Ecko Rising E-Book

Danie Ware

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 719

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Ecko is an unlikely saviour: a savage, gleefully cynical rebel/assassin, he operates out of hi-tech London, making his own rules in a repressed and subdued society, When the biggest job of his life goes horribly wrong, Ecko awakes in a world he doesn't recognise: a world without tech, weapons, cams, cables - anything that makes sense to him. Can this be his own creation, a virtual Roschach designed just for him, or is it something much more? Ecko finds himself immersed in a world just a s troubled as his own, striving to conquer his deepest fears and save it from extinction. If Ecko can win though, then he might just learn to care - or break the program and get home

Leseprobe

ECKO RISING

ECKO RISING

DANIE WARE

TITAN BOOKS

Ecko Rising

Print edition ISBN: 9780857687623

E-book ISBN: 9781781162835

Published by

Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: September 2012

Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

Danie Ware asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

© 2012 by Danie Ware.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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FOR BONES

F.T.W.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

PART 1: IMPACT

TO BE A PILGRIM / RECONNAISSANCE / THE WANDERER

PART 2: RIPPLES

THE MONUMENT / LIVING THE NIGHTMARE / FLESH / MYTH / TRIQUETA / STONE / FEREN / MONSTER / COURAGE

PART 3: WAVES

RHAN / MERCHANT / THE COUNCIL / ASH / REDLOCK / FOUNDERSDAUGHTER / SENTINEL / TREASURE / CRAZED

PART 4: TORNADO

VISION / AMETHEA / FIGMENT / TWICE FALLEN / CATHEDRAL / SICAL / GUILT / LOREMASTER / MEGALOMANIAC

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE LONDON

“We’re bein’ stalked.”

It was evening. The press of people was close, huddled and submissive to the public monotone that accompanied them home.

Overhead, the streetlights were halogen brilliant, obscuring the heavy, belly-down sky. The drizzle sparkled like shrapnel.

Fuller, tarnished aplomb in suit and overcoat, gave Lugan a nervous look. “You’re sure — ?”

“Shut up an’ keep moving.” One of the cell commander’s massive, oil-stained hands grabbed Fuller’s elbow and propelled him swiftly through the crowd. A gang of kids, laughing at their own defiance, barged into them and were gone.

Reflexively, Lugan checked his pockets.

Get Collator. Subvocalised, his voice was transmitted from the back of his throat directly into Fuller’s ear. I want CCTV access — like, now. Drones if we can get ’em.

Fuller gave a brief nod.

Tense now, Lugan checked the street. The light pools were bright but the shadows were hard edged and darker than oil. Everywhere he looked, unseen eyes looked back, teeth were bared in unseen grins. He shivered, bristled.

What’re you looking for? Fuller asked him.

Dunno. Trouble.

Half a head taller than the blindly ambling workers, Lugan picked out the police-blue glow of the hoverdrone, watched it swing about and head back towards them.

Fuller was rebroadcasting Collator’s info-stream. Data input commencing 18:42:06... 07... Camera locations accessed. Drone ID: 23-987b accessed. Download commencing one minute and forty-five seconds...

Lugan reached for a dog-end. “This stinks.” Watching the drone, he headed for the shelter of the buildingside. As he moved, the crowd stirred and parted.

A shred of silent darkness flickered in his wake.

What was...? Further back, Fuller’s voice came over the aural link. Lugan!

“What?” Without thinking, Lugan spun, back to the wall and crouching, hand going for the ten-mil that wasn’t there. Breathing tightly, he kicked in his ocular heatseeker, but the ambivalent temperature of the blankly trudging people defeated him.

There was nothing there.

Telling himself he’d imagined it, pillock, he watched a moment longer.

There was nothing there.

A burst of distant shouting made him start; the hoverdrone swung about to investigate.

Then a voice in his ear said softly.

“Boom.”

“Shit...!” Lugan spun sideways and back, fists balling. “Fuller!” Two paces ahead, Fuller dropped into cover behind a heap of dustbin bags shining with rainwater.

You get it? Lugan snapped.

No, I...

Did the drone get it?

A moment later, he heard Fuller’s voice reply, No screen. It’s gone.

What? Lugan slammed his back to the brickwork, searched his pockets. My smartcard, my headset, my fucking lighter. One black boot kicked the wall, rubbish scattered. What are we — fucking amateur night? We catch this joker, I’m going to wring its neck. Update Collator!

Spitting out the dog-end, Lugan sought the drone. Above his head, the light show had started: bright lasers played on the clouds as if to cut them open. In the wealth of the City and the West End, London still pulsed with life. Here, the shadows were —

Eyes. Some two metres above his head — the shadows were eyes.

A frisson shivered up his spine — whatever this character was, it was playing with them.

Fuller’s rebroadcast was telling him about the building. Human Resource Container standard design 12a, security level eight... Purchased by Mortimer, Hiner and Thompson Finance in 2018... Population: fifty single units...

Lugan watched the eyes. They were red. Just as he figured they were LEDs, they winked at him and were gone.

The frisson became a shudder; he found he was holding his breath.

Under the public monotone, a breath of laughter reached him — dark, malicious, cynical. It stroked his ear like a cold hand.

They were being watched.

The sound had come from the heart of the homeward-walking workers, as if the drugged-up drudges themselves mocked his efforts.

Swallowing hard, Lugan forced himself to move normally. What the hell was this character? Security level eight — and it just... hung on the wall like a gargoyle? Laughed as they tried to track it? Picked their pockets without getting —

Oh wait a fucking minute...

Snarling through his beard, Lugan went back through the pockets of his old leather. He chucked a handful of washers onto the pavement and held up the piece of paper that remained.

“All right, smart-arse,” he said, “you got my attention. Now what the hell are you?”

The laugh came again. “I’m caught. Red-handed.” The voice was a rasp, savage, gleeful and absolutely fearless; a faint hint of an American accent. It came from behind them, but this time neither Fuller nor Lugan turned. “You gonna try an’ shoot me, biker-boy, or are you gonna turn me in?”

“I’ll turn you into fuckin’ chop suey, mate, if you don’t give me back my stuff.”

Still scanning the wall, Fuller said, Rebroadcast kicked, Collator’s with us. Report’s uploading.

“So, the mighty Lugan loses his kit like a rookie. Y’know what they say, the bigger they are —”

“The harder they kick your arse. Whatever you are, you better get out where I can see you —”

“Yeah? Why don’tcha make me?”

Incredible. The rebroadcast was dumping info so fast that Lugan could barely keep pace. The voice was male, adult, lacking a formal education, Chicago-born but living in London for ten years or more; there was a cruel, childlike quality that could indicate psychological damage and/or cybernetic overload...

The eyes were back, closer. “Y’ever heard of the Bogeyman?”

Through Fuller’s aural link, Collator’s smoothly androgynous tone said, ID confirmed, 98.83% probability...

“Yeah,” Lugan said. “He’s the bloke you don’t boogie with.”

The laughter became a cackle. “That ‘One Percent’ tattoo your sense of humour?”

“I know the ‘Bogeyman’,” Fuller said. Tall and wiry, Fuller’s quiet presence and calm voice cut the laughter with a sharp, informative edge. “He worked towards a better world, a liberated world — a world free from pharmaceutical control. He was a crusader, fought for the people. The graphic novel was banned —”

Comic books? Lugan raised an eyebrow. You’re pullin’ my chain...

Fuller ignored him. “It was you last night, wasn’t it? You took out Pilgrim’s new facility, the Serena Installation.”

The rasp twisted into a humourless cackle. “I’ll take any op to fuck with Pilgrim — ’til some grunt gets lucky an’ raises the alarm.” The eyes blinked once and were gone. “Didja see the bang?”

Lugan swore. “That bleedin’ buildin’ did a double backflip an’ swallow dive. You ain’t tellin’ me that was you?”

The shrug was audible. “Hey, it’s traditional to blow up a major London landmark on Fawkes’ Night. Besides, I jus’ laid the charges. Ol’ Bobby Pilgrim set it off.”

Lugan stared at Fuller. “Our stalker trashed...” He glanced at the drones, but they paid him no attention. The crowd was thinning, now. “Our stalker jus’ trashed Robert Pilgrim?”

Fuller snorted. “World’ll be a better place if you ask me.” He nodded at the last of the walking workers. “Look at these poor bastards —”

“Not the fuckin’ point!” Over their aural link, Lugan went on, This nutter must be wanted by every security agency in — !

A cloaked figure dropped into the light.

He was small, slight, as strong as coiled steel wire. His skin and cloak were dappled a shadowy, shifting blue-grey. As he put back his cowl with one thin hand, Fuller gasped, Lugan swore softly. Neither man was a stranger to cybernetic enhancement, but they had never seen anything like this.

This couldn’t be human.

The little man’s face was savage, sharp cheeked and gleeful. His skin was the same dark mottle — it seemed to be actually part of his flesh. Across it slashed a nightmare sneer — a black-lipped, black-toothed grin. But his eyes...

Black, blacker than pits, featureless and soulless, too large for his thin face. They were inhuman, alien — reminiscent of too many horror movies. Somewhere in their depths, there was the cold, blue glitter of an optical scan.

Even as the men stared, the skin-mottle was changing. Seeping, spreading. In a moment, it had flowed to the greys and reds of the surrounding buildings, the blue flicker of the distant laser show. Camouflaged perfectly against his background, the little man was almost impossible to see. Belatedly, Lugan tried his ocular heatseeker, tried to see weaponry and cybernetics; somehow he was not surprised when the man had no visible body temperature.

“You’re the ‘Ecko’,” Fuller said.

“The ‘G’ is silent.” The sprite grin was pure malice. He was a flicker, a fragment of nightmare; his empty black eyes as cold as blades. There was no mercy in his smile. “Last night... was a little ‘illustration’ —”

“You lookin’ for attention?” Lugan said. “Or you lookin’ for bidders?”

The face turned from Lugan to Fuller and back.

“Maybe I’m lookin’ for asylum.”

“No shit,” Lugan said.

“You’re killin’ me. Look, you’re kinda infamous round here — most bad guys know to stay outta your face. Take me in — turn me in. I’m the fuckin’ phantom fireworker and y’got me cold — whatcha gonna do?”

Fuller? Profile? Lugan said.

Tamarlaine Benjamin Gabriel, aka the ‘Ecko’. Age: 32. Address: no fixed abode; suspected tunnel rat, Southwark area. No smartcard on record, no PIN. Criminal record: street-kid stuff; nothing after age 17. Collator says that, as of 19:00 hours, no one is yet wanted in connection with last night’s explosion.

But Bob fuckin’ Pilgrim, for gawdsakes! Lugan said.

Tell the Boss we’ve got Pilgrim’s nemesis — it’s a major blow to them, Lugan, big kudos.

Big risk, y’mean. If ’e gets found...

He’s just the ‘Echo’. He’s got no criminal record to speak of — he doesn’t get found!

Unless he wants to be?

Self-evident. Fuller glanced at his commander and shrugged.

Lugan pulled out a dog-end. He stuck it between his lips, paused for a moment and spat it out again. From somewhere across the river, the laser show danced on the glowering clouds.

It began to rain, drops of fat, filthy water.

“All right, all right, I’ll speak to the Boss,” Lugan said. “You, us, here, same time, tomorrow. And gimme back my lighter!”

Ecko tilted his head, his attention flicked from one man to the other and his black grin remained. “Do your research, guys. Then here. Tomorrow.”

“Aren’t you going to tell us to come alone? No tricks?” Fuller asked.

With a snort, Ecko slid his hood back into place. “You try whatever you like.” He took a pace away, two; the chrome glint of Lugan’s lighter held in his hand. “But I’m keepin’ your kit — you get it back if you play nice.” He flicked a flame, like a farewell.

As Lugan blinked to clear the rain from his eyes, the little man was gone — faded into the London night until only the fire remained.

Just an echo.

PART 1: IMPACT

1: TO BE A PILGRIM

THE BIKE LODGE AND THE BOSS’S OFFICE, LONDON

Through the single grubby window in the Bike Lodge office, the sky was a thunderous black. It was still early spring, but the London weather was close and stifling, and it was making Lugan tetchy.

On the old couch, Fuller had long since fallen asleep. Still in his habitual battered suit, he was curled round his laptop as if he couldn’t bear to let it go. He was snoring, gently and sweetly, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

Both men had been working through the night, systematically digging for obscure information, but for all their spade work, they were no closer to realising a decision. Ecko had been with them for three months, his probation was nearing its end, and Lugan still didn’t know which way he was going to jump. The little bugger was invaluable, had skills that surpassed the Boss herself, but he was about as reliable as a... Oh for fuck’s sake, Lugan was getting too tired for creativity.

Wincing, the cell commander took his glasses off, laid them on the desktop and then tipped his chair back to stretch the kinks from his shoulders. Tendons crunched, and he swore.

Bloody Pilgrim, Lugan thought, all the tricks they’ve pulled in the last ten years, all the bullshit they’ve promised, the new fuckin’ world they’ve built, they could at least have done something about my vision, about the old road wounds that still gimme gyp in the cold.

Nah. Fuckers. We know what their priorities’ve been...

Searching his pockets for a dog-end, he slammed the chair back onto all fours and Fuller started awake, blinking.

“What? What? What’s the time?”

“Half one?” Lugan patted another pocket. “An’ I ain’t no closer, mate. If I’m gonna make the Boss listen, I need more than old-school biker loyalty and all that bollocks — I need facts.” He patted the pocket again. Stood up. Patted the pockets in his jeans. Turned to his battered leather, hung on the back of the chair, and patted the pockets in that, too.

He’d been working sixteen hours, and he was not in the mood for this.

“On the other ’and, I could just let her shoot the little bastard.” Sending the old desk scraping backwards with a hefty shove, Lugan slammed the office door open and bellowed, “Ecko? Ecko! Bring me back my fucking lighter or I’ll wring your fucking neck!”

Fuller groaned and sat up.

Outside the office door, the big, open floor of the Bike Lodge was silent, the roller door shut and locked down. Metal shelving and skeletal frames made odd shadows on the oil stains, the current chop-job watched them from its one lidless and lightless eye.

Half expecting Ecko’s characteristic cackle to come from somewhere in the ceiling, or from down among the bikes themselves, Lugan was disconcerted to find the shop as quiet as the proverbial grave. Over his shoulder, he said, “Get the kettle on, willya?”

And the now-familiar voice in his ear said, “Boo.”

In no mood for it, Lugan spun, scowling.

“Will you fucking stop doing that?”

Ecko was standing directly behind him, his skin and cloak reacting to the overspill of light from the office. Lugan had no idea how he’d got there or where he’d come from, and his sense of humour was struggling. He’d been all night trying to find a concrete reason to keep this little bugger, to add him to the Boss’s tightly run cell network, and right now, Ecko’s pranks were a temptation to just tie a bike frame to his ankles and chuck him in the Thames.

Lugan said, “Gimme my lighter back.”

“Don’t have it.”

“It’s too early for this. Give me my lighter.”

“Don’t have it. Not this time. This time you lost it all on your ownsome.”

The commander drew a breath. “I’m warnin’ you —”

“I said, I don’t have it. An’ if you keep bein’ an asshole, you don’t get dinner.”

Motion pulled Lugan’s attention downwards. In Ecko’s hand, swathed in his stealth-cloak, was a crumpled brown bag. From it came the faint, curling scent of takeaway.

The smell made Lugan’s belly grumble, loud in the stillness. Shaking his head, he said, “I don’t s’pose you paid for that?”

“Don’t be stupid.” Ecko grinned like a fiend.

Unable to help himself, the cell commander chuckled, half in relief, half in exasperation. Ecko might be off-the-fucking-wall annoying, but what they’d do without him... Lugan didn’t want to finish the thought. Instead, he cuffed Ecko’s shoulder, made the smaller man wince. Ecko’s ability to get in and out of local businesses was frankly astonishing — hoverdrones, cameras, recorders — the little man might as well have been invisible.

One way and another, it was sodding handy.

And not just for free food.

“Well, what the fuck have I done with it, then?” His dog-end still between his lips, Lugan made one last search of his pockets and then shrugged and reached for the arc welder, behind him on a shelf.

He shielded the cigarette with his opposite hand and then swore round the thing as the arc nearly torched his beard.

Ecko cackled. “Addict.”

“Freak.”

The welder went back on the shelf with a bang.

“Serious for a minute?” Fuller’s voice came from the office. “My newsfeed’s just gone batshit. I think —”

From outside, there came the first wail of sirens.

* * *

Half two.

The lights in the Bike Lodge were off. Outside, it was quiet; the last yowl of siren was finally fading. Inside, the curry was roiling uncomfortably in Lugan’s belly, and he still hadn’t found his lighter.

Agitated, the cell commander was pacing.

In this new age of Pilgrim’s social tranquillity, sirens were rare and disturbing things. Sirens for almost an hour could well mean the fucking apocalypse.

Bollocks.

Lugan spun on his boot heel and paced the other way. The various oil-stained papers tacked to the wall — ID numbers, serial markings, notes, addresses — fluttered in his wake as though trying to escape.

On the couch, Fuller had discarded the older laptop and was glued to his tiny, secure flatscreen, trying to track and identify the night’s events. Ecko was sat next to him like some sort of urban grotesque, hunched up with his knees almost into his chest.

Lugan had never seen him look this pensive.

And it made him angry.

“What the fuck did you do? I thought you went out after dinner! Tell me you got out clean and they didn’t follow your arse back ’ere?” The commander paced back, jabbing a stained and callused finger at Ecko as he did so. A dog-end was still clamped in the corner of his mouth and reflexively his hands kept going for the lighter that wasn’t there. “I got your future to fight for, mate, an’ you better not be takin’ the piss.”

Ecko snarled back at him, “I’m doin’ your job, for chrissakes. I went out after leads, on Pilgrim, on how to take them down. Better than sittin’ on my ass in here.”

“What I don’t want is the Met on my doorstep...”

“Please.” Ecko snorted. “They couldn’t find me with Sherlock Holmes and a bloodhound.”

That much was probably true. One advantage to the little fucker being so reckless — Ecko wasn’t afraid of much, and that made him honest.

Lugan spun again. “I ’ope you’re right, you little bastard, because if they do, I’ll slit your throat myself.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Watch me.”

“Chrissakes, I can’t watch my own throat.”

Fuller chuckled at their double act, smothered it.

For a moment, Lugan stopped pacing and glared at the pair of them as if he was the only sane man left in the city. Then he flung himself back in his chair, swore venomously, and picked up the now-cold mug of tea.

“What says Collator?” he said to Fuller. “You trackin’?”

“Still on radio silence,” Fuller answered. “For the moment, I got nothing.”

“Fuck.”

“Easy, Luge,” Fuller said. “If the Met knew anything, they’d be here with the tear gas by now. The chaos is calming down.” He glanced round at Ecko, the light from the little screen making his eyes glitter. “Luck is on your side, it seems. Again.”

“Luck, for chrissakes.” Ecko grinned back, like the Cheshire Cat’s evil twin. “Skill.”

“I swear, one of these days you’ll give me a fucking ’eart attack.” Lugan eyed the tea and thought better of it. He smacked the mug back on the table. “Now. Quit dodging the subject. If I’m gonna defend your arse to the Boss, I need to know what you did. And ’ow much of a mess you made.”

Ecko shrugged. “I went after the pharmacist, Grey.”

As Lugan opened his mouth to answer back, Ecko cut him off.

“C’mon, Lugan, we’ve done fuck all for months. D’you wanna do this, or what?”

“Grey’s the cook, not —”

“In fact,” Fuller commented, “Grey’s another major shareholder. When Pilgrim bought out the NHS in the early tweens, he was the orchestrator. It’s his utopia we’re living in.”

Ecko said, “See? Major bad guy. I found his Secret Lair.” He grinned. “So now we can go bust his ass.”

Lugan said nothing. On the desk in front of him was an old pub ashtray, half full of roll-up remnants. Carefully, he began to shred them and collect the remaining tobacco. It was a habit he’d picked up a decade or more before, while waiting on His Majesty, and he’d never quite given it up.

Ecko was bristling with anticipation, his obsidian-black eyes flickering with a faint, red light. His impatience was infectious, and Lugan could almost hear his thoughts, C’mon, let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s...

“We can get Grey? You serious?” As the realisation sank home, Lugan was beginning to think that, aggravating or not, Ecko needed to stay on his team.

Like, big time.

Ecko’s grin spread. “You wanted leads. I know where’s he’s at. An’ we can fuckin’ get him.” He was almost bouncing on the seat. “Well, I can.”

Fuller said, “It’s tempting, Luge. Pilgrim’s utopian society is largely attributable to Doctor Grey. You know the story — every GP, every researcher, every psychologist, was given a choice by their new employer: you prescribe the drug we give you, or you lose your job. Suddenly every dissenter, student, protester, everyone who’s unemployed — they all have ADHD, or depression, or anxiety, or maybe they just can’t sleep... A decade later, we’ve got almost complete servitude. No unrest, no remonstration, no riots, no freedom. The internet’s full of happy cats, and everyone loves their job. Whatever it is. It was bloody genius.”

Lugan glanced up — Fuller rarely swore, and his flash of rancour was unusual.

The commander shot back, “We’re not all fucking brain-dead. Pilgrim ’asn’t won yet.”

“The pockets of resistance get smaller with every year,” Fuller said. “You’re an anachronism, Luge, a relic, and they know it. They’ll get bored with you one of these days, and then they’ll send the boys round. I fear our time is borrowed.”

So we’d better make the most of it.

He didn’t actually say it, but Lugan heard him anyway.

Ecko said, his rasp soft and sinister, “So let’s gettem, for chrissakes, before they get us, huh?”

Lugan rolled the shreds of collected tobacco into a new cigarette that was almost pure tar.

“All right,” he said, shoving himself to his feet. “I trust my team. You included. I dunno what kind of mess you just made, mate, but if you’ve just given us Grey, I’ll back any fucking play you make.”

“That was well timed,” Fuller said suddenly. “Collator’s back online — and we’re wanted in the office.”

* * *

“Bollocks,” Lugan said cheerfully. He leaned back in the big black chair and thumped his size fourteens on the conference table. He’d picked up a disposable lighter, and a tail of greasy smoke curled from the dog-end that was glued to his lip.

Beside him, Fuller fidgeted like a child expecting a scolding.

Around them, the Boss’s office was silent, soulless and dark. It was steel and glass and cold, VIP perfection; long black windows were silvered with skitters of rain. Outside, the harsh, halogen lights of the city were smeared to a watery blur.

The room’s only illumination came from the big flatscreen at the far end of the table — and from its image, reflected in the tabletop’s gleam.

Lugan took another drag from the dog-end.

The screen showed a familiar figure, a phantom of gleeful darkness, his skin and garments shifting with shadows, his movements framed in blood and smoke. He was terrifying, more extreme than Lugan at his worst, and utterly unhampered by conscience. He was swift as a thought and just as fucking careless. He carried no firearm, no blade, but the goons fell like a street kid’s tin cans.

Ecko.

His skill and savagery were horrifying.

Lugan blew brown smoke, and kept watching.

From impossible stealth positions, Ecko taunted his targets — they coiled in fear long before they coiled in pain. While they were still looking for him, his fists and feet broke bones, and when they fell, he burned them and they died screaming.

Lugan took another lungful of smoke.

Jesus ’Arry Christ on a fuckin’ scramble bike...

Then, with a silent snap, the screen went black.

And the Boss’s soft, Scandinavian voice said, “Well, gentlemen? Would either of you care to explain?”

Lugan and Fuller exchanged a glance, their faces now almost in darkness. Tobacco wreathed in the air. Neither of them spoke.

Instead, Lugan blew out an irritated tail of tar that made the smoke curls dance. He’d no fucking clue how the Boss had got Ecko on camera, but the devastation only made his resolve stronger — he was going to keep Ecko on his crew.

And then, they were going after Grey.

The voice said, “I’m waiting.”

Biting back his initial, blistering response, Lugan answered, “’E did the job, didn’t ’e?”

The light on the screen came up, brightening the room and returning the shine to the table. It showed a woman, blonde and in profile. She was beautiful, flawless and pale skinned, and apparently naked right down to the part of her shoulder that Lugan could see. She didn’t turn to face them — her attention was on something else, a screen within the screen, a light source that decorated her porcelain flesh in a shifting, fractal pattern of illumination.

“He left a crater.” Even speaking, the Boss didn’t turn. She gestured with one pale hand.

Lugan said, “They didn’t track ’im —”

“That really isn’t the point.” The lights teased her skin, danced over the tabletop. “If we’re to tackle Pilgrim effectively, then strategy is crucial, discipline is crucial, orders are crucial. I’m not taking chances on a loose cannon.”

Lugan’s dog-end was coming unstuck. Wetting a tarred and callused fingertip, he made an industrious effort to dampen and reroll it. Choosing his words, he said, “Just because ’e ain’t good with orders doesn’t mean ’e can’t do the job. ’E’s got ’is own ways of doing stuff.” He examined the dog-end, frowning. “An’ they work.”

The Boss ignored him. “I’ve no tolerance for chaos. I’ve dedicated my life and this organisation to taking Pilgrim down — and I don’t like surprises.”

Down by her bare shoulder, the Pilgrim logo folded onto the corner of the screen — the image of the strongly travailing worker, bent under his load. Beside it unrolled the strapline that now bound the heart and mind of every man, woman and child, the words that framed their lives, the flag that had become their only compass and motivation, and the banner against which the Boss’s organisation had pitched itself.

Valiant Be.

“Valium Be”, more like. Lugan relit the repaired dog-end and coughed tar. There’s a Fifth ’Orseman an’ his name’s “Apathy”. He flicked the little flame on the lighter, glanced at Fuller.

But Fuller shrugged, and pointedly turned his attention back to the screen.

The Boss said, cool and clear, “Quite apart from the collateral damage, Ecko killed fourteen people, one of them an approved Pilgrim medic —”

“An armed-to-the-teeth combat medic with an ’ypo fetish —”

“A trail of bodies, and a media circus. I don’t appreciate having to tidy that sort of a mess.” Her profile was perfect, pure and cold. “Unless you two have anything to add, this hearing has one conclusion.”

Fuck.

Thinking hard now, Lugan chewed stray tobacco.

Bloody Ecko. The little man was a genius — an erratic, irritating, indispensable fucking genius. He’d got a smart mouth and a ready wit, and a thing for practical jokes — in the three months he’d been with Lugan, he’d grown on the cell team like a particularly virulent form of mould.

Shit!

He wasn’t going to let her do this.

Aloud, Lugan said, “Without Ecko, we’d have fuck all. No info, no lead on Grey, a boot up our collective arse-crack.”

The Boss’s flawless face gave the faintest hint of a smile.

“Without Collator’s clean-up,” she said, “your collective arse-crack would be sitting on a cold metal bench. And that would be the fun just beginning. Ecko has a peculiar charisma, certainly, and I know you’re fond of him —”

“’E did the job.” Lugan gripped the dog-end between yellow-stained thumb and forefinger and blew a long, dirty plume of smoke. “You know I need ’im — ’e’s deniable, ’e can do the shit I can’t. My ’ands stay clean.”

“Unless they’re covered in bits of medic.” The lights on her flawless face changed, shadows flickered and cycled.

Her skin was shifting with mottle like Ecko’s. With a grin like a rusty knife, Lugan flicked the lighter’s wheel with a tiny, metallic chink. Nothin’ like takin’ a trip down Irony Lane...

“I need ’im.” Lugan blew the flame out and dropped the lighter back in the pocket of his old denim cut-down. “I want ’im on my team.”

“Do your team want him?”

“’E needs family,” Lugan said. “We —”

“He has family.” The Boss cut him short. “His mother still lives in London. The charity she founded isn’t large, but it operates. His siblings have lives and families that are easily traceable. He had a solid and loving —”

“Four bleedin’ half-sisters, an’ a storybook wicked stepdad. It’s enough to make anyone retreat into a world of comicbook ’eroics.”

“Yes, but I question his ability to come out.” Her voice hinted at a steel edge. “He’s critically damaged, socially certifiable and an unnecessary risk to my security and yours. You’re a radical.”

“I’m a businessman —”

“But Ecko’s insane.”

“Yeah.” Lugan leaned forward, he wasn’t backing down from this. “’E’s also a fuckin’ gem.” He coughed smoke, inhaled harder. “’E got a lead on Doc Grey — got a location! We can get that bastard, kick Pilgrim where it ’urts.” In an “up yours” gesture, he tapped his ash into the glass carafe on the table.

There was a tiny, defiant hiss.

“Lugan.” Almost regretfully, the Boss said, “I know why you’ve taken to Ecko so strongly. He’s the part of you that you miss, the part that Pilgrim’s new society has taken from you. You’ve learned to conform — at least as far as you have to. Ecko...” She trailed off into a pale, perfect shrug. “...Hasn’t.”

Conform, my arse. Goaded now, Lugan marshalled his assault.

“Yeah, maybe I was like that once — no fuckin’ brakes.” His tone revved like a gunned engine. “It’s why I understand ’im — I get it. But think — just think what ’e could bring down!”

“Us?” Her tinkling laugh was ice-cold; she almost turned to face them. Lugan held himself still, lungs full of oily smoke. Her chin was lifted, the lights tinged with colours, tantalising hints of shapes that teased her perfect, ageless skin.

She said, “Your faith in him is touching.” Light and laughter pulsed again. “But I think his presence affects your decisions. If he won’t follow orders, then I can’t use him. And neither can you.”

Lugan glowered. “We got the location of Grey’s lair. You know Ecko’s gotta do this...”

The Boss inhaled, mustering patience. “Don’t be ridiculous. If the data you’ve given me clears, then this may be one of the single most important penetrations we’ve ever attempted. Ecko’s Tech was one of the doctors that went renegade when Pilgrim took over. What she did to him has damaged his mental stability beyond repair. We can’t let him handle something like this — we send in a full team.”

“Bollocks,” Lugan said again. He dumped the dog-end in the carafe and exhaled a double lungful of oily smoke. “That’ll just be a mess. ’E can do this. In an’ out. Quick an’ clean. Recon first — full stealth. No muss, no fuss.”

The lights on the Boss’s face were moving more swiftly. “Your loyalty is impressive, but —”

“But I’ve never quit on a mate an’ I never will. That’s why I’ve got this.” From beneath his t-shirt, he produced the half-black, half-white symbol that marked him as a ranking member of the Boss’s organisation. “It says you trust me to run my ops, my way.”

“Of course I trust you. But...” She gave a tight sigh, tucked her hair behind her ear in a gesture that was oddly girlish. “This job is imperative.”

“An’ ’e can do it — better than any fucker else!” Lugan pressed the point. “Three months! He’s done his prospectin’ —”

“The days of your bike gangs are gone, Lugan.” She tapped her lips with her finger, long nail gleaming.

The days of your bike gangs...

Suddenly robbed of words, Lugan eyed the faded-blue ink that decorated his muscled forearms — a reminder of the way things had been before Pilgrim’s Fifth Horseman had doled out the pharmaceuticals and smothered the world in happy grey smog.

The days of your bike gangs...

The ink reminded him who he was — who he’d been. It was youth and fire, experience and wisdom. Not only was he Alexander David Eastermann, retired biker, he was still the Lugan he’d once been.

When the world’d had the time for such things.

Tapping her index finger on her chin, she said, “I will admit that Ecko’s fear of authority means his hatred of Pilgrim is sincere. And he remains remarkably untouched by the changes of today’s society.” Her eyes flickered as though she was watching something. “Eliza’s initial psych report details the massive damage inflicted by his Tech — he calls her ‘Mom’?” Her eyebrow raised slightly. “She also lists the physical and neurological adjustments he bears — and some very interesting psych reactions to his being effectively more than human.” A smile touched her lips. “When so many people are now less.”

Lugan said absolutely nothing. Unless he missed his guess, she was right on the fucking verge...

“All right — the details on Grey’s location are cleared. Collator gives me 84.61 per cent success if Ecko runs solo reconnaissance and retrieval.”

Lugan said, “An’ if he don’t?”

Her smile was cool. “Significantly less.”

The lights shifted more swiftly, Collator was irrefutable. Lugan planted a boot against the table edge, pushed the chair back and stood up.

“If ’e succeeds —”

“Lugan, I’ve spent over a decade working against the world that Pilgrim has wrought here, fighting for the return of our social freedom, warts and all. If he succeeds, Eliza will run her full — and proper — psychological diagnosis. She’ll design her Virtual Rorschach just for him, and he’ll get the treatment he actually needs. If he fails —”

“If ’e fucks this up, I’ll slit ’is throat myself. I already said so.”

In the silence that followed, he became aware that the Boss had turned her face, ever so slightly. She was looking over her bare shoulder at him in a manner that was almost... flirtatious.

“Lugan, you have so much alpha you leave a bollock dent in your fuel tank — but even you may find that difficult.”

“He’s my respo —”

“Collator will process and download the full mission briefing to Fuller at 21:46.” She turned back. “Ecko will move at 23:33. If he fails this mission, he’s mine. Go back to the Bike Lodge, Mister Eastermann, and explain to him, in words of one syllable or less, what I have just told you — and what will happen if he messes up again. You say you can manage him? Go and prove it.”

The screen went blank.

In the sudden darkness, Fuller’s voice came over their personal link. Do you trust this, Luge? She could as easily set him up...

Lugan didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure he could.

2: RECONNAISSANCE

PILGRIM PHARMACEUTICALS RESEARCH FACILITY, LONDON

Ecko crouched against the back wall of the roof garden.

The cold March wind shrieked the length of the Thames, driving the grey water to white froth. The weather had grounded drones and aircars; on Blackfriars Bridge rain slashed viciously sideways into bright glass. Up here, acrylic greenery was driven to madness by the howling weather, it thrashed round where he hid as if it were trying to give him away.

He’d been cornered like a fucking rat — stuck here, with no way out of the shit Lugan’d landed him in.

He’d like to see Collator’s percentage on this.

Ecko’s recon was fucked and now he was trapped, eight storeys above the sidewalk, with no firearm, no aural link and no radio. The wall of the building below him was sheer glass, running with rain — too tough to break and too smooth for his vacuum suckers to hold. His usual Spidey tactics useless, the only way out was past the guard-’bot that blocked the stairwell door.

Yeah, like that’s gonna happen any time soon...

Through the rain, he could barely see it. Like his suckers, his oculars were trashed by the weather — the ’bot was a dark-grey blur against a bright-grey background. It’d set up camp like it was waiting for the opening of a BiFrost gig. Watching, Ecko hunched against the wall and wondered if Lugan would send the cavalry in time.

Salva, goon commander, knew he was up here. She was coming.

And once she found him, he was fucking toast.

“I know you can do this,” Lugan’d told him quietly after the initial briefing. “But listen up. This run is just recon — you get in, you get out. No mess. Fuller uploads the report at 06:48. Don’t fuck this up.”

Ecko’d barely listened; he’d been so fucking cocky. He’d been given a chance to show what he could really do — and he’d grabbed at it like a dangled carrot.

“Like I’m as dumb as you look.”

“I mean it.” One of Lugan’s hands had clamped hard on his shoulder, holding him back. “You don’t understand ’ow important this is — an’ I ain’t explainin’ it, not now. Behave yourself.”

Yeah right, Ecko told the memory. That’s why you didn’t gimme a radio you —

One of the potted trees went over with crash, ceramic shattering. A blood-red sheet of target-scan seared through the rain.

Ecko dropped flat in the lee of the wall and belly-crawled backwards, the puddles soaking his skin. The scan passed over him.

Jeez, he thought at the ’bot, Get it through your metallic brain willya, there’s no one fucking up here...

It was his only plan: if the ’bot scanned one hundred per cent of the potential hiding places and found nothing, it might just go for a cappuccino.

All right, already, so it was a long shot.

He’d thought this job was going to be so fucking simple!

Collator had pulled everything it could on Doctor Slater Grey; it had plotted Ecko’s approach carefully. They’d seen sat-cover of the South Bank — cafés, bars, galleries, theatres. Tourists and yuppies, he’d thought, a piece of piss, placid after dark. Grey’s pad was a zigzag of blue glass rising above its surroundings.

Getting in had just been too fucking easy.

He’d been a flicker of obscurity; they’d never seen him coming. His chameleon skin tone concealed him from visual security, his small physique radiated no heat, his stealth-cloak blurred his outline. His black-on-black eyes and black grin reflected no light. Mobile or stationary, he made no noise unless he chose to, he left no scent —

That fucking ’bot was moving.

Flicking his vision over to starlites, Ecko struggled to make it out. It showed up like a blotch of grey-green, one arm rising to point across the landing pad. Through the screaming weather, he made out a faint whirring noise.

Like a gyrocopter. Or an arm-mounted —

Shit...!

Unable to do anything else, he hugged the soaking gravel and prayed to the Bogeyman for luck.

The noise was phenomenal. Muzzle flashes dazzled his adjusted vision; rapid explosions chewed chunks out of the ferrocrete wall, dust and debris covered him. Already battered by the gale, the trees were shredded, pots exploding into splinters. Flying shards slashed at his face.

It stopped.

Breathless in sudden quiet, Ecko realised he was okay.

His first thought — Missed me, sucker! — was followed by a furtive scan of the sky. Was Grey two cogs short of a full fucking gearbox or what? Belly-flat on the freezing rooftop, he wondered who the cops would shoot first.

And if he’d get the chance to explain how the fuck he’d gotten himself up here...

* * *

Initial recon found Grey’s lair just as the briefing had described — soft carpeting to cushion footfalls, framed prints to inspire loyalty, a join-the-dots of pretty, neon pinpoints to light the corridors and conceal the security.

Shadow within shadow, Ecko waited, counting the time readout in his field of vision, watching the mottles of his skin shifting like disease. His black grin went unseen, his superiority unspoken. He mentally marked the IR trips, the UV tags. Then, without a breath of sound, he slid past the cameras and headed upwards.

He was the Bogeyman, the nightmare, the fantasy. Grey could dream on in all his plush Pilgrim naïveté...

Until — boom — it was too late.

Goons passed him on a back stairwell; he heard them long before they came close. Their kit was good — gas-powered, close-assault weapons, nerve-contacted shades that imitated ocular scans — but they sauntered oblivious, unaware of the dark spider that crouched on their dark wall.

Ecko watched them as they passed him and then strolled, ignorant, round the angle of the stairway.

After a moment, their booted feet paused.

“Stairwell clear; time 01:14, moving onto floor three.” A door opened and closed.

Then silence.

Over his head, the camera whirred softly as it changed angle. He lifted his chin and pulled a face at it.

Timing his movement carefully, he landed silently behind its arc and flitted, ghostlike, up the stairs.

Straight to Grey’s nerve centre.

Yeah, he thought, this is like takin’ cellphones from street kids. Lugan had made such a fucking fuss — and Pilgrim’s security stank. He was amazed at how easily he’d reached his target; how simple it was going to be to penetrate Grey’s innermost defences.

Just like this.

At the top of the stairs, the door to Grey’s lab. Beside it, a small security alcove with a mirrored back wall. The briefing had said it would be occupied.

Sitting in a swivel chair: another goon — weapon, shades and earpiece.

Standing, arms crossed: a small, blonde female, Slavic cheekbones and hard eyes — Salva, goon commander.

The third was tall, skinny and long haired. There were flesh tunnels in his earlobes and knotwork tats down one side of his neck. Over a black tee and jeans he wore a lab coat that looked like he’d slept in it. Half a reefer was firmly stuck between his fingers as he pointed at one of the flatscreens.

Brilliant, radical, total fucking sell-out: Doctor Slater Grey.

Behave yourself, Lugan had said.

Got no radio, asshole, Ecko told the memory. Howya gonna check up on me?

It was just too tempting. Coaxed by the apparent simplicity of Grey’s security, Ecko gathered his concentration and focused on the mirror.

He began to breathe.

Slowly, softly.

He breathed through the back of his throat and nose: a heavy, wet noise that was half Darth Vader and half rotting-liquid-corpse. It was a dank sound, a sound of absolute darkness.

And, like the rising miasma of something dead on a hot day, it was getting worse.

The goon was closest, he shivered and rubbed his shoulders.

“What the hell was that?”

Ecko had practised this as a kid, sending his clamouring, spoiled sisters screaming for Mommy. He focused again, staring intently.

Raised the volume.

It was desolate, empty breathing, spectre cold and carrying a hollow note of laughter. The goon shoved his chair backwards, bringing his carbine up to cover the mirror.

Ecko gave him a flash of red eyes.

As dumb as you fucking like, he fired.

The mirror frosted, opaqued with cracks. Grey swore.

No fool, Salva had spun to cover the landing. She barked commands, clipped and cold. The goon just stood up and turned, wide-eyed at his own stupidity.

A moment later, the heavy boots of the patrol were pounding back up the stairs.

* * *

On the roof, the minigun suppressed again, heavy calibre rounds detonating further along the wall — it was shooting blind. Ecko snuck a second glance upwards, but the only light was the rotating LED that topped the Tate Leisure...

No cops. No ’copters, no aircars, no drones.

So — what? Grey could just let off suppression bursts with miniguns whenever he liked?

The firing stopped. Through the howling weather, Ecko heard the whirring of the barrels wind down, then cease.

Yeah, he thought, maybe that ain’t so smart, RoboCop. Now, what else you got?

Their impasse was unchanged: the ’bot couldn’t see him, he couldn’t get past it. Without Lugan to run a distraction, Ecko was going to be stuck here when Salva and her goons reached the top of the stairwell...

Where the hell had that biker bastard got to?

Ecko wondered if Collator knew that Grey’d got a fucking Takeshimi combat machine. Lugan’s Tech had been babbling the other day, “Experimental,” he’d said. “Not ready to leave Japan,” he’d said...

So what was this one — on fucking vacation?

The vertical red slice of the scanner swept again. The rain glistened like falling blood.

It knew where he was, huddled in the shredded remains of the roof garden — it was just gonna keep scanning ’til it got him. Salva couldn’t be far behind... Lugan was so not gonna reach him in time.

Where was Collator when you needed it? With its percentages and fucking scenario analysis? Ecko held down a sense of panic, he didn’t want to know the odds on what he was about to do.

You’re not, he told himself.

Yeah, I am.

The wall behind him had been shattered, pieces of rubble were still tumbling to the sidewalk far below. No security defended the roof’s edge. Not thinking about the drop, not thinking about it, he let his outrage at his own stupidity focus into white determination.

Swallowing a mouthful of insanity, he slid backwards over the edge.

There was no fucking way he was letting some experimental tin can get the better of the Bogeyman.

* * *

The goons burst, breathless, onto the top of the stairs — and they’d found only Salva. If she’d heard their confusion she ignored it, she was scanning, slit-eyed and unfooled.

The landing was the size of a food-cube; if there was something here, she appeared intent on finding it.

She glared round the walls, studying every millimetre. When she found nothing, she looked up, raising the muzzle of her rifle.

Still nothing.

Her expression narrowed.

Gotcha, bitch! With a grim smile, Ecko watched her ocular scanners flicker. Less than a metre above her head, he was backed into a corner, crouched like a nightmare with his shoulders crunched against the ceiling.

Her gaze went straight over him.

He didn’t dare move, she’d feel the air. He stayed as still as stone — even when she squeezed her trigger and loosed a short, sharp burst of ammunition directly upwards.

He stilled his breath. Dust and plaster scattered.

“Sal!” Grey stubbed his reefer out on the security desk. “Don’t trash the place. You lot, get a grip. Maynard, stay here and watch those readouts. You two, keep an eye on the stairs. Anything comes near you — shoot it.”

“Doc, if the building’s compromised, shouldn’t we —”

“If you patrol, it’ll take you out one by one. Stay put — and stay together.” He shrugged off the lab coat, revealing pale arms and more tattoos, blue with age. Old needle marks decorated his forearms. “Sal, time to hit the panic room.”

Ecko stayed still as the chemist moved to open his sanctuary door. Beside him, a hatchet-faced Salva still watched the ceiling.

As the goons settled down to squabbling about who’d seen what, the door into Grey’s lab swung open, then slowly closed.

Before it resealed, Ecko was through it.

* * *

One hand.

Two.

Flattened by the wind and hammered by the driving, freezing rain, Ecko clung to the edge of the roof.

The flexiweight in the cloak hem kept it from tangling his legs but its folds billowed and flapped as if threatening to drag him loose. His hands strained to hold him — his reinforced skin didn’t cover his fingertips and they stung with pain on the broken stone.

Ecko’s Tech — he called her “Mom” — had fashioned him many things. Laying a complex system of wiring into the motor nerves of his hands, she’d turned his fingers into inhumanly accurate callipers. Arrayed with tactile sensors, his bare fingertips could tell him the location of wiring in a wall, the movement of tumblers in a lock, the exact moment the breath stopped in someone’s throat...

But they also hurt like bastards if anything damaged them. He could feel all of it: every lump, every splinter, every crack, every chip and fragment of the broken wall. He could have mapped the destruction to the last half nanometre — the pain etched the landscape of the stonework into the blood on his fingertips.

His resolve set like cold steel, Ecko swung sideways along the roof’s edge — away from the can’s target arc. His jaw jumped with the hurt of every handhold, but he kept his oculars focused on the dirty, pitted ferrocrete before him. He closed his ears to the demented yowl of the wind, ignored the rain as it battered into his flesh. If he fell...

...He was playing Bogeyman, playing Bogeyman for real. Bogeyman didn’t mess up — and he didn’t fall off the fucking wall. For Bogeyman to end up as Pavement Pizza was inconceivable.

He sniggered like the first sign of panic.

One hand then two.

His feet swung loose, billowing uselessly as if his legs were broken. He could get no purchase on the slippery glass. After another metre, the pain in his fingertips was sparking stars across his vision. His hands were cramping, his arms and shoulders shuddering with strain. As the hurt increased, his fingers lied to him. A whole chunk of wall came away under his grip and he dangled precariously from one hand, the wind blinding him with his cloak hood.

For chrissakes, he thought to himself, get a fucking grip.

He sniggered aloud — then strangled it before it rose to a scream.

Desperate fear gave him strength. With a simian swing, he secured the second handhold and hung there, sick with relief. He dared not raise his head above the lip of the wall — that fucking can would blow it clean off.

Another two metres and he’d reach the corner.

* * *

Ecko’s briefing had covered only the corporate basics — approach, building security, office space — it hadn’t listed the contents of Grey’s lab. That shit was target numero uno on the list of stuff Ecko had to recon.

Gotcha!

Behind him, the door clanged shut and sealed with a slight hiss. Oblivious to the additional presence, Grey and Salva headed swiftly away across the gloom.

Leaving Ecko crouched at the bottommost edge of a nightmare cavern.

He’d been expecting the usual — some elaborate medical setup. Computers, cryogenics, glass tubing, dry ice, some twisted lab assistant with genetics issues... The span of the entire building and four floors in height, this place had none of these things.

It looked more like a prison.

In the moment of confusion, he paused to check for security — just scanning the gloom as though nothing was wrong.

And then he realised what he’d found.

It left him breathless — staring above and around him in a choking swell of awe, fear and scorn — a rising, throat-closing claustrophobia that all but had him scrabbling at the door.

Down each long wall, stacked like crates and stretching into the gloom, there were chambers. The layout was utterly familiar — and terrifying in its banality. Now utilised by every major corporation to house its staff, these were bog standard, completely recognisable Human Resource Containers — commonplace city habitation, sold on by Pilgrim to the big corporations. They were marketed as “bolt-holes” to those that lived in them — known as “shit-holes” to those that managed not to. Each had a bed, a cupboard, a toilet, a fridge and a console loaded with The World of Anywhere-But-Here... Yeah, each one had everything the mindless worker drone needed.

Grey and Salva had purposefully vanished. Ecko didn’t care. Hunched under the weight of the room, he stared from door to door to door, his lungs filling with repulsion and horror. This was social perfection — pure order. This was what Pilgrim strived for, this was how they’d become the single most powerful corporation in the world. They’d delivered a quiescent, contented population, a totally peaceful and crime-free society.

Yeah right. What they’d delivered was fifty million little plastic bottles labelled “Mood Stabiliser”.

Instant contentment. Happiness in tablet form.

Yeah, it may as well have been fucking cryogenics, Ecko reckoned. At least the bastards shut in those didn’t have to work a nine-to-six.

The place stank like a week of backed-up shit. As Ecko remembered to breathe, the stink was a sharp punch in the nose. He found the room smelled of piss, unwashed skin, rotting food... It reeked like a bunch of junkies had been using it as a crash space.

Ecko quelled his anger and checked again for the room’s security. Then, as wary as a black-eyed rodent, he moved to the door of the first shit-hole.

He’d had a horrible fucking idea he knew what was coming.

* * *

At last, Ecko reached the corner of the building.

Feeling the openness of the sky to his side, he hung there for a moment, willing himself to continue. His blood screamed louder than the wind in his ears.

As he eased precariously round the angle, the weather hit him like a train and he found himself scrabbling frantically for a foothold. From being plastered to his back, his cloak became a parachute, pulling at his throat, hips and elbows — its loose folds inflated and the wind shrilled through carefully seamed rents.

For an instant, it nearly ripped him clean off the side of the building.

The thing was a mass of folds and slits and loose ends of fabric... all now trying to pull him loose. Ecko twisted his back to the wind and the thing deflated like a dying animal.

His fingertips were slippery, leaving bloodstains; he could feel the palms of his hands oozing with stickiness. He didn’t dare release a hand to move onwards and the cloak was too complicated to release, so he hung, pain, fear and savage resolve all yammering for attention in his head.

Whatever you do, he told himself, don’t fucking look down.

Fucking Collator and his fucking odds, fucking Lugan and his fucking plans. You get in, you get the data stick, you get out... Yeah, right — more like, you get in, you get screwed, you end up target practice for a Takeshimi tin can that’s not even supposed to be here...

His feet slipped and skidded; his arms and fingers cramped like he’d never uncurl them. The cloak still tugged at him. He shook the cowl from his head and the wind slammed into his cheek.

The temperature was dropping — the rain was turning to sleet.

With an effort that nearly broke him, he swung his weight into motion once more — one hand then two, just a little further...

* * *

The first shit-hole wasn’t locked.

On the bed, the recumbent figure wasn’t restrained. As the door inched open, she turned her head to smile, although she didn’t sit up.

Her cupboard door stood ajar, spilling soullessly creased garments onto the carpet tiles. Her gaming console was on standby, the eyewear discarded. Beside her was a metal mug — as Ecko slipped around the door, he saw it contained puddles of white, furred mould.

Stink and revulsion flooding his system, he realised she hadn’t left the bed in days.

But — she wasn’t restrained. No one was forcing her to stay. She was lying there because... his heart cowered in his chest when the full depth of Grey’s achievement hit him... she was lying there because she wanted to.

She was happy.

Peace: a population that voluntarily incarcerated itself, that had no interest or need outside the workplace —

No passion, no fear, no desire. No anger. No frustration.

They didn’t even know to fight back; they no longer cared.

They wanted nothing. They were just content.

Stealth forgotten, Ecko stood in the centre of the little box, his blood congealed to fury. Around him, above him, across the room from him there were more boxes and more boxes...

How many people had Grey got in here — his control experiments, his gauges? Were they better than this? Were they worse?

The woman was — what — maybe thirty-five? Her well-cut suit was crumpled to a rag, her well-cut hair grown to an unruly tangle. She had clothes, food, entertainment — a door out of her box whenever she chose to take it...

But she was fine where she was.

Ecko found his face twisting round a sneer that felt like pity.

With a red flash of contempt, he wanted to make her react, to defy her own conditioning and stick one in Grey’s throat. He pulled the door from the cupboard, yanked out her garments, tore them to strips, kicked over her fridge... She followed him with her eyes, smiling at him.

He turned and snarled at her to move, to get the hell up, to say something, to cry, to curse, to fight, to beg him for help.

Her mouth moved, but it was only for a moment. She returned it to the smile.

With a short, sharp impact, he punched her in the face.

Her nose crunched, her lip split; blood splashed across her skin. She spluttered surprised red bubbles. Her hands half rose in an effort to cover her head against further blows.