Multiplayer

by John C. Brewer

  “Where are you going?” asked Helen, when he entered the kitchen. His sisters were seated at the table doing homework but Helen’s phone was lying next to her open, screen glowing.

  “Out,” whispered Hector.

  “Mom wants you to tell me where you’re going,” she said loudly.

  “Shhh!” hissed Hector. “I don’t want to –” he rolled his eyes in the direction of the family room.

  “You’re such a complete and total stain,” Helen said matter-of-factly, and just as loudly. “And as bad as I’d like to get rid of you, you can’t leave until you tell me where you’re going.”

  Hector cringed. “Do you think you could keep it down? Riding my bike. I have my cell phone. You can text me. You know how to use your fingers don’t you?”

  “Do you have homework?” Helen asked, ignoring the dig. “Mom wants us to finish our homework first.”

  “Mom told me to go outside when I got home.”

  “Why’s Hector whispering?” asked Halie.

  “Because he’s an immature little twit,” Helen answered with abject kindness.

  “I’m out of here,” said Hector.

  Helen threw her hands up. “What-ev.” Her phone buzzed and she snatched it up, furiously working the keypad with her thumbs.

  Hector pedaled through the neighborhood, looking for something to do. Bicycles stood in open garages unused and backyard swings and trampolines were empty and motionless. There weren’t even any pets outside. Deion had a dog, but it went to ‘daycare’ everyday because no one was ever at his house enough to take care of it.

  As he passed the school, Hector watched a soccer team practicing on the field. He glanced down at his Bayern jersey and felt a tinge of regret, but had no desire to sign his life away to a club. He noticed a group of kids riding skateboards and trick-bikes in front of the school. As he drew near, however, his hope turned to disappointment. Among others, Sabrah the Goth and Chaz Martin, who’d dropped out of school the year before. Chaz was a year older than Hector, had a head of thick, red curls, and a reputation for getting into trouble for things like racing his go-cart on the school track. Hector kept going.

  Just outside the neighborhood sat one of the Zahedi’s convenience stores. The Gas-n-Go. He parked his bike and went inside.

  “Hello Hector. How are you?” said the thick-chested, swarthy man entrenched behind the cash register.

  Hector forced a smile back at him. “Fine, Mr. Zahedi.”

  Along with his graying hair and friendly smile, Mr. Zahedi had little pockmark scars down the right side of his face. He was wearing a blazer now but Hector knew those little scars ran all the way down his right arm. But the most noticeable thing was the heavy black patch that covered his right eye. Hector sometimes wondered if the scars were from a bomb he’d been building that had gone off accidentally. He couldn’t understand why his mom pretended to like this guy. He was obviously trouble.

  “Can I help you find anything today?” Mr. Zahedi asked kindly.

  “No, thank you.”

  He walked around the store a few times. The little table where Mr. Zahedi and Pappous sometimes played checkers was empty. His grandfather was just as bad as his mom, hanging out up here swapping stories or whatever.

  Hector finally bought a soda and a strip of beef jerky and brought them to the cash register. When Mr. Zahedi leaned forward to take Hector’s money his jacket fell open and Hector gasped. There was a small pistol strapped to his hip. Mr. Zahedi saw Hector’s stare and turned his body quickly to hide the gun, but Hector had already seen it.

  “Thank you, my boy,” Mr. Zahedi said with a plastic smile. “Please give your family my regards.”

  “I’ll do that…” said Hector, and backed slowly out the door, his eyes fixed on the bulge beneath Mr. Zahedi’s jacket. What would he be doing with a gun? Hector thought.

  Once outside he’d only just opened his drink, still rattled by the gun, when he caught a flash of something out of the corner of his eye. He looked quickly to see a tail disappear around the edge of the store. Probably just a stray cat, but it still was something alive to pass the time with.

  He crept to the edge of the wall and peeked around. There, not ten feet from him, was a tiny ball of gray fur with terrified, green eyes. Hector set his drink down, and emerged from around the corner. The kitten’s eyes grew as large as marbles, and it bolted to the back of the store.

  Hector padded after the tiny animal, only to chase it under a dumpster that backed up to a wall of unkempt foliage. He used his teeth to rip off a piece of the jerky and stuck it under the edge of the dumpster. An instant later a gray paw swiped out and pulled it in, making Hector smile. A few more pieces and Hector hoped he could coax the stray into the open. He peered under the dumpster, almost hearing his mom’s voice censure him for snooping around where he wasn’t supposed to be. Good thing she wasn’t here. In the darkness under the steel bin, twin green gems twinkled out of the darkness, coming closer. But the eyes suddenly extinguished when Hector heard a car approaching. He darted behind the dumpster and forced himself between the untrimmed shrubs and the metal box.

  Peeking around the edge, Hector could see it wasn’t a car but an old gray van with no side windows, like some kind of mobile meth lab. The driver, deeply tanned with a heavy moustache, climbed out and glanced around nervously. Once convinced that he was alone, he slid open the side door and knocked on the back door of the store.

  Mr. Zahedi opened the door. The two men exchanged a brief hug and disappeared inside. Hector began creeping out of his hiding place, when he heard their voices grow louder. When they came back out, each was carrying a large white bucket bearing a black, skull-and-crossbones – and beneath it, the word CAUSTIC. Hector fell back behind the dumpster before they could see him. Caustic? That was like acid, or, that other thing they’d talked about in science class… a base. Whatever was in those buckets could eat human tissue, like skin or eyes. One after another of the containers disappeared into the van – a dozen in all. If they were as heavy as they looked it was enough to take out… Hector’s mind froze. An attack! There could be no other explanation. Mr. Zahedi was a terrorist! That’s why he had the gun. In case…

  Hector strained to hear as the driver made a call. “Yes, I’ve got the stuff… I’m bringing it now… Yes, yes, very good stuff. Potent. You’re going to like it. I’ll meet you there…”

  Hector was paralyzed. Afraid to even breathe. Trying to still the deafening pulse of his heart. Hector knew that once terrorists find out you’ve discovered their plan, they cut your head off. He’d seen it on the news. And YouTube. And if he tried to run, they’d shoot him down.

  The driver put the phone away then he and Mr. Zahedi embraced. One of them said, Hector wasn’t sure which, “They’re going to like this.” The other laughed and said, “Allahu Akbar.” The driver climbed back into the van, slid the door shut, and drove off. Mr. Zahedi looked around to make sure no one had seen them, and slipped back inside.

  Hector slid around to the other side of the dumpster, but the van was already out of sight. There was only one thing he could do. His dad would have agreed. He took out his cell phone and, with a shaking hand, stabbed 9 – 1 – 1 into the keypad.

  Ch. 5

  Hector’s mother was in the kitchen whipping up a meal, keeping her eyes on the tiny kitchen TV that was always tuned to the news. She smiled, but then her mouth dropped in concern. “Hector, honey, you okay?” she asked, giving a last glance at two men arguing on the TV before turning her full attention to her son. She put her hands on his shoulders.

  “What do you mean?” he stammered, gazing back into her eyes, while trying to avoid them. He was still shaking from his encounter with terrorists.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Almost wiped out on my bike,” he laughed nervously. “Dog ran right out in front of me. Stupid mutt.”

  She held on to his shoulders and Hector could feel her eyes probing his, looking in
side him. But thankfully, she believed him, giving him a kiss on the forehead.

  Pappous appeared from out of the den, a giant smile plastered across his wrinkled face. “Hector my boy!” he exclaimed, oblivious to Hector’s mood, and wrapped his arms around him. “You’ll be big as Leonidas, soon!”

  “Hey, Pappous,” he answered with little enthusiasm.

  “Olympikiaos won in the Champions League today,” Pappous went on. “My old team. They’ll be playing Bayern in the second round. Are your guys ready?”

  Hector shrugged the old man’s arm away. Could he not take a hint? “Spring’s a long way off,” Hector said quietly. Pappous just nodded, then reached up and snapped off the kitchen TV as they sat down around the table.

  “Dad!” Mom exclaimed, with eyes suddenly wide. “Turn it back on!”

  “I’m not going to listen to that garbage while I eat,” he shot back. “Reminds me of Nazi propaganda I had to hear when I was a kid.”

  Oh crap, thought Hector. Here it comes. And it did. Hector pretended to listen, but all he could think of was what he’d seen this afternoon. The poison. The gun. His mother noticed he was quiet, occasionally shooting him a worried look. But Pappous eventually turned the conversation over to Helen who droned on about elections at school. She was going to run for class treasurer. Halie played with her mashed potatoes, heaping them into piles then smashing them flat before taking a microscopic bite.

  Mr. Zahedi loading buckets into a van; the image stuck in Hector’s head. Buckets of what? Something dangerous. Caustic. For what? Contaminating the water supply maybe. He’d heard that would be a good way for terrorists to attack here. Good thing he’d been there to see it and report it to the police. At the same time, he was terrified. Terrified he was right. And more terrified his mother would find out. Or Pappous. They didn’t get it, and would never understand. But Hector was sure he had done the right thing.

  He finished eating and blew through his chores before retreating to the upstairs bonus room. His game console there would allow him to avoid the real world a little longer. Since his father had died, the real world had become too real. He’d been naïve before then, not seeing how much danger there was all around. And now that he knew, Omega was the only place where he could get away from it. All totally sanctioned by a doctor.

  But now, Mal-X had screwed up Hector’s haven. He’d cheated and stolen Vera, and Hector had to get the sniper rifle back. He could take Mal-X in a fair fight. He knew that. And whatever cheat Mal-X had used probably wasn’t even available in quest mode. Head-to-head was supposedly easier to hack, so there was no point trying to get Mal-X to face him again in a rematch because Mal-X would only cheat again. Hector knew he’d have to find him somewhere in the MMOG, in the quest mode, and face him there. But where?

  Hector pulled up the Google Earth-style Omega Wars mapping interface. There were no country outlines. The ‘Omega Wars,’ a fictional armageddon and the namesake of the game, had erased them. All that remained were continents with shattered cities and clans carving out new nations.

  He spun the world slowly, watching the red blips glide across the screen – the location of slipgates at major cities and former military bases. Where would he start looking? Then he stopped. What had Mal-X said after he killed Izaak? Victory is mine, Hector remembered, nearly choking on the thought. It was after that. His voice had dropped to a deathly drawl. He had said: “Bring it on kid. You know where to find me.”

  So Mal-X was challenging him. Challenging him to come find him in the game. And there was only one place he could be.

  Ch. 6

  Hector’s cell phone buzzed in his pocket and jolted him back to the present. It was a text from Deion: Meet me @ Gib. The time on his cell phone showed it was almost 7:30. He had a ton of homework. “F-it,” he whispered, pulled out of navigation and materialized as Izaak Ersatz.

  Each Omega Wars account came with an online lair that served as the owner’s home base. Izaak’s was set up to match the cargo hold of the Sulako, the battle cruiser from the movie Aliens. Along one wall, his other characters were ‘sleeping’ in translucent cryo-tubes. An empath he’d worked on for a while. A merc. A smuggler. He didn’t use them very often. Mostly Izaak. Hector liked the versatility of vanguards.

  There was one other character he had saved, and he went over and stared at the figure behind the translucent cover: his father’s vanguard C0L0N3L W35T. It hadn’t been activated in over a year. He could just make out the dark smudge on the vanguard’s breastplate from a close call against some Thugz clansmen they had tangled with. It had been one of their last adventures. Hector couldn’t bring himself to delete the character. Or use it.

  “I’m going to go get Vera back,” he said to the silent vanguard, and turned from his father’s old avatar.

  A mix of weapons and equipment he’d picked up in the game were scattered around the loading bay. A smaller version of the chain-guns used by mercs – it looked really cool, but was more-or-less useless. Different types of armor. Extra fusion cells to power equipment. There were also a variety of mines and IED-like explosives that Izaak had built in his fabrication lab. His favorite was a magnetic limpet mine. He wasn’t specialized for building, like a cybertech, but vanguards did have some tech fabrication abilities for weapons and traps.

  Hector opened Izaak’s inventory tray and numbly went through his vanguard’s gear. He had other sniper rifles but it was like going from guided missiles to throwing rocks. He added a few grenades and a nano-smoke to his inventory until his weight pegged. Resolve gripped him. His mission to retrieve Vera was going to begin tonight. He just hoped he’d be able to find Deion.

  With one last glance at his father’s old avatar, Hector punched the ID code for the Gibraltar slipgate into his electronic passport, and approached the silver arch that pulsated gently in the middle of the chamber. He checked his inventory tray one last time and stepped through. In a bright flash, Izaak disappeared.

  The Gibraltar primary gate was in the center of an abandoned RAF heliport at the southern tip of the Gibraltar Peninsula in the Mediterranean Sea. More than anything it looked like a shorter, fatter version of the arch in Saint Louis. The Reavers kept it powered down most of the time since it was possible to send an entire fleet through it in either direction. They usually used a smaller, secondary gate just big enough for two fully-loaded mercs to pass through abreast.

  The small arch glowed blue and then the interior went utterly black. Izaak appeared out of the nothingness. The mercs guarding the gate raised their weapons half-heartedly. Two of them were off shooting at birds.

  “Halt!” barked the warden, vigilant as always.

  “Come on, Zerg,” Hector groaned.

  Zerg was a vanguard and what he lacked in skill he made up for in loyalty. “Got to make sure you haven’t changed clans, Ersatz,” he said suspiciously.

  “Now why would I go and do that?” Izaak snapped, even though that was exactly what he was planning. These guys were getting old.

  “Orders from Gore,” barked Zerg, and checked the list written on virtual paper and uploaded each day through a virtual transfer terminal or VTT. “Yeah, you’re okay,” he finally said, and waved him through. This was what Zerg did, all day, every day. Like a greeter at Walmart. Hector thought he must have no life whatsoever to pay his game fees to monitor slipgate traffic.

  The tunnel to their gathering place pierced the side of a mountain next to the ruins of a mosque Izaak had destroyed when the Reavers first came to Gibraltar. All that remained was the fallen minaret, two walls, and part of the original dome. He’d left it standing to remind him that he’d destroyed it. Behind it, the Rock of Gibraltar leapt skyward, honeycombed with tunnels and bunkers built by the British. But the British were no more. Except for the Archons, the very idea of a country had been wiped out until players were able to build new ones. Many were trying.

  Not far off, moored in the harbor on coal barge-size pontoons, floated the Reaver clan’s prize posse
ssion. The Archons had constructed five giant Achaean Class assault ships for the Omega Wars and three of the dreadnoughts had survived the conflict. This one had been called the Achilles until GoreFiendHell captured it from the MetroGnomes and renamed it Uber Pwn after using it to crush their one-time arch rivals, the SpetzNazis. The main section was a single, gigantic wing two football fields wide with six enormous propellers on the back. But it didn’t use this wing to fly. Instead, it levitated high above the ground with powerful gravity-repulsors. The propellers pushed it slowly along so the guns could rain down fire from above.

  Uber Pwn was still manned by MetroGnomes – an alliance they made with GoreFiendHell in exchange for the Reavers not utterly destroying their clan. It sounded more like conscription to Hector, and he wondered again why some people played this game.

  Izaak jogged through the tunnel into the mountain, emerging in a large chamber teeming with scores of Omega characters – mostly mercs, vanguards, smugglers, and a few techs. Gore had really put the word out for this one. At the center, on a raised platform, the huge black merc, himself, stood with an upraised fist delivering a long-winded speech in his electronically deepened, faux English accent. Hector had long ago wearied of GoreFiendHell’s adjective-packed rants. When he’d joined, the Reavers were a young clan hungry for battle. But then, GoreFiendHell had showed up with his goons. They’d been incredibly successful under Gore’s leadership but the fun had gone out of it.

  “Hey, Izaak, what’s up?” came a voice.

  Izaak recognized the towering, gray armor of a merc he knew as Maelstorm. “Looking for Deion. You seen him?”

  “Who?”

  “Darxhan,” Izaak corrected.

  “Nope. What do you think of Gore’s plan?” the big, steel gray merc asked with a voice that sounded more like it belonged to a pre-teen than the bipedal battleship from which it emanated.