Black Sun (Phantom Server: Book #3) (14 page)

“They might be,” Jurgen didn’t sound too sure. “I was with the first twenty, wasn’t I? I’ve no idea what happened here after that.”

The road skirted the lake. Snowflakes swirled in the silent gloom. I could sense something was coming but I couldn’t quite put my finger on how I knew this.

The Reapers were here! Right here! Not two paces away!

I swung round.

In a silent flash of purple, a portal opened behind me, disgorging a rider. He appeared in a swirl of snowflakes, crushed ice flurrying from the horse’s hooves. The rider’s eyes glowed purple through the narrow slits of his lowered visor, his spear aiming at my heart. All this flashed through my mind in the milliseconds — beyond which lay the sticky darkness of death.

“Neeeeuuuro!”

A burst of automatic gunfire thundered above my shoulder, burning my cheek, dumbfounding me. I dropped down and rolled aside as the scared horse bolted, dragging its unmounted rider behind.

Another portal!

And another one!

And yet one more!

“Neeeeuuuros!”

A bizarre medley of realities gushed forward out of the gap between worlds. Each of the Reapers was surrounded by a pack of motley creatures. Fangs and claws, the frozen gleam of steel and the rusty armor of androids, the shabby futuristic gear of post-apocalyptic dwellers — imagine that all the boundaries between the gaming worlds had been torn down and their NPC inhabitants had received both purpose and absolute freedom in achieving it.

Charon reacted quickly. He didn’t give a damn about the phenomenon’s illusory nature. All he could see was a bunch of aggressive mobs. Unfazed, he didn’t try to analyze their origins. In one shattering blow, his club struck sparks off the nearest serve’s steel casing, crushing him and sending him flying a good thirty feet.

Foggs (it had been him shooting over my shoulder) had already spent what meager ammo he’d had. He dropped the gun and whipped out his sword, beheading the nearest mob, unable to see yet another portal open up behind his back.

Stumbling and falling, Arbido staggered toward the nearest building, desperate for cover.

Several riders attacked Jurgen, knocking him down. He wriggled in the snow, his face distorted with agony. Numerous shallow wounds seemed to appear strategically over his body. They didn’t bleed: they just oozed a dull green haze.

“Zander! Help me!” he wheezed.

The dull haze enveloped him, thickening into phantom images. His wounds were leaking something deeply personal, hidden in the recesses of his heart. The haze formed Frieda’s ghostly outline. She looked so young and happy...

Those were neurograms!

The Reapers were harvesting Jurgen’s identity! They needed his memories, his feelings — any manifestations of human nature!

His personality was about to be ripped apart and absorbed by these raiders who would take its fragments away as precious trophies.

I too was circled by NPCs craving human experiences. No idea what kind of sick experiment this had been but its results were obvious. Now I knew what kind of agonizing death they’d all met: both the Corporation workers and the players trying to stop the Reapers on the river bank.

I desperately wielded my sword, fighting my way toward the kneeling Jurgen. He was clasping his head. Arbido hadn’t made it to the nearest building: he lay motionless. Foggs was fighting off the creatures with his last ounce of strength. Time slowed down, growing more subjective, dragging out the nightmare until it became an eternity.

A bullet hit my shoulder and went right through my armor, sprinkling the melting ice with claret.

Blood?

Why not the ominous green haze?

Your neuromatrix has been stabilized

The brief system message didn’t make it clearer but, gleaming like a ray of hope, breathed renewed strength into me.

Charon came into my field of view. The Reapers seemed to be giving him a wide berth. Apparently, a xenomorph’s emotions weren’t to their liking! Charon had managed to break his club in his rage but he wasn’t giving up, going hand-to-hand with several
serves
at once.

I noticed a spear lying on the frozen ground, dropped by the rider who’d been gunned down by Foggs in the very first minutes of the melee. “Charon, cover me!”

This was some gizmo, I tell you! A complex energy-thirsty device, judging by the numerous power units embedded in its shaft and the microchips forming its tip.

The Reapers who’d attacked us in the wastelands hadn’t been a patch on these. With their humble weapons and the absence of portals, they’d been quite easy to defeat. These were definitely top level ones, arrogant and experienced.

Clasping my wound with one hand, I dodged an attack, picked up the strange weapon, swung round and buried it in my adversary’s chest.

The spear’s microchipped tip lit up with a deadly glow. It pierced the swordsman’s breastplate with ease, extracting a blood-curdling scream from his chest.

His bloodless wound coursed with pulses of emerald light. They surged toward me, snaking around the spear shaft. Microscopic charges of energy sank into my fingertips. A foreign memory woven of hundreds of mental fragments clouded my mind.

I’d never experienced anything that cold and dreary. Fragments of NPC’s visual memory are an endless sequence of repeating images. The ground underfoot, slimy with blood; severed limbs; bodies split open. The everyday life of a swordsman, if you wish.

My mind choked on these images, their pain and stench eating through my brain while trying to become part of it. The cables of emerald energies entwined my arms and shoulders, sinking into my neck and piercing my temples.

“Nooo!”

The riders busy attacking Jurgen turned to my hoarse screaming.

It all happened faster than words can tell. The portals were still open, their long shadows still glowing purple, staining the ice and blotting the snow. I couldn’t feel my legs. My fingers closed around the spear. My face distorted. The world froze in eternity.

The riders’ figures dripped with emerald auras. The mobs were calm as they awaited the outcome of the combat in the knowledge of their own absolute superiority. This was their territory and their rules. The location’s defense programs were helpless against them. All they did was freeze everything solid without causing any harm to the Reapers. After the very first rounds, our firearms had stopped working. Foggs had managed to wrestle a gun from one of the low-level mobs but the bullets now flew right through the creatures surrounding him, helplessly hitting the snow or screeching as they ricocheted off steel.

The spear!

The thought scorched my mind, pulsing within its mauled constraints. My convulsing fingers closed around the spear, pulling it out. Its microchipped tip crunched as it left the mob’s frozen flesh. The swordsman collapsed on his side. Neurograms gushed out of his wound, breaking down into flashes of pulsating light. Dozens of phantom silhouettes escaping their prison, unsure what to do with their freedom. They floated, circling in mid-air, until gradually losing all detail.

Some of the mobs rushed to trap the dissolving images. Frantic, they seemed to have forgotten everything; they left Foggs and Charon alone and squabbled among themselves trying to get hold of the precious neurograms.

I was shaking uncontrollably. The nightmare of the NPC’s memories had released my mind, bringing back the agonizing pain.

One of the riders attacking Jurgen must have sensed something. He turned round, then nudged his horse unhurriedly in my direction. I staggered to my feet. The flaking sheets of dull green haze began to fade. The clatter of hooves grew closer. An ominous blood-curdling figure in frosted armor loomed out of the ghostly fog.

His purple eyes shone in the slits of his visor.

“Neuro, you’re strong and stubborn,” his dull voice paralyzed my will. “Give it to me!” he reached out for the spear in my hand.

“As you say,” I obediently lowered my head. “Here you are!”

I aimed the spear upwards, piercing his throat. His horse reared up. Taught by experience, I released my fingers and recoiled just in time.

His deadly wound surged with light. His freezing scream deafened me with debuffs. I was thrown back a good thirty feet: I was lucky not to have broken my neck. My vision darkened: a darkness that squirmed with agonizing tentacles, its emerald gloom replaced by crimson, followed by an almighty explosion which shattered every pane of glass in the nearby buildings.

I could still hear the tinkling crystal of the crumbling windows. The darkness had been burned out.

The rider was gone. Dozens of phantom figures circled the deep crater where he’d just been. Unlike the swordsman’s neurograms, fragmented and unstable, these coagulated identities used to belong to dead human beings.

They were doomed. Still, in these last moments of freedom, they craved revenge.

The Reapers recoiled, scattering. Too late. Flames enveloped them. Smoking, their frozen flesh hissed. Their armor melted. The portals collapsed.

Flashes of blinding energy hit them all one by one. Their frightened horses bolted and disappeared into the distance.

* * *

You’ve received a new level!

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Recommendation: in order to prevent the levels you received earlier from being blocked, you need to leave the incompatible cyberspace ASAP.

“Zander? You okay? Help me, somebody!”

Someone lifted my head and wiped my face with a handful of melting snow.

Foggs. Arbido.

I sat up and looked around me. I didn’t recognize the location. A cloud of thick fog hovered over the lake. The buildings gaped with broken blackened windows. The sky beyond the cliffs’ ragged outline shimmered with ghostly aurorae.

“How’s Jurgen? Where’s Charon?”

“They’re all right,” Foggs helped me back to my feet.

I noticed Jurgen at a distance busy collecting something, trawling through the damp steamy sand. From the direction of the buildings, I heard the rending of a door being forced, accompanied by Charon’s impatient growling.

Arbido offered me a water flask.

Good idea. I was parched. “Thanks. How long have I been out?”

“Dunno,” Foggs answered. “I’ve only just come round myself. That was one hell of a blast!”

“Ask Charon if there’s anything in those buildings we can use. Better still, go and look for yourself. I’ll go speak to Jurgen.”

“What do you want me to do?” Arbido asked.

“You can check out the area for any loot,” I gave him his flask back and hobbled toward the lake.

At the sound of my footsteps, Jurgen swung round. There was the stamp of madness upon his face. He was clutching another one of those weird weapons.

“May I? Where did you get it from?” I tried to sound calm as if nothing had happened. We had very little time. Yes, I knew he was scared. The Reapers had very nearly ripped his soul out. Those monsters seemed to crave one’s deepest and most secret experiences, leaving their numerous retinue to feast, vulture-like, on the carrion of basic human emotions and ordinary memories.

Having had a taste of the disembodied swordsman’s mental imagery, I still felt like I’d been covered with blood. “Keep your chin up, man.”

Jurgen blinked a few times. His eyes were tearful. His fingers shook. “Here,” he offered me one of his discoveries.

A
Short Sword of a Reaper

Class: service artifact

Power units had been built into the item’s hilt. A line of neurochips had been welded into the blade along the blood groove, each of them carrying the signs of the Founders’ language.

I focused on the sword, trying to access its properties.

Wish I still had my mind expander! If only I could activate my technology scanner and access a couple of databases...

This wasn’t just any old sword. I closed my hand around the hilt. Immediately it sprouted long threads of a metal which began to intertwine, some forming a lacy guard while others hugged my wrist and my clenched fingers.

I focused on them. Slowly a prompt came into view:

Servoids

The word said nothing to me.

The double-edged blade began to shimmer with intense light.

Plasma?

Could be. What else would you need these heavy-duty power units for? A blade like this could slice through any kind of armor with ease. Still, the presence of an artificial neuronet betrayed its true purpose: neurogram harvesting. Was it an AI sword? Hardly. Most likely, it contained an exchange buffer which trapped fragments of the victim’s identity and forwarded them to the owner of the weapon.

I shared my thoughts with Jurgen.