by Isaac Hooke
"Oh no you don't!" Ari dashed toward him.
Briar glanced over his shoulder, eyes wide with fright, and he abruptly slipped and fell. Ari winced when she saw his head bounce on the ice. He didn't get up.
Ari hurried over and knelt beside him. "Uncle!"
Briar opened heavy lids. "Dear me dear me," Briar said, panting. "You've killed me then, haven't you? I hope you're happy now, blasted woman! I curse the day my sister sired you into the world! Line up the whoremongers, we gots ourselves a fine specimen here!" The folds of fat around his neck jiggled as he spoke, and nearly engulfed the too-tight collar.
"Uncle." She cradled him in her arms. "Those are some nasty words for the daughter of your sister. What were you doing trying to run away from me? You know I'd never harm you."
"Mmm." Briar had aged rather well. She'd seen him at the mayor's dinner party a few days before, from a distance. He hadn't seemed much different from eight years ago. But up close she noticed that he had a touch of crow's feet, and the start of a widow's peak. "You'd never harm me, woman? Indeed! I saw what you did to Jeremy's guards. And I remember those threats you hurled at me with such callous disregard eight years ago... and you say my words are nasty. Not to mention the jolts of lightning you spat at my arse. Not a friendly gesture! Not friendly at all! I still have your lightning marks on my backside, I might add. Not pretty marks. I'm a sensitive man at heart. Much too sensitive for such treatment."
"You are a sensitive man. And I'm sorry for how I treated you. I've been known to have my bitch-of-the-month moments in a single day." She frowned. "But I didn't come here to talk about bygones."
"No no, of course you didn't," Briar said. "You came to see me finished. Well then, do it if you must. Snap my neck. Stab me with that flaming sword of yours. Or use your lightning. I don't care anymore. I told my whorish sister it was a mistake to marry Hoodwink, but did she listen? No!"
"Again you disrespect the good name of my mother." She combed his hair in mock tenderness. "Briar Briar Briar. I didn't come here to harm you. Trust me. But keep mentioning my mother in that manner..."
Briar drew his brows together. "I suppose you would have harmed me already, if that was your intention. Very well. It is my turn for apologies. I won't mention my sister. You are the whoremaster today."
She nodded, giving him what she hoped was her most understanding smile. She wasn't sure she liked being called a whoremaster, but if that was his way of saying he'd listen to her, well, she'd just have to take it.
"Are you all right sir?" someone shouted from the house over the bleating wind.
Ari glanced toward the mansion. Through the raging snow she saw a man wearing white gloves and a black livery standing at the back door. She clenched her fist in Briar's hair. "Make him go away."
Briar gasped. "I'm fine Alf," he called back. "Just my cousin is all! Teaching me how to figure skate! She's quite good!" He lowered his voice and added for Ari's ears alone: "At manipulation."
"As you say, sir." Alf raised his collar, obviously freezing. "If you need anything let me know." He shut the door.
Briar stared at her. "So," he sneered. "You were never one to spread the bullshit thickly on your toast. Speak plainly then. If you're not here to kill me, then what do you want?"
Ari glanced at the back of the mansion. "Is mother really here?"
"Cora? Egads no! She left the city years ago. Too many painful memories she said. I should've done the same, apparently."
Ari scanned the mansion's uppermost windows, which at times the blowing snow completely hid. She didn't entirely believe him, but she saw no one else watching her from those windows.
"Where did she go?" Ari said.
"Dhenn." Briar answered without hesitation. His eyes became distant, and his tone, sad. "She always wanted to be a singer. When she failed, when she lost everything dear to her, she went to Dhenn. Wanted to get away from the world, I guess. The poor thing."
Dhenn. The Dark City, some called it.
She spotted a raven squatting in the dead tree beside the mansion, and her danger sense tingled. She hadn't noticed the bird until now, because of the storm. It was a gol of course—no real bird could cling to those branches in a storm like this. Likely it watched the house. The first thing she always had her New User scouts do when they secured a place was to kill all the ravens.
"So is that all you wanted then, missy?" Briar was sneering again. The man really knew how to get on her nerves.
Ari smiled her sweetest smile, though her eyes must have been ice. "No Uncle Briar, it is not." She glanced at the raven. "They're coming, aren't they?"
She felt his muscles tense again. "Who's coming?"
"The city guards. Or Jeremy's Direwalkers. It doesn't matter. You're going to show me the back way out of this place."
"I am?"
She hauled him to his feet.
"Wait!" Briar said. "I still don't know what you want! And for the sake of my already bruised backside please don't say it involves Jeremy."
"It involves Jeremy."
Briar straightened like a board beside her.
"The back way, if you would?" She shoved him forward. "Unless you want me to mark your backside with lightning again?"
Briar led her from the manor grounds by the back way. She saw the raven take flight, and though the wind whipped it this way and that, somehow the bird managed to climb away through the storm.
She thought she heard the shout of guards from the front of the house, and she hurried Briar along.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Ari led Briar through the storm. She kept glancing back, and felt certain someone was following her, so when she neared Luckdown District she veered off into a side alley and waited as a large form lumbered past.
She watched the sky for ravens or other birds in the storm, but the conditions were approaching white-out. Still, she took a circuitous route to the old shack she owned, and by the time she met with Tanner about two hours had passed.
She and Tanner explained the plan to Briar. At first, her Uncle refused to play any part in it. But when she promised him wealth beyond his dreams, Briar reluctantly agreed. His eyes lit up when she mentioned the amount she could pay, and though he did his best to hide it, she detected a subtle, eager quiver in his jowls.
Briar owned one of the houses across the street from Jeremy, a house Briar never used anymore because of the Direwalkers that haunted the night. Though apparently the Direwalker activity in the area had dropped off since Ari's escape from the mansion—New User scouts hadn't reported any bodies drained of blood in days.
Jeremy was up to something, that much was certain. Ari and Tanner were trying to discover exactly just what. And so they moved to Briar's second home under the cover of the storm. Once there, Briar deactivated all his security protocols, traps that would have killed Ari and Tanner if they'd decided to break in on their own. They hunkered down on the second floor, and observed the mayor's house across the street by spyglass, though the storm made it difficult to pinpoint the windows at times. They were trying to see what Jeremy planned, yes, but they also hoped to learn as much about the inner workings of Jeremy's household as possible. The guard patrol schedule. The hours of breakfast, lunch and supper. Jeremy's usual location in the manor throughout the day.
The days passed. Ari forced Briar to stay with them, and wouldn't let him visit other rooms unescorted—Briar still had a lot of trust to earn. Briar eventually helped plant a spy in Jeremy's household—a human servant hired under his signed recommendation. At a designated hour and location, the servant tossed messages over the high stone fence bordering Jeremy's land. Her Uncle was in this as deep as Ari and Tanner, now. Amazing what the promise of a few coins can do. Still, she wouldn't let her Uncle off his tight leash, and counseled Tanner to treat him likewise.
The storm lifted when she left Luckdown District several days later, leaving Briar and Tanner to continue observing Jeremy's mansion. As she neared the transit center, she heard the ca
w of a raven high above. She glanced at the sky, looking for the bird, but the bright sun blinded her.
City guards were probably on their way.
Several new warehouses had popped up near the transit center since the last time she'd come this way. She supposed the portal traders had built them to store the goods destined for faraway cities. There were five transit centers in the city altogether, modestly named Line A, B, C, D, and E.
Ari reached the transit center, Line A, which was like a huge warehouse in and of itself. Roped-off lines led to each portal, the destinations labeled in large white signage. Her line just so happened to be the smallest. Not a popular destination, she supposed. All kinds of transitioners waited in the lines around her. Small-time traders with pack mules or big-time traders whose caravans bulged with goods. Families with crying babies and gifts for relatives, or lone men and women returning home from work. She kept an eye on the transit center gols, but none of them paid her any heed—they were all slobbering.
Her own line moved smoothly, and her turn came after about three minutes.
She hesitated.
The shimmering surface of the portal in some ways resembled a mirror, wide enough to fit four men abreast, and tall enough for two. Electricity occasionally sparked in subtle waves across the surface. She would have thought those sparks vitra once, the source of all life, but she knew the electricity for the illusion it was.
But it wasn't the false vitra that gave her pause. Though everything else behind her was reflected on the surface, she herself was not. A fact not lost on the family just behind her.
"She has no reflection!" the littlest member of the family said.
She should have been used to it by now, she supposed. Tanner had even explained it to her, telling her that some of the new gol "source" that Jeremy—or whoever was helping him—put in the system had become entwined with the blueprint used in the making of all gols. Any new gols created on the Inside were part Direwalker. Including her. She hadn't sprouted pointy teeth at least. Yet.
"But Hoodwink had a reflection when he was a gol," Ari remembered telling Tanner.
"His avatar was created before Jeremy's source entangled the blueprint," Tanner said.
"Okay. But how come I can see myself in those handmirrors you always inject Inside along with us?"
"Those are special mirrors," Tanner said. "I set them to ignore the no-reflect flags assigned to your avatar."
The guy had an excuse for everything. Still, she was glad for those handmirrors, because without them—without a reflection—she'd feel like she had no identity whatsoever. She already felt that way enough as it was, the dual personas and self-image of Inside and Outside constantly vying for control. The strong and fearless Ari of the Inside. The weak and frightened Ari of the Outside. And potentially someone else, beyond that.
Who am I?
In the mirror she saw city guards dash into the transit center and point at her. One shouted.
Ari stepped through the shimmering surface.
White light filled her vision.
Time had no meaning here. Nor did space. She had no body, yet somehow she was still corporeal. She was anchored nowhere, yet everywhere. She floated in a white primeval goo fashioned from the leftovers of the universe, the particulates that remained when the planets and the stars were made, a goo that existed in the spaces between matter.
But it was all simulated.
She was on the Inside, after all.
None of this was real.
Right?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
What is reality?
A series of lights painted on our irises? A sequence of sounds played out on our ear drums? The touch of a lover? The crisp scent of fresh snow in the morning? The taste of cinnamon-spiced wine? An emotion? A memory?
She had experienced all of these things on the Inside.
And all of them were false. Unreal.
Just like this new city she ventured to. A city she'd never been to in her life. A city she wouldn't really be in, even when she arrived. How could she be, when it was all fake?
And yet if she died here, in this world, she died in the real world, that cold world of steel and golems where her air was slowly running out and the threat of death was even more constant.
Yet Hoodwink lived. He had died in that world, the real world, and he lived. Or so she was told. Tanner believed it. So it must be true.
But it made no sense.
Hoodwink. Father. How can you survive when no one else can? How can you live through death in the real world, when neither I, nor Tanner, nor Marks, poor Marks, can do such a thing?
And are you really my father, Hoodwink?
Tanner had told her a little about the system. Time passed slower on the Inside. She understood that well enough. She even embraced it. But what had her mind in knots was the fact that she would've lived through at least five or six lifetimes by now. Tanner had told her that if you died while connected directly as a gol, you died in the real world. Whereas if you died violently while connected through a pod, you either killed your body in the real world or you woke up, and iron golems would come fetch you either way. But he also told her that when you died of old age on the Inside while in a pod, the system merely reset you, and you were reborn with a body dictated by the DNA of your real-world counterpart, and you kept being reborn until your real-world counterpart died. Each rebirth you were assigned to a random mother and father.
A random father.
When she discovered she'd been revised by Jeremy those ten years ago, all she wanted to do was find her real father. She'd found Hoodwink, or rather he found her, and she felt that her life was complete. And then she lost him.
But it turned out he wasn't her real father anyway.
Tanner said she was conceived in a thin glass tube and grown in the uterus of the pod world. He said "organic" wires were meshed into her brain and spine while she developed, wires that grew with her so that she was one with the machine. So in theory her father was the machine itself—the ship that housed her. The A.I. that ran this place. Her real father and mother would remain forever unknown. The dead bodies of her actual parents provided the eggs and ejaculate, and were stored in a bank and arranged according to something called "genetic" traits. These raw materials that formed her were chosen because they were deemed a perfect match by the A.I., and when combined would produce a child with the best possible traits for long-term survivability in the pod world. What those traits might be, she didn't know. The ability to lie still and sleep your life away while a game played in your head ranked up there as number one, she supposed.
In any case, the inevitable conclusion was, no, it was impossible that Hoodwink was her real father. Her real, actual father and mother were long dead, and the life-producing stuff they left behind was packed away in ice somewhere, ready to produce more of her brothers and sisters, who probably already numbered in the hundreds, if not thousands.
And yet for all of this, to her, Hoodwink was her father.
And that was her reality. That was real to her.
Reality is what you make it, Tanner had told her.
Hoodwink was her father, through and through.
And she missed him, but she knew he would return. When, she didn't know. How could she? Not even Tanner knew what Topside meant. I have to go Topside anyway, Hoodwink had told her before he died. She still saw the glass breaking outward. She still saw Hoodwink getting sucked into space, his body floating, receding into the distance.
Gone Topside.
Would she ever find out what Topside meant? Would she have to die to find out?
"Hoodwink can come back from death," Tanner had said the other day on the Inside, when she'd been in deep sorrow again, and contemplating the unthinkable. "But you can't come back."
"Why can't I?" she said. "Why?"
Tanner sighed deeply. "Ari. I don't know. I wish I did. I wish there was a way. But you have to wait. Trust me. How he can do it, and why you or anyon
e else can't, I don't know. Hoodwink never told me. He never told any of us. That he hasn't told his own daughter should tell you something."
"He didn't have time!" She knew Hoodwink would have told her. Eventually.
But he died.
Gone Topside.
Ari emerged from the portal into a vaulted transit center that looked very much like the one she'd just left, with similar roped-off lines leading away from each portal. There were no guards waiting for her. Good. The mayors operated independently of one another, and if Jeremy had contacted the mayor of Dhenn about her, the official would've probably laughed and told Jeremy it wasn't this city's problem. Then again, if Jeremy had cast her as a wanted terrorist, she wasn't necessarily all that safe.
She nervously followed the other transitioners who'd emerged moments before her. They had arrived from cities all over the world. She wasn't exactly sure what routing mechanism the portals used to ensure only one person came out a certain portal at a certain time, though she'd heard horror stories of people materializing with their bodies mashed together—the heads of other transitioners jutting from their chests, genitals from their armpits, hands from their faces. Terrible rumors, though in truth she'd never seen anything like that, nor anyone with a head jutting from his or her chest, though she supposed such a person wouldn't survive long.
Ahead of her, four people in different groups abruptly collapsed dead at the same time.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Ari remained calm during the ensuing panic.
It was The Drop.
It reminded her of the terrible situation on the Outside, a situation that was only getting worse. An attack had destroyed some of the pods just now, killing the sleepers who existed on the Outside, along with their representations in this world. She did her best to ignore the anguished sobs of the bereaved, knowing all too well what it felt like to lose someone important to you.