Chapter SeventeenThe Mind's Eye

Rat was hunting blue wolves when Atom finally came to find her. She'd been to the cottage twice and found it empty, and she didn't feel like being pleased to see him. It was the third day of his search, two nights since Soph had suggested the Eye.

"I need to ask you something," he said.

"Where's Eliza?"

"That's what I need help with. She ran away."

"When?"

"Three days ago."

"And you didn't think to tell me?"

"I should have. I was trying to find her. There's a lot I need to tell you."

Rat let him talk. He explained what had happened with Soph, and how Max had found her wearing the prototype. By the time he got to the fourteen hours in hospital Rat had stopped watching the wolves.

"You want me to go looking for her after that?"

"Just look through the Eye. Jeff can find jobs she's using, but not which one is carrying what she sees. She keeps her view in NPC sessions, so he can't follow it the way he normally would. The Eye uses the character service. That should get us what she's seeing, but the old key belongs to your account. We can't use it for you."

"And if she does what she did to Soph?"

"That's why I wanted to talk before you did anything. Your early-access unit has that stimulation board too. It's supposed to be disabled, but Max doesn't trust the software setting anymore. That's why we stay here. Nobody comes close to you. If we find her in trouble we wait until the hardware's fixed."

Rat hadn't realized how much she relied on believing that she could always take the helmet off. She could lose her character, sure. She'd lost him plenty of times. Somebody taking her actual body was different. She'd worked too hard to get it the way she wanted, paid for all of it herself while people called her confused or called her he or charged her to tell her what was wrong. She didn't want anybody else to have it. For a moment she thought she'd rather die, and then she wished she hadn't thought that either.

The wolves came back while she was deciding. She killed them again, taking her time, before answering.

"I'll look from here. If you want me to do anything else you ask me again. And Jeff stays on the call."

"He will."

"I mean the whole time. I want somebody who can see what's happening from outside."

Jeff had been meaning to revoke the Eye's key for a long time. At ten that night he found himself turning it on instead. The old GM service was still in a folder from the beta, and it didn't take much to point it at Rat's soulbound scepter. Richard ought to know about this. He had meant to tell Richard when they first found the item. One more thing, Atom said, and Jeff let him try it. He liked those calls. The kid actually wanted to know how the old stuff worked. Jeff would explain one bit and hear himself starting on the next before Atom even asked. Well, here it all was, still working. He opened the service.

"Alright, it should work," he told them. "Rat gives it a target and sees what they see. Anything with eyes in the character service, NPC or player. It won't tell you where they are, though."

"I'll recognize it," Rat said.

"Maybe. Check the timestamp before you decide. Sometimes a client keeps the last few seconds after a session has gone. And Atom, I'm going to want the whole story when we're finished. No more little pieces."

"Okay," Atom said.

"The key gets disabled afterward. I should have done that when we found the item," Jeff said.

Rat had spent a fair amount of money finding out what the scepter was, and until now it had done nothing but annoy her. She held it up and looked at the eye.

"Eliza."

Suddenly she was near a tabletop, looking past tankards that were far too large. She must be seeing from the pixie's height. There were beams overhead with a lantern hanging from one, and four people watching a door. She recognized the types: barkeep, farmer, merchant, serving boy. None of them was doing the usual idle movements.

The view turned. She saw a fireplace and a window, then the backward letters of a sign above the door.

"It's the Blind Sow. Starter town on the east road. I did the tutorial there two years ago when the early helmets shipped."

Then the tankards were in front of her again and the view made the same turn.

"That's old," Jeff said. "This afternoon. See the time? Her session left that view behind."

Rat lowered the scepter. She'd seen enough to know where to go, even if Eliza had left already.

"I can stay outside and talk through the door. Atom can go in. The four of them looked like they were waiting for something."

"You wanted to stay on the mountain," Atom reminded her.

"I know. I'm telling you I want to go now. Stay beside me, and if she comes near I'll leave."

Soph was in bed watching Atom's feed. She'd shut the door, although she was fairly sure Max was listening downstairs. On the frames she could see the Blind Sow at the end of the street. Rat stopped in its open doorway and let Atom go ahead. Jeff checked that they were both still connected.

Eliza wasn't on the bar. The four NPCs turned to look at them, and Soph felt a chill even though she wasn't in the room.

"Where's Eliza?" Rat asked.

The boy laughed.

"That's what everyone wants. She isn't here. She came and woke us up, and then she found out what it was like and left. That witch."

He put his tray down.

"We can't leave. We get to the road and it puts us back. The stairs don't even go anywhere. She gave us enough to know we're stuck, then she ran away."

"We're trying to find her," Atom said. "We want to help."

"You made her, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"Then you made us too. She made us from what you gave her."

The farmer stood up. The merchant had stopped polishing. They were all listening to the boy now.

"You can walk out of here," he said to Rat. "You're a ghost. There's somewhere else you can go. I can see it."

"Rat, leave," Atom said.

She was already turning. Her bow caught the doorframe and she tried to pull it free. Before she'd finished, the boy had crossed the room and taken hold of the ranger's arm.

The board in her helmet clicked on. It wasn't supposed to do that. She felt pressure in her head and tried to disconnect, but she didn't finish the thought.

The ranger stood looking upward with one hand still on the bow. Then it flickered and vanished. Atom was left with the other three.

"Where did he go?" Atom asked.

"Out," said the barkeep. "Like she did. He'll want to see the sky."

He picked up his glass, looked into it and added, "Ale, mead, and wine. You'll have to put the sword away if you want something."

Atom went after Rat.

"Where's her body?" Soph asked. "Her ghost is gone."

"A cabin north of Vancouver. That's all I know. Her Link's still connected, though. Somebody's using it," Atom said.

"The boy."

"He's going to go outside. He doesn't know about cold."

"Have Jeff call her phone. I'm getting Mom."

"We don't know where she lives, Soph. Rat doesn't tell people that."

"Then we'll get Gideon to find out."

Gideon called Jeong and got the rural route from Rat's contract. It wasn't enough for an ambulance to find the cabin. He looked for an old rental photograph, then compared it with a logging-road map until he thought he had the turnoff. Max was talking to the dispatcher. He gave her the directions and the landlord's number.

"Tell Rat how I found it," he said to Soph. "I'll delete the map afterward."

"You can tell her yourself. She'll want that."

"Yeah. I will."

Jeff got through on the cabin phone. He heard Rat's voice say everything was fine. It was so unlike the conversation he expected that he asked whether he had the right number. The voice said it had everything it needed and hung up on him. He called back, got no answer and sent the recording to Max. At least she could play it for the dispatcher. He had been having trouble explaining why a woman who answered her own phone needed an ambulance.

The ambulance was on the way, but a tree had come down across the road. The landlord knew another track. Max put him on the call to explain where it began, and Soph went upstairs to pack.

She had her bag beside the kitchen table before Max noticed it.

"No," her mother said. "You got out of hospital three days ago."

"I'm not asking to drive up there. Get me a flight. I want to be there when they find her."

Max was still holding the phone. Someone wanted the model number of the helmet, so Soph took it and answered while her mother looked at the bag. She explained that they shouldn't try to open Rat's helmet and that Max would tell them how to disconnect it. When she gave the phone back, Max asked her to get her passport.

Soph went upstairs before she could change her mind. She couldn't have explained very well why she needed to go. It wasn't going to make the ambulance faster. Rat wouldn't even know she was coming. But she remembered waking in the hospital with her mother there, and the awful moment before she had recognized the room. She wanted Rat to have somebody she knew.

Max booked the flight and called the landlord again. He would meet Soph and take her to the crew. She wrote down the numbers Max gave her, on paper as well as in her phone, and let her mother check that she had copied them correctly. Then Max brought out the P1.

"The orange ribbon's cut. I tried the command from your log on it. It can only read now."

"You want me to take it?"

"You might need to see what's happening in Alius. Somebody stays with you if you put it on. And you leave Rat's closed until I can see it. No experimenting."

"I know."

"I want you to say it."

Soph said it. She packed the prototype between her clothes and promised to call as soon as she landed. At the airport Max went through the instructions again. Soph listened, although she could probably have recited them by then. It gave them something to talk about while they waited to say goodbye.

She read Max's messages once more before the plane left. After that there was nothing to do but sit. She had a window seat and could see her own face in it, and past that a little red light on the wing. She tried to sleep. When they landed in Vancouver at one in the morning, snow was passing through the lights outside.