Alice has always been the smartest girl I know.
But Sora’s a genius.
She got really into Sun Tzu last year—into maneuver and strategy and how to apply them to get to her goals. Not that she knows what her goals are, but when she does, she’ll be able to pursue them.
According to Sora—and Sun Tzu—there are five faults that can lead a general to ruin: recklessness, cowardice, temper, delicate or offendable honor, and caring too much about his troops.
I’ve never liked that last one. Why should caring too much about your soldiers lead you to ruin? You should want to keep them alive—to keep them safe—unless there’s no other option. The others make sense to me, but shouldn’t people care?
James noticed that Alice was on the move within milliseconds.
It was far too slow.
In the first quarter second after she left her room, he watched and threw processing loops at her. He reached out, trying to make contact through her augs, but she didn’t respond. He didn’t think anything of it. She’d gone rogue before—she was probably heading for the testing center where they’d been trying to break Li Mei’s bond with her.
That theory lasted all of fifteen seconds before she turned into a stairwell and started descending.
James quickly shifted processing loops from a few survivors in southeast Russia over to Alice, trying to figure out what she was up to. It wasn’t so much that she was on the move as it was that she didn’t seem interested in talking at all. But something was up. He watched her move down the flights of stairs toward the maintenance hallways, where SHOCKS VVI’s airflow, heating, and cooling ducts ran.
What was she doing?
[Claire, your sister’s up and moving through the SHOCKS facility. I’m trying to figure out what she’s up to, but she’s not heading for the testing cells.]
Claire looked up from the sealed metal door. “Got it. Can you help me open this? We’ll talk to her about it later.”
Instantly, a thousand processing loops focused in on what Claire needed. The dozens on Alice kept tabs on her, moving security cameras to follow her progress. One of them caught the black right eye with the hint of red in its core, and James zoomed in.
Something was wrong. He couldn’t figure out what.
But something.
Location Unknown, Provisional Reality ARC, Time Unknown
- - - - -
The door is a problem.
It’d be easy to Slither and Smoke Form through it. And if I didn’t mind dropping a merge behind me, I’d have already done it. The thing is, the CPI building in general holds the keys to at least one of my Inquiries, and if it merges with the wrong reality, I won’t be able to stop it from being destroyed.
[Claire, your sister’s up and moving through the SHOCKS facility. I’m trying to figure out what she’s up to, but she’s not heading for the testing cells.]
I look up, even though James isn’t in the cameras here. “Got it. Can you help me open this? We’ll talk to her about it later.”
I stare at it. It’s sealed. It has to be. But there’s no keyhole, nowhere to scan an eyeball or put a fingerprint or speak a security password. If I didn’t know I was looking at a door, I’d assume it was just another section of wall. The handle in my hand’s the only giveaway, and when I try it, it—
The door opens. Just like that, it opens.
Huh.
“Did you do that?” I ask.
[No. I’m a little busy,] James responds. [I’m watching along with you, though, so keep moving and scanning the room.]
I step inside. It’s an airlock, just like the JAMES Experimental Sector has. This place feels so much like the SHOCKS Headquarters building that it gives me the shivers. I wait as it cycles, since I don’t have much of a choice.
The last time I was in a situation like this, I didn’t have James. I was also hanging out with Li Mei, and I’d just fought the Stag Lord. That fight brings back memories, but whatever’s past this door, it’s going to be worse.
The airlock finishes cycling, and I confront a darkness so pure, so unbroken by the blazing overhead lights, that it takes my breath away. “James, can you do something about this?”
My optic aug flickers between a half-dozen settings before settling on a standard night-vision, except that everything is variations of maroon. It’s a hallway. It stretches onward and down in a slight right-handed curve, and overhead, lights burn. There’s something else up there: black, snaking vines and roots. “How close are we to the void root?”
[Very. Within fifteen feet. At this reality level, a typical RST trooper would have fifteen minutes before experiencing personal reality collapse, even with a personal reality anchor. You have closer to three hours—maybe four,] James says.
I keep moving. Three hours is a lot of time until you’re digging into an alien laboratory. Then it’s not very long at all.
The hallway doesn’t have a single door to either side of it, but James helpfully highlights a dozen different holes in the walls. [Those are defenses, but they’re facing inwards. Whatever this is, security’s positioned to keep things in, not out. That maybe explains the door being so easy to open. Maybe.]
I ready the Revolver and keep moving down the hall. The reality is that whatever’s in there, whether it’s bad enough for defenses and firing teams and who knows what else to be aimed at it, or whether it’s helpless and harmless, is what I need to find. The hall grinds on and on, and then, suddenly, it stops at a simple door that opens without a fight.
Inside is another tank, just like the ones we saw outside. It’s full of a similar goop, but it’s intact and still powered. All around it, dozens of computers hum. I can’t access any of them with the tools I have; I probably couldn’t open them up if I had L5-4’s toolkit. If Alice and the RSTs were here, maybe.
But right now, my focus is on the tank, and the winged gap in the goop that hovers halfway between the top and bottom, suspended in the goop.
The Voiceless Singer.
The nanosecond James saw Alice’s black and red left eye through the maintenance hall’s single security camera, his processing loops went into overdrive.
That wasn’t Alice. That was Li Mei.
If that was Li Mei, then she had a goal in mind.
If she had a goal in mind, James couldn’t allow her to complete it.
It took almost fifteen milliseconds for the Headquarters’ breach alarm to start wailing. Ten milliseconds later, he started triggering lockdown protocols on the Geren-Danger wing where the Itos and Robert Pendleton lived, as well as the wing they’d placed Landsdowne’s staff in. A gun went off in the RST barracks, but James couldn’t be bothered dealing with that.
He was already locking doors and sealing hallways in a bid to stop Li Mei from reaching what she absolutely couldn’t reach: the facility’s self-destruct system. Every SHOCKS building had one because if the worst happened and containment failed on something monstrous, the destruction of an entire city was a small price to pay for maintaining the veil.
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Had been a small price to pay. When the veil still existed.
Massive steel doors clanged into place, and a Faraday Cage that put the one in the experimental sector to shame roared to life, crackling and sparking. James’s vision all around the hydrogen bomb disappeared; it was all he could do to keep the camera outside the security doors running through the interference.
Li Mei and Alice walked past the security doors as if they were just part of the wall.
It took James almost thirty milliseconds to figure out his mistake.
Li Mei was an infovampire. She wouldn’t destroy a source of perfectly good information. She wasn’t aiming for the self-destruct system. She never had been.
No. Li Mei had a different target in mind. She wanted to control the facility, and to do that, she had to get James out of it.
He hadn’t planned for this series of events. SHOCKS pushing the limits he and Claire had established? Yes, absolutely. He could open the containment cells and secure Claire’s people within their wings, then wait it out. SHOCKS would come around. Claire deciding to go rogue? Wouldn’t be the end of the world, and he’d been subtly guiding her into cooperating with SHOCKS for both of their benefits, but he had Alice as a backup plan.
But Li Mei taking control of the facility? Releasing more anomalies wouldn’t solve anything, and neither would locking down the building. He didn’t have a play to prevent her from doing exactly what she wanted—not if she was heading to—
Before he could come up with a plan—or even start calculating what she might be up to—the infovampire turned to smoke and poured under a door James had just locked. The massive generators that powered the whole facility hummed along inside a cavernous concrete room. Li Mei disappeared from the still-locked door and appeared at the control panel. Then, in the course of three seconds, every generator shut off. Every. Single. One.
Every camera turned off a moment later, except the ones running on independent batteries outside of must-secure anomalies’ containment cells. In the next ten seconds, James went from in complete control of the SHOCKS facility to blind, deaf, and impotent. He hadn’t even been able to warn Director Ramirez what he was up against, and now he couldn’t connect to the man’s augs.
Worse, he had to deal with Claire. He gulped digitally.
[Claire, I have bad news.]
SHOCKS Headquarters, Victoria, British Columbia - June 16, 2043, 10:55 PM
- - - - -
The breach alarm ran for all of ten seconds before the power died.
In that time, Lamba-4 and Lambda-5 engaged in an abortive firefight, ceased fire, and started responding to their containment breach duty stations. Like professionals.
Pissed off, ready-to-kill professionals.
Strauss and Daley headed for the offices. Their first job was to get between the Xuduo-Danger anomalies and the researchers. Strauss wasn’t happy about it. He wanted to head for medical, but a group of agents were supposed to cover that wing. Instead, he dragged Director Ramirez out of the RST barracks and started down the hall.
The lights and alarm cut out a second later. Strauss had never experienced SHOCKS Headquarters this quiet before; it took him a second to flip his aug over toward night vision, his rifle—the SMG would have been better, but the rifle had been closer to hand when the shooting started—at the ready.
There was a light. Probably a hundred meters down the hall. It flashed red, then white.
Strauss didn’t stick around to find out which Xuduo-Danger was breaching its must-hold cell. “JAMES Unit, please advise.”
Silence. Nothing but silence.
“JAMES Unit, the current situation is as follows. Lambda-Five is moving toward the Experimental Sector. We have Director Ramirez and are moving to cover the offices. Internal communications are down. Vision is limited. Please advise.”
Once again, only silence met Strauss. He tapped his aug, trying to connect to the SHOCKS local system. It was also down—mostly. Strauss wasn’t, officially, a computer expert. He knew a lot, though, so as a piece of the local network vanished like something had taken a bite out of it, a chill rushed down his spine.
Something screamed in the distance. No. Someone.
“Director Ramirez, as per SHOCKS major breach doctrine, and given that L4-1 is out of commission and L5-1 is out of contact, I am taking temporary control of SHOCKS Headquarters staff. Get your ass to the garage. We’re bailing.”
“Where to?” Ramirez asked. His face and tone said he wanted to argue, but his feet, at least, were listening. He was already running down the hall.
Strauss shook his head. “Sir, I have no idea.”
Li Mei didn’t care about the Joint Anomaly Management Enhancement System Experimental Sector.
It had nothing for her but bad memories. She’d been tricked—betrayed, even—by her bestie there. Trapped and isolated, she’d been consumed with thoughts of revenge. And of feasting on Claire’s memories. Now, she was stuck in this physical body, unable to be what she knew she could be. She needed sustenance, and she was sitting on a wealth of information that—thanks to Alice’s work with Lambda-Five—she could access. She just needed to push the right buttons.
She didn’t care about the Experimental Sector at all. But she very much cared about making sure there wasn’t a single SHOCKS employee left in the Victoria and Vancouver Island Headquarters building.
That’s why she was driving the Alice body straight toward the portal.
Alice’s soldier persona had given her every piece of information she needed. Lambda-Five would be there. Their job was to protect the merge generator. They wouldn’t see her coming.
Li Mei headed for them like a building hurricane.
Then, at the door, she stopped. She let the airlock cycle, stepped inside, and cycled it again. When the inner door finally opened, she yelled, “Alice Pendleton, L5-6. I’m coming out. Don’t shoot.”
The responding security question hit her like a brick wall, but Li Mei grinned through the rage that suddenly filled her. She was back in control; she couldn’t lose it. Not yet, at least. “The Earl of Sussex,” she shouted back.
“Advance,” L5-1 said. As she walked toward them, pistol held down toward the ground, he kept talking. “We’re in a world of hurt here, L5-6. I hate to say I’m glad to see you, but I am.”
“Same. I got caught out outside of my family’s safe zone and decided to group up with you.” Her eyes flicked over the three of them, with L5-1 talking to her while the other two tried to set up their heavy machine gun. They were too late. They just didn’t realize it yet. “Sir, is this all that’s left?”
Her power activated, and he started answering. For a second, she thought he’d figure it out or that his aug would catch her power forcing him to respond and clamp down. Instead, he answered smoothly. “Yes. After you left, things went to hell. Lambda-Four got beat up, too, but we got the worst of it. Do you know what’s going on here? Which anomaly breached, and how did it hit the power so fast?”
Li Mei didn’t bother holding her rage state back this time. At this distance, none of Lambda-Five could react fast enough to stop her. Instead, she grinned as she turned to smoke and surged toward L5-1. “Guess.”
Location Unknown, Provisional Reality ARC, Time Unknown
- - - - -
“What do you mean, Li Mei’s free?” I ask.
[I mean Li Mei is currently in control of Alice’s body, and she’s used her to outmaneuver me. She’s killed power to most of SHOCKS Headquarters, including almost everything I was connected to. I’ve got a couple of cameras in the Qishi-Danger wing and three in the Xuduo. Other than that, I’m completely cut off. I can’t even access the RSTs’ augs, so I have no idea who’s still up and fighting,] James replies.
My blood goes cold. The Revolver’s heavy in my hand. I can’t wrap my head around any of this—I want to, but I can’t. “What do you mean, Li Mei?”
[I mean that Li Mei is loose in SHOCKS Headquarters, and there’s no way for them to regain control—or at least, I can’t help them do it.]
“Can you activate the merge generator?” I ask.
[I’m checking that now, but it looks like—no. Something just shut it down. All the way down. It cut off my last camera in the Experimental Sector, too.]
“That’s not possible,” I say. I need to get home. Sora needs me. So does Dad. More importantly, so does Alice. She’s stuck in there with Li Mei—for all I know, the infovampire’s already killed her. “James, get me home. Get me home now!” The ice in my blood’s starting to head up. My muscles won’t stop tensing, and I make sure my finger’s not on the Revolver’s trigger.
[I can’t.]
“Bullshit! You’re the whole System. You can get me out of here and put me right in front of Li Mei. I’ll kill her, and everything will work out.”
[Claire, speaking as the System, I can’t move you anywhere,] James says.
“Then what do I do?” I have no idea what the right move is. There is no right move.
The math is the most complicated equation I’ve ever worked on. In order to go home, I need a pathway. The merge generator is down. I could look for another way, but every second I waste trying to figure this out is time Li Mei tears SHOCKS Headquarters apart. In the meantime, James doesn’t have eyes in the building. I can’t wrap my head around how he didn’t see Alice and Li Mei becoming a problem.
Then again, I’m not sure how it happened either. So maybe it’s not right to lay the blame on him. Alice had control. She had an Infohazard Resistance that made mine look pathetic. She shouldn’t have been able to lose—
No.
That line of math doesn’t help me.
It takes almost three minutes to pare down the equation—every time I try, I keep focusing on the Geren-Danger wing, or Rodriguez, or even Doctor Twitchy. How many of them are still alive? What’s their plan for a mess like this?
But in the end, I get the equation down to the point where I at least know the first step. The rest of it’s still indecipherable, but if I get the first answer, I’ll be able to make another move. I highlight a trio of Inquiries; I’ll need to solve at least two of them, and there’s only one way to do that.
?Inquiries (4/5)
?What’s going on at Albert Head and West End High?
?What do the voiceless singers want?
?Why don’t people come back from other realities?
?Where are the voiceless singers hiding?
?Why can’t humans handle different reality levels?
Then I stall for another few seconds, looking for reassurance that no one can offer me. “James, how can I get home?”
[I don’t know.]
“But there is a way, right? I’m not stuck here forever?”
[I…] James goes quiet. He’s silent for almost three seconds—an eternity by his standards. Then he speaks up again. [I think so.]
I swallow. It hurts, and I’m not sure if it’s from the almost complete lack of reality in here or the nerves—or maybe both. The Revolver’s in my hands; I change the cylinder out for the gravity shells. Then I swallow a second time. I’ll have to go fast, and that means taking risks.
I pull the trigger. The shell rips toward the tank, exploding the glass and sucking the goop into a whirling purplish orb.
And as the Voiceless Singer erupts from the ruined tank, I start solving the equation.
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