He looked Tonya in the eyes. “I can’t move my legs. I can’t do this.”
She grabbed him and kissed him full on the mouth. Everything went sideways inside him. His first real kiss came from Kim’s best friend. Tonya pulled back, and all he could do was gape at her.
“Works every time,” she said, grabbed his chest straps and pulled.
They went out the door together.
Tonya let go as quickly as she had grabbed him. Free fall. It was over. He was about to die, and there wasn’t anything Mike could do. Nothing he could do.
Mike had a brief impression of a tumble, and then the backpack shifted with a heavy thump. Four big fans shot out and spun up, slowing him to a casual float. It felt like the firmest, surest hands slowly lowering him to the ground. The pack even extended stabilizing legs so he could walk out of the harness. The entire process might have lasted ten seconds.
The droneChute powered up and flew away to wherever they were supposed to go. It could stop a fall, but it lacked the power for full flight with a human on board. He and Tonya had to get out of here in a Jeep Kim had waiting at the bottom of a nearby logging road. He stared up at the stars, brilliant in this rural location.
He did it!
A kaleidoscope twirled around inside him. All that space, and he’d been out in it. Floated through it. Freedom like the realms, but it was real. Mike had never experienced this sort of reality. It was fantastic…amazing! A reflex he’d never experienced before urged him breathe deep to let out the biggest whoop he could imagine.
Tonya’s covered his mouth quickly. “Not here.”
Right. They had to be quiet. He grabbed her up in a silent bear hug, but then his face went crimson-hot. He set her down. This was important. “Kim’s gonna kill us if she finds out.”
“Who do you think thought that up, laser-brain?” Kim asked in his ear.
“Trust me,” Tonya said, “kissing terrified, clammy white guys isn’t my idea of romance. She owes me for that one.”
True. But damn it, he did it! He couldn’t help himself and jumped up and down a few times pumping his fist in the air.
Tonya coughed.
“Right. I’m up.” He pulled a block the size of his fist out of a pouch hanging from his belt, then broke a neat quarter-inch cube off of it. A microLED flashed once faintly to acknowledge the activation, and then he dropped it. As soon as it hit the ground, it sprouted spider legs and skittered away into the undergrowth.
Sneaking around in the woods at night was a breeze compared to that helicopter ride, even in the rugged country north of the Trilogy compound. Mike took the lead, throwing a cube out occasionally.
The hike wasn’t easy, but that was the point. Trilogy was relying on terrain to provide protection, not realizing how little that would slow down a couple of determined people with good maps, traveling light.
Soon they found themselves at the edge of the compound. From here it was even more obvious that Trilogy didn’t think an approach from the north was possible. Everything from lights to cameras to sentry outposts pointed away from them.
Life went on normally: people walked between the various low-slung cinderblock buildings going about their business. Mostly they went into small houses and a single large dormitory. It was late, time for bed.
The bulk of the sugar cubes remained in the block he’d pulled out of his pouch. Mike set it down and twisted it at the center. The block collapsed in a brief flash of firefly light as all the remaining cubes activated at once, then they scrabbled away into the undergrowth.
“And now?” Tonya asked.
“Now we wait.” He set a timer on the shared circuit, then they sat down behind the cover of a big bush.
Each cube had enough power to last about an hour, and was little more than a network transmitter, a bit of storage space, some nanotube yarn, and a battery. Mike used them to form a private mesh network with nodes that could host one of his threads inside each cube. It would allow him to completely infiltrate and control Trilogy’s security sensors. He thought his panic on the helicopter had ruined his preparation for such a big split, but for some reason, it was easier than normal. He got the sneaking suspicion he had fun making that jump. Mike shuddered at the thought and concentrated on the task at hand.
They needed a diversion, the bigger the better. The cubes he’d scattered on the way in had already nestled into the various cameras, microphones, and motion detectors they passed on the way in. Now he guided the bulk of them forward into the more monitored part of the camp. The cubes weren’t built for speed, so it took a while. With his threads split across such a wide area, he barely noticed his realspace body. Maybe this was what a hive mind felt like, seeing everything, being everywhere, but small and looking up at giants. It was godlike and vulnerable at the same time.
One by one he infiltrated their sensors. Infrared, starlight, motion triggered, vibration sensing, and even a few that sniffed the air. The coverage was impressive. If they had tried sneaking in from the front, it would never have worked.
He and Tonya stood when the timer hit ten seconds.
“Be careful,” Kim said over their shared connection.
“Hey,” Mike replied. “It’s me.”
Tonya shook her head and chuckled. “You’re only getting away with that because she’s in Virginia.”
Split like he was, it took a second to focus on her. He smiled. “I never miss a golden opportunity.” Mike activated the infiltration programs the cubes had injected into the Trilogy network before Kim could weigh in.
Low sirens in every direction started up. Even though he was the one activating them, the sound made his skin crawl. The camp erupted, and now he watched an anthill inhabited by people. The women and children rushed into storm shelters, while the men shouted and went off in different directions. In minutes, the camp was empty. The group was well practiced at this.
He and Tonya moved toward the camp, making their way to the utility building that was the most likely place for the fiber terminus, as well as the rest of their network stack if the backup power installation next door was any indication. The two big propane tanks that fueled it must’ve taken a real effort to get all the way out here. They were both the size of semitrailers.
Mike held his phone up to the lock on the door.
“Right,” Kim said in his ear. “Mark twenty-five wireless.” He didn’t have a thread to spare to look up what that meant. “Just a second.” Having so many threads doing so much at once made him giddy, like that first gentle buzz as a glass of wine kicked in.
“Okay,” Kim said, “touch your phone to the lock.”
He did. The beep was normal, but the loud ka-clunk that happened all around the door wasn’t. Neither was the weight of the thing when they opened it. It was almost as thick as the walls. It was better built too. Apocalyptic cults had weird priorities.
He was using his phone to control the show, so he let Tonya go in first. The room was tight and cold, an unfinished garage filled with electronics. The door shut behind them with a solid thump while Tonya ran a wire from her phone to a free port in the switch rack.
“I’m in,” Kim said in their shared space. “Okay, Spencer. We’re up.”
Chapter 13
June
Figuring out the portal’s activation sequence ended up taking almost all of the three days she’d been given. It was a very manual process, needing all the desks of their mission control to be manned and working. Inkanyamba didn’t have that many properly sized robots available, so they ended up employing anything that worked. The result made the room look like a cross between an advanced command station and a vacuum cleaner repair shop.
Anna didn’t come to watch the show alone. She brought the whole board with her, twelve men and women entrusted with saving the world from its own filth. June was now a part of that. Her work would make it even better, greener, than it would’ve been otherwise.
Anna, always in the lead, marched right up to the device. The others held back, m
urmuring disapproval.
“Ma’am,” June said, “I think you should stand back.” The murmurs changed to a more agreeable pitch. “We’re not sure what it will do after the activation.”
Anna didn’t turn around. “Nonsense. We’ve talked about this before. If it was genuinely dangerous, they would’ve put more safeguards in place.” She looked over her shoulder and shook her head. “Fine. All right.” She stomped down the ramp to join the rest of them. “If you would do the honors?”
June nodded. “Stage one in three…two…one.”
A powerful force field surged outward with golden light, forming a continuous duct that started at the Hellmouth hatch, connected to the turbines over their heads, and went through to the other wall where more conventional ducts routed to the downstream recovery systems.
“Stage two in three…two…one.”
The doors on the hatch clacked multiple times, a metallic sound that she jumped at slightly, and then opened. The super-dense atmosphere on the other side shot through the force field tunnel and slammed against the generators. They creaked a bit under the force of the blow, and everyone took a step back.
Now for the final stage. June spared a glance at Anna, but the other woman was rapt at the sight of the device.
June swallowed hard. “Stage three in three…two…one…”
The substance in the device began to spin, slowly at first but picking up speed.
A claxon at one of the tables blared.
June turned just as Yumbo said in her ear, “We have a network breach. Outside contact. They’re—”
A brilliant flash of light blinded her.
Chapter 14
Kim
“You’re sure you don’t want me on the ground with you?” Spencer asked.
“This is strictly a smash and grab. I’m the muscle, you’re the lookout. I find the endpoint, you grab everything you can reach on the other side and get out.” Even though Mike and Tonya were in the same room with it, going from the switch rack port to the fiber optic endpoint that led to the power plant would not be a straight line. It wouldn’t be short either.
“Got it,” he said over their connection. “You kick the butts, I take the names.”
She wanted to tell him to stow the wisecracks, but that was what Kim wanted. She read the newly connected realm’s contract. Mike wasn’t kidding; it was hyperrealistic and all-encompassing. At least she already knew how to wield a sword. “More like I’m the knight, you’re the squire.”
“Squire would be a promotion.”
Realmspaces were driven by contracts that specified their parameters. How close to real the physics were—whether or not magic was allowed, what sorts of technologies could exist, things like that. Avatars, the constructs people used when they accessed the realms, were either custom designed for specific realms, or adapted based on what was or was not legal.
Her avatar materialized in full plate armor outside a massive old castle. The contract was straight late medieval, so there were no advanced alloys to lighten the load, no actuators to help her move. It was heavy, but the fit was perfect. She could do cartwheels in it if she wanted to. The contract only allowed edged weapons, but that was fine. Kim had done plenty of medieval realm tournaments over the years. Her armor was grimy in places, scored by countless deflected strikes, her sword grip well worn, the tabard—decorated with an angel made of flame, natch—threadbare at the edges. Kim wouldn’t want it any other way. She had a story for every scar.
It was time to add some more.
Whoever was in charge tried to bump her out of the realm by rejecting her contract. She felt the feather-touches of their attempt under her skin, but it was too late. The antirejection clauses she’d inserted in hers prevented that from happening after it had been accepted. It wasn’t going to be that easy for anyone.
“God, I hate observation posts,” Spencer said above her. His avatar, such as it was, wrapped around her helmet as a crown. Basically, Spencer was her crown. The jewels were his eyes, the rivet points his ears. It gave him all-around vision and more precise hearing. If she got him near the right constructs, it would also let him override local contract conditions. Basically, hack it. Assuming he’d practiced with her tool kits.
A subconscious warning landed in her monitor queue like the whisper of a memory. Bandwidth allocation frozen.
It was another standard defensive move. Whoever was in charge decided she was enough of a threat to make sure nobody else would come in to help her.
“You did load up the tool kit Mike gave you, right?”
“Fucking antiques. It’s been awhile since you hung up your spurs.”
She was running hacks when he was learning to walk. “They’re custom tools, Spencer. Age doesn’t matter.”
“Tell that to the emulators I had to dig out to get them running. You could at least upgrade the—two contacts incoming. Twelve and six o’clock. Mounted.”
Ahead and behind her. “Lancers.”
“Got it in one. You take out the first responders, I’ll see if I can tap into their comms.”
The rumble of hooves was obvious now, felt through her boots as she stood on the gravel path outside the castle. The response was low-key, and it was a good one. Two lances coming full speed from opposite directions usually would be. Anyone else would either run and die tired, or be spitted and split like a whole hog. She drew her sword and settled her weight into her hips.
Kim wasn’t anyone else.
She earned her keep back in the day by being a hacker, but her true talent was always in the realms. Nobody moved like she did. Nobody could see an attack coming and think three moves ahead to counter it like she could. It was instinctive, the same way a world-record sprinter ran so fast or an Olympic swimmer knew the most efficient stroke. It was something they did, something they knew.
And it felt good.
As the lances arrived in perfect synchronization Kim shifted her stance and moved to guide the tips across her armor. The blade of her sword sliced a leg off each knight as he passed. The move happened in an instant that took an eternity of adjusting her body with millimeter precision, an agonizing satisfaction that triggered a massive adrenaline rush.
The knights, now denied half their support, fell heavily from their mounts. Kim turned the grip of her sword around with a light toss and then threw it hard, spearing one of the knights through the chest. She turned that move into a spin as she drew a dagger from her belt and threw it through the eyehole of the other one’s helmet. Both attackers disintegrated as the damage ran well over their avatar limits.
That was how it was done.
“Jesus Fucking Christ,” Spencer said. “That took less than a second.”
Kim didn’t notice she was panting until she tried to talk. “It usually does.” She pulled the sword out of the ground and sheathed it. The realism settings prevented them from removing the horses via a command. Someone would have to come in and get them. She now had a ride.
Until she didn’t. A loud, high-pitched whine behind the castle wall spooked the beasts. Kim didn’t pay attention to them for long because the weight of her armor had changed. It moved differently, and now she had a heads-up display as part of her helmet.
“You’ve definitely got their attention now.” Spencer said. “They upped the technology limit. You’ve got incoming, five marks, three o’clock.”
The whine turned into a shrieking buzz that tickled the back of her throat. Kim looked toward the castle on her left as five single-seat flying saucers cleared the wall. Someone watched The Incredibles a few too many times as a kid.
Spencer’s eyes were better than hers. “They’re deploying autocannons. Move!”
Slugs thumped into the ground, tearing a solid trench straight at her. Kim amped the now-powered armor’s boosts to maximum and ran a zigzag line just a little faster than they could aim. A ricochet still managed to bounce off her back and knock her into the air. That wasn’t very much fun. Time for a different pl
an.
Kim tucked into a tumble, pulling the now-legal automatic shotguns off her back. It was time to take the fight to them. She hit, rolled, flexed her knees, and jumped hard with a twist. Her amped-up legs shot her up in an arc above her attackers. Without the armor’s arms pushing against the recoil, she would’ve lost both guns after the first shot. Fortunately they kept tracking with the targeting reticle the helmet provided as she took two of the contraptions out in quick succession.
A clang rattled her brain, and everything tilted. The shotguns flew out of her hands as Kim fought to find a grab-hold. She’d managed to land on one of the machines, or maybe it had flown underneath her. The magnetic clamps on her boots kept her from falling off, and she now held the thing’s still-firing cannon in her arms. Kim wrenched the hose of tracer rounds until it intersected with this one’s wingman, which exploded in a fireball that would do any Hollywood animator proud.
It was time to stop dancing and get Spencer to a place where he could do some good. She pulled one of the special softballs off her belt, stuck it to the hull, and then leaped backward toward the castle wall.
Spencer shouted, “He’s still got that gun!”
She touched her thumb and forefinger together, activating the explosive she attached. The flyer shattered in a shower of metal construct.
Kim landed in a classic Iron Man crouch and smiled. Five to one, fighting air support with shotguns and explosive constructs. Hanging up her spurs didn’t mean they’d gone dull.
Now free to communicate with her normally, her suit flashed a new warning. Full contract rejection engaged.
She could hear Spencer’s smile when he said, “Now you’ve got them scared.”
They thought that locked her in here with them. They still didn’t understand that it locked them in here with her. She knelt in front of the sally port she had landed in front of. “If you would do the honors?”
“My pleasure.”
Filaments extended from her crown. When they touched the door lock, it opened with a rusty clank. As she walked into the empty inner ward, Kim chuckled under her breath. More than you counted on, eh?
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