The Eternal Prison (41 page)

valuable.
” He spread his hands in an elegant gesture. “I won’t lie. The same hidden knowledge that brought you to Chengara under Director Marin’s ungentle attention makes you valuable to us. The difference is, we’re
asking
you to help us. We’re
asking
you to tell us what Undersecretary Salgado knows.”

 

My bullshit meter exploded. I didn’t know who the fuck this Neely character was, but I knew just from looking at him that he was not the sort of man accustomed to
asking
anything.

 

I ran my dry tongue over my cracked lips, wincing at the sudden pain. “You got any gin back there, slick?”

 

Something passed over his leathery face, a fast contortion I couldn’t quite catch. He regained control right away, glancing down at his lap and coming up smiling. “I apologize, Mr. Cates. You have been through an ordeal.” He stood up and pointed at me. “Old-school: warm and straight, yes?”

 

I nodded. “Piss warm if possible.”

 

He turned for the bar. “At any rate, Cates, for you the war is over, of course, whether the old bag decides to tell you her secrets or not. We’ll put you anywhere in the System within our power.” He glanced over his shoulder at me, a glass in his hand. “With your verbal pledge to not act against us, of course.”

 

I looked at Grisha. He stared back at me without expression. I looked at Marko, and he was still giving me the off-center smile that made him look like he had a brain disease. I turned to look at Neely’s solid back. This was nothing like Kev had been, or even the government Spooks like Bendix I’d run into during the Plague. This was a fine touch for a Pusher. Neely had two people on a slow burn and wasn’t even breaking a sweat.

 

He spun around with two glasses filled four-fingers deep, took three steps, and held one out to me. I reached for it, humiliated to see my hand shaking. I put the glass up to my nose and breathed it in, the smell familiar but different than I was used to. Less bathtub and more gin, I supposed—filtered, cleaned, and professional. I swallowed it all in two gulps, the fumes rising into my head and making my eyes water. It was terrible. It tasted like someone had boiled gin down to a mathematical equation and had a computer construct a glass of it, molecule by molecule.

 

“Thank you,” I breathed, feeling steadier. The healing power of booze. “So, let me get this straight: you’ve rescued me.”

 

Neely nodded, pointing at me again. “Yes! Because that is what constitutional governments do—they protect their loyal citizens.”

 

Fucking hell,
I thought,
this guy’s not used to operating without

 

his Push.
He was all elbows and creepy smiles. “And you think it’d be nice if I told you something I don’t even fucking know.”

 

He sank back into the seat across from me. “Yes!”

 

“And then I can go anywhere I want as long as I promise not to fuck with you.”

 

He nodded crisply. “Yes.”

 

I took a deep breath and tried to get a quick snapshot of my physical state, a sense of what I’d be able to do. It came back pretty thin. Every joint ached, my muscles trembled, and the ringing in my head had blossomed into a thick cloud of fog. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get up out of the chair, much less do anything else. But there was the choice, because I had a strong feeling that if I stayed in the chair now, I’d never get out of it.

 

I was off the rail, and I didn’t like it.

 

Exhaling slowly, I put my hands on the seat of the chair and pushed myself up, trying for a smooth, slow motion, trying to make it seem easy. I managed to get to my feet while keeping my face smooth and unworried with effort. I felt Neely’s narrow eyes on me as I made for the bar, taking small steps but managing a steady gait, and at the bar I fell forward into it at the right moment to mask my unsteadiness. I picked up the bottle of gin, half-full and made of thick, heavy glass. I weighed it in my shaking hand, struggling to slow my breathing down to a normal rate. I turned and leaned back against the bar for a moment.

 

“I can’t promise not to fuck you, Mr. Neely,” I said, breathing deeply again, holding it for a moment as my lungs burned, and then launching myself back toward him. “I’m a Gunner. I get paid to fuck people, and if you start turning down jobs because of vague promises made under duress in hovers, you pretty quickly get a reputation as a useless motherfucker, and jobs dry up.”

 

Neely smiled as I approached. “I am sure we can work out some sort of agreement that satisfies honor amongst thieves.”

 

He
is
a fucking prick, isn’t he?
Marin whispered to me suddenly.
The great Sekander Neely. One of the first babes snatched up for the project, M-rating off the charts. He’s famous. I’ve never actually seen him before. Are you aware that your eyesight is not very good, Mr. Cates? Of course, I’m used to digital optics.

 

“Honor amongst thieves?” I said, forcing a smile onto my face. “What the fuck do you know about honor amongst thieves?” I took a second to steel myself, trying to summon every drop of energy I had left; then I flipped the bottle up, caught it by the neck, and smashed it down on Neely’s head with everything I had.

 

As he fell out of the chair, blood spurting, I felt the lightest touch of his Push again, but it faded away immediately as I gladly dropped to my knees next to him. Panting painfully, I took hold of his blood-damp hair and yanked his head up, pressing the jagged edge of the broken bottle against his neck hard enough to draw an extra trickle of blood.

 

I remembered the first time I’d played that trick, feeling happy. Neely’s strangled grunts filled my ears, and his warm blood covered my hand.

 

You’re a true professional, Avery,
Marin chortled silently inside me.
No complicated tech for you, huh? No ancient martial arts. None of that pretender bullshit. Just a broken bottle and a complete lack of empathy for the rest of the human race.

 

I ignored the whisper in my mind, panting spittle down onto Neely’s damp head. “You don’t like not being able to Push me, huh, you fucking dandy? Fuck you. You’re under orders. Send him back.”

 

Neely gasped and twisted under me. My vision swam, but I pushed everything I had into my one arm and tugged harder on his hair. “Who?” he hissed. I noted that neither Marko nor Grisha had moved. Neely was the most powerful Pusher I’d ever even imagined. I’d
broken a bottle over his head
and now threatened to slit his throat, and he could still maintain his Push on them. If he hadn’t obviously been ordered not to try anything with my delicate, special little brain—any doubt that I was an avatar tossed in the garbage with that one tiny flicker of his Push against my thoughts—I wouldn’t have had a chance.

 

“Your fucking boss. I don’t deal with fucking flunkies, seconds, or dressed-up secretaries.”

 

He twisted his face around and slid his eyes toward me. “Oh, fuck you, you goddamn monkey.”

 

“Mr. Cates,” I heard a new voice say from the direction of the cockpit. I turned and looked at a tall, black man—the darkest man I’d ever seen—hunching a bit to fit under the ceiling of the hover, his belly an amazing sight, swollen and preceding him by several orders of magnitude. He was dressed in an even nicer suit than Neely’s, looking hand tailored and possibly made out of pure gold. His head was shaved and waxed, shining in the warm light. I put him at fifty or sixty, though he had the ageless look of the rich with their endless stem cell treatments and surgeries—despite the very edge of a nasty surgical scar peeking up from his collar. He walked gracefully over to Neely’s vacated chair and lowered himself down with regal grace, then looked down at me with an expression of immense disappointment.

 

“Release Mr. Neely,” he said in a low, rich voice. “And we will talk.”

 

And I heard Dolores Salgado again, whispering,
Forget Neely. Throw
this
son of a bitch out a window.

 

And then Marin again, sounding muted for a change.
Damn,
he whispered to me.
Look at that. I haven’t aged well at all.

 

 

 

 

XXXVI

I WANT TO BE
ERASED

 

 

 

 

I stared at Ruberto longer than was wise. I still had Neely’s hair in one hand and the bottle against his neck in the other, but I’d lost all power and gone limp. If Neely had surged up, he could have thrown me back against the cabin wall like I was made of paper.

 

What did you just say?

 

Marin stayed quiet. I remembered the Worm in Moscow, Gall, spluttering,
Don’t you know who Ruberto
is?

 

“I think I understand your kind, Mr. Cates,” Ruberto said, sighing deeply, as if the disappointment of such understanding was more than he could comfortably bear. “You are looking for a deal, yes? You have something we want, and you would like fair compensation. In spirit, I agree with you. I am sorry if it appeared we were trying to, as you might say,
screw
you.”

 

Ruberto had a slight wheeze, like a distant tide.

 

Well, I’ll be damned. That would explain a lot of bullshit,
Salgado muttered.

 

Is that what you know?
I demanded as I struggled to control my breathing.
Is that what they want from you?

 

She didn’t know that,
Marin said, somehow conveying smugness in my head.
No one knew that. It was the perfect crime.

 

We assumed,
Salgado went on.
We convinced Captain Marin to

 

participate in our little pilot program to have his brain sucked into a quantum drive. Two hundred volunteers, one hundred ninety-nine died leaving no usable brain imprint behind. Marin’s imprint was the only viable one. We assumed his body died as well—the body
always
dies. And then when we needed a Director of IA, we had this imprint we could program and nudge, control.

 

Didn’t die,
Marin said gleefully.
Even I didn’t realize it at first, but I survived. Just like you, Mr. Cates! We’re brothers in a sense. When I realized, I found myself and… elevated myself. Changed the appearance of my avatars to confuse the issue. Bit by bit, slowly, I created new files, a new name. I created Cal Ruberto, and I made him—myself—an Undersecretary in time.

 

“Mr. Cates?” Ruberto said, cocking his head. Like a bird.

 

Easier than it sounds. They thought I’d died during the process—I was the first subject who even left a usable brain imprint behind, and no one even checked the body—my body. Why would they? Everyone died. Like you, Avery, they left me for dead, scooped up my imprint, and a few months later hit on the brilliant idea of making me their lackey—Director of SSF Internal Affairs. So I could tame the beast they’d created. They added all sorts of programming to my imprint, to control me. Meanwhile, my body, my physical self, managed to survive. Crawled back into the the System and disappeared for a while. When I found myself again, what was I supposed to do? Let me languish?

 

I sank back onto my ass, releasing Neely, hating the feeling of Dick Marin in my head. The Pusher didn’t scramble away or anything; he got to his feet slowly, wiping blood from his eyes and slicking back his hair with one hand, flicking a pattern of dark blood onto the floor of the cabin. He took a deep snorting breath and spat blood, stepping to stand behind his boss and stare at me.

 

“A deal,” I said hoarsely. I felt like I couldn’t breathe deeply enough, like my lungs were bottomless, just letting the air pass through. I wiped my chin with one sleeve. “All right. Make me an offer.”

 

You have nothing to barter with,
Salgado said tersely.

 

My bullshit meter was still off the known charts. I stared back at Neely and Ruberto—Marin—and asked myself what was wrong with the whole scene, why everything felt off. I didn’t know. All I knew was that this was all bullshit.

 

The gin in my gut had soured and was making me woozy. The adrenaline dump had perked me up, though.

 

“An offer,” Ruberto repeated, glancing down at his hands. “Mr. Cates, it would be helpful to know what it is you
want.
”

 

“World peace,” I said breathlessly, swallowing vomit. “Education for all the children. Jobs for everyone. Go on, get creative. Let’s start with letting my friends have their minds back.”

 

Ruberto raised an eyebrow, and his eyes swiveled to Grisha, who still sat calmly, a neutral expression on his face. “We can discuss that. At present I am worried that their reactions may be… unproductive.”

 

Ruberto, Marin,
Dolores hissed in my mental ear.
This is a conspiracy. They’ve been working angles. Marin alive! For decades! Everything makes sense now. Everything.

 

I shrugged at Ruberto. “Okay. Let’s talk money.”

 

The Undersecretary narrowed his eyes at me. “Money? Mr. Cates, you are still a very rich man from your previous exploits, despite everything.”