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Those last words sparked a thought. Wolf, or the thing that lived in his body, had been shredding their tech since they came into the building. Comms first, then weapons, and then odds and ends. They were each left with one undamaged but useless device. Items they ditched a half hour earlier when they realized they were being used to track them. Attacks were Ma-trix based, and they were holding their MaMa-trix assets back for phase two. They hadn’t faced any spirits or spells, no magic at all. Wolf had been one of the most feared Wolf shamans on the streets. He fought all comers who dared claim he didn’t de-serve the moniker of their totem and left them alive and under-standing he was alpha.
Calling every last ounce of mana he could muster and howl-ing to Grandfather for anythhowl-ing he was willhowl-ing to lend, Wind-howler shaped magical energy and held it. He could feel power pulling at him; his muscles ached channeling this much power.
“I’m sorry, dad,” Windhowler growled. It was all he could say.
Windhowler sprang around the corner and sprinted down the hallway, ready to unleash a spell as soon as Wolf came into sight. He was shocked to find the shell of his father standing in the center of the door, in plain sight. There had been plenty of time for Wolf to have dropped Windhowler’s inattentive hoop, but there was a delay. The delay gave Windhowler hope that he threw into the spell he launched down the hallway.
The spell took the form of a meter-and-a-half-long wolf that dashed ahead and slammed into the target.
The drain of the spell tore at Windhowler’s body and mind as the blow landed. When the spectral wolf leaped into the air, Windhowler sagged.
His vision shrank to a pinpoint, his father’s face at the center.
He hoped the smirk would fade from the familiar yet alien face, but instead he saw it deepen, and he felt the horrible sensation of a spell shredding on a shield. It had failed. That thing still held arcane power.
Pain or not, Windhowler now knew he had to fight. His bi-cep and tribi-cep contracted in unison, snapping his humerus.
Ribs cracked from jerking muscles. His vision blurred as blood vessels in his eyes ruptured. The pain was everywhere, but he pumped aching legs, propelling himself down the hallway.
The smirk on Wolf’s face shifted to a fiendish grin as he rolled his palms up toward Windhowler and shifted his torso.
The motions unleashed a glowing ball of force that overfilled the hallway, wrecking walls as it flashed to meet Windhowler’s headlong rush. Their collision launched the charging shaman back far faster than he had approached. His already-limp body slammed into the wall above the jutting desk, cracking plaster, wood, and bone before collapsing.
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BY SCOTT SCHLETZ
✖
Cirolle slipped quickly and quietly around the corner. Wolf was an old friend. He’d known the young shaman when he first came into power, when Wolf was an idealistic kid filled with honor and loyalty. Cirolle had gained his trust, been part of his pack for years in Chicago. The bugs broke that connection.
They’d encountered each other on and off in the interven-ing years. Then Cirolle met the version of Wolf that was no lon-ger Wolf. Windhowler had recruited him in this mission, talking about saving his father. But Cirolle knew enough about CFD to know better. He knew there was only one salvation for Wolf, the one that came from a gun or a sharp blade.
His path took him swiftly through side offices and back halls he had spotted on the blueprints during planning. They had al-most backed Wolf into his last corner. Cirolle knew the lengths Wolf would go to once he was cornered. Though magic was no longer an option, the wily lupine likely still had some nasty tricks in reserve.
Cirolle could hear the conversation of Windhowler and Wolf as he slipped through a doorway directly behind their quarry.
He was stunned for a moment as he saw Windhowler rush out into the hallway and unleash his familiar knockout spell. Cirolle slid his shock-knife from its scabbard on his thigh, shockpom-mel at the ready to finish the job if the spell wasn’t quite enough.
He made quick steps forward, a slow mirror of the young wolf shaman who was collapsing from drain.
Cirolle watched Windhowler’s spell leap and then shred into spectral wisps. He saw Wolf’s hands start to roll outward and knew, despite the complete illogic of the idea, what was about to happen. He’d seen it many times before. Cirolle abandoned quiet and dashed forward, spinning the shock-knife in his palm as he ran. It was too late for mercy.
Wolf’s reaction, though fast, wasn’t fast enough. Cirolle snaked his left arm up under his opponent’s and then snapped his hand up behind Wolf’s neck. The half-nelson was only part of the attack. It provided the leverage and control for Cirolle to jam the wedged armor-piercing tip of the shock-knife into his once-friend’s back three times in quick succession. He tossed the blade away after the third strike and shifted to control Wolf’s body as it fell, making sure the head case’s tainted blood didn’t touch him.
The move proved fruitless as Wolf’s body failed to collapse as he expected. Instead he rotated, with muscles that should have been destroyed by Cirolle’s stabs, and hip-tossed the run-ner. Cirolle expected to hit the ground and find Wolf’s ham-mer-like fist finishing the job, but instead he was sent flying out into the hallway. As he spun, he saw why.
✖
Burst saw Windhowler spring up and sprint into the hallway.
The kid’s move was going to get him killed, but he understood the mentality. Like father, like son.
Burst had been part of Wolf’s efforts to go straight for the kid. He was part of the founding four for Securitech: Special-ized Security, and he knew how much the old shaman loved that kid. And he knew that whatever that thing down the hall was, it wasn’t that kid’s dad or his old friend. He also knew he couldn’t wait for Windhowler to understand that.
Burst pushed through the pain and lumbered to his feet.
He’d been trying to hold off using his pain editor, knowing how easily he could blow past the limits of his body against Wolf, but now he had no choice. Pain washed away, and he prepared to make a run for the hallway.
A half-meter before he made the corner, he saw Windhowl-er sail past. He heard the heavy crunch and thud as the kid hit the wall. He continued without missing a beat around the cor-ner, using a foot planted on the far wall to keep from slowing down. He was big, but he was graceful thanks to his top-grade (a decade ago) move-by-wire system. He framed a fond hope that maybe the kid had died still thinking the best of his dad rather than realizing the truth.
The troll spotted Cirolle slipping in and jamming his blade home. Lung, liver, heart. Three stabs and it was over. The elven knifemaster had killed 300 kilos of troll with that move. Burst slowed his run for only a microsecond before he realized Wolf’s knees weren’t buckling in death but were instead bending and shifting to launch Cirolle over his hip. And what a launch it was.
Cirolle sailed through the air toward the charging troll.
Burst’s massive mitts snagged the spinning elven projec-tile in mid-flight. He realized the error of his ways too late as the move narrowed his reach. He had a handful of elf when he could have had a handful of Wolf. The cunning mind was still there.
Burst recognized the familiar shift in stance as Wolf launched into an acrobatic 360-degree spinning roundhouse kick that brought the heavy steel toe of his combat boot into contact with Burst’s temple. The blow jarred the big troll’s head, and his momentum slammed him into the frame of the doorway. His horn hooked a wall stud as his chrome skull broke through the wall, and the bone horn snapped.
As his vision blurred and blacked out, he was thankful his pain editor would let him die in peace.
✖
Tranq didn’t bother to say a word to stop Burst. She saw the conviction in his eyes and let the troll do what he thought necessary. Tranq knew what it was going to take. She’d been brought onto the team not because she was an old friend of Wolf, but because she had already brought over a dozen ram-paging head cases to heel.
When she saw the kid shaman slam into the wall, she knew it was time to go all in or fold. She considered the kid her stack of chips, and it was running real low. The troll was her last deal.
She couldn’t bank on the elf, because she knew how tough it was to assassinate a head case, especially one this tough.
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She wasn’t wired like the troll and had no chance of keeping up with him, but she leaped into the long hallway all the same.
Between the massive bulk of Burst and the plaster dust hover-ing in the air from the crumblhover-ing walls, she had no clue what was at the end of the hall. She was betting on the same lack of perception on Wolf’s part to get where she needed to. Tranq slipped the fingers of her custom gecko gloves into the fan of pouches on her hips.
Dust swirled as Burst passed, clearing the air enough for Tranq to see the troll’s downfall. She spotted Cirolle, once again confirmed her assassin vs. head case assessment, and then saw the blur of Wolf’s boot slamming into Burst’s skull. The troll had slowed just a hair; the move gave Tranq the instant she needed.
A quick double-step over the falling Burst allowed Tranq to pop out on Wolf’s blindside and bring a wide, arcing slap down across Wolf’s rising face.
The weak blow didn’t even phase him. He used a front push kick to plant a foot into Tranq’s chest and shove her back into the wall. The foot stayed in place, crushing the ork’s chest as the smile widened on Wolf’s face. But the smile stopped growing as Wolf caught sight of the grin on Tranq’s face, despite the foot slowly crushing her chest.
“I don’t know you,” Wolf said calmly.
“No need to, you’ll be gone soon,” Tranq forced out with as much cockiness as her crushing chest would allow.
“I think you’re confused,” Wolf started to say, but his speech disintegrated into stutters.
Wolf’s boot dropped off Tranq’s chest as the drugs took effect. He clawed at his face and pulled two of the five patch-es free. But it was too late. They’d delivered their debilitating cocktail.
Tranq rubbed her chest and warily circled the stumbling head case. She knew it was dangerous, especially if it realized what was about to happen. Tranq watched the silvery film form over the side of Wolf’s face as the nanites in his system pushed out the toxins, but she wasn’t shocked like most people. This wasn’t her first time at the table.
“I love the irony of this,” she said, smiling through her cracked tusk.
“Probably not a time for wit,” Wolf said as his eyes cleared a little and his legs gained balance.
Tranq rolled the back of her left glove to face him. The rod of Asclepius sewn into the back of the glove got Wolf’s attention for the moment she needed to swing around the other glove.
The matching symbol on its back flashed through the air as the blow broke past Wolf’s weary defense to slap the other side of his face and plant five more tranq patches from temple to jaw.
“Frag me,” Wolf slurred as he stumbled from the ridiculous attack. “You’re Butch.”
The ork didn’t reply. Instead she calmly pulled a commlink from her pocket and powered it on. “Phase one’s done. Come on in for phase two.”
✖
404 had laughed when he walked through the wreckage of the meat-world fight. Such a lack of finesse and style. He start-ed his sim-recording the moment before he’d jackstart-ed in so he could show the team how a real pro operated.
Now, the snarling maw of some fantasy-novel monstrosity sprayed unpleasantly realistic saliva over the face and spiked hair of his persona. The monster rammed a massive black sword through his 404 Error T-shirt and the virtual torso behind it, and the sim recording turned into a snuff sim.
✖
Icecap watched in horror as the gnoll totally derezzed 404. It was the right term in the Matrix, but horribly inaccurate in their current situation. Instead of just disappearing from the Matrix, 404’s persona coughed up something like blood and crumpled to his knees.
The cavernous expanse became a touch more in sync as one of the usurpers fell to the native forces. 404’s persona be-gan to turn to stone, blending into the cavern floor as a statue of grey stone instead of the blue t-shirt, purple punk hair, and denim jacket.
Icecap had problems of his own, though, as he used his ice shield and icicle spear to fend off the orks working to surround him. He froze clawed feet to the ground with some tweaked crash program coding to gain some time and provide openings for the two other personas fighting nearby.
One of them, the video game brawler called Keypunch, swung his left fist into the back of the head of the stalled ork.
His massive fist, covered in half of his namesake rings, explod-ed from the front of the ork’s skull. The program didn’t derez either; instead it fell to the ground, piling on the dozen other orks they had already slain.
Icecap called out a warning, but it was unnecessary as Escher appeared from behind a stalagmite and decapitated the ork about to skewer Keypunch. Escher attacked with angles, swinging and throwing flat, nearly invisible planes at foes.
The trio pulled in close to regroup, looking for some way out of this cavern. The place was so massive that the walls were only visible when you were close, and the ceiling remained hid-den up in the shadows, its existence verified only by the stalac-tites descending from the darkness. They’d been moving slow-ly, fighting off the monsters erupting from the shadows, but they seemed to be the only ones suffering any level of attrition.
404 was down, and they’d lost CodeMonkey only moments in as he underestimated the deadly pack tactics of a group of ko-bolds. They needed a plan.
“Anybody got any useful scans?” Icecap asked. Wisps of frosty breath hovered in the chilly air of the cavern.
“I got something, but I’m not sure what it is. It reads close to the same as the monsters but not quite. It’s that way.” Escher pointed, which was was helpful since Escher was now up-side-down, standing on a floor tied to his persona. Looking like
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he was doing the impossible was very appropriate to what they were attempting.
They all had different motives to attempt this. CodeMon-key had been in it for Wolf, but he was out. The shaman had helped him earn enough nuyen to get his first datajack and then put the kid through college with a scholarship from Se-curitech. 404 had a similar story. Icecap had earned an intro to FastJack and a few months of education by impressing Wolf with his coding skills. Escher had the closest connection, but his extensive body mods had long ago left him emotionally cold. He helped out of duty, the closest thing to emotions he had left.
“Time to earn our nuyen,” Icecap said.
“We’re down two. My vote is bail, reinforce, and come back heavy now that we know the layout.” Keypunch looked to Escher to vote with him. But he didn’t know Escher like Icecap did.
“The kid’s plan is valid. Butch said she can keep him out for a few hours. We should gather reinforcements,” Escher said.
Icecap checked the program he was running and saw ex-actly what he expected. Much like Wolf had managed to com-pletely restructure the landscape of his mind into a deadly dun-geon of fantasy monsters, he was also dilating time for them.
While the hackers were all used to functioning at the speed of thought and blazing through the Matrix, they weren’t on the Matrix. They were jacked straight into the mindhost of a head case, and he controlled time here. Icecap’s timer program al-ready read more than three hours. They didn’t have time.
“That’s two votes. Let’s bail,” Keypunch spoke, but then his persona’s face scrunched with worry, followed by surprise as he realized he couldn’t jack out.
“Problem finding the exit?” a deep growling voice echoed through the cavern.
“What the frag?” Keypunch yelled to the emptiness. Then he turned to Icecap. “You knew this was a one-way trip!”
“Knew? No. Suspected with near certainty? Yes,” Icecap said coolly.
“I can let you out, fist fighter,” the disembodied voice said.
Escher and Icecap both turned warily toward Keypunch. The pair mentally coded some quick defenses and held them for Keypunch’s well-known attack program.
“I’ll let you out,” the voice said. “All you need to do is distract that ork bitch for a moment. I’ll take care of the rest and reward you handsomely.”
The offer was punctuated with a ring of orks and gnolls stepping from the edge of the shadows in eerie unison. The opening was directly behind Keypunch.
“Don’t do it, ’punch. You can’t trust this guy,” Icecap pleaded.
“Whoa! I thought we were here to save him because he’s all noble and loyal and drek.”
“Wolf, the one we knew, was loyal and noble. Whatever drekstain AI stole his body isn’t even willing to offer you a deal face to face,” Escher said. “There is nothing noble in this mental
“Wolf, the one we knew, was loyal and noble. Whatever drekstain AI stole his body isn’t even willing to offer you a deal face to face,” Escher said. “There is nothing noble in this mental