“And then the kid’s dad turned into my dad.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I only saw the kid for like a second outside the tagghet game. You know what was even crazier? I was thirsty. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted a drink.”
“And then you saw your father.” Spindle stopped the meditative dance. “Perhaps you should investigate how you feel about this dream.”
“I would, if I knew what really happened. You were about to beat me, the next thing I saw you smashed against a boulder.” I pulled my shirt off and wiped my face. Spindle stood very still. “Maybe you can fill in the blanks.”
“I cannot discuss this, Master Socket. Trainer Pon will address the occurrence when you return.”
“Occurrence? So something happened.”
He tipped his head. He’d already said too much. “I believe it is time to eat.”
Spindle was through the door, helping Mom set the table.
Conversation over.
T R A I N I N G
Back in the game
I hadn’t seen the high school since it was destroyed by the duplicates’ last stand a year ago. Some of the old live oaks had burned and the reconstruction was expansive. The building was wide, not tall, with green and tan colors that matched the countryside. The walls were made of triple-paned insulated fiberglass that could change colors and opacity, letting in more or less sunlight depending on the season and time of the day. The Paladins paid for it all.
I parked far up the road and avoided the traffic. The last thing I needed was the Garrison getting a traffic summons. Besides, Spindle would annoy me all night if I parked illegally. I wanted him to enjoy the game. I wanted to enjoy the game.
All Spindle needed was a death sickle to complete the whole grim reaper look, but no one seemed to notice. There were already enough high school freaks to make him look normal. He couldn’t get enough of them. So much culture!
“This is where you went to school?” Spindle asked.
“That’s the place,” I said. “I like to think of it as my prison years.”
“You were incarcerated?”
“No, it’s just what it felt like.”
Spotlights beamed up ahead into the low-lying cloud cover, bright enough to illuminate the dusky sky. I avoided walking through the parking lot where we were sure to find problems. Rednecks, burners, and every other sort of troublemaker would be there. Lookits constantly cruised over the area and reported fights or any other suspicious activity, bringing security as needed, which was at every game. Years ago, it was a prime spot to score weed, speed or meth, but those were the drug days. Now specialized gear could induce a similar high, and no one would know the difference.
The school stadium was on par with Blackbaud. While the color scheme matched the school, it was two stories tall. The outside walls were open scaffolding and spiraling ramps circled up each corner where people walked to the top.
The crowd funneled toward the main entrance. An arch curved over the gate, swirling with greens and tans and an animated fox mascot clenching his fists at the crowd. A bunch of guys ran past us, bumping into Spindle.
“My apologies,” Spindle called.
A couple of them turned around, then turned again. They grabbed their buddies. Thankfully, the rest were too distracted by the girls ahead of them.
“Come on,” I said. “We should get inside.”
In front of the gates was a low, concrete pond with fountains where little kids threw coins. A concrete pillar rose from the center of the water with the inscription, In Memory. The inscription left out what it was remembering, but everyone knew, they didn’t need the words to know all this new stuff was in memory of those lost in the attack, when the duplicates launched their first and only public attack.
The fox mascot high-fived the fans. Teachers handed out programs and directed traffic. I didn’t bother saying hi. None of the teachers remembered me. As we got closer to the gates, the crowd got tighter. Look at that and it’s a humanoid murmured from those around us, but the line kept moving. We got to the gate without incident, but then a girl tugged on Spindle’s hood.
“Hello.” His eyelight spun around. “How are you?”
“What are you?”
“I am a—”
I grabbed his sleeve and yanked him onto the pedestrian ramp. “We’re going to draw a crowd.”
“I just want to be polite.”
The girls followed. “Is he yours? What’s his name? Hey! Don’t be a jag, we just want to see him.”
We got up the ramp before they slowed us down. I just wanted to be invisible, which usually wasn’t a problem. I should’ve know this was going to happen.
“He’s a prototype,” I said. “No big deal.”
“Who are you?” the girl said.
“Nobody.”
“You don’t go to school here, I can tell you that,” she said, looking at my white hair.
“You’re right.”
“I like your coat.” One of the girls had a hold of Spindle’s sleeve.
“Do you really?” Spindle said. “It came recommended from a website on popular culture…”
“Spindle!” I stood on my toes and tried to whisper. “What’re you doing?”
“Your name is Spindle?”
The girls were waving more people over. This needed to be addressed. I flooded their collective awareness with thoughts of boys and cars and food and homework. Their expressions emptied into the storm of pressing thoughts and the emotions that followed. Two seconds later, they were fixated on some boys and forgot they ever saw a one-eyed humanoid.
“From now on,” I said, “let’s be a little less polite and more invisible.”
“I do not want to be rude.”
“Just because you don’t say hi, that doesn’t mean you’re rude.”
We walked to the top of the ramp and through a short corridor. The stadium seats surrounded the entire field and enclosed skyboxes with black windows looking down from the top. The bleacher seats were steep and filling quickly.
A lookit floated down. “Do not block corridor.”
I pulled Spindle along like a six-foot kid with attention deficient disorder. The crowd was less rowdy in the seats at the ends of the field, where green scoring cubes hovered off the ground inside bluish domes. We found seats near the top with people that looked like grandparents. Old people couldn’t care less about humanoid mechs, and even less about freakishly dressed students. Perfect.
I nestled into the soft, moldable seat – no expense spared – and placed a program on the seat next to me, just in case Streeter showed up. A couple had their interactive program open in front of me, watching imbedded vid of their grandson scoring a cube from last season. Spindle’s eyelight was bright again, scanning the crowd.
“Explain to me,” he said, having to lean his head against mine to be heard over the crowd, “the various subcultures.”
I described high school students and how like-minded personalities were attracted to each other and formed group mentalities. There were the gearheads, the bombers, crossers, and brainers, to name a few. I avoided explaining the burners and droppers since they were in the parking lot because then he’d want to know why they weren’t supporting the team. I pointed to people I remembered, told him who used to hook up with who and who was popular and who wasn’t. And why.
“What about those kids?” Spindle stood and pointed at the band of misfits walking down the isle, all dressed in black. I yanked him down before they came over and made a scene.
“Those are bleeders,” I said.
“They appear to have neck wounds.” His eyelight brightened. “If they are not treated, they could become infected.”
“Those aren’t wounds, just fake tattoos on their necks to look like puncture wounds. It’s a whole vampire thing.”
“Vampires do not exist.”
“Yeah, well, tell them.” I stopped him before he did.
“I do not understand. If, in fact, vampires did exist, why would those boys and girls want to walk the earth as the undead?”
“Beats the hell out of me.” I smacked his leg. “Kids these days, huh?”
“Which group did you belong to?” he asked.
“None of the above.”
“You know what group I believe is right for you?” Spindle crossed his arms, surveying me with his red eyelight. “The potters.”
“The what?”
“The potters.” His eyelight dimmed, as if squinting. “Surely, there must be a gang of kids that follow the story of Harry Potter, the famous wizard of Hogwarts. It was a worldwide phenomenon.”
“And you think I’d be in that group?”
“Why not, Master Socket? I can see it now, you and your friends dressed in your long, flowing robes and knobby wands at your sides, practicing spells between classes…”
“You lost your mind.”
I looked over the edge of the stadium while Spindle continued on with his favorite Harry Potter book. I recalled the day when the duplicates attacked the world. I was wearing a dark hoodie, watching Chute in her very first tagghet game.
“You see that over there?” I interrupted Spindle’s analysis of Professor Snape. “That’s where the truck erupted.”
His faceplate sparkled, recalling the incident from his database. He probably had a fully detailed account of the incident from lookit vids that captured the entire ordeal, but he listened to my firsthand account. How the eighteen-wheeled truck caught on fire. How the explosion destroyed the old bleachers and killed people. How the crawlers spewed from the flames like a volcano of freakish spiders, tossing parked vehicles to get to the school’s portal underground to let the duplicates have access to virtualmode before they died.
Now, instead of the domed roof there was a tower encircled with dark windows, like the school was looking in all directions. It was the Paladins’ clever design to remind the public we kept them safe. That we were always watching.
The crowd stood and cheered. The Hilton Head Hightide rode onto the field on hovering jetter discs, swinging sticks curved at the end over their heads. The self-balancing jetters whizzed at dangerous speeds and the team circled the entire field before huddling at the opposite end.
“Socket!” Chute’s voice rang in my head. “Where are you?”
“On the home team end, behind the goal at the top.”
Whatever she said next was blotted out by the roar of the crowd. The Charleston Rapid Foxes blazed onto the field, sticks in the air. Their heads were projected as a hovering three-dimensional image as they hit the field. The players pumped their fists. They were twice as nimble as the last time I’d seen them.
Chute was the last one out and the crowd announced her arrival with an explosion of cheers and the signature shhhhooooooooot. Her projected head looked in our direction with a bright smile. I stood on the seat and pulled Spindle up. Wave, wave, I told him, and Spindle raised his arms, bright colors dancing inside the hood. She saw us and pointed, but her teammates pulled her into the huddle. I was still standing when the crowd sat. And Spindle was still waving. I pulled his arms down.
They started pre-game, doing a double figure-eight and passing three tags. They formed a large line at center pitch and, one at a time, flew toward the goal. Each person cut back and forth with their own display of evasion skills, taking a pass from the sideline and throwing it at the green cube inside the electro-magnetized dome. The tag went through the dome and stuck in the cube. Some rode to the top of the dome and fired the tag through it.
Chute worked the jetter like it was an extension of her feet, cutting turns sharply, quickly and precisely. She executed a double-spin move, took the pass blindly with her stick behind her and bounced a shot off the ground that stuck in the center of the cube. Sweet.
The crowd was on its feet again.
“Should I wave?” Spindle asked.
“No!” I stood on the seat. “Just shout!”
Fans cupped their hands around their mouths. Spindle put his hands inside the hood and let out a baritone roar that shook the seats, sounded like a goddamn cargo ship. The entire section looked at us.
The energy was exhilarating. I called Streeter and got his voice mail, again.
“Locate.” My nojakk reported he was there, at the school, at the game! “Where are you?” I said on his voice mail. “Spindle and I are sitting behind the home goal at the top! Get here before the tag drops!”
But as announcements were called and the teams took the field, Streeter’s seat was still empty. The announcer’s voice was barely audible over the crowd. A lookit hovered over the center pitch with the tag. A player from each team squared off underneath. Holographic numbers counted down over them. On zero, the tag dropped. The stadium shook. Another tagghet season was underway.
I called Streeter again without luck. I wasn’t going to leave another message. There was little chance he’d find us in the madness. I called to locate him and get a closer look on his location. I could go get him while Spindle held the seats. He was so fixated on the game, he might not even notice I was gone.
“Locate, Streeter.” The noise was drowning out the volume in my head. I sat down and covered my ears, called the command again.
“The recipient’s GPS is blocked,” it replied.
Streeter shut off his GPS since I left a message. He didn’t want me to know where he was.
My neck was beginning to chill.
T R A I N I N G
Void
Streeter was definitely losing his mind if he thought he could hide from me. Did he forget what Paladins can do?
I activated the imbed, felt it connect with my eyes. I was encouraged not to use it in public because my eyes would be brighter than normal, sometimes even sparkle if it was dark enough.
[Locate Streeter,] I thought.
A virtualmap platform of gridlines stacked in the air, then curved and formed a sphere. Blue oceans and terra firma developed and planet Earth was now rotating in front of me. The Paladin’s version of Google Earth was finely detailed, but unlike Google, it was a live feed. The view zoomed into the United States, South Carolina, Charleston, and finally the stadium. A tiny figure was highlighted on the far end of the parking lot.
“Come on.”
I pulled Spindle out of his seat and we pushed through the crowd. The imbed locked onto people as we passed and automatically downloaded their history, identifying objects with glowing outlines. Spindle didn’t ask questions. He sensed the urgency in my step.
When we entered the parking lot, the burners stared at us; their hair was no longer than mine but it was knotty, unwashed and hanging in their eyes. One of them blew a long cloud of smoke at us. The distinctive smell of burning skin lingered in the smell of cigarettes, the sort of smell that would emanate from slow-roasting meat. That was the gear cooking their brains, ever so slowly. Most people wouldn’t smell that, but most people didn’t see what I could see. Or smell.
I didn’t recognize any of these people from school, but the imbed immediately downloaded their histories along with names, whereabouts and criminal records. They were mostly small-time punks with dim futures, although some of them were good kids hanging around bad people. Small discs were tucked behind their ears that emitted a low drone and convinced their brains they were happy and good. They were burning on mood gear, cooking their brains like a meth lab.
We were heading for the low-riding black pick-up truck parked in the grass with the tailgate down. Streeter had his back to us, talking to a guy with artificially tanned skin. His face was sort of shrink-wrapped over his cheekbones like he’d sucked on the end of a vacuum cleaner.
“This won’t take long,” I told Spindle.
He slowed his pace and let me approach the truck that reeked of cologne. I reached for Streeter as he put something in the tanned guy’s hand.
“What’re you doing over here?” I asked.
Streeter
jumped back when I touched him and yanked his arm away, breathing heavily. There was another guy sitting on the tailgate that looked lean and dangerous with veins bulging down his forearms. He closed in on me; his muscles tensing. The imbed reported he was a mixed martial artist and a registered bodyguard.
“It’s all right, Edward.” Vacuumface put his hand up and karateman stopped; then he stared at me for several long seconds, keeping his hand up like he was holding back an attack dog but might change his mind. My reflection looked back from the black sunglasses. Most people wouldn’t be able to see with lens that dark, but he wore them to protect his eyes from light, not to look cool. Even moonlight was too bright for him.
His birth name was Patrick Black and he was a virtualmode dealer, a guy that pushed mood gear to the loitering burners. He was also called a void merchant because he helped people avoid their lives, to get rid of pain and seek pleasure. In reality, he helped them empty their lives until they were void of realness, but his victims wouldn’t know what hit them. By the time they were strung out, they wouldn’t know the difference between dream and reality. And Streeter was making a deal with him.
Vampires do exist, Spindle.
“My friend,” Patrick said, flashing a pearly-white smile, “I’m afraid I only work by appointment. My assistant gets a little nervous when people barge in, you see. You’ll have to wait your turn.”
“I’m not here to see you, I only need a word with my friend.”
“Well, then you and I are mutual friends. Mr. Street and I have spent a lot of time together as of late.”
Streeter sort of cringed and turned away.
“My name is Mr. Black.” Patrick extended his hand. I didn’t shake it. Edward the watchdog twitched. Patrick only smiled.
“No offense, Mr. Black, but I only need a second and I’ll be out of your way soon enough.”
“No problem. I see you have urgent business and I wouldn’t want to be a burden, but you see we’re in the middle of an exchange.” He held up the item that Streeter had placed in his hand. “Mr. Street has given me something that I desire and I wish to reimburse him for it.”
Socket 1-3 - The Socket Greeny Saga Page 30
