Cates 04 - The Terminal State (21 page)

“You’re feeling better?” Panić said, glancing up at me. “That relieves my mind, my friend. We need you on this.”

I fished for my Roon in my pocket and inspected it for a moment. It was slick and sticky with blood. Looking up, I saw Mara lying on one of the bunks, roomy and luxurious now that we had the whole car to ourselves. “Any idea where we are? ” I asked.

“No,” Mara said without moving.

The Monk was seated on a low bunk under Mara’s. It produced its LED screen and held it up for me.

I WOULD GUESS SOME MILES NORTH OF SHENZHEN. ARMY ACTIVITY NORTH OF HONG KONG PREVENTS THIS TRAIN FROM MOVING ANY FARTHER. ALL OTHER PASSENGERS HAVE LIKELY DEBARKED.

Feeling groggy and sick to my stomach, I checked my gun one last time and walked to the door, making sure to keep my gait steady and brisk. The Roon needed cleaning, but I reloaded it anyway and hoped for the best. The Poet might find some morsel of pity for an old broken-down Gunner, but I was pretty sure Mara would put me down like a sick dog if I couldn’t do my part.

I slid the door open and stepped between the cars. It was warm and humid compared to Brussels; a brisk wind pushed at me and smelled rotten and smoky. Facing south, I could see the previous population of the train fanning out into the tall grass and scrubby trees, rain falling in a steady, depressing drizzle. On the horizon was an immense plume of thick, black smoke, actively curling up into the air like a column of shifting gray stone. At its base was a soft orange glow.

The people were all carrying luggage and were headed generally eastward. I had no idea where the fuck they thought they were going.

Mara climbed out behind me, stretching her lithe body, her eyes clear and sharp on me. “All right, Mr. Cates. You’re in charge of this fucked-up situation, eh? Y’made that clear back in Belgium. And we achieved our current state of
world-record
fucked-up-ness due to you, eh? So now what? ”

I gestured toward the column of smoke, the biggest I’d ever seen, like someone had snuffed out a star somewhere on the coast. “We start walking.”

She sniffed. “Walk,” she said slowly, as if trying the word on for the first time. “
Where
, for fuck’s sake? ”

I gestured again. “South. Toward Hong Kong. Toward the army.”

 

 

The column of smoke didn’t seem to be appreciably nearer. My head was fuzzy, the headache having spread to envelop my entire brain in a sour pulsing cloud. Despite the humid heat, my teeth chattered in my mouth. I’d been concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other, a slow, ponderous process that had kept me moving so far.

We were walking through the outskirts of what had once been a large city that had been all but erased. The ground beneath us was smooth and warm, like something recently melted, and nothing was standing taller than three or four feet, jagged remnants of foundations. Nothing—
nothing
. It was impressive, a flat field of rubble as far as you could see, not a single building spared. I didn’t know if it had been the undersecretaries and their shiny new army or the System Police, but someone had studied up on salting the fucking earth.

The air smelled like metal, and I felt like radiation was soaking into me, even though my HUD showed rad levels as nominal. I just kept swallowing my stomach and staring at the smoke, making sure I was more or less aimed toward it at all times.

“This is impressive. I have seen Berserk before. Grown men were crying.”

I squinted but didn’t look at the Poet. I hadn’t noticed him stepping close to me. This was how broken old men got killed, but I couldn’t even summon up panic or fear, outrage or anger. I just didn’t want to turn my head.

“Do not be a fool,” he suddenly whispered. “I prefer you do not die. Let me be of help.”

I licked my dried lips. “I’m fine, Adrian. Go the fuck away.”

I heard him snort. “The great Master Cates,” he said with a sigh. “I know the need for image. Trust no one, of course. Trust only yourself.” He laughed softly. “I’ve heard Cates stories.”

Even though we were just walking, I was gasping. “Like what? ”

“You survived the Plague. You killed cops as a
hobby
. Survived Chengara.”

I nodded. “I’m the next stage in evolution, sure,” I panted. “Can’t kill me.” I was almost a fucking machine now, anyway. Even when I closed my eyes, I saw the faint outlines of my HUD, electrical impulses fired directly into my optical nerves.

Suddenly the Poet’s hand was on my chest, pushing me to a halt. “Stop a moment, please.” I looked around; we were standing in what had once been a large square, where a perimeter wall still clung to existence around us, limestone still clinging to the cinder-block bones beneath, creating shadows. I blinked, ancient instinct struggling up through the haze with a payload of anxiety. He looked back at Mara and the Monk, which moved with the subtlety and quiet of an avalanche. “Despite our silent advance, we are being watched.”

Mara stepped forward to stand with us, hands on her slim hips, scowling around. She’d gotten a bend in her back that made her look old, shortened, and worn down. “Fuck me swinging,” she muttered. “I think you’re right.” She turned and spat on the melted ground. “Well, Mr. Cates, I think we’ve found your army.” The Monk, carrying our heavy duffel on its back, stepped next to Mara with its serene, infinite smile on its plastic face and stopped.

I nodded, taking a deep breath and stepping forward, shaking my head, trying to snap some clarity into myself, eyes roaming as I noted the spots I’d have placed snipers and scouts if I’d been in charge. I stood for a moment, swaying a little but unable to stop myself, and then I raised my arms. They felt like someone had tied weights to them, and after a few seconds of standing in silence, just the soft wind and the damp air in my ears, I muttered a curse under my breath and breathed deeply, gathering myself to yell.

“We’re four assholes on foot,” I shouted. “You waiting to see if we’re radioactive? ”

There were another few beats of silence, and I thought,
Fuck it, I’m putting my arms down. Let some trigger-happy simp blow my head off for it
. As I dropped them, they all suddenly appeared, stepping out from behind every possible hiding place I’d spotted. Their white uniforms were brilliant, perfect, impossibly clean in the dusty, half-melted city. They all stepped out from their locations simultaneously, but only three or four had their long-barreled sniper rifles trained on us. They all had their cowls up, plastic visors glaring in the dimmed light.

As we stood watching them, detachments trotted around, circling behind us.

“You better know what the fuck you’re doin’, Mr. Cates,” Mara said in a low, unhappy voice. “Some might say this smells like fucking suicide.”

“If I want suicide,” I said slowly, keeping my eyes on the small group of snipers in front of us, “I’ll just slap you in the face and call you names until you cry, okay? Now shut the fuck up and let me handle this.”

A few more seconds and then one of the white uniforms stepped forward and pushed its cowl back. A pudgy-faced blond woman stared at me, her face flushed, short hair damp. My vision was suddenly filled with the tiny text boxes, blooming on top of each of the soldiers for a second and then fading to transparency. I ignored them all. I didn’t need names.

“Deserter!” she called out, crooking one hand at me. “Step forward. The rest of you don’t move, or we’ll erase you.”

This was said with a curious lack of bravado—it was simply said. She sounded bored and tired and in no mood to actually threaten us. I started walking, trying to put a little pimp roll into it, trying to look dangerous, confident. I kept my eyes on the blonde, feeling every other set of blank, visored eyes on me. As I got closer, I realized she was speaking into a microphone embedded in the collar of her uniform.

“...due respect, you fucking monkey, we are in our assigned
position
. There’s nothing fucking
here
, except some fucking vagrants we’re going to rub in a minute, okay? So get on the fucking horn and tell your CO we’re just standing here with our dicks in our hands and after I get done putting some bullets in some ears we’re gonna get
bored
.”

She cut the connection with a savage flick of her wrist and turned on me.

“Gonzalez, 009987-562, I got your beacon in my HUD like a fucking stone in my boot, but you’re not assigned to a unit or detach service, which makes you a fucking runner. I don’t know how you ran or which incompetent piece of shit
let
you run, but I am hereby putting you on trial and I’m about to condemn you to fucking execution. You got five seconds.”

I nodded. “You know Colonel Malkem Anners? ”

She stared for a moment, then nodded, once. “Yup.”

I smiled. “Tell him Avery Cates has a business proposal.”

“A new Cates story,” the Poet whispered next to me. “The great man slept just before his execution.”

I kept my eyes shut. The cell smelled like piss that had been fermented, imbibed, and pissed out all over again. “They’re not going to shoot us,” I said. Then I opened one eye. The Poet—I realized I had gotten perfectly used to his ridiculous nickname and used it even though I knew his real one—sat at my feet on the hard metal bench I was stretched out on, looking grimy and peaceful in his glasses. “Well, they’re not going to shoot
me
.”

I closed my eye again and was instantly in a drifting, fuzzy place that wasn’t quite sleep. It was sheer physical exhaustion.

I heard the creaking of his leather coat. “You also are calm,” he said. “You can be shot as well, as far as I know.”

Mara’s voice was irritated. “They can shoot me a hundred times. What do I care? It’s the fucking
delay
that bothers me, follow?”

Her voice echoed in my thoughts. Something about Mara bothered me...I couldn’t put my finger on it, but every time she opened her thin little mouth, I wanted to grab hold of her neck and choke her until she explained it to me. She was young; I wondered if I’d known her as a kid and forgotten, maybe one of the rats who had run underfoot back in Pick’s, trying to pick up a tip or two, trying to lift a pocket. We’d always tossed a few of them out on their ass every night. I’d never gotten too upset—more power to them if they could snatch a credit dongle off of that crowd.

That didn’t feel right, though. She didn’t have the look. She always moved like she didn’t like her body, awkward and tight. She walked like she was angry with the ground, and her accent, broad and vaguely Gaelic, varied. All of which was perfectly normal, except it wasn’t.

The fucking Monk, with its eternal smile and rotting brain, freaked me out less than Mara did.

We were in a small holding cell, a cube of stainless steel apparently formed out of a single sheet of metal, escorted into it with firm but polite insistence by the soldiers after making contact with Anners’s staff and relieving us with horrible efficiency of our weapons, even finding Adrian’s garrote. In the absence of clear authority to shoot us all in the head, the squad leader had become suddenly polite and businesslike, wondering, I was sure, how a runner like me had any pull with a colonel. She’d even offered to round up some freeze-dried rations for us. I knew that if Anners decided to be rid of me after all, the blonde would shrug and pop one in my ear without hesitation, but until then I might turn out to be a major pain in her ass, and she was playing it safe.

“I don’t like the army,” the Poet groused. “I do not like uniforms. Men who take orders.”

“
You
take orders from our girl over there,” I pointed out.

“She has the black button,” he said with a verbal shrug. “The Middle Finger of God. This is common sense.” The soldiers had allowed Mara to retain our tiny remotes; I guessed that under Anners’s command they knew pressees got sold out of the army sometimes, and allowed for it.

“Shut the fuck up, both of you,” Mara suddenly said, sounding cheerful. “
That’s
an order.”

“If they come for us,” the Poet said with sudden ferocity, “I’ll ask if I can kill
you
. Save them the trouble.”

The heavy door to our little cell began grinding open, and I sat up just as Mara said, “Dream on,
cailín báire
.”

The blonde pushed her way into the cell, trailed by three other kids in uniform. Their cowls were down, and she looked fresher than before, cleaned up and cooled off. The uniforms were eerie—they shimmered and
flowed
, and I didn’t want the material to touch me ever again.

She put her blank, heavy-lidded eyes on me and jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “A’ight,” she said. “Colonel wants you.”

We all stood up, but the blonde pointed at me. “Just him, eh?” she said. When the Poet and Mara hesitated, her cheeks suddenly bloomed red. “Sit the fuck
down
,” she said, snapping her fingers once. The three grunts behind her instantly raised their modified shredders. Mara and the Poet sat down, hands up in placating gestures. The Monk sat down like it had just remembered the maneuver and wanted to try it out.

I smiled around the cell. “Set me wide,” I said to Mara, and winked.