by Neil Gaiman
One side of the Arc is heavy with magic, the other with technology. The Earths existing around either side of the Arc are known as the fringe worlds. Fringe worlders are all the more valuable because the worlds they come from are so heavily influenced with science or magic that the Walkers tend to be more powerful than us middle worlders. The ones who come from the magic side can do anything from fly to cast spells, and I’m not talking like Jo can fly, with wings if there’s enough magic in the air. I mean just fly, because they will it to be so. Because they’re magic enough to manage it even without the atmosphere they’re used to. Ones from the science spectrum are more like J/O—from what I’ve heard, he’s the closest to a fringer we’ve gotten in a few decades.
The fringe worlds almost never yield Walkers anymore; HEX and Binary hold sway on opposite ends of the spectrum, and they grab up all the Walkers they can find. Sometimes we get a blip here and there, but we’ve never been able to get out there before they get snatched up.
The giant screen at the back of the mess hall was alight, and every eye was on it. Would the new Walker be from the magic end or the science? How long before Binary or HEX would find them?
“We don’t know their status yet, but Upstairs leads me to believe it has the potential to be disastrous if we don’t get them. Joeb, Jerzy, Jonha, Jorisine, and Josy—suit up.”
A low murmur went through the room. Four of those names were senior field ops, and no one had ever heard of the Old Man sending that many at once on any mission. If this failed, four teams would be off the grid until they could be split and reassigned.
This was huge.
He was sending the heavy hitters, too. Joeb was from one of the fringe worlds himself, on the magic side. Come to think of it, that probably meant this Earth was magic heavy; Joeb looked more or less human, but Jonha had skin like tree bark and Jorisine was the closest thing to an elf I’d ever met. Josy also looked more or less human, except I privately liked to think of her as Rapunzel. Her golden hair went down to her feet, and was stronger than anything I’d ever encountered. She wore it in a bunch of thin braids, with little knives tied into the ends.
As for the last one, birdlike Jerzy was light, quick, and one of the fastest runners on Base. He couldn’t fly like Jo, but as fast as he could move, he didn’t need to. I was actually kind of proud that he was going on an officer team; Jerzy had been one of the first friends I’d made here, and I hoped this meant he might be considered for officer status later.
“Everyone is expected to sleep with one eye open tonight; while the chance of anyone tracing us is slim, the possibility does exist, especially with the power we’re about to expend. Joey Harker, assemble your team and report to my office.”
The screen went dark, and it took me a moment to register what I’d just heard.
“Did he say my name?” I managed smartly, looking at Josef. He and Jakon were the only members of my team still up, as far as I was aware.
“Sure did,” Josef confirmed, though he looked as confused as I felt.
“We can’t be going out again; we were out this morning.” Jakon was still staring at the screen, fur ruffled slightly in her confusion.
“Well, we won’t find out by sitting here.” I sighed, getting to my feet. “Let’s go. The others probably heard all that, too. Let’s not make them wait.”
“Good luck,” Acacia offered, and I stared at her for a moment before I remembered to say thanks. I’d forgotten she was there. Which raised a slight problem.
“Right, you’re…supposed to be escorted at all times, aren’t you?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll stay in the mess.” She nodded to the people still sitting around; though less than there had been at dinner, there were still quite a few. “I’m not done eating yet.”
“Okay,” I said, pausing to consider. She wasn’t technically my responsibility, so I wouldn’t get in trouble if I left her…and the order to assemble my team had come from the Old Man himself, so I was covered. I nodded, offering a “Well, see ya,” as I headed out. Not the most debonair exit I’d ever made, but I was tired and distracted. It didn’t seem like this day would ever end.
“She’s coming,” Jakon said after a moment, perking up. We’d only been standing outside the Old Man’s office for about thirty seconds, but even five seems like an eternity when you know he’s waiting for you.
Jo rounded the corner a second later at a jog, her hair looking somewhat puffier than usual. As she got closer to us, we could see that her wings were damp, the feathers looking far more scraggly than majestic. “Sorry,” she muttered as she slowed, raking some of her hair back from her face. “I was in the shower,” she said defensively as we all glanced at one another.
“Mm, wet feather smell,” Jakon teased her, earning an annoyed glance.
“You’re one to talk,” she replied, with that aristocratic haughtiness that only beings with wings seem able to muster.
“We’re going in now,” I said, opening the door.
Jai was already inside, standing silently with his hands behind his back. He didn’t even glance up as we came in. His gaze was fixed on the picture hanging behind the Old Man’s desk, the one of the Arc that was the Altiverse. The Old Man himself gave us one of his signature glares as we entered.
“Glad you decided to join us. Don’t sit, you’re suiting up.”
“But we were—” Jakon started, then fell immediately silent as he turned to her.
“I am aware of your schedule, Jakon Haarkanen, seeing as I make it.” He let the reprimand settle for a moment, waiting to see if she was stupid enough to say anything else. She wasn’t.
“You’re going back to Earth FΔ986. You’re going back for three very specific reasons, not the least of which is because I say so. The other two I am telling you so you will grasp the importance of your mission and hopefully not fail again.” He let that sink in before continuing. “First, you are to succeed in your initial mission. We need that data.” He turned his gaze to J/O. As our resident computer whiz, he was to be the one responsible for hacking into the mainframe and downloading the files we needed. Why we needed them, we didn’t know—and we didn’t ask. The Old Man gave information out on a need-to-know basis, which meant that grunts like us were rarely ever in the loop.
“The second is another Code Mercury. A Walker blipped the radar an hour or so ago. The Binary already has him, but it’s on the same world you just came from—you probably stirred him up with your rapid entrance and exit. He’s a powerful one, too. Get him.”
We all nodded, but I couldn’t help thinking that this didn’t make sense. There were two Walkers, surfacing at the same time? I wasn’t sure that had ever happened, but if the other one was yet undiscovered, why send four officers after him and leave us to fight our way through the Binary’s forces?
The Old Man turned to look at me, and I could feel my skin prickle as if I were sunburned. “You have something to say, Harker?”
No attainment in feigning disingenuousness, as Jai would say. “Yes, sir. Sir—if the Binary already has him at one of their bases, why are you sending us and not the four officers you sent after—”
His intensity racheted up a notch, and my skin went from bad sunburn to slow roast. “Because, despite the twofold importance of this mission, the other Walker is the priority. Believe me when I say it was a difficult decision.
“I know you’ve been out already, but have a latte and get back to it. Jai has all the information, and the alchemist will meet you in the locker room. Dismissed.”
We filed out of his office, stepping onto the conveyer. Walking was encouraged except in emergencies; most of the halls had strips of moving floor that could be adjusted to various speeds. I pathed it to the lockers and upped it a few notches; we’d get there in a matter of seconds rather than the two or three minutes it would have taken us to walk.
Sometimes those minutes make the difference.
Jirathe was waiting with our lattes—the informal term fo
r booster shots—and didn’t bother wasting words as we suited up. She gave us each a jolt, watching our reactions carefully. I don’t know what’s in them; she told me once, but the chemical names meant nothing to me. All I know is that they provided an extra juice that left you feeling like you’d had ten hours’ sleep on a mattress so wonderful even Hans Christian Andersen’s snotty princess couldn’t kvetch about it, but without the crash and burn that you usually wound up with.
We stepped onto the platform at the edge of the lockers. The huge automatic doors slid open, revealing the prehistoric Earth beneath us, the last rays of dying light filtering in, along with a breath of fresh air. Jirathe burst into a thousand colors behind us, and we Walked.
“Did your world have movies? Because there’s this movie from my world called Mission: Impossible, and it has this really catchy theme music—”
Jai gritted his teeth, knuckles turning white as he clasped his hands in front of him. “Kindly cease your superfluous prattle,” he muttered to me, not taking his eyes off Jakon. “This requires an inordinate amount of concentration.”
“Sorry,” I responded. There wasn’t much else I could say. Jakon was scaling the outside of the building while Jai made her invisible. Or, as he’d explained it, “Depreciated the probability of her being discovered.” He wasn’t making her invisible so much as he was surrounding her with the belief that she couldn’t be seen. It was hard to believe, considering we could all see her as she made her way up the wall, but Jai had explained that we were able to see her because we knew she was there already. What I didn’t know was how she was climbing it; the building was glass and metal, and straight as a ruler. She was apparently accomplishing it on nothing more than clean thoughts and pure intentions.
J/O spoke up, confirming that Jakon had successfully planted the microchip that would scramble the security system. He put a hand to the panel next to the door, eyes unfocusing for a moment as he sorted through the command system.
After our last attempt, we’d decided to try a different approach. We knew they had the advantage of numbers—well, they always had that, but this time by hundreds instead of dozens—but we had something we hadn’t bothered to use before. All their attention would be diverted to keeping the new Walker contained, and no one would expect us to come back soon after our harrowing escape just this morning. The Binary were all organic computers; they calculated what was logical, and likely. They were the closest thing to the Borg we’d found—well, except for Universe YY∑2373, which most of us just called the Trekiverse. At any rate, we were humans (most of us), and we had emotion. We also had determination. Last but not least, we had the element of surprise.
We also had a shot each of latte, which was probably how Jakon was able to literally climb the wall.
“Let’s go,” Jo said, bouncing a little on her toes. She was acting more like Jakon than her usual calm, slightly sarcastic self.
“Not yet,” I cautioned, though I was just as eager to get this over with as the rest of them. “Wait until J/O—”
“Got it,” the cyborg said, his eyes refocusing as the doors slid shut. “Jakon’s upstairs in a vent, but her portable scrambler will keep her hidden from the patrol bots. The Walker’s on the same floor as the information we need.”
“How fortuitous,” Jai said. I couldn’t help but agree with him, and that worried me. I wasn’t sure if I was just being paranoid or not, but the last time I’d been worried on a mission, my entire team had been captured by an elaborate HEX-laid trap. “Just keep an eye out,” I cautioned, earning a semidisgusted look from J/O.
“Do you doubt my sensors?”
“No, I just don’t want all of us to end up in a HEX sandwich again.”
“We’re dealing with the Binary this time, not HEX.”
“It would probably taste the same: bad.”
Jo giggled, and Josef laughed. Even Jai smirked a little. We were all a bit loopy. Our senses were working well enough, though. Twice on our way up the stairs we used Jai’s “we’re not really here” trick to avoid a clone patrol, and once J/O projected an image of an empty hallway to fool a patrol bot. In some ways, the Binary was easier to deal with than HEX; computers made more sense to me than magic, even though I wasn’t full of nanochips like J/O was.
There were downsides, however.
“Crap.”
“You’ve got how many dictionaries in your head, and that’s all you can come up with?…What’s wrong?”
J/O simply pointed. At a wall.
We stared for a moment at the wall, then at one another. Then at J/O.
“Did you blow a fuse or something?” Jo finally asked. “What are we looking at?”
“What does it look like? It’s a wall,” J/O said quite helpfully, and I think someone would have tried to strangle him, if he’d needed to breathe. Luckily for him, he continued before any of us could come up with a more effective way of venting our frustration. “It’s supposed to be a door, guys.”
“Not all of us have the floor plans in an embedded mission file,” I snapped.
“Not my fault.” J/O looked smug.
“Just project it, already.”
One of his eyes glowed red for a moment, then a map of the building appeared on the wall closest to us. There was a little gray dot in the corridor that served as J/O’s “you are here” beacon, and in front of it was a door. Except the door existed only on the map, not in reality.
“Hm,” said Jai. He took a step forward, but didn’t get any further than that before the wall opened, with no fanfare, to reveal Jakon.
The wolf girl was crouched on top of a clone guard, her arm still outstretched from where she’d pushed the button to activate the concealed door. Several more guards were stretched out across the floor behind her, the satisfied smirk on her face making their fate obvious.
“What took you so long?” she asked.
“Good job, girl! You want a treat?” Josef was the only one of us who dared to tease her like that, since he’d demonstrated exactly once that he was big enough (and strong enough) to pick her up by the scruff of the neck. She bared her teeth and growled at him, though it lacked her usual oomph. She was amused. So was I, but I couldn’t help wondering what the point of the one-way door had been. Why have a room you could get out of but not into?
“Is this the computer you need, J/O?” I asked as we filed into the room. “And can you project that map again? I want to make sure there aren’t any other hidden doors in here.”
“An adroit cogitation, Joey,” Jai said as the map appeared on the wall again.
“Joe, remember?” I studied the map. I wasn’t the best at reading them, but this seemed fairly straightforward. J/O’s little gray dot was in the middle of the room; behind it was the door we’d come in; and there were three walls, all smooth and doorless. Everything looked normal—except for several dotted lines going through the picture. “What are those?”
“Vent shafts. How else do you think Jakon got in?”
“Follow this one,” I said, tapping my finger along one of the dotted lines. Then I forgot about the mystery of the doorless room as a new thought occurred to me. “Do you know exactly where the new Walker is?”
J/O’s other eye narrowed in concentration; then another gray blip appeared on the map, a few rooms and hallways over from where we were. “The shafts go right to it. We could send Jakon back up there.”
“Sure,” the wolf girl said, flashing a toothy grin.
“Your plan is sound, but J/O needs to devote his attention to the computers at this juncture. I would suggest we separate to accomplish both objectives.”
Jai was right. I didn’t want to split up the party, but we had a time limit here. The miniscrambler Jakon had placed and the one she was carrying meant they hadn’t discovered us yet, but J/O had been able to make only two, and they weren’t very powerful. His hacking into the system would likely ring the first alarm, and us rescuing the Walker would trigger the second.
“We
’ve gotta do this at the same time,” I decided. “Jo, can you fit in the shaft with your wings?”
Jo looked at Jakon, who narrowed her eyes thoughtfully, then nodded. “They fold,” Jo said somewhat reluctantly.
“Good. Jo, Jakon, and I will go through the vents to get the Walker. Josef and Jai will guard J/O while he downloads the data. Jai, let’s you and me link.”
Jai nodded, putting one hand out, the other to his ear. I did the same, and we touched palms. An odd metallic “taste” touched my mind. It was kind of like when you go swimming for too long and the chlorine starts to feel like it’s part of you.
Testing, I thought at Jai, who nodded.
Your projected voice is perfectly discernible.
“I wish linking gave me access to even half your vocabulary,” I said out loud. Then I turned to Jakon and Jo. “Ready, girls?” At their nods, I glanced over to Josef. “Can you give us a boost?”
The big man nodded, lifting Jakon with one hand. She scrambled up into the vent shaft, hardly making a sound. I went next, unfortunately with a little more noise—Jakon was lighter than I was and a sight more graceful. I silently resolved to be more careful with my weight distribution; the last thing we needed was to have the vent creak and give us away. Jakon looked smug as I slipped carefully past her to take the lead, testing my weight against the metal sheeting.
Jo came up next, her wings folded around her like a cloak. The shaft was too small for me to turn and look at her, but I got the sense that she was irritated. I remembered how she said she’d just gotten out of the shower, and made sure to keep my mirth to myself. She’d need another one after this. “Jakon, do you have your blaster?”
“Yeah,” she growled, in the universal tone for “duh.”
“Good. Pass it to me. When Jai gives the signal, I’ll activate my shield and go in first. The shield’ll take the first few hits; I should be able to take out some of them in that time. After you hear the first four or five shots, you come down and do your thing. The room we’re headed to has an outside window—it’s on the left. As soon as either of us is able, we break it. Jo, when you hear the glass shatter, you come down and get the Walker. Just fly him out—”
