She dispatched two medical assist bots to the cave Spencer and Tonya were in. They’d managed to find the most remote part of the entire plant, so it wouldn’t be quick. But it was a start.
She then grabbed a nearby construction bot and set it to work excavating the now-collapsed passage to the cavern. She had no way to know if that had been caused by the first explosion, which she knew they’d survived, or the second. They had to be okay.
They had to be okay.
The medical bots arrived and joined her digging out the rubble. It felt like hours but was probably less than a minute or two. Edmund was gone, she didn’t know Kim or Emily, and there was no way she’d be able to stop Anna on her own. The oupa on her shoulder suggested a prayer, which June set into with a passion.
The construct bot broke through first, shining a light in. Nothing. But it was a big cave. They were fine. The medical bot she now controlled shoveled the rest of the rubble away. She couldn’t see them.
A blast blew the construction bot back into the hallway.
“WAIT!” June shouted through the speakers of the one she controlled. Then she stopped. It could be Spencer, or it could be the guards.
“June?”
It was Tonya. “Yes, it’s me! Don’t shoot this one!”
She moved the bot into the cave. The first thing she heard was a long string of swearing in a familiar voice.
Spencer.
The prayer changed from asking for help to saying thanks. Fervent thanks. She threw search lights all around. “This is a medical bot. Is anyone injured?”
“Fucking thing blew up in my fucking face. Goddamn it hurts!”
“Yes,” Tonya said. “Spencer got burned in an explosion. This is a standard AA23?”
June had forgotten that Tonya was a nurse in real life. She would know about the various medical bots. “A subvariant, but yes.”
“Give me drawers seven and twelve. It fried him a little, but he’ll be all right.”
The cameras of the bot scanned around to find them. It first fell on a group of sullen security guards, arms tied behind their back, mouths covered with tape. A few had fresh cuts but otherwise seemed okay. “What about them?”
“They’re getting a lesson about why they should pay attention to the black lady.”
“Fuck them,” Spencer said. “Fix me up. We need to figure out where the cables the goddamn thing I blew up was using go.”
Chapter 53
Kim
The front gate of the plant opened at seven, and it was a good thing Tonya had warned them to arrive early. Kim couldn’t see the actual gate through the morning mist and the long line of cars. There had to be at least as many stacked up behind them, all moving at a crawl. Eventually they got up to someone who directed them to use both the inbound and outbound lanes to move forward.
“Anything yet?” Emily asked.
Tonya had said to get here and wait for instructions, but they had heard nothing since then. The message was anonymous, and Tonya’s phone wouldn’t answer. Kim had the permissions to track it, but it had gone dark. They were only a dozen cars away from the security checkpoint.
“No.” Kim looked in the rearview mirror. “And there’s no backing out now.”
“I’m not backing out. Will’s in there. What can we do?”
She set the autodrive and tinted the windows until they were opaque. Time for plan B. She put her purse in the passenger foot well where Emily could reach it. “I need you to take five years off of my face, and as many as you can off yours.” The makeup kits they’d picked up in the airport both contained smartBase, which was miraculous stuff. It wouldn’t make them teenagers, but it’d do. Emily frowned, probably thinking Kim had made a dig at her age. “Sorry, I don’t mean it like that. You can help me, but I can’t help you, and we don’t have much time. They’ll be closest to me, so I have to be more convincing.”
Emily gasped. “You’re letting me touch you?”
Emily was two steps behind. That happened a lot when things went pear shaped, and she got one of her out-of-left-field ideas.
“I won’t feel anything while I’m doing the hard stuff. I’ll ping you to get clear when I’m done.”
Mike was a problem. Two girls in a cheap car were students. Two girls in a cheap car with a zombie in the back were not. He’d have to forgive her when it was over and stay quiet in the meantime. “Fold down the rear seat. I’ll roll him in there.”
She set Mike’s waypoints for the trunk, made sure he was moving, and then jumped to realmspace. Teens and twenty-somethings thought nothing of attaching their phones to a car’s operating system. People had been doing it for decades. What they all forgot, well, what most of them forgot, was that cars came with vulnerabilities that needed regular patching, just like everything else. The automatic procedure usually kept it all up to date, but not always, and few people checked to make sure.
There were lines of potential, and she couldn’t remember how to breathe. Tiny huge no networks car expensive cheap all patches no patches collapse and now…
She found herself inside a home-built minirealm that was imbedded in an old New Microbus. The VW’s core OS hadn’t been patched since the warranty ran out ten years ago, and it was a short hop from that into their data stores. She found and copied a pair of invitation messages into her own queue. There was no way to hack the authentication hashes to make it look like Kim and Emily were the original recipients, but that was fine. Ruining them would work. She was able to alter the text to add their names easily. Kim checked where the hippie-mobile was in the line, which gave her another idea. After setting a few timers, she messaged Emily. Coming out.
I’m clear.
When Kim exited, her face felt like she had a dried cleansing mask on. Emily had commandeered the main rear view mirror and was working frantically with a makeup brush. Kim toggled her window clear and moved forward to see Emily’s handiwork in the side mirror.
She noticed her shirt had been rolled up all the way under her boobs. “Nice touch.”
“I remember having a stomach like that,” she said without looking away. “And I’m thinking we need all the help we can get?”
“We’re trying one of the oldest tricks in the book here.”
“I know.” Emily finished her lipstick. “My women’s studies professors would be horrified by it.”
“With these stakes? I’ll take every pry bar I can use against the patriarchy.” There were only two cars ahead. Kim gave one last check. “Minimalistic.”
“They’re greens, not goths. I had to be subtle. How do I look?”
She was blonde where Kim was brunette, and willowy in a way that always made Kim feel like a Greek peasant who spent time hauling around baskets of olives on her head. Kim’s ancestors had done that. She’d seen the pictures.
“You look great.”
“You look great. I’d kill for those eyes. Next to you, I look like a boy in a dress. Well, I did. Kids, ya know?”
“Let’s hope I do one day.”
She turned away before Emily could react. There. She’d said it out loud. One day, probably sooner rather than later, Kim wanted kids. Her comatose boyfriend in the trunk was a complication.
One thing at a time.
When she rolled down the window the guard, who was maybe a few years shy of fifty, gave her an appreciative scan. The fact that the guard was a woman didn’t matter one bit to Kim. She was an equal-opportunity grifter and always had been.
“Hello, ladies. Invitations?” A query opened up in their message queue, and Kim sent the corrupted ones over.
She watched as the guard went from confused to pissed off. In situations like this, things were supposed to go smoothly, or they didn’t work at all. The guard groaned. “Not again.”
“Is there a problem?” Kim asked.
“Maybe. Probably.” She shouted behind her, “Carl? We got another corrupted one.”
“Shit,” a tall young black man said from the shack behind her.
“We had some of those yesterday. They take forever to work out.”
The guard leaned back down to their window. “If you could pull over there we’ll—”
On cue, the Microbus five spots behind them began an unearthly wail. Kim looked back, horrified. “What is that?”
Half-dressed kids bailed out of every door of the van as smoke billowed behind them. The pitch of the electric motor went higher and higher until it set her teeth on edge as bearings overheated. It let go with a bang, and the back of the van jumped up at least a foot while shrapnel blew the back windows out. Flames flickered through the smoke. Kim gaped at it like the sheltered sophomore she was supposed to be. “Oh my God! Should I call the fire department?”
The guard swore under her breath. “We are the fire department. You need to get out of the way.”
“But our invitations?”
The guard’s eyes unfocussed as she checked them again. “They’re fine. It must’ve been on our end. Follow the directions. Thanks.” She waved them through.
As soon as the road bent away from the guard shack, Emily let out a whoop. “The van, that was you?”
Kim shrugged. “It’s nowhere near as cool as it looks. And it hurts.”
She stopped smiling. “When can we get Mike out of the trunk?”
Kim checked his readouts. Still fine. “Right now.” She set the autodrive and issued the commands that gently unfolded him until he sat up properly in the back seat.
This part they’d planned for. Guys in street clothes, even ones as big as Mike, were not unusual in a crowd like this. His favorite jacket, a worn, ugly camo thing he’d gotten from some army surplus site somewhere, fit right in with this crew.
Kim parked as slowly as she could, trying to buy time. Tonya never messaged them.
When they stopped Emily asked, “Now what?”
Kim got out of the car and activated the macro that would ensure Mike followed her without Kim having to plot the waypoints. “Now we follow everyone else. We’re students.” The pancake makeup itched, but she’d have to rely on it.
As they got closer to wherever everyone was going, it crowded up. She altered Mike’s program to put him behind her. “Emily, if you wouldn’t mind standing to my left?”
She did it in time to bump against a group that might’ve been the hedonists in the van. Kim was too wound up to be sure. She turned around to make sure Mike was close behind.
He wasn’t. The basic collision avoidance that came with the mobility program hadn’t been designed for anything like this. He had stopped and was now ten rows back.
Her realm connection cut out.
“Make a hole!”
Everyone around her parted, forcing her to dance to avoid a touch. When Kim was able to concentrate on anything other dodging, a circle had formed around her and Emily, bordered by guards, their weapons drawn.
“I’ll need you to come with us,” he said, then motioned them forward. Kim couldn’t think of a quick diversion. Mike was gone.
Then two guards pulled out handcuffs and moved toward them. One thing she could never forget was what people with restraints did to put them on. Kim had made special arrangements for that. When a security guard reached to grab her wrist, she activated an emergency pack on her watch. The stick of the needle brought darkness.
Chapter 54
Mike
He played it all over again in his head but couldn’t think of a different way to save himself. Now he was stuck in darkness with no conceivable way to get home.
And he was simply in darkness. The realm hadn’t disappeared. He could feel the consoles around him and the power cylinder or whatever it was in the center of the room. Tal’s probe constructs were still piled lifelessly on the floor. When he vanished, it hadn’t destroyed the realm. It was puzzling. Gonzo’s odd Yoda-speak was still hard to understand but ruined everything is seemed obvious.
With nothing else to do, Mike started testing the consoles, going slowly so as not to crash into anything. These people liked knobs a lot more than they liked switches or buttons. Almost all the controls twisted, even the ones that could be pushed or toggled. There had to be a light switch around here somewhere.
He gathered up his threads and pushed on the construct that trapped him inside his avatar’s storage. There was something on the other side still. If Tal had been destroyed, presumably Mike would be able to easily occupy the space beyond. But he couldn’t. It was weaker than before, though, less dense, and it stretched more. He didn’t dare test it too far. Who knew what would happen if it tore? But that had to be Tal, at least part of him.
It left him stuck dealing with this side of the realm’s interface. His searching led him to the walls of the control room. The first switch he found there twisted like all the rest.
When it clicked, the lights came on.
Gonzo, in her centaur form and fully manifested as an avatar, lay curled around Tal’s holo, which stood above her, frozen, in the corner of the room. Even with her alien face, the sad longing was clear. It made her seem more beautiful, quietly dignified in her mourning.
She never took her eyes off Tal as Mike walked up to her.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know any other way.”
“I understand. He stubborn always was so.” She looked at Mike. “I you safe for now have salvaged keep.”
That seemed like good news. It wasn’t delivered like there was an emergency at any rate. “What happened?”
She stood. “Tal sick was. My real self accident due to in a rafit…” she stopped. “I you again I have not lost?”
“Something about Tal being sick, and you in an accident?”
“Yes. He up axnathos murtana with an mixed smuggling…I again there go. He men bad worked for. Accident an there was. My real self rafit. This he could not without support survive meant. A Zefnanto Ach Ban network, the last functioning…I you you need to know hate not being able tell. Sorry. That what you off turned is.”
“And without Tal?”
“That sad part the is. He done almost was. He see it to refused.”
“Almost done with what?”
A window in the control room’s wall opened, showing the bleak landscape they’d walked through to get here. “This what Tal remembers is. It planet after centuries the a is.” Another window opened. “This actually out there what is now.”
What was once bleak was now devastated. The towers were no longer recognizable as anything other than piles of junk. The sky was still starless, covered by clouds, but now the ground was covered with thick, blowing snow.
“Planet recycling century ago for a more than was ready. I signal one who the was sent. The Al Detanra already this hemisphere on have started work. He free would have been, century less than perhaps a now.”
“I’m sorry, you lost me again.” At least Gonzo didn’t get mad about it.
“I know. I true meaning my words without your other half can not convey.” She sighed. “You know yet understand do not.”
“No kidding.”
“But can that change. Once we your threads I you a proper education rearrange can give. Tal you clueless thought, I so but do not understand. You about the Ixasha Guild you a because Ixasha Guild do not know do not have. I know how possible that have is do not, but it also you Zefnanto Ach Ban network presence your system no in have. You one without other the do not get.”
When Gonzo got rolling she forgot he could only understand basic sentences, if that much. “So something about education, and my threads?”
“I this easier will promise get. But that later for is. Right now, we need you to home get.” A pause. “You go home.”
That part he understood perfectly. “But how?”
“Problem you iftar naga the is reversed. You never supposed your entire biznat trifan to send through, when you did you vistan bixbul and the blocked.”
Some of those words weren’t even in English. Mike shrugged at her.
“You should only one threa
d send here. I how you them all managed do not know send.”
“You’re saying I’m supposed to leave one thread here?”
“If you your education to continue want, yes. Without a Zefnanto Ach Ban, it you the only way will learn.”
Looked at from that perspective, he understood what was going on. If the channels were for single threads, then moving all of his here blocked the vistan bixbul, whatever that was. Or maybe he did know what that was. Maybe he couldn’t go back because he couldn’t see the exit. “Please tell me I haven’t always had the power to go back to Kansas.”
“Name your system that the is? Kansas?”
“No.” It was a funny way to think about it. “We don’t have a formal name for the whole system. Sol would come close but that’s just another word for star. Plus it would take a hundred debates to get everyone on board with giving it a name, never mind picking one. Systemy McSystem Face would probably get the most votes. Humans are weird.”
“I your back online other half until cannot wait. That sense at all no made.”
“Welcome to my world. Now, how do I get home?”
She walked over to a console at the far end of the room, which turned on when she touched it. He’d need to learn how that worked if he ever came back here. Although it seemed that he might not ever leave.
“Arriving way you did the very was dangerous. Whatever you do not ever it again used use. You it a second time will not survive.”
He caught most of that and couldn’t disagree with her. “I promise.”
“The return dangerous complex as as or is not. You needed here because it only place left tools correct arnarv tithra with to the to be is can form.”
A thing that looked an awful lot like a speculum drew itself into being above the console. He’d learned all about those after picking Kim up from her gynecologist a few months ago. “What are you going to do with that?”
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