Chapter 15

The jump still sickened Leila but now that sickness seemed like an indulgence. She shut it off. Determination eclipsed any emotional shock as her new location leapt into being around her.

‘Ambrose?’ she called. ‘Are you there?’

His defences were still up. They’d queried her as she’d arrived. His office was quiet and dark. He’d deactivated its weave overlay. There were no flies and no pressure men. And there were no bookcases, no log fire, no armchairs and no antique desk. In reality, his office was a small, cheap, windowless space. Metal shelves hung from concrete walls, holding chaotic piles of printouts. The armchairs were cheap plastic recliners. The table was plastic too, its garish surface pocked with cigarette burns. The room smelt damp. Leila thought of the cosy hours she’d spent chatting with Ambrose in here and sighed. She wondered how well she really knew him.

The door to his living quarters was open. Pushing through, Leila found herself in a narrow corridor. Without the weave, it would no longer end in Ambrose’s comfy, exquisitely decorated little flat. ‘My castle,’ he always called it. ‘Drawbridge up, safe from the world.’ But now, concrete walls and floors sat grey beneath an unpainted ceiling. Fluorescent lights parched the colour out of them. Leila moved down the corridor, feeling disturbed. She readied herself to jump away at the slightest hint of pressure man presence. She opened the door into Ambrose’s living room.

Grief echoed out towards her. Someone was sobbing. Dread took Leila’s heart in its cold hands. She thought about fleeing. But she couldn’t abandon Ambrose. She’d pushed him into taking her to the satellite, then moving beyond it. She had to help him. The sobbing continued. She touched her pendant for good luck, spun up the skull face, gripped the fly spray and moved cautiously into the living room.

‘Hello?’ she called. ‘Ambrose?’

The weeping eased. The living room’s true self was as cold and hard and impersonal as the hallway. Ambrose sat at a little table, looking small, sad and grey. Without overlay, his hair drifted in greasy streaks across a shiny scalp. His face was less cheerful, less confident. His eyes were dull, unpolished stones set in dark rings of exhaustion. His skin made her think of damp putty. He hadn’t shaved for a couple of days. His shirt was unironed. She could smell stale sweat. There was a half drunk bottle of Docklands whisky and a small, dirty kitchen knife on the table in front of him. The skull face asked if he was a potential target. No, she told it.

‘Here I am,’ Ambrose said. He looked hopeless. ‘My father said you’d come for me.’ He picked up the knife. ‘So I got this from the kitchen.’ His words had a light slur to them. His hand shook.

Leila took a careful step towards him. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘We went down together. We escaped together. Now we’re safe together.’

‘Safe!’ he replied, pain in his voice. ‘Safe. Perhaps we are.’ He looked at the knife. ‘You know, I’ve only just realised this can’t stop you. Stupid of me. But I always was stupid. That’s what father says, anyway.’

‘Why would you want to stop me?’ she asked, taking another step towards him.

‘Stay back!’ He thrust the knife towards her, then looked at it, then laughed bitterly. He put it down on the table. ‘You see? There it is in my hand. It couldn’t hurt a fetch. I didn’t even think.’ And, in a more confiding tone: ‘I don’t think. Father says that too. I never did, he told me.’

Leila wondered what had taken root in Ambrose’s head. ‘Your father came?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ replied Ambrose. ‘I remember him so clearly. Standing right where you are. He told me that I’ve always been stupid, that I don’t think. That’s why he never reinstated me.’ He paused for a moment and took a shuddering breath. ‘I always had hope. The back door – I thought they left it open on purpose. To help me.’ He looked up, his eyes pleading for understanding. ‘He said the door was an accident. That he’d shut it down. He made me turn off the overlay in here. Face the truth of my life, he said.’ The knife shivered in Ambrose’s hand. ‘He told me about you.’ His voice cracked into something close to a howl. ‘About what you’d become.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Leila. ‘I’m me. Just like always.’ She took a cautious step towards him and spoke, making her voice as soothing as possible. ‘The pressure men have been here. They’ve written new memories into your mind.’ A second step. ‘One of them tried to do it to me. ‘

‘Oh no. No pressure men.’ He suddenly looked much sadder. ‘Just father.’ He rubbed his finger across the blade. ‘I sharpened it, you know.’ He looked up at her. ‘He said if I was quick enough, I wouldn’t have to face you.’ A sigh. ‘I couldn’t even get that right.’ Guilt and shame shivered across his face. ‘It’s so hard to look at you. At what you’ve become. It’s my fault, Leila. I’m so sorry.’

‘I am what I’ve always been, Ambrose.’ She remembered how the flies had rewritten Lei’s memory. She wondered how Ambrose’s memories of her had been changed. ‘Dieter left defences. A partial version of himself. It kept me safe. The pressure men didn’t get anywhere near me.’

‘I saw you, Leila. I saw what they did to you.’ A sad laugh. ‘Here I am, talking to you as if you’re still the person you were. And that part of you is just a mask now. A lure. To get me back down there.’

‘No, Ambrose. That’s wrong. A false memory the pressure men forced into your head.’ She took another step towards him. ‘I’m still the Leila you’ve always known. Your friend, Dieter’s sister. Uncorrupted. And you are right – we still have to find the Shining City again. But not to trap anyone. We’ve got to get Dieter back.’ Another step. ‘I can’t do it without you.’

‘No!’ he shouted, his voice suddenly harsh. His mood changed so quickly. It was as if his personality had been smashed, then too hurriedly reassembled, leaving jagged discontinuities it was so easy to trip over. ‘Stop! Don’t get any closer!’ He thrust the knife out again, then realised what he was doing. Another broken laugh. ‘That won’t scare you, will it?’ Suddenly the knife was at his own throat, pressing into skin. ‘This will.’

‘No, gods – no.’ Leila stepped back, her hands up, until she felt the wall behind her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she gasped. ‘I won’t – I mean – what could I do to you?’

‘You want to get me back to Dieter’s workshop and rewrite me. Have me working for the pressure men. Like him. Like you.’

She scrambled for the right words. ‘You have to trust me. I’m not working for them. I’d never work for them.’

‘Of course not.’ He snorted. ‘I watched Dieter strap you into one of those chairs of his so they could remake you.’ The knife moved against his flesh. ‘Both of you lost. And it’s all my fault.’

‘That’s not what happened.’

‘I shouldn’t have been so scared. I should have gone to him in the hospital. I should have tried to get that fucking box out of him. I should have done something. You and Dieter, gone like Cormac’s family. And it’s all my fault.’

‘I haven’t been rewritten, Ambrose. I’m still me. I still love Dieter. And we need to get back there and save him.’

STOP FUCKING SAYING THAT!’ he roared. His throat pushed against the knife. A thin line of blood appeared.

Leila wondered about using the skull face to stun him. But that would only confirm his sense of her as an enemy. She had to try and talk him round.

‘Oh, stop it, Leila,’ he continued. ‘Admit what you are.’ He groaned. ‘My father tried to help me. Told me what to do. I didn’t do it and now here you are and I have to face you. Stupid, stupid, stupid me.’

‘Ambrose, your father wasn’t really here,’ Leila said desperately. ‘Someone else was. Something else. I’ve had a visit too.’ A single bead of blood rolled down Ambrose’s throat. Leila had no way of getting the knife off him. ‘I crashed back to my flat. A pressure man came and tried to rewrite my past. Make me believe that I’d accepted Dieter’s true death.’ It was difficult to tell if Ambrose was taking any of it in. ‘That I didn’t love him. That I had no reason to save him.’ Ambrose’s eyes were glazed. Leila imagined his glitched mind reaching for memories that were no longer there.

‘But we can’t save Dieter. There’s so little of him left.’

Now it was Leila’s turn to shout. ‘Don’t say that!’ Then, more quietly: ‘It’s not true. We’re going to get Dieter back, Ambrose. You and me together.’ She was near tears. ‘And you’ve lost part of yourself. We’ll get that back too.’ Guilt shot through her. ‘If all this is anyone’s fault, it’s mine.’

‘You’re so convincing,’ he said, wonder in his voice. ‘I almost believe you.’

Another shout: ‘Yes!’ Then, desperately: ‘Yes, do believe me. Because it’s the truth, dammit. I’m not working for Deodatus. I’m not trying to force anything on you. I’m just telling you the truth. Can’t you see it? Wouldn’t you rather it was this way?’

‘Yes,’ he said sadly. ‘I would.’ The knife dropped away from his throat.

Leila sighed with relief. She was getting through to him at last. She wondered if she’d be able to get him out of the building. They needed somewhere to hide. She couldn’t take him back to her flat. Perhaps she could get them into one of the properties she’d shown recently. She remembered the block she’d shown the awful couple around, when her life was so different. That would still be empty.

‘I’ve got somewhere we could go,’ she said. ‘Somewhere safe.’

Ambrose stared at the knife. ‘That would be good,’ he replied. ‘Fresh air. The world outside. Get away from this shithole.’ He looked up at Leila. ‘Do you know how much I hate living here? I’ve made the best of it, but still.’ He sighed heavily. ‘You make stupid, stupid mistakes when you’re young. My father told me that, when he came. He was talking to me again, at last. But you’re saying that wasn’t really him?’

‘No, Ambrose.’ He was finally listening to her. ‘It was a pressure man. Come on, Ambrose. I can take you somewhere safe. And then we can go back to the city and rescue Dieter.’

Ambrose took a deep breath. ‘He told me you’d say that. Exactly that. To try and get close to me. To find a way of rewriting me. And he told me how to avoid it.’ He suddenly looked happy, as if a great weight had been lifted from him. ‘The past is such a beautiful place. You, still yourself. The Lazarus Crew still together. And further back – before I fucked up – even better.’ He ran his thumb down the knife’s edge. There was red there too. The blade was very sharp. ‘It’s all I have left.’

‘Oh, no,’ breathed Leila.

‘And I’m going back there. Just like Cormac did.’

‘No!’ Instinct sent her leaping towards him, even though there was nothing she could do.

With a quick, liquid flick of his wrist, Ambrose lifted the blade and sliced it across his own neck, starting beneath his left ear and pushing hard all the way round. Blood leapt out in a fine spray. The knife clattered to the floor. He fell sideways, choking. His head thumped down on to the table. Leila was on him, pressing her hands up against the wound, but they passed through it and she felt the pain of being a ghost, unable to save the living. Ambrose gurgled – a low, hopeless sound. His eyes were glazed. He slowly rolled on to the floor. A red pool grew around him, the brightest thing in that bleached, hopeless room.

‘Oh,’ breathed Leila. ‘Ambrose.’

Pain and loss seared through her. She took a step back, then another, then she was in the hallway, then the office. She put a hand to her face and found tears. There was too much loss in her world. She thought of jumping back home, but seeing Dit would only remind her of all that she’d failed to protect. She thought of jumping to Cassiel, but then imagined finding that the mind too had been rewritten. She couldn’t bear another encounter like that. Her friends, too, would remember different yesterdays. For a second she despaired, feeling that she had nobody to turn to. Then she remembered the past she’d tried so hard to write out of her own life.

Now it was all that remained to her.

It was time to return to the Coffin Drives.

She closed her eyes and let herself fall into the land of the dead.