Socket 1 - The Discovery of Socket Greeny (20 page)

The Paladins locked the last of the spikes in
the ground, sealing in the heat and sound from our side of the
parking lot. Their evolver weapons unfolded around their hands,
glowing blue, then engulfed them in protective bubbles just as the
crawler reared back. The bottom of the crawler’s body opened. I
could hear it through the ground, the sound the thing let loose was
shrill and deafening. It vibrated through the bottom of my feet.
The Paladins faltered but the shields held.

Chute latched onto my sleeve. “Who are those
people?”

I wanted to tell her they were the good guys
but I was watching them spread out while a second set of legs
emerged from the flames. The crawler backed up like a mother
protecting her newborn in a burning nest as the Paladins set to
attack. I think Streeter or Chute might’ve asked what those things
were. I thought I knew what they were, but the Paladins were
attacking them. They were sent by an enemy.

The duplicates are coming.

It was a scene from a movie. People were
running. Screams and cries and hysteria soaked the air. Bodies were
all around. Some were dead. Sirens could be heard in the distance
and the first of many emergency vehicles started down the road. And
there were still only three Paladins. Three! Where were the rest of
them?

That’s what didn’t make sense. A disaster
like this and the entire Paladin Nation should be here treating
people. Instead, there were three of them and they were barely
holding their own against the duplicated crawlers oozing non-stop
from the burning wreckage. The fire flickered red, yellow and blue
as it burped out one spider after another. The agents sliced and
diced them but some escaped and made for the giant hole in the
Pit.

The spot on my neck warmed. I touched Rudder
still working on the clamp. As he deactivated it, knowledge seeped
from him as our minds intermingled. It came to me not as thoughts
but more like a stream of memories that imbedded themselves in me,
as if he were melting into me. I saw what he saw, knew what he
knew. And then I understood.

The duplicates were attacking worldwide.

While the duplicates had dissolved into the
general population, Paladins discovered they needed to stay in
touch with virtualmode as if it was some sort of life force. They
didn’t know exactly how or why they needed periodically get back
into virtualmode, they just knew that if they cut them off they
would die like weeds without roots. Paladins installed worldwide
code that kept duplicates from logging into virtualmode, and when
they tried it was poison. After that, the Paladin Nation went about
flushing the duplicates out of hiding, even alerting public
authorities about illegal virtualmode activity. It was only a
matter of time before they starved. And the duplicates knew this.
They were cornered.

It was fight or die. They chose to fight.

The crawlers were doing the duplicates dirty
work. They’d sent them to seek out access to virtualmode. Schools,
cafes and businesses across the planet were being attacked
simultaneously, hoping one of them could circumvent the security
patches, get to the inside of virtualmode and unlock it for the
rest of them. The duplicates were waiting for the life-giving taste
of virtualmode. They held their last breath, hoping.

Paladins didn’t see the wide-scale attack
coming. Of course not. They didn’t have their fortuneteller
anymore. Pivot was still missing. But Pivot saw. And that’s why he
sent Rudder to free me. He needed me for a reason. He needed me in
the fight.

“They’re after the portal,” I muttered.

Streeter and Chute were staring at me with
mouths open. I forgot to tell them all the details, but what was I
going to tell them? They were witness to it all. I just pointed
over my shoulder and said, “That’s what I couldn’t talk about.”

Streeter was sort of nodding, watching the
ongoing fight, the sounds muffled by the pillars. Chute was staring
at me, though. I could feel her fear, taste it like a bitterness at
the back of my throat, a rotten energy eating at her stomach. She
was freaked by the death and destruction, and she was wondering
what I was. She felt guilty for fearing I would leave her again
despite the misery all around. I took her hand. Her energy flowed
down inside me and I opened to let it flow back into her, mingling
with the fear that rolled inside her.
[It’s all right.]

I didn’t force the thought into her mind. I
didn’t make her believe it. I just laid it out for her to see. She
blinked. The smile of relief didn’t show on her face, but I felt it
rise inside her.

“Why are those things climbing into the Pit?”
Streeter said.

“I think they’re accessing the portal.”

“But… that’s like twenty feet below ground
and encased in hardened steel. They can’t…”

His thoughts trailed off. Maybe he realized
he was watching spiders climb the wall and that reality was doing a
180 on him.

For some reason, those things were going
after the portal. And the Paladins desperately wanted to stop them.
“Is there any way to access the security patch?” I asked Streeter.
He looked at me, but his glassy eyes were unfocused. “Streeter, how
can I get to the portal security?”

His lips quivered but his thoughts were a
mess. I needed answers quicker than that. I started for the
pillars.

“You’re not going in there.” Chute’s voice
was firm.

Maybe if she hadn’t said anything, I would’ve
tried to slip between the pillar beams. But what was I going to do
once I was in there? I had no weapon, no training. I couldn’t even
slice time yet. I was just going to get in the way. So I stood
there looking at the endless parade of crawlers flow from the fire
and the Paladins tireless efforts to control them. But they were
starting to tire. They weren’t blinking into timeslices anymore.
They were conserving their energy, fighting them in real time.

“I’m not going to lose you again.” Chute
stepped next to me. Her cheeks were glowing in the yellow aura. “I
don’t care who you think you are or what you can do, you’ll die if
you go in there.”

Panic was clenching my chest. What could I do
then? What? If the duplicates got through the portal, what was
next? Something in Rudder’s knowledge told me the Paladins didn’t
have a backup plan. They had gambled on their move to end the
existence of the duplicates and now the whole world was on the
table. Winner takes all.

“We can get to Buxbee’s lab.” Streeter felt
lucid. The slack in his face had taken up.

“What do I need to do?” I asked.

“The security shells need to be
completed.”

“How do I do that?”

He looked at me. “You want me to tell you
now?”

“Just… just think it.” I closed my eyes,
focused on his mind. I could absorb what he knew the instant it
came up, but it was a murky cloud of thoughts.

“What the hell are you talking about?”
Streeter said.

“I got to know how to finish that security
shell or those things could get into virtualmode.” I stepped toward
him. “They’re dupes, Streeter.”

Like that was all I needed to say, he would
figure out the rest. But he was staring at me like there was a tiny
dragon attached to my neck.

“I’ve got to finish the security updates,” I
said.

“No, you’re not,” Chute said. “You see what’s
going on back there? You’re not going anywhere near that school.
Neither of you.”

“Buxbee’s gear is only coded for me,”
Streeter said. “It’ll reject you. You can’t get on.”

That was a problem, but I’d figure it out
later. If Rudder would get the clamp completely deactivated, I
could slice time and have plenty of time.
Come on, Rudder.
Faster.
I felt him twitch, impatiently.

“Look, there’s no danger if I go,” Streeter
said. “Buxbee’s lab is all the way on the other side of the school.
Those yellow beams got that truck barricaded around the Pit.
Whatever’s on the inside isn’t getting out. We can go log in and
get it done, in and out. If you’re helping, I can finish in like
five or ten minutes.”

“I’m going,” Chute said.

“No, you’re not,” I snapped.

“Yes. I am.”

“Look.” I gently gripped her bicep. “This
is—”

She yanked her arm out. “I’m going with you.
Try to stop me.”

“I will.”

Sometimes she hit me in the arm when I acted
like an asshole. Sometimes she just set her feet. Always, she got
her way because she usually made more sense than me, thought
clearer. This time, I was right. But this time, she didn’t swing
and didn’t dig in to get her way. I felt her energy soften.

“Don’t make me stay out here,” she said. “I
can’t just wait.”

“It’s too dangerous.”

“I can help.”

“I wouldn’t forgive myself if something
happened to you.”

“Neither would I.”

I took a breath and looked around. Truth be
told, I didn’t want to leave her. I didn’t want to be away from
her, not when this shit was going on. Maybe it was selfish to let
her come along, but was she any safer out here? I would never know
the answer to that.

We started for Buxbee’s lab.

Lights were on a portion of the hall, but
beyond that it faded to black. Dust drizzled down like mist.
Buxbee’s door was partly open. The classroom was so dark the desks
and chairs looked like lumps waiting to jump us.

“What now?” I said.

“We virtualmode,” Streeter said. “It’s the
only way to finish the upgrade.”

“I thought virtualmode was shut down.”

“Yeah, unless you’ve got high-security
access. That would be me.”

“You can’t just call it up on a monitor?”

“Maybe.” He sounded thoughtful. “But I’m not
sure.”

“Can you do it or not?”

I could see him turn to me but couldn’t see
his expression. It felt hot.

“Look, we can’t afford to leave the skin,” I
said. “I don’t care if those things are trapped out there or not,
we need to call it up on a monitor.”

“Well, now’s a perfect time to experiment,
wouldn’t you say?” he snapped. “I’ll boot up the monitors and break
out the manual so we can work in the skin. Got a light?”

I didn’t like it, either. Streeter was
staring at me, waiting for an answer.
Which is it?
Somehow,
I had become the leader and he was waiting for my blessing. I just
couldn’t bring myself to say it. They shouldn’t be here. They
should be at home or out there with the cops and EMTs. This was a
bad idea to bring them along, but I had to get honest, I couldn’t
do it alone.

Chute’s touch broke the tension. Her fingers
slid down my arm and laced with mine. “How long will it take if we
virtualmode?” she asked.

“Five minutes,” Streeter said. “Maybe
ten.”

“What’d you mean ‘we’?” I said. “You’re not
going.”

“I’ll stay and watch things, make sure it’s
all right. You and Streeter go, get it done. We’re wasting
time.”

Her smile was forced. Streeter said, “Then
make that twenty minutes if she’s not coming.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Look, you want to sit here and debate every
possible scenario? Jesus Christ, we’d be done if we jumped on as
soon as we got here.”

“All right! Let’s get on.” I dropped into a
soft seat. “But you’re staying, Chute.”

She gave me that same smile.

* * * * *

Streeter grumbled as he sat down and stuck
the transporters behind his ears. As soon as I applied them, I was
in my sim. The gray space around us went on forever. Streeter’s
giant sim stood next to a hovering bluish ball.

“This is a replica of the portal,” he said.
“There are shells around it that monitor access. The only way to
virtualmode is through it. Anyone, or anything, that tries to
access it illegally will not get through. If those things reach the
portal below the Pit, they’ll have to come through this in order to
virtualmode onto the worldwide Internet. If they don’t get through
this, then they’re just stuck in a hole with nowhere to go.”

A black figure flickered between us, and then
Chute was standing there. She pushed the dark cowl from her head.
“Hey.”

I just shook my head. She knew how to play
me. Now it was either argue with her about getting off while the
clock ran or shut up. “Let’s just get this over with,” I said.

The portal was enclosed in several
translucent shells, the last one partially complete. “We need to
finish the final shell to make the portal impenetrable,” he said.
“Then we get off. Done.”

Streeter reached into the empty space beside
him, his hairy fingers grasping something invisible. He took
several breaths, closed his eyes and muttered something as though
he were wishing for something. Then, between his dirty fingernails,
a curved puzzle piece appeared. He hunched over and slid it into a
gap in the unfinished shell.

“Anything we can do?” Chute said.

Streeter twitched. The piece dissolved. He
let out a deep breath and bowed his head. “Yeah, how about not
scaring the shit out of me?”

“Do you really need the giant sim with the
fat fingers?” she said. “There’s no one here to fight, you
know.”

“Oh, sure. Give me an hour and I’ll build
another sim.”

“Don’t give me that, you’ve got generic sims
in reserve. I’ve seen them.”

“You don’t know what I—”

“Can we get on with this?” I said.

Streeter blew a curly lock of hair from his
eyes and stared at Chute. “I have to recall the pieces and fit them
into the shell. You can hold each one in place for
about
ten
seconds or until the piece stitches while I retrieve the
others.”

He held up his hand and, again, a piece
appeared between his fingers five seconds later. He bent over,
carefully placing it. Chute put her finger on it and he created
another piece, put it in place and I held it. He did it again. Now
Chute held two of them. I let go of my piece to grab the next and
it disappeared.