THE SURFACE
ON APPROACH: MANHATTAN/CENTRAL PARK ZOO HELIPAD
Rubi swallowed as she looked at the helicopter shareboard. Rollander Erwitz had been successfully transferred to Pretoria, despite riots, and was adapting to @jarhead protocols rapidly. Even so, the extent of his cancers was significant: he might survive in a tank for ten years.
That would make Frankie around twenty when he died.
“I’m the poster child for accepting aid, you see?” Gimlet said. “Step right up! Witness the miracles of the Pale! We slice, we dice, we raise the very nearly dead. Humankind can start having babies, if we please, as we please, when we please. Order now and we’ll restock your forests—”
“With animals the biosphere can’t support yet?”
“Abstaining on principle is a luxury I don’t have.” The tiniest of shrugs. “My pack’s lost too much. Frankie’s lost too much. As for you … well. Win, lose, or concede—”
She felt her lip curl. “Concede?”
Gimlet mimed picking up the glove she’d thrown. “I’m going to defeat you in detail, my dear.”
“And then take me to the ball, Prince Charming?”
“In matching glass slippers and ballgowns if you like.”
“They might have to be tearaways.” A thrum of lust went through her. Excitement, at the prospect of sex, mixed with regret that they hadn’t thrown down there in the aircraft.
Too evil, too good, just right. Irrelevant, weird thought. Despite everything, she felt oddly … content.
Well, that would cheer Happ up, if nothing else.
“Crane,” Rubi said. “Tell Mayor Agarwal I’ll be happy to clean Gimlet’s clock for the common good as soon as we’re somewhere big enough to stretch out our arms. But we need—”
A loud smack made them both jump.
“What was—”
Another, louder. A shudder ran through the chopper.
Rubi checked her safety belt, then felt, automatically, for a chute she wasn’t wearing. Naturally. She’d never really parachuted out of an aircraft.
“What now?” Gimlet demanded.
“Something’s hitting us. For reals.”
“In midair?”
A plastic blur smashed the window, leaving a spiderwork of cracks.
“Slow-mo replay.” Rubi ran time back, sharing the footage from her eyecams. The missile was a camerabot the size of a fist, now tumbling in bits to the ground.
“That’s supposed to be impossible!”
A new voice said, “Someone dropped it. Hovered it over your location, then crashed it. It fell through the propeller.”
Rubi heard herself titter nervously. “At least a realworld helicopter crash should live up to the sims.”
“We’re not gonna log,” the pilot said.
“Nice use of we, considering you’re remote,” Gimlet snapped.
“I can get you down before we take more hits, though you’ll be short of the Central Park helipad.”
“How short?” Gimlet said.
“Dunno. Roughly you-don’t-have-to-die-now kilometers? The corner of 152nd Street and not in the fucking water?”
“Is that … Mer Pox?” Gimlet asked.
Rubi groaned, filtering the cockpit. Sure enough, Luce was standing on the nose of the chopper, dressed as a big fish in prison stripes, flapping his fins in a metaphor for navigation, twisting to lurch away from another plunging drone.
Gimlet cursed as they bounced, up and then down. “What are you doing?”
“Someone’s trying to dead you guys.”
“Kill,” Rubi corrected.
Another lurch. The green rectangle of the Manhattan preserve seemed very far away. The helicopter described a smooth, rapid curve, descending, momentarily throwing off the drones.
Working together, they hauled on the side door of the chopper, revealing a stretch of ground, getting nearer. They were descending toward rubble: a toppled statue, an old park bench, a medical stretcher, and a pile of concrete wastebaskets.
“Isn’t there anywhere flat?” Gimlet demanded.
“You want me to circle around looking?” A drone dropped onto the nose of the chopper with a smash.
“It’s fine,” Rubi said.
“Ragamuffins first,” Gimlet said, offering her a hand.
Rubi clambered down to the skid, heart pounding.
She let her body weight settle, checked her grip, then toed for the ground. Her foot caught and she stepped away fast.
As Gimlet let go, her center of balance wobbled. Wind from the rotors whipped her. She fought to stay upright, raking tears from her eyes.
A rain of falling drones. She leapt off the bench, arms raised overhead.
“Gimlet!”
The helicopter roared away, dodging the bots, leaving Rubi on the ground to try to outrun the bombardment.
“Go left!” Crane advised, and she sprang. A grab-and-go shattered at her feet. Battery fluids sprayed her leg and her primer shed fabric everywhere, protecting her from the chemical burns, reducing her overall coverage.
Running in the dark, she scanned the broken expanse of concrete, eyes picking out metallic humps that must be … yes, they were last-gen cars, stripped husks covered in bits of emerging forest: pine needles, rotten mulch.
“The last of the bots went after the chopper.” Crane tooned in beside her. “Their number is diminishing: their driver could only override the safeties within the true antiques.”
“Gimlet will be okay?”
“I can’t guarantee—”
“Where am I?”
Maps rose on her displays, marking a location well south of Central Park.
“Any idea who’s doing it?”
“A few remnant malcontent groups have retained possession of drones. Commodore Bell has put out a gig to track and expose them.”
She put her back to a wall, caught her breath. “I need to traverse while in-game. Orient terrain so I’m moving toward Drow.”
“Interfacing with Rabble. Coach will map out a path.”
“Ask Game Control and Hyderabad for additional support. Get journo bots so nobody else can throw a drone at us, and something to prevent them dosing us again—”
The receding hum of the chopper engine turned to a high-pitched mechanical whine.
Rubi heard something she’d only ever heard in sims, an awful combination of collision and bomb.
Crash. Boom. Tinkle of falling glass.
She stood stock-still on a long-dead car, her sore hand covering her half-open mouth, eyes streaming.
“Miss Cherub?”
Wisp of smoke, something on fire, firelight pulsing from behind a wall of buildings. #Crashburn.
The noises she was making, some part of her noted, weren’t even words. The rest seemed to be variations on “This is real, that looked real, real enough for you?”
“Miss Cherub! They’re all right. Mer Barnes is on the ground.”
She sank to a crouch next to a garbage truck, fighting for breath.
“Mer Pox and the chopper didn’t fare so well, clearly.”
“Luce is indestructible.”
Gimlet chose that moment to ping her directly. “I’m in something called the Flatiron District. Rubi—”
“It’s all right.” She wiped at her eyes. “Listen. Drow will watch out for Frankie. You don’t have to worry. Believe it or not, he’s good with kids.”
Moji: a thumbs-up. “Then we play?”
Much rests on your word, the mayor had said.
I better not be lying, then. Rubi consulted a city map. “Yeah. Should I try to rendezvous?”
“Given what happened last time, it may be better if we’re physically separated.”
“True.”
“I’m making for Central Park. Traversing in-game.”
She flailed for words. “You scared me.”
“Save your fear for France,” Gimlet said. “Rabble scum.”
“Highbrow privileged panderer,” she sniffed. “I’m coming for you.”
“Enemies to the end,” Gimlet said, with a remarkably elegant curtsey.
“Archenemies,” she agreed.
“See you at the zoo? Rapiers at midnight?”
“And on to the happily ever after,” Rubi said, and once again, she sank into the constructed past.