Versim (11 page)

Somehow Hark stood. He couldn’t feel much, not at this point. His HUD was off, all AbSys energy having been expended. His involuntary systems were keeping him upright. He knew his blood pressure was dropping. One lung was about to collapse. One heart was palpitating, the other working fine. His anti-shock mechanisms were struggling to keep him from passing out. Without Magdalena …
 

“Worth the price of admission?” he said to the crowd, gasping, smiling as best he could. He wanted to take a bow, but had to hold himself up with all his might.

He glanced down, and already Caleb’s body was gone.
 

Just like that. And poof, no evidence
.

A few sturdy NYPD in their blues and police caps appeared.
 

Hark had already stumbled back to the sidewalk. People were helping the hotdog guy get his cart back up. The cordon of tourists who gawked was all talking about what they’d seen. He heard more than one person wonder where the other guy had gone.

“Do you need medical assistance, sir?” one officer asked.

“I’m good.” He steadied his breathing to not look desperate.

“Causing problems?” another said. “Let me look at you.”

Hark stood there in his Skinsuit, now fully reactive with armored parts in key areas from his chest, shoulders, elbows, knees, along the kidneys and abs. He looked like a futuristic superhero. He posed, hands on hips, and smiled. Already, his armor was mending the rent areas.

“Guerrilla marketing, guys,” Hark said, feeling his left lung collapse. Still he smiled. He grunted like a hog and pretended that was part of the show. With a wheezing breath, he said, “New film. Street performance. I’m done, though. I’ll move along.”

“You do that, buddy. Get a license next time.”

Hark had charmed harder cases than those two. He turned, tunnel vision threatening, a weight like a stone in his chest. All sound was disappearing as he walked stiff-legged into the hotel. Every system in his body was working overtime to keep him upright. The journey from the lobby to the hotel room could have taken thirty seconds or thirty minutes. He had no idea. He just remembered Binda opening the hotel room door. Somehow Frankie was already helping him into a room on the other end of the suite.

Hark crashed to the floor.

“Lock the door,” he said. “Order me … room service. In the mood for a … cheeseburger.” Hark lay belly down on the floor, his face in the carpet. “Frankie, come here.”

“Really?” Frankie bent down. “A cheeseburger?”

“Kidding …”

Hark grabbed his shirt, pulling him to all fours. He stuck his hand inside and turned on the embedded phone.

“Oh, snap,” Frankie said as Hark’s hand fell. “This is going to be good.”

Hark passed out to the sound of Frankie jabbering.

16

Hark’s eyes were finally focusing. He stared at the ceiling. His fingers reached across his body. He was still wearing his Skinsuit. Of course he was. They wouldn’t know how to get it off him. He felt the rippling of the armor still repairing itself just as the heat from his body meant the nanoengines inside were healing him. He inhaled deeply. Already, his damaged lung was working. The broken ribs were mending.

That was close
.

He lay on a bed with a mauve bedspread in a side room of the suite. He sat up and groaned, hands to face, feeling heat blisters that scabbed his cheeks and forehead. The world swirled around him. He bit his bottom lip to keep from passing out. I need a few more hours for those to heal, he thought. At least they sent me here with my complete physio package.
 

Binda appeared in the doorway. She still wore the same clothes. Must be the same day, he realized.

“You okay?” she asked. “You look like you’ve been run over.”

“Where’s Frankie?”

“Behind you, where you left him in the corner. Smiling like an idiot.”

“Bring him to me.” She led forward a catatonic but happy Frankie. He stood rigid, like a statue, eyes glazed. Hark said, “Direct access. Oh wait. Move his arms …”

“What?” Binda asked.

“Stick his arms out.”

She adjusted his arms, and they moved on their own.
 

Hark white-knuckled the bedspread with both hands to steady himself like a drunk about to pass out. “Direct access. Give me data on … how many … how many viewers for
Collides
.”

“Two hundred and seventy one thousand new viewers since this afternoon,” Frankie said in his proxy voice.

“No way,” Binda said. “He’s a terminal.”

Hark raised a hand. “Proxy, actually. That phone’s too weak for him to be a real terminal. He likes it.”

“He does?”

“You want to try?”

She nodded vigorously. “Definitely.”

“Maybe later. We’re slamming the ratings by now.”

Binda’s eyes widened. “Big show?”

“You got your audience.”

She clapped. “We’re breaking versim rules talking about it.”

“Doesn’t matter at this point. Something’s going on that sent me off the rails. Frankie is involved. You’re involved. EA tried to take me out in narrative. I’m illegal, so they can’t pull my plug. My bet, my sister pushed you two to me.”

“Like I said, it was an anonymous message.”

“Sounds like Krista.”

“Ask about riders.”

Hark grinned at her. “Sure.” To Frankie he said, “Access rider count for secondary character Binda Avey.”

“Forty two riders.”

Her hands flew to her mouth. “Forty two!”

“They’re paying big bucks to experience what you’re experiencing, Binda. Make it worth their while.”

“What about you?”

“Don’t need those numbers. Even if no one was riding, I’d give it my all.”

“I know. We all know.”

He watched her flash her best, I’m-Sexy grin, and he smiled back even though his head pounded and the heat damage in his torso still made him feel like burnt meat. All his AbSys energy was fueling his soma therapy, which meant it felt like he had an electric brick vibrating in his gut. His HUD simply displayed a single alert that his systems were in critical shutdown mode.
 

Still, he stood. Normally he’d chat her up a little because she was cute and his type by the look of her (the riders would be clamoring for it) but this was serious business, the sort of business that only came once a year. He could be cavalier with himself any other time but when he was doing his duty to an old buddy who’d asked him to take care of his son, he had to limit the charm.

Hark nudged Frankie closer. “Direct Access:
The Borderlands
.”

“Oh, I got to see this.” Binda moved in close.

Hark glanced at a bare wall in the room, it’s only decoration a single square in the middle. “Turn on.” Without a projector, the wall lit up in white light. To Frankie he said, “Project.”

A wide, establishing shot appeared on the wall as if backlit of rolling hills in such a bright green that it hurt his eyes.
 

Hark’s breath caught in his throat when he saw where he and his friend Paul Stammand had ridden into danger as free-wheeling sheriff Buster Boggins and his rascal companion Roy’s Jones. He’d spent almost three years in the low-budget Rend-V. It was a cult favorite now. Its numbers were nowhere near the big ones. But it had a special flavor, even though its principals were gone, that meant its fan base kept paying to return.
 

“Jump to Roy’s house.”

His access control as a principal allowed him to go anywhere he wanted. The direct jump to Roy’s cottage always caught him by surprise. It was a rough-cut timber home with beige stucco Roy’s wife kept painted every year. A hog pen out back ran up against a hay and horse barn. The corral was on the other side, as was the chicken coop, the dairy cow barn, and the vegetable gardens.

He expected to see Paul Stammand’s real-born son, Saul, rounding a corner, maybe carrying a bundle of sticks, maybe tender for the cast-iron kettle inside the home. He waited but Saul was nowhere to be seen, a grown boy, now, of ten. He had his father’s blue eyes and blond hair, and he had his own humble fan club supporting this interesting character without proper legal personhood.
 

Hark fought through a wave of nausea and vertigo as he realized the reason he was in this predicament wasn’t home. Saul knew he was always supposed to stick close to home on this week of the year—the anniversary of his father’s death and the time Hark could be held to fulfilling a critical promise. He had to know the boy was safe. And he wasn’t home. Neither was his mother. Hark grabbed the wall to steady himself.
 

“Come on, Krista, I need my memory.” He moved to Frankie and adjusted his arms. “Direct access: memory dump request.”

“Denied. You are not being tunneled by the official host—”

“Tell me something I don’t know. It was worth a try, though. List all illegal insertions:
Collides
Rend-V.”

“Harken Cole, specialist, unknown immersion host. Still at large.”

“Take a bow at telling me what I know. Pure brilliance. Who else?”

“Inspector Krista Cole and Agent Tripp Cole. Brief immersions. No longer present.”

“I know.”

“Who else?”

Frankie began to totter. Hark reached for him just as he fell. “That’s it for him for a while.” He set Frankie on the floor. “Get him that pillow.”

Binda set a pillow under his head. “He sure is smiling.”

Frankie’s eyes returned to normal; he shut them while mumbling to himself.

“He’ll sleep like a baby,” Hark said.

“What was all that?” Binda asked.

“I think
Collides
is under attack.”

Binda grinned. “And we’re the stars.”

“For the time being.”

“What’re we going to do?”

“My sister recruited you for a reason. Why?”

“I have no idea. I just got a message to look for you. Said it would help my career.”

“What are you good at?”

She looked perplexed. “Cooking. I’m a good cook.”

Hark shook his head and sat back down. The nano-engines working overtime, each one a micro machine repairing a specific cellular problem, made his bones feel on fire. His tongue was thick in his mouth. Even his teeth hurt. Each nerve in his body seemed to have pulled into itself, stretching all the soft tissue around it.
 

He tried to focus as his vision swam. “Make me something to eat.”

Binda nodded. “I can make—”

“I’m kidding.” He grinned at her, even though his face felt as if it might split. “Something else. Why would Krista send you to me …?”
 

17

Binda watched Hark fall face forward on the bed and almost roll off. She rushed to his side and pushed him toward the center. He flopped onto his back. She stood over him, while Frankie lay on the floor like a guy jacked into a Rend-V or zipping on brain juice.

Hark appeared beaten up, even in his jet-black superhero jumpsuit. She touched his leg, felt the reptilian skin-like material, and resisted an urge to crawl on top of him and run her fingers through his hair.
 

She glanced through the open door. Celia Preston was on the other side of the suite, still moping like the spoiled celebrity she was. Binda returned to Hark. She couldn’t believe she was alone in the same hotel room with him. She knew who he was, of course. Everyone knew who Harken Cole was.

Binda considered why she’d been called up and couldn’t find a reason.
 

He asked me what I was good at, she thought. And I said cooking. Oh my god. Cooking. Why did I say that?

Binda sat on the bed next to the Rend-V star, watching him breathe deeply, feeling heat baking off his body as if he were a machine. She knew she was being watched, probably by millions at this point. Even had her own riders. She was a conduit for others to experience what was happening.

What am I good at?

She ran a finger along his thigh, thinking a few naughty thoughts, and heard footsteps. She turned, expecting to see Celia. Another woman stood in the doorway.

“How did you get inside the suite?” Binda asked.

The woman was about her height with wavy long hair. She was dressed in a tight-fitting blouse and pressed denim jeans. She looked like a dressed-down lawyer, or a smarty who looked good in casual wear.

“I’m his sister, Inspector Krista Cole,” she said and stepped toward the bed. Binda had to move out of the way. “He’s okay?”

“Looks like he’s sleeping. Hot as hell. Did you say, Inspector?”

“He’s healing.” Krista leaned over him, as if she might check his temperature.

“He’ll be all right?”

“Happy to be here?” Krista asked, eyeing Binda up and down. “With my famous brother?”

The woman’s eyes rounded on her, seeming to grow bigger, to actually glow. But this wasn’t a fantasy V. That sort of thing didn’t happen in
Collides
. Binda had the distinct feeling the woman knew who she was, knew all about her. In fact, she imagined she was looking at someone who may have been watching her intimately for months.
 

She reached into the clutch she carried—a shiny, blue purse no bigger than a wallet—and felt the dampener inside. The tiny device with a single button was used to create a bubble of privacy. As a non-principal, she could use it whenever she wanted: in the bathroom, the shower, in private moments alone, on dates, etc. She wasn’t contracted to keep it off because she wasn’t a principal.

Even better, she didn’t need to use it right now because in this Rend-V, versim apparently wasn’t an issue, and whatever conversation they were about to have could be heard by anyone.

“You know about me?” Binda asked.

“I sent you the message to meet my brother.”

“Why?”

Krista nodded at him. “I need someone like you.”

“Like me?”

“He doesn’t know yet, what this is all about. But, soon, the memories will return, and Hark will have to make some hard decisions. You’re committed to being a principal, aren’t you Binda?”

“You saw my audition?”

“It didn’t land you a principal role, but it showed …
potential
.”