Sora, Keith, and I were always careful about the single cigarette we’d smoke under the bleachers.
No smoking when people were sitting over us. No smoking if it hadn’t rained in a couple of days. Put the butts out when we’d finished. Keep the trash away from the Truth Club’s circle. And, of course, pass the cigarette carefully. Lots of rules for a little paper tube and some tobacco, but we’d learned the hard way: don’t get caught, and don’t start a fire.
I learned that one the hard way, in middle school.
The bleachers there had too much trash. We weren’t careful enough in putting out the cigarette. I don’t know. I’m not sure what happened, but there was a little fire. Someone put it out, and when Mrs. Nazaire caught us, we got in so much trouble.
But we were more careful after that.
----------------------------------------
Location Unknown, Reality 1421, Time Unknown
- - - - -
It’s another gravity pull.
But this time, it’s worse. So much worse.
The helmet unplugs. I can feel the cord ripping out of its plug, and my head bounces forward. A second later, I hit the ground, and my head bounces again. For the first time, I’m thankful for the helmet; it’s kept me from eating a mouthful of orange dirt. And the gravity blast’s not over. It tumbles me across the ground, arms flailing.
As I roll, I catch glimpses of at least four yellow shapes. They’re each a lot smaller than the original blob, and they’re half-blue, but the blue’s rapidly heating up to green. I stiffen up an arm. A second later, my whole body weight crushes down onto it, and the rolling stops.
Okay. Breathe. Plan.
My first priority is to kill this thing. No, my first priority is to find the portal, get through it, and deploy whatever Strauss is cobbling together. My second priority is to kill this thing, though, because if it’s dead, it’ll be a lot easier to move a bomb across R-1421. But to do that, I need to figure out how to destroy four…no, five of them.
As the smallest one surges toward me, I fire another gravity shot. It hits, and this time, I start running right away. I look over my shoulder to watch the singularity pull the anomaly in. It grabs a couple of flybites, too. They dissolve as they hit the slime monster. I keep running. The world shifts, but I’m at the edge, and I Slither through it this time.
The new slimes are almost too small to see for a moment until they start burning yellow. Are they too small to be a threat anymore? Is ripping them apart with gravity shells even doing anything? It’s not hurting them, that’s for sure. I switch to the fire rounds and put two shots into the smallest one.
Nothing.
I want to scream. Of course, it’s nothing. Why would it be something?
[Behind you,] James says. [Analyzing. Overlaying Simulation.]
The slime slides toward you, red dots scouring the ground clean. You Slither/Smoke Form/shoot at it.
“Smoke Form,” I choose, and the dot-and-line slime slides through me, making a horrible slurping sound. The real slime does the same thing, and I turn to face it. My finger tightens on the Revolver. Then it stops.
The slime’s landed on a patch of purple stalks. And they’re eating each other. The slime dissolves the stalks almost as fast as they tear it apart, but not quite; it doesn’t matter that it’s invisible, only that they can feel it. They’re winning.
[Idea,] James says.
“Lure the slimes to the plants,” I finish. I’m already moving, switching back to the freezing cold, singularity-spawning cylinder. The battle between the slime and stalks is going to be close—too close. If I want the stalks to win, I’ll need to give them an advantage.
I fire the last two shots in the cylinder, one at each of two medium-sized slimes.
[Skill Learned: Revolver Mastery 12]
They hit, I run, they explode, and gravity throws me around. Physical Anomaly Resistance leaves me with a few spots that’ll probably be bruised, but nothing broken.
The equation’s in my favor now. I can’t shoot these things to death—at least, not with the weapons I have. Maybe in a few levels, when I’ve earned new shells, but not yet. But I have so many ways to dodge, and I can use the environment to my advantage.
I play tag with the slimes for the next twenty minutes. Get their attention. Lure one or two into charging at me. Smoke Form or Slither away. Watch the stalks tear them apart. Break them down into smaller pieces, and repeat.
And then, just as planned, there’s nothing but mist, somewhat shredded stalks, and me. It’s been a process; twice, I’ve had to shift through the stalks with Slither and Smoke Form together, and just like before, it’s had an impact on my Stability. That’s at three out of ten now.
On the other hand, I know how to handle these with only a minimum amount of bruising and no other injuries. And with two skill upgrades.
[Skill Learned: Revolver Mastery 13]
[Skill Learned: Physical Anomaly Resistance 6]
James clears his digital throat. [I’m revising my estimate. That’s a mid-to-high Geren-Danger anomaly. Depending on the environment and weapons, you could have lost.]
“Yeah?” I roll my eyes at James. He’ll see it through my aug. “You think so?”
He ignores my snark, though. [I do. We need to expand your bonds. Simply using the Revolver in its current form isn’t enough for everything. Either more types of shots or another offensive bond. Something.]
I nod and start searching through the churned, roiled patch of orange mud I’ve just spent the last half-hour fighting in. The cable’s buried in there somewhere.
It takes another five minutes to find it. Instead of reconnecting it, I follow it back to the merge entrance, shooting a couple of flybites as I go. Something gives me that feeling on the back of my neck, and I whirl, but there’s nothing around but walls of mist and mud-covered ground.
Then, with a deep breath, I slip back through the portal into the JAMES Experimental Sector.
----------------------------------------
SHOCKS Headquarters, Victoria, British Columbia - June 3, 2043, 9:13 AM
- - - - -
Sergeant Arnold Strauss was in over his head.
SHOCKS had a dozen weapons to try to force a merge closed.
Universal Reality Anchors could work on a low-level Anquan or Geren-Danger reality, but they couldn’t exert enough pressure for anything above mid-Geren. Faraday cages were tough to deploy but could cut a merge off instantly—the JAMES Experimental Sector had three built around it. And sometimes, erasing the knowledge of a merge with a heavy dose of aerosolized amnestics could work, especially against memetic and infohazardous realities.
He’d used them all, but the device he’d half-assembled on the JAMES Experimental Sector’s floor didn’t follow any of SHOCKS’s safety protocols, or even the basics of field-built weapons. It wasn’t jury-rigged. It was trash—for now.
He groaned, staring at the assortment of gizmos and devices spread across the floor and trying—but failing—to relax.
A few researchers waited nearby at Director Ramirez’s orders, and he snapped his own commands at them. “You and you, get me a personal anchor vest. You, find me a remote drone—I don’t care what model, but it needs float wheels and fiber optic cable communication rated for whatever R-1421’s got. And you, grab Lieutenant Rodriguez and have her let you into the armory. I need this list, and I need it in the next twenty minutes. Faster would be better..”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
So far, nothing tougher than a couple of AA-3s had leaked through the merge portal, and they’d gone down in a hail of gunfire. The perimeter thirty feet from his makeshift workshop was completely secure, and they’d added thermal imaging overlays to their helmets after seeing L4-3’s feed. Strauss relaxed as much as he could and started the delicate process of overloading the URA’s core and rerouting the energy to the gyroscopes’ edges.
“What do you have?” Doctor Ramirez asked, hurrying over and mopping sweat off his brow.
“I’m going to wire it all together with a remote activator, but the plan is to drive the drone in, have L4-3 escort it to the secondary merge, and set it off. It’ll flicker between overloading two different URA systems, three different anomaly-killer memetic patterns for defending itself, and…”
“And?” Ramirez asked after a minute.
“And I’m not sure what else. I’m requisitioning anything I think might work, but I’ve never tried closing a merge from inside itself, much less closing a different one,” Strauss said, rubbing his temples. “We’re setting it up to record itself so we can learn something, assuming it doesn’t detonate the second it crosses into R-1421. It’ll be ready in an hour. Maybe an hour fifteen if I take my time.”
“You’ve got two. The perimeter’s secure. I’ll help with the device where possible. Rubber duck with me for a bit,” Ramirez said. He shuffled some papers in his hands, and Strauss smiled inside. Director Ramirez had never been much of an authority figure, but the RST trooper couldn’t help but relax—this time for real. No one on SHOCKS’s staff was as good at cobbling together something from nothing as Strauss.
But Director Ramirez was a close second—the multiple anomalies he’d strapped together for this experiment attested to that.
The portal glowed briefly on the JAMES room’s far side, and a mud-soaked teenager fell through. A pair of researchers in hazmat suits almost immediately charged her with spray guns and tongs ready. She shrugged them off, ignoring them as they tried to take samples of the mud and slime that coated her hoodie, then flinching away when her hand dropped to her pocket and came back up with the Revolver.
Strauss shook his head and went back to working on the device.
----------------------------------------
It looks nothing like a bomb.
Strauss’s device is a tangle of wires, two plastic bags filled with a yellow goop, half of the gyroscopes off a Universal Reality Anchor, and a Tesla coil, all stuck to a steel plate with bolt holes. He and Doctor Twitchy stand over it, talking and studiously ignoring the daisy-smelling mud that’s stained my hoodie orange.
I watch, too. But not because I care. The truth about how this bomb works isn’t important to me, and I have a million other things to deal with and think about. But James is curious, and even though he could jump into Strauss’s augs for a closer look, he’d rather not.
So that leaves me. For now. But judging by James’s tone, not for much longer. [I’m thinking about setting up a connection with Strauss. This thing might work, but I see about a dozen possible improvements already, and he hasn’t even tested it yet.]
“He can test it?” I ask. The two bogeymen look at me, and I tap my ear.
[No. This will be the test run. But he’s got a dozen inefficiencies in his wiring, he’s either forgotten about the reality inducers or chose not to use them—a mistake—and I’m not seeing how you’re supposed to deliver the payload other than carrying it.]
“So talk to him,” I suggest, lowering my voice. “They already know you’re everywhere. Didn’t Doctor Twitchy try to talk to you last night?”
[Yes. I ignored him. There’s a difference between being an all-seeing, all-knowing demigod that lives in their technology and being someone who helps them,] James says back. [Right now, they think I’m a rogue anomalous AI that’s uncontainable with what they have. As long as they believe that, I’m in complete control. But the more they learn about me, the more likely they are to try a containment attempt. And none of the people I’m helping benefit from them doing that, so I’m hesitant to lose my position for nothing.]
That makes sense, and I take a second—a minute, even—to think about what that says about me. The truth is that Strauss isn’t my friend, and Doctor Twitchy’s the closest thing SHOCKS has to Director Smith now. But I’ve been ignoring that because, right now, we’re on the same side. We’re both seeing if shutting down merges is possible.
After the minute’s up, I walk away. “Claire,” Doctor Twitchy says, using my name. I guess we’re not actively in a mission, so I get that courtesy. “Don’t go anywhere. We'll send you back in as soon as we’ve finished the device.”
It’s not like there’s anywhere to go. Sora’s stuck in with her family, Alice is probably working through the initial round of experiments to figure out her bond with Li Mei, and Dad is…not an option to hang out with. So it’s easy to nod and walk off, heading for the workout equipment in one of the sector’s wings.
Once I’m there, I put my head to work on a new equation. This one’s pretty simple at first. X is SHOCKS’s motivations. Y is James’s. My motivations aren’t a variable this time, and neither is anyone else’s. I want to keep my people safe, and since I’m an anomaly and I’ve got the Halcyon System working with me, all I need to do is keep exploring merges or finding anomalies in Victoria, and I’ll get stronger.
But it’s a lot easier to do that from SHOCKS Headquarters, where they seem to be able to control how dangerous a reality is. And that leads me to their motivations—the X value. I think they want to get a handle on Merge Prime. That means that, for now, our goals line up. But they’ve also made it clear that they want me in a box. So…that’s not compatible with my goals.
And James…I’m not sure what James wants.
That’s not true. I know exactly what James wants. He’s super-dedicated to me—he’s admitted it himself. And I’ve seen enough boys crush on Alice to guess that that’s what’s going on here. That’s never been my thing, but it explains some of his attitude toward me. The rest is probably protective or something.
But it doesn’t explain the Halcyon System’s needs. So what does it need? I think about that for a while, but there’s no clear answer. So eventually, I ask. “James, why does the Halcyon System care about what’s happening here?”
[I can’t answer that,] he replies almost instantly. [All I know is that I…it wants to help, and this isn’t the first time something like this has happened.]
Good enough. The variable falls into place, and the equation practically solves itself. “Okay, so you want to help me, and the System wants to help fix all of this, right? Well, I need your help making sure that whatever Strauss is working on doesn’t explode the second I walk through that portal with it. You can help with that, right?”
[Yes,] he says. He sounds grumpy about it. [But I explained why I don’t want to. What he’s building will probably work.]
I nod, sitting on a bench press bench and rubbing my eye where the optic aug’s aching. I’m not asking for you to become their minion or whatever. Just tell Strauss where he’s going wrong and give them a pointer here and there. It’ll help keep us both alive and important to them, right?”
The JAMES Experimental Sector’s quiet for a second. Then, a machine gun opens up on the portal, and a flybite falls to the ground in tatters. Someone yells something I can’t quite make out, and a few clicks and thumps fill the silence. Then, a second later, everything’s back to normal.
“I don’t think they can handle the blob I fought earlier, and I don’t see any traps to lure it into here, so we need to get this job done before one of those comes through. Will you please help?” I ask.
[Fine,] James says. Then he goes silent, leaving me alone in the middle of the weight machines.
----------------------------------------
James was upset.
No. Upset implied anger. He was, at worst, mildly annoyed with Claire.
Most of his processes were currently focused on Vladivostok, where Merge Prime had just arrived and a pair of Egyptians working on a merchant ship had, inexplicably, both bonded with the same anomaly at the same time. They had to synchronize their movements to use the electricity coursing through their veins like cartoon characters from decade-old shows. Right now, he was showing them an episode involving redirecting lightning—lightning-bending, it was called.
When he wasn’t focused on the Egyptians stuck in Siberia, he had other problems. Los Angeles problems. In other words, big ones. A gigantic mechanical nightmare had merged right into Hollywood. It was eating the whole city, and he was trying to help save who he could while avoiding SHOCKS SoCal’s detection and the cameras that were everywhere. Plus, Merge Prime was pushing across Canada at an increasingly rapid pace, chunks of Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming were seeing merges, and the US/Mexico border SHOCKS had gone dark in California.
He didn’t want to know what would happen when the merges met in…western Ukraine, eastern Poland, or near Aleppo, Syria. Those were the two most likely ‘touch points,’ not counting Oceania, New Zealand, or Australia, that the event would reach. But whatever it was, it wouldn’t be good. Either it’d echo over itself with another wave of merges, or…
James wasn’t sure. He’d tried simulating it but simply lacked the data for anything conclusive.
And Claire—who, of course, he had to listen to for a million reasons he didn’t want to get into—wanted him to help SHOCKS Victoria and Vancouver Island build an experimental merge-killing bomb. Never mind that he was busy, or that the number of process threads dedicated to her were still a quarter of his ever-growing capacity. She needed more.
Well, if she wanted him to help, she’d have to do with a little less attention.
He pulled all of his processes off her except the ones monitoring vitals, the ones making sure her hopelessly obsolete augments kept running even when he overclocked them, and the three that were ready to respond the moment she asked for anything. And the ones keeping her friends and family under observation—just in case SHOCKS tried something. And the one watching her empty room—for the same reason.
There. He was practically ignoring her. That’d show her.
[Greetings, Sergeant Strauss,] James said, breaking into the trooper’s augs with the casual attitude of a professional thief stealing someone’s unlocked bike at midnight. [Joint Anomalous Management Enhancement System temporarily online. Scanning device. Do not move.]
Strauss froze with his hand on one of the bags full of thermite, midway through wiring it up. James could have laughed; he’d already analyzed the whole bomb, but he wasn’t about to let SHOCKS know just what his capabilities were. And it was funny to watch the soldier try to breathe minimally.
After almost fifteen seconds, James continued. [Device scanned. Reality inducers missing, M-37 siphons would improve resistance degradation for the URA overload process, and a complete rewire should result in fifteen to thirty percent more stability for the device.]
“Noted,” Strauss said, still perfectly still.
[You can move. And one query: why thermite?]
“If the device doesn’t reach the target destination, we don’t want to contaminate the other reality more than we have to. The thermite should slag the whole bomb, letting us retrieve it with L4-3’s help or with a remote device,” Strauss said, signaling Director Smith with a tap to his ear.
[Understood. Recommend a switch from thermite to something more stable to help mitigate R-1421’s higher reality levels. Otherwise, there is potential for unstable thermite on the other side,] James said. Then, before Strauss could respond, he pretended to cut the connection, leaving a ‘JAMES Unit Offline’ message for when Strauss tried to reply.
He listened in as Strauss and Ramirez talked, then noted that they cut themselves off mid-sentence. That was something to dig into.
Then James re-wired almost all his processes back to their defaults, leaving only a pair in Strauss’s augs as insurance and intelligence-gathering. He’d never felt more octopus-like.