Beep beep, beep beep!

  It was the tone indicating an incoming missile. There was a moment of disbelief, followed by muscle memory. Locus slammed the stick to the right, causing the whole world to roll upside-down. Then he slammed the stick forward, causing the nose to pitch up toward the ground.

  Flip.

  "Shit!" Locus hissed. "Sweets! Someone is shooting at me!"

  "Affirmative," Sweets replied. "The other runner might be in the building. I'll take a look around."

  Flip.

  The dark ground dominated his entire vision, the features growing larger, rising up to meet him. A quick glance at the altimeter revealed that he was locked at sea level, even as the nose dive developed. More disbelief, followed by a mental hypothesis: This airspace violates the laws of physics. The air everywhere had the same density. Which meant that missiles would quickly lose most of their energy even at high altitudes.

  No time to think about that.

  Locus refocused on his other instruments. The angle-of-attack indicator was still working, as was the airspeed indicator, the slip indicator, and the G-force indicator. Sensor fusion display reported the direction of the incoming missile, but whoever (or whatever) had shot the thing had not been located yet. High-resolution cameras combined with an image recognition AI should have seen the bandit, especially since the sky was relatively clear. It was possible the enemy fighter jet was painted with an AI-frustrating paint scheme, but Locus could not be sure until he actually got eyes on the target.

  The fighter-jet shaped display between the instruments was blinking red in two places, because he had used two of his ground attack missiles. Eight green lights remained: two additional strike missiles loaded with legacy icebreakers, two radar-guided Dark-Three, two heat-seeking Ice-Two, and finally two AI visual-guided Pigeon-Four. The main cannon was at the full capacity of five hundred rounds. All three types of air-to-air missiles were loaded with brain cooker biotech viruses in addition to the explosives.

  The ground was rapidly approaching, and Locus began to make out the finer details. He rolled over so that the missile was behind him, then he gritted his teeth, clenched his butt, and pulled up hard on the stick. The intense G-forces of the maneuver caused his vision to narrow, turn grayscale. But he missed hitting the ground, skimming the surface. He did not know his exact altitude, but it was likely somewhere between seventy and one hundred feet.

  Beep beep, beep beep!

  Upon closer inspection, the black ground was not a ground at all, but the tops of trees with black leaves. Old ruins dotted the landscape, nearly black against the pale sand between the trees. There were shattered stained-glass windows standing in some of the ruins, gold-green and beige-orange. A part of Locus wanted to simply relax and enjoy the interesting scenery. It was, after all, a brand new sky to fly through.

  Frantically, he glanced around, searching for the missile. By craning his neck almost all the way backward, he caught sight of the thing. It was not too far away, above him and to the left. He watched the thing uneasily, waiting for it to begin to fall behind. It still had a lot of energy, but it was no longer burning propellant, so the energy would bleed off over time. He made note of its position, then looked forward and started flying again. The missile wasn't the only danger. He needed to avoid smashing his fighter jet into the ground.

  "That thing looks dangerous!" a feminine voice said.

  Locus jolted in his seat. Panicked, he scanned the interior of the cabin, searching for the source of the voice. It turned out to be right by his shoulder, on the left side. He had looked away toward the missile, and then she was there.

  A fairy, or something that looked like a fairy.

  She was about the size of a kitten, with hair so dark it seemed to absorb the light. Strangely, her pale face was half-obscured by a mask that appeared to be made from the skull of some horned animal. Her dress was pure white, which contrasted with the bright colors of her oversized butterfly wings: red, blue, and purple. Locus got the uncanny feeling that he had seen this creature before.

  "That thing is dangerous," he agreed.

  The little fairy woman flapped her tiny wings and fluttered around the cabin a few times. Then she gently descended and then landed, tip-toed, on the stick. He ignored her, and took another glance at the missile. It was closer, almost flying in formation with him, but it was slowly, ever so slowly falling behind. If he ascended, it would not be able to follow him. He pulled the nose up and abandoned the thing. It would crash somewhere in the ruins or in the woods.

  "Who are you?" Locus asked.

  "'Tis I," the little woman replied. "Ashe, the Queen of Darkness. Why, little mortal, have you come into my realm?"

  Ashe. Religious nutjob nonsense. But... Locus suddenly remembered. He had seen this creature before. His master had many paintings on the walls of his little cabin. The one in his bedroom, just above his headboard, depicted the Elemental Queen of Darkness. Apparently, the entity was important to the Church of the Lady Ghost.

  Locus eyed the little creature skeptically. Was it some sort of rogue AI living on this subnet? Maybe it had gone insane and convinced itself that it was a powerful deity from a real-world religion. It was a reasonable theory, except for the glaringly-obvious problem that his cyberspace deck would have detected the intrusion. Also, the thing had not immediately killed him, which is what a rogue AI would have done. Probably.

  Either way, Locus didn't have time for such distractions. He rolled into a knife's edge maneuver and pulled up slightly, entering into a long arc away from the missile. Calmly, and deliberately, he craned his neck around to search the alien sky for threats. Absently, he said: "I don't really know much about this place."

  "This is my Domain!" the creature insisted. "Close enough in any case. This is an interstice. Memories linger here. Ambitions, emotions, intent."

  "What intent?" Locus asked.

  "Disappointment and fear. Nostalgia. An intense hatred of all things new and foreign. The engineers who imagined this world saw advanced technology as a type of corruption infecting their ancient traditions. Their highest ideal, their highest ambition, was to create a leather-bound book that could last a thousand years. But that's not what their masters wanted."

  Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  Interesting, Locus thought. "And who were their masters?"

  "Foreigners, ones with a clever and arcane plot to conquer this land. The engineers living here knew about the plot. Their hatred and sorrow and loss caused the interstice to appear. That's how I was able to sense you!"

  The little butterfly creature paused.

  "I don't like it when you mortals fly fighter jets through my Domain," she continued. "One of you was bad enough, but two? Maybe you'll kill each other, hmm? I think that other guy is hunting you."

  "Where is he?" Locus snapped.

  "Oh," the fairy woman said. Her body language gave Locus the impression that she was feigning innocence. "I'll never tell. Haha!"

  She vanished in a puff of black smoke.

  Locus grunted, He was relieved that the distraction was gone, but he was also disappointed that the entity, whatever it was, refused to help him. He still hadn't managed to see his opponent, and except for that low-energy missile, the sensor fusion display was clean.

  Flip.

  Sweets stalked through a raised tunnel, illuminated on either side by a vast chamber beyond the glass.

  "An anomaly," Locus reported. "Possibly a rogue AI, not sure. It seems to be gone now."

  "Who was shooting at you?" Sweets asked.

  "The bandit is still up there somewhere. I'm working on it."

  "Noted. Take a look at this room. Notice anything?"

  The entire chamber was filled with printing equipment, but there was no motion. The printer was not running. There were no workers on the floor and no technicians at the lab stations. Locus was expecting at least a single security guard.

  "It's almost like it's not a real business," Locus said.

  "Might be money laundering," Sweets offered.

  Locus was beginning to think the same thing. It could have been the work of just one ancient politician, a clause in some obscure law that requires titles for mansions to meet some asinine standards. The owners of the castle likely had a monopoly on the things, a reliable and prestigious source of income that could be traded among the elites like a plantation or a ski resort. And why pay a staff? More importantly, why pay a fighter pilot to patrol the subnet?

  Flip.

  The green-gray horizon was slowly rotating around as he continued his arc, close enough to the ground to gain the benefit of radar clutter from the trees and the hills. A huge stack of books, fifty thousand feet tall, loomed just ahead. Locus slotted in behind the stack, then pulled up into a vertical climb, using the books as a shield. High overhead the pear-colored neon clouds shifted. Black lightning struck the highest books, creating a flash of darkness that lingered in his vision.

  Maybe not a fighter pilot at all, Locus thought. Maybe it's just somebody following a checklist, cheap and inexperienced, piloting a very advanced fighter jet.

  It was a good working theory. The quality of the fighter jet was immaterial. It wouldn't cost the owners anything, and they would likely want to minimize the salary of the pilot. Locus felt a tinge of regret. He had not invested much time in improving his own fighter jet. It was a smaller jet with a single engine and a single tail, designed for warbird-style rate fights. With the exception of sensor fusion and the auto-pilot, the dashboard still used steam gauges.

  He pushed aside his regrets as he reached the summit of the stack of books, fifty thousand feet of vertical climb in just a few seconds. He had a very vague idea of where the bandit was, somewhere in the sky on the exact opposite side of the books. If they had spent a lot of time flying through this subnet, they would have noticed by now that the new bookshelf, which represented the crypto server cluster, was out of place. They would likely be nearby, investigating the strange addition.

  It was just an instinct, an impulse. Time to take a risk.

  Locus pulled hard. The edge of the highest book flew straight at him, growing, dominating his canopy. A slight relaxation of the stick, a slight roll, and a whole lot of rudder; the fighter jet barely missed the leathery escarpment and began to skim over the gold foil of the book's upper surface. It was gone in an instant, growing smaller and smaller in the rearview mirrors. Dark tentacles writhed ahead, reaching, grasping at the empty sky.

  Sensor fusion was quiet. Locus watched.

  There!

  A tiny arrowhead, vague against the twisted library on the horizon. It was banking slightly and moving away from him, not far from the new bookshelf. Locus smashed the throttle to full afterburner and gave chase. A few blips on his sensor fusion. Brief silhouette detection, very small radar cross section, no AI recognition. It was, Locus assumed, a modern fighter with an AI-frustrating stealth coating. As he got closer, Locus began to make out two engines and two tails.

  The other pilot turned.

  Beep beep, beep beep!

  Locus saw the missile clearly. It was a high off boresight missile with thrust vectoring. A very, very dangerous missile, and Locus was on a path straight toward it. Whether or not he was within the weapon employment zone was a gamble. A coin toss.

  "Chaff! Flair!" the fighter jet annunciated. "Chaff! Flair!"

  His training kicked in. Tshhh tshhh tshhh tshhh. Flashes of orange light filled the rearview mirrors, gray claw mark fountains of smoke. Tshhh tshhh tshhh tshhh. The fighter jet rattled, the stubby little wings wobbled. Menacingly, the missile roared straight for him. He kicked the rudder. Rolled out of the cone. Tshhh tshhh tshhh tshhh.

  Whoosh!

  He pulled the other airplane into his HUD, went up on edge, and merged. A hard pull on the stick. Gray eyesight, narrow vision. Dizzy. He craned his neck and watched the two-circle develop, but strangely enough, the other pilot did not react. He was pulling away from the circle, trying to escape. Tone.

  "Idiot," Locus said. "Ice-Two!"

  He pulled the trigger. One of his heat-seeking missiles lanced off the rail toward the enemy craft. The other pilot was so inexperienced that he didn't even use flares. The missile chased, leaving a misty streak in the sky, then struck the tail. The resulting fireball took one of the wings off, and both engines burst into flames. The fighter jet rolled and drifted, listlessly, derelict.

  Flip.

  Sweets was outside, sprinting along the rooftops of the houses outside the castle, invisible and silent. Her feet squished on the rotten yellow leaves that had spilled over the gutters. She glanced into each window in turn, searching.

  "Splash," Locus reported.

  "He wasn't in the castle," Sweets said. "I finished the training module and started the printer startup sequence. I figured I'd come out here and look for him."

  She passed a window. A double-take. There was a man inside, writhing, twitching, seizing on the floor. He was completely decked out in pornographic simstim gear, including a tube protruding from his crotch, long and animated. Pump, pump, pump. Locus recognized the brand name on the tube: Pussy Witch. It was one of those expensive true-to-life vaginas, 3D-printed from the stem cells of a famous simstim star.

  "It looks like your bandit was distracted," she said.

  "The mind cooker is smart enough to infect the simstim rig," Locus said. "Get in there and clean up. Remove the cyberspace deck, make it look like he wasn't jacked in at all. Whoever finds the body will think his porn was infected."

  "Affirmative," Sweets said. She reached for the window.

  Flip.

  Locus found the little butterfly creature standing on the stick once more. She looked up at him, her hands on her hips, her foot tapping.

  "You didn't hesitate to murder that man!" the little woman said. "And now you concoct clever deceptions to hide your work. A conspiracy! A scandal!"

  "Do you need something?" Locus asked.

  "I love deception!" she replied. "You are welcome to bring your deceptions into my Domain again. I'll be watching you, mortal."

  She vanished again, but this time Locus noticed something strange. She left twelve shadows, radially arranged around the interior of the cabin. They vanished one at a time.

  I have seen that Elemental before, the Dream Elemental said in his mind. She is right. Here, the Mother's Domain overlaps with the Plane of Darkness.

  "Is that really the Queen of Darkness?" Locus asked.

  Yes. However, she did not attempt to harm you. Perhaps she cannot harm you. This is new, and strange.

  Locus flew through an empty sky until the printer was finished. Sweets stuffed the new titles into a tube and squirreled them away inside her chest cavity. Locus lined up to land, and after he rolled to a stop, he jacked out. Rain pattered against his light jacket. Burner, the crazy priest in the red robes, was watching him with a face filled with madness.

  "Time to pack up," Woodsman announced. "We're driving to Saint Vaska tonight."