The Softwire: Wormhole Pirates on Orbis 3

by P. J. Haarsma

  When Theodore’s energy field dropped, he leaped out and gasped, “You made it here first!”

  “C’mon, there’s a lot of ground to cover before the labyrinth shifts,” I yelled, and turned for the exit.

  “What’s wrong with your hand?”

  I held my hand up. My fingers were bending backward again.

  “That’s just a little glitch. Vairocina is working on it. C’mon!”

  Banar’s bait banged on his electronic cage, igniting a shower of sparks to which the crowd erupted in approval. We didn’t stick around for his next act.

  I wanted to retrace my steps through the labyrinth as quickly as possible, since I already knew what lay waiting for me. Theodore could simply follow my lead without ever having to navigate a new obstacle. But if the labyrinth shifted on us, then it was a whole new game.

  We passed the first three stages of our return with minimal effort. Theodore began counting the escape buttons: large gold crystals embedded in the walls that would allow you to swap out players on your own team. I think he did it to keep his mind off Banar. There was one for each level, and each button we passed meant we were one stage closer to the finish. For me, those escape buttons did not exist. I knew that if I pressed one of those crystals, Ketheria would be there, waiting — forced to play against the monster, Banar. I was trying to ignore the buttons.

  On the fourth level, Theodore had trouble scaling the slanted cubes we needed to navigate in order to get to the exit. I was forced to backtrack to help him.

  “It’s my shoes!” he cried. “I can’t get a grip.”

  I stretched out from the top of the last cube and extended my arm. “Just grab hold. I’ll pull you up!”

  Each stalled moment eroded my confidence and allowed my anxieties to seep out. I watched Theodore struggle over the top of the last cube.

  “Hurry, Theodore,” I breathed. “We’re almost out of ti —”

  The labyrinth shifted, cutting off my last sentence.

  The corridor in front of me sealed shut while the wall to my left disappeared. I spun around to find Theodore lagging behind.

  “Theodore! Move!”

  If we were separated, I could spend the rest of the match looking for him. Theodore leaped toward me just as a new wall formed behind him. He was lying on the ground when the wall to his left disappeared.

  Behind the wall stood Banar’s bait. He lunged toward Theodore and stepped on his leg with a large four-taloned foot. Theodore never had a chance. His leg buckled under the weight of the alien. Even over my friend’s screams, I could hear the bone in his thigh snap. Theodore cried out, and the alien smiled, raising his arm to strike.

  Instinctually, I ran at the attacker. Leading with my good arm, I dove and thrust myself into his soft, exposed underbelly. With the wind knocked out of him, the alien reeled backward, tripping over Theodore’s other leg. He crashed onto his backside, his plated armor clanking on the metal floor. Then the final part of the maze shifted and a new wall formed between the alien and us.

  “JT, my leg! Look at my leg!”

  I lifted myself off the ground and turned to see Theodore. My stomach wrenched as I saw Theodore’s left leg lying useless, twisted at a grotesque angle.

  “What are we going to do?” he cried. “I don’t want to die. Not like this.”

  “You’re not going to die,” I told him, and grabbed him by his underarms.

  “Agh!” he screamed.

  “I’m sorry, but this is going to hurt.”

  I dragged Theodore toward the exit and past the escape button.

  “Where are you going?” he protested.

  “To the exit!”

  “JT, I can’t! It’s killing me. Please.”

  He didn’t ask me to push the escape button. I don’t know if he would actually say the words. Theodore knew how I felt.

  “You can’t drag me for ten more levels. Banar will finish both of us off,” he breathed.

  “I have to!”

  “No, you don’t,” Vairocina whispered. “Replace Theodore with your sister. Do it quickly.”

  “I can’t,” I hissed. My brain refused to turn my need into action.

  “Now, JT,” Vairocina urged. “Please.”

  Breaking my trance, I punched the crystal button and the wall disappeared. Ketheria was sitting there waiting, her helmet already on. She jumped out and helped me put Theodore into the chair. Then she gently placed her hands on Theodore’s leg as he cringed.

  “It’s okay now,” she whispered. “Everything’s going to be all right.” Then she tapped the escape button. The wall swallowed him up.

  “Stay close,” I told my sister. “This is it.”

  The game felt different now. I felt different. I wasn’t concentrating on the labyrinth anymore. Instead I was constantly watching Ketheria. Was she too far behind? Too close to that opening? To that channel?

  “What’s wrong with you?” she yelled out.

  “Nothing,” I cried.

  “Concentrate! Grab that immobility cube. I can use that. Let me take the lead, too.”

  With Ketheria in front of me, I actually felt a little better. I could see her and I could see the path ahead of us. This calmed me somewhat. We had cleared three more levels and were almost halfway home. On our return, we found the Neewalkers again, still frozen near the level’s exit. They were no longer sleeping, though. Someone had killed them. By the position of their bodies, it looked as if someone had killed them in their sleep.

  Ketheria saw them first and stopped, peering over the lifeless corpses.

  “Did Banar do that?” she croaked softly.

  “Don’t look at that,” I told her. “C’mon, we’re almost there.”

  I pushed Ketheria toward the only exit. The shift in the labyrinth had placed it on the other side of the room now. I paused and took one last look at the dead Neewalkers. Could I do that? I asked.

  The room pulsed.

  “Ketheria!” I screamed at my sister, but she slipped through the exit just as the labyrinth shifted. The wall swallowed her up. I leaped to the wall and pounded on the metal. “Ketheria!”

  A thunderbolt of pure anxiety struck my mind and body. I spun on my heels looking for the new exit, but there was none.

  “Shift!”

  A hole opened in the floor and I dove in. This could lead to anywhere, I thought, but I didn’t care. I had to keep moving. I had to find Ketheria. Blindly, I leaped over each obstacle, looking only for the next opening. I didn’t know if I was going forward or backward, but at least I was moving.

  “Ketheria!”

  “You’ll find her, JT,” Vairocina assured me, her words just a whisper.

  “Ketheria!”

  I slid down a steep chute and into a smoky passageway. About four meters above my head was a thick ledge that lined each side of the corridor. I don’t know why, but something told me I had to get up there. I sprinted down the length of the hallway and spotted a ladder. Then I saw him.

  I couldn’t tell if it was Banar or his bait, since they both carried the bulbous, black armor on their backs.

  “Hey!” I yelled at him, but he did not turn. “Hey, split-screen!”

  I scrambled up the chrome bars embedded in the opposite wall and onto a broad, square landing. I could see both of them. Banar and his bait. Ketheria was there, too. They had her cornered on the landing.

  “Ketheria!”

  But she couldn’t hear me, either. I hadn’t been able to see it from below, but a glass wall sealed up their side.

  “I’m gonna jump!”

  “You don’t know how thick that wall is! You don’t even know if it will break,” Vairocina protested.

  I didn’t know if I could jump across the corridor, either, but that wasn’t going to stop me. I took a good run at it, put my good arm forward, and jumped.

  The glass exploded on impact, bursting into a million pieces. I landed on the floor, rolling.

  “JT!”

  I scrambled
to my feet. Banar’s frozen expression told me that Ketheria had used her immobility cube on him, but the bait was moving fast. His battering ram of an arm was pulled back and poised to strike. I reached the alien just as he swung at my sister. She crumpled under the impact, her body flailing against the wall, blood already escaping her mouth.

  My mind went blank. It was as if a switch flipped and erased every bit of fear from my body. Neither sight nor sound registered with my senses. My mind was more focused than I had ever experienced in my life.

  Banar’s bait spun toward me. The blackened metal plates on his back whirled and then locked in front of him, protecting his vulnerable underbelly.

  By some means that I could not explain, I knew that with his armor now locked in front, the alien’s back was exposed. I just needed to get around him. To do this, I simply visualized the location within the room and in a blink, I was there. A faint smell of dirty socks lingered in the air.

  As if by reflex, I thrust my hand forward and into the warm flesh of his back. My fingers clamped around his spine and with a quick snap, I rotated my hand counterclockwise. The alien did not scream or cry out in pain; he simply slumped to his knees and fell forward. A chunk of his spine was still clutched in my fist when his face hit the floor.

  “No!” I heard someone scream. It was Banar. The immobility cube had worn off while he helplessly watched his partner die. I wasn’t afraid of Banar anymore. He was simply another obstacle I needed to dispose of. I turned and prepared to deal with him, but before either of us moved, the light in the room shifted — bent, if you will — and four hulking Space Jumpers stepped into our dimension. They brushed past Banar and gathered around me. Two of them scoped the room, while the other two took hold of my arms. I wrenched my body, looking for my sister.

  “Ketheria!”

  Then nothing.

  “Ketheria!”

  I was still calling her name when I woke. In my dream I had cradled Ketheria’s broken body in my arms, screaming at her to open her eyes. Did that happen? Where am I? Is Ketheria with me? One part of my mind told me I had just been sleeping, but another part told me I had been fighting in the match less than a nanosecond ago. I was confused. I had no clue where I was, but I definitely wasn’t in the labyrinth anymore.

  I lifted myself up, but my right arm refused to participate. It clung to my side, held in place by thin, transparent wires. Who did that? I fell back onto the misty blue sleeper. It reminded me of the conveyor belts on Weegin’s World.

  “Hello?” I called out, and waited for a response. There was none. I was alone, locked in a room that looked like someone had scooped it out of a rock, then placed some sort of weird sleeper in it and sealed the whole thing up with a crude-looking force field.

  “Vairocina,” I whispered. “Vairocina?”

  She was gone, too. I tried to access the controls in my arm through my softwire, but those, too, were unavailable. It felt as if someone had turned off my arm and taken Vairocina with them. Who? Who did this?

  I stood up. How long have I been here? I peered through the force field, but I couldn’t see anything. I paced the perimeter of the small room, searching for clues to where I was.

  All the while, a question that I didn’t want to ask — that I couldn’t ask — was hovering at the edge of my consciousness. I turned on my heels and searched the room again as if it were my only distraction. Don’t ask it, I told myself. Don’t! But I couldn’t stop myself.

  Is Ketheria dead?

  “Ketheria!” I cried out loud, falling to my knees.

  I know what I had seen. Ketheria was crushed by Banar’s bait. She was unconscious before she even hit the wall. I saw blood, too, her blood. But the last thing I saw before the Space Jumpers took me, the thing that frightened me the most was Banar’s hulking form lunging toward my sister.

  My head throbbed. Oh, what have I done? Please, let her be all right! Who was I talking to? Who would answer me? No one. I felt empty and alone. I had failed my sister.

  Then something stirred beyond the door.

  “Who’s there?”

  I stood up and slunk toward the transparent force field, approaching it from the side. I peered into the darkness. Something darted past again, and I jumped back. Whatever was out there was big and fast.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello,” someone blurted from the darkness. My heart thumped in my chest. It sounded like a kid.

  “Hey, kid, can you help me? Can you help me get out of here? I need to get out of here!”

  Suddenly I realized I was shouting. I didn’t know who could hear me, but I shouldn’t be attracting any attention.

  “Please,” I whispered. “Can you help me?”

  “Can’t,” the kid replied, mimicking my whisper.

  “Why not?”

  “You bad.”

  “Bad? I’m not bad. I didn’t do anything,” I said. “I have to find my sister. Bad things are going to happen to her if I don’t get out of here.” Maybe they had already happened, but I couldn’t stand waiting here and doing nothing.

  I put my face as close as I could to the force field.

  “Hey! Are you still there?”

  “You bad.”

  “I’m not bad!”

  Whatever was out there shot past me again. That’s an awfully big kid, I thought. I didn’t even try to call after him. I knew I had scared him away. What a split-screen I am.

  I had been sitting on my sleeper for what seemed like an eternity when the force field opened. I immediately sprang to my feet. Before I could make it to the door, though, a small cream-colored ball floated into the room. I kept my distance. I was well aware of the surprises things like this could hold. As the orb moved toward me, it flattened out and began to elongate. Something pushed at my mind, forcing me to turn around, as if I’d been ordered to, yet no one had spoken to me. The bands holding my arm at my side slipped off. Instantly I felt the energy fill my arm and Vairocina’s voice flood my head.

  “What happened?” she cried. “Where are we? Oh, that was horrible! It was as if I was locked in a box, unable to move, unable to see. I was going crazy. Johnny, what happened?”

  But I couldn’t answer her. Something else was controlling me now. I think it was that weird orb.

  “JT?”

  I was raising my arms as the thing snuggled up against my back. The transparent wires that held my arm in place returned. This time, though, they wrapped around my legs, my forehead, my arms, and even my waist. I think I heard Vairocina scream before my body became completely paralyzed. I felt the orb lift me off the ground and then tilt me forward. Now I was facedown about half a meter off the ground, my arms stretched out to my sides and my feet together. Finally, something reached over the top of my head and blocked my sight.

  I felt the device gliding in the direction of my door. No! I need to find Ketheria! But I could tell we had slipped outside my room, as the air was much warmer on my skin. I began to hear things moving around me, or moving out of the way; I couldn’t tell which.

  “You bad,” I heard the kid whisper in my ear. Was I being paraded around in front of my captors like some prized possession? Where were they taking me?

  Hey! I tried to scream, but even my mouth was paralyzed.

  The sounds of people shuffling around me dropped off, and the air grew very cold. The device stopped, and my ears became plugged as if the air pressure had suddenly changed. Then the thing I was strapped to released me. Instinctually I thrust my arms forward to cushion my fall. As I hit the stone floor, Vairocina’s voice came rushing back into my head.

  “Stop doing that to me! What’s happening?”

  “Quiet, Vairocina,” I whispered to her. “I think we’re about to find out.”

  I paused for a moment, my hands and knees connected firmly with the cold, damp floor. Its rough texture sparkled from a shivery blue light glowing all around me. I would not look up. Some part of me was waiting for Ketheria to call out my name, waiting for her to rus
h over and tell me not to worry, that they had grabbed her, too.

  “Get up,” ordered a frigid and passionless voice.

  I waited one more second for Ketheria, and then I looked up in the direction of the voice.

  “Oh!” Vairocina gasped.

  I was kneeling at the center of a vast, cavernous room. I think the entire room was constructed from stone, but I could also see metal, glass, and flesh. Directly in front of me, about three meters above the ground, were five glowing alcoves carved from the rock. Four of the chambers were occupied. The center one was empty and casting most of the icy blue light that filled the room. The creatures inside each chamber looked almost human, except that parts of their bodies were indistinguishable from the rocky surroundings. An arm would disappear into the wall and surface a meter away at an unnatural angle. Piping of all sizes emanated from the rock, into the chamber, and right through its occupant. It was as if these things were part of the room, each highlighted by the glowing light inside their chambers. That’s when I noticed more people in the rock; I counted fourteen altogether, except the lights in their chambers were turned off. Only the center chamber was lit and empty.

  “Who are you people?” I croaked softly.

  “We are the Trust.”

  I stood up. My eyes darted across the four glowing members of the Trust. I did not see any lips move, but it was as if each of them were speaking to me.

  “I have heard of you, but you have to let me go. I have to get back to my sister.”

  “There are matters that need to be discussed.”

  “I have to get back!”

  Every bone in my body flexed at once, igniting a pyre of pain. It was short but effective. Okay, so don’t yell at them.

  “Yes, please don’t do that again,” Vairocina breathed in my ear.

  “Listen to me,” I told them. “I know you think I’m some sort of savior, this Scion thing of yours, but I’m not. I’m just a kid. I just want to be a kid. I want to take care of my sister and figure out how to live on those stupid rings. My sister needs me right now. For all I know, it might be too late. Please just put me back —”

  “You are not the Scion,” the Trust interrupted.