Project Recollection: Book One of the Affinity Series

by A A Woods

  And I can see my opponent.

  She’s beautiful.

  Thick, mahogany hair and matching eyes, so dark they’re almost black. Skin the color of burnished copper. The wide planes of her lips are curved into an insolent smile, as if inviting the world in on a private joke. Floral-pattern jeans coat spindly legs, double-cuffed over magenta stilettos that add at least four inches. She’s twirling her IRIS cable in one hand, making a neon rainbow in the air as the bands of tape leave ghostly trails. I’ve never seen anyone proclaim their illicit hobby in such bright, gaudy colors.

  But then, I’ve never seen anyone wear heels to a Gaming ring.

  The girl’s smile quirks even higher, her eyes twinkling with mischief. “Anubis, signing on.”

  With a single feline move, she steps forward and slides her cable into the port. I feel the Obaki mat flicker in acceptance. And then, between one blink and the next, Anubis is standing in front of me, grinning through her Yokai.

  Where my avatar is tiger-striped and colorful, with sweeping orange hair and a crimson robe, hers is pitch black. Built like a night heron, it looms over me. Sharp bones taper into slicing fingers; obsidian teeth glimmer from a dark mouth. It is amorphous, shifting, a thing made out of ink.

  My nerves thrum like plucked strings. It would take me weeks of coding and all my skill to design a Yokai with that kind of liquid shapelessness.

  Which means that Anubis isn’t just any Gamer.

  Who are you? I think as the Obaki mat holds me frozen. Through my avatar, I try to squint at the hazy shape of the human girl behind her digital creature. But the shadow’s smile only widens, as if it can read the thoughts on my Yokai’s face.

  Kitzima is on her feet, short legs carrying her to the screen on one side of her dais. It’s old, pixelated, but the wires sprouting from the back connect to the Obaki Mat and dictate the rules. Depending on the command Kitzima supplies, this match could be fought with magic. Underwater. In space. With real-world restrictions.

  Or, in this case, no restrictions at all.

  In the held-breath moment before the fight begins, I risk a glance behind me. It’s stupid, I know, but I can’t help the need to see myself. Before I went blind and my life crashed so spectacularly off the rails, I took mirrors for granted. Seeing myself was a thing done in passing and with faint irritation, examining a freckle or straightening a lock of hair.

  Now I can’t help but savor these stolen glances.

  My body stands clutching the railings of the Obaki Mat. Dark hair. Pallid skin. Narrow face. Every piece of clothing the same shade of black, including Zhu’s jacket. The chipped paint on my fingernails is the only blotch of color, a deep shade of aqua, leftover from one of Mom’s better days. Behind the dark lenses of the Fuzz Specs are the blue eyes I once shared with my brother.

  Perhaps still share.

  I turn back to face Anubis.

  “Everyone here knows the rules,” Kitzima says with her trademark sharp-toothed smile. “Last one standing earns themselves ProRec’s key,” She gestures to the virtual projection of the data-drive hanging over the mat, dangling from the industrial ceiling. “And my heartfelt congratulations.”

  I frown. Anubis smiles.

  The crowd is as silent as deep space.

  Kitzima’s hand hovers over the screen, savoring the power as every single person in the cavernous chamber waits for her to release them.

  And then her fingernails click against the screen.

  The Obaki Mat surges, releasing its hold. Anubis is in motion before the virtual bars around the edge have even finished flickering into existence. She moves like the ghost of a shadow, like a flash of light.

  But I’m ready for her.

  As sharp fingers claw at my face, I lift my avatar’s arms and warp the space around her. The crowd gasps. Her hands slow as the air thickens, holding her in place like molasses. I roll away, freeing one of the two katanas from the crossed sheaths on my back as I move. Metal sings around my head, arcing forward. Anubis has dissolved, sweeping away from the remnants of my attack. She’s turning toward me as she reforms, claws solidifying into glittering, malicious points.

  I lunge.

  Slice at Anubis’s middle.

  The sword goes right through it.

  The crowd gasps again, louder this time.

  The most difficult code a Gamer can write is to warp the very nature of the Obaki Mat. Most Gamers are limited to elemental magic or some power that allows their bodies to change. Shape-shifting. Fantastical weapons. The ability to fly, breathe fire, shoot lasers.

  However, to use the space inside the mat, to change the natural laws within the confines of the virtual system, that is a rare talent.

  One that Anubis and I apparently share.

  This is going to be more difficult than I thought.

  I adjust my grip on the katana, shifting my balance. The wraith in front of me flashes ghostly, needle-like teeth.

  “You’re full of surprises,” it says in a whispering voice, filled with rock-salt gravel.

  I don’t respond.

  The wraith laughs and I surge forward, hoping to catch Anubis off-guard, cut through her while she’s unfocused. But her Yokai comes apart around my blade, reforming even as I pass through it. From the corner of my avatar’s eye, I see a rear attack, lift my hand, shift the air around Anubis’s arm. It becomes solid and presses in like a squeezing fist, inescapable and cruel. Anubis’s laugh turns into a shriek. The arm explodes in a cloud of gas. She stumbles back. The girl in the Gamer stand opposite me rubs her arm as the Yuri Gamen wires in her cerebellum try, and fail, to shield her from the pain, unable to hold back the flood of information from the mismatched IRIS cable.

  Her Yokai moves in a slow circle around mine.

  “Impressive,” growls the specter.

  I purse my lips. With any other Gamer in the Tunnels, that bit of code would have been ingenious. It would have marked the end of the match. The key would be mine.

  But Anubis is different.

  I match her steps, holding my katana high.

  “Who are you?” I ask, watching the creature’s solid grey eyes for any sign of distraction.

  It chuckles. “No one you’ve met before.”

  I feint right and then spin left, whipping my second sword free. It whistles through the air, but Anubis isn’t there. On instinct, I leap. The dark shape passes under me, scrabbling for my ankles. I throw one blade down at it, but it only sinks uselessly into the mat, wobbling in place.

  Anubis’s cackle is chilling, as if she knows something I don’t.

  “Careful,” she says. “Those are sharp.”

  I growl. This girl is acting as though this match doesn’t matter, as if it’s just a game. And perhaps for her it is. But that little device hanging over us represents everything I’ve been working toward for the last six months, everything I’ve wanted so desperately since that day when my brother didn’t come home. When ProRec accused Zhu of corporate espionage and stole everything from me.

  When the cracked foundation of my family finally crumbled.

  Fueled by my hatred of ProRec, I dive forward, crash into Anubis. Her laughing voice cuts off as my arms wrap around a torso my code keeps solid. We both tumble into the cage. She’s trapped, held by my attack, her gaseous body compressed into something dense enough to tackle. We spill to the side, the noise of our fall bouncing off the cavern’s ceiling. The crowd cheers and boos in equal measure, their excitement pounding in on all sides as Anubis and I tangle.

  Her limbs move like water.

  My swords meet her every strike.

  Swiping.

  Vaporizing.

  Disappearing.

  Warping.

  She and I are like shadows thrown by a fire, moving in choreographed steps to a dance still being written. My fingers wrap around her throat before it shifts away. The talons on her hand rake down my side before I thicken the air around them. Phantom pain blossoms on my real body’s ribs, crackli
ng at the base of my neck, but I push it aside as only I can and focus all my energy on the match.

  My swords come together to pin Anubis to the metal bars. Her leg sweeps out. I go down hard. Air abandons my lungs, both real and virtual. She’s over me and I’m rolling, leaping to my feet. I spin to face her, clutching my katanas and ready for the monster to be hanging over me.

  But it’s not.

  I hesitate, waiting for the catch. The Anubis-avatar in front of me is shuddering, shoulders shaking like a child about to be sick. Its elongated form looks strange and vulnerable as it curls in on itself, holding one arm close to its chest.

  Behind the Yokai, Anubis herself is hunched, clutching the edges of the Gaming stand with white knuckles, her face a mask of agony.

  I’ve watched countless Gamers suffer the damage inflicted by the sloppy patchwork of technology that lets them compete. I’ve seen people gasp, cry, seize up in pain.

  But I’ve never seen anything like this before.

  I straighten and hold my weapons high. I could strike Anubis down in a thousand ways while her Yokai stands there, defenseless. But Kitzima would claim foul play and deny me my trophy. After all, the unspoken law of our world demands respect for your enemy. No one wants to be struck down without a fair fight.

  I don’t give a damn about fair, but I want that key.

  “Anubis?”

  The Yokai doesn’t move, but the girl behind the shadow does. Her face lifts, lips twitching even as her eyes radiate with pain.

  “What? Afraid to hit a cripple?”

  I step forward, sword raised, ready to slice those words right out of her shadow’s thorny mouth.

  But before I can do anything, the shriek of sirens echoes from one of the tunnels branching off the gaming square.

  A cry is taken up, crashing over the spectators.

  “Police!”

  I react without thinking, without hesitation. My Yokai leaps. I make a frantic grab for the holographic replica of the ProRec key. But it’s already gone, swallowed by the program under Kitzima’s control as chaos blossoms around me.

  Tora

  Monday, September 17th, 2195

  9:14 P.M. EST

  The disorientation of pulling out of the Obaki Mat without waiting for the program to shut down leaves me reeling. I’m clutching the railing of the Gamer Stand, waiting for my head to clear as a tide of voices rises, claustrophobic with terror.

  “It’s the Nova police!”

  “Get out of my way!”

  “Where’s Mitsuru?”

  “Shit!”

  I shove back from the railing with a sneer, yanking my cable out. I cast a useless glower up to where I know Kitzima stands, waiting until the last possible second to abandon her territory. Vixens will already be rolling up the Obaki mat, clearing away any evidence of the Gaming ring, ready to slink into the shadows until the coast is clear.

  They’ll be back by tomorrow. Kitzima and her Vixens are like a determined bathroom fungus: impossible to remove.

  My hand plunges into my pocket. Where before I was a cripple, now I am an obstacle and a dangerous one. I can hear the thump of colliding bodies, the panicked cries mingling with angry shouts. This crowd will not move aside for a shuffling blind girl.

  I pull out my Personal Access Port, breaking every rule Kitzima’s ring has, and plug in.

  It’s different than seeing through the Obaki Mat. Looking through the eyes of my Yokai avatar is the closest thing to true sight I have left. Plunging into that body molded out of code and clever tricks is like shrugging into a warm coat.

  This, however, is almost as good.

  My updated IRIS cable allows me to squint through the tiny camera of my wireless PAP as if it were my own eye, illuminating the world in a flashlight cone ahead of me. The cameras on PAPs are outdated and superfluous—after all, most people just record memories through their optic wiring nowadays—but thankfully ProRec hasn’t done away with them yet. Some people, mostly Purists, still use PAPs like the old world used cellphones, as an independent communication device.

  But like so many things, I’ve found an entirely different use for mine.

  Blurry shapes move in the glum light of the square, entering and exiting my narrow band of vision with dizzying speed. But it’s enough. I can make my way. I palm my PAP, keeping it at hip-level in the hopes that no one will think I am trying to record incriminating evidence, and move into the chaos.

  It’s like fighting the sea.

  There’s a mad scramble away from the tunnel where the warning cry originated. Boots slap the ground, obstacles catching on my shins and knees as I wade toward my Bi-Bike, parked in a corner by the tunnel that was once forty-sixth street. I flash my PAP up once to check that I’m going in the right direction. My target is an old clothing store called American Eagle, its moldy autumn-line display rotting in the dusty window as the synthetic fabric finally decays. Someone heavy slams into my back and I hear the echo of sirens coming toward us.

  At least they’re not private police, I think to myself. The city cops, while frightening to the Gamers and MemHeads desperate enough to operate outside the system, don’t hold a candle to the brutality of ProRec’s private security force.

  And to me, the ProRec police bring their own breed of terror.

  I check my progress again and see it. My bike, a tiny shadow among hundreds. I lunge forward, shoving aside a girl in pink sneakers and a boy wearing tattered sweatpants. My fingers curl around the bike’s handle, heart thrilling at the touch, ready to flee into the twisting burrows beneath the city.

  A sharp elbow jabs into my back, sending me sprawling.

  My fingers tighten around the PAP, my link to the world, but I feel my Fuzz Specs lose contact with my face. The knees of my black jeans catch on the cracked concrete. Fabric tears. Pain throbs up my leg, joining the ache in my ribs from the fight.

  I throw a look over my shoulder, filled with vitriol.

  “Sorry,” taunts a voice above me, unmistakably Vixen. She doesn’t stop, doesn’t bother to help me up as she trots off to finish whatever Kitzima sent her to do.

  Not that I would accept her help anyway.

  Shoving to my protesting knees, I scan my PAP over the ground.

  “Come on, come on,” I mutter, panic fluttering in my chest. How many other Gamers in the room have given up on the code of secrecy and taken out their own PAPs? How many are recording the chaos, eager to share it on their personal channels, to give their handful of Tuners a taste of adventure and miscreant behavior from the safety of their homes?

  My unguarded face might already be recorded, on its way to publicly accessible channels.

  Into ProRec’s waiting arms.

  A voice cuts into my frantic search. “Drop these?”

  I freeze. Twist my PAP to the side to see magenta stilettos and floral jeans, broken by an offered pair of Fuzz Specs.

  I snatch them from Anubis and jam them on my face.

  “They’re cracked you know,” she says. There’s laughter in her voice and I feel a flush of shame coloring my cheeks as I imagine how I must look. Hands groping on the floor. Bloody knees leaving streaks I can’t even see. Eyes unfocused.

  I grab hold of my bike and shove myself upright, brushing off my brother’s jacket with my uninjured hand. “Thanks.”

  Turning away from the strange girl, I yank my IRIS cable out of my PAP, ignoring the disorientation from suddenly losing what my body believes to be a new part of itself.

  You’d think I’d get used to it after a few thousand times.

  “That’s a nice bike.” Anubis’s voice comes from behind me, probing and dangerous. “Where’d you get it?”

  “I made it.”

  “And how do you plan to, um, drive it?”

  I shove my IRIS cable into the specially designed port where the keyhole used to be. Sensing Anubis’s eyes on me, I try to shield the handlebars with my body, but there’s no hiding, not with her standing so close, the swarming
press of the crowd pushing her tight against my bike. She can see what I’m doing, witness the strange connection I’m making.

  It can’t be helped.

  I hear the police spilling into the square, shouting for the Gamers to freeze. I’ve run out of time to be secretive.

  I swing one leg over, settling myself into the narrow seat as my mind surges into the bike’s cameras, flashing the high beams over the scene in front of me. I glimpse the crush of bodies in an alley, the cops corralling as many Gamers as they can into one corner. On the other side of the square, I catch a flutter of purple as Kitzima vanishes into the shadows, scurrying down whatever hidey-hole she and her Vixens use.

  I wrap my fingers around the controls, revving the bike to life.

  “Give me a ride?” Anubis asks.

  Despite the surging chaos, she hasn’t moved. She stands, strange and warped in the corner of my bike’s fisheye lens. Her curious eyes draw hot lines on my cable, the black electrical tape wrapped around the wire, the way it sticks out of the engine like an arrow.

  Give me a ride?

  A part of me wishes I could. If I were a normal Gamer, just another person with illegal banding and dangerously modified Neurowiring, helping her escape would be the right thing to do. Perhaps we could even be friends. In that world, I wouldn’t have to be so alone. I think of Zhu, black hair swept back, surrounded by laughing boys and pretty girls, his arm around Gemma as if he didn’t care what society thought, as if he barely noticed her neon pink tape. It had all been so effortless to him, relaxing into his social role like an autumn leaf settling on the grass. Graceful. Smooth.

  And me?

  Well, you can’t exactly make friends when you’re in hiding.

  “Sorry,” I say to Anubis as my bike growls, revs.

  Then I spin the bike in a tight circle and accelerate into one of the empty alleys, tires squealing against the concrete ground.

  “Hey, stop!”

  The deep, authoritative shout disappears behind me before the words even register. I’m speeding through the darkness. My hair cuts at my neck as I soar into the underworld, the Tunnels. Through the rear cameras, I see that three Nova police hovers have peeled away and are tilting toward me. They move like dragonflies, built for speed and agility in the stretching metropolis above.