by Sean Rodman
Copyright © 2017 Sean Rodman
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Rodman, Sean, 1972-,
Firewall / Sean Rodman.
(Orca soundings)
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-4598-1453-0 (softcover).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1454-7 (pdf).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1455-4 (epub)
I. Title. II. Series: Orca soundings
PS8635.O355F57 2017 jC813'.6 C2017-900833-1
C2017-900834-X
First published in the United States, 2017
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017933024
Summary: In this high-interest novel for teen readers, Josh discovers a virtual town that is eerily similar to his own.
Orca Book Publishers is dedicated to preserving the environment and has printed this book on Forest Stewardship Council® certified paper.
Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.
Edited by Tanya Trafford
Cover image by Dreamstime.com
ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS
www.orcabook.com
Printed and bound in Canada.
20 19 18 17 • 4 3 2 1
To my family, who support my writing habit with passion and patience.
I couldn't do it without you.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Preview of Tap Out
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter One
I’m made of high-caliber awesome.
Check me out. I’m the hulking guy dressed in combat gear, lurking in the shadows of a bombed-out building. My blue-uniformed torso is draped in ammunition, a one-man arsenal. And the gun I’m holding—there’s no way on earth that anyone could realistically grip this massive multi-barreled weapon of destruction.
But I can. Because—like I said—high-caliber awesome.
All right, full disclosure. Obviously, that’s not actually me. In real life, chicken-bone arms stick out from my faded black T-shirt. I have puffball brown hair and a spattering of zits around my nose. I’m a little short, just enough that I never get picked for basketball. That combined with my baby face makes everyone think I’m in ninth grade—even though I’m in eleventh. Not too surprisingly, I prefer the on-screen version of myself. It’s part of the reason why Killswitch is my favorite video game. In the game, I’m a “warfighter.” A cyborg warrior. Here in the real world, I’m a gamer. And a nerd.
I find the can of Monster Juice next to my keyboard and take a swig. Readjusting my headset so the microphone is closer to my lips, I wipe each sweaty hand on my jeans before grasping the controller again. I make my warfighter turn in a circle, surveying our bombed-out headquarters.
“Griggs?” I say into the microphone. “You logged in?”
“Keep your diaper on, Josh.” His voice fuzzes out from my headset. “My connection sucks, and I’m a little laggy tonight. Let me try again.” A few seconds later, another warfighter appears next to me on the screen. Identical blue super-soldier armor, except for a glowing green “tag” floating above his head. That shows that this soldier is on my side.
“I’m in,” Griggs says. “You see me now?” His guy moves a little jerkily, stuttering in little pixelated jumps as he turns around.
“Yep,” I answer. “All right, let’s go. First stop is the helipad.”
Both warfighters start jogging smoothly out of the ruined building, and the view opens up. It’s a battlefield, the scene of a war in progress. A war that won’t end as long as we keep playing. The camera tracking our two characters follows us down into a crater. Griggs stops and covers me while I inch forward carefully. I peer over the far edge of the crater. Tracer fire in the distance arcs between two broken-down skyscrapers. I hear a rushing sound in my headset and flatten to the ground. Just in time, too, as something huge swoops by overhead. It looks like the evil love child of a military helicopter and a dragonfly—a bugchopper. The roar in my headset is deafening. I tap on the keyboard to drop the volume down.
“You got that one?” I say. Turning around, I see Griggs is already aiming his massive weapon at the bugchopper as it soars away. There’s a flash of yellow light that obscures the screen. The missile quickly closes in on the helicopter, trailing jagged clouds of exhaust. There is a second flash of light as the target disintegrates.
“Yes!” says Griggs. “Suck it!” The tag above his warfighter flashes as he racks up some extra points. His super-soldier does some weird little jerky moves—Griggs’s victory dance, I guess.
“Yeah, yeah. You’re the big man,” I say. “Just watch my back, okay?” I push my controller forward and clamber over the side of the crater. Gun up, crosshairs floating midair, ready for anything.
Almost. I’ve walked right into an ambush—a group of soldiers is waiting for us. Warfighters just like Griggs and me, except their armor is red. Other players sitting in their bedrooms somewhere, ready to atomize us. I key the button on my controller to bring up my flamethrower. Pulsing red crosshairs appear, floating over an enemy soldier’s helmet. A clean head shot. The flamethrower will be overkill. Satisfying though.
Before I can squeeze the trigger, my world dissolves into jittery static, filled with bullets and laser fire. Messages in tiny script start scrolling up from the bottom of my screen—[low health, critical hit.] My warfighter jerks randomly and stumbles backward. The screen is so full of gunfire that I can’t even see the guys who are killing me. This isn’t right. They shouldn’t be able to deliver that much heat. Whoever this is, they’re cheating somehow.
Dimly I hear a muffled hammering sound. I ignore it and keep jamming the buttons on my controller.
“Griggs!” I call out. “What the hell is going on?” Stabbing the controller buttons, I slowly manage to turn my character around. It’s not dignified—I’m running away in slow motion. As I inch forward, I see Griggs’s warfighter lying on the ground. There’s a red X floating over the body. He’s toast. Dead. His voice crackles through my headset.
“Sorry, man. I think they got me with a grenade.” I flinch at the crunch of an explosion on-screen and watch my warfighter suddenly fly through the air. He lands in a crumpled heap on the ground. I’m tagged with a red hovering X as well.
“Dammit,” I mutter. I was pretty proud of my warfighter. Spent way too much time grinding through levels, loading up on weapons and armor. And now he’s dead—I’m dead. Just like that. On-screen, a group of soldiers dressed in red combat armor jerkily run around our bodies, scooping up gear and ammunition. Then they disappear out of sight, leaving my digital corpse behind.
“Who were those guys?” I ask Griggs.
“Wolf Clan, I think,” says Griggs. “There was something sketchy going on there. Think they had cheat codes?” I can hear the disappointment in his voice too. “Want to respawn? One more gam
e?”
The muffled hammering is back. Louder. More insistent. I realize it’s not a sound effect from the game and pull the headset down from around my ears. It’s my dad, banging on the bedroom door.
“Joshua? Open the door. Right now.” My dad is a cop, and he’s using his command-and-control voice. The one that makes perps drop their guns and piss their pants. I’ve built up an immunity to it. Mostly. I slap the laptop lid closed. Pull out a random binder from my backpack and flip it open, hiding the laptop beneath it. Then I open the door.
Dad’s in his pyjamas, which does nothing to make him seem more cuddly. A broken nose that never set right sticks out from his round, jowly face. His friends on the force call him “Big Dog,” and it’s an appropriate nickname. Bark, bite—both are unpleasant.
“You know what time it is?” he says. Gray eyes bore steadily into mine. I make a show of looking around for a clock.
“I don’t know, but it’s really late. Thing is, I’ve got this math test tomorrow, and I don’t want to screw it up. Still trying to get used to the new textbook. It’s all different from my old school.” Dad still feels guilty about the divorce. About moving us away from big-city Chicago to rural little Valleytown, two time zones away from everything and everyone that I grew up with.
I play the guilt card whenever I can. But he’s not buying it tonight.
“Don’t give me that bull. I heard you shouting to your buddies, playing that damn game. You think I’m deaf and blind?” He stomps into the room, filling the doorframe and crowding me out of the way. He looks down at the open math binder and flips through a few lined pages. “This looks pretty blank to me.” He nudges it aside, revealing the laptop. Dad lays a big meaty palm on it for a moment.
“Your computer feels pretty warm, like it’s been running for a couple of hours.” It sucks having a cop for a dad. “I’ll hold on to this for a while.”
“No, c’mon. That’s not fair,” I say. It sounds like begging—it is begging—and I wince. He hates that. Dad’s face toughens up even further. He tucks the silver laptop under his arm and turns toward the door.
“Mom wouldn’t do this to me,” I say. I snap the words out like tracer rounds, and they stop Dad cold. He half-turns back to me, his bald head shaking slowly back and forth. He grimaces like he’s swallowing something he doesn’t like.
“Get to sleep. We’ll talk about this tomorrow.” He turns away and doesn’t look back, just turns out the light and clicks the door shut.
I flop back onto my bed. Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I text Griggs.
Busted. AWK for tonight. Away from keyboard. Maybe permanently. I flip through the incoming texts on my phone. A couple from Jane, back in Chicago. That’s complicated. I can’t handle texting her back right now. Not that I ever can. It’s been weeks.
So I shut the phone down and lie there in the dark.
I can imagine a bright red X hovering over my body, just like in the game. I’m dead in the virtual world, and my real life sucks even more.
Chapter Two
“Pod people.”
Griggs looks at me sideways, twisting the hood of his black rain jacket. “Say what?”
“I said pod people. That’s what they are.” I nod at the clumps of students gathered outside McCallum High. “They’re like some kind of alien species. All identical. And if you get too close…” I mime my brain being sucked out of my head.
“What, you become one of the pod people?” says Griggs.
“Exactly.”
We study the students milling about in the parking lot. The school day complete, hundreds of them now shuffle through. Waiting under cold autumn skies to be evacuated from the school grounds by a fleet of yellow buses. On the brick wall beside us, someone has scrawled a meaningless graffiti tag in black balloon letters—SUDO. I shiver as a gust of wind blows through the crowd and cuts right into my thin jacket.
“I beg to differ,” says Griggs. “Well, maybe you’re right about the brain-sucking thing. I don’t know. But they aren’t all the same.”
I check my phone. Another ten minutes before the bus will arrive. Another text from Jane, wondering why I haven’t replied to her. “All right, enlighten me.”
I watch Griggs, holding his arms across his body for warmth, rotate like a radar dish until he’s pointing at a gaggle of girls. They all hold pastel-colored umbrellas. They all have long hair, varying only in the shades of brown and blond.
“Those are the socialites, also known as the girly-girls.” He continues to rotate slowly, naming groups as he goes.
“Drama kids.” Dressed mostly in black. A lot of loud laughing.
“Skaters.” Three guys, big plaid jackets and ballcaps. Skateboards strapped to their backpacks.
“Wangsters.” Griggs is looking outside of the corral where we’re all waiting for the buses. Out there, in a second parking lot, stands a group of guys clustered around a new Honda Civic. It’s pimped out with neon, spoilers and chrome.
“What’s a wangster?” I ask.
“Wannabe gangsters. They like the bling-bling. And would survive about five seconds in a real ’hood.”
“True dat, homie,” I say.
“Don’t ever say that again,” says Griggs. “Don’t be a wangster.”
I laugh. “So which group are you part of?”
Griggs pushes back the hood of his jacket, releasing his staticky hair into the air. “Well, see, this is where you’re really wrong about the pod-people thing.” With a diesel grunt, our bus comes around the corner and slides into the space in front of us. We line up, the crowd congealing into order.
“What do you mean?” I say.
“You said before that if you get too close, the pod people make you one of their own?”
“Yeah?”
“Truth is, nobody wants guys like us in their group. We will not be assimilated by the pod.”
We climb up into the bus, the overheated air inside filled with its distinctive odors of vinyl and sweat.
“Yeah, fine. Who would want to be?” I say. I find a free seat and slide in, leaving room for Griggs beside me. We shove our backpacks down below the seat.
“You say that—and I get your rebel, I’m-a-loner-new-kid thing.” Griggs pulls a can of Monster Juice from the side of his pack and snaps it open. “But I bet you had a pod back in Chicago.”
I think about that for a moment. I had Jane—best friend, kind-of girlfriend. One or two other gamer buddies, people I’d known since forever. Not much of a pod. It’s a thousand miles away anyway.
Griggs gives up waiting for me to say something. “Whatever. I don’t have a specific pod either. But here’s what I’ve figured out. Each of those groups? They can’t interact. If the skaters want something from the socialites? Ain’t gonna happen. Invisible wall. Worlds apart.” He takes a swig from his can. He nods at a boy in goth makeup as he files down the aisle past us. The goth half-smiles in return.
“So this whole…ecosystem…needs a few free agents,” Griggs continues. “People that aren’t part of any group but are tolerated by everybody. That’s me.”
“You’re…tolerated?”
“I’m mildly acceptable to all.” Griggs finishes his drink, raising it in a toast. “I’m a man of the people.”
“Yo, G,” says someone behind us. We turn around. He’s big—like, football-player big—and squished into the bus seat. “You got another Monster?”
“Sorry, man, last one,” says Griggs. The big kid grunts. Shrugs. Slides his headphones back onto his bald head, eyes closing.
“So what category does your friend back there fit into?” I ask. “Jock? Meathead?”
Griggs’s brow furrows. “Dude, you don’t talk like that in front of—”
A heavy hand lands on my shoulder. “I miss something?” I look back to see Meathead’s face inches away from mine. His headphones are still on, but he can clearly hear me just fine.
“I was just asking Griggs,” I say carefully, “what to call
you.” Where did this go off the rails?
“Josh,” says Griggs in a warning tone.
“I can think of a couple names for you,” says Meathead in a low voice.
“I think we got off on the wrong foot here, gentlemen,” interrupts Griggs. “Josh, meet Aaron Carnavon, star linebacker for Valleytown Vikings. Ripped his knee up and is now off the field for a bit while he does rehab. No sports, and he can’t drive his sweet ride. Makes him a little irritable.”
Meathead/Aaron keeps staring at me. Griggs continues on.
“Aaron, meet Josh. Newly arrived from Chicago. Still figuring things out. Clearly.”
Aaron gives me one last hard look, then slumps back into his seat and closes his eyes. I can hear the tinny sound as he cranks up the volume on his tunes.
“You are a world-class idiot,” Griggs says, leaning over to whisper. “That guy can hunt you down and stomp you with only one good leg. And what did he do to you?”
“What’s his problem? We were just talking,” I say. “Look, I get it. I don’t fit in here. I’m okay with going it alone. Why aren’t you?”
Griggs shakes his head. “You just don’t understand. Dude, high school is a combat zone. You won’t survive it solo. Someone has to watch your back.”
“And that’s you?” I say, raising an eyebrow. “You’re my big tough bodyguard?”
“For now,” says Griggs.
“Why?”
“I find you mildly acceptable.”
“Shut up,” I say, punching him in the shoulder. But we’re both smiling again.
Chapter Three
When I get home, there’s good news in the form of a note from my dad on the kitchen table. A yellow sticky note with his scrawl on it, stuck to my laptop: Working evening shift. Use this for homework only. Dad.
And honestly, I try to be good. Make myself some mac and cheese, but with a side of vegetables. Clean up all the dishes. Do my math and socials homework. Lock up the house. Then go to bed by ten.