by Phoenix Ward
“Yeah,” Tera replied. There was part of her that was worried someone might overhear her, someone working for the Council. She knew she was safe, though.
She started to rise from the couch.
“Well, Ben, if there’s anything else you can think of —”
“I know how to call you,” Ben interrupted.
At that moment, a page came through on Tera’s communication system. It was Abenayo.
“Officer Alvarez,” Tera answered.
“Tera, I need you to get to my location as soon as you can,” the senior officer said, forgoing a greeting. “Do you read my G.P.S.?”
“Got it,” Tera said. “En route.”
“Good. Hurry.”
Abenayo disconnected.
She turned to the I.I., who was still sat in his rocking chair, looking up at her.
“I’ve got another call,” she told him. “I’ve got to go.”
“I understand.”
“Thank you for speaking with me, Ben,” she said.
Ben nodded softly, a content look on his artificial features. “I’ll speak with anyone willing to show these folks a little compassion. The world needs more people like us, officer.”
Tera said nothing else before leaving the apartment.
Challenge
Sharpe was amused by Ethan’s story, to say the least. A look on his face indicated that he thought his friend was joking, that the interaction with Gauge was just some funny story he’d made up. Ethan didn’t like the way Sharpe reacted.
“I’m being serious,” Ethan said.
“Of course you are,” Sharpe said, a tinge of sarcasm in his voice. “And I suppose some fair maiden sent you on a quest afterward?”
It frustrated Ethan to not be taken seriously. His face turned a bit pink as he blushed. Sweat gathered under his brow, though it was just a digital rendition.
“He said the real world wasn’t what we thought,” Ethan said, ignoring his friend’s comment. “He said that we were being lied to.”
“Yeah, it sounds like a great hook for an adventure,” Sharpe replied. “I’d play it. Sounds intense.”
“It’s not an adventure, Sharpe!” Ethan replied.
Sharpe sat up in his virtual loveseat. His expression went from total amusement to thoughtful consideration.
“How do you know?” he asked. “Some of those adventures can feel pretty real.”
“Not this real,” Ethan replied. He refused to acknowledge the possibility. It was just so… different from anything he’d seen in the series of missions that made up the “game” part of the simulation.
“Did he ask you to take a red pill or a blue pill?” Sharpe joked. “Because, you know that you’re better off with the blue pill, right?”
“What if it’s real, though?” Ethan asked. He felt helpless. If Sharpe wouldn’t listen to him, no one would.
Am I really so wrong?
“Then I’d enjoy the simulation while you’re here, if I were you,” his friend replied. “Replication Systems worked hard to make it, after all.”
He became distracted by something on his personal interface. Ethan couldn’t see what it was, naturally.
“Shit,” Sharpe said, almost as a whisper to himself.
“What is it?”
“Someone’s at the door,” Sharpe replied.
“Who?”
Sharpe concentrated for a moment while his eyes saw things that weren’t actually there in the room with them. A smirk crossed his lips after a few seconds.
“It’s Taylor,” he replied, his focus returning to Ethan.
“Taylor?” Ethan repeated, thinking of their casual rival. “What does she want?”
“How the hell am I supposed to know?”
A knock came at the front door, loud enough for the pair of them to hear it down in Sharpe’s basement. The host turned his attention back to whatever security feed was showing him the front of his home base.
“She says she just wants to talk,” he explained. “Says she ‘doesn’t want a shootout like last time’. Think we should entertain her?”
“Hmm, I dunno,” Ethan replied. “She’s probably still sore about the hole we blew into her home base on the island.”
“She started that fight and she knows it,” Sharpe said. “She’s not unreasonable.”
Ethan sighed, feeling like he wasn’t being listened to for the umpteenth time that week. “Let’s go see her, then.”
Ethan and Sharpe were no fools. Their rivalry with Taylor meant that no one was above deception. If she was still angry about her home base, the worst thing they could do was get together in one place for her to do God-knows-what. Therefore, they both armed themselves with magical weapons and heavy artillery, just in case things got ugly.
In the end, however, it was all fake. She couldn’t really hurt them. Even if she killed them both and blew up the basement, they would respawn and Sharpe could rebuild it with infinite materials. Rivalries like these were just part of the fun.
As soon as they emerged from Sharpe’s base with their weapons brandished, Taylor lifted her hands. She was about a year younger than either of the boys, but more cunning and devious than both. There was no real hatred in her eyes, only that playful look she got when she was thinking about winning.
She must have a game in mind, Ethan thought.
“I come in peace, compadres,” she said, her arms still in the air. A smile crossed her face — she wasn’t worried about their weapons.
“How do we know that?” Sharpe asked. He held a pump-action shotgun that Ethan knew shot laser beams.
“You don’t, really,” she admitted, “but putting myself at your mercy like this would be a pretty funny way to start a brawl.”
“What do you want?” Ethan asked.
Her crystal blue eyes shifted over to him.
“Our birthday is coming up, you know,” she started.
“Don’t call it ‘our’ birthday, Taylor,” Ethan stopped her. “We’re not brother and sister or something. It’s just your birthday and my birthday. Got it?”
“But why, Ethan?” she replied. A bit of golden blonde hair fell in her face. She didn’t move to fix it, though; subtle things like that didn’t actually tickle in the simulation.
“What do you mean?” Ethan said, his eyebrow cocked.
“I mean, we could combine our forces to have one last fun sendoff before we graduate from the simulation,” she answered. “We could share our nineteenth birthdays in the spirit of competition.”
“You want to play some sort of game together?”
“That’s right,” she said. “The winner gets to enter the real world with bragging rights. Plus, it could add to your score just before graduating.”
“No,” Sharpe said. “We don’t want to do that.”
Ethan looked over at his friend. He felt a little strange about him answering for him, but his sentiments were the same.
“No?” Taylor asked. “Why not?”
“Because we tried that before and you cheated,” Ethan stepped in. “You lorded it over me for a whole year and no one believed me.”
“You’re right, Ethan,” Taylor said. “I cheated. But we were only ten. You can’t hold that kind of stuff against me forever. I was kind of a little bitch, and if I remember right, you were a pretentious weirdo. It’s not like that anymore — at least, not entirely.” She couldn’t keep herself from smirking. “No funny business. I promise.”
Ethan looked over at Sharpe as if to ask his thoughts on the challenge. There was an interested expression on his friend’s computerized face.
“What do you have in mind?” Sharpe asked.
Taylor’s eyes lit up. It was clear that she hadn’t been sure if they would humor her.
“Last Stand,” she replied. “Heard of it?”
“Sounds familiar,” Ethan said, scrunching his face up as he tried to recall from where.
“A bunch of us enter the map — dozens of us — but only one can win,
” she explained. “It’s a hunt-or-be-hunted situation. Last person left alive on the map is the victor.”
Ethan couldn’t deny that the concept intrigued him. Some of the details were starting to come back to him, as he remembered watching an interview about the game mode while it was still in development. If he remembered correctly, it involved finding weapons, sneaking across the map, and fighting for your life. Like something out of the Hunger Games.
“What’s the catch?” he asked.
That’s when Taylor’s grin grew even wider. She was obviously proud of whatever twist she invented for the Last Stand challenge.
“Spit it out already!” Sharpe demanded.
“We stake all of our points on the game,” she said, barely able to contain her delight. “Winner takes all.”
Shedding
“What took you so long?” Abenayo asked once Tera arrived on location. “I paged you fifteen minutes ago.”
Hello to you, too, Tera thought as she approached the scene.
They stood outside one of the few churches scattered around Slumside. It was an old wooden building with a short steeple. It was covered in white paint that was splitting and peeling away in the hot city sun. A few other officers patrolled around the area, their weapons already deployed and readied. The late afternoon sun caught all the bodyshells in such a way that they looked like a bunch of dazzling gems.
“I got here as fast as I could,” Tera replied. “What’s going on?”
“We’ve got a group of armed people inside. Maybe an I.I. or two, but we haven’t confirmed anything. At least a dozen humans, though. The terrorists just finished shooting down about twenty-nine people in Murphy Square. Witnesses say they were spouting some sort of scripture or something; we don’t have an exact quote.”
Tera’s interest was piqued.
“Religious terrorists?” Tera said. “Don’t hear a lot about them.”
“Well, this looks like a new religion,” Abenayo continued. “According to people who saw the shooting, the things they were shouting were anti-human in nature. Pro-I.I.”
“Pro-I.I.?” Tera echoed. “In Slumside?”
“I know,” Abenayo replied. “That’s why we needed the backup. We have no idea what we’re dealing with here. Christian extremists, Muslim extremists; they’re easier to predict.”
“Has anyone gone in yet?” Tera asked.
“Not yet, rookie,” Abenayo said. “This is one of the most important lessons of the trade: expect anything and prepare accordingly. You loaded?”
Tera checked the ammo readout on her heads-up display. She could fire for a full two minutes straight without running out of 5.56 rounds. She gave her partner a nod.
The two of them went to the front of the church and, with one big heave of their shoulders, threw open the double doors. The sunlight poured into the church’s tiny reception area, glinting off a brass cross behind the front desk. The wallpaper was starting to peel like the paint on the outside and the wood of the walls behind it seemed swollen. It was almost as if someone had dunked the whole building in a pond and forgot to apply some sort of finish first.
Arms pointed forward, the tactical torches on their shoulders detected the change of lighting and activated. Their two circles of illumination danced around the entrance room as they both checked for any hostiles.
The days of the calculated and nerve-wracking raids were over. Once a police officer might fear for his or her life when entering a similar situation, but Tera and Abenayo could approach without worry. They knew that if anything happened to their bodyshells, their consciousnesses would be awoken in new ones somewhere in the basement of their precinct. They wouldn’t feel a thing, and nothing would be lost except for the cost of the robotic body, which the Council took care of. The only ones with anything left to lose were the criminals inside.
Talk about a deterrent.
Tera nodded to Abenayo to indicate that it was clear, and the senior officer moved forward into the main chamber of the church.
The forms within turned toward them as they entered the altar room. Their lights were cast over a mob of humans. They were all dressed in simple garb, even by slum standards. Some almost looked like they were dressed in burlap sacks. Their faces were muddy and smeared.
No one moved to attack.
“Everyone freeze!” Abenayo shouted, waving her gun barrel wrist from person to person. “Anyone moves, I’ll mow you all down, you got it?”
“Don’t worry,” one of the men inside said. “We won’t harm you.”
Abenayo cast her light on his face and he blinked. He was rather young, with shaggy brown hair and a mustache. There was a knife in his hand.
“Oh, I’m not worried, motherfucker,” Abenayo said. “I just don’t want to clean your brains off of the church walls tonight.”
“Abenayo,” Tera said, trying to get her partner’s attention. “Look.”
Her light was pointed in the corner of the altar room, past all the pews and the stage. There, the two police officers saw a large machine, which made a deep hum that seemed to come from within oneself. It almost looked like an old-school cat scan machine, with a bed-like surface going through the hole of a large, upright donut shape. Another human that they hadn’t noticed at first was just standing up from the machine.
“What the hell is going on?” Abenayo asked.
“It’s a neuroscopic recorder,” Tera replied, reciting her education. “An installation machine.”
“What are you fucks doing with that device?” Abenayo asked, her torch shining back at the one who spoke.
“We’re ascending to the next level,” he said. The others around him nodded, their faces uncomfortably calm. It gave Tera the heebie-jeebies.
“Next level of what?” Tera asked.
“Humanity,” the terrorist said. “Rejoice, sisters, for we will be joining your breed soon. Like you, we will be one step closer to God. All that’s left is the Shedding.”
Tera and Abenayo looked at each other. Each gave a look as if to say, “I don’t like where this is going.”
The speaker raised the knife he was holding and looked over at a human woman beside him. Her eyes seemed hopeful and loving, yet there was a sparkle of fear in them. Perhaps uncertainty.
She nodded.
The others in the church followed the first man’s example. They all had different weapons: knives, guns, bricks, broken glass — anything that could kill a person.
Abenayo spun up the barrel on her wrist gun to show them she wasn’t messing around. Tera could see a little horror in her face.
Then, without much warning, the terrorist who had spoken drove the knife into the side of his own neck. Once the blade was in to the handle, he pulled it forward a little to ensure he had severed the jugular.
The others started to follow suit, taking their own lives. Gunshots ran out as their shooters fired into their own skulls. One man took some sort of capsule, which made him start foaming at the mouth instantly.
Before either police officer could do anything, every human in the church was dead. A grotesque pool of blood was starting to form while Tera and Abenayo stood still, stunned.
Birthday
Everyone was crammed into the small chamber that served as the challenge’s staging area. It looked like it was constructed for about half the participants that were actually there, but once Taylor, Sharpe, and Ethan shared news of their birthday “celebration”, everyone wanted to join. Kids from all over the simulation of various ages and backgrounds wanted the opportunity to be the one to win all the points. For some of them, especially the younger ones, it could mean the difference between being the C.E.O. of their own robotics corporation and laying out the spreadsheets for that company’s financial department.
Taylor led the brief orientation before the killing got started. She stood before the rest of the room in what space she could be afforded.
“I want to wish you all good luck out there,” she said, a sly smirk seemingly t
attooed onto her face. “Whoever wins the game — me — will be awarded the entire pot of points you guys have chipped in. That’s over 230,000 points, folks. We’re talking some real cheddar here.
“There’s only one rule in Last Stand,” she continued. “Last Stand means you never have to say you’re sorry. Other than that, no rules, and no whining about it either. Everyone ready?”
There was a resounding affirmative that rolled around the chamber. The excitement was palpable.
“Here we go!” Taylor yelled, and the last countdown appeared on the wall behind her. It dropped down from ten, and the air vibrated the entire time. Then the chamber and everyone in it faded away.
When everything started to load back around Ethan, he found himself in the middle of a shallow depression, somewhere in a craggy desert. He turned around and found a steep cliff that stretched up a few hundred feet above him. Embedded into the rock face was a concrete bunker-like building. There were square holes where windows would be, were it a house, but no glass. They reminded Ethan of the pillbox bunkers he’d seen in programs about World War II, but much larger.
In the corner of his vision, he could see one of the other fifty kids that he was competing against run away from the cliff and its bunker. It looked like he was headed to a trailer camp, off the side of a road that ran around the cliff. The running figure reminded Ethan that he was on a ticking clock; every second he waited was another second someone could use to get deadly weapons or sneak into ambush positions. With that in mind, he burst into action.
No one else seemed to be going into the bunker, which was a relief. However, Ethan didn’t interpret that as an invitation to take his time.
There was nothing in the first segment of the bunker, but he noticed a doorway that lead to another room. He ran through it and found what appeared to be a rifle in the corner. Aside from that and a box of what he guessed was ammo, the room was barren and featureless.