Bluescreen

by Dan Wells

  “This game looks way cooler than Muffin Top,” said Saif.

  “We haven’t even started playing yet,” said Marisa. “Each team has five agents, and you can customize your powers. . . .” She paused. The VR game was just a pretense, really—they weren’t here to play; they were here to talk about Bluescreen. She wanted to find out what he knew about the people who made it . . . she needed to find out. Anja was in trouble, and how many other people? eLiza was dead, and five innocents were in prison for it. What she learned from Saif might save them.

  Or it might implicate Saif. Despite herself, she suddenly didn’t want that to happen.

  Marisa looked across the Colosseum, watching a manticore pace across a high stone platform. “You know what?” she said. “Forget the rules, I don’t really want to play.”

  Saif’s statue looked at her. “You just want to talk?”

  “Eventually.” She felt the sudden urge to stall, to delay as long as possible the confirmation that he was lying to her. She opened the power menu, scrolling through the various abilities. “But if you’ve never played, there’s something you’ve got to try first.” She blinked on a power package, and copied it to him. “Flight.”

  The powers engaged, and Marisa felt herself float up, just a centimeter off the ground. She flexed some imaginary muscle and flew off into the sky, the ground falling away beneath her in a rush. The wind on her face wasn’t real, but the exhilaration was; she pulled to a brief stop, high above the Colosseum, and plunged into a power dive, forgetting everything else, just for a moment, whooping with joy as she aimed for a fallen arch and rocketed through the gap, dodging the vine-wrapped pillars and skimming the tops of the grass with her fingertips. She soared back into the sky again, looking around for Saif, and saw him sailing toward her with a grin.

  “That was amazing,” he said. “You’re good at this.”

  “The flashy stuff is easy,” she said. “It’s the fine control that takes a lot of skill—hovering in one place to line up a sniper shot, or making fast turns through the sewer stairways.”

  He smirked. “There’s a sewer in a Roman ruin? Big enough to have stairs?”

  “We just call them sewers, no matter what the map looks like—the part underground is the sewer, and the player who fights there is called the Jungler. I don’t know why.”

  “So there’s something about this game you’re not an expert in?”

  She grinned at him. “Maybe a couple of things. The terminology is old, full of weird holdovers from games so old my abuela used to play them. But”—she flew back a little, spreading her arms—“when it comes to actually playing the game, I’m almost pro.”

  The marble statue raised its eyebrow. “Want to prove it?”

  She studied his face. “You don’t believe me?”

  “Of course I believe you,” he said, and the corner of his lips curled into a mischievous grin. “But how many times am I going to have a one-on-one with a semipro Overworld player?”

  She nodded her head; he wasn’t doubting her skills, he was testing them. She eyed the field, looking for a suitable challenge. “We can’t go head-to-head, because you’ve never played—even a novice could beat a total noob. But maybe . . . okay, here we go. You see that manticore on the roof?”

  “I’m a big manticore fan,” said Saif. “I’m a fanticore.”

  She stopped and blinked.

  “Sorry,” said Saif. “I’m usually cooler than this. Maybe I should go back to the baby blue dog boy outfit.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Marisa, trying not to smile. It was endearing, she realized, to see some cracks in his perfectly groomed facade. “But: here we go. You’ve got your flight controls down? You know what you’re doing?”

  He moved back and forth in the air. “I think I’ve got the hang of it.”

  “Then we’re doing an obstacle course: straight out, touch the manticore, do a loop under him through that old window arch, touch him again, and then back here.”

  “I’m going to guess that touching the monster is the hard part of this race.”

  “Touching a monster is easy,” said Marisa. “The hard part’s getting away from it alive.”

  “Well, yeah—”

  “But you’ve got to do it with attitude,” she said. “You don’t just fly right at it, you look the monster in the eye and say, ‘Tenemos un pollito que comernos.’”

  “Tenemuh . . . what?”

  Marisa laughed. “Try it in English: ‘We have a little chicken to eat together.’”

  “That is . . . the worst threat I’ve ever heard.”

  “What, like you’ve got a better one? The English phrase is ‘I have a bone to pick with you.’ How is that more menacing?”

  “Maybe it’s the other guy’s bone, and you’re going to pick it, like, out of his body or something.”

  “That’s not what it says.”

  “At least it doesn’t say you’re going to serve him dinner.” He looked at the manticore. “Hey buddy, watch out, in a minute I’m going to come over there and give you some chicken; I thought we could eat it together, maybe catch up on some stuff.”

  “Fine, then,” said Marisa, trying to control her laughter. “Excuse me for trying to inject some style into this competition. If all you want to do is race, we’ll race. Three.” She leaned forward, preparing herself to launch.

  “Wait,” said Saif, “we’re going now?”

  “Two,” said Marisa, not waiting for him. Saif copied her pose. “One.” They both launched toward the manticore at full speed, and Marisa laughed at the thrill of it. Halfway there she swerved sideways, bumping Saif with her hip, but he corrected his course almost immediately, and bumped her back with a grin.

  They reached the manticore at the same time, but with two different strategies. Marisa aimed for the center of its mass, knowing that it would be the easiest to hit at high speed; Saif went high, trying to slap the monster’s head as he flew past, but he’d overestimated his flying skills and missed it by more than a foot. The manticore attacked, lashing out at Marisa with its thick scorpion tail, and she barely managed to dodge out of the way. She pulled herself almost to a stop, and dropped below the roof to circle through the window and back; Saif was coming in for another pass to touch the monster and aimed for its center this time. The manticore was still focused on Marisa and ignored him. She ducked through the ruined arch and popped up again on the other side, slapping the thing on the tail before zooming back toward the starting point, but checked herself halfway to look back at Saif. He was struggling with the small gap in the stone window, giving the manticore just enough time to refocus on him. The scorpion tail shot out and stung him, and a damage meter popped up in Marisa’s vision: he’d been poisoned, and his life started dropping tick by tick. Saif cleared the window and came up the other side, only to be stung again, and when he flew away the manticore followed with a roar. Marisa gauged the distance, staying just outside the point where the monster would lose interest and return to its post; when Saif came in range she targeted him with a healing boost, and he limped to safety with just a few points of health left. The poison effect ended, and the manticore flew away.

  “Ouch,” said Saif, but he was laughing as he hovered in the air. “That’s harder than it looks.”

  Marisa grinned. “Satisfied?”

  “You’re definitely good. I figure it wouldn’t take me much practice to do that and live through it, but to do that, live through it, and heal the doofus who couldn’t figure out how windows work? You have my respect, madam, and my thanks.”

  His health was regenerating now, and she watched the numbers tick up. She was having fun—not the satisfaction of a successful race, but real, can’t-stop-smiling fun. She didn’t want it to end, but the poison icon seemed to burn in her memory, and she thought about Anja. She flew a small loop, more of a flip than any real movement, and kept her eyes on the ground, or the sky, or the manticore; anywhere but Saif’s face.

  “Saif?
”

  “Yeah?” He seemed to sense that her demeanor had changed, for his voice became serious. “What’s up?”

  “Saif, I need to know if you’re a part of this. I need you to tell me the truth: Did you know what Bluescreen does? Did you help make it?” She raised her eyes and found his; pale marble orbs laced with rippling bands of quartz and color. She held his gaze, and he held hers. After a long moment, he spoke.

  “Do you know how it works?”

  “Saif, tell me—”

  “I don’t know anything,” he said. “I’m telling you the truth, Mari. I know it gives you a buzz, I know your friend had a weird reaction to it, and that’s it. I haven’t sold a single drive since you called me last night. But you’re talking like you know how it works.”

  “It’s not enough to stop selling it,” said Marisa. “Everyone who’s ever bought from you is in danger, in real, life-threatening danger, and you have to warn them.”

  “What danger are they in?” he asked. “What do you know, and . . . how do you know it?”

  “What do you know?” she asked again. “Do you know how it works? Do you know what it does to their minds, all the people who use it and turn into . . . puppets?”

  “Puppets?”

  She couldn’t tell if he was shocked at the information, or at the word she’d used to describe it. “It takes over their bodies, and turns them into . . . well, nulis, I guess. Mindless slaves that someone—whoever’s in charge of all this—can move around like robots.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “No it’s not,” said Marisa. “Anja and everyone else who’s ever used this is a puppet, remotely controlled, and they’ve already used them to kill, and that’s just one of the crimes they’re capable of.”

  She watched him, waiting for a response, trying to see something—anything—in his sculpted stone face. An Overworld avatar was tied directly to the brain, and detailed enough to convey the player’s emotions. She watched his eyes for a sign of care, of concern, of horror at the truth.

  He didn’t even blink.

  “Saif?”

  He said nothing. She touched him, and he bobbed in the air like a buoy, anchored but uncontrolled. She frowned; this happened sometimes in online matches, when someone’s link to the game was interrupted, but how could that happen here? How could you go link-dead when there was no online link, just a direct cable from the console to the djinni?

  Unless the djinni itself had gone offline, but what could—

  Bluescreen.

  Marisa blinked out of the game as fast as she could, exiting the menu, exiting the lobby, tearing through the layers of virtual reality until she jerked upright in the parlor chair, blinking in pain as she opened her eyes too quickly in the real-world light. Saif was standing straight up, walking away from his VR chair, the djinni cable stretching out behind him like a thin white umbilical cord; it reached its limit, went taut, and snagged him for a moment before finally slipping free of his headjack and falling to the ground.

  He moved in the same strange trance that Anja had, sure-footed but mechanical, with none of his usual smooth grace. He was headed for the door. Marisa ripped out her own cable and ran after him, grabbing his shoulder. He pulled away from her easily.

  “Saif!”

  He didn’t seem to hear her. Someone was controlling him.

  Outside the street was full of speeding cars and autocabs, not moving straight like they had on the highway, but weaving in and out of each other in a far more delicate pattern. How easy would it be to have him jump in front of a bus—or had they learned their lesson with Anja, and they’d devised a new, surer way to get him killed? She grabbed him again, calling for help; the VR parlor receptionist looked up, doing something to his nails, but didn’t offer any assistance.

  “Quiet down,” he said, irritated. “We don’t want to disturb the other guests.”

  “He’s . . .” She paused, straining against Saif’s relentless walk, not knowing what to say, or how much of it to describe. “He’s OD’d on something,” she said at last. “Close your door so he can’t get outside; he could be killed.”

  The receptionist frowned, his irritation bleeding halfway into confusion. “The door is glass, though, what if he breaks it?”

  Marisa grunted in frustration. Saif was almost to the door. The only reason to try to kill him now, at this precise moment, was if they’d been monitoring his sensory feeds and heard their conversation, and wanted to get rid of him before he told her anything else. One more loose end cut off, like eLiza. And if they were monitoring his senses before, they were definitely monitoring them now—anything he saw, they’d see, which is why she didn’t dare to get in front where they could see her.

  Except . . . they’d already seen enough. They’d heard him say her first name, they’d seen her character information in the game system, and they’d heard her talk about Anja; if they were smart enough to code this drug in the first place, they were smart enough to trace that information backward and find who and where she was. Nothing was secret anymore. All she could do was save his life.

  She stepped in front of Saif, blocking the door with her body, staring into his eyes. “Let go of him. I won’t let you kill him.”

  “Who do you think you are?” said Saif, only it wasn’t him; the voice wasn’t right, and the eyes weren’t focusing on her. It was the puppetmaster, speaking through his toy.

  “My name is—”

  “We know your name, Marisa,” said Saif. “We just don’t understand why you think that matters. Why you think you matter. You can’t stop this.”

  “I don’t have to stop the whole—”

  “Just kill her, too, and get it over with,” said Saif’s mouth, as if whoever was controlling him was talking to someone else—another mastermind, far away in their secret lair. They didn’t even take her seriously enough to address her directly. Saif grabbed her by the shoulders and slammed her against the door, rattling her bones and cracking the safety glass; it fractured into a spider’s web of brittle shards. Another slam would shatter it completely, and he adjusted his grip to do it.

  “I’m sorry, Saif,” she said, gritting her teeth. She raised her SuperYu arm, curled her stainless steel fingers into a fist, and hammered it into his face. He staggered backward, twitched once like he’d touched a live circuit, and dropped to the floor.

  Hey girl! said Jaya, the message bouncing cheerfully in Marisa’s djinni. How’s the date going?

  ELEVEN

  “Don’t call the police,” said Marisa, shooting a quick glance at the receptionist. He leaned over the counter, looking down at Saif’s unconscious body like it was a frog he’d been told to dissect. “We’ll clear out; we were never here.” The police would call her parents again, and the hell she’d catch for getting in trouble with the cops two days in a row would make being grounded look like a vacation. There were worse things than being sent to your room—if they wanted to get serious, they could shut off her djinni service altogether.

  “Is he going to be okay?” asked the receptionist.

  “He’ll be fine,” she said, and right on cue Saif moved his head. “See?”

  “Buuuuuuuh,” said Saif, struggling painfully back into consciousness. His lip was split, and his face was bloody. Marisa grabbed the front door and pulled it open, propping it with her foot so she could drag Saif out onto the sidewalk—she needed to get him into hiding before the Bluescreen puppeteers could reestablish their link.

  Mari, sent Jaya, you there?

  Call everyone, Marisa sent back, grabbing Saif under the arms. Especially Bao—I need Bao.

  What happened?

  I punched a drug dealer in the face, said Marisa. Call Bao!

  “Urrrrrr,” moaned Saif.

  “Just hang on,” said Marisa. She pulled his feet clear of the door, and it swung shut behind them. “We’re going somewhere safe.” The sidewalk was empty, but the street was full of cars, their lights just beginning to come on as dayligh
t gave way to a pale half-darkness. She looked at the passing autocabs, knowing they would make a great place to hide, but she didn’t want to pay with her own ID for fear of being tracked, and her fake account didn’t have enough money. Where else could she go?

  Sahara’s voice icon popped up in Marisa’s vision, and she blinked on it to accept the call. “Mari, honey, what happened?”

  Marisa grunted as she dragged Saif away from the busy intersection. “The good news is, Saif’s on our side.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “For now,” said Marisa. “The bad news is, the genius used his own drug. He’s got the puppet program, same as Anja, and they tried to kill him with it. He’s unconscious for now, but I don’t know what to do.”

  “How’d they knock him out?”

  “They didn’t,” said Marisa, straining to keep her grip as Saif started to squirm. “I became a Super Me. Triste chango, he’s starting to wake up.”

  “Knock him out again,” said Sahara, and then Jaya and Fang both entered the call.

  “Jaya filled me in,” said Fang. “What the hell have you gotten yourself into?”

  “You have to go dark,” said Jaya. “Turn off your ID and your net connection completely.”

  “They don’t have my ID code,” said Marisa. “They can’t track it through GPS.”

  “They don’t need GPS,” said Jaya. “I’m in marketing, and this is what we do: as long as you’re in a business district, every storefront you pass is going to read your ID. If the Bluescreen dealers know who you are, they can track you through that.”

  Marisa glanced up at a pawn shop as she dragged Saif past it; she’d set her djinni to automatically filter out any coupons and ads, so she’d forgotten, but of course they were still scanning her. She swore.

  “That’s brilliant,” Marisa growled. “Remind me to try that trick sometime when I’m not running for my life.”

  “Hey lady,” said a man in the doorway of a branding hall. “You okay?” He was covered with several brands. Tattoos were so easy to do and undo, the only way to stand out was to destroy your skin, either with chemicals or a red-hot branding iron. This guy had several examples of both, by the look of it. Marisa looked back down, trying not to make eye contact.