Starbearer

by Rock Forsberg

  ‘Perhaps,’ Efia said. ‘The only problem is, they’re not here—they’re more like projections—and to disable them, we would have to go to the source.’

  ‘Source?’ asked Berossus.

  Efia frowned. ‘That’s the problem. I can’t locate it. I feel this world and ours as if they’re projected from both sides at the same time, and that’s not all—there’s a third origin.’

  Berossus sighed. He agreed with Oberen—removing the portals once and for all would have been the right thing to do, but at least they now had a way back. ‘Where do they lead?’

  Efia walked past the portals, tracing their surfaces with her palms. ‘This one goes to Dawn Central, this one to Spit City, this to Runcor, and—’

  ‘Runcor?’ Berossus asked. Evie had told him she had gone there, in search of Gus.

  ‘That’s right,’ she said, holding her hands close to the portal. ‘I’m getting compelling vibrations of E through this one.’

  ‘I think we should take it,’ Berossus said. Efia’s vibrations and the possibility of Evie and Gus convinced him it was the right way to go.

  ‘Is that wise?’ Oberen asked.

  ‘Got a better idea?’ Berossus said.

  ‘Well, no,’ Oberen grunted, and stepped over to Efia. ‘Are you sure about this?’

  ‘Not at all. But the vibrations are promising.’

  ‘Do you know what’s behind?’ Oberen asked.

  Berossus wanted to hear the answer. He was there because if Nenetl threatened the world, he could do something about it, but mostly he was there because of his father. He wanted to understand who he was, and given time, maybe his father could provide the answers.

  ‘It’s Runcor,’ Efia said with a smirk, ‘and if there’s something else, well, that would be a surprise, wouldn’t it?’

  Oberen sighed. ‘All right, show us what you’ve got.’

  ‘Follow me.’ Efia walked right through the black disc, disappearing from sight.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ Oberen said. ‘Go on.’

  Berossus nodded and followed. He tried the black surface first with the fingers of his prosthetic arm. They went through without his feeling anything, looking as if the tips of his fingers were cut. He pulled his hand back out. It was whole.

  He stepped through.

  The world changed in a disorienting way. He stumbled forward in an attempt to remain standing, taking support from the metal floor.

  ‘Quiet,’ Efia said.

  Berossus froze. Oberen entered behind him, and he, too, stumbled.

  ‘What is it?’ Berossus asked. They were in a small passageway—similar to a maintenance corridor on Gemma Central—with the portal behind them and an airtight door in front.

  She held her hand up, and said, ‘This is Runcor. There are people, not Remolans, behind that door.’ A mischievous smile crept onto her face. ‘I was right!’

  ‘Tell us already!’ Oberen said.

  ‘Let’s go and see. Hide your weapons and act natural, we’re not attacking this place.’

  Berossus pushed his pistol under his jacket, and Oberen covered his plasma rifle.

  Efia opened the door. They came into a large open space with some kind of machine in the middle, a wide walkway with a railing around it and glass-walled rooms circling that. It seemed to be an office or a lab, or some kind of research operation.

  They followed Efia along the curved walkway. Berossus thought they must have attracted attention with her in a long dress being followed by two dishevelled brutes, but no. Nobody paid attention. Was she using E to hide them in plain sight?

  There was a bridge between the central ‘machine’ and the walkway, and a seemingly infinite chasm in between. The contraption must have been something important.

  Efia stopped by a door to a room, where one person was working on a terminal. ‘This is it.’

  She pushed on the door and it opened. The man inside turned; his face flushed with surprise.

  Berossus gaped in awe. ‘Gus?’

  ‘Oberen, old bugger, how’d you get here?’

  ‘Huh?’ Oberen frowned. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Jilius Dal,’ Efia said. ‘It’s been a while. We’ve a Shade to contain.’

  ‘I know, I’ve been waiting for you.’

  Berossus stared at Efia. ‘What did you just call him?’

  Chapter Thirty

  Evie woke up to an old visual rock ballad that filled the big screen in her hideout inside the old communications orb. She gave a languid stretch on the bed. She had dozed off in boredom, and now the screen over her showed a retelling of a story about a beautiful girl who falls for a massive guy everyone else thinks of as a monster. It reminded her of the dinner with Berossus.

  What a disaster! I was so bored at FIST then. Do people engage in romantic pursuits out of boredom?

  The apartment was first-class, and the Evie of yesteryear would have loved staying there just relaxing, but the pending dive into Momentum 6 made her anxious. If the world of Momentum 6 was the cost of preventing the dark world of Nenetl from taking over, so be it. It was a heavy price, even more to some of Evie’s friends, who had little life outside the game and would unknowingly assist in destroying the virtual world they had spent a lifetime building. She tried to ease the anxiety by reminding herself the alternative was much worse, but still it pained her.

  Reina and Naido had gone somewhere, and she was alone, waiting, tapping her fingers faster than the beat on the speakers, willing time to move along.

  The song on the screen changed—via a quick advertisement for a pocket sanitiser—to a fast rock tune she knew all too well. When the singer’s face filled the whole of the dome that was her ceiling, she cut the song.

  It was Over You by The Bombers, her former boyfriend, Ash Macabre’s band. Even now, she couldn’t stand his face.

  She closed the screens and the room became dark.

  While her charges for Ash’s murder were dropped, she wondered what his old bandmates and entourage of groupies and wannabes thought of her. But they didn’t matter. It wasn’t her life anymore.

  Instead of turning on the lights in the bedroom, she reopened the screens on the ceiling, this time to show the lights of the city.

  Talk about going from one extreme to the other. Ash was the complete opposite of Berossus. She enjoyed his wicked sense of humour, his spontaneity, but the degradation and violence destroyed everything they’d ever had. Killing him was the worst and the best thing she had done.

  Other obsidian buildings with scant points of light, buildings taller than the one she was in, framed the view. A constant stream of flying shuttles of all shapes ran in orderly lines across the sky. Sometimes a shuttle would break out to exit the freeway and land on a building or change to another route.

  A lonely bird flapped past.

  Wait a moment. There shouldn’t be birds in Spit City—or should there?

  She wanted to zoom in on the bird, but it was already gone from view. So instead, she just slumped back on the bed, staring at the hypnotic string of shuttles passing by.

  Without notice, the screen changed, and red lights blinked all around the bedroom. The proximity alert had gone off.

  Evie’s senses sharpened. She stepped down from the bed and pulled on a pair of loose sweats.

  The screen showed the roof of the building, and a red tracker over an unidentified person. Someone had just entered the roof from the stairwell and was prowling around as if looking for something. Evie zoomed in.

  It was a young woman, with a soft face and dark-rimmed glasses. She wore a black leather jacket, black pants—all black like everyone in this city—and a backpack. She seemed to be looking up at the skies.

  Evie relaxed. She was just someone from the building wanting to get outside.

  But this was her first visitor on the roof, and Evie was keen on following her. At least there was something real happening.

  The young woman set her backpack down and touched the rim of her
glasses—a deliberate touch, as if there were controls on them—and continued looking up to the skies. After a moment of gazing at the buildings, crafts, and the planet Heeg, she squatted and pulled something from her backpack. For a moment Evie thought she’d be assembling a sniper rifle, but she retrieved an awkward-looking contraption that resembled a weapon only in that it had a grip and a trigger of sorts. Even zooming in on the thing, Evie couldn’t fathom its purpose.

  The woman aimed the thing into the skies and pressed the trigger. Nothing seemed to happen. She adjusted her aim and pressed again. She repeated this a number of times in different directions. Then she stopped and sat on a metal unit by the ledge, gazing up.

  She didn’t seem dangerous, but Evie left the tracking on as she went down to the living-kitchen. She took a glass from the cabinet and asked the foodalator for some Vitalo juice. They said of all the things a foodalator created, out of whatever junk it ate, Vitalo had the highest concentration of broad range vitamins and minerals. She wanted to believe it was true because she enjoyed the taste. She gulped a mouthful, and almost spat it out as she saw what was happening on the screen.

  The young woman was running across the rooftop with the device in her hands, pointing it up at something. Then Evie saw it, too: it looked like a bird, but it wasn’t.

  Evie zoomed in on the flying creature. It was big, leathery … and exactly the same as the ones that had attacked them in Fuu’s joint.

  She pinged Reina on her terminal.

  No immediate response.

  On screen, the creature flew around over the roof while the woman pointed her device at it. Evie couldn’t understand what she was doing—she wasn’t shooting, or taking pictures. Then the creature dived straight at her, and on impact she stumbled, the device falling from her hands, bits bouncing off as it smashed on the roof.

  The woman didn’t seem to be hurt. On all fours, she picked up the device and gathered the loose pieces. The creature was circling above the building again. She stood, wiped the dust from her pants, and moved behind the comms orb, trying to piece together the device in her hands.

  Evie gasped, as more winged creatures appeared in the sky. There were five of them now.

  The young woman tried to fix the device, but dropped one of its pieces. She picked it up, as one of the creatures landed on the roof in front of her. She yelped and dropped the whole thing. She took slow steps backward.

  Evie wanted to help.

  The group of creatures flapped in formation before the young woman. She whimpered against the wall just outside the door to Evie’s crib.

  Evie knew she shouldn’t, but she trusted her intuition. She had to help her. She ran to the door.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, reaching out through the doorway and taking the young woman by the arm. The creatures shrieked and the wind howled, but she pulled her inside and closed the door.

  Everything quieted.

  ‘Do I know you from somewhere?’ the woman said.

  ‘Who are you? And why were the Ver after you?’

  ‘Sofia Kvantström, a research scientist with the Dawn Alliance Navy, and— Nice! I thought this was a comms orb. How do you know about the Ver?’

  ‘Long story,’ she said. ‘I’m Evie.’

  Sofia’s face lit up. ‘Now I remember where I know you! You were with FIST.’

  On the screen, the Ver seemed to scatter around the orb, not leaving, but flying as if studying it.

  ‘And how would you know that?’

  ‘I work with Belinda Killock.’

  Evie snorted. Though Sofia seemed nice, if she worked with Belinda, she couldn’t be trusted. ‘Are you here because of me?’

  ‘No, no,’ she chuckled, and pushed her glasses back up her nose. ‘We were studying some anomalies.’

  ‘What anomalies?’

  Her face held an awkward expression. ‘It was confidential yesterday, but now it’s all over the news.’

  ‘What’s all over the news?’

  ‘You don’t know?’ Sofia said, her eyes wide. ‘Some of those black discs are portals for dark creatures just like those outside. They’re coming through across the Dawn.’

  This was bad news; there were thousands of those portals and Evie knew only too well where some of them led. So, it was beginning. ‘Is Belinda Killock here?’

  She shook her head. ‘I was here with one of your FIST colleagues, Henning Dal, but he’s gone, too.’

  ‘Henning’s cool.’

  ‘He is,’ Sofia said, with a gawky grin.

  Evie was just about to say something about Henning, when the proximity alarm went off again. On screen, a big black creature—bigger than a human—landed on the roof.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘They said there are bigger ones, too.’

  Evie considered running upstairs to change her trousers, but there was no time. Instead, she grabbed the chip and shoved it into the front pocket of her sweatpants. ‘Pack your stuff. We should leave.’

  ‘To go where?’ Sofia said, cramming her device into her backpack.

  Evie grabbed her jacket from the hanger, and pulled open the grey metal gun cabinet, revealing the weapons inside.

  ‘Oh.’

  Evie took the plasma rifle and the energy pistol. ‘Grab one. Or two.’

  Sofia’s hands were shaking as she reached into the box. She picked up a submachine gun with tungsten-filled magazines.

  ‘You’re navy, right?’ Evie asked, slamming the cabinet shut.

  ‘Yeah, but I’ve only done firearms basics in virtual, and that was some time ago.’

  ‘Grab here, point that end to the baddie, and squeeze there— You got it.’

  Sofia perused the gun’s interface, and took a deep breath. She grabbed her backpack from the floor and flung it on her back. Even with a gun in her hands, she looked geeky.

  Evie tapped down the pockets of her jacket to confirm she had everything she needed, and grabbed her bag. ‘You good to go?’

  ‘Do we have a plan?’

  ‘We’ll distract them with a smoke bomb and plasma bolts, then make a run for the stairwell. After that, we get as far as we can from here. I’ve called for help.’

  ‘What if they follow us?’

  ‘We’ll improvise,’ she said, trying to seem calm. She knew the plan was haphazard and risky at best, and relied heavily on someone like Reina or Naido coming to help them.

  Evie stepped up to the door. Everything was ready. She was ready.

  A gust of wind blew in as she opened the door, and the shrieks of the Ver echoed around them. Evie fired a stun grenade up in the air. It burst with a deafening blast.

  ‘You go, I’ll cover you,’ she said, pushing Sofia forward. ‘Run to the stairwell!’

  Sofia yelped, but got her bearings and ran. Evie flicked the switch on her gun and snuck out after her. She fired multiple shots upwards, where the Ver could have been.

  Sofia’s run was cut short by the big monster that hovered in front of the doorway to the stairs. This one had a tall human form, a horned head and burning red eyes. Sofia stumbled to a stop just a few metres before the abomination.

  ‘Use your gun!’ Evie shouted.

  Sofia looked at the weapon in her hand as if only just realising she had it, but before she could do anything, the monster swung its long arm and made Sofia tumble down and lose the gun.

  The monster kicked the gun away, but remained standing above Sofia, who touched her bleeding lip as she pushed herself up.

  Evie took cautious steps towards Sofia.

  The monster hissed through long teeth like shards of glass, and leaned forward.

  Evie pulled out another grenade from her jacket’s side pocket, and flung it at the monster.

  The monster caught the grenade and it went off in white smoke.

  As the wind blew the smoke away, the monster growled. Engulfed in a copious amount of sticky synthetic spiderwebs, it was unable to move.

  ‘I get you, mate,’ Evie said. ‘I hate spi
ders, too.’

  Sofia sat on the ground, holding her weapon in both hands. She pointed the gun at Evie.

  Evie gasped. ‘Wha—?’

  Sofia squeezed the trigger. A triple shot of tungsten bullets flew just above Evie’s head, and hit something that screeched. Behind her, a small Ver hit the ground. Evie tried to take a calm breath, but she was shaking.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Sofia said.

  ‘No,’ Evie said, and lent her a hand to pull her up. ‘You just saved us.’

  The big monster tore its claws through the spiderweb. More small creatures emerged from below the roof’s ledge.

  ‘Let’s run!’

  They entered the staircase that seemed to continue down forever. While this building wasn’t anywhere near the biggest one, it did have at least two hundred floors. They ran down as fast as they could.

  Sofia glanced up, short of breath. ‘They’re after us.’

  When she had first arrived with Jude, Evie had come in from the one hundred and fifty-fourth floor through where the building connected with another one via a semi-public walkway. It was still some way down.

  ‘Come on,’ Evie said, continuing down, but at a slower pace.

  ‘What do they want from you?’ Sofia asked.

  Evie didn’t reply. Instead, she took the other grenade from her pocket. ‘This will be a big one, so shut your ears and take cover when it goes.’

  Sofia nodded, and Evie set the explosion for thirty seconds, so that they could get at least three floors between them and the grenade. She set it on the floor. ‘Come on!’

  They moved as fast as they could, jumping downstairs, turning two times per floor, and all the while Evie counted in her head. Finally, she stopped, and said, ‘Now!’

  They both put their hands over their ears, and, three seconds later, the grenade went off, shaking the stairwell.

  Smoke and rubble fell from above. The rumbling didn’t end.

  ‘It’s falling over us!’ Sofia said.

  There was a door half a floor below them. Evie sprinted towards it. But the door was locked. She flipped the settings on her gun and gave the door two shots, and it opened.