Authors: Terry Schott
CHAPTER TWENTY
An hour later, Danni and her Eternals concluded their meeting with Thirteen. Miranda, Raphael, and Danni travelled to one of Danni’s houses which overlooked the rest of Galt, one area of the city. They assembled in the great room. Carl, Angelica, and Samantha arrived before long and Raphael filled them in on the information they’d learned.
“We thought it might be Shane,” Carl said. He reclined in one of the chairs with a water glass full of dark amber coloured alcohol. They had all seen him drink, but no one could recall ever seeing him get drunk.
“Guessed,” Danni corrected, “but now we know for certain that it was him.”
“What do we do with this knowledge?” Samantha asked.
“We find Shane and make him turn things back on.”
The room erupted into laughter. Danni looked around the room; apparently everyone but her and Angelica found the idea funny.
“I didn’t say it would be easy,” she said.
“What you should have said is that it’s impossible,” Raphael said. “Eternals have been hunting him for thousands of years, Danni. There are squads whose only purpose for being inside the Game is to find Shane.” He shook his head in frustration, “The squads are augmented and trained specifically to find this creature, but no one has ever done it. Finding Shane is, for the most part, a key Timeless goal. Except for Daniel and a few other Devils along the way, finding and subduing Shane is a Timeless Alpha order.”
“What’s an Alpha order?” Danni asked.
Raphael nodded at Angelica and she spoke up. “No matter what operation or task is being performed at any given moment, Alpha orders require the Timeless to abandon everything else in order to complete them.”
“So, if someone is three steps away and about to plunge a knife into me and you’re rushing to save me from certain death, if you see Shane you abandon me and take off after him?” Danni asked.
“Absolutely,” Angelica said with a sly grin.
“In most every case,” Samantha corrected. “Using your example, Danni, we would still rush to save you. That’s because you come with a complete set of very concise Alpha orders that focus on you.”
Danni nodded and looked at Miranda. “You almost had him,” she said.
Miranda shook her head. “I saw him, but there was no way I ever had a chance at him. The plan there was for me to get a location and Sparx would report back to a larger force that would come in to neutralize him. I didn’t find him, though. We guessed that he liked to fish for broken avatars, so I volunteered to be broken and dangled out there as bait on the hook. It took a long time to get him to bite, then it ended up failing.”
“I don’t know about that,” Raphael said. “He may have slipped the trap, but if not for your time spent in the Zoo, we wouldn’t know what we do today.”
“Why did he release them?” Carl asked. “Why not just kill them when he was done?”
“Not everyone plays that way,” Danni said.
“Shane does,” Carl assured her.
“Then he must have a plan for them,” Raphael said.
“I think we need to find them, and bring them here,” Angelica said.
Everyone considered her idea. Heads slowly began to nod in agreement.
“Any chance they give off a distinct energy signature?” Carl asked.
“There’s always a chance,” Samantha said. “I’ll examine Miranda and Thirteen to see if I can come up with anything.”
“Good,” Danni stood up and walked to the window. “Any suggestions on how to start looking for them?”
“Even if they have signatures, it will be like finding a specific grain of sand on a large windy beach,” Raphael said. “I don’t know if this is the best use of our time, Danni.”
“I know who would be willing to do it,” Carl said.
“Who?”
“Tracker squads,” he said. “If you can convince them it’s the best chance of finding Shane, I don’t think you’ll have a problem getting them to agree to it.”
“Great idea,” Raph said. “That raises another problem, though. The only one who can locate and give new orders to Trackers is our leader. I haven’t had any luck locating Gabriel since the Day.”
“The old man still around? Maybe he could locate him.”
“He’s not here,” Danni said, “but we can put the word out that he’s needed and he might pop up.”
“What if the Infernals are looking for these thirteen individuals as well?” Angelica asked.
“Then we’ll have to be sure and find them first,” Danni said. “We know Daniel is around, perhaps we can ask for his help in finding either Gabriel or the Trackers. Maybe we can even convince him to set his own squads to look.”
Carl chuckled and shook his head slightly. Danni frowned. “It’s not a terrible idea. You just said all Timeless want to find Shane.”
“Look as hard as you want. Daniel isn’t gonna be found,” Carl said.
“Why not?” Danni asked.
“Danni, there’s something we should share with you,” Raphael said.
“Okay.”
“It’s about the Devil,” Raphael poured her a drink. “You might want to sit down for this one...”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
One thing Danni missed was knowing the exact time.
It was something that she’d taken for granted; all of them took the simple things for granted back then. Once technology stopped working, she’d quickly lost track of the time. Not the days, months, and years; they were always able to keep track of that. It was the smaller increments that presented the challenge. Right now was a perfect example; she knew it was late, but not wasn’t exactly sure how late. Was it midnight? 2 a.m.?
Danni shouldered her backpack and adjusted her gear. Whatever the time, it was late enough to execute her plan.
She left the house through the back door, careful to make as little noise as possible. She’d chosen the back door because it had been oiled recently and opened and closed without a sound. Perhaps her shoes would have made a creaking or some other betraying noise on the back porch, but she was floating just a fraction of an inch above the ground. She smiled to herself as she reached the back gate and quickly disappeared from view in the brush of the gully that led towards the dark town centre.
Danni touched down and began to walk when a chuckle from above made her start with surprise.
“Where you goin’, girl?”
Danni frowned and looked above her head. The old man floated in the air, his black garbage bag clothes billowing in the soft wind and his hair moving about as if it were a white scraggly fire.
“I’m glad you tie those garbage bags at the legs,” she whispered. “I would get a shocking view from this angle if you didn’t.”
The old man slowly descended to the ground beside her. To reward her for the lewd comment, he flashed her a grin, his teeth reflecting patches of brown and white in the dim light. “Looks like you’re plannin’ on taking a hike of some sort.”
“Might be that I am.” She began to walk again, and the old man began to walk alongside her.
“Want some company?” he asked.
Danni stopped and shook her head wearily. “I haven’t been alone for many moments in my entire life, and frankly I’m tired of it.” She pointed back towards the house she had just left. “I’ve had protectors and shadows and others with me since I was a little girl. It’s not that I resent that fact...”
“Sounds a little bit like you do resent it,” the old man observed.
“Well, I don’t,” Danni said. “But I do think it’s overdue for me to spend some time on my own. This has all become very complicated.”
“How do you figure? Since the Day, most people would say things have become much less complicated. Life now is mostly about eating and surviving the day.”
“You must be able to guess what constitutes a normal day in my life,” Danni said. “If you can’t, then believe me when I tell you that things for me have become much busier and stressful since the Day occurred.”
The old man nodded and put his hand sympathetically on Danni’s shoulder. “I know for you it has, girl,” he said. “You’ve taken it upon yourself to save as many of these fine folk as you can. It’s an admirable endeavour, truly it is, but the weight on your shoulders is significant.”
“It is,” Danni agreed.
“So you’re just gonna run away,” he nodded. “Maybe find a nice mountain cave and become a hermit lady. You don’t read about many female hermits in the history books. I wonder why that is?” he scratched his beard reflectively.
“I’ll come back,” she said, “but I intend to make things... less complicated for a while.”
The old man looked out over the dark city centre for a time, then nodded his head and looked back at Danni. “Okay,” he said. “Where you going?”
Danni hiked her backpack up onto her shoulder and began walking once again. “I’m going to make things right with the world,” she said. “I’m going to find Shane and make him turn the power back on.”
“Not a good idea,” he said. “I’ve met that boy a time or two, and let me tell you, he is not someone you want to spend time with. He’ll eat you alive, girl.”
“I don’t think he will,” Danni said confidently. “He might be surprised to find a meeting between us does not end well for him if he doesn’t behave.”
The old man chuckled again as he looked at Danni. “I imagine you could be right, Danni,” he said with a shake of his head. “Maybe he’s met his match when it comes to you.”
Danni nodded and the two walked in silence for a time.
“How you gonna find him?” the old man asked.
“I have no idea,” Danni admitted. “It’s more important to search than it is to find him.”
The old man stopped walking and looked at her seriously. “What do you mean by that?” he asked.
Danni looked over her shoulder and turned to face him. “I mean that everyone else wants to sit and tell me why it’s pointless to go look for him. I say you’ll never find anything sitting on your arse in a house making excuses or reasons to fail. So I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I do know that the only way to find what you’re looking for in life, and by that I mean anything, is to get up and go look for it.”
The old man rubbed his face with a dirty hand, massaging his forehead and eyes slowly. He looked up and nodded at her. “That’s pure wisdom in the words you just said, girl.”
“Likely,” Danni agreed.
“Okay, then. Let’s go,” he said.
“Go where?”
The old man winked, then adjusted his course to avoid the town as he began to walk.
“To go see Shane,” he said.
“You know where he is?” Danni asked.
The old man snorted. “Of course I know where he is. That’s no surprise to you, though, is it?”
“I had a hunch,” she admitted.
“Then let’s get going. We have a long journey ahead of us.”
“How long will it take us to fly there?” Danni asked.
The old man looked at her and shook his head. His eyes twinkled as he answered her. “We won’t be able to fly there, girl. If you want to do this, then it has to be on foot. Let me assure you before we even get started, it’s gonna be a long, tough trip.”
Danni looked at him for a moment and then nodded. “Lead the way, old man,” she said.
Danni followed him out of town and into the dark wilderness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“Have you seen Danni today?”
Carl didn’t bother to look up from his task of smearing honey onto a thick piece of warm bread. “Saw her last night, same as you, Raphael. Let the girl sleep in. I don’t think she was too happy with the news we shared.”
Raphael grabbed the loaf of bread, sawed off a large slice, and spread fresh butter onto it, plopping the knife back into the bowl where he’d found it. “No, she wasn’t,” he agreed as he moved to sit at the dining table.
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Carl joined him and took a bite of his bread, savoring the taste. “She might fret and mope around for a while, but the girl has to realize that we’re with her not because she’s in charge of us, but because our goals coincide for the most part.”
“Agreed,” Raphael said. “She’s just so damned easy to follow. She has an air of authority that is rarely seen... for a mortal.”
“Maybe she’s had multiple lives leading,” Carl shrugged. “Perhaps she played Napoleon and Caesar in past lives. We’ve run into stranger things than that before. Doesn’t really matter. Making a play on the Devil was our call, and it’s working out as well as we hoped it would.”
“Is it?” Raphael asked. “You know better than anyone what the crimson eyes do to us. Stephanie might not be able to hold on to enough of her Eternal essence to help us accomplish the goal.”
“The girl’s a pro,” Carl said. “She’ll do fine. She needs to get into her groove, that’s all. Give her a few years and she’ll have the reins on her dark side enough to do what we want her to.”
“We may not have a few years,” Raphael said.
Carl shook his head disgustedly and snorted. “You’re kidding me, right? Time is exactly what we have.”
“This scenario is wiping out millions, even billions of humans,” Raphael said. “We might not have enough to work with before she’s ready.”
“Then we wait a few centuries until the population rises again,” Carl took another bite of honeyed bread. “We’ve seen big dips in the numbers before. They will just allow more players to flood the field. Now stop whining like a recruit. You’re making me want to puke up my breakfast, and if I do that, I’m gonna get angry.”
Raphael ate his bread in silence. When he finished, he reached for another slice.
“She’s not in her room,” he said calmly as he scooped honey from the bowl.
“What?” Carl looked at him with a frown. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”
Raphael blinked his eyes slowly at Carl as he took a bite of his second piece of bread.
Carl pursed his lips in thought, then closed his eyes. His face became calm and detached as he entered a meditative state.
After a few moments he opened his eyes. “She’s not in the city,” he scowled.
Raphael continued to eat his bread.
“Well?” Carl snapped.
Raphael finished chewing his mouthful and swallowed deliberately. Then he slowly wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s what I was saying when I came in here.”
Carl stood up quickly, the sudden motion sweeping his chair loudly out of the way behind him. “Well, you didn’t say it right,” he muttered. “We should take to the air and scan for her from the corners of the Colony.” He paused suddenly and tilted his head to look at Raphael. “You’re her protector, right?”
Raphael nodded.
“What’s your range? For detecting her?”
“Two hundred kilometres.”
Carl swore under his breath. Flying to the edges of the Colony would do them no good. Raphael knew she was nowhere close. “Who’s our best tracker?” he asked.
“Normally it’s you or Miranda,” Raphael said, “but since I have protector range on her, it would be me.”
“Why are you still sitting here for, then?” Carl asked. “Go look for her.”
“I di
d
,
”
Raphael said. “For the past three hours I’ve flown all over. That’s why I came in here wondering if you’d seen her.”
“You’re driving me nuts, Raph,” Carl snarled. “Your brain isn’t firing right. If you could sense she wasn’t here, why come asking me if I’d seen her?”
Raphael shrugged. “Thought maybe you’d opened a portal for her.”
The thought made Carl nod grudgingly; that actually made sense. He sat back down and grabbed his glass of water, taking a sip while his mind raced through ideas for finding her. Finally, he sat back and put his feet up on the chair beside him.
“So she’s gone, then,” he announced.
“Looks like it,” Raphael said.
“That good or bad?”
“Likely one or the other,” Raphael agreed. “Let’s hope it’s good.”
“Well, let her be and see how it turns out.”
“I would, except there’s that whole issue where if she dies then the entire reality we now call our home comes crashing down around us.”
Carl looked at Raphael for a moment, then his eyebrows raised in understanding. “Ahh, yes, I’d forgotten about that.”
“Seriously?” Raphael asked. “You forgot about that?”
Carl shrugged. “I have a lot on my mind. Besides, Danni can take care of herself. Even I would have a difficult time killing her now; she’s very lethal.”
“What if she’s with the old man?” Raphael asked.
Carl thought about the possibility and looked at the ceiling, contemplating. “Yeah, he might just be able to harm her,” he agreed. “Do you think he would want to, though?”
“I have no idea, which worries me.”
“Me, too,” Carl agreed. “Want me to come with you?”
“No,” Raphael shook his head. “I’ll take Miranda. We have another concern I’d like you to handle in the Colony.”
“What’s that?”
“I think we might have an assassin ejecting players from the Game in our midst.”
“Really?” Carl’s eyes lit up with interest. “Anyone we might know?”
“I don’t know,” Raphael said. “Can you find them for us?”
Carl grinned, his concern for Danni forgotten for the moment. “I’ll get right on it. When I finish up, I’ll come join you in your hunt for Danni.”
“Good idea,” Raphael agreed.