Now, marching down the sterile white corridors of the clinic once again, with the muzzle of my own Philips gun screwed into my neck, I began to have some understanding of the strength it must take to wade back into that water. I’d had cold shivers since we went down in the lift: for the second time, Jerry holding the gun on me from behind. After Innenin, I’d more or less forgotten what it was like to be genuinely afraid, but virtualities were a notable exception. There, you had no control, and literally anything could happen.
Again and again.
They were rattled at the clinic. The news of Trepp’s barbecue ride must have reached them by now, and the face that Jerry had spoken to on the screen at the discreetly appointed front door had gone death white at the sight of me.
“We thought—”
“Never mind that,” snapped Jerry. “Open the fucking door. We’ve got to get this piece of shit off the street.”
The clinic was part of an old turn-of-the-millennium block that someone had renovated in neo-industrial style, doors painted with heavy black and yellow chevrons, façades draped in scaffolding and balconies hung with fake cabling and hoists. The door before us divided along the upward points of the chevrons and slid noiselessly apart. With a last glance at the early morning street, Jerry thrust me inside.
The entrance hall was also neoind, more scaffolding along the walls and patches of exposed brickwork. A pair of security guards were waiting at the end. One of them put out a hand as we approached, and Jerry swung on him, snarling.
“I don’t need any fucking help. You’re the wipeouts that let this motherfucker go in the first place.”
The two guards exchanged a glance and the extended grasp turned into a placatory gesture. They conveyed us to an elevator door that proved to be the same commercial-capacity shaft I’d ridden down from the car park on the roof last time. When we came out at the bottom, the same medical team were waiting, sedating implements poised. They looked edgy, tired. Butt end of the night shift. When the same nurse moved to hypo me, Jerry brought out the snarl again. He had it down to perfection.
“Never fucking mind that.” He screwed the Philips gun harder into my neck. “He isn’t going anywhere. I want to see Miller.”
“He’s in surgery.”
“Surgery?” Jerry barked a laugh. “You mean he’s watching the machine make pick and mix. All right, Chung, then.”
The team hesitated.
“What? Don’t tell me you got all your consultants working for a living this morning.”
“No, it’s…” The man nearest me gestured. ”It’s not procedure, taking him in awake.”
“Don’t fucking tell me about procedure.” Jerry did a good impression of a man about to explode with fury. “Was it procedure to let this piece of shit get out and wreck my place after I sent him over here? Was that fucking procedure? Was it?”
There was silence. I looked at the blaster and Nemex, shoved into Jerry’s waistband, and measured the angles. Jerry took a renewed grip on my collar and ground the gun under my jaw once again. He glared at the medics and spoke with a kind of gritted calm.
“He ain’t moving. Got it? There isn’t time for this bullshit. We are going to see Chung. Now, move.”
They bought it. Anyone would have. You pile on the pressure, and most people fall back on response. They give in to the higher authority, or the man with the gun. These people were tired and scared. We double-timed it down the corridors. Past the operating theatre I had woken up in, or one like it. I caught a glimpse of figures gathered around the surgery platform, the autosurgeon moving spiderlike above them. We were a dozen paces further along when someone stepped into the corridor behind us.
“Just a moment.” The voice was cultured, almost leisurely, but it brought the medics and Jerry up short. We turned to face a tall, blue-smocked figure wearing bloodstained spray-on surgical gloves and a mask which he now unpinned with one fastidious thumb and forefinger. The visage beneath was blandly handsome, blue eyes in a tanned, square-jawed face, this year’s Competent Male, courtesy of some upmarket cosmetic salon.
“Miller,” said Jerry.
“What exactly is going on here? Courault,” the tall man turned to the female medic, “you know better than to bring subjects through here unsedated.”
“Yes, sir. Mr. Sedaka insisted that there was no risk involved. He said he was in a hurry. To see director Chung.”
“I don’t care how much of a hurry he’s in.” Miller swung on Jerry, eyes narrowing with suspicion. “Are you insane, Sedaka? What do you think this is, the visitors’ gallery? I’ve got clients in there. Recognisable faces. Courault, sedate this man immediately.”
Oh, well. No one’s lucky for ever.
I was already moving. Before Courault could lift the hypospray from her hip sack, I yanked both the Nemex and the blaster from Jerry’s waistband and spun, firing. Courault and her two colleagues went down, multiply injured. Blood splattered on antiseptic white behind them. Miller had time for one outraged yell and then I shot him in the mouth with the Nemex. Jerry was just backing away from me, the unloaded Philips gun still dangling from his hand. I threw up the blaster.
“Look, I did my fucking best, I—”
The beam cut loose and his head exploded.
In the sudden quiet that followed, I retraced my steps to the doors of the surgery and pushed through them. The little knot of figures, immaculately suited to a man and woman, had left the table on which a young female sleeve was laid out, and were gaping at me behind forgotten surgical masks. Only the autosurgeon continued working unperturbed, making smooth incisions and cauterising wounds with abrupt little sizzlings. Indistinct lumps of raw red poked out of an array of small metal dishes collected at the subject’s head. It looked unnervingly like the start of some arcane banquet.
The woman on the table was Louise.
There were five men and women in the theatre, and I killed them all while they stared at me. Then I shot the autosurgeon to pieces with the blaster, and raked the beam over the rest of the equipment in the room. Alarms sirened into life from every wall. In the storm of their combined shrieking, I went round and inflicted Real Death on everyone there.
Outside, there were more alarms and two of the medical crew were still alive. Courault had succeeded in crawling a dozen metres down the corridor in a broad trail of her own blood, and one of her male colleagues, too weak to escape, was trying to prop himself up against the wall. The floor was slippery under him and he kept sliding back down. I ignored him and went after the woman. She stopped when she heard my footsteps, twisted her head to look round and then began to crawl again, frantically. I stamped a foot down between her shoulders to make her stop and then kicked her onto her back.
We looked at each other for a long moment while I remembered her impassive face as she had put me under the night before. I lifted the blaster for her to see.
“Real Death,” I said, and pulled the trigger.
I walked back to the remaining medic who had seen and was now scrabbling desperately backwards away from me. I crouched down in front of him. The screaming of the alarms rose and fell over our heads like lost souls.
“Jesus Christ,” he moaned as I pointed the blaster at his face. “Jesus Christ, I only work here.”
“Good enough,” I told him.
The blaster was almost inaudible against the alarms.
Working rapidly, I took care of the third medic in similar fashion, dealt with Miller a little more at length, stripped Jerry’s headless corpse of its jacket and tacked the garment under my arm. Then I scooped up the Philips gun, tacked it into my waistband and left. On my way out along the screaming corridors of the clinic, I killed every person that I met, and melted their stacks to slag.