VRTP:RABBLEVSRISTO.PLAY/BASTILLE/EPISODE-ONE.VR
@Bastille: We are experiencing technical difficulties. Stand by.
Coach was, blessedly, in Rubi’s ear again.
Gimlet released their grip on her throat and backed away, hands raised, as she doubled over, taking time to breathe, just breathe.
“Are you—”
“Nothing serious. You?”
“Unhurt, but what just bloody happened?”
She shook her head. “I think Happ…” Could that be right? Had Happ barked them awake?
“I nearly strangled you.”
Rubi’s jaw was puffy and sore; teeth felt loose on one side of her mouth, and she could barely open and close the fingers of her right hand. “Fair play. I’ve blacked your eye.”
“I’ve shared gyms before without hard contact.” Gimlet took a step, testing the foot she’d stomped. “All the safeties … How?”
“Too much buy-in,” Rubi said promptly.
Gimlet limped to the access pod, checking Frankie’s green lights. Then they picked something off the floor—the dose sheet.
Drug patches were missing. Lots of patches.
“I remember. You took two,” Gimlet said.
Rubi ran a hand over her inner arm, finding a half dozen sticky dots. Smudges showed the ink color: two red, two blue, two green. No wonder the walls were shimmering.
“Martyrfuck, as Drow would say.”
Gimlet wore a wary look, along with the emerging bruise. “I hope you know…”
“No! Gimlet, I’d never believe you dosed me.”
Stark relief.
It occurred to Rubi that people must assume Gimlet, as a professional villain, was capable of anything. “I think it happened last episode, too.”
They were aghast. “But how?”
Sobering thought: they had—from implantation if not birth—trusted their apps to dose them properly, to shepherd them through sims.
“Color filtering? Print the wrong patterns on the patches?” Rubi suggested. “Crane, eyes off.”
As her augments shut down, the room’s ambient light dimmed. Even so, it was obvious the colors on the patches were indeed reversed.
“See?”
“Who could possibly want us in-game that badly?”
This played to all of her fears about stepping out of the real world while Luce and Drow were vulnerable. She’d tried to quash them, to tell herself it was paranoia, worthy of a @hoaxer, but …
“Crane, review user agreements. Does anyone involved in Bastille have a legal right to adjust our buy-in meds without consent?”
“Absolutely not!”
“Request a formal investigation.”
“The Cloudsight backlog is impacting the speed of the judiciary and legal complaint process. I advise getting evidential blood samples,” the sidekick said.
“Where’s the nearest med—”
“Sixty seconds remaining in time-out,” Coach broke in: “Resume positions for replay from last save.”
“Forget that,” Rubi said. “We’re getting out of here.”
“The casino appears to be in security lockdown,” Crane reported.
“What?” She yanked on the dining hall doors, twanging her injured hand—Gimlet had really crunched her.
“Tampico city management reports widespread rioting. They barely got the morning train away.”
“Still no law enforcement?”
“No, Miss Cherub. Local drones are in reserve for fire control.”
“Legit? Or an excuse to keep the two of us here?”
“You’re sounding a bit like a @hoaxer, my dear.” Gimlet probably meant to keep the tone light, but their voice was strained.
“If ever there was a time to sniff at blood trails!” She raised her throbbing hand. “We could have seriously hurt each other. Crane, where’s the staff?”
“They appear to have been lured into the old hotel laundry, Miss Cherub, and locked in. Sergeant Wilson was incoming to assist but has been trapped in an elevator.”
“This isn’t about our tiebreaker match anymore, Gimlet. We’re pieces on a bigger board. We need to—”
They set a protective hand on Frankie’s pod. “To what? Singlehandedly stop a riot?”
She felt a burst of rage. Was that the MethodAct, still in her system?
“We shred the drug tabs,” Gimlet said. “Rescue the @Manic- Pixie and hotel staff. I went off script because of enhanced buy-ins. They’ll wear off; we can—”
Sudden burst of inspiration. “Luce could get us out.”
“What?”
“He’s a locksmith, isn’t he?”
“He’s a fugitive. And where would we bloody go?”
“I’ll see if I can raise Mer Pox,” Crane subbed.
“We’re not going anywhere,” Gimlet insisted. “The streets are full of vandals, Cloudsight’s down, Sensorium’s reinventing #flamewar, and—in case you’ve forgotten—terrorists have attacked your pet project.”
“We’re being played,” Rubi said. “Don’t you want to know why?”
“If we bail on Bastille now, all we do is free up more frightened people to go berserk.”
Bells chimed all around them.
A whirl of snow and the Regent herself, twelve feet tall and exuding chilly fairy grandeur, tooned in astride the roulette wheel, towering over them. A notepad-wielding assistant type in wig and powder peered around her skirt.
“Who are you?” Rubi demanded.
“You have a four-hour commitment left to play. You will fight it out over custody of the spy. Barnes, stop trying to pre-empt Episode Three by going off-quest.”
A long pause.
“I have to say,” Gimlet said, “I may not have agreed with Mer Whiting about a secret cabal backing the gaming scenario, but your turning up like this—”
Rubi felt the misplaced warmth of affection seeping through the fury of a moment earlier.
A villain, on paper, but Gimlet’s so damned sharp …
The Regent silenced them with a raised hand. “Mer Barnes, I’m tasking a private ambulance to Cornwall Hospice. Your spouse will be removed from the #triage list and prepped for conversion to steady-state life support. He will be in a facility in Pretoria, cocooned for the long term, within seven hours.”
Gimlet’s already-white skin paled to the color of birch bark.
The assistant with the notepad whispered in the Regent’s ear. She added, “Ah! If you win the scenario outright, we’ll gift him a lifetime premium user account. #Triage forbidden, except in the event of brain death.”
“Why would you offer—”
The assistant spoke: “Certainement, you can’t refuse?”
Anselmo?
No, that’s silly. One word of French means nothing.
Gimlet shot her an agonized look.
“You can’t refuse,” Rubi subbed. “I get it.”
“Take your meds,” said the Regent. “Return to play.”
Rubi snatched up the page of printed drug patches, clapping them against a handful of hydrogels. Water burst under her palm, soaking the page. Ink swirled from the colored tabs.
“Never mind the buy-ins. Go, Gimlet. Frankie can’t lose another parent.”
Gimlet stepped close, tipping two fingers under Rubi’s chin, bringing them eye to eye. “Have I ever mentioned how much I admire your…”
Rubi raised an eyebrow.
“… principles?”
“That’s what you admire, is it?” She brushed her lips over theirs, then set a light kiss on the puffy edge of their eye, where she’d landed the punch.
“We’ll inventory your attractive qualities after I’ve crushed your paltry rebellion.” They caught her stinging hand, pressing it to their mouth. Apologizing.
“The game awaits, Mer,” the Regent said.
“By all means.” Gimlet released her, bowed, and turned, scaling the climbing wall.
Show must go on. They wanted her in Sensorium. SeaJuve had been greenlighted—was someone looking to push back against that? Luce was—she checked—still soapboxing, apparently doing just fine without her.
What could she possibly do if she wasn’t online? Here, in Tampico, official middle of nowhere?
She couldn’t puzzle it out.
As Gimlet glazed, Rubi put her hands on her hips and faced the Regent. “Got a carrot for me, too?”
“For you? Stick, I think.”
Rubi let out a thin, catlike hiss.
The Regent nudged her secretary, who cleared his throat, referring to his notes: “Audits of your family transcripts show your father’s put himself in a vulnerable position of late, n’est-ce pas?”
It was Anselmo. This was how he’d dealt with getting broomed from Luce’s case: by eavesdropping on her family.
“Who’s this powerful new friend of yours?” she asked. “The one with enough juice to get a dying man out of the hospice track?”
“Imagine what we might do for your family. Or to it.”
Keep them talking; get this in a transcript. “Drow goes into things eyes open. I didn’t make him go out #hoax hunting. If I have to visit him in jail for awhile, so be it.”
“Would we bother with trespassing charges at this point?” Anselmo seemed amused.
“What else have you got?”
The room changed, not to an old-time France but the interior of a Setback-vintage ambulance. Two paramedics fought to subdue an impossibly young and freakily hairless version of Dad. He was soaking wet, bald, without eyebrows … and covered in blood.
Auditory transcript wafted through the speakers …
Who hurt you, Woodrow?
Don’t know, not sure, don’t remember …
… tell us how you got these injuries …
… don’t know. Voice rising in panic now. Don’t fucking touch me, I don’t remember!
“Shut it off!” Rubi’s injured hand was pulsing. “All that footage was lost. Haystack’s been searched for that needle.”
“Data’s never truly destroyed,” the Regent said. “All the memories this little lost man’s pushed away? I have them. But I can bury it again.”
“That’s not…” She thought about all Crane’s lectures, on Drow’s autonomy. “Not really my call.”
“How long will it take, do you think, for him to slash his wrists? If he is forced to relive it?”
He’s stronger now.
Was he? They might not know Drow’s weak spot; they certainly knew hers.
Rubi didn’t—quite—have that much faith in him.
“Swish your hands around in that soup,” the Regent said. The assistant looked like he might object, but a look from the frost-rimed fairy silenced any protest.
Rubi looked at the dye-colored smear of jelly. “I’ll play, but—”
“Consider this an object lesson in power dynamics. You, Mer Whiting, need to learn your place.”
“Strike,” Rubi murmured. “Abuse and coercion.”
“Just do it.”
At least the mush was pleasantly cold on her injured fingers. After about thirty seconds, the Regent began to ripple, seeming less of a toon, more of a person. The cheap casino carpet turned into cobbles. The chandelier rose up and up, changing to a bloody harvest moon.
“I beg you, miss, eat an anti-inflammatory fruit cube before you return to France.”
Rubi shook her head, unsure who had spoken. She cast about for her sword, retrieving it near a low wall that smelled of mold and spilled red wine.
@Bastille: All systems back online. Players, to your marks.
She had a socialite dryad to save.