Tim

  The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

  --Sun Tzu

  Rifles rise all across the square, and in the streets and rooftops beyond. I crouch in my cover, there in the parking garage, and silently curse as my whistle, distracting as it obviously is, does nothing to send these guys running.

  As if.

  No one has started firing yet, but the whole crowd of regular students and visitors seems to recognize the threat all once. People back away from the first strangers they see pulling weapons, then scatter and run. Shouts and screams suddenly echo through the square. With the endless dirge of my tiny siren sounding a mournful counterpoint.

  Great, I think. I’ve started a panic. Though it’s hard to feel too bad. If these fanatics are about to open fire, then passersby are better off anywhere but here.

  The crowd disperses like a thin mist around an open blast furnace. A mist that cries for help and begs for mercy, anyway. While, ironically, a thin mist seems to crawl out of every drain and every patch of greenery, curling around the feet of anyone foolish enough to still be lingering in the square. Or anywhere in the line of fire.

  “I don’t suppose you’re armed?” I ask. Not that the girl hanging from her cord above me has any reason to be. But then again, she is dressed up as a white-clad ninja or superhero or something, so maybe the cosplay extends to weapons.

  White ones, I’m sure. But who am I to complain? I just slingshotted away my only weapon worth mentioning, and it was a glorified whistle.

  Maybe the invisibility is making me careless.

  First Kei and Haley, and now…

  “I wish,” she mutters, a burner flip phone in her hand. She punches a speed-dial button, says “Kaleidoscope” into it, and then drops closer to me before flipping her phone under a row of cars. I hear it beeping and skittering along underneath them, but she turns away, having apparently forgotten it already.

  “Really?” I say. “Well, you have any cool drones available? Or hacking skills?” Okay, it’s just weird chatting up a girl on her guerilla warfare skills, but it’s worth asking. Unsaid is that she looks like a high-end superhero or cyberpunk cosplayer, but who am I to judge? I wear my costume all the time. It just happens to be invisibility.

  She snorts, glancing down from her perch a few feet up the wall of the deck's entry ramp. “I’m not an idiot,” she replies before shifting her gaze back to the square. “Waycross is packed with security – especially the school. And the ASIs have overwatch on its networks. You hack here, they’ll tear your processors apart and wipe your mind. This is not your playground. Or mine.” Her offhand grips the white cord she's hanging from tightly, but she makes no other moves. I guess she is out of tricks.

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  “Just theirs,” I observe, watching a wave of paramilitary troops sweep into the Library while more join the perimeter forming all around us. Then I pause and turn back to her. “ASIs? What, narrow ones for just cyber, then?”

  My new friend nods distractedly. “And the real superintelligences, watching over them. And those do not play games.” She stares out across the square again. “C’mon,” the girl in white mutters. “Where are you?”

  “Hey,” I say, pitching my voice lower as I edge under her position, “how can you see me?” The question's been eating at the back of my mind. I haven’t let the Fade drop. If anything, I’m straining every nerve to boost it however I can. But she seems to be piercing it without even trying. At least Kei knew I’d be coming and was actively looking for me. How is this girl doing it?

  Somewhere out in the square, my tiny siren dies with a crunch and a squeal. Just as waves of drones hurtle through the rising white fog billowing through streets and rolling off the tops of buildings. Wisps snake around the heavily armed guerilla troops on the street.

  A signal passes through those gray-clad intruders, and I see them raise their assembled, high-tech rifles as one.

  An icy spike rams through my heart, and I realize I’m about to witness a massacre. Maybe as one of the victims.

  “Get down!” I hiss at the white-clothed girl, but she’s already dropping soundlessly next to me, peeking just far enough around the concrete slabs of the parking-deck entrance to glimpse what’s about to happen outside. My heart dies a little. “We should run,” I tell her.

  The gunmen in gray pull their triggers.

  And a wordless shout rises like curses everywhere outside. Not a single gun fires. But the troops are desperately trying to fix or fire their rifles, pulling handguns which are equally useless, and shouting commands at one another. They scatter even as we watch.

  “What?!” I demand, trying to pitch my voice low, though I’m sure it’s lost in the commotion outside. “They’ve stopped?”

  The girl-in-white shakes her head. “Just a wrench in the works. Gummed up their gears.” She looks at me. “I’m Ghost. And you’re right. We need to go. Now.” She jerks her head further back into the underground parking deck. “I’ve got a way out.”

  I look outside. Something white clings to the next-generation railguns and plasma rifles our new friends were about to use to slaughter hundreds. Now they’re about to use them as clubs and coatracks.

  “What?” I repeat as Ghost lays a hand on my shoulder and pushes me back into the shadows. I’d Fade at this point, but I’ve never stopped. “How?”

  “A mist of tiny, adhesive bubbles.” Ghost waves dismissively and gets us walking fast downramp as she talks, heading to the lower levels. “With just enough magnetized particles to make them cling to ferrous metal and electromagnetic sources. They’ve slipped into every firing mechanism out there, even the plasma cannon’s.”

  Which are massively electromagnetic and probably sucking up those doped bubbles like vacuums, though she isn’t saying that.

  I blink. “You stopped it, then?” We don’t stop, but speedwalk faster. We drop through Level 2 to Level 3, counting in reverse order.

  “Just here, and just for a minute. But I couldn’t smuggle anything else in. These guys have other tech, and they’ll scrape their tech clean or fight hand-to-hand. Their bosses don’t care if they live or die.”

  “You did all that just to delay them?” I ask as we hit Level 4. A riotous roar follows us from the streets above.

  “People are getting away,” Ghost snaps. “But no, I was hoping the heavy hitters would get here. Or at least that I'd give a… a friend a chance to fight back or slip away.”

  “Heavy hitters?” I repeat. I’m in shock, I think, but also aware this girl’s a font of information like I’ve never seen.

  “A cyberwar just hit the planet. We’re an epicenter, and even the ASIs are busy. But I was still hoping…”

  A sound like distant thunder rumbles far above our heads. No. Like an incredible fast and powerful drumroll.

  And Ghost stops. And even through her white cowl I can see her face shift and smile.

  “You hear that music?” she asks me with a grin.

  “Was that a drumbeat?” I answer. The sound rings out like a distant jackhammer that never stops.

  One with rhythm.

  “A staccato beat,” Ghost tells me. She tilts her head and casually cracks her neck. “Okay, you ready to fight? We might save a few innocent people up there, if we go now.”

  “We’re not running?” I ask, confused.

  “Not with her up there. C’mon. And stay invisible. You’re about to be one of the few ever to see Kairon’s Scythe in action.”

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