On the way I learned that a few workers had already moved into our complex that day, including Trixie and his grandfather. When he saw us, the dwarf behaved strangely — he took to his heels.
“Hey, Furtado! Stop! Roj!”
My bodyguard ran after Trixie, easily caught up to him and span him round. Then marched him back to us.
“Hey, Trixie!” I said. “How’s it going? How’s your grandpa?”
The little hunchback cast an angry glance at me and gave a sniffle, wiping tears away with his sleeve.
“What happened?”
“Nothing!” Trixie muttered.
“Alright, fella, I see you ain’t in the mood,” Hairo said peacefully. “Next time you want to take a stroll, pick some place else, away from the hangar. You don’t have access rights, got it? Those guns there could have made a heap of ash out of you if I hadn’t been here.”
“I need flyer,” the little man said. “Trixie fly to European District!”
We were all stunned into silence for a few seconds. The declaration was of the kind that didn’t fit right away into one’s usual perception of the world.
“Veratrix, you’re a non-citizen,” Hairo said calmly. “You know what that means, right? You can’t fly to Europe. A patrol flyer will stop you at the border of the first citizen zone. You’ll be punished, little man!”
“I don’t care! I don’t care! I don’t care!” The dwarf shook his fists and shouted like a madman.
When efforts to find out why he wanted to go to Europe didn’t help, Hairo sighed heavily and called Sergei.
“We need to ask this guy some questions,” he explained.
The techie appeared with a metal case, which turned out to contain a miniature syringe. Seeing it, Trixie twitched, emitted a piercing wail and tried to bolt again. Roj caught up to him and brought him back once more.
“Keep hold of him, this is gonna hurt,” Sergei warned, leaning over the little man.
After the needle, the hunchback went limp and fell silent like a burst balloon. Drool dripped from his mouth.
“How do you feel, Veratrix?” Hairo asked.
“Me good…” he answered sleepily.
“Tell us — why do you want to go to Europe?”
“Jess there… She waiting for me…”
“Who’s Jess?”
“A girl… beautiful… we in love!”
“Where’d you meet her?”
“She fall in love with Trixie… in Kinema…”
He spoke disconnectedly and vaguely; Hairo had to repeat his questions and ask more, but ten minutes later, we had the full story of the boundless love and ignorant treachery of Veratrix Furtado, whose deeds, however, were hard even to call traitorous, for the little man knew not what he did.
At Hairo’s command, Roj took Trixie to a cell. As it turned out, the building had a kind of isolation area.
“Let our Romeo sit there while we figure out what to do,” the security officer said wryly.
“He should be in Dis,” I said. “Our castle is new, we need a gardener.”
“You’ll have to do without for now!” Hairo said sharply. “You understand what he nearly did to us? That girl is a plant, I guarantee it! This little guy said too much and she smelled a Threat. And sent it up the chain. God knows how else they’ll try to make contact with him.”
I remembered the stationary portal on Kharinza and nodded. The risk was too great.
“You realize we all could have been killed because of him?” the security officer asked, looking me right in the eyes. “Back in Alaska.”
“I know.”
“This is how they found us. The Darant brothels are controlled by the United Cartel and the Triad. But the specific spot where Trixie met Jess is Cartel-controlled…” Hairo thought for a moment, then punched his fist with his other hand. “Damn it! Diego can’t meet with the Cartel! If he tells them about us and Alex… Sergei, take Alex home, go into red alert. Don’t let Maria leave his side! Send Roj to me, we’ll fly together.”
Forgetting about me, Hairo ran to the hangar, shouting commands into his comm as he went.
I went off to rest. Sleep took a while — my body was warm and full of adrenalin from training, and thoughts whirled through my head; of Trixie and for some reason Behemoth, the Cartel and the Triad, my new hand-to-hand abilities and the Demonic Games, the temple in the desert, which would be completed any minute, and Terrastera, where I’d be able to go tomorrow… I don’t remember falling asleep, but I woke to Maria’s voice.
The bodyguard was shaking me by the shoulder. She almost shouted:
“Alex, wake up! Wake up! Alex! There’s trouble!”
Not immediately finding the boundary between dreams and reality, I croaked:
“Maria? What did you say?”
“Nobody came back from the operation. Hairo, Willy, Roj…” Her eyes gleamed with tears in the darkness. “They’re all dead. We have to run, Alex! Run!”
Interlude 2. Kiran
ONE EARLY MAY morning, Kiran Jackson stood on the terrace of his house. His face to the rising sun and his arms spread wide, he took in a deep breath of fresh air thick with prana.
Done with his awakening ritual and ready for the new day, he started to get ready for work. The director of Snowstorm, a mighty corporation that practically ruled the world, could have started showing up at the office in shorts and a t-shirt long ago, but he had a reputation to maintain. Suits, shirts and ties from the best tailors, a mechanical watch of which only one was ever made, cologne sold only to category-A citizens… Props, but useful props, intended to create a boundary between Kiran and everyone else, all those beneath him on the social ladder. The watch on his wrist was merely decorative. Kiran could always see the time without it.
The reflection in the mirror pleased him. There was no sign of his more than fifty years on his smooth, noble face. His Indian roots had given him that proud and hawkish gaze, those expressive eyes. Smiling to himself, he noticed Irma in the reflection, stretching alluringly on the huge bed. Knowing that Kiran was watching her, she cast a soulful glance his way and stretched her legs out from beneath the sheets. The girl said nothing, but everything she wanted was reflected in her stunning eyes. Irma wanted him.
Kiran hesitated. He reached to take off his belt, but suppressed the desire awakening within. Irma always wanted only Kiran, demanding nothing in return. He liked that about her; she played no games. In the first two months of their relationship, he gave her only one gift, a new Ferrari Falco, but the superflyer brought the girl no joy. As far as Kiran had been informed, the luxury present still sat in the parking bay of her apartments, never once taking flight. Then Kiran gave her earrings. Special earrings. One could even call them unique. By the standards of Dis, they were divine-class. Those Irma wore.
“I’m going to be late today,” he warned her.
The naked girl rose gracefully, walked over to him and pressed her hot body against him, electrifying him with her breath and whispering into his ear:
“I’ll wait as long as you need, baby.”
“You’re staying?”
“If you don’t mind. Can I use the guest capsule? I have some work to do.”
“The entire house is at your disposal,” Kiran said, kissing Irma and leaving the house.
Five bodyguard combat droids whirred into action, surrounding him: two transformer orbs and three flying drones. Kiran’s personal pilot already had his Rolls-Royce Ghost ready outside the front door. The procession loaded into the superflyer and it took off into the sky over the island, quickly gaining not only altitude, but speed too. Accelerating to a thousand miles per hour in ten seconds might have been somewhat uncomfortable for the passengers if it weren’t for the compensators — Kiran felt almost nothing.
An hour later, he was sitting at a conference table in an underground Snowstorm bunker. Conference table… This archaic title didn’t reflect the reality at all — there was no table. What was the point when nobody had to write anything down? E
ach employee had a corporate AI assistant built into their comm bracelet. They had all the information at hand, and it could be easily projected onto the retina, a holoprojector or screen. And since there was no need for a table, everyone could sit as they liked. Chairs, bean bags, barstools at a bar — although all that was archaic too. The company usually organized its conferences in virtspace, but today’s meeting was anything but usual. More important than any in a long time, Kiran thought. Damn that Sheppard!
His employees had convened from all over the world, from various departments. In a company as gigantic as Snowstorm, it was no wonder that the eighteen assembled directors found it hard to figure out precisely what one department or another actually did. But in the light of recent events, everyone had heard of the Threat Department’s work, and now the department’s founder, Bellamy Drake, was bringing everyone in the room up to speed. Kiran liked Bellamy in every sense, which was why he had brought him into Pilgrim. However, Drake bargained himself the right to supervise the Threat Department, no longer in direct control of it, but keeping abreast of all its activities.
Kiran only half listened. Bellamy brought up a table of all the Threat types and went from level Z upwards, describing which exact principle the world-controlling AI used to classify them.
“In setting the potential level of a Threat, the Celestial Arbitration models all the options for the character’s development and makes its calculation using the maximum possible damage that the Threat can inflict on the world’s balance. The levels are a kind of millstone, preventing Threats from reaching their maximum potential.”
Bellamy had almost reached level D, and Kiran knew already that he was about to tell the room about Crag, Modus’s pet Threat, but then his AI assistant distracted him.
TR analysis of subject Irma Leikowic complete. Would you like to see it now? a young man’s melodic voice said, audible only to Kiran. The owner of the voice had long since rotted away somewhere in a Zone. Kiran liked the voice, and its owner, who… Damn him! That traitor had broken Jackson’s heart when he was young and foolish. Learning from his mistake, Kiran remembered him and did all he could to ensure that the traitor lost his citizenship.
He had never had a serious relationship since. With anyone — man, woman, transgender or non-binary. You can’t break someone’s heart if they don’t give a damn about you. Kiran had learned that simple truth well. Moreover, he was now extremely careful when it came to sexual partners. In the depths of his soul, he wanted a person to be with him not for his high status, not for his money, but just for him. Kiran had successfully repressed his emotional drive for someone to love, but he still wanted to be loved.
But how could one tell truth from falsehood? He’d seen so many insincere partners in his time that he ought to be able to tell them by sight! But no. There were professional femme fatales and Adonises aplenty, who wouldn’t admit their deception even with a plasma gun pointed at them. Round-the-clock monitoring and software analysis of words, gestures and reactions never gave one-hundred-percent accuracy.
At least until recently.
All emotions are just the result of hormones coursing through the blood. Happiness and joy, fear and terror, sadness and grief, even love — all these beautiful words to describe a biochemical cocktail of various ingredients. One young amateur inventor had created an AI that could precisely detect all variations of mood, and he had offered his invention to Snowstorm. Kiran turned down the invention, but then contacted its author privately.
All the device needed was contact with skin. What could better provide permanent contact with a woman’s skin than a pair of beautiful earrings worth the price of a space yacht? And that wasn’t counting their electronic contents; a miniature nanobot factory. Kiran was sure that Irma wouldn’t take them off in any circumstances. And he was right.
Every time he was with the girl, the experimental analyzer tracked her reactions. It had cost Kiran some huge donations to the Mars colonization fund — that was a condition of the talented, but eccentric inventor. What was his name again..? Zoran, that was it. Zoran Savic.
Nodding to Bellamy so he knew not to stop his report, Kiran rose from his chair and walked into an attached room. Then he called himself every name under the sun for his sentimentality — surprisingly, he realized he was afraid to look at Irma’s TR (True Relationship) report.
Closing his eyes, he took a few deep breaths to calm his heart as it tried to jump out of his chest. Damn, how could he be in love with Irma? She was an airhead! Wretched category-F citizenship status, no outstanding mind, an obviously customized appearance. He didn’t even have anything in particular in common with her. She agreed with everything he said and didn’t talk about herself. All the time they spent together, they spent rolling around in bed.
Kiran brought the results up on his retinal display:
Analysis of the true relationship of subject Irma Leikowic to procedure initiator Kiran Jackson is complete.
With a probability of 99.98%, Irma Leikowic feels contempt for Kiran Jackson; with a probability of 0.02% — indifference.
Your reputation in the eyes of Irma Leikowic (according to Savic Scale) is: contempt.
His heart skipped a beat. Blood rushed to his face, filled his ears, his throat dried up. Kiran blinked, clearing the AI’s soulless verdict from his retinal display, then took out his Accelerant and shot several sprays into his mouth.
He could hear his heartbeat in his temples. His thoughts span feverishly. Thrown off balance, he brought up the stream from his home camera footage. Irma lounged in a deckchair on the terrace, her eyes closed, an unfinished cocktail beside her. Nothing unusual. Just in case, Kiran raised the house’s security level.
He walked over to the door leading to the conference hall and stopped, his face twisting in a snarl. He called Farkhad, chief of his personal security attachment, and gave a short command:
“Irma is done. For good.”
“Got it,” Farkhad confirmed.
‘Done’ meant that the subject was no longer of interest to the boss. That meant cut her off, take her gifts away, wipe her memories, put a mental contract on her and throw her out of the house. ‘For good’ meant throw her out, but somewhere far from the house, and not alive.
With that problem solved, Kiran calmed down. The anger and pain of disappointment had already left his body. In the end, it was all just a cocktail of hormones. Half a minute later and Irma was gone from his mind, her name crossed out forever. She would probably be dead before the end of the conference, but in his mind, she was already buried.
Not bad, not bad, Kiran thought, opening the door. The earrings worked great! Just a shame it took so long to gather the data. I’ll have to talk to that developer, have him speed up the process.
Bellamy had fallen silent and looked a question at his reappeared boss.
“Let’s continue,” Kiran said. “Where were we?”
“We just reached the A-Threat,” Bellamy answered. “Should I continue, or hand off to Mr. Menfil?”
What? Kiran couldn’t believe his eyes when they followed Bellamy’s. His mood, already perilously low, got worse. Menfil shouldn’t be here! Alright, get a grip, behave as usual, Kiran told himself.
Arto Menfil was a project director about whom few knew even within Snowstorm. Kiran himself heard of the work Arto directed only relatively recently. And when he did hear of it, he trembled. He couldn’t allow the other directors to feel the same emotions; that would make an already tense atmosphere worse. If he let the man speak now, the transition would be too sharp. It had to be more fluid.
Nodding to his thoughts, Kiran said:
“Colleagues, before you all meet Mr. Menfil and learn what exactly his department does…”
All heads turned to stare at the lean and pale-faced man sitting in a chair in the corner of the hall. He seemed to be daydreaming. His shaved head gleamed in the bright lamplight. The badge on his jacket stated: A. Menfil. Project: Optimization.
Kiran
continued.
“First I will summarize Bellamy’s report and reaffirm the aims of the Pilgrim project. Because one leads naturally to the other, and if we pay attention to the chains of cause and effect, we can come to only one conclusion: the A-class Threat, Scyth, must be eliminated before… Ahem… Let’s say, before the scenario of the Sleeping Gods reaches a point of no return…”
Kiran’s speech, a little quick from the Accelerant, but cogent and clear, continued for twenty minutes. The managers of the departments he mentioned supported his words with holographic illustrations, diagrams, graphs. Once done talking about why exactly the scenario of the Sleeping Gods was dangerous and what role Scyth played in it all, he moved to the Pilgrim project, starting from the very beginning:
“Few know it, but two versions of Disgardium were launched, and not many know about the first. It was a complete copy of the world, raw and not yet trialled by the official beta testers. It couldn’t even be called an alpha, really, but it was this version that incidentally became the reason for the creation of the Pilgrim project. A hundred beta testers were carefully selected by the security service. All orphans without close friends or relatives. All unique in their own way. Members of all races and creeds, all genders and ages. Deadlines loomed, there were mere months to go before Dis’s official launch, so the founding fathers gave their permission to use deep immersion. In deep immersion, time, uh…”
Path of Spirit (Disgardium Book #6): LitRPG Series Page 25