Skyler Grant Anthology

by Skyler Grant

  Masque shook her head. "Didn't choose it. Got taken by the client and he put me in here. I can't log out. None of the victims here can. They just hurt people until they die. Hasn't happened to me yet. They say when you die you relive everything done to you. Over and over on a loop until a few days later the timers run out and you're back here, fresh meat to hurt all over again."

  "Oh fuck," Ismene said.

  Ismene pretty much never cursed. I couldn't help but agree. I didn't have any other worlds. Since coming down to Earth, one thing after another had been horrible, but this... someone had set up their own little camp of horrors and they weren't content to use virtual victims. They were hurting real people, trapping them here.

  They were hurting Masque.

  That shard of icy rage inside of me just kept getting larger. By now, I felt that if you cut me open I might not even bleed.

  "I need to find you. Do you have anything?" I said.

  Masque began to sob, gut-wrenching brutal sounds from a throat already raw. "I don't. I've tried to remember. I tried to remember anything that helped, but I'm sorry. I don't. Please help me."

  Ice. Masque didn't have anything that could help me. I wasn't going to leave her like this, in this pain and subject to whatever came next.

  "Brambles," I said under my breath, and a circle of them formed around her bare throat. I stepped forward and pressed down, crushing them and forcing them deep. It didn't take Masque long to die, her body had already been through so much.

  As of this moment I was on a timer. A few days until her death timer expired. A few days until she'd be back to this. I had that much time to find her body and set her free of whatever held her. I had that much time to get her out of the Network.

  "What are you going to do?" Ismene asked. I didn't have any long-term plans. In the short term I knew exactly what I was going to do. I killed everyone in the inn. I went room-to-room and looked at the horrific deeds done, and I put an end to them, at least for a time. I didn't like the idea that I was sending these people back to relive what they had recently experienced, but I could only hope that was better than fresh horrors.

  I intended to clean the town out totally, but by the time I left the inn the rest of it was empty. All the other buildings including the saloon, were vacant.

  "Where did they go?" I thought.

  "Obviously they picked up on what you were doing and shut things down for the moment. Our connection is getting analyzed heavily," Ismene thought back.

  I wasn't exactly subtle. If they had any sort of visual on me they'd know exactly who I was. I'd known the clock was ticking already, so that didn't actually change anything.

  "Pull me out," I thought.

  In an instant I was back on the table. Sparks had fallen back asleep and Diva was pacing anxiously. As soon as my eyes flickered open she was there undoing the straps so I could sit up. I felt even worse this time. Two dives into the Network back-to-back like that was pushing things. I'd have to power through. Masque was on a time limit.

  "I found her. Client grabbed her and she doesn't know where her body is, but she's being kept from logging out," I said.

  Diva frowned, "Why?"

  I debated how much to say. I decided to just tell them everything. Fury could be a motivator and it was important that the others understand just how pressed for time we were.

  Diva stopped me to gather the others and I started the story over.

  "Fuck," Diva said. "Fuck fuck fuck."

  Yeah. The news had that sort of reaction.

  "Is there anything you can do that you haven't already tried, to find her body?" I asked.

  "We were lucky to get what we did and even that ain't there anymore," Sparks said.

  "I've got nothing," Ismene said.

  "Then stop trying to find her body directly. Lance and then Masque were in contact with the client somehow. Dig into those exchanges and see what you can find out. Maybe there is a lead there," I said.

  "Looked, but I'll look again," Sparks said.

  "Hammer. You said the Collective can peek into about any part of the Network. Check with them and see if they can tell us anything," I said.

  "Not that easy, but I'll do what I can," Hammer said.

  "Diva. Let’s check out where she went missing. Was the meeting spot Masques idea or the clients?" I asked.

  "Masque insisted on someplace public. Client named the bar. We checked it out and it was legit," Diva said.

  Good. That was good. If the place was one they could name offhand, then it was probably one they were familiar with. Somewhere they had frequented before.

  "We'll check it out. I know you already did, but we'll do it again," I said.

  It wasn't a perfect sort of plan, but we needed to do something. Besides, the thing about bars was the crowds were always changing. Just because there hadn't been a lead there before didn't mean we wouldn't find one now.

  102

  The bar was adjacent to a corporate enclave. Camelot wasn't tremendously successful as corporations went, but they'd achieved some success because of the skill of their artisans. The bar was capitalizing on its proximity, calling itself the "Dragon's Roar Tavern" and going for that medieval dive vibe.

  It worked. The crowds were thick and a woman on stage was singing a bawdy song. The crowds were mostly low-level employees dressed in peasant’s attire, although I did spot a young knight in heavy combat armor seated at a table in the back, and there were a fair number in far cheaper gear.

  Diva guided our way through to the bar. A balding man was there serving drinks and looking harried. I didn't blame him with this crowd. A glance upward at our approach resulted in a frown. He wasn't very happy to see us.

  "This again. Told you, I don't know nothing about your companion," said the man.

  "That isn't going to do. We know that she got dragged off by the guy she was meeting with. We figure if you think really hard you'll remember who that is. Or you know someone who will. Make this easy," Diva said, leaning on the counter and pulling out her pistol to rest it on the bar.

  As threats go it wasn't subtle.

  "You think you can just wander in flashing a gun?" the tavernkeeper asked.

  "I think I can shoot you in the face and walk out the damned door, if I want. So how about you just tell me what the fuck I want to know," Diva said, her voice almost a growl.

  Perhaps it was a mistake to tell her just what Masque was going through. I might have become ice with the news, but not Diva. Diva was a blazing inferno just waiting to burn the whole place down around our ears.

  I caught motion out of the corner of my eye and grabbed Diva's shoulder, pulling her to the side. A sword came down and chopped her pistol cleanly into pieces, the blade burying itself deep into the counter.

  Fiber swords, great. They'd been rare and expensive in my day, a luxury for the bored and the wealthy that wanted to bring swords to gunfights. They'd cut through most standard armor and anything else that got in their way. They were stupidly dangerous to use. The wielder didn't look bored and rich, he looked like a street punk looking for a fight. Perhaps the cost had come down.

  "You think you can come into our part of town and start trouble. You want to fuck with our bar, you pink-haired bitch?" said the youth, slurring his words.

  Great. Drunk, bored, and looking for a fight. Several others were lining up behind him.

  Visual prompts appeared outlining swords in red at their waists. Unarmored portions of their body took on a faint reddish hue.

  "I hope that is you and I'm not having some kind of inconveniently timed stroke," I thought to Ismene.

  "It’s me. I told you I'd done some upgrades when I built your new body. I'm wired right into your visual cortex and can act as a combat overlay," Ismene said.

  It was useful. Weapons had been indicated on all the others in the bar. I'd picked up a lot of them myself, but Ismene could analyze data far faster and in greater quantities than I could.

  Diva didn't respond to
the taunt. She turned and head-butted the punk with a sharp crack on his nose. It worked, he staggered away leaving his sword behind.

  It was good that he did. I grabbed it by the hilt and raised it just in time to deflect a blow from one of the punk’s companions.

  Weapons like these made this more than just a simple bar fight. I had to figure out what level of response I wanted to give. I decided this was an attempt to kill us.

  I brought up my knee to catch the second swordsman in the balls, and then kicked him back into a third who was just drawing a sword.

  The punks were being set on from behind. It was the knight I'd seen drinking at the table. In his heavy Camelot armor he was completely immune to fiber swords. Their blows caught him and skidded off, and he seemed to be breaking teeth and noses instead of going for the killing blows. I could respect that. With him as a distraction I joined in and between us we were a far more formidable fight than the punks had been expecting. They broke and ran.

  "Fuckers," Diva spat.

  "I believe you started it, Miss," said the knight, with a pointed look towards the shattered gun. "That was extreme."

  Diva looked ready to start up things anew, but I held her back with a hand on her shoulder. "We were driven by the urgency of our investigation."

  "Giles Nevington," said the knight, extending a bow. "I overheard. I am searching for someone missing as well, I wonder if perhaps they are connected."

  I noted that he hadn't said Sir. That meant he hadn't actually been fully knighted. A trainee, most likely, although from a wealthy family to have gear like he did. Camelot wasn't large enough to have a station in orbit, or at least they hadn't twenty years ago. Their executives and their families lived on Earth.

  "I'm Persephone and this is Diva," I said. "I doubt that, but it might not hurt to compare notes. Who is missing?"

  "Lady Darla Penworth," Giles said. "Who was in turn herself investigating a series of disappearances in this very area."

  I hadn't thought it connected. Still, given how many people I'd seen in that town perhaps this was something worth following up on. The tavernkeeper seemed far too interested in our conversation. I nodded towards the door and we made our way outside.

  "Tell me about this Lady Penworth," I said.

  "It really wasn't the sort of thing she should have been looking into herself, but she has always had a good heart. For the past several months unemployed commoner women have been disappearing from this district. Lady Penworth feared it was the work of a serial killer, although no bodies have ever been discovered," Giles said.

  It wasn't just women I'd seen there, but it was mostly. If someone, if a group of someones, were preying upon the populace it would make sense for them to do so in an area like this. Missing corporate employees, even low-level ones, would have resulted in an investigation, but nobody would care about the unemployed and unaffiliated.

  "Do you have any information about when she was taken? How?" I asked.

  Giles shook his head. "I fear not. I knew she was looking into it and politely discouraged her. I thought that she had dropped matters, but then she disappeared. I fear I should have offered to aid her instead."

  That seemed a safe bet. If she had fallen victim to what I'd seen on the other side, this knight to be would be blaming himself for a long time.

  "Did she have any leads? If she was talking to you about the investigation, she must have had something," I said.

  Giles frowned and said, "I know that she had a suspicion. It seemed unlikely, but for some reason she expected the involvement of an executive from one of the corporations. A man who was down from one of the stations."

  That was something I could work with.

  Executives coming down from the service were carefully tracked every moment they were here. They had to be, and that was shared with other corporations. The strict interpretations of the Treaty of Detroit required it. No respectable corporation would want to accidentally have one harmed.

  This man, if he existed, would have a record of his movements in the system somewhere.

  It also wasn't the only corporate connection we had.

  "Ismene. Can you cross reference corporate movements with this district and the executive whose travel plans we diverted with the attack on the garage? There has got to be some kind of connection there," I thought.

  "Sorry. You've got midlevel manager access, but that isn't nearly enough to go poking into the lives of the bigwigs," Ismene said.

  That meant I had to escalate.

  "Well, I thank you for your assistance. I need to do some investigations of my own, Giles," I said.

  "Miss, if there is a hope of you finding whoever abducted the Lady Penworth, I beg you, please let me accompany you," Giles said.

  I wanted to check with Columbia. Liberty seemed my best bet to get the information I wanted, but if they didn't this guy might have the access required, or his family would.

  "Come along," I said.

  The clock was still ticking. I wish I had more to go on, but this was a start.

  103

  Back at the base I introduced Giles to the others and made my way downstairs. I wouldn't be gone long enough to need to strap myself to the table, but I still wanted some privacy when I went dead to the world. I put in a call to Columbia and waited. Hopefully she wasn't involved on a mission of her own right now.

  Reality faded and I found myself phasing into the Network.

  I appeared in a field of flowers at a shooting range. Columbia looked to be doing some target practice. Today she was dressed in a tank top and a pair of shorts with a pistol holster on each hip. Targets were popping up regularly and she was firing independently with each gun. It seemed insanity, but she was landing those hits and each round exploded on impact tearing targets apart. I really didn't want to be impressed by Columbia. I kind of was.

  I watched for a few minutes as she completed her course and then she came over to plop down beside me in the grass. "Sorry about that. You caught me practicing."

  "No. You're good," I said.

  "No, I'm the best," Columbia said with an easy sort of grin. Here she seemed more in her element than I'd usually seen her. "What did you need? We going to go rob those banks?"

  That was so not going to happen. "I wanted to see if I could get some Liberty assistance on something that is a bit above my paygrade," I said.

  That wiped the smile off her face quick. "Sugar, you're awfully new to go asking for favors. You can try, but the answer is probably going to be no."

  "I'll owe you?" I asked.

  "Maybe," Columbia said, not sounding very convinced. "Ask what you're going to ask."

  "Back in meat space I'm running with a crew of independent contractors. Decent sorts. One of them has gone missing after meeting with a client. I found her logged into a Network location unable to leave. Some really bad stuff was going on," I said.

  Columbia drew up a knee and rested her chin on it while she stared over at me, "Boxing. I've heard of it."

  "I haven't," I said.

  Columbia made an expression of distaste. "Liberty doesn't approve. Officially we aren't doing it, unofficially it happens. Some corps are being a lot more open with it. Recruiting, get a nice lump sum for your family and go into the box for the rest of your life. You get hooked up and can never leave the Network."

  I couldn't imagine that. I didn't want to imagine that. "Why would anyone do that?"

  Columbia shrugged, "It isn't always bad. In some cases it is pretty nice. What fun is being the king of a virtual kingdom, if all your subjects are just bits of code? Isn't it nicer if the servant cleaning your robes, and the tavern wench you're fucking on the side, are all real flesh and blood people? You're on Earth, you know what it’s like down there. For a lot of people this is a better life."

  What I saw hadn't been anything like she was describing.

  "What I saw was really bad and my teammate didn't agree to anything," I said.

  "Yeah. You know sick fuck
s are everywhere. They could get their kicks in virtually all day, but it’s the same thing isn't it? It’s more fun when the victims feel," Columbia said. "Motherfuckers."

  Columbia was getting a little pissed off now. I had to hope that was a good thing.

  "You don't like it. I can tell you don't like it. Help me," I said.

  Columbia stared at me for a long moment. "This is getting Liberty involved. No promises, but send me what you have."

  "Can you do that?" I thought to Ismene.

  "On it," Ismene said.

  Columbia got a distant look in her eyes. A virtual interface appeared in the air before her and she began to tap and swipe in the air.

  "You're doing jobs against Pharosa? Really?" Columbia asked.

  "I'm not a Liberty employee," I said.

  "Believe me, I know. I still don't approve of your choice of hobbies," Columbia said.

  What could I say? I knew Liberty wouldn't much like that, but it was technically allowed.

  "It was an existing contract from before I came on board. I'll be more selective going forward," I said.

  Columbia grunted and nodded. "Good shit on the Camelot lead. I'd have to work hard to sell helping out an Independent, but rescuing the Lady is doable. They fucked up when they grabbed her."

  That wasn't really a surprise. Masque mattered to me and my team. I knew in a Corporation level things would be different.

  "Okay, I've got something. Let's talk price," Columbia said.

  "Not doing it out of the kindness of your heart?" I asked. Columbia shook her head.

  It was worth a try.

  "What do you want?" I asked.

  "First of all, what I have. The physical location of where your friend is being held and hopefully this missing Lady as well. It is technically under private ownership," Columbia said.

  Good then. Hitting it wouldn't be getting anyone into any trouble. I didn't really care at this point, but it smoothed things over.

  "And in exchange for this, you want what?" I said.

  " I'm having a party soon. Heroes everywhere you look, big bash, I want you to come and be charming," Columbia said.