Kill Code

by Justin Sloan

  “We should get to it,” I said, trying to recover. If we could at least locate the ring, this might be fixable. “Unless… do you have it on you?”

  “Of course not, it’s at the spaw—” He stopped himself. His eyes darted over to me, narrowed, skeptical. A sneer found its way to his lips, and he took a step closer. “Something’s off about you.”

  “He was hit hard up there,” Rivera said. “We both were.”

  Now it was her turn to get his skeptical look. “And since Ling Wen was the only female assigned to this hill, you would be her. Except that you’re clearly not.”

  There was only one move here, as far as I was concerned. I had the rifle up before he could react, sending a round through his leg. The man fell to the ground, but still had his rifle in his hand and he shot, grazing my cheek. It hurt! It wasn’t supposed to do that, but I supposed at some point, when they’d changed the game so that the Marines died, pain had become part of it.

  Rivera was charging in, the two conscious guys up and fighting also. A soldier pulled the rope off from his wrists and then slammed into me with a side-kick and then jumped for a spinning kick—but the short man behind him came in with an uppercut to the crotch, ending whatever thoughts of a fancy, show-off move he might have had. The next caught the little guy with a blade in the back, but all that elicited was laughter and a kick to the soldier’s shin.

  I turned in time to see a soldier about to tackle me, but too late to stop it. He had me on the ground, pummeling me, and then drew his blade. The first strike narrowly missed my head as I thrust myself over. My forearm slammed into his for an armbar and he dropped the knife, only to catch it with his other hand.

  The next slash cut a line across my shirt, but didn’t reach flesh. It had left him off balance, so I managed to thrust up and maneuver the armbar to have him on his stomach, me over him. I brought my knee down hard onto the back of his elbow. He screamed as it snapped, and then I had the blade and slammed it into the side of his neck. He was gone, pixelating out of there, and I was up and ready to take on the rest of them.

  Only, my new team had done their job well, because the rest of the soldiers were finished off already, one pixelating out next to Rivera as she grinned my way.

  The white wizard stood over us, watching it all with pride. “Well, it looks like we’ve chosen our hero wisely.”

  Oliver stood at his side and waved to us enthusiastically.

  “But where did it get us?” I asked.

  “The ring,” the wizard said, seemingly ignoring my question. “Have you accepted this quest to see it destroyed?”

  I frowned up at him. His character was familiar, but different, too. Then I nodded.

  “We at least know where the ring should be,” Rivera said. “Or we can guess, based on what he started to say.”

  “At the spawn point?” I guessed, based on past game experience.

  “The ring must be able to throw a curtain around what they are doing next,” she said with a nod. “But they’d need something in the simulation to set it off. To activate it.”

  “That’s why they were charging in so fast at first,” I said as the realization hit me. “They needed to distract us, but also they needed a sort of reset button set. Their general—I killed him. Maybe he was the button? Meaning, the code could be altered when he, or maybe a majority of them, were killed. Some sort of trigger.”

  She looked to the old man, who shrugged.

  “All over our heads,” Rivera said. “But let’s go with it. And since we know which direction the enemy spawn point is, it shouldn’t be too hard to find it.”

  “But before you go on your journey…” the old man said. He motioned us to the far wall, where there was a small door I wasn’t sure had been there before. “See what you find within.”

  “What, like loot?” I asked, kind of excited, actually. As much as all of this was messing with my mind, I would be quite fine with some positives thrown in.

  We entered a square room that actually had a chest in the center, and I had to laugh.

  “This is funny?” Rivera asked.

  “It’s so… over the top. Ridiculous. Funny? Well, considering the fact that the world is in danger and we just lost most of First Recon, finding all this is damn funny.”

  She nodded, then smiled. “Well, what’re you waiting for? Open it.”

  I shook my head, sighed, and walked up to the chest. I half expected to find a Triforce inside, but was equally pleased to see a shield within. It was small, barely large enough to cover my forearm, and brown with a lighter brown cross. Maybe bronze? I reached in to take it, not sure exactly how this would come in handy. As soon as my fingers touched the shield, it morphed, turning clear as it became one with me and moved to cover my body. My reaction was, naturally, to freak out.

  “Wha—” I jumped back, trying to wipe it away like a swarm of bees, but Rivera was there telling me to calm down. I did my best, realizing it wasn’t hurting me or affecting my ability to breathe.

  “It’s a shield,” she said, hands outstretched toward me, but held just far enough away in case I exploded.

  “It was a shield,” I corrected her. “Now?”

  “No, I mean like a different kind of shield, the modern ones they put on ships.” She took a step closer, looking me over. “You can’t even see it anymore, but I bet if I shot at you—”

  “Whoa, let’s not risk it,” I said. “Let’s say we wait and see how it does in battle.”

  “Speaking of battle,” the old man said. “You have the information you sought, you have your destination. The ring must not be allowed to exist in this world any longer.”

  I couldn’t agree more, though I would’ve worded it differently. The old man and boy joined us, and we exited through a back door out into the open, on a different part of the hill.

  “Thank you,” I said, but then frowned, realizing I couldn’t just let it go at that. “But… can’t you tell me who you are? What this is all about? I have theories, and my thought is that you’d like to help me more, but you have to overcome the obstacles they’re throwing in your way. Is any of this right?”

  The old man and boy shared a look of confusion, then the old man said, “If you’d like to pass, this boy can guide you.”

  “Pass?” I asked.

  He smiled. “Surely you don’t want to walk the whole way across.”

  “Oh, like a portal.” I beamed, excited. Even though the odds were very much stacked against us, I was liking whoever was helping me more and more.

  “I’ll take you,” Oliver said, and grinned. He pulled out his stick and waved it in the air to create a glowing omega sign. He slashed through it and a vertical line appeared. Suddenly a flash of light surrounded us, and when it was gone, we were staring at a massive stairway and great, golden doors like the entrance to Heaven. “Come on!”

  He darted up as the doors opened, and was gone.

  “You won’t find him there,” the old man said, shrugging. “But it will get you to where you need to go.”

  “Where exactly would that be?” I asked.

  “Near the ring, or close enough. We’ve been able to narrow it down to a general location, at least. From there, it’s up to you.”

  “And if we need a quick retreat?”

  He looked confused for a moment, but turned to Rivera and nodded, as if that helped him understand. “Ah, the portal? I’m not sure… this was lucky in itself. But… we’ll see what we can do.”

  With those words, he and the whole village section of the hill started to vanish. Rivera held out her hand and said, “No use stalling.”

  I looked at the hand, confused, and gave her a curt nod before ascending the steps into the door. She caught up at the top and hit me in the arm.

  “It was supposed to be a magical gesture, ass,” she said. “Like we go through together.”

  After considering that, I held out my arm. A much less committed gesture, one that I could feel comfortable with, like I wa
s escorting her at the Marine Corps Ball. She smiled, wrapped her arm through mine, and we proceeded through the doors and into the golden light.

  10

  We emerged from the light into nearly equally bright lights—neon ones hanging in front of tall buildings. As the old man had said, the boy was gone and the door behind us vanished. It was too bad, as I felt I should’ve had a final chance to wish the boy luck in his search for his mother. Then again, I knew how that turned out.

  The area certainly didn’t fit what we’d seen from the sim so far. In the distance I could see blue retro lines forming like blueprints of new buildings, vanishing as the actual buildings took their place. Some signs were in Japanese, others in Chinese and languages I didn’t recognize. It was like this city was rising up in the world, building itself. Or maybe the enemy hackers were recreating their home city, a place for their higher-ups to relax and feel at home while the peons searched for us.

  “Kinda makes me crave gyoza,” I said, looking around at it all in amazement. It had been meant as a joke, but the expression of discomfort on Rivera’s face showed she hadn’t taken it so. “You with me, Rivera?”

  She nodded. “This… I’d never…”

  “Too much like the pictures, huh?” I asked. We’d all seen images of the enemy’s homeland, though tourists had been banned many years ago, when both of us would’ve been children.

  “It’s creepy,” she said, then motioned to the closest building. “We should get out of the middle of the street.”

  With the crazy light show our Heaven door had made, I was inclined to agree with her. Even though it was daytime, I doubted anyone could’ve not noticed it if they were anywhere nearby. The closest building seemed to be some sort of shopping mall, complete with Japanese-style food carts and mannequins.

  Inside was darker, but in our current situation that could be a good thing. We agreed that, without knowledge of where we were going, staying hiding and looking for signs of the enemy or any sort of clue made the most sense, so we worked our way to the rooftop. As stupid as the decision seemed by the tenth floor, we pushed on, both of us huffing and puffing as if we were using our real lungs. My legs ached, too, reminding me what a great simulation this was.

  At the top floor, we pushed through the door to find ourselves at a good vantage point, and stood there frozen at the sight. It was beautiful, the far-stretching city interspersed with temples, tall trees, and all manner of neon lights.

  As much as we were trained to despise the Eastern Ascent Company for what it had done to our world, visiting the countries there had always been a dream. Japan had been brought in when I was ten, at a time when I’d been super into playing the original Japanese version of Seiken Densetsu Three. When mixed with playtimes of the first Tenchu games, that made me really want to go visit the country. I found journals online of Americans who had gone over there, and spent many hours reading about their times at a ryokan and tempting fate—as they saw it—by eating something called fugu. One man wrote about visiting hot springs in a village outside of Nagasaki, and how he’d been walking nude from one of the baths to the other with his buddies when they passed by a river where a mom and her children were playing. He freaked out, while his Japanese friends laughed and made fun of him for being so shy, saying that was how it was there. I wondered at that, imagining how I would’ve reacted in that situation. So yeah, video games and manga had fueled my interest in going to Japan and trying the food, checking out the cherry blossom festivals, seeing their fireworks shows that supposedly lasted for hours on end… and then I suddenly wasn’t allowed.

  Now, it was not only like I was there, but in a mixture of a city that was like visiting Japan, China, and various other places all at once.

  Rivera turned to me and said, “Beautiful, ne?”

  “Ne?”

  She smiled. “Don’t you think?”

  “Like a dream,” I said, looking out over it again. “I can almost imagine myself going to some important meeting in that building there, or taking a break from my job in Tokyo to visit that café, or eat at the restaurant over there with the hanging lantern. Ever see the Karate Kid where they go to Okinawa?”

  She thought for a moment, then shook her head. “Only the show when they were adults, which was great.”

  I laughed. “A classic in a different sense. But yeah, Okinawa… now that would be on my bucket list.”

  “If we win this war, we’re one step closer to changing the world, to putting a dent in the E.A.C.”

  “That’s what you call it?” I hadn’t ever heard the Eastern Ascent Company referred to by the acronym, but hey, we were military so it made sense. “Damn, if someone had told me when I was younger that all I’d have to do was wage a two-person war against the E.A.C.…” I paused, letting the words settle in my mind, “I would’ve run off to start the war when I was a teenager.”

  She laughed, but then shook her head. “No war is ever a good idea, but sometimes they can be inevitable.”

  “You’ve seen your fair share of action?”

  “Have I…?” she said, but in a way that didn’t make it very clear whether she actually had or not. “I’ve been to Okinawa,” she added. “When I was a little girl, but I don’t remember much. Except for the pineapple fields, and this place my dad took me where they had pineapple chocolate, pineapple cake, everything pineapple. Want to know what I remember most?”

  “It wasn’t the pineapple chocolate?”

  She smiled, wistfully. “No, and it wasn’t the large sake bottles they kept with snakes in them. It was the way my dad would laugh every time I made some joke, I don’t even remember what it was. I think I was doing some kid’s yoga pose thing and pretending I was a pineapple or something, but he didn’t care if it was funny or not, you know? He just loved that his little girl was having fun, and so he was having fun.”

  “Sounds like a great father.”

  “He was.” Her voice was distant, faint. “Cancer got him a couple years later. Okinawa would be the one place I’d like to go, too, above all else. Just go there and sit, looking over those pineapple fields, remembering him.”

  “Maybe do your yoga pose thing again?”

  She laughed, her eyes glistening but no tears coming. “Maybe… maybe.”

  My own father had always been kind, when sober. There were the little moments, like making it to my soccer games, that mattered. But right now it felt right to let this be her moment, to let her have it to reminisce about her father and the great times they’d had. So I stood there, eyes searching for anything we could use, and then I froze.

  “There,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she replied, her voice almost a whisper. “I’d just noticed it too.”

  In the distance, past one of the temples—or maybe in the temple— a blue light glowed. A moment later, it was gone. It had to be connected to our mission.

  “Well, we have our target,” I said, motioning to the stairs with a nod of my head. “Guess we’ll have to take a rain check on that sushi, huh?”

  She laughed, but it was a sad laugh. “Hey, we ever get the chance, I’m taking you up on that.”

  “Deal,” I replied, and we started down the stairs.

  We were on the stairwell, just reaching the second floor, when the door behind us opened and an enemy soldier stepped forward and froze at the sight of us. He said something in another language, and I realized we still wore the uniforms we’d taken from his companions. For some reason, the translator wasn’t kicking in and I had to imagine it was related to everything else going wrong.

  Maybe it was too dark in here for him to see us well, but I wasn’t going to wait for him to realize we were really the enemy. I decided I’d use my own form of communication—a Ka-Bar to the gut.

  He shouted out as he saw it coming, and as his body pixelated out, it left the view of the hall behind him. And of at least five more soldiers.

  “Dammit,” Rivera said, seeing this as she pulled me back and slammed the door sh
ut. Bullets pinged off the other side, a couple making it through, but we were tearing down the last set of stairs. “Maybe check how many there are before making a kill.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t think of it,” I said as we made the last stair and burst back into the shopping mall. Shouts were coming from above, some through a comms device nearby. That meant more soldiers would be on us at any minute.

  “Aren’t you the video games guy?” she spat at me. “Didn’t you play those assassins games? Come on, that’s like stealth move for dummies.”

  “I got it, okay?” I spun, lifting the rifle to my shoulder, ready.

  She grunted, doing the same at my side, but facing the opposite direction. “Make a run for it?”

  “Hold,” I said. Then again, quietly, “Hold… hold…”

  A figure appeared from the other side of the mannequins, charging at us. Before he could get a shot off, I’d got him in the forehead. Two more followed behind him, then others from the stairs. As Rivera and I tore into them, I kept glancing over at the mannequins, half expecting them to come to life and join the fight, what with all the craziness that had happened so far. But they stood in place, taking stray shots.

  “Move!” I hissed, and we darted over, bullets exploding bottles of perfume and displays of makeup.

  Soon we were outside, and I nearly stumbled as I watched spaceships soar through the sky that looked exactly like the Cylon Raiders from Battlestar Galactica—the first remake. Apparently, the enemy was having fun with this reference thing, too, or there was some reason why they had to take on a certain look. The game developer in me was extremely curious, but wrote it off to porting of external resources, and only what they had access to. The man who wanted to live part of me said it didn’t matter, and I needed to keep running.

  “Over there,” I shouted, indicating a large café that I’d seen earlier across a big intersection. We’d be in the open, but on the other side we could try to lose them.

  Bullets tore into the street as we ran, one of the raiders above turning to rain down more shots on us, but we were already almost there. A shot hit and I went flying forward, stumbling, and looked down to see a brown flicker. No blood, no missing limbs.