by Jim C. Hines
“Isn’t there something I could just stick to the keyboard to take control?”
“The keyboard?” Talulah laughed. “Do you know how computers work?”
“Can you help me or not?”
“That depends on what they’ve set up. Charles Stross’ work might have something, or maybe Kelly McCullough. They’ve both written about magic-infused computing. There’s a bookstore in the mall. Let me see what they’ve got on the shelves. It would be easier if you could get to the servers.”
“That I can probably do. I’ll call you back shortly.” I hung up and checked the map again. Both wings of the building were lined with small, regularly sized rooms I assumed were individual cells. A larger enclosure could have been a cafeteria.
I turned to the guard. “Where are your network servers?”
She pointed to a nearby room on the map. “You’ll never get to them. They’re the most secure part of the whole facility.”
“Ten bucks says you’re wrong.”
Deb had pulled a packet of thick plastic zip ties from one of the guards’ belts, and was securing their ankles and wrists. “Hon, are you seriously making bets here?”
I stepped back and studied my hand. The guards’ badges had eroded a bit of the ring’s power. I was visible, but faint enough it would be almost impossible for anyone to identify me. “Can you do your brain whammy thing to make them forget about us?”
“I’ll give it a shot.”
I checked the camera screens again, but saw no sign of Lena. Several teams of guards were running down the hallways, but I couldn’t tell whether they were coming after us or trying to capture Lena.
Given the nature of Lena’s powers, I had a sick feeling I knew what she’d sensed. I grabbed one of the pistols we’d taken from the guards and handed it to Deb. “Would you care to unlock the door?”
She finished whispering to the guards, took the gun, and emptied it into the door by the handle. A quick kick finished the job, busting the door open.
I led us deeper into the building and took the second hallway on the right. This part of the prison appeared to be for the staff. We passed locker rooms and a small break room, turned left, and came to a riveted steel door that made me think of a bank vault, not a server room. Through a small vent in the bottom of the door came the humming of some sort of fans.
There was no knob or visible lock. An electronic keypad was mounted to the wall next to the door.
“I don’t think we’re going to be able to shoot your way through this one,” said Deb.
“No problem.” I grabbed Alan Dean Foster’s re-released novelization of Alien. I’d marked several scenes with sticky tabs. I skimmed the one I wanted and pressed the open book to the door by the keypad. Yellow-green alien blood oozed onto the metal and began to sizzle.
The acidic blood ate through the book within seconds, nearly taking my hand with it. Scraps of paper fell away, eating pits into the floor where they landed. The metal bubbled and smoked, filling the air with a sharp, toxic scent.
“Who’s out there?” someone yelled. New alarms buzzed throughout the prison.
Chunks of dissolving steel dripped and sagged, creating a hole the size of my fist. The titanium barrel of a JG-367 poked out through the opening.
Deb grabbed the end of the barrel and pushed it against the edge of the hole, so the titanium touched the acid. The gun hissed and smoked. She pressed harder, until half the barrel came off in her hand. “How long will that keep burning?”
“You don’t want to know.” The hole was almost as big as a Frisbee now, and had eaten through part of the wall as well as the door.
Deb shoved the door open. The guard inside had tossed away his magical pistol and was clutching a Glock 22 in both hands.
“Shooting her will just piss her off.” I stepped into the doorway, little more than a translucent afterimage.
The man turned toward me, his eyes wide. Deb snatched the gun and hammered her fist into the bridge of his nose, quick as a snake. She adjusted her grip on the gun and pistol-whipped him, leaving him bloody and groaning on the floor.
His badge lacked the magic-damper his colleagues had worn. I relieved him of his other weapons while Deb zip-tied his hands and feet. Only then did I look around. There were no servers humming away. No tangled cables or racks of routers lit up like Christmas trees. Only a floor-to-ceiling curtain cutting the room in half. I tugged the curtain aside.
Four narrow steel-framed beds were stacked tightly atop one another like a bunk bed from a claustrophobic’s nightmare. Small fans circulated air over the occupants. The faces of all four sleepers were physically identical to Babs Palmer’s secretary, Kiyoko Itô.
The women’s shaven heads were covered in electrodes, all flowing together into black cables like thicker versions of the ones I’d seen in the guardroom.
I called Talulah back. “I’ve got interesting news about those servers . . .”
NEW FIGHTING IN UKRAINE
Renewed military action between Russia and Ukraine is being blamed on a mythological creature known as the vodyanyk.
Described as malevolent, slime-covered water spirits, vodyanoi are said to live in rivers and other bodies of water. According to folklore, they would destroy dams and bridges when angered, and often drowned unsuspecting passersby.
Reports claim Russian supporters near the town of Luhansk began dying sixteen days ago. Each morning, three new bodies have been found washed up on the banks of the Siverskyi Donets River. At first, these deaths were blamed on pro-Ukraine militants. Multiple eyewitnesses now describe an elderly-looking man, covered in scales and seaweed, roaming the streets at night.
Russia has made no official statement, but Luhansk has seen an influx of armed soldiers, as well as tanker trucks said to be carrying poisons that could be used to kill all life within the Siverskyi Donets.
Government officials at a Ukrainian cabinet meeting disavowed any influence or control of the vodyanyk, but warned that Russia’s actions would only increase the creature’s anger.
“If you could go back and do it over again—libriomancy, the Porters, and everything else—what would you change?”
“For one thing, I’d stay the hell away from the book that killed me.”
“You know what I mean.”
“You want to know if it was worth it. I can’t answer that, Isaac. We can know what was, but not what might have been. I oversaw five hundred years of magical history. The Porters spread throughout the world. The knowledge we amassed is beyond anything I could have imagined. We stopped countless threats. Was it the best possible outcome? Perhaps not, but I’m proud of what we accomplished.”
“Those five hundred years of secrecy also set up the ignorance and fear that are triggering backlash and war against people like us.”
“Human ignorance has never needed help. You think society would be more stable if magic had developed and evolved openly? Perhaps. Or perhaps kings and emperors would have added magic to their arsenal and committed atrocities to make the horrors of the past centuries look like schoolyard brawls. Perhaps they yet will.”
“Or maybe they’d have accomplished miracles.”
“Exactly so. It’s impossible to say. This is quite the gamble you’ve taken, Isaac. I hope the dice fall in your favor.”
EACH WOMAN—EACH COPY OF Kiyoko Itô—wore a simple black hospital gown. Unlike Babs’ secretary, these Kiyokos weren’t wearing the amulets that blocked me from reading their magic. I removed my glasses and sat down next to the bottom-most Kiyoko. “They’re from a Japanese novel.”
“Since when do you read Japanese?”
“I can’t read the text, but I can understand the images, the ideas and belief and excitement of the readers.”
“So what happened to not creating intelligent beings from books?” Deb whispered. “I thought Lena was the exception to that rule.”
“I think these are clones,” I said slowly. “Quick-grown in a laboratory, and written to be a
blank slate. They probably created her as a batch of cells.”
“Keep your voice down.”
“I don’t think she can wake up while she’s plugged in.” I grimaced as I tried to make sense of it all. “It looks like she’s based on that old myth that humans only use ten percent of their brains. She was written to be a semiautonomous multinode supercomputer.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Every piece is part of a larger, smarter system.”
“How smart?”
I didn’t answer. “Talulah, are you still there?”
“Just made it to the bookstore. I’ve been listening in. Clones as a biologically networked computer? Very cool.”
“I need you to hack into every camera you can, throughout the country, and run facial matches on Kiyoko Itô. But don’t use any New Millennium or Porter network.”
“How many do you think are out there?”
“I wish I knew.”
“All right. I’ll see if I can crack one of the customer service terminals here in the store and make this my base of operations, just as soon as I can figure out how to keep people’s attention elsewhere.”
“What about Vince? He should be able to conjure up a ‘look-away’ spell to keep people from noticing.”
She sighed. “He wanted to catch the end of the movie.”
“Tell him to get his ass over there, and that if he makes it in less than five minutes, I’ll help him find the truth about his runaway crow.”
I turned back to the Kiyokos. It looked like each one had a psychic link with all her sisters. I glimpsed combat scenes from her book, where a team of Kiyokos moved impossibly fast, relying on inhuman teamwork and precision to disable a larger force of armed soldiers. The book was called . . . it translated to All of One, by Shunrō Kuronuma.
I’d hoped to wipe the prison’s servers and erase the evidence of our break-in. Lethe water would probably work to wipe these four, but if they were linked to Kiyoko in Vegas or any additional clones, we were in trouble.
“Can’t you use one of those books to mind meld with them and find the sirens?” Deb asked.
“I don’t think so. It would be my one mind against at least four of them, maybe more. They’d overwhelm me the second I touched their thoughts.”
“Then maybe we should stop wasting time. Shoot them to bring the system down, and let’s get back to searching.”
I stared at Kiyoko’s face. Faces. It was possible she was being used, a tool for Keeler and Hayes and whoever else was pulling the strings of this conspiracy. Or she could have been a willing participant. Assuming “willing” was a term that even applied to a programmed clone.
Was the Kiyoko in New Millennium Babs’ prisoner, her accomplice, or her jailer?
The phone in my jaw beeped. “Yah?”
“Vince is here. I ran a program from Blackout 2020, a dystopian thriller. I know you said to focus on the U.S., but I decided to go global. It’s already tagged two matches. One in Taipei, China. The other in D.C. Both date-stamped within the past week.”
“Any recommendations on how to hack a biological computer?”
“We could try a direct neural hack from Neuromancer, but cross-novel tech is risky as hell. The tech they’re using, what book did it come from?”
“All of One. Shunrō Kuronuma.”
“Give me a minute to dig the details out of our catalog. Looks like Japanese cyberpunk. Published back in 2012. Oof. Neural hack is out unless you want your brain turned to pudding.”
“How much longer?” asked Deb, her words tight.
“What if I just yank these electrodes off of her?” I asked.
“I’d have to read the whole book, but I wouldn’t advise it. Too many writers go with the trope that a sudden disconnect from cyberspace can fry your brain.”
“We’re about to have company,” Deb warned.
“Isaac, I’m not going to be able to get you in, but if the clones are all connected, I might be able to use the one at New Millennium as an entry point.”
“She’s got that magic-blocking pearl.”
“She’s also wired into a physical network in Babs’ office, which means I can tap the cables. We’ll head back and see what we can find.”
“Thanks. And Talulah, where exactly was the match in D.C.?”
“That Kiyoko was coming out of the Pentagon.”
The sound of hard-soled boots on linoleum converged outside the door. I moved to one side of the beach ball-sized hole. Deb took the other.
“This is your one chance to surrender peacefully.” The speaker sounded both angry and eager. “We know there are two of you in there, and we will kill you if necessary.”
I glanced at the Kiyokos. Was she communicating our actions to her team? I hadn’t had time to read more than a fraction of her abilities.
“Any ideas?” asked Deb.
I remained mostly invisible, which gave me an advantage, but they were probably wearing more of those magic-damping badges. I could hit the environment around them, turn the floor to quicksand or fill the air with fireworks to blind them. The alternative was to use magic on Deb and myself. If we shrank ourselves to ant size and snuck into the walls, the guards would have a hard time—
“Drop your weapons!” The command was followed by a burst of gunfire. I flattened myself against the wall, but they weren’t shooting into the server room.
There was a noise like a baseball bat hitting a coconut. I heard one body drop, and the gunfire died. Someone else started to swear, a sound that cut off abruptly with the crack of oak against flesh.
“Your girlfriend’s back,” Deb commented.
I glanced through the hole in the door. Two men were down, one unconscious and the other likely wishing he was, judging from the obviously broken legs and his pained whimpering. Lena hurled a third guard into the wall like he weighed nothing.
The cold efficiency with which she tore through the guards frightened even me. I searched for any magic that might be influencing her emotions, fueling her rage, but there was nothing. She backfisted another guard. The jagged, fresh-cracked stubs of broken branches protruding from her knuckles cut deep gashes along the side of his face.
Bullets had torn at least three holes in Lena’s shirt and jacket. Judging from her bulk, she’d grown her wooden skin at least an inch thick. It slowed her movements, preventing her from reaching one of the remaining guards as he raised his pistol. Two more bullets thudded into her side.
She strode toward him and struck the side of his head with her bokken. She’d blunted the edges, thankfully. Gun and guard both fell.
Lena spun in a quick circle, making sure everyone was down, then approached the door. “The cell block’s sealed off. If you’re finished here, I could use a hand getting through.”
Lena marched us into the north wing of the prison. We passed three more unconscious guards, as well as a supply room that had been sealed shut. It looked like Lena had stabbed a branch into the doorframe and broken it off, leaving it to grow and grip both door and wall. Someone pounded the door from the inside, but the oak bulged more than an inch to either side of the crack. They’d need a chainsaw to cut their way out.
The door blocking Lena’s progress wasn’t quite as heavy-duty as the one into the server room, but it was a close second. Lena had grown additional saplings here, probably trying to pry the door free of its hinges, but the steel hadn’t budged.
“Are the sirens back here?” I asked.
She picked a bullet fragment out of her wooden stomach. “I don’t know.”
“Lena—”
“I can’t worry about the sirens until I deal with this, Isaac. With him.” She slammed a fist into the wall hard enough to splinter the stubs on her knuckles. She grimaced and shook her hand.
“All right.” I used an older fantasy to create what the Porter catalog referred to as Excalibur #29. This was a simpler take on the mythical blade: Roman in style, with a golden hilt. I brought the scabbard a
long as well. In this version, the scabbard had certain healing and defensive magic. Lena had her healing cordial, but I’d lost mine the night before. I drew the sword and pressed it into Lena’s hands. It turned visible, escaping the magic that still concealed me.
Lena plunged the blade into the crack at the edge of the door. She hauled down, muscles flexing beneath wood. I grimaced at the metallic squeal as she cut through the hinges. She yanked Excalibur free. Power flowed through her saplings. They flexed and bulged, twisting the door from its frame to reveal the prisoners beyond.
“Déjà vu,” I whispered. This corridor looked like it had come straight from the pages of my report describing the vampires’ dungeons in the Detroit salt mines. Each cell was airtight, with small steel doors for passing food and other objects in and out. A layer of thick Plexiglas stood just beyond the steel bars that had probably been here since the prison was built. The cells were furnished with narrow beds, a steel toilet and sink, and little else. The prisoners I’d seen in the yard pressed against the Plexiglas, watching Deb and Lena.
Lena handed Excalibur to me. “Get them out of there.”
“Where are you going?”
She strode down the hall without answering. I thought about trying to stop her. I didn’t think she’d kill anyone if she didn’t have to, but I’d never seen her like this. She disappeared around a bend.
I either trusted her or I didn’t. I turned to the nearest cell and stabbed Excalibur between the bars, through the Plexiglas.
My invisibility wavered. I tried to force the sword down to cut a doorway. Excalibur wouldn’t move. Clearly, stabbing wasn’t the right approach here. I should have created a damned lightsaber.
A devourer in the wall stretched out to envelop the blade. I yanked it free and stepped away until the spells trapping the devourer in place tugged it back like a dog at the end of its leash. After taking a moment to repair the sword’s magic, I moved in and slashed a quick X. Enchanted steel cut through the bars and the door beyond. I completed one more swing, this one low and horizontal, before Excalibur crumbled to black, gritty dust in my hands.