Atlas Alone Read online

  I almost snort at the cheesy dialog, but then I realize I have no idea what was on the desk. I was paying attention to the man speaking to us, too distracted by the odd way his gaze wasn’t quite focused on me to even look at the room he was in. Stupid rookie error!

  “It was a small glass hedgehog,” Carolina says confidently. “Its body and spines were made of clear glass but its eyes and nose were black glass.”

  The agent smiles, blinks slowly, and nods. She looks like she’s bleeding out. “This is where he is.” She holds out a piece of paper and Carolina takes it from her, looks at it and passes it to me. It’s a page from a London A to Z—the same size and coloration as the pages in the edition I have—a small black dot marking a building off Fleet Street. At the bottom of the page a number seven is written. On the other side, written across the streets and squares, is a string of eight numbers with dots between them.

  “The code on the back is for the dead drop. It’s a locker in the Hospital Club in Covent Garden. I had a card to get in but I lost it en route. I’m sorry, you’ll have to find another way in.”

  So that’s another challenge, then. Fine. “What about the place off Fleet Street?” I ask, flipping the page back over. “Is it hard to get into?”

  She shakes her head. “It’s a flat . . . safe house . . . keypad on door is last three digits of the dead drop code. Made it the same to . . .”

  Carolina goes over to her, kneels down and starts to try to pull the T-shirt away from the wound. The agent shakes her head. “I’m fucked,” she says with a lopsided grin. “Nothing to be done for me now. But Serge is the real deal. He wants to help and he still has the flash drive. Get to him, keep him safe, get the drive to the dead drop and then the boss will contact you. He’ll tell you where to bring him in. Okay?”

  I want to ask her how they got separated, how Serge got to the safe house but she didn’t, how putting a dead drop in a private club that presumably anyone can be a member of if they have the money could seem like a good idea. But then I’d just be one of those arseholes who only bought access to mersives so they could shred the plot and put all the solutions online in narcissistic recordings of themselves crowing about how they’d make something so much better and yet never seemed to get round to it. The fact I could fly a small aircraft through the plot holes in this mersive is not going to help us right now.

  Carolina gets up. “Let’s go,” she says, heading for the door.

  I glance back at the agent, who looks sleepy now. She nods, giving me silent permission to leave her here to die. It’s a linear and she’s just an NPC and I feel absolutely nothing, save for a sense of dissatisfaction. I follow Carolina into the hallway.

  “There’s no chance she was one of the other players?”

  Carolina shakes her head. “That’s why I went up close, to check. We can only use disguises we can find in game. There’s no way they could have sourced one that good and got here before us. Come on, we need to go.”

  I take a few more steps and then stop. “Wait. If we go now, she’ll die, right? Then when they get here, there’ll be something to tell them they had the right place, but that they have to wait because they got here second, yeah?”

  She nods, still moving toward the door.

  “There’s a better way to handle this. A ten-minute penalty isn’t enough. We’ve got . . . what, three more steps at least? Get to Serge, get the drive, get into the club and make the dead drop. Then it sounds like there could be more. We need a better advantage than being one step ahead, even in just a linear.”

  “Okay, I’m listening.”

  “You go to Fleet Street,” I say, handing her the map page and the bike key. “Get the drive, move Serge somewhere else, meet me across the road from the main entrance to the Hospital Club. I’ll slow them down here, then join you.”

  She frowns as she takes the page. “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I lie. “I’ll figure it out. Do they know what I look like?”

  “They might have looked before they went into the loading room. I had to declare you as a teammate. But that was, like . . . a few seconds before we went in. I didn’t know if you were going to say yes.”

  I know that’s a diplomatic way of saying she wasn’t sure if I was going to make the grade. “Go! I’ll see you there as soon as I can.”

  “You know where the club is?”

  “Yes, yes, it was—” I almost tell her it was my father’s club, that it was the place he met my mother, that every time we walked past it as a family he’d point to it and say that if they had had more chairs, I might never have been born but he would never explain why. “It was really well-known,” I say.

  “We don’t usually split up,” she says, slowing. “We don’t have phones or anything. What if—”

  “Go! If I fuck it up, you’ll have to finish it by yourself. That’s the worst that happens, okay?”

  She scowls at the carpet for a moment and then nods. “Good luck!” she says and then races out of the flat.

  I go back into the living room. The agent is still alive, just. She opens her eyes as I approach and looks up at me. “The enemy have sent two more operatives and we think they intercepted your message,” I say to her. “They’ll be here soon.”

  “Go. I don’t have long. I’ll be dead by the time they get here.”

  “No,” I say, crouching in front of her. “I’ve got a better plan, and you’re going to help me.”

  15

  THE AGENT, WHO told me her name is Charlotte, is dying quietly in the bedroom as I make my final preparations. With the help of the Internet and the contents of the well-stocked kitchen and a sewing box I found in a cupboard, I’ve patched her up enough to prolong her life by an hour at most. She’s in a lot of pain and suffering like hell, but she isn’t real so I don’t waste any worry on it. I’m focused on staging the flat for the other team’s arrival.

  Charlotte had gone into the bathroom to wash her wound, leaving the trail of blood that we saw when we entered, rather than trying to deliberately misdirect us. I plan to use the blood though, and I sit down on the floor at the end of the trail, just outside the bathroom door, so they’ll see me. I’m wearing a fluffy bathrobe I found hung on the back of the door; I got Charlotte to lie on the robe while I patched her up, soaking as much of her blood into the front of it as I could and using it to wipe my hands when I’d finished pushing some of her intestines back into her abdomen and gluing the wound closed. Like I told Carolina, it takes a lot to freak me out, and while I had to take a moment to ready myself, I didn’t feel faint at any point. There wasn’t time for that.

  Now I’m wearing the robe over my clothes, figuring that people who are going into shock get cold and I could have found it and put it around my shoulders before collapsing here. Her T-shirt, still sodden with her blood, is in a plastic bag in the pocket, ready for me to take out as soon as I hear them outside the door. I found some pale foundation in the bedroom and have used it all over my face. It’s as good as it’s going to get.

  A bottle I found in the kitchen earlier is positioned behind me, easy for me to grab when I need it, hidden from view. Will I be able to go through with the plan when it comes to it? This is a leet server; it’s not the same as other games. What if I freeze up? What if—

  The sound of footfalls on the stairs outside sends a surge of adrenaline through me. I scrabble into a crouch with my back against the wall, draping the dressing gown so that it covers the fact that I’m not actually slumped back. I pull up the hood to hide my face—just in case they looked me up before the game—and pull the soaked shirt from the bag, screw it up into a tiny ball and shove it in the gown’s pocket. I press the shirt over my side, just like Charlotte was doing when we found her, move my right hand to grip the neck of the bottle resting on the floor behind me and drop my chin down toward my chest. I stare at the floor in fron
t of me as the front door handle turns.

  “It’s the right place!” An American man’s voice. “Finally!”

  “There’s the agent!” says a second man, his voice just as American, only deeper. To my Noropean ear it’s difficult to tell where either of them comes from. “We must have got here first!”

  The door closes and they both rush toward me. I keep my eyes down, making my breathing as rapid and shallow as I can without making myself dizzy.

  “I need to know you’re legit,” I croak, trying my best to remember Charlotte’s crappy dialog.

  One of them kneels next to me. I tighten my grip on the bottle. “Whoa, shit, there’s a lot of blood. I don’t feel so good.”

  “Get out of the way,” says the deeper voice, unimpressed. “Take some deep breaths. Yeah, this looks bad.” His hand reaches toward the soaked T-shirt but I keep my head down, just in case.

  “You could have intercepted my message. If the boss sent you, you’ll know what was on his desk.”

  “Fuck,” the man mutters. His hand moves quickly toward the shirt, pressing hard into my stomach, and I cry out in surprise. “Tell me where the commander is!”

  “What are you doing, Brace?”

  I can’t help but look up at the man pressing hard into my side. Commander Brace’s face is twisted by a determined sneer as he drives his fingers deeper in, thinking he is pressing a wound, but it is still hard enough to hurt.

  Good.

  All of my worries about whether I’d be able to do this dissipate, and I bring the broken bottle I’ve been hiding out from behind my back in a tight arc, shove the jagged glass into his side and pull it out again with a sickening, moist sucking sound to plunge it right back in as quick as I can.

  He roars in pain, throwing himself back away from me, sending a spatter of his blood up against the wall as the bottle is pulled free, still gripped tight in my hand and slick with his blood. His teammate squeals, a strange, strangled sound that reminds me of a puppy being stepped on by accident. He throws himself against the wall too, leaping out of my range as I spring to my feet, dropping the bloodied T-shirt.

  “You fucking bitch!” Brace spits through his teeth. His hands are now pressed over the messy wound in his side, and for a moment, I wonder if he will actually be hurt in the real world, just like Myerson was. Christ, I hope so.

  “She’s with Carolina?” the other guy says, incredulous, his face paper white in shock.

  “Of course she fucking is!”

  I back away from them, heading toward the front door, the dripping broken bottle held defensively in front of me. Brace’s face is crumpled in pain, his lips drained of color, an impressive slick of blood already spilled on the carpet. Damn. Did I stab too deep? I don’t want that bastard to die too quickly; I want him to suffer and not be kicked out of the game too soon.

  His teammate is frozen rigid with shock, staring at the makeshift weapon, back pressed against the wall still.

  “Stop her!” Brace yells at him, but he doesn’t move.

  I turn and bolt out, slamming the door shut. I set the broken bottle down in favor of gripping the tiny disk I stuck on the outside of the frame after Carolina left, and I draw the monofilament across the doorway at the level of my forehead and stick the disk on the opposite side of the frame, just as it was when I found it before. If Brace’s partner comes to his senses and decides to pursue me, he’ll run straight into this. I have no idea what damage it will do and I don’t care. We’re going to win. That’s all that matters right now.

  I run down the stairs, wiping my hand frantically on the dressing gown, which trails down the steps behind me. As I reach the bottom floor I hear a cry of pain from the top of the flights of stairs. He found that wire, then. I stop, catching my breath as I wipe my hand more carefully, knowing I have a head start. I dump the dressing gown, hoping no one will notice the blood caught beneath my fingernails, and walk out of the building at a calm, measured pace.

  Flipping through the A to Z to the relevant page, I plan a jog to Tower Hill Underground station, knowing I can tap in through the barriers with just the credit card. It will be a short tube ride to Embankment, then a jog to Covent Garden. There were no signs of the riots on the ride over, but if the tube network is shut down, I can get a bus there. Once I’m at the club, I’ll scope out the building and see if I can figure out a way to get past security if I get there before Carolina.

  It occurs to me that my parents had guest passes for friends they wanted to take into the club. I know where they were kept. And the old flat is on the way . . .

  Once I’m a couple of streets away from the apartment I’ve just left, I break into a run. It’s weird running without Dragon’s Ghost. Then it hits me. Dragon will be at our old home.

  I trip over the curb and stagger forward, narrowly avoiding a fall. I try to focus on the sprinting; the last thing I need is a sprained ankle or gashed knee, and I promise myself I’ll make the decision about going home once I’m on the tube.

  The station is not one I ever used before, but the barriers and the ancient, grubby yellow disks that read the travel cards, phones or payment cards are just as I remember. I hold my breath as I tap the credit card against the pad and then the barrier opens and I saunter through, just a quick backward glance to check that no injured men are hurtling toward me. There’s just an old lady with a small dog.

  Unlike the times I recall using the tube in real life, the train I need arrives only a minute after I arrive at the correct platform. I get on and flop into one of the seats, relieved that the carriage is only fairly full instead of absolutely rammed tight with people. I’m a little shaky after the running and the excitement, and sweaty too. But the heady glow of triumph, the memory of Brace’s scream as I jabbed that broken bottle into his side, brings a smile to my face. I fold my arms, tuck my bloodstained fingers away from sight and slide down a little in the chair.

  It’s rare to get dead time like this in normal games. They’re usually designed so that if it’s the sort of game that needs pauses in the action—say, a standard zombie apocalypse shooter—there’s something interesting going on, something to listen to at least, or an NPC to chat with. Here, there’s nothing to occupy me, nothing to entertain. The smart ads running along the carriage are tedious and I’m so used to avoiding them I just stare at the floor, pretty much the only person not plugged into a device of some sort. I’m amused briefly by the sight of someone watching something on a pair of glasses that I remember wanting so badly as a kid.

  A family gets on at the next stop, a young boy guided on by a tired-looking woman who squeezes onto the last free seat and puts the boy on her lap, as a woman who I assume is her wife or partner comes and stands near them. The boy has a bear, which looks very similar to the model that Bobby Bear was. I try not to stare as the boy turns it around to face him so they can chat about the train.

  And there was me thinking there was nothing to observe, and what do I get? A painful reminder of what I’ve lost.

  And where am I faced with going? The home I lost. And when? The same summer as the riots, the worst time of my entire life.

  But this station wasn’t closed, and I’m sure the entire tube network was shut when all that violence broke out. I look at the girl wearing the glasses and force myself to break a cardinal rule by talking to a stranger on public transport. “Excuse me . . . Sorry, I dropped my phone in the river and I’m lost without it. I heard someone say something about riots? Have you seen anything about that on the news feeds?”

  She shakes her head, eyes wide at my having interrupted whatever she was watching. An elderly man seated next to me looks up from his handheld console screen, his game pausing as soon as he looks away. “I heard something about it just before I left home. It’s only a few idiots smashing some windows near a protest about something or other. Nothing to worry about.”

  That was how it st
arted before though. Protests against the appalling corruption in government, about the huge gap between the rich and the poor . . . protests my mother took part in, thinking she would come home that day. It escalated so quickly . . . so violently . . .

  I swallow down the lump in my throat. “Is the date the twenty-third of August? I’m just lost without my bloody phone!”

  He nods, smiling. “It is, love,” he says with a smile and looks back down at his game, the tiny lights on his wireless earbuds showing the sound has resumed too.

  Somewhere out in the city, my mother is marching toward Parliament Square, and before the sun has set, she’ll be dead.

  I squeeze my eyes shut. No, not necessarily. This is just a game, just a rendering of London that might not be a perfect copy. But why this day, of all days? Why this city? Carolina said the levels were randomized so that no team could skew the challenges to suit their strengths. But this has been grossly unfair already. I’m playing a level in the city I grew up in, able to use my personal knowledge, to use a vehicle I’ve ridden before, through streets I know. Against Americans, for fuck’s sake! Is that bastard beast behind this? Is he dicking with me again?

  And if he is, is Brace dying in the real world now?

  I wipe new sweat from my upper lip, taking a few steadying breaths. What’s important, right now, is making sure Carolina wins. That’s what I’m here for, that’s what will serve me well in the future and that is a guaranteed reason for me to be here. All this other bullshit is just paranoia bordering on narcissism. Either it’s a coincidence that this is the day my childhood ended, or it’s that bastard fucking with me again; either way, it does not matter. It doesn’t change what we have to do to win. And when I think of it that way, I have to try the old flat, because if the guest passes are there, we will surely win. I know I’ve given us a decent lead, but if we mess up trying to bypass the club’s security, it could all be worthless. It’ll be a five-minute detour, ten at the most. There’s no reason not to try.