Jeff Somers: Electric Church

“You screwed up, Mr. Cates.”

I was on the East Side of Old New York, the original island. A dive, no roof, the worst gin I’d ever had too much of and no familiar faces around me. It was cold, and I felt feverish, sweaty-I felt like shit and I was getting worse with every cup of the dirty liquor I bought with my dwindling yen. I wasn’t sure what they made it from-paint thinner was my best guess-but it was terrible.

Immediately, the man on my right and the grizzled, one-eyed woman on my left stood up with their cups and walked away. No one else at the table even looked at me. If I got murdered sitting here they’d just roll me onto the floor and forget about me. I had no people here. It wasn’t my part of the city.

I knew the voice, though. I tightened my grip on my own cup and quickly scanned the place without turning my head. The place was packed, just like every other illegal gin joint in New York. It was just the ground floor of a ruined building, all tattered gray concrete and broken rebar, ancient graffiti and bloodstains. Next week it would be abandoned again, dusty and shadowed, and the week after that it would be another bar, serving liquor made from rubber tires or ground glass or some other nightmare. The walls all around ended in a ragged tear, the entire second floor of the building gone, torn away by riots and time and several hundred hover displacements as System Cops hunted people like me through the streets. It was filled with scavenged tables and chairs, a crazy collection of mismatched furniture and unhappy people.

“You fucked up, Mr. Cates,” the voice emphasized, and a hand fell on my shoulder.

I imagined I could feel the blade right behind me. I’d seen enough barroom executions to know the drill-guy walks up behind you, says something, one hand on your shoulder to get leverage and then a knife in the back, angled up, the victim half-paralyzed and very little blood. It wasn’t a bad move, normally-except for the little speech, which was just a waste of advantage. My eyes jumped from a pile of rocks to a pack of slope-shouldered shitkickers milling about the edges of the place to a rusted steel table with two flat metal planks welded to the legs for seats set right against the far wall. It looked sturdy enough.

Heart pounding, I took a deep breath and glanced at the security I could see. I figured it would take them about twenty seconds to get to me. I’d killed people in less time.

The bullshit, it was endless. I hadn’t had a very good night and was in no mood to watch it get worse. I didn’t move right away-assholes twitched, assholes always thought it was harder to hit a moving target and they thrashed around constantly. I knew better. I wasn’t the oldest person in the room for nothing. With his heavy hand on my shoulder, gripping tightly, trying to be intimidating, I took a few seconds to take in my surroundings.

I saw it all-every face, every position, every table, chair, or pile of rubble they were sitting on. I saw the twitchy augmented security-illegal muscles with its own alien IQ layered all over their bodies-making sure no one got crazy. I saw the red-eyed beggars eager to drain the dregs from an abandoned cup. I saw it all and fixed it in my mind, even the Monks. The Monks with their creepy plastic faces and mirrored glasses were always in these places. They were supposed to be immortal-humans who’d signed up to have their brains placed in advanced cyborg bodies, in order to pray for eternity or some such shit, and by the looks of them they believed it. Three of them were working the tables, scanning faces and talking to people about death and sin and forever.

I dismissed them; I’d heard of people messing with the Tin Men and finding out they were dangerous, vague stories of a guy who knew a guy who’d tried to rob a Monk in a dark alley and lost his arm for his trouble, or stories of people going to sleep after a bender and waking up Monked against their will the next morning-there was so much bullshit, you didn’t know what to believe, and I didn’t have time to figure it out now. I didn’t know whether to believe their spiel about “salvation through eternity” either. I figured it was best to just give them a wide berth and hope they never scanned my face.

I had the layout fixed in a moment: thirteen tables, approximately three hundred people crowded into the space, one narrow, inconvenient exit guarded by security. Probably a hidden escape-hole for the proprietors, too. The security guys weren’t much better than the customers, skillwise. One on one I wouldn’t have much trouble with them, but with a crowd and narrow doorways, they’d be trouble enough.

This was why I was still alive. Most people in my line of business, they just blazed away-all muscle and ammo. No research. No patience-they lived and died by their reflexes. Especially if their reflexes were augmented with black-market gene splices.

Me, I was tired. I was old school. I liked to use my brain a little.

I shifted to the left just a tick, brought the cup up, and splashed gin into the big guy’s eyes, and knew I’d hit the mark from the sudden squeak of surprise. I spun left and his knife flashed into the empty space in front of him. I slapped out my hand and took him by the wrist, firmly, and stood up, rolling his arm behind him as I moved, something popping loudly in his shoulder as he dropped the blade with a clatter onto the floor. I kicked at it and it disappeared, most likely plucked cleanly off the floor as it skidded by some enterprising criminal. From the look of his expensive clothes, my admirer either was rich, worked for someone rich, or was a System Security Force officer. But System Pigs didn’t need to hire guys to arrange murders; they just showed up, pinched you, and shot you in the head in some deserted alleyway, usually after emptying your pockets. This guy, from what I remembered when he’d hired me a few days before, didn’t talk rich. He was just a middleman who’d come up in the world.

Now I had leverage, and I used it to slam him face-first onto the table. No one else sitting around me had moved. I leaned down, smothering him, and chanced a look up. Security was just starting for me, a little slow. Fuckheads. You couldn’t find good help these days. I thought, I could kill this bastard six times before you made it to me, assholes. Keeping my eyes on security, I put my mouth into his ear.

“You owe me fifteen thousand yen, motherfucker.”

He was having a lot of trouble breathing, with my weight on top of him and his arm nearly broken. “You… fucked… up …” he gasped.

I twisted his arm a little more, and he finally made some real noise, a strangled cry that dissolved into a gurgling moan. “What was that?”

“They found her… hanging from a… fire escape… goddamn… goddammit…”

I felt pretty confident that I had this guy under control, so I looked up again. Security was still a few tables away, sauntering toward us, not hurrying. They were used to sodden lumps of shit causing a ruckus. I’d overestimated them, no doubt, and dismissed them from my worries.

“My employer…” he stuttered out, “will not… be happy…”

My sense of outrage turned my vision red for a moment. This asshole owed me fifteen thousand yen, had tried to shiv me in the goddamn back, and now he’s complaining to me? I tightened my grip on his wrist and pushed with all my might, and the bastard finally screamed as a sharp cracking sound rewarded my efforts.