by Adam Thielen
Matthias approached the front of the desk. A pudgy man leaned back in his chair, engaged in some sort of game with his view-shades. The glasses appeared to project an image a couple feet from the man’s face, similar to a com but hands-free. The clunky technology was easier on the eyes than laser injection. Matthias could see a reverse image of the screen on the lenses, its details too small to make out. He cleared his throat dramatically.
The man touched the top of the frames and the image disappeared. “Can I help you?”
“My friend was outside this building about twenty minutes ago, do you know if he came in here?” Matthias asked.
“Umm, nope, no one has come in here for a couple hours at least,” the man said. “I think I saw your friend outside. If he’s not there now, I don’t know what happened to him.”
“Thanks,” said Matthias.
Kate’s voice came into Matthias’s head by way of his earpiece. “I’ve been rifling through their video footage. He was definitely outside. I got a nice closeup of his face I’m sending to your com,” she paused for a moment. “He collapsed about twenty minutes ago, but got up a few minutes later… then he vanished.”
Matthias slid his com out from his pocket. It was a rounded rectangle that measured approximately four centimeters by eight centimeters, with a half a centimeter of thickness. The device was accurately called a projection interface computer, or PIC… Or Picom… Or p-com, depending on the manufacturer. As the PICs replaced traditional ultra-phones and became even more essential for daily life than their predecessors had been, the name was simplified to just “com”; the abbreviated word for the one function anyone consciously associated the device with.
The coms also acted as identification, all manner of licensure, proof of insurance, payment methods, entertainment center, and of course network interface. They recorded the owners movements, conversations, and even eating habits with the goal of displacing any need by one’s brain to remember or make decisions about his or her life.
Screen type displays were still useful, but the modern com unit had two small laser projectors that could swivel almost imperceptibly to stay locked on the eyes of the holder, injecting a two or three dimensional image directly into the eye. Such an image usually appeared as if floating in the air in front of the user, though it could appear anywhere if an application required. The coms accepted voice and touch input as well as gesture controls, following one’s fingers with its camera.
Matthias held his com in front of his waist and studied the image floating in front of him. It was the mage, Paul Winter, a definite match from the images on file from the Chicago academy. He walked away from the desk and toward a men’s restroom entrance. “What do you mean he vanished? A video glitch?”
“It’s hard to say,” she said slowly, as she continued to watch the footage. “The hotel’s left door opens and closes by itself just a few moments after he vanished.”
Matthias, now in the restroom, pulled out his gun. “Impossible. Ask Taq—”
Kate interrupted him. “He has the same thought, says it can be done.”
Matthias felt a chill of fear. He holstered his gun again. Waving it around wasn’t going to make him safer. He could read the council report now, “Agent Matthias discharged his firearm blindly in a hotel lobby.”
He briskly walked back into the lobby and up to the front desk, the man took notice of him again, raising his eyebrows. “Hey,” said Matthias, “Do those shades have thermographic capability?”
The man looked around nervously, “Y-yeah.”
Matthias jumped over the counter. The man yelped and put his hands up in front of his face. Matthias gripped his neck, pressuring the jugular and carotid arteries. The man tried to pry Matthias’s fingers loose, but they would not budge. A few moments later, he fell limp. Matthias took the shades off the man’s face, leaned down and sunk his fangs into his neck. The clerk’s blood filled his mouth. As Matthias swallowed, he felt a euphoric rush followed by a feeling of intimacy with his victim. Bits of memory and recent thoughts flashed through his mind. Blood bonds were often fleeting, and Matthias cared little for this man's knowledge.
He pressed his tongue against the two small incisions he had created, then counted to five and removed his mouth from the man’s neck. The bite marks were there, but the bleeding had ceased. He had only taken a little, but it would be enough to sustain him another day.
Matthias stood up and slipped the shades onto his face. He fumbled with its controls, calibrated to the eye movement of its former master and eventually found the thermographic setting. Hope this works, he thought. He turned it on and saw a translucent overlay depicting, as a color map, the temperature of items in lobby. Mostly blues and greens. The unconscious man was orange.
“Kate,” Matthias called. “Have you figured out where he went, other doors he used?”
“The elevator opened and shut with no one coming or going,” she reported. “It went to the top floor without stopping.”
“Nicely done. Think you can delete any recording of what I did here?” he asked.
“Already done.”
Matthias took the elevator up to the top floor. He stepped out and looked to his left down the hall and saw nothing but blue and green painted doors and walls, floor and ceiling. Even the lights were only a pale green in the shades, giving off little to no heat signature.
As he pivoted to look the opposite direction, he froze. Among the blues and greens, an orange outline stood only meters away and was closing the distance. Matthias forced his left foot forward, then his right, walking toward the ghostly image. As he got close, he turned toward the nearest room door and pretended to reach inside his coat for a room key. He only noticed afterward that the doors were thumbprint activated. Matthias stood rifling through his pockets, waiting for the fiend to pass. He glanced to his right and saw the orange form walking away from him toward the elevator.
Matthias carefully pulled out his handgun, currently loaded with silver bullets. Each one had five sharpened tips at one end in a star formation with a channel in the middle to allow for air to flow through the center of the round and out of pinholes on the sides. The five tips were part of five sections adhered to each other. The air passing through them made a whistling noise, but anything thicker caused the sections to shear apart and change trajectory, inflicting maximum damage. A horrible weapon. A vampire killing weapon that was rarely used.
As Matthias put the invisible man in his sights, it stopped moving. Subtle gestures were hidden in the haze of the orange outline, but Matthias surmised that it was turning its head around to see him. He squeezed the trigger. Humans can’t see where a bullet goes between its launch and its destination. Matthias could. The bullet had curved slightly, missing the figure by inches, eventually colliding with a room door.
He fired several shots in the space of a split second, each diverting from its intended course. The figure began to motion with his arms. The final motion, an upward swing, was accompanied by a bright orange spike protruding from the floor at an angle, impaling Matthias through the chest. It was some sort of magical fire, and as quickly as it had erupted, it vanished. Matthias grunted and gripped at his chest, now severely burned.
A man materialized inside the orange figure. He appeared to be breathing heavily. The mage’s face was gaunt with light blue veins branching from his ears toward his mouth. His jeans and shirt were dirty and torn. His skin and hair was ashen, and his eyes were black orbs. He held his hands open, and his fingernails extended into long claws.
Matthias dropped his gun and stood up. The mage charged at him. Matthias brandished a silver dagger from a horizontal sheath on the back of his belt. The mage flung his right hand forward. Instead of trying to avoid it, Matthias let the blow land. Four claws stabbed into Matthias’s chest. As they sunk in, Matthias grabbed the mage’s wrist and lunged with the dagger. The mage’s other hand diverted the blade from hitting his heart, but he still shrieked in pain as it plunged into his low
er rib cage.
The mage Winter was inhumanly strong. He grabbed Mathias’s forearm, then twisted it, forcing Matthias to release his grip on the dagger and bringing him to his knees. The mage pulled his claws out of Matthias’s chest, causing blood to spurt heavily. He stabbed at Matthias’s face, but Matthias blocked the lunge with his hand, the claws cutting through it as if it were paper mache. Blood splattered onto his face and eyes, with more of it streaming down his wrist and onto the ground.
Matthias saw a flash of light behind the mage bright enough to illuminate the hall. Winter released his grip on the vampire enforcer and turned around. Matthias rolled onto his back looking for his gun. Out of the corner of his eyes he saw Taq standing at the entrance of the elevator. Whatever spell he had cast did not phase the ashen-colored abomination.
Claws still extended, the rogue mage charged toward Taq. Only five meters away from his target, the mage’s left foot fell through the floor, followed by his body, which seemed to move through solid ground like a ghost—a very heavy ghost. Taq sprinted to Matthias, his feet finding solid ground where the mage had just fallen.
“Can you move?” he yelled at Matthias.
Matthias feebly picked up his gun, got to his knees, then struggled to his feet. “Where?” he slurred out.
“He’s below us; we have to get out of here,” Taq said, wrapping Matthias’s arm around his neck. He clumsily started walking him toward the stairwell.
“We can’t lose him now,” Matthias again spoke.
“We already lost, and I think you are about to bleed out,” Taq retorted.
“Elevator’s the other way,” Matthias protested.
“Only way out is up now,” assured Taq. “I’m taking us to the roof, but I set the elevator to head down. Hopefully it buys us some time.”
Taq felt his load lighten as Matthias began to stumble forward using his own strength. He was already beginning to recover; the blood in his body changing into muscle, skin and tendons. By the time they reached the door to the stairwell, he limped under his own power. They climbed to the top of the stairwell and pushed onto the roof of the hotel.
“What now?” Matthias asked, following Taq to the edge of the roof. He knew that even he would not survive such a long drop.
“Kate, we are jumping off the building,” Taq said.
“What?” Kate asked.
“Meet us on the side of the building facing the Chevron dealership,” Taq said.
“South of the hotel?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he replied.
“Yes, south,” barked Matthias tersely. “Does she even know how to drive?”
“I’ll get there. You need to get the hell out of there; that thing is still after you.”
Taq grabbed Matthias’s arm to get his undivided attention. “I’m going to reduce our weight,” he explained. “Physically, we’ll still accelerate, but we won’t have the inertia required to seriously injure or break bones, more than likely.”
“More than likely? Your plan is based on more than likely?”
Matthias looked over the ledge, then back at the door to the stairwell.
“I’ve already cast it. Jump and you’ll feel it, I’ll go first if it eases your fear.”
“Appeals to my sense of pride are futile,” Matthias suddenly leaned down and scooped Taq into his arms.
“What are you doing?” yelped Taq
“You still feel kind of heavy. Hold on,” said Matthias. He knew that even at a fraction of his normal weight, such a long fall would be dangerous for a human.
Matthias stepped off the ledge toward the road twelve stories below. Wind began to whip up his body, faster and more forcefully as they fell. The air caught the back of Matthias’s longcoat, like the world’s smallest and least effective parachute. However, it did help him maintain an upright orientation, something that strangely felt natural to him as he descended.
Matthias bent his knees slightly as the ground rushed toward him and his passenger, who, despite mental preparation, had started screaming uncontrollably. To his surprise, their fall ended with a slight bend in his knees as his feet pushed against the pavement. He sat Taq onto his own feet, who stared at him wild-eyed. “Woah,” Matthias remarked.
The van pulled up beside them and the tires screeched to a halt. Taq stopped looking at Matthias and instead looked up toward the roof. On the ledge stood the rogue mage. Matthias pushed Taq into the van and followed suit.
“Kate, floor it. Hurry!” Matthias urged. He stared out the back window. The mage jumped off the building toward the parked van below. The van jerked to life and moved out of the way. The mage hit the concrete with a loud thud and cracking sound. The pavement had given way under his weight, snapping into disjointed pieces around his feet. The mage fell to his knees and caught himself with his hands. He stood back up, but did not chase the van, which was already a hundred meters away and accelerating.
“Jesus Christ!” exclaimed Kate, staring through the rearview at Matthias’s bloody and torn clothing.
Matthias turned from the window and sat down on the floor of the van. “Don’t stop,” he said quietly. Kate kept speeding down the road south, with no destination. Taq sat in his seat, shivering.
A few miles later, Taq calmed himself down. He moved from the rear seat to the passenger seat beside Kate. He looked back at Matthias, who had fallen unconscious.
“You’re plugged into everything, aren’t you?” Taq asked Kate.
“Not even close,” she replied. “My interface allows me to theoretically monitor hundreds of streams, but even using four radios, I’m bandwidth and frequency limited. Also, I don’t need security hassles, so I try to use proxies on anything not immediately critical.”
“Right, proxies are good,” Taq said, nodding. He sort of knew what that meant.
“I’ve got a satellite above us, the nearest com tower, and a quantum relay station tapped right now. I can listen in to anything being broadcast if I can decrypt it, without needing to transmit. Those are freebies, in a way.” she continued.
“Are you listening and watching… stuff right now?” he asked.
“Gods no,” she shook her head. “That would be just a soup of random images and hundreds of people talking into my ears. I am alerted if any keywords are uttered, typed, and whenever that mage’s mug appears on a camera. Every hit is almost always irrelevant, but I have to check them all just in case.”
“I knew someone like you once,” Taq said. “I never really tried to understand what it was like. I guess I was always more interested in my own situation. I clearly missed out.”
“It doesn’t seem that interesting to me anymore,” Kate said, shrugging. “Now it is a means to an end. It’s just something I’m good at that pays the bills.”
Taq sat back for a few minutes, then remembered why he had started the conversation. “When was the last hit on that thing?”
“He’s been on the move. I tracked him to a residential area of town, west of us,” she replied. “I lost him, it’s a poor neighborhood with little surveillance. I would wager he’s still in that area.”
Matthias opened his eyes. “Perhaps he’s hiding from the sun. This could be a lucky break.” He looked at the time on the dashboard of the van. “I have to hide from it as well.” Matthias swiped his finger over the guidance screen and tapped a few menus, eventually displaying a map on the screen.
“Follow the navigation markers,” Matthias said. “Once there we can regroup, and I can report to Frank.”
Waypoint markers appeared on the inside of the van’s windshield, signifying points where the van would have to stop, turn, or switch lanes. A solid line appeared to emanate from the bottom of the van and connected each of those markers as it formed a route to the nearest safe house.
Kate engaged the drive assist and began to focus on data analysis. Taq fell asleep in his seat, while Matthias continued to brood in the back. The van left the downtown district and continued into the old indust
rial district. Unlike most of the city, the industrial area was not completely paved. Scorched dirt sat underneath heavy machinery and surrounded warehouses and factories.
Most buildings were abandoned, while many were still in use. A few for legal purposes. Laws against cybernetics were enforced at the whim of the regional corporate interests. Usually their interests were in capturing useful surgeons, confiscating tech they either wanted to reverse engineer or recycle. The buildings had their fair share of squatters as well. Otherwise, the area’s low population density made it a rare sight.
The final navigation marker drew near, and it became clear that the van was heading toward an old parking garage. There were no signs of life apparent from the outside. The garage was only a story tall. As the van approached its entrance, a gate with horizontal rods threading vertical plates came to life, opening slowly upwards.
Matthias crouched onto his feet. “I’ll take it from here, Kate.” He took the wheel and guided the van through the gate. He turned right, where his path was blocked by a second gate. Matthias glided his fingers over the nav screen. The map disappeared, replaced with a text box and keypad. He typed out a simple five digit number and hit a green button. The second gate opened. The van began to move of its own volition and began descending a spiral ramp. Old fluorescent lights lined the walls, which were similarly old and decrepit. The ramp however appeared to be in fair condition.
At the bottom, the van pulled into a parking stall. Only two other vehicles occupied the underground garage. Matthias got out, beckoning for his two passengers to follow. They came to a plain metal door. He pushed his thumb against a thorn-like protrusion on the wall next to the door. It pierced the skin and took a sample of the vampire’s blood. A small green light appeared from a pinhole on the handle, indicating that the sample had passed the test.
Opening the door revealed a hallway in stark contrast to the garage they had exited, plain in design but with immaculate walls and gleaming tile floor. Ceiling tiles glowed a dim orange using isotopes and translucent panels that would last for decades. A pair of cameras pointed toward the three new visitors as Matthias led them to the end of the hall, which opened into a small lobby. A woman in formal attire sat at the desk. Her hair, blonde with a grey streak running through it, was pinned up neatly.