Gustav awoke to find himself lying in a dark and dusty, sharply sloping roofed attic space. There was a single, dirty skylight letting in light from the moon and from a moving searchlight passing overhead. He tried to stand, felt his muscles spasm and immediately experienced a panic attack as a bout of dizziness coupled with difficulty breathing, racing heart and palpitations seemed to emphasise the pounding headache that threatened to drown his ability to focus. A wave of nausea washed over him as he realised his hands were trembling. He was sure it wasn’t due to ‘hunger’.
Something was seriously wrong with him. He looked down and saw his costume had blood on it. Feeling his rapidly healing face, he realised it was likely his. He looked around, allowing his night vision to enhance what he could see. He was in the roof cavity of a block of flats. It had several sealed crates and boxes of forgotten belongings, but nothing that identified where he was.
Outside he could hear shouting and a distant gunshot, it took him a couple of minutes though to realise the shouting had been in Carpathian.
He had no idea how he had got here. His memory was decidedly blank. The last thing he remembered was yet another failed mind-control session with ‘Also’ Rhan in Down Below, thinking that enough was enough, this wasn’t going anywhere and he’d be better off just heading to Carpathia now and then, nothing. He pinched himself, nope, that hurt. This wasn’t some sort of weird dream.
He stumbled over to the skylight, noticing a number “3” carved into the wall in front of him, and looked out. The rooftops looked Eastern European in design, rooftops designed for harsh winters despite the current warmth. Flying above the rooftops were about a dozen remote-controlled camera drones spreading out across the city, apparently searching for someone or something. The closest drone had Cyrillic writing on the side and the warning notices were in Carpathian.
That’s when he realised the voices he could hear were speaking Carpathian. He heard someone shout, “Search everywhere, he’s got to be here!” and far below the echo of heavy military boots on concrete stairs.
There was a hatch in the ‘floor’ nearby. As quietly as possible, he moved the radio sitting next to it to one side, opened the trapdoor slightly and looking down.
He was about three metres above a dark communal landing and stairs with four doors off it on each level – each consisted of metal security doors common in some Eastern European Countries like Carpathia as it provided the illusion of safety and security in their own home. Looking down the stairwell, he saw several armed soldiers with the three lens helmets that signified the Baroness’s own Special Forces were on the first floor demanding access to apartments so they could search and confirm the “traitor wasn’t hiding there.” Activated landing light sensors illuminated their presence.
If there had been an assault on the Baroness or some sort of rebellion then protocol called for the Police to be placed under house arrest on pain of death and the normal soldiers confined to barracks to prevent them from possibly joining or supporting the ‘other side’. Only the Baroness’s Special Forces, her hand chosen troops, would be free to patrol the streets of the capital.
He quietly lowered the hatch, only to spin round suddenly as he heard the skylight quietly open and two figures creep inside. In his fever and paranoia, it took him a second or three to realise that it was Cadet and Firewall. Like him, they had a number of small cuts and abrasions as though they’d recently been in a fight. As Gus’ stumbled forward into the light, he saw Firewall smile and quietly point him out to Cadet.
“Gus, I’m glad to see you! How are you?” Firewall muttered quietly, “You look rough. Now we just need to get you away from here.”
“I feel… I don’t know what’s happening. I really want to blame Rhan, but I don’t think she’s responsible, is she? Where am I and how did I get here?” he replied.
Seeing his heightened state of anxiety, Firewall pulled out a medical kit and gave him some tablets to “counter the effects of the Baroness’s control drugs she addicted you with in the six months you’d been at the Seminarium.” He went on to explain that Gus had run away from Claremont six months before and joined the Seminarium as he had originally proposed. Earlier tonight, at the Summer Palace, he’d attempted to kill the Baroness and claim the throne through right of succession by assassination. He’d failed
“I didn’t think it would succeed” Gus quietly responded, only for Cadet to ask him angrily, “If that’s the case, why the hell did you try it then?” Firewall ignored Gus’s stuttering apology and explained that now he and his ‘followers’ were being hunted, that meant anyone who for any reason had opposed the Baroness’ rule were now automatically declared a participant in treason and were being rounded up. She’d enacted a curfew a short time ago to prevent him from leaving the city. They themselves had arrived in the country only a few hours before to try and stop him, and now were going to try and help him get to safety. “We haven’t got a lot of time and we need to get out of here.”
Gus continued to try to defend his actions by claiming that he never thought this would be easy. His anxiety levels caused his withdrawal symptoms to flare up again. Firewall asked him to remember his mindfulness training and not get upset while the drugs tried to counter the effects of his addiction withdrawal, “Concentrate on your breathing and focus on grounding yourself. You need to be at your best if we’re to survive the night.”
Gus’ realised that whatever concoction of drugs the Baroness used on her ‘faithful’ to keep them under her control had caused him to go into serious withdrawal. Could it also be responsible for his six months’ worth of memory loss? It was clearly summer outside, and his last conscious memory was of the start of the new school term at Claremont.
Thankfully, whatever medication Firewall had given him was at least temporarily calming down the withdrawal effects. He almost felt normal again. Below, they could hear that the guards were now searching the second floor.
“Look we’ve not got a lot of time; we’re here to spring you so consider yourself sprung and let’s get out of here.” whispered Cadet as he opened the skylight and looked down at the street below. For a moment, Gus considered making their way back to the Palace and making another attempt at the Baroness, but was quickly talked out of it.
Parked below but surrounded by six more of the triplexed guards on the street was an armoured Humvee. A man was being marched out of the building and was about to be thrown in the back of the vehicle. They could hear the soldiers accuse him of being a traitor and rebel sympathiser as his wife and two young children sobbed. One of the guards was telling him to behave or they would take his family in as well.
Cadet and Firewall seemed to understand what was being said. In Firewall’s case, that wasn’t a surprise since he could interface with the internet and translate using that in real time, but Cadet had obviously upgraded his earpiece communicator so that it now included a translation facility similar to the Balance’s commdots. Gus’ found his own earpiece and made sure it was on as they decided that perhaps they could ‘kill’ two birds with one stone; they needed to help free the man below and as Cadet pointed out they could get themselves disguises and transportation at the same time.
As Firewall used the nearest telephone cable to ‘zap’ himself down to the old telephone kiosk on the corner, Ashen and Cadet flew down, with Cadet using his memory-cloth glider, camouflaged against the night sky, to drop the three stories. Down below, Firewall pulled out his rebreather and inserted it in his mouth before jumping out of the kiosk and catching the guard’s attention even as Cadet unleashed several of his sleeping gas cartridges from above on them.
One guard managed to get off a shot at Firewall, which he managed to dodge as the first of the exploding cartridges erupted and stunned the guards, who staggered against the side of their vehicle. “Shazam!” shouted Firewall, all pretences at stealth having now gone out the window.
A couple of undirected shots were fired up into the sky, but clearly missed the two coming in for landing.
Firewall responded enthusiastically to the fired bullet with an area-wide energy pulse that left two of the dazed soldiers completely incapacitated and two others staggered. The driver and the guard riding shotgun had also stepped out of the vehicle at the sound of the shot and were caught in the blast, leaving them dazed by the unexpected burst of energy. Gus landed beside them, grabbed the passenger and threw him physically at the driver, causing both to collapse in a semi-comatose heap as he rushed round to the rear of the vehicle and their equally staggered prisoner.
He smiled as he helped the man to his feet, “Never fear, the rebellion lives on!” He was caught by surprise at the look of sheer panic on the man’s face and on his wife’s standing on the steps now utterly terrified at what had just occurred. The man’s eyes grew larger with fright as he scrambled for one of the rifles and stuck the barrel under his chin. “Damn you, you’ve just condemned my whole family, unless…” He went to pull the trigger as Firewall unleashed a laser beam at the rifle rendering the trigger red-hot and slicing through the barrel. The gun clattered to the ground as the shot went off it the air.
He collapsed in utter panic onto the ground, screaming to anyone who could hear, “I’m not with them, I’m not with them! Kill me, but spare my family, please…” He resisted Ashen’s attempts to try to get him to stand or try and flee.
Firewall joined in by shouting at the man, “Get out of here you filthy traitor, go away. You’re nothing to do with us.” One of the dazed guards got to his feet and tried to shoot Gus, only to be ‘rewarded’ by Cadet with a Bo staff striking his temple, knocking him unconscious.
As soon as Firewall and Cadet jumped into the front of the Humvee, Firewall bent down and started to hot-wire the ignition to bypass the biometric starter even as he Tasered the last remaining conscious guard outside. Ashen grabbed three of the unconscious Special Forces personnel and threw them into the rear of the vehicle. He was about to throw their guns in with them when Firewall screamed at him to “do what you like, but do not arm the prisoners, put the guns upfront and get in quick.”
He did so; jumping in the back himself as Firewall began to drive away at speed from Palace Square, down Anastasie Panu Boulevard towards an old church.
They all tried to ignore the single gunshot that rang out seconds after they drove away or the hysterical screams that followed.
In the back, Ashen pulled off one of the soldier’s helmets, realised that the screen inside was linked to cameras on the front of the helmet and that the top one of the three lens was attached to some sort of GPS and facial recognition database. The screen showed that all three of them had been facially tagged and identified. The helmet’s integrated earpiece was calmly stating, “Suspect recognition confirmed, awaiting further troops 47.1585.331° by 27.6014.123° heading East…”
He slammed his fist inside the helmet, smashing the circuitry and everything went dead – including the view plate. Damn, the helmet was only usable when the facial recognition and tracking software was functional; he started to strip the costumes off the unconscious soldiers anyway.
Just beyond the church, a roadblock had been set up. Behind the barrier, a female with wild-looking red hair was apparently in charge. Upfront, Cadet and Firewall switched seats whilst still driving so that Firewall was now riding shotgun even as the van performed a violent left turn followed by a sharp right and another sudden left turn as they passed the Barboi Church. The curfew meant the streets were thankfully otherwise deserted.
In the back Ashen managed to strip their uniforms off, leaving the soldiers near-naked in front of their ever-on helmets. He winked at the two activated helmets as he tossed the stripped soldiers and their helmets out the back. The bodies bounced on the road as only unconscious or drunk people can. He hastily put on one of the uniforms minus a helmet but with the cowl up to try and cover his hair, Then the van swerved violently to one side of the road as a tyre blew up front throwing him around the cabin.
Upfront, a few seconds before a humanoid creature had stepped out into the road. He had a beaked, reptilian head, was hairless and his scales were burnt black under his tabard.
He gestured and a fiery blue energy sphere manifested in his hand which he immediately threw at the front of their Humvee. The blue fireball exploded, blowing out one of the front tyres and causing the vehicle to almost swerve off the road. Cadet continued driving with the Humvee’s wheel on its rim, sparks flying, passed the smirking, dragon-like figure and came to a halt a hundred metres up the road in the railings of an old Church. They jumped out with Ashen trying to grab one of the rifles as they vaulted over the fence and began to run across the graveyard.
Cadet remembered seeing their attacker’s profile once on HeroNet, after his recent escape from custody – their pursuer was the Black Dragonkin. Once human, he was believed to have undergone a forced meta-crisis that somehow resulted in dragon-like abilities and appearance. He was also known to be powerful. Damn!
Several fiery blasts dogged their passage as they dodged behind gravestones. Firewall unleashed a laser blast aimed directly at the diamond-shaped section of their pursuers’ uniform covering his solar plexus. It hit, but appeared to do little if any damage. “Damn, he’s tough. Well, by the looks of him, he’s already fire damaged.” Firewall muttered as he sprinted towards the cover of some distant gravestones.
The Black Dragonkin responded with a roar that created an intense feeling of fear. Trained to ignore such responses, Cadet and Firewall shook off the effects immediately, but Ashen, still suffering the effects of drug withdrawal, was unable to do so and found it left him trembling and shaking.
Thankfully, their cocky attacker was in no hurry to finish them and just followed behind, unleashing handfuls of the eerie blue fire in their general direction. Cadet had the feeling that he was herding them towards a trap. They ran through the graveyard, using the darkness as cover as they argued quietly with Ashen about his desire to stay and fight rather than their preferred plan to get him to safety.
As they headed onto Cuza Voda Avenue hoping to reach the Embassy section of the city, they passed an apartment block with bars over the windows. Inside one of the windows was a small child staring out into the street. As Ashen ran under a street light, the boy saw him and began screaming hysterically for his mum that, “The monster is out there! He has come to try and kill me too!” His mother appeared saw Ashen in the street, screamed and dragged her child away from the window.
Ashen muttered as he ran towards the nearby Theatre, “That is not what I planned.” Over their comms, Cadet asked, “What did you plan?” his voice harsh. “Not this… I planned to wait a bit longer before acting,” replied Ashen almost as a plea to the Gods above. “If you’d left it any longer you’d have been completely under her control, a slave addicted to her cocktail of drugs and completely at her mercy” was the response from out of the darkness.
They reached the National Theatre just as the latest rehearsal for Swan Lake was finishing. There had to be guests of high standing in the Carpathian Government in attendance for it to have been allowed to proceed after the curfew. One such guest, an elderly gentleman in a smart, tailored evening suit, was standing outside talking with a young woman in evening dress young enough to be his granddaughter. He was watching a TV broadcast on his tablet. It showed Ashen trying to stab the Baroness, only for the Premier to intercept and be stabbed instead. As chaos broke out, Ashen was seen to flee, leaving his followers to be mowed down by the Baroness’s security team.
Cadet slumped behind a car opposite while he waited for them to leave. The gentleman put the tablet away and was explaining to the woman who was trying to raise his hand up towards her waist, “That’s not how it happened, of course; I was there when the mongrel tried to kill the Baroness. The Premier was accidentally shot at by one of his own men, not ‘bravely’ intercepting the blade intended for her ladyship as portrayed on TV. Hah, who cares? History is written by the winners to suit their own purposes, eh.” His chauffeur opened the rear door of a limousine, and he and his young companion stepped inside and sped off into the night.
Meanwhile, Firewall was still running while trying to take the time to get a good aim at their reptilian pursuer. Bringing up the rear, Ashen was in a quandary – he was in two minds what to do, he still had the rifle but he’d never fired one before or? He threw the rifle back at the advancing figure then used His Shadow’s Alley ability to walk through the darkness until he was standing just behind the Black Dragonkin. Ashen felt the need to prove he wasn’t as he was being portrayed, a traitorous terrorist out for his own ends. He used the Voice of Allure, “It wasn’t me, I need you to tell the citizens the truth about what really happened in the Palace, they need to know the truth…”
Despite the Voice washing over him, it had little or no effect on the monstrous figure. He turned and started striking out with his diamond-hardened black claws causing Ashen to have to dance around him to avoid multiple strikes to his face, chest and groin. Thankfully, the strikes all failed to connect as something hit the back of his stolen uniform, hooked on and suddenly he found himself being whisked back through the air, away from his attacker.
Seeing Ashen teleport towards the blackened assassin and then being forced to waltz round to avoid being struck by the other’s claws, Cadet had turned and fired his grapple at Ashen’s back, hoping it would snag onto something. It succeeded, and he then hit the rewind button, whisking his friend away from the fight and towards him in an uncontrolled manner. Ashen bounced on the tarmac a couple of times before it continued to drag him back towards Cadet. It would leave him bruised, good thing he healed fast.
As he turned, he realised that an armoured vehicle now blocked their path. Four of the Special Force operatives stepped out, surrounding a young woman with wild red hair and demented eyes as she gestured with arms covered in old self-inflicted scars.
Damn! They were trapped with them in front and the Black Dragonkin behind. He reeled in the grapple that the bruised Ashen had now released and whispered over their comm channel, “Cover your eyes.” He immediately unleashed several flash bombs over the top of the van even as he kept up his sprint. The bombs exploded with brilliant white light, blinding the soldiers and catching the woman off-guard as she unleashed an icy attack.
Several icicles suddenly fell from the sky and pierced the road near where they had been standing.
Bringing up the rear, Firewall had watched Ashen uncontrollably fly past him as he tried to steady his aim. He took the opportunity of the flares erupting up ahead to startle his pursuer and unleashed a Taser blast which hit and staggered their dragon-like follower, causing him to monetarily collapse to his knees.
Meanwhile, a couple of the soldiers, temporarily blinded by the flares, were firing wild in their general direction. One bullet whizzed past Cadet’s ear, so close he felt the heat of its passing.
They continued their run. As they got closer, Ashen threw one of his special smoke pellets straight at the red-haired female’s feet, surrounding her in light-refracting particles as he dropped a second pellet at his own feet and teleported to just behind her and again tried to protest his innocence this time in the female’s ear.
Over his comms, he could hear an exasperated Firewall muttering, “You need to learn how to smooth-talk a woman rather than all this direct and to the point stuff. Listen Gus, I’ll show you how to talk to women, just give up on the ‘I’m innocent’ bit, everyone’s already seen you on TV – you need to compliment her on her hair, say she looks nice. Ask her what she’s doing tomorrow tonight, then protest your innocence if you must…” Despite the gravity of the situation, Gus smiled. The female might not be listening to his words but for the moment she was entranced by his voice. Anyway, given the SNAFU and lost memory, maybe he really was guilty? He turned and ran, leaving her staring off into the distance, unblinking, as Ashen muttered, “we need to find somewhere we can lie low for the moment.”
Having passed the now-blinded roadblock and at least shaken their pursuers for the moment, they ran up a side street towards Independentei Boulevard and the Embassy sector of the city. Cadet explained that their best hope was asking one of the Embassies for asylum. Firewall caught up with them and muttered, “Maybe not the Embassy of Ecuador at the moment and given your status as a terrorist with dual nationality, your British status might already have been stripped away.”
Up ahead they could see a siege of a block of flats and several shots rang out. Several security vehicles were parked outside as soldiers stormed the building. Shots were also raining down from open windows as several rebels fought back. It was a lost cause but they refused to surrender, possibly since survival would mean torture and a painful, extended death anyway. Firewall and Cadet tried to keep to the opposite side of the assault and sneak past. Ashen in his partial uniform rushed in, even as an upper window several stories up broke and a female was thrown out. Ashen leapt into the shadows and teleported as fast as he was able into the shadow of the building, hoping to grab the flailing woman before she hit the pavement. He got to her literally as she had a single storey left to fall, reached out to grab her wrist and… his grip missed. She collapsed into the ground with a sickening thud. She lay there on the pavement bleeding out, body crushed, her lifeless eyes staring up at him, accusingly. He crashed to the ground from three metres up, bruising himself as he suddenly felt the need to fight, to hurt and to be hurt.
Staring up, the guards suddenly became aware who he was and began to unleash a torrent of bullets in his direction. If any hit, he was unaware of it. Then the area was blanketed out in a cascade of smoke bombs, blinding everyone at street level. He heard Cadet’s pleas that there was nothing they could do here, that they needed to follow the plan. Behind them Black Dragonkin was slowly catching up on them.
Firewall was running behind Cadet as he again fired his Taser at the advancing figure. The outburst of electricity followed the laser path straight at the fire-wielding dragon-like figure and again bruised and dazed him, though he obviously could recover quickly.
Gus was weeping and screaming that he needed to get into the building and save ‘his’ people. Firewall muttered to Cadet that “you really should have kept the grapple on him.” Cadet nodded grimly as he leapt up, grabbed hold of Ashen and tried to drag him away from the building which was now on fire. The soldiers inside were now trying to get past their external attackers with their convoy of prisoners, but were forced to remain in the entrance of the blazing building.
Gus allowed himself to be dragged away with his friend holding on to him, all the time protesting that he really wanted to get inside, he needed to make things right. He tried to resist Cadet’s grip, but his heart was no longer in it. Things like this were probably happening all over the Country as the Baroness used the current situation to attack and jail anyone who had resisted her authority. He shouted “The spirit of rebellion lives on” as they ran away and up the street. Ahead was a museum of some sort and following them closely in the sky were several of the camera drones they’d seen earlier. If they were to get away, they needed to get past or blind them.
They dived into a museum courtyard and headed under cover of the foliage whilst Firewall messed around with some objects he’d apparently brought with him trying to jerry-build something. Thick copper wire was quickly wrapped round an iron bar to create an electromagnetic coil. He clamped on a capacitor and added a powerful battery to the concoction and attached it to one of Cadet’s stun grenades. “It’s a Hail Mary shout” he muttered as he ran into the middle of the circling drones above and activating it, threw it up into the middle of them. The makeshift EMP grenade flared and died.
A second later, all the drones suddenly and uncontrollably crashed into the ground, dead. They set off across the grounds and a number of narrow back alleys, heading for the square up ahead, avoiding patrols looking for them. Ashen used the shadows to conceal himself as he tried to heal his various wounds.
Unfortunately, blocking off all access to the square and the embassies beyond were several Humvees and the red-haired woman. They’d obviously stopped on route to pick people up, as Black Dragonkin stood beside her.
Two shots rang out from guards standing in the street just ahead of them, both aimed at Cadet. He threw himself to one side and both bullets missed him but smashed into a shop window on the corner. “Are smashed windows like mirrors and equal seven years of bad luck?” he wondered as he jumped up and somersaulting up in the air unleashed a cascade of flash bombs at the several soldiers advancing on them from the barricade. Most of the soldiers were caught off-guard and were temporarily blinded, but at least two were still able to aim their rifles. Firewall unleashed a series of laser discharges at them, temporarily staggering them as Ashen arrived, grabbed a pair of them and banged them into each other.
Firewall meanwhile was keeping up a running commentary on which of the embassies they should approach assuming they could get inside without starting a war. His personal recommendation was to approach the Dutch Embassy first.
Up ahead they still had the barrier of the vehicles across the road and armed troops to pass. To add to their worries the female gestured and ice began to form, creating a wall in front of the vehicles.
The decision was taken to divide their attention up by each using different means to get past the blockade – Firewall tampered with his phone to pull up an app he’d designed earlier. He then turned insubstantial and in his energy form walked towards the barricade – his presence invited attention and several shots rang out, each passing through his insubstantial body.
The other two used the distraction caused by Firewall ‘flaring up’ as Cadet fired his grapple onto the roof and began heading up even as Ashen set off flying over the blockade trying as much as possible to stay in the darkness above the street lights and out of the moonlight.
As he got closer, Firewall was worried that the ice might ground him and short out his abilities but he had a plan. He materialised himself as close to the Ice Queen as he could, using the van and her body to obstruct any further shots as he switched on the app. A hypnotic pattern appeared on the screen he held in front of the redhead’s face. He’d got the idea from Mace’s visit though his copy was 2D on the screen rather than holographic and, if he was being honest, he was hoping Ashen’s previous use of his Voice of Allure on her might have left her more susceptible.
He watched as the app played out and her eyes glazed over, unfortunately it didn’t stop her escort from firing at Cadet and Ashen as they made their own way over the roadblock.
One of the shots clipped Cadets’ lower lobe, resulting in a cascade of blood down his uniform. His grapple reeled him in, several other shots were fired in his direction. He tried to swing unpredictably even as it pulled him onto the roof and sheltered momentarily behind a chimney to try to staunch the blood and while he worked out the safest route down.
Back on the ground, Firewall tried to keep the woman between him and the soldiers though he still made sure he had his protective barrier up. He then tried to convince her that he would “make sure the nice man you spoke to earlier, the one who thought your hair was lovely, keeps his promise to take you out on a date, if only you would please rein in the ice, this air of frigidity around yourself and allow it to warm up.” She had again entered an entranced state even as two of the guards on the other side of the barrier opened up with their guns at him. Most of the shots bounced off his shield but one of the bullets creased his chest, leaving him bleeding and stunned.
Ashen, seeing what had happened, flew down and grabbed hold of him, flying him up into the darkness and over before dropping him about a 100 metres behind the vehicles. “Thank you, but you should get yourself to the embassy” Firewall insisted. Ashen responded “We promised to get there together, remember.” Just then Cadet rappelled down from a nearby building and they began sprinting across the empty street towards the various embassies as shots rang out behind them.
The US embassy was dark and deserted. They assumed it had been closed ever since their Government had enacted their isolationist policy after their attempt to carry out extraordinary rendition of Metas from around the world was uncovered. Other embassies were just suites of offices, not occupied at night. Behind them, guards were chasing after them and firing. Thankfully, their shots missed. The Black Dragonkin unleashed fiery blasts at Ashen, which also missed, though a bullet fired a second later did hit his leg, resulting in a flesh wound.
Ahead of them, they saw the Dutch embassy and running wildly, they approached the Dutch officers on duty. As their pursuers ran towards them, Ashen tried to explain that, “We’re not Dutch citizens but we are Dutch in spirit and we need a place of refuge in this carnival of chaos.” as he managed to unleash his Voice of Allure on them, hoping to ‘persuade’ the guards to let them inside the gates. It worked. They stepped aside allowing the three youths to rush up the stairs and begin to open the embassy door. Ashen shouted back, “Thank you, I think you’re doing a wonderful job.”
Behind them, the Carpathian troops were shouting at the Dutch security who had closed the embassy gates preventing them following or from shooting them as they dived inside the doorway.
Inside, instead of a hallway, they found themselves looking at an all-encompassing kaleidoscopic pattern that was beginning to seem very familiar. Ashen heard Firewall mutter, “Okay Browser, we beat the system, now back down” and the next thing was he found himself inside a Virtual Reality suite as the force field surrounding the unit collapsed.
Rhan and Mr Summers were waiting for him as he stiffly unsuited the VR helmet, stepped out of the 360o treadmill and walked across the chamber even as Cadet and Firewall walked out of nearby pods.
Summers looked guilty as he explained, “Sorry about that. We had to be careful about how much we could tell you without alerting Browser while in there. We didn’t want to risk him changing the session parameters again and possibly killing you in the process.”
They explained that the system had been shocking his physical body using pain feedback every time he suffered an injury inside the VR world. After the second attempt, the hacker had deliberately disabled the resuscitation capacity of the pod, taking it offline. If Ashen had ‘died’ inside the VR world this time round, he would have actually died and they would not have been able to resuscitate him.
Mr Summers sat down on a nearby seat and explained that the school had been hacked a couple of hours ago, most the staff had been hypnotised and some students kidnapped. Thankfully they were rescued but regrettably Ashen had been already inside the VR suite when Browser took over and he’d been trapped inside the scenario he’d been working through, his Palace Coup scenario.
The system’s protective force field activating had prevented them from physically removing him from the pod, the computers systems were still in the control of Browser and in the meantime, he’d endured the results of his previous failed attempts to assassinate the Baroness. Twice he’d failed, twice he’d had his short-term memory wiped, and twice he’d ‘died’. Each time the system has successfully resuscitated him, but the effort left him weaker. They were convinced he wouldn’t survive a third such death… That’s what the ‘3’ carved into the wall of the loft he’d woken up to had meant, this was his third time round.
In the end, they’d asked Firewall to breach the computer system and bring himslef and Cadet (who refused to stay out) into the scenario to try and persuade Ashen to find a backdoor out, in fact the last known backdoor in the program that even the hacker Browser couldn’t delete out of the system without crashing it.
“Of course, the scenario was designed to be as realistic as possible, hence the drug reliance that the Baroness imposes on all who she allows to get close to her. The fact that your coup failed before it even started was mainly because they had already infiltrated your rebel cells and knew in advance who to arrest, who was no longer to be trusted.
To make sure you didn’t take any stupid risks, it was agreed that both of your friends would stick to the existing scenario – that you’d already been in Carpathia for six months. They’d originally hoped to get to you before the assassination attempt, but Browser altered the scenario this time round, so you awoke after your assassination attempt had failed.
They had to be careful that they didn’t alter the scenario too much as that would alert our hacker that he might need to get involved personally and in there he would have had the power of a God over you.”
Summers turned to Firewall and Cadet and thanked them for taking the risk of going in, especially as if they had failed, they could have ended up being trapped inside themselves.
Gustav was transported up to one of the apartments on the first level, next door to Ms Kitty’s, and told he would have to stay overnight but that he’d be allowed the following morning off school.
Nurse Joy walked in and administered a sedative to help counter his psychosomatic withdrawal effects before quickly leaving. Apparently, she had several other patients she needed to see to because of the assault on the school.
As he drifted off, he heard Firewall say from the doorway, “Oh, and don’t forget Alien Psychology Class 101 – how to talk to women starts tomorrow after school, so don’t be late…”
Growing up Meta, UK-Style! 