“We’ve got to strap you down. When the toxin hits your nervous system, there’s probably going to be some convulsing.”

I stared at Kieth, who had somehow found the time and materials to shave his head smooth again. His scalp gleamed in the sickly light of the kitchen. I was sitting on the big crate, with Kieth, Milton, and Tanner standing around me, each of them holding a length of synthetic rope. Orel leaned against a wall, smoking a cigarette, disdaining to do any actual work. For a second, my balls crawled up into my gut and my tongue shriveled to a stump. I was going to entrust my entire existence to these people. If they weren’t incompetent, they wouldn’t shed tears if I never made it back-unless of course I was bearing buckets full of yen at the time.

The moment passed. It didn’t matter: I wasn’t going to live through the week, anyway. I’d killed System Cops, I’d taken on the job of assassinating the leader of the Electric Church, there were hits out on me. I could feel the struggle falling away, and calm took its place. I was just waiting for the impact, and the few seconds before were blissful, peaceful-empty.

I nodded. “Let’s do it.”

Kieth nodded. “I just want to make sure you understand what’s about to happen to you. Administered correctly, this solution will induce a deathlike state. This means that while you may-or may not-retain perception, you will certainly lose all conscious control. Your breathing and heartbeat will slow to almost undetectable levels. To most examinations, you will appear deceased. If you do retain perception, it will be… most uncomfortable.”

I let Milton take my arm and begin tying a rubber tube around my forearm. “If I retain perception?”

Kieth shrugged. “Not many people survive this. There just isn’t much information available.”

This struck me as funny, and I burst out laughing. Kieth and Milton shared a look, but didn’t say anything. I listened to the rest of Kieth’s speech with tearing eyes as I struggled to regain my composure, but the laughter kept dribbling out of me. This was classic. This was appropriate. This was how the Gweat and Tewwible Avery Cates was going go out, after all the fighting and scrabbling and suffering. He was going to just lie back and get executed.

Kieth plowed through my hysteria. “You’ll possibly feel pain. Don’t discount the psychological impact if you do have your wits about you, Mr. Cates-it’ll probably be very claustrophobic.”

Still giggling, I waved at him. “Come on, Mr. Kieth, hurry it up, now.”

Milton tapped the vein that had risen in my arm and nodded with professional satisfaction. Kieth picked up a slender syringe and looked apologetic.

“I tried to scrounge an auto-hypo, but they’re scarce, so we’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way.” He held the syringe up so I could see it. The seriousness on his face almost started me laughing again. He still thought this all mattered. “The, uh, the Monk will have another syringe just like this one, containing a little cocktail of chemicals. If Mr. Gatz can really control it, it will be injecting it directly into your heart when the time comes-when you are inside and momentarily secure. Mr. Cates, Ty can’t stress this enough: The ‘waking up’ process is not going to be pleasant. You’re going to go from as near dead as you can be and still be alive to fully functional within seconds. It will be much like doing a hard reboot on a computer system. That, Ty knows with certainty, will be very painful.”

I nodded, feeling some control coming back to me. “Understood.”

Kieth looked unhappy. “Ty doesn’t think telling you this serves any purpose, but everyone else seems to feel you should know that you need to come out of stasis within four hours or so. Longer than that and you may not ever come out. You can only play dead for so long, eh?”

“Understood. Let’s get this show on the road. It’s time.”

Kieth held the syringe up and tapped it with one finger, squinting at it. Then he looked around at the others and back at me. A terrible excuse for a smile came over his face, unpleasant to look at. “See you on the other side, Mr. Cates.”

I lay back and they strapped me down tight. Milton held my arm in position, palm up, and I made a fist. I looked around at all of them as Tanner leaned over me with a piece of leather to slip between my teeth. I was still calm, still feeling the last tingle of the laughter rippling inside me, but a coppery taste of terror had oozed into my mouth. I swallowed it back and it stuck in my throat.

“Don’t fuck up,” I said, my voice tight and harsh, as if little bits of glass had gotten lodged in it.

“Fuck you,” Tanner snapped, jamming the leather between my teeth roughly. “We don’t ever fuck up.”

A bit of motion caught my eye and I turned my head to see Orel pushing off from the wall and crushing his discarded cigarette. Our eyes met, and he winked as he sauntered out of the room. I knew that look. That calm determination always preceded a calculated murder. He’d waited until I was tied down, and now he was going to put a bullet in Marilyn Harper’s brain. A hot blade of panic sliced through me: How had I not seen this coming? The answer was galling: For all his outward urbanity, our fake Orel was not a civilized man.

I kicked, I screamed, I struggled against the ropes. But Milton and Tanner held me down with surprising strength, and Kieth leaned in like a doctor, grim and serious.

“Sorry, Mr. Cates,” he said, sounding almost sad. “But you’re worth a lot more money to us dead than alive right now.”

I felt hands on my arm, the cold bite of the needle, and

XXVIII

A BOTTOM-FEEDING FISH, BLACK AND SWOLLEN AND COVERED IN SPIKES

An icepick in my chest, tearing apart blood vessels as it slid along my arteries, propelled by the sluggish, back-and-forth tide of my blood, bloating me with a sudden, razor-sharp heat that sank into every unprotected organ. It was a bottom-feeding fish, black and swollen and covered in spikes, puffing up as it neared the surface, ready to explode. I opened my mouth to scream but found myself biting down on the strip of leather instead. It kept coming. It was too large for my arteries, it tore through and began swimming in my guts, perforating and wriggling, headed unerringly toward my heart. It tore through my pelvis, it lacerated my lungs. Gasping, choking in the open air, it bloated up through my chest and slammed into my heart and exploded there, sending spikes shooting through my insides, landing with wet, shivering force in my spine, my bones, my cartilage.

I stiffened, my whole body going taut as a fuzzy numbness burned its way from my feet upward. I shook and shivered, biting through the leather strip in my mouth, staring pop-eyed at Ty Kieth, who silently took a step backward, eyes on the exits.

Then, suddenly, everything went dark as I passed out.

When I came to, my vision snapped on, as if God or someone had flicked a switch. One second, nothing, the next, I was staring up at Brother West’s hideously cheerful mask of a face. It loomed over me, waxy, pale, permanently smiling.

“Mr. Cates? I do not know if you can hear me, but I want to assure you I will keep my end of the bargain. Mr. Gatz assures me you will keep yours. It is time to go.”

His head floated away, and I was staring up at the ceiling. There was no noise. Then some sounds I couldn’t identify: a swishing sound, a sharp, metallic clang, a tearing sound. I struggled to bring my thoughts into line, but they squirmed and writhed out of my grasp. I wanted to shake my head to clear it, but couldn’t.

Then the pain started to come back.

At first it was just a buzzing in the background, a dim memory of something terrible, teasing at the ends of my thoughts. It gathered like distant thunder, growing in ominous volume until it broke over me like terror, like bamboo shoots under my nails going deeper, further, faster.