Electric Church

XIV SO I CAN KILL YOU AGAIN!

“Son of a bitch,” I muttered. I ran my eyes over the place, made my decision immediately. “Kieth, Milton, Tanner, take the unit and get out. I don’t care where right now, just get out. Kev, you’re with me. The Pigs want me, so they’ll follow us. Kieth, wait a minute until the hover goes after us, then get the fuck out of here.”

I looked around again. “We meet in London as planned. I’ll find you. And if you fucking screw me, I will find you faster. Move!”

“We’re gone!” Milton shouted, leaping into the garbage hover. “Gonna stay low, a few feet off the ground, and follow the streets. SSF won’t pick us up on their screens that way.”

“You’ll what?” Kieth said, aghast. “Fucking crazy bitches, you can’t steer this thing through streets.”

“Watch us, little man. Get your science project on board and stop bitching.”

Gatz and I ran out the back way. The search lamps hit us immediately, and we pushed into the maze of ruined buildings moments before a burst of gunfire chewed up the rubble behind us. The taste of grit coated my throat as we scrambled through what was left of the ruined city, and we barreled through dark rubble-strewn rooms without regard or thought for the half-million things a man could trip over and impale himself on.

The roar of hover displacement was right behind us. I just ran as best I could, ducking and diving through the endless blasted buildings until we found ourselves back on the remnants of Newark’s streets, facing a blank wall, undamaged. We skidded to a halt and stared around helplessly, and I imagined I could feel the hover cresting the building behind us, searching the ground. My eyes fell on a manhole cover set in the ground, obscured by debris. I shoved Gatz.

“Go! The bastard’s after me. Go and I’ll meet you in London!”

Gatz nodded as the white light, pure and painful, swallowed us. I backed away quickly, trying to stay in the shadows created by the buildings. Gatz glanced back at me as I stepped carefully backward, and I stopped moving, a familiar feeling of listless cooperation stealing over me for a second. He winked and dropped the glasses back in place. I stumbled back into motion.

“I’ll see you there, Ave!” Gatz shouted over the roar of the hover.

I didn’t stop to think. I turned and dived for the manhole cover. In New York we often used the old sewers to get around. Hell, staying alive in the System when you didn’t have money was a full-time job, and back when I was fifteen and running with the Snuff Thieves pulling the old dust-in-the-eyes-credit-disc-in-the-hand routine I’d learned that there were hidden roads under the streets. We kids used to live in the damn sewers. But the SSF had caught on and started wiring them up, motion detectors, motion-activated cameras, random patrols. It was illegal to travel the sewers-just one of the endless stream of laws by the Joint Council. There were at least ten new ones a week, along with countless amendments. My coat, filled with various tools for various occasions (you didn’t live to be a spry twenty-seven by being unprepared for bad news), produced a simple hooked wrench that fitted into the small opening in the lip of the cover perfectly.

“Hey, rat!” Moje’s voice boomed over the noise as the hover cleared the building, its spotlight finding me and lighting up my world like noon in Times Square. “If you make me go down into that shit, I will have doctors resuscitate you after I kill you so I can kill you again!”

I flung the cover up and away, losing my wrench in the process. I shoved my feet in and hugged myself, sliding down into the darkness as bullets once again cracked the pavement. I could tell immediately that these sewers were deeper than those in New York, and I just closed my eyes and waited for impact.

When it came, it hurt like hell, but it didn’t kill me. I hit water, and after it smacked me in the back like a block of cement, I sank and choked immediately. Avery Cates, world-famous Gunner, drowning in four fucking feet of ancient shit.

The humiliating thought of my shriveling reputation spasmed me into determined thrashing, and I started to kick up to the surface, coming to my senses and changing direction after a few kicks. If I were Moje, I’d order my Stormers to fire down into the water for a moment, try to hit me before I even surfaced. I swallowed ancient shit and kicked for all I was worth in a random direction. All the other bullshit aside, I was running for my life now. Who gave a fuck if the Monks swallowed the world, or if the Joint Council finally made all of us illegal, or if the SSF tore my arms and legs off for spite after I was gone-it was a matter of whether I would live to see the next hour or not.

My stomach turned from what I’d swallowed, my lungs burned, and I couldn’t seem to order my eyes to open, to see the actual filth I was swimming in. I just swam until my hands and knees scraped stone, and stood up in shallower water, only up to my waist. The walls gleamed with slimy, reflected light smeared over the old bricks, stretching off into blackness. There was no chance of secrecy, of being careful; I had to breathe. I sucked in air loudly and flailed around in the water for a few seconds, orienting myself. The shaft of bright white light coming down through the manhole was about fifteen feet behind me. The fact that I was still alive indicated that the Stormers hadn’t come in after me yet. The sound of the hover indicated that they were coming, probably fast.

I pulled my backup weapon, aimed at the pool of hard light directly below the manhole. The Stormers would be close to invisible in their ObFu Kit. I kept my hands still and waited… waited… waited…

Two splashes, one on top of the other. I put four shells into each spot, turned, and ran for all I was worth through the water. It smelled like something had died down here, the air burning my throat. Before I’d gone more than ten or fifteen more feet, I heard a third splash, then a fourth and a fifth.

Everything was in slow motion, every ripple on the oily water, every jagged edge of the walls standing out in harsh relief as my mind raced and my heart seized up-I had just killed an SSF officer. This would make the fourth I’d either killed or caused to be killed in recent months, but the first had been an accident, a mistake, and I’d spent a lot of time and sweat erasing any connections between it and me, lying awake at nights listening for the sound of a hover, the whipping sound of Stormers sailing down on wires to raid my building, grab me up, and execute me on the fucking roof. The second hadn’t been my fault, though the Pigs, in their infinite Drum Trial wisdom, wouldn’t care. And the third I’d done remote control-I was blocks away when it’d happened, and if that crazy bastard Dawson had done his duty and died, too, no one would have known of my involvement.

But this, this was different. I’d reached out, personally, and taken this one. There would be a record of who they’d been chasing. Moje would be more than happy to spread the tale. I didn’t think even the unofficial patronage of Dick Marin could save me if it became general knowledge.

My arm ached from holding the gun steadily in the air-I had just killed a motherfucking System Pig. As the implications hit me I found myself running on autopilot, my mind paralyzed with an odd mixture of dread and relief. I had killed a cop; any thin barrier between me and the vengeance of two million Pigs all over the world was gone, burned up in a muzzle flash. The System Pigs could be bought, they could be fooled occasionally, and they sometimes tolerated things out of laziness or for profit. But people who killed SSF-the few who had been stupid enough these past twenty years-they were hunted.

And made examples of.

“Better run, rat,” Moje shouted, receding behind me. “You’re a cop-killer, now. Two of my team! We’re gonna have to punish you for that.”

Two down, I thought, recovering as I pounded along. Forget the dead cops-it couldn’t be helped. Besides, when they started sending the Stormers into the fucking sewers after you, you were pretty much on the SSF shitlist anyway, so how could a couple of dead cops make things worse?

Thinking such cheerful thoughts, I added the attrition of Moje’s team to my slim list of advantages. It didn’t do me much good; I didn’t have any other plan. I had no idea where the sewers led, where I’d be when I emerged, or if I’d be able to stay ahead of my pursuers.

You’re screwed now, Avery, I panted to myself as I ran. Shoulda known twenty-seven was too old. You’ve pushed your luck.

I imagined a bullet in the back of my head. I imagined falling down and drowning, the inky blackness creeping closer. I imagine being paralyzed, everything slipping away, and I wondered if I hadn’t made a huge mistake rejecting the Monks. A thousand times, I’d walked by them preaching on the streets. A thousand times I’d ignored them. Even knowing how they acquired most of their members, the crazy thought that maybe it was better to live as a Monk than to die. Always the craziest thought: Fuck, man, what if they’re right?

The sewers were tight, barely man-sized tunnels, and I had to crouch to be able to move through them. The water slowed me down and pushed against me, sucking hungrily and soaking my clothes. The bottom was slick slime and I lost my footing frequently, especially when I found intersections of tunnels and made sudden decisions to take one. And all the while, Moje shouted after me, over the splash of their pursuit.

“You didn’t think you were just going to walk away from me, did you? Here we come, rat!”

I stumbled, finding myself in an open area, spilling out into a round area where a lot of tunnels seemed to connect. The air sweetened, and looking up I could see another manhole. Behind me, I could hear shouts and lots of confused movement, and figured I’d lost them for a minute-at most. There were only so many possible paths, and I knew Moje would catch up soon enough. This was a junction, which meant that picking a tunnel randomly might lead me back the way I came, right at Moje and his Stormers.

I looked up at the manhole. There was a narrow, crumbling lip of stone halfway up, and I thought if I could get a foothold on it I might reach the manhole and push my way out. It wouldn’t be easy. I felt tired just staring up at it.

Shutting my eyes, I got ready. I could hear Moje and his men sorting themselves out, coming closer. I stashed my backup in one pocket and thought if I couldn’t do it, I wasn’t going down without a fight. And I thought, If a Monk were to somehow pop up out of nowhere and offer me salvation, save me from having to pay for twenty-six dead people and a slew of other crimes, I’d do it in a heartbeat. Taking a deep breath, I began calculating angles, probable entries, and how I would approach me if I were wearing ObFu Kit that made me blend into the walls.

I picked my spot-a section of wall where the mortar between bricks had chipped away, leaving shadowy gaps-and launched myself at it. I managed to cram two f-ingers into one of the gaps and get one foot hooked on the tiny ledge. Heart pounding, I pulled and pushed and pushed myself up until I was almost standing, pressed up against the slick wall.

I twisted and stretched out one trembling arm for the manhole cover. Almost… almost… with sweat running into my eyes, I gathered myself for one final effort when there was a scrape from above. I froze, swiveling just my eyeballs up to look. The manhole shifted, then tore away, revealing the dark blue night sky. A pale and ridiculously genial face, hidden behind fashionable sunglasses, appeared over the rim. I stared in complete speechless shock.

“Come on,” Dick Marin said. “I’ll pull you up. I don’t have all day; I’m about to deliver a speech to A-Level SSF chiefs in Sydney.”