Saga Read online

The others had done a good job, and the mall was a parody of its former self. Bedraggled and smeared with a hundred anarchist slogans, it looked like a waistcoated groom who had run through a factory paint shop, staggering out the other side a bright and disheveled ruin.

  “Get out now!” Athena cried into our headsets.

  “What’s up?” asked Milan. But there was no reply.

  A moment later, everything shut down.

  Instinctively I ducked down to grab my board, but it was no help. For the second time today, I fell, this time hitting the escalator stairs and rolling head over heels to their bottom, lucky not to have broken an arm or worse. Every neon sign in the building was off, including the green safety signs. All my equipment was dead. Someone must have fired a high-energy radio frequency bomb into the mall. Someone who really wanted us and didn’t care about the cost.

  Above the glass roof, a giant shadow, like fingers spreading, reaching down to clasp the whole mall, and the slow, ominous throb of a powerful aircraft.

  Limping with the resurgent pain in my left leg, I ran into mr. green. Frightened and desperate, I even left my beloved airboard behind; it couldn’t help me now that its engine and anti-grav units were fried. Two security guards saw me and, with a shout, came running.

  Somewhere deep down, a little nine-year-old girl was screaming with terror. Never, even when I was sneaking around blue zones, had I felt this close to capture. The very thought of it made me gag. I was sobbing aloud as I staggered through eveningwear, dragging over the rails of black suits to slow down the pursuit.

  They were only ten meters behind me when I leaped over a credit desk and through the swing door beyond into a staffroom. I kicked open another door that opened up to women’s casual wear, but ducked back into a small kitchen instead of heading out into the sea of pink, white, and pastel colors.

  They blundered past. Fooled? No, they had stopped.

  “Where’d she go?”

  “You keep going, I’ll check the staffroom.”

  By this time, I was squeezed tight into a cupboard, crushing beneath me packets of instant soup and nutribars. The urgent steps of the guard came into the room. Tears were in my eyes as I tried to control my heart. It was banging so hard inside my chest that I was more worried about dying right there than the fact that he might hear me.

  The cupboard door opened.

  “Hello, little girl.”

  Oh mercy.

  Chapter 3

  MAYHEM AND MAGIC

  Never had I felt as much dread as I did in this stark-white police room. Not a fear based on the prospect of some kind of punishment for having broken into a mall and sprayed slogans but an inchoate terror, springing from some unfathom-ably deep, unconscious core of my being. Some part of me, a part formed long before my first memory, was howling like a caged wolf. It was impossible to suppress the shudders that welled up from my stomach, or the wave after wave of sweat that caused an acrid odor to linger in the air around me.

  The room’s one harsh light was embedded high up in the white ceiling, directly above a heavy white plastic table. Some former prisoners, in a display of bravado, had somehow managed to scrawl their initials in the surface. For a while, I systematically considered the clothing I had been left with for a means of leaving a mark also. In the end, I decided my best hope was to twist the zipper off its track at the neck of my tunic and hope that, in breaking it loose, a sharp part would form. In fact, it was the broken track that produced a workable edge. The room was too cold to remove my top, so I had to lean forward and scrunch it up so that my new tool could reach the table. Using the torn copper, I began work on an anarchy sign, hoping that my friends might see it and know from its freshness that one of us was here, and still resisting. If the cops hoped to make me more cooperative by leaving me so long alone in this room, they were mistaken. That littlemade me feel a lot better.

  A crack appeared in the far wall; a man and a woman stepped into the room. Both wore standard police navy. They sat opposite me, the man wrinkling his nose, the woman trying to catch my eye and smile. Oxman and Quigley, said the name tags.

  “This conversation is being recorded and extracts may be used in court.” Oxman sounded bored. “You do not have the right to remain silent. Failure to assist in our inquiries can, and will, be interpreted as guilt, subject to the Aelbury-Noonan ruling.”

  For a while, nobody said anything.

  “You know what our concern is?” Oxman asked eventually.

  I didn’t reply, although I smiled as a number of smart remarks occurred to me.

  He sighed heavily through his nose, looking hard at me, tired of me already.

  “Forget the mall. How did you erase your records? How is it we don’t have your DNA on file? According to the system, you don’t even have a red card. How do you live? What do you eat?”

  Even if I’d wanted to be helpful, this was going to lead nowhere fast. What did I know about myself? Nothing. It was exactly this kind of questioning that the core of my being feared and, as intimidating as this man looked, the possibility of making him angry was nothing in comparison to the sensation of impending disaster that sprang up as I listened to his words. So I stopped even looking at him and studied the letters scratched onto the table surface, wondering if someone I knew could have made any of them.

  “Would you like a cup of tea, dear?” The woman tried to smile, but her eyes were hard. This was pathetic: good cop, bad cop. I snorted derisively.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Who are you?”

  “Where’s your card?”

  “What’s your name?”

  This continued until I grew tired and, putting my head in my arms, I closed my eyes.

  Smack!

  Oxman was standing over me, his cheeks red with anger, his forehead and neck white.

  The right side of my nose started to fill with blood. When I got up, I leaned over the table till the dizziness passed, watching crimson drops splash on the white surface. If I moved my head slightly, I could get them to form a pattern. So this was why the table was plastic. Easy to clean.

  “Don’t play this game, kid. You’re going to lose.” Oxman had regained control of his temper, if he had ever really lost it.

  “There’s no hurry,” added Quigley, getting up. “You’re not going anywhere; you will talk to us in the end.”

  They waited for me at the door.

  “Come on, then. Back to your cell.”

  The corridor that led back to the holding cells passed alongside reception, a thick layer of laser-proof plate glass between the prison side and the free side. Police officers and members of the public could watch with silent disapproval as you were moved along the aisle. But right now nobody was looking our way. Instead, their attention was focused on the most beautiful and strange-looking woman I had ever seen.

  Perhaps a filmcast star had been brought in from where she was making an adventure film or maybe she had been attending a fancy-dress party as a pirate? She was wearing ornately scrolled leather armor pieces, tied over a silver silk blouse and trousers; at her hips were two rapiers, and a bandoleer of daggers crossed her chest. The pirate was not much taller than me, but lithe somehow, like a cheetah. Her eyes were a striking green. The busy reception area was on hold while everyone looked over this charismatic curiosity. Oxman stopped and whistled admiringly.

  “Name?” Their voices were muffled by the glass wall between us, but distinct enough.

  “Cindella Dragonslayer.”

  The policeman at her side laughed, and she smiled back at him with perfect white teeth.

  “Name?” The desk attendant was less amused.

  “I just told you.”

  She typed it in and looked up with some surprise. “Yeah, she’s listed. Red card. What’s the offense?”

  “Interference with a member of the police during the course of their duties,” replied the policeman beside her.

  “You were
hurting that boy.” The pirate looked around the room for support and found none.

  “Save it for your hearing.” The arresting officer was cross now, because instead of being contrite, this woman called Cindella was defending whatever it was she had done. Immediately I took a liking to her; perhaps she was one of these eccentrics you sometimes saw on the streets, homeless but willing to stand up to the cops. Mind you, this got them nothing but blows and hard times.

  “Let’s have your kit.” The attendant handed up a large transparent plastic bag.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Everything but your clothes, into that bag, please.”

  “Oh no.” Cindella laughed. “This has gone far enough. I’m not giving up my magic items. In fact, I think I’ll go explore the City some more now if you don’t mind.”

  The receptionist looked severely at her.

  “Very well.” She nodded to two nearby policemen. “Search her.”

  “Now wait,” Cindella replied, hands falling to her sides. I could see the fingers of her right hand moving as they found the end of a cord that was tied around the neck of a small leather pouch. “I’m just looking around; I don’t want trouble with the authorities. But you aren’t getting my magic items.”

  The two advancing policemen glanced at each other and shared a sinister smile. I felt a little sorry for this beautiful helpless creature. She obviously had no idea what she was dealing with and was possibly a little mentally imbalanced, with her talk of magic.

  They took another step closer, and she raised the pouch high. The mood of the room changed instantly, and a dozen lasers were drawn, pointing at her.

  “Put that down now, whatever it is.”

  “Oh dear,” Cindella sighed, and as she turned the pouch upside down to release a cascade of glitter, she spun. Silver powder instantly filled the room beyond the glass. It was like looking into one of those little toy snowstorms, the ones you shake to make the snowflakes swirl around in the oil, until they slowly settle on the model landscape.

  I was shoved aside as Quigley pushed past me to get to the action. When I looked up, I expected to see the pirate woman lying on the ground, smoking from a dozen black holes. But there she was, full of life, a strand of red hair loose from her ponytail.

  In the other room, everyone was lying unconscious on the ground. Quigley kicked open the door, but in doing so, she created an eddy that brought a rush of silver dust into our corridor. As she choked and fell over, I backed away.

  With a roar of anger, Oxman turned his handgun all the way to maximum and fired.

  The pirate was hit right above the heart. They both stood looking at each other. She scowled as she wet her thumb and brushed away a sooty mark from her tunic.

  “That’s not possible,” Oxman whispered to himself in disbelief. He fired again, this time at her head.

  I’d never seen anyone move so fast. I honestly thought that she’d dodged the pulse, which released its energy violently on the wall behind her.

  The corridor now stank of ozone.

  A thin rapier was suddenly in the pirate’s left hand, unwavering tip poised before Oxman’s chest. “Please, stop that.” Her voice was surprisingly calm under the circumstances.

  “Die, you—” But his voice was stopped by the point of the sword impaling him through the roof of his mouth. Oxman collapsed, toppling to bang his head on the hard stone floor with a hollow-sounding noise. Blood was pooling around him from his open mouth. She had just murdered him.

  Instantly the pirate was through the door and in my corridor. Rather horribly she dipped her fingers in the blood, rubbed it between them, and examined it curiously.

  “Amazing detail,” she mused aloud before looking directly at me.

  “Don’t hurt me! I’m a prisoner.” I held my hands high, frightened that this strange woman might turn on me.

  “I know.” Cindella laughed, a merry, effortless, and cheerful laugh, chilling under the circumstances. “It’s pretty obvious.”

  “You killed him.” Even though I hated the way Oxman had treated me, I was horrified at his death and even more disturbed by Cindella’s nonchalant attitude. She was probably psychopathic.

  “Yeah, guess he was a pretty low-level NPC, huh?”

  I had no idea what she meant. “What’s an NPC?”

  “Non-Player Character. You’re probably one as well, right?” We looked at each other blankly.

  “You’d better run,” I advised her.

  “Oh. Yes.”

  As we hurried back into the main entrance room, stepping over the bodies of the unconscious police, another cop stepped through the station entrance and stood still, looking at all the prone bodies with a shocked expression.

  “Hmmm,” wondered Cindella aloud, again with that inappropriately innocent smile. “Should I kill her, too? Witnesses and all that?”

  “No point. It’s all recorded.” I gestured up at a camera.

  “Ahh, I see.” She waved cheerfully at the unblinking blue lens.

  The uniformed woman fled. It occurred to me that I probably had a few minutes before the police from the next district arrived. Leaping over the desk, I quickly accessed the recent arrests.

  “What are you doing?” asked Cindella. “Why aren’t you running away?”

  “My friends.”

  “Ahh, a rescue. Great—that’s more like it. Can I help?”

  “Um, actually, yes; I could use his hand.” I pointed to Oxman.

  “His hand?” she repeated.

  “Yes, please.”

  With a shrug, she pulled a fierce-looking dagger from her boot and sawed at the hand until it came off. She passed it over to me, careful not to drip blood on her trousers.

  “What?” she asked, looking at my face.

  “I didn’t mean . . .”

  At that moment, alarms started to ring.

  “It doesn’t matter.” I took the bony hand, without gagging too much.

  The station we were in had only ten cells; it was a moment’s work to press Oxman’s severed hand onto the palm-print keys that unlocked the doors to the rooms that held my friends.

  I have to say they were pretty quick on the uptake, leaping from their bunks and out into the corridor as soon as they saw me. Athena, Milan, Nathan, and Carter.

  “Where’s Jay?” asked Carter.

  “Not listed here,” I answered tersely.

  “Then let’s go.” Milan ran forward until he saw the mess around Oxman, and stopped.

  “Yeah. She did it,” I announced, pointing to Cindella.

  “Strike me blind!” He looked at her, astonished. “You did all that? You knocked them all out and killed him?”

  “Well, it wasn’t hard.” Cindella shrugged. “I doubt they were even level one. And I have magic armor that seems to make their weapons useless. It was all a bit one-sided, really.”

  Milan couldn’t stop looking at all the blood; he was pale. Even though he liked to consider himself as tough as they come, I could see he was shaken.

  “We’re too late,” Athena announced glumly; through the shrill beats of the alarm, we heard the sound of helicopters above us. Blue and red patches of color began to flash on the white walls of the station as squad cars arrived out front.

  “You don’t have spells in this world, right?” asked Cindella.

  “What are you talking about?” Carter was furious, his anger driven by fear. It was one thing to be in prison for a bit of spray painting, but being associated with the murder of a cop was a terminal offense.

  “No, I guess not. Here, then, you’d better drink some of this. Just a mouthful each, please; I don’t have a great deal with me.” Cindella passed around a semitransparent flask that seemed to be made of thousands of emeralds.

  “What is it?” I asked her.

  “Invisibility potion.”

  “Great.” The others looked on with disbelief, but I took my swig with confidence. They hadn’t seen those lasers bounce off her.

 
“Whoa!” Nathan jumped back, staring at me. “She’s gone.”

  It was true; I held my hands in front of my face and saw right through them. Nothing showed at all, not the slightest outline.

  “Hurry.” Cindella passed the flask around. “It won’t last long.”

  Being invisible was sweet. Even better was to walk out through a cordon of armed police, while their guns were trained on the station door. As I walked in the open air, such a rush of freedom suddenly ran through my body that I nearly snorted aloud with laughter. Here were earnest-looking cops, talking into their headsets, checking their weapons, glancing at the choppers above, getting ready to storm the building. And we were right beside them, sauntering out from under the barrels of their guns. What a giddy feeling. This was truly punk. Walking away to freedom from a police station full of unconscious cops.

  Then the image of Oxman’s death came back to mind, and I shuddered.

  Chapter 4

  LOOKING AT THE STARS

  Although it was summer, Erik and Injeborg were sufficiently high up the mountain range that it became chilly at night. They had a fire lit, but even so, Erik was glad of the thick wool jumper that his mum, Freya, had knitted for him. Perhaps he’d tell her so, later, when she was clipped in to the new game, Saga.

  Behind him their donkey, Leban, gave a snort. Erik got up.

  “You’re all right there, my old friend?” Leban’s long nose was warm. It had been a long three-day walk up the mountain valley, and Leban had patiently carried their tent and food all the way up. Moreover, Injeborg’s rock collection, which was the point of their journey, was going to fill the donkey’s packs for the way down.

  From where he’d earlier left a satchel, safely out of reach of the donkey, Erik produced a carrot. It still amused him, after all the years, to see Leban lurch into motion, always eager for food. With the donkey happily crunching away, Erik returned to the fire.

  Watching someone immersed in a game was always slightly strange. Like watching a dreamer. Or perhaps it was more like sitting next to someone experiencing a terrible nightmare. For Injeborg’s hands and head were constantly moving, sometimes with shudders and sharp jerks. Her eyes were covered with large dark goggles, her ears with small plugs, and her hands with bulky metal gloves, from which cables ran to the portable game unit in front of her.