Yes and she smiled to herself, a sad, lost smile that vanished like a drop of sweet moisture on an oven window…
This felt the same. And the sound was the same She and Twan barked simultaneously, 'Buckle in!'
Easier said than done. Massing in the club car had been a mistake: twenty chairs divided by thirty Gamers equals chaos. Acacia got into a seat somehow. Other Gamers pushed through the door and into the shuttle cars. They were still swarming when the train underwent a lurching deceleration.
That was what her eyes had been trying to tell her mind. She couldn't see the end of the track! It ended under a hill of dirt or sand.
The train shuddered and ripped apart. The club car grated over rock on its metal belly. Just outside the windows, one of the shuttle cars was rolling, bouncing, jolting, getting the shape pounded out of it. Friar Duck was ripped from his seat and went rolling along the bar, yelling, thudding into more bodies. Acacia closed her eyes as screams rang out in the constricted space.
The car's nose was smashed violently sideways. The car rolled, sliding uphill, and came to rest on its side in a final lethal lurch. The scream of grit or sand or dirt grinding in gears ran down to a destructive halt.
'What happened?' Major Clavell yelled.
The air was filled with moans, whimpers of disbelief, and a few muttered prayers of gratitude or oaths of vengeance.
'This damn door is wedged closed.' That sounded like the normally unflappable Twan, and Acacia managed a smile.
Somebody got a flashlight working. She saw a mass of bodies, a bizarre forest of arms and legs sticking up and waving about. Corrinda promised Mouser castration unless he removed a strategic portion of his anatomy from her eye.
A creak. The door was opening. As it did, a torrent of sand and dirt flowed into the compartment, half burying Trevor Stone before it stopped.
Acacia wiggled toward the door. It was overhead now. Sand trickled down into her face. She lowered her visor. Surrounded by the harsh rasp of her own breathing, she crawled up and out, gasping, using knees and elbows. Once free, she grabbed Trevor's big, bony hand, braced herself, and pulled until he had leverage to make his own way.
He was puffing. 'Thank you, Miss… Panthesilea?' He had big square teeth, too perfect to be all his.
The tram was half buried in a spill of rocks and sand. She skinned elbows and shoulders crawling up.
Cracked, even earth and ruined ridges of sunbaked mountains surrounded them. She turned as a spray of cool mist wet her cheeks, and found herself looking straight up along a sheer cliff-a cliff partly made by men.
It was the largest building she had ever seen. It wasn't tall-though a twenty-story fall will kill-but its weather-blasted, sand-scraped, dull red walls stretched perhaps a mile along the base, bending to fit the contours of the mountain. Twisted, ruined cables dangled free from its east face, swinging in a wind that blew from somewhere in the south. Halfway down the building, a row of immense, raised stone letters spelled the word MIMIC.
Water cascaded from the rooftop, tumbling in the early light like a fall of emeralds. It impacted with balconies or outcroppings until only a fine spray reached the ground, deflected into them by that mild southern wind.
MIMIC seemed completely abandoned. The windows were all sealed up, and there was no obvious means of entry.
The slope of sand and rock had been part of the natural cliff. The Quake of '95-or a later one? — must have caused an avalanche. Hundreds of tons of rock covered the maglev track.
Over later centuries sand had softened the contours of the rubble slope. It still stood four stories high. The six cars following the track had slammed into it, ripped loose from their magnetic confinement, and continued moving uphill until their momentum was lost. The club car had reached the third story. The five shuttle cars hadn't gotten that far. Gamers were crawling out and up toward Acacia.
Acacia got her heart back down out of her throat and turned to her companions.
There were only thirty Adventurers. Hardly enough to search a single floor. That mountain of masonry could be full of…
Anything. Or Things.
With a spate of coughing and sputtering, a thin, muscular arm waved up out of the passenger compartment, seeking assistance or purchase. Acacia grasped it. She heaved with all of the considerable muscle in her back and long steely legs, and hauled Twan up.
The wind whistled low.
'Formidable. '
Acacia nodded. 'At least they have water. Probably power, too.'
'An Engineer, and a Scout.' Twan snapped her fingers twice. 'Evacuation, then evaluation-' She stopped, and seemed to be wrestling with a notion. 'Panthesilea?'
Acacia nodded acknowledgment.
'Truce. Straight up. Twenty-four hours.' Twan's oval, very Asian face was firmed by resolve.
'Can you control Tammi?' the Warrior-woman asked. 'She wants my ass. Pardon. My hide.'
A tiny smile. 'Affirmative.'
Acacia glanced at her watch-7:46 A.M.-and thrust out her hand. 'All right. Truce.' They soberly extended hands, touched thumbs, and waggled their fingers to and fro. Neither laughed.
The wind spawned dust devils at MIMIC's base. They danced away into the distance, or dissolved in the wet spray to the south.
There were no lights in any of the windows, and when she scanned the grounds around them, there was nothing but desolation, and a long, low ridge of dusty mountains.
Acacia called, 'Aces!'
'Yo!' Steffie Wilde was still down in the car. She lifted her bullcy pack through a window. Acacia helped her with it, and then hoisted Steffie out.
'All right. We need a way in. '
'Pathfinder, do your stuff.' 'Aces' Wilde punched a combination code into a bracelet, and her face visor glowed.
The Scout would be seeing details denied to Acacia the Warrior. Acacia flipped her visor up and watched the entire building.
It was pitted and streaked, as if a thousand years of neglect had all but destroyed one of the great giants of architecture. This was Meacham's building, wrecked by the '95 Quake-the place they called 'Meacham's Folly.'
But within the California Voodoo Game, the facts would vary. What had she heard of MIMIC? In her… girlhood in the enclave? Yes. Had Panthesilea known of it? What would she know?
Aces lowered her glasses. 'Fourth level. See? There's a ledge, and it's marked for entry.'
Acacia strained, but couldn't make it out. 'Marked for entry?'
'Oh, yeah-someone's in there all right. Count on it. We might be watched right now.'
Acacia's hand unconsciously strayed to the blade at her belt. 'All right. Keep a watch. Let's get everyone out.'
The teams had to split up and somehow get into their various half-buried shuttle cars to get their gear. Major Clavell supervised the extraction of two of his team members, but he was repeatedly distracted.
'Corporal,' he said under his breath. 'Where are we? This is real, isn't it?'
'It's real,' SJ said. 'Smell the wind, Toto. I don't think we're in Dream Park anymore.'
Together they hauled Black Elk up, Clavell muttering, 'Serious snafu. We'd better revise tactics, and fast. First break, report to me.'
But SJ was staring up at the Folly, his expression somewhere between anger and admiration.
Despite their growing alarm, within three minutes all Army personnel and equipment were out of the train, armed and ready to go.
'Trevor!' Bishop yelled. 'Find us a way in.' His voice was abrupt, imperious. Trevor Stone's eyes narrowed, but he pulled Aces aside and began to confer.
They formed in single file, staggered with no real concern for teams, and worked their way up a fall of twisted rocks and construction rubble. The mound was so weathered that it took Mouser and SJ, both experienced
