The Electric Mile (Gamer Handle: Vector Book 1)

by Jack Crosby

  There wasn’t much further to go until we reached the plaza in front of Zeus Tower. My boost had come to an end and it was up to me now to keep him off my tail. He had his gun out and was trying to blow out my tire again and his last shot was true. My back tire ruptured and the bike jerked me hard to the right. I flew off the motorcycle as it went skidding on the road and into the guardrail that ran parallel to us.

  As I got up from my crash, I made a stunning realization. My body crossed the finish line first. I had actually won. “No shit…”

  Draxler was beside me. Very stoically, “Vector, you have defeated me on the Electric Mile.”

  This was a bit anticlimactic, besides my oculus making all sorts of noises from leveling up to new achievements. “What happens next?”

  I heard something launch from the top of Zeus Tower. It was the missile, only this time instead of coming towards me, it was aimed at Draxler. Knowing what came next, I ran my ass off to get away from him. Right before impact, he yelled my name. “Vector!”

  I turned as he threw something towards me. Moments before the missile collided with him and put a giant crater in the ground. “No fucking way… They just killed their own man!”

  There were numerous fires around the plaza. I’d never been to this point in the game before and I was in a bit of shock. I needed to snap out of it. I focused on what Draxler threw at me. I went over and picked it up. It was a needle, one that looked like it would go in a compass. Knowing the one I just picked up was still in the wreckage on the Typhon; I ran over and grabbed it. The needle fit in perfectly and immediately pointed towards the front door to the tower.

  Everything was still in slow motion to me. Next I went back to my oculus and scrolled through all the alerts. I leveled up again from defeating Draxler and could pick a new skill. I didn’t even really put a lot of thought into it. I chose Dead Man’s Gambit (a skill that increased my stats across the board when I was in a no win situation), more as a way of honoring my fallen foe. Everything I’d done was to get to this point and now that I was here, I seemed so lost.

  There was only one thing left to do and that was to make my way to Zeus Tower. The door was unlocked, so I pulled it open and went into the great unknown. Inside was your standard lobby that went directly back to the elevator. Seeing as how this was my only choice, I went over to it and pressed the button to go up. The door chimed and opened. However, instead of taking me up, when the doors closed, we went down to the floor labeled UG II.

  Getting off the elevator, I couldn’t help but notice I was in some sort of server farm room. The machines were all humming along nicely, as if it was another day at the office. Against the far wall was a desk with a computer sitting on it. I sat down and jostled the mouse to bring it out of sleep mode. There were two programs open, one was a card game and the other was a file that just had the title ‘Click Me.’ Against my better judgment, I did.

  A video file opened and there was a blonde lady on the screen. “Hello Vector, I imagine if you are here, you were tempted to open this.”

  I sat down; amused that so many people knew so much about me. The video kept playing. “My name is Yazmin Flockhart, CEO of Zeus Industries, and yes, I was created in the likeness of the woman who runs Tanaka Industries.”

  This was monumentally confusing. So the lady CEO of Zeus was basically a digitized version of the Tanaka lady? Talk about being uncreative with this character. “We have much to discuss, should you make it to the top floor. I wish you luck in finding the keycards to do so.”

  The screen went black, leaving me with an even bigger headache than I had beforehand.

  Chapter 31 – To the Top

  Well fuck me running, the elevator wouldn’t open. I was stuck down here in the server room, which really sucked because it was hot and there was hardly any ventilation. Anyone with half a brain knew that wasn’t good for these guys, but going over improvements to the server farm wasn’t on the agenda with the digital Yazmin Flockhart. Nope, threatening and cursing were my initial thoughts.

  There was probably a secret to this area. As I learned from the start, this game was one giant misdirection after another. So I walked around the room, checking out everything to ensure I didn’t miss anything obvious or what not. As I completed my lap, my frustration grew as nothing jumped out. This was just a regular old room with a bunch of overheating computer stuff.

  A dumb idea hit me. Maybe that was the trick to this area, getting ventilation back in. But how would one go about doing that in an underground room? What was I missing?

  I needed to sit down and really think. With no obvious answer jumping out, I decided to take inventory of what I had. There were my guns, the Taret cards, the compass I just found – err the compass! When I put the needle in after defeating Draxler, it pointed to the building. Maybe this thing was the key to overcoming the puzzle! I picked it up and held it out. It was pointing towards the far south server.

  At first glance, the server looked to be just as ordinary as you’d figure it to be. When I opened the panel, there were no guts to it. Instead, there were four levers about waist high. This was very weird. Not knowing what else to do, I pulled the first lever down. A light flickered from behind the lever and ran upwards in a zigzag. I pulled the second one down and another light came on.

  I did this for all four, but nothing changed in the room. I began moving the levers up and down at different angles until something did happen. When two of the lights crossed, a fan kicked on above me. It wasn’t nearly strong enough to cool the room, but this was a start!

  I left numbers one and three alone, as those were the two lights that crisscrossed. I moved number two back up just a little bit, trying to guide it towards the others. It didn’t make contact with the already connected lights, so I went back to number four. I moved it down just enough and it crossed number two, which in turn connected number two.

  A full blast of fans began cooling the room down. Man, the relief was almost instant. When I made it back to the elevator, it opened when I pushed the up button and proceeded to get in. I went to hit floor thirty-five, the top floor, but a light was already preselected. It looked like I was on my way to floor number nine.

  When the doors opened to the new floor, I got off and the same thing happened as last time. Doors closed, elevator locked. Instead of a server farm this time, I was in a cubicle hell. No one was here, but it looked as if this floor had anywhere from thirty to forty people working on it. Seeing as how the compass was my guide last time, I let it show me the way. It pointed to an office along the west wall.

  The door was locked, but nothing a simple blast from the Nemesis pistol couldn’t change. I kicked the rest of the door down and kind of chuckled at the interior decorations. Whoever used this place had a weird thing for clowns, as they were all over the room. Clowns are fucking creepy.

  Well I should’ve known better. The moment I was all the way in the room, a yellow force field of sorts blocked my way back out. And those clowns, those fucking clowns weren’t decorations, they were hideous clown monsters. Damnit all!

  These things were eight kinds of creepy. There were three of them, all varied sizes. One was tall and walked with a funny looping stride, one was fat, medium height and kind of rolled around, and the last one was short and jumped around like a fucking frog. Did I mention I really hated clowns? If I hadn’t, I really do.

  My flight or fight instinct kicked in. I immediately grabbed both of my pistols and went bonkers firing at everything in the room. Maybe stray bolts hit a clown here or there, but between the yelling and the wild shooting, I wasn’t really accomplishing anything. I guess I was keeping them at bay, which was good, but they weren’t any closer to death than when they first came to life all creepily and sinister like.

  I had to calm myself. If I was going to survive this circus massacre, I needed to be on my A game. I stopped shooting and let both guns cool down. Thinking clearly, I activated Heart of the Oracle and Oracle’s Outlaw. With some boost
s going, I liked my chances a little better.

  I’d forgotten that I had Dead Man’s Gambit, too. Red sparkles formed under my feet and everything about myself felt a lot better. With those three skills in place, the idea of killing clowns seemed a lot more tolerable. “I hope you bitches are ready to meet the maker.”

  They didn’t answer, instead just kept slinking around the room. It looked like they were trying to encircle me, not giving me anywhere to go. Little did they know I had one more trick up my sleeve; Redemption Man. I set my sites on the small, frog like imp. He was the hardest to target and getting rid of him right away would make everything much better. “Bullet Burst – Mass Explosion!”

  Three shots left the barrel of the Nemesis pistol and aimed in on the leaping lurker. As soon as they hit, the clown was caught up in a hellfire of explosions. The medium sized, fat one thought he could get the upper hand, but little did he know he was in for round two. Another round of skills punched him smack in the face, sending him to the ground in a blaze of glory.

  Were they dead? I didn’t know, but both were squealing. That just left me with the tall, very pissed off looking clown. He went on the attack finally, his hands producing very long, talon like nails. He took a few swipes at me, putting me back on the defensive. He was fast, very fast, and didn’t let up. The only way I separated myself from him was jumping over the desk and kicking it at him. He needed to go left to avoid that.

  I wouldn’t have my skills ready in time to put him in the ground. The fat one was dead, as he was no longer moving and his corpse was smoking. The smaller one was still fidgeting on the ground. Just to make sure he was done, I put a couple of shots into his back. That stopped any more movement.

  Knowing I was just left with tall dude, I started to formulate a plan in my head. Since he was too agile to really get a good shot off at, I needed to take away his movement. The best way to do that was to limit the amount of available space in the room. This of course had the risk of putting me in harm’s way, too, but it was a chance to take. I blasted the bookshelves off the back wall, causing them to fall, taking up floor space.

  He chased me around as I continued to make a mess in the office, really boxing the two of us in. When I shot down the light fixture, this put the clown right on top of me, so close I could see into his horrid black eyes of clowny doom. He was rearing back to take a massive swipe at me, but the Nemesis gun was buried in his stomach. I unloaded as many shots into him as I could. At this close range, there was nowhere for him to go. I didn’t stop shooting until the gun overheated and the tall clown corpse joined his brothers. For my troubles I reached level twenty-nine, but I chose not to loot the corpses. There was nothing those weirdos had that I wanted.

  The force field was gone as soon as the third clown died. I made my way back to the elevator, thankful that it was unlocked. I punched the up arrow as hard as I could and went inside immediately. Rationally I knew the clowns were dead, but I didn’t even want to be on the same floor as them.

  As before, there was a preselected floor number awaiting me. This time we were moving up to floor twenty. Hopefully this one would be friendlier. I was still shaking a bit over the last nightmare.

  Imagine my surprise when I got off the elevator and found myself greeted by a concierge. “Greetings Mr. Wilde, we have a reservation for you for the evening.”

  He was a friendly faced man with brown hair and matching eyes. It was totally a trap. “Listen, I don’t know what you’re trying to pull,” I started before he stopped me.

  “I am programmed to provide one last easy night’s sleep before you venture to the thirty-fifth floor.” He showed me over to a table. “Please sit down and rest. We have tacos coming out for you soon.”

  “How did you know I’d want tacos?”

  His answer was very nonchalant. “The longer you’ve been a part of this world, the more the CEO knows about you.”

  I was going to complain, but when the waitress brought me my dinner, my hunger took over. There’d be time for an ‘at gunpoint’ question and answer session later.

  Chapter 32 – The Final Boss

  The elevator stopped at the top floor. Was I nervous or scared? I didn’t really know. What I did know was that I was going to get the answers I demanded, one way or another. I was rested, fed, and had all the guns I could possibly need. As the doors parted, I took my first step towards finishing the game.

  The room was dimly lit. It looked like one of those boardrooms you’d see on a legal TV show or something. At the far end of the room was a figure sitting down, patiently waiting for me to join her. This was a bit weird, not at all what I expected.

  I wasn’t about to put my gun away. I slowly walked down the long room until Yazmin Flockhart came into view. She was writing something on a piece of paper, paying little attention to me. As I got a bit closer, she waved to one of the chairs in the room, a gesture I took as ‘to have a seat.’ I didn’t feel like it.

  Being annoyed she was ignoring me, “So, is this how the game ends? The main character gets bored to death?”

  “How this game ends is entirely up to you, if you want it to end, that is.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Yazmin put her pen down and looked up to me. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail and her eyes were a very pale grey color. “Look out the window and what do you see?”

  I hadn’t really paid much attention to the outside of this little room, but as soon as she mentioned the window, my eyes were drawn to the billowing areas of smoke that were littering Spark City. “When did that happen? I didn’t notice that during the Electric Mile race against Draxler.”

  Her lip curled in disgust at the mention of Draxler’s name. “My failed bodyguard’s name doesn’t need to be said in my presence.” Whoa lady, chill. “Had he done his job and won like he was programmed to do, I wouldn’t be in this bind negotiating with you.”

  She still hadn’t answered the question. “What’s really going on? I get the idea this game and the outside world are a lot closer tied together.”

  “At least you’re not entirely stupid, though something tells me you’ve been influenced by that bitch, Baba O’Riley.” Who in the digital world was this woman a fan of? Man she came off like a bitch. “When Tanaka found the old Neon Death Race file, they used technology beyond its grasp to bring an interactive game to life.” She broke off her explanation. “Why did you choose the name Vector?”

  Talk about a question out of left field. It must have had to do with the previous protagonist of the game by the same name. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I picked it based on the nickname my dad gave me as a kid.”

  “Is Hank Wilde still alive?”

  She knew my dad’s name. “What the fuck, lady? Just who the hell are you, for real this time,” I added with the Nemesis gun quickly ending up on her forehead. “I’m tired of all the shit games and the double talk.”

  My outburst brought forth the first bit of emotion I’d seen in her. It wasn’t fear, it was anger. “Put that thing away before you hurt yourself.”

  “I don’t think you’re in a spot to make –”

  She grabbed the gun and with a lot more strength than I was ready for, bent it down away from her. “You want answers and I need your help. To get your answers, I need you to go out there and lead my shock troops to victory over the Tanaka Corp’s uploaded army.”

  I was struggling to keep upright against her sheer power. This wasn’t normal. “You know what I think,” I said, pushing back as hard as I could. “I think if I take you out, and then somewhere around here will be the answers I need.” What I don’t think she had known was just how far my father and I had fallen apart. Dangling that carrot wasn’t as appetizing as it probably should’ve been.

  “So you’d rather fight against an unbeatable foe instead of being smart and taking the deal?”

  “The Electric Mile was unbeatable and yet you had to blow up Draxler for losing to me.” Th
e gun slipped through her grasp and was back in my control. “Games are meant to be beaten and distracting me from taking out the final boss isn’t going to work.”

  She slid the chair back and stood up. She was just under an inch shorter than me, but I already knew looks could be totally deceiving. I was up against some sort of mini-hulk or whatever. She pulled her heels off and her eyes went deep red. “You will die here today and no one will remember your name.”

  “I doubt that, bitch.”

  Wings materialized behind her. “The real Yazmin Flockhart considers herself an angel, and in this form, she made me one.” A flaming sword appeared in her hand, too. “Not what you were expecting?”

  It wasn’t but she wasn’t going to get that satisfaction. “I’ve beaten bosses a lot scarier than you.” I had both guns out now, ready to engage my skills. “I’ll take a great deal of personal satisfaction adding your head to my collection.”

  She took a step towards me, her sword hanging in the air very menacingly. “This is your last chance.”

  I responded with a gunshot to her head. Her head whipped back from the impact, but when she came back around, all I’d done was piss her off royally. “So be it.”

  She took two flaps of her wings and became airborne. Knowing that in a final boss fight there would be a lot of shit happening, I decided not to waste my skills, yet. Instead I took a few pot shots, just to see what would happen to Yazmin’s health bar. If anything happened, I didn’t see it. That wasn’t good.

  She swooped down like a bird of prey and tried to take my head off. I slipped under the table and let her flaming sword cut nothing but air. Still, the heat that went by on the miss was something else. Think, Ash, think! She had to have a weak spot; no one would be dumb enough to create a boss that they couldn’t beat. Maybe I needed to think of how the real Yazmin Flockhart would beat herself. What would she have used?