The last time I’d caught a full stun charge was courtesy of the Millsport Public Order police and, although the Envoy conditioning had forced me back to a kind of consciousness in about twenty minutes, I hadn’t been up to much more than shivering and twitching for the next couple of hours. There was no telling how long ago Ortega had been hit, but she looked bad.

“It’s a simple exchange,” said Kadmin. “You for her. I’m parked around the block on a street called Minna. I’ll be there for the next five minutes. Come alone, or I blow her stack out the back of her neck. Your choice.”

The desert fizzled out on the Patchwork Man smiling.

I made the two corners of the block and Minna in a minute flat. Two weeks without smoking was like a newly discovered compartment at the bottom of Ryker’s lungs.

It was a sad little street of sealed-up frontages and vacant lots. There was no one around. The only vehicle in sight was a matt grey cruiser waiting at the curb, lights on in the gathering gloom of early evening. I approached hesitantly, hand on the butt of the Nemex.

When I was five metres from the rear of the cruiser, a door opened and Ortega’s body was pitched out. She hit the street like a sack and stayed down, crumpled. I cleared the Nemex as she hit and circled warily round towards her, eyes fixed on the car.

A door cracked open on the far side and Kadmin climbed out. So soon after seeing him in virtual, it took a moment to click. Tall, dark-skinned, the hawk visage I had last seen dreaming in fluid behind the glass of the Panama Rose’s re-sleeving tank. The Right Hand of God martyr clone, and hiding beneath its flesh, the Patchwork Man.

I drew a bead on his throat with the Nemex. Across the width of the cruiser and very little more, whatever else happened afterwards, it would take his head off and probably rip the stack out of his spine.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Kovacs. This vehicle is armoured.”

I shook my head. “Only interested in you. Just stay exactly where you are.”

With the Nemex still extended, my eyes still fixed on the target area above his Adam’s apple, I lowered myself into a crouch beside Ortega and reached down to her face with the fingers of my free hand. Warm breath stirred around my fingertips. I felt blind towards the neck for a pulse and found it, weak but stable.

“The lieutenant is alive and well,” said Kadmin impatiently. “Which is more than we shall be able to say for either of you in two minutes’ time if you don’t put down that cannon and get into the car.”

Beneath my hand, Ortega’s face moved. Her head rolled and I caught her scent. Her half of the pheromonal match that had locked us both into this in the first place. Her voice was weak and slurred from the stun charge.

“Don’t do this, Kovacs. You don’t owe me.”

I stood up and lowered the Nemex slightly.

“Back off. Fifty metres up the street. She can’t walk and you could cut us both down before I can carry her two metres. You back off. I walk to the car.” I wagged the gun. “Ortega keeps the hardware. It’s all I’m carrying.”

I lifted my jacket to demonstrate. Kadmin nodded. He ducked back inside the cruiser and the vehicle rolled smoothly down the block. I watched it until it stopped, then knelt beside Ortega again. She struggled to sit up.

“Kovacs, don’t. They’re going to kill you.”

“Yes, they’re certainly going to try.” I took her hand and folded it around the butt of the Nemex. “Listen, I’m all finished here in any case. Bancroft’s sold, Kawahara will keep her word and freight Sarah back. I know her. What you’ve got to do is bust her for Mary Lou Hinchley and get Ryker off stack. Talk to the Hendrix. I left you a few loose ends there.”

From down the street, the cruiser sounded its collision alert impatiently. In the gathering gloom of the street, it sounded mournful and ancient, like the hoot of a dying elephant ray on Hirata’s Reef. Ortega looked up out of her stunblasted face as if she was drowning there.

“You—”

I smiled and rested a hand against her cheek.

“Got to get to the next screen, Kristin. That’s all.”

Then I stood up, locked my hands together on the nape of my neck, and walked towards the car.

PART 5: NEMESIS

(SYSTEMS CRASH)

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

In the cruiser, I was sandwiched between two impressive musclemen who, with a bit of cosmetic surgery to mess up their clone good looks, could have hired out as freak fighters on bulk alone. We climbed sedately away from the street and banked around. I tipped a glance out of the side window and saw Ortega below, trying to prop herself upright.

“I cream the Sia cunt?” the driver wanted to know. I tensed myself for a forward leap.

“No.” Kadmin turned in his seat to look at me. “No, I gave Mr. Kovacs my word. I believe the lieutenant and I will cross paths again in the not too distant future.”

“Too bad for you,” I told him unconvincingly, and then they shot me with the stunner.

When I woke up, there was a face watching me from close up. The features were vague, pale and blurred, like some kind of theatrical mask. I blinked, shivered and hauled in focus. The face drew back, still doll-like in its lack of resolution. I coughed.

“Hello, Carnage.”

The crude features sketched a smile. “Welcome back to the Panama Rose, Mr. Kovacs.”

I sat up shakily on a narrow metal bunk. Carnage stepped back to give me space, or just to stay out of grabbing range. Smeared vision gave me a cramped cabin in grey steel behind him. I swung my feet to the floor and stopped abruptly. The nerves in my arms and legs were still jangling from the stunbolt and there was a sick, trembling feeling in the pit of my stomach. All things considered, it felt like the results of a very dilute beam. Or maybe a series. I glanced down at myself and saw that I was dressed in a heavy canvas gi the colour of quarried granite. On the floor beside the bunk were a pair of matching spacedeck slippers and a belt. I began to get an unpleasant inkling of what Kadmin had planned.

Behind Carnage, the door of the cabin opened. A tall, blonde woman, apparently in her early forties, stepped in, followed by another synthetic, this one smoothly modern-looking apart from a gleaming steel direct interface tool in place of a left hand.

Carnage busied himself with introductions.

“Mr. Kovacs, may I present Pernilla Grip of Combat Broadcast Distributors, and her technical assistant Miles Mech. Pernilla, Miles, I’d like to present Takeshi Kovacs, our surrogate Ryker for tonight. Congratulations, by the way, Kovacs. At the time I was utterly convinced, despite the unlikelihood of Ryker making it off stack for the next two hundred years. All part of the Envoy technique, I understand.”

“Not really. Ortega was the convincing factor. All I did was let you talk. You’re good at that.” I nodded at Carnage’s companions. “Did I hear the word broadcasting? I thought that went against the creed. Didn’t you perform radical surgery on a journalist for that particular crime?”

“Different products, Mr. Kovacs. Different products. To broadcast a scheduled fight would indeed be a breach of our creed. But this is not a scheduled fight, this is a humiliation bout.” Carnage’s surface charm froze over on the phrase. “With a different and necessarily very limited live audience, we are forced to make up for the loss in revenue somehow. There are a great many networks who are anxious to get their hands on anything that comes out of the Panama Rose. This is the effect our reputation has, but unfortunately it is that same reputation that precludes us doing any such business directly. Ms. Grip handles this market dilemma for us.”