by Andrew Novak
When the trio disappeared behind a corner, Jack cautiously peered out from behind the rusty sheet – the ship was also not in sight.
"Hey, Peter!"
"You're still here?" Shifty wasn't happy that Jack had stayed.
Whatever, he'd live. Jack made his way towards him and on the way over asked,
"What do they want?"
"Don't worry, it's not to do with you."
"Yeah, I understood they weren't asking who you supply with ammunition. But after yesterday's appearance of defenders, it looks suspicious. Where did you send them?"
"To Queens. That's where my client... Oh, you were here for that! Remember the medicine that came through my foundation? I sent a messenger, and he took Carl with him?"
“Medicine, yeah," Jack nodded. "I remember. And what about the package?"
"Those two were asking how to find her, the addressee. But how to explain it to someone who doesn't know Queens? Had to send a guide with them. So, don't worry, this has nothing to do with the trip into the Blighted Wasteland. It's purely my business."
"I wonder, why do they need a sick girl?"
Shifty shrugged. "They're alphas – who knows? Maybe the sponsor wants to make sure his packages are reaching their destination?"
"And he needed two defenders for this?" Jack was starting to get suspicious. Right now, it was just a vague feeling that he couldn't put into words. "Tell me, where exactly in Queens does the client live?"
"What are you up to?" Peter asked, surprised. "If they catch you with those cartridges in your pocket..."
"Hey, don't you worry. The cartridges won't be in my pocket. They'll be in the chamber of my Smith & Wesson," Jack winked. "Tell me where she lives."
Peter narrowed his eyes.
"What for? Actually, I can't just give out that information to anyone."
"Okay, knock it off!" Jack raised his voice. "How long have we known each other? And the whole time we've maintained a good relationship. You helped me, I...
"You helped for payment, mind you," Peter remarked.
"You help me for payment, and vice versa. But we never tried to squeeze the other dry. And, if there was a need, we would do something for each other... there were extra fees, without long bargaining sessions. Is it that hard to give me her address? I'm curious to know everything. You know I'm used to controlling the situation, but here is something unconventional – they sent two defenders... So what's her name, this mysterious person being cared for by the alpha, and where does she live?"
Peter was still frowning, shook his head, but in the end told him anyway that the girl's name was Lisa and described how to find her trailer.
Everything was gradually falling into place. Eloise – Lisa – served a rich and powerful alpha. Did the necromancer Ruger have to pay her? He must. Of course, payment could be game gold, which can be easily converted into panbucks. But if she needed medication, then it would be possible to pay with that. And the appearance of the defenders after Lisa snatched the Corrupted Book from her master... if that was the case, it turned out that Ruger Eckerhart was a very influential man.
And he definitely couldn't give the defenders a chance to shake the book from Eloise. What if Sartorius started got lost in another reverie and didn't wrap up the deal? What if the book was still with Eloise? Then the defenders would force her into Alterra and hand the Corrupted Book to the necromancer. If, of course, that was what they had come for... And why else?
Jack concluded all this already on the run. He took an alternate route to get ahead of the soldiers. He didn't want to follow them, didn't want to be seen and arouse suspicion. Jack crossed Pigot Park, the converted landing area for airships, and plunged into a maze of shanties. Queens wasn't the kind of place where you could run. It had its own order to things here, and it didn't take long before a trio of shady types were tagging along after Jack. There was no time to try to talk with them, so Jack just stopped and drew the revolver out of his pocket. His pursuers turned right back into the ruins. Jack started running again. A few passers-by watched him as he went by, but that was nothing. Let them wonder.
When Jack spotted a trailer fitting the description that Peter had given, the defenders showed up at the end of the street. No one was following or trying to stop these guys. With the appearance of the defenders, the ghetto residents ran to hide in burrows. The surrounding area emptied in an instant. But the defenders strode behind their guide, still turning their heads in all directions. It looked like they did it automatically, as they'd learned to do. While walking, both swished half-meter rods with a couple of prongs at the end. Electroshockers, Jack recalled. He'd heard a few times that defenders used electroshockers for interacting with omegas.
He retreated into the shadows and looked up. The airship wasn't visible in the yellowish sky, but if he listened, he could discern a distant rumble. The ship was somewhere nearby, but walls just suppressed it.
Peter's man pointed down the street and a defender swung the electroshocker in front of the man's nose – like he was telling him to beat it. The guy disappeared with obvious relief. No one would like it if they saw him in the company of defenders. But the soldiers strode off directly toward the trailer Jack spotted. He dove into the maze of jumbled rubbish so he could approach Eloise's home from the rear. Her trailer stood on the outskirts, adjoined by the shells of ruined brick buildings, where the locals threw their trash.
It was a real dump. The substratum of the heaps consisted of the rusted-through carcasses of cars. On and between them were piles of crushed bricks and rusty pieces of iron. The whole mess was liberally littered with smelly rags, broken dishes, and similar trash. Clambering up the heaps of junk, Jack heard rats stirring and chittering somewhere deep underneath him. This was their kingdom. The depths of the scrap-heaps were probably a real labyrinth of rat passageways, thousands of them.
When Jack had made his way to the trailer from the rear, the defenders were already standing in front of the entrance. The pile of garbage under Jack's feet buckled and sagged, and he had to fumble for footholds before each step. Here was the wall of the trailer. It was piled almost to the roof with bricks and pieces of damp plaster. Jack crouched by a window and carefully looked through the hazy glass.
There was a loud and insistent knock at the door. The girl emerged from the darkness in the back of the building and ran to the door. Jack saw her from behind but recognized her right away – the gait, general outline of her slight figure, the way she moved. It was her, Eloise. The furniture inside, to put it mildly, was modest. Basically the same kind of mess as in Jack's trailer. The thought even flashed through his mind that he, as it seemed, kept rather decent order at home.
There was even a bucket of water standing at the entrance, exactly like his. The neighbor children brought Jack water in thanks for the trinkets he'd carried back from his trips in the Wasteland. For ghetto children, any fun, little thing from the past life became a toy. Eloise probably had to fill the bucket herself.
"What do you want?" yelled Eloise, stopping in front of the locked door.
Jack already knew what they wanted. He knew what would happen next, so he didn't waste time. He stepped away from the window and carefully, not making any noise, climbed up onto the roof. He lay down and waited.
While he was busy with this movement, a short argument passed down below. The girl didn't want to open the door, but everyone – she, the defenders, and even Jack, hiding on the roof – knew perfectly well that she, in fact, had no choice. With a sharp crack, the door either flew off its hinges or fell apart. Heavy steps thundered underneath Jack. One defender went inside, the other stood outside. Jack didn't peek out, but it was clear what the defender was doing. Rotating his head from side to side, scanning the street with his shiny, mirrored visor. The street was empty, no one dared to go out while the defenders were here. In one hand, the defender held the electroshocker, the other rested on the hilt of an emitter hanging from his belt.
The second stomped th
rough the trailer. A crack split the air, then a crashing noise, and Lisa briefly screamed.
"Get up, I don't have time for you!" the defender barked. "Get up, I said! Where is your console? Now we're going to play a little."
Jack heard a resounding slap, then sounds of a scuffle, and another cry from the girl. But Lisa was, as they put it, a girl with spirit. Judging by the sound, she cracked the defender over the helmet with something solid. It was useless, of course. Jack carefully slid to the edge of the roof and peeked at the one who had remained outside. Then looked around the street for something heavy. There it was! A piece of concrete slab with bits of rebar sticking out, weighing about two hundred pounds. Lying quite close, three paces from the soldier milling about in front of the trailer. This hunk of rock was too heavy for the frail girl to have dragged it herself behind the trailer and onto the garbage. But there were no helpers to be found. This was Queens. It wasn't common practice here to help out neighbors.
Jack figured: the defender's armor was very sturdy, everyone knew it. A knife or even a revolver bullet wouldn't break through it. But there were always other options.
More sounds of commotion were heard from in the trailer. The characteristic crack of an electrical discharge... the sound of falling.
"Get up and put on the virt-helm! Now! I've wasted half a day because of you!" the defender barked. "That was at ten percent charge, mind you. Next I'll put it on maximum and you know where I'll stick it?"
"You go right to that place yourself!" Lisa snapped feebly. But there was no feeling in her voice, just sheer stubbornness. She had to know that it was useless to resist.
Jack braced himself and prepared to jump.
"Enough! I'm tired of you!" the defender in the trailer roared.
"Hit her with a full charge!" the one outside shouted. "They're hailing me, asking if they can pick us up. What, do we have mess with this rat all day?"
Jack jumped. His boot sole skidded off the smooth, spherical surface of the helmet and struck the shoulder in the shoulder. Jack was a big guy and weighed quite a bit. That kind of mass, with increased inertia, knocked the defender from his feet. He went down face first, or rather, visor first. Jack stamped him with his boots, hammered him into the dust. Without stopping, he leaped over to the concrete block, grabbed the protruding pieces of rebar, throatily exhaled, and lifted it above his head. The stunned defender was just beginning to move about, coming to his senses and rising up, when the piece of concrete descended on the unfortunate man’s helmet, again driving it into the soft ground.
Even that kind of blow wouldn't inflict any particular damage to the man, protected as he was by his black armor, but the massive piece of concrete slab pressed his helmet to the ground and prevented him from getting up. The soldier was stuck underneath it, clawing with his hands, loosening the trodden, compacted debris around him... His armor creaked, the mechanisms of its booster motor were grinding. Jack had already jumped into the doorway of the trailer, pushing off from the concrete slab and thereby further crushing the helmet of the defender further into the dirt.
Flying into the doorway, he picked up the bucket standing at the entrance and cast a glance inside.
It was a typical poor man's trailer, a significant portion of which was occupied by a bunk bed with laundered rags lying in a crumpled heap on top. Lisa was doubled over on the floor, the burly defender standing over her with his electroshocker. Blue sparks flashed off the gleaming electrode pins. Against the backdrop of the tiny girl, the soldier in his powerful armor looked especially massive.
When Jack's boot crashed to the floor, the defender whirled sharply at the sound, bringing the electroshocker up in front of himself – and Jack splashed the entire bucketful of water on him. With a loud bang, the defender's body was encased in electrical discharges. The soldier began to twitch and fell to the floor. A cloud of dust puffed up. And it went quiet. Just outside, the other defender was struggling in the dirt, muttering obscenities barely audible from under his helmet, his armor gnashing and crunching.
Jack grabbed Lisa by the hand, jerking her up to her feet and pulling her toward the door. She tried to hang back – confused, probably.
"Quick!" Jack barked. "We're getting out of here!"
"My console!"
"There's no time!"
Jack pulled Lisa behind him, dragging her from the porch outside. The defender pressed under the concrete block was quick-witted. Instead of trying to pry his helmet from the vice, he unfastened the chin strap and pulled his head out. It was at that moment that Jack showed up next to him. Without missing a beat, he slammed his heel onto the crown of the soldier's head, so that the man fell back into the helmet.
"Run!" he shouted to Lisa again.
But she hung back to kick the defender in the side. And immediately cried out in pain. She had smashed her foot into his hard armor. Jack, not wasting words, grabbed her again by the hand and dragged her behind him. For the first few steps, she hopped on one leg, then shifted into a normal run. Lisa was about to run down the street, but Jack yanked her arm, almost dropping her into the dust, and led her behind the trailer – to the junk heap. They jumped up on the garbage, which sagged under their feet. Jack noticed a piece of a concrete pipe, about four feet in diameter and more than six feet long.
The pipe was partially covered with garbage, but the space inside was still fairly empty and it was possible to hide there. He forced Lisa to duck into the dark interior of the pipe and squeezed himself in after. He wrapped his arms around her so she couldn't move, and they froze. A defender appeared from behind the trailer with an emitter in hand. He groped about his throat with his other hand, fastening his helmet. The second soldier was nowhere to be seen.
Jack found a piece of brick in the soft pile of waste under his feet and hurled it out. The cobblestone fell into the junk, disturbed the packed trash, and about five rats shot out of the pile. They scurried and ran.
The defender caught the noise and movement, and ran in that direction. Just in case, Jack shook the girl and hissed:
"Do not move!"
And in the sky, a rumbling was already mounting. The ship was approaching. Jack and Lisa were sitting in the garbage, pressed tightly against one another. Jack could feel her body, felt every breath. And despite the unseemliness of their situation, in the darkness and stench, a strange sense of satisfaction arose. Why? Simply because, for the first time in his life, he'd tangled with two defenders and was still alive? Or because he was sure that the Corrupted Book of Bacchus would surely not reach the necromancer alpha? Or was it because Eloise was sitting next to him here in reality, and not in the game?
Lisa leaned forward a little and looked up into his face. Oddly enough, her features on her in-game character were a reproduction of her actual appearance almost without alteration. The unnatural whiteness, of course, was not observed. Well, as far as Jack could tell under the layer of dirt. However, the thinness and doll-like face with huge eyes – that was just the same as it was in Alterra.
"Jack, is that you?" Lisa asked. "Yes, of course it's you. I don't know where you came from, but... that was awesome."
"Piece of cake!" Jack managed to crack a smile. "When you see what I'm capable of in Alterra, you'll forget all about a couple of defenders. Today, we'll join the guild Stargazer and from now on, we play together. You'll rediscover the definition of the word ‘awesome’."
He was saying this to encourage her. And himself. Because only now he truly began to realize what he had done. He'd protected the girl – well, okay, that was noble. Both the girl and the book, which otherwise would have gone to some alpha necromancer. But... to tangle with defenders? Those people, who could just casually burn down an entire ghetto block from their airships? This had been perhaps the most desperate move in his life. Now it was impossible to predict what this could lead to.
Chapter Ten. History of the Person and History of the Persona
"TELL ME," Jack said.
"Tell you what?" L
isa asked, surprised. They were sitting, tightly pressed to each other inside a dark hole in the junk heap. Somewhere nearby, amidst years-worth accumulation of debris, rats were crawling around. From time to time, the rumble bore evidence of the approach of the defender airship. What was there to tell in a situation like this?
"Everything you think you should tell," Jack explained. "For example, why you want to hire a Walker. We'll be sitting here for a while."
"A while? Why's that?"
"You have somewhere to be? Sartorius is expecting us in the evening, so it's safer to hang around here until dark. The defenders will be meticulous in their search – I gave them enough reason to be angry. More than that, Ruger won't forgive them for returning empty-handed."
"That's true. Except they were too late. Sartorius already has the book."
"Well, there you go. That means there's nowhere to rush. We'll wait in this hole until evening because, here, two steps from your trailer, they probably won't think to look. So, tell me. You can start from the very beginning. We have more than enough time."
And Lisa began. At first, she chose her words slowly, carefully weighing what to reveal to Jack and what to keep secret, but later let herself be carried away by the story. The words poured from her. She spoke faster and faster, and toward the end was chattering excitedly.
Jack realized that she, like Sartorius, was tired of not being able to speak out. A person needed to spill their secrets to someone else, at least sometimes, then it became easier. Jack was that person, too. The truth was that he only dared to talk to himself, when he was away from everyone, wandering in the Blighted Wasteland. Lisa hadn't had such an opportunity.
The story, though, was essentially average. After the Insurrection-22, she had lived in the trailer together with her brother. He was older, named Sven. Jack nodded. Yes, in the trailer, there had been a bunk bed. At first, her spot had been on the bottom, Lisa continued, because she was afraid of falling. And Sven was older, so he wasn't afraid of anything. He farmed lumber in northwestern Maxitor. After he reached thirty experience points, he earned the right to enlist a team of NPCs and then everything seemed like it would be fine, that they would survive. Then Lisa would turn sixteen, gain access to Alterra, and the two of them would earn even more. But Sven that’s when began to hurt. Over time, he got worse. He almost couldn't work in Alterra when the dizziness and nausea began. Eventually, he lost his team of axemen. He just lay in bed, silent. Now, his place was on the bottom.