Glitch (10 page)

“Simone, get in line.” Her mother nodded to Agent Nable, who stood in the back as if he were trying to be invisible. He and Coach Buzz pulled the large garage-like doors closed.

Today was humid and damp outside but not too warm. Everyone sitting on the mats looked comfortable enough, except for Beasley, who was sweating. Simone watched a rivulet run down her cheek and realized she hadn’t sweated since ... well, since she’d become a ghost. A curious nostalgia made her even miss uncomfortable weather. Lost in her own thoughts, she hovered just to Hutto’s left.

When she heard her mother say “... today, you’ll learn to bind your entities. This is the power to control the rate of transformation,” all thoughts of the weather disappeared. “Today you’ll learn to let them emerge in an instant, but keep them in stasis.” She glanced at Simone, sending a clear message that Simone should master this technique before trying to summon again. “It’s a great way to save your outfit from shredding.”

“Right, I get it,” Simone mumbled to herself. “No more summoning.”

Her mother stopped in front of Hutto. “You first.”

He found a place on the other side and began to move through the steps he’d been shown earlier. He was fluid and precise, and Simone watched him with jealousy. She had spent years practicing these movements. He looked just as skilled as her already.

An hour later, she heard her mother clap once. “Everyone, remain as you are. Do not open your eyes or look up. Do not disturb us.” Simone closed her eyes and heard her mother’s feet scrape the dirt as she showed one final piece to Hutto.
 

“All the movements together, please,” her mother commanded Hutto.

Simone listened with the heightened perception of someone who was both an Alter and a Digi-Ghost. She floated an inch off the ground, legs crossed. She heard Hutto’s feet in the dirt, his breath exhale from his lungs, and the words of his mantra spilling from his lips. She heard his breathing increase, the strain working through his voice. He grunted a few times. It wasn’t a sound of pain. She remembered her time of transforming slowly. It was pleasurable. The beast inside was emerging, second by second. She heard the sound of tearing seams and shredding clothes.
 

All movement stopped. A charged atmosphere sent prickles of energy along her body. This was the moment the Lords of Order would arrive, except they weren’t her lords anymore. Whatever they were, kindred spirits had come to Hutto; she felt them bubbling beneath her own surface, waiting to come out.

“Good,” her mother said. “Hutto, keep listening to me. I speak to you, the young man, the son of a Tarean Toth. To you, Hutto.”

Simone heard a deep exhalation. No human being breathed like that. Her entire body energized. A longing ached in her crotch. She bit her lip and tried not to breathe heavily but the memory of their time together made her head pound. Worse, her entities were stirring, pushing out, her body wanting to change.

Not now
.

She began her mantras again.

Another harsh breath. She remembered hearing something similar, but less full, when he was on top of her, when they’d had sex by the swing sets. She remembered the smell of him, the heat, and the saliva. She wanted to turn and look, like some naughty pervert.

“In this kata your entity is manifested but bound to stillness,” her mother said. “It’s angry. Let it know that unless it obeys you, you’ll keep it there.” Simone imagined her smiling. “It won’t like that.”

* * *

Yancey Wellborn stood next to a fifteen-foot tall Kodiak-like brown bear, with something human about it in the face. It stood on its hind legs, balancing, the bulk of its body somehow full of winter weight. She was tiny in comparison as she walked around it. Each paw was as big as a large dinner plate. It must weigh at least a ton, she thought, and it was as docile as a puppy. The binding spell Hutto had put on it had worked.

“Begin your dance again,” she said to him, “this time in reverse, and in your mind. See the steps, hear the sound of your feet falling.”

The bear began to recede. A few moments later, Yancey gave Hutto a large towel. Human hands that still reformed from paws grabbed the towel. The bear was nearly gone, leaving him complete. She led Hutto to the far fight space. As if in a trance, he changed into a pair of sweat pants and shirt she’d prepared. Then he continued his dance, as if he were warming down.

She always wore a Consortium Bodyglove because a partial summoning and a partial manifestation meant rapid body chemistry changes, and that meant their entities would enlarge a human body. Clothes ripped. Bodies extended. These were the first steps in a continued negotiation between host and entity. The katas of binding were to let the entity experience this world, while keeping it bound. Hutto’s had appeared in full, but had been kept in check. To let it run free, while keeping it bound to your command took much more control. They weren’t ready for that yet. She’d have to get him a special type of Bodyglove to save him more destroyed outfits.

“Beasley,” she said. She watched the large girl stand as if she were heading to the gallows. Beasley turned, head down, and walked into the middle of the fight space. “You okay?”

Beasley nodded, still looking at the ground.

Yancey guided her by the arm. “The rest of you, stay centered. Keep your eyes shut the entire time, and do not—under any circumstance—turn around.” Back to Beasley: “Okay, Beasley, these final movements will allow you to bind the thing inside you. Let me show you.” She demonstrated by drawing invisible lines in the air with her hands and on the ground with her feet. “Practice.”

Yancey watched Ms. Beasley Gardner because, of all the Alters, Beasley was the most troubled. The integrity of the katas was reliable. If the entities in Beasley came, they would be bound. They wouldn’t be able to do any harm. She wondered, though, how Beasley would react, feeling their presence.

At first Beasley moved like a club-footed hippo. The fighter inside who’d spent so many hours training struggled to emerge, though, and in only minutes she was mumbling the words and performing the steps with precision. When it was time, Yancey made sure all the Alters’ eyes were shut and that each was in his or her own calming space. Even Simone seemed oblivious, although she doubted that was true—Simone would be listening, at least.

Yancey showed Beasley the very last movement that her husband had shown her that he’d created in his battle with the AIs, and that he’d bound in the Protocols. She couldn’t explain how it bound the entities (because he had never told her), and she had stopped asking, but the Protocols he’d setup always worked.

Yancey backed up a step and stifled a cry. She caught her breath. She refused to allow any escaping sound. Beasley morphed at a rapid pace. Her clothes popped off her body. Standing in stasis before them, like a humanized killer from some hell-world, was Beasley, except she was larger, fuller, and matt-black. She looked rubberized. Where there should have been curves, there were edges. She looked like a machine, but she wasn’t alloyed. Yancey moved forward and observed that the texture was organic, but hardened, like the carapace of an insect. Beasley’s face, like a mask’s, resided in the middle of a massive head with a bundle of horns projecting backward as if blown by a wind. She was built for battle with the look most of the entities adopted: talons, claws, teeth. Beasley’s, though, had a tail and mobile flanges at its back that ended in razor edges.

They look like projectiles.

Yancey guessed, maybe, her husband was right—that these were just avatars generated by the SAIs, maybe the Eternal Eminences themselves, in their attempt to combat the Rogues. Weapons and armor systems, Skippard always said. The perfect tools. Whatever they were, they were real, they were here, and they were dangerous. More disconcerting, they were channeled through the bodies of children.

She glanced at her own daughter and beat down a pang of guilt. These students would be used as recruits, and she would use them, and she would do so because the need to avoid disaster required it.

“In reverse,” Yancey said. “In your mind.”

Beasley stared back at her through the demon’s crimson eyes. A moment’s pause … she feared Beasley would not obey. A full five minutes of her listening to Beasley say the words passed before the young woman looked human again. Yancey covered her with a large towel.

“Well done.” She guided her to the girl’s locker room. “There’s a change of clothes for you in there.”

Now, she thought. Let’s get a closer look at my daughter’s entity
.

Yancey guided Simone to the center floor, whispering words of encouragement. Simone acted as if she were an old veteran; she lifted her head, said the words, and performed the steps. As a ghost her transformation was immediate. Yancey bit her tongue, jealous. Before her stood a twelve-foot tall, streamlined, humanoid beast appeared resplendent armored scales atop a deeper golden layer of protective hide. It was fuller than the earlier manifestation, as if it had learned its lesson being defeated by Simone’s double. The skull elongated in the back like a teardrop, with a flat face under a ridged brow and a wide maw filled with teeth. Even in stasis, its nostrils flared with aggression. Its eyes scanned the room as if looking for a meal. Flickers of light danced streamers along its skin. Whatever force allowed this ghosted manifestation, she thought, human beings and their bodies were the prize.

Now she believed her husband was wrong. These were not fantasy creations of SAIs designed for the conflict. Not data.
No. These are alien species
.

She understood these creatures, as well as she could, because she was looking at the same species as Myrmidon, the same species Skippard summoned as well. In the beginning, when her entities first emerged, they had been a collective and would not give her a name. They agreed to be called Myrmidon, which was her choosing, and a nod to the idea of a humanity she forced them to fight for. They laughed at her choice and pretended to know the story of Achilles and Troy, but they had never convinced her that they understood what it meant to be a human being, much less a hero’s companion. Either way, Myrmidon had bent to her will like a willow reed.

She snapped out of her reverie and told her daughter to reverse her dance and return. She sent Simone to the far side. Beasley now wore a new outfit and danced alone, finally at ease. Hutto had sat down and now looked as docile as a calm child.

FIVE

THE NEXT MORNING, YANCEY LINED UP THE ALTERS—except Simone—on the mats. Each one had been mumbling his or her mantra for an hour. Cliff sat in a chair by the door, his drone still outside, wise enough to leave her alone, but the two of them would speak at some point. She was thankful the day was overcast, with a cool wind blowing in from the mountains—enough for the doors to be closed all day. Coach Buzz eventually pulled the doors open and escorted in Tarean and his wayward son, Nisson Toth.

Tarean’s second-born looked like Hutto, but larger, and dressed in blue-jeans and a woolen, plaid shirt that hinted he might go outside and cut some timber. He had long hair, an inviting face, and a body to die for, although he had something else. She watched him saunter across the dirt fight space in workbooks, as if he owned it. She saw pride and defeat in him and something else ...
recklessness
.

She had never been told by an insider what had happened to Nisson Toth, and no one was talking.

He paused, glanced her way.

She clapped. “Students, please stand.” She pointed. “Please meet the Gladmasters we’ll be using for this semester’s challenge.”

“Nisson!” Hutto said, hopping to his feet. The two brother embraced. “Where have you been?”

“Just got back from Prague. Fightin’ and partyin’. No rules out there. You’ve heard how it is.”

“Right,” Hutto answered, as if he understood. He looked his big brother up and down. “You okay?”

“As good as I’m gonna be.”

Hutto acknowledged his father with a nod. “We’re going to fight in the big time. Dad is going to let me.”

“I heard,” Nisson replied and jumped forward as if he might bear-hug his little brother again. Hutto skipped out of the way with a smile. “Where’s the ghost?”

“She’ll be here later,” Yancey replied.

Hutto glanced her way. “So you want me because these children are going into the arena?”

“Hey!” Hutto said.

Nisson shot him such a withering look Hutto almost melted into his shoes.

Yancey’s breath caught. His move from joking to ...
this
was disconcerting. “We’re all in the same predicament—”

“Let’s get one thing straight, lady. No politics when I’m around. You want me to help you compete against Rogueslave Pitdogs, and Viperhounds, fine. But don’t start on your Consort crap. I’ll have to break something if you do.” He glanced around at the space like a rabid dog hoping someone would challenge him.

She saw in him the very thing that they needed: an uninhibited Alter.

He glanced at the students standing before him. His eyes fell on Beasley. “So this is the other Rager. Hutto, you fell in with the right sorts, I guess. She looks the type. You too hooked up yet?”