, Template 6, Custom 81-2, Archetype 21, Shard 30
Player ID -
Holy crap. She had a whole list of accounts in her profile, and the only reason for that was if she was using them to spoof a false identity back to the server. She could always be Sasha, but as far as Headshot was concerned, she was always someone else. Now that the virus was tracing and discarding them one by one, in a couple of seconds the only one that remained would be the one she could never completely scrub.
Her real ID.
There were only three fake ones left now. Then two. One.
Fuck it. I reached out with my willpower and grabbed the malware by the throat. It reacted with the only thing it knew, absolute violence. I felt it wrap around my limbs, lash around my throat and constrict.
No way. Redhook’s code was stronger in me then it was in Sasha, and I tore the virus to shreds and felt it die away. Once it was gone, so were her false identities. She was naked now, unprotected. The only way to buttress her defenses was to come up with a new identity for her to spoof, and after a couple of seconds of panic, I realized that I had just the thing.
It didn’t take long. The details came to me, swirling out of the darkness. Thankfully, I’d been the one that had set up Lori’s Headshot account…
Chapter 20
When Sasha finally opened her eyes, for the first time in a long time light flooded her pupils so badly that she jumped up and batted the nearest lamp off the table with the back of her hand. It wasn’t the only offender, but it was in on the migraine conspiracy, and it deserved to suffer.
Now that she was back in the moment, she slapped her palm down over her thigh. The spear was gone. There wasn’t even a blood stain or a tear in her coveralls. Whatever I’d done, I’d ended up doing a damn good job of it.
I was standing beside the chair she’d occupied only a moment before, having snapped back into existence as soon as she regained her place in the game. We weren’t alone, and I froze. I didn’t know if any of the three players that surrounded us in a loose semicircle could see me, but the fact that they were keeping their concerned gazes on Sasha most likely meant they couldn’t.
It probably implied that they were friends and the only friends I could think of her having were the rest of the Eternals. I glanced around cautiously, recognizing the now familiar exhibits in the deeper level of the Computer Science Museum.
Sasha was home. Back with the guild that had betrayed me and hidden the fact from her.
Great…
Each of them had their names displayed above their heads, which helped matters considerably. Harker was a soldier through and through. He stood ramrod straight, his military bearing and even gaze denying even the smallest amount of empathy. I could tell right now that, as far as he was concerned, Sasha had done well to get out of a bad situation, even though it was her own fault for getting into one. He probably didn’t like the fact that they’d had to drag her out of the sewers.
Things like that, deviations from routine procedures, usually pissed guys like Harker off.
Bonbon was beside him, a study in pink. She was smaller, lean and vivacious and always moving, even if it was only her foot that was tapping. She wore a long-sleeve t-shirt underneath a short-sleeve one, just like she wore ripped leggings beneath her skirt. All of her clothes were various shades of her signature color. Somehow she’d even found sunglasses with pink lenses, and these were propped up high on her forehead at the moment as she popped pink bubbles from the pink gum she was chewing on.
And lastly, Winter_Will. He was an odd one, shoulder-length white hair, dark eyes, a leather jacket that was a couple of sizes too big and acid-washed jeans. He was standing as still as I was, and it took me a second or two to work out that he wasn’t just trying to be a freak. He was doing something else in the game, playing around in his menu or raising his skills or something.
Unfortunately, my sense of smell was still working. The smell of the sewer was, thankfully, fading fast. It was still here though, a ripe perfume to remind players that life above the streets is often preferable to life below. Sasha wrinkled her nose and wiped at her face absently with the back of one hand before giving her guildies a grin and letting out a long, low sigh of relief.
“Where the hell have you guys been all day? I was starting to wonder if you’d given up the ghost.”
Bonbon shrugged and looked like she was going to say something, but Harker talked over her. “Login servers are jacked. Figured that was your doing.”
Sasha shook her head. “Not me. At least, not on purpose. I had a hell of a time getting in too, but nothing like the, what, four-hour delay you guys must have had?”
“Six,” supplied Bonbon helpfully. “You must have been in that sewer for a while…”
Sasha shuddered. “Six, then. Wow. Anyway, whatever kept you, I’m glad you’re in now.” The craziness of the entrance Deep Dive into the game, even if she didn’t exactly know that’s what was happening yet, was already getting erased by the comfort of having her allies present. It was hard over here on your own, and I didn’t begrudge her the feeling of salvation that was rolling over her, no matter how misplaced it was.
How was she to know that these guys might not have her back in the same way she thought they did? And more to the point, it was insane for me to expect her to give me credit for bailing her out when she had next to no knowledge of my existence.
She looked around. “Is it just us?”
Right. There were seven Eternals in total, which meant almost half of them were missing.
“So far,” Harker told her. “The rest must be having the same difficulties we did.”
Sasha grinned, and I caught a twinkle in her eye that I hadn’t seen in a while. Having allies around her were bringing her out of her shell. “Have I got some crazy shit to tell you guys about…”
Bonbon shrugged her slim shoulders. "I bet you do. You can start with explaining what you were doing in the sewer. If Winter hadn’t worked out where you were, you’d still be swimming in a pretty good simulation of other people’s shit, girl.”
Sasha looked at Winter, who had yet to so much as bat an eye. “He found me, huh?”
“Yeah. He’s doing something else now, but it was his idea to check the sewers. He knew the network from a couple of games back, and once we decided to hold our noses and do it, finding you wasn’t too hard. What were you doing down there?”
“Trying not to die.” Sasha looked around the room. It was bright enough in here that there weren’t any dark shadows for unseen enemies to hide in, but she still took her time studying the place. She was worried about another Diver showing up, and so was I. “Have you guys seen anything strange, this time around?”
Harker hid his smile behind a gloved hand. “Other than you face down in feces, you mean?”
Sasha waved his words away. “It’s not like that’s real. Don’t get me wrong though; we are absolutely in deep shit…”
The ghost of a smile was still playing on her face, but at her words both Harker and Bonbon stiffened. I caught a shared glance between them, and I didn’t like the look I thought them swap. They weren’t in. All of this was starting to scare them both, and either they’d seen something or heard something or simply suspected that retribution for bringing down Deep Dive’s network wasn’t far away.
Whatever it was that had spooked them, they were getting cold feet.
Sasha missed it though, and she kept on talking, blissfully unaware. “I’ll shut up until Winter’s back, at least. It’d be good to have the others here too, but if I have to tell it twice, I will.”
“Winter’s checking on the status of the others,” Harker told her.
“Good luck with that. I’ve been looking every so often, and it’s been goose eggs all morning with you guys.”
He didn’t engage with that comment, choosing to change the subject instead. “You should count your lucky stars that Deep Dive hasn’t decided
to implement weapon durability, yet. That’s an impressive rifle, but I wouldn’t envy you the task of breaking it down and cleaning sewer muck out of it.” He aimed his chin at a glass-topped display in the corner where her rifle lay beside her backpack.
At the sight of the bag, Sasha rushed over, shaky fingers fumbling with the zipper. She was frantic to get into it, and I knew that she was worried that that big book would somehow be missing.
It wasn’t. She’d probably already known that just by the weight, but it wasn’t until Harker growled "It's there," that she calmed down enough to slide it out and set it beside the air rifle.
Harker came to stand next to her, and as he went past me; he had a long scar that crawled up the corner of his mouth and disappeared in the hairline above his left eye. “These starter backpacks are an impressive piece of kit. I wish we had these in the war. A lot would have gone differently if we had."
Both Sasha and Bonbon flicked him a sidelong glance. The pink Eternal even covered her mouth to hide a smile, turning away in a vain attempt to avoid busting out laughing. I knew exactly what he was doing, and it wasn’t that strange, I suppose. If it was odd at all, it was only because I’d never played on the Survivor side. Of course, there’d be role-players over here.
Zombies couldn’t RP, not with our extreme limits to communication. But if we could, we sure would have.
Still, I got the feeling that Headshot was the sort of game where, if you talked to your guild members about anything, the topics didn’t extend much beyond strategy, upgrading weapons and the newest places to find good salvage.
I didn’t have an issue with roleplaying. Everybody in here was pretending they were something that they weren’t, so what was the big deal? I mean, it was nothing compared to the fact that I was pretty damn certain that they’d spend the last few minutes of my previous game trying to ambush me without Sasha’s knowledge.
“This book could make things a lot easier for us,” Sasha told them both. I suppose she told Winter too, but he was still in his own little world, unmoving and completely unresponsive.
“Yeah?” Bonbon asked. “Sounds good to me.”
Sasha pressed her hand to the book’s cover. “Speaking of the rest of us, have you guys seen MattieMayhem, Coda or Smashfoot?"
Bonbon was behind Sasha, so she didn’t see the smaller girl open her mouth, close it, then lick her lips and try again. The only sound that came out was, “Ummmmm…” She looked like she wanted to say something else, but she cut herself off so quickly that there was actually a slapping noise as she clapped her hand over her mouth.
Sasha turned around and cocked an eyebrow at her. "Something you need to fill me in on?"
Bonbon shook her head ‘no’ furiously, even though she plainly looked as guilty as sin. It was obvious to me that she didn't like to lie, but she’d much rather that than come right out and tell Sasha the truth.
Sasha let it go. I wondered if she might be in the habit of doing that too much. I got the feeling that she didn’t particularly like being the leader, particularly since it meant that she was eventually going to end up leading them somewhere none of them wanted to go. Prison, most likely. Or worse. "Harker, you picked a soldier, I’m guessing.”
“Of course.”
Bonbon reached out and stroked the rifle Sasha had engineered. She looked like she was in love. “I’m a sniper, as always. I don’t suppose you can make another one of these anytime soon, can you? A beast like this would sure help me cover your asses while you guys are elbow deep in scavenge.”
Harker sighed. "You’d think that I would be the bloodthirsty one, not some fifteen-year-old from Van Nuys…"
Bonbon chuckled. "Whatever, old man. I like to snipe, and I miss it! I had to swap to a missile launcher last time, and that…" She let her voice trail off, and looked for all the world like she wanted to disappear underneath the desk somehow.
Sasha waited for her to finish, and when she didn’t, pressed Bonbon for more with an, “’And that’ what?”
“Sucks, I guess.”
When there wasn’t more to the story forthcoming, Sasha did what she did a lot. She dropped it. Guilt guided too many of her decisions, but I couldn’t fault her. It must be hard being in charge of a group of people who could cut and run and at a moment’s notice. They were only as loyal as they desired, and I wondered how long they’d last as a cohesive group when Deep Dive really came calling.
Harker shook his head. “Bonbon doesn’t know what she’s talking about, as usual. When was the last time she pulled the trigger on anything that wasn’t a rifle? Never, that’s when. She’s crazy and Winter’s AFK. On top of all that, you're all mysterious about your last little adventure. Talk about dysfunctional…”
There were a bunch of chairs in the Museum, put there for parents to sit down in a state of blissful unawareness while their kids ran around and broke things. Sasha plunked herself down in one of them now and took a deep breath. She was still recovering from the effects of the spear, and her hand strayed again to where the wound should have been but wasn’t.
Harker was staring at her, and when she realized it, she gave him a stern look back. There was the Sasha I knew, the fighter who wasn’t interested in getting pushed around. She took a lot from him, but she had a line in the sand. “What is it, Harker? Do you want out?”
“No.”
“Are you sure? If you do, there’s no hard feelings and no ill will. You and I both know how rough it’s going to get. Bonbon’s too crazy to care, plus she’s a kid. She probably won’t get tossed in real jail, not like us.”
“Juvie!” shouted Bonbon happily. “Can’t wait!”
Sasha ignored her. “If your heart isn’t in it, I understand.”
Harker’s face may as well have been made of stone. “I know what needs to be done. We’re doing it."
"Okay. Good then, I guess. Right?"
"Let’s hope you still think that when all is said and done."
Winter picked that moment to take a sudden deep breath and then twitch into normal action. I jumped, startled by the way he went from motionless to animated. Zombies didn’t have that. At least, if we did, we were so often motionless and without the need to have a visual “breathing” sequence that there wasn’t really a big difference between us looking at our limited menus and us simply standing there, waiting for whatever came next.
Winter_Will might be back in the game, but there was something distracted about his gaze. When he spoke his words ran out of him in a wild torrent, and when I didn’t even need to look at Sasha to sense that she thought something was off about him. Maybe he wasn’t fully back in sync with Headshot, though. No luck,” he said. His voice was dry and croaky. “Something happened to Stringer, and the new guy says they’re working on the login issues, but he also said it was endemic. They don’t sound-”
Bonbon bounced into his line of sight, cutting him off. “Hey! Sasha’s awake, Will! She’s about to tell us why she decided to go subterranean, all of a sudden.”
Winter blinked hard, shook his head as if to clear it and then turned to focus on Sasha. “Oh. Right. Hi.”
“Hey man,” Sasha said with a wry smile. “I hear I owe you big for finding me. The way these guys have been talking, I’d still be down there if you hadn’t tracked me down.”
“You’d have done the same thing for any of us.”
Sasha rolled her eyes at him. “Yeah, but you did it for me, so thanks. I mean it.”
Winter nodded.
I tuned out the niceties. They didn’t matter anymore because Winter had just given himself away. He hadn’t known that Sasha was already awake when he’d slipped up and announced a name I was familiar with.
Stringer…
Mark Stringer was the Diver I’d assaulted on the library stairs. There was absolutely no good reason for Winter to know his name, much less be hearing from Deep Dive about his status. Unfortunately, it meant that these guys were a lot more compromised than I’d feared.
&nb
sp; Fuck. And even worse than that, here was Sasha about to show her hand and admit to them that she had strange gunmen appearing out of nowhere. If the Eternals were in direct communication with Deep Dive, whatever she told them could be used to break her down.
Harker shut them all up with a stern look. This guy was intense, but he must be like this all of the time because nobody protested. “Sasha was about to explain to us why we found her in a sewer. In fact, it sounded like she’d turned over a rock and found something interesting.”
Sasha nodded enthusiastically, and I rushed over to her in order to try and stop her. I had no idea how, but desperation took over and all I could do was put my hands on her shoulders and shot in her face. “Shut up! They are not on your side! Nobody is!”
Nobody but me.
Chapter 21
She took a deep breath. “Okay, here’s the thing,” Sasha said to them, as unaware of my presence as she had been for almost the entire time I’d been attached to her. “There are these guys after me. I know we always talked about the possibility of that happening. Well, it is.”
Harker frowned, and Bonbon took a step forward. Was she reaching for something? It was hard to tell if I was just being amped up and suspicious, but she was so hyperreactive that any stray twitch had me thinking she was going to do something crazy.
Sasha didn’t seem to notice, though. “At first I didn’t know if it was just a coincidence, but when I got rid of them once, they came right back even stronger than before.”
The other Eternals fell so silent that I let go of Sasha and spun around to face them. For an instant, I had convinced myself that they’d all conspired to log out at once, but there they still there.
Harker reached out and put his hand on Sasha’s shoulder, exactly where I just had. A pang of jealousy shadowed my heart, but I shoved it aside. There was much more at stake than that. “Let’s head into the staff room, okay? It sounds like you’ve got a story worth telling, and standing around here won’t do us much good.”
Headshot: Two in the Head (Book 2 of a Zombie litRPG Trilogy) Page 15