Angel Stations by Gary Gibson Read Free Book Online Page A

not like that,’ she said, cutting him off. ‘It works fine. It’s a fairly straightforward surgical procedure. The thing does most of the work itself once it’s inside your skull. After that, no problems.’
    Kim could see the faintest hint of a grimace playing on his lips. Some people didn’t like to think of that, something alien and slimy living in their skull next to their brain, reaching into their flesh and entangling itself inextricably with their neurons, ultimately conjoining with their mind. ‘I had it done by someone reputable but, yes, off the record.’
    ‘Do you remember why you had it done?’
    ‘ Why? ’ She hesitated for a moment. ‘It . . . I had my reasons.’ She looked at him angrily. ‘I don’t like you prying, Pierce. There’s nothing I want to say to you about it. What happened out there was an accident, and nothing to do with it.’
    ‘Okay, okay,’ he said, raising his hands in placation. ‘I’ll keep you posted about what happens with the Goblin, all right? And maybe we can get some kind of an appeal sorted out.’
    ‘All right,’ she agreed.
    Elias
    When he got back to London, Elias dumped the taxi in a back street, sliding a knife under the cheap aluminium panel which hid the vehicle’s brain, thus damaging it beyond repair; if he could make it look like the vehicle had been vandalized, there was maybe a little less chance that anyone would analyse the onboard computer’s log and trace his journey from the Arcologies to this part of London.
    He couldn’t have imagined the pain might get worse, but it had. He pressed the heel of his hand into his face, then forced himself to walk away, looking for the first subsurface entrance he could find. The city extended as far below the ground as it did above, and he needed to get himself out of sight. It was a part of town he knew, but he couldn’t go back to his cramped quarters in the Camden Maze; too dangerous until he figured out what was happening.
    Which meant the only way to go was downwards.
    He found a service entrance he’d used a couple of times over the years when he’d needed to get lost quickly, and soon lost himself in the warren of sewers and service tunnels that honeycombed the city’s infrastructure. There were people down there, shadow-people like the ones that populated the Arcologies outside the city, surviving by whatever means they could.
    He went looking for Danny, and found him in the deserted Tube station which had become a kind of home to some of London’s abandoned folk. He was standing with a small cluster of people who were struggling to pick up one of their own from where he lay on the cracked concrete. Danny turned at Elias’s footsteps, then frowned and started forward when he noticed the blood.
    ‘Elias, what happened to you?’
    ‘Don’t ask, all right? What happened to your friend there?’
    Danny frowned again, then glanced back at the men carrying away the body of their dead companion. As they disappeared into the gloom of the station, Danny shrugged and shook his head. ‘Died of despair, probably. Don’t tell me if you like, Elias, but you need fixing up.’
    Danny led Elias back to his hospital: a long, low, luxury-sized mobile home rescued from a scrapyard that now doubled as a clinic. Elias let the priest inject him with something that seemed to distance the pain. Somewhere between the horror of what had happened to him out there in the Asteroid Belt and his present existence, Danny had found religion. As Elias told him about the Blight, Danny stared at him in horror.
    ‘You should be dead,’ Danny observed eventually. ‘You shouldn’t even be alive.’
    ‘It doesn’t always kill,’ Elias insisted.
    ‘You need to tell me more about exactly what happened.’
    ‘I can’t.’
    Danny stared at him with fierce anger and disappointment.
    ‘Just trust me, please,’ continued Elias. The room around him swayed for a moment, till he felt Danny’s firm grip on his upper shoulder.