by Danny Tobey
They needed to get into the boiler room and erase their guilt. And now the Game was throwing this at them.
“That’s not a hard question,” Peter said hurriedly. “Charlie, seems like you should have the honors.”
Charlie thought about the wrist cracking under his foot. Choices had consequences.
“I have no idea what picking Y does,” Charlie said.
“It’s just a question. If the Game does something to Tim, that’s not your fault,” Alex told him.
“It’s like the trolley problem!” Kenny added, always happy to quote philosophy.
“Oh, shut up, Kenny,” Vanhi said.
Peter ignored the squabble and turned to Charlie and said quietly, “He probably beats her.”
Charlie glared at Peter. “Leave Mary out of this.”
Peter held up his hands. “Just saying.”
“Oh, to hell with this,” Kenny said. “I hate him, and I don’t even know the guy. This is our butts on the line, remember? Blood on the wall? Let’s focus. We obviously have to answer this in order for the Game to help us.”
Kenny reached out and pushed the Y floating above them.
They saw Tim’s social media unfold in space above them. He wasn’t a big poster, but everyone posted about him. Look at me, at a kegger with Tim Fletcher! Look at me, cheering him on at State (Fletcher tagged in the background of the selfie, on the field, crushing skulls for that great American bloodletting).
The Game was moving between posts. It pulled Tim’s face and elements of his clothes and gestures, then drew on pictures of Kurt, too, creating an image of the two of them standing in front of a wall. Behind them, it began painting in a new element, a Confederate flag pinned to the wood planks behind them. The image was perfect. It didn’t look like any fake the Vindicators had ever seen. No telltale photoshopped clues—mismatches in graining or tone or lighting. On the deepest lizard-brain level, it felt real.
The Game said:
Post? Y/N?
On some level, Charlie felt relieved. He thought maybe the Game would murder Tim if Charlie hit Y. Who knew? This felt more akin to a prank. Like Alex’s Lord LittleDick poster, might it rest in peace. Charlie could live with that.
“It’s crazy how real it looks,” Kenny said.
“So we post it,” Alex said.
“Um, yeah,” Kenny said. “To save us? That’s a small price to pay.”
“Yeah, he probably won’t even get in trouble,” Alex said. “Football’s too important.”
“He’ll just say it’s fake,” Peter added.
“It is fake,” Kenny agreed.
“It doesn’t look it,” Vanhi said.
“Still, it’s a big deal to label someone a racist,” Kenny said, thinking it through.
“But he is a racist,” Peter said.
“We don’t know that,” Kenny said.
“Yeah, we do,” Peter shot back. “I don’t need to hear him say it. He reeks of it.”
“Kurt called me the Dumb Asian,” Alex said.
“There you have it.”
“You guys are missing the real problem,” Vanhi said.
“What’s that?”
“What if posting Kurt and Tim with that flag doesn’t bring them down? What if it brings the flap up?”
“Huh,” Peter said, considering it.
Charlie pulled on the door. He checked the hinges in the Game, looking for some clever way in. But it was obvious: the Game wasn’t going to help them until they posted that fake photo.
“It’s us or them,” Kenny said, coming to the same conclusion. “There’s no way in but to play along. That graffiti could ruin us.”
Everyone turned to look at Charlie.
“What do you think?” Vanhi asked.
Charlie wondered who should answer—Boy Scout Charlie from two years ago, dropout Charlie from a week ago, Game-playing, Mary-courting Charlie of today?
There was only one thing all three of them agreed with.
“I think I hate Tim Fletcher,” he answered, pushing the Y floating above them.
The boiler room door opened, the Wi-Fi lock unclicking automatically.
“I wonder if we’ll see Hephaestus again,” Peter asked, as they crept through the virtual mist pluming out. Vines wrapped around the pipes all around them. A python hung lazily from one, flicking its tongue in and out, sniffing them from above. A low moan came from the boiler.
“Oh! That’s disgusting,” Vanhi said, startling them all.
On the ground, in the corner, was little Hephaestus’ body. His head was torn off. Blood pooled around his torso, tacky in the oily black muck-water covering the ground.
“Oh-ho-ho,” Peter said. “The plot thickens.”
“Where’s his head?” Kenny asked helpfully.
He turned around and gasped. There in front of him was Hephaestus’ little head, stuck on a pike, tongue hanging out.
Kenny poked at it, and the eyes shot open.
“You did this!” it shouted, then fell dead again.
Kenny wiped his face, the digital blood coming off on his hand in the gameview.
Behind them, the door clicked locked and blue swords appeared in their hands. “What the—” Vanhi managed, then a roar tore through the room, so loud it hurt their ears. A creature raised its head from behind the boiler, then another head and another after it. The heads lashed forward, scaly and fanged, snapping at them. The creature rose from behind the boiler, as if the metal casing with the bloody pentagram was its armored belly.
Charlie didn’t move in time, and one of the heads lashed out and sank its teeth into his arm. Virtual blood sprayed out.
25 Blaxx!
flashed in text over him, spinning quickly, then disappeared.
Another head reared back, opened its mouth, and roared.
At the same time, one of the pressure-release valves sprung open on the boiler, spewing invisible gas, while the pilot light’s sparker triggered. A plume of real flame shot out, intermingling with the virtual fire pouring out of the creature’s mouth.
“Ow!” Vanhi cried. “That really hurt.”
She ran to the door, but it wouldn’t budge.
Peter tried chopping one of the beast’s heads with his blue sword. It lopped off with a bloody spray, then grew back instantly. Fire breathed out again, and this time the real fireball was bigger, as more gas poured out from the pressure valves and filled the room. Peter felt the heat as he ducked just in time. Any minute, enough gas would be in the room to burn them all to a crisp.
Vanhi and Charlie swung for other heads on the beast, but they kept growing back.
“What do we do?” Charlie asked.
But Kenny was laughing—he knew exactly what was going on, and he knew just what to do. “Burn the necks!” he cried out, elated. “Before they can grow back! Look!”
He dipped his sword into the oily muck on the floor, then raised it into one of the plumes of fire, where it ignited. Charlie did the same and looked at the flaming sword in his hand. He chopped the next head that flew at him, then held the blade against the oozing neck as it sizzled and singed shut. The stump fell down like a dead boa constrictor.
They chopped away at the other heads, which now shot out at them frantically with teeth bared and eyes wide. A final plume of gas ignited, so large they all had to drop to the ground, but then the last head rolled across the ground and the beast lurched back with a wild spasm and fell dead as the fire sprinklers came on.
Water poured down from the ceiling, soaking them.
“I will wash away all your sins!” Kenny laughed. He raised his hands to the falling water and began rubbing them over the furnace, smearing the pentagram. They all pitched in and scrubbed, until at last the image was totally erased, just a trail of reddish brown swirling down the drain in the floor, then gone.
Vanhi looked at Kenny with actual admiration. “How did you think of that? Burning the necks?”
“Hercules and the Hydra! The AI was built on w
orld religion. While you guys were reading code, I was reading books!” Kenny folded his arms triumphantly.
“Holy shit. That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever played,” Peter said.
“Played? Done? Experienced?” Charlie asked.
“What is the word?” Kenny added.
“The word is mindfuck,” Peter said. “That was the most amazing mindfucking I’ve ever received. And I’ve been arrested in my home by Feds.”
“Wow.”
“That was better than sex,” Kenny said.
Everyone stared at him.
“Fine,” he amended. “That was better than I imagine sex to be.”
* * *
Everyone slept hard. Except Alex.
His physics exam was tomorrow. He hadn’t forgotten. He’d just blocked it out with the Game. Except now he’d failed that, too.
Only Vanhi had seen him hiding in the boiler room. When the fire started spraying out, he ran and ducked behind the pipes in the back. While his friends were chopping away, he was crouching in the corner.
When it was over and the water started, Vanhi saw him step out from the shadows. She pretended not to notice, but he was sure she’d tell them all.
His dad was a war hero, and Alex couldn’t even stand up to an imaginary dragon.
He’d peed his pants, a little. Did she see that, too?
For five minutes, he’d been the hero. The one who earned them the Aziteks. Who would remember that now? Kenny was the hero. Alex was shit.
As if reading his mind, the Game told him:
You don’t matter.
That was indisputably true.
He needed sleep.
But he couldn’t add another failure to the list.
Not now.
He looked at the bottle of pills Peter had supplied him. He hesitated, then popped an Adderall and felt his brain light up. Suddenly he was firing on all cylinders, and it seemed entirely possible that he could learn in the next five hours what he hadn’t in the last three weeks.
He had Red Bull and caffeine pills to boot, and he popped a couple now, to keep the juices flowing. His heart was beating too hard in his chest, but he focused on the equations in front of him. He could do this.
It was 2:17 A.M.
Plenty of time.
He woke up the next morning with his face on his desk, unsure if he’d studied at all.
33 HEALED!
Kurt Ellers was back the next morning. He wasn’t even limping.
Charlie knew it was wrong, but that filled him with rage. He wouldn’t have chosen to blow up the phone in Ellers’s front pocket, but knowing that Kurt wasn’t maimed, Charlie couldn’t help but regret that it hadn’t done slightly more damage.
Especially when he saw the smug look on Kurt’s face. He didn’t look like a guy who had just been humiliated in front of his peers. He didn’t look like Alex Dinh, eyes heartbroken, snot running down his face. He grinned and shrugged with a “What can you do?” affability. Yep, my phone blew up. Isn’t that crazy? I’m still gonna get laid tonight. Are you?
But then Charlie thought about the strange magic of the internet. Maybe that Confederate flag photo would go viral and turn everyone against Kurt. Or maybe someone would leak the video of him hopping around, pants on fire, some dowdy old teacher spraying him with white foam. No matter how infallible Kurt was with his friends, the wisdom of the crowd could prevail. Isn’t that what happened with dictators these days? They stay propped up for so long, their power intact, rising on a web of fear and belief. But when the truth spreads like wildfire through the crowds, the illusions burn up and old gods fall.
Charlie tried to remember who had filmed the phone episode. Eric Weisman, maybe? Elena Moore? In the excitement it had been a blur. He’d ask around after class. Or maybe the Game had it already? Maybe he could buy it with Goldz?
Once the rage passed, Charlie realized he felt pretty good. He’d slept like a baby after their wild adventure. In the daylight, with some rest, everything felt less terrible. Mary wasn’t wearing his bracelet, but she wasn’t wearing Tim’s either. The Game was crazy, but it was fun, too, and they’d washed away the pentagram; now they could relax. No harm, no foul.
This morning, rightly or wrongly, things seemed possible.
He looked at the posters in his backpack. The five lame, lousy VOTE FOR CHARLIE flyers that Mr. B. had made for him. They were pathetic. He’d be embarrassed to put his name behind them. But he also felt touched. Underneath all the pain and grief, for the first time he felt a small ray of gratitude.
He wasn’t going to run for student body president. But he did want to be able to say, honestly, to Mr. Burklander, that he’d put up one of the posters. Charlie didn’t want to have to lie to him anymore. Charlie tried to think of the most obscure area of the school, where people were least likely to see it (besides the Tech Lab, which was obscure, but not to his friends). Charlie found a bulletin board on the fourth floor, south wing. He wasn’t 100 percent sure, but it might have been near the remedial classes, so maybe the students wouldn’t be able to read it.
He hung the poster, stuck a pin through, and threw the other four in a trash can.
Okay, Mr. B., he thought. Okay. Now you can feel good.
* * *
Kenny was feeling better, too.
His DNA, after all, had been in the bloody graffiti.
No one had thought to scrape a little blood off—not Eddie, not Candace—and now the blood was gone. Nothing could link the photos Candace took to the Vindicators; photos were just pixels on a disk. If he played the Game right, those might disappear soon, too.
So why did Eddie look so smug this morning, even as he told them about the strange sprinkler malfunction?
“Walker let me back in,” Eddie told him. “The place was a mess. Water everywhere. The graffiti was gone.”
“Well,” Kenny said, trying to sound nonchalant, “we’ve got the pics. So we’re good.”
“Oh, we’ve got more than that,” Eddie said viciously, without explaining what he meant.
“And now there’s a cover-up!” Candace added. “It’s like Watergate.”
“No pun intended,” Kenny tried lamely, but they ignored him, excited.
“Right!” Eddie nodded to Candace. “If it was a prank, why break in and wash it away? You’d want people to see it.”
“Okay, slow down, everyone,” Kenny said. “I thought it was a sprinkler malfunction.”
“That’s what Walker thought, too, but he’s dense. We know about the pentagram. We’re supposed to think this is all just a coincidence?”
Kenny shook his head, trying to look casual. “If I were a devil-worshipping graffiti artist, I think I’d use a rag, not water an entire room.”
“Are you a devil-worshipping graffiti artist?” Eddie said it like he was joking, but Kenny didn’t like the look in his eyes.
“Yeah, right,” Kenny said, trying to laugh it off.
“Anyway,” Eddie said, “here’s the plan. I want Kenny to research Friends of the Crypt today. There’s just too many similarities not to link the stories. Plus, we know that got national attention, so let’s bring it up. Candace, I want you to research devil stuff in general—what does the pentagram mean? What other bad stuff would these guys be doing?” Eddie smiled. “Whoever these nuts are, they’re going down hard. And we’ll break the story.”
“It’s kind of thin,” Kenny said, throwing a Hail Mary, “without any physical evidence.”
“I agree,” Eddie said. “That’s why it’s so awesome I’ve got their DNA.”
“What?” Kenny felt his fingers begin to throb again.
“Yeah. After you all left, I was like, wait, why didn’t we take a little sample? Well, actually, it wasn’t my idea.”
Kenny was baffled. “Whose idea was it?”
“That same anonymous source. He really wants these sick fuckers to go down!”
* * *
Something was wrong with Mr. B. Charlie h
adn’t seen him like this since his divorce. He phoned it in through Creative Writing. All the joy was gone. This was the guy who stood on the table like in Dead Poets Society and read to them aloud from Mark Twain and Dostoyevsky. Only then, seeing Burklander so gloomy, did Charlie realize how much Mr. B.’s annoying optimism had been a scaffold for Charlie’s despair, keeping him from dropping all the way down a bottomless shaft.
He felt unmoored.
He wanted to tell Mr. B. about the poster (now he wished he hadn’t thrown out the other four). But when the bell rang, Burklander was out the door faster than the students.
Charlie ran after him. He heard Mary call his name and almost turned around, but something kept him chasing after the teacher.
He found Burklander outside by the Dumpsters, sneaking a cigarette. “I didn’t know you smoked.”
“Damn it,” Burklander snapped, and flicked the cigarette behind the Dumpster. “I don’t.”
“Can I have one?”
“No.”
Burklander sat on the ground, in the gravel, a strangely juvenile gesture. He let his back slide down the wall till he was seated. He popped another cigarette out and pulled it with his lips.
“No, you can’t have one.”
Charlie sat down beside him. “Don’t you have a heart problem?”
“Yes.” Mr. B. looked at the cigarette in his hand. “I just … needed one.”
“Why do adults who smoke always tell kids not to smoke?”
Mr. B. gave him a dry look. “Because we want to believe you guys will be better than we were.”
Charlie didn’t like this new, cynical Mr. B. “I didn’t want a cigarette anyway. I don’t smoke. I just wanted to see if you’d give me one.”
“So did I pass your test?” Burklander said sarcastically.
“Yeah. Sorry.” Changing the subject, Charlie said, “I put up one of your posters.”
Mr. B. didn’t even look at him or respond.
It stung.
“What happened?”
“I might as well tell you. I’m sure it’ll get around soon enough.” Mr. B. shook his head. “I’ve been teaching for thirty years. And the kids just get worse and worse. Meaner and meaner. Nothing matters to them.”