Shadowplay

by Nigel Findley

  Wolf raised its eyebrows in a human expression of surprise.

  Falcon rushed on. “I have to leave this place. A woman is ... a woman needs me.”

  Wolf growled quietly, the first actual sound Falcon had heard from the creature. Its eyebrows drew together in a scowl. “You would leave?” Wolf asked. “You would scorn my teachings? Who is this woman to you?”

  Maybe I should stay. . . . But he couldn’t. Falcon knew that.

  He swallowed hard. “She is my friend,” he said as forcefully as he could. “She is . . .”

  He paused; his eyes were drawn to the timber wolves flanking him.

  “She is of my pack,” he finished.

  Wolf’s scowl faded. After a moment it spoke, its mental “voice” tinged with amusement . . . and approval. “Yes, of your pack. You follow my song perhaps better than you know. You have always followed it.”

  Falcon had the strong impression he’d passed some kind of test.

  Wolf sat back on its haunches. “Go, Man,” it said gently. “There will be time later for you to learn more. For now, go in peace.”

  And, without any warning, reality seemed to burst into a million fragments, flying apart around him.

  * * *

  Falcon was standing on a nighttime city street, Mary beside him. Looking around, he saw people passing by, but not many. All were going about their own business, but it struck Falcon as strange that none spared him or Mary even a single glance.

  There was something strange about the street, something strange about the buildings. Everything looked too clear, too sharp. He could see into all the pools of shadows, even the deepest where no light fell. He turned to Mary.

  “Where are we?” he asked.

  “Outside The Buffalo Jump,” she answered slowly, “but we’re on the astral plane. Did you do that?”

  Falcon shook his head slowly. He couldn’t have done it; he didn’t even know for sure what the astral plane was. “It was Wolf,” he told her.

  “Why?”

  The terrible scream rang out again, shaking his mind to its foundations. That’s why, he realized. “Did you hear that?” he asked Mary.

  “Hear what?”

  So this is just for me, whatever this is.

  Though Falcon knew he’d heard Sly’s scream with his mind, not with his ears, he thought he could sense the direction from which it came. He turned his head, scanning with senses he hadn’t known he had. It came from that direction.

  “Come on,” he urged Mary. He started to run, the shaman—the other shaman—on his heels.

  Running here was almost like running on the plane of the totems. He was moving much faster than his legs could possibly pump, and there seemed to be no effort involved, no strain. Though Falcon didn't know where the thought came from, the idea blossomed in his brain that his will was all that limited his speed here. He exercised that will, and his speed doubled, trebled.

  At first he dodged around obstacles such as parked cars and buildings. But then, as an experiment, he ran directly at the wall of a building, passing right through it as though it wasn’t there. He cried with exultation.

  Another scream, much closer now, much louder—and much more terrible. Somehow he knew from where it came. A small building up ahead, the dead neon sign identifying it as a machine shop. The doors and windows were boarded up.

  That didn’t stop Falcon. With Mary close on his heels, he plunged into the building. Passing through the walls like a wraith, he found himself in a large, empty room. Dust and refuse were everywhere. No sign of life.

  But—somehow—he could feel life below him. With nothing but an exercise of will, he passed through the floor.

  Found himself in a bare concrete room. Two standing figures flanked a third, who sat in a high-backed chair. One was thin, almost skeletally so. Strange objects dangled from his clothing. Falcon saw those objects with some kind of double sight. He saw them as what they were—tiny amalgamations of wood, bone, and feathers— but also as what they represented—flickering, shifting concentrations of power.

  He focused on the strange items for only a moment before his attention was drawn to the figure in the chair.

  Writhing and twisting against the straps that bound her, face twisted into a rictus of agony, it was Sly. She screamed again, and this time Falcon could hear it both with his ears and with the strange internal sense that had led him straight to her. He realized only then that Mary Windsong was still with him. The young woman stared, aghast, at Falcon’s tortured friend.

  The second figure standing there was a scrawny, soulless-looking woman. Reaching out to a black box connected to Sly’s datajack, the woman flicked a switch.

  29

  0223 hours, November 16, 2053

  God, let me die! Sly tried to scream the words, tried to beg for the release of death.

  The agony thrummed and rang through every nerve fiber, burned through the marrow of each bone. Her head pounded with it, her stomach and bowels twisted with it. Sometimes it was formless. Other times it had a shape— trolls gang-raping her, tearing at her body; surgical instruments in the hands of a demented artist; fire consuming her from within; rats consuming her from without . . . Each time she thought she had reached the boundaries of pain, thought she understood its limits, the form changed—so fast she couldn’t adapt.

  All she could do was scream.

  And then, the pain was gone. The terrible sensations stopped pouring into her mind, replaced with the very real sensations of her own body.

  She was weak, weak as a baby or a woman who’d run a dozen marathons. Her muscles twitched and vibrated— an aftereffect of her convulsions, she guessed. Her clothes were drenched with sweat, her throat hoarse with screaming. She took a deep, shuddering breath.

  “Falcon,” she moaned.

  But Falcon’s not here, another part of herself answered wearily. Why did you call for him?

  She opened her eyes, looked up into the face of the soulless technician.

  “Do you want to talk?” the woman said.

  Sly tried to spit in her face, but her mouth was too dry. “Go frag yourself,” she croaked.

  The woman shrugged, totally unmoved. She reached up to flip the switch on the black box.

  No! Panic ripped through Sly’s mind. I can’t take that again! She teetered on the edge of the abyss, on the margin of madness.

  Falcon? Again, impossibly, she felt the young ganger’s presence, and it was that presence that brought her back from the brink.

  As if it mattered. The woman’s finger touched the switch. Sly braced herself, a useless gesture.

  “Huh?” The scrawny shaman gave a guttural grunt, seemed to stare at something that Sly couldn’t see. The technician jumped at the sound, her finger falling away from the switch.

  And then, shockingly, fire blossomed in the small room, bursting forth from one of the fetishes festooning the shaman’s belt. Like a fireball it bloomed, washing over the technician, igniting her hair and clothing, turning her into a flailing, shrieking human torch. Sly screamed as the flame also licked over her, but somehow the fire did her no harm. She felt no pain, saw no blisters bloom. Neither her clothes, her flesh, nor her hair ignited. Nevertheless, she clenched her eyes tight shut.

  The firestorm was over in an instant. Cautiously, Sly opened her eyes once more.

  The woman was dead, sullen flames licking over her body. The shaman, though, seemed almost untouched. His clothes were scorched—particularly around the fetish that had detonated—and his exposed skin looked red, but he was not significantly injured. (Spell defense? Sly wondered groggily. Was it that saved me too?) He snarled in anger, closed his eyes, and slumped against the wall. Sly realized he must have gone astral to cope with some magical threat.

  He was in trance for only a few seconds. Then his eyes opened wide, his face twisted in an expression of disbelief and horror. He lurched to his feet—clumsily, like a zombie from some low-budget horror trid—and took a stumbling step toward S
ly. The runner recoiled from the terrifying rage in the thin man's eyes. His mouth worked as though he were trying to speak, but only garbled moans and rumbles came out. A gobbet of saliva dribbled from the corner of his mouth.

  This is part of the torture. The thought struck Sly suddenly. It isn’t real, it’s just another false scenario being fed into my brain. But regardless, she still struggled and strained against the straps binding her.

  The shaman stopped beside her chair, reached out and released the velcro band around Sly’s left wrist. She snatched her hand back as soon as it was free, clenched it into a fist, readied to drive it into the man’s throat. . . .

  With an immense effort, she forced herself to stop. He’s setting me free. For whatever reason, he's letting me loose. She felt withdrawn, emotionally overwhelmed and totally confused.

  Snarling wordlessly, the man freed her other hand, then bent down to release her ankles. While he did so, Sly undid the straps around her torso and the band around her head.

  When he'd freed her feet, the shaman lurched back against the wall. His eyes rolled up in his head, and he slumped to the floor, whether dead or just unconscious, Sly couldn’t tell.

  For a moment, she just sat there in the chair. Then she reached up and carefully unjacked the torture device from her skull. The moment the plug popped out of her data-jack, she flung the black box against the concrete wall with a yell, flung it with every joule of energy left in her body. Laughed aloud as the plastic enclosure cracked, spraying broken circuit boards and fragments of integrated circuits across the floor.

  She sat up, grabbed the chair arms and started to force herself to her feet.

  But the world seemed to spin and tumble around her. With a groan, she sank back into the chair.

  Sly felt like drek. Pure, unadulterated, pluperfect drek. Every muscle in her body ached; her joints felt loose; even her skin tingled and itched. Worst of all, though, was the feeling that her grasp on reality was shaky. Is this real? she asked herself. Did the shaman really free me? Or am I hallucinating?

  Or—horrifying thought—was this only another part of the torture? What if she forced herself to her feet, left the echoing concrete room with its smell of burned meat, and ran outside into the night—only to have that feeling of freedom wrenched away? To open her eyes and find herself back in the chair, strapped in place, immobile. With the woman technician preparing the black box to feed another electronic fantasy—something even more soul-destroying—into her brain.

  Sly couldn’t stand that. If it turned out that’s what was happening, she’d collapse right then. Surrender, give up the will to live.

  And, yes, break. Tell them what they wanted to know. And didn’t that very fact—the realization that this technique would succeed—make it even more likely that this was a simsense fantasy?

  She closed her eyes. This is how I can beat it, she told herself. If I never believe I’ve got my freedom, having it snatched away won’t frag me up. Who feels the loss of something they never had? She slowed her breathing, tried to relax her muscles.

  She felt eyes on her—someone was watching her. Is this it? Is this when the tech turns off the simsense torture box? Despite her efforts at relaxation, Sly felt all her muscles tensing again. She opened her eyes.

  Nobody was there. Well, nobody conscious, at least. The smoldering body of the tech still lay crumpled in the corner; the shaman still slumped against the wall, definitely unconscious or worse. Apart from them, the room was empty.

  But frag it, she still felt the presence of somebody else there. Knew there was someone watching her. And, deep down, she also knew it wasn’t someone watching her through a spy-eye. There was someone near her, she could sense it. Someone standing next to her chair, even though she couldn't see anyone.

  A spectator—maybe Knife-Edge himself—under cover of an invisibility spell, like the back-up at the hosed Roundhouse meet? But no, she didn’t think so. She could sense a person’s proximity, but there was more to it than that. She knew this person. That’s how it felt, at least— there was definitely a sensation of familiarity.

  “Falcon?” The word slipped from her dry lips before she could suppress it.

  It couldn’t be. .. .

  But—and now she was totally convinced—it was.

  “Falcon? Are you there?”

  How could this be part of the torture? They couldn’t know that Falcon was working with her, that he’d come to Cheyenne with her. That he was her comrade, her chummer. Could they?

  Panic suddenly washed over her in a wave. Am I losing it? Is this what it’s like to go mad? She looked wildly around the room.

  And yes, there was Falcon. Standing next to her, his face twisted with fear, with horror. And with concern. She reached out to him, tried to grab his arm.

  But her hand went right through his body. For the first time she could see that the young ganger’s body was translucent, vaguely transparent. She could see through him, see the wall and the shaman’s body behind him.

  I am going mad! She closed her eyes again, tears leaking out from under her closed lids. Ask me your questions, Knife-Edge. I’ll answer them. Just don’t let this continue.

  “Sly.”

  It was Falcon’s voice . . . but not quite. There was something eerie about the sound, something . . . ethereal was the only word that fit. It was distant, too, as though he were speaking from a long way off, not from right next to her.

  “Go away,” she mumbled.

  “Sly,” Falcon said again, and this time she could hear the tension, the urgency in his voice. “Come on. You’ve got to get out of here, chummer.”

  She shook her head, closed her eyes. “You're not real,” she whispered.

  “Knife-Edge might be coming back.” The panic in the ganger’s voice contrasted with the peace she felt inside—the peace of fatalism, of surrender. “You’ve got to move.”

  “You’re not real,” she repeated.

  “Frag it, go! You want to die?”

  “Why not?”

  “Sly, you slitch!" he yelled, the voice echoing strangely around the concrete room. “Die on your own fragging time! Now move your fragging hoop!"

  “You’re a ghost,” she muttered.

  “If I am, I’ll haunt you till the end of fragging time. Now get your pudlicking hoop out of that chair and move it!"

  She shrugged to herself. Why not? It wasn’t going to do any good, of course. She'd get outside, and then the tech would turn off the simsense and she’d be back in the chair. But what the frag was the difference anyway? Listening to Falcon was just as bad—his voice reminding her that the only way she'd get any peace would be to tell Knife-Edge what he wanted to know. Reminding her that she'd be killing him too.

  “Okay, okay. . . .” She forced herself to her feet again, clung to the chair while the world did its wild acrobatics around her. Clenched her jaw against the nausea that threatened to make her spew.

  Took her first lurching step toward the door.

  “That’s it, move,” Falcon told her.

  “Go frag yourself, ghost,” she growled.

  Took another step. Stumbled over the outstretched leg of the felled shaman, almost pitched headlong to the floor. Reached out a hand to steady herself, felt the cold of the metal door against her palm.

  Okay, I’m at the door. Now what?

  Open it, idiot. She reached down for the handle, grabbed it. Twisted.

  It didn’t turn. Of course not, it’s locked. Pounded her fist against the door in frustration at the futility of everything.

  “Turn it the other way, frag you!”

  “Okay, okay,” she mumbled. Turned the knob the other way.

  And the door swung open. A narrow stairway ahead, leading up.

  Three or four meters, maybe, to reach the top. The way she was feeling, it could just as easily have been a hundred klicks.

  But he won’t leave me alone until I do it, will he? She started up the stairs, leaning against the concrete wall to
keep herself upright.

  It was almost too hard. Her muscles rebelled, her sense of balance swung like a compass needle next to an electromagnet. Her vision tunneled down to the size of a gun muzzle at arm’s length. The sound of her breathing in her own ears took on the same distant echoing as Falcon’s ghost-voice. I'm not going to make it.

  But somehow she did. She almost fell when she raised her foot to stand on a step that wasn’t there. Leaning against the wall, her legs quivering under her, she breathed deeply until her field of vision widened again. Not all the way: it was still like looking down a tunnel, with flickering, pixelating lights around the dark periphery.

  She looked around her. A small anteroom, doors to the right and left, the staircase behind her. “Which way?” she whispered.

  “To your right.” The ghost-Falcon was still with her, seeming to stand right beside her. “It’s not locked. Open it.”

  Only if you’ll leave me be afterward. She grabbed the doorknob, turned. The door swung open.

  A rush of chill air washed over her, partially clearing her head for an instant. Outside. The streets of Cheyenne at night. Freedom? She paused.

  “What are you waiting for?” the ghost-Falcon demanded, nearly hopping from foot to foot with impatience. It was almost funny. “Well?”

  How could she answer him? That she was waiting for the tech to cut the simsense. . . . Now, when she could see freedom a meter in front of her? Or when she’d taken the first couple of steps out of the building? Which would cause her the most torment?

  "Move!” ghost-Falcon screamed.

  She moved. What else could she do but play this out, follow the script to the last page? She stepped out into the night, filled her lungs with the cold night air.

  Sly had come to an alley in what looked like a light-industrial neighborhood. Warehouses, disused machine shops, across the alley a boarded-up foundry identified as Cheyenne Chain and Wire.

  Which way? And did it matter?

  She turned to the right, took her first step away from the building that had been her prison.

  The illusion didn’t end; the tech didn’t turn off the simsense.