“Excellent work, Ashley. You and your team both.” Sawyer gazes out at us from the viewscreen, tucked away in some office somewhere on the rig.
I rub at my head with one of the scratchy towels, trying to convince my hair that it’s dry. Beside me, Wind stares at the ceiling sprawled along the couch, arms spread wide. Slend straddles a chair and squirts another stream of water into her mouth. Jase nervously taps his fingers on a side table, gaze distant, lost. At least Sawyer let us keep our own clothes this time.
“We didn’t fuck it up.”
Sawyer’s mouth tilts up the tiniest fraction.
“No. No, you most definitely did not. I must confess, I did not think we would find ourselves in this position. I was fully prepared to be mounting a full-scale territorial defense at this very moment.”
I wave my hand tiredly.
“Yeah, that’s us, the SunJewel Warriors, overachievers extraordinaire, bringers of world peace. Just another show for the stream. Cut the shit, Sawyer. What’s going on?”
Sawyer resumes his normal flinty expression.
“Very well. Since you didn’t activate the cruiser or orbital assets, a tenuous peace is holding along our borders with the Silicon Zone Egalitare—the ‘silkies.’ The Big Three suspect we might have attacked the New Frisco arcology, but each of them suspects the other two just as much. This gives us a window in which to act.”
“Gives us a window to act? We’ve done enough, Sawyer.” I slump back next to Wind on the battered couch, and pretend that my next words have nothing to do with my experiences in the drones. “Use your military people. That’s what they’re there for. We found what you wanted.”
“You’re done when I say you’re done,” Sawyer snaps back. “Those hoods are still out there, or have you forgotten about your friend so easily?”
Brand’s face flashes through my mind, and I tense.
“Fuck you, Sawyer. We’ve more than earned our creds on this. You’ve got your target. You pull the fucking trigger this time.”
“…I can’t.”
“What do you mean, ‘you can’t’? That’s bullshit, Sawyer. We’re a fucking Game guild. You’re the government. You collect the fucking taxes, you deal with the existential crisis.”
“The target is not accessible by drone.”
“What?”
Sawyer runs a hand through his bristly hair.
“In his brief time in the New Frisco cloud, your friend Jason secured essential information. Information identifying the individual behind these hoods.”
“So? Why are you telling us this?”
“The individual in question is an EVP for one of the Big Three, the ultracorp WGSK. He lives in a compound covered by concentrically smaller domes, each laced with a Faraday shield, and all his connections are through shielded underground tunnels. No signals get in or out, and the sort of sustained bombardment required to breach a gap would prove… prohibitive. It’s quite an elegant setup, actually.”
“Again. Why do we care? If the drones can’t get in, use a commando squad or whatever you call it. Send one of them.”
“Oh, but I am. The best one I have, experts all.” An ugly light enters Sawyer’s eyes. “You.”
I sit bolt upright.
“No fucking way, Sawyer. You forced us to ghost, not invade some silkie’s fortress in the real. We’re Gamers, not soldiers.”
“You seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that you have a choice, Ashley. You aren’t just doing this for me, or the Church, or to prevent the party favors from popping off once more.”
His voice drops.
“You’re doing it for Fatima bint al-Hajj’s parents and extended family, surrounded by the dispossessed who are all too prone to riots.” Wind’s eyes narrow. “You’re doing it for Brynn Murphey’s brother, serving five years in prison for inciting revolt, guarded by a warden who views a dead inmate as another profitable empty bed.”
Slend’s mouth becomes a razor line.
“You’re doing it for your mother, Naomi Akachi, practicing katas in her cell of mind and body, desperate to escape both.”
Somehow I’m standing, fists clenched at my sides.
“If you even think about going after her I will fucking end you, Sawyer.”
“I’m just pointing out realities, Ashley. Realities that everyone must acknowledge, and for you, that means—”
His eyes widen in shock.
“Ta—”
The world flips upside down, something smashing an iron fist into my cheek and nose, my legs flopping over the couch. Darkness cuts down with guillotine swiftness, the overhead lights blanked. Ringing echoes fill my ears, a failed processor shrieking malfunction.
Wha…
Red light sputters sullenly into existence, emergency generators coming online. I can feel my brain doing the same, the ringing slowly fading. Clarity kicks open the door of concussion, citing necessity. Groaning, I peel myself off the floor, snowblind static fuzzing my vision. I fumble off my broken glasses and stick them in a pocket.
Just. Another encounter.
“Wind,” I croak. “Slend. Brand.” I can feel blood dripping off the side of my face in slow trickles.
“Guh. The… fuck was… that?”
Wind sounds groggy, confused. She tries to push herself up, but tips back over after regaining a knee and sprawls out on her stomach. She must have hit her head harder than I did.
“…Explosion. Close.”
Slend is a little more coherent. I hear her spit. Something clatters on the metal. Sounds like a tooth. She drags Wind upright, holding her close, stabilizing her with a heavily muscled arm. I press a hand to my brow, trying to stanch the flow of blood.
“Brand?”
Noisy puking.
“Good, you’re still alive. Let’s figure out who the fuck just tried to blow us up.”
Never mind how close they came to succeeding.
Just another. Encounter.
I take a step toward the exit and almost fall, the room spinning around me in nausea-inducing dips and whirls. I suck in a deep breath. Must have hit my head harder than I thought, but there’s no time to be weak, not right now. The others need me. I force my vision to stabilize, then will my feet to move. The other three follow behind, Wind still leaning against Slend’s side.
The same sullen red light illuminates the hapsphere chamber, draping the scaffolds in eerie shadows. Muffled pops sound in the distance, a sort of irregular staccato clapping that slowly gets louder. When recognition finally dawns, I swear, and lurch into cover beneath one of the scaffolds, motioning the others to join me.
“Someone’s shooting at something,” I hiss.
Slend raises an eyebrow.
“Hostiles?”
“I doubt they’re here with fucking fruitbaskets.”
“Fair. Plan?”
“Take ’em out.”
She nods, and hands Wind over to…
Who is that? That’s not Brand. What happened t—
… Jase, both of them leaning back against the sphere’s base. I put a hand on his shoulder, trying to center myself. Trying to rid my brain of the accusatory eyeless stare of my dead friend, to shake away the concussive fog warping my thoughts.
“Jase, Wind’s out of it right now, so you’re gonna have to be her legs, okay?”
He looks back at me, pale moon sclerae wide under his glasses. Another burst of shots chatters in the distance, even louder this time, and he flinches.
“Wha-what do I do?”
“For right now, hide here. Slend and I are going to scout the area. Once it’s clear, we’ll come back and grab you two. We need to find Sawyer, figure out what the hell’s going on.”