Archon's Queen

by Matthew S. Cox

  She let off the throttle and slumped over the handlebars. Once the e-bike had come to a stop, Anna slipped off and tumbled to the ground on her back. She lay still for a few breaths, staring up at the stars and savoring the feeling of not being underground. Faces appeared in her view as bystanders approached to check on her.

  A man in a black suit stooped down, glanced for a moment at the hole she put in the barrier, and reached to help her up.

  “Are you hurt, miss?”

  She grasped his hand. “Yes, thanks. I think the damn dodgy GPS gave me a bit of a wrong turn.”

  he elevator let her out on the thirty-ninth. Anna glanced through floor-to-ceiling windows at a pleasant view of Finsbury Park to the east. From all the light at the north end, she assumed a Frictionless match was underway. Plodding down a hallway lined with heavy blue carpet, she staggered past bits of silver sculpture composed of numerous free-floating pieces held aloft in magnetic fields. Orbs, triangles, and other constructs no one had invented names for spiraled about in some artist’s attempt to associate moods with shapes.

  Apparently, six spheres of ascending size spiraling in a graceful curve equated to serenity, while two pairs of counter-orbiting cubes somehow meant lust. Her head hurt too much to contemplate esoteric philosophy as she fell against the door to apartment 3915. Carroll had been oddly forthcoming with the address. That “you owe me a major favor” smile had her shivering the entire ride here.

  As if the impact of her body was not loud enough, she pounded her fist on the door twice.

  It slid open with a pneumatic squeak, leaving her falling forward into the arms of a broad-shouldered man with thick black hair. Much of his shoulder and neck area had been replaced with dark metallic cyberware, which gave way to a texture like living tissue halfway down his biceps. He looked quite different without the coat, but familiarity glowed within his orange eyes. The sight of her made him blink.

  “Did you take a nosedive off a moving car?”

  “Motorbike actually… Twice, in fact. I’m shocked the NetMini is still alive. Bloody thing only survived because I’ve kept it off, I bet. I didn’t want ‘em using it to track me. Orange, I need your help to find someone… I don’t know who else to trust.”

  He carried her inside, past a sunken living room where a couch, table, and holovid player waited three steps down from ground level in a pool of grey rug. A kitchenette covered with imitation black marble tiles went by on the right as she floated down a hall to a bedroom where he set her on something soft and warm. He spent several minutes wiping grit out of the abrasions on her chin and forehead, a spritz of Aeroderm here and there erased the damage from her skin with a cold, tingling foam.

  Afterwards, he flopped into an oversized chair surrounded by technology. “So, shall I assume you were pursued the old-fashioned way?”

  Anna ogled the eight separate display screens that surrounded him like a halo, as well as the rack of components and three individual net decks on the desk behind him. White squares, one inch thick, emblazoned with spirals of concentric lines stood off from the wall on silver pegs of various heights. The three-dimensional effect made the room feel expensive. She moaned, hurting everywhere.

  “How the hell do you afford this place?”

  “I have many benefactors, only some of whom are aware of that fact. So, please, tell me why you’re here? Did Carroll give you something you couldn’t handle?”

  “No. It’s the CSB.”

  He had her halfway to the door before her begging made him stop. She hung suspended by one hand holding a fistful of shirt and one in her belt.

  “Please, Mr. Orange. A little girl needs your help.”

  “Yeah, sure. You’re not that small.”

  “Not me. Faye. She’s only thirteen.”

  He hung his head and grumbled. “Do I look like a missing kid’s charity? Damn CSB. How can you be certain you weren’t followed?”

  “I told you the other night, I’ve done this before. Besides, they are trying to shoot me not stalk me. If they’d spotted me, bullets would be in the air already.”

  He carried her towards the door.

  “Wait!” She clung to him. “Please… There isn’t much time! I can’t go to Carroll again. The CSB is probably watching him, and if they bribe him well enough I’m done. I don’t know anyone else good enough to find her. They wanted me to assassinate a Member of Parliament. I couldn’t do it. They’re going to kill her to hurt me; I just know it.”

  Orange held her for a full minute in the doorway, gazing at the ceiling. “For all I know, you’ve just led the authorities to my damn flat.”

  “I will admit to being rusty,” she said, pulling herself up until they almost touched foreheads. “But, I know I wasn’t followed. I lost them underground and I didn’t take an autocab here… I nicked a scooter. There’s no trace. Please, Orange. I’ll do anything you want.”

  “Anything?” He raised an eyebrow.

  “Well, maybe not take it in the bum.”

  He slouched, staring at her with uncomfortable pity that made her feel like a Cov again.

  “Don’t look at me like that. I was tryin’ to make light.” She looked away. “Sorry if it wasn’t funny. I’m not in a great mood. If it’s what you really want… Faye―”

  “No, Pixie.” He sighed. “Not every man in the world is just looking to use you.”

  She cried, keeping her face away so he couldn’t see. Orange shifted and carried her back across his flat and set her on the foot end of a king-sized Comforgel pad. He glanced between her and the terminals, opening his mouth as if to say something, but changed his mind.

  Anna gathered her composure. “Does this mean you’ll help?”

  “Aye. However, I will call in that favor you offered eventually. It’ll more than likely involve getting shot at.”

  “Awright.” She stretched, cringing from sore muscles.

  After feeding him all the information she had about Faye, Agent Gordon, and the timeline of when they took her from Coventry, she let gravity take her backwards onto the bed, and waited.

  The elaborate chair whispered a soft breath as it reclined. Mr. Orange plugged in to one of the decks and laced his fingers together over his abdomen. Anna stared upside down at a large sheet of paper covered with Japanese writing hung on the wall over the headboard. Traces of the Far East adorned the room. A little pagoda carved from red jade sat by an incense platter in the image of a Samurai. Paper lanterns hung across the rim of the bedroom window and a small door led to what seemed like a Shinto shrine.

  “You fancy Japan?”

  Orange chuckled. “There’s a lot of high-paying work there. The country is fragmented, corporate warfare is part of their culture, and they have some of the best network security in the world. I enjoy the challenge.”

  She remained still, eyes closed but awake, until the pain in her shoulder and thigh became too much. After kicking off her boots, she sat up and undid her belt. With a grimace, she peeled her pants away from the wound and slid them down to her knees. Once she had plucked all the stray threads and splinters from the graze, she flicked the safety cap from a stimpak and pressed it into her skin. Inside of a minute, her thigh was as pristine as if it had never been touched. The synthetic adrenaline caused a wave of pain to cascade through overtaxed muscles.

  “Nice tattoo.”

  She jumped at the sound of his voice, blushing, feeling a spike of gratitude towards Doctor Mardling for giving her underwear.

  “Would you mind?” She pointed at her shoulder with her second to last stim, and held it out to him.

  The wire auto-ejected from the socket behind his ear as he got up, reeling itself back into the deck. She rolled over, tensing without conscious thought as his weight settled into the Comforgel next to her and the presence of a man loomed over her back.

  “That’s a nasty scrape.”

  “Ahhh,” she yelled, biting the covers as he picked debris out of her back. Gasping, she turned her head to th
e left and let herself go limp. “I’m lucky Gordo is a shitty shot.”

  “Who’s Gordo?”

  Another scream slipped through clenched teeth as Orange plucked a nugget of rock from her shoulder. She relaxed, whining, once the pain spike passed. “CSB agent.”

  “I’ve never met a CSB agent who was a poor shot.”

  “Maybe it’s ‘cause we were doing sixty-five through the Tube on bikes. You think―”

  She tensed at the touch of the cold metal injector, and moaned when her shoulder filled with the cool fluid. Anna gnawed on the bedclothes as the relaxing chill became itching. Orange’s warm hand brushed over intact skin, sending a shiver down her back.

  “Wound’s closed.”

  Mr. Orange patted her on the uninjured shoulder. “You definitely got an angel watchin’ out for you. From what I’ve seen, those CSB blokes are all former MI6, most have SAS training. Damn miracle you survived.”

  She rolled over, staring up at him. “Maybe he was as terrified of riding a motorbike through the Tube as I was.”

  He gave her a shrug. “Or he wasn’t really trying to kill you.”

  “What the devil for?”

  Orange raised both eyebrows. “You said he wanted you to take out a MoP. Maybe they’ll do it anyway and leave you alive to stand trial for it.”

  I gotta get the feck out of London. Oh, James. She shook with emotion, fear, love, and anger. It subsided in a moment with the singular focus of not abandoning her friends.

  “Thanks for this, Orange. Mind if I use your shower?”

  “Go right ahead, I’ve still got some digging to do.”

  “You’re not done yet? Why’d you log out?”

  “The pixie caught my eye.”

  Anna blushed at the small cartoon head grinning over the waistband of her panties.

  She squinted. “Well it is in a bit of a spot, innit? I’m kinda sorry I got it.”

  He looked at her for a moment and frowned. “Go get cleaned up. I’ll send your kit off for laundry.”

  “Okay…” She ducked into the bathroom and hid behind the door while she stripped.

  Leaving her clothes outside, she availed herself of the autoshower. When she finished, she padded over to the door and cracked it open. He lay out cold on the chair, lost in cyberspace, seemingly meditating. Anna clung to the edge of the door, watching him breathe for a few minutes. She hadn’t noticed the four katanas hanging vertically upon the wall behind the monitors before.

  Seeing no sign of her clothes, she edged the door open a little more until it hit the plastic-wrapped packet he had left on the ground. She grabbed it, closed the door, and broke the seal, filling the room with the scent of fabric softener and the subtle hint of some manner of chemical. He had used one of the good places; the rips and bullet grazes had been stitched almost to the point where no sign of damage was evident.

  Anna put on everything except her boots, wanting to leave them off for comfort while Orange worked. A glance at the window on her way to the bed changed her mind, fearful the CSB might show up at any minute.

  He remained motionless for several minutes. Anna got up and paced, then helped herself to the reassembler in the kitchen and made a single serving of coffee. Twenty minutes later, she had about finished it before he sat up and swiveled around. His expression did not fill her with much hope.

  “She’s still alive? Please tell me she’s still alive…”

  “Yeah.” He pulled the wire out and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs. “She’s being held at a high security facility outside the city. The kind of place they use to hold nutter auggies. What exactly did this brat do?”

  “Something bad…” Anna stared at the ground. “She met me. The bastards are using her as leverage.”

  A tray slid out of one of the black boxes on the rack. He plucked a holodisk from it and tossed it to her. “Well, I got all the information I could on the place, but by the time you get there what codes I could get will have changed.”

  “Can I convince you to be a digital guardian angel while I go in?”

  His lips parted in a mischievous smirk as he leaned forward. “Will you owe me a second favor if I do?”

  “Of course. So what’s the big deal about the tattoo?”

  He exhaled, crossing his hands behind his head and sat back. “Well, that’s probably something I shouldn’t have mentioned.”

  Anna squinted. “What do you mean? You’ve seen it before?”

  Orange yanked a large handgun from under the desk; he hesitated, not quite aiming it at her. “And this is why they round you lot up. Look, I trade in secrets that people kill for. Stay the hell out of my head.”

  Anna scampered away over the bed, hands in front as if they would stop a bullet. “Sorry! I only hear surface thoughts… I can’t deep dive.”

  His finger left the trigger, causing the firing circuit to go dark. He stared at her for a minute, something between anger and pity in his eyes. His expression filled her imagination with a debate about how easy it would be to clean blood from his bed.

  She cringed. “I’m sorry, Orange. I’m desperate. Really, I didn’t look deep. All I got was what you were thinking about right at that moment. I swear I won’t peek again. It’s a habit… Only thing that’s kept me alive sometimes.”

  “You wanna know? Okay, fine.” He tossed the gun on the desk with a clatter. “Maybe someday you’ll understand why people keep secrets.”

  Orange shoved at his desk, rotating to face his rig. He swiped at a virtual display panel. One of the numerous holo-screens went from flat grey to showing a black box inside a blue frame. His finger poised over a holographic button. Conscience seemed to get the better of him, and he waited.

  “Are you absolutely sure you want to see this, Pixie?”

  She walked over and put a hand on the back of the chair. Her voice carried a hint of dread. “Yeah.”

  His finger pierced the tiny square of light. A video feed filled the frame. A ceiling-mounted camera pointed down from the ceiling of a messy bedroom, aimed at a queen sized Comforgel pad. She squinted at it, sensing something familiar about the horrendous shambles. Shadows moved across the sheets as a door opened, letting light from the hallway leak in. The walls caught dark azure light from outside, and then a pudgy balding man waddled forward dragging an unconscious nude girl with holographic filament wings. As soon as Anna saw them, she clung to the chair to keep from falling to her knees.

  Blake, from Bristol City, was carrying the woman she used to be. He paused a step inside the door and gave her a light throttling, screaming about her costing them money all day long and shouting about her lying there like a turd.

  “This is what happens to whores who can’t handle their junk,” Blake shouted.

  He threw her face-first into the bed, the electronic wings fluttering along with her brief flight. Her body landed limp as a corpse, stopping with a dull splat upon the gelatinous surface.

  Looking up at the camera, he adjusted it and whispered to the lens.

  “And this is how you make up for the money you lost. Greetings my loyal followers! Tonight we have Pixie for your viewing pleasure. No, the useless bint ain’t dead. She be strung out to hell and back like usual.”

  With that, he stripped and climbed on top of her. Anna stared in horror, unable to turn away from the rape of her unconscious body. Orange looked to the side, one hand up to his temple to block his peripheral vision of the screen. From the color of his face, it was obvious he had seen it already.

  Blake rolled her onto her back to give the audience a front view and threw her legs apart to the side. The tattoo grinned at the camera. After a minute’s pause for the viewer’s benefit, he was on her again. Blake didn’t even stop when his motion began to knock vomit out of her throat with every thrust.

  Anna turned away, shaking. “That’s enough… I don’t want to see any more. Where did you get that?”

  “The club sells the videos. I find them here and there in conce
aled network nodes when I go hunting for data with trade value. Think I found that one in the archives of some investment firm in The City.”

  As the lights began to flicker, she forced herself to think about Twee. If she let her emotion out right here, all of Orange’s stuff would fry, and he’d never help her. She knocked some of his things from a shelf while stumbling to the exit.

  Her voice blurred through the urge to sob. “Can you delete it? I mean… all of them?”

  A pained expression came before a noncommittal offer. “I can try to slap together a hunter construct to track down and wipe the file wherever it finds it, but it won’t be able to touch offline storage, and it could take years to get every copy. You know the ‘net. Once something’s out there…”

  She bit her lip. “Please start it. I gotta go. I’ll call you when I get out to the site.”

  he sky rumbled with the thunder of unseen lightning. Anna looked up into the reflection of the rage boiling beneath her sorrow. Rain approached, it would soon be no weather to drive a motorbike in. She stashed it in an alley behind Orange’s flat, covering it with enough junk to keep it safe at least for a few days in case she needed it again. Cold whistling gusts sent ripples through her white orb of hair. She stood motionless, a lone piling in the river of people. Intermittent voices, pleasant greetings as well as pick-up lines, churned into an endless din of shuffling feet and traffic.

  A great burst of wind and water vapor swept down the street as a maglev tram whisked overhead. The row of silent metal boxes flowed around a sweeping curve, ascending a long ivory thread into the tenth story of a building. Anna observed the world happen as though the city existed without her in it, a detached spectator looking from afar.