Ecko Rising (6 page)

There was no cover up here; nowhere to go. Turbocharged or not, he wasn’t a fucking action-movie hero able to dodge short-range rifle suppression with no cover.

He did the only thing he could do. He went over the edge.

And fell down, down into the screaming and the dark.

3: THE WANDERER

                    
THE WANDERER, ROVIARATH

Ecko drifted through layers of consciousness.

“...Why he even brought it inside.” The speaker was young, female. His head was clouded with fug; as the voice hazed into focus, he groped for a name. “We’ve got enough strays: new cook, new bar staff. Oh come on, mush, I’m
never
inhospitable...”

“The Bard said he knew what it was.” The second voice was male, clear and deep. Soft footsteps moved somewhere behind where Ecko lay.

Behind him...? Where...?

He couldn’t think. His limbs and head felt heavy: he’d been sleeping very deeply. The last thing he remembered...

The roof garden. Bloody handprints across the shattered wall. Insanity screaming in muscle and weather.

Falling.

Stupidly, his first solid thought was that Lugan never reached him in time.

They must’ve scraped him off the tarmac like so much roadkill. In the thick, sheltered blanket of awakening, he wondered: why was there no pain?

“Anyway, we can’t leave it up here.” The woman was brisk, authoritative. “I don’t even know what it is – we can’t have it running around, it’ll scare the customers.”

“This is Roviarath,” the man answered her. “Their only concern would be what they could trade it for.”

She giggled.

No pain... Ecko tried to focus on that realisation. No pain. Only his hands... Gradually, pushing back the smothering warmth, he allowed his awareness to expand. He wasn’t restrained, though his webbing and cloak had gone. His cheek rested upon something supple, cool to his skin. He had no injuries. A brief, subvisual check showed all systems normal, although the flamethrower tanks in his chest weren’t full. His memories were washing up slowly, garbage on the riverbank – Doctor Grey with his half a reefer, a scanner, blood red through the rain...

In the bottom corner of his field of vision, his digital time readout was jittery: he’d no clue how long he’d been out.

Even Grey wouldn’t’ve seen anything like Ecko before. Dimly he wondered: maybe they were gonna do
experiments
on him?

Humour flickered. Heh... would
they
be in for a surprise.

He remained still, his breathing unchanged. The air was clean – but there was no hum of purifiers. He could hear a party – but there was no music. More fragments floated belly-up to the surface – the woman, burning on the bed; Lugan saying, “You get in, you get out. No mess.”

Yeah, right. Whatcha gonna do about it
now
, biker-boy?

The female voice tutted. “Look, do you think it’s all right to leave it? I need you downstairs, we’re in the wrong part of the city here.” She walked round where Ecko lay, her footsteps soft, indicating carpets or rugs. “Roviarath can be difficult – c’mon, Sera.”

Ecko waited for a third voice but the man answered, “It seems quiet for the moment... yet it seems you are not giving me the choice.”

Sarah? A guy called “Sarah”, for chrissakes? Ecko tried to pull his concentration together. What was downstairs? And where was “Rovi-ar-ath”?

Were Grey’s goons talking like this when they’d passed him on the stairwell?

He heard a door open.

The sound was two, maybe three metres away. Though still unseen, the room took on shape and size. For a moment, the noise of the party became louder.

Then long, easy bootsteps crossed towards him.

A sudden, peculiar tension brought Ecko fully awake. He lay motionless, stilled by incomprehension. Who...?

The footsteps stopped; the newcomer was right over him.

Salva was dead; it had to be Grey. What was he carrying – pistol, hypo? Ecko’s targeters twitched although his eyes were still closed. Could he spark and flame before – ?

“Karine, Sera.”

The voice was male, warm, light and fine; it had a timbre and vibrancy so compelling that his questions braked to a screeching halt. It wasn’t Grey; the subtle accent was completely alien. And yet...

“It seems the traditional brawl is brewing early.” Where had he heard it before? That hint of wry humour was familiar, so familiar...

...was this the deal – were they gonna
talk
him into submission?

Shit. He remembered that Lugan’d sent him on this fucking mission without a radio. He’d have no help getting out of here.

“They should be drinking, not fighting,” the woman said. There was a faint scuffle. “Go on, you dirty great bouncer, get your arse down there and sort them out. I don’t want the place trashed.”

“Will never happen.” “Sarah” headed for the door.

When he’d gone, there was a pause.

The long footsteps of the guy with the voice crossed to another point in the room. There was a shuffling of what sounded like paper –
paper
, for chrissakes? – and the woman said gently, “What’s up?”

Ecko heard the guy inhale, let his breath out again in a half-muffled sigh like he was rubbing a hand over his face.

“How I wish I understood,” he said. “This is so unexpected, and yet it brings me hope.” The voice held – what was that? Anticipation? Fear? “My dear Karine, you know the tales as well as anyone –”

“You’re a nutjob, looking for something that isn’t there.”

The man chuckled. “Perhaps.” His voice danced with irony as he added, “Perhaps I’m the only sane one.”

“You’re a nutjob – and an egomaniac.” She tapped fingernails. “Come on, Loremaster, we’ve got an alehouse to manage.”

“
You
’ve got an alehouse to manage.”

“Don’t even think it!” Her footsteps crossed the room.

He laughed. “All right, all right. Lace transitions are traumatic – our friend here won’t be conscious for a while.” Furniture moved. “And I may be insane but
you
are a bully.”

“Which is why you gave me the job, as I recall. Go on – out. I’m coming too.”

“Riddle me this –” the man was heading for the door as he spoke “– what’s pretty, aggressive and going to be my absolute undoing?”

“I’ll be your absolute undoing in a minute,” the woman said. “If you don’t get down those stairs, I’ll –”

The door closed behind them.

* * *

When they’d gone, Ecko lay still.

His head was a glaring question mark. The beautiful, alien voice; the words it spoke. It was all wrong; sounded wrong, smelled wrong,
tasted
wrong.

He listened.

No howling weather. No traffic, no sirens, no pounding nightclub bass. The party noises were coming from a lower floor, he must be upstairs. The air was quiet; yeah, it was too damn quiet and it was freaking him out.

The obvious conclusion – that this was one of Grey’s shit-holes – he’d dismissed when he’d realised the room was too big.

The voice had said he wouldn’t regain consciousness for a while, they’d probably left him alone. Turning off his flickering digital clock, he counted:
one
dead corporate,
two
dead corporate...

When he hit six hundred without noise or motion, he slitted open his eyes.

And the big question mark got one helluva lot bigger.

It took him a stunned moment to realise it was a set-up, a
set-up.
It was some kind of simulated environment.

Had to be.

Ecko was on a couch, one of three that surrounded a small table in the centre of a large, low-ceilinged room. On the table sat his webbing and cloak. Light came from some kind of writing desk that sat by a long drape – two further drapes presumably covered more windows.

There was no guard.

There was no security of any other kind: no cams, no mikes, no weapons, no trips, not as much as a cable. There was no console, no flatscreen. There wasn’t as much as a fucking datasocket – like you could fit one on a wall of bricks and beams. His heatseeker showed warm ambience, only the light source raised the temperature of the air.

What was this – the set of some Sauce’n’Swordery routine? Was fucking Robin Hood going to come prancing through here any second? This was like some loony-trick spook-interrogation thing. If this was Grey’s idea of a head game...

Maybe they’d left him free, with his kit, just to see what he’d do – there had to be a vid-feed somewhere.

Yeah? Well, he was gonna take that bluff.

His webbing and cloak were untouched. As he kitted back up, he realised two things – that he had no injuries other than his ripped fingertips and that there was no sign of Salva’s rifle. Warning alarms rang in his head, but he flicked his hood to cover his face and headed for the nearest window.

First priority – find a way outta here.

The desktop offered no information – just curly papers and a feather-in-a-pot cliché that made him wince. The feather was a bright, UV-brilliant white. The room’s light source appeared to be a rock, for chrissakes. Shaking his head at Grey’s apparently whimsical nature, he tweaked back the edge of the curtain.

A slice of bright illumination made the colours of his skin recoil.

His oculars defending his vision, he looked out at the polluted, halogen-blazing –

The sky was dark, untouched by advertising – unobscured by clouds or buildings, by the Tate’s ever-cycling LED. It was pitch-black, crystal-vision clear and completely starless.

What?

That wasn’t right.

The moon was half full, low, brilliant and shimmering silver. It was way too close and way too bright – that wasn’t right either. The second moon, a little higher and glowing a fantastic yellow gold, was also half full. That was getting beyond not-right.

What freaked Ecko right out was that it was the other
half.

He blinked.

No fucking way.

Reality took a half step sideways, staggered, and fell on its ass. Panic rose in his throat and he found himself fighting to breathe – what the
hell
was going on? His adrenals had instinctively kicked; he was shivering with fight-or-flight tension and it was making him queasy.

It was a picture, a projection of some kind, it
had
to be. They were just messing with his head...

He was losing control of his gut.
Think
, he told himself.
Get a fucking grip for chrissakes.

He’d been sent on a recce. He’d jumped off the roof. He’d splatted on the tarmac like a lump of strawberry jam. Grey could’ve done whatever he wanted...

Fucking Grey.

The memory was like a reprieve, he found his knees going. This was a simulation all right, they’d shoved him in one of those boxes and plugged him into the fucking console. It was a
game
: a few rounds of interrogation in The World of Anywhere-But-Here, soften him up a bit. It explained why the fall hadn’t mashed him.

But then – how the hell did he get out...?

Shielding his skin from the light, he backed into a crouch half under the desk and fought a sudden, choking clamour of panic. Even the drugged-up-zombie workers were allowed to game, it gave them an approved – and supervised – recreational outlet. Bread and fucking circuses. But if he’d been put in here, and he couldn’t unplug himself...

It was an inescapable gaol. He was helpless.

Yeah
, Ecko lashed at his fear with savagery,
but that don’t fucking mean you hafta just sit here.

Annoyed at himself, he twitched the curtain. The window was long and narrow, tiny panes of – was that mica? – stretching floor to ceiling and allowing him to see outwards into the weird, pale-yellow light.

Stone walls, dark archways, narrow, twisting streets. The moon... moons... gave everything a bizarre, cross-hatched shadowing that warped the scene into a comic-book fantasyscape, something unreal – a world as beautiful and alien as the voice had been –

He was gonna puke.

He let the curtain go and edged right back under the desk, cloak covered, his hand over his mouth. His gut was churning like the back wheel of Lugan’s bike, the adrenal rush had left him shaking like a –

Again, he heard the door.

What
now
? This place was like fucking Clapham Central. Secure in his stealth mode, he raised the front of his cowl high enough to watch.

It was the owner of the voice.

That same not quite familiarity shivered in Ecko’s skin, made his heart lurch with anticipation. Like seeing a brain-rig actor in the street – or a celeb you’d once had a crush on – you knew them though you’d never seen them before.

The man who came into the room was tall – as tall as Lugan – but rangy, long legged and dressed like a ponce. Black boots and black pants looked like the bottom half of a highwayman costume; a loose pale shirt was stark against deeply tanned skin. Long, heavy black hair was tied back in a tail – in the light from the rock, it shone almost blue.

Ecko’s heatseeker showed no weapons, no enhancements, not even jewellery – fucking diddly-squat.

He needed his Tech – Mom – to run a full diagnostic.

Yeah right – and he needed a radio. And Salva’s rifle. And a coupla grenades. And maybe some plastic explosive...

He needed forty thousand hit points and a sword of bad guy slaying.

What he
needed
was a fucking way out of here.

The man stopped, apparently scanning the room.

“The nausea’s a side effect of your transition,” he said. “It’ll pass. Kale’s cooking something that’ll help you – but you’re strong. It won’t be ready just yet.”

That was the second time Ecko had heard the word “transition”. He swallowed convulsively; they had to be pulling his chain. They’d boxed him up for sure but they wouldn’t try anything that dumb...

The man closed the door. The sound had a distinct finality.

Ecko shuddered.

“I’m Roderick of Avesyr,” the man said, “usually known as the ‘Bard’, though I fear the moniker is somewhat ironic. This illustrious drinking establishment is The Wanderer, it has the occasional habit of collecting strays – both local and otherwise. And you, my friend, would seem to be an ‘otherwise’. If you let me, I can help you.”