Cold War Rune: A Virtual Reality novel (Rune Universe Book 2)

by Hugo Huesca

  “Hey, I’m that cargo!” I told the car.

  THAT’S QUITE PERCEPTIVE OF YOU. WELL SPOTTED, BUDDY!

  “Don’t worry, Cole,” said Harrison. “I told you that getting arrested wasn’t as bad as it looked. It’s in the government’s best interest that you don’t appear in the news cuffed and locked over a minor misdemeanor, after all.”

  “So, let me see if I get it. You have orders to arrest me on sight, but don’t actually put me behind bars. What’s the idea? Make my life as annoying as possible?”

  Harrison’s guilty expression was all I needed to realize I had stumbled upon the exact truth.

  “You pissed off a lot of bureaucrats, Cole. This is their idea of retribution.”

  Well, hello there, Madam Caputi. You’re a class act as always.

  The policeman got out of the car. He talked for a moment with the passenger of the black car (no actual drivers in 2042, we had drones for that) and then walked back. The door next to me opened.

  THE CARGO TRANSFER HAS BEEN ACCEPTED. HAVE A GOOD DAY, COLE DORSETT. THANK YOU FOR TRAVELING WITH SAN MABRADA’S BEST AND FINEST, WE HOPE WE NEVER HAVE TO ARREST YOU AGAIN. BUT WE SURE APPRECIATE YOUR PREFERENCE!

  “It was nice to see you, Cole,” Harrison told me. He hovered near me like he wasn’t sure if he should hug me or something. It was awkward as hell. I shook his hand instead.

  “Same, Officer Harrison.”

  “Tell your mother I said hi,” he added as he walked back to his car. “And Van, of course.”

  The black car opened the back door for me. There was no point in fighting it, and to be honest, I was a bit glad I wasn’t getting actually arrested.

  Inside, I found myself next to a familiar face. I didn’t know the man’s name, but he was one of Caputi’s underlings. He wore black glasses and liked to hang out in the interior of black cars. He had once held a gun to my head, the giant prick.

  “Hey, man. Long time no see,” I told him with fake cheeriness. “How’s the lady-boss doing? I see she didn’t come meet with me this time.”

  He frowned slightly. “Madam Caputi has meetings with presidents, not with a seventeen-year-old kid—”

  “Eighteen, thanks.”

  “In any case, she’s out of the country. You’ll have to deal with me, Dorsett.”

  “Oh,” I looked to the window with disinterest. “That’s great, I guess.”

  Seeing the guy irked secretly filled me with pleasure. You may think it childish, but I held in special contempt any person who had pointed a gun at my head, even if it had been only to make a point.

  “We’re displeased with your attitude, Dorsett. The States have been moving earth and sea to keep you and your family protected as best as we can. You are paying back the effort of many selfish men and women by needlessly risking your life in these escapades of yours.”

  “Oh, well, thanks for the excellent job you have been doing with those surveillance drones flying all around the city looking for me,” I told him.

  “We’re working on those. You’re a civilian, I don’t have to discuss ongoing investigations with you.”

  “Well, I won’t discuss my ongoing investigations with you, either.”

  “Real mature, Dorsett.” The man looked out of the window and I saw his hands close into fists. What was pissing him off so much?

  He took a deep breath and he forced himself to relax. “I have a message from Madame Caputi. She says you should carry yourself with more care in the future. She has so far kept your encounters with her in Rune Universe as separate activities from her job as a government official. This is in deference to services you have previously offered to the States and herself. But…”

  He gave a pause to stare deeply into my eyes. He even lowered his sunglasses in an attempt to look more menacing. “Your stint in Balatan II was pushing the envelope, Dorsett. One more prank like that one and she won’t be playing anymore.”

  “That’s very intimidating, sir,” I told him as I maintained eye contact. “Good job.”

  I wasn’t sure what he meant by “services previously rendered.” I had always kept my distance from Stefania Caputi and her ilk before. But it was obvious something was going on that put me in danger and they weren’t willing to do something about it, yet.

  That may sound selfish, but my family was in danger, too. They were in this situation because of me, and if I could help them I was going to take any chance, even if it put my own life in danger.

  The suited man shook his head. “Well, at least you can’t say we didn’t warn you. Now, Dorsett, think very carefully before answering. Cooperation will be rewarded, and any lie punished.

  “You infiltrated a government facility located in the planet Balatan II. You were captured when you were walking towards some private parts of the complex. Did you take anything from there?”

  I bit my lip without meaning to, a rookie mistake that wouldn’t be ignored by a true expert in body language. But I recovered quickly and diverted the man’s attention.

  “What do you mean ‘government facility’? Rune is just a videogame. Are you seriously implying people can store top-secret documents in there?”

  I was getting on his nerves and had no idea why, but since it seemed to be working there was no reason not to abuse it further.

  “I think you, of all people, know that videogame is more than that,” he said crisply. He moved closer to me, close enough that I could smell his cheap cologne and see the gun he kept holstered at his hip, normally hidden by the fold of his jacket. “I’ll ask you just one more time. Did you take something you shouldn’t have from that complex?”

  Most pistol holsters were built in a way that made it very hard to pull the gun out unless you were the one wearing the holster. More modern weaponry had built-in security measures that made them impossible to fire unless your biological signature matched that of the owner.

  Showing your weapon to an unarmed opponent was still a mistake that would have gotten him in trouble in other circumstances. If we had been playing Rune, that is. Which was still a virtual world where death wasn’t permanent.

  If Walpurgis had been here, she would have taken the gun anyways, just to make a point. Beard would have panicked and tried to negotiate. Rylena would have managed to blackmail him, somehow. Those were the kind of things I had learned about my friends and crew.

  I wasn’t them, though. All things considered, the man in front of me may be a dick, but he was more or less playing on the same side. He may have pointed a gun at me a year ago, but he never pulled the trigger. Unlike other people.

  I still had to decide if I should either lie to him or come clean. It wasn’t really a hard choice. This relationship I kept with Crestienne and her ilk was an alliance in name only.

  “Dude,” I told him, raising my hands in surrender, “I get it. I’m not insane enough to steal something from Crestienne, alright? That’s a bit crazy, don’t you think? I barely managed to get out of there without taking the skill penalties of a death.”

  Of course, I was lying through my teeth. I was insane enough to get into a government facility and steal a piece of information about Crestienne’s—Stefania Caputi’s username—informants in San Mabrada. What allowed me to lie to his face so easily was that he thought I had been captured going to the secret facility. In reality, I was walking back from it. I simply had heard the security party getting closer and decided to change directions.

  If Crestienne didn’t like it perhaps next time she would be more forthcoming with information about who was trying to kill me and my family.

  “You better hope we don’t find out you’re lying, Dorsett,” the man finally said. He reclined on his seat and the car stopped. “Otherwise, you’ll hear from us.”

  “Seriously, if I never heard from you again I would be very happy, Mister I-kidnap-eighteen-year-olds-and-throw-them-in-jail.”

  “The name’s Foreman,” he told me with a whisper, like he was revealing some huge secret.

 
The door of the car opened. I was outside the safe house.

  “Sorry, Foreman, the name doesn’t ring any bells,” I told him as I got out of the vehicle. I slammed the door shut without bothering to see his reaction.

  The safe house was located in an inconspicuous district of San Mabrada, far away from both Lower Cañitas and high-traffic places like downtown.

  It wasn’t actually a house. More like a high-security apartment building. It had white walls without graffiti (no idea how they managed that) and a tall concrete fence that separated it from the rest of the block, which was littered with the abandoned buildings of old convenience stores and other apartment complexes.

  In the States, there were thousands of districts identical to this one. As I said, completely inconspicuous.

  And easy to secure, I thought, while I walked to the security booth and let myself be scanned by a myriad of different sensors. The abandoned convenience stores could be covered by the FBI spy-drones, and the other apartments were easy to keep a watch on with modern surveillance technology. No snipers to worry about, here. I still kept my head low as I walked past an exposed window, which was a quirk I had stolen from Walpurgis, who always acted like she was fighting a one-girl war against some unknown army.

  The metallic door slid open just enough to let me pass. The apartment building was mostly deserted. It was very unusual, given the States’ housing situation, but I wasn’t expecting something normal with a safe house like this one.

  The other occupants were FBI agents.

  I reached my new home after taking an elevator where I was scanned again. Then I was walking along a hallway whose walls were covered by the steel bars of the security drones’ cages. Those hound-like things had almost killed me and all my friends a year ago. I still didn’t trust the dog-terminators.

  The door of my apartment scanned me once again and I was finally allowed to enter. It was almost a miracle that they didn’t register all the illegal software I carried in my backpack.

  “I really hope all these scans won’t give me cancer when I’m old,” I said aloud. “Because I swear I’ll get you all to pay for the medical bills.”

  Talking to myself may have been the sign of a crazy person, but in addition to all the security measures, the place was bugged to hell and back.

  “I’m home!” I announced as I threw my jacket over the counter.

  For a building whose sole purpose was—as fas as I knew—to safeguard the Dorsett family, the actual apartment was tiny. I wasn’t complaining, though, since compared to our last apartment, we lived in a palace now.

  Three bedrooms were side-by-side at the end of a small living room that transformed into a kitchen by pressing a button. A bathroom was on the other side that we all had to share.

  The walls were so thin that if I farted in the privacy of my room, Van would complain in her own bedroom, separated from mine by Mom’s. The living arrangement had her in the middle room at the start, but she threatened to doxx ourselves to the media if she had to suffer another thin-walled night next to mine.

  Whiny brat.

  Mom was waiting for me in the kitchen-living room. Her arms were on her hips and her face was stern with worry and displeasure. “Where have you been, Cole?”

  “I just went for a walk,” I told her. Technically, I hadn’t been away for more than three hours. It was still early morning. “Just to stretch my legs.”

  “Sure you did, and I’m the Captain of my own Battle-barge,” she snapped back.

  Where did that Rune reference come from? Was she watching Van’s replays?

  “Uh…” I began. I hadn’t actually thought what I was going to tell my mother when I came back from my little adventure. I hated lying to people I cared about. Made me feel strangely like my father, whom I didn’t remember at all.

  Perhaps a psychiatrist would have a field day with me if they somehow managed to catch me alive.

  “Don’t ‘uh’ me, Cole!” She walked over to my jacket and held it in front of me like a lawyer from those old shows where they confronted the criminal with undeniable evidence by the end of the episode. “You went for a walk in your Xanz clothes? That’s absolutely in character for you. Did you join a cult while you were out, too?”

  “Your accusations wound me, Mother,” I told her with a hand to my chest. “I would rather start my own gang, that’s where the money is. Lower Cañitas’ has an opening, last I heard.”

  Mom wasn’t in the mood for joking around, though. “You know we’re not supposed to leave the safe house under any circumstances! I was worried sick, Cole!”

  I lowered my eyes, unable to meet her gaze. I had hoped she would still be sleeping when I came back. That’s what I got for forgetting about her ‘Cole-is-doing-something-illegal’ sense.

  What could I say to her? She would never approve of me going out there and risking my life.

  “Mom, whatever it was,” I finally said after a long pause, “it wasn’t as bad as you think, since I’m here unharmed—”

  She opened her mouth to tell me something nasty and well-deserved, but I kept going:

  “We need to have a chat at some point in the future, but I don’t think this is the best place to do it, do you?” I looked at the walls that were crawling with unseen microphones and cameras.

  Mom wasn’t stupid by any means. For all the problems of her past she had managed to raise a family in one of San Mabrada’s worst districts and have her kids come out relatively okay.

  Yup.

  Last year, when the news media had been trying to make my friends and I look like some kind of terrorist organization, Mom had stuck out her neck for me and risked her own freedom in doing so. She had done it without an inch of evidence that I wasn’t what the reporters said I was.

  It was one thing to know in theory that those were the kind of things that a parent would do for their child. It was something else entirely to see it happen in live video.

  “I see,” she said. Her eyes flickered towards the walls for only an instant. “Well then, young man, this discussion isn’t over. You won’t get out of this so easily.”

  “I expect nothing else of you, mighty maternal overlord.”

  She clearly had to fight the unmaternal instinct of rolling her eyes. “Seriously, Cole. You have to promise me you won’t be doing any escapades like this one again.”

  That was a promise I couldn’t make. I grunted and looked away.

  “Cole?” she pressed on. “You have to promise.”

  “I promise,” I told her gravely, “I won’t pull an escape like this one, Mom.”

  “I don’t like how you worded that,” she said. She furrowed her brow. “I don’t like it one bit—”

  Fortunately, reinforcements arrived in that very moment. Sis’ voice came from her room:

  “Mom? Have you finished lecturing Cole already? I need some backup fast as hell!”

  “That sounds important!” I said, seizing the lifeline. “Wouldn’t you say? I better check that out before something terrible happens to your youngest child!”

  “She’s just hunting some dino—”

  But I was already gone. Regarding tactical retreats, there was nothing to be ashamed of. Better to live and fight another day.

  Van was standing in the tiny space between her bed and the rest of her room. She was wearing a Pixel Tactics Online t-shirt and a pair of jeans so old they were almost white. For all I knew, pretending to be a hikikomori was the latest trend between videogame streamers and she was merely playing her part.

  Or she had spent too much time on her mindjack. Which, by the way, she was using now. The bulky helmet, all metal and plastic, covered her head completely like some kind of cyberpunk parasite. A line of glass enveloped the metal at eye’s height and served as a visor. A cable was connected from the mindjack into her personal computer, which showed her video-feed and streamed it to a thousand different persons in different parts of the world.

  She used cables because even in 2042, th
e fastest way to transfer data from point A to point B was to fill the space in between them with copper.

  “Finally! What took you all day?” she asked as I entered the room.

  “You know. Just went outside for a perfectly legal stroll.”

  “That, indeed, sounds like a reasonable explanation,” she said loudly as she turned her mouth up in the direction of the ceiling. “I don’t doubt this explanation of yours one bit, brother of mine.”

  Van was a Dorsett, which meant we shared bits of a peculiar sense of humor that few people understood (or even found funny at all). I guess it was some variant of gallows humor—Lower Cañitas style. One of the things we found hilarious was the idea of a couple FBI agents having to spend the entire day filling paperwork and hearing our dumb chitchat, unsure if we were talking about something important that they should report (and thus fill them with more paperwork), or ignore and risk missing some vital piece of intel they could use against us later—if our shaky alliance fell through, that is.

  “You shouldn’t,” I answered in her same overacting tone. “Otherwise you would be implying I was out there doing something I shouldn’t have done, which would be illegal.”

  “Going against the law is bad,” she confirmed.

  It was a bit childish. Fine. Very childish. But spending months on end in the same cramped space will do that to a person.

  “You asked for my assistance, sister of mine?”

  “Indeed. See, I’m currently in the middle of a hunt,” she explained. She kept quiet for a second, probably focused on something that was happening in-game.

  All modern mindjack variants came with an immersion-breaking switch that allowed people to divide (albeit badly) their attention between the virtual world and the real one. This was a feature, not a restriction.

  The first versions of the mindjack were not immersion-optional and they put the players into all kinds of trouble. It’s very easy to rob someone when they’re completely alienated from the real world, for example. Nastier things had happened. People began suing after the first report of an exploded bladder, for example.