by J P Carver
The rogue talent I took was helpful for a lot of quests, but I still found myself outmatched most of the time. The stealth mechanic was a harsh mistress, and I'd been caught and killed more times than I'd admit. Still, I made my way, soloing for most of the game. There was no soloing against Samhain, especially not with those pumpkin children too. If Nina and the others hadn't shown up, I'd have joined Winter in death.
A sigh escaped me as I got up. My mouth was dry and disgusting, and I tried to swallow away the taste. Six hours in game was too much. My limbs felt like they still had poison in them, and walking felt alien. I stumbled and rode the wall into the kitchen.
My crash spot was outside the main part of the city, smack in the middle of a bunch of twentieth-century buildings that had been scheduled for demolition ten years earlier. Committees moved slowly. The walls were bare brick, red and brown coming together into a crumbling mosaic. The windows were mostly boarded up, so my light came from candles and two lamps I'd picked from the trash. I'd learned old wiring the hard way, redoing most of the connection out to the street. When I first found the place, I'd tapped into one of the few hanging lines and nearly killed myself. The burns were still rough on the pads of my fingers.
In the kitchen, I flipped one of the lights on. Its bulb flickered as if annoyed at being used. There was a pouch of milk in the fridge, and I sat down with it at the table. Out the window, I could see the faint lights of others like me—those just trying to make ends meet. My head started to drift as I watched shadows move across the golden squares, the sight a reminder of my childhood.
My father and I had lived in places like my crash spot—at times even worse. Part of me expected him to stumble through the door, dead tired from working two jobs and crashing on the couch without so much as a good night. When my mom left, he, like so many people I'd known, picked up the pieces and did what he had to. It killed him. Endless hard work stole his life away while he tried so hard to create something good for me.
I gulped down the milk and shook my head to get rid of the memories that threatened to hammer me. The last thing I needed was to start crying over things in the past. I still wondered from time to time what my life would be like if he hadn't died. It was nice to fantasize when I started to feel down, but it was meaningless. I wouldn't give up my friends for a slightly better life.
Then again, a few months before, I would have. The consequences of my job weren't lost on me, but they were so far removed that I didn't really need to worry about it. It was just fun. Cracking systems and making admins look like idiots was a great pastime.
Being locked up or worse was not as fun, and I came damn close to that when a corporation tried to frame me for the murder of a CEO. My friends had stood by me and helped me, and because of that, there wasn't anything I wouldn't do for them. They were all I had… they were my family.
Which was why I couldn't help the thread of worry that wound through me about Winter. I barely knew the guy, but he and Nina had hit it off big time, and based on how worried Nina had been when she logged out, I knew they were more than just a fling. She was practically shaking over not being able to reach him. All I could do was hope he'd just fallen asleep after logging out.
The clock on my neural blinked three in the morning. I tossed the empty milk pouch into the trash can and went back into the living room. I stopped and stared at the folding partition that separated the bedroom from the rest of the crash spot.
Sleep didn't find me yet, as my habits leaned more toward those of an owl than a human. I flopped down on the broken recliner and started to browse the Open Jobs listing. Funds were starting to get dicey, but all the jobs available involved a lot more work than I was willing to put in right then. Annoyed, I logged out and decided to try to sleep anyway.
"Raggy?" A little box showed up on the overlay across my eye with the name Nina written in bold letters. I had just started to nod off. "Raggy, you're still awake, right?"
I sat up and granted the call with a yawn just to annoy her. "What is it that can't wait until the sun is up?"
"Sorry… I'm sorry, but I've got a major problem."
I became wide awake. "What's up, Crow? What's going on?"
"It's Winter…"
"What about him? He still hasn't shown up?"
"No, I'm at his place, and he's still in the game."
"Okay? Just log him out and give him an earful for disappearing on us."
"That's just it—I've tried. Nothing happened. He's like… zonked out or something. Shaking him doesn't work, and I tried yelling and punching his shoulder. It's like he's not even here."
"Shit—okay, what's the address?"
She sent me the information as I got up. "Hurry, all right? I'm about to lose it here."
"Give me fifteen minutes," I said. The window winked out. I found clothes that were probably dirty and threw them on in record time. I rushed down the steps and out into the cool air of the streets. I made my way to the electric motorcycle that I'd picked up a few days earlier in front of a corner store. It was stashed in the alley. I removed the ragged tarp that covered it and disabled the alarm.
I hopped on and darted out onto the street, a chorus of horns following me as I weaved between the computer-controlled cars. They hated anything unpredictable and abused the horn when they ran into it.
The trip took longer than fifteen minutes, and as I came to a stop outside the brick townhouse, I was worried that Nina had done something stupid. She sat in a chair on the small front porch with a vaporette pressed between her lips. She never smoked. She got up and flicked the vaporette out onto the sidewalk as I reached the steps.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"I found one on the coffee table. I needed something to settle my nerves, so give me a break on the lecture."
I shrugged. "I can't really judge. Done far worse. Winter still out?"
Her hands balled into fists. "I don't get it. I just don't. It makes zero sense to me. I logged in and searched for him and tried teleporting to his location. The game actually crashed. That's never happened before."
"All right, we'll get it sorted. He's probably playing around in a brothel or something."
Nina's brows knitted together, and she ignored my grin.
"I'm kidding," I said. "I'm sure it's something dumb. Show me where he is."
She opened the screen door, and I followed her in. The living room we stepped into was dimly lit. Two orange bulbs in lamps on either side of the couch barely pushed back any of the darkness. The pale walls were cracked, with small flakes of plaster littering the floor.
At the other end of the room was a set of stairs that led up to the second floor, the white paint peeling to show scarred wood beneath. The place was old and needed work, but it wasn't as bad as where I lived. The most noticeable thing was the lack of technology in plain sight. My neural picked up a bunch of little hidden things, but compared to the large networks and systems in most houses, this place was practically dead.
"He's in here." Nina led me through to the next room. Four monitors were against the back corner, their screens dark. Winter sat slack in his chair, the Immerse System helmet on his head, and he faced the ceiling.
Outside of the cracking world and power uses, few people went through the trouble of getting high-end neural implants if they were older than ten, though more were doing it every year. Most got the basic system and the I-Dent chip installed and used an Omni computer system for anything major. I assumed Winter had been a cracker like the rest of us, but it didn’t seem like it, based on where he lived and the lack of any real tech.
"He's been like this since I got here."
I went over and knelt beside him. The headset looked in good shape, and all the correct lights were on and flashing. Nothing out of the ordinary. Through my neural, I could monitor most of his vitals, and even those checked out.
There were rumors of systems like the Immerse System sometimes not taking log-out commands, but this was different, because
even the fail-safe of throwing him to the floor hadn't kicked him out.
"Jeez, Raggy…"
"Gotta try everything." I pulled the wire from my forearm and connected it to the port of the helmet. The console window came up blank at first, then a burst of colored text began to stream down in columns. I tried to keep up, but it quickly became a jumble to my eyes. When I disconnected, I found myself staring up at the ceiling with a burning sensation in my forearm. I turned to see Nina beside me, her eyes wide and searching.
"Oh, thank God," she whispered.
"What happened?"
"I… I don't know. One moment you were jacked in, and the next, you were out cold on the floor. It was like an overload or something. I pulled your wire as quick as I could. You okay?"
I squinted. There was a slight buzzing in my ears. "I think so. How long was I out?"
"Like, two minutes, I think? Maybe a bit less. I didn't know what to do… what the hell is going on, Raggy? The helmet shouldn't be able to do something like that."
I nodded and rubbed at my forearm while sitting up. "Not normally, but there is something seriously wrong here. I think we need to get him to the hospital."
"What? Can't you do something here?"
"Not from what I can see." I stood, touched the helmet gingerly, and checked Winter's vitals again. All normal. "Whatever is keeping him in there… I don't think it's just the helmet. Come on. Help me get him up."
"He doesn't got insurance," Nina said as she put his arm over her small shoulders.
"That's a stupid excuse. I'll get him covered before we get there." A terminal opened in my neural, and using one of my old backdoors, I broke into Sanguine Insurance Company's client records. I sent the link to Nina for her to fill out.
Outside, we stopped on the walk, and I looked up and down the row of cars. "He got one here?"
"No, he walks everywhere."
I sighed and went to my bike. "All right. You take him, and I'll meet up with you there."
She shook her head viciously, her light-purple hair scattering around her face. "No way am I riding that deathtrap. We'd be dead a block away."
"Fine… I'll take him. Just make sure to get there as fast as you can." I got on the bike and helped Nina load Winter in front of me. I tied the sleeves of his jacket together around my waist to keep him from face planting on the dash. Once he was as secure as he could be, I hit the start button and took off to the nearest hospital.
Two
VR Virus
The hospital looked like an amusement park with all the lights and sounds that filled the drop-off area in front . I turned into the roundabout behind three ambulances and watched their medics pull people out of the back and rush them through the doors. Nurses and doctors lined the hall inside, and a group of them would take a stretcher and run with it into the bowels of the building.
"All right, up we go, Winter," I grunted as I lifted him from the bike. He was too heavy just for me, and I struggled to drag him up onto the sidewalk.
A nurse ran to me, his scrubs dark with sweat. He took Winter's other side and looked at me. "Another one?" He took all the weight. "In VR too, right?"
I looked at him over Winter's helmet, dumbfounded. "There's more?"
"It's getting out of control…" He shouted in the direction of the doors, and another nurse, this one a heavyset woman, came running up and shoved me out of the way with a flustered apology.
They carried Winter into the building and onto a stretcher. For a few minutes, I couldn't decide if I should follow, but as I watched more and more people arrive, I made my choice. I fought my way into the building, pushing through a bunch of nurses and doctors, all of whom cursed and shouted at me.
"What's going on?" I asked when I found the male nurse from before.
He turned tired eyes to me. "I don't have time to explain. We aren't even sure what it is yet, so let us do our jobs. He's in good hands." He carried another stretcher through the door, which swiped closed before I could follow.
Cursing them, I kicked the door. Behind me, more stretchers were showing up, and doctors were fussing over men, women, girls, and boys. At least eight or nine of them rushed past me. From the hall opposite to where I stood, another nurse caught my attention, and her gaze locked with mine. I felt my stomach drop as she moved toward me.
"Excuse me, did you come in with one of those patients?"
"Oh, no. I just brought a friend here. I'm okay."
"I'll be the judge of that. Please come with me."
I took a few steps back. "No, thanks. I'm just gonna wait here for my friends."
The nurse frowned then took my arm. I gritted my teeth as she tugged me along beside her and through another set of doors. We went down a beige hallway with bright lights, then she pulled me into a dimly lit room. Draped sheets of plastic with little flaps for doors filled the room. It looked almost like a campground.
The nurse let me go as we stepped into one of the square rooms, this one just large enough for a table and tray. I held back a whimper at the sight of vials and the injection gun that lay on the tray. I decided then that Nina was a dead girl for getting me into this.
Ever since I'd given up taking drugs a few years before, I'd developed a great dislike of needles. Just seeing them could send me into cold sweats and bladder-leaking terror. I sat down as directed and rubbed the crook of my arm. There were still needle scars there, reminders of my previous addictions.
"Taking any medication?" the nurse asked, and the white mask over her nose and mouth bubbled out a little. I said no. She then asked all the usual questions. I'd been truthful with my name. Knowing they would probably scan my I-Dent chip the moment I stepped into the hospital, I'd had no reason to try to hide. She asked one last question. "Any allergies?"
"Needles," I said as she made her way to the tray.
She squinted in amusement and nodded.
"Do we really have to do this?"
"Afraid so." She primed the injection gun. "Just some blood samples and an antibiotic cocktail. Nothing major, I promise." She rolled up my sleeve, and I turned away to face the semitransparent wall.
Beds appeared as outlines for about five rooms from me. Worry began to sink in as I watched the silhouettes of doctors and nurses behind the plastic walls. If this was some new disease, then I was beyond screwed after riding with Winter for so long. There was no way I hadn't caught it. I felt the prick of the needle, and a wave of sickness washed over me as I looked back and watched the vial fill with my blood.
"Don't look." The nurse turned my head back toward the wall with her free hand. She removed the vial, and another snapped into place, followed by a new shock running up my arm. "I would think that having so many needle marks, you wouldn't be so scared of them."
"It's a long story."
The nurse murmured an acknowledgment and switched vials. She moved the injector farther up and punctured my arm again. This time, it burned like raw fire as she injected something.
I gasped and turned back. "Jesus, you shooting me up with lava?"
"Sorry about that." She finished and placed the injection gun back on the tray. "All done, but you'll have to stay here for observation."
I held the piece of gauze she'd given me to my arm as she started to clean up. "How many?"
"Many what?"
"People. You just poked me a bunch of times, so I think I deserve at least a bit of information. How many people have come in, and what do you know?"
She sighed and leaned against one of the metal poles that held up the room. She tapped on her Omni tablet and looked up. "Twenty-five so far. Fifteen have been reported at other hospitals in the city, and more are showing up all the time."
“You guys think it’s a disease?"
"We don't know yet, so we're taking all the precautions we can."
I nodded. "So what now?"
"Now you wait here."
"My friend will be coming here to see me."
"Have they been exposed as well?"<
br />
"Her boyfriend is the one I came in with." She made a note on her tablet and asked me for information. I gave it to her. "Take it easy with her, all right? She's a bit hardheaded."
The nurse chuckled. "Thanks for the warning. Let's get you into a room and hooked up." She nodded toward the door, and I dropped from the table to follow her out.
"Has anyone died from this?"
She shook her head. "I don't have that information."
"That means someone did. How?"
Even with the mask, I could tell she sneered at me. "I can't tell you any more. We have good people trying to figure this out, so trust in them." She pushed aside more plastic flaps and finally took me to a room with a bed. "Change into the gown that's on the chair. You should only need to stay for a few hours."
"A few hours. Sure." I entered, took off my shirt and pants, and threw on the gown. Of course, my ass hung out the back. I glared at the nurse when she came in. "Can't ever get ones that actually cover everything, can you?"
"They're only made one way. Lie on the bed."
I did so, and she began to place small circular stickers across my chest and arms. "Since you have a neural, we can't check your vitals wirelessly, and we can't trust your neural for accurate reporting. You work in IT? Don't see too many people with a wire port."
"Yeah, I kinda have an unhealthy obsession with my job."
"Gotcha. Well, you're all set. I'll be back in an hour to check on you. If you need something, just hit the button there." She pointed to a panel on the bed, where a large red button sat above a bunch of smaller switches.
"Got it."
She nodded and left. I watched her shadow travel down the hall. When she went through the doors, I lay back onto the pillow and cracked into the hospital's network. I spent the time searching through medical records of those admitted. I was no doctor, but it was obvious this wasn't some virus or plague. Almost all those admitted were using some sort of VR system. I felt a bit annoyed at getting shots for no reason.