Electric Church

“Interesting,” Squalor said. His voice was smooth and unaccented and sounded completely natural. “A psionic.”

All I could see was the Cardinal. Without hesitation, I threw myself at it with everything momentum and gravity could grant me. My bones rattled and my vision swam as I hit, taking it off-balance. We crashed into the wall right next to the still-open door, bounced, and I fell backward, the Cardinal crashing down on top of me with crushing force. I couldn’t breathe, and his round, chubby face was thrust into mine, so real-except that his glasses had been knocked askew and lay across his face, revealing one delicate, tiny camera lens.

“Your actions will result in chaos, Mr. Cates,” it said reasonably. “There will be unrest, lawlessness, property damage. This ca

The words were just noise. I felt no pain, just a hideous cold anger. A guttural, meaningless growl exploded from my throat, and I pushed, rolling the machine off me, staying with it so that I was right on top of it. I sat astride it and jammed my gun into its mouth, panting, staring down at the crazy glasses, the single revealed camera. Out of the corner of my eye I could see it swinging its weapon around toward me, so I pulled the trigger. Again. And again. And again, until all I got were dry clicks. Then I slumped backward and let my hand fall to my side, reflexively dropping the spent clip onto the floor. I was breathing hard, my face wet, shivering. Somewhere nearby, I could still hear Belling shouting, gunshots, moaning.

“Cates!” someone shouted. “The door!”

Slowly, I turned my head. The door was swinging shut. It seemed to move in dreamy slow motion. I felt like I could do a million things in the time it would take to close.

“Cates!”

I stood up and reached down, gathering a handful of the Cardinal’s coat in one hand. The ice and razor blades were gone. I was exhausted, a numb buzzing was all I felt. I pulled the Cardinal across the rough floor with deadened, stubborn determination, and managed to push it into the path of the door with a foot or so to spare. The door slammed into the body and froze, a soft mechanical whine rising from it.

I realized with a start that everything had gone silent. I turned to look around.

Kieth was slowly pulling himself out of the coffin. Belling sat sprawled on the floor, guns still in his hands, his arms limp at his sides. Gatz sat where he’d been. Ta

“Ah, Jesus,” I croaked. “Ah, fuck. Why didn’t you Push it, goddammit it?”

“No brain!” Dawson’s gleeful, warped voice boomed from inside the coffin. “All digital, Cates! There was nothing for your rat-friend to Push!”

I ignored the voice, disembodied, like gas in the air. Gatz looked just the same. Pale, skeletal, hidden behind his dark glasses. If he’d stood up and wiped the gelled blood from his forehead and chin, it wouldn’t have surprised me.

I looked at Kieth, and then beyond him to Belling. Behind Belling there was a mass of Monks, and Ta

Kieth slid from the coffin onto the floor and knelt there, his arms wrapped around himself.

“You broke my ribs,” he whispered hoarsely.

“Fuck you,” I offered through gritted teeth. His fucking ribs. I’d lost the closest thing to a friend I’d ever had. Out of habit, I swapped in a fresh clip with stiff, arthritic hands.

“Cates,” Dawson’s voice bubbled up, sliding over the edge of the coffin and pooling on the floor. “Cates!”

I turned and walked over to the coffin and peered down into it, my hands still like rocks, my body shaking. Dawson leered up at me with his latex face and camera eyes, smiling.

“There’re dozens of Cardinals, Cates,” he rumbled. “You got lucky. They’re coming.”

With no conscious thought, I brought my gun up and aimed it at Dawson’s face.

“Fuck you,” I hissed.

Dawson’s mouth twisted. I pulled the trigger twice.

XXXIII

OTHERWISE KNOWN AS THE KING WORM

Belling struggled to his feet and leaned against the wall, reloading. Kieth still knelt next to me on the floor, moaning and hugging himself.

“Shut up, for God’s sake. You aren’t dead,” I snapped.

“Ty isn’t made for this shit, goddammit,” he wheezed petulantly. “I think you punctured a lung.”

I reached down with my free hand and pulled him up roughly. “Inconvenient, but survivable,” I advised him, and Belling let out a snicker of amusement.

Kieth squawked. “Survivable, Mr. Cates? Look around: Your team hasn’t survived all that well lately.”

I nodded. There was no force in the universe that would keep me from completing this job. I’d paid too dearly for it. Maybe nothing mattered, maybe you lived and died and unless you had the wisdom to get Monked and live forever that was it, a great yawning darkness that nothing ever escaped from. Maybe. But I was going to make this matter, by brute force if necessary.

“We got set up, Mr. Cates,” Belling said without looking up from his guns. “We were herded here, and pi

I didn’t care anymore. My whole existence the past few weeks had been at the whim of some power beyond me, and I’d finally accepted that whatever it was could kick my ass any time it wanted. It was time to just pull my arms and legs inside the safety cage and enjoy the ride.

“There’s been a lot of packet traffic in the air,” Kieth panted, wincing as he brought his handheld up for a look. “Then, suddenly, nothing. It’s like the whole EC just went quiet, all of a sudden.”

“I don’t much like the sound of that,” Belling said, racking the chambers of his guns and holstering them. “We should all be dead right now. I think I’ll be nervous until something starts shooting at me again.” He looked up at me, and our eyes locked. Belling was back to his old self: cool, unconcerned, projecting the impression that he was going to live through it all even if you weren’t. “I assume I’ve earned a full share of your payday, should we walk out of here alive?”

I gritted my teeth. A sudden rage flashed through me; if I’d released my limbs to it I had no doubt I would have tried to kill a member of the Dъnmharъ.

“I’ve shares to spare, all of a sudden,” I said instead. “You can have two, you fucking asshole.”

He almost smiled at me-a faint turning-up at the corners of his mouth. “While I admit that I find myself in a poor position for negotiation, I have to ask you if you really expect to be paid for this job. Where will the paycheck come from? Who, exactly, is going to pay us?”

I stared at him. “You’re fucking worried about money? About fucking money?”

“Don’t get all saintly on me, son,” he snapped back. “We all got into this mess because of money. You can piss and moan about it-oh, poor me, my team fucked up and got killed, poor me, poor me.” He waved his hands. “We caught a break here. Let’s go put a bullet in Squalor’s brain, by all means. But before I take a step, before I somehow decide to not save my ass, I need to know that there is actually a fucking fortune out there as you’ve suggested. Because, as I’m sure my old friend Mr. Kieth would agree, this has turned out to be slightly more work than expected.”