“Huh?” asked Paul.
“Drop your weapons,” yelled David. “Now.”
A tingle of psionic activity happened behind and to her left. David had to be tweaking their emotions, intensifying fear and guilt. He didn’t want to kill them. Kate smiled. He was too nice.
Bang.
Smoke peeled from the barrel of a handgun, wobbling in the grip of one of the men lying near the smoldering wreck. David let out a yelp and collapsed. Kate screamed with fury and pain, channeling it into the shooter. His body convulsed and gurgled; the handgun went off twice more, striking nothing but distant glass. Blisters formed and burst all over his back and face, as boiling blood and body fluids sought release. His final attempt to scream in agony emerged as a rush of steaming, brick red ooze. If the amount of pain a person experienced in death meant anything, some astral sensate would be in for a hell of a ride.
Kate ran to David. He lay on his back, E-90 a few inches from his hand. He looked shocked and confused, blood trailing from the corners of his mouth. Kate pawed at him, frantic until her hand found a sticky, wet patch on the right side of his chest.
Blood on a black uniform.
He wheezed. Kate ignored Paul and Leo, grabbing at his belt for the case of stimpaks. Nervous fingers fumbled to pull the safety caps off the ends; she gave up and bit them, spitting the yellow plastic aside. After emptying five autoinjectors into him, she fell on top of him.
“David!” She fought the urge to sob. “David!”
When his hand closed on hers, she burst into sobs.
Her relief evaporated at the sound of an incoherent roar. Kate whipped her head around and perched on top of David, glaring like a lioness guarding her mate. Leo broke away from Paul, who had tried to hold him back, and charged at her.
The huge man was on her before she could gather her wits or a fireball. He grabbed her in a crushing embrace, catching her attempt to leap away. She kicked at the air as he hauled her off her feet and whirled her around. As if controlling where she pointed would matter, he clamped his hands about her wrists and forced her arms across her chest. She gasped from a crushing embrace that drove the air from her lungs. Her foot landed on the cold fender of the patrol craft; she pushed but didn’t have enough strength to move him.
Leo kept howling, spittle raining on her head as he twisted away from the car. She pedaled her legs at nothing, her mind unable to process an idea more complex than the need to get air into lungs that couldn’t move. Her desire to get away from him activated her Pyrokinesis. Leo’s suit erupted in flames as her body superheated. Molten skin peeled like cheese from Leo’s hands, sticking to her forearms when he screamed and jumped away, swatting at his burning suit. Kate caught herself before her ass hit the ground, landing in an awkward crabwalk pose. She leaned onto her knees and brought her hands up to defend herself in case he rushed again.
Strands of charred flesh on her arms turned to wisps of ash. Leo held his arms up in the pose of a doctor washing before surgery, gazing in horror at the exposed muscles and tendons. Traction coating melted away from wherever she touched, her toes smearing it away like wet paint from shiny metal. Kate stood, circling around him, leaving a trail of chrome footprints on black.
“What the fuck, Leo? Why are you doing this?” Wanting to cry and kill him at the same time left her doing neither. “What happened?”
“If you’re not with us, you’re against us,” he muttered, still staring at his hands.
Kate let her body cool. Naked on the roof of her apartment building, she shivered from the freezing wind.
“Influence,” whispered David, struggling to sit up.
Distant sirens grew louder. Leo lifted his gaze. As soon as he looked at her, his expression went from horrified to murderous beyond reason. Kate drew her hand back to kill him, but Althea filled her thoughts. The child wouldn’t want her to kill. Leo tensed as if to charge. Kate backed off, holding her hands up.
“Don’t do it, Leo.” She took another step back.
He leaned forward; streams of blood dribbled off his fingers as he raised his arms. Before he could charge, Paul came out of nowhere and tackled him. The men rolled to a halt a few meters away. Kate’s eyes narrowed in twitches, keeping time with meaty thuds as Paul punched Leo unconscious. His tight, curly hair glistened from where Leo’s blood covered it. He refused to look at her.
Kate crouched at David’s side and took his hand. He stared at Paul.
Flashing lights flooded the area, red and blue mixing to violet; at least ten Division 1 patrol craft swooped in and landed, armored officers spilling out. Some ran to the corpses by the blown-out hovercar, others rounded the front of David’s patrol craft with weapons raised. The sight of her nude form huddled over him seemed to stall them in their tracks. Four officers focused their attention at Paul. Two holstered their sidearms; one moved to Kate, while the other put in a comm call for a medical unit. The female officer took a knee. A faint line of bright green light ran down the silver visor on her helmet.
“Thought you were a vic… Officer Solomon? What happened to your uniform?”
“David needs a MedVan,” she rasped, letting the officer ease her upright and away from him. “Off duty… clothes. I got shot.”
“Looks like you could use a medic, too,” said the patrol cop. A static chirp cut off the last syllable of her words. “New to the force? Yanno, getting shot doesn’t usually cause people to go streaking.”
“Does getting shot usually cause bruises?” Kate coughed up some blood.
Pain burst out from under her fading adrenaline, her hypervigilance eased by the security of cops everywhere. She froze, blinked, and laughed. When did having cops around go from scary to making me feel safe? As soon as she laughed, she regretted it. Every bullet bruise ached.
Another officer approached and wrapped a plain, grey blanket around her from behind.
The female officer guided her to rest against the Division 0 patrol craft. “Is he your TO?”
Kate held the cloth tight around herself as she watched David fight to stay conscious. “No… off duty. He’s my boyfriend.”
Blood leaked out of his smile.
“Guess the assailants caught them at a bad time.” A male officer chuckled.
Kate blushed. “We weren’t….”
A gleaming white MedVan popped up over the edge of the roof, brilliant plumes of cyan light streaming from the ion thrusters at the four corners. It circled around and landed nearby, sparks dancing upon the metal ground beneath its engines. Figures in white swarmed out of it and rushed to David. Kate shot a mournful glance at Paul as officers led him away in cuffs. He tensed his arms as soon as he saw her, and forced himself to look away.
The officer squeezed Kate’s arm. “Officer Ahmed will be okay.”
“We’re always supposed to tell families that,” Kate said, without emotion.
“Come on, Solomon.” The armored woman tugged on her arm, pulling in the direction of the medical transport. “Sometimes, it’s true.”
34
Nightwing
Mamoru
Hollow samurai armor floated inches above a street devoid of cars. Mamoru lifted his gaze to a sky without smog, where every star shone bright and clear. He noted the lack of hovercars or advert bots and felt pleasure. He would have smiled, had his avatar possessed a face. This version of West City appeared too clean, too new, and far too silent.
Wavering violet light drew his attention to an alley where a tall man with impossibly thin features, milk-white skin, and pointed ears appeared. An indigo strip, a haze of perhaps makeup or tattoo, crossed his face over blood red eyes that looked like solid orbs of colored glass. He walked with a long staff, topped with a crystal surrounded by two counter-rotating spheres of amethyst light. Metal bracers on both forearms shone with intricate scrollwork of gold leafy vines over a red enamel coating.
“What in the nine hells are you supposed to be?” asked Mamoru.
The figure lifted an eyebrow,
exuding arrogance. “A noble of the house of Selethiel.”
Mamoru let off a low, throaty grumble.
“I see you require the simple explanation. An elf. A wizard if you must know.”
“Why do people in this country waste their time on such things?”
The elf chuckled. “Says the man whose country still lives medieval. We only chop each other up with swords in VR.”
“I was expecting something more… technical.”
“They called me Flatline because I kept getting Black ICEd. It’s not a name of choice. Besides, high elf wizard seemed appropriate since we’re after a dragon.”
Mamoru shook his head. “I expected it to be here by now.”
“Dude,” said the elf, raising his hand. “I don’t know how the hell you jacked in without a plug, but that’s probably why the damn thing can’t sense you.”
“Where is your friend?”
“He’s coming. Said he had to wrap something up with an accounting server cluster that kept trying to use an address range he’d mapped to marketing. He’s got a day job.” The elf shuddered as if he’d sworn the worst oath imaginable.
“A serious problem.”
Flatline raised his eyebrow again. “Is that Japanese sarcasm, or are you serious?”
“I do not think your friend is coming.”
The elf, staff clicking on the road, walked a few paces away to a metal hatch at the mouth of the alley. “Oh, he will. I said dragon. He couldn’t pass up this much experience.”
“When will you say something that makes sense?” Mamoru squeezed one hand on the handle of the katana at his side. “So, what is your great plan?”
“Simple. I’ve set up an isolated network node on an old GlobeNet relay server the Authority hasn’t taken offline yet. It doesn’t have the power to handle a full dragon AI’s parallel processing demands. Plus, once we’re in, I can burn the egress proxy so it can’t call any reinforcements.”
“You expect it to walk right in there?”
“Of course.” Flatline held his arms out to the sides, playing up the melodic not-quite-human accent the avatar added to his English. “You said it was angry with you. All you need to do is piss it off to the point it loses reason and jumps down this hole.”
Flatline tapped the end of his staff on the ground and the hatch opened with a pneumatic hiss and a rush of steam. It looked like one of the access panels leading to the Beneath.
Mamoru set his weight down on his boots and marched off.
“The uplink is kinda old,” said Flatline. “You should be able to get across with only a little lag. Make sure you get it nice and angry so it doesn’t have second thoughts when its fat ass gets stuck.”
Three blocks away, Mamoru stopped in the center of an intersection where two six-lane roads crossed. Eerie darkness filled streets devoid of cars and people. It felt like a city after a viral apocalypse, cavernous and deserted. This part of cyberspace mapped to the real world equivalent outside Flatline’s apartment. A grey zone on the darker end of the spectrum. No one wanted to be here in cyberspace either.
He drew the katana with a deliberate, ritualistic motion, flipped it upright, and clasped it in two hands before his face.
“Hachiman-sama, may I bring honor to you on this day.”
Mamoru lowered his blade to the side with a sweeping motion. A lone white dove glided to a landing atop a vendomat at the corner. Seconds later, it flew away, vanishing between two mirrored skyscrapers. He wondered if the bird had come from his subconscious influence over the net, or if the God of War had heard him.
He took in a great breath, holding it for a second, before bellowing, “Nightwing!”
The shout echoed into the dark replica of West City.
Moments passed. Mamoru looked up at the sense of an approaching presence. At least a quarter mile away along the great road, two eyes of lime green raced toward him. The shape of a black dragon drew in around them, awash with the fury of lightning and thunder. Windows shattered to chrome splinters as it passed; the shards burst into space over the street and froze in midair like glittering snow.
“There you are,” thundered a voice from the heavens.
Nightwing extended his talons, gouging trenches in the road. Pure black matter occupied the rips, highlighted in thin lines of glowing cyan light.
Mamoru upended his blade and drove it into the paving at his feet. He commanded the GlobeNet’s ‘dark matter’ to reshape itself, altering the boundaries of the world. Program code flashed into being within his thoughts, responding to glimpses of ideas and concepts. Not even a fish as powerful as Nightwing could reshape its bowl.
The dragon bore down on him with all its weight and fury. Mamoru forced power out of the deck into the GlobeNet, causing a forty-foot wall to erupt from the street in front of him in a burst of shiny silicon flakes. Nightwing smashed into the barrier with a resounding detonation that sent a radiant wave of force rippling forth. A shimmer of blue lines pulsed outward along the wall from the point of impact, hinting at the form of bricks. The GlobeNet best approximated the incalculable power of the impact by breaking everything representing glass within a two-mile radius.
Despite appearing only an inch thick, the barrier held.
Rolling thunder faded into the distance, amid the sound of billions of brittle objects shattering.
The wall dissipated at Mamoru’s command. He leapt upon the dazed head of the beast, cutting an X between its eyes. It reared up, smashing a clawed hand down upon its face as Mamoru overrode the GlobeNet’s location tracking algorithms and teleported underneath it. The katana sank into its scales, cutting a gash open in its belly from which inky darkness swelled like vapor.
Nightwing roared lime green flames into the sky.
Mamoru pulled the blade loose and rolled out of the way of a frantic raking of claws. Alas, the Matsushita Ultra Series deck he borrowed only had so much processing power. The corrupting effect of viruses represented by his sword stroke could not outpace the error checking of a grade ten AI.
The wound closed.
“Your feeble attempt to take my life in the other world has failed, lizard.” Mamoru teleported onto the beast’s back, stabbing down between its shoulders. “Here, you are but an ungainly beast.”
Nightwing’s body shifted, morphing from standing upright to lying on his back. The claw hit before Mamoru could react, swatting his vision white. Street and sky traded places too many times to count before he struck the side of a building with a crack like a gunshot. Dozens of walls smashed over his helmet as he passed clean through a skyscraper. He bounced once after falling from the third story to the street on the far side of the building. Sparks rained from his armored back as he scuffed to a halt on the road.
His hand burned; the deck overheated in the real world.
Nightwing clawed gouges out of walls while pulling himself down an alley too narrow for his bulk. Metal girders buckled, and hundred-story buildings collapsed behind him, raising a cloud of simulated dust as well as another deafening roar.
Mamoru floated upright and gestured at the ground. He generated program code at the speed of thought, creating a waterfall of ancient golden coins, which swelled up into a pile that reached his knees.
“What’s this?” bellowed Nightwing, his distraction by the wealth obvious. “You seek to bribe me? Hah! I shall devour you and claim your tribute regardless.”
“I thought the gold might work. Simple-minded creatures are often attracted to shiny things.”
Nightwing’s massive face trembled with a tic. His eyes darkened to red. Roaring beyond the realm of coherent speech blew the reek of brimstone past onyx teeth as he opened his mouth. Green flames swirled at the core of his throat.
Mamoru teleported a block away, watching the fire breath melt out the foundation of another skyscraper and leave the street paved with liquid gold.
“That looked like it might have been unpleasant,” yelled Mamoru. He glided backward to the hatch, whistling
as if calling a dog. “Here boy.”
The dragon sank its claws into the street and dragged himself around to face Mamoru. “You will suffer like no mortal has yet known suffering in the history of your pathetic species. I shall destroy you and anything even bearing the slightest connection to you once I am done.”
Mamoru generated an image of a six-foot wide dog treat and waved it, whistling.
Whatever words bellowed from Nightwing’s mouth next drowned in a swirl of muted sound as Mamoru leapt into the hatch. The sensation of falling down a narrow chute slowed, as if the air around him had become dense syrup.
The narrow passage vibrated with a deafening roar that shuddered in his armor. Even his ears in the real world ached. Cringing, he looked up.
With a resounding crash, Nightwing rammed his head into the tiny hole, ripping and clawing at the sides to force his massiveness into the small space. Mamoru couldn’t help but remember Flatline commenting about the AI's fat ass getting stuck, and laughed. The raging dragon faded into the stretching tube above him as he fell with increasing speed.
His feet touched ground, and the pipe snapped away into the sky like a rubber band, exposing miles and miles of rolling green fields. Far off to his left, the shape of a castle shimmered amongst the meadow. Flatline, rather the elven wizard, stood a few paces to his right next to a huge man in gleaming medieval armor.
Mamoru attempted to raise an eyebrow his avatar lacked. The titan had to be at least seven feet tall with the kind of ridiculous muscles only a professional bodybuilder could possess, and a square-chinned jaw verging on cartoonish. Long blond hair hung to the middle of his back over a blue-trimmed white cloak. He chatted away with the elf, in a voice so stereotypical it hurt.
“I couldn’t believe I made it back in time. This couple was in front of me at the Cyberburger and they couldn’t figure out what they wanted. How can you go to Cyberburger and not know what you want? It’s not like their menu ever changes. They only give me forty-five minutes for lunch, and I’m spending ten of it just standing there waiting for no reason. It’s not hard.”
Angel Descended (The Awakened Book 6) Page 35