Electric Church

PROLOGUE THE CIRCLE OF LIFE IN THE SYSTEM OF FEDERATED NATIONS

“You screwed up, Mr. Cates.”

I was on the East Side of Old New York, the original island. A dive, no roof, the worst gin I’d ever had too much of and no familiar faces around me. It was cold, and I felt feverish, sweaty-I felt like shit and I was getting worse with every cup of the dirty liquor I bought with my dwindling yen. I wasn’t sure what they made it from-paint thinner was my best guess-but it was terrible.

Immediately, the man on my right and the grizzled, one-eyed woman on my left stood up with their cups and walked away. No one else at the table even looked at me. If I got murdered sitting here they’d just roll me onto the floor and forget about me. I had no people here. It wasn’t my part of the city.

I knew the voice, though. I tightened my grip on my own cup and quickly scanned the place without turning my head. The place was packed, just like every other illegal gin joint in New York. It was just the ground floor of a ruined building, all tattered gray concrete and broken rebar, ancient graffiti and bloodstains. Next week it would be abandoned again, dusty and shadowed, and the week after that it would be another bar, serving liquor made from rubber tires or ground glass or some other nightmare. The walls all around ended in a ragged tear, the entire second floor of the building gone, torn away by riots and time and several hundred hover displacements as System Cops hunted people like me through the streets. It was filled with scavenged tables and chairs, a crazy collection of mismatched furniture and unhappy people.

“You fucked up, Mr. Cates,” the voice emphasized, and a hand fell on my shoulder.

I imagined I could feel the blade right behind me. I’d seen enough barroom executions to know the drill-guy walks up behind you, says something, one hand on your shoulder to get leverage and then a knife in the back, angled up, the victim half-paralyzed and very little blood. It wasn’t a bad move, normally-except for the little speech, which was just a waste of advantage. My eyes jumped from a pile of rocks to a pack of slope-shouldered shitkickers milling about the edges of the place to a rusted steel table with two flat metal planks welded to the legs for seats set right against the far wall. It looked sturdy enough.

Heart pounding, I took a deep breath and glanced at the security I could see. I figured it would take them about twenty seconds to get to me. I’d killed people in less time.

The bullshit, it was endless. I hadn’t had a very good night and was in no mood to watch it get worse. I didn’t move right away-assholes twitched, assholes always thought it was harder to hit a moving target and they thrashed around constantly. I knew better. I wasn’t the oldest person in the room for nothing. With his heavy hand on my shoulder, gripping tightly, trying to be intimidating, I took a few seconds to take in my surroundings.

I saw it all-every face, every position, every table, chair, or pile of rubble they were sitting on. I saw the twitchy augmented security-illegal muscles with its own alien IQ layered all over their bodies-making sure no one got crazy. I saw the red-eyed beggars eager to drain the dregs from an abandoned cup. I saw it all and fixed it in my mind, even the Monks. The Monks with their creepy plastic faces and mirrored glasses were always in these places. They were supposed to be immortal-humans who’d signed up to have their brains placed in advanced cyborg bodies, in order to pray for eternity or some such shit, and by the looks of them they believed it. Three of them were working the tables, scanning faces and talking to people about death and sin and forever.

I dismissed them; I’d heard of people messing with the Tin Men and finding out they were dangerous, vague stories of a guy who knew a guy who’d tried to rob a Monk in a dark alley and lost his arm for his trouble, or stories of people going to sleep after a bender and waking up Monked against their will the next morning-there was so much bullshit, you didn’t know what to believe, and I didn’t have time to figure it out now. I didn’t know whether to believe their spiel about “salvation through eternity” either. I figured it was best to just give them a wide berth and hope they never scanned my face.

I had the layout fixed in a moment: thirteen tables, approximately three hundred people crowded into the space, one narrow, inconvenient exit guarded by security. Probably a hidden escape-hole for the proprietors, too. The security guys weren’t much better than the customers, skillwise. One on one I wouldn’t have much trouble with them, but with a crowd and narrow doorways, they’d be trouble enough.

This was why I was still alive. Most people in my line of business, they just blazed away-all muscle and ammo. No research. No patience-they lived and died by their reflexes. Especially if their reflexes were augmented with black-market gene splices.

Me, I was tired. I was old school. I liked to use my brain a little.

I shifted to the left just a tick, brought the cup up, and splashed gin into the big guy’s eyes, and knew I’d hit the mark from the sudden squeak of surprise. I spun left and his knife flashed into the empty space in front of him. I slapped out my hand and took him by the wrist, firmly, and stood up, rolling his arm behind him as I moved, something popping loudly in his shoulder as he dropped the blade with a clatter onto the floor. I kicked at it and it disappeared, most likely plucked cleanly off the floor as it skidded by some enterprising criminal. From the look of his expensive clothes, my admirer either was rich, worked for someone rich, or was a System Security Force officer. But System Pigs didn’t need to hire guys to arrange murders; they just showed up, pinched you, and shot you in the head in some deserted alleyway, usually after emptying your pockets. This guy, from what I remembered when he’d hired me a few days before, didn’t talk rich. He was just a middleman who’d come up in the world.

Now I had leverage, and I used it to slam him face-first onto the table. No one else sitting around me had moved. I leaned down, smothering him, and chanced a look up. Security was just starting for me, a little slow. Fuckheads. You couldn’t find good help these days. I thought, I could kill this bastard six times before you made it to me, assholes. Keeping my eyes on security, I put my mouth into his ear.

“You owe me fifteen thousand yen, motherfucker.”

He was having a lot of trouble breathing, with my weight on top of him and his arm nearly broken. “You… fucked… up…” he gasped.

I twisted his arm a little more, and he finally made some real noise, a strangled cry that dissolved into a gurgling moan. “What was that?”

“They found her… hanging from a… fire escape… goddamn… goddammit…”

I felt pretty confident that I had this guy under control, so I looked up again. Security was still a few tables away, sauntering toward us, not hurrying. They were used to sodden lumps of shit causing a ruckus. I’d overestimated them, no doubt, and dismissed them from my worries.

“My employer…” he stuttered out, “will not… be happy…”

My sense of outrage turned my vision red for a moment. This asshole owed me fifteen thousand yen, had tried to shiv me in the goddamn back, and now he’s complaining to me? I tightened my grip on his wrist and pushed with all my might, and the bastard finally screamed as a sharp cracking sound rewarded my efforts.

“You lied to me,” I hissed. “Or you’re incompetent. The subject was not alone. You said nothing about professional protection-moonlighting SSF, a fucking cop she looked like, and a lot of goddamn trouble.” I twisted his arm again, savagely. “And there was a child, you shithead. In the room.”

I looked up. Security had split up, coming around the tables from either side, looking to flank me.

Amazingly, the big guy started to shudder, and I realized he was laughing, whether from reaction or shock or some bizarre sense of humor, I didn’t know. My eyes swept the table, black and tan and white faces, all more interested in their gin than in my little drama-a drama they’d seen, a drama they’d acted in. Boring stuff.

The big guy had suddenly found his voice, slurry and close to unconscious as it was. “A child?” he gasped. “Who gives a shit, a child? You’re hired to eliminate someone, you do it. A child? Fuck, you kill that piece of shit, too.”

I wanted to hurt him more, I wanted to make him feel it. I trembled with the urge to do him violence. But I could see, in my peripheral vision, that security had arrived and were sneaking their way around the table, coming at me from the left and right. I let out an explosive breath, released the big guy, and in one practiced motion reached across my body into my coat and came up with a gun in each hand, each pointed at one twitchy musclebound asshole. Security paused, looking at each other across me. No one at the table moved, or even seemed to be paying attention. The big guy looked to have finally passed out.

“We don’t give a shit,” one of the security guys said with the mushy accent of oft-broken teeth. “Just take it outside.”

I nodded. I was civilized. I didn’t kill children and I did not shoot men whose only crime was doing their job. Not unless I had to. “I’m leaving. No trouble.”

Even shitheads respected you if you played by the rules.

One of them swept an arm toward the door, inviting me to take my shit elsewhere. I was full of terrible gin eating away at my insides, and I was a sweating, unwashed mess. I’d killed someone just a few hours ago, the wrong person, worth exactly zero yen to me, and the mark I had been hired to kill, and the kid, would both likely be dead tomorrow when the contract went out to someone else, some other Gunner with less scruple. Some kid who had never known anything but the System, nothing but a unified world and the Joint Council that ran it. And the cops-the Crushers who walked the streets and kept order, more or less, and the officers, the System Pigs, who cracked heads and shook us all down, who’d grown rich off us like fucking bedbugs sucking for all they were worth. Someone who’d never known anything better was possible.

I took one step backward, slowly, bringing my arms in and holding both guns ready just in case. As if movement had triggered something, a sudden roar filled the air, and I froze.

“Hover displacement!” someone shouted.

“Pigs!” someone else added helpfully, and the whole place was chaos. Everyone leaped up and made for the exit, the fucking morons. I was forgotten. I found myself standing there with guns drawn while everyone in the place pushed past me. For a moment I was frozen in shock, but when the cops kicked on the floods and the whole space filled with harsh, white light, I found my legs. I moved against the current and rolled under one of the tables.

This sort of shit usually didn’t happen-the illegal bars were so common, and the Crushers liked making a little extra money in bribes from what they saw as a victimless crime. When enough was enough and time came to shut things down, everyone knew it was happening and the cops ended up raiding an empty place, confiscating a lot of stale booze, and smashing up some burned-out still; meanwhile a new place opened up in some other toothless shell of a building. The circle of life in the System of Federated Nations.

A hover meant officers, real police. This was a step up, this meant someone in the place was wanted. The Crushers in their sloppy uniforms you knew by name, they cracked some heads but were generally all right, just doing their job-and maybe, on good days, you could even admit they did a necessary job, keeping us jobless wonders from tearing each other apart. But the System Pigs, they were a step up, the elite. They were more dangerous, greedier, and they didn’t crack heads. They put bullets in them.

I reholstered the automatics and drew my lucky gun, made by the Roon Corporation out in California, a modified model 87a (illegal because it was fully automatic, unregistered, and lacking DNA scan locks). Expensive, with action like silk. The exit, as expected, was blocked by the crush of assholes trying to escape. In the bright light of the hover, they were crisp, sharply defined, a mass of desperation. I racked a bullet into the chamber and ran a dry tongue along my lips, my stomach feeling like it was on fire, my head aching. I was old. I’d been old for years.

“Attention!” came the booming metallic voice of the hover’s PA. “This is Captain Jack Hallier of the System Security Force! Stand still and submit to authorized scanning and identification procedure!”

That was formal bullshit. The SSF didn’t give a shit if you submitted or not. They usually preferred you didn’t. The Crushers you could reason with, strike a deal-they were human, even if they carried a badge. The Pigs, though-fuck, they weren’t human.

On cue, I saw a dozen boots drop from above and hit the floor, swirling, headache-inducing patterns on them, Stormers in Obfuscation Kit. No proper SSF raid happened without Stormers in their ObFu, practically invisible when they stood still. From my temporary shelter I looked around, and did a double take: To my left, hiding under their own table, were three Monks. They each turned to look at me with their terrible mask faces, and then looked away. I blinked, twisted around, and began crawling away from the exit, toward the far wall, hands and knees, old-fashioned. Behind me, bullets started flying.

I just kept crawling. I’d killed twenty-six people. I wasn’t going to allow myself to be picked up in some random grab. When I made it to the wall I didn’t waste time: I jumped up, climbed up on the table I’d spied earlier, and threw myself over the wall, landing hard on the other side, my head bouncing on the broken pavement. Lying in the damp shadows, head ringing, I elected to just stay where I was for a moment. Above me, I could see the ass end of the SSF hover floating. In a way, it was beautiful, a rectangle of metal, blurred by displacement, lights blasting through the evening, Stormer tether lines snaking out of it like tentacles, all of it like some horrible, bloated insect.

A pulse of panic shot through me and I blinked, my head clearing. I forced myself up, checked my weapon, and limped for the deepest shadows a few steps away, a painful hitch in my back making me limp a little. Everything in this area of Old New York was a ruin, left over from the Unification Riots decades ago. It was all shadows and sharp edges.

Hidden for a moment, I caught my breath and thought.

The gunfire increased, and I watched more Stormers snake to the ground as a determined contingent of my fellow scum broke out of the bar and took cover behind more ruins. It was all lit up for me perfectly, fifty feet away, clear as day. There were always hardasses who thought they could blast their way out of anything-kids, youngsters who didn’t know shit except how to pull a trigger and so thought they were all grown up, who thought that because they’d outrun some Crusher on his rounds they knew cops. You didn’t know cops until a couple of System Pigs kicked your ass for fun.

I let my eyes adjust and scanned the street outside the bar, away from all the commotion. At first everything seemed still and empty-usually New York was a press of humanity sloughing this way and that in search of something to do, something to steal, anything, but an SSF hover cleared the streets admirably, and the area was deserted, and probably was for blocks around. But a second or third look revealed a glow of a cigarette here, the outline of a shoulder there-SSF officers, waiting, letting the Stormers soften the place up. These cops didn’t fear the hardcases-they stood out there just waiting for someone like me to scamper right toward them, get gunned down or-worse-arrested, if they were bored and feeling cruel. There were a couple of Crushers I didn’t mind, but there wasn’t a single System Pig I’d hesitate to kill, if I thought it wouldn’t bring the whole SSF down on me. Watching the faint movements of the Pigs hiding in the darkness across from me, I realized I was going to have to sit tight for a while. There was no way to get away from the area with them on the lookout.

The noise muffled by distance, I calmed myself. I’d heard a story, once, about Cainnic Orel, who’d been a legendary Gunner (he’d founded the Dъnmharъ, his own personal Murder Incorporated), with more than fifty confirmed contract kills and not one arrest. I’d heard that he’d once hired a Techie to disconnect a target’s security system, slipped in and hidden in a closet, and then had the Techie reconnect the security, complete with motion detectors, just so the subject wouldn’t notice anything strange when he came home. So Orel had stood stock-still for forty-eight hours, waiting. And when the subject came home and deactivated the security system, Orel had stepped out, shot him in the head, and walked away like nothing had happened.

From what I heard, Orel had retired rich. Standing in the shadows, I knew I’d never be rich, because five minutes into my vigil I was aching all over and going batshit.

There was a small explosion somewhere nearby; the hardcases were putting up a good show, and it sounded like a few of them had some serious firepower, too. That would slow down the Pigs, but not for long. The Pigs were funded by the System, and had everything. I’d had to work long and hard to get a Roon, the best handgun in the world. The SSF issued them like candy.

I froze, stopping myself from leaning forward in the nick of time. Casually, as if nothing were happening, the three Monks emerged from the bar and walked past the Stormers. They didn’t hurry. Bullets flying everywhere, and they didn’t seem to care. I watched them in fascination as they moved blithely away from the chaos, and the cops didn’t pay them any attention. They were a protected religion, of course, and from what I’d heard the Electric Church had a lot of pull these days, maybe enough to cause even the SSF trouble. So the Pigs were playing it safe.

I was about to look back across the way to see if the perimeter cops had shifted, when someone broke from the bar and made a mad dash behind the hardcases into the night. By sheer dumb luck, he made it-no one shot him, and as he sped out of the light, his path intersecting the Monks’, it looked like none of the Stormers had picked him up. I thought he was just going to make it, an amazing escape, but as he ran near the Monks, I could have sworn the Monk nearest him moved-twitched, shrugged, something-and the runner suddenly crumpled to the ground. The Monks just kept walking, and were swallowed up by the night. He stayed where he was.

I shook my head. It was far away, and the glare of the floods hurt my vision. He’d probably been nailed by a random bullet, or a sniper. I scanned the black rooftops of the empty buildings. Snipers, too. Whoever they were here for was in for a world of trouble.

I thought of Canny Orel, and my feet ached even more.

“Got any flatfoots I can have?”

The voice was flat and monotone, and too loud; not someone hiding. I moved my eyes, imagining the noise they made, and there just a few feet away was SSF, a tall, blond officer, cigarette dangling from a thin-lipped, small mouth. He was dressed expensively, dark suit and heavy overcoat. A linkup bud shone in one ear.

I stared. Moving my eyes seemed like a bad idea. I had little doubt that if this cocksucker saw me, he’d shoot first and think about it much, much later, with a mild sort of curiosity about who he’d killed.

Moments later, two Crushers jogged over to him. They were older than him, and breathless, two beat cops with sidearms, in uniform, one tall and bald and unshaven, the other shorter and stockier, his white hair standing up in a shock on his head. They both looked sweaty and tired. I could see the officer’s eyes as he stared at them. They danced, moving this way and that, unsteady, like fluttering wings. It was creepy as hell.

“Jones and Terrell, Captain,” the tall one said as crisply as he could.

“Great,” the System Pig drawled, cigarette wagging up and down. “You two look like fucking geniuses. Okay, geniuses, here’s the deal: We got a fucking cop-killer in here somewhere. Earlier today Colonel Janet Hense, working undercover, was popped over in Harlem. Working Sec on a VIP.” He paused to remove his cigarette. “We don’t think the shithead knew he was popping a cop, but who gives a fuck? We’re going to pull his arms off and beat him with them, okay?”

The two Crushers shifted their weight uneasily. “Absolutely, sir,” the shorter one said.

“Don’t talk, numbnuts,” the captain said, his voice betraying no emotion at all. “We don’t actually know who we’re looking for. We don’t have an ID, okay? We have a good tip that the shithead was in this bar. We have a description. Listen carefully, geniuses, because I will not repeat it.”

The good captain went on to describe me. Pretty accurately, too. The woman flashed through my mind: Hanging upside down from the ancient fire escape, guns still clutched in her hands. I wanted to move so badly I thought about just shooting the three of them where they stood and rushing out into the night, screaming. It wouldn’t make my situation any worse; if I got IDed as a cop-killer, I might as well shoot myself, because it would be less painful than what the SSF would have ready for me.

“Got that?” the captain said. “Now, the only reason we’re using you assholes is because we got a crowd in there, and some of them are obviously unhappy that their liberty is being curtailed. Fuck ’em. But we need bodies to manage them, and I’ve got a temporary manpower shortage-every day there are more of these rats breeding in the streets. I know you guys who walk a beat have trouble with complex thoughts, so I’ll make it simple for you: Get your ass into that space and practice some crowd control. Think you idiots can handle that?”

The Crushers looked glum, because this raid was costing them at least three or four more days of steady bribery. Plus it was always fun when the System Pigs showed up in their fancy clothes and their fucking hovers and kicked you in the balls for a few hours. They saluted and headed off, the night filled with noise, light, and the constant thick pressure of displacement. A second later there was a loud crash and a sudden flare of light as something exploded inside the still-crowded bar. The SSF officer just stood there, smoking, hands in pockets. There were a hundred people not far away who wouldn’t mind putting one in his ear, but he didn’t look worried. And why should he? The System Pigs were very good at what they did, carefully recruited and trained to an amazing level of skill. Everyone was afraid of the System Pigs-because it was damned hard to beat them, and if you did, you had the whole SSF on your ass. I glanced up at the hover, blurry and roaring, and then back at the captain. This was the hammer, coming down.

I was straining so hard to remain still my muscles were twitching. I was no Canny Orel; I wasn’t going to retire rich and live to a ripe old age. I was twenty-six and I’d already lived too long and I couldn’t stand still for half an hour much less two fucking days. When the SSF officer finally turned away, flicking his cigarette into the air in a glowing arc, I almost sagged with relief. I had to get moving. I couldn’t hide forever, and soon enough they’d have the Crushers doing sweeps of the area on foot, and the hover’s heat sweeps scanning the ground. I could handle a couple of Crushers; I didn’t think I could handle an entire brigade of them, and I didn’t know if I could handle an officer, much less the ten or twelve of them I counted in the area. I’d seen the System Pigs in action. They were smart, and they were fast, and they were armed to the goddamn teeth-and no one was going to come after them if they killed me.

I eyed the darkness around me. The System Pigs had an eye on the perimeter, obviously, and I didn’t know of any Safe Rooms or friends in the area. To my right, there was the bright glow of the hover, which had shifted position to illuminate the patch of ruined street outside the bar, where an intensifying firefight between cops-Stormers in their ObFu and the poor Crushers in their ill-fitting uniforms, clearly thinking they didn’t get paid enough for this shit-and the shrinking number of hardcases continued, the hardcases ensconced behind two ancient, rusting vehicles on their sides, internal combustion tech, useless except for emergency shelter. The Crushers might as well have been throwing stones at the steel barricades, but the Stormers had high-powered rifles, and were having more success.

I looked up, examining the low and ragged wall I’d just pulled myself over. I felt tired just looking at it, but it was my best shot at this point. The System Cops had almost certainly done a heat-signature scan on the interior of the bar and determined we were all on the run. Running out into the night wasn’t going to get me anywhere. It was back over the wall for me.

I took one last look around, squinting into the blackness around me. There was no way to tell whether some pair of night-visioned eyes was watching the wall, so it was best to just choose my moment by instinct and make my leap. I would have to make it over quietly and smoothly. If I ended up hooked on top of the wall flopping about like a dead fish, I’d just be target practice. The cops were making a statement here: An SSF officer had been killed, and the person responsible was going to be killed in turn, and any place that had given him shelter during the day was going to be leveled to the ground. I either got away completely unnoticed, or I was a dead man-if not today, then tomorrow.

I eyed the top of the wall, took a deep breath, and launched myself at it. Keep moving, keep moving. I tore my hands up on the sharp stone and metal, pain slicing up my arms and lodging in my brain. I heaved with everything I had and pulled myself up, rolling over onto my back. For a second I stared up at the night sky over Old New York, a crisscross of light chains, hovers moving in complex patterns, freight and rich people.

Keep moving, keep moving…

I rolled off the wall and landed softly but awkwardly back inside, instantly crouching and touching the floor with my bloodied hands. I stayed there, trying not to breathe, and peered around the place, listening for any sign that I’d been noticed. There was no change in the cacophony outside, but I didn’t relax, because strolling with her back to me was a Crusher.

Generally, you only feared the Crushers when they came in force; they weren’t the officers, the System Pigs, they were just beat cops with peashooters. I thought of them as just like me, just citizens of the System of Federated Nations who hadn’t had many choices and who’d made what seemed like the best of a bad lot. I only fucked with the Crushers if they fucked with me.

This one was obviously addicted to getting black market genetic augments. She had skinny, normal-looking legs and a skeletal face that hinted at someone who didn’t eat well, or often. In between the two was a broad, fantastically muscled abdomen and chest and two arms that rippled with every gesture. You could get an awful lot done to you-emphasis on awful-by black market surgeons these days, like night-vision eyes or a complete nerve-burn that inured you to pain. The lab-grown muscles were big business. They weren’t strong muscles, and they didn’t last forever-just like all the black market augments, they were inferior tech performed by half-tight asshats-but for a while they looked good, and for some suckers that was all that mattered. Looking at her profile again I figured this one had been diverting her grocery budget to augments for a long time now.

I froze and watched from my shadowed position at the base of the wall. I scanned the room again. No one ever opened one of these illegal places without an exfiltration plan, so I was counting on there being a secret way out. The System Pigs were well-trained-we were all terrified of them for a reason-and well-equipped, but they were arrogant bastards, too. I didn’t think it would have occurred to Blondie out there that one of us rats might actually have managed to slip down a hole and disappear. I studied the bar area, from which the owners had run the place. This was too obvious, of course, because even a dim Crusher like my Lady Hulk here would think to check it out for ratholes. Still, it would have to be a place you could easily get to from the bar, a spot you could roll into within seconds, before any System Pigs showed up with enough on the ball to take notice of such things. My eyes traced the shadows and cracks on the walls, on the floor, and I made out a curiously squared set of cracks in the floor near the makeshift bar.

I took a slow, deep breath, gritty and damp, and fixed the spot in my mind. My heart was pounding and my stomach was in revolt; I regretted every sip of the oily booze they’d been serving. I glanced at the Crusher, walking slowly around the room; it was surprising, sometimes, how long you could hide in plain sight if you kept your head. I was dressed for the shadows, of course-I was a Gunner, we spent half our lives standing in shadowed corners, waiting for someone to walk in through the door and be killed-and the Crusher was bored and obviously not too bright; I figured I could squat there in the dusty shadow of the wall until next week and not be noticed. But I doubted it would just be the Crusher and me for much longer. The Pigs were going to note they hadn’t scooped up anyone that looked like me soon enough, and while perhaps not very surprised at this discovery they’d at least do a final sweep of the area before giving up. I had to get out in the next few minutes, while my dimwitted colleagues continued to provide distraction and sound cover.

I considered. I couldn’t just toss a chunk of concrete and distract Lady Hulk; with the hollow punching noise of rounds denting metal, the angry shouts and the continuing roar of the hover, she probably wouldn’t hear it. I squatted, listening for a second or two, chewing on it, and the bullets gave me a sudden inspiration. I tightened my grip on my Roon and considered Lady Hulk and the noise outside. I thought it very probable that no one outside would notice one more shot fired, and Lady Hulk offered a lot of nonlethal targets on her huge, rippling body. I didn’t want to kill her; she was just doing her job. But she was standing between me and the rest of my miserable life, so she was going to have to take a bullet. I tracked her as subtly as I could as she paced, waited for a fresh volley of fire outside, and popped her in one shoulder. She went over like a wet sack and I launched myself at the rathole in the floor.

I hoped fervently that there wasn’t a lever or catch that had to be manipulated before the hole would open for you. This was the life: one goddamn thing after another. I hadn’t had a peaceful evening in fucking years; it was always this constant race from one emergency to another. Thinking that one more emergency might just kill me, I threw myself bodily at the floor just as two gunshots, sounding ridiculously small and harmless-pop! pop! — burped behind me.

I didn’t have time to think about my bad luck-though bad wasn’t even the right word, they’d have to invent a whole new fucking language to describe my luck. The floor split downward as I hit the spot, and I fell into empty space. A split second of panic free fall, and I hit the ground beneath hard, my teeth rattling in my head, my gun knocked from my hand.

My whole body vibrated, a humming sensation. One jittery heartbeat, two jittery heartbeats, I just lay staring up, my body made of stone and damn, it would be nice to just fall asleep, just fuck it all and close my eyes. Take a rest for the first time since I’d been five, the first time since Unification, when the world was separate nations instead of just the System.

A surging wave of panic swept it all away, and my body came back online screaming with pain and still vibrating. I sat up and spun around the dark space, searching with shaking hands for my Roon, my fingers closing around it just as the rathole above me flipped downward again, the weakened light of the hover’s searchlights lighting me up. I didn’t pause to think or aim, I just raised the gun and spat three shots upward. The rathole snapped closed again and I spun and forced myself into a staggering, unhappy sprint down a narrow man-made tunnel. I wasn’t in the sewers, which had long been the underground highway for the criminals of Old New York. This was a tunnel built specifically as the escape route for this place. Good work, too, a tight fit but the air felt dry and sealed, the stone floor solid beneath my feet. I’d been in escape tunnels that had felt ready to come down on my head if I sneezed, so I appreciated a competent job.

I tried to pick up my pace. I figured I had an SSF officer on my trail, and the System Pigs weren’t like the Crushers they commanded-they weren’t easily scared and they weren’t stupid. I wasn’t going to have much of a lead. As I skidded around the first turn, I heard the rathole slap open again, and the heavy thud of someone dropping down onto the floor. The SSF officer, of course, would not have fallen like a sack of shit onto the floor and been stunned for a count of three. He’d undoubtedly landed gracefully on his feet, gun held firmly in one hand. The System Pigs annoyed me with their smirking perfection: They pushed people like me around, shook us down-it would be okay if they were really trying to enforce the law, but the SSF officers were just as bad as us-worse; they had that badge, and a budget behind them, which meant no one short of Internal Affairs could slow them down.

I knew what was waiting for me if this one caught me: a bullet in the head. There was no due process with them, no rules of law. They could do whatever they liked, so they did. The only question was, would I get a ridiculous speech before the bullet in the head, or not?

I kept running.

The tunnel wasn’t very long, of course. After about fifty feet more of twisting and turning, I stumbled to a halt just before a blank wall of earth. I looked up, and there, a few feet above me, was the ass end of a ladder bolted in place. Internally, I swore; there had probably been something nice and convenient to boost up on-an old stool, something-that the clever bastards who’d built the place had pulled up after them just in case they were pursued. For a second I stood there hating them with all I had, and then there was a bellow from behind me in the tunnel.

“You made me run!” the System Pig shouted. “I’m going to eat your fucking kidneys, asshole, for making me run.”

Thinking that my day was improving at a record rate, I stuffed my gun into my pocket, gathered everything I had left, and leaped for the ladder, catching the bottom rung with the tips of one hand’s fingers. Grunting through clenched teeth, I pulled until I could get my other hand onto the rung, and then reached for the next, legs dangling and breath whistling in and out of my nose. Arms trembling, I pulled one more time and managed to get one foot onto the bottom rung, pulling the rest of myself up just as two bullets smacked into the wall where I’d just been hanging.

“Motherfucker,” I heard the SSF officer hiss. I didn’t look back, I just kept pulling for my life. The only thing worse than being shot in the back by a System Pig would be getting shot in the ass.

I emerged, panting and sweating, into a damp-feeling space, a basement a block away, just outside the perimeter the cops had set up. It was dark, so dark I was blinded for a moment before dim shadows made themselves apparent. I didn’t stop to enjoy the view, I crawled out of the hole and pushed myself up, spinning fast to get a look around. I had no idea where I was, but the cop was right behind me and I didn’t have time to think up something brilliant. I oriented, squinting, and shot twice at the opening in the floor just to discourage him, and then spun around again, blinking dust and darkness out of my eyes. There were windows, high up and impossible to reach, and vaguely I discerned a stairway leading upward. Everything else was dark, mysterious. I started for the stairs, but at the bottom I paused-where was I running to? What was up there? I’d lived this long because I wasn’t some asshole running around blazing away, being stupid. If I was going to live another day I had to hold on to that.

Sweating freely, I jumped on the first step and heard a satisfyingly loud creak. I mimed running up the stairs, bringing one foot and then another down onto the ancient wood. Then I took a step backward, gingerly, and crept slowly back into the shadows, until I felt a wall behind me, slimy and cold. My eyes had adjusted to the murk, and I could pick out the rathole exit in the center of the room. Just as I came to a dead stop, gun up but held close in toward my body, the System Pig’s head appeared for a second, then dropped down again, trying to draw nervous fire. I stayed stock-still for a few endless seconds. I was a Gunner, I was a professional, and I was damned if this System Cop prick was going to fuck me.

His head reappeared. I felt exposed, and my heart leaped inside my chest. He stared right at me… but couldn’t see me. He was blinded, just as I’d been. But I could see him. It was the blond Pig from the street, with the dancing eyes. A chill went through me.

He swept the room with his unseeing eyes and then was up and out of the hole, moving fast. Gun up, he whirled around, calm, but in a hurry. I had the drop on him, I knew it would be easy to pop him… but System Pigs were always tougher to kill than you thought. They always turned out to be luckier than they had right to be. And scraping your living off the streets of Old New York, you lived by one basic rule: Don’t fuck with the System Pigs. The Crushers, sure. But the officers, no-too many hotheaded assholes had gone down in flames thinking they could just get the drop on a System Pig and walk away from it.

Wiser men, older men, like me, we bided our time. Besides… it seemed unfair, to be hiding in the dark, taking a sucker shot. Dishonorable.

He saw the stairs and went for them, dropping at the last second and coming up ready to fire. When nothing happened he didn’t hesitate, he sprang up and pounded up the stairs.

Slowly, I let out my breath, and slowly, I drew gritty, moldy air in. The cop’s pounding footsteps grew dimmer, and finally faded completely. I waited for a count of fifty, ready to cut the bastard down if he came back down the stairs, then slowly knelt, allowing myself to breathe in little shallow gasps, quiet. I felt the floor with my aching free hand and selected a good-sized hunk of rock, weighing in my hand before flicking it at the stairs. The rock struck the third step up and then thunked down onto the next step. It sounded like an explosion to my ears, but there was no response.

I took a deep breath, my chest shuddering with its force, and the spots in front of my eyes fading. I just breathed for a few seconds, filling my lungs, and then I sprang, rolling myself into a ball and throwing myself toward the rathole, ending up on my back, gun raised, sweeping it left to right. Nothing happened. It was just dust settling and my panting.

I stood up and took the stairs two by two, emerging into another empty shell of a building, nothing but rubble and load-bearing beams, plaster dust and the remnants of a million hasty camps. I could see the city beyond the walls, dark and empty, and a few blocks away the weak light of the slightly more populated downtown, familiar and, for what it was worth, home-a single room that I had all for myself. Not much but at least I didn’t share it like most of us, fifteen people at a time, or a room shared in shifts of six or eight hours. It was mine.

I considered the possibility that my System Pig was waiting in his own shadows, waiting for me to emerge. I considered my luck up to that point, which had taken an unexpected upturn toward the end-the cop hadn’t seen my face. I could pass him in the street tomorrow and he wouldn’t know me, and the thought suddenly made me very optimistic. I crept to the shattered opening in the wall that led to the street beyond and poked my head out, looked around, and then stepped into the dim moonlight. I stood for a moment, a perfect target, and a thrill of insane risk whipped through me. I looked up at the jewel-like strings of hover lights far above, so far they were silent and almost static, moving gently, rich people zooming from place to place without ever having to come up against someone like me, a killer, covered in dust and hung over. A man already too old.

But the strange optimism stuck with me as I darted back into the shadows and headed for home, my streets where I knew people, where I knew the Safe Rooms and where I had allies-not many, but better than nothing. I felt lucky. I felt like maybe my fortunes were about to change, and maybe I wouldn’t spend the rest of my life being chased by people who wanted to kill me.