Versim (20 page)

He nodded, as if understanding she had her own contacts. “But now I know …”

“What do you want? And if we do this, it goes both ways.”

“I understand. What I’d like for you to do is take responsibility for turning our host.”

“You mean us Spinners? Why not the Vox?”

“We couldn’t admit we did that—”

“Against the integrity of your hacking ideals.”

“Right.”

“Turn how?” Krista asked, skeptical.

“I’ll send over a backstory for her. She’ll be the demon-queen of this new world we’re making.”

“And you want me to pretend to have used bleedover lore to force the host to transform her in-V?”

“Exactly. You were impressive with getting your library. Claim responsibility for what happens to the host—”

“Fine. But you quash questions of how I manipulated the host.” She waited while he nodded. “The library’s that impressive?”

“It is.”

 
“It won’t matter if you turn her, Hark will kill her anyways. I have to find a solution to that—”

“Regarding that problem, I have another proposition for you.” He grinned, no longer pretending to be anything other than a Voxyprog zealot. It’s always about the Vs for them, she reminded herself. Always about building what has never been built. “Hear me out, I think it’ll solve your problem so that both of us win. And Hark can still be himself. Then, you can visit your library.”

30

Krista stood on
Collide’s
faux 5
th
Avenue on a bright and muggy late afternoon. The crowds were dense, tourism in-V always at peak levels due to the eternal spring and summer provided by the Sersavants. The wide, stone steps out front allowed people to sit and cool off while they waited to go inside.
 

The old beau-arts building that had been the model for the library reared up beyond the steps. The temple facade with its three tall entrances was still there. And the building’s multi-story wings to either side still stretched up and down the street. But now cylindrical towers stood at either end. Battlements lined their tops. Also, she saw other fortifications like portcullises before the arched entrances. Bars on the windows looked stout enough to stop a team of elephants from yanking them off.

Krista planned to walk around the entire building. Her prayer threat had worked. She’d led Pizer to believe it had been a piece of bleedover lore, the central mechanism Spinners used to manipulate the real world. Its existence was enough to make a man like Pizer quake in his night slippers. But, all she’d written on the prayer was a strongly worded request that the library become a fortress. She explained who she was and why it was needed. And she hinted she could swallow up the shrine, and its host floating inside in a bio vat, with a few simple words.
 

Nothing like coercion to get your prayers answered.

Oh the irony, she thought, as she began to walk. The host was protecting an archive of objects created in-V, the very texts from which Spinners took their content that, when stitched together, could make magic.

She wanted to hum to herself or maybe whistle, but too much was at stake. And she’d just made a deal with Pizer that would take some explaining to Hark. He’d listen and understand. He’d have to.
 

31

Hark rushed into the secretary’s office. Frankie stood rigid, arm stiff, Blaster pointed at the open doorway.
 

The glass doors had been shattered into a thousand shards that littered the floor. The two elevator doors had burst open, as if something had smashed its way out.
 

Inside, on his knees, clawing at the side of the elevator, was a mutated human being in a business suit. Hark saw two sizable holes in the man’s chest, enough to have killed a regular person. This mutant was still alive, but barely. Distended chest and arms as long as a large chimp’s had given it the strength to smash through the elevator but not ample defense against Hark’s Consortium Blaster. He glanced at the man’s elephantine face, half of it a swath of flesh that had attached itself to the man’s shoulder.

“What is that?” Frankie asked, the Blaster dropping to his side.

“That’s what happens when narratives get mixed up. That’s something from someone’s biotech nightmare.”

“Elevator’s out of commission.”

“But the shaft is still there.” Hark glanced at the stairwell door. “And the stairs.”

Frankie nodded, eyes still ahead.

To his right, Hark saw movement. He spun, ramping up his carapace, until he saw Krista standing there.

“It’s happening fast,” she said. “Oh, put your hands down.”

He dampened the energy and embraced his sister. She was a tiny thing next to him. He wanted to lift her off her feet. She would kick him if he did. But his older sister folded into his arms for a few seconds.
 

“Glad you made it back,” he said.

She glanced around. “We have to talk.”

He led her out of the lobby and back into the office suite. Celia and Binda looked up. Krista approached the two women, eyes on Celia.

“Has she found her final trigger?” Krista asked.

Celia shook her head. “No.”

“We’ve been looking,” Binda said.

“Well, stop,” Krista replied.

“Stop?” Hark asked. He gently grabbed his sister’s arm and pulled her to the far side of the suite. They stood in a narrow, short hall opposite the vases in the wall. “Stop? If she doesn’t wake up … and I can’t protect her for long …”

“You? Not protect her?” Krista put her hand’s on her brother’s chest, then patted his cheek. “You will, Hark. I know you will.”

Hark retrieved himself. “What’re you doing, Krista? You have to tell me. Things are moving too quickly.”

“I’ve got agents here, Hark. I’ve got other assets. I’ve got an entire block dedicated to a cross-V operation. You can’t wake her up, and you can’t let her die.”
 

“Get them out.”

“I can’t … do that.”

Hark turned away and considered leaving her in the hall, maybe walking back to Frankie. His sister’s secretive job was always causing problems for the agencies. The Spinners were an unofficial group of individuals who used anomalies in the Rend-Vs to further their own agenda. From what he’d gleaned in the past she was using this boring, low-profile V for some project that affected the real world.
 

He rounded on her. “Krista, I’m going to wake her because I have to. And you know why.”

“No matter what?”

“Yes.”

“I was afraid you’d say that. That’s why I … made arrangements.”

“What have you done?” Hark looked around as if the walls themselves might melt away.

“I’ve done what I have to.”

“
Krista
…”

She backed up, shaking her head. “We don’t have time for this. Right now you have to prepare for Ervé. I knew you wouldn’t leave, so I’m here to help. It’s going to be big. All my sources say this place will definitely flip.”

“Then it’s better if she exits peacefully, Krista.”

“I’ve got important work here, Hark. You wake her, that’s all lost. Valuable persons will die here. It’s bigger than your promise. These are real worlds, Hark. Real people.” She pulled him to a far corner where a table lined the wall. On it, several magazines had been placed in a fan. “Look at this.” She pointed to one. “Ever heard of that?”

He scanned the glossy cover:
Bingo
. On the cover a man leaned over a roulette table, maybe in a casino, or possibly on a boat. He scanned the articles, all of them about gambling.

“That publication was generated inside,” Krista said. “That’s real knowledge, Hark, as real as anything on the outside. We’re collecting it, using it, benefiting from it. Would you destroy such an archive?”

Gambling? So what?

He rounded on her. “I have no choice.”

She moved in close. “There’s always a choice. You need to see this.” She pushed aside the magazines, until she displayed one with a blank cover. “Ah, here it is.” She placed both hands on it. “I didn’t want to have to show you this, but even your friends have backstories now. Miesha’s co-opting them. I tried to keep them safe, but they’re in play beyond me.”

“Friends?” He eyed the magazine, recognized it as an official dossier Krista had ferreted into the Rend-V. Doing it this way, as an actual object, instead of data meant she could hide it.
 

She opened to the first page. He saw a picture of Frankie skate boarding down a street, smile on his face, wind in his hair. It looked like an expose piece on him. The text ran to four pages. Krista stopped on the last page. “You can read it, if you’d like. It’s all there. He’s a target too, now. I paid to have him constructed. And Garce is generating him, but since he’s just code, they wrote in a morbid history for him. Truly tasteless. He’s not mine anymore. He’s a techno-fetishist. They’ll mutate him when they get him.”

“Damn. That’s on me.”

“Yep.” She turned to a page with a picture of Frankie lying in a tub of machine parts, as if they were all his friends. “They know he’s your proxy. The embedded phone fits in with the backstory. The entire population of mutated hybrids are coming for him. Ervé has an army of them. All coming here to make him one of them.”
 

She turned to a page with a black-and-white photo of Binda at a coffee shop with an espresso at her lips. “I fought to hide her, but they have Binda’s genoscript. And of course she’s being managed by them. At first, I just wanted her to keep you on track. But then when I learned Miesha was behind all this, I knew they’d get her. She’ll be offered a big role, Hark , and you may not like it.”

“Keeping an eye on me, eh? That’s why you involved Binda?”

“Direct access. Less risky than coercing our host.”

“And who’s coming for Binda?”

“They’ve done a number on her. Wrote in a sophisticated story about her and her mother.” Krista cast a glance at Celia, who was obviously being touted as Binda’s mother in-V. “She’s the last member of a group of sorceresses, but she’s the key to keeping the history alive.”

“And they’re coming for revenge?” She nodded. “Ervé’s got that much agency?”

“Miesha’s been working on this for years, apparently. They’ve inserted enough elements, the V’s going critical.”

“Mutants and sorcerers. That’s two dominant horror-fantasy tropes. I’ve handled both of them before.” He saw the way she was looking at him, as if more bad news was to come. “Only two, right, Krista? That’s difficult enough. They have to have several hosts … more?” She nodded.

“The other trope is for Celia. She’s a demon-queen.”

“
What
?”
 

The question had burst out too loud, and he moved in close. Binda looked over her shoulder, but she returned to helping Celia, who was in the kitchen, looking for her trigger.

“A demon?”

Krista turned the page. Hark saw a grotesque photo of someone who might have been Celia flying through the air, taloned hands splayed, black rage in her eyes. “Not just a demon. They’re blending all the cannibal tropes: ghoul, vampire, zombie. Her followers are undead bloodsuckers and braineaters. She a queen of the damned, Hark.”

“Miesha’s pushing it. Too many archetypes emerging at the same time. That’s a bit of overkill, if you ask me.”

Krista ran her finger over the horrific picture of Celia. “Three fundamental tropes of the horror genre: the Thing, the Werewolf, the Vampire/Zombie. Ervé is determined to stick it to you. He wants revenge and this is the best way to do it. My intel leads me to believe he wants you to die to one of his minions, trying to save the host. And Miesha wants the extravaganza of seeing you try to thwart her blurring the boundaries of the Rend-Vs. Hark, this all goes away if you use your parachute.”

“I can’t.”

“They won’t kill her if you jump out.” Krista gave him a hug. “I have to go. Think about it, before it’s too late.” She turned to walk out of the hall. “Do the right thing.”

“Dammit,” he said as she left the suite. “What is she up to?”

32

Hark stood behind Celia as she stared at an open cupboard in the corner kitchenette. It held a variety of stainless steel crockery.

“She has no idea where it is,” Binda said.

“They don’t make it easy for a host,” Hark said. “I once spent a week with a host while the damn hackers laughed their asses off moving the parachute around. The V had no paying customers, and only a few constructs left. We were on a barren moon base. And we’d narrowed it down to a large hanger. Yeah, a week of watching the damn host wander around just like Celia. Maybe it’s here. Maybe it’s there. I have a feeling. I really do. Over here this time. It was a lug-nut in a barrel full of them.”

Celia removed a frying pan. She stared at it as if it were inscribed with magic sigils. “I can sense it’s near.”

“Yeah, he sounded just like that.” Hark moved Binda away. “You won’t reconsider?”

She scowled at him, while still batting her eyes. “We have some time to kill.” She snaked a finger along his chest. “Why don’t we go relax—”

He removed it. “Listen, this is serious.”

“Harken Cole. How many dangerous Rend-Vs have you survived?”

He stared at her as if a stern look would get him what he want. “Too many.”

“I think I’ll make it out alive.”

He couldn’t bring himself to say that she wasn’t on equal footing with the host. Binda wasn’t his primary concern. But she knew him well enough to know he’d do everything for her if she was here.
 

“There’s more,” he said.

He saw the slightest hint of concern in pursed lips and a raised eyebrow. “More?”

“You’ve hit the big time, Binda.”

“Backstory?” Her eyes actually glimmered, as if he’d told her she’d won a billion dollars. “They gave me one?”

“Sure did.”

She inhaled a deep breath, the cords of her neck standing out, her cheeks sucking in. She jumped into his arms, and hugged him. He’d have kissed her again, of course, but she had the discretion not to force herself on him in front of Celia.

Celia saw the celebration and stopped. “Good news?”