Touch

by Camille Picott

  “Your only interest is in the girl.”

  “Partially,” Gun says. “I believe I can do that by breaking into Collusion Underground. If I can recover the intel, we may have what we need to stop Global. Please, give me forty-eight hours.”

  “You have twenty-four.” Anderson turns his stare on Li Yuan, who, Gun is startled to realize, has not relinquished the crystal vase. “You’d better hope my son’s exploits prove fruitful. Rest assured that one way or another, I will obtain the information I need to take down Reginald Winn.”

  21

  Golems

  “Wait until you see this.” Nate proffers his tablet. “You’ve never seen an avatar with a better suit of armor.”

  At first glance, the avatar is the same nondescript one Li Yuan gave them. A plain-looking, twenty-something man with light brown hair and a large nose. His khaki pants and brown polo are as unremarkable as the rest of him.

  Gun scrolls down to the list of defense Axcents programmed in by Nate and the Dread Twins, revealing an avatar that is anything but normal. The programming is nothing short of stunning. Anti-Mortality, Anti-Touch, Anti-Constrictors . . . the list goes on and on, a defense for every known Black Tech on the market.

  Except Dream Dust.

  “No defense against Dream Dust?”

  “Sorry, bro.” Nate shakes his head. “No code against that yet. The tech is too new. We can probably develop one, but it will take more time than we have.”

  “Good thing I stocked up on flumazenil.” Gun claps his friend on the shoulder. “Good work. You and the twins have your own avatars ready, correct?”

  Nate grins. “You don’t think we’d let you go into Collusion Underground and have all the fun, do you?”

  ***

  From the outside, Collusion Underground looks like a one-story colonial sitting in the middle of a grassy field. Horses graze in the pasture, flicking their ears in curiosity when Gun, Nate, and the Dread Twins arrive in the Vex site.

  The four of them wear similar nondescript avatars in khaki pants. The only difference is the color of their polo shirts and the size of their noses. Gun’s nose is, by far, the largest.

  “We’re the khaki pants brigade,” Nate says.

  The twins crack up at this, chuckling and elbowing Nate. Gun ignores them and heads toward the colonial, leading the group.

  As they walk up the long dirt road to the colonial, the horses lift their heads. Each time Gun passes one, the animal’s left ear glows red as it scans him. When his security pass registers, the horse goes back to munching grass.

  Nate and the others are granted access as his guests. This process isn’t as easy as it sounds. It required Gun to preregister each of their avatars a week in advance. There were no background checks on his team, as privacy is a large part of the Collusion Underground society, but the lead time on guest registration does make sabotage more difficult.

  “What do you think would happen if we didn’t have Billy’s access avatar?” Nate asks.

  “I bet those horses shoot laser beams out of their eyes and eject us from the site,” Mage says. “We should send in a dummy avatar to see what happens.”

  “I want robot horses,” Lox says. “Can I have one? We can put it outside our apartment.”

  “I’ll build you one,” Nate says.

  “Don’t bother.” Mage grimaces. “It’ll get stolen or dismantled within hours.”

  “Quit being a buzz kill.” Lox elbows his brother.

  “Enough,” Gun says. “Time to focus.”

  The others fall silent. They pass a total of six different horses by the time they reach the steps to the colonial.

  The inside of the building is lined with polished golden wood. It’s three stories tall on the inside, with elevators lining the room from floor to ceiling. Ladders are mounted between the elevator bays, giving people access to all levels.

  Gun leads the way up the left-hand wall, climbing to a third floor elevator. He hops inside, followed by his friends.

  “You guys ready for this?” he asks.

  Mage cracks his knuckles. Nate gives him a thumbs up. Lox fingers the collar of his polo shirt and grins.

  “Okay,” Gun says. “Here goes nothing.”

  He swipes his palm over the scanner. The elevator doors close, taking them to Billy’s vault.

  The doors open onto a long, narrow room. It’s three stories tall, lined from floor to ceiling with books.

  The books are storage facades for data. And if every book contains data, Billy Long is indeed an intel junkie.

  Slowly, not quite sure what to expect, Gun steps out of the elevator and into the vault. He pauses just inside, waiting.

  Seconds tick by. Nothing happens.

  Which is what they hoped for. The point of the access avatar is to clear the initial entry security, like it did with the horses.

  Lox lets out a small whoop of joy. He and the others join Gun inside. Standard protocol grants entry to anyone with the primary avatar.

  “Lock it down,” Gun says.

  Nate complies, rigging up a temporary security in front of the elevator.

  “Let’s see how good his search engine is.” Gun takes the tablet from the wall.

  As soon as he snaps it off the wall mount, a blast of bright light blinds him. He cries out, turning his head away from the Blinder Bug.

  In response, a spray of black mist shoots from the wrist of his avatar. The mist—nicknamed Ravenator—wraps around the blinding light, chomping down and devouring it, like a shark devouring a piranha. Within seconds, the Blinder Bug is destroyed.

  “He rigged the tablet,” Mage mutters, wiping at his eyes.

  This is what Li Yuan had warned them about. She got them into the vault, but who knows what sort of secondary security measures Billy and his uncle planted in this place.

  “We have to assume everything in this place is rigged,” Gun says. “Be on alert.” He turns his attention to the tablet. A number pad sits in the middle of the screen, clearly waiting for a passcode to be entered.

  “Code Cracker.” Gun pulls off the tip of his finger, revealing a chip underneath. He plugs the chip into the side of the tablet, watching as it decodes the tablet passcode.

  “I’m in.” Gun taps the search box and types in Project Renascentia. As soon as he does this, several things happen.

  Half a dozen books float off the shelves, drifting down.

  The floor ripples beneath his feet. Several arms burst through the tile, clawing their way to the surface.

  The arms emerging from the floor belong to four clay creatures who claw their way into the vault. One of them rushes Gun. He dodges to the left, but the creature manages to snag his shirt and tear it.

  “Golems,” Mage shouts. “The books were rigged!”

  Golems. Damn it. These things are hard to disable. The only way to defeat them is to write the word dead on their foreheads. In Hebrew.

  Where the golem comes in contact with Gun, bits of mud flake off and become tiny little bugs. The swarm under Gun’s shirt, biting chunks out of his avatar.

  And then the elevator door bulges, expanding like a balloon.

  “Incoming!” Nate yells. He rushes toward the elevator, deploying a Barrier. A wall of bricks appears in front of the elevator. The bricks expand horizontally, pushing the bulging door backward.

  In another thirty seconds, those bugs will chew clear through Gun. When they eat enough of his code, his avatar will collapse and he’ll be ejected from Vex.

  “Bug Repellent!” Lox yells.

  Gun twists away from the golem two more times, then yanks hard on his left thumb. This activates his Bug Repellent. Yellow goo springs out of his pores, smothering the bugs. His avatar immediately starts healing, the holes made by the bugs patching over.

  He pulls a small switchblade out of his pocket. As soon as he flips it open, the blade lengthens into a long dagger. When the golem rushes at him again, he cuts off its arm. It thunks to the floor. The creatu
re shrieks, swooping down to grab the arm and reattach it.

  “I could use some help over here!” Mage says. His arms are loaded with books. He runs across the vault, dodging the golem who follows on his heels. “Can’t hack anything if I’m being chased!”

  “Hey, mud face!” Gun grabs a book off the nearest shelf and flings it at the golem. It sinks into the mud of his skull, crumpling the top of it.

  The creature grapples at the book, walking in a sightless circle as it tries to dislodge the volume. In his periphery, he sees Lox engaged with his own golem. The man has, of all things, a small pen knife in his hand. He swipes at the golem’s face, cursing.

  The first golem has managed to get his arm reattached. It howls, charging at Gun. He squares off, holding his switchblade ready. He’s going to cut this monster into tiny little pieces and mash him into pulp. He’s going too—

  An explosion of bricks rockets through the room. The barrier Nate erected in front of the elevator crumples. Half a dozen black-clad mercs pour in.

  Global mercs. Each one wears a black uniform with the Global insignia stitched on the breast. What are the hell are they doing here? How did they get in? Do the Winns have a Collusion Underground membership?

  As soon as the cybermercs enter the vault, more golems emerge and claw their way free. One golem for every person.

  “Protect Mage!” he shouts, who’s the only one actually doing something other than fighting.

  The man has managed to scramble up the shelves. He knocked a bunch of books onto the floor and is wedged on a shelf a dozen rows up. His fingers fly across the surface of the books as he tries to unlock the data within.

  “Five minutes,” Mage calls. “Buy me five minutes.”

  Gun finds himself in a melee with two golems and a cybermerc. He alternates between hacking at the golems and fighting off the merc.

  Nate rushes past him, followed by several golems and Global mercs. “Write ‘met,’” he says as he streaks by. “On the golem. On his forehead. Write—umph!”

  One of the golems manages to grab his leg. Nate goes down. Two more jump on top of him.

  Gun snarls, fighting toward his friend. He elbows one merc in the head, then kicks a golem so hard his foot is buried up to the ankle in mud.

  Nate’s muffled voice comes from under the pile of struggling bodies. “Write ‘met’ on the golem’s forehead! That’s the Hebrew word for—!” His voice cuts off. The pile of bodies lurches as Nate disappears from underneath them.

  He’s gone. His avatar is destroyed and he’s been ejected from Vex.

  Gun renews his efforts. A group of golems has cornered a group of mercs. Gun finds himself squaring off against two golems. They rush him at the same time.

  Gun sidesteps, sweeping low with his blade. It cuts through both legs of a golem. As soon as it goes down, Gun springs at the remaining beast. He manages to slice off one arm before pinning it to the ground.

  Bugs swarm up his avatar, chomping on his body. The bug repellent continues to ooze from his pores, but the bugs are eating him faster than his defenses can administer repair.

  Gritting his teeth and holding the remaining arm down with his free hand, he drops his blade and sinks his index finger into the forehead of the golem. Finger moving rapidly, he scrawls the word met on the monster.

  To his shock, the firm clay beneath him goes mushy. The face melts, losing all traces of definition. Gun scrambles up, grabbing his knife.

  Half of the golems have been killed by cybermercs, all of them formless piles of goo. Lox still fights two of them, while Mage flings books down at two cybermercs who climb up the bookshelves toward him. The remaining golems and mercs fight each other.

  One of the mercs breaks away from the melee, charging at Gun. Blue glitter drifts from his clenched fist. The man cranks back his arm, preparing to fling the dust straight at him.

  Dream Dust. Gun swears. He can’t afford to be trapped in Vex, can’t afford to be captured by Claudine Winn.

  He scans the room, looking for some means of escape. He could fight, but not without getting doused by the Dream Dust. He could climb the bookshelves like Mage, but again, he risks the Dream Dust.

  Right as blue dust sprays from the merc’s fingers, Gun makes his decision.

  In the real-world, he yanks off his Vex set.

  22

  The Hole

  Gun half lunges, half leaps off the sofa as he crashes back into the real-world. Nate is already there, pacing up and down the study as his fingers fly over the tablet.

  “Mage has something!” he crows. “The file, it’s coming—no, no—arg—damn it!” Furious, he hurls the tablet onto the sofa with a string of curse words.

  “What happened?” Gun grabs the tablet. On the screen, the words download interrupted flash at him.

  It’s Gun’s turn to curse. “Did they get anything else?”

  “Negative.” Mage and Lox, back in their real-world apartment, appear on the large screen behind the desk.

  “The encryption on the files was nasty. I deployed Bug Repellent, Stingers, Anti-Wash, Oil Leak, and Snowplow. After all that, I still had three different firewalls to hack through.” Mage shakes his head. “That was one tricked out vault. I needed more time.”

  “You did manage to get thirty-nine percent,” Gun says.

  “Really?” Nate snatches the tablet from it. “Let me see what that thirty-nine percent entails.” He hunches over the screen.

  “The Global mercs were waiting for us,” Lox says. “It was a trap. How did they know we’d be there?”

  “A set-up?” Nate asks, glancing at Gun. “Could she be a double agent?”

  He thinks about this, wondering if Li Yuan indeed set them up. But her loathing of Global is too genuine.

  “I don’t think so,” he says. “The Winns, particularly Claudine, have been on high alert ever since our attack on Infinity Stadium. There’s extra security at every Vex appearance. She’s trying to track me down and find out who I am. She may have known Collusion Underground was a place I’d eventually visit.”

  “So you think she had cybermercs stationed there, just in case?” Lox asks.

  Gun nods. “One of the mercs came after me with Dream Dust. He wanted to catch me.”

  “Guys, look at this,” Nate says. “We got a video clip.” The twins are relegated to the upper right-hand corner as Nate throws the clip onto the wall screen.

  A woman huddles in the corner of a room. Her pretty face is raccooned with two black eyes. Blood dribbles from her nose. There’s something in the tilt of her eyes and the slope of her cheekbones that seems familiar.

  Her black, shoulder-length hair is a tangled halo. She wears a loose cotton dress that conceals her body, but she cradles her arm in a way that makes Gun think it’s broken.

  She’s surrounded by three soldiers. All he can see of them are their navy blue pants and black combat boots.

  The sight of all that navy blue makes his blood run cold. League soldiers wear that color.

  “Please,” the woman whimpers. “Please, stop.”

  Her words seem to act as a trigger. The boots lash out, kicking with brutal precision. The woman curls into a tight ball, screaming and crying. The sound of cracking bones can be heard, along with the hollow thump of the boots against her body. The sight is so awful, Gun almost tells Nate to turn it off.

  But this came up in the search for Project Renascentia. It has some significance.

  Blood blooms beneath the woman’s dress. She weeps, her movements growing feeble under the onslaught.

  Another pair of legs steps into the picture. The camera pans back, revealing a black-haired man in a white, Smart-Plastic mask. A blue sea serpent crawls up the side of his face.

  Imugi. Or the man hired to play Imugi, before he was killed on the freighter.

  “Your betrayal has been noted,” Imugi purrs. “Noted, and duly punished. If you were not a valued asset, this would be you.”

  He flicks his fingers. One
of the mercs draws a weapon and fires. The woman’s body shudders as two bullets enter her torso. She keens as blood streams from her, spreading around her in a viscous ellipsoid.

  “You have been warned,” Imugi says. “Return all evidence immediately. This is your one and only warning. Your next infraction will result in the death of you and your son. Be smart. Make the right choice.”

  Imugi steps out of view. The camera zooms in on the dying woman. She’s gone into shock, her body shaking as her life drains away.

  Her head falls to one side, glazed eyes staring at nothing.

  And that’s when Gun recognizes her. Or rather, sees the family resemblance. It’s so striking, he wonders why it took him so long.

  “Oh.” The sound of recognition comes out of him in a rush.

  “What?” Nate asks. “What is it?”

  “The merc boy,” Gun says. “Taro Hudanus. The son of Black Ice.” Gun points at the screen. “That’s his mother.”

  My associate had proof, Li Yuan had said. The proof is no longer in our possession.

  Is this was she’d been talking about?

  “You think Black Ice had proof to unravel Global?” Nate asks.

  Gun nods. “Yes. I think that intel cost him his wife. He turned it over to save his son. The Winns spared him for some reason. No doubt they value his talents as an operative. Taro’s, too.”

  They stare at the screen in silence. The woman’s body has gone into convulsions, a horrible moan cutting through the air.

  “Can we turn it off?” Nate’s face has gone pale.

  “Yes.”

  When he hits the pause button, the screen freezes on a close up of the woman’s face. In her tilted eyes and straight nose, it’s impossible not to see the face of Taro Hudanus.

  “That is his mother.” Nate shakes his head and turns off the film. “Poor bastard. Do you think he knows?”

  Gun shrugs. He wouldn’t complain if Taro Hudanus magically disappeared, but he wouldn’t wish the murder of a parent on anyone.

  “This is all very sad and enlightening,” Mage calls, he and his brother once again filling the screen. “But what does this do for us?”