by Alex Powell
“I guess all we can do is set up a domain for everyone to gather and hope they all show up,” Joanne said. “I’ll find a place and send the password.”
“My place or yours?”
“Just go set up a domain, Fox.”
“Where?”
Joanne decided the password should be one of Mrs. Park’s knitting patterns, in the hopes that she would be able to find her way back without help. Fox didn’t think Simon or Karl would know what the password meant, but Joanne insisted they would figure it out.
Fox created his domain for comfort, because he was still on edge. He rarely indulged in a domain that looked like anywhere near his home, but he felt that after all this, Joanne and the others wouldn’t mind. Maybe they wouldn’t even realize that was what it was.
“This is quaint,” Joanne said, looking around.
They were sitting on an outdoor patio across from a country-style inn. The tiny road that ran between them was barely large enough to fit one vehicle, and it disappeared down a lane, with a little stone wall on one side and a screen of small trees on the other. They overlooked a shallow brook, bright blue and cheery in the summer sun, babbling along. He saw a swan’s nest on the other side, and a stone bridge crossing behind it.
“This is where I grew up,” Fox confided, looking fondly at the inn.
“Where is it?”
He almost didn’t tell her. Joanne couldn’t be a spy, not after all that had happened. Yet he couldn’t be a hundred percent sure, and hesitated.
“You don’t have to tell me, you know,” Joanne said.
“This is a place in the county of Devon,” he whispered. “A tiny village just outside the town of Totnes. Been here for the past few hundred years or so, I imagine.”
“It’s lovely.”
“If you walk that way, there’s a large hill with lots of sheep,” he said wistfully. “I like sheep. My mum owns a silly old sheepdog that’s gone senile and keeps trying to herd people into the inn. Or at least she had one. I’m not sure the daft thing hasn’t passed on by now.”
They looked out at the brook, and Fox imagined them a cranky swan. They were always cranky, and he had a particularly vivid memory of being chased by one as a child.
He missed his home, he realized with a pang. He was hardly ever in his home country, and when he was, it was usually in one of the big cities, London or Manchester.
And now, here he was IRL, somewhere halfway across the world, in a landscape that wasn’t in the least bit hospitable while simultaneously trying to find his way through this mess in the Cerebrum. It made him want to get on the first plane out of there.
There was a knock on the door.
Both he and Joanne froze.
“Password?”
“By any other name, what am I?”
“It’s Mrs. Parks!” Joanne exclaimed, and Fox hurriedly granted her entry.
The door to the inn opened, and Mrs. Parks stepped through, looking around carefully.
“Are the others not here yet?” she asked in a tired-sounding voice. “I was sure all those messages you left everywhere were just for me.”
“They’re looking for you, but we can send another message to say you’re here now.” Joanne abruptly left the domain, then returned in a moment.
“I’m sorry to have caused so much trouble for you all.” Mrs. Parks wearily shook her head. “But it was unavoidable. I’ll wait till the others arrive to fill you in, but let me tell you, it was quite the adventure. This is why I generally avoid them. After this, I swear, I’ll sleep for a week.”
It didn’t take long for Simon and Karl to join them, and soon everyone was sitting around a long, wooden table. Fox was feeling slightly self-conscious now that everyone was here, looking around at his childhood home, but no one else had noticed anything different. Fox supposed that most of his domains were picturesque in some way.
“What happened, Mrs. Parks?” Karl asked, sounding worried. “No one knew where you had gone. We feared the worst!”
“The agents had a scrambling bug,” she said. “Let me tell you, I hope I never encounter one ever again. The effects were unpleasant.”
“Scrambling bug?” Simon asked, fear apparent in his face. “Did they trap you somewhere? Did you have to somehow fight them off to escape?”
“Oh, I did a lot of fighting, all right, but not with those agents.” She waved a robed arm in his direction. “I had a split second to counteract their plan to trap me in a link with them, so I made the bug think I was a bit of data and not a person.”
“So why didn’t you return to us?” Karl asked.
“The Cerebrum continued to think I was a piece of data after it shifted me and tried to keep processing me as such. I ended up on a gaming platform, and I had to play my way through all the levels in order to escape. Not to mention, for ages afterward, I felt like I was hungover with vertigo on a hallucinogen.”
“But you escaped!” Joanne said. “That’s the main thing.”
“While everyone was gone, I discovered the meaning behind the clue,” Fox interrupted. He knew he was being petty, but he’d been terrified for several long hours, and didn’t want to hear stories about narrow escapes. It made him more anxious.
“Oh, and what does it mean?” Simon asked, flipping back his cape.
“The country in question is Canada. The older brother, I’m assuming, is America. The wording in French that Joanne found so familiar is a Quebecois saying, part of a longer passage that refers to its parentage. France started the colony, but it was overtaken by England, which made Quebec part of the colony that eventually became Canada.”
“So why was there a second part?” asked Simon. “You did not need any other clue to decipher Joanne’s memory, so why is it important?”
“I have many memories of Canada,” Mrs. Parks interjected. “Although I am beginning to suspect which one it is, from the wording. Go on, Fox. I’m sure you’ve figured it out.”
“‘Children of a common mother’ is an inscription on the Peace Arch, a site at one of the American-Canadian border crossings. It refers to the fact that they were once colonies of England—the Rose.”
“I thought so,” Mrs. Parks said, getting to her feet. “Well, come on, all of you. If we’re taking a trip down memory lane, I’d like to get it over with so I can go home and have a well-deserved sleep.”
Fox pressed his forehead to hers, transferring domains.
All at once, Devon disintegrated and they were somewhere very different. It was still summer, but the heat was unbearably oppressive and humid. They were standing around a vehicle, an old beater with a cracked windshield and a missing taillight. Ahead of them, row upon row of ground vehicles stretched out, and Fox could see the border crossing.
“There’s the Peace Arch.” Joanne pointed at a great, white gate, and on the side facing them was the inscription “children of a common mother.”
“It’s not just the countries that the clue refers to,” Mrs. Parks said. “I have two of them, both by different fathers. One was born in America, which is my home nation.”
The memory started playing, and suddenly a woman got out of the car and ran down the row of vehicles ahead, screaming, “I need a doctor! A nurse! Anybody with any medical experience!”
Curious heads poked out of the open windows, and from several rows ahead one women replied, “I’m a neurosurgeon. Is there something the matter?”
“Neuro-what now?” the woman replied. “Good enough. Anyone else?”
A few more minutes of shouting produced a nurse and an ambulance attendant, who all followed the woman back to the car.
“That’s my sister,” Mrs. Parks said. “We were in Canada on vacation—or so I told her—because I was really there to inform my lover that I was about to have his child. I’m sure you can imagine how that went down.”
She looked into the car, and everyone else hesitantly followed suit. A pregnant woman lay across the back seat, clutching an armrest so hard that her d
ark skin had turned pale. She had curly hair matted with sweat that had nothing to do with the hot weather, and glasses slipping down her nose.
“That’s me, and I’m about to give birth to a son at the Canadian-American border in the back of my sister’s clunker.”
As she said this, a glowing orb appeared in front of them, one that looked the same as Joanne’s, but not quite as bright. Or maybe it looked different because they were in an extremely bright setting, with a cloudless sky and a myriad of reflections off all the metal surfaces.
Mrs. Parks sighed. “And there’s the next clue, written on the Peace Arch.”
Everyone turned to look.
“Now I can go home,” she said. “Before I do, I forgot to tell you in all the hubbub. I’ve discovered where those agents are coming from.”
“Oh!” Simon exclaimed in sudden excitement. “So the plan worked? I thought you had failed after you told us about the scrambling bug.”
“Worked like a charm.” She sounded extremely pleased. “The bug came afterward, when they were trying to stop me from getting back with the information.”
“So we know the country in which King’s body is located and can start the search?” Joanne asked, hands on her hips. “Well, go on. Don’t keep us in the dark.”
“You know, it’s really very odd,” Mrs. Parks said thoughtfully. “I’d say it’s a coincidence, but I’m not sure it could line up so neatly. The agents are from Canada.”
Fox froze, and his stomach turned to ice. No, it surely could not be a coincidence. “My body is in Canada,” he whispered into the sudden silence.
Before anyone could say anything, he fled the domain. He didn’t know what it all meant, but it was beginning to make a distinctly sinister pattern, and he was in the middle of it.
* * * *
Seven faced the Cat and the Reaper by himself. Twelve and Eighty-Eight had offered to accompany him, because they said it was as much their fault as his that the rebel had escaped. Guarding the King was in his care, however, so he turned them down. They’d seemed relieved at that.
“So what if they know which country we’re in?” The Cat waved a dismissive hand. “They’ll never find our facility. It’s well hidden, not to mention buried under three feet of snow.”
“In fact, they’ve shut down all incoming and outgoing flights because of the weather,” the Reaper added with a theatrical shiver. “Too much ice on the wings.”
“That’s why our location is ideal,” the Cat agreed in satisfaction. “We don’t even need to guard it, really. Nature does it for us.”
They must have noticed Seven’s sceptical expression, because they both laughed.
“Not to worry, Seven,” the Cat said. “Everything is being taken care of on our end. All we need you to do is find those rebels and keep them occupied in the Cerebrum.”
“We’ve heard interesting news,” the Reaper said, gliding toward Seven. “Our source tells us that one of the rebels is currently in Canada. You can find him easily now. There are only so many link-ins, and that means you’ll be able to narrow it down. He has to return to our section in order to leave, so he will have to pass by at some point.”
“Which rebel?” Seven asked, careful not to betray any emotion. He wasn’t sure how to feel about it anyway, so that helped.
“The one called the Fox.”
Fox. A tingle ran up the length of Seven’s spine.
“Now go and catch him.”
Seven had doubts about how well this plan would work, although the Cat and the Reaper seemed confident in its success. Wandering around the link-in points and hoping to run into Fox seemed like a fool’s errand.
Did they even know how many link-ins existed for their entire nation? There were millions, and he couldn’t be at all of them at once. Would it have killed them to be slightly more specific when they gave him their directions? The only good thing about the way the link-in system was set up was that public and private link-ins were set up differently. The Reaper seemed certain that Fox was using a public one.
Seven wandered into the link-ins for the Manitoba region, marked in big, black, squarish letters. Underneath, in smaller letters, were regional names. The biggest was Winnipeg, and Seven began aimlessly walking through it.
Everyone else had reasonable assignments. They’d all looked baffled and sorry for him when he’d relayed his assignment. They’d still left, however, leaving him to wander around the link-in sector. His superiors had to have someone do this in-person, because security cameras weren’t possible in the Cerebrum. Perception was a tricky thing at best, and it could be fooled easily.
Yet he was an expert MindWaller, one of the best. And here he was, stuck on a tin soldier assignment. It was maddening.
They could have at least left him some company. Ordinary people, the ones all using the link-ins, were so dull. One glance, and he knew everything about them. Their data was written in easy-to-read lines, and most of them were wearing an approximation of their own faces. At least Fox would stand out.
A flash of red. People here had red hair sometimes. It was just wishful thinking that had him swivelling to look after the retreating back of the redhead who had just gone by. There were redheads here, but most of them didn’t have gravity-defying hair, or wear excessive amounts of leather and buckles.
Damn, the stupid plan had actually worked. Whether it was planned or simply coincidence, Seven didn’t know, but there was Fox nonetheless.
He chased after the splash of red, trying not to alarm any of the people around him by flat-out running. That might alert his target. Most Canadians in the Cerebrum recognized what the agents were, or at least their purpose. They knew they had nothing to fear from them as long as they followed the laws.
He came up behind Fox and slipped his hands over the man’s eyes, feeling playful and just a bit daring.
“Guess who,” he whispered.
Fox turned slowly, which left Seven’s hands on the back of his head, quite an unexpected position. The ridiculous hair beneath his fingers felt like silk, and he fought the sudden burning desire to wind his fingers in deeper.
“Seven,” Fox said. “Or at least, if you’re not Seven, then the entire lot of you are extremely strange.”
“I am Seven,” he said, suddenly unsure whether or not he’d managed to keep his eyes from turning back to brown in all the previous pandemonium. “Am I strange, then?”
That wasn’t fair. It wasn’t as if Eighty-Eight didn’t know weird things about dating sims.
Careful fingers gently lifted his goggles, and Seven blinked at the sudden change in light perception.
“Your eyes are blue,” Fox said. “I still haven’t had a chance to check any other agents’ eyes, so I can’t be sure that means you really are different.”
“We’re all different,” Seven said defensively. “It’s just that you can’t tell by looking at us.”
“How do you tell?”
“I…” Seven didn’t know. He just could.
“I know a way.”
Fox leaned in, and Seven couldn’t think. Their noses brushed and he felt his heart banging against his ribcage so hard it almost hurt. His stomach fluttered violently, and for one mad instant, he thought Fox was going to—
Their foreheads touched, and abruptly, they were in Seven’s domain. Seven was relieved for one brief instant before he remembered that Fox being in his domain was a bad situation for him, and for their entire operation. But even so, he wouldn’t have known how to react if Fox had done what Seven thought he’d been about to do.
They were in his sitting room. Unfortunately, so was the King.
“King?” Fox said in a dazed voice. “What are you doing here?”
Thankfully, when he looked up, the King didn’t revert back into agent form as he had the last time that Seven had returned. Maybe he would forget the training.
“Oh, you have a friend!” The King sounded delighted. “You never told me there were other people here, Seven.�
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Fox immediately dropped to his knees before the King, looking him over as if he could visibly tell if he was all right. “I’m Fox,” he whispered. “Do you know me, King?”
“No.” King looked at Seven. “You should introduce us.”
“Yes, Seven, introduce us,” Fox said in a choked voice.
“King, this is Fox,” Seven said. “You knew him before. Do you remember what I said earlier, about losing your memories?”
“Yes, and that I really had another life. You said I was the King, but those other men said I wasn’t. They said I was one of you.”
“You aren’t,” Seven said. “You shouldn’t listen to them.”
“Well, they said not to listen to you.”
“Who do you think you should listen to?” Fox asked. “Who is more trustworthy?”
“I didn’t like those robed ones,” King said thoughtfully. “They were unpleasant, and they kept shooting poor Eighty-Eight to prove something to me. I’m not sure what it was, though.” King didn’t mention that they’d also shot him.
“He really can tell you apart,” Fox said, looking at Seven.
“We have no way of knowing if he could do that before he lost his memories,” Seven said. “We must be careful what we do when it comes to his mind. If we take memories in and out too often, he’ll lose his ability to retain them altogether.”
Fox glared suspiciously at him. “How do you know that?”
Seven shrugged. “I was told there used to be six agents before me. I’ve never met them, but I can assume that their minds were grounds for experimentation. Before they became useless, that is.”
“Who told you?”
“The powers that be. I know them as the Cat and the Reaper.”
“Yes, those robed men that I don’t like,” King added helpfully.
“How do you know they were telling the truth?” Fox demanded. “They could be lying.”
“What use would it be to lie to me?” Seven asked with a wry tilt of his head. “I can’t go anywhere.”
Fox looked around before changing the subject. “Why is your domain a house?”