Electric Church

XXIII YOU’LL NEVER BE PRETTY AGAIN

Orel didn’t say anything more as we walked in, and I stayed quiet. My cheek stung and probably needed a stitch or two. I wondered if anyone had thought to bring some basic first-aid. About ten feet inside the door, Orel stopped and turned to face me.

“That was just a probe,” he said.

I nodded. “He knows I’m here, he knows the basic security of the building, he knows who he has to deal with and how good we are.” I sighed. “He’ll be back.”

Orel nodded, inscrutable. “But not here. He’s established that getting in unnoticed isn’t possible, and I think you and I together were a bit more trouble than he was prepared for.” He paused. “You know something, Cates? That was the first time in thirty years I thought I might get killed.”

I blinked. “Thirty years? I barely make it through an evening without thinking I’m going to get capped.”

He kept his gray eyes on me. “You’re one of those true believers, aren’t you, Cates?”

“True believer?”

He shrugged. “Revolution. Changing the world. Ending the System.”

I looked down at the floor, embarrassed and resentful. “Don’t you sometimes just want to give up on all this bullshit? Christ, if you were in the Dъnmharъ, you must.”

I met his eyes again. “Oh, yes, Mr. Cates.” He pointed a finger at his head like a gun. “If I could put a bullet in the System’s brain, I would. But I’m a realist. Until the right time comes, a man’s got to eat.”

We walked back to the Assembly Room in silence. The place looked empty except for Brother West’s lonely vigil, until I noticed Gatz sitting with his head down between his knees, a bound and gagged Marilyn Harper on the floor next to him tracking me with wide, white eyes.

“You okay, Kev?”

He didn’t turn or lift his head; just waved dismissively at me. He’d had Harper Pushed for a long time. Kieth’s bald head popped out of the hover’s hatch and he waved at us.

As we entered the cramped cockpit, squeezing in with four other people, Milton glanced at us, winked, and held a finger against her lips. I oriented on the Vid, staring at my own face.

“… no comment. Repeating this breaking news item, our colleague Marilyn Harper, a respected and popular Vid anchor, has been reported missing. System Security Force spokeswoman Denise Proctor has announced just ten minutes ago that a suspect in Harper’s disappearance has been named: Avery Cates, a native of New York City, shown here. Cates is also a prime suspect in fifteen unsolved murders going back-”

I waved the sound off. “Fuck,” I breathed.

“I wonder,” Tanner said with a twinkle in her eyes that was eerily matched by her silent twin, “if you aren’t sending these press releases to the Vids and the SSF yourself. I wonder if you aren’t a secret media whore.”

I’d been letting the sisters slide because they were tough, and because I wanted to keep things jolly, but this was getting old.You couldn’t relax for a moment, could never be human. You had to be a blank wall. I counted to three, quickly, in my head and lunged for her. She yelped and tried to scramble back, but the cockpit was overpopulated and there was no place to go. I had her by the nose. She twitched and a knife flashed out and stopped just short of my neck, everyone else yelling and pulling at me.

“Just keep pushing,” I advised her in a calm voice cutting through the sudden cacophony, looking at her sideways, my eyes just brushing her face. I ignored the knife. If she was going to slit my throat for touching her, I’d already be bleeding out. “Just keep pushing.”

I let her go, and she relaxed, tenderly rubbing her nose. I turned to find Orel leaning against the hatch, looking at me blankly. “That how you handle things, Mr. Cates? Don’t try it with me.”

I shook my head. “Certainly not, Mr. Orel. You, I take out on the town, buy you drinks, and then shoot you in your sleep.”

All I got was a raised eyebrow, manicured to a razor edge.

“Look,” Milton broke in, pushing her way forward and standing with arms fiercely akimbo. “She’s got a point. You’re getting awfully high-profile, Cates.”

Her sister, still rubbing her nose and holding her knife, nodded. “Your face is on the Vids. That’s a problem.”

“Goddammit, I know it is.” I looked around at each of them. “This is my job. You want to walk away, go ahead-but there are no goddamn severance packages. You’re either here for the payout to defend your share or you’re not, it’s that simple. If this is too hot for you, bail. But don’t look back. And don’t ever contact me again. If you walk away, keep walking.” I looked at Orel. “That goes for you too, Canny. You want your money, you stick.”

His eyes were alive with energy. “And if I choose to just revenge myself on Mr. Kieth here? There are other things than money in the world, Mr. Cates.”

I shrugged. “I’m rapidly shedding anything I might have left to lose.”

He nodded and pushed off from the hatch, putting a manicured, heavy hand on my shoulder. He gently pulled me into his orbit. His calloused hand was heavily veined and rough, overdeveloped.

“Walk with me a moment, Cates.” We stepped out of the hover and I walked with him a few feet away. When he paused, I just waited, hands in my pockets. He glanced over my shoulder and then leaned in so that we were each looking over the other’s shoulder-an old habit of street hustlers, to minimize volume and watch each other’s backs. Orel and I fell into it easily. It occurred to me that it might be dangerous to give Orel such a clear opening, but I didn’t think it was his style to sucker-punch someone he obviously considered his inferior.

“You’ll have to kill the woman, of course,” he said easily.

I didn’t look at him, just bunched my jaw muscles. “No.”

“Bad enough,” he said in a clipped, precise manner, as if he’d had the speech memorized since childhood, “your face is on the Vids-but we can deal with that. The Vids have faces on them all the time, an endless parade of Bad People Who Must Be Stopped, all right? No one really cares about yet another heartless killer-not the people on the streets, at least. But she is a danger to us. Her, people will recognize. You and her seen together, almost certainly. What if she contrives to escape? To signal? Finally, what if she simply causes trouble? Throws a wrench, so to speak, in the works?” He pulled back enough to glance at me, and our eyes met. “No, Mr. Cates. She needs to be dealt with. Take her out back, now, and do it. She is too dangerous.”

I swallowed thickly. The suggestion itself didn’t bother me. I’d killed almost thirty people on contract, and at least that many in the course of things. I was a killer. I wasn’t an animal. I was prepared to argue my case to God or the Cosmos or whatever-I played by rules. I lived by them.

I leaned forward slightly, until my lips were very near his ear. “I do not,” I whispered, “simply kill obstacles, Mr. Orel, or whoever the fuck you are. It is not her fault that she is here. She should not be punished for it.”

“That is a mistake, Mr. Cates.”

I straightened up. “Mine to make. You know your options.”

He straightened up and studied me, and I stared back at him. I didn’t know if he was used to being ignored, but I wasn’t a starfucker. Reputations had to be maintained, and one bad night could end it. If I had to, I knew I could be Cainnic Orel’s bad night. After a few moments, he smiled.

“Yes, Mr. Cates. I know my options.”

I watched him disappear into the guts of the factory, followed by one of the nervous Droids, which had been programmed to stay close to us in case we got lost. I walked over to sit next to Gatz, letting out an explosive sigh.

“Bad day, huh?” he asked without raising his head.

“I didn’t tip anyone with Harper,” I said without preamble. “Fuck, you were there, Kev. We didn’t do anything stupid. How’d they get my name? A million fucking London crooks not half a mile away, and they fish me out of the hat? It was our fucking friend Moje. Colonel Moje. He probably doesn’t even know I really did grab her. He knows I’m in London, somehow, and he’s just pinning this on me to flush me out.”

“How do you know that?”

I grimaced. I’d gone from exhausted and hollow to impatient with sudden restless energy. I wanted to attack something and was frightened of the urge. “Because I know what everyone else who wants to kill me is up to.”

For a few moments, I just sat there. Gatz was the one person I was pretty sure didn’t want to hurt me. He maybe didn’t care much if I lived, but he wasn’t actively pursuing my death, either, and as sad as that was, it was the best I could do. We sat there side by side, both dirty, disheveled, and tired. We came from the same place. I felt comfortable next to him.

My eyes slid to the right, and Marilyn Harper was staring at me, eyes watery, drool pooling under her mouth from the ruthless gag. I looked away. I was amazed at how complicated everything had become. It had only been a few days. And amazingly, it would probably all be over, one way or another, in a few more.

Footsteps behind me, and I turned to find Milton and Tanner, looking clean but just as leathery.

“Come on, then,” Milton snapped.

“The surgery’s open. No hard feelings, brother.” Tanner grinned.

“Can’t have you goin’ septic on us, can we?”

I blinked. “What?”

They looked at each other simultaneously, and my head ached from watching them. “Your cheek, asshole,” Milton said. “Let’s get you fixed up.”

I sat on the crate we used as a table in the corroded kitchen while Milton and Tanner fussed over me. One of the Droids sat silently between them, bearing our meager medical supplies. When Tanner lifted a thick needle attached to coarse black thread, my hand whipped up and grabbed her wrist.

“You are not pulling that fucking cable through my tortured flesh, right?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Don’t be a baby, sonny. You see any plastic skin grafts here? You see any laser scalpels? A Med Droid? We have,” she held the needle and thread in front of my nose, “good old-fashioned needle and thread.”

Milton chuckled. “You’ll never be pretty again, Cates,” she said. “But you’ll heal. We were running on the streets when you were just bad news on the horizon. I’ve stitched up more people and set more bones than you could count.”

I looked at her closely, the faint lines around her eyes and mouth, the lean, taut look of her. “Tell me, how’d you manage to retire?”

She laughed. “You mean, retire alive?”

I shrugged.

“It’s like anything else in this fucking world. We got lucky.”

I grimaced as her sister leaned in and began shoving the needle through the flaps of my wound. It hurt so intensely that moments after she started I was numb. I ground my teeth as the sisters stared at me, Tanner’s nose still red and angry.

“What?” I grunted.

Milton folded her arms across her chest as Tanner sewed me back together. I realized with a start that as her sister leaned in and out, working on me, she moved just a bit forward and back, in rhythm. “We’re here, Cates. We’re at each other’s throats and getting bullets thrown our way. And I have yet to hear a plan from you for getting into this fucking place.”

I looked at her and then down at my hands, dirty and covered in scabs, some of which had been torn off and leaked blood wearily. “I’ve got an idea.”

Tanner snorted. “Glory be.”

“The bad news is, it isn’t something Kieth can wiggle his nose at and make happen with geek power and a few batteries.”

Tanner snorted again. “So there’s-”

“-good news?” Milton finished.

I paused for a second or two. “Not really.”

Tanner paused, the needle buried in my flesh and burning. “Do tell, mistuh boss.”

I sighed. “Well, to start with, we’re going to need some stuff.”