Heir of G.O'D. Revelations Page 13

  “How? All calls connect over the Sol networks. When Sol goes, all communications might go with it. How the frack is he supposed to make a fracking call?”

  “The headsets still worked last time,” Denver snaps.

  Samir coughs, “We’ve been checking the shut-down code, everything’s going. Including Umbra, and all their comms.”

  “I’m sure someone will sort it, Ana,” Mika says.

  “How? And when?” I wait for someone to answer, but the room is silent. My anxiety grows, “Who can tell me when?”

  Silence. Someone in the room pours drinks and places a cup of hot black tea in my hands. I can tell by the perfume wafting around me, it’s Musa. “This is your choice, Ana. I said we would confirm within ten minutes.”

  “It’s not her decision,” Denver says, kicking something, a chair I think by the clatter.

  “Really? Are you in charge, Denver?”

  “Of my team, yes. Changing plans now is too dangerous.”

  “Interesting. Ana, I can take you there and bring you back here or to the station. I might be able to arrange transport back to your container if you want. Or, you can just stay here.”

  “Will it be safe?”

  “Nowhere is safe. You know that. Not now the Church is mobilising for Baktun. We know they’re preparing something for when Sol falls, but we can’t get close enough to them to find out what. You have a choice; either way it’s risky. Do you continue as you are now, perhaps make new plans with Celal, or hope Sol is saved, or do you risk meeting Celal while you can? Only you can decide.”

  If I could, I would join Denver in pacing the room, but I can’t do that because this is not my home and frack knows where everything is. People guide me about, and this morning Denver described what was served on the plates at breakfast. Right now, I feel vulnerable and entirely reliant on the people around me. Something niggles though; it’s not just me taking the risk.

  “Can you take me to the terminal safely?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Ana…” Denver says, his voice heavy with warning.

  I ignore him. “Drop me at Al Ghubaiba, Musa, and leave. No point in putting everyone at risk.”

  “That’s insane, Ana! What the frack’s got into you?” Denver’s shout slices through the room. Loud footsteps echo towards me, and his hands snake under my arms. I resist and wriggle, but he’s too strong.

  “Get the frack off me!”

  Denver ignores me, wrapping an arm around my chest and holding me still. Somehow, I manage to spin enough that my swinging knee connects with his groin.

  “This is insane. You are insane,” Denver yells as he drops me to the floor. “Go kill yourself, if that’s what you want. Pack and move, SCAR.” Denver storms away and the room bursts into action as chairs scrape and plates and cups rattle, and the team follow him out the door.

  “Denver …”

  “I don’t want to hear it, Mikie.”

  The SCAR trio follow their leader, and we wait in silence as the echo of their boots fades into the distance. A moment later and the footsteps stop, replaced by the murmur of a distant argument. My heart skips a beat at the thought of them coming back, but then the steps begin again, gradually growing quieter. A distant door opens with a squeak, then slams shut.

  “That was …”

  “Denver being Denver,” I finish for her.

  “If you’re sure, I’ll make the call?”

  Denver’s exit feels a little like I’ve just waved off a life-raft as I stand aboard a sinking ship. I made my choice though and I nod, not trusting my voice. Musa wanders out of range to make her call.

  “Ana,” Samir’s familiar rich accent echoes from across the room. He takes my hand and presses a plastic card into it. “I’ve messaged the configuration settings. You must be cautious with this. You know what happens to people who get caught with a fake ID?”

  I nod because everyone does – anyone caught with a fake ID is imprisoned and loses a hand. Changing your appearance is permitted within Sol, provided you only use one account. I make a pact with myself to dispose of the fake as soon as I hold the new visor in my hands. I will burn it and watch the flames—real flickering red and orange flames, that exude real warmth—as it melts away. “What name did you choose for it?”

  “You’re going to love it. Remember that book you never stopped going on about, the one where people fly by ingesting metals for fuel?”

  “The Mistborn books?”

  “That’s them. Happy birthday, Valette Vincent.”

  I can’t help but clap my hands. The name is a subtle play on the name of my favourite character. “Very clever! It’s awesome, Samir,” I squeal, dragging his sleeve to pull him close enough to hug, and grinning when I discover he’s just as awkward at hugging realworld.

  -20-

  “Is it still parkland?” I ask, checking the grounds circling the station in-Sim.

  “Not anymore. It’s a container yard now.”

  Another part of realworld Dubai that’s nothing like the in-Sim version. “Where are you going to wait again?”

  “There’s a tower just south of the station. The team is setting up there.”

  The tower, apparently, is one of four. Each tall enough to house framework on the roof to support the solar-panel ceiling. I busy myself trying to picture what it’s like, as we sit in the vehicle parked a street from the terminal, awaiting Celal’s signal.

  “Are you sure you want to do this, Ana?”

  Am I?

  I’ve seen the movies in-Sim, where infinite parallel universes exist, each one slightly different due to the choices that people make. I never understood the multiverse theory, but Denver likes those classic movies, and so I got dragged along to a few screenings on the Moon. This moment feels like one of those choices. However, I’m a little like Neo from The Matrix; I already made a choice, and now I must understand it. I chuckle at my profound stream of internal bull-frack. The release settles my nerves a little and, by her huge sigh, Musa’s too.

  “Here,” she says, dropping something small and metallic into my hand.

  I roll it in my fingers and realise what it is. “A locket?”

  “I noticed the one you constantly fiddle with in-Sim. I assumed it was a realworld inflexion you copy in Sol. But then yesterday I saw you weren’t wearing one, so I got you this. It’s gold, not silver, but it’s almost the same.”

  “Thank you. I don’t know what to say.” I reach out my hand, and she grips it firmly.

  “Perhaps it can be the first thing you see.” My heart leaps at the thought.

  Musa climbs out of the Jeep, checking in with the team via comms. I fit the earpiece unit that Musa gave me earlier, and I’m ready to go. The door beside me opens, and Musa takes the locket from my hand and fastens it around my neck. After I tuck it inside my clothing, she assists me until my feet rest firmly on the solid floor. In the distance, I can detect the sounds and smells of a terminal. Most of all though, I can smell the salty sea from the harbour somewhere behind us. A strong breeze sweeps in, swirling around my ankles and pooling up dust that makes me cough. I pull a bandana from my pocket and fumble-tie it around my nose and mouth. Concentrating on Musa’s voice through the earpiece, I listen to her instructions and step forward.

  “The road is perfectly flat Ana, no obstructions. How fast can you walk?”

  “Are you sure it’s flat?”

  “Yes. Trust me.”

  Trust. The word alone is enough to fill my head with the many and frequent warnings from Denver. Not only am I trusting someone, I have also abandoned all caution. If I survive, I must start being more careful again.

  “Sure. Is the engineer here yet?” I question quietly.

  “He is. The team has him and his assistant in view.” We start to move along the street, our boots quiet on the compressed dust. After a couple of steps, I find my rhythm and follow Musa’s lead as we walk. “They should be just around this corner… Yes! There he is, beside
the station wall, away from the entrance.”

  “Is this really going to happen?”

  Musa squeezes my hand. “Yes, Ana. It is.”

  I can feel Musa’s excitement in her grip, even though we’re both wearing haptic gloves. As we decrease our pace, her clothing rustles as she turns her head back and forth.

  “Ana. Thank you for accommodating us.” Baran takes my hand and shakes it, his voice different to yesterday, more wary, nervous even.

  “Will this take long?” Musa questions, her voice tight with anxiety.

  “A few minutes.” I hear a sound, Celal opening his case I assume.

  “I’m sorry,” shouts Musa as gunfire explodes all around us. Louder, she adds “No, wait it’s…”, but her voice is drowned out by a crescendo of bedlam.

  I freeze as something hot, wet, and sticky splatters my face. I’m thrown to the ground, only managing to turn my head at the last moment. Dirt plumes around me sticking to the hot, wet blood. In the Arena I’d know what to do, out here, outside, I’m like a new-born. I curl up in a foetal position and cover my head with my arms.

  “Who is it?” I screech through my terror. No one answers, but the rat-a-tat-tat of bullets striking metal and glass echoes all around me. A can of something lands to my right and rolls to a stop against my leg. It hisses, and the stench of something acrid fills my nostrils. I gasp for breath and cough as the stinging smoke fills my lungs, despite the bandana tied around my face. I feel like I’m drowning, with each desperate gasp for clean air burning my lungs. Someone else coughs close to me. Heavy footsteps rush closer and hands drag at my feet. I try to resist, but all I can do is heave in the poisoned air. The gloved hands pull at my arms, and I’m flipped up and over someone’s shoulder. The man—the person too big to be female—starts to move, pinning the backs of my thighs with his arm. I struggle frantically, but futilely. He rushes forward as other footsteps sound around us, followed by fresh bursts of gunfire. Louder, closer gunfire.

  Without warning, he grunts and topples forward to his knees. I’m thrown back as he falls, somehow protecting the back of my head as I crash to the ground. He lands, groaning from pain, on top of my lower legs, pinning me down. His chest still rises as he sucks in air, his breath ragged and wet, like he’s gargling, or breathing through water. With a loud, shuddering gasp, he stops breathing, stops moving.

  More people approach, shooting as they close in.

  Someone pulls the dead man off me and presses a cloth seeped in chemicals over my nose and mouth. I become drowsy, even as someone lifts me again. Whoever holds me moves at speed, the cloth still pressed over my mouth. The shooting, the chemical smell, the other footsteps all fade away as I find darkness beckoning and slip into unconsciousness.

  “R, get her safe. C, protect…” I hear as I fade. I recognise the voice from somewhere.

  -21-

  My head hurts and my throat burns. But I’m alive and laying on something soft. The place smells familiar too, like home. Someone close to me paces impatiently.

  “I think she’s waking up.”

  “Mika?”

  “Yeah, Ana.” I try to sit, but his ham-like palm presses against my chest and eases me back. “Be still. Here, drink this.”

  He places a metal cup into my trembling hands. The drink is warm and bears a rich aroma that I’ve never smelt before. I take a sip. The fluid is thicker than I expected and tastes sweet with a sharp and acidic aftertaste. “What is it?” I ask. The effort makes me cough, and I drink a mouthful of the sweet and sour mixture. It helps a little.

  “It’s medicine, we added some boiled water.”

  “Made from honey, Ana. And lemons.” Two things I’m aware of, but have never tasted before. Wild bees became extinct a long time ago due to the lack of flowers. Lemon trees are still grown artificially according to the boards, although I don’t know anyone who’s seen a real one. Taking another sniff of the drink, I find it quite sharp and tart.

  “Denver? Where am I?”

  “Back home, where else? Stop speaking and drink.”

  “How did I get here?”

  “Drink your medicine first, then we’ll explain.”

  I conclude that honey and lemon are unlikely to make my regular shopping list. Perhaps honey alone might, but lemons are just too sour. My throat does feel a little better though, less raw, although I now need something to take the tang of the medicine away. I reach out with my hand, find my bedside table, and put the cup on it. I shuffle along the bed and pull myself up, then take two steps before realisation dawns on me; I never expected to be back here and still be blind.

  “What happened?”

  “Musa set you up. We rescued you.”

  The accusation is the last thing I expected to hear, and I bark out an ironic laugh before I can stop myself. “Musa was standing with me.”

  “Not when we arrived. Ana, the place was full of Sol-Corp security. We barely made it out.”

  “You weren’t supposed to be there. You went home.”

  “No. We followed.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “It was chaos. Sol-Corp wasps stormed out from the terminal. One shot at you and hit that engineer. After that it was like an Arena respawn and Sol-Corp were the Dastarders. They filmed it all on the terminal security.”

  I’ve hardly ever seen anything recorded realworld because cameras are so scarce now, and those that exist are attached to private corporate security, or sometimes fixed to key buildings for protection. Realworld is nothing like the Orwellian coverage of the millennium. A station terminal might have a security camera on the roof, perhaps, but why film outside? “What about Celal?”

  Someone squeezes my shoulder, by the size of the hand it can only be Mika. “He didn’t make it, Ana. Sorry.”

  “Dead? What about my visor?”

  The silence is answer enough. The realisation that both Celal and my new visor are gone strikes me like a punch to the gut, harder than any emotion I’ve ever experienced. My mind is a void, maybe this is what the Bleakness felt like? Hands slide underneath my arms, and Denver is carrying me before I realise that I collapsed on the floor.

  “Ana. Ana, calm.”

  “My visor, my visor…” is all I can say.

  “Ana, please,” Denver whispers as he carries me to the bed. I’m too distraught to struggle. My new visor, gone. I pull my knees up to my chest and wrap my arms around my shins. Someone tries to take my hands, but I shrug them off and start rocking. “How could you?” I mumble into the room.

  “How could we what? What the frack. We saved your life!”

  “Who let her in here?”

  “See,” squeaks Nele, “I told you she was an ungrateful fracker.” I half-listen to her as she stomps her way out of my container.

  “There was no need for that, Ana.”

  Typical Denver, protecting his darling little assassin. “Frack you.”

  “You don’t understand how close you were to being killed. Musa set you up!” says Mika, not Denver. I can’t remember the last time Mika was this angry. “Here.” Mika rams my old visor against my chest. Watch it. See for yourself.”

  I don’t want to watch the news-stream, or anything else. Why would she set me up? It makes no sense. I ignore them all and let my old visor tumble to the floor. If I don’t respond, I might wake up back in Musa’s warehouse.

  “Don’t believe me?” Denver asks, mimicking his father’s condescending tone with perfection. “Think about it. If Sol goes, Musa’s in-Sim rep won’t matter anymore, all that trade goes. She’s desperate to make as many $uns as she can now, before Baktun.”

  Denver’s logic seems fuzzy, but a kernel of truth nags at me; maybe Musa does stand to make as much, if not more, if Sol black-screens. We drove around her vast warehouse in a buggy, but we never once went outside; the whole complex must have been massive. I suspect that Musa has been stockpiling goods for years, building a black-market and hedging her bets just in case Sol is switched off, forever
.

  “Just watch it Ana. Come on, Mika.” The pair follow the Mouse and my door slides closed behind them. Suddenly I’m alone again, stuck in my prison with nothing but my thoughts and a dying Sol for company. Worse still, all hope of getting my visor upgrade is gone.

  I am unaware of how long I’ve been slouching in my bed, feeling sorry for myself. I test the ground around my feet for the visor, then fetch some water. Ultimately, with nothing else to do, I dress in my haptics, pull on my old visor and hook up to the rig. I ignore the bottomless abyss of marketing spam, and all the messages from Denver and his team, and the numerous messages from Samir. Despite how I feel, curiosity eventually prevails. I head to my Sol-apartment, go to the movie room and pull up the media menu. Denver’s right about the camera feeds. The station boasts full coverage thanks to a 360-degree roof-mounted camera. Realworld footage is generally sparse, and isn’t usually part of the network broadcasts, but it looks like some snert sold the footage to the primary local UMET channel. I swipe the story onto my three-metre movie wall and push play on the hover-remote.

  I watch as an incomprehensible swarm of travellers exit the station, more even than I pictured in my mind yesterday when we travelled through to Jebel Ali Metro. The headline ‘CORP WARS?’ spins across the centre of the screen, rotating and changing colour until it resolves into the ridiculously proportioned avatar of ‘Dub@i0r@cal3’ – the name of our local lead news host. DubaiOracle, to use her alphabetical name, is an annoying sanctimonious fracker, and likely has links with COGOD. Whoever it is that funds the show, her reports overflow with Corps’ bull-frack and propaganda.

  “In downtown Dubai today,” drones Dub@i0r@cal3 in her nasal monotone drawl, “Sol-Corp forces ran into a unit believed to be MOSSAD. Neither the Mediterranean Alliance ambassador stationed in Doha, nor Sol-Corp administration confirmed or denied any involvement.”

  The camera zooms in and focuses on the north end of the deserted street where the unmarked Jeep is parked. Four people wearing civilian clothing jump out – they’re too far away to see much detail, and their faces are covered with military masks, obscuring their identity. I watch with grim fascination as they head to the back of the vehicle and soon reappear loaded with a small arsenal of weaponry. With a precision of movement seen daily in Arenas, the team heads towards the station, disappearing inside a brick building tucked amongst all the metal stacks. I was right, I think to myself, the towers do support part of the solar roof. I pause the footage and stare at the frozen image, trying to find myself, like some old-fashioned ‘Where’s Wally’ game.