Page 11 of Godslayer
And it’s not about people. It’s not about people at all.
It’s about code.
But that’s all Sweep classified and even though I did tell Clara about the infection my team got, she’s different. She’s part of itin a big way so she deserves to know some of it. But the ordinary person standing on the platform of the underground waiting for a train does not have, and should not have, any fucking idea of what’s really happening in the Omega Outlands.
Seeing me, though. All dressed up like this. It’s enough to spark their curiosity. Kids begin to point to us, parents hurriedly hushing them up as we pass.
Clara must notice, but she doesn’t say anything. I like this about Clara. She’s observant and smart. She knows when to just go along and when to ask questions. It’s a life-saving skill in the line of work I’m in.
The line of work she’s now in too.
The train comes, people get off, people board, but we stay still, waiting for it to pull away. Then, once it’s gone, Clara and I walk over to the edge of the platform. I jump down and offer her my hand.
She takes it and jumps without comment, looking up at me with a smile when she lands.
“Partners,” I say.
“Till the end of days,” she responds.
Then, hand in hand, we walk into the darkness of the empty tunnel.
Claraand I had a conversationabout the train tunnels the day after Delta gave me the deployment and I showed her the map of the train line that was on my overlay.
Of course, she knows what a train is and we rode one to get here.
The concept of this whole thing is best introduced this way. As something familiar.
Because the train we’re looking for now isn’t familiar. It’s not even part of this world.
My overlay tells me we’ve got three minutes to find the entrance we’re looking for before another train comes barreling down this tunnel, and even though that kind of time limit is a bit stressful, it only takes about thirty seconds of walking before we find what we’re looking for.
Clara waits, silent, as I scan it. “Yeah. This is it.” Then I grab her hand because she can’t see in the dark, and we walk forward.
“How far do we have to go?” she asks. No panic in that question. Completely calm.
“About a hundred paces.”
“And there’s a door in here?”
That’s how I described it. “Yeah. A door. I’ll show you. There.” I point with my free hand. “That’s it.” We walk over to it, and when I pull on the handle, find it unlocked. We enter, me first this time, and she follows, holding on to my ruck with loose fingers just to keep herself oriented.
My overlay lights up with data, and I stop, letting all the information filter in. There’s a new control panel on my readout screen—one that operates this room, which is handy, but confusing—so I find the tab for the lights and activate them.
The place illuminates with blue light the same color as spark.
Clara and I are both silent as we look around. Me, because my overlay is lit up like a fuckin’ sun with data and even though my augmented brain gets all this information in a millisecond, it takes my human one a moment to sort it out.
Her, I surmise, because the room from her perspective is completely empty.
I’m still turning things on and off on my display when she speaks. “OK. What am I looking at?”
Which is the exact right question to ask. “You’re lookin’ at nothin’, darlin’. But I’m looking at… many, many options. Give me a sec to find the one we need.”
“OK.”
The overlay is crowded with dimensions. One pressed against the other, pressed against the other, pressed against the other like windows arranged in row. The way you might find them in a warehouse for storage.
Except these windows are all portals to other places. But because windows are transparent, I’m gettin’ glimpses of all these worlds layered over the others. It’s a fuckin’ mess.
