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He eyed my hand warily. “You’re a man of your word, Avery,” he said, stepping forward, “and I am not. But for what it’s worth, I promise this: until we’re done here, you can trust me absolutely. As for suffering, I expected nothing less. We’re each making deals with the devil.”
I almost believed him. You’re a man of your word, I repeated to myself and thought of Kieth, upstairs. Shit, I thought, you’re thinking of last week’s Avery Cates. Hating him, I pumped his hand.
I took a slow, deeper breath, taking my time with it in order to avoid triggering more coughing. “All right, what intel do you have?”
“Little man,” Belling said over his shoulder to Marko, “do you have floor plans of this complex on that delightful little device?”
Marko nodded, rushing forward. “I do!” he said briskly, thrusting the screen toward Belling. “I have floor plans, wiring networks, plumbing, air ducts-none big enough for a person to crawl through, however.” He was sweating lightly, whether from excitement or the first stages of his own nano invasion it was hard to tell. Based on the way he was looking up at Belling, as if he’d found god, I decided it was excitement.
Belling nodded, turning to me. “I know where they’re holding Kieth, and I know the basic deployment of the Mutant Freak’s fellow Monks. We know their strength and resources, Avery.”
“Do we know their strength? Isn’t Kev up there making new Monks right now?”
Belling blinked. “Making Monks? No, not exactly.”
I frowned. “Then why a hospital complex? He wants Monks to take over once we’re all dead, Belling. That’s the whole idea.”
Belling shook his head. “You’re behind the curve as usual, Avery,” he said in a fatherly tone that made me want to split his lip. “Monks were five years ago. You think that was Kev Gatz designing this nanotechnology? Kev Gatz? I’ve seen melons with more mental energy than that asshole. This kind of tech comes from a genius, Avery. Someone with a pre-Unification degree.” He raised an eyebrow. “You must have heard Mr. Gatz talk about Him, yes? The voice in his head? Didn’t you wonder who that was?”
“Holy fucking shit,” Marko said suddenly, sucking in breath. “You’re talking about Squalor. You’re talking about De
Belling’s eyes stayed on me, but he nodded. “Avery, Kev’s got Squalor in his ear, telling him what to do, how to do it. Monks? Squalor’s lost his manufacturing base. His corporeal body. His political clout. He’s personally keeping Kev Gatz from flying apart at the seams, from what I can tell. The rest of the Monks, Kev’s followers, look like the rarities who survived the destruction of the suppression signal-strong minds, I’d guess. Crazy, sure, but crazy in a focused way.”
I shook my head. Something was roaring inside it, making it hard to think. This shit wasn’t fair. “I destroyed Squalor,” I said slowly.
“Avery,” Belling replied, “Squalor was a digitized intelligence. You destroyed his server.” He fluttered his smooth, un-scarred hands in the air. “He’s in the air. And he’s looking for a way to rebuild. Monks were yesterday’s tech. The way Mr. Kieth tells it, what Squalor’s doing now is, in Techiespeak, utilizing the available resources.”
I turned, keeping my eyes on Belling, and grabbed Marko by the collar, pulling him in close. “What the fuck,” I said slowly, “does that mean?”
Marko swallowed, his wide eyes on me, hands limp at his sides. I felt I could have lifted him off the floor. “I think it means all these dead people aren’t going to stay dead.”
Belling smiled and shaped one hand into a gun, poking it at us. “Bingo.”
XXXIV
Day Ten: I am Very Impressed, Mr. Belling
I followed Belling as he enjoyed his voice some more. “Come along, Americans, we’ve got some deep shit to wade through before we even get to kill the incredibly a
Deserved. I pictured Kieth, just trying like hell to stay alive. I didn’t doubt he’d work like a demon to reverse all this if given half the chance, but there didn’t seem any choice: if it took him a week to do it, there might not be anyone left to save. It wasn’t fucking fair, and it was making me angrier every time I thought about it. I’d never liked Kieth, either, but we’d worked together for years, and I knew the Techie had never screwed me on purpose. He didn’t deserve this. I didn’t deserve to have to do this.
“Are you serious?” I asked, staring into the rusty interior of the elevator cab, my mind still trying to process what I’d just been told. “You came all this way to commit suicide by elevator?”
“As I may have mentioned when you were perhaps light-headed from coughing up your i
We stared at each other, and he gri
“The elevator got me down here. It will get us back up. Stealth is wasted effort at this point. Go straight at them, Mr. Cates, and never mind the maneuvers.”
He was right. We might waste hours creeping around looking for a secret way up, only to find Kev waiting for us. If our arrival was news, well, at least we knew the odds: fifty-four against four, although I wasn’t sure I should count Marko as a whole person.
“Mr. Marko,” I said suddenly, “you’re a cop, right?”
He looked up from his little screen, surprised. “I’m a Technical Assistant.”
I nodded. “For the SSF. Do you know how to handle a gun?”
He stared at me like I was speaking some bizarre language, and then Belling strode over to him, producing one of his shiny custom-made Roons from somewhere within his coat and proffering it to the Techie. “Here,” Belling said impatiently. Marko regarded it dumbly, so Belling leaned in and pressed the gun into his hand. “You pull the trigger and it goes boom,” the old man said. “Just point it away from yourself. And me.” Belling looked back at me and raised his eyebrows. “Satisfied? Come here, let’s get organized. Zeke, show us the main floor, right above our heads.”
Marko continued to stare at the gun in his hand, worth more on the black market-at least the black market that had existed a week ago-than he probably cleared in legal SSF pay in a year. He slid it gently into one of his pockets, as if it might explode if he held it too tight. Which, I decided, was the preferred attitude of useless Techies when handed a gun in my presence. It was the ones who started pointing it at things and squinting that you had to worry about.
“Okay, this is where I think we are,” he said, slowly at first and then with increasing speed as he got back to his comfort zone, voice bouncing off the ancient pocked cement. “This subbasement level here.” I leaned over Belling’s a