What Have We Done: A Cyberpunk Action Thriller on the edge of LitRPG (When Tomorrow Calls Book 3)
Page 31
Morgan gives Kate a flat wave and administers his own shot, as does Bernard. Zack checks each one of their wrists with his fingers to make sure their hearts have stalled.
Keke hugs Kate goodbye. “So, you got what you wanted.”
“What?”
“A rapture party! It’s perfect. Apart from the distinct lack of funeral cake.”
Kate almost laughs. “How can you joke at a time like this?”
“What do you mean?” asks Keke. “Apocalypses are always the best times to joke.”
Post-diabetic Keke doesn’t flinch at having to inject herself, but Seth takes the pen from her and holds her tightly. She returns the embrace. They’re all weeping.
Seth hesitates before shooting her up. “Keke.”
“Seth. You don’t have to say anything.”
“I want to.”
Footsteps outside. The smell of the horde reaches them first: The scent of malevolence seethes into the room, sweat and blood and gunpowder.
“We don’t have time,” says Keke.
“I want you to know how I feel about you.”
Keke’s eyes soften. She covers his hand with her own shaking fingers and takes her quill back.
“We don’t have time,” she says, and drives it into her arm.
Keke’s body sinks into him, and Kate watches as he holds her, breathing her in for a moment longer, then lays her gently down.
Kate is still crying when she and Seth sit on the floor and squeeze each other’s hands.
“Will it work?” Kate asks, looking at her dead children, anxiety like a bright bomb in her skull.
“I don’t know,” Seth’s breath comes in gasps.
She takes a deep, shuddering breath. Her whole body is shaking from the inside out. “I guess there’s only one way to find out.”
Kate and Seth squeeze each others hands, whispering “I love you,” and then tenderly inject one other.
Kate’s shocked by the sharp sting of the quill. She can feel the poison painting the inside of her veins. It’s exactly as she imagines a jellyfish sting to feel. A swarm, a smack. A bright blue current of venom shooting towards her heart. A rushing feeling in her head.
The barbarians hurtle in. Three, five, then ten of them, slick with fresh blood and stained by death and depravity. Kate sees them leer at Solonne in her white robe and feels sick for her. The rushing sound is taking over Kate’s vision now, but she can still make out Zack injecting himself. Zack looks over at Solonne, who nods back, her face betraying her naked fear for just an instant.
Kate’s eyeballs spin back and she expects to see darkness, realising then that she doesn’t expect to wake up again, but instead there is white thunder, like she’s standing in front of a giant waterfall. Kate and Seth fall backwards onto the floor together, still holding hands, and it feels as if they’re falling through the floor. They take their last breath, and their souls swoop out of their bodies.
Epilogue
Nirvana 1.0
It’s not like waking up.
Not quite. It’s more like when you’ve been daydreaming and then something happens to snap you out of it. You weren’t sleeping, but now you’re certainly awake. There’s a green rush of clear consciousness (Mint Crackle).
Kate’s standing in a field of seeding wildflowers. Symbolic, she’s sure, of life and death and regeneration. She remembers the garden in her small apartment with James, the black-petalled rose maze at the Luminary, and the creeping wild weeds at the glass-paned Atrium. The word ‘atrium’ is another word for heart, and it makes sense—a glass heart—as other seemingly unconnected things also all start to make sense to her now: like her colours and shapes. As if she has a more developed perspective now that she’s here, as if she’s above, or beyond, her previous existence.
Kate’s wearing her body-fitting orange catsuit again. It energises her, makes her feel as if she can do anything, like fly through the air. She touches her stomach, her hips, to make sure she’s all there. The dragon dagger is back in its sheath on her utility belt.
“Mom,” says Silver, and it is, at the same time, as if she has just appeared there and has been there all along. She looks so healthy in this dimension; Kate doesn’t think Silver’s ever looked this vital before. She has colour in her skin: sun-ripened peaches; vanilla ice cream flecked with cinnamon. She’s dressed in white, and has a SurroSis-style crossbow and a quiver of diamond-tipped arrows on her back. Her shoulders and arms are strong and ribboned with muscles.
The others are there too, and it feels right. Keke and Morgan stand behind Kate, dressed like steampunk assassins. Mally’s a sophisticated robot, sleek and strong in his titanium and silicone armour. He wears Vega’s Soul Shard on his chest, over his heart.
Bernard has taken the form of a large woolly dog, and is huffing warm, wet air into the grasses. Saint Bernard, of course, named after the monk who helped distressed travellers along their treacherous journey across the highest part of the Alpine path and founded a hospice there. The marching partners of travel and death.
Has everything always been so obvious? It’s like Kate can see clearly—really clearly—for the first time.
Zack appears next to Bernard, and he has also taken an avatar. He looks like himself but taller, with a glowing bronze skin, and giant fire-feather wings.
Saint Zachariah.
Ouroboros appears as a fluttering gold leaf tattoo on his chest: a serpent eating its own tail. Eternal death; eternal return.
“Where is Seth?”
“We’ll find him.”
“My mom? Marko? Arronax?”
“We’re not sure if they all made it, but we’ll try to find them too.”
Kate looks around. Outside of this lush natural field there is a white desert to the left, and a sparkling cityscape to the right.
“This is it?” asks Kate. “This is the real world?”
“Not quite,” says Zack. “Not yet.”
“What?”
“It’s the first step.”
“But you said the lace … would lead us out of the simulation?”
“And it did. Now you have to level up. You can’t just get straight in. You have to prove your worth.”
“It’s a game,” says Silver.
“I’m not good at games.”
“You have help.” Zack gestures at the others, and then at Silver. “Including the best player we’ve ever seen.”
“You didn’t tell me this,” says Kate.
“I knew you wouldn’t have come. You’d be cyberdust, and I would have failed.”
“What do I do now?”
“There’s only one thing you can do. Win.”
“Win? And if I can’t? There’s nothing to go back to.”
“That’s right,” says Zack, feathers flaming. “So I recommend you win.”
He begins walking ahead, in the direction of the shimmering city, leaving sparks and singed grasses rustling in his path. Bernard the dog pants and joins his side, parting the plants with her ample, wiry-haired flanks.
Kate’s nerves and energy rise in a wave, up her body. “But how?” she asks. “How do I play?”
Zack turns. Burning feathers float to the ground. “You’ll figure it out. After all, you invented it.”
<<<<>>>>
What’s Next?
If you like eccentric, hexing-and-texting witches, you might like ‘Grey Magic’, about Raven Kane, a burnt-out witch.
She’s been arrested for the murder of one of her clients. It wouldn’t be that bad for Raven, except that she knows she’s guilty.
Click here to start reading ‘Grey Magic’ now.
If witches aren’t your thing, you may like my collection of suspenseful short stories. Perfect for fans of Gillian Flynn and Roald Dahl, each story is deeply unsettling and has a delicious twist in the tale.
Start reading ‘Sticky Fingers’ here.
Also by JT Lawrence
FICTION
WHEN TOMORROW CALLS
• SERIES •
1. Why You Were Taken (2015)
2. How We Found You (May 2017)
3. What Have We Done (October 2017)
The Stepford Widow: A Short Story (Oct 2017)
The Memory of Water (2011)
Sticky Fingers (2016)
Grey Magic (2016)
NON-FICTION
The Underachieving Ovary (2016)
About the Author
JT Lawrence is an Amazon bestselling author,
playwright & bookdealer. She lives in Parkhurst, Johannesburg, in a house with a red front door.
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janita@pulpbooks.co.za
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Acknowledgments
Thank you to my committed and talented team
of beta readers: Jess David Lipworth; Mack Lundy;
Kim Smith; Brenda Helfrich; Robyn Ambler,
and Michael Lawrence.
Nerine Dorman, thank you for your mad editing skillz, and Keith and Gill Thiele for your proofreading.
Nolakhe Gozongo for sacrificing time with
your family so that you can help me with my work and look after my kids while I write.
What would I do without you? Thank you.
Deep gratitude, as ever, to my loyal readers.
A special thanks to my supporters on Patreon:
Elize van Heerden and Christine Bernard.
I’m so fortunate to have you all on my team.
Copyright © 2017 by JT Lawrence
All rights reserved.
What Have We Done is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
1st Edition
JT Lawrence has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic without written permission from the author.
Published in South Africa by Fire Finch Press, an imprint of Pulp Books.
www.jt-lawrence.com
Cover images by Shutterstock and Freepik.com
ISBN: 978-0-9947234-1-3
Created with Vellum