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A woven wire net covered the low ceiling. It gathered electricity from outside power leaks, and hid the electric signals of anything beneath. The floor was carpeted with large colorful rugs and the walls by heavy forest green curtains, tied back in places where feature-lights lit paintings hanging on bare concrete. Great bookshelves sat against two of the walls near a tan sofa pit. The wall to my right housed com-vision workstations. The largest CV angled toward the sofa pit for easy viewing and use. The fourth wall held a kitchen counter and cabinet area. All around the commonroom’s center, two dozen armchairs clustered into groups.
Barren headed for the sofapit.
Two of the CV workstations were occupied. One by Serene, a blonde woman in a gray zippered jumpsuit who’d taught my kid sister how to be a hack when we first joined the underground. e-girl, the pink-haired tenth-grade dropout sister-of-mine, sat at the other. Two more saints chatted in armchairs near the bookshelves. A tall pale man wore a neatly pointed gray-flecked beard and a stone-gray turtleneck. A brown-paper wrapped package and a battered aluminum briefcase sat beside his chair. He listened attentively to a silver-haired pipesmoker in a tweed herringbone jacket. Their conversation died as I approached. “Hymn to Him.”
“Glory,” Grandpa replied in his Queen’s-English accent. “The children of Terminal have been evacuated through those secret tunnels of yours. I’ve placed a request with the Elders for more sandmen to join our muscle cell, and they’re sending us a pup. As soon as he arrives Lightfast will upload his mindware.”
I faked outrage. “You-gotta be kiddin-me!” I said with scrunched eyes and clenched fists. “I tell you we’ve got Neros crashin’ our shelter, and all the Elders give us is a single cubbie-rookie-pup?”
Grandpa stood and put his hands on my shoulders. "Calamity, don’t blow a vessel. They’ve just given us Barren, and our new man was a peacekeeper sniper. You’ve not given me the opportunity to tell you that Ward Eleven has lent us seven additional sandmen.”
I chuckled, poked him in the belly, and steered him back to his chair, "Relax, I'm just funnin’ ya. I know the Body of Christ has all the manpower of a vending machine. I offer into evidence, exhibit one: defending an orphanage against all the resources of a global government with ten sandmen, seven of them borrowed.”
The tall pale guy, Lightfast, drew breath to speak, but Grandpa took the floor “I told you that we are always outnumbered. Had we the manpower, you’d have had far more assistance in the Mammon Clinic rescue.”
I slumped into the nearest chair. “Got a secret. Over the last four weeks I’ve been all over Terminal's security issues. Since talking you out of closing the place down, I’ve worked with sandmen from the surrounding Wards. Sandmen who’ve agreed to help protect Terminal in a time of crisis. Sandmen who accepted a certain chip from me, know exactly where to be, and what to do. They all know a code word, which after calling you, I sent to a drop that will forward the word to each of them.”
"Oh." Grandpa shot a thoughtful frown at Lightfast, who sat smiling.
I continued. “The three from our muscle-cell, your borrowed seven and my recruited nine gives us nineteen sandmen versus the One State. So they’d better send an army. I’ll brief the pups when they get here. And I hope it’s soon ’cause there’s only three and a half hours until all Hell breaks loose.”
Grandpa rose with a weak smile. “I can’t believe how much you’ve matured since your arrival. I’m beginning to understand how you've made the ten-most-wanted list so quickly.
"On another matter, we've all been waiting to hear of Legacy's fate." He leaned forward and flipped me a printout. "It's a D.C. court transcript e-girl chased-up in the new public records."
I read aloud. It was the judge‘s proclamation:
“Sandmen, your trial has been concluded while you slept. The One State finds you guilty of fundamental terrorism. Fourteen of you are to be sent to Rehab Ward 18.”
Razz. D.C.‘s 18. Word on the street ranked it the most notorious rehab on the planet.
“The terrorist known as Legacy represents a particular danger to society, and is hereby sentenced to the Lost Zone.
“Guys, what a lost zone?”
Grandpa answered. “Serene researched the term. From what she can tell, the Lost Zone is an uninhabited subtropical island somewhere in the South Sea, surrounded by a ten-megawatt electric forcefield.”
“Ten megawatts. How big is that?”
Grandpa smiled his bad-news smile. “Ten nuclear powered aircraft carriers. Have you ever read Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe?”
“No.”
“Well, suffice it to say we won’t be seeing Legacy ever again. He’s a castaway without hope.”
“Grandpa, you disappoint me. We’re never without hope, and you know it.”
“I stand corrected. He’s a castaway in need of a miracle. Please continue reading.”
“In addition, you will be exposed to prolonged electromagnetic static treatment. You will then be inserted through a temporary loophole in the force-field, which will complete the process and destroy all the mindware you carry.”
“They can un-re-form us? I’ve never heard of that.”
“Perhaps Lightfast can explain. It gets better—go on.” Grandpa gestured with the back of his hand.
“The process shall begin immediately. Gentlemen, please apply the grade-six tranq.
“Court reporter description: The pronounced terrorist, Legacy, claimed a gavel banging on a tranq headache ‘cruel and unusual punishment’, then attacked the judge.
I chuckled. “Yeah that’s Legacy all right.
“The bailiff triggered the pronounced terrorist’s injection collar, carrying out the sentence immediately.”
I flipped the print-out on and end-table.
“The Body Surfers are attempting to locate this Lost Zone. Now, I’ve some business to attend to. Lightfast, please don’t forget to nag Calamity.”
Lightfast casually adjusted his turtleneck and spoke in that voice of his that could ripple water. “Hi CK.”
Humility's what I liked best about the FBT's most-wanted man, and the most famous saint in the underground. Smartest guy I'd ever met, had the faith of a Seraphim, but he spoke with you, not down to you.
“Sorry for my homeless manners, it’s just that I’m a few months behind on sleep. Hello back atcha(1).” I sat up straight and offered a sideways fist.
He bumped it. "Don't mention it; Grandpa couldn’t wait to speak with you face to face. I’m sorry about the Legacy report.”
“You-kiddin’-me? I thought he’d been enrolled in the organ donor program. I’m thrilled he’s sittin’ on a beach, toes in the sand, eatin’ coconuts! Even without mindware, that guy’s smart enough to take care of himself, mindware or no . . . They can really remove our mindware?
“In a sense. This is cutting-edge, and word is still trickling in.” He sat back and crossed his legs. “Technology cannot apprehend the spiritual dimension. In simple terms, when humanity fell, our souls were jarred from our bodies—again at the Great Flood. BW-tech goes through the backdoor, shoving the body into better alignment with the soul.
Lightfast looked very serious. “What can be done with tech can be undone by tech. I pray for Legacy and you should too. I can’t imagine what his brain has gone through. Through the ringer, so to speak.”
I stared at the carpets. “We’ve gotta find him.” I dipped my head and winced back tears. “He sacrificed himself to save my freakin’ life—and Grandpa’s. You know the Code, no saint left behind.”
Lightfast reached out and pushed my shoulder. “We are trying, but all we can do is our best. You know that. Walk in the Spirit.”
I elbowed my armrests, laced my fingers, and squeezed to steel myself. “Yeah, I know. Just that I owe him.”
“Now that’s not in the Agape Code. He made his own choice, and God’s will will be done. You know it. Get over it—until we go home, life on this ball of dirt‘s all pain punctuated with moments of joy.”
“Pretty pessimistic worldview.”
Lightfast grinned. “Welcome to fallen Earth, Earthling. Now I’m changing the subject to the old Brit’s nag. How‘ve you been sleeping lately?”
“Not real well.”
“So I’ve heard.” Lightfast leaned forward, elbows a-knee. “It’s your responsibility to keep yourself in useable condition for the Boss. If you allow yourself to get below eighty percent, when crisis hits this mission, you'll be useless. What’s your somnolence index rating?”
“You really don’t want to know.”
“CK, what’s your get-up-’n-go rating?”
“How’d you know I call it that?”
“CK.”
I rubbed my red eyes.
“CK.”
“Not a lot, aw’right(2)?” I flopped an arm on my lap.
Lightfast just stared. Patience of a freakin’ saint.
“After today’s action, sixty-five,” I admitted.
Lightfast sat back. “Thank you. Make that number change. Consider yourself nagged.”
“You are half the reason I came. I also need to upload the new guy when he gets here, but we need to point-update your mindware as well.”
I waved my palms defensively. “Hey, uh-uh. You know I don’t have room in my memory for . . .”
“I’ll never forget packing your head with more data than you had brain space." He winked.
“Not funny.”
"Took nearly an hour for your head to stop spinning, and I'm not going through that again. Not to worry. Mindware point-updates only replace what’s in your memory. No new data will be added.”
“Good. Don’t want to be seasick again.”
“And we were even on land.”
"We were even under land. What’s the update about?”
I heard what sounded like: “An-ez-ka Vay-check.”
So I said, “Bless you.”
He stonewalled my great sense-o-humor.
I shrugged my palms a-ceiling and shook my head.
“Anezka Vacek is an Olympic fencing gold-medalist. She joined the Body of Christ in the European Union four days ago. Her brain was virtually dissected by the Paris Body-Surfers in an effort to improve the current swordplay mindware skill-set.”
I drew breath to object, but he knew where I was going.
“I know, techniques are very different between a short-sword and a fencing foil. Trust me, if there were a gold-medal for the Roman short-sword, she’d have won that too. This woman is to swordplay what Michael Jordan was to basketball.
“And while I’m on the topic, these are what you asked for,” he picked up the brownpaper-wrapped package next to his chair and tossed it at me.
I caught it left handed and smiled crooked. “These be what I think they be?”
“Merry Christmas.”
“Ho-ho-holy smokes! Sooner than I’d ever expected!” Brown paper flew.
“My lab boys work fast.”
The last of the shredded paper fell away, and two scabbarded short swords lay across my lap. Their hilts and plain T-shaped hand guards surprised me with the poorest craftsmanship I’d ever seen. They were plastic. A fat groove ran around all edges where the mold hadn’t met properly and excess liquid polymer oozed out—mold-flashing. I flipped them back at him “Real cute. Got these at a dollar store, did'ja?”
He batted them out of mid-air, back at me. “Just draw one, ya techno-ignorant cubbie.”
How flippant. I recaught them. "You're not serious."
"Too. All the time. Isn't that what you're always telling me?"
"You can't help yourself. That's just how the Boss made ya." I drew one of the pathetic weapons from its cheap scabbard. Good news was its double blade had been sharpened to remove the mold-flashing that edged its hilt. The bad news was the crude sharpening job left gouges and scratches all along its length. And it looked like the mold had sand in it when the plastic had been injected. Particles speckled all across its surface. I angled the weapon at the floor and winced at the BoC's Einstein. “You’re not serious.”
“They’re prototypes molded from a fiber-plastic resin. After heat tempering, they have a tensile strength higher than tungsten carbide.” Lightfast explained patiently.
I replied with an honest belly laugh.
He waited until I finished before speaking, measuring me with his scientist’s observant eye. "You know, we got you off the street, but you've got a basic education. Sometimes it’s a real trick figuring out how to effectively communicate with you. Tungsten and carbide powders are forged together at a touch over 1315 degrees Celsius. It's among the hardest yet least brittle known substances. In plain English, this plastic won't even scratch. Spiff?"
"That’s better. Spiff."
"The granules on the blade are a molecularly altered ferrous alloy. After sharpening, they were exposed to static microwaves that baked them harder than diamonds. The electro-magnetic blades can be set manually with thumb-switches, or with a mindware thought.”
I considered the crude swords with wide new eyed respect and ran my fingers along the rough blade flats, and whispered, “Ace.”
“I thought you’d become fast friends. I have something else for you, too.”
“A plastic ray-gun?”
“Not funny.” He opened his battered aluminum briefcase, removed a Chicago White Sox ball-cap and put it on. A braid of wiring trailed from his thinking cap to the briefcase’s tangled circuitry. That mindware update. “Sit still and look deep into my eyes.”
I pretended to check the time on my watchless wrist. "Oh, that. Hey, think I’m late for a dentist appointment."
"Big baby."
I hated doing this. He sat adjusting my mind with wide gold eyes, while my scalp itched chronic-dandruff. I didn’t understand it. Brain-Wave technology was a combination of anatomy, quantum physics, and com-vision science. Re-formation added applied Theology, a field of study pioneered by Lightfast. He'd invented every generation of BW-tech. Mindware, third-gen BW tech, was a kind of software loaded right into my brain. I know it made one stronger and faster. My senses rated way past predator sharp and I healed hundreds of times faster than an un-loaded person. It also messed with the wrinkles on my brain's surface, which is what made my scalp itch like bugs were crawlin’ on it.
"You ‘bout done?"
“Shut-up and sit still. It’s good for you.” Lightfast said in a monotone.
So’s bran. Don’t mean I gotta like it.
His saint eyes bore into my mind. Eyes, they say, are the window to the soul. Apparently to the brain as well. I sat on my hands and wriggled my fingers. I’d heard his explanation many times over. Lightfast likens humankind’s Fall to dropping a sensitive lab device. The body and soul were jolted and misaligned. Re-formation recalibrates us, like he'd have to adjust his dropped lab tool. So here he sat, shoving my brain around to a better fit with my spiritual dimension part. All I felt was rabid itchy. I recalled his words when I first came underground. “Re-formation re-forms the spiritual you with the physical you. Everyone knows about his or her animal self, but few know anything of their spiritual self. Re-formation opens your senses to both sides. Someone once said that faith is the distance between the heart and mind. Re-formation overlaps the heart and mind.”
“All finished,” he said, removing his cap.
I scratched at my itchy head that itched no longer. “Man, I hate that.”
He ignored me. “I have a saint to upload and I know you’ll have things to put in order before tonight. Get some sleep,” Lightfast admonished.
I laughed and slapped his shoulder on my way to the supply room, but he repeated, "Get some sleep,” he repeated. “Can't save a sinner from himself. Apostacia."
"I love Italian. That a New or Old Testament recipe?"
"New Testament Ancient Greek, ya lightweight. It means you know you’re doing wrong but you do it anyway!" he called after me.
Guilt froze my witty come-back. I knew what Apostasy meant, but my mindware just opened the seamless concrete door to the equipment room, I had scads of ambush work ahead, and so little time. "Thanks for the swords," I called, and went for the easy escape.
Sandmen milled around in Terminal’s loft, small-talkin’ rumors to ease their own pre-fight tension. The simple pole-barn had once housed some kind of small business until the Capone turned the place into a dance club. This loft area above a few drywalled rooms had been his office, overlooking the warehouse-slash-dance-floor. e-girl sat at what used to be Junkman’s antique real-wood desk. I slouched in a fancy silk upholstered Adirondack-styled chair right in front of her. Because of the virtual goggles strapped to my face, I could no longer see the sad abandoned toys strewn across the orphanage’s childless main floor. Many hours before, the kids had been spirited invisibly away through secret tunnels according to Operation Exodus’ evacuation plan. Right now I was busy seeing through e-girl’s eyes.
Her virtual-self sat on a padded stool in a spherical chrome room, fun-house-reflection warped in mirror-like walls. Her virtual personna wore a close fitting silky jumpsuit the same shade of hot-pink as her real life china-girl cut hair. Her sleeves ended in lace gloves and her leggings attached to high-heeled sneakers that laced up shins like knee-high boots. My tenth-grade CV-nerd of a little sister was all Anime Supermodel-Barbie. In a word, sick.
My virtual-goggles' window-on-her-world piggybacked her actions. It wasn’t just visual—I sensed everything through her senses. We weren’t even in the Web. This was an isolated system. This tiny tech-world consisted only of local hardware and devices. Like the Panasonic RSCs I'd had installed weeks ago. The remote security cams monitored from the rooftop in overlapping sweeps. I chose this model because it was disguised as a hanging flowering basket. Pretty sly. Sly means alive and free to fight the good fight one more day.
Scenes from our four overlapping RSCs played on the chrome room’s wall-monitors. e-girl’s stool stayed still but the room spun, so over and over, I watched crumbling high-rises behind concertina wire northeast, same thing southeast, rusting polebarn and blocks of abandoned buildings southwest, industrial park sweat-shop slavemills northwest. Then more highrises. I couldn't figure out how the spinning views didn't spill my sister's stomach. She sat with heels hooked on the stool's highest rung, elbows propped on knees, chin in her palms, watching. Focused.
Then she sat up straight.
e-girl thought-speeched everyone. Rooftop motion.
Then only to me. There. She pointed north-west to the slave-mills. Sure enough, three blobs settled at a rooftop’s edge. And there, exiting the highrises and taking cover behind those cars. Look at ’em all! There were at least twenty.
Sis, I count five more behind those stacks of plastic pallets next to the polebarn.
Got ‘em. I’m bootin’ up a procedure. If we’re catchin’ this many with naked eyes, there’s got to be more. Check this. Red dots appeared everywhere across the wall’s video feeds. The procedure counted 173 confirmed bad-guys. Terminal was surrounded, and they did bring an army.
“Uhh! Kid, we can’t take ‘em all!” she panicked out loud.
Sis, hacks may have skills, but sand-boyz got toys. Non-lethal violence is my department, so don’t you worry ’bout it.
She gave the proper reply. Don’t you worry ’bout what I worry ’bout!
Most'a these guys are just perimeter guard. Scan some targets. They’re non-BW tech humans with guns. She scanned three, and after zooming-in, small data-screens appeared in mid-air, confirming my claim.
She closed the screens. Oh thanks, I feel way better now. Goody skippin’ gumdrops. How many rounds can 173 fully-automatic weapons put out in a minute?
Depends on make, model, and size of the clip, but I’m telling ya, you're on my turf now. The army they brought is outnumbered. You trust me?
e-girl sighed.
If you open that random-frequency conference call that I’d asked you to prep, I’ll show ya why you should be keepin’ your gumdrops dry.
Nothing.
Finally she asked, Um, you mean ‘please’, right?
So you got some faith in your big brother's talents, ya big tease?
She hummed the theme song from the hit-movie, Pop-Girlz and Boy-Bandz.
Please don’t do that! I really thought you were afraid. Please, kay?
Just afraid I'm not doing enough. Torturing you helps me get by. And I’m not stupid—I know you paramilitary types like to get into position before you do a thing. Good manners cost nothing, dearest Calamity. The yellow phone icon appeared on my com-shades. Freakin’ kid sisters.
The yellow phone stopped flashing—connected. Welcome to the shooting gallery, y'all. Parabolic Mike, start-us-up.
Mike, our periscope and spotter, crouched in the newly installed bulletproof heating ventilation and air conditioning penthouse on the roof. It was wired with more signature cloaking tech than the Pentagon. e-girl’s Web room with its four monitors flickered like there’d been a power surge, which meant the snoop plugged his body-surfer written chip into his com-shades' temple jack. Snoops were wired with a normal reformed saint’s sensory perception times-ten. A blue dot appeared at each compass point, all on high-rise roof-tops—waaay out at four kilometers from Terminal.
Mike spoke. Attention ladies and gents, it’s show-time. Those are BoC snipers all-decked-out with fifty caliber automatic sniper rifles. Their mindware runs a constant windspeed matrix, and allows them to hold their breath for fifteen minutes. With reformed AS-50 cover fire this gig should be slacker than a fish-line in the Cal-Sag channel.
I chuckled. The river had caught fire a few years back. What do you use to put-out a river? It burned for days.
I joined in. Blue dots are saints, red are Neros. Let’s see how many entry-team Neros make it past our sharp-shooters. Mike, please start a stop-watch on your com-shades. My guess is we’ve got about a minute till the floor-show begins. e-girl, can you please add Terminal’s interior camera feeds?
On they came. I zoomed in as fifteen blue dots descended the stairs from the loft.
Spread out, y'all. If you read my file, you know that red bad-guys mark their perimeter. Red dots that turn orange mark their entry team—close combat units. Let's bottleneck ’em—take these guys down as they walk in our doors and give our snipers more time. Can I get an Amen?
I slid off my goggles to a chorus of Amen and spoke quietly. “Sis, I’m goin’ com-shades. You-’n-Mike are our eyes now.”
“CK, we’ve got no cams in the secret-tunnel orphan-exit. Entry team Nero’s could sneak right up on us from there.”
She was right. I hadn’t thought of having sensors in a secret tunnel, and our tech-toys wouldn't detect underground Neros. “No way they could know about that, but I’ll check the lock. Don’t worry Sis, this is way easier than it looks.”
She’d already turned her attention back into the local network and gave no reply.
I slipped on my com-shades, ran down the stairs four-at-a-time, and checked the freshly installed manhole cover. Locked. With eight two-inch hardened-steel rods, it would take a battleship's maingun to open the thing.
I ran for the front door and nodded to the other shortsword bearing sandmen who ringed the main entrance and put my back to Terminal’s front wall. Bullets are near useless in combat against Brain-Wave technology opponents. Hand to hand combat only results in both parties knocking each other over with each other’s Brainwaves. Which is why we all fought with twin swords. Our intention was not to cut, but to stun.
I drew Lightfast’s new dollar store blades. Any moment now. I focused on my com-shades display. A dot-swarmed one square kilometer map showed heavy red on my lenses.
Watching for orange.
Barren leaned a beefy shoulder against my wall, swords held loosely. He wore a Kevlar duster.
I gave him a smile. “Don’t get too bulletproof comfortable over there.”
“Augh, you know me better than that.”
“Looks like you’re about to have a nap.”
“Nap a Nero maybe.” Barren pushed off the wall. “Let’s wake-up da house!” He rolled his neck, worked his shoulders, paced large strides, and boomed his voice to the room. “You feel good about this? I feel good about this. Let’s suit-up this Spirit walk. Pray it with me now, y’all.”
A Saint chorus rang the Sandman’s Prayer off the walls. “Yea though we walk the Valley of Death, we fear no evil, cause He’s made us the meanest hot-’n-heavy-rabid Spirit walkin’ saints in the valley! Props!” At the last word, everyone’s right-hand-sword-arms pointed up.
Barren paced toward me, indexed his forehead, and gave me a head-butt that knocked me back against the wall.
“We feelin’ it?” He raised fisted swords in thick fullback arms. “Gimmie an Amen three times!”
Three echoes.
No wonder this guy had a rep.
In my com-shade’s lenses upper right corner, Parabolic Mike’s team-stopwatch read forty-eight seconds as a series of thumps sounded along Terminal’s walls. That would be the entry team’s molecular bonding grapples.
Dots shot toward Terminal, streaked with speed.
Inside the fifty meter mark, they turned orange.
The red-counter dropped from 173 to 148, and a new orange-counter read Twenty-five.
Wasn't often we were so evenly matched. We’d win this ugly-quick.
I whooped aloud and thought speeched everyone These guys are about to be hurt. Let it go and, let God. Walk the Walk. I consciously gave-up my own will for His and my body shifted into overdrive.
Me? I was a passenger in my own body, along for the ride.
We’d grouped around Terminal's doors, but by their method of approach, it was obvious that this team wasn’t bothering with traditional methods of entering a building. Sandmen gathered in the room's center, forming a loose defensive half-circle, facing the outer walls.
Our four snipers opened up.
Ten orange dots disappeared in the same moment that a traffic wreck crashed the building.
Fourteen flat-black three-meter-tall power-assisted battlesuits punctured Terminal’s walls. Goliaths. Operator’s faces glared from behind clear face shields. The One-State’s latest version of BW-tech swiveled .30 caliber full-auto gun-mounts from robotic shoulders to sweep the room of all orphans and homeless. For a moment’s fraction, they all froze.
"No orphans? Gee, sorry," I lied.
I leapt at the nearest Goliath and switched my left blade to attract. Both his forearm snap-blades stuck to mine even as they sprang forth. We showered red sparks discharging BW energy. I smiled at his panicked expression before goin’ upside-his-head with the flat of my right blade. He toppled with the noise of a toppled forklift.
By the time those soundwaves washed past, I’d sprung behind my next target.
I paused for whole seconds to take-in my new partner’s words. Barren’s voice boomed, “What the Hell’s wrong with y’all, trashing a freakin’ orphanage? Take what’s comin’!” He backhanded a Goliath so hard it busted right out the wall. “Elvis has left the building!”
Barren’s spirit was highly-infectious. “Nice swing, Sammy Souza!” I called, as I batted one over-the-fence. It barely punched through the wall. Man, I needed sleep.
The room sizzled in sparks, like a crew of welders had just lit-up their torches. The battle-suits were full-military grade, but we had new skills, Spirit walk, and surprise.
The Goliaths pulled a stunt maneuver. That means at the exact same moment they all leapt high in the air to attack different opponents.
A stunt’s supposed to confuse.
Better luck next time.
Two more went all grand-slam.
A pair engaged me right and left. I turned on both magnets and just waited for backup.
Two seconds later I stepped behind the closest. Already engaged with two sandmen, I just swung at the mass of metal. The flats of my blades slapped his helmet where his ears should have been, and another forklift crashed. The few left had literally backs to walls, fending off multiple sandmen.
Barren again. “Try’n gun down kids right in front of me? Oh no you do not!” This time I took the time to look. Heavy tears tracked his face wet.
That froze me. Overdrive stuttered. At that moment, the Spirit spoke. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”
Then it hit me. I keyed my com-shades and re-checked my math. The orange counter had read twenty-five. Snipers took down ten. Twenty-five minus ten is fifteen. There were fourteen holes in the walls. On my lenses, one orange-dot close-combat unit lingered outside the front door. Their squad leader? Was this Nasty Nero?
I turned my back on the absolute blowout. Even though both sides used the most current gen-three tech, His will vs human will? Fergit-abowt-it(3).
I stepped into the front-door-frame, leading with my plastic (very funny, shut up), blade.
As my arm raised one unimpressive weapon at the orange dot on my com-shades, I looked through my lenses and what I saw slowed me just enough to miss my target.
Not a Goliath. A well-tanned Kevlar-duster-wearin stubble-headed young woman. She avoided my blade by tossing both of hers into the air, throwing herself into a backflip and recatching her swords. The first female I’d ever faced in combat and something else. No way.
With a thought I keyed a procedure on my com-shades that judged bone structure and development.
Her swords licked double quick and I ducked into the door-frame. When I peeked back around, she’d already fired a left-hand molecular-bonding grapple at the nearest building, ordered a high speed winch to reel it in, and left three words hanging in the air behind her. “What a Heartbreaker.” The procedure reported her to be an eighteen-year old Latina. It’s accent recognition procedure volunteered that her very slight accent was Colombian.
The blood drained from my face, and it wasn't from the sniper rounds that began popping against my loose-hanging Kevlar-duster. I knew this woman. What were the odds it was really her?
I retreated into the doorway and crouched to watch her fly across the parking lot.
Heartbreaker had escaped from me too many times in the Peacekeeper Com-Vision game. This chica even moved like her. Pure danger on-a-stick.
Heartbreaker had foiled me, beaten me, so many times over three years. I'd never seen her face but I knew her voice, her style, her strategy and techniques.
She and I now used the same real-life equipment and abilities as the virtual characters we gamed back then, but now my re-formed abilities should be able to crack her skull. I tried to wrap my mind around this. Was she an ex-Saint? Why hadn't she joined in the attack? Double agent?
Razz.
* * *
I zombied into mission and made-for e-girl's favorite CV-workstation. Her eyelids fluttered over her eyeball’s whites. “Sis.”
I knew it was bad to interrupt a hack in the Web, but this was that important. I rocked her shoulder. "Yo, Sis!"
e-girl shrieked and snapped upright in her chair. "CK! Never, ever . . ."
I rolled-up the adjacent workstation's chair, sat close and cut her with a whisper “Sorry, but I need you. I think I was made.”
“What?”
“I met someone. I mean I recognized someone. So she may have recognized me. Need you to chase a name for me. Heartbreaker. She's a twenty-three year-old Latina, if that helps.”
Her shoulders humped, all-indignant "You shocked me out of a hack because you finally got a girlfriend?" Then came the instinctive wicked-little-sister smile. “This is a whoop event! If I had champagne bottles, I‘d be popping corks.”
I glared best I could, but probably just looked tired. "She's the best Peacekeeper opponent I’d ever gamed against. The online game always automatically assigned Heartbreaker and I to opposing teams because of our cumulative high-scores."
e-girl rubbed her eyes and groaned. “One name is way-too-broad a chase term. I need parameters to narrow Heartbreaker.”
“Try this. Look in the PeaceKeeper championship log on the ID Software home page.”
She made a tsk sound that meant she was annoyed. “Even you can do this. It’s called Google. You're a waste of cyber-space.” Her mindware had already chased the data and the ID Software home-page displayed on her com-vision. She stabbed a bladed palm toward her screen. "Yeah, so?"
“What’s the name of the player who’d finished first place at the Headhunter Classic for the last two years?”
“It just says Heartbreaker. The bio's missing. Hold on.” She slid back in her recliner, and into the Web.
Ten seconds later she slid up “It’s not there.”
“Then find it.”
“No, I mean nothing’s there. It's weird. Just gashed Web-space. If someone had cut it, I'd be able to track it down. This was hacked out. No trail.”
I slouched in my chair. “Razz.”
That sister-smile re-appeared. “Hold it. You're tellin’ me this Hearthrob is the same person who beat you in Peacekeeper's Headhunter Championships the last two years? The bad-to-the-bone Calamity Kid lost to a mere girl?” Her laughter giggled sharp off our mission's common room walls.
I just stared at the floor and waited till she could hear me again. “Her name's Heartbreaker, she’s a woman not a girl, and it gets worse. She stole my tag-line.”
That only made her snort air through her nose and go-all-ROFL on me. More uncontrollable giggling. No respect, I tell ya.
When she could speak again, tears glistened her eyes. “Por widdo Putty-Tat(4).”
I sat dead-pan quiet ’til she kicked my shin.
“Ya know how I’d say "What a Calamity" when I blew myself up or when I pulled-off some spiff move?"
She shook her head, then nodded. Freakin’ sisters.
"Whenever Heartbreaker napped an opponent she’d spam the field with flashing sparkling floating words that read What a Heartbreaker! It was so obnoxious I just couldn't use What a Calamity anymore."
Laughter pealed.
"Please, Sis. This is serious. It's how I recognized her." I explained my encounter with the fifteenth orange-dot.
e-girl finally sobered-up, listened and asked, "So you know that this is the person you saw today because she used her tag-line—sorry—your tagline.”
I sighed. "I know it's her. She moves right, she speaks right, and she got away. She beat me again. It's her."
All humor finally ebbed from her face “I’ll put together a encyclopedic chase and scan the whole Web for this chica of yours, kay?”
I patted her knee “Thanks. And speakin’ of chase, how's your searches for Legacy and the legendary FBT system coming along?”
Her eyes beamed stress at the wall “Nothin’ new on Legacy, and the only reference to Lost Zone are in court records. I found my second FBT fake yesterday. Two seconds after I Sherlocked the thing, it was like someone unplugged the entire network from the Web. Freaking system just disappeared like a mirage.”
“Least I’m not the only one being ghosted.”
“I’m sayin’. Too many ghosts lately, I’m getting spooked. It’ll be nice to run a chase that will have answers.”
“I hope you’re right. How’s Mom-’n-Dad?”
“They got their stack-room in New Galilee. Mom’s a healer and Dad's uploading like Lightfast. Can you imagine Dad tickling your brain with gold eyes?"
I cleared my head with a quick shake. We shared a grin and I sighed. “I’m grabbin’ some downtime. Please wake me if you get anything on Heartbreaker.”
“Sleep fast, Kid.”
Translations:
1 at you
2 all right
3 Forget about it
4 Poor little pussycat
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