Life: Online: A gamelit novel

by Shiloh Hunt

  “Yes, of course.” Cecil dipped his head. “I give you leave to place the object in my inventory, player.”

  Kitty hesitated, glancing at her open inventory. The object Cecil referred to with such reverence was a hand-held radio, identical to the one she’d had. She placed it over Cecil’s avatar, and it disappeared.

  “You have it?”

  Cecil drew in a deep breath, pressing his fingertips to the edge of the coffee station he stood at.

  “Yes, player. It is a heavy burden to carry, but indeed my path has never been one strewn with golden chests and health potions.”

  “I really don’t know what that means,” Kitty said, but Cecil chose not to enlighten her.

  “As my oath decrees, what needs to be done will be done and within the hour. This I swear,” Cecil said, taking up the cup and saucer and facing her. “But there is something I insist upon in return.”

  “Sure,” Kitty said. “Whatever you want.”

  Cecil gave a small nod, sipping at his tea as he stared at the corrugated wall behind Kitty.

  “I understand what it must be like.” He ambled over to the sofa and sank down onto it. “You hear my story, you think that there is no possible way I could still be sane.”

  Kitty tried a non-committal shrug, but Cecil’s expression didn’t alter.

  “Whether or not you believe me, player, I shall have you swear an oath.”

  “Sure.” Kitty made sure her nod was gentle but emphatic; it was important that she make no sudden movements.

  “You must swear that once you have found this William of whom you seek, that you shall return to Polaris, if indeed it is still possible to do so.”

  Kitty stopped her head mid-nod. “Uh… why?”

  “Because there will never be enough players to stand vigil,” Cecil replied. “With enough players, we can be assured to know the instant the menu is available. And then, we will be able to Save Our Game and Exit.”

  He spoke the words not like they were the usual actions associated with computer and console games the world over, but like a reverential ritual. She could hear the capital letters slamming into place.

  “Ja, sure. I will… I’ll return as soon as I’ve found Will.”

  Cecil’s eyes bored into her skull. “Then our conversation is over.”

  He rose, unfolding slowly, stiffly, and bathed her in a radiant smile. Kitty stood less gracefully, suppressing a wince. Instead of moving, Cecil watched her until Kitty’s skin began crawling.

  “What is it?” she asked when she couldn’t stand the infuriating silence any more.

  “How long have you been on your path, player?”

  “I’m not sure—”

  Cecil rolled his eyes. “In-game.”

  “Oh… um… eight hours. Little more, I think.”

  Cecil approached her then, cautiously, as if worried she would take scare.

  “There is no need to hold onto the negativity of the past, player. Instead, release your affiliations with what was and move toward a new future. A brighter future.”

  Kitty stared at him. “I have no idea—”

  Cecil’s upraised finger interrupted her. “When the time comes, you will know.”

  They descended the stairs, Kitty following Cecil down the staircase with stiff, jerky movements. He beckoned for her to exit the last container and stood at the threshold with hands clasped behind his back.

  Kitty got a few feet before he called after her, “Be careful, player.”

  She turned, pausing in stride, to frown at him.

  “There is much duality within Lucy Fur. He comes to you bathed in light. But in truth he is overwrought with shadow. I fear the path he walks is far removed from the path he claims to take you down.”

  And with that, Cecil turned on his heel and disappeared into the darkness of the container. The guards stared impassively toward her, as if their master hadn’t just belted out some arcane warning that left Kitty’s blood ice cold and her skin two sizes too small.

  Lucy was leaning against the wall, eyeing the guard with ill-concealed malice. She cleared her throat. The guard stepped aside to let her through, flashing a smile that evaporated an instant later. Lucy pushed away from the wall, lifted his chin at the guard, and clanged down the stairs in front of her.

  As soon as they’d emerged into the hum-drum of the first mountain step, Lucy spun to face her.

  “Did he take it?”

  Kitty nodded. Her mind was whirring with Cecil’s words — both his maniacal ravings and his last, more sane, warning.

  “Said he’ll do what needs to be done in an hour.”

  “Probably within the hour?”

  “Something like that.” She gave Lucy a sidelong glance. “You could have warned me about what a fracking fruit-cake he was.”

  “Nothing I said could have prepared you,” Lucy said. “Interesting theory though, isn’t it?”

  Was he was leading her somewhere? She stopped and crossed her arms over her chest, waiting for him to register that she wasn’t following anymore. When he did, Lucy strode back to her with a flash of annoyance creasing the corners of his dark eyes.

  “It’s not safe for us in the open. Hurry.” He reached for her, but Kitty sidestepped his grasping fingers.

  “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s going on with you,” Kitty said. “Why are you helping me? You know stuff about every rift we’ve been through. Stuff only a player who’d finished the levels would know, but you said you’d only been to Helical before getting zapped back to Chimera.”

  Lucy’s eyes widened as her harangue lengthened. The sense of urgency in his expression grew, and he beckoned her with frantic fingers.

  “You’ve got questions,” he said. “I get that. But I can’t answer them. Not out here. Come. Just come.”

  She opened her mouth, and he lunged forward to grip her wrist.

  “Leave me alone!” she shrieked.

  Lucy ignored her protests as he dragged her along after him with a grimace.

  “Hey!” She dug in her heels, but there was no purchase to be had on the smooth metal underfoot. “Help! Someone—”

  Lucy kicked in the door of a lopsided container and hurled her inside. The light streaming in from outside was cut off as the door slammed behind them. In the darkness, Kitty scrambled up and crashed headlong into a wall.

  Electricity shot through her, blinding in its intensity.

  It was the game’s suit. It was simply sending a few mild electrical currents through her, simulating pain. But this was no simulation. Her muscles spasmed in agony as cold fire coursed through her.

  There was a hand over her mouth, but she didn’t have the strength to fight it. Another hand pressed her shoulder down. A knee pinned her leg. Then another. A weight settled on her, trapping her.

  The pain fled as quickly as it had arrived. Kitty wept silently, Lucy’s hand muffling any sound she could have tried to make.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” Lucy said.

  She kept silent, mostly because that was the only option available. Lucy was a suggestion of a shape, the darkness of the container absolute.

  “But if you make too much of a noise,” Lucy went on, “you might alert a guard. If someone finds us here, they’ll start asking questions we can’t answer.”

  Kitty nodded. Lucy lifted his hand.

  “Like how you killed—” Kitty began.

  Lucy’s hand cut off her words before they reached their intended volume.

  “Yeah. Exactly,” Lucy said. “Another point I am as eager to explain to you as you are eager to have explained. But I need you to know: I will help you find William. It’s not a lie. And I will take you to Bang-Bang Island, to the Arena. Do you understand?”

  Kitty gave him a nod.

  “Then I’ll get up. But you can’t run. You cannot scream or cause a ruckus of any kind. Do you understand?”

  His voice had changed. It had grown rough, almost hoarse. He spoke deliberatel
y. Not like Cecil, trying to explain something to an infant, but as if he had to make sure she grasped the gravity of his words.

  She nodded again.

  “Good. Okay.” He lifted his hand.

  Kitty decided not to scream. Not yet, anyway.

  Lucy got off her, the sound of his movement indicating he stood about a yard away. Kitty rose to her feet and stared toward his shadow. Where was the door? She’d gotten turned around when she’d fallen. It could be behind him, for all she knew. There was no indication of light falling in from outside to help her with her decision, either.

  “Okay,” she said. “Now’s as good a time as any. Best you start telling me what in the name of the void is going on.”

  She didn’t know if he’d nodded — she couldn’t see his face.

  “What Cecil said in there,” Lucy asked. “Did it make sense to you?”

  Kitty blinked a few times. “What he said about what? He said a lot of really fracked up shit, so you’re going to have to help me out here.”

  “About the game. About refreshing. Did it make sense to you?”

  “What? No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because…” Kitty licked her lips. “Because they’d let us know as soon as the menu was working. It’s just a waste of time: hanging around, waiting for it to be fixed. That’s like Nick waiting in Helical because he thinks something bad will happen if he leaves. The only way out of here is to get to the Arena and find the moderators. Else, why would they have told us to go there?”

  “Exactly,” Lucy said. “There would be no reason for them to lie. Their number one priority is to get as many players out of the game as they can. They would have no reason to do otherwise.”

  Kitty frowned. Lucy’s tone wasn’t filled with conviction. Instead, it bordered on sarcastic.

  “But that’s not what you think, is it?” Kitty asked.

  “Doesn’t matter what I think,” Lucy said. “What matters is that I get you to your William, and then both of you to the Arena. Why anything else should make the slightest difference to you, I can’t—”

  A voice rang out: clear, loud and from an unseen source.

  “And so it shall come to pass,” the voice intoned, “that each and every player will be given seven chances to repent. No more, no less. Yeah, for every rift there will be an opportunity for deliverance.”

  “What the—” Kitty began.

  “Quiet!” Lucy hissed.

  “Twice—” the voice went on “—we’ve refused to repent. And twice have we denied unto ourselves the prize of the void.”

  Was it Cecil? That deep baritone couldn’t possibly have been produced by the same weaselly, insane man she’d had tea with, could it?

  “Fear not the void, players, for it is She who you should welcome. The void is our eternal release, and this, the game, our purgatory. So repent now, ye sinful players. Repent, that the void may open her arms and welcome you into her glacial embrace. Thus I beseech you: repent, for the end is nigh!”

  “I believe that’s our cue.” Lucy’s hand was around her wrist an instant later. “Now let’s get the hell out of this void-forsaken place.”

  Level 5

  Off to Carnage Mountain

  “The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world.”

  G-Man - Half Life 2

  18

  The container’s door flew open as Lucy thrust his shoulder against it. Outside, dark-robed players swarmed past, cowls whipped from their heads.

  “Don’t let go.” The sound of the crowd's terrified cries nearly drowned out Lucy's voice.

  Kitty grabbed his wrist and he hauled her after him as he dodged through the stream of delirious players.

  “What’s happening?” Kitty screamed. “What did he do?”

  Lucy didn’t look back at her, but she could hear snatches of his reply.

  “—end of—glitch is—the third—”

  Buffered by the maddened crowd, they were herded toward the tunnel exiting the mountain.

  “Hold on!” Lucy yelled. “Don’t let go!”

  The mass of players was suddenly constricted by the narrow tunnel mouth. Lucy shouldered aside a woman, sending her sprawling. Far behind them, a plasma rifle sounded, its thwack-thwack-thwack filling the air with noise and vibration.

  The crowd’s movements became even more agitated. Kitty’s hand was almost ripped free from Lucy’s as a guard’s elbow winded her. She clung with iron desperation to Lucy as he pushed and shoved his way through the bottleneck of human flesh.

  Another rifle joined the first. Then a third. A fourth. The sounds drew closer. A player shoved Kitty into Lucy’s back, hands grappling with her to try and drag her out of the way. Lucy’s head swung around, his body stiffening when his eyes settled on the player behind her, manhandling her. A plasma rifle appeared in his free hand, Lucy’s facial expression not shifting in the slightest as he swung it to the player and pulled the trigger. Kitty felt more than heard the shots going off, and then the player’s hands fell away from her, his body disappearing underneath fluttering robes as the crowed surged over his corpse.

  Lucy turned sideways, gripped Kitty, and drew her against him.

  Someone’s elbow connected with her ear. Kitty wailed. Back on Earth, the game’s kit was struggling to keep up with the various points of contact that could be causing her pain, seemingly attempting to compensate for any it might have missed by electrocuting her to death.

  Lucy hugged her, one arm clutching her waist, her robe trapped inside his fist. He gave her a grim look and swung his arm over her head, plasma rifle now facing forward.

  Thwack-thwack-thwack.

  Whoever Lucy had been trying to push past was no longer there. Kitty surged into the void left by their transmogrification from a human into a holier-than-thou corpse, but Lucy’s grip kept her from falling. He bared his teeth and swung the plasma rifle over her head again, narrowly avoiding knocking her unconscious with the clunky barrel. Beside them, another player was sent to their untimely demise.

  Lucy waded forward, eyes set straight ahead and teeth gleaming as he cleared a path for them. The back of Kitty’s robe was wet with blood, and her legs shook from the awkward position she had to walk in by the time they exited the mountain.

  “Follow me,” Lucy cried as he released her. “And hurry!”

  They shot from the mouth of the tunnel and into the vast, black desert-scape of Polaris, surrounded by the yells and sobs of disorientated players. Lucy ran ahead. Kitty struggled to keep up with him as they crunched over the black sand, following the curve of the mountain. He’d holstered his plasma rifle on his back, its silhouette dwarfing him.

  After a few minutes of running, Kitty’s stamina ran out.

  “Wait up!”

  Lucy swung around, halting immediately. He jogged back to her, taking hold of her arm. She tried batting him off.

  “My stamina’s run out,” she said. “You go ahead, I’ll catch up.”

  “No, we’ll wait.” Lucy stared over her shoulder, eyes narrowing as if calculating distances. “Bonzo should be nearby.”

  “I would ask who the hell Bonzo is, but since I doubt you’ll give me a straight-up answer, I’m not going to bother.” Kitty crouched, grabbing a handful of midnight sand and letting it pour through her fingers.

  There was a lot she just couldn’t wrap her head around. She knew how the suit worked; okay, as much as any ordinary person knew how electricity or computers worked. She could even roughly grasp how software and hardware — General Gaming’s patented Mindware™ — could be made to induce a dream-state on someone. But how in the name of the void could you share someone else’s dream? Thousands of other people’s dreams? That was the point where reality’s knees began wobbling.

  Lucy’s boot appeared in her vision, sinking into the glimmering sand. “Your stamina full yet?”

  “Almost.” Kitty glared at him. “What did he do?”

  “Cecil?”


  “You know of another raving lunatic puking out apocalyptic revelations?”

  Lucy bristled, eyes narrowing. “He created a diversion for us to escape.”

  “We needed a diversion? Couldn’t you just have—”

  Lucy lunged forward, grabbing her arm. “Your stamina. Is it full?”

  She jerked her arm free. “Almost.”

  “Then we have to leave. Now.”

  “What’s the hurry? We’re free.”

  Lucy whipped his hand away, laughing mirthlessly at the ground before wiping his hand over his face.

  “We’re anything but free. But that’s a discussion for another day. Right now, we have to leave,” he said, voice a calm monotone.

  “Why did Cecil want me to come back?”

  Lucy opened his mouth, but then paused. “He what?” A frown marred his forehead as he glanced away, toward the mountain they’d just escaped. “Why would you say that?”

  “Because he made me swear an oath that I’d come back here when I’d found William.”

  Lucy’s eyes came back to her and settled with an unexpected intensity.

  “He said that?”

  “You’re the only one of us who’s a good liar, Lucy.”

  Lucy shrugged off the accusation, his eyes sliding away from her again.

  “He’s always looking for more players to join his cause. He no doubt thinks you owe him after all of that.” Lucy waved a hand in the general direction of Carnage Mountain, Polaris and snorted. “He’s crazy, Kitty. Being in-game as long as he has will do that to you.”

  “How long is that?”

  “Eleven hours, give or take.”

  Kitty gaped at him. “I don’t believe you.”

  “I didn’t expect you to.” Lucy gave her avatar a critical glance. “I’m sure your stamina bar’s full. We have to leave.”

  He started forward without her.

  “I don’t need you,” Kitty called after him. “I can find Will myself.”

  Lucy spun around, walking backward as he gave her a cold smile.

  “Then what the frack are you waiting for, Kitty?” His hand swept the rubbish-humped sands of Polaris. “This is one of the largest rifts. Your real-world body would be dead before you found your way out of here.”