“I think that’s what the guy in the doorway said.”
Leaning on me, she turned to stare, eyes centimetres away. I deadpanned it, and the laughter broke across her face like a sunrise. She shook her head.
“Jesus, Kovacs, you are one sick motherfucker. They teach you to tell post-firefight jokes in the Corps or is it just you?”
I guided her towards the exit. “Just me. Come on, let’s get you some fresh air.”
Behind us, there was a sudden flailing sound. I jerked around and saw the synthetic sleeve staggering upright. Its head was smashed and disfigured where my last shot had torn the side of the skull off, and the gun hand was spasmed open at the end of a stiff, blood-streaked right arm, but the other arm was flexing, hand curling into a fist. The synth stumbled against the chair, righted itself and came towards us, dragging its right leg.
I drew the Nemex and pointed it.
“Fight’s over,” I advised.
The slack face grinned at me. Another halting step. I frowned.
“For Christ’s sake, Kovacs,” Ortega was fumbling for her own weapon. “Get it over with.”
I snapped off a shot and the shell punched the synth backwards onto the glass-strewn floor. It twisted a couple of times, then lay still but breathing sluggishly. As I watched it, fascinated, a gurgling laugh arose from its mouth.
“That’s fucking enough,” it coughed, and laughed again. “Eh, Kovacs? That’s fucking enough.”
The words held me in shock for the space of a heartbeat, then I wheeled and made for the door, dragging Ortega with me.
“Wha—”
“Out. Get the fuck out.” I thrust her through the door ahead of me and grabbed the railing outside. The dead pistoleer lay twisted on the walkway ahead. I shoved Ortega again and she vaulted the body awkwardly. Slamming the door after me, I followed her at a run.
We were almost to the end of the gantry when the dome behind us detonated in a geyser of glass and steel. I distinctly heard the door come off its hinges behind us, and then the blast picked us both up like discarded coats and threw us down the stairs into the street.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The police are more impressive by night.
First of all you’ve got the flashing lights casting dramatic colour into everyone’s faces, grim expressions steeped alternately in criminal red and smoky blue. Then there’s the sound of the sirens on the night, like an elevator ratcheting down the levels of the city, the crackling voices of the comsets, somehow brisk and mysterious at the same time, the coming and going of dimly lit bulky figures and snatches of cryptic conversation, the deployed technology of law enforcement for wakened bystanders to gape at, the lack of anything else going on to provide a vacuum backdrop. There can be absolutely nothing to see beyond this and people will still watch for hours.
Nine o’clock on a workday morning it’s a different matter. A couple of cruisers turned up in response to Ortega’s call in but their lights and sirens were barely noticeable above the general racket of the city. The uniformed crews strung incident barriers at either end of the street and shepherded customers out of the neighbouring businesses, while Ortega persuaded the bank’s private security not to arrest me as a possible accessory to the bombing. There was a bounty on terrorists, apparently. A crowd of sorts developed beyond the almost invisible hazing of the barriers, but it seemed mostly composed of irate pedestrians trying to get past.
I sat the whole thing out on the kerb opposite, checking over the superficial injuries I’d acquired on my short flight down from the gantry to the street. Mostly, it was bruising and abrasions. The shape of the forum provider’s reception area had channelled most of the blast directly upwards through the roof and that was the route the bulk of the shrapnel had taken as well. We’d been very lucky.
Ortega left the clutch of uniformed officers gathered outside the bank and strode across to the street towards me. She had removed her jacket and there was a long white smear of tissue weld congealing over her shoulder wound. She held her discarded shoulder holster dangling in one hand and her breasts moved beneath the thin cotton of a white T-shirt that bore the legend You Have The Right To Remain Silent — Why Don’t You Try It For A While? She seated herself next to me on the kerb.
“Forensic wagon’s on the way,” she said inconsequentially. “You reckon we’ll get anything useful out of the wreckage?”
I looked at the smouldering ruin of the dome and shook my head.
“There’ll be bodies, maybe even stacks intact, but those guys were just local street muscle. All they’ll tell you is that the synth hired them, probably for half a dozen ampoules of tetrameth each.”
“Yeah, they were kind of sloppy, weren’t they?”
I felt a smile ghost across my lips. “Kind of. But then I don’t think they were even supposed to get us.”
“Just keep us busy till your pal blew up, huh?”
“Something like that.”
“The way I figure it, the detonator was wired into his vital signs, right? You snuff him and boom, he takes you with him. Me too. And the cheap hired help.”
“And wipes out his own stack and sleeve.” I nodded. “Tidy, isn’t it?”
“So what went wrong?”
I rubbed absently at the scar under my eye. “He overestimated me. I was supposed to kill him outright, but I missed. Probably would have killed himself at that stage, but I messed up his arm trying to stop the machine pistol.” In my mind’s eye the gun drops from splayed fingers and skitters across the floor. “Blew it way out of his reach as well. He must have been lying there, willing himself to die when he heard us leaving. Wonder what make of synth he was using.”
“Whoever it was, they can have an endorsement from me any day of the week,” said Ortega cheerfully. “Maybe there’ll be something left for forensics after all.”
“You know who it was, don’t you?”
“He called you Kov—”
“It was Kadmin.”
There was a short silence. I watched the smoke curling up from the ruined dome. Ortega breathed in, out.
“Kadmin’s in the store.”
“Not any more he isn’t.” I glanced sideways at her. “You got a cigarette?”
She passed me the packet wordlessly. I shook one out, fitted it into the corner of my mouth, touched the ignition patch to the end and drew deeply. The movements happened as one, reflex conditioned over years like a macro of need. I didn’t have to consciously do anything. The smoke curling into my lungs was like a breath of the perfume you remember an old lover wearing.
“He knew me.” I exhaled. “And he knew his Quellist history too. ‘That’s fucking enough’ is what a Quellist guerrilla called Iffy Deme said when she died under interrogation during the Unsettlement on Harlan’s World. She was wired with internal explosives and she brought the house down. Sound familiar? Now who do we know who can swap Quell quotes like a Millsport native?”
“He’s in the fucking store, Kovacs. You can’t get someone out of the store without—”
“Without an AI. With an AI, you can do it. I’ve seen it done. Core command on Adoracion did it with our prisoners of war, like that.” I snapped my fingers. “Like hooking elephant rays off a spawning reef.”
“As easy as that?” Ortega said ironically.
I sucked down some more smoke and ignored her. “You remember when we were in virtual with Kadmin, we got that lightning effect across the sky?”
“Didn’t see it. No, wait, yeah. I thought it was a glitch.”
“It wasn’t. It touched him. Reflected in the table. That’s when he promised to kill me.” I turned towards her and grinned queasily. The memory of Kadmin’s virtual entity was clear and monstrous. “You want to hear a genuine first generation Harlan’s World myth? An offworld fairy story?”