35. Double-Barrel
Double-Barrel
Isaak
The four of them met in Dylan’s tape-space the next day.
Rolling green hills, same as his place used to look before he added the volcano and darkened the colours.
The temperature was nice and pleasant here, unlike IRL – which trended in the thirties by February – and his own tape-space, which felt like… well, a volcano.
Talia taped in from Sacha’s, Dylan from his place. It was the quickest way they had to communicate, but also dangerous. They had to move fast and be on the lookout for any of the black spheres or grey shapes. They huddled around a summoned desk, with three screens just like his.
“Here’s your sword back.” She tossed him the holstered weapon. He grabbed it in the air. Power surged through his arm, and a sense of responsibility.
“GK…”
Sacha and Talia gave him a quizzed look.
“This is the last thing Astrid had me steal before I quit,” he explained. “I never gave it to her. And the gig before that, I had a peek at the data.”
“And what did you find?”
“GK. Just those two letters. They were on the box this came in too. Whatever was on that file, it was related to this. Check it out.” He aimed away from the desk and flicked the sword-pistol to life, the blade quickly extending to its full length, the mounted gun barrel slipping into place.
“GUNKATANA MODEL XR01—”
“We spoke about this, Gunky,” Dylan said.
“Apologies, ma’am. I am Gunky. Pleasure to meet you both.” It was addressing their friends.
“Uh.. hi?” said Talia. “Never thought I’d be talking to a sword…”
“It’s not the only surprising thing that speaks. He gave me a talking cat too.” Dylan said it like it was the most normal thing. She didn’t tell them what else he’d made the cat do, but he was still hit with another pang of guilt for having spied on her.
Neither of them had seen Miss Kitty since she’d disappeared.
Sacha made an intrigued face. “A talking cat? How did you—”
But Talia interrupted, fighting to keep them on track. “Okay, enough about your romantic gestures. What happened with that sleep device? Why did you put it on?”
“Gunky would like to know too.”
The surprises kept coming. So the sword really was sentient, or was simulating it well. But, “I don’t think so, Gunky. What if you’re a spy?”
“Wait, wait! Gunky will be good!”
Isaak flicked it off and hooked the holstered sword to his belt.
“Whoa, the sword was cool. Come on!” Sacha protested.
Isaak laughed and waved him down. They were here to figure out what to do next, and their plans needed to stay in as small a circle as possible.
“Astrid sent that thing to me. Like a provocation.”
It was delivered to his home the day after he argued with Dylan. Did he know it was from Astrid? Of course. The decision to use it came after a few days of avoiding Dylan and stewing in all of his guilt. Driven by impulse, rage, and a need to escape.
“Did you know it would take you to the Tapeworld?” Dylan asked him, her eyes shining under her tape-space’s sun. They’d spoken briefly about it last night. But other than telling him it wasn’t his fault, she hadn’t probed. Now was her chance.
“I did. I didn’t know it was going to trap me, obviously. It was fucked up.”
Talia stared at him, arms crossed, lips tight.
“Go ahead, say what you’re thinking.”
“Just… why the fuck did you trust something from this woman, who you’d just cut ties with?” She looked ready to slap him. Had Dylan told her everything about their argument? About his past with Astrid? Either way, Talia’s anger was probably justified.
“I…” Isaak starting pacing, his breathing erratic. “I fucked up, okay, I know I did. If it wasn’t for the three of you—”
“Tal, we get it.” Dylan said. “It was stupid. He was stupid.”
“Uh… thanks?”
“No, I mean, you’re not to blame. You’re not the one sending out creepy devices to trap people, are you?
It’s Astrid. The Sleeper. It’s funny, I was scrolling StreetSocial at work the other day and saw an ad to take part in research trials for a new sleep aid, and it had a picture that looked just like the thing we took off his head.
There was no branding. I’ve tried looking for it again but I can’t find it.
So instead I did some digging on Isaak’s boss. ”
“Ex-boss.”
She smiled. Dylan swiped one of the screens on the desk into the air, magnifying it to the size of a large TV.
It hovered in front of them, showing footage and photos of Astrid at various public events.
Astrid Fern-Lock. Authority suited her. “Long-time CEO of Crypterra, one of the few surviving cryptocurrency exchanges since the Dark Year. Name the scam, Crypterra’s involved with it.
MLMs, NFTs, gen AI, mechanical turk bots.
And one hundred percent owned by the Kingdom of America. The Book.”
This wasn’t new to him, but he’d ignored the red flags when he first met with Astrid. Seduced into committing crimes in cyberspace… What a joke.
“Isaak, can you show them the photograph?”
He nodded. He and Dylan had discussed this part earlier this morning, but he still struggled with it. Opening up such a big part of himself.
He produced the photograph of his mother from the sword’s internal storage, and swiped it so it floated next to the hovering screen. “That’s Maria Powers.”
“Your mother?” Sacha nearly choked.
He nodded.
Talia went from looking mildly displeased to intrigued. “Her picture was in there?”
Isaak swallowed. “Go ahead, Dylan.”
She gave him a smile, acknowledging his pain and thanking him for letting her explain all of this.
“Maria Powers disappeared twenty years ago.”
Sacha and Talia exchanged worried looks.
“She was Astrid’s father’s first choice to be his successor at Crypterra. Not Astrid,” Dylan continued. “But once Maria was out of the picture, Astrid gained full control of the company.”
Sacha glanced at Isaak. He could imagine exactly what his former teammate was thinking. Pity. How it made sense now that his parents never showed up at their games. Wondering why he would work for Astrid if he knew she might be responsible in some way for his mother’s disappearance.
The truth was that until his conversation with Dylan this morning, he’d had a completely different idea of his mother.
She’d left them when he was a kid. He had some vague memory that she worked for a tech company, but he didn’t know which one.
And when she left him and his dad and never tried to contact them again, he grew up to hate her.
His dad had never brought her up in conversation, and Isaak had never bothered to find out more about her as an adult – why would he, when she so obviously never wanted to see him again?
He knew she was gone from his life, but until Dylan told him, he’d had no idea that she’d disappeared altogether. He just assumed she was out there somewhere, raking in cash as a tech CEO, and spending all her time and money and effort on herself. Or someone else. Now he didn’t know what to think.
Of course, the hate he felt for Astrid was unreal.
Not just for sending him the Sleeper device to trap him in the Tapeworld, a cruel retaliation for quitting the gig, but also for doing whatever she might have done to his mum.
If she was still around, might she have made contact with him again?
Might she even have come back…? He swallowed his emotions. Now was not the time.
“Astrid’s ex-husband is a man called North Lock,” Dylan continued. “She kept the double-barrel. He’s a higher up at Crypterra’s owner itself, The Book. Senior Vice President of New Business Opportunities.”
Of course the Five Kings would have their bloody hands all over this.
“Did you manage to find anything about any contact still going on between them?” Isaak asked.
“Their last appearance together was mere days before the divorce. When the Book announced they were buying Crypterra.” She zoomed into the photos.
“Strange…” Talia said.
“What is?”
“They look very happy in this photo. You'd think it’d be obvious their relationship was over by then, wouldn’t you?”
She had a good point.
“So,” Sacha said, “your theory is that Astrid made Isaak’s mum disappear to get control of Crypterra? And then, twenty years later, she manipulated her son into stealing secrets from the Book?”
Dylan nodded.
“I don’t know what exactly went on between them,” Isaak said, fighting to keep his emotions under control. “I don’t know for sure that Astrid harmed my mother. I always felt like she left us willingly.”
But the full implications of it made him feel sick.
They hadn’t even talked about the fact that his first meeting with Astrid had ended up with them in bed.
Sleeping with this woman who knew his mother?
This woman who might be responsible for making his mum disappear?
Just thinking about it made his insides turn. He swallowed the feeling down.
“I want to find out what happened. Astrid came after me with this device. For what? To try and get the Gunkatana? Or is there something else going on? I want to know what she’s doing with all the data we’ve handed her. What does she want?”
Dylan moved away from the desk and looked at the other two, her hand on Isaak’s shoulder.
“You two don’t have to be here if it’s too much. Talia, I’m sorry I brought you into this. Sacha, I’m—”
“Are you kidding me? I was with you before we entered his trapworld, and I’m with you now. I know you. You’ve been dying to find a cause like this.”
Dylan blushed. “It’s not like that. I just want to keep Isaak safe, and you too.”
“Sure, sure…” Talia rolled her eyes, but smiled.
“Where do we start?” Sacha asked, already busying his hands with the end of a summoned metal tube. He looked like he meant to use it.
A proud nervousness settled into Isaak’s chest. They were all staying. They wanted in.
“You guys know it’s dangerous? If you’re injured or killed in the Tapeworld, we don’t know what happens IRL…”
Dylan looked back at him, eyes calm. “Maybe we die. Maybe we don’t.
But who’s to say we’re any safer out there?
” She turned to Sacha. “You asked where we start. Well, Astrid’s throwing a special event.
” Her voice was lifted by elation, the excitement of someone finally letting everyone else in on something.
“The Night of Entertainment, she’s calling it, at the Crypterra mansion in Mayfair.
Two days from now. It’s a product launch, and I think we can all take a pretty good guess what the product is going to be. ”
They all looked at each other.
“That’s awfully timely,” Isaak said. “But it’s not like I can go. She’ll know I escaped, if she doesn’t already. She knows Sacha too.”
Dylan nodded. “You and Sacha are out of the question. We have to hope she doesn’t know about me.”
“Us,” Talia said. “It’s the perfect opportunity for us to get close to Mrs Fern-Lock. I’m sure I can get us an invite through work!”
Dylan smiled as she bought into her friend’s idea.
Isaak rubbed his beard. “So, we go in and… what?”
“We look out for any trace of the Sleeper,” Sacha said. “Find something to nail her. It could work. I’ll handle the tech.” He winked at him.
“It sounds like we have the makings of a plan.” Dylan’s voice sounded hopeful. “Isaak, you’re our team captain. Do you think we can pull it off?”
Look at you. Pulling me in.
Isaak looked over his “team”. Dylan, who he was getting to know more and more every day, finally opening up to her, who had rescued his ass from certain doom.
Talia, her best friend, who looked like a top model fresh out of a gala – she’d fit right in for the Night of Entertainment – and who seemed to be willing to do anything for Dylan.
And Sacha. They’d learned so much together playing for the London Lazarus.
He regretted the way they’d parted months ago.
It wasn’t fair on his younger ex-teammate.
And now he was willing to risk his life to help him.
Could they pull it off?
“Of course. Not a doubt in my mind.” He tried to sound as calm and confident as he could.
Dylan grinned. “Then let’s nail that bitch for what she did to you!”
They blipped out of the Tapeworld shortly after, first Talia and then Sacha.
Dylan stayed behind.
“Do you think we should involve your and Sacha’s contact? Elodie?”
He paused, watching the sun setting on the green hills. “She did help you save me… But I don’t know. I trust you guys, and I don’t want to open the circle too wide.” Doubt wormed its way into his gut.
Dylan approached him slowly, leaving a trail in the simulated plasticrete floor, blue and red colours swirling around her feet. “Come here…”
His doubts found a way to disappear.