One of the ladies asked, “You understand Chinese, but you don’t speak it?”
He tugged just a bit on the napkin they held together under the table. “I have an excellent translator.”
Being the only Westerners, they were peppered with questions about their experiences in China. Kim’s revelation that she had a government-approved driver’s license impressed them. The fact that she’d used it on Chinese highways horrified them.
“It wasn’t that bad,” Kim said, and then turned to Mike. “My passengers disagreed.”
“Only when you banged on people’s roofs with your fist as you drove by.”
She crossed her arms. “He tried to cut me off.”
That was normally the start of a fight, but her eyes were sparkling. She was showing off for the guests, so he played along.
“And the way you called out which storm drain you were knocking the next electric car into, like you were playing pool.”
“How else was I supposed to get past them? They were everywhere.” The raised eyebrow was a nice touch.
Then he remembered a genuinely funny thing. “And let’s not forget your side-view mirror collection.”
“Just three. They were supposed to fold them in as I went by.”
He briefly wondered what the hotel cleaning staff must’ve made of them, sitting on the desk like trophies. “But the beer in bags helped the rest of us cope.”
One of the men on the other side of the table laughed. “My nephew sells beer like that while he’s on summer break. It’s how the brewery workers make extra money. They get some of their pay in beer, and whatever cash they make selling it they get to keep.”
And so the stories went as the dinner moved on.
The conversation turned to realmspace. It gave Mike the opportunity to do a little fishing. He was still trying to figure out how everyone had been stuck in a realm for a week. “You’re right,” he replied to the realmspace developer to his left, “the newest connection rigs have amazing haptic resolution. We got caught up in a murder mystery so real that Kim thought I’d been killed in realspace.”
She went rigid for a moment. Great. He’d said the wrong thing again. This had been a world-record stretch of nice Kim, and now he’d ruined it somehow.
The lady replied, “Yes, I’ve forgotten I was in a realm more than once. When we finally break the time limits on participation, the wall between real and realm will grow thinner.”
Ah, well. Maybe she knew about the realm itself. “We were trying to escape from a horrible lab.”
“Wait,” her husband said, “Silent Hill fourteen?”
“No, not exactly, but I’m pretty sure the realm was based on it.”
Kim texted him. “Ladies room. BRB.”
He sent back, “Am I in trouble?”
She paused just a little too long. “No, you’re not in trouble.” Kim took one of the young wives with her.
While she was gone, he indulged in a few of his own stories. Being at the base of realmspace had given him some unique opportunities over the years.
“You were able to trigger sirens all over Bangladesh?” an older gentleman across from him asked.
“I helped install a new holographic warning system. We’d just finished when the cyclone hit. The storm surge destroyed the warning center, so I found a way to hit all the local emergency alert buttons at once.” By pressing them all at once, sort of. “I only wish we’d had more warning.”
It was one of his first paying jobs. Cyclone Anna had strengthened from a category two to a five-plus in less than a day, the first time that had ever happened.
The older gentleman nodded. “Still, it was quite amazing how low the death toll was. You should be commended.”
“Just part of the job, I guess.”
“But what do you do now?” the developer asked as Kim returned and sat down.
“I own a realm start-up.”
The older gentleman said, “My son does this. Very risky.”
“It can be, but I’m doing okay.”
“You should partner with my son. He’s a very hard worker.” He flicked a contact card across their shared vision into Mike’s message store.
“I’ll look into it, and I mean that. China’s only now waking up to all the economic opportunities realmspace provides.”
After the dinner party broke up, the realm developer couple and the older couple with the beer-selling son asked to talk more in a nearby lounge. It was rather crowded. Kim took one look and said, “I’ll be right back.”
They didn’t seem to notice that Kim never came back. After half an hour of earnest talk, he excused himself and went looking for her.
A quick monitor check showed Ozzie in the realms, Tonya in the casino, and Helen and Spencer sitting on the balcony of Spencer’s suite. He found Kim in an empty theater, picking out a melody on a piano on the small stage.
“How much trouble am I in?”
She stopped, her hands very tense over the keys. “You’re not. I’m being stupid.” She paused, then said, “Who told you what the rest of us went through in that realm?”
“Spencer, when I walked him back to help us find Helen. Tonya talked to me about it later.” He finally decided to risk asking a question that had been bugging him ever since they got to the monastery. “What I want to know is why you never said a word.”
She turned away. He took advantage and quickly snuck up onto the stage. Walking silently had a lot of uses.
Kim turned back and startled when she saw he was so close. She bit her lip, played a few more chords, and then stopped. “You died.” Her voice cracked. “I saw your body. I didn’t know how to talk about it. I still don’t.”
“Kim, it wasn’t real.”
“It was real to me. It’s still real to me. God, Mike, I can’t touch you to make this real. I can’t make that image go away.”
He stood next to the piano as she wiped off her face. He wanted so desperately to trust her, to just give in without worrying about when the razor would come out. “I don’t know what to say. I’m here, Kim. I’m alive.”
She played a few chords, and then started to sing.
The song was more than thirty years old, but still popular today. She’d give up the future for a touch. The piano vibrated against him, and her voice rang through the hall. It was probably the only way they would ever touch.
Or maybe not. He very gently sat on the bench beside her.
The song ended with a demand, and he understood it. They could hold secrets from the world, but not from each other. There was no need to be afraid of each other’s secrets anymore.
She turned to him. His face was only inches from hers.
Kim swallowed. “I can do this.”
He closed the gap, slowly. “I know.”
The floor lurched up, and he flew into the back wall.
Chapter 41: Spencer
He’d spent all night out on the balcony with Helen and had almost no progress to show for it. Helen coming unglued and shouting at him after he cut the channel with Tonya was the last damned straw.
“You know, me and Mike worked all this out when he had his head in a sack, after he’d been kidnapped, wondering if they were all gonna get shot. You just have to rearrange pillows and worry about the occasional mosquito.”
“So you’re saying he’s better than me?”
“And a helluva lot nicer.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Really.”
He would not back down about this. “Goddamit, Helen, I saw you chanting at the monastery. You know how the breathing works.”
“A bunch of voodoo and superstition. Opium for the masses.”
“You are such a communist.”
“I take that as a compliment.”
“You would. I got news for you. As soon as Mike told me I’d have this job, I started reading up on your history. You got nothing to be proud of until Mao died, and that next guy started talking about cats.” Deng Xiaoping’s quote made sense to Spen
cer now. Helen would care what color the cat was, even if it caught mice.
“I will not have you disrespect my country.”
This had to be at least part of why Kim and Mike went at each other constantly. He refused to follow up on what that might mean.
“Look, sister, I ain’t in this for your government, and I sure as hell ain’t in it for you. So if you’ll just sit the hell down…”
She stared over his shoulder.
“What?”
“Do you see that?”
He turned. There were things floating in the water. Spencer used his phone to get a night vision overlay.
Oh, hell no.
Spheres floated in the water. They had actual spikes sticking out of them. It was like something out of a cartoon, but they were very real.
He grabbed her by the shoulders. “Helen, you need to listen to me. Reach out, right now. Center and find yourself. I need you to connect.”
“Spencer, I don’t—”
“Helen, we have seconds. I need you to reach out.”
Her eyes glazed over. “Spencer…oh, my ancestors. Spencer! I’ve made it! I’m—”
The explosions were like massive hammer blows that threw them against the rail. Fire blew out and the boat tilted away from the explosions, sending him skittering toward the back wall. People on other balconies cried out into the night as furniture, debris, and the occasional person sailed into the water.
“Spencer, what was that?” Helen had managed to hang on to the rail.
“Mines. We have to get off this boat.” He tried to reach out to everyone else, but the realmspace connection was gone. “Can you reach Mike?”
She concentrated, but then shook her head, startling like her mouth didn’t work right.
“Nevermind. Keep trying to reach Mike. Use his address.” The deck groaned, and he slid sideways and down. He ran into the hall and beat on the next door. “Ozzie!”
It yanked open. “Damn it, I had that True Ogre down to his last regen. What the hell is happening?”
“We have to get off this boat, right now!”
Another explosion threw the boat in the other direction. There were mines on both sides. At least they’d sink on an even keel.
The next explosion was softer and clearly from deep inside the ship. The cars on board must have caught fire—or maybe the fuel bunkers. The smell of smoke permeated the hallway. Blaring alarms and flashing arrows pointed the way toward the lifeboat deck, and the hall crowded with panicked passengers.
Ozzie turned and ran back into his cabin.
“Ozzie? What the fuck? Get back here!” He chased Ozzie inside with Helen close behind. “We have to get off this boat!”
“No way! There’s no way I’ll get down to the boat deck without being touched. They’ll crush me in the crowd. I can’t stand the thought.”
Helen could barely talk, and now Ozzie was a flat-out coward. “We have no time for this.” The deck evened out, but he could see through the window how quickly the boat was sinking.
“You don’t understand. I can’t go out there into a crowd. I just can’t.”
A voice spoke calmly in Chinese over the PA system, and then in English. “All passengers please report to the lifeboat deck for immediate evacuation.”
Ozzie went white. “There’s no way.”
“Can you swim?”
Helen had been rummaging around in a closet the whole time. “It doesn’t matter.” She pulled a lifejacket out and tossed it at him. “I know how to swim.”
Spencer replied, “So do I, but we can’t take chances. Any more in there?”
The room was meant to hold four, and there were exactly that many life jackets in the closet.
“Can you reach anyone yet?”
“No. Mike’s not answering. Neither is Tonya.”
There was no way to reach any other part of the boat.
“Keep trying.”
He opened the sliding-glass door to the balcony. It was just wide enough for two people to lean over the rail. Shouts and cries came from all around them. Another explosion blew a ball of fire into the sky on the stern. Most of that segment had submerged. The middle was sinking faster.
He turned back to the cabin. “Okay, Ozzie, we’re doing it your way. Helen and I will go first. You can follow.”
It was obviously something he hadn’t considered. “You mean you’re going to jump?”
“We’re going to jump.” Hundreds of people were already in the water, with more falling from the balconies every second. “Come on, Helen. You ready?” He climbed on top of the rail.
She looked every bit as scared as he was. “I’m supposed to say something really clever now, right?”
“Just say yes.”
She climbed on the rail with him. “Yes.”
He grabbed her hand, and they jumped.
The boat had flooded almost to the first deck, but that still left a good fifty feet for them to fall. He barely missed a few people already in the water. The life jacket popped him right back to the surface. It was cold, but he could breathe. Helen came up beside him.
Spencer backstroked away from the ship, shouting up at Ozzie, “Come on!”
Spencer saw more than heard him shout, “No way!” He ran back inside, but then reappeared after a few seconds.
“You have to jump! We didn’t hit anyone, you won’t either!”
The back segment finally tore along the articulated joint, a sound of almost animal pain Spencer knew he’d never forget. People were still on board as it sank. He could see them through the windows. They would never come back up.
Everyone around him was losing it except for Helen, who shouted up to Ozzie. A series of explosions in the middle segment, their segment, walked forward, blowing fire out as they went.
“Ozzie! You have to jump! Now!”
Ozzie climbed up over the railing, one foot at a time. His arms started to heave the rest of him off the ledge just as an explosion tore through the cabin. It flung him well clear of the wreckage, but Spencer did not like the way he fell.
He swam hard toward where Ozzie landed and called for him, but got no response. He was in the right place; he found the Ark’s case, singed but otherwise floating like a silver cork on the surface. It didn’t matter what was inside at the moment, it would help them float. But he couldn’t find Ozzie anywhere in the mess.
“Spencer!” Helen cried out.
She held Ozzie in her arms. His head lolled, mouth open. A chunk of the balcony’s rail had gone straight through his chest.
The current carried them quickly downstream. “Let me have him. We can at least get him to the shore.”
“I still can’t reach Mike.”
The riverboat exploded again, and he turned. It had completely broken apart now, with the bow sticking straight up in the air. There were people everywhere in the water around him, bleeding and crying and clinging on to whatever they could grab. Almost everyone had a life jacket on, so when the current whirled them under, they popped up like corks.
But not everyone.
As the boat slowly descended into the water, the lights flickered and died. Bubbles foamed around the bow, and then the tip of it vanished into the gloom.
Well, whoever the hell was blowing shit up, they weren’t screwing around. No wonder the country was on a hair trigger.
He turned to Helen. “Can you reach Tonya?”
She shook her head. “They’re not answering. None of them are.”
Helicopters swirled over the river, throwing spotlights onto the water.
“Keep trying. We’ll swim for the shore, but take your time. Let the life jacket do most of the work.”
Chapter 42: Kim
God, the smell was horrible, and everything squished. Her toes were pruned—she could feel them in her stockings. It was unbelievably uncomfortable. Then pain came thumping through, heart beating pulses, the pain of her madness. She threw herself away from the column of agony before she understood that it w
as Mike underneath her.
“Ma’am!” A soldier shouted as he rushed up to her. “Ma’am, are you all right?”
Mike coughed and rubbed where her elbows had hit him. “What did he say?”
They sat in the reeds on a bank of the Yangtze. Helicopters thundered overhead. People moaned and cried all around her. There were soaked families trying to comfort each other higher up on the bank, and more than a few bodies floating face down on the shore nearby.
Mike sat up slowly. “Kim?”
Her skin burned and black madness rushed underneath it just from the few moments of touching him. She had to get it under control but couldn’t, not surrounded with bodies, pain, and who knew how many people that were too close.
Mike shot to his feet. “Kim, breathe, remember to breathe. You’ll be okay.”
“No, goddamn it, I’m not okay! I’m really not okay!” She crushed reeds already in her hands, and then ripped more out of the bank. The madness slowly cleared away on its own. Kim’s boots kept sinking, threatening to tip her over into the muck.
The soldier shouted, “Are you injured?”
She rounded on Mike. “That’s twice, twice you’ve touched me. It’s not fair! I hate that I can’t touch you!”
The soldier asked, “Ma’am?”
Mike just stared.
Finally, Kim realized why Mike couldn’t understand her. She’d been speaking Mandarin the whole time. She threw the reeds aside and motioned to the soldier. “We’re all right.” She switched to English and asked, “What happened?”
“There was an explosion. Water rushed in and knocked us both over. How’s your head?”
She had one helluva goose egg on the back of her head. That explained the headache, and probably the hole in her memory.
“I’ll live. I don’t remember anything after I played Iris. Where’s the riverboat?”
He unfocused the way he always did when he went into realmspace. “Gone. Spencer said we hit mines.”
“Mines? Spencer! Where is everyone? Are they safe?”
“Hey, I just woke up too, remember?” He paused. “Helen and Spencer are safe, somewhere downstream on the other side of the river.” His face grew somber.
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