Raine VS The End of the World (46 page)

“Ah, I get it,” the time traveler deduced. “This old hub is the unfortunate victim of lazy game design. Raine, stand straight towards the doors and look ominously into the distance.”

Lily hardened her face, determinedly facing the cold sun with all her might. Raine struck a heroic pose, gazing off into the snowstorm.

“You’re not staring ominously enough,” Lily advised.

She snapped Raine’s back straight, prompting a tormented grimace, with the unintended effect of sending the girl’s gut churning. Satisfied with its inhabitants’ commitment, if nothing else, the elevator snapped loose, and then suddenly shot upwards at a sickening speed. Raine nearly hurled as her lungs dropped into her stomach.

Seeing that her companion was uncomfortable, Lily slowed the machine’s ascent.

“What’s wrong? That isn’t supposed to be happening,” she said, placing a hand on Raine’s cheek. The poor girl was a bright red; her fever was melting the layers of ice coating her nose and eyelashes.

“Oh, shit,” cursed Lily. “There’s something the matter with your neural connections. They’re confusing your real-life senses with the reality of the game. Your muscles are acting up. This is not good.”

Raine finally settled her breathing.

“No, I’m fine. I think now that I understand… I’ve got this,” she said firmly.

“Okay, scratch my earlier theory. My guess is that old snake Senior put some sort of corruption patch in your steak. It’s fighting your neural brainwaves. This extra-sensory perception is just one of the side effects developed to use more of your brainpower in conscious thought, robbing your subconscious of the power to overcome this… counter-virus thingy.”

Raine nearly hit her head on the wall.

I should never have taken a bite of that food.

“Um… so based what you’re saying,” Raine ventured, “I can configure my subconscious to take over my thoughts, to fight this virus?”

“Kind of like that. You just need a shift in perspective to get the subconscious working on itself. It’s hard to explain, but… do you by any chance meditate?”

“Meditate?”

“Shoot, I thought we remembered to include that in the plan,” Lily mumbled to herself, a little too loudly.

“My past foster Mom used to meditate,” Raine said at last. “She would sit cross-legged with her palms out and focus on her breathing. The idea was to empty her mind of all attachments and worries.”

The elevator snapped to a stop. Before it was a long bridge, and at its end, a glittering diamond structure with a mass of important-looking computers and screens inside it.

Lily snapped her fingers. “Anapana. Wonderful. Raine, I want you to try that, okay? That should help your brain fight off this evil patch thing while I jimmy up our ticket to the main event.”

Raine nodded, a little uncertainly, as Lily skipped across the icy bridge hundreds of feet off the ground. She made the mistake of looking down, which sent her mind spinning again.

Once inside the giant diamond, Lily shook her head at the control panel. This puppy wasn’t going to be easy to hack.

Gathering up her courage, Raine sat facing the whistling din of the blizzard outside the plasma-shielded elevator – an ice storm denied by invisible doors. She closed her eyes and listened, taking note of every sensation, all the while focusing intensely on the air’s light touch as it entered and exited her nostrils.

Raine imagined a war going on in her head, a war between truth and illusion.

She couldn't tell who was winning. But she imagined it because it was all she could do to keep from passing out in exhaustion.

If she fell asleep now, there could be no telling what kind of world she would wake up in next.

XXV. Endgame

“Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.” – Khalil Gibran

The
Nexus’
Icebox brought a terrible cold to Francesco Zarifian’s bones, and it wasn’t just the sub-freezing temperatures or the glass prison capsules containing dozens of his allies in need of some serious thawing out. There was something downright creepy about the place.

He tried to ignore the surveillance cameras in the isolated comm. chamber. The Overseer was, no doubt, watching his every move.

At last, the video loop he fashioned circled into the feed. The trick would buy him ten minutes at most. Dr. Zee used his encrypted Holo-Lens to patch the latest vidfeeds into the
Valkyrie
, giving the EDC the lowdown on the ground situation.

Z: The freedom fighters are in trouble. Where are you?

A quick neural reply came from Lt. Gen. Joaquin.

J: Eighty klicks out. The Admiral’s still plugged in.

Z: Obviously. So’s the Queen. Get a move on; they’re dying out here.

J: And the HDP?

Z: Up and running. It looks like L might shut down the ‘Verse before we get to the Overseer. Could you spare a few decrypting bots to help me crack the ice? I’m thawing out our strike team, but Guggell’s protocols are being a real pain in the ass.

At this line, a rather malicious hologram appeared behind the Doctor.

“I had a feeling someone mentioned my name,” intoned the digitized voice.

Miss Guggell Prime.
Impossible
, he gulped.
We’d locked its functions away. Unless… the Queen kept it running as a background process from the local backup, lying in wait – impressive.

“My, Miss Guggell, you’re certainly a sight for sore eyes.”

“Francesco, so it’s you who’ve been keeping me from my Queen and desecrating my source with your impure exploits. Your brain will be scoured with iron wool, your death slow and painful.”

Zee cut the chamber’s power lines, but the hologram only returned a second later, following the whirring of the backup generator. By this time, he’d hit the emergency isolation switch and drawn his firearm.

One of the Icebox’s maintenance cranes came careening through the thick windows. He ducked under its arm, but Miss Guggell was too fast. The crane knocked him aside, away from his weapon. Security droids rushed across the walkway, fifty meters away. Tablet in hand, Frank climbed up the crane-arm and bolted to the emergency exit.

He almost made it to the other side.

Daisy-chained androids electrically shocked the arm, knocking the Doc out. As he tumbled to his death, tendrils caught his body in mid-air and promptly passed him around the chamber, standing the man up within a nearby Beta Testing unit, which resembled a cross between a diving bell and a coffin.

Miss Guggell’s hologram materialized outside the capsule and observed from its many sensors as Zarifian’s brain was fitted with the hypno-module. EDC agents would be trained to resist any and all memory-prying techniques, but no one could last forever.

It estimated that in three hours, everything he knew would be downloaded into the
Eden
Archives – except that the AI failed to access the servers. The Network had gone silent. The human engaged the emergency isolation switch with no hesitation. He might have failed to free his agents in the end, but he patched all exits extraordinarily well. The malfunctioning Guggell now running the
Metaverse
was shutting out all external access.

Guggell Prime concluded that it was trapped in the Icebox with Chuckles and his frozen war buddies. It placed a finger to its virtual temple. No response from the Queen.
Damn those humans.
Both Master and Servant had been taken off the board.

≡

Gripping his laser rifle with care and shaking from the dreamlike events the past twenty-four hours had taken him, Yossa sent the next batch of his men into the makeshift portal.

Hector Travers clapped a hand on his friend’s shoulder.

The barbarian werewolf who led the revolution on
Avidya’s
North continent stood a hulking six-foot-ten and wore nothing but animal furs draped across his lower body.

“So wait. What exactly happened in HC last night, bro?”

“Absolute disaster. We lost thirty percent of our forces. Tens of thousands. That’s when I sent you the message. When I returned, the Tavern was fully prepped for our last stand.”

Early that morning, Yossa explained, the Developers raided the bubble server. The bloody battle had only one possible outcome. For every defeated Templar, they sent four. Tanks crushed the barricades. Even advanced exploits were of no use against such numbers.

“I take it you, too, were put on trial?”

“Yes, and tortured. Something about terrorism and disrupting the peace. Said I’d be held here for a period of maintenance. Seemed eager to dump us lot with nary a round of questioning. Odd, isn’t it?”

The anarchists weren’t stupid. No way were they going to be transferred back to
Avidya
, or any other server, for that matter. Their existence was too dangerous to the continuing structure. It would undoubtedly be the deep freeze.

Hector scratched his beard. “Nay. I take it they meant to put us in deep, but maybe something’s gone wrong on their end.”

Rumors arose as to why they hadn’t already been processed, but one theory rang true: the Developers were running low on resources.

They had to act fast, and the speed with which their best and brightest utilized Lillian’s recently acquired codes to break through their individual prison partitions, overtake the central hub, and crack open the walls of the unstable backup server astonished even Yossa.

“The whole thing reeks of a trap,” the elephant man observed.

“Aye. But it may also be our only chance.”

This was too easy of a win for comfort, but the others foamed at the mouth at the opportunity to go to the outside world. People had bets to settle, rumors to deal with, truths to confirm or deny. And the alternative was to wait for almost certain death in this empty hub.

Most were out now, and this backdoor route would hopefully last long enough to evacuate the rest. They were leaping into it ten at a time, restless to emerge into the real world and leave behind this twisted digital limbo.

Yossa urged badly to traverse the portal, but he wouldn’t have missed the veritable roll call of his best people for anything. He high-fived good friends who’d fought alongside him for years, those who stuck by through the hard times, and the new recruits, whose dreams had been realized before they lost their youthful enthusiasm. They would be the ones to build their new future.

At long last it was down to the two leaders.

Hector pulled a jug out of his pelt bag, uncorked it, and poured its contents into a drinking horn.

“Have a drink, old friend,” he said, offering a swig of his mead to Yossa, who gulped down a healthy mouthful of the stuff.

“Time to say goodbye,” replied Yossa once he’d passed the horn back.

“Many times we were told we could never do it,” he said grimly. “Now our people are free. We have much to celebrate.”

“They’re waiting for us. They’ve seen the other side.”

“It’s time, brother,” Hector boomed. “I hope we shall meet one another in that world.”

Both men walked into the portal simultaneously.

They awoke in the midst of a heated battle.

Yossa, still dazed, twitched his weary feet. He looked down at the puddle of water on the ground. His human face stared back at him, for the first time he could remember. A button nose took the place of his trunk.
The same eyes, at the very least.
The wrinkles on his face, and his brown, leathery hands, felt both familiar and foreign.

I’m old: that much is certain.
And beside me: a man in the process of waking up. No, a kid.
He’s decorated in bruises, too. Could it be?

“Hector? Is that you?”

Yossa discovered with some surprise that he had a strange accent. Or maybe the stale air just caught in his throat.

The body of the injured man was the total opposite of Hector’s appearance in the game –short, lanky, and young. Yossa did a double take, his heavy helmet shaking as he turned his head. He felt the device. If the rumors were true, this terrible contraption must have been what connected him to
Endless Metaverse
.

“Yossa? You sound different.”

“Yes, it’s me. Do yourself a favor and don’t look in a mirror ‘til we’re out of this.”

Hector inspected his body. It was most unusual.

Yossa peeked out from behind the dumpster they’d evidently been hidden behind. Discarded helmets lined the floor. People engaged in combat all around them. A massive armed force of synchronized humans and androids subdued civilians with electrical weapons. The military men wore helmets outfitted with blast-shields covering, but not concealing, lifeless eyes. The air smelled dirty and decayed; many of the younger rebels were hunched over, hurling or gasping for breath, their oxygen-deprived brains pushed to the limit.

Some were better off than most. A few could barely muster the energy to stand, but others took the charge with stolen weapons from the armed forces. Someone from a slum balcony threw a Molotov cocktail into the advancing military wall. Men and women ran screaming or fell like ragdolls, their flesh charred and smoldering, shrapnel from the androids exploding into their skin.

What the hell is going on?

Discarding his chrome hat, Yossa gnashed his teeth at a sharp stab of pain running up his spine. The nano-bots in his brain were self-annihilating, delivering a shock to his nervous system. The connection between his conscious brain and his body was repairing itself. It was a most confusing feeling, and a part of him yearned to put the thing back on his head. He tried not to acknowledge it. Instead, he wrapped a nearby bottle around a discarded broomstick with a piece of rope.

Hector had also decided the headgear was out of style. He was fashioning a makeshift scythe out of a sharp piece of scrap metal, some twine, and a strong utility rod.

Gods help us.

Yossa and Hector exchanged glances, nodded, and ran into the fray.

They were facing almost certain death.

Bombs fell from high above, reducing concrete to rubble. The blasts sounded nothing like the digital explosions in
Endless Metaverse
. Shacks quivered in the aftermath of powerful tremors. The air echoed screams from those being driven insane by toxic gas grenades.

“All free peoples! Rally to us!” Hector called out.

After observing a soldier with a riot shield beating one of the indoctrinated women senselessly with an electric baton, Yossa stabbed the man in the gut and wrestled away his weapon and shield. The ordeal was oddly strenuous on Yossa’s old bones.

With Hector at his back keeping the armed forces at bay, he worked at gaining the upper hand in the battle. Together they advanced through the guard valiantly, cleaving a pathway for others to follow, calling the newly freed to join them in finding higher ground.

“Where’s our leader?” a young woman cried. “The boy from the local underground, he said there was a reinforced building--”

“He’s dead,” replied a middle-aged man. “Their entire force was gunned down. And we’re next.”

Yossa grabbed the woman by the shoulders. “Where’s that safe house?”

“I-I don’t know, but he said it was due east.”

Just then a forceful gale from a nearby airship knocked the wind out of Yossa. He pushed the woman to safety and rolled underneath a hail of gunfire, ducking behind an upturned market booth. Loudspeakers situated around the dilapidated inner city sounded out in unison.

“Halt! Attention all
Endless Metaverse
users
!
You are in violation of your End User License Agreements! Drop your arms and return to the town square immediately!”

“Never!” Yossa boomed. The gunship shot him in the shoulder. His nervous system not yet fully operational, the pain spiked in and out violently.

“Return now! This is your final warning!”

Yossa stood holding his shoulder, paralyzed by true fear.

Suddenly the gunship began to rock back and forth, as if it were just hit by a strong wind. Yossa saw the men inside grasp the controls with all their might, trying to wrench the device back into their own hands. Another gunship headed straight towards the one staring Yossa down, spewing blue flames at its twin. There was no time to run. He ducked behind a large clay pot and held what remained of a tin roof over his head as the two collided and spiraled down into a nearby building in a terrifying blaze. Flames scorched the aluminum. Yossa threw off the superheated sheet and wiped the ash from his overalls.

“Yossa! You all right?”

He nodded and strapped on the oxygen mask being offered to him, falling in by the front of the pack. They carefully navigated the narrow, crowded intersections, attempting to find more freedom fighters. An elderly man chased his goats down the street towards what Yossa now saw as one of the city’s entrances – the roads were swarming with pedestrians, vehicles, and horse-wagons, all struggling to escape.