Between firing, he wriggled his fingers, and his avatar would glitch to a new location. Sometimes he would appear directly behind another player and unload his virtual weapon into their backs, then follow it up with a steady stream of insults, the most common being "You lame!"
Pi watched for about ten minutes before unplugging his helmet from the computer.
He yanked his helmet off, half catching it on his ears, until sweaty and out of breath, he was facing her. His expression went through contortions as he tried to figure out who she was and why she was standing there.
"Who the fuck are you?" he finally asked.
"A girl with a problem," said Pi. "And you're going to help me."
"Go away, tourist," he said, leaning over the ring and plugging the helmet back into the computer. "I've got a kill streak to maintain."
"I can pay, get you a couple of weekends' worth of game time," she said.
He gave her a dismissive shrug. "Who pays?"
He went back to playing, and Pi chewed on her fingernails. Clearly the direct approach wasn't the right one with him. Nor was the offer for payment, which meant he was probably hacking them for credits. She considered using the Voice on him, but it hurt like hell, and using it in public would be too easy to trace.
She eyed the second VR station in the room. She'd played enough shooters to be decent, but Dustin was playing on a competitive map. Everyone in that game could kill her with both their eyes closed. But like Dustin, she didn't plan on playing fair.
Pi spent the next few minutes studying the spell he was using. Without the soul fragment from cybermagics, she'd have no chance to make sense of what he was doing, but the gestures woke enough memories that she could repeat the spell.
She went to the register and purchased three hours of playtime. The attendant walked her through the equipment, shaking his head at Dustin as he explained how the VR equipment worked.
"Shall I put you in a beginner's map?"
"No," she said, holding the helmet. "I want to be in the same game as him."
"Really? You'll get slaughtered. Top pros play on that map," he said.
"I'm a fast learner."
"Whatever. Your money."
The fake reality inside the game was uber detailed. The game map was the burned-out ruins of Stalingrad during World War II. Pi might have been impressed had she not spent the majority of her second year getting killed by giant bugs on an alien planet.
Pi entered her name as CasualN00b. About ten seconds after loading into the map, Pi was killed. Then killed again. She barely had time to figure out the gun controls before getting shot six more times in rapid succession. The other players moved realistically, dodging and weaving and leaping across shattered buildings, while Pi could barely move ten feet without tripping over rubble.
At least one of those times, she got killed by UL4M3, which she realized was Dustin Davies by his catchphrase "You lame!"
Eventually she was able to get into a hiding position so she could figure out how to hack the game like Dustin was doing. When she teleported behind another player and stabbed him in the back with her bayonet, she whooped for joy, only to have her victim call back, "Noob!"
The next two hours, she spent killing the other players with growing expertise. Pi wasn't deluding herself that she was suddenly a top-ranked player—the spell was doing most of the work—but it felt good to get her kills in, making her long—only partially—for a normal life when goofing off playing videogames was a thing she could do.
When the attendant tapped on her shoulder, she authorized another three hours. She hadn't gotten anywhere near killing Dustin, since he was impossible to track. She'd planned on stalking him in-game and challenging him to a contest, but she couldn't even find him, which made her plan ridiculous. She was about to give up when she remembered the monitor in the room, showing exactly where he was located. The only problem was that she couldn't see the screen and play the game at the same time, and he moved too quickly for her to switch back and forth.
Pi took the VR helmet off and pulled a quarter out of her pocket. She enchanted it to act as a mirror of the monitor, and fixed it inside the helmet like a miniature HUD device, using a piece of chewed gum to hold the quarter in place. Seeing both viewpoints was a little disorienting at first, but Pi figured out how to use it to track him.
When she killed him the first time, a revolver shot to the head while he was setting up a sniping location, she didn't say a word. Then she killed him again while he was sneaking up a set of stairs. The next three kills were right as he teleported to a new location.
"Get off my back, glitcher! I'm gonna report you," he screamed in her ear through the mic. She heard the echo of his real speech in the room through her helmet.
"I'm going to keep killing you until you help me."
"Fuck you."
"Nice insult, you infantile Muppet humper," she responded.
He rage-screamed in her ear until she muted him. Then she killed him again. And again. He spent the next ten minutes teleporting around the map trying to avoid her, but she kept fragging him over and over until she saw the message "UL4M3 has left the game" appear in the corner of her vision.
When she dragged the helmet off her head, the wig went along with it. He was staring at her with suspicion.
"Who the hell are you? How are you casting our proprietary Hall spells?"
"Who I am doesn't matter. What matters is that if you don't help me, I'll stalk you in whatever game you play, making sure I spend my every waking moment murdering your avatar in rapid and continuous fashion from now until the heat death of the universe."
"Wow. If that wasn't so fucking psycho, I'd say that was awesome. Until the heat death of the universe—I'm going to have to remember that one," he said.
Pi was a little thrown by his sudden change in tone. He didn't seem as mad as she thought he might, given what she'd done.
"Will you help me? Like I said before, I can pay, or we can trade." When his lips started to curl upward, she pointed her finger towards him. "Say it and I'll put my Sketchers up your ass."
He smiled congenially, spreading his hands. "I'll help you, assuming it's something I can help you with, if you tell me how you knew exactly where I was going to be in the game."
"Sure. After you help."
He stuck his sweaty hand out. Pi stared at it for a few seconds before shaking. "Deal."
When he set his helmet down, she scrubbed the sliminess off her palm against her black skirt.
"So where'd you learn how to do that?" he asked as they took a table in the back of the room. Dustin ordered a pair of energy drinks from a touchscreen that appeared.
"I knew Bala," she said, which was true, but probably not in the way that Dustin expected, but she wasn't going to tell him she had a piece of his soul in her head.
He did a double take, then kneaded his hands together. "You knew him? Man, I miss Bala. Fucking bad luck that it was him last year."
A memory from Bala's life that involved Dustin wavered into her mind. It was them lying on their beds in their hall, talking about growing up. Dustin had lived in a trailer outside of Kansas City, raised by a single mom who worked long hours.
"I miss him, too," said Pi.
A familiar warmth moved through her mind. Bala and Dustin had been best friends, and losing him had been pretty tough on Dustin. She thought about telling him about the soul in her head, but decided against it, in case he grew attached to her.
"We met on some old forums, before the Halls, and we used to trade spells back then," she said.
"What hall?" he asked.
"Coterie."
"Whoa," said Dustin. "So what do you need?"
She pulled out the cell phone she'd gotten from Sunil, and accessed the information she'd been able to restore from it after getting dunked in the Arcanium moat. Besides some nasty pictures Sunil had taken of drunk girls passed out at parties, there was a lot of other information that proved the things they'd suspec
ted about the Cabal. She'd read through group text chains talking about the rewards offered by the professors of their halls if they could get Arcanium students to use magic. There was talk of a raid on the hall, though most seemed apprehensive about the protections enchanted into the physical structure. Even without Semyon aware, the school itself was formidable.
"I acquired this phone. But the owner unconnected it from their apps, emails, and other stuff. I want to reconnect it into their text chains so I can monitor what goes on."
Dustin chugged from his energy drink, then set the aluminum can down hard on the table as his eyes whirled with thoughts.
"That's a tough one," he said. "Bala would be able to do it, for sure. He was our best hacker. Almost as good as our patron."
"Could you walk me through the idea of what I might do?" asked Pi. "Like, maybe, assume I had Bala's skills."
Which was kinda true. She had some of his memories, but she didn't have enough of them to accomplish the task. His fragment was thin, and filled with major gaps. Like an amnesiac trying to rediscover their life, she was hoping to trigger the right memory.
"You'll need to jack the data stream and spoof the encryption to accept this phone as the real deal."
She waved him to a stop. "You're gonna need to slow it down. Less techy speech."
He shook his head, disbelieving. "I don't know how you're planning on accomplishing this then. Sounds like you're not even a script-kiddie, but okay, I made a deal." He paused, shook his head again. "Hacking using magic isn't so different from hacking using a computer, except magic is a tool that has certain advantages, but you still have to understand the code. Like there were some French hackers that used a drone with a camera to fly it up to a window in a corporation, and had it read the blinking red light on the server to figure out what it was transmitting. Using magic is like that. It's a way to bypass the normal rules, if you're creative enough."
"So you're not 'seeing the Matrix' or anything like that," she said.
"No. But it does allow you to hack in ways not accessible to regular coders. Like in the game, I was using a coded spell that allowed me to move to any location in the game as if I were sysadmin."
"What if I wanted to jump into a group text?" she asked.
Dustin tapped on his chin. "That's simple. You only need the password and login."
Pi opened her mouth to ask a clarifying question when a trickle of knowledge floated to the surface. Suddenly, she understood what she needed to do, or more importantly, Bala had regained the knowledge.
"Got it," she said, smiling. "I'm good now."
"But I haven't really said anything," he replied, face scrunched.
"Like I said, I'm a fast learner."
"Whatever." He tapped his energy drink on the table. "Your turn."
Pi retrieved the enchanted quarter from the inside of the visor. As soon as he saw it, he understood.
"Wow, yeah. I'm an idiot," he said. "Maybe you're better than you make out. That's hacker thinking. Why brute force it when you can work around."
She left when he returned to his game, content that she could access the text chain so she could monitor the Cabal students. She thought about sharing her discovery with Aurie, but decided against it in case that encouraged her to leave Arcanium again. The attack a few weeks ago had taught her that Aurie and the other students were too defenseless to leave the school. Whatever Pi decided to do against the Cabal, she'd have to do it on her own.
Chapter Four
Aurie found Pi in the map room, staring at the representation of the city of Invictus, fiddling with a cell phone that she shoved into her pocket the moment she realized she wasn't alone. Aurie didn't recognize the cell phone, but decided that if her sister wanted her to know about it, she'd tell her.
"Hey, sis," said Aurie, giving a hug, catching the sharp perfume she was wearing. "New scent? I like-y, but that fruity one's kind of your thing."
Pi ran her fingers through her blue-streaked dark hair and looked away. Aurie noted that her sister looked older than her nearly twenty years, possibly due to a change in makeup, or the new perfume, but she couldn't pinpoint the exact reason.
"Not anymore. Whatcha need?" asked Pi.
"I need your help this afternoon. Outside Arcanium."
"You can't go out there," said Pi. "Too dangerous. If you give me a few days to prepare, maybe we can go, but you have to warn me about this stuff."
"That's sweet, sis," said Aurie, trying to control her annoyance at being lectured at, "but I've already taken care of it. We'll be fine, but that's why I'd like you along, in case I missed something."
Pi touched the pocket in which she'd placed the cell phone reflexively. "It's worse than you think. Trust me. I've been doing some research, let's call it some counterintelligence. The Cabal can't wait to get their hands on an Arcanium student. They've given them free rein to try and take someone. I guess this kind of thing isn't forbidden by the charter, harkening back to the early days of the school when they warred with each other."
"I'm going. You can either come along or not," said Aurie, crossing her arms.
She hated playing the big sister card, but she hadn't involved Pi with her preparations on purpose. Since the attack on the way to Freeport Games, Pi had been downright annoying with her mothering.
"You're not playing fair," said Pi, shaking her head. "At least give me a chance to go change. You should too. They're set up for tracking enchantments leaving the building, so we need to strip ourselves."
"I'm leaving right now," said Aurie, enjoying her sister's discomfort. "You can keep your leather jacket on."
Pi ran to keep up with Aurie's long strides, her black boots clicking against the hardwood flooring. Along the way, Aurie stuck her hand in her pocket and rubbed the smooth stone in it, feeling the memory in her head brighten. When they ascended the drawbridge and a black limousine bracketed by two black SUVs came into view, Aurie couldn't help but smirk.
"You could at least try not to act so smug," said Pi. "Are you sure we can trust her?"
Rather than answer, Aurie raised an eyebrow. When they hopped in the back, Violet greeted them with a little hand wave as she finished up a conversation on her earpiece. She wore a black pants and jacket combo, and her hair had been brushed to golden silk.
"Hey, Silverthornes," said Violet, smiling warmly. "Looking good."
Aurie chuckled. "We look like a dumpster fire compared to you." Pi interjected with protests that her jacket was uber-sweet. "Things seem to be going well for you." Aurie flinched. "I'm sorry, that came out badly."
Violet reached across the space and patted Aurie on the knee without a trace of contempt, which seemed like a miracle considering their shared past. "Don't ever apologize. My mother was a grade-A bitch with outsized ambitions. She got her comeuppance. While I mourn her, I'm not blind to the fact that she was willing to hand the city over to Bannon Creed, the creepiest of creeps."
Aurie nodded. "Thank you for helping out."
"Helping out? I'm in this boat with the rest of you. If Semyon goes down, I'm screwed too. And while I've got a media empire to run, the board members are well aware of what's happening in Arcanium. Every one of those old farts hated my mother, and now that I'm in charge, they've stopped hiding their contempt. I don't go anywhere without multiple layers of bodyguards, and I'm not even sure of their loyalties considering the stakes. If it's not the Cabal, it'll be one of my own."
Aurie already knew this from her texts with Violet, but assumed she was explaining it for Pi's sake. Her sister wasn't saying anything, which was probably a good sign. After last year, and especially after experiencing Violet's memories about her childhood, Aurie understood why Violet acted the way she had.
"How is everyone doing?" asked Violet.
Aurie knew exactly what she meant. "A little shaky. Xi has terrible nightmares. Deshawn found him wandering half naked through the library last week. Drake has reoccurring hiccups that he says are from not using magic. You?"
Violet looked out the window at the passing city. "I have moments when I forget what happened to Semyon and start to cast a spell. Even when I remember, I still want to do it, like a compulsion." She chuckled at herself. "A few nights ago, I tried to walk through a wall, thinking that I had some magical ability that allowed it."
"It's only going to get worse as the year goes on," said Aurie.
"So where are we going?" asked Violet.
Aurie told her the address, which she relayed to the driver. While they drove, the three of them caught up, and at times, Aurie found it hard to believe they'd been enemies for the first three years of school, based on the way they reminisced. Violet didn't ask about the purpose of the trip, which could have been a side-effect of her destination, or she was trying to be careful, assuming that whatever Aurie was doing was important enough she shouldn't know about it. Aurie guessed it was a bit of both.
When they arrived at the destination in the twelfth ward, Violet asked before they got out of the limo, "Do you need me to pick you up?"
"Won't be necessary. Getting home after this will be much easier," said Aurie.
Violet surprised Aurie with a hug, Pi included, before they left. As they waved goodbye to the limo and two SUVs, all heavily enchanted, Aurie felt her shoulder blades itch with the feeling they were being watched.
"Why did you have her drop us off in the middle of a dump?" asked Pi, doing a slow circle.
It wasn't a dump, but an old industrial area in which most of the buildings were half collapsed, trees growing right out of the middle of them, bushes chewing through the concrete sidewalks, turning them to chalky dust. Rusted chain-link fences were bent, where squatters had probably jumped over in years past, though she couldn't imagine anyone living in these now. The buildings looked out of the '50s, or earlier, and probably hadn't been used since. The air didn't smell like oil or waste, but sweet, as if the rot had consumed it, and the section of the city was returning to nature.
"I think the term is post-apocalyptic chic," said Aurie, heading towards the end of the street, where a boarded-up wall was covered in signs. She pulled the stone in her pocket out and kept it in her fist. She could feel the magic of the area warring with the enchantment on the stone.
Gathering of Shadows Page 3
