We’ll win, and everything’s going to be fine, Rat told herself. Again. And again.      She watched from the safety and comfort of Jock’s VR rig, patched in through a hidden camera in one of his shirt buttons. Riding lifts and wandering stone-clad hallways. The castle was so much bigger than it looked from the outside. She’d searched for a floor plan, but nothing...

     Everybody tried to keep up the illusion of a pleasant chat. They studiously ignored the camouflaged soldiers in the background, so casually unobtrusive that you couldn’t help but notice them in the corners.      Gina knew where they were, now that she was paying attention. Her mind’s eye picked them out even when the eyeballs in her head couldn’t tell them from the...

     Bomber didn’t know much. Even his name got fuzzy at times. There was only one thought which provoked no doubt in him: He was on the hunt. If anyone had stopped to ask, he probably wouldn’t have been able to say what, or why. Luckily no one did. He just knew where he was going on a level beyond rational thought. Nothing so primitive as instinct. Nothing so unsophisticated. It was a higher state,...

     The jet was there, as promised. Fully loaded and crewed. It shone under the massive floodlights of the Laputa Jetway, a strip of artificial land built out into the sea on the north side of the island, the only airfield in Laputa that flew fixed-wing aircraft. Gina kept one hand on the steps up to the jet, and stared up at the sky as if she could see the stars.      “Come...

     A dial flashed purple on the console before Hideo. The whole world around them, by extension, began to pulse with a glowing red light. Thinking on her feet, Harmony dove through Hideo to get at the controls, cancelling the log-in.      It was already too late. An eye the size of a planet appeared in the sky and blinked at a geological pace. It watched the very small group of humans, and...

     “What do you mean, ‘detour?'” asked Gina, shaking off her grogginess. She divided her attention between Henry and the heavy black-and-yellow thunderclouds on the horizon, brooding, pregnant with evil. It was the biggest dust storm she’d ever seen. Swirls of old fallout whirled at the edges while polluted lightning flashed orange and green in its murky depths. It hung there like a big...