Yea, verily, it is once again time to post a free novel one chapter a week! This year’s novel is FOREVER MAN. Enjoy!

We stood there for a moment with guns pointed at each other. His shook slightly.

“That’s a bluff,” Jenks said.

I nodded. “Look at you. You’re already feeling the radiation. All of you were dead the moment I invoked the Sphere. They never understood the radiation, Bechels told me. Couldn’t account for it. And so didn’t find a way to avoid it.” I shrugged. “All I have to do is wait.”

It’s outside, Bechels had panted. Of the universe. Not of it. It’s leaking in, and we can’t figure out why, or how to stop it.

The sound of rotors was painfully loud, making the whole building seem to shake.

“Let’s play,” I said. “We count three, pull the trigger. Someone dies, someone lives. Simple rules.” I smiled at Jenks and recalled the words Danik had said to me, all those years ago: Death is a waste, usually. Why not make yours worth something?

.o0o.

I wasn’t sure how long after the Jump it was. I was still limping, and there was an infected slash across my chest that kept breaking open and staining everything with yellow-tinged blood. My head ached all the time, and the Funeral Suit, as I’d started to think of it, was still torn up and stained. I stank. I barely spoke.

Danik, as always: Urbane and calm, expressionless. Smoking brown cigarettes and sitting in his tiny office, waiting for his men to bring me. I remembered a sense of jealousy for being a man who had minions. He gestured to the only seat in the room aside from his own and poured us each a glass of very fine vodka. He picked up his and held it aloft to me.

“To your Anna,” he said. “You received the flowers?”

I stared at him, my head ringing. I didn’t think he knew my name. Or Anna’s. It was somehow disturbing. After a moment I reached out and picked up my glass. Free liquor was, after all, free liquor.

“No,” I said, and swallowed the shot. It was pure liquid fire in my belly, and I immediately wanted to throw it all back up, before it could burn a hole through me.

“That is unfortunate,” he said, pouring two more shots. “I will speak to someone.”

I wondered if I’d just gotten someone killed.

“My men have told me a fantastic story,” he said in his soft way. “I do not believe them, but they have sworn it to me.” He studied me and I stared back. “Would you be willing to give me a … demonstration?”

I shrugged. “You have a gun?”

.o0o.

“All I gotta do is – ”

I didn’t let Jenks finish. “I’m going to shoot you in ten seconds, Barrow. You can either try to shoot me first, and play your turn, or just eat the bullet. I don’t care.”

I’d rattled him. He looked awful, but being shot at least twice and standing just feet from a Bechels Sphere would do that to anyone, I imagined, when they didn’t have the protective, smothering blanket of predestination around them like a shield.

I started to count.

“Ten. Nine. Eight – ”

He squeezed the trigger. Misfire. He tried four more times, and it misfired each time. “Goddammit,” he hissed, staring at it. He dropped his arm and looked at me, throwing his free hand in my direction. “Wait – ”

“I win,” I said, quietly. Squeezed the trigger. I was amazed to discover it felt just as empty and terrible, as always.

I dropped the gun. Looking out the dirty window with its half-melted glass panes and lead glazing bars, I could see two black helicopters just settling onto the ground outside, people in dark uniforms and helmets pouring out. I doubted a few bullets would make any difference.

I stepped back out into the bloodbath of Brusca’s outer office. Everyone was dead, lying in stagnating pools of blood. The Sphere sat implacable, smooth and perfect. Reaching into my pocket I took hold of the remote and pressed a pattern of buttons, and without any noise or artifact of its existence the Sphere winked out of existence. If I’d understood Bechels – and I had no reason to think I had – the Sphere in England was still there, an entrance without an exit.

Kicking the Beta shut, I dragged it into the room with Atelia. I’d had the dense, heavy case for so long, it seemed to leap into my hand and almost push me along.

“Can you walk?” I asked her. She looked at me, her face calm, and shook her head. Of course not. She’d been strapped to a bed for months, years. I set the Beta down and leaned over her, working on the straps.

“We have to go,” I said. “I’ll have to carry you.”

She nodded. She was Moira’s age but seemed like a child, she was so small and frail, so silent and accepting. When I had the straps undone I pulled her into a sitting position and she slumped there, looking exhausted, but smiling.

You and I, we go to London.

I could hear the troops outside. Shouting, distant and muffled, buried under the muted but still-present buzz of the rotors. I didn’t know who they were. Barrow Jenks had been some sort of Special Forces, certainly, but whether for some government still keeping a toehold on the world or just a bigger and better gangster, above Brusca’s pay grade, I didn’t know.

I hoisted her onto my shoulders and she slid her arms around my neck. She weighed nothing. I considered what it took to strap a human woman into a bed long enough for her to accumulate those scars and to weigh less than the suit I was wearing, and regretted that I’d killed Brusca and Jenks so quickly. So painlessly. I should have tied them up and left them inches from the Sphere, soaking in it.

With Atty on my back, I took hold of the Beta and walked out the rear exit, plunging into the dark interior of the old warehouse. A set of ancient rusted stairs led upward, and I attacked them, taking them two at a time for the first flight, Atty bouncing on my back. She pushed her face into my neck. By the second flight I was winded, and slowed down.

Being unkillable didn’t mean you were in any kind of shape.

The air seemed hot and dense as I climbed, but her breath on my neck was cool and sweet. It seemed possible that she’d fallen asleep with her arms clasped around my neck. I struggled up past the third floor, then onto the fourth. I staggered to a stop just in time: There was no floor. It was just a pattern of steel joists.

Below, I could hear the shouts and clamor of troops, heading up the stairs right behind me. I lifted up the Beta Unit and hugged it to my chest as Atelia hugged herself to my back, and started picking my way carefully along the narrow strips of metal, the third floor twenty or thirty feet below, concrete and debris. At the other end of the floor a final set of narrower steel stairs clung to the exposed brick wall, leading up to the roof.

Behind us, voices. Low and befuddled at first, then suddenly rising up in a chorus of shouts, the tone something I would label authoritative asshole. I didn’t recognize the language, and didn’t pause or turn around.

I reminded myself not to flinch when they started shooting. Breaking both legs on the floor below wouldn’t kill me – but I was suddenly certain I didn’t want to know what the alternative was. I forced myself to pick my steps carefully, moving slowly towards the stairs. I made another five steps before a warning shot rang out, a single round that was deafeningly close.

I kept moving.

I wasn’t sure if they’d risk shooting at me, if they’d risk the Beta Unit. They clearly knew about it and had come for it – I supposed it was possible it was all for me and Atty, our Forever nature – but I doubted it. I’d been an open secret in New York for years. Gangs had gone to war over me. If some paramilitary group or lingering echo of government had wanted me, they could have come for me long ago, taken me in my sweaty, troubled sleep in the Sixth Floor Walkup.

They started to move onto the joists after me, but had the same limitations – they couldn’t move very quickly. I kept my eyes on the stairs, picking up the pace. I had to reach them with enough time to make the roof, or they’d swarm me.

For just a second I considered setting the Beta down. Maybe, I thought, it wouldn’t be a bad thing to hand it over to some group – funded, staffed, protected. Let them do what Bechels couldn’t. And then I thought, if this was really a government mission, if this were legitimate authority popping back in for a moment to try and do something good, they could have gotten to London. They could have contacted Bechels. Years ago.

I kept moving. I felt Atty’s breath against my neck. Sweat streamed down my face and got in my shoes and my lungs burned and my legs burned and the joist seemed to be wobbling under me, trying to buck me off. Another two shots made me jump and almost saw me toppling off, but I somehow shifted my weight and managed to more or less fall forward onto the stairs.

For one breath I hung there, panting. Then Atty tightened her grip on my neck with a soft grunt, and I launched myself upwards on unsteady legs, mouth open, drool leaking from my lip as I struggled to breathe deeply enough to fuel my way up. The shouting behind me had multiplied into a cacophony of hard voices, and I concentrated on taking each additional step, pushing up.

When I burst onto the silvery-black roof, the wind pushed back at me as I skidded into a puddle that came up to my ankles, formed by a concave dent in the rubber that gave under me, soft and yielding. Something tore in my back that I felt all the way down to my legs as I struggled not to fall backwards onto Atelia, like a turtle with my legs in the air.

I ran for the edge and set the Beta down. Kneeling next to it, I peered down at the water lapping against the eroding bank of the river, a long way down. With a deep breath, I pushed the Beta over the side and watched it fall. It hit the water with a vague, lackluster splash, and I wondered for a second if I’d just destroyed it, and if that would be so bad.

I didn’t have to jump. I wanted to jump.

I pushed my hand into my pocket and found the remote. Keyed in the pattern, and in a blink there was a Sphere about as big as a hot air balloon below us. I felt the soft, invisible heat of it against my face, and then I struggled up onto my spastic, exhausted legs. Head pounding, I turned and raced back towards the center of the roof, splashing in the deep puddles the fading rood hosted, brakish water filling the air and creating rainbows all around me.

I slid to a halt, Atty squirming around my neck. I reached up and gently unlaced her fingers and knelt down, letting down and picking her up, standing up with her draped in my arms. She looked like she was sleeping.

Two black-clad soldiers appeared framed in the doorway. I smiled. Spun. Sprinted.

Without the weight of the Beta, I felt almost refreshed. Light. Easy. Shouts from behind but they weren’t ready for me. This was just another round of The Game. Two players. Stakes. And me, in my Funeral Suit. There was no one to share a look with, no Anna, but as I stepped off into the air over the water and flipped over, staring up at the sky, I felt her.

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