Cates 05 - The Final Evolution (27 page)

The light turned green.

For a second I was frozen. The green light meant bend your fucking knees, grab onto the clip, and push yourself into the open air, but
fuck
the ground was far away. I was sweating like a stuck pig, and I was jumping into airspace that would cook me from the inside out if not for the suit. I stood for a second staring at the green light, mesmerized.

Jump, dummy
, Dick Marin whispered at me.

I didn’t bend my fucking knees; I leaned forward and grabbed the guide clip and then kept leaning forward until gravity reached up and plucked me from the bay. There was a moment of crazy when I didn’t have a center of gravity and just whipped this way and that, and then everything settled down and it was exhilarating, just gliding down through the air. I couldn’t hear anything because of the suit, and I couldn’t feel the wind pushing against me; the sensation was like floating with purpose, and for a few seconds I forgot about everything else.

Then I glanced down and thought,
Oh shit.

The ground came up so quickly I made a squawking noise of surprise, suddenly remembering, vaguely, something about going into a crouch while still in the air and letting go of the guide clip at a precise moment. Then I smacked down hard, bouncing once, the impact absorbed partially by the thick, almost-armor-like material of the radiation suit. I skidded along the rough ground for a second or two and then crashed into something unyielding and came to a sudden, ringing stop.

Almost directly in front of me, Marko managed a perfect landing, dropping onto the ground and into a shuffling run, the silvery wire snapping back up just like I’d been told to expect. His momentum took him a few feend then he stopped himself and knelt down, like taking a bow. A few moments later, Mehrak, wearing standard Stormer Obfuscation Kit scrubs instead of the rad suit, hit the ground with similar grace, and when Grisha smacked down like a load of wet shit I was fucking happy, and I watched him roll like a rag doll with something approaching satisfaction. Even the perfect landing Hense’s doppelganger—also in standard issue Stormer kit—managed when it landed couldn’t ruin the moment.

Marko stepped over and reached out a gloved hand. My earbud sizzled into life. “You okay?”

I let him haul me up. “Peachy. Hitting the ground at a thousand fucking miles an hour is a tonic, you ask me.”

“We had mandatory training,” Marko said, sounding almost apologetic. “Even the Tech Associates. This was my fifteenth drop.”

“Two hundred forty-nine,” Mehrak buzzed in. “Two hundred thirty-three live in the field.”

“Compare manhood later,” Grisha panted in my ear, “and someone help me up. There is no
time
.”

I spun around, taking in the scenery and picturing the aerial images. “This way,” I said, breathing hard already in the heavy, hot suit.

It was hard to believe the whole area was dangerous—everything looked normal, natural. It was easy to think that the rad suit was a joke, that Hense was trotting along behind me with her endless fission energy hiding a smile as she imagined me sweating and straining under its weight. I had a crazy urge to just shed it, to peel it off and feel the cool air on my skin.

Hense’s voice buzzed in my ear. “You ready for him, Cates?”

I smiled inside my humid little world. “Tell me something, Janet: Do you hear yourself? Are you just whispering to yourself constantly? Are there, like, forty echoes of your own voice in your head?”

“This unit is off-net, Avery,” she buzzed back, static making her sound thin and distant. “We didn’t want any signals getting noticed. I’m independent.”

I thought about that. Independent. Fuck, I’d thought I was independent for years, but I was on the Rail, being pushed gently into increasingly terrible things. And I didn’t even have circuits where my brain should be, hardwired with who knew what. I didn’t have an automatic shutdown routine if my insane leader somehow got shut up for a few weeks.

We were in the right area, but I couldn’t see the entrance to the sewers. I spun around, feeling constricted without proper peripheral vision, and finally spotted a big clump of rocks too squared off and too precisely piled to be natural. These turned out to be the edge of near-buried ruins, big slabs of worked stone fallen over onto itself, exhausted. I climbed into the midst of it and followed the outline of the stone, finally finding a sloping indentation into the earth, lined with faded, moss-eaten stone, leading down into darkness. What was left of some previous System, I thought. Some other King Worm had built this, then died, and it was still here, being swallowed an inch a century forever.

“Right here, I breathed.

I waited for everyone to catch up, clambering over the stones and swatting low branches out of their faces. Marko and Grisha were like nimble foam men, all bulk and shapeless material but somehow still able to bound from toe to toe, balanced and easy. They all gathered around the hole and paused, staring down into it.

“Fuck the hazard pay,” Mehrak said as melodiously as ever. “This is the worst assignment I’ve ever gotten.”

“Duly noted,” Hense snapped. “Now, in. Mehrak takes point, Avery and me in the middle, our two Tinkers in the rear.”

“Careful,” Grisha said, sounding out of breath but amused. “Parts of avatar can still be broken. You might trip down there in the dark.”

Mehrak shrugged. “If I do,” he said, “don’t recycle my chassis for one of your crunchy geeks, promise?” Without waiting for an answer, he plucked his sidearm from its holster and with a glance around jumped down into the darkness. I gestured on my helmet’s built-in light and jumped in after him before Hense could issue me any more instructions.

It wasn’t a very far drop. I landed easily on a brick floor and immediately stepped aside to let the rest follow Mehrak and me. We were in a tight little tunnel, big enough for us to walk in single file along its damp, slippery stonework. It graded down a few feet but then appeared to level off to a subtle downgrade, pitch-black aside from the trickle of sunlight from the hole and the thin light Mehrak and I were throwing around. I was just thinking that it was going to be a painful procession with Hense at my back barking orders when a shadow moved up ahead.

“Get down!” I shouted, my own voice buzzing in my ears with feedback. Mehrak dropped to a knee instantly, his gun coming up in time with my own. For a moment, we were statues, trembling with the desire to pull the trigger and make some fucking noise.

“Oy, don’t fuckin’ shoot,” a woman’s voice called from the gloom. “I’m comin’ on up to ya. Don’t fuckin’
shoot
me.”

The shadow moved again, creeping up toward us, slowly resolving into a tall, thin woman with bright red hair, an unpretty face but a nice body, shown off to good effect in her skintight pants. She wasn’t wearing a lick of protective gear, and as her face resolved in the dim light I instantly knew why.

“Fuck me,” I said, straightening up. “Mara.”

She stopped a foot or so beyond Mehrak’s reach and put her hands on her hips. “Ach, Avery, you know better’n anyone here there’s no-fucking-body named
Mara
in this world. If you don’t recognize yer old pal Cainnic, or a version o’ him anyway, then t’hell with you.”

“Avatar?” Hense hissed from behind us. “Of
Orel
?”

Mara’s eyes flashed over my shoulder. “That’s right, sister. An’ I come bearing the fucking flag of
truce
.”

I licked sweat from my lips and wished fervently I could wipe it from my eyes. “Why’s that, ashole?”

Mara’s face smiled sweetly, transformed, for a second, into a pretty woman. “Because I’ve gone fucking batshit insane.”

XXVIII

SOMEONE WAS TELLING ME A STORY ABOUT BEING KNOCKED ONTO THE GROUND

I raised my gun and took a half-lunging step forward toward the avatar, looking just like the familiar young girl with reddish hair, a flat, angular face, and long, graceful-looking limbs. “This was a poor fucking day to find me and taunt me, Mickey,” I said as she scrambled backward from me, slamming up into the ancient, smooth stone of the tunnel. I pushed the barrel into its nose. “A poor. Fucking. Day.”

“Cates!” Hense snarled behind me.

“Avery!” Grisha shouted, breaking up into wet coughs. “Wait!”

I paused, my own breathing through my nose sounding impossibly loud in my ears. My HUD, inexplicably bright and shiny in my vision again, reported that my core body temperature was rising, but still well within tolerations. I flicked my eyes to my left out of habit, getting a good look at the shadowy interior of the rad suit’s helmet. I forced myself to dial it back a little, and I eased my finger off the trigger.

“Say it fast,” I said. The Mara avatar had its hands up by its ears, its tits thrust out at me, but its face was smiling.

“Avery,” Grisha said, his tinny voice like a tiny Russian Techie was standing in my ear, shouting. “If this is a
copy
of Orel, it may possess what we need.”

“Too fucking easy,” I heard Marko mutter. “I’ve been on trips with Cates before. Too fucking easy.”

I looked back at the Mara avatar, which was still smiling at me. I pushed the gun into its nose a little harder, but it just raised its eyebrows. I put my thick gloved finger up against the helmet approximately where my mouth was, and Mara winked.

“No,” I said. “He’s too smart for that. He wouldn’t take the risk those codes would be out in the wild.” I smiled at the avatar, even though it couldn’t see my face. “Orel wouldn’t trust himself.”

Without warning, something heavy crashed into me, knocking me down. In the rad suit it felt distant, like someone was telling me a story about being knocked onto the ground. I flopped my arms, trying to roll over onto my belly, but something stamped down on my wrist, pinning me to the ground. I looked up at Hense, looking incredibly tiny and light, like she was made of loose twigs, and I tried to roll my arm free, but it was pinned to the floor like I’d been nailed down.

“Talk,” she said to Orel. “Make it quick. I can’t stand on his fucking hand all fucking day. You have one minute.”

I reached awkwardly to my left and eased my second gun out of its holster, but suddenly Mehrak appeared between me and the director, his legs planted on either side of my belly, his own sidearm aimed at my helmet. He smiled a little and just shook his head. “Sorry, darling,” he said softly, like he was kissing me good night.

“I appreciate yer time… Director,” Orel said in Mara’s rough feminine voice. I wondered if there had ever been a real Mara, whether she was long-dead or scratching away somewhere. “I know this is… surprisin’, and Avery’s never been good with surprises.”

Hense didn’t move a muscle. “That took ten seconds. You have to do a better job of managing your time.”

His smile spread across the girl’s face. “Aw’right.” He pointed one delicate finger at Hense. “I’m offerin’ you a deal. I’ve gone fuckin’ crazy. I popped that piece of junk into my head, and it was downhill from there.” He spread his hands in a slow, graceful way, a con man’s gesture, smooth and totally believable. “I’m offerin’ you
me
, on a fucking platter. All I want in return is a pardon. All I want in return is, you let me walk, no hard feelings.”

Hense nodded. “But I don’t need to make any deals. I have
you
, now.”

For a second, Mara’s plain face rippled with surprise and unease, and I was glad in my heart.

“Here’s
my
deal,” Hense said slowly, taking her time and, I would swear, enjoying herself. It all felt theatrical, too wide, too ripe. “We’re taking you. We’re calling off this mission and hauling your ass back to Berlin, where we’re going to feed you into the mainframes and suss out what we need.” She leaned in slightly. “And then when we’ve settled our problems, we’ll come on back for the real you.”

She sold it—I was even terrified of her, that tiny little dark-skinned woman with the fussy hairdo and the perfectly cut clothes, the soft steady voice and the unblinking eyes. Then Orel snapped Mara’s face into a wide grin again. He didn’t have any of the real Orel’s artificially stimulated Psionic powers, but he was still irritatingly sure of himself.

“Marin’s codes, huh?” The avatar barked a laugh. “You ’n me, we’re in that boat together. Because Av’ry’s right. That crazy bastard edited
that
out of his imprints. He edited a lot out.” Another laugh, this one harsher, Mara’s flat face getting red in another astounding example of avatar programming. “You imagine it? Brain salad surgery on
yerself
? He’s fucking far gone.”

Hense didn’t move. “I don’t believe you,” she said in a precise way that hinted at all sorts of violence.

Orel laughed, crinkling up Mara’s face in a way that evoked the old man’s wrinkled round head perfectly. “Yeah? You got the juice to take a risk, box me up, and check me out and then come
back
?” He shook his head. “You ain’t got the
slack
, Director. The good news is, yer wrong. I don’t have your fucking override codes.
He
deleted them from me.” He spread his hands again, an actor on the stage. “I’m in th’ same boat, girly. I’m on the same fuckin’ network.” Mara’s face turned dark again. “That fuckin’ bastard sets me to be his lackey, rattlin’ around this fucking
basement
for months. He’s gone barkers.”

Hense didn’t move or speak for a moment. “How do I know you’re actually Cainnic Orel?” she said, and I knew she was taking his deal. He was right; the cops didn’t have the fuel, ammo, or functioning avatar units to make another assault on Split, so we had to proceed with the plan. She would, I was pretty sure, screw him and take the avatar back to Berlin anyway after they’d grabbed the main event, just in case. But I figured Orel had about as much experience with the System Pigs as I did, and so he must expect to get the screw from her.

Mara’s face bloomed into a wide smile as Hense turned to look down at me. “You’ve spent time with this old asshole,” she said evenly. “What do you think?”