Escapology

by Ren Warom

  Ho pushes away from the wall. Walks toward Shock.

  “So, what do I do with you?”

  He tosses the psy to one side as he comes, discarding his high just as casually. Does nothing touch this guy? ’Course not. There’s nothing to touch. Shock’s not a fighter. He has the gun but his body’s not together enough to use it. So he does what he should have done with Li and perhaps a few times before.

  He calls Shark.

  Shock feels the surge of movement as Shark explodes through 400-odd floors, bursting up through the gallery between them just as Ho removes a thin filleting knife from his jacket. Seventeen feet of enraged golden predator plough into him teeth first. With a toss of the head, Shark flips Ho up against the ceiling. Hot blood spatters down, chased by gobbets of flesh as Shark drives into Ho’s body, shaking its head.

  Horrified by the level of his violence, the depth of his rage, Shock tries to stop Shark, but Shark ignores his pleas. The predator has waited, as it was asked, and now it won’t wait, will not listen. It has its own anger to appease, Shock’s anger. Hidden too long and now finally unleashed. When it’s done, Shark swims serenely away down the gallery, radiating satisfaction, leaving Ho to drop to the floor, a rag of flesh in a sharp suit. Hands shaking, Shock wipes his face with the bottom of his tee, too numb to feel, too scrambled to process. Unsure of whether to laugh or cry.

  Puss slides up his leg, onto his torso, gently, careful not to disturb rib bones still broken and now moving again thanks to Li Harmony.

  Is it over? he asks her. Because he really doesn’t know.

  “Run.” The voice is weak. Broken. Pleading. “I told you to run. Why didn’t you run? They’re coming. You brought Emblem too close, and they’re coming for it. I can’t hold them any more. I’m so sorry.”

  Shock turns. Behind him stands Josef, holding himself against the wall with one arm, his body drooping, heaving with exhaustion. Josef looks up, and in his eyes golden lights swirl. Particles gather. “Run,” he whispers. “Now.”

  Change Is Underrated

  Darkness is like the deep sea. There’s no comfort in that thick swell around you, pulling you under, only panic gripping the limbs, the heart, the guts, and squeezing hard. Amiga’s never been near the sea, but she dreams of drowning. Doesn’t everyone? Now she’s not dreaming. She’s drowning in darkness, in liquid cold filling her chest, dragging at her limbs.

  The urge to sleep, to let go, is overwhelming, but there’s no coming back from that, and Amiga’s beyond terrified of the finality in it. She’s not ready for this. Not ready to give up, to let it all end. Frantic she clings on to awareness, fights the drag of a body convinced it’s too damaged to continue, weakened by blood loss and become so terribly heavy. Too heavy to hold onto.

  The thought of losing her grip galvanizes her. She’s screaming inside as she claws back consciousness, determined to find light, find air, to beat her body. They are at war and she refuses to surrender. With ferocious intent, she fights the darkness, that oh-so-tempting desire to rest, to sleep; and in the darkness peeks a glimmer of light.

  Closer and closer it comes. Brighter and brighter. And then pain hits. So much fucking pain. Her chest burns, her lungs, her throat. Air rasps like wires, every one abrading, and she’s pulling at them, trying to tear them out. Hands grab at hers, holding them away, but the air, it hurts.

  “Amiga!”

  The voice hits from a distance. And again, closer. “Amiga!”

  “Amiga!”

  Closer still. The rasp in her throat worsens for a second. It rises, choking her, then disappears. It’s bliss. Fucking amazing.

  “Amiga!”

  She starts awake into the middle of a coughing fit, her lungs on fire. There’s a shadow hovering above her. She grabs for it. Blinking frantically she tries to clear her vision. In blurry flashes a face comes into view. Moustachioed. Brown eyes alight with concern.

  “Ravi?” Dear heaven talking hurts.

  “Right here, girl. Right here. Fuck but you had me scared.”

  It’s Ravi. Definitely Ravi. His gloves drenched in gore, a gun full of C-Gen gripped in his hand.

  He turns and calls out, “She’s awake!”

  Footsteps to her side. Vivid appears in her peripheral vision, an odd look on her face.

  “Hey. Hey there. Wow, you’re fucking crazy, you know that? You popped a lung. Clean smashed it through with almost a dozen fucking darts. Ravi’s taken an age to patch and re-inflate it. Had to intubate you and everything. Scary arse shit, bitch. How you feeling?”

  “Like I’ve been chewed up and spat out.”

  Amiga tries to move, to sit up. Ravi slaps a hand on her forehead.

  “Still, dammit. Almost done.” He leans down and finishes putting her thigh back together. It hurts like hell. “There. Good as new. Sort of. Well, not really. But you’re alive.”

  “Thanks for that, Ravi,” she mutters.

  “Well, you know, I do my best. Even when idiots consider it necessary to fire crossbow bolts through their own torso. What the fuck were you thinking?”

  “He had a gun pointed at my back.”

  Ravi makes a considering face.

  “’Spose that could be a reason. But you know anatomy. Coulda been a tad more careful.”

  “Er… not long to think.”

  He sniffs. “Excuses. Next time use those seconds to rustle up a better angle, eh? Don’t like having to patch my friends up. Don’t like having to bring them back from the fucking dead. It harshes my fucking shine.” He grabs her arm, not allowing her time to respond. “Come on. Up. Let’s see if my handiwork is handy enough.”

  Trying not to feel the guilt sloshing about in her system, because she could have aimed a little better if she weren’t being all self-pity machine and shit, Amiga allows him to yank her up from the floor. Immediately, she throws up in spectacular fashion, the violent heaves sending flashes of pain like static electricity across her chest and down her side. Ravi holds on to her, keeping her steady, letting her rest against him as what seems like an entire week’s worth of food ejects itself from her stomach.

  “There we go. Let it all out,” he says, rubbing her back. “Had to pump you full of a few unpleasant drugs to keep you stable whilst I worked. Best they’re out, for sure.”

  “Fucking bastard,” she chokes out.

  “Fucking idiot,” he replies cheerfully. “All done?”

  She hangs down, waiting out a few last heaves. Enduring them. Nothing else comes up, so she wipes her mouth and straightens in careful increments, wary of setting herself off again. Asks the important question first.

  “Where’s Twist?”

  Ravi turns her. “There.”

  Twist’s splayed out on the floor in a pool of blood, arms akimbo, and she’s pleased to see how well her bolts got him. Just below the heart. Judging by the amount of blood they tore right through the pulmonary. In which case the neat bullet hole in the cranium could be seen as overkill. Ah, there’s the reason for that look on Vivid’s face. She raises a brow at Vivid.

  “Double-tap, Vee? Really?”

  “Better to be sure,” Vivid replies.

  “I can dig that. Grab one of those swords from the Guns there, would you?” Amiga asks her.

  “Ooh, souvenir?” asks Vivid, doing just that.

  “If you like. First I want you to cut off his head.”

  Vivid places a hand on her heart.

  “You spoil me. Genuinely.”

  “You ladies are fucking nuts,” Ravi says, shaking his head in amazement. “I adore you.”

  Couple of hard strikes later, interrupted by a reel of cursing, Vivid has the head.

  “That was harder than I thought.”

  “Vertebrae,” Amiga says, ever practical. “Never underestimate them.”

  “Logged and internalized for future ref.” Vivid grabs the head by the hair and lifts it. “Where’s this going?”

  “Vault.”

  Understanding without having to ask
what Amiga wants, Vivid hands her the head and takes her other side to help Ravi lead her to the vault. Deuce is in there on the computers, unravelling Twist’s network and anything else he can sabotage. He raises a brow at Amiga, who’s got Twist’s head rammed under her bad arm. She doesn’t buy his insouciance for a second, he’s pale as his mother right now, fear hanging in his eyes like unshed tears.

  “His head? Really, Amiga? Overkill.” He sounds as shaky as he looks. Sounds like he wants to say something else. It can wait.

  Amiga untangles from Ravi and Vivid, allows her body to find its equilibrium, and limps to the tanks, lifting the lid from Nero’s. She wants to say something meaningful, instead she finds herself rambling.

  “I’m sorry about your eyes,” she says to him. “And your ears. And your tongue. And… well, actually, I’m kinda sorry about everything. I was having a bad day. It wasn’t your fault. Anyway, I brought you some company as an apology of sorts. I think you’ll grok the joke.”

  She plops Twist’s head in and replaces the lid. Turns to find Vivid, Ravi and Deuce staring at her.

  “What?”

  “That was… interesting,” says Deuce, trying not to laugh.

  “Yeah… well… I felt bad okay?”

  He smiles, and it’s that smile again. Her smile.

  “Fair enough. I’m about done here. Twist’s clearly very done. What shall we do next?”

  “How are the other teams doing?”

  “Efficient. Make us look bad almost.”

  Taking a break from staring at him before her eyes melt, Amiga struggles to think of what to do. There’s a lot she wants to say to Deuce, and from the look in his eyes, oh that look, she can see there’s one hell of a lot he wants to say to her.

  Jeez, it really can wait. Today has been hella long, and she’s feeling all kinds of fucking raw, in body and mind. Besides, she’s taken on a new role, one she intends to be as honest as possible in after somehow surviving killing herself. And there’s a half-broken ex-Haunt who might be in need of practical help from a half-broken ex-Cleaner.

  “Let’s go help Shock,” she says. “He might be grateful of some back-up.”

  She looks at Deuce to gauge his reaction, and is relieved to find he’s still smiling at her. Except there’s something different. Something wrong. In the black depths of his poker-chip eyes, golden lights are swirling.

  So What Happens in the End

  Reality ripples around Shock. He was in the self-same position as Josef only this morning. Gold erupting from his eyes. Something coming through IRL that was never meant for it. Was it this morning? Aeons have passed. Whole lifetimes flashing by on fast forward. At this moment, two feet planted on the ground means nothing. His truth was in another universe where time stood still for years, paused in Sendai. Now he’s running ahead of time, feet on fire, mind reeling. Gold lacing through each and every thought he owns.

  Does he own his thoughts? Surely he must share them? He’s not one but three. Three minds in one. Three minds where there was only one this morning. Or was there? What is the truth?

  And how many Queens? Six. Six behemoths against one Shock, one Puss, one Shark.

  Still fighting for a truth that fits this moment, just as he’s still fighting for a truth that fits his own and all the moments he’s encountered since, Shock turns from the gold gathering in Josef’s eyes. Walks down the gallery one shaking step at a time, feeling surreal, like a puppet in his own body, unsure who’s driving, who’s making the decisions. Because this is impossible. You can’t run from the impossible. The Queens can’t come through Josef. How could they? They’re not avis. They’re made for Hive. That’s where they belong. And yet, gold light fills the gallery. They are coming. Truth has changed. It’s changing faster than time these days.

  And there’s another truth he’s trying to grasp. Could the Queens wield the same power out of Hive as they do within it? Surely they’ll be reduced out here? Vulnerable maybe. Shock wants to convince himself of it, but Shark disagrees. It’s agitated, harrying. Turning every now and then to make sure Shock’s following and fear grows through Shock’s uncertainty like golden light, obscuring all else.

  Shark’s a tool, a tool made from Shock, the hungry, angry parts of himself he’s suppressed for far too long. Shark can’t speak like Puss, and yet it’s emanating tension, unease, more eloquent than any language could express. Puss, who can speak, is strangely silent, grips Shock’s torso tighter and tighter as the golden glow blooms to dawn-bright intensity.

  What? he asks her. What is it?

  Get out. Get out, please, she replies, and tries to hide in him. So she can’t see.

  What the hell? Shock moves faster, trying to run, driven by their fear. As afraid for them as they appear to be for him, for each other. Beyond the gallery, another lounge. Huge. Filled with antique furniture broken beyond repair by Li’s manic whirl through the room.

  And there’s Ho’s actions, right there. The tinted sliding windows along the room’s right side are pushed wide, their frames bent out of skew. Wind whistles in from the balcony, icy cold. Li flew all right, but not without help. Was she aware of Ho’s treachery? Shock hopes so. There’s no justice in her being allowed to die oblivious. That’s too kind for one such as her. Shivering, he makes his way to the windows and looks out, his hair blowing madly around his face.

  Curling away from the balcony is the outside corridor to the residential shoot. He can use it to get away. He laughs. Crazy thought that: away. In Hive the Queens are easily as tall as Heights, perhaps even taller. If they appear IRL as his avis have, they’ll be the same, and if there’s reason to fear them there’ll be nowhere he can run. Better to turn and fight. But how do you fight hologrammatic colossi who control every sec-drone in the Gung? What do you fight them with?

  Giving in to his instinct, he hurries out along the balcony, and makes for the shoot.

  We need to crack the res shoot, he says to Puss.

  I’ll try. There are layers of VA. They come from the entrance, not the staff quarters.

  Shock leaves her to it, still too fried to help. If only Emblem were doing what it did with Li, then he could jack into Slip, help Puss bypass all the VA. But Emblem’s dormant. He can feel it there, right through him, almost like an avi, with little to distinguish Emblem from self; only its code is visibly different, a delicate filigree sewn through him, into him. Carefully he prods at it, trying to make it respond. Nothing. Perhaps he damaged it somehow by cutting Li’s connection to her avi? Just because you can do a thing, doesn’t mean that you should. Doesn’t mean that it’s safe.

  Battling against the wind, Shock makes it to the outer walkway. Made entirely from glass, it’s like walking on air, floating. How he wishes he could float away. Behind him, Josef lets out one half-choking scream, and gold light explodes through the whole penthouse, followed by the most enormous legs, still weaving into existence.

  Here come the Queens.

  Those legs pass the corridor, lighting up Shock’s face, and keep going, no sign of a body yet to follow. Only when they’ve almost touched the ground does he see the first head emerging, feelers waving, eyes fixed on him. He feels them. Like weights. Like in Hive. And he knows.

  “Ah shit,” he says, and shifts up a gear to a shambling run he won’t be able to maintain.

  Her head moves close to the glass, compound side eyes reflecting multiple Shocks, wild-haired and wide-eyed, terror written all over his skin. She’s in his head, too. Small at first, as if unsure of her power, her size outside of Hive, and then vast, confident, overwhelming. Fuck but if he thought Emblem was huge, she smashes that delusion, steamrolling into his mind and crushing it beneath her weight.

  Shock Pao, she says, and her voice deafens him, roaring like a hurricane through his brain. Did you not think we knew you would try to run? Did you not think we would have means to bring you back to us? Amuse us. Try again. Try and run.

  Shock has no intention of remaining. He stumbles on toward the e
nd of the walkway. Weighed down by the Queen’s monstrous presence, Emblem stirs. Wakes. And in those moments of waking, it throws her from his mind, some shadow of its old function temporarily come to life. She exits laughing, as if Emblem is a flea batting at her face. She’s right. This eviction is no more than a gesture. Emblem can’t keep her out, it’s not what it was; not just a lock any more.

  Freed from the burden of her, Emblem finishes what it began before he used it to destroy Li; altering his perception, making him a living uplink forever both inside and outside of Slip. He’s running along a glass walkway, which is also a schematic, whilst floating inside of Slip, surrounded by millions of avis. The avis see him too. Curious, they stop to stare, and he realizes that he’s golden there, just as Breaker made him before. An anomalous human-shaped fish.

  Puss is beside him, serene and graceful, and Shark too, back in their ocean at last, and their delight radiates. They’ve been trapped far away from the familiar, and vulnerable. Now they’re like he is, half IRL and half in Slip—stronger than ever before. But they’re not strong enough, not dangerous enough. He warns them against attacking the Queens and makes for the shoot.

  Through his new perception—the underlying patterns he used to only see with Puss’s help augmented by his reconnection to Slip—he can see in a glance how to crack his way in. So simple. Layers of VA undone with a single thought. Why can’t everything be like this? He steps in, amazed that even through this information overload and the chaos of Slip he knows where to put his feet.

  Looking out across inner city as the shoot begins to travel downward, he finally sees the other Queens, all five of them, striding across the Gung. They dwarf everything, casting endless shadows between ’scrapers, over rooftops. Around them flit hundreds of drones, flashes of silvery light. He looks up again, wary of losing the sixth—or is she the first?—even though she’s too big to lose. She’s still watching him; he feels her interest as profoundly as if she were still inside his mind.