Decimation Island Read online

  Thirty seconds later you find a way in. As far as you can tell there’s one guy on the main floor, one on the second, and two on the third. The one on the bottom is sticking mainly to the front of the building, alternating peeks out of the two windows that give him the best angle on anyone who might be approaching. You settle in under one of the windows, a Stinger in each hand, and the next time he peeks you pop up and spray him down through the window. He’s quick enough to get a burst off, but the high-velocity metal eats through him and spins him around and he goes down.

  Then it’s on. You leap through the window and empty the Stingers into the groaning figure on the floor.

  AniK@ downs TinkleTaint. 13 players remain.

  You reload the Stingers, keeping the camo active. It won’t do much now that you’re moving at speed, but it won’t hurt. There are three more players above you, and the only way up to the second floor is a single narrow staircase, a choke point they can easily defend. They could always be stupid and rush you, but they won’t. They’ll be expecting it’s the other foursome, not a single player. They’ll also be positioned away from the top of the stairs to give them open sight lines to take out anyone who tries to breach. Trying a full-frontal assault would be suicide, camo or no.

  Instead you grab the two flashbangs TinkleTaint had on him, duck back outside, and lob them up through two of the second-story windows. Before the glass has even hit the ground you’re racing up the stairs, and just as the two bangers pop you crest the stairs and dive to the left, roll to a crouch, and come up shooting.

  It’s an open floor, and the two waiting to ambush you are staggered by the flashbangs, unable to focus. They shoot anyway, yelling in fury as they aim for the blur coming for them, but their shots miss high, and you rake your weapons across their flailing bodies, downing them both.

  AniK@ downs LuvMunkee6969. 12 players remain.

  AniK@ downs Crumplestilskin. 11 players remain.

  “Well, shit,” Zara-Zee says in your ear.

  “Ain’t over yet,” you reply.

  But it is. You got this all zipped up.

  For just a second you get the urge to drop from the squad. You’re at the center of the zone, your spot’s secured, and you could leave the guy upstairs alone, let Zara-Zee and OVRshAdo fight it out for tenth, but you don’t. Eventually you’ll have to stop OVRshAdo from getting his thousand hours, but now’s not the time.

  There’s only a minute left before overtime as you loot the two corpses. They’re loaded up, probably been here a while and haven’t needed to spend their utility. They had a handful of grenades, a choking smoke, even an assault drone. You’ve got options. More than enough to take out your one remaining opponent.

  “Let’s talk,” the guy upstairs calls, his voice trembling. His guaranteed win just got shot to shit and he’s feeling the pressure. “It doesn’t have to go down like this.”

  “Oh yeah it does,” you yell back as you prime three grenades. “Ready or not, here I come.”

  GAGE, FINSBURY

  10:55:25 // 11-JUL-2059

  I pace back and forth across the cabin’s uneven pine floor with the fire warming my legs, and work over the past few days.

  I start from the beginning, reviewing everything I’ve learned, trying to make pieces fit, and it isn’t until I get to something Dub said that it comes to me: I’ve been looking at this all wrong, concentrating on the heist and the stolen skyns and going by what SECNet can tell me, but SECNet only sees the physical world—Anika and OVRshAdo live on the mesh. While SECNet’s got ties into the global communication system, it’s mostly blind to what happens inside the tens of thousands of public and private virtual worlds. I’ve been coming at this like a cop, but I need to think like a gamer, and since I’m no gamer, I need a specialist, a virtling, a digital native who knows their way around.

  And if anyone’s gonna know someone who can help, it’s Shelt.

  He doesn’t ask any questions and an hour later I have a meeting with someone called Jace. From what Shelt says, Jace is a true bit-head, an original gamer, been living purely digital for years and has renounced everything to do with the real world—including the concept of a personal gender. He also says Jace has maxed-out characters on half the virts in the mesh, knows everyone, can find anything, and is willing to take commissions. The catch is they’ll only meet face-to-face. Digitally, of course, but it still means I have to go to them.

  A few minutes later I get a link to a private virt and when I cast through I arrive in a room surrounded by mirrors, with all the reflections showing different people—and not all of them are what you’d consider people. I glance down and my stomach lurches for a second when there’s nothing under me, not even my feet, but I know better. This is my first time in this virt, and I need to pick a body before I can go any further.

  Based on my choices, I guess this must be a fantasy-based world, elves and orcs and shit. I’ve got a wide variety of options—a red-haired woman with a bow and a dark purple cloak, a blue-green skinned aquatic thing with webbed feet holding a trident, a guy in full plate mail armor, and plenty more—twelve in all to choose from, plus the option to customize my own. I pick the redhead for no reason other than she’s directly in front of me.

  The room fades to black and when the lights come up I’m sitting in the back of a wagon, bouncing over cobblestones as the horses clip-clop up a wide, heavily trafficked road toward a tight packed, fairy-tale port city. The sun’s high in the sky, glittering off the ivory spires of what I guess must be the royal palace or whatever. The wind is blowing clean and clear off a wide shimmering bay strewn with high-masted ships anchored at the docks, and even more out in the water. Wouldn’t surprise me if there were dragons around somewhere. Everyone loves dragons.

  I’ve never been much for wizards and flaming swords and prophesied chosen ones and all that, I prefer my fantasy a little more grounded, but I get the appeal. Who wouldn’t want to live in a place where magic was real?

  I’m not alone on the wagon. Along with the driver there are others on the back with me, all travelers huddled under their cloaks, but I don’t know who’s human and who’s background ambiance. For all I know I could be the only person in here.

  We pass through the slums on the outskirts of town, my ass growing steadily numb, and a few minutes later we’ve entered the shadows of a bustling commercial section leading up from the docks, with vendor’s carts and colorful stalls and squat wood and stone buildings lining either side of the road. Eventually the cart stops in front of a canted wooden tavern. The windows are dark, but warbling music seeps from the rickety door, and a swinging sign hanging from the rough-wooden slats reads “Harold’s Barrels Tavern.”

  The grizzled driver gives me a dirty look until I take the hint and leap off. I’m barely on the ground before he flicks the reins and the wagon trundles away.

  Inside is warm and dark and smoky, with a long bar and a dozen square tables lit by weak lanterns and a smoldering fireplace. It’s still midmorning and the room is only a quarter full, but the people in here are drinking like they’ve made a career out of it. A stout, dark man sits on a stool near the fire, plunking the strings of a stout, dark instrument. No one looks up as I cross the floor, searching the patrons for Jace. I’m not sure what they look like, I only got their name, but when I spot them I know I’ve found the right person—they’re the only one in here whose eyes are glowing.

  Jace’s aspect is strikingly androgynous, with sharp, narrow features and a shock of messy, silver-white hair. They’re sitting alone in the corner, wearing a purple leather jerkin and tight white leggings, leaning back on the bench with their slender silver boots up on the table like they own the place, and they don’t move them when I approach.

  “Jace?” I ask, and the word comes out in a soft-pitched, lilting drawl. I’d already forgotten I picked a female avatar.

  Jace puts their arms behind their head and narrows one silver eye at me. “Mistress. We don’t often see your people t
his far south. Your quest must be dire indeed to bring a northerner such as yourself to our sunny isles.”

  Jesus, they’re in deep. I’m sure they expect me to play along but it’s not gonna happen. I’m not feeling especially generous toward people wasting my time right now, and unfortunately for Jace my patience is in short supply.

  “Wouldn’t be here otherwise,” I say. “Can we get to it?”

  “Why so hasty?” Jace purrs, like they’re trying to seduce me. “Join me for a flagon of summer ale, won’t you? Wash the road dust from your voice before we speak.”

  Nope. I knock their feet off the table and they sit up with a lurch. “I’m not playing this game with you,” I tell them. “I have a job. You want it or not?”

  Their voice hardens. “This virt is strict RP,” they say, like that’s supposed to mean something. “Play your role or I’ll bounce you.”

  “I’m about to pay you twenty grand, that buys me an exception. Now, you working or do I need to find someone else to give my money to?”

  Their silver eyes glare at me, and the light briefly intensifies, but then they slump back on the bench. “Yeah, I’m working.”

  “Good,” I say, and drop down on the chair across from them. “I need you to run a couple gamertags for me. Find out everything you can.”

  “That it?” they say, the cockiness returning to their voice. “Who you looking for?”

  “OVRshAdo,” I say, and wait for a reaction, but they don’t show me anything. “Plus XeroFacks and RainBowWow.”

  “I can do that,” they say. “Half up front.”

  I hesitate, not sure if I can trust them, but then I figure it’s Dub’s money anyway, ack my bank account, and transfer ten grand. “When will you have something?”

  They lean in, flick their shining eyes back and forth over my shoulders, and raise an eyebrow. “Is now soon enough?”

  “Now? Already? Don’t you need to go research or something?”

  Their face twists up into a bewildered smirk. “What? You think I have the movements and interactions of millions of bit-heads stored in neat paper files back in my office? Or maybe a warehouse of punchcards I need to sort through?” I shake my head. Okay, stupid question. “You wanna see it or not?”

  “Show me,” I say.

  They rub their fingers together.

  “Prove you’re not full of shit first,” I counter.

  Their grin widens. “RainBowWow’s real name is Elmer Kham, but he goes primarily by HuggyJackson.” I remember that name. He was partnered up with OVRshAdo in DI and Anika took him out of the game. Even money XeroFacks is Zara-Zee. “He’s twenty-six, went rezso two years ago but still runs a skyn. Parents Philbert and Willomena, residing in Laos. He hates onions and has an extensive collection of hentai. Want to know his address?”

  Shit. This person is good. Way better than SECNet.

  I send them the other half of their payment, then they reach into their cloak and pull out a crystal that glitters as it hovers above their outstretched palm.

  “What’s this?” I ask as I take the rock with my thumb and index finger. Silvery light dances across its surface.

  “Your answers,” they reply as they sit back, a satisfied smile splitting their face.

  “If you’re fucking with me—” I start, but then the crystal flashes and all is revealed as knowledge dumps straight into my head.

  “OVRshAdo’s a mysterious fella,” Jace says, almost to themself, while my Cortex ripples with fresh information. “Not much to find on him, but those two others are open books.”

  I’m right. Zara-Zee and HuggyJackson are a couple, which makes sense, based on how they were acting when they stole the skyns. They both went reszo in their early twenties to further their gaming careers, and they both still run skyns, and like HuggyJackson’s profile says, they live in California. Not only that, but Jace scanned back through Huggy and Zara’s entire network, cross-referenced their teaming habits, figured out their primary IDs, tied those profiles to their skyns’ biokin, and tracked them down on SECNet.

  A shipping drone running on a private network tagged them less than an hour ago. They’re in the Louisiana flood zones, in Lost Orleans, which fits. No cops to worry about and isolated from the link. It’s the perfect place to hide a bunch of red-hot skyns.

  I can’t suppress my grin. I’m impressed, and Jace knows it. “This is very good stuff.”

  “That was nothing,” they say.

  “You have done the North a great service today,” I intone as I stand. “Your skills truly exceed your, ah, lofty reputation.” They came through, and as ridiculous as this all is, I’m happy to indulge Jace’s game. They’ve earned it.

  They start, then lean back and put their feet back up on the table, with their silver eyes flashing and their grin set back to mischievous. “Should you or the North require my services again, good lady, you must but call.”

  “Until then,” I say with a courteous nod, then yank myself out of the virt and back into the cabin.

  Zara-Zee and HuggyJackson are moving the arena skyns, I know it. Why else would they pop up in a literal backwater like Lost Orleans? The place is mostly underwater, no one down there but fishes and people who don’t want to be found.

  I’ve only eighteen hours left, and I need to get to Louisiana before Zara and Huggy can make those skyns disappear again.

  Let’s hope I haven’t already missed them.

  GAGE, FINSBURY

  14:12:59 // 11-JUL-2059

  The Union abandoned Louisiana’s south coast to the rising waters a decade and a half ago. It wasn’t the only place in the world ravaged by the rising ocean, but it got hit hard. By the time the world started giving a shit and made efforts to curb the carbon pollution, the battle had mostly been lost. It’s only now, after years of actively pulling carbon out of the air, that the climate’s settling back down, but the damage has already been done.

  They tried their best to save New Orleans. They threw engineers and bots and money at it, built a massive sea wall and huge pumps to keep the water out, but the ocean was relentless, hot and angry, and between the flooding and the constant hurricane batterings, maintaining anything resembling modern infrastructure for a city built mostly below sea level became impossible. The Union declared the entire Mississippi Delta a disaster area and ordered its evacuation, suspending all essential services and pulling the region off the grid.

  But it didn’t die. The city went feral, and survived.

  The tributaries of dry land still clinging to the banks of the Mississippi became a place to hide from the Union’s ever-present gaze, and New Orleans morphed into Lost Orleans, a post-apocalyptic, antebellum Venice. A city of unintended canals through submerged urban sprawl, rooftop communities connected by floating walkways, and all powered by the sun and the wind and the water, driven by the electric charges of anarchy and avarice.

  It’s a refuge for artists and outcasts and madmen and hustlers. The rotting buildings provide refuge for genitects frustrated by the limits of Union-imposed morality and fleshmiths constrained by Human Standards. It’s a hub for smugglers, and weapons traffickers, where people shill anything you could ever want and everything in between.

  Somehow it’s even a vacation destination—a billionaire reszo bought the entirety of the French Quarter, domed it off, and now runs it as a 24-7 self-contained resort for bachelor parties and conferences and exuberant corporate retreats.

  Sure, the murder rate is astronomical, every few weeks another building collapses and kills a bunch of people, the only way in and out is by boat or drone or hopper, the mosquitos get thick enough to block out the sun, and there’s always the danger of running out of water or food if a hurricane roars in and sticks around too long, but no one worries about the cops knocking down doors and interrupting the flow of commerce, and that’s all that matters.

  It’s not completely lawless—troublemakers are handled swiftly and harshly. But for the most part people mind their own business
and work together to keep the peace. All things considered, I couldn’t imagine a better place to arrange for the sale and transport four white-hot skyns, no questions asked, but OVRShAdo could have run the operation remotely, anonymously. There’s no reason for Zara-Zee and HuggyJackson to be down there too.

  Maybe the buyer insisted on a face-to-face exchange. Or maybe there was a hitch in the shipping—someone could have discovered the skyns and figured they were worth a bribe and OVRshAdo sent Zara and Huggy to deal with it. Or maybe he just prefers the personal touch. Who knows? Either way, they’ve shown themselves. Now maybe I can find out what they’re up to and how Anika’s involved.

  Lost Orleans keeps itself cut off from the link, and there’s limited local bandwidth and only basic internet, so I can’t cast my rithm directly there. Instead I cast into a rented skyn in Baton Rouge and once I’m there charter a hopper to fly me to a floating pad anchored to the river-wall protecting what’s left of downtown.

  The landscape outside Baton Rouge grows more ramshackle the further we get into the disaster zone, and the scattered pockets of half-hearted civilization thins until there’s nothing but swamp passing below. The ride takes about an hour, and when I land the heat is stifling and the mosquitos immediately form a shrill cloud around my head. Luckily the skyn I rented is built for the humidity and chemically invisible to the bugs. It’d be unbearable otherwise.

  Jace sent an update while I was en route with a new location for HuggyJackson and Zara-Zee. Whoever’s running the drone network must be selling the real-time sensor data on the open market. It’s a lucrative side hustle, sure, but one likely to get whoever’s operating it killed as soon as someone finds out.