I was turned over, the sudden light stabbing down into my eyes, and Brother West’s cheerful-fucking-face filled my field of vision as it leaned over me. It was so close I kept waiting for the blast of warm breath, but of course there wasn’t any. For several long, stretched-out seconds it hovered over me, fake skin and sunglasses.

Let me out! Let me out! Let me out! Let me out! Let me out! Letmeoutletmeout-

“We are inside, Mr. Cates,” West finally said, but there was something off in its voice. The digitally smoothed, eternally calm tone that all Monks used was frayed at the edges. If I’d had any control over myself, I would have studied its face. As it was, I continued to stare just off-center, over its shoulder. In my peripheral vision, Brother West appeared to vibrate, a fuzziness around its edges as if something vital had come off the rails inside it.

“I will now-” It hesitated, and suddenly jerked its head violently to one side, then back toward me. “I will now inject you with the antidote provided by-” Another violent spasm. “By-” Again. “By Mr. Kieth.”

It turned away and disappeared from my sight.

Let me out! Let me out! Let me out! Let me out! Let me out! Letmeoutletmeout-

It came back, a rising wave of nerve-shredding pain, burning through everything else and leaving me a dissolved puddle with shards of glass glinting in the sudden light. Through it, like squinting through a heavy rain, I could sense my clothing being moved aside and the needle being pushed, hard, into my chest. Brother West jerked and stuttered through the whole procedure, almost dancing. I wondered, dreamily, if he was tearing my heart open, if blood was rushing out of me, if this was where I would just bleed to death, a stupid sort of death.

Its rubbery face loomed over me again. “It is done, Mr. Cates,” it said. “I wonder-” It stopped and cocked its head, as if listening to something. Then it shuddered and oriented on me again. “I wonder if you will keep your end of the bargain, Mr. Cates. I so looooongggggg long long long to die.”

It snapped back to loom over me, suddenly calm. “I wonder,” it said, the creepy calm of the Monks back in its voice. “I wonder if you would permit me to speak to you about immortality, if I may, Mr… Cates, isn’t it? It will only take a few minutes, and I would appreciate your time.”

There was a moment, a part of a second, where everything was balanced. The pain had swollen inside me until I was sure I was going to explode, just pop like a balloon, but it held steady. Brother West stood still, watching me, its face frozen in that subtle smile, all I could see. There was no noise. I still could not move.

And then the pain exploded, shattered into billions of tiny particles scattering throughout my insides, burning on and pock-marking my bones. My body stiffened, my whole existence becoming one endless cramp. I felt my heart spasm and lurch back into motion, pushing the cooling blood in my veins. I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out, my lungs deflated and unwilling to move. I sat up and froze, trembling, eyes wide and staring at Brother West.

“Mr. Cates,” it said. “Let me show you an endless-”

A gunshot tore the air, and Brother West’s abdomen, so recently repaired by Ty Kieth, exploded outward in a spray of wiring and fluffy white insulation. The Monk collapsed with a strange wheezing noise. My blood felt like splinters moving through me, and I sat in a strange black metallic container, trembling and unable to move.

Heavy, deliberate footsteps approached. I was able to squeeze a trickle of air through my constricted throat. After a few more seconds, as I was slowly forcing my lungs open, hunched over and dry-heaving, a Monk entered my field of vision, stepping carefully over West. I could only see it out of the corner of my eye, but there was obviously something wrong with it: Its robes were tattered and stained, its face smudged with dirt-though it still possessed the eternally satisfied expression of all Monks.

Somehow, when it turned to me and spoke, I knew who it had once been. Shivering and still semiparalyzed, a surge of adrenaline, like fresh ice poured directly into my veins, swept through me, making me choke.

“Mr. Cates,” the thing that had once been Barnaby Dawson said, “only Monks and dead people are allowed in here. One of us is not playing by the rules.”

XXIX

MY OWN PERSONAL ANGEL OF DEATH

Outside the walls of the small room, an alarm sprang into life.

Aside from the tattered and dusty robe, Barnaby Dawson looked like every other Monk I’d ever seen. Humanoid, a uniform six feet tall, dressed in black, white fake-looking skin, eyes hidden by dark glasses. His facial expression was identical to every other Monk’s-somehow a combination of amusement, concern, and arrogance, though I wasn’t sure if I really saw or imagined it. I sat shivering, finally able to curl my hands into fists and track Dawson with my eyes, but unable to do much more than that. I couldn’t lift my arms; I couldn’t imagine fighting someone, much less a digitally enhanced killing machine. I was fucked.

It still didn’t bother me.

“You’d think,” Dawson said brightly, holding his Roon on me carelessly, “that I would be grateful. You gave me immortality. I could just follow you around making note of your advancing age and wake up every day over the next few thousand years, nuclear-powered, cheered by the memory of your pathetic death. I could wait around just to watch you try to crawl, feebly, away from death.” He paused. “And that would be fun. But now you’ve gone and had a fucking inspiration, Mr. Cates. I underwent my transformation in a place just like this. So why shouldn’t you undergo a similar change?” He nodded. “Similar, but not exactly the same, eh? I’m thinking, once we have your brain out of your skull, we’ll stop there.”

My teeth chattered and I shook violently, but I was slowly regaining some control. I could look around, and I tried to keep Dawson in my line of sight while I got my bearings. I was sitting in a small, coffin-shaped skid that floated, like a hover, swaying a few feet off the ground. It was just big enough for a tall man to stretch out inside, and various LED displays blinked peacefully along its side. It was rapidly filling with my sweat.

The room was small and Spartan; bare concrete walls, a single metal table lit by an overhead bank of harsh, white lights, and a wheeled metal table bearing three motorized surgical tools, clean and painful-looking. Without knowing why, I had an impression of being underground-a dampness in the air, a sense of weight hanging over me.

Dawson leaped up onto the table and sat with legs spread and shoulders slumped, a creepy, human posture that looked bizarre and out of place on his Monk body. He began swinging his legs at the knees, and I could hear the tiny motors whirring.

“When your name popped up on the EC network, all I could think about was splattering your brain all over whatever wall was handy, doing some finger painting with your blood if the mood struck me. Now look at you. I’ll be honest with you, you piece of shit. I am not sure how to proceed.”

Straining and jerking, I wrenched my head around to look directly at Dawson. I tried to say something, and managed to open my mouth, but only managed to force a gurgling sound out, my mouth filling with saliva.

“What’s that?” Dawson said, jumping up and leaning toward me, a hand cupped to his latex ear. “I can access huge translation libraries in seconds, but you don’t seem to be speaking any known human language.” He walked toward me with quick, mincing steps. “But then, as a piece of shit, you’re not human, are you?”