“Just this: what if we plant a deep posthypnotic suggestion in the mind of the person going in?—such that as soon as he’s in VR, he logs in and tells Avery to free the alpha team, along with himself, of course. Oh, and there’s this too: after he’s hypnotised and the suggestion has fully taken, what if we wake him up and then pump him full of anozine—?”
“Anozine?” asked Timothy. “What’s that?”
“It’s a mild stimulant, but it also has an antihypnotic property.”
Timothy touched his temple. “Oh, I see. And you believe it would—”
“Yes, yes.” Toni nodded eagerly. “If we get the dosage exactly right—I’ll have to run a calc on this, but I would guess that it’s somewhere around a CC for every fifty pounds—then the hemisynch will engage just enough to fool Avery, but won’t engage fully, so that the one going in—when he reaches VR—will be aware of his true identity, of who he is in reality.”
Timothy’s eyes widened. “Will that actually work?”
Toni paused in thought. “I think so. Yes, I do believe that it will.”
“Then if anyone goes in, it should be me,” said Timothy.
“But we need you out here,” protested Toni.
“No, wait,” responded Timothy, “don’t you see, I am the best choice to do this thing: first, of all the superusers, I am the overlord of superusers . . . if Avery will listen to anyone, it’s me; second, I actually have the most VR experience, so that if anything goes wrong, I am the one best fitted to cope with it; third, I have a VR persona, Trendel, the seer, who is quite good at what he does, hence if anything does go wrong, I am well suited to help the Black Foxes get to endgame and win—and before you ask, yes, he will put me in the same adventure, it’s the only one he’s running; and last but not least, it was my idea in the first place. Besides, desperate times call for desperate measures.”
“This is truly a desperate measure,” said Toni.
“It’s all we got,” said Timothy. “And, by the bye, I weigh one sixty-five.”
Toni glanced at the clock and then at Timothy and then back to the clock. “All right, Timothy, all right. I don’t have time to argue with you; we’ve only got thirty-nine twelve left.”
“Okay, Al,” said Kat, looking at the distribution system, “you and your crew cut loose everything between the substation and here. And cut out the fried Allen-Breech. Use fire axes and chop the cables if you have to; we’ve got just under forty minutes.”
Al Hawkins nodded. “Gotcha, Kat. We’ll free the bus to the boxes, too . . . for your Astro.”
Kat turned to Michael Phelan. “Where’s the H2, Mikey? And the valves.”
“This way,” replied Michael, heading for the liquid hydrogen tanks.
As they hurried along the ’walk, Kat keyed a talkie. “Carleen?”
“Yeah, chief.”
“Crank up the rig and pull it ’round back.”
“Right.”
Passing through a door, “Here we are,” said Michael. “The valves are over there.”
Kat looked at the thermopipe-coupling on the line to the defunct turbogen. Again she keyed her talkie. “Luiz?”
“Si, princesa.”
“We’re gonna need to rig a number ten from the H2 to the Astro. Can do?”
“Number ten? We only brought forty, fifty feet with us.”
“Hang on, Luiz.” Kat turned to Michael. “How far is it from here to the back entrance?”
Michael scratched his head. “Shoot. A hundred, hundred twenty-five feet.”
“You got that much number ten?”
“I don’t know. We’ll have to ask Al.”
“Well, get to cracking, Mikey!” As Michael sped out the door, Kat said into the talkie, “Start thinking of ways to stretch that forty feet to a hundred twenty-five, Luiz.”
Kat glanced at her watch. Thirty-six minutes and counting.
“This is insane!” shouted Stein.
“Listen, you arrogant bastard,” snapped Toni, “I’ve already lost one mission in my lifetime, and I’m not about to lose another. This is the best chance we’ve got— Bloody hell, it’s the only chance we’ve got. Now help us or get out of the way.”
Grinding his teeth, Stein stepped back and motioned his medtechs to jack Timothy in.
Timothy, injected with thirty-three cubic milliliters of antihypnotic and dressed in a rig suit, inserted his Trendel ID crystal into the helmet slot then swung into the cradle.
Toni glanced at the clock. Twenty-two forty-one.
Swiftly, two medtechs strapped him in while others plugged fiberoptic bundles into the rig.
All the while, Timothy was mumbling to himself: “Log in. Contact Avery. Order him to restore all people to the real world. Log in. Contact Avery. Order him to restore all people to the real world. Log in . . .” It was the posthypnotic suggestion planted deeply by Doctor Toni Adkins.
Finally, at a nod from a medtech, Toni asked Timothy, “Ready?”
Timothy took a deep breath. “Ready,” he answered.
The medtech snapped down Timothy’s helmet visor and turned to Toni. “We’ll have to trigger it from here, from the rig.”
“Go ahead, Ellery.” Behind her back, Toni crossed her fingers.
“Here we go, on my mark,” said Ellery. “Three, two, one, mark.”
Moments passed. “Hell, I think he’s unconscious,” called Grace, observing the readouts at a console.
“¡Diablo!” spat Ramon, monitoring at the rig. “Avery is using the electrolytes to flush his system of the anozine.”
“Then get him out of there, now!” barked Toni.
“It’s too late,” said Stein, arching an eyebrow at her. “His brainwaves just went flat, all but the autonomous.”
Over Toni’s comband came the voice of Alvin. “Doctor Adkins, a new mental pattern has this moment appeared in my holo. It’s labeled Timothy Rendell.”
Toni felt as if she had been kicked in the stomach and she could not seem to get enough to breathe. Now Timothy is trapped in Avery, and it’s all my fault. Their only chance is to get to endgame and win, if there is time. Toni looked quickly at the doomsday clock. Eighteen minutes remained, eighteen minutes until the rest of the alpha team members would die . . . along with Timothy Rendell. A shiver shook Toni’s frame and her chest felt hollow, and the dark shadows in the room seemed to gather closely ’round and with cold fingers clutch at her missing heart.
39
Prisoners
(Itheria)
Trendel’s head hurt like all of the seven hells had been crammed into his skull, and something sharp poked his cheek. A sour odor filled his nostrils and he came near to gagging. Slowly he rolled onto his back, the clink of chain accompanying his movement. Whatever was poking his cheek no longer did so. He opened his eyes. Dark stone met his gaze in flickering torchlight. He raised a hand to his— What th—? I’m shackled! Swiftly he sat up and looked about, wincing at the pain in his head. Where the badoo am I? And then he saw: stone walls, stone ceiling, stone floors, stone pillars, iron fetters linked by iron chains to iron eyelets anchored in stone, and an iron-clad door with an iron grille over a small warder window. He sat on sour straw bedding, and in room center were two buckets—a water bucket and a privy. How in Luba’s name did I get locked up in a dungeon?
And then on the wall opposite he saw movement in the shadows. And stepping toward him from the darkness came a syldari female dragging chains behind, she too shackled to the stone.
“Awake at last, eh?” she said.
“Where in seven hells am I? And how did I get here?” Ooo . . . Talking made his head hurt, as if the resonance of his own voice reverberating through his skull threatened to explode all the cavities therein.
“You are in the dungeon of Horax the Great, or so he calls himself. Me, I call him Horax the Bastard.”
Trendel held his pounding head in his hands. “Where is this place and how did I get here? I mean, last I knew I was in the bed of— Well, never m
ind. She wouldn’t want it bandied about.”
“You were hauled in unconscious, my friend. As to where the dungeon is located, ha, that I know not for certain, though I suspect we’re somewhere in the Drasp. I, too, was senseless when these were locked on.” The syldari held up her wrists and rattled her chains.
Trendel drew in a big breath then expelled it. “The Drasp, eh? —A bogland, from the smell of things.”
“That’s right.”
“I grew up near the Gridian Mire; I’ve found they all smell somewhat the same.”
Gingerly, Trendel got to his feet and walked to the water bucket. A moldy gourd hung by a hook on its side. Trendel dipped in a hand and sipped from his palm . . . several times. Finally he straightened and looked down at the syldari; he stood two inches short of six feet, she two short of five. She was dressed in mottled grey leathers; Trendel in silk and satin—cerulean silken shirt and dark blue satin breeks and violet silken hose, now wrinkled and torn and stained—and black shoes bereft of their silver buckles. In spite of his appearance, he bent at the waist in a courtly bow, then grimaced and held his head, saying, “I am Trendel, seer.”
“I am Ky, Shadowmaster,” she replied, grinning.
“Shadowmaster? Then why haven’t you, uh”—he looked around the shadow-wrapped cell—”escaped?”
“You know how your head feels?” asked Ky.
“Awful,” he answered, holding a hand atop his redheaded pate, his hair tied in a pony tail.
“That’s why I can’t simply step through shadow and be gone, assuming, of course, that I could get free of these fetters.”
“What does my hammering head have to do with it?”
Ky blew out a long breath. “We, you and I, Trendel, are locked in a null dungeon. No spells work.”
Trendel frowned a moment in concentration—which was extremely difficult with the throbbing in his head—and then attempted to cast a “past vision” spell, one that would let him see just how he had come to be shackled here in the first place. Nothing whatsoever happened.
He looked at her. “I’ve heard of these voided places where magic is dampened or extinguished altogether, but I never thought to ever be a prisoner in one.”
“Your headache will soon ease,” said Ky. “At least mine did. I think it’s the loss of casting ability which causes such a horrid pounding.”
Trendel silently agreed that the pounding was indeed horrid. “I think I’ll go sit till some of this passes.” He wobbled back to his sour straw bed and eased down.
Ky, too, retreated back to her own bedding.
After a moment Trendel softly asked, “Do you know how you came to be imprisoned by this—this Horax?”
“Horax the Bastard” came Ky’s voice from the shadows.
“Yes, all right, Horax the Bastard.”
She did not immediately answer, but sat silently in the shadows of the cell contemplating him, as if weighing whether or not to trust him.
After a moment, Trendel said, “Ky, I assure you I am no lackey, come to worm things out of you.” He gestured about, his chains clanking. “You and I both have a score to settle with Horax the Bastard, and perhaps together we can manage an escape. Besides, what could you tell me that Horax the Bastard doesn’t already know?”
Still she sat without speaking, her eyes glittering in the torchlight. But at last Trendel heard her sigh, then she quietly began: “We were riding across the plains, the Black Foxes and I—”
“Black Foxes? I once heard a bard-sung ballad about a group calling themselves Black Foxes. Are these the same?”
“Probably. What was the song?”
Trendel thought back. “Something about a mere five Foxes in desperate battle capturing a hundred-score legions.”
“Yes. That was us, though the truth of the matter is that it was but a single company, and no battle at all but trickery instead.”
“Oh.” Trendel sounded disappointed. “Even so, you are one of the Foxes?”
“Yes.”
Silence fell. After a moment, Trendel said, “I interrupted you. Please do go on with your tale and I’ll try to hold my tongue until the end.”
Once again Ky’s voice came softly through the darkness. “We were riding across the plains, the Black Foxes and I, when we came upon a slain gnoman. . . .”
“. . . and something or someone struck me from behind and I crashed into the wall, and after that I knew no more until I woke up shackled here.”
Ky’s voice fell quiet.
“And now he’s got the gemstone, eh?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Arda, if he does indeed take it to the DemonQueen—”
“Oh, I think he already has.”
“You do? If so, there’ll be all seven hells to pay.”
Trendel heard Ky’s chains rattle and she stepped out from the shadow and into the torchlight, walking to the bucket. She, too, ignored the moldy dipper and took drink by hand. When she was refreshed, she said, “You see, Horax the Bastard came and crowed to me that he had successfully bargained with the DemonQueen herself. In trade for the gemstone, he’s to be her consort.”
“Consort?”
“Yes, ruling Itheria as her regent whenever she conquers the world. Till then he’s to sit by her side on the demonthrone. That’s been his ambition all along, even when he belonged to the Circle of Mages, or so he said.”
“He was one of the Circle? The Inner Circle of Wizards?”
Ky nodded. “Until he betrayed Jaytar back when she stole the gem. He guided the demons to her, but she fooled them—hid the stone where neither they nor he could find it.”
Trendel drew in a breath. “When did he tell you this?”
“My third day here, I think.”
“And how long have you been imprisoned altogether?” asked Trendel.
“Two weeks, more or less,” she answered.
“So then, the DemonQueen may have had the gemstone for, um, ten or eleven days?”
“Likely. But I can’t be certain; time is difficult to judge without the guidance of the sun and the moons.”
“Then how—?”
“The jailor comes once a day, or so I think, bringing fresh buckets, taking the others away. Bringing food as well.”
“What do we eat and when?”
“Believe me, Trendel, you don’t want to know.”
Time passed, and Trendel and Ky tossed plans back and forth on how they would escape, but everything they proposed was flawed beyond measure and doomed to fail. Even so they continued, hoping against hope that one or the other of their stupid notions would inspire an idea of brilliance.
And as they spoke a pale light came glowing dimly through the grille of the door and slowly grew brighter as it drew near.
“Someone comes,” hissed Trendel. “The guard?”
“I think not,” whispered Ky. “It’s too soon.”
40
Sparks Flying
(Coburn Facility)
Kat Lawrence keyed her talkie. “Carleen?”
“Yes, Kat.”
“Is she grounded?”
“Yeah. Six-strand double-ought bolted to the building frame.”
“Good. —Luiz?”
“Si, princesa.”
“You nearly finished?”
“Si, princesa. We upcoupled the ten through an expansion joint to a twelve, ran that out the doors and up the ramp, and now we’re downcoupling back to a ten to hook it into the Astro.”
Kat looked at her watch. “Hustle, Luiz. We’ve got just over twelve minutes. Kat out.”
Kat turned and ran back toward the power distribution center, passing the rest of her crew rolling a large spool of insulated cable—six-strand double-ought—along the catwalk, the heavy-duty wire snaking back toward the rig. Michael Phelan, helping with the spool, called, “How much time, Kat?”
“Eleven minutes.”
Jimmy Chang, second foreman, barked to the crew, “Goddamn it, you heard her, can’t we pull
this cable any faster?”
Kat reached the powertech team at the circuit breaker panels. Fire axes were scattered about. “Hawkins, is the Allen-Breech cut free?”
“Yeah, Kat,” answered Al Hawkins, not turning away from what he was doing. “The busses to the substation, too. We’re rigging the mains for the double-ought.”
Kat glanced at her watch. Just over ten minutes remained.
The comband beeped. “Doctor Stein? Johnston here.”
Henry Stein keyed his band. “What is it?”
“I think you’d better look at Avery’s D2s.”
Stein turned to Grace Willoby. “Can you get the D2s on your console?”
Grace punched keys on the compad. “Yes. They’re here.”
Stein stepped to the console. Moments later he called to Toni, “Doctor Adkins, your expertise is needed here.”
Toni, sitting at a dead console, raised her head from her hands and momentarily stared at Stein. Wearily, she rose from her chair and walked to the console. Doctor Greyson and Mark Perry drifted over as well.
“These patterns are not normal,” said Stein, pointing at the holoscreen.
Toni bent over and peered. Lines crawled across the display. Toni rolled a chair to the console and sat down next to Grace. Then she keyed the pad. Several lines were highlighted in yellow, the others fading to grey. “Hm. The E3s seem to be altered.”
“That’s obvious,” said Stein.
“E3s?” hissed Mark Perry to Greyson. “What are they?”
“Ha,” whispered Greyson. “One of the few brainwaves I know something about. They have to do with empathy.”
“Good Lord,” said Toni, and her face drained of color. She gestured to Doctor Stein and pointed at the screen. “Henry, if I didn’t know better, I would say that we are looking at the mental pattern of a sociopath.”
“Sociopath?” burst out Perry.
“That’s what it looks like,” replied Toni, magnifying the pattern.
“But that’s—that’s”—Perry turned to Greyson. “Isn’t a sociopath someone who will go to any lengths to gratify his own desires, regardless of the costs to others?”
Shadowtrap: A Black Foxes Adventure Page 34