Synthetic Dreams (3 page)

Vyn sank onto the couch opposite Ossian. He’d stopped twitching—that was a good sign—but pain still drew heavy lines over his thin face. She’d have to wait until he pulled himself together to find out why he’d rushed up to her on the street. It was practically suicidal. He was just lucky that her electro-shock packed a non-lethal charge.

She’d known Ossian for three years, since they’d collaborated on getting into one of the middle Mind tiers. He had a genius for breaking portals. Ossian wasn’t his cold-world name. It had appeared somewhere in the past, as had her name of Bran-seven. Skanks had quickly run out of true Fomorian names and so they’d simply plundered Celtic mythology.

Vyn offered Alec a smile as he brought over a tray loaded with a coffeepot, mugs, plates, forks and a heaped plate of chocolate bread. Her stomach growled in anticipation.

She poured coffee and milk into the two mugs and pushed one of them towards her friend. “Ossian? What was so urgent?”

Ossian’s slim fingers closed around the white mug and he stared into the pale liquid. “They’re disappearing.” He lifted the mug to his lips and took a gulp. “I thought I was too late.”

Vyn broke off a quarter of the chocolate bread, dropped it onto a smaller plate and found her fork. “Too late? Who’s disappearing?”

Ossian had grown up in S-District…and he tended to be a touch paranoid.

The cake-bread melted in her mouth, warm, heavy with dark chocolate and spiced with a hint of cinnamon. She waved her fork. “And I’m sorry for shocking you. But you grabbed me from behind on the street…”

Ossian sat forward, his face flushed. “The Corporation is pulling in Fomorians.”

The Corporation dictated all their lives, had taken a very
personal
intervention in her own life, and its reach stretched beyond Britain. It was eager to use its influence to gain yet more power. It had a commodity the other hungry mega-conglomerates that ruled the planet wanted, needed. The Mind. A system of virtual tiers and hidden, exclusive Halls that the Corporation protected with a ruthless efficiency. And one that Fomorians like her just
itched
to break.

Vyn let out a soft sigh and picked up her mug. She watched Ossian through the rising steam. Today he had more than a touch of delusion. “They haul in our gear most of the time, strip us of the glamour we create and use it themselves. It’s what they do to survive.”

“No. It’s like the time before, before you came to S-District. Six, maybe seven years ago.” His knuckles whitened around his mug. “Not just a short stint away in a cold-world detention centre for tier violation. These Fomorians were properly vanished, as in wiped. No trace.”

A ripple of unease prickled down her spine and she couldn’t hold down a shiver. Her friend from college had vanished. One day Liam was there, attending lectures, hanging out at the student bar…the next gone. His room was occupied by another student who had his name, looked vaguely like him, had the same courses…but the real Liam had vanished. Vyn had doubted her own sanity as no one questioned his disappearance and replacement. She still doubted it. The rush of her thoughts around that time were blurred, indistinct. Then her whole world had blown up when the life-ruling Corporation dumped her in S-District.

Her fork circled her plate over and over, the scrape of the prongs breaking her thoughts before she laid the fork down. Bloody irritating habit. But she couldn’t stop it. “And no one else has taken their place?”

Ossian frowned at her. “How do you mean?”

Vyn took a sip of her coffee, the heat swelling through her and easing some of her nerves. They hadn’t replaced the missing. Ossian would’ve been full of the conspiracy of it. And she’d never shared her personal past. None of them did. “Who’s gone?”

“Top-level people. Balor, Cian, Ogma. Those are the ones I know are missing.” He blew out a breath. “And I thought you.”

Vyn speared more of the crumbling cake bread. “I was holed up.”

“You were nowhere. Unreachable.” Ossian snagged a thick piece of the cake bread and let himself sink back into the battered couch cushions. “It’s nice to see you’re still with us.”

“I make you money.”

“Yes, you do.”

Vyn held her mug tight in cold fingers. Liam had been…replaced seven years before. She had to believe that. She hadn’t imagined it. “So what happened last time, with the disappearances?”

“We lost maybe ten people, other groups more. The Corporation asset-stripped their gear. Got a lot of the legal glamour floating through the tiers now. They never came back.”

“Part of a refresh?” She almost winced at the memory of some of the bad legal she’d encountered. “After all, legal glamour is far from perfect.” In the corner of her eye, Alec busied himself, tidying up for the night.

“More than that. Yes, a refresh, but—” he sat forward and his gaze darted around the silent, empty coffee shop, “—the last time, after the disappearances, the CEO—Lucas March-Goodman was acting head then—made a grab for another industry. Took the chemical parks owned by the Warrick-Alder Group in old Germany.”

“What’s that got to do with the Fomorians?”

“Simulacrum.”

Vyn almost choked. “That’s a myth!”

“Is it? The Corporation lives in daily fear of its discovery.” Ossian wagged a bony finger at her. “The disappeared ones? They were all working on it.”

“Every Fomorian skank
claims
to be working on it, or to have it. It’s like our own philosopher’s stone. The thing we all crave, the pinnacle of our abilities, our science…but completely impossible.”

Ossian was her friend, but she wasn’t going to admit anything to him. Not until the kinks were worked out. With it she could do anything, be
anyone
inside the Mind. Simulacrum would make her so wealthy it dried her tongue.

She took another sip of coffee. “You see conspiracy everywhere.”

He tugged the sleeves of his jacket over his wrists, an old nervous tick. “With the Corporation’s permission, every person, every company in the world plays and works through a tier—which is why they want to identify each true individual. Simulacrum would take that away.” The sudden light of a zealot hacker burned in his eyes. “To open-source it—”

“Would mean they’d have to shut the tiers and you’d make zero money. They can’t trust who you are? Everything collapses.” She gave him a sharp smile. “How would this be a good thing?”

“I know. I’m crazy. It’s in the blood.” He took more cake bread. “It wouldn’t be good. Still, it’d be a nice kick in the eye to the CEO.”

Vyn took the chance to pull him away from his favourite topic, how much he hated Lucas March-Goodman. “Speaking of eyes, I have a backlog.”

While she had coffee and Alec’s cake bread, she’d sort out some pressing business. The simulacrum had dominated her time and she needed money. She had glamour to move. Ossian was also her man for that. It was a safe place to discuss it. They bought Alec’s discretion with upgrades to his glamour. He was an Adonis on the lower-levels of the Mind, a classically handsome man, with the sleek perfection of an athlete. Few rivalled him.

With the last drain of her mug and the pot empty, Vyn’s business was done. Ossian wangled an invite from Alec to crash out on his couch, an invite that also extended to her. But with the simulacrum case burning a hole through her shirt, she didn’t feel safe. Ossian might be her friend and business partner, but that didn’t mean she trusted him. Not really.

“You’re sure?” Alec’s meaty hand wavered over the security settings. “It’s full dark. You’ve been here a while now.”

“I have this.” She pushed the head of her electro-shock through the cauterised tear in her jacket pocket. “It’s a couple of hundred metres. I’ll be fine.”

“You’d better be.” He ran his other hand over his thinning scalp. “I need you to upgrade my hair. It’s glitching.”

Vyn grinned at him. “Next thing I’ll work on.” The outer detector was clear, no blips indicating body heat appearing on the display above the long security panel. “Time to go.”

Alec released the door and Vyn slipped through the opening gap. The rush of sudden cold caught her breath, a full shiver hitting her. She yanked up her hood and broke into a run. Icy air burned in her lungs. Calls burst out around her, shadows moved, on the street, over low roofs, against the taller buildings.

Her heart thudded, the heat and pain in her muscles scaring her. It’d been a long time since she’d made the mistake of risking the dark. Something moved under the weak, flickering light of the streetlamp ahead of her.

Vyn yanked out her electro-shock. A form leapt, and she jabbed the device hard against a bony hip. She dodged his flailing arms, his scream ripping the air as he fell to the hard pavement. She ran on, her mouth dry, her heart drumming. The familiar lit front of her building was only metres away.

She slammed herself against the metal, the scan on the back of her hand smacking against the plate. The door gave way. She stumbled, caught her balance and edged through. A hard kick and the door shut. But she couldn’t relax. Safety lay in her flat, not in the open foyer and stairwells of her building.

Vyn took to the stairs two at a time. The ripple of energy chased along the walls of the corridor, running interference with her thoughts. As she broke the security on her door, she made a pledge with herself not to drink so much coffee. It opened and she was in, the solid reinforced wood slamming back into the door frame with a satisfying thunk.

She fell back against it, her chest tight, her legs like water. “No more late night coffee runs.”

“There you are.”

Her heart jumped to her throat as adrenalin rushed through her. There, sitting on her battered couch, was Paul.

Chapter Three

Vyn scrubbed at her eyes. It had to be a side effect of the simulacrum. She’d denied her brain the extra stimulation, and now it was providing it in the form of a visual hallucination. And auditory. She’d most definitely heard him speak.

She calmed her breathing. The sharp injection of caffeine and the surge of adrenalin had to have affected her. She opened her eyes.

He was still there.
Fuck.

“Surprised I broke into your flat?” He jabbed a thumb towards the window. The frame had distorted in one corner, the lamp on the table beneath set to the wrong side. “You’re only five floors up, Bran-seven.”

Not
a hallucination. Panic rioted through her body. What had Ossian just said about Fomorians vanishing, taken by the Corporation? And a security officer, a very
real
security officer was now sitting on her couch. Slow and easy, she slipped her hands back into her jacket pockets. “You have the wrong flat. No Bran-seven here.”

Paul stood. He wore the same smooth and immaculate black suit, white shirt and slim tie as he had in the club, seemed impossibly handsome and
un
real in her dingy, grubby flat. He ran his hand over his tie, straightening it unnecessarily, and fastened the buttons of his jacket. “Do we have to do this, Bran-seven? You deny you are who you are. I pile on the proof that you do manufacture glamour under that name, that you are a top-level Fomorian. We go around and around, until I get bored and electro-shock you.”

“Fomorian?” She shook her head. “My name is Lotte Cenon, I work—”

“In the chemical factory a mile from here.” A dark smile touched his mouth and Vyn’s skin tingled. She’d kissed him. It was like a half dream. “False. Now…” He stopped and turned his head. “Are you expecting anyone?”

Vyn blinked. “Including you? No.”

His jaw tightened. “We have to get out now.”

“Who
are
you?”

“Someone who’s about to save your life.”

Vyn stared at him. “What?”

He strode towards her and she jerked the electro-shock at him. He caught her wrist through her jacket and squeezed. Her fingers numbed and she could no longer hold the device. He pulled it free of her pocket and dropped it into his own. “Don’t even think about it. I’m senior security. You know what that means.”

He was a trained killer. Which made his appearance in the club strange. Had he been there to trace her through her glamour?

She gave a slow nod and he let her wrist go.

“Now, do as I say and I’ll get you out of here alive.”

“I’m much safer—”

A low rumble shook the walls, and screams and barked orders reverberated through the ceiling. Vyn stared up. Misdirection she’d planted pointed authorities to the floor above. The white-fyre lab. The less of their kind the better.

“That’s where they think you are. And you know it.” He grabbed her arm and hauled her into her bedroom. With little effort he kicked aside her bed to expose the dusty wooden floor. “Open it.”

“Open what?”

Shots rang out, there was another rumble and dust fell from the ceiling. “You can deny this all you want. But if they break in here, you’re the person they’re going to shoot. Not me.”

Vyn knelt and ran her hands around the edges of a large square, hidden by optical sensors. A flat metal trapdoor appeared and she pressed her hand to its centre. Air hissed, there was a dull clunk and it released. She eased her fingers under the curved edges and heaved. Beside her, Paul straightened her bed, leaving the trapdoor still exposed.

“Down,” he said, pointing into the darkness.

“It’s not big enough for two.”

“I’m lean, you’re skinny. We’ll fit.”

Vyn turned and climbed down the ladder. Paul caught the lid and followed her down. She stepped off the ladder and pressed herself to the metal-lined wall. She’d cut a hole through to the dead space at the back of the small, rarely used storeroom directly below. Thick boarding and more optical sensors had kept it hidden. This was her bolthole. Not even Ossian knew about it, and yet this security officer had led her straight to it. “How did you know this was here?”

Paul dropped down next to her, the final touches of light edging his sharp profile as the trapdoor shut. In the cramped and silent darkness, there was only their breathing and Vyn’s wildly beating heart.

His scent wrapped around her, unchanged from the club. A trained killer shouldn’t smell this good. She closed her eyes, the press of her simulacrum case against her spine a constant reminder of her distorted life. Nothing like the life she was
supposed
to be living. “I said—”