He dived, hand outstretched, thudding into the ground, hand closing round the barrel of the gun, desperately slapping at it and trying to turn it as he brought his other hand up, finally grasping it properly. He rolled over, expecting to find her running towards him, leaping on top of him, clutching the knife he’d thrown at her or just with her clawed hands reaching for his throat.
She’d gone. He sat up as quickly as he could, legs quivering, chest heaving, breath whistling to and fro inside his throat. He stood, shakily, and saw her, down by the reeds a little way off, just starting to pull herself back out onto dry land.
Off to one side, more trees were catching fire, sending flames leaping and boiling into the darkness. They lit up the sheds where the miniature battleships were kept. He could see some of the vessels themselves: one on a wheeled cradle on the dockside, another floating in the water by the quay. Some of the sheds were surrounded by burning grass and fallen branches, flames starting to lick up their metal walls and curl over their shallow-pitched roofs. A burning bough fell from a tree and crashed through the roof of the nearest shed in a shower of sparks.
He walked, slowly, legs shaking, breath raw and ragged in the warm, fire-parched air, to where the girl was trying to pull herself out of the mud and the crushed, flattened reeds. Blood was running down her face from where the knife had hit her.
Part of him wanted to tell her he still didn’t believe that she was who she said she was, but even if it was true, well tough. Winners won, the successful succeeded, aggression and predation and ruthlessness tended to win out — what a surprise. Just the way life was. Nothing personal. Well, actually, everything fucking personal.
But he didn’t really have the breath for any of it. “Fuck you,” he said at her as she crawled in front of him and he stood over her, pointing the gun at her straggle-haired head. He’d said it as loud as he could but it still came out as more of a wheeze than anything else. She swung at him, one arm and hand whirling round. She’d found the knife he’d thrown at her, had gone into the reed bed to find it. The blade whacked into his leg, into the calf just below his good knee, sending pain darting up his leg and spine and detonating in his head.
He screamed, staggered back, held the gun in both hands and nearly fell as the girl collapsed to one side, unbalanced by the need to wield the knife that was now sticking out of his leg. “Fucking little—!” he shrieked at her.
He steadied, straightened despite the pain, aimed the gun at her and squeezed the trigger.
The trigger was stuck. He heaved at it, tried again to pull it, but it just wasn’t moving. Felt like his finger couldn’t move. He tried to move the gun to the other hand, but even that was difficult. It was as though his hands were so cold they weren’t obeying orders. He heard himself make a mewling, whimpering noise. He glanced at the side of the gun, looking for a safety catch, but it was already off. He tried the gun again, but it just wasn’t happening. He tried to throw it away, but then it was as though it was stuck to his hand. Finally it sailed off into the darkness. He fumbled in his jacket for the second knife, then — staggering, feeling like he was about to black out — realised he could pull out the one sticking into his leg.
The girl was still on the ground near his feet. She seemed to be trying to get up again, then she collapsed back, thudding down onto her rump, one arm going behind to steady herself.
He found the second knife inside his jacket pocket, pulled it from its sheath. Somewhere off to one side there were lots of little explosions like fireworks. Light flickered everywhere. Stuff was whining and zipping overhead. He took a step towards her as she looked woozily up at him.
Then he was caught, steadied by something that wasn’t him, rooted to the ground, unable to move, as though every part of him had seized up: muscles, skeleton, everything.
The girl looked up at him, and something changed in her face. It seemed to relax, and her shoulders and chest shook once, almost as though she was laughing.
“Ah,” she said, and got her legs beneath her, pushing herself up until she was kneeling. She felt at the side of her head, where the blood was, looked at the darkness of it on her hand in the flickering orange light. She looked back to him.
He couldn’t move. He simply could not move. He wasn’t paralysed — he could feel his muscles straining, trying to move him — but he was stuck, as though enchanted, utterly immobile.
“Look at your hands, Veppers,” the girl told him, over the noise of more explosions. Stuttering light flared against her mud-streaked face and wet, bedraggled hair.
He could still move his eyes. He looked down at his hands.
They were covered in fine silver lines, glinting in the firelight.
Where had—?
“Aye-aye,” said a male voice nearby. “Pleasant evening for it, what?”
A tall, too-thin man in pale, loose clothes strolled past. When he glanced back, he saw that it was Demeisen. The avatar spared him a glance then went to stand by the girl.
“You okay?”
“Never better. Thought you’d left.”
“Yup. That was the idea. Need a hand up?”
“Give me a moment.”
“Happily.” The man turned and looked at Veppers, folding his arms. “This isn’t her doing this,” he told him. “It’s me.”
Veppers couldn’t get his mouth or jaw to work. Even his breathing was difficult. Then a thousand tiny fierce pains sprang up, as though hundreds of hair-fine wires were wrapping every centimetre of him, and were starting to shrink, cutting into every part of his body.
A bubbling, wheezing whine escaped his mouth.
The man glanced down at the girl again. “Unless you want to finish him, of course,” he said to her. He looked back at Veppers, frowning a little. “I wouldn’t though. Conscience can be a terrible thing.” He smiled. “So I hear.” He shrugged. “Unless you’re some-thing like me, of course,” he murmured. “I don’t give a fuck.”
The girl looked up into Veppers’ eyes as the wires of the tattoo device cut slowly into him. He had never known such pain, never guessed that anything could hurt so much.
“Quickly,” she said, and coughed as more smoke and burning embers sailed past the three of them.
“What?” the avatar said.
“Quickly,” she said. “Don’t draw it out. Just—”
The avatar gazed into Veppers’ eyes and nodded down at the girl. “See?” he said. “Good kid, really.”
The pain, already intolerable, increased wildly, just around his neck and head.
The coup de grâce was Veppers’ head twisting right round, an almost comical expression filling his already blood-flecked face as the tattoo lines flicked into a spiral, rose up and shrank inwards all at once, so that his head seemed to crumple and shrink into itself, becoming a far-too-thin tall cylinder that disappeared in a spray of blood.
Lededje had to look away. She heard what sounded like a whole big bowl full of rotten fruit being emptied onto the ground, then heard and felt the body thump into the grass beside her a moment later. She opened her eyes to see it twitch a couple of times, blood still pumping from the garrotted, twisted-open neck.
She felt she was going to faint. She put both arms out behind her. “Neat trick,” she said, watching arcs of flame and little sprays of fire burst from the miniature docks and the sheds where the model battleships were kept, as they burned and blew up, shells and rockets whizzing everywhere.