The Bloodlight Chronicles: Reconciliation Read Free Page B

different than all the other sliders on the move back in the day. You played with fire but never turned on a buddy. We had a good thing going, you and me, before you zoomed uptown for fame and fortune.”
    â€œA lot has happened, Jimmy.” Zakariah paused and swallowed a crack in his self-confidence. “I’m Eternal now,” he declared softly to Jimmy’s back.
    The monocular lens hit the table and rolled noisily away. Jimmy’s old face turned white except for angry red spots at his temples. “Holy ghost,” he whispered. “You’ve brought the demons down on me.”
    â€œIt’s a fraud, Jimmy—everything you’ve heard.”
    Jimmy turned slowly, grimly, his eyes wide. “You’ve got the virus?”
    â€œI’ve got it.”
    Jimmy licked dry lips. He closed his eyes briefly as though in prayer or meditation. “Sure,” he said finally. “Sure. It had to happen.” He chuckled at this new revelation. “You were heading right for the top, I could tell, reaching for the big ticket. Sure, I’ll sell out to the Eternals, if you can make it happen. I got no choice now.”
    â€œI’m sorry, Jimmy. I figured you should know, of all people.”
    â€œYeah, I guess you don’t blab it to every hussy in the night.”
    Zakariah held up his hands to ward off the thought. “No street stuff for me, Jimmy. I’ve got a wife now. And a son, Rix. He’s already wired to hack the Beast, just like his dad.”
    â€œThe glorious future, eh? You’re all gonna live happily ever after.” Jimmy smirked. “Kinda poetic, ain’t it?”
    Zakariah felt his throat constrict with emotion. Forever was a long time. Too long and too far away. “My boy isn’t Eternal,” he croaked. “Not yet.”
    â€œNo?”
    Zakariah shook his head as he struggled with his private devil. This was the reason he survived. This was the reason he fought day after day for a better world. “The virus is not transmitted by human contact. I can’t give it to Rix. I can’t buy it on the street. I’m still trying to track down the Source.”
    Jimmy frowned up at him with reflected agony in his eyes. “They make you watch your own kid die?” he asked quietly.
    Zakariah stared at his oldest friend, the man who had taught him how to hack V-space long before the Beast had even attained self-consciousness, perhaps the only man he had ever trusted.
    â€œI hope not, Jimmy.”

TWO
    R ix could make out but a bare phosphorescent shadow of the V-net horizon before him, a jagged silhouette glowing purplish and eerie in the darkness. He felt like a gangster in his hooded avatar, moving furtively in an unknown and dangerous cityscape. He’d had a vague tracer on his dad’s lifeline, but the datatrail had evaporated like a wisp of fog in a blast of car exhaust, leaving him lost and uncertain. This section of Sublevel Zero was completely unregistered, the pavement patchy, the empty shops mere facades, the whole area under construction by the minds that used the V-net. The continuum grows with every use, his dad had told him, it is a function of need, of infinite accessibility. You can’t be afraid of V-space; it doesn’t exist. Only ideas exist, imaginations.
    Rix shuddered. His dad’s advice sounded so real, so near, drawing him onward into the ever-expanding digital frontier. Any sense of distance in V-space is only an illusion, his dad had told him. Information swirls around us at lightspeed, faster than meagre senses can register. The user is everywhere at once, the runner nowhere at all. Whatever you experience in V-space has already happened—the net is a glorified history book, a detailed account of human experience. Don’t be fooled by mere sensorium. The future is inside your head.
    â€œDad?” Rix spoke out loud, breaking the haunting silence with a word. “Well,