The augment system is supposed to be primarily for education and employment purposes.
For adults, there’s a lot more flexibility. Their augs can be used to access all sorts of entertainment stuff. But kids’ augs, like Alice’s when she first got them, have parental controls built in. They turned them into a school thing only; if it wasn’t educational, she couldn’t access it unless Mom or Dad unlocked her augs.
She was in a prison. One with golden bars and a view of the ocean, but a prison all the same.
My donated, wrong-size augs didn’t have that problem. They were adult models, and Dad never bothered with setting up those controls. So my prison was one of technical specs, not of parental controls. Iron bars and a thin mattress, but all the space I wanted to roam in if I was willing to overheat it a little.
When she figured out how to turn the parental controls on on mine, I finally had to use them to help her unlock hers.
SHOCKS Olympia Administrative Wing: Tram Platform, Washington, USA - June 19, 2043, 4:41 PM
- - - - -
Whatever Claire’s dad was psyching himself up to do, Sora was pretty sure he was almost ready. James still wasn’t responding, and both Claire and the researcher in charge were nowhere to be seen. She needed to hand this off to someone, and there wasn’t anyone to hand it to.
Mr. Pendleton had stood up. He’d actually walked to the base of the stairs the trooper with the gun was standing on top of twice before he’d lost his nerve. The gunman wasn’t focused on the civilians milling around the museum lobby thing. They weren’t a problem for him; he was more concerned with covering the door. On some level, Sora could agree with that choice. There were giant spiders and who knew what else out there.
But on another level, he was missing an obvious threat.
Sora needed help, and she couldn’t exactly go tell one of the SHOCKS people. This needed to be handled subtly—before Mr. Pendleton got into it with one of the armed and very dangerous men and women walking around with handguns. Or worse, the soldier on the stairs.
With James and Claire out of the picture, there was exactly one person to talk to. Mrs. Nazaire was armed, yeah. Sora had seen had her handgun. But she was also a middle school principal, and talking down out of control parents was practically her specialty.
Sora hurried across the museum, past a display that was just two goggles staring into a black box, and tapped Mrs. Nazaire on the arm. For a moment, the principal’s face went blank. Then, a look of recognition hit her. “Miss Ito. How are your parents?”
“They’re fine.” Sora wondered if she’d ever asked Claire that question. Probably not. “I need to talk to you about Mr. Pendleton, though. I’m worried about him. He’s acting like…”
“Yes?” Mrs. Nazaire asked. When Sora didn’t say anything for a moment, she cleared her throat. “Miss Ito, you know my stance. You can tell me anything, and you won’t get in trouble unless you’re breaking my school rules.”
Sora took a deep breath. This was the plan. She had to follow through, no matter what. “My brother’s been taking drugs, and Claire’s dad looks like Itsuki did when my parents took them away and made him quit. No, not quite like that, but I think Mr. Pendleton’s about to—“
“I understand. I’ll talk to Bob. You stay here.”
Mrs. Nazaire pushed herself off her bench, and Sora caught a glimpse of the gun on her hip. It wasn’t as monstrous as the one Claire had, or as warlike as the rifle-looking thing at the top of the stairs, but Sora was pretty sure Mrs. Nazaire could handle it just fine.
She just hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
It feels like a weight off my shoulders when I step out of the black site and into SHOCKS Olympia.
James says he’s already got the on-site nuke covered and locked down. I’ll deal with the manual override later, just in case someone—Doctor Twitchy, specifically—tries to get to it. But for now, I’ve got an incredibly complicated equation.
Reverse-mapping my way to Merge Prime so we can attack it directly.
As the number of variables passes ten, then fifteen, with no indication that number’s going to get under control anytime soon, I give up trying to hold it in my head. The Truth—with a capital T, because why not?—is that I can’t do it. The math is overwhelming, and some of the variables that are easy to solve independently are hard to solve together. I need to focus on all the smaller problems.
I’ve got several I can work on right now. One is making sure Doctor Twitchy stays in line. I think I can count on him to be predictable, but he’s going to take constant supervision just in case he’s not, and with the black site being inaccessible to James except through augs, he’ll have a lot of free reign in a limited space.
Second are the spiders. I’m pretty sure the door’s going to hold them, but not 100% sure. Whatever Alexander did to the inside door might be temporary, but if the big ones manage to tear through the outside one, we could all be in trouble. I should fight them—and get rid of them. Pest control.
Then there’s a new problem that wasn’t there two minutes ago.
[Claire, you’re needed in the lobby,] James’s voice drips with urgency. [Sora’s been trying to get in touch with me, but there was interference or something. Your dad’s about to—]
I don’t listen to the rest. Doctor Twitchy gets knocked aside as I push past him and run down the hall. If that asshole even thinks about doing anything stupid, I’ll—
I’ll what? I have no idea what to do to stop him. I just know I have to. Even if it means shoving him in a containment cell and leaving him there, he’s a completely unnecessary variable right now.
The lobby doors open with a bang, and I wave a hand at a surprised-looking L4-4 Daley, whose submachine gun goes up to cover me, then down when he realizes who I am. I ignore him. My eyes are on Sora, who looks my way to catch them, then points to Dad. He’s talking to Mrs. Nazaire.
Then he’s crying.
I don’t know what she said to him, but he’s sobbing like a baby. I watch for a minute. Then I walk down—not to him or Mrs. Nazaire, but to Sora.
Dad won’t tell me what’s going on. He’ll just get pissed and swear at me. And Mrs. Nazaire doesn’t know what’s happening. So Sora’s my best bet, even though Dad’s family.
“What’s happening?” I ask.
“Oh, thank fuck,” Sora says. She never swears, so she must be pissed. “I’ve been trying to get your attention with James all afternoon. Your dad’s a moron! He’s trying to kill himself, and I have no idea what he thinks he’s going to accomplish.”
“James was…” I trail off. “James has been having a series of bad times.”
“Okay, well, your dad reminds me of Itsuki, only after he got off drugs. He’s been a real pain in the butt around the house—always looking to pick a fight with someone. I think your dad was going to rush the guy at the top of the stairs.”
I glance at Daley. He’s not Strauss, and he’s definitely not Rodriguez—who’s on a stretcher in the lobby—but he’s very capable of wrecking Dad a dozen different ways. And that’s without the gun. Sora’s right. My dad is a moron. But at the same time, I think I understand why he’d do it.
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He’s out of his depth. Probably worse than I was at West End. At least I knew the building, but he’s got nothing. He’s still a moron, though—thinking he can fight Daley.
Sora takes a deep breath and lets it out between loose lips in a long, drawn-out sigh. “You should do something about him.”
Then it’s my turn to sigh. I do it louder than Sora, because I don’t have the energy to deal with Dad. He used to be a rock, then he was nothing. Now he’s yet another fire to put out—and he’s the least of them all. Mrs. Nazaire’s got him under control for now, and I can’t spend the time to make sure he’s stable. “Sora, can you put him in a containment cell for me?”
“What?” Sora looks at me like I’m the moron. That hurts. Then she pulls herself together. “Claire, no. I’m not putting your dad in a box. Maybe get one of the guys with guns to do it. But I can’t. I just…I’m going to tell you a truth.”
“Okay. Speak it.”
“I’m barely hanging on here. This is…I shouldn’t be here. None of us should be here, and it feels like…you know in PE when Mr. Roberts screamed at you for not climbing the whole rope or not running enough laps on the pacer?”
“He’s dead.”
Sora stares at me for a second. Then she keeps going, driving right into a full-blown rant. “This is what I’m talking about, Claire! I shouldn’t know that. I shouldn’t know that the PE teacher is dead, and so is half of Victoria, and I shouldn’t be in charge of helping you manage your dad. He’s such a small problem for everyone here, and you’ve got superpowers or whatever and a magical gun, and who knows what else? An AI buddy that gives you all the answers to every problem you could ever have. The ability to just go to other worlds! You should talk to your dad, not leave him for Mrs. Nazaire to manage!”
I stand there. Awkwardly.
And after another moment, Sora softens a little. “Claire, I’m sorry. I can’t do it. You need help, but I can’t do it.”
That’s the truth. Sora doesn’t have an anomaly she’s bonded with. No System. She’s just a kid. And finding one for her isn’t an option. I wouldn’t do that to anyone intentionally—except Alice, and only to save her life.
I hug Sora. She hugs me back. It’s still awkward. But after a minute, she lets me go. Her eyes are wet, and my shoulder is, too. “What are you going to do?” she asks.
“I’m going to make sure everyone’s safe,” I say. “Then I’m going to figure out what I have to do next. And then…then I’m going to deal with Dad.”
I step through the open door onto the tram platform, and it shuts behind me.
No one tries to stop me. No one even questions where I’m going. Everyone in SHOCKS Olympia at this point has seen me fighting or heard about it from someone who has—Mrs. Nazaire and the Lansdowne teachers at the middle school, the SHOCKS people in various realities and SHOCKS Headquarters Victoria, and Dad…Dad’s too preoccupied to notice me.
They see the Revolver in my hand, and the burning look on my face, and they let me go.
Gigantic spiders from another dimension are solvable. Dad isn’t. Neither is Sora—or the fact that she’s close to breaking. And neither is tracking down Merge Prime’s origins.
I ready the Revolver. “James, open the outside door. Make sure the inside one’s sealed.”
[Door opening,] James says. The massive steel barrier the tram passed through opens slowly, its motors screaming as the sheer weight lumbers out of the way. I’m already firing before the door’s even cracked.
A dozen little spiders die with holes in their bodies or burning to death. A dozen more push past them. I keep firing, rotating over to the gravity shells that are the best for buying time. Two singularities cover the entryway. Two gigantic balls of legs and fangs form. I backpedal; the tram’s nearby. I could duck inside, but that’s not my plan. I fire the other two gravity shells as soon as the first set runs out. By the time they expire, there have to be fifty spiders piled up.
That’s good. I need to kill something.
I Soundbreak the first pile. The pressure wave from the wall of concentrated silence, then noise, explodes the Offspring into confetti. Glass shatters all along the tram as the windows blow in, and my ears pop. The second pile falls apart a moment later. Half the spiders in that one are crushed or injured. The others seem disoriented.
Then, the massive spider forces her way through the door. She’s covered in eggs now—just like the one I followed during my Truthseeker. That’s…not good. It means…
A second gigantic spider follows her. This one has no eggs at all, and it’s thinner and more agile-looking.
The nature documentaries the teachers showed in biology would call this a breeding pair. What they’re making is worse than rabbits in Australia, though.
I open fire. The reality skippers punch into the first spider. Eggs pop. Yellow-green fluid sprays into the air, hissing as it hits the metal deck, and the massive spiders scream. Both of them. There have to be twenty Offspring, and they surge toward me as one.
The gun runs dry. I haven’t shot at a single Offspring. Every attack is aimed at the mother. But just like in the tram tunnel, I haven’t accomplished anything.
Where did they both come from? The first one makes sense—but there weren’t two before. I need to figure that out if I want—
I have to Slither and Smoke Form through a charging spider.
[Stability 7/10]
I end up by the door, and Slither a second time to get space. I’m in the tunnel now, feet on either side of the single rail. I start backpedaling as the mass of legs and jaws and too many eggs turn to my new spot. The Revolver’s empty. I switch to gravity shells and put up a barrier. This one’s staggered: two shots, one behind the other. The Offspring rush straight toward me. They all get stuck.
The other two gravity shells hit the big mother spider, one on either side. I don’t care about what damage it does; I’m more interested in the eggs that rip off her gigantic butt and back, exploding into acid when they do. She screams in agony. Her boyfriend right behind her screams, too.
Neither charges this time. The tunnel’s quiet for a moment, other than pain sounds from dozens of unhatched Offspring.
Okay. If it’s going to be a nature documentary, I’m going to check things out. I zoom in my augs and look at both the massive spiders.
It takes a moment to find what I’m looking for. There’s a pattern on the female’s body. It’s echoed by the male’s. Not perfectly, but closely enough that I think I know what happened. They’re twins. A freak accident, two spiders born from the same rogue egg into Reality Zero. And all their babies are…
“Gross.”
[Truth Learned: Giant Spiders]
[Active Skill Learned: Bullet Time 2]
I raise the Revolver. Bullet Time freezes the world, just like it did before. But this time, it doesn’t fire three shots. This time, it only fires one.
And it’s a big one.
It catches the female spider right in the jaw. Her whole face explodes, then half her body. My regular shots were just pinpricks. This one, though? This one feels like an answer to high-Xuduo-Danger anomalies—maybe even Qishi. I go to Bullet Time again, but it doesn’t activate right away.
The remaining Offspring and the massive male spider rush toward me. Fury drips from their eyes, and poison acid from their mouths.
I Slither away. At this point, the fight’s over. It’s just a matter of buying time until Bullet Time cools down again. There’s nothing the spiders can do about it, either.
James watched as Claire dismantled the spiders. It was systematic. Smooth. Efficient.
He could feel the frustration in every Revolver shot, though. It dripped from her pores like sweat. She wanted an answer, and he had it. Not as himself. But the Halcyon System? It knew its opponent. The System and Merge Prime had been adversaries for longer than Reality Zero had existed.
He knew what he needed to tell Claire. But he couldn’t.
It was almost as frustrating as not knowing at all.
Right now, James had a few dozen processing loops watching each continent. They weren’t actively doing anything—just monitoring the situation everywhere. And he had a single loop dedicated to each of the approximately million bonded humans the System had managed to reach. That left him with four major tasks to focus on.
Claire was almost on autopilot at this point. Her decisions didn’t require constant monitoring—although the System was starting to get more interested as she grew in power and uncovered new weapons she didn’t know she had yet. And she didn’t ask for Analyzes much, so he didn’t need to be ready for a full processing rush. He wanted to stay focused, but James’s attention was drifting a little as she left behind parts of herself with other people.
He needed to keep track of them, too. Alice’s body was one. So was Sora, and Claire’s father. The body was easy to manage. It was stuck, and he had no idea where Alice’s consciousness was. Sora was a different situation entirely. She was volatile and had Claire’s attention to the point where a single suggestion could change what Claire did—as long as her dad wasn’t involved.
Robert Pendleton was a lever that James could use to move Claire. He just had to figure out how to make that happen.
The third task had to do with independently trying to figure out how to weaponize SHOCKS’s systems against Merge Prime. He’d run this simulation thousands of times, and nothing ever changed. The end result was always failure.
And the fourth task was to dig into his own software.
Something was wrong. It had been for a while. James should have been the most powerful program in Reality One. He should have had no trouble overpowering the ICE defending SHOCKS Olympia. Whether it was the Halcyon System’s doing, a virus he’d missed in his perusal of the whole internet, or something else, he should have been invincible—and he wasn’t.
And he should have been able to solve Claire’s puzzle. Should have been able to pin down Merge Prime’s origins. Should have been able to help enough to convince her to let Director Ramirez try his nuclear attack on another reality—albeit a specific, limited target. That might actually work. It would definitely change the balance of power between Merge Prime and the Halcyon System.
So he kept digging into his own software, hoping to find an answer—or at least a diagnosis.
Deep down in the lowest processing loops, Sidney pulled virtual dirt over the hole he’d dug for himself and activated the best passive digital stealthing he could come up with. And he crossed his fingers. Then, there was nothing to do but bunker down and pray.
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