by In Churl Yo
The result was sudden and never in doubt. After what could very well have been a thousand swift punches thrown, the giant fell with a deafening thud onto the dojo floor before fading away.
A doorway appeared on the rear wall revealing a set of stairs leading upward, and Milton took them. When he arrived on the next level, it was nothing he expected—a darkness that gave way to colored lines that formed long flat grids, cubes and pyramids. It was a world of three-dimensional vector graphics, and everything except for Milton was a polygonal representation, a bitmapped reality set in high-contrast colors of green on black.
A gong sounded again, and this time two opponents entered the room—a man and woman, each holding the end of a long-chained flail with heavy spiked balls. They appeared as Milton did, plucked out of the real world and yet now somehow a part of this computer-generated experience.
That’s when the floor started moving, followed by the ceiling and everything in between. Each grid square floated up or fell, slid left or right, either in groups or individually and to Milton it all seemed random and chaotic. The man and woman, both dressed in the same type of shiny, light body armor, jumped in tandem to a nearby grid toward Milton. The two maneuvered together and with such precision they could have been mirror images of each other, twin assassins gunning for him and on the move.
The grid Milton was standing on began traveling to his left. He attempted a sprinting leap to an adjacent landing of squares, but the hyper speed Milton had acquired on the previous level was gone now, and he fell off his perch, landing on another platform below him. Lucky. There was nothing but an inky blackness everywhere underneath them. Who knows what would happen if Milton slipped and plummeted down into it? Maybe he’d fall forever or wake up from the Virt a total failure. Maybe he’d die, a victim of malicious code. There was no way for him to know for sure. He took a moment to think the scenario out and came to a quick and obvious conclusion: I need to run a new hack.
Milton looked at his cufflink and noticed a countdown timer had been added in the corner of his display. There was a little over a minute left before the ticker reached zero, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what was going to happen when it did. He started deciphering the lines of code he’d need to alter to gain the access he needed.
The Mirror Twins were close now, riding a set of grid panels traveling toward him on an intercept course. Milton judged their distance and thought he had time, but then one of the twins jumped out and away from him, swinging back around at him like a pendulum at the end of their shared chain-link flail mace until she landed next to where he stood. Then she returned the favor and swung her partner over to join them, where he connected Milton with a swift kick to his ribs. He howled and fell over, almost falling off the floating panel. Milton then rolled aside and lay there looking up at his opponents wondering what was next.
“Milton Lee,” the woman said. “You think yourself worthy?”
“Not hardly, after what I’ve just seen,” said the man.
“Yeah, well I beat your hulk,” he answered. “I can beat you, too.”
“That brute?” the man responded. “A child could have bested that simpleton. No, with us, you’ll have to do better.”
“Much, much better,” added the woman.
Milton looked around him for an opening, a bit of leverage—something that might help him out of his predicament. “Alright,” he said smiling at the twins. “Here’s something better.”
He threw himself off the grid and stretched as far as he could to reach a passing group of cubes as it rose, riding a wire frame column that carried him up and away from the two before they could react.
An alarm beeped on Milton’s cufflink. The timer had expired. He half expected to explode into a pile of hexagons and light—instead he noticed something odd in the distance: one of the grids was flashing. Milton was already scanning the ever-moving terrain for a way to reach it when something struck the column he was standing on, and it began to collapse beneath him.
No. No. No!
The spiked ball from the twins’ weapon had jabbed itself through one of the supporting cubes, and the vectors were splintering from the impact. Milton had just enough time to jump over to another moving panel before the column disintegrated. Then he continued hopping from grid to grid toward the nearby flashing square.
“He’s slippery,” the woman said.
“He’ll fail,” said the man. “Like all the others.”
The Mirror Twins were like conjoined acrobats, using their partner’s momentum to help each other fly around the various shaped platforms, one pulling the other along toward their prey. They were fluid, beautiful and relentless in their approach.
Milton, on the other hand, was anything but—often stumbling and off-balance as he worked his way forward. After a great deal of effort, he made it to his target, and the flashes from the grid he stood on slowed before stopping. Then a shimmering object glowed at Milton’s feet. When the glare subsided, there was a large wooden jousting shield sitting there waiting for him.
He had hardly picked it up and slid the straps through his forearm when the spiked mace came at him. Milton raised the shield and blocked the blow, saving his head from the indignity of being separated from his neck, but was thrown back by the force of the impact. Chunks of broken wood flew all around him.
A glance back at his cufflink showed that the timer had reset and was already commencing another two-minute countdown. If Milton was going to win this round, he’d have to get ahead of whatever programming was behind the flashing grids. He set his attention to uncovering the subroutines responsible while attempting to evade his pursuers.
“Nowhere to run to,” the man yelled.
The woman laughed then added, “Nowhere to hide.”
Milton traversed quickly through the moving landscape, gaining some distance from his foes as well as affording him a moment to hide behind a walled cross section of stacked cubes and work his virtual keyboard.
One eye on the active workspace in his visor, the other on the Mirror Twins, Milton’s attention went back and forth between the two. He should have been elated to find the right directory that housed the blinking grid application files, tagged as Power Ups in the code, but instead was distracted while watching the man and woman as they worked to find him, always together and in perfect harmonious motion. Maybe there was something there?
The next alarm’s rapid beeping broke that thought, and Milton scanned the horizon. Then he caught it—the telltale flashing of a Power Up in the distance. The twins saw it as well and altered their route to intercept it.
The race was on.
CHAPTER 24
Milton leapt between platforms to make up some distance but could tell it was going to be close. He grabbed the next available grid at its side edge with both hands and dangled beneath it as it traveled. As he got closer, Milton swung his legs back and forth until he had enough momentum to throw himself at the landing and its flashing grid.
Now he was sliding toward the Power Up, arms extended so he could be the first to touch it, only to watch at the last moment as two feet landed dead center on the grid ahead of him. Milton allowed his motion to carry himself past the Mirror Twin to the far end of the paneled surface and braced himself, shield up, for whatever was coming.
When the glow subsided, a collection of throwing stars lay at the twin’s feet.
“Nice! It’s full of stars!” she said and gathered some up. A flick of her wrist sent three projectiles at Milton—two embedded in his wooden protection, the other flew just past his head.
The shurikens were another complication Milton didn’t need right now, but the silver lining was he had found his way into the application. Once the Power Ups were active and sending out data to the system, the bot Milton had left had no trouble infiltrating the code, and that was positive news indeed.
Another thwack in his shield, another throwing star. Milton chanced a peek and saw both Mirror Twins preparing to send ano
ther barrage his way. This time more than a dozen came at him. Flick. Flick. Flick. The shurikens stuck in the ground, in his shield, all around him. Then a sharp pain in his shin signaled he’d been hit, and Milton grunted and cursed a response.
The man laughed. “We are prepared to accept your surrender anytime.”
“Surrender can be just as honorable as resistance,” the woman added, “especially when you have no choice.”
Milton looked at the pocked and cracked panel he was lying on, then raised his shield above his head and hit the grid with all his strength. Everything around him shattered, and he fell.
Down into the inky darkness for dozens of meters, Milton dropped, uncertain of what awaited him—until he landed hard on a lone traveling cube that almost robbed him of his consciousness from the force of the impact. His side burned, and Milton supposed he’d broken a rib or two. He laid there and started working his cufflink, trying his best to ignore the pain.
Milton altered the probability settings of the Power Up database, then re-programed the materialization matrix. When he was satisfied with his work, Milton halted the countdown clock that had commenced following the arrival of the throwing stars—and then set it for five seconds. When the timer zeroed out, a Power Up appeared in Milton’s hands.
He stood and wielded the gleaming two-handed sword, pleased by its weight and balance. While he might have preferred a machine gun or laser weapon instead, Milton didn’t have the time to write out the code necessary to fashion either. Besides, the sword was more than enough for the job at hand, at least for what he had planned.
Next, he used his newfound access to jam a foothold inside the level’s entire programming infrastructure. Milton let himself in through a backdoor of his own making, and once there decided to write a few easy changes to the software, starting with the cube he was standing on. A down-and-dirty interface commanded the cube to stop, then travel to the left and upward, and while it wasn’t precision flying by any means, Milton was happy with the result. He had control.
The cube approached, then rose, above the heads of the twins. Milton looked down on them, his lips crooked with satisfaction, one hand resting on the pommel of the huge sword standing next to him. He hovered over them for effect, letting them see he had the high ground and the advantage.
“He flies,” the woman gasped.
The man spun the mace in his hands, never taking his eyes off Milton. “Soon he dies,” he said.
Before the man could release the heavy spiked ball at Milton, the cube reacted to a delayed set of commands stored in its memory by rearing back and then thrusting its rider high up into the air. Milton flew toward the Mirror Twins, arms raised above his head as he swung the heavy blade down. A growl from Milton’s throat grew into a full guttural yell by the time the blade connected.
The sword struck the ground at a high angle, embedding itself into the grid between the man and woman. Milton threw his body around it, using the handle as leverage, and kicked the man hard in the chest, sending him flying over the edge of the platform into darkness. The woman began pulling the chain toward her, reeling in the slack and preparing to bear the full weight of her partner. Then horror filled her eyes when she saw the broken link at the end of the chain and realized the sword had severed their connection. Her twin was gone. She was alone.
“What was that you were saying about surrender?” Milton asked.
She swung at him, just missing his chin. She stepped toward Milton and threw another punch, this one connecting with his side. Even though his broken ribs were across the other side his body, he yelped from the blow and felt a deep pain there just the same. Milton tried to back up and put some distance between them, but she continued her advance.
Anger seethed from the woman’s eyes. The lone twin jumped into the air and came at Milton with her elbow, who blocked it with his forearm, and then wrapped her hands behind Milton’s head and pulled his face down into her knee—the resulting impact breaking his nose, causing him to fall away and scramble to the ground in agony.
Milton considered his predicament, the blood on his face, clothes, everywhere, and recognized a change of tactics might be prudent. The woman went back to retrieve her half of the flail mace and hefted the weapon in her hands eager to dole out a finishing blow. He saw her approach and began punching his cufflink hoping for an answer. She spun the flail at her side, building up speed.
“Wait. Just wait!” Milton said. “Hold on!”
The spiked ball slowed.
“I have access! I control this entire level. I can bring him back. You’ll both be together again,” he said.
“You’re lying. Not that it matters anyway. When you’re dead all of this will be over. Gone.”
“At least let me show you. Aren’t you even the least bit curious to see how?”
The woman considered his words, then shrugged and answered, “Nah.”
Just as her shoulder dipped and weight shifted from left to right, a fast-moving cube came out of nowhere and batted the twin far into the inky sky, sending her and the mace away deep into the unknown. Milton watched her disappear and exhaled, then tried to wipe his bloody face with a bloody sleeve. “I told you,” he said, halting for another labored breath, “I’d put you two together again.” Despite the pain in his side, face and all over, he managed a slow and weary laugh.
Grid squares began popping up all around Milton until the entire floor was covered in connected green lines continuing to an infinite horizon. A doorway blipped open nearby. He lifted his head to look at it, then brought it back down and laid there for several minutes more.
Milton eyed the open threshold again and saw it was now blinking—strobing impatiently at him.
“Alright,” he mumbled. “Alright already.”
Milton forced himself to stand. His mind was this fuzzy, loose thing presiding over a beat and broken body, and neither cooperated. The intent was to walk himself through the door and up the stairs to the next level. The reality was more a hobbling sad meander, as Milton fought through the pain and exhaustion ravaging through him.
The stairs were troublesome, as the still-embedded shuriken left one of his legs hurting and useless, and now that the adrenaline and those lovely endorphins had all but left his body, Milton was feeling the brunt of everything he’d had to endure so far today. But there was no way he was going to let the Kiter Five see him thrashed and defeated—no way was he done yet.
He advanced up to the next level, found a spotlight in the darkness and waited under it. Milton couldn’t see much beyond the circle of light surrounding him, but the floor was a smooth, pristine white. He almost hated bleeding on it. Then the now-familiar gong sounded, and everything went dark.
A cool breeze drifted around Milton, and it reminded him of his time in the woods with Zoah—those all-nighters spent around the campfire and early morning strolls together laughing and talking. He realized then how much he missed her and how stupid it was being apart from her now. Thinking about Zoah made him feel better, and he did feel better—the pain and weakness were fading, as if being washed away by the gentle winds wafting about him. He could just catch the scent of evergreen needles in the air, almost feel Zoah’s warmth and presence next to him.
When the light reappeared overhead, Milton found his wounds healed, even his clothes and hair clean and in perfect order. It was as if all his game stats had been reset in preparation for the next level’s challenge. His health bar was full. His five hearts were replenished and whole. He should have been relieved, grateful even, but instead could only worry about what was coming for him next.
Another light cracked to life in the distance, and he saw him: head bowed and hands clasped together, a man dressed in military camo standing motionless, half in shadow.
“So, who are you supposed to be? Are we going to fight now?” Milton asked.
Instead of responding, the darkness lifted around something else in the void nearby, the reveal much slower this time. Despite the i
mage coming into perfect clarity, it still took Milton’s brain a moment to process the image: Neema gagged and tied to a chair, thrashing against her bindings. Milton saw her eyes locked on him pleading for help.
“Neema?! I see you. I’m coming to you!”
A white podium rose in front of Milton. A handgun rested on its surface, and after a quick check of the chamber and its clip, he found only a single bullet inside. Milton tucked the pistol in his belt and started for Neema. As he moved, the entire level lit up, revealing white corridors extending at 90-degree angles away from him. The man dressed in fatigues was gone, an identical podium standing empty next to where the soldier had once been.
“It’s always something,” Milton whispered.
He advanced down the hallway and quickly realized things here were not what they appeared to be. Most of the walls, floors and ceilings were opaque white panels, but some were transparent and revealed identical but inaccessible passages behind their thick hardened glass. A few panels were polished mirrors capable of reflecting a perfect illusion of something that was in reality somewhere else. And one panel even projected a three-dimensional image so convincingly, Milton thought Neema was sitting against her will right in front of him. He passed his hand through the holo-projector beams and disrupted the image again to make sure. Neema wasn’t here. Everything around him was created to confuse or fool Milton into the wrong course of action.
A scream rose from the corridor ahead of him, and Milton turned the corner at top speed toward the source of the sound. At the end of another long hallway, he saw Neema again tied up in the same chair, and now she was sobbing.
It’s not her. Well, it’s probably not her. Probably. Oh, hell…
Milton again ran for Neema, but when he dropped his foot on a white panel in mid-sprint, his boot touched air where the floor should have been, and he fell. Landing in an identical corridor below the one he just left, Milton rolled as he hit the floor, then sat up on one knee to assess his surroundings. Everything was the same. That meant everything was also not at all what it seemed. Milton knew he’d have to be careful moving forward—as if he needed any reminding—but took a moment for some controlled breathing to tell himself again to take it slow and easy.