Escapology

by Ren Warom

  Shock slopes over to the hydra-haired super-model-in-training at the kiosk.

  “Take for how long?” she asks, voice flat as cardboard, and about as interesting.

  “Shop limit.” he tells her, feeling like he’s got this fuck-off huge sign above his head blinking in neon: “UP TO NO GOOD”.

  Cell #108 is plastic, tacky despite the wealthy ambience, but the room’s an abstract study in desertion; so empty it echoes its own sounds for company. Blinking to access his neural jack, Shock leaps in cold, no prep. Like fucking bareback, warm and slick and sexy. He feels the mesh swallowing him whole, flinging him into Puss, into Slip, into the usual early morning traffic; crammed with weekenders bugging the feed.

  Puss feels different today. Distant. There’s a reluctance to cooperate and Shock has to work hard, spiralling down through teeming crowds in an impatient swirl of tentacles to hit one of the biggest veins. A gusher leading out of public domain toward Hive.

  Swept away, he weaves mid-stream, still fighting his reluctant avi and hella frustration, because this is not the time for glitches. He runs a quick scan as he sweeps through the first block of firewalls, role-playing innocuous data. Finds nothing. Puss is simply not wanting to play ball today. What?

  Fucking focus, he snaps at it, as if a thing formed of code can talk, or even understand him. I have no choice and I don’t need my Tech fucking my day any further.

  Puss cooperates almost immediately, as if acquiescing. Its control algorithms mesh fully with his mind, opening it out, giving him full access to that part of his brain seemingly dormant IRL and helping him recall things locked behind walls of hurt and anger. Why is it that trying to forget the things that hurt can obscure so much of you it reduces you to almost nothing? It’s like in winning by forgetting, you also lose. Down here, having it all back, it’s like having a superpower. All the memory and none of the hurt. Magic. And boy does he need magic right now.

  Hiding in data is playtime for a Haunt, even one only still Haunting by virtue of a block, but the next ten levels of VA would be impossible without this Slip superpower of his. Firewall mazes, controlled by ever-changing equations. They look insane, like the grids of roadways at night time stuck on fast-forward, so many colours zipping around, bright as fireflies. It hurts the eyes.

  Shock allows the information streams feeding the maze calculators to flow through him and winces. Man, that’s some chewy math. Lucky Puss is back up to speed and functioning as it should, because he has no time to stop, solving these beasts on the run; every opening snapping shut on his heels with increasing hunger.

  Calculations flowing in a continuous loop through his mind, like when he was a kid and first realized how fucking easy this stuff was for him, Shock skims through the gauntlet in seventeen minutes flat. A personal best. He’s about to hit self-congratulation in spades until he groks the fact that there’s something very wrong here on the other side. Something he hadn’t anticipated.

  The info feed is mute.

  Trial and error discovered all the obstacles on the way in. But the way out? No one got that far. They got here, floating in this silence like he is. Maybe wondering, like he is, whether they could make it out and unaware that they’d never have to worry about it. Will he? That’s one hell of a thought, too large for his mind right now. The weight of it beneath water drives his head inward, throbs like the beginnings of a migraine, and his three Octopus hearts, not quite under his control, pump a frantic rhythm he’s afraid will transmit back to the single heart in the chest of his sling-bound body and burst it.

  He has no time to calm himself. He’s going to need every last second if there’s more of this shit to find. Gotta press on. He’ll worry later, if there is a later.

  Beyond the maze lies a whole fucking field of his very favourite thing: barcodes. Most are in the top five difficulty: Gordian, Gunner, Boa, Double-Fisher and Figure 8. He scans the field, finding exactly what he’d feared: the short route comes up against a whole row of Gordians so extreme they turn cranial throbbing into pure migraine.

  His best bet is to follow a convoluted pattern like the letter S. One or two fairly horrifying Gordians lurk therein, but most are in the next category and an easier target. Plotting the course so he doesn’t get lost, Shock dives in. He gives himself thirty minutes just for the challenge, does it in twenty-eight point four, and exits to the last twenty levels of VA thinking if he never has to solve an equation again it’ll be too soon.

  Up next? The big Daddies. Twenty rows of all-seeing eyes, impossible to cross. This is where the scum grenades he bought from Heng come in. Scums hit, explode and cling like taffy. A touch bio, they throw out sticky tendrils like virus vine, but totally neutral. Clueless Daddies will scrape that shit off their eyes for at least a double score, not realizing they’re being punked. By the time they’ve cleared their peepers, he’ll have been in and out despite activating alarms. If he’s lucky.

  Beyond the Daddies, Hive is the horizon as far as the eyes can see, both up and across. Fulcrum made Slip like the sea, deep and teeming with multifarious life; confusing in its madness, overwhelming in its vastness, so no one ever gets ideas. But Hive, that’s a whole different design: cool, logical, absolute function. Mountainous and black, it’s a digital fortress that dwarfs the Slip. No eyes, no need for them.

  Hive has the Queens, and to get past them requires more guile than gung-ho.

  Info moves on the surface in Hive, along speeding lines. Nowhere to hide, no gullies or troughs. Hence his drone-skin matrix. The matrix is flawless, should scan him in and out no sweat, survive to get him through the part he’s most afraid of, Core, but it’ll last a mere five mins. If he misjudges by so much as a nano-second, the Queens will be after him, and he’ll be Puss satay. Game over.

  Tingling with nerves, some his, others bizarrely coming from the golden body he’s tucked inside, as if fear is transmitting between mind and shell on a loop, Shock rolls out, tentacles lashing forward to slam the scums bang on target. Taffy-thick slick leaches out over the great red eyes of the rows of Daddies and, line-by-line, they switch to clearance mode, their attention temporarily away from him, away from Hive. Moving fast he slips on further, throwing scums as he goes, covering all the eyes in his path.

  Clock’s ticking now. Eyes in a line unable to see will alert Hive to trouble real soon, less than a minute. Sirens will go off when that happens and that’s when his clock starts ticking down quick smart. They’ll send out Seekers, viral nukes, and this shit will get real. And here it is, shining like fucking Mecca: the Hive. No time to waste, Shock activates his drone matrix and fast foots over to a speeding golden pathway, diving into a duckling trail of drones heading back to their Queens.

  Scans roll over his skin as he passes inside, clocking him as Hive-registered. He tries not to whoop it up. Knowing his skill and practicing it are two different beasts, not always simpatico, and seconds are ticking down too damned fast for comfort. In fact he’s only just whizzed past the final checkpoints inside when alert sirens begin howling through the fortress.

  They fire him up like napalm. Somewhere out there his flesh suit is sweating fit to drown him. Frantic, Shock seeks out Core, uncertain what to look for as no one’s seen it before, and finds a shimmering column at the centre of the mountainous fortress, the shadows of towers within. Seeing it triggers a deep swell of nausea, and the signal from the P.O. rises in his drive, loud as Hive sirens, sweeping thought and coherence away.

  Dimly he feels the drones around him lift him up, carry him away to another, faster, line. The sensation of impossible speed is like drunkenness, like standing on the roof of a mono, the world spinning away far below. Core looms through it like sunrise, bright and overwhelming, and a sensation like ropes twangs deep inside, as if trying to tear him inside out. He’s aware of pain that isn’t his, Puss’s beak gaping wide like it’s screaming, and then the signal dulls to a sound like tinnitus.

  When Shock comes to seconds later, he’s marching in a line o
f drones toward vast pillars like the close-grown trunks of a petrified forest, glowing with intense black light.

  Core.

  No one knows what’s kept in here, besides Emblem. He’ll be the first to know outside of the Lakatos family, and maybe one or two of their top Corps and Techs. In any other circumstances, that’d be such a fucking rush. He checks the time. He’s lost forty seconds.

  Stuffing panic down where it can’t frag his processes, Shock sends out his secret weapon, his bio-wires, the reason he’s so damned good at this Haunting shit. Unlike nano-wires, they’re intelligent, adaptive, and have to be carried in, because they can’t be made in Slip. These will work alone to find anything he tells them to, hopefully including a thing he’s never seen. Everyone knows what Emblem does, what it is, but there’s no telling what it looks like. And he’s got three minutes to locate it, crack it, and get the hell out.

  These bio-wires are his last. He won’t be able to afford to make them again. Armed with Emblem’s code-designation, the numeric representation of its design name, engraved into their search algorithms they sift the info-towers swift as thinking. What they find confounds him.

  Avis. Only avis. Billions of them. Every avi there is. Finding Emblem amongst them should be easy, considering it’s the only thing different, instead it takes one min thirty-two of unbearable tension.

  Turns out Emblem is tiny, a red packet-node stamped with the Slip sign, a stylized fish, hidden under layers and layers of crypt. Shock bites down a wild flare of despair. He needs nano-wires now. Lots of them. It’s not safe in this environment to have so many, in case the Queens notice, but he makes them anyway—what choice does he have?—and instructs them to decode. Hundreds of thousands of wires working at full speed take a damn near endless forty-three seconds to crack the crypt.

  Once done, they separate to two units. One unit unpacks Emblem and brings it to his drive for storage, the other half creates an inert copy giving off the correct signal and recodes every last layer of crypt to hide it.

  And that’s it, Emblem’s secured.

  But the relief of having it is short-lived. Dropping into his drive like a deep-sea mine, it’s a spiky package several dozen levels more hideous than the Core drone signal. He wants to vomit it up like a belly-load of bad liquor. The pain is unreal, makes him feel woozy, discombobulated.

  Bio, he mutters, not sure if the sickness is terror or Emblem. It’s fucking bio.

  Emblem should not be in a drive. It’s going to kill him. How the hell is he going to do this? He’d waste time on serious worry, but he’s seconds left before his skin-matrix fails. Gotta crank him some serious skedaddle.

  He tacks his arse onto the tail end of a team of drones heading out of Core toward the border of Hive, trying not to look suspect. No easy task. Around their orderly line, speeding along, all hell has broken loose. Alerts are full volume, Seekers out in force. The Hive is alive and searching for a breach.

  Fucking come on! he begs, still hoping he’ll make it out before his skin fails.

  Through the stacks, just ahead, one of the Queens looms from between the outer towers. Large as life. Larger.

  Tall as her fortress, she’s the same shade of black, but her skin glows with yellow phosphorescence. She’s scintillating. Gorgeous. Like gold dust in oil on black marble. Vast feelers prodding at the ground, she moves gracefully toward him. Shock closes his eyes as the line speeds him toward her. She can’t see him yet—he’s not been scanned, would’ve felt it. Just coming in his direction, that’s all.

  Then her shadow falls across him, and he feels her in his mind. She’s bright white light, she blinds, engulfs. Her voice is a tidal wave of sound, obliterating thought, drowning the feel of Emblem’s hooks.

  Shock Pao.

  It’s not a question. She knows. No scan, no nothing. Just seen straight the fuck through him like this skin’s not even there. He scuttles on, half insane fear, half pure insanity, hoping to outrun her, knowing he can’t. Her shadow goes on forever. She’s in charge here. Hive can be whatever she wills it: a labyrinth, a trap, a coffin.

  Do you have it?

  Shock can’t breathe, which is stupid, no need in here. He’s not even real, just a collection of data thinking its way into a preset, pre-paid, supposedly state-registered form that if anything feels like it’s more terrified than him. Fear’s got his voice in a box.

  I see it. Keep it safe. Do not take it to Twist. We no longer require his services.

  What the holy fuck? Twist was working for the Queens and now they want to cut him out of the deal? Any chance of surviving this madness shrinks to a pinpoint and pops out of sight.

  I can’t keep this from Twist! Shock doesn’t know if he’s speaking to her, or to himself. He’ll kill me.

  We will deal with Twist. You will deal with us.

  The threat is implicit. Also insane. Twist is not to be fucked with, not even by these crazy ant dames. He’s not in their Hive, they can’t touch him. He can get Shock though, oh yeah he can, and Emblem with him. Then see what that crazy Scots fucker does to their Hive, their home. He’ll crush it. Surely they know that. Surely? Shock drops his common sense like a handful of bad trips.

  Are you crazy? Twist won’t walk away from this like a good dog. He’ll take this shit from my head by any means necessary and he will shut you down.

  He feels her censure as hellish pain, like every tooth extracted at once, twelve-inch drill bits churning his lobes, a head full of flash bombs. Queenie could crush him without thinking. That she’s put so much thought into making him hurt this bad without killing tells him how far he’s crossed the line. And a message rides atop the pain.

  Shock’s her errand boy. He’s alive because she needs him to be, no other reason. It’s human/ant dynamics reversed and she’s wearing big fucking boots. He vibrates apology, sends it out on all frequencies, praying to whatever God they bothered to replace the last with that she’s in a forgiving mood.

  Bring Emblem to the Heights. Do not delay. You will be signal loud, and there will be others after you, but they are far behind. Once you are at Heights, you will be safe. We can remove Emblem. Then we will help you run, Shock Pao. We will ensure your survival. Her voice is a tornado in his mind, howling and roaring. Still pissed. So not good.

  The exact address, a penthouse number so high even thinking about it gives him vertigo, drives into his flash with diamond-tipped power. Adds several powerful dimensions to the pain already bleeding out in concentric circles from where Emblem squats, leaden, and spiked with unexpected armature. Feels as if it’s damn near decapitated him.

  Go. We will be waiting, and we will be watching you, Shock Pao.

  Her weight, her voice, her shadow, disappear. He opens his eyes. He’s outside the Hive, beyond the Daddies, the barcode field and the Firewall maze, at the mouth of the trough running back to Slip. In terms of an expression of absolute power it’s as convincing as a bullet to the cranium.

  He recalls with a disbelieving laugh what Twist said about choice, incredulous that he assumed that was the worst he could face. What ignorance. Throwing his drone skin aside like so much junk, Shock dashes in to the gusher. Doesn’t so much as think back, let alone look. Wakes in the cell a few minutes later, breathing hard, head pounding and aching, body drenched in sweat, nerves jumping like ECT, and wondering what the hell time-bomb he’s got hooked in his skull that it gets to hurt this bad.

  Back out to drizzle, aiming for casual, Shock’s striking out on all levels, freaking hard enough to bust a fit. Freak should be over by now. Adrenalin should have frog-hopped that fucker and be running rings ’round his veins like victory laps. But there’re two things in the way.

  One: he just got spoken to by a genuine, honest-to-goddamn-hell Hive Queen. Moreover she and her kind are watching him. Watching him. He’s stuck in the spotlight. Hell for a Haunt, even one so signal loud he’s no longer anything like.

  Two: Emblem’s toxic, deadly, inside his skull, and he’s no option but t
o carry it where the Queens want it to go. Talk about your human garbage disposal.

  Feeling distinctly used and abused, Shock makes for the Heights, thoughts of Twist dimming beneath the need to get this out of his head before it reduces his grey matter to mush. Those hooks are hurting as if they’re real, not mental manifestations of security protocol, and he can feel Emblem pulsing in there like a freaking heartbeat.

  Thing is, the Heights, that well-protected jut of prime real estate, is over two blocks away, through more people, more traffic, than you could safely cram into the centre of the moon. If Shock blows before he gets there he’ll be all over the daily news on every flash in the Gung, as well the soles of several hundred thousand feet. Bodes so far from well it’s in a different fucking dimension.

  Only option here is to keep moving, and he’s got that all sewn up from here to kingdom come. As he enters the inner city, drizzle picks up to the point where it earns the right to be called rain. Looks like drops of mercury in the glaring light of scrolling neon and sulphur-bright street lamps. Silver pools collect across polished concrete, splashing his genuine-as-dammit Beng boots. Clearly today has not reached its optimum shit level and his freak cranks up to DEFCON 1, because the inner ring is a whole different ball game.

  Between outer and inner city, it’s like the difference between Slip and Hive. Buildings that look big as dammit suddenly dwarf next to gargantuan monuments that rise into the sky like God’s own fingers. This here’s money territory, claustrophobic and exposed all at once, and surrounded by sec-drones. Luckily they belong to Fulcrum, are controlled by Hive, and therefore should leave him alone, considering the Queens want him at Heights.

  Embalmed in pain, Shock stumbles on, foot following foot, eyes fixed like Araldite on the Heights, that neo-gothic pathway to heaven’s colon, lit up bright enough to form a neon halo. He tries to ignore that ka-thump ka-thump in his bloated flash, but it’s beginning to sound like the drum beat to the end of the goddamn world. Bomb trails arcing over the brain horizon, pretty and all-out deadly as a meteor shower aimed at your window. He could do with dropping a handful of blockers, just to shut out the screaming migraine before it drops him, stone cold, to the sidewalk.