Chapter 20
A message appeared in the midst of the huge windows in the void around the System: Sprite would like to share a window.
Accept? A moment later, a new chat window opened.
In one corner was the dark-haired young woman from earlier, but most of the window was taken up with the face of a little white girl with blond hair.
“Hello there,” said the young woman, obviously talking to the girl. “I’m Sprite. I’m so happy to meet you! I’m going to show you a message in a moment. When I do, can you look at it and say yes?”
Chloe gasped even before the little blond girl spoke.
Though her face was very different, the way her eyes flicked down and up and the way the corners of her lips tightened and trembled were unmistakably Kleio when she was trying not to cry.
Her quiet “Okay” confirmed it. Whoever had given her the glasses hadn’t bothered to scan her face, so the glasses had defaulted to a placeholder avatar of a generic white girl.
Chloe felt her own lips tremble in a rush of relief and fresh trepidation.
She wanted to scream “Let me talk to her!” but she bit the words back.
She felt Marcus step close behind her, felt his hands close almost painfully on her shoulders, and knew he, too, was forcibly holding himself back.
“Okay, do it now!” said the young woman in the chat window.
Kleio’s eyes focused inward, and she said, “Yes.” Apparently that was permission for a camera share, because a new window opened, a three-dimensional view out of Kleio’s eyes, or rather from the twin cameras in the frame of her glasses.
The System had made this window life size, so it felt to Chloe as if she were looking directly into the room where Kleio was standing.
It was a vast concrete space lit by LED light banks and filled with complicated conveyer belts and tubes.
Chloe felt a burst of disappointment that she couldn’t see Kleio since she was the one wearing the cameras, but in that instant, the inset chat window of the little white girl was replaced by a breathtakingly accurate representation of Kleio’s own face.
Chloe’s heart stuttered under a sudden ache, sharp as a blow, and she shot a grateful look at the System.
Kleio’s vision was centered on a young man who stood in front of her, and Chloe recognized him as the man who’d appeared in the reflection of the jet cab window, talking to Nesta. He was saying over Kleio’s head to someone Chloe couldn’t see, “After you let us both walk, I’ll unlock that file.”
“My friend is going to help you,” the dark-haired young woman’s avatar said to Kleio from her chat window. “Do exactly as she says and she’ll get you home. Okay?” Kleio’s vision bobbed as her avatar nodded, and the young woman gave her a final smile and disappeared.
The System stepped forward and into the room, and Chloe blinked; she appeared to pass seamlessly from the void where Chloe and Marcus and Grandma were standing into the concrete room where Kleio was.
There she turned around, and at first, Chloe thought she was looking back at her, but then realized she was really looking at Kleio, who could obviously see her because her view shifted to center her.
“Hi, Kleio,” the System said in a voice that dripped with reassurance and warmth. “Your mommy sent me to get you. Can you be brave?”
Someone out of view said, “Wait. Connection has been transferred to third party.”
“I fink so,” Kleio said. “Who are you?”
“Who’s she talking to, little Ghost?” said the voice. “It’s not our fairy friend anymore.”
“You can call me Sys,” the System told Kleio.
“Sis like sister?” Kleio said.
At this, there was a burst of what sounded like Russian swearing in the background, until the voice said something commanding to make everyone go quiet again. The voice said, “Ghost. You were not honest with me.”
“Sys like System,” the System was saying to Kleio. “But sister works too.”
Behind the System in Kleio’s vision, a couple of burly-looking men with guns stepped up to the young man, grabbed his arms, and began dragging him toward the conveyer belts in the background. “Wait!” he cried. “I’ll give you the location, I swear!”
Kleio’s focus shifted to him, but the System flashed with multicolored lights and fairy sparkles, drawing Kleio’s eyes back to her. “Don’t worry; this is part of the adventure!” she said.
“Ghost, Ghost, how can I trust you?” the voice was saying at the same time. “I’m surprised and disappointed. You want to walk? Go ahead. Walk.” The two men hoisted and dumped the young man over the transparent plexiglass wall and onto a conveyer belt.
“MorDread is trying to trace my connection,” the System said suddenly from beside Chloe, and Chloe jumped.
There were two Systems now: one talking to Kleio and one standing next to Chloe, calm as ever, even while behind her other form, the young man lurched to his feet and almost fell as the conveyer belt began to move.
“I’m letting him think he’s making progress so he’ll let Kleio keep the glasses on. ”
“What’s going to happen to him?” Chloe asked, pointing to the young man. Whatever the conveyer was pulling him toward seemed to terrify him.
“Ghost? The plexiglass is a transparent substitute for steel, so it is very thick,” the System said, as if that explained something.
“Are you a princess?” Kleio asked.
Chloe couldn’t decide what to pay attention to: “Ghost” struggling to keep his balance on the moving conveyer belt, Kleio’s conversation with the System, the other System beside Chloe, or a sudden new camera window showing an overhead drone view of a gaggle of police, including three military-style canine dronebots with gun-turret heads gathered around a manhole cover in the middle of the street.
But a part of her mind had time to think that Kleio was right: The System did sound a bit like one of the princesses in the movies Kleio watched and rewatched, with her childlike voice but adult vocabulary.
“I’m not a princess,” the System told Kleio. “But you are.”
Kleio giggled, a sound that filled Chloe’s heart. “No, I’m not.”
“How long can you walk, little Ghost?” said the unseen voice mockingly as Ghost stumbled and scrabbled for a grip on the plexiglass wall, which was too smooth and high to climb.
He gave up and ran down the belt and out of Kleio’s vision, but the voice gave a command in Russian and the belt sped up, dragging him back into view, jogging desperately.
“Yes, you are!” the System said. “You’re Princesszilla. Remember?”
“Dat’s not real,” Kleio said.
“Look at your feet.”
Kleio’s view shifted downward. Instead of her own shoes, she was looking at a pair of bright-pink, furry monster feet. She laughed in surprise, and she must have wiggled her toes because the monster toes wiggled too. “I’m Princesszilla!” She raised her head. “I’m Princesszilla!”
“I’ve just convinced Dr. Norman to grant me emergency control of the police dronebots,” the System beside Chloe told her. “I’ll try to make sure Kleio doesn’t see.”
“Doesn’t see what?” Chloe said, even as Marcus said, “I want to see what happens.”
The System looked at him. “It will happen too fast.” She thought for a moment. “I’ll slow down the feed.”
“See, you’re magic!” said the System in Kleio’s vision at the same time. “Now we’re going to play a magic game of tag to get you home. You just have to touch me! Try as hard as you can! Are you ready?”
“Ready!” Kleio said, with another wiggle of her monster feet.
Two policemen lifted the manhole cover and leaped back.
The System blinked out and reappeared to Kleio’s left with a joyful shout of “Over here!” She glowed bright blue, and as she turned to run, her motion left a trail of sparkles.
The dogbots jumped into the manhole, passing into the opening in quick succession, the third trailing a long, rippling communication line.
Three new windows opened, showing the camera feeds of each as they passed through the narrow hole.
There was a moment of blackness; then the light returned as they emerged from the bottom of the shaft.
All the videos slowed down.
On the first dogbot’s feed, Chloe saw a suspended image of the whole space: a maze of belts, chutes, and tubes that made her think of the giant indoor playgrounds she’d sometimes taken Kleio to, except that it held a dozen men with guns.
Ghost stumbled in slow motion on the conveyer belt.
At the center of the dogbot’s view was the tiny form of Kleio, her shoulders each held by one of her captors.
No System avatar was visible in this feed, but Kleio was turning her head to her left.
“Success,” said the System.
The dogbot’s vision centered on the man holding Kleio’s right shoulder, a big bald man in a garish T-shirt. There was a flash, and the man’s head exploded.
It came apart in several pieces, bone and blood and brains flying outward as his knees began to buckle.
In Kleio’s camera feed, the System swerved sharply right; Kleio’s head and body turned in that direction and she began to run forward, out of the now-limp grasp of the collapsing kidnapper.
The second kidnapper, holding Kleio’s left shoulder, began to yank her back, but then his head, too, was shattered, and Kleio pulled out of his grasp while gore sprayed behind her.
She ran several steps forward as the two bodies folded like marionettes whose strings had been cut.
She was running directly away from the men who’d hoisted Ghost onto the conveyer belt.
They began to fall, blood-splashed spiderwebs of cracks sprouting on the plexiglass behind their heads, right in front of Ghost, whose eyes widened in dawning surprise even as his feet slid out from under him.