Dante

  "Ultima Ratio Regum" – an inscription on the cannons of Louis XIV, translating to "the last argument of kings."

  --Louis XIV

  The restricted archive certainly doesn’t look like an avalanche in the making.

  The Celestine Library is a vast, impressive place, even in an era of digital technology, and apparently their rare books take up more space than whole libraries do on most major college campuses.

  But in engulfing so much space in the quest for knowledge, the Library also swallowed up a few landmarks, one of which is the campus’ historic clock tower.

  A clock tower and a bell tower, the internal mechanisms are elaborate gears of polished brass and steel, carefully maintained.

  I can tell because while the most-restricted shelves Celestine has are carefully climate-controlled and sealed off from all other elements, one reading nook is next to a huge glass wall opening into the inner workings of the tower, where a section of the old stone wall was broken away, allowing scholars to reflect on the clockwork’s steady movements while meditating on secret lore.

  I glance at it once and begin continuously scanning the book as I go through it, cover to cover, in the space of a few minutes. A bit fast for even my reading speed, but I have to agree with Arden, Andrea and Anton’s assessment – my grandfather is talking without a filter in these margins, and we’ve hit paydirt.

  Great. A simple task, great view, no risk and an invaluable payoff.

  How much better could the day go?

  After one more glance at the almost hypnotic inner workings of the Tower, I pick up the book, return it to its shelf, and proceed to the elevators.

  I could really get used to this no-risk secret agent stuff. Maybe I should get a second library card? You know, so I can live on the edge.

  I reach the elevators, and noticed all three begin climbing from the ground floor. Simultaneously.

  Maybe it’s a gut reaction. Maybe I’ve just had a bad week. Maybe it’s even some Paragon-level instincts tipping me off.

  But I decide, abruptly, not to be here when they arrive.

  I duck into the stairwell.

  The steady tramp of feet – of dozens of people thundering up the stairs – greet me.

  I duck back out and kick a doorstop under the door – hard – to give anyone opening it a minute’s pause. Hopefully.

  This… could get interesting.

  “Armed and armored,” Foresight comments quietly in my earbuds. “Best algorithmic analysis suggests unconventional armor and high-energy weapons. I’d suggest not fighting them in here, for your own sake as well as the archives.”

  I agree, but there are no obvious ways out in a place with no other doors and only one window. Which doesn’t lead outside.

  So I go for the window. I really did want a better look at those gears and chains and soon-to-be-falling glass.

  “Three botnets dead and accounted for,” Legios comments. “More coming. Full marks for enthusiasm – and fully lacking in skill.”

  Someone slams into the door at the top of the stair, shouts something, and slams into it again. I go around a corner, racing towards my privileged view of advanced 19th-century technology.

  “Malware won’t kill you,” Lyrica notes. “I’m getting hints of Circle basilisk hacks in operation, or at least reflections of their favorite elements. I can tell you more if you stay to get hit.”

  “Dante?” Andrea’s voice is sharp. “Circle agents may be in your area. We have help… 5 minutes out. Confirm?”

  “Got less than two,” I say. “Appreciated, though.”

  There’s a crash, as if the whole stairwell door was just ripped off its hinges, and a too-rapid rush of feet heading my way. One person. Moving very fast. But I’m moving pretty fast already.

  I lower my shoulder and charge the great pane of glass, which I expect is hardened, if not literally bulletproof, for security and insurance reasons.

  We’ll have to test just how bulletproof, then.

  I hit it hard. And bounce.

  “Dante,” another, familiar voice says. “K. Full Circle legion is coming for you. Help coming in… 3 seconds. Keep running.” It’s text-to-translation, but good advice regardless of how it got in my ears.

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  I duck slightly as I run – pure instinct, nothing more – and a round whistles past my ear before I hear the crack of it firing or the sonic boom in its wake.

  The railgun round hits the glass before I do, and I can confirm it was definitely bullet… resistant.

  A spiderweb of cracks mars the thick glass, but still it stands. For a moment.

  The next, and my shoulder is hammering into with enough force to turn cracked glass into shattering shards, and I’m suddenly in midair reaching for the nearest chain.

  Not to stop my fall, but to accelerate it before whoever’s behind me can line up another shot.

  Shouts and slamming bodies echo from the stairs, and I hear the distant ‘bing’ of all three elevators opening together.

  My body twists in the air and another round grazes my bullet-resistant jacket as I hang there, time moving at a crawl as my senses – and my sense of time, itself – accelerate. I grab the chain and yank myself towards the ground. Headfirst.

  Another shot hits the chain itself. Another grazing hit, but if whoever it is severs all the chains I’ll have nothing left but the fall.

  And I need to do more than survive the drop. I need to be able to run afterwards. To outrun the Circle, and all its living weapons.

  I’m ‘climbing’ the chain in reverse, hand over hand, accelerating my headfirst drop towards the stony floor of the tower, below. So far, I’m ahead of the falling glass, so I have something to look forward to when I hit rock bottom.

  I glance ‘down’ towards my feet – or rather up the tower – and see my gunslinging friend leaning out the broken glass pane with his massive handcannon of a railgun at the ready. I wonder if I can possibly move to the side fast enough to dodge even one more shot.

  And then a sound like an incredibly rapid drum solo fills and vibrates the tower, his weapon shatters, and he’s slamming – hard – into the opposite wall.

  Unexpected. But I’ll take it. I suddenly shift my grip to flip my body around and slow my descent rather than accelerate it.

  Keiron’s backup? I subvocalize. My AIs, at least, pick up on it. As they’ve been trained to do.

  Unclear. Lyrica’s voice is clear, if quiet, within my earbuds.

  But we’re getting reports of heavy contact with Circle troops across campus, Foresight observes, and the town beyond.

  “Dante,” Andrea’s voice cuts in. “Stormforge and Mathlete are held up trying to reach you. I’m coming too, with Hammersmith. But it will be at least 5 more minutes.”

  “Got it,” I tell Andrea. Or whoever Uncle K sent’s ‘Got it.’ Whatever.

  Then I notice something, my gaze see-sawing between up and down as I clamber down my rapidly falling chain. The guy who hit the wall above is no longer hanging there as if clinging for dear life… or falling. He’s running.

  Straight down the wall. Whirling a bike chain in his right hand.

  I flip over and drop the last 10 feet to the concrete, feet first.

  There’s a weird moment of disorientation, and not from the flip. Like gravity just shifted as I moved, letting me go and seizing me again, even as I have a sense that I traveled incredibly far in less than a heartbeat.

  Fortunately, I’ve been in weirder places, and am not even phased as I hit the concrete.

  Life lesson: When everything is unbelievably strange, prioritize. And Brainwashed Crazy Person Trying to Kill You almost always wins the top spot.

  I can see a faint haze above me, right where everything twisted, and the clock tower above almost looks washed out, like I’m seeing it through some film that eats half the colors. Gravity ignores the situation, though, and I keep falling.

  I feel the impact with the floor through my shoes, but not enough to even bruise someone like me.

  But Chain Guy is moving fast and is almost on top of me.

  Far faster than I’m moving now. He’s a white kid, maybe a couple years older than me, with scarred knuckles, ripped jeans, scuffed sneakers, and manic, bloodshot eyes. There’s murder in those eyes.

  My chi roars to life in answer to their challenge. I feel burning power course through me, filling my every limb with a raging fire.

  And I can’t shake Ghost’s words – that anyone in the Circle could be just another brainwashed puppet, even if they’re trying to kill you.

  I’m not going to murder an innocent guy, even in self-defense.

  So I do the only thing I can do. And let him take a shot at my head with a chain blurring so fast it’s almost invisible. Just as he hits the edge of the strangeness himself, and flinches. But the madness holds him tightly even as he slips on the wall. Because it doesn’t need him intact so long as I’m not standing at the end of this.

  He closes and swings, his bike chain lined up perfectly with my head – moving far faster than I ever have. In public.

  So he looks stunned when I pull my head just out of the arc of his chain – and hold up a taser. Just as a shimmering hologram appears just above the face of Foresight’s smartwatch. On the wrist of my taser hand.

  The chain is a blurring disc and the end of that chain crackles through the voltage spitting across the taser’s prongs. He must hit it a dozen times before he spasms too badly to hold onto his weapon.

  But his eyes are already taking in the hologram – and Ghost’s sigils appearing and disappearing with blinding speed. Far faster than anyone without an accelerated mind to see and understand.

  My new friend sees everything.

  He takes it all in for a leisurely half-second, at least. Better than a minute for a normal person. Then, finally, he squeezes his eyes shut and turns his head away. A dozen taser jolts seem to have slowed his response time to Ghost’s counterprogramming technology.

  But then again, he’s now tasered, blind and partially deprogrammed while fighting another guy and falling straight for the concrete. Not an ideal position, tactically.

  He gapes like a landed fish when my punch takes him in the stomach – ironically breaking his fall.

  My offhand wrenches the chain completely from his open hand and my elbow takes him in the temple – dropping him.

  I feel bad, but that’s as gentle as I can manage, and I have places to be. Starting with out of here.

  Hopefully the deprogramming will take.

  There’s a tasteful wooden access door at the bottom which is, unfortunately, locked. Forcing me to kick it off its hinges.

  I’m not sure who’s more surprised, me or the two Circle guys directly behind it with heavy plasma rifles.

  But I do know who’s more unconscious as it hits them, and it isn’t me.

  “Sorry, guys,” I mutter as I hop their bodies and few broken planks of wood.

  The seven other gunmen in the hallway with me, not to mention the five gunwomen, seem to take offense at my mode of entry, and begin firing – or trying to.

  Unfortunately, or rather, fortunately, they’re almost evenly split between one side of the corridor and the other, and I emerge from the clock tower in the middle of them. So lining up on me with plasma rifles or other cool and exciting weapons without accidentally shooting all their allies in their backfield is a little tricky.

  I, of course, have no such problems. And for that matter, no such weapons. Superfast rounds and burst of plasma in every color of the rainbow make that point for me, even as the cannon fodder’s careless shots make it clear they view each other as expendable.

  I dodge and weave and whirl and whip the chain at almost supersonic speeds as I engage them.

  And because the chain has plenty of slack, I can let it lash out far further than any of them imagine.

  So I drop the people furthest away and work my way in, while dodged plasma bursts and stray railgun ricochets do most of my work for me. I whirl like a dervish while kicking off walls to reverse my momentum, constantly putting one shooter in the path of another.

  My chain smashes weapons, clips helmet, hammers flak jackets dead center, and sweeps legs three guys at a time. The hallway should really work against me, but my reflexes are too fast to be human, and mentally I’m built for this game. They’re not.

  Foresight is blazing away with his counter-brainwashing sigils the whole time, also. I assume these guys are ‘conditioned,’ as well.

  My eyes are wide open as I take in everything. My kan, ma-ai and hyōshi are perfect for this. Yoshi may have hated hurting others… but timing, fighting distance, rhythm?

  He taught us those until a fight like this is practically a dance. Something else I owe him for, besides having a daughter.

  The chain wraps around the ankle of the second-to-last guy standing, and I use it to flip him head-over-heels into the last guy upright. They crash to the ground and I’m pinching nerves as I hop them, almost by instinct.

  The vicious stuff I get from Keiron, but he teaches it well.

  My best bet is to break free before I can be overpowered or overrun. Which means leaving before too many regular troops can pile on, or someone Enhanced can bring down the hammer.

  Other than speedy Chain Guy, though, I haven’t seen anyone obviously Enhanced yet, so I’m hopeful.

  I step over the last of my fallen playmates and look for an exit.

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