I chanced a glance around the corner and was rewarded with an explosion of chipped stone, three shells hitting within centimeters of my face, I whipped backward, cheek stinging. I sat for a moment and contemplated something that could react that fast, that accurately, for whom shadows and rain and my own expertise meant nothing.

“Things are different, now, Cates! I’m air-conditioned and armor-plated. I’m networked and backed-up. Do you know what you did to me? You killed me. I can remember it-dying. Do you know what it’s like to be a System Cop who loses his badge? I didn’t have more than a few days to live. They were fucking lining up to kill me, to torture me. I had nothing. And then this grinning little robot wants to talk to me about salvation? I thought it would be fun to twist off his little head and see what was inside, and you know what that little piece of shit did, Mr. Cates? It fucking shot me in the balls.”

I needed to know exactly where the bastard was. I was contemplating another glance around the corner when Kieth’s voice crackled in my ear.

“To your right, Mr. Cates, against the building across the street, in the shadows,” he said, and clicked off.

I closed my eyes and fixed the location in my mind.

“You know what?” Dawson went on. “I’m-” His voice cut off and there were four quick shots, followed by what I thought was Orel cursing somewhere nearby. “I’m glad you got me booted from the force. Glad! Glad that fucking machine shot me in the goddamn balls and let me bleed out on the street. Glad they ignored my screams of pain and dragged me into a hover, and I’m glad they sawed my head off my neck while I was still alive!”

I felt a tingle down my spine, and then Kieth’s voice was in my ear again.

“Cates! Moving-fast! It’s-”

I lunged down and to the side. Behind me, the wall exploded into chips and dust. I crawled as fast as I could, pushing myself up onto my feet at the expense of several layers of skin on my palms, and ran. Hard. At the next corner, I feinted, whipping myself in the other direction at the last moment, right out into the open, turning and firing three shots as quickly as I could with the old gun, guessing on target position. I didn’t wait to see what happened, I launched myself forward, running for the slim protection of the angle, putting the building between us.

“Missed me!” Dawson shouted. “But don’t be hard on yourself. You don’t have quantum targeting chips and night vision, you don’t have weather analysis calculating air pressure and wind speed. You don’t have anything.”

I kept running, searching for cover. Behind me five more shots cracked, then a whoop that was distinctly human.

“Orel winged it,” Kieth whispered in my ear. Why he was whispering was beyond me. “But those Monks are fast. Superficial damage. It’s still on the move, and on your ass.”

I was tempted to curse him out, but that would be a stupid waste of breath, which was in short supply. I imagined the scene in my head, the positions of each of the players. I veered toward the wall of the building and reversed direction, running back toward Dawson. It was an old trick; Dawson was suddenly pinned between us. The second the dim form of the Monk resolved out of the rainy afternoon gloom, I aimed down and fired my last three bullets. Orel added a volley of his own, five more shots, fully automatic, into the same spot. I threw myself off to the side, into shadows, and lay for a moment, listening. Nothing. After a moment, Kieth’s voice was in my ear.

“It’s gone.”

“Fuck!” I hissed. I sat up, panting. Orel appeared out of his own set of shadows nearby. He didn’t even look mildly out of breath, and it bothered me. He held out his guns and dropped their empty clips.

“I can’t believe what I just saw, Mr. Cates,” Orel said slowly, approaching me as he reloaded. “I hesitate to admit this, but I think if you hadn’t been here to distract that Tin Man, I might be dead right now. I’ve never seen anything move that fast.”

I stared up at him. I was sick to death of being chased. If one more ghost from New York showed up, I was going to have to commit some serious violence. I accepted a hand up from Orel after he holstered his weapons. He held my hand for a moment when I was up, looking me over, and then released me to touch my cheek.

“You got lucky,” he said, holding up his fingers, gleaming blackly with blood. I touched my cheek and found a deep slice. It began to throb immediately. Then Kieth was in my ear again.

“Mr. Cates, you’d better get in here. Tanner got the Vid on the hover working. There’s something you should see.”

XXIII

YOU’LL NEVER BE PRETTY AGAIN

Orel didn’t say anything more as we walked in, and I stayed quiet. My cheek stung and probably needed a stitch or two. I wondered if anyone had thought to bring some basic first-aid. About ten feet inside the door, Orel stopped and turned to face me.

“That was just a probe,” he said.

I nodded. “He knows I’m here, he knows the basic security of the building, he knows who he has to deal with and how good we are.” I sighed. “He’ll be back.”

Orel nodded, inscrutable. “But not here. He’s established that getting in unnoticed isn’t possible, and I think you and I together were a bit more trouble than he was prepared for.” He paused. “You know something, Cates? That was the first time in thirty years I thought I might get killed.”

I blinked. “Thirty years? I barely make it through an evening without thinking I’m going to get capped.”

He kept his gray eyes on me. “You’re one of those true believers, aren’t you, Cates?”

“True believer?”

He shrugged. “Revolution. Changing the world. Ending the System.”

I looked down at the floor, embarrassed and resentful. “Don’t you sometimes just want to give up on all this bullshit? Christ, if you were in the Dъnmharъ, you must.”

I met his eyes again. “Oh, yes, Mr. Cates.” He pointed a finger at his head like a gun. “If I could put a bullet in the System’s brain, I would. But I’m a realist. Until the right time comes, a man’s got to eat.”

We walked back to the Assembly Room in silence. The place looked empty except for Brother West’s lonely vigil, until I noticed Gatz sitting with his head down between his knees, a bound and gagged Marilyn Harper on the floor next to him tracking me with wide, white eyes.

“You okay, Kev?”

He didn’t turn or lift his head; just waved dismissively at me. He’d had Harper Pushed for a long time. Kieth’s bald head popped out of the hover’s hatch and he waved at us.

As we entered the cramped cockpit, squeezing in with four other people, Milton glanced at us, winked, and held a finger against her lips. I oriented on the Vid, staring at my own face.

“… no comment. Repeating this breaking news item, our colleague Marilyn Harper, a respected and popular Vid anchor, has been reported missing. System Security Force spokeswoman Denise Proctor has announced just ten minutes ago that a suspect in Harper’s disappearance has been named: Avery Cates, a native of New York City, shown here. Cates is also a prime suspect in fifteen unsolved murders going back-”

I waved the sound off. “Fuck,” I breathed.

“I wonder,” Tanner said with a twinkle in her eyes that was eerily matched by her silent twin, “if you aren’t sending these press releases to the Vids and the SSF yourself. I wonder if you aren’t a secret media whore.”

I’d been letting the sisters slide because they were tough, and because I wanted to keep things jolly, but this was getting old.You couldn’t relax for a moment, could never be human. You had to be a blank wall. I counted to three, quickly, in my head and lunged for her. She yelped and tried to scramble back, but the cockpit was overpopulated and there was no place to go. I had her by the nose. She twitched and a knife flashed out and stopped just short of my neck, everyone else yelling and pulling at me.