He also saw on one of the walls the large, inset-framed collage called “The Warrior,” its copper and gold and gray-subdued pinks perfectly suited to the terra-cotta floor, the artwork given as a wedding gift to Timothy and Meredith by Hiroko, who owned Visions, an art gallery downtown. Caine smiled at Hiroko and as he did every time he looked at the collage he said, “God, sweetie, but I love that work; one of yours, I believe.”
Just as Hiroko pulled Caine down from his six-four to her four-ten and kissed him, Meredith came back with Hiroko’s beer and Caine’s scotch, and a Modello for herself. She grinned and asked, “Would you like to use the guest room?” Caine laughed, and as Meredith served the two the doorbell chimed.
Meredith stepped to the door. “Lyssa, Arik,” she said in greeting. “We’re in the great room, having a drink while waiting for Timothy.” Moments later Alice Maxon held a glass of chardonnay and Eric Flannery a tumbler with two fingers of Macallan, neat.
Eric took a sip then turned to Caine and asked, “How’s the plastic business these days? Given anyone bigger boobs lately, or trimmed anyone’s schnoz?”
“Sirrah!” said Caine, drawing himself up in mock protest, “I’ll have you know that Cosmetic-Cuttings R Me never, I mean never, calls those body parts by those names.”
“Oh, what do you call them instead?”
“Why by their precise Latin names: hooters and beaks.”
Struggling to suppress laughter, Eric said, “Good to know, my dear plastic surgeon, I’ll use those proper terms in my next book.” Then he broke out laughing, as did Caine and Hiroko and Meredith, though Alice simply looked at all three and sighed.
“Son of a bitch!” came a yell from upstairs.
Shortly after, Timothy Rendell clattered down the steps. He looked about the great room, sweeping them all up in his gaze. “Bastards!”
“Whoa, big fellow,” said tiny Hiroko.
Timothy made a wave-off, negative gesture. “Oh, not you, not any of you, but the fucking heirs of Arton, of Arthur.”
“The estate has been settled?” asked Eric.
Timothy nodded toward the flaxen-haired writer. “Yes, Arik. It has.”
“But I thought that would take years,” said Alice, perplexity behind her brown-eyed gaze.
Tim puffed out a sharp breath. “According to Toni who got it from Mark, as of this morning, Finster and Charlotte are the sole inheritors.”
“Six months since Arthur’s funeral,” said Eric.
“Then Mark must be a better lawyer than we gave him credit for,” said Caine.
Even as Timothy nodded, Meredith handed him a tumbler of Macallan. Timothy looked into her dark eyes and seemed to settle down somewhat. He took the scotch and murmured a “Thanks, love.” Then he turned to Caine and said, “Yes, Kane, he must be. I mean, in spite of thinking that Arthur Coburn’s estate would be in receivership for years, it took Mark just six months in all to settle the inheritance affairs.”
“Even so,” asked Eric, “why all the rage?”
“Because, the first thing the heirs asked Toni to do was to shut down Avery for a restart.”
“And this would be bad because . . . ?”
Timothy took a deep breath and exhaled and seemed to settle even more. “Because of the message I received from Avery this morning, a message I forwarded to Toni. Because of it she refused, as did everyone else. And the sons of bitches evicted her and the entire corporate team.”
“Evicted—?”
The Black Foxes looked at one another, and Hiroko asked, “They can do that?”
“They just did,” spat Timothy. “Sent in their goons and threw everybody out.”
“But what about Avery?” asked Alice.
“Toni says Mark is going to get someone else to do the restart,” said Timothy.
“But they don’t know squat about Avery,” said Caine. “I mean, it’s sheer lunacy.”
Hiroko frowned and took a sip of her Modello. Then she looked at Timothy and said, “But Avery has been babbling. What could he possibly say that would stop Toni from a restart.”
“Here, I’ll show you,” said Timothy. He took up a remote and flipped on a vidscreen. “I transferred it so that you could all see it for yourselves.” Timothy pressed another button, and three stark words popped onto the vid:
Help. Prisoner. Arton.
The Foxes stared at the screen in stunned silence. Finally Caine said, “Holy Arda, can this be true?”
Meredith said, “If it is true, then we’ve got to do something.”
“What are the odds, Tim?” asked Eric.
Before Timothy could answer, Alice shuddered and said, “But Arton was ripped in two by that swamp monster. Half of him fell at my feet. Or rather at Lyssa’s feet.”
“Even so, that was in virtual reality,” said Caine. “It was on Itheria, a place where magic is real. And on Itheria, Arton could have been resurrected, or he might have been turned into a spirit, a ghost”—Caine looked at Alice—“just as you were, Lyssa.”
“Yeah,” said Hiroko, “but when Arton was ripped in two on Itheria, Arthur Coburn died out here as well . . . in reality, that is.”
“True,” said Meredith, “but as Kane said, magic is real on Itheria, and so he could have somehow survived. Yet there is this, magic is not only real in that VR place, but for us, as Ky said, it’s real out here as well.”
“Yeah, if it’s magic, that is,” said Caine. “But I think Avery changed our brains somehow, and instead of magic it could be psi and ESP.”
“I’m not certain there’s any difference,” said Eric. Then he turned to Timothy and asked, “So, Trendel, again I ask, what are the odds that this message speaks the truth?”
Timothy shrugged. “There’s no way to know. But listen, Avery did make a complete mental pattern of each of us when we were in VR; either that, or as Dr. Greyson believes, he sucked in our very souls. No matter which, Arthur’s mentality might still exist inside of Avery. Most likely in the volatile memory, though it could now be in permanent storage as well. I mean, since we can’t access Avery, there’s no way of knowing. But if that pattern is in volatile space, then a shutdown and restart would wipe Arthur Coburn out.”
Meredith nodded. “As I said, lover, if this is a valid message, we’ve got to do something to set Arthur free.”
“It might only be Arton we set free,” said Hiroko, “and not the full of Arthur.”
“True,” said Eric. “Still, if Timothy is correct, then the entirety of Arthur Coburn’s mentality resides somewhere in Avery, and to activate that would bring Arthur back to life.”
“Do you think so?” asked Alice. “What I mean is, with Arthur’s body dead, would he really still be alive?”
“That’s a question for Greyson to answer,” said Eric. “I mean, he’s the philosopher, the ethicist, the metaphysician, not us. And so, as to whether Arthur is yet alive in some manner is for him and others like him to resolve.”
“Perhaps,” said Caine, “but Greyson’s gone a bit ’round the bend. If he would let me, I could heal him, though with me taking on his neuroses or whatever, then it’d be weeks before I would be whole again.”
“I don’t want you to do that,” said Hiroko. “I mean, it was bad enough when you were bats after what the Dark God did to you.”
“My heart,” said Caine, “he showed Kane something that I cannot remember, but in reality what he did was push my seat of fear, my amygdala, well past overdrive, and that took a very long time to set to rights.”
“Fourteen weeks, all told,” said Eric, who had visited Caine every day.
Hiroko nodded, for, as soon as she had moved her art gallery down from Santa Fe to Tucson, she had visited him each day throughout his recovery as well.
Alice looked at the displayed message. “Of course, this might all be a trick of Avery’s. Perhaps he is trying to lure us back into VR simply to get even with us.”
“It could be a trick,” said Eric, “yet the message was sent to Tim
othy and not Toni. Why do you think that was?”
In silence, they all looked at one another, but then Meredith said, “Tim wrote most of the basic software for the AI. Perhaps there’s a special bond between Avery and him.”
Timothy shook his head. “Oh, sure, I was the overlord of superusers, and if that means anything then perhaps it is Avery who sent the message, and not Arton. Avery might think that what I did to him at our final encounter was betrayal, and he’s simply out to get even. On the other hand, perhaps it’s Arton who actually sent the message—or rather Arthur instead, and mine was the only comm connect he could remember. I mean, we did communicate a lot during the entirety of the project.”
No one spoke for long moments, but finally Alice said, “But to go back into VR is fraught with peril.”
Eric sighed. “We’ve had this discussion before—”
“For months, now,” interjected Hiroko.
“—as to whether to go back into VR or not,” continued Eric. “Whereas previously it was to try to break into the black hole that Avery seems to have fallen into, it now has become a mission to free Arton from wherever he’s been imprisoned, assuming the message is authentic and not one of Avery’s tricks. But no matter the mission, still the danger seems the same.” Eric pointed at the vid. “Yet with this message, and with the threat of the heirs for a complete shutdown and restart, and the fact that that could destroy Arthur’s stored mentality, I think it is urgent that we make up our minds and quickly, before it becomes too late.”
“But with the eviction, we are now locked out,” said Caine.
“We can always break in,” said Meredith. “I mean, with our powers, be they magic or ESP or psi, who could keep the Black Foxes out?”
“Yes, but,” said Timothy, “we can’t simply slip in by ourselves. We’ll need at least the skeleton crew to plug us in and hemisynch us up and run the other equipment and to monitor our state of well being, and that means bringing in Toni and a crew.”
“And we’ve had that argument before as well,” said Eric.
“For months,” said Hiroko, again.
“I mean, back when we were simply going to break into Avery’s black hole, it was to find out what he did to give us these extraordinary powers, and to do that, we would have had to tell Toni why. And now, to break into the facility, she and the others will certainly see that some of us have the same abilities that we had in VR—whether it be Rith’s control of sound, Lyssa’s ranger spells, Ky’s control of darkness, Kane’s healing powers, or Trendel’s seer talents. And once any one of our abilities is revealed, it follows that the other powers are under our control as well.”
“You left out your own talent, Arik,” said Hiroko.
“Yeah,” said Timothy. “The ability to make any weapon you pick up turn into a magical weapon as long as it’s in your grasp.”
“We don’t know that’s true,” said Eric.
“Oh, no?” said Alice. “You shoot a perfect score on the firing range. You whomped up good on that champion fencer. I mean, come on, Arik, be it anything from pub darts to swords to guns to artillery—probably tanks, too—you are an ace at it.”
“All right, all right, you have a point,” said Eric. “Regardless, we’ll have to bring others in on our secrets, if we decide to break in.”
“Well, with the eviction,” said Timothy, “if we do decide to break in, at a minimum we need to tell Toni.”
A silence fell among them, but finally Eric said, “Look, if we don’t do something, and they shut down Avery, then, if it is either Arton or Arthur Coburn who sent that message, he is likely to die. Let’s at least tell Toni what we can do, and then decide.”
He looked about at the others, and finally Caine said, “Ah, what the hell,” and he raised his glass and said, “Up the Black Foxes.”
And so said they all.
4
Five Months Before the Hearing
(Black Foxes)
At the door, as Timothy stepped to the front patio and glanced downslope at the distant road, he asked, “You came alone, right? Told no one? Weren’t followed?”
Toni Adkins frowned and said, “Yes, yes, and yes. What’s this all about? I mean, you act as if we’re in some cloak and dagger business.”
“It’s about saving Arthur,” said Timothy, stepping back in and closing the door.
“Well, as to saving what we think is probably Arthur, I’ve asked Melissa French to get us an injunction.”
“Don’t tell me yet,” said Timothy. “Wait’ll we’re with the others.”
“Others?”
“Yeah.”
Timothy led her from the rosa-flagstone patio through the foyer and into the great room. And there, waiting, were the members of the alpha team.
Toni paused a moment and her gaze swept over them all—four Caucasians, an African-American, and one Japanese-American . . . a Nisei. Then she smiled and greeted each one, giving and receiving hugs. As soon as she had taken a seat and had a gin and tonic in hand she asked, “Now what’s all this hush-hush business about?”
“As I said,” replied Timothy, “it’s about saving Arthur. And toward that end we’ll swear you to secrecy, and then we have something to reveal, and to give you a demonstration.”
“Ah, this sounds mysterious.”
“It won’t be for long,” said Caine, “but we think it’ll knock your socks off.”
“Even more so, then,” said Toni, frowning slightly.
Timothy glanced at the others. “But you were saying about Melissa French . . . ?”
“I’ve asked her to get an injunction against shutting Avery down until we can resolve the issue of the message you received.”
“And what are the odds of her being able to do so?” asked Eric.
Toni looked at Flannery and she felt a faint flush rise to her cheeks. So what if he was ten years younger, after all he was the kind of man she could go for: early thirties, six feet tall, one hundred eighty pounds, slender, athletic in spite of being a writer, flaxen hair, blue eyes. There’s got to be some Viking ancestry in his Irish past. Too bad Alice has him all to herself.
“Melissa thinks there’s a chance, if we can find the right judge,” said Toni.
“A good chance or a slim one?” asked Alice.
Toni sighed. “Probably slim, given who we’re up against.”
“You mean Mark?” asked Hiroko.
Toni nodded.
Caine ran his hand through his reddish-blond hair. “Ah, I always thought him somewhat dim.”
Toni shook her head. “Though he’s ignorant in science and general knowledge, still he’s a whiz at corporate law, else he wouldn’t have been hired by Arthur.”
Eric turned to the others. “Slim chance, then, eh? Well, if we’re going back into virtual reality—”
“What?” exclaimed Toni. “Go back into VR? Out of the question. I won’t allow it.”
Timothy pushed out a hand stop her absolute rejection and said, “How else are we to determine whether it really is Arton imprisoned somewhere?”
“Why, we’ll-we’ll—”
“Hear us out, Toni,” said Timothy. “You and I have spent months trying to break into Avery’s shell, and have gotten nowhere. He gestured toward himself and the alpha team and said, “We think we need to go into VR to set Arton free.”
“But this could be some trick of Avery’s,” protested Toni.
“We’ve been arguing about this for months,” said Ky. “But Timothy thinks we can do it, and Eric thinks we have to do it. Even before Tim got that message from Arton.”
“Before?” said Toni. “You were considering going in before? Whatever for? Avery’s crazy, you know.”
“Indeed,” said Meredith. “Still, long ago we also decided to find out how Avery altered us, changed us, did whatever he did so that we are now, um, extraordinary. So, we need to go back in, regardless. The message from Arthur makes it even more critical that we do so.”
Toni frowned and loo
ked from Meredith to Alice to Hiroko, as if somehow she trusted only the feminine side of the team. “Altered? How?”
All three of them as well as Caine and Timothy looked at Eric, the unofficial leader of the Black Foxes.
“We need to swear you to secrecy,” said Eric.
“I know you said that before, but I thought you were just—”
Timothy said, “No, we weren’t kidding.”
“But why would I need to pledge such a thing?”
“Because we don’t want to be studied like bugs under a microscope, like specimens on a slide,” growled Caine, getting up and stepping to the game room to pour himself another two fingers of Macallan.
“Even if you decide to go forward with this stupid plan,” said Toni, “the place is guarded by those jackbooted agents of the heirs: Blackledge Security.”
“No problem,” said Hiroko. “Did you not hear what Alice said? We’re extraordinary.”
As Caine brought the bottle back and set it on an end table, Timothy intently stared at Toni. “We’re serious, Toni.”
Just as intently, Toni stared back into Timothy’s blue eyes, sitting in a freckled face under rust-colored hair tied back in a ponytail. “All right, I swear.”
Tim relaxed, and gestured toward Eric.
Eric took a deep breath and said, “When we got free of Avery, each of us came out of VR with our Black Fox talents intact.”
Toni’s jaw dropped slightly. “What?”
“Our Black Fox talents are intact. Somehow, Avery changed us, and we can—”
“Wait a minute, are you telling me that—?”
“Here, I’ll show you,” said Hiroko.
She gestured at the dimness at one end of the great room and slowly swept her hand toward the opposite end, and, rather like living things, the shadows flowed along the walls and across the floor and ceiling, sliding from the one end of the room to the other, leaving pale light behind as they surged up against the far wall, to become an ebony cluster.
“Oh, blimey, tell me I am hallucinating.”
“No,” said Eric. “This is really happening.” Then he turned to Hiroko and said, “Ky.” And, as if letting go, she dropped her hand, and the shadows seemed to snap back to normal.
Shadowprey: A Black Foxes Adventure Page 3