I reached for my gun. It wasn’t there. I’d had to chuck it to get on the hover.

“It’s okay!” Kieth shouted over the Monk’s din. “It can’t activate its weapons.” He paused to stare at the Monk with me. “This is Mr. West, Cates. This is what’s going on inside his brain right now. After some analysis, Ty doesn’t believe his mental operations are damaged, he simply believes being a Monk is too much to process. In short, the mod chip eliminates free will, Mr. Cates, but once it is removed there’s a viable person in there. It’s just a viable person who’s been driven mad by the process, and who knows how many months or years of being enslaved.”

“Let me out! Let me out! Let me out! Let me out! Let me out! Letmeoutletmeout-”

I flinched away from it. “Goddamn it, Kieth, can’t you shut it up? I get the point.”

He nodded, but didn’t move. “Mr. Gatz?”

I glanced sharply at Kev, who unfolded himself and stepped forward, stiff and ponderous. “Kev? What the fuck?”

Kieth held up a hand. “Watch.”

Kev stepped in front of me and removed his glasses. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, slowly, the Monk calmed, until it was completely silent, its arms raised, its body stiff and kneeling. After a few more seconds, it climbed to its feet again and resumed attention.

“Kev can Push a Monk?”

Kieth nodded slowly. “It appears that the only requirement for Mr. Gatz’s ability is a human brain. And proximity.”

I blinked. “But it doesn’t have eyes.”

“Ty’s belief is that Mr. Gatz uses the eye-to-eye contact as a focus. It isn’t physically required.”

Gatz spoke slowly. “I noticed it first in Newark. When the Monk showed up, I was so fucking terrified I started Pushing without even realizing it. And I could swear for a second I almost had that Monk by the short hairs, that it hesitated because I was Pushing it.” He glanced back at me with naked eyes and I flinched. “Wanna talk to Mr. West?”

I nodded, my brain disconnected from the rest of me by the stress of processing all of this new information-as if there wasn’t sufficient wattage left to manage anything else. After a moment I realized that my hands were rubbing themselves nervously together. I had to concentrate to stop it.

Gatz nodded, looked at the Monk. “Say something, West.”

The Monk twitched again, and then turned its head to look in my direction. I had the eerie feeling of being stared at by something eyeless. It wiggled a little, as if losing its balance, and then nodded its head.

“For God’s sake,” it said, its voice terribly perfect, smooth and on-pitch, still processed by whatever hardware was built into its artificial skull. “Kill me. Kill me now. I beg of you.”

XIX

WHY AM I STILL ALIVE?

I stepped into the gutted kitchen area, where Milton and Tanner had scrounged a few crates together into a makeshift table and stored our meager food supplies. Food was hard to come by. Mostly, we had nutrient tablets, the kind they handed out now and then in New York when local aristocrats were moved to keep the peasant population alive for a few more weeks, for whatever obscure reasons really rich people had. The tablets kept you going, but left hunger gnawing at you. It was like starving to death forever.

Milton sat on some boxes, taking a pull from a gleaming flask. She glanced up at me from her spot at the crates and grinned. “Cheerful fucker, isn’t he?”

I gestured at the bottle she was drinking from. “Give me a blast.”

She handed it over. “Gearing up for the interrogation, eh? That’s what we figured you’d do.”

I nodded, sitting down on a box and taking a long swallow of liquor. It tasted like gasoline. I held it in by sheer will and after a moment the burning was replaced by warmth and I risked a second swallow before handing it back. “Kieth can’t guarantee West’s brain will last very long once it’s unfettered from the mod chip. Gatz seems to be able to force lucidity onto it, but who knows how long he’ll be able to manage. We need information.” I coughed. “Someone will need to sit in and take notes. Kev’s illiterate, I think, and Ty will be busy, so that leaves you or your sister.”

She winked. “Way ahead of you, chief. Why do you think I’m in here getting drunk? It’s like talking to a ghost.”

I stared at the rough wood of the crates. “You believe in shit like that?”

She slid the bottle in front of me, and I took another drink. It was starting to taste better. “Like ghosts? Like a soul?” Milton’s voice disappeared under the edge of the crate as she stretched out on the floor. “Sure I do, Mr. Cates. How can you not? All those prophecies are coming true.”

I swallowed wrong and had to cough to clear my windpipe. “Prophecies?”

“Fucking pagan.” She sighed. “Revelations. Catholic dogma. Most religions have something similar. Isn’t it obvious? We’re in the End Times.”

I stared at the bottle. Milton’s hand appeared over the edge of the crate and waved around lazily until I handed it back.

“Think about it, Cates. The dead are walking the Earth inside those air-cooled Monk bodies. You can’t get a doctor to look at you or buy something high-end unless you have one of those chips under your scalp. I’m telling you, it’s near over.”

I stood up. “Well then, we have nothing more to worry about.”

“Hey, Cates?”

“Yeah?”

“Make me a promise. I know we aren’t friends or anything, but promise me something human to human. Promise me you’ll blow my brains out before letting them Monk me. And my sister. Okay?”

I nodded immediately. “Honey, I thought that was understood, for all of us. Fuck, that’s a standing order.” I swallowed. “Be in the Assembly Room in five, okay? Take notes.”

“Keep calling me honey,” she called out after me, “and we may not have to wait for the Monks to arrange it.”

I tried to find my way back, but got lost in the twisty tunnel-like hallways of the place. It gave me an opportunity to search out more of the boobytraps they’d set up in case we had to fight off a small army of SSF or Monks or whatever huge, global organization was going to decide to kill me tomorrow. They’d been busy little bastards, and the work was first-rate. Aside from the guns and the drop-plates, there were electrocution wires stretched across the floors at key intersections, ready to snap taut and murder a half-dozen men simultaneously. There were small charges embedded in the seams of the floor, ready to blow and tumble another dozen into a newly born pit. Anyone trying to force their way into the place was going to pay dearly for it.

Eventually one of the Droids found me. Sputtering programmed politeness, it led me to where everyone except Milton and me had gathered. The four of them huddled around the Monk, which stood exactly where I’d left it when I’d fled: ramrod straight, staring directly ahead under the dual influence of its mod chip and Kieth’s custom instruction set.

“Well, well, the Boy Gunner,” Tanner said as I approached. “Traveling in style while the hired help suck fumes all the way across the ocean, I see,” she added sourly.

“I’ll kick in an extra yen to your share for pain and suffering,” I announced, pulling off my coat. “Now shut the hell up and let’s get started. You said you didn’t think we had much time?”

Kieth nodded and danced around checking his equipment. “The brain appears to be in good physical shape, but something is decaying in there. The personality? Soul? Subconscious? Ty doesn’t know. Maybe he’s just too crazy, after all this time. Every time Ty unhooks Brother West from the mod chip, Brother West goes more apeshit than the last time. Mr. Gatz has been able to control West to an extent-maybe a substitute for the mod chip-but that also appears to be decaying. Ty thinks you have about five minutes before Brother West goes fatal error on us.”