Selections from the Official Shadowrun Returns Anthology, a book containing stories and art in the Shadowrun Universe. Featuring tracks from the Shadowrun Returns Soundtrack. Updates Monday, Wednesday, & Friday. Shadowrun Returns: http://store.steampowered.com/app/234650/ Shadowrun: Dragonfall: http://store.steampowered.com/app/272030/ http://harebrained-schemes.com/
“Here we are!” I sauntered over and stuck the katana carelessly into one of the elven gangers, then started typing on the little phone-computer’s keyboard with my bloody, sticky thumbs. It took me longer than normal.
“All set, Evan,” I set the pocsec’s alarm to go off in a few hours, then wedged it back into his pocket. Rolling him for the disposable, certified credstick I knew an operative got before a job—oh, how my mighty self had fallen—I hauled him by the ankles toward the door and the Eurocar’s waiting trunk. I nearly opened my side back up heaving the crate of TMPs out to make space for him, but once he was tucked away, the GridGuide responded to my voice commands and the sporty little coupe drove off into the heart of the city. Such admirable obedience the dog-brained car had, driving off into the heart of Cutter turf and then opening every door while it still idled.
Oh, he’d be plenty mad when he woke up, no doubt about it. Whoever found the car, doubtless some ne’er-do-well car thieves, would get murdered for their trouble. But if Blackwing was anything, he was loyal to the Tir. He’d deliver my message once he spotted it on his pocket secretary. James would, eventually, understand. I’d explained it all to him. He’d neither forgive nor forget, but…compromise.
I just had to show him that the Silent P’s weren’t worth the trouble. Show him that the Ancients were still his best—his only—bet. Show him that they were mine, whether they knew it or not. Show him I could—I would—rule and treat with him like an equal.
And for that to all happen…
I arranged the corpses just so. I picked up a TMP and sprayed it indiscriminately, then dropped it, empty, next to a Silent P body. I picked up a second, and fired it a bit more carefully, a bit more accurately. Puffs of calcium powder filled the air, big chunks of gravel fell to the floor. I placed a few shots just right, then blasted the rest of the magazine away.
When I stopped maintaining the petrification spell, Blitzen’s pockmarked form turned to a wet, red, ruin. A lesser man may have gotten sick just from the sight, never mind the smell of him, but I am not a lesser man.
I thumbed my own pocket secretary to life, the last ganger’s sleek little Steyr in my free hand. I wedged the barrel tight against my side—still sore—and let out a quiet sigh as I auto-dialed Sting’s number.
“The things I do for love,” I quipped to the bodies all around me.
It wasn’t quite the literary classic I was accustomed to, but the quote felt apt. While the phone rang, I squeezed the trigger. The burst tore through me and my howl of pain was more genuine than most of my lies; that was saying something. My side wasn’t cold this time, no, but white-hot from this fresh indignity heaped upon it.
“Silent P’s!” I shouted at the phone, arm shaking and knowing it made the tridview chaotic on her end. “Meet gone…bad…Ambush! Blitzen…shot!”
Ye gods, but talking hurt. Hell if I was going to keep babbling. I made sure the connection stayed active, and tossed the phone down on Blitzen’s savaged corpse—I didn’t want it to just land on the concrete and break, did I?—before letting myself tumble down to sit and wait. I heard Sting shouting orders, her voice tinny and far away, and I knew she’d be there with help as fast as they could run a trace and saddle up.
I worked on Blitzen’s farewell speech while I waited. He’d died protecting me, of course. Taken one of the race-traitors out with the fool’s very own sword. The rest gunned him down as he’d tried to usher me away, then I’d retaliated and avenged him. He’d be a hero. I’d tell Comet all about it, maybe while she healed me herself. I had to make sure everyone heard my version while the sight of his savaged corpse was fresh in their minds. I’d give her that very blade, Blackwing’s mono-katana, as a gift, a badge of honor, a legacy to pass down to her baby when it came. It would be perfect.
I’d get my war with the Silent Ps, against Sting’s and Telestrian’s wishes. Sting would temper it, rein us in, keep us from wiping them out. Telestrian would be happy with our restraint, but content after our demonstration of superiority. Sting’s authority would be further eroded, my schemes would advance, the Tir pipeline would stay solely ours, and—most importantly—all my secrets would stay safe.
My Tir loyalties and ties. My chafing against those same connections. My Talent as a mage, that perpetual ace up my sleeve.
I drifted as I bled, wondering if a point-blank burst had been my best idea. My thoughts drifted back and away, to my last visit to her. The last time I’d gone to the Seamstresses Union, to the room—and the whore—I’d reserved for myself in perpetuity. My Angel would be there. Her hair was so soft and pale. Her features so flawless. For a Seattle-born elf, she was beautiful. Another secret of mine. Almost my last one.
My last secret was waiting in her belly. I’d decided—as though a father’s opinion ever decided such things—that it would be a boy. A son. Nathaniel seemed like a good name. A strong name.
I awoke, choking on a desperate gasp of air, to Blitzen kneeling over me and cursing me back to life.
“Get up! Green Lucifer! Greenie! C’mon, you bastard! Wake up!”
In suddenly sharp focus I saw him fumbling with a slap-patch; this one stark white with a broad red cross on it. I looked down and saw a twin to it already stuck to my bare, bloody, chest. A trauma patch. He’d brought me back with a trauma patch.
I sat up and swatted his callused hands away before he re-killed me with another of the things. He laughed, cursed, and rocked back on his heels with relief. Blackwing, limp and helpless, lay in a pool of my blood just a meter away. I didn’t see a single scratch on Blitzen. The drugs had done their work.
I smiled past the terrible pain in my belly and started to warm myself without thinking. I poured mana into my injury, drew it from the Astral and filtered it through my skill, knitting closed the gaping hole in my belly before the adrenaline could wear off and let me die again.
I don’t know how long it took me, on the verge of blacking out but not quite letting myself, but eventually I tried to clamber to my feet. Even my ear’s delicate tip had grown back, gods be praised. Still chatting away—I’d tuned him out, to be honest—Blitzen hauled me up as effortlessly as a father lifting a child.
“…didn’t know you could do that, boss! Wiz! You and Comet should talk. Share spellbooks or whatever. She’d love to learn some Tir tricks.”
I focused on Blitzen and let out a quiet sigh. His ork-broad shoulders looked almost incongruous on such a fit elven frame. His eyes were more almond shaped than mine, belying some Pacific heritage; Japanese, perhaps? And those cheekbones looked sharp enough to cut, not just elven-high, but likely Native. The only thing that kept him from being attractive was that ridiculous facepaint. The fool kept talking, trying to keep me from going into shock by just nattering away at me, his Puyallup-gruff voice conversational, reassuring.
“And who the frag is James? Some guy you owe money to, maybe? This no-arms guy his muscle? Well, null sweat, boss. We’ll handle it. Ancients look out for their own. No wonder Sting had me tail you!”
He was burning off nervous energy by talking, looking me over worriedly, as devoted to me in that instant as a hound.
“And no worries about that girl he mentioned, either. We’ll take care of her. Seriously, Greenie. We’ll find her, don’t you wor—”
He froze, and I let out an exhausted sigh. It only took him an instant to be locked in place, calcified solid. The strain of casting the spell hadn’t been pleasant, but the wide-eyed look on his stupid, petrified face was worth it.
“These barbarians,” I said to Blackwing’s unconscious form. “They don’t know when they’ve killed themselves, do they?”
Then, careful about my still-tender side, I leaned over to pick up his very own katana.
“I wonder, Evan. You don’t mind me calling you Evan, do you? I wonder, though, if I’m quite strong enough right now to take your head in one swipe.”
I held the blade high, savoring the taste of victory. Blackwing. Evan Parris. The bloody right hand of the Council of Princes, and I held his life and death in my hands. I paused.
“But I wonder, also, Evan. I wonder about that fool.” I pointed with his sword, flashing in the dim light and red with my blood, gesturing towards the Ghost I’d put down.
“Why did James send him, and not tell him about my Talent? Why send him to, to…to accost me? Insult me? Why send him with a message, unless the message was one of…of…of…reconciliation?”
I tilted my head, circling Evan-called-Blackwing’s insensate form.
“James had to know. He had to know I’d kill that fool. Who was he, Evan? Not one of James’ hand-picked, no. Too blunt for that. Nor one of Laverty’s, for certain. Ehran’s, maybe? Aithne’s? Ah, who knows. But surely not one of James’, no. Not a favorite of his.”
I rested the bloody katana on my shoulder, jangling softly against the spikes and chains we Seattle barbarians decorate ourselves with.
“So. So he shouldn’t mind him dead, right? Or those ridiculous savages,” a casual wave of the blade took in the corpses of the Silent P’s I’d killed. “James sent them here for me to kill. As a favor to him. A request. But you, Evan…you are different.”
“Well, it’s decided. The good news is, you won’t remember any of this. Or anything else from this whole day, in fact. And that, Mr. Evan Parris, is saving your miserable, mundane life.”
I kicked him over and thought about dramatically laying the edge of his blade against his neck. No, best not. I was still a tad unsteady, and it would probably kill him. I settled a second laés patch onto his neck, instead, and then I rifled in his armored jacket until I found it; his pocket secretary.
Maybe it was how his eyes widened, maybe it was how one bloody hand reached out behind me as if begging for someone to help, maybe I—somehow—heard the scuff of a footstep or the rush of wind that so many others had died without noticing.
Blackwing’s first swing missed me by a hair’s breadth as I spun out of the way. There was none of Carromeleg’s artfulness to his assault. He was grace in motion, but pure efficiency, simply murder on legs. His second stroke I tried to parry with the stolen Predator, but his too-sharp blade cut deep into the silencer and jerked the gun from my hand. He was elf-slender and quick as me, but chipped up faster and his glossy, black cyberarms whipped his sword around with inhuman quickness and precision. I backpedaled out of reach of his third swing, but he was too good for his fourth strike to miss, even me. It took maybe a second.
Even as I felt his cold monosword slide between my ribs, a tiny part of my mind wondered how many others had survived that long in open conflict with the Tir’s premier assassin. The bulk of my attention worked at mustering up a manabolt that I prayed would shred his aura before I bled out. He twisted the blade and sliced sideways before I could cast it, though, and the tidal wave of pain crashed over me and drowned my concentration. The spell slipped away from me as I fell to my knees.
“James says hello,” Blackwing said from somewhere behind me. The canny bastard. He knew, even if the Ghost hadn’t. Knew what I was. What I could do. Knew that even I, like all magicians, had to see my target to kill it. I tried to move my head but it was terribly heavy, I was terribly slow, he was terribly fast. Damn this ridiculous mohawk. Damn this street rabble that insisted I wear it. Surely I was top-heavy from that, not shock?
Surely I wasn’t dying?
“And, given your response to his negotiation attempt, he would likely also bid me say goodbye.”
I saw only shadows while he bantered, tried to turn my head and spot him. Both my hands were firm against my stomach, pressing my gang leathers tight against me in scraps, stemming the flow of blood. Blackwing circled me, and I knew if I could see him—damn him, damn him, damn him—he’d look every inch the stalking panther.
“It’s a shame that it came to this, Alejandro. You had potential, once. But you just couldn’t stay in line.”
I slipped in my own blood, spinning, circling, trying to see him so I could kill him. Everything was getting darker. He didn’t make a sound when he moved, though, gave me only his voice, his idle, matter-of-fact, malice-free voice, to track him by.
“James will find someone else. Someone else to run things here in Seattle. Someone else to arm these savages. Someone else who’ll work with him, not against him. Someone who knows how and when to follow orders, not just give them. Truth is, actually, he’s already found someone.”
“Who knows…” I saw his shadow from the warehouse’s harsh lights, but when I spun to face him he was already gone. He was toying with me. With me. “Maybe I’ll learn to like it here eventually.”
“Oh, and I haven’t told James yet,” Blackwing continued, while I half-spun and felt the world keep spinning, while I tried to concentrate through the pain and—was it fear?—force my broken body to stay upright. “But I thought I’d let you know…”
“Just before coming here, I found the girl.”
I felt his shadow fall over me, saw his katana in razor-sharp outline as he held it over my head. Death paused to let his final taunt sink in before taking me.
From very far away, I heard a scream of anger.
I swayed to the side as I saw Blackwing’s shadow start his downward stroke. I felt the wind from his blade against the smooth-shaved side of my scalp, then a feather-soft tug as his monosword took off the tip of my ear. His form was perfect, his follow-through impeccable. He’d stepped into the kenjutsu stroke perfectly, and I used up all my remaining strength to reach out and pat him on the leg with my open left hand.
I let gravity and blood loss and the weight of my absurd mohawk pull me to the ground. Blackwing whirled away while a slap patch made the thin fabric of his pants cling to his leg. The laés dose started leaking into his bloodstream just as Blitzen, a blur dark as Blackwing in my dimming vision, shoulder-checked him. My slender sword in hand, the Ancient hacked away at the Tir killer with none of Blackwing’s finesse, but all the augmented strength and speed Tarislar’s street docs could muster.
Well. I certainly hadn’t expected to see that when I got out of bed today.
The light overhead danced crazily as I lay in a sticky pool of something warm, watching the pair of shadows fight with one another. I wondered if Blitzen would survive long enough for the laés to take Blackwing out of the fight, then I wondered why Blitzen was there in the first place, then I wondered why I cared about anything at all since my last secret was about to be lost to me.
Satisfied that I was disarmed, the Ghost sat at a dingy little table. He pointedly thumped his Predator atop it, silencer squarely aimed at the empty chair across from him. Ignoring Redhead, Topknot, and Yellowtooth, I jandered over and casually took a seat.
The Ghost seemed calm just because my weapons were gone. I wondered how much of my file James Telestrian III—of Royal rank in the Tir, but not a sitting member of the Council, albeit by choice—had actually shared with this particular government operative. I decided to throw him off guard by asking the first question; as though it were a meeting I’d called instead of him.
“Since you’ve given this shipment of weapons to the Silent P’s, is it fair for me to assume your…other goods…have been similarly rerouted?”
The Ghost answered with a negative grunt. He reached into his suit jacket and produced a small, silvered case not unlike one that might hold cigarettes. A press of his thumb snapped the lid open, and as he tossed it onto the table, a handful of slap-patches tumbled out in front of me.
Laés. The magical elven drug was nearly impossible to find outside of the Tir, a potent narcotic that wiped away memories and sent people into an almost immediate slumber. Even this small a batch would sell for a truly ridiculous amount here in Seattle.
“You’ve got your drugs, exile. But Prince Telestrian doesn’t appreciate the tone of your last message. If you want more, you need to work more. You’re to unite the elves of the city to protect Tarislar, not fight them. Extend Tir influence here, not disrupt it. Do good for the elven people, not just yourself.”
I picked up one of the patches and made it dance across the knuckles of my left hand like a stage magician, shrugging in response to his list of orders. The Ghost, ever so serious, just had to keep talking, though.
“And most of all, you’re to remember your place. If you want him to keep supporting your little games up here and keep the Peace Force looking the other way? You make requests of him, not demands.”
“No. I make demands of him, not requests,” I said, low and quiet, all levity gone. “I work with him, not for him.”
“My objective tonight is simple, exile. It’s not really a courier run. It has nothing to do with delivering the laés to you, or the guns to them.”
He stood and leaned over the table, one hand on each side of his gun, and even as I knew a threat was coming, it did my ears good to hear the soft Tir lilt in his voice.
“My mission tonight, exile, given from Prince Telestrian’s own lips, is to beat you until you come to heel.”
The Ghost leaned even further into his staredown, rickety table creaking. I tried not to laugh in his face. Now it was time for my move.
I reached out with will and Talent alone, calling on my magical power with no more physical effort than a crooked, come-hither finger. His Predator spun, skittering across the table and into my waiting right hand. I snatched it, stood, and kicked at a table-leg all in one smooth motion. It broke beneath his weight, making the Ghost tumble forward.
I lifted his Predator smooth and easy and put two rounds between Redhead’s eyes with a pair of muted coughs. Topknot started raising his gun, but I squeezed the trigger three times, idly, and sent him tumbling to the ground in a dying heap. Yellowtooth went all wide-eyed and tried to grab a gun. His gutter-stupid mind couldn’t decide between clawing at his waist for my Ares or scrabbling at his side for his dangling TMP. I reached out with the same telekinetic spell that had armed me, and planted one imaginary hand squarely on his pointy chin as my other tangled in his greasy hair. The Ghost got his balance back and started to lunge for me just as my mental twitch snapped Yellowteeth’s neck with a wet crack.
He was good, the Ghost, but then I suppose they have to be. His Carromeleg was crisp and focused, less flashy and artistic than some. He wasn’t bad. Pressed to it, I might even admit he was quicker than me, no doubt wired up in ways I wasn’t. But I was better. I was me. I was meant to rule over the likes of him, not lose to him. In a just world, this Ghost would have been my sworn servant. If he was, I’d have trained him past the seventh circle in Carromeleg, if nothing else.
I let him come at me, deflected his every strike until I was certain he knew just how outmatched he was, and then turned a counterpunch into a muffled gunshot simply to show him my disappointment. His Predator whispered in my fist and a ragged red hole appeared, as if by magic, in the center of his throat. I skipped away backwards, laughing as he fell to his knees and clutched at his neck to try and hold his life in.
I almost died, watching that fool Ghost gurgle and bleed out.
The sun was just coming up when a car appeared from the direction of the wharf, coming toward the gatehouse. Achoo was still sitting outside, one hand clamped over the wound in his shoulder. Arik was inside, trying to watch the cameras and listen for the phone to ring. All it would take was one missed check-in from a Star switchboard, if Lothiel’s girls hadn’t done their decking right.
They probably had. The phone hadn’t rung.
But there was a chair inside.
If you didn’t mind the smell of dead sec guards.
Arik stepped outside at Achoo’s summons, hands thrust into his belt to hold his trench coat open. He’d need the pistols quickly if he needed them at all.
“That looks like the boss in the back,” Achoo said, as the car slowed at the gate. Arik squinted. Son of a—
“Sir!” he said, as the window trolled down.
Alejandro Kylisearn sat in the back of the limo. He had a fluorescent green mohawk. He looked tired, though Arik didn’t judge him for that—they were all tired. He look at Arik and smiled a half-grin.
“Schofield,” he said. “Good work last night.”
Arik doubted his lord had any idea what had happened during the night. Nonetheless, he said thank you. Alejandro looked through the window at the wrecked van, on its side, and the blackened building. He looked at Achoo, sitting and seeping blood.
“You had some difficulty?”
“Two men dead,” Arik said.
“Pity.”
“You must remember them when you return to the Tir,” Arik said. “They would appreciate that.”
Alejandro frowned. “Yes, the Tir. It turns out I’ll be staying in Seattle for a while,” he said.
“Here?” Arik blurted.
“Yes—my cousin would prefer that I take an interest in the Ancients.”
“The Ancients?”
“They’re an association—” Alejandro began, but he stopped when he saw Arik nod. “You know them.”
“Yes,” was all Arik trusted himself to say. The Ancients were an association in the sense that a mob was an association. They were a gang, to call a thing by its true name.
“The High Prince was quite—insistent,” Alejandro said, his mouth twisting into a moue.
He lost, Arik realized. Whatever this all was—whatever Fidel and Victor died for, he lost. He’s banished here. He tasted copper in the back of his mouth. His palms tingled.
“What will that mean for me?” he asked. “For my men?”
“I’ll see that you’re paid,” Alejandro said. “A man keeps his word.” He looked down at his lap for a second. “But I’m not sure how long it will be before I call again, Arik.”
He lost. It was everything Arik could do to keep from sucking air between his tusks in anger. All of this, tonight.
For nothing.
“I will be here when you call,” he forced himself to say, because he was a loyal man. His mother had raised him that way. But as he watched the car drive away, he licked his lips and forced his mind—his not-quite-so-slow, but never-all-that-fast mind—to work a problem over in his head.
I am a loyal man, he told himself. But what does it mean to be loyal to man who is not loyal back?
“Thanks. Blitzen’s off reporting to Sting. I told him to look for me to be playing nurse. The patch’ll help me get to it.” She slapped it onto her forearm, then let out a contented little sigh. I saw some color return to her cheeks.
“Hey, listen.” She leaned in close, voice low. “I just wanted you to know we aren’t all mad at you Tir boys for signing up. Y’all really help the gang, and that’s what matters. I’m sorry Sting’s bein’ such a bitch to you. She’s still just…adjusting…to Wasp being dead, I think.”
“No fear, Comet. ‘Everyone is quick to blame the alien,’ as Aeschylus said.” I gave her a warm smile, wishing she’d just go away. Her aura still bothered me. She wasn’t an initiate, not yet, despite that powerful glow. She had power, but not refinement. What was it?
“Well, I meant it. And hey!” She gave me an enthusiastic thumbs up. “Wiz plan tonight, Greenie! We scored lots of tuskers, that’s for sure.”
“Oh, nonsense,” I smiled away my indignation. Imagine! Some Tarislar gutter witch thought her approval mattered. “I just stole from the classics. You did the real work.”
Hah! That was it. The cow was pregnant. No wonder those deep passions roiled at her core. She was carrying some squalling little brat-to-be around with her. Blitzen’s, no doubt.
I kept the brittle smile on until she walked off in her hideous chaps, then slung a leg over my bike and roared away. I had an appointment to keep. This rabble being busy licking their wounds and, invariably, enjoying an afterparty, would lend me just the time I needed. I knew Sting wouldn’t, couldn’t agree to move into Silent P turf tonight—I just needed to arrange for her own lieutenants to hear her say so.
Silent P turf, mind you, was right where I was headed.
The warehouse didn’t look like much from the outside, but in fairness that’s because there wasn’t much to it on the inside, either. Just like the rest of Seattle. Dingy and worn down, dirty, coated in ash like half of Puyallup, gray and lifeless. Ye gods, I missed Portland.
A low-slung Eurocar Westwind was parked out front, flanked by a trio of white and gold street bikes. I didn’t have to look for details while I parked my acid green Rapier, I just knew that the bikes were Silent P rides and the Westwind would be registered in the UCAS, NAN, and California Free State, depending on who you asked; and the driver, too, would have an assortment of fake SINs. But it was from Tir Tairngire, just as the driver certainly was.
“Gentlemen!” I swung the small warehouse door wide open, arms up, step light, voice cheerful,. “How does the night find you?”
“Armed,” said a humorless elf in an even more humorless suit, all stiff white shirt, short-cropped hair, outfit pitch black everywhere else. He couldn’t have been advertising himself as a Ghost any more than if he’d shown up in his dress blacks or combat fatigues. He held a silenced Ares Predator in a gloved hand, trained square at my center of mass.
A trio of crass elven gangers stood in a ragged semi-circle nearby. They were every bit the denim-and-leather of my Ancients, but in dirty white and dull gold instead of our bold greens. Silent P’s. They were also truer rivals than the miscreant orks and round-ears we both clashed with so often; more dangerous because of their familiarity, to be taken more seriously because they recruited from the same starving Tarislar brats we did, and to be hated and pitied because they refused to join us. Street muscle, nothing more, but each one pointed a sleek Steyr TMP at me. The TMP was a common Tir Peace Force issue weapon. I should know, I’d shared a crate of them with my men just prior to tonight’s fight.
“Indeed you are!” I said with a cheerful smile. I reached down to unsling my swordbelt, holding it high. “And you brought enough to share with your loyal dogs, it would appear.”
“Not every shipment can go to the Ancients, Kylisearn,” the Ghost said with a thin-lipped smile. “You know how Prince Telestrian feels.”
One of the Silent P’s slung his TMP and stepped close to pat me down, grunting and flashing yellow teeth in a smug grin when he grabbed the Ares Light Fire from the small of my back. He snorted down at it, and I could tell he wanted to call it a girl’s gun. For my part, I wanted to snap his neck very, very, badly.
Yellowtooth stepped away from me, tucking my pistol into his waistband and leaving his Steyr dangling from his shoulder sling. One with a ridiculous ponytail lowered his muzzle as soon as my gun was taken. The last one, a redhead, kept his gun trained on me the whole time. He eyes widened as his foul-breathed, moron partner crossed his line of fire, but I didn’t make my move. Yet.
My Ancients rushed past me to keep the Black Rains scrambling away in a panic, and I knew some eager handful of toughs would probably chase the orks halfway to Auburn. I sauntered towards Sting as she started reining in the troops.
“…and gives us boots in the streets here, here, and here. Fly the colors on those corners, send some of the kids to tag over Rain marks. Show folks we’re here to stay.”
Sting had a weatherbeaten old map spread across the hood of a subcompact, a handful of our lieutenants standing around her.
“We have to hold ground, we can’t just take it. Split up the cav and put two mages each with groups going here, here, and here,” her chromed hand razors glinted in the light as she marked crucial points on the map, sending reinforcements to take the last few Rain strongholds. “And get every otherwise available magician to work on healing. Tonight was rough on the tuskers, but we took some licks, too.”
She didn’t even mean her own injuries; a bloody wrap around her upper arm and a second circling her thigh. She was worried about the Ancients, even mine. How sweet of her. How simple.
“We’ve got nine men down and past helping,” she continued. “Let’s make sure we patch up who we can, chip-quick, people. We don’t want any more deaths tonight.”
Her chromed eyes lifted to glare my way, blaming me for every one of them. I replied with a shrug, my leathers and chains creaking and clanking.
“I see far more than nine orks in the streets, don’t you? And I see where we’re standing. They’re crippled, and we’ve almost doubled our Puyallup territory. If this isn’t a resounding victory in your mind, Sting, I can’t help but wonder what you think victory looks like.”
I put both hands on the map, leaning over it just to watch my shadow fall over the whole city.
“The Black Rains are scattered, subdued. They’re not destroyed, but they’ll trouble us no longer and we’ve taken enough turf to keep them in their place even once they breed more.”
The ring of elves nodded, though Sting eyed me warily. I smiled confidently at the rest as I lifted one hand from the map and slid it next to the other to neatly frame the next neighborhood we’d swallow whole.
“One down, one to go. The Silent P’s have long been a thorn in our side. They ’ll not poach recruits from us so handily if we chastise them with the same firm hand. Especially if we do so swiftly and confidently. The Ancients’ way.”
Sting’s cyberoptics narrowed until they were just slivers of metal, and she shook her head. Her fangs flashed while she barked back at me.
“Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not any time soon. We don’t spill elven blood if it can be helped,” her hand razors dug into the hood of the car opposite me as she kept going. No poker face, our Sting.
“We’ve done plenty of fighting already. We need to rest and re-arm. The whole Sprawl will hear about us taking half the Rain’s turf from ’em, that’s message enough. The P’s know their beef’s been settled, and settled by us. They’ll get in line if we talk to ’em, no need to kill our own.”
I shrugged again, fingers splayed, expression innocent.
“You’re the Captain, Captain. If you think we can’t handle the Silent P’s in a fight, well, I suppose you’re correct.”
She shredded another handful of car hood, the metal shrieking softly as she balled her hand into a fist.
“That’s not what I’m saying, you Tir-born son of a bitch, and you know it. You daisy eaters come to Seattle like you run the place, you get my people killed, and you…”
She snarled away the end of the sentence, but the damage was done. A few of the other lieutenants shared long glances, and another one—nominally loyal to her, despite being a Portland exile like myself—stiffened at her tone.
“Just get out of here, all of you.” Her shoulders slumped a little, razors flashing as she waved for us to get back to work. “You have your orders. Follow ’em. Keep our elves alive.”
I swallowed a smile as I slunk away like a kicked dog, letting them all see my dejection. Hadn’t I only been expressing more confidence in the gang than her? Hadn’t I only wanted to follow up on a victory brought about by my tactics, not hers? Didn’t I deserved to be treated better than that? Word would spread. Just like I wanted.
I came across Comet leaning against their Vector, where several of our bikes were parked in a ragged row.
With her golden hair shining in the moonlight, she looked tolerably attractive despite her ridiculous outfit, until I saw how pale she was. She had a look on her face I knew meant a magician’s migraine, or what the Peace Force called Combat Hermetic Fatigue. It had been a gamble, asking them to cast so powerfully and for so long. She’d done well enough, and I could appreciate her competence. That competence, however, also made her a bit of a threat to me; or, at least, to one of my secrets. Just like I did around every magician in Seattle, I actively masked my aura around her, hiding my own prowess and making myself appear as mundane as Sting, a puddle of mud, or half a brick.
At the same time, I made a point of switching my own perception over to the Astral plane. Sizing up the competition just made sense, right?
“Here,” I fished in a pocket for a stimpatch and flipped it her way, sidelong like a throwing star. “I’ve heard they take the edge off.”
She snatched it out of the air and smiled gratefully. Her aura glowed with determination tinged with appreciation. Strange. Something was different about her.
I leaped onto the hood of a Ford Americar, circled my sword overhead to rally the troops, and bellowed at the top of my lungs. I pointed my boxy Uzi down the street. At this range, waving it around like a pistol, the odds of even me hitting an ork were rather slim.
“Arise! Arise, riders of Tarislar!”
I didn’t fire the Uzi to hit anything, though, just to add some noise and muzzle flash. The elves around me treated it like a starter’s pistol, racing forward. Sting hunkered down behind a flipped-over Toyota half a dozen meters away as she reloaded, but she might as well have been on the moon for all the command she had over them at that second.
All they cared about was me standing in plain sight of the Black Rains, sword and gun in hand, voice booming. A few more hearts and minds fell into my pocket. That’s what counted.
The charge stalled out a few blocks later, of course. I’d meant for it to do just that. The Rains had some rattle-shaking street shaman supporting them. I was the only mage we had, and hell if I was giving up that particular secret just because an earth elemental roared to life and pulped a few Seattle-bred elves. The huge, concrete ork smashed and bashed away as we poured dozens of rounds into it, then we started slowly falling back. We darted back down the street from car to wreck, corner to armored mailbox, dumpster to doorway. The orks gave chase as we gave ground. The insolent brutes—they actually thought elves were afraid of them. At the end of the next block, we dug in our heels in and held fast.
Right on time, my flanking forces arrived. Their engines howled over the gunfire and I smiled, hoping Sting could see the flash of my teeth. She’d sworn that I was crazy to collect all our mages for a flanking maneuver; that my plan was madness; that we were getting too fancy; but I’d assured her their magic would turn the tide. It had.
The bikes screaming our way from both side streets were Yamaha Rapiers and Honda Vectors, sleek street bikes, not growling Harleys like the Rains sometimes rode. They were the nimble, almost elven bikes that my followers preferred over the chrome monstrosities Sting and some of her die-hard Seattle rats favored. I’d hand-picked this crew myself, told them over and over the importance of their double envelopment. I knew my reputation hinged on the maneuver’s success. Thank you, Miltiades.
A green-glowing Vector roared by, likely pushing a hundred kilometers an hour, and orks fell under a wave of automatic fire. The rider, dark and burly for an elf, hunched low over the handlebars. He split his concentration between pushing his bike through the obstacle course of an urban firefight and reorienting its smartlink targeting reticule. As soon as the autogun hidden in the front fairing cycled in a fresh magazine, he’d be able to open up on more Rains.
The passenger was brighter, garishly so, and was what made me recognize them in particular. She was Comet, he went by Blitzen. She’d taken to wearing a ridiculous leather outfit, dyed somewhere between blaze orange and hot pink, to dare enemies to try and hit her on the back of the fast-moving bike her man handled so well. Both had daubed and striped their face with neon green paint, and that wasn’t the only flash of light from their bike. Magic flared from Comet’s fingertips, blasting a Nissan Jackrabbit into a ball of fire and twisted metal.
Blitzen’s Honda burst through the wreckage a heartbeat later, ramping off what was left of the chassis to race past the charred corpses of two Rains who had taken cover there. Comet slipped an arm around her lover’s stomach as the engine howled and they were gone again, too quick for any ork to draw a bead.
A half-dozen bikes roared down the street in their wake, smashing into and through Rain defenders, every bike with an expert driver giving unprecedented mobility to a combat mage. Simultaneously, several bikes streaked by from the opposite side street, the two lines of riders scissoring through and past one another, cutting down every ork that stood between them.
I stood up and laughed. Their street names, like so many others in this ridiculous city, were absurd, but they knew their killing and they followed orders very well, indeed. The Sprawl had never seen that much firepower tied to that much speed, and—best of all—Sting had been against concentrating our magical assets from the start. Everyone knew the plan was mine. All mine.
Five minutes. What the hell could be taking five minutes? Achoo was a better planner than that. Anything that involved shooting should’ve been over in a minute or less. Five minutes meant both sides were hunkered down and wasting bullets, convincing each other they were still there and not leaving. He thumbed the dial button on his phone and held it to his ear.
It rung out.
But in between the sounds of gunfire, he heard the chirping of Achoo’s phone. It came from in front of him and off to the left. Arik pocketed his phone and squinted, looking. The entire face of that building was boarded up and blocked with brick, and the sidewalk beneath was an almost-unbroken line of Dumpsters.
He wouldn’t… Arik squatted behind the last of the cars before the street split into a t-intersection at the fence line. From where he was he could see the guardhouse. The steel-reinforced brick was enough to stop an anti-armor rocket, but it looked like Victor had been fool enough to shoot his off anyway. The facade was cracked and blackened but not broken, and assault rifle muzzles poked out of each of the three firing ports on that side of the building.
Arik leaned back and closed his eyes, thinking.
Five minutes. If the guards were going to call for police help—Lone Star or otherwise—they’d have been here by now. The fact that none had appeared, and that Lothiel and her merry band of deckers was still nearby, meant the Star hadn’t been called. The Tir guards were trying to keep it in-house. Which means…
From down the street behind him came the howl of a siren. Not the high-pitched job the Star used, but the more whiny rawr of a private security van. Reinforcements from the Tir security post down the road. More of the High Prince’s Seattle-based goons.
Pulling a headset out from an inside pocket, Arik slid it over his ear. It was a tactical rig with a black rubber gasket that covered his left ear and hung a microphone down near his chin. The battery wasn’t much, which meant the range wasn’t much, but it should be close enough. He thumbed it on and leaned around the rear of the car.
“Boys?”
“Where the hell you been?” Achoo shouted, loud enough that Arik heard it twice, once through his earpiece and a quarter-second later, through the air. The syncopation was distracting in a clinical sense, but he didn’t care.
“I told you I was too far away,” Arik said. “What’s the deal here?”
“They saw us coming.”
“Might that have been the rocket?”
“Might have.”
“More sec coming from behind,” Arik said. The siren was getting louder. He saw the blue flashing lights reflecting off windows at the other end of the building.
“Yeah. Lothiel’s girls decked in and shut down all the calls to the Star or anyone else, but the bastards had an old, sound-powered phone to the next station down the line. They passed the alarm to the ready squad.”
Arik bit the center of his upper lip. Because of his tusks, that was all he could bite. If this had been the morning, the flying squad would have gotten lost. They’d already paid for that. They hadn’t even considered trying to buy off the night squad, because they weren’t going at night.
Except now they were.
The lights were bright enough and the siren loud enough that Arik knew the van was nearly there. He leaned forward, putting his weight on his feet and getting ready to stand.
“I’ve got the van,” he said.
Tir security vans in Seattle weren’t high-armored jobs. The elves didn’t want to spend that much on the largely-human and ork security force they paid for in the great city. If this had been Portland, the Walled City’s security forces would’ve been riding in what was more or less a tank.
But this wasn’t Portland.
Arik leaned forward onto one knee as the van came screaming up. Raising the Mossberg, he snugged it tight to his shoulder, keeping the muzzle down, and waited. The truck was fifty meters away. Forty. It passed Beren’s car.
“Keep your head down, points,” Arik muttered, and slid out from between the cars. The Mossberg kicked. The tingling in Arik’s palm told him the smartgun adapter was talking to the wires in his hand and his head, and his shots went where he wanted them.
He fired three rounds. The big automatic shotgun blasted the three buckshot loads out in just over a second. The recoil punished Arik’s shoulder. He noticed none of it. He was watching the fall of his shots.
The first round shattered the driver’s window. The second round went through the new hole, finishing the job that the first shell and the shattered glass had begun, flaying the driver’s skull to the bone.
The third shot took out the left front tire in a blowout that was loud enough to rival the sound of the Mossberg’s own shots.
All of this took little more than one second.
Another second later, the three remaining tires were screaming.
Two seconds after that, the van was on its side, steel screaming and shedding sparks, sliding toward the guardhouse.
Two seconds after that, the van slammed into the guardhouse. The tough building shrugged off the impact, but noise had to have been horrendous. All three assault rifles stopped firing as their wielders flinched back.
“Damn,” Victor said over the radio.
Arik watched the van burst into flames. A man climbed out of the now-on-top passenger door, his back and arms on fire, and fell to the pavement. He struggled, screaming, for a few moments, and then lay still.
Arik fed three new shells into the Mossberg’s magazine.
“I’m glad you showed up,” Achoo said. Then he sneezed.
And that’s why he’s called Achoo.
“I can’t see from here,” Arik said, pushing the last round into the tubular magazine. “Is that wreck blocking the gate?”
There was a pause. Then, “Drek.” Achoo’s voice was filled with an odd tone of acceptance.
“Of course it is,” Arik said. Now they had to move a drekking burning van before Beren and Lothiel and all the others who were just standing around watching could get through to do their part.
“We can get them now,” Fidel cried. Arik spun on his knee and looked back toward the Dumpsters. The squat dwarf came running out from behind his cover, the tube of another rocket launcher jutting over his shoulder and a subgun clutched in his hands. He moved with surprising speed for someone with such short legs.
“Get back here!” Achoo called.
“Come on!” Fidel shouted.
“Son of—” Arik reached up and covered his mike with his hand. “Get back to cover, you damn fool!” he shouted.
A burst from an assault rifle burped through the air and cut the dwarf’s legs out from under him. Another burst ripped the night when he slid to a stop, thudding into his body armor and the thin flesh beneath. Arik heard a gurgling grunt in his ear, and then nothing.
“Son of a bitch!” Victor shouted. “I’ll kill—urk!”
From the sneeze, Achoo had just tackled the other man. Arik couldn’t see them. What he did see when he looked back toward the gate was a man trying to crawl out of the passenger door that now pointed toward the sky. Arik didn’t bother trying to shift the shotgun around—his left hand drew the cross-draw pistol from its hip holster. He aimed the gun and fired a single round in one motion, then reholstered.
He didn’t miss.
He never missed.
“Can you see Fidel?” Victor asked, over the radio.
Arik looked. “Yeah.”
“Is he alive?”
“No.”
“Frag.”
Arik looked back at the guard shack. No more firing was coming from it. That was bad. It meant the slags inside where getting smart, not wasting rounds when they didn’t have to. It meant something drastic would have to be done.
Frag.
“Achoo,” Arik said.
“Yeah?” He could hear grunting as the smaller man sat on Victor—or whatever—to keep him down.
“I need you to get their attention.”
“I think Fidel just tried that, chummer.”
“I have to get close to the building,” Arik said patiently. “Which means I have to get behind the van. To get behind the van, I have to cross the street. I can’t do that if they’re looking at me.”
“Frag.”
“Yeah,” Arik said. “On a three count, okay?”
“Three,” Achoo said, and the snarl of a submachine gun echoed down the street. Impacts and ricochets sparked from the guardhouse’s walls. Arik leaned far enough over to see as the hammering of the guards’ assault rifles started again, counting muzzle flares. There were still three.
“Keep looking that way,” he grunted, and heaved himself to his feet, Mossberg held across his chest. A few pulse-pounding seconds later, he was across the street and sliding on his knees toward the rear of the van. His chest burned as he sucked in huge lungfuls of air—he’d run the whole way holding his breath.
“I’m clear,” he said.
“Hooray for you,” Achoo snarled. “Now do something, ’cause Victor got away from me.”
Arik twisted around the back of the truck. Victor was running, half-crouched, toward Fidel’s body. He held the trigger down on his sub gun as he ran and had his machine pistol out as well. More impacts sparked off the guardhouse. Arik was close enough to hear the lead going thock-thock-thock against the tough wall.
“You stupid slag,” Arik whispered, but he moved, too.
Maybe he’d be fast enough.
It’d be risky.
That was part of loyalty, too. He’d learned that the first time someone had saved his life when he’d done something stupid. A man did what he said he would do—even saving dumbass slags from themselves.
Four steps put him around the burning wreck of the van and against the side of the guardhouse. His weight slamming against the wall must’ve made a noticeable sound inside—a gunport snapped open by his right thigh, and an assault rifle muzzle poked out. It didn’t fire, and Arik didn’t move.
But he had to move.
Victor was moving.
Lifting the Mossberg, he brought the butt around and down like a sledgehammer into the barrel, knocking it back into the guardhouse with the force of a driven railroad spike. There was a cry of pain and the rifle went off, but the three-round burst spent two of its rounds on the interior wall. Arik stepped quickly past the gunport and around the corner of the building.
If he’d been inside, the next thing through that gunport would be a grenade. He wanted to be around the corner if that happened. And what if the guards inside are smart, he snarled at himself, and drop one out this side, too?
Then you die, chummer, he told himself. Life’s a risk.
There was grunt cut short in his earphone. Arik frowned and looked down, watching the ground, but he knew what he’d heard.
Victor was hit.
Around the backside of the guardhouse was the door. There were two firing slits in the wall, but none in the door itself. There was a recessed cubby above the door where a camera would go, but it had shot out long ago. Arik stood with his back against the door and worked the Mossberg’s action, ejecting flechette shells.
“I hope it was worth it,” Achoo said, his voice thick.
“Me, too,” Arik said. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a handful of heavier shells. They felt reassuringly solid as he fed them into the shotgun’s tubular magazine, and they should. He didn’t load slugs for too many things, but busting a door was one of them.
According to the plan, Victor had pocket charges to blow the door.
But Victor was out on the street, dead with his dead boyfriend.
Arik stepped away from the door and shouldered the big auto shotgun. Needs must, and all that, he told himself, and prayed his smartgun would put the shells where he told them to go.
BOOM. BOOMBOOMBOOM.
The shotgun was ripped from his hands and his trench coat punched him in the chest as a ricochet hit the Mossberg. Arik stumbled back, shaking stinging hands and praying there’d still be fingers when he looked, but his eyes were focused on the door.
The shells had done their jobs. The door hung half-open.
Arik recovered his balance and lunged forward. One kick from his size-fourteen boots broke the door free from one side. He slid through the doorway, his hands already drawing his pistols.
There were four guards inside, not three. Three were trying to bring long-barreled assault rifles around. Empty magazines littered the floor, and the burning, cloying smell of propellant was so strong Arik’s eyes were already watering. The fourth guard lay on the ground, clutching his shoulder and cursing.
Arik fired. He started on the left and went to the right, dropping to his knees as he did. Bam. Bam. Bam. Bam. Metronomically, even if the space between each shot was too small to measure outside a lab.
More propellant, subtly different from the rifles’, made his nostrils twitch.
The guards were all slumped against the walls, now with matching holes in their heads or chests.
Thank all the gods warm and cold for the money I spent on that wire, Arik thought. And thanks to Alejandro Kylisearn for paying for it.
He keyed his radio. “It’s done.”
“’Bout time,” Achoo said. “I’m hit, by the way.”
“Boost a car out there,” Arik said, holstering his pistols. His hands ached. He looked down, counting bloody fingers, and watched them shake. “Something big enough to shove the van out of the way. Then go tell Beren and Lothiel the way is open.”
“I already told him, drekker,” Lothiel’s voice said. “Nice security on your radio net, by the way.”
Arik closed his eyes. “Just get it done,” he told them.
The car was where Arik had left it, which was saying something in Redmond.
There were a few gangers down the street, but they scampered when they saw him come out of the Union and head toward the car. It might have had something to do with the Tir marks on the plates.
Or maybe the Union had an agreement—certainly the Seamstresses wouldn’t want their clients inconvenienced—with the nearby gangs. Protection wasn’t the oldest profession in the world, but it was pretty damn old. Gangers in Redmond weren’t slags—slags got scragged.
Arik got behind the wheel, then pulled his phone back out and dialed Portland. The line rung out without anyone answering. Arik redialed and waited.
It rung out again.
“Frag.”
It wasn’t supposed to be this early. He wasn’t—his team wasn’t—set up for a night job. The port would have lights, of course, but what if they got shot out? Arik had an ork’s night vision—it wouldn’t bother him. But Achoo and Victor were humans; Fidel a dwarf.
“Frag.”
He started the engine—ignoring the rattle of the exhaust system and whatever metahuman thrash metal band was playing on the radio—and pulled out into traffic.
It was supposed to be this hard. Go tomorrow morning—after an evening at the Seamstresses Union—and see that a certain section of the waterfront was held by people loyal to Alejandro Kylisearn instead of the High Prince. Lugh Surehand was High Prince of Tir Taingire. His people controlled the waterfront, collecting the taxes, paying the graft, and otherwise seeing that the seaborne freight meant for the elvish nation to the south was taken care of.
It wasn’t Arik’s place to be told all the details of the plan. He didn’t know why Alejandro wanted to take the Seattle trade away from his brother-in-law’s underlings. He didn’t need to know.
Alejandro Kylisearn paid Arik’s salary, and he’d done him any number of boons. That was another lesson his mama had taught little Arik Schofield before pushing him out of the house right before she dropped her next litter.
A man—an ork, a human, anything—kept his word and stayed loyal to his salt. Arik didn’t know what salt meant; Alejandro had never given him a condiment. But he knew what loyalty was.
And he knew it was important. Because it felt important.
So if Alejandro wanted the Tir elves off the wharf, Arik would bloody well take the wharf.
As he drove, he patted his pockets. The pistols were still there, one on his hip and another on his thigh. The knives were still on his hip, balancing the knife, and no one had been near his boots.
From the itch, his razor fingers were just fine. And the smartwire in his arm didn’t come out—there was no way he could have misplaced that.
He dialed Achoo again, praying the small human would answer, but the line rung out a third time. Arik didn’t leave a message. He was too far away to change what would happen. If Achoo said the timetable was that tight, it meant the other teams were moving, too.
Why had they gone early?
Arik didn’t need to know why they were doing it—but it might mean his life that they were doing it early.
Even Mama wouldn’t have said that was too much to ask.
* * *
They started the party without him.
Arik pulled the car to the side of the road a good hundred meters back from the security fence, but he could already see the flashes from the teams’ guns and the security troops at the gate. The gate was all his team was supposed to hold. That was all the plan called for. The four of them were to take out the security squad—quietly if possible but quickly if not—and then pass the other teams through.
The car Arik parked behind held one of the other teams.
He climbed out of the beater and walked to the trunk, watching the cars around him. At least one of the other teams was waiting for him to clear the gate. He unlatched the trunk and regarded the contents. What he’d had planned for the morning was out. He wouldn’t need the fake security uniforms. Or the hats. Or the paralyzing gas.
Arik sighed. Along with what he was wearing, he only needed one more thing: the big Mossberg auto shotgun resting beneath the piled clothes. He put spare shells into his pockets and half-shrugged out of his armored trench coat. The sling for the shotgun went over his right shoulder, and then he shrugged the coat back up. The gun hung down along his leg, where it wouldn’t be easily seen. He slammed the trunk and walked up to the next car.
An elf with a glowing green tattoo over half his face looked up at him from the driver’s seat. “Schofield,” the elf said. “Letting your kids play?”
“Beren,” Arik said, nodding. “You didn’t think of helping?”
“You boys got the gate,” the elf said. “Our brief is the wharf.” He shifted in his seat to jerk a finger behind him. “Lothiel and her little slags are two cars back on the other side of the street. Don’t bother asking for help. They’re waiting to go in and get the security office.”
Arik looked up at the ratty van parked across the street. “You don’t think the sec office knows we’re here?”
Beren laughed. His tattoo fluoresced when he moved, flashing like a soft strobe in the darkness. Arik wondered if he had a mask or something for when the shooting started, but decided he didn’t care.
“How long they been at it?”
“Not more than five minutes.”
Arik pulled his phone out. “They could’ve called.”
Beren laughed again. “Not a lot of time to dial in a firefight, ork.”
Arik didn’t laugh.
“Guess I’ll get on, then,” he said. He started walking away from the car. He didn’t like playing the big dumb ork, but drekkers like Beren deserved it. The stupid elf slag thought he was a god’s gift to the world since he had pointed ears and a clean smile. He’d said enough.
Arik Schofield looked down on the seat cushion, at the small patch he could see between his legs, and tried not to frown. He knew he was frowning anyway—he knew it from the way his tusks rubbed against his upper lip—but he didn’t want to be. A woman wouldn’t stop to talk to a frowning man.
Not that many women stopped to talk to Arik. Or any other ork—well, okay, ork women would talk to him, but he didn’t like ork women. The tusks got in the way when he tried to kiss them…Arik shook his head. Don’t be thinking about tusks. He looked up from the chair and its lace and glanced around again.
If someone had told him a year ago that he’d be sitting in a human brothel in Redmond he’d have punched them. A brothel? Sure thing. In Redmond? Zero static. But a human one? He’d never have thought in a hundred years that an ork would be allowed inside the Seamstresses’s Union.
Yet here he was.
He looked around at the room. It wasn’t much—darkly lit, a small desk with a woman engrossed with something on her personal secretary, two chairs—also with lace on them—and a series of doors. The woman had taken his name, pointing him at the chair, and gone back to her reading.
Arik huffed and settled back in his chair. Soon. He rolled the credstick in his left hand through his fingers while he waited. It helped him to be touching something real. If he didn’t pay attention he might miss something, and the whole experience seemed unreal enough already. There was a small T engraved on the end of the credstick. Arik rubbed his thumb over it. If it weren’t for Alejandro, he’d never have the chance—
—the door nearest him opened. A young woman wearing something white and diaphanous and nothing else stepped through. Arik lurched upright, trying to stand up straight like his mother had taught him.
“Not yet,” the woman behind the desk said without looking up.
Arik blinked. The young woman walked by, all wafting folds of fabric and whorls of perfume. His nose tingled. That tingling made other parts of him tingle. He looked at the woman at the desk, but she still didn’t look up. He sat back down, listening for the telltale crack that would tell him he was too heavy—too dumb and heavy, he heard his father’s voice in his mind—for the woodwork.
The chair held.
Arik squeezed the credstick until his father’s voice was gone. It didn’t matter how big and dumb he was now. Alejandro Kylisearn had seen to that. And tomorrow, just after the sun came up, he’d see to Alejandro’s interests in the city. The credstick rolled more smoothly.
Another door opened.
Arik stood.
“Not yet,” the woman behind the desk said.
Arik sat down again. He tried to ignore the woman who stepped out, but she was even younger than the first, and taller, with more defined muscles and even less fabric. Arik’s nostrils flared as she walked by. She smelled—smells, hell, I can taste her on the air—stronger.
The credstick rolled. There were plenty of doors left.
A doorknob turned.
Arik lurched upright.
“No.”
He sat down.
Patience, he told himself. Mama always said patience was the key to anything. Arik hadn’t been too good at too many lessons—he was an ork, after all, and no one had ever hidden that fact from him—but he’d paid attention when mama talked.
His phone chirped.
Arik stood up.
“Not yet,” the woman said again. Arik ignored her and dug his phone out and opened it.
“What?”
“It’s time,” Achoo said.
“Tomorrow,” Arik said.
“It got moved up,” Achoo said.
“What?”
“It got moved up.”
“I heard you,” Arik said. He looked around the room again. “Why?”
“You want me to call Portland and find out?” Achoo asked. “They don’t tell me that drek, man. We’re moving on the checkpoint now. There’s no time.”
Arik frowned, tusks or not. “Wait for me.”
“Can’t—new timetable starts in twenty.”
Arik closed his eyes. “We can’t get there that fast.”
“You can’t—I can. Fidel and Victor will go with me. Get there as quick as you can, hey?”
“Be careful.”
“You, too.” Arik closed his phone and slid it into his pocket. The woman behind the desk was looking at him. “What?”
“We don’t allow phones up here,” she said.
Arik squeezed the credstick. He looked down at the still closed doors and breathed in deep through his nose. Perfumes and other smells permeated the air. There was lace on the chairs. The air was warm and moist.
We’re going early, he’d said. Early, hell—you’re going before I even get my reward.
He wanted to remember it all.
“I’ll take the phone out,” he said, pocketing the credstick.
“Your appointment…”
“I’ll have to reschedule.” He walked down the hall to the elevator.
The sun was just coming up when a car appeared from the direction of the wharf, coming toward the gatehouse. Achoo was still sitting outside, one hand clamped over the wound in his shoulder. Arik was inside, trying to watch the cameras and listen for the phone to ring. All it would take was one missed check-in from a Star switchboard, if Lothiel’s girls hadn’t done their decking right.
They probably had. The phone hadn’t rung.
But there was a chair inside.
If you didn’t mind the smell of dead sec guards.
Arik stepped outside at Achoo’s summons, hands thrust into his belt to hold his trench coat open. He’d need the pistols quickly if he needed them at all.
“That looks like the boss in the back,” Achoo said, as the car slowed at the gate. Arik squinted. Son of a—
“Sir!” he said, as the window trolled down.
Alejandro Kylisearn sat in the back of the limo. He had a fluorescent green mohawk. He looked tired, though Arik didn’t judge him for that—they were all tired. He look at Arik and smiled a half-grin.
“Schofield,” he said. “Good work last night.”
Arik doubted his lord had any idea what had happened during the night. Nonetheless, he said thank you. Alejandro looked through the window at the wrecked van, on its side, and the blackened building. He looked at Achoo, sitting and seeping blood.
“You had some difficulty?”
“Two men dead,” Arik said.
“Pity.”
“You must remember them when you return to the Tir,” Arik said. “They would appreciate that.”
Alejandro frowned. “Yes, the Tir. It turns out I’ll be staying in Seattle for a while,” he said.
“Here?” Arik blurted.
“Yes—my cousin would prefer that I take an interest in the Ancients.”
“The Ancients?”
“They’re an association—” Alejandro began, but he stopped when he saw Arik nod. “You know them.”
“Yes,” was all Arik trusted himself to say. The Ancients were an association in the sense that a mob was an association. They were a gang, to call a thing by its true name.
“The High Prince was quite—insistent,” Alejandro said, his mouth twisting into a moue.
He lost, Arik realized. Whatever this all was—whatever Fidel and Victor died for, he lost. He’s banished here. He tasted copper in the back of his mouth. His palms tingled.
“What will that mean for me?” he asked. “For my men?”
“I’ll see that you’re paid,” Alejandro said. “A man keeps his word.” He looked down at his lap for a second. “But I’m not sure how long it will be before I call again, Arik.”
He lost. It was everything Arik could do to keep from sucking air between his tusks in anger. All of this, tonight.
For nothing.
“I will be here when you call,” he forced himself to say, because he was a loyal man. His mother had raised him that way. But as he watched the car drive away, he licked his lips and forced his mind—his not-quite-so-slow, but never-all-that-fast mind—to work a problem over in his head.
I am a loyal man, he told himself. But what does it mean to be loyal to man who is not loyal back?
“Enough,” my aunt Jessica said. I never thought I’d be happy to hear her voice again.
“What is that thing?” I gasped, jerking out of her grasp and backing up until the cold stone wall chilled my spine.
“This is one of my children,” Jessica said. “You will understand in time. Now please stop this childish running around and go with Val.”
One of the UB badges stood by, not one of the original two that I’d escaped. This guy was at least as big as those two put together, and twice as ugly. He had a scar over his right eye, thinning, black hair cut military high and tight, and a crooked mouth that gave him a permanent sneer.
“Come, Ms. Telestrian,” he muttered, stepping forward to grab my arm. His huge hand could have wrapped my bicep twice.
“Isn’t Val a girl’s name?” I asked as I tried to pull away.
“She is my niece,” Jessica said with a warning tone in her voice. “I don’t want her damaged.”
Big and Ugly grunted something that sounded like “yes, high priest,” and hauled me along the hallway. I tried to call to Jessica over my shoulder, but my new jailer tightened his grip and yanked upward so that I was more dragging than walking. Pain lanced up my arm, and I blinked back hot tears, my bravado dying a weak death.
I stumbled along in a haze of misery, trying to count the turns and the doors we went through and having no luck at all. Ugly Val used his badge and a code to enter a door I hadn’t even noticed, pinning me to the wall with one hand wrapped around my neck in a way that made it clear he was willing to explain an “accident” to Jessica.
Beyond that door, the whole place changed. The walls were still stone, but no longer cinderblock. Instead, they were natural stone that had been bored out or maybe carved by some kind of industrial acid. The air carried an odd, metallic tang that had the tiny hairs on my neck and arms standing at attention. I dug my feet into the stone floor. I was pretty sure that my situation had not improved.
“Look, pixie, I don’t wanna hurt you,” Val said in the same grunting tone he’d used before.
Pixie? Really? As a racial slur went, it was pretty tame. I guessed that Dandelion Eater would be too much of a mouthful for him. I managed not to say that aloud. Go me.
Footsteps killed whatever equally biffy thing I might have said. A thin human male in gold robes approached, with another buggy man at his side. This bug guy had wings coming up over his shoulders and his arms didn’t quite fit into the loose robe he wore, with weird double-joints poking out. It looked like someone had stuffed a grasshopper into a bathrobe.
“We shall take the future queen from here, Val,” the human man said.
“Suits me,” Val muttered and turned around, punching in the code for the door.
I, being brilliant, tried to duck under Val’s monster arm and get through the door in front of him. He swatted me to the weirdly smooth stone floor and left without even looking back.
“Please, Ms. Telestrian,” the human guy said as he offered me his hand. “There is no need for this.”
He was probably a decade older than my cousin Lynne, but his face had a smooth, ageless quality that some people get, and his blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail. It was his even, white smile that disturbed me. I kept expecting the whole façade of normal humanness to crack apart. I got the impression that if I looked too closely at his body under the loose robe, I’d see something more like what his silent, buggy companion had going on.
“Okay. You win. Let’s go.” I wasn’t giving up. Just using the better part of valor. I refused to take his hand, worried I’d peel his skin off like a glove and reveal something icky, and shoved myself to my feet.
If the last place had been confusing, this place was actually a maze. Fortunately, we passed no more of the weird bug men. Unfortunately, I started to understand where they might have come from. Rooms like little pods opened off the main corridor. Ripped clothing and piles of shit crowded some of these rooms. The stench of rotting flesh and old blood grew stronger the deeper we traveled, and I started to hate my elven senses. I fixed my eyes on the gold robe of the human and kept my hand over my nose. Te’ch.
I had to remember how to get out of here, but keeping track of where we were going was impossible. Frag that drek. Bile burned my throat. I was going to be bug food if I couldn’t figure something out. Some of the rooms had weird devices, technology like I’d never seen before. Nothing that looked even remotely like a comm or a display. I debated grabbing a thingamabob or two, but threw that thought out quick as it came. What was the point? I didn’t know how to use it, and there was no way I could overpower both these guys, even if the more human-looking one was actually just a human. He was still bigger than me. My thoughts spiraled around in despair as I warred with my stomach to keep down what little I’d eaten today.
The robed human led me to a room that had a single stone bench with a folded up blanket on it and a single electric lantern on the floor. This room actually had a door, which he locked behind him, leaving me alone.
I poked and prodded at the keypad for a moment, but it stayed a dumb chunk of tech with an evil red light shining at me. The door was solidly fixed into the stone, no hinges on this side and no good edges to grip. Kicking it just made my feet hurt more. I gave up and the noise boomed for another long moment, then the echoes died away.
Shivering, I sank down onto the bench and wrapped my arms around my knees. Bug food. My short life had come to this. Maybe someone would rescue me. It could happen. Somebody had probably noticed I was gone by now. Or Lynne, traitor that she sorta was, might have asked Jessica where I was. I thought about the look in my cousin’s eyes whenever she had looked at Jessica, and despaired a little more. She would believe whatever Jessica told her.
I thought about the myriad corridors and passages and locked doors that I had been taken down. If I couldn’t even find me, how was anyone else supposed to? The cavalry was not coming. I was bug food.
An hour or a year might have gone by before I stopped feeling sorry for myself long enough to notice that relatively fresh air was flowing down over me. I looked up and saw a metal vent crudely attached to the wall with an overabundance of rubbery cement material.
The vent pried free easily enough, leaving a hole in the wall above my stone bench a little wider than my head. Lucky for me, I’m not much wider than my head. Standing on tiptoes, I reached into the vent, feeling along it for a bend. Nothing as far as my arms could reach to either side. I shoved away visions of razor-sharp, elf-slicing fan blades and went and got the lamp.
To the left, from what my keen eyes and the badly angled lamp light could discern, the vent passage went up. If it had been carved by normal means, I might have never been able to tell, but the passage sloped more than turned at a less than ninety-degree angle. I didn’t know if I’d be able to fit inside, or if I could get up that passage.
One thing was for sure though: staying here made me bug food. Suffocating or being crushed to death by killer fan blades wasn’t exactly my second choice of ways to die, but doing something—anything—felt better than waiting for a sure thing. All I had to do was close my eyes, and my fragging brain fed me the images of popped and exploded bodies I’d encountered on my way to my prison cell. No thanks. Anything was better than that.
I set the lamp down on the bench and pulled my belt out of my jeans. I didn’t want to have anything on that could get caught on stuff. I tossed the belt into the narrow ventilation shaft. It could still come in handy, after all.
Outside the door, I heard loud footfalls and the sound of someone or maybe multiple someone’s yelling. I hesitated. Rescue? I could wish.
Probably more bug food. Good luck to those poor guys. With one last prayer to whatever might be listening, I reached up and gripped the sides of the vent. Time to see if this kitten could get herself out of the tree.
Unfortunately for my aunt—and for my poor head—whatever drek she’d drugged me with apparently wore off quicker in elves than she’d estimated. I came to while the badges were still carrying me to whatever dungeon I was doomed for.
My brain felt like it was coated in snot and being used as a snare drum in a punk rock solo. I kept my eyes closed for a moment, hoping the rolling sensation would pass. I was draped one of the big human’s shoulders like a sack of meat, and half the rolling feeling was him walking. The guard’s uniform smelled like bleach. Not helping.
I opened my eyes to find that I wasn’t exactly in Kansas anymore. The comfortable woo-woo corporate environment of the UB complex, with its golds, oranges, and earthy tones, was gone. The hallway the two guards walked down was constructed of flat, gray cinderblock. I saw into one room as we passed it, some kind of militaristic dormitory with bunks.
I seriously needed to get out of here. The badge carrying me hadn’t woke to the fact that I was conscious, but I figured I could change that quick enough. Nice thing about being an elf? I’m tall, even for my age, with long, slender limbs. Long, slender limbs that come with bony as frag knees and elbows.
I introduced one elbow to the nape of his neck and then my knee to his groin as he bent over with a yell. Lucky for me these corp guys weren’t wearing real body armor. Tricks like that wouldn’t have worked on Telestrian elites.
The guy dropped me and I ducked between him and his partner, running back down the hall. My thinking was that the way out had to be the way they had come. My thinking was stupid, again.
The hallway opened into another hallway and I chose a direction that didn’t have shouting coming from it. The whole place was like a fragging warren of military-industrial sameness. It was more confusing than the hallways at school, which is saying a lot. It had taken me almost a year to stop getting lost on the way to classes.
The first three doors I tried were locked. I wish I’d had the brains to grab one of the guard’s key-cards during my daring escape, but that hadn’t been my focus. I was never great at multitasking. The scent of soy sauce and the faint ring of metal on metal drew me onward down a right fork in the next gray cinderblock hallway.
A kitchen. That was a good thing. Kitchens needed supplies. Supplies came from outside. That meant a door to the outside.
With that beautiful logic train whistling through my head to the sound of my heart pounding in my ears, I raced down the corridor. I bowled over a short, fat human male wearing a stained apron as he opened a door at the far end. I tucked and rolled like we’d been told to do a million times in gym, and came up to my feet. I almost face-planted into a large steel bowl of noodles, regretting the choice of heeled boots. They had looked good with my jeans, though.
“You shouldn’t be in here,” a man said, coming around a steaming industrial stove. He had a large knife in one hand and a sour expression on his ugly, sweaty face.
I didn’t argue. Shoving the bowl of noodles at him, I ducked past him, eyes desperately searching for the nearest door. To my left, past the bank of ranges and gawking cooks, I spotted a door that looked like it led somewhere other than a pantry. ’Cause that would have been mega embarrassing.
I flailed my arms, screaming like a crazy person to keep the surprised humans away from me. No one made a move for me, not even knife-guy, as I dove for the door, yanked on the handle, and charged through it, slamming it behind me.
I had prayed for salty, polluted Seattle air. Instead I got another hallway, this one more dimly lit but just as dull and cinderblocky as all the others.
“She went through there!” someone shouted behind me.
Well, she certainly wasn’t going back through there. I took off running again, because there wasn’t much else to do other than wait for recapture, and I really didn’t feel like making it that easy. I’d read somewhere that if you are in a maze, you should only turn left, so I did that. I took every left turn I could while avoiding any sounds of pursuit, trying the doors I could find, though each looked exactly the same. After about five turns, I was pretty sure from the soy sauce scent of the air that I had just gone in a crazy circle.
One of the doors opened in front of me and I shoved on the man coming out, pushing us both inside, which turned out to be an almost empty room with only a single metal chair in the middle. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any creepier—
“Hey, hi, sorry,” I said to the guy I’d shoved half on his face. I reached to help him up and then recoiled.
He looked up at me with insect eyes, faceted and ruby-red, like fresh blood. His mouth opened too wide for his thin, almost still human face, and shiny black mandibles protruded, clicking and chittering. This guy was no exotic, he was super bugged-out. Nothing remotely human looked at me through those eyes.
I pretty much screamed like a little girl.
The bug man lurched to his feet and grabbed at me with hands that were human in shape but tipped with hard, chitinous claws. I kicked at him. My boot connected with his abdomen but met what felt like a metal plate. The blow shoved me off balance and I stumbled back, into the door.
And then out through the door as it was yanked open. A woman’s hand closed on my arm and steadied me.
The Universal Brotherhood complex was aces. They had dormitories, meditation rooms complete with sand you could rake into shapes and pretty rocks and fountains, exercise facilities, classrooms—which were kind of lame, ’cause who wants to grow up and go to school—multiple dining rooms which all seemed to serve some delicious-smelling stuff, and basically anything someone could want. Everyone we passed was all smiles and nods. I guessed my aunt Jessica was pretty top shelf around here, and Lynne, too. People certainly seemed to recognize both of them. No one made any comments about us being elves, either, despite pretty much everyone else I saw being a human.
Eventually, however, the fun tour ended. We were back in a different room that was just as warm and comfortable as the first one, sipping tea. It was official, my father was a jerk. A tiny part of me felt it was unfair to only listen to one side of things, but he’d blown his chance when he’d lied to me about Hakeem. It seemed like everything had been said, but somehow I sensed that Jessica wanted to tell me more.
“We’d like you to join us, Marie Louise,” Jessica said after the silence had stretched a bit past comfortable.
“Um, you mean, live here?” I thought about my room at home and my friends at school and how I’d miss them. Even my annoying brother, though he was off doing some project for our family that, of course, I wasn’t a part of. “I…don’t know.”
“We need people like you to spread our mission, to help bring truth and justice to this world. To show that we can all be connected, and part of a greater whole,” Lynne said. She’d been really quiet this whole time, letting Jessica do all the talking. Now she looked at me with an almost crazy passion burning in her eyes.
“Lynne, could you give us a moment alone, please?” Jessica asked.
“I won’t be far,” Lynne said to me. She left the room without protesting being excluded. Her total adoration of my new aunt was kind of weird.
“How would you like to help your friend, Hakeem?” Jessica asked as the door closed behind my cousin.
Her question wiped my brain. I had told her all about Hakeem; about him getting kicked out of school and then beaten half to death on my father’s orders. I got the feeling, just that little pinch of doubt in the back of my mind; she had known all this already. Still, help him? Lame question.
“Of course I want to help him,” I said, smoothing my hands over my jeans. “Why do you think I wanted to know the truth? He’s still my friend.”
“Join us, Marie Louise. Be our queen, and you can.” Jessica’s eyes had a little of the same fire in them now.
“Queen?” I asked, then shut my mouth before I said anything stupider.
“Yes,” Jessica said in the same tone of voice she had used to ask me if I wanted more tea. “We would like you to help usher in this new era, be at the center of things here at UB, for you to take your rightful place at my side as my kin as we show Seattle and beyond how different and beautiful the world really can become.”
I blushed, leaning back into the super soft couch. Queen of the Universal Brotherhood. Had a nice ring to it. Probably was a lot more respect and responsibility than anyone else in my family was offering me. With the resources of the Universal Brotherhood, I could totally help Hakeem, and maybe even prevent people like my father from abusing their wealth and power again.
“I think I want to know more about it. And about you, Aunt Jessica,” I said. It seemed to please her when I called her aunt. “I mean, I’ve had a lot dropped on me today.” This place could be really cool. I wanted to come back here, maybe talk to Lynne some more, learn what I could about the Universal Brotherhood, get to know my aunt better. Hey, and be queen of whatever. I refrained from asking if this meant I got minions. Having lots of minions would be aces, but probably that wasn’t the first thing a queen should think about.
“Of course, dear. You must be tired. I will show you to your rooms.” Jessica rose with the same sweet smile that had been on her face since she’d first met us.
“Rooms?” I asked like a total biff. “I thought…I should probably go home.” I had snuck out to see Lynne. People would be missing me eventually.
Jessica’s expression didn’t change one bit. “I’m afraid I can’t allow that, Marie Louise. You will be our queen. We must protect you here.”
“Allow it? I’m not asking. I am going home.” I started edging toward the door, wondering how far was the “not far” Lynne had meant.
“This has been a pleasant afternoon. Do not make it otherwise,” Jessica said, moving across the carpet toward me with more speed than I would have thought a short human capable.
“Lynne!” I yelled, reaching for the door.
The door opened, but Lynne wasn’t on the other side. Two corp badges came in, looking at Jessica with questions on their faces. I backed away from them. Though they hadn’t drawn weapons yet, the two human men were a lot bigger than me. Then my aunt was behind me, her arm sliding up around my neck as something pinched my arm.
“Shh, Marie Louise,” Jessica said softly.
The last thing I heard as a weird, greenish darkness swam up to claim me was her telling the security guys to move me quietly to private rooms.
Jimmy rubbed his sweaty palms on his jeans. This was the last thing he could think of. He didn’t know what he’d do if the delayed-knock key based on the anagram of “lock and key” didn’t work on the hidden door. He held his breath and hit the enter key.
SirBohart knocks on the scroll with the key.
The scroll opens. Welcome to DHaven.
SirBohart has entered DHaven.
TheGreyHermit applauds.
SuzieQ applauds.
SirGawain cheers.
LadyBlackthorn applauds.
BioHazard whistles. “You made it!”
SnowLeopard cheers.
EagleScout claps.
JackAttack applauds. “I told you he’d do it. New record. 17 hours from scroll delivery to entrance.”
SirBorhart smiles. “Thank you.”
JackAttack walks to SirBorhart.
JackAttack hugs SirBorhart. “Now, we show you what DHaven is.”
Jimmy grinned at the screen, exultant. It was a long day, but this was a nice end to it. He popped open another can of BOOM soda, sat back, and watched the screen. A block of text appeared. It was clear that JackAttack had this on macro.
JackAttack says, “This is the Data Haven. Every member of the Data Haven has earned their way into it by being smarter than the rest of the players on the MUSH. This is a place where everyone is who they really are in the big blue room. Every member of the Data Haven has a DHaven switch that automatically flips when they enter. Here, we go by our real names and our real faces. No one cares about race, creed, gender, or any of that stuff. Here we can relax and be who we really are. This switch flips back to your normal character name and description anywhere else on Shadowlands. Welcome to the Data Haven. Pull up a stool and be who you really are.”
Jimmy’s smile disappeared and a sick feeling grew in his stomach. Be who you really are? He couldn’t do that. He couldn’t let them know what kind of a freak he was.
JackAttack says, “Flip your bit everyone.”
TheGreyHermit becomes Sumiko.
SuzieQ becomes Ron.
SirGawain becomes Dylan.
LadyBlackthorn becomes Shilpa.
BioHazard becomes Gopal.
SnowLeopard becomes Yakov.
EagleScout becomes Cristos.
JackAttack claps SirBorhart on the shoulder. “Take a look at everyone’s description when you have time. You’ll see that Sumiko is only nine years old. Smarter than me, too. Ron is a gay kid at a private boarding school that doesn’t want to admit that gay rich kids exist. Dylan, well, he’s the oddball—fit, handsome, and smart—but we don’t hold it against him.”
Sumiko waves.
Dylan says, “Thanks. I appreciate it.”
Ron says, “I’m fat, too. Doesn’t help matters any. But here, that doesn’t matter.”
As JackAttack introduced all these people to him, Jimmy’s fear grew into terror and disbelief. They really were being who they were in real life. These weren’t characters. These were people.
JackAttack says, “Shilpa is from New Delhi. She’s the mom of the group.”
Shilpa waves her clubfoot. “I have a clubfoot, too. It’s why I don’t get out much.”
JackAttack says, “Gopal is also Indian. He’s in high school. Sometimes, he has a hard time. I’ll let him twll you about that.”
Gopal waves.
JackAttack says, “Yakov is the old man of the group. He’s actually a grandfather.”
Yakov says, “I’ve been through a lot. I can help sometimes.”
Jimmy’s heart pounded too fast, his stomach wanted to crawl out through his throat, and for the first time ever, he could feel sweat tricking down his back. It was an awful sensation. These people didn’t want to know him. They couldn’t. They didn’t understand.
Jimmy found himself typing before he realized he was going to do so.
SirBohart asks, “Why? Why are you doing this?”
JackAttack says, “Sometimes, it’s really nice to shed the character and just be who you are. It’s why I created DHaven. So we can just be us and help each other and talk about what’s actually going on out there in the world.”
SirBohart asks, “Why invite me in?”
JackAttack says, “Because this is my MUSH. I’ve read your stats. You’ve spent an average of 85 hours a week roleplaying here for months. That’s a lot of time to be someone you’re not. I think, maybe, you need us like this and not just the characters you’ve RP’d with.”
Jimmy closed the MUSH. Then he closed all of his chat programs and his IRC program. Then, for good measure, he shut his computer off. He hadn’t done that since his father got the T-1 line installed last year. He felt like his world was ending. They didn’t want to know him. Not after they found out about him. They didn’t know…Jack, his best friend…didn’t know what kind of a monster he was.
He sat there, staring at his reflection in the dark monitor screen. Even though it wasn’t an actual mirror, there was no hiding his elongated, pointed ears or his too thin face with its alien slanted eyes. Jimmy knew he looked like a demon. His mother pointed it out every time she saw him. All he was missing as the red skin and forked tail.
Like wiggling a sore tooth, Jimmy couldn’t help but get up and go look at himself in his bathroom mirror. Under the bright lights, there was no hiding his too-skinny body, bony hands and fingers, and deformed head topped with flyaway white blond hair. It was true what his nannies said—all of them—he would never be accepted in the outside world.
The internet was his only real home, real life. And now that was gone.
Jimmy didn’t try to stop the tears coursing down his face. He crumpled to the bathroom floor and cried until he couldn’t cry anymore. When the crying was done, he lay there, feeling the wetness dry into tight salt trails across his cheeks, thinking about the people who had been in the Data Haven.
All of them were friends of one stripe of another. It was a surprise to discover that TheGreyHermit was a girl younger than him and that SuzieQ was actually a boy. Now that he was away from the shock of it all, Jimmy realized he was curious about the rest. And LadyBlackthorn’s player…with a clubfoot?
His curiosity pulled him out of his funk and back to his computer. He sat there for a while, thinking things over before he turned it on. He looked up what a clubfoot actually was and what it looked like. After wincing over the pictures, he wondered how she got around. More than anything, he wanted to know how long it took for everyone in Data Haven to accept her.
He hovered his mouse over the icon that would open Shadowlands. Jimmy knew he would appear in Data Haven as soon as he opened the program. He debated for a moment, the clicked it.
SirBohart has entered DHaven.
Shilpa says, “Seriously, there’s something going on in India, some new thing they’re calling Kali’s Harvest. It’s killing people. But no one’s saying anything officially. They never do until it’s too late.”
Shilpa waves at SirBohart.
Yakov waves.
Dodger waves at SirBohart. “Bohart, my man, are you OK? This is JackAttack. You left before I could introduce the real me to you.”
SirBohart says, “My real name is James. I’m ten years old. My nanny calls me Jimmy. I’m…deformed. My head is squished, my ears are too long and pointy, my eyes are slanty-alien eyes. I’m a freak and I can never leave my house. My parents won’t let me. If you don’t want to be my friend, I understand. But this is what I am.”
Jimmy sat back and waited to see what everyone would say. His heart hoped with all it was that they would accept him, even with his deformity. His mind was already divorcing himself from the pain to come. He would have to find a new place to play. Or maybe just haunt a couple of BBS boards for a while. He didn’t know.
Shilpa says, “You’re not a freak, hon. It’s OK to be who you are. You’re smart and wonderful. Please stay.”
Gopal says, “If you’re a freak, I am too. I have scars all over my body. Bad ones. And I’m missing an eye. Look at my description.”
Sumiko says, “I’m a freak in my family. They want a quiet, obedient little girl who’s prettier than smart. They’re disappointed in me. They think I won’t marry well.”
Dodger smiles. “I’m already your friend and I guess we have something in common. I suspected but I didn’t know for sure.”
Dodger is a tall, slender man with blond hair in jeans and a t-shirt. He looks like the classic fairytale elf with long pointed ears and slanted eyes. This forces him to wear a hat and sunglasses while in public but, here in DHaven, he lets it all hang out.
Dodger whispers to SirBohart, “Do you want to see a picture of me?”
Shilpa says, “I’m sorry you can’t leave the house. That explains why you’re online so much.”
Jimmy wondered if Jack was making fun of him. And whispered to him that he did. As soon as Jimmy replied, his email binged and an email from “Dodger” arrived. Attached was a picture of a guy that could’ve been his older brother…or even the father he should’ve had. On Dodger, the “elf” ears and eyes with his slender face was attractive. Not demonic. The idea of it made Jimmy’s head spin. He stared at the picture for a long moment before focusing back on the screen.
Yakov says, “See? I told you. It is worldwide, here and there, genetic mutations are occurring. You aren’t a freak, James. The government is hiding an evolutionary shift that is slowly taking over the planet.”
Cristos says, “A couple of my neighbors have talked about the mutations they’ve seen, but my government refuses to admit it’s happening. Between you and Dodger, I know something very interesting is happening. This is why we need to talk about it here in DHaven. Because no one else is talking about it.”
Dodger says, “I’ve added the DHaven bit to your profile. Which do you prefer to be called? Jimmy or James?”
Jimmy stared at the screen. No one cared that he looked like a monster. Dodger even looked like him. Yakov and Christos heard of others who looked like him. Maybe he really wasn’t a freak. And maybe he wasn’t alone. Not anymore.
This time, when the tears came, he pushed them away but only so he could read his computer screen. These people were still his friends. Jimmy had no idea how much knowing this, being accepted, would fill his heart. But right now, he felt like he could take on the entire world.
SirBohart says, “James. Please set my name to James.”
SirBohart becomes James.
Dodger says, “There you go. I’ll help you with your player description if you like.”
The ride to meet Cousin Lynne’s friend gave me too much time to think. Tears of rage stung my eyes. How dare my father try to decide who was and wasn’t okay for me to hang with? It was just like him—his high-handedness. I guess it was kind of nice to be protected, though at sixteen I hardly needed it. But this time, someone had gotten hurt. Hakeem was my friend. Now he had a criminal record, couldn’t come back to school, and the fragging cake was he’d never walk again. He was on scholarship. No way he could afford the kind of bio or cyber recon it would take to get out of that wheelchair.
All because of my father. Lynne was right. He was so not who I thought he was.
“Marie Louise? We’re here,” Lynne said. She patted my hand in the way people do who see tears and have no idea how to respond.
Wiping my eyes on my sleeves—glad for anti-smear make-up—I followed my cousin Lynne into the huge Universal Brotherhood complex. Smiling, human men and women, many of whom seemed to recognize my cousin, greeted us.
“We’ll have to give up our phones here, but we can get them back later,” Lynne said.
Not sure how I felt about that, but who knew what the coverage was like in this place, anyway, so I handed mine over without arguing. As we walked into the complex, I studied Lynne’s slender shoulders. She was okay, for an adult. She was an elf, the only one on that side of the Telestrian family, and pretty cool for being like thirty years old. Bit woo-woo though when it came to the whole “we’re all connected” thing. She’d said there was someone I had to meet, so here I was, ready to find out what else about my father and family had been lies.
Whoever we were meeting wasn’t there yet, so one of the smiley folk showed us to a nice room, the kind my father would probably entertain executives in. Everyone wore loose-fitting clothing with the yellow and orange UB logo on it and the furniture and walls were colored in the same warm tones. I expected the place to smell like patchouli or frankincense, but the air had a clean, faintly floral scent. Soft music played through speakers hidden somewhere in the walls.
Lynne accepted an offer of tea for both of us and then stood up with a huge smile on her narrow, elfin face as another human woman entered the room. I stopped trying to trace a faint, swirling pattern in the wallpaper and sat up straight.
“Jessica!” Lynne said. “Marie Louise, I want you to meet your aunt.”
“My what?” Not the most polite response, maybe, but it was all I could manage.
“I am your aunt Jessica,” the new woman said with a smile. “I’ll explain everything.”
“Of—of course,” I stammered. “I’m sorry—today has been a lot of shocks.”
This “aunt” Jessica was certainly pretty, though she was human, so it was hard to tell if there really was any family resemblance. She looked to be about the same age as Lynne, with darker brown eyes and stylishly short brown hair. She had a fun, sweet look to her that I liked immediately.
“So, Marie Louise,” she said as she took my hand, “let me tell you about our grandfather while we tour the complex, and then, if you like, I have some…hard things to tell you about your father, my half-brother.”
I stiffened at the mention of my father. Whatever hard things she had to say, I was ready to listen. All I had to do to remind myself why I was here was to think about Hakeem being dragged out of school. Hakeem in a wheelchair. All because my father thought he wasn’t aces enough for me. I glanced at Lynne, who smiled at me and nodded.
“Okay,” I said. I squeezed Jessica’s fingers back and let her lead me out of the room. “I’m ready to listen. I want the truth now so I can decide what’s good for me.” No more so-called adult intervention.
