“OK, smartass, you win,” Kilgore says. “I guess, if we cover each other, we might just get out of here.”
Will shrugs his left shoulder. “Maybe, but there’s no need.” He looks at Kilgore and smiles. “You know, you never did tell me your name.”
“Yeah, I know,” Kilgore says. He points to the game tag on his chest. “You can read, can’t you?”
Will rolls his eyes. “You know what I mean. What’s your real name?”
“No way,” Kilgore says. “We don’t give out our names, man—you know that.”
Will frowns, and a sudden lull in the gunfire makes the silence hang awkwardly between them. Kilgore purses his lips. Maybe he should give the man his name. What harm can it do?
A hollow roar splits the air. Kilgore doesn’t need his HUD to tell him a rocket-propelled grenade is on its way. The projectile slams into the SUV and detonates with a deafening boom that resonates in Kilgore’s chest. The SUV lurches sideways, and for a moment Kilgore thinks the heavy vehicle is going to tip over on top of them, but gravity wins out and the SUV rocks back on its suspension. Another RPG whooshes toward the two men, but this one goes wide and pounds into the wall. Kilgore watches the rubble fall. One minute ago, I was standing right there, he thinks. Will just saved his life. Again.
He looks at the older man. “Hank,” he says. “My name’s Hank.”
Will reaches out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Hank.”
Kilgore can’t help but smile; the two men shake hands as if they’re at a dinner party rather than hunched in the rubble behind a rapidly disintegrating SUV with bullets and RPGs raining down on every side.
“So, what’s your plan?” Kilgore says. “Don’t tell me you’ve got a bunch of mines laid out again—unless...” He lets his voice trail away. I wouldn’t put it past him, he thinks.
But Will just grins. “Not mines,” he says. “But I do have something up my sleeve.” He points at his wrist pad. “First though, you need to take this mod.”
Will taps just once on his wrist pad, and a notification appears in Kilgore’s HUD:
ACCEPT SHARED MOD?
He hesitates. You have to be careful. There are mods out there that can siphon off your credits, corrupt your profile, steal your weapons. He glances at Will, taking in the man’s top-of-the-line body armor, his backpack bristling with add-ons and enhancements. What do I have that he could possibly want? Nothing. Compared to this guy, Kilgore’s nothing but a dead-end loser, clawing his way up through the levels, clinging on by his fingernails. But for some reason, his new friend wants him to stick around. Perhaps he needs his help, or maybe, in real life, Will is one of those trust fund game-heads: rich guys with nothing better to do than plug in and play their days away. Kilgore rubs his jaw. If this fool wants to throw his money around, then why stand in his way? After all, this this could be the break he’s been waiting for, the missing piece of the puzzle that will turn his luck around once and for all. Accept.
Immediately, a warning scrolls up onto his HUD:
CAUTION! THIS MOD IS NOT AUTHORIZED BY AGRIPPINE EXPERIENCE
Kilgore smirks. He doesn’t have time for this. If he only ever used the official mods, he’d still be stuck on the easy levels with all the newbies, and he’d be hell of a lot poorer.
Admin override, accept mod, activate.
AIPR0N ACTIVATED
Immediately, a new panel appears in the center of Kilgore’s HUD, and the display flickers as the existing panels rearrange themselves around it. The new panel has a simple message:
AIPR0N STATUS GREEN
“OK?” Will says. “You good to go?”
Kilgore nods. “I guess so.” He tries to keep the disappointment out of his voice, but he doesn’t quite succeed. Somehow, he’d expected something flashier, something crammed with options and add-ons. “What does it do?”
“Just watch. I’ve been saving these bad boys for just such an occasion.” Will taps again on his wrist pad, and Kilgore’s AIPR0N panel fills with a rapidly scrolling list of system updates. He tries to follow the notifications, but they move too fast and wink out of existence before he can take them in properly. Even so, he has a keen eye for chunks of code, and a lot of this looks new to him. There are commands there that he hasn’t seen before. Jesus! Is that kernel code? Kilgore’s mind races to catch up with what he’s seeing. But he must’ve misread the display. Will is a jerk, but he isn’t stupid, and interfering with the kernel would be too risky, even for the most devil-may-care, hardcore hacker. Breaching the security protocols at the core of the game’s software won’t just get you kicked out of the game and land you in a lawsuit, it can fry your hardware and turn your game chair into a useless hunk of plastic. And if that happens when you’re connected, it can seriously mess with your mind. They say one hacker lost the use of his legs, another wound up in a coma, and a girl in Ohio put a pistol in her mouth to make the pain go away once and for all.
Kilgore opens his mouth to say something, but then he sees something that takes his train of thought and runs it clean off the rails. The system messages vanish from his HUD, and a bold red warning sprawls across the display:
NANOBOT SWARM INBOUND – STRAIN: FLAY07
“Hang tight,” Will says. “This is going to get very messy, very fast.”
Kilgore stares at him. “Are you freaking kidding me?”
Will laughs. “You’ll be fine. They won’t touch you so long as you’ve got AIPR0N activated.” He pauses and frowns. “Whatever else you do, don’t try and deactivate it, OK?”
“Jesus Christ!” Kilgore says. “You can’t do this.”
“I just did. But if you can’t handle it, you might want to look away.”
“Don’t tell me what I can’t handle, you asshole. Those things have been illegal for five years. They’ll be picked up, and then you’ll be thrown out the game and banned before you know what’s hit you.”
“You mean we, don’t you?” Will pauses for a beat. “I deployed them from AIPR0N, and it’s a shared mod, so...”
Kilgore punches the older man on the arm. “You goddamned idiot! What have you done?” He thinks fast. Maybe it’s not too late to distance himself from this maniac. He focuses on his HUD and gets ready to ditch the shared mod. But his instincts stop his mind from forming the command. If AIPR0N can really protect him from the nanobots, he can’t risk deactivating it now. It isn’t an option. He glares at Will. “You stupid, arrogant, piece of—”
But Will doesn’t let him finish. He turns to Kilgore, looks him in the eye. And now the older man’s smile is gone. “Just shut up, kid. I just saved your ass, all right?” He shakes his head in disappointment. “Listen, you’ve done well to get this far, but you don’t know every damned thing. I’ve invested more time and money and energy into this game than you ever could. I know which rules I can bend and which ones to break, and I don’t need some kid to second-guess every damned thing I do. Are we clear, Hank?”
Will pauses and takes a breath, his nostrils flaring. For a moment, the men glare at each other in silence. And then slowly, Will’s lips stretch in a cold smile. “You do want to get through this level, don’t you?”
Kilgore clenches his jaw tight. He doesn’t trust himself to speak. The nanobot swarms were banned for a reason. Once you let them loose, they’re difficult to control, and their tiny code modules are unstable and notoriously easy to corrupt. On top of that, an attack from a swarm of nanobots is a slow and painful way to die. He returns Will’s stare. You sadistic bastard, he thinks. I should tell you to go to hell. But he’s not going to do that because the son of a bitch is right, isn’t he? Kilgore wants to get through this game—wants it more than anything. And yes, Will hasn’t got this far by being stupid. He must know what he’s doing; there’s no way he’d risk getting thrown out the game at this level. And right now, he’s staring at Kilgore, waiting for an answer. Kilgore nods slowly.
“Well then. Don’t worry about the nanobots—I’ve got it handled. And don’t spa
re a thought for those bastards pinning us down—they’re just part of the game. Just code. Don’t sweat it. Sit back, and let the swarm do its thing.”
Kilgore looks down at the ground. One of these days, he’s going to get even with Will and his kind. But not now. Right now, all he can do is follow along and watch out for a chance to cash in and get out. He lets a stream of dark thoughts trickle through his mind, but his HUD soon snaps him out of his sulk:
NANOBOT SWARM: TARGET ACQUIRED—AWAITING KILL ORDER
Kilgore sneaks a sideways look at Will. The older man is waiting, his hand hovering over his wrist pad. He looks up at Kilgore and raises his eyebrows, then, without looking down, he lowers his finger onto the pad. “Boom,” he whispers dramatically.
Kilgore keeps a straight face. The last thing he wants is to encourage Will’s theatrical bullshit. But in the next moment, Kilgore can’t help but wince. A burst of static hisses in his earpiece: dozens of voice channels all opening at once. Then the white noise is gone, replaced by a deranged chorus of shouted commands, a torrent of furious threats. But however vile the hurled threats become, they aren’t as hard to hear as the tormented screams that follow: long, wailing screams of gut-wrenching agony. The blood drains from Kilgore’s face. He’s never heard anything like it. The sound fills his mind and sends a chill to settle in his stomach. The harsh sounds of gunfire and grenades are nothing compared to this. He stares into space and counts off the seconds in his head. He gets to seven before the last of the screams fade away. His HUD tells him that the kill is complete, and the sudden silence presses in on him. The air is filled with the stench of death.
Will stands up and stretches his back. “That’s better. Crouching in the dirt gets old fast, don’t you think?”
Kilgore pushes himself slowly to his feet. He turns to face Will and grabs him by the arm. “What the hell was that? You said those guys were just code—just part of the game.”
“Yeah,” Will says. “That’s right. GDL assholes. Not worth thinking about.”
Kilgore shakes his head. “No way. Those screams—they were real.”
Will snorts. “Relax, kid. It’s just some psy-ops bullshit. They’re trying to frighten you off, and I have to say...” he pauses and looks Kilgore up and down, “seems like it’s working pretty well.”
“Psy-ops? Seriously, do you expect me to believe that?”
“Whatever.” Will shrugs. “Who cares?” He looks down at the remains of the SUV and thumps its roof with his fist. “I guess we won’t be needing this anymore.” He moves his eyes side to side, focusing on his HUD, and the SUV shimmers for a moment.
Kilgore frowns and reaches out to touch the vehicle, but as his fingers skim across car’s roof, his skin tingles and his fingers dip below the metal surface. He checks his HUD. It’s not real. There’s nothing there—just the image of an SUV. He gives Will a shrewd look. “So what were we hiding behind? There’s no way you could’ve carried something that big in your inventory.”
“No,” Will says. “But AIPR0N can deploy a defensive structure. The SUV is just window dressing. Pretty cool, huh?”
“Yeah.” Kilgore purses his lips. He doesn’t want to think of all the times he could’ve used something like that. He looks back down the road, toward the side street and the barricade. Sure, Will had some fancy tricks up his sleeve, but where had it got them? They were still right back where they met: still stuck on the same street. “You know what?” he asks. “It’s about time I headed back to someplace easier to deal with. Thanks for your help and all, but I’m done here.”
Will leans in toward him. “What? You’re going to give up?” He clucks his tongue. “No way, kiddo. We never back away. That’s not how we play the game.”
“It is today,” Kilgore says. “We can’t go on anyway. That barricade has me beat, and since you just shot at it, even though I told you not to, it sure looks like you don’t have the answers either. So let’s just call it a day, yeah?”
Will shifts his rifle and holds up his hand, the fingers splayed. “Now, hold on a minute. OK, I was a bit hasty earlier. I was just having a little fun, that’s all. I wouldn’t have let you get hurt. And look, I gave you the medikit and the booster. I provided the SUV. What does it take to get through to you? I’m on your side, pal.”
Kilgore feels his patience melting away. He takes a step back. “No way. I’ve got to go back and see if I can figure out another way through—on my own.”
“All right,” Will says with a dismissive wave of his hand. “You can run away if you want to, but I’m telling you, with your HUD and my knowledge of AIPR0N, we can solve this thing—right here, right now.”
Kilgore starts to shake his head, but somewhere in the back of his mind, a tiny voice is whispering in his ear: You can do this. You can solve the problem. You’re the only one that can do it.
Will turns away and starts walking down the road. He calls back over his shoulder, “See you later, kid—if you make it this far again.”
Kilgore sets his mouth in a tight line and swallows down the growl building in his throat. He hates to admit it, but Will’s got a point. He played his heart out to make it here, but without Will’s medikit, he’d be dead by now.
Will stops walking, and without looking back he calls over his shoulder, “You still there, kid?”
“I guess so.”
Will turns around slowly. “You know, I could sure use your help. Do you think you could maybe just take a look at the barricade with your HUD—tell me what you see?”
Kilgore shrugs. “OK. I’ll take a look for you.” He sets off along the street to join Will. What harm can it do? He’s just taking a look, that’s all. In a few minutes, he’ll be out of here.
The men walk side by side in silence until they’re ten yards from the barricade, then Kilgore stops walking. “This is close enough.”
Will doesn’t say a word. He just steps to one side and watches expectantly. Let the kid have his five minutes in the limelight.
Kilgore turns his head from side to side, running through the full suite of diagnostics in his HUD. “OK, it’s electrified, like I thought,” he murmurs. “Yeah, that’s high tension so you can’t even go near it without getting fried.” He lets the tip of his tongue protrude from his lips for a minute as he concentrates, tracing the code back to its roots. It isn’t easy, but the barricade’s code has been significantly altered from the game’s usual physics engine, and those changes have left a delicate trail of anomalies scattered throughout its structure. He scans the wall of crushed vehicles from top to bottom and back down again. Something is niggling at him—something he really ought to understand. “The cars are... wait... there’s something wrong with the cars.” It’s crazy. With his HUD, the structure of the individual cars should be clear to see, but they’ve been compacted, crushed together until the metal has fused into a solid wall. But that just doesn’t tally with what he’s seeing with his eyes. He looks over to Will. “I don’t get it,” he says. “Even if they’ve been welded together, they wouldn’t be solid like this. It’s like they’re...” He racks his brain, hunting for the right word.
“Seamless?” Will says.
Kilgore raises his eyebrows. “Yeah. Exactly. How did you know that?”
Will tips his head to indicate the road they’ve just left. “Remember the SUV? A defensive wall is seamless and impenetrable. While it’s activated, very few weapons in the game can get through it, and even then, only with sustained fire.”
“But the SUV was being blown to pieces. It didn’t look as though it was going to last much longer.”
“It wasn’t,” Will said. “The wall’s avatar shows how much damage it’s taking. It only lasts so long.”
“Not this one,” Kilgore says, turning back to study the wall. “I see it more clearly now that I know what I’m looking for. You could blast this wall with a tactical nuke without leaving a scratch on it, and with the way it’s wired, it could last forever.”
They look at
each other for a moment, each man searching for a spark of hope in the other’s eyes. Unfortunately, they are both disappointed.
CHAPTER 4
Just Code
MERVIN FALLS THROUGH THE MURKY VOID, his eyes wide open. The darkness claws at him, creeping into his nose, his mouth, his ears. Like drowning in ink. And for a moment, it’s silent, almost peaceful. But then the screams begin. All around him, men bawl commands or cry out in alarm, their voices harsh and strained, pushed beyond endurance: a demented confusion of urgency and suffering. Mervin’s mind recoils from the horror of it. It was never like this in training. Training! Christ! He’s forgotten lesson number one: Deploy or die. If he doesn’t complete his deployment sequence, he’s screwed. He must take the next step and engage with the battlefield system, or he won’t be able to do a damned thing. Until he’s fully logged in, he won’t even be able to log back out. He’ll be trapped in limbo, his mind permanently disconnected from his body. And back in the War Room, they’ll take him from his chair then wheel him down to Room D—the place Clyde calls the Vegetable Patch.
No, he tells himself. Not that. Anything but that. He pulls the tattered threads of his courage together, summons up an ounce of strength. It’s now or never. He forces the vital command to the front of his mind: Engage!
Nothing happens.
Engage.
A clenched fist of pure fear forms in his stomach then reaches out to probe deep into his belly, its cold fingers twisting in his guts. He’s left it too late. In the system, time runs in nanoseconds: millions of cycles faster than the human brain ever could. During deployment, his chair’s interface temporarily slows the system down to a speed he can comprehend, but it’s a narrow window of opportunity. He has only moments to actively engage or his synapses will be thrown out of phase, his mind scrambled beyond any hope of recovery.
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