I turned and looked at Kieth. He looked back at me. He was shaking.

“Mr. Kieth,” I said steadily. He jumped a little. “Get the goddamn door open.” I smiled, the familiar crazy laughter catching in my throat. “Let’s fucking surprise them.”

Kieth didn’t hesitate. He seemed almost happy as he pulled his small bag of instruments from his jacket. A slight smile played on his lips, and he didn’t even flinch when a fresh wave of Monks at the end of the hall brought on another volley of bullets from Orel and Tanner.

“Two more!” Orel shouted. He sounded almost happy, too. I was surrounded by madmen. Madmen of my own choosing.

Kieth began scanning the door with his little handheld device, running it up and down the thin, faint lines outlining the opening. While bent over scanning along the bottom, he paused suddenly.

“Huh,” I heard him say quietly. “That’s-”

The door suddenly emitted a loud, hollow banging sound. Kieth stood up instantly, and Gatz and I turned as one, me with my gun held out, Gatz with a shaking hand on his glasses. Behind me, there was more gunfire, and a stream of curses from Orel. I squinted down the sight of my gun, hand hurting from gripping it so tightly.

The door banged inward as if a silent, dark explosion had propelled it, knocking Kieth back hard into Dawson’s temporary coffin. I glimpsed the figure revealed in the doorway for just a split-second, because in the balance of that moment I ticked my gun’s muzzle to the left an infinitesimal amount and pulled the trigger twice, turning his head into cheese.

Dennis Squalor stood there for another moment as we all stared, and then fell forward, leaking coolant and insulation.

For a moment, there was nothing. Then, rising like sour steam, Dawson’s terrible ruined laugh.

XXXII

YOU DID THIS FOR MONEY. YOU KILLED YOURSELF

There was only Dawson’s terrible laughter for a moment. It went on and on without pause for breath, without inflection, a tape loop. I didn’t feel anything except the buzz in the bones of my hand, recovering from the gun’s recoil. I had seen his face, but I couldn’t believe it. It had been him, Dennis Squalor, and I’d killed him. But it wasn’t real. I stared at the slumped form in the doorway and didn’t move a muscle.

Behind me, shots continued to ring out in waves, punctuated by Canny Orel’s growled expletives. Kieth moaned and struggled to extricate himself from Dawson’s floating coffin, and Gatz was a statue next to me. I imagined I could hear the sizzle of my sweat on the gun’s muzzle, that I could smell the coolant leaking from Squalor’s metal body.

I opened my mouth to say something over Dawson’s endless laughter, but as I did so a second figure filled the doorway, and I froze again.

It was Dennis Squalor. Again.

“Avery Cates, shitbag,” Dawson’s ruined voice rumbled up from beneath Kieth. “Meet the Cardinals.”

The face was exactly as it had been shown on the Vids. Round, loose-skinned, and jowly, a ring of friarlike hair on an otherwise smooth, red scalp. Small, delicate-looking ears and a flat, broad nose. He looked about as old as anyone I’d ever seen, maybe sixty, and wore small round dark glasses molded to his face, hiding his eyes entirely. He wore a blindingly white shirt, buttoned to the top, and a suit of black clothes, the coat trailing along the floor like a fitted robe. He looked entirely human, standing there, and I would have thought he was human except I’d shot him in the face just seconds before, and yet he was standing there, over his own dead body.

Behind me, I heard Orel bellow something almost inhuman, a sound that was just pure frustration, as an endless volley of shots rang in the hallway, Tanner and him firing in waves.

“Cates!” Tanner screamed above the din. “Here they come!”

I didn’t turn around. I kept my eyes on this… thing, the doppelganger. With Orel’s yell in my ears like cotton, with Tanner’s words still hanging in the air like shattered glass, Squalor moved. It was just the subtle shift of his arms, a movement of millimeters by his coat. Old, burned-in instincts took over, bypassed all my higher functions. Before I consciously realized Squalor-or whatever it was-was going to draw and fire, I was moving. I threw myself back and to the side, taking Gatz off his feet as I pushed myself into the air, aiming for the floating coffin containing Dawson and Kieth.

In midair, I heard the sound of more bullets. When I crashed into the coffin awkwardly, half-in and half-out, the breath knocked out of me, I was followed immediately by a thunk-thunk-thunk of bullets hitting the metal casing.

“Get off of me,” a melted, gurgling voice hissed in my ear. “And go die.”

“Oh, shit,” Kieth coughed from beneath me. “I think you fucking broke my ribs.”

I didn’t wait to hear more. The trick was always to keep moving. A moving target was hard to hit. You paused to catch your breath, you caught a bullet. Using Dawson’s head to push off from, I gathered my strength and launched myself up and over the back of the coffin, landing on the other side on the balls of my feet, something in my back tearing painfully, electric shocks going up both legs. For some reason I was suddenly very aware of the damp stone smell of the hall.

“Very nice,” Orel growled from behind me. I could feel him there, an inch away. “Mr. Cates, you are fucking not who I would have chosen to die with.”

“Fuck you,” I snapped, clearing the chamber of my gun out of habit. “You did this for money. You killed yourself.” I willed my hands to move faster through the practiced motions, automatic. “You think I would have chosen you? I don’t even know your fucking real name.”

“Ah, Mr. Cates.” He sighed. “Belling. Wallace Belling. My associates call me Wa. It was my priviliege to work with Cainnic Orel thirteen years ago. As for money-show me a way that doesn’t end with my meaningless death, and I’ll happily start tearing this whole godforsaken world to pieces.”

Done with the pleasantries, I popped up. The Cardinal wasn’t in the doorway anymore, so I dropped back down, all the way, stretching out on the floor. Dragging my eyes from right to left through the narrow band of air under the coffin, I saw Gatz, sitting with his back against the wall. The Cardinal stood directly over him. Its boots were brightly polished. The posture and position of them was instantly familiar. I’d executed enough people in my time, and stood off to one side while others were executed, to recognize the classic pose.

My whole body went rigid for a second, ice and razor blades pumping through my heart.

As if pulling it through thick mud, I dragged my gun over and put four shells in those boots, welts erupting in them, impact craters, the armor-piercing bullets tearing everything inside them to shreds. Any man would drop on his ass, screaming.

The Cardinal didn’t even move. I imagined the bullets destroying wiring, bouncing off titanium alloys, ripping tiny motors and etched circuits apart. But the Squalor clone didn’t flinch.

A second later there was a loud pop. Gatz’s body twitched, went still. Ice and razor blades pumped into my head, and my vision narrowed down. Ignoring the pain in my back, I jumped to my feet, suddenly graceful. I felt a hand in the fabric of my coat.

“Get down, asshole!” Belling yelled.

I ignored him and jumped again, up on top of the coffin, balancing precariously on the rim as it rocked and swayed. Belling’s hand fell away.

Behind me, more cursing, more shots. Below me, Kieth moaned, Dawson hissed. In front of me, the Cardinal, Dennis Squalor’s spitting image, still stood looking down at Kev Gatz’s lifeless body. A dark red pool of blood was steadily spreading out. The color was shocking in the grayscale universe of the Electric Church.