Free Crashing Heaven by Al Robertson

thought about how deft, how precise her support for him had been, as he’d come to terms with the end of his life. Her new status helped explain that too. She had a very personal understanding of what it meant to pass on.
    And that led to the puzzle of her death. Andrea had apparently fallen victim to a drug overdose a few hours after Harry had been shot. Ifor found a news report explaining that grief had overwhelmed her. At best, she’d miscalculated an anaesthetic shot. At worst, the overdose had been entirely deliberate. But the Andrea Jack knew had never touched anything harder than wine or whisky, and even them only in very strict moderation. He thought back to the traces of Pantheon involvement he’d found in the Panther Czar’s accounts, and wondered what new corruption Harry might have uncovered; who could have found the potential spread of such knowledge threatening.
    The hotel room oppressed Jack with unanswered questions. He went out into the street and started walking. He was heading for his parents’ neighbourhood, although he wasn’t yet too sure if he wanted to see them.
    [All this angst! It’ll be different when I’m in charge, Jackie boy.]
    [Oh, fuck off.]
    After half an hour or so, Jack found himself standing on the edge of a void site. A kind of death had come to it. It had once been an apartment block, but terrorism had left it a burnt-out shell. Windows were dark holes where flames had roared out. Soot-black smoke stains leapt up the walls above them. There was no roof. The ruin had been left untouched since the fire. A high metal fence stopped anyone from getting too close.
    Fist’s words were still buzzing through Jack’s thoughts. He remembered the rage that had taken him when he’d first truly accepted that he was going to die. He’d tried to attack Fist, but it was impossible to really damage him; ranted at him for hours, but the puppet had just laughed. He’d bargained with him, but they both soon realised that there was nothing either of them could do to slow or stop the end. There had been despair, too. In his blackest moments, Jack had thought of killing himself. But that came to seem like such a waste.
    A woman stopped a few metres away from them. She was looking up at the dead building. Jack noticed that, very discreetly, she was crying.
    [ I wonder what’s set her off ?] said Fist.
    She was the right age to have lost a child on the moon. Jack thought of his own mother, of her fetch’s belief that he was dead. He thought of Andrea.
    [ It’s a private moment, Fist. Let’s go.]
    They walked in silence for a while. They were very close to Jack’s parents’ house. A meeting with his father would no doubt be painful. He doubted that he’d be allowed to see his mother’s fetch.
    [ There was some pretty heavy security software in that void site, Jack. Some of the Rose’s best.]
    [A bit much even for you?]
    [ I could chew it up and spit it out, if it wasn’t for this fucking cage.]
    Fist’s frustration buzzed in Jack’s mind. He so clearly wanted a different present to live in, built on a different past; one in which he’d been grown on a different host, been able to prove himself in different battles. That set Jack wondering how different his own life would have been without Fist, what he could have become if he hadn’t been sent away to fight a war that would break most of his links with his home and all of his faith in its gods. He remembered all the senior executives he’d worked for, and mapped his life on to theirs.
    He wouldn’t have fallen out with his parents – but Grey would have lifted him very rapidly into a very responsible, very time-consuming role. He doubted that he would have seen very much of them. He would have been on-Station when Harry and Andrea died; but by then, Grey would have introduced him to a suitably corporate spouse – someone who would never have tolerated any sort of mourning for a failed relationship with a musician from Docklands. There