White and Other Tales of Ruin

And then Tom realised for the first time that, as much as Honey’s feelings for him were a surprise to her, the reason behind them would be more so. He should tell her. But he was afraid.

How to tell her that her love was caused by a virus?

“Nothing,” he said. “And I’m not jealous. I’ve never felt like this before and I know it can’t be false. You and I… we’ll endure. If we’re given the chance. And that’s what frightens me, the idea that we won’t even be able to try. If you’ve been to this club before, it’s one of the places your pimp — ”

“He isn’t my pimp anymore,” Honey said, quietly but firmly.

Tom shook his head. “Yes, but you know what I mean.”

“The man I’m going to see… he’s my only client that Hot Chocolate Bob never knew about.”

Tom was confused. A lover? A sex partner for a hooker? Or was the Baker wrong? Had love existed for artificials all along, and only he, Tom, had never experienced it? The thought was chilling and belittling. He felt the world moving out from him, and Honey seemed to recede, forever beyond his reach, their separation confirmed by an awful, unbelievable truth.

“And you have to say goodbye?”

Honey nodded slowly. “He’s a human. His name’s Doug Skin. There were lots, hundreds, but he was kind, Tom. Not the first time, then he was just like them all — he fucked me, beat me, came in me and left. But the second time he’d changed, he was different. We never had sex again. Ever. And he said it was because he’d fallen in love with me.”

“Do you love him?” Tom asked. Such complexities in four short words. The answer would make or break his existence.

“No,” Honey said.

“Did you, once?”

She frowned. “No. I respected him, and I was grateful to him, and I treasured him. I still do. But no, I never loved him, even though he wanted it so much. It was never like that.”

“Can we trust him?”

Honey merely nodded once, and Tom thought it was because she was angry at the question.

More people passed them by, a couple of grotesque manacled women stopping to hiss and laugh and piss at their feet. One man — chopped so that he was over eight feet tall — strode over and whipped the women around the necks and faces with his extended phallus, as long as he was tall and festooned with knotty lumps.

“Hope they’re not going to this club of yours,” Tom said as the three freaks sauntered away, laughing and crying together.

Honey raised her eyebrows. “Well, they’re going the right way.”

Tom sighed and followed, grabbing Honey’s hand and enjoying the contact. They were both dressed in black, and really they didn’t seem that out of place on the streets. But if Hot Chocolate Bob did have important contacts, and money to buy up-to-scratch surveillance equipment, then they would be found. No question. Chances were, if he worked in association with regional drug barons or the illicit chop surgeons, he would be tracking them now with a hijacked police satellite. Recognition software would have picked them up within minutes of leaving the Baker’s unit.

Tom looked behind them, up, across the street, feeling eyes burning into him from every angle. He’d never felt so exposed, even though they were lost in a crowd. And each time he turned to Honey she was looking at him, smiling, eating him up with her resurrected eyes and holding his hand tighter every time.

“What?” he asked, half-smiling.

“I don’t know. I’m just enjoying what’s going on, loving that fact that I love. Maybe I caught life from one of the humans who had me.”

Tom thought about that, about all the living stuff she’d had pumped into, onto and over her. In reality it wasn’t life she’d caught, but something even less quantifiable and understood.

Yet again, he wondered whether he’d ever tell her the truth.

And that’s when they were seen. Freedom, so fleeting and precious, was lost to them in the space between breaths.

Tom felt the instant change in atmosphere. One second they were part of a crowd, two black-clad night walkers with plenty of secrets to hide, and that was their camouflage. Next second, all attention was on them.

When he turned around and scanned the street behind them, he saw why.

“We’ve been found!”

Three people emerged from the steaming mouth of a subway station and ran straight at them. They were chopped. They had elongated legs to help them move faster, at least two extra arms for multiple weapon implementation, and their bodies were mostly hidden by a sleek, shiny protective coating. They looked like man- sized beetles.

“Mercenaries,” Honey said. “One chance. Run with me!”

The crowds parted as Tom and Honey sprinted along the pavement. For a second Tom wanted to mingle with them, pressing away from the streetlights and melting into the dark. But he knew that would be pointless. The mercenaries had them now, they were locked on as surely as if they were all chained together, and the only chance of escape was to outrun or outmanoeuvre them.

And that was hopeless.

The street had quietened suddenly, all conversation and laughter and singing smothered by terror. The only sounds now were their own pounding footsteps and the regular, incredibly fast slap-slap-slap- slap of the mercenaries’ hydraulically driven feet meeting concrete. The hunters closed in quickly, echoes bringing them even nearer. Tom knew that they would be caught within seconds.

He glanced at the people pressed against walls or huddled in alleys, but no one would meet his eye.

“Where?” he gasped, and Honey reached behind her and grabbed his hand, squeezing. Hours ago she had been shut down and deflated, and now here she was running for her life from three mercenaries, people so drastically chopped that they were more mutant than human, more machine than mutant. Her new charge must be draining quickly.

It wouldn’t matter. Within a few seconds they would have either escaped — and Tom had a hunch now as to where Honey was leading them — or they’d be dead.

At least their deaths would be quick. The mercenaries were trained killers, and from what Tom knew of them they had no time for torture or melodramatic acts of vicarious vengeance. If they were hired to kill they killed, in the most effective and economic manner available.

They’d probably crush his skull under their feet to save on ammunition.

As if conjured by his panicked thoughts, a machine gun opened up behind them. He’d never been near to gunfire, and the sudden cacophony shocked him, the white-hot kiss of bullet trails across his skin sending him into a state approaching panic. Bullets thumped into the ground ahead of them, spinning shattered concrete slabs along the street. More impacted the facades of shops and buildings, and Tom was sure he saw indistinct shadows flailing and spinning, heard the surprised cries of innocent victims. The gun paused for a moment, and as Tom wondered why something smashed into his ankle, taking his feet from under him and sending him across the concrete on his face.

“Grenade!” Honey hissed. She grabbed Tom, dragging him clumsily across the pavement and into the doorway of an old hotel.

It stank of piss and stale booze, and the pain from Tom’s foot brought everything out clearly, even in the weak streetlight: the crumpled newspapers damp beneath him; Honey trying to hug the two of them into one; the smell, the stench, a miasma of everything that could show fear.

There was a surreal moment of utter quiet in the street before the grenade exploded.

They were protected from most of the blast by the reveal of the inset door. The ground shook, windows shattered and rained glass across the street, bricks burst into stinging powder, people screamed, the air was sucked from Tom’s lungs by the blast, his outstretched legs were shoved into the brick wall, bringing more white- hot agony. He heard Honey moaning beside him, and he reached for her and cried out joyously as she squeezed his hand twice, a message that could only mean I’m fine. He squeezed back as he stared to get to his feet.

“We may have a second or two,” he said. His voice sounded distant, eardrums ringing. The echoes of the