Free Mr. Ruins: A Thriller (Ruins Sonata Book 1) by Michael John Grist

broken bottles littering every surface, dark stains that must be blood splattered on floors and walls, cobwebs, the stink of bat guano. The railings and seats are all brittle faded plastic, cracked through in places, shattered to wafer-thin glass-like shards on the floor in others.  
    It's a sad place, and always was. I never liked the idea of making sharks fight. I heard once that they can never stop moving or they'll suffocate, can only sleep in winks while they keep stalking through the waves. That's the life for a shark, not this.
    I start down the wooden steps looking for my node, careful with my feet so I don't kick it down to the arena. It's got all my glial backups on it, plus the spike is not a cheap fitting. Soon I'm crawling on my hands and knees round the aisle, banging my shoulders on the bent metal seating frames, feeling tiny fragments of old rust press up into my palms, telling me the story of this place.
    I was once young too, they say to me. I was once alive.
    I brush them away, run my fingers through piles of fluff and balls of wiry old hair, nudging aside old crisp packets with the colors leached away by darkness, a cup with the crusted remnants of beer adhering to the inside like limescale, chunks of nail and wet wood rotted through from above.
    I find it nearer the door than I thought, well lit now. The face has maybe one more crack, but it chirps to life when I palm it. A call from Carrolla, another from an unknown number which I guess to be Mei-An, and that's it. I scrape blood out of the spike fold and depress it.
    It's only when I turn back to the arena, to look it over a final time before I take my leave, that I see the body. 
    It is lying where the guy with the teeth, Ruins, was sitting. It's a man on his back, dressed in some bizarre military uniform, something out of a long-ago history: white tight pantaloons with yellow trim, a deep blue vest over a white tunic with gold buttons. Epaullets at his shoulders, the bicorne hat resting over his face, and one hand tucked into his tunic at an open button above his sternum.
    For a long moment I stare, because I know who this is, or is meant to be. We had all kinds of engrams injected into us when we went up to face the ice, I've added dozens since, and this man was in one of them, something about strategy in some basic foundation course.
    A startling memory flashes up, pop-fire like a camera's flash, in the way gray-merged memories are recovered, of two images laid next to each, one of this gallant dashing figure on a rearing horse, a furl of bright red cape swirling about his shoulders like a classic hero, his right hand held aloft and leading forward.
    The other is a mean-faced sallow man in the rain, wearing a miserable green trenchcoat and riding a stocky brown pony, his right hand tucked into his coat.
    NAPOLEON CROSSES THE ALPS
    The words pop-fire into my mind like the images. I lurch down a few steps, closer.
    The man on the floor is pot-bellied, rotund. Closer, my heart thumping a sickly cadence in my ears, I edge up to his stockinged legs, his polished black shoes gleaming in the dawnlight.
    "Hey," I whisper, "wake up," but he doesn't say anything, doesn't move. I reach out tentatively, touch his left hand then jerk away like I've been shocked.
    He's cold.
    I stand above him, straddling his chest with my feet wedged between his paunchy upper arms and the seats on one side, railing on the other.
    Ruins must have had his feet on this man's chest. The thought is hard to shake. I pick up the hat and study the face beneath. It is not the gallant Napoleon, nor the paunchy mean Napoleon, but neither. It's just a man, fat-nosed and ugly, with the faintest sense that I recognize him, though I can't say from where. His face is beet-red from being strangled.
    I spot the garrote marks round his throat quickly, and instinctively spin, bring my arm up before my face.
    There's no one behind me.
    Then Napoleon begins to beep. I startle and turn, suddenly