Digital Magic

by Philippa Ballantine

  Tania landed with a cry in the bottom of the stream. The breath was knocked out of her for a moment, but then the bitterly cold water snapped her alert. The voices were gone, even Hamish's, but she gladly would have had them back. The forest was being whipped up around her and the air was full of dead leaves and twigs.

  Clambering to her feet, she was glad at least to feel she hadn’t broken anything, though the heel of her boot was long gone. Her whole body was shaking and she squeezed her eyes shut. It made no difference. It was still there: the unmistakable noise of something coming towards her through the trees. The wind shrieked and suddenly it didn’t matter to Tania if she was mad or not—she had to get away.

  Pure animal instinct washed through her brain. She turned and bolted up the stream; heart trying its best to break loose from her chest. Behind, the trees snapped and gave way to the thing, but she was too afraid to look back.

  The world reduced to a mad scramble through the icy water and the slippery stones. Every step was awkward and every breath a gasp.

  Whatever it was, it screamed. Even as Tania scrambled over the boulders, the roar of rage and unearthliness made her glance back. Breath lodged in her throat, though her mouth managed to wrap around a howl. The thing following her was all spines and fangs. The insect-split mouth gaped wide. It was a flash from every childish nightmare she’d ever had. She wanted the voices back, she wanted that comforting madness she had almost grown accustomed to—not this!

  Tania was crying now; sobbing and clawing her way through the water, the breath freezing in her lungs. The cry was the nameless prayer of the doomed.

  Behind her the nightmare's long legs stretched out before it, so wide that they avoided the stream and plunged like daggers into the soft earth of the bank. From somewhere strength welled up in Tania's legs and she tore around the bend in the stream. With terrified excitement she realized that she'd reached the culvert. A crusty and rusted barely-there ladder snaked up towards the street. I don't want to die —not to be a grey voice, not to go there and join them.

  A thousand coiled nightmares slammed into the concrete as she laid finger on her escape route, each one taking out a perfect round hole at either side of her. A mewl of terror burbled out of her as she scrambled upwards. Still she was unable to resist looking back. Just in time, she saw the tentacles draw back towards the gleaming missile shaped head of the thing. Her feet were missing vital rungs and her fingers, numb with horror, weren't helping either. She wasn't going to make it. The nightmare wasn’t even going to bother climbing after her; its next strike would not miss.

  And then the clouds finally parted, and the grey became white. The streambed was flooded with the most blinding spring sun, pouring over the culvert and onto the horror below. Its bellow of shock seemed like it would rupture her eardrums, and Tania could only moan and hang onto the rungs as the air around her rocked with it. Whatever it was, it could no more stand the sun than the monster under the bed could have. Her feet were running of their own accord. Skittering against slippery concrete, finally they found purchase and she was moving up again. She could see the top, where sunlight covered the ground and nightmares had no place. Then sharp pain brushed her back, like a knife had suddenly plunged in. Her opponent roared again, but quieter this time. It was fleeing.

  Tania reached the top and threw herself onto the wet ground. Lying there, she got her breath back. Rolling over and brushing her tears of terror away, she felt gingerly where the pain had come from. It was hard to tell without seeing, but there was only a little blood and the wound seemed small. She’d had worse playing hockey. Her attacker had caught her with one tentacle in a last desperate attempt. As Tania wiped the blood from her fingers she considered what had just happened; that thing had killed Rob and it had meant to have her too.

  Whatever the voices had done to her mentally, they had never threatened violence. Either her madness had taken a frightening new turn or something else was happening in Penherem. Which ever it was, she was quite sure she didn't want to find out by herself.

  7

  Returning

  Bakari took the first VFT to London before anything was open. He’d left the library door undone so that anyone who wanted to could get in. Really, he’d just thrown his job into the hands of Fate. He liked being a librarian, but in the scheme of things it was not the most important thing to him. He had more pressing things to attend to—demonstrated by the fact that he was going to London, which he hated, and in the morning, which was never his best time of day.

  Every fiber of his being shrunk from cities, and in this modern world that was more than an inconvenience. Bakari had spent more than his fair share of years trawling through the underbelly of urban sprawl, where desperation and animal instinct were all anyone had to live on. He’d fought, first in the meatworld and then even harder in the lineworld, for every moment of breath. Just how hopeless that life had been, he’d never realized until he found Penherem.

  Oh sure, the village was veneered and dressed up, but it still breathed. It still had a green heart and a history that wasn’t steeped in human misery. Bakari had never loved anyone, never believed in such a fragile and dangerous thing as hope, until he’d become part of Penherem. The years that he'd spent in the village had been the years during which he'd learnt the meaning of the word home.

  Bakari concentrated on the window, watching his old world reclaim him; first with fingers of shadow, then a stale breath, until finally the sun itself was swallowed up by the copper-gray clouds. He slid further back into his seat and glowered back at the city. The only thing that London had ever given him that was worth a damn was his Line—and even that had come at a steep price.

  Bakari left the VFT and dropped effortlessly back into the sprawl. It was bad enough Lining through London, let alone having to experience it in the meatworld.

  He stood for a moment on the platform and orientated himself within the vast chaos of Waterloo station. The weight of passing people buffeted him to and fro. He backed against a wall, eyes half-hooded, feigning a calmness he didn’t really own.

  Flicking down his shades and stuffing his hands into his worn trousers, he let the scroll of information dance across the inside of the lenses. It wasn’t true Lining, often called derisively Skimming by his kind, but it did allow him to keep a foot in each world. One hand twinkled on the tiny board in his pocket and the red script on his shades responded, linking to Buzzer. If there was one constant in the London lineworld, he was it.

  Buzzer had Swallowed the Line years ago, shucking off his rather porcine meatbody and stepping into what he'd always considered his true form. His finely crafted avatar, which he'd slaved years over before taking the ultimate step, was a mind-blowing gorgeous male form—one that would never age, get bad breath, or have a hair out of place. By contrast, his meatbody was securely locked away, tapping its energy off the power grid and slowly atrophying. Bakari had never heard of anyone that had met Buzzer's lost and unlamented meatbody. Buzzer would get mad with those who even hinted at its existence.

  When the connection sprang to life, Buzzer's voice poured seductively into his ear.

  “It's me, Vortex.” Bakari cut him off.

  “Well I guess that means you won't be meeting me in Line wearing rubber and carrying a paddle.”

  “Not until I'm down to my last dollar, Buzz.”

  He sniggered. “From what I hear, that isn’t far off.”

  “There's nothing wrong with being picky about my jobs.”

  “Picky’s one thing, but just plain dumb ain’t far off. People don't like to have their employees bail out on them.”

  Bakari wasn't about to get into the same old argument. “Look, right now I need a heads on Flash Point.”

  “You back in the game, my friend?” Buzz’s voice took on a note of interest.

  Bakari shuddered, but managed not to snap back. He still might need his connections in this scarred town. “Might be,” he tried to sound noncommittal. “I’m meeting
up with a few old friends there and don’t want to run into anyone... unsociable.”

  “Fair enough,” Buzz chortled. “There are still plenty around who’d remember you—though not as many as there were.”

  “The business takes care of that, what with such a high turnover.”

  A faint distant distortion was all that marked the nano it took Buzz to check his network. Bakari held himself tightly in check; not jumping to any conclusions, waiting patiently like this was his last chance. It very well could be. “You’re looking good to go. It’s real quiet down there at the moment. Have a shot of tequila for me.” Was that a minor note of longing in the digital voice.

  “Sure thing.” Bakari closed the connection and looked out once more through the smoky interior of his shades into the meatworld.

  He’d thought about it once. Most Liners, at one stage or another, considered shutting up shop in the real world and swallowing the Line. But something always stopped him, no matter how close he got. Once he’d been as far as the Cutters front step; cash in hand, all his possessions sold, all his friendships severed.

  He’d yet to work out what had made him turn around and begin again in a world that had lost its magic. Perhaps it was Mama’s voice crooning in his memory, telling him about Mother Thunder and all the animals who made magic. It was a sound that was hard to shake, and swayed him even in the world of science.

  Bakari had branded himself a fool for going on, for living on the Line without hope. Until that day over a year ago, when he’d had his epiphany. It was one of those moments on which your whole life turns, he’d known that immediately. But, it was more than that. It was also one of those times when the world itself might change. He was lucky to have seen what he’d seen, and that thought alone drove him on.

  With a little sigh, Bakari pushed away from the wall into the pounding crowd and began to swim against the current towards Flash Point. It was a place Joe Average avoided unless he was a zapped up Liner, looking for a contact, or hoisting some serious weaponry. It had been Bakari's favorite haunt back in his sprawl days and even if he hated the city, now he found his feet hurrying him to get there.

  Kensington had once been a fashionable place, up until about twenty years ago when a bunch of eco-terrorists had taken it into their head that it was a valid target. Perhaps it was the shop selling furs, or the up market cutter who catered to the whims of fashion, but either way, Gaia's Revenge was released there. Hundreds had died by the time the culture was discovered to have been less than perfect culture, and the outbreak had been contained.

  The area never recovered, though, and by Bakari's era it had dissolved into graffiti ruins, where the descendants of those plagued victims eked out their lives amongst the pockets of the virus. Revenge was a highly manufactured plague capable of endless variations and going by a range of different channels. No one wanted to live anywhere near where it had been and might still linger. So Kensington had been transformed into the perfect place for dark dealings to take place.

  Flash Point had no signs, no exterior exposure to explain what its various entrances led to. Leia and Alexis, the couple that ran the Point, made sure that their clientele always had a way out. They also had informant police by the dozen and a cracking team of Liners to keep them up to date on who was legit and who was to be watched. Bakari hoped that he was still low enough to keep under their radar. No one really wanted Leia or Alexis keeping an eye on them.

  He chose the south entrance and walked down the apparently quiet oozing alleyway. Nodding to the bot cunningly disguised as a large tabby cat on top of the dumpster, he jerked open the rusted and cranky door and went in. Leia might like her tech, but she also admired the old school methods of detection.

  Lights were flashing inside while the thump of the music shook his bones. It smelt of booze and ozone. Turning up the dampening effects of his shades, Bakari contemplated how much closer he should have strapped his pistol to his hand; the last thing he wanted to have to do in a firefight was untangle it from his ankle. It was too late now.

  He walked the long corridor to the Point, trying not to think about how many electronic eyes were watching him, and how many weapons were capable of taking him out where he stood. Still, nothing stopped him entering and that was about as good as it got in here.

  Bakari didn’t pause at the doorway like some foolish first timer. He dropped into an empty, shadowy booth before checking out the lie of the land. Molly was still serving drinks, but she made no sign that she recognized him as she took his order. Both her mothers were pulling pints and chatting to the customers, neither appeared to notice him. Bakari wasn't fooled; they knew he was here. It was just that they considered him mostly harmless. He grinned to himself and refrained from waving. Leia looked a little older than last time he’d seen her, more wrinkles than there needed to be, but she was funny about that sort of thing. Alexis, on the other hand, had definitely visited a Cutter recently. She looked almost like Molly’s older, blonder sister.

  He threw some money down when his drink arrived and concentrated on the patrons, wondering who would be Green’s messenger. They looked like just the same lot that had frequented the place in his day, mostly Liners and their hangers on. Pretty much everyone had clamped a transceiver to their Line and was shaking to the alternative music and light show that only they could see. Bakari was tempted to join them, it always made the Point far more attractive, but today he needed meat eyes and ears.

  Soon enough, he picked out trouble among the crush of people and piped in smoke. A bunch of carefully concealed suit heavyweights were two booths over. Thankfully when he'd been shooting at them it was through a Line controlled bot. It had been his hardest job; attacking even a branch of the massive Infinity Rose Corporation was something not to be taken lightly. Bakari had thought himself prepared, carved by experience, ready to make the real money of cracking the top line corps. He’d been wrong. And there’d been no payout for the lack of results, but it was valuable in that he’d learnt his lesson.

  Recognizing them, then, Bakari was very careful. He didn't twitch, didn't move a muscle, instead letting his eyes slide easily away from them. Should he let the ladies know? Probably best not to. Trying to throw out Infinity Rose now would be more trouble than even the Point could handle. They were probably just scoping out the Line talent.

  Then Ronan grabbed hold of his shoulder and Bakari spilled his drink. The thief slipped into the booth across from him and called for Molly to get a refill. “The least I can do.”

  Bakari glared at him, but kept his voice level. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m just as surprised to see you, my friend.” His voice was chilly. “I got a message from an old… acquaintance. If I know how she works, I’m the messenger you’re waiting for. Still, I thought better of you.” Ronan kept his hands under the tabletop, near his weaponry no doubt. “Because if you had any idea about who you’re dealing with… well, you’re stupider than I thought.”

  Bakari could feel his anger building up in his throat, and here was the last place he wanted to release it. It would have all been so much simpler if Ronan wasn't involved; unfortunately, he hadn’t any choice in that. He refrained from sharing these thoughts with the other. Instead he smoothed his face into calmness and leaned back in the booth. “It’s a simple acquisition job.”

  “We both know that’s not true,” the other replied without a hint of malice, “So perhaps we should stop lying and get to the real meat of the matter?”

  Bakari's mouth went suddenly dry. Molly thankfully chose that moment to appear with her tray. It was loaded with a beer for him and something smaller and more potent for Ronan, though he’d never asked for anything. He must have had regular privileges, a thing that Bakari had lost long ago.

  She darted them a sharp look from under her long fringe, slid a scrap of print paper across the table to them, and then melted back to the bar.

  Ronan claimed the paper before Bakari could even reach for it. The loo
k on his face hardened as he bundled the scrap into his hand. When he straightened up and looked Bakari in the face, it was not a pleasant experience. He opened his mouth to speak and the other was not expecting the words to be any nicer.

  What Bakari had not expected was for chaos to choose that moment to break lose. The rattle of gunfire smashed into the ceiling. Liners began screaming, probably as their circuits overloaded. The lights flared once, then went out.

  Ronan moved as fast in the real world as Bakari did in the virtual. In a heartbeat, he’d ripped the table free of its bolts with one hand and yanked Bakari down onto the floor behind the makeshift barricade with the other.

  Against the dim light cast by the luminescent floor marking the Liners were spasming shapes, hands clutched uselessly to their heads. Cursing his slow meat reactions, Bakari clawed desperately at his leg bound gun while Ronan uncoiled his with a terrifying fluidity.

  He should have taken more notice of the Rosers two booths along. Bakari propped his gun over the edge of the table. Someone had set off the sprinklers, probably by Line, and through the heavy gray drops he could make out the ugly muzzle of Leia’s Grunter six hundred aimed two booths behind him.

  The thud and rattle of automatic gunfire bit its way through the dull concrete floor, across a couple of twitching Liners, and smacked into the edge of the steel bar. The Point was luckily not your average pub, and Leia's gun replied angrily from behind the welded and reinforced metal plates. As paint chips flew and blood began to pool across the dance floor, someone threw a mini thermal. First came the blinding, painful white flash, and then the hiss of thick smoke that burned the eyes.