Guy Haley - Omega point

They had Waldo sit, and pressed the struggling shadow's soles against Waldo's. "Right, you little sod," said Bear. "I'm going to Peter Pan you good and proper."

There was an angry squeal. They looked up to see Hog being taken in the side by a long spear. The mook guard had fallen and Hog's enemies had reorganised, keeping themselves back from his cleaver and jabbing with their pikes. He bellowed, smashing the pike to matchwood and pulling upon it, dragging the unfortunate creature wielding it within chopping distance whereupon it was swiftly dispatched.

"Now, Bear! Now!" shouted Richards. The cavern rumbled. Little remained of the Anvil now but the inner temple.

Bear shook his head. He wrestled with the struggling shadow, and the first stitch went in, pricking blood from Waldo's feet. It drew a howl of despair from the shadow. Waldo looked on, puzzled.

"What are you doing?" he said. "Who is this man?"

"Nooooo!" screamed Penumbra.

"Yes!" cackled Bear. He stitched swiftly, humming as he worked.

"Aieeeee!!!!!" said Penumbra. As each new, neat stitch went in, Penumbra became flatter and flatter, his features less distinct. Bear finished off the first foot and moved to the other. A morblin rammed a pike into him, a haemite chopped into his side with a rusty seax. He irritably punched them away, Richards shooting over his head, warding further blows from him by pulling at the world code.

"Better hurry this up, Bear!" Bear muttered, and stitched faster than he ever had before. There was a pained oink, and Hog sank to his knees. Hungry spear points dipped themselves in and out of his body.

"Quickly, quickly, sew it on!" he grunted. "Or all is lost!"

"Aieee!" screamed Penumbra. "Leave the pig! Kill the bear!"

Bear was beset from all sides. The last of the elite mook guard fell, and the enemy swarmed all over him. Morblins, trollmen, haemites, and things with far too many teeth to have proper names. Richards covered himself over with a hemispheric shield, and ducked down, a mass of creatures scrabbling at it and burying him.

"Get him off me! Cut the stitches!" ordered Penumbra. He was little more than a dusky cutout of a man.

"No!" said Bear. "One… more… stitch!" His assailants stabbed and cut him. Fur and stuffing went everywhere, as they ripped long strips of fabric from him. They tried to drag him back, but he fought them off with flailing paws and deadly might, his violence astounding them. With one last heroic effort he hauled those who still clung to him forward. He reached out and, using all his strength, moved his arm to pull the thread through one last time.

The scrum parted for a moment, and Richards saw a pair of conjoined haemites prime their weapon and point its nozzle at Bear's back.

"Sergeant Bear!" he shouted. "Look out!"

A burning light burst from Waldo and washed out over the cavern. Bear covered his remaining eye.

The cavern shattered into nothing.

The haemites, in the instant they felt their unnatural life desert them, fired.

Lord Penumbra ceased to be as flames washed over Bear, setting his fur ablaze.

Bear fell, arms flailing.

Otto watched stolen feeds of Henson's men being slaughtered by k52's robot drones. They proceeded into the Realm House practically unhindered, only to be swarmed by spider drones when they had reached the Grid relays on the floor of the Realm House cavern.

"Bad tactics," he said. "They let them in, let them access the Grid relays before moving in in force and taking them out." Otto replayed key parts of the footage, watching the way k52's machines behaved, plotting avenues of attack and defence. Question was, why had k52 let them in at all? "Are we ready?" he said.

"Yes," said Valdaire.

Otto lowered himself onto the first v-jack couch, next to the dead Waldo.

"No time to clean him away, sorry," said Valdaire. She slipped the v-jack headpiece on.

"Good fortune, Klein," Guan said.

"Now," said Valdaire. "Because of the nature of this patch up here, and possible interference, entry into the Grid may be a little rougher than normal, OK?"

"OK."

"In case you can't find the way yourself, I've rigged a channel that will carry you directly to your virtual office. You'll have to find your way after that, I can't break Richards' encryption and get you straight in to the LA office. Now, are you ready?"

" Ja," said Otto. He hated the VR world.

"Right, on three. One… two… three…"

Otto's mentaug howled as it was slaved to the v-jack unit. His head felt as if it would burst as he was shunted along the raw Gridlines, his perceptions open to a world normally hidden to human eyes. He hadn't enjoyed his last interface with the raw Grid. This jaunt wasn't much better, a dizzying roar of light and sound, knots of blackness growing like bacterial infestations where k52's presence interfered with the running of the Grid.

It was over. He found himself in Richards amp; Klein's remote telepresence lobby, represented by an anonymous avatar made of ovoids and spheres, its clothes an allusion to a business suit.

Genie instantly appeared in front of him, fancy-dress outfit nowhere in sight; she wore a sober grey skirt and jumper, her hair slicked and tied back, businesswoman style. "Otto? Otto! Ohmygod, it's you!" She did a little jump, gabbling quickly, her words tripping themselves. "Oh, thank goodness! Otto, what's going on? The Grid's freezing up, I can't reach any of my friends, and I have no idea what's going on. I've not heard anything from Richards

since the office blew up. I saw his Gridsig, but nothing else. Is he OK? Are you OK?"

" Ja, Genie, calm down. We are OK. We are in the middle of a case. You will learn, this is not unusual."

"The office? Someone blew the office up? With a compact nuke? Usual! Otto, they've had to shut down half the arco. That's not unusual?"

"OK, yes, that's not so normal. Listen, can you bring up the LA office for me? I need to access one of Richards' sheaths, the heaviest model he has there — this is Richards' territory, not mine. I could do with some help."

"Yeah, er, sure, of course." Genie became focused, pulled a board made of light out of the air and began working switches with sweeps of her fingers. An AI would have interfaced directly with the network, but Genie was a pimsim, a post-mortem simulation, and the habits of the living died hard. "I've had to patch an entirely new network together after the office went. It's shaky, especially now with the Grid shutting down. What's happening?"

"One of Richards' brothers, that's what is happening."

"Oh, er, OK. Another Five? Is that bad?"

Otto's avatar nodded its featureless head. "Don't worry."

"What have I got to worry about? I'm already dead." She gave a little smile. She had been young, she still was, and would be forever. She'd been with the company slightly under a year, not long at all. "OK, right, er, you're in!" She clapped her hands and smiled brightly. "Well, Mr Klein, will there be anything else?"

"Yeah," said Otto. "Anyone calls, tell them to ring back."

A smoother shunt through the Grid, and Otto followed paths ordinarily trodden by Richards.

He opened plastic eyes to the inside of a closet in the garage beneath their LA shopfront. He held up plastic hands as the lights came on.

He felt a little weird at being inside Richards' body. It was all… wrong. At least he'd been able to convince him to buy this light combat model. Not as heavy as Otto would have liked, but it would do.

He had the rack release him and stepped past four other sheaths to the closet door. It slid open at a thought from him. Outside, the remainder of the garage. His eyes alighted on the airbike at the centre.

Seconds later, Otto was in the air over nighttime LA. Below, the sounds of traffic collisions filtered into the smoggy air, and blocks' worth of lights flickered uncertainly. Over LAX, dirigibles bumped one another aimlessly, and he watched as a stratoliner plummeted from the sky to impact and explode on the mountains east of the city. He deactivated all automatic features of the airbike and switched illegally to full manual.