His earnest, stupid name, combined with his earnest, stupid nature, loosens something inside me I didn’t even know was compressed. This kid’s a burbie through and through, serving on the Wall, and he… likes us? I offer my hand across the table.
“Ash. Nice to meet you, Skyler. Sky.”
He shakes my hand gingerly, as if unable to believe it’s actually happening. I make sure not to crush his fingers.
“W-wow. I never thought I’d get a chance to meet the Ashura herself, along with her team.” He pulls his hand free, looking at it in wonder.
“Make sure you wash that at some point,” Wind says, still smiling. “You don’t know where she’s been.”
“Wind!” Damn irreverent Hajj girl.
Skyler laughs nervously, as if unsure whether he’s allowed to or not, then looks at the three of us.
“So, what is it you’re doing here? Didn’t you guys just clinch the ladder? Oh, and can I get a selfie for my socials? My friends’ll never believe me otherwise.”
Oh, crap. Sawyer said we weren’t supposed to talk to anyone.
“Uhhh, well, we were—”
A hand falls on my shoulder.
“Ashley and her friends were on a private boating cruise, celebrating their victory, and unfortunately their vessel foundered,” Sawyer says in a friendly tone, like a paternal uncle dropping in on a conversation. Laugh lines surrounding his eyes back up the lie, though not his irises. The void lurks within those merciless orbs. “Luckily, one of our esteemed Border Patrol ships was close enough to pick up the distress call, and brought them back here to recuperate. After all, it would be a tragedy to lose the inestimable SunJewel Warriors, champions of Infinite Game, bringers of glory to the Theocrophant, right after their most recent triumph.”
“General Sawyer, sir!” Skyler shoots to his feet, hand flashing up in a razor-sharp salute. “Apologies, sir! I did not notice you enter the room, sir!”
“At ease, Lieutenant.” Sawyer waves a hand. “You are a Game afficionado, correct? On your first deployment?”
“Sir, yes sir!”
“Then it’s only natural you would want to meet these three, whom you so quickly recognized.” Sawyer’s lips tighten the barest fraction. “Though I must confess, I thought your squad was scheduled to eat in the southwest cafeteria today.”
Somehow, Skyler stands even straighter.
“Printer malfunction in the southwest cafeteria, sir! Just came off patrol, and regulations state that all troops must replenish physical reserves as quickly as possible in case of emergency, sir! I checked the duty board and saw this cafeteria was empty, sir!”
“Excellent initiative,” Sawyer murmers, his fingers twitching inside his hapgloves, and Skyler relaxes. I don’t. I get a feeling the young lieutenant might end up another “training accident” statistic, but there’s nothing to be done right now. No reason to worry Skyler about anything more than not embarrassing himself in front of the general. Sawyer puts a hand on the kid’s shoulder. “Why don’t you take a memory with the ladies, with proper filters, of course, and then I’m afraid I’m going to have to take them to get some rest before their trip back to the mainland.”
“Sir, yes sir!” Skyler beams, then scrambles to put himself in a position where his glasses, now in hand, can catch all four of us. One smiling selfie later, he bounds off, like an overeager puppy. I pop a last chunk of kelp-bread into my mouth, then stand, Wind and Slend following suit. We trail Sawyer out of the cafeteria and back to the hapsphere chamber. Technicians continue their scurrying dance around the dull gray globes, various arcane instruments appearing and vanishing from dented toolboxes.
“I told you not to talk to anyone.”
“He started it,” I reply, folding my arms. “Your troops, your problem. Why’d you let him take a picture?”
“Because if I hadn’t, he would’ve posted to his socials anyway, and that would look even more suspicious. No plan survives—”
“Contact with the enemy, yeah, I’ve read von Moltke too. Didn’t know your own troops were the enemy, though. What’s the plan now?”
Sawyer walks up a battered flight of stairs and ushers us into a room. Our clothes lie on a table inside.
“Information is the enemy, Ashley, information we do not want our enemies to consider meaningful. You and your team in a top-of-the-line drone station with worldwide linkups is meaningful to a select group of very dangerous people, and Lieutenant Chaddington does not keep his socials scrubbed quite so thoroughly as I would like. There is a trail, miniscule, but existing, that can be followed back here.”
He points toward the clothes, then turns his back. Slend rolls her eyes and we start changing.
“I’ve already sunk a small craft several kilometers from Ditchtown, an off-the-books asset, in case one of the Big Three or Industan come looking. Han is undoubtedly already looking, but they snoop everywhere. I’m sending the three of you back—I wanted to keep you here for the duration of the op, but that looks to be impossible now. Instead, we will assume that the story of your boat capsizing is the truth, and you are fortunate to have survived long enough to be picked up by an automated Border Patrol cruiser.”
“What about Jase?” The ice in my voice matches his own.
“Consider him… necessary to our efforts here. He will be treated well, and he’ll help our scientists tease the secrets out of that piece of tech.”
“A hostage.”
“Yes. That too. Keep an eye on your messages. I’ll send you further instructions once we’ve gathered enough info on the next target. In the meantime, I expect you to act normally. Log in to the Game for your dailies, make note on your socials of how embarrassing losing the boat was, how fortunate you were to be briefly rescued by the Border Patrol, and above all, do not let anyone so much as even smell a hint of what happened in Industan, or things will end very badly. For all of us.”
“Put on a smile and lie for our lives?” Wind asks sarcastically, fitting her burkha around her shoulders.
“Another day in Ditchtown,” Slend responds, eyes tight behind her glasses. Idly she clenches her hands, muscles popping up and down her arms.
“Exactly.” Sawyer’s voice reveals no hint of emotion. “Play the role you’re required to play, and we might just make it out of this alive.”
“There’s a difference between making it out alive, and making it out intact, Sawyer.” I strap the sheath onto my leg and slide the blade home.
“Yes. There is. Now go, the LC is waiting. I’ll be in touch.”
In deference to the fact he still has Jase, I wait until he’s out the door before I call him an asshole.
I make sure he can still hear me, though.
14
[Knots]
I step off the gangplank and into the Brown, waiting for my eyes to adjust from the flash of dazzling late afternoon sunlight outside. Wind and Slend were dropped off earlier—Wind near her parents’ place in Westspire, Slend in the Rust. I don’t know why Slend chooses to live there, especially after our continued success in the Game, but then again, who am I to judge, stuffed in my three-by-five closet.
Icons blink to life in my view, overlaying the dim halls, connection to the Web and regional ’Net reestablished. Lots of public messages on the socials, couple private ones just for me. I skim the socials first—fans glad I made it off the boat before it sank; boardshits wishing we’d all gone down with it; global news of more “hostilities” in Industan, just one of the many slow burn wars constantly churning in the background; another silkie corp merger and “rebranding” between two subsidiaries of the Big Three, a quieter sort of war than drones and bombs but just as deadly. Fashion news from the UPC style algorithms, this season’s wear incorporating lots of curves and the old maple flag, reds on whites. Blood on snow in the Arctic, a Han hauler raided by Polers as it made its way through one of the shipping lanes topping the world, refugees doing whatever it takes to survive. Local news from Ditchtown, a medical ward in the Rust burned down, looting and small riots in Northspire, a rise in missing persons postings.