>> A Trick Inside A Trick Is No Treat At All

  The floor of the grand ballroom gleams like a sheet of still water floating on an endless void. A single sheet of solid, crystalline, glass. Perfect and utterly flawless, without a single pillar, or support. The murky fires of the train still flickering, with sullen fury, in the darkness of smoke boiling beneath.

  Like a portal into Hell.

  And maybe it is.

  My eyes scan the tumbled mess of champagne flutes, and dusty bottles, scattered beneath iron tables topped by stone. Seemingly afloat on a sea of sheen and roiling smog. With creamy tablecloths drifting among them like pale white clouds.

  All flickering with colour beneath the godly, and triumphant, light of of a dozen huge holoScreens.

  Imagery erupts from them in an endless, silent, stream. Hyperloop trains that rush between the tables. Streamers and explosions of light.

  Diagrams, videos, and more.

  All of it crowned by a single, massive, timer that flashes gently in time to the fireworks. Hideously breaking and glitching as my implant tries to translate it into every language at once.

  Totally unreadable.

  Unlike the mood.

  "Damn, mate. Like, right in the middle of their big party..... Y'know?" Zip shivers, fogged prints fading behind as he pads out onto shimmering nothingness and smoke.

  "It's somethin' alright." I mutter, trying not to look.

  "....yeah...." He shudders again. "I mean, they all just won? They built their prototype? Or whatever? and had a party?" He raises an imaginary wineglass. "And then, like, the world just sorta ended? Right around them?"

  We all think on that, for a long moment. One we probably can't spare.

  "A toast to oblivion." Polybius intones, with echoing force, from all of our guns at once. "To victory, defeated. And the last light of all that could have been."

  "Ah. Yeah, mate." Zip stutters, frightened of speaking too loudly. "Like, welcome back. Yeah?"

  "Thank you." The Machine acknowledges, static buzzing the ammo counter on my gun. "Spook. I estimate you have two hours at most. Use them well."

  My insides go cold.

  It means my implant.

  "Thanks." I stumble, trying for casual. My eyes fixated on Zipper's feet, stood on little more than darkness and shiny air. Kami's boots clomping, heavily, after as Badger and Gremlin patter all about. Peeping under tables, and batting at wine-glasses.

  Children streaking foolhardy squiggles in the dust.

  While suspended on nothing.

  On empty space.

  My stomach implodes into a black hole, and my eyes snap away. One hand gripping hard to the greeter's podium as I struggle for breath, and composure. Or even the pretence of it.

  "Hey!" I half whisper. "Hey! We don't got time for this!"

  But the atrium seems to be stretching. Plastic flowers blurring into a mash of colours as I feel something terrible and twisted form in the nothingness behind me.

  All I can do is turn fully around, and pretend I'm guarding the darkened doorway.

  A doorway three times as tall as me.

  And filled with eyes that whisper, and shiver. With children that grin and claw at each-others skin, goading themselves forward - as if to ask me a question.

  "Shit....." I breathe, stepping back. Then, hideously, remembering the glass-covered cliff behind me. "Shit..... Guys....."

  But like a dream, my words are silent.

  Cancelled out. Maybe by tek. Maybe not.

  Badger's grinning copse leers at me from the dark doorway, as all the children crawl into his back. Pushing him forward, like a shell on wheels. Rotted teeth dripping with blood, as the thing drags a broken copy of his plastic hand on a desolated arm.

  Its brown flesh greyed. Its bones crushed. Stretched by the weight of that horrible hand, so that it that flops and slithers and drags behind him. Scraping. Clinking.

  Alive, yet not.

  "P-piss off!!" I try to shout, though nothing at all comes out. "We all know ya ain't real!!"

  It laughs.

  "Oh of course I'm not. Spookie." It says in that not-Badger voice. Dry and caked with filth, as he shambles toward me. "You really think I really survived to escape The School with you? Really really? You think you're not just imagining me? Pretending I'm still here?"

  "Shut up." I hiss. Eyes flicking up and around. Hunting the projectors.

  "Spookie. Spookie. Is quite mad-" It sings.

  "SHUT UP!"

  "The others think it's really sad!! That you've really gone quite barking mad!!!!"

  "Tufty-"

  "Tufty is who we kids all blame." It cheers. "When our Spookie goes insane!"

  I pull my pistol, and fire into the flowers. The leaves. The greenery. Rockets roaring and flashing in the shallow room. Hidden tek exploding in the dusty greenery as I turn a full circle of the room.

  Reloading, in a rush of motion, as the gun clicks dry.

  The thing that isn't Badger smiles its dead, dead, smile. "Silly Spookie!" It titters as it fades away. "You can't kill ME!!!" The dead smile twinkles, and then it's gone. A final breath of voice in my ear, as the others come ramming up behind me, in a rush. "I'm all in your head!"

  Zipper and Demon clear the room around me, as I stand there. Impotent pistol shaking against my side. Badger whooping as he batters in behind - careless and oblivious as always.

  The real Badger. The alive Badger.

  I shut my eyes, and try not to throw up.

  I have dreams like this. Where fighting means nothing. Where claws, and guns, and knives can't save me - or anyone I care about.

  Where they die to ghosts with great big smiles.....

  "No. This is reality. We've already won." I growl, to nobody. "You just ain't got the memo yet."

  Then I turn to the others.

  "Mate? Like, you okay?" Zip stutters, in the face of pretty good evidence I'm not.

  "Yeah..... Just another bloody holo. That's all." I flick a nervous hand through the mess of glitches crowding in around me, almost hitting his helmet as I do. Shivers twitching my hand as I drag it back, just in time.

  Which earns myself a jarring, digital-mess, of a look from Kami. Her one hand squashing Badger's head as the rest pointing guns back the way we came.

  I check him again. Forcing myself to believe he's really there. Really him.

  Really safe.

  He beams at me, bright and big, as I do. Spinning like a top to wave, awkwardly, with that big plastic hand. Pulling his mouth real wide, into an even bigger smile. Just happy for any attention at all.

  Alone of all of us, his face is unglitched and unmarred by the bug in my Augmented Reality overly.

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  Like an island of sanity in a well of chaos.

  I check Tufty too. And Gremlin.

  One bobbing about on Demon's shoulder, slobbering his horns. The other a sad little slump, holding tight to his hand. Lonely, and afraid, and uncertain.

  All their faces lost in a maze of broken light.

  I want to reach out and grab them up. All of them.

  But the pain. So much pain. The pain of even thinking I could. As if part of me really does believe that my hand will just fly right through them both, turning them to smoke.

  I force my eyes away, because I have to.

  And in the snarling, stuttering, edges of my vision I see Badger slump. His big grin drooping into grief, as I ignore the kid like he's nothing. Blowing at a candle of hope that's almost gone out.

  And Tufty.... Tufty just shivers his acceptance. Knowing his place.

  Guilt hammers through me like poisoned blood. Ripping at my insides.

  But I have to not care. No matter how much it hurts.

  Because the monsters lick their lips in the dark, just at the sight of our friendship.

  Moon. Our Evil Stepmother. And all of the rest.

  They will will use family against me, just as they did before.

  And then he really will be smoke that burns through my fingers.

  And-

  "Spook. These holos....." Kami interrupts my inner implosion. Her glitched mouth ripping at her lip with a tooth. Forcing pain to become anger to cover her fear. "Either my sensors are utter shit today, or we're being hacked."

  "Hacked?" I snap my head around.

  "Hacked. Yes. I think that mob of rats was fake."

  "No. It was real. Felt em hit the door. Hard."

  "You felt something hit the door." She corrects. "I think they had real rats, there. A dozen rats, maybe. But they multiplied it up. Made it look like thousands." Her eyes turn inside out in rage. "By the time they hit the door, there might have been five. All skinny ones Anything more, and we'd have been bulldozed."

  I stare at her. "Shit. I wasted a mag on that."

  "Me too, mate."

  "But hacked?" I circle back.

  Her imploding face twists, as if tightening. "The rat-plague showed up on sensors, not just visually. They're on heat. Bio-magnetic. Everything. It's as if they're real."

  We consider that in utter silence.

  "Shit." I say, softly. "How? Are they in our systems?? We're bloody unbreachable." A shake of my head. "I should bloody know."

  "Incorrect." Our guns intone, in an echoing cadence. "Nothing is unbreachable. Nothing."

  "Even you couldn't bloody do it." I counter. "Took us a month to get ya in here. Took a cable from a-"

  A flutter of strange, half-imagined, wings cracks across my vision. The mere image of Polybius almost shattering my implant, and my mind. "Most neoSoviet systems are crude. Poorly made. However, The Empire is spiteful in its secrets. It has taken great pains to secure your systems, even unto death." The Machine Mind rattles, without even a shred of emotion. "To this end, your uplinks are quantum-sealed with stolen Corporate technology."

  "But?"

  "There is no addendum." Rends that choir of metal tongues and strange voices. "Military grade Uplinks cannot be breached remotely without knowing their specific quantum-crystalline signature. And possessing the means to replicate it. Civilian models have a broader spectrum, but still quite limited."

  "So much for Hacker movies." I mutter, wryly. "Or remotely jacking our way in."

  "Again. Not unbreachable. But be glad that this is difficult." The eerie Machine rumbles in the digital void beyond our physical world. "Before quantum-locked technology, digital plagues would eradicate or enslave civilisations within a matter of days. This is why your open Uplink spike is so dangerous."

  A little shiver goes up me as I remember the Pirate bar, and what I had to do to control it. "Then what is this? What's going on?"

  "Likely solution: our enemy possesses enhanced military hologram systems designed to confuse and mislead on the battlefield. Most are capable of fooling bio-magnetic, heat, and radiation sensors."

  "Well. Crap. That's just great." I scowl. Secretly almost glad that I'm not the only one running blind here, locked out of my own sensors. Even if I gotta see Zipper's glitched-out head rapidly and repeatedly explode....

  "We need a hard counter." Kami garbles, her voice starting to 'robot'.

  "Bright light, maybe." I chip in.

  "Can they counter-counter that?"

  "Yeah. Kinda depends, mate." Zip's shoulders come apart as he shrugs. "I mean, like, how bright we talking? And how cheap's the holo-bot?"

  "Tt's neoSoviet, so assume it's shitty and cheap?" Kami says, and they devolve into a rapid debate as I pace between them. Brooding, quietly, about my broken implant. And what a tricky, sneaky, bullshitty enemy might do if they knew about it....

  Calm is the key. The enemy wants us emotional.. Unnerved. Panicking at shadows.

  Imagining what isn't really there.

  So we must set our hearts like carbon steel, no matter what they show us.

  Our minds cold, and sharp.

  Suddenly I stop. Snapping clawed fingers to get everyone's attention.

  "Right! We're gettin' nowhere with this bloody holo bullshit. And, right now, we got bigger problems." I turn on the spot to see all of them at once. "We got a clear signal to the train, but we're directly on top of those big bloody metal doors. If we move, we're gonna lose Polybius."

  Unless we tiptoe out onto that crystalline pit-

  I drag my eyes away from it.

  "And we need Polybius to beat these bastards." I continue, a little more shaky. "So. Any suggestions?"

  "Signal Relays, mate." Zip beams as I pace between shattered bits of face, orbiting gleaming-dark helmets. "But, like, we gotta hide em or the rats will smash em? Right?"

  "Right." I grumble, turning to stalk my way back - as close to the glassy abyss as I dare. "We need a plan here. We need....."

  I stop. I grin.

  "What?" Kami says, thinking I'm staring at her.

  "Zipper's bloody Centipede drones."

  I can almost hear his pierced, blue, eyebrows rising. "What. Y'mean, like, my Giant Magical Extendo-"

  "He left them in The Night Tyrant." Kami interupts, in the grudging tone of one holding off on murder.

  But I walk right past her. Ripping one of his newly resurrected Guardian Orbs from the air, and snapping a Signal Doodad to the back of it. Then the other.

  Activating the beacons, and letting them go.

  "One here. Another on the move. Wreck any cameras you see. "I say in one sharp burst, like a rifle. Grinning with evil intent. "S'long as they stay up high, they can bend our signal over the door. And Pol can move em if you lose contact. That way they gotta kill both to kill our signal."

  "Dang, mate! I like it!" Zip whoops. "But, shit, like, what about rats?"

  "Orbs are tiny, fast, and fighty." I retort, claw raised. "Get em going. Now. Keep em loose, and dodge the enemies. Don't engage. Don't bother. Just back off, play keep-away, and hide. We don't gotta beat em. We just need one thing. And when we find it...... It's over. We go."

  "Got it."

  Zipper's Guardians arise like clockwork stars. One ducking back into the grand and mysterious glass observation room. The other blasting past my stutter-faced team.

  Ripping through the madness around them.

  "Game frickin' on!" I grin. "Pol! Start lookin' for a way in their network! Badger! Helmet ON! Breather ON! Don't think I can't bloody see ya!"

  "But!! Aww-!" He wilts as Demon hits the button on his neck. Activating the smallest, cutest, and downright huffiest armour-up sequence in history. A few things spark on his suit, and then augmented reality activates. The last face of my crew vanishing behind a scored-out haze of lines and broken parts.

  I bite down a shiver.

  "Right then!!" A flash of fangs as the walls start to glitch. "Let's go kick their bloody asses."

  We barely make it out the door before the first welder-bot blasts around the corner. Tiny ion-jets roaring as it pulls a blazing kamikaze-run, directly toward us. Another behind it. A roar of noise echoing up from behind.

  Demon's horned head twists, and he casually butts one right out of the air. Turning to slam the other directly into the wall.

  But that's when the cutter drones roll in on thick metal treads. Blade-arms buzzing. Spikes welded all over their arced metal shells. Ready to gore. To cut.

  To waste our goldarned ammo.

  We run for it.

  "Spook. I have detected a minor issue." My gun states, in a low monotone. "In your Augmented Reality systems."

  Shit, Pol. What are you doing? The enemy is listening.

  "It ain't nothin'. Some weird colours." I drawl, in a bored tone, as my team's heads explode and reassemble around me. Ammo-counters twisting into teeth, and hair, and jittering mouths.

  "A minor distraction." Polybius agrees. Confirming, to me, that The Machine Mind can lie.

  Which is a terrifying thought in itself.

  "Yeah. Kami's got candyfloss hair." I chuckle. "It's an improvement."

  "Piss off!"

  "However. It is a distraction. It isn't real." The thing continues. "It would be best if it were disabled."

  And there it is. Polybius is giving me a choice.

  Shut off my Augmented Reality overlay, and risk my whole implant frying itself. Or put up and shut up, while the walls melt and my team turn inside-out.

  It would help. A lot. It might even delay the inevitable.

  Or it could fry my whole system.

  It could knock it offline with no way to come back.

  There is a metal click. A wing of iron and cogs shifting in the unknowable void. "Your choice. Spook." It states, like a demon holding out a poisoned cup. "But be ready. There may be some visual stuttering."

  Visual stuttering my ass. I could go blind. Deaf.

  But, in the end, it ain't anything rational that stops me. It's a wibbling and terrified Tufty, reaching out to tug my arm.

  "Gosh. Are you okay, Spook? I-"

  "Gerrof! I told ya! It's shifting colours." I snort, tugging my hand away. "Just needs a restart. But we ain't got no time for that over looks."

  "....okay." He mumbles through a twisted, mangled, face.

  "I'll get Pol t'fix it later. Don't worry." I finish.

  And, for just a second, I wonder if he manipulated me.

  "Mate! Security hubs's that way! But we got trouble!!" Zip yells as his bees come roaring back. Blitzing off down different hallways. Forming Xs over the ones we ought not cross.

  My fangs flash. As I realise. "They're drivin' us in circles! Got somethin' in the middle they don't want us to see!"

  "Kah!" Demon roars, leaping to slam his horns through a hologram sign. Ripping them free in a sparking whirl of wires as Gremlin bounces off his back to take out another.

  Instantly, one of the Xs flickers and vanishes.

  I grin. "There! Go!"

  Gremlin chases ahead on the ceiling, swiping at lights, as we blow down that hallway. Skidding through a pair of huge glass doors scribed 'Executive Suite'.

  And stop.

  A golden secretary-droid stands silent, and dusty, and dead, at a podium just beyond. Ushering us in to a world of frosty-white windows, floor to ceiling. Each one divided by huge panels of glossy-black granite, artfully spotlit from beneath.

  With vases on plinths. And actual paintings in actual frames.

  The floor is a single, slick, sheet of marble - and rigidly straight. Carving out an executive procession to the boardroom, right at the end. Its long table cast in pools of soft yellow light that give it the air of a gambling den.

  And through it all slithers a subtle, imperceptible, Wrongness.

  A terrible, terrifying, dagger of the unreal that twists its serrations into the back of my neck. Needling its way in, via my subconscious. Even through the storm of digital decay eating away at my vision, and my mind.

  It's a trap.

  I know it is.

  It's nothing visual. Nothing heard, or felt. But simply Known.

  A primal sense from before the dawn of anything.

  "Back." I breathe, as Tufty shrinks into his haunches. Flattening his ears. "BACK!"

  "It's too late." The cat whispers.

  And something punches its way up through the floor behind us, smashing clear through the ceiling to breach whatever exists above. Another hammering in at a thunderous angle. Collapsing concrete beams and walls, even as the thick - bulletproof - doors flash red with internal light.

  Slamming themselves shut with a deadening CRACK.

  Our guns flick up to the corners of the room. Hunting projectors as Kami beats her pistol against the huge doors. Not even scarring the material.

  Which is when a low twist of childish music winds up from under the crush of rubble. Eerie, and mournful, and twisted with time. With spite. With ill intentions, and an inner decay. A poison that seeps, and skitter, beneath the perfect surface.

  "If you go down to The Woods today, you're sure of a big surprise...."

  "They're masking the projectors." Kami whisper. "Holos within holos."

  Somewhere, off in the deeps, a little girl giggles.

  And then Hell itself slips its chains, and monsters rip their way into our world.

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