Level Zero

by Jaron Lee Knuth

  “Arkade is right,” Cyren says. “It'd be better for him to stay here, where we know he's safe.”

  Xen's voice remains calm and peaceful. “That is not going to happen. I am coming with you. Omniversalism teaches us to be brave, even in the face of imminent failure.”

  I start to argue more, but Fantom interjects. “It'll be fine. With the amount of NPCs we're going to have to kill, our group will be like, power-leveling him or whatever. He'll catch up faster than you think, yo.”

  I can tell Cyren is still worried. I feel an urge to reach out and touch her shoulder. I want to comfort her and tell her not to worry, but I catch my thoughts and keep my hands to myself. Both of them.

  “Are we ready for this?” Ekko says, then his image shakes and blinks, which fills me with anything but confidence.

  I grab my trench coat off the mangled avatar of their former group member, Klok. “Are we just leaving him here?”

  Fantom looks down at him and says, “There's like, no point in trying to save his avatar. It's too late for that. His real body is what we're worried about now. If everything goes according to plan, and we can figure out a way to like, log out or whatever, maybe we can still save him, yo.”

  I feel better with my coat on, like I'm Arkade again, the same kid who ran circles around players in the original DangerWar. I adjust my cowboy hat and step over Klok's avatar.

  Fantom steps up to the main door and says, “When Arkade opens this, we need to be ready for the worst. There could be like, an entire army out there waiting for us, yo. And it might not be just the low Level NPCs or whatever. The other NPCs could have joined them by now. We could be facing-”

  “Anything,” Cyren says, her voice still quiet, which only adds to the ominous feeling I get from it.

  “She's right,” Fantom says, nodding at her. “There could be anything out there, yo.”

  “We can't attack from inside,” I say.

  “But they can't attack us, either,” Ekko says.

  “We need to move fast,” Fantom says. “We need to get out, and like, start attacking before they can react. They won't be expecting us, and that may be our only advantage, yo.”

  “Move, shoot, and find a vehicle,” I say very matter-of-factly. “Our safest bet is to drive as fast as we can North, toward the mountains.”

  “Do you think your car will still be out there?” Xen asks.

  “It like, doesn't matter,” Fantom says. “That thing had so many bullet holes in it, it was like, barely running when we got here. And even if it does still run, we like, barely fit Cyren and Ekko in the back seat. There's no way we can all use it now, yo.”

  “Just find something big,” I say. “Something that can take some hits.”

  “And like, kill as many of those things as you can on the way,” Fantom adds.

  No one verbally agrees, but we all summon our weapons and aim them toward the door. Fantom stands in front, her shield glowing on her arm, hoping to protect us from the first wave of attacks. I reach out and touch the option to open the reinforced door, and I watch it slide upward.

  I try to consume everything I'm looking at as the group rushes out. There's two cars with flames painted on the hood, and small green-skinned men sitting inside with huge lower jaws and crooked teeth protruding over their upper lips. They're parked nose to nose, blocking the street in front of the equipment shop. I lift my guns, ready to fill the windshields with explosive rounds, but Ekko beats me to it. The muzzle of his rifle pops and the green-skinned monsters inside the car shake as their bodies are filled with bullets. His wooden avatar spins and pumps the other car full of bullets. Sparks fly from the few rounds that hit the hood, but the windshield shatters, and the monsters inside slump forward.

  I turn to the right, following the group and bringing up the rear. I'm watching behind us, but the street looks fairly empty. When I spin forward, I see a delivery truck parked only half a block away. The back of the truck is opening, and I see more of the green-skinned men climbing out. They're only half my size, but all of them are wearing armor and carrying automatic rifles.

  “Goblins!” Cyren screams.

  Fantom is already zipping across the street, and in a flash of light she's standing next to the delivery truck. She slices the first goblin in half with her gigantic sword, but the one right behind him unloads a clip into her chest. The blast from the gun launches her into the air, and she lands flat on her back.

  Xen tosses his small fireballs, but I shove him to the side and fire both of my pistols. My explosive rounds tear the goblin apart, even with his armor, but more of the creatures pour out of the door. I hold my fire, not wanting to damage the van. My brain has already kicked into overdrive, imagining our luck if we can all get inside a truck that size.

  Cyren dodges some gunfire from another goblin, then flips across the street. Bullets zip past her body, and before they can unload an entire magazine, she's positioned herself next to three of them, slamming the flat of her palm into the face of the closest one. She ducks down as another rifle turns toward her. She spins, extending her leg to trip the goblin pointing the gun at her. His feet are knocked out from underneath him, and her elbow lands on his ribcage as he slams against the street.

  The last of the three goblins slams the butt of his rifle into the back of her head. He yells something at her, but I can't hear it. Ekko is unloading his rifle right next to me, and the goblin blows apart into a few large pieces.

  “Get inside!” I yell, pointing at the truck and turning around to check behind us again.

  I see two more cars come squealing around the corner. Xen stops next to me, ready to fight, but I shove him toward the truck.

  “Move!”

  He reluctantly extinguishes the green fireball in his hands, and follows Ekko into the back of the truck. I pull both triggers, pecking away at the approaching cars. Finally one of my explosive rounds punctures the hood of the car, and the engine catches on fire. The car careens to the left and slams into the front of a building. The other car keeps coming at me, and I realize they aren't going to stop. They're trying to run me down. I glance over my shoulder and see Cyren climbing in the back of the truck. I don't see Fantom, so I can only assume she's inside too. I keep stepping backwards toward the delivery truck, letting loose as many bullets as I can toward the car, which is only building in speed.

  Just as I'm about to give up firing and leap to the side, I see Fantom zipping out toward the car. She crouches down as it passes her, holding out her sword and slashing the front tire. The car squeals to the side, shoved to the left by the explosion of the wheel. It turns sideways, and I have a clear shot at the goblin driver through the side window. I see the pupils of his huge eyes as he sees my pistol raising at him. A single explosive round fires from my gun as the car slides past me, and I watch the NPC driver explode into a burst of flames. The car smashes into the the building next to me, and the passenger goes flying through the windshield, mangling himself on the broken glass. I hear him release a series of painful moans, and I'm shocked by the programming that would be required to simulate that kind of anguish.

  That's when I realize that none of the NPCs are disappearing.

  011000

  I'm staring at the writhing body in the shattered windshield, and it's only a hand grasping my arm that shocks me out of it. I spin around and see Fantom yanking me toward the delivery truck.

  “Come on!” she screams with annoyance. “We don't have time to admire the graphics, yo.”

  My brain returns to the state of fast-forward that I prefer, and I find myself already running toward the driver's door. As soon as I open it, Fantom is shoving herself past me, climbing up toward the steering wheel.

  “I always drive,” she says without a hint of laughter.

  I'm about to argue, but I hear the sound of gunfire close by. I run around the front of the truck and hear the engine start. Fantom is stomping on the gas pedal before I'm completely inside. I yank my door shut as the delivery t
ruck lurches forward.

  “We've got more cars behind us,” Ekko yells, his face pressed up against the tiny windows in the back doors.

  Gripping the steering wheel with both hands, Fantom says, “We've got bigger problems in front of us, yo.”

  I peer out the windshield and see a wall of dead NPC corpses blocking the street. Aliens, werewolves, zombies, and other things I don't recognize. Without a reboot, nothing has been reset. All the dead bodies from last night are still laying there, heaped on top of each other.

  “I can make it,” Fantom says.

  “Floor it!” I yell.

  The truck plows through the corpses, knocking the lifeless NPCs to the side. The vehicle bounces around as it runs over a few of the bodies, but the truck is heavy and keeps itself weighed down. Unfortunately, we also make a clear path for the other cars to follow us.

  “Okay,” I say, “open those doors and let loose.”

  Cyren throws open one of the back doors and Ekko steps up. The cars are close, trying to gain on us. Ekko drops to one knee and tilts his rifle upward. He reaches forward and grabs onto one of the upgrades he's added onto his obscenely large gun. I hear a pop of air, and a small, round grenade goes spinning into the air. It lands on the hood with painted flames and explodes, pushing the front of the car into the pavement and tossing the rear into the air. The vehicle flips end over end as Ekko reloads the launcher. I watch the Koins drop into my inventory.

  “Yo, how we doing back there?” Fantom asks as she wheels the truck around a corner.

  I hear another grenade launch and the sound of an explosion ripping metal apart, so I smile and say, “We're doing... okay, actually. These goblins must be low Level NPCs.”

  “Good,” she says through her clenched teeth. “Because we've got other problems, yo.”

  I look ahead of us and see two centaurs, half-man and half-horse, run out into an intersection. They're both holding humongous spears and they waste no time hurling them straight at the truck. Fantom does her best to turn out of the way, managing to deflect one of the giant metal tips off the truck's side, but the other spear sinks deep into our front grill. The engine sputters for a moment, but keeps moving us forward.

  I watch as another set of spears appear in both of the creature's hands, so I lean my torso out of the window next to me, pointing both pistols straight at the them. The explosive rounds slam into the centaurs, but they take the damage without flinching. I only manage to slow them down.

  “These things aren't from any quests we've seen,” Fantom yells.

  I keep unloading my pistols at them, hoping to at least distract them long enough for the truck to get past, but when we get less than twenty yards away, they both crouch down on the street. I see them plant the base of their spears in the ground to brace for impact, pointing the head of their spears toward our approaching vehicle.

  I slide back inside the truck and grab a hold of the steering wheel. Fantom screams at me, but I yank the wheel toward me, turning the heavy truck to the right. It's such a sharp turn that we tilt up on two wheels, drifting around the corner of the intersection and slamming our back end into one of the spears. I hear more metal tearing and a few screams from the back of the truck. Once we're going straight down the road again, I look in the back and see the giant spear sticking straight through one wall, the sharpened head only inches away from Xen's face.

  “You okay?” I ask, but he only nods in reply.

  I turn back around and look out the windshield, expecting more monsters to be descending on us, but I see a vacant street. Stores and restaurants line both sides of the four lane road, but everything looks empty. Cars are no longer sitting in the lots or next to the parking meters. No random civilians are wandering on the sidewalks.

  Then we turn another corner.

  There are craters in the street still smoldering from explosions, and the walls of buildings are marked with bullet holes. I see a player's avatar stuck to a wall with arrows. A tank is overturned in the middle of the road. It looks like a post-apocalyptic simulator.

  “They're still on us,” Ekko says, loading another grenade round into his massive gun.

  I look in my side mirror and see the two centaurs galloping down the street. Both of them are holding huge spears again, and despite their hooves, they're still gaining on us.

  “I don't know if my grenades will even do anything to these guys,” Ekko says, readying himself by the backdoor.

  My brain is spinning, trying to come up with a plan to stop them. If we can't kill them, we need to trap them, or at least slow them down enough to get away.

  Cyren's eyes lock on mine. “Stop the truck.”

  It doesn't register at first, but before I can filter how to reply, she's opening the backdoor and leaping out. She flies through the air like a kite, arms outstretched and floating for an impossible length of time. Both centaurs hurl spears at her, but miss the moving target.

  “Stop the truck!” everyone screams at once.

  Cyren lands hard on one of the centaurs, and his horse legs fold underneath him. She rolls to the side, but is back on top of him before he can recover. She systematically grabs each leg, and with a powerful chop of her hand, breaks the bone.

  The other centaur looks at our stopped truck, then back at his fallen companion, trying to decide what to do. He waits too long, and Cyren is leaping through the air again, this time landing on the centaur's bare back.

  Fantom watches the attack in the side mirror, but only manages to say, “Like... wow.”

  “She's incredible,” I mumble.

  The centaur wheels around, trying to strike at Cyren, but she remains behind him, like an itch he can't scratch. Her hands wrap around his face. His hands latch onto her forearms, trying to pry her grip away from his eyes, but she digs the tips of her fingers in deep.

  The centaur screams. He bucks onto his hind legs, throwing Cyren to the ground, but it's too late. He's blind. His hands touch his face, then reach into the air, grasping for anything to give him stability. Cyren sidesteps around him and runs back to the truck, jumping through the back doors and slamming them shut behind her.

  “Go,” I say to Fantom, but I never take my eyes off of Cyren.

  She looks bashful, but keeps glancing in my direction as Xen and Ekko congratulate her. I feel the urge to tell her how amazing that was. I want to tell her that her movements were unlike anything I've ever seen. I want to tell her that her body is the deadliest weapon in any game I've ever played. And I want to whisper all of this in her ear.

  “Arkade.”

  Fantom says my name, and I shake off the strange urges I'm feeling. I look toward her, and she points out the window at a road sign that reads: HIGHWAY.

  011001

  Fantom wheels the truck onto the ramp and merges onto the wide highway. The four lanes loop around the entire city in one huge circle. We head north, toward the mountain peaks rising above the rest of the game world. All the lanes are littered with debris, corpses, and abandoned vehicles. Huge parts of the road are missing, bombed and destroyed by explosions.

  “How long will this world last if there's no reboot?” I ask, but I think I'm only asking myself.

  Cyren is next to me, looking over my shoulder, and peering out the window with me. “If they kill all the players... then the war will be over. The destruction will end.”

  I turn and look at her. Her cheek is only inches from my face. “The war? Is that what you think this is?”

  She turns and looks at me. Now her lips are so close to me I can almost smell them. “Look around. What would you call this?”

  “She's right,” Fantom says. “It's like they declared war on us, yo.”

  “They?”

  Fantom never takes her eyes off the road. “The NPCs. The game. Whatever. We're like, on one side, and everything else is on the other.”

  Cyren points down the road. “There's something up ahead.”

  I squint my eyes, but I can't see anything. I'm abo
ut to ask, but as we drive closer I can make out a long black line that stretches across every lane. I lift the goggles off my neck and strap them around my eyes. The telescoping feature zooms down the lanes, and I see the NPCs in high-definition.

  “It's a roadblock,” I say.

  We pass a road sign that reads: DARKFYRE MOUNTAINS - EXIT 1 MILE.

  “They're blocking the zone entrance,” Cyren says.

  I adjust my goggles and zoom in closer, trying to examine the NPCs that pace back and forth. I see the glowing armor, signifying its magical properties. They're carrying submachine guns that are equipped with a mess of upgrades. When I see them spot our approach, they open their mouths wide and hiss. Behind each of their lips, I can see two long fangs.

  “Vampires,” I say, and I can feel the shudder run through everyone in the group.

  “Are you like... sure?” Fantom asks.

  “Those are high Level NPCs,” Cyren says. “They shouldn't be in a low Level zone like the city.”

  “They also shouldn't be out during the day, but I don't think the NPCs are following a whole lot of rules anymore,” Ekko says from behind me.

  Cyren grabs onto my shoulder, and her fingers dig in as she says, “We need to turn around.”

  I pull the goggles off my face and look in her eyes. I speak in something a little over a whisper, caught in the intimacy of our closeness. “You don't think we can beat them?”

  “They're too powerful.”

  “So were the centaurs,” Fantom says, “and like, you killed them pretty easily, yo.”

  Cyren shakes her head, her face looking strained as she says, “I didn't kill them. I only... incapacitated them.”

  Fantom lets off the gas pedal and says, “So like, what are we supposed to do?”

  I lift my goggles again and scan the road ahead of us. The exit ramp is only a short distance beyond the roadblock. It leads down to a gravel road that winds into into the wooded hills that surround the mountains.