by Hugo Huesca
“Van. Sis,” I said. “This is our only chance.”
“You don’t even know if Terrance can do dick about Keles!” she shot back. “He has lived here for how many years? And Keles only needed a day to become a goddamn eldritch abomination! I won’t let you waste your life away. What’s Mom going to think?”
Mom will be fine, I thought. It was bittersweet. She’ll grieve at first, I think. But even then, it’ll be hard to feel sad with her son right there in front of her. As long as the original Cole is alive, my family can go on.
“I intend to come back,” I told her. I realized it was a lie as I spoke the words. But I was a Captain, and Persuasion was my main skill. “If Francis could, so can I. And the risk is worth it. This is my responsibility, Sis. I have to finish what I started or I won’t be able to live with the guilt.”
Derry and I exchanged a poignant look filled with meaning that only the two of us got. Strange. I understood the man better than the other Cole did. Next to Walpurgis, Mai’s gaze switched between the two of us, trying to guess what we were thinking.
What we were thinking was this. There are things more important than a man’s own life.
There have to be. If nothing is worth dying for, then nothing is worth living for.
“Can you?” Van asked Francis. “Can you come back from there?”
“Tell her you can,” I ordered to the AI on a private channel.
“Of course, Master Cole,” he said. “I’m ready to follow you into hell.”
He told my sister that coming back was a trivial matter.
She still looked doubtful. Her eyes were twitchy, like she was debating between two courses of action. “You don’t have to do it. Let Caputi’s people take charge. Keles is her enemy, not yours. The CIA and Odin have been at it since the beginning. You heard Derry.”
The other Cole walked next to our sister and put a hand on her shoulder. “He’ll be fine, Sis.”
“You too?” she said. Her eyes looked ready to fill with tears.
Rylena hands were already on her hips, looking for her rifle. She was talking to someone, I could see her lips moving. Walpurgis nodded in her direction imperceptibly.
I had to gain time. I asked aloud. “Anyone else have a better idea? I’m open to suggestions.”
Cole opened a private channel with me:
“You sure about this?”
“You know I am.”
“Charli Dervaux sent me a goddamn text,” he told me. “I read it just now. She wants to meet with me. She thinks she can make another mind-scan and use it on Freya’s mainframe to fix the exploit. Same way Keles plans on using it, but the other way around.”
“She’s probably going to take control of the drones herself,” I told him. “And you’ll die if you let them scan you with the VR-Brain, just like Keles or Terrance.”
“I know.”
“Good,” I told him. “You have to survive this, man. Try to wait as long as you can for me to find Terrance before you let them fry your brain.”
“Got it. Now, you have to get ready. Van and Rylena are going to try and kill you to make you respawn on Earth, so Francis can’t take you away. They’re discussing it on a private channel, I’d bet. Look at the way they’re standing.”
I understood why. From my friends’ point of view, I was about to risk deletion over a ghost story. The danger was too big. It would have been a touching moment, if we had had time for that.
We added Francis to the conversation.
“How long will it take you to get us to the Stack?”
“Thirty seconds if you reach the Teddy, five minutes if you stay where you are,” Francis said.
“Got it. Get ready to close the airlock when I reach it.”
Van and Rylena were dangerous, but it was Walpurgis’ inhuman accuracy that could stop me in my tracks. I would never reach my ship on my own.
The other Cole knew this. “Get ready to run on my mark,” he told me.
“Good luck, man. Tell Mom I love her.”
“Of course.”
Then he closed the channel and went back to public. “Hey guys, I know this is a tense moment and all, but do you remember my signature move?”
Rylena’s attention shifted back to him. “What?”
“Well,” he said as he raised one closed fist. Inside of it, I could see the unmistakable shape of an electric smoke grenade. “I wanted to think of something cool to say now. Whatever. I only needed to stall until the timer—”
The grenade went off, surrounding everyone in a violent cloud of smoke. My visor went dark. Communication scrambled. Distorted screams of surprise and anger reached my ears.
I was already on the move. I dove down and to the left. Walpurgis’ twin-linked sniper rifle shot a bullet straight at the spot where my heart had been half a second ago. The mag-bullet disappeared in the smoke instead.
She kept shooting.
Everyone, in fact, started shooting.
“Don’t do it!” I could hear Van through the interference.
“Sorry, Sis,” I exclaimed as I jetpacked my way to the Teddy, flying low and close to the floor, zig-zagging away from Walpurgis’ onslaught of fire. “Thanks for being there for me. I hope I see you again—”
“Cole, don’t!” That was Rylena. My answer was swallowed by the grenade’s static. Was she talking to me or the real Cole?
Walpurgis was aiming at the Teddy’s airlock with the hope of intercepting me. How the hell did she manage to do so while blind?
The smoke was rapidly dissipating, but not before eating my shields whole and shutting down my visor. I was flying at random, guided only by the memory of the Teddy’s location. I should be close already…my jetpack lost power.
The bullet blew my goddamn arm off at shoulder’s level. “Holy shit, Walpurgis!” I screamed in pain and surprise as I spiraled out of control.
No! I had to reach the Teddy. Where are you? I used the oxygen streams to violently stop my blind cartwheeling. I was lost. But if I waited for the smoke to fully, they’d see me.
“Francis!”
“On it!”
The Teddy’s engines roared to life. The light from the exhaust ports was like a storm of blue in the middle of the dark. They were so close to me…
So the airlock had to be up and to the right.
I flew towards it. Now Walpurgis’ shots were wider. I had stumbled my way out of her sights.
My hand found the Z-Alloy armor of the Teddy, but there was no airlock.
“Five yards to the left,” Francis said. He sounded clearer now. The smoke was almost gone.
I found the airlock. It was already open. I threw myself to the floor of the ship as a volley of plasma fire came straight at my back. “Close it, close it, close it!”
The airlock closed. I stumbled painfully into the ship’s corridors, my stump bleeding profusely. “I’m about to bleed out, you have to do it now!”
“I’m already doing it, Master Cole. See you on the other side,” Francis said. Outside, the ship shook with the impact of the plasma rifles. Teddy’s shields were up, though. Even if they weren’t, the Z-Alloy was strong enough to make the sensors think the shots were a warm massage.
A prompt appeared in front of me.
Alert! The data stack identified as “Cole Dorsett-Scan1.0.exe,” has been reported as corrupted beyond repair. Procedure calls for deletion of Cole Dorsett-Scan1.0.exe. This software was previously marked as Essential. Deleting it could cause loss of work and interfere with other systems. The system manager of Cole Dorsett-Scan1.0.exe has been identified as Cole Dorsett-Scan1.0.exe. Do you wish to revoke the Essential status of the corrupt software?
Yes / No.
“Jeez! Yes, damn it,” I grunted. My remaining arm clicked the appropriate button. A new screen appeared asking if I was sure.
Someone started banging on the airlock’s surface. I had to hurry. Before clicking the new prompt, a desperate idea occurred to me.
I opened a new priv
ate channel.
“Yes?” asked a man’s voice. Derry didn’t sound like he shared the my friends’ urgency in stopping me. He was rather calm. “I didn’t expect you to want to exchange goodbyes, Dorsett.”
“No time for that,” I said. My vision was already red. The mag-bullet didn’t cauterize the wounds like plasma did, so I was bleeding a fuck-ton though the stump of my shoulder. “Listen, Derry. The real Cole got a message from Dervaux. She says she can patch Freya’s drones with a new scan. Cole is going to risk it.”
“She’ll use the patch to take control of the drones herself,” Derry said. “You’ll change one tyrant for another.”
No. We’ll swap out a massacre for a tyrant. That’s a better choice. But it was not the choice I wanted. Derry was my third option.
“You have to stop her. Don’t tell anyone—Dervaux still has spies in the government, doesn’t she? Whatever. I have a friend, his name is Roscoe, a hacker. Ask him for help. You have to stop her at all costs.”
“I know Roscoe. We’re not on speaking terms. But I’m pretty sure I can convince him to help, given the circumstances,” Derry said placidly, like someone discussing the weather.
“Good. Try to save Cole’s hide. As a personal favor.”
“I’ll try,” he said. “But if you and Terrance can’t stop Keles, I’ll have to let Dervaux make her patch before bringing her down.”
That’s as good as it’s going to get.
My hand hovered over the button that would kill me. I realized it had been hovering there for a bit. The airlock started to open—that had to be Mai and Rylena’s Hacking skill at work.
It would be pathetic if I had made it this far just to get stopped at the last second. Still, my finger didn’t move.
“Derry,” I asked with a dry crack in my voice, “you’ve been dead before. What does it feel like?”
The outside airlock opened and my four power-armored friends irrupted into the chamber, where they started pounding on the metal door between me and them while Rylena worked on the lock. They were screaming something that failed to reach my ears.
“You won’t even realize it’s happening,” said Derry. “Doesn’t hurt one bit.”
That was a nice thing of him to say. It was a shame my Persuasion was high enough that I could automatically know he was lying.
“Okay,” I sighed. “Thanks.”
I pressed “Yes” to the deletion prompt as the hatch started turning.
All the components on my body were pulled apart at the same time.
It was quite painful.
18 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
WOLF'S MOUTH
AFTER THE SMOKE grenade went off, I quietly removed my mindjack without logging out first. This was a painful, but necessary step. Otherwise, I would call attention to myself.
And I didn’t want anyone trying to stop me.
The sickness and disorientation immediately took a hold of me, making my head feel like it was spinning inside a blender at full speed. The impulse to throw up was almost overpowering.
Only because I had been expecting it was I able to stop myself from loudly dry heaving in the cramped closet. I still fell to my knees and took several long, deep breaths of chemically cleansed hospital air.
Can’t stay like this much longer, I thought. They’d either catch up with the other Cole soon, or they’d miss him. And then, they’d look at me and demand an explanation. After all…well, I had just given myself permission to go and get myself killed.
Both of us.
I almost wanted to laugh. The situation was as bizarre as it could get. Not many people got the chance to have more versions of themselves lying around, and not many people were such a disaster that they spent all those versions at the same time.
Charli Dervaux’s text was still shining on my phone screen, whose battery was slowly growing back up through my shitty charger.
Cole Dorsett, we’ve never met before. But you and I have a common enemy. An entity that thinks of itself as one Savin Keles. I fear that his attack on the Puente del Diablo Fort is only a prelude of things to come.
He plans to exploit a vulnerability found in the drones of certain corporations that will allow access of not only the new versions, connected to the Rune Signal, but some that run with normal Internet. This could result in terrible damage to all things we both hold dear.
I can stop him with the equipment in my possession, through a mind-scan similar to the one he underwent. Since your current single digital version has permissions in the Rune Signal thanks to Caputi’s Device, I have reasons to believe this new one would share them.
It would be trivial for this version of yourself to stop Keles.
Of course, you know this procedure is lethal to the subject. Please carefully consider the consequences of your actions before making any decision. But don’t overthink it, Dorsett. Keles won’t wait for us, and time is running out. You have hours left, not days.
There’s a car waiting for you outside the hospital. Come alone.
Yours,
Charli Dervaux.
I could see why she and Irene’s father had worked so well together for as long as they had. They both shared the same talent for speaking the truth while meaning another thing entirely.
From my little chat with Wily, there was little doubt in my mind that this new digital scan would be used shamefully for Dervaux's own benefit. Doubtlessly, to get control over the drones herself.
This new Cole would get experimented on. He would get copied and copied, and those copies would go through some pretty nasty shit. They would be utterly defenseless to do anything about it. Freya only needed to throw them into a computer with no Internet access and there was no chance of escape.
It would be my fault. My own self would avoid such things. I’d be dead as soon as the VR-Brain finished the scan.
I looked up, slowly, while my nausea receded. I could see Irene’s lips tense as she furiously worked over something inside Rune. A long time ago, she had kissed me for the first time when our situations were reversed.
A part of me wanted to do that more than anything in the world. Instead, I got up in silence and left the room before I could think or do anything that would change my mind.
Van was waiting for me outside.
She still had her mindjack on.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked me.
I hadn’t realized she was missing from the closet because of the forced logout’s confusion.
“People will die if I don’t do this.”
“What, exactly, is ‘this’ you’re talking about, Cole?”
I realized she was playing at the same time we were talking. She wasn’t willing to let any of her brothers go.
“I can’t tell you,” I told her.
“Because you know I’d stop you if I knew.” She understood me well. “It must be something very dangerous.”
I didn’t answer, which in this case was kind of an admission of guilt, anyway.
She nodded to herself like my silence was an argument. “So I get to lose both my brothers in the same day? And what about Mom? After all the shit she managed to overcome, you’ll fuck it all up.”
My jaw clenched so my voice wouldn’t shake. “She’ll still have you, Sis. One Dorsett is enough to keep her busy. And I don’t plan on dying today.”
“You idiot. The two of you think I don’t know when my own brother is lying to me?” Her hands were clenched into fists and it seemed she was trying her best not to hit me. “Just because you have a lot of skill ranks in a videogame?”
“Well,” I had to chuckle at myself. “Yeah. When you put it like that, it does sound pretty dumb.”
We stared at each other for a moment, neither of us willing to budge on our positions.
If Van tried to stop me, I’d have to run. But I’d give my own arm to not have to go through that.
“I can’t let you go,” she said. “Not even if you believe you are coming back.”
“I’ve survived some pretty dangerous shit before,” I told her.
“Never on your own.”
She had me there. No chance I was risking anyone else over this.
Foreman’s mangled body flashed in my mind. No, there had been enough blood for a lifetime. Nasty as it may sound…Foreman had been a hero, but I barely knew him in the end. To imagine Walpurgis, Van, or Irene taking his place inside those bloody white sheets—
No. No way.
“Sorry, Sis.” I shrugged sadly. “It’s going to be a bloodbath if we don’t stop that asshole. I have to do my absolute best, otherwise, even if we do make it through the day I won’t be able to live with myself.”
“Don’t ‘sorry’ me. I want you to mean it when you say you’ll come back.”
I nodded. “I’ll do my best. To be honest, I could use your help.”
She raised an eyebrow at me. “That’s not reassuring at all. You never ask for my help. That’s you admitting shit’s hitting the fan—”
It was a chance I couldn’t just pass up:
“You’re the only one who can help me, Obi Van Kenobi! You’re my only hope!” I said with my best dramatic flourish.
Van’s eye twitched a bit. “That’s so fucking out of place, you shithead.” But I could see her trying to stifle a laugh.
We both ended up doing our best not to laugh.
Yeah, it was bizarre. If I traveled back in time and told the script kiddie I used to be how the following years would spiral out of control…
I’d probably think it was one over-the-top joke of Kipp’s. I’d start looking for hidden camera drones in the corners or something.
It would probably piss me the hell off at first, but I’d eventually see the humor in it.
This was no joke.
To that revelation, I had no idea how I would have reacted.
“What do you need?” Van asked. “I, too, couldn’t live with myself if I don’t do all I can today.”
“We need time,” I told her before either of us could change our minds. “Keles is expanding fast, right? He’s pouring out these clones of himself all over the Signal, and eventually, the number will explode and be too high to handle. But right now…hell, the Algernon’s garrison was able to push the tide away for a while. Keles had to wear them down with numbers to reach the engines. If enough players were to mount a defense…”
