by Brian Trent
The doctor wanted to talk to him, but Jonas wasn’t interested. Time was more precious now than ever. He knew he was doomed…why pretend otherwise? By the ghastly pallor on his mother’s face, Jonas guessed what the doctor was going to tell him anyway.
Home. He just wanted to be home.
And they let him go. Bahara signed the discharge papers.
“You look like a pirate now,” she told him, carrying a box of pink foam into his bedroom. Wonderingly, he watched her use the stuff to injury-proof his room, blunting the sharp edges of his monitor and desk. When she was done, it looked like his workstation had been dipped in raspberry cotton candy. “Good?”
Jonas nodded weakly. Sitting in Maximilian’s wheelchair form, he reached for the VR rig.
“Wait!” His mother’s eyes were bloodshot. “Jonas, do you have to do this right now?”
“Of course.”
Her forehead creased with anguish. She hesitated, clearly on the cusp of confession. Finally she bowed her head in resignation. “Do you mind if I do my needlepoint while you play your games?”
He told her he didn’t mind. She fetched her colored threads and canvas graph and sat on his bed while he set the rig over his head.
His first order of business was to confirm that Anju’s transmission had gone through. Good! The recording was saved in his files. Now was the tricky business of making good on his word: he needed to start a war with the Judgment Fiends. It was going to be disastrous, a shrieking melee, a cataclysm of digital gore and death that would snowball through Arcadia. It would be the gameworld equivalent of another Final War. The very thought made him weary.
But before he could log into Arcadia, he noticed the newsfeed headlines. An Athenian airship had crashed into the Turkish Wastes. The mainstream news wasn’t reporting any details yet, but Cappadocia surveillance had scooped them. The airship belonged to the IPC. Spybots confirmed that there were at least a dozen bodies strewn among the wreckage, that many of them had died from gunshots, and that most were dressed in Stillness regalia.
Ah!
Jonas was so intrigued that he almost didn’t bother with the other headlines. Then he saw the pictures from Luna, and his jaw dropped.
Club Nadsat. Williams Sports Dome.
Jonas lifted the rig and peeked at his mother. She smiled up at him from her needlework.
“Is that a new game?”
“Yes, Mother.” He returned to the feeds. Luna was under martial law. Not just Tanabata City, but the entire moon. A terrorist named Apophis had murdered dozens of people, and managed to repel an IPC elite anti-terrorism squad. Details were so sketchy it gave Jonas a chill. President Song was urging everyone to be calm, but he had already mobilized two battleships to Luna. The dome was under nanomesh quarantine; it was believed Apophis was still inside.
And everywhere, the headlines.
APOPHIS: ESCAPED MONSTER FROM PROMETHEUS INDUSTRIES BIOWEAPONS DIVISION
Jonas breathed hard. His lungs felt sore; the bronchial passages recently scraped of diseased tissue gave the sensation of being overly congested. In a few days, they would be again. Jonas smiled grimly behind his breathing mask.
It took real effort to return to the airship crash story. Jonas knew it must figure into the puzzle somehow. Besides, it had practically crashed in his backyard. The world rarely came to Cappadocia.
Jonas cracked his knuckles and began digging.
Cappadocia security systems used quantum encryption, but even the best systems were prey to human error. In this case, Jonas had the unwitting help of his mother. Two years ago, she had dated a security guard named Erkan, a likeable enough fellow who came by for dinner one evening still wearing his security badge on his jacket. While Bahara and Erkan sat watching old holos in the living room, Jonas quietly lifted the badge, scanned it, and used it to hack the camera grid in the local station. Cameras were quite helpful when they were poised above someone’s desk…and keyboard…
Now Jonas tapped his list of pilfered passwords and began nosing around the security database until he struck pay dirt. The Cappadoccian government was taking a keen interest in the airship crash. They had authorized spybots to both comb the wreckage and perch nearby when IPC investigators and cleanup crew arrived. Everything the outsiders had said was recorded and delivered to Cappadoccian security. Jonas spent the next forty minutes listening to streams of audio.
From the cleanup crew’s conversations, he gleaned that two Prometheus Industries investigators had been aboard the doomed ship: a Keiko Yamanaka and Jack Saylor. Mention was also made of a ‘Wasteland girl’, and an IPC investigator named Gethin Bryce…
The name almost stopped Jonas’s heart.
Gethin Bryce? And Keiko Yamanaka?
From the age of five he had known all about Arcadia’s former stars. Prodigies from Greece who had built an online empire! Jonas had studied Bryce’s strategies in particular, feeling closer to this man than to any other male figure in his life. Fact was, Jonas sometimes fantasized he was playing under Bryce’s tutelage, and that he might glance over and see his green-eyed hero nearby, nodding in satisfaction.
But of course, that was impossible. Bryce and Yamanaka’s greatest moments had been long before Jonas was born. He knew the man had relocated to Mars. Any fantasies Jonas had of meeting him were preposterous.
Was it conceivable that Bryce was back on Earth? And working for the IPC?
Maximilian’s alarm lights flashed. Jonas took slow, stabilizing breaths through his mask to steady his excited heart.
Bahara darted forward. “Jonas!”
“I’m all right, Mother.”
“Maybe you should stay off the web right now? Jonas?”
“Give me one more hour,” he pleaded, worried suddenly by the tone in her voice. Bahara could be heavy-handed. It wouldn’t take much right now for her to shut down his rig by force and wheel him into the other room. One more alarm from Maximilian was all it would take. “I promise I’ll stop in one hour.”
“Five minutes, Jonas.” The fear was coming out as anger. “You’ll stop in five minutes. I’ll make some lunch and we can sit together on the couch and watch a movie.”
“Mother—”
“You have to give me some time, Jonas! We don’t know how much—”
“You’re right,” he said. She stopped, glassy-eyed, her sob caught in her throat. “Give me my five minutes, and we will have lunch together.”
Five minutes. He sighed, turned back to the computer.
Jonas promptly conducted a search for all news containing the name ‘Gethin Bryce’ for the last few years. The only thing that popped up was the Flight 3107 explosion. Bryce had been killed while returning from Mars! Perhaps that’s when the IPC recruited him for this investigation. Now, the poor man was involved in another accident.
The cleanup crews, by their conversations, were clearly tasked with finding Bryce’s body. But they’d been unable to. Bryce, Yamanaka, Saylor, and the unknown Wastelander were not among the dead. Therefore they must have survived the crash, but for some reason, hadn’t waited around for first responders.
With mounting excitement, Jonas conjured a GPS map of the region. The airship crash was seventy miles outside the Apollonian Ring’s borders. Deadly gloplands. Why on Earth would Bryce disappear into some of the most perilous forest of Europe? He surely must know what the region contained.
Jonas studied the Cappadoccian security footage. Stillness bodies.
How did it all fit together?
He steepled his fingers, thinking.
The Stillness terrorists must have hijacked the airship; their presence almost certainly accounted for the crash. Bryce and Yamanaka probably expected more enemies to show up, so they figured their best prospect was to melt into the woods. Either they didn’t know how monstrous the local fauna was – and it wasn’t Bryce’s style to be uni
nformed – or they estimated it to be safer than sitting still for rescue.
Jonas pored over his map of the gloplands. Scattered towns studded the region, connected by a thin spiderweb of trade routes but otherwise remote and alone and autonomous, hiding from the brutal wilds as much as counting on it to dissuade hostile neighbors. Cappadocia monitored its Outland neighbors; Jonas, therefore, knew all about them. By his ninth birthday, he’d even hatched a silly plan of building a database on every local Wastetown which supported Stillness, with the intent of selling it to the Republic in exchange for the cure to his condition.
No one reputable had taken his offer.
Now his fingers flew nimbly, opening up a half dozen lines. Bryce’s best bet was to make for Cappadocia. And he had to cross the deadliest terrain in Europe to do it.
Jonas decided it was time to drop an anonymous tip to Derinkuyu security.
“Five minutes is up, Jonas,” Bahara said behind him. “Let’s have lunch together now.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Consequences and Complications
Chief Enforcer Howd was a model of controlled fury.
He looked less like a boy-band leader now, and more like a no-nonsense military lieutenant, trim and ascetic. His attractive features hardened into a scowl, eyes blazing in their sockets, as he paced up and down the line of townspeople with his rifle slung at his back, arms straight at his sides. That rigid posture underscored intense rage. His jaw muscles visibly bunched between stinging, vitriolic bouts of condemnation.
It looked like the entire town was gathered at the square. The pack that had pursued Gethin and Keiko had been corralled into a line. Young and old men alike, looking sullen. One bearded fellow off to the side cradled broken fingers. Several gaunt teenagers in the back looked absolutely terrified. The corpse of the local boy was sprawled before them.
“You’ve put the entire town at risk!” Howd said again. He whirled on the bearded guy with broken fingers. “Twenty-five hundred people. Fathers and mothers! Families! Step out here now and admit what you did!”
Without hesitation, the bearded man shuffled forward. Celeste saw resignation in his eyes.
“I tried assaulting her,” he said, motioning with his head to Celeste. “I wasn’t going to shoot her. I just…I…”
“Wanted some fresh pussy?” Howd’s voice was merciless. “Wanted to rape a visitor to Haventown? Explain to everyone what you desired so much, that you put everyone at risk. We are only six years away from charter incorporation! Tell everyone why you jeopardized that!”
The bearded man gave a hollow look to Celeste. Thirty minutes earlier, he had come at her from an alley as she was talking to the locals. King D. was the subject of discussion; an easy, accessible subject that broke the ice wherever she went. Celeste had headed out early in the morning, intent on gathering intel, intent on being careful since Haventown was part of a loose network of towns up for incorporation, and therefore Republic spies might be nosing around, seeking any excuse to delay or deny the charter.
Celeste realized now that the teenagers had started talking to her to distract her, to give their accomplice time to make his move. But when conversation turned to StrikeDown, the façade melted. She told them she had met King D. personally. Their eyes widened. Their conspiracy dissolved. By the time their accomplice came for her, they had changed their minds about abducting her. They tried calling him off as he popped out of the fog like a lecherous jack-in-the-box, but it was too late, and Celeste put him down easily and stole the shotgun from his quiver.
And there he was now, singled out in front of the entire town. She caught his empty eyes.
“I wanted her,” the bearded man said.
Howd looked disgusted. “You were willing to sacrifice us because she gave you a hard-on?”
“Yes.”
Celeste read the lie in her attacker’s voice. Likely, rape was only going to be a prelude to what they really had planned for her. Chopshop. Knock her out, strap her down, slit her throat, and start excavating her carcass for goodies. Sensorium, Familiars, whatever mods they could find. Her late Uncle Tony employed a fat butcher who went by the name of Nicky Christ. Could ransack a body of tech and still have time to scrub his hands for dinner in seven minutes flat.
Howd made another pace in front of the townspeople. Siyanda was there, but the Zulu barely paid mind to the teenage ruffians.
“Turn him out,” Howd bellowed. “And alert the grid. If in twenty-four hours he’s still local, he will be shot on sight.”
The townsfolk were deathly still.
Howd pointed to the others. “The rest of you. Dig a grave for your companion. Then…” He hesitated fractionally. “You are mandated to roadwork for the next thirty days.”
The road in question was the gravel path stretching west. Essentially, a crude welcome mat to arky society for the day when they would formally arrive to welcome Haventown into civilization.
“Dismissed!”
The gathering disintegrated in grim quietude. Howd marched to Celeste, Siyanda in tow.
“Do I get roadwork too?” she snapped. “Or a grave?”
“You get out of my town.”
“Why? Because your dogs attacked us?”
“You did the right thing,” Howd said. “But you have to leave anyway.”
“Reason, please?” Gethin asked.
“You know damn well why,” the kid growled.
Celeste folded her arms. “Enlighten me.”
“That’d be a waste of breath. You were leaving today anyway, right? March to those gates –” he pointed, “– and don’t ever set foot in my town again.”
Jack still didn’t get it; the outrage showed in his red complexion. “I don’t understand what the hell we did to deserve—”
Standing nearby, Siyanda said to Howd, “Her accent is pure Hudson, chief. The same with her fellows.”
“So?” bellowed Saylor.
Howd’s hazel stare burned. “You came here from the Hudson to spread StrikeDown propaganda? With the sky about to crash down around us?”
Celeste spat. “That crap? I spouted off the only thing I thought would work to prevent a fucking lynch mob. They had marked us for arkies. I grabbed at the best defense I could muster.”
“Sounds reasonable. But I don’t believe you.”
“Like I fucking ca—”
The enforcer’s eyes turned to icy hate. “Out now. You’ll get your weapons once you’re through the gate.” He marched away with the forcefulness of a drill sergeant.
The Zulu watched her, shaking his head sadly.
“What the fuck do you want?” she asked, ashamed by the judgment of his stare.
“The only enemy is chaos, sister. You been away from your comlink? World’s going to chaos, again. It’s the only real enemy in the universe. Chaos is all that StrikeDown will bring.”
“I don’t belong to StrikeDown.”
“Of course.”
“It was a clever deception.”
“Not half as clever as you imagine, sister.”
* * *
At the town gates, Celeste traded in the ticket for their weapons, half expecting to be denied. The Haventowners were good as their word, though; soon, they were out in the wilderness again with everything they had arrived with. Aside from birdcalls and rain dripping off branches, the forest was a portrait of solitude. It might have existed there for a hundred million years. She could easily imagine a long-necked sauropod lumbering forward, munching wet leaves, reptilian skin glistening from the dewy air.
The highway lay ahead, crisscrossed by weeds and tufts of grass.
Celeste felt a whirlwind of rage, undirected and amorphous, the StrikeDown mantra still thudding in her head like tribal drums. A steady burn of adrenaline had her energized, ready to fuck or fight. You got that when riding a combat hig
h sometimes, and Celeste figured that the last few days constituted one drawn-out battle. She hadn’t even dealt with Jeff’s death yet.
Dangerous. With emotions riding high, it was easy to make a mistake.
“We need to run,” she said, without turning to the arkies trailing her. “The longer we stay out here, the poorer our chances.”
Keiko shoved Celeste from behind as they reached the road. “StrikeDown, is that right?”
The push nudged Celeste forward a step; she braced on her left leg, leaned, and fired a sidekick into Keiko’s gut. The strike was fluid and perfect. Keiko doubled over, staggered back, drew up her multigun, and froze.
The double barrels of the Outlander’s shotgun were aimed between her eyes.
“No DC,” Celeste reminded her, and she winked. “Blurmod powered down. For the first time since we met, we’re even. You want to scrap, Yamanaka? Just say the word.”
Keiko held the Outlander’s stare but said nothing.
“We could kill each other right now,” Celeste continued, flushed and panting, “or return to a world that’s about to incinerate. There’s a battle in heaven right now, or haven’t you heard? The pillars are gonna fall and I can’t fucking wait.”
Gethin raised an eyebrow. “You were speaking to the Haventowners? What do they know? What did they say?”
Whatever attraction Jack might have been developing for Celeste didn’t sway his loyalties; he jerked his rifle towards Celeste. “Gun down. Now.”
She did, somehow making her compliance seem tremendously defiant. Cards out, masks shorn away, Celeste only wanted to be back in her ship, en route to King D.’s Odessa fortress, where they could sip from an excavated case of Dom Perignon while the missiles launched and the Republic burned like a goddamned Viking funeral pyre.
Gethin’s gaze was a bright green knife. He glared as Keiko’s fingers tightened around the trigger. “Don’t even think about it, Keiko.”