ARC of the IMMORTALS/Book 1

Pursuit: Chapter 10.1 Game 7 Continued

[Contains VR violence]

Recap: Pursuer Jac analyzes vectors to crash into the casino with his ship — the Needlecraft. Bendel and Jac fight in Game 7./Touzdae and the restored Harry steal a boat and make a run for it. They go for the Fish.

Recap continued: Touzdae opened the buoy and disengaged the memory chip. Harry bumped into her as a current heaved the tiny boat. The memory chip dislodged from her fingers and fell into the dark current. All was lost.

Lost in the Harbor

“Weren’t their navigational grids in that chip?” Harry asked.

“Yeah,” Touzdae was dejected.

“We have no choice we have to go back and find a new chip,” Harry said. Touzdae was silent. She turned and looked back at the Casino, the town, and the great cliff embankment.

“What the hell is that?” she pointed. Harry turned.

A double image of the port Casa Noir and Casa Negra Nola exchanged flashing back and forth into one another.

“If I didn’t know better I’d say Bendel is phasing two realities back and forth to minimize damage to the hotel, the casino, and the town if Pursuer plans to crash his ship into the casino,” Harry explained.

Game Seven Continues

“The Levelz,” Jac whispered under his breath as he disentangled himself from Bendel who woke.

“Damn right,” Bendel said as his ground effect scooter materialized underneath him as he stood. Bendel rose straight up on the scooter as fragments of the Levelz collapsed around Jac. Huge pieces of marble and parts of the surrounding cliff fell just as they had three thousand years ago when Jac was crushed.

- I have to think of something, he thought, but he felt suddenly tired and defeated.

He waved his arms over his head and stopped time. It was instinct. Fragments and boulder chunks suspended in a bizarre kaleidoscope above. He began to climb. He slipped, fell several feet, and landed in a debris field. He began again along a different route. He was clear, above him only the night sky.

Just beyond his reach was Bendel on his scooter frozen in space laughing maniacally, at least that was what Jac surmised. All his weapons were gone, except his broadsword and time had begun to inch forward imperceptibly. The sword appeared in his hand.

He raised his arm and pressed a few buttons. His sword vanished and he leapt onto the back of Bendel’s scooter as time resumed.

Pursuer Jac armed the eject hatch as he targeted the hotel and the gaming table.

The Foray Needle Craft braked as it plowed into the upper atmosphere and began its descent.

Yon appeared from his jump without displacement between Harry and Touzdae. Yon grabbed her and prevented her from falling into the airless current below.

“Yon, why are you here?” Touzdae.

“I can jump you inside the Fish, you and Harry,” he said.

“You can’t. Fish is shut down and defensive measures are active. It’s too dangerous to jump straight in.” she said. And added, “I have to take this box.”

“That’s a transdimensional box,” Yon said. “It’s terrible heavy inside.”

“You didn’t answer my question, Yon, and there’s very little time…”

“Jac made me promise if there were snags. This is a snag, yes, no?”

“Full stop,” Harry interjected.

“I see where you want to go and I can jump you, Harry, Me, and the box — all together and — how you say — intact.”

Touzdae nodded as she picked up the small box in her hands. They pressed into one another. The boat rocked hard as they jumped away; it was swamped with current and was pulled under.

“Get off me you, bastard,” Bendel twisted the scooter left and right trying to shake Jac. He pulled out his blast stick and pointed it randomly over his shoulder. Jac leapt into the air flipping up and over and hitting Bendel squarely in the chest and the head. The scooter headed downward, dropping like a rock, Bendel barely conscious and Jac hanging onto the backseat.

Several feet above the rubble where the debris had settled Bendel re-engaged the engines. An electromagnetic pulse flattened the area below for nearly a mile in diameter, while Jac did a handstand on the seat.

He flipped up over Bendel forward and in midair reversed his tumble backward. Bendel plunged his blast stick into the engine of the scooter. It imploded and pieces shattered to the horizon. Instinctively Bendel leapt upwards as Jac fell onto the rubble microns from the blast. A shield deployed with a mind of its own or so it seemed. Bendel froze time for a few seconds until the blast cleared and then landed on Jac, catching him in a headlock.

Yon brought them onto the forward dorsal part of the Nez where the was a small flat spot. An emergency airlock was at their feet. Touzdae and Harry crouched over the hatch while Yon stood tall.

Touzdae tried the airlock with a manual bar.

“It’s stuck.”

Harry strained against it. It was frozen shut.

Touzdae took the manual bar and checked the batteries: dead.

“Help me get the cap off.”

The Needle Craft plowed through the atmosphere.

“Look,” Yon said pointing. “It’s the Pursuer Thing, coming in. Hot!”

Harry glanced up while Touzdae pulled the batteries out.

The craft impacted the hotel with a force field on full and the facility and its surrounding area oscillating between past and present realities. It was as if the hotel parted for the impact. The force field from the Needlecraft pried rooms apart.

The gaming floor began to vibrate as a roar of thunder began.

“Impact, immediate evacuation NOW!”

Lights and an obnoxious buzzer blared.

Fifty Griz-Ac hybrid soldiers were activated and made a perimeter around the gaming suite and the elite members of the audience with orders to keep the crowd in play and protect the gaming suite.

Touzdae and Harry scraped the contacts of the batteries and re-inserted them into the tube of the manual bar and reconnected it to the airlock.

The Needle Craft ripped out the upper balcony as screaming crowds poured out of the main viewing auditoriums. The upper floors began to collapse. The Needlecraft stopped a few feet from Jac and Bendel’s table as the emergency generators kicked in augmenting the batteries and continuing to supply power to the game. The door exploded. It glanced at Bendel’s helmet and shattered the outer window just before Pursuer suspended time.

Part of the upper floor sagged towards the gaming table. A titanium shard was frozen as it pierced the table between Jac and Bendel, partially obscuring Jac. In the Needlecraft’s wake was the flaming wreckage of the collapsed hotel, all suspended in time. Pursuer Jac sprang out of the cockpit onto the table. He dislodged Bendel from his play-dock momentarily as he shifted around lunging for Jac.

Bendel had nearly strangled Jac with his thighs and hands. Bendel’s body went slack for an instant, Jac flipped him back, rolled backward, and flattened his body, springing up to his feet was about to land on Bendel’s shoulders, surely killing him. But his body slacked. Someone was removing his helmet.

“Oh shit, it’s you,” Jac said as Pursuer-Jac slammed his fist into Jac’s face and upper body through the suit. Jac fused his body into the suit and the suit into the dock. Pursuer-Jac lifted Jac’s body from the table and heaved it across the floor to what was left of the lifts. He landed wires attached to his posterior but was blind to the game’s reality.

Bendel regained himself and saw Jac six feet away. He leapt up.

Jac heard Bhantu’s voice in his head, “Trust your instincts.”

Pursuer-Jac leapt across the devastated casino and just as he landed Jac twisted away running clumsily in his suit back towards the table and his helmet.

Jac blind inside the game ran into Bendel running forward feet like a missile into Jac’s abdomen and knocked him flat. As Bendel lunged at him with deathblows, Pursuer-Jac pulled the wires towards him and Bendel slid into Jac’s crotch just short of something presently dangerous. Jac kicked hard and felt his foot make contact with a skull. Jac looked on helplessly as Pursuer revealed a dagger about to cut his cables. He flipped backward and took hold of time and sped it forward twice as fast, allowing a huge chunk of wall to fall, trapping Pursuer-Jac on the other side, but severing the cable.

He had three minutes to re-establish contact or he would automatically forfeit the game and the series. The back of the seat that housed the spare dock was torn into pieces. The dock was floating outside the casino in the low gravity of the mist.

He closed his eyes for a brief moment and projected a series of impulses into his game body. It wasn’t controlled but it would appear to Bendel as if Jac were having a seizure and could short-circuit producing arcs of electricity.

He opened his eyes, zipped himself out of the suit, and wriggled through the broken window as he slowed time moving at lightning speed through the mist.

Touzdae and Harry linked two battery packs together and then transferred the power to the manual bar and closed the outer door.

“We need to get this door open and get into the Pool of Life.”

“What?”

“If we want to survive without brain damage we need to get into the Pool of Life, now!”

Meanwhile, Yon tried to jump back to his home and failed. He collapsed on the hull while Harry and Touzdae entered the emergency escape airlock.

Behind the enormous bulkhead that had collapsed from above, Pursuer-Jac began using the physics of colliding time rates to make explosions. He blew fragmentary chunks out of the way and slowly he began to free himself.

Jac pushed the dock through the open window as normal time began to resume.

Re-suited he plugged himself in as Bendel had him in a choke-hold, about to snap his neck. Jac punched his fist through the blind faceplate of the helmet and reinserted it to see a chunk of marble descending toward his head. He slowed time and twirled out of the way as Pursuer-Jac freed himself from the debris.

Jac’s game body was bleeding profusely.

Bendel rushed him.

Pursuer rushed him.

He leapt upwards into the night sky.

In real-time he waited until Pursuer-Jac was inches away. Suited he leapt up dock and wires, twirled around over Bendel in a counterclockwise motion, and hit Bendel’s head with both feet; his neck snapped and Jac hit Pursuer-Jac in the head. Pursuer flew across the room.

the last chapter:

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