Portal Jumpers

by Chloe Garner

  Slowly, the layout of the buildings began to make sense. Larger buildings were further apart and had larger bases, for obvious reasons, and commercial buildings were labeled with logos or symbols, while the residences, hotels, apartments, anything else that didn’t appear to sell a specific product, were color coded. She had no idea what the color codes meant, but she wasn’t sure it mattered. There were open spaces a few blocks away that she presumed were green space - if the flora was actually green here, which was reasonably likely from the wavelengths of light coming through the clouds, but not a given - and then a cluster of buildings beyond that that had more mundane labels.

  Administration, of some kind, she guessed.

  She managed to force the map to zoom out far enough to look at other cities from a geographical perspective, but the map didn’t like it, and kept popping back to her location. It was a tourist guide, not a research center. She didn’t see any cities in her quick sweeps that looked larger or more important. She spent a few minutes trying to alter her assumptions for what an underground civilization would value - direct access to surface water for transportation would probably be less important, but would they come out to trade with each other instead of trying to build underground transit? - and then made the arbitrary conclusion that this was probably as close to a capital city as she was likely to find.

  If she were a smug, power-happy Palta intent on destroying a civilization, where would she hang out to watch the fallout?

  If it were Cassie, she’d be on top of the largest building in the city with a pair of binoculars and a cold beer, but that wasn’t where Mab had been. She’d been with the Southern army, sitting next to the Commander. Sure it was leverage, as well as a vantage point, but Cassie could see Jesse wanting to be at the command center of anything he was trying to manipulate, rather than just watching it from above.

  She tapped on the screen to jump there, the way she’d seen Jesse do it, and nothing happened. She did it again, and noticed characters flickering on the bottom of the screen.

  She didn’t have any money.

  Figured.

  She studied the map once more then headed off on foot.

  It was probably the right way to go, anyway. The amount of culture on display was priceless, and a part of her itched to take notes to take back to Troy.

  She hadn’t thought about home, or Troy, in a long time. She waited for the sense of loss that came with missing them, but it didn’t come. She was having too much fun.

  The blocks were bigger than she would have guessed. It took a little over an hour to walk to the administration buildings, across a gray-bricked courtyard where roots and shoots were poking their way up between the bricks. It wasn’t unkempt yet, but it was getting there. Apparently there were still things that machines hadn’t done.

  Cassie took the stairs up to the main building, ignoring the energy platforms that would have helpfully taken her to the top. Up the center of the stairs was a ramp with similar platforms at the bottom; not everyone who insisted on making their own way up to the buildings used stairs, though. It wouldn’t have passed handicap laws on Earth - it was much too steep. Cassie wondered what kind of species it was there for.

  The walkways at the top of the plateau were similarly constructed; simple bricks easy for Cassie to walk on ran alongside a much more complex groove up to the front of the central building. Pillars held up an immense, high roof and the building didn’t appear to have doors. After the slick, technological nature of the rest of the buildings, Cassie was a bit shocked to find these so sparse and fundamental. No cement or tile, the pillars and walls of the building might have been Egyptian sandstone, by color and texture. The scope was phenomenal, and Cassie suspected that there was a lot more modern technology at work, here, than met the eye.

  She ventured inside, finding several hallways branching off in either direction as she entered, then a large space lit by skylights and chalky, matte panels that reflected the light around the room without casting shapes. At the far end of the space, twenty feet above the main floor, a stone platform rose against the wall. It would have been the right place for a throne, but instead Cassie saw the backs of bank after bank of computer monitors. No effort had been made to disguise or transition between the raw stone and the metal electronics, and it had a stern effect. It wasn’t trying to impress anyone; none of this was. It was simply this grandiose because it couldn’t possibly be anything else.

  “I almost overrode the system to let you jump here,” a voice called in Gana. Cassie saw movement through the electronics, and then Mab came into view. “I’ve been bored, waiting for you. And that’s with you walking straight here.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Cassie asked.

  “Why you?” Mab asked back, tripping down the stairs on light feet.

  “What?”

  “Why you?” Mab asked again, landing on the floor noiselessly and putting her hands on her hips. “Why is he toting you around the universe with him? You’re nobody. You aren’t interesting. You aren’t smart. You aren’t useful. What are you, even?”

  “Human,” Cassie said. “We like to think we’re pretty special.”

  “Never heard of you,” Mab said. “Unimportant. Why is he bringing you with him?”

  “Could ask him yourself,” Cassie said. “I’m sure he’d want to ask you a few questions. Like why are you doing this?”

  “He’s clever,” Mab said. “Can’t ever be sure if he’s lying or telling the truth. You’re too dumb to lie. Convincingly.”

  “So the ego is universal for you guys, huh,” Cassie said.

  “Is it ego if you’re right?” Mab asked. “Why you?”

  “Maybe you wouldn’t see it,” Cassie said.

  “Maybe you’ve got no clue,” Mab answered, flipping a hand through her hair. “What do they really call you?”

  “What?”

  “Single- or dual-syllable words are great handles for an identity, but they’re pretty worthless when you’ve got an entire planet of whiny parasites wandering around trying to find each other.”

  “Calista,” Cassie said. “Three enough for you?”

  Mab snorted.

  “What do they call you?” Cassie asked. “Really.”

  “Not Mab,” she said. Cassie shook her head.

  “You got out. After everything that happened to everyone you knew… How did you end up here? Why did you just throw it away?”

  “Who says I’m throwing anything away?” Mab asked darkly. “Maybe this is just who I’ve always been… set free… after I got out.”

  “Talk to him,” Cassie said. “You aren’t alone.”

  “He certainly is, if you’re all he’s got for company. Like having a hand-puppet with a stutter.”

  “What did you do?” Cassie asked. Mab looked around the echoing room.

  “I took them away,” she said finally, her voice small but defiant, a great departure from the staged persona from just moments before. “They were his favorite, but I took them away.”

  “Why?” Cassie asked.

  “Sure, I left a few, so that they could tell him how bad it was…”

  “This is about him?” Cassie asked. “Why?”

  Mab tossed her hair.

  “I take what I want.” The big voice was back. “I take it, and I don’t have to explain myself to worms, you or the xhrahk-ni-els.”

  “I’m going to stop you,” Cassie said. This brought a sharp look from the Palta.

  “That’s a big threat for a tiny little member of an unimportant species,” she said.

  She wasn’t entirely sure where it had come from, but having made the threat, she didn’t feel like taking it back. Mab was more than she could tolerate.

  “I’m not the type you want to underestimate.”

  Mab laughed.

  “How did things turn out with the Adena Lampak?”

  Cassie shrugged.

  “Why do you care?”

  “Seeing how much I underestimated yo
u.”

  “Why are you doing it?” Cassie asked. Mab answered by pulling a gun out from behind her back. Configured like any normal handgun, it appeared to be powered by some kind of electronic energy, rather than a chemical explosion.

  “You know what this is?”

  “Don’t you?”

  Mab smirked.

  “This is where the contest begins,” she said. “You aren’t anyone special, but he seems to care about you. I’m going to take you away from him, same as everything else.”

  “You started the Consciousness,” Cassie murmured. Mab was silent for a moment, then tossed the gun high in the air toward Cassie.

  “You don’t know anything,” she said, then disappeared. Cassie caught the gun and spun a full circle. The room was empty.

  “Great,” she muttered.

  She took cover on the platform behind the computers, appreciating being invisible for a few minutes while she worked through the gun. It was a rather elegant design, just two pieces with the hard work of projecting a slug all embedded in the main piece by design. It came apart in her hands easily, and slid back together just as easily. The handle contained triple towers of glossy white metal in familiar bullet shapes. Aerodynamics were aerodynamics, no matter where you grew up.

  The power source for the gun was in the handle; it audibly charged when she reassembled the two pieces. That was reassuring. She wished she could take a few shots to work it in; it was hard to even guess what the muzzle velocity would be for something this foreign, but she wasn’t willing to leave pock-marks in the great structure around her. It wasn’t that life-or-death yet.

  It could be a trick, she considered. What would the motivation be to arm her and suggest a hunt, other than what it seemed on the surface?

  Were there survivors or strays that Mab was hoping Cassie would hurt by mistake? Was she hoping Cassie would lose focus entirely and shoot Jesse?

  Was there something about the gun that was dangerous?

  She would have to do some kind of test to rule out intentional mechanical failure, though that seemed inelegant for the blond Palta. Cassie took another look at one of the bullets. It was harder than the lead she was used to; there was no way to know whether there were any features hidden inside of it, but the weight seemed consistent and the sound it produced didn’t suggest it was hollow.

  The balance of the gun was good. It was lighter than a human-made gun of equivalent size, but solid enough that the kick wasn’t going to come as a complete surprise.

  Depending.

  Too many unknowns.

  She definitely needed test shots.

  She wondered how the planet was programmed to view firearms. Getting herself arrested for brandishing a weapon in pubic - even if that public was deserted - hardly seemed like the outcome she was going for.

  She looked up at the banks of computers, wishing she had the skillset to manipulate them. They had gurus, Jumpers whose natural aptitudes ran toward the digital, and they had an ever-evolving training set on how to address a foreign electronics system - it was somewhere on the spectrum between voodoo and savant, what those Agents could do, given a completely foreign paradigm - but even they would have had a hard time doing anything much beyond identifying what the system was doing, and Cassie didn’t even have that much mojo. It was unfortunate, but all they were going to be for her was cover.

  She poked her head around the edge, scanning the room again, then dashed across the wide space, taking a new refuge in the hallway.

  Why would Mab want to kill her, again? That part wasn’t making complete sense, though she believed it, having seen what else Mab was capable of.

  The stone by her head exploded and she crouched, turning.

  “Life or death, human,” Mab said. “Pick one.”

  Cassie returned fire.

  It was like a hellish version of training.

  Her target would pop up out of nowhere, and Cassie would scramble for cover, staying low and shooting back, trying to be aware of the limitations she faced on ammunition. At least there were no civilians. The city seemed deserted, even as the electronics continued their energetic, colorful advertising.

  Cassie was crouched behind a half-wall inside a retail store that sold products she hadn’t even attempted to identify, watching the street while listening for motion behind her. The tower of products behind her wouldn’t stop a bullet, but it would stop Mab from getting a clean shot at her.

  It had been an hour since she’d seen Mab. The Palta had started out playing with her, jumping across short distances to keep Cassie off balance and under fire. Now, though, the fight had gotten more tactical. Mab was laying traps.

  Cassie was doing it back.

  There was a creak behind her and then a sharp noise. A woman’s voice yelped. Cassie turned and shot though a hole in the display. She found Mab doubled over where a pole had snapped free and kneecapped the Palta woman. Cassie brought up her gun and the shots hit true. Mab staggered sideways, then grabbed her arm and disappeared. Cassie stood slowly, checking the street, then went to go see what Mab had left behind. She was almost sure she’d hit the woman more than once before, but had yet to find any body fluids.

  This really wasn’t a fair fight if Cassie was the only one who could be killed by a projectile.

  For her own part, Cassie was carrying some kind of shrapnel in her thigh; her dress had self-healed over whatever it was that had hit her, and Cassie hadn’t had a chance to do any more checking to see what had hit her. It hurt, but not enough to slow her down.

  The pole rolled when she pushed it with her foot, the strips of cloth she’d used as elastics to stretch it against falling away. Simple trick, one she’d learned from a guy who had actually seen combat - on Earth - but hard to identify separately from the rest of the chaos of the store. She’d ransacked it looking for supplies. And to hide a half-dozen traps like this one.

  She checked over her shoulder again, then knelt.

  The floor was so clean that she could find the oil prints from Mab’s fingertips, but there was nothing else.

  No bullets, either. She checked her line and went to scan the wall. Nothing.

  Mab was carrying them around, but she showed no sign of it.

  This frustrated Cassie more than anything else about this stupid game.

  It was clearly a game. Mab was measuring her. No question, Cassie’s life was in danger. She had cement dust in her eyes that was still bothering her from the encounter an hour before. Mab had bounced the bullet off of a post and been less than an inch away from hitting Cassie. Random noise; out of a hundred, it would have hit her in the face at least sixty times.

  But it was a game. Mab wanted to make her afraid. Wanted to push her to breaking, into making a mistake or into hiding. Hitting Mab with the pole might have been more satisfying than bullets, at this point. Palta may not have been particularly sensitive to platinum, or whatever her shot was made of, but they had knees.

  Cassie looked around the shop, noticing where automated processes had started an attempt to straighten it and sighed.

  The odds were against her in such overwhelming fashion that she should have been running. She couldn’t kill Mab - not with any degree of guarantee - and she was, herself, all too mortal. It simply wasn’t her nature to look for the white knight. She was the white knight, and she was going to take her pound of flesh. Whether Jesse found her alive or dead, she was going to have made Mab pay for it.

  It rained.

  Cassie was outside of a cafe - best guess - the makeshift backpack she carried emptied of tricks twice over, now, and still the game persisted. She’d impaled Mab twice, smashed her in the head both from the side and above, and was nearly out of ammunition, she’d taken so many shots, but the Palta still harried Cassie. Whatever sun there was behind those dark clouds had set several hours ago, but the streets were well-lit by signs and discrete lights tucked up in the buildings.

  For all the effortless civilization around her, the rain was dreary
and cold and left gritty gray marks down her skin. Cassie checked to make sure they weren’t causing immediate damage, then ignored it.

  She had avoided interfacing with any of the electronics any more than she had to, guessing that Mab could track her that way, but when she would go past maps, she would try to get snippets of information about where she was. She was trying to stay within a radius of the hotel, if she could.

  Jesse had to come back sometime, and if this was going to devolve into a bloody stalemate otherwise, she’d keep the advantages she had.

  The glass behind her popped, the sound of a glacier breaking up, and she scanned the street, knowing better than to look behind her. The advertising glass was bullet-proof to everything but direct shots and re-healed after impact, so if Mab were inside the cafe shooting at her, she’d never hear the bullet that killed her. Besides, she’d coated the inside of the window with an orange, floury paste to cover her back twenty minutes ago. The shops were set up with security in mind, but they didn’t hold up to a determined onslaught when there was no one there to stop her.

  There was a second shot, the crack as the bullet broke the sound barrier coming from her right. Cassie kept her head down, creeping out toward the street. She couldn’t see Mab yet, but the sound was unmistakable. And Mab wouldn’t be shooting if she didn’t have a line-of-sight on Cassie.

  There was a flash of blond as Mab ducked around a corner down the street, and Cassie streaked across the road, getting her back against the building and walking along it, keeping a wide sweep of the street in view as she walked. Foot over foot, with her back against the storefronts, she made her way toward the corner where Mab had disappeared.

  She stuck her head around the corner and pulled it back, swallowing as a bullet smacked into the building where her face had been. Mab was down the street a ways, crouched behind a metal structure. Cassie hadn’t figured out what they were for yet, but she did know that her ammunition wouldn’t punch through two thicknesses of metal; Mab had shot a similar box earlier that day, and the pinging inside of it had gone on for almost a second as the bullet had tried to find a way out.