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

by Hugo Huesca

  Too real, I thought. This is just ridiculous. What even is the point?

  Sure, exploding a smuggling ring didn’t bother me at all, and sure, it was hypocritical to feel like this. But the smugglers were designated mooks. Their entire point was to be exploded by players during quests, so they didn’t have any redeeming features.

  Not like you ever looked for one.

  This NPC was scared, and vulnerable. Hell, I knew how that felt.

  “So, the crew is thinking you could give us trouble if you talk to the Federation about what happened today,” I told him. “They’re thinking we should just throw you out of the lock and let space do its thing.”

  Yep, that’s real terror right there, I thought. After all, he knew how being spaced felt, since he had experienced it just minutes ago.

  “Myself, I was thinking perhaps you wouldn’t do that. Perhaps you’ll play ball. See, you don’t want to tell the Federation about today. They’d end up finding out about your involvement with Lion Fang.”

  If he had any energy left, he’d have nodded vigorously. Still, I wasn’t done.

  “The way I see it, you’re in a great position. No more Lion Fang to blackmail you, so you can start anew with the Federation.”

  Again, he tried to nod. Even fake a smile. His face was too burned for that.

  “See, buddy, we ended up doing you a favor, didn’t we?”

  “Aghhh-uuuh…”

  Let’s go with yes.

  “So, you don’t want to do anything to hurt people who helped you out, right?”

  Jarred tried to nod, then thought better of it and shook his head no.

  “Good. Because those people know where you live, know your name, and have enough dirt on you to bury you again.”

  Fearful silence. It was getting old quickly.

  “Good. Glad we see eye to eye.” I turned to leave. “But remember. You owe us a favor.”

  I left the medbay feeling vaguely like John Derry must feel on a good day. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation, so I decided I’d forget about it as soon as I could. There were other things going on.

  For example, Walpurgis was running my way.

  “Cole, we have trouble,” she told me. “It’s your sister, someone’s calling her. Asking to talk to you.”

  “What?” My blood froze in my veins. Funny how the body works. I wasn’t tired anymore. Just very, very scared.

  “Wait.” Her eyes unfocused and she was very still for an excruciating bunch of seconds. I tried hard not to shake my friend’s avatar around.

  What’s going on?

  Then she was back. I couldn’t read her expression, but it was grim. “It’s Martinez.”

  I said something an NPC would never say.

  “Cole, she has your mother.”

  My mind went blank. I looked like a statue. In the real world, my hands were closed hard around the edges of the table, hard enough that it was painful, but it didn’t even register in my head.

  “What’s going on?” I managed to ask. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted to say, but it was all I could muster. My heart rate began slowly rising, and the sound of my own heartbeat threatened to drown out Walpurgis’ words:

  “I think she went to the FBI—before I called her to tell her you were alive,” my friend said. “Martinez must’ve caught her on the return trip… Your mom didn’t know she was a traitor…”

  You know something? Absolute terror has a particular taste in your mouth. Metallic, and a bit like blood, only heavier. Most people won’t pay attention to said flavor because there’s something more important going on.

  I didn’t know what my mouth tasted like. There was only one thing I could pay attention to. An obvious question.

  “What does she want?”

  “What?”

  “Martinez,” I said. “What does she want? She’d never acted before, but now she has. There has to be something she wants.”

  Walpurgis nodded. She knew what I was talking about. “She wants you. An exchange.”

  My friend didn’t say what she was thinking, but I could see it in the way she couldn’t held my gaze. She knew, if I went to Martinez, I wasn’t going to survive.

  We’ll see about that.

  “Where is she?”

  A second of immobility. My hands twitched with anxiety. I also knew what she was going to say before she said it. Because, in her place, I’d have done the same.

  “Uh… Your sister’s not telling,” Walpurgis said. “She… well. She knows you’ll go and get yourself killed. To be honest, I wouldn’t have told you, even if she did.”

  There was a lot I could tell both of them. One was my sister, the other was like a sister. So I knew what to tell them.

  I could say, “This is not your decision to make.”

  Or perhaps, “I have a plan, don’t worry.”

  I said neither of those things. Instead, I opened my Options menu and my fingers flew towards the Log-Out button.

  “Cole!” Walpurgis exclaimed. “What are you doing?”

  “Tell Van I’m going to bring our mother back safe,” I told her. Then the screen faded to black.

  I removed the old mindjack. The real world felt gray to me, between the panic and the anger. Less real. No one could die in Rune, right? Players could respawn, and NPCs weren’t truly alive. Here, people didn’t have that luxury.

  “Everything OK?” asked Derry. He was finishing the last touches of a steaming jar of coffee-like substance. “You’re pale.”

  You’ll need backup, a quiet part of my brain whispered, trying to make itself be heard. You’ll die if you go alone.

  Ask the Devil for a match and he’ll set fire to your house. I knew I couldn’t tell Derry; he’d never let me leave the apartment. He wasn’t a friend, he was a guy who had kidnapped me because I was useful to his plans, and because his enemies wanted me dead and he wanted to hinder them in any way he could.

  If he knew what was really going on, he’d either knock me out or tie me up again. Perhaps both.

  “Dorsett?” His voice was low and guttural, not threatening and not really curious, right in between a question and an order.

  I knew what I had to tell him. Well, at least the gist of it. I’d have to pull everything else out of my ass.

  I’d love it if Rune’s skills worked in the real world.

  “We spoke to Jenkins,” I told him. “We know where the base is.”

  No way you can lie to this guy, he’s a trained pro. And yet, even the baddest of the bad would not look to the obvious if you gave them exactly what they wanted to hear, served on a silver platter.

  “Good to know,” Derry said. “I wasn’t so sure this… Quest of yours was going to net us results.”

  No hint at all that he wasn’t buying it. Still, the most important part came next.

  “We need to get out of here,” I said. There was no point in keeping my expression straight, and I wasn’t a skilled liar. So I didn’t try to act like I wasn’t scared. “Right now.”

  Now his eyebrow rose a notch, bridging his forehead with rows of wrinkles. “Do we now? Why?”

  “Because you were right all along,” I told him. Exactly what this kind of person wanted to hear. “About Rune. Everything. The NPCs are all part of the same software… the same AI. It spoke to me, just like it did last year. Wants us to stop the CIL. No idea why, didn’t say. It will take them out of the Signal for us, give us their files directly. But first it wants my mindjack…”

  “What? You already have a mindjack.”

  Wasn’t the best of lies, but I wasn’t thinking straight. Either way, he wasn’t calling my bluff yet, he simply appeared confused.

  “My other mindjack,” I explained, thinking on my ass faster than I ever had. My heart was beating so fast it felt like it would come out of my mouth at any time. That would be a great image. “The one I used last year. The AI said I had to use that one, because… Because otherwise it wouldn’t be sure it was speaking to me.”

&nbs
p; When telling a terrible lie, it really, really helps if you say something the other party is already suspecting. The sweetest phrase anyone can hear is, “You were right all along.”

  “You were right all along,” I told him as I slumped forward. “It’s alive. And dangerous. But it can stop the CIL for us, all of them. Dervaux, Keles…”

  Derry didn’t move from behind the table. His face was pale, but his eyes irradiated a kind of febrile light. “And it says it will help us?”

  “Only because we’re already doing what it wants us to do.”

  The only hope my lie had going was that it spoke to the way Derry saw the world. No friendships, no kinship between persons. Only people with a goal, willing to use others to get what they wanted. The way of the Cold War. You couldn’t trust anyone, but as long as your goals aligned… you had allies. If only for a bit.

  “So, your mindjack.” He thought about it. “Makes sense. It has your metrics coded into it, right?”

  Uh… No? Not really, only enough to save my account preferences.

  “Yes! You’re right!”

  He nodded. He spoke mostly to himself. “It’s as I feared, then. We’ll have to shut this thing down… It puts humanity at risk.”

  Mental note, nip that in the bud if you have a chance later. If you’re still alive, Cole, buddy.

  Derry’s eyes focused on me again. “Get in the car, Dorsett.”

  “Don’t have to tell me again.” I swallowed hard, fighting the knot in my throat, and went for the drone in the garage. My mouth tasted something not unlike blood.

  So we went to get my real backup.

  STRAP IN, CHIEF, WE’RE READY FOR MORE FANTASTIC ACTION! BY THE WAY, COLE, I’M SO GLAD YOU WEREN’T ALLERGIC TO YOUR MEDS. IF MY PROGRAMMING ALLOWED ME TO UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF DEATH I’M SURE I WOULD’VE FELT VERY SAD FOR YOUR PASSING—

  Derry muted the drone with a lazy gesture of his hand. Neither of us was really in the mood for the hollering.

  I had no idea where exactly Martinez wanted to meet. There was no way I was going to pry the information out of Walpurgis or Van, either. They were smart girls, who knew there was no way in hell I was going to get out of this one if did what Martinez wanted.

  The way I thought about it, Keles had her on his weird cult payroll. Probably did with her the same thing he did to normal people like the guys I had met last night. So, Keles was with her, or at least his people were.

  It was strange, knowing someone hated you personally, when you had never done anything to them. Derry, last year, made it perfectly clear there was nothing personal there. He was only doing his duty (or his weird interpretation of duty) and he would have been happy not to kill any of us if we stopped meddling with the unknown forces of the universe.

  Keles wanted me, by name. Martinez had given him the means.

  Let’s meet, asshole.

  Martinez knew where the safe house was. She had lived there, same as me, for several months. For a reason I couldn’t fathom, she had chosen not to act there. She had to drag me out to the CIL’s territory. Then she disappeared.

  Well, there was no way in hell she wasn’t watching the complex right now. Zero. If she knew I was there, she’d get ready. Perhaps she was already waiting for me, perhaps I’d get lucky and guess her location in the first try.

  Then, when you do, what happens next?

  This is the real world. Any skill I may have in a videogame definitely didn’t apply here. I’d had a taste of what being shot at really felt like, and even the memory sent shivers down my spine.

  Even then, I wasn’t going to go in without a plan. I thought of one, even if it was incredibly crappy. I’d get there, agree to the exchange, and hope hard that Keles wanted to extract me the same way he had tried to do before.

  If he refused to let Mom go, I’d threaten to jump out of the building. He wanted me alive, right? Said so himself.

  I’ll tell him I’ll jump headfirst into the asphalt, so no power on Earth can bring me back.

  It was the nastiest thought I had had in a long time. But it was my only leverage.

  Leverage only works if the enemy believes you’ll use it, if it comes to it. Again, something that Rylena could have said. Was I really prepared for something like this? Was I that kind of person?

  I guess we’re going to find out.

  The trip to the safe house was fast, even with my vague directions. The roads were empty except for the automated trucks carrying supplies to feed an entire city when the morning came.

  With Derry at the wheel (it wasn’t even legal anymore to have working steering wheels) the black sedan dodged and squeezed itself between the trucks in ways that its normal programming would never have allowed.

  It crossed the huge distance that separated us from the safe house (we were on the other side of the city) in minutes, which would’ve been hours at any other time, with any other driver. The city was a blur in the windows. A blur of metal, concrete, and neon holograms.

  Could’ve been all a cardboard cutout for all I cared. It didn’t feel any more real than the asteroid belt of Taren IV or the long, cramped corridors of Argus Station. The only thing that was real was at the end of the road.

  “We’re two minutes away,” said Derry. “You’re sure you can get in and out without attracting attention?”

  Of course the man wanted to discuss tactics. The reason he had even stayed alive for so long was probably because he tried as best as he could to control all around him. Right now, he believed the FBI was generally infiltrated, but he didn’t know the names of the compromised persons, which was the other bit of information I’d refrained from revealing. He had no idea Martinez would be watching.

  “I’ve gotten in and out a hundred times before,” I told him. I gave my voice an annoyed pitch, like a teenager giving his parents some attitude when they doubt him. “This hour of the night, Mom and Van are asleep, and the security system is riddled all to hell with bugs.”

  He only grunted in response, his eyes still fixed on the road.

  Then, he stopped the car and turned to face me. My heart stopped. Did he know?

  “You recognize this place?” he asked me. We were pulled over near a mega-mall filled with theaters and cinemas for rich people, not two blocks away from the safe house. Open space, lots of angles and forks in the road. “You know how to get here from the safe house?”

  “Yes,” I told him. Perhaps I hadn’t been made after all.

  “Anything happens, I’ll be waiting here,” he told me. “If the FBI gets suspicious, wait an hour or so and return here. I’m not bringing you any closer, or the the security drones will get me on tape.”

  He’s still trying to cover his bases. Exactly like I’d tried to do this entire time. And look where it got us.

  “OK.”

  Derry nodded. I opened the door to jump out of the car and his hand wrapped around my forearm. “Don’t fuck up, kid. In case you’ve forgotten, people could die if you make a mistake.”

  Trust me, asshole… I know.

  “OK. Be back in a few,” I said.

  The complex was only two blocks away, but felt like walking a marathon. The city around me was dead and cold. San Mabrada wasn’t a night-city, at least not somewhere other than downtown. The only movement around here was the occasional hologram flickering in and out of some gray office building. It was like entering a ghost town, except the ghosts wore bright colors and skimpy clothing.

  After the black sedan was out of sight and I was reasonably sure it wasn’t following me, I started running.

  By the time I reached the safe house, I had started to pant and sweat. I swore some vague promise to begin resistance training if I survived this night.

  Entry into the complex was carefully regulated by security software. Said software was programmed to keep me inside the safe house and everyone else out. Whatever was going on internally, updating the software after a day or two of confusion simply wasn’t on the FBI’s list of priorities.
r />   I walked in like I owned the place.

  Elevator lift. Empty, silent corridors. A lot of laser beams, a lot of scanners that didn’t at all resemble the ones at Argus customs, but were the same thing, really. Empty, silent corridors again. I reached my safe house door. At the other side of the hall, Martinez and Doyle’s hideout was closed. No one here, not a single sound. The silence of an empty building is different than the silence of a place with a lot of people being quiet.

  Where are you, Martinez?

  I had no idea what to do next. I was betting it all on the faint hope that she and Keles were watching, but there was still something nagging at me. The fact that Martinez could’ve acted at any time while I was living in the same roof as her—but hadn’t.

  It made no sense. But this was my only option.

  What’re you going to tell Derry if this turns out to be a dead end? He’d know I was bullshitting the instant he put on a mindjack and spoke to Beard and the others. Well, with any luck they were checking on General Jenkins right now. Perhaps Derry would forget about the ancient, super-powerful AI he was sure was going to eat humanity up or something.

  I felt like laughing in the dark corridor.

  Instead, I walked into the apartment as the last scanner washed its invisible net around me and deemed me worthy.

  The place was empty. Without Mom and Van around, I realized for the first time how small it was. Not like our home had been a mansion compared to this one, but this felt incomplete. The way one of those livable capsules that were all the rage in Japan never ended up feeling like home.

  Where are you, Martinez?

  The walls and roof were filled with invisible cameras. The agents had access to them, surely someone had to be watching. Literally, just download a bot, order it to check the video-feed and ping your smartphone the second something moves. Anyone who knew what a computer was could do it. Martinez had been a hacker.

  There was no way she wasn’t watching. And yet, the complex was empty.

  I didn’t know what scared me the most: finding her or not doing so.

  I grabbed my Visage mindjack and tossed it inside my backpack filled with scripts and burner berries.