《Hackers, Dragons, and Fighter Jets》


 Chapter 1: A Routine Run

    Locus jacked in, and found himself sitting in the pilot''s seat in a fighter jet. The runway straight ahead was a lattice of pale cyan light against a colorless void. Skyscrapers of pure data rose by degrees to either side, subdivided into rectangles that flickered with stock prices and advertisements for pornography simstims.

    The aircraft was cold and dark. By rote memory, Locus began the startup procedures. The crown of cranial electrodes on his physical body simulated the physical sensation of setting the switches. When he pushed the battery switch, the other switches and annunciators began to glow with neon green backlights. Generator one, generator two, fuel shutoff to open, engine master to on. He pushed and held the starter down until the engine began to spool up with a high-pitched hiss.

    The needles began to rise. The instrument console was of an ancient style, designed before the invention of the computer. It was what his master taught him to fly. Before he died, the kindly old man had a soft voice and infinite patience. Unfortunately he was also a religious nutjob. He claimed that there was an ancient war between two empires that involved fighter jets powered by magic. That was completely ridiculous, of course. Street sorcerers were useful to have on a crew, but there was never a time when mere magic could be used to create the same power as a boatload of burning kerosene.

    As the engine heated up, Locus continued down his memorized checklist. Anti-skid system activated, rudder trim to neutral, aileron servos to norm, speed brake retracted. He slipped on his fur-lined leather helmet, complete with brass-rimmed goggles, a virtual artifact that his master swore was traditional garb for pilots. Finally, he strapped the oxygen mask across his mouth and set the green oxygen switch to on.

    Satisfied, he released the parking brake and slid the throttle forward to takeoff power. The cyan gridlines began to slip backward with increasing speed. He watched the airspeed as it slowly increased. It always seemed to take a very long time, rolling forward faster and faster as the engine roared. The fighter jet was very heavy and the wings were relatively small, so it required over one hundred knots of airspeed to create positive G-force. When Locus pulled back on the stick, the nose felt heavy. He slapped the landing gear lever up as the cyberspace runway fell away.

    Pointing the nose directly up, Locus slammed the throttle forward to full afterburner, and ascended like a rocket into neon light pollution. The sprawling city of data and logic slowly shrank in the semi-circle of rearview mirrors overhead. In just a few more moments he was soaring at over fifty thousand feet. He pulled hard on the stick, inverting the craft, and then rolled upright. Even at his lofty height, massive towers of corporate data dominated the horizon.

    A quick scan of the horizon revealed his target. At heading two-seven-zero, standing over a hundred thousand feet tall, the central tower of the KB/CA Biomedical Corporation loomed like a crimson shadow. As he flew closer, Locus began to make out the intrusion countermeasures electronics. Slashed with glowing red crosses, the self-healing magenta ice was clearly military-grade stuff.

    The radar was silent, which meant the airspace was clear. The company must place a great deal of faith in their ice. Without fighter jets patrolling the cyberspace near their data tower, they would be completely dependent on the local Tacticals. While the City of Saint Ingrid Tacticals were generally retired military fighter pilots (and therefore dangerous), they generally took at least five or six minutes to respond to alarms. They also tended to use non-lethal network tracer missiles. If you took a hit, then you might need to skip town. On the other hand, corporate security missiles could liquify your brain.

    Locus began to execute the weapon system activation checklists. Green annunciator lights flashed on the wings of a small fighter jet-shaped display in the center of the instrument console. He set the trigger to control the outer missile on the right wing, brought the corporate tower directly into the center of his gunsight, and pulled the trigger. The missile rocketed off the rail and lanced out toward the crimson ice.

    Nobody remembers the name of the first cowboys who discovered that fighter jets could be used as a tool for hacking the matrix. It had been hundreds of years at least. Locus was deeply unsatisfied with his master''s explanation of the phenomenon. The old man had claimed that when you jack in, your soul partially enters a place called the Elemental Plane of Dreams. There was also a sort of luck goddess named Titania that for some reason blessed fighter jets with good luck. It was all superstitious nonsense, of course, but Locus was forced to admit that his master had been extremely lucky in his long career as a hacker.

    You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

    The missile struck the tower with a colorless flash. Like frost growing on the canopy of a fighter jet in a freezing cloud, the crystalline mother-of-pearl icebreaker began to grow. Even though Locus preferred the cheap and outrageously effective icebreakers designed by youth gangs from the streets of Saint Vaska, this particular icebreaker had been furnished by his client. Locus quickly decided it was a damn good icebreaker, because the red crosses of corporate ice began to rip apart faster than they could heal.

    He activated the inside missile on the left wing, brought the festering data-chasm into the center of his gunsight, and pulled the trigger. The missile, a huge bomb-like tube with oversized fins, detached and immediately began to fall. The engine ignited, and after a few seconds it was flying fast enough to recover the lost altitude as it raced toward the target in a long arc. Locus slammed the stick to the right and pulled hard on the stick, a high-G turn to line up parallel to the tower.

    The second missile struck the riven data, then his coms light began to blink.

    He activated the coms. "Locus here, the virus has been delivered."

    Brief static, followed by a low-pitched, masculine voice. "Sweets is broadcasting her nervous system data to your deck. She will be your diver. I want you to cover her ass as she goes through the atrium."

    "Affirmative."

    The physical deck featured a trigger to force his consciousness back into this simulation if anything appeared in the sensor-fusion. Locus configured the auto-pilot on the fighter jet to hold the current altitude and heading. Then, he flipped to the second feed.

    He immediately experienced that unfamiliar feeling of the air rushing between her legs, the way her breasts bounced slightly as she ran. She was completely nude, her skin a layer of liquid crystal chameleon, invisible in the darkness. Her vision was enhanced with low-light cybernetics, so the pitch-black interior of the hospital records office appeared bathed in faint light. She moved with inhuman speed, silent and graceful as a cat.

    Pale moonlight filtered through open windows in the hallway just ahead. As she sprinted past the windows, she looked up into the tree-filled atrium. Locus flipped back out to his deck, took screenshots of her vision every twenty frames, then visually verified all nine images. An image recognition system activated, isolating shapes that were too subtle for the human eye to see. The system immediately identified the dark silhouette of a pot-bellied security guard on the fourth floor, almost invisible beyond the foliage canopy.

    He flipped back. "Sweets, this is Locus. Security guard, fourth floor, I don''t think he saw you."

    She did not reply.

    Locus flipped back to his fighter jet, and then took a look around. The sky was quiet, but he had drifted far away from the KB/CA Biomedical Corporation. He rolled upside-down and pulled up into a split-S maneuver, which perfectly reversed his direction. Then he flipped again. Sweets descended a staircase into a huge empty room filled with heavy vault doors. She stalked forward toward the third door and pulled gently on the handle. The virus had done its job, and the vault slid open effortlessly.

    It felt like a routine run. Nothing fancy. There was no glory in it, but it was the type of job that paid the bills.

    She made a beeline for a very specific sub-vault: W-Z 1295 A.E.B. He felt her press one finger against her left clavicle, which caused her chest cavity to open slightly. Within was a sealed tube, which contained the birth certificate for one Julia Webb. Locus did not doubt that the woman was a complete fiction, however the virus modified the corporate database to add medical records and a digital copy of the birth certificate. The physical document in the vault would corroborate the digital record.

    Sweets began to fish through the records. Her enhanced vision began to isolate images of fingerprints. She held up her own fingers, searching for fingerprints of similar size. Shortly after, the thumb and fingers on one hand began to feel very hot. After a few seconds, she began rubbing her fingers over the new birth certificate. At that moment Locus realized that this was not just a routine run. Full-body chameleon should have been a red flag, but biosignal mimic prosthetics were absolutely a red flag. This woman was capable of very high-level espionage, undoubtedly packing military-grade prosthetics, and backed either by a state or by one of the mega-corporations.

    But which corporation? he wondered.

    Everything else was clinical. She planted the birth certificate, closed the vault, and snuck out of the building. Meanwhile, Locus flipped back and forth between Sweets and his fighter jet. The scars on the corporate ice were beginning to self-heal, and the virus would modify the downstream logs. Nobody would know that the ice had been dysfunctional for a few minutes. There were no alarms from the tower, and no Tacticals chasing him with full riot lights.

    "Locus, this is Woodsman. Sweets just left the building."

    Locus set the throttle to descent power. He pointed his nose down at the runway in the distance, framed with red and green lights. It was one of their traditions. Fighter pilots always needed to land after their missions, and hackers always needed to land after a successful run. Perhaps it was a superstition, but Locus didn''t care to find out.

 Chapter 2: The Dream Team

    The alarm reverberated through the coffin, as it did every morning. Locus groaned, rolled upright, and immediately pulled the plug on his camp mattress.

    A generic, AI-generated female voice began to speak: "The auto-cleaning sequence will begin in 5 minutes. Your account will be charged a 36 New Krismark cleaning fee. Pack your belongings, or you will be charged a 78 New Krismark lingering fee if the unit is occupied when the cleaning sequence begins. Your account will be charged 180 New Krismark for lodging taxes to the City of Saint Ingrid. The unit will unlock for the next customer in 7.5 minutes. If the unit is still occupied when the door unlocks, you will be charged..."

    The voice cut off abruptly when he slammed the door release button. The tiny chamber began to glow with a warm copper light, illuminating the matte blue interior of the coffin. The door began to slowly open automatically, revealing the vast interior of the coffin hotel. Heavy wrought iron doors, shaped like elongated dinner plates, were arrayed in a grid on the opposite wall beyond an empty void. They were painted the same matte blue, and the entire chamber was lit with the same dull copper light. The hotel was at least ten stories tall, with an air circulation well in the center. Gantries placed every few levels granted elevator access for residents.

    Locus checked the fire pole, and, finding it empty, he slid down to the gantry. He took the elevator down seven stories and took a service exit to an alley behind the hotel. The litany of potential fees haunted him along the entire journey. It was raining outside the hotel, but then again it was always raining. The sky just forgot what it meant to truly rain. It was more like a light drizzle that lasted eight months in a row.

    The street descended slowly toward one of the many sinkholes that allowed access to the North Saint Ingrid underground. A line had formed at the gondola station, but it was still early enough to avoid the surge of locals who lived in real apartments. The sound of the buzzing cable accompanied Locus as he shuffled into the queue, and he had not waited very long before a voice called out to him: "Hey! Coffin slug with the duffle bag!"

    It was a petite young woman in a drab gray jumpsuit. She looked chromed to hell, possibly a full cyborg. Her raven hair seemed to be coated in an oily rainbow sheen.

    She waved him over. "Yes, you. Over here."

    Remarkably, the station staff ignored him as he cut the line. "What''s this about?" Locus asked.

    "Follow me."

    Locus figured it would be unwise to ignore her instructions, given all that chrome. She marched straight to the station platform and began barking orders to the staff. Then she led him by the arm into the next empty gondola car. Nobody else followed. He took a seat directly opposite to the woman near the center. When the door closed, the huge tri-cable gondola car, which normally carried twenty people, contained just the two of them.

    "You did well last night," the woman said. "Woodsman sent me. The others call me Sweets."

    Locus relaxed a bit. "Is something wrong? Does Woodsman need something?"

    "Nothing is wrong," Sweets said. "In fact the client asked Woodsman to bring you on to the team permanently."

    "And who is the client?" Locus asked suspiciously.

    "A reasonable question. Our client is named Lucrezia. She is the CEO of HARPR Holdings."

    "I''ve never heard of HARPR Holdings," Locus admitted.

    "Well, we''ve got time," Sweets said.

    Locus glanced through the gondola windows at the scene outside. The gondola continued to descend along the three cables leading into the sinkhole. North Saint Ingrid was built on a relatively thin layer of bedrock, supported from below by a forest of huge stone pillars. The empty space within had been carved out by ancient geothermal vents at the base of the geoscape. The Church of the Lady Ghost had built underground monasteries in the region in some ancient age. They wanted the monasteries to be self-sufficient, so they constructed geothermal power plants, hydroponic greenhouses, and huge sunlamps. The monks had all been evicted when the City of Saint Ingrid annexed the land north of the channel.

    "Our client is not human," she continued. At first he thought the woman was joking, but her face was unreadable. "I didn''t believe it at first, but then I met Woodsman. He isn''t human either."

    "Did he undergo some sort of gene splicing?" Locus asked.

    She shook her head. "You''ll see for yourself when we get there. Are you familiar with the Elemental Plane of Dreams?"

    "I''m not a religious person."

    If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    "Neither am I. Either way, the client, House Anna-Rhea Physical Realm Holdings Company, is owned and operated by some royal family from that other world."

    "Or somebody could be scamming you," Locus said.

    She did not react to the comment, and he almost immediately regretted it. Obviously, that would have been one of the first things she investigated for herself. Suckers don''t last long enough on the street to accumulate so much chrome.

    "I was like you," Sweets said. "I had never heard of the company before, but apparently they own a large amount of real estate in rural areas. Forests, mountains, lakes, and undeveloped land on the outskirts of Mount Saint Glenice National Park. Apparently their revenue comes entirely from tourism. According to public records, they only have a few thousand employees, but they own about eight percent of the land in Taisia."

    "It could be a pyramid scheme," Locus said.

    "At one point the regulators agreed with you. However, the company has already been investigated."

    Locus used his phone to search for HARPR Holdings. The company website prominently featured idyllic scenery. The various resorts shared a common architecture, and the structures all appeared to have been constructed from some type of purple crystal. The website did not list nightly rates for any of the properties, and the usual search engine space devoted to advertisements was empty. He skimmed through the public records, and two dates immediately caught his attention. The company had been founded in the year 191 A.E.B, and Lucrezia of House Anna-Rhea became the CEO in the year 689 A.E.B.

    "Is our client an AI?"

    Sweets grinned. "It would make perfect sense if the company was being run by an AI. At first I thought maybe some ancient environmentalist founded the company and tasked an AI to slowly accumulate land. But then I met Woodsman."

    Among the forest of stone pillars supporting the city overhead, very few were perfectly bare. In most cases, huge steel decks extended radially outward from the stone core. From a distance the pillars resembled huge radiators. Each disk was packed with wooden shanties, industrial buildings of sheet metal, and the occasional brutalist concrete high rise.

    The gondola leveled off. The hum of the cable changed as the car switched cables onto the bullwheel in the lower station. They walked out onto the steel platform, onto a narrow street that was mostly empty in the morning. Neon signs advertised various services and food stalls. Clothes lines spanned the space overhead, forming a dense canopy of colorful garments.

    Sweets led him away from his usual haunts, in a completely different direction, to an arched bridge leading to another pillar. They finally arrived in a tavern, and while Locus had never seen the place before, it did not feel unfamiliar. It was dark, lit by black lights which caused the neon paintings and furnishings to glow. The bar itself was one giant slab of neon green resin, swirling with glittering silver. Half a dozen alcoholics were busy pissing away their paychecks even in the early morning hours.

    Beyond a retinal scan and up a flight of creaky wooden stairs, the second floor was illuminated with natural light. Cables and pipes crisscrossed the wooden floor, and dozens of different cyberspace decks where piled on rusty tables. Locus normally would have started drooling, if his attention had not been caught by the two men standing in silhouette against the wall of windows. One of them seemed to have glowing gold hair, which was so long that it reached the small of his back.

    The man turned, and Locus froze in shock. His skin was the color and luster of obsidian. His shock of coppery red-gold hair seemed metallic, his eyes were brilliant gold, and finally his cheeks and forehead were tarnished with shining golden scales. He smiled warmly, his white teeth a sharp contrast with his obsidian skin.

    "It is nice to meet you in-person, Locus," He said. His voice was deep but inviting. "They call me Woodsman. I''m the team''s muscle."

    Locus was speechless.

    "I''m guessing you''ve never seen my kind before," he continued. "I am not from this world. And neither is our current client. She asked to have you added to the team, and she always gets what she wants. So, welcome to the Dream Team!"

    "Thanks," Locus managed.

    He looked up to the second man. While the man named Woodsman did not appear to wear any chrome at all, the second man was dripping with chrome. He wore loose robes the color of dawn. This, in addition to his graying black hair and long beard, gave Locus the impression that he was some type of priest.

    "You''ve already met Sweets," Woodman said. "She is our diver. This gentleman here is Burner, a fake priest of the Elemental Queen of Fire."

    "All boundaries between us will be erased!" Burner proclaimed, his voice confident and grave. "All things will become one! The great mistake will be undone! The divisions between us will be consumed by holy fire!"

    "Our client added him to the team recently," Woodsman said. "He is going to be working to spread this fake religion to the youth gangs in downtown Saint Vaska. Apparently the young people enjoy ironically following fake religions."

    "He never breaks character," Sweets added.

    "It must be hard to communicate," Locus said.

    "He follows orders well enough," Woodsman said. "There is one other member of the team, our boss, a woman named Selucia Grace. She is the only member of the team who can directly contact our client. She is the one who relays orders to us, here in the field."

    Locus glanced around the room, but he did not see anyone else.

    "She is not here right now, but she will want to meet you in-person. Sweets, can you take him?"

    "Are you going to pay for the tickets?" Sweets asked.

    Woodsman offered Locus a credit chip. "Grace took care of it already," he said. He handed a second chip to Sweets.

    The chip was decorated with the likeness of a familiar character, Darkstar Crush, a superhero that sometimes appeared in tacky Nadiya films. Locus remembered seeing one of those dumb superhero films a few summers back. They made a lot of money, and apparently the Emil Nadia Company was one of the hottest stocks on the market.

    Sweets groaned. "I can''t stand that place."

    "Grace wants to enjoy it one last time," Woodsman said. "Before we take out Nadiya permanently."

    "You can''t be serious," Locus said.

    "Ah, but our client is very serious. The Emil Nadiya Company has drawn the ire of a Purple Dragon." Woodsman closed his eyes and made what appeared to be some sort of warding gesture. "Grace will be able to answer any questions about our client."

    "Fine," Sweets said. "Locus, it looks like we are going on a date."

 Chapter 3: Nadiya Land

    After a thousand years of constant development, the city of Saint Ingrid had slowly grown across the channel as a series of geodesic domes connected by arched bridges. Each dome rested on a circular platform of pale yellow stone, a material which had been common in ancient times. According to the religious nutjobs, the stuff could only be manufactured with the help of sorcery. Either way, it was strong enough to support the weight of the seasteads even in the deepest parts of the channel.

    One such dome loomed directly ahead, mostly visible in spite of the thin fog. The boat was almost full, dutifully ferrying the occupants toward the indigo lights on the dome''s northern dock. Wipers lazily scraped away droplets of rain as they accumulated on the forward windows. The pilot stood beyond a rope, holding the ship''s wheel and navigating with a smartphone slotted onto the control column. The engine hummed and gurgled in the water near the back of the boat.

    Sweets spoke into her phone, using a language that Locus did not understand. She glanced at him and giggled. She was still smiling after she finished her call. With two fingers pressed against one clavicle, her chest cavity opened with an electric hiss. The phone vanished within.

    "What language was that?" Locus asked.

    "Modern Heylin," Sweets replied. "For some reason, Grace only ever speaks Imperial-era Heylin on the phone. I ran her voice through an AI translator, but the AI was trained on Middle Heylin, so it makes a lot of mistakes."

    "Is she afraid somebody may be listening in?"

    Sweets shrugged. "I doubt anyone would be interested in our conversation. Just some logistics. Grace is going to meet us inside the park."

    With a masterful twist of the ship''s wheel, the tail of the craft began to swing around toward the dock. The assistant pilot reached out and rang the ship''s bell, hopped onto the dock, and moored the front of the craft to a post with a rope. Locus watched with some fascination. He imagined a similar boat one or two thousand years in the past. The crew of such an ancient craft would find his era nearly incomprehensible, with the sole exception of naval tradition, which they would find deeply familiar.

    The pilot began shouting over the roar of the engine: "Please watch your step as you exit the heaven-ward side of the boat. Enjoy your stay here at Nadiya Land!"

    The green/indigo navigation lights of three more boats aligned with identical lights along the length of the dock to the east. White-clad park workers herded hundreds of tourists toward the gates at the base of the dome. Sweets led him away from the congested lanes toward the VIP entrance.

    When Locus passed through the gate, his chip began to glow and speak with a gruff voice: "Welcome to Nadiya Land, citizen. My name is Darkstar Crush. You can find me and my brother in the Heroes of Old Taisia District."

    Beyond a gap in the geodesics, the interior of the dome was warm and clear. Buildings rose in tiers toward the center, glassy and glowing with neon light. Small airships floated over the inner tiers, fashioned after the steam-powered machines from the Old Taisia universe. The hotel at the very center of the dome was itself crowned with a smaller geodesic dome, filled to the apex with verdant flora. A few other points of interest rose above the horizon: a dark castle, a fake volcano, and a giant tree.

    "Have you ever been here before?" Sweets asked.

    "When I was a child," Locus replied. "It took my parents a few years of saving, but they were able to buy three-day chips for the whole family. We stayed at a coffin hotel, not far from where I live now. I had to share a single coffin with my brother and two sisters. I remember riding the boat."

    Sweets sighed, then tapped her chip. "We need to find the Elemental District."

    A feminine voice replied: "The Elemental Mythology District lies to the west, beyond the Heroes of Old Taisia District."

    As they passed through Old Taisia, Locus caught a glimpse of Darkstar Crush flexing his huge muscles in front of a crowd. The superhero''s steam-powered war hammer rested against a lamppost nearby. Deadscar Cleave sat gravely on the rim of a marble fountain. His weapon of choice rested over one shoulder: an oversized double-barreled shotgun with a wooden stock that gracefully transitioned into a long butcher''s blade at the opposite end.

    You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

    A tall blonde beauty waited for them when they arrived at the ten-color arch to the Elemental Mythology District. She possessed the slender, muscular body of a dancer, clad in a small navy dress. Her hair was neatly arranged into a crown of braids and she wore an abundance of gold jewelry.

    "Hey beautiful," the woman said with an immaculate smile. "And you must be Locus. Sweets, he''s so handsome!"

    "Locus," Sweets said, "meet Selucia Grace."

    He waved to her.

    "How exciting!" Grace said. "I love meeting new people. Sweets, you look a little tired. How about we grab some coffee? I''ll pay."

    Neither Sweets nor Locus protested.

    They did not need to walk very far before finding a coffee stall, though the line to order was surprisingly long. According to the sign above the stall, it was named "The Laws of Life and Heaven." The word "Life" was printed in green above a steaming cup of coffee, while the word "Heaven" was printed in indigo above a sweet cheese pastry. Locus surveyed the area with some unease. The Elemental Mythology District featured iconography that in many ways resembled the religious paintings from his master''s cabin. Women in colorful, skin-tight, full-body suits played the role of Elementals. They were color-coded and they traveled in pairs. The two baristas in the coffee stall wore green and indigo respectively.

    "Is something wrong?" Grace asked.

    "I''m not a religious person," Locus replied. "This place feels tacky."

    "The Elemental Mythology films were not inspired by the Church of the Lady Ghost," Grace said. "They were inspired by much older stories, from Imperial-era Heyl."

    Locus relaxed. "Fair enough."

    "According to Heylin Mythology," Grace continued, "there were only ten Elemental Planes. Fire and Water, Wind and Stone, Metal and Lightning, Life and Heaven, Light and Dark. Each of the ten Elemental Queens has a sister-self, and so on. The Church of the Lady Ghost is different. They believe there are twelve Elemental Planes. They teach that Saint Ingrid, the Ghost of Taisia..."

    "Split a goddess in half," Locus finished. "My master often spoke of such things."

    Their conversation was interrupted by screaming overhead, and the smooth sliding sound of a roller coaster train. Locus noticed the track for the first time, almost imperceptible because of the chameleon coating. The individual cars on the roller coaster vaguely resembled fighter jets. They also appeared to be able to rotate independently, so as the train barreled down the invisible track, it reasonably approximated a flat spin.

    "Captain Taisia and the Ten Skies," Grace said. "If you ignore the fact that they gender-swapped Ingrid and added a stupid enemies-to-lovers plot, the films are not too bad."

    "I am absolutely not going to ride that thing," Sweets announced.

    "You would need to add yourself to the queue and wait a few hours, even with a VIP chip. I just got off the ride."

    When they reached the front of the line, Sweets ordered coffee with extra sugar and a cheese pastry with extra icing. Grace began to nudge Locus away from the line. "Off you go, no coffee for you."

    "Why not?" Locus asked.

    "You''ll understand when we get back to my room."

    <hr>

    The lobby of the hotel was illuminated by a skyscraper-sized chandelier, suspended from crossed arches spanning the cylindrical void. Small balconies lined the interior of the open space, level after level, all the way up to the geodesic dome on the roof of the building. The whole of the affair reeked of outrageous wealth, the type of money that could only be acquired either through inheritance or through pyramid schemes.

    Thankfully, Grace''s room was located on the first floor. By objective standards, it was a modest room with a kitchenette. Compared to a coffin, it was luxurious. Every tabletop and countertop in the room was fashioned from polished marble. The lamps conspired to create triangular blooms of soft, rainbow-tinged light. A huge oil painting on the wall above the beds depicted Mount Saint Glenice, the volcano just south-west of Saint Ingrid.

    Sweets locked the door behind them.

    "Take off your shoes," Grace commanded.

    Locus was suspicious, but he compiled.

    Grace walked to the kitchenette and took a seat at the counter, then turned to face him. "This room is clean. It''s safe to talk here."

    Feeling slightly uncomfortable, Locus glanced back at the door. Sweets was standing guard, leaning back lazily. There''s no way I''m getting past all that chrome, he thought.

    "Greater Daughter of the Queen of Dreams, show yourself," Grace said.

    A flash of cyan light filled the room, so bright that it drowned out the soft lamps. A huge woman appeared, so tall that the top of her head scraped the ceiling. Her entire body appeared to be composed of cyan mist, like some creature out of cyberspace.

    Locus could not believe what he was seeing. A second glance at Sweets revealed that she was also dumbstruck. Is this some sort of illusion? he wondered. Am I suddenly trapped in a simstim? But no, that was impossible. He did not feel the uncanny dual-sense of a simstim.

    "Shit," Sweets said. "Are you hacking my eyes?"

    "I see it too," Locus said. "And I don''t have a single piece of chrome in my body."

    "Have a seat on the bed," Grace commanded.

    The misty cyan creature regarded him with the impression of eyes. It took Locus a few seconds to realize Grace was talking to him. Once again he complied with her instructions.

    "Greater Daughter, please guide him to the shared dream."

    Suddenly he felt overwhelmingly tired. That monstrous cyan woman suddenly didn''t seem so frightful after all. Nothing mattered. He just needed to rest his eyes. Relaxing, he fell back into the soft comforter, and darkness took him.

 Chapter 4: Lucrezia

    A dull orange eclipse, cold and distant, appeared in the center of his vision, surrounded on all sides by colorful nebulae. The night sky was filled with stars, as if he had been transported far away from the light pollution of the city to some distant hiking trail. He stood on the surface of a dark pool in a forest of glowing pink trees, though the water did not seep into his socks. Pale green aurora danced on the horizon. Just ahead, a mountain of pure darkness rose above the forest, blotting out the night sky.

    Then the mountain moved.

    A silhouette began to take shape against the stars. A long serpentine neck and two outstretched wings. Out of the darkness it moved with a predatory speed and grace, took flight briefly, and then crashed down into the forest, crushing the trees. A huge wave of churning water surged through Locus. While it did not soak into his clothing, it was still cold and wet against his skin, and he was knocked flat on his back.

    It took a few moments for his mind to accept what he was seeing. Shining purple scales armored the creature''s body. Each wing was larger than a military cargo aircraft. The monstrous beast lurched forward, and one eye opened to regard him. The pupil was a vertical slit and the iris seemed to glow with purple light.

    "Hello mortal," the Dragon growled. The voice was both feminine and ancient.

    Locus panicked. "Grace? Grace, where are you?"

    "Calm down mortal, you are safe here, I promise."

    He remembered feeling tired so he fell back onto that nice soft comforter and fell asleep. Why did I feel so tired so fast? And what was that huge glowing woman? Suddenly suspicious that he had been kidnapped, his fear was momentarily replaced by anger.

    "Where am I?" Locus demanded.

    "You are dreaming," the Dragon replied. "This is the shared dream. Anyone with a Dream Elemental can come to this place. I have asked the woman known as Selucia Grace to bring you here."

    A second, smaller Dragon, very similar in appearance to the first, trotted forward on all fours, a bit like a dog. Unlike the first Dragon, the second one did not have glowing purple eyes. In fact, there were simply empty sockets where the eyes should have been. It appeared as if the scales immediately surrounding those empty sockets had been ravaged. Deep lightning-shaped gashes revealed the Dragon''s pale flesh. An inky substance oozed out of the empty sockets, poured down the Dragon''s cheeks, and seemed to evaporate into dark mist.

    "Reinforcements?"

    "Peace mortal," the first Dragon said. "You need fear no violence from us."

    "Who are you?"

    "A reasonable question, mortal."

    "Do not answer him!" the second Dragon insisted. The voice was also feminine, but much younger, almost childlike. "It is unfashionable to announce ourselves. We should send for a herald!"

    "Time is of the essence, daughter," the first Dragon growled. "I shall indulge the mortal''s question. Mortal, you stand in the presence of Princess Lucrezia of House Anna-Rhea, firstborn daughter of Exalted Princess Astrid. You also stand in the presence of my firstborn daughter, Exalted Princess Greta of House Anna-Rhea, Right Honorable Lady Mayor of the City of Skygarden. Like her grandmother Astrid, she is a Fate Binder."

    "You must command him to kneel, mother!" Greta protested.

    Lucrezia did not respond to this comment. "Tell me, daughter, can you see this mortal?"

    "Yes. I can see him. His soul glows with Titania''s light."

    "Are you certain?" Lucrezia asked.

    "I am certain," Greta replied. "His soul belongs to Titania. Titania, and no other."

    "Thank you, daughter," Lucrezia said, in a tone that even Locus recognized as a dismissal.

    The younger Purple Dragon dissolved into glowing cyan mist, then vanished.

    Lucrezia continued: "You, mortal, are known to me. Selucia Grace told me that you have named yourself ''Locus.'' I have personally investigated your background. I know that your legal name is Vincent Einar."

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    "How?" he hissed.

    "Like you, I soar through cyberspace, hunting for data. Unlike you, I have wings. Please, remain silent and allow me to continue. I know that you studied aeronautical engineering at the University of Taisia. I know that you dropped out a few semesters before graduating. I know that you maxed out several credit cards paying for flight school training outside of Taisia City. I know that you are saddled with crippling debt."

    "And what of it?" Locus asked.

    "And now," the Dragon continued, "I know that your soul has been marked for special treatment by Titania the Luck Elemental. I observed you unseen when you modified the hospital records. I decided that your performance was acceptable, and so I would like to negotiate terms with you at present."

    "Woodsman told me that you always get what you want," Locus said. "Do I have a choice in any of this? Are you going to send a hitman after me if I refuse to work with you?"

    "I do always get what I want," Lucrezia agreed, "as is proper for a princess. Before we begin, you must know that your student loans have been purchased by one of my financial holdings companies."

    "Do you think you can control me like that?"

    "Your debts are going to be forgiven, as a gift from me, to show my good faith. Now that that is out of the way, we can begin negotiating."

    "I''ll believe it when I have the final invoice in my hands," Locus said.

    "Please be patient, mortal, a physical copy of the invoice will be delivered soon. For now, I have a question. Do you have a dream?"

    "A dream?"

    "A purpose, something important that can give your life meaning."

    "That''s a strange question," he observed. "I had a dream when I was a child, but I have since abandoned it. Because of my medical history, it is physically impossible for me to accomplish that dream."

    "Tell me about your dream," Lucrezia said.

    Locus rolled his eyes. "As you wish. When I was a child I dreamed of being a fighter pilot, like in those old Captain Taisia films. I went to school for aeronautical engineering hoping that I could go into the military as an officer, with my own fighter jet and my own maintenance crew. But it was never going to work out. You see, I''ve got this autoimmune disorder. My body cannot interface with military-grade biotech cybernetics."

    "That is unfortunate," Lucrezia said. "It is my understanding that, in your world, childhood dreams are rarely fulfilled. In my world, a Fate Binder can give you whatever life you desire. My mother and my daughter are both Fate Binders. Transportation to my world can be arranged at a later time. If you join my team, Locus, and if you succeed in your tasks, then I will fulfill your childhood dreams. That is my offer."

    "You can''t be serious," he said.

    "You will accept my offer. No soul marked by Titania should be able to refuse."

    "This can''t be real. None of this can be real. This is all just some elaborate simulation in cyberspace."

    "You have it backwards. When you perceive cyberspace, you visit the Elemental Plane of Dreams. Your master should have taught you this fact."

    "What do you know about my master?"

    "I was the one who trained him!" Lucrezia snapped. "I trained the first hackers to visit my world, to fly in fighter jets and take advantage of Titania''s outrageous luck. That was hundreds of years ago, but as generations passed, the traditional methods became corrupted by the efforts of the Elemental Queen of Darkness. Your master called himself Nexus, but his true name was Adrian Casper Eduard. He was born in Ayaru. You were living in southern Taisia at the time. You would have needed to cross an international border every day to visit his cabin."

    Locus was completely stunned. Nexus never revealed his real name, but one time he overheard a relative address him by the name Adrian. And how could she possibly know about the border? Hacking those damn border cameras twice a day was obnoxious, especially at the end of a long day training.

    He felt trapped.

    What is the probability that she is telling the truth? he wondered. What is the probability that this is real?

    But no, probabilities were meaningless for pilots. Pilots don''t calculate the probability of icing conditions inside a cloud. They just stay away from the fucking cloud. His master, and his flight instructors, both drilled the same concept into him. Crashing the airplane is an infinite cost, and even when multiplied by very small probabilities, the cost is still infinite.

    The dream of flight is an infinite good. If you multiply the probability...

    "I''ll do it," he said.

    "Excellent," the Dragon said. "There is one more thing. Fourth High Daughter of the Queen of Dreams! Show yourself!"

    A ghostly woman appeared, made entirely out of misty cyan light. She looked very similar to the strange creature that Grace summoned in her hotel room, except that this one was twenty feet tall. She towered over Locus, but in spite of her immense size, she still seemed tiny when compared to the Purple Dragon.

    "High Daughter, summon one Dream Elemental for this mortal."

    A second, smaller flash of cyan light revealed yet another one of the things. The second creature was about the size of an average human, slightly shorter than Locus himself. Then, he heard a feminine voice echoing in his mind.

    Greetings mortal.

    "Command her to bond with this mortal," Lucrezia said. "Locus, your first task is to accept the bond."

    I am a Daughter of the Elemental Queen of Dreams. By the command of the Fourth High Daughter, I offer now to bond with you. I will consume your spiritual energy, and in exchange you will have access to my powers. Do you accept?

    Locus was suspicious at first, but he did accept the Dragon''s offer, and he saw no upside in protesting. He said: "Very well, I accept."

    The bond is established, as commanded. Now, mortal, what will you Wish for?

    "No!" Lucrezia said. "High Daughter, command her. Wish is banned. Locus, be weary, Dream Elementals are fickle things. It takes a great deal of intent to formulate deliberate commands that they understand. Grace will teach you how to use your new Elemental. Moving forward, we will be able to communicate through this shared dream. For now, report to Woodsman and prepare for your next job. You are free to go."

    And then he woke up.

 Chapter 5: Downtown

    Still feeling groggy, Locus opened his eyes and yawned. While he was sleeping, the two women in the room must have moved his head up onto the pillows. On the wall above the headboard, the landscape painting of the volcano, Mount Saint Glenice, dominated his vision. He rolled off the bed and staggered into the kitchenette.

    Grace slid a steaming cup of coffee across the counter and asked: "How did it go?"

    "I''ve decided to join the team," Locus said.

    "Shocking," Sweets said.

    "And it seems that Lucrezia has given you a Dream Elemental," Grace said.

    How did she know that? he wondered. Aloud, he said: "She said you could teach me how to use it."

    Grace sighed. "Presumably, you will need to be able to access cyberspace without using a deck. That is, unfortunately, an advanced ability. At this point, you won''t even be able to communicate with a Dream Elemental, let alone formulate commands."

    Locus took a sip of his coffee. "Why would I need to access cyberspace without a deck?"

    "Because it makes you nearly impossible to track," Grace replied. "Furthermore, it grants a great deal of independence. You will be able to hack security cameras while walking down the street, for example."

    Being untraceable would be nice, Locus was forced to admit. "What''s so special about communicating with these things? I could understand your commands well enough."

    "Dream Elementals are relatively young," Grace explained. "They were created about thirteen hundred years ago, when Ingrid and Vaska bisected the Sixth Goddess into two opposing forces, Dreams and Spirits. Because they are so young, they do not really understand human language very well. Older Elementals can translate between languages."

    "Wait," Sweets said.

    She froze. Her face appeared determined. Her eyes flickered with artificial light, transitioning from brown to blue to red.

    Finally, Sweets said: "Shit! She has been talking in Imperial-era Heyl this entire time."

    "You caught me," Grace said.

    "What do I need to do?" Locus asked.

    "How did I not notice before?" Sweets grumbled.

    "You need to talk to her," Grace said. "Speak to her like she is an invisible friend. Once you are able to understand each other, we can move on to other things."

    Locus continued to sip his coffee as Grace wandered off to fetch something from her bags. She returned with two strange glass boxes. Each one was a little smaller than his coffee cup, and each one contained a small ball of magenta lightning. As Grace moved her finger near one of the boxes, the lightning arced out against the glass.

    "Woodsman," Grace said. "What''s your status?"

    The little magenta orb flashed, and then it spoke with Woodsman''s voice: "The truck is loaded. We are waiting in line for the ferry."

    "Excellent, I will send Sweets and Locus ahead. They will wait for you at the new site."

    When she removed her finger, the little orb dimmed and went silent. Grace slid the other glass box across the counter to Locus.

    "Keep this with you," she said.

    "What exactly is this thing?" Locus asked.

    "Colored Orb," Grace replied. "It''s a type of minor Lightning Elemental. Unlike full Elementals, small sprites like this don''t bond with people. They are not intelligent. You need to physically carry them around, usually in some sort of vessel."

    "Like a street sorcerer."

    "Exactly. Now, unless either of you need anything from me, I''ve got a virtual queue for my favorite ride."

    <hr>

    Just as the foothills south of the city were dwarfed by Mount Saint Glenice, so too were the skyscrapers of downtown Saint Ingrid dwarfed by the corporate megastructures in the city center. Through the canopy of the air taxi, Locus was able to look down upon those skyscrapers for the first time in his life. He was surprised to discover that many of the roofs featured entire parks, complete with lawns and trees and fountains.

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    As soon as they boarded the craft, Sweets admitted to a dislike of heights. She was still wearing one of the on-board simstim rigs, occasionally twitching and muttering to herself. As the taxi descended into the river of fog between two skyscrapers, Sweets suddenly seemed to come to life. She removed the crown of electrodes and sighed.

    "What kind of simstim was that?" Locus asked.

    "I was on a farm," Sweets said. "I was brushing horses. There was a cat hiding in the rafters."

    Locus felt the upward G-forces as the pitch on the propellers changed. A dull red landing pad materialized in the fog just a few seconds before the skids touched down. Sweets scrambled from the craft as soon as the canopy unlocked, but Locus took his time to appreciate the bulbous porcelain machine before leaving.

    The air taxi station was located on a concourse of sky bridges between four skyscrapers. They rode a glass-walled elevator down to the "street" level, which Locus quickly discovered was not the street at all. It was a false ground supported by yet more sky bridges. They transferred to a second elevator, walled with scuffed and stained plastic, and as they descended further, they seemed to enter into another world. The thick fog vanished, replaced by obnoxious neon.

    A dozen motorcycles, driven by children wearing rags, roared by as the elevator came to a halt at street-level. A pack of mangy dogs sniffed through heaps of rubbish that had accumulated on the sidewalks. The foul water in the gutters was corrupted with the oily sheen of some industrial runoff. A one-hundred foot tall hologram of a nude woman, rendered in explicit detail, danced across the rooftops. Locus was certain that that hologram was watching him.

    He lost his sense of direction as Sweets led him through the back alleys of downtown Saint Ingrid. He checked the compass on his phone and it reported that he was moving to the south, toward the megastructures. Indeed, not long after, they came across what Locus assumed to be the base of a megastructure. It was a wall, as high as a skyscraper, composed entirely of massive metal pipes.

    They passed a squad of Tacticals guarding a barricade. The Tacticals wore reflective orange vests over drab green uniforms, and they were all armed with assault rifles. The smoke from their grenades seemed to glow pink in the neon light. There was a corpse on the street beyond the barricade, or at least what was left of a corpse. It had been shot so many times that it had been transformed into a vague smear of blood and meat radiating away from a pair of black boots.

    They came upon an east-facing escarpment, where the skyscrapers opened up to reveal the three districts east of downtown, nestled under the fog. The northernmost district was green and blue and filled with nature. In the center, huge white monuments marked the holy site dedicated to the Elemental Queen of Light. The district to the south featured the department buildings of the city government, mostly constructed from steel and glass. The southernmost district featured huge gardens surrounding Saint Ingrid''s Cathedral, with its six high towers crowned with onion domes. Each of the six domes featured a swirl of two colors: red and blue, teal and brown, metallic and pale yellow, green and indigo, gold and black, cyan and magenta.

    At the end of the escarpment they came to a brutalist concrete structure hanging over the void atop a steel platform. Locus followed Sweets through the rusty iron doors into the darkness of a tavern.

    "It will be a while before Woodsman get''s here," Sweets said. "Do you want to grab a drink?"

    "I''m not in the habit of drinking," he replied. "You never know when somebody will ask you to fly a fighter jet through cyberspace."

    "That''s fair. Sorry I asked. I always take for granted that I''ve got the cybernetics to instantly filter the stuff from my blood."

    As they made their way to the bar, Locus realized why it was so dark. Everyone in the room had slightly glowing eyes. They''re all chromed up, he thought. Even the bartender looked full cyborg in the dim light. Sweets took a seat at the bar beside another woman with bright red eyes. As the other woman raised her neon blue drink to her lips, it cast enough light to reveal an unzipped fur-lined aviator''s jacket. She was otherwise bare-breasted.

    "Hey Sweets," the woman said.

    "Hey Twist," Sweets replied.

    "Who''s your friend?"

    "He''s our cowboy."

    "Oh! Are you working with Woodsman again?"

    "Yeah."

    "Got any room on the team?"

    As the two women continued chatting, the bartender arrived and activated a small lamp on the bar in front of Locus. This had the effect of fully illuminating the woman''s impressive bosom, though Locus thought it would be impolite to keep staring and ignore the poor bartender. Locus discovered that his initial impression of the man had been correct. He was not only chromed up, but completely jacked, with muscles the size of tree trunks.

    "Are you going to order something?"

    "Something virgin," Locus replied. "Maybe with coffee. Can you do that?"

    "Absolutely," the man said.

    "I wouldn''t be able to survive," the woman named Twist said. "Hey cowboy, you don''t have any chrome in your body at all?"

    "Nope," Locus said.

    "I want to see!" Twist announced.

    "See what?" Locus asked.

    "Your body! Let''s go upstairs and find a room. You can take your clothes off."

    "Sure," Locus said.

    "No!" Sweets said. "He''s off limits, Twist."

    "Says who?"

    "Our contact. Woodsman''s boss, Selucia Grace. If you really want Woodsman to bring you on to the team, then you need to follow the team''s rules. No fucking the cowboy."

    "That seems oddly specific," Twist protested. "Is this Selucia character a woman? I''ll bet she wants to fuck him."

    "I don''t doubt it," Sweets agreed.

    "You think so?" Locus asked. That would be nice, he thought.

    "With certainty. I would be weary of that one, though. I think she''s much older than you think."

    "She can''t be older than twenty," Locus said. "I don''t think she was wearing any chrome either."

    "There aren''t many twenty-year-old women in the world who exclusively speak a language that has been dead for a thousand years. She''s also capable of using some extremely advanced sorcery. She also refers to the Lady Ghost and the Consort Eternal by their first names, Ingrid and Vaska, as if she knows them personally. For all we know, she could be Saint fucking Glenice."

    As he sipped his coffee cocktail and waited for Woodsman, Locus could not get the image of that damn volcano out of his mind.

 Chapter 6: Dark Business

    When Woodsman arrived, Locus mistook him for a demon. His red-gold hair seemed to radiate light in the darkness of the tavern, but by contrast, his obsidian skin seemed to absorb light. The stranger beside Locus retreated the instant he recognized the advancing apparition, and Woodsman slipped into the empty seat without ceremony. The bartender plucked a bottle of something from the top shelf and poured a glass of the wine-dark liquid for Woodsman.

    "You got business here, friend?" the bartender asked.

    "I''ve got dark business," Woodsman replied. "The Queen of Darkness herself is going to watch us as we work. Unless, of course, we manage to move somewhere more private."

    "West four is open," the bartender said. "There''s a reservation in fifty minutes so your business needs to be quick. I''ll add it to your tab."

    "Up we go then," Woodsman said. "Twist, is that you?"

    "''Tis I," Twist agreed. "Sweets told me you''ve got a job. Need any help?"

    Woodsman rubbed his chin. Took a sip of his red wine. Nodded.

    "I''m not going to say no."

    He stood up, which prompted Sweets and Twist to do the same. Locus plucked his coffee cocktail off the bar and followed them toward the edge of the tavern. Burner, the priest-looking man with the red robes, stalked them in silence.

    They passed through a pair of pitch-black doors decorated with a glowing white tree embedded right into the metal. Beyond, there was a long sloping ramp that led up toward a room glowing with copper light. As they ascended the ramp Locus began to feel a pulsing in his chest. Boom, boom, boom. The sound of music began to dominate his senses.

    The entire second floor of the structure turned out to be a dance floor, nestled into a forest of towering holographic trees, each glowing with coppery light against the darkness. The curved catwalk was separated from the dance floor by glass panes, each of which was illuminated by purple lights hanging from the bottom of the dark handrails. At least a hundred people were dancing on the polished wooden floor. They were all chromed up, and most of the women were topless.

    Up a small flight of glowing purple stairs, they came to a private booth overlooking the dance floor. The ceiling was transparent, glowing with faint purple holograms of nude women swimming between two panes of glass. Armless couches were arranged around an odd table, the likes of which Locus had never seen before. It resembled a polished wooden pyramid, with the apex jutting up through the square hole in the center of a broad sheet of glass. Everyone took a seat around the table and set down their drinks, with the exception of Burner, who sealed the door and stood guard.

    "The room is clean," Sweets announced.

    Locus saw Twist clearly for the first time in the light of the booth. She looked a bit boyish with hair that flared out to one side. She caught him ogling her naked breasts and her eyes shifted from red to green. Her smile looked genuine just before she took a sip of her neon blue drink and then glanced at Woodsman.

    "So what''s the job?" Twist asked.

    "We''ve got one more task here in Saint Ingrid," Woodsman said. "Then we need to move out to Saint Vaska."

    Woodsman set a small device on the table. When it activated, it created a 3D hologram just big enough to fill the space between the couches. Unlike the trees around the dance floor, the new hologram was full color, and the resolution wasn''t too shabby either. It depicted a fancy estate at the top of a skyscraper, surrounded by gardens, fountains, and rows of immaculate trees.

    "Looks like a corpo estate," Locus said.

    "No corpos," Woodsman said. "Northern Ayaru drug cartels. The house was recently purchased by a man named Nil Gerard, a high-ranking member of the cartels. The place is worth at least fifty million New Krismark, with a minimum of twenty percent down-payment on the mortgage, and Gerard most likely paid half again as much to launder cartel money across the border."

    "Is that our target?" Twist asked.Stolen novel; please report.

    "It is," Woodsman said. "Even before he boarded the airplane to Saint Ingrid, he needed a passport. He is a wanted man, even in Ayaru, so he arranged to have a false identity generated in that nation, using the standard methods that we are so familiar with."

    Locus nodded. "And Lucrezia intercepted him?" he guessed.

    "Not too bad," Sweets said.

    Woodsman chuckled. "And Lucrezia intercepted him, yes. His identity service provider was actually a HARPR Holdings shell corporation. The whole thing was arranged by somebody who owed Lucrezia a favor."

    "What has been done can be undone," Locus said. "The job is to take the house, then Lucrezia is going to pull the rug back in Ayaru."

    "And how would you go about taking the house?" Woodsman asked.

    Locus stopped and thought about the problem. How are we going to replicate the title? he wondered. There were plenty of shops on the street that specialized in making replica KB/CA Biomedical Corporation birth certificates. The title for an estate like that was something else entirely.

    "We''ll need to find a contact that can forge a new title," Locus replied. "Then we hit Gerard, Lucrezia makes him vanish from history, and we stuff the title into a bank vault somewhere."

    "That''s not quite right," Sweets said. "For all we know the deed to that estate could have been printed with a one-off printer in Saint Vaska that only services half a dozen requests each year."

    "Ah," Locus said. She''s right. That was a mistake.

    "The security features on the physical document could be hundreds, maybe even thousands of years old," Sweets continued. "The documents have probably never been digitized. A trained professional needs to manually verify the security features, most likely a master-apprentice setup going back to before the dawn of computing. If we had a few samples, we might be able to get help from an AI to create a replica."

    "But ''might be able to'' isn''t good enough for Lucrezia," Locus said. "Why bother when we can just break into the place?"

    Woodsman nodded. "Sweets will break into the basement of a stone castle in the forest outside Saint Ingrid''s Cathedral. It was constructed hundreds of years before Saint Ingrid was even born, and there are no digital records of the traps the engineers left for us. The rest of the plan is routine. Locus, you''ll need to break into the bank database and replace the mortgage records. Sweets needs to physically break into the bank vault in Saint Vaska to swap the two deeds."

    "It sounds like we''ll be busy," Locus said.

    "And we will take out Gerard," Twist guessed. "Me and you, right Woodsman?"

    "Nil Gerard is a full cyborg," Woodsman said. "I was planning on storming the house with Burner, but I don''t mind the backup, Twist. The cartel enforcers in the house will be heavily armed."

    "And there will be a security system," Locus said.

    "You''ll be helping us as well. Gerard will be protected by one or more cartel hackers, maybe even old-school cowboys like you. You''ll need to watch the skies in cyberspace. And, of course, you''ll need to deliver an icebreaker and a virus to the house security system."

    Locus nodded. "And what about the Tacticals?"

    "The cartels know how to avoid Tacticals," Sweets said. "Gerard probably registered his guards as a private security force that can intercept emergency calls."

    "Lucrezia has verified that is the case," Woodsman said. "They don''t know Gerard is living in the house and they have no reason to care what happens there. Not unless we really, really fuck up."

    Nobody spoke for a few moments, and the only sound in the booth was the pulsing beat of the music on the dance floor. Locus took a sip of his cocktail and considered the plan. His intuition was telling him that something was missing.

    "So what''s Grace going to be doing?" Locus finally asked.

    "Grace is going to be negotiating the logistics of getting Julia Webb here," Woodsman said. "Her name will be on the title for the house. Once the cartel thugs are dead, she''ll be able to move in. Then we can start the second phase of the plan."

    "And who is Julia Webb exactly?"

    "I have no idea," Woodsman admitted. "Somebody that Lucrezia thinks is important. Apparently, Selucia Grace has been trying to track her down for several months."

    "I could try to search for her," Locus offered. "If she has interacted with cyberspace at all, then..."

    "She''s not here," Woodsman interrupted. "She''s not in this world. She''s not in my world either. Grace thinks she''s in one of the other Elemental Planes."

    Sounds like bullshit to me, Locus thought, but he said nothing.

    "What''s the second part of the plan?" Twist asked. "Why go through all this trouble to steal a house for this Julia bitch?"

    "Grace hasn''t told us all the details," Woodsman said. "All I know is that our long-term plan is to destroy the Emil Nadiya Company, and Julia Webb is the only person in the whole universe that can pull it off."

    "She''s going to take down the entire company by herself?" Twist asked.

    "It''s got something to do with those augmented humans that Lucrezia finds so offensive. Once Julia is here in the Physical Realm, we''ll plant her in the augmented human program. Then she''ll fuck them up."

    "And how does Burner fit into this?" Locus asked.

    The red-robed priest was still standing stone-faced with his back to the door. "We will spread the wisdom of the Queen of Fire to the people of this world!" he proclaimed. "All boundaries will be erased! Every living being, every living soul, will return to the exalted purity of First Chaos!"

    "Burner is going to spread his little religion," Woodsman said. "Once the augmented humans are dealt with, we can get help from the youth gangs in Saint Vaska to ruin Emil Nadiya''s reputation. Lucrezia has some sort of hostile takeover plans. You know, buy up a majority share and then bleed them dry by demanding dividends."

    "Then we get paid," Sweets said.

    "Then we get paid," Woodsman agreed.

 Chapter 7: Full Circle

    The truck slowed to a halt and then turned to the left. Locus, who was already half-buried in unsecured cyberspace decks and cables, was jostled in his seat as the wheels left the pavement. A short bumpy ride brought them to a stop. The engine died, and the low rumble was replaced with the static sound of rain against aluminum. Locus began to unstrap himself, but in the far corner Burner did not move at all. The man had been completely silent the entire ride, a dark ghost in the corner, forgotten.

    Sweets opened the roll-up door and waved him out. The late afternoon sky outside was unchanged, gray and moody. Locus plucked his deck and duffle bag off the seat, stepped out, and absorbed his surroundings. They were just north of the escarpment, in the woods not far away from Saint Ingrid''s Cathedral. The dark megastructures of downtown faded and vanished into the ominous clouds. There was a play gym nearby, red and yellow and blue plastic, and a derelict swing set drowning in a muddy puddle.

    Sweets marched off toward a creepy tree tunnel leading into the woods. Locus followed. The rain pattered against the hood of his light jacket.

    The grass on either side of the trail was dull yellow, as were the leaves on the trees. Directly overhead, the branches of the tree tunnel were dark, naked, and jagged. There was some dark green grass in the high places, at least where the leaves had not fallen. Huge puddles covered the forest floor; the foggy teal surface was broken by old stumps, yellowish reeds, and gray stones. At the end of the tree tunnel they came upon a graveyard nestled into a grove of trees with blood-red leaves and pink berries. The wall of a stone castle rose beyond the far end of the graveyard. The castle was built into the trunk of a massive tree, and it prominently featured a crumbling clock tower.

    They stopped and waited for the others to catch up. When Woodsman arrived, Locus asked: "How did you find this place?"

    "Our client told us about it," Woodsman said. "She knows every nook and cranny of my world. Apparently she found something interesting here."

    A world, the Dream Elemental said. Her voice startled Locus.

    A world? Locus thought. What kind of world?

    Come see for yourself, silly!

    Sweets began unbuttoning her jumpsuit, and she appeared to be naked underneath. Locus couldn''t help but watch with anticipation.

    "No need to ogle the chrome," Twist said as she put her hands over his eyes. "It''s unprofessional."

    "Good point," Locus admitted. He turned away.

    "Follow me," Woodsman said. "This castle is not connected to the internet. It has its own isolated subnet, most likely protected by a rogue AI. There''s an access point at the other end of the graveyard. Burner can open it up for us."

    Through the graveyard, and beyond a patch of pink flowers, the access point turned out to be a rusty old electrical box, surrounded by broad red mushrooms with white spots. The box read: "City of Saint Ingrid Municipal Power Service," painted white using a military-style font. The red-robed priest marched up to the thing and placed one hand on the metal. It melted and spread apart, allowing the man''s hand to pass straight through.

    Street sorcery. Where did they find this guy?

    Locus turned back to try and steal one last glance at Sweets. She was far away, so he could not make out much detail, but she was completely nude, revealing all her military-grade chrome. She jumped a few times, causing her breasts to bounce.

    Such a banal dream, his Elemental said. Even the brute beasts of the forest dream of copulating with a female. You should strive for higher dreams.

    "Just can''t help yourself, can you?" Twist asked.

    "That''s how you know he has a penis," Woodsman said dryly.

    "Where the hell did she get all that chrome?" Locus asked, desperate to change the subject.

    "She didn''t tell you?" Twist asked. "She''s an active agent of the tep ay aie."

    The TEPAI? Locus wondered. He looked skeptically at the woman, and said: "You mean the urban legend?"

    "It''s not an urban legend! It''s real. It''s one of the oldest AIs in existence, maybe even the oldest."

    Locus rolled his eyes. "Now you are just making fun of me."

    Twist shook her head. "No, it''s true. She''s basically the best diver in Taisia because of it. The AI recruited and trained her specifically for that one purpose."

    "You should not reveal such things," Woodsman warned. "If the client wanted him to know that, she would have told him."

    "You don''t honestly believe it?" Locus asked incredulously. He sighed. "I suppose it doesn''t matter. I would rather stay focused on the job."

    Woodsman nodded.

    Locus began assembling his cyberspace deck on the empty section of the electrical box, but as he worked, his mind was troubled. The Taisian Ethnic Preservation AI, or TEPAI, was just something drunken college students whispered about. Allegedly, the ancient AI had orchestrated secret genocides in centuries long gone, one foreigner at a time. It would make the government and the banks forget people existed, then send assassins into their homes to murder them, and finally sell the houses to ethnic Taisian citizens at a steep discount.

    Not unlike what we are going to be doing to this Gerard fellow, Locus realized. He shivered at the thought. There was absolutely no evidence that it actually happened. But then again, why would the AI leave a bunch of evidence just laying around? And Sweets...The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

    Locus shook it off. It''s just a job.

    Burner finished his work, and, without speaking, offered Locus a receiver port. Locus took it, connected his cyberspace deck to the isolated subnet, and jacked in.

    He found himself in the seat of his fighter jet, under an impossible sky. Against a backdrop of dark gray, clouds of neon green fractals drifted, shifted, connected. Corrupted black tentacles exploded from inverted fractures in the sky, blotting out the neon light. In every direction the sky was filled with stone book shelves, stacks of raw books, and twisting wrought iron lamp posts. All of these features were as big as megastructures, perhaps as big as planets. Black lightning flashed on the horizon, absorbing the light. Pages drifted in the wind, old, handwritten, yellowed.

    What the hell is this place? Locus asked.

    Home, the Dream Elemental replied. The dreams of those who labored to create the, uh... I do not know the word.

    The isolated subnet?

    Yeah, that thing. Isolated subnet. What a stupid pair of words.

    So it''s sort of like cyberspace, Locus reasoned. Except different.

    The fighter jet was parked at the top of one of the bookshelves, not too far from the edge. Locus realized he would need to turn around and take off in the other direction. By rote memory, he went through the startup checklist. Soon the engines were spooled up, and after a few redundant safety checks he released the parking brake and punched the throttle up to taxi power. Once the craft was moving forward, he pressed the brakes on one side, causing the alien sky to slowly rotate around him.

    It would have been an unremarkable takeoff, if not for the flurry of torn pages that flowed over the canopy like snowflakes. He reached takeoff airspeed just before reaching the edge of the huge bookcase. While the altimeter indicated he was at sea level, the lofty edge of the bookcase dropped away to reveal his true altitude was at least thirty thousand feet. The ground far below was black, pocked with craters and rivers and lakes filled with brackish green water.

    The airspace just ahead was clear, so he configured the auto-pilot to hold altitude and heading. Then, he flipped.

    Sweets was already on the move. With perfect balance she was sprinting along the top planks of an old wooden fence, to prevent revealing her location by splashing through the puddles. Her skin felt cold as rain streamed off her naked body. All of the buildings within the castle town were brownish gray with gray doors and blue trimming. There was also a cafe with a red door, and a well with a red gazebo cover on top. At the end of the fence she reached a stone door leading to the castle interior.

    "Cowboy, are you ready?" Sweets asked.

    Locus used his deck to add a waypoint to his fighter jet flight computer, one which matched her relative position. Then he flipped back. His waypoint was off to one side, hovering over one of the massive stone bookshelves. This particular shelf only had a single book, black and leather bound, resting horizontally on the top shelf.

    Data, Locus realized. Here, books are the representation of data. Maybe the missiles will work?

    Using the buttons on the stick, Locus activated one of the missiles which had been loaded with a legacy icebreaker. It was the type of program that used first principles to devise a series of exploits and take control of a system, without any prior knowledge of that system. It could not be used against modern self-healing ice, but it would make quick work of whatever security system the door was using.

    He rolled on edge and pulled up on the stick until the bookshelf was directly ahead. He aimed the gunsight just using stick and rudder. When he pulled the trigger, the missile lanced off the rail toward the book, leaving a long stream of smoke in its wake, setting fire to the stray pages that fluttered along its path. When it struck the book, it exploded with gold light. Black ink began to precipitate from the book and flow in waterfalls from the edge of the shelf.

    Flip.

    The stone doors rumbled to either side, opening the way into perfect darkness. Sweets navigated the long maze of narrow stone hallways, which led finally to a dim chamber lit by old gas lamps. Shadows dominated the space, dark, industrial, whirring and blinking and beeping. It was, in fact, a server room, cramped and dusty. The floor was coated in a vine-like blanket of cables.

    Sweets crouched down, placed one palm against a nearby server, and brushed away the dust. It appeared to be an ancient design, but thankfully there was a very modern universal jack port. Sweets tugged on the jack at the nape of her neck, just below the ear, and slipped it into the server port. Locus waited for the port-forwarding notification to appear on his deck. When it did, he activated the forwarding protocols, which effectively added the entire server cluster to the isolated subnet, with Sweets acting as an intermediary.

    Flip.

    The new hardware manifested as a new bookshelf, vaguely in the direction of her new relative location. The new shelf was stocked with uniform, skyscraper-sized black books, leather bound with gold lettering. Each one was, Locus reasoned, a unique server. Because they were all connected, any one of them could be used as a target. He armed another missile, lined up a shot, and fired.

    Locus flipped again. A few moments later, Sweets said, "I''m in."

    "What is it?" Locus asked.

    "It''s a cryptocurrency server cluster," she replied. "A very, very old one."

    "Cryptocurrencies?" Locus said, astonished. "You mean like, the pyramid schemes and artificial price trends that early programmers invented to scam suckers at the dawn of computing? Those cryptocurrencies?"

    "Yeah, but there is a difference. I''ve located the employee training videos for this facility. I''ll play them at one point five times speed."

    Locus flipped back to his fighter jet and forwarded the new video into his HUD. A corpo in a black suit appeared and started regurgitating the usual HR word salad.

    Finally, the lesson started: "We use the finest hologram technologies available, and all of our titles and deeds are printed on polymer substrates. You cannot see this on your screen, but this title was printed with a distinct set of colors on the front that turns into shades of gold on the back. There are features to create depth and movement among the images, as well as an optically variable device that resembles the Capitol Building here in Saint Ingrid, which is white under normal lightning but fully colored when viewed under UV light."

    A quick internet search on his deck revealed that such security features were cutting edge technology over one thousand years in the past.

    "Our most important security feature is the use of the cryptographic blockchain. Each title contains the hash code required to fulfill the requirements of the current block. This is the only copy of that hash code, because the server which generated it immediately deletes that portion of memory once the printing process is complete. In other words, the physical documents become part of the blockchain."

    Locus flipped.

    "What an asinine way of doing things," he said.

    "Yeah," Sweets agreed. "Early cryptocurrencies were intended to replace physical fiat currencies. It seems like they went full circle with this design."

    "Wait, this is a problem, isn''t it?"

    "Yeah."

    "How many titles were printed after the title for Gerard''s house?"

    "Three," Sweets said. "All of them for the same bank."

    "That''s not too bad," Locus said. "We just need to re-compute the entire blockchain starting with Gerard''s title, then print four new physical documents and stuff them in their respective bank vaults. How long do you think that will take?"

    "This blockchain has been in continuous use since cryptocurrencies were invented, all those centuries ago. These hashes have a lot of leading zeroes. Estimate says twenty-five minutes. How are things looking on your end?"

    "The sky is clear," Locus replied. "Twenty five minutes is not a long time. If there''s a rogue AI up here, I haven''t seen it yet."

    "Good. Keep me posted. Enjoy your flight."

 Chapter 8: Dogfight in the Twisted Library

    Beep beep, beep beep!

    It was the tone indicating an incoming missile. There was a moment of disbelief, followed by muscle memory. Locus slammed the stick to the right, causing the whole world to roll upside-down. Then he slammed the stick forward, causing the nose to pitch up toward the ground.

    Flip.

    "Shit!" Locus hissed. "Sweets! Someone is shooting at me!"

    "Affirmative," Sweets replied. "The other runner might be in the building. I''ll take a look around."

    Flip.

    The dark ground dominated his entire vision, the features growing larger, rising up to meet him. A quick glance at the altimeter revealed that he was locked at sea level, even as the nose dive developed. More disbelief, followed by a mental hypothesis: This airspace violates the laws of physics. The air everywhere had the same density. Which meant that missiles would quickly lose most of their energy even at high altitudes.

    No time to think about that.

    Locus refocused on his other instruments. The angle-of-attack indicator was still working, as was the airspeed indicator, the slip indicator, and the G-force indicator. Sensor fusion display reported the direction of the incoming missile, but whoever (or whatever) had shot the thing had not been located yet. High-resolution cameras combined with an image recognition AI should have seen the bandit, especially since the sky was relatively clear. It was possible the enemy fighter jet was painted with an AI-frustrating paint scheme, but Locus could not be sure until he actually got eyes on the target.

    The fighter-jet shaped display between the instruments was blinking red in two places, because he had used two of his ground attack missiles. Eight green lights remained: two additional strike missiles loaded with legacy icebreakers, two radar-guided Dark-Three, two heat-seeking Ice-Two, and finally two AI visual-guided Pigeon-Four. The main cannon was at the full capacity of five hundred rounds. All three types of air-to-air missiles were loaded with brain cooker biotech viruses in addition to the explosives.

    The ground was rapidly approaching, and Locus began to make out the finer details. He rolled over so that the missile was behind him, then he gritted his teeth, clenched his butt, and pulled up hard on the stick. The intense G-forces of the maneuver caused his vision to narrow, turn grayscale. But he missed hitting the ground, skimming the surface. He did not know his exact altitude, but it was likely somewhere between seventy and one hundred feet.

    Beep beep, beep beep!

    Upon closer inspection, the black ground was not a ground at all, but the tops of trees with black leaves. Old ruins dotted the landscape, nearly black against the pale sand between the trees. There were shattered stained-glass windows standing in some of the ruins, gold-green and beige-orange. A part of Locus wanted to simply relax and enjoy the interesting scenery. It was, after all, a brand new sky to fly through.

    Frantically, he glanced around, searching for the missile. By craning his neck almost all the way backward, he caught sight of the thing. It was not too far away, above him and to the left. He watched the thing uneasily, waiting for it to begin to fall behind. It still had a lot of energy, but it was no longer burning propellant, so the energy would bleed off over time. He made note of its position, then looked forward and started flying again. The missile wasn''t the only danger. He needed to avoid smashing his fighter jet into the ground.

    "That thing looks dangerous!" a feminine voice said.

    Locus jolted in his seat. Panicked, he scanned the interior of the cabin, searching for the source of the voice. It turned out to be right by his shoulder, on the left side. He had looked away toward the missile, and then she was there.

    A fairy, or something that looked like a fairy.

    She was about the size of a kitten, with hair so dark it seemed to absorb the light. Strangely, her pale face was half-obscured by a mask that appeared to be made from the skull of some horned animal. Her dress was pure white, which contrasted with the bright colors of her oversized butterfly wings: red, blue, and purple. Locus got the uncanny feeling that he had seen this creature before.

    "That thing is dangerous," he agreed.

    The little fairy woman flapped her tiny wings and fluttered around the cabin a few times. Then she gently descended and then landed, tip-toed, on the stick. He ignored her, and took another glance at the missile. It was closer, almost flying in formation with him, but it was slowly, ever so slowly falling behind. If he ascended, it would not be able to follow him. He pulled the nose up and abandoned the thing. It would crash somewhere in the ruins or in the woods.

    "Who are you?" Locus asked.

    "''Tis I," the little woman replied. "Ashe, the Queen of Darkness. Why, little mortal, have you come into my realm?"

    Ashe. Religious nutjob nonsense. But... Locus suddenly remembered. He had seen this creature before. His master had many paintings on the walls of his little cabin. The one in his bedroom, just above his headboard, depicted the Elemental Queen of Darkness. Apparently, the entity was important to the Church of the Lady Ghost.

    Locus eyed the little creature skeptically. Was it some sort of rogue AI living on this subnet? Maybe it had gone insane and convinced itself that it was a powerful deity from a real-world religion. It was a reasonable theory, except for the glaringly-obvious problem that his cyberspace deck would have detected the intrusion. Also, the thing had not immediately killed him, which is what a rogue AI would have done. Probably.

    Either way, Locus didn''t have time for such distractions. He rolled into a knife''s edge maneuver and pulled up slightly, entering into a long arc away from the missile. Calmly, and deliberately, he craned his neck around to search the alien sky for threats. Absently, he said: "I don''t really know much about this place."

    "This is my Domain!" the creature insisted. "Close enough in any case. This is an interstice. Memories linger here. Ambitions, emotions, intent."

    "What intent?" Locus asked.

    "Disappointment and fear. Nostalgia. An intense hatred of all things new and foreign. The engineers who imagined this world saw advanced technology as a type of corruption infecting their ancient traditions. Their highest ideal, their highest ambition, was to create a leather-bound book that could last a thousand years. But that''s not what their masters wanted."

    The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

    Interesting, Locus thought. "And who were their masters?"

    "Foreigners, ones with a clever and arcane plot to conquer this land. The engineers living here knew about the plot. Their hatred and sorrow and loss caused the interstice to appear. That''s how I was able to sense you!"

    The little butterfly creature paused.

    "I don''t like it when you mortals fly fighter jets through my Domain," she continued. "One of you was bad enough, but two? Maybe you''ll kill each other, hmm? I think that other guy is hunting you."

    "Where is he?" Locus snapped.

    "Oh," the fairy woman said. Her body language gave Locus the impression that she was feigning innocence. "I''ll never tell. Haha!"

    She vanished in a puff of black smoke.

    Locus grunted, He was relieved that the distraction was gone, but he was also disappointed that the entity, whatever it was, refused to help him. He still hadn''t managed to see his opponent, and except for that low-energy missile, the sensor fusion display was clean.

    Flip.

    Sweets stalked through a raised tunnel, illuminated on either side by a vast chamber beyond the glass.

    "An anomaly," Locus reported. "Possibly a rogue AI, not sure. It seems to be gone now."

    "Who was shooting at you?" Sweets asked.

    "The bandit is still up there somewhere. I''m working on it."

    "Noted. Take a look at this room. Notice anything?"

    The entire chamber was filled with printing equipment, but there was no motion. The printer was not running. There were no workers on the floor and no technicians at the lab stations. Locus was expecting at least a single security guard.

    "It''s almost like it''s not a real business," Locus said.

    "Might be money laundering," Sweets offered.

    Locus was beginning to think the same thing. It could have been the work of just one ancient politician, a clause in some obscure law that requires titles for mansions to meet some asinine standards. The owners of the castle likely had a monopoly on the things, a reliable and prestigious source of income that could be traded among the elites like a plantation or a ski resort. And why pay a staff? More importantly, why pay a fighter pilot to patrol the subnet?

    Flip.

    The green-gray horizon was slowly rotating around as he continued his arc, close enough to the ground to gain the benefit of radar clutter from the trees and the hills. A huge stack of books, fifty thousand feet tall, loomed just ahead. Locus slotted in behind the stack, then pulled up into a vertical climb, using the books as a shield. High overhead the pear-colored neon clouds shifted. Black lightning struck the highest books, creating a flash of darkness that lingered in his vision.

    Maybe not a fighter pilot at all, Locus thought. Maybe it''s just somebody following a checklist, cheap and inexperienced, piloting a very advanced fighter jet.

    It was a good working theory. The quality of the fighter jet was immaterial. It wouldn''t cost the owners anything, and they would likely want to minimize the salary of the pilot. Locus felt a tinge of regret. He had not invested much time in improving his own fighter jet. It was a smaller jet with a single engine and a single tail, designed for warbird-style rate fights. With the exception of sensor fusion and the auto-pilot, the dashboard still used steam gauges.

    He pushed aside his regrets as he reached the summit of the stack of books, fifty thousand feet of vertical climb in just a few seconds. He had a very vague idea of where the bandit was, somewhere in the sky on the exact opposite side of the books. If they had spent a lot of time flying through this subnet, they would have noticed by now that the new bookshelf, which represented the crypto server cluster, was out of place. They would likely be nearby, investigating the strange addition.

    It was just an instinct, an impulse. Time to take a risk.

    Locus pulled hard. The edge of the highest book flew straight at him, growing, dominating his canopy. A slight relaxation of the stick, a slight roll, and a whole lot of rudder; the fighter jet barely missed the leathery escarpment and began to skim over the gold foil of the book''s upper surface. It was gone in an instant, growing smaller and smaller in the rearview mirrors. Dark tentacles writhed ahead, reaching, grasping at the empty sky.

    Sensor fusion was quiet. Locus watched.

    There!

    A tiny arrowhead, vague against the twisted library on the horizon. It was banking slightly and moving away from him, not far from the new bookshelf. Locus smashed the throttle to full afterburner and gave chase. A few blips on his sensor fusion. Brief silhouette detection, very small radar cross section, no AI recognition. It was, Locus assumed, a modern fighter with an AI-frustrating stealth coating. As he got closer, Locus began to make out two engines and two tails.

    The other pilot turned.

    Beep beep, beep beep!

    Locus saw the missile clearly. It was a high off boresight missile with thrust vectoring. A very, very dangerous missile, and Locus was on a path straight toward it. Whether or not he was within the weapon employment zone was a gamble. A coin toss.

    "Chaff! Flair!" the fighter jet annunciated. "Chaff! Flair!"

    His training kicked in. Tshhh tshhh tshhh tshhh. Flashes of orange light filled the rearview mirrors, gray claw mark fountains of smoke. Tshhh tshhh tshhh tshhh. The fighter jet rattled, the stubby little wings wobbled. Menacingly, the missile roared straight for him. He kicked the rudder. Rolled out of the cone. Tshhh tshhh tshhh tshhh.

    Whoosh!

    He pulled the other airplane into his HUD, went up on edge, and merged. A hard pull on the stick. Gray eyesight, narrow vision. Dizzy. He craned his neck and watched the two-circle develop, but strangely enough, the other pilot did not react. He was pulling away from the circle, trying to escape. Tone.

    "Idiot," Locus said. "Ice-Two!"

    He pulled the trigger. One of his heat-seeking missiles lanced off the rail toward the enemy craft. The other pilot was so inexperienced that he didn''t even use flares. The missile chased, leaving a misty streak in the sky, then struck the tail. The resulting fireball took one of the wings off, and both engines burst into flames. The fighter jet rolled and drifted, listlessly, derelict.

    Flip.

    Sweets was outside, sprinting along the rooftops of the houses outside the castle, invisible and silent. Her feet squished on the rotten yellow leaves that had spilled over the gutters. She glanced into each window in turn, searching.

    "Splash," Locus reported.

    "He wasn''t in the castle," Sweets said. "I finished the training module and started the printer startup sequence. I figured I''d come out here and look for him."

    She passed a window. A double-take. There was a man inside, writhing, twitching, seizing on the floor. He was completely decked out in pornographic simstim gear, including a tube protruding from his crotch, long and animated. Pump, pump, pump. Locus recognized the brand name on the tube: Pussy Witch. It was one of those expensive true-to-life vaginas, 3D-printed from the stem cells of a famous simstim star.

    "It looks like your bandit was distracted," she said.

    "The mind cooker is smart enough to infect the simstim rig," Locus said. "Get in there and clean up. Remove the cyberspace deck, make it look like he wasn''t jacked in at all. Whoever finds the body will think his porn was infected."

    "Affirmative," Sweets said. She reached for the window.

    Flip.

    Locus found the little butterfly creature standing on the stick once more. She looked up at him, her hands on her hips, her foot tapping.

    "You didn''t hesitate to murder that man!" the little woman said. "And now you concoct clever deceptions to hide your work. A conspiracy! A scandal!"

    "Do you need something?" Locus asked.

    "I love deception!" she replied. "You are welcome to bring your deceptions into my Domain again. I''ll be watching you, mortal."

    She vanished again, but this time Locus noticed something strange. She left twelve shadows, radially arranged around the interior of the cabin. They vanished one at a time.

    I have seen that Elemental before, the Dream Elemental said in his mind. She is right. Here, the Mother''s Domain overlaps with the Plane of Darkness.

    "Is that really the Queen of Darkness?" Locus asked.

    Yes. However, she did not attempt to harm you. Perhaps she cannot harm you. This is new, and strange.

    Locus flew through an empty sky until the printer was finished. Sweets stuffed the new titles into a tube and squirreled them away inside her chest cavity. Locus lined up to land, and after he rolled to a stop, he jacked out. Rain pattered against his light jacket. Burner, the crazy priest in the red robes, was watching him with a face filled with madness.

    "Time to pack up," Woodsman announced. "We''re driving to Saint Vaska tonight."