by Jamie Davis
He made his way past the other people in his row to the aisle and bounded up onto the stage.
Myles greeted Fergus with a firm handshake and a pat on the back. They exchanged a few words before parting, with Fergus standing next to Myles and facing the others with a huge smile on his face.
The CEO turned back to the rest of them. “This is exactly the kind of astute and hard-driving effort we want to see from all of you. We need you to push our system to the limit and beyond. The only way to ensure you do that is to reinforce that you’re in competition with each other. We are timing you to see who can complete their missions the fastest and using the most direct methods. People like Fergus here will be rewarded. People like the candidate who couldn’t kill their primary target, giving him the opportunity to locate and kill it, will be recognized as well for their failure. That person deserves their punishment.”
Quinn stiffened in her seat at his final statement. She didn’t like the way he said that. What workplace talked to its employees that way? Punishment was a strange choice of words. Quinn didn’t have a lot of work experience to draw on, though, so she didn’t know for sure.
Myles leaned into the microphone again while he stared out through the lights at the assembled candidates. “Will Quinn Faust please stand? You do not need to come up on the stage. This space is reserved for champions and the best among you.”
Quinn glanced around the room. A few of the people from her orientation group knew her by name. They all turned in her direction. Taylor offered the only sympathetic face.
Quinn stood as requested, her hands at her sides, fists clenched in anger. She hated being singled out this way. She didn’t understand how it was her fault that something went wrong with their system. She’d had nothing to do it.
Quinn started to sit when he started talking again, thinking he was finished with her.
No such luck.
“No, don’t sit down, Miss Faust. It’s important for people to understand that we are very serious about success here at the VirSync. We do not work on anything that is not the best it can be. Since this is your first day in the testing program, we will make the punishment for your failure the embarrassment you’re feeling while you stand here in front of the other candidates. We want everyone to know they’ll be singled out for this particular dishonor if they fail.”
Quinn’s face burned. She wished she could turn away or sit back down again. She knew better than that, though. Myles Hickman had meant it when he told her to remain standing, and she still wanted to make this job work out, if only to prove she was capable of succeeding the next time out.
“I want all of you to take a hard look at Miss Faust standing there. She screwed up and hesitated. She could’ve made the kill, but she didn’t follow through at the last critical instant. We want this system to bring out the best in the people we train in it. That means we can’t show mercy. We must strive for complete victory at all times. When you’re assigned a target in the game, you’re expected to complete your mission as fast as possible. I hope I do not have to make an example of anyone else in the future like this. I think you will all agree it will not be a pleasant experience should it happen.”
Myles waved his hand in Quinn’s direction. “Sit down.” His dismissive gesture as he turned back to Fergus and pointed at him as he began clapping for the day’s recognized winner.
Fergus stood on stage, grinning like an idiot and soaking up the recognition before the group. He kept his hands at his sides and his shoulders back as if he were standing at attention in some sort of military unit.
Myles continued when the applause subsided again. “Instead of being like Miss Faust, I recommend you emulate Mr. Bishop here. Mr. Bishop, you may return to your seat.”
Myles waited by the podium as Fergus jumped down from the edge of the stage and returned to his seat. As he passed the other candidates, he exchanged high-fives and grins with several of them. He slid into his seat next to Taylor, pausing and shooting Quinn a broad, toothy grin before settling in beside her best friend and throwing his arm around her shoulders.
Taylor shrugged off the arm, shifting away from Fergus. He just laughed and turned his attention to the girl seated on his other side.
That girl, a perky blond named Cindy, squealed with delight and leaned into Fergus’ one-armed hug.
From the stage, Myles laughed at the display of affection given to Fergus by the other candidates. “To the victor go the spoils. It seems like you’ve already started to get your reward, Mr. Bishop.”
Laughter spread through the other candidates as they turned around to look at Fergus and Cindy.
Quinn groaned. This whole thing was the worst.
Taylor reached back and gave her friend’s hand a squeeze.
Quinn forced a smile. Taylor was always there for her when she needed it.
Myles went back to talking about what was expected of them, and Quinn’s mind drifted for a few seconds. A sort of daze passed over her as he droned on in the background. It almost sounded like he’d shifted to speaking in a different language.
Quinn shook her head a few seconds later and forced herself to focus on what the CEO was saying from the stage. He seemed to be wrapping up his speech. She glanced at her phone to check the time, hoping they wouldn’t be here too much longer.
Her eyes widened. The late hour surprised Quinn. She had no idea they’d been here that long. It was already past one in the morning. What could Myles Hickman have talked about for hours like that?
That couldn’t be right. Where had all the time gone?
By Quinn’s estimate, it should only have been about two hours since she’d arrived at VirSync, not going on seven.
Her time in the VR world had amounted to no more than four or five minutes, although, now that she tried to remember what had happened, she couldn’t. All she could remember was that she’d failed to kill her target and Fergus had taken it from her. She couldn’t remember any specifics. She felt like there was something important she was missing. The fact that the details of what she had done in the system test had slipped from her memory bugged her.
Quinn checked the time again. It didn’t make sense.
She went over the night’s activities again. The rest of her time here in the VirSync building should’ve been no more than two, maybe three hours, between the prep and getting changed in the locker room. There were three or four hours she couldn’t account for.
Quinn glanced around while she tried to understand where the missing time had gone. Everyone had their eyes glued to the stage and the CEO’s continuing speech on excellence.
They couldn’t have been sitting here listening to the speech for that long. The only thing that accounted for the lost time was that something else had happened during the perceived five minutes inside the testing system. It bothered Quinn to think she’d been lying there in the testing room that whole time. It didn’t make sense.
Myles said a few more words of encouragement before dismissing the group.
As Quinn left the room, she found herself preoccupied with the problem of the missing time. She wanted to ask Taylor about it to see if she remembered her experience in the test scenario.
Several of the candidates sneered at her as she walked out, and she ignored them.
Fergus came over with Cindy beside him. “Quinn, I can’t believe you let that kill get away from you. You were standing right there with your blade in hand, ready to go. All you had to do was finish the thing off.”
“It wasn’t as simple as that,” Quinn argued. She struggled to remember the details of what happened in there but couldn’t. She simply replied, “I don’t know what you saw in there, but my system was all glitched up.”
“Well, I hope they fix that problem for your sake. If you’re gonna freeze up like that every time we go into the system, I’m going to have stay close to you. I don’t want to miss a second double-kill day.”
Cindy smiled as she ran her hand up Fergus’s muscular arm.<
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Quinn rolled her eyes. She looked for Taylor and saw her talking to a few of the other candidates nearby.
Fergus turned away from Quinn and started chatting with two other candidates.
Quinn went over to join Taylor, where she stood with the others.
“Quinn, I’m so sorry about what happened in there. I hope they fix it for you. I was talking with Claire and Gary here about what we saw of the program they were using in the control room to run the VR system. They’re both coders.”
Quinn nodded a greeting. “Hey, I’m tired, and I want to get out of here. You ready to head home?”
“Claire mentioned something about going out for something to eat at an all-night diner she knows about nearby. I thought I’d tag along to talk some more about the amazing computer systems they have here. Do you want to come?”
“Uh, no, that’s all right. I’m going to head home. I’ve got a major migraine starting, probably caused by my broken VR setup.”
“You don’t mind if I go with them, do you?”
Claire nodded. “Don’t worry, we’ll make sure she gets home in one piece.”
Quinn chuckled at the situation. One sure way to lure Taylor away from a good night’s sleep was to offer her an opportunity to talk about computers, hacking, and everything in between.
Quinn smiled and said, “Sure, whatever. Just remember we have to be back at work tomorrow evening. I know how you get when people start talking circuit boards and bits and bytes.”
“I won’t be too late, I’m sure,” Taylor said, laughing as she glanced at Claire and Gary. “Don’t wait up, though.”
Quinn didn’t say anything. Taylor could take care of herself. She waved at them and headed back down the hallway toward the lobby and parking lot.
She was glad Taylor had found like-minded friends in the group. For Quinn, this day sucked more with each passing minute. She just wanted to get home.
Her earlier doubts about the job had turned into serious questions about what had happened to her tonight. She needed to get out of here and clear her mind.
Chapter Six
Quinn left the building and headed across the dark parking lot toward her Jeep. As she walked, she wondered why her mind was in such a fog when she thought about the questions surrounding the lost hours inside the testing room. She couldn’t remember more than a few details of what had happened when she’d failed to kill her target. It was like she was forgetting something important. The harder she tried to think of it, the more she felt like it was slipping out of her grasp.
She got to where her Jeep sat under a lamppost. Quinn stood in the pool of light from the overhead lamp and shook her head, trying to clear the cobwebs.
The strange feeling had to be related to the VR training system in some way. The missing hours from the earlier part of the evening weren’t any clearer than the missing memories she tried to bring back.
She’d have to remember to say something when she came back to work the next evening. Phillip and Velma should be told. If there was some sort of problem with the system they were using, the company should know about it, even if it seemed to have no effect on the other candidates.
Quinn unlocked the door and climbed into the Jeep. Starting it, she let the engine warm up as she idly flipped through the notifications on her phone. A news alert came up in one of them, with a small photo next to it.
She froze.
The news headline swam in and out of focus because her eyes stayed glued to the face of the man in the photo. She tapped it to launch the article in a browser.
The face appeared again, larger this time, filling the screen. It was so familiar that it sent chills down her spine and raised goosebumps on her arms.
It was the man from the training simulation. The one she couldn’t kill.
Why had she been trying to kill him, anyway?
The fog drifted back over her memories as if something was trying to force her to think about something else. Quinn had to force herself to stay focused on the article. She stared at the picture, willing herself to remember.
The guy in the photo wore glasses, and it looked as if it had been pulled from a driver’s license or something like that. In the picture, he was in front of an American flag and a plain white background.
Quinn scrolled down, bringing up the article to learn more about why his face had shown up in her news feed.
The article was a breaking news story about the death of an important politician from the city of Baltimore. He’d recently been found brutally murdered on a city street near his home.
She kept reading the article. As she did, the fog lifted from her mind, clearing the way for the full collection of the night’s memories to flood back into her. They came on like crashing waves as she read an eyewitness account from a person who’d been there when the body was discovered on the sidewalk.
“One bystander, who declined to be identified to this reporter, said, ‘I couldn’t believe it. I’ve never seen anything so gross in my life. It was like he’d been hacked to bits with a hatchet or something.’”
Quinn froze. The description brought to her mind a visual of Fergus using his weapon of choice, a tomahawk, on her target in the game. That target, whether it was a monstrous werewolf or an old man, was one she hadn’t been able to bring herself to kill in cold blood.
She scrolled up to the top of the article and the photograph of the politician. Quinn started trembling as she realized that somehow, the man she’d seen in the testing system had been a real person. Not only that, but he’d been murdered on the same night she’d hunted him through virtual city streets in a VR game that looked a lot like downtown Baltimore.
How could that be?
Quinn’s mind swam through possible explanations. Maybe there was an internet mixup during the VR session, and the system had grabbed this guy’s image from the web, where it was plastered all over the news.
It could be as simple as that, couldn’t it?
Quinn tried to calm her breathing. She’d been hyperventilating. She didn’t know what to think about this. There was no explanation for how the man in the murder story had ended up in her VR training session.
She also couldn’t explain how the man had died in a very similar manner to what she’d remembered from the system.
Was it a coincidence? Could coincidence explain why things matched so exactly?
Quinn made up her mind. She had to know more. She re-read the top portion of the article and quickly found out what she wanted. Quinn put the Jeep in drive and pulled out of the parking space, heading for the parking lot’s exit.
As she drove through the gate and onto the road, Quinn feared what she might find when she got into the city. That fear didn’t deter her, though. She had to know the answer, no matter what. There’d be no sleep or rest for her until she got an answer.
Once she’d reached the Beltway, Quinn headed for the exit that would take her into the east Baltimore neighborhood she’d seen mentioned in the article. It wouldn’t take her too long. There wouldn’t be much traffic at this time of night.
Quinn arrived downtown a half-hour later. She drove around a little, trying to get her bearings. She looked for anything that seemed familiar and might trigger a memory of something impossible.
She found it.
Pulling over, Quinn stopped the Jeep and sat there on the neighborhood street, staring at the corner grocery store.
After sliding the gear shift into Park, Quinn climbed out and stood on the sidewalk, staring around at the familiar two- and three-story row homes and shops exactly like the ones she’d seen earlier in the evening while she was inside the VirSync testing and training system.
Quinn glanced over her shoulder, half-expecting to be shoved from behind by a running werewolf trying to get past her. Of course, there was no one else there. An occasional car drove by a cross street in the distance, but this street sat empty for now.
She shook her head. “No, no, this can’t be real. Get hold
of yourself, Quinn.”
Not sure what to do other than retrace her virtual steps from earlier, Quinn crossed the street and proceeded to the corner by the store. She stopped and peered around the side at a cluster of police vehicles and news vans, and the yellow crime scene tape strung across from one sidewalk to the other.
Like a moth drawn to a hot light bulb, Quinn started down the street until she reached the crime scene tape. Aside from the police and news vehicles, it all looked just like what she’d seen in the VR system. Dark, dried blood stained the cement sidewalk where the body had lain.
Quinn noticed a police officer walking in her direction, and she backed away from the line of caution tape. She gave the officer a half-wave, shoved her hands in her jeans pocket, and started back toward the corner. As she turned to leave, she jostled a tall man in a shabby dark overcoat who was standing just behind her.
Startled that she hadn’t spotted him before, she looked into his face. She couldn’t see much because he had his baseball cap pulled down over his eyes.
It was odd that he was wearing an overcoat in such warm weather, but she’d seen a lot of weird stuff while she’d lived on the streets when she was younger. A lot of the homeless wore everything they owned to keep from losing anything.
Quinn held up her hands and backed up a step. Assuming he was homeless, she said, “Sorry, I don’t have any cash on me.”
The man didn’t say anything, just stepped to one side so she could walk past and nodded.
Quinn took the opportunity to make her exit. She turned to look back after taking a few steps to make sure he wasn’t following her.
He wasn’t following her. He wasn’t there.
Quinn stopped and looked around. There was no way he could have gotten out of her line of sight that quickly, yet there was no sign of him anywhere.
For a moment, Quinn considered going back to ask the police officer watching her from behind the police tape where the guy had gone. Then she decided she’d had too many strange things happen tonight already. If she talked to the officer, he might wonder what she was doing up and about at this time of night. She didn’t need to try to explain why she’d come to this crime scene in the middle of the night.