"Unlike some, I know who I'm loyal to. I figured I'd help myself to the leftovers at the rich man's buffet, seeing I've just armed the scuttling charges. And aren't you just the dish? I think you'll do for starters." Johanna's grin widens, carnivorously: I catch a whiff of breath that's not so much stale as cadaverous, reeking of the crypt. "I can disentangle you, 'Mona, did you know that? I can even unlock your binding without killing McMurray. I stole his tokens while I was helping him consider the error of his ways down in the brig."
She turns her free hand so that I can see she's holding a small plastic box. "It's all in here. I own you both."
Breathe. Ramona tenses and kicks harder towards the light. Her buttocks are a solid slab of agony: she's swum nearly a kilometer straight up, and she's beginning to tire of struggling, of fighting off the adaptive stress that seductively taunts her, the knowledge that if she just uses her other muscles everything will become so much easier — "So what do you want with us?" I ask, taking a short step towards her.
"Stop. Don't move." She stares at me. "I want you to adore me," she says, almost wistfully. "I want you to be my body.
'Mona, give him to me and I'll even set you free, Ellis doesn't need to know — "
For a moment I'm in Ramona's body, swimming free towards a surface that is slowly brightening: it's still a dim twilight, utter darkness to merely human eyes, but I can see shapes in the murk above me. Half of the horizon is dominated by a huge, black shadow that the drill string disappears into, and there's another dark silhouette in the near distance.
I'm in control, I'm the one who's swimming with unfamiliar legs and weaker upper arms — I begin altering course towards the distant, dark shape in the water — Meanwhile, Ramona is in my body, and she's dropped the MP-5 and is halfway across the perspex lid covering the diorama, making a noise in the back of her throat that I've heard when two cats get serious about their territory. Johanna whacks the hammer hard, off the back of my neck — aiming for my head, but she misses — causing a bright sharp pain, and then I'm in her face and she's biting at me and trying to smash me on the side of the skull and Ramona does something with my arms that I'm just not up to, some type of blocking move. I can feel muscles, possibly a tendon, tearing as I punch Johanna overarm; she blocks, I bring up a knee — Breathe for two because the Mabuse is holding station but it's still a third of a kilometer away — "Bitch!" screams Johanna, then sinks her teeth into my shoulder and goes for my balls.
Ramona, not used to having that external hazard to guard, doesn't react in time to Johanna — but I do, and I manage to squirm sideways so that Johanna grabs my inner thigh painfully, rather than turning me into a pile of screaming jelly. The Glock in my pants is digging in uselessly. Then I notice Johanna's teeth in my right shoulder. They burn and they're icy-cold at the same time, which is wrong: bite injuries aren't meant to freeze. Everything about Johanna is wrong: this close with the Tillinghast resonator powered up I can feel something moving just behind her face, something horrifyingly similar to Ramona's succubus, but different.
Instead of feeding on the small death I can hear it calling for the great one, the ending of time. I feel weak in its presence, enervated and crushed by a numinous dread.
**Fuck it, keep breathing, monkey-boy! What are you doing, shit-for-brains, trying to kill us both?** That's Ramona. She sounds as if she's calling to me from the far end of along corridor.
Breathe? I'm lying on top of Johanna on the floor. How did we get here? She's still as a corpse, but she's got her teeth embedded in my shoulder and she's hugging me like her one true love. And I feel so heavy. Breathing is a huge effort.
There's a haze forming around my vision. Breathe?
A hand — mine? — is fumbling with the lump in my pocket.
Breathe.
Everything is going gray. The tunnel is walled in darkness.
Johanna Todt waits at the end of it, smiling coolly, as inviting and desirable as a glass of liquid helium. But I can also tell somehow that Johanna isn't what's waiting for me if I take that drink: Johanna is like the bioluminescent lure dangling before an angler fish's head, right in front of the sharp jaws of oblivion. She's got me in her arms and if I take the lure, when I get up I'll be as hollow as she is, I won't be me anymore, just a puppet rotting slowly on its feet while her daemon tugs it through the motions of life.
Breathe?
BANG.
Johanna spasms beneath me, shuddering and tensing. Her thighs flex.
BANG.
I remember to breathe, then nearly choke on the hot stink of burned powder.
She's vibrating away, drumming her heels on the floor, and there's a flood of blood and tissue everywhere around her head, like a spray of hair. As I pant for breath I realize there's a hand clutching a pistol inches away from my head, and my arm feels as if it's twisted half out of its socket. A combined wash of fear and revulsion makes me bounce off the floor, muscles screaming. **Ramona?**
**Still here, monkey-boy.** She's gasping — no, that's wrong — she's struggling for breath. There's a burning sensation in her gills as she fights down the reflex to extend them fully. Stroking towards the slim shadow of the Mabuse outlined against the brightness of the surface, still some 200 meters overhead: **Breathe, dammit! I'm getting cramps! I can't keep this up.** I pant like a dog, then carefully lower the pistol. I've got more pulled muscles and my right arm is screaming at me, plus a savage bite that makes me dizzy when I poke at it with my left hand. I look at my fingertips. Blood. **Shit. How long — **
**If that bitch was telling the truth, you've got two or three more minutes to get the diorama and make it up on deck.** I look around, trying to make sense out of nonsense, a luxurious lounge aboard a yacht, a dead woman on the floor...
and a diorama in a large, locked display case. I can't move the case, it's the size of a pool table. I groan. It looks like the proximate effect of my first stab at hatching a Plan B was to spook Billington into ordering the ship sunk — and right now, I seem to be short of options. But. Secure the field generator. That's the core of the geas Billington's set up, and he's now trying to destroy it in the crudest way imaginable — not just by throwing the "off' switch, but by blowing up the ship. (Why? Because I got a little too clever and let slip the yipping Chihuahuas of infowar.) If I can keep it running, then the semantics of the spell demand that James Bond — or a good knockoff — will save us. It's just a matter of figuring out how to keep the thing running while I get it off the sinking ship.
My Treo is in my back pocket. I nearly scream as I reach for it with my right arm, then shakily switch it on and aim the camera lens at the display. Once I've filled the memory card that'll have to do. I check the display — 72Km/97% Complete — then shove it in a hip pocket.
Looking around the owner's lounge, I don't see anything obvious, but the dining room was just up the corridor. I duck out and stumble towards it, shove my way through the door, and what I want is waiting for me under a pile of uncollected dirty dishes. I grab the linen tablecloth, wait for the clatter of crockery to stop, and stagger back to the lounge. Then I whack the display case hard with the butt of my pistol, knocking out as much glass as possible.
Breathe. I catch a glimpse of Ramona, the agony spreading to her lower back. There are burning wires of pain in her shoulders as she scrabbles towards the surface close by the port side of the Mabuse. The air in here is foul, a stench of sewers and decaying, uncooked meat. I shove the pistol in a pocket then take the tablecloth in both hands and drop it across the broken glass and the diorama. I lean forwards — remember to breathe — and gather it all in with both hands.