His anger rushes out of him. He rises to leave, mulling over his options.
“Gun?” Li Yuan stands in the Warrior pose, her back to him.
“Yeah?”
“If there’s anyone who can get intel out of Billy’s vault, I think it’s you. I just want you to know that. For what it’s worth.”
• • •
“My team and I are infiltrating Collusion Underground,” Gun tells his father. “We obtained access to a vault that contains intel on Global and Project Renascentia.”
Anderson scoffs, spearing Gun with scrutiny. “How did you obtain this access?”
“The Dread Twins have an array of contacts.” It’s not an outright lie. The twins do have a lot of contacts.
“You might as well storm Fort Knox while you’re at it. I don’t care how brilliant your team is or if you have vault access. It’ll take weeks to develop the software needed to survive that place. You need to focus your efforts on convincing Li Yuan to give up the Dome’s location.”
“I will,” Gun lies. He doesn’t want to put the lives of the Dome in his father’s hands any more than Li Yuan does. “But I can’t spend twenty-four hours a day trying to grind her down.”
Anderson narrows his eyes. “You’re getting soft. I don’t like it. Your time with the Hom girl has changed you. Your affection for her is clouding your judgement where her mother is concerned.”
“No, my affection for Anderson Arms is guiding me. Li Yuan and her family will be valuable assets. We’re in danger of pissing that all away if you don’t start showing her some respect.”
“All the assets in the world won’t mean a damn thing if Reginald Winn is allowed to walk free.”
“Which is why I’m going to break into Collusion Underground. We need all the help we can get in the battle against Global.”
“Fine.” Anderson waves a dismissive hand. “See what you can dig up in Collusion Underground.” His voice hardens. “Don’t think it will change my mind, though. Li Yuan Hom doesn’t leave her suite until she gives me the intel to bring down Reginald Winn.”
Gun doesn’t bother responding. In the last twenty-four hours, he’s pondered the merits of the access avatar. There’s no guarantee it will yield any good intel. That being said, he knows full well Li Yuan won’t give up the Dome’s location. The only way to break the stalemate between her and Anderson is to gather evidence against the Winns by some other means. When Li Yuan’s intel is no longer needed, Anderson will release her. Once freed, Li Yuan will bring Sulan to him.
• • •
For the next several weeks, Nate and the Dread Twins apply themselves to fabricating avatars to combat the Black Tech in Billy’s vault. Gun spends his time following Sulan’s Vex circuit. After Infinity Stadium, the cybermercs are on high alert for him. He wants to contact Sulan, but doesn’t risk it. He can’t help her or Li Yuan if he gets caught.
He attends every one of Sulan’s public appearances, even going so far as to buy a ticket to the Crawler show. No one on his team is surprised when Imugi shows up and douses everyone in Dream Dust. Gun suspects the Vex show host might be Claudine’s confidant, or at the very least a business partner of some sort. Nate, who monitors the event, yanks off his Vex set before the Dream Dust is administered.
He manages to speak to her and Billy once at an anarchist rally. The conversation is shorter than he would have liked. He hoped to glean more intel on Project Renascentia, and perhaps even get Billy to tell him the secret to breaking into his Collusion Underground vault, but Claudine and her mercs cut the meeting short. Gun barely escaped.
Gun visits Li Yuan every day on the pretense of updating her on what he knows of Sulan. In truth, there’s been an ache deep inside him ever since Sulan was taken. He misses her, plain and simple. Seeing Li Yuan, his only connection to Sulan now, lessons the ache a fraction.
He never bothers asking Li Yuan to give up the location of the Dome. They both know she won’t.
One day, he arrives to find Li Yuan has kicked a hole in the sheetrock to reveal one of the horizontal beams. She has her feet hooked on the beam and does sit ups from a hanging position.
The furniture in the living room has been pushed up against the wall. The coffee and end tables are stacked on the sofa. The love seat has been tipped up on its end and wedged into a corner.
“How goes the hack into Collusion Underground?” she asks, huffing as she curls up and down against the wall.
“We’re close,” Gun tells her. “My team is almost finished with avatars built to combat Black Tech. We’ll be ready to infiltrate in the next day or two.”
“Good work.” She unhooks her feet and hops to the ground, moving to the center of the room. As Gun watches, her body flows in a complicated martial arts pattern. Her limbs move with quick, firm decisiveness. She kicks, block, strikes, and lunges, her body in constant motion. “How’s my daughter?”
“Global has polished her up. She follows a script. She’s probably convincing to anyone who doesn’t know her.”
Li Yuan raises an eyebrow, never ceasing her slowing in her exercise. “What do you see when you look at her on stage?”
“Someone who would rather eat rocks than be in the public limelight.”
The barest smile tugs at Li Yuan’s mouth. “That sounds like my daughter.” She turns away from him, running her finger along a crystal vase. She’s wedged a pricey relic from Pre-‘fault days between sofa cushions.
“Did Sulan . . . did she ever talk much about us?”
Her words come out casual and off-handed, but Gun takes in the tense muscles of her neck and back, of the way she is careful not to look at him. In all the time he spent with Sulan in the Cube, he lost count of the number of times she showed up angry after a fight with Li Yuan.
“When you see Sulan again, ask her about our fight against the Blazers,” he says. “Ask her about the Meat Grinder competition. About our training sessions with the Marstons. About the first time she pegged a guy in the groin.” He walks around, forcing Li Yuan to face him. “Ask her about the endless hours of training she dedicated herself to over the last few months.”
Li Yuan glares at him, but not before Gun sees sorrow flash through her eyes.
“Have Morning Star show her some fighting techniques,” he says softly.
Her nostrils flare. He sees her internal struggle to maintain her glare. He waits for her to snap at him or change the subject, but there’s a sudden shuffle of boots outside the suite door.
Li Yuan’s focus snaps toward the door. She snatches up the crystal vase and drops into a crouch. Gun spins around as his father flings open the door and marches inside. His expression is thunderous.
He takes one look around the disfigured suite, then stomps over to the minibar and slams a tablet down on the counter.
“Watch this,” he growls. “Both of you.”
Gun and Li Yuan don’t make eye contact with one another as they approach the tablet. Even from across the room, Gun recognizes the image on the screen: the shiny white plastic mask with the blue sea serpent crawling up the right side. The mask of Imugi—again.
“You may have succeeded in cutting off my head,” Imugi growls, “but rest assured, another will always grow back. Behold Project Renascentia.”
The screen cuts to live footage of a refugee camp. The camera zooms in on a row of people huddled beneath a lean-to comprised of a disintegrating tarp and old plastic garbage bags. The people lay on their backs in a line, covered by ratty blankets.
From the pallor of their faces, it’s clear they’re sick. They all cough, some of them so violently they spit up blood.
The footage cuts to another camera. The videographer walks through camp, catching hunched over, coughing people on screen. Most are huddled under lean-tos, many with blood spattering the front of their shirts.
On the edge of the camp is a pile of bodies. Most are very old or very young.
Something inside Gun clenches at the sight of the little, lif
eless bodies. He wants very much to break something. Anger boils up his throat, like lava venting from an underground channel.
The angles of Li Yuan’s face have hardened, her eyes blazing. When she looks at Gun, he sees his fury reflected back at him.
“Weep, America,” Imugi says, his shiny mask filling the screen. “One by one, you shall fall by our hand. We shall move into your embittered landscape and remake a better world.”
The broadcast ends, leaving a frozen picture of Imugi’s mask on the screen.
In the silence that follows, Gun hears his own harsh, angry breathing.
“Initial reports are claiming a modified version of the pneumonic plague,” Anderson says.
Gun, absorbed by the horror, forgot his father was still in the room.
“I told you this was coming,” Li Yuan says. Her voice is quiet, but hard enough to grind rocks.
“You could have prevented this.” Anderson stabs a finger at her.
She knocks it away and retreats several steps, watching Anderson the way a wary lioness might watch a lion. Gun tenses.
Anderson looks down in surprise at his hand. Under normal circumstances, flicking away the hand of William Anderson would be a dangerous thing to do. But Gun senses the moment when his father, seeing Li Yuan’s defensive stance, decides to ignore the act.
Instead, he plants his hands on his hips and glares. “Do you hear me, Ms. Hom? These deaths”—he gestures at the tablet—“are on you. If I’d had the location of the Dome, I could have stopped the Winns. I—”
“You would trade the lives of those in the Dome for the lives of these refugees.” Li Yuan, though shorter than Anderson, manages to give the impression of staring down her nose at him. “That is not an acceptable alternative. I will not help you kill or hurt people.”
“I’ll send in a small team,” Anderson says. “My top mercs. They’ll execute the Winns in their sleep.”
Gun sees the lie in his father’s face. He’s about to speak up, but Li Yuan beats him to it.
“There is no sneaking into the Dome. The only way in is to blow a hole in it, or else have someone on the inside initiate an unauthorized opening of the hatch over the landing field.” She shakes her head. “Both actions will bring down swarms of mercenaries. We need to throw the force of Congress against Global. Once I have extracted my husband and my team, we will have all the intel we need to do so.”
“You leave me no choice,” Anderson says. “If you will not give me the intel, I will force it from you.”
Gun has a brief, horrifying vision of Li Yuan’s body bloody and broken beneath the “administrators of influence,” as his father calls them. He can’t let that happen to Sulan’s mother.
“Wait.” Gun steps between them. “My team is close. We’re almost ready to infiltrate Collusion Underground. Give me another forty-eight hours.”
“Don’t get soft, son,” Anderson says. “It doesn’t become you.”
“I’m trying to preserve a valuable relationship for the company,” Gun snaps back. “The Homs have a lot to offer Anderson Arms. You know this.”
“Your only interest is in the girl.”
“Partially,” Gun says. “I believe I can do that by breaking into Collusion Underground. If I can recover the intel, we may have what we need to stop Global. Please, give me forty-eight hours.”
“You have twenty-four.” Anderson turns his stare on Li Yuan, who, Gun is startled to realize, has not relinquished the crystal vase. “You’d better hope my son’s exploits prove fruitful. Rest assured that one way or another, I will obtain the information I need to take down Reginald Winn.”
21
Golems
“Wait until you see this.” Nate proffers his tablet. “You’ve never seen an avatar with a better suit of armor.”
At first glance, the avatar is the same nondescript one Li Yuan gave them. A plain-looking, twenty-something man with light brown hair and a large nose. His khaki pants and brown polo are as unremarkable as the rest of him.
Gun scrolls down to the list of defense Axcents programmed in by Nate and the Dread Twins, revealing an avatar that is anything but normal. The programming is nothing short of stunning. Anti-Mortality, Anti-Touch, Anti-Constrictors . . . the list goes on and on, a defense for every known Black Tech on the market.
Except Dream Dust.
“No defense against Dream Dust?”
“Sorry, bro.” Nate shakes his head. “No code against that yet. The tech is too new. We can probably develop one, but it will take more time than we have.”
“Good thing I stocked up on flumazenil.” Gun claps his friend on the shoulder. “Good work. You and the twins have your own avatars ready, correct?”
Nate grins. “You don’t think we’d let you go into Collusion Underground and have all the fun, do you?”
• • •
From the outside, Collusion Underground looks like a one-story colonial sitting in the middle of a grassy field. Horses graze in the pasture, flicking their ears in curiosity when Gun, Nate, and the Dread Twins arrive in the Vex site.
The four of them wear similar nondescript avatars in khaki pants. The only difference is the color of their polo shirts and the size of their noses. Gun’s nose is, by far, the largest.
“We’re the khaki pants brigade,” Nate says.
The twins crack up at this, chuckling and elbowing Nate. Gun ignores them and heads toward the colonial, leading the group.
As they walk up the long dirt road to the colonial, the horses lift their heads. Each time Gun passes one, the animal’s left ear glows red as it scans him. When his security pass registers, the horse goes back to munching grass.
Nate and the others are granted access as his guests. This process isn’t as easy as it sounds. It required Gun to preregister each of their avatars a week in advance. There were no background checks on his team, as privacy is a large part of the Collusion Underground society, but the lead time on guest registration does make sabotage more difficult.
“What do you think would happen if we didn’t have Billy’s access avatar?” Nate asks.
“I bet those horses shoot laser beams out of their eyes and eject us from the site,” Mage says. “We should send in a dummy avatar to see what happens.”
“I want robot horses,” Lox says. “Can I have one? We can put it outside our apartment.”
“I’ll build you one,” Nate says.
“Don’t bother.” Mage grimaces. “It’ll get stolen or dismantled within hours.”
“Quit being a buzz kill.” Lox elbows his brother.
“Enough,” Gun says. “Time to focus.”
The others fall silent. They pass a total of six different horses by the time they reach the steps to the colonial.
The inside of the building is lined with polished golden wood. It’s three stories tall on the inside, with elevators lining the room from floor to ceiling. Ladders are mounted between the elevator bays, giving people access to all levels.
Gun leads the way up the left-hand wall, climbing to a third floor elevator. He hops inside, followed by his friends.
“You guys ready for this?” he asks.
Mage cracks his knuckles. Nate gives him a thumbs up. Lox fingers the collar of his polo shirt and grins.
“Okay,” Gun says. “Here goes nothing.”
He swipes his palm over the scanner. The elevator doors close, taking them to Billy’s vault.
The doors open onto a long, narrow room. It’s three stories tall, lined from floor to ceiling with books.
The books are storage facades for data. And if every book contains data, Billy Long is indeed an intel junkie.
Slowly, not quite sure what to expect, Gun steps out of the elevator and into the vault. He pauses just inside, waiting.
Seconds tick by. Nothing happens.
Which is what they hoped for. The point of the access avatar is to clear the initial entry security, like it did with the horses.
Lox lets out a sm
all whoop of joy. He and the others join Gun inside. Standard protocol grants entry to anyone with the primary avatar.
“Lock it down,” Gun says.
Nate complies, rigging up a temporary security in front of the elevator.
“Let’s see how good his search engine is.” Gun takes the tablet from the wall.
As soon as he snaps it off the wall mount, a blast of bright light blinds him. He cries out, turning his head away from the Blinder Bug.
In response, a spray of black mist shoots from the wrist of his avatar. The mist—nicknamed Ravenator—wraps around the blinding light, chomping down and devouring it, like a shark devouring a piranha. Within seconds, the Blinder Bug is destroyed.
“He rigged the tablet,” Mage mutters, wiping at his eyes.
This is what Li Yuan had warned them about. She got them into the vault, but who knows what sort of secondary security measures Billy and his uncle planted in this place.
“We have to assume everything in this place is rigged,” Gun says. “Be on alert.” He turns his attention to the tablet. A number pad sits in the middle of the screen, clearly waiting for a passcode to be entered.
“Code Cracker.” Gun pulls off the tip of his finger, revealing a chip underneath. He plugs the chip into the side of the tablet, watching as it decodes the tablet passcode.
“I’m in.” Gun taps the search box and types in Project Renascentia. As soon as he does this, several things happen.
Half a dozen books float off the shelves, drifting down.
The floor ripples beneath his feet. Several arms burst through the tile, clawing their way to the surface.
The arms emerging from the floor belong to four clay creatures who claw their way into the vault. One of them rushes Gun. He dodges to the left, but the creature manages to snag his shirt and tear it.
“Golems,” Mage shouts. “The books were rigged!”
Golems. Damn it. These things are hard to disable. The only way to defeat them is to write the word dead on their foreheads. In Hebrew.
Where the golem comes in contact with Gun, bits of mud flake off and become tiny little bugs. The swarm under Gun’s shirt, biting chunks out of his avatar.
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