As the doors swooshed open, the big cop’s jaws bunched, and then he was leading us out of the elevator. The kid was on his heels, looking terrified, and then me, a fake expression of bland disinterest in place. My game face. I was half blind, felt like something important had been broken inside me, and found myself in a building filled with people who would happily shoot me on sight-but I had to be Avery Cates. I was famous. I had to act like it.
We turned a corner of bald cinder blocks and were on the docks, where the grimy garbage hovers backed in every day to cart away tons and tons of garbage for dumping over in Jersey. It smelled like a toilet and all the concrete gleamed with an unhealthy shine. Loader Droids idled in the bay, humming softly, waiting for the next delivery or pickup. Weak daylight shone from the dock entrance a few dozen feet away. I could hear the Vids echoing an announcement in the distance, but I couldn’t make out the words.
Behind us, the second elevator bay dinged softly.
The two cops whirled, Happling’s satchel hitting the ground and Hense’s coat swirling around her. I felt slow next to them, crouching and bringing my gun out, arm aching and head throbbing. Marko just stood there, a fucking target, blinking in confusion.
The second elevator split open and disgorged two men. I recognized the first one; it had been only an hour or so since he’d expressed his disapproval of me outside the elevator, but I imagined I could already see signs of my little buggers eating away at him-circles under his eyes, a sheen of sweat like his body was trying to bake something out of itself. His dark hair was still plastered to his forehead as if he never thought to push it out of his eyes. He had put on his coat, and stepped forward with his hands in his pockets, shoulder holsters bulging under each arm. His tiny eyes were set close together, giving him a permanent squint.
“We’re under lockdown orders, Colonel,” he said in his weedy voice. “I’m shocked and dismayed to think you might disobey that command in order to smuggle a prisoner out of the building.”
“I’ve been promoted,” I said, smiling. “I’ve got this neat new coat and everything.”
He pointed at me without looking at me. “Shut the fuck up, you fucking monkey. You think you got tuned up? You think you got hurt, your fucking rights violated? Asshole, we haven’t begun violating you. How many cops have you killed?”
Thirty-three, I thought darkly. Including the Stormers outside Westminster Abbey. I kept my smile on my face, but my free hand formed a fist so hard my knuckles popped.
He licked his lips and shrugged. “You’re not taking Cates out of the building, sir.”
His buddy was behind him, arms folded, a thick-chested guy with spindly legs that looked like they belonged to someone else. Neither of them moved for their guns. Hense and Happling relaxed a little, putting their weapons up. They were going to stand there and piss on each other’s shoes all fucking day, but no one was going to shoot.
I made a show of relaxing, too, letting my gun drop to my side, out of immediate sight. I kept my one good eye dancing from spot to spot.
“Do you idiots know what’s happening here?” Hense said levelly. “How you passed your CIS tests I’ll never fucking know, since you’re dragging your goddamn knuckles around bothering me. Lieutenant, get back to your post or I’ll break you down so hard you won’t just be reassigned to Chengara, you’ll be serving slop at Chengara.”
The lieutenant’s expression, which appeared to be one thin beat per minute away from unconscious, didn’t change. I ran my eye over his friend, who was a square-shaped kid, bloodshot eyes staring balefully at Hense and Happling. No one was paying any attention to me. Typical System Pigs-I was irrelevant. I was just a shithead from the street they’d get around to shooting when it fucking suited them. I cleared my mind, imagining snow, thick yellowed drifts of it falling silently, that nothing could penetrate.
“Colonel, I think I speak for all of us, every cop in this building, when I say go fuck yourself. You’ve broken a dozen SSF regs just by not posting Cates to the system. Now you’re taking him from the building without posting him. These are Class A violations, Colonel, as far as the Worms are concerned. You’re going to get burned for this as it is, and I think if anyone has to worry about-”
Feeling peaceful, I took my moment. It didn’t require any theatrics or fancy moves: amateurs got caught up in diving, jumping, making it look like something you’d see on the Vids. Wasted effort-bad for your aim and your chances of staying alive. I raised my weapon calmly, sighted on the lieutenant, and squeezed the trigger, putting a surprisingly small hole in his forehead. Then I moved my arm and brought the cop behind him on my right into sight and squeezed the trigger again.
Thirty-five, I thought without pride, with just a dusty feeling, my whole body aching.
Then Happling was crashing into me, growling like an animal. The gun was stripped from my hand before I could bring it around, and my head did a little drumbeat against the concrete floor. His fist crashed into my mouth, breaking some teeth with a sharp, lancing pain and sending my head back into the concrete. The familiar taste of my own tired blood filled my mouth, and for a second I thought, Do it, do it, you goddamn animal.
Then I could hear Hense’s voice, somehow cutting through Happling’s wordless howling.
“Captain!”
One word, but Happling froze, his fist raised over me, my blood dripping off his fingers. His face, bloated and red, quivered as he hovered there, crouched above me. I tried to suck air and got a thick mass of blood instead. I burst into a spasm of choking coughs, spewing blood and snot everywhere as I twitched, little red spots appearing in front of me each time.
“You kill him, you kill all of us,” she said, her voice expressionless. “You want to kill yourself, crawl over there and shoot yourself in the head.”
Happling and I stared at each other. His whole body was shaking. Finally he tore himself away from me, rolling away and springing to his feet. He stood with his back to me and cracked his neck loudly, rolling his head around. “He doesn’t keep the fucking gun,” he said, biting off the words one at a time. I imagined hell, my final resting place, and saw Captain Nathan Happling, beating me forever.
“The fuck I don’t,” I gurgled, my words soft. “You still don’t know where you’re going, asshole.”
He didn’t turn around. “Eventually,” he said, “I get to kill you.”
I pulled myself into a sitting position, blood dripping from my chin onto Happling’s coat. Hense stepped between us; I could feel her anger, but she was locked down and perfectly calm, her eyes dead and cold. I didn’t like looking at her eyes. Every time I looked at her, I thought of cops I’d killed. I turned and looked at Marko, who was staring at me, eyes wide. I gave him my bloody grin and he looked away, finding the floor suddenly fascinating. My mouth ached in time with my pulse, pain fresher than everything else.
“Let’s move,” she said.
We moved. In silence we left the cooling bodies of the two cops behind and slipped out into the street. Which was nearly deserted, except for packs of Stormers hustling here and there, the occasional officer talking into the air and listening, badge exposed, to his earbud, and a civilian or two running for their lives. As we paused for a moment, dazzled by the gray light as fat hunks of yellow snow fell silently around us, a well-dressed woman ran full speed into Happling, bounced off him, and landed hard on her ass, staring up at us. She was pretty, of course, a blonde in a bright red, expensive-looking coat, her face sporting the overly smooth, expressionless look of the totally reconstructed, a rich girl who hadn’t liked the face the cosmos had given her.