Binding Foxgirls III

by Simon Archer

  “Yep,” Lin confirmed, following my gaze.

  “Man, they really do go the extra mile to copy off us, don’t they,” Clem asked, shielding his eyes from what very little sun poked through the clouds as he peered up at the logo.

  “They sure do,” I said grimly. “Okay, so you guys go. We’ll wait here and watch for your attack. Then Clem and I will take our opportunity to head inside.”

  “This is it, then,” Malthe said, shifting nervously on his feet.

  “Just for now,” I said. “We’ll see you guys soon. But yeah, this is it.”

  “Well, good luck to ya,” Clem said, reaching out and shaking Malthe’s hand. “You’re a good man, hacker.”

  “I’m not walking to my death,” Malthe said, laughing nervously and taking a step back. “There’s no need to start saying our goodbyes.”

  “Okay, okay, I was just saying, don’t screw this thing up,” Clem said, looking away from our friend and holding his hands up in the air to defend himself.

  And with that, Malthe and Lin sped off, leaving Clem, the foxgirls, and me to sit on a bench close to a nearby building. It was charcoal, of course, to match the architecture.

  We waited for a long while. There was nothing else to do, and I couldn’t stop fidgeting. Finally, Cindra reached out and squeezed my hand.

  “It’s okay,” she said, meeting my eyes and smiling at me kindly. “They’re going to be okay. And we’re going to win this thing. We started this thing together, and now we’re going to end it the same way.” I squeezed her hand back and returned her smile.

  “Yeah,” I said, feeling myself somewhat put at ease. “I like that.”

  “Me too,” she whispered.

  I thought back to how this had all started, with me standing over her terrified form strapped to a binding chair until she mustered up enough strength to break out of its steel restraints all on her own. We’d come a long way, but I’d never forget that first conversation when she opened my eyes to so much I hadn’t known. And so much life I hadn’t lived yet.

  We waited for a long time sitting there, and I kept my eyes peeled on the front doors of Tibor Enterprises headquarters. Some people walked in and out, mostly men in those monkey suits. But I didn’t see anyone I recognized or anyone who looked all that important, although I supposed that I might not know it if I saw it.

  “We really think Achilles is alone in being able to resist bindings?” Clem whispered in my ear after some time had passed. “Or could it be all Tibor Enterprises employees?”

  “Well, those goons who worked for him back in Termina couldn’t resist us,” I said simply with a shrug. “Look, there’s no reason to obsess about it before we’re in there, and we know for sure.” Clem nodded nervously, but he looked like he was going to hurl.

  “Are you gonna be okay in there?” Kinley asked him, eyeing him skeptically. He nodded again and swallowed hard.

  “Yeah, I’ll be fine,” he said. “Just workin’ off some nerves is all.”

  “Clem always rises to the challenge at the end of the day,” I assured the foxgirls, clapping my friend on the shoulder good naturedly.

  And so we waited. And waited. And waited. Until finally, I thought I saw something, a small flicker in the clouds above the museum building across from Tibor Enterprises.

  “Look! Look there,” I cried, pointing to it, but it had disappeared by then.

  “I don’t see anything,” Cindra said, squinting in that direction. “I didn’t see anything.”

  “There! There it is again,” I said, gesturing wildly at what I was seeing.

  And this time, it stuck. There, in the middle of the great dark sky above Direfall, was one of those tank things that Malthe had made for our civil war with the other binding corps that felt like a lifetime ago. It was faint at first, difficult to see, but then it solidified, and if I didn’t know any better, I never would’ve been able to tell the difference between it and the real thing.

  “Whoah,” Clem gasped, his mouth falling open as he stared at it. “Shit, it looks real.”

  “It sure does,” I said, grinning. Malthe had done it again. Was there ever any doubt?

  As the tank moved slowly across the sky, the pedestrians on the ground began to notice it. They cried out and pointed up at it, turning to each other and whispering amongst themselves, trying to figure out what it was. And then, a woman screamed and clapped a hand over her mouth, pointing up at the tank and shaking.

  “It’s from Termina!” she cried, sounding like she was about to faint, or burst into tears, or both. “I saw it on TV!”

  There was more whispering, but a consensus emerged that she was right, and all the people seemed to freeze as one, paralyzed by fear. Then, one by one, they started to come to their senses and flee in all directions.

  More tanks appeared in the sky behind the first one, along with more than a smattering of combat drones peppered throughout. And they appeared in such a way that it didn’t seem like they appeared out of thin air, but more that they were coming down through the cloudy sky and just becoming visible to those of us down below.

  “Nice work, Malthe,” I murmured. “Impeccable, really.”

  “Maybe we should get up and try to get in the crowd,” Cidnra suggested. “We’ll stick out like sore thumbs if we’re the only ones not acting scared out of our minds.”

  “Right, good call,” I said, rising quickly from my seat on the bench and motioning for Clem and the foxgirls to do the same. We briskly walked in the direction of all the disturbance. People were running in every direction, trying to get away, but everywhere they went, more drones and tanks appeared in the sky. I wondered how Malthe would go about making the binders themselves appear, though it certainly seemed like our concern that the tanks and drones wouldn’t be frightening enough to these people had been unfounded.

  When we reached the center of the square between the Tibor Enterprises headquarters and the industrial museum building, it took a real effort for my group to stick together. People were rushing past us on all sides, screaming and crying and trying to find their friends and loved ones. They crashed into us at every turn, and Kira even got knocked down to the ground.

  I rushed over to help her up and then kept a tight grip on both her and Cindra.

  “Grab hold of each other,” I yelled, whipping my head to each side at my teammates. They all caught on, and Kinley grabbed hold of Kira’s other arm while Cindra took one of Clem’s hands.

  We moved as one, pressing through the gathering crowd. There were people spilling out of all the surrounding buildings now, including the Tibor Enterprises headquarters and the museum building, screaming and calling on what they called their cell phones for help.

  Some sirens wailed in the distance, but no one came in our direction. All the vehicles that had been in the area had long since sped off down the street as fast as they could, with pedestrians grabbing onto their doors and windows, begging to be let inside. But none of the drivers dared waste even a few seconds to stop and help anyone, leaving several of the pedestrians lying prone on the ground from the force of the vehicles’ attempts to wrestle them off.

  There were dozens of tanks and hundreds of drones up above now, looming over the area. Malthe had even somehow managed to get them to cast shadows, though I wasn’t sure how. None of them fired, obviously, because they were holograms, but no one else knew that. They thought this was a very real threat, and they couldn’t have been more terrified.

  And then, descending from the clouds, came air tanks filled with binders. There was Semra, and Clem and me, and Vic, and everyone else I could think of. Dammit Malthe, he’d gone and recreated real fucking people. Absolutely brilliant. And he gave Clem and me a great alibi in the process.

  The binders brandished holo knives and grenades, making like they were ready to pelt them down at the streets if they showed any sign of movement.

  “Attention Tibor Enterprises and the people of Direfall,” Malthe’s voice echoed throughout the a
rea as if he were on a giant intercom, coming from one of the tanks. I squinted and saw that there was a small version of him in there somewhere, too. Absolutely brilliant.

  “Oh my God, oh my god, it’s them, it’s them!” a woman cried, nearly fainting on the ground in front of us.

  “We’re trapped!” a man screamed as the street filled with pedestrians trying to make their way out of the area, but the street itself had become so congested that this proved to be an impossible feat.

  “Attention Tibor Enterprises and people of Direfall,” Malthe repeated over the ruckus before continuing. “You will hand over the man named Achilles Tibor to us for trial and sentencing. Then you will leave us be. Otherwise, we will pulverize your capital city, and you will have a second Great Binder War on your hands.”

  More screaming and fainting and trying to press forward.

  “Okay,” I said, looking to either side of me at my teammates. “Let’s go.”

  26

  As one, our arms still all locked together, we pressed sideways in an attempt to get to the Tibor Enterprises front doors, which weren’t all that far away from where we were already positioned.

  The crowd parted for us fairly easily because unlike pretty much everyone else, we weren’t trying to get forward, but rather sideways. No one seemed to pay us any mind. They were just glad that some space had opened up for them to move forward.

  The front doors of the Tibor Enterprises building looked exactly like the ones back home at TelCorp headquarters. There were still employees fleeing the building, so we didn’t need key card access to get inside. The lobby was also pulled straight out of TelCorp.

  “Where are we going?” Cindra whispered when we were inside. “Where do we think he is?”

  “Well, he’s in charge of the company,” I murmured under my breath. “He reports to the government, but it’s his company. And this place is basically a clone of TelCorp, so where do you think we would put me if I were in danger—and cowardly enough to hide from it—if we were back there right now?”

  Our eyes met.

  “The board room,” she whispered.

  “Exactly,” I said, smiling slightly. “It’s the safest, most hidden, most secure place in the building.”

  “Okay,” she said, swallowing hard and nodding. “Let’s go, then.”

  We ran over to the elevator, lost again amidst the torrent of people trying to stream out of the building. We darted inside after a couple of people disembarked, and I hit the top floor button.

  This was a much better reproduction of the real TelCorp than any of the outlets we’d been to in the other port cities. I wasn’t sure why, but this was eerily similar to back home. It didn’t feel quite like a knock off, and if I didn’t know any better, I might have just believed that all this had been a terrible nightmare, and I really was still on the island. Man, wouldn’t that be nice?

  The elevator dinged open on the top floor, filled with clear binder desks. The place was completely deserted without a soul in sight.

  “Looks like they all went downstairs already,” Clem murmured.

  “Or they’re all hiding in the board room,” Kira suggested.

  “Only one way to find out,” I said, releasing my teammates from our interlocked arms at long last and tapping my bracelet twice to go back to my normal appearance.

  “Wait,” Kira said, grabbing my hand. “Won’t they know that we’re not actually out there?” She jerked her chin in the direction of where we could still hear the holographic tanks and binders whirring and threatening the people of Direfall.

  “I don’t intend on letting anyone who sees us relay that information to anyone out there,” I reminded her, and she reluctantly nodded and tapped her own wrist twice. The others followed suit.

  “Well, it’s good to see everyone’s faces again,” Clem remarked, and I smiled around at everyone.

  “It is,” I agreed. “And here’s to never having to hide again. In any way, shape or form.”

  “Here, here,” Kinley said darkly.

  I briskly walked across all the binder desks and off to the side of the room where I knew the cylindrical hallway leading to the board room would be, with my teammates following close behind me. Predictably, we needed key card access to get inside, and the door was made of solid bronze.

  “How’re we going to get inside?” Clem asked. “It’s impervious to holo knives and lasers.”

  “Our board room is,” I corrected him. “But that doesn’t mean this one is. No matter how much it may look like it, this place is not TelCorp. They don’t know as much about us and our technology as they like to think they do. They fear it, in fact. I bet you anything they wouldn’t know how to make a door that solid even if they tried.”

  And with that, I pulled out my holo knife and buried it in the door. It didn’t work at first. The metal was thick and fierce. But then it did, and it began to melt, and my holo knife pushed further and further into the door.

  But it was slow going. This could take a while.

  “Come on,” I said, nodding to Clem. “You have a go, too.”

  So Clem barreled his holo knife into the door in turn. It was slow going, and a tricky dance for us all to avoid the falling, melting metal, but eventually, there was a wide enough hole in the door for all of us to step through.

  Slowly, I stepped through and motioned for the others to follow behind me. We made our way together down the eerily familiar cylindrical tunnel leading to the board room. I had to shake my head more than once to clear it and remind myself that this was not TelCorp. This was not my board room. This was not home. This was enemy territory, no matter how familiar it felt.

  “Why do you think they did this?” Clem whispered, shaking his head. “Why copy us so much, all the way down to this? The public doesn’t see this. This doesn’t fuel their fetish with Termina.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, pursing my lips. This was all very strange. But then again, what else was new?

  Just as I was about to barrel my holo knife into the second door, the one leading directly into the board room, it swung open. I’m not sure if I could’ve been more surprised.

  “Hello, Mr. Joch,” a male voice that I failed to recognize called out to me before I could see what was inside. “Welcome to our humble abode. I trust you find it an adequate copy of your own corporate headquarters?”

  As the door swung open, I stared, dumbstruck, as it revealed a cluster of men in their thirties, forties, fifties in suits clustered around a round board room table much like our own back at TelCorp. Achilles Tibor was nowhere in sight.

  “Where is he?” I asked, clearing my throat and pushing away my shock, doing my best to sound confident and in control. One of the men at the left-hand side of the table laughed, and I recognized his voice as the one that had spoken before.

  “You do have a one-track mind, don’t you?” he asked, but he didn’t wait for an answer before pulling out a chair next to him. “Come. Why don’t you and your friends take a seat and talk to us for a while?”

  “I don’t think so,” I growled, glaring at him.

  “Come on, Nic,” he said, holding out his arms. “What do you have to lose, really? And you have everything to gain by trying to pry for information from us.”

  I hesitated, looking deep into his eyes. To his credit, he didn’t so much as flinch. He was probably in his early to mid-forties, with graying dirty blonde hair and brown eyes. From such a distance, I couldn’t see much, but I could scratch the surface, and beneath his cool and calm exterior, I saw that he was scared. They all were. The fear was palpable in the room, though they were all doing everything they could to cover it up. But I could sense it. I could always sense it except with Achilles.

  They didn’t know, I realized. They didn’t know that the army outside was fake. They had no idea. And if they had no idea, no one did. I had to stop myself from grinning. I had been right. We had the upper hand, after all.

  “Fine,” I said at long last, cross
ing over and taking the chair from the man’s outstretched hand. “I’ll play. Come on.” I motioned for the rest of my team to join me. There were several chairs sitting empty on that side of the table. We wouldn’t be split up by much. They hesitated but took their seats as asked.

  “That’s a wise move,” the man said, giving me a cool smile. “Now, I should take the time to introduce myself. I’m Rudi Casal, the Vice President of Tibor Enterprises. I’ve been running things here while Mr. Tibor was… away.” His voice lingered on the last word as if he didn’t want to say ‘in Termina.’ Even the name of my home was terrifying to these people.

  “But he’s not away anymore,” I said simply. “We saw him. On your ‘TV’ during the mayor’s press conference.”

  “Ah, yes, the mayor felt that Mr. Tibor’s presence would be somewhat calming to the general population,” Casal continued. “It may have been true, but they’re panicking, anyway. Hardly surprising.”

  “Why would he be calming?” I asked, trying to sound calm and nonchalant.

  “Oh, Mr. Tibor has been the face of all operations in Termina,” Casal said, waving his hand in the air lackadaisically. “So the people know him. But they also know how much he’s failed in recent months, so I’m not particularly confident that they wanted to see him.”

  “Well, they certainly wanted to see him,” I scoffed. “All anyone here’s been able to talk about is how much they want to hear from him. And yet they haven’t yet. Why is that?” It was true. From that first driver we had when we arrived in Firebend to the other passengers on the ocean liner, everyone we ran into talked incessantly about how much they wanted to hear what Achilles Tibor had to say. And how angry they were that he hadn’t bothered to say anything yet. “Oh, we’ve felt that it would be best to keep him away from the public eye for now until all this is settled, and Mr. Tibor felt the same,” Casal explained. “But the mayor made it a condition for going along with our plan to reveal your presence here to the public that he be at the press conference. We drew the line with him speaking, however.”