by Danny Tobey
But Charlie reached and stopped him. “No. No way.” This was the Alex he feared. The nihilist who acted as if cutting himself were no big deal, as if he’d felt much worse.
Hephaestus shook his head. “It must be the youngest.”
“The god has spoken,” Alex said.
“I play the cello. I can’t cut my finger.”
“Cut the left hand,” Alex said.
“The left hand is the one you play with.”
“Then the right!” Alex said brightly.
“I’m not doing this.”
“No one is cutting themselves.” Charlie stepped in. “I can’t believe we’re even considering this.”
“How do we know you can even give us what you promised?” Peter asked the god.
“Peter.” Charlie stepped toward him, slightly aggressive. “We’re not doing this.”
Peter seemed unconcerned.
“Oh, I can give you what I claim,” Hephaestus told them. “And so much more. And I know just who you want to use this power on. I have foreseen it. It will be a splendid victory. A most just distribution of the fury of the gods. But the time has come. You must decide. Do you want it? Will you do what it takes to get it? I will wait no longer.”
With that, Hephaestus turned his back and began hobbling away, his little cane clicking as he shuffled toward the shadows of the far corner of the dark room.
Everyone looked at Kenny. It was all on him.
“I’ll do it,” Kenny said, surprising them all.
“No,” Charlie said. Drawing blood was too far. Even a stupid pinprick. “We’re your friends.” Charlie glared at the rest of the group. “We’re not going to pressure you into this.”
“No one’s pressuring me. I want to do it. We’ve been beating around the bush all day. We all know what Kurt did to Alex. I hate that guy. We could never get him back on the street. But we can do this.”
“We don’t even know if this … thing … is telling the truth.”
“I’d spill one drop of blood to find out. Wouldn’t you? For Alex?”
“He already has,” Alex said. “Kurt took more than a drop of blood from you,” he said to Charlie. “You did that for me. Why is this any different?”
Charlie wanted to say, Because I don’t care about me. Instead, he shrugged. He was tired of playing nanny. “It’s Kenny’s choice.”
“Then it’s done,” Kenny said. “One drop.”
Kenny was a scholar, but his guilty pleasure was video games. And not just any video games. He loved the old games. The vintage adventure games. Zac McKraken, Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island. The puzzles were silly, the graphics terrible, yet they swept him away—away from the jocks, the jerks, the racists who looked down on him, the black kids who chided him for being too white, whatever that meant. He didn’t fit in anywhere, except with the Vindicators. And now he could move the game forward. For them.
Was it twisted to prick his own finger with the barest edge of a razor blade just to see what a virtual Greek god did next? Tim Fletcher and Kurt Ellers kept themselves entertained by slamming their heads into concussions. This was a small price to pay for a little adventure.
Kenny plucked out a razor blade gingerly and noted with relief it wasn’t particularly old or rusty. He could wash the pinprick with alcohol later. He’d had a tetanus shot.
So whatever.
Before he could think twice, noting the eyes of all the Vindicators were wide, he jabbed down into his fingertip and right back up and let out a yelp.
“Fuck shit,” he blurted, this from a guy who was so tightly wound he’d barely managed to say “piss off” earlier.
It cut deeper than he meant to. He held his finger up in the dim light and saw the ruby bulbs beading up and running down the side of his hand.
“Yum,” Hephaestus said.
21 BLOOD CODE
In gamespace it was a raging coal-fire furnace, belching smoke.
Hephaestus motioned Kenny’s hand down to his mouth and swung a finger across the drop of blood, bringing it to his lips. “Yes,” Hephaestus said, gumming his lips. “That will do nicely.”
Charlie sighed. It was grotesque, but it was done. Now they could move on to the prize.
Kenny seemed to feel the same way. The tension in his shoulders melted. He was nursing his finger, which was still bleeding more than he’d intended.
“No sense in wasting,” Hephaestus said.
Seriously, Charlie thought, we have to watch the little ghoul drink more blood?
But Hephaestus had another idea.
He tapped his cane on the broad surface of the roaring heater. “I need you to write something for me.” He pointed at the beading blood on Kenny’s fingertip. “With that.”
“Rad,” Alex said. “This is like Friends of the Crypt–level stuff.”
That wasn’t exactly a template for success, Charlie thought. According to legend, half of those guys got arrested, and the leader lost his free ride to Princeton and jumped off the roof of the school.
“You promised,” Charlie said to Hephaestus. “One drop. That’s what you said.”
“I lied?” Hephaestus answered.
“Give us the Breath of God,” Kenny snapped at him.
“Suit yourselves.” Hephaestus began to limp away.
“You little bastard,” Vanhi said.
“No blood note, no prize.” He crossed his arms like a petulant child.
“What’s the message?” Peter asked.
Hephaestus told them.
“I won’t do it,” Kenny said. He was religious after all, or at least he came from a religious family. What would his parents think? This felt wrong. Deeply, morbidly wrong.
He looked at Peter, who shrugged, as if to say, Why not? It’s just a game.
Kenny looked at Vanhi, who believed in the Holy Trinity of code, hair dye, and slap bass. She seemed unconcerned, as if there were no difference between the finger prick and this.
He didn’t even bother to look at Alex. Kenny had already seen the hungry look in Alex’s eyes. Whatever this was, he wanted more.
Finally, everyone looked at Charlie.
Charlie sighed. Screw it. Someone else could be the voice of reason for once. “Why not? We’ve come this far.”
Kenny nodded, but Charlie could see the disappointment in his eyes. “Fine. For Alex.” Kenny knelt in front of the boiler and began drawing with his finger.
There wasn’t enough blood. Kenny closed his eyes and drew a long breath. “In for a penny, in for a pound.”
He went to the old razors and gritted his teeth. Second finger, bow hand.
Hephaestus watched, the corner of his crooked mouth twisted up into a smile. Then he walked away, disappearing into the shadows beneath the pipes and tubes.
“Hey!” Kenny shouted. “You promised.”
But before he could complain further, a creaking noise announced the opening of the fire gate, virtual smoke gushing out. They gathered around the furnace, which glowed a reddish orange, and the flames spoke to them.
What they whispered was a code, a series of instructions, commands and prompts and incantations basically—for at the end of the day, what was the difference between a hack and a spell? Both were a precise flow of words in a secret language known only to the initiated, to manipulate a reality that was inviolate only to those content to accept it as such. The Game gave them exactly what Hephaestus had promised: a tool that they could use in second period, when Kurt was in sight, to bring an invisible revenge down on him.
Just hearing the words and knowing what was to come, the Vindicators felt powerful, enriched.
Charlie’s phone buzzed.
There was a new text from God. But this time it was only for him.
22 LEVIATHAN
They could barely wait for second period.
They came out from the basement as the sun came up, unkempt and bleary from their all-nighter, and tried to stay awake through first period. Charlie kept lookin
g at the strange new message from God:
Come to 8710 S. Wayland
Alone—Don’t tell or it goes away.
Social Control—You earned it.
Don’t tell or it goes away.
Why was the Game trying to separate him from his friends?
He googled the address. Just a strip mall. Nothing more.
The bell rang, and they filed into Earth Science—except Vanhi, who had art—exchanging nervous, eager glances.
When Kurt Ellers strode in, taking his seat next to Caitlyn Lacey and putting a proprietary hand on her ass without looking across the aisle of desks, they smiled.
Maybe Peter smiled a little more, because he could imagine Caitlyn being happy to hook up with him in the seclusion of the fields off Meadow Drive, yet just as happy to look at him as if he were crazy when he asked her to homecoming. Caitlyn was the mirror image of Mary: just as popular, but mean where Mary was kind, cruel where Mary was curious and open, if trapped.
“Okay,” Peter said quietly. “Here we go.”
“Remember the plan,” Charlie said.
“Yep.”
Class started, and Mrs. Harlingen was talking about the volcanic forces that arose from the deep earth beneath the ocean and boiled out into the sea. It reminded Kenny of something dark and primordial, like the Leviathan, that ancient sea monster from the Bible. Like the power they were about to unleash.
She clicked through PowerPoint slides on the big screen above them:
Hydrothermal vents.
Black smokers.
Giant tube worms and limpets—sea snails with toothed tongues.
Hot fires and creatures of the deep!
Kenny whispered, “‘Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook or tie down its tongue with a rope?’”
Peter began to type in the code for the Breath of God on his phone, subtly, below his desk, something every teenager on earth was now adept at.
Kurt Ellers must have been thumbing something out, too, and seconds later Caitlyn Lacey glanced at her phone and snickered cruelly.
Charlie recalled with pride smashing Kurt’s last phone, before he could broadcast to the world the image of Alex with his pants down, crying, snot running down his face.
Kurt slid his phone back into his pocket.
Peter kept typing, his eyes flicking up and down subtly.
“‘Can you fill its hide with harpoons or its head with fishing spears?’” Kenny recited under his breath.
Peter followed the instructions carefully, line by line, just as the fire had shown them:
x = getPosX()
y = getPosY()
It would start soon, and it wouldn’t take long.
“‘Who dares open the doors of its mouth, ringed about with fearsome teeth?’”
size = getOldSize() + 1
“‘Its snorting throws out flashes of light; its eyes are like the rays of dawn.’”
def transmit(z):
“‘Its breath sets coals ablaze, and flames dart from its mouth.’”
sendLocation(x, y, z, size)
Peter sent the instructions, one by one.
Now all they had to do was wait for the moment to execute.
His finger hovered over the button.
One more time, Kenny quoted the book of Job: “‘It looks down on all that are haughty; it is king over all that are proud.’”
That’s when Kurt Ellers noticed something warm in his pocket, near his crotch. It wasn’t unpleasant, just odd. How could he know what the infinite looping signal would do?
Then it happened so quickly. The lithium-ion battery in Ellers’s phone created a thermal runway, an expanding gas that led to incredible pressure within a tiny metal space.
They had vowed that they would only do it when the phone was in Ellers’s hand or on the desk. It would scare him, maybe. If the timing was right, he might yelp in front of the entire class. Either way, it would cost him another $700, his third phone in two days. That was some justice. He deserved worse, but they weren’t going to sink to his level.
But the phone wasn’t on the desk. It was in his pocket.
The chemical reaction was fast and violent. It caught Kurt Ellers’s pants on fire. He leaped out of his chair, and everyone spun to watch him hop around madly, then hit the floor, yowling and rolling back and forth to put out the flames. The students around him gaped. People kicked their desks backward. Some screamed. A couple took out their phones and filmed.
Mrs. Harlingen grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall and ran over to Ellers, but the small flames were already out. Not realizing this, she doused him with white foam.
He stood up.
A strange calm came over the room.
He looked around with his mean-spirited eyes.
He was hurt, but not badly. It could have been so much worse. A singed hole was in his pants, revealing half his thigh and the charred edge of his spotted boxers. The skin was red but not open. He winced with pain for a moment, then willed it away. But the shame rose through him, his cheeks turning red.
People laughed. Not everyone. Not even most of them. But enough, seeing him standing there, covered in foam, his pant leg seared open. Maybe remembering among them the various cruelties he had bestowed, not just to Alex but dozens of others along the way. Slamming them into lockers. Calling them fags and losers. All the way back to elementary school.
They laughed, some nervously, some not, until Mrs. Harlingen flashed a look so severe the room went quiet, and she nursed him to the door, which was a somewhat comic sight, this giant lineman limping with an arm around little Ms. Harlingen, she of the ugly sweaters and eighties hair.
She helped him to the door as if he were the gentlest student on campus, and with a last judgmental look that said, No one move, she helped him to the nurse’s office.
23 TOO FAR
The Vindicators gathered by the table and whispered in hushed tones.
“Holy shit!” Peter said. “Did you see that?”
“He didn’t know what hit him,” Alex said, his smile beaming.
“That wasn’t the plan.” Vanhi looked furious. She poked Peter in the chest. “You were supposed to do it on his desk. Not in his pocket.”
“I never pressed Send. That wasn’t me.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Believe what you want. I’m telling the truth. I wanted to punish the guy. Not burn him alive.”
“You swear?” Charlie asked Peter, trying to read him.
“Et tu, Brute? I didn’t fucking burn him on purpose. I’m not a psycho.”
“I think he deserved it,” Alex said. “It should have been worse.”
Everyone stared at Alex for a disturbing second.
“Don’t say that,” Vanhi told him.
“Maybe the Game did it,” Peter said. “It has a mind of its own.”
They split up for third period, and Vanhi pulled Charlie aside. “Do you believe him?”
“Peter? Sure. He’s trouble, but he doesn’t lie about it.”
“How would you know?”
“I’m more worried about you,” Charlie said. “You should quit before this gets out of hand. Remember what happened to the Friends of the Crypt. Don’t lose Harvard over this.”
Vanhi felt the shame rush through her. She’d lied to her parents. She’d lied to Charlie. She had as little to lose as he did.
“Did you start your Harvard app yet?” she shot back.
“No.”
“Then quit telling me what to do.”
When he was gone, Vanhi checked her phone, which had buzzed in her pocket. The text was anonymous:
I know your secret.
24 IT KNOWS
Vanhi felt her stomach jump into her throat.
She only had one secret. She hadn’t told a soul. She’d just hacked her report card, gotten her parents’ signature, then hacked it back.
She typed:
What secret?
She didn’t have to wait. Th
e message appeared, showing her forged report card. The fudged grade changed back and forth from a D to an A, warping like a Möbius strip. The commentary came next, short and to the point:
Cheater.
Vanhi cursed under her breath. She wrote back:
Who is this?
There was no answer.
But she knew. The bad grade was over a year ago. So why was the threat coming now? It was the Game. It had to be. Why had she said yes to playing? Why hadn’t she listened when Charlie urged her not to play? She’d never give him the satisfaction of saying he was right. It was her choice. Fuck it. It was on her, right or wrong. She’d fix it, too, just like she fixed her lousy grade. She could out-tech this lousy game.
Vanhi tried to trace back the number, but it was masked and anonymized, rerouted a dozen times over. There was no end to it. She’d never seen anything like it.
She was about to write again when it beat her to it.
Relax. I just need a favor.
* * *
Charlie cut out at lunch and went to 8710 South Wayland.
He had to know.
Come to 8710 S. Wayland
Alone—Don’t tell or it goes away.
Social Control—You earned it.
He had run into Mary in the hall, and she stopped him, looking angry. She’d already heard what happened to Kurt Ellers. She was still wearing that damn bracelet. Maybe Vanhi was right. She’d never choose Charlie. Even though she seemed to like him, he still didn’t have a chance. Social control, my ass, Charlie thought—I don’t control shit.
“What did you guys do?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Kurt. He picks on your friend, and then his phone just blows up the next day?”
“He didn’t ‘pick on’ our friend. He tortured him.”
“I agree. But you could’ve really hurt him.”
He almost said, That wasn’t the plan!—but that would have been an admission.
“We didn’t do it,” Charlie mumbled.
She studied his face. “Okay.”
He couldn’t tell if she believed him or not.
She left him there and walked out into the parking lot by herself, heading toward her car, until Tim stepped out from beside it and intercepted her. They seemed to have words, then he put a hand on the small of her back, guiding her two spots over and up the step into his giant, oversize I Am a Douchebag Truck. He closed the door for her, and it sounded hard.