Digital Plague

We were at the edge of the crumbling retaining wall, and we stopped. The feeling of complete, terrible calm was still with me, and I stared down at the muddy water, where a watery moon stared back at me.

“I’d love to push you in, Avery,” it said, voice low and easy. “You’d fucking sink like a stone and be dead in minutes. That’s how fast things happen in this world. Minutes. Minutes. Do you know how long the brain stays alive after the body has died, Avery? A long goddamn time. A lot longer than you’d think. Long enough for a body to be retrieved and the brain extracted, placed in one of these Monks, at least. Minutes-it all comes down to minutes. Everything changes in just a few short minutes. How many people do you think you’ve left for dead, Avery? I don’t think you can even count how many people you’ve stepped over so Avery Cates the Great and Terrible could go on living a few more miserable fucking weeks.”

I listened and felt nothing. The water was strangely beautiful.

“I’d love to push you in,” it repeated. “But you still have work to do. Things will take their course, of course. It’s unstoppable now, and my sources tell me New York is quarantined and about to fucking burn to the ground. I want things to move faster, so I need you out there, spreading yourself around. I know you, you cocksucker. I know you’d never dream of sacrificing yourself. So you’ll scuttle around like the roach you are and move things along, won’t you?”

It spun me around and we started back toward the group, where the cops stood with Belling. The Monks emerged from the church silently.

“Mr. Kieth has escaped,” the Monk said, its hand tightening painfully on my shoulder, “with the help of your pet SSF Techie, who is smarter than he looks. That is problematic. But I know him as well as I know you, Avery, and I know he’ll stay alive, which is all I really need from him. We will, of course, search the city and find him. It isn’t really a human city anymore, after all. It is our city, and I doubt Mr. Kieth will find it very hospitable. Very well. Officers,” he said, stopping and letting me shuffle forward to stand with them, “I’d gladly kill you as well, but He has told me I need you to keep Mr. Cates alive. I fear if your colleagues arrive and find you dead and Mr. Cates here alone, they will simply execute him on the spot. So I need you to remain alive to vouch for him.”

We all stared at him. I realized I didn’t even mind the pain anymore. I felt good.

The Monks began to file away, falling into line and marching for the river. The leader spread its hands. “This is a mess, right? Fuck it. It’s the System. It’s always a fucking mess. Everything falling apart in goddamn slow motion, every moment. Look at this-Paris-a huge goddamn city. Lost. Lost and no one even trying to get it back. Every year they lose a few more inches to the wilderness, to the weeds-to us.”

The Monks behind him were marching straight into the river, just walking into the water and slowly disappearing. In the distance, I noted with vague interest, I could hear hover displacement.

The Monk leaned in toward me. “Go home, Avery. Go home and scuttle about, spread yourself around. If they’ve managed to contain things, to set up a clean zone, that’s exactly where they’ll bring you, huh? And good-bye to that.” It reached out and put its cold plastic hand on my face. “I’m glad, though, that I got to see you like this. Hurt, desperate. All that fucking yen you got for killing all those people-not even counting the people you left behind along the way-and here you are. It’s good.” It turned to follow the last of the Monks. “He told me it would be good. He whispered to me when I was reborn and promised me revenge. I didn’t even know what the word meant until he spoke it to me.”

I watched him go. “I know you,” I said to the air, and then Belling was in front of me.

“Avery,” he said, and then stopped, holstering his guns and shooting his cuffs. His face looked odd to me with his scum of beard and deep lines. “I am sorry our paths crossed like this. Even the best of us fear death. You, I know, understand.”

Fuck you, I thought lazily, not really feeling it.

I watched, vaguely curious, as Belling was carried across the river by four of the Monks. He held the edges of his coat up out of the water and stared at the sky. I followed his gaze and saw the hover, a fat bug of light floating slowly through the sky, like a star crashing to Earth from a light-year away. At the sight of it, a hard kernel of anxiety bloomed in my chest, still smothered by a relaxed unconcern. I watched it slide across the sky, dropping lower and lower, displacement screaming around us, making us stagger backward. As it passed over the church it dropped to a few dozen feet above us and landed behind the building, shaking the whole island.

For a second the night was quiet and peaceful.

The kernel of alarm grew, like a pearl forming around a piece of grit, swelling and shunting aside the lethargic calm that had enveloped me. Hovers were never a good thing, I thought. I should be worried. I should be moving.

Shouts behind us, and then the familiar sound of boots in sync. We stood there admiring the night as Stormers formed up around us, moving stealthily and invisibly, detectable only by the blur of their motion as their Obfuscation Kit struggled to keep up with the terrain behind them. In seconds we were surrounded, the Stormers taking on the colors of the muddy water and the silvery sky behind them, their face masks empty space staring at us.

I shivered, alarm making my muscles twitch. Hense and Happling looked at me sharply, then around at the Stormers as if they’d never seen them before-which maybe they hadn’t, not from this particular angle, anyway.

The Stormers didn’t say anything. They didn’t have to, since they were gathered together in the international symbol of We will kill you if you move. My mind was whirring along merrily, trying to figure out what the fuck had just happened to us, and in the near silence I heard boots crunching their way around the side of the church. This was standard operating procedure for the System Pigs, of course; first the Stormers gathered, and then the officers in their brightly colored plumage came around to start the ritual ball kicking.

The footsteps turned flat and hollow on the flagstones, and I squinted at the approaching figure, looking for a clue to the exact type of ball kicking we were in for. As he drew closer, a chill stole over me, smothering my anger. I was no expert, but I was starting to think that every goddamned psionic working for the government looked the same.

He’d once had the ageless look I remembered from Shockley and his friends back in New York; this one still had the round face and big eyes, but a jagged red wound, dotted with pinker, smooth flesh, puckered one side of his face, a lightning bolt of broken skin. It gave him some years. As he walked I noted his left arm hanging down stiffly at his side. He stopped in front of us and squinted, his whole face scrunching up, muscles pulling skin into unfamiliar shapes.

“Mr. Cates,” he said. “I hear you like to kill government employees. It may take more than a hover to do me.” He looked around. “There is supposed to be one more? A Technical Associate?”

For some reason I wanted to laugh. I let a smile twitch my face. “The TA is AWOL.”

Happling shivered. “What the fuck is this?” he said, his words firming up as he went, like he was coming back online.

“Howard Bendix,” the newcomer said, his rainbow-colored ID suddenly held up for inspection. “Assistant to Under-secretary of the North American Department. Ah, weapons,” he muttered, nodding his chin casually in our direction. As if a magnet had been turned on, the guns leaped from the cops’ hands, their arms jerking forward. The guns skittered behind Bendix and stopped in a neat little pile. He glanced at them and then turned back to us.