by K A Riley
Hiller backs off for a minute, gesturing to one of the large, dark buildings looming in the background.
“Now it’s time for building number five. Epsilon Cube. Believe it or not, you might just enjoy it. If nothing else, it’ll take your minds off of Terk. He’s in good hands. So you need to re-focus on the larger picture. The next training is for hostage rescue. It’ll teach you a bit about how the Eastern Order operates, how they move and strategize. It’ll give you a tiny taste of how ruthless they can be as well. But maybe more important, it’ll show you and us how you operate under real pressure. I’m heading over to Eta Cube to attend to Terk right after I get you set up for your next challenge. Let me take care of your friend. You take care of showing us what you can do in this exercise. And don’t worry. You can’t get hurt. It’s a Virtual Reality sim.”
“Really?” Karmine asks with a small, restrained smile. He seems to regret dropping his guard, though, and his old sneer quickly returns to his face.
Granden steps forward. He looks as tired as I feel, but he manages a perky smile of his own. “The revamped VR-sim is the newest and best tool in our training arsenal. The sim will give you combat conditions and full sensory experiences but with virtual bodies in a virtual space. You’ll look and sound like yourself. You may even experience sensory perceptions similar to the ones you experience in the real world. But you’ll be safe. Basically immortal.”
“Follow me,” Hiller says grandly as she leads the way to the Epsilon Cube. “Time for you to experience some Virtual Reality.”
Sounds good to me.
I’ve had enough real reality to last a lifetime.
19
As we’ve done with the previous Cubes, we pass under the watchtower turret, walk through the fenced-in path up to the large black building with “ε,” the Epsilon symbol, posted above the door.
Hiller leads the way, Granden and Trench following along behind. We walk up a flight of stairs and over to sliding steel door that leads into a small room with viz-screens and holographic input panels hovering in front of the walls. In the center of the room are eight partially reclining console chairs facing each other in a circle. The chairs look oddly comfortable considering how cold and mechanical the rest of the room looks.
After telling us she’ll be in a monitoring station just down the hall, Hiller turns us over to Granden and Trench who invite us to sit in the chairs. We nestle in, but any sense of comfort we might have had quickly vanishes as we all look at the empty chair Terk would normally occupy.
I swallow hard. A Conspiracy doesn’t work if everyone’s not on board. And right now, there’s a big hole in our little family.
Granden and Trench walk around the perimeter of our circle of chairs. They have us lean forward one at time as they scan some kind of device over the Biscuits in our right shoulder blades. After that, they tell us to lean back and relax.
A moment later, Hiller’s voice comes at us from every direction at once with instructions for our VR mission. “The Eastern Order has taken hostages. They’re holding President Krug, his son, and a four-man security detail in an office at the top floor of an abandoned auto-parts warehouse. Your job is a simple search and rescue mission. Make your way to the top of the warehouse. Overcome enemy resistance along the way. Save the hostages. Get out alive. The sim won’t stop until the mission is completed. Which means you could be plugged in for a short time or for a very long time. If you fail, the mission resets, and you start again. Understood?”
Except for Amaranthine, who’s preoccupied and fidgeting with a small bundle of wires on the side of her chair, we all say, “Yes” into the air.
“Sergeant Granden will now prepare you for the VR-sim.”
Granden taps a code into a holographic input panel in the air in front of him. In front of us, eight thin metal arms descend from a compartment in the ceiling. They’re shiny like polished steel but supple as a rubber garden hose. They seem almost alive, like the flexing arms of a robot octopus. Octobot? Roboctopus? I think for a second we’re about to be shot or blasted with some kind of acid. Granden makes his voice gentle when he sees the shocked expression on our faces. “They’re optic-arm scanners,” he explains. “They’ll scan VR contact modules directly onto your eyes. They’ll interface with your sensory synapses. You’ll see and feel and sense in the sim almost like you do in the real world. Don’t worry. It’s just a trick we play on your brain. Nothing permanent, and we’ll remove the modules after the sim with no harm done.”
Cardyn isn’t pacified. “That thing’s not sticking anything into my eyes!” he protests, shrinking into his chair. He squints hard and turns his head.
“Don’t be such a baby,” Kella calls out with a teasing laugh from her reclining console just across from him.
“I’m not a baby,” Cardyn insists.
“Then why do you look like you’re refusing to eat your peas?”
Cardyn sticks his tongue out at her, grips his console’s armrests, and sits up—wide eyed and clamp-jawed—to face the oncoming octopus arm. It draws in close and fires a pair of thin blue lights right into Cardyn’s eyes. He blinks a few times and turns to me. “That wasn’t so bad,” he admits.
I’m surprisingly not nervous about it, and I open my eyes wide to receive the modules. After what we’ve been through the past few days, I’m anxious to do some serious escaping from the real world.
Kella leans back in her chair, her eyes wide open as the optic-arm in front of her scans the VR contact lenses onto her eyes. “Doesn’t feel right without Terk, does it?”
“No,” Karmine agrees. “That big oaf better be all right, or…”
Brohn reaches over and gives Karmine’s shoulder a comforting shake. “We all feel the same way, Kar. Let’s get through this, get Terk back, get our deployments, and get the hell out of this place.”
The optic-arms scan the VR modules onto Rain next and then Amaranthine before slithering back into the ceiling.
Granden skims his fingers on the holographic input panel and tells us he’s activating the sim. “You’ll be inside in about five seconds,” he says.
As he passes behind my console chair, he leans down and whispers, “You need to be part of the sim to win it. And be careful. Recruits have died in these chairs.”
“Wait. What?”
I must have misheard. But I don’t have time to follow up. Granden turns away and doesn’t look back. I repeat his words in my head. His tone. The look on his face. But nothing implies he was joking. Before I have a chance to call out to him or consult with the others, the world disappears in a flash of white. A single eye-blink later, and I’m standing with the other Recruits just outside the front lobby of a giant steel-walled and windowless warehouse. The place is as tall as the Cubes, about four or five stories high, but it’s a ragged structure, streaked with dirt and rust. The rest of the world around the warehouse is pure white. No. Not even white. More like an absence of white. An absence of everything. Like whoever designed this program didn’t worry about any details of the world other than the warehouse. The warehouse is realistically solid down to every grimy detail. Everything else around it is…non-existent. If “blank” were a crayon color, this would be it.
We turn back to the warehouse where the outer doors have just opened on their own. We step into the lobby and stop to have a good look around at ourselves and at each other.
It’s us. But it’s also not us at all. We all walk around in the warehouse lobby, swinging our arms and marveling at this virtual version of ourselves. On the surface, our digital avatars look almost exactly like us. Almost. There’s something not quite right, though. Maybe it’s the way we move. So smooth, like we’re strutting. Like we don’t have a care in the world. It never occurred to me before how much of our feelings are projected in something as simple as the way we walk. Or the weirdness could be the odd sensation of weightlessness. I feel the lobby floor under my feet, but it feels distant and softer than it should. Or maybe it’s our clothes.
Eight-inch, lightweight black leather combat boots. Charcoal-gray cargo pants embedded with a black and green camo design. Black military tactical vests with multiple pockets, pulled on tight with side grip tab-closures. The clothes all move as we do, kind of like real clothes. Only the wrinkles and creases don’t move exactly the way I’d expect them to. It’s like they respond a split-second too slow or even too fast, like they’re anticipating our movements instead of just moving in accordance with the physical rules of the real world. Our looks are a bit off, too, although I can’t quite put my finger on what it is. Everything’s there. My forearm “tattoos” in exact detail. Cardyn’s full lips and the small constellation of freckles on his cheeks. Karmine’s chipped tooth. Kella’s long blonde hair and high cheekbones. Rain’s jet-black hair and olive skin. Brohn’s stubble and arched eyebrows. Amaranthine’s brooding eyes and messy shoals of hair.
Cardyn says, “Marvie” and stretches his arms out in front of himself, wiggling his fingers to make sure they work. His voice sounds right. Maybe a little tinny. Or is that just my imagination at work? Am I seeing what I’m seeing or only what I expect to see and hearing what I expect to hear?
I think that what’s wrong is that everything about us is a little too…perfect. Where is my insecurity? Or Rain’s genius? Or Karmine’s never-say-die attitude? Where is Kella’s steely determination? Or Brohn’s enviable blend of confidence and kindness? Where is Cardyn’s friendship and defensiveness of his friends? I didn’t used to think of such things as visible, but looking around at our avatars, I feel like I’m looking at us, just minus the souls.
“Guys. Before we got…zapped into here or whatever, Granden said something to me I’m sure I must have misheard.”
“What’d he say?” Card asks.
“Something about being part of the sim and other Recruits dying.”
“That sounds ominous,” Rain says with a pensive squint.
“More like creepy as hell,” Karmine pipes in.
Kella shakes her head. Her digitally-created blond hair falls in waves on her shoulders and catches the light almost like it does in the real world. “It could just be a motivational thing. You know, ‘get your head in the game’ and all.”
“What about the part about dying?” I ask.
Kella shrugs and glances down at her perfect digital body. “Our avatars can probably die. Doesn’t mean anything bad will happen to the real us.”
“I guess.”
“Hey troops,” Brohn calls out, pointing to a rack of weapons and a digital count-down chronometer that’s just materialized into the wall next to us. “Looks like we need to get armed and on our way.”
The clock starts counting down from fifteen minutes.
The seven of us approach the rack in a line to collect our weapons. Sig Sauers. Magpuls. And two Bolt-Action .338 Gen 2030 rifles. We attach suppressors to each weapon to act as silencers and to contain muzzle flashes like we’ve been taught. Then we check our ammo like we’ve also been taught to do.
The guns look and feel just like the weapons we trained on back in the Agora. I know it’s just artificial sensory inputs, but with my eyes closed, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between this and the real thing.
Karmine and Kella take the rifles. The rest of us take a combination of the other weapons, tucking them into our holsters and waistbands.
“Follow me,” Brohn says, as he leads us to the main doors.
Follow me. He doesn’t even really have to say it. Avatar or not, leadership is built right into his character.
Flanked by Karmine and Kella and their two big rifles, Brohn leads us through the metal double-doors from the lobby into the warehouse.
The place is huge, empty and cluttered at the same time. Orange-colored racks of old auto and airplane parts tower up in the expansive space. The shelves are stocked full of crates, overflowing metal bins, and palettes of parts and tools covered in clear plastic bags. Appliance-lifters, trolleys, grav transport skids, and all sorts of assorted warehouse equipment litter the aisles. Thick spools of copper-colored cable sit just inside the warehouse entrance as we step in. The ground is cold concrete, pitted in places and with long, jagged cracks running through its surface. On the far side of the warehouse, leading up to the mezzanine level and barely visible from this far away, is a rickety-looking and rusted out metal staircase. Painted red, it rises high up into the warehouse, stops at a landing, and then continues up to a bank of offices. The office windows seem to be covered with thick curtains or boarded up from the inside. It’s hard to tell from here. Thin bits of light shine through the cracks around the edges. The light is interrupted by the shadows of figures passing by on the other side.
“They must be in there,” Brohn says.
“We’d better be careful,” Rain warns. She points around at the racks and at the large wooden crates and heavy moving-equipment cluttering the spaces between rows. “Lots of places for bad guys to hide.”
“Good guys, too. We’ll use the crates and storage racks for cover. We can bounce from one safe spot to the next. We’ll head over to the far side of the warehouse. See if we can get to those stairs. If we do this right, we can get up to the office and rescue the hostages before anyone knows we’re here.”
“The stealthy approach. Not nearly as much fun as a good ol’ frontal assault,” Karmine says.
“Consider this silent but deadly.”
Brohn leads us in a jogging crouch down one row of storage racks and up another. We get to the end of the next row before we encounter our first resistance. We catch one of the Order off guard. He’s got his back to us and is fiddling with his weapon. He’s got it in pieces on top of one of the big wooden crates. One at a time, he holds parts of his gun up to his eye and then up to the light. Something in his program alerts him to our presence. He whips around, drawing a small pistol from inside his jacket.
Kella drops him with a single “silent but deadly” shot to the head. He slumps down against the crate and slides silently to the floor before pixilating out of existence.
Kella walks over and taps her toe against the ground where the man just was. “See how real he looked?”
“Marvie,” Karmine says. “Real or not, that was a terrific kill shot.”
Kella beams. She and Karmine exchange a high-five, and we continue along toward the red metal staircase.
“Hold it,” Brohn hisses. We all stop and automatically drop into a recon-cover formation with me, Card, and Amaranthine ducking behind some auto equipment on the bottom shelf while Brohn drops down to the right with his back to a broken-down appliance-lifter. Karmine drops to a knee behind Kella. Both of them raise their rifles to the ready position, careful not to expose too much of themselves or their weapons to an enemy’s potential line of sight.
I hate to say it, but Granden and Trench trained us well. We move as a team, fluidly and totally in synch. Like we’re reading each other’s minds.
Up ahead, I count ten guards on patrol. Their uniforms are standard military issue like ours, only orange and brown instead of black and green. The men’s faces are dark and angry, mouths contorted in menacing and permanent scowls. Their faces look creased and tough as old leather. The squad walks toward us in standard two-by-two formation from the end of the aisle. In about five seconds, they’re going to be right on top of us. Brohn doesn’t wait even half that long. He gives Cardyn a look from his hiding place across the aisle. Cardyn confirms with me and Amaranthine. I nod. Manthy just stares at him. Still, we get the idea.
Cardyn takes careful aim, not at the advancing guards but at the flickering light hanging from the ceiling high above their heads. He checks his silencer, fires once, and the bullet finds its target. The bulb explodes in a hot blast of glass. The guards whip around and look up in unison.
That’s when the rest of us make our move.
Karmine and Kella lay down a cover fire for us, tagging two of the guards in the process. Brohn advances in a flash, firing his gun and taking down
two more guards as the rest realize what’s happening and turn around to face us. Card and I dodge their first volley of gunfire, roll to either side of the aisle, and come up firing. We each take down a guard, but we’re all in close now, which means hand-to-hand combat. The four guards left standing aren’t standing for long.
Shoulder-to-shoulder, Card and I lunge at them. We dispatch two with quick jabs to the solar plexus followed by interior elbow strikes that pixilate the guards clean out of the simulation. Brohn takes down one of the two remaining guards with a leg sweep followed by a devastating heel-stomp to the chest once he’s down. The last guard whips out a knife and lunges at Amaranthine. For a second, I think she’s going to get killed. Then I remember that, one, this is a simulation. And two, there’s more to Amaranthine than meets the eye. Sure enough, she dodges the knife strike like she’s been doing it all her life. When the man’s arm comes around again, she steps right into his space, nose to nose, and fires the heel of her hand upward into his chin. His head snaps back, and he disintegrates away into colorful little cubes before he hits the floor.
“Nice move,” Karmine says, clearly impressed.
Manthy shrugs and ties her tangle of hair back in a messy ponytail.
So far, we’ve been either very skilled or very lucky. Either way, that’s eleven members of the Eastern Order we’ve taken out in under five minutes, all without making a sound.
In a quick jog now, we hustle the remaining distance to the red staircase and begin to make our way up. Karmine and Kella walk up backwards behind us, their eyes and rifles trained back into the warehouse in case we’re spotted or followed.
A bank of metal garbage bins sits against a rail on the wide landing halfway up. A hint of motion behind one of them alerts us to the presence of an enemy. This time, it’s Rain who holds up her hand to tell us to stop. With a dash and a shoulder-roll, she crosses the distance between us and the last garbage bin. She comes up on one knee, her gun at the ready, and blasts three silent shots into the enemy combatant who drops face-first to the floor and then disappears.