[ Hello,] said a voice that Jack knew well. [At last I get to play with you. You won’t find me as easy as Akhmatov.]
[ Yamata,] Jack said, shocked. [On our private channel! Where’s she coming from?]
She laughed and the assault began.
‘Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!’ yelled Fist, not bothering to mask his voice. His defences had been fully compromised. The puppet’s first task was to determine how deeply he’d been penetrated. A thousand security objects leapt into being within him, deleting invader bots as fast as they could.
‘They’re trying to crash my weapon systems.’
Pain shimmered inside Jack as Fist drew on deep resources. He staggered, then shouted: ‘Careful! Don’t knock me out!’
The puppet had seconds to rebuild his defences, understand their opponent and start fighting back. Yamata’s voice boomed out, rich with confident amusement.
‘No mercy this time, Jack! You’re too much of a threat. You’ve finally realised what Fist can do, so Kingdom’s let me take the gloves off.’
The light intensified, punching agony into Jack’s mind. He collapsed to his knees.
‘Now for something a little more physical,’ said Yamata calmly.
A bullet cracked past.
‘SHIT!!!!’ howled Fist. Suddenly there was a panther by Jack. He shook at the sight of it. Then it was springing to the right of the shining virtual entity before them. Yamata half-laughed, half-screamed.
[Got privacy again,] gasped Fist. Crystal had grown around his lower legs. The puppet tottered forwards, then stopped as the two crystal masses joined and became one. He was immobilised. [ Totality attack package.] There was no emotion in his voice. Fear pricked Jack. The situation must be very serious for Fist to dump his personality subroutines.
[ I’ll take the digital structures,] Fist’s new, toneless voice said. [Get the woman with the gun. This panther won’t be there for long. Can’t boot up the others.]
The crystals were still growing. They’d insinuated themselves into his joints. Foot had separated from lower leg, lower leg from upper leg, upper leg from hip, each now a separate shape floating in crystal.
[ I need to focus. Dropping the cat. Get the woman.]
Jack forced himself to follow the panther. Its growling vanished. Light flashed behind him and white noise roared. Fist was fighting back. There was a black shape ahead, a woman lying on the floor. Jack threw himself at her, piling a knee into her stomach as he landed. She grunted and he saw her face and Corazon’s memories inside him screamed, for this was the woman that had killed her.
‘Yamata!’
A punch snapped his head sideways and then she’d flipped him over. He gasped, partially with pain, partially with shock. [ Fist!] he yelled.
[ I’m busy. Yamata’s attacking,] said Fist.
[Me too.]
[ What? Both of us?]
A status update flashed into Jack’s mind. Fist was three quarters encased in crystal, one arm trapped, one flailing. His legs were completely separated from his body. Crackling blue fire danced out of him, charring each exit point, and exploded through the crystal as his defence systems tried to break its hold.
[ Harry was right,] said Jack.
[ That cunt. We’re not finished yet.]
Pain gripped Jack’s throat. Yamata was throttling him. He thrashed at her arms, but her grip was too strong. He tried and failed to kick her. His neck shouted agony.
[ Fuck’s sake Jack, go East on her!]
Jack dropped inside himself, pushing the Eastware to full. A flood of digitally enhanced charisma flashed through him. He remembered the effect he’d had on the InSec men, wondered briefly how Yamata would respond, then smiled, a Narcissus turning his beauty on another.
Yamata reacted, but not as Jack had expected. She leant back, for a moment taking the pressure off his neck, and laughed.
Fear flashed through him as the Eastware frantically fine-tuned itself, looking for a way to affect his adversary. He failed again to punch her. She shifted her weight, moving her hands to his shoulders, pinning his arms down. Her face came right down to his.
‘I’m beyond that sort of thing now,’ she said, and slapped him. Her hand hit with the density of lead. ‘Kingdom’s afraid of you. I wondered if I needed to be too.’
Fist screamed in the background.
‘But look at you now,’ she continued. ‘A broken puppet, and a man whose makeup does his fighting for him.’
She drew right back, arching away from Jack. He turned his face away just in time, so when she drove her head down at him the attack glanced off his cheek. Fist screamed again, but this time the sound was muffled. Jack imagined the crystal choking his mouth.
[ Fist!]
[She’s attacking my higher functions. Trying to wipe me.]
‘You don’t even know what I am, do you?’ said the woman. ‘Or what I’ve been up to. Not a clue.’ She clamped her hand over his mouth and nose. ‘Meat’s too easy to beat. Your puppet too. We planned to wait till you were dead and do a deal with him. Too late for that now. Going to burn him out and hope we can salvage his weapon systems.’
Jack swore, his voice as muffled as Fist’s.
‘Fucking sweat-dealing BITCH!’
‘You think Kingdom cares about sweat?’ she said, and laughed again. She lifted her hand off his mouth and snatched a breath. ‘You really do? After all this time? Oh, Jack, bless you, you sweet, innocent thing. Your puppet can kill gods, but you still don’t understand them.’ There was a tinkling sound, as of breaking glass. Fist had freed his mouth.
[ Fuck it. I’m summoning Harry. With luck, she’ll kill him too.]
[ You don’t have to.]
[ I’m almost beaten. Weapon systems all down. Hardly any shields. He’ll be a distraction. You might get out. And he’ll be far too busy to hack me, so …]
Fist’s voice cut off suddenly. Jack imagined crystal growing back into his mouth. There was a white noise blast, then silence. An alert flashed in his mind. Fist’s last firewalls were dying.
‘Little Fist all burnt out,’ Yamata chanted, pressing a hand down hard on Jack’s face. ‘And no Grey to save Jack the wannabe giant killer. You know,’ she continued conversationally, as he choked beneath her, ‘I’m enjoying this. I was so angry that Grey protected you all those years ago, but now I’m almost grateful.’
Jack’s consciousness began to slip away. He reached out for Fist. There was nothing coherent there to touch, only a mess of emergency defence and repair systems blinking rage and confusion. He imagined a small wooden mind, about to be torn apart; refused to consider the digital carnage that such dissolution represented. Now that he too was falling into unconsciousness, a strange and gentle calm had descended on him.
His principal emotion was a distant sadness that Fist would not after all inherit his flesh, that soon nothing would remain of either them. There was deep frustration, too. Yamata had named Kingdom as her patron, but dismissed sweat as his motivation. Even now, it seemed that Jack didn’t understand the true nature of his adversary. The problem of his exile remained unresolved.
Words drifted into his mind: ‘You really were too easy …’ He prepared to let everything drift away. But then a voice he recognised pulled him back.
‘He may be easy,’ said Harry grimly. ‘But I’m not.’
There was a gasp and the pressure lifted off his mouth, then his body. He had just enough in him to turn and see that there, in the centre of the room, larger than life, stood Harry. He was maybe seven or eight foot tall. Blue fire danced round him in barbed, jagged flashes. The flames that had burnt Fist didn’t seem to touch him. His voice was a roar, thick with Docklands rage.
‘You killed me, you ungrateful bitch, and now I’ve come to break you.’
The barbs of blue fire exploded off him, and all hell broke loose.