Gemini Gambit

by D Scott Johnson

  “So, Mike,” Tonya asked behind her, “what did you do, you know, before all this?”

  “Well, over the past few years I designed and built Warhawk. I’ve been running it ever since.”

  “You own Warhawk?” The way Tonya said it set Kim’s teeth on edge. The news he owned a famous realm wasn’t as cool after paying for his food and clothing. And setting up his apartment. And buying him a car. Kim stopped what she was doing and glared at him until he cringed. She nodded briefly and went back to work, scowling.

  “So.”

  The sultry tone in Tonya’s voice made Kim raise an eyebrow, but she was too busy to look up again.

  “What does a girl have to do to get a date with a successful realm designer?”

  The gravel crunched under his feet as Mike shifted back and forth. “I dunno, ask?”

  Sure, like anything he was involved in could ever be that simple.

  Tonya’s voice turned playful, which rang alarm bells Kim didn’t know she had. “Oh, Mike, that’s not how the game is played. Girls don’t ask boys out; it’s the other way around. Now, what would it take for a girl, maybe like me, to convince a successful realm designer, maybe like you, that she would be fun to have around?”

  Kim spent all this time and effort keeping him going, and now he was going to let Tonya swoop in and take him away. She wants Mike? Fine, that’s great. The thundering in her ears made her nearly miss the alert that the security system compromise was finished.

  “If you two are done flirting, we’re in.” She turned around.

  Tonya was so close to Mike she was practically breathing in his ear.

  Mike shook his head. “I wasn’t flirting. Was I?”

  Tonya laughed easily as she walked away. “No, hon, you weren’t.” Her eyes locked on to Kim’s with a fierce stare as her voice went hard. “But I was.”

  The implication doused her anger. Mike wasn’t her toy, and he wasn’t a dog she could kick any time she liked. He was a person, and if Kim wasn’t careful, someone else could easily take him away from her. The thought jangled her badly. She blushed and nodded. Game, set, and match, ma’am.

  Mike walked to a different door, then cleared his throat. “I think this one leads to a building entrance?”

  She and Tonya stayed behind in a utility room while Mike made his way to the front desk. Tonya gasped when he just vanished. “How does he do that?”

  Kim held up her hand briefly and sent to Mike: THERE SHOULD BE SOME BADGES WAITING FOR US IN A PRINTER.

  “Really, where did he learn how to do that?” Tonya asked.

  Kim tried to think of a quick way to explain the strangest of Mike’s mysteries. “He didn’t, not really. The person who used to own that body, the one who died, he was an assassin, probably the best in the business.” Or worst, depending on how you looked at it.

  “Mike’s an assassin?”

  “No, it’s more complicated than that. The guy’s name was Colque, a total nightmare of a man.”

  “You mean you knew the guy who used to own that body?”

  Well, it did seem crazy until you nestled it in with all the other lunacy that surrounded Kim her whole life. Then it was only a little eccentric.

  “It’s a really long story, and I promise to tell you about it when this is over. The point is that the assassin is dead, but Mike is able to access the muscle memory that made up most of Colque’s skills.”

  Kim needed to change the subject. Talking about Colque somehow brought his memory closer to Mike’s, and her life was confusing enough already. “Mike, are you there yet?”

  “Jesus, Kim, don’t do that!”

  “Do what?” How many ways could she screw up tonight? “What did I do now?”

  “No, it’s okay. Sneaking around like this is harder than it looks.”

  Kim heard the beeps of door locks over his line. “Damn it!” he whispered. “Someone just walked in!”

  “Are you okay?”

  The silence stretched long enough for her pulse to kick up a few notches, but he finally replied. “I’m fine.”

  She turned to Tonya. “Someone walked in.”

  Mike opened the channel again. “Kim? I’m pretty sure we’re not going to have to worry about these two.”

  “What are you talking about? How do you know there’s just two of them?” She included Tonya in the conversation just as Mike opened the microphone on his phone to ambient sound.

  What came over the line brought her up short. Tonya was just as surprised. People didn’t normally ask, well, demand, for that in an office. When the first slap of a hand hitting bare skin cracked out, their jaws basically hit the floor. Then there was the snap of a whip, jingling chains, and the snick of handcuffs locking together. These two were quite athletic.

  Kim needed to get him moving.

  “Mike, stop hanging around and get back here.” She cut the line and fought the urge to fan herself.

  “I don’t know,” Tonya said. “I was about to take some notes.”

  She rolled her eyes. “He’s an amateur. You have to pause longer between the lashes to maximize the burn.” She stumbled to a stop at Tonya’s face, which was more disapproving than anything else.

  “What?” Kim shrugged. “I’m a competitive person!”

  “Let me guess, there’s a realm tournament for S&M?”

  “No.” Kim smiled wistfully as she recalled that dungeon realm. It had such a clever arrangement of restraints. “But there was a weekly contest. It was a nice prize.”

  Tonya raised an eyebrow. “How many times did you win?”

  Kim thought for a second and shrugged. “Twelve.”

  “Out of?”

  “Out of what?” Mike asked as he entered the room to hand them their badges.

  “Out of… this place,” Tonya covered smoothly. “I was wondering when you’d get back so we could get out of here.”

  When Mike turned away, Tonya winked at her.

  Kim closed her eyes, shrugged, and silently mouthed, “Twelve.”

  They crossed the glassed-in foyer pretending to be two workers deep in conversation, with Tonya hiding behind them. They all waited, listening for an alarm, a siren, or any other sign that the guard outside had spotted them. After a few moments of nothing but the athletic couple and their antics, Kim motioned toward the elevators.

  “Excellent,” Tonya said, breathing out and slumping her shoulders as the doors slid shut. “Which floor is the data center?”

  By the way he blushed, Mike had forgotten to look for it too.

  “Guys?” Tonya prompted.

  Kim started, “That probably would’ve been—”

  “—a good thing to figure out ahead of time,” Mike finished.

  She glared at him while he did the same at her.

  “You’re kidding me,” Tonya said. “We make it all the way inside an actual, for-real, bad-guy lair, and you guys forgot to find the target?”

  Kim pointed. “Well he didn’t remind me!”

  “I told you we should’ve looked at the index key!”

  Tonya slapped her forehead. “You two have got to be dumbest white people I have ever known!”

  “There were teenagers everywhere distracting me in that realm! The avatars were ridiculous!”

  “And Kim’s little realm pinched!”

  “I can’t believe this,” Tonya said. “There are seven floors underground. It’ll take all night to find it!”

  The door bonged, and two rather disheveled people jumped back when they found three other people in the elevator and shouts still echoing off the walls. Everyone froze, staring at everyone else. Tonya was stuck with her finger pointing in the air.

  Kim’s brain unlocked first. “And that’s why it’s so important for us to be here, damn it. I’m sorry, but it just is!”

  Mike and Tonya shifted and nodded in meek agreement.

  Tonya smiled at the couple. “Going down?”

  The woman, a petite brunette whose hair had probably sta
rted out quite pretty, managed to stutter out, “We’ll take the next one.”

  The man, a redhead who must’ve been at least a foot taller, said, “Yes, you guys.” He waved his hands. “You go right ahead.” He gave up trying to tuck his shirt in.

  Kim’s hand shot out and hit the button for the bottom floor. Everyone on either side of the doors stood and straightened and fussed until they shut.

  “God,” Mike said. “Do you think they’ll say anything?”

  Kim knew better. “Not on your life. We’re wearing the same kind of badges they had on. Having the right ID and acting like you’re supposed to be here has gotten me past so many chance encounters, I’ve lost count.”

  It turned out the seventh floor was a lab with white hallways and tile floors. On either side, there were long narrow rooms with windows facing the hall. Some of them held polished steel equipment, holographic projectors, and workbenches with scattered pieces of computers. Others were more like chemistry labs with elaborate distillation rigs and tanks of chemicals that had complex labels on their sides.

  Everything was spotless, and by the new smell, could not have been more than a few years old. Kim stopped in front of a large door that didn’t open into the labs on either side of it.

  “Here we are.”

  It was an equipment room about twenty feet wide and at least twice as deep. The main lights were off, leaving the tall racks of equipment shrouded darkness. Barely visible computers filled each rack from top to bottom. They each had flickering green, blue, and red lights arranged in neat rows. They went all the way to the back of the room where they splashed against the far wall in semicircles of color. The noise of the vent fans was noticeable but not oppressive, their dry whirring not quite loud enough to cover the volume of a normal voice. A workbench with lights, a stepstool, and a folding chair in front of it took up the space just to the left of the door.

  “So this is what it’s like behind the wizard’s curtain,” Tonya said.

  Kim nodded as she sat down on the folding chair. “It’s pretty neat in the dark. This is a really nice one too.”

  Another indication how new it all was. Datacenters tended to evolve over time. After a few years, what started out a neatly engineered toy box was usually a mass of confusing wires, dead systems sitting alongside their replacements, and benches covered with coffee rings. If the lights were on, she was sure this place would sparkle. Kim motioned for Mike to take the stepstool.

  Tonya pointed at a different rack in the back corner where all the wires gathered in bundles as thick as her arms. “And those are the…”

  “Quantum computers,” Kim said. She stared at Mike. “The heart of the Evolved Internet, and the realms that it makes possible.”

  He looked back at her, smiling with puzzled eyes. “Do you need me for anything?”

  Kim opened her mouth, but nothing came out. The question meant something very different to her now, but it couldn’t.

  Not now not ever.

  Kim cleared her throat and turned away, then took a deep breath. “Yes. I’ll be searching the spaces I can reach; you should do the same where you can.”

  They transitioned into the private realmspace, and she had to fight the nostalgia. She wasn’t supposed to find new ways to use her old skills. At least she had Mike to talk to. “Have you ever been inside one of these before?”

  “No, I haven’t. It feels strange. I’d always assumed the space I lived in was the only place like it, and now here I am working through another one, while I’m still a part of the first. Remarkable.”

  She lost focus trying to picture what his world was really like, to stretch in and through mysterious places. He was such a strange, intriguing person. She shook herself.

  “What do you think you can do here?”

  “Maps, certainly. This place is a lot bigger than I expected. I’ll bet there’ll be plenty of locked doors to open too. I won’t be able to talk much.”

  “That’s fine,” Kim said, turning a corner down the hall. This part of the realm was a duplicate of the first floor above them, minus the adventurous couple and their indoor antics. “But before you start, if you could?”

  “I’m sorry, a door would be handy, wouldn’t it?”

  A door opened in front of her, and Kim stepped through to the box controls. A display snapped to life over the consoles as Mike began to map.

  Copying an entire realm was a big task. Even a private one like this must have terabytes of data in log files alone.

  At least it wasn’t a rerun of the Trump heist. There was no decrepit billionaire wandering around naked in the dark, screaming “Melania” at the top of his lungs. They lost precious seconds making sure he didn’t fall over as they tried to get out of the place. No amount of mental bleach would wipe away that memory.

  Kim grabbed a container out of her avatar’s belt and used it to trace a line of purple dust across each of the panels.

  “Fly, my pretties, fly!” They dissolved toward their destinations. With those constructs, a job that should take days would only take maybe half an hour.

  Mike pinged her at roughly the halfway point of the copy. “Do you know what to make of this? I think it’s a button, but I’m not sure.”

  He showed her a schematic, but it was far too complicated to make out quickly.

  “Can you tell me where it is?”

  “Yup, and before you say anything, don’t worry, no frog. Path stripe only.”

  “You’re sure it’s a button of some sort?” she asked, entering a weird amphitheater. It was dark, save for some footlights, just enough to keep from bashing shins or falling down the stairs. About a hundred, maybe two hundred people could sit on the padded benches that formed concentric, ever-higher semicircles around the empty stage.

  “Wait a minute. Mike, do you recognize this?”

  He swore. “Kim, I think you’re right. This is where Watchtell had his meeting.”

  She scanned around as she took a few steps away from it. The belly of the beast was not a good place to be, even when the demon was away.

  “Where’s the button?”

  A hatch opened at the front edge of the stage, and a pedestal rose up. Its top was flat and wide, and sure enough, there was a big covered switch right in the center. When it locked to a stop, a spotlight threw it into high relief.

  “What’s it do?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure, but it was locked down so tight it must be important. It took me forever to tease it open. I can’t even tell where the lines underneath it go, there are so many of them.”

  Kim walked over to it, then crouched down. “Yeah, it has to be a class twenty-seven switching construct, hell maybe even a twenty-eight.”

  It was the kind of stuff seen on for-real aircraft carrier realms, or an Ares Heavy II launch controller. She opened a flap on her utility belt and sat down on the floor. “Let’s see how we can ruin someone else’s day.”

  “With that outfit on, I think you should have a pipe and speak with an English accent.”

  “I don’t always wander around in a catsuit.” Kim moved her trench coat around out of the way. Pitching her voice low, she smiled. “But I can definitely change into it, if you like.”

  Kim’s smile broadened when he stammered.

  “No, that’s okay, no need to do that.” He cleared his throat. “What are you doing, anyway?”

  She lay on her back, working at a hatch underneath the podium with some tools. “Being mean.”

  She popped the hatch free with a snap and grabbed a LockPass the size of a sugar cube. When she pressed it into the opening, it dissolved into the flashing, zipping interior.

  Kim caught herself humming a tune her mom sang to her when she was little, back when that was the only way people could get her to say anything at all. On a whim, Kim changed the default message to match.

  “Well, they’ll have to ask me nicely if they want to use it now.” She closed the hatch and sat up just as an agent brought her notice tha
t the transfers were ready to start. “Button it back up, Mike.”

  “With pleasure.”

  It turned out the realm was bigger than either of them had expected. What should’ve taken half an hour was now approaching two. Kim squirmed in realspace; that second tea at supper may not have been the best idea.

  “Kim? Flying monkeys? Really?” Mike asked.

  “You design your constructs; I design mine. They get bigger the more stuff they find.” She ducked as one the size of a small airplane flapped into view.

  “Tonya wants to know how much longer?”

  The last one, a tiny thing not much bigger than her palm, sailed into her phone’s storage area. “That’s it.” Then with her real voice, she said, “Time to go. I need you to find a patch cord before we leave, Mike. I don’t want to have to come all the way back here if I need to visit again.”

  Chapter 54: Kim

  When she woke up, it took her a few minutes to remember where she was. Another hotel. She was back to the gypsy’s life, living out of a bugout bag. It was a lot more exhausting nowadays. She liked sleeping in a bed nobody else had used.

  Then she remembered the massive download they’d pulled from Watchtell’s private network. Once that happened, there was no going back to sleep. Kim pulled her pants and sweatshirt on, then padded into the den of the suite, leaving Tonya asleep on the other bed. She always worked better sitting up when it came to stuff like this.

  After a while, Tonya walked out. “What time did you wake up?”

  “Hour or so ago, I think.” Kim checked the time. “There’s breakfast in another hour.”

  Tonya smiled. “You and your breakfasts. I think I’ll go get us some necessities. A change of clothes would be nice, don’t you think?”

  Kim needed to finish this debug routine to figure out why the damned OutLock kept throwing a null exception. Just one more run. If it worked, the whole thing would unlock.