He tucked my arm back around his waist and leaned down to grasp the handlebars. “Hold on.”
So I did, clamping my arms and thighs around him and tucking my head against his back.
I’d thought we’d been traveling fast before. I’d been wrong. The burst of furious speed and sound that followed would have stolen the breath from me if my avatar was capable of breathing. It felt like the world had exploded around us, moving into a kind of hyper-overdrive no physical body could handle. Not without dying, at any rate.
Darkness surrounded us, but it rapidly receded as light from the realm ahead closed in. It looked like dawn breaking, but with a swiftness no sunrise could match. I kept my face pressed to Alexei’s back, moving as the cycle dictated, pulverized by its speed. But if I felt terrible with my dulled senses, Alexei had to feel even worse. At least his body protected me. He was in front, taking the brunt of the onslaught.
It took me a while to notice it, but over the roar of the cycle, I heard another noise. At first, I thought it was the cycle’s engine whining at the punishing speed. Logically, I knew that wasn’t possible. The cycle went as fast as the CN-net protocols allowed.
I focused on the sound, giving it all my attention until it became distinct on its own. It sounded like…buzzing, coming from behind us. I looked back, then wished I hadn’t.
Ahead of us was light from the city. Behind…
It looked like a funnel-shaped column of fire, presumably full of bees—if the buzzing was any indication. It was the only comparison my mind could come up with. Gods help us, we were being chased by bees on fire. I couldn’t tell how big the column of flame was, or how close, but I suspected it was bigger and closer than I gave it credit.
It was also, despite our speed, gaining on us.
We came roaring into the new realm and were hit with full day—sunlight, blue sky, fluffy white clouds. The transition was jarring even though I’d known it was coming. We were also surrounded by buildings, people, and other vehicles. Suddenly our straight shot to the nexus-node jump pad was an obstacle course with endless hurdles.
The cycle twisted and we hit a bump before straightening out again. I stifled a scream because fuck me, we were driving down the sidewalk!
Pedestrians leaped out of the way. Alexei cut our speed, but there were still avatars who didn’t clear out quickly enough and were knocked brutally aside as we passed. Alexei swore in Russian, the curses loud and vicious. Next, he jerked the cycle so violently, he nearly sent me flying as we skidded to a halt. Then we were off the cycle, his hand clamped around my wrist in a viselike grip.
“Behind us!” I shrieked.
“I know,” came the snarled answer.
We bolted into a large building, moving too fast to take in the details—big, airy, and rammed full of people. I also knew where we were: the terminal point of the nexus-node. Ahead was a series of jump pads reminiscent of the Y-line pod launch platforms back in Nairobi.
Alexei ran us straight through the crowd, shouldering people aside with ruthless efficiency. I tried to keep up as best I could, tripping after him, thankful my implants couldn’t project the sensory data. In the real world, having Alexei wrench me after him like this would have torn my arm off.
We were almost to the jump pads when the screaming started. I stumbled and fell as blind panic erupted around us. In the chaos, Alexei lost his grip and I was torn away. In seconds, I lost sight of him. There wasn’t even time to panic about losing him. Instead, I risked a glance back.
The world was disappearing. The column of fire bees destroyed everything in its path, leaving only darkness. The world dissolved behind us, eaten and disappearing as if it had never been. The buzzing noise was horrifyingly loud and reaching a crescendo of deafening thunder. I could only kneel on the ground and watch it bear down, observing with fascinated terror as the end of the world descended. I honestly couldn’t move. Could only look up with my mouth hanging open, too paralyzed by fear and amazement to scream.
Arms pushed at me. I pitched forward and went sliding across the floor. Snapped out of my panic, I dashed forward on my hands and knees, rushing to the jump pad. I had no idea where Alexei was. The crush of avatars was too much and I had to move with them or be trampled as everyone streamed to the jump pads.
Then I found myself sitting on one of the pads, dozens of people falling on me. There were too many of us, their weight smothering me. Never mind that I didn’t need to breathe: My lungs were convinced I needed air and I was choking on nothing. Through the press of people, I saw the column of fire arching over all of us. Around it, only dark emptiness. Fire. Darkness. Buzzing. Screaming. This was the world and soon it would be gone, consumed in unquenchable fire.
Then everything turned a blinding white and the entire universe fell away.
9
I opened my eyes with a start and my intake of breath came so fierce, I choked on it. I couldn’t get up. Couldn’t move. My body refused to do what I wanted it to. I took another breath so I could scream before a voice broke into my hysteria and penetrated the fog.
“Felicia, I have you. We’re out of the CN-net. I promise you’re safe, but you need to relax.”
When in human history had telling someone to relax actually worked? That was what I wanted to say but couldn’t get the words out. They felt like impossible things trapped in my throat, so I tried to take stock of my surroundings instead.
Alexei. I lay atop him, on the couch, both of us where we’d been from a time that seemed like years ago. His arms were around me, pinning me and preventing me from hurting myself. Realizing that, I stopped struggling and went limp. His arms loosened, then a hand began rubbing along my back, the touch careful and soothing.
On the other side of the room, Feodor slept in his dog bed, twitching with some doggy dream. One of his ears lay twisted so it flopped inside out. As I watched that sleeping puppy dream about chasing rabbits or squirrels, the confusion of the CN-net dissipated enough to let me make sense of the world again.
“I feel like I died,” I whispered. My voice came hoarse and raspy, as if I’d been screaming for hours. My throat felt sore too. All this sensory input was a far cry from the insubstantial e-world. Now, my body felt like oversensitized deadweight. “My brain just stopped working and I had this moment in between where I didn’t exist.”
“I know, but you’re safe. You logged out with no damage done.” I felt him kiss the top of my head. “The CN-net rebooted itself and all the avatars were purged.”
Hearing his familiar accent felt like the most wonderful thing in the world. “A reboot doesn’t sound so bad.” When he said nothing, I felt the tiniest flicker of worry, making it impossible to merely concentrate on the hand stroking my back. “Does it happen often?”
“No. Not in the time the Consortium has monitored CN-net activity.”
“And how long have you been monitoring?”
“Since its inception.”
“That’s…a long time.”
“Nearly two hundred years,” he agreed. “I’ll be interested to see what readings the tech-meds made.”
“Did we break it?”
He chuckled, his chest moving with it and dislodging me from my comfortable spot. “It isn’t so easy to break the CN-net, although attempts have been made with varying degrees of success.”
I struggled to make myself comfy again, refocusing on the sleeping puppy. I needed to calm my racing, fragmented thoughts—thoughts that kept zipping back to my last memories on the CN-net. Reliving the horror. The flames. So much buzzing.
“Felicia, look at me.”
“I can’t,” I admitted, saying the words into his chest. “I’m scared I’m not where I’m supposed to be, trapped in some lost corner of the CN-net and I can’t get out. I’m afraid you won’t be you. You’ll be someone else, and you won’t be mine. Or I’ll find out I’m lying on top of a…a giant cockroach.”
A minute of utter silence followed this. Even the back rubbing stopped.
“A cockroach?”
His tone was flat and unreadable. Guessing what it meant was beyond my feeble skill set. Maybe amused. Upset? Incredulous? Annoyed? I honestly couldn’t tell. My people-reading skills had evaporated.
“Talk to me,” I murmured. “Tell me what happened in the CN-net. What was that thing chasing us?”
I moved my head and saw the dark edge of one of his tattoos—the Madonna and child maybe? I touched it with my finger, tracing its lines. I moved until I could see the intricate design in its entirety. I felt the top of my head bump lightly against something. His chin? I ignored that and concentrated on the tattoo. Yes, I’d been right about the image, and that had me sighing in relief. And I could hear his heart too—another encouraging sign. In the CN-net, you couldn’t hear heartbeats.
“Those were the queenmind’s drones.”
I stilled. “I didn’t think drones worked that way. What did we do wrong?”
His chest rose and fell as he breathed, moving me as well. I caught a glimpse of his thick black hair where it brushed the collar of his shirt. I curled a strand around my fingers. Yes, this was familiar too. I knew this.
“Nothing significant enough to warrant that type of pursuit,” he said. His hand caught mine, holding it in place when I might have pulled away, pressing it against his smooth, warm skin. “I’ve never been tagged before, but it feels like someone expected us at the Renew repository. Even the best AI jockey would have been ensnared. The traps were unavoidable.”
“A column of fire bees,” I reminded him with a shudder. “I never want to see anything like that again.”
“Drones don’t react like that. Something that cataclysmic should never have been unleashed on the CN-net. It’s too dangerous and unpredictable. The queenmind has built-in safeguards to prevent it from reaching the terminus point of its processing capacity and forcing a reboot.”
“I don’t know what that means, but it doesn’t sound good.”
“It isn’t. Someone powerful and very reckless is keeping an eye on your family’s records, and they don’t care what resistance is in their way.”
I took a shuddering, anxious breath. “Someone in One Gov?”
“I don’t think so. No one in One Gov would unleash that sort of chaos on a whim. Any avatars caught in the reboot would have been deleted and will need to be reactivated from the last restore point. That sort of data loss won’t sit well with the rest of the tri-system. With Secretary Arkell’s popularity levels so low and an election coming in a few months, One Gov wouldn’t want the polls to dip lower.”
“Or it might make someone so desperate to hold on to power, they’d make a play for the luck gene thinking it would solve their problems,” I said. I couldn’t imagine anyone being so stupid, but I knew for a fact the tri-system was full of stupid people. “Will whoever set the traps know it was us snooping?”
“The aliases did their job in that respect. However, now we’ve tipped our hand to whoever’s after your family’s DNA. It’s reasonable to assume they’ll know we were behind it.”
Great. We’d just alerted the bad guys we were onto them. “What happens next? Will they come after us?”
“They can try. They’ll fail.” The dark undercurrent in his voice was unmistakable.
“Do you think we can expect my family to come out of this okay?” How would I feel if I learned my father was actually dead? I had no idea.
“I don’t know, but I swear to you, we’ll find out.”
“And we’ll stop them,” I whispered, finally lifting my head to meet his eyes. They were the startling, impossible blue I’d come to expect. Alexei was exactly who he was supposed to be. It was almost embarrassing how much this relieved me.
“We’ll stop them,” he agreed. He smiled at me. “Not a cockroach?”
I flushed, embarrassed, and pressed my face into the crook of his shoulder. “You know I never actually believed that, right?”
“I know.” His hand smoothed along my back for a few more relaxing strokes. “And I’m still yours. I will always be yours, regardless of whatever world we find ourselves in.”
I sighed into his neck and pressed a kiss to the spider tattoo there, savoring the feeling of safety and the rightness of our being together. “I think this is the part where I’m supposed to tell you how much I love you.”
“Even more than designer shoes and emeralds?” he teased lightly.
I snorted a laugh. “Yes, even more than all of that.”
“Good. Do you think you can stand yet?”
“Yes. I don’t feel so…insubstantial.”
He sat up, swinging us both around until our feet were on the floor. He stood and grasped my hands, pulling me into a standing position. “I want your implants checked by one of the tech-meds. After what happened, I want to ensure the circuitry is intact. Then we can leave, and I’ll make sure you’re fed.”
I wasn’t a fan of the Consortium tech-meds as a rule. Most were holdovers from the days of Konstantin Belikov. Alexei may have cleaned house, but Belikov had had them working on projects so morally gray, I doubted if they knew right from wrong anymore. However, a check-up seemed like a smart idea.
“I want to see Karol.”
“You hate Karol,” he reminded me.
“I know, but I want to see him.” Or rather, my gut wanted me to.
He gave me one of those long, steady looks I could never seem to read. “You want to ask him about the embryos.”
Did I? “I’m curious about the progress. Aren’t you?”
“He’s brilliant, but he flusters easily. I’m trying to give him the space he needs so he can focus on results.”
I blinked, surprised. When had Alexei become so open-minded? “Okay. That makes sense. I’ll see whoever’s in the lab.”
We left for the lab, bringing Feodor with us; he’d chosen that moment to leap up from his bed, barking with excitement. His nap had turned him into a ball of energy that wanted to race around the room. If only we could harness that energy for good, I reflected as Alexei snapped the leash to his collar.
The lab was located underground and could only be reached by a single elevator. Once we were there, the doors opened into a high-security, off-limits laboratory that was the heart of planning for the Ursa 3 mission. It wasn’t so much a single lab as a series of research and office areas created within the larger space of gray concrete and metal-framed walls. Some were no more than cordoned-off open squares of space where tests were conducted for everyone to observe. Others were private worlds—little cubicles without windows, only large enough for one or two people. Others still were more like classrooms, having walls, white easels for pixel projection, cluttered desks, and models of equipment I didn’t understand.
Staff bustled about as we entered. Then everything came to a grinding, painful halt as everyone snapped to attention and waited beside their respective workstations as we passed. It felt like we were a parade, as heads bowed in deference and murmured greetings were exchanged in Russian. I wasn’t sure how often Alexei went to the lab, but the staff acted as if he was visiting royalty. The looks ranged from awed to terrified. Nice to know he still scared the shit out of his staff.
We entered a part of the lab sectioned off from the rest that looked more like traditional office space. Karol was inside with two other people. They stood around a table, looking at a plant, all frowning at it. The plant’s leaves were black and shriveled, making it look like it might be dying. However, I saw new growth too, so what did I know?
Everyone jumped to attention as we swanned in. The tech-meds, both women, froze like timid forest creatures. As for Dr. Karol Rogov—thin, sandy hair, an obvious Adam’s apple, and with a nasally voice that drove me round the bend—he looked like he might vomit at the sight of us. Wonderful. Karol and I had a strained relationship, but I hadn’t thought it this bad.
“Forgive the interruption,” Alexei said. “There’s been an incident with the CN-net and Felicia needs her implants sc
anned.”
Karol broke free of his rictus of fear. “Yes, of course. The reboot. We noted the disturbance and are taking ongoing measurements of the event.”
Alexei nodded. “I’ll want the results tabulated when normal CN-net access resumes. I want to see the fallout and the data trends, as well as any analysis as to whether this is a repeatable event.”
“Of course, Gospodin Petriv. It’s a fascinating case study. In fact, none of us knew such a collapse was possible—not on a system-wide scale.”
I paled. “A collapse? System-wide? You mean the whole CN-net went down?”
I looked up at Alexei with alarm while he looked at Karol impassively, as if the man was an insect he didn’t find particularly interesting but needed kept alive for a class science project.
“Yes. It was quite a significant event, with data loss in many areas before backup systems came online. Luckily, the Consortium systems remained intact. Even still, the AI queenmind drone surge was incredible. I’ve witnessed surges before, but nothing like the spike we recorded. It was unprecedented, and we’ve yet to determine if it was purposely done or accidental.”
Drone surge? Data loss? “It sounds worse than it really is, right? I mean, the drones tag and trace, but there’s no impact outside the CN-net.” When Karol didn’t answer, I felt a rush of dread. “Were people hurt? Not avatars, but people in the real world?”
“If the nexus-nodes overloaded while so many avatars attempted to transition at once, the system might not be able to handle processing restore points. Brainwave scans could be lost, and the hosts’ minds not returned to the proper body, if at all. In that case, the assumed result would be death.”
“Karol,” Alexei said, an edge of warning in his voice, “I suggest keeping speculation to a minimum until you’ve confirmed the results. For now, continue monitoring.”
Karol blanched, eyes darting from me back to Alexei. He swallowed, making his Adam’s apple bob violently. “Yes, of course, forgive me. I have no evidence to support my conjecture. I was merely theorizing. You’re here about the implants. We should focus on that.”
The Game of Luck Page 13