Something sparked into life higher up the rope and leapt down towards him. Fist waved a hand. It vanished in a shower of sparks. [ Your corporate engagement and my penetration systems mesh rather well.] More security bots leapt towards him. [ I see them, I know them, I break them. We’ll find out who’s up there in no time.]
[Come down,] yelled Jack. [ NOW!]
[ Really,] Fist shouted back, [you should have more faith.] Another explosion of sparks shivered down from above. [ I wish we’d fired up your Greyware years ago! Who’d have thought that accountancy could be so much fun?]
[Gods!] Jack reached out to pull Fist back in, but as he did so there was a surprised little squeak. Fist disappeared.
[ Where are you?]
[Still here!] The puppet’s voice sounded impossibly distant. [Only I’m not quite sure where here is. Some sort of gateway. Corporate security, cracking it now.]
[ Fuck’s sake.]
Jack tugged at Fist, but nothing happened.
[ I can’t get you back.]
[ Hmm, must have been a one-way portal.] Fist tittered. [ How silly of me to step through it just before you tried to reel me in.] Jack groped for swearwords. Before he could shout anything, he felt another pull on his mind. [Oo, some tricky stuff. Going to need more resource, Jack. Ready for a little sleep?]
[ It’s not safe.]
[ There’s no other way out. And besides, pretty much everyone’s gone home, and I’ve nudged TrueShield’s sign-in systems to make it look like we’ve left too. We’ll be fine.]
[ I’ll have to take your word for that,] grumbled Jack. Darkness flooded his mind. He quickly slipped into the familiar dream state. Faces from his past flashed in front of him – his parents, Harry, David Tiamat, Andrea. Andrea’s music danced behind them all, shaping memory into coherent narrative. Soon, even that faded as Fist drew on yet more of his mind. Jack fell into a deeper, quieter sleep.
When he woke up, he was somewhere new. Fist was shaking his shoulder. ‘Look, Jack. Just look!’ At first, the bright light dazzled him. He sat up, rubbing his eyes. Machinery roared, assaulting his ears. ‘Look around you! I had to show you, I rebalanced my systems a bit to bring you in.’ Fist’s voice was bursting with excitement.
‘You opened the gate? How long did it take?’
‘A few hours. Took everything I’ve got. Still easier than Totalityware, though. But that doesn’t matter. Look!’
‘Where are we?’
‘Somewhere you’ll never, ever fucking believe.’
Chapter 33
Jack’s eyes adjusted to the light. He stood up. They were standing on a small platform, next to some oil barrels and a small pile of welding gear. The platform was set in the side wall of a great, cruciform space. It was the same shape as East’s cathedral, but a very different kind of building. Instead of stone, it was built entirely of iron. Jagged pilasters ran up vast rusting wall plates past weld-seams the size of train tracks. On the ceiling, rusting tracery had metastasized into endless, snarled-up metal knots. Rather than a mirrored lake of mercury, the floor was solid concrete, spattered across with vast dark patches where oil had soaked in. The cathedral was empty, but the sound of heavy machinery clanked and groaned through it. About three quarters of its nave was in darkness.
‘Gods,’ whispered Jack. ‘We’re inside one of the Pantheon. That’s impossible. Who is it?’
‘It’s Kingdom,’ replied Fist. ‘I’ve checked the code.’
‘Shit. You’re sure?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘And you broke into him. No wonder he wants to get his hands on you. Imagine if he could do that to the rest of the Pantheon.’ Jack sat down on one of the oil barrels. It creaked beneath him. ‘He was behind it all. Smuggling sweat to screw even more work out of his people, and fuck the consequences. Fucking bastard.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Fist triumphantly. ‘He’s that all right.’ Fire sparked up around his hands. ‘And now you need to let me kill him.’
‘No,’ replied Jack. ‘We can’t do that. We need to get out of here, right now.’
‘What? Kingdom’s spent the last seven years fucking you, and he’s about to start fucking me too. We’re right inside him, he doesn’t know we’re here and he won’t until it’s too late. We can turn him into a smoking ruin. Take no prisoners, Jackie boy! It’s the only way to be sure.’
‘Oh, you’re right about that. We have to bring him down. But we can’t do it like this. We can’t just burn him out and leave a void. That’s no victory.’
‘Why not? That’s what we do. It’s what we’ve always done. Think how we toasted all those Totality fucks. That’s kids’ stuff next to this, but the principle’s the same.’
‘We stopped doing that.’
‘You stopped. Because you didn’t believe in the Soft War. But you believe in this.’
‘And I believe in all the people who rely on Kingdom. What would happen to them if we suddenly broke him? Who would run all his infrastructure then? It would all crash – chainships, manufactories, satellites, joy platforms, asteroid bases. Everything that the Totality haven’t taken yet, from Mercury to here and then out to Mars – broken.’
‘So, who cares?’
‘Tens of thousands dead. And even if it wasn’t for that – can you imagine how the Pantheon would react, if you killed one of their own? Can you imagine how they’d punish us? And we don’t even have any evidence. How would we ever convince anyone why we’d done it?’
‘Oh bloody hell!’ Fist turned away from Jack. He balled his little hands up and beat them against the railings. ‘Bloody, bloody, bloody hell! It’s so unfair. I could have been someone, Jack. I could have been the puppet who killed a god.’
‘You still can be,’ Jack reassured him, gently but firmly. ‘Just be patient. We go back down to the TrueShield servers, we dig through them and we find proof. Then we take it to Lestak and Ifor, and we let them sort out Kingdom and Yamata for us.’
‘Boring,’ spat Fist. ‘I think I’ll just kill him anyway.’ He kicked the welding gear. A pair of goggles and a blowtorch flew towards the railings. ‘Fuck!’ he gasped, rushing to catch them but just missing. Jack leapt forward and grabbed him, stopping him from going over too. A great clatter rose up from below. It was far noisier than it should have been, noisier even than the machine sounds. Then it died away to complete silence.
‘Not good,’ said Jack. ‘Crash us out.’
‘But he’ll see us! He’ll know we’ve been in here!’
The air was dense with strange, charged expectation. A soft gust of wind touched Jack’s face, promising something far harder. ‘He knows already. He’s isolating us.’
Fist closed his eyes. ‘Dammit, you’re right. He’s draining power from local systems. Full manifestation imminent. No time to reconfigure for combat.’
The cathedral vanished, and Jack was back in the server room. [ Fist?] A few seconds, and the puppet popped into existence. [Let’s go,] Jack snapped.
The door leapt open in front of them and they were running down the corridor to the atrium. There were no trees this time. When they were halfway across it, the Sprite reappeared, man-sized, smiling out of a mouth made from cracked bones. Its nails were hard and black and wickedly sharp. Its wings were made from human spines and flayed skin.
[ YOU STEPPED OFF THE PATH,] it howled, its metal grinder voice too loud to be anything other than a simulation, [AND NOW YOU’RE LOST.]
[ FUCK, JACK, IT’S INSIDE ME!] screamed Fist.
[ What? How?] said Jack.
[ NEEDED EXTRA RESOURCE TO GET INTO KINGDOM. SHUT DOWN ALL SHIELDS. NOT BACK UP YET!]
[Shit.]
The Sprite leapt towards them. It shattered into a great burning shape, stretching itself out into shimmering patterns of light. Fist swore, Jack yelled orders. The patterns resolved, becoming a floating entity carved from brilliance. Its body was a lopsidedly incandescent sac. Tentacles hung down from it, waving lazily backwards and forwards as if stroked by invisible currents. It looked like a vast jellyfish, dreaming in a tropical ocean.