Mind Games

by Teri Terry

  ‘And you, Tempo?’ Crystal says, looking at her strangely.

  ‘I’ll do what I can to stop them from following you. Go.’

  I focus on the MD Gateway: take me there. Silver arrows waver. I focus, and they are stronger.

  I run, Crystal by my side.

  46

  ‘It doesn’t look that impressive,’ Crystal says, as she surveys the inside of the MD Gateway.

  ‘No? It is only a link to every PareCo world, ever. But what about everyone in the worlds?’

  ‘Escape code. They’ll get dropped back into their hallways. Do it, Luna. It’s the only way to stop PareCo. Tempo is right: it has to be done.’

  I try to spin, to gather power, but it’s not working.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I think this only works properly in the void or S’hacker spaces. This is too closed off from it.’

  Crystal throws ice at the wall between two doors: it coalesces into a sheet of silver. She flicks it, and it shatters. She smiles. ‘How about if there are windows to the void? I’ll make more. Keep trying.’

  I raise my hands, close my eyes. Spin. This time it starts to work; silver starts to draw through Crystal’s window, then another and another as she makes more of them.

  Silver, and more silver. More than when we escaped from the PareCo trap. I’m pulsing with it. It’s in me; it’s part of me. Just a part, but becoming more and more. I’m growing. A wave of silver surrounds me now – like Gecko’s tsunami.

  Gecko? I frown. What about Gecko? He hasn’t got escape code, and even if he did, he has no body to escape to.

  What about Crystal? And everyone else in the void?

  Like a distant fly buzzing, somewhere I can hear voices, blows, screams. Crystal? Some of the Gateway doors are opening. Monsters are coming out to try to stop us, and getting caught in Crystal’s ice. But there are too many of them, coming from all sides. They can’t get me; I’m too strong. I try to flick at them, to catch them in the silver wave to protect Crystal, but it is hard to do that and spin at the same time, to grow and grow in power.

  This is what Tempo wanted all along. But is it what Astra wanted me to do? She was training me to spin, to fall with the void. I can destroy: is this why she said I was special?

  I can return chaos, and claim my S’hacker name:

  I could claim Anarchy.

  A final scream. Crystal? She’s fallen, then she is swept into the silver. Becomes part of it.

  No.

  Silver tears blur my vision. Tempo sent her. She knew she’d die, didn’t she? Crystal did, too. She came anyway.

  I sigh, breathe out silver. I’ll die, too. I can only take in so much power before I’ll die. Somehow I know this is true.

  And it is comforting somehow. Dying is better than being a brain in a tank, a puppet of PareCo.

  What about Tempo? She went somewhere safe. Crystal knew that, too. She meant for us to die, and for her to live?

  I’m slowing now. Some of the silver is bleeding away, back to the void where it belongs. There is a jumble of doors and worlds all around me in what is left of the MD Gateway. I leave for the void through one of Crystal’s windows.

  My hands are silver, beautiful silver. I stare at them in wonder. My body also. I’m still spinning, but slower – just enough to hold power now, neither growing nor diminishing. But I can’t hold it in for long.

  And then I realise the mistake: escape code won’t work, not in a collapsing VeeDub. It was never designed for this scale of destruction. Anyone in a VeeDub that is destroyed will be spilled into the void. Everyone in the void will die if the void collapses, won’t they?

  Another tear drops from my eye, and splashes down: a silver tear.

  Dr Rafferty appears in front of me. He smiles kindly.

  ‘Luna, you are so very much more than you appeared. What are you going to do now?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I’m still spinning, slowly; somehow he is moving with me so his face is always straight ahead.

  ‘Join us, Luna. You can help sort out this mess you’ve created. Then join your friend Gecko in his world. Be together forever there. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

  I sigh, silver bleeding out from my lungs. ‘For a while, maybe. But not forever.’

  ‘Poor Luna. You could have stayed safe at home if you were still a Refuser. But once you started coming to the void, you were far too dangerous to leave alone.’

  I could have stayed at home? Nanna was right – about not plugging in, about everything. It was Gecko who told me about ANDs, but it was Tempo who pushed us together. He didn’t know what would happen.

  I shake my head. ‘But it’s too late to go back to being a Refuser now.’

  ‘Yes. And in case you need extra incentive to stop this crazy destruction, I have it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Listen. Listen very carefully.’

  My silver ears listen: they can hear the entire void. A cacophony of cries of the lost, distressed and broken worlds. Hidden inside it, one little tug? My name. It’s faint, but I focus, closer and closer.

  Luna… A familiar voice, calling my name. Luna?

  Jason’s voice.

  ‘Jason? Where is he?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not as good as you are at finding people in the void.’

  ‘He’s in the void?’

  ‘Lost, and alone.’

  I’m angry. I spin and reach for Rafferty, to pull him into the silver wave, but he laughs when my hands pass through him. He’s a projection? From where?

  Luna, help me! Jason’s voice again. It’s wavering; he’s scared.

  It’s a trap. Isn’t it? Even they wouldn’t put a ten-year-old in the void, would they? But I can’t risk it. I have to try to find him.

  I sense rather than see them. Rafferty and others, camouflaged and waiting, in a ring all around me. They’re waiting for me to stop spinning; then they’ll have me.

  One last thing:

  One last spin:

  I throw silver into the void above. It becomes a fiery meteor shower. It catches Rafferty and his friends by surprise; fending off the flames keeps them busy.

  Silver words form in the sky:

  Run, you clever girl, run.

  47

  I run and run.

  I’m fractured. Parts of me are running; parts of me are crying. Some in the void, some in my hallway, some in every world I’ve ever visited.

  Focus: what was I going to do? My memories are fuzzy, damaged: there are beads to fix that. Memory beads?

  No: Jason first. Find Jason.

  I concentrate on his smile, his laugh. To start with, there are silver arrows everywhere, pointing in all directions. The void is fractured, like me; but when I follow first one arrow and then another, they are pointing at beads. I ignore them, concentrating hard on Jason, on holding him first in my thoughts. And after a while it settles, and there are fewer, and finally just one arrow leading the way.

  ‘Luna?’ I hear his voice again. This time he is close. I can see him!

  ‘Jason?’

  But when he turns and sees me, he runs. In the other direction.

  ‘Jason!’ I call his name again. ‘It’s me, it’s Luna.’

  He pauses, looks back. He’s crying. ‘It looks like you, but not you.’

  I look at myself, and frown: I’m beautiful silver, and I love it. But I will it to go. It starts to bleed off, bit by bit. First my lungs are clear; then deeper tissues; skin. But it stays in my blood, my eyes. I’m finally starting to accept that it is part of me, and always has been.

  ‘Better?’ I say, and hold out a hand. He hesitates, finally walks towards me.

  ‘Is it really you?’ he says.

 
‘Yes, monkey. It’s really me.’ He launches himself, holds me tight. ‘Come on. I’m going to take you somewhere safe.’

  I take him to my S’hack for now. It is safer than anywhere else I can think of – I’m the only one who can get in there – but once again, the silver arrows are confusing, pointing in all directions. I have to focus hard on the S’hack to get there.

  It hasn’t escaped the spinning – the garden is jumbled and the house a bit sideways, but it is intact.

  ‘Wait for me here. I’ve got to sort some things out.’

  ‘You’ll come back? You promise?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I kiss him and he doesn’t fend me off like he usually would. I look back and wave from the silver door, and step back into the void.

  What now?

  Again there are arrows, multiple sets of them, and I can’t ignore them any longer. One by one they take me to beads. I collect them in my hand. Seven in total: two are carved with my S’hacker marks, the other five with Astra’s. Memory beads?

  These ones weren’t on the necklace, but they look just the same as the ones that were. I thought Tempo had sent phantom beads to remind me about the necklace; I thought they weren’t real.

  Yet here they are – seven beads in my hand. What do they mean?

  Seven is the seeker of truth. I must do this: I have to know what they hide.

  The silver comes to me easily now.

  The memories are harder to bear.

  I lie in the void. It is a while before I can make myself focus on what it all means, along with all I’ve learned since then. Silver is swirling into a message above me, but I ignore it, and look within.

  In my beads were my realisations – too late – that Tempo manipulated Gecko; she manipulated me. Though I can’t regret meeting Gecko, I’d never have known about ANDs and plugged in with them if it wasn’t for her setting him up.

  If Rafferty told the truth when he said they’d have left me alone if I’d stayed a Refuser, then Nanna was right, all along. She was the only one who always had my interests at heart. Even Astra made me for a reason, had plans for what I could do. Nanna was the only one who didn’t want to use me for something.

  And Tempo killed her.

  And in Astra’s beads?

  Astra had been investigating Tempo. She’d found out that Tempo had betrayed S’hackers who stood against her in COS to PareCo, and worse: gave PareCo the means to trap them. Silver was extracted from inside the S’hackers when their brains were removed, and used as part of their virtual prison. One that could not be escaped. Like Gecko’s.

  The memories stop abruptly, but one thing is certain: whatever happened to Astra, Tempo must have been behind it.

  The one person I thought could help me was the most dangerous. How could I have been so wrong?

  I don’t know how long I lie there, lost in the things I’ve learned. There is some fluttery movement out of the corner of my eye; I ignore it. It becomes more insistent. Finally I look up.

  Silver coalesces to form letters and words that appear, vanish and reappear: Go to your hallway.

  When it happened before, I thought they were from Tempo. But that can’t be right, can it? They’ve helped me, whereas Tempo has done nothing but hurt and deceive Gecko, Crystal, me, Astra. Tempo, despite the double game she plays, wants PareCo destroyed so she can sweep in and take over – what happens to any of us is nothing to her.

  So I go to my hallway. Take the last AND in my pocket, then drop down through a hatch.

  I look around, and sigh. There’s nothing out of the ordinary here, just the usual doors, the usual fan club invites. It’s a dead end.

  Would a message do any good? To Melrose. Just old-fashioned words, not in person – if she can see me it’ll be hard to get away. But as soon as I send it PareCo will know I’m here, will come for me. I’ll have to be quick.

  I concentrate, but seem to be incapable of making sense.

  M – please tell your dad. General weirdness on Inac. Bio body transports and brain Think Tanks. Pls send help. A helicopter would be nice. Love, L. Not Crazy.

  That will have to do. I hit send, and run for the hatch out of my hallway, past a fan club invite.

  Did it just pulse?

  I pause, glance back. It’s just the usual thing: Astra Remembered.

  I look closer. No; wait. It’s different.

  The spine spiders are back. I blink, and look again.

  It says Astra Remembers.

  It feels like my heart stops. Just stops beating. Everything inside me is frozen. Remembers…? Present tense?

  No.

  It can’t be.

  Can it?

  There is a faint whoosh behind me, then another. One by one the doors to my hall are disappearing: access withdrawn. PareCo knows I’m here. They’re coming.

  I hit join, and push the door open.

  She’s not as tall as I remember; barely taller than me. Of course I was much shorter the last time I saw her. But her dancing eyes and dark hair are just the same. She hasn’t aged.

  We stare at each other. We’re in a clear dome, stars all around. Silver winds around her eye – even more than in my memory.

  She holds out a hand, trembling.

  ‘Luna? Oh, my darling girl. You’re beautiful.’

  I hesitate.

  I want to demand to know everything: how she could deceive Dad, how she could engineer a daughter – me – to be some sort of weapon against PareCo. What am I, even? Part girl – part void? How she could let herself be trapped by Tempo. How she could leave us alone all these years.

  But that can wait. I step forward. It feels good to hold each other, just the same.

  We’re in a space station in the midst of a galaxy-wide war. No real surprise that once Tempo gifted a captive Astra to PareCo, the world they would choose to incarcerate her in would be a space game.

  She’s like Hex, and Gecko. She exists only in virtual; a permanent prisoner of a Think Tank in reality.

  Little did they know she’s been working on manipulating wormholes all this time. It took her nine years to start spying on the world outside from here, and another four after that to work out how to get silver messages out to the void. She saw how Gecko manipulated a group invitation to trace me a while back, and only just worked out how to use one to provide a portal to her.

  She never gave up trying to reach me. Not once.

  48

  Ping. What is that? Oh. The security pingback I set: I scan the logs. They’ve begun a PIP-by-PIP check of the entire Centre.

  ‘I’m sorry, can we work a little faster?’ I say.

  Astra looks up, smiles. ‘Just as patient as when you were three.’ We’ve been S’hacking wormholes, trying to see if together we can find a way Astra can get out.

  But nothing has worked so far.

  ‘I should go soon. They’ve started checking all the PIPs to try to find me. And I’ve got to go to Gecko before I unplug.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say? Go, go!’ She’s distressed. Hugs me again, and despite everything, it is hard to let go.

  I promise I’ll be back, and wish for a door. It’s not fair. Everyone else can go in and out at will, but those trapped by PareCo in a VeeDub – like Gecko, like Astra – no way. I told her everything that was in her missing memory beads, including that she, herself, is part of the fabric of this world. If it’s part of her, how can she leave it? She said we had to try.

  I start to step through the door, then turn back. ‘Wait a minute. Crystal opened multiple windows to the void, so we could get many flights of silver into the Gateway for more power. Would that work here?’

  ‘It might. But you need to go.’

  I pause, and check the security logs again. ‘They’re nowhere n
ear me. I’ve got some time. Don’t waste it arguing!’

  ‘All right.’ She grins. ‘But make it fast.’

  I open dozens of windows, and we spin together. I draw silver in from the void – more and more flies in, more than I could command – and funnel it to Astra. She has more control than I do. She shapes and contains it, a massive ball of silver power – then flings it out to explode against the world’s barrier.

  It’s like a million silver fireworks set off at once; for a moment I can’t see, not anything.

  When my vision clears, the world is gone. We’re in the void.

  She’s pale, but all smiles. ‘Are you all right?’ I ask.

  ‘Wonderful, lovely clever girl! Get back to your boy, and look after your body.’

  ‘What are you going to do now? Go to COS?’

  ‘No. Tempo would know; there’s a risk she’d twist things and talk the Council around. I’m going straight to NUN.’

  I check the Centre’s security logs. They’re concentrating the searches on intern PIPs and areas we frequented.

  ‘I’m OK for a bit longer; I’m monitoring the situation. I’m coming with you.’

  When we get to NUN’s virtual towers, I find out that Astra is good at breaking into places. Even places that are supposed to be impossible to break into.

  It’s in full virtual session: there was an emergency meeting called in response to widespread void chaos – caused by moi. I scan the room; Melrose’s dad is absent. My eyes stop on one of the representatives. That’s why I thought Media looked familiar: she’s in NUN?

  The house falls silent when we appear in the midst of the floor. Astra has presence – or maybe it’s the way we climbed from nothing through a silver door.

  She addresses the Speaker.

  ‘I’m Astra. I died thirteen years ago.’

  He snorts. ‘You’re looking well for a dead person.’ He motions for guards to remove us. She speaks fast while I try to erect a silver barrier between us and them, wondering why she’s not helping. There is so little silver in this place that my efforts falter, but then, with a small gesture, Media bolsters the barrier. It strengthens and holds.