“Enough!” The most aggressive Reaper unloads a round into the air and the bleached people scatter.
“They have the right idea,” I say.
“Now!” Frances points her weapon at the Reapers. A bright green blast spirals out of the barrel of her gun-arm, tearing through the man. My mini-gun spins up and hoses out a river of supersonic metal. The remaining three return fire and the shield drops.
I use the mini gun like a garden hose, but the Reapers don’t seem to notice. I burn through more than half my ammo before I look down to find something clamped onto my leg. Three bleached people look up at me, their mouths filled with saliva as they bare their yellowed teeth.
More crawl in my direction.
“Don’t kill them!”
“Dammit Frances!” I say as I kick my feet.
She blasts another Reaper in the chest with her gun-arm. It tears through his armor; digital blood sprays out of the back of his body. Two Reapers down, two to go. I have my own problems – the bleached people are up to my waist now, clawing me with their nails and sinking their teeth into my avatar.
I activate my advanced abilities and leap – slow motion – walking on air towards the two Reapers left standing who are now moving at a snail’s pace. Suddenly, my advanced abilities bar disappears and I’m left kicking and twitching as I fall to the ground, directly on top of one of the Reapers that Frances has already smoked with her mutant hack.
My hand lands on his distended skull mask and I grip it tightly, triggering the mini-gun and blasting what has always been, up until now, a copper-jacketed wall of death at the other Reapers who are tag-teaming Frances. Fired cases fly out of the ejection chute in a cloud of brass; the gun goes silent as the last round goes downrange. The electric motor still spins the barrels until I release the trigger.
Bleached people squirm all around me, covering my face with their hands and digging their razor nails into my flesh. Breathing heavily, salivating, biting into my flesh. An explosion erupts ten paces away. My eyes are open just long enough to see two Reaper skulls flying through the air alongside Frances Euphoria’s gun-arm.
They’ve killed Frances!
The bleached people overwhelm me. They cover everything until I can barely open my mouth, like quicksand, like a pit of ravenous snakes, like a swimming pool full of leeches. There’s only one thing I can do.
I trigger my explosive jacket and flash into painless, instantaneous dissolution.
Day 551
Feedback licks the inside of my skull. Feedback travels from ear to ear laying waste to what’s left of my sanity. Feedback an anathema, a constant reminder of the place I remain trapped, imprisoned.
I roll to my side, directly onto a Reaper’s skull mask.
“Strange … ” I say, examining the mask.
The Loop is out to get me, to disorient me. I’ve never awakened with something in my bed before, yet here it is – a Reaper’s skull mask, item 551. The jaw of the skull mask is crushed, providing just enough covering for my nose, my cheeks and my forehead. The electronics inside seem to be intact.
As soon as I place the mask on my face, an ocular feed activates, showing me the gridline architecture of my hotel. The mask allows me to see to the floor below, where I find the child on his bed. It also allows for me to see into the hallway, akin to the way that one would look at a 3-D model of something and be able to zoom through it, from one portion to the next.
“Long distance,” I say, and the hotel room’s wall appears in my feed, magnified to a gross extent. I smile and my cheeks scrape against the inside of the Reaper mask. I have become the enemy I never knew I had.
Frances should be here any moment; at least I hope she comes. She never said what would happen to her if a Reaper punched her ticket.
She can’t be dead.
8:04 AM.
“Where are you Frances?” I say, as if speaking aloud has ever done any good in The Loop. Stepping out of bed, I quickly move to the mirror on my dresser to see what my new skull mask looks like.
Just like the Reapers, my pupils aren’t visible in the mask. The top of the skull stops just below my widow’s peak, giving space to my blondish-brown hair. Unlike a normal skull, there is actually a bone protecting my nose.
I’m just about to take off the mask when the window shatters and Morning Assassin rolls into the room.
“You’re back!?”
A throwing star lodges in my chest and the curare starts to take hold. He tosses another, but I’ve already activated my advanced abilities, and am bullet-timing back out of its path.
My inventory screen comes up and Morning Assassin freezes. I locate my harpoon, item 236, and the list disappears. I gasp – he’s no longer in the same place he’d been when I accessed my inventory list.
“That’s not going to work anymore, Quantum.”
He grabs a handful of my hair and yanks my head back, exposing my throat. An icy blade spears into the side of my neck, and even though I know better I jerk backwards to get away from it as he rips it forward and severs all my tubes and pipes. M.A. releases his grip and my knees won’t support me. I fall to the floor in a pool of my own blood, and he looms above me, good ol’ number 33 gripped in his fist.
As my vision goes from red to gray, I realize that I’m really, really starting to hate that knife!
Exit, stage left. Fade to black.
Day 552
Feedback, you shitmonger. Before awakening in the hard-boiled hell of all hells, I dreamt that I was being washed, that someone was caring for me, turning my body over, cleaning me, keeping me alive. Of course all this is shattered by the violent static of the feedback.
Of course I wake up in The Loop.
“Bastards … ” I say as I roll to my side.
Morning Assassin will be here any moment and I want to make sure he gets some good ol’ fashioned payback for cutting my throat the previous day. My inventory list comes up and I access my chainsaw – item 112. What better way to start the morning than by flinging flesh and slinging blood?
I lower myself onto my haunches next to the dresser and my eyes fixate on the picture of the sinking sailboat that rests over my bed. The swelling colors whip their hues into a sea of remorse and anger. Apropos to say the least.
The time appears in front of me – 8:05 AM. Morning Assassin will come through the window any moment now and I’ll be here to greet him with a chainsaw in the gizzard. Pay it forward or pay it back – the chainsaw conundrum.
Patience, Quantum.
I tug the starter rope once; the engine fires and the chainsaw roars to life as I goose the throttle. I can feel the chainsaw vibrating in my hands, whirring and ready to devour limbs.
To kill is to be part of The Loop.
The window shatters and Morning Assassin rolls in. He bounces to his feet I am on him like poo on a pig. It’s as if I’m wielding the Mother of All Chainsaws; in one fluid sweep, both legs come off at mid-thigh. Before Ol’ Lady Gravity can fully embrace him in his newly altered state, I pivot through a full three hundred and sixty degrees and swing the bar up under one arm, over his head, and down through the other. He collapses to the floor like some simile that doesn’t involve strings and marionettes and lies there like the main attraction in Boxing Helena.
The chainsaw throttles down to a loud idle; I breathe in the heady stink of burned forty-to-one. “Anything you’d like to say before I finish the job? Anything at all?”
Morning Assassin shoots me a twisted grin. “Right, I’ll do you for that!” he giggles. The gun barrel emerges from the back of his throat as a vein pulsates on the side of his face.
“What, the ol’ roscoe-in-the-piehole gag again?”
The saw screams up to a zillon RPM as I mash the trigger and jam the tip of the bar right in his mouth. I take his head off and quarter his torso, just to be sure.
I return the chainsaw to my inventory list and step over to the mirror. Blood and scraps of flesh are splattered all over my face and shirt a
nd speckle the walls, floor, and ceiling of my ultra-deluxe accommodation. No doubt Leatherface, Jeffery Dahmer, and Doctor Crippen are all weeping tears of pride at my morning’s work, but for me it’s just another day at the office.
Movement in my peripheral vision; one of Morning Assassin’s severed arms twitch, the hand contracts into an almost-fist and gives me the finger. I almost laugh. Almost.
A change of clothes. The blood disappears from my skin, a black suit with a black tie and black cufflinks appears on my body. I select the Reaper’s skull mask from my inventory list, item 551, and slick my hair back. Just in case, I select my jacket lined with explosives, item 300. This fits conveniently over my suit jacket; it doesn’t look half-bad either.
I raise my finger at my reflection, making a gun out of my pointer finger and my thumb.
“Blam.”
The crow appears on the windowsill and I don’t even need to look at the time. The dark clouds will follow and somewhere, The Loop’s NVA Seed is laughing at me. No matter. In times of great distress, the ability to maim will suffice.
I step into the hallway and the lights flicker three times. That means that it’s assassin time again, and that there’ll be six of ‘em in the lobby below. Be prepared I always say, and a crowbar of the finest titanium – item 141 – appears in my hand.
I clear my throat as I walk down the stairs to the lobby in an all-black suit and a skull mask. Don’t fear the reaper – see the reaper; be the reaper. Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na.
The lobby.
Sure enough, one of the assassins comes from the left. The pry end of the crowbar spears through his open mouth and out the back of his skull With slow-motion activated (for everyone else but me), I twist under the next assassin’s dagger, and crunch the crowbar against the side of his neck. From there time speeds up, and I’m in the air above two more assassins, standing with one foot on each of their shoulders with my legs spread, grandstanding. I swing the crowbar like I’m Tiger Woods teeing off pre-Elin Nordegren, and I outen the lights on both of those mugs.
Number five gets the hook end in the stomach. When I flip him up and over, land him pile driver-style and snap his neck, I also inadvertently discover what a Scotsman wears under his kilt when it flops down under his arms – the kilt, I mean. I unhook him and sling the crowbar backhand into Tail End Charlie’s face, do a fancy jump-roll-and-spring-to-my-feet, snatch the crowbar before it falls, pirouette and cave in his skull with it. I raise both arms in the air and bow to the imaginary panel of judges.
That’s how you bump off six assassins in less than thirty seconds.
“Mi … Mi … Mister Hughes?”
My eyes lock on Jim the Doorman. The Reaper’s skull mask I’m wearing provides extra data on NPCs, including their combat ability and likelihood for Randomly Generated Mutant Hacks. Jim’s combat ability is low, but his RGMH likelihood is high, over fifty percent. I remember the fight we had just a few days ago and I decide to prevent the battle before it starts. A targeting icon appears in my ocular feed and I toss the crowbar at Jim, connecting the sharp end with his chest.
“Call me Quantum, dammit.”
~*~
It’s amazing how easy it is to get back into one’s routine. After corpsing Jim with the crowbar, I head to the kitchen, where I walk in, pop the chef between the eyes with one round from item 501, a silenced Beretta 92, and exit before he hits the floor. From there I head to the main dining area, just in time for Dolly to sashay to my table.
“I’ll have my usual, Dolly,” I say.
“What’s with the skull mask?” she asks, her brows furrowing. “Have you … ”
“Have I what?”
“Nothing.”
A quick glance at Dolly shows me that her combat level is a lot higher than Jim’s, surprisingly higher, astronomically higher, with a 100% chance of a Randomly Generated Mutant Hack. I need to stay on my toes like a ballerina.
“What are you looking at?” she asks.
“Me? A good looking gal with legs up to there and a knock-out pair of sweater-fillers. Say, Dolly, want to catch a flick later?” I ask for old time’s sake.
“I’m busy.” A flush spreads across her cheek. “Besides, you’ll probably be busy with that other dame.”
“Which other dame?” I ask, just for sport.
“The one that was in here the other day.” Dolly is smacking gum and the ends of her sentences are accented with an annoying popping sound. “You know, the one with red hair.”
“Frances Euphoria.”
“Yeah, her.”
“Actually,” I say, dropping the show. “Have you seen her? I’m kind of looking for her. Something … happened to us the other day.”
“Haven’t seen her.”
“Would you tell me if you had?”
“No,” she says with a flirty grin.
“Well then how do I know if you’re lying or not?”
“I guess you don’t.”
“Well that ain’t fair, is it Dolly?”
“Life ain’t fair, Quantum.”
“Why don’t you sit down for a moment, let’s talk this through. I want to be honest with you for once.”
Dolly hesitates. Her hand falls to the chair.
“Take a load off,” I tell her. “I want to tell you what’s going on, who that lady was and why I’m wearing this mask. You must know something is up… ”
“You can’t leave,” she says, her eyes filling with tears.
“Can’t leave?”
“Never mind. What do you want? Your usual?” She sniffs, wipes her nose. “Pancakes?”
“Dolly, why are you crying?”
“Quantum, tell me what you want or… or get the hell out of the dining room.”
“Well hell, Dolly, I’m not trying to upset you. I just wanted to be honest with you.”
“And take that mask off … I … I hate it!”
“It’s helpful. It gives me extra data on the environment, architectural gridlines, NPC stats. I could use it … ” The thought comes to me. “When searching for a logout point.”
“So you do want to log out, huh? It’s true,” she says. “I … I knew it!”
“Of course I do, Dolly, I’m trapped. I’m … I’m human!”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “Am I not enough for you?”
“What?”
“AM I NOT ENOUGH FOR YOU, QUANTUM!?” she yells in a voice that isn’t hers. It sounds like a thousand voices, a million bees buzzing around in my skull. It sounds like my morning feedback amplified.
~*~
“I don’t want breakfast.”
I push my chair away from the table.
“Fine.”
“Come on, you’re not sore are you?” I ask Dolly.
“Go find your logout point, if that’s what you want!” she says and with that she’s gone, veering towards the kitchen. I think for a moment to go after her, but I decide to deal with her later, if I make it to later.
I step out of the hotel and hail a taxi. One appears moments later, its hood shiny from the falling rain. Lightning cracks in the sky like flash photography. I’m in the taxi before I can even remember where I’m going.
“ … I said, where to pal?”
I glance at the taxi driver through his rearview mirror. He’s the same as all the others, a human fly covered in little hairs with big bloodshot eyes and cigarette burns on his wife beater. Chrome-dome bottom feeder. My eyes skip from the driver to the faded hula girl affixed to his dashboard.
“The Pier. Make it fast, buster.”
“Yeah, yeah. Make it fast. Everybody’s in a hurry … ” he grumbles as he lifts into the air. Just seeing the expansive city light up below us, and the rain lash against the windshield, makes me want to go for a joyride.
“Ever been skydiving?” I ask as I climb into the front passenger seat.
“Hey! Whutchoo doing!?”
“Sending you home early.”
I kick open the passenger side
door and grab the taxi driver by the front of his wife beater. The taxi dips, swerves, dips again, and nearly crashes into another vehicle moving below us. The honking horn Dopplers away as I struggle to pull the driver out of his seat.
We’re twisting over each other and he pulls his fist back and busts me in the kisser as I press my legs against his door, trying to pull him over to my side of the taxi so I can toss him out. The vehicle spirals, arcing downwards. Finally, I get a good enough grip on him to pry the driver’s tookus from his seat.
I grab the wheel with one hand as I scramble over him.
“What are you doing!?” he screams, and I hear the schnick of a switchblade.
“You’re packing?” I ask, watching the blade move towards me. My inventory list comes up (cheating, I know) and I select a short police baton, item 45. The list disappears and I club the guy in the skull with one hand, instant KO.
One donkey kick later and he strikes the unlatched door pinwheeling out, switchblade and all. I turn my attention to the problem at hand – the ground is rushing up at me at a rate of knots.
“Come on, come on, come on, come on … ” I chant, tugging up on the steering yoke. The open passenger door flaps back and forth. I reach out to grab the door handle but it moves too quickly. Accessing my inventory, I select my sawed-off shotgun, item 21. Ka-BLAM, Ka-BLAM and the door separates from its hinges and flutters away like a particularly elephantine piece of confetti.
The yoke is as back as it will go; the roller coaster descent slows, slows …
Almost …
Yes! I clear the point of no return, successfully steering the vehicle back into the air. I scissor up through the rain, spinning as I lay a patch on a nonexistent cloud. Goosing it even harder, I laugh as I whip past a moving transport vehicle, causing it to swerve into another airlane.
Not five minutes later I bail out of the cab, after adding the driver’s dashboard hula girl to my inventory list, item 552.
The vehicle crashes into the tugboat that carried the bleached people to The Pier yesterday. I hit the ground hard, nearly blowing out my knee. I’m on my back looking up at the darkened sky as rain falls onto my mask. I laugh at the sheer joy of cheating death, at how alive I feel, until I remember where I am and, and how feeling alive in here isn’t necessarily all craft beer and T-bones.
The Feedback Loop (3-Book Box Set): (Scifi LitRPG Series) Page 9