by Adrian Cole
From either side of the clearing, other shapes now burst into view. Bannerman spared them only the briefest of glances as he took to his heels and sprinted on down the path, back into the woods beyond. He had seen enough, though, to know that the agents of his enemies were hot on his tail. The creatures hunting him were as much machine as man, part of the nature of the system, designed to terrify the intruder and weaken his resistance. Their distorted faces snarled in bestial fury, elongated arms pounding the ground as they wove through the undergrowth after him.
He felt the shuddering of the neural system of this vector of pseudospace. It was focusing its energies on him like a living creature. Somewhere someone was hard at work, punching keys, guiding forces, stimulating electronic data, organising it into the power that would snare him and stuff him unceremoniously into the equivalent of its cyberspace test tube. Then they’ll know exactly what they’ve got hold of.
It wouldn’t be long before he was surrounded. Whether Ho’s colleagues used an army of these projected hunters or anything else, they were simply manifestations of the network’s energy. Bannerman knew that his only hope of evading them would be to convert himself. He would have to become what he least wanted to become. Catch 22.
He raced off the path at a tangent and tore through the undergrowth. There was one other trick he could throw at them, but it might only buy him time. He could sense the trap tightening now, a noose comprised of the hunters. He threaded his way through the trees, looking upward until he saw what he wanted. One of the trees ahead was almost bent over, its gnarled branch an easy climb. He almost bounded up it, gripping the lowest of the branches and swinging higher.
Below him, still screened by the thatch of leaves, the pursuers were closing right in, mouths opening in silent snarls, grins fixed idiotically.
Spare me the performance, he thought, wriggling upward. He found what he wanted, a bough strong enough to take his weight that hung out over the drop, with its own mat of leaves. At the base of the tree, a group of pursuers had gathered. They waited, simulated, feral eyes staring upward. They knew they had him trapped. He had to assume that somewhere, Ho would know that, too, the information passed to him by his operator. All they needed to do now was close the circuit and isolate him.
Bannerman eased on to the branch and took as much of the foliage in both hands as he could. If he had guessed right, the tree would be part of another curcuit, independent of the hunters. He concentrated. Below, the first of the pursuers were coming up the trunk. The tree shook, something within it buzzing like a cloud of hornets, the sound rising. Wisps of pungent electrical smoke diffused from the bark. Blue lines of light zipped from trunk to hunter, the shock punching it from its perch.
In the foliage, Bannerman’s figure began to dissolve as he poured his energy into the circuit, draining it like water into a narrow conduit. As it raced away at electric speed, the pursuers fell back, short-circuited by contact with the tree. They sat around its base now like so many broken dolls, hissing and popping, gradually dissolving, their own energies flowing back to their primary source.
Bannerman, converted now to a familiar energy form, flickered deeper down into the complex reaches of pseudospace, though he knew that a renewed pursuit would come. This was a local network, its boundaries not infinite, and they must be controlled by Ho and his technicians. Sooner or later he was going to have to get out of the net. But the very thought was like a punch in the face. Get out to where? His body? But if it was smashed, there would be no way he could do it. Another body? Impossible. Then what? The only alternative was to remain trapped in here. But he was like a fish in a bowl. A big bowl, yeah, but sooner or later they’d scoop him out. Into what?
* * * *
Fujimoto watched the technician as the man removed the headpiece, carefully easing aside its many wires and setting it down on the console beside him. The man turned, his face damp with sweat, his hair plastered to his skull. He took out a handkerchief and wiped his cheeks and mouth, leaning back heavily. In front of him, the huge screen was vacant, save for a minute, winking cursor.
“I understand you have something to report,” said Fujimoto, his voice calm, relaying an easy manner that belied whatever sat beneath its surface. His associates understood it to be predatory, cold as any shark.
The technician, an Englishman, nodded. He spoke in a clipped, tired voice. “It’s some kind of hacker. In the system. Damned if I know how. He must be bloody good.”
Only the faintest stiffening of the shoulders betrayed a reaction. “Very skilled indeed. I understood that our system was impervious to such incursions. So what exactly have you found, Dainton?”
“It’s something new. But I don’t think it’s anything to do with Riderman’s people. No damage done. I just noticed some glitches in the system a while ago and I’ve been trying to clean them out.”
“What did you find?”
“It’s not the usual kind of hacker. Someone has projected themselves into the system. Converted themselves into an energy form that can surf whole sections of it, like a current passing through its microchips. Incredibly fast. Whoever it is, his or her whole metabolism is restructured by whatever programming is being used. It’s cutting edge.”
Fujimoto nodded patiently. He respected the Englishman’s work. The man was second to none in his field. “Go on.”
“It may be something to do with the Bridge of Light. It unleashed some extraordinary forces and probably opened doors that would normally not even be doors. My guess is, that’s when our intruder slipped in to our network. I can’t be sure how, but it doesn’t matter. He’s there.”
“You are sure?”
Dainton nodded, again wiping his face. “Oh, yes. I can’t be certain how he will act, but he was netted by the defense field, in this case a wood. I sent in the Curators. They’re the latest cyber-cop modification. Very fast and effective, feeding off the neural emanations of the intrusion. But this one’s damned slippery.”
“What happened?”
Dainton indicated a glass window. Beyond it, in a bare room, a dozen or more machine-beings were slumped against the walls, either asleep or drugged. They had once been men, but here they had been modified, plugged into the pseudospace network. “I sent them into the system to ring him and disable him. My aim was to reduce his energy and dump it on to a compact disc. Once I’ve done that, you can do whatever you want with him.”
Fujimoto looked in at the machine-beings. “You are saying they failed.”
“Yes. The intruder deduced what was happening. He not only short-circuited them, but he re-converted his own energy and gave me the slip. Even so, I now know what he’s capable of and how he operates. Temporarily we now have a virus loose in the system.”
Fujimoto actually smiled. “A virus. How intriguing. And how will you deal with this situation, Mr. Dainton?”
“I have a search engine I’ve been developing. Once I’ve pinned him down, I can disable him with my own anti-virus programme. I’ll have to be careful, though. It’s pretty deadly stuff. The likelihood is that it will wipe him clean. And I presume you want to ask him a few questions.”
“Indeed I do.”
“All I need is a bit of time.”
Fujimoto nodded slowly. He knew that time for Dainton had a very different meaning for him than it did for most people. The technician thought in nano-seconds. “How much?”
Dainton looked uncomfortable. “Possibly as much as an hour.”
Inwardly Fujimoto grinned. In an hour Dainton could achieve what would take his contemporaries a week. “Very well,” he said condescendingly. “An hour.”
“Is there any news about the American?”
Fujimoto glanced at his watch. “I am confident that he will be here eventually. Why do you ask?”
Dainton was frowning, as though presented with an even more complex problem. “There may not be enough energy residue in his body to load up into the system. Every minute that passes reduces my chance of succ
ess. I can’t promise miracles.”
“I thought you were a master of such arts, Mr. Dainton.”
“Yes, but if Bannerman is dead, he’ll be no use. I don’t have a voodoo programme. I can’t create zombies.” Though I’ve no doubt that Fung Chang would be delighted if I could.
Fujimoto nodded thoughtfully. “Of course not. But you would be surprised at the uses we can put Bannerman’s body to. There are other powers we can, shall we say, interface, with. In the meantime, Mr. Dainton, use your hour well.”
* * * *
Bannerman had become pure energy, pure mind. Like an electrical current, he flowed through the countless wires and synapses of the system, like an impulse set loose by the brain. Except that I originated outside this body, he mused. How much time do I have? I can duck and dive, but whoever is running this set-up has got everything in his favour. I’m like a damned mouse in a maze with no doorway out. Sooner or later I’m going to be penned up in a dead end.
But he wasn’t one to give in easily. As he moved about the myriad circuits, he applied himself mentally to the puzzle, discarding solution after solution.
When he heard the voice, he mentally jerked to a halt, freezing. The sound, for it came to him like a sound, was a whisper inside his metaphorical head. He still imagined himself in physical form. The voice was gently exhorting him to remain very still.
Well, it would do, he thought. They would rather trap him without a fuss, prevent him from fouling up any of the works here. If he could find certain parts of the system, he could do one hell of a lot of damage.
But this voice was weird. It was like being spoken to telepathically. This was a new development and a very dangerous one. If Ho’s masters could develop a programme that worked on that kind of level, they were using powers way beyond anything yet known in cybernetics. If they could create cyborgs, Cyberwolf clones, which seemed to be their aim, and control them telepathically, they’d have a force of phenomenal potential. The original army from hell, he thought.
The voice came again, insistent, seductive almost, and he tried to shut it out and with it the welling bile of panic.
CHAPTER TWENTY
In the Pit
The Barbarian eased his cramped muscles. He and the Mire-Beast had been chained up in a semi-circular pit cut twenty feet down into the natural rock of the landscape, the garrison built around it. Across the pit, some twenty yards away, the Mire- Beast sat hunched up, still bound by the wire mesh that prevented him from trying to tear loose. Overhead a full moon bathed the tiny amphitheatre in pale light: by its glow the Barbarian had already studied the walls of this outdoor prison. Apart from the thick door set into them, there was no way out. The walls were sheer, smoothed carefully by the masons that had cut them.
Cradoc watched his companion silently. The Barbarian looked despondent, head down, shoulders slumped. Faking it, Cradoc told himself. If he’d learned anything about Konnar, it was that he possessed an extraordinary resilience. If there were to be a moment to strike, Konnar would snatch it and unleash his remarkable energy. But this is a hell of a place to be holed up in. Even if we cut loose from here, we’ve got to work our way through the entire garrison. There won’t be any underground escape route. Any drains will be no more than pipes. I might just make it, but he won’t. And he’s the only person who’s shown a scrap of sympathy for me! The last kind of sidekick I would ever have expected!
His vaguely amused thoughts were cut short by movements up above the rim of the amphitheatre. Several soldiers appeared, one of them leaning on the stone rim and looking down at the two prisoners.
“I’ve seen the likes of the barbarian before,” he said disdainfully to the man beside him. Cradoc recognised the latter as Quintus, the sergeant who had supervised their capture. “Plenty of muscle, but with as much brain as a stone.”
Konnar did not lift his head, apparently staring at the ground.
“But what in Hades is that other creature?”
“We can only assume, Artavius, that it is another of these grotesque spawnings that seem to be plaguing us at the moment. I’m not convinced that they are the handiwork of the Druids, although some of the men claim to have seen some outrageous sights deep in the forests. But just lately, there seems to be something far worse at work.”
The other grunted assent. “You down there. Barbarian!”
Konnar turned his head slowly, gazing dumbly up at the man Artavius.
“They tell me you enjoy a fight. Well, you shall have one. One of you will join the rest of our gladiators and hopefully win us some money. Do well and life won’t be so bad for you. Get a good night’s rest. Tomorrow morning we’ll see just how good you are. Whatever that thing is in the net, you can pit yourself against it. Kill it and you’ll go on to serve me. If it kills you, we’ll pit it against some of the other horrors that have been crawling out of the night recently.”
The Barbarian turned and again studied the ground.
“I hope, Quintus, he shows a bit more life in the morning. Judging by the state of him, I could brain him with one arm tied behind my back.” Without another word, Artavius swung round and left.
Quintus looked down at his captives. “Put on a good show tomorrow, or it will go very badly for you.” Then he, too, left and with him the soldiers.
Cradoc looked across at the Barbarian, but he did not move for a long time. As much as half an hour had gone by before he finally raised his eyes and looked across. He gave a slight shake of his head, suggesting that he did not trust the Romans, who might be listening. He gently extended a shackled arm, again shaking his head, clearly indicating that he wasn’t going to be able to tear free.
Cradoc nodded. Not a lot we can do. But if we have to fight each other, they’re going to have to release us. Konnar will know that.
If he could have read the Barbarian’s mind, he’d have heard the echoes of his own thoughts. Sooner or later the chains would have to come off. Konnar mentally sighed. He’d been in more prisons and pits than he cared to remember. And got out of them by any number of means, fair and foul. His enemies usually underestimated him somehow and left at least one chink in their armour. Difficult to see where it would come this time. These Romans were indeed well organised. But they were arrogant. They didn’t expect to be bested by a brainless ox of a barbarian. He smiled. Always a useful guise.
The night wore on and there were no sounds from above: the two prisoners might have been alone in the world. Around them, the night air was very still. So still that a slight stirring of it immediately drew the Barbarian’s attention. He glanced across at Cradoc. He had heard, too. Strangely, the sounds were very soft, but furtive. Why should a guard move so stealthily?
In a moment a shadow appeared at the rim of the pit, partially in silhouette. It was human, but its form was distorted by a black cloak, swathed around it in a cloud that had the appearance of wings, though gossamer thin. Amazingly the figure slipped over the rim and dropped easily to the ground, landing as lithely as a cat and with as little sound. It followed the curve of the wall, itself like a shadow, more spirit than solid. The Barbarian tried to focus on it, but its sleek black lines seemed to confuse his vision. In a moment, the intruder was standing over him.
“I’m here to aid you,” it said in a whisper.
The Barbarian said nothing. It seemed unlikely that this stranger would be here to kill him. But who in all the hells was he? One of the so-called ‘spawnings’ that Quintus had referred to so anxiously?
Darkwing bent down and took a short weapon from his cloak. He cut with its laser light into the chains at Konnar’s wrists and the Barbarian saw with amazement that the metal was melting. More sorcery! In a matter of seconds he was free. He nodded across at Cradoc.
“Sure,” breathed Darkwing. “I’m here for him, too.” He seemed to flow like black mist around the perimeter of the pit until he reached the Mire-Beast. The eyes within the strange lenses of his mask fixed him with a very human stare.
Crado
c found himself studying the face of a complete stranger, but those eyes were warm, a glint of humour in them.
“Soon have you out of this mess. Cradoc, isn’t it?”
Cradoc’s eyes widened, but he nodded.
“You’ve got friends in this freaked-out world, Cradoc. You and the Barbarian. But not here. These guys are definitely not friendly. But you know that.” As he spoke softly, Darkwing used his weapon to slice easily through the mesh that was holding Cradoc so tightly.
Cradoc unbent himself, stretching slowly, letting the blood flow back into his cramped veins. He nodded his thanks. Where the blazes is this guy from?
Darkwing felt a movement behind him and swung round, poised as a cat, ready to strike out. But it was the Barbarian, himself moving soundlessly. He grinned at the two weird figures before him. “Our thanks,” he said. “But how do you intend to get us out?”
Darkwing indicated the door. “Stay in the shadows while I test it.” They did as bidden, blending as best they could with the wall on either side of the door. The cloaked figure reached the door and pressed his gloved fingers against it. Solid and doubtless barred within. Again he used his odd weapon and in short while, smoke curled from a hole he had burned in the wood. The Barbarian watched in fascination. The dark man seemed to be able to control this fire, concentrating it into a thin beam of light. He worked in absolute silence, like a ghost.