The California Voodoo Game

1

Tuesday, July 19, 2059 — 5:00 P.M.

Late afternoon shadows crept across MIMIC.

Meacham Incorporated Mojave Industrial Community was one of the largest structures in the world, for all of its ruined grandeur, a testament to 1990s optimism and the vision of the late Nicholas Meacham. Built forty miles northeast of Barstow, about twenty miles west of the California-Nevada border, MIMIC looked east with a facade that resembled a nineteen-story rust-colored sandwich board with a vertical convex crease. A thirty-foot-high horizontal row of letters spelling M.I.M.I.C. divided the crease from the tenth to the twelfth floor. The flattened top extended acres of concrete roof onto Clark's Ridge, a natural mesa. At the bottom, MIMIC measured nearly half a mile across.

According to documents found among Meacham's effects after his demise, MIMIC was intended to be the "linchpin of a planned community, an ever-expanding prefab metropolis poised to house and employ the excess population which, in years to come, will boil out of the Los Angeles basin like a crazed yeast culture."

As one might guess, Meacham's genius lay in construction, design, and financing, rather than the realm of prose. If not for a little seismic misunderstanding in 1995, MIMIC might have been all he anticipated.

After the Quake, MIMIC lay cracked and rotting for almost fifty years. Myths about the abandoned hulk multiplied. There was a live nuclear reactor in its guts; mutants prowled the ruins, shambling semi-human Morlocks with a taste for trysting teenagers…

Then, abruptly, the nightmares were dispelled. Life began to return.

And with new life came new dreams.

The rooftop stretched to a convincingly distant horizon, a concrete flat etched with pools and gardens, shadowed with California stucco. Newly installed sensors scanned sun-bronzed tennis enthusiasts as they swished their rackets about.

Monitors translated sounds of thudding feet and gasping lungs, waste-heat silhouettes, and cheerfully exhausted visages into multisensory data for the security banks. Like glowing ghosts, guests roamed through three minimalls, lounged in tiny parks and arboretums, or chased golf balls through the flames of purgatory and the gilded clouds of paradise in Dante's, the best miniature golf course in the state.

A swimming pool glittered in the sun, like a pond touched by King Midas. Here its border was a white sand beach; there a rippling frictionless slide with a vertical loop; elsewhere were black basalt cliffs for diving. A hidden wave generator sent seven white crests rippling across the surface every minute. Here was an expanse of cattails sculpted of bronze; there, swimming in a programmed curve, was a weed-and-palm-covered island. Explorers would find it to be a huge lethargic flatfish with feelers the size of hawsers writhing about its mouth. In the center of the pool rose an island shaded by an artificial banyan tree, beneath which a grass-roofed tavern tinkled with laughter and the clink of glasses. One could swim to that tavern, or stroll a glass pathway hidden beneath the artificial waves.

Four hundred Dream Park employees were partying hard: swimming, minigolfing, playing dominance games, drinking.

Sixteen stories beneath them in level three, Tony McWhirter licked his lips. A drink? Later. He focused on the work at hand, his fingers and thumbs dancing in the holographic display of a keyboard.

He was an intense man in his middle thirties. Light red hair ran thin above a lean face with chocolate eyes. His fingers were long and almost delicate, his forearms still wiry from years of college wrestling and gymnastics. Muscles bunched and corded as he typed. A window jumped into place, superimposed on the projection of the roof. It focused on a view of the bar beneath the island.

Tony knew the man and woman busily mixing drinks: Elmo and Doris Whitman. Both were white-haired, pink with sun and as oval and solid as potatoes. They meshed like well-worn gears.

Tony made adjustments. His viewpoint floated in closer, as if his camera were mounted on a skimmer. He was staring into El's face. Capped teeth and sun-peeled lips filled the visual field at point-blank range.

Sound: the computer picked out El's voice from the surrounding gibberish, matched it to his lip movements, filtered, and compensated.

"…part-time for eight years. Never really thought about being full-time until…"

Doris glided onscreen. She was chunky but esthetically firm and rounded. Her legs looked damn good beneath the barmaid's skirt.

"Tequilla-"

The computer made a fast adjustment, backed itself up, and now she was a vocal pattern, locked into the bank. "-Sunrise for table six. "

Doris Whitman's face was pink with sun, pleasantly plump, and invariably glowing with some private amusement. She plopped her tray down on the counter and kissed El behind the ear as he juggled bottles and glasses. She said, "We met at drama school, Metro N.Y., did a lot of summer theater, a little off-Broadway. I guess we never quite made it big, but we always ate, which is more than most can say. Anyway, we gave it up maybe six years ago when an old buddy offered good jobs at a restaurant at Kennedy International. Lugbot jockeys, off-duty stews, mostly. They went automated, we grabbed our savings and got out. El, I said, what would we rather do than anything in the world?"

Tony pulled farther back as another voice came in, highpitched and lightly accented. "I know your answer. "

Chi-Chi Lopez was the prettier half of the world's most famous team of Game Masters. Her cheekbones were high and angular, but softened by ringlets of shoulder-length, jet-black hair. Her eyes were just as dark and sparkled with mischief.

"Richard and I used three of your DreamTime routines before you even went pro, Doris."

"Tribute from a master," Elmo said, putting two drinks on Doris's tray.

"Later. Our room." Doris arched her eyebrows. "Tribute from a mistress?"

"Rrrrr!" He swatted her affectionately. She dimpled, sashaying away.

Barmaid's walk, Tony mused. Efficient, no-nonsense sex appeal. She was old enough to be his mother, but she'd been a private fantasy for months. Was the Whitman marriage lock-stepped?

Chi-Chi watched them and then turned her attention to her husband, Richard. Tony remembered the wan little man. More specifically, he remembered playing the South Seas Treasure Game, designed and executed by the Lopezes. Their reputation had been well earned: lethal, unpredictable, but basically fair.

Richard spoke, and the computer automatically adjusted for decreased volume and pitch change: Richard had lost a lung four years back.

A small dark man with introspective black eyes and a pencil-thin mustache, he always hesitated over his words, as if writing them on a mental slate before speaking. "This is the Game I always wanted to conduct," he said. "I am happy to have you with me, El. Doris. This one will be remembered."

Hell, yes. It would be argued about, debated, and replayed for years.

And even after costs, and dividing up almost seven million dollars in guarantees among the players, the Park would still profit mightily. Worldwide pay-per-view, virtual simulations, theatrical re-creations, and licensing rights would reap over thirty million dollars.

Damned little of which would find its way into Tony McWhirter's hands.

Richard and Chi-Chi huddled silently against the bar. How long had it been since Tony had seen them? Eight years? Chi-Chi was tall and slender even when seated, the elegant curve of her back accentuated by a fluff-fringed yellow dress that clung like body paint. If anything, she looked younger and more alive. Richard, smaller and darker, seemed shrunken. Could his health be a liability in the coming Game?

No. Richard Lopez never gave less than one hundred percent. Never. It was what made him great.

They were all great, in their individual ways-the Lopezes with their holograms and overall Game design, the Whitmans with their choreography of Virtual mimes and Non-Player Characters.

Four Game Masters. And Tony made five. A junior member he might be, but, by God, a member.

Tony's fingers tapped again. A window zoomed on the shoreline, framing schools of bathers. All those Dream Park employees tended to cluster, leaving lots of empty space. The roof was too big for them, dauntingly large.

The water was green, covered with lily pads and shoals of moss. Pure artifice, it looked as if half a thousand years of neglect had allowed a real swamp to take over Meacham's toy bayou. But that was Game reality. In truth there hadn't been water in the rooftop lake since the Quake of '95, when the tilt of the roof changed and the lake emptied into the desert.

There had been several levels to the roof, even before the Quake. Now it sagged to the west, and the whole western edge had collapsed. Twelve thousand gallons a minute flowed from the swimming pool through a safety grid and over the edge, plummeting two hundred feet to a fountain below. What was the rate of evaporation? It boggled his mind-only the power of the Cowles fusion distillery in Long Beach could have furnished sufficient cheap water to make the lake viable.

Tony zoomed in on the roof party: some of the celebrants were almost at the edge, near the vine-camouflaged barricades. Narrow focus: he watched them enjoy the view. Meacham's architects had never planned that waterfall, either!

"Barsoom Project" was the designation for the projected terraforming of Mars. The dead planet would gain a breathable atmosphere, arable land, and enough water for an expanding human population. The Barsoom Project would take decades, and would involve the natural, industrial, and scientific resources of almost every nation on Earth, but MIMIC would house the beginnings. The vast spaces within Meacham's arcology, and the spaceport now being built nearby, would be the Mars terraforming project for decades to come… unless thirty Gamers and four hundred Non-Player Characters, under the supervisionof Tony McWhirter and four senior Game Masters, tore the building apart during the

California Voodoo Game.

Something buzzed at the edge of his attention.

Tony ignored it-not a computer sound, not an alert, nor yet the sound of data disappearing in randomized bubbles as unimportant. A notion had come to him. Fingers and thumbs tapped as inspiration took hold. Pictures jumped around him on the white half-dome of MIMIC Security: windows into all the corners of the huge building, windows projected onto windows.

Conversation behind him, a woman speaking. "…Voodoo Game is ready?"

A man's. Deep and musical. "Yeah. McWhirter wanted to tear the building apart. Travis said no."

"So the Boss finally did something right. Aside from being born into the right family."

Tony recognised voices: Alex Griffin, and that woman from Cowles Security in Tacoma. He couldn't resist a comment. "Buildings are hardware. Software is as cheap as dreams."

"Tony?"

"We did our work in DreamTime. You'll think we spent a billion dollars. I'm finished here in a minute, Griff."

Out of the corner of his eye he watched Griffin, Dream Park's security chief, a tall man who carried his seventy-five inches and two hundred pounds with animal assurance. His hair was shaded a burnt strawberry, dark enough to make

Tony look almost blond. When Griffin answered "Fine," his voice exuded enough casual confidence to make Tony wince.

The woman at Alex's side was a stunning brunette. Sharon something

… Court? Griffin's left hand lightly touched her arm, while the other gestured with the relaxed authority of a plenipotentiary. "Sharon, there's working room for sixty people here. MIMIC-"

"You like that name?"

"Seems appropriate."

"I like 'Meacham's Folly,' " she said. "That's what the locals call it."

"All right, Folly. ScanNet breaks it into overlapping quadrants, with variable scan depth. The entire building gets a standard four-stage coverage, but some countries have contracted for more. Half a billion dollars' worth of security.

Quite a system."

"Are you jealous?" she asked innocently.

"Cowles asked me to join up. I get all the stretch in the Park." Irritation had touched Griffin's voice, very lightly

Tony's fingers kept moving in the hologram, sensors picking up finger movement and wrist position, inputting far faster than any mechanical keyboard. The sensors "learned" eccentric movements and habitual errors, the individual shorthand of the operator, and together with voice cues created an ideal programming environment. Minimum size of portable units was no longer limited by the physical dimensions of a keyboard. He was trying to keep his mind on programming. The last thing he wanted to think about was Alex Griffin. But it wasn't working.

Persecutor… betrayer… woman-thief… savior.

Eight years before, a disguised Griffin had entered one of Dream Park's infamous live-action role-playing games to solve a case of industrial espionage. In the commission of that crime, a guard named Albert Rice had died. Very accidental it had been, but as even Tony's own lawyer had observed, dead is dead.

Griffin had taken six years of Tony's life.

He had also taken Tony's lady, Acacia Garcia. Eventually, she had taken him or somebody had dumped somebody. Tony had never been sure which.

Alex pointed in the video windows, picking out familiar faces in the rooftop press. "Quite a party."

"Everybody's getting the time off?" Sharon asked.

"Sure. The Folly's almost finished. The Barsoom Project is cooking. Fiftieth anniversary of groundbreaking for Dream Park is right around the corner. Everybody's feeling pretty good. Dream Park's closed to the public for a week. Some folks are taking off. Four hundred of us are staying right here as NonPlayer Characters-NPCs." He stretched, yawning hugely. "Nice to be just another head in the crowd. For once. "

"Say not so. The Griffin actually taking a day off?"

"Scout's honor." He squeezed her waist, glanced back at Tony, and released her.

Good old Griff. So considerate. So quick to hire Tony out of Chino, get him a job, set him up with psychological readjustment sessions. Mother hen…

And why did something at the very core of Tony McWhirter take offence? How could he respect this man, and be grateful to him, and never warm to him at all?

Gracious McWhirter. He shut out his thoughts and began building dreams again. What good is a dream without internal consistency, settings, and a rigorous timeline? A good dream had detailed settings, plus special effects to make the dreamer blind to the illusion. He had become very good at computer dreaming during the six long years. Dreams and computers, after all, were all he had had in Chino State Penitentiary.

Alex Griffln, like so many security execs before him, had decided that anyone good enough to beat his systems was a man to recruit. He had turned Tony loose in Dream Park, then gone further still. He had pled Tony's case with the International Fantasy Gaming Society, the organisation that monitored and brokered points for Gaming worldwide. They had screamed foul, but Dream Park hired its own personnel, and Griffin chose McWhirter. Tony went on-line as Dream Park's liaison to the Game Master, coordinating security and computing time.

And now, not two years later, Tony McWhirter, novice Gamer turned gentleman thief turned (murderer) turned…

The current wasn't buzzing through his fingers anymore. Hardedged ideas dissolved into a mushy jumble in his head.

Dammit, when would he forgive himself? He had made good. Now he was coordinating the efforts of four Game Masters as they unleashed their finest work. The killing was behind him, his debt for the untimely, unintended strangling of Albert Rice paid in full.

(Okay with you, Albert?)

At the moment he was at work on the setting: a dreamscape superimposed on the real, redesigned MIMIC, a building intended to feed, house, and entertain 25,000 people. Fifty years earlier, water had poured down the wrecked building, into broken balcony doors and windows, until the tilted rooftop swimming lake was nearly empty. Now the waterfall flowed again. In the context of the California Voodoo Game, the roof and its artificial lake housed a fishing and farming community half a thousand years old. Who knew what supernatural terrors lurked beneath its filthy waters?

The Shadow do. McWhirter chuckled nastily.

Scattered within the California Voodoo Game were a total of fifty talismans, far more than the number necessary to win. Some were in the rooftop lake, requiring scuba gear. Currently, such gear was available on the Mall level, but could he make it easier? "Of course," he muttered, and his fingers began to move.

"Of course what?"

"Of course it's obvious." He couldn't delay acknowledgments any longer. "Hi, Griff. Hi, Sharon… Caine?"

She was small and dark-haired and pretty; she looked quite military in her crisp, blue Cowles Security uniform. "Crayne. Sharon Crayne. Good evening, Game Master." Her smile was incandescent. He wondered how it tasted.

He bet Good Ol' Griff knew.

"I'll finish this later. How goes?"

"You're changing the Game," Crayne said disapprovingly.

"Is a bear Polish? But only just a little bit, Sharon, and I'll record all changes for Security, and it's trivial anyway. We've put snorkels and scuba gear in the Mall level, right?" His fingers were a floating blur in the keyboard. "The Gaming teams have to use it on the flooded levels, but getting it there will be an exercise in masochism."

"That's a fair description of the whole Game," Alex Griffln said. "five teams of masochists submitting themselves to the tender mercies of Tony McWhirter. "

"Well… me and four other gentle souls." Tony felt warm and chummy. Alex could do that to him, if they were face to face. It was easy to forget the intense intelligence behind those dark green eyes and the tremendous strength and technique that had once held Tony McWhirter as helpless as a baby. Tony grinned like a minstrel. "Yes, boss. Isn't it obvious? If there was diving gear for sale before the Quake, somebody must have been buying it. So I'll put some in the upper apartments, too."

Griffln chuckled. "You're getting sly in your old age. Why aren't you partying?"

"I thought if I went through the territory again, I'd come up with something more."

"You've got four hundred NPCs out there, all partying their hearts out in the forty hours left before your Game begins." Alex Griffln was being just a little bit careful with his tongue. Might have been drinking, yes? Never seen Alex drunk. Might be interesting to douse his punch with a little Kleerlite 190 proof. "Why not go out and get a little adulation? Your public awaits. "

"Uh-huh." Tony's cheeks were getting tired, and he relaxed the grin. "What are you doing here?"

"Routine check. We need our screens back, Tony. Wrap this up, would you?"

"Oh, Lord. How long?"

"Give me an hour. If everything checks, you can have it all back. The damn Game is done, isn't it?"

Tony bit back a retort: No Garne is ever complete while the authors live, Alex. He stood up, and Alex slid into his chair.

Dream Park's security chief was at work almost instantly. He had a running view of the train depot on levels one and two. Then the Mall on level three. The Mall extended up to level six, with another two stories of light-well. Escalators ran from there down to the train gates. The gates had been there already, but with only one set of track laid, a split-level station carved into the ground and the cliff face.

"How much of this did you actually build?" Sharon asked.

Griffin didn't seem inclined to answer, so Tony said, "We cleaned out the broken glass and planted merchandise in the stores, and bombed out the stinks and the vermin. Otherwise we left it alone. There're some clues in the Mall-"

"What about the rest of the building?"

"Ah. Well, most of it was in place. MIMIC had eleven thousand in residence, and was going slowly broke, on May twenty-third, nineteen ninety-five."

"The California Ouake," said Sharon.

"Yep. You can see for yourself, the place wasn't totaled. California's always been antsy about quakeproofing. MIMIC stood up pretty well. Part of the west face is sagging. See how it's distorted, like someone slammed the oven door on the souffle? Maybe two thousand people were trapped. Rescue was a long time coming, because the whole damn state needed rescue. Over eight hundred died. The building wasn't a total loss, but who'd want to live here after that? Cowles stole it at auction. Hell, everything in California was going for nickels.''

The scanner's eye shifted just north of the vertical ridge on the west face, to focus on the waterfall. The western edge of the rooftop lake cascaded over the broken masonry in a silvery flood. The viewpoint moved down the torrent in jumps.

"When we finish, we'll turn this back into industry housing. Home base for the Barsoom Project. But first, we get to play with it. We'll run the California Voodoo Game from roof to basement, the biggest role-playing game ever.

"We flooded levels ten and eleven, Sharon. There'll be more flooding by the end of the game. We clean it up afterward. The waterfall, that'll stay part of the building forever. Along the crease "taptap" here we go. This was what

Meacham called 'the modular wall.' "

The view was from the desert floor, straight up the crease. A central track ran the crease, with tributaries splaying out and up like Christmas-tree branches. There were egg-shaped bulges on some tracks, each the size of a camper. Half-crushed eggs lay at the base of the building. One egg hung three hundred feet up from cables that looked no larger than threads.

Griffin spoke. "Tony, you're not going to use those?"

"Oh, hey, Griff, they're not dangerous. Not anymore. I watched the work."

"But you've got a whole apartment dangling there." He leaned closer. "Crap. That's not mine, is it?"

"Ha ha. Your apartment is down a few levels, and anchored tight, Griff. You don't trust me at all…" Could Griffin veto his use of the modular wall? "It's a mock-up, just a bedroom and office and some storage."

"Does it move? Crawl up and down the wall like the others?"

"It does that."

"It looks dangerous."

"Exciting, Griff. It looks exciting. This is a Level Ten Hazardous Environment game. They don't get tougher. Lawyers worked overtime on the waivers, believe me. If Gamers or their families even whisper 'lawsuit,' their firstborns disappear in baby-blue puffs of smoke."

"Exciting, huh?"

"Yeah." A distraction? "Griff, hope you don't mind, but I tied some of the Gaming monitors into ScanNet. Seemed a shame to waste all that wonderful full-spectrum imaging technology-"

Sharon's pretty face creased with irritation. "And how did you manage that trick?"

Griffin clucked with feigned weariness. "Don't ask, Sherry. There is madness to his methods."

Tony's grin was pure evil. "Yesss. Seems a shame not to get some use out of it. After all ScanNet will be obsolete in ten years. Five if the Japanese don't sit on their hands. Maybe three-"

"Leave the poor woman her illusions."

"Sorry, Griff. Heh heh. Anyway, even if you don't need it yet, I do, to run the Game. Is that stuff in place?"

"We're still mounting scanners. Sharon, let's do a run. Tony, you can stay or you can party." When Tony seemed inclined to stick around, Griffin added, "I'd party if I were you."

"On my way, chief." Tony saluted and spiraled out of the chair.

He was at the door in three breaths and paused there, casting a final glance behind him. Alex and Sharon were standing close together, generating enough heat to make the air shimmer.

Do you remember Acacia Garcia, Griff? She'll be here, for the Voodoo Game. Did you look at the roster, Griff? Do you know? Do you care?

Tony cared, enough for it to create a sour, aching void in the pit of his stomach. Enough to wonder where she was at that moment, and what she was doing.

The back of Acacia's neck burned with the touch of Wizard's eyes. She longed to check her coordinates on her "location finder," but dared not. She had to save that juice! Tammi would be closing in on her with lethal intent. Tammi would be expecting Acacia to prepare an ambush, or to select the best possible location to stand and fight. Neither approach would work. Tammi was too good at selecting her own sites. There would be no way to sucker the Troglodykes.

But there was one stratagem that had never been tried.

She walked rapidly and spotted a telltale reflection only an instant before her nose bumped an invisible barrier. Thump.

She edged around, both hands spread, searching for the ends of the glass. There had been nothing, just another endless crystal vista, and suddenly Acacia stood on the edge of a waterfall. Victoria Falls? Niagara, in some prehistoric age? The air churned with foam, a million acre-feet of water per second cascading into the dizzying depths.

There was no way across? Her team might well fight and die here…

"Captain Cipher!"

An odd, fat, pale little man came waddle-jogging to join her. Corby Cauldwell was as nimble as a somnambulant geriatric. He had the personal hygiene habits of a water buffalo. A bumper crop of potatoes could be grown on his scalp. But his alter ego, Captain Cipher, was not only a certifiable genius, but also one of the highest-ranking Magicians in the International Fantasy Gaming Society.

She needed him now. "There's a way across," she said urgently. "Find it for me."

Light erupted from Cipher. Its radiance revealed a loop of rope sitting on a tree branch beside the abyss.

Acacia reached for it, then hesitated. What was the trick? Was it as easy as that? She sensed nothing menacing…

"Reveal danger," the Captain whispered.

At first, nothing. Then…

"Look," Acacia whispered. On the far side of the falls danced a tongue of red fire.

"This is your baby," Cipher said happily.

Acacia retrieved the coil of rope and balanced it in her hand. There was something wrong with it-a metal bulb buried in the trip? But a quick scan by Cipher showed nothing. That meant that it was Dream Park business, not hers.

She made a long cast over the water

The rope stood straight out

And hung there, like an Indian rope trick performed on the horizontal. And then the rope elasticised, began to stretch out and out… until it connected on the other side.

Acacia's tummy did a sour little dance, recognising the next part. She reached out a sandal-shod foot and tested the cord.

It would bear her weight.

"Vision," she said brusquely. "I want magnified vision."

There on the other side of the abyss was the rope bridge. The rope didn't quite reach. Someone would have to cross and attach a lariat to the magical bridge, and then haul it back across.

Or could her team cross on the rope? Hand over hand? Tightrope walking? "Captain Cipher? Do you think that you could — ?"

"Captain Cipher loves your sense of humor," he said.

"Just checking." She shucked her pack. "All right. Let's see what we've got."

Acacia drew her sword, balancing it easily in one hand. Her Physical rating was high enough she could actually perform a fifteen-foot tightrope walk without Dream Park assistance. But in winds, and over a gorge, and in a Game-that made it a little scary.

She stepped out on the line…

Tammi stretched out a long, muscular arm and shushed her companions. There was a bridge ahead of her, a catwalk rising on crisscrossing wooden supports that rose up from a deep gorge. The bridge led nowhere, terminating against a sheer crystal cliff. A perfect location for an ambush, Garcia-style.

She looked at her wrist sensor and noted Acacia Garcia's movement pattems. Acacia was approaching the center of the Maze, but taking the long way around. Tammi's esteemed opponent was famous for direct assaults. The apparent indirection had to be a trick. To assume anything else would be suicide.

She called to the thin young man behind her. "Mouser, what do you think?"

He touched his goggles absently. "I can see a door," he said, his voice adolescently nasal. "I think I can riddle the lock, or break it."

Mouser tested the bridge and then walked out into the center. It swung gently from side to side. Below it glistened a field of fire blossoms. They were much like morning glories and grew on long, glassy stems. Their petals unwound slightly, hissing.

"Kiss my pistil," Mouser hissed back.

"Mouser!" Tammi warned.

"Sorry, Mom," he said sheepishly, only mildly chagrined. His Gaming buddies at Medford Academy would howl when they heard that line. He was sorry that he'd gotten the gender wrong, not that he'd said it. "Kiss my stamen" had like zero impact.

The bridge was narrow enough that he had to be cautious with every footfall. Above him, through the ceiling, he saw the sun, or something that could have been the sun, rising. As it rose, the petals of the flowers opened. Tiny flaming mouths shimmered within them.

As he watched, the mouths spit threads of fire. Flames began to crawl up the bridge's support struts.

Mouser smirked, humming with cavalier disregard for his own safety. He had at least fifty seconds. He knew this world; he understood its rules.

He removed a lockpick from his leather belt pouch and faced the blank wall.

His Thief's vision revealed a tiny flutter in the crystal. A keyhole. He slipped his key into the slot and began to manipulate it.

Two eyes, a nose, and finally a mouth appeared in the crystal before him. They watched him speculatively. "Hello there, young man. Are you ready for a test of skill?"

"Bring it on."

The pick slipped in, and his field of vision expanded. He could see the workings of the lock. Within his gloves, his fingers tingled. It was a pleasurable sensation, not yet a warning buzz; it felt rather like snowshoed ants scampering in rhythmic patterns over his knuckles. The flames were closer now. His vision was edged in flame even when he focused his attention down to a narrow line. Now he felt as though he actually were hot in fact, he was burning up. The air around him was crackling, and the flames were closer…

He maintained focus on the job at hand, and suddenly the flames disappeared. There was a crack in the crystal wall, one just tall enough for Mouser.

The metal framework of the catwalk remained, and he beckoned to the others. Come on over!

His teammates swarmed across.

Tammi checked her scanner and chuckled grimly. That task had netted seven hundred points, easy. Her adversaries were just the other side of this tunnel. She would take the lead, and with just the smallest bit of luck the adventure would be won in time for lunch. She shucked her cloak and wiggled through the crack.