The Unseen (10 page)

“I don’t believe you,” Joseth said. “I mean, I believe you, but that story is unbelievable.”

Kari didn’t know how to respond. Joseth had just sat there nodding his head while she had recounted the night she had mentally relived a thousand torturous times. “You created drones that can hijack anything the military owns and turn it against them?”

“Unfortunately.”

“What do you mean ‘unfortunately’? That’s amazing, Kari! No wonder they were after you again. Can you imagine? You could conquer the world with those drones!”

“That’s why I haven’t printed another one since.”

“Can you show me the code?”

“I don’t know . . .”

“Come on, you simply must! You can’t tease someone like me with something so incredible and then not show me how it’s done. It’ll drive me mad!” Kari was growing more uncomfortable by the moment. His eagerness to see her hacking drones reminded her of Marshal Henderson, and that was an upsetting comparison.

“I thought you said you didn’t want to look at any more code today. Didn’t you say you had your fill already?”

“That was before. I feel like I might be able to code for days right now.” The more eager that Joseth became, the more Kari mentally pulled back.

“Not right now,” Kari said. “I need a break from code too. Not to mention, I’m actually getting pretty tired.” Joseth eyed her suspiciously.
It’s the truth; I’m tired of you trying to convince me to show you the hacking drones.

“You’re really not going to show them to me?”

“You’re really going to keep pushing me on this?” Joseth drew his head back, bewildered. He looked her in the eyes, and she stared at him back. A moment later he shook his head and stood up.

“Well, I’ll let you get some rest, then,” Joseth said before walking out of the room. Kari watched him go in disbelief.
Even the great Oedipus is still a stupid boy.

“Just one game,” Motorcad said. “Then we’ll leave you alone. You can even choose which one we play.” Kari shook her head in protest. Ever since her fight with Joseth a few days ago, she hadn’t felt like doing much aside from work.
It was a stupid fight, but it wasn’t my fault.

“I’m just not feeling up to it today,” Kari said.

“Boooooo!” SeptemberMist said. “That’s what you said yesterday.”

“And the day before,” Motorcad added. “The unpredictability of it all is making me look forward to what she will say tomorrow.”

“Always nice to have something to look forward to,” Kari said.

“Look, honey,” SeptemberMist said. “We’ve seen this before, and what you are doing is natural, but it’s not smart.”

“Huh?” Kari said. She was confused about how they could have seen this situation before when they didn’t even know what was going on.
Does Oedipus treat all of his guests like this?
SeptemberMist sighed and rubbed Kari’s back slowly.

“This is a new place, and it’s different from home. We all miss what we had before, family, friends, and our hometown. Everyone gets a little homesick eventually, and they think that keeping to themselves is a good idea to fight that feeling, but it’s not. You need to open yourself up, embrace the Unseen and Valhalla!
This is the best place we can be right now, and we might as well make the best of the situation. Have a little fun!”

SeptemberMist was passionate; Kari knew that she meant everything she said.
Nice sentiment, but she’s so far off from what’s bothering me. I didn’t really have a home before, but I have one now
. Just thinking those words made Kari feel a little guilty for treating her new friends with a cold shoulder.

“All right, all right,” Kari said. Motorcad let out a whoop, and SeptemberMist patted Kari’s back lovingly. “But don’t we want a fourth player? Where’s Hermes?”

“Old man Herm is busy working with some other people on a project, apparently,” Motorcad said. “Misty’s speech didn’t work quite as well on him.”

“Shut it, motor mouth,” SeptemberMist said. “I don’t have a speech, and I certainly didn’t give one to Hermes. I don’t like him enough for that.” She smiled, and Kari returned the sign of friendship.

“Just the three of us then?”

“Yeah, what do you want to play?”

“Something new.”

“Not a video game,” SeptemberMist cut in, to Motorcad’s disappointment. Motorcad was funny that way; he liked playing games that he knew he was going to win. Kari had never found easy challenges entertaining.

“That’s fine,” Motorcad said. A smile spread across his face. “I have just the contest, but you’re going to hate it, Misty.”

“Not that again,” SeptemberMist said flatly.

“Look, I’ve spent a lot of time on it. It’s much better now.”

SeptemberMist rolled her eyes before shrugging.

“What is it?” Kari asked.

“Follow me,” Motorcad said. His excitement made Kari uneasy as he led them down to the basement.

“You’re serious?” Kari said.

“I’m afraid he is,” SeptemberMist said. “He made me and Hermes play this a month or so ago.”

“You know I feel personal responsibility for Hermes not wanting to play with us anymore,” Motorcad said.

“No need for that,” SeptemberMist cut in. “I mean, the rest of us figure out ways to deal with your personality. He should be able to as well.” Kari couldn’t help but laugh at that.

“That was mean,” Motorcad said. “But the reason Herm doesn’t want to play anymore is that I always beat him so badly.”

“None of that explains what I am doing on the back of an auto-cycle,” Kari said. By the time they had made it to the basement, three auto-cycles had just finished printing on the large printers in the back of the room. Motorcad had led them outside the large bay doors in the back and to the outside, where he instructed them both to climb on the backs of their respective bikes.

“Well, this game is roughly based off the Mongolian horse archer,” Motorcad said.

“Still haven’t thought of a name for it, then?” Kari said.

“Excuse me,” Motorcad said, as if he was too dignified to be questioned. It made Kari chuckle. “But, this yet-to-be-named game just so happens to be amazing. I’m going to invite you to my game, and we’ll get started. It’s really simple. We’re going to ride these auto-cycles around, and various targets are going to appear around us as we drive. We’ll use an advanced bow-and-arrow system, generously provided via augmented reality, to shoot those targets down for points as we drive.”

“That’s it?” Kari said.

“Yes,” SeptemberMist said. “This is his proudest invention.”

“She’s just a little sore from losing last time,” Motorcad said. “Any questions?”

“And this is safe?” Kari asked.

“Great question!” Motorcad said. “Let’s get started.” Motorcad sent Kari an invitation to join the game, which she accepted, despite her concerns. The auto-cycles revved their engines in unison, and the tires beneath them kicked up dirt and gravel.

“Here we go!” Motorcad said, and the bikes shot forward. A translucent golden bow appeared around Kari’s left hand, and quivers of see-through golden arrows appeared on the front of the bike as it shot forward. She squeezed the bike tightly with her legs and reached out to grab one of the fake arrows in front of her bike.
This is insane.
By the time she had knocked the arrow to her bow, they had already covered several hundred feet. The wind was blowing in her face, but the goggles that Motorcad had printed for them kept her from having any problems with her vision.

A target shot up from behind the trees and into the air. Kari took aim at it, but she was too slow; an arrow shot out from Motorcad and shattered the target into a billion pixels. A scoreboard appeared in the corner of her vision and showed that Motorcad had earned fifty points.

“I’m winning!” Motorcad yelled proudly, like a schoolboy.

Another target appeared on the other side of them, and this time Kari released her arrow before the target was destroyed. She missed, but a digital arrow from SeptemberMist landed on the target a moment later.

“Leave some for Lancelot,” Motorcad said over their in-game audio channel.

“Lancelot?” SeptemberMist said.

“FreeLANCER. Lancer-lot, Lancelot?” Motorcad said.

“It’s a stretch,” SeptemberMist said.

Motorcad destroyed three more targets, and still Kari hadn’t even been close to connecting with one.
And I thought I was bad at capture the flag.
A target appeared on the side of the path right as it merged onto a paved road. Kari was excited to be on pavement, where her ride would be smoother. She wasn’t able to get an arrow off before SeptemberMist destroyed the newest target. Kari watched as the target blew into pieces. Below where the target had just been, Kari could see the clear red markings of several cheetahs.
Those aren’t in the game. Why would they have cheetahs out here?

For protection—remember what just happened to me?
They don’t want anyone swooping in to ruin what they have here.
It made sense that Joseth would take measures to defend the
Unseen. The auto-cycles turned onto the paved road and accelerated down the street. Targets popped up more often now, but Kari was too far behind in the score to try too hard at earning points. Instead, she started to wonder about the limits of the game itself.
I wonder what would happen if I did this . . .

Kari shot an arrow out to the side at Motorcad’s bike. It connected, and his bike shuddered and slowed, losing valuable ground and time on SeptemberMist, which allowed her to score several targets.

Cool!
She thought before she felt her bike shudder a second later. She thought she was going to be thrown from the bike to her death, but she clutched to the auto-cycle.
Not cool, actually!

Motorcad’s bike had only slowed for a second when she shot his, but hers didn’t recover. It continued to slow until it came to a stop. She couldn’t be sure if the smoke rising from her bike was virtual or real.

It only took SeptemberMist and Motorcad a minute to realize what happened and to circle back. Motorcad ended the game, with him being declared the winner by a wide margin. He made it back to Kari’s disabled bike first, a few moments ahead of SeptemberMist.

“Don’t trust anyone,” he said.

“What?”

“And don’t talk about this out loud anywhere in Valhalla and don’t mention it to anyone else, understand?”

“What do you mean?”

“You OK, Kari?” SeptemberMist said as she pulled up next to them.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Kari blinked a few times, unsure of what to make of her friends.

“Looks like your ride is toast,” Motorcad said. “Not sure what happened there. Must be a bug in my game code or something.”

“Why don’t you hop on the back of mine,” SeptemberMist said. “We’ll head back home. And we’re not going to play this game again any time soon.”

“Sore loser,” Motorcad said. He smiled as if there was nothing to worry about in the whole world and waited for Kari to climb on the back of SeptemberMist’s auto-cycle before racing them back to Valhalla.

It’s not location, and it’s not timing.
Kari studied her map of details on the assassinations, searching for something common between them that she could use to predict the next one.
Ever since her argument with Joseth, she hadn’t felt like working on “paying her rent” or doing him any favors, so instead she spent her time working on her other project: figuring out how to stop the assassinations from happening.

The hope was that if the assassinations could be stopped, the situation would stabilize enough that Kari would feel safe enough to go live close to David and Aubrey.
If I want to, that is. Right now I don’t have the option to, even if I wanted to leave Valhalla. Options are freedom.

At first glance, all the killings seemed to be retaliatory in nature. The Middle States killed the president, so the United States responded by killing the Middle State’s CEO.
They went back and forth, one official on the coasts, and then one official from the center of the old United States.
The governments denied involvement, of course, but no one believed them. It didn’t help that each assassination was followed by a major offensive by the offended side.

Before the assassinations, the fighting had been focused on the eastern border and in the Gulf Coast, but now the West Coast was heavily entrenched.
It’s a complete mess, and every time it looks like it might get better, it just gets worse.
It was to the point that most vacant positions were not being replaced by individuals who could be assassinated easily and were instead being filled by committees.

Kari had written a dozen algorithms in the last day to try to figure out who the next target would be, but each calculation had given her a different name. The problem was that the victims were all similar—prominent government or military officials—but nothing else she was able to discern connected them. They all held different titles and levels of influence and worked at different agencies across the countries
.
Several of the assassinations had even occurred when those officials were on foreign soil. Emphasizing different similarities or differences predicted a different person to be next. She was stuck, so she called the one person she could think of who might be able to help.

“Kari?” David said, his face appearing in Kari’s overridden vision. He looked surprised to see her, and his voice was hushed like he was the middle of something. He was walking away from whatever he was doing pretty quickly, though, a clear sign he wanted to talk.

“Sorry if I was interrupting anything,” Kari said.

“Oh, no worries. We were just in a movie.”

“We can talk later if you want to finish it.”

“No. No, no, it wasn’t very good anyway,” David said. Kari squinted his eyes in distrust. She didn’t want to interrupt him from having a good time
.
Especially because, from the way their conversations had been going lately, it seemed David wasn’t particularly happy about his new, subdued college life. With a giant war raging a few hundred miles away he claimed the dorms felt like a prison. “So what’s up?”

“I was just doing some work and felt like talking through a few things with someone, and I was hoping you wouldn’t mind.”