by Curtis Hox
Hark strode through. He saw Binda standing by the vases. “You find yours?”
She nodded. “Right here.” She tapped the vase.
“Good. Hers won’t be so easy.”
Hark strode to the TV display, ran his finger along the bottom, and turned it off again. Binda struggled not to stare at his muscles lined in black. His feet and shins, knees, pelvis, abdominals, chest, shoulders, elbows were all covered in armor, but it fit as if it had grown on him. His hands were covered now, and the glistening, ebony material had run up under his chin to surround his neck. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think he was about to activate some mask. But Hark couldn’t cover up that beautiful face, not with everyone watching. Not unless it was serious …
“It’s happening?” Binda asked.
“Right now, the entire city is flipping. A major bleedover antagonist with a beef against me has infected this entire V.”
“Infected?” Celia asked.
Hark turned to her. “Listen carefully, Celia. You need to find your final trigger. And do it soon. Most people’s are in plain sight. Yours … will be hidden. You’ll be drawn to it. We don’t have much time.”
“What’s coming?” Binda asked.
The dark look that crossed Hark’s face meant he wasn’t going to tell.
Celia saw it. “What … should I do?” She stood.
Hark rounded the couch. “Binda, walk her through it. Explain the sensation of being near your parachute.” He moved to the window.
“Where’s Frankie?” Binda asked.
“Standing guard.”
Hark continued to stare at the city below, as if he could read what was happening. Whatever he saw, she could tell he wasn’t happy.
He turned to her. He bent to one knee, as if he might propose. He gently grabbed her arms. “Use your chute. It’ll trigger your insurance policy, Binda, before the rush. You need to be early. The premiums for the VIPs will go first. You need to put it on now.”
“No way.” She shook her head. “You’ll protect us from whatever’s coming. And I’ll have made my career. You know how this goes: every Rend-V principal has to prove herself in the big show. When the tension gets high, you can’t bail. Right?”
He smiled at her the way she’d seen him smile at so many top-tier Rend-V actresses. Usually a kiss followed. She let herself breathe the scent of him in, slowly, and she smelled, of all things, something like aftershave. That was maddeningly unoriginal, but it lingered. If he leaned forward just a little more, she’d plant one on him herself. Celia was watching. She knew the entire Rend-V audience was watching.
Hark nodded. “That’s true, but …”
“But nothing. I’m doing this. Besides, with you on our side, what could go wrong?”
The explosive sound of five loud Blaster retorts echoed from outside the office.
29
Krista walked into the hive immersion apartment and stopped, the barrel of a Voxyprog assault rifle in her face.
Tripp sat on his cot, looking as if he’d just woken up. Four fully armored and augmented Voxyprog stormtroopers surrounded him. Pizer appeared wearing traditional Sersavant finery. She noted fire swirls embroidered on his sleeve and the ostentatious gold brocade at his neck that made him look like a puffed up bird. The gold chain and medallion that marked his station hung from his neck.
“Ah, Inspector Cole,” he said. “It seems we’ve sniffed you out.” He waved away the police, the team lead scowling, but sent a signal to his men to back down.
They all retreated a few steps, weapons pointed at the floor.
“Care if I sit?” Pizer said.
Krista glanced at Tripp, who looked like he’d just eaten a bit of rotten fish. Atticus? No response from her AI. They must be blocking it. Tripp shook his head, signaling that his AI, Sunni, was blank. Both of their AIs had been dismantled, thanks to the mighty hand of Pizer. As a Spinner, she had other non-technological means at her disposal, but those, hopefully, wouldn’t be needed.
With a subtle shake of her head she intimated to Tripp to do nothing.
She ran her fingers through her hair, took a centering breath, and faced Pizer. “We had you on the run for longer than most, didn’t we?”
“That you did.”
She glanced at Garce behind the plastic, Sammy standing near him like a protective rooster. Garce was obviously still in play. Hark, in his own vat, was still immersed. That was a curious fact she needed to wrap her head around. Why are the letting him …?
Krista grinned. “Pizer, what game is this?”
“It’s all working out perfectly, thanks to your brother. He’s such a simple soul.”
“You’ve been playing him from the beginning?”
“That bit of brilliance is Director Preston’s doing. I just wanted to flip the V to demonstrate what wonders can happen when we mix things up. It didn’t take much convincing to manipulate EA, once Director Preston’s idea became clear.”
“I thought so. Always the heretic. And your bosses?”
“With Collides doing so well, those funds are funneling to the right people, who are walking around happy. Blind eyes are being cast my way.”
“No one cares the V is flipping?”
“Ah, Director Preston’s inimitable Ervé ... ”
“Ervé wants Harken.”
“That he does,” Pizer said with a smile.
Krista shook her head, pretending to have a headache. She just needed a few precious seconds to work out the possible outcomes. All of them led to Hark burning everything to the ground, which would destroy not only every person in the V, but all her work for the past decade.
She faced Pizer, presenting her best please-listen-to-me face. “Pizer, call off Ervé. Don’t push Hark into a corner. He’ll make everyone suffer.”
Pizer presented an odd old man’s face that was, somehow, youthful and alert. “Since you failed to convince him, we have … a surprise that will keep him on script.”
“Surprise?”
“The boy from The Borderlands, Saul. We’ve got him. And … we’re going to use him.”
“In Collides?”
Pizer nodded and spoke over his shoulder. “Keep a team here. I want this place guarded until we can move Specialist Cole back to an official immersion clinic. It’ll have to wait until this next bit of drama concludes, maybe while he sleeps in-V. We don’t want to upset our viewers by making Hark disappear.”
“Let these two jump in whenever they choose. They’re part of the drama now.”
Krista raised her hands. “No one’s directing me.”
“Of course not,” Pizer said, placating palms out in a gesture of friendship. “We just mean you’re getting a fan base. You’re free to improvise. In fact, we expect it.”
“No hard feelings about my prayer to the host?”
“None at all. And you can have your library … and all that’s in it. We’ll keep Ervé’s horde away. Have you seen the library yet?”
“Thank you.” But that doesn’t solve the problem of Hark murdering Celia, if he has to, she thought. “And no I haven’t. I was planning on jumping in now.”
Tripp stood, obviously unable to contain himself. “I’m in this for Hark. Get that straight.” The shrunken Pizer turned toward him like a dwarf to a giant. Tripp said, “I’m no specialist, no actor. I don’t follow scripts. And I carry a black shield. That means in the real world, everyone in this room is my bitch.” Krista watched all the cops staring at him as if he were their true boss. More than one looked openly fearful. Tripp stepped by Pizer. “Keep that straight, Vox.” To Krista, he said, “I’m getting some lunch before going back. Hark’ll need us.”
“I’ll wait for you,” she said.
Pizer tipped his head. “Good day, Agent Cole.” He turned back to Krista. “I’m looking forward to this upcoming episode: Ervé confronts Hark.”
Krista snorted. “It should be good. I wouldn’t bet on Ervé.”
Pizer nodded for her to fo
llow. He edged past the cops, toward Garce floating peacefully in his vat. Sammy wrung his hands, distraught. With one look by Pizer he shuffled away.
“Why did you use … this freelancer?” Pizer asked, as he stared at Garce behind the curved glass.
“What do you mean?” Krista asked.
“You have an intellect that towers over his. You could have …”
“I need mobility.”
“Ah, right.” He circled around the immersion vat, as if inspecting the contraption. “What if I told you I fully expect your brother to succeed in killing the host?”
“I’d tell you you’re smart and to shut down Ervé so that he doesn’t feel pressured.”
“Not going to happen. Your brother’s illegal project here has been too successful. I want the flip. Director Preston wants the drama. Ervé wants his revenge. But none of us want it to end. Do we?”
Krista felt her breath catch as Pizer looked at her. His mind was a powerful thing, but like all high-level Sersavants, he had learned to mute himself. The sort of open psychic powers some people demonstrated was considered crude. It was like walking around with your banking account number tattooed to your forehead. She knew she was being maneuvered, but he was a blank to her, as she was to him. They both knew how to bottle themselves in an instant.
“What are you suggesting?” she asked.
“We were impressed that bleedover lore of yours worked. Overnight, while Celia Preston dreamed in stasis, the library sprouted defensive towers, automated sentries, the whole lot.”
“I’m good.”
He moved in close, like one colleague to another, hoping for a shared professional tip. “See, that’s what fascinates me. We get so many of those prayers daily, we run them through the scanning system. All the prayers are funneled to a team who codes them into a database that is fed directly to our host. I’m told she gets them as if in a dream. And they soothe her. She grants wishes sometimes. We couldn’t figure out which one was yours.”
Krista grinned at him. “I would imagine not.”
“Funny, though, that the very night after we seeded that batch, your library became one of the most secure buildings on the island.”
“Yeah, funny.”
“Care to explain how you convinced the host?”
Krista pursed her lips at him and considered telling him off. “Pizer, you chose the Voxyprog. I chose the Society of Spinners. We have different methods. You use human computers to send code into human hosts. We have words on pages, pictures, songs even. We have narrative itself. All I did was suggest she make the change or she might not enjoy being in that stasis vat for long.”
“Your move was ostentatious, though, enough to raise some hackles. Manipulating a host that way. Threatening her with bleedover lore.”
She moved in as close as possible. She could smell the sweetness of his breath and skin that seemed oiled with some moisturizing agent. “The Vox will be repaid. They know this.”
He nodded, as if understanding she had her own contacts. “But now I know …”
“What do you want? And if we do this, it goes both ways.”
“I understand. What I’d like for you to do is take responsibility for turning our host.”
“You mean us Spinners? Why not the Vox?”
“We couldn’t admit we did that—”
“Against the integrity of your hacking ideals.”
“Right.”
“Turn how?” Krista asked, skeptical.
“I’ll send over a backstory for her. She’ll be the demon-queen of this new world we’re making.”
“And you want me to pretend to have used bleedover lore to force the host to transform her in-V?”
“Exactly. You were impressive with getting your library. Claim responsibility for what happens to the host—”
“Fine. But you quash questions of how I manipulated the host.” She waited while he nodded. “The library’s that impressive?”
“It is.”
“It won’t matter if you turn her, Hark will kill her anyways. I have to find a solution to that—”
“Regarding that problem, I have another proposition for you.” He grinned, no longer pretending to be anything other than a Voxyprog zealot. It’s always about the Vs for them, she reminded herself. Always about building what has never been built. “Hear me out, I think it’ll solve your problem so that both of us win. And Hark can still be himself. Then, you can visit your library.”
30
Krista stood on Collide’s faux 5th Avenue on a bright and muggy late afternoon. The crowds were dense, tourism in-V always at peak levels due to the eternal spring and summer provided by the Sersavants. The wide, stone steps out front allowed people to sit and cool off while they waited to go inside.
The old beau-arts building that had been the model for the library reared up beyond the steps. The temple facade with its three tall entrances was still there. And the building’s multi-story wings to either side still stretched up and down the street. But now cylindrical towers stood at either end. Battlements lined their tops. Also, she saw other fortifications like portcullises before the arched entrances. Bars on the windows looked stout enough to stop a team of elephants from yanking them off.
Krista planned to walk around the entire building. Her prayer threat had worked. She’d led Pizer to believe it had been a piece of bleedover lore, the central mechanism Spinners used to manipulate the real world. Its existence was enough to make a man like Pizer quake in his night slippers. But, all she’d written on the prayer was a strongly worded request that the library become a fortress. She explained who she was and why it was needed. And she hinted she could swallow up the shrine, and its host floating inside in a bio vat, with a few simple words.
Nothing like coercion to get your prayers answered.
Oh the irony, she thought, as she began to walk. The host was protecting an archive of objects created in-V, the very texts from which Spinners took their content that, when stitched together, could make magic.
She wanted to hum to herself or maybe whistle, but too much was at stake. And she’d just made a deal with Pizer that would take some explaining to Hark. He’d listen and understand. He’d have to.
31
Hark rushed into the secretary’s office. Frankie stood rigid, arm stiff, Blaster pointed at the open doorway.
The glass doors had been shattered into a thousand shards that littered the floor. The two elevator doors had burst open, as if something had smashed its way out.
Inside, on his knees, clawing at the side of the elevator, was a mutated human being in a business suit. Hark saw two sizable holes in the man’s chest, enough to have killed a regular person. This mutant was still alive, but barely. Distended chest and arms as long as a large chimp’s had given it the strength to smash through the elevator but not ample defense against Hark’s Consortium Blaster. He glanced at the man’s elephantine face, half of it a swath of flesh that had attached itself to the man’s shoulder.
“What is that?” Frankie asked, the Blaster dropping to his side.
“That’s what happens when narratives get mixed up. That’s something from someone’s biotech nightmare.”
“Elevator’s out of commission.”
“But the shaft is still there.” Hark glanced at the stairwell door. “And the stairs.”
Frankie nodded, eyes still ahead.
To his right, Hark saw movement. He spun, ramping up his carapace, until he saw Krista standing there.
“It’s happening fast,” she said. “Oh, put your hands down.”
He dampened the energy and embraced his sister. She was a tiny thing next to him. He wanted to lift her off her feet. She would kick him if he did. But his older sister folded into his arms for a few seconds.
“Glad you made it back,” he said.
She glanced around. “We have to talk.”
He led her out of the lobby and back into the office suite. Celia and Binda looked up. Krista approached the
two women, eyes on Celia.
“Has she found her final trigger?” Krista asked.
Celia shook her head. “No.”
“We’ve been looking,” Binda said.
“Well, stop,” Krista replied.
“Stop?” Hark asked. He gently grabbed his sister’s arm and pulled her to the far side of the suite. They stood in a narrow, short hall opposite the vases in the wall. “Stop? If she doesn’t wake up … and I can’t protect her for long …”
“You? Not protect her?” Krista put her hand’s on her brother’s chest, then patted his cheek. “You will, Hark. I know you will.”
Hark retrieved himself. “What’re you doing, Krista? You have to tell me. Things are moving too quickly.”
“I’ve got agents here, Hark. I’ve got other assets. I’ve got an entire block dedicated to a cross-V operation. You can’t wake her up, and you can’t let her die.”
“Get them out.”
“I can’t … do that.”
Hark turned away and considered leaving her in the hall, maybe walking back to Frankie. His sister’s secretive job was always causing problems for the agencies. The Spinners were an unofficial group of individuals who used anomalies in the Rend-Vs to further their own agenda. From what he’d gleaned in the past she was using this boring, low-profile V for some project that affected the real world.
He rounded on her. “Krista, I’m going to wake her because I have to. And you know why.”
“No matter what?”
“Yes.”
“I was afraid you’d say that. That’s why I … made arrangements.”
“What have you done?” Hark looked around as if the walls themselves might melt away.
“I’ve done what I have to.”
“Krista …”
She backed up, shaking her head. “We don’t have time for this. Right now you have to prepare for Ervé. I knew you wouldn’t leave, so I’m here to help. It’s going to be big. All my sources say this place will definitely flip.”
“Then it’s better if she exits peacefully, Krista.”
“I’ve got important work here, Hark. You wake her, that’s all lost. Valuable persons will die here. It’s bigger than your promise. These are real worlds, Hark. Real people.” She pulled him to a far corner where a table lined the wall. On it, several magazines had been placed in a fan. “Look at this.” She pointed to one. “Ever heard of that?”