Game Breaker

by Cheree Alsop

  To see the papers lying all around the room in a torrential mess fueled Breccan’s rage. The Catlans didn’t deserve to have their home burglarized. The adrenaline that rushed through Breccan’s veins from his worry about his friends rose into a roar of heat. He clenched his one hand into a fist around the action figure.

  “What are you doing here?”

  The man’s head jerked up. The moonlight put him in silhouette; Breccan couldn’t make out his expression. He saw a faint shine of light flicker when the man’s eyes moved to his missing arm, then back to his face.

  “It’s you.”

  Ice ran through Breccan’s veins. He didn’t let his fear show. “What do you want?”

  The man threw the papers down. “You’re the one I’ve been looking for.” The ghost of his smile leered at Breccan. He could make out the shadow of a broken tooth in the darkness. “Instead of tracking you down in some podunk, burned-up town, you show up on my doorstep.”

  Breccan’s heart raced. “Why are you looking for me?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough,” the man replied.

  He reached for something in his coat. Breccan caught a glimpse of the gun harness the man wore and dove for the couch. Bullets tore through the upholstery near Breccan’s head and then into the wall. He cringed when one of the picture frames his aunt cherished fell to the ground and shattered.

  Breccan peered out from behind the couch, then ducked back as two more bullets whizzed past his head.

  He looked at the wrestling figure in his hand. “This is worthless,” he muttered. He chucked it into the air. The action figure connected with the spinning ceiling fan and ricocheted downward.

  “Ouch!” the man yelped.

  Breccan fought back a tight smile and reached for the shards of glass from the broken picture. A bullet exited the couch where his head had been.

  “Are you dead?” the man called out.

  Breccan chucked one of the shards at the fan. Instead of bouncing off in the same direction as Jonny’s wrestler, the glass rebounded straight for Breccan. He ducked a hair too slow. The glass caught him on the side of his forehead. He sucked in a breath at the pain. Blood trickled immediately from the wound.

  “Nice try,” the man called out.

  “That was stupid,” Breccan whispered to himself. He looked around quickly for any other weapons. Besides the frame, nothing was reachable. The moment he exposed even the tiniest bit of himself, shots quickly followed.

  Breccan gritted his teeth. He was out of options and whoever sent the man to find him had obviously requested that he not be alive when he was brought back.

  “Who’s trying to find me?” he asked.

  “It’s not my job to tell you,” the man replied. He fired a few more shots.

  Breccan wished he had a gun with enough bullets at that moment that he could use them so carelessly. He had to stall until he came up with something, but he was also afraid Aunt Jenny and his mom would finish up at the Zone and come home early. They sometimes did that when their quota was filled. It would be just his luck that tonight would end up being one of those nights.

  “If I’m going to die, it’d be nice to know what it’s for,” Breccan called out. He checked the back of the couch for any wood that had been broken free, but all he found was an old sandwich he assumed was Jonny’s stuck to the inside.

  “You’ve gotten into something too deep, kid,” the man replied. “You angered some very powerful people, and they don’t mess around.”

  Breccan didn’t need to ask who he had upset. The timing from their conversation at the Zone was too perfect to be a coincidence. The Cranfield Company must have had the Zone wired. They were stupid to have had their meeting in such an unprotected place. He wished his mother had spoken to him about the energy war before they had agreed to go to work.

  “How’d they find me?” he asked.

  “They’re everywhere,” the man replied in a dark tone.

  Breccan put his hand to his bleeding forehead. He couldn’t see any way out of the mess he had gotten himself into. He would die and the Cranfield Company would get away with it. Breccan’s hand clenched into a fist. He refused to go down without fighting.

  He grabbed the remaining shards of glass regardless of how they cut his skin and chucked the entire handful into the air. Shots were fired at his exposed hand. He ducked and covered his head with his only arm the best that he could. The shards struck the fan, glass rained down, and then a yell sounded.

  Breccan counted his heartbeats, willing himself to remain in cover. A few seconds later, the sound of the man falling heavily to the ground shook him. Great, gurgling, gasping breaths came from near the door. The man thrashed around, knocking over several things Breccan was sure his aunt cherished. Eventually, the thrashing and gurgling both stopped. A deathly silence filled the room.

  Breccan raised his head slowly. He didn’t dare look over the couch for fear that it was a trap. Instead, he picked up one of the shards that had struck the ground on his side of the couch. He held it around the edge of the furniture and used the reflection to check on what was happening on the other side.

  The man lay in a motionless heap near the bookshelf. Breccan thought the man might be faking it, but then he saw the dark pool of liquid that grew on the linoleum in a widening circle.

  “Are-are you dead?” Breccan called out, repeating the man’s words.

  When the form didn’t move, Breccan pushed slowly to his feet. He put his hand on the couch to stand, then winced at the pressure. He lifted his hand to find that one of the bullets had torn right through it. With the adrenaline pumping through his veins and death looming so close, he hadn’t even felt it. But at the sight, the wound began to throb. Blood stained his aunt’s couch and dripped to the floor. Breccan grabbed several lace doilies from the closest end table and, using his teeth, tied them around his hand in an effort to stop the bleeding. Perhaps doilies were useful after all.

  Breccan approached the form slowly. He expected the man to attack him at any moment. He spotted the man’s gun on the ground about a foot from his head and picked it up in his wrapped hand.

  “Get up,” he said.

  The man didn’t move.

  “Get up!” he shouted.

  The man continued to show the same animation as Uncle Jix’s stacks of papers.

  Breccan didn’t have a free hand to roll the man over, so instead, he put his foot against the man’s shoulder and shoved. The man flopped onto his back. His wide eyes stared at the ceiling while whatever was left of the blood in his body trickled from the huge shard of glass that stuck from his jugular.

  “Not so stupid after all,” Breccan said, his voice shaking.

  A gurgle came from the man and his head rolled to the side. Breccan jumped back several feet and hit another end table. A lamp crashed to the floor.

  “We’re going to blame that on you,” Breccan told the man.

  He looked around, unsure what to do. The room was in shambles, he was bleeding, and Jonny was still asleep in the alley. He couldn’t leave his cousin at the apartment now that he knew people were looking for him, and his friends were in danger in the Edge. Breccan was seriously running out of options.

  He decided leaving body disposal to the adults was probably the best option. At least if his mom and aunt came home, they wouldn’t be killed. He felt bad for the sight that would meet them, though.

  It took some work to get Jonny back to a standing position, but Breccan found that with his cousin’s arm pulled over his shoulder, he could get him to sleepwalk at a shambling pace. Blood dripped through the doily onto Breccan’s shirt. He wished he had thought to grab a better bandage than a few lacy circles, but time was of the essence tonight. He gritted his teeth and pushed Jonny as fast as his sleeping cousin could walk.

  By the time Breccan deposited Jonny not-so-gently into one of the chairs in the Lobo Four room of Building Seven, his chest was heaving and his hand hurt to the point that he wondered how m
uch help he could be. Breccan didn’t know if he would feel the pain in the Edge. His fingers slipped twice and the cable was slick with blood before he managed to plug himself in. His last thought was that if he got electrocuted after being shot, the Edge would probably be better off without his current bad luck anyway.

  The appearance of his right arm was a welcome one, especially since pain apparently did follow into the Edge. He signed into his avatar and found that opening and closing his left hand was extremely painful. He quickly tied the white bandana around it and hoped it wouldn’t impede his ability to help his friends. The thought that the damage to his left hand from the bullet might be too severe to fix lingered in the back of his mind. Breccan ran up the stairs and away from the fear of what would happen if he lost his last remaining hand.

  A girl with rabbit ears pushed away from the wall the moment Breccan opened the door. “Game Breaker?”

  Breccan gave her a wary look. He didn’t like suspecting everyone, but after what had happened at the Catlan residence, he couldn’t help it.

  “Yes?” he asked with caution.

  The girl smiled in relief. “I’m Everybunny’s Friend. Minx sent me to bring you to her the moment you showed up.”

  Breccan stared. “She told you her real name?”

  The girl’s ears waved up and down when she nodded. “She said it was the only way you would know for sure she was the one who sent me.”

  Breccan had to admit that Minx was right, but he didn’t like the thought of her giving out her real name. It was getting too dangerous outside of the Edge for anyone on the inside to take risks.

  “Take me to her,” he told Everybunny’s Friend.

  The rabbit girl led the way to the main elevator he had ridden in before, but it was empty this time. Foreboding pressed against Breccan at the feeling of being in the huge elevator without the usual cram of avatars. Every level they passed was conspicuously empty of anyone, even Techsecs.

  “Where are they all?” Breccan asked.

  Everybunny’s Friend’s nose twitched when she replied, “Hiding. After the Contessa sent out the warning, the avatars banded together against the Techsecs, but we’re not strong enough.” Worry shone bright in her big eyes. “But Minx, I mean Black Jack, said she, I mean he, found a way. He said you would understand when you got there.”

  The elevator beeped.

  “Shrinkersize Me,” Breccan read aloud. “What kind of level is this?”

  “It’s for those people who have always wanted to see the world as if they were a bug or an ant or something,” Everybunny’s Friend replied. Her nose twitched when she said, “It’s one of my favorites, but not right now.”

  The doors slid open to reveal why.

  Enormous sculptures of food had been turned into battle zone hideouts. Everywhere he looked, Breccan saw Techsecs charging down avatars, and avatars of every shape and size running or cowering in fear. As they watched, a Techsec cornered a boy that looked part fox. Before the boy could so much as duck, the red glowing Techsec pressed something on his scanner and a pulsing light shot from the end. The boy froze, then vanished, leaving only a puff of steam where he had been.

  “That’s horrible,” Breccan said.

  Three Techsecs turned toward them at the sound of his voice.

  “Run!” the bunny girl squeaked.

  She took off through giant cheese wedges and half of a cake that towered like a building above them. Breccan followed her up the tangled vine of a clump of grapes, down a piece of celery, and across chocolate chip cookies that floated in what looked like a milk river. He glanced back to see the Techsecs still struggling with the cookies.

  “They aren’t great at balancing,” Everybunny’s Friend said over her shoulder.

  “Do you know where Black Jack is?” Breccan asked as he climbed up an oversized carrot that had foot and handholds carved into it, and then up the stalk to a long brown brick shaped from rectangles.

  “Just up here,” the bunny girl replied.

  Breccan jumped from one rectangle to the next before he paused in surprise. “Is this a chocolate bar?”

  “Yes,” the girl said. “And no matter how much you eat here, it’s replenished the next time you come.”

  Two Techsecs climbed onto the bar in front of her. A blast from one of the Techsecs made her duck just in time to avoid singeing her ears.

  “But I’d recommend waiting until next time to try it!” she said in a high voice.

  Both Techsecs aimed their weapons at the girl. Breccan was about to see her be vaporized in front of his eyes.

  “Wait!” he shouted.

  The red glowing Techsecs turned in unison. Breccan grabbed two round cheese crackers that had been discarded on the chocolate bar and spun, sending the head-sized snacks flying like frisbees towards the Techsecs.

  The first hit the Techsec on the right hard enough to knock him off the candy bar and into the river of syrup below. The cracker glanced off the second Techsec and broke.

  “No conflict with authority,” the Techsec said in his monotone voice. “You will be eliminated.”

  He advanced with methodical steps past Everybunny’s Friend with his gaze focused on Breccan. Breccan looked around quickly for something else he could use as a weapon, but they were too high up to grab anything. The syrup river could have been promising, but the Techsec that had fallen into it had never resurfaced. The last thing Breccan needed was to accidentally drown and have to wait another night to come back. With his heart pounding and adrenaline racing through his veins, Breccan watched the Techsec approach.

  “Hey, Techsec,” the bunny girl called out. “I’m a rebel!”

  “No rebels are allowed to survive,” the Techsec said. He spun to face the girl. “You will be eliminated.”

  “Go!” the girl mouthed to Breccan.

  He shook his head. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

  “You’re too valuable to lose,” she said. She looked back at the Techsec. “Come on, you piece of slag. I’m a rebel! Do something about it!”

  Breccan could only watch as the Techsec lifted his weapon.

  “Make it count!” the girl called to Breccan.

  She closed her eyes when the flash of light sped from the gun and enveloped her. Pain knifed through Breccan’s heart as he used the opportunity to run back down the candy bar. He jumped off just as another flash sped past his shoulder and into a soda can; the can vaporized right in front of him. Breccan ducked under the chocolate bar and ran along the syrup river. A few paces away, a waffle bobbed to the surface. Breccan glanced back, saw that the Techsec was gaining, and leaped onto the makeshift lily pad.

  “You will be eliminated,” the Techsec threatened from the shore.

  Breccan ducked just in time to avoid several shots before the waffle turned, following the river around a giant jug of orange juice and then beneath a bridge made of donuts stacked with a piece of bacon across the top. By the time he rose back to his feet, the Techsec was gone and so was any chance he had of finding Minx.

  Before he could truly panic, a whistle sounded to his left. Breccan searched the stand of pixie sticks until he spotted a boy with a racoon mask across his eyes.

  “Game Breaker, this way! Minx knows you’re here!” he said in a high voice.

  Breccan let out a sigh of relief and looked for a place to reach the bank. It was too far to jump, and the syrup was definitely too thick to swim, so he grabbed a cinnamon stick from a patch growing near the shore and pushed his way to the bank like a fancy breakfast-inclined gondolier.

  The boy took Breccan’s hand the moment his foot touched solid ground, or in truth, the really spongy ground that looked to be made from some sort of cake. Breccan followed him through a stand of licorice and down into a cave made from jellybeans glued together with melted cotton candy.

  Several avatars armed with black rectangles attached to pretzel sticks rose the moment they turned the corner.

  “Whoa!” the racoon boy said. “
Wait! We’re with Game Breaker’s Army!”

  “Game Breaker’s Army?” Breccan repeated.

  The boy flashed him a grin, revealing pointed eye teeth, and said, “It’s a thing, trust me.”

  One of the guards shoved his stick toward Breccan. When he moved it, a line of bright light arced from the two points of the rectangle.

  Breccan took a step back. “Take it easy,” he warned.

  “And who are you?” the avatar demanded, eying Breccan’s horns with suspicion.

  “I’m Game Breaker,” Breccan replied. He held up his right hand so they could see the tattoo.

  All of the guards immediately lowered their weapons.

  “My apologies,” the first avatar said. He put a clawed hand to his heart. “You have my loyalty.”

  “Uh, thank you,” Breccan replied.

  The other guards immediately did the same thing.

  “You have our loyalty,” rang out down the hall.

  Breccan glanced behind them, sure that a passing Techsec would have heard the salute.

  “Okay, thank you,” he said, attempting to stamp down the feeling of being overwhelmed. “I, uh, appreciate your loyalty and promise the same.”

  Nods and looks of awe met his words.

  “Thank you for your understanding, Lord Game Breaker,” the first guard said. “I never would have threatened you if I had known who you were.”

  Breccan choked on a cough. “I’m not a lord.”

  “You have the horns,” the avatar pointed out.

  Breccan opened his mouth to argue, but couldn’t come up with anything he felt would be effective. He finally cleared his throat and glanced at the racoon boy. “I’m sure Black Jack is waiting.”

  The boy’s eyes lit with excitement. “Yes, let’s go! I’ll show you the way!”