VRTP:RABBLEVSRISTO.PLAY/BASTILLE/EPISODE-TWO.VR
Rubi’s forces managed to keep Monique Goyette out of the Regency’s hands, but that was the only win they pulled from hours of savage fighting. Gimlet, as Regent’s Blade, set them a rather elegant ambush, and by sundown, the Rabble had been decimated—mauled by ice monsters and brawling bears. The Regency had even intercepted the Dauphine when they tried to smuggle her out of Paris.
Player casualties were consigned to a sort of limbo, listed as having been killed, wounded, or captured. Prisoners would be slated for evaluation and #triage …
… execution; the terms are trial and execution.
Rubi warmed her hands by the flame of a torch as someone, behind her, spelled out restore conditions. “Captured players without a save versus death may switch sides, attempt full catch-up from the prologue, or challenge a series of escape quests within the prison.”
Escape quests always had a cruelly high fail rate. It would fall to Rubi’s remaining forces to break them out and retrieve the Dauphine.
“We’re making out worse ’n usual,” one of the blacksmiths grumbled.
“Be of good cheer,” Rubi said. Usual, she thought. Why did this feel so familiar and yet so wrong?
She held her hand as close to the flame as she dared. Her fingers throbbed painfully; the warmth declined to penetrate to her bones. It was getting hard to hold a sword.
The remnants of her #flashmob were regrouping within Monique’s fairyland refuge. Hasty retreat into land held by the dryads, summerfolk aligned against the icy Regent. Rubi had placed herself near the gate, to welcome her dispirited, fleeing compatriots to the …
… save point …
… as bloody sunset unfurled across the horizon.
“We’ll save them yet,” she told the surviving revolutionaries. “Don’t worry. Be of good cheer.”
Far away, church bells tolled. The portal to the enchanted safe space rippled, beginning to change.
For a breath, Rubi thought the Regent’s Blade had breached the fairy defenses, that they were captured, guillotine-bound. But the view of the setting sun became a dusty expanse of mirrored wall with a steel fire-rated door.
Fire-rated?
Locked in. Her hand hurt and now her head was spinning.
Too much buy-in.
“Snap out of it. Gotta—” Her throat was raw from hours of shouting orders. She had been peculiarly afraid to take any food or water, even during breaks in the fighting. She had refused rations even when the others dug in.
The knuckles of her right hand were raw, scabbed.
Locked in. Drugged.
Under her feet, the grass turned to stiff carpet, with coins scattered across its rough red surface. She raked up one token. Gold in color, it was—like her trademark beads—too lightweight to be real metal. The word Casino was etched in its heart.
“A token,” she said, still grasping. “Chips. When the chips are down…”
“Miss Cherub!” A huge blue crane appeared before her. Rubi shrieked and jumped backward, hitting an old chair and demolishing it as she fell. Then everything snapped together. Tears ran down her face.
“It’s all right,” Crane said.
“Nothing’s all right.”
“Let’s get you out of here.”
“The Regent locked us in.” The air seemed flat, overwarm. Tired and used up, like the planet. I shouldn’t have to lobby for air.
“There’s an emergency exit. I did as you suggested and recruited someone to unlock—”
Someone. Sniffling, she climbed to her feet. She had mentioned Luce—had Crane asked for his help?
“Exit where?”
Footprints appeared, superimposing themselves on the spilled chips.
Rubi staggered after the breadcrumbs. She smelled wet Florida air before she saw dust motes swirling in a shaft of natural light. The door lay on the stairs. It had been unscrewed from its hinges.
She scrambled up, wobbling as the door teeter-tottered under the shifting load of her weight, and came out in what had once been a back alley. A rusted, long-forgotten dumpster sagged in its shadows.
“Mind your injuries, miss—”
“Fine, I’m fine, I’m fine.” The air was clearing her head. She leaned against a wall and let herself cry for a minute, watching tears hit the pavement and evaporate.
The confrontation came back. She and Gimlet had fought. Hard contact.
Trembling, she took stock. There were no new injuries.
“I didn’t see Gimlet on the circus stage.”
“Oh dear, oh dear. They’re in the fly gallery. He didn’t tell—”
“Crane! I’m too tired for pussyfooting.”
“I asked”—Crane indicated the unscrewed door, and Rubi realized he meant Luce—“asked someone to ping Mer Barnes in-game. Young Frances has gone off-grid.”
“Frankie? Gone? How?”
“Unknown.”
“She’s gone lemming?” The mental fog cleared. “And Gimlet doesn’t know?”
A furious howl, from within.
“They’ve worked it out now,” Crane said.
“Frankie would never…” Could this be why they’d had to be pushed back into game? It wasn’t about Luce, or Drow, wasn’t about Rubi at all. Someone had been covering Frankie’s escape.
Who?
Whoever’s playing the Regent.
Rubi found herself reluctant to go back inside, into the stale air and memory of being cooped. The Regent had threatened to plunge Drow into a recreation of his initial trauma.
Frankie wouldn’t lemming, would she?
Why not? Her family’s in ruins.
Gimlet had found the secure room, the presidential dummy. They pummeled the desk, flinging the first aid kit. The black eye made the rest of their face seem even paler than usual. “Her RFID.” Dull, murderous voice. “He cut her tracker out.”
“He?”
“Whoever abducted her.”
Reaching out to touch Gimlet was something she had to force herself to do. But she did, clasping a shoulder loosely within her throbbing fingers. They could both use some anti-inflammatories.
“We better go.”
Feral snarl. “Aren’t we caged?”
“That’s … It’s sorted.”
They looked at her, uncomprehending. Rubi turned the gentle squeeze into more of a tug. “Come on. She’s not here. Crane’s been searching—”
“Crane has, has he?”
Rubi got moving, back to the opened door, obliging them to follow.
Crane jumped into the breach despite the sarcastic edge in Gimlet’s voice. “Current streams from 17,621 eyeballs in the hospitality district show no sign of your daughter, Mer Barnes. I took the liberty of hiring analysts to crunch faces, in case someone picked her up leaving the casino.”
“Being taken from it, you mean?”
Barely perceptible pause. “Indeed. No hits yet. Status bar shows full analysis for the past ninety minutes, which suggests that her departure—”
“Abduction.”
“—the abduction occurred before 1:30 p.m. local time.”
The idea of someone coming in and stealing the girl while she and Gimlet were in-game, a hundred feet away …
No. Frankie was too old to be a @Freebreeder target. There was no point in capturing a nine-year-old for nurture. She was on the young side for a Neverland run, but a riot was good cover …
“Check with Sangria,” Gimlet said. “The spouse who left us.”
Crane said, “Can you not simply ask, Mer Barnes?”
“Sangria comms-blocked us all.”
“Here’s the alley.” Rubi took a deep breath, trotting to the corner of the building and peering out at the deserted street.
Feeling self-conscious—17,000 cameras? Even in an abandoned district?—she nevertheless started walking.
“I hesitate to add Newscycle to your processing load, Miss Cherub, but…”
“Yes?”
“A second persona, sent by the Pale, has gone public.”
“Another polter? Like Luce?”
“She calls herself Allure. She confirms Mer Pox’s tale about an approaching expeditionary force, and is soapboxing a pitch to cede Global Oversight to offworlder management. She has mustered a significant number of stakeholders.”
Rubi glanced at Gimlet. They were walking beside her, obviously glazed. Looping family in on Frankie’s disappearance, presumably, and reporting the kidnapping to the already-overtaxed police?
“Stop,” Crane said suddenly. “Chuggers.”
Rubi paused beside an abandoned vending cart, with its red and orange bottled fuel loads.
“They’re med-free.”
She reached for a bottle, oddly reluctant.
“You must hydrate, Miss Cherub.”
“Nag, nag. This is how Drow feels, isn’t it?” Another of her father’s paranoid ideas—getting dosed was one of his hobbyhorses—was turning out to have some basis in truth.
But Crane was right: her batteries were in the red.
“Gimlet, have something.”
No response.
“You can’t help Frankie if you collapse.” Biting off the lid of the bottle, she washed back a mouthful. It tasted painfully sweet: trademark Florida orange juice.
Gimlet took a chugger, stared at it. Didn’t fuel.
“There’s a car coming for you,” Crane said.
Rubi guzzled the rest of her chugger and broke into a run. The liquid sloshed in her gut.
Gimlet kept pace. “Why are we running?”
“You want to get locked down? Now?”
“We can’t outpace a car.”
Rubi didn’t reply, instead spidering over a low fence at the edge of a demolition site. Skirting its pit, she made her way to an alley that was, according to the maps, a half-click from the Miami Trans Hub.
Her speakers chimed an alert. “You are headed into an area of civil unrest.”
Rubi pressed herself against a wall.
“It’s all right.” Gimlet pointed. The drone was police-grade, equipped with joy buzzers and sedative darts … and harmless. Someone had wrapped it in a long sunscreen, twisting the gossamer shield into a rope and tying the drone to a cinder block on the edge of the construction site.
Rubi bent down, staring at the tranq darts. They seemed smaller than the ones she remembered.
“Traveling armed is profoundly antisocial,” Gimlet hissed.
“If someone has your child…”
“Bare hands will more than suffice.”
They left the bot where it was, scaled the fence at the far end of the demo site, and came out near the far edge of a long public square leading to the Trans Hub.
“Half a click of ground to cover,” Crane observed.
A vintage limo drifted up, blocking the way. Juanita Bell beckoned, furiously, from the back.
“Now what?”
Rubi sighed. “Play the privilege-of-fame card. Crane, tell that #flashmob in the station that there’s an actual military vehicle between them and me.”
Soft, pained noise beside her.
“What?”
Gimlet shared an image from the casino, painting it onto the side of the car. Rubi watched, keeping one eye on the Trans Hub. Would the mob come?
Gimlet’s share depicted the two of them making their initial, willing transition into Episode Two. Gimlet lay down on a gymnastics mat; Rubi took a position by the climbing wall.
Fast-forward shadow-fencing, as the game began. Then at one minute fifteen, Frankie emerged from the Sensorium pod, disappearing into the secret room, the same one where Rubi had met Crane. She emerged, bloodied and bandaged, and threw her VR rig into the Sensorium cocoon. Then she smashed her gaming baton, stripped off all her tech, and jump-closed the pod.
“She ran away,” Gimlet said, as hundreds of people began to stream out of the Trans Hub and @Globalsec’s limo, seeing the better part of valor, decide to back away, out of their path. “She’s thrown herself into the wind.”