Kei

  And that, I suppose – as the building slowly implodes in fire and fragments – is why you don’t fire a dozen ultra-high-powered weapons inside a high-class strip mall.

  That, and the whole war crimes thing.

  I keep running.

  A plume of smoke rises behind me from the imploded bodega and begins to sway in the wind. I notice a flash of more energy weapons firing a few streets over, only to cease in abrupt screech of rending metal.

  Even from the edge of the roof I can’t see more, but it’s a good place to start. Even if the Aspects are stealthier than I am, there are three of them, and just one of me found more trouble than I could usually dredge up without tapping hard into my Gift. As I reach the end of the line of shops, I hop onto a tarp over a shoe store entrance, and then down to the street.

  I cross the pavement to the open door of a jeweler’s shop and plunge in without a thought. Alarms might go off, but unless actual explosives trigger or hidden troops open up, it’s better than in the street.

  For now.

  I glance around the glittering displays. Gold and gemstones lose their glamour when you’re trying to hide in the first place, especially when already people notice you from a block away when ‘dress down’ is anything less than a burka or a circus tent.

  Low profile has always been a pain for me, which is why I prefer no profile.

  So I don’t see much besides shallow attempts at style. But I hope this place has a backdoor also. Preferably as unguarded as the last.

  I plunge through, offhandedly noting different pseudo-styles. Fake Italian, fake Persian, fake Japanese, fake fakes – given the whole thing’s a simulation, I could be a little more charitable. But they could’ve displayed the regalia of literal royalty, and instead I’m seeing the kind of gloss someone probably 3D prints by the ton in the real world.

  Fake Norse. I blink. I’m pretty sure no one encrusted genuine runes with gems, no matter how tasteless, but there’s an artistic atrocity for everything, I suppose. Especially if you have no shame whatsoever.

  I blink again and try to pull my gaze away.

  And can’t.

  Reflected light runs like fire along the jeweler’s display in front of me. Necklaces and torcs laid out on black velvet, matched by incongruous objects – carved drinking horns, a handful of crowns and an unsheathed sword. Everything not made of polished silver or gold seems at least decorated with them, usually filling the endless runic script that seems to be everywhere. No glass between me and these riches for the taking. The wall just behind them holds shields and more unsheathed blades – swords and axes – all carved with more runic designs. The swirl of runes aren’t all ancient Norse.

  Indeed, the Norse runes themselves seem to bend and blur as my mind unconsciously translates them. Because my subconscious knows some runic Norse. Of course it does.

  And at the worst possible time. Of course.

  But the whispers in the back of my mind change from ancient curses and musings on death faithfully translated by some hack program or artist into modern ‘homage’ art. The written words slip across my sight as their echoed sounds slither and slur within my brain.

  And now the runes, or whatever passes for them, are no longer clinging to these faux relics, but slide free and swim before my sight. They expand until an endless wall of gleaming sigils rises before my vision, Matrix-like as the view behind them dims into shadow.

  I notice glowing runes floating in front of my eyes and peer at them. And I feel something reaching into me, into my mind, with confidence. And power. Tendrils of influence slice in, filling my thoughts in an instant, probing for weaknesses and triggers long laid in advance.

  Then simultaneously, across every point of vulnerability, they strike. A thousand dark whispers, a thousand pulses, a thousand cutting blades.

  They reach every point of me at once.

  Sifting, slashing, synthesizing. They want not a servant, but a tool. The rest is a useful cover if it can be kept, irrelevant if it can not. And with a machine’s precision and consciousless design, they cut for what they seek.

  I can not move, can not counter, can not scream. And still it cuts. Cold fire burns, but does nothing.

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  I am bound, with no comprehension of what this is, even terror a distant, raging thing being torn away from me.

  And deep inside me, something else opens its eyes, and looks back.

  Kei? Something moves effortlessly, as if no more than flicking its fingers, and the attacking presences are gone in a heartbeat. The runes shatter and I’m back in the simulated showroom, the shining sigils gone and even the carved objects before me are… shattered and dull.

  I’m not to be made a tool today. Perhaps… because I already am one.

  No. The awareness seemed distracted. It is too soon. You can not hold this as you are. To sleep, then. But not for long.

  Something seems to pass over my mind like a current of cool water, and then flows away.

  I go out the back. Or rather, I go shoulder-first through a security door, heedless of my strength or street sightlines.

  Better to be fake-shot than whatever was happening in there.

  The three patrolling robots on the street seem surprised to see me. Or the one knocked of its feet by the flying door seems startled as I jump on the door, grab the second one by the leg as it swings its rifle around, and use it as a club to pound the third into a heap of high-tech trash.

  Did I mention I’m not using kid gloves anymore? Because I’m not using kid gloves.

  The second reduces the third to its component parts, and then what was left of the second handles the first as it scrambles out from under the door. I drop the smoking pieces, pick up the door by its handle, and run.

  A few shots hit the back door but miss me as I drop it and hit the next front door, an elegant wooden door which rips off its hinges as I barrel through it and over the bot behind it. The patrol robot and its two companions may have been heading for the doorway because of the commotion outside, but it lines them up nicely as my new makeshift shield slams into one after another and carries them back through the coffeehouse into the back wall.

  Drywall isn’t much of a barrier to me at the best of times, and I’m going ever faster.

  Everything that normally gives me reason for pause is gone. Hypnosis? Inside full-sensory VR? I had to get out, and take the Aspects with me.

  And for once, my ability to skew and wreck everything around me is a bonus, not a catastrophe. I have no idea what’s going on with the runes and the hypnosis, but my Gift reaches into everything, the more fluid, unstable or powerful the better, and I can turn data into static like a living EMP if I had to.

  Of course, we’re living inside this data right now, which means ashing the program has its own risks.

  The three bots and crumbling oak door going through the drywall in front of me can’t appreciate any of that, much less crossing the coffeeshop’s narrow storage area and slamming into the bare cinderblock wall behind that.

  I haven’t built up that much momentum, so we don’t go through it. And I bounce back.

  I catch my footing just before tripping over the huge bag of coffee beans I unthinkingly jumped the instant before. The bots are raising their rifles, or starting to.

  The door and I slam into them again like a hydraulic press, and it splinters. So do they. My shoulder feels warm, as if VR-bruised, or something.

  I pull back and hammer forward with what’s left of the door. I seize the last intact rifle, grab the helmeted head of one of the robots, smashed it into their other two heads until all three are decapitated, then kick the rear security door in the wall off its hinges and peer into the street.

  A video display shows whatever the rifle’s pointed at, so I flick the muzzle just past the edge of the door to view the street, and see it’s empty. A distant sound of fighting fills the air now, though, so there’s definitely something going on besides me.

  I burst out into the avenue not so much at a sprint as a blur. I’m across the pavement in one accelerated heartbeat, down the next line of shops in two more, and around the corner in the direction of the fighting in the fourth.

  If hide and seek includes the environment brainwashing me, we’ll have to play a completely different game. And break the setting before it can break us. I follow the cross street towards the reassuring sounds of plasma fire.

  Abruptly, I can hear the Aspects’ voices in my head again. And hearing voices in my head is definitely good news.

  This looks like max difficulty settings, Anton remarks over comms. All threats.

  Yes, Christopher agrees. Kei, if you’re out there, nothing in here can hurt you physically. Just keep moving, and if we don’t find you at the obelisk or on the way there, we’ll keep looking for you.

  There’s a maximum duration for any VR session, especially during orientation, Andrea adds. We can’t stay more than 45 minutes, an hour at the absolute longest.

  I race around another corner, and there they are.

  Andrea is hovering just off the ground, jetboots and jetpack blazing. She stays low behind the hoversled Chris is piloting, which is half-covered by a huge, translucent golden shell of what I could only assume is plasma. Anton’s fiddling with an immense energy cannon bolted onto the hoversled, which looks like something they’ve salvaged separately from the battered sled.

  “Good to know!” I answer with a cheer I don’t have to fake. It’s good to see them, especially unharmed, not to mention alive, simulation or not.

  They all look up, Andrea and Chris relieved, and Anton just grinning.

  “Not sure what your score is,” he tells me, “but you just took the top spot in my book.” He taps something on his weapons mount and spins the plasma discharger to cover the street behind us.

  I almost laugh, but catch myself. “Have you been seeing the sigils?” I ask them. “Noticed weird stimuli?”

  “What?” Chris says, blinking as he glances up from his controls.

  Andrea looks thoughtful.

  Anton just waves me onto the sled with his free hand. “Not through my gunsights, but tell me more.”

  “I think someone has a set of post-hypnotic triggers, but none of them are aimed at me. Or they just don’t work because I’m not primed for them.” ‘Or my abilities are killing them before they take root,’ but I can’t tell them th… “Or my abilities are killing them before they take root.”

  “In that case, you can sit next to me,” Anton laughs. He fires another burst down the street just as several robots start firing from cover, and they all instantly explode, hit with inhuman accuracy.

  The gunner’s position has absolutely no room for me with Anton squeezed into it, but I take the closest seat, then glance over at Andrea and Chris. She follows me in and buckles into another chair. Chris accelerates the hoversled as I strap in, then tears around the corner towards the black obelisk on the horizon.

  “C’mon, battle buddy,” Anton tells me. “We’ve got a wargame to win.”

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