It tasted sweet and clear, and the salt from the sweat stung her eyes.
It was perfect, she decided. So far.
On level three, an arrow whizzed by her head. She knew the path to take—which was maybe cheating a little. But it was fun! And work, too, she reminded herself as she charged up the steep path, her breath huffing out. Her boots skidded on mud from a recent storm, and when she went down, she felt the warm, wet dirt ooze between her fingers.
Up and running again, dodging left, right as muscle memory guided her.
Come on, she thought, yeah, come on! as her fingers reached for the Bowie in her belt.
The rival she’d named Delancy Queeg stood in the path, his knife already drawn.
“The henchmen you hired need more endurance,” she said.
“They drove you where I wanted you. Go back now, and I’ll let you live.”
“Is that what you said to my father before you slit his throat, you bastard?”
He smiled—tanned, handsome, deadly. “Your father was a fool, and so is his daughter. The Dragon’s Egg is mine. It’s always been mine.” He waved a hand, and she glanced behind long enough to see five bare-chested natives with bows ready.
“Not man enough to take me alone?” she demanded.
“Go,” he ordered them. “You’ve done what you were paid to do.”
Though they slipped away, she knew he was a liar. They would lie in wait. She would have to be quick.
She shifted her grip on the knife to combat stance, and began to circle on the narrow, muddy path.
Jabs, feints, and the scrape of blades. Perfect, she thought again, no tweaking necessary. She smelled blood where she’d nicked the bastard Queeg’s arm, just above the wrist.
He’d cut her next, she thought, anticipating the next moves in the program as she played it. After he sliced her shoulder he’d smile, thinking he had the advantage.
Then she’d plunge it into his side, and leap from the cliff into the rock-strewn river below as arrows flew around her.
She considered dodging the slice since she knew when it was coming, and from where, but it was better to study the details, to look for flaws if she played it by rote rather than mixing it up.
His knife struck out fast, the tip ripping through cotton and flesh. But instead of the expected jolt, she felt the tear, the fire of it.
She stumbled back, dropping her knife as she brought her hand up, felt the blood as warm against her fingers as the mud had been. In disbelief, she watched the knife drip with it.
Real, she thought. Not holo. Real.
As Queeg’s lips spread in a feral smile, as his knife began another downward arc, she slipped on the muddy path and tumbled over the cliff with a scream snapped off by the rocks and rushing water below.
The next morning, Benny paced Var’s office. “I’m going to try her again.”
“You tried her five minutes ago.” Standing at his window, Var stared out in the direction of Cill’s building. “She’s not answering the ’link.” He rubbed his hands over his hair. “Or e-mail, or text, or any damn thing.”
Frustration in every line of his face, he turned back. “You’re sure she didn’t say anything to you about not coming in today?”
“No, I told you, just the opposite. She said she’d be in early. She didn’t want to stay at her place any longer than she had to. I told her she could bunk at my place. You know how she is about her things, her space.”
“Yeah, she said the same to me, and that if she didn’t go back and stay the night, she’d probably never go back at all. Goddamn it.” He looked at the time. “She’s probably just overslept, that’s all. Maybe she took a sleeper—”
“Maybe she took too many sleepers.”
“Jesus. We should go over. We’ll go over and check on her. Just in case . . . Probably just tuned out for a while, but we should check.”
“Let’s go now. Neither of us is going to get any work done until we do. She logged out her copy of Fantastical,” Benny added as they caught an elevator down.