Victoria falling an apoc.., p.16
Victoria Falling: An Apocalypse LitRPG, page 16
The Mindscape seems to construct itself. It’s no fortress; the walls are neither high nor impenetrable, and it doesn’t loom against the not-gray void like a proper stronghold should. Its defenses are sorely lacking.
But, it decides, those defenses don’t matter. There’s no way across the colorless, featureless void, except through her thoughts, and that gate cannot be sealed.
So. A garden, with dozens—hundreds—of different flowers, all in bloom. Roses and lavender, lupines and daisies. The kinds she thinks about all the time. It understands better than she does—the sweet scents aren’t a threat.
It will teach her that.
A small cottage. Brick and books, a fireplace and a wide, soft armchair. It’s not a realistic space. The cottage is too small, and there’s no kitchen or bathroom. It lacks everything she thinks she needs for survival. But Madame Baudelaire doesn’t want her to survive. She wants her to live. And this space is for living—not the way she thinks she has to, but the way she doesn’t dare imagine she could if given the opportunity.
It’s a fantasy. An illusion. A lie.
And Madame Baudelaire knows it. But that doesn’t mean the garden filled with flowers isn’t beautiful, or that the two oak trees framing the tiny cottage and pond aren’t perfect guardians. It doesn’t mean the calm breeze that will blow her hair as she reads a book won’t feel refreshing, or the water she can dip her fingers in won’t be cold and biting.
It’s an illusion.
But that doesn’t mean it isn’t real.
◄▼►
A half-hour later, a trio of SHOCKS’s armored trucks tears down Hillside. The team’s not organized well; the parts of Lambda-Four and Five that weren’t hurt too badly during the withdrawal from Sooke are along for the ride, but Lieutenant Rodriguez isn’t. Neither is Strauss; he’s working on upgrading the merge bomb with Doctor Twitchy.
This should be enough to evacuate Lansdowne Middle School but not to do much else.
I’m in the first truck. It’s just me and the drivers, though; SHOCKS is running light.
If I had inhuman strength, I’d have torn Doctor Twitchy apart. As it was, I was one motion from shooting him and ending my time at SHOCKS. And I still haven’t decided whether to go back into a merge for them—a lie of omission is still a lie, and they were already on thin ice. But right now, I’ve got a job to do.
Object - 032-VVI-9/URM is the burning man—the one made out of a metal that shouldn’t exist. And my job is to stop it, let SHOCKS contain it, and help convince Mrs. Nazaire and the others that the guys in black body armor are their friends.
That’s bullshit. SHOCKS isn’t anyone’s friends. But they do have a port in the storm. All I have to do is convince Mrs. Nazaire.
Easier said than done. She’s a smart lady.
The truck stops, the door opens, and I hop out. My feet haven’t hit the ground before I reevaluate; it doesn’t look like she’ll need much convincing.
Every one of the dozens of windows facing the wall’s been blown inward, and the aluminum frames all smolder and burn. My nose wrinkles from the metallic tang—it’s unlike any fire I’ve smelled before. The Revolver’s in my hand, the school fire alarm fills my ears, and I barely pay attention to the two RSTs deploying to form a perimeter around my middle school.
I sprint for the fire.
It should hurt. But it doesn’t—not even as I plunge through the cracking window frames, Revolver up and ready. The Recovery and Stabilization Teams aren’t going in. Their job is to set up containment around the school. My job is to drive the burning man into their trap—or at least, that’s what the briefing said.
[You’re going to try to kill it, aren’t you?] James asks.
“I haven’t decided yet.” I’m absolutely going to try to kill the burning man if I can figure out a way. SHOCKS may want it back—may want to put it back in its box and study why it transformed from a hunk of metal to a humanoid shape—but as far as I’m concerned, the best way to stop it from breaking out again is to destroy it.
At the same time, though, there’s another part of the equation. I’m not sure if it’s actually necessary for the solution, but Mrs. Helquist, my math teacher last year, didn’t teach me to go for the easiest solution.
I push past the scoured sphere that was the band room before the God in the Machine’s reality tried to merge there. The lockers outside are all twisted and melted, their edges still red-hot. The burning man’s been here recently. It might still be here.
The shelter’s around here somewhere.
This part of the math is pretty complicated, but it has to do with the Stag Lord. It just wanted to live. It would have vanished into northern Vancouver Island if I’d let it, and filled the whole island with life. But at the end of the day, I couldn’t. It would have hurt James on its way out, and Li Mei wouldn’t let it go, either. And, equally importantly, it wasn’t just fighting to escape. It was fighting to kill me.
I round the corner before I’ve fully solved my equation.
The burning man pivots on one foot, the other extending as it closes half the space between us in one step. The heat’s almost overwhelming.
[Skill Learned: Physical Anomaly Resistance 9]
Almost.
I’ve got the reality skippers loaded. Bullet Time. The Revolver fires three times, and three of the shells go dark. The world doesn’t start again. It stays frozen.
I don’t.
[Stability 4/10]
I’m already through the last micromerge and on the other side of the burning man when time starts. I throw myself onto the floor, sliding down the hall and firing my last three reality skippers. The shelter’s right there; I see the closed gate as a flash in my vision. The reality skippers start hitting the burning man. Once. Twice. Three times.
[I don’t think that’s working,] James says.
“I know.” I reload, switching to the gravity shells. The burning man doesn’t make a sound. It charges, and I Slither to the side. The Revolver barks again. Once. Twice. Three times. Three gravity shells hit the monstrous metal man, jerking it off its feet.
A support pillar catches fire instantly as the burning man hits it. I backpedal hard. There’s no way I can hurt this thing. But right now, that’s not the goal. I fire the last gravity shell as my enemy pulls itself through itself and reforms, back on its feet. This shot’s a stalling tactic. It works; the burning man charges right toward me, tearing gashes into the burning, melting lockers. Then it stops dead like it hit a wall.
There’s something there. It won’t be enough, though. My job’s simple. Dangerous as hell but simple. I switch back to the reality skippers. “Come get me.”
Then, I vanish into the sixth-grade hall.
I can tell by my red-hot skin that the burning man’s following me. That’s okay—Mr. Terrance’s door flashes by, then Miss Legraff’s. Next should be Mrs. Watson, then the double doors leading to the cafeteria. I keep running, crashing through them.
It’s spotless, except for a few tables where the abandoned remains of breakfast sit. The door bursts into flame behind me. Then it crashes in, blown right off its deformed, melted hinges. Everything smells like hot metal—and single-serving microwaved waffles. And, underneath it all but impossible to ignore, lilies.
I turn and fire a single shot, aiming at the burning man’s head. The bullet goes dark. The cylinder rotates, and the micromerge opens behind my target. I duck behind a table. It charges me, but the bullet appears and hits it, and the charge slows long enough for me to move.
The burning man feels fixated on me, and I keep peppering it with shots as I retreat toward the kitchen. There’s a door in the back where the truck drops off food every day. If Lambda-Five’s where they’re supposed to be, and if I’ve given them enough time to set up, that’ll work as an exit point.
The cafeteria’s support beams creak and pop; sparks fill the whole room, and every table that’s not on fire is either charred or melted. I turn and run as the entire roof comes down on the burning man. The kitchen flashes by, and I push the door open. A second later, I hit a wall—a swirling, technicolor brick wall that I can barely push through. The burning man’s closing in. I want to Smoke Form through, but it won’t work. I know it won’t work.
I fall through the Universal Reality Anchor’s barrier as Lambda-Five opens fire on the burning man. One of them’s on the back of a truck, firing some kind of hose net from the cannon on top. It slaps into the burning man as it tears the shimmering URA barrier apart. The water vaporizes instantly.
The others have fire extinguishers. They’re trying to cover the burning man with foam. Is that its containment? I switch back to the gravity shells but hold my fire as they slowly cover the anomaly until I can’t see flames and feel its heat.
Lambda-Five’s lieutenant is talking on comms. I see him glance my way, and he says something into his helmet as the rest of the troops start pulling a stone box out of their truck. They move it next to the completely foam-covered burning man and start trying to get it inside the box.
“Good work, L4-3,” the lieutenant says. “We’ll take it from here.”
The foam explodes outward, and the burning man erupts in flame again.
Chapter Fifteen
Robert Pendleton shivered in the armchair.
Everything was fucked up. Everything was wrong.
Everything hurt.
This wasn’t his La-Z Boy, and the can he was sipping on tasted too sweet. The hint of Budweiser mixed in the apple juice was just enough to trigger bad memories but not enough to blot them out. He needed a drink—a real drink, not the watered-down, heavily medicated drinks coming out of his vending machine.
But every time he stumbled to the door, someone in a lab coat met him there and helped him back to his seat, and he didn’t have the strength to resist. He didn’t even know if he wanted to fight back.
He’d used to be someone. No one used to treat him like an invalid old man. Fuck. He was only forty; this was some bullshit.
His stomach rolled, and he pushed himself up and staggered to the bathroom. Liquid erupted from his mouth—he’d already puked up everything he’d eaten in the last day, and he couldn’t stomach the thought of food—and he wiped his beard on the dark gray hand towel.
God dammit.
His eyes met his eyes in the mirror, ignoring the concerned-looking lady doctor hovering behind him. He’d used to fucking be someone. His kids had used to think he was someone. But ever since Claire had dragged them here, he wasn’t someone anymore.
He was nothing.
And he hated it. He hated her for bringing him here.
Robert spat into the sink, growling as the doctor put a hand on his shoulder. He could have broken the woman in half, but he felt so weak and the world wouldn’t stop spinning, so instead, he let her lead him back to the chair, cover him in a blanket, and hand him another can of 50/50 apple juice and Bud.
The can tasted too sweet, but he drained it anyway.
It blunted the pain.
◄▼►
Li Mei raged.
To her, it felt like a hurricane, a tsunami crashing ashore. Any other host would have broken and fed her by now.
Alice barely felt it. She wasn’t a host; she was a partner, unwilling though she was. Whether Li Mei starved or feasted only mattered in terms of how difficult it was to maintain her facade, and ever since last night, the woman’s voice had faded to almost nothing. Her Infohazard Resistance had broken thirty early this morning, and she’d finally been able to sleep—really sleep, not the half-resting, half-fighting state she’d been in since her sister had come home. It felt like heaven, not a hurricane.
She was so relaxed it took her almost ten minutes to realize she was awake. The clock by her bed read 7:05 AM: too early, too dark out, and too much like the countless times Claire had woken her up. She glared at it, catching a flash of her black, red-pitted eyes in the glass screen.
Reality set in. James was watching, her sister’s bogeymen were outside the door, and she had a parasite living in her brain. She headed to the little table SHOCKS had given her, with the mirror and her makeup kit. She armed and armored herself like she had for years before school: foundation, blush, eyeliner, and a nice, enhancing lipstick that wasn’t too red but wasn’t natural either.
As Alice applied mascara, her hand shook slightly. Li Mei threw herself against the prison wall Alice had built in her mind, desperately trying to find a crack. She howled and screamed, threatened Alice’s fondest memories, roared doom on her new warden—anything she could think of to break free. She had to break free.
She couldn’t. The prison walls were too high, too thick. Alice’s mind had always been full of walls. Every persona needed to be completely separate from the others—it was the only way to keep them all straight in her mind. Once she realized that Li Mei was just another mask, even if she was one Alice could never control, it was simple to build the barriers around her and simply…not ever slip into that persona.
Two nights ago was the last time Li Mei had really been a threat.
Alice smiled. She looked beautiful.
Li Mei raged.
◄▼►
Lieutenant Olivia Rodriguez was in over her head, and she knew it.
She’d been in the shit since her mutiny against Director Smith. His corpse was in cold storage now, but if she hadn’t pulled a gun on him, he wouldn’t be dead right now. It had gotten worse when Paul told her about the merge generator and said he could build it. And now her squad was out there, fighting Object - 032-VVI-9/URM without her.
Olivia rested a hand on Paul’s shoulder as they watched the battle on his computer screen.
Paul was another sign that she was in over her head. He was in over his—on every front. No one on SHOCKS’s staff had experience with detoxing a decade-long alcoholic, so they were going by the advice of an expert they’d found. He wasn’t with them anymore. Li Mei had never possessed someone for this long, and Alice had stopped trying to break free. She just went through the motions during her tests and experiments. And then there was the JAMES Unit’s betrayal.
Not to mention Merge Prime itself.
She could try to justify their secret, no-frills thing as stress relief—they both needed that—or as a friends-with-benefits situation. It was pretty much just that—at least on the surface. Half the staff probably knew, and no one cared. Everyone here was too busy to care about their bosses screwing each other in the few minutes they had off. But the reality was that it’d been a long time coming, and if the SHOCKS Ethics Division caught wind of it, they’d both be screwed.
And not in a good way.
She snorted. Paul glanced over his shoulder and raised an eyebrow. When she shook her head, he turned back to the screen. “What about this is funny?”
Right now, L4-3 was running and gunning across the playground as Object - 032-VVI-9/URM melted swing sets and set a slide ablaze. Lambda-Five was scattered and trying to stabilize the injured lieutenant, and Lambda-Four was out of position and moving civilians to their two trucks. There wasn’t anything funny about what was on the screen.
“Nothing. The usual thing,” she said. The usual thing was Paul’s horrified face when they’d woken up in the same bed for the first time a few nights ago. It got her every time.
Paul nodded, the ghost of a smile passing his face even though he couldn’t stop sweating nervously. Olivia sympathized even as she pulled herself together. SHOCKS Victoria/Vancouver Island couldn’t afford to lose either of its Recovery and Stabilization Teams, and both were in danger as long as Object - 032-VVI-9/URM was uncontained. “This kind of mission’s a waste of our resources. Almost everything we do for that girl is a waste of our resources. We should be focusing on the real threat.”
“I know.” She leaned down and pecked Paul’s cheek. It was a quick motion, hardly romantic, but neither of them had time for too much of that shit anyway. “And you know we can’t tighten our grip too much, or she’ll stop cooperating. I’m going to check on Strauss and see if we have any Agents we can deploy as backup.”
“Got it. I’m assuming control of the mission. Good luck, Lieutenant.”
“Thank you, Director. You too.”
As she marched out of the office she shared with Paul, Olivia bit back another storm of laughter. The only thing she could think to say was how they’d both put the fate of the world into the hands of a fifteen-year-old girl—and how all she could really think about was the hope that the JAMES Unit wouldn’t care about ethics violations.
If it did…they’d both be screwed—
She burst out laughing.
—and not in a good way.
◄▼►
James had no time for ethics violations.
He was running Claire’s augs autonomously, giving her flashes of infrared to help aim her gravity shells and reality skippers so she wouldn’t have to deal with anything except staying alive. The shots weren’t causing much damage, but they were annoying the hell out of the burning man. She’d pulled its attention off of RST Lambda-Five, and right now, she was fleeing across the playground, toward the Wal-Mart that sat caddy-corner to Lansdowne Middle.
He had a million other things he was working on, but, as always, Claire’s safety came first.
Figuring out how to help her beat Object - 032-VVI-9/URM came second.
And that mess in Los Angeles came third—a very distant third.
The aug flickered red-orange for a second. Claire pulled the trigger. A burst of black and blue filled James’s vision, and he shut off the infrared as she ducked behind a half-melted plastic rock. The bullet hit. It tore the burning man off its feet. Claire kept running; the burning man barely missed a second before it was up and moving again. Bark chips steamed, then burst into flames.
