A million thought fragments searched for a glimmer of light in the dark recesses of Chas’ mind before one of them sent a blinding reflection arrowing back through his consciousness. The white cherub clutched in Janey’s hand. Not Angel or Angela, but Angeloz. Luis LA Angeloz. The skinny half of Laurel and Hardy. Hadn’t they seen his AV in Second Life? Phat Botha. Wasn’t it possible he had a second account? An alt. Chas looked at Dark afresh, and the gun pointing straight at him. “Stanley?”
For a moment it seemed as if Dark had frozen. “What?”
And in that moment, Chas double-clicked the first LM his cursor landed on in his Inventory, and he teleported out of the Blackhouse before Dark could pull the trigger.
As the grim brick and brownstone buildings rezzed around him, Chas realised he was back where most of his SL adventure had begun. In Crack Town, Carnal City, where Doobie had trapped and killed the griefer, Tommy Tattoo. He knew that Dark could only be a matter of seconds behind him. He clicked into Run mode and started running down the street. Past Dura’s Play Lounge and Carnal Street Urban Building supplies, and Urban Grims offensive textures.
On the corner, a police car was pulled up on the sidewalk, and an officer was handcuffing a young thug against the wall. A scrawl of graffiti read Fight apathy — or don’t. He heard the report of gunfire echoing along the street as the brick wall ahead of him splintered under the impact of a bullet. He glanced back. Dark was pursuing him at a run. He knew, from his brief experience how hard it was to hit a moving target. The secret would be to keep moving.
He passed a prostitute touting for business.
Becka Cale: Five hundred for an hour, Chas. What do you say?
But he didn’t stop, even to turn her down.
He ran past the Bad Art store and turned left at the end of the street as another shot rang out. A butcher with a bloody white smock stood outside his store, a meat cleaver in his hand. He was holding up a string of sausages and grinning, as if he thought Chas might be interested in buying. Ahead, a single-decked bus was burning at the side of the road, and beyond it mist swirled around the headstones in the Carnal City cemetery.
Chas veered away from the cemetery gates and found himself in what seemed to be a dead-end yard. He panicked, aware that Dark was only just behind him. Then he spotted a narrow, concealed exit that led out between tall buildings, and he ran through it and into a maze of passages that zigzagged between meshed off courtyards. The walls were very nearly obliterated by graffiti. He passed Strangled and Strangle animations. Ahead was Le Baron 24-hour store, selling “kinky accessories and more”.
Chas turned right, still afraid to look back. And suddenly the landscape seemed familiar. He ran straight up the street and turned left on to a bridge spanning a river of chemical green sludge. This was where Doobie had finally caught up with Tommy Tattoo. At the end of the street stood the Carnal City Police Department.
In a momentary but absolute failure of logic, Chas thought that he might find safety there. He glanced behind him to see Dark turning the corner, and when he turned back, found himself confronted by two bizarrely deformed AVs. Badwolf Lilliehook was a punk, with his right leg impossibly stretched and extended well above his head, his right arm growing out of his thigh. Ariel Kyle was a white-faced demon with a long, thin neck and both legs doubled over above her head. They looked like they had been pulled through a machine and mangled beyond any recognisable human shape.
Badwolf: Hi, Chas.
He sounded friendly enough. Chas stopped dead. Uncertain whether they posed any threat or not.
Chas: Hi. I guess you guys are into the deformed look.
Arieclass="underline" This is how we get off. Normal toon sex iz boring.
Almost before her words had registered onscreen she exploded, like a watermelon dropped from a great height. Blood spattered everywhere as the shot from the Super Gun echoed around the street.
Badwolf: Jesus Christ!
Chas took off again, running to the end of the street, straight for the precinct office of the Carnal City police.
A hooker in a short black skirt and thigh-length red boots called to him at the door as it slid open and he ran inside. But he didn’t stop to read her text.
There was no one behind the desk. He ran past a wall of wanted posters and a map of Carnal city and turned through open steel doors into the cell area. Several role-playing prisoners lounged behind bars, drinking from beer cans. They looked up as he came in. Chas was panicking now. He was painting himself into a corner with no way out.
He ran down the hall and through the only door at the end of it, finding himself in a small, square interview room with scarred green walls. There was a plain black table with two chairs at either side of it. A blackboard on the wall was scrawled over in yellow chalk. Witness. Photos. F/prints. Fluids. Weapons. The door slammed shut behind him. He was trapped. He cursed himself. There was no way out.
An IM chinged into his dialogue box.
Doobie: Chas, what’s happening? Did you get out okay?
Chas: I’m in deep shit, Doobs. In Carnal City.
Doobie: TP me.
Chas: No time.
He opened up his Inventory and clicked on the Landmark folder, then tried to turn at the sound of the door opening. The movement of his arrow key shut down his Inventory, and there was no time to open it again before he saw Dark standing in the doorway, the Super Gun pointing straight at him. It was all a question, he knew, of whether he could find the Quit key, before Dark clicked his mouse and fired the shot.
But there was no competition. Dark fired. Once. Twice. Three times. Chas felt the impact of the bullets. His AV reacted, thrown backwards as each one struck him, until the third propelled him against the wall. There was, of course, no pain. Just a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, as his screen turned first red, then black, and his SL software crashed.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Michael sat staring at his screen in disbelief. How could he have let it happen? Why hadn’t he teleported out earlier, or simply quit?
Chas was gone, and with the erasure of his account, any chance of proving where the three million had come from. But Angel was gone, too. And in spite of everything that had pointed in her direction, any thoughts that he had harboured that Angela Monachino was the killer had been blown out of SL by three shots from the Super Gun. It could only have been Stan Laurel — Detective Luis LA Angeloz.
He slumped forward, elbows on the table, head in his hands, bereft of the least idea of what to do now. He found himself mourning for Chas. In some way that he barely understood, he had been born again in Chas. Rediscovered the emotions he had thought were dead inside him. Chas had shown him how to live again. How to be. How to feel. And now he was gone, leaving Michael all on his own to face murder charges and death threats. The killer had destroyed Chas and would almost certainly now come after Michael in RL, too.
And with that thought came the realisation that Angela was also in danger. Dark had only killed her AV. But Angela would know his true identity. Angeloz must have been one of her patients. While he might simply be content to let Michael be gunned down by the mob or sent to prison by the state, he would have to kill Angela. She knew too much.
“Sorry, Michael, I’m going to have to ask you to leave now. It’s closing time.” The bearded barista smiled at him apologetically over the counter. “You, too, ma’am.”