Awaken Online: Ember (Tarot #1) Read online

  Awaken Online

  Tarot Book 1: Ember

  ______________

  Travis Bagwell

  Copyright © 2019 by Travis Bagwell

  All rights reserved.

  ______

  To my wife… For the last time, I swear I didn’t kill you off in this book and then search and replace your name.

  ______

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1 - Crippled

  Chapter 2 - Intrigued

  Chapter 3 - Fortunate

  Chapter 4 - Weighed

  Chapter 5 - Educated

  Chapter 6 - Enlightened

  Chapter 7 - Studious

  Chapter 8 - Magical

  Chapter 9 - Converted

  Chapter 10 - Clueless

  Chapter 11 - Creative

  Chapter 12 - Popular

  Chapter 13 - Modified

  Chapter 14 - Physical

  Chapter 15 - Durable

  Chapter 16 - Deadly

  Chapter 17 - Sneaky

  Chapter 18 - Distracted

  Chapter 19 - Focused

  Chapter 20 - Pivotal

  Chapter 21 - Armed

  Chapter 22 - Studious

  Chapter 23 - Fiery

  Chapter 24 - Controlling

  Chapter 25 - Unaware

  Chapter 26 - Fleetfooted

  Chapter 27 - Focused

  Chapter 28 - Thrifty

  Chapter 29 - Subtle

  Chapter 30 - Infamous

  Chapter 31 - Cheater

  Chapter 32 - Vengeful

  Chapter 33 - Violent

  Chapter 34 - Sturdy

  Chapter 35 - Soiled

  Chapter 36 - Shaky

  Chapter 37 - Frigid

  Chapter 38 - Hesitant

  Chapter 39 - Final

  Chapter 40 - Compelling

  Chapter 41 - Blazing

  Chapter 42 - Triumphant

  Chapter 43 - Resolved

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Finn Harris looked out the window, watching as the other vehicles and buildings sped past. The sun had long since set, and the passing structures were merely a blur of colored lights. Faint technicolor streaks amid the darkness that vanished almost as quickly as they appeared. He could feel the gentle hum of the car’s engine below them, but the shocks and soundproofing dampened most of the road noise.

  “Penny for your thoughts?” Rachael asked, snuggling up beside him and draping his arm across her shoulders. He could feel the smooth fabric of her dress, a fanciful affair perfect for the award ceremony they had just left.

  Finn grimaced, his eyes still on the window. He couldn’t fight the heavy feeling that lingered in the pit of his stomach. It wasn’t tangible. There wasn’t any reason for it.

  Something just felt off.

  He felt Rachael tickle his ribs, and he let out a very manly yelp. Mock glaring at his wife, he said, “Behave. At my age, I’m likely to break a hip or something.”

  A tinkling laugh. “You aren’t quite that old yet. There might still be a little fire left in you,” she retorted, looking up at him.

  The foreboding feeling receded slightly as he met her gaze. Glorious brown eyes framed by auburn-colored hair tinged with faint traces of gray. Rachael had never felt the need to color it. She was just who she was – without any shame or reservation. Even if they had long since crossed the half-century mark and had decades of married life behind them, she hadn’t changed a bit. She was still the same captivating, gorgeous, rebellious woman he had married.

  “And besides,” she continued with a grin and a mischievous twinkle in her eye, “when you kick the bucket, I already have a young gentleman lined up and ready to go. I even have the French villa picked out. The life insurance should be just enough to cover it.”

  “Is that so?” Finn replied with a raised eyebrow. He rose to her challenge, cupping the back of her head and drawing her toward him. Rachael smiled as their lips met. He might not be twenty anymore, but he could still make a point.

  When they withdrew a few minutes later, slightly breathless and flushed, there was a different sparkle in Rachael’s eye, one that Finn knew well. “So, is there a way to speed this thing up?” she asked. “I hear you might know a guy...”

  Finn snorted softly. He could feel the sharp edge of his most recent award digging into his back. He had designed this vehicle. Well, at least the software that helped navigate both their autonomous car and the many others that surrounded them. These new vehicles were revolutionary. They were much more efficient, allowing for travel in a fraction of the time of their conventional counterparts. They removed the need for separate lanes, traffic lights, and stop signs. Once his company helped repurpose the ancient interstate highway system and this technology spread, people would be able to travel well past the previous speed limits, rivaling even train and air travel.

  The mechanical hurdles had been tricky, but the linchpin was the new software controller. Finn liked to think of the new traffic system as water flowing through a pipe, except his software allowed them to track every molecule in real-time. Cars wove into traffic without pause. The AI controller he had designed allowed for incredibly small variances in the distance between vehicles, and it was able to dynamically adjust the velocity of an entire chain of cars – all while making split-second judgment calls. The AI was supposed to be safer since the software never got tired or distracted. There was still the risk of mechanical defects, of course, but the software was sound.

  They had even given him an award for the achievement.

  Well, technically, several awards.

  “You know it doesn’t work that way. I can’t just hit the gas on this car,” Finn replied, looking down at his wife, his expression somber. The same ominous feeling had returned when she mentioned the vehicle.

  “It was just a joke,” Rachael replied, looking at him with a confused glance. “What’s up with you tonight? You seem like you are a million miles away and you’ve had this perpetual frown on your face, even while you were accepting your award.”

  “And here I thought I was doing a good job of hiding it,” Finn muttered.

  “Nope. Terrible. Stick to computers because acting definitely isn’t your strong suit.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Finn replied with a half-hearted chuckle. He shook his head. “Honestly, I don’t know what it is. I just have a bad feeling…”

  Rachael sighed, rolling her eyes. “I know you want to pull up the terminal and look. Just do it, and then we can get back to where we left off.”

  Finn smiled ruefully. She knew him too well. He had been compulsively checking the system every few minutes since it had gone live a few days ago. Right now, there was just this small strip of highway between two cities – a test case for the larger rollout. However, plans were already in the works for rapid expansion into every major city center within the next five years. The introduction of a massive federal grant had accelerated what had initially been a simple test project into a full-blown renovation of the country’s transportation system within a matter of months.

  He tapped at a hidden panel beneath his seat, and a part of the cabin wall shifted, opening to reveal a recessed display. The logo for Cerillion Logistics flashed across the screen, and the system requested login credentials. Finn tapped at the screen, and a moment later, a grid showing the stream of traffic appeared in front of him, data scrawling down the margin. He suddenly wished he was sitting in front of his real workstation instead of this tiny little display.

  Everything looked okay. The system was maintaining proper distances between the vehicles, and he didn’t see any immediate issues – at least nothing nearb
y. He panned out and looked farther down the highway. A juncture was approaching ahead of them, and they were only about a minute out at their current speed.

  A frown tugged at Finn’s lips. The system was reporting that everything was okay, cars merging and diverging seamlessly. However, the data seemed to be telling a slightly different story. A slight millisecond delay, here and there. But even that small variance shouldn’t have been happening. He sensed a pattern in the data, but his mind couldn’t quite piece it together.

  “What’s wrong?” Rachael asked, noting his frown.

  Finn looked over at her, opening his mouth to speak.

  That was when he felt the tremor. Just a small irregularity. Most people probably wouldn’t have noticed it. But he shouldn’t have felt anything.

  He looked back at the screen, and his perspective shifted slightly. “Oh shit, it’s…”

  He never got to finish that sentence.

  Several things happened at once. The tremor grew dramatically more violent, causing the vehicle to sway. Finn tried to throw himself over Rachael, even though he knew that it was pointless. Already his mind was doing some rough calculations – the car’s velocity, mass, momentum, and the tensile strength of the steel cage that surrounded them. Then he factored in the other vehicles on the highway. The kinetic dampening foam installed in the walls hadn’t been tested to withstand the numbers that were tumbling through his head.

  The damage would be catastrophic.

  “Finn,” Rachael shouted, looking up at him, her eyes wide and panicked.

  The world seemed to list sideways, like an angry giant had just thrown their car, sending it tumbling through the air. The muted screeching grind of metal on metal echoed through the chamber, and they were suddenly weightless. Yet Finn’s only focus was Rachael, keeping hold of her even as her auburn locks floated around her face.

  He saw the fear in her eyes.

  In that moment, Finn knew despair. It was a primal thing that flashed through his brain. He wanted to fight, to run, to fix this. Yet he knew it was impossible. It was the inevitability of that moment that caused the panic to settle in his mind. He couldn’t do anything. He was trapped. They were trapped.

  Then they slammed into something, the force of the impact throwing him across the cabin and ripping Rachael away from him. Finn’s back struck the wall with a muted crack, a blinding pain erupting along his spine.

  They were suddenly weightless again. The top of the vehicle had been ripped off in a shower of sparks and a thunderous crack of noise, the system trying vainly to seal the opening with a thick pink foam. Yet it was moving slowly – far too slowly. Finn reached for Rachael, his fingers stretching through the air, almost touching hers.

  She met his eyes one last time, her mouth moving, but he heard nothing.

  He screamed then, straining with every fiber of his being.

  It was futile. Rachael was sucked out of the opening and into the dark expanse on the other side.

  Chapter 1 - Crippled

  October 3, 2076: 2 days after the release of Awaken Online.

  “No!” Finn screamed.

  His heart was beating rapidly, his pulse pounding in his ears. It felt like he was drowning, a heavy weight settling on his chest. With great heaving breaths, he tried to suck in air. His arm was outstretched, his fingers twitching as he strained to save a ghost.

  All at once, Finn realized he was sitting in his bed. In his home. There was no car. There was no accident. That had happened a long time ago. More than a decade now.

  These facts settled in his mind, each one feeling like a heavy blow. In some ways, they were even more painful than his dream. They meant that it had been real. That he was alive, and his wife was…

  His hand automatically reached for the familiar spot beside him. It was empty. Of course, it was empty. Yet that hadn’t stopped him from making the same feeble gesture every time he had that dream.

  “Fuck,” he muttered. He felt something wet trickle down his cheek and soon tasted salt on his lips.

  A soft chime echoed through the air, and light slowly began to filter into the room. Windows lined the wall behind the bed. The thick metal shutters opened automatically with a faint hiss of hydraulics, letting the morning sunlight trickle through the bulletproof glass that lined the windows on the other side.

  “Good morning, sir. Are you alright? The dream again?” a male voice spoke up, his voice thick with compassion. A translucent ball of sapphire light appeared beside the bed, projected from hidden cameras embedded in the walls.

  Finn just rubbed at his face without responding.

  There was little genuine sympathy in the AI’s voice. He knew it was fake. He had programmed it, after all. It was an attempt to simulate emotion – it didn’t actually feel. It was Pavlovian. Like a digital dog. It picked up on his behavior. The shout. His heartbeat and respiration recorded by the chips installed under his skin. The gesture toward the empty half of his bed. The AI knew that this combination of behaviors meant that it needed to act a certain way. But it didn’t – it couldn’t – understand his pain.

  “Yes, Daniel,” Finn croaked. He had named the AI. It had made things easier.

  “Would you like a moment?” Daniel asked.

  Another canned response. The AI was on-script this morning.

  Finn shook his head. “No. I just need to get moving.”

  A soft chime in response and a chair wheeled into the room, gliding over toward the edge of the bed.

  “Would you like any help, sir?” Daniel asked.

  “I’m good,” Finn grunted, as he did every morning. Someday he would have to accept the AI’s assistance – when his body finally grew too old and feeble to do this on his own. But it damned sure wouldn’t be today. He would live with the full weight of his mistakes for as long as he could.

  Finn gripped his legs, feeling nothing as his fingers touched the bare skin. He forcefully shoved the dead limbs to the edge of the bed and then managed to maneuver himself into the chair with practiced movements. He knew the next steps. Wheel himself to the bathroom, brush his teeth, shower – that was always hard. Then the task of pulling on his clothes. The ritual was familiar. He even knew exactly how long it would take, plus or minus about 90 seconds.

  Yet today, he paused, staring down at his legs.

  This was the price he had paid. After the accident, the doctors had offered him several options. He could have regrown the damaged nerve-endings in his spine, replaced his legs with advanced robotics, connecting cold metal wires into what was left of his damaged nervous system, or a half-dozen other possibilities he couldn’t remember anymore. He had turned them all down. His wife hadn’t had any of those options. So, he would live with this.

  As a reminder.

  “Sir?” Daniel asked, giving off a faint blue pulse as he spoke. Another canned response. He had been sitting still for too long. Even now, he could visualize the branching dialogue tree from here. He knew exactly what Daniel would say if he didn’t start moving.

  “I’m fine,” Finn said again, as though saying it out loud would make it true.

  He didn’t sound very convincing, even to himself.

  With a sigh, he began wheeling himself toward the bathroom. 1 hour and 37 minutes. That’s how long it would take to get ready. Then he could start his day.

  ***

  1 hour, 37 minutes, and 47 seconds later, Finn wheeled himself into the kitchen, palming the metal bars on the wheels. He refused to use the chair’s electronics. He needed the exercise anyway. The old man that had stared back at him in the mirror had looked rather pale and thin, and it had been a struggle to lift himself in and out of the shower this morning.

  The lights immediately came on, Daniel drifting into the room like some sort of overprotective blue angel. However, Finn was forced to do a double take. Something about his routine was off. There was the familiar tang of coffee in the air, but he could also smell food cooking on the stove.

  He wheeled him
self further into the room. Daniel had been busy. Piles of bacon and eggs were lined up on the counter. Mechanical arms stretched out of the backsplash – stirring and flipping as they prepared another batch of food on the stovetop.

  “What is this, Daniel?” Finn asked. “You know I prefer to make my own breakfast.”

  “Sir, it is October 3rd,” Daniel replied.

  “I know what day it is,” Finn snapped. “Why is that significant?”

  “Your children are scheduled to arrive in the next five minutes…” Daniel trailed off, the cloudy blue haze flashing.

  “Correction, your son and his family have just pulled into the drive,” the AI reported. “Shall I disable the building’s security measures?”

  Finn bit back a frustrated response. Daniel hadn’t given him a warning yesterday evening or this morning. He sensed his son’s – or more likely, his daughter’s – manipulations behind this. Although to be fair, he had rescheduled the breakfast about a dozen times now. Apparently, Gracen and Julia had decided to take matters into their own hands.

  “Fine, let them in. Also, set a reminder for me to overhaul your user permissions,” Finn grumbled. He could immediately hear the muted grating sound of metal on metal as the AI released the reinforced shielding on the front door.

  “Of course, sir. However, I have been instructed to inform you that your firewall also needs some work and that you are slipping in your old age,” Daniel replied. For a moment, Finn almost thought he detected amusement in the AI’s voice, but that couldn’t have been possible. Not unless he had put it there.

  Damn it. Definitely Julia, he thought.

  Sighing, Finn wheeled himself over to the kitchen table. Daniel was already transforming the surface, the tabletop expanding and chairs emerging from the floor to accommodate the crowd that would soon be disturbing his home. He closed his eyes, willing himself to stay calm. He needed to keep up the act today. He was fine. Just fine.

  He didn’t have to wait long.

  He heard the front door click open a few seconds later. It would take them approximately 60 seconds to walk from the front door to the kitchen. Even now, he could hear footsteps down the hallway.