by Anthea Sharp
The Guard gave Brandon a sense of identity that he’d never found among the Gardeners. Just wearing the armor in the game made him feel special. He didn’t need a community that highlighted his awkwardness; he needed to be part of a goal-oriented strike force. Mal’s little hacktivist collective did seem a lot more like that.
And now, apparently, The Cut was ready to take out True.love.
There was no way Brandon could ask Mal about her plans here. Virtual words were full of embedded spyware. Even if it was just a bunch of benign adbots, they needed to speak around what they were really trying to say.
“You think I’m an idiot,” he said. “I’d just screw up your stupid favor.”
She wasn’t letting him off the hook so easily. “If it’s a stupid favor, then an idiot’s exactly who I need.”
He had to counter with something else. “An idiot who’s going to be alone forever?”
It was true enough. In all the time that he’d been a full-fledged member of True.love, the site’s supposedly infallible algorithm had matched him with exactly no one. Deep down, he suspected it had something to do with Mal’s tampering.
Regardless, it was yet another reason Brandon had thrown himself so deeply into his game development work. He enjoyed making worlds full of quests, puzzles and Easter eggs for the masses to enjoy. His personal challenge was to create a platform that fascinated him more than Dyrlland. So far, that hadn’t happened.
Mal’s dark angel gave Brandon’s knight a black-lipped grin. “Little brother, a girl could walk right up to you and say that you were literally her reason for living, and you wouldn’t know what to do with her.” She stretched out her wings and ran her fingers through her feathers. Brandon could see the green code sparkle along the edges of her fingers.
Mal wouldn’t care about an algorithm. She believed in “destiny” and “fate” and “getting to know each other” and all that other socially religious faff the Gardeners spouted about the Real World. Of course Brandon wouldn’t know what to do in a situation like the one she’d hypothesized. No one did. Not that it mattered; Brandon knew his destiny. He would live and die a mediocre soul in a virtual world, just like almost every other human his age.
Assuming he didn’t die pulling whatever stunt Mal was about to ask him to do.
“I gotta go meet the gang. You know how impatient they get.” The angel leaned down and air-kissed his cheek. “I just wanted to make sure I wished you a happy birthday. Your present’s in the mail. And Happy New Year!” She waggled her fingers at him and vanished a flash of verdant code glitter.
Brandon removed his glasses and ended game play. He leaned back against the wall of his VR booth and mentally translated his sister’s thinly-veiled message.
The Cut was ready and waiting for this to go down. The details of the mission would be physically sent to him by messenger, and soon. January first was in three days. The “present” Mal mentioned was a red herring. Brandon’s birthday was really in July. If he got caught pulling this stunt for Mal, he might end up spending his next birthday in a jail cell somewhere. He was going to have to trust Mal and her hacktivist buddies to hold up their end.
Yeah.
Well…at least he knew he had a sister who needed him.
The package was delivered by drone on New Year’s Eve. A calculated move—between the fireworks bursting throughout the city and the countless VR drones transmitting the spectacle to units around the globe, one tiny unauthorized package flown under the radar was never going to be noticed.
The seamless box bore only his user name and unit number. There didn’t seem to be any way to open it, until he picked it up. The box warmed for a moment as it read his biosignature, and then the top slid open. Inside he found an ID badge, an earbud, something that looked like a large steam bun in a bag, and a letter from his sister.
Curious about the steam bun, Brandon cracked open the bag…and then immediately sealed it again. Whatever it was, it was heavier than it looked and stank like a mothball. Brandon put the bag back in the box and pulled out the handwritten piece of paper. He rolled his eyes and grimaced. Mal knew what a hard time he had reading written text. Another little Real World dig from his bully of a big sister.
He couldn’t make out every word, but he got the gist. He was to go to the True.love building the next day, find the server room, and leave the stinky device there. There were also instructions on how to setup the earbud, but that quickly lost his attention. Instinctively, he placed the earbud on top of his phone. Within seconds, an app appeared on the main screen called “Tunes.”
It all sounded too easy. Brandon was tempted to put in the earbud and give his sister—and The Cut—a piece of his mind. But tomorrow would arrive soon enough. Sparkledust filled the air outside his small window, turning the inside of his cinderblock unit a nonstop rainbow of colors.
He drifted off to sleep well before midnight and woke to the obscene buzzing of an alarm he didn’t have. Brandon rolled over and squinted at his phone. On the lock screen was a familiar graphic, but instead of saying “Look Up,” it read “Wake Up.” He snorted, twisted in the earbud, and opened the Tunes app.
“Don’t you people ever sleep?”
His ear filled with cheering and a chorus of “Happy New Year!”
“Happy New Year to you guys, too.” He sat on the edge of his bed, wishing he’d taken a shower last night. If The Cut were already this alive and kicking, there was no way they’d let him waste any more time on something as silly as hygiene.
“Rise and shine, little brother.”
“Hey, Mal.”
“So here’s what we worked out.” Brandon brushed his teeth while Mal briefed him. “Each of us worked on a separate piece of this operation. As you move from step to step, the person in charge of each will walk you through it. Okay?”
Brandon rinsed out his mouth in the sink. “What step did you do, Mal?”
“I got you on board,” she said. “Don’t worry, you’ll love the team. And I’m staying on as admin, so I can mute any of these rascals if they get out of control.” There was a combined grumbling in response to her teasing remark. “Holler if you need anything.”
He almost wished she weren’t going to stay on the call. If he didn’t know the voices in his ear, he could pretend this was just another game. If—when—he screwed up, he didn’t want his sister there to witness it first hand.
“Let’s get this over with,” he said.
“Hey, Bran?” Mal added quickly. “Before I forget, thank you for doing this.”
“I owed you.”
“Still. Thank you. I love you, kid.”
Brandon shook his head. The last thing he needed was to get emotional right now. “Love you too, Mal,” he muttered.
The exchange was met with a combination of sappy exclamations and taunting. He’d already forgotten she wasn’t the only one listening. He heard Mal’s laugh above them all. “Candy, you’re up,” she said, before muting herself.
“Yes, ma’am, captain.” The words that filled his ear now were thickly accented and dripping with sugar. “Hey there, sweetness.”
“Sweetness?” Brandon asked. “Not likely.”
“Mal showed us a pic. I know how adorable you are. Right now I need you to get that adorable butt into the closest thing you have to an office work uniform.”
“I have a light blue shirt and khakis, will that do?”
“Perfect. Okay, how do you take your coffee?”
Candy’s no-nonsense tone was a lot like his sister’s, but she wouldn’t be as dark an angel as Mal in Dyrlland. Brandon imagined a pixie-sprite avatar for her—part girl with wings, part butterfly with teeth. “Sugar,” he said. “No cream.”
“What do you usually eat for breakfast?”
“Nothing.”
He could hear her sucking her teeth in disappointment. “Do you normally carry a wallet? Watch? Any jewelry? Piercings? Implants?”
“I normally don’t leave my unit,” he said
as he put on his trousers. “A wallet, I guess. No jewelry.”
“Fantastic. Leave it. Leave everything. I want nothing on you but this earpiece, that ID, and the bao.”
“I thought it looked like a steam bun, too,” said Brandon. “What is it really?”
“A quantum DFG…like a crazy powerful EMP, but far more effective and far less detectable. Plus a few wireless bugs that will seal themselves in when the system reboots.”
Brandon froze in the middle of putting on his shirt. “I’ll get caught carrying around an electrobomb.”
“Thus the stinky bun shell,” she said. “It’s thick enough to get through security scans and volatile enough to evaporate in the server room. It’ll also give you time to get out of the building before everything goes down.”
“Brilliant.”
“Yes, sir. Our Carmen’s a chemistry genius.”
Brandon detected a note of reverence in Candy’s voice. “Chemistry genius” obviously meant “bomb expert” in The Cut’s language. “I’m ready.”
“All righty. Exit the building and take a right on Market.”
Brandon followed her directions to a dispenser where his coffee was waiting, along with a bar of nutmeat and honey substitute. He scanned the ID to access the door and chuckled at his order. “Thanks, Candy.”
“Breakfast is important,” she said. “Good luck, sweetness.”
He took a bite of the bar. “Where do I go from here?”
“The train,” said a voice that was not Candy’s.
Brandon choked. When he regained his breath and composure, he took a sip of coffee. “Bullshit,” he said. “I don’t do trains.”
“I could hack you a share scooter, but that would waste all our time. Just get your ass on the train.”
Brandon tried to imagine this guy’s avatar. One of the Rosenthorn Guard was a big renegade that called himself Berserker. He walked into crazy situations with the ease of someone with a death wish. Berserker didn’t often give orders, but when he did, everyone followed them. They knew he’d already considered the 600 other ways in which they’d fail.
This guy didn’t sound exactly like Berserker, but that was definitely who popped into Brandon’s mind.
Brandon made it to the station, through the turnstile, and onto the platform. There wasn’t much of a crowd, what with the New Year’s holiday. A train came…and then the train left, with Brandon still on the platform.
He expected Mal to tap in and scold him for that, but it was not Mal in his ear.
“You seen some shit, huh?” Berserker asked.
“Have you?” If Brandon kept the conversation going, he might stall enough to skip the next train as well.
“Lost my leg in a hovercraft accident,” he said. “Can’t even look at the damn things now.”
“My parents died in a train crash.” Brandon couldn’t remember the last time he’d said those words, if ever.
“Shit, sorry man. Bad luck.”
Brandon tried to shrug it off. “Bad luck was getting Mal for a sister. The rest is just fallout.”
Berserker chuckled. “Heard.”
The next train came into the station all too quickly. Brandon tried not to freeze completely.
“You miss this one, yo, you might trigger security for aberrant behavior.”
“Shit.” He was right.
“You got this?”
“Yeah.” If Brandon could fight a giant game monster every day of the week, he could walk onto a train. People didn’t die on trains every day of the week. That he knew of. Step by step he made it, cold sweat and all.
“You good?”
Brandon couldn’t find the breath to answer. He’d apparently forgotten how to breathe. The train’s doors slid closed behind him. He lowered himself into a seat. He tried not to look out the window at the greatness and the smallness of the world speeding by.
“It’s only a couple of stops,” said Berserker. “You want me to talk, or you want me to shut up?”
“Talk,” Brandon managed to say without throwing up. He could feel the hum of the train through his seat.
“Aa-ight.” There was a pause. “Do you believe in the ghost?”
“What?”
“Talia Karian. You gonna run into her in the server room? Or one of the dark hallways?”
Of all the conversation topics Berserker could have picked, Brandon never would have guessed this one. “Talia Karian’s an urban legend.”
“There’s some truth in every legend,” Berserker replied.
The train dipped into a tunnel, and the once bright window became a dark mirror. Brandon's reflection warped slightly in the tempered glass. He closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing normally.
“So what do you believe?” The voice in his ear asked. “Did Talia design the most successful hookup software in the world and then miraculously die of natural causes? Or do you think the sister offed her and stole the company?”
That was the most popular version of the story: that Talia’s ghost had roamed the halls of True.love enterprises for the last hundred years, seeking retribution for her murder but never finding it. Brandon didn’t believe in ghosts, but the tale had fascinated him for some time after he’d received his Rosenthorn skin. He’d gone over that armor a million times, examining the placement of every rose, the turn of every briar, looking for some sort of Easter egg that might solve the riddle of Talia’s death. He eventually forced himself to accept that there was no mystery to solve.
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” said Brandon. “You?”
“I did the research.” With The Cut’s resources at his disposal, Berserker would definitely have gotten farther with an investigation than Brandon ever could. “No death certificate. Nothing. Talia Karian just fell off the face of the earth.”
“What do you think happened?” Brandon asked.
“I say she found her soulmate, but they were in witness protection or something,” Berserker replied. “I mean, she created the algorithm for a reason, right?”
“Yeah,” said Brandon. “I hope your version’s the truth.”
“Nah, man,” Berserker added. “Sister gutted her, took everything, and used the money to bury her body so deep no one’ll ever find it. I only say Talia found her soulmate ‘cause the Real World’s got enough ghosts.”
Brandon found it nice to have believed in something good, even complete fiction, for just a moment. Especially when the doors of the train slid open at his stop. He’d barely even noticed his arrival.
Brandon quickly disembarked and waited for his heart to stop racing. “Thanks.”
“You did it, not me,” said Berserker. “I’ll make sure that ID gets you in the building. Once you get to the elevator, you’re somebody else’s problem.”
“Yeah, well…thanks anyway.”
Brandon turned his face into the wind that snapped down the alleyways between skyscrapers. Wind, especially the cold, bitter stuff like today, was one of the only things he missed about the Real World. The sting of it brought tears to his eyes. The wind, and his parents.
Berserker must have been tracking Brandon’s location, because as soon as he was in front of the True.love building he heard, “Don’t hesitate.”
Brandon glanced up at the edifice. The bartender probably should have cut the architect off a few pints before he got to the fourth floor, where the straight lines suddenly broke into a myriad of jutting turrets. They clung here and there all the way up the outside walls like so many Victorian barnacles, with ornamental crenellations incorporated into their glass rooftops. The central lobby area was topped with a faceted glass pyramid.
Brandon walked up to the door like it was his thousandth day at a dreary job in this fascinating building. He placed his card on the holder, waited a moment for the reader to acknowledge his presence, and walked right in. Stepping onto the train had been harder.
No sirens shrieked as he crossed the sparse lobby, so Carmen’s electrobomb shield was delivering. Not that
Brandon had the luxury of celebrating his triumph. He timed his walk so that he missed the few people in the first elevator car. The second was blissfully empty. No one stepped in behind him.
“Well done, B.”
“What the…?” Brandon’s jaw dropped. He knew that voice as well as he knew his sister’s. Maybe better. “Jack?”
“Zzzzing! You all owe me ten hours’ work, my hack of choice.” After a moment, he added, “B, you can’t hear them, but I assure you the groans are massive.”
“Jack, you son of a witch. You work with—”
“Ah, ah, ah! Watch your language, young sir.”
Brandon clamped his lips shut and balled his hand into a fist. He’d almost said “The Cut” out loud like an idiot and ruined the entire mission. The world was always listening.
He didn’t open his mouth again until he trusted himself to use it properly. “You work with my sister and didn’t tell me?”
“You might have thought I was trying to recruit you.”
“Were you?”
“Maybe. Never did, though, did I?”
Brandon leaned back against the wall of the elevator. Mal would never have been able to get Brandon into The Cut willingly, but Jack was Rosenthorn Guild. He’d have been able to convince Brandon in a heartbeat.
“Push a button before your behavior gets flagged, ya’ plank,” said Jack. “Server’s on Sublevel 4.”
The button warmed beneath Brandon’s finger as it lit up. “Did she send you?” Brandon asked him.
“You mean, did your doting miss commandeer a couple of friends to look after her little brother after she hacked him into a new skin?” Jack blew out a breath. “Perish the thought.”
“A couple of friends?”
“Me and Hammer, yeah,” said Jack.
“Hammer?”
“You were just talking to him.”
“Ah,” said Brandon. “He didn’t say. I was calling him Berserker in my head.”
Jack gave a quick laugh. “I can see that.”
“Why isn’t he part of the Guard?”
“He lost his armor in the Rapture,” said Jack. It was dumb luck that most of the Guard had been able to keep their Rosenthorn skins. They hadn’t been as obsessed with the armor as Brandon.