“I am big girl,” she said. “I can see which is right side, and which is wrong side. So—even if you are dead, it does not make you any less right.”

“There is that.” He stepped through the arched entrance, into the cool shadow of the concourse. It was as he’d left it.

“So I choose to fight, kamerad kapitan. I see no other way.”

Petrovitch crawled across the top of a turnstile, clawing at the cold metal with his fingers and trying not to fall. He turned awkwardly, letting his feet find the floor through the mist that rose up in his vision.

“As you wish, Valentina.”

He cut the connection and staggered out onto the platform. The end of the tunnel was in sight, and so was the slight figure of a schoolgirl standing in the opening, anxiously shifting her weight from one foot to the other, bouncing slightly in her now-scuffed and dusty trainers.

Where he had climbed up before, he hesitated, looking at the distance between the platform and the track. When he turned and started shuffling down toward the incline that merged the two, Lucy broke from cover and ran toward him.

She slowed as their paths converged, and she stopped completely when they were face to face.

“Sam? What happened?” Then she caught sight of the cable hanging around his neck. Her gaze narrowed, and she followed it from his collar to the base of his skull. “What the fuck is that?”

He tried to smile, to make light of it: “It’s a cybernetic mitigator implant. All the cool kids have got one.”

“But… where’s… that blood. Is it yours?”

“Yeah.” Petrovitch shrugged awkwardly. “I got blown up again. Miyamoto’s dead. His choice. Not mine.”

He wanted her to walk in front of him: not because he didn’t want her to see the ruin of his back, but because he couldn’t deal with her reaction. She wasn’t taking his hints, the gentle ushering of his hands, the pointed stare back down the tunnel.

“I got us some transport. Enough to get everybody away. I need you to go and round everyone up, start them moving.”

“And what are you going to be doing?” she asked suspiciously.

“Me and Doctor Death need to have a chat.” He reached behind him and took hold of the jack in his head. He twisted it, and pulled it slowly out.

It felt like half of him had died, and he mourned the loss so much that he almost drove the spike back in again. His fingers trembled, then let the silver-shiny connector slide free.

She was watching him. She caught the cable in her hand, and slid it carefully under his collar, retrieving the rat from his inside pocket. The casing was scratched and dented, discolored with dirt and some uncomfortable dried brown stains.

“What do I do with it?”

“Hang on to it for me.” He needed his glasses. He found them in his coat. One lens had chipped, but he slid them on, and pushed them up his nose. “You can use it. Not in the same way. With, with these.”

The overlays were flexible enough to have escaped damage. He passed them over, and she held them in front of her face, checking the difference they made. She stopped and moved them back over to Petrovitch’s right.

“There’s someone there.” Lucy flipped the overlays aside. “Some sort of virtual guide?”

“He’ll warn you if there are Outies nearby, or anything else that might be a problem. You can trust what he says. Isn’t that right?”

Petrovitch supposed the avatar was either taking a bow or wearing a cynical smirk. While she was distracted, he managed to turn, keeping his back out of her eyeline. He walked toward the tunnel while she played briefly before remembering her mission.

As she ran past him, he turned again.

“What do I call him?” she called as she vanished into the dark.

“Michael, apparently.” Lucy had gone, and there was no one to hear him add, “After the archangel, the leader of the Army of God.”

25

They passed each other in the tunnel, a string of blue-white lights swinging and shading in the darkness. Lucy moved up and down the line, urging the old men on, exhorting the old women to keep going.

And Petrovitch knew that she was destined for something greater. He moved aside, catching her luminous grin as she held up the lantern to illuminate both him and her.

“We’ll wait.”

“You’d better,” he said.

He made his way back to the abandoned train. Climbing up took all his remaining strength. He lay there, stranded, gasping, as the one last light lowered itself down toward his face.

“You found a coach,” said the doctor.

“I won a coach. I fought for it and I won it.” Petrovitch looked up and saw the doctor’s shoes. “You could have done pretty much the same, except it would have been easier for you because when you would’ve been looking, you wouldn’t have had the Outies.”

“And then what? Where would I have taken them? And why aren’t you getting up?”

“Because my back’s full of shrapnel and I’m bleeding heavily from a dozen places.”

The light moved, and there was a sharp intake of breath.

“What? I need a doctor? I kind of thought I’d found one.”

The man pulled a face. “I did A and E for six months, five years ago.”

“I’m reluctant to threaten the only person in a position to help me. But I have a gun in my pocket that I’m very tempted to use on you.”

“This is beyond what I can do here. You need a hospital. You need a scan, a transfusion, fresh skin. I haven’t even got sterile water so I can see what I’m doing.”

“What do you have?”

“A bag of stuff I threw together at the last minute.” Petrovitch could see it, packed and ready to go, sitting in the aisle.

“Then that’ll have to do. We don’t have time to get fancy.”

“I could kill you if I get it wrong.”

“Then,” said Petrovitch, “you’d better start praying to whatever god you believe in you get it right. Or right enough that I live for another few hours.”

The doctor looked skeptical and went to his bag. He brought out a pair of surgical scissors.

“I’m going to have to cut you out of what’s left of your clothes.”

“Yeah. Figured.” Petrovitch started to wriggle out of his long leather coat. “I’m sentimentally attached to this, though.”

He felt tearing: more than sentimentality, then. Actual flesh and blood. He dragged it to one side, and the doctor kicked it further with his foot.

“Got a name?” The scissors started to click.

“Petrovitch.”

“That’s it. The antigravity man.” Snip, snip, snip.

Petrovitch gasped as his back was exposed, the bloodied cloth peeled away. “It’s not… doesn’t matter.”

The doctor went quiet as he surveyed the ruins. “I don’t have a spare pair of trousers.”

“Showing my yielda to the world is the least of my worries.”

The doctor knelt again beside him and clipped his way through the waistband. “I did mean what I said about you needing a hospital. You’ve got multiple penetration wounds, and only some of them have visible fragments. Those foreign objects I can’t remove will continue to do damage the longer they stay in. Nick a vein or an artery, and you’ll bleed out in under a minute. Depending on the depth, you could be bleeding internally already. You have burns and abrasions, and you’re losing fluid from those, too.”

“My turn,” said Petrovitch. “What’s your name?”

“Stephanopolis. Alex Stephanopolis.”

“Right, Doctor Stephanopolis: I don’t want you to stop and listen to me, you can do and listen at the same time.” He shifted uncomfortably. “You see that hole in the back of my head? That connects to the experimental cyberware I used to defeat the New Machine Jihad six months ago. Today, I’m using it to direct a modified version of the Jihad to help defend the Metrozone from the Outies. As you may notice, there is nothing plugged in at the moment. That is because the satellite uplink I have to the Jihad won’t work underground. Joined the dots yet, Doctor?”