Black Sun (Phantom Server: Book #3) (15 page)

He nodded moodily. “I’m going to alter a couple of things,” he said. “Then we might be able to use it against the Reapers. You disembodied one of them by realizing you had to let go of the spear. A blow with a weapon like this disrupts the structure of a person’s identity matrix. I need a bit of time, okay?”

I glanced at the collection of items he’d already amassed. “All these things contain the Founders’ neurochips. Now where could mobs have gotten hold of them?”

“The neurocyber labs are not far from here. You might find all your answers there.”

“Okay. Keep going,” I released my fingers. Immediately the servoids slid back into the hilt. “We’ll check the area while you’re at it.”

* * *

We didn’t find anything useful inside the buildings. There was nothing left of them but their gutted frames.

Oh well. We walked back to the lake shore where Jurgen had already laid out his collection of weapons on a couple of scorched beach chairs. “Help yourselves.”

Arbido wasn’t in a hurry to touch them. “You sure they’re safe?”

“I’ve disconnected the neurochips from the handles. Once full, the exchange buffer will simply release the harvested neurograms.”

“Which will go where?” Foggs asked.

“Which will become part of cyberspace, I suppose,” Jurgen pointed at the dull green mist enveloping the wastelands, filled with whispers both bitter and unintelligible.

I focused on a two-handed sword but received no immediate response. My interface was still zoned out, with question marks instead of levels.

As I kept staring, a pale inscription formed above the sword,

A Two-Handed Sword of a Neuro

Class: a service artifact

“I’ll take it,” I said.

Servoids snaked out of its hilt, sheathing my fingers. Arbido gasped, his eyes filled with instinctive fear. That was it, then. He wasn’t going to touch any of these weapons, this little was clear.

Unhesitantly Charon picked up a poleax. Jurgen chose a
partizan
: a spear with a wide tip and two bladed guards at its base. Foggs studied the collection for a while, then took two short swords.

“Put the rest in your inventories,” I ordered.

Arbido shook his head. “Sorry, Zander. I’ll give it a miss.”

“Whatever. It’s up to you. Jurgen? Where do you want us to go now?”

He pointed at where the road tracing the lake disappeared into the whispering mist.

“Oh well. Let’s go, then.”

My armor was caked with blood. Even though I didn’t feel the pain, the wound kept reminding me of itself, turning my arm numb and stiff. Had I had received a blow with the microchipped sword, I might not have gotten away so easily. Jurgen was still a terrible sight. He seemed to have aged ten years at least.

We walked in silence. The road began to climb uphill, then ended abruptly.

Arbido stared at Jurgen, uncomprehending. “Where’s the junction?”

Jurgen didn’t answer. He stood there gritting his teeth: his face spent, his skin a ghostly gray. Instead of the mountain locations he’d promised, we were facing the flat slope of a gigantic crater, its cracked surface still breathing fire.

Foggs cussed, dumbfounded. A wide fissure snaked just below, exuding heat. A few little hillocks looked like solidified magma bubbles. The hot wind carried disturbing odors.

“It can’t be! You can’t destroy all the testing grounds’ equipment and its database!” Jurgen wheezed once he’d overcome his initial stupor.

There were no signs of sentient activity here. Everywhere you looked, the dull green mist mingled with the crimson glow.

Arbido’s face fell. “We need to go back,” he sighed. “It was a good idea. Still it doesn’t look as if we can do it.”

“No,” Jurgen snapped. “We need to keep going!”

“Where can you go in this disaster zone?” Arbido demanded. “Can’t you see? Your locations are gone! What do you want us to find? A cable hanging from the sky?”

I didn’t let their argument blow up out of proportion. “We need to keep going.”

I’d already spotted a strange jagged outline far ahead to our right. It looked like the ruins of a building. If Jurgen was to be believed, the access point to the Earth’s cyberspace could turn out to be anything. It was too early to admit defeat. We hadn’t risked all simply to turn round and go back!

“Zander, are you sure-“ Foggs tried to object.

Charon interrupted him. “There’s something moving!” he growled.

Arbido craned his neck. “Where?”

Charon pointed at the ruins.

Foggs tensed up. “Is it a Reaper?”

“
Nowr
! It’s a human! Not tall, blond hair!” the Haash replied in his curt manner. “I can see some equipment...” he crouched and clawed a recognizable teardrop shape in the sand.

Jurgen glanced at the drawing and frowned, confused. “That’s an in-mode!”

“Charon, haven’t you already seen this human before?” I asked. “In the tunnel, remember?”

The Haash gave an energetic nod. A chill ran down my spine. This was too much of a coincidence. Then again, the probability of this sort of encounter was dangerously close to zero. “I’ll go there on my own,” I said.

“Why? What do you need to do that for?” Foggs demanded.

“I think I know who Charon’s talking about.”

The Infosystems Corporation testing grounds

S
he perched on the edge of an open in-mode capsule. Hot wind tousled her long hair. Her gray eyes betrayed fatigue.

The battered 3D Optos hung around her neck. Her bloodied fingers clutched a rusty piece of construction steel. The rocky ground around the capsule was covered in fresh scratches leading right up to the cliff’s edge. The dull green mist rose from the abyss, the wind tearing at it, swirling it into unclear silhouettes and taking it away.

“Kimberly?” I stepped closer.

She didn’t even startle. She just looked up at me. “How do you know me?”

Gusts of wind plucked at the tattered remains of her clothes. We were enveloped in waves of heat and still she was trying to wrap herself into her rags.

“Liori told me about you.”

Kimberly sat up. “Is she alive?”

“You could say so... I suppose.”

Her stare hardened in reply to my hesitation. Her fingers closed over her makeshift weapon. I had a sneaky suspicion this wasn’t just any old piece of steel.

Who are you, girl? A Neuro? A Reaper? Or something else?

Madness glowed in Kimberly’s gaze. This in-mode capsule which had fused with the cracked ground; the rusty piece of steel; the ancient optical device: were they her strongest memories that cemented her identity matrix? Or were they a primitive trap for my own mind?

The servoids clung tighter to my fingers, winding themselves around my wrist like living beings, helping me to grip the sword tighter.

She couldn’t have survived
, the dull green mist whispered at me.
All this is but your imagination.
You shouldn’t believe it. You shouldn’t give in.

I knew it. Our gut reactions are not always right. Still, without following them we stop being human.

“Kim? What happened here?” I perched next to her on the edge of the open in-mode like an old friend that she could trust.

With a hiss, the servoids retracted back into the hilt. The plasma edges of my sword stopped glowing.

“You were with the first twenty neuroimplant testers, weren’t you?” I said. “That’s what Liori told me. She was looking for you. Then she thought you must have died.”

“I did,” she whispered. “I did, Zander,” she had no problem reading my name tag. “My identity matrix survived though,” she added, staring into the green mist. “The first twenty were special cases. The neurograms of each of us were stored on a separate server. Would you like to know what happened back on Earth?” she asked with an uncomely grin, avoiding eye contact. “It was a digital apocalypse. Some corporate cretin had decided he was God Almighty. He probably thought he could add a bit of diversity to gaming worlds. Or he didn’t think at all.”

Kim was shaking with cold, trying to wrap the tatters of her clothes tighter around herself. Her answer hadn’t explained much. We already knew about the latest update which had apparently breathed “life” into NPCs.

Pointless keeping things secret from her. I just hoped she wasn’t our enemy.

I motioned the others to come out. Foggs was tense and prepared to fight. Jurgen was in shock: he must have recognized her. Charon couldn’t quite grasp this latest development so he tried to stay calm, wary of not scaring the weird “human”.

“Arbido, there aren’t any extra clothes in that stash of yours, are there?”

“Don’t bother,” Kimberly’s eyes twinkled with a new dose of madness. She didn’t seem at all scared by my friends’ arrival. “Gear won’t help. I’m not cold,” the words fell from her lips, barely audible. “Thanks anyway,” she closed up again, deep in thought. Apparently, she didn’t consider us a threat.

No idea how she’d managed to preserve a semblance of sanity and recover her neurograms in order to survive.

In the meantime, Arbido reached into his inventory like a magician and produced an old checkered plaid, threadbare in places. Cautiously he approached the girl and threw it over her shoulders.

“Kim, you know this area well, don’t you?”

“You tell me why you came here first and where exactly you want to go,” she wrapped herself in the plaid but continued to shake.

“We need to get back to the real world. They stopped servicing our in-modes.”

She waved her hand at the edge of the precipice. “One step, and all your problems will be solved.”

“Meaning?”

“You need to fall to your death. What’s the point in clinging to life? Back on Earth, it’s even worse. You’re strong. One thing you need to remember is that for the first few minutes, your neurograms will be floating around your avatar. You shouldn’t be afraid. Just do it,” the way she was instructing me, you’d think I was about to jump off the cliff already. “Something might go missing but trust me, a dozen lost memories is a small price to pay.”

So that’s how it was, then? She’d found another way to go digital? To become part of Earth’s mutilated cyberspace, adding to its agonizing technosphere?

She misunderstood my hesitation. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. There’re lots of neurocomputers servicing the testing grounds. I know what I’m talking about. Your identity matrix will survive. But you’ll need to act fast. You must remember your name before your neurograms dissolve into cyberspace.”

“Thanks for the tip. I appreciate it. Still, I don’t think I’m ready yet. We need to recharge our in-modes and go back. Would you like to come with us?”

“No!” she seemed to know exactly where we meant. Her gaze alighted on the Founders’ navigator. “I’m not going back there! No way!”

“But don’t you understand? Here the Reapers will get you sooner or later!”

Her fingers closed around her piece of steel.

“Okay, I’ll help you,” she suddenly acquiesced. “But first you need to tell me why you want to go back. Is it because of Liori?”

The abyss spewed out a discharge of dull green mist. A groan resonated from the rocks. The several in-mode capsules which were fused into the cliffs flashed their indicator lights.

“Do you love her?” she asked.

“I do.”

Kimberly shrank as if I’d just hit her. She shrugged the plaid off and walked over to the edge. The hot wind attacked her rags, tearing at them with a renewed force.

“I’ll help you,” she whispered without turning. “For this I want the neurogram of your love. This is my price.”

Arbido shook a sympathetic head. “Zander, I want you to think well first.”

“I only want a copy!” Kimberly stared into the abyss. “I want to be loved too. Even if it’s like this... Even so...”

I didn’t know what to say. The reason for my hesitation was the simple question I’d suddenly asked myself: what was love, really?

Was it a passion? Or physical attraction? Or sex?

None of those. What I felt for Liori had nothing to do with it. The words I tried so hard to summon up were all weak, unable to describe my true feelings for her.

Did that mean I had no idea what love was? That in all thirty-eight years of my existence I’d not once experienced it?

It feels so empty and cold without you...

You couldn’t have said it better.
Empty and cold
. As if your heart had stopped beating.

Anxiety. Hope. My desperate desire to see Liori, to look into her eyes and realize that we were back together.

“There’s no such thing as a neurogram of love,” I said softly. “It can’t be reconstructed. Sorry, Kim.”

She turned around. “I know. I just wanted to hear your answer. I’ll help you.”

“What, just like that, no questions asked?” Arbido demanded. “Sorry girl, but you’ve no idea who we are or where we’ve come from! How can you trust strangers?”

“Shut up,” Foggs hissed.

“He’s right. You can’t trust strangers,” Kim now stood on the very edge, the green haze clinging to her bare feet. “This mist is everywhere now. I’ve learned to tap into it. I can listen in to mnemonic frequencies. This is how the Reapers seek out Neuros.”

Arbido recoiled. “Does that mean you can read our thoughts?”

“Not all of them. Only the strongest,” her gaze burned a hole right through me. “I know what happened to Liori. You keep thinking about her. Wait here.”

She turned round and walked slowly along the jagged edge of the cliff until her outline dissolved into the acid-green mist.

* * *

“Arbido, are you raving mad?” Foggs attacked the old man. “Put your mind in gear before you speak! Better still, shut the fuck up! What if she doesn’t come back?”

“Quit aggroing,” Arbido snapped. “I couldn’t help it. She looked too much like my daughter.”

Jurgen walked over to the edge, scooped up the green mist and froze, as if listening in.

Charon used the opportunity to get closer to one of the in-modes. He emitted a nervous growl, then began keenly studying this sample of human technology.

I perched myself on the edge of a fire-licked hillock. Two-tone clouds swirled overhead: a depressing combination of acid-green laced with crimson. But what was that now?

A black twister spiraled through the clouds. Several black specks broke away from it. In falling, they acquired human shape, then exploded in flashes of cold light, breaking apart until there was nothing left but fading clumps of green mist.

I immediately thought of the looters we’d met by the river bank. They’d been about to throw Arbido into a well, confident that they would get some neurograms for their trouble. So that’s how it worked, then?

The Neuros (which apparently meant
humans
) were now hunted and thrown into wells, caves and crevices, sacrificed to the Reapers. The fading clouds of green mist that the twister had brought were meant to be a meager reward for the murderers. Snippets of human memories and simple emotions would be shared between low-level NPCs while the players’ identity matrices would end up in the location’s gloomier depths where the Reapers would be awaiting them.

A digital apocalypse. Kimberly’s words had pinpointed the essence of the global disaster.

Jurgen walked over to me. “I’ve seen it.”

“Then you’d better tell me how it could happen.”

“I don’t think that the Corporation has anything to do with this update.”

“Tell me how you see it, then,” Arbido was listening in. “There’re always some crazy idiots lurking in the wings, some unappreciated prodigies seeking notoriety!”

“Still, the entire scope of this is mind-boggling,” Jurgen replied. “You can’t write an update like this on a kitchen table. Whoever did this was familiar with the Founders’ technologies,” he cast a meaningful stare at my sword. “And these Reapers too — they don’t at all look like unhinged mobs. I sensed their hatred — it was something irrational, almost absurd. It was as if they detested our guts. Zander, if you get the chance, can you please ask Kim how it all started? It’s pretty clear that the root of the problem lies in the testing grounds. I just find it strange that Corporation workers were the first to die.”

“All right. I’ll try and speak to her. But this mist, does it really work as some kind of neurogram conductor?”

Jurgen rose and returned to the edge. He reached out his hand. Immediately the green substance wavered and grew several tentacles which threatened to entwine his wrist and touch the flat of his hand.

“Does that mean that there’ll be more attacks?” Foggs watched everything that was happening, drawing his own conclusions. “These Reapers, they’re going to find us in the end, aren’t they?”

This was a rhetoric question. But at least now we had an adequate weapon against them.

* * *

Kimberly didn’t come back until much later. We’d already begun to worry when she appeared out of the mist and silently motioned us to follow her.

Soon the in-modes disappeared from sight. The shallow slope was now intersected by a web of crevices, their bottomless sides cutting through the islets of hard ground. A strong hot wind blew in our faces.

“Some terrain,” Arbido looked around him. “I wouldn’t say no to a levitation scroll. Shame we don’t have a wizard who could cast us a bridge. No wonder the Reapers use portals!”

“It’s over here,” Kim pointed at a narrow crevice.

“What’s this, a staircase?” Foggs studied the steps cut into the rock. “I’d never have noticed. Who made it?”

The girl ignored his question. Silently she began to descend.

The mist closed in, gradually transforming into darkness. Our torches could only illuminate a small area around us.

A twixstworld
.

The word gave you the shivers. Here, virtual realities merged into each other, creating a new digital universe ruled by synthetic identities which placed their sole value in neurograms.

The number and variety of the NPC inhabitants of these phantom worlds were legion. Someone had poisoned them with human emotions, creating ersatz identities to whom this poison had become a drug. The lived to
feel
— their only purpose being to syphon off a great variety of experiences, each stronger and edgier than the next.