by Scott McEwen
Jalen took off his headset and was about to go downstairs when he heard his laptop ding from the desk across the room.
Commenters already, he thought.
He opened his email and saw the sender was someone he didn’t recognize—Encyte. He wondered if it was spam, and he read the subject line out loud: REALITY IS BROKEN.
The words intrigued and chilled him. He paused, then opened the email. The message only contained three words: You did it. At the bottom was a YouTube link. Jalen clicked and was suddenly viewing his own livestream. “What in the world…”
On one side of the screen was the typical Twitch video—the game format and the view of the gamer in his room. Jalen saw a boy sitting on a bed, wearing a VR headset playing a video game on Twitch. Because of the VR headset, it took Jalen a half second to realize the boy in the video was him. On the other side of the screen, there was actual footage of the actual food truck court. The hairs on the back of Jalen’s neck stood up and his stomach soured as he realized it was the same as the game he’d just played, except this food truck court was real, and the people were real, enjoying a beautiful day in some town, in the United States. They were getting lunch, hanging out, having fun, and then, just as the Twitch video showed Jalen driving the stolen eighteen-wheeler into the food truck, a real eighteen-wheeler with high-tech gizmos on the roof sped onto the screen. The truck plowed into bodies—humans. Jalen could hear himself laughing in the video over the screams of people being slaughtered on what should have been an ordinary Saturday.
Jalen’s hands shook. He ran to the bathroom, fell to his knees, and vomited.
CHAPTER 3
Wyatt’s head was not in the game. Sure, he wore a helmet and cleats and held a long titanium stick. His eyes followed the gameplay from the sidelines where he waited to be sent back in, but his mind was elsewhere, lost in a moment nine months before when she was taken from him, from her family, from this world, and no one aside from a small band of misfits and outlaws knew it. Not even his teammates—many of whom considered him a great friend—had any idea who Wyatt was and what he had lost. Wyatt kicked at the dirt, wanting to shake the thoughts in his head, but he couldn’t. He wanted to be present for his team, especially now, but Dolly kept creeping back in.
His team, the Bulldogs, was playing in the Virginia State Championship semifinal for high school men’s lacrosse, and even though he’d started the season with the other freshmen on the bench, his aggression and speed had earned him a spot as a long-stick midfielder with a reputation as a go-to in clutch situations, an enforcer who could make things happen. Wyatt, with his slight, scrappy build, should not have excelled in this sport he’d only played for a few months, but the truth of the matter was this: he was 165 pounds of pure, raging teen. The shaggy hair, the jaded eyes, the jutted-out chin—from across the field it was easy to see that an anger had set in him so deep it went to the bone, and he took it out on anyone who dared to stand in front of him.
It was how he coped. Pushing his body to the brink. Letting physical pain distract from what was inside him. If his thoughts settled for even a moment, he knew what would surface—Dolly: gagged and bound, the life gone from her wide, dark eyes. And then he would see Mr. Yellow, the pit rings around his button-up when he told Wyatt the news: “We found a body in South America. Washed up in the river. Dental records are a match.”
Wyatt had not saved her. And worse, he was the reason she was used as bait.
“Get in there and take somebody out!” Wyatt’s coach screamed at him from the sidelines, shaking him from his trance. The Bulldogs were down one point with two minutes left and as always, Coach used Wyatt when he needed to shake things up.
“Yes, sir!” Wyatt called out and ran onto the field. Because his captain had fouled out, Wyatt’s team was a man down, and the player cradling the ball in front of him was the opposing team’s best attackman. The ref blew the whistle, and the attackman ran at Wyatt, then rolled. Wyatt tripped. The attackman got a step ahead and ran toward the goal and hitched his stick back to shoot, but Wyatt, teeth bared, caught up to him and with his six-foot titanium shaft, snapped hard on the boy’s ascended stick. The white rubber lacrosse ball popped out, and with a practiced flip of the wrist, Wyatt swung the head of his stick and secured it, running in a slight arc toward the other team’s goal. Wyatt ran with his own stick out in front of him, so the players chasing and lashing him with their sticks weren’t able to jar the ball loose.
Wyatt ran down the field and crossed over into the other team’s defensive zone, creating a four on three. Normally the defense would “slide” toward Wyatt, opening up an attackman who Wyatt could pass to, but this wasn’t happening. The other team was making the bet that Wyatt—with his long stick and less than perfect stick skills—would not attempt a play on the goal. But he did. Moving the stick from his right hand to his left and cutting hard toward the center of the field, he sped toward the crease in front of the goal. Angling straight for the goal, still switching his hands back from left to right, Wyatt’s eyes shifted to the lower left corner of the net. The center defenseman, a 240-pound senior who’d already committed to play at an Ivy League school, slid off his attackmen and ran full speed at Wyatt, his stick pointed like a spear at Wyatt’s chest. Wyatt took the shot, expecting to get hit, wanting to get hit. But he saw the defenseman slow and turn his head, tracking the ball with his eyes. Wyatt figured the guy was going to hit him a second before. Why deprive him of the chance? He lowered his head and rammed the six-foot-three defenseman, planting his shoulder in the giant player’s chest, knocking him to the ground and then stepping over him, like a boxer after a knockout blow.
The defenseman writhed on the ground, cradling his forearm. Within seconds, a couple of medics rushed the field and began checking, but Wyatt just stood there, watching him squirm. He could hear the crowd screaming. He finally looked over to see if he’d scored. The ball had stopped rolling somewhere behind the goal, far out of bounds. He’d missed. Game over. But he’d tagged his man.
* * *
“Hey.”
Wyatt heard a voice behind him and knew immediately who it was. He turned to see his father, Eldon Waanders, standing outside the locker room. As usual, his father’s sunglasses sat a little crooked, his left ear missing from his previous summer as a hostage of the psychotic killer the Glowworm.
“Good game,” Eldon said somewhat cheerily as they walked across the gravel parking lot. “Except for your crappy attitude.” His tone turned stern. “I don’t care that you lost, but you took a cheap shot and you almost hurt that guy.”
“Whatever,” Wyatt said, slinging his bag over his shoulder and crunching gravel. “That dude was twice my size. His fault if he can’t take it.”
“Look,” Eldon said, following his son. “I know it hasn’t been easy since we’ve been back, but you’re gonna have to get control of yourself.”
Wyatt slung his gear into the back of the car and slammed the trunk.
“If anyone has a reason to be angry, it’s me.” Eldon pressed the finger of his mutilated hand into his son’s chest and held his gaze. “And if anyone has a reason to want revenge … it’s me.”
“Come on, Dad, you still have Mom. The woman you love didn’t get stabbed to death because of you. Don’t you get it?”
“No, but she’s lived alone for the better part of twenty years. Thinking I just ran off on her. She was hurt too—”
“Hurt, but alive—” Wyatt said and then added, “Why didn’t she come to the game?”
“I don’t know.” Eldon hesitated. “Maybe—I think she still has a tough time being out with me in social situations.”
“That’s great,” Wyatt said and kicked a patch of gravel across the lot.
“I’m sorry, buddy,” Eldon was saying when he caught a glimpse of a familiar car out of the corner of his eye. They’d been so engrossed, they hadn’t realized they were being watched. Two faces peered through the windshield of the sedan parked a few rows over:
Mr. Yellow, the fixer for Camp Valor, and Avi Amit, the former Mossad agent and Valor’s less-than-cuddly security expert.
“Are they here for you?” Wyatt asked his dad.
“Something tells me they want you.” Eldon waved as Avi got out and pulled down his sunglasses.
“Eldon!” Avi called out with a nod. “We need Wyatt.”
“Nice to see you too!” Eldon joked. “Have at him.”
Avi started toward Wyatt, speaking as he got close. “Wyatt, there’s a kid we need you to talk to. About the attack in Texas that a criminal or criminal network, Encyte, took credit for. He’s in Detroit and we need you there tonight.”
Wyatt looked at his father, waiting for an answer.
“Sure.” Eldon shrugged.
“Really?” Wyatt said. “I’m not punished?”
“You’re not a kid anymore, Wyatt,” Eldon said. “Go do something useful with yourself.”
“We’ll have him back by midnight.” Avi opened the car door for Wyatt. “We’ll keep you in the loop.”
* * *
Mr. Yellow aimed the sedan out of the lot onto the highway, heading for Charlottesville’s Albemarle Airport. The damp, late spring air swirled through the car, smelling sweet, like young leaves and distant barbecue smoke.
In the back seat, Wyatt had changed from his wet undershirt to a dry T-shirt with a soft hoodie and a clean pair of mesh lacrosse shorts. He was still sweating slightly but the breeze cooled his skin.
“You need a shower.” Avi scrunched his nose and rolled down the window farther.
“You were the one in the big hurry,” Wyatt said, slipping on his headphones.
Mr. Yellow drove them to a private terminal and parked outside a nondescript hangar. They cut through a small lobby, reminiscent of a car dealership—wafting gasoline and a burning pot of coffee. They passed onto the tarmac, where a Citation jet waited for them, gassed and ready. The pilot welcomed them aboard, and a few minutes later, they were airborne, en route to Detroit, to an airport that catered to military and private aviation.
Mr. Yellow found Wyatt staring out the window seat facing the rear of the plane. “Could you take those off?” He motioned to the Bose headphones.
Wyatt obliged, the punk rock bleeding from the headphones.
“So the official death toll from the Austin attack is fifty-three.” Mr. Yellow slid into the seat beside Wyatt and began his brief on the developing situation. “Dozens more injured, some gravely—paraplegics, one quadriplegic, amputations. Victims include Sanjeet Rao, the CEO of GoTech Industries, and Chris Moriarty, a CBS news anchor, and a cameraman, all killed after the truck rammed into the first police car.”
Mr. Yellow passed a folder to Wyatt, who paused before opening it. In it, the faces of the dead. He looked over them—elderly, children—his eyes glazed over.
“Law enforcement on the scene opened fire into the cab of the truck,” Mr. Yellow said. “It’s unclear if all three inside were killed by gunfire. The cameraman wasn’t wearing a seat belt and may have died from head trauma before being shot.”
“A couple dozen students from UT were also killed,” Avi joined in as Wyatt looked through the images. “Three professors. A high school civics teacher, four middle schoolers, a nun, a family with young children, and a grandmother.”
“The digital operator of the semi, Jalen Rose, is a teenager,” Mr. Yellow added. “Bright kid, no record or any major trouble. Attends St. Mary’s Prep School. Mom and dad are athletes, but the boy is pretty big into gaming.”
Wyatt looked at Jalen’s face. “I saw the YouTube video on the news.”
“That video,” Avi added, “has made him the most hated human in America, the scapegoat. The unedited version was viewed eleven million times before it was pulled. Thankfully, he was wearing the VR, or he’d probably be another victim. Everyone is trying to figure out the boy’s identity. He’s been getting death threats, so authorities put him in protective custody outside Detroit.”
“He is a victim,” Wyatt said somberly. “Even if he pulled the trigger.”
Avi nodded.
“But how could these even happen? I mean, technically speaking?” Wyatt asked.
“An interesting and complicated question,” Avi said. “You want the simple version or the real answer, the one cloud technology PhDs are trying to figure out?”
Wyatt gave Avi a look. “When I need to bore myself to sleep, I’ll ask for the extended version, for now let’s shoot for simple.”
“Okay, so the servers that allow the video game to work and the GoTech-outfitted truck to drive both reside in the cloud—meaning, on remote computers accessed through an internet connection, where they have massive amounts of computing power, so the cloud can tell the car where to drive and so players can interact in a virtual game environment. These servers reside in separate data centers, and in the case of GoTech, in highly secure data centers that supposedly cannot be accessed by anything or anyone but the remote GoTech devices. You follow?”
Wyatt nodded.
“Somehow Encyte was able to hack into the GoTech data center, find the server for that truck, and replace the part of the cloud computer that tells the truck where to drive with part of the gaming computer that received instructions from the gamer’s controller. At the same time, Encyte took all of the live video, LiDAR, and live data the GoTech computer was using to see the street and converted it to the data the gaming computer’s virtual reality engine was using to produce the graphics environment the gamer was experiencing while playing. This combination let the gamer control the truck while seeing everything the truck’s computer saw in real time, but in his video-game world.”
Wyatt paused. “So that was the simple version?”
“As simple as I could make it.”
“So basically, Encyte hacked into the GoTech computer and put the videogamer in control with a video-game view of the truck.”
Avi shrugged. “Sure. That’s one very simple—almost absurdly stupid—version of what happened.”
“Thanks.” Wyatt smiled. “I assume the FBI’s Cyber Division is investigating. Any leads?”
“They’re going through Jalen’s home internet, computer, and console, as well as GoTech’s servers now, looking for evidence of the hack. It’s going to take a long time—the servers are massive. So there’s nothing yet. We do have the email Encyte sent Jalen. It contained the subject line: REALITY IS BROKEN. That mean anything to you?”
“Actually, yes. I first heard it doing research into Glowworm Gaming. It’s a phrase used by gamers,” said Wyatt. “And a book. Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and Can Change the World.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Avi asked.
“It’s a worldview,” Wyatt explained. “Gamers think the worlds they experience in a video game are superior to reality. Reality, in their view, is flawed and doesn’t follow the perfectly ordered logic of a well-designed game. Games are logical and designed from the ground up to match our needs perfectly. Games provide the things we need in reality, like a sense of accomplishment, total engagement with the world around us—what we don’t get from life. Anyway, that’s the gist.”
“Now you have me confused. Gaming is not reality, so it has no consequences?” said Avi.
“Games do have consequences. You can make money, or lose it—a lot. The gaming economy is massive.”
“And just look at Austin,” Mr. Yellow said. “Those are very real consequences.”
“I think what he’s trying to say is that the world we live in is broken,” Wyatt said. “Games can make us better, games can improve life. And now he’s playing a game with us. Trying to change the world through his games.” He stared out the jet window at a vast sunset the color of a drying bloodstain. “Or that’s my thought at this time.”
“Avi, let’s get this book Wyatt is talking about,” said Mr. Yellow.
“Already on that,” said Avi.
Wyatt looked back at them. “Is this Encyte�
��s first attack? Or do we have a preexisting criminal profile?”
“Interesting you ask,” Avi said. “Do you remember the Sneaker Riot this past year?”
Wyatt shook his head.
“Weezo, the sneaker company owned by rapper Young Tarique, makes collectible shoes and decided to do a drop. You know what a drop is, right?”
“Yeah. To hype a product. You announce a drop in an area with a limited supply.”
“In this case, Weezo—or someone claiming to be Weezo—released an app to locate the pop-up, but when fans got to the drop—a church basement in SoHo, in New York—there were thousands of people and just a few pairs of shoes.”
“The reaction was completely out of hand,” Mr. Yellow said. “A riot ensued, inside the closed area.”
Wyatt looked incredulous. “But a riot? Over shoes?”
Mr. Yellow held up a can of Sprite and shook it. “But everyone was trapped, like the gas in this can, excited, bouncing off each other. The room was ready to explode. And then it did.”
Wyatt eyed the can. “You got one of those unshaken?”
“Yes.” Mr. Yellow cracked a different Sprite and poured it into a plastic cup. “It was like a Black Friday brawl on steroids. Got very violent. The press blamed it on the hip-hop element. Weezo denied any knowledge of the drop. And it faded away in the news cycle. But what the public didn’t know was that the shoe company that supposedly organized the drop was entirely blameless. The app—our intel informs us—was created by Encyte and used to corral thousands of people, many of them impressionable teenagers, in a church basement that been suffused with a lethal cocktail of norepinephrine and adrenaline.”
“Hormones,” Avi said, “were released into the air so the people, who were already stressed and excited by the sneakers, experienced a chemical shift in their brains—and bingo.”