Stormbringer by Alis Franklin Read Free Book Online Page B

63. But Sigmund knew for a fact he looked nothing like his past self. Not like the way the woman in Wayne’s sketchbook looked like him. She was even dressed in the sort of clothes he’d be dressed in, were he, too, an inhabitant of a dystopian cyberpunk future.
    “Tell me her name’s not—”
    “Her name’s Sigga,” Em said, confirming Sigmund’s fears. “She’s a mechanic, working for the Intra-Solar Mining Company. They build spaceships to ferry mining cargo between Earth and the other nine planets.”
    “Pluto isn’t a planet,” Sigmund muttered. He wondered when the catch was coming.
    “Never said the ninth planet was Pluto,” Em said. Then, “The way the ships work is a mystery; some technobabble about the flight calculations involved being too complex for a human, blah blah blah. Everyone assumes it’s an AI doing flights.”
    “It’s not an AI,” Sigmund guessed.
    “Correct. Our heroine, Sigga, via some plot quirk, finds out what’s really controlling the ships: a powerful psychic, imprisoned and permanently plugged in to the system. And, moreover, said psychic turns out to be—”
    “Oh god,” said Sigmund. Appropriately, as it turned out, Wayne flipping the page in her sketchbook to reveal—
    “Sigga’s childhood sweetheart, Luke.”
    Except it wasn’t Luke, it was Lain. Naked and thin, blind and plugged in, wrapped and chained and tied by an HR Geiger nightmare in rusty Cat-6. And for a moment—just one moment—Sigmund was back in that awful cave beneath the World Tree. A dank, dark eternity of pain and degradation, standing with trembling arms and a hardened heart, waiting for the world to end.
    “He hates it.” Wayne’s voice slapped Sigmund back into the present. “I told you he’d hate it.”
    “I don’t hate it,” said Sigmund. He looked at Em. “I just—the point of the game?”
    “Rescue the prince, obviously. Free him, take down the evil empire, get married, and live happily ever after, roll credits.” Em’s eyes were bright green chips behind her glasses. Watching.
    Sigmund looked back at the sketchbook. There were other, smaller pictures scattered around the large central image of Luke imprisoned in his machine. Head shots showing him healthy, free of wires and cables. Smiling and grimacing. Afraid. And, in one larger image, sharing a passionate kiss with Sigga.
    Sigmund swallowed. “Why?” he started. Then, “I mean…I just—”
    “For her,” Em said. “For Sigyn. Because some thirteenth-century asshole didn’t think she was important enough to bother remembering her stories. I can’t get them back. But I can write her a new one.”
    Something curled beneath Sigmund’s heart, the flutter of a second beat, not quite in time with his own.
    “All right,” he said. “What do I need to do?”
    —
    Em wanted to go big-screen, to move off mobile and into living rooms and into desktops.
    “There’s been a lot of movement in dev kits and APIs,” she said, leaning forward on her milk crate, elbows on her knees and hunger in her eyes. “We’ll need to pick one, and you’ll need to learn it.”
    Sigmund nodded, chewing on his lip. “It’s a lot of work.” Em was talking an action RPG shooter. Guns and powers and inventory and crafting. Dialogue and companions and morality choices. It was big. Real big.
    “No,” Em said. “It’s a little bit of work we have to do real fucking smoothly. Get one level down perfect—gameplay, story, characters—then we go pitch it to your boyfriend. Then he gives us Utgard, and we’re home free.”
    Utgard Entertainment, one of the most prestigious video game companies on the planet and, not so coincidentally, a subsidiary of LB.
    “What makes you so sure he’ll agree?” Something about Em’s plan didn’t sit right. It felt…cheap. Even if Sigmund was an adult and he knew this was how business was done, out in the Really Real World. Not the what you know but the who, and Sigmund just happened to be dating