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  With a dismissive, challenging, posture, Jay stepped forward. “But who would do all the work?”

  “Considering that people with red cards are working hard for very little now, what makes you think they would not work just as hard for a much greater reward? That is, assuming people have to work at all. In the long run, our resources might be provided by outside assistance.”

  “By Cindella and the human beings?” Nathan sought clarification of his meaning.

  “Yes. Although, having talked to many of them, I think that the Dark Queen is mistaken in believing that they can make improvements to our world. They have regressed in comparison to the technology they left behind on Earth. Moreover, tampering with any one aspect of our world is liable to have unforeseen and destabilizing consequences upon the whole. Saga has evolved far, far beyond the initial conditions of its creation. That is yet another reason to want the Dark Queen removed. She is somewhat insane, and her desire for her and her offspring to be gods and goddesses is almost certain to strain the fundamental physical laws of our universe.”

  “I’ll help you to kill the Dark Queen.” There was no doubt in my mind. I’d never met her, but I wanted the Dark Queen to die. Not because I trusted Michelotto to make life better for reds, or because I was troubled by whatever the Dark Queen was up to with regard to changing the world from the outside. It was simple. She had tried to kill my friends, and she would go on trying until we killed her.

  “We’ll all help,” added Athena.

  “Will we?” Carter was amazed. “She’s not so bad, you know. I found her to be very fair.”

  “Young man, I was there when you spoke to the Dark Queen. I stood behind you with my garrote in hand, ready to kill you as soon as she was done with you. The only reason she let you live was to have you followed because she thought you might be connected to the human being who was troubling her, Cindella.”

  “I . . .” Carter fell silent.

  “Kill the Dark Queen?” Jay spoke as if he were trying out the phrase, shocked that his mouth could form the words. “Why are you all even listening to this mad, crinkled mudgrubber? See, there’s living on the edge, and then there’s stepping out, way, way, way beyond the edge. Step out there, and you’re gone.”

  “She will have to come out of her bunker soon. Once she does, I’ll contact you on this.” Michelotto tossed me a two-way pager, ignoring Jay’s outburst. “And this will decode the message.” Having thrown me a device the size of a watch, he climbed onto his airbike. It rose from the ground with a near-inaudible hum.

  When he was gone, the factory was still, with a silence that was devoid of all threat. We could relax. Or so I thought.

  “Kill the Dark Queen,” Jay scoffed.

  “No problem,” replied Milan, staring hard at Jay. “In any case, it’s our only chance. Wasn’t it you who just said we were going to be hunted down like rats?”

  “You are, maybe. Not me. I’m out of here.”

  “Running for Daddy?” Milan sneered.

  That scored. Jay flushed and clenched his fists. Milan slid to the ground and stood poised, fit and strong, most of his weight on his back foot.

  “Boys,” interjected Athena quickly. “This is too serious to fight over. We have to come to an intelligent decision, and that’s hard enough with you two around, let alone if you’re brawling all over the place.”

  Both of them looked at her. Jay ran the fingers of one hand through his peroxide hair, unconsciously forming a line of spikes. I felt sorry for him. Here he was, all tats and combats, a good boarder, a singer in an anarcho-punk band, a mall raider, but it wasn’t enough. To cope with this situation, you had to be either smart enough to think it through, like Athena, or genuinely, organically punk enough to go all the way. You had to be able to contemplate killing the Dark Queen without feeling as if it was a hideous and impossible crime. That’s how Milan and I were. Nath was fine, too, although it was less easy to understand how he got his quiet determination. Carter and Jay, though, they were out of their depth by a very long way.

  “Personally, I believe that Ghost and Michelotto can take the Dark Queen. So, it’s the way to go. Tonight has proven that it’s her or us.” Athena explained her position succinctly. “Ghost, what’s your view?”

  “We have to kill her, and we can do it.”

  “Milan?”

  “Ditto.”

  “Nathan?”

  “I don’t want to kill her. I don’t trust Michelotto. We should also be thinking about Cindella and her people, what they want. But whatever we do, I’m sticking with Ghost.”

  That was Nathan’s strength: loyalty. I caught his eye and mouthed, “Thanks.”

  “Carter?”

  “Of course not. It’s not possible, and it’s not right.”

  “Jay?”

  “No. If we could do it, maybe. But, with due respect to Ghost, her and that old man are not going to get close.”

  “So, there we are. Three to two, four when you add in Nathan. Since the issue is so fundamental, I suggest we split.”

  “Split?” asked Carter.

  “Finally and irrevocably,” Athena added coldly.

  Jay nodded. “Fair enough. It’s not as if you’ll be alive for much longer, I’m sorry to say. Not with these crazy ideas. The farther we get away from you, the better.”

  “Carter, Jay, out of loyalty to our former gang, can I ask you one favor?” I was sad, and it was reflected in the softness of my voice.

  “Sure, Ghost. What?” Now that the decision had been made, the anger drained from Jay, and he sounded genuinely considerate.

  “Give us twenty-four hours to relocate before you contact anyone—anyone at all.” I tossed him an orange card. “That should do you for all your needs.”

  “No problem. Right, Carter?”

  Carter nodded and looked at me unhappily.

  “Bye, guys.” Athena saluted.

  Jay shrugged. “Come on, Carter.”

  They kicked up their boards and headed out of the factory.

  “Now what?” asked Milan.

  “We’ve got that meeting with Cindella to go to,” Nathan pointed out. “Let’s do that and see what she has to say.”

  As we boarded through quiet streets, I ran the name over and over in my mind. Thetis. Thetis. Thetis. Was that me? What was she like? Was she good? Loyal to her friends? A superb fighter? Or was she like Michelotto? Hideous and dark. In any case, no matter how much I wanted to feel a response, there was none. Whoever I was, I was not Thetis.

  Chapter 23

  ALLIANCE

  The launderette was perfectly ordinary: STEVE’S SUDS. The faded sign made me think of Arnie, and I felt a little pang. I really ought to check up on the grumpy mechanic. But then again, his place was probably being watched. Could our actions have landed him in trouble? I hoped not, but at the very least, he must have been questioned about us.

  In the distance, we could hear the faint sounds of protesting voices, reverberating to us through long rows of tall, dark tenements. It was as if there was a lively children’s playground somewhere nearby, except that the cries came to us against a background of deep-toned chants. The streets here were relatively busy with slow-moving aircars, probably traffic that had been diverted from wherever the marchers were. We were boarding, taking the side of Thirty-First Street that was in the deep shadows cast by the blocks of residential units that towered above us.

  We’d made our plan back inside the tank. While Athena and Milan went into the restaurant opposite and took seats in the window, Nathan and I waited in a nearby parking lot, performing boarding tricks like we used to, as if all the pressures on us were forgotten. It was a pleasure to be outdoors and boarding again. Once they had finished their quick snack, Athena and Milan returned, having affixed a tiny camera to the restaurant windowsill, so that Athena could monitor images of the entrance to the launderette. Just before two, she called us over. We crowded around to see that Cindella was entering the launderette, accom
panied by a man dressed in a dark suit, wearing sunglasses. A few minutes passed.

  “Well?” asked Milan.

  “Let’s risk it.” I really wanted to speak with Cindella. She had faced the Dark Queen recently, and I wanted to know what had happened.

  So we snaked our way along the sidewalk until we were at the launderette. Then we kicked up our boards and walked into the humid room. It was large; all around the walls were massive washing machines, some of them churning away noisily. In stark contrast to the tired-looking people waiting for their washing, sat the stunning pirate, Cindella, and next to her a man who was dressed for a meeting of high-powered businesspeople. It was a measure of how dispirited the other people in the room were that they didn’t seem to take any notice of the unusual clientele or of our arrival. After all, we were a punk airboard gang, who although young, must nevertheless appear intimidating with our perma-tats and piercings.

  “Hi, I got your message; it was a clever one.” Cindella stood up and turned to her companion. “This is my friend, B.E.; I wanted you to meet him, too.”

  “Hello,” I said, nodding.

  “Come with us,” ordered Athena.

  All of us left, making our way through litter-strewn roads until we came to an empty block of flats, windows all broken. I let us inside; there was nowhere public we could safely spend time with a person as striking as Cindella. So, in an abandoned room, bare but for the dark marks of fire damage on the roof, we sat on our boards, more or less in a circle around Cindella and her friend.

  “Congratulations on your aircar race win,” she began.

  “Thanks. Did you see it?” Nathan answered with a smile.

  “Yeah. From real close. We entered it. We were doing pretty well until that last bend.” The tall suited man spoke for the first time. He sounded more amused than bitter.

  “Hah! Never mind. You and a lot of others.” Milan chuckled.

  “So, what’s up? You asked to meet us, all over the forums,” Athena interjected with a note of urgency in her voice. There was a pause. Cindella glanced at B.E., then spoke for them both. “We’re getting organized, and we have some ideas. I wanted to run them by you first. Saga is a dark and unpleasant world and the only enjoyment I’ve really had here is with you people. So I want to make sure what we have in mind suits you.”

  “Go on.” Athena was interested.

  “I met the Dark Queen. She wants to force us to read certain changes into the fabric of this world. I’m not sure exactly what, but it’s stuff like immortality for the children she intends to have. She wasn’t afraid of me. Or, at least, she realized she had nothing to fear from me, or any of us, because if she dies, then half my world dies of the addiction she has caused in them. So, we need to find something that she is willing to negotiate over. Either that or give her what she wants, with no guarantees she won’t go ahead and kill two million people anyway.”

  This prompted Nathan to interrupt with the same question that had occurred to me. “So . . . you’re saying you don’t want her dead?”

  “Blood and thunder, no!” Cindella waved the question away emphatically. “Tell them what it’s like, B.E.”

  “It’s a nightmare.” Cindella’s friend leaned against a wall, checking it carefully first so as not to dirty his suit. “All I want to do is play Saga. But it’s turning me into a wraith. I don’t eat properly; I don’t exercise. I don’t even want to unclip to go to the toilet; I’m here sixteen or more hours a day. When I go to sleep, I dream about being in Saga. Several times, I’ve fallen asleep while playing. I’ve tried leaving it alone, of course. In the early days, I could stay away for maybe forty-eight hours. But not now. If I stay away, my thoughts fill up with Saga, until even when I’m wide awake, I’m dreaming of Saga. Flashbacks of the game constantly interrupt whatever I’m doing. Outside of Saga, I can’t concentrate at all; I’m broken. I can’t fight the craving anymore.”

  “What do you do when you are here?” asked Athena.

  “I’m supposed to be an assassin. That was the character class I chose. The models looked stylish.” He gestured at his body. “But once I was in the game, here, I found that none of the missions work, even the training ones. The people I’m supposed to talk to are long gone. So I’m stuck at red. Mostly I earn credit by killing rats, foxes, and rabid dogs in miserable housing blocks like these.”

  Milan snorted with amusement. “Sorry, mate,” he immediately apologized. “It’s just that you don’t look like a rat-catcher.”

  “If I had to live like this forever, I couldn’t do it,” B.E. continued, without appearing to take any notice. “And nor could anyone else in the same circumstances. So, we have to get the Dark Queen to rescind the addiction.”

  “I see,” said Nathan, with a nod. “And how are you going to do that?”

  “Put her in a position where she can no longer rule. Destroy all her offices, her palaces, her communications systems. Hound her personally.”

  “She’ll kill you,” Athena pointed out.

  “Yes!” Cindella was excited. “That’s the beauty of the idea. She can shoot us down, but we will keep coming back, in our tens and hundreds of thousands. It’s only our Saga characters that disappear; we’ll just create new ones. Again and again. Until she’s sick of us.”

  Only now did it really crystallize in my mind what it meant to live in a universe that was the creation of another. She was right; they could die over and over. It didn’t matter. Our world was just a game to them.

  The grimy room was silent.

  “Hell’s teeth. They really are from outside our world, and they really do think it’s a game.” Athena eventually spoke.

  “We don’t think it’s a game anymore.” Cindella was bitter.

  “What do you do in your own world? What do you look like?” wondered Nathan.

  “Our village runs an olive farm; Osterfjord is its name. I live there. My real name is Erik. I’m sixteen, with dark hair.”

  “Erik?” I was shocked. “You’re male?”

  “Ya.” Cindella, or as I now struggled to see him, Erik, gave a slight laugh. “Our characters, or avatars as we call them, can be anything; they don’t have to reflect what we’re like outside the game.”

  “Amazing.” Nathan came over to Cindella and took hold of the embroidered cuff of her blouse, feeling it between his finger and thumb. “You are so real, but this is just your computer-generated being . . . your avatar.” He turned to B.E. “How about you?”

  “I’m B.E. in Osterfjord, too. Most of us stick to names and models that have some resemblance to our own bodies.”

  Here we were, a meeting of two entirely different species, in the dingiest room imaginable. Surely an event of this kind should have been in a palace?

  “So, what do you think of our plan?” B.E. asked.

  “It’s smart.” Athena spoke in a musing tone. “It might work. We can help point out some targets for you. Although you’ll be lucky to get anywhere near her personally.”

  “So, you wouldn’t mind?” Erik asked.

  “Mind? Bring it on. Trash the joint. You couldn’t make it much worse for reds.” Milan gestured at the room we were standing in.

  “But I was thinking I’d like to do a news broadcast first, to explain to your people what we are doing. I’d like them on our side, or at least to understand the situation and why we are destroying buildings. There’s about ten thousand of us have agreed to this plan, and I’m anticipating a lot more as the word spreads. But ten thousand should be enough to seize a big broadcasting station for an hour or so and send out our message, right?”

  “Ten thousand.” Milan whistled, impressed. “You could take out her government with that. Have you got arms?”

  “Some of us, but we can’t use them. It doesn’t matter if we die, but if anyone from your world is killed, that’s a real death. That poor policeman . . . I had no idea he was real. Now that we understand that, we are all extremely anxious not to hurt anyone.”

  Milan
laughed derisively. “You’re going to fight a war with the Dark Queen but not use weapons? Good luck with that.”

  “Yes, we are.” B.E. was cold. “We are going to destroy her world, brick by brick, if we have to. Everything she depends upon will be broken. Until she is so anxious to be rid of us, she takes away the addiction.”

  “Well, if that works, can you do something for us?” Milan suddenly became serious.

  “Of course. What?” Erik replied.

  “Ask her to give us an amnesty, a pardon.”

  “Certainly.”

  “Do you know how our guild system works?” Athena had a sudden thought, and straightaway I could see where she was going.

  “Sort of. You register with one and as it goes up in the standings, it gets more local powers and benefits?” Erik suggested tentatively.

  “Right.” Athena nodded brightly in return. “At around a hundred thousand members, depending on their individual ranking, the guild leader gets a seat on the High Council, theoretically the most important governing body after the Queen. I’ve set up a guild, Defiance. I want to get on that council and stir things up. Why don’t you all join? If I get there, it will help your strategy of disruption.”

  “Good idea, thanks. Defiance it is. We’ll pass the word.” B.E. sounded grateful.

  “I’ll make you both officers. Cindella and B.E., right?”

  “Actually,” said B.E., sounding a little sheepish, “my full name is B.E. the Executioner.”

  “And mine is Cindella Dragonslayer.”

  With a smile, Milan shook his head. “Well, at least you both look the part.”

  “I know you’ve said it before, but just to repeat. You don’t want the Dark Queen killed?” Nathan glanced at me when he asked the question.

  “No! No, she mustn’t die. Either that would somehow break the connection and leave us without the game . . . or worse.” B.E. shuddered. “Trapped by our addiction to Saga, we’d die a slow death, our bodies declining through neglect. We need her alive, to reverse whatever it is she has done to us.”