Waking Hell

by Al Robertson

  ‘That’s everything we’re fighting against, East.’

  ‘Oh, I’m just teasing you,’ laughed the god. ‘But then again, perhaps you’re wise not to trust me. You can’t really trust anyone, these days. Look at your lovely Fetch Counsellor, he’s got you exactly where he wants you.’

  ‘He’s the only person I can trust.’

  ‘Really?’ East smiled. ‘Wise up, Leila. The Counsellor’s using you. Telling you not to talk to anyone? To keep it a fetch affair?’

  Leila nodded. ‘Of course. We didn’t know how far things had gone. Who’d fallen. The Counsellor wanted to keep us safe.’

  East snorted. ‘The Counsellor’s seen how much good helping rescue everyone when Kingdom fell did for the Totality. He wants his own little political boost.’ She pointed a perfectly manicured finger at Leila. ‘And you’re it. He’s keeping you to himself because he wants all the credit for sorting this out to go to the Fetch Communion.’

  ‘That’s bullshit.’

  ‘He’s a new god and he’s weak. And so he has to be very manipulative.’ She arched a perfect eyebrow and pointed at Leila. ‘You be careful round him. He can be dangerous.’

  This time, Leila did roll her eyes. ‘And you’re NOT manipulative?’

  ‘I’m not manipulating you, if that’s what you mean,’ replied East. ‘I’m just helping you deal with a dangerous situation. And in return I want to tell Station your story. You see,’ she smiled sweetly, ‘I’m being completely open with you.’

  ‘The Fetch Counsellor has always been completely straight with me.’

  ‘Ask him, my dear,’ purred East. Then she was all business. ‘But you have an interview to finish.’

  ‘You can’t just accuse the Fetch Counsellor—’

  ‘Don’t you want to find your brother, Leila? Time is of the essence.’ She waved at Cormac and he started speaking again.

  ‘Fuck,’ spat Leila.

  ‘Please,’ East told her. ‘I hate having to edit out swearing. Do listen to him.’

  ‘I’m going, East. I’m not going to play your games anymore.’

  ‘There’s more you need to hear. And I’m doing everything I can to help you. I’m just making sure you help me a little too.’

  Leila snorted. ‘You haven’t been much help so far. We’re the ones taking all the risks.’

  ‘You know I can’t take the risk of alerting the Rose – or the fallen minds, come to that. You three are my little deniability tool. You’re very precious. Now, shall we finish?’

  Accepting the inevitable, Leila sighed and turned back to Cormac. ‘I need all you’ve got about the pyramid and the space beneath it,’ she told him. ‘And I want to know how to get Dieter out of a Kneale Pit.’ She thought of Cassiel. ‘And then shut it down.’

  ‘Oh wonderful,’ said East, shivering with joy. ‘That was so dynamic. You are magnificent, Leila.’

  Leila stifled a very dynamic response to the god’s praise.

  Cormac waited for a moment, then said: ‘If you can persuade Dieter to leave he should just be able to come along with you. Kneale Pits rely on rewired loyalties. They never have very heavy exit security in place. And this Kneale Pit is centred on the Shining City, which is a fully virtual environment. You should shut down any servers that the city’s running on. That’ll break the flies, too. They’ll all be run from the city. Once you’ve crashed it, they’ll shut down too. Every single fallen mind and human from Deodatus down will be isolated. Easy enough to neutralise.’

  ‘Once we’ve got Dieter out.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course,’ replied Cormac. ‘And you should make sure you do get him out before you switch everything off. A forced shutdown could corrupt any data held on the servers, his weaveself included. And given how dangerous this Pit is, there’s no guarantee that the gods will let you turn it back on to go looking for him if you leave him in there.’

  ‘So I need to pull a reverse Deodatus,’ said Leila, ‘and rewire Dieter’s loyalties back to me.’ She had to make sure that he accepted Dit’s true memories. ‘I can do that.’ She hoped she still sounded dynamic. ‘So now our only problem is getting into the Wart,’ she continued. ‘Cassiel and the Caretaker are working on it. It’s not going to be easy.’

  ‘Oh, there’s no need to worry about that,’ said East airily, ‘I can get all three of you to that pyramid. I’ve got just the people for the job! And then you can have a look around and see exactly what’s going on. Maybe even shut the Pit down all on your own.’

  ‘And boost your ratings, too.’

  ‘Well, it’s only fair,’ she beamed. ‘If the cloud has a silver lining, it’s so wrong not to take advantage. And the gun kiddies will have so much fun helping you!’

  ‘Gun kiddies? What have they got to do with any of this?’

  ‘Oh, my dear – all that nonsense with Kingdom left me feeling so powerless. I decided I needed to start building an army of my own. Just in case. And they’re it!’

  Chapter 27

  Twenty-four hours later, and East’s gun kiddies were ready to go. Leila, Cassiel and the Caretaker left the safe house when the spinelights were at their dimmest. Leila touched her pendant for luck, then called the cloak into being and was invisible to everyone but her two companions. Cassiel’s camouflage systems cast shadows around her and the Caretaker, hiding them both from the Rose.

  ‘We’ve got about half an hour before the Rose breaks my cammo systems, if the Fetch Counsellor is right,’ whispered Cassiel. ‘Then she’ll have us. I’ve allocated twenty minutes to movement time. We need to go quickly.’

  They zig-zagged through the streets, following the plan Cassiel had drawn up to avoid the Rose’s patrols. Leila followed the mind, not really taking too much in. She was still thinking through the events of the afternoon. She’d gone to see Dit – not, she told herself firmly, to say goodbye, but rather to get the memories she needed to rescue Dieter.

  She’d jumped to the road just outside her flat, to double-check that all was safe. It was all the same as ever, and yet everything had changed. Even the gods had shown themselves to be malleable. The river of time flowed on, and they were just little eddies in it – larger than most, perhaps, but in the end just as transient. Twelve gods had become six, then five. They might soon become fewer. It seemed inevitable that, one day, there would only be one of them. Perhaps even that final, single corporate divinity would fall in the end. She wondered what would replace it, then shook her head, amused at herself. Threat had clearly brought out the philosopher in her. There was no sign of the gun kiddy who’d been on the roof. She wondered if East had moved her agent to somewhere a little more discreet, observing who came and went. You manipulative hag, she thought to herself. She was about to leap into her flat when she saw an even more familiar figure at the block’s street door.

  Lei stepped out into the street.

  Leila was amazed. It was such a shock to feel that she’d left her old life so far behind that someone else had to step in to live it. It was fascinating, too, to be able to see herself as others saw her. Lei set off down the street and Leila followed her, walking quickly to keep up with her. Her double moved with a fluid, impressive confidence. She’d upgraded her wardrobe, leasing new fashion content from designers that Leila had never been able to afford. They marked her out as someone who wouldn’t be staying in the old neighbourhood for long. Leila wondered where Lei would move to, how she’d deal with her new life.

  Then she stopped herself.

  Lei wasn’t even fully self-aware. She wouldn’t exist for much longer. Leila would rescue Dieter, then pull this other life back into hers. A stream that had fallen away from its mother would rejoin the greater flow. There would be no more great adventures, no more lives at stake – just the past to come to terms with, and a newly secure world within which to do it.

  And then Miwa and Dave appeared out of the c
rowd and greeted Lei, and as kisses were exchanged Leila felt a new grief. Her return wouldn’t be as simple as that. Her friends were lost to her too. It was absolutely right that she should be a ghost, watching them unseen; absolutely right that they shouldn’t be exposed to the hard, deadly risks she was facing. They’d already had part of the past stolen from them. She couldn’t bear for them to lose anything more. And yet it hurt so much to see them laughing with Lei, safe within a world that she was excluded from.

  For a moment, Leila imagined stepping away from all the fear and worry, and back into her old life. Perhaps she would even be left alone to enjoy the security that had been Dieter’s final gift to her. She could leave Cassiel and the Caretaker to solve the problem of Deodatus. But in returning to the past she’d be abandoning the present, letting them as well as her brother down. She realised that they were more than just allies – they’d become friends, as important to her now as Miwa and Dave had once been.

  Her attention drifted. A shock flashed through her. There, tucked away over the road, stood a pressure man. A long jacket stretched down over high-waisted trousers. Sharply pointed collars reached out over wide lapels like wings. Jewelled gold and silver rings clung to his fingers. Sunglasses hid his eyes, their dark arms pressing down luxuriant sideburns. She imagined the perfumed reek that would surround him.

  He reminded her of the man who’d broken into her apartment. She knew she should find him absurd, but again her childhood self reared up and made him at once authoritative and threatening. Somehow the pressure man seemed older, more mature, even more capable than her. She shook her head. ‘This is bullshit,’ she told herself, imagining the decaying fallen mind that lay beneath this out-of-time façade.

  The pressure man stared at Lei with a cold, appraising stillness. Leila flicked back through her memories of the last few minutes and found him tucked away in the peripheries of them all. He’d been waiting for Lei when she came out of the block and – like Leila – had followed her since then. Leila wondered if the pressure men were always present in Lei’s life, watching through flies when she was at home, moving quietly behind her when she was out and about. She was surprised not to spot any gun kiddies keeping an eye on Lei. Perhaps East’s troops, being weaker, had had to find ways of being more discreet. She hoped that Lei wouldn’t notice any of her trackers. She imagined the awful, paranoid fear their presence could create.

  Lei linked arms with Miwa and Dave and moved away into the crowd. The pressure man waited for a moment or two and then slid down the street after them. Leila didn’t follow. She was relieved, at least, that the plan had worked. Lei’s masquerade would be entirely convincing. Leila and her new friends would retain the element of surprise. She prepared herself to jump into the flat and speak with Dit. She took a moment to look around her. She’d been so focused on Lei and the pressure men that she’d hardly registered anything else.

  ‘Oh, no,’ she breathed.

  The space above the street was dense with ocean. Shoals of fish twitched between coral studded buildings. A familiar silhouette lanced through them, scalpelling threat into the moment. It was a shark. It could have been perfectly innocuous, all part of the simulation. But Leila had been still for a minute or so, watching Lei as the pressure man had watched her. It could be that – despite the ghost cloak – she’d bled part of herself into the world that surrounded her. It could be that one of Ambrose’s search engines was on her trail.

  She leapt to her flat and asked Dit for Dieter’s memories of their life together.

  ‘Why do you need them, Leila?’

  Worried that a full explanation would force reset him, she kept it simple: ‘In case Deodatus has rewritten Dieter. Like that pressure man tried to do with me. These’ll help him remember the truth.’

  ‘Gods,’ said Dit, profoundly shocked. ‘That would be awful. Of course, take them.’

  Leila thought back to Ambrose. After his rewrite, he’d refused to trust her. ‘I might need to force them into him.’

  ‘Easily done,’ Dit reassured her. ‘I’ll write an injection app for you. Attach it to the memory block, it’ll push them straight in.’

  ‘Sounds very simple.’

  ‘You’re giving back something that came from him. They should mesh very naturally with what’s already there. Might be a little disorientation, but only for a moment.’

  Relief filled Leila.

  ‘The app will need a focus,’ said Dit. ‘Something to give him to trigger the memory transfer.’

  She thought for a moment, then held up the pendant. ‘Use this.’

  ‘It’s a terrible thought,’ commented Dit, as he set everything up. ‘Losing his memories of you would change him so much. If he has lost them and this doesn’t work, I’ll merge with him myself.’

  Leila turned away to hide the tears that sprang into her eyes. When he was done, she thanked him and hugged him too tightly. ‘What was that for?’ he asked, amused, and she couldn’t answer but just said ‘goodbye’, her voice tight and controlled. Then she jumped back to the safe house to wait until dark. She’d planned to visit the Fetch Counsellor too, but she worried about the risk. Once we’re out again, she thought, telling herself that her decision had nothing to do with East’s analysis of his motives.

  Now Leila, Cassiel and the Caretaker were hurtling through the streets. ‘Keep moving,’ she hissed at her companions. ‘We don’t want a shark to spot us.’

  ‘Going as fast as I can,’ the Caretaker puffed.

  Cassiel was just ahead of them, leading them around the Rose’s searchers. ‘Fifteen minutes,’ she called back.

  The weave whispered night words in the empty streets. A sprite buzzed past, a glimmer of stardust. It was broadcasting on an open frequency. ‘Can’t sleep? Worried about debt? Payday loans available for all…’

  ‘This could be such a beautiful world,’ muttered the Caretaker. ‘Wild with visions! But instead there’s just this shit.’

  Cassiel hissed back at them: ‘Someone coming.’

  They ducked into a doorway. But it was just a huddle of dockers, shattered at the end of a day-long shift, too tired to even unlink their minds from each other. Their bodies moved through the streets as one, a machine built from flesh and bone.

  They set off again. ‘Ten minutes,’ hissed Cassiel. Then, to Leila: ‘We’re in control until we reach the rendezvous. After that, East is in charge. And that makes me very uncomfortable.’

  ‘I hate it too,’ replied Leila. ‘But what choice did we have? We can’t get to the Wart without her help.’

  ‘When you have no choice, then you’re a slave,’ Cassiel told her. ‘We fought a war to escape that.’

  ‘She knows how to pull people’s strings, I’ll give her that. If we’d turned her down, we’d have been stuck in the flat and she’d have sent her gun kiddies into the pyramid. And they’d have been massacred.’

  ‘It amazes me she sees them as an effective military force.’

  Leila thought of all the teen gamers she’d seen racing round Station over the last few years. ‘She has been training them pretty hard.’

  Another few minutes, and they were at the rendezvous point. One side of the road was gleaming new office blocks. The other was vacant lots and half-demolished factory spaces.

  ‘Where did our new boss command us to wait?’ grumbled Cassiel.

  East’s instructions were very precise. Leila led them to cover behind a half-tumbled wall, overlooked by a broken office block. The block’s facing had been ripped off, leaving three empty storeys staring out at the night.

  ‘A minute remaining,’ said Cassiel. She scanned the area. ‘No cameras,’ she confirmed. ‘We are secure. For now.’

  ‘East can’t see us,’ replied Leila. ‘But the sharks can.’ She was worried. ‘The kiddies should already be here.’

  ‘Be cool, guys,’ the Caretaker told them. ‘The
y’re just teenagers. Probably just got held up along the way. They’ll be here soon.’

  But nobody came. Seconds passed, then minutes.

  ‘We should get moving. The sharks will scent us,’ worried Leila.

  ‘We can’t make it back to the flat and we have nowhere else to go,’ replied Cassiel. ‘We know how that would end. East has betrayed us.’

  ‘Have a little faith,’ droned the Caretaker. ‘If she wanted to put the zap on us, she’d have done it right back when she first found you, Leila.’

  ‘Look,’ said Cassiel, pointing up. High above them, a scalpel sharp silhouette flicked through the sky.

  ‘Shit. Shark.’ Leila glanced around. The wasteland was still empty. ‘We should stop it. Or run.’

  ‘I can stop it,’ said Cassiel, gazing up. ‘But when I hit it, it’ll see us. And it’ll have enough time to ping back our location before I fry it.’

  Leila remembered Ambrose talking about how sharp the shark’s senses were. She imagined her skull face ripping into them. ‘I can blind it. Deafen it. Break it.’ She called the skull face into being.

  ‘No,’ said Cassiel. ‘That’ll blow your cover.’

  ‘What choice do we have?’

  ‘Well,’ said a teenage boy’s voice, ‘You could come with me.’

  ‘What the—?’ Leila was sure there was nobody there.

  And then there was, as a shadow at one end of the wall took on a plastic solidity, then started to shift and morph into something like the shape of a person.

  She waited for a moment or two. It didn’t fade away. ‘You guys are seeing that too?’ she asked.

  A moment’s stillness, then the shadow stepped towards them, moving across the rubble with tense, nervous steps. ‘There you are!’ It sounded relieved. ‘And can you see me? Because I’ve only just upgraded to this armour. I’m not sure I’ve turned the cloaking off properly.’

  ‘You’re partially visible, gun kiddy,’ replied Cassiel.

  ‘We don’t call ourselves that, you know.’ The dark shape raised itself up to its full height. It was short and looked male. ‘I play East’s games. I play them well.’ He was wearing some kind of deep camouflage bodysuit. The suit reflected no light, turning his body into a flat absence. A hand reached up to a face mask and pulled it off. Two eyes, a nose and a mouth appeared. There was a wispy growth on his upper lip. ‘I’m Hando.’