Seven #2
Isako doesn’t bother assuming a combative stance or trying to maneuver into a better position.
She doesn’t have time for that; speed relies on efficiency, and the older she gets, the truer that becomes.
Her joints scream a protest against explosive movement, but she reaches the masked man before he can finish speaking.
She coils her torso, loads into her hip as she slams the triggersheath forward.
A click as the longknife flies free, and as her body unwinds through its twist, the man’s head leaves his body.
A convincing spray of blood streaks across Isako’s immersivisor.
A key principle in handling rebellion: Identify and engage with the most prominent disruptor.
As the leader’s decapitated body topples forward and hits the floor, the mob erupts into confusion and violence.
Some of the intruders lose their nerve and run for the exit.
Others are not so easily cowed; they start swinging batons and firing homemade pistols.
Screaming and frantic movement assaults Isako’s senses; even knowing full well that she’s inside a simulation, she can almost feel the panicked jostling of shoulders and smell the acrid gun smoke.
She stays low and sprints for the stage.
The director in the tuxedo is being rushed by his aides toward the hidden exit at the back.
A group of attackers surge after him, pushing and shoving their way indiscriminately past fleeing servers and lesser staffers.
Isako leaps onto the platform ahead of the first assailants.
The floor is solid and she lands in a crouch, feeling the impact in her knees; the structure of the room is real, at least.
Two masked men charge her. Her longknife slices through the plastiwood club in one man’s hands; she feels the simulated impact through her gloves when she punches him in the throat.
She buckles his knee with a well-placed kick, then slashes low, longknife whistling, and hamstrings the second man.
She can feel sweat on the bridge of her nose, under the visor.
There’s a surreal ripple at the far edges of her vision, movement blurring and jerking where the simulation is imperfectly rendered.
Everything has the hazy, disorienting texture of a fever dream.
The director has safely reached the exit. He disappears out the door.
It can’t be that easy, Isako thinks—and then she realizes her mistake.
On the other side of the platform, a second-stage woman is trying to descend the shallow steps, moving jerkily in an older-model synthbody.
Hanging next to the gold badge around her neck is a small silver key.
The same type of key Isako saw on Savannah Minto yesterday, symbolizing access to the Sweetsea and the Genebank beneath it.
The second stager is a member of the Board. She outranks the man in the tuxedo. She’s the client.
And she’s about to be murdered by an insurgent who runs straight at her and lobs a grenade.
Isako sprints. She dives for the bomb, landing on it as it hits the ground and explodes.
A blinding wall of light obliterates everything in her vision.
Knives of pain sear through her hands and arms and shred through all the nerves of her body.
She can’t isolate the pain or do anything to allay it; all she can do is writhe and scream on the ground as it wipes her mind free of everything except the unspeakable agony of dying.
Then she’s dead. The pain vanishes so suddenly it’s as if it was never there, and after the pain, euphoria.
It’s the best feeling, the relief and ecstasy of non-pain, better than any earthly pleasure.
It’s dark again, and Isako feels as if she’s floating weightless in the soft embrace of the universe before it began and after it ends.
Nothing can touch her. A sense of absolute peace and calm surrounds her like a cocoon, and she languishes in the quiet, motionless tranquility, not wanting it to end.
A tiny part of her still-conscious, rational mind knows that none of it is real.
The immersivisor and the electrical nerve stimulations in the haptic gloves work in conjunction with the sensory distorting and psychomanipulative effects of the sim-enhancing drugs—all for a purpose.
Because every licensing exam ends the same way: You die.
It doesn’t matter how well a candidate handles the scenario, whether the fake client is saved, whether they ultimately pass or fail the test. The message remains.
This is where the edge life leads. Accept it.
Isako figures actual death won’t feel much different from what she’s already been through. Hurts like hell for the first bit, but afterward, pure peace. It makes her feel okay about the real thing—which, she knows, is exactly what the Agency intends.
Unfortunately, this part of the simulation ends.
Isako returns to life reluctantly as the lights come back on in the room and the drugs wear off.
She opens her eyes to a blank room, its walls and floors softly lit and pebbly textured.
Feeling returns to her body and she realizes how miserably sore she is.
She’s lying on her side, right shoulder and hip pressed uncomfortably against the raised floor that used to be the ballroom stage.
The ballroom is gone, as are all the guests, the music, the entire illusion.
She wonders how long she was out. What felt like hours was likely only a couple of minutes.
“Motherfucker,” Isako groans. Her throat feels strained.
When she rolls over and gets to her hands and knees, she realizes she banged her left elbow diving onto the floor to catch the lobbed grenade.
Sitting back on her heels, she pulls off the immersivisor and gloves and wipes the sweat from her face.
Her surroundings lose their unreal blue tinge, and as the raised sections of flooring sink slowly down to ground level, the room reveals itself to be nothing more than a large, square box of blank surfaces.
She feels dehydrated and woozy, and her eyes hurt. Her vision still seems a bit fuzzy. She would like to sit and rest for a while, but a previously unseen door slides open on the far side of the room.
Grimacing, she gets to her feet. Though she moves slowly and deliberately, her knees flare up in protest, which pisses her off enough that she cusses them out under her breath.
Shut up, you traitors. All she did was business analysis, some running and jumping, a bit of simulated fighting, one false trip through death.
Twenty years ago, she would’ve handled it all with ease.
She can’t help but imagine what a younger version of herself would’ve thought of her performance today.
You peaked years ago. Now you’re old and slow.
She finds her longknife, fallen not far from where she was lying.
A good thing she didn’t roll over it in her false death throes.
She slides the blade back into the triggersheath, where it locks into place with a familiar, soft click and rotates straight and snug against her left thigh.
Maybe she isn’t who she used to be, but damned if she’s going to let that show here in the Agency.
She straightens her coat and pulls her disheveled hair back into a tight clasp.
Then she squares her shoulders and walks through the far door.