Axillon99

by Matthew S. Cox

  He pulled up to the gate, nodding a greeting at Manuel and Kyle, who peered in at everyone.

  “Yo, that li’l Norwegian model you got’s a little young, no?” asked Manuel in heavily-accented English. “You might wanna keep her away from Carlos.”

  Dakota forced herself to keep a straight face. “His name is Shawn.”

  Manuel cracked up laughing. “Yo, that might not matter to Carlos.”

  “Dude.” Kyle shook his head. “Not right.”

  She swallowed the unease churning in her gut. “You serious about that?”

  “Nah.” Manuel waved dismissively. “Carlos’ girl’s like nineteen. He’s forty-something. We just pick on him for chasin’ them young.”

  “Ugh.” Dakota cringed. “That’s almost as bad.”

  “Come on, get in so we can close the fence,” said Kyle.

  Dakota walked inside, weaving around the concrete lane dividers set up as barricades. Eric navigated the Sentra through the maze at a walking pace until they reached a wider area with no way out. There, he parked, killed the engine, and got out.

  Christina wobbled out of the car and stretched, pacing around in a stiff-legged circle. Her nose scrunched up at the reek of low tide, trash, and burning plastic in the air.

  Shawn climbed to his feet and stared around at the underside of the bridge, the burn barrels, cargo-box ‘rooms,’ and armed gang punks. “Whoa, this is like… post nuclear.” He pivoted in place, open-mouthed at the scenery until a gust of ocean breeze threw his hair in his face.

  “Hmm.” William pulled his bag out of the trunk. “I’ve heard of laying low, but this is beyond low. This is underground.”

  “Yeah…” Dakota offered a helpless shrug. “Only place I could think of. But… there’s no way anyone will find us here. At least, not in two days.”

  William flashed an appraising frown. “If it is the CIA or the NSA, they’re probably five minutes away, following our smartphones. But then again, if that’s the case, it wouldn’t matter where we tried to hide.”

  “Thank you for the confidence.” Dakota kicked her sneaker at the ground.

  “Does this place have a bathroom?” whispered Shawn.

  Dakota pointed deeper into the compound, where higher fences covered with corrugated steel blocked out ambient light from the street. Scraps of unidentifiable material dangled from the cavernous bridge ceiling, swaying in the breeze. “There’s a bathroom over that way by the blue tarps.”

  Shawn stared into the darkness and gulped. “Umm…”

  “I’ll go with ya.” William walked up alongside him. “Yeah, this is not the kinda place I like havin’ my son around.”

  The boy tried not to act as scared as he looked.

  “These guys are okay. None of them will give you any trouble. I guess you could say if this was an army, my brother’s like an officer.”

  “Fair enough. Normally, I’d say let’s get started right away, but it’s late, so I think sleep is in order first,” said William.

  Shawn yawned, which got Dakota yawning. Christina held up a middle finger as she yawned next.

  William and Shawn walked off in the direction of the toilets.

  “Kota!” shouted Nebraska. He jogged out of a shadow by a pylon, ran over, and threw his arms around her. “What’s up? Kyle texted me something about you getting shot at?”

  She found herself clinging to him, having to fight not to cry. Her crazy, stupid, living-on-the-street-like-an-idiot brother was still family. If I don’t wind up dead, I’m gonna visit Mom and Dad. Thinking that she hadn’t seen them in person since she’d been eighteen got her eyes misty.

  “You okay?” asked Nebraska.

  “Yeah… Just… Wow.” She held on for a moment or two more, and blew up into a babbling mess about the kidnapping and guys trying to shoot Christina. She told him about hacking into CSI, and that she’d found some freaky-scary stuff about how they could use the gaming helmets to mine data straight out of people’s brains or insert ideas.

  “Holy fuck, Kota… that’s… We gotta take this shit down. That’s like everything we’re fighting against.”

  “I know. I know.” She paced, grabbing two fistfuls of her hair. “I’m too wound up, fried, tired, and pissed off right now to think clearly. Can you set us up with a place to sleep? I need a lot of coffee and a clear head.”

  “Yeah, sure.” He took a step, waving for them to follow.

  Eric and Christina followed them past a couple pylons to a ‘village square’ with a big fire in the middle, and out the other side to where a large group of oceanic shipping containers had been lined up and packed with improvised mattresses and hanging sheets or tarps to divide the spaces into rooms.

  Nebraska stopped at the fifth metal box and banged on it twice. “Here, you guys can take this one. Only had two guys in it, and they’re both away for a bit.”

  “Mission?” asked Eric.

  “Nah. Jail.” Nebraska sighed. “Got picked up for vandalizing an office tower downtown. I told them the project was too damn big, take too long.”

  “What’d they do?” asked Christina.

  “Spray painted a three-story tall middle finger on the building.” Nebraska grinned. “Covered wit’ the names of some people the company killed over in Africa with that pipeline bullshit.”

  “Damn.” Dakota stared down at the pavement. “That sucks.”

  Her brother held his hands up in a ‘what can ya do?’ gesture. “They won’t be in long. Couple months at most. And they’d do it again to spread the word.”

  “Gonna go find that toilet,” said Christina, eyeing the cargo box with a cringe of mild disdain.

  “Sorry it’s not exactly a Motel 6.” Dakota pulled a drape of blue hair away from her eyes. “But we’re safe here.”

  “I am going to take a nice long shower when I get home.” Christina winked, set her bag down, and wandered off to explore the compound.

  “Well, let me know if you need anything.” Nebraska pointed at an orange cargo box about thirty yards away on the other side of the square with the big fire. “That’s my spot.”

  “Okay.” Dakota hugged him again.

  “Now are you glad you didn’t talk me into getting a real job and an apartment?” Nebraska playfully punched her shoulder.

  She stared at him for a moment, and shook her head. “Honestly? No. I’d rather have you safe and healthy somewhere, even if it doesn’t suit my immediate physical needs.”

  “Wow.” He blew air past flapping lips. “Well, I’ll try not to get myself killed doing the right thing.” He winked, backed up a couple steps, then turned and walked off to his ‘room.’

  Dakota shuffled into the cargo box and flopped on a random mattress covered with an assortment of old sleeping bags. The place didn’t smell too bad, but she already missed home. At least they’d run a cable through the wall to a Wi-Fi repeater.

  William and Shawn arrived a short time later. The boy’s persistent fear ebbed a bit at the sight of the cargo box, which he thought ‘cool.’ He darted in and claimed a sleeping spot all the way in the back while his father stood by the door, arms folded, surveying the camp.

  “Well, I suppose this will do for the time being,” said William, “but if we weren’t getting shot at…”

  Dakota smiled up at him. “Yeah. Sorry. I won’t ask you guys to slum it with me long.”

  He walked in, dragging his duffel past her with Shawn following. “We got in this mess together. We’ll work something out.”

  Eric jogged back from the bathroom and took a seat beside her. “You okay?”

  “No. Not even close.” She leaned against him. “But I could be worse.”

  He held her, making the rough accommodations somewhat bearable. Christina entered a while later and took a bed. Random snips of conversation in English and Spanish drifted in from the outside, along with the occasional hiss of a distant passing car. Shawn’s soft whispery voice echoed from deeper in the cargo box, alternatively comparing
this place to surviving the end of the world and asking if ‘those people’ are going to kill us. She about got up to reassure him her brother’s associates were trustworthy, but realized he meant the people who’d kidnapped her and shot at Christina.

  Eventually, he fell asleep, as did Eric. Dakota snuggled into him, her human blanket, and tried to get her mind to stop spinning in circles. Thoughts of her Niath alt flying over the beautiful landscape of their home world helped her relax somewhat, but it also got her angry.

  She’d gone almost twenty-four hours without logging in to Axillon99.

  No Respawn

  30

  A gentle nudge to the shoulder jostled Dakota awake. She peeled her eyes open and came nose-to-nose with a slender-faced young woman. She had dark brown skin, black-purple lipstick, and long, straight brown hair. Her tattered denim-leather ensemble made her affiliation with Nebraska’s gang no secret. She could’ve been anywhere from sixteen to twenty-or-so.

  “Hey,” said the woman before asking, “you awake?” in Spanish.

  “I am now.” Dakota yawned.

  “Hungry?” The woman held up a big white bag. “Randy and Tito made a food run.”

  “Food?” asked Shawn, emerging from behind a hanging sheet that walled off the back half of the cargo container.

  “Oh, what are you doing bringing a little girl here?” asked the woman in Spanish.

  “Not much choice.” Dakota reached into the bag and grabbed a breakfast burrito. “We got in the crosshairs of a corporation… or a politician… or both. William can’t leave his kid home alone.”

  “Bastards,” said the woman in Spanish.

  Dakota switched to Spanish. “By the way, he’s a boy.”

  “Ay! Wow.” The woman grinned at Shawn. “When he’s older, he’s goin’ to be so damn hot.” She bit her lip and shook her head. Dakota reached for her purse, but the woman shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. You technically already gave us the cash.”

  “Heh. Or someone who looks a bit like me did.” She winked.

  The young woman laughed, then handed out food to everyone, enormous burritos stuffed with scrambled eggs and onions. A few smelled of bacon. Dakota munched, jealous she hadn’t grabbed one with meat.

  Despite feeling drained and exhausted, she couldn’t fall back asleep after eating, even with a full stomach. She unpacked her PlayStation 7, hooked it up, and pulled out her laptop. Her brain hadn’t quite gotten moving yet, so she sat there drumming her fingers on the Neurona 4 helmet beside her.

  The same woman who brought breakfast came back with a box of coffee and a bag of paper cups.

  “Oh, you are a goddess!” Dakota grabbed a cup and poured herself a black coffee. The smell reminded her of having to go to work, but at the moment, she didn’t care. Coffee trumped everything.

  Everyone except Shawn had some, despite his asking to try it. At least, until the woman mentioned they had a spigot for water nearby… at that point, William relented and let Shawn have coffee instead of trusting water from a pipe under a decommissioned bridge.

  “Good call,” muttered Christina, who lapsed into discussing her first coffee experience at the age of nine.

  Eric sat cross-legged beside her as she racked her brain. Christina, Shawn, and William decided to log in to the game, since the ’net connection here worked and they had nothing better to do.

  “Wait,” said Dakota before they could finish setting up. “You just gave me an idea.”

  She opened the laptop and called up the program code for the anti-brain-reading mod. Over the next half hour or so, she used it as a framework to develop another mod that would cause their helmets to be invisible to any sort of back end process on the network. The Axillon99 client, or any other game software, could interact with the helmet, but no administrative user would see the helmets as connected. For example, if CSI had their network people scanning for these particular helmets’ hardware ID, they’d appear to be offline.

  “Gimme your mod fobs,” said Dakota, hand out.

  “What did you do?” William walked over, carrying his helmet.

  “If CSI is looking for us, I don’t want them to find us. I just threw together another helmet mod that’ll keep us invisible. We can access the game, but CSI operators can’t see us.”

  “Won’t that make us obvious?” asked William? “Or set off the cheat detection?”

  She grinned and shook her head, deliberately throwing her hair over her face. “Nope! The front-end client can still see us. It’s like proving a negative. Their back end tools won’t see us as online so they can’t know we’re missing.”

  He crouched and peered at the laptop screen, reading over the code. “Hmm. Looks solid. All right.”

  Everyone handed over the mini USB fobs with the previous mod software on it. She uploaded her new mod to each one. She did her helmet last, slotting the little black square in place, closing the hatch, and patting it twice.

  “Okay, more safety.” She sighed at the worried look in Shawn’s eyes. “What am I doing? Dragging you all to this shithole…”

  Shawn grinned.

  “Oops.” She grumbled.

  “Dad gets upset about cuss words, as if I haven’t already learned them all.” Shawn folded his arms and puffed a lock of blond off his face.

  “Kids at schools these days are kinda rough,” said Eric.

  “Nah.” Shawn shook his head. “Dad thinks he’s a mechanic. Every time he tries to work on the truck, I learn new cuss words.”

  William picked up a Neurona helmet and held it high like he intended to throw it at Shawn, but caught it with his other hand and laughed.

  “So, yeah. I can’t ask you guys to stay here. We should go public with the information and hope people are too freaked out by the implications of having their brains hacked that the company forgets to come after us.” She ran her hands up over her head, clamping her hair against the back of her neck. “Ugh.”

  “I agree…” William raised an eyebrow with a sly grin. “But not right away. We found the teleport algorithm for the Reckoning, right? Let me take a crack at it. Maybe we can get the prize money before we torpedo the game.”

  “Aww.” Shawn grumbled. “I don’t wanna shut down the game. Can’t we like make CSI get rid of the scummy crap but not shut down the whole game? Like tell ’em get rid of it or we go public?”

  “We’d have a bullseye on our asses,” said Christina. “I do like William’s idea. Two mil is tempting.”

  “Like they’d actually pay out on it to us.” Eric gestured at nothing in particular. “The very people they’re trying to kill or kidnap.”

  “They’d have to. The game itself will announce the winner because of that damn leaderboard.” William ran back to his bag and returned with a laptop. “Let’s find that ship.”

  “Or they lure us into a trap.” Eric raised an eyebrow. “You ever see Running Man? I don’t want to wind up like that.”

  “No, but I read it.” William logged into the laptop, then looked at Dakota. “You still got that algorithm code handy? If we win that money, we become celebrities at least for our fifteen minutes of fame. People will notice if anything happens to us. This prize would be like insurance.”

  Dakota opened a browser to her throwaway email account. “Okay. That’s at least a good place to start.”

  While she and William began tossing around program code on their respective laptops, Eric sat protectively close and watched.

  “So where’d you two meet?” asked Christina.

  “Huh?” Dakota looked up, noticed Eric’s hovering, and grinned. “Oh… in Axillon.”

  “She couldn’t stand me at first.” He put an arm around her.

  She poked him in the side. “That’s not entirely accurate. I just have this thing about mixing magic and technology. Magic belongs in fantasy games. When I joined the crew, I pretended Rallek didn’t exist because he’s a Technomancer. That didn’t have anything to do with Eric, just me not wanting to acknowle
dge magic existed in the game. Once I got to know him…”

  Eric sat up straight, one hand to his chest. “My powers of charm overwhelmed her distaste for magic. I shall regard that as a compliment.”

  “Ahh. That’s cute.” Christina smiled, then noticed Shawn hiding in the back of the cargo box, his expression like some innocent suburban kid accidentally sent to an inner city ‘scared straight’ program. She pushed herself up off her mattress and crept over to sit beside him. “Hey. How are you holding up?”

  He shrugged and mumbled, “Are we gonna have to stay here long?”

  “Not that long.” Christina shifted cross-legged and started asking him about the various fighter ships available in the game.

  The boy answered her first few questions tentatively, but the more he talked about the game, the more at ease he became.

  “She’s good with that,” said William in a near-whisper.

  Dakota made a ‘well duh’ shrug. “She’s a nurse. Probably has a lot of practice distracting kids from bad shit.”

  “Yeah, but she can’t have had that much practice at it, she’s just outta school,” muttered Eric.

  “She’s thirty-five,” whispered Dakota. “Saw a birthday card.”

  William’s eyebrows ticked up a notch.

  “Daaaaamn,” muttered Eric. “She don’t look it.”

  “Why thank you,” said Christina. “I may be an old maid, but my ears haven’t gone yet.”

  Eric whistled innocently.

  “Shawn’s not used to such a rough area,” said William. “No offense.”

  Dakota muffled a laugh. “Oh, it’s cool. If I didn’t know these guys, I’d be scared too. They look like a street gang, but they’re really more a pack of anarchists-slash-social-warriors.”

  “So, what, like Greenpeace without a leadership structure or day jobs?” William grinned.

  Eric bowed his head and snickered.

  “Something like that.” She backed up a few keystrokes and retyped a line. “So basically, we build an engine around this algorithm and feed it the star map data, it should be able to tell us where the Reckoning will be at any given time.”