11. InMotion
InMotion
Kael
My DataLINK is vibrating incessantly. I contemplate throwing it through the window of my penthouse.
The monitors on my wall spring to life, blaring alarms and blinding me with pulsing lights on the city’s grid.
One minute I’m in DreamNet about to sword-fuck my current favorite holo-girl, the next I’m waking up a sweaty mess in the dark confines of my room, wind knocked out of me like a kick to the gut. I have no clue what’s going on, but it’s never good when it’s the middle of the night.
It only takes me a second to surmise from my dropout that something has happened to collapse DreamNet.
“LINK—who the hell is calling me at this hour of night?” I’m agitated, like someone threw cold water down my boxer shorts. In a way they did.
The girl from STATIK, Lyra, has me hot and bothered in a way that’s eating through my veins like venom.
She’s in my head when she shouldn’t be. I can’t shake the sound of her voice, the way her presence crackled against mine.
It’s not just attraction, it’s borderline obsession, uncoiling low in my gut, making me want to claim her, feel her underneath me.
DR. RYUDON
DR. EMBER VOSSE IS CALLING FROM THE LAB
SHALL I TAKE THE CALL?
LINK interrupts my yearning.
“Yes.” I rub my eyes with my palms and sit up pushing the covers away. “Ember, what the fuck is going on? What collapsed DreamNet? Did an update fail for TheKast? Did your father do something stupid again?” I quite like being an asshole.
“Kael...” Her voice sounds frantic. She never calls me by my first name. “TheKast is fine, but we have two of the biggest anomalies we have ever seen popping at ten point five on the surge scale about fifteen minutes ago in VikkCorp Towers.”
“Two at ten point five? Unprecedented. I’ll be right there.” I throw my LINKpad down on the bed and shimmy into my pants while heading for the door. “LINK—bring my car around to the front door in exactly five minutes, it’s urgent!”
YES DR. RYUDON.
ARE YOU GOING INTO THE LAB EARLY?
I roll my eyes and sigh. “Yes! Anomalies! Now just do it!”
WOULD YOU LIKE YOUR MOTORCYCLE DOCTOR?
I CALCULATE IT WILL GET YOU TO THE LAB 4.9 MINUTES FASTER
“Fine,” I snap. Bike jacket. Boots. Gloves.
Helmet. No wasted motion. I don’t bother with the lights; the glow from the screens already paints the room jagged crimson.
LINK will take care of it, like she takes care of me.
My hair is still damp with sweat, but there’s no time to shower.
I run my fingers through it, shoving it back for my helmet.
Two anomalies detected. Both off the charts.
I tear off to the elevator, eyes focused, mind already in motion. “LINK—it’s still curfew. I need curfew clearance immediately. State that it is a Code3 Anomaly.”
Nothing for a beat.
I pace back and forth outside the elevator doors, the silence deafening. A punch of stale air hits me in the face as the doors open, once inside, the panel awakens, and her mechanical voice booms:
GRANTED DR. RYUDON
SEE YOU AT THE LAB
The doors hiss open, and the smell of exhaust and oil hit me as I enter the garage.
My bike is waiting for me, sleek, matte black, the kind of machine that doesn’t whisper speed, it promises it.
The digital instrument cluster flickers to life as I swing one leg over, the soft hum of the engine dropping into a low growl like a caged animal.
“LINK—fastest route to the lab, send it to my GPS,” I order.
LINK auto-connects to the bike’s AI-driven GPS and plots a route, safe, straight, and efficient.
THERE ARE STREET CLOSURES
ETA: 15 MINUTES DR. RYUDON
I smirk. “Override,” I whisper under my breath as the engine roars beneath me.
LINK hesitates, just a fraction of a second.
“My way,” I add, voice low.
LINK can calculate ETAs or chart optimal routes, but she can’t feel this city the way I do.
I punch the throttle, and the bike shoots forward like a bullet through the veins of Oneiro.
Neon bleeds across the wet pavement in a riot of colors: pink, violet, green, each reflection shimmering as my tires tear through the slick streets.
Towering billboards blur above, selling more shit we don’t need but are urged to consume.
Corporate logos illuminate the corners of the dark night as I lean into the speed, my knee almost scraping the ground.
The rain comes down harder, as I shift gears, the wind whipping through the seams of my jacket. I don’t fight it, letting the wind claw at me, the cold rips the breath from my lungs. This is where my mind quiets. Where control isn’t just an illusion.
I slice the bike between autonomous CIC Corp-cars crawling through their overnight patrol routes, scanners sweeping sidewalks and doorways.
I miss a bumper by inches, close enough to feel heat on the side of my boot.
The growl of the engine turns into a howl as the bike skims over the puddled pavement.
Overhead, a drone patrol buzzes past, lights piercing the rain. I don’t look up. If they lock on now, it will take too much time to check my clearance. They’ll never catch me anyway.
The city dissolves into a blur of motion.
Alleys whip by like knife slashes. Giant holo-screens attached to corporate spires light my visor in fractured bursts. Raindrops splatter across the glass, spiderwebbing outward with every jolt of the engine.
I take a turn down a half-flooded service road, past a collapsed construction barrier still tagged with rebellion sigils. The bike jerks beneath me, gears screaming as I skim across the pavement. I stay with it, breathing in the rush of adrenaline.
The anomaly ping flares again in my comm. Stronger now.
Good.
I reach up, finger brushing the comm built into my visor as I swerve through a narrow gap between two automated street cleaners grinding slowly along. “LINK,” I bark over the engine’s howl, “call Ash.”
The bike growls beneath me, as I shift once more, even faster. Someone is about to learn why running from me only makes the hunt worse.
CALLING ASH DR. RYUDON
LINK connects with a click, then static. Ash’s lazy drawl crackles through, punctuated by an absence of background noise. “Kael? It’s the middle of the night, man. I just got to bed after my gig. You finally calling to tell me you missed me? Or is this a booty call?” He chuckles.
“Very funny,” I comment dryly. I duck under a low flying delivery drone, the glow of its yellow light flashing over my helmet as I thread the needle between two concrete pillars. “Two anomalies. Huge ones. Lit up the whole damn grid a few minutes ago.” I clipped, “Where were you tonight?”
I push the bike harder, my body crouching lower. My reflection snaps across a line of shop windows in a strobe of lightning, black leather, color-drenched visor, a shadow made of speed and rain.
“Where do you think?” Ash’s voice is immediately defensive. “Bro, it wasn’t me. I was at the club until TheKast. Crowd loves me...what can I say? Standard set tonight, no extra spice. Don’t tell me this is about work again.”
“Of course it’s work. What the hell else would I have?” I snap, leaning hard into a turn that sends sparks off the bike’s footrests. “The readings are off the charts. Looks like both were inside VikkCorp Towers. I just figured it was you with that much surge.”
A pause. Then Ash’s tone shifts, the easy humor draining into serious sarcasm. “I haven’t slept with anyone in VikkCorp Towers in months.”
Cocky but effective.
I refuse to laugh. On the other end of the line, he goes quiet in a way that means his brain is moving faster than his mouth. For once.
Then he mutters to himself, “That’s...weird.”
“Weird how?” I snap, leaning the bike hard around a glowing roundabout.
“If there was a huge surge,” he says, “like a really big one, then I should have felt it.” Another pause. “It doesn’t feel right.”
My jaw tightens against the helmet. “Explain.”
Ash exhales slowly. “Usually when magic spikes like that, I feel it first. Vibrations ripple through the grid, through me.” An even longer pause this time. “I didn’t feel that usual anomaly hum.”
I hear him get up and start walking. He begins humming, barely audible against the roar of my engine and the wind rushing past me. “Wait...I feel it, not the usual vibe though, a glitch, like a DJ remixing a track.”
My grip tightens on the throttle.
“You think this is her?” he mumbles to himself. “Yeah. Yeah, it has to be. Must be her.” His voice drops, trailing off. “Only she could bend it like that without setting off every alarm.”
He doesn’t finish what he’s saying, and that’s worse than if he had. The city continues to smear past me in streaks of neon.
Ash finally clears his throat. “I didn’t feel the vibration because it wasn’t intentional, Kael. It was accidental magic, uncontrolled, a slip-up.”
I don’t answer right away because I don’t like where this is going.
“What?!” I bark. “She? Her who?”
He ignores my question. I can hear him muttering something and his fingers flying over his keyboard as I slow my bike to a purr. The faint click of keys echoes through the comm. “I’m scanning the rebellion boards, encrypted channels, community rooms, any info pertinent to tonight.”
The bike bucks slightly as I take the corner leading into VikkCorp’s campus slowly. “Anything?”
“Nothing there...nothing...” He pauses. “Wait!”
“Ash?” I question him impatiently, my voice tuning into a low growl.
“Yeah, yeah, hold your murder-cycle,” he says. “Someone just flagged an outage. One of the systems inside KrossCorp.”
My stomach drops. “KrossCorp?” I say. “Like the GameNet KrossCorp?”
“That’s the one,” he replies. “Private diagnostics went dark for almost sixty seconds. Not a crash, more like it voided some code. Everybody dropped out right before TheKast.”
That’s not possible. Not without authorization. I personally sign off on GameNet code; KrossCorp just holds the servers.
“KrossCorp’s been sold for years,” I say. “VikkCorp owns GameNet now. I maintain GameNet. I would’ve seen—”
“A corporate alarm go off?” Ash cuts in. “Sure. If it was corporate. But this was an anomaly, remember?”
The rain stops as I pull under the giant awning leading to VikkCorp HQ. My thoughts race just like my bike.
“KrossCorp still owns the servers, the actual hosting,” Ash continues. “GameNet’s architecture, the old skeleton under all your polish. Dax Kross never let that part go. Sold the dream, kept the bones.”
I frown. “I know, but Dax Kross is a ghost, a billionaire recluse. No public appearances in years. He couldn’t care less about it.”
“Exactly,” Ash agrees. “And now his old system tweaks at the exact same second the anomaly surge hits. What else was affected?”
“As of right now, I only know of DreamNet. I was in it, dropped out like a hot brick.”
Silence, then that mischievous tone. “Because you were in it where? RedRoom or what, dude? Was it hot? I need deets...”
My knuckles whiten around the throttle. “Moving on.” I give him a warning.
“I’ll get it out of you later.” He makes a mental note for future harassment. “That means whatever happened tonight didn’t just flare magic,” he adds quietly. “It destroyed things, voided them...powerful.”
“So, GameNet wasn’t just disrupted. It was attacked and voided,” I think out loud. “Some anomaly has some sort of power that can destroy entire systems, and they can’t control it.”
The lab is just ahead, white spires jutting into the dark clouds, a stark contrast to the bright street behind me.
“Stay where you are for now; I’ll need you at the lab when curfew breaks. We’ll handle it.”
“Copy that, boss,” he replies, lighter but only half-joking. “Just like you ‘handled it’ last time? Look, Bro, you can’t keep the whole world under control, and if this is who I think it is...you’re way in over your head.”
I kill the engine in one fluid motion, boots hitting the pavement with purpose.
Above me, the VikkCorp logo, a jagged, silver “V” bisected by a pulse of red lightning, glows from the glass wall like an unblinking eye, reminding everyone that nothing here is private.
Not even your thoughts...and especially not your dreams.
Sterile, white light from the lobby washes the ground as I enter the front doors, pulling off my gloves.
GOOD EVENING DR. RYUDON
WE ARE EXPECTING YOU
The AI Bot at the front desk greets me cold and unfeeling.
I continue talking to Ash and ignore it. “On second thought, maybe you better sit this one out.” I kill the call with a flick of my finger, the comm going dead as I approach the security panel for the lab.
A text comes over my DataLINK:
Ashhole (ASH): Sit this one out?
Ashhole (ASH): Yeah, like that’s ever worked
Ashhole (ASH): See you after curfew. I’ll use my code
Ashhole (ASH): Hugs and Kisses
I roll my eyes and enter the lab. Ready for the hunt to begin.