by Rusty Coats
"And you?"
I shrugged. "After I’ve finished with Jenny. I don't --"
"Jesus!"
It was Levy. Or what was left of him. His legs remained on the ledge, pinstripes and all. But the rest of him had been torn away at the waist and was now ascending through a molten gash in the ceiling, his fists beating against the talons of a dragon.
The dragon climbed to the edge of Avalon's atmosphere. It lounged mid-air to release its cargo, waited for Baxter Levy's virtual body to descend into a sporting distance and then turned its emerald-green neck toward the ground.
I'd forgotten how beautiful it was. Brass spines rose above emerald scales and lavender wings cut the sky. Its programming was genius. It moved with a ballet dancer's grace, roaring toward the surface like a bolt from Zeus.
"My God," Benedikt marvelled. "Have you even seen such impressive code, Danny?"
Marrs, now lacking his entire left arm, only moaned.
The dragon dove, wings angled back, garnet eyes locked on the Digerati boss. The Sysops huddled on the ledge, watching Levy fall, and then they saw the dragon's mouth open, and saw the orange-blue flame shoot across the turquoise sky.
Levy's body was consumed like a marshmallow, the skin turning black while the insides bubbled. His screams hiccupped in our ears, the audio tracks corrupted by the bomb, so that his voice came out as pathetic drumbeat, "Ka! Ka! Ka!"
The dragon turned on its left wing for another approach.
Cassady's autopsy report on McFee droned in my brain as I watched Levy fall. The neural tapeworm let the brain open the channel to the cerebellum, using panic as a gateway. Then it cut speech. Then muscle control. Then breathing.
Levy was dead before he hit the ground.
Marrs and Benedikt had every reason to fire whoever was on the other end of the data pipe. They stood on the shrinking ledge above four stories of flames, watching the dragon descend toward them, heads bent back in stupefied awe.
The dragon seemed to smile. And then it killed them both.
Flames turned the ledge into a funeral pyre. The Sysops stared into the dragon's garnet eyes as the flames hit, continued staring as they screamed, stared as they lost the capacity for speech. They were still staring when they slumped against each other, eyes as empty as the moon.
The dragon soared, flames spurting from its nostrils, as if it were chuckling.
Suddenly, I felt a thud on my back. Van Meter had grabbed me.
His remaining leg wrapped around my waist with the urgency of a kid on a piggyback ride. I slammed against the desk and heard a crunch, stumbled forward and barely caught my balance before falling through the hole in the floor. Below us, the ground-level dance floor had become a sea of lava, decorated with the alabaster statues of online guests unplugged by Merlin's pre-Prohibition anti-lawsuit functions.
“Kudos, Jackie.” His arm tightened on my throat. "You're the last course."
His grip was too strong. To get free, I'd have to rip his arms off, and I didn't have the leverage. So I staggered back and began pounding him against the burning wall.
"Not!" he grunted as I slammed him against the wall. "Enough!" Wham! "Time!"
The dragon hit its apex. It turned lazily, thrust its spiked tail out and plunged.
My salvation would have to be Monk. I glanced at the subscreen to tell him to drag me across the Leap without cloaking the point of exit, even though that might mean giving up our location. Staring into the dragon’s eyes, I figured it was worth it.
But Monk wasn't there. The control panel flickered, unmanned.
"Monk?" I called at the screen. "Monk!"
"All alone, Jackie." It was almost impossible to decipher; the bomb had garbled Van Meter’s voice. "But that's how you always liked it. Good old Daedalus."
I caught a glimpse of the dragon's eyes -- at the swirling, hypnotic lure -- and looked away. "Set us up," I grunted. "Set us all up."
Van Meter's laughter felt like oil in my ears. "Of course I set you up. That's my job. Levy was already on the outs. Another month and he would have sold out his interests. Roddy and Danny were in for the long haul. They still had some kind of affection for Merlin, plumbing around in the ductwork of the city, and we couldn't have that. Sooner or later they would have figured it out."
"The data pipes," I said, remembering the grid Rita showed me. "Sparta and the Palms sit on major arteries. Orphan Andy’s is on the drain spouts. Club Troc clinches it."
He chuckled. "Not bad for a has-been. When Club Troc is gone, we'll seal the spouts so the back-haul of data spills over into real-time. The system will crash. And for a nanosecond, the unthinkable will happen: Avalon will cease to exist."
"And then you'll hang the 'Under New Management' sign."
"A shame to lose you, Jack. But, like I said, you should have stayed in the past."
The dragon was only a hundred meters away now, and the flames boiled over its nostrils. My eyes snagged on its garnet pupils again, on the swirling images there, and I jerked my head away, thinking that if I didn't look at the dragon's eyes, I'd make it.
But Van Meter grabbed my chin and thrust my face toward the beast. "This is the last time you'll see Avalon, Jack. Face it like a man."
I looked up, but instead of seeing the dragon's brilliant wings, the infrareds in my visor toggled the control screen from my datapack. The list lit up the side of my field of vision: IDENTITY, FLIGHT LOG, OPTIONS, LOCATION. And at the bottom:
MOHICAN.
The dragon roared, but my mind was on McFee's autopsy. And how Cassady said that McFee's encryption program had to be disengaged for the worm to work.
Because high-level encryption refracts the tapeworm.
My eyes moved to MOHICAN, blinked twice to cue the infrared sensor. And the datapack moved the hybrid gauze program from the ROM to my suit.
Flame erupted from the dragon's mouth, an orange-blue dagger cutting the sky.
"See you in the next reality, Jack."
The light bar blinked cobalt blue on Mohican and I said, "Run."
The corrupted audio files skewed the command for a moment, then it took hold. And as the flames seared across the sky, I began to disappear.
Jenny said: "Huh?"
His grip felt distant, as if he were squeezing me through a pillow. Then, as my body faded, his grip passed through me, his arms moving through a crosscurrent of evaporating data. I looked down and saw my body returning to its featureless form.
The program scrolled off its progress: Forty percent cloaked, sixty, eighty.
One hundred percent.
"DENYS!"
With nothing left to hold, Van Meter fell into a slop of corrosive lava. He looked up in time to see the dragon's flame pass through my transparent body.
"No."
The flames turned the floor into a swamp fire. Van Meter’s body shook, the sharp seams of his black Stygian blurring, but his eyes would not let go, reflecting the swirl of the dragon's pupils. As the flames consumed him, Van Meter stopped thrashing. His head fell against his desk, virtual eyes brilliant, blue and empty.
The dragon pulled out of the descent, turned itself into an arrow and shot a hole through the sky, disappearing in the turquoise perfection.
I glanced at Van Meter as the corrosive slag ate through the floor, then saw him fall four stories through his charred nightclub. He splashed into a lake decorated with alabaster statues that looked like tombstones, then sank below the surface.
The Leap cleared from my visor in time for me to see a tungsten spotlight explode, showering the stage with bits of blue-tint lens. I smelled ozone through the helmet, as tart as horseradish. The beaker beside me was empty; Rita was gone.
"Monk?"
I heard him holler from the hall, just as a burst hit Rita's uplink beaker. "Suit out fast, Jack. "We've been found."
I shoved the helmet off and peeled off the suit. The stage was littered with broken glass and debris. Rita's scuba suit lay on the Vitrolite stage like a dehy
drated corpse. I saw her barefoot tracks in the dust, headed for Monk's trapdoor. I caught sight of the neon WPA clock, hands clasped at midnight. I'd been in Avalon for almost five hours.
In the hall, I heard the litany of Prohibition: "By authority of the United Nations, I find you in violation of International Amendment 28! Surrender or be taken by force!"
He repeated it, but his companions weren't waiting for peaceful compliance. Red sparks fell on the dusty floor as Monk and the datacops traded electricity.
I jumped out of the beaker and ejected the ROM from our datapacks, hoping I had the only copies of Mohican. I grabbed my clothes, feeling the heater I'd taken from Cassady's goon, shoved the fedora over my head and beat it down the hall.
Monk was holed up in a dumbwaiter built for delivering supplies from the sub-basement, where a tram once connected the Campus to the rest of the world. He carried the stun rifle at his hip, slung low and speaking storms to the datacops above.
"By the authority of the United Nations --"
"Authorize this!" Monk hollered, letting his rifle finished the sentence.
The datacops backed away. Outside, I heard the bass-drum beat of 'copters and figured the Campus must look like an urban assault zone.
"Sounds like there's a dozen out there."
"Try two dozen. Ferret counted twenty datacops upstairs, but they ain't alone. Copters everywhere. Plus, the whole Campus is crawling with Neuromantics."
I snapped the suspenders in place. "Neuromantics? What brings them out?"
Monk fried the metal hinges of his trap door until they glowed. "Ask those guys. But don't expect anything more than 'international authority' crap. Ferret says the Neuromantics are in a sweep formation, kickin' in doors and shootin' tear gas."
I tied my shoes. "Everybody's on a bug hunt today."
He gave me the once-over. "You OK?"
I nodded. "Tight scrape. But yeah. Levy, Marrs and Benedikt weren't so lucky."
His brown eyes jumped. "All three of them? Jesus Christ, Jack."
"All four of them. Van Meter tried to trap me the way he trapped his Digerati pals. I keyed Mohican and disappeared. Jenny took the bullet."
Monk sagged against the dumbwaiter door. "All of them?"
I shoved my arms into my sleeve. "Club Troc burned to the ground. Worse than The Palms or Sparta. I think it actually hurt the people trapped inside."
"All dead." He raised his eyes to mine. "Then who's in control?"
Standing in the tight alcove as the datacops plotted their invasion, I had no answer to Monk’s question. The Digerati had ruled Avalon for six years, divvying up the profits from the city, keeping the datacops paid off and scoffing at septal decay. Almost by accident they'd defined outlaw culture, and now they were gone. It was like stepping into the cockpit of a Tube train and finding it empty, searing down the rails.
The datacops didn't give us much meditation time. They pushed an old Mensa through the trapdoor, opening a hole in the ceiling, and the lightning storm moved in.
A rosy-cheeked lieutenant stepped into the clearing and I unloaded a burst on him, my heater keyed high enough to knock him backward four meters.
Then they upped the ante. We heard the sound of a stone plunking into a pond, and a canister flew through the hole, belching smoke. We knew instantly what it was.
Orange gas took root in my lungs and spread like thorns. Monk hacked and shook, fighting it. I tucked my face into my Tremayne, using the fabric as a filter.
A new face poked through the hole, covered by a gas mask and wearing a black jumpsuit. Over the right breast was the insignia of the globe ignited by a Tesla coil, the face flashing pale eyes I knew too well. Wells Janak. The Neuromantic Southpaw.
"Hello, Jack!" he called, waving the barrel of the tear gas gun. "Glad I could join you! Would you like to invite me down?"
Monk turned, eyes streaming tears. "Where'd he come from?"
"Head office. He's Zamora's left hand," I said. "Southpaw, or used to be. If he's here, that means the whole Neuromantic force is behind this. We've gotta get out."
I tried to draw a bead on his body, but couldn't focus, fired anyway, hit the ceiling girders and shorted out an emergency light. Janak smiled, patronizing me. Then he motioned over his shoulder and six others appeared, one of them with a rope ladder. It fell into the hole and smacked the linoleum, and the first set of boots hit the rungs.
Monk grabbed my arm. His cheeks looked like they'd been smeared with Vaseline. "Take the tunnels. Find Ferret. He'll get you and Rita outta town. Far as ya can go. If the Sysops are dead, this is gonna get worse."
"We'll both --"
"No!" He reached behind me and unlatched the dumbwaiter door. "I ain't bein' noble Five minutes, then I'm settin' this rifle on charge and runnin' for the storage closet. The explosion should buy me some time."
He pushed me toward the dumbwaiter and I stubbornly set my feet, fired three shocks over his shoulder at the descending datacops, missed all three times.
"Monk."
He grabbed my shoulders with rough hands. "It ain't me they want, Jack. It's you. And they'll hunt ya like a wild rabbit. So run like one."
My face was slick from the gas as I climbed in. The orange clouds billowed behind Monk as he yanked the dumbwaiter door down, the metal latching and locking, leaving me in a cold darkness broken only by the glow of my stun's metal prongs.
Rita wrapped her arms around me and kissed me, squeezing tight. I staggered, sick from the gas and said: "I can't see."
Ferret was waiting by the tunnel opening. Rita took my hand and led me there.
Before we went into the musty tunnel, we heard the concussions as the stun-guns hit the electronic equipment. Monk was retreating into the pressroom, using his precious equipment as shields -- the Mensas he'd restored, the beakers, his experimental suits. From the sub-basement, we could hear them explode.
We ran. I held Rita's hand, my eyesight returning in shadows.
We went into the tunnel, running over broken cables that once pulled supply trams between buildings. Ferret steered us into an official-use-only staircase, down the maintenance tunnels for the sewer system. We ran through brackish water that covered the floor like a skin, looking over our shoulders, seeing nothing.
Ferret signaled me closer at a call box and we shoved it sideways, exposing an entrance roughly chiseled out of the wall. I kicked a stone in and heard it fall, never heard it hit bottom. Four steel pins anchored a chain that disappeared in the hole.
"You go," Ferret said, his breath whistling. "Leads to tunnel. Safe there."
I nodded. "What about you?"
He motioned over his shoulder with his thumb. "Monk."
"You'll bring him to the Tube station?"
He shook his head. "Monk stay with us."
Rita pushed the hair out of her face. "They'll follow you."
Ferret slashed the air with a sharpened ROM and said, "Hope so."
In the distance, we heard the explosion. It thundered through the tunnel, echoing from Administration. Monk had detonated his rifle.
Ferret shoved me toward the hole. "Go now."
I crawled into the opening, grabbed the dirty chain and began climbing. Rita followed. Then Ferret shoved the call-box back into place, sealing the opening with a hollow crunch as the metal hit home.
Rita and I moved hand over hand into the blind darkness, listening to the echoes of explosions above. We climbed until our shoulder muscles felt like they'd leap off our bones. The world was blanketed in an oily rag and we climbed deeper into it.
When we reached the bottom, I dug the halogen out of my coat and lit up the world we'd climbed into. We were on the western branch of the old intracity tunnel, its curved walls broken from the force of that long-ago earthquake. Staring into the tunnel we could see only darkness and rubble. Nothing easy.
Rita's dress was wrecked from the oily chain, the pastel yellow smeared black. My Tremayne was no better, its life long since sacrificed. We star
ed for a second in the eggshell glare of the halogen, at the smudges and tears on our faces. Rats chittered among the broken tiles and the ground seethed with bugs, but we couldn't hear the explosions anymore, and for the first time we knew we were going to make it.
I brushed the hair out of her face, leaned in and kissed her. Her fingers dug into my shoulders as her lips opened with mine. And I held her close, and she let me.
Then I took her hand, and we walked into the tunnel, four hours from daylight.
AVALON XXI: Fugitives
The brushed-aluminum Tube train cut through the transparent pipe like a bullet, chasing the eastern horizon. The skyline of New Berkeley disappeared in a blur of steel and glass, replaced by the tract homes of abandoned suburbia. Before the Depression, these bedroom towns boomed, fueled by a love for vaulted ceilings, shopping malls and fresh-laid sod. Now they were part of the ruins, the residents scattered like pollen, their jobs automated or drowned in a Chinese nuclear rainstorm. From the Tube, the cracked Spanish tile looked like an infestation clinging to the blond hills, too stubborn to let go.
United Nations authorities have declared a state of martial law on the site of the former World Progress Administration Campus, birthplace of the doomed virtual city known as Avalon. Tonight, as troops lay siege...
Rita slept as my eyes moved between the sprawl and the news images on the cabin screen. I brushed the hair from her smudged cheek, saw the grime imbedded in my palm and wondered if we'd ever be clean again. The redcap in New Berkeley had glared with contemptuous metal-flake eyes as we tracked mud across the station, but that didn’t stop him from taking the pirated credit ROM from Rita's filthy hand.
Unconfirmed reports speculate that at least four thousand people were killed last night during what experts believe is the first such disaster in the history of immersion technology. The people, whose names are being withheld, died in Avalon’s Club Trocadero, a night spot famous in the illegal community for dancing and, of course, its opulent sex rooms.....
I needed sleep, but too many images swam across my eyelids when I blinked. Freefalling Baxter with a dragon on his tail. Van Meter, dead and twitching, falling into a lake of corrupted code. Online dancers turned to alabaster husks. Monk, blurred by the tear gas, closing the dumbwaiter door. The blind darkness of the Campus tunnels. Yes. Insomnia has its perks.