Authors: Danie Ware
Ecko Endgame (52 page)
With an effort that made him curse, splinters of words spat through gritted black teeth, he heaved the ’bot bodily past the enforcer, at the curtain behind her.
Watched it rip the curtain free, and tumble, tangled, onto the floor.
And his answer was there.
Right in his face.
Sleeping like some fucking giant cherub.
No cortical plug, no ’trodes, no body covered in lights.
Just a drip in his arm.
Holy motherfucking shit.
But he’d known this, all along; he’d fucking
known
it!
The sleeping figure was a man. Blond, bearded, tattooed, built like that well-known brick shithouse. His stubbled scalp was wispy with growing hair, and though his face was turned away, Ecko didn’t need the shiny bald spot to tell him who it was.
Known this all along.
Lugan.
Lugan, who’d taken on Grey, who’d been there in The Wanderer. Lugan, who’d saved everything by finding Ecko just in time to kick his sorry ass…
Vision Quest.
Ecko glanced back at the fizzing screen, at the ghosts that still lurked within. He had no words, only this huge feeling of things locking into place, like everything was suddenly making sense.
He didn’t understand it completely, not yet, but any minute now…
“You sent him in after me.”
“No, Ecko, I didn’t.” Eliza’s voice was alight with tension. She looked over at Ducarl, held up a hand. She seemed to be choosing her words very carefully. “I saw him but I didn’t put him there. You can see for yourself – he’s not wired. There’s no way he could have shared your program. Lugan was spiked, hit with Lysergic acid diethylamide, not life-threatening, but enough to drop a bodyplating—”
“Bullshit,” Ecko said. He was trembling. “He was in there with me.”
“That’s not possible.” Her words were laden with fear.
Shaking now, sick with comedown, Ecko snarled at her, “He came in
after
me, you dozy bitch. Without him, I’d’ve failed the whole goddamn fuckin’ thing!”
She spread her hands, said, “Sometimes, the subconscious mind, in times of extreme stress, conjures—”
“Fucking horseshit. Either you put him there or he… Jesus, LSD? He was
tripping
?”
And yet, his dream was the same as mine. And that means…
“Ecko.” Eliza used his name like she’d grabbed his jaw and forced him to look at her. “Your program is a fiction, unique, created only for you, responsive only to you. Lugan was hallucinating after a drugs overdose.”
…it means it’s all connected. There’s more than one way in. And that means…
His mind clamouring impossibilities, Ecko ignored her. He was heading for the curtain, the fallen robot doc.
That means it’s all real.
Inside and outside, both the same. You fuckin’ said it yourself.
You really
did
create a world.
The thought made him want to laugh, to cheer, to find his friends and embrace them. To tell them, “It’s all right, it’s all right!”
She said, “You have to let this go. Let your program run its last scenes, and let it finish.”
He grinned. “I don’t think so.”
“Ecko, you need closure.”
He gave her the finger. “Close this.”
Her face tightened. She ran her hand through a mass of hair. “Please don’t make me do this.”
“You? Denying responsibility? Yeah right. Do your worst.”
“If I have to.” She nodded at Ducarl, and Ecko turned.
He saw the muzzle of the .357 come up, just like he’d once watched the whirling barrels of a minigun, seventy-six hours and a lifetime ago. He saw the crosshairs in her shades, saw them target, saw the lock, saw the pressure of the enforcer’s trigger finger. He was moving, reflexive, but without the adrenaline, he’d never fucking make it…
Over his head, he saw the flatscreens change. He saw the vastness of the dead Varchinde as if he were standing on the slopes of the western Kartiah. He saw the sunrise streak the soil in pink and yellow and gold.
It was beautiful.
And down there, he could see growth – only a little – but there were tiny uncoilings of green, bright fronds of hope scattered across endless death. The sky was blue and the clouds were white.
The spring would come, after all.
Because they had won.
He didn’t feel the bullet as it went through his chest. He didn’t feel himself fall back, his arms flying. He didn’t know that he’d hit the floor, his own blood puddling round him. He didn’t feel any of it, hell, it didn’t matter now. The hospital, the enforcer, the shrink, the room – the hurt – were all long gone.
He didn’t see the little nerve-lights extinguishing, one after another like stars tumbling from the sky.
There was no pain, no regret.
Because there, far out across the empty plain, the flags were flying from the top of Fhaveon city, and the world would be born anew.
THE BIKE LODGE, LONDON
The Bike Lodge was closed.
Metal shutters had sealed off the end of the railway arch and police barriers had sealed off the end of the road. Since the disappearance of the business’s owner, the London Met had been all too pleased to remove one of the last free thorns that dug into their perfectly orderly side.
If any of them missed their custom chops, side projects that occupied garages and gleamed pointless on Sunday afternoons, then they were too smart to say so.
But Tarquinne Magdalene Gabriel was not concerned with the London Met.
Instead, she stood in the centre of the bleak and echoing space. She inhaled the smell of oil and scanned the cleaner patches on the walls where the posters had been torn away.
She tongued the diamond in her tooth, a reflexive habit when thinking.
Her ploy had succeeded.
Almost.
Everything had fallen into place – her brother had been put through the Rorschach program, and Lugan had been fool enough to touch the needle that she’d passed him. These two facts meant that Tam – Ecko – had successfully run the test gauntlet against Grey, and the program to take him down should run smoothly with what it had learned.
But Ecko had never recovered, been shot as a liability. She had no real feelings for her brother either way, but his loss was a nuisance.
She walked across the stained concrete floor, her heels clicking. The air was cold, and she wrapped her coat around her tightly with one arm as she used the other to push open the door to Lugan’s office.
It, too, was empty. Even the heavy and scarred desk had gone.
Fragments of forgotten paper fluttered in the sudden breeze – but there was nothing in here of any use whatsoever.
Checking annoyance, Tarquinne turned away. As she did so, a glint of something caught her eye. And there, in the corner of the room, half-buried under the tumbleweeds of garbage and dust, she saw the gleam of chrome.
She knew what it was, and bent to pick it up.
Blew the dust from it.
Thoughtfully, she read the inscription, and then flicked the little wheel. The yellow flame was bright and immediate, warm on her face.
Tarquinne Gabriel snapped the lighter shut, and she smiled.
DANIE WARE
is the publicist and event organiser for cult entertainment retailer Forbidden Planet. She has worked closely with a wide range of genre authors and has been immersed in the science-fiction and fantasy community for the past decade. An early adopter of blogging, social media and a familiar face at conventions, she appears on panels as an expert on genre marketing and retailing. Follow her on twitter
@Danacea
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