by Don Allmon
“She’s dead,” Comet said.
JT stopped his drone. “Valentine’s dead?”
“Comet dropped a bridge on her.”
“Valentine’s dead.” JT shook his head as if he couldn’t quite believe it. His drone returned to his side. He reassessed the two of them. His gaze lingered on Comet’s cuts and bruises, torn clothes, and dirt-matted hair. “I should have known you’d come after me.”
“Yeah, you should have,” Comet said. The accusation in his tone was gentle but unmistakable: JT hadn’t trusted Comet with his secrets and Comet was hurt.
Buzz couldn’t blame him, and maybe now was the time to get it all out in the open. “I’ve told him everything, mostly.”
And then Buzz told JT the story, getting him up to speed. He left out a few parts (so, no, maybe not everything out in the open, not yet). He left out the kisses and hand holding and pelvis grinding and not a word of what they’d have done after the bridge except they’d both been too exhausted to do it. But he told everything else.
He looked at Comet nervously, wondering what Comet was going to say about his version of the story because he knew JT and Comet’d had something between them once, and he wasn’t quite sure what it had been or what it was now. And he wasn’t sure if he and Comet had something between them or not. And he wasn’t sure he was ready to know.
And just now, this very moment, he desperately wanted Comet to say what he couldn’t: Buzz left out the part where we kissed. But Comet didn’t say that, and Buzz felt mildly and unreasonably betrayed by Comet’s support of his own omission.
JT nodded and sighed, relieved by the story, and looked over at the two people sleeping deep within their spell, “We’re safe, then.”
“I don’t think so, JT. The one who hired Valentine? It was Firelight.”
Comet and Jason sat cross-legged on the cave floor. Shaggy gave them space so the two of them could hash it out. The floor was cool and soft with dirt fallen from the cave ceiling. Comet could have lain in it and slept a thousand years, he was that tired. “What should I call you?”
“Jason.”
“But that ain’t your name.”
“JT.”
“What’s it stand for?”
“Nothing. Gene-donors J and T. Embryo 1138. Could have been worse. Could have been donors E-W or P-P or something.”
“Genetic experiments?”
Jason shrugged as if the details of his inception and birth didn’t matter.
“Is that why the fake ID?”
“No. The fake ID was because I was running away.”
“From Valentine?”
“No.” Jason glanced over to the sleeping elf. “From everything.”
Jason took a deep breath and told Comet the story of how this had all started two years ago when he, Austin, and Austin’s sister, Roan, had learned that the rumors surrounding a wizard named Firelight were true: the wizard was capturing kids—orc and elf children and teens, street kids mostly who wouldn’t be missed—and doing what with them . . . no one knew, but nothing good. So this was their chance to do the right thing: they’d break Firelight’s kidnapping ring wide open. All they needed was proof, and the proof lay in a private med center in Hunter’s Point.
Jason called it The Job That Went Bad.
Roan had died, her brain fried by network defenses, and they’d lost Grayson too, the fourth member of their team. And Comet knew how that felt. He’d lost teammates too. But he said nothing because this was Jason’s story.
Jason and Austin had been arrested, or so they’d thought until they awoke in an old-fashioned dungeon and not in an SFPD or PBI holding cell. He didn’t tell Comet what had been done to them while they’d been prisoners, and Comet knew better than to ask. But the ones who had captured them had been a cabal of wizards called the Thousand Suns, named for the number of stars listed by Ptolemy. Their archmagus was Firelight.
They were Firelight’s prisoners for six weeks, and then something happened, Jason didn’t know what exactly. Another raid on the facility? An earthquake? For all Jason knew, it could have been The Bomb. But something had set off the alarms and sprang the cell doors and threw the place into chaos, and he and Austin had escaped.
They’d hidden for a while until it all blew over. And then Jason had decided he’d had enough. That was how he’d put it: “I’d had enough.” He never told Comet enough of what. And Comet left that alone too, and didn’t ask.
He’d contacted Buzz, and Buzz forged the Jason Taylor ID and Jason Taylor moved to the promised land of the orcs—Greentown, Arizona—for a chance to start over. And Comet understood that idea perfectly well too, because he’d done the same thing after he’d left the service. And there Jason had met Comet and Duke at a corner table in a dive bar.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Comet asked, because all of Jason’s story (still unable to call him JT) was his story too, and if Jason had only told him, Comet would have understood better than anyone.
“I wanted to. I really wanted to. But I didn’t want to be JT anymore. I didn’t want you to look at me and see two people. I just wanted to be Jason. I just wanted to build fucking cars.” He sniffed as if fighting back tears, and the sparks in his eyes swirled brighter. Comet had never seen Jason’s eyes fleck with fire outside of sex. He’d never seen Jason so upset as he was now, and he didn’t know what to say or do to help him.
“But Firelight’s found us again and everything’s ruined now. Valentine broke through my firewalls in Greentown. I think she used a vulnerability in some system Dante was jacked into, I dunno. All the alarms went off, and Austin and I ran to help her, but she was already down—” He choked up a bit and wiped his eyes. “We fought our way out, but we couldn’t go to a hospital. It was too dangerous. What if Valentine attacked the hospital—could you even imagine? And how would we explain what happened? But Austin said Grandfather Henry could fix her, so we drove here. But Urushiol said that Henry was gone. We went to his house, and it was just like he’d left it for a weekend or something. All his stuff was still there, and Austin found the unicorn horn and stole it. I don’t think Urushiol knows we have it. I don’t think it’d be very happy if it knew. But Austin said he could use it to fix Dante on his own and we wouldn’t need Grandfather to cast the spell. It’s some kind of shared dream they’re having. He has to convince her to wake up.”
“That’s not how comas work.”
Jason shrugged. “That’s how magic works.”
They sat quietly awhile and watched the leaves spin in their vortex. Comet didn’t understand any of it. Cupid had been their wizard in Reindeer Squad, and Comet had never learned magic. Near the entrance, politely out of earshot, Shaggy watched them patiently. Comet was still linked to him, though they’d not sent to one another in a while. He liked the feeling of Shaggy there, the soft pressure of Shaggy against him like a gaze, like knowing Shaggy wore his clothes.
Jason fidgeted as time passed. He fidgeted the way that experienced drone pilots fidgeted: by moving his drone. He scratched idly at the ground using its clawed foot.
It reminded Comet of the footage Shaggy had recovered: Jason taking down one of Valentine’s Ataris with a pack of utility drones like this one. And the soldier in him had to ask: “Just how good are you?”
“You see? That’s exactly the kind of thing I was afraid you’d ask if you knew.”
Buzz sat at the cavern entrance and pretended not to hear, but of course he heard everything. And it was hard watching JT tear up, not only because it was always hard to watch a friend hurt, but because JT had left out the part where all this had been Buzz’s fault.
It had been Buzz’s decision to steal the Blue Unicorn from the Electric Dragon Triad, and then JT and Austin had had to save him from their retribution. And that girl there, Dante, she was hurt because of Buzz. And Buzz didn’t want to tell JT what would happen if Austin’s spell didn’t work, because Buzz knew exactly what would happen: She’d stay in her coma and doctors would try to do the
ir thing, though there was nothing they could do, and JT would wear himself down to a ghost with worry and self-hate, and Buzz would walk away scot-free, not a single damn scratch on him when it should have been him lying there.
He’d been arrogant to think he could walk around awake and free and no one would care. Stinking selfish. If he’d been in High Castle with BangBang and Critter and C#Minor, none of this would ever have happened.
JT and Comet sat quietly now, watching the lovely swirl of magic. And he’d have been lying if he’d said there wasn’t a jealous stab seeing the two of them together. That was who Comet deserved. Someone like JT, who was strong and smart and wasn’t Buzz.
Buzz looked away. The passage outside had a bend to it, and all he could see was a dim glow. He half expected to see BangBang there, hands shoved deep in his pockets, looking forlorn and abandoned and saying, You promised me you’d come to High Castle. But of course there was no network here and no BangBang.
The air smelled strange, and for a moment he thought it was BangBang and his stupid cigarettes.
Comet said, “I smell smoke.”
The forest itself blocked the view, but to the north, Buzz saw a perfect blue sky filling with gray plumes. They couldn’t see flames. To the west, storm clouds gathered: a druidic response to a forest fire. Comet and JT joined him and watched the fire spread.
And of course they all thought of Firelight, but Comet said, “We need to know for sure it’s him. I’ll go.”
He was off in a sprint before anyone could say no.
JT turned away. “Let’s get inside.”
Buzz didn’t want to lose contact with Comet. “No. The cave’s too deep. It’ll interfere with his signal. Someone needs to stay out here.” —Comet, link your vision. And Comet did. It was startling how fast the guy could run. Trees whipped by in a blur.
He hated seeing this way. It was always the problem in simflicks too: the actor never looked the same direction you wanted to. They never seemed to focus on the things you were interested in. You knew a good simflick actor and director because they always focused on the things you wanted to see or hear or touch. Comet didn’t do that.
—Stop, goddamn it, stop. What is all that shit? There were things hanging in the trees, what he couldn’t quite tell.
—Fetishes. Comet sent, but didn’t stop. —They’re all over Arunachal Pradesh these days.
Even outside, Comet’s signal degraded quickly as he passed behind hills and ridges. Comet’s feed hung and then jumped to a completely different arrangement of trees and then hung again. —This ain’t a satellite link. Watch your z.
—Buzz, you ain’t gonna get a clear feed
—You’re getting out of range.
—
And their connection dropped entirely.
Buzz paced.
The smell of smoke intensified and the air grew hazy. Buzz could feel it in his lungs.
Comet reconnected and dropped, reconnected and dropped. Through Comet’s eyes, Buzz saw smoke and flames, thick and black. He saw something move quickly past his vision, immense. He heard a noise like a growl or a rattle. He caught fragments of sendings from Comet, single syllables. And if one of those syllables had been Buzz’s name, that would have been something. But mostly he saw static and heard nothing at all.
JT came outside the cave and watched him pace. Finally he sighed, “Goddess, Buzz. Sit down.”
“No.”
“Come here and watch this.”
Buzz sighed and followed JT inside. He hadn’t gotten anything but static and silence for several minutes now anyway. JT put his hand into the magic surrounding Austin and Dante. His touch rippled through it like JT had touched water, rings expanding all the way around and back upon themselves, and the oak leaves went wild. He cringed and went glassy-eyed a moment and then blinked his eyes. “If you touch it, it’s like it pulls you halfway into the spell. You can see Dante’s dreams.”
“What did you see?”
“Dante hates Austin. She thinks he’s trying to ruin my life. I told him I should be the one to talk to her, but he said my implants would mess up the spell. So he keeps trying to talk to her and she just runs away. I tried to talk to her myself, but she can’t hear me.”
“I don’t think you should do that anymore.” And Buzz went back to pacing.
“He’ll be all right.”
Buzz knew he meant Comet, not Austin. “You don’t know that.”
“He’s Comet.”
“Have you met him? He’s completely helpless unless he’s got someone telling him what to do! He’s . . . he’s . . .” and Buzz had no idea what he meant to say next, but his heart was pounding and it had been twenty minutes and Comet should have been back by now.
“Sweet Diana, you’re in love with him.”
“No,” Buzz said. “No, I told you he held a fucking gun to my head. Look!” And he pointed to the tiny, barely existing bruise under his chin. “And then he saved my life, or I saved his, or maybe both, I dunno, but then he handcuffed me to his bed and took his shirt off, and then I got shot and he kissed me—different bed, there were two beds—and Valentine wanted my brain, but he wouldn’t give it to her even though he could have, and then he was jumping on cars and almost got himself killed, and I had to drive his damn bike through a fucking car-nado, and I thought he was going to kill us both with a land mine, but he didn’t. He held my hand, and we flew just like Kal-El and Lois—I was Lois, he was Kal-El—and we landed and we laughed, and I thought he was going to . . . I wanted him to . . .”
And anyway, if it was love, shouldn’t it have felt different? Happy, maybe? Just a little bit happy? Not this gut-wrenching thing that made Buzz want to puke up.
“That’s gotta be some kind of record.” Buzz couldn’t tell if JT was pissed or just being sarcastic. “You went from gun to the head to falling in love in what? Six hours?”
“And now he’s out there, and God knows what’s going on, and you want me to stand here?”
“He’s a professional soldier. You’re a hacker with a pistol you barely know how to shoot. How are you going to help him?” And JT moved his utility drone between Buzz and the passage outside.
Buzz’s glance flicked to the magical vortex. The rings JT had stirred up were gone. “You’re right. You’re right.” And he forced himself to walk away from the passage and over to Austin and Dante. He forced himself to sit when all he wanted to do was run.
JT sat beside him. “He’s not an easy person to love.”
Yeah? Well, Buzz already fucking knew that, didn’t he? He’d had six of hours of intensive training in that. “How long is this spell supposed to take?”
“I dunno. They’ve been in it forever.”
“We can see what they see? All right, let’s try it. Maybe there’s a way we can help.”
So they reached their hands toward the maelstrom, and JT counted down, three, two, one, go, and they touched it.
Except Buzz didn’t. And when JT went glassy-eyed, filled with his apprentice’s dreams, Buzz ran.
These were a druid’s woods. The boles of trees wore faces knotted and creased in bark. Strange fetishes hung from their branches: bits of twig and bone and feathers and fur bound up in hemp string. A light breeze made them spin. They threw leaf-scattered shadows on the pine-needled ground that didn’t match their shapes. The shadows were somehow bigger, more solid than the objects that cast them.
JT’s bitching and pleading —That was a dick move, Buzz! You little fucker, get back here! Gods damn you! Please? came over their network. Buzz ignored him.
He replayed the images Comet had seen when he’d left the cave, and matched them to those he saw now and was able to follow his path, at least until the point where Comet’s transmission had failed and what then?
That point came soon enough (and he couldn’t hear JT anymore), and he found himself at the base of a ridge with no idea where to go
.
Comet’s mission had been to scout, wasn’t it? So he’d find high ground, wouldn’t he? So Buzz climbed to the top of the ridge, but what he found wasn’t Comet.
He found a ring of standing stones in a clearing. The stones weren’t water-saw-cut like modern stones. These were worn and carved with Celtic knots and serpents and some language he didn’t know, and the knots tangled and untangled and the words within their borders crept across the stones. These stones were ancient, non-native, carried from somewhere. He imagined a tanker ship filled with excelsior-packed stone, or airlifted on poly nets across the Atlantic, a caravan of one hundred sixty-five choppers like they were carrying magical nukes. Or maybe they were summoned straight out of the earth and the writing he saw was the words of old gods. Buzz would believe that.
And look at the bones and the blood. My God, it was everywhere. How many people had died here?
The stink of rotting meat was overwhelming. Broken human bones made a carpet. Tarnished chrome and bent steel embellished it. It was a cybernetic graveyard. He supposed that made sense. The druids would choose modified people as their sacrifices. People like himself and Jason and Comet.
He backed away from the horror of it. Wind gusted. The fetishes clicked and rattled and threw their strange shadows. Those shadows folded and twisted and stood and surrounded him.
They were the wicker creatures he’d seen before: woodwoses. He screamed for help and tried to run, but they caught him easily and lifted him into the air kicking and screaming, and they shoved him into the chest cavity of a wicker giant and the chest closed around him.
He kicked and tore at the straps of wood and shouted “Comet! Comet!” and sent, —Comet! JT! But got no reply.
The giant started to walk. It carried him down the hill and into the woods toward the fire in the distance. He’d heard stories of cultists reviving old traditions, and there’d been rumors of burning sacrifices trapped in wicker men.
Maybe the fires weren’t Firelight at all, but the druids themselves, and the wooden giant was going to walk right into it, and Buzz would be burned alive.