spy game? You never told her about all the things we might have been to each other, might have meant to each other . . . if only you hadn’t got me killed . . .”
“That’s not what happened,” I said.
“Hold it,” said Molly, looking Honey over carefully. “You’re dead?”
“As a doornail, darling,” said Honey Lake. “I’m only here because Eddie called me up to save him. Subconsciously, I’m sure. He needed someone to save him from certain death, and he knew he could depend on me.”
“He has me for that,” said Molly coldly.
“If he’d really believed that, I wouldn’t be here,” said Honey.
The firepower from the energy weapons was becoming utterly savage now, blasting away at the sides of the standing machinery, whittling the tech away as it rocked dangerously back and forth. Honey Lake stepped out from behind the machine, using her personal force shield for cover as she reached for a gun on her hip. An energy beam punched right through the force shield, through her chest and out her back. She made a shocked, surprised sound and sat down suddenly, like a small child who’s just run out of steam. Her force shield flickered and went out. I grabbed her and pulled her back behind the shelter.
There wasn’t any blood. The great wound had been cauterised by the energy beam. A little steam rose from it, but that was all. And a smell of burned meat. Honey’s eyes were wide, and she tried to say something to me, but all that came out of her mouth was a dribble of blood. I held her in my arms. She felt very real. She shook and shuddered, as though she was cold, and then she smiled shakily up at me.
“Here I go again . . .”
Honey Lake lay dead in my arms. Again. I expected her to disappear, but she didn’t. I cradled her in my arms for a while, her head resting on my armoured chest like that of a sleeping child. And then I laid her gently down on the floor. I knew she wasn’t real, that her second death wasn’t real, but the anger I felt was real enough. Molly started to reach out to me, to say something, but she must have seen something in my body language through my armour, because she pulled back her hand and said nothing.
“She was an old friend,” I said. “A respected colleague. She might . . . have meant something to me if things had been different. But they weren’t. I don’t believe I summoned her here. Someone else did it, to mess with my mind. I will make them pay for that. This world we’re in responds to my thoughts, my beliefs . . . and I believe my armour is better than anything they’ve got.”
I stood up and stepped out from behind the standing machinery. The enemy’s energy guns targeted me in a moment and hit me with everything they had. Beam after beam slammed into me, but I stood firm. My armour remained untouched, and I was unaffected. I had faith in my armour. I could feel it changing, taking on a new shape and design as it responded to the rage boiling within me. It became . . . something monstrous, perhaps even demonic. And I didn’t give a damn. I heard Molly gasp behind me. I didn’t look back. Didn’t look down to see what my armour had become. I just strode forward, into the energy beams.
I walked in a straight line, smashing through everything in my path as though it was nothing more than cardboard. Workstations and heavy equipment crumpled and fell apart, and none of it slowed me down for a moment. The world can be a very fragile thing, to a Drood in his armour.
I raked my machine guns back and forth, strange matter bullets ploughing through everything in my way. I completely destroyed one side of the Armoury, and then the other, and my rage was a cold, cold thing. I kept firing, maintaining a steady pressure, forcing my enemies back and back. Denying them any cover they could use to make a stand. I drove them back the whole length of the Armoury, until finally I could see the two of them moving, retreating from one blown-away protection to another. But I still couldn’t see who they were. Finally I came to a halt.
“I know this Armoury better than you ever could,” I said, my voice carrying