The Fangirl touched down in the woods outside Viktor’s parents’ summerhome. Misto cut the power to the thrusters and the Repulsivators, and the car settled down onto the ground. He and Gadget got out first, followed by Viktor, Mystikite, Buffy, and then Darmok. The woods were eerily quiet. Gadget could see the summerhome, just up ahead in a clearing. It looked deserted. And there, parked beside it, was the Zarcturean flying saucer, also looking abandoned. The summerhome was dark — no lights were on. It looked as though nobody was home, but he knew better. Dizzy was in there. So was Ravenkroft.

  “Okay, so now what do we do?” asked Mystikite. “It’s not like we can go knock on the door and pretend we’re Jehova’s Witnesses, or something.”

  “No, it isn’t,” said Misto. “Besides. If I know Ravenkroft, he’s got this place rigged with booby traps and defenses. We need to be careful.”

  “Oh,” said Darmok, “you mean like that thing?” She pointed to their left. There suddenly came flying at them what looked like a vacuum cleaner, whirring and floating on an antigravity beam and rigged with two large churning sawblades mounted on a pair of rotating robotic arms that whirled on either side of it. Buffy let out a small scream as the thing headed right for her. Misto pulled out his remaining Decimator pistol and fired an antimatter charge at it. The vacuum cleaner exploded in a firestorm of blue-white light and disintegrated into a shower of sparks.

  “Look out!” cried Gadget. “Everybody take cover!” From the right, there came another whirring sound, and there swooped in another sawblade-armed vacuum cleaner, this one firing at them with a pair of Interphase Pistols attached to either side of it. They all ducked for cover to try and avoid the pattern of fire the thing laid down — luckily it didn’t have very good aim, most of its shots bouncing off the Fangirl’s metal frame or plowing into the ground — and this time it was Gadget who took aim and fired. He missed; the bolt from his Decimator pistol went wild and hit a nearby tree instead — causing a shower of sparks to erupt and felling a branch that crackled and snapped to the ground — and so he took aim and fired again, and missed a second time. Viktor stood up and fired his Lightning Gun at the thing, and scored a direct hit; the Lightning bolt coursed through it, lighting up the forest as well, and the attacking vacuum cleaner let out a shower of electrical sparks and fell to the ground, sparking and motionless.

  “Nice shot, Vic,” said Mystikite, standing back up from his hiding spot.

  “Well, I try my best,” said Viktor.

  “Damn good thing we have you along, then,” said Misto.

  The forest grew uneasily quiet around them. Gadget’s heart beat quickly. Misto was right. Ravenkroft had the place rigged, alright. There would be more where these two came from, they could be sure.

  “Come on guys,” said Gadget. “Let’s go. But let’s be on the lookout for . . . well, for more flying vacuum cleaners. And other weird-kinda shit.”

  “You don’t have to warn my Vampiric ass,” said Mystikite.

  Slowly, deliberately, they began to creep toward the summerhome, sticking together as much as possible, weapons drawn and ready. Gadget put two fingers to his temple and telepathically scanned the entire area, trying to pick up on Dizzy’s thought-stream. Buffy activated her powers and put them on standby — a blue aura of flame enveloped her body and clothing — but did not extend the actual fiery tendrils just yet.

  Suddenly, from off to either side, Gadget heard noises. He looked around to see what it was. “Goddamn it,” he said once he saw. “Not these things again!”

  “Ah shit,” intoned Mystikite.

  “Well fuck,” said Misto.

  “Oh crap,” added Darmok.

  “Dammit!” said Viktor. “I thought we killed all my Children!”

  “And let’s all just parse that sentence for a moment, shall we?” said Buffy.

  Coming at them from either side at a run, just as they cleared the forest and came upon the summerhome, were two contingents of Biomechanoids, with ten soldiers to each unit, with each soldier armed with two katana swords on its back and each carrying an energy-weapon. The Biomech in the lead of eaach unit pointed at them and squealed a command to its followers, and they all fanned out, drew their energy-weapons, took aim, and —

  Gadget quickly concentrated and threw up a forcefield to protect them from the twenty Biomechs’ weapons-fire as the creatures assaulted them with their energy-weapons. They would soon — possibly very quickly — figure out that this line of attack wasn’t working, and would then attack on foot. It was their standard strategy. Well, when they did, they wouldn’t like what they got in return! Buffy was their ace in the hole . . .

  “Goddamn it,” said Misto, reading his Decimator pistol. “Now what’ll we do?”

  “We fight ‘em,” said Gadget. “What else can we do? Here, Misto.” He handed Misto the other Decimator pistol. “You’ll need this more than me.”

  “Thanks,” said Misto, taking it from him.

  “Antimatter charges,” said Darmok. “Use antimatter charges, Misto. Just disintegrate the lousy fucks.”

  “It’s always a fight with these things,” said Mystikite. He straightened the Geist-Verst?rker unit sitting atop his head. “Always. They never wanna just sit down and work out their differences over a nice game of Magic: The Gathering. Nooo. They gotta always fight you.”

  “My poor Children,” said Viktor, shaking his head. “I wish now I’d never made them. How could I have been such a fool? Such a careless wretch.”

  “We’re all careless wretches at some point, as scientists,” said Misto, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Walter and I learned that lesson a long time ago. Or at least we should have.”

  “I know,” said Viktor. “But that realization doesn’t take away the pain I’ve caused. The trouble I’ve made. Or the chaos I’ve created. It only makes me suffer right along with everyone else.”

  “But it’s a good kind of suffering,” said Misto. “Because like the scientific method, it brings with it knowledge. And knowledge is power. The power to change, to make things better. The power to make it right.”

  “I suppose you have a point,” said Viktor, nodding, his brow furrowed in thought.

  “Fuck! Guys! They’re getting ready to breach the forcefield!” yelled Gadget.

  Ten of the Biomechanoids kept on firing at the forcefield with their energy-weapons, but the every other one — the other ten — now marched forward, and stepped through the forcefield. Buffy let loose with her fire-attack. The twin tentacles of fire shot out of her body and writhed through the air, twisting and turning, and plunged into two of the Biomechs head-on, roasting them alive as they plunged through their chest cavities and out the other side of them. They dropped in their tracks, smoking, and the tendrils of flame whipped around in the air and sought out two more victims, wrapping around their bodies and burning them up in their tracks. The others pulled out their energy-weapons once they were on the other side of the forcefield, and Darmok and Misto opened fire on them, taking cover behind two nearby trees as the Biomechs opened fire as well. Blasts of energy flew back and forth. Mystikite engaged his Geist-Verst?rker unit, and two more of the Biomechs went flying up into the air and cracked through two large tree branches, causing them to burst, shattering their spines and then slammed them back down into the ground — hard, their bodies hitting the packed earth with dull thuds. Finally, Buffy killed the last two with fire, the fire-serpents snaking through the air and coursing straight through their faces, melting their flesh and burning their heads clean off their bodies. Five of the other Biomechanoids — the ones still firing on the forcefield — broke off their attack and headed in as well; they marched forward, two of them drawing their katanas, the other three drawing and firing their energy weapons as they marched and crossed over through the forcefield. Darmok and Misto barraged them with their Decimator pistols, and Misto took a hit. Viktor fired his Lightning Gun at the Biomech that had hit Misto, frying it in its tracks with a blue-white bolt of electricty; it dropped into a smoldering heap of flesh and studded leather.

  “Gah, fuck!” Misto cried out, the blast tagging him right in the shoulder. He slid down the side of the tree where he had taken cover, grasping at the ugly, bloody burn mark on his upper arm. The the mixture of blood, singed blue fur, and crimson leather looked nasty. Darmok ceased fire and went to him; so did Buffy, breaking off her fire-attack. The Biomechs pressed their advantage and came on stronger, the two with katana swords getting closer, the three with the energy-weapons moving in. Gadget wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold the forcefield. He could feel it getting weaker; the longer he held it, he could feel the energy he was channeling to it growing slippery in his mind’s grasp, could feel it getting harder and harder to maintain. Come on, he thought, just a little bit longer. We can do this. We can beat these things! Viktor fired his Lightning Gun again, this time at the two baring their katanas; the lighting hit one of them, the electricity coursing through the blade it held and zapping back into its body, throwing it a good ten feet back and slamming it into a nearby tree-trunk; sparks flew from its body as it jittered and danced, its limbs twitching and smoking. It fell over, dead.

  Gadget winced from the sharp pain that he suddenly had behind his eyes; it was too much, he couldn’t hold it any longer. Something was wrong here; he had held the forcefield for longer than this when he’d been on the rooftop of the Renaissance Regency, so what was the problem here? Why was he having trouble with it now? He didn’t know. But whatever the problem was, it was serious. He collapsed to one knee as the forcefield slipped beyond his grasp and fell. As it did, the five Biomechs continuing to fire at it stopped, and then those five and the remaining four moving in on them swarmed. Viktor fired his Lightning Gun again and killed one of them, Darmok blasted at them her Decimator and took out another, and Mystikite engaged his Geist-Verst?rker. Two down, seven remaining. The Biomech with katanas went flying backward — thanks to Mystikite, Gadget presumed — its neck snapping from telekinetic force, but the now-remaining-six got in close, fast. Three of them stowed their energy-weapons and pulled out their katanas, which they summarily put to Misto, Buffy, and Viktor’s throats. The other three trained their energy-weapons on Gadget, Darmok, and Mystikite’s heads at point-blank range.

  “Buffy!” cried Gadget, turning to her. “Do your thing!”

  “I . . . I can’t,” she said, sounding as though she were in some slight discomfort. She screwed up her face, as though in pain, and winced. “I don’t know what’s wrong, but something . . . something is blocking me, somehow. I can’t use my powers anymore.”

  “We’re in a psionic dampening field,” said Darmok, nodding to herself. “I’ve seen it before. There’s one in use, here. You must’ve activated it when you first started using your Mind-Weirding Helm, Gadget. It doesn’t so much as prevent psionics, it just hampers their effectiveness.”

  “Well how the hell would Ravenkroft even know to have one of those?” asked Gadget. “He didn’t even know that I or my powers existed until today.” The Biomech that had its energy-weapons pointed at his head nudged him with the barrel of its weapon. It wanted him to walk toward the summerhome. The other Biomechs did the same to their prisoners, as well, prodding them to stand and march toward the old, mansion-like house.

  “Goddamn this really hurts,” said Misto, still clasping at his shoulder. A cold sweat had broken out on his furry brow.

  “Doesn’t look too serious,” said Darmok.

  Misto tried to smile. “’Tis but a scratch. Merely a flesh wound.’”

  Buffy tried to soothe him by stroking the blue fur of his arm. “It’s okay. We’ll get you fixed up, Misto.” She turned to the Biomech that had her prisoner. “He needs medical attention.” In response, the Biomech poked her with its katana, urging her to move along with the rest of them. “Okay, okay,” she said. “Fine.”

  The Biomechs took Misto and Darmok’s Decimator pistols, and Viktor’s Lightning Gun. They raised their hands in surrender.

  “In answer to your question, Gadget,” said Darmok as the Biomechs marched them toward the summerhome, “he didn’t need to know about you or your powers. All he needed to be was paranoid enough that someone would develop telepathy, or telekinesis, and use it against him somehow.”

  “I can confirm that that’s the truth of it,” said Viktor. “Ravenkroft was afraid that after Alicia was revived, she would come back with the same powers she had as before she died . . . and that she would try to kill us both using them. So he engineered a psionic containment field that would nullify or dampen her abilities.”

  “Well that’s a comforting thought,” said Buffy.

  “So we’re being taken prisoner, that’s just great,” said Mystikite.

  “This may wind up lending us a tactical advantage,” said Darmok. “We’ll have to wait and see, though.”

  The Biomechs marched them single-file to the summerhome. A light came on in the front windows, and the front door opened. And there, before them, stood Ravenkroft, grinning from ear to ear.

  “Well, well, well,” said Ravenkroft, standing before them. “What have we here? Ah, yes. You must be the ‘friends’ that Weatherspark spoke of so highly. I can see why she puts so much faith in you.” The snide sarcasm in his voice was enough on its own to make Gadget want to punch his lights out.

  The Biomechs had closed the doors behind them. The six of them stood in the living room of the summerhome — a.k.a., from the looks of things, the main part of Ravenkroft’s laboratory — with three of the Biomechs arrayed behind them with energy-weapons pointed at their backs. They could see Dizzy in her Evangeliojaeger, magnetized to the operating table, and the Machine he had her hooked up to, right in the other room. Dizzy’s Guitar sat against one wall. Just seeing her like that was enough to almost spur Gadget into action, right there. Fat lot of good it would do him if he did act, though; he had no weapons, his Helm was useless in here — the dampening field had only gotten stronger the closer they had come to the summerhome, and now that they were in it, its effects were complete and total — and plus, there were the Biomechs right behind him and their weapons to consider.

  “So now what, Ravenkroft?” said Misto. “What’s your end-game, here? Why are you doing all this, anyway?”

  “Evolution,” said Ravenkroft, almost immediately. “The Human race needs to move forward, Michaelson. It’s the grand experiment that you and Viktor — and Walter — began all those years ago, finally coming to fruition at long last. The Eidolon . . . they represent all that we could be, all that we could ever become. They are the pinnacle, the ultimate destination for all that the Human race could ever strive for. And now, thanks to me, they are coming. Coming here, to rule us, to show us the way. The Zarcturean, too. They’re the Children of the Eidolon, their heirs, and they’re coming as well. I’ve invited them both to come and stay for a while, to rule this world of ours, to light the way for Humanity along Evolution’s rocky road. And they will. Weatherspark will be the first in a new breed of Human Being. She will . . . Become. And in her Becoming, a new Way Forward will open for us. You’ll see. You’ll all see. You’ll all be witnesses.” He sighed, and sounded wistful for a moment. “Right here, in this very house, you’ll see the gateway to the future open up . . . and swallow the world.”

  “Jesus dude,” said Mystikite. “Dizzy was right. You really are cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, you know that?”

  “As flibberty as a gibbet,” muttered Buffy, nodding.

  “Yes,” said Misto, “I know all of that. But what’s your angle in all this, Ravenkroft? What’s your personal stake in all of this? What did they offer you?”

  Ravenkroft smiled and spread his arms. “I am but a humble scientist, Michaelson. Like you. I asked only for permission to continue my work under their rule. To be allowed the freedom to do as I needed to advance the cause of science under their benevolent control, while the rest of the human race’s free will is subsumed under their authority. To be a slave-master among slaves. A go-between, their . . . official ambassador.”

  “In other words,” said Darmok, “you sold out Humanity to the Zarcturean and the Eidolon in order to save your own skin. What a despicable creature you are.”

  Ravenkroft only smiled. “We all do what we must to survive, do we not? Again, evolution, my dear. It is what drives us forward, gives us purpose. It is what calls out in our blood for us to keep moving, keep working, keep striving for the next goalpost in life, no matter how unattainable or unachievable it may seem. It is why I do what I do, and why Weatherspark does what she does, and why you do what you do. It is what has led each of us to our respective fates, and what has led you to me right now. It’s all so very clockwork and deterministic, when you think about it. The Blind Watchmaker’s hands at work, in everything we do, in all the cosmos, everywhere at once. No intelligence to it, really . . . just the sheer force of cosmic expansion, forever reaching outward toward an unknowable destiny. I like that. There’s poetry in it.”

  “Poetry my ass,” said Misto. He drew himself up to his full seven feet of height, his looming wolfen form towering over Ravenkroft. The two Biomechs behind them steadied themselves and backed up a pace, aiming their weapons just at him now. “You just like it because you think it frees you of any responsibility for your actions and gives you free reign to be a total asshole. Well it doesn’t. It may be the truth, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t come with its own set of responsibilities. The ‘Blind Watchmaker’ may be blind, but that doesn’t mean it can’t build in a conscience into its creations. Doesn’t mean it can’t architect a creature capable of moral reasoning on its own. There may be no such thing as Intelligent Design, but we’re here, and we’re intelligent, and we are capable of ethics and moral reasoning, even if the universe isn’t. And the whole argument about free will? It’s true we may not have free will. Our brains may decide to act before our conscious minds give the go-ahead, all on their own. But that doesn’t mean we can’t think about free will; that doesn’t mean we can’t act and think as though it exists, and that we can’t consider that there are varying degrees of freedom in our actions. And that along with those varying degrees, there come varying degrees of responsibility, as well. Your whole moral system is based on the idea of ‘Oh fuck it, the universe is rigged against us, so let’s just go with that and see what happens.’ Well my moral system says ‘Oh yeah? Well the universe may be rigged against us, but we can rig back, motherfucker.’ So there. That’s what I think of you and your philosophy, Ravenkroft. It sucks, and you suck. Now let Dizzy out of that machine, or I’m afraid we’re gonna have to get tough with you. Asshole.”

  Ravenkroft barked a laugh, then covered his mouth. “Oh. I’m sorry. I just . . . I’m so sorry, but I couldn’t help but laugh at that! My dear Michaelson. You’re surrounded by my Biomechanoid Children, and you have no weapons other than your rather large, furry fists. I on the other hand have the Biomechs, their weapons, and . . .” He raised the arm of his Evangeliojaeger. He obviously had had a spare, having destroyed the one he had been wearing during the battle at the Renaissance Regency. Why wasn’t he wearing the Geist-Verst?rker unit anymore? Didn’t it give him a sizable advantage psionically? Oh, right — the psionic inhibitor field. It would’ve been useless in here. He aimed the Interphase Pistol on its wrist right at Gadget, and Gadget tensed-up, clenching his fists. If only the damn Mind-Weirding Helm was working! Ravenkroft continued: “So you see? You’re out-matched on every level here. So barring some miraculous intervention, I really don’t see any of you coming out on top here. Sure, that may be cheating a little — it’s not a fair fight by any measure — but who cares about that?”

  “That was always your style, even when you were part of me, you know that?” said Viktor. “Cheating, that is. No one never played a game of chess with me where I didn’t try to cheat whenever the other person would get up to go to the bathroom. I wouldn’t move the pieces behind the other person’s back or anything like that. No, I wouldn’t cheat like that. I wasn’t that bad. No. I would simply wait ’til they got up, then get Walter or Alicia to help me with my strategy, basically play for me, advise the heck out of me before they got back. You remember, Michaelson.”

  “Yep,” said Misto. “I do indeed. Those were the days. Then he’d act like his new strategy had been his idea all along. And if you have his memories, Ravenkroft, then you know — “

  “That he would still lose,” said Ravenkroft, his smile faltering ever-so-slightly. He licked his lips. “I remember. But I am not you, Viktor. And you are not me. I never was you. I am my own man. I always have been, and now, I always will be. You are redundant. I don’t know why I haven’t had you killed yet. Perhaps it’s the sentimentalist in me. Wait. I have one of those? Hmm. Interesting. I guess I do, after all.”

  “Ravenkroft,” said Viktor, stepping forward. “listen to me. Let Weatherspark go. Use me instead. Please. Think of the symmetry in that. Your oldest nemesis — your true nemesis, me — becoming the vehicle for your greatest triumph.”

  “Mmm. No,” said Ravenkroft. “That would not work. Your new body is synthetic, remember? It would be totally inappropriate for the transferral procedure. Besides. You are not my oldest nemesis, Viktor. Walter is my oldest nemesis. And thus so is his daughter. By doing this to her — by corrupting her — by turning her into one of the Eidolon — I am perverting Walter Weatherspark’s legacy beyond any hope of redemption or reversal. I am doing to her — to him — exactly what he did to you. You should be helping me, not chastising me or trying to talk me out of it.”

  “But Ravenkroft, she’s — ”

  Suddenly, the lights flickered and dimmed with a loud humming noise, then came back on again. Ravenkroft looked up at them, then returned his attention to Viktor and the others. “As I was saying. I want you all alive to see this, to witness what is about to happen here. You’ll forgive my hospitality . . . it isn’t what it should be. And after the Eidolon crosses over . . . after Weatherspark is . . . reborn . . . I’m afraid you’re all redundant, at that point. And then, I’m further afraid, you will all have to be killed. Which is convenient, because the Eidolon will be hungry after its long journey across the dimension barrier, and no doubt will want to feed on something.”

  “You won’t get away with this, Ravenkroft,” said Gadget, finally speaking up. “We’ll stop you. I don’t know how, but we’ll stop you.” It was all he could bring himself to say. What else could he say? What else could he do? Nothing. The Biomechs had guns to his back, the Mind-Weirding Helm wasn’t working, Buffy’s fire-powers were useless, and even with all of Misto’s strength, they couldn’t overpower the Biomechs and Ravenkroft, nor evade all their weapons at such close range, and with nothing to duck behind but lab equipment that was too far away. Damn it! Their only hope was really Dizzy herself, and it appeared she was out for the count. It occurred to him that this could be it; they really could die here, in this old Viktorian home out in the middle of nowhere, gunned down by these terrifying creatures with energy-weapons, reduced to ashes by this madman and his machines. He would never see his mother again, nor would he ever graduate from college. He would never take his meds again. Would never see his therapist again. Would never get to hang out with Mystikite or Buffy again. Goddamn it, there had to be a way out of this! He did not want to die!

  Pretty far cry from where you were the other day, a voice inside him said.

  Go away, he told the voice. Not now.

  Oh? the voice retorted. What’s the matter? Don’t like hearing the truth?

  Shut up, he told it. This isn’t the time for that. Of course I don’t want to die. What, do you think I’m stupid or something?

  I’m just sayin’, said the voice. You were pretty gung-ho on the idea sitting at the kitchen table the other day. What changed your mind?

  “My dear boy,” replied Ravenkroft, grinning at him, “if I were you, I would put more emphasis on the ‘I don’t know how’ part of that sentence.” The lights flickered again. “What is going on here?” he said, mostly to himself. He returned his attention to Gadget. “Yes, definitely more emphasis on that. Now then. If you’ll all step this way, you’ll get a much better view of the transformation sequence as it happens in real time. That’s right . . . this way.”

  He motioned for them to follow him. The Biomechs nudged them forward with the muzzles of their weapons.

  When she had first been created, Pris had been programmed with a simple set of directives; one of those had been to assist her father with bringing back the woman she would eventually come to regard as her long-lost mother, Alicia. She would later generalize this into a desire to help people in general, a genuine need to do good, which would even later develop into a passion for being a helper and an altruistic individual. She didn’t know this consciously; it was something that operated deep in the core of her being. It was what urged her onward even now, to help Dizzy . . . that and her desire for vengeance upon Ravenkroft. For killing her. And for what he had tried to do to her Father. What he had done to him. And what he had done to Alicia, the lost mother she had never gotten a chance to know.

  Presently, she reached into the bottomless depths of the pocket of her leather jacket — a “portable hole,” of sorts — and pulled out her Portal Gun. A steampunk-themed ray gun, about two and a half feet long, with a wide glass barrel and with a large coil of thin, tightly-wrapped copper wire inside it, the glass pieces held together by golden rivets and brass fittings. Multiple wires and hoses protruded from the those, and snaked their way back along the glass barrel toward a large cube-shaped device on the butt-end, which looked like a six-sided, densely-packed circuitboard more “futuristic” in character. Protruding from the front end of the gun were two crossbow-like limbs, only made out of crystal, with several antennae-like wires in the shapes of bat-wing bones spreading out through them. The trigger mechanism had a series of four brass dials next to it, located on the back of the wooden grip, and tiny four digital readouts placed next to them. There were also two toggle switches mounted on the opposite side of the stock, labeled “OPEN” and “SEAL.”

  “What in the name of — ?” began Dizzy. “Now that . . . I’ve never seen one of those. What the frell does that do? Make killer cappuccinos, keyword being ‘killer?’”

  “Nope,” said Pris. “It does this.” She aimed the gun at the space directly in front of them, flicked the switch to “OPEN,” and pulled the trigger. A purple blast of energetic goo shot out of the gun and then came to a halt in space a few feet before them, and melted in the air into a vertical-standing puddle, which then grew thin and translucent, and then became transparent . . . and there, on the other side, they beheld a hole in space that glowed at the edges and that hovered a few feet from where they stood in the Cathedral, just hanging there sideways in the air, waiting for them to jump through it. On the other side awaited a smoky series of shifting images, their destination unclear. Pris felt the connection come online, much as a flesh-person might hear a random door being opened somewhere in their house, and would know for certain that it led to the front lawn. It led to a place she had hidden within the code of an abandoned simulation she’d managed to hack into and firewall-off from the rest of the NeuroScape. Yeah, for now, Pris told herself.

  “Ah, I see, said the blind girl,” said Dizzy. “Now where does this go, exactly?”

  “It goes somewhere else,” said Pris. “A protected memory space within the NeuroScape, one level up in the simulation. He can’t track us there. It’ll buy us time to mount an assault on him, and a way back to where he has your Avatar — or its shell-pointer — held prisoner. We have to be quick, before he figures out what we’re doing and unleashes the Shadow-Wolves.”

  “The Shadow-Wolves?” asked Dizzy. “That doesn’t sound too good. What are Shadow-Wolves?”

  Pris sighed. “The Shadow-Wolf NeuroScape virus — one of a very few of its kind — is artificially intelligent, and is insanely clever. Hell, it’s almost a synthetic intelligence in its own right, and I would know . . . I designed the fucker, once upon a time in the early days of my existence. It was a technical exercise that Father gave me, and believe me, I curse my own genius in passing that test with making the Shadow-Wolves the ultimate beasts of prey. They look sort of like a far more dire version of a Direwolf. They’ve got all black fur and glowing eyes, with a hunch-backed look to them, and each one stands about half as tall as your average person. They walked on all fours. Their snouts have powerful jaws that can snap the virtual bones in an avatar’s arm if they bite down on you hard and quick enough. They prefer to maul and gore their prey before consuming what remains of it. They’re nasty. I wish I’d never designed them. But yeah . . . if he unleashes those on us, we’ll have major trouble. That’s if he figures out that you’re consciousness isn’t presently being invaded by the Goat-Demon and that . . . alien thing in that virtual laboratory of his.”

  “Well let’s just be sure that these ‘Shadow-Wolf’ things don’t catch up to us,” said Dizzy. “That sounds like a plan, right?”

  “Yes, but just in case they do,” said Pris, “I’ve planned ahead. I’ve hacked us together a couple of antiviral agents. While we’ve been talking, I kickstarted a side process in another processor thread that helped me put them together.” She reached into either pocket of her jacket once more — she really loved doing this; she had never gotten to impress anyone other than Father before — and pulled out the Shockwave Cannons she had designed. From the moment she had first designed the Shadow-Wolf virus, in her youth, she had known these would be a necessity, and so she had planned them from the beginning. It had been easy to sim-hack them together now. And now, she produced them for Dizzy: A pair of large, cannon-like ray guns, that had a definite “1960’s sci-fi film” flair to them: The stocks and grips were made of a shiny black plastic; the barrels were gleaming, silvery, elongated ellipsoids with coils of copper-tubing wrapped around them, and had glass spheres that sat on their butt-ends, filled with some sort of purple, glowing liquid. On their business ends, they had what looked like nozzles with spindles of wire wrapped around them. She continued: “These are my Shockwave Cannons . . . and no, sadly, they do not turn into giant robots or boom-boxes voiced by Frank Welker. They have the ’Magical Weapon,’ ‘Ranged Weapon,’ ‘Close-Quarters Mêlée,’ ‘Works Anywhere,’ and of course, the powerful ‘Esoteric Magic Damage’ flags all turned ’On’ by default. It does two-D-20 fire and four-D-20 lightning damage to as many as two NPCs or monsters at once. Whatever you do, don’t point it at me . . . safety protocols have been disabled. The good news is that before I came to you, I went and activated the NeuroScape’s old, defunct RolePlayer Generisys plug-in system that some genius somewhere developed, and scripted it to reboot itself in the event it got shut down for any reason. I then tied that back into the main NeuroScape metaphysics interface, lookup tables and all. In other words, Ravenkroft’s whole simulation is playing by rules invented for a generic tabletop role-playing game . . . he just doesn’t know it, yet!” She giggled.

  “You,” said Dizzy, grinning, “are a genius, Pris. I like you. You’re devious and brilliant. So. We just jump through this Portal and we get taken back one level up into the simulation, back to where he has the other copy of my Avatar prisoner? And he won’t know it?”

  “He shouldn’t, at first at least,” said Pris. “But this is highly complex code we’re dealing with, and he could figure it out very soon. Any time now, really. So we have to be quick about this.”

  “Right,” said Dizzy. “And these Shadow-Wolf things — “

  “As soon as he figures it out, it’s almost a guarantee he’ll send them after us. And if they catch us — and if one of them eats you — you’ll become his prisoner all over again, twice as helpless and right back where you were, on that table, with that alien thing being downloaded into your mind.”

  “Well I guess anything’s better than that,” said Dizzy. She sighed. “Oh well. In the words of the Eleventh Doctor — ‘Geronimo!’” She jumped up and went through the Portal, and disappeared into the shifting cascade of images. Pris followed her through, and the Portal snapped closed behind her.

  Pris materialized in the School, the place where her Father had taught her the basics of life, now an abandoned simulation she had preserved for purely sentimental reasons. There had been no other reason to keep it online once she had learned how to navigate the rest of the NeuroScape and impersonate a human being. It appeared as an ordinary, if a bit disused, middle-school science classroom, its lab tables and chemistry glassware all dusty and cobwebbed, the chalk on the chalkboard practically ancient, the windows covered in the grime of ages-past. She turned around to see Dizzy stumble out of the Portal just a few feet behind her, and the Portal close just behind her. Portals were a first-in, last-out technology, for some reason.

  Suddenly, something banged into the classroom door from the other side. Both their heads whipped around, and their gazes went straight to the source of the sound as the whatever-it-was banged into the door a second time, causing it to shake on its hinges. It was then that Pris heard the familiar growling, snarling, and other low, guttural sounds emanating from the throats of the Shadow-Wolves outside. A cloud of dust loosed itself from the concrete blocks in the walls near the door as it banged a third time, and the glass in the door’s narrow window shattered. A meaty, black-furred paw protruded in through the hole the window left, clawing at the air inside. The doorknob rattled furiously, back and forth, and then the assault on the door ceased — or so it seemed.

  Dizzy screamed “Frak!” and Pris cried out “Fuck!” as ten seconds later, the wispy, green-eyed, translucent “ghost” of one of the Shadow-Wolves — Pris knew not what else to call it — came leaping through the solid matter of the door, its body re-solidifying into blackened fur and raised hackles, its size that of a baby elephant, those fierce, green-glowing eyes fixed upon the two of them.

  “Run!” yelled Pris.

  “To where?” replied Dizzy, as together they backed away from the approaching, slow-stalking Shadow-Wolf. It growled, a gurgling sound deep in its throat. As they tried to keep an eye on that one, another one came through the door in ghost-form, then re-solidified and also began slowly, almost gracefully stalking toward them. Then there came a third. The three Shadow-Wolves approached them, acidic drool dripping from their fang-like incisors and burning holes in the floor, their green, glowing eyes unblinking and full of murder and death.

  “Heh. Watch this,” said Pris, and smiled. She whirled around and pointed the crossbow-like, steampunk-themed Portal Gun at the far wall, and fired. A burst of neon-purple goo flew out of the central glass barrel and impacted with the wall, whereupon there formed a circular hole in it, the outer-perimeter of which glowed with a blue light. The hole appeared to lead not to the next room over, but to a darkened alleyway somewhere else entirely . . . perhaps a simulation of a city of some kind.

  Pris followed Dizzy as she jumped through the hole, her feet splashing in a grimy puddle in the alleyway. She turned around, and saw — embedded in the graffiti-ridden, gray-brick wall — the counterpart to the glowing, blue-outlined hole in the classroom: Another hole, this one with a yellow perimeter, and beyond it, the innards of the classroom and the Shadow-Wolves, one of which looked like it was preparing to jump through after them. Pris aimed the steampunk-themed, crystalline crossbow gun at the hole, then flipped the switch marked “SEAL,” and pulled the trigger. A translucent blob of bright yellow light rushed backward from the perimeter of the circular hole and into the glass barrel of the gun; the yellow hole snapped closed as the blob retreated — thankfully before the Shadow-Wolf could get through — regressing to an infinitely small point and then vanishing, leaving the brick of the alleyway wall unblemished and uninterrupted. It was night, here, the only light being the light of the moon, programmed to be twice as large and bright as the one in the Real World, a place she had never seen and guessed she never would.

  “Well that was quicker than we expected,” said Dizzy. “Any idea of how many those things there are?”

  Pris shook her head. “No clue how many Ravenkroft’s unleashed . . . nor how many clones they might have spawned already.”

  “Great,” said Dizzy. “Just great. So he’s got my Avatar prisoner somewhere in here, and he knows my consciousness is untethered from it . . . and he’s trying to track it down with these Shadow-Wolf things . . . of which there could be an infinite number, basically, right?”

  “Uh, yeah, basically.”

  “Fantastic.”

  “Yeah it’s not good.”

  “Nope, it isn’t. So where to from here? What do we do now?”

  “We find the entrance to his laboratory from the outside, in the rest of the NeuroScape, and we ambush him there, two on one, and we take him down using Magic and Effects, like these guns here.” She held up her Shockwave Cannon. “That’s what we do. We — ” She stopped, and stared at something that had caught her eye: Up above the rooftops of the city — the downtown area of which they seemed to be the middle of at the moment — there seemed to be several large, strange, billowing cloud-wisps floating in the sky, all made up of translucent, purple and orange curtains of light, illumining an otherwise dark and starlight sky with their glow. “Hang on a sec, Diz, I gotta get a closer look at something. Gimme a minute.” She turned toward the fire-escape of the building next to them, and began climbing the ladder there.

  “Wait — where are you going?”

  “Up,” she replied. “C’mon, follow me.” She continued her climb, mounting one set of metal stairs after another. Dizzy stowed the Shockwave Cannon by clipping it to her belt, and started up the fire-escape behind her. Together they ascended the side of the five-story building that sat next to the building whose wall they had just borrowed for their initial portal there. Once they reached the top, Pris looked out over the cityscape and saw, about twenty city-blocks away, a gigantic, jet-black pyramid-like structure made of bright, silvery steel and dark, smoky glass, towering over the rest of the city like a silent, ancient sentinel. It stood at least forty stories taller than even the tallest skyscraper, and from its apex, there rose — into the billowing, purple and orange clouds — a steady, ribbon-like stream of energy, pouring upward like a reversed stream of rainbow-colored lava. Rings made of blue and white lightning encircled and rippled upward around the energy stream as it spewed heavenward, igniting the clouds that then became the folds of the beautiful aurora pattern that appeared there. And, dancing across the edges of those purple and orange folds, she could see hundreds of smaller shapes, behaving much like the milky froth on top of a hot cappuccino: Ornately-typeset mathematical equations and eerie occult symbology, some of it simple, most of it complex, as though it had been written in ghostly calligraphy and set to swaying on invisible puppet-strings. Pris smiled. “Y’know, I’m not entirely sure, but I think I just figured out the where part of the question with regards to the location of ol’ Ravenkroft’s laboratory.”

  “Well, frak,” said Dizzy. “That was damned fortuitous. Now we just need to get there, break in, find out how it all works, and shut it the hell down before Ravenkroft-Heterodyne’s machine turns me into Cthulu, or Yog Shoggoth, or some other crazy crap straight out of the Necronomicon.” She visibly shuddered. “Yeah, preferably way before he does that.”

  “We will,” said Pris, gripping her by the shoulder. “Now c’mon. Let’s get crackin’. First things first, we need a ride.” She reached into the pocket of her leather jacket and pulled out a keyring bearing a single squarish key-fob with three buttons on it, one of which she now pressed. “”I once built a vehicle for a Mage: The Ascension campaign that I never got to play with anyone. And, yeah, in case you’re wondering: My positronic existence has been a fairly dull and lonely one, thus far, save for the few Human friends I’ve met online. Oh hey, here it is now — check this out, dude.”

  Dizzy looked, and her eyes nearly bugged out of her head as she watched the street corner below. There, materializing out of a waterfall of green-glowing computer code, with a high-pitched, jet-engine-like whining noise — and apparently driving itself — was what looked (at least, cosmetically) like a shiny-black 1932 Chevrolet Roadster, a sleek, long-nosed, all-steel sports-chariot from way back in the still-early-days of automobiles, with a pair of round, outboard headlights mounted to either side of its skinny grill; a metal running board that stretched along the side of the vehicle and then “blossomed” into bulbous fenders that arched over the front and rear metal-spoked, white-and-yellow walled tires; a spare tire and wheel mounted near the passenger side door; and four exhaust ports on either side of the engine compartment that became a series of pipes leading downward to below the running board, which eventually turned into the car’s tailpipes. In addition to the standard factory equipment, though, this model had two large, almost cartoonish rocket-thrusters mounted to either side of the rear trunk assembly, with a vast array of wires, hoses, and other mechanics that connected the two together, as well as into the various machines that had been installed into the car’s luggage rack. In front, the engine compartment had been opened up, and sitting there — where the old 6 cylinder power-plant with 2 valves per cylinder belonged — was a machine that looked as though Nikolai Tesla had tried to build a small-scale fusion reactor out of the cobbled-together wet-dreams of a dozen different amateur radio enthusiasts.

  “Well?” asked Pris, grinning at Dizzy, “whadda ya think?”

  Just as Dizzy closed her gaping mouth and was about to pronounce Pris’s Roadster one of the coolest things she’d ever seen, she heard the fire escape behind them give a metallic groan and rattle, and then she heard the snarling. She and Pris both turned around slowly . . . to find two of the Shadow-Wolves slinking toward them, their eyes aglow in the dark of the rooftops, their massive forms hunched, their fang-like teeth showing as they growled and approached. The pyrotechnics from the distant pyramid threw twisted shadows onto the chimneys, roofs, and water-towers surrounding them. Dizzy found himself backing toward the ledge of the roof, with Pris right beside her, doing the same. The NeuroScape was a world of endless wonder, alright . . . and also one of endless terror, too.

  “Uh, Pris?” she asked, taking her by the hand tightly, and looking over her shoulder at the nearing ledge. “Please tell me you know how to fly, girlfriend.”

  “Nope,” she replied. “I had wings in a previous life, but . . . nah. Not currently. And I’m none to good at sticking landings, either.”

  “Outstanding,” replied Dizzy, rolling her eyes. “So what’ll we do? They’ve blocked the only other way down.”

  “Well . . . I guess we jump, and hope for the best,” said Pris, as the Shadow-Wolves closed in on them. “Theoretically, I’m just software so I should be able to survive any kind of ’death’ the system puts me through. I’ll just be re-up-taken into the NeuroScape’s spare parts archive, and pieced back together by Viktor’s original programming, just like before . . . If, that is, the Shadow-Wolves don’t get to me first and permanently destroy what’s left of me. And we know you’ll be okay . . . well, not really. You’ll wake back up in Ravenkroft’s lab if you ‘die’ here. So yeah. That will suck. But if you don’t — ”

  “If I don’t? Wait, there’s an if?”

  “I might be able to hack the physics protocols . . . temporarily. Use Magic and Effects to displace the gravity subroutines. I don’t know.”

  “Well we’re gonna find out soon,” said Dizzy. She climbed up on the ledge. Pris followed suit, looked down, and almost swooned and fell. Dizzy caught her by the arm. “Look out!” she cried. Pris steadied herself on her feet. Whew. It would not do to get Pris killed. Artificial life-form, synthetic life-form, it made little difference; she was a pretty cool character, and Dizzy didn’t mind spending time with her. She also would not want her dead because as of now, she represented her only hope of making it out of here alive.

  “I’m fine,” said Pris, brushing her off. “Just got a bit woozy, is all.” Dizzy turned to look, and saw that the Shadow-Wolves had gotten much closer, though they still moved with grace and stalked toward them at a very deliberate pace. “Their greatest weakness is their overconfidence,” remarked Pris. “Hence the fact that they’re taking their good sweet time in closing in on us. It was a design choice I made, based on what I’d seen in video games, to help instill fear — and therefore decision-paralysis — in their prey, while still giving said prey an opportunity to run, if they can. The Shadow-Wolves will chase down their prey if they have to, but they don’t prefer to. So now what?”

  “Okay. On the count of three,” said Dizzy. She swallowed a nervous lump in her throat and looked at Pris. Dizzy attempted what she figured was a charming, reassuring smile. Pris looked back in what she guessed was supposed to be an equally-reassuring way, but then she looked down again and very nearly lost her balance a second time. Dizzy more than understood; five stories was a long way down. Once more, she looked up, and discovered that the Shadow-Wolves were now on fire. Their fur had transformed itself into smoldering fire, as though made of rippling, molten lava, their eyes burning like two stones cast out of an erupting Mount Doom, their tails whipping tentacles of flame, their teeth burning shards of blackened ash. She could feel the heat baking off them with every step closer they took.

  “Try not to land on my car, okay?” asked Pris, slightly breathless. “I just got done applying the latest mods to it.”

  “Wait! Wait a second!” cried Dizzy, and smacked her forehead and laughed. “We don’t have to do this!”

  “Say what?” replied Pris. “What the hell do you mean?”

  “I mean,” said Dizzy, laughing, “that we don’t have to jump five stories to our most-probable deaths. Here, check it out. I just remembered — your Portal Gun can do this! Go on. Just make us a Portal to the street below, instead of us having to jump!”

  “Y’know,” said Pris, sudden enlightenment dawning in her eyes, “I’m glad I picked you to partner-up with. You’re a bright one, you are!”

  “I try,” said Dizzy.

  Pris turned around and pulled the Portal Gun from her pocket again, and aimed it at the rooftop itself, right in front of where they stood on the ledge and about ten feet ahead of where the Shadow-Wolves were presently skulking toward them, and fired. The neon-purple-glowing blob of translucent chewing gum flew forth from the glass barrel and impacted with the roof, and sure enough, another Portal opened up on its surface. This one was odd: Even though the Portal spread out over five feet of the surface of the rooftop, with the entrance being like a “hole” in the roof, the world on the other side — the street below, with a closer view of Pris’s wild-looking Roadster — looked tilted on its ear, vertical and right-side up, as though at a offset at a ninety-degree angle from where they presently stood . . . as though if they were to fall through from this side, they would land on a plane that would bisect that of the Portal itself and would then be rotated ninety-degrees from their current position. If they jumped down into the Portal, they would land on their asses right in the street, right next to the Roadster. “Okay,” she said. “Now jump. That-a-way. Beware the bumpy-ass landing on the other side, though.”

  Dizzy took her by the hand, and with one more glance between them, they leaped off the ledge and into the air, sailing right in front of the Shadow-Wolves, slipping right past them and through the Portal. They came out on the other side, tumbling over one another on the pavement, the world suddenly turning on its ear as gravity reasserted itself and reoriented their world. They got up, and ran for the Roadster, with Pris running backwards, flicking the “SEAL” switch on the gun, and trying to fire it at the portal they’d just arrived through. She wasn’t fast enough. The Shadow-Wolves exchanged a brief look; one nodded to the other subtly, and the one closest to the portal leaped up and through it. It came out rolling head-over-heels on the other side, getting its legs back under it quickly and righting itself right in front of her, sparks and hot coals burning and lopping off of its molten body. Dizzy’s eyes grew wide at the sight of it and she bolted for the car. The other Shadow-Wolf came through as well, and both creatures sprinted after Dizzy and Pris, picking up their usually-leisurely pace a bit.

  Pris got in the driver’s side, but just as Dizzy yanked opened the Roadster’s passenger-side door, one of the Shadow-Wolves lunged for her and snapped at her with its jaws, catching her miniskirt in them at the waist and dragging her down to the pavement, where it then bit into her leg and tossed its head. A hot, hateful burning sensation spread throughout her leg as the thing’s ashen, red-hot molten mouth chomped down on her thigh, and she felt the searing pain of the thing’s razor-sharp incisors and canines dig into his flesh like scalding knives. She cried out, yelping in agony. “PRIS! FOR FUCK’S SAKE, HELP!”

  She heard something that sounded like the whine of the photo-strobes in an old camera charging up, only much louder. And then, he heard Pris say in a grim voice: “Yippee-kai-yea, motherfrakker.”

  There was a flash of green light, the merest suggestion of some sort of ripple in space and time echoing out from where Pris stood with the Shockwave Cannon . . . and then the Shadow-Wolf that had hold of her simply exploded into a million flaming pieces and flying, translucent chunks of alphanumeric code . . . some of which landed on and burnt holes in her halter-top. She skidded backward on her buttocks, trying to avoid the cinders as they scattered. Another bright green flash and another rippling wave, and the other Shadow-Wolf also exploded into hot coals, bits, and fiery bits and bytes, as Dizzy averted his eyes, hoping none of the flaming little suckers hit her Avatar’s “skin.”

  “Wowzers, these suckers are powerful,” remarked Pris, as Dizzy lay there, grabbing at her leg and biting back howls and whimpers of pain. “I might just keep these! Oh, shit. You’re hurt!” She hurriedly got out of the car and came over to where Dizzy lay on the pavement, and knelt down next to her. “Dude. Looks like that thing really fucked your leg up. Here, lemme help.” She gently pulled up her skirt in order to reveal the messy, blackened, bloody wound in Dizzy’s leg. Some of the charred material stuck to the burned, wounded skin. Dizzy screamed in pain as Pris tried to peel it off.

  “Frak!” he cried. “FRAK! Stop that! It HURTS!”

  “Just hold still,” said Pris. “I promise, this part won’t. Well, much. I said, hold still.” She grabbed the area of Dizzy’s leg just above the wound, and the area just below it where her thigh met her knee — her grip was amazingly strong, for someone her size — and then closed her eyes and began muttering. Dizzy thought it might be the name of a spell, but she couldn’t be sure. She felt so dazed and stunned by the raw fury of the pain in her leg that she didn’t have the strength to argue with Pris or put up much of a fight. She relented and submitted to Pris’s touch, and lay still — or as still as she could, with the bright, burning fires of torment racing through that entire half of her body. When the NeuroScape software turned off all the safeties, it really turned off all the goddamned safeties. She tried sitting up on her elbows so he could watch Pris work, but even moving such a small amount sent cascading messages of agony coursing through her nervous system.

  When Pris had told Dizzy earlier that she had brought the NeuroScape’s old Roleplayer Generisys module — which “some genius” had designed — back online, she hadn’t told her the entire truth. She knew who had designed it. The friend of Dizzy’s whom she and the others that the real Ravenkroft held captive called “Mystikite.” He had been the one. Once Ravenkroft — the real one — had taken them prisoner in the real world (for she had been silently observing them the whole time in another process-thread), she had quickly spawned another thread and done as much background research on all of them as possible. They seemed like decent people. People she wanted to help. She had “felt” the old Generisys module come online earlier when se’d activated it.

  The bottom line was that with that module engaged, the entire NeuroScape would operate . . . somewhat differently. While you could still conjure weapons (especially magical weapons), you had to do so against a dice role; the preferred way to get ahold of weapons was to either craft things — actually build them yourself — or buy them from Non-Player Characters, or find them on your own. Also, any and all Avatars inhabiting the NeuroScape now had an associated, hidden “player-character data sheet” attached to them, containing their vital statistics — things like Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma — along with things like Armor Class, Hit Points, a large list of specific skills weighted by numerical scores, an Inventory of items, and a “Level.” (Pris saw that her Level was 11, and one of the items listed in her Inventory was “Resurrection Stone,” and that it could not be removed. Interesting.) The NeuroScape now also had a concept of money: The golden Galleon — the concept lifted straight from Harry Potter — was the coin of the realm, and one could always go adventuring (or grave-robbing, or whatever else) if one wanted or needed more than the default 1,000 coins one started out with. Finally, the last big change what that from the time of the Role-Player Generisys’s activation onward, all NeuroScape Avatars who had their “Magic User” flag set to “YES” could draw upon the vast resource known as Mystikite’s Nearly-Endless Grimoire of Magic, a large compendium of magic spells that the genius-someone Mystikite had coded into the system from a cavalcade of different role-playing systems . . . and whose pages Pris now conjured up in a hologram before her, projected from the bridge of her sunglasses. Hurriedly, she flipped through the book’s virtual pages, looking for the “Healing” section.

  She shoved the Shockwave Cannon back into her pocket barrel first, until nothing stuck out but the handle. Hands now free, she rubbed her hands together, mentally preparing herself to do Magic. She reached out to the holographic menu floating in front of her and touched an item: Healing Incantation, a second level Daily spell that would cause any creature within four spaces — though just what the hell constituted a “space” in the NeuroScape, she wasn’t sure — to regain one-D-six Hit Points of Health, plus an amount equal to her spell-casting modifier, which she knew to also be a six, plus one-D-four Hit Points for each Level above second. The text turned yellow and began to glow. She then reached into the sleeve of her leather jacket and produced a wand made of willow wood, about fifteen inches in length and slightly bowed toward one long, thin, tapering end that came to almost a point, with the slightly squarish end to be used as the grip. Pris held it as might a master magician preparing to invoke a spirit of wonderment in her audience, or as perhaps might a calligrapher preparing to ink some ancient scroll of grave importance to some high queen or another.

  Pris tapped the wand to Dizzy’s wounds and intoned, “Sanare vulnus quod feci per artificia magica!” The wound on Dizzy’s leg began to pulse with a soft, glowing yellow light, as did the wand, the two pulsing glows synchronizing within seconds. Pris rooted in the pockets of her leather jacket and now found, of course, a luminescent pair of dice that hadn’t been there before: One four-sided, one six-sided. She closed her eyes and rattled the dice in a loose fist for a few seconds, then spilled them onto the pavement before her. The D-six read . . . “6.” So, 12 Hit-Points restored. The D-four read “4.” She rolled the D-four eight more times and got grand a total of “27.” So, really, 39 Hit Points restored. Damn, that was a powerful spell! As she rolled the last of these, an arc of purple lightning leaped from the dice to the wand, and then to Dizzy’s wounded leg. Dizzy convulsed, stiffening, winced, and cried out in pain as the wound magically began to close . . . and sure enough, a moment or two later, it faded from view entirely, leaving only scars. The dice themselves vanished, to be summoned again later when needed.

  Now feeling drained and exhausted — it was a Once-Daily spell for a reason, she guessed — Pris let go of Dizzy’s leg. For a moment, only the sounds of their equally-ragged breathing could be heard. It was Dizzy who finally broke the ice.

  “Dude — Pris — thank you,” she said, sitting bolt upright and hugging her tightly. “Thought I was a goner there for a minute. Man, how ironic would that be? I can see the headlines now: ‘Expert Engineer Killed By Computer Sim.’ I’d be dead and a laughingstock. Not cool. So thanks . . . I owe you. Big time. So . . . where to, again?”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Pris looked to the horizon, as did Dizzy, where they could both see the pyramid rising into the sky — it appeared that once your Avatar had “seen” it, it became a permanent part of your perception — casting forth its high-powered energy-beam into the Aurora-Borealis-like folds of energy in the cloudscape above. Near the top of the pyramid, a series of the black glass panels that made up its surface were lit from within, and shadows moved across them.

  “Same place as before,” said Pris, pointing to the pyramid’s towering edifice, and right at the brightened glass panels. “The pyramid. Our objective should be to get inside, shut down whatever it is Ravenkroft’s got cooking, rescue your Avatar, and then wake her up so you can return to the Real World safely. C’mon. Let’s bug out while the bugging is good.”

  “Agreed. Let’s make like programs, and run.” Dizzy got up, dusted herself off. Pris grabbed the Portal Gun and Dizzy grabbed her Shockwave Cannon — then stowed it in her pocket — and together, they got in the Roadster. Pris started the car — its engine came alive, sounding like the whine of a jet-engine blended with the whirr of a vacuum-cleaner — and stepped on the gas, and together they took off down the road. Pris cut the wheel hard, and they executed a U-turn, careening wildly to the right and mounting the curb briefly before changing direction, doubling back, and heading straight toward downtown . . . and in turn, the pyramid of nightmares.

  Up close, the base of the pyramid looked just like that of any other corporate high-rise: A rectangular structure made of glass and steel that stretched some sixty yards to the right and sixty yards to the left, with a series of eight smoked-glass doors set into its midsection. The pyramid itself rose out of this three-story structure, angularly ascending heavenward, its darkened glass reflecting back the the starry, moonlit skies above. After careening through the city like a madwoman on drugs — mounting curbs, running red-lights, and forcing Angelus to hold onto the dashboard and doorhandles for dear life — Pris mashed the gas-pedal at the last second and then whisked the steering wheel to one side whilst stomping on the brakes, causing the car to skid sideways into an arcing half-turn, so that it wound up facing the building head-on, about a hundred yards away from it, instead of stopping parallel to it that same distance away. Once they’d skidded to a stop — and Pris had almost lost control and toppled the car — she revved the engine twice, apparently just for kicks. It whined and snarled angrily, sounding like a Shadow-Wolf itself, albeit a mechanical one. She turned to Dizzy, lowered her sunglasses, leaned against the seat-cushion, and smiled.

  “So, Dizzy,” she said. “How do you wanna play this? We’ve each got one of my Shockwave Cannons. I’ve also got my Portal Gun. But I’m betting that won’t be enough to fight our way into that place. It’s most likely festered-up the wazoo with NPC guards, mercs, and monsters . . . most of ‘em pretty high-level, I’d think. And while ray-guns might be the radical weapon of choice for a hacker like myself, bullets are almost always a better option . . . because while plenty of Magical artifacts and armors can deflect them, few if any spells exist that can counter them, and nothing is naturally immune to them, except for Dragon-hide. Luckily, I have a plan that gets around that issue. The bullets issue, I mean. And the ‘guns to shoot them with’ issue, too.”

  “Well, I sure as hell hope you do,” said Dizzy. “‘Cause I was just thinking, ‘where the hell are we going to get hold of those kind of firearms?’ With the Roleplayer Generisys system activated, we can’t just wish them into existence. Not anymore, at least, according to you. We have to either find them, buy them, or forge them. And while I’m pretty sure I have ‘Craft Magical Weapons’ listed as a character skill, I'm not really sure if AK-47s and P-91s necessarily count as ‘Magical,’ Clarke’s Law be damned.”

  “Clarke’s . . . Law? Who’s Clarke and what Law did he make?”

  Dizzy sighed. “Clarke’s Law, as in Arthur C. Clarke, the science fiction author who wrote ‘2001: A Space Odyssey.’ He once said that ’any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ But like I said, I don’t think automatic weapons would necessarily ‘count’ as ‘magical,’ in this case. What we need right now is one of those amazingly, fortuitously-placed weapons shops that never, ever closes, and that just happens to be close by to whenever we find ourselves in need of a new gun or two . . . or twenty.”

  “Or,” said Pris, grinning and holding up a correcting finger, “even better . . . we need a vehicle that can turn itself into a giant, heavily-armed robot warrior that I control through a virtual psionic link.” She paused at his upraised eyebrows. “You, er, might wanna get out first.”

  “Mmm-hmm. Oooh-kay.” Dizzy opened the door, got out, and took about fifteen good, solid steps backward, keeping her eyes on the 1923 Chevy Roadster with the rocket engines on the rear and the warp-drive — or whatever it was — where the car’s engine was supposed to sit. Pris got out too, and joined her, leaving the car running, the headlamps burning, the rear-thrusters idling. She whacked the sleeve of her leather jacket against her left thigh, and from out the cuff near her wrist, her wand fell into her hand. With her free hand, she reached up and touched the nose-bridge of her sunglasses, and there once again appeared the pages of Mystikite’s Nearly-Endless Grimoire of Magic. She flipped through its pages until she found the spell she needed — this one marked Transfiguration of Transformium — and touched the words on the page, which then lit up, the grimoire disappearing from view. She reached into her jacket pocket and once again fished for the dice, and found them: This time, she found just a single, 20-sided die. She squatted down on her haunches near the pavement, and rolled. The die stopped with the number “18” facing up.

  “Converteret apparatus usura magicae,” she intoned, flicking the wand on the air, as though conducting a large, invisible symphony. A streamer of liquid yellow light erupted from the tip of the wand, traveling as though in “slow motion,” the time passing more slowly for it — whatever it was — as it flowed through the air zigzaggedly before splashing against the car in a shower of bright, crimson sparks. The car began to shimmer and vibrate, the liquid yellow light pouring from and bursting out of all the seams and cracks and edges in shining, volumetric rays.

  The car immediately began to noisily change, the parts all rearranging themselves. The warp-drive-like engine moved backward as the hood of the car disassembled, folded, and moved to either side, the exhaust pipes fanning out and flipping down under the undercarriage and reconnecting elsewhere, becoming something like the bones for a pair of bat-like wings. The windshield broke in half and descended as a distinct, “head”-like construct flipped up out of the dashboard, its eyes two illumined slits above an armored faceplate that sufficed for its mouth and nose. The front and back fenders moved and reshaped themselves into shoulder-joints as the thing’s frame split apart up front and in the rear, the rear wheels moving backward and up and into a new place near the thing’s fender-shoulders, the split frame in front separating into two leg-like structures, as the wheels in front rolled downward on tracks and reattached themselves onto the sides of the thing’s “feet,” two huge hydraulic-looking metal pads with wires and hoses leading to them from up inside the creature’s innards. The doors, rocket-thrusters, and their associated mechanics all moved, unhooked, rearranged, and then reattached to one another to create a pair of arms, each with six-degrees of freedom and two large, robotic hands that emerged from the hidden spaces beneath the rumple seat, the right one featuring a large projectile weapon — something like a machine gun crossed with a bazooka, only much larger than both — already gripped tight. The rear cabin flipped around and folded backward on itself, the “top” portion locking onto the “bottom” of what remained, providing the creature with a “torso” of sorts. Finally, the “eyes” of the thing — if what it had could be called eyes — lit up a bright blue not unlike the color of the moon. The metal face-guard moved up and down as it spoke for the first time, and said —

  “Greetings, m’Lady Pris. Of what use can I be to thee upon this night, so glorious and full of stars?”

  “Whoa,” said Dizzy, looking up at the thing, agape with wonder. “Now that, I have to admit, is ten different shades of motherfrakking badass.” The robot stood a good nine feet taller than either of them, and the projectile weapon it carried in its right hand was indeed bigger than a bazooka. It also featured what looked like a pair of high-caliber machine guns fastened to the top of its right forearm, and what looked like a Minigun attached to the top surface of its left. Each of its shoulder pieces had a trio of small ballistic missiles loaded into a kind of launch bay, and the spare tire on what had been the right side of the car’s engine compartment had now become the creature’s knightly shield, attached to the front of its left forearm. The robot stomped forward a few paces — the ground shook as it moved its huge, clunky body with a kind of unexpected grace and fluidity — and then knelt before them. Or more precisely, before Pris, Dizzy noted.

  “Stargazer Prime, we need your help, ” said Pris. “We — ”

  “Stargazer Prime?” said Dizzy, turning to her, with a raised eyebrow. “A kickass transforming robot that turns into a classic Roadster, and that’s really all you’ve got? That’s the best you could come up with? Jeeze. Not saying I could do better, per se, but . . . ”

  “Oh, bite me, dude,” Pris offered, rolling her eyes at her. “I named him after the 39 ’chevrons’ on the Stargate, from the Stargate TV franchise, and as a play on both the car brand ‘Chevrolet’ and the word ‘Chevalier.’ And I happen to think that it was pretty goddamn clever of me to figure all that out. So lay off. I swear, you’re just like those assholes I read about on feminist blogs all the time . . . the ones who try to be the ‘gatekeepers’ of that thing you humans call ‘geek culture.’ Always trying to invalidate the ‘Others’ who want access to your private little party.”

  Dizzy recoiled as though struck. “Bite your tongue, woman!”

  “Well it’s the truth.”

  “Is not.”

  “Is so. Admit it. You’re a geek supremacist.”

  “Am not!”

  “Are too.”

  “Most certainly am not. I genuinely care about the Mundanes of the world.”

  “Listen to yourself. Mundanes. Did it ever occur to you that Mundanes have feelings too, and that that term is actually really insulting? And that they have imaginations that are just as whacky and brilliant as yours, but that maybe they just don’t manifest in the same way yours does? And that besides all that, your distinction between what qualifies as ‘geek’ and what qualifies as Mundane is also really arbitrary? And not even based on anything real and tangible? That you basically are pretty willy-nilly about what classifies as one, and what classifies as the other? I’ve done a lot of thinking about this based on what I’ve read on blogs and on the Internet in general, and it seems to me that people like you — people who believe in a kind of ‘geek superiority’ — are really just basically very insecure people who are trying to inflate their own importance by taking pride in something that they have no business taking pride in, in the first place. But what do I know. Virtual life-form, remember?”

  Dizzy sighed. “Okay, fine, I admit it — the name is clever. Okay? There, I said it. You, Pris, are clever. Feel validated yet?”

  “M’Lady Pris,” said Stargazer, “wouldst thou permit me to smite this ‘purple-haired one’ in the black tank-top for thee? She seems foul of temper and is as arrogant as a bratty princessling . . . And she has the manners of an oafish boor. ”

  “Uh, Pris?” asked Dizzy. “One: You realize that your big robot pal here just threatened and insulted me, right? And two: You also realize that he did so while sounding like something straight out of Excalibur, or Monty Python and the Holy Grail, right? What’s with the twelfth century speech patterns?”

  “Deliberate idiosyncratic design choices,” she said, and shrugged. “Anyway. Stargazer. My friend and I here were planning on crashing the mad-science party going on inside yonder pyramid, and I’m getting a serious Admiral Akbar vibe from the place, even just standing here. Y’know — ’It’s a trap!’ and all that. What we need here is a little . . . oomph going in, a bit of a . . . show of force, if you know what I mean, to throw off whatever guards or critters Ravenkroft — the Big Bad who runs the joint — has in his employee. Basically, we need to make use of some ‘shock and awe’ tactics, and that’s where you come in, my friend. Oh — and switch your vernacular mode to ‘Modern,’ if you would . . . and modulate your vocal eccentricities down to 55 percent, please.”

  “Roger that,” said Stargazer. “So, basically, you want me to crash through that building’s front edifice, laying down covering fire as I go, taking out every NPC and monster I can find so that you and your friend here can try to make it to the levels near the apex, with a maximum of Hit Points still intact . . . whereupon — I presume — you will take on this ‘Ravenkroft’ fellow, in an attempt to seize control of the machinery he is currently using to — I suspect — affect no good outcome?” Stargazer pointed toward upward, indicating the highest levels of the pyramid. Pris had to crane her neck to see, but yes, those same rooms near the top were still lit from within, and flashes of arcing lightning still flashing behind them every few seconds.

  “That’s pretty much it, yeah,” said Pris, nodding. “Shock and awe, covering fire, and one big-ass distraction on top of everything else.”

  “Very well,” said Stargazer, nodding. “When should we carry out this plan of attack, Pris?”

  Pris shrugged. “Well, whenever, I suppose.” She reached for the grip of the Shockwave Cannon, and pulled it all the way out of her pocket. “I’m ready when you two are.”

  “Wait,” said Dizzy, as she reached into Pris’s other pocket and pulled out the Portal Gun. “I have an idea. Once we’re in, why don’t we just Portal our way to the top rather than fight our way up through an endless series of cannon-fodder NPCs? The Gun seems to ‘know’ where we need to go, after all, and we could conserve ammunition and Hit Points that way.” And with that, she stowed the Portal Gun and withdrew the second Shockwave Cannon from her own other pocket. “But . . . it’s up to you. Ready when you are.”

  Pris nodded to her. “Good idea. Okay, then.” She turned to Stargazer. “On the count of three. Ready?”

  “Ready,” said Stargazer and Dizzy together.

  “One . . .” she said, inhaling and exhaling a long breath. She steadied the Shockwave Cannon with her free hand. She swallowed a lump in her throat and felt her virtual heart-rate increase.

  “Two . . .” said Dizzy.

  “Two and a half . . .” Pris continued.

  “And three,” said Dizzy, and with that, they began walking toward the pyramid’s rectangular, three-story base. Stargazer tromped forward, moving more slowly, as his enormous gait carried him farther than either of theirs did with each gargantuan step he took. Dizzy marched on the opposite side of him from Pris, her own Shockwave Cannon at the ready, the same way Pris held hers.

  No security guards nor anyone else emerged from the building to stop them as they approached, and that bothered Pris. Why? What were they waiting for? Where were they? Come to think of it, where was everybody? The whole city seemed abandoned except for her, Dizzy, and Stargazer, and Ravenkroft up there on the top floors of the pyramid.

  “Well, fuck.” Speak of the devil, she thought, and he shall appear, as the eight smoked-glass doors all opened at one, and a cavalcade of security guards spilled out — twenty-two in all, all armed with machine-guns. From either street-corner that stood adjacent to the three-story pyramid base, three cop-cars — six all totaled — suddenly appeared from holes in reality not dissimilar from those the Portal Gun created, their sirens wailing, their lights flashing, their tires peeling out on the pavement as they rushed to close the distance to the center and then skidded to a stop, whereupon the security guards from the building all fell into formation behind the barricade they formed. More security guards leapt out of the barricading cop-cars, twenty-four guards in all, all armed with handguns, all of them pointed right at him, Pris, and Stargazer.

  It was then that she heard a familiar sound behind her — the click of claws on concrete, and a low, angry growling originating deep within a dog’s — or rather, wolf’s — throat. She halted and turned around heel-toe, as did Dizzy. Stargazer too stopped, and turned. There, about forty feet behind them stood four Shadow-Wolves the size of small ponies, growling and snarling at them, drool leaking down from their toothy muzzles and eating away the concrete of the sidewalk, their eyes aglow with moonlight and violence.

  Then the forty-six security guards all opened fire.

  Dizzy and Pris both immediately took cover behind the girth of Chevronimus’s mechanical legs. As the bullets flashed and ricochetted off his metal hide, they faced down the four Shadow-Wolves, who all approached at once, four gruesome deaths stalking ever closer. Dizzy lowered her Shockwave Cannon and fired at the one farthest to the left. The green light flashed from the gun’s forward nozzle, along with the ripple-effect that cascaded through the air and impacted with the Shadow-Wolf . . . but this time, the blast didn’t tear the beast apart. Instead, the beast skidded backward on its paws when the ripple hit it, clawing at the concrete, absorbing both the shockwave and green energy-flash alike . . . then the Shadow-Wolf whined for a moment, as though in pain or discomfort. For a moment, a crackling green aura surrounded it’s shadowy form, and green lightning bolts leapt from it to the pavement and back, and then faded. As they did, however, the Shadow-Wolf grew, now about eight inches taller and wider than it had been, its head and paws having grown in proportion. This was so not good, Dizzy thought.

  “Well frak me running backwards with a chainsaw,” said Dizzy. “Looks like they’ve adapted to the Shockwave Cannons, Pris. Now what the frak do we — gah, frak!” she cried out, as the Shadow-Wolf lunged at her, chomping, snarling, and biting with its powerful jaws, going right for her throat. Two sudden and surprising flashes of light, a pair of deafening thunder claps, and an acrid odor of gunpowder later, and she clawed at her chest to keep her heart from jumping leaping out of it in shock. It took a moment for her to realize that she hadn’t just been gored by the beast, and that Pris had, in fact, shot it in the head twice with a Glock nine-millimeter that she had pulled from her jacket pocket. The fallen animal de-rezzed immediately, returning to the raw stuff of the NeuroScape, dematerializing and turning into flowing bits of computer code that gradually disappeared as they broke down into glowing bits. She turned and blinked at Pris. “Got any more surprises for me?” she asked. Pris shrugged and put the weapon away.

  Behind them, Dizzy the hail of machine-gun and handgun fire battered away at Chevronimus’s armored body. Dizzy fired her Shockwave Cannon at them; the green flash came and went, and then came the Shockwave, which caused one of the cop-cars to explode in a torrid geyser of flame and metal shrapnel. It ignited the gas-tank of the police car next to it, which also went up in flames, killing about nine of the security guard NPCs, their bodies de-rezzing as they ran around on fire, screaming and dropping like poisoned, flaming birds who’d been blown out of the sky by some crazed hunter with a grudge to settle. The rest paid no attention, and continued to pummel Stargazer with gunfire. Stargazer let loose a missile from one of his shoulders; it whizzed through the air, careening toward the rightmost line of cop-cars, and the security guards clustered behind it ran for their lives. They were not fast enough. BOOM! The missile collided with the hood of the cop-car that sat between the other two on that side; it exploded in a roiling, orange mushroom cloud of flame, immediately igniting the other two on either side of it, both their gas tanks sending their fuselages rocketing upward on blazing columns, killing eight more guards, their bodies flying upward like flimsy mannequins set aflame and shot from a catapult as the cop-cars crashed back to Earth as flaming metal husks.

  The other security guards all backed away from the blazing barricade of burnt out, smoldering automotive wreckage that had just been six police cruisers, and continued to fire at Stargazer. Some — eleven of those with machine guns who had been left standing — began advancing, moving beyond the barricade, closing on Pris’s and Dizzy’s position, even as Stargazer continued laying down fire with his minigun and automatic rifle, presently taking three of the advancing guards out of commission, the minigun raining down ringing shell after ringing shell onto the pavement below, the machine gun discarding them as fast as it could, spraying hellfire across the battlefield, its shots plowing into the wrecked cop-cars and some of those still hiding behind them. With a quick glance around the side of Chevronimus’s leg, Dizzy confirmed that eight unfriendly guards now remained, still advancing toward their position. She fired the Shockwave Cannon at them; first came the green flash, and then came the resounding thunderclap and ripple through space, which took out two of the security guards, causing their bodies to simply explode; blood and viscera flew in every direction as the wave ripped them to pieces.

  Meanwhile, Stargazer continued to slowly advance forward, headed toward the three-story building’s entryway, the six cop-cars, and the gaggle of security guards firing on them. And as he continued to advance, Dizzy found that she and Pris had to move quickly and walk backward in order to keep up with his stride, so they could continue to hide behind his armored body in order to protect themselves from the security-guards’ hail of gunfire . . . and so they could keep an eye on the hungry, also-advancing Shadow-Wolves, the remainder of which now decided to attack: One of them lunged at Dizzy’s upper-leg; the other two went for Pris, her throat and her shin. Dizzy slammed the one going for her leg right in the head with the butt of her Shockwave Cannon, and down it went in a hurry with a sharp cracking noise, a yelp, and a yowling whine . . . She then kicked the damned thing right in the throat as hard as she could. It growled, retreating a bit and whining — but for only a moment. She kicked the one going for Pris’s throat in the stomach; it too barked a wounded noise and lost its paws’ purchase on her, and fell upon the one trying to eat her ankle for lunch. Both wolves recoiled in pain, and then lunged to attack them afresh, coming at them with double the ferocity, along with the third that she’d kicked. Dammit! Apparently, she’d only succeeded in pissing the fraker off.

  “Pris, NO!” she cried, as the two went after her and the one came at she herself again. Dizzy felt in her pocket with her free hand for the grip of the Portal Gun, found it, and then yanked it out and, out of pure instinct, pointed it at the Shadow-Wolf and pulled the trigger. The Shadow-Wolf yowled and whined in agony as it fell to the ground, the blueberry-bubblegum-like blob of energy colliding with its body and then enveloping it, as though the Shadow-Wolf had been suddenly been dunked in a vat of some molten, bright purple rubbery substance, with dazzling, high-energy electric arcs coursing through its every bone and muscle, dancing across its form as it yelped for mercy and then imploded into nothingness. Unfortunately, though, there was another one right behind it, ready to leap in and take its place. And it did; its attack was as swift as the wind; as soon as its littermate went down, the other one moved in, ready to chow down on some Dizzy-burger. She fired the Portal Gun again, and the purple goo-blob impacted the second Shadow-Wolf as well, and the same thing happened to it; it whined and yellped as its body was swallowed into a bright-sparking, gooey singularity. This thing was more effective than even the Shockwave Cannon! She turned it on the third Shadow-Wolf attacking Pris, and was about to fire, when a fourth Shadow-Wolf materialized from nowhere, and lunged at the arm holding the Portal Gun. It bit down into the flesh of her arm, and Dizzy cried out in pain and surprise as its teeth penetrated her skin and tore through the muscle there. She dropped the Portal Gun to the ground.

  “Dizzy!” cried Pris, as a fifth Shadow-Wolf appeared from out of nowhere, just like the fourth one had, right next to Pris, and also lunged at her, leaping through the air and going right for her jugular.

  And then, it happened; Somehow, time froze. Or maybe it didn’t freeze, per se; that would’ve been the wrong word to use. It slowed. Down to a crawl, as though someone had poured syrup onto the gears of the NeuroScape’s cosmic clock. Despite the pain in her arm — and despite the Shadow-Wolf that hung suspended in the air a foot in front of her, hanging there, its teeth mere centimeters from the skin of her arm, the other one hanging in space with its teeth mere inches from Pris’s neck — and the blood that stood out there, Dizzy didn’t quite know what to make of this new development.

  “Uh, Pris?” she asked. “Are you doing this?” She winced, grasping at the wound in her arm.

  “Uh, no?” said Pris, clearly confused. She eyed the Shadow-Wolf at her throat warily, and stepped away from it. Despite the slowed-downness of everything else, it appeared that they could move about normally. “I didn’t know you could even do this. Well, I mean, theoretically it’s possible. I mean, the NeuroScape has a timing circuit, just like all computer systems. And it is a virtual ‘dream,’ and time does run differently in dreams, I guess. So it’s possible to slow down your perception of time inside the simulation, I suppose. It must be you doing this . . . somehow.”

  ‘This is a most curious new twist,” said Stargazer. “Whatever could it mean?”

  “Well, whatever it means, we’ll figure it out in a minute,” said Dizzy, and winced at the colossal pain in her arm. The bite stung and bled, and burned. “Pris, I need healing. Uh, could you?”

  “Of course,” said Pris. She walked over to where Dizzy stood, pulled out her wand, conjured the Grimoire again, pulled out the dice, intoned the spell, rolled the dice, and healed Dizzy’s wound. The wound vanished without a trace. “Now, then,” she said. “I wonder — how did you do this?”

  “Beats me,” said Dizzy, and shrugged. “Maybe I’ve got superpowers I had no idea I had. Maybe this is The Matrix, and I’m like Neo.” She smiled. “But it’s funny . . . I do feel . . . sort of . . . like I’m . . . connected to all this. Like my mind is busy with something. Like I’m plugged into something, connected and energized somehow . . . I can’t explain it. But I can feel myself getting tired . . . something like that. It’s like I’m being drained.”

  Pris nodded. “You’re expending effort keeping this going. The longer time stays slowed down, the harder it is for you to keep doing it. You’ll give out eventually and time will return to normal. You must’ve done it on instinct . . . somehow. I don’t know how. Holy shit, maybe you are like Neo in The Matrix. The Chosen One. I’d laugh my balls off if that were really the case, but hey. Stranger things have happened, right?”

  “Right,” said Dizzy, and smiled weakly. “Let’s get going, though. Pris, Stargazer. C’mon. I’ve got an idea. Follow my lead; do as I do.” She turned from where she stood and walked toward the veritable wall of bullets that hung suspended in midair before them — the hundred or so that had not reached their current position or Chevronimus’s yet, that was — and, wit Pris getting the idea and then helping her out, Dizzy went from one bullet to the next and flipped them around while humming the theme to the X-Men, so that they now faced the other direction . . . all but five, which they rearranged so that they aimed directly at the five Shadow-Wolves, ready to shred their brains and eviscerate their innards once time was unfrozen. The six of eight security guards who had broken away from those behind the barrier — two of whom Dizzy and Pris had just wasted with his Shockwave Cannon a moment before — now had a total of sixty-some-odd bullets aimed right at them, bullets which would continue on that trajectory when unfrozen. “Notice that the momentum of the bullets is only deferred,” said Dizzy. “It’ll be paid back in spades whenever I decide to let time resume. Aye, physics . . . she’s a mean ol’ bitch, she is. For now, though, just follow my lead. Pretty sure we kinda have to sort of hurry, here.”

  Pris and Stargazer exchanged a brief glance. The robot merely shrugged his large metal shoulders in a humanlike “Sure, why not?” expression, and then the three of them fell in. They continued toward the pyramid’s base, headed toward the flaming cop-car carcasses — the flames frozen in mid-flicker looked pretty, but weird — with Dizzy occasionally pushing aside or reversing the trajectory of the odd floating bullet or two in order to safely clear them a path. When the four of them arrived at the wreckage of the six blazing cop-cars, they saw that on the other side — about fifteen feet away, and squinting to see through the heat-haze and the smoke — stood the rest of the security guards, their movements arrested mid-step, as though they were prehistoric cavemen trapped in invisible amber. Beyond them, little remained of the pyramid-base’s smoked-glass doors; the glass had all been shattered and broken into half a million pieces — some of which hung motionless in the air — and the steel that held them together now featured hundreds of dints, dings, and bullet-holes.

  “There’s no way around,” said Pris, as they came to a stop in front of the strange-looking, stationary flames that extended from the wrecked cop-cars. “I wonder, though: Can fire still burn you even if it’s not technically . . . uh, burning at the time?”

  “Don’t wanna find out, really,” said Dizzy. She looked away thoughtfully, then shook her head. “Yep. Pretty sure I don’t need to know that.”

  “Ahem,” said Stargazer. “Perhaps I could be of some assistance?” He grabbed hold of the cop-car to his left, and with one big, groaning-metal push, he shoved it out of the way — sparks flew from the place where its roof had already collided with the ground — then did the same thing to the cop-car to his immediate right, giving them plenty of space to move through.

  The only obstacles now were the still-as-store-dummies security guards, still clutching their machine guns mid-firing . . . some of which still had a bright burst of muzzle-flash frozen in time at the business-end of their barrels, the bullets having barely made it out. Dizzy walked up to one of the guards and, seemingly without much effort, moved his limbs and torso around so that his gun pointed at the guard next to him, then did likewise for that guard, as well. She did this several more times, going down the line of security guards, posing each of their bodies so that whenever time resumed, they would all immediately slaughter one another.

  “There,” she said, dusting off her hands on her halter-top. “All taken care of. We can’t have any of them following us, after all. Now, then.” She grabbed what remained of one of the steel-and-smoked-glass doors that led into the building and held it open for them. “Shall we, m’Lady Pris?”

  “After you,” said Pris, gesturing to the door.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” said Dizzy. She turned and tried to go through the door, and felt an electric shock whip through her body, and before she could fully realize what had hit her, she found herself hurtling backward through the air, propelled away from the door by a shockwave of force. She landed on her tailbone and a splinter of pain rattled up through her buttocks and spine as she skidded to a stop on the concrete in her miniskirt, the wind knocked out of her. Time continued to remain at a crawl, though; thankfully, it had not come unfrozen yet . . . but Dizzy could feel herself growing weary, tired, and this had only exacerbated that feeling. “Ow,” she said as she Pris helped her to her feet, a good ten feet away from where Stargazer stil stood by the doors, looking at them quizzically.

  “Are you alright?” asked Pris, as she stood. “Are you hurt?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Only my pride,” said Dizzy, rubbing her backside and wincing. “We’re not getting in that way, though.”

  “Yeah, I can see that,” said Pris. “Yo! Stargazer. We need to get into this building. It doesn’t want to let us in the nice way, though. Time for Plan B.”

  “With pleasure, dearest Pris,” replied the giant robot warrior. He tromped forward, all four stories of him, head hunkered down like a battering ram, his arms out to his sides, and crashed headfirst into the wall of black glass and gleaming steel that made up the three-story base of the pyramid, smashing it into a million pieces, causing shards of glass and bent, torn pieces of metal to rain down all over the place, collapsing three floors’ and ceilings’ worth of office spaces, closets, doorways, walkways, hallways, stairwells, and elevator shafts. He ripped the building’s electrical wiring, plumbing, and inner-scaffolding to shreds, ribbons, and debris. Wailing alarm klaxons began to shriek like banshees, with the fluorescent lights in the place — those that weren’t trashed or flickering, that was — all pulsating with a bright red glow, as a computerized female voice boomed, “INTRUDER, ALERT! INTRUDER, ALERT!” Sparks and arcs of lightning flew from downed power-lines and exposed electrical wires; geysers of water spouted from smashed-up, collapsed bathrooms, kitchenettes, plumbing lines, and water-mains; truckloads of flotsam, jetsam, concrete, and steel crumbled and rained down on Stargazer as he continued to march through the building as though its innards were made of papier-maché as opposed to metal, concrete, wire, plastic, and wood. The blaring alarms all ceased as Stargazer punched a hole through a wiring cabinet on what had once been the second floor. e stopped in the center of the building and turned back to face his friends, having refrained from damaging the huge concrete pillars that supported the enormous pyramid-structure that sat atop the three-story building. With a single swipe of his arm, he cleared away the debris blocking the closest stairwell — the only one left that seemed intact — and gestured toward its entrance. “I apologize, m’Lady Pris, but the all the elevators in this building seem to be out of service. I recommend taking the stairs while the . . . remodeling continues apace.”

  Pris grinned. So did Dizzy.

  “So what’re we waiting for?” asked Pris. “C’mon. Stargazer . . . wait here, okay?”

  “Aye, m’Lady,” he replied, bowing slightly to her. “That I will.”

  Pris mounted the stairs, as did Dizzy. And so it was that together, they began the thirty-one-story climb to the pyramid’s apex, and to the final confrontation — or at least, their next confrontation — with Ravenkroft — or at least his NeuorScape Avatar — and his evil plans.

  Avatar-Ravenkroft looked up sharply from his work with the transference machines as the klaxon sounded and the alarm system blared, “INTRUDER, ALERT! INTRUDER, ALERT!” He smiled, and clenched a fist in anticipation, and glanced over at Weatherspark’s sleeping shell-Avatar, which lay on the metal slab next to the Elder God on the other metal slab beside it. So, the bitch had found her way back here, had she? Apparently, the answer was yes, and also apparently, the Shadow-Wolves had failed in their mission to retrieve her consciousness for him. Well, she would soon remedy that problem for him. When she came — and of course she would; she needed to unplug her original shell-Avatar from this level of the simulation in order to wake up back in the Real World — he would de-rez her sub-level Avatar and transfer her consciousness back into the original, and complete the download procedure as he had planned, merging the Elder God’s essence with her consciousness, causing its true form to leap the dimension barrier and cross over into the physical realm back in the Real World, as well. All he had to do was wait for her to come through that door over there at the other end of the lab . . . and then immobilize her, beat her in a fight . . . Take her down, and zap her consciousness across the room and back into that sleeping Avatar.

  He plucked the Consciousness Transference Tool from the tray of surgical instruments near the operating tables. It resembled a gun, made all of a silvery, reflective material, with a long, thin barrel made of concentric cylinders and delicate electrodes protruding from both ends of it. He admired it for a moment, then readied himself for Weatherspark’s arrival. It really was a pity that she had to die like this, he reflected. They could have made formidable allies, in a different universe. Had she only not been so . . . inflexible. Ah well. Water under the bridge, he supposed. All that could be done now was to see his plan through to its grisly conclusion, and to let Evolution take its course through the cosmos as it inevitably would.

  Dizzy and Pris came to the double iron doors of Ravenkroft’s lives as they reached the top of the stairwell and stopped.

  “Well, this is it,” said Pris. “Here we are. What’s your plan?”

  “We go in hard,” said Dizzy, “and fast. We overwhelm with shock and awe, and we overpower him two to one.”

  “We need to be careful, though,” said Pris. “Remember . . . we’re on his turf here. Who knows how he’s programmed this simulation.”

  “He said something earlier about having turned off Effects hacks,” said Dizzy. “Does that mean anything to you?”

  “Hmm, yes,” said Pris. “It does. It means that normally, we couldn’t use magic here. But. He wasn’t counting on me being involved.” She grinned. “He doesn’t know this, but I can simply turn them back on. Oh. And your friends are here.”

  “What?” She looked up sharply. “They are? Where?”

  “In the Real World. I have a separate thread process monitoring the Real Ravenkroft’s security cameras, and your friends . . . they’ve arrived at his laboratory in the real world. The Real Ravenkroft has them captive in his laboratory.”

  “Crap!” exclaimed Dizzy. “We have to help them!”

  “And we will,” said Pris. “By defeating Avatar-Ravenkroft. Once we defeat him, we can take over control of the Real Ravenkroft’s Biomechanoid minions in the Real World from in here — or at least, I can — and turn them on him. Then the fun really begins.”

  “Outstanding,” said Dizzy. “Well then, what’re we waiting for. Are we ready?”

  “About as ready as we’ll ever be, I guess.”

  “Well then let’s get too it. In case we don’t make it out of this, I want you to know . . . it’s been great working with you, Pris. You’re one hell of a virtual lifeform.”

  “Thanks. You’re one hell of a flesh-form, Dizzy. Now then. Shall we say, on the count of three, and kick?”

  “Let’s.”

  “Okay. One. Two. Three.”

  They both thrust their legs out and kicked at the iron doors, and the doors obeyed the colossal force that the NeuroScape lent the symbolic gesutre of the blows; the doors burst open with a loud creaking noise, and there on the other side was Avatar-Ravenkroft’s virtual mad science lab, and there, Avatar-Ravenkroft awaited them, his green cape billowing behind him as he stood before the operating table where lay Dizzy’s shell-Avatar and the slumbering Elder God.

  “Well, well, well!” cried Avatar-Ravenkroft as Pris and Dizzy strode into his virtual laboratory. “What have we here? Two lost lambs, come home to the shepherd, or so it would appear. Why, Pris. So good to see you still in good health despire the withering defeat dealt you twice before. Once by yours truly. Have you come back again to be bested a second time? It would appear so.”

  “Not hardly,” said Pris, readying her Shockwave Cannon. She took aim at him, wasted no time, and fired. Quick as a viper, he threw up his palm in front of him, lightning quick into a fighting stance, and deflected the blast. The ripple and the green blast both ricochetted off his gauntlet and impacted the machinery around him, which exploded in a shower of sparks and electrical arcs, rocking on its base, but still standing. He grinned malignantly at them.

  “You’ll have to do better than that,” he said, snickering. “I am nigh-omnipotent here, you see. Not quite all-powerful, but close. You’ll just have figure out what few vulnerabilities I do have.”

  “Well then, we will,” said Dizzy. She raised the Portal Gun, aimed it at him, and fired. He moved his palm slightly to his left, and the purple blob of energy bounced off of it, deflected into the wall, where it impacted and opened a Portal back to the area outside the front of the building. It quickly collapsed into a sparking singularity and disappeared.

  “It’s going to be long fight, then,” he said, drew back a fist that crackled with lightning, and then thrust it forward. The ball of lightning flew from his fist, split in two, and came racing at them. Pris and Dizzy both tried to run. The iron doors slammed shut in front of them, and the lightning discharges hit them both. Dizzy felt the charge hit her, and felt the shock course through her, rattling her teeth, setting her skin and nerves on fire for an agonizing second or two, and she went flying into the air for a few seconds, flying over the stone floor of the room, head over heels, and landed on her backside, the pain that shot through her body dazing her as she landed next to Pris. She kept a tight grip on the Portal Gun, however, the Shockwave Cannon, still clipped to her belt, smashing painfully into her hip as she hit the ground. The weapon didn’t crack or break when she hit, which she supposed she was thankful for. Not that it would be much use against Ravenkroft.

  Dizzy got to her feet, as did Pris beside her. She dusted herself off and forced herself to laugh. “Y’know,” she said, “if I wasn’t used to getting knocked on my arse by bad guys like you, that probably would’ve surprised me just now. But as it is, it didn’t. Try again, please.”

  “I’m not trying to surprise you,” he said, striding toward them. “I’m trying to shock you into submission, Desirée. There’s a difference.” He pulled back his fist again — it once more crackled with electricity as he did — and then thrust it forward again. The ball of lightning surged out of it, split in two, and flew at them once more.

  This time, it appeared Pris was ready for him: She thrust out her magic wand, and yelled, “Protecto!” A curved, shimmering wall of force appeared in front of her and Dizzy, and the balls of lightning slammed into it instead of them.

  “Oh. I see,” he said. “Well, two can play at magic, my dears.” Ravenkroft clenched a fist in front of him and intoned the word, “Cruciatu!” Pris cried out and doubled over in pain, gripping her stomach with her free hand as she grimaced. She fell to the floor and curled into a fetal position, crying out in agony, letting go of her wand in the process. The shimmering wall of force winked out of existence. Ravenkroft grinned at them malevolently. “Three-nothing. Your move, Weatherspark.”

  Dizzy swallowed a throat-full of fear and uneasily reached for Pris’s fallen wand. She picked it up, steadied herself on her feet, and reached out in front of her with the hand in which she held it, imitating Pris’s usual stance. She had no earthly idea of what she was doing, but she suddenly felt a surge of power and energy rise up through the floor through her feet and into her legs, passing up through her body like an oscillating wave of current. That at least gave her confidence. There had to be a structure to it, though . . . It had something to do with that grimoire she had seen Pris conjure-up from her sunglasses. Which she presently did not have access to. Crap.

  “I’m warning you, Ravenkroft,” she said, waving the wand in front of her in a warding gesture. “I’m a talented NeuroScape . . . hacker. I can make this wand do . . . well I can make it do pretty much anything I want it to, okay? Yeah, pretty much anything. So . . . so I order you to free my Avatar from this simulation! Now! Wake her up at once!”

  Ravenkroft put his hands on his hips and laughed. “No. No, I don’t think so, Weatherspark. You’re a babe in the woods here. You might be tough out in the Real World, but in here . . . ah, in here, I am God.” He drew himself up, curled up a fist, and slammed it into the ground at his feet. The ground shook and rumbled, an earthquake striking the place. Ravenkroft remained on his feet, but Dizzy stumbled from side to side, trying to keep her balance and failing. She fell, crashing onto her butt. Ravenkroft laughed. “You see? God. Now do yourself a favor and surrender, Weatherspark. I promise to make the procedure quick, and as painless as possible.”

  Dizzy got to her feet and dusted herself off. Pris uncurled from her fetal position, regaining consciousness, and Dizzy helped her to her feet as well. Once more, the two of them stood there, facing-off against Ravenkroft, who stood a good fifteen feet away.

  “Did I miss anything?” Pris asked Dizzy. “What’s the score?”

  Dizzy handed Pris her wand. “So far, he’s still winning. And so far, he’s still an asshole. And so far, we’re still having a standoff where he’s still just showing-off.” She made sure to talk loudly enough to where Ravenkroft could hear her; she didn’t take her eyes off of him as she spoke.

  “Too true!” he called to her from where he stood, sauntering closer to them. “I enjoy showing-off my power here. Especially if it intimidates you. For too many years, I let you defeat me in honorable combat, Weatherspark. I allowed your heroic antics to come between me and my true destiny. Well, no more. No more! That ends tonight. No, tonight, you will bend to my will, succumb to my design for the future. Tonight, your days as a ‘hero’ come to an end, and my ascension to power — unlimited power — begins. And oh by the way . . .” He smiled an evil smile. “About your friends, Weatherspark. In the Real World. They’re watching. Watching over your body there, right now. Waiting to see the transformation take place. Or rather, are being forced to watch. What do you think will happen to them when they see, with their own two eyes, their hero, their savior, become a hideous monstrosity from another dimension? Perhaps that will be the most gruesome transformation of all.”

  And with that, something inside of Dizzy snapped. She wasn’t sure what it was — whether it was her temper, or her stress-level in general, or perhaps her tolerance for Ravenkroft’s bullshit all on its own — but something inside of her clicked into place, a psychological switch closing and a surge of current running through it. She ran forward and tackled Ravenkroft to the ground, pulling back a fist and slamming it into his face. He responded, rolling her off of him, drawing back, and punching her in return, sending her sliding away from him on the floor. His punches packed a wallop; he was far stronger here than he was in the Real World — even stronger than the Real World version of him wearing the Evangeliojaeger — and she was far weaker without the Evangeliojaeger in play.

  But perhaps that could be remedied; perhaps, if the NeuroScape could simulate her level of Real World strength, it could also augment that strength.

  “Pris!” she cried as she and Ravenkroft both scrambled to their feet and into fighting stances, squaring off against each other in close quarters, “I need you to somehow enhance me! Make me stronger!”

  She threw a kick at Ravenkroft’s head with her left leg, but Ravenkroft blocked it, grabbing her leg and twisting it at the ankle. She cried out and fell to the ground, crashing down onto her ass. Ravenkroft snickered, came forward, grabbed her, picked her up by her shirt-collar one-handed, and threw her across the nearest rounded countertop nearest the operating tables. Meanwhile, Pris fidgeted with Mystikite’s Grimoire, searching for the right spell, as Dizzy landed on the far side of the rounded counter with a colossal pain in her back and tailbone and legs. Dazed, she tried to clamber back to her feet as he rounded the lab table and closed in on her, a predator in motion. Ravenkroft reached her, and Dizzy spat out a wad of virtual blood — the stinging pain was real enough though! — and grabbed her by the fabric of her shirt. He picked her up, the shirt digging into her armpits and the back of her neck, and hauled her into the air, glaring at her. He was about to throw her again when —

  Dizzy saw Pris thrust out her wand. She flicked the wand and intoned, “Augeretis!” A bright streamer of golden energy shot out of the tip of the wand and sailed across the lab, and hit Dizzy’s body. Dizzy felt a sudden, soothing warmth infuse her, suffusing her entire being, seeping down into her aching bones and relieving the pain, renewing her sense of strength, revitalizing her, emboldening her. She suddenly felt twice — no five times! — stronger, more capable, more powerful. It was as though suddenly, Ravenkroft had shrunk a little, while she had grown, without either of them actually changing size. Her body felt as though it crackled with a new kind of energy, a newly unleashed electrical charge. She glared down at Ravenkroft, and grabbed his wrists where he held her by the shirt.

  “Y’know, it’s not nice to manhandle a lady,” she said, and twisted his wrists. He cried out in surprise and pain, and dropped her. Dizzy landed on her feet, reached out, grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket, pulled him in, then threw him back over the rounded countertop, tossing him. He landed on his back on the other side, but quickly recovered and got to his feet again.

  “Oh, I see how it is,” he said, once he did, and grinned at her, spitting blood. “You want to fight me with your fists. Is that the only thing you understand, Weatherspark? All that masterful intellect you possess — all that knowledge of physics and engineering, all that expertise in science and wizardry with technology that you have stored in that brilliant mind of yours — and it all comes down to who can punch the hardest? Very well. I will indulge your primitive need to fight me mano-y-mano. But I guarantee . . . you will not like the way I fight.”

  He suddenly thrust his hands out in front of him and two bright, blue-glowing bolts of lightning erupted from his fingers, and raced through the air toward her. Dizzy had time to suck in a breath and shield her eyes, and dodged out of the way. The bolts of lightning zoomed past her and slammed into the host of machines just behind her. Sparks and smoke issued from them and one of them exploded with a loud BOOM!, a cloud of flame, and the sound of tinkling glass. Dizzy ran at him and engaged him afresh; he blocked her first attack — a roundhouse punch with a left hook — but then she came at him with a punch to the gut that sent him stumbling backward. He struck at her with a sideways chop to the throat which she blocked by grappling his hand, and on it went — blow after blow, punch after punch, kick after kick, the two of them fought one another for a full ten minutes before finally, Dizzy managed to deliver a walloping kick to his head which sent him spinning like a top twice in a row, and left him stumbling, dizzy, so much so that he had to catch himself on the nearest rounded countertop near the operating tables. Blood oozed down his face; two of his teeth were broken; and Dizzy knew that her Avatar wasn’t in much better shape. And she felt it, too; she could feel warm blood trickling from her nose, could feel every bruise he had given her. Pris had been active in the battle as well; she had circled the dueling duo, and each time he had tried to use Magic — which he had, several times — she had been there to cast a protective spell on Dizzy, shouting “Protecto!” or “Expelliaramus!” just in time to dispell the Effect he had tried to use, and had in fact brought Magic into play on Dizzy’s side several times.

  Ravenkroft spun around and leveled an open palm at Dizzy, clenched his fist, and intoned, “Cruciatu!” Dizzy dropped to her knees with a sudden cry of pain, her hand going to her stomach as suddenly, she felt as though someone had stabbed her right in the intestines and was twisting the knife sideways. God, the agony! It felt as though a pair of spooked horses tied to meathooks embedded into her guts were pulling in opposite directions. She felt the stone floor hit and skin her knees, the pain there nothing compared to that in her stomach, and she crumbled. Dammit, no! She could not let him win this way! She fought the urge to go unconscious. If she did, she knew that was the end of her. Her eyes went to her shell-Avatar asleeep next to the Elder God form on the other operating table; if she went unconscious, her consciousness would zap back over there, and she would be done for, a prisoner, and that thing would download into her mind and erase her from existence. She could not let that happen!

  Pris leveled her wand at Dizzy and shouted, “Sanitatem Curare!” Dizzy knew a little Latin. That meant “healing cure.” And as the bright orange streamer of energy shot out of the wand and enveloped Dizzy’s body, Dizzy felt rejuvinated, the pain subsiding, easing somewhat, then ebbing away . . . it was almost gone entirely when . . .

  She heard Pris scream.

  The pain vanished all at once, the spell completing, and Dizzy’s eyes popped open. She got to her feet immediately and saw Pris go flying backward. Ravenkroft had his hand raised and his palm open and facing in her direction. He had thrown her across the room telekinetically, and sent her crashing into the iron doors. They rang out as Pris collided with them and went sprawling on the ground, her wand knocked out of her hand as she fell, knocked unconscious. Dizzy calculated the distance between herself, him, and Pris — and the wand — and made a run for it . . . but Ravenkroft intercepted her and clotheslined her, flipping her onto her back. She went down hard onto the stone floor, crashing down onto her back, her head rapping against the stone. She saw stars. Dammit, why was the NeuroScape so good at simulating pain?

  She started to try to get to her feet, but Ravenkroft put his foot on her and pressed down, pinning her to the spot. Meanwhile, Pris started to regain consciousness, and began groggily picking herself up from where she lay on the ground. As she did, Ravenkroft turned toward her and raised his hand again, and Pris rose up from the floor, into the air — but not before grabbing her wand, Dizzy noticed — gasping for air and grasping at her throat. He was telekinetically choking her, the bastard! He pushed his hand forward through the air and Pris slammed backward into the iron doors again, her body crashing into them and sliding down onto the floor again. But as she did, she raised her wand and pointed it at Ravenkroft and shouted, in a hoarse voice, “Sectumsempra!”

  A bright green bolt of energy leapt out of the wand, crossed the room, and collided with Ravenkroft. He cried out in pain as deep cuts appeared on his face and neck, and blood began to pour from them. He stumbled backward, taking his foot off of Dizzy’s chest, and Dizzy struggled to her feet, as did Pris, who crossed from where she stood to where Dizzy stood, nearer to the operating tables. Ravenkroft recovered, the wounds on his face and neck healing, and then he struck back: Lightning bolts leaped from the stone floor into his body, which glowed with an eldritch purple aura for a moment, and with a yell, he then he threw out his hands in front of him, throwing the lightning at the both of them.

  Pris shouted, “Protecto!” The shimmering, curved wall of force appeared in front of them, and deflected the lightning. It blasted off to either side of them and struck the walls of the room instead, leaving burn-marks in the stone there. Ravenkroft wasted no time and attacked a second time: He rose into the air on telekinetic currents, and a fierce wind began to blow all around them, nearly taking them off their feet. The ground beneath them began to rumble and quake as well, and between the wind and the earthquake, Dizzy almost lost her footing again. She tried like hell to maintain her balance, but it was difficult. As the quake intensified and the wind grew even stronger, she had to shield her eyes and face from it, as did Pris. They were going to blow away. She had to plant her feet and lean her body into it to avoid that happening, as did Pris. They both grabbed onto the nearest rounded countertop and held on tight. The shimmering wall of force winked out of existence. From all around Ravenkroft’s head, a bunch of ice-daggers materialized from out of thin air, crystalizing into being from clouds of frost and fog. They raced through the air toward Dizzy and Pris. Pris thrust out her wand and whisked it from side to side, left and right, waving it around, and telekinetically whacked the ice-daggers off-course. But not all of them — one of them slammed right into her shoulder, piercing it all the way through, and she screamed in pain as virtual blood poured from the wound. Another one whizzed just past Dizzy’s head, the air whistling in her ear. Whew. That was close. Poor Pris, though! She clutched at the wound with her wand-holding hand, wincing in agony, the ice-shard lodged in her shoulder. Dizzy moved to grab the dagger of ice and pull it out. As she did, Pris screamed again. Dizzy pulled it out, leaving a bloody gaping hole in Pris’s shoulder. It gushed virtual blood, and Pris collapsed.

  “Here,” she said, pushing the wand into Dizzy’s hand. “Take this.” Dizzy again felt a surge of power go through her, climbing up through her feet and legs and into the rest of her, washing over her like the warmth of an electric blanket.

  “But I don’t know how to — ”

  “Here, take these too,” said Pris, giving her the sunglasses from off of her head. Dizzy put them on. “Use the Grimoire. Gotta go. Worry not. I’ll . . . be back. At least, I think I will.”

  Pris promptly disappeared in a flickering cloud of glowing computer code and alphanumeric characters. Dizzy blinked, unsure of what to do next. The wicked windstorm and the violent earthquake continued all around her, and she almost lost her balance again. She turned around, and faced Ravenkroft, unsteady on her feet. Ravenkroft smiled at her.

  “It’s just you and me now, Weatherspark!” he shouted over the wind and the rumbling noise of the earthquake. “Just the two of us, as it was always meant to be.”

  “So it is,” she said. She stowed the magic wand in her pocket, worked out a crick in her neck, flexed the fingers on both hands, and then clenched them into fists. She fell into a fighting stance. “Let’s finish this, Ravenkroft.”

  “Yes, do let’s.”

  They ran at each other, and engaged in their most brutal confronation yet. Punch after punch, kick after kick, blow after blow, they hammered at each other like immortal martial arts masters engaged in one final bout after Ravenkrofts of pursuit across contintents and the cosmos. They laid into one another with a ferocity becoming of animals, but with the calculation of strategy and precision of whoopass that only human opponents could deliver one another; neither of them held anything back, for neither of them had anything left to prove, nor was anything at stake other than each of their very existences, and they both knew it. Dizzy knew that if she lost this fight, she would cease to live, and that the Elder God — one of many — would walk the Earth in her body, and that her friends would be among the first casualties of the coming twin alien invasions. And that seeing her destroyed would destroy them — not to mention what it would do to her father when he learned of it. That gave her the fire and the passion to want more than anything to win. And so she fought Ravenkroft harder than she ever had before. No more holding back. No more thoughts of Viktor conjoined with him to stay her hand in delivering his punishment. And likewise, he didn’t hold back on her; he pummeled her and beat on her like never before, his blows precise and devastating, his punches hard and fast and lightning quick. Their movements were almost a blur they moved so fast, first Ravenkroft reeling back on his feet, stumbling to one side or the other, Dizzy delivering an uppercut and then a suckerpunch, Ravenkroft delivering a roundhouse kick to the head, and then Dizzy leveling him with a kick to his stomach. He bent double and she kneed him in the forehead, but as he stumbled back he recovered, and came at her with a snap-kick to the face. She staggered backward, and fell onto the ground, tripping over her own feet. He came at her afresh and grabbed her by the shirt, picking her up and slamming her against the wall. Blood poured from her nose and mouth.

  She punched him in the face — once, twice, three times. He stumbled backward, and caught her fist mid-swing on the fourth punch, and twisted her arm. She cried out in agony, and he punched her in return. She staggered, and he moved in, pressing his advantage. He grabbed her by the throat and punched her again. She kicked him in the side, sending him shuffling to the right. He recovered, though, and kicked out at her with his right leg, landing a blow to her stomach, sending her reeling backward. He moved in closer, and grabbed her by her shirt and forced her up against the wall.

  Dizzy reached into her pocket and grabbed at the wand, and reached up with her other hand and activated the glasses. He was right in her face as he grinned at her with malevolence in his eyes. He spun her around and threw her across the room. She landed, and skidded across the stone floor, scraping her side and legs. It hurt like hell, and she cried out in pain. Mystikite’s Nearly-Endless Grimoire of Magic projected itself in front of her face, and, her hands shaking as she lie there on the floor — he came toward her and grabbed her again, readying to toss her around some more — she flicked through the pages that, invisible to him, only she could see. She found a spell, and pulled the wand out of her pocket.

  “Ex Inferis!” she shouted, flicking the wand at him. A bright orange ball of flame roared out of the end of the wand and collided with Ravenkroft’s body. He screamed in pain as he was immediately set on fire. He staggered backward, the flames leaping higher and crackling, engulfing him entirely. Dizzy got to her feet, keeping the wand trained on him at all times. She flicked through the pages and found another spell. “Lasso veritatis!” she cried, and flicked the wand again. A bright golden “rope” slithered out of the wand and wrapped itself around Ravenkroft’s flaming, screaming body and tightened around his midsection, and Dizzy yanked on the wand, hard, and he was jerked off of his feet, and landed on his back, still on fire and still screaming. She saw him clench his fists, and the flames doused themselves.

  His skin charred — blacked, bloody, and burned — and fairly sickening to look at — he laughed in spite of what must’ve been excrutiating pain. Dizzy yanked on the wand again — holding it with both hands, the “lasso of truth” she had conjured glowing a bright gold color, and drew him toward her, his arms bound at his sides.

  “You think you have defeated me,” he said, his voice raspy and hoarse. “You are wrong.” His eyes went to the operating table where the Elder God form lay pulsating and quivering. It began to move slightly.

  “Now,” she said, ignoring him, panting for breath, the blood still running from her face. “You will release my Avatar! Wake her up, so I can get back to the Real World!”

  “No!” He chuckled through the scars and severe burns. “Never! I refuse!” Then, amazingly, he heaved himself up, and despite his arms being bound, he managed to get to his knees, and then stood up, bloody and blackened burn-wounds, tattered and charred clothes, and all. He stood before her, and her golden-glowing lasso of truth vanished. Dizzy stood slack-jawed. Now it was his turn to work out a crick in his neck, flex his arms, and clench his hands into fists. “Now, then,” he said. He moved too quickly for her to react; he wound up like a baseball pitcher, and threw a ball of lightning at her. The glowing ball raced across the space between them and hit her dead in the chest, throwing her across the room, the shock sparking and quaking through her body as she hit the far wall of the room hard, the wind going out of her. He continued from where he had left off: “And now . . . Now we come to something I’ve been saving for last. You know how the NeuroScape taps into the brain and utilizes neural impulses to let you do things like . . . oh . . . say, walk? Well your brain has been trained, for a very long time, to not walk, Weatherspark. Or to use your Evangeliojaeger to walk instead. So how about I just tell the NeuroScape to reinforce the part of your neural impulses that tell it you’re crippled.” He put one finger to his temple and scrunched his eyes in concentration.

  Dizzy cried out as she felt her legs vanish from beneath her, and she crumpled to the floor in a heap. She lie there, crawling, unable to get up as he stalked toward her, laughing.

  “Ah,” he said. “To see you so helpless, it makes me cringe. Truly, it does. You’re usually so full of heroism and bravado. To see you, reduced to crawling around on the floor before me . . . sickens me, Weatherspark. Ah well. You won’t have to crawl for very long.”

  “Damn you, Ravenkroft!” she spat. “You lousy cheat! If you can’t win the game, you just hack it!”

  “Oh-ho!” he said. “And isn’t that what you did when you created your precious Evangeliojaeger? You couldn’t adapt to being a cripple, like so many other people in the world do. No, you had to cheat. You couldn’t overcome your disability. You had to sidestep it. Good day, Weatherspark. I’ll try to make the download go as smoothly as possible . . .”

  Dizzy swallowed. “I thought you needed to transfer my consciousness back into the shell-Avatar first. Before you could do that.”

  “No,” he said. “Not quite. I’ve found I can circumvent that limitation. It will be a slower process, is all. Much slower. But it can be done, if one merely has the patience. And the time. And I have both. You pose no threat to me like this.”

  And with that, he turned around and stalked back toward his machines and the operating tables, where lay her unconscious shell-Avatar and the Elder God form. He began tinkering with the machinery again, checking readouts, throwing switches, and adjusting dials. Electrodes zapped, and various devices whirred. Dizzy had time to think. His words had done their job . . . they had cut deep into her soul. For he was right, in a way. She and he were more alike than different . . . she was just as reckless as he was; they were cut from the same cloth . . . she was every bit the mad scientist he was, maybe even more so, just as heedless of the consequences as him. All true, all of it. She had to quite hiding from these things. Yes, she had to. Had to stop cheating, stop trying to “hack” her way around them, stop trying to “invent” a way out of the truth. She had to stop hiding. Dammit, quit it. Quit hiding. Quit avoiding the truth, she told herself. Face it! Face this stuff, face it now, the same way you face him all the time! It can’t be that hard! Be a scientist. Let the truth in. It’s only light. The light can’t mislead you. It might burn you, but it can’t mislead you,

  She turned and looked at Ravenkroft’s back as he worked the machines. Her shell-Avatar had begun to glow at the edges, an eldritch green aura tinging her flesh, as had the Elder God form; the rays of light seemed to be falling inward toward her shell-Avatar’s body, though, rather than radiating out from it. The creepy Elder God form pulsated faster now; something had excited it. No doubt the prospect of a host organism.

  “There, there,” said Ravenkroft, resting his hand upon its fleshy sac. “It won’t be long, now.”

  Goddamn it, she thought, and as she spoke to herself, she let each thought hammer itself home, feeling each idea pound itself into her like a nail being driven into concrete. So be it.

  Tears streaked down her face as she felt the weight of the words crush in on her. Truly felt them, for the first time in her life.

  I am disabled, she thought. The thought felt hollow, ringing, but it also felt true. But that does not mean I am worthless. Or worth less. That does not mean I am incapable. On the contrary. I am smart. I am a genius. I figured a way around my disability. And I am strong. I am stronger than this asshole, that’s for sure. I am smart, and I am strong, and I will overcome — both my disability and this, here, now. I will get out of this. I will live to fight another day. And I will do it with strength and with courage, and using my giant brain. I just need to figure a way to turn the tables here. A way to get my legs back under me. And I am not like him. I am not like Ravenkroft. I may be a little reckless, a little without caution . . . and I may be a tad ruthless in my pursuit of science. But that’s a far cry from being a villain. A far cry for purposefully hurting people and not caring about who dies for my glory. No. I am not like him. His words are bullshit designed to weaken me. That’s all they are. And right now, I need to live through this. I need to survive so I can deal with all of that psychoanlaytic stuff later. Now then . . . Ravenkroft hacked the simulation, made it do something it wasn’t supposed to do, using magic. So thus, I can do that, too. So what do I do? I’ve got the magic wand; I’ve got the Grimoire; so how do I do it? What on Earth can I —

  Then, a thought occurred to her. The NeuroScape could conjure magical weapons, according to Pris. From inside the user’s mind. That gave her an idea.

  “Hey!” she shouted. “Ravenkroft!”

  He turned from where he stood near the machines. “Yes, Weatherspark? What is it? Have you decided upon any last words? I do hope it’s something pithy. Otherwise, don’t waste my time.”

  “Oh it’s pithy alright,” she said, and grinned a savage grin. “Pithy as frak. Don’t you think it’s about time . . .” she said, out of breath as she crawled toward him, “that we evened this shit up?” She intoned a spell that she hoped would work as she flicked the wand. “Accio Evangeliojaeger!” She felt something grow hot in her pocket, and felt for it . . . A pair of dice had appeared there, and they were glowing. Curious, she took them out, looked at them. A pair of D20’s. She rolled them on the stone floor. They came up an 18 and a 17. Dizzy smiled up at Ravenkroft, who appeared perplexed.

  “I don’t get it,” he said flatly.

  “Oh but you will,” she said.

  The roof of the building suddenly exploded inward in one spot as a sudden new arrival punctured it: The various pieces of her Evangeliojaeger — or at least the NeuroScape’s simulation of it, summoned up from inside her mind — flew in through the hole, answering her call, coming to her rescue. It flew toward her despite Ravenkroft’s vocal objections — “No! This cannot be!” — and began attaching itself to her body, piece by piece. She stowed the wand as the gauntlets fitted themselves onto her hands, the gears interlocking, the motors whirring as the pieces locked into place, the braces and vambraces fitting themselves onto her arms and legs, the zero-point reactor coming online. The Evangeliojaeger bolted itself onto her in all the right places, the last piece to attach being the motorcycle helmet. She felt the Evangeliojaeger come fully online in her mind, merging with her Avatar, the ultimate magical weapon as far as the Roleplayer Generisys part of the NeuroScape was concerned. A small hologram superimposed itself on her vision — two twenty-sided dice, ready to be rolled for magical maneuvers. She got to her feet — god it felt good being able to stand again! — and stepped toward Ravenkroft, the motors and gears of the Evangeliojaeger whining as she walked toward him.

  “Oh?” he said. “Well. Two can play at that game!” He spread his arms out to either side, and soon, another part of the roof exploded inward, as the pieces of his Evangeliojaeger came punching through it as well, and likewise latched onto his body, attaching to his body in the same fashion as hers had to her. “Now. You were saying?”

  “Okay, have it your way,” she said. “At least now we’re more evenly matched. Even if it is a bit unfair . . . after all. Maybe the NeuroScape doesn’t know this . . . but we both know that my suit is the better one.”

  And with that, once more, they engaged.