Cold War Rune: A Virtual Reality novel (Rune Universe Book 2)

by Hugo Huesca

  That’s what you get for hiring normal people as informants, Crestienne.

  I walked away from the building trying my best to blend in with the crowd.

  Don’t look back, don’t look back.

  It was like being part of those horror movies where the protagonist is walking down a black hallway and the music is growing in intensity. The camera is following his back and getting closer and closer and you are sure there’s a claw coming to grab his shoulder at any moment.

  Then he turns back and nothing is there. You sigh with relief, but when he goes back to face the front, a monster is right there, waiting with open jaws.

  A fourth drone came flying with lazy movements out of a nearby alley and hovered in the air right in front of me. I was in the middle of his invisible search pattern, and the electronic brain of those things could scan dozens of people in seconds.

  Well… fuck.

  “Yeah, we’ve been made,” Francis said. “Run for it!”

  The drone’s tiny, red eye-sensor focused straight in on me. It seemed to be frozen in surprise for an instant.

  I smiled innocently and waved to the camera. Then I made a break for the alley.

  “Hey, asshole, watch it!” A man fell to the floor after he bumped into me. I pushed him, and then another, carving a path into the human river as fast as I could. Looking back, the other three drones were nearing its position. The first drone was still frozen in place, probably beaming its discovery across all the secret communication channels it had in place. Could Francis delay them?

  Crowds suck when you want to move quickly. They fight back when you push them, grab you, you get all sorts of unwanted attention.

  The trick is to think of them like a strong sea current. No point in fighting it head on, you’ll just get tired and it’ll drag you without an ounce of trouble. Instead, save your strength and move diagonally towards the nearest land in that direction. With any luck, you’ll escape the current that caught you without getting dragged into the ocean.

  I reached the alley at the very instant the drones switched from surveillances-mode into chase-mode. They flew at me with their sensor-arrays pointed in my direction like a hundred tiny fangs.

  The alley was a dead-end, closed between a tiny, local bank and a loan shark business. The Financial District wasn’t like the streets of Lower Cañitas, where a person could easily get lost in the under-streets and the tiny passageways into which gangs flocked like packs of rats.

  I knew this, though, and instead of staying still and letting myself get caught, I dove into the door of the loan shark building and smashed it open with a kick.

  The interior was brick and naked concrete. A wheeled drone overlooked the counter and it turned toward me with surprise as I ran for my life—and to the nearest window.

  SIR, THE BACKROOM IS ONLY AVAILABLE TO MYSELF AND THE OWNER, the drone told me with its best scandalized tone.

  “Tell that to them!” I said without looking at it. Instead, I reached the window and pushed it open. First, one leg out, then the second…

  I WILL, said the drone, AND THEN I AM CALLING THE POLICE, AS PER ESTABLISHED BY THE LAW AND MY LAW-ABIDING SOFTWARE. I REGRET TO INFORM YOU THIS IS A CRIMINAL OFFENSE, SIR. MAY I HAVE YOUR NAME TO GIVE TO THE AUTHORITIES?

  I was almost fully out and into the yard where the loan shark kept the rusty cars and trucks. “Sure, wait a bit!” I said. Then I began running.

  I heard the drone’s electronic voice behind me. THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION. NOW, YOU FOUR… THE BACKROOM IS ONLY AVAILABLE TO MYSELF AND THE OWNER. I AM CALLING THE POLICE—

  SHUT IT, OLD MAN, called the chirpy flying drones. WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF A CHASE!

  Dealing with drones gets tiring after a while.

  I ran towards the carcass of an old, battered truck and slid beneath it. The warm pavement scraped my knees and elbows.

  The drones came out of the window, but had to stop to re-calibrate their path. Thankfully, they weren’t expensive enough to have the kind of sensors that allowed them to fly through window-sized openings with military precision, otherwise I would never have been able to lose them.

  They separated, flew up, and made several passes over the yard, but avoided the fence.

  COME OUT, COLE DORSETT, one of the drones exclaimed. WE ONLY WANT TO HAVE A FRIENDLY CHAT WITH YOU.

  Yeah, sure you do, I thought. I had seen the tasers installed in their sensors. Friendly chat, my ass.

  “I don’t want to add more pressure,” Francis’ voice came from far-away, “but your phone is running out of power. I put it on low-energy mode, but you know it doesn’t help much…”

  Of course.

  I kept to my hiding place and hoped the drones wouldn’t notice me. I knew I needed to get out of there fast or the drones would find me eventually. Like a Roomba stumbling around a room until it has checked every corner.

  The drones began inspecting the cars nearby and my heart sank when one of them looked underneath one truck not far away from my own. Well, they weren’t dumb.

  Time to improvise. I carefully slid out into the open. Two of them were checking the cars and the other two were keeping watch in the sky. This gave me few chances of remaining out of sight, but if I had to fight, I preferred to do so in the open.

  So I could run away, of course.

  The drones in the sky hadn’t seen me yet, since I was partially covered by the open door of the truck. Perhaps it was my lucky break.

  Let’s create a distraction. A shoe would do the trick. I took it out and threw it as far away from me as I could. The black, plastic thing drew an arc through the air and hit a bunch of old drone carcasses and made a lot of noise. Score!

  HE IS OVER THERE, screamed one of the flying drones. HE WAS TRYING TO FOOL US BY THROWING SOMETHING FAR FROM HIS ACTUAL LOCATION. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?

  THAT IS THE OLDEST TRICK IN THE BOOK, another drone replied.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I exclaimed as the things flew in my direction. “What the hell do they put in those things’ brains?”

  I didn’t stop to fight them. Instead, I ran towards the same window I had used to get outside.

  Perhaps I could still give them the slip… No, two of them cut me off almost instantly. I was surrounded on all sides.

  “Boy,” I said, raising my hands and closing them into fists, “you sure have a lot of tasers in those chassis.”

  SO WE CAN GET TO KNOW YOU BETTER, COLE DORSETT.

  I took a deep breath. The two drones in front of me were probably going to be a distraction. The actual hit would come from behind. So I looked straight in front of me and listened… Yes, there came the zoom…

  I rolled to the ground and out of the way. A second drone came at me with blinding speed. I jumped away and pushed it into the first one, hard enough for them to lose their path and fall confused in a heap.

  OWIE!

  Now I had an opening. The two drones in front of me came at me from the sides, trying to flank me. I dove for the window, smacked into the concrete floor, and stood up with a pained groan.

  Thanks to an entire year of Rune Universe, my reflexes were top-notch. My cardiovascular condition, on the other hand, needed some work. I retraced my path out of the loan shark store, panting all the way. My white shirt was already drenched from exertion, and I felt like a lifetime smoker who suddenly has to run an entire marathon.

  Not exactly the best way to blend into a crowd, but then again, getting tasered by mysterious drones was worse.

  I reached for the door and swung it open. I found myself staring at the blue-vested chest of a police officer, complete with a mustache and a pair of sunglasses.

  “Stop right there, criminal scum!” he said with an imperious gesture.

  “Officer Harrison?” I asked.

  “Hah! Always wanted to say that,” said the officer. He flashed a smile at me and then went for his sidearm. “Get behind me, Cole.”

  I did what the man with the gun ordered—a cu
stom of mine that had kept me alive on several occasions. He advanced into the store, but the drones that pursued me were nowhere to be seen.

  “You were running from someone?” Harrison asked me. “The report only said that Cole Dorsett was roaming in the vicinity of the Financial District and that he looked like he was up to no good.”

  Looking like I’m up to no good is enough to detain me now?

  But I was actually relieved to see Officer Harrison. Some backup from law enforcement was more than enough to keep those drones away from me.

  “I was being chased by some recognizance drones,” I told him. “The same ones that have been roaming the city. I think they ran when their sensors detected police activity nearby.”

  “The report didn’t mention anything about those,” he said. Since the coast appeared to be clear he put away his gun.

  The clerk-drone turned to us. THIS IS THE FASTEST POLICE RESPONSE I’VE EVER SEEN. NOT TEN SECONDS AFTER I CALLED YOU! I’M VERY IMPRESSED WITH THE EFFORT THAT SAN MABRADA’S FINEST ARE MAKING TOWARDS OUR CONTINUED SAFETY. YOU’RE TAKING THIS JUVENILE DELINQUENT AWAY, I PRESUME?

  Harrison ignored the thing and turned to me instead. “Whoever called the police did so at least twenty minutes ago, Cole. I had to cash in a couple favors to come here myself instead of half the police force of the city. I only managed that by telling everyone it was probably a fake call and that I’d report back immediately.”

  So, whoever called did so while I was sitting in the park, trying hard not to look out of place.

  Either I sucked at the art of disguise (in my defense, my Disguise skill in Rune was already at 50) or someone had had me in the lookout.

  This information didn’t terrify me anymore. I had been in the crosshairs of a lot of people this last year.

  Being the guy who used an ancient alien signal to reveal the location of the Earth to an—so far—unknown amount of alien life out there in the whole universe would do that to anyone.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I suggested.

  “Good idea,” said Officer Harrison. “Go wait in the car. I have to ask some questions of our witness.”

  I did that gladly. The interior of a police car was safer than a lot of other places I’d been.

  If the person I was a year ago could see me now, I’d be incredulous.

  Police cars and the Cole Dorsett from a year ago didn’t mix at all.

  Officer Harrison turned to me before I was fully inside the car and told me. “By the way, Cole, you’re under arrest.”

  He had the gall to shrug.

  “What the fuck, Harrison?” I exclaimed.

  HELLO, COLE, said the police car, JUST LIKE THE OLD TIMES, EH, OLD BUDDY?

  The door closed in front of me, locking me inside.

  “Sorry, kiddo. It’s policy. We see you wandering around looking suspicious and we have to bring you in. Don’t worry, it’s for your own protection.”

  “This is insane,” I told him. “I haven’t done anything this time.”

  Besides bugging a government official (a spy still counts as one, right?) and setting a transmission system to listen to his communications, that is.

  But Harrison didn’t know that.

  “What can I tell you?” he shook his head sadly. “It’s been an insane year.”

  The windows rolled up and I could only see the officer’s back as he interrogated the loan shark clerk. I sat there, fuming, muttering under my breath.

  COLE, MIND YOUR LANGUAGE, the police car said, WHAT’S YOUR MOTHER GOING TO THINK?

  “Yes, Master Cole. What’s your mother going to think?” Francis whispered in my ear with the traces of battery left in my phone.

  Oh dear, the robots were organizing. To nag me.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Familiar Faces

  The road to the police station was awkward. Officer Harrison kept tried to make small talk while I sulked in the back seat.

  The car drove very slowly through the avenue. There was a chance he was doing this on purpose. Dragging out the drive in hopes of… what?

  “Again, sorry about this,” he said. “I know the policy makes no sense, but you should see the amount of death threats about you that people report every day.”

  Pause.

  “On the other hand, don’t look at them.”

  I grunted some affirmative response.

  “So, how’s your mother?”

  Mom, Van, and I had left Lower Cañitas as soon as we could. It was necessary, since the death threats that Officer Harrison thought the police was intercepting were actually slipping through and reaching us through the cracks in the system.

  By that, I meant we got some nasty videos on all our email accounts.

  People can be cruel.

  Mom was having the rougher time with all of this. She had never been one to frequent social media, so she had no idea how things could get when you got enough strangers angry. She spent most of the day staring at the window of our little witness-protection apartment and sighing heavily. Seeing her like that pained me. It was my fault we were in this position, after all.

  Which was why I was trying to do something about it. Wandering into the Financial District, getting into fights with mysterious drones, and bugging spies.

  “She´s fine,” I told Officer Harrison. I was not in the mood to talk to him.

  “Is the security at your safe place doing its job?” he inquired. “I know some guys in the FBI. If someone is slacking I could give them a call and have your security tripled in a day.”

  It was very hard to remain angry at Officer Harrison. The man was just so… paternal. Not that I knew a lot about fathers; mine had died from an Akz overdose when I was two.

  Harrison was the only police officer I knew who truly cared about the street rats that grew on the Lower Cañitas District. He kept tabs on them (on us), tried to be there when they ended up with too many Strikes and assisted with the soccer games of the younger ones. That kind of thing.

  I knew a couple of gang members who could’ve easily taken a shot at Harrison several times, but they pretended either not to see him or their pistols jammed at the last second.

  He was that kind of person. On the other hand though, the interest he kept on my family was always a bit strange. He wasn’t my father by any means.

  “The security is fine,” I said. I let out a deep sigh and gave up on my anger. Fuming wouldn’t get me out of jail sooner. “We have two FBI agents hanging outside our door all day, and a small army of surveillance drones surrounding the building checking for snipers. I also found the signal of a satellite running interference on the local radio waves, in case someone manages to find our coordinates and launch a bunker-busting missile our way. I’d say we’re pretty safe, excluding an actual army invasion or the like.”

  Harrison winced. “They told you all this?”

  “Let’s say they did.” I smiled innocently. I had been talking to a friend of mine who claimed to be the best hacker in the world. He had taught me a thing or two. I was still a long way away from being more than just a script kiddie, but I was getting better.

  The tactical stuff was just the inevitable consequence of hanging out with Walpurgis and Rylena.

  Thinking of my girlfriend’s in-game avatar made me wince. Inevitably, the conversation diverged in her direction.

  “I heard you got a girlfriend,” Officer Harrison said. “That girl who was with you during the Rune Event.”

  “Yeah.” Irene Monferrer had saved the asses of the entire team several times and I was alive only because of her help —and the help of all my friends.

  Still, I hadn’t heard anything from her for at least two months now. She wouldn’t answer my calls, she wouldn’t log in to Rune Universe. The only clue I had she was still alive had happened less than a week ago when her father appeared in the news. He had been a local politician before the Event and was now running for San Mabrada’s mayor. She stood right there beside him when the reporters started their
interviews. She was wearing a business suit and carried that heavy frown she had when thinking of a plan.

  I knew that girl. She was playing at something dangerous and I had no idea what.

  Then again, I was playing at something dangerous, too. We lived in interesting times.

  It was a bit much to share with Officer Harrison, though. What I said instead was:

  “We’re in a long-distance relationship. You know. With things the way they are…”

  “Yeah, I understand that,” he laughed loudly and then looked at me with worried eyes. “I’m sorry that you’re going through all this, Cole.”

  “So am I, Officer Harrison,” I told him. “To be honest, I’m a bit surprised you don’t care about the ‘revealing humanity to unknown alien species’ move I pulled.”

  He shrugged. “People have been scared of different things for as long as I can remember, Cole. Wars, famine, diseases. Yeah, people were a bit crazy in the days after the Event. But most of the rational folks have already moved on with their lives. We have feared a lot of things that turned out to be nothing in the past.”

  He had a point. The Event had brought a lot of panic and civil unrest to the world, but it had faded quickly. We had gotten a couple of “messages” from outside the Solar System in the early days, but then all communications had ceased. The consensus, after a year, was that either all alien civilizations were not advanced enough for sustained interstellar chitchat, or we just didn’t matter a lot in the grand scheme of things. The fact that we had no idea what those messages said helped a lot with those views.

  It may have been a bleak idea, but it sure as hell kept the markets moving.

  God is in heaven. All is well with the world.

  Officer Harrison stopped the car. I looked out of the window. We were still in the middle of a busy avenue, not even close to the police department. There was a black car behind us, the kind of inconspicuous brand that completely fails to hide its bulletproof windows and wheels.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Harrison.

  I’M RECEIVING A CARGO EXCHANGE REQUEST, HARRISON, came the voice of the officer’s car. THE OTHER CAR IS OFFERING TO TAKE ALL DELIVERY RISKS UPON ITS DEPARTMENT. I THINK IT’S QUITE REASONABLE.