Shackled, p.38
Shackled, page 38
“Hmm, interesting,” he said, not taking the bait. “Question two: Describe briefly your most recent play experience.”
A sudden burst of emotion filled her. It felt like fighting at the dojo; she often relied on her instincts to tell her when to advance and when to let her opponent come to her. Now, that same intuition was screaming at her not to tell them what was going on. This was her story, and they didn’t have any right to hear it.
“It’s been… good,” she said, eyes shifting left and right as she tried to come up with a believable lie. “We climbed a mountain and met some angels. It was cool.”
“That does sound like fun,” he said, still fiddling with his wearable. “Do you feel like you’ve been advancing at an appropriate pace?”
Again, that same flash of reticence swept through her, and her heart felt like it was beating out of her chest.
“Sure do,” she stammered, “No complaints at all, there.” She wanted to run out of the room and dive back into the pod. She’d be safe there, away from these questions.
A beep came from Doctor Ben’s wearable. He glanced down and nodded to himself.
“Well, last question, and this one’s a bit different from the usual. The updated form just came in.” He glanced at her as if waiting for her to say something. She met his gaze and stayed silent, though she couldn’t seem to stop bouncing her leg up and down. Why was she so nervous?
“All right, if you’re fine with that, I’ll continue,” the man said, pressing another button on his tiny, wrist-mounted screen. “Have you noticed any side effects or abnormal thought patterns in the last twenty-four hours?”
Her limbs went cold and her mouth tasted like metal. Did they know? She had to throw them off the trail.
“No,” she said, her face still and calm. She had been wearing The Face since she had been old enough to walk. Give nothing to your opponent, her father had said, and they will fall before you in their ignorance. In the end, it hadn’t saved him.
“I see,” he said, making another gesture on the screen. What was he doing?
A beeping noise came from the doorway. She turned to see one of the small Ambi-Aid robots roll into the room. It was based on the old Segway designs from forty years ago, but instead of giving her a place to stand, it had a large, comfortable seat. It was the pinnacle of minimalism, all white and no chrome, more like a ghost than a proper robot. Its gyros would stabilize the unit, so no matter what she did, she couldn’t fall off. She had been forced to use one after the attack, and she had never wanted to see one again.
“No, thank you,” she whispered to herself. Doctor Ben was only a few meters away, so of course he heard her.
“Afraid so, Rachel. You know we can’t let you take any unnecessary risks while you’re under our care.”
Seething, she went and sat on the white leather seat. The unit emitted a series of friendly-sounding beeps and boops as it adjusted to her weight.
She heard Doctor Ben’s wearable buzz, then buzz again.
“Please fasten your restraint belt for safety,” the conveyance said in what was supposed to be a cheery voice. She hit the override button.
“Restraint use voluntarily waived,” the voice said. “A note has been appended to your file for review by your supervisor.”
“Whatever, just take me back to my room.”
“Acknowledged, Rachel Carpenter.” The robot began to move. When they got into the hallway, it hugged the right wall, the better to avoid accidental collisions. The building had been designed with modern accessibility standards, so there was plenty of room for those heading the other way.
From a room up ahead, an alarm went off. It wasn’t a fire alarm; in fact, it didn’t sound like any alarm she’d ever heard. It sounded almost happy. Three tones, ascending in scale, sounded again and again as she rolled toward the room. The sign above the door read, “Meeting Room 37B.”
The door slammed open faster than the hydraulic safeties should have allowed; it almost hit her before the superb anti-collision on the Ambi-Aid spun her away at the last moment. The door handle banged into the wall with a boom, its hardware rattling before the safety finally kicked in and the door started to hiss slowly closed.
Out of the open door ran The Scary Woman. Rachel had fought many matches against intimidating opponents twice her size. None of them held a candle to Doctor Quartermaine. The woman always had a look in her eyes that spoke of an implacable will to accomplish her goals regardless of simple things like ethics.
She sprinted down the hallway, brushing past Rachel without a glance. In heels. She was shouting into her wearable.
“I heard you the first time, moron, and I don’t care about Watcher Nineteen right now,” she snarled. “Just get Woods on the line. Yes, I remember; I just don’t care! Goddammit, then get whoever replaced Woods!”
A moment of silence. The Ambi-Aid tried to resume its trek to her room, but she spammed the Pause Trip button. This was interesting.
“Leo, about time.” The woman was almost out of auditory range, the large hallways and her rapid flight rendering it hard to hear. Behind her, the alarm went silent, which bought Rachel a few more seconds of eavesdropping. “Look, cancel all the batch jobs and all other scheduled jobs. Yes, all of them. Talk back again, and I’ll do to you what I did to Jim. Now, listen carefully. There’s an open port into Network Five; kill all the running data ingest traffic and switch the network over to octoplexing mode. I’ve got Eggers opening a ticket with the details, but you need to get this backup going. Don’t write this down, just memorize it. Host is Dreamland dash perm dash zero two nine…”
She was gone. Rachel hit resume and the chair spun her around, then jerked away as it almost ran into someone.
She came face to face with David Koenig, who was staring at her with a strange look on his face.
“Nice night, Carpenter?” He wasn’t looking at her as he spoke, though. He was staring down the hallway, where the woman — his boss — had fled.
“Not so bad, Sir,” she said, somewhat surprised that the man knew her name. If his title didn’t have a C in front of it, she’d be surprised.
“Saw your interview just now,” he said. “Or read, rather. You spooked Ben.”
Good, she thought, forcing the words away from her tongue.
He pulled a strange, cylindrical object from one of his pockets, along with a bit of plastic wrapped in more plastic. He opened the package with a practiced hand and snapped the nozzle-shaped bit onto the cylinder.
“Do you vape?” He waved the device at her as if inviting her to have a puff. She wrinkled her nose. Cigarettes and other forms of tobacco had been illegal since before she was born, but for some reason, the electronic version was still popular.
“I’ll take that for a no,” he said as he glanced toward her and observed her face. He took a large puff and exhaled, the mist spreading through the air in front of her. Her nose caught a whiff of mint, and something else familiar. It smelled enticing in a way such things never had before. She kind of did want to try it.
“Maybe next time,” she said, hitting that resume button again. She felt the chair lurch beneath her as it plotted a path around the tech guru.
“No problem,” he said. “Have a good night, Carpenter.”
As the chair rolled away, she thought about the exchange. Something had seemed strange about it.
I read your report, he’d said. Wasn’t she just another test subject in OneiroSoft’s vast medical study of their product’s effect on nerve conductivity?
She saw Doctor Ben in her mind’s eye as the chair rounded a corner, tapping at his wearable. Have you experienced any side effects?
Do you vape? said a man so far above her own station that he should never have known she existed. She didn’t know how many people her age vaped, but it had to be less than one percent.
As they passed the stairs, the last piece fell into place. She jammed Pause so hard her knuckle cracked and she hopped down from the comfortable seat.
“Rachel Carpenter, please retake your seat. You may also press Cancel to send this unit back to base.”
Her legs didn’t hurt as she opened the double doors that led into the stairway, though she was careful not to bang the protruding screws against anything.
Her legs didn’t hurt as she grabbed the robot by its tiny shaft-like body. She lifted it a few centimeters off the ground with a good bit of effort; it only weighed about thirty kilos. Before her accident, such an act would have been effortless.
She shouted out her anger at being treated like an invalid, at the loss of her family to a monster wearing human skin, at the growing certainty within her that they were trying to control her.
She hurled the robot down the stairs, and watched its pristine white plastic shell shatter against the cement landing. She turned and ran the rest of the way back to her room, leaping over imaginary obstacles because she could. There was no pain, and the joy that should have filled her heart fled; only the fear of what she might discover remained.
She slowed as she entered the room, pulling in deep breaths to calm the burning in her lungs. She needed to pick up her cardio again. She walked over to the pod, avoiding the towel that lay crumpled on the floor.
Mother would be so disappointed, she thought. She could almost feel the woman looming behind her, hands on hips, ready to give her another lecture about discipline.
Hannah would be there, somewhere out of their mother’s sight, always where Rachel could see her. She’d be covering her mouth, trying not to laugh, or pantomiming the older woman’s mannerisms in an attempt to get Rachel to laugh and get in even more trouble.
That was the thing with grief. It never really left, and you couldn’t control when it might surface. She was trying to be angry. She needed to be angry, to brace herself for a discovery that would shatter the life she’d only now started to rebuild. And yet, she smiled at the scene in her mind, the ghost of her sister not angry and full of judgment, but laughing and encouraging, just like she’d always been.
Other people had it easy when it came to losing family. They would die, and you’d start to forget. It would still hurt, sure, but not like this. Her parents were starting to fade in her memory. Not a lot, but just enough. She could tell she was starting to heal by the way the edges of the memories grew soft at the same rate as the pain.
But with Hannah, she didn't have that luxury. That wound got torn open again and again, and it was more raw now than when she’d woken up in that hospital bed, all alone for the first time in her life. After all, how could she forget someone’s face when it just stared back at her whenever she looked in the mirror?
She opened the hatch and the smell rolled out, half-absorbed bodily detritus, the odor of plastic, and something else, something she’d just thought was the smell of the biogel.
Until she’d smelled it just now, in the hallway.
Do you vape?
Gagging, she slammed the pod shut once more. She couldn’t leave Arthur alone, trapped in a game. She knew that was a fact. Not after what she’d done, what she hoped they still didn’t know about. Had she gotten far enough from the building before she’d made that call?
She practically ran away from the pod and the miasma that surrounded it. In her haste, she was careless, and one of her screws caught on something, which fell to the floor with a clatter. It was her wooden training sword, just like the one she’d been using in the game.
She picked up the bokken and brushed the dust from it, ashamed that she had disrespected the weapon by ignoring it for so long. It felt heavy in her hand, too heavy for simple wood. She turned it over, and there, right where she’d feared and hoped to find it, right below the brass inlay where the tsuba would normally be, were her father’s initials.
She felt the tears come, and she didn’t let them hinder her. She pushed the small sofa away from the wall and in front of the door. It might not be enough, if they were determined.
She wrapped her jacket around the heavy, dark wood and leaned it against the pod, within easy reach. She’d need it, if…
Anxiety welled up in her. What was she doing? If she was right about all of this, she should just get out now, before they realized just how much she had pieced together. It was the height of foolishness to put herself in so much danger over her perceived obligations to a man she had just met.
That’s what some would say. Her mother and father, certainly. Not Hannah.
She folded each piece of clothing as she took it off, placing it on the stool that normally held her towel. The air was cool on her skin, the air conditioner humming like nothing was wrong. Her heart slammed itself against her ribcage as if it were trying to escape. She contemplated going back into the game, knowing what it was doing to her. The thrill of excitement that shivered up her spine at the thought of logging in had a sinister tone to it, now.
She reached out to the door release, then pulled her hand back. It was too much for her.
She needed help, and there was only one person she could count on, unconditionally, for that.
Sis, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I stole your doll that one time. I’m sorry about “the spider incident.” I’m sorry that I lived, and you didn’t. But I can’t do this without you. She glanced at her father’s sword, and its shape was blurred by her tears. She choked back a sob. I’m afraid I can’t do this at all.
She felt Hannah’s presence settle around her in an embrace almost real enough to feel. Her heart grew calm, and she knew the truth. Hannah would never have abandoned a friend. That wasn’t who she had been.
It wasn’t who Rachel was, either. She reached out, and together they opened the lid of the immersion rig. One last wave of anxiety rose in her chest, assailing her with visions of her fears, but it was powerless in the face of her resolve.
Any side effects?
She stepped into the pod.
We can’t let you take unnecessary risks.
The pod began to close.
All right, sis, let’s go finish that quest, she thought. Stay with me, just for a little while.
As her senses faded in one world and came alive in another, she suddenly felt motion, like someone gently nodding.
Hime stood and hefted her sword, ready to take the fight to the machines at last.
Hime wasn’t afraid. Now, for the first time in a long time, neither was Rachel.
Chapter Seventy-One
The Seabreak Cliffs, Krakensport, Kingdom of Eastmere
“Why don’t we just Princess Bride it?” Hime gestured vaguely at the rope swaying gently in the wind.
“I don’t know what that means,” Korrash huffed for what felt like the tenth time since they started arguing about how to get back up the cliff. He didn’t understand why Hime kept insisting on using nonsense words like “minmax” and “movie.”
She scowled and looked like she was going to say something rude, but then her face softened and she took a deep breath.
“Okay, Arthur. Sorry. How about I just carry you up? You can hang onto my neck.”
“No way. My arms would give out. Let me think for a moment.” Korrash ignored her latest use of the strange nickname she’d given him. They’d spent all that time training, then Hime had “logdowt” while he’d gotten his plan together and, now that she was finally back, he was anxious to track down the metal golems and destroy them before they could hurt anyone else. His mood had been going downhill ever since they discovered that they’d apparently wasted an entire day down in the dungeon. It was night once more, and the increased skill with Blades he had earned from the Sage’s training would not come until he saw the sun’s face.
“Got it! Let’s tie a loop in the end of the rope, you can climb up first and then pull the rope up with me on it. That seems like the easiest way.”
“Easiest for you, maybe,” she groused. “You’re the one with all the magic; why can’t you just summon some gryphons or wyverns or something?” Korrash winced at her pronunciation.
“It’s pronounced ‘griffon,’” he retorted. “And the cost to summon flying creatures like that would use most of my mana. It’s wasteful.”
“Fine, have it your way.” She tied the loop faster than he thought was possible, then started climbing the rope. She wasn’t even using her legs to grip the rope, nor was she grunting, sweating, or exhibiting any discomfort.
That’s what I said, he heard her mutter to herself as she climbed. Gryphon.
“It’s griffon!” This time, he kept the venom from his tone.
She paused in her ascent to gesture at him. He wasn’t sure exactly what the extended middle finger meant, though he had a pretty good idea from the context alone.
As she reached the top, she braced her legs against the cliff face and kicked off, using the rope to swing out away from the cliff before pushing off with just her arms, doing an aerial somersault, and landing out of sight at the top. Korrash shook his head, awed by the beauty of the maneuver and more than a little jealous. He might be able to pull off the move thanks to his Elven Grace, but he’d need to be in the position first, and he knew his grip would fail. He put his foot into the loop and hugged the rope as he began to swing, staring upward so he could see when Hime began to pull.
Instead of Hime, he saw a red beam of light streak by. It vanished over the ocean in an instant, the cliff glowing red as it passed. The effect reminded him a little of the crab he’d fought.
He heard Hime shout, and the sounds of battle echoed so loudly he could hear them even this far away.
He refused to let himself panic. He knew he wouldn’t be able to count on Hime pulling him up in the midst of battle, so he needed to find his own way up.
Grimacing, he pictured a griffon in his mind, preparing a summoning spell, when a volley of the light beams shot into the night once more. If he tried to fly up, he’d need to avoid those weapons, and he wasn’t sure he was a skilled enough flyer for that.
