“It’s already been done,” Detective Heart said. He rummaged under the table and pulled out a tiny plastic box. “The procedure went on as we spoke. Now all we have to do is check what we must. Excuse us for a moment please.”
They spent the next few minutes hoarsely whispering to each other, locked in a conversation out of which Ben was only able to catch a short phrase, “have to print it out for you now”. After that, Inspector Braggs left abruptly, and Ben stayed with the Detective.
“Look,” he said to Detective Heart. “About last night, this dungeon thing we did, it was technically not a crime, okay? I mean it was a crime, alright, by the laws of Albion, which is a virtual Clockworld state, and it’s all a game anyway, right? It lets you, say, break into a prison and free someone, and if you got away with it, there was no crime, it doesn’t count. Right?”
“What, you mean some sort of Dreamweb activities?” The Detective’s sleepy eyes regarded Ben from underneath his grizzled eyebrows. “Nah, son, we’re not allowed to access those memories. Just your movements in the real world, and your contacts, this kind of thing. The Web stuff is apparently better protected by the laws of privacy than the real world stuff, huh? Well, whatcha know.”
Detective Heart fidgeted and shifted around, his chair creaking. Then the antique pseudoplastic door whooshed open, and the long Inspector squeezed in, a stack of freshly printed pages in his hands. He dropped the paper in the Detective’s lap, and they all sat in silence for a while, waiting while both policemen got up to date.
“Look, this Mister Reaper, I don’t think he’s involved,” Ben blurted out. “I know my meetings with him may seem like — ”
“Mister who?” Inspector Braggs asked him.
The Detective looked up from the stack of papers, then looked at the Inspector, then leafed through the papers again, then looked up, his eyebrows raised.
“I mean, he did buy a couple choppers from us,” Ben stalled. “And yes, he did mention he wants to buy us out, but then — ”
“There’s no Mister Reaper here, kid,” Detective Heart interrupted him. “No one by that name.”
“You said the choppers?” The Inspector sat with his eyes squeezed nearly shut, looking at Ben through narrow slits, reviewing something on a virtual screen on the inside of his eyelids. “According to the information we have, the two motorcycles you sold recently were purchased by the local branch of the Church of New Faith and Awakening, the same folks you served a couple years back, for some kind of a fueled vehicle festival. Is this right?”
He opened his eyes and looked at Ben.
“Umm,” Ben stalled again. “Y-yes, I suppose so. I mean, I didn’t know whom he represented actually. The Church? Could be, why not?”
Except it couldn’t be, and Ben really hoped the matter wasn’t written right across his face now. He suspected why Mr. Reaper and the memories related to him were filtered from the scan. The cyborg fellow in his super-expensive limo was a DC. Digital Citizens were a matter of the Dreamweb, they weren’t even supposed to be found outside of it. So the little black thing scanning his brain must have thought Ben’s meetings with said Mr. Reaper happened in the Web, not in the Wakeworld, and thus they had to be filtered from the memories these cops were able to browse through.
Faith though? Impossible. Mr. Reaper was a Dead Creep who broke out of his Dreamweb prison. The cyborg represented everything the people of the Church ever hated and feared. If any of them would meet him for real, Ben thought, they’d burn Mr. Reaper at the stake, not equip him with a super-expensive limo hovercar. This part made no sense. It was very wrong.
“Here though.” Detective Heart rummaged through his stack of printed paper and fished out a page with faint circular strokes outlining a familiar clockwork device. “Care to explain to us what this is?”
It was a blueprint for the Animatron, the device Baron Plunkett had on his back. Later carried away by an unknown agency, and never seen again.
The device similar to the ones employed by Divine Kingdom in combat.
A Pan Asian thing, same as ninjas.
Ben sighed and started to explain.
He got home after dusk, tired and hungry, although full of the potent police coffee that made him twitchy. Ben’s father was in the kitchen. He’d already heard the grim news from the police.
“This cop friend of yours just left, son,” the old Harry said. The Chopper King robbed of his kingdom. He also seemed tired. And quite angry.
“Yes, Dad,” Ben said. “Sorry, they had to install some surveillance here.”
“What do you mean, surveillance? Cameras? Are you insane?”
“Relax, Dad.” Ben sighed. He quoted the Inspector: “It’s all some infra-red electromagnetic band recognition stuff, and no human eyes will ever see it. It’s only there to call a droid response team if someone breaks into our apartment. They think I’ve seen too much, and someone wants me silenced. On this Baron Plunkett case, I mean. They think we two may be in danger.”
“Robots.” His father chewed his hollow cheek. “Robots want the two of us dead. Well, that’s even better. You listen here, son.”
He bent over the unfolded kitchen table and beckoned Ben closer.
“Whoever did this,” his father told him as Ben leaned in. “No matter the insurance, no matter if they’re coming for us next or not. Even if they don’t, you have to promise me this.”
He looked at Ben expectantly. Ben looked back at his father and shrugged.
“I can’t promise before you tell me,” he said.
“Promise me this,” the old Harry croaked. “Whoever did this, you go after them, and you hit them hard. For us both, son. Hit them like a fifty-ton lorry. You hear me? Hit them hard. So hard they’ll never. Ever. Rise. Again.”
He struck the table to accentuate each one of his final words. Ben sighed once more, and then nodded.
“I will, Dad,” he said. “I hope I can.”
A steady green light was blinking above their heads, a light on a small white disc which wasn’t there earlier.
Chapter 8: Infiltrators
Yet again I found myself swimming through a dark, cold, and all-engulfing mass of saltwater, the only source of light a blue round blotch dancing far above my head, its contours roughly circular. The Moon?
It all clicked together the next instant, and I realized I was swimming through an underwater passage straight towards Daphne’s hideout, the grotto the dim light of which I could see through the round opening above, the dancing blotch I took for the Moon at first. As I swam, this ragged Moon grew and grew until it became the ceiling, and I emerged from underwater, quite drenched and hungry for a gulp of air.
They were both waiting for me: Diego-Joanna was also there. They had a large patch of white sand in the middle of the grotto cleared of debris and all covered with crisscrossing lines now, with candles burning all around like the two of them were about to perform some kind of a black mass.
“Man, you’re trying your magic in here or something?” I asked Diego. To be honest, I wanted some time alone with Daphne, and my ex-employee’s presence wasn’t a very pleasant surprise.
“Man, please don’t call me ‘man’,” Joanna retorted in her eerily feminine voice. “I mean, gotta stay in character, right? We all gotta earn our keep.”
“Well, fine,” I said. “So what’s with the pentagram?”
Daphne walked straight towards me then, carefully stepping around the drawings in the sand. She hugged me and kissed me long and hard. Then she said: “Now, Ben, this is no pentagram. This is a floor plan.”
“Oh.”
“This is the Royal Keep,” Joanne explained. “Your local arsenal.”
“Right,” I said, still not understanding much.
“We’re breaking into it tonight,” Daphne said.
“We what?” Now I really felt lost. “People, come on! Are you insane? This is the most guarded place in the entire Queenstanding, no?”
“Yes!” Daphne said, smiling mischievously.
“Of course, man,” Joanna said. “Isn’t it like, the whole point?”
“But, what for?”
Daphne shrugged and said: “We’re going to La Republique, eh? Are you with us or…”
“Yes, yes,” I said. “So what?”
“We’re going to need weapons. And supplies. And equipment. What else?”
“And what’s the best place to find them?” Joanna added. “It’s the Royal Keep, yo!”
I simply stood there and stared at their candlelit drawing, not really believing they meant it.
“Okay, so, if you’re with us,” Daphne said, “let’s discuss how we get in.”
“The first part is gonna be easy,” Joanna picked up. “We still have us three nice redcoat uniforms, and this gets us where?”
“Past the main gate.” My girl drew a line in the sand, retracing a previous one from their time without me. “Then on through the guard barracks on the first floor. Then down this corridor and, if we’re lucky, straight into the central tower.”
“If we’re lucky?” I asked.
“You can never be too sure!” Daphne gave me another wry smile. “Don’t worry, Ben. We’re experienced kids, eh? We can handle this.”
I examined the plan.
“Guard barracks?” I asked. “What if someone amongst the guards, naturally found in those guard barracks, recognizes me, a Journeyman Mechanic? I received a medal just lately, you know.”
“Exactly!” she replied. “You’re a hero! You’ll simply tell them you swapped the class.”
“From a Journeyman? To a basic redcoat?”
Daphne merely shrugged.
“So what? Tell them your story. Tell them you’ve developed a taste for combat instead of crafting. You did well at that foray. You realized melee is your real calling. How does all of it sound?”
“To me, it sounds totally convincing,” Joanna said.
“And what happens if they ask about you?” I replied. “The new faces?”
“We are reinforcements, what else.” Daphne shrugged it off again. “We are expected. Queenstanding is in dire need of reinforcements after all.”
“Okay, fine,” I said, feeling totally underequipped to argue with two wishful thinkers at once. “So we get to the main tower, then what?”
Daphne pointed at the drawing again. “The arsenal is basically on top of this very tower,” she said. “The problem is this spiral staircase is well guarded. There’s a nook at twelve, three, six, and nine o’clock, along the ascent. Each one with an elite Royal Guard stationed within. These boys aren’t your typical redcoats. It’s past the redcoat clearance. If they spot us, we’ll be recognized as intruders the same moment. And, most likely, attacked on sight.”
“And certainly die,” I said. “For I know what an elite guard is. These fellows are Knightwalker Lite. Breastplate, greaves, and boots, everything rigged with clockwork for enhanced combat potential. In close combat, they flail about like a windmill. If we try to flee, they have small ballistae mounted on their backs. All they have to do is bend forward a bit, and then just spray these huge bolts at us until we look like hedgehogs.”
“What’s a hedgehog?” Joanna asked.
“An extinct animal,” Daphne explained. “Sort of like a rat with lots of needles stuck into it.”
“Oh.”
“So then, how are we supposed to deal with those elite guards?” I asked.
“We won’t.” Daphne smiled at me again. “There’s an elevator in the middle. This round cage. It’s used by those elite guardsmen, to roll up to their barracks and back down.”
“And you think it will just take us up there?”
“Of course not. Its controls can only be activated by a key built into an elite guardsmen’s right glove. No way to make the cage move otherwise,” Daphne said.
“Great,” I said. “All we have to do is not only engage an elite redcoat and kill him, but also cut a hand off him and use it to start the lift cabin.”
“No need to kill anyone,” Daphne said, patting me on the shoulder. “You’re so murderous today, Ben. What happened?”
“Oh, nothing,” I lied.
“His workshop got torched,” Joanna said.
“Oh my god. By whom?”
“By ninjas.”
“Ninjas?!” Daphne looked at me, her eyes wide. “Pan Asian Coalition again?”
I merely shrugged. All I could say was everything was a bloody mess by then. And I wasn’t all that murderous. Whatever had made me care until now, it started to malfunction.
“How do you propose to do it without killing then?” I asked. “Talk some sense into the redcoats? Seduce them using your charms?”
“See this small space here?” she asked, pointing somewhere behind the lift cage with a stick. “This tiny spot? That’s where the elevator cage’s counterweight is.”
“And?”
“Well, you’re a mechanic, you figure it out!” Daphne said.
“When the cage goes up, the counterweight goes down,” Joanna explained. “And when the cage goes down…”
“The counterweight goes up, yeah,” I said. “So you want to grab this thing and ride all the way to the top holding onto it. This is your plan?”
“Pretty much.” Daphne smiled. “The problem is, from there we’ll have to improvise. We have no idea what’s up there, in terms of traps and locks, we don’t even have a floor plan. That’s where we’re going to need you, Ben.”
I examined the drawing again, recollecting the million doubts I had about this break-in and took a deep breath.
“Well, first of all,” I said. “How do you know they’ll be using the elevator at the time we need? Or even using it at all? Next, I’m sure there’ll be lots of elite guards in there, on top of the locks and traps. I mean, their barracks are there as well. I’m sure they keep them pretty well manned, at all times.”
Daphne was staring downward. At first, I thought she was examining the map, trying to figure out something, but then I realized my girl was merely thinking, hard.
“Okay, Ben,” she said finally. “You’ll have to trust me on this. They will use the cage around this time. A lot. And all of them — or at least the most of them — will be going down. When we hit the arsenal, it’s going to be severely undermanned.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“You’ll have to trust me on this,” Daphne told me. “Okay? Do you trust me?”
I stared at her for a while, and then shrugged. “Well,” I said. “The worst thing that happens, we’ll be despawned, and I’ll spend a few nights outside the Web. The police, they said I should, anyway.”
“Yes.” Daphne held my stare and kept looking in my eyes. “Joanna here told me about the police. This is why I cannot tell you. We don’t know what they put into you, or who may be listening to what we’re discussing right now, eh? We better leave this part out.”
I huffed, then puffed, then shrugged again.
“So,” Joanna said. “Any hardware you may need up there in the arsenal, man?”
“I can procure it myself,” I said.
“No need. I’ll get it for you. Less suspicious. Harder to trace.”
I puffed once more. “Well, fine,” I said. “Go on. Here’s the list.”
Advanced Lockpicks x1
Frost Essence x5
Acid Flask x5
Nuts and Bolts x25
Shoemaker’s Hammer, Iron x1
Small Pickaxe, Steel x1
Retort, Glass x1
Gas Burner x1
“Got it!” Joanna tapped her long finger against her temple, showing the list was secure inside her head. “I’m not sure about those Lockpicks though. They don’t sound like a piece of hardware you can just buy at the local marketplace.”
“Neither are the Retort and the Gas Burner,” I said. “Sadly, this part will hardly be possible without killing
. You do understand who will carry this stuff?”
Daphne and Joanna exchanged a look, and then the Elven girl merely shrugged. “Okay,” Joanna said. “If it comes down to it, I’m in.”
“Fine by me,” I said, although it wasn’t fine at all.
I’d just issued a death warrant to at least one Alchemist. Worse off, I’d betrayed my own kind, and another Journeyman Mechanic of Albion would have to die tonight, just because my own set of Lockpicks was already spent.
Then again, it was all just a game, right? And no one would die for real.
Still, it felt terribly wrong.
I spent the rest of the short Clockworld day in the Pit, drinking ale and ruminating over this new suicidal mission, ten times more suicidal than our dungeon break-in. I had no idea how far La Republique was, and how hard it was to get there from here. Daphne probably knew. And maybe she was right; maybe we needed a few toys from the Royal Keep’s arsenal. The Web was on the brink of war after all, was it not?
Then again, she felt so distant from me this time. Was it because of my contact with the police in the Wakeworld? She wasn’t telling me everything, this I knew for certain.
What if Mr. Reaper was right, and I couldn’t really trust her, for Daphne’s only reason for existence was to entertain me, and little else? What if I were to be despawned tonight? If I were to miss half a week of Web time, how big would the distance between us grow?
None of these questions I could really answer, so I just sat there and hoped Joanna, or Diego, or whatever the hell this virtual Elven girl was, would turn up on time with all the supplies I requested.
The three of us met next to the drawbridge as dusk fell, right next to the Keep’s main entrance, each one of us dressed like a common redcoat guard.
At first, it seemed we’d get into the Royal Keep in no time. I pulled the drawbridge access lever, making the giant cogs on the other side creak and the chains rattle, so this metal plank, wide and strong enough to hold a loaded military wagon, began to slowly creep forward across the chasm surrounding the Keep and serving as its impassable moat.
“Nice,” Joanna remarked. “Technology, yo.”
Clang! Halfway there, the drawbridge stopped and refused to extend any further, no matter how many times I pulled the handle. A big copper lantern went on above the gate instead, equipped with a mirror the way its light shone straight in our faces, blinding and confusing the three of us.
Enter the Clockworld Page 19
