There are seven Eternals in the guild, counting her. That’s it. The other six are all online right now.
None of them answer.
I felt bad for her. I’m close enough to her thoughts to know that the thing that's going to haunt her the most is the radio silence. I watch as she stands there for long, crucial moments that would have been better spent getting ready to defend herself. The ground shakes beneath her feet as the approaching Tanks rumble closer. I can hear the shriek of the Runner screech ever closer before she finally takes up a position near the window and starts taking out the Zombies.
You’re out there, I told myself. This is the attack that you led. You were the one that dragged those Tanks and the Runner and the others off of the freeway and down to the diner. Look out the window. Can you see yourself?
Morbidly curious, I peek out the window. A few of the Zombies have already had their heads blasted to bits, but the, what had Sasha called them? Starters? The Starters that remained weren’t different enough from one another for me to even work out which one was me.
The brick releases a hiss of static. The Eternals are on the airwaves, listening. But that’s all they’re doing…
Then the brick’s screen flashes three times, a signal that it’s finished the scan. Sasha grabs it and runs. There’s no time to put return it to the backpack, and she risks one last look out the window as she escapes.
The Runner is on the roof. The Tank is at the door. The only clear exit is the back one, and she knows that none of them will have been smart enough to cover it yet. And so she’ll be safe.
Until she isn't. Because I am there.
The brick, the only thing her dad left her, is still in her hand. It can’t be destroyed. In theory, it’s as much a part of her avatar in Headshot as her hands or her feet, so when I latch on to her and slow her escape she isn’t worried about losing it. She brings it to her lips and says, “I guess this is goodbye.”
Then the Tank splatters her across the pavement, and we’re back together in the character creation room, shaking like a leaf.
Chapter 5
I felt out of breath, petrified at what I’d just witnessed and the manner in which I’d seen it. After a second or two I’d gathered my wits enough to realize that, in the dream, I hadn’t been locked in her body. I’d been an outside observer, able to step away from her and look out the window on my own.
And now that we were back in this white room, I turned around to find that it was still true. I wasn’t a passenger anymore. Sasha was standing in front of me, looking exactly like she had when I’d helped her die. Red hair, green eyes, lean enough for the wiry choice of body type to make sense and busty enough to make me wonder if Headshot gave all of the Survivors a hyper-idealized version of themselves.
Why not? What better way to keep people coming back?
Curious, I looked down at myself. I was me. The real me, not the Zombie one. I had both of my hands. I was wearing my beat-up sneakers, jeans, and the black shirt with TRY HARD written across it.
“Was that a dream? That was fucking nuts, Sasha. Does that happen all the time to you?”
She didn’t answer. No, it wasn’t just that she didn’t answer. I could tell by the look on her face that she hadn’t heard me. Nobody could be that good at ignoring a random, disembodied voice of the opposite sex in their head.
Great. I might not be stuck with her steering me around, but that didn’t mean I was free to communicate with her. I tried to log out, and that didn’t work either. So, I was still a prisoner, just one that was able to pace…
Whatever connection I had shared with her thoughts was still there, though. I couldn’t access them all, but there was an upper level of her consciousness that was coming in so loud and clear that it made it hard to focus on anything else.
She was thinking about the game, of course. Headshot, the one thing that seemed to matter to her above everything else. More specifically, she was wondering what classes the rest of the Eternals would select.
Sasha was an engineer. Even though I knew that because I’d watched her pick it, I also knew that she never chose any of the professions. Most of the rest of the Eternals were constantly swapping around. They told her it was because they hadn't found their “calling” yet, and even though she nodded whenever they spun that little story, in reality, she didn’t care much for their excuses.
To her, their inability to dedicate themselves to a singular role showed a distinct lack of dedication. Even though she'd been with them a long time, but that didn't mean that she trusted them with her deepest darkest secrets. I guess that explained how she was able to guard so many of her thoughts from me.
Sasha had trusted her dad. That was about it, and his absence loomed so large in her mind that I could see how whatever had happened to him had made her wary of putting her faith in anyone else. She wasn’t going to let herself get hurt like that again.
Had he walked out on her and her Mom? Was he dead? I didn’t know, and even if she had been able to hear my voice or sense my thoughts or use whatever link she and I had, I didn’t think I’d know how to ask her. Not without fucking it up, at least.
All I knew for sure was that he’ promised her he’d be there for her and that had turned out to be a lie. It had changed her, and now Sasha couldn’t hear a promise without sneering and telling herself that anyone who believed it was naïve, a child willingly fooling themselves into believing in a fairytale.
Just about everything was a lie to her. Some people were more upfront about it, and others dressed the bullshit in flowery prose and artful gestures. She knew that she had to be careful because there were a lot of lies she was desperate to be true, and those were by far the most dangerous type of all.
Now that she had confirmed her profession as an Engineer, Headshot was ready for her to jump in.
Remember – Survivor Sunday is about gathering resources and staking a claim. Player vs. Player combat is encouraged outside of the Green Zone. The land and buildings that a Guild holds at midnight will become their permanent turf throughout the coming week. Guilds have advantages when fighting on their own turf. Salvage is everywhere, though until it is safely stored in your Guild Headquarters, it is fair game.
With that in mind, please choose your base stats. You have 20 points to allocate.
Strength – Sometimes you’ve only got yourself to rely on.
She knew it was important to a lot of professions. Everyone benefit from an increased carrying capacity, and when push literally came to shove the only thing that would save your ass were your own muscles. Sasha had skimped on this stat before and regret it, and she was determined not to make that mistake again. Besides, when the world’s fallen apart and the only things you can rely on are the ones you can shove into your backpack and run out the door with, carry capacity is next to godliness. She liked the idea of being stronger than she looked. It suited her.
Five
I nodded. It made sense to me, at least. She could always go back and take a point away from it before she confirmed her options if she needed to.
Intellect – Don’t kid yourself. The brain’s a muscle, too!
This one was right up there on the list of importance, especially for an engineer. Not only would it allow a to Survivor learn a wider range of skills and level them up more quickly, but in Sasha’s case, it meant that she had a greater chance of understanding any blueprints she might find. There was also the fact that it would make her own modifications to gear and equipment work better and last longer. I saw her smile as she dwelled on this stat in particular. That quip about the brain being a muscle was right out of her Dad’s mouth.
Six
That was the maximum a starting stat could be, and putting anything less than that would have made Sasha feel like she was doing her Dad’s memory a disservice.
Evasion – For Dodging bullets and blades today and bites the rest of the week.
She didn't have a lot of points to waste, and she told herself
that last time, when the Zombie at the back door of the diner had grabbed her, maybe a little more evasion would've been a nice thing to have. Last week she’d only put two points into it, but now decided not to scrimp.
Four
It was more than a little disconcerting to be swimming in someone else’s thoughts while they remembered me, but I pushed through it. If I let a little thing like that bother me, I had a feeling I’d lose my mind less than ten minutes into the game. Sasha had gotten good at protecting a lot of her emotions and thoughts from the outside world. I was going to have to learn how to do the same thing.
And quick.
Education – Knowledge is power, especially now
Sasha smirked. She knew that a lot of newcomers bitched about the fact that there was both an Intellect stat and an Education one, but anybody who gave it a little more thought was usually able to see that they were two very different things. The inclusion of both stats had been one of her Dad’s wins, and she could still remember how proud he was the day he’d come home and told her he’d talked them into it. After all, he’d said, he'd gone to the top schools to get what he had between his ears, but that wasn't always the case for everyone else. Sasha knew the conversation was meant to cheer her up. She'd never been anything more than a lackluster student, dropping out of high school despite the fact that there were a dozen colleges begging for the daughter of Blake Redhook to attend their prestigious campuses.
Two
Accuracy – Hit the thing you mean to hit, near or far
Sasha didn’t think she’d need it. She wasn't a gunslinger, and if she was stuck in a situation where the only thing between her life and death in the game was an accurate shot, well… Well, she’d probably be screwed either way, since that would mean that the shit would already be hitting the fan so hard that she’d be in over her head regardless of the result. Besides, that was why she had the other Eternals. She couldn't max everything, and they far preferred a good gunfight, anyway.
Two
Social. Intimidation, bartering, truthful lies, and false truths
Pretty much anytime she had to deal with an NPC the result would be based on her Social stat, not to mention if the game had to adjudicate some discrepancy between her guild and someone else’s.
One
She sighed. There were only twenty points to allocate, at least at first. She knew that some people liked to cram the social stat as high as it would go, relying on being able to get cheap stuff and pushing the NPC's around to do odd jobs for them, but it had never felt right to her.
Besides, the Eternals weren’t going to tangle with any other guilds, and even if they did, death wasn't permanent on Sundays.
Chapter 6
Once Sasha had allocated all of her stats, the game was ready to let her in. She waved her hand and text appeared in front of my eyes. I assumed she saw the same thing, judging by the look of concentration that set up shop on her features as she manipulated the programming.
Administration Access granted. Tutorial skipped. You may begin the game in a Guild Headquarters of your choice, provided you are affiliated with them.
Guild Headquarters of [The Eternals] selected.
I’d already known that she had her hands on some pretty high-level code, but this was starting to look like a lot more than I’d assumed. She obviously knew how to use whatever backdoors her father had built into the system, and she was using them to anonymously get into the game and cover her tracks.
At least that explained why Deep Dive had been so hellbent on working out who had brought their servers down. I’d assumed that a game that essentially connected to your brain wouldn’t have any trouble rooting out malcontents, but Sasha was a couple of steps ahead of them. And it didn’t look like she was slowing down, either.
The next thing I knew I’d popped into existence right along with Sasha in the middle of the darkened Museum of Computer Science. It was black. There was no emergency lighting, and the game didn't kiss your ass and just hand you a flashlight. I could sense here and there, the same way you know when you’re near a stove that’s been left on even if the lights in the kitchen are off. At least I still had the same UI as she did, and that gave me access to her inventory, which was empty. The clock up there said 12:09. Somehow, all of that mishmash of flashback and character creation process had only taken three minutes.
Sasha and I were both stuck pawing at the air, trying to find a wall so that we could at least use our sense of touch to guide us around the museum. She’d done this a bunch of times and, even though I couldn’t see her with my eyes, I knew when I was near and when she was far. Using that hot or cold sensation as a guide, I followed her as she moved down one wall, turned a corner and hurried down a hallway.
Something kicked in the back of my brain, and I realized that I was familiar with this floor plan too. We were headed out of the main room, the one where I’d dropped her backpack amongst the three Eternals doing a terrible job of standing guard before landing in the middle of them and beginning my butchery.
And now? Now we were headed toward where the guild Vault was. Toward where I was…
There was a glow up ahead, and when we went around a final bend in the hallway, I saw that a single ray of moonlight spilled unsubtly through a window to fall where the Vault had been. Nice touch, developers, I grumbled to myself. You really don’t mind kicking me in the teeth, do you?
It did feel like they were laughing at me. If my body was going to be anywhere in this game, it would have been in there, but the fact that the Vault was gone probably meant that it wouldn’t reappear for another twenty-four hours when the Zombies were let in after the bullshit “downtime” was finished.
I frowned. What was Sasha doing? She was a Survivor. I knew from her head that she’d never played as a Zombie, so she must have known from experience that the Vault wouldn’t be here. And yet, not only did she approach the circle of moonlight, but she peered into the surrounding darkness, obviously looking for something.
“It’s not here,” I told her, even though I didn’t expect her to hear me. I was already coming to terms with the fact that I was a silent partner in this whole thing, doomed for her never to respond. “You should know that. If I got the brick into the Vault, it’d be safe. If I didn’t, it’s already been wiped by the server. Right?”
But the fact that she was still looking had me worried. I didn’t know Sasha very well, but I certainly didn’t think she was an idiot. She knew the game better than anyone, and if she was checking shadows to make sure the brick wasn’t there, then there was no chance it would have been erased. She was as pragmatic and no-nonsense as they came, which meant that…
Shit. “You bitch. You fucking lied to me, didn’t you? The brick was never going to be wiped. That was just a story to get me to bring it back to you, wasn’t it?”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. The very fact that she was still searching, going so far as to shuffle out of the moonlight and drag her feet in case she bumped the brick in the darkness told me that I now knew the truth.
She’d made it all up. Maybe most things got erased when the week was over, but I was pretty confident now that a hardcore programmer like her dad would have coded something as special as the brick to be permanent.
So, I’d been lied to. But why?
I didn’t know the answer to that, and she was too good at keeping her secrets for me to glean it from her thoughts. Now and then something would slip through, but for the most part, all I got from her was an internal narrative on the game mechanics and the situation at hand.
I grinned to myself in the darkness. Sasha Redhook may have used some software hack to magic away the tutorial on her side, but she was a walking, scheming tutorial for me, just the same.
I watched as she gave up looking and took a confident step forward into the darkness. Now that she had her bearings, she didn’t need to feel her way around the museum.
She knew this place like the back of her hand. Not only had it been the headquarters of the Eternals since the very beginning of the closed beta, but much more importantly many of her formative years were spent within the safety of these walls. Sure, the individual placement of a lot of the interactives and displays were different. Some of the exhibits were over there, instead of over here, for instance, but as she strode confidently away from the splash of moonlight the clock ticked over to 12:10.
Time to get to work.
And there was certainly work to do. Sasha looked down at herself, and I saw that she couldn't help but make a face at the overalls she was wearing. For whatever reason, whoever had decided to design the starting outfit for the Engineer class had decided that overalls were going to be the most fashion conscious starter outfit. She supposed that it wasn't completely insane. Mechanics wore coveralls, after all. And at least from a distance, you could tell what type of class a fellow Survivor was when they were just starting out. The ensemble was rounded out by heavy boot and a tool belt stocked with the basics; hammer, screwdriver, wrench.
She headed for the entrance to the museum, and I followed. At one point I stopped in my tracks, just to see how far away from her I could get, but once she was about ten feet or so ahead of me, I got dragged along behind her like a wayward puppy on the end of a leash.
Okay. Ten feet, huh?
Once we got outside, it wasn’t much brighter. The power was out, of course. It always was. Sasha had spent so much time in Headshot that she’d just about forgotten what it was like to leave the museum and not see rows of streetlights that didn't work. As it was, she was comfortable using the moonlight that reflected off the windows of the tall buildings across the street to see by.
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