Electric Church

XXXV THE GODDAMN TIME OF MY LIFE

The noise was terrifying. It was all around us in the darkness, simultaneously distant and not distant enough. It sounded like hundreds of people screaming, interspersed with gunshots.

A light flared painfully into existence and I instinctively shielded my eyes. Ty Kieth stood holding a flashtorch up over his head, giving the whole room a strange, pale glow. Wa Belling and Dick Marin were still crouched defensively, guns aimed at the door. I lowered my own weapon and tried to relax, but my body refused, remaining tense and electrified.

Kieth was pacing, one hand still on his head as if he was keeping it from popping off. “We assumed the mod chips were closed, but they were receiving a signal. We never noticed with West, because Gatz took over that role. But Squalor’s been in some sort of contact-probably just an authorization beacon-and now that he’s gone, there’s nothing modifying behavior out there.”

“How exactly do we get out?” I shouted.

“Well, Mr. Cates, I thought you might have something planned for that.”

I swore, a stream of pent-up obscenities dribbling out of me in a breathless, uninterrupted flow for five or six seconds. “Whatever I might have planned for exfiltration, Marin, it involved not having a thousand fucked-up Tin Men shooting the place up.”

Marin’s grin in the ghostly glow of Kieth’s lamp was the single most irritating sight I’d ever witnessed. “Not my problem, Mr. Cates. I am merely an avatar. If I am lost, there are currently thirty-two others in existence.”

Belling glanced at me and then back at the King Worm. “You said thirty-four of you just a moment ago,” he pointed out.

Marin nodded, and just kept nodding as if he’d forgotten to stop. “What is happening down here, Mr. Orel, is also happening on a global scale. Every Monk in the Electric Church’s network was directly linked back to Dennis Squalor’s digitized intelligence. Their mod chips, in fact, relied on this connection. It has been rather inelegantly severed, and globally things are, shall we say, chaotic. My presence in Manila has been terminated. Spectacularly, in fact.”

He looked at each of us as he continued. “This avatar, in fact, represents all the resources I’m willing to allocate to your survival. This is pretty generous, I think, considering that you were hired to eliminate Squalor-there was nothing in the original deal about your exfiltration. Whatever this avatar can do to help you escape, fine. Other than that, you’re on your own.”

The hysterical laughter was still there, in my throat, choking me. “That’s fucking fantastic,” I said cheerfully. Who gave a shit if I made it out or not? It didn’t make any difference. “Mr. Kieth, if you would open that door, Mr. Orel and I will clear a hole for us.”

Belling nodded. “That we will.”

“All right,” Kieth said, swallowing. “Mr. Marin, can I ask you to hold the lamp, or does that fall outside the services you’re providing us here?”

Marin stepped forward to take the lamp. “I like you, Mr. Kieth. I hope you survive.”

Freed, Kieth strode purposefully toward the door, pulling tools from his pockets. “This won’t take long. Jesus! They really beat the shit out of this. Ty bets one of you could just yank the goddamn door in, but let’s be professional and pop it, why not.”

He knelt and began attaching small magnetic clips to the door. Belling and I moved in concert, setting up behind him in a crisscross pattern aimed just above his head.

“Don’t stand up, Mr. Kieth,” I warned.

“Ty’s more the prostrate-and-beg type, Mr. Cates,” he said without turning around. “Mr. Marin, bring that lamp over to your left, please. Interesting hardware they’re using on these doors, actually.”

There was nothing to say to that. After another thirty seconds, Kieth made a gasping noise and the door clicked, drifting silently inward. Kieth turned his head to look back at us as he gathered up his equipment, opened his mouth to say something, and was knocked backward as the door was kicked in. A ghostly Monk filled the doorway.

“This isn’t right!” the Monk shouted, firing wildly twice into the room, its voice still modulated and sweetend by digital filters. “This isn’t fucking right!”

Belling and I each put a shell in the Monk’s face, and it fell backward in a spray of white coolant. The noise was deafening now that the door was open, pouring in from all directions at once, near and far, a cacophony of terror and anger and sheer madness.

I wondered if I’d just killed an innocent human, crazed and tortured. I didn’t like the feel of it. But it had a gun, and I had no doubt it would have shot me, if I’d let it. It was survival. That helped.

“Uh,” Kieth said feebly, pulling himself up from the floor. A thin trickle of blood ran from his scalp to his chin. “Ty will take up the rear.”

I gestured at Belling. “After you, cocksucker.” He winked and darted out into the hall with disturbing quickness, rolling to the opposite wall and coming up in perfect form, gun steady, sweeping around him. After a moment he glanced back at me and nodded. I moved swiftly past him and down the opposite wall, staying out of his line of fire. Marin fell in behind us, shouting directions, with Kieth between us all, looking pale and worried.

After the first turn, it was insanity. The Monks came from all directions-behind us, in front of us, out from hidden doors and once even down from the ceiling. They were incoherent, firing randomly and shouting different things, in different languages, and sometimes didn’t even seem to notice us-which didn’t matter when they entered shooting the fucking place up, chips of concrete stinging my eyes and bullets sizzling past my ears. Still, the strange cheer that had taken hold of me persisted, and I found myself grinning through it all, as Belling shouted curses and Kieth begged for his life at top volume.

At first, because of the crazy way the Monks were tearing ass around the complex, our work was easy enough. Most of them just ran right into our sights, or ran right past us without even a look. Even the ones who took notice of us and tried to share their pain a little were shaky and disoriented. At one point I turned a corner and hands were on me instantly, and I was being lifted up off the floor while Belling and Kieth shouted behind me. I brought my gun up instinctively and planted the muzzle under the chin of the Monk, but found myself staring down into its plastic face, exactly like West’s, like Dawson’s.

“Make it stop!” the Monk screamed at me, the smooth filtered audio of its voice ragged at the edges as some emotion strained the circuitry. “Make it stop!”

The Monk wasn’t even trying to hurt me or protect itself. Killing it would have been easy. I couldn’t do it. These were people, people like me, just unluckier. Then again, I was trapped underground with an army of crazy cyborgs and the chief of SSF Internal Affairs, soon to be sole master of the world, as far as I could tell. Maybe the Monks weren’t the unlucky ones.

Belling didn’t see it my way, and put a bullet between its eyes, white coolant splattering my face.

It was slow going, though. After twenty minutes of white-knuckle crawling, we paused at an intersection, Belling and me back-to-back, panting. My gun was hot in my hands as I reloaded and checked the action for the millionth time. I glanced back at Marin, noting thankfully that he’d resumed his dark glasses.

“Any shortcuts?” I shouted. Behind me, I heard Belling curse and the explosion of his gun.

“Watch your ammo,” Belling advised. “We can’t shoot every fucking Monk in the known universe.”

Marin shook his head. “This area was designed to be a single-point-of-weakness. Believe me, if you hadn’t had the chief of SSF Internal Affairs here to pull strings, you’d never have gotten this far.”

“Fuck!” I said cheerfully, letting a Monk who streaked across my field of vision pass unmolested. I was trying to kill only the Monks who posed a threat.

“Cates!” Kieth hissed. “You okay? You sound wonky, and Ty is worried that wonky will get Ty killed!”

“Fuck you, Mr. Kieth!” I howled. “I’m having the goddamn time of my life!”

“Cates,” Belling said in a low voice. “We’re not going to make it like this. It’s a barrel-shoot, sure, but there’s so much fire coming at us we’re going to get clipped eventually, and we’re going to go dry on ammunition soon.” I felt the recoil through him as he fired again. “We won’t make it this way.”

I was grinning. “Who says I want to make it, Mr. Orel?”

“Then say so and I’ll put one in your ear for your fucking bullets, Mr. Cates. What’s the matter? Not enough dead people on your hands today?”

His voice was silky, cultured, and it sank into my ear and yanked, hard. I glanced around at Kieth, who held his gun awkwardly and actually thrust it forward every time he fired it, usually at the three-second-old shadow of a Monk that had just run by. He was hopeless, and obviously terrified, nose vibrating like a hummingbird’s wing. Kieth hadn’t bargained for this. He hadn’t even been in it for the money-his one moment of happiness had been tearing Brother West to pieces, discovering its secrets. But he’d stayed in anyway-for the money, on some level, sure, but for something else. Loyalty, maybe. Honor amongst thieves.

Gatz and Harper flashed through my mind. Milton, Tanner. A man in the backseat of a car. A woman hanging upside down from a fire escape.

“Ah, fuck,” I breathed. My cheer dried up, the laughter sucked back down into whatever dark hole it had come from. And I thought, I guess I can commit suicide any time. “Marin!” I shouted. “Do you have any communication with the outside?”

“Mr. Cates,” he responded in a scolding tone, “I’ve already explained to you that this avatar is the limit of resources-”

“Fuck!” I shouted. “Mr. Kieth! Do you have any open comm channels?”

A few moments ticked by. A half-dozen Monks ran by, screaming, as if we weren’t even there. Belling and I let them go. I tried to keep my eyes everywhere. “Yes, Mr. Cates!” He shouted back. “I have a narrowband signal I can use!”

“Marin, do the goddamn resources you’ve allocated include issuing orders to System Pigs if they’re standing right in front of you?”

Marin’s response was instant. “Yes.”

I nodded. “Kieth: Call the fucking cops!”

I imagined I could hear the sinews in Belling’s neck pop as he turned his head toward me. “Excuse me?”

“Call ’em, Kieth,” I shouted, as a Monk turned the corner, an electric whine coming from its open mouth, guns in each plastic hand firing indiscriminantly. I whipped my gun up and put a bullet into the back of its throat, knocking it backward.

“Mr. Cates, I should advise you that the surface is in a state similar to that of this complex,” Marin said. “I am doubtful you will be able to get the SSF’s attention-even though you are the great Avery Cates.”

Avery Cates, the Gweat and Tewwible, I thought grimly. “Don’t just call the cops, Kieth,” I advised, a slim trickle of the sick happiness returning. “Have them patch you through to Elias Moje. Tell Colonel Moje that Avery Cates is down here. Tell Colonel Moje that Avery Cates is a very rich man, and he’s laughing at him.”

For a moment, there was relative quiet, just the endless screaming of Monks, the endless distant and not-so-distant gunfire.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Belling muttered.

“I’ll try, Cates,” Kieth finally shouted back. “But it isn’t going to be easy to just find him.”

“Sure it is,” I corrected him. “He’s looking for me. Just shout my name on the SSF feed long enough, and he’ll find you.”

“Well this is a wicked fucking googly,” Belling muttered. “Extracted by the fucking System Pigs. I don’t know about you, Cates, but I’m not sure I want to make it out of here that bad.”

I was grinning again. “Like I said, who says I want to make it, Mr. Belling?”