The Life- Illusion
Page 36
“So that’s why even if we joined, we could only help you a little bit before…fucks sake dude, you already signed up for Fox.” Jimmy shook his head and sat back with a laugh.
Kurt grinned at him. “You’re still gonna help though, right?”
Jimmy snorted back. “Well yeah. I’ll see if Gadot can join us.” He paused to check the games page. “Oh we’ve got like twenty minutes, plenty of time.”
“If I can make it just fifteen minutes, that’s a fifty-million-dollar payout. That’s worth it even if we don’t win.” Kurt continued pressing his case.
His eyes rising slightly at that, Jimmy glanced over, clearly not convinced it was a good idea. “Pretty big if dude. A five mile head start won’t mean very much with what you’re gonna be facing.” He started swiping through the chat on the game modes page. “Right now, these guys are all just cheering that they got a Fox and talking about how they can’t wait to kill you. You should pay attention to this chat by the way, these idiots will often give away their strategies, or brag about vehicles.”
Kurt pulled up the chat and was immediately accosted by the froth and vitriol of his soon to be opponents. He felt his nerves fraying a bit as he saw the count of the Hounds begin to rise steadily, a new name ticking onto the list every few minutes. “How many are going to be against me?”
“It caps at five hundred.” Jimmy smiled. “Oh don’t worry, most of them will be trying to kill each other…at first.” He shook his head, amused at Kurt’s new plight. “But if you make it past the fifteen minute mark, you’ll be shocked how fast they team up to make sure you don’t get to that next milepost.”
Shifting in his seat a bit, Kurt suddenly became nervous. “I better log over and make sure I’m ready.”
“Yeah, you’re not. Gadot says you’re a jackass, but that she’ll be on to help when it’s time.” Jimmy waved a hand at him dismissively, chuckling at Gadot’s response.
Kurt shrugged, unable to refute the claim, and logged back over to the immersive side of the game. Once there, he immediately pulled up the Lace on his contacts and called them.
“Yes?” As usual, the voice was terse, short spoken, and to the point.
“I need the quartermaster please.” Kurt hung up when he received the positive answer to his request and waited impatiently on the couch, watching his timer tick away.
Leo arrived, wheeling in a thick double wide suitcase behind him. He gave Kurt a warm smile, before sitting down on the coffee table opposite and cocking his head to the side. “How can I be of assistance Mr. Kurtis?”
“Hey Leo. I need some new ammo, I’m about to go up against some heavy hitters.” Kurt was feeling more confident. Gearing up before a fight always helped calm his nerves. “Specifically, I need some better armor piercing rounds for my magnum, something to upgrade my hollow points, and some incendiaries for my 9mm, along with another drum magazine and holder like this one for it.”
“Hmm…I may have…” Leo drifted off, turning to his case and pulling open one part of it, revealing a rack of ammunition boxes. He sifted through them for a moment, before turning and setting two boxes of shells on the table in front of Kurt. “For armor piercing, the best I can offer currently is steel core. A step up from what you have currently.” He moved his hand over the other ammo box. “This is the incendiary.” Laying out the drum magazine and holder, he sat back.
“That works, thanks.” Kurt quickly changed the ammunition in his magnums holder, before adding rounds to his new drum magazine and placing the holder for it on the opposite side of his belt from the one full of Ratshot.
“An upgrade for hollow point ammunition?” Leo looked to him questioningly, one hand in the ammunition drawer of his suitcase. When Kurt nodded his approval, Leo brought out a new box of ammunition. “These are fragmentation rounds. They should serve as a viable upgrade for your current ammunition, and do not suffer the same armor penalty.”
Kurt grabbed the box and shook out a shell. The round looked like it had several smaller bullets in its tip, set into its sharpened point like gemstones. He scanned them to find a significant damage increase, and happily purchased enough to fill what was left of his special ammunition inventory. When he finished his ammo shopping, he had a thousand rounds of his new steel core ammo, a thousand rounds of 9mm fragmentation, and a thousand rounds of incendiary to go along with the Ratshot he always carried. He began to get himself equipped, pulling the straps on his freshly repaired armor tight and applying his various weaponry and consumables to their holders and holsters. Once that was done, Kurt stood up with a deep breath and swiped to log back into the lobby where Jimmy and Gadot were waiting for him.
“Just in time. You better make it fifteen minutes, or we’re both out a million.” Jimmy didn’t sound angry, just mildly annoyed, speaking without looking up from his phone.
“Well…I’ll try and win it, I guess.” Kurt shrugged at his friends, a look of consternation on his face. “…Go team.”
“Somebody wins Fox once a year, and we’re overdue. He might pull it off.” Gadot glanced at her wrist as their game notification came in. She gave Kurt a small smile, her eyebrows peaked in a mostly hopeless gesture. “Kurt’s style is…unusual, you never know.”
“Thanks.” His face screwed up slightly as he swiped to his blinking game invite, his thumb hovering over the accept button. “You guys are kinda dicks.”
Jimmy barked a laugh, pulling up his own invite. “You’re in good company then.” With that, he pressed his thumb to the air above his wrist and vanished. Gadot shrugged and followed.
Kurt took a deep breath and hit his own invite. The lobby faded out as his senses shut down momentarily, providing a brief but panic inducing glimpse at a void without sight or sound. His sense of hearing loaded in first, the rattling hum of rotors giving him an idea of where he would be starting his latest misadventure. Eyes opening on the cargo hold of a large helicopter, Kurt nervously looked around, his gaze settling on the AI representative seated across from him. Her gaze was still tilted slightly to the left of his eyeline, expression slack. He became aware that he was wearing a parachute and leaned forward slightly to alleviate the pressure it put on his back.
“Welcome to The Fox and the Hounds, Mr. Kurtis. The game will begin in two minutes.” She shifted in her seat slightly, turning to face the window behind Kurt. “The rules for Fox are simple; survive any way you can. This is a five hundred vs one mode, and the longer you stay alive, the more your reward will be at the conclusion of the match. Do you have any questions?”
Kurt raised an eyebrow. “Sure. How do I win?”
A ghost of a smile flickered at her lips, and she turned to face him directly for a brief moment. “Aggression…fortitude…luck. Most of all, cunning.” A red light blinked on overhead, and a grinding noise reverberated through his feet from the creased floor, causing him to look down nervously. The length of the cargo hold was split down the middle by what appeared to be a door. He understood what was about to happen and clutched at his parachute straps. “The game begins in thirty seconds. This Representative is required to take a picture of you for the Hounds. Wearing a mask is recommended.” She had gone back to her automaton impression.
“Sure thing, doll…” Kurt reached into his large inner jacket pocket, producing his white wolf mask and strapping it in place, before standing up and crossing his arms with his head cocked slightly to one side. “Creepy, creepy doll. Why don’t you do something horrifying next, just for fun? Maybe dump me from a helicopter at high altitude…”
The AI representative raised a hand-held phone and pressed its screen, causing a flash of light to engulf the cabin. “Thank you, Mr. Kurtis.”
Kurt looked to his phone, seeing a couple of new additions to his main screen. At the top there was now a prominently displayed clock, counting down from thirty seconds. Next to it was an enemy player icon; a little red man with a gun next to the number 500/500. His timer reached ten seconds, and a holographic display of the n
umbers lifted from his phone, counting down with loud chimes. The floor beneath him made a loud clunking sound at three seconds, and Kurt resisted looking down again.
He looked up at the AI representative instead, seated in her wall mounted chair, with a safety belt securing her in place. She met his gaze briefly. “Good luck.” With that, his timer hit zero and the floor fell away beneath him, dropping him into the clouds above the city.
With a quick silent thanks to Jimmy for shoving him out of the Lace’s flying fortress, Kurt angled his body to fall as straight and fast as possible, swallowing his fear and focusing on the task at hand. He had four hundred and ninety-eight players to kill, and just under an hour to do it in. As he fell, he looked around to see dozens of copies of the helicopter he had just fallen from. They were clustered in a giant circle in the air far above the city, each with a group of players plummeting from the bottom of their holds.
Fear began to rise in his gorge as the city grew close in his focus, the distant sky scrapers jutting to the south. Forcing it down, Kurt angled his fall to land in the far northern outskirts of the city, wanting to land more or less directly above where he had dropped. Yanking on his ripcord a mere handful of feet above the rooftops, he landed hard in the grass and unclipped his parachute.
His phone was up, and his attaché was called before he even stopped his stumbling run. “I need the Testarossa.” His attaché responded in the positive and the line went dead as he cautiously hid between two houses. Having run with Gadot made him paranoid to long range rifles and hiding from the possibility seemed prudent. The Ferrari he awaited pulled up to the curb and his attaché fell to dust the instant she parked. He had to pause as he got to the car, pulling up his phone as dozens of different colored flares rose into the sky around him. They were far away, but for the most part they were in a rough circle around his position. “Must be the guilds…”
Kurt snorted to see the player count had dropped by roughly a dozen already and he chalked it up to idiots who couldn’t use a parachute properly, and early game aggression. Dropping into the seat of his car, he revved the engine and sped away, heading towards the Downtown Cluster where the flares were thinnest. He swiped up his map, with the timer and kill counter on the border and flicked it up to the windshield. Cruising at a fast but safe speed, he was dismayed when only three minutes into the match a gang of roughly a dozen players on high speed motorcycles approached from the other side of the freeway. Kurt’s jaw hardened. Time to get aggressive.
He drew his Glock and pressed the button to roll down his window, thrusting the gun out of it and emptying his magazine in the direction of the oncoming bikers. They reacted predictably, each drawing automatic weapons of their own and returning fire. Kurt was pleased to see one of them drop to his initial burst, bouncing along the road before puffing into a cloud of silver dust, but the rest of the pack swerved and cut across the lanes, falling in behind him and revving their engines to catch up. Kurt floored his own accelerator, reveling in the lack of NPCs to get bogged down in. He streaked down the empty freeway as the players behind him began firing indiscriminately in his general direction.
Rounds spattered the road around him and sunk into his car and body, driving home the point that this would be over quickly if all he did was run. Health would regenerate if he could shake them, but armor was a limited quantity, and his had dropped by a quarter already. He grabbed a drum magazine of Ratshot and slapped it home, glancing at his rear-view mirror to gauge his opponents distance. Once they were within range, he sprayed the drum magazine at the bikes, attempting to hit their wheels. He was disappointed, as no tires burst, and the return fire became more aggressive. Kurt let off the accelerator slightly, letting the car drift over a couple of lanes and ducking low in his seat as he allowed the motorcycles to catch him up. With a jerk of the steering wheel and a jab at the gas pedal, he sent the Ferrari into a spin. Ducked down and holding his breath, Kurt spun out of control directly into the pack of motorcycles going at full speed towards him. Several thuds and screams of twisting metal accompanied the sound of shattering glass as he tore through the pack, wiping most of the clustered bikes out even as every window in his own vehicle was blasted apart.
The Ferrari slid to a stop against the center divider, Kurt’s foot firm on the brake while he ducked to avoid the glass and bullets flying around him. He lifted his gun hand to the windshield, spraying a magazine of fragmentation rounds into the road around him with a quick rotation of his wrist before sitting up straight. He dropped out the magazine, replacing it with his new drum of incendiary rounds. As he hit the gas and sped away from the few bikers left, he lit two of them on fire, no remorse visible on the features of his mask. The players count on his phone continued to plummet, far more players dying than he was responsible for. With a shrug, he figured the teams must be actively engaging each other and sped away. Distant gunfire and explosions seasoned the air in the otherwise eerily silent city.
The only biker to have dodged Kurt’s spin revved his engine and lifted his bikes front wheel from the ground as he pursued, his team’s wipeout not enough to dissuade him. His bike was pure white with chrome trim, and his motorcycle pants, jacket, and helmet matched. Kurt fired a magazine of fragmentation rounds at him, reaching his arm back towards the rear window. He dodged the incoming fire, swerving to either side of the freeway before accelerating towards Kurt again, a large chrome painted FN90 personal defense weapon pointed forward. Kurt tried to dodge the incoming fire, but most of the bullets seemed to find his car, and he was forced to duck low in his seat as it began to erupt in puffs of cloth and leather. He glanced at his HUD to see his health had dipped slightly and another sliver of his armor was gone, one of the tiny bullets having found purchase in his back with a sharp sting. The player count was continuing to drop, falling below four hundred and fifty. He looked back up to see a low slung florescent green car hurtling directly towards him, the spark of gunfire already lighting up its front end in warped reflections. Kurt swerved hard, bouncing against a nearby concrete divider as the other car whipped past. The biker also swerved, dumping his motorcycle as he barely managed to avoid being crushed.
The vulgarly green car spun expertly on the freeway, causing Kurt to grimace nervously. He recovered his partial crash and poured on the gas, hoping to get away from this new enemy. His Ratshot was regenerated, so he fumblingly loaded his Glock with it and swung the gun towards the road behind him. Two other low slung high powered cars had joined the chase, swerving into the freeway from side roads. A grim expression on his face, Kurt held his fire until the green car was closer, then sprayed the entire magazine through his rear window, aiming for the road line and his opponent’s tires. Nothing happened, and Kurt was forced to realize that he was likely the only one in this match without bulletproof tires. He ducked from the return fire and darted his car up an offramp. As he reached the top and began a turn, a large pickup truck swerved around a nearby corner and headed towards him, a monstrous machine gun opening fire from its bed. His opponents followed him up the ramp, but Kurt cut the wheel and drove back down the opposing on ramp, continuing his arc towards the Downtown Cluster in an attempt to avoid the large caliber bullets filling the air. More high end sports cars were falling in behind him and engaging from the front, and Kurt was forced into a near constant crouched state as bullets filled the air around him.
His intention was to make a lap through the city, using the buildings to lose some of his pursuers, but the fleet of military vehicles that approached from in front of him derailed that slightly. Three tanks of various origin and six technical vehicles with mounted machine guns flanked a strangely low slung twelve wheeled semi-truck with a series of long tubes in its cargo area. A tank shell exploded against a bridge support beside him and he cut the wheel, swerving into the heart of the cluster. He glanced at his clock, an exasperated grunt forcing its way out of him as he saw the timer tick past the eight minute mark. A series of loud explosions and a sudden drop in the enemy
player count caused him to turn his car around again, coming up on the freeway from a street a few blocks away. A small war was playing out below him, the varied military vehicles engaging the swarm of sports cars to a predictable end. The white motorcycle made its return then, revving directly through the vehicles and wrecks on the freeway. He ducked his bike behind a technical while shooting its gunner. A nearby tank belched fire at him, causing them to destroy one of their own vehicles before he darted through the cloud of smoke and accelerated into the city. He dropped a blinking satchel on the onramp behind him as he drove, lifting a rude gesture without looking as the onramp crumbled in a thick orange fireball.
Kurt turned his now smoking car around and drove into the city when he noticed an obviously armed helicopter swing around a nearby hill and duck its nose towards him. The sky tore apart in the roar of high powered engines as a Harrier jet swept through and annihilated the helicopter with a streak of bright sabot rounds, dipping to aim at Kurt as he fled. The road behind him erupted in asphalt and sparks as the Harrier switched into hover mode on the fly and attempted a sweeping bank to follow him. It slipped behind a building and Kurt immediately changed directions. A cluster of bright green flares rose into the sky from the freeway as he fled, and he was reminded of Jimmy’s warning about crews, as answering flares lifted above the rooftops further north. More dots encroached from all directions on his map, and Kurt quickly realized there were no safe paths through the city. The different players and crews all hunting him were spreading out, hoping to avoid one another as they attempted to engage him. His practice with the GoonStorm forces was coming in handy, as he began playing cat and mouse again, on a much grander scale.