Extropia

by Robin Bootle

  His shield-bearing arm jerked up and the blade’s impact sent him tumbling backwards. Pain seared through his knuckles and into his hand. He crawled backwards as the soldier came after him. What a fool to come up here so blindly. What a way to end his journey, with a stupid rush of blood to the head.

  Without a sound, a pair of hairless legs appeared behind the soldier, and then a sword lifting high above the soldier’s head. It came crashing down, the soldier’s eyes grew vacant and he dropped to his knees. Now in his place stood Elizabeth, her sword and a small round shield in her hands, her bow strapped to her back.

  ‘You’re a real ass, you know that?’

  ‘Thanks,’ was all he managed. There wasn’t time for anything else. He scrambled to his feet and dashed to the next room. One soldier was still engaged with Ivandell, his back turned. The soldier couldn’t even see Edward, probably didn’t even know he was there.

  Edward tried to step forward, picturing himself plunging his blade into the soldier’s flesh. But his feet refused to move and his dagger-holding hand began to shake. The only game characters he’d ever killed had been two-dimensional, executed via the simple press of a button on a remote control or by a wave of his arm. But here he would feel it, the skin giving way as his blade broke through, the tightening and twisting of his victim’s body, the groans in his ears. And once upon a time these soldiers had been men, so Ivandell had said.

  Elizabeth brushed past his shoulder, ready to do what he could not, but before she reached the soldier the tip of Ivandell’s sword pierced through the skin on the soldier’s back. Ivandell’s eyes settled on Edward and the shaking dagger in his hands. ‘Your bravery is to be commended, my friend, but you must not get involved.’ He rushed to the window, his hands gripping either side of the window frame. ‘By the Skylar! The people are fighting! They have committed themselves, their homes! I must help them!’ He marched past Edward towards the front door with only a brief backward glance. ‘Edward, if you believe the Great Warrior is alive, then I believe you! Find him and bring him back to us! Elizabeth will keep you safe!’ And like that, Ivandell was gone, leaping through the doorway into the street.

  Edward couldn’t take his eyes off the soldiers on the floor. The blood that had been spilled was the darkest red, like the mist in the woods, and thick like oil. The soldiers’ eyes were black, without whites or coloured pupils. And their corpses stank, filling his nostrils with the smell of rotting flesh.

  Through the window he could see more soldiers fighting, teeth snarling as they swung their blades. Then the door swung open and smashed into the wall behind. A soldier hung in the doorway, blood running down his side. Edward thrust out his dagger without thinking, but it didn’t connect. The soldier was already falling to the ground, an arrow through his back.

  ‘You still sure about this?’ asked Elizabeth, arriving beside him.

  He shook his head, anything but sure. Hesitantly, he moved into the doorway to survey the street. What seemed like thirty or forty duels were in mid flow, the Greys outnumbered by the plain-clothed men and women of Hawkshead. This wasn’t a street fight. This was a battle. In the middle of them all was the warrior Ivandell, so strong and powerful he seemed to draw Dēofol’s men towards him.

  ‘Whatever happens, we stay together, okay?’ said Elizabeth.

  He nodded, scarcely aware any more of what he was doing. Elizabeth fired off an arrow, quickly followed by another, then sprung into the street, hacking into the back of a soldier who was fighting with one of the civilians.

  Edward glanced at his dagger, his whole body already seizing up. I can’t do it, he thought. I can’t kill them. It’s all too real!

  Above the sound of the fighting, a shrill cry came loud and clear. ‘Help!’ The captain was on the floor, his sword out of reach and his body curled up with two hands behind his shield, protecting what he could of his head and body as a soldier jabbed at him, trying to find a way through.

  Edward remained frozen as the soldier kicked the captain in the ribs, then again in the arms, and his shield tumbled and rolled out of reach. The soldier let out a bloodthirsty growl and raised his sword up above his head.

  A spark of energy exploded from deep inside Edward’s belly, quickly reaching his arms and his hands. The soldier’s downward swing stopped abruptly, inches from the captain’s head as though his sword was lodged in an invisible rock. His arm shook in mid-air as he struggled to release his blade from the unseen force. In one smooth movement the captain rolled over, grabbed his axe and rammed it through the side of the soldier’s armour. The creature collapsed with a pig-like squeal.

  Edward barely noticed the captain’s nod of thanks. He leant hard against the doorframe, retching amid desperate gasps for breath. But he needed to push on. Someone else might need his help. And now he knew how he would help them – not with his dagger but with his staff.

  He pulled it from his back, scanning the scene for his next target. It was then that something tugged inside him, like that feeling of having left something behind. Ahead, Ivandell was surrounded by three soldiers. Running to help him was the captain. Edward glanced wildly left then right, acutely aware now what was wrong.

  Elizabeth was missing.

  Already the crowd was thinning, the superior number of Hawkshead’s fighters making quick work of the Greys, and the rate was accelerating with each of Dēofol’s soldiers that fell. But nowhere could he see Elizabeth.

  ‘More soldiers!’ A man pointed with the two foot-long blades in his hands towards the fountain in the central square. Beside it, twelve or so of Dēofol’s soldiers stood, looking to one another as if uncertain what to do. The first of them turned to run, then the second, and before long all of them were running from the villagers.

  ‘Elizabeth?’ Edward weaved over and around the bodies that littered the floor, searching and calling her name, praying to see her on her feet. And now at last with the street around him clearing, he could see her, arms sprawled in the dirt, her body smothered beneath a soldier’s corpse.

  ‘Elizabeth!’ He raced to her side and kneeled to roll away the body. He heaved, ignoring the stench, but the soldier was too heavy. ‘Elizabeth! I need you to push!’ he cried. But she didn’t budge. ‘Please God! Please don’t die!’ He pushed again, this time with his body and his mind together. The soldier shifted a few inches. He let the soldier roll back and then with one last cry he drove forward with all his strength and the soldier tumbled away.

  He put his index and middle finger to her neck. Her heart was beating. He searched her body for blood, but there was none. He lifted her head, cradling it in his lap. ‘Oh Christ, Elizabeth!’ His fingers ran through her hair and he leant forward, kissing her on the forehead. ‘Please, wake up!’

  He realised he was rocking back and forth, just like the first time they’d met. And in a flash he remembered all the times he’d wronged her, always forcing her to follow him into danger. All the things he’d never managed to say or do. To hold her, to comfort her. To tell her how he felt.

  Oh God, Elizabeth, what I have done to you? he thought, as the emotion inside threatened to overwhelm him completely.

  An eerie silence from the remnants of the battle drew his attention. Some of those fighting seemed distracted by something happening near the prison. He followed their gaze until his eyes settled on something that made him lift a hand to clear his eyes. When his hand dropped away again, there could be no denying what he saw.

  A circle of distorted space, whirring and black.

  The circle cracked, imploding on itself. And in its place all that remained was a figure dressed in black skeletal armour.

  Quickly Hound limped into the heat of the battle, his dagger in one hand and his axe in the other. Those of Dēofol’s men who were within reach seemed to tumble where they were, like puppets whose strings had been cut. And for a second Edward dared to believ
e that Hound was here to help, here to fight against Dēofol’s army.

  But Hound kept on forward, deeper into the battle, then through it and beyond into the empty street before Edward.

  Edward scrambled to grab Elizabeth under the armpits. He dragged her towards the house, his arms and legs burning with the effort. Hound was gaining several yards at a time for each of Edward’s burdened steps backwards. He reached the house and hauled her inside. Slamming the door, he knelt down beside her and shook her as hard as he dared. ‘Elizabeth! Wake up!’ Her head bobbed limply with every shake. ‘Elizabeth, please!’ Still nothing. He stood up, knowing his only option was to head back to the battle – to call for help, but more than anything to draw Hound away from Elizabeth.

  As he gripped the door handle, the door flew off its hinges, knocking him to the floor beneath it. He rolled under its weight and crawled his way free. On his feet, he caught sight of Hound’s black figure in the corner of his eye. He swivelled with his staff an extension to his forearm, but only in time to see Hound’s fist heading straight for his cheekbone.

  The world began to gyrate. He was falling to the ground, plummeting through it, crashing around in a whirlpool of an abyss.

  Then the abyss closed in, and all noise and light was shut out.

  19

  The Dark Agent

  Edward came to, his head dazed and throbbing, his chin slumped to his chest. His wrists were bound behind his back. The edges of a wooden chair pressed hard against the inside of his arms.

  He opened his eyes only slightly because it hurt to do so. His mage’s robes had reverted back to the blue jeans and white t-shirt he’d been wearing when he’d first jumped into Extropia. Below was a clean white tiled floor. Hound’s black shoes were facing away from him, his Extropia armour was also gone. Hanging down next to his left trouser leg, Hound’s hand was wrapped in a thick white bandage.

  Edward remembered Hound storming through the crowd despite his limp, as though nothing would stop him. Then Elizabeth, her body motionless against the wooden walls of an unknown home. Why had he forced her into battle? She’d wanted to run, and now he didn’t even know if she was still alive.

  He lifted his head to take in his surroundings. Beyond Hound, a video played on a TeleWall. Lines of men, women and children, bound at the feet and wrists, were being marched by Dēofol’s soldiers through the rubble-filled streets of an unknown city.

  Where the hell was he? Not in Extropia, judging by his clothes and the TeleWall. But surely this couldn’t be the real world; that would have required Hound to have kidnapped him from the NCCU. He glanced to his right, and for a moment doubted what he was seeing. A window, but through it there were no buildings, no fields and no sky. Only an empty pitch black.

  Between Hound and the TeleWall, neatly arranged surgical implements covered a metal trolley. The only one Edward knew by name, a scalpel. Was he here for an interrogation? His jaw clenched at the thought, causing his forgotten wound to bite back with a dagger of pain.

  He hadn’t yet seen a door but there had to be a way out. Behind him, maybe. He tried to get hold of the rope behind his back, hoping he might work his way free, but he could barely reach it with anything more than a flick of his finger. Keep working it, he told himself, keep on and on and then strangle the bastard with it!

  ‘I wouldn’t try that if I were you.’

  Blood flushed from Edward’s head to his toes. He stopped straining for the rope and looked up. Hound was staring down at him, a smug smile on his lips that said he knew he had won.

  ‘Your wrists will burn down to the bone before you get out of that.’

  ‘You’re wasting your time! I won’t tell you anything!’

  Instead of some retort or threat of violence, Hound reached behind, again balancing most of his weight on his right leg, and pulled forward a chair. He yanked his trousers up an inch, wincing as he did so, and sat down.

  ‘You’re not here to answer any questions, Edward.’

  ‘Then why don’t you just kill me and be over with it?’

  ‘Like I said before, if I wanted to kill you, then I would have done so already.’

  ‘Who do you think you’re fooling? We all saw what happened in VirtuaWorld.’

  ‘I can see why that might have appeared confusing. But the truth is, Edward, I saved your life.’

  ‘You tried to kill me. And you missed! You murdered an innocent guard!’

  ‘He was no more a guard than I, and no more innocent. You of all people had a right to wish him dead. That so-called guard had only hours earlier tried to grab you outside your home.’

  Edward was taken aback. He’d almost forgotten about the men in the van: a pair of hands reaching out to grab him and a man shot. It had all paled in comparison to the events that had followed.

  Hound went on, ‘He was one of Dēofol’s.’

  ‘You expect me to believe that Dēofol has men in the real world?’

  ‘Is it really so implausible? You already know that Dēofol has contacted you. Why not others?’

  ‘Then why me? Why not every other boy out there who could be the boy from the prophecy?’

  ‘None of this has anything to do with the prophecy, Edward. Your father’s game was over the moment it came into creation, when he created a mind such as Dēofol’s, capable of feeling, of being self-aware. All Dēofol wanted from the very instant he heard about the real world was to know it, to know how to live in it. To conquer it.’

  ‘How to live in it?’ Edward repeated, certain the word live must have been a slip of the tongue. But Hound kept looking at him, eyebrows raised, like a teacher waiting for his pupil to give him the answer. ‘How…’ Edward started, but he wasn’t ready to ask the question. Snippets of information and memory were beginning to reconfigure themselves in his mind.

  That Dēofol knew about the real world was certain. Probably Vanderboom had told him. And with his desire to reign, the moment he knew about another world, his first thought would have been to understand how to conquer it. ‘But how? And why would Vanderboom want to help him?’

  ‘Is the answer not obvious, Edward? What does every dying man want?’

  With that last question it all came together, the answer so clear Edward couldn’t imagine how he hadn’t seen it before. ‘They want the same thing,’ he whispered. ‘They both want to find a way to live in the real world.’

  ‘Yes, Edward. Yes!’ Hound leant back, as though relieved to finally get it off his chest, to have someone else believe his once insane theories.

  ‘But how? How is that even possible?’

  Hound asked his next question carefully, not a teacher but a therapist digging into his patient’s nightmares. ‘Never mind how, for the time being, but what? What will they need, to accomplish such a goal?’

  And then it hit him, so hard that the front legs of his chair jumped an inch off the floor. Dad had tried to warn him. Hound had tried to warn him. But he hadn’t listened. He hadn’t stopped to think. And now the horror of what he’d risked was right before him, leaving his mind so disgusted it felt like it had lurched into hell itself.

  To live in the real world, Dēofol and Vanderboom would need new bodies. And whose bodies were within easiest reach?

  * * *

  Hound limped to a basin on one side of the room. Edward took his chance and glanced behind. One door, back and to the left. Then a pair of double doors that he struggled to make out, directly behind him. His head flicked forward as the tap was turned off. Hound limped back with a damp cloth in his hands and knelt by Edward’s side.

  ‘Where are we?’ asked Edward. ‘This is another virtual world, isn’t it?’

  Hound nodded, his face free from animosity as he dabbed the wound on Edward’s jaw. ‘This is the place where it all began. The first ever virtual world.’

 
‘You mean, a world before Extropia?’

  Hound nodded. ‘This is your father’s first design, his prototype. He never would have shown it to anyone except Vanderboom, and your brother, of course. I only stumbled upon it while I was searching for a way into Extropia. As you can see, it’s not even finished. There’s no landscape through the windows. There isn’t even a password, suggesting he designed it, even forgot about it, long before the possibility of anyone else being able to access it became a reality. For some reason he must have abandoned it in favour of Extropia.’

  ‘How did I get here?’

  ‘Through my hack of the Tartarus Portal. I programmed the portal to bring us here, somewhere out of harm’s way.’

  Edward’s gaze drifted about the room. The basin, the medical tools, the metal surfaces. ‘What is this place?’

  ‘An operating theatre.’

  ‘An operating theatre?’ he repeated.

  ‘I wanted you to see it, Edward. This is the true wonder of your father’s achievement. In the same way SenseGel replicates an action inside virtual reality to harm its users in the real world, it can also be used to carry out life-saving surgery.’

  Edward’s gaze drifted to the floor. At last he had some of the answers he’d been searching for. Why Dad had been so consumed by his work. Why people could get hurt in their ports. Dad had never intended for VirtuaPorts to be able to cause pain, but to save lives.

  He could still hear the doctor telling Dad those heart-wrenching words, We could have saved her, but we couldn’t afford the equipment. ‘He wanted to build a world where doctors could have any equipment they needed, at only the cost of a VirtuaPort.’

  ‘A very noble cause, Edward,’ Hound said. ‘And just think, your father still has the chance to be remembered a hero. But by trying to help him, by enabling Vanderboom to inhabit his body, you risk throwing all that away. You would condemn him, your brother, even yourself to a fate worse than death.’