Bunch of bullshit, he thought, and swept all the rocks away without so much as a gesture. He cleaned the overlay around him until it was once again just himself in his dingy t-shirt and tattered canvas pants.
'Not happy to see me?' he said lightly. Blood Sister did not reply, but the reconstructed archway over her head was already starting to tremble.
'All right, all right, fine. I'll go,' Vitriol said. It hadn't been much of a conversation, but it had been enough. 'I only dropped by to say hello, anyway.'
He turned around and walked toward the exit, hoping he could make it out clean. But there was a demon in his way.
From a distance, Agares did not look all that frightening or even demonic, except for the sharp-toothed crocodile he rode (the crocodile was nothing more than overlay, but Agares still moved like he was riding the nonexistent beast. Vitriol had to admit it was a pretty good trick). Agares had no wings, no forked tail, none of the traditional accoutrements of demonhood except for the reddish sheen of his skin and the nubby horns on his forehead. Once you got closer, though, and saw the eyes blazing out from under the old demon's protruding brow, you gained a full appreciation for the art of Agares' overlay. The face was a wonder of malevolence, with high, sharp cheekbones, a cruel, smirking mouth, and a gaze that cut into you with an almost audible whistle of air.
Vitriol thought the whole package was a little pathetic. In his experience, anyone who worked so hard to look intimidating was overcompensating for something.
'Agares, you old fart,' Vitriol said cheerfully. 'Did you bring some sulphurous fumes of hell with you, or were you just eating broccoli?'
The crocodile slowly turned to look at Vitriol, but the demon did not move a muscle-except to speak.
'You should stay away from my sister,' The hiss of his voice blended almost completely with the steam rising from the AR rocks.
'Oh, you're not related. She's only your sister in the sense that all nuns go to hell. So you're colleagues, nothing more.'
'You should stay away from her,' Agares repeated.
'And if I don't?'
Fire burned deep behind Agares' eyes, and his lips curled in a tight smile. He stood slowly, then took a step to his left. He was no longer riding his crocodile.
The demon said only one word. 'Execute.'
The crocodile moved forward. • • •
'Look, I know it doesn't have teeth, but when it bites you it hurts! It fucking hurts, okay?'
Vitriol knew he was speaking louder than he should, so he shut up. He sat against the wall next to the roof door and huddled against the cold wind.
He could tell Harpy was still curious, but also that she didn't want to give him the satisfaction of asking him anything more about it. But they had been on the roof for an hour already, there was no telling how much longer they'd have to be up there, and something had to pass the time.
'So how does it hurt?' Harpy finally asked.
Vitriol knew exactly what she was talking about, but it might be a long night and he needed to take his fun where he could get it.
'How does what hurt?'
'How does a goddamn crocodile hurt, you asshole? You know, the thing you were just talking about?'
'Ah, right, the crocodile,' Vitriol said, lightly slapping his knee. 'Well, here's the thing. It's a program, right? Software. So it can interact with anything wired into the Matrix. You take your average Hiroki, someone without anything hardwired into their brain, maybe without any implants at all, and it's not going to hurt them much. No access points. But someone like me, I got all sorts of points of entry for it. So when it bites, it's trying to short out anything electronic in me. It didn't permanently fry anything, but it gave me a weird sort of sharp tingling in my brain and throat, like someone was trying to dig a dozen slivers out of the middle of my head with a dozen needles.'
'That's still not as bad as an actual crocodile bite,' Harpy said.
'Yeah. But it ain't good.'
They were quiet again, and Vitriol watched the Manhattan city lights calmly blink and flicker in front of him. It was soothing, which was all wrong, so Vitriol looked at Harpy instead. Her round face, her folded arms, and her eternally arched eyebrow were enough to keep him irritated and on edge.
'Don't you want to know how I finally got away?' he said.
'Not really.'
'Oh come on! It was a virtual crocodile trying to fry my neurons! That's kind of cool, right?'
'I guess.'
'And obviously I got away from it, or I wouldn't be here. So how did I do it?'
'I don't know,' Harpy said. 'Some sort of hacker crap. You got out your program and it fought the demon guy's program and yours either won or it distracted this crocodile thing long enough for you to get away. Who gives a shit?'
'It's more complicated than that!' Vitriol said. 'It's not like you just launch a program and sit back and wait for it to do its thing! There's all sorts of adjustments you need to make on the fly, moves and counter-moves, it's like swordfighting!'
'It's like playing video games-just a bunch of button-pushing.'
'Yeah, but really cool button pushing!'
'Shut up,' Harpy said.
'No, hold on, let me explain-'
'Shut up.' Harpy grabbed her dark sunglasses and threw them on, watching the images that appeared on the insides of the lenses. 'They're here,' she said. 'You're on.'
The dark rooftop in front of Vitriol faded as he focused on the image inside his head, a feed from a security camera in the building below. Lochinvar was in the lobby, dressed in his usual black with clips and creases in all the right places. Next to him was the pigeon, a man whose newly implanted scalp hairs did not yet conceal the fact that he was balding.
'No, no, I think it will grow in fine,' Lochinvar was saying. 'But it's unnecessary, really. Your eyes are-well, forgive me for this, but your eyes are simply extraordinary. I'm not sure anyone could look beyond those eyes and notice anything about your scalp.'
The pigeon-his name was Carruthers, if Vitriol remembered correctly-was walking beneath one of the cameras, giving Vitriol a good look at the stubble on top of his head. The skin underneath was turning red.
'Okay, let's move,' Vitriol said. He took his focus away from the security footage but made sure he still paid attention to the audio link from below.
Harpy stood, picked up the crowbar she had tucked behind her, and wrenched the rooftop door open with a screech.
Alarms went off throughout the building, but there wasn't any sound. Prometheus Engineering apparently did not feel any need to let any of its neighbors know about break-ins on its property. The people who needed to know about it, though, now knew.
'Oh dear,' Vitriol heard Carruthers say through the security feed. 'I'm afraid we have to leave.'
'Why?' Lochinvar said. 'What's happened?'
'It's-I can't really say,' Carruthers said. 'But we need to leave.'
'How disappointing.'
Harpy and Vitriol were plunging ahead, going in and out of range of several security cameras and being captured by all of them. Thanks to Harpy's spell, though, the only thing they'd show is two dark, ghostly, faceless images drifting past.
They found the entrance to one of the building's corner staircases and ran into it. The walls here were plain and gray, and while the AR overlay wasn't much prettier, it sure was interesting. Security access points were all over the place, glowing bright red so they couldn't be missed. And security personnel were in the staircase too, a few floors lower, chasing the ghosts their cameras had seen.
'Oh-oh dear,' Carruthers said inside Vitriol's head. 'The doors are sealed now. I'm afraid we can't leave.'
'That's entirely my fault, I'm afraid. Emergencies and crises and such things just aren't my forte. I find I want
