by L. E. Price
“These somebodies are all up in my business,” he said, “and I don’t think I like it.”
“Just don’t get sucked in. The BIP lies, Jake. Only reality is reality.”
He studied the scattered wares on her display table. Circuit boards, stray chips under plastic clamshells, tangles of colored wire.
“My reality needs a little added security,” he told her. “I’m looking for a motion detector. One I can wire to a standard tablet interface.”
She ducked low, rummaging in a cluttered cardboard box.
“Got just what you need, hey.”
She dropped her discovery in the heart of the counter. A fist-sized sphere of gray plastic with a black oval eye, hooked to an H-shaped mounting bracket. A pair of cables dangled from the back of the sphere.
“That’s a Paratech B-38. Security cam with a built-in motion detector. Two years past the curve but it’s reliable, and still compatible with anything you’ve got.”
“Is that your way of saying my tablet is obsolete?” he asked.
“No,” she said, teasing. “Not just your tablet.”
“Cute. What do I owe you?”
“Thirty.”
He knew better than to haggle, not with Rica. He paid her and slipped the motion detector under his overcoat.
“You really ought to come to a church meeting, Jake. We’re evolving ourselves, adapting to the future. You should join us.”
He played it off with a benign chuckle. “Don’t think I’m ready to go full Transmog.”
“Just listen with an open mind. That’s all we ask. It’s only a matter of time, you know. The BIP is going to fall, and only the real will be saved. Dragon’s gonna fall.”
He had been easing back from the booth. Now he paused, looking back at her.
“Dragon?”
Her LEDs turned ocean blue as her masked head bobbed.
“Like the book says. Modified New International version, Revelation chapter thirteen, verse one. ‘And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a dragon rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of Babylon.’”
A fresh wind rippled through the open market, too cold for the season.
* * * *
Jake was back in his office, balancing on a wobbly step-stool and screwing the gray plastic sphere into the wall overlooking the door, when Woody showed up. He had a fat vinyl tote-bag under one arm and a nervous bounce in his step.
“Shit, Jake.”
“Good morning to you, too. I just made coffee, help yourself.”
“Not on days when I’m streaming, told you, caffeine screws up my—” he paused. “You know what? Yeah, gimme.”
He filled up a mug while Jake lined up another screw. Then he pointed to the desk. The bullet was still there, a little copper-tipped rocket, now laying dead on its side. Long black scuffs marred the linoleum where Jake had hauled the desk back and forth.
“That it?”
“Yep,” Jake said.
Woody was wrestling with his tote-bag. He laid it out on the edge of the desk, pulled back the flap and produced a tablet. It was a few generations newer and a few grand more expensive than Jake’s, a paper-thin oblong with a translucent screen, capturing words and text like holograms projected upon a crystal-clear pane of glass.
“You aren’t the only one who got a message. Mine came last night, too, but I didn’t see it until this morning.”
Jake arched an eyebrow. “They broke into your place?”
“Nah. Didn’t need to. You remember how I had to bail last night for the Golden Temple semifinals? I was reading the comments from the feed—”
“Never read the comments,” Jake said. “Even I know that.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Woody’s fingertip scrolled along a deluge of comments, one-liners and fat paragraphs, thumbs-up and thumbs-down icons glittering like gemstones as his viewers passed judgment. “Anyway, this one came in around a few minutes before midnight. Burner account, brand new and already deleted. They registered just to post this.”
Jake finished threading the last screw. He stepped down from the stool and craned his neck to read over Woody’s shoulder.
From: [Deleted], 23:54
The contender was a nice guy and everybody liked him, but Neko Zoe got him killed. Sound familiar, Woody? Keep hanging out with Jake Camden, and you’ll find out what that’s like first-hand.
Jake shook his head. “Neko Zoe?”
“Golden Temple,” Woody said. “Part of the game is choosing from a cast of characters, and swapping them out, fast, to fit your strategy as the match unfolds. Last night’s runner-up played a perfect game until he picked Neko Zoe, and his entire offensive fell apart five seconds later. His opponent crushed him like a bug. In other words, he made one mistake and lost everything.”
“You should walk,” Jake said. “You know what happened to Rickey. This isn’t an empty threat — they’ve already killed at least one person for getting too close.”
“Are you quitting?”
“Nope. But I’m used to people wanting me dead. It’s an occupational hazard.”
“I’m a little safer than you are, Jake. I’m Barrymore—”
“So was Rickey.”
“Rickey,” Woody said, “was an academy hire. An indentured servant. And I don’t say that to look down on the guy, I just mean he didn’t have the same security or the same advantages a real arcology resident does. Nobody’s sending a gardening robot through my condo door.”
Jake glanced to his game deck, over by the sofa. Amber lights softly strobed, waiting to be awakened.
“Trevor was hard to get at, too,” Jake said. “They got him just fine. Not much of a practical difference between dead and brain-snatched, when it comes to shutting somebody up.”
Woody clenched his tablet until his fingertips turned white. Jake could see the frustration in the clench of his jaw, the tight squint of his eyes, nervous energy looking for a way out.
“I have to bring something up,” he told Jake.
“I’m listening.”
“This escalated fast. You know when it started.”
“I was there when he died.”
“No,” Woody said. “It escalated after — the morning after — we reached out to Prentise for help.”
“That was your idea.”
Woody’s head bobbed. He set the tablet down on the desk.
“I’m not saying it wasn’t my idea. I’m saying it might have been a bad one. I don’t think we can trust her.”
Great. Now he had Prentise not trusting Woody — or at least not trusting that he’d keep his mouth shut around the wrong people — and Woody not trusting Prentise. And Jake standing in the middle, trying to keep this ship on-course through the rocky, storm-tossed waters.
“If it puts your mind at ease,” he said, “when that message came in, Prentise was sitting right next to me.”
“What’d you find out last night?”
Now Jake had to decide who he trusted. He meant what he said to Prentise: Woody was solid in his books. No chance he was a knowing accomplice to the bad guys. But what she pointed out was just as true. As long as SDS was signing Woody’s paychecks, and expecting regular status reports, there was a good chance every word Jake said was finding its way to enemy ears.
Freeze him out, Prentise had said. Jake didn’t want to. Felt like being a lousy friend. There was another risk in play, too; if he cut Woody out of the loop and he found out — and he would find out, sooner or later — that’d be the end of Woody’s help and support.
“I’m taking a chance here,” Jake said, more to himself than to Woody.
“Meaning?”
“Who do you report to, at SDS?”
“Who do you think?” Woody said with a laugh. “Anton Kozlowski, Senior Counsel and Pain in the Ass. I’m to talk to him and only to him, under pain of being lawyered into oblivion.”
Jake contemplated the door.
>
“You any good at lying, Woody?”
Woody paused. A quiet deliberation.
“Try me,” he said.
Jake pointed to the motion detector. “Hook me up while I bring you up to speed.”
27.
“It makes sense,” Woody mused, in a tone that said he’d already walked this trail of thought on his own. “I mean, we already knew — if what Rickey said was true — that Anton Kozlowski lied to you about the Sea Dragon.”
“You can see why I don’t want you sharing our leads with him. If there’s a conspiracy inside SDS, if that’s why Rickey died and Trevor got mind-napped, he could be neck-deep in it.”
Woody pursed his lips. “Could be. On the other hand, everything he’s doing? Clamping down on the investigation, demanding to be in the loop every step of the way? I mean, he’s SDS’s chief attorney. That’s literally his job; if he didn’t, he’d be negligent. When you look at it that way, beyond being a typically sleazy corporate lawyer he hasn’t done anything suspicious at all.”
“Why are you defending him?”
“I’m not defending him,” Woody said. “I’m just saying, we don’t want to be paranoid.”
“Woody? Someone broke into my office last night, could have shot me, and left a bullet on my desk before sending you a death threat. Please listen to the voice of professional expertise. This is the exact time to get good and paranoid.”
“But you still trust Prentise.”
He didn’t have an answer for that. Beyond yes, he did. His gut told him Prentise was on their side. His gut wasn’t always right, but he’d still learned to trust it over the years.
“Anyway,” Woody said to his silence, rapping the translucent face of his tablet, “you’re all hooked up and ready to go. I ran a feed from the motion detector to your game deck.”
“So, if anybody comes in through the door—”
“Immediate alarm and emergency disconnect. You’ll be up, awake and on your feet before they get halfway into the office. Heck, I almost hope they come back and try that again. I’d love to see the looks on their faces.”
Me too, Jake thought. He rubbed the stubble on his jaw.
“What do you say?” Jake asked. “Can you keep this in-house for the time being?”
“Hey, I’m with you. You know that. But what do I tell Anton? I mean, I have to report something.”
Jake had been thinking about that. If Anton was on the level, it didn’t matter. If he wasn’t, this could be their chance to throw him off the scent.
“Tell him about how I used Trevor’s school rig to find out about Rickey’s dragon-hunter club, and the stash of illegal apps he’d been hoarding care of his pals in Russia. And how that’s what led me to confront him in person, and his subsequent death-by-hedge-clippers.”
Woody tilted his head, squinting.
“If he’s with the bad guys, he already knows all that.”
“Exactly,” Jake said. “A little truth to make the lie go down. Tell him the utility stash was a bust; it was all infected with malware and viruses, nearly bricked my game deck. That whole lead, thanks to Rickey’s murder, is a dead end.”
“Do I want to say murder, or accident?”
“Murder. Because we’re not stupid, and Anton knows it. There’s no chance I’d call it anything but a targeted hit. He’ll smell a rat if we pretend otherwise. Just don’t breathe a word about the realm keys. We don’t want him or anybody else knowing that’s our angle of attack. Can you handle that?”
Woody flipped him a casual salute. Then he tugged his game deck from the tote-bag and set it on the desk.
“I can be pretty convincing when I have to be. What’s our next move, partner?”
“Finding Prentise,” Jake said. “I got a bullet, you got a death threat. I want to know what she got.”
* * * *
What Prentise got, Jake learned fast as they gathered under the dusty rafters of the Hurst town hall, was irritation. Mostly at him, for refusing to cut Woody out of the loop. She didn’t say it out loud, but it was right there in the angry wrinkle of her nose and the glint of her hard eyes.
“You realize,” she said, pacing, “if Anton is dirty and he doesn’t buy your story—”
“I can handle it,” Woody told her.
She shot a glare at Jake. He spread his hands in surrender.
“He says he can handle it.”
She’d been on edge since he told her about the twin overnight threats. She didn’t have one of her own to share; apparently, she’d stayed off the conspirators’ radar so far. That was a good sign.
“If you’re worried about this coming back on you—” Jake started to tell her, about to give her another chance to walk away. She cut him off with a sharp wave of her hand.
“I’m not worried. They can’t get at me offline.”
“Trust me,” Jake said, “anyone can be got at.”
“Not me,” she said, firm as a wall of iron.
Who are you? He wondered, not for the first time. The question was undercut by his realization that she wasn’t worried about herself.
She was worried about him.
“We aren’t the only ones in potential danger,” Jake said.
Woody knew who he meant. “Rolen the Blue.”
Trevor was mind-locked and Mr. Rickey was dead. As far as they knew, Tim, Trevor’s classmate, was the sole survivor of the Barrymore Dragon-Hunters’ Club.
“Good chance they haven’t hurt him because he doesn’t know anything worth hurting him over,” Jake said. “But I don’t think we can risk it.”
Prentise put her hands on her hips. “Which raises the same question I had after the teacher died. How come Rickey got dead, Trevor got comatose, and you two only got warnings?”
“My best bet?” Jake said. “Whoever is behind this, they’re trying their best to keep things on the down-low. A schoolteacher dies in a freak accident, that’s an afternoon or two of headlines before it falls out of the news-cycle. If I go the same way, Trevor’s mother — Senator Kensington — is going to raise holy hell over it.”
“And as for me,” Woody offered, “well, even if somebody at SDS is the culprit, the entire company can’t be dirty. If I get killed, they’ll be pushed into mounting a bigger investigation. Better for the bad guys if they can scare me into quitting the job and walking away on my own two feet.”
Jake nodded. “Tim doesn’t have that kind of protection. Woody, he’s a friend of yours — can you track him down?”
“Sure. And what, fill him in?”
No. Jake knew that was a bad play. Faced with the truth, the kid might panic, go out for revenge, spill his guts to the media — anything Tim did, short of keeping his mouth shut and maintaining his normal routine, could be a disaster for all of them.
Prentise was a step ahead of him. “Too risky. We can’t trust how he’ll react.”
“But we have to do something,” Woody said.
Jake gnawed at the problem like a dog with a bone. Right now, being too high-profile to kill — not without trouble, at least — was the only thing keeping him and Woody alive. He had to find a way to give Tim that same level of cover.
Then he saw it. Not cover. Exposure.
“I was thinking about the first night we got together in Dutton,” Jake said, “and that guy you introduced me to, he was part of the ascension guild that Trevor ran with — what were they called? And did Tim hang out with them, too?”
“The Crewe of Dreams,” Woody said. “Tim’s a member, yeah. But he’s not going for ascension, last I checked. He’s just there to help out and boost his pals. The Crewe’s never actually had anyone make it all the way to godhood; they’re honestly not that good.”
“Even better.”
Jake put his hands on Woody’s shoulders.
“You’re about to launch a new feature on your channel.”
“I am?” Woody asked.
“You are. Everyone talks about the top gamers, the elite, the best of the
best. But what about a more slice-of-life profile?”
“You mean,” Woody said slowly, putting it together, “like a series of videos following an average, mid-tier guild struggling to pull off their first ascension?”
Prentise broke into a grin. She got it, too. “As seen through the eyes of Rolen the Blue, an ordinary player just trying to support his friends.”
“I want you to weaponize your stream,” Jake told Woody. “Turn Rolen the Blue into a star. Put him front and center, with plenty of air-time. Make him the kind of guy who would turn heads, if he suddenly went missing like Trevor did.”
“Doesn’t stop them from arranging another ‘accident’ like they did with Rickey,” Woody pointed out.
“Don’t think they will, and I’ll tell you why. We already know the bad guys are keeping an eye on you, hence last night’s threat. Not only will this make Tim a harder target, it sends a message: namely, we’re watching the kid. If they take a shot at him, we’ll shoot right back.”
“That…might actually work,” Woody said. “At least it’s better than leaving him twisting in the wind. Okay. Cool. I’ll go try and track him down, butter him up, and pitch the idea. We’ll see what he says. What are you two going to do in the meantime?”
Jake shared a lingering glance with Prentise. He didn’t have to say a word; she already knew exactly what he had in mind.
* * * *
Back in Dutton, well past moonrise, the Dented Chalice was a party in full swing. An impromptu band filled the corner by the bar, lute-strings thrumming and staccato drumbeats putting a little sympathetic spring in Jake’s footsteps. Regulars lined the knife-scarred tables, drinking and feasting, while a few rowdy couples danced a jig in the aisles. Woodsy pipe-smoke mingled with the chestnut smell of spilled ale and hot, spicy stew.
Jake’s eyes narrowed, peering through the wraiths of smoke, hunting for his target.
There she was. Merisaude had rejoined her cult; the dusk-elf nursed a goblet of rich red wine, surrounded by sycophants and her adoring bodyguards. That was a problem. Jake needed to get her alone for what he had in mind. He had worked up a plan with Prentise on the way over. Now he just had to sell Merisaude a story and make her believe it.