by M. R. Forbes
Handsome? I looked over at Dannie, and she shook her head and motioned for me to touch my face. I cupped my chin, and was surprised to feel the two days' worth of stubble pricking my hand.
"This is Baron. I'm helping him with a job. I was hoping maybe you could help him, too."
"Perhaps. What do you have to offer?"
"Nothing right now. Future favors?"
Azeban laughed. His voice was rich and delicate. "Oh, come now, Daaé. You are fantastic in bed, but I have a reputation. I can't just give away information that I work so hard to collect."
"Cut the shit, Az. You wouldn't be here if you weren't looking to make deals. It's what you do. Anyway, my friend Baron here is about to come into his own, if you know what I mean. A small deal today goes a long way tomorrow."
He looked at me. "Come into your own?" He pursed his lips. "An investment, then. A bit of risk. How many credits do you have?"
"Four thousand." Her voice was strained. She didn't want to tell.
"Well, I don't want to leave you penniless. Thirty-five hundred, plus a small favor in the future."
"Wait," I said. "What if you don't know the answer to my questions?"
"She wouldn't have brought you to me if she didn't think I had any answers."
"Done." Dannie held out her hand. Azeban took it and brought it to his lips.
"Maybe later?" he mouthed.
"Not tonight," she mouthed back.
Azeban leaned back in his seat. "Ask away, Baron."
"Mr. Black paid two million to do a job. Except, the job didn't come from Mr. Black, only the payment did. How could that be?"
He put his hand to his chin, and then looked at Danelle. "How did you get caught up in this?"
"So you know about it?"
He leaned forward again, and put his hand on top of Danelle's. "Take your credits back. I won't help you."
"Az? What the hell?"
He pushed his chair back and stood. "I'm sorry Daaé." He looked at me. "A little free advice. You should be hiding in the deepest, darkest hole you can find. House Red is finished. They took something that didn't belong to them, and they're paying the price. Forget whatever House politic bullshit they're trying to sell you. Sometimes the simplest reason is the only one."
I got to my feet. "What are you talking about?"
"Tarakona. That's what he calls himself. He's not a ghost. He's not a House. He's the future, and he knows where you are." He waved goodbye as he vanished from existence.
"That doesn't sound good."
"We have to get out of here, back to Jin and Amos," Dannie said. "If he's compromised the Machine somehow... Just say 'exit the Machine' to get out."
"Exit the Machine."
I looked around. I was still in the Jungle.
"Exit the Machine."
"Going somewhere?"
The voice came from behind me. I turned around.
Veronica was standing there, smiling at me.
"I killed you."
The face was stoic. "No, you killed my sister, but I thought confronting you in her skin would make a nice statement. We've been waiting for you to turn up again. Did you know necromancers have a fairly unique brain chemistry? Our man on the admin team picked it up as soon as you jacked in. From what he tells me, you still have an hour and..." He looked upward, like he was getting messages from God, which I guess in a way he was. "...forty-five minutes left on your clock." The avatar morphed from a female redhead to a male one. "Our team will be at the Greens within the hour."
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Dumb ways to die.
I glanced over at Dannie, and then charged the bastard.
He let me hit him, toppling over with my arms around his waist, laughing the entire time. We hit the ground together, and I started pummeling his face with my fists.
He kept laughing.
"Keep on hitting me. I'm not going to fight you."
I felt a hand on my shoulder.
"Baron, let's go. There are plenty of ways to die in the Machine, and that directive can't be overridden by anyone except Aldred himself."
I stopped punching and looked down at the bastard. He stopped laughing when Danelle threw the logic on my fire. There were three ways out of the Machine. Saying 'exit the Machine', running out of time on the clock, and dying. We'd been cut off from the first, and had way too much of the second.
I hopped off him. "Okay, how?"
She grabbed my hand. "Oscar probably got Audrey booted back in by now."
Let the plant eat me. Simple.
Veronica's brother was still on the floor. A pair of massive arms appeared from behind me and squeezed tight. A second ogre grabbed Danelle.
"What do you want us to do with them?" my guy asked.
"Nothing," he replied, getting to his feet. "Just don't let go."
"Don't let go?"
He reared back and threw a heavy punch, getting me squarely in the ribs. I held my face calm against the pain, not willing to give him the satisfaction.
"I thought you said you weren't going to fight?"
"This isn't fighting. This is restitution." He punched me again.
"You know what Veronica's problem was? She was overconfident. She thought there was no way she could lose." I tightened my muscles as another punch hit the other side of my ribs. "You think because you managed to get some ferals working for you, or one of the Machine's admins, that makes you untouchable? It didn't make her untouchable. I touched her, and she liked it."
I was being an asshole. I was trying to piss him off, to get him to punch me harder, hopefully too hard.
It didn't work. He stopped hitting me and backed off. "Some ferals? You have no idea." He shook his head. "Know your enemy. That's the first rule of warfare. You don't know jack shit." He looked at his watch again. "Forty minutes. Would you like a beverage? I've heard the cocktails here are to die for."
The goons holding us chuckled at his humor.
"Fuck you," Dannie said. She was struggling against the ogre, trying to break free.
He sauntered over to her. "Who are you, I wonder? The necromancer's partner. You-"
"Mod ghost," Dannie whispered. Immediately, her form became translucent, and she slipped right through the arms of the ogre. She started running, not towards the exit but further into the club.
"Mod solid." Our captor aimed his hand at her. A web of energy spiked out from it, striking her in the back. She lost her translucency, slamming right into an avatar with a bubbling green concoction in his hand. They both crashed to the floor.
"Mod-"
A leathery ham-hand fell over my mouth. "I don't think so."
The other one chased after Dannie, but she rolled off the guy she'd collided with and bounced up. She threw a fist into the face of another avatar, a blonde with a huge chest, hanging to the arm of a slimy looking guy in a long, dark coat. The odds were good that in a place like this, an avatar like that would be packing.
"What the fuck?" he said, reaching under his coat.
Danelle punched the blonde again, and then grabbed her shoulders and threw her at the ogre. He caught her at the same time her escort got his gun clear of his coat.
I heard a gunshot. A dark hole appeared in the forehead of the slimy guy, and he fell backwards. The machinist was kicked out, booted from the Machine for a week for being dumb enough to get shot. His avatar lingered on the ground in its death position, an artifact that would hang around for another hour or two.
At once, a dozen more avatars pulled a dozen more weapons from various places on their bodies. The ogre dropped me to the ground as the entire place erupted in gunfire. Veronica's brother crouched next to us, a smoking Magnum in his hand. I could hear the bullets passing overhead, and thumping into the tables around us.
"That little bitch," he said.
I was held tight, and couldn't see where she was. I started squirming, fighting back against the ogre, but he was way too strong. My captor leaned up and fired a couple more times,
then ducked down when another volley followed.
"Illicit kills detected. Targets acquired."
Three robots entered the Jungle. They were each a single solid piece of metallic silver, with long limbs and blank faces. They raised their hands in unison, a red glow forming in the palms. They were aimed at the asshole crouched next to me.
He had seen them, and he cursed and dove aside at the same time three tight red laser beams blasted the spot where he had just been, leaving scorch marks in the ground.
He returned fire, blasting at the bots with his hand cannon. The bullets sparked on their metallic torsos, skipping off without causing damage. Their bodies twisted to fire back.
The ground shook, and the bots vanished. An armor-plated black van crashed through the entrance to the Jungle, crushing them underneath. It came to a stop a dozen feet in and the doors slid aside. Seven or eight avatars piled out, dressed in black combat fatigues and carrying heavy weaponry. They didn't strafe the crowd, instead using the van as cover and firing single, sighted shots at targets I couldn't see.
Was one of them Danelle? I had no idea. Maybe she'd gotten herself shot, and I would be out of there any second. I struggled against the ogre. I needed to get loose so I could see what was happening.
Veronica's brother returned to his spot, tapped the ogre on the shoulder, and pointed back to the van. "Let's go."
The ogre pulled me to my feet, giving me a chance to survey the scene. The entire place had been trashed, with broken glasses and bullet-ridden tables and chairs thrown all over place, empty avatars scattered everywhere in all kinds of bloodless death poses. There was a line of tipped tables at the far end, where the remaining shooters were staying under cover, rising up to take pot shots at the armored group at the van. Since they were with the aggressors, my guess was that taking them out wouldn't cause a penalty, and would have some kind of value for the machinists participating in the gamification.
I scanned the bodies, searching for Danelle, at the same time the ogre dragged me away. The squad laid down cover fire, keeping us from getting shot and preventing me from being killed.
Then I heard a shout, and saw a flash of red. Another team of bots streamed into the building, their lasers finding two of the soldiers and turning them to dust. They turned on the bots, raising grenade launchers and firing back, explosions coating the metal creations in smoke and dust.
The attack left them distracted. The avatars lined up behind the table rose and opened fire, bullets pinging off the armored van, skipping off the ground around the ogre's feet, and then finding their way into the ogre. The pain and shock made him let go of my mouth, and I didn't waste any time.
"Mod ghost." I felt an electric tingle, and saw my body begin to fade. I stepped right out of the ogre's arms at the same time someone turned their grenade launcher on the defense. The area behind the tables exploded, three bodies were thrown aside, and the bullets stopped coming. "End mod."
I turned solid again, and ran towards the center of the room, waving my arms. Neither side shot at me. The attackers wanted me alive, and the defense knew I had been a captive and didn't want to risk hitting me. Shit.
I scanned the floor, looking for a gun. All I had to do was shoot myself, and I'd be out of this crazy-ass place.
Instead I found Danelle's avatar, half-buried by the busty blonde. She had four bloodless holes in her chest.
My heart had been pounding the entire time. Now it found a new level of panic. Why the fuck was I still here?
I could imagine the ugliest reasons, but I wasn't willing to accept any of them. The simplest reason was probably the right one, that's what Azeban had suggested.
She couldn't get me out. I had to do it myself. She would be stranded in the setup until I could move her back to her wheelchair.
I found a gun laying on the ground nearby. I dove for it, sliding across the floor between two dead avatars and getting my right hand around the butt. I was bringing it to my mouth when a bullet smashed into my hand, tearing it from my grip and breaking my fingers. I ignored the pain and looked around for a new weapon. Another gunshot, and my left hand exploded in agony. They didn't have to kill me to keep me from shooting myself.
"Give it up, necro," Veronica's brother shouted. "Even if you manage to get out of here, we're still going to find you, we're still going to kill you. You picked the wrong side."
Maybe I had, but I was committed to it. There was an emergency exit on my left. I ran for it.
I could hear boots behind me. I saw two of the armored soldiers out of the corner of my eye, firing on the defense and headed my way. They were running impossibly fast, gaining in a hurry, trying to cut me off before I made the door.
Dannie had listed some of her mods. I tried to remember them. Reversal, ghost... what were the others? Fuck. Reversal, ghost... The soldiers were almost on me.
Reversal, ghost... It hit me. "Mod agility," I said.
Everything slowed down. One of the soldiers dove to tackle me, but it was like he was running in slow motion. I ducked aside and kicked out, catching his head with my foot, breaking his neck. The other was still running towards me, and I kicked his kneecap, forcing his leg in the wrong direction and hearing the deep, retarded crack. I kept going for the door, making it out before either had crumpled in a heap behind me.
I was outside, on a side street adjacent to the club. I saw more bots run past, headed to the scene of the fighting. Traffic had slowed here, trying to stay out of the way of the battle.
I didn't dare ease up. I ran down the street, even though I had no idea where I was going. I'd only been in the Machine once before, for only an hour. I'd spent the entire time in a room, just getting used to the sensations of being whole again, of not feeling the need to cough, or the tightness in my stomach.
It sounds stupid, but I hated it. That's why I'd never gone back. It felt like such a cop out to hide from life here, though I would never have told Dannie that, and I didn't judge her for coming back to this place to be complete again.
It just wasn't for me.
Now I was stuck here, and I wanted to get out and couldn't. I needed to kill myself, but how? I didn't even know half of the unwritten rules of this place. All I knew was that the bad guys were on my ass, and they wanted to stop me from leaving.
I kept running. I felt a pulsing in my body as the agility mod ran out, and everything went back to normal speed. I checked the watch. An hour and a half. Thirty minutes to get out.
I heard the roar of an engine, and saw a nice-sized truck headed my way. I took a deep breath, and threw myself in front of it.
A horn, skidding tires, an avatar cursing at me. The breeze of the truck blasted my side, but the vehicle itself got around me. In the real world, there was no way something that size could maneuver like that. Damn.
I raced down a standard city street, avatars wandering the sidewalks around me, tall buildings rising up on either side. Most were nondescript bastions of steel and glass, but a few had their own personal touches, in-Machine real estate, owned by anonymous machinists. I thought about throwing myself off one, but the boring ones didn't look like they even had doors. They were just facades to lend atmosphere, flat canvasses like a movie set.
There was nothing to do but run. I knew the armored van was going to come for me. I waited for it to pull up alongside any minute, for the doors to open and for them to pluck me from the street. I moved as fast as I could, my feet pounding the ground, pushing my way past the other machinists and feeling the seconds ticking away. I was getting tired, my hands hurt, my throat was dry, and my heart was starting to throb from beating so fast for so long. I'd never heard of someone dying for real from the Machine, but it felt convincing enough.
I crested a hill, and my salvation appeared in front of me. A massive structure of steel hanging across a churning body of water. A bridge. All I had to do was throw myself off, and I'd be out.
Seeing it gave me a second wind. I picked up the pace, pushing harder to
reach it before the goon squad showed up. I was half a mile away. I could run that in no time.
The van didn't come from behind me. It appeared in front of me, rocketing from a cross-street and skidding to a stop, blocking the bridge. The doors slid open and Veronica's brother got out, flanked by two remaining soldiers. They held something in their hands, some kind of weapon, or...
One of them fired. I saw the shot coming at me, and it broke apart and spread wide into a weighted net. If I hadn't used the agility mod already, it would have been easy to escape. Now, there was no way I could avoid it. I was caught. Done. I could only hope Dannie had somehow gotten to her chair and made it to Jin and Amos.
I didn't want these assholes to win.
A horn echoed right behind me, a car appearing as if out of thin air. I barely had enough time to turn my head before it hit me. I barely had enough time to see the driver.
Azeban.
He gave me a curt wave and plowed into me, and even as I flew up over the hood I could tell he was still accelerating, the car destined to reduce the three assholes in the van to nothing more than pieces.
I don't know why he helped me. I wondered who he even was. I wish I could have gotten the satisfaction of witnessing the collision, but I hit the ground hard, and everything went black.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Who lives forever, anyway?
I still couldn't see anything, but I knew I was out of the Machine. I could feel the weight of the helmet over my head, and the noiseless din of the real world. My heart was still going too fast, but it was nothing compared to what I had felt inside.
"Dannie?"
I reached up and gripped both sides of the helmet, lifting it off my head. I looked over at the chair next to me. She was still there, her helmet still on.
That was strange.
"Dannie?"
I slid off the chair and put my helmet down on it. She had died in the Machine, hadn't she? Maybe that hadn't been her? It was possible she had a mod to make her look like someone else, and make someone else look like her. Could it be that Azeban had known about it, and that's why he had saved me?