Seeing Lily in action left no doubt. No human could move that fast. Nothing else could have evaded such an intense onslaught for even a second, much less for the duration that Lily had already survived. But there was no time to lose. Lily was now driven into a corner, and the one who meant her harm was slowing her approach, making sure not to overextend herself and allow Lily to escape. This lovely creature only had a second or two left to live.
Brian charged and leaped at the product like a lion ambushing an unsuspecting gazelle. However, when he landed he set his feet and bent his knees to absorb the impact so that he could stop dead in his tracks. His ploy had worked. The product had heard him, as he knew she would. As he landed, she turned and swung her long baton back at him, the tip of the weapon whistling just millimeters away from his chest. She had expected him to be a little closer, but he had anticipated the swing. It was a trick that hypersensitive products liked to play on humans-act as though they don’t know you are coming, lull you into thinking you have the element of surprise, and then bam! hit you like they have eyes in the back of their head. It was a move that Brian was all too familiar with.
Having swung her baton with the confidence that she would deliver a decisive blow but then missing, Treva was now open. Brian knew his opportunity would last only for the briefest of moments, which is why he was already swinging good ol’ Tiffany. Only a moment ago he had been swinging at empty space, but now-right on cue-the baton was there in the path of his swing. Brian’s preference would have been the product’s arm or, better yet, its torso, but the savvy guard settled with slamming the heavy, bulbous tip of his mace into the stun baton with a mighty crack.
Treva, not expecting the blow, lost her grip on the rod, which smacked against the hard stage and clattered off into the roaring crowd. She was enraged. She had been watching this new meat puppet in her periphery, the one with the club. Relative to a being like herself, the human guard seemed to attack slowly and recklessly. She had expected to neutralize him with a single strike with her baton, but the seeker had underestimated this one. Now she had lost her weapon. Normally, she would have enjoyed the challenge of a worthy opponent, but now all she desperately wanted was her prey. And this guard was interfering!
Treva turned toward the man as he aimed another blow at her head, but this time she was watching and dodged it easily, and as the club sailed past her, she launched herself on him.
Love_Monkey, the watcher of the lounge, gazed down at the stage from her throne high above. This will not do, she thought. Due to the nature of their work, seekers were never a welcome sight, but Love_Monkey had never witnessed one unleashing itself in public. Sanctioned by the Divine Authority or not, Love_Monkey would not abide such violence on her watch. Without hesitation she leaped off of her balcony into empty space, eighty meters above the groksta floor. She fell rapidly at first, but the nanothreads gradually slowed her descent. It was at times like these that Love_Monkey was grateful for the groksta’s safety matrix, the web of threads so thin that they were invisible to the human eye.
Groksters were not allowed to use the safety matrix for fun (although they were often tempted); rather, it was there to avoid the stiff point penalties imposed for wrongful death. However, Love_Monkey was not just a grokster, she was the watcher, and as such she would do what she pleased. This was a true emergency. Falling toward the groksta floor, billions of nanothreads crisscrossed across her small body, stretched, and then, unable to withstand her weight, snapped. Although the threads broke, each one absorbed a tiny amount of her kinetic energy, the collective influence causing her to decelerate as she neared the floor. The damage to the safety matrix was of no concern to the hostess, who knew the threads would self-assemble again.
During her fall, Love_Monkey had withdrawn an emitter from a QuickPocket™ in her dress. Her familiar had called up the blood profile of the seeker, but Love_Monkey was too far from her target for the emitter to work properly. As the floor zoomed in, she readied the kill switch.
The human male was adept with his weapon, and so Treva endured some solid blows, one of which nearly broke her arm. But seekers were built to take a beating and Treva had no time to play, so she took her licks and then proceeded to rip into Brian. She tore at his flesh indiscriminately with her sharp fangs and steely nails, and his body quickly became slick with blood. Astoundingly, the girl-the one Treva had hunted all this way-jumped on the seeker’s back, grappling with Treva and screaming. Treva felt the dull sting of a blade as Lily stabbed into her shoulder and neck. Lucky for the seeker, her prey was less adept at attack than it was at evasion, and Treva estimated her wounds to be nonthreatening.
Treva bit down into the throat of the troublesome man and then snapped her head backward, effectively severing Brian’s carotid artery. He crumpled to the floor in a dead heap, blood spurting from his neck. With the nuisance now disposed of, Treva turned her attention to the little girl on her back, the one Treva had been imprinted with. The scent of her prey pressed up against her was overpowering. Soon she would feed. And when she had satisfied the worst of her hunger, she would then feed on the other one, the man limping toward her with his pathetic little knife.
The bloodthirsty seeker snatched a handful of Lily’s hair, and just as her brain was sending the signal to her muscles to pull the prey off her back, Treva felt the most wonderful feeling of her life. She threw back her head, moaning in ecstasy. She then fell to the ground. Her back bowed and she started to pant. Lily was still on Treva’s back, cutting into her wildly, but the hunter did not feel the knife; rather, the seeker writhed on the ground sensuously. The quiet from the audience was deafening. Then, all at once, Treva’s body convulsed in an explosion of haphazard movements and then went limp. The whites of her eyes turned pink as the blood vessels ruptured under pressure. Lily was still on top of the seeker, hacking away like there was no tomorrow. Blood spatter now covered Lily’s body, but no one could see it behind the illusion of her skinsuit. Treva’s limbs started twitching violently.
D_Light, dragging his injured leg and clutching his knife, then fell on top of the seeker and joined Lily in the grisly task of butchering the downed hunter.
Love_Monkey bent her knees slightly to absorb the shock as she landed on the stage. She looked down at the emitter’s clearly lit readout display. It was targeting the D-bots in Treva that carried the pharma MaxiDrive™. This drug was often used as a well-being pharma, but it was also a very effective pep. No doubt the seeker carried MaxiDrive™ in her bloodstream for those times when she needed an extra kick of adrenaline. Love_Monkey had set the emitter to an infinite loop, which meant that it sent the release signal over and over very rapidly. This emptied all of the MaxiDrive™ available into the seeker’s bloodstream over a fraction of a second. Her pulmonary and circulatory systems were overloaded, or at least that was what it was supposed to do. Love_Monkey was unsure if her emitter had killed the seeker, or if it had merely incapacitated her while the other two stabbed her to death. Either way, her objective had been met.
“My Soul, it’s like the murder of Julius Caesar down there,” Djoser said as their party watched the show from their pillbox. Lyra’s mouth hung agape, and speaking to no one in particular, she muttered, “We are all going to be reformatted for this.” Sweet_Ting said nothing, her lips pursed tightly and her eyes bulging more than usual.
Lily and D_Light, as though waking from a trance, ceased their butchery. The great hall was nearly silent. With expressionless stares, they looked up at each other and then out into the audience. Suddenly, the hall erupted in deafening cheers. The point reader above the stage shot up as the audience ratings began streaming in. By now, several guards had taken positions along a railing overlooking the scene, their crossbows leveled down, uncertain where to point as hundreds of rabid groksters rushed the stage to embrace the talented “performers.”
CHAPTER 26
“My father does not take appointments and rarely keeps the ones he makes,” Love_Monkey stated coldly
to Lyra. If the child-framed daughter of Dr. Monsa was intimidated by Mother Lyra, the tall and beautiful noblewoman, she did not show it.
Lyra smiled pleasantly down at the girl. “It is imperative that we speak to him. Certainly you can grant us an audience with your bio-father.”
Love_Monkey smiled sweetly. “Perhaps I should do this as payment for the live entertainment members of your party gave us-you know, the performance that left two unrecognizable corpses up on stage in the middle of my groksta?”
Lyra’s lips turned into a thin line.
“No matter,” the girl continued. “I’m not even going to ask why there was a rabid seeker chasing after your friends or how you might have run afoul of the Authority.”
“The seeker was a rogue product,” chimed in Djoser smugly. “They are no more than predators. Surely one is bound to snap. It is we who should be upset. Mother Lyra just lost a good man, an exceptionally talented and dedicated guard. It will be expensive to commission and train a new one. Perhaps we should upload a formal complaint.” Djoser made the threat in a casual tone, but his smirk was instantly wiped away when he saw the expression on Love_Monkey’s face.
The girl glared back at him with her small, pale hands clamped into fists. Her watery blue eyes then darted over to one of her guards who stood at attention nearby, loaded crossbow at the ready. “I suggest that you not speak again,” she snarled, malice dripping from every word.
D_Light sat on the soft dro-vine floor, paying no attention to the conversation. He had stripped off his skinsuit, wearing only his undershorts. A medic with product tats knelt down on one side of him, rubbing some chemi into D_Light’s leg while a medical bot scurried around, instruments extending in and out of its metal body as it ran its routine diagnostic protocol.
D_Light’s mind was still reeling. Having left the groksta and its overwhelming sensory overload, he now felt numb, deaf, and mute. Fortunately, the LoveGas™ had not yet begun to wear off, so he felt fine despite the pain in his leg.
Lily stood nearby, leaning back against a wall. She too appeared to have stepped out of a chainsaw massacre. D_Light lay back, flat on the floor, and reached up to stroke the back of her calf. The snakeskin texture of the microlenses hissed softly with his strokes. Her large blue eyes shot open at his touch. She watched him. Her expression was neutral, an unreadable mask, and she did not move her body. D_Light just stared back and smiled for what felt like a pleasant eternity.
Katria watched over and over in shock as her rented seeker was butchered on stage in front of thousands. It was as though she could hear her god laughing at her. First, against all expectations, the demons escaped the spanker ghetto. Next, their path was wiped clean by a cleaning crew. Then their trail was obliterated again in the lake, and now this? This grisly public spectacle? Could it be that the OverSoul was conspiring against her? My Soul, are you testing me? she wondered.
That seeker flew off the leash! Rhemus pinged.
It’s not supposed…it’s just not supposed to do that, was all Katria could send back. She felt as though her life had drained from her.
Yeah, where the hell is the subtlety? I mean, damn! The… Rhemus tripped over his thoughts. I mean, first the Tool gets knocked out, and now our seeker gets fragged? Are we insured for this? Rhemus’s blink thread was somewhat garbled.
Katria did not respond.
Rhemus broke the silence. What now? I can get another seeker-that is, if anyone is willing to lease one to us. Actually, I think we should go with a human seeker this time.
No, Katria said at last. I’m not risking any more points chasing them. They’re in the inner sanctum. If they come out we’ll know it, and we can deal with it then.
Yeah, Rhemus replied, the key word here is “if.” Maybe the doctor’s little infamous Darwinian gauntlet will solve the problem for us.
Eventually, the MetaGame team was ushered through the multiple airtight portals that guarded the entrance to the inner sanctum and were left there. Love_Monkey, the watcher and high hostess of the lounge, had given them permission to enter the inner sanctum, but only because she wanted them out of her sight, or so she said.
This arrangement was not what Lyra and Djoser had hoped for. From what they could tell, Dr. Monsa was not expecting them. “So we’re just going to what? Tell him we were in the neighborhood and thought we would drop by?”
Djoser spoke, but his voice seemed to get swallowed up by the alien vegetation around them. It was extremely dark, which was no surprise to the party since the elevator they had used to get there seemed to travel downward for ages. According to their familiars, they were now under the bottom of the lake.
All was quiet, except for the sniffles and soft crying emanating from D_Light and Lily. Still bloodied, they hung onto one another, belatedly mourning the loss of Brian.
“He rescued us!” Lily sobbed. “He was a rescuer. And that thing…”
“He was like a lion, fierce and with no thought for his own life,” D_Light blubbered. “Oh, the horror! He was my brother!”
Lyra looked back at the two mourners, contempt clouding her face. “My Soul, when will that damned drug wear off?”
Djoser said nothing, only smiled. Moocher, his familiar, was facing back toward D_Light and Lily, its oversized eyes fixed on them. Ah yes, record it all, Djoser thought. This will be worth a good laugh later.
“Notice, Lyra, that whenever one of your entourage dies, your new friend D_Light is somehow involved?”
Lyra rolled her eyes as Djoser continued. “Certainly he has proven himself useful, and I expect that with his help we may very well win this game, but I fear none of your employees will survive.”
Lyra laughed. “Lucky for me I’m out of henchmen. Maybe he’ll move on to yours!” She smirked at Amanda who, heedless of the conversation, was carefully surveying their surroundings.
“Oh, I wouldn’t underestimate him,” Djoser said. “I suspect he can kill your people remotely. Maybe you should check in with your servants back home.”
Lyra smiled as she was teased, but she had to fight the urge to open a blink with her house. The team had agreed not to communicate with anyone unless absolutely necessary since no one was sure what the Authority could trace. They were probably being paranoid. Although it was true that the Authority used to eavesdrop on blinks and data-mine the minds of players via their mind interface chips, the Authority later imposed a series of privacy rules-collectively called “Free Agency Rules” (FARs)-on itself. Apparently, these rules were in response to a study the Authority sponsored which concluded that players who knew they could be listened in on showed a decrease of “free and innovative thought” and that this led to “suboptimal productivity.”
Nevertheless, Lyra did not feel like testing the validity of the FARs just now. The stakes were too high.
Lyra turned her attention to the black foliage ahead of them. It was a dark zone, a place void of nanosites, so no one could jack into a skin to see. The dull, greenish light that filtered in from the plexi portal seals behind them was their only source of illumination. It was eerie and unsettling. Djoser and Lyra piped their familiars’ night vision into their own minds in order to get a better look.
The vegetation that surrounded them was dense and much of it unfamiliar. There was no discernable pattern to the plant life, just a wild hodgepodge of alien flora. The only thing that the trees and plants seemed to have in common was the size of their leaves, all of which were enormous. Lyra supposed that the purpose of these gigantic offshoots was to maximize photosynthetic potential, yet there was no sunlight.
“Is that a breeze I feel?” Djoser asked into the darkness. The nobleman confirmed through Moocher’s night vision that they were indeed indoors. A smooth ceiling loomed about two hundred meters above.
PeePee, Lyra’s familiar, swiveled her head about, surveying the area while Lyra faced forward with her eyes shut so as to better concentrate on what she was seeing. “I presume the good doctor is trying to simulate t
he outside world,” Lyra proposed. “If so, then I expect the sun to come up at some point, an artificial one…although, the inner sanctum is obviously not synced to local time. It’s dawn in the outside world right now.”
“I don’t know. Seems warmer in here too. Probably an optimized climate for parasites to infect us,” Djoser said sarcastically. “Anyway, we’re not going to find the doctor just standing here. Looks like a path over there.” Djoser pointed to a stone paved path and stumbled toward it.
“Our familiars have a different vantage point, so we’re going to fall off a cliff or something if we try to walk around using them as our eyes,” Djoser said gruffly.
“Stick Moocher up on your shoulder or hold his head in front of you,” Lyra suggested, holding back a smile.
“Screw it, let’s do it the old-fashioned way,” Djoser exclaimed. He then pulled out a tiny glow stick from his pocket and turned it on.
Lyra frowned. “Might that attract unwanted attention? I suspect there’s more than experimental plants in this place.”
“Well, I’m not walking around holding a flippin’ ferret in front of my face,” Djoser snapped while continuing his journey toward the rough stone path ahead.
MetaGame Page 26