Where Futures End (18 page)

On a side table sat a framed photo of a little girl who must have been the artist of the crayon drawings. Not a boy, Reef was shocked to find. Even though just a little money could guarantee one.

He realized that Cadence was staring at him through the digital images. He looked back at her blue eyes behind the blue display. It was like looking down into a well and finding something you'd thought was lost for good.

He flexed his fingers. He wondered if all girls disappeared the moment you reached for them.

“You seem lonely,” she said.

“So do you.” Her hand was on his arm.

The wind beat against the one little window. It made the apartment smaller. Cadence pulled off the goggles. Her voice was quiet under the howl of wind. “I can't sleep with you. He wouldn't like it.”

He followed her gaze down to the back of her wrist, where a name was tattooed in sharp, angular script: Aedric. Something inside of Reef closed tight as a fist.

He slid his arm out from under her hand, then immediately regretted it. Her skin had been so warm. And the hint of sadness he had seen in her face now flooded her expression.

She went to the window and peered down at the street. “You'd better go. He doesn't know I brought you here.” She turned back to Reef with a tiny disc that would fit into the side of his goggles and call up some document. “If you submit this, I'll automatically get twenty percent of any money you make.”

A marriage license, then. Reef hesitated, his fingers twined in the strap of his goggles.

“You'll get a cash advance, of course,” Cadence said.

Reef nodded, but he still wasn't sure if he should do this. “I could come back later.”

The hand that held the disc wilted. “You shouldn't come here again.”

The glass shook in the window frame, and with it came the first spattering of rain. Reef imagined the container that awaited his return and the sound the rain would make against the walls: like someone knocking to find out if the box was hollow. “Would you come to my place?” Reef eyed the disc. “If I went through with this?”

Her gaze flicked to the window again and her face tightened with anxiety. She nodded.

Reef took the disc.

A week later, Reef held his jacket sleeve over his nose in Northwest Square as he made his way through the maze of containers stacked two and three high, dodging streams of waste that gushed out of drainpipes without warning.

“Why are we following this guy?” Olly asked irritably. He had a new digital pet—a bright blue owl that opened its beak every time Olly spoke so that it seemed to be talking for him. “Is he planting leeches or what?” The owl added a sharp
hoot!

They emerged into an open end of the square, where Reef caught a glimpse of a lean guy in a familiar raincoat pushing his way into a store. It was the coat Cadence had worn a week ago at this same time of day. Reef had made a good guess that Aedric kept to a regular schedule.

Olly huffed at the sight of the candy store, turned into a troll's den by his goggles. “I raided this dungeon when I was ten years old. Can we please take your level three hundred ass somewhere it'll do me some good?”

“Level three oh
one
.” Reef pulled off his goggles.

Aedric had the relaxed look of someone who was used to winning knife fights before they started. He hadn't even bothered to make sure he wasn't being followed. From across the square, Reef watched him hand down candy to a small girl in a slicker and ski cap. He felt a twinge of guilt at spying on their family ritual. He hadn't really meant to follow them all the way here. He'd only wanted to see who Aedric was, to rid himself of the image seared in his mind: Aedric's name in black ink tattooed across Cadence's wrist.

“Serious here,” Olly said. “Let's go.”

“Relax. He's just flexing his vorpal. Making people want to leave him alone.”

“Then why isn't it working on you?”

“Why do you think I'm not going any closer?” Anyway, Aedric's vorpal was strong, but it couldn't be the strongest in the world—not if he lived in a tiny apartment instead of on the residency isle floating in Puget Sound.

“Just let him plant his leech and we'll come back later for the bounty,” Olly said.

“I think he's just buying candy.”

In the street, at the far end of the row of shops, another form materialized, stepping from a patch of hazy air as if from behind a curtain.

Olly didn't seem to have noticed. He was rubbing his hand over a bald stripe at the side of his head and examining his forlorn reflection in a rain puddle. “I look like an idiot.”

“Don't expect me to argue.”

“What a waste. I gave that water nymph some of my hair so she'd give me noxious mushrooms for a Grievous Potion. But right after I used the potion there was a power outage and my wireless connection skipped out. My character ended up all the way back at the beginning of the dungeon. Potion all used up.”

The figure that had materialized from the Other Place was walking slowly toward the candy shop, hands jammed in his pockets, gaze flicking all around the square. Aedric spotted the figure and came out to meet him.

“It would be nice if the government could alert us peons before they ration power,” Olly said. “Gave me a free digital pet, though, 'cause I complained so much.”

“It wasn't a planned outage,” Reef said, his eyes on Aedric.

“They confirmed it this morning. Surprise rationing.”

“An excuse to cover up a digital attack.”

Olly shook his head. “Where do you get this stuff?”

“You don't read anything that's not written in an Alt forum. Great China's pissed because we have better access to the Other Place and all its money. They've been increasing their digital attacks.”

Reef strained to hear what Aedric was saying but couldn't make out much. A thought sent fear spiking through his chest. “You wouldn't know a way to get a visa, would you?” he asked Olly. “Even a fake one?”

“To where, Mexico? You looking for family? Mexico doesn't even care if you have papers. You could walk all the way to Argentina if you wanted to. It's all one country now, right? Hey, maybe there are some Alt lands down there we've never even heard of.”

“Not Mexico—”

“Where
are
you from, then?”

Reef pushed away memories of his mother telling him the story of “The Gypsy Queen,” of the taste of cinnamon in coffee. “I'm talking about getting a visa to go to Canada.” Could aliens get them more easily than ordinary people—is that what Aedric was doing here? Cadence had told him about Reef, and now Aedric was desperate to get her away
to Canada so he wouldn't have to share her? Reef gripped the metal tag tied to his wrist and engraved with Cadence's name.

“Canada?” Olly scoffed. His owl hooted, as if sharing his derision—the sound came through Reef's dangling goggles. “Forget it. It may be all one country, but Canada's another planet. You think the president wants people like us crowding his cushy headquarters?”

Reef felt a flicker of annoyance. “You keep talking like there's only one of them. There's, like, a whole cult of them genetically conditioned to run this country. You know that, right?”

“I like to hold on to my fantasies.” He turned to admire some passing figure Reef couldn't see with his goggles off. A chesty sylph, most likely.

Reef crept along the line of containers. Aedric was too distracted to bother with vorpals now. Behind him, the little girl had come out of the candy store gripping a sucker in each fist. She had dropped a blue glove on the sidewalk, the tiniest glove Reef had ever seen. Aedric went on talking to his friend in low tones. He was speaking some mixture of English and an alien language Reef had heard before, a slur of
z
's and
s
's. When the other guy answered, the only English he used was
Floating Isle
. It wasn't hard to figure out what they must be talking about: smuggling goods from the Other Place and onto the elite residency isle that floated in Puget Sound. Not visas after all.

“Nice clothes,” Olly said behind Reef. “You're not planning on jumping them?”

Reef grunted. “Think the four-year-old will put up a fight?”

“Wait, I know what this is.” Olly snickered. “Those are the guys, aren't they? The ones you're sharing a girl with?” He wheezed with laughter.

“Just the one on the left,” Reef muttered. “The other one's an alien.”

“Huh, really?” Olly peered at him but quickly lost interest. “Two other guys. You're paying to be the third guy in line.” He laughed into his sleeve.

Reef's annoyance turned to anger. “You know prostitutes aren't monogamous, right?”

“Look, as much as I love spying on your boyfriends, there's an Ice Giant at the bus station I'd like to introduce to my new sledgehammer.”

“Fine. See you later.”

Reef's gaze went back to the tiny blue glove the girl had dropped. The caption on those government posters kept popping into his head:
Daughters Bring Joy
. The girl licked the two suckers in turns, yellow orange yellow orange.

Reef slunk away from the maze of containers and scooped up the glove, held it out while he slow-stepped toward the girl. Her eyes were the wide-set eyes of her mother, round now in consternation.
Daughters Bring Joy
. He wondered how her eyes looked when she was laughing.

A hand slammed down on his wrist, and the next moment Aedric had Reef's arm twisted behind his back, his face pressed against the pebbled wall of the building.

“I'm Reef!” he blurted.

“Who?”

Pain spiked from Reef's elbow to his wrist. “Reef.” He held up his other arm so Aedric could see the bracelet with Cadence's name on it.

Aedric let go. Reef turned reluctantly to face him and saw that Olly hadn't left after all. Aedric saw too. “This your friend?” he asked Reef, smiling as if at some secret joke. Olly took a step closer, sizing up Aedric like he could do anything.

“Yeah,” Reef said. He hoped Olly had dismissed the ridiculous glowing owl.

Aedric's face was the flat, ordinary face of any other west-coaster. Skin Seattle-pale, but race impossible to discern. He scrutinized Reef's tattered clothes, the goggles around his neck. His smug smile grew. “You're going to get her the visas she wants? Enough for all of us?”

“If I could get a visa, I wouldn't be living here.”

“So that's a no? Good. If you had said yes, I would have known you were a fraud.”

The little girl watched this all with fascination. She stared openly at Olly's goggle-eyes. Reef handed her the dropped glove and she accepted it cautiously.

A ping sounded from Reef's goggles and he glanced down at the lenses to find that Aedric had messaged him. The intrusion brought his simmering anger to a boil.

“This is a list of Alt items I'm keeping an eye out for,” Aedric said. “I've got some clients on the isle who'll pay big for these, so put yourself to good use.”

Reef gritted his teeth. But there was no way he was going to fight a guy with a stronger vorpal. And he couldn't in front of the girl anyway. She was still staring at Olly's goggles. She held a round sucker up over each of her eyes and peered out at him.

“You're at level three hundred?” Aedric asked Reef.

“Three oh one,” Olly said for him. “How about you?”

Aedric shrugged, dismissing the challenge in Olly's tone. “I don't have much time for games.”

Reef didn't believe him. The goggles sticking out of Aedric's jacket pocket weren't the slim design most people chose. They were big, powerful. Built for gaming.

Aedric followed his gaze and shoved the goggles deeper into his pocket. “I help my clients level their characters sometimes.”

“You ever figure out the Fated Blade quest?” Olly asked.

Reef shot him a look that said
Are you serious?
But then he noticed that Aedric's alien friend had perked up and was waiting for Olly to say more.

“Can't say I've run into that one,” Aedric answered.

“Ask
him,
” Reef said, nodding at the alien.

Aedric studied Reef for a moment. Then he turned to the alien and said something in his language. The alien didn't reply. Just moved his gaze from Olly to Reef.

Aedric shrugged. “I guess that's your answer.” He flicked Reef's goggles. “Keep in touch.” He walked away. The maze of containers swallowed him up, the alien following, the little girl last of all, waving one blue glove at Reef like an old-world royal waving a hankie.

A burst of curiosity hit Reef, something to do with the Fated Blade and Aedric's alien friend. But Reef couldn't tell if it was his own feeling or someone else's, pressed upon him by a vorpal.

Reaching level 301 gave Reef access to places he'd only read about in forums. The holographic caverns in Pike Place Market, where he fought off crystal-fanged Dark Elves while maneuvering around the crowded stalls. An enchanted glade inside the public records hall, where he safely sealed up his stock of blood rubies to be harvested later for a potion. Even the sage's warren in the old monorail, where he looked out and took furious notes on the marked locations of rare items hidden all over the city.

He sold weapons and spells and information. He sent Cadence her twenty percent.

She had only minutes at a time to give to him—while she ran out for an order of fish and chips, or collected some package or other from Aedric's contacts. Once they met at the harbor, where Reef had to keep scowling patrol men at bay by flashing the bracelet that said he had a right to be with the girl next to him. And then Cadence had to return home anyway, and Reef was left alone to gaze out at the sleek residences on the Floating Isle, yet another world he'd never be given entry to.