by Sean Platt
“If it’s so important,” Nicolai said, “just tell me.”
Kai didn’t bother to respond. They’d been through this a few times already. Nicolai felt worse than squeezed on time; he felt bled dry. He had more errands now than he’d ever had as Isaac’s lackey. The irony was he didn’t technically work for anyone. He was pre-Enterprise, acting the part a few illegal days in advance of truly joining the party. He couldn’t earn money as Enterprise yet, but he could stick his head out the metaphorical window, enjoying the breeze of a wild car ride. He was a free agent in all but official designation, and for a change, it was nice to be owned by no one.
And yet he was on Sam Dial’s errand. Sam wanted Nicolai to insert a crowbar at Braemon’s event and pry out damning evidence against the tiered system for Sam to publish later. But that was its own nested set of obligations. As much as he found himself liking the scattered, Beamsick young reporter, Nicolai hadn’t climbed to where he was by trusting the plans of others. So that was on his list, too: investigate Craig Braemon, investigate Sam Dial…and, curiously, poke at the edges of a Beam legend called “Shadow” who popped up in every corner Sam had sent him to.
And of course, Nicolai was on Micah’s errand as well.
Before he’d more than cracked the seal on Sam’s investigation, Micah had heaped even more atop him. If Sam was a puzzle, then Micah was a puzzle inside a puzzle. Micah gave Nicolai no shortage of intentions and ulterior motives to pick at. Figuring out where he sat inside Micah’s grand scheme was even harder than fitting into Sam’s. Fitting into them both at once seemed impossible.
And lastly, there was Kate to consider. Kate — who was still impossibly Doc in Nicolai’s mind — wanted yet a third thing, not quite what Sam wanted and likely the diametric opposite of Micah’s desire…though maybe not opposite at all, which made things more confusing.
And now there was this thing with Kai. She had something she absolutely needed to show him, and they had to cross District Zero to Little Harajuku to see it. Right now. Without explanation.
But out of Sam, Micah, Doc/Kate, and Kai, his choice of which ally to believe and follow was simple.
“Will you at least tell me where we’re going?”
Kai still had his hand. Instead of answering, she pulled him into a narrow alley. The weather in Little Harajuku was as controlled as the rest of the NAU, but the air felt too clammy. Buildings on either side of the alley were original New York structures, retrofitted inside not by the city itself, but by the hackers who called this place home. Brick walls were slick with moss and moisture that had collected on their cool surfaces — evidence, Nicolai thought, of the fact that weather experimentation was well within the domain of those who built their subversive wares here.
Kai stopped halfway down the alleyway. Both ends were stacked with garbage cans. A single lamp glowed overhead with what looked like a decades-old LED bulb. They’d replace that bulb with something contemporary when it burned out, but the things lasted forever.
Kai looked to one side of the alley then the other. They were alone, and the air was cool and quiet.
“We’re going to visit Ryu,” she said.
“Who’s Ryu?”
“Doc’s man. The dealer’s dealer.”
“Shit. I thought I recognized the name. Please tell me we’re just going to walk through his front door.” But Nicolai didn’t think so. Ryu was an underground legend. People talked about Ryu the way they talked about the second coming of Noah West and the Tooth Fairy, except that Ryu was unquestionably real. Rumors surrounding the legendary ghetto innovator sounded like childhood fears of the boogeyman: Ryu arrives at dark, blinds and deafens you, then takes you back to his lair. Even Nicolai’s stolid disposition, here in the dark alley at dusk, prickled at the thought.
“I didn’t want to say his name before. I’m sorry. I feel like Micah is judging every little thing I say. You know he has a truth detector?”
“Not for you, though,” Nicolai said. “You can lie to him. You of all people.”
Kai nodded. “Maybe. But lies only stretch so far. He’s hooked into City Surveillance. This is the only part of the city that isn’t watched.”
“Convenient,” Nicolai said.
“It’s an informal contract. Labs like Xenia need places like this. The high-end labs have funding, but people like Ryu have incentive and guile. Places like Little Harajuku are permitted to exist. The bots and drones all look away.”
There was the sound of something falling at one end of the alley. Nicolai looked over and saw three black figures dressed in long cloaks. He flinched the other way but saw three more in that direction, closing slowly.
Nicolai’s lips pressed into a bloodless line. “Dammit, Kai. We’ve already done this, haven’t we?”
“This time, they’re friends.”
Nicolai watched the figures approach. His dashboard lit up, showing him the heat in Kai’s skin and the pulse in her neck. Friends indeed. She was as nervous as he was.
“This is important.” She swallowed, rushing. “The other thing I didn’t tell you was that I met with Rachel Ryan.”
“Why?”
Kai didn’t flinch. “Micah wants her dead.”
“What? And you’re — ?”
“She wants me to do it, Nicolai. But only at the Violet James fundraiser tomorrow. And she showed me something. Something Micah doesn’t know.”
“What?”
“It’s what I need to show you. Why we’re here.”
The cloaked figures were taking their time. Now that they were closer at each end, Micah could see their faces but couldn’t make out any details. One of them was wearing strange eyewear — something that looked like 1900s aviator goggles, but stuck with tubes and wires to turn it into something alien. This last man was taller than the rest, massive through the torso, and completely bald.
“It’s okay,” Kai whispered, her eyes wide, Nicolai’s dashboard still displaying her fear. “I didn’t want to come either.”
Before Nicolai could reply, the six people arrived and took up station around them. Four, upon closer inspection, turned out to be women, their hair cut short and punky in what seemed to be a Harajuku hallmark.
The bald man with the goggles approached. He looked them up and down and said, “You’re Kai.”
“You must be Ryu,” Kai said.
“Your reputation precedes you. You’re a friend to this sector.” He turned to Nicolai.
“This is Nicolai,” Kai added as the man looked Nicolai over again, starting with his shoes and finishing with the crown of his head.
“I know who he is.”
“What does that mean?” Nicolai asked.
“Please,” Ryu said. “Hold still.”
Two of the others stepped forward and removed long, wand-like devices from their coats. One waved hers over Kai while the other did the same to Nicolai. Then both pocketed the wands, used handhelds to read something on Kai and Nicolai’s right wrists, and wrapped each of them from hand to elbow in crinkly silver foil. As it was pressed into place, Nicolai felt his external senses fogging. He could still sense The Beam around him, but it had become instinct, all of his settings erased, his very presence anonymous and insignificant.
Ryu held up a small device that looked like a mess of electronics wrapped in gray tape.
“Picture the place where you live,” he said. “Until we arrive, I suggest you imagine yourself walking through it, again and again, noting every detail you can remember. Do you understand?”
Nicolai looked at Kai then back at the man with the goggles.
“This,” he said, “will be a bit weird.”
He tapped Nicolai on the temple with the device, and in an instant, the world went away.
Nicolai felt another tap on his temple maybe fifteen minutes later. It was impossible to say how long for sure, though, because time had become elastic. He hadn’t been knocked out, which is what he’d thought would happen. He’d simply lost his senses of sight
and hearing. After a short while, The Beam itself seemed to become disinterested in him, and he lost the feel for it, too. At that point he’d found himself alone in a grave-silent black room, floating, able to feel his world through only his feet and hands.
In one of those hands, he’d felt Kai’s. Behind, he’d felt the gentle pressure of someone leading him ahead, so he walked with something in the neighborhood of faith. He’d turned a few corners, been folded into a seat, and accelerated at an unknown rate to an unknown place. There had been more walking, more jostling. Nicolai found he didn’t mind. Compared to the stark nothingness of sitting, being shoved and shaped had felt interesting.
Panic had tried to intrude. So, as Ryu had suggested, Nicolai had imagined himself in his apartment. He’d pictured long, slow laps of the place. Touching his piano. Staring out the window, across the city.
When he felt the new tap, his senses returned as if someone had flipped a switch. Nicolai found himself in a chair, unbound, with Kai beside him. She wasn’t looking at him; she was looking around the disorderly room like someone acquiring sight.
Ryu was standing above them, no longer in his dark overcoat. He was in a sleeveless tank top, his arms and chest massive.
Ryu pocketed something. It seemed to be the same object he’d used to shut them off.
“I’m sorry for the precautions,” he said. “They are necessary. I’m sure you understand, given the situation and your request.”
Nicolai kept his voice calm. He wasn’t afraid, but was angry. This was the second time in a month that he’d been abducted, and even though he wasn’t restrained this time as Kai had told him he’d been last time, he hadn’t precisely given consent.
“I didn’t make any request,” Nicolai told the hacker.
“I did,” said Kai. “Come on, Nicolai.”
Ryu was already leaving the room, heading through a wooden door that had been almost entirely covered with old circuit boards and what seemed almost to be pneumatics. Kai had risen to follow, holding a hand out for Nicolai. Her look was slightly apologetic. Mostly, Nicolai saw urgency on her face.
He stood and followed.
Ryu led them into the room beyond the door. It wasn’t large. In the center were two chairs like they’d had in Nicolai’s childhood kitchen, with something metal or Plasteel wired to their tops. The contraptions, on hinged armatures attached to the chairs’ backs, looked to Nicolai like the colanders used by manual cooks to drain pasta from boiling water. Thick braided wires draped from the colanders to the floor, where they joined other wires and ran to the wall in a python-thick tube.
Ryu pointed to their forearms, still wrapped in foil.
“Once I close the door, you can safely remove the shielding. Your IDs won’t leave this room except through the wired connection, which is encrypted with the best technology we have. We don’t use Fi, so if you detect any, immediately re-shield. Same when you’re finished. The door won’t allow you to exit if you are radiating a detectable ID. With me so far?”
Nicolai kept his mouth shut, but Kai nodded.
The big man touched the colander-like thing atop the first chair. “Hinge these down. They should settle over your heads, and I’ve ballparked the armature for your heights. Miss Dreyfus, you’re in this one.” Ryu pointed. Then he touched the chair’s arm, where Nicolai saw a second arm, much thinner than the first, extending from the chair’s side. On the arm’s end was another of the devices Ryu had used to turn off their eyes and ears for their ride over.
“The command to immerse is simply a verbal, ‘Immerse.’ You will emerge from inside the simulation by using your normal dashboard. The immersion command will also trigger these.” He tapped the devices. “They’re rustic but effective nanobots. You won’t get the smooth transition you had before, but it will mimic neural downtuning by simply flipping those nerves entirely off. Now, just so you understand, these are different than what I used to bring you in. Using the immerse command will shut off all five of your senses. The effect is disorienting to say the least. If you haven’t experienced disembodiment before, you’ll have to fight panic. I’ve heard the effect described as being like dreaming. It is not.”
Nicolai looked to Kai, wondering a thousand questions. But she was still watching Ryu as if all of this made perfect sense.
“I have been unable to visit the sectors you’ve requested. If you are successful, the disorientation should fade once you are given new senses, if our estimations of the simulations’ depths are even close to accurate. Until then, I recommend pacing a known place, as you hopefully did when you were blind and deaf before. You need to understand that I will not be watching. If you get lost, or if you become stuck in a hole, I will be unable to help you and won’t even know you’re trapped. We suspect time acceleration may be in use in the restricted Beau Monde Beam sectors, so it’s also possible you could become stuck for what feels like years, but what those of us outside this room will experience as minutes. I’m sure I don’t need to point out the dangers if that happens.”
Kai nodded. “We’ll be careful. Thanks, Ryu.”
The tall man nodded back then turned and left the room. When the door was closed, Nicolai looked at Kai.
“What the hell is going on here?”
“He’s giving us anonymous access to his hacked connection. It’s the only way to access the Viazo without an authorized rig.”
“What’s the Viazo?”
“Ultra-high-end immersion. Like the one we used to stage Doc’s death for Jason Whitlock, only restricted. Playground of the rich.”
Nicolai’s heart thumped harder. Kai and Doc had both described the experience. It had sounded real enough to be terrifying.
“What makes you think you can get in if it’s restricted?” And why, he wanted to add.
“Rachel gave me access.”
“You moved into Beau Monde?”
Kai was sitting, already lowering the colander onto her head. She looked up at Nicolai, her eyes urging him to join her in the second chair, and shook her head when she saw he wouldn’t budge without an answer. “It’s a kind of back door. Consider it a day pass.”
“And Ryu? How do you know this isn’t all something he orchestrated?”
“Because I saw Rachel. Because she gave me the key herself, tagged with some sort of short-term addition to my ID.” She was already unwrapping the foil, freeing that altered ID for the room to read. “I’ll owe Ryu. But we can trust him.”
Nicolai was thinking of Doc. And of Kate, whose recent call had been one more bit of overwhelm he hadn’t yet divulged to Kai.
“Doc doesn’t trust him.”
“Doc didn’t trust anyone.”
“You’re sure about this?”
“There’s honor among thieves, Nicolai.”
Nicolai reluctantly sat. His fingers tugged at the foil but didn’t peel it away. “You’re sure about that?”
She nodded, her brown eyes serious. He didn’t trust Rachel or these people who’d stolen his senses and dragged him into their lair. But he trusted Kai. She was the best judge of character he’d ever met, intuitive to the bone.
“Okay,” he said.
Nicolai peeled away the foil and tossed it onto the floor. He lowered the colander-thing onto his head from behind as Kai had done then waited while she tapped out a pattern in the air with her fingers. He was about to ask if she needed anything from him when he felt a tap on his head and the world disappeared.
Nicolai, are you there?
The voice was Kai’s, but also not. He couldn’t truly hear her any more than he could see her or feel the chair beneath him, but if he’d understood Kai’s discussion with Ryu, The Beam and the Viazo were about to supply them with new senses. For now, her ID must be talking to his, her signal becoming his internal concept of her voice.
I’m here.
Are you okay?
I’m okay.
He was, too, but he was okay in what felt like a bundle of his missing body, like the non-corpor
eal version of the fetal position. He didn’t want to speak or breathe or move — to whatever limited or nonexistent sense he could do any of the three. The sensation was filled with an existential breed of panic that Nicolai thought only existed in philosophy texts.
I need to find the door, Kai’s feed told him.
Nicolai nodded, not trusting himself to do anything else. He had no idea what “the door” meant; he had no idea why Rachel Ryan or anyone else would give her the key to it; he couldn’t figure out why she didn’t sound as nervous as he felt. Maybe it was purpose that drove her — a sense that somewhere in this dark room, there was indeed a light switch. Nicolai felt no such certainty. The terms Ryu had used in his warning rang in Nicolai’s head, feeling worse than the simple ending of death: Time acceleration. Hole. Stuck. Dangers.
Reality returned all at once. Nicolai hadn’t had a body a moment ago, but he’d still carried that sense of curling up. Now he was standing, snapped erect like a rope pulled suddenly taut.
The room Nicolai found himself in with Kai was, as far as he could tell, exactly the same as the one they’d entered with Ryu. The walls seemed the same. The wired door seemed the same. The twin chairs with their colanders, behind them, were the same. Even the discarded bit of candy he’d noticed in the corner was still there, covered in fuzz.
“Did the connection break?” Nicolai asked, looking around, confused.
“I don’t think so,” Kai said, holding her hands up at waist level as if walking on brittle ground, unsure how to distribute her weight. “Let me try something.”
Nicolai felt annoyed. He’d been dragged here, promised yet more information to overwhelm his already-stuffed mind — practically abducted. It didn’t matter that Kai had been behind it. He didn’t have time for this kind of cloak-and-dagger bullshit considering the way —
Kai’s hands began to glow. The chairs, one by one, evaporated as if she’d magicked them away. They became swirls of dust, curled toward the ceiling, and were gone.
“We’re in a simulator?”
“Does it smell like a simulator?”
At first, the question didn’t make sense, but then Nicolai found his mind drifting back to simulators he’d visited before. As time had passed, he’d even seemed to gain access to bits of memory from his missing time with Kai and Doc in the simulator they’d described, just before two of their three had been tortured nearly to death. That had sounded high end, and Nicolai’s foggy memories seemed to agree. But no matter how fine the simulator, one glitch always rebelled. Of all things, simulators didn’t smell like reality. They could fool every sense but that one. Vents in simulators could create artificial scents, but they were always mixed just wrong enough, coming from slightly wrong directions. Even if the top level of the mind was fooled, the deeper mind wasn’t.