One Verse Multi, page 25
“Cheat codes,” Tidus said.
“Neat, but wouldn’t you lose nuance?” I asked.
“That’s the part we’re working out. How much nuance do you need?”
“Never thought about it.”
“Done,” Tidus said. “How long was that?”
“Three minutes,” Mason said. Tidus made a face, but I couldn’t tell if he was happy or not. He nodded once and then restarted the simulation.
“What about you?” I asked Del.
“Oh, I’m helping Mason.”
I looked back at Mason.
“I was thinking the VIP tech could actually help us fix the rift issue. Theoretically, we could use the relays we already have in the A-classes to amplify the frequency of each universe. That would strengthen the barrier. And we could close any rifts at the same time.”
“What’s holding you back?” I asked.
“Well, first of all, it’s hard to estimate the number of rifts. I’d need something to emit the frequency of that verse in order to amplify it through the relays. And I don’t know how strong to make the sound.”
“Can’t take the noise, get out of the concert,” Tidus said.
“I’d need the emitted sound to be high enough to stimulate the particles, but too high and I could accidently suck everyone back to their home-verse.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve seen it before,” Mason said. “On the Hub, we call it the Other Sock Phenomenon. When a verse becomes overamplified naturally, an object from that verse gets sucked back. It’s like the universe recalls parts of itself. Usually animal swarms do it, the emergence of cicadas, or pod whales singing.”
“That’s crazy. Would the relays be able to reach that high?” I asked.
“It’s a lower threshold than you think,” Mason said. He pointed at his computer and showed me the simulations he was running.
“Does your brain ever stop?” I asked.
Mason looked like he was going to answer, but then he paused. We all did. The room froze. The distinct and out-of-place smell of peanut butter told me someone had just tuned into the here-verse. We listened. As the silence crept, a small feeling started to grow in the pit of my stomach. Something was wrong.
The doorbell rang. The game room was directly under the hallway to the front door, so we could hear walking around over our heads. The silence stretched. Then there was the sound of something hard falling on the floor.
“What do you mean?” Hugo’s voice boomed. Hugo must have turned on the intercom.
“It’s like I said, Del Mar. You violated the security clauses in your contracts. We’re here to escort you back to HQ,” a stranger answered.
“We aren’t going anywhere,” Hugo said.
“You don’t have a choice.”
“Shit, this is bad,” Mason whispered.
“What about our work?” Hugo said.
“Don’t worry, it’s coming with us.” I didn’t like the tone in that guy’s voice. I knew it was HQ security.
“Mason,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder. He jumped with a small squeak but looked at me. “You have to dump everything.”
“I what?”
“We can’t let them have it. They’d know it all. They’d know where VIP is, how their tech works, that we know they’re killing counterparts. I think it’s a setup. Could you imagine what they would do with this?” I could hear the panic and worry in my own voice. “How did they find us?”
Mason seemed to think for a second. His eyes went sort of glassy, and I thought for a moment he would have a panic attack. But then his eyes focused sharp and clear on me, and he nodded. He went to his computers and started typing.
“Del,” I said, turning next on him. We could still hear the conversation over the intercom, and we could tell everyone else was doing what they could to try to slow the security detail down. Even Bowser was barking in a menacing way.
“What?” he said. He was standing with Margo’s book clutched to his chest as if it was the only thing he had left in the world.
“You have to go. Use your watch and walk out of here.”
“What?”
“Listen, if they find you here, you’re as good as dead. But you can leave now. Take Mason and Tidus with you.”
“Martin,” Tidus said.
“No, you have to.” I thumbed a few commands in my sequencer, then tried to hand it to Tidus, but he didn’t move.
“I won’t leave you. I won’t leave anyone. What about Bowser?”
“Come back for Bowser. Mason knows too much, Del is too much, and you’re too important.” Tidus let me step closer to him. He let me put the phone in his hands. “I’m not going to argue about this.”
“Why do you keep doing this? The risk—”
“Yeah,” I said, “It might be a risk, but this time it’s you who has to come rescue me.”
My pulse was like a thousand bees under my skin. The sound of footfalls overhead, moving down the hallways, branching and splitting off, felt like the most ominous thing in the world. “Mas, take them to the next universe over, wait it out, then come back. How long until it’s done deleting?”
“Eighty percent.”
“And it’s going to be total?”
“Total. It’ll be like no one ever used them.”
“Okay, I can manage the last twenty percent. Leave.”
No one moved.
“Leave,” I nearly screamed.
They jumped, then huddled together.
“Damn it, Martin,” Tidus said before he stepped forward and pulled me into a slightly off-center kiss.
The next second they were gone. I had just enough time to get into a chair, log into a computer, and bring my drones to life. I sent them to a different verse, selected an object randomly, and pulled it into this verse. The swivel chair from some poor soul’s office was big enough that the quantum tell was activated. I was trying to cover the others tuning. I sent the chair back and pulled it again. The computer warned me it would reboot in fifteen seconds. I let my hands fall away from the keys. The door nearly fell off its hinges as the security guard kicked it open. I jumped and put my hands almost comically high in the air.
“What the fuck are you doing?” the guy in front demanded. Four others were behind him.
“Nothing.” Just as I said this, all the computers in the room turned blue and flashed the restart screens. I and the five security guards watched the three seconds it took for them to blink back to life. All you could see was some generic MVP background.
“What the fuck are you doing?” the guard asked louder, emphasizing totally different syllables.
“Chillin’.”
“Are you Martin King?” a different one asked.
I nodded. “Is there a problem?”
“Time to pack it in, Martin,” the guard said.
* * *
The security team herded us into the front room. Everyone stared at me as I came up alone from the basement. I shook my head to signal that the others weren’t coming. I hoped they trusted me. I hoped they got the message. Their response was to look at the floor. Hugo was handcuffed and Wei and Luca were standing nearby. Kiki and Tamar were holding hands in a corner near the door. I was placed somewhere in the middle of the room.
The security guys were all wearing radios, and calls came in from all over the mansion that things were clear. No one said anything. Seconds after the all-clears, people started pouring back into the living room. They had us outnumbered three to one.
“Boss, there’s a dog,” one of the guys said.
“Leave him. There’s a cook who comes in the evenings. She’ll figure it out,” I lied, hurrying to keep the others from wrecking the cover I had built. Bowser bellowed from a back room. The security guards shrugged.
“This is everyone?” they asked.
We nodded. They led us out of the house into the snowy evening.
Section 25
A coup and I’m still a fucking prisoner
Security confiscated everyone’s sequencers. I lied and said mine was in my room back at HQ. Then they ushered us into the yard and into a different verse. The trip back to HQ was almost uncomfortably short. There was a private jet and then a private bus to a dark section of beach. It was isolated for the most part, a stretch of sand trapped behind private summer houses. Then we tuned into the dead-verse.
I spent most of the trip panic-strategizing things Mason, Tidus, and Del could do to help us. It was pointless. I didn’t know what we needed help from. I just knew in my core that the fallout from whatever this was would be bad. I also didn’t know where they would go. If Tidus stayed with them, their options were limited. And even if I could come up with a plan, I had no way of communicating it. I clenched my teeth so much that by the time we stepped on the beach in the HQ dead-verse, the pain in my jaw was almost as bad as it had been when I was in the hospital.
The colossal carcass of HQ, dark and unyielding against the water’s edge, was borderline horrifying. I knew that when damaged badly enough, the whole thing could be maneuvered to shore for repairs. I had just never seen it done. I was surprised by how little activity there seemed to be. It was even quiet inside. We crossed a few gangways working our way to the Hub, but we passed no one on the way in.
“Where is everyone?” I asked.
“Most people decided to go home because we’re doing repairs and will be shored for a while,” a guard said. She had a pleasant voice and had tried a few times to get one of us to engage with her. When that failed, she just offered us water. We didn’t say anything to her or to anyone else. If it weren’t for the cheap jokes from the guards, the trip would’ve been silent.
“It’s creepy,” Wei said.
“They’ll be back,” she said.
We were taken to the second level of the Hub. It looked like a storage room with big locking cages, like in a cheesy cop movie. They put us each into a cell. Mine had a cot, a blanket, and a table with water and food but no chair. I stepped inside, and they shut the gate behind me, locking the door with a padlock and chain. HQ had never prepared for a security threat as big as the one they were accusing us of.
“This seems like a lot,” Hugo said as they removed the handcuffs. He was my direct neighbor. He rubbed his wrists and stepped into the cage without any protest.
“Hey, until we can figure out what you were up to in a B-class verse with MVP tech, we can’t be too cautious,” the main security guy said.
“When do we talk to someone?” I asked.
“The team extracting the tech from the house will be back tomorrow. And then it’s just a matter of figuring out what you did.”
It was funny. These people had been in the business too long. They had lived most of their lives in the dead-verse with the rest of us. Having shared so much of the same space made security less like sentries and more like bouncers for a local bar. Aside from the silence and the initial conflict, we had all been civil with each other. It made me wonder what they thought of the people giving them orders. How would knowing they worked for stone-cold murderers make them feel? Did they already know?
The group who had taken us from Wei’s mansion left, replaced by two fresh guards who announced their names and that they would be just outside the door should anyone need them. They seemed less friendly than the others, so they were probably newer to MVP.
“What the actual fuck,” Kiki groaned. I couldn’t see them. They were farthest from me, on the other side of a cage full of metal lockers. In between me and the lockers was Hugo. Wei was across from me, Tamar across from Hugo, and Luca across from Kiki. Luca and I made eye contact at some point, and I tried to smile at him.
“God damn it, how’d they find us?” Wei asked, pacing back and forth. “I thought we had it locked in.”
“No one is perfect, no use fussin’ over a broken urn when what’s inside is already dead,” Hugo said.
“That doesn’t help,” Tamar said. Hugo shrugged and put his hands behind his head in that I’m-relaxed-but-only-for-show way he had.
“I agree with Hugo,” I said. I lay down on my cot, which was like a stone slab. It was lying down, though, and I needed it.
“Martin, what do you think is going to happen?” Kiki asked.
“Someone has a plan,” I said, trying to sound offhand. In reality, I was banking on Mason, Del, and Tidus. My only conclusion from the countless scenarios I tried to play out on the plane was to stall. I needed to buy as much time as I could.
“I hope you’re right,” Kiki said.
That was explicit enough. Kiki had basically asked if I knew what I was doing, and I had effectively said I did. Their last comment wasn’t meant to convey any hope. It was a threat.
Most of us passed the night restlessly. I watched Hugo, Wei, and Tamar move around their cages. Luca sat near the door of his. I assumed he could see everyone else and the door to the room from there. I couldn’t bring myself to move much. I just lay on my cot, which was only one one-hundredth of a degree better than standing. The pain in my chest was so bright, even yawning made me want to scream. I ate the food and drank the water, then called the guards at some point because I had to pee. A new guard came in a little after ten a.m. To my surprise, he stopped in front of my door.
“Hello,” I said when he didn’t say anything. This guy was tall and unremarkable looking.
“You need to come with us,” he said. A second guy about half his size stepped out from behind him and went to Hugo’s door.
“You too,” the second guy said.
“Okay.” I rolled myself onto my feet and went to the gate. Hugo shrugged and gave me a fake confused look. We had expected at least this much. I was already prepared for a long series of questions. I was just surprised Luca, the data lab leader, hadn’t been included.
“Martin, Hugo,” Luca said, coming as close as his fencing would allow.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I think I know what this is about.”
I smiled at him as Hugo and I followed the guards out of the room. Two more guards met us in the hallway, and we were led sci-fi-villain style through HQ to a data lab. The layout was exactly like Luca’s, only it flowed in the opposite direction. A woman came out to meet us. She was about my height with blue eyes and red hair that was in a straight, severe-looking ponytail.
“Emma Elizabeth?” Hugo said.
“Hugo! My God, it’s you?” she said, her face turning a bright red. “When they said—”
“Never mind that, ask your questions,” Guard One said.
Emma Elizabeth was surprisingly calm and turned a steely gaze on the guard. “Hugo doesn’t have the expertise to do what I suspect was done, not by half.”
“No offense,” she said to Hugo.
“Not him,” Guard One said, pointing at me. “Him.”
“Him?” Emma Elizabeth asked.
“Me?”
“Who are you?” she asked me in a friendly tone.
“Martin King.”
She turned a pinker sort of red and grinned. “No, you can’t be. You’re him? Martin King as in Martin King?”
She pointed to a photo on the wall. I instantly knew it as a rift still, like the one Luca had given me.
“Oh jeez,” I said, feeling a genuine amount of embarrassment. “Yeah, that’s me. What rift is that?”
“That’s the Chicken Problem Rift,” she said. I groaned and covered my face. The Chicken Problem Rift was a rift I had closed on a farm, only the area was so overrun with chickens that I had to climb a tree to get away from them.
“All right, all right, stop with the circle jerk,” Guard One snapped. “Well?”
“Well what?” Emma Elizabeth said.
“Your questions.”
She nearly laughed herself to the floor. “Martin King is pretty amazing, but whoever did what they did to those computers was a genius. Also, no offense, Martin.”
“None taken. Do you have our tech?” I asked.
Step one of the plan: stall. It seemed to be working. My gut had been right to have Mason dump the info on the computers. Emma Elizabeth would have had all the answers by now. But even she was reluctant to work with the guards, which only made the warning signal in my guts louder. I had to wonder what she knew. The evidence on the white boards and the notes we printed were incriminating enough, but I didn’t know if that stuff was here. Or if she had seen it.
“I do,” Emma Elizabeth said, putting her hands into her pockets. “I have the hardware at least. Whoever cleaned them did a seriously professional job. And as I have told these fools, there’s nothing left and no way to recover it.”
“Really?” Hugo said, sincerely impressed. I also had to wonder what he was thinking. I wanted so badly to fill him in, but I knew it was better if he knew nothing.
It was time to move on to step two: bluff.
“I might not’ve been the one to do it,” I said, my voice as indifferent as I could make it. “But I gave the order.”
“You what?” Emma Elizabeth said.
“What do you mean?” Hugo asked, his voice dropping as if he were trying to have a private conversation with me.
“What?” some guard said on top of that.
“Why?” Emma Elizabeth asked.
I sighed and then squared my shoulders. The next part of the plan seemed to divine itself as I spoke it. “The reason is simple. The information on those computers was the most damning information in MVP history. And if Don or the other founders want it, they’re going to have to go through me to get it.”
“What the fuck?” Guard One said. He took a series of menacing steps toward me. I tried to back up but only backed into more guards.
