Dead of Night (Ghosts & Magic) (Volume 1)

by M. R. Forbes

  She started to speak. I put my hand back on her mouth.

  "Listen to me. You're saying Carlyle told you to lock me in the Machine?"

  When I said 'me', she got a better understanding. She nodded.

  "Who told him to do it?" I took my hand away.

  "I just work on the Machine. I don't know anything about what the execs do."

  "Right. You work on the Machine. That means you're good with computers." I turned my head. Carlyle's laptop was resting on his desk. "If we take that, can you get into it?"

  "I... I can't... I mean... my job."

  "You don't have a job here anymore. The only way you get to live past today is to come with me, and break into that laptop."

  "It... It's not enough. You need his phone. They may have called him, not e-mailed. You can't risk it."

  She was right. I went over and peeked out the window. Carlyle had everyone gathered up in the back corner, and they were clapping while he spoke.

  "Fuck. Okay." How was I going to get it from his pocket? Be bold. "Grab the laptop and anything else you think might be handy, and wait near the door. I'll come back and get you."

  "Where are you going?"

  "I have to get the phone."

  I left the office and headed towards Carlyle. I kept my posture confident but concerned. He was talking about profit sharing and quarterly results. He saw me coming. I was damp from the water.

  "Excuse me one second."

  He took a few steps towards me and wrapped his arm over my shoulders, huddling me close. "What's up?"

  The initial contact was the best chance. I brushed my hand over his pockets, finding the cell in the front of his pants. I was quick and precise as I lifted it.

  "She wouldn't drink it. Do we have more?"

  "That little bitch. No. Just drag her out if you have to. I'll make something up. At the end of the day, all these people care about is their paychecks, not if one of their nerd peers goes psycho."

  "Okay. Two more minutes."

  "You got it."

  I walked back to his office at top speed. By the time I opened the door, Prithi had a Prada messenger bag over her shoulder. I took it from her. I wouldn't be able to get it out without Carlyle noticing. "We're going to need to make a run for it. I have a car waiting outside. If you hear gunshots, don't look back, don't stop running. Got it?"

  She nodded, her growing resolve to stay alive settling on her face.

  "Come on. You first. I'll act like you slipped away from me."

  I pulled open the door holding her arm. We moved out into the office. She squirmed against me, shaking her arm and pulling. As soon as we were both clear, I let her go. She bolted for the door.

  I glanced back at the same time I started chasing. Carlyle had seen, and he was pausing his speech again to aid in the chase. I had been hoping he wouldn't want to be so obvious.

  Prithi reached the door ahead of me, and went to open it.

  "Stop."

  She stopped.

  I caught up, pulling my gun from under Campbell's suit jacket. I was hoping to get in and out without these kinds of problems.

  "Campbell, what the fuck are you doing?" Carlyle shouted behind me. I opened the door, and we passed through together.

  The desk had already been alerted. I shot the guard in the shoulder, and the receptionist in the head. I hated to have to kill her, but she was too dangerous to simply wound. I heard gunshots behind us. Carlyle was packing too.

  "Keep going. Get to the Cadillac."

  I turned around, facing Carlyle old-west style. I would have loved to drop the mask's illusion just then, to see the look on his face. I had to settle for shooting him in the chest. He was still firing as he dropped. He was a lousy shot.

  I regained the chase, following Prithi out the front door. I was breathing heavy, Campbell's old body not suited for running. We crossed the ground towards the parking garage. There was no sign of Amos.

  Where the fuck did he go? He'd survived the weres at the Golden Sun. He was too good to have just driven off and left me here.

  A police car appeared in the garage. It came to a stop in front of us, the doors opening. I reached out and grabbed Prithi's arm again, jerking her perpendicular to the law enforcement.

  "Stop and drop," one of them shouted. "Now!"

  "Keep going." I fired two shots at the car. They weren't close to hitting the crooked officers, but they kept them under cover.

  "You said you had a car."

  "I did."

  There was more motion coming from the buildings. It was like a swarm of angry ants, the secondary security, the hidden security beginning to pour out to take on whoever was threatening the Machine. This had gone really bad really fast. I was going to kill that fat-ass if I ever saw him again. He had the easy part of the job.

  We were out in the open, quickly getting surrounded. I expected to be shot any second.

  He came flying out of the garage, through the front-end of the squad car, slamming it into a spin that collided with the officers. He jumped the curb, headed our way, his window down and one of the rifle ends hanging out of it. He drove and fired at the same time, keeping the oncoming guards back. The Cadillac skidded to a stop next to us.

  "Someone call a cab?"

  I opened the back door and practically threw Prithi in, sliding behind her, and then reaching over her lap for one of the rifles.

  "Where to, Mac?" Amos leaned back to look at us. "Famous Amos' House of Pleasures?"

  "Just drive," I replied.

  He laughed and hit the gas, kicking up dirt and heading away. We weren't safe yet, we still needed to get through the gate.

  "What is that smell?" Amos asked, bringing the rifle back in and concentrating on driving. "Did you piss yourself? It's kind of hot."

  Disgusting. "Can you shut the hell up for two minutes?"

  "Let me tell you, Baldie... Holy shit that match was unbelievable. I've got the whole thing playing in my mind right now."

  I swear Prithi looked like she would rather have been dead. She was tucked between the rear passenger seat, her eyes closed tight.

  "Do you mind? Guard at twelve o'clock."

  I leaned out the window with the rifle. He was standing in firing position, the way they teach it at the range.

  "He'll move."

  "You sure?"

  He took a shot. Missed.

  "Yes. Just don't slow down."

  Amos accelerated. The guard didn't even wait for the last second to bail. It didn't matter that the gate was reinforced and there was no way we could have blown it. We skidded to a stop, and I hopped out and ran past the guard and into the booth. I opened the gate, and jumped back in. He stayed head down on the ground the entire time.

  Then we were through, and out on the road.

  "What now?" Amos asked.

  "We need a new ride."

  "You know they're going to match me up to the rental?"

  "You should have thought about that before you were late picking us up."

  "Ah, shit. I saw the cop car come in, I was trying to stay out of sight until the last second."

  "You did great at that. Now we need a new ride."

  "And someone needs a new pair of panties."

  Prithi. I looked over at her. "We made it. You can open your eyes."

  She did. A moment later, she climbed onto the back seat.

  "Amos, Prithi."

  "A pleasure," Amos said. Prithi just looked shell-shocked.

  I took the bag and pushed it towards her.

  "I know you're traumatized, but we don't have a lot of time. You need to work mobile."

  She took the bag with shaking hands, and started unzipping it.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  The game.

  "There's just no way," Prithi said. She had Campbell's laptop on her knees, and was trying typing in different potential passwords. Somehow, that didn't seem very efficient.

  "You told me you could hack it?"

  "With
the right equipment, sure. I didn't know I was going to have to do this while we drove." She pushed herself towards the corner after she said it, afraid I was going to hurt her.

  Black had given me the phone for a reason. It was time to see if Adams could come through. I pulled it from a pocket and hit contact list. It immediately started dialing, the info coming up only as 'Outgoing Call'.

  "What do you need?" The voice was gruff, and younger than I had expected.

  "A new car. Tech to crack a password protected laptop and cell phone. Enough firepower to drop a skin walker. "

  "New panties," Amos shouted from the front. "Size extra small. Pants, also extra small."

  "I've got your location. I'll send you the address. When you get there, look for Templeton."

  The connection dropped.

  Nice guy.

  It took thirty seconds for the address to pop up, and I let the cell read Amos the directions. It was a warehouse or something just outside of Boston, only twenty minutes or so from where we were. I looked out the back window. Nobody was tailing us yet. Hopefully we could get there without being spotted.

  "Just give it up for now," I told Prithi.

  She closed the laptop and put it back in the bag. She was still terrified.

  "I'm not going to hurt you, even if you can't help. Right now it's enough for me to know I stopped Tarakona from killing you."

  "I helped you already." Her voice was weak and low.

  "What?"

  "I said I helped you already. In the Machine. I didn't know what was going to happen. I swear I didn't. I thought it was all above the table."

  "A little less mystery would go a long way."

  Her face turned red. "Azeban."

  I looked at her. Was she suggesting... "You're Azeban?"

  "Yes."

  "Dannie said she and Azeban..."

  Her face turned more red. "You can be anything you want to be in the Machine. Do anything you want to do. Is Daaé's real name Dannie? She was jacked into the same sub node that you were. Is she still at the Greens?"

  The power of the mask chose that moment to fade away. Prithi drew back when Mr. Campbell disappeared. I reached up and pulled the bone artifact from my face, putting it back in my pocket. I couldn't hide my anger when I answered her.

  "No. She's dead."

  Tears welled up from her eyes again. "How? I... I didn't mean for this to happen. It was just part of the game. That's what they said. Mr. Carlyle came to me, he said there was someone in the Machine with a unique pattern. They wanted to talk to you about it to tweak the Machine, so don't let you exit. I told him it was against policy, but he threatened to fire me. It was easy enough to override that method on your node."

  Whatever that meant. "How can you be Azeban? You were in the Machine when we were locked in."

  She wiped her eyes with her shirt, and pushed her long black hair aside. There was a small, tattooed stamp on the back of her neck.

  "We have our own interfaces to the Machine, a patch that rests on the tattoo and a pair of glasses. It lets us switch back and forth, or even overlay the Machine view with reality. It isn't quite as immersive and takes some getting used to, but it lets us test commits in realtime."

  "So you were here and there? That's why you paused when we sat down with you?"

  "Yes. I was talking to Mr. Carlyle. I was making the change while I talked to you."

  "What about all that shit about Tarakona being the future?"

  "It's all a game, right? I mean, I spend twelve, sixteen hours a day in the Machine. I work late so I can stay, and come in on the weekends. I buy information from one source, I sell it to another. I have a whole skyscraper in the Machine from all the credits I've earned. It's all for fun."

  She thought the entire thing was a game? "You think the Houses only exist inside the Machine?"

  "I thought they did. I thought it was all a big sub-game, you know, like those live-action roleplaying freaks, except a little more realistic? I committed the code and locked your node, which meant Dannie was stuck, too. Then that other guy showed up and said they were coming to kill you... the real you. I got scared, so I switched out, but Mr. Carlyle was watching me, making sure I didn't get up or leave. Then I saw that Dannie was gone from the node, and you were stuck. I waited for her to take you out, but she didn't. So I did."

  She looked at me, her lip quivering.

  "I didn't know she was dead. I thought she escaped. They let me go home. This morning, they said someone outside of the company found out what I had done. They were going to kill me. Mr. Carlyle told me that. I didn't think it was real."

  She started crying again, in loud, wracking sobs.

  I couldn't be angry at her. She saved my life. She tried to save Dannie. "Prithi, I need you to try to calm down, okay. What happened to Dannie wasn't your fault. I'm trying to catch up to the asshole that killed her. You can help me with that."

  "I want to go home."

  "You can't go home. Not today, maybe not ever. It isn't safe for you, and it's really not safe for your family. All of those things you learned about the Houses? It's all real. The espionage, the killing, the ghosts, everything. It's not just inside the Machine."

  She cried a little harder, and then calmed herself enough to speak. "You're a ghost?"

  "Yeah."

  "A wizard?"

  "A necromancer."

  "They said your pattern was unique. There aren't supposed to be any necromancers."

  "We're a dying breed," I said, using the same lame joke a second time. I got a small, nervous laugh from her. "Maybe you can't hack the computer yet, but you can tell me what you know about Tarakona."

  "He's real, too?"

  "Real enough to kill for."

  She sniffled a few times and wiped her eyes again. "There were already whispers when I started working for Parity, when I started using the Azeban avatar. Someone who would challenge the Houses, who would pick them apart one by one. He's been hiring ghosts left and right for different operations, but I heard he has his own operatives that he calls his 'pack'. They're like his family, but they aren't related. Supposedly, they're people he found at homeless shelters and youth camps and stuff like that, brought under his wing, took care of. He's got people planted everywhere, and they're really loyal to him because he saved their lives."

  Some of those people might have gotten sick and turned feral. If there was a way to reason with them after... Veronica might not have been lying.

  "They say some of them are 'special'. That he handpicks the ones who please him and does something to them to make them... I don't know... better?"

  "What does he want?"

  "To destroy the Houses, and put the original humans back in their rightful place."

  "Has he ever been in the Machine?"

  "There's no way for me to know that. Some people claimed he had. Others said he hadn't. The Machine is anonymous. That's why I believed them when they said they wanted to tweak it. I thought they wanted to fix it so people like you wouldn't stand out."

  "Do you know anything about what House Red took from him?"

  "They always called it his treasure. That's all I know."

  I'd gotten two different stories so far, but it seemed as if they both had elements of truth. Whoever Tarakona was, he was powerful, and he did want to make a move against the Houses. With Red it was personal. Probably with Black, too. The others? He would bring them down, because they kept everything stable and smooth. If he wanted to give the world back to the original humans, he would want chaos and fear. He would want an environment where he could start freeing the ferals and give them a chance to fight back.

  Where did the stone, the so-called 'treasure', fit in? Where did Jin fit in?

  Even better, how the hell was I going to stop it?

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Know your enemy.

  The address turned out to be a large, brick warehouse on the outskirts of Boston. It didn't have a gate around it, or any windows; only
a bunch of loading docks and a few heavy metal doors scattered along the dirt and graffiti covered doors.

  A semi was waiting when we got there, an eighteen foot shipping container loaded onto its back. The loading bay behind it was open, and an overly-muscled woman with frizzy dark hair was waiting there, smoking a cigarette, legs dangling from the dock.

  "I'd ask you if you're the necro, but I think that's pretty clear." She got to her feet and took another puff on her smoke.

  "Would you mind putting that out?" I asked.

  She laughed. "Afraid you'll get cancer."

  "Already have it. I don't want to watch you get it."

  She held it between her fingers, looked at it like she had never seen it before, and tossed it to the ground in front of us. "I was almost done with it, anyway. The door over there is unlocked."

  We made our way inside the warehouse. I'd expected it to be stocked with equipment suitable for ghosts. Instead, it was filled with diapers.

  "You might want to grab a box," Amos said, nudging Prithi. The girl was clearly uncomfortable with everything this far out of her ordinary.

  "Amos," I said.

  "Just sayin'."

  We met the female wrestler further back near the open bay. She had been joined by a tall, skinny guy in a suit while we were making the trip. A fixer. She must have been his bodyguard. He looked at Prithi first, wrinkling his nose.

  "You'll find a change of clothes in the office over there. Extra small, as requested."

  She seemed nervous to go off on her own, but I reached over and took the laptop bag from her, and she headed to the door the fixer was pointing at.

  "You Templeton?" I asked.

  "Yes. This is Sasha."

  "Baron, and Amos."

  He made a small grunt like he didn't care. "It was short notice, so we didn't have time to unload the truck. Your car should be here in the next few minutes."

  "What about the Caddy?" Amos asked.

  "We'll sink it."

  He turned towards the back of the truck. "Sasha?"

  She went over and unhitched it, swinging the container doors open.

  The inside was filled with all kinds of fancy kit. Guns hung from hooks on the walls, and flat tables with drawers beneath begged to be explored. There was combat armor, helmets, cuffs, knives, even a samurai sword. A laptop rested on a counter at the front, its screen providing the illumination for that part of the container.