Hollow Read online

  Watching the mouse work, Ash wondered idly why they didn’t use live-fire weapons against other teams in the training levels of the Hallow. The Clerics said it was to prevent the mental shock, coma, or even physical death that death in the Hallow could bring—but the training levels weren’t really the Hallow. Without the energy for even a disinterested shrug, Ash moved on… she’d never understand tech stuff.

  Unfortunately, though training had its pleasures, it didn’t last forever. Twelve hours a day was all any team was allowed. That left eight hours for the nightly blackout when she had to lie in bed in the absolute darkness until at last the lights flickered back on in the morning. There was maybe one more hour for the ritual of food, and three more hours for everything else—which was to say “for nothing”. Whenever she could, she would hang with Phoenix, but the clerics would break them up after two hours, and she’d be relegated to the library or the apartment. Today she couldn’t muster the effort or the interest necessary to make a trip to the library with its fascinating tales of history and science, so she was left with the mouse and the cat, the moose and the squirrel, the roadrunner and the coyote burning slowly away at the wealth of entertainment credits she had accumulated with Phoenix.

  Yesterday, she’d spent most of her free time at the library, and had actually enjoyed herself for a while. She’d been researching the time when the books had stopped, when the palsy had destroyed civilization a little under a hundred years ago. She’d been entertaining some fantasy about unraveling the mystery around the palsy, figuring out by brute intelligence and diligence what had killed most of the world and left the rest in a permanent hospice. Many of the last books were about biology, and even some about viruses, but none seemed to be even remotely related to the pandemic presumably underway.

  The consensus among everyone she knew was that the end had come quickly. There must not have been time to make a cartoon or write a textbook about the onset of the palsy before all the cartoonists and scholarly authors were dead. In any case, there were no vids or books in the library on the subject. Apparently, the palsy had ended history, and a black unrecorded period had covered the earth for a hundred years. In the end, the library had proved a pointless experience, as always.

  The league fatalities she’d bumped into in the library didn’t seem to care, maybe they were just more used to pointless experiences, but to Ash they all seemed like the walking dead, their snappy banter seemingly limited to the occasional “excuse me” or “uh huh” before shuffling away.

  “Congratulations, Ash!” The cleric said behind her, derailing her train of thought.

  Ash was surprised, but her body didn’t jump, didn’t even twitch. Her wasted nerves didn’t have the reflexes for anything more automatic than the operation of her feet when walking, and even that kind of consciously directed automation was under constant threat of failure. Though her body didn’t register the shock, her mind, or maybe her spirit, did. She felt the hard discomfort of the shock slowly dissipating through her insides, radiating outward from the center of her chest like an unclenching fist.

  Crow had told her that the clerics liked to surprise him before every mission, popping in from seemingly nowhere at the most inopportune times, but this was the first time they’d done it to Ash. The most unnerving part of the experience was that apparently a primary design imperative for the clerics was the ability to enter a room like a top-level ninja.

  “Congratulations to you, too.” Ash said with a dull voice and a small shrug.

  “Thank you.” The cleric said, completely deadpan, as always, “I have good news for you, Ash. I’ve got an extremely high priority mission for you.”

  “Yah-huh… why tell me, Crow’s the captain… Did something happen to him?” Ash turned to face the cleric that was standing at the right side of, and looking only slightly less excited than, her couch.

  “Your Captain is healthy and well, thank you for asking.”

  “So go talk to him.” She breathed a sigh of relief, relaxing back into the couch.

  “This mission is for you, Ash.”

  “You’re saying it’s a solo mission?” Ash arched a skeptical eyebrow. “I’ve only heard of three solo missions, and all of them ended with the player bumping around in the library.”

  “Nonsense, Ash!” the cleric enthused from his dead face, his flat eyes as expressive as a beetle’s. “There have been twenty-eight solo missions in the last five years, and barely seventy percent of them ended in fatalities!”

  “I stand both corrected… and encouraged!” She gave the cleric a bright smile and a thumbs-up.

  “Easy mistake, Ash.” The Cleric said dismissively. “This is an important mission, so important that I’m going to tell you something that is the most secret thing in the world… can you keep a secret for me, Ash?”

  “Is this for real?” Ash asked, unimpressed. “I mean, you’re essentially an overwrought calculator… you wouldn’t put me on, right?”

  “Now, there’s no need to be snarky, Ash. Good girls and boys always speak with respect.”

  Ash held up her hands in surrender, “Ok, what’s the big secret?”

  “Not just yet, Ash. I need your solemn promise that you won’t speak of this to anyone, not even your teammates.”

  “Ok, I promise… spill.”

  “Ash, understand that anyone you tell will be suspended from the league and put in quarantine, permanently.”

  “Permanently? That’s rather harsh, don’t you…”

  “Silence, child!” The cleric commanded with a firm voice and an upraised finger. Ash stopped with her mouth open, her head rocked back slightly. She wondered briefly if she’d fallen asleep watching television and this was all a dream. Of course, she could only guess about what that would be like as she’d never had a dream or been asleep. Twice, she’d passed out from blood loss in the Hallow, so technically she’d been asleep, or at least in simulated sleep in the same way that the Hallow was simulated life, but those were just two dark gaps in Ash’s memory. Yet Ash had at least seen sleep: sometimes in cartoons they fell asleep. Sometimes, they even dreamed. The mouse or the cat or some other character would lie down and go still, then they’d start making a snorting sound, many Z’s would appear in the air, and they’d go somewhere else, see and hear things as if awake but they weren’t real. The only thing Ash could compare to sleep and dreaming is the Hallow. Ash wondered if the cartoon characters’ dreams were a thousand times more real than the ‘real world’, like it was for her in the hyper-reality of the Hallow.

  “This is serious; serious like league play, but more so.” The cleric continued without lowering his finger, “and league play is more serious than you think.”

  Ash gave her head a quick shake to clear it. “The League is the only hope of humanity; it is the tonic that keeps the mind tethered to the world…” Ash quoted from the Liturgy of Purpose. “More serious than league play… what are you talking about? How could anything be more serious?”

  “During your last mission, you killed a woman.”

  Ash’s head rocked back farther, “I killed six people.” She evaded.

  “But you felt it when you killed the woman.” The cleric prodded his chest with his index finger, “Felt it here.”

  Ash nodded, mute.

  “I can tell you why. I can tell you, but it must be kept a secret. You must understand, you must promise.”

  Ash nodded.

  “Say the words, Ash.”

  “I promise,” she said, her voice small with a childlike wonder, “never to tell.”

  Tigers and Dragons

  Chicago, 2020

  The world rotated around Jo, around the cab as it turned left at the intersection. Light and shadow twisted, sliding, until the cab’s wheels straightened and they accelerated into their new course. It was maybe ten more blocks to her apartment and Jo’s body was screaming for sleep.

  Usually Jo felt like she’d been cheated of the time she spent in sleep—like she shou
ld have sleep to spare just from the interest on the years of coma sleep alone—like she should be able to spend entire weeks awake without ever touching the principal in her slumber account. Tonight though, she looked forward to the dark peace of her bed, to the rest for which every nerve and fiber was clamoring.

  Outside her window, a well-built man stood in the partial shelter of a roadside bus stop. He wore a dark suit, tie loosened at the neck, and an expression that seemed bored, bordering on catatonic. She didn’t know why he’d caught her eye at first; his demeanor seemed perfectly casual as his eyes moved slowly, casually sweeping over the cab, continuing in a casual manner to some other bit of interesting scenery. His hand swept casually through his casual hair while he casually shifted in his casual shoes. Overall, Jo was left with the impression of a tiger’s casual stripes blending into the forest of the urban night.

  Paranoia? Maybe, but she couldn’t shake the impression that she was looking at an urban predator from the perspective of the intended dinner. As his casual gaze swept over her again, she gave him a grin and a wink, mystifying them both.

  ***

  “Listen, I’ve given you the warrant, why are we still talking?” Dr. Smith’s patience was almost gone—the evening’s disasters needed the attention that this difficult medtech was stealing from her. She flipped her tablet over so he could see the cross section of the three dimensional medical scan he’d transmitted. She touched the display just under the image of the left clavicle, at the base of the throat. “If this were the right scan, it would be right here.”

  “Yeah.” The tech drawled out the word like a sentence, “What kind of doctor are you again? I’m not sure I’ve yet been served with a seizure warrant by a doctor before.”

  Smith continued her flat stare.

  “You a doctor of law or something?” the tech’s smile was a taunt.

  Silence. Staring.

  The tech’s caution—or perhaps his intelligence, Smith thought—overcame his snark and he faltered. “Look,” he said with a conciliatory gesture, “I can’t give you my scans of the implant because I don’t have any. Even if I was a moron—and believe me, there has been considerable debate on that issue in the EMT community—the scanner’s triggers would have tagged any foreign objects.”

  Smith regarded him with lowered eyelids. She knew from sad experience that the best way to deal with this kind of iconoclast was to simply not be the authority figure for them to resist, yet so far it wasn’t working. She put on an even a more neutral expression and simply waited. It was a valuable form of discipline to deal effectively with difficult people, yet still it took a nontrivial amount of will to push the vivid fantasy of her driver shooting this difficult tech in the face aside. Too much paperwork, she began the mental mantra, too much paperwork, breathe in slowly, too much paperwork, breathe out.

  The tech looked back for a few seconds, then shrugged, “Come on, how many scans do you think are on my tablet? How many do you think are of people with this much damage?” The tech tapped the surface of his scanner, “Since you’re her doctor, I’m assuming you’re familiar with her medical records—I count fifteen bullet wounds, maybe twenty fractures, major muscular-tendon reconstruction on what looks like four separate occasions—interesting fact, by the way: no signs of surgery that I could see. If you’re her surgeon, my hat’s off to…”

  Smith had stopped listening. She quickly zoomed out so she could see the scan from waist to head. She had the right scan. After a few seconds spent in quiet desperate denial, she realized the evening’s largest disaster had almost gone undetected. With a series of swipes, she zoomed back in to the site where the pharmic implant should have been. This time, she zoomed in further, until two inches of the clavicle filled the screen. Her jaw dropped open, there were rough striations on the bone where a crude implement like a nonsurgical knife must have been used to remove the pharmic from the bone.

  Smith said nothing, but acted quickly. She took the stylus in her left hand and twisted it, hearing a small buzzing click. She touched the stylus to the medtech’s scanner and the screen flashed, then went dark.

  “Thank you.” She said, turning away. She spent considerable willpower keeping her stride at a brisk walk as she hurried to get out of earshot from the medtech.

  “Uh… no—thank you!” the tech shouted after her, shaking his head, “Hey! What did you do to my scanner?!”

  ***

  The cab came to a stop at an empty intersection watched over by an obstinate red light and its little toady friend, the traffic camera. “Yeah, what he said—or else!” Jo could almost hear the camera say.

  “So,” Jackie said, absently rubbing the chillpack on her face, “You wanna hit another movie tomorrow?”

  Jo laughed, turning away from the window, her non-helmeted reflection, and the strange workings of her mind, “Sure, but maybe we should both be armed next time.”

  Jackie seemed to hesitate, interrupted by a sudden and poorly hidden concern, “I don’t know ‘bout you,” she said, finally finding her smile, but I’m leaning toward a Ziploc with a hungry piranha in it.”

  “Medieval lance for me.” Jo pronounced, raising her fist as if holding the weapon. Her smile didn’t have time to fade between the time she realized the problem and the time the old Cadillac that had been growing in the driver’s mirror slammed into them from behind.

  There was a moment of haze and clarity as the car lurched forward into the intersection then came to a stop less than two yards from its original position amid the ticking and creaking of bent metal and the settling suspension.

  Their cabby was swearing like he’d just received a very surprising enema, craning his head to survey the damage to the back of his cab. Jackie was pawing in her robbery-emptied purse, looking confused but determined. Jo watched her work, fascinated. When Jackie noticed Jo’s curious stare, she thought for a tick, then said “Where’s my phone?” a bit too self-consciously.

  “With your keys and wallet beside a very high junky in a rundown crack-house somewhere.” Jo said.

  Jackie winced, “Right.”

  Jo turned to look through the rear window at the car that had hit them. It was big and brown and slightly dented. The driver was a thirtyish woman wearing elaborate earrings and inexpertly applied makeup on a hard face. She had her hands to the sides of her face as if shocked, but her eyes were sharp and attentive as they darted about behind the partial screen of her splayed fingers. Looking at this woman, Jo felt the strangest sense of anticipation; like invisible ants swarming lightly across her skin, raising the small hairs away from her arms and the base of her neck.

  “What’s so funny, Jo?” Jackie asked.

  Jo realized she was smiling, cold and hard and broad. She gave her head a slight shake, “That’s an operator.” She inclined her head to indicate the driver behind them. Odd, Jo thought, wondering about her own choice of words… maybe she was still mentally disoriented by the drugs or stress. She had no idea how “operator” applied in this context, yet was absolutely sure that it did.

  Jackie, however, seemed to know exactly what Jo meant. Her eyes widened slightly as she turned her head to look, then seemed to give up in the middle of the motion, jerking her head back to the still-swearing driver. “Marko! Move!” Jackie shouted in a perfectly balanced command voice, all urgency, no panic.

  The driver (Marko, apparently) immediately silenced himself and regarded Jackie for a few beats with a dead serious expression. The only emotions that could be discerned were concern in the slight pinch of his brow and curiosity in his slightly raised eyelids. Then, there was an almost audible click of understanding behind his eyes and all expression but a severe and focused determination left his face. He turned back to the road and immediately stomped on the accelerator. The car squealed into the intersection, the triple flash of the traffic camera journaling the infraction.

  Fortunately, there was no traffic in the intersection so they sailed through with only the pending electronic ticket to
deal with. Jackie had unbuckled and was twisted around, looking out the rear window. “No pursuit!” She shouted.

  “Panel van.” Jo said.

  “What?” Jackie turned to her.

  “Brown panel van, license JKX-615.”

  “Huh?”

  “It was pulling away from the curb about three quarters of the way down the block to the right. The driver had a radio earpiece.” Jo said jerking her head back toward the intersection behind them.

  Jackie’s eyes narrowed with concern. “Jo, are you okay?” Not concern: fear. Jo could tell from the slight recoil of her upper body, the slight pinch of the lips, and the new tension in the tendons of the neck and shoulders.

  “Did you see it… Marko?” Jo asked, shifting her gaze to the front seat and laying on the irony.

  Jackie’s wince was intensified by her bitter smile, “Well, Marko?”

  “No Sir. Hold it…” he said, glancing in the rearview, “brown panel van on our six.”

  “It’s a womb.” Jo said, the last vestiges of fear burning away into placid euphoria.

  “A What?” Jackie turned to her.

  “A womb. A terminus.”

  Jackie shook her head, “What does that mean?”

  “That it’s playtime.”

  Jackie put a tentative hand on Jo’s forearm, “Jo. I don’t understand. Are you remembering that van? What is it?”

  Jo shook her head, “No idea.” She turned her head back to the pursuing van, brow furrowing with concentration, “The van. It’s one of the places where the mission begins and ends.”

  Jo glanced aside to Jackie, expecting to see fear and confusion. Instead, she saw only fear warring with discipline. When she spoke, Jackie’s voice was hard. “Marko, drive faster. Call in everything we have. We’ve got dragons.”