Vicious Circle

He ran out of words, his face flushed so deep a red it looked like he was about to bust a major artery. He brandished his fist at me again, but didn’t go for a second punch. He took a long, shuddering breath, visibly struggling to get himself back under some kind of control. I remembered that he was popping speed; that’s not generally conducive to moments of calm reflection.

Then things took a turn for the worse. Peace flicked his jacket away from his body on the left-hand side and pulled a handgun out of his belt. He shoved it hard up against my cheek.

“Take it easy, Den,” Reggie Tang murmured anxiously.

“Shut up, Reggie,” Peace growled. He looked at me with a sort of agonized hatred. He seemed to be working himself up to something, and I opened my mouth to try to head it off. Before I could speak, his free hand shot forward, balled into a fist. I didn’t have time to move—just to close my eyes. A splintering, rending sound came from just to my left. Opening my eyes, I turned my head a fraction and saw the gaping hole that Peace had just punched in the decorative fascia above the breakfast bar. He curled and unfolded his fingers three times: as far as I could see, he hadn’t even broken any skin.

“If I ever see you again,” he said to me, a fraction calmer now, “I’ll kill you. I mean it. I’ll kill you. Don’t come looking for me unless you’re ready to cut my throat while I’m asleep, because that’s the only way you’re getting her. And don’t assume I’m asleep just because I’ve got my fucking—eyes—closed.”

He punctuated these last three words with three sharp jabs of the gun barrel into my face. He flicked a glance at Reggie, and then at Greg. “Give me five minutes,” he said, “and then let him go.”

Reggie nodded. Greg just blinked. Peace was already heading for the wide open spaces in any case, tucking the gun back into his belt, and he didn’t look back as he ducked to clear the low door.

Well now. I liked these odds better.

I drooped a little in Reggie and Greg’s grip, making them take a little more of my weight. Irritably they hauled me upright, which meant that they were off balance when I came up with them and shoved backward. We all lurched against the bulkhead together. I dragged my arm clear of Greg’s grip and punched Reggie hard in the throat. He gave a choking gurgle and staggered sideways into the breakfast bar, letting go his hold on my other arm as both of his hands flew to his neck. I didn’t need the arm, though, because I was already taking Greg out with a sharp butt to the bridge of the nose.

I was out through the door before either of them could recover enough to mount a counterattack, but by the time I got up the stairs and out into the companionway, Peace was already legging it down the gangplank. He turned on the quayside and looked back at me.

He kicked the gangplank away just as I got to it, and it tumbled end over end into the Thames, hitting the Collective’s hull with a series of hollow metallic booms like a clock chiming the hour inside a coffin. The distance to the shore was only ten feet or so, but I had to back a few steps to get a run-up, and meanwhile the guy was already having it away on his toes.

I made the jump, and I landed with both feet under me—but then a moment’s dizziness, coming out of nowhere, made me stagger and almost fall backward into the river. I pulled myself together and took off after my quarry, who’d reached the pier’s gate by now and was hauling it open.

To my horror I saw him take the key out of the near side of the lock and throw it toward the water. Then he was through and slamming the gate shut behind him a second before I reached it. I dragged down on the handle but the damn thing didn’t budge.

Damn damn damn damn damn! No lockpicks, no time, and the razor wire on top of the gate looked like the most serious kind of bad news. I cast around for some object I could use to smash the lock, and saw the key: it had landed on the edge of the pier, a couple of inches short of the water.

I snatched it up, put it in the lock, and turned. Running out onto the street, I looked left just in time to see Peace’s burly figure disappear around a corner fifty yards away. As I started in pursuit, a car roared past me, heading in the same direction and accelerating: it was a battered-looking Grand Cherokee, sheathed in dried mud and looking faintly military. With a jolt of alarm, I saw that there were two men in the front seats, the passenger a man so tall that he was folded over on himself, his raised knees showing in the window. Even from a single high-speed glimpse, Po was unmistakeable.