“Yeah, Howard, the kid has the price wrong, and I’m trying to get him to do the math.”
“And what did you order?”
“I ordered a number two and a number nine.”
The manager looked at the screen. “Okay, that’s fourteen thirty-nine.”
Howard was lucky Sebeck no longer carried a Taser.
Sebeck returned to the car with a carryout bag and two drinks. Laney Price was still refueling at the sprawling interstate travel center. There were at least twenty pump islands around them, brightly lit. Traffic hissed by on the nearby highway.
Price was using a squeegee to clean bugs off the windshield of the Chrysler 300 the Daemon had assigned them the day before. He seemed to notice the look on Sebeck’s face. “What’s wrong?”
“Humanity is doomed, that’s what’s wrong.”
“Oh.” Price kept cleaning the windshield.
Sebeck tossed the food in the car and took over the refueling. “That was something Sobol knew, wasn’t it?”
“What’s that?”
“That people will do whatever a computer screen tells them. I swear to god, you could run the next Holocaust from a fucking fast-food register.” He pantomimed aiming a pistol. “It says I should kill you now.”
“I see we’ve had another unsatisfactory consumer experience.”
“There are times when I miss the badge, Laney. I swear I miss it.”
“Why, so you can intimidate the shit out of teen slackers? Besides, what you’ve got now is something better—a quest icon. You’re like a knight of the realm now.”
“Just get in the car.”
Sebeck almost missed the turnoff. They were heading west on Interstate 40 about an hour outside of Albuquerque when his new Thread abruptly veered onto an exit ramp marked INDIAN SERVICE ROUTE 22. Sebeck was in the middle of taking a sip of bottled water when the turn came up on him, and he had to swerve one-handed from the fast lane onto the exit ramp, cutting across solid white lines just before an abutment.
He glanced over at the sleeping form of Laney Price, who stirred a bit but then settled back to sleep. Sebeck followed the glowing blue line superimposed on reality over a bridge that crossed the highway to arrive at a travel center where trucks and cars were clustered around gas stations, convenience stores, and ever-present fast-food outlets.
There in the middle of a parking lot his new Thread ended in a swirling aura of blue light, above a live human being this time—a woman standing next to a white passenger van. The van was parked in front of a Conoco convenience store.
It was not exactly the destination he’d envisioned—not that he had any clear idea what to expect. Sebeck parked the Chrysler facing forward in a row of cars across from the woman and peered through the freshly bug-spattered windshield at her.
She was a trim American Indian woman in her fifties with long gray hair braided into a plait. She wore jeans, cowboy boots, and a tan button-down shirt with some sort of logo on the breast pocket. She also wore slim, stylish HUD glasses, through which she was gazing directly at Sebeck. She looked like a Santa Fe art gallery owner. Her D-Space call-out marked her as Riley—a fourteenth-level Shaman. Riley’s reputation score was five stars out of five on a base factor of nine hundred three—which, if Sebeck had understood Price’s ramblings over the weeks, meant that she had an average review by nine hundred-plus darknet operatives who’d interacted with her of five stars out of five. She was apparently highly regarded—about what Sebeck didn’t know.
He turned off the engine and glanced over at the sleeping form of Price in the passenger seat. Sebeck pulled the keys from the ignition and stealthily opened the driver’s door. He didn’t feel like having his Daemon-assigned minder along for this conversation, so he placed the keys on the seat and quietly closed the car door behind him, checking that Price was asleep.
Sebeck then walked across the parking lot toward Riley, who regarded him with some curiosity, since he was leaving his companion behind. It was fairly cloudy and rather cool. Sebeck closed his jacket as he approached Riley. Fellow travelers came and went around them.
He took note of the passenger van she stood alongside. It was new and bore a logo for “Enchanted Mesa Spa & Resort”—the same logo printed on her shirt pocket.
When he reached her, the last of the Thread disappeared and a chime sounded—leaving only the soft blue light of a D-Space aura slowly swirling above her head.
Sebeck was unsure how to feel. He spoke without emotion. “I’m supposed to be looking for the Cloud Gate. Is there something you can tell me?”
She extended her hand. “Why don’t we start with hello?”
Sebeck took a deep breath and shook her hand briefly. “Hello. You’re Riley.”
“Shaman of the Two-Rivers faction. And you are the Unnamed One.”
“Yeah, that just about describes it. I hope you have some answers for me.”
“What sort of answers?”
“Like how I can complete my quest? How do I justify the freedom of humanity to the Daemon?”
She frowned. “That’s not visible to me.”
He rubbed his eyes in frustration. “Why do I have to wander all over hell’s half acre to complete this damned quest?”
“It’s the hero’s journey.”
He narrowed his eyes at her.
“Don’t forget: Sobol was an online game designer. In the archetype, a hero must wander lost in the wilderness to find the knowledge necessary for his or her quest. Perhaps that’s what’s happening to you.”
“And I’m supposed to be the hero.”
“It’s your life. You should be the hero of it. If it’s any consolation, I’m the hero of mine, too.”
“Riley, why did the Thread lead me to you?”
“Why me exactly? I don’t know. I suspect it has to do with my skill set and my proximity to you when some system threshold was reached.”
Sebeck nodded to himself. “Yesterday I spoke with Matthew Sobol. He gave me this Thread after our meeting.”
“And yesterday an avatar appeared to me on a deep layer. She was like an angel. A beautiful woman with copper hair and alabaster skin—bathed in light. She said you would come.”
Sebeck ran his hands over his bald head. He thought of Cheryl Lanthrop, the woman who had betrayed him. Copper hair and fair skin. She’d worked for Sobol, and had paid for that with her life. “This is madness.”
“The avatar told me you were on a quest from Mad Emperor, and that you needed to grok the shamanic interface.”
He was lost.
She nodded in understanding. “I’ll put it in layman’s terms: you need to fully learn the darknet and all its powers in order to have any hope of succeeding on your quest.”
“Powers.”
“Data magic, far-sight.”
“And you’re a shaman?”
She smiled. “I know what you’re thinking. There’s no such thing as magic, and restless spirits are wives’ tales. However—”
Sebeck held up his hand. “Yeah. I stand corrected.”
“Good. I chose my darknet profession, and it is shaman. It governs my skill tree and level advancement. Is that more clear?”
He nodded.
“I see that you’re a first-level Fighter. Which makes it all the more puzzling that you’ve been geased by Mad Emperor to complete this quest.”
“Geased? What’s ‘geased’ mean?”
“It’s ancient Gaelic. It means an enchantment that compels you to complete a task. It’s an incredibly powerful spell—far, far above my level.”
“Can I break free of it?”
“Not if you accepted the quest. The only one who can cancel it is the one who gave it to you: Mad Emperor.”