The Eternal Prison (40 page)

 

 

I opened my eyes to find myself sitting in front of me, with that same static smile as if it’d been in low-power mode for hours.

 

I blinked. My eyesight had returned, but it was blurred and jumpy, everything smeared with something thick and sticky. I squinted at the figure across from me as I shivered in the chair, my body just shaking uncontrollably. It wasn’t my avatar. It was Dick Marin. A Richard Marin who’d been through some rough times. An attempt had been made to spruce it up a bit—repaired skin that didn’t quite match in tone and quality, a newish suit that had once been very expensive and impressive and was now merely a very nice old suit, a pair of wraparound sunglasses that showed a tiny but noticeable crack in the left lens.

 

It cocked its head at me. “Awake at last? Fucking hell, I look like shit.”

 

I tried to blink. One eyelid came down first, slowly, and then the second, which decided to stay down. “What?”

 

“Fuck. You look like a complete fucking burden. This is going to be a pain in the ass.”

 

I shook my head, trying to spill the ringing out of it. “What?”

 

Suddenly, it reached out and took hold of my nose. A fresh bloom of jagged, sparkly pain barely registered in me, a distant flash, like thunder on the horizon. I’d been trying to retreat into my old quiet spot inside my head, a glassy sphere that kept noise and pain out, leaving me safe. But I hadn’t been able to summon it for a long time. It kept shattering inside me.

 

“Stop saying
what,
okay? And then we’ll be friends.”

 

This was me inside a Marin avatar. It made no sense. I realized suddenly that I didn’t like myself very much. I was kind of an asshole.

 

“What,” I said.

 

The avatar—my imprint inside Dick Marin’s chassis—twitched its head. “Good.” It waited a moment and then removed its hand from my nose, its face turning serious. “Grisha sent me. To retrieve you.” It smiled again, suddenly sunny. “It’s amazing, really. Russian bastard tries for
months
to kill us, now he follows us like a fucking lost puppy, right?” It shook its head. “Never met a Techie with his kind of chops.

 

Fucking Grisha could have been an
operator
back in New York, you know?”

 

I nodded. “Yeah,” I said as slowly and clearly as I could. Slowly I felt myself flowing back, like blood into a sleeping limb. The ringing in my head was receding slowly, although I kept shaking. “I know.”

 

It nodded. “Okay! Okay. Let’s get you up. Get you dressed. Medicated. I’ve got stimulants and coagulants and anti-infectious cocktails. Even if you’re bleeding internally, you’ll feel better. Though I can’t prevent you from actually dying, sorry. I’m double layered, and if I wasn’t air-conditioned, I’d be sweating my balls off. Come on. It’s not far.”

 

It leaned in, and with three quick tugs I was freed of my bonds. I immediately fell sideways onto the floor. This seemed like the best idea I’d had in
years,
and I decided to stay there.

 

“Ah, hell,” the avatar said, reaching under me and easily lifting me up, approximately upright. “Shit, I did
not
need to see that. All right.” It let me slide back to the floor, and my heart swelled with gratitude. “Easier to dress you down there anyway.”

 

I was too tired to be humiliated as the avatar tugged dirty, unfortunate clothes onto my bleeding, shivering form. “All right,” it said, standing up and examining me with hands on its hips. “We need to move. Our window here is about five more minutes. Come on, you sad sack of gristle.”

 

Roughly, my arm was stretched out again, another autohypo jabbed into the bruised crook of my elbow. Another barely noticed prick of pain, and warmth seemed to flow from my arm into the rest of me. “How did you manage to get in here?” I gasped as it lifted me up and pulled me toward the door of the cell.

 

“Same trick you thought of back in Moscow,” it said immediately. “We dressed me up and sent me against the fucking Techies. They let me waltz right in. We got schedules and maps, so we’re set. If we keep moving.”

 

“Who,” I struggled to say. “Who gave you the maps?”

 

“We also have a Pusher helping us out. Greasy little bastard, makes me glad I don’t have a brain for the first time. Here we are,” it said as we found the cell door. The avatar gestured and the door fell open an inch or so. It reached out immediately and pulled it completely open, shoving me through with a sudden, rough push that sent me windmilling on rubber legs into a concrete hallway, scratching my hands on the rough, unfinished walls as I tried to steady myself. My legs were shivering uncontrollably, but I felt surprisingly better, stronger.

 

“Keep going straight,” the avatar said, pulling the door shut behind him. “Try not to fall.”

 

I concentrated on moving myself forward aided by the occasional shove from behind. I’d quickly come to hate the avatar. When I found out which one of my pet Techies had saved my imprint from The Star, I was going to twist their nose until they fucking
screamed.
I wasn’t sure Grisha would let me get away with it, but if he’d secretly sucked a copy of me out of that robot and hung onto it all this time, I was prepared to take my chances.

 

The hall terminated at a shiny metal elevator door. The avatar gestured and the doors slid open, revealing a clean, polished interior that looked like it had been installed a few minutes before—not even a smudged fingerprint—an elevator used exclusively by avatars with their plastic hands.

 

A shove sent me sailing into it. My legs collapsed under me, and I crashed awkwardly into the back wall. I lay there as the avatar stepped into the cab behind me, gesturing the doors closed. The elevator immediately began to rise, pushing me down into the floor.

 

“As soon as I have a few weeks to recover,” I panted, “I’m going to tear you into small components and melt you.”

 

“My alloys have a pretty high melting point,” it said, sounding cheerful. “And some materials used in my construction don’t react predictably to heat.” It turned its head halfway toward me. “But since you really can’t get any uglier, why not take the risk?” It turned back to stare at itself in the shiny doors. “I like this chassis. Much better looking. We are one ugly bastard, don’t you think?”

 

There was a soft beep, and the elevator settled to a stop. The doors split open again. Grisha stood outside the elevator, a Shredding rifle ridiculously strapped to his back, bigger, almost, than he was, and a cheap-looking auto in his hand. Otherwise, he looked exactly as I’d left him in Russia—dirty and wearing a heavy coat that must have been punishing in the desert heat. He didn’t look like he’d been sweltering in the sun for days—which was to say he wasn’t dead.

 

“Good to see you are not dead yet, Avery,” the skinny Russian said, stepping backward quickly. “Come, we must move fast. The psionic cannot hold the guards for much longer.”

 

The avatar spun and pulled me up again, every bone in my body stabbing into something soft and puncturing it. I thought I might be able to walk but decided not to advertise the fact until I knew the full facts of the situation. I let the avatar drag me painfully along a brief corridor that ended in a set of battered-looking double doors.

 

“Grisha,” I managed to cough out. “Grisha! Did you rip my imprint and hang on to it? Because I’m going to strangle whoever did.”

 

“In that case,” he shouted over his shoulder as he arrived at the doors and pushed them open. A blast of skin-melting heat pushed its way into the hall. “In that case, Avery, it was Mr. Marko. Now, hurry, please.”

 

The sun hit me like scalding oil, immediately dripping down over me and baking my skin, sweat popping out everywhere. I squinted my eyes against the blinding white glare, but I could make out the familiar rounded shape of a hover, painfully reflective in silver, with odd markings on the side I didn’t recognize. As we got close I realized that four Stormers were standing at attention around it, perfectly still, cowls down and mouths slack, staring. Pushed. I’d seen that expression enough when rolling around with Kev Gatz.

 

There was no drop bay. The hatch popped open as we approached, and Grisha bounded up into it, turning around to take hold of me as the avatar passed me up. I was pushed down into a plush seat, and I heard the hatch snapping shut behind me.

 

“Are we good?” a voice said, oily and assured.

 

“Yes,” Grisha said breathlessly. “We are good. Easy, as you said.”

 

I squinted around. We were in the nicest hover cabin I’d ever seen, carpeted with rich-looking chairs arranged around bolted-down tables. A bar had been set up in the back, and a very tall, very tanned man in a very nice suit stood there with a deep drink in one hand, rings glittering expensively in the soft light. Cool air caressed me gently, pulling the fresh heat away from me. I thought perhaps heaven was a brand-new military hover, and I’d finally managed a way in.

 

The tall man unspooled himself and walked over, throwing himself down into the seat across from me. I scowled at him. He smelled too clean and looked like he ate regularly. Not my kind of people. I probed a raw spot in my mouth where a tooth had been lost; the pain was numbed, fading throughout me into a dull pulse. I sucked in a deep breath, blinking my eyes clear.

 

For a second, just a second, I felt a whisper in my mind, a soft brush of someone else’s thoughts—someone’s thoughts
outside
of me. My scowl deepened. He was the psionic, then. He was their Pusher. And I didn’t think an avatar could sense psionic activity.

 

Clever boy,
Marin singsonged.
You’re a real live boy after all!

 

“It’s him, all right,” the tall man said and put the most insincere smile I’d ever seen on his face, his teeth too white against his tan skin. “Mr. Cates, it’s a pleasure to see you again.”

 

I swallowed dust and sunlight. “We’ve met?”

 

He blinked, then let loose a calculated, insincere laugh. “Oh! Of course not! My apologies.” He leaned forward, extending his hand. “Name’s Neely. I work with Cal Ruberto.”

 

Don’t trust him,
Dolores Salgado whispered in my head.
In fact, if you get a chance, throw him out a window.

 

 

 

 

XXXV

NONE OF THAT PRETENDER BULLSHIT

 

 

 

 

I kept blinking my eyes, trying to get the gloom and glare out of them, struggling for control. I squinted owlishly around, hoping I looked mysterious and calm instead of batshit and broken. I saw Marko sitting in one of the plush chairs and tried to give him a smile, unsure if I’d pulled it off. The glassware at the bar—delicate, expensive things that looked old, from a previous era—rattled gently as I heard the dim roar of displacement behind insulated, soundproofed walls. Then my stomach—already shaken loose from its moorings—sank into my ass and stayed there as the hover rose into the air.

 

I looked at Grisha again, then back at Marko. They both looked back at me blankly. After a moment, Marko smiled, a slow, uncomfortable change of expression that made me wish I had the strength to smack him.

 

“So how, exactly, did this
happen?
” I asked.

 

Grisha shrugged. “Mr. Neely showed up in Moscow shortly after you’d been snatched,” he said. “Looking for you.”

 

“If we’d gotten there a few hours earlier, we might have prevented your being taken altogether,” Neely interjected, sitting back and steepling his hands. “Since our goals temporarily coincided, I suggested to your colleagues that we pool resources at least this far.”

 

The tan man smiled at me, those white teeth like searchlights popping out of his mouth. I started coughing and put some theater into it to buy time. I was feeling a little better—just getting up and moving had helped, and whatever miracle drugs the avatar had pumped into me were doing their work—but this didn’t feel right. I’d spent a lifetime feeling my way through situations, getting betrayed and stabbed in the back. You developed a taste for the bitter upchuck sizzling in the back of your throat that always preceded a real good assfucking, and I had half my organs clawing up my throat.

 

I cleared my throat forcefully. “Why? Why come looking for me?”

 

I wondered why Neely wasn’t Pushing me. I was pretty sure the last way to describe what was happening was a
rescue,
so why wasn’t the bastard just putting me in a mental headlock?

 

Probably he doesn’t know how that will affect
us, Dolores whispered to me.
We’re an unknown quantity. What if we resist? What if our presence makes you immune? What if we all snap like brittle glass and you’re scrambled? He can’t take the chance.

 

I felt her go silent again before I could respond.

 

Neely’s smile didn’t falter. “Frankly, Cates, when we acquired your imprint and hatched this little plan, we didn’t realize… what had
happened
to you. Aside from being a citizen of the System and thus under the protection of its duly elected officials, you’re, shall we say,