“What about the first part?” Blackstrike interrupted.
“And,” I said, holding up a finger as I rocked from heel to toe, a motion that was starting to agitate both villains, “I won’t be revealing the particulars of the plan quite yet. Still a few details to work out, depending on the size of the team and the scope of the operation. Big,” I said, inclining my head. “It’ll be a big operation. That’s for certain.”
Blackstrike took a menacing step forward, and Atlas seemed on the verge of smashing me to bits then and there. I took a look through the fog behind them and squinted at the shadows of the towers across the bay, thinking of how they must be glittering in the Titan City sun while we rotted in the gloom. The image always seemed to bolster my resolve.
“Leviathan’s weakness is ultimately chaos,” I said, my eyes – one covered and one bare – switching back to them. My voice went stiff, almost hollow. The next look they shared was less certain than the one before it. “We sow chaos – and I do mean that literally – we kill the king.
“And as for how I know it,” I reached into my coat, raising a hand, fingers splayed, to stay a flinching Atlas. I pulled out the glowing gemstone I had placed in the pocket over my heart and held it in front of me, its ethereal glow bathing the two in ghost light.
“What’s that?” Atlas asked.
“A gift from the AI,” I said.
“A part of your kit?” Blackstrike asked. He was enamored with the stone, even reached out to touch it, unconsciously. I pulled it back and he blinked. “What is it?” he asked, more forcefully.
“A treasure from a former crisis event,” I said. “Something of enormous power.”
“And the AI gave it to you?” Atlas asked, doubtful.
“I found it,” I shrugged. “Seems it was meant to be.”
“What’s to stop us from taking it now, if it’s so powerful?” Blackstrike asked.
“You don’t know how it works. I do.”
“How is that?” he asked. “How does it work? And what’s it got to do with Leviathan?”
“This shiny rock here contains a detailed dossier on every player in Titan Online. Every hero and villain of every tier is immortalized in these pretty facets. All of their strengths and weaknesses. All of their triumphs. All of their sins. All laid bare for me to see. You could call me an oracle, if you were so inclined.”
“Or a charlatan,” Blackstrike said.
“You can see attacks coming,” I said, blurting it out. Luckily, I seemed to surprise Blackstrike more than myself, so I went with it, replaying the fight against Prism and Starshot in my mind’s eye. I had to hope my powers of observation and summation could measure up to the stone. I couldn’t know either villain’s superpowers or stats since they were tier fours, but revealing that would reveal more about the core’s inner workings than I cared to while summarily proving that I couldn’t be one hundred percent sure of my conclusions about Leviathan.
“It’s an extra sense you’ve got,” I said, pointing at the space between my eyes. “Like a third eye.” Blackstrike frowned, and I decided to back away from the specifics. “Thing is,” I said, remembering the way he had dodged and dodged, waiting to time his attacks at perfect opportunities, “it leaves you vulnerable.” Blackstrike’s eyes widened ever so slightly, and I rolled the dice. After all, all gambling was an informed game of chance. “Your armor takes a hit when you activate it. You need to guess right. You need to know you’re going to avoid the strike, and that you’re going to land one. Otherwise…”
Blackstrike swallowed, opened his mouth to respond and then closed it, and I decided to keep the good times rolling.
“In many ways, you’re the new-school Deadlock, albeit weaker. At least he had the brawn to back it up.”
That was going a bit too far, as Blackstrike bristled.
“You, on the other hand,” I said, looking Atlas up and down. The behemoth looked uncomfortable under the scrutiny. “Your weakness isn’t a weakness, per se, more an absence of strength. The faster you move, the more you fight, the stronger you get. Increased brawn, bonuses to armor and even agility – spry for a big fella, once you get moving. But if you get pinned down, you’re not near as tough as you look. Strong, yes. I’m guessing that baseline brawn stat is a beauty, but the armor ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. Not unless you’re on the warpath. Dealing damage builds the shell. Momentum is key. Or am I totally, completely off base?”
Atlas was slack-jawed, and I felt like leaping into the air and clicking my heels together. I’d actually sussed it out. All of it. Well, enough of it to convince them.
Blackstrike cleared his throat. “And that rock told you all that?”
“Like I said,” I deposited it back into my inner pocket, “it was quite the find.”
“A gift, you said,” Blackstrike amended. He still seemed too stunned to put together proper sentences.
“All treasures are gifts. But, listen,” I continued, waving their gathering cloud of concerns away like so much smoke. “You two are marked, yeah? We’ve been over that. But let’s move beyond the obvious. Let’s look past the doom and gloom and envision a brighter tomorrow – or a darker one to suit our ends.”
They didn’t have to tell me they were listening.
“Any villain in Titan Online worth his or her salt will find a way to be perm’d by Leviathan and his cronies. I’d guess the only reason Anastasia’s avoided it is because we all know it’s sort of useless to kill her.”
They simultaneously grunted their agreement.
“Killing Leviathan presents one obvious benefit: our absolution.”
“From him,” Blackstrike said as Atlas nodded along. “Not from anyone else.”
I continued without skipping a beat. “Think about it,” I said. “Think of the attention a kill like that would bring.”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying—”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. I was getting frustrated and tried not to let it show. “Think bigger. Think real world. How big would Leviathan’s fall be? It would be akin to—”
“A crisis event,” Atlas breathed.
“Crisis events,” I amended. “One before we challenge him, and one when he dies. That will be the crisis event to end all events, and one not prompted by the devs or the AI. An organic event. A real event. And we’d be the stars. We’d quite literally be ushering in a new age for Titan Online. One full of uncertainty, true. Maybe even one quite dangerous, and for us most of all. But we dictate the terms of this new world, and we reap the rewards. Real rewards. Real-world rewards.”
We’ll be the stuff of legend, I thought but didn’t say. Not everyone cared about legacy. If I could build one by dashing another…
“Sponsors,” Blackstrike said, nearly drooling.
“Fame,” Atlas said, not meaning the in-game hero currency, but the real thing.
“We’ll be marked,” I said, shrugging. “But we’re already marked, and by worse folks than any who could come afterward. They’ll come for me first. That’s true. But they’ll come for you soon enough. We take down Leviathan, and we’ll get on some lists, no doubt. But we’ll also earn respect. And what’s the best form of respect a villain can earn?”
“Fear,” the two said in unison.
“Fear and uncertainty,” I said. “’How did they do it?’ they’ll ask. How indeed?”
I predicted their next shared look, and it did not disappoint. When they turned back to me, they were putty in my hands. I looked up above their heads, half expecting to see little white icons materializing out of the mist.
“How do we do it?” Blackstrike asked. “How do we kill him?”
“Chaos is a collective, my friends,” I said easily, even though my heart was hammering in my chest. This was becoming real, and fast. “And what is more chaotic than a crisis event? I want us to trigger one. I want us to kick off an unplanned event without scripting. That should be chaos enough. But we’re one short of our full party. There’s
someone else we need to get onboard.”
Twenty-One
Rivals
“You’re insane,” Starshot declared.
Ordinarily, I might have sighed, but the memory of our recent meetings – the last in particular – allowed me a better measure of sympathy for the fledgling hero than usual.
We were standing on the roof of a squat, five-story apartment complex. To the north, over the rows of town houses and across the major silver veins of the highway, Gallant Tower stood like a sigil of hope for most, and a looming specter of corruption for others. If you looked closely enough, you could see the capes flapping in the breeze like flags on display, maybe the occasional bright flash of power being brought to bear, usually in a show of immodesty for viewers or other heroes. Villains rarely ventured there, now. Not since Leviathan had tiered up for the last time.
Instead of getting embroiled in an official encounter by starting some real trouble on the ground, I’d simply strolled by Titan Dominion’s southwest branch and stuck my face – broken mask and all – into the front door. When the skinny, rat-like manager saw me, he froze, and then his programming took over. He was through the back door of his office in such a well-placed panic that I knew backup would be along in short order.
Starshot had not disappointed. Nor had the AI for that matter. Everything and everyone can be played once you know how they work.
“Your rival Despot is in the area. Protect the innocent,” I whispered, knowing she’d come.
She did.
By the time I had climbed the fire escape of the apartment building across the way, Starshot had arrived. A shrill whistle from me got her attention, and now, here we were, speaking like very old friends and not the bitterest of rivals.
I had to work to push down the anger I felt at seeing her, remembering that she was indirectly responsible for Meteora’s assault on the base.
Atlas and Blackstrike were with us too, leaning against the green-painted steel door to the stairs. They were close enough to lend assistance if I needed it, and to make Starshot glance nervously in their direction every other blink, but far enough back so that the hero felt she could make a quick escape if she needed to.
At first, Starshot had been skeptical, and who could blame her? She could not hide the unease she felt in the presence of one who had caused her so much trouble of late, especially on account of the bombshell I’d just dropped at her feet: that I was Streak, or had been, and that Leviathan had killed me, not Deadlock.
“You’re Streak…” she said, her mouth quirking open at an odd angle. She looked dubious and mystified at once,
I nodded, but it was my eyes she focused on.
“You’re Streak.” Her tone shifted. It was subtle enough, but I caught a bit of something I liked in there.
Starshot liked Streak. She didn’t have to say it, but I saw the recognition. I had been unsponsored, and proud of the fact, but I was known to those who followed the game, a bright and bold tier two well on his path to ascension. That, and the moment of my death was an oft-seen and oft-skimmed footnote to the final encounter between Titan Online’s oldest rivalry.
“I… I can’t believe it.”
“Why not? You can be anyone and anything in Titan Online, can’t you?”
She shrugged, seeming more at ease than she had just a few seconds earlier. “True enough. But it’s just… Streak was something of an idealist, wasn’t he?”
“Streak was a lot of things. Now he’s nothing. Being dead has that effect.”
She searched my expression and may have found something more than I was in the mood to show her. She smiled knowingly, and though I didn’t know for certain, I thought it was because it was just crazy enough and just tragic enough to make sense, to explain all my calculated, foolhardy behavior. Streak was the beginning that justified my intended ends.
The smile shifted, then, and the look that replaced it was an odd mix of pity and disgust. She seemed to cover it well enough, but it left a sting behind.
“Have your masters come calling yet?” I asked her.
Starshot had let her energy dissipate just after we started speaking. Her irises could now be seen against the whites. They were the color of honey and gold, and nothing like the magma Meteora’s held.
“My masters?” She shook her head and crossed her white spandex arms, replete with their shimmering sun bolts, over her white spandex chest, bedecked with its inlaid and many-pointed star. “You know, on this side of the bay, being an apprentice is pretty common.”
“Common, yes.” I nodded. “Necessary?”
“It’s the choice I made.”
“And look at where it’s got you.”
“Where?” She opened her arms in a pleading, exasperated move. “Where exactly do you think it’s got me? I’m still here, aren’t I? You’re the one who killed…” She looked around, flinching as a nearby pigeon was startled from its nest atop an old electrical box. “You’re the one who killed him,” she said, working to keep her voice low. “Not me.”
“I assume you’re talking about Prism.”
She frowned, unwilling to play my games any longer.
“Fine,” I said. “He died by my hand in the most literal sense. Sure, you didn’t kill dear old insufferable Prism.”
She smiled at that, and then let it drop away – too slow, I thought – when I saw it.
“Do you really think that matters to them?” I asked her.
“Who is ‘them,’ exactly? You’re talking like there’s some sort of grand conspiracy in place. Who would blame me for what happened—”
“You know exactly who—”
“I’ve never even spoken with him!”
The sudden outburst had Atlas straightening lazily from his position. Blackstrike laid a dark hand on the brute’s forearm, but gave me a questioning, curious look. I looked past Starshot’s golden locks and shook my head. She swallowed without turning, as if remembering her proximity to three killers for the first time since touching down.
“Who,” I started, speaking slowly, carefully, “acts with Leviathan’s will? Who, more than any other, fights his battles for him? Who fights his battles before him? Who gets her gloves dirty to preserve the blissful white of his heroic attire? Who has tiered down on two occasions for ‘misplaced’ comets? There are many heroes living in the shadow of Leviathan’s indifference. But who occupies the highest position? The closest?”
Starshot’s fear was plainly visible. If there was any hero in Titan Online whom players – villains and heroes alike – feared above any other, including Leviathan himself, it was the one of which I spoke.
“Who made a very recent visit to me and mine?” I finished.
“She wouldn’t…” She swallowed. “She wouldn’t kill me. She can’t know it was my fault. She… unless… you told her it was! Didn’t you? You blamed it on me, didn’t you? Prism’s death. You told her it was my plan!”
I held up one gloved hand, letting Starshot see my bare fingers poking through the ribbed leather.
“Does it look like I had time to do anything like that? No, Starshot. I didn’t blame you. Nor did she. Not directly, in any event. But tell me, given the vibe you’ve received from her while in Prism’s… care, do you think you still belong in Gallant Tower? It’s not about whether or not you deserve them. It’s about whether or not they deserve you.”
Starshot hesitated, and it was the only opening I needed.
“Those of us who have played Titan Online for years on end, studied it, followed it from inception to its current stagnant, boorish form know that there are tier ones, and then there are ‘tier ones’. Leviathan and Meteora are the latter. Streak could have been. You, Starshot, could be. Those powers of yours are going to scale nicely. Very nicely. Those beams, given enough Fame, could even be enough to challenge Leviathan himself. And I don’t mean that in jest. I mean head-on. Direct.”
“Why would I want to fight him? Why would I want to fight any of the heroes of Titan City, w
hen there are so many villains across the way?”
“Because Titan Online is dying. You know it just as well as I do. The ratings aren’t in sharp decline yet, but the line is leveling. New player growth has virtually halted, even reversed in recent months. New viewers are out there, but they’re not coming here. They’re not watching because there’s nothing to watch. There’s no change. Ever since Deadlock died, there’s no one to challenge the powers that be. No one on either side of the water looking to upset the status quo. The current elites – Leviathan, his lackeys, and the sponsors too caught up in the short game to see the long – will bleed it dry.”
“Until you.”
“Until us. Face it, Starshot,” I said, staying her response, “if you’re not marked for death, you’re certainly not sniffing the fame and position Leviathan and Meteora occupy. And I do mean that in the real-world sense. And then, of course, there’s the small matter that you’re not playing for Fame. Nor power. No. You’re playing for something else. Or am I wrong there?”
Starshot studied me, lips pursed.
“You’re here because Titan Online means something to you.”
“It should,” she said. “Mean something, I mean. All of it should.” She swept her hands out to encompass the shining city at her back. “Heroes. Villains. Good deeds and bad. It should all mean something.”
“To me it does. To us. Do you really feel like you’re on the good side?”
It was the final screw, and I saw the light dawn in the way it faded from her eyes, from her blowing hair and the soft, shimmering border that was always buzzing around her like white moths’ wings. It was like a daytime candle going out.
I thought about pulling out the alien core, explaining how her powers worked – that much I knew for sure – and giving her one last bit of assurance that I knew what I was talking about. Something stayed my hand, though. Somehow, I knew it would have had the opposite effect. Somehow, I knew that Starshot cared less if a thing could be done than if it should be done.
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