by Curtis Hox
“Nothing you need to worry about. It’s time.”
Her mother pulled the curtains aside. Simone saw the open cage door and floated out. She moved inside the large chain-link cage and heard the door close behind her. Her mother stood at it, as if she were there to prevent anyone else from entering. Bright lights made everything just beyond her mother pitch-black.
She imagined they were all staring at her.
I’m a little girl ghost, Simone thought. Big deal. “What’s going on?”
Nisson appeared out of the swirling mass on the other side of the cage. “Some assheads here just trying to make names for themselves.”
“With who?” Simone asked.
“Who do you think?” her mother asked.
She had seen one Rogueslave before, and that was the man who’d snuck into their school. Her mother had explained that Rogueslaves attended these matches, even fought in them, and that their goals were to cause as much havoc as possible, all in the name of furthering their masters’ agendas in total human domination.
The Consortium called them terrorists.
Her mother called them criminals.
Her father called them animals.
I call them ...
The far cage door opened, and Simone saw a skinny old man in a loin cloth enter the cage. She heard the crowd again, this time boiling with laughter. He had flabby arms and legs, a bird chest, and a bit of a belly. His skin was flaccid and stained with eczema along the shins. His hair stood out in wisps atop a bald pate. He looked like he might keel over and die at any moment, and here he was stepping into the arena.
She saw spikes burst from the man’s chest in a spray of gore.
“Mom?”
“Summon, Simone. Now.”
* * *
Joss was supposed to stay in the waiting room with the rest of them. But the room wasn’t wired, and he couldn’t get a signal on his tablet. A few standard wooden chairs, a table with a plastic top, even a typical black-and-white pastoral print of horses running in a field.
Beasley sat in one of the chairs, reading a trashy novel on her tablet, while Wally slept in the corner on a cushion. Kimberlee also fiddled with her tablet, playing some silly game. Hutto and Simone were already gone.
Joss cracked the door and peeked down the hall. He had to see the fights. He also had to see if the Rogues believed the information he’d sent about the Alters entering this small-time event; most importantly, he wanted to know if they had sent their people.
Yesterday, he had spoken to Agent Yancey Wellborn about her plans for him. He had seen what the other Alters could do with their entities, and he was jealous.
“What about me and Wally?” he’d asked her.
It had been the end of the day, and everyone was gone. He’d caught her as she was leaving the club. He began walking with her on her way to faculty housing. They passed the football field, where the team was busy preparing for their first home game at the end of the week. He could also hear the marching band in their own field. Joss realized that for most students at the Sterling School, the year was just like any other.
“Wally,” she said, “will be trained to harness his gifts, as will you.”
“I don’t get to summon?”
She stopped and looked at him through Mirrorshades he hoped he’d get one day and, maybe, even retinal lenses. He couldn’t tell if she were scanning him, or just contemplating what to say. “Mr. Beckwith, you have already been branded once by the Rogues. They know who you are. Also, your file says you summoned an irrational object.”
“Because I looked flat?”
“Yes.”
“I knew I should I have kept that to myself.”
“Your parents verified it.”
“I guess.”
“You’ll never get a legal summoning upgrade. You’ll never learn to channel. If you do, you’ll be arrested, or worse. You’ll be allowed to continue your interfacing, and that’s it. Have a nice night.” She left him standing there as if he were some regular person.
Last night, after struggling to accept Agent Wellborn’s denial, Joss waited until he was alone in Sterling’s Compsys room. He hooked up to his VR workstation and dove through a tunnel into a complex, myriad world as large as the real universe. If you could imagine it, it existed there, he would tell you. Lately, he’d been swimming in a four-dimensional sea of high-end gamblers who bet on anything, and in this cyber sea, the bigger the bet the bigger your avatar. He was a minnow right now because he’d just entered. Ever since he’d heard Sterling was entering the glad game, he’d known something important was happening, and, sure enough, the chatter in the high-stakes sea was all about the IGL exhibition matches coming up.
For months, he’d been siphoning fractional cents from a European Union hedge fund dividends’ account. He had over twenty thousand dollars in overseas escrow. Yeah, it was theft, but in Cyberspace all money was virtual. Besides, he was a skilled Interfacer. Getting caught was improbable.
In a few minutes of sending mental data queries, he found an active link. It was being tunneled through a South Korean corporate proxy. He tagged along, and soon his terminal began firing data with such speed he had to shut it down. But he had the link. All he needed to do now was use a rendering engine to join.
His Cybercorps brand would hurt him here if someone pegged him. Still, he took a deep breath in Realspace and flipped the switch. The renderer placed him in a superstructure of industrial machinery the size of a sky-scraper city. The holdfast was a tiny node in the massive complex. He checked the manifest and at least eight-thousand hotjackers were there, buying and selling. The black market was never so black as in Cyberspace.
He moved forward in the form of a nondescript space jockey who looked like a Buzz Lightyear rip off (a favorite avatar in these parts). He came to rest in the middle of the holdfast, amid a sea of fast-moving individuals. He began to look and listen for the unmistakable sermonizing of a Rogueslave.
He never expected they would find him, and so quickly.
They surrounded him near a culvert where a two-bit fence was hawking social-networking identities. Joss was forced up against a rusting iron wall. Six different avatars surrounded him. He thought the huge beating human heart with roses coming out of the arteries was original. He tagged each avatar, just in case things got nasty, and he needed revenge.
“What?” he asked the heart.
“You a cop?”
“No. Fuck off. Are you?”
They all laughed. A purple mastiff in a bikini barked. “We’re the Shadow Keeper Clan, asshole. We spotted your Consort brand.”
An ogre with a chain around its neck swung a cudgel. “Shadow Keeper Clan!”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Joss said. “What kind of clan?”
The heart beat a few times, spurting carotid blood. “We interface for some big ones.”
“Sure you do.” Josh recognized a real Interfacer when he saw one. These were minor-league players at best. They probably hadn’t ever been close to a Rogue. But they could help. “Okay, guys and gals. I’m looking for a legit in. Any of you fit that bill?”
They were all silent. He thought they might disappear into the ether.
“Why?” the mastiff asked.
“Business.”
A spinning cube with pustules that looked like they might spit out noxious fumes righted itself. “What’s a Cybercorps property doing looking for an in?”
Joss watched each of the avatars run through their prescribed animations. “What’s anyone ever want with a Rogueslave?”
The heart spasmed enough arterial blood it shot into an arc. “We got a juice junkie, I bet.”
Joss let them believe what they wanted. Besides, it was close enough to the truth. He didn’t need black-market drugs. He needed something much more important: a legitimate summoning package. “If any of you can broker a contact, I’ll pay a good commission.”
A massive column of fluted iron decorated with a thousand medallions b
roke through the ground in front of them. Trumpets blared, and Clan Shadow Keeper disappeared in a puff. Joss recognized the brands. He’d had similar ones all over his body. It would take him ten minutes to walk around this thing’s base. Because of its size and status, he guessed he was meeting the holdfast’s owner.
“I’m a branded Rogueslave to Dagons, Lord of All Things Beautiful and Fucked-up,” a soft voice said. “What do you want?”
Joss’s workstation systems were on alert, but he had them muted. He was being scanned. The owner saw he carried the Cybercorps brand. Joss had a powerful Interfacer to contend with here, and he needed to be careful. He wondered if any residual effects of the previous Rogue brands were still pinging in Cyberspace. He would find out soon enough.
“I’m a clerk at a federal-licensing office in Poughkeepsie,” Joss said. “I’m branded, so I’m already property. But my job sucks and my life as a bean-counter sucks. I want to mess around.”
“What kind of taste?”
“I want information on how to summon.”
“You an Alter?”
“What’s it matter?” Joss considered shucking his humble avatar and showing this illegal holdfast owner and Rogue-sucking sycophant what he could do. “I need anonymity. But I want to know what sort of Realspace manifestations your lords can offer.”
“Without loyalty.”
“I’m owned.”
“You know what you’re asking?”
“I do.”
“Will cost you, big time. They’ll want more than money.”
“I know.”
The voice in the column laughed. “Welcome. I’m sure I’ll call you brother at some point.”
Joss sent out an encrypted container. “Put their demands in here when you get them.” He jumped out of the holdfast quicker than he expected.
He yanked his visor off and shut down his alert system.
Joss smiled to himself, imagining what he could do if he learned to summon his interface avatars or channel their powers. To be able to do in Realspace what he could do in Cyberspace ... he’d make the Alter’s entities look like dollar-store plastic toys. If he succeeded, he could expect an encrypted megablock of clean nano-fabrication code with his name on it and usable at any black-market clinic out there. The result: a working summoning package. But the Rogues had been clear. His intelligence had to be sound for him to get his reward, but they first had to believe him about the Alters being here.
Joss flipped off his tablet. Agent Wellborn and Simone had just left, and he couldn’t stand waiting any longer. She was going to shine tonight, thanks to Joss. Whatever small-time Rogue-lovers showed up, they’d get more than they bargained for, and he’d get what he wanted. He could stick it to the Rogues and benefit at the same time.
“I’m going for a walk,” he said.
Kimberlee looked up. “They told us to wait.”
“So wait.”
“Jerk,” she said.
Beasley kept reading her e-novel.
Joss entered a narrow hallway. It took him five minutes of wandering to find a signal and another five to hack their system to find a schematic of the grounds and a route to the fights. He found the fight chamber full of beer-swigging spectators, most of them barked up on chemicals.
Joss skirted a wall in the back. The energy in the air was frenetic. He had heard about these kinds of places but had never been. He hadn’t been out much at all in his life, in fact, and here he was mixing with people who lived life as criminally as possible. One guy with dyed-red hair and a series of sub-dermal implants along his brow spilled beer on Joss. He didn’t apologize, and Joss didn’t ask for one.
When no one was watching, Joss picked up a plastic cup with some beer in it and pretended to be as cool as possible. But he looked out of place, and he sensed it, even though no one was bothering him. He pushed through the back of the crowd just as Simone entered the cage. He found a place along a wall and climbed up on a table.
He couldn’t see the cage very well from this distance because of the load-bearing pillars. But he saw an old man in the arena with Simone.
Spikes burst from the man’s chest.
* * *
Yancey stood behind the cage door and watched her disembodied daughter move through the steps she had taught her. It was beautiful to watch, even in a place such as this, with maniacs like those around her screaming for blood.
Yancey recognized the signs that something was wrong with Simone’s competitor when he entered the cage. He was old, for one, but he looked energized. She had never seen him before. He was probably some unknown given an opportunity to make a name for himself. She had seen this look before in the field. When Rogueslaves were about to make the ultimate sacrifice, they looked just like that man. Something in their wild anticipation gave them away. His debased body was infused with transformative technology and was about to burst asunder. She saw the first spike puncture the man’s sternum in a spray of blood. She bit back bile because of the look on his face: Ecstasy.
In seconds he was reduced to a spiked creature that looked like a sea anemone with eyes and a mouth. She saw intelligence there, and she bit down a curse that would have disturbed her summoning.
She turned to Nisson. “I need space.”
He stood at her side and smiled. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
“It’s going to be a slaughter.”
“Welcome to the illegal world of pit-fighting. You come to watch, but sometimes you participate.”
Yancey pushed through the weakness, which was worse than yesterday because of all the activity, but she wasn’t so weak she couldn’t summon. She identified several nano-junky Rogueslaves in the crowd whose systems were about to go critical. A few moments more, maybe less.
She began mumbling her mantra. Whatever connection existed between her and her entities opened like a flood gate. Nisson was already enraptured, and the same ineffable process that once made people like her a target—but now made her the most valuable of weapons—began to surge.
The Rogues were working through their servants. Yancey saw movement behind the cage through her shades that cut through the darkness. The other Rogueslaves had begun their attack.
She heard Nisson’s Graucus roar. She snuck a quick glance and saw his entity emerge. Several bodies went flying through the air behind her.
Myrmidon, come.
* * *
Among the crowd of spectators, Gramgadon watched in a pocket of darkness. He had chosen a far corner so that he wouldn’t be noticed by anyone. His soldiers were in place, and ready. Tonight, he was here to observe because that was his assignment, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy himself.
Ever since he’d made the announcement of the contest at the Sterling school, he’d sensed the tide was turning, that the chatter was proving true. His masters were on the move. They had struck a blow at the Sterling school—an unsuccessful one, he’d admit—but enough of a message had been sent that the authorities were nervous. They managed to get enough of Simone Wellborn’s genoscript that her mother killed her. A double and ghost were created. Now, with her double allied to the Rogues, they had leverage on her father. When Gramgadon had stood there in the cafeteria and announced that the contest for Simone Wellborn had begun, he had put himself at the center of the greatest contest in all the world—
An elbow in his side snapped him out of his thoughts. He made his index finger like iron and jabbed outward. It penetrated liquid-like flesh as far as the liver. He heard the offender yelp before falling to the floor, shrieking. Gramgadon moved a few paces away. Already, people were tripping over the fallen man. Someone would help him, or not.
Not many people had recognized Gramgadon at the Sterling school. He had been transformed too many times, his body no longer his. His masters had remade him into a frail thing, in comparison to what he had been. When he’d looked at himself in the mirror after his first regeneration and seen what appeared to be an elementary-school teacher, he lashed out an
d broke the glass. He’d cursed the Rogues as he thought about putting a bullet in his head. He had given up a career as a prized glad-fighter for them. He had given up his body. They had promised him power. Instead, they’d made him into a weakling.
In time he understood.
I am more than I appear.
His finger compressed to its current state of weak flesh.
The air had already changed. It seemed as if everyone sensed what was about to happen. He had paid the promoters to leave. The complex was locked down by security with instructions to keep everyone out after a certain time. The homeowners were paid well. His masters wanted a blood sacrifice in the most entertaining way possible. He planned to give it to them.
Meatgrinder, they called it. When he saw the Wellborn ghost float inside the cage, relief washed through him. The intelligence from Cyberspace said that the Consortium was using the Sterling Alters in a new program and said that they would demonstrate their skills here tonight. And there she was. He also saw Agent Wellborn—and, of all people, Nisson Toth—here supporting another Sterling Alter, Hutto Toth. Gramgadon knew Nisson very well, and his father, Tarean, and had worked on an opposing fight team for years, until he encountered the Rogues and gone rogue himself.
Nisson did as well, without their guidance.
Mystical fool, Gramgadon thought. Nisson didn’t know who his true masters were. That was dangerous.
The other Rogueslaves were in place around the cage. They were already triggering the nano-machines that would turn their bodies into weapons. Each martyr would be rehusked one day with super-human power ... so they were promised. So it would be.
Gramgadon saw the old Rogueslave redneck from Alabama prepare to walk into the cage. In a few minutes, the meatgrinder would begin. He also spotted another Sterling student. His mouth watered when he recognized Joss Beckwith. He edged himself through the crowd over to a table the student was standing on. The din was so loud he wouldn’t be heard if he tried to speak, so he climbed up.
* * *
“Shit,” Joss said, recognizing the messenger from the Sterling Incursion.
“Messing with the big boys, again,” the Rogueslave said. “You didn’t learn your lesson.”