Raine VS The End of the World (28 page)

Elise needed to outsmart the Stopwatch, to somehow lead it to self-destruction. It was glitching up. Perhaps its overclocked RAM was burning out. But it was staying alive, and the last ship left standing would receive a bonus in points that could tip the scale.

The final boss, Dr. Professor, nearly killed them both. The crowd waited with baited breath. His first form went down in flames. The second form, too. But the third was the fastest of all, and had gotten deadlier during each run. Dodging its endless barrage of bullets was all that the challenger could do. She’d used up her bombs. He was charging up its most powerful attack. It was highly unlikely that both of them would make it out of there alive.

“SUDDEN DEATH!” a drunken dwarf called out from the audience.

It became a chant. The townspeople were livid.

Zoot joined the chanting. Fireworks erupted above them. Sweat ran down Raine’s arms and dripped down onto the joystick, where her palms were clammy, sticky, and covered in painful blisters. Yet she continued to jerk left, right, left, fire, up, down, right, down, fire, until the raw power of her performance moved them all to silence.

There was a collective gasp.

When Raine became somewhat conscious of the world again, it was because people had yanked her from the throne and tossed her into the air. Hands scampered for the controls all too late. The Stopwatch had died to the boss’ master attack, and now so had she. The world she had taken to its limit fell away as the judge entered “ELI” as #1 on the top score screen.

Another shrill beep snapped our heroine out of her trance. The Stopwatch was being tied up to two large poles. It looked very miserable and turned to Raine for a brief exchange, perhaps searching for sympathy, until the folk carried it into the distance and it was no more.

Raine was placed onto the main throne before the fountain. She looked down uncomfortably on the villagers. They were bowing before her as if she were a goddess.

Then Mrs. Zoot crowned her.

The crown, she decreed, would confer unto Elise the title
Princess of Pagoda
. As an added bonus, she was gifted with Developer status for a whole day. For the next twenty-four hours, she was going to be absolutely invincible.

∩

Watching the drama come to a crescendo in transit from the
Phoenix,
Lily leapt from her seat, hit her head on the ceiling, then sat down and pumped her fists instead. Raine had done it. She actually defeated the Champion, triggering a secret connection into
Endless Metaverse’s
central mainframe.

She checked in with the
Belladonna.
Rutger was already drawing a map of the Intranet. All that was left was to crack the access codes to the exit node registry, and she’d have a laundry list of backdoor entrances to the fundamentals of Lorelei’s Network.

Lily ran the debug app from her Holo-Lens, patching it through the direct connection that Raine’s remote account had opened with the
Metaverse’s
mainframe. It was the beginning of the end to this nightmare. As she watched Raine smiling atop the traveling procession, Lily pondered the enormity of what had just been accomplished. The map of secret passageways into every facet of
Endless Metaverse
would soon be complete.

“It’s been a joyous day, Rutger. Is Yossa mobilizing?”

“Yes, Miss Lily. Congratulations.”

“We can’t celebrate just yet. The show must go on.”

“It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.” – Mahatma Gandhi

While Raine slept in late on the floor of Mrs. Zoot’s long-neglected antique shop, General Lacie had no such luxury.

The latest reports still insisted that Raine, her next target, was hiding within Pagoda’s freak data blizzard. In other words, her physical location remained untraceable. The prudent step at this point was to head back home and regroup.

At seven A.M. the sun glanced out from behind the Eastern peaks, casting long, dark shadows over empty fields. Lacie cracked the sunroof about a half-inch. At nearly mach speed, the cold wind shooting into her cockpit woke her up better than a shot of adrenaline. Not that she was falling asleep, of course. She’d only been up for three days, powering away on four kinds of painkillers and multiple amphetamines. In another world, the General might have rested, at least for a few hours, but her sister had no patience for wasted time.

Lacie closed the window and took a gander at her navigator. Her personal speeder had ascended the desolate Ukok plateau with ease. She was currently flying by the Altai Mountains, a beautiful stretch of highlands that in the old world was sandwiched between Russia, Mongolia, China, and Kazakhstan.

All three of her remaining escorts flanked her
Isis
, rotating positions with perfect precision. She had been journeying to home base for hours now with her precious cargo.

Gerrit, one of the two who would destroy
Endless Metaverse
, was now in her possession. The boy was no easy quarry to attain. Breaking into Lily’s underground bunker and facing off against almost a hundred armed droids had been a lengthy battle that left twenty of her best men dead and half as many seriously wounded.

She spun around for a quick glance. There he was; the sad, pale thing, passed out, curled up in the cargo bay like a helpless animal, half-open eyes visible through his
M-Gear
’s standard goggles. Cut off from a power source, his eyeballs rolled back and forth into his head at incredible speeds, and the helmet’s ‘solar recharge needed’ LED blinked erratically. As far as she was concerned he was comatose.

Lacie had hoped to find the boy working actively with the resistance – heck, she expected to encounter at least one human member of the EDC – but instead, just an hour ago she discovered him sitting cross-legged in a small room, dressed in the garb of a Tibetan monk. Maintained by android servants, fed on an ample vegetarian diet, and with a light exercise routine programmed into his daily regimen, the kid’s body was perfectly at peace, his frozen mind’s last memories arrested on his short-lived role within the
Metaverse
.

They would investigate whether Gerrit possessed any latent memories of the world outside. Of course, that was even considering that Lily hadn’t wiped his memory beforehand. Any rebel plot in a potential sleeper agent’s memory banks would have been processed by the nano-bots and mentioned in the asset’s file. Oddly enough, none had been found: a testament to Lily’s craftiness.

Lily. It’s odd that she hasn’t showed up yet.

There was a blip on the radar. Speak of the devil.

Lacie bit her tongue. It was coming fast. It could only be
her
, and none too late.

“Gamma Leader to Gold Squadron Leader, do you copy?”

“Copy, General. Awaiting orders.”

“Enemy bogey sighted at seven-o-clock. Closing.”

“Shall we engage, ma’am?”

Lacie knew the answer was no.
Not yet. We don’t even have visibility. What can we possibly shoot at?

“Cargo is first priority. Defensive positions. Phalanx formation.”

“Phalanx formation. Affirmative.”

The speeders pulled in to surround Lacie’s ship, carefully positioning their jets and rotating guns outwards. Almost as soon as it fell into formation, vitals went silent on the pilot of the southern-facing craft. Lacie gaped at the video replay – he was shot in the head.

The pilot died instantly; his corpse fell onto the controls, sending the craft speeding towards the westernmost ship, which moved to dodge it and suffered a barrage of well-timed explosive rounds on one of its turbines. As the pilot gasped for breath amidst the smoke cycling into the cockpit, the ship’s gunner spotted a flash of metal, aimed carefully, fired, and missed. The mystery craft had disappeared once again.

“We’ve lost Redd! Six-two is hit!”

Lacie was furious. Nothing was showing up on the
Isis’
displays. Lily’s infrared signature should at least have registered on the radar. She barked orders like a mad woman.

“Steady! Steady! Enemy is cold-cloaked and within range. Fire at will! This bitch is going down!”

The General studied the vidfeed from every corner of her ship. A blip registered directly on top of her position. Lily had to be either above or below her. She pulled the
Isis
to a sudden slowdown, let her escorts fly ahead, and held her breath.

Gerrit’s restraints clicked into place immediately as G-absorbing gel flooded the cabin and stopped Lacie’s and Gerrit’s bodies from falling apart at the sudden change in G-force. She checked her screen again as the gel quickly cycled out.

The blip continued following them briefly. Lacie kick-started the jets again, rapidly accelerating towards her escorts. She was closing on Lily, so close now, just waiting for her to fire, or miss, or her cloak to breach… just one sign…

A frantic voice yelled over the radio. “General, look out!”

Blinding light hit her straight in the eyes. Lily’s plasma flashbang; the brat was closing the distance. Two lightning-fast beams of concentrated electricity hit Lacie’s power supply, shorting out the engine for a split-second and resetting her navigation systems. Lily trained her machine gun as she zoomed past Lacie, who struggled to keep the
Isis
airborne.

Lacie surveyed the damage. Machine guns: jammed. Afterburners: cut. A few bullets penetrated the fuselage and took out one of the flaps, but all other systems were go. Gerrit was fine. It seemed at the last second Lily had stopped herself from risking any serious harm to the boy.

“Ha! You missed!” Lacie chortled as she spun one of her jets around, pulling a 180, and let loose her missiles towards the vague area where Lily’s ship should be.

Its cloaking pulsed for a split-second as Lily leeched power from the system to jet forward, revealing the sleek craft. As she’d expected, Lily wasn’t fool enough to pilot the
Phoenix
into a terrestrial battle, but this EDC ship was no less state-of-the-art. Thanks to Lily’s silver coolant scrambling her heat signature, the missiles were flying blind, but at least one was sure to connect. Lacie cheered as one exploded against the main rudder in a satisfying fireball, and savored the cracking metal as the Sky Admiral’s craft sputtered to the ground, barely missing an awkwardly placed Network tower.

“General, are you all right?”

“Never better.”

“We are en route to your current location.”

“Negative. Bogey down. I’ll investigate on foot and send my ship on autopilot with you to home base. Cargo is first priority. Cannot allow it to fall into enemy hands. Send a squad back for me after the next checkpoint.”

“Copy that.”

General Lacie set her ship to a vertical standstill to arm herself with all fifty pounds of her heavy weaponry. She then descended to the surface of the plateau three hundred feet from the crash site. Boulders and bushes dotted the soil: a perfect hiding place for growth-stunted Lillian. Lacie scanned the burning wreckage. The craft was totaled, but there was no trace of her sister.

Machine guns fixed, Lacie unloaded the rest of her ship’s ammunition onto the ground before opening up the hatch and strolling down the entry ramp. She steeled her determination, prepared to face the worst.

At twenty-nine, Lacie had been extensively educated in all forms of combat, undergoing intense training throughout various time periods. As she first came into consciousness in the body of a thirteen-year-old, it wasn’t as good as what Lily had grown up with – virtual training and conditioning since the age of five – but it was something. Hand-to-hand combat. Fencing. Judo. Street fighting. Firearms. Heavy weaponry.

Whatever awaits, I’ll be ready.

A cocked shotgun met the General not twenty feet away.

Lacie couldn’t help but snicker at the irony.

Having sprung from behind a weathered rock, Lillian was staring her down from the other end of the automatic shotgun, finger latched tightly onto the trigger.

“You have forcibly breached my facility and taken away someone very important to me. I’d like for him to be returned.”

“Hmph. You certainly reacted fast enough. We thought you’d be playing hopscotch with your terrorist buddies.”

“Then the only explanation is that I knew you were going to do it.”

Lacie glowered. Lily had broken the rules.

“Elaborate on how this is not a violation of our set terms.”

“That’s simple. Recently, you or Lorelei scouted into the future, and saw that I razed your precious
Metaverse
. So either you were sent or you came of your own volition to take Gerrit out of the equation and make sure that your apocalyptic power trip runs smoothly. My future self discovered this blatant trickery and sent back a message telling of your crime.”

“You will refer to her as ‘Majesty’.”

“She will always be Lorelei to me.”

Lacie sneered. “So you reveal plainly that you received information from the future and acted on it. How is it that you accuse me solely of breaking the rules again?”

“You cast the initial stone. In the first place, there’s absolutely no way you could have known of Gerrit’s location without tracking my shutdown signal, which hasn’t happened yet. Don’t take me for a fool, Lacie. Another of the preconditions, I hope you’ll remember, is that we agreed to no further time travel to and from the end of the world. Aren’t things convoluted enough? Your fuel cells are almost spent, anyways.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Technically, I would be lecturing myself,” Lily answered. “The truth of the matter is, in this case you two have cheated and as there are no judges or arbiters qualified to hear our particularly unique case, I reserve my right to challenge at least one of you to a duel to the death.”

Lacie groaned. “Now?”

“Yes, now. No more tricks. And no weapons.”

Lacie internalized this long and well. On the one hand was possible death, on the other a chance for ultimate glory. Lily hadn’t fought so well the last time, but her limbs, formerly broken, were now covered in shining titanium. It would certainly be a challenge.

“As you wish,” she said at last.

The morning sun in her eyes, Lacie tied her hair back, then carefully removed her ammo vest and stripped her person of two pistols, an automatic crossbow, an electric whip, a pair of nunchaku, three concealed knives, and a hand grenade.

“The electromagnetic belt, too,” Lily said.

Lacie reluctantly threw off the heavy belt.

Walking in a semi-circle, Lily relieved herself of the same exact pair of pistols, her shotgun, a stun laser, two electric whips, a katana, four hand grenades, and a lightweight shield. She also took off her helmet, letting her shoulder-length hair blow in the wind.

By mutual agreement Lily was allowed to keep on and use her cybernetic limb enhancements, for they were the only things holding her frail body together.

The two women stared each other down as they moved counter-clockwise in a loop, boots crunching the grassy plain below as they circled closer and closer.

“This will be your end,” Lacie said, her voice stained with hatred. “A fitting end to a false prophet, to be done in by her own lieutenant.”

“Your arrogance is misplaced,” Lily barked. “Don’t forget who made you, who raised you, who trained you.”

“I am not beholden to you, or to your damning oath! I am more than you were, are, or will ever be!”

Without hesitation, Lacie charged towards Lily with a punch that turned into a feint, and quickly transformed into a sweeping kick. Lily tried to clear the low kick, but was a split second too late. Lacie knocked the Admiral off her feet.

The jets in her limb enhancements spurted to life and Lily performed a handstand into a perfect flip backwards, landing on both feet three meters away.

Lily assumed a fighting stance as Lacie circled her again, looking for an open spot. Lily charged through her defenses, blocked a high kick, grabbed her leg, chopped into Lacie’s standing knee and twisted her into the ground. Lacie fell on her stomach and immediately rebounded off the grass, twisting her nimble back around as she did so for one desperate blow.

Her leg connected with Lily’s face, sending her flying. Lily pushed her hands backwards, activating her arm jets to absorb the impact and somersault. She landed on her feet again just in time to take a deafening punch.