Ecko Rising (5 page)

But they also hurt like bastards if anything damaged them. He could feel all of it: every lump, every splinter, every crack, every chip and fragment of the broken wall. He could have mapped the destruction to the last half nanometre – the pain etched the landscape of the stonework into the blood on his fingertips.

His resolve set like cold steel, Ecko swung sideways along the roof’s edge – away from the can’s target arc. His jaw jumped with the hurt of every handhold, but he kept his oculars focused on the dirty, pitted ferrocrete before him. He closed his ears to the demented yowl of the wind, ignored the rain as it battered into his flesh. If he fell...

...He was playing Bogeyman, playing Bogeyman for real. Bogeyman didn’t mess up – and he
didn’t
fall off the fucking wall. For Bogeyman to end up as Pavement Pizza was inconceivable.

He sniggered like the first sign of panic.

One hand then two.

His feet swung loose, billowing uselessly as if his legs were broken. He could get no purchase on the slippery glass. After another metre, the pain in his fingertips was sparking stars across his vision. His hands were cramping, his arms and shoulders shuddering with strain. As the hurt increased, his fingers lied to him. A whole chunk of wall came away under his grip and he dangled precariously from one hand, the wind blinding him with his cloak hood.

For chrissakes
, he thought to himself,
get a fucking grip.

He sniggered aloud – then strangled it before it rose to a scream.

Desperate fear gave him strength. With a simian swing, he secured the second handhold and hung there, sick with relief. He dared not raise his head above the lip of the wall – that fucking can would blow it clean off.

Another two metres and he’d reach the corner.

* * *

Ecko’s briefing had covered only the corporate basics – approach, building security, office space – it hadn’t listed the contents of Grey’s lab. That shit was target
numero uno
on the list of stuff Ecko had to recon.

Gotcha!

Behind him, the door clanged shut and sealed with a slight hiss. Oblivious to the additional presence, Grey and Salva headed swiftly away across the gloom.

Leaving Ecko crouched at the bottommost edge of a nightmare cavern.

He’d been expecting the usual – some elaborate medical set-up. Computers, cryogenics, glass tubing, dry ice, some twisted lab assistant with genetics issues... The span of the entire building and four floors in height, this place had none of these things.

It looked more like a prison.

In the moment of confusion, he paused to check for security – just scanning the gloom as though nothing was wrong.

And then he realised what he’d found.

It left him breathless – staring above and around him in a choking swell of awe, fear and scorn – a rising, throat-closing claustrophobia that all but had him scrabbling at the door.

Down each long wall, stacked like crates and stretching into the gloom, there were chambers. The layout was utterly familiar – and terrifying in its banality. Now utilised by every major corporation to house its staff, these were bog standard, completely recognisable Human Resource Containers – commonplace city habitation, sold on by Pilgrim to the big corporations. They were marketed as “bolt-holes” to those that lived in them – known as “shit-holes” to those that managed not to. Each had a bed, a cupboard, a toilet, a fridge and a console loaded with The World of Anywhere-But-Here... Yeah, each one had everything the mindless worker drone needed.

Grey and Salva had purposefully vanished. Ecko didn’t care. Hunched under the weight of the room, he stared from door to door to door, his lungs filling with repulsion and horror.
This
was social perfection – pure order. This was what Pilgrim strived for,
this
was how they’d become the single most powerful corporation in the world. They’d delivered a quiescent, contented population, a totally peaceful and crime-free society.

Yeah right. What they’d delivered was fifty million little plastic bottles labelled “Mood Stabiliser”.

Instant contentment. Happiness in tablet form.

Yeah, it may as well have been fucking cryogenics, Ecko reckoned. At least the bastards shut in those didn’t have to
work
a nine-to-six.

The place stank like a week of backed-up shit. As Ecko remembered to breathe, the stink was a sharp punch in the nose. He found the room smelled of piss, unwashed skin, rotting food... It reeked like a bunch of junkies had been using it as crash space.

Ecko quelled his anger and checked again for the room’s security. Then, as wary as a black-eyed rodent, he moved to the door of the first shit-hole.

He’d had a horrible fucking idea he knew what was coming.

* * *

At last, Ecko reached the corner of the building.

Feeling the openness of the sky to his side, he hung there for a moment, willing himself to continue. His blood screamed louder than the wind in his ears.

As he eased precariously round the angle, the weather hit him like a train and he found himself scrabbling frantically for a foothold. From being plastered to his back, his cloak became a parachute, pulling at his throat, hips and elbows – its loose folds inflated and the wind shrilled through carefully seamed rents.

For an instant, it nearly ripped him clean off the side of the building.

The thing was a mass of folds and slits and loose ends of fabric... all now trying to pull him loose. Ecko twisted his back to the wind and the thing deflated like a dying animal.

His fingertips were slippery, leaving bloodstains; he could feel the palms of his hands oozing with stickiness. He didn’t dare release a hand to move onwards and the cloak was too complicated to release, so he hung, pain, fear and savage resolve all yammering for attention in his head.

Whatever you do
, he told himself,
don’t fucking look down.

Fucking Collator and his fucking odds, fucking Lugan and his fucking plans.
You get in, you get the data stick, you get out...
Yeah, right – more like, you get in, you get screwed, you end up target practise for a
Takeshimi
tin can that’s not even supposed to
be here...

His feet slipped and skidded; his arms and fingers cramped like he’d never uncurl them. The cloak still tugged at him. He shook the cowl from his head and the wind slammed into his cheek.

The temperature was dropping – the rain was turning to sleet.

With an effort that nearly broke him, he swung his weight into motion once more – one hand then two, just a little further...

* * *

The first shit-hole wasn’t locked.

On the bed, the recumbent figure wasn’t restrained. As the door inched open, she turned her head to smile, although she didn’t sit up.

Her cupboard door stood ajar, spilling soullessly creased garments onto the carpet tiles. Her gaming console was on standby, the eyewear discarded. Beside her was a metal mug – as Ecko slipped around the door, he saw it contained puddles of white, furred mould.

Stink and revulsion flooding his system, he realised she hadn’t left the bed in days.

But – she wasn’t restrained. No one was forcing her to stay. She was lying there because... his heart cowered in his chest when the full depth of Grey’s achievement hit him... she was lying there because she
wanted
to.

She was
happy.

Peace: a population that voluntarily incarcerated itself, that had no interest or need outside the workplace –

No passion, no fear, no desire. No anger. No frustration.

They didn’t even know to fight back; they no longer cared.

They wanted
nothing.
They were just
content.

Stealth forgotten, Ecko stood in the centre of the little box, his blood congealed to fury. Around him, above him, across the room from him there were more boxes and more boxes...

How many people had Grey got in here – his control experiments, his gauges? Were they better than this? Were they worse?

The woman was – what – maybe thirty-five? Her well-cut suit was crumpled to a rag, her well-cut hair grown to an unruly tangle. She had clothes, food, entertainment – a door out of her box whenever she chose to take it...

But she was fine where she was.

Ecko found his face twisting round a sneer that felt like pity.

With a red flash of contempt, he wanted to make her react, to defy her own conditioning and stick one in Grey’s throat. He pulled the door from the cupboard, yanked out her garments, tore them to strips, kicked over her fridge... She followed him with her eyes, smiling at him.

He turned and snarled at her to move, to get the hell up, to say something, to cry, to curse, to fight, to beg him for help.

Her mouth moved, but it was only for a moment. She returned it to the smile.

With a short, sharp impact, he punched her in the face.

Her nose crunched, her lip split; blood splashed across her skin. She spluttered surprised red bubbles. Her hands half rose in an effort to cover her head against further blows.

But even that wasn’t enough. After a moment she fell back, arms tumbling slackly to her sides – like her fucking batteries had died.

Fight me, you fucking – !

With a surge of absolute savagery, hating the drone for being a victim, hating Grey for what he’d done, Ecko drew in a breath and exhaled.

He breathed pure fire.

It was Mom’s greatest trick, one he’d asked her to design for him. It was more a toy than a weapon – only lethal at very close range.

Like this.

The drone died without a sound, her face blackening, blistering and sloughing down into the pillow. Hell, she had to be better off. Beneath her, the unclean bedding coughed, spluttered flame and flared into life.

Ecko was just wondering if he had time to total the rest of them when he heard servo-motors, loud across the cavern’s quiet. His vision spun as he focused his telescopics in the direction Grey had taken – the other side of the room.

It was then, of course, that he’d seen the ’bot.

* * *

On the roof, the ’bot could no longer see him.

With a mouth full of terror and indignation pounding in his temples, Ecko pulled himself upwards until his forearms and elbows rested along the top of the wall.

His shoulders sang relief. He didn’t dare look at his fingertips.

Here, the stone was unbroken; here, he was shielded from the arc of attack. For a moment, he paused, feeling the sleet on his skin, the blood on his hands, the cloak flapping like a dead thing round his legs.

So much for the fucking cavalry, Lugan.
The thought was a bitter one, but there was a savage sense of righteousness in doing this by himself.

What had Lugan said, after his interview with the Boss?
“You get this right, mate, an’ she’s promised she’ll have Eliza fix you up proper, d’you know what I mean? No expense spared.”

Ecko responded as he’d done that morning,
“What’m I, your fuckin’ bike, now? You think can customise me any which way? You fuckin’ hypocrite! You leave my cyberware alone an’ you stay the hell outta my head.”

There was motion. A door, booted feet. A clipped, military voice.

Salva.

Holding his breath, he watched.

Salva was coldly efficient, covering the shattered remains of wall and roof garden. Ecko didn’t need oculars to clock the precision in the way she scanned the area, ducked back, paused, and moved to the next checkpoint.

It’d be about sixty seconds before that checkpoint was slap-bang in his face. If he was gonna pull this off, he needed to move. Like, now.

He let the wind swing his body sideways, got one foot on the top of the wall. Not thinking about the drop below him – thinking about the ’bot, the
’bot
– he rolled silently over the top and down onto the gravel.

The wind suddenly cut off as the stonework shielded him, his ears sang with cold. He stayed still, waiting, watching.

As Salva moved to cover the trashed remnants of the roof garden, Ecko realised that she was alone – her goons had not come with her.

At last, the Bogeyman’s luck was with him; he might just fucking do this after all.

Hope and adrenaline flooded his system.

Mom had built Ecko to be many things – stealther, spy, thief, tech – but her vision and genius had not stopped with reconnaissance and Bogeyman trickery. He had also been constructed to excel at something else.

Assassination.

Guilt, fear, compassion; these had little meaning against the adrenal boosting that supercharged his coordination and reflexes, against the ocular targeting that cross-haired the most elusive objective. His mottle-skin was spider-silk woven, lighter and tougher than Kevlar; biospheres in his bloodstream doubled his healing rate and fought infection. Increased capillarisation improved his body’s ability to transport and process oxygen. He was as strong, as tough, as fit as the characters he’d grown up with.

As Salva came closer, so Ecko went from joker to combat machine.

He had one shot at this.

The first kick hit her knee and snapped her leg. The same foot flashed again, connecting with the side of her head as she fell. Doctor Grey’s elite fighter never knew what’d hit her – she was dead before she hit the gravel.

Her rifle was in Ecko’s hands.

But the ’bot was moving.

He heard the high-pitched whine of the barrels, saw the thing turn into his field of vision. He raised the rifle butt to his shoulder; his targeters cross-haired the sensor array in its head. With a snarl of defiance, he squeezed the trigger to blow it away.

He missed.

His arms were shaking too badly. Overstrained, he wasn’t strong enough to hold the weapon and it climbed, rounds flying high and wide of his target.

In the split second he had before the tin can opened fire, Ecko knew he was screwed.