Kill Code

by Justin Sloan

  The flash came before the sound, the wall behind me rumbling. Bits of wall blew out, the soldiers evaporated into pixels, and something hit me hard. Good thing these weren’t real concussions, I thought as the darkness took me. Or at least, I hoped they weren’t.

  15

  When I came to, I was thumping along, my whole body in pain. We seemed to be in a tunnel with rock walls, Williams ahead of us, Kline behind. That meant Staff Sergeant Lau was carrying me over his shoulders.

  “I’m good,” I mumbled. Then again, louder, “I’m good!”

  They paused so he could lower me to the ground, check my eyes, and then nodded. “Good to go, sir.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked, pushing myself up. “Did you find her?”

  “Find her?” Kline asked.

  “Lieutenant Rivera,” I said, annoyed. My head was hurting. “How close are we to where we figure the escape pod would’ve landed?”

  Kline glanced at me, then to the others. “Sir, we’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”

  “The hell does that mean?”

  “We have another plan, sir.” Williams stepped forward, one hand massaging his dead arm.

  “A plan that doesn’t involve going after a fallen Marine?” I demanded. “No Marine left behind. Never.”

  “Who is she?” Kline said, bluntly.

  “Wh—what?”

  “A simple question, sir,” he replied. “I just want to know who she is to you, because you’re putting a lot on the line to go after her. We figure the enemy will think we’re going that way and move out. Meanwhile, we can make a move on the enemy base, see what we can do about taking them out. This lady seems resourceful, a definite badass… but not First Recon. She was with you?”

  I frowned, never having even considered that she might not have been First Recon. “No. But, I guess General Fukui had other Marines join us—”

  “No, sir,” Lau interrupted. “Pardon, sir, but I was in charge of personnel, checking to see that everyone scheduled to enter did, and nobody else. She sure as hell wasn’t on that roster.”

  I ran my hand over my head, trying to understand this. “If she wasn’t with you all…?”

  “An enemy plant?” Williams asked.

  “No way. No way in hell.” I paced to the wall, put my hand against the cold stone, then turned back to them. “The things she’s done to protect me, the way she sacrificed herself to take out the enemy. She’s on our side.” My heart was racing as fast as my mind. “She’s got to be one of them. Not the enemy, but an NPC, or an avatar for someone working with command. Yeah, they probably found a way to get in and help us out.”

  My mind wasn’t matching it all up, but it fit well enough for now.

  The others were nodding along, and then Kline said, “Which, sir, comes back to our point. She’s not really here. She never was—so it’d be stupid to risk real lives to go after her. We need to strike now, or when we can.”

  I considered it. They were right, and yet… there was no way.

  “Go,” I said.

  “Sir?” Williams looked to Kline, who was clenching his jaw, neither liking the situation.

  “You’re right, but I’m also not going to leave her on her own. You might be right about her, or she might be a Marine nobody was told about. I don’t know, and am not going to speculate. What I do know is that she’d been there for me too many times for me to be okay with just moving on without her. And what I won’t do, no matter the cost, is let those sons of bitches get to her. So go, destroy the enemy base if you can—there’s a ring or something inside the temple, where they respawn. Try to take it out, and we’ll join in as soon as we’re able.”

  “Roger that, sir,” Kline said, then pointed back the way we came. “There was a split in the tunnel back there. It’ll lead to the right, and take you closer to where you’ll find her. Good luck.”

  “You too, Marines.”

  “Oh, wait,” Williams said, unslinging a rifle from his shoulder. “I can’t use this. I picked it up from the carnage, thinking you might like to have a rifle and a pistol, just in case.”

  I caught it and thanked him. They saluted me, and I saluted back, then we split our ways. My mind was still reeling from the explosion and the idea of what they’d just revealed about Rivera. I wasn’t sure which had more of an impact. My gut felt like it was being torn apart and then shoved back together every time I allowed my thoughts to wander to the many who had died here—the most recent being Captain Eckard. Confusion, grief, and the struggle to survive were the opposites of what I’d been hoping for when leaving the Marines behind years ago.

  Now what? Was I walking off to die to rescue what might just be another NPC, no more real than Glider and Banshee? I still had no clue what had happened to them, and frankly it was all starting to get under my skin. At the turn Kline had indicated, I paused, one hand on the wall.

  A thought had struck me, and it was a big one—for the first time in years, I wasn’t thinking about Donica. That is to say, when I was in games there would be many days when the pain was dulled, when I’d be having so much fun that, when the memory of her smile hit me, I wouldn’t be as sad.

  But here? None of that had been on my mind for some time now. I hadn’t forgotten about her, but the pulling feeling on my heart, the lead in my feet, the yearning to move on and join her—all of that was gone. Even standing there, consciously thinking about her, wasn’t bothering me.

  I would never forget her. Never. But… was it possible I was starting to move on? To have accepted that she was gone, and that maybe I could keep living my life to its fullest? That is, if I escaped this sim, of course.

  For the first time in a while, I took a deep breath and could focus on it without all of that other B.S. weighing me down. Of course, there was new B.S., larger amounts of it heaped onto this terrible situation. But I’d dealt with these types of problems before—problems that could be resolved via a quick shot to the head, or some game programming. In that sense, I was the perfect Marine for the job.

  It was time I got it done.

  Without another second’s delay, I started running down the tunnel. I didn’t know if it would really take me to my destination or what would happen next, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to dawdle.

  I climbed the first ladder I came across. At the top was an actual manhole, which felt out of place, since I hadn’t been in the sewers and we weren’t in the city yet. It was also incredibly difficult to lift, but when I managed to get it out of the way, I emerged into what I had no doubt a hacker was behind. The question was, was it our hacker or theirs?

  All around was snow. A strange, funky music played from somewhere in the distance, and there were large, pink crystals sticking out from the ground. I noticed something gray on the other side and moved for it, but then noticed it moving as well. Then there were two of them. Large, growling wolves.

  “Whoa there,” I said, backing up.

  “Ryan?” Rivera said, using my first name for the first time that I could remember. I turned to see her, standing behind me in the snow. She took my hand, tenderly, and smiled. “You came for me.”

  “Of course I did.”

  Her eyes moved to focus behind me. I had nearly forgotten the wolves. I spun around again, but the wolves weren’t there—instead I saw Glider and Banshee. They were glitching in and out, like an old T.V. program that wasn’t quite working.

  “Miss us?” Banshee smiled.

  “What’s… happening?” I asked, looking from them to Rivera.

  “They found me,” Rivera explained. “But the hacker stuff seems to be having some issues.”

  The two video game ladies disappeared for a moment, then came back—except, they weren’t exactly them.

  In place of Banshee was a much shorter version of her, with crazy hair and a little magic staff looking thing. Glider was a blonde girl in a genie costume.

  “Explain,” I said, totally at a loss for what was happening.

 
; “Their hackers can’t find us, but they were able to target our avatars,” Banshee said. “As long as we switch it up here and there, or maybe get some better walls up, we should be good.”

  “So you went with… wait, holy shit.” I stepped closer, looking them over, then laughed. “The sprite and the girl from Seiken Densetsu Two! Secret of Mana, I mean.”

  “Bingo,” Banshee said, giving me a thumbs-up.

  “Too cool,” I said, nerding out for a moment. I glanced over at Rivera, thinking she’d be judging me, but she was grinning. “Wait.” I turned back to them. “Do I call you Primm and Popoi now, or…?”

  “Let’s stick with Banshee and Glider,” Banshee replied. “Your creations—our gamertags, in a sense.”

  “I like that.”

  “We do need to go fight that thing,” Rivera pointed out. “But on our way, explain. You didn’t tell me you knew the classics.”

  I nodded, and we all started moving the way we’d seen the mech go, cautious to not be noticed by any of those red, floating orbs.

  “It was sort of my thing,” I said with a grin, relieved to have a distraction from the terror of our situation. At least until we were back in the action, I’d take it. “The old-school Zelda, Bomberman… Oh, Ogre Battle!”

  “That was one of the best,” she replied, smiling wide my way now. “Ever played Rampart?”

  “We’d stay up until two in the morning rearranging those silly Tetris blocks, trying to beat that game. Give me Rampart over the modern stuff any day.” I laughed. “I’d want more Ogre Battle, or this game, Metal Marines. Actually…”

  “Those were all around the same time, right?”

  “Not exactly, but relative to where we are now, sure.” I thought about it, remembering my youth. “Epiphany moment. Metal Marines… That game might have played a large role in my decision to join the Marines.”

  “How the hell so?” the sprite—I mean Banshee—asked.

  “I mean, every time I’d deploy one of my metal marines, I’d remember that amped up feeling I’d get. Sure, it was there when I later played all those Call of Duty games, but Metal Marines planted the seed.”

  “If we were in one of those games,” Rivera said with a grin, “we’d dominate.”

  “Damn straight,” I replied, and had a thought.

  “Is there a way to capitalize on this?” I asked, leading us through the snow. “I mean, we can’t change the whole simulation, but… what could change this more in our favor?”

  “We need weapons,” Rivera said, then turned to the hacker ladies. “What can you do?”

  “Let’s find out,” Banshee said, her eyes turning white. Then her eyes returned to normal, and she grinned.

  “What?” I asked.

  She leaned over, rising up on her toes, and pointed at a couple indicators that I hadn’t noticed on my rifle before. No, they definitely hadn’t been there. One was a projection indicator that showed over two thousand rounds, which didn’t seem right. I looked at her, and she smiled and nodded.

  “And check this out,” she said, gesturing to the number at the back of it. “It’s accounted for what you’ve done so far, and the weapon’s already at level five. You’ll get more levels as you fight, and switching out other guns will do the same. It’s specific to the weapon, though, and I was able to mod the sim to allow for various upgrades. If I was truly badass, I could’ve made them automatic, but modding the sim was the only way I could figure it out in this short amount of time.”

  “You’re a genius,” Rivera said, looking over her own rifle—level four.

  Banshee gave us a bow that befit the sprite she was.

  “So the other Marines?” Glider asked. “You got to them, no?”

  I explained what happened and where they had gone, and then the three ladies were grinning.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Just excited to go kick some enemy asses into outer space,” Banshee said.

  Considering what had happened to her brother in my game with the silent option—I felt that was a poor choice of words. But I couldn’t agree more.

  My mind was on Rivera and the questions I had for her, but we’d get to that later. At the moment, our mission was more important, and I was ready.

  I was ready to destroy the ring.

  16

  The snow crunched beneath our boots and the air was cold, but soon we were back in the grass, moving toward the city. Only now it was different, morphing before our eyes to form more of a fortress.

  “I’m guessing they’re figuring out how to use the mods,” Rivera said. “Maybe our friend can counter that, or try to at least put in something that stalls it.”

  I glanced over, then took a moment as we ran to guess how far the fortress and city were now. Far enough that we certainly had time to hash this out. Getting closer, I said, “About our friend, how well do you know him? Or… her?”

  She frowned. “I’m not following.”

  “Sure you aren’t,” I replied.

  The other two looked back at us, but I motioned them on, trying to speak between heavy breaths.

  “You’re a great soldier,” I said, then hesitated.

  “Thanks?” she replied.

  “Agh, Rivera! You’re a Marine, not a soldier.” I kept jogging, my head pounding. “I know you’re not with First Recon, okay? I know!”

  “Is that right?” Her pace didn’t falter, but she stared ahead, not showing emotion.

  “I doubt you’re a plant or other type of additional help sent from Command. That leaves an NPC, or… an actual avatar of the hacker.”

  The other two stopped at that, Rivera too, so that I jogged on a few more paces. When I stopped beside Glider and Banshee, all three women were glaring at me with the exact same expression, hands on their hips in the same way.

  “We have to keep moving,” I said. “We can discuss this along the way.”

  “It doesn’t matter who we really are,” the three said as one voice. “What matters is that we win this war, and that we stay on the same side here. I want you as my ally, I need you. The enemy, the EAC, has to be put down, put in their place. For the good of humanity.”

  “No arguments there. I just want to know who you are and what you’re doing with me.”

  “Helping you to win this war.” Rivera stepped forward, the other two seemingly frozen in place, not speaking. “Ryan, listen… We don’t have much time. I get that you’re confused, and I’ll tell you this—am I an avatar? Yes. I’ve been helping from the moment their hack kicked in. I’m in the dark channels, heard talk of it happening, and prepared. But be assured, I’m on your side. The rest… well, the rest you’ll have to learn when it’s over and we’ve won. I need you to trust me on this.”

  “Trust you?”

  The idea felt so out of place, considering everything she’d just revealed. She’d been lying to me since the moment we met—although, to be fair she did save my life in that moment. But now that I thought about it, maybe it should’ve been more obvious? The first time I met her was after I’d first seen that monk shadow. She had so many good guesses about how the hacker stuff worked, and they all seemed to make sense. Her rank even, she’d gotten that wrong! That should have been my first clue. And not knowing who Charm was on the billboard? Well, if she didn’t reside in the West, that might make sense. Everyone in the Americas knew who Charm was!

  She was still staring at me, waiting for an answer. Finally, she scratched her nose, raised an eyebrow, and then said, “I want you alive. You want you alive. And the other soldiers—I mean Marines. So can we all agree on this, and that we’re going to go forward without making a big deal about who I am for now, until we’re out of the sim?”

  “Why?” I asked.

  She leaned in. “Because I can’t risk exposing myself to the enemy. There’s too much at stake. Could I be some middle-aged man? Sure. But this isn’t about me… and I’m not. You’ll find out soon enough, and when you do, I hope you can forgive me for not being
able to tell you more in here.”

  “So you have to keep it hidden to also hide it from the enemy?” I nodded, realizing she was right about all of this. Nothing else mattered right now other than winning the war. The rest of my questions could be addressed in time.

  “I do,” she replied.

  “But you’ll find me when it’s over, tell me the rest? Shake my hand in the real world and tell me everything?”

  “I will.”

  With that, I nodded. “I can accept that. Now, can you summon us some dragons or massive spaceships or something?”

  She laughed. “Imagine, me flying over that wall on a dragon’s back, you on the Millennium Falcon or something. But, sorry. I’ve been trying to get the Seiken Densetsu dragon in here since we ported in those two.” She motioned to the other ladies, still in their Secret of Mana forms. They started moving again.

  “The enemy is catching on, working to block you?” I asked.

  She nodded. “The best I can figure, they’re able to block certain types of objects. That’s why I couldn’t just get us our own mech from nowhere, or even bring in guns. Bastards took away our ability to bring in new guns, but that didn’t stop me from being able to port upgrades and other loot. Until they specifically write a code blocking something, we’re in luck.”

  “So you basically have to keep trying new things, getting blocked on most—”

  “Yeah, at least ninety-five percent are blocked. Add in that I’m trying to pay attention to keeping my avatar alive in here… it’s not easy.”

  I nodded. “Ninety-five percent. Okay. Just… keep doing what you can. I’ll do my part to kill the enemy whenever possible.”

  “Well, guess what?”

  I frowned, confused, but then saw her wide smile. “You just accomplished some sort of hack, didn’t you?”

  “One I’ve been working on a while.” Her smiled widened even more, if possible. “We don’t have to run the rest of the way, but this might alert them to our arrival.”