Raine VS The End of the World (36 page)

“Sir, the town square’s no longer safe. The pigs are processing everyone they can, everyone who’s seen us, or her. They don’t want any loose ends.”

“I should think not, Moe,” Yossa replied, sitting down with a thud.

Yossa glanced back up at the shield.
Hundreds of Templars were cracking through the barrier, layer by layer. It wasn’t going to last much longer. There were very few ways out of a situation like this. If they all simultaneously teleported to safe hubs, they’d be easily tracked; their hideout compromised. And all these new recruits couldn’t simply be left for the law to deal with.

[rainorshine23]: “Do you have an escape plan? My crown grants me Developer status. I can fend them off.”

[Yossa_B13]: “I’d rather you not. It’d be unwise to give away your position. It’s increasingly looking like there’s only one way out of this. Moe, we break on through this Coliseum, split up, and make a run for safe hubs. Everyone lie low for the next twelve hours pending my orders. We leave in three. You and the other squad leaders coordinate.”

Moe tossed a salute and dashed back to the other freedom fighters. Now that they were alone, Yossa trained his charms onto Raine once more.

[Yossa_B13]: “You bear the hopes of the
Metaverse
. Come with us?”

Raine kept silent, looking up at Yossa hopefully. It was difficult to tell him that she hadn’t the faintest idea what she was supposed to do next.

[rainorshine23]: “I’m sorry. I don’t know if I should. I know it seems right, but I also know there’s somewhere I’m supposed to be… other than that, I really don’t know what I’m doing. I think I’m operating for Lily, but I haven’t been given any details.”

Yossa was visibly terrified.

[Yossa_B13]: “Raine, be honest with me.”

[rainorshine23]: “It’s the truth. I haven’t the slightest idea what I’m doing.”

[Yossa_B13]: “That’s unbelievable. You’ve accomplished so much, freed minds, revealed countless truths, and yet… Are you sure you’ve received no word? No messages?”

He seemed on the verge of breaking. It was inconceivable. He’d worked nearly a decade to understand and uncover the truth about this realm, and this… this was to be the agent of its destruction? Even if he were to take her back with them, what could they hope to accomplish?

Raine sensed his frustration, and worried that he might lose it completely. She tightened her fists in empathy, hoping for an answer, and felt that something was missing – the balloon string. She’d put in her bag just a minute ago.
But of course! Lily’s message!
That she recalled it at that very instant seemed a magnificent stroke of fortune.

[rainorshine23]: “Wait! I… may have received a clue. I think I know where I’m supposed to go, and how to get there.”

[Yossa_B13]: “Perfect. Don’t tell me where you’re going, in case they catch me. Mode of transport?”

Raine drew the balloon from her shoulder bag.

[Yossa_B13]: “The balloon? Truly?”

“Yes,” said Raine, flabbergasted at her own words.

[Yossa_B13]:
“It was Lily, wasn’t it?”

[rainorshine23]:
“Why, yes, yes it was!”

“Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.”

Yossa reached into his pack and pulled out a battery-operated fan.

[Yossa_B13]:
“Not two hours ago, that girl, she drops me a line, telling me to carry around an electric fan and make sure I had my latest maps. She also left me a handy dossier of custom exploits. May I? This might shock you.”

The balloon was cautiously offered. He took the string, still attached to Raine, in one hand, put on his
Cyclops
-like visor with the other and executed the program. The girl felt a jolt of electricity shoot through Yossa’s hand and turn the balloon string neon blue. She instinctively pulled on it, which had the effect of lifting her up into the air.

“Yossa? What’s going on?”

He gently took the girl by the shoulders, pulled her back down to the surface, and taught her how to control the balloon’s vertical movements through motions of her wrist.

[Yossa_B13]:
“It’s a homemade exploit Lily concocted to work with any balloon. You can now travel quickly and safely across the map. You’ll be completely invisible to anyone more than three meters away.”

“Excellent,” Raine commented.

Yossa turned to his remaining men briefly and executed some complicated hand gestures. They responded affirmatively and fell into formation.

[Yossa_B13]: “We’re leaving now. This is a brand new glitch that only Lily and I should know about, so your chances of getting through their perimeter undetected are pretty good. I don’t know how strong their counter-hackers are against our feed manipulators, but we’ll hold them off as best we can.”

“Will you be safe?”

“I don’t know how you know where you’re going, but this will help you get there,” he told Raine as he uploaded a completely explored and annotated map of the local region to her wristwatch. He also quickly modified her visor so that she could use it anonymously.

“How can I thank you?”

“Raine, I know you haven’t told me why you’re doing this,” Yossa said. “And I understand it’s very likely that you are not sure of it yourself… but you and I… we share a common goal. It wasn’t just Lily who brought us here together. It was destiny.”

“I’m still not sure if I believe in destiny, but I hope you’re right,” Raine said grimly. “And I hope we will meet again, maybe somewhere less chaotic.”

“Perhaps. Though I sense that my battle is within this world,” Yossa called. “And yours without. Of course, I’ve been wrong before.”

[Yossa_B13]:
“As soon as I give you the signal, face the fan towards the ground, activate it, and tug on the balloon. You should shoot straight up.”

Raine nodded.

Yossa walked away, eyes on Raine. The cloaking took effect immediately, and with it a bittersweet feeling engulfed Yossa’s old heart, which sank at the thought that the rumors might prove true, and
Endless Metaverse
might not live up to its title. Its conclusion would mean the end of years of passionate work.

He took more than a bit of solace in knowing that he did the right thing. His steps away from the girl grew lighter than air.

Before long, Yossa shouted, “Now go! Go with my blessing!”

Raine flicked on the fan and pulled the string.

She blasted off the ground at incredible speed, popping through the barrier between two Templars drilling their way through the shield. She jerked the fan to a stop before slamming into an approaching airship. Quickly yanking the balloon back east towards Atmoya, Raine pointed the fan behind her and flicked the switch again. She zoomed onward.

Raine caught only fleeting glimpses of the rebels as they divided into small groups and fought their way out of the Bowl. Before long the shield gave way. Gunfire sparked the streets like fireworks on Independence Day. Then the noise gave way to the cold silence of night.

Ω

Whilst changing into a flowing black gown deep within her chambers, Queen Lorelei grimaced at the stuttering three-dimensional battlefield being projected in the midst of her room. Even Guggell
’s
software struggled to keep up with the wanton destruction. She paced listlessly along the elegant shag carpet.

“What is happening here, Jon?” she asked a floating hologram of Mister Senior.

He was hovering above the Coliseum in a gyrocopter, watching the chaos unfold below as the streets of Helium-Corneria burned and rebels picked off the Templars one by one.

“Surely you can see the situation better than I can, ma’am. It's a bloodbath down here!”

Queen Lorelei zoomed into the Coliseum. Every player avatar and NPC was visible on her screen; that is, every player but the girl she now needed desperately to find.

“Did you see where the hell Raine went?”

Wrathman searched his holo-map anxiously, panicking. The girl was headed onstage when she disappeared a minute ago; there was no mistaking it.
Could the entire feed be corrupted?

She addressed the quivering Developers in the
Avidya
dome.

“This mere skirmish is irrelevant compared to the damage that girl’s capable of inflicting. She's the key to all this, we can't just let her slip through our fingers!”

Jon looked around hopelessly one last time and shook his head.

“Still no dice. And we can't get a video lock. Scanners are overloaded.”

“Tell me, why can't you teleport in there again?” the Queen asked.

“A m-m-modification by the anarchists; they’ve exploited a glitch. The anti-spawn shield we created to prevent the rebels from infiltrating seems to have backfired, Your Eminence.”

Incompetence surrounds me from every angle! Who is pulling the strings? Whose failures, intentional or not, caused Lacie’s death? The answer may point directly to me. But regardless, I need answers.

“In other words, it's a prison break and we're locked out of our own dungeon; they can get out, but we can't get in. That. Is. Just. Fantastic.
Wrathman!
Have Hoshua interrogated, then frozen.”

This was awful for many reasons.

First off, Alphonse Hoshua was a pretty stand-up guy. More than just the life of the poker table, his years as
Avidya
Lead and Senior Network Security Adviser had been mostly stress-free and uneventful. Second, Mister Senior had a theory that Queen Lorelei only ever used his last name with that particular inflection when she was considering executing him. And she only ever put him in charge of freezings when he himself was guilty of serious mistakes.

“But, ma’am---”

“Now. And I want Karuishi in his place. Brief the woman first thing in the morning; I have business with the rebel boy tonight. My patience wears thin.”

Mister Senior bowed, holding back shivers.
Maybe I should’ve ratted Beech and Marco out while I still had something left to lose.

▬

Raine’s stomach churned at the chilly night winds. All this talk about revolution, all the pain and fighting and uncertainty in this world just reminded her of her home back on Earth.

It was a boring place, but at least she understood it to some extent. And for the first time, she longed to return, to see her foster Mom again, and to sit in that boring classroom filled with strange kids whose attempts at friendship she’d shied away from or ignored. She would even go to those ‘advanced’ placement classes, and learn about things beyond her level just because she could. Raine usually hated having opinions dropped into her head as if she were a sentient piggy bank, but even schooling seemed a joy in comparison to flying above a firefight with the fate of the world weighing on her shoulders.

The girl took another glance at the digital map on her wrist. It was now taking her en route to Atmoya, Sector Nine, the only place where she could hope for some answers.

She switched on her Network visor and looked up Super BlastBoy. Information bombarded her from every angle. Her field of vision flooded with text, pictures, and holographic recordings. The second she put her eyes on something, it expanded before her and various windows populated themselves with streams of useless information, comingled with advertisements. No dice.

Gerrit was next on her search list, and Raine began by exploring the Blogosphere, a built-in app that displayed short, real-time, text-based status updates strewn about like a holo-dome across the starry sky. She flipped through with her fingers, sorting them by name, subject matter, and user tags. There was nothing to be found about either herself or Gerrit, nor anything about the attack at the concert.

After some digging, she uncovered some of the boy’s now-redacted awards in the Hall of Warrior Fame, as well as detailed battle records in the
Metaverse
All-Star Duelists archives, but found nothing at all helpful. The girl drifted into an idle detour of the fashion forums before recognizing that searching for a fugitive on a controlled Network was completely futile. Thanks to the turbulent desert winds, Raine became airsick, and took the goggles off.

I’d learned a lot less than what I’d hoped for. I guess it’s like those Kung-Fu movies. The aspirant can only get so far without a Master.

Down below, fires claimed a majestic castle in the midst of a violent siege. She wondered if this was a part of the war or just a friendly battle. Within one of the factions were those whom Gerrit had fought alongside, back when they first met. She decided to go closer to warm up a bit and smelled, then saw, that trolls, minotaurs, serpents, and what looked like dinosaurs were involved, many of them with armed riders.

Raine felt her grip weakening, and longed to have a bit of shut-eye. As if he could sense this, Chance wrapped around the balloon string, stretched out into a hammock encompassing Raine, and mewed.

“Are you sure?” she asked groggily.

Chance nodded, and Raine drifted off for a too-short rest.

The full moon peeked out from behind a cloud to wake her up. It kissed the border at the end of the patterned grass, reflecting the blue-brown hues of a land of parched soil and billowing sands. She crossed this desert until it filled her entire field of vision. Yossa’s map finally confirmed that she’d arrived in Sector Nine.