Freedom TM

appropriate in the symbolism of it, and Sobol knew his archetypes well. With Sobol, gates were critical points, where fate was determined. The one Loki was searching for was no exception.
    Loki had been studying planar spells ever since he received his odd message. Of course, he was familiar with planar travel froma dozen games where players gate in and out of various dimensions and universes. But now, with the advent of the limitless layers of D-Space projected atop reality, dimensional gates suddenly had relevance to the real world. Artificial intelligences from digital dimensions were starting to appear, and in some cases gaining wireless control over real-world machinery. It was a message from just such a being that had brought Loki to this desolate place—a message from an old opponent.
    Loki switched on his motorcycle’s infrared headlights, and his helmet automatically switched to FLIR mode. He could now see down the tunnel to a vanishing point. Sixteen hundred and sixty-seven feet of World War One–era masonry.
    But closer at hand he could see a homeless encampment clogging the passage. There were three men with packs and cardboard boxes huddled in the darkness—all of them looking his way, trying to discern who it was that had come to their hiding place, engine rumbling and lights out.
    It occurred to Loki that economic times must be getting tough indeed for homeless people to appear this far from cities and towns. He’d begun seeing them everywhere. Whole families. White, Latino, Black, Asian. It looked like the current financial crisis was hitting everyone. Prostitutes were literally everywhere now. These guys, however, looked like locals—white-trash tweakers in their early twenties to late thirties.
    If that was the case, then the bike Loki was riding was worth its weight in gold. And standing in the mouth of the tunnel, silhouetted against the night, Loki was probably a good target for folks whose eyes had adjusted to the darkness. Sure enough he saw one of the men—tattooed scalp, piercings, and goatee—lifting what looked to be a pistol. The man slowly pulled back the slide to chamber a round and whispered to the others.
    Loki nodded to himself.
Bad idea.
    He revved the bike’s engine to fully charge his weapons and watched to see what baldy would do next. The man was still pointing the gun up in a holding stance, staring intently into the darkness. Loki raised a gloved hand and aimed a hypersonic projector in the palm of his glove into the middle of the group. He then softly spoke words that were amplified a thousand times into a booming voice that appeared in the midst of the group. “PUT THE GUN DOWN OR DIE!”
    The gunman panicked as everyone scattered. The man aimed his pistol at the mouth of the tunnel.
    CRACK!
A blinding beam of light projected from Loki’s index finger and the deafening sound of a bullwhip filled the tunnel.
    The gunman fell dead, his hair and clothing smoking in the darkness. The other homeless men staggered around, blinded by the sudden burst of industrial lightning.
    Loki shouted. “Who else wants to die tonight?”
    The men got onto their bellies and covered their heads. One shouted. “Don’t shoot, man! Don’t shoot!”
    Laser-induced plasma channel was a hell of a weapon. The technology used a relatively low-powered laser at a precise wavelength to cause atmospheric oxygen to form a plasma—one with an extremely low electrical resistance. It was, in essence, a virtual wire that could carry a lethal electrical shock. The thunderous clap occurred when the energy burst stopped and the air snapped shut around the vacuum that remained. It was man-made lightning. Loki could shoot lightning from his hands—the achievement of a lifelong goal. Whenever some idiot gave him a legitimate reason to use it on darknet business, he almost felt like kissing them.
Thank you, tweaker.
    Loki gunned the engine and came up to the men lying on the edges of the tracks. They were still blinded. “If it was up to me, I’d kill you—but I can’t unless you give me a good reason. If you’renot still lying here when I get back, I’ll follow the heat signatures of your footprints, find you, and kill you both. Do you understand?”
    “Yes! Yes!”
    Loki roared off into the tunnel, feeling the exhilaration of adrenaline surging through his veins.
    A couple hundred yards later Loki could see a colored, D-Space object glowing in the tunnel. He closed the distance and before long