by Simon Archer
“Okay, okay,” Clem said, nodding to reassure himself. “That’s good. That’s good.”
“Somebody, turn that thing on,” Kinley said, as she was pacing in an agitated state back and forth in the main lounge of the cabin, pointing at the TV. Kira reached out to a panel on the wall, and the screen flicked to life.
“It’s just more of the same,” Cindra said with a shrug. “We already know they’re expecting us, and they’re going to inspect everyone on the boat.”
“So we just need to sneak off and change faces right away,” I said, repeating for the umpteenth time the plan we’d decided upon a week ago when we saw that the government was broadcasting that we were most likely on this ship.
The ocean liner had been on lockdown since that day. Food was dropped off on our porch three times a day, and we could call for more service if we wanted it. But there was no more roaming about the ship of our own free will. I got the sense that the captain regretted his decision to disembark the second he saw the news that night. But no one had interrogated us or anything. I imagined a ship like this wasn’t equipped for anything like that. It was full of vacationers. They never would’ve expected something like this to come up, not in a million years.
“I assure you, we will meet these people when they arrive onshore… before they arrive onshore, even… and we will apprehend them,” the mayor was saying on the TV screen. “They will not be allowed to so much as set foot in Direfall. Not for a second.”
“And how are we going to deal with that?” Clem asked, jerking his thumb at the image. “What if they come to our cabin, keep us locked up in here so they can apprehend us?”
“Well, we’ll just have to find a way to slip out, then,” I said, shaking my head at the man on the screen. “We’re trying to fucking help you, dude, why can’t you just see it?”
Just then, a voice began to reverberate throughout the ship, just as it had when we had originally been informed about the lockdown on the ocean liner.
“We will be docking in under thirty minutes,” the voice said flatly. “You are not to leave your cabins. I repeat, you are not to leave your cabins. You are to stay in your cabins until a customs personnel representative arrives to clear you for shore leave. Thank you for your cooperation on this matter.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound good,” Kinley grumbled as she continued to pace back and forth in front of the TV, which was still on and showing aerial shots of a beach, presumably where we would be docking in the Direfall port.
“We figured as much would happen,” I said with a sigh. “Malthe, do you think you’re ready?”
“Huh?” he asked, so absorbed in his work that he was no longer paying attention to the conversation. “Oh, I guess so. I mean, we’re flying by the seat of our pants here, regardless. There’s no testing it out first, and I imagine there’s a point of diminishing returns with all my tinkering.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding to him. “So what we need to do is we need to sneak out of our cabin and find a lifeboat, take it, and paddle it into shore without getting caught. I doubt the captain will do anything if they notice us. They’re too freaked out, and honestly, if they think it’s us, they’ll probably be relieved to have the problem out of their hands. The trick will be docking somewhere away from where the patrols will be.”
“Okay... I think I saw a couple of lifeboats lining the sides of the ship,” Lin said. “I wasn’t paying very close attention, though.”
“I was,” I said. “When we first got on here, I did a run-through of the whole ship. There are a lot of lifeboats off to the left where the buffet is, but there are a few more on the opposite side, where there isn’t as much foot traffic. We’ll be better able to evade detection going that way.”
“They’ll notice when we’re gone,” Kira said, her voice trembling slightly. “They’ll know it was us.”
“Of course they will,” I said simply. “But it won’t matter. These faces will mean nothing once we get away from this ship. We won’t have to use them again. We’ll have to use one more set of disguises, but then it’s all on our real faces. Our real selves.”
“Really?” Lin asked, her jaw hanging open slightly. “But why? I mean, wouldn’t it be safer to keep the disguise on?”
“At first, yeah, until Malthe sets of the holographic army,” I said. “But after that, being our true selves is an advantage, not a deficit. They’re afraid of us, remember? More afraid of us than they are of anyone or anything else. We can use that, so we should.”
“Okay,” Lin said, nodding grimly. “Let’s do it.”
“Alright,” I said, standing up quickly and tapping my bracelet twice to turn on my ocean liner face for one last time. “Alarms will probably go off when we leave, so we have to be quick. Just follow me. And don’t trip over anything.” I stared pointedly at Malthe on this last part, and he looked away sheepishly.
“I’ll do my best,” my kinesthetically challenged friend muttered.
Predictably, our doors were locked from the outside. So I pulled my laser out of my hidden tool belt and cut a long opening in it, allowing us to walk through. Also predictably, alarms began to blare the second I set foot outside the cabin.
“Well, that’s that then,” Clem muttered, clearly disheartened.
“Come on,” I whispered, waving for them to follow me down the steps from our balcony. “We’ll need to be fast. They don’t have enough staff for major security, so we’ll have a few minutes before they come after us.”
So we scrambled down the stairs and all the way to the main deck, the alarms continuing to blare and send flashing red lights across the ship as we did so. I could feel my own heart throbbing loudly in my chest, and could feel all of the foxgirls’ anxiety. Clem panted beside me. But there was no time for sensory overload now. We had to get to that damn lifeboat.
When we reached the bottom of the staircase, I made a sharp turn behind the life vest station to run along the narrow path on the opposite side of the ship from the buffet where not many people went. Sure enough, I didn’t see anyone around, though I could hear voices of the staff calling out for help and trying to figure out what had set off the alarm.
Then we reached the lifeboat. I ran over to where I remembered Iggy had rolled the last one down, but the place where we could do that was locked.
“I need a staff card to undo it,” I said, banging my fist against the railing in frustration. “Dammit, what’s even the point if passengers can’t access them? We’ll just have to send it down there and then jump down.”
And with that, I flashed my holo knife again and cut the rope, sending the lifeboat half dangling down on the remaining rope.
“Okay, Clem,” I said. “You first. I’ll round out the rear, just in case.”
The other binder nodded and swung himself over the railing, sidling down the hanging rope until he reached the boat. He pulled on the rope more and more until it started to loosen and unwind, despite us not having the access card, and then he followed it down into the water.
It was awkward, and he splashed around quite a bit and got rather wet, but he ended up right side up in the boat and motioned for us to follow him down there.
I motioned for Lin to follow him down, and then Malthe, and then the foxgirls. It was rough going for the first two since their skills were not of the physical variety, and Kira probably wouldn’t have made it, either, if it weren’t for my help through our bond. But they all eventually made it down, leaving me alone on the ship.
While this was happening, I heard more voices congregate on the other side of the main deck as the alarms continued to blare. The panicked voices began to grow closer and closer, and I feared that our time was running short.
So I swung my legs over the railing just as Clem had and grabbed hold of the rope, getting ready to sidle down myself. But just as I was about to do so, a hand clasped around my left ankle, which was the only part of me remaining on the ship.
A particularly fierce-looking man wi
th an asymmetrical face in a security guard’s uniform was on the other side of the hand. I wriggled and wrestled and tried to get out of his grip, but he held on tight, his torso elongating so I couldn’t pull him overboard and his bulging muscles taut through his thin shirt.
I looked down. My team was right below where my ankle was in the boat, staring up at me with arms outstretched, ready to catch me if I were to fall.
And so I did. I let go of the rope and allowed myself to flip upside down, so I was dangling just from my ankle, still being held up by the guard.
“Wha...?” the guy began to ask, but he didn’t miss a beat, stretching himself out further so that he could maintain his grip on me. He started to pull, trying to get me up, but while he was pretty damn big, so was I. It would take a lot to get me back on that boat.
But the laws of gravity still applied. It would take far less to get him down in the water, I reasoned.
And so I started to swing myself back and forth, my dangling hands slapping against the side of the boat, enabling me to push off and gain more traction.
Finally, I was able to gain enough traction to curl my torso up around my legs. By then, the man with the throbbing muscles had managed to pull me up a couple of inches or so, his veins pulsing and his face red from the effort. He grunted out, crying for reinforcements, but the ones who had already arrived just stood there, unsure of what to do or how to help him, likely also paralyzed by their fear of my team and me.
On my way up to my legs, I managed to pull out my holo knife again. It buzzed to life, and I cut off his hand with one swift motion, sending myself plummeting down to the lifeboat.
“Incoming,” I screamed at my friends. “Hit the motor!” I had noticed that the thing had a motor on the side, and Malthe was already hard at work, bringing it to life.
The man, crying out in pain and shock at the loss of his hand, came tumbling over the side of the boat after it and me, left off balance by the sudden loss of my weight from his grip. And, technically, the loss of his grip in and of itself.
He fell into the water to the left of the lifeboat and began to splash around haphazardly, still in a great deal of pain, and unable to swim as effectively as he normally would without half of a limb.
I, however, fell into the waiting arms of Clem, Cindra, and Kinley. My fall nearly destabilized the whole boat, but it turned out okay. We rocked back and forth a bit, and some water spilled over into the sides, but that was it. We remained stable and afloat as the boat whirred out across the waved toward the thin line of land up ahead.
The other members of the ship crew just stared, open-mouthed, down at the scene. More of them began to congregate around where the lifeboat had been, alerted by the sound of our scrimmage. But just as I’d expected, they didn’t make any effort to come after us. We weren’t their problem anymore.
“They’re just going to sit there and let us leave?” Kira asked blankly.
“Yep,” I said. “It’s easier for them that way. They just want to avoid being fired. This way, they get off pretty much Scott free. No major property damage or anything, no search of the ship. The other passengers probably get to disembark without much problem now that they know we’re the imposters. This is good for their bottom line. Not really for their public image, though, but they were screwed in that regard, anyway.”
“You’ve studied the maps, right?” Malthe asked, turning to Lin. “Where should we go?”
“As far to the right as we can,” she said, squinting up ahead. “The main beach is to the left, so the further right we go, the more likely we are to avoid whatever’s meeting us there.”
“Good,” I said. “Good job, everyone. We got out of there without a whole lot of incident.”
“You call that without a whole lot of incident?” Clem asked. “We practically drowned a guy and nearly drowned ourselves.”
“We’re talking about by our own standards, not any objective measure,” I said with a laugh, and he shrugged, giving me the point.
“And when we get there? What’s on the right side of the land?” Cindra asked, turning to Lin herself.
“It might actually be easier for us this way, in the long run,” she surmised. “The main city is on the right side. The left side is more of a retreat by the beach, a more affluent area. As far as I can tell, the business district is in that area. But I think we’ll have to climb some shit first.”
“We’re used to that,” Kira said, though she didn’t look at all happy about it.
Pretty soon, the ocean liner was just a speck in the distance.
“We should change our faces now,” I told Malthe. “While we know we have time.”
“Sure,” he said, nodding and holding out his hands to collect our bracelets once more. We all flicked back to our normal appearances for a few moments, which was somehow a relief to me.
“It’s good to see you all,” I said, looking around at everyone and smiling.
“You too,” Cindra sighed, resting her head on my shoulder.
“Okay, so to go over the plan one more time, Clem and I and the foxgirls will go into the main Tibor Enterprises building while Lin and Malthe do the whole holographic army thing to distract them. We find Achilles and take him down. Then we meet up with each other again and deliver him to the mayor with all the evidence we have of what the company has done.”
“What do you think is going on back home right about now?” Clem asked with a sigh.
“I don’t know,” I said somberly. “I hope no news is good news, and I honestly really think it is. But there’s no way to be sure.”
“It will work to our advantage if Semra’s managed to hold off their forces there,” Lin said matter-of-factly. “That way, they won’t have any leverage in negotiations. They’ll have to give in to us, at least give us back Termina.”
“Exactly,” I said. “And then, once we’ve secured that, we go for the rest. Free rein in the outside world, with some necessary restrictions, of course.”
“Do you really think we’ll get all that?” Clem asked, arching an eyebrow at me and looking more than a bit skeptical. “That’s a lot.”
“Well, there’s only one way to find out, I suppose,” I said.
“Here you go,” Malthe interjected, passing out the bracelets again. I put mine on and tapped it twice, raising my head to see that everyone had assumed new forms once more.
“Okay then,” I said, swallowing hard. “It’s go time.”
25
We continued far into the right side of the land in front of us, unobstructed. And Lin had been right. We had a lot of rock to climb to get to the top, but we managed, utilizing the many tools at our disposal and my bond with the foxgirls.
About halfway up the rocks, I noticed that the skyline was lined with tall buildings.
“I’m assuming that’s Direfall,” I murmured at the sight of them.
They were all the same charcoal color, which I found kind of odd, and the clear blue sky I was accustomed to out in the ocean had given way to a dark, gloomy, overcast climate. But not overcast in the rainy way that Termina was. Overcast in a kind of smoky way, like there was fire in the air or something. Speaking of which, the air quality wasn’t all that great either.
Once I pulled myself up to the top of the rocky area, I was shocked to find that there wasn’t a single shock of green in sight. No grass, no trees, nothing. There was just the ocean in the background, and a giant city made up of dark buildings with dark windows on dark streets.
“Well, this is cheery,” Malthe said sardonically when the rest of my team had pulled themselves up after me. “Nothing like the other port cities.”
“The research told us that it would be like this, remember?” Lin asked. “It’s an old industrial city, so the climate reflects that. And the infrastructure.”
“If it’s going to be this dull and gloomy, they might as well add some fun to it like we do back home,” Clem grumbled. “They could at least have some lights or something, and some
clubs to go to. These all look like office buildings.”
“Yeah, I guess they do,” I said, noting this. “That’s good, at least. There’s less likely to be a ton of people who don’t work for Achilles wandering around. Less chance of them getting caught in the crossfire.”
“But it’s imaginary crossfire,” Clem said, confused.
“Ours will be, but theirs won’t,” I explained with a dull laugh. “They’re going to fight back which is why you two need to hide.” I turned and stared pointedly at Malthe and Lin, and they both nodded.
“I think the building across from Tibor Enterprises will do for that,” Lin said. “It has a roof area that’s kind of walled off, and it’s one of the tallest buildings around, so it will be hard for people to see us once all the commotion starts. And it’s a museum, so we can grab tickets and find our way up there without too much trouble, hopefully.”
“Okay, good,” I said, nodding to her. “Do we blend in okay?” I looked around at the surrounding pedestrians, all looking just as gloomy as the sky and dressed in boring suits.
“I think so,” Cindra reasoned after sizing us all up and down. “We don’t necessarily look like we’re from here, but neither do they.” She pointed at a line in front of the museum. It was true. There were a few people in more casual attire there.
“What’s the museum for, anyway?” I asked, turning to Lin. “It just looks like another dull office building.”
“It’s a history of the city’s industry,” she said with a shrug. “So on a technicality, I guess that it is.”
“Okay, then,” I said with another low laugh, wondering why anyone would bother using their day off on a place like this. “And I’m assuming the one across from it is Tibor Enterprises?” I looked to the building, which was by far the tallest in the area, which was saying something. I almost couldn’t see all the way to the top, but I could just barely make out a giant ’T’ logo up there, not unlike the one that sat atop TelCorp headquarters back home.