Mountain High Enough

Ano and Becken tend to find themselves in peril, especially when they get trapped in the mind of a mentally disturbed client who’s virtual world is eroding around them. As the team struggles to escape the rapidly disintegrating reality they’re stuck in, the two senior team members take an accidental detour. (Excerpt from Corrupting Paradise, the first story in the series for these characters.)

-

Ano’s head whipped up from the book she’d been attempting to code back into coherency with a velocity that made her neck crick. “Did you hear that?”

Becken was already standing on a nearby couch, his dark eyes piercing the acres of gloomy shelves in the direction they’d walked from. “That really loud crashing noise? It was kind of hard to miss.”

She rolled her eyes a little and activated her earpiece. “Tri? Jenny?”

It took Tri several moments to answer, and when he did it was with a groan. “Yeah, Boss?”

“What happened?”

“We nearly got killed by boiling magma is what happened!” Jenny said. “We rematerialized ten feet above the ground in here right when we should have been dying painful, burning deaths.”

Becken and Ano traded uneasy glances. “Do we want to know?”

“You guys didn’t get stuck in the tropical volcano?” Tri demanded incredulously.

That earned a raised eyebrow from Becken. “Not last I checked,” Ano answered. Ignoring the dark muttering coming from Tri’s end of the line, she got back to her original question. “What was that noise?”

“The dying gasps of the table that broke our fall. Which I will of course be recoding later,” he hastened to add at Ano’s disapproving silence.

Before Ano had the chance to respond, the bookcase nearest to them toppled over, driven by a hurricane-force wind that whipped her hair around and slammed her into Becken’s solid bulk. His arms came around her to hold her in place and she shut her eyes tightly against the stinging wind. As suddenly as the gale started, it ceased. Ano opened her eyes warily.

They weren’t in the library any more. They stood on the apex of a mountain so high Ano couldn’t see any details of the ground below them. Close enough to brush Becken’s head, the bottom of a cloud bank misted cold rain onto them, the liquid sparkling in the blinding sunlight. Far, far below them, a gray-green ocean crashed against the foot of the mountain. Just looking at the sight gave her vertigo. Considering her hover pad experience, that was more than slightly worrying.

She blinked. “Becken?”

“Yes,” he affirmed her silent question. “We are.” He reluctantly let her go, keeping close by her side as he let his protective nature take over. When Ano strayed towards the edge to look down again, he grabbed her firmly by the arm and pulled her back to him, activating his earpiece in the same motion. “Anyone there?”

The only response was static. The big man cursed softly, ignoring Ano’s disapproving look.

Becken was trying very hard not to look down. He hated heights, especially when they were forced upon him unexpectedly. Ano took pity on him and sighed, looking around to find something to distract him with. “Well, it could be worse.”

Naturally, that was the exact moment the hurricane-force gale started up again. Grabbing Ano’s smaller frame to his, Becken planted his feet in an attempt to keep them both anchored to the mountaintop. But the wind was relentless, pushing and pulling at them so forcefully that he felt his feet slip, inch by fighting inch, towards the edge of their small pinnacle of rock, the rain seeking to force them off and into infinity.

She was so intent on staying upright that Ano realized a second too late that she was closer to the edge than he was. She felt her foot slip, and his arms tightened around her in a vain attempt to keep her on solid ground. They swayed, toppled, and then she was floating backwards. Becken grabbed her arm and she jerked to a stop, held up by her hand in his. Her shoulder wrenched and she winced.

Ano had to yell to make herself heard over the roaring wind. “Let me go!”

“You’re insane!” He shouted back, resolutely clinging to her even as he felt her start to fall. His footing wasn’t much better than hers, and he scrambled for purchase as her weight dragged him towards the edge. In a moment of ironic clarity, Ano found it appropriate that they were about to die because he followed her over the edge of a cliff.  Then he lost his footing, Ano fell backwards and the two of them catapulted off the mountain and into bottomless space.

…Only to fall about ten feet before meeting the library’s cold stone floor. Somewhere in those ten feet Becken managed to twist them so when they hit the ground, Ano was on top. For a moment they lay there, breathing heavily, cheeks still smarting from the cold wind that had been tearing at them only moments before.

Ano rolled off of him and gave him a hand up, dusting a stray piece of gravel from his shirt. “Don’t do that.”

“What, keep you from falling off mountains?”

She stopped to think about it. “…Well, no. Not when you put it that way.” He grinned smugly, and she turned away and activated her earpiece again. “Anyone there?”

Found

From Collapsing Paradise, this little scene continues where this one left off. Ano gets surprised, Becken gets suspicious, and a few questions get answered about the book.

-

Ano waited until she was alone in the lobby to finally touch the book. She ran a hand carefully over the cover, felt the page edges with her fingertips. Finally, with great care for its considerable heft, she gently lifted the thing and brought it through her office into her quarters, keeping it firmly closed against her side the whole way.

Her tiny kitchen unit was a mess, so she bypassed it entirely and made her way over to the worn sofa in the living room that she spent most of her time in anyway. She put the book down carefully on the low end table and deliberately left it there unopened as she went to get herself a drink of water. Finally, glass in hand, she sat down on the sofa again, put her drink carefully on the far corner of the table, and let herself be terrified.

Ano knew this book. She’d seen it before, albeit a very long time ago. She had no idea what it actually said, of course—no one in all of the twelve galaxies did, in all likelihood—but that had long since failed to matter. If anyone knew this was here…

The thought spurred her into action almost against her will. With careful gestures, she finally lifted the front cover to reveal the title page. There was a long line of odd, curly-cue writing that swooped in a graceful half-circle across the middle of the page. The same stylistic planet symbol was repeated here too, though this time in what looked like a hand-penned sketch in blue ink several shades lighter than the cover. An entirely hand-written book? The sheer amount of time involved in that kind of venture made Ano’s NR-Programming brain hurt.

It was Almarian. Of course, it was Almarian. It was her life, and Elim’s, all the things they’d never known about themselves sitting right here, neatly penned on these pages in lettering that no one alive could read. She realized, somewhere in the back of her mind where she wasn’t frozen in alarm, that she felt a little sick.

Oh yes, Ano knew this book alright—she would remember this title page anywhere. She recognized every odd quirk and curve of incomprehensible language with the exactness that only a photographic memory could bring.

But how had it found her?

More importantly, who had found this book of all books, and then managed to find her as well, and then left it for her without leaving a record? She had spent her entire life making that kind of thing virtually impossible. The fact that it had now been accomplished so silently, so flawlessly, made her skin crawl.

The book drew her attention again. It was like a magnet to her conscious mind; all thoughts bent towards it and stuck.

Feeling very much like she was breaking an unknown confidence, she reached out again and hesitantly turned the title page to reveal an entire spread of the whorls and curves of bizarre writing. She tried to follow what looked like a sentence, but the line ended up curving back into a half-circle underneath itself and branched into another three lines near the middle of the page. Though for all she knew, the sentences could start at the bottom of the page and work their way up. Or maybe they didn’t move in sentences at all, so much as sweeps of thought graphed across the paper…

She turned another page, and then another. It almost made sense, in the small corner of her mind that saw patterns in the way people moved across plazas and heard the things that got said in the silences between words. She had the growing idea that if she just concentrated a little harder, all the writing would suddenly decode itself and reveal its secrets to her. Just a few more–

The knock that sounded on the door from her office made her startle so badly that she actually knocked her drink over. Her nerves were swamped all at once with a surge of adrenaline that left her fingers buzzing. She slammed the book shut out of instinct, just as Becken entered her quarters.

The book gave off a huge cloud of dust that made her sneeze helplessly for a full minute. By the time she manged to focus on Becken through her watering eyes, her friend had managed to maneuver his considerable bulk into one of her chairs.

Ano summoned up all the dignity she could muster, which admittedly wasn’t much. Her heart was still thundering like she’d been shot at. The little voice in the back of her head was saying run, hide, run, run! She ruthlessly quashed it with the cold light of reason. “Did you want something?” She had the impression that she looked as flummoxed and alarmed as she felt.

Becken confirmed her suspicion by lifting a single inquiring eyebrow and narrowing his dark eyes at her in a way that expressed just how oddly she was acting. “Nervous?” he asked in his deep voice.

The question stymied Ano with its bluntness for a moment. Finally, she managed a rather weak, “Why do you ask?”

Becken didn’t dignify that with a verbal response; he looked pointedly at the overturned glass and damp carpet that he had stepped over to get to his seat. Point made, he then held out a small card of beautiful paper delicately balanced between two huge black fingers. Ano recognized it as the card that had come with the book, which she must have left out on the counter. The bright white paper made a sharp contrast with his dark skin, especially in the low light of the room. He tilted it a little so the light would catch the lettering on the card’s surface. The blue ink sparkled with what Ano suspected was crushed precious stones.

“Has your name on it,” he pointed out unnecessarily. When she didn’t immediately respond, he continued, “Found it on the front desk. Figured that anyone who can afford paper and ink like that is worth carrying messages for.” He leaned back as far as the protesting chair would allow him and folded his hands on the tabletop. “Besides,” he said in the matter-of-fact tone that said he was enjoying backing her into a corner, “You jumped like someone shot at you when I came in.”

Ano finally shook herself out of her surprise and stood to get a rag. “It’s not a customer,” she sighed. She mopped up the spilled drink in silence and returned the overturned glass to the table. She felt Becken’s gaze on her, but for the moment she ignored him. Finally, she settled across from him again, and this time she met his eyes calmly.

“It’s not a customer,” she repeated. “It came with this.” She gestured at the book still sitting in the middle of the table, as if he wouldn’t have noticed it before now until she drew his attention to it.

Becken considered the book carefully for a moment, his expression calculating. Though Ano would never say it out loud, it looked exactly like the way Tri had been examining the thing earlier.

Her friend shook off the book’s spell much quicker than she had. He looked at her expectantly over its blue cover. “So? What is it?”

The Book

This rather long excerpt comes from the beginning of Collapsing Paradise, which is the most  recent addition to the currently four-story-long Paradise series. In this scene, the Paradise staff wakes up to find a book–a real, rare, mysterious book–sitting on the desk in their main office. The book becomes mightily important later. In the mean time, I just like this scene for its interactions between the main characters.

-

Elim had meant to go and boot up his screens for the day, but…well, it was a book. A real one, with a deep blue cover and yellowed pages, still edged in what looked like real gold and bound together with ancient glue. Heavy gold and silver thread twined across the spine and cover to form an elaborate flowing pattern of reaching vines and fruit-bearing branches that encircled an archaic symbol in the middle that might have been a representation of a planet. There was no title, at least not on the cover. He hadn’t dared touch the thing, let alone open it.

It was very, very old, and probably invaluable on any number of financial and cultural levels. Finding this just sitting here was like finding a bar of platinum under your pillow, only more surprising. Elim tilted his head from side to side to see the light shimmer off the gold and silver thread. He was so absorbed that he completely failed to notice when someone else entered the room through the main entrance directly behind him.

The figure padded silently across the thick cream-colored carpet, navigated around the semi-circles of dark blue couches in the middle of the circular room, and came to a stop directly behind Elim, all without making a sound.

And then it spoke. “Having fun?”

The Operator startled guiltily and turned to see who’d snuck up on him. Unsurprisingly, he was greeted by the sight of Triyankast, his human coworker and friend, who was grinning mischievously. The expression was a very familiar one to Elim.

Triyankast was handsome in that cliché, flawless, utterly charming kind of way that rarely existed outside of advertisements. The gleaming brown eyes, perfect brown hair and slightly tanned skin, along with a dazzling smile, had the ability to stop a passing female at thirty yards if Tri focused his attention. It was a deceptive trait that he used to his advantage. Those who knew the young man well agreed that his natural mischief and penchant for trouble (not to mention the fact that he’d spent most of his early life as an accomplished thief and conman) far outweighed his physical attractiveness and charisma.

He also had a bad habit of sneaking up on people—especially Elim, whose mercurial eyes still turned magenta when he was unpleasantly surprised, no matter how hard he tried to control the reaction.

“Stop doing that,” the Almarian reprimanded, his eyes already fading to something more like blue. He ruffled his mess of black hair in a gesture that did nothing to cover his embarrassment; the silver streaks amidst his dark curls caught the light like the threads on the book behind him.

“Magenta’s a good color on you,” Tri replied without apology as he joined Elim, leaning on the back of the couch facing the desk. “What are we looking at?”

All annoyance was instantly forgotten. “It’s a book,” Elim breathed reverently, his accent giving the word a cultured kind of weight. “A real one.”

Tri gave a low whistle of appreciation. The former conman merely shrugged in response to his friend’s mockingly raised eyebrow. “Hey, I may not read much, but even I have to respect something worth more than I am in solid gold.”

Elim conceded that with a nod. They both stood silent for a moment, heads turning this way and that in identical postures to the one Tri had found Elim in a moment before. “See the way it shimmers?” Elim murmured.

The other man’s thoughts were on a different track. “It would be impossible to sell illegally,” Tri said absently. Elim turned to stare at him. “What?” he said defensively. “It’s true! Something that unique is impossible to fence off unless you have someone ready to buy it on the other end. Who’s it for?”

Elim narrowed his eyes in a way that said he’d seen right through the other man’s abrupt subject change, but he answered anyway. “It’s for the Boss.” He nodded towards the note resting next to the book. It was just a square of heavy paper, and written on it in loopy letters with thick blue ink was their employer’s name: Ano. Just the one word. No explanation, not even a sign-for receipt.

“Mysterious,” Tri whispered in the voice reserved for secrets and ghost stories. “Secret admirer, I’ll bet you anything.”

“Who has a secret admirer?”

The two men turned to see Jenny enter the lobby from her office. The wall to the right of the main entrance was a smooth curve of glass divided by five evenly spaced glass doors, each leading to the office of a Paradise team member, and farther back into their own small set of rooms. Jenny’s was the second to last, between Becken’s dark office space on one side and Tri’s on the other at the end of the row, nearly opposite the main entrance.

The young woman joined them leaning against the couch. She leaned easily against Tri’s side as his arm went comfortably around her waist. Her brown hair was brushed back into a simple ponytail, and her pale skin was still flushed pink with the remnants of sleep. “Is that a book?”

“Looks like,” Elim confirmed.

They let her have her moment of awe. Eventually she shook herself. “Who’s it for?”

“Ano,” the other two answered in unison.

“We don’t know who dropped it off,” Tri continued, his eyebrows raised dramatically.

Jenny’s blue eyes sparkled mischievously. “Has anyone opened it?”

Tri snorted disbelievingly at the same time Elim replied, “You first!”

She pouted, a little crestfallen, and tilted her head to look up at her boyfriend with pleading eyes. It was something she’d never try with Ano in the room, but with the Boss gone for the moment, it seemed that all was fair in love and books.

“Oh no,” Tri responded instantly, jostling her to disentangle their arms so he could take a step away from her, the counter and the temptation of the book. “No way am I opening that thing without an engraved invitation from a literary deity! Or the Boss.”

“What about me?”

All three junior employees froze guiltily, even though none of them had technically done anything wrong yet. They watched Ano come in through the door of her office, clearly just out of the sonishower in her quarters. She ruffled her short blue hair with her fingers, leaving it fluffed to dry. Her green eyes narrowed as she took in their expressions. Unsurprisingly, she immediately zeroed in on Tri. “What did you do?”

“Nothing!” he held his hands up again and backed up so he stood in the middle of the room, out of touching range of anything. “I have not so much as laid a finger on the priceless object! I have witnesses!”

Ano grinned a little at that, which told them all right away that she wasn’t remotely upset with any of them. “You’re getting rusty,” she told Tri with a sly smile. “That denial was much more convincing the first time I heard it.”

That startled a full-bodied laugh out of Tri, and surprised glances from Elim and Jenny. Getting Ano to talk about the past—or getting Tri or Becken to discuss it either, for that matter—had until this point been an exercise in futility. Laughing at Tri’s former criminal ways was unprecedented. A lot of things had changed since Ano had nearly died last month. Still, the new, sharing-friendly office atmosphere was going to take some getting used to.

Elim felt his shoulders relax considerably as Ano wandered over to the desk. She touched his shoulder as she passed in her normal greeting, and he had to fight to keep the blush off his cheeks, even though she’d done it every day for the last four Cycles.

Ano gave a low whistle of appreciation as she came to the book. The other three instantly gathered round her, looking for information like sharks scouted for unsuspecting fish. Her hand drifted towards the heavy cover seemingly of its volition before she redirected it at the last moment to pick up the note instead. She read it, then turned it over curiously, looking for indicators on the paper. “Who dropped it off?”

“The door doesn’t have a record,” Elim answered. He watched her face carefully as he said it—this wouldn’t be the first time that Ano had managed to get something delivered without telling any of them what it was, or who was responsible for procuring it. The three dozen bronze-plated ND manifolds that had miraculously appeared on the docks three months ago just when Elim had run out of them came to mind.

But today, Ano’s eyebrows raised in surprise at Elim’s news. “No record at all? Becken is going to have a fit.” She caught his eyes and said seriously, “Figure out how they managed to get past the protocols. Regardless of who they were, I don’t like people walking in unannounced.”

He nodded in understanding, and glanced at Tri and Jenny. They were both staring at the book again. For a few moments, they were all quiet, lost in their own personal studies.

Ano looked up from her own intent scrutiny to see the others still grouped around her. “Don’t you all have work to do?” The pitifully curious looks she received at that were enough to soften the hardest resolve. She shook her head in resignation. “This is why I need Becken here.”

“Where is Mr. I-have-to-work, anyway?” Tri wondered. Jenny elbowed him in the side rather indiscreetly. He shrugged unapologetically. “What? I haven’t even seen him in three days. I think he inspected all the 200-level pods completely on his own.”

Ano sighed and ran a hand through her hair. “He’s sleeping. Finally.”

Elim raised his eyebrows. “How did you manage that?” he asked before he realized he probably didn’t want to know.

“Threats of physical violence,” came her deadpan reply. “After this little stunt, I’ll likely never listen to him again when he complains about me not getting enough rest.”

“He was worried about you,” Jenny said softly. “We all were. We kind of…let things go, for a while.”

Ano’s gaze gentled as she gave Jenny a small smile of thanks.

When no one else spoke, Elim cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Still, the rest of us managed to find the time to sleep since you’ve been back.”

“And intelligence like that is why I hired you to begin with,” Ano said brightly. Elim noticed that she was deliberately avoiding giving the impression that she cared about the book at all. Somewhere in the back of his head, warning bells began to sound faintly. Still, he listened when she prodded them, “Now come on, we have work to do. Get moving!”

With a few last curious looks, they finally did as they were told.