Chapter 20

I awoke into a realm of pain. The rest of the world and its sensations were in a haze, but the pain was agonizingly clear. My ears rang like a church house bell, and my head throbbed as if there was a tiny gnome in there pounding at the inside of my skull with a sledge hammer. I tried to say something, to tell the little fragger to slot off, but all that came out was a hoarse croak.

There was a voice somewhere nearby. "He's coming around."

Something touched my neck. A few seconds later, the little bastard inside my head began to lose steam and my senses gradually began to clear.

"The stimulant patch should have taken effect. He'll be cognizant in a few seconds."

In my addled state, I briefly wondered what cogni-whatever meant. Finally I decided to open my eyes and see who that was talking. As I cracked my eyelids, I caught sight of a Hispanic man with dark sunglasses standing in front of me next to a blonde man in a suit.

"Who…" The rest of the words wouldn't come out.

The one in the sunglasses knew what I meant, though. He smiled, but for some reason I didn't think it was sincere. "I'm Jesus. Don't you remember me after all we've been through?"

Jesus? Was I dead after all? I glanced around the bare room I found myself sitting in. "I thought Heaven would be prettier."

The smile dissolved from his face. And then he slapped me. My face stung, and I would have fallen out of my seat if I hadn't been tied to it. The combined realization sobered me up real quick.

"Ow," I mumbled through the blood oozing from my split lip.

"Yeah, 'ow.' After what you did to me, I figure I owe you one."

I suddenly noticed the large welt on his temple, remembering where it had come from and why I put it there. But more than that, I noticed the gun in his hand—my gun.

He held it aloft, watching as its chrome surface glinted in the bare florescent light. "With this bullet, I thee wed," he intoned. "Catchy. I wonder, do you even know what it means?" He laughed at some unspoken joke. "You know, some people in my position might 'wed' you so to speak to pay you back in full." He pointed the gun at me, cocking the hammer with an ominous click. "You know, for trying to kill me and all. It would be rather poetic justice to be killed with your own gun, don't you think?"

He smiled, but I knew that under those glasses his eyes weren't smiling at all. They were as cold as ebony and just as expressionless.

Finally he laughed and lowered the weapon. "Lucky for you, I don't hold grudges. Like I told you before, it's just business. You're worth far more to us alive."

"Speaking of business," said Blondie for the first time, "Let's get down to it."

Jesus nodded. "Yes, by all means." He turned to me. "We're going to need your help in finding the rest of your merry little band."

"Frag that. I won't tell you a damn thing." I tried to spit at him, but all I managed to do was dribble down my chin.

He gave me a patronizing look. "Poor boy, you actually think you have a choice in the matter."

When I didn't seem to get it, Blondie gave me a sad smile—the kind a veterinarian gives a dying dog just before he jams the needle in. Then he advanced, arms stretching out toward my face.

I tried to resist, straining against my bonds like a drug-crazed junkie. It was no good, though, and Blondie latched onto either side of my head, mumbling words under his breath. I tried to pull away, but his fingers were like a steel vise on my skull. It felt like they were digging through my scalp and into my brain, rifling through the contents of my memory like someone digging through a filing cabinet. I fought. God knows I did, but no matter how hard I struggled to push that presence out of my mind, it pushed back harder. Finally I gave up, unable to prevent the inevitable. A few seconds later, it was over. Blondie released my head and stood up. I sagged forward, weary beyond description.

Blondie allowed himself a tight smile. "I know where they are."

"Good," Jesus replied. "Once we get rid of this one and his little friend, we'll pay them a visit." He turned back to me, pulling an adhesive patch from his pocket. I tried to resist, but it was no use. He pressed it to the side of my neck, still smiling all the while. In a matter of seconds, my skin had soaked up the drugs like a sponge, and I found myself spiraling back downward into darkness.

I awoke again. Pain seemed to have become my wakeup call of choice. It was the same as before, except the gnome had changed positions, leaving my head in favor of my wrist. He was up there, sawing away at my meat hand with glee, like some unwanted extension of my psyche trying to sever itself from its creator. I tried to move, to swat the little bugger away, but I could hardly flinch. My arms felt like they were being held down by some interminable weight. I cracked an eye open, glancing upward to try and locate the sonuvabitch. If I couldn't be rid of him, I at least wanted to see what my tormentor looked like. But he wasn't there. Instead there was a plastic tie that had been looped around my hands and snagged on what looked to be an old fashioned meat hook. The bonds dug into my meat wrist so deeply that a small trickle of blood had already begun to dribble down my forearm.

I suddenly came to the realization that we were moving. The sound of traffic around me and the slight sensation of swaying told me that we were in some sort of moving vehicle. It also told me that I was suspended from the ceiling; my feet couldn't touch the ground. I groaned as we hit a bump, my body swaying as the tie dug in deeper.

"P, are you awake?" a familiar voice asked from behind me.

"Blitz, is that you?" I managed to say despite a severe case of cotton mouth. I tried to twist around to look at him, but with the way I was hanging I couldn't see.

"Yeah, it's me."

"Where are we?"

"In an old meat wagon of some sort."

My stomach lurched. "Organ leggers?"

With all the medical advances of the last few decades, organ replacement surgery in the year 2059 was little more complicated than outpatient surgery. As a result, a thriving illegal trade had cropped up around the business. Many a street rat had gone missing only to have their organs turn up in the body of someone else.

"No," he said, assuaging my fears. "I don't think so. When they loaded us up, they said something about holding us at Ayanami."

"Oh."

"But y'know, you'd think they could come up with a better way to haul us around."

"I think it has something to do with the pain," I said, trying to hold the emotion back from my voice. "They want to break us down."

"Well, it's working," he said, gritting his teeth.

"Hey!" a voice called out from the front of the vehicle. "Shut up back there!"

We fell silent, but not because of that. I was just too embarrassed to say anything more. My impatience had gotten us into this. I had been so angry that I couldn't think straight. The thought of that betrayal, that duplicity, had sent my emotions spinning into a delirium of rage. It was no excuse, I knew. But that had been my problem ever since I started in the Shadows. I could never separate my emotions from the job. I had a tendency of making the impersonal personal. Now, when the whole job was personal, I needed that detachment more than anything, but it just wasn't something I had in me. And because of that, I had doomed the people that put their trust in me.

"Hey P?" Blitz called softly

"Yeah?" I asked, keeping my voice lower this time.

"I think I figured it out."

"Figured what out?"

"The inscription on your gun. 'With this bullet, I thee wed.'"

I shook my head at the pure randomness of it all. "Why?"

"You told me before that if I came up with a good enough answer, you'd tell me what it meant."

"So?"

"So I think I figured it out."

I sighed and decided to humor him. "Okay, shoot."

"I think I heard it in a movie. See, they say that when you die, all of the people you killed in your lifetime become your slaves in the afterlife. So, it's like marrying yourself to someone with a bullet because they'll be attached to you forever after you're dead."

I was silent.

"So am I right?"

"No."

"Well what's it mean, then?"

I sighed. "Blitz, sometimes things don't really have a meaning. It's all just smoke and mirrors to hide the truth."

"And that is?"

I opened my mouth to respond, but I was cut off as the van slammed into something. Tires squealed and metal screeched as we came to an abrupt halt, our bodies swaying violently back and forth. A cacophony arose as the unseen motorists around us lay on their horns. Then the sound of gunfire punctuated the noise, and the din of horns was replaced by a chorus of frightened screams.

The sound of gunfire grew closer. People were running. I heard sirens in the distance. Bullets slammed into the front of the vehicle. There were gurgling screams and what sounded like a large fish flopping around in the cab. Then a gunshot sounded at the back of the van, blasting the rear door's locking mechanism. The door swung open, and a figure stepped up into the square of daylight.

I was so surprised, I couldn't respond. But Blitz could.

"Sugar!" he exclaimed.

She moved forward, stowing her Uzi and drawing a knife as she went. She had to climb up the side of the van to reach my hands, but she managed to cut away the bonds. I hit the ground in a heap, my numb legs tingling with the pain of a thousand pins and needles. I picked myself up as she began cutting down Blitz.

"How'd you find us?" I stammered, massaging my bleeding wrist.

"Rei followed you after you left the apartment. When you didn't come out of the warehouse, she figured things went badly and called me. We got here as soon as we could." Blitz flopped to the ground and she stooped, helping him to his feet. "We don't have time to chat. Lonestar will be here any minute. Come on." She tossed me the Uzi and drew a Predator pistol before heading out the back of the truck.

The bright daylight outside blinded me for a second before my cybereyes compensated. As my eyes adjusted, I saw that we were in central Seattle, towers of concrete and glass rising all around us in a man-made canyon. The busy city street was choked with traffic and fleeing pedestrians. Screams filled my ears, adding to a back beat of wailing sirens.

"You sprang us in the middle of fragging Downtown?" I shouted at Sugar.

"We didn't have a choice, thanks to your little maneuver. Quit bitching and come on!"

We headed out, our feet pounding the pavement as we raced along, threading our way through the gridlocked cars toward where our van waited for us at the front of the nearby intersection. Rei stood by the opened driver's side door, a pistol in her hands as she covered our escape. I spared a glance back at the meat wagon as we went, only to see that the front end was totally smashed in. Bullet holes permeated the front windshield and blood spattered the interior, two bodies slumped inside. Shaking my head, I turned away and raced after the others.

Sugar and Blitz had already reached the van when a Lonestar patrol screeched to a halt in the intersection in front of us. I raised the submachine gun to my shoulder as an intercom blared, "Police! Give yourselves up!"

I wasn't about to give up yet. I clamped down on the trigger, concentrating on keeping the cops at bay rather than trying to kill them. The spray of bullets slammed into the front of the vehicle, punching through the hood to bounce around inside the engine cavity. The doors opened, and a pair of troopers started to pile out until another blast from the Uzi sent them scampering for cover. I let loose of another burst, shredding one of front tires before making a dash for the van.

The others were already inside the van as I clambered in and slammed the door closed. Rei sat at the driver's seat while Diana slumped in the passenger side. She had a glassy look in here eyes, and her head lolled backward against the window.

"Did it work?" she asked in a dreamy voice.

"Yeah," said Sugar. "The barrier spell worked like a charm." She patted Rei's shoulder. "Get us out of here before any more cops show up."

Rei didn't waste any time. She nodded and hit the gas, catapulting us down the road.