Hollow Read online

  Hawkins bit down on the harsh sarcasm that was already forming his reply and took a deep, focusing breath. “Wow. You’re right. That was brainstem thinking. Sorry. Couple more breaths please…” He took a few more deep breaths, trying to push fear and frustration aside and think. As the excitement faded, possibilities began to assert themselves.

  “She’s taking them out.” He said, finally, “They’re not trying to kill her… they’re trying to retrieve her and she’s taking them out like chumps.”

  “Yes. And what does that mean?” Smith said with a small, pleased smile.

  “That I shouldn’t feel so bad about when she knocked me out like a chump?” His smile was genuine, but he made a conciliatory gesture when her look sharpened in reproach. “It means,” he said seriously, “that she might still be ours.” He rubbed at the knot of painful tension that was forming at the base of his skull, “…or at least that she’s not theirs yet.”

  “If I have anything to say about it, she never will be.” Smith concluded.

  “One second.” Hawkins touched his earpiece. “Hawkins, go.” He was silent for a moment, then “Confirm. Get the feed to the spikes. Tell them to get as close as possible, get out of sight and await orders.”

  He touched his earpiece again, severing the connection. “Tech just appended a new feed to the end of this montage. We’ve got new info.” He tuned the laptop so that she could see again, then tapped the screen to resume the feed, this time at full speed.

  On the screen, Jo hit the landing on the stairs just as the next two dragons landed behind her. She ducked low and left, avoiding both as they attempted to tackle her. She came up hard against the legs of the one on the left and the one at the right crumpled with his left thigh at an odd angle. She drove left and down the stairs, driving through the other dragon’s legs and causing him to tumble down the stairs while she leapt over him.

  Hawkins paused the feed again. “I’m not sure if you caught that, but if we watched it in slow-mo, you’d see that she lifted the sidearm from the one on the left and shot his companion in the left femur… compound fracture… pretty ugly.”

  “But not fatal.” Smith observed. “She’s bruising them, but she’s not breaking them.”

  Hawkins nodded, “You think it means something?”

  Smith shook her head pensively, “Not sure. But it does mean that now she’s armed.”

  “Wait… there’s more.” Hawkins resumed the playback, which jumped to a two-way split screen from the two subway platform cameras.

  On the screen, Jo danced and dodged through the heavy square pillars on the long, narrow platform, sparks and dust filling the air as the two dragons behind her fired on her from the stairwell.

  Jo weaved, rolled, then tumbled over the edge of the platform, onto the tracks, and out of sight. The two dragons spread out, using the pillars for cover as they covered the edge of the platform with their suppressed Kriss .45 caliber submachine guns. Then, they both fell, clutching their right thighs. Hawkins paused the feed again, “Sorry… I need to get to the new info or I’d be able to show you this properly, but she just popped up and shot them both in the exact same spot she shot the guy in the stairwell, then dropped back down so fast I didn’t even see her until I’d slowed the feed down.”

  Hawkins ran his finger along the bottom of the screen, scanning through the feed. On the screen, the two wounded dragons writhed a bit, still struggling toward the platform until they were joined by another two, limping from the stairwell, then four more uninjured dragons came from the entrance on the far side of the long rectangular platform. The two limping dragons helped their newly lamed companions to their feet and headed back for the door where they’d entered. The new team of uninjured dragons moved toward the tunnel entrance where Jo had disappeared, weapons ready.

  “Now here’s the new part… The techs said that…” Hawkins trailed off as a man in a black suit entered the platform from the entrance where the uninjured dragons had arrived. The wounded team of dragons moved immediately to cover the new arrival, all of them now on relatively steady feet, their injuries healed enough for them to limp around.

  Words were exchanged, and the barrel of the dragons’ guns dipped. They relaxed from a shooting posture, still speaking… smiling?

  The new arrival was smiling too. “What are they talking about?” Hawkins paused the feed, zooming in to get a better look at the new arrival. After several gestures, the new arrival’s upper body filled the screen. He was dressed in a long black coat, black shirt and the white collar of a priest. He held both hands slightly up and away from him, more in a gesture of accommodation than surrender. His mouth was open, caught in mid word, but he was smiling. His face had a blunt, powerful symmetry, handsome after a fashion, but crossed with several old scars that seemed to add character to his features rather than mar them. Even through the slightly blurred and pixelated paused and zoomed video feed, and even though his face was open and smiling, his dark eyes were terrifying in their intensity.

  Smith’s mouth dropped open, “How did he get here?”

  “How is he alive?” Hawkins shook his head in disbelief, “Better yet, what’s with the half-hands-up?”

  “And when did he enter the priesthood?” Smith added.

  “This an informal dragon reunion?” Hawkins ventured, “I don’t think he came with them, and the body language seems all wrong…”

  “Let’s see if we can get anything from a lip-reader. Until then, let’s see how this plays out.”

  Hawkins zoomed out and unpaused the feed. On the screen, the new arrival hooked a thumb over his shoulder, and casually added emphasis with a tilt of his head and quick backward glance. Then everything changed.

  Two of the armored dragons dropped like rag dolls to the floor, new holes in their partially exposed throats. The remaining six dragons moved fast, one of the wounded dragons brought his submachine gun less than one quarter up before he also fell in a heap.

  The stranger now had a small subcompact pistol in his hand, though neither Smith nor Hawkins had seen him draw. The pistol jumped in his hands four more times as he ran, closing the distance to the armored dragons. The shots rang off helmets and thudded off faceplates, chipping the polymer, but having no further effect—except the desired effect, which was to freak the dragons out, apparently.

  As the new arrival charged forward, firing, the three remaining dragons turned and ran for the stairs. The last remaining wounded dragon fell before he reached the turnstiles at the base of the stairs, but the other two vaulted over the turnstiles, disappearing into the stairwell.

  Hawkins shook his head in disbelief. “He’s still killing them.”

  They watched in silence as the stranger stowed his small pistol in a jacket pocket and harvested two SMGs from the fallen dragons, before sprinting up the stairs after them.

  “He is indeed.” Smith’s eyes glazed, mind reaching for possibilities wild enough to explain what was happening.

  Her cell phone vibrated in her jacket pocket. Annoyed at the distraction, she pulled it out and checked the caller ID. Her brow wrinkled with curiosity and she gave Hawkins a sidelong glance. “What?” he asked.

  Instead of answering him, she answered the phone, “Smith.”

  “You need what?” Her brow furrowed in deeper confusion, then tightened with focus, “Yes sir. And what will you have on that? Hm… yes… anything else? Yes sir, thirty minutes okay or is this a rush delivery? Excellent, sir. We will be there in twenty minutes or it will be free. Yes, sir, and you have a good night as well!” Smith snapped the phone closed and sat for a moment, thinking.

  “Who was that?” Hawkins asked.

  “Agent King.”

  “The boyfriend fail?”

  Smith nodded. “Jeremy just ordered a pizza from me.”

  Hawkins snorted out a bit of surprised amusement. “A pizza? And just when I thought our evening was all out of surprises…” His eyes widened, “No!”

  “Oh, yes.” The
y shared a knowing look, “His last words were, ‘I’ll pay for the expedited delivery, we’re both pretty hungry’.”

  “Wow, I’ll gather the teams. Orders?”

  Smith thought for a few seconds, then opened her phone again and dialed as she spoke, “Tell the teams full tactical. We need them as hard as we can get them quickly. Keep your best two spikes in plainclothes.”

  “Who are you calling?” Hawkins asked as he used his laptop to check the current status of their ready forces.

  “I’m ordering a pizza.” Smith said, bringing the phone to her ear.

  Premeditation

  Chicago, 2119

  Crow lay on the couch at the heart of the womb, trying not to feel it. He tried to immerse himself in the focus of the mission, considering options and tactics, but the details of the mission were too sketchy to work with and this feeling was too deep to be avoided. He tried to simply be in the moment, examining the familiar yet imponderable purposes of the various wires and machinery around him, but the power of the feeling would not be denied. He tried to think of Shadow and Tink, lying happily in other rooms just like this one, excited by the novelty of this new mission type. Crow tried to catch the spirit of their enthusiasm, this would be a unique experience, a whole new League mode, but there was no denying the fear, which was methodically tearing through his guts like a ravenous tiger with OCD.

  He’d been here for hours, suffering under fear’s assault. In the short life that he could remember—about three years now since he woke in recovery after his last catastrophic seizure—he could not remember ever feeling fear. He could remember concern, even anxiety, when a mission was going badly, the intensity of pain, sadness at losing friends to the library, and mostly he could remember the focus and intensity of the Hallow and the dim boredom of the “real life” of the Hollow. But now, as if a dam had burst, the flood of fear covered his desert heart, changing it, unmaking it, leaving him nothing but a sick child wired to a machine, waiting to die.

  As unknown as this mission was, it was even less likely to succeed… and if it succeeded… The tiger tore at his insides and he twitched on the couch. The new League mode was to be called “Kamikaze”. Apparently, in the distant past, there were warriors with that name who fought to the death, win or lose, throwing their very lives like weapons against their enemies. Unlike all other League game modes, where the mission began at insertion and successfully completed only with extraction, this new mode was to be different. Win or lose, Shadow, Tink, Crow, and Ash would taste the Hallow’s version of death. They were to go, cause maximum damage, and die inflicting it. According to the clerics, some new advance in the tech of the womb interface would spare them the psychic shock that normally left League fatalities dead, in a coma, or wandering the library like literary zombies.

  In Kamikaze mode, death was certain, so there was no survival bonus. The team would still earn bonuses for their major and minor objectives. Thinking of their objectives, Crow felt the fear tiger’s teeth again and twitched weakly on the couch inside the womb, this time a small whimper escaped him, its sound largely drowned out by the martial music that continuously played here.

  They had two primary objectives: Kill the head of the OSI—a standard assassination gig—and kill Ash on sight.

  Again, the teeth: the twist of jaws deep in his guts. Crow’s eyes darted about the room, the most primitive part of him looking for an escape. Of course this was ridiculous, he thought when his forebrain began to work again a few seconds later. Escape was the purpose of this room, the Womb around him—the Hallow itself. Though he could walk (or at least hobble) out of this room at will, that wouldn’t be the escape he needed. The thought of killing Ash in the Hallow… maybe fear wasn’t the right word. Maybe the word was despair, despair that this was all that life would ever be. A new game mode was about all the excitement that life had prepared him for, and certainly more than it had promised him thus far. And yet, when he was with Ash, there was something else, always hinted and never explicitly understood, always in the corner of his mind’s eye. Yet it was more real than anything in his life, even more real than the intensity of the Hallow.

  It wasn’t logic that was warning him, terrifying him. Logic told him “new game mode, interesting distraction, everyone safely dies—good deal!” It wasn’t even anything like the intuition he’d experienced from time to time in the intensity of combat. No, this was something else, something deeper or bigger or possibly just more real… or more foolish.

  And he knew that when he killed Ash in the Hallow, that mystery, that vague yet earthshakingly powerful promise, would be gone.

  Again, logic reminded him of the monumental foolishness of that feeling, but the fear tiger disagreed most strenuously.

  Crow’s all-tiger reverie was broken when the door to the hall opened and a Cleric in white robes strode in. Crow’s nervous system didn’t allow the involuntary flinch of surprise, so he simply turned to face the cleric without trying to rise from the machine’s embrace.

  “Your mission will soon begin, Captain.”

  Crow’s brow furrowed, “What are you doing here? I’ve never seen a Cleric in here before…”

  “Good news,” the Cleric ignored his nonstandard intrusion and continued as if Crow hadn’t spoken, “We have located Ash.”

  “Where is she?” Crow also continued as if he hadn’t spoken before, “Is she alright?”

  “We do not have that information, Captain. We have none of the normal telemetry from her equipment or bio-monitors. As expected, she’s gone completely dark.”

  Crow knew better than to speak to the Cleric as if the Hallow was anything but a real mission in a very real world, so he bit back the acidic commentary on this mission’s very unusual parameters and ended up with, “So how did you locate her?”

  “We introduced some exotic particulates into her bloodstream. They were designed to lie dormant for a few hours then decay in bursts several seconds long over the next thirty hours. This weak signal she’s emitting is detectable by satellite, but should remain undetectable to any kind of standard scan our enemies might use. We’ve got her triangulated down to a thirty mile expanse of Virginia forest and she has stopped moving.

  Crow didn’t like this at all. Again he felt the pressure of hot criticism in his throat and clenched his teeth against it.

  “Focus, Captain.” The Cleric said with sternness, and what Crow was almost certain was very human annoyance. “You are her only hope. If she is going to survive and not experience the… consequences of a League fatality, you’re going to have to bring your very best game.”

  “Right, I’ve got to kill her or she’ll die here in the real world.” Crow didn’t bother hiding the scorn he felt.

  “What are you not understanding here?” The oddly present and more oddly annoyed Cleric snapped, “The only way out of this game mode is death. If she doesn’t die, she won’t make it back from the Hallow. You will need to recruit to fill her spot in Phoenix.”

  Something deep moved within him as if the river of fear around him had suddenly changed direction. Crow knew the Cleric was lying.

  Crow’s eyes widened, his mouth opened—he was sure. He didn’t suspect, he didn’t yet see why—as if he’d received an internal radio signal from a trusted ally, the knowledge filled him with its certainty, and with a whole new fear.

  Yet this new fear, as terrible as it was, was far preferable to the tiger that had been devouring him for hours as he lay helpless on this couch. This was a fear he could handle with strategy and tactics instead of being ridden and mauled. His face hardened, his eyes narrowed… he smiled. “Understood.” He said.

  The Cleric nodded, satisfied. “Remember, Captain, she is counting on you to reach her and to bring her home.”

  Crow’s smile widened, “Understood.”

  “Your Cleric will be running this mission, but we are all watching on this one.”

  “You watch?” Crow asked.

  “Only when it really count
s.”

  “It always counts.” Crow said, hiding the sarcasm and realizing just how thin this Cleric’s performance had become. It was the humans, the players, who were to be constantly reminded that the League always “counted”, that it was the most important thing in life, the only religion that would bring any salvation into this destroyed world.

  The Cleric’s eyes narrowed, “New game mode, Captain.”

  Crow couldn’t yet see what was happening, but something big was going on. He could feel wheels turning all around him, and it wasn’t just the Clerics’ manipulative urgency where there should have been only serene piety, it wasn’t only the new game mode, or the fact that Ash was alone in the Hallow without communications, armament, or even telemetry. It was… then his mind was captured by an intense vision: he and Ash were pawns travelling across a chess board, moved by an unseen player, under the watchful eye of the white bishop standing above him now.

  The Cleric turned and strode smoothly toward the door, his priestly vestments whispering around him, audible even over the martial music, “It is time, Child. Enter and serve.”

  “Victory is life.” Crow said the words quietly, but he felt them resonating and amplifying in his heart. “Victory is life.”

  Objectives

  Chicago, 2020

  “When is that pizza going to get here?” Jo asked hopefully, leaning back against the counter in Jeremy’s kitchen.

  “Nice try, Jo.” Jeremy turned back from the fridge with another water bottle. “You are a conversational ninja, you know that? Always throwing down one of those smoke balls and disappearing whenever I say anything more serious than a knock-knock joke.”

  Jo took the bottle and gave him a credulous look, “Who’s there?”

  Jeremy gave her a look and she made a pained face that was half pantomime and half in earnest. “Sorry, Jeremy. I know I haven’t been a good friend to you.”