Gun Blade

by Rick Scott

  “There!” Lexi says, handing me the top. “Now we all match!”

  We share a laugh and then head out again for the place Gilly mentioned, but she’s still being coy about where it actually is.

  “Just tell me already,” I say, still drawing a blank.

  “Come on, try and think,” Gilly says, tapping her temples with another wink. “We talked about this, remember?”

  I go quiet as we ride in the back seat of the buggy, still trying to decipher her little puzzle. Then my heart does a little double-beat when I recall the promise I made to her outside the keep—to take her out on a real date once we got to New London. But surely she can’t be talking about doing that right now. Could she? And Lexi is here too. Would that make her our chaperone or something? Ack! How lame would that be? Especially since she’s the same age as us, for crying out loud. But by the way she and Gilly is interacting now, who knows?

  Maybe Gilly did invite her to our first real date.

  I marvel at the two of them as they chat away, Gilly even adopting some of Lexi’s accent as we bounce through the streets of downtown.

  Okay, this is getting way too weird.

  I send Gilly a PM.

  Me: You guys seem to be getting along pretty good now. What’s up with that?

  Gilly: Yeah… you were right about her, she’s pretty cool. :)

  I’m still unsure as to how they got so close so quickly, though.

  Me: Quite a turn around. I thought you didn’t like her so much.

  Gilly: Oh, I didn’t. (: We sort of had a fight a little while ago. xD

  Me: A fight?

  Gilly: Yeah lol. It was me being stupid though. :P Possessive, I realized. Over you. ;)

  My heart does another little double-beat at that. To have two girls fighting over me? This is something new indeed.

  Me: Over me? For real?

  Gilly grins at me in silence but sends another PM.

  Gilly: Yeah, I told her to stay away from you and she kinda laughed at me and said you weren’t her type and that I had nothing to worry about. Then we got to talking and found out—

  Me: Wait. Not her type?

  Gilly: Yeah. Sorry, dude, she only has eyes for someone else. xD Haha.

  I’m not sure how I feel about that. I wonder who?

  Gilly: Anyway we kinda made up afterwards and I asked her for some tips to look more stylish…since you couldn’t seem to keep your eyes off of her. =P

  I didn’t realize I was ogling Lexi that much. And it was honestly more because I’ve never actually seen anyone look like her before, not because I found her super attractive or anything. But I guess Gilly interpreted it that way.

  Me: Is that why you got the piercings?

  Gilly: You DO like them right? :P

  Gilly lowers her pierced brows at me in a mock scowl.

  Me: Of course! Of course! You look awesome. ^_^

  Gilly: Good, cause I did all this to—

  Gilly pauses mid-message as her gaze shifts to something behind me, her eyes growing wide. “Lexi, stop the car!”

  The goth girl slams the brakes and we screech to a halt in the middle of the road. “What? What is it?”

  “Reece, look,” Gilly says, pointing to something behind me.

  I turn about and see a building across the street with a huge hand-drawn mural on its side. The image is of a creature thirty feet high, as big as the building itself. The drawing is crude but I recognize it immediately. Black paint forms long spindly limbs and outlines a vaguely human skull with an open jaw filled with razor-sharp teeth and a throat made of fire.

  An Other…

  Above the painting are words written in red: Join the Feast. Feed the Gods.

  My skin prickles just looking at it, thoughts of our recent encounter with them replaying in my mind. I glance at Gilly and by the vacant look in her eyes I can tell she’s experiencing the same thing. Below the mural a half dozen players are dancing about, completely naked and shouting at passing cars.

  “Oy vey…” Lexi says with a tired sigh. “The bloody Feast Freaks.”

  “Feast freaks?” Gilly says, looking to her.

  “Aye,” Lexi says. “They’re a faction of sorts. They claim that this one chap, their founder or something, was brought back with a revive item after being dead for fifty minutes. Had a less than 1% chance of working or something ridiculous like that. He came back claiming he saw gods or whatever and now these stupid punters worship him like some messiah.”

  “And that’s what he said they looked like,” I say. “The gods?”

  Lexi shrugs. “Apparently. A bunch of nutters they are. They keep killing themselves and trying to revive, later and later each time. Getting closer to the gods they call it. They mostly just end up dying though. Oh bloody hell…here they come.”

  Lexi turns back to the wheel to drive off again, but I stop her. “No, wait.”

  Across the street one of the naked guys dodges through the traffic waving his arms at us.

  “Are you ready to join the feast?” he says, wild-eyed and grinning. He’s slimly built with a shaved head and nothing but a loincloth on. “Are you ready to follow the path of the Great Martyr?”

  I never gave thought as to how the different Raise mechanics here might cause such an outcome. But whoever this great martyr is, he or she definitely experienced what Gilly and I already have.

  “You’ve seen that?” I ask, pointing at the mural.

  “Oh, I’ve tried,” the guy says, nodding. “But I’m not worthy yet. I lack the faith to go more than 20 minutes. But one day. One day I will. Will you come? Come and try? The gods may accept you more easily.”

  I have no intention of vising Planet Hell again, but I wouldn’t mind meeting someone else who has.

  “Who is this Great Martyr of yours?” I ask. “Is he here?”

  “Oh no,” the guy, Hector I see his name is, shakes his head. “Brother Cedric has returned to prepare for the great feast, when the gods will devour the sins of the world and create a new utopia!”

  I can tell he’s believing every word he’s saying. I look to Gilly and see her hyperventilating next to me, her eyes wide and terrified.

  Hector focuses on her with interest. “Wait…I’ve seen that look before. Are you a martyr, love? Have you seen them? Have you seen the Great Ones?”

  “No!” I shout, pushing the guy back. “Lexi, get us out of here!”

  She hits the gas without hesitating and we peel away, leaving Hector in the middle of the street shouting something about feeding the gods.

  Lexi shakes her head. “See…what did I tell you? Complete nutters. I think they all go psychotic from experiencing death so much. A lot of them join that way too, you know? People trying to make Ronin by killing each other over and over. Bloody fools.”

  I place my arm around Gilly, who’s still shaking a bit. “You okay?”

  She nods and slowly I see the fear in her eyes replaced with resolve. “All the more reason to get to where we’re going.”

  “You still haven’t said where that is yet,” I remind her.

  She then looks at me and sends a PM.

  Gilly: To remember what you did to kill those things.

  * * *

  Five minutes later we arrive at a medical center that looks a lot like the clinic back home, save it’s in a nicer neighborhood and set off the side of a small park. No other patrons seem to be around however, and as we enter the facility, I’m pleased to find that, also unlike home, there’s no entry fee. The interior is clinically pristine and white, with treatment booths lining the wall on the far side.

  “So what did you need here?” Lexi asks, looking around the place. “Usually only cyborgs and bioroids come here to install upgrades and what not.”

  “Reece is suffering from a bit of amnesia,” Gilly answers for me. “We want to see if there is a treatment for that.”

  Lexi points to one of the booths. “Ask the Auto-doc.”

  I nod to her. “Thanks, Lexi.
”

  As I approach the booth, a holographic image of a woman in a lab coat with a brilliant white smile appears. “Welcome…how may we assist you today?”

  “He’s suffering from memory loss,” Gilly pipes in next to me. “Can you help him?”

  I roll my eyes slightly. “You’re worse than my mom, you know?”

  “Quiet,” she says, elbowing me.

  “We will need to perform an evaluation,” the hologram says and then something pops onto my HUD as well as on a screen that appears below the hologram itself.

  [1] Level Two Scan …………. £75

  Do you accept the fee? [Y/N]

  I accept it and step into the booth. A ring of light passes over my head a few times and then something scrolls onto my HUD again.

  Scan complete. Minor memory fragment detected. Attempt repair?

  Stem Memory Leak……. £500

  Do you accept the fee? [Y/N]

  I snort with chagrin, reminded of my initial treatment for my legs back home. “At least it’s cheap. Yes, I accept.”

  I brace with anticipation as the light scans me again. For a second I wonder how this is going to feel. Will I get all the memories back at once? I try to help the process by focusing on the event—as much as I can recall of it. It’s still very vague…the Other changing classes, and myself in an immense sense of pain. I will myself to remember, to learn what I did to kill that thing.

  [System Error… Repair failed.]

  Crap…I hope I didn’t mess it up by trying to help it along.

  The hologram looks at me sadly. “I’m sorry, but we were unable to repair your memory loss.”

  “Why?” Gilly says. “What happened?”

  “The memory fragments are irreparable because the adjoining segments do not exist. This is the product of a partial Emergency backup save following a subsequent memory purge. This system script of the event was retrievable.”

  New information appears.

  [System Error!]

  [Core breach!]

  [Data purge!]

  [Warning: Unsaved memory will be lost!]

  [Attempting Emergency backup: 4%.....8%....15%....]

  As soon as I see it, it looks familiar to me. I do recall something like this happening. Is this what occurred when the sphere shattered and imploded?

  “Future memory losses of this nature can be prevented by installing a Backup Core device,” the hologram says, cheery in a sales-pitch voice. “Would you like to install a device now?”

  “How much?” Gilly asks.

  My HUD replies.

  [1] Backup Core ……….. £5,000,000

  [2] Installation fee ..……... £10,000

  “Geez!” I say. “So much for this place being cheap!”

  Lexi lets out a whistle. “I’d expect it’d be around that much. Cyborgs use those to keep their skills and abilities while they die. An extra life, so to speak. But those are hard to come by.”

  I release a defeated sigh.

  “It doesn’t matter anyway,” I say. “What I came to remember is already gone.”

  I stare at the tile between my feet as I push the thoughts of the Others to the side. That’s a problem that’s going to have to wait a little longer to solve, I guess. I feel an arm slip around my shoulders as Gilly gives me a hug.

  “Don’t worry, Reece,” she says. “This was always just a side quest. The real mission is getting into the Archives. That’s all the answers we really need.”

  I smile at Gilly in her attempt to cheer me up, but inside I wonder if the archives will turn out to be just as useless as this clinic. “You really think so, Gilly?”

  “Think?” Her boundless optimism returns in a big old smile. “I know so, silly! You leave finding the answers to me. What you need to concentrate on, is leveling up and beating the Gun Queen.”

  “Aye, she’s talking sense, love.” Lexi folds her arms with a nod. “And you’ve only got two weeks, remember?”

  “Two weeks?” Gilly lets out a laugh. “This guy went from a miner, to a Dodge Tank in less than one, and beat a World Boss to boot. This will be cake.”

  I laugh at her talking me up.

  But what she says is true, I did do something amazing before, but now the challenge is even greater and the work I need to put in even harder. I go over in my mind just how much experience I’ll need to gain in order to reach where I need to be. It’s going to take more than just leveling. This is going to take strategy and planning.

  “All right, guys,” I say, my resolve returning. “We have two weeks to prepare. Let’s do what we need to do…to kill ourselves a Gun Queen.”

  Chapter 26: Sleuthing

  Bruce followed Gina’s lead as they traversed the narrow walkways between the air scrubber banks. The place was certainly not unfamiliar to him, but he had to admit it had been some time since he’d ventured this deeply into the system. They were currently on Level 100, having accessed the maintenance corridor through the throngs of displaced citizens living on the HUB level.

  Gina’s pace was slow, but steady and Bruce was impressed with her endurance in general. Perhaps it was a sense of purpose driving her now, or the fact that she didn’t want to look weak in front of him, but she took the lead once they left the streets of the HUB and entered the Air Scrubber chamber. Now she was breezing through at a brisk pace.

  The “room” was a series of suspended walkways weaving in between the scrubbers unit, which were each about a cubic yard in shape and size and suspended on long chains from the fifty-foot-high ceiling above, where thirty-foot-diameter draught fans created a steady pull of suction from the darkened depths below. The lighting was poor, with only trace LEDs lining the walkways and railings to light their path.

  They eventually reached the center of the chamber, where the walkway opened into a grated area which formed an octagonal-shaped hub between several walkways heading in all directions. In the center of the roughly thirty-by-thirty platform, an electrical cabinet with a thousand wires spewing from it dominated the floor space.

  “Tools please,” she said with an out-reached hand once they reached the cabinet. Bruce handed Gina her satchel and she withdrew several small electrical devices from it, mostly diagnostic equipment that he could recognize and a few that he couldn’t.

  She opened the cabinet and connected to the devices within, coughing every once in a while as she tested the equipment. “It was sweet of you to come, Bruce, but you know this could take days, right?”

  “Days?”

  “Well, at least to find the first one,” she said, her eyes focused on her work while she spoke. “If it’s something they rigged in the hardware it should be easier to spot the rest of them. I wouldn’t imagine they would spread them out too far. With luck they might all be in the central hub location.”

  That would make sense, since that’s where the scum most likely originated, Bruce thought.

  “How are things holding up, Bruce?”

  The question took him a bit by surprise. “You mean…with myself?”

  “No,” she said with a chuckle. “I already know how you’re doing, Bruce. I meant the city. The nano reserves. The maintenance. How’s all that going?”

  “Oh,” he said and released a deep sigh. In truth he hadn’t even checked the latest data reports—his mind was too preoccupied with Dennis, his loss of Gilly, and now this newest dilemma with Novak and the stupid gun. “Not good, to be honest, last I checked.”

  She then smiled. “Well I’m sure you big wigs have a plan to sort everything out. Right?”

  He chuckled mirthlessly. I wish…

  He still needed to address the nano issue from a public perspective. Bob, the accountant that controlled the finances, had already recommended a new hard currency limit of 250k. If they went live with that people would soon have trouble purchasing the basic necessities of life…food, air, shelter. It was a festering sore at the back of Bruce’s psyche, a challenge he didn’t want to deal with, and part of him wonder
ing if he wasn’t distracting himself from the task at hand with all these other issues: like Dennis.

  No, that was a threat even worse than the nano. But he didn’t know quite how to deal with that either. What could he really do? Out him publically once they had some concrete evidence? Or should he just hire that thug Novak to whack him? He chuckled inwardly at that. If only it were so easy, but without knowing his true nature and capabilities, something like that could wind up akin to kicking a hornet’s nest.

  He needed to exercise patience and tact.

  But when it came to the nano, time was not on their side.

  Just one more reason to bring the team home as quickly as possible, Bruce thought. For whatever plan Dennis was hatching with the AIs, they still needed the most basic of resources to survive. And he could rely only on Gina’s boys and his daughter to bring it home.

  He studied Gina while she worked and prayed for forgiveness for the sacrifice he was forcing her to make. A sacrifice she wasn’t even aware she was making…just like in the past.

  Forgive me as well, Mark, he said to himself. I’m putting her through so much again.

  “Okay, I have good news and bad news,” Gina said, standing from her crouched position in front of the cabinet. “The good news is I can trace the routes no problem.”

  That sounded promising, Bruce thought.

  “And the bad?” he asked.

  “They’re all over the darn place,” Gina said, dusting her hands off on the back of her coveralls. “I’m going to have to check every single floor…locally.”

  “That doesn’t sound good,” he said.

  “Or quick,” she added. “But it’s doable.”