Keeping It Real (15 page)

locked solid. Her face bore an expression of the kind of euphoria you sometimes saw in religious

icons. Zal lay across her arms, his head hanging loose, his hair a flag of defeat
.
Various people, who

looked small and puny beside her, were struggling with cables, keyboards and remote controls,

prying fruit
-
lessly at
her arms and legs, and warily watching her weapons-ports
.
There was a long,

black elfin arrow shaft
sticking out
of her left
shoulder.

Lila wanted to tell them not to be silly, but
she couldn't move. She felt weary, and that she would

like to lie down.

Jelly went off and sometime later returned with Sorcha, all covered up in a black cloud of coat

and dark glasses, her high heels sounding like the crack of doom on the hard floor of the emergency

room.

'Flown back from goddamned Vegas!' Jelly was screeching. 'Vegas and are you listening to me,

C3PO? He is on stage in sir
hours.
Can't you people pull your fingers or your power out of her ass?

We're talking millions of serious dollars.'

Sorcha walked up slowly, her face set and serious. Lila wanted to smile.

'You look bad, girl,' Sorcha said quietly
.

No, I'm fine,
Lila tried to say, although nothing came out
. Every
t
hing is fine.

Sorcha put
her hand up, up, up to where Zal's head hung and touched the tip of one, long, pointy

ear
.
Already on tiptoe with the heels, she leant
forwards, closer, closer, so that Lila could feel how

warm she was, and smell her perfume. She whispered something that
even Lila couldn't hear.

Zal twitched and jerked suddenly, so strongly that
he nearly fell from Lila's hold. He made a noise of

pain and struggled to claw his way upright, but Lila's arms automatically closed more tightly, to prevent

him falling. She would rather have let him go, because she was j

exhausted now and she had started to hurt, but the more he fought
to get free the more her arms and

hands drew him closer, tighter, safer.

'Stop, for hellsakes!' Sorcha hissed at him, her tongue a strip of red flame. 'She'll crush the life out of

you. Something's gone wrong with her. She's broken. Stay still.'

Zal stopped. Lila felt him take hold around her neck in an effort to move to a less agonising position
.

She was glad he was ready to take his own weight. Even something as light
as an elf got
heavy after a

while, and now she could barely stay awake. Only the growing news of discomfort and worse pains

coming through to her from the great
distant
plain of her body kept
her from falling asleep. She longed to

be able to yawn.

'Shut
her down! Reboot! Power cycle her! Reverse the friggin' polarity!' Jelly shouted encouragingly.

'Fuck the shut up, man,' Sorcha snarled at him and he jumped aside from the dart
of blue energy that

came zipping out
of her mouth with the words. Sorcha turned back calmly, 'Zal, are you cool?'

Lila couldn't
see what Zal did but Sorcha chuckled and said, 'Sure, you cool. Now don't go anywhere.

I got to take me a picture of your ass for the guys.'

Then someone took the world and put it back in Lila's head. Her arms collapsed and Zal fell hard

against her, dragging her head down and forward. She lost her balance and staggered and screamed with

agony. She felt
Zal let go, and the natural recoil as she was freed broke something important
in her back.

When Lila woke she saw the familiar ceiling of the Incon hospital - a bank of foam tiles set in a light metal

frame with recessed lights that
shone on her but avoided her face, like eyes that couldn't bring themselves

to quite look at her. She smelted antibac and other chemical compounds in the air. Although she felt
fine

she soon realised this was because she could feel no physical sensations from the neck down. A sadness

and sense of defeat crept through her, so profound that she felt she would never be warm again. Tears

ran, betraying her with their heat and the softness of their touch, but
she couldn't
wipe them away.

She was plugged into the Central Intelligence Tree, the AI which operated all of Incon's

communications and data traffic and provided informational support. It responded to the flush of blood in

her face by

opening the windows. Lila couldn't
speak, but her Al-self asked it
in machine code:

Where is Zal?

Zal is no
t
wi
t
hin
t
he CI
T
ree span,
it
told her, obliged to notify her of Zal's uplink status as a matter of protocol
. He was discharged
t
wo hours ago and
t
aken from here
t
o
t
he Coke Arena a
t
Bay Ci
t
y
Cen
t
er by Buddy Ri
t
z, Jelly Sakamo
t
o and Jolene Duchovnik.

Wha
t
t
ime is i
t
?
Lila asked.

I
t
is
t
en p.m. Pacific,
the machine said.

Patch me t
o
t
he Coke Arena coverage of
t
he concer
t
,
she insisted.

The AI switched her out of its disconnected security to the Incon servers that were connected to the

Otopia Tree and gave her TV.

Zal's support act was still on. Lila let her mind wander through the system and found the internal

CCTV units. She started to search through the crowd, and at the same time to look for Zal in the

dressing areas. She saw Poppy and the other faeries with headphones on, warming up by singing old

RftB melodies. She saw Luke and DJ Boom drinking lite beer, their feet up on the table in the green

room, watching the support band and flicking broken potato chips at each other.

Then there was Zal, sitting a slight
distance apart on the edge of a table, drinking something out of a

styrofoam cup, both his hands in gloves, although that
went with the general High Elf woodlands look the

designers had given him. His slanted eyes were glittery with a bigger than natural kind of high, she

thought, but it
could have been the lighting
.
He looked as though he had been transported in from

Alfheim, like he carried it with him in a forcefield that could repel all Otopian influence. The white cup

seemed bizarre by contrast
.
He glanced at
the camera, into Lila's eyes, then looked down at
the cup in

his hands and casually crushed it flat.

Lila made herself switch gear and start working for real.

All the rig reports were in order from the road crews, all the security features functional. The guards

collected mundane and magical weapons at the gates.

How badly damaged am I?
she asked the Incon Tree, knowing it
would never lie to her or try to

make her feel better.
When will my insys
t
em be on again?

You are expec
t
ed
t
o recover sufficien
t
ly for insys
t
em
t
o be re
t
urned by five a.m. Pacific, it told
her in its neutral, sexless, diffident voice.

What
happened
t
o me?

You were in we
t
-surgery for an hour and a half. Surgical nanoware packs are s
t
ill opera
t
ive a
t
t

he sacroiliac si
t
e, a
t
t
he arrow punc
t
ure, and a
t
t
he major junc
t
ion bodies wi
t
hin your leg pros
t
he
t
ics. Your reac
t
or core remains undamaged. You are receiving a rebuilding nu
t
rien
t
s
t
ruc
t
ure
t
hrough blood
t
ransfusion.
T
he magical de
t
ec
t
ion device has recorded a significan
t
al
t
era
t
ion in
your energy pa
tt
ern which is consis
t
en
t
wi
t
h exposure
t
o high-coun
t
Zoomenon radia
t
ion.
T
he effec
t
s are so far unmanifes
t
ed, and unknown a
t
t
his
t
ime.
T
his has been added
t
o your permanen
t
record. You have been cleared
t
o con
t
inue opera
t
ions, bu
t
you will no
t
be permi
tt
ed
t
o opera
t
e wi
t
hou
t
suppor
t
in
t
he field.

Wha
t
's
t
he delay
t
hen?
Lila wondered at
the five a.m. deadline. It seemed a long way off. She pushed

aside her resentment at being downgraded. That meant the Incon special agents team were watch-ing

her, because they didn't
know what
the Zoomenon exposure might do, or how it could change her. She

didn't know either. She didn't want to.

Your brainwave readou
t
s are erra
t
ic, and follow a non-
t
ypical pa
tt
ern. Engram res
t
ora
t
ion
t
herapy has been recommended before insys
t
em renewal by Doc
t
or. . .

Yeah, well, screw
t
ha
t
.
Lila said.
Swi
t
ch i
t
on.

I am obliged
t
o inform . . .

'One hardly needs to be telepathic to know what you're thinking,' Sarasilien's voice said quietly beside

her.

Lila would have jumped if she could have. She hadn't
known he was there, but he must have been

sitting there the whole time at her side.

The tall elf leaned forward so that he came into her line of sight. 'It does you credit, but you need to

rest and recuperate. Now is not the moment for another attack of heroics. We have deployed other

agents to watch Zal while you recover.'

She couldn't even turn her head. Sarasilien stood up, and Lila felt the air move as he bent over her.

His long hair hung forward, like her mother's used to. 'Lila,' he said with gentle affection. 'Don't
cry.

You'll be fine in a few hours.'

Lila worked hard to try and talk. She could barely move her eyes to meet
his. It
was exactly the same

as it
had been on the awful day she woke up here the first time, two years ago, after Lila Amanda Black

had

officially been laid to rest, missing on assignment
in Alfheim. Then she couldn't feel or move either, and

the only things that passed through her head were the replays of the final moments of her old life with the

elven agent who had ended it - Zal's hunter, Dar.

Again she saw his face as firestars arose from the words he was speaking and fell onto her, blasting her

apart
in a shock of white silence
.

Sarasilien had talked to her throughout the months of her physical rebuilding and the longer months of

her mental recovery, and listened to her screaming silently, able to hear her thoughts through magic when

no one else could. She remembered those times with resentment
and gratitude, the latter winning out.

'I'm fine,' she whispered finally, although the words were mangled in her dry throat. 'I saw him. Dar.

He was in the forest at Solomon's Folly. He shot me. He shot
Zal.'

Sarasilien had bent
close to listen
.
His hair pooled over her neck, tickling her. She smelled the clean,

evergreen scent
of his skin, drank it
in. 'Are you sure? Zal was unhurt when he was released from here. I

could find no magical traces on him.'

"The arrowhead scratched his shoulder after it
went through me. It self-destructed. And his hand

'Yes?' He waited for the long age it took her to draw breath and process it.

'There was an animal spirit, an I-space ghost. It drank from his hand. He was ... we were in

Zoomenon. Before Dar shot. Zal was in Zoom-enon, outside the circle, drawing elementals. He was . . .'

But she didn't know the name, used what she could find, 'He was shooting up with them, and the ghost

came.'

Sarasilien drew back when she had finished. 'This is a serious twist. I suspected that Dar might be

involved. He's the senior Jayon Daga agent in Otopia.' He paused and then added, 'Elves have a history

with elementals which may explain the source of Zal's apparent addiction, though I can tell you from my

brief examination of him that there is a lot
more to Zal than any high-caste elven magics
.
I cannot say

what, as he was extremely resistant to my attention. But the I-space ghost is most unusual
.
Do you think

its presence there was a coincidence?'

'No,' Lila whispered. But
she didn't
say why she thought so - that the combination of demon magic