Chapter 30
She told me her plan. Then I made her tell it to me again. As soon as it became clear that she hadn’t been trying to bullshit me the first time around, I pretty much had no choice but to interrupt her. "Let me just stop you right there. Are you serious?”
“Deadly.”
“Sasha, I thought you were a gamer.”
“I am!”
“Well, prove it, then. The first rule of a multiplayer game is Never. Split. Your party. That’s it. It's been like that since Dungeons & Dragons, since people were rolling the dice and not walking around in some genius’s comatose brain. Sorry…", I said, catching myself at the end there.
Sasha was frustrated with me, but at least she didn't take offense at what I’d just said about her dad. I hadn't meant it to be a slight. It was just that I was still coming to terms with the organic ‘server’ we were in. Humor and deprecation had often been the only way that I knew how to cope, and I was having a lot of trouble turning it off right now.
I was glad that she didn't think I was making light of her situation. I didn’t want to be arguing with her the whole time, but this heated discussion we were locked in right now was too important to give in to.
She clicked her tongue at me, acting like a disappointed grandmother. "You're not thinking straight," she told me. “So let me break it to you as gently as I can. What are your skills? Go on, check your menu. But since you haven't been bragging about them, I'm going to guess that you don't have any. Because if you did, which I don't think you do, the only abilities I would guess that you had would be the same ones that I do. Your character was ‘created’ at the same time as mine, right? But what good would that be? Two engineers might be a bit better than one, but that’s the situation, is it?"
Just to spite her, I checked my menu again. I still didn’t have any skills or abilities, so she was annoyingly right about that. That was happening far too often, and it was starting to get old. "Just because I can't help you booby-trap the place or whatever you’re cooking up, doesn't mean that I should go out there." I hooked my thumb at the outside world, where the sun was almost all the way down, and the crowd was beginning to gather.
She shrugged. “True. But it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t, either.”
I went over and looked out the window. A strange blue box had descended around the hospital on the minimap, and if strained my eyes hard enough I could see it in the air out there as well. It was three blocks away from us. It had to be the safe zone created by her dad, the one that Deep Dive would bust through at 11 to release the hounds. "Are we even sure that I can get through that?"
Sasha gave me a wink. "You're not asking the right question. The right question would be ‘if you can get through it on the way out, who’s to say that you can return? Or would you prefer to be stuck out there with them?"
I cracked my knuckles, a habit that I hadn’t been able to use in Headshot for a while since I’d had to chew the left one off in my Zombie form. Now that I had them both again, it was taking my brain a little while to come to terms with the additional limb. Which meant, of course, that this game was royally fucking me up. Not for the first time, I wondered what type of lasting psychological damage I’d suffer if I stayed in for as long as I intended.
No time to deal with that now. There was beginning to be a long list of things that I’d rather not turn my mind to, and I put this one at the bottom. "But I’m not a spy."
A little half-smile ghosted across her face, and she knew that she’d already won. I was coming around to her way of thinking, and part of my process was simply complaining about the minutiae. "You don’t need to do much. Pretend to be a Survivor. If somebody asks you a question you don’t know, play dumb. There’ll be a ton of noobs hopping in to see what the ruckus is about, so you won’t be alone in your ignorance. You look human now. Let’s use it.”
“But…”
She held up her hand. “I know. Maybe some of you rubbed off on me, and I can read your mind now, but I can already hear what you’re going to say. And you’re right. You don’t belong in the game right now, and the trace program might find you. But I’m betting that Deep Dive’s resources are focused on the patch. They’ll have their hands full trying to paint my dad into a corner, and you’ll slip through the cracks.”
She was probably right. And even if she wasn’t, learning what the Survivors were planning was worth the risk. “So I just… mingle?”
“Yep. You’ll be safe, Ryan. I can't imagine that the devs are going to let there be PVP out there. The friendly fire would be insane even if things went right, and there’s always a bunch of assholes who want to mess up a big gathering of players like this. A random car bomb or a whole bunch of crazy kids with guns would spoil their entire army, and they’re not about to let that happen."
It was all so simple to her, wasn't it? But then again, it's always simple to the person giving the commands when they’re not the one expected to carry them out. "And that's it, huh? I just sneak over there, get chummy, and then return loaded with exactly the information we need to turn the tide?"
I was expecting a witty rejoinder. She and I had been having a pretty good back-and-forth ever since I'd materialized in the game, and for a girl that I'd hardly met until this morning, I was speaking with her as if she was one of my closest friends. Screw that, I told myself, the two of you are way closer than that. Not that that’s hard since you don't have a lot of friends in the first place. But if you spend a few hours in someone else's mind and see some of their secrets, camaraderie takes a shortcut.
But this time Sasha didn't fire back. She rarely hesitated to bat my comments back at me, and when all I got was silence, I sought her gaze with mine.
She was tired. Exhausted really. All of this was wearing her out, and I had to keep reminding myself that the woman I saw in front of me hadn’t set out to be some rebellious mastermind. She didn't particularly want to be a white hat hacker bent on saving the world. She was twenty-two or twenty-three. I don’t know where her life had been going before this, but it wasn’t going there now.
The world that conspired to take her dad away from her and she was doing what she could to get him back. That was it, but it didn’t magically make it easy or simple or painless or successful.
And she was scared.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I'm just so used to you coming up with the plan lately that it seemed to fall to me to be play the devil’s advocate. Somewhere in the last couple of hours, I guess I turned into an asshole. I don't want to shoot down all of your ideas. I just want to help."
She pressed her fingers to her temples and then sighed. "I know. And I know you're trying, too. I'm sorry I dragged you into all this. Even the Eternals chose, though whether it was because they were looking for some adventure in their life like Harker or were too naïve to care about the circumstances like Bonbon. You didn’t sign up for this. You’re just like everybody else, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You want to play the game. I'm sorry that I have to destroy it."
I waved her words away. "You don’t need to apologize. I get it. And I’ll help you, like I said. And you’re right; we need all the information we can get. Me going over there and playing superspy isn't a bad idea. I'm expendable, and I get that. If I get killed or kicked from the game, so what? The server probably doesn’t even know I’m here anyway, and when I'm gone, I'm gone. It’d be stupid for me to stay behind if we have a chance at learning what the other side’s up to."
Thanks," she whispered.
"Don't mention it," I said, pushing myself away from the window and taking a quick look around me in case I was missing something I should be bringing with me. "Here goes nothing, I suppose. The back of the hospital is pretty well shadowed. I'll leave through there and then loop around to where most of them are gathering."
"Good idea,” Sasha agreed. "And Ryan?"
"Yeah?"
"Don't be so hard on yourself, huh? You didn't turn into an asshole in the last few hours
."
I smiled. "Thanks."
"You’ve probably had at least a couple of years of practice."
I chuckled and shook my head at her, and before I could give her a stupid little wave or any words of meaningless encouragement, I turned and went downstairs, following the emergency exit signs until I found the night.
Chapter 31
I might not have had any abilities assigned to me by Headshot, but this game couldn't take away my instincts. I'd been playing as a Zombie for long enough that it was second nature to pick my way quickly through the deepest of shadows. I'd certainly be better concealed if I still had my Low Light Vision and Hide In Shadows perks, but I'd learned my lessons well on that side of the game.
On the Survivor side of things, it turned out that walking three blocks in the very last of the light amidst a city that had yet to return to the grid was surprisingly simple. On top of that, the few Survivors I did see from this distance weren’t even looking in the direction of the hospital.
Once I got closer, I could see why. There was a huge gathering going on, complete with muffled music, aromatic food, and military-grade transports. On top of all of that, what appeared to be a small rave had broken off and taken over one of the abandoned buildings nearby. Even though electricity was in short supply when it came to streetlights, it seemed there was more than enough to go around for the floodlights that were pointing at dozens of tables full of player-made merchandise.
The atmosphere was bubbling with excitement, and people were getting caught up in the moment. Every player I looked at was more heavily armed than the last, and I imagined that all of that hardware would be aimed at me in a couple of hours at best and a few minutes at worst.
The blue wall that protected Sasha and I from them was only half a block ahead of me now. It didn't shimmer anymore, but even though I could tell its shape and its color it went through this odd pulsing dance, somehow managing not to obscure my vision. I went towards it as fast as I dared and, when I was right in front of it, I reached out to place my palms on the surface.
Except it had no surface. Not to me, at least. I didn't stop to marvel at what Sasha's father was able to do. Instead, I walked straight through it. As soon as I had, I took a few quick glances in as many directions as I had to worry about and then dropped the slinking through the shadows bit. It had been important that I got here without being seen, but now that I was on the Survivor side of the barrier, skulking around like I had something to hide was a surefire way to arouse suspicion.
I stepped away from the shadows with my shoulders thrown back, and I walked right down the middle of the street like I owned the place. For all that I'd been through so far and all that I was afraid I had yet to endure, this was probably one of the strangest parts of the game for me. It went against everything I’d spent the whole time learning, often through painful lessons. The lizard part of my brain, the one that felt hunted throughout the entirety of Headshot, was screaming at me. It wanted to reach out with its claws and yank me back into concealment.
I'd never experienced this game without fear.
There was a multibillion dollar corporation hunting us, not to mention dark and desperate deeds remaining hidden beneath the very program I was in. Then there were the developers and their godlike powers zoning into the game indiscriminately, hot on my trail. All that, and the only thing it took to make me feel safe was walking past a lone Survivor as he gave me an awkward thumbs up.
I returned the gesture. The last thing I wanted was to be stuck in a conversation, but this guy nervously pointed in the direction I had come from anyway and said, "That's fucking weird, right?"
Had I been caught already? Would my best response be to see if I could shove this guy down and dart back to the safety of the barrier?
I gritted my teeth and steeled my nerve as I cautioned myself not to turn into the world's biggest coward at the drop of a hat. I was no more than forty steps away from the damn barrier, and already my first and only plan was to slink back to it like a child that had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
Instead, I cocked an eyebrow in his direction. "If you ask me, this whole thing is fucking weird," I told him, doing my best to adopt the world-weary attitude that I often had to wear when I was on the bus or at my job, and someone asked me something that I’d rather not reveal.
He was nodding enthusiastically, and I began to worry that his eagerness to chat could be put down to him being as much a stranger to this side of the game as I was. "You'd think they'd let us see it. I mean, how are we supposed to plan if we can't even work out where the damn thing is?"
I turned around to see what he was getting at. On this side of the barrier, the blue wall was solid. It looked like someone had deleted all of the game on that side of the world, and I had to take a few steps back and look down the street to my left to work out if it ended. It did, but I was sure that if I rounded that corner and looked toward the hospital, there’d be more blue wall staring me in the face.
He wasn't done talking. "You just touched it, didn't you? That's why you're coming from that direction, yeah?"
"Yeah," I lied. So much for confidently walking down the center of the street making me safe. I probably should've waited to pull that shit until I was farther from the wall.
"What happened when you did it?" he asked, his eyes as wide as if he had requested a war story from an older relative.
I did my best to give him the answer he was looking for. "What happened? It hurt like a bitch, that’s what happened. Deep Dive is doing a good job of making it fair. No sneaking in and no head start."
He smiled. "I heard a bunch of people talking about the wall, so I thought I'd come down here and see what happened if I tried to shove through. Just to test it out."
I shrugged at him. "You can try it, if you want. My guess is that it affects everybody differently. I mean, they’re in our heads, right? It wouldn’t be that hard for them to just summon up some fear that they knew would get us to back off. Fire, acid, snakes. Whatever…"
And just like that, all the enthusiasm that had been painted on his face faded away as if by magic. I'd burst his enthusiastic bubble, and he didn't even bother to pretend that it wasn't the case. "Maybe I’ll just look and not touch…"
I nodded sagely. "Probably for the best." Before he could decide that he had several other questions he wanted to ask me, I put my head down, shoved my hands into my pockets and strode up the street toward the rest of the Survivors. The closer I got the louder the music was, and now and then people were firing shots up into the air with a myriad of different firearms.
Some idiots were already testing out the friendly fire options, walking up to people and pumping twenty or thirty rounds into their chests, laughing with glee when no damage was done.
It wasn't just a cast of idiots, though. The merchants, they were the ones that obviously knew what was up. As I got close enough to inspect what was on those long folding tables, I knew that hardware like that wouldn’t come cheap and it wouldn’t come easy. There were some big players out tonight, and big players like that had to have big guilds behind them.
Shit. That reminded me. Here I’d been walking up the street like a moron, trying to pretend like I belonged and I hadn't even considered the fact that there was every chance that at least three Survivors out here knew exactly what I looked like.
Winter_Will, Bonbon, and Harker. They wouldn't miss out on the raid, not for anything. Maybe the rest of the Eternals never really did get a chance to log back in for whatever reason, but those three would be here, somewhere. And even worse, Deep Dive would've told them a bit more than that systemwide message had let everyone know.
I didn't have definitive proof that they were working more closely with the developers, but every sign sure pointed in that direction. They'd known Mark Stringer. They'd betrayed me, to get to the brick. I didn’t know exactly what knowledge they had, but those three were dangerous.
I should've looked for a hat or a
hoodie before I left the hospital, anything to try and disguise myself. I hadn’t though, and here I was walking up to a group of some of the best-outfitted Survivors I'd ever seen, and I was wearing my game face.
Too late to turn back.
Not really, but I had meant it when I’d spoken to Sasha a few minutes ago. If I got nabbed, it wasn't that big a deal. Even if Deep Dive worked out who I was and captured me, I could probably talk my way out of it. Maybe if I played dumb and lawyered up, I’d be all right. I could probably even get a message to Lori so that I could let her know that I was in custody. She could tell enough people where I was to make sure that I didn’t just up and disappear.
I swallowed hard. It was hard to be brave in the face of a conversation with myself that involved the possibility that I was going up against forces that could kill me. And worse, ones that might do so, if it was expedient.
You sir, are in way over your fucking head, I warned myself.
But what Deep Dive Studios had done to Blake Redhook was wrong. What they were using his game to do to the rest of us was even more wrong, and the newfound fighting spirit that I didn't even know I had was burning brightly, an ember that the fear and the cowardice that I experienced in every other part of my life had yet to put out.
I wasn't going to go quietly. I wasn't going to give up. Even if it were the best thing for me, I wouldn't.
I’d go down swinging.
Some of the merchants and shopkeepers were selling armor as well as weapons. I thought about buying a helmet to conceal my identity, but the thought didn’t last long. I didn't have any money, and I had nothing to trade. I didn't even know what the economy here was like, and it wasn't like there were price tags on things. I walked by the goods slowly enough and feigned enough interest in a few items to eavesdrop on several conversations, and they were all talking about rarity and salvage points.
Headshot: Two in the Head (Book 2 of a Zombie litRPG Trilogy) Page 22