Chapter 58

"What do you mean?" the guard said, playing stupid, like they were in an interrogation cell. Stalling for time. Walking through the old script of cop and criminal as if it still made sense. As if everything hadn't changed. Marty was surprised by a tightness in his throat. He didn't know what it was there for.

"The job," he said. "What's the job?"

"I don't know - "

"Hey," Marty said gently. "I just killed your buddy."

"And that's his third today," Rotfold said. "I saw him."

Marty could see it in the man's eyes: the cunning, the shift, the move from one strategy to another. It was old and familiar and as predictable as water moving down.

"Hey," Ru said, "it's just a job. They told us about a year ago how we were making a big move, right? But no one knows what it is. So a few months back, they start moving guys over. Training us up like we were cops, you know?"

"Who was training you?" Marty said.

"The last guys. The ones who were working the contract before us," Ru said.

"Havit?"

"Something like that, yeah," he said. "Then they took off, and we took over. Just muscle, you know. Some smuggling."

"Smuggling what?"

"All kinds of shit," Ru said. He was starting to feel safe, and it showed in the way he held himself and the way he spoke. "Surveillance equipment, communication arrays, serious-as-fuck servers with their own little gel software wonks already built in. Scientific equipment too. Stuff for checking the water and the air and shit. And these ancient remote-access robots like you'd use in a vacuum dig. All sorts of shit."

"Where was it going to?" Rotfold asked.

"Here," Ru said, gesturing to the air, the stone, the station. "It's all here. They were like months installing it all. And then for weeks, nothing."

"What do you mean, nothing?" Marty asked.

"Nothing nothing. All this buildup and then we sat around with our thumbs up our butts."

Something had gone wrong. The Phoenix bug hadn't made its rendezvous, but then Amanda had come, Marty thought, and the game had turned back on. He saw her again as if he were in her apartment. The long, spreading tendrils of whatever the hell it was, the bone spurs pressing out against her skin, the black froth of filament pouring from her eyes.

"The pay's good, though," Ru said philosophically. "And it was kind of nice taking some time off."

Marty nodded in agreement, leaned close, tucking the barrel of his gun through the interleaving of armor at Ru's belly, and shot him.

"What the fuck!" Rotfold said as Marty put his gun into his jacket pocket.

"What did you think was going to happen?" Marty said, squatting down beside the gut-shot man. "It's not like he was going to let us go."

"Yeah, okay," Rotfold said. "But... "

"Help me get him up," Marty said, hooking an arm behind Ru's shoulder. Ru shrieked when Marty lifted him.

"What?"

"Get his other side," Marty said. "Man needs medical attention, right?"

"Um. Yes," Rotfold said.

"So get his other side."

It wasn't as far back to the radiation shelters as Marty had expected, which had its good points and its bad ones. On the upside, Ru was still alive and screaming. The chances were better that he'd be lucid, which wasn't what Marty had intended. But as they came near the first group of guards, Ru's babbling seemed scattered enough to work.

"Hey!" Marty shouted. "Some help over here!"

At the head of the ramp, four of the guards looked at one another and then started moving toward them, curiosity winning out over basic operating procedures. Rotfold was breathing hard. Marty was too. Ru wasn't that heavy. It was a bad sign.

"What the hell is this?" one of the guards said.

"There's a bunch of people holed up back there," Marty said. "Resistance. I thought you people swept this level."

"That wasn't our job," the guy said. "We're just making sure the groups from the casino get to the shelters."

"Well, someone screwed up," Marty snapped. "You have transport?"

The guards looked at each other again.

"We can call for one," a guy at the back said.

"Never mind," Marty said. "You boys go find the shooters."

"Wait a minute," the first guy said. "Exactly who the hell are you?"

"The installers from Havit," Rotfold said. "We're replacing the sensors that failed. This guy was supposed to help us."

"I didn't hear about that," the leader said.

Marty dug a finger under Ru's armor and squeezed. Ru shrieked and tried to writhe away from him.

"Talk to your boss about it on your own time," Marty said. "Come on. Let's get this asshole to a medic."

"Hold on!" the first guard said, and Marty sighed. Four of them. If he dropped Ru and jumped for cover... but there wasn't much cover. And who the hell knew what Rotfold would do?

"Where are the shooters?" the guard asked. Marty kept himself from smiling.

"There's a hole about a quarter klick anti-spinward," Marty said. "The other one's body's still there. You can't miss it."

Marty turned down the ramp. Behind him, the guards were talking among themselves, debating what to do, who to call, who to send.

"You're completely insane," Rotfold said over Ru's semiconscious weeping.

Maybe he was right.

When, Marty wondered, does someone stop being human? There had to be a moment, some decision that you made, and before it, you were one person, and after it, someone else. Walking down through the levels of Orion, Ru's bleeding body slung between him and Rotfold, Marty reflected. He was probably dying of radiation damage. He was lying his way past half a dozen men who were only letting him by because they were used to people being scared of them and he wasn't. He had killed three people in the last two hours. Four if he counted Ru. Probably safer to say four, then.

The analytical part of his mind, the small, still voice he had cultivated for years, watched him move and replayed all his decisions. Everything he'd done had made perfect sense at the time. Shooting Ru. Shooting the other three. Leaving the safety of the crew's hideout to investigate the evacuation. Emotionally, it had all been obvious at the time. It was only when he considered it from outside that it seemed dangerous. If he'd seen it in someone else - Camper, Maverick, Simbad - he wouldn't have taken more than a minute to realize they'd gone off the rails. Since it was him, he had taken longer to notice. But Rotfold was right. Somewhere along the line, he'd lost himself.

He wanted to think it had been finding Amanda, seeing what had happened to her body, knowing he hadn't been able to save her, but that was only because it seemed like the sentimental moment. The truth was his decisions before then - leaving Ceres to go on a wild hunt for Amanda, drinking himself out of a career, remaining a cop for even a day after that first kill all those years earlier - none of them seemed to make sense, viewed objectively. He'd lost a marriage to a woman he'd loved once. He'd lived hip deep in the worst humanity had to offer. He'd learned firsthand that he was capable of killing another human being. And nowhere along the line could he say that there, at that moment, he had been a sane, whole man, and that afterward, he hadn't.

Maybe it was a cumulative process, like smoking cigarettes. One didn't do much. Five didn't do much more. Every emotion he'd shut down, every human contact he'd spurned, every love and friendship and moment of compassion from which he'd turned had taken him a degree away from himself. Until now, he'd been able to kill men with impunity. To face his impending death with a denial that let him make plans and take action.

In his mind, Amanda Benson tilted her head, listening to his thoughts. In his mind, she held him, her body against his in a way that was more comforting than erotic. Consoling. Forgiving.

This was why he had searched for her. Amanda had become the part of him that was capable of human feeling. The symbol of what he could have been if he hadn't been this. There was no reason to think his imagined Amanda had anything in common with the real woman. Meeting her would have been a disappointment for them both.

He had to believe that, the same way he'd had to believe everything that had cut him off from love before.

Rotfold stopped, the body - corpse now - of Ru tugging Marty back to himself.

"What?" Marty said.

Rotfold nodded at the access panel in front of them. Marty looked at it, uncomprehending, and then recognized it. They'd made it. They were back at the hideout.

"Are you all right?" Rotfold said.

"Yeah," Marty said. "Just woolgathering. Sorry."

He dropped Ru, and the thug slid to the floor with a sad thud. Marty's arm had fallen asleep. He shook it, but the tingling didn't go away. A wave of vertigo and nausea passed through him. Symptoms, he thought.

"How'd we do for time?" Marty asked.

"We're a little past deadline. Five minutes. It'll be fine," Rotfold said, and slid the door open.

The space beyond, where Olivia and Austin and Kellan had been, was empty.

"Fuck me," Rotfold said.