by Damien Boyes
The others will be coming now. You imagine OVRshAdo will be furious—he had to have spent the entire game planning this out, finishing the Observatory hotspot to find your location and then running through Walter’s Arena to get the camo unit. He put a lot of resources into taking you down, and all he did was deliver you another powerful weapon.
Right on cue you hear engines fire up somewhere close by. They’re swinging around the compound to come in on the east, probably aiming to overwhelm you, but you won’t give them the chance. You race over to HuggyJackson’s corpse. Luckily the camo unit’s undamaged, and you disengage it from his armor and plug it into yours. It’s still got half a charge, and his backpack’s got three extra cells. That’s nearly two hours of near invisibility.
The unit hums as it engages with your armor, and then chimes ready in your helmet, and you engage it immediately. Your dropsuit shimmers as the built-in active camo function engages, and you disappear. Everything except the weapon in your hand.
Dammit! You should have thought. The rifle isn’t built to integrate with the camo, and neither is the Redeemer. You need to drop them or the camo is useless. A floating sniper rifle makes for an easy target.
You resist the idea of losing your most powerful weapon but know you have no other choice, and toss the Redeemer and the AR into the trees away from HuggyJackson’s body just as two players come sailing into the compound on motorcycles, controlling the bikes single-handed. You just get clear before they spray their teammate’s body and the surrounding area with high-velocity metal shards from the flechette launchers strapped to their wrists, probably hoping to catch you looting.
The air sings with the whistling of a thousand knives cutting the air, slicing through wood and leaves, but you’re already out of the line of fire, moving back around the tree line toward the west entrance. The invisibility isn’t perfect, more like a fast-changing camouflage, but it’s enough to keep you out of sight, and you play silent as OVRshAdo barks out frustrated orders to his team.
You pull yourself up into a tree, climb as high as you can, and stay still as they search the compound. At one point OVRshAdo walks right under you, and you hold your breath for dear life, but he moves right on past.
After fifteen minutes, when you could be long gone, they give up, load back onto their vehicles, and roar away.
Once you’re sure they’ve cleared out and aren’t playing another trick, you clamber down out of the tree and search the woods for the Redeemer, but it’s gone. No doubt they found it. OVRshAdo may not have caught you, but he didn’t walk away empty-handed.
You figure they’ll probably set up somewhere nearby, hoping to catch you in rotation as the zone pushes you, but there’s still lots of safe-zone left to hide in. And with the camo unit, you should be able to avoid them until you run out the clock.
It looked rough there for a minute, and you lost your legendary weapon, but you might just survive another game.
GAGE, FINSBURY
23:41:15 // 10-JUL-2059
Dub was wrong about Anika.
I was wrong about Anika.
Chalk it up to the thick shell she’s built around herself, to a childhood that didn’t leave much room for vulnerability, and to the raw agony of losing a child.
There’s nothing wrong with her. She’s awesome.
And I kinda hate myself right now. A little for how I suspected her in the first place and got us into this under false pretenses, but mostly because every second I spend with her I’m betraying Connie.
I know I’m not doing anything wrong, but the buzz I get from being with Anika is hollowed out by guilt. Just a few days ago I was ready to defy nature and decency and drag Connie back from the dead, transplant her sprite into a replica body and dive head first into the lie of being with her—and now I can’t stop thinking about a girl half my age I’ve known for less than a week.
There’s nothing going on with her except her dogged pursuit of a place on the Gladiator team, and as far as I can tell OVRshAdo is clean too. I checked into the alts Yellowbird shared and there’s nothing I could find that would indicate even a hint of foul play. He’s a self-important dick, sure, but that’s not against the law. Dub was being overcautious and I got caught up in it, started looking for problems—and yeah, I found problems, but they weren’t what I expected. Honestly, I almost wish she was up to something. It’d be easier to deal with that way.
“So you’ll be my guest at the fight on Sunday?” Anika asks. “I have twenty tickets, I might as well use one of them.”
I don’t even hesitate. “Definitely. I’d be honored.”
“You don’t need to be honored,” she retorts. “Just show up.”
We’ve spent another evening together, but this time scrimming while she streamed for her fans—a quarter of a million people watched as we slayed duos in DI. I knew Anika was a celebrity, but I didn’t fully understand the weight of her following until it crashed over me. I had five thousand new contact requests in the first ten minutes, and had to have Connie put my inbox dark after the hundred thousandth. My rep’s bumped up two full points, and it was already pretty high to start with. I don’t know how she deals with it, this constant level of scrutiny. The weight of it must be astounding, but she barely seems to notice.
We left Decimation Island and hopped into a private, high-poly virt. I think she picked the location at random. It’s an alien landscape—a blue-grassed meadow under a brilliant green sky—but we’re finally alone. And while our presence is completely artificial, I can still feel the warmth of her body standing next to me. The aspect she’s wearing is different than her current skyn, her hair is longer and darker and she’s a little shorter, but I can still see her through it. She smiles, bashful, but then leans in and kisses me, and even though our lips pressing together are artificial, the pleasure is real.
She leans into me, and I grab her around the small of her back and return the kiss. My head is whirring. I’m giddy and horny and ashamed of myself all at once. I know I shouldn’t be doing this, that it’s all built on a lie and I’m betraying Connie, but none of that matters as her tongue flicks mine and her pelvis grinds into me. I want to drop her down in the grass right now and take her, and I think that was her intent in bringing us here, but I pull away instead.
She squints at me. “Is there a problem, Mr. Gage?”
“Yeah,” I say. “You.”
“Is that so?” she says, stepping back and crossing her arms.
“I ...” I don’t know what to say. This was supposed to be a job, but I can’t stop thinking about her. Only yesterday I was planning on Frankenstein-ing Connie’s sprite up into a new skyn, but now …
Jesus I’ve fucked this up.
I wave my hands, trying to come up with the words, and finally blurt out, “I just—I’d forgotten what it feels like to not feel like shit.”
This makes her laugh. “Is that your idea of a compliment?”
I like her. When I’m with her, that’s the only place I want to be. She knows who she is, doesn’t have anything to prove, doesn’t need to fill the silence. It’s easy and it’s fun. I know there’s something wrong because, even though I don’t have a stomach in here, still it’s all clenched up. The last time I felt like this I was married a month later.
“I wasn’t expecting any of this,” I say. “I’m still ...” I don’t finish the sentence, but she knows.
“Your wife,” she says, and I nod. “And you feel guilty.” I nod again.
“I know it’s stupid—”
She puts up her hand, presses her finger against my lips. “It isn’t stupid. If anything, it’s sweet.” She locks eyes with me and for a moment her thoughts are far away. “I’ve always dreamed of being loved like that. You were lucky to have it.”
I take her hand, lean in, and kiss her again, and this time I don’t think about it. I like her, and I think she’s feeling the same. We’re both broken, shattered by loss, but somehow our cracks line up.
Event
ually she pulls away and gives me a big grin. “Hard to believe this is all just in our heads,” she says, and she grabs my hand and strokes my palm with her fingers. A jolt of electricity throbs between my legs.
I suck in a breath. “Imagine the real thing.”
Anika gives me a coy look. “We’ll have to test that out sometime.”
“I’m up for experimenting ...”
Her mouth twists up in a smirk. “I’m busy for the next day or so, have this thing Sunday night, but whichever way that goes, I still get Monday off. Pencil you in?”
“Can’t wait,” I say.
She squeezes my hand once then lets go. “I should get going,” she says, drawing out her words. “I’ve got a midnight training slot booked.”
“Those asses aren’t going to kick themselves.”
“See ya, soldier,” she says, her voice canted like she’s quoting something, and just as she’s fading away a bubble in me bursts and suddenly I don’t want her to leave and I reach out to stop her but she’s already gone and I stumble forward and nearly fall into the long blue grass.
I’m an idiot. Zero Chill Gage, that’s me.
I’m no good at this, never was. I know I should let it be, play it cool, call Dub and tell him he has nothing to worry about, then cast back to the cabin and figure out what the hell I’m supposed to do.
Can I start to entertain the idea of a life without Connie? And if I can’t, what the hell am I doing kissing someone else? But I don’t do any of it. Instead I think up Anika’s contact, still not sure whether to send her a note or try to lure her back here—but she’s showing offline. She’s gone, I already missed her, which is probably just as well. At this point I should just leave well-enough alone. Anything else will likely only mess things up.
I start to trigger the cast back to the cabin but have another thought, and before I can think better of it I call up Anika’s alt, and there she is—GulfGaytR. She’s in Decimation Island, probably one last solo run to warm up before training. I want to send an invite or a message or anything for the excuse to spend a few more minutes with her, but hold myself back. I don’t want to come off clingy.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t kick back in spectator mode and watch her frag bots for a bit. No harm in that, right?
I call up the spectator console and zero in on GulfGaytR. She’s in a vanilla DI run, just landed from the drop tower, but she isn’t playing alone. She’s running a squad and teamed up with three others, and instead of one of the hotspots, they’ve landed near the edge of the zone, away from the hostilities, and from the looks of things they’re just standing around talking.
Curious, I check out the others she’s teamed with. Two of them I don’t know—RainBowWow and XeroFacks—but the third …
My chest vibrates with a numbed shock as I reread the name to make sure I’m not imagining things. By the fifth time I’ve gone over it, breaking it down letter by letter and comparing it to the list Yellowbird sent me, my infatuated light-headedness has compressed down to a tight nugget of anger in my gut.
The third name is n0tSHAD. One of OVRshAdo’s alts.
Anika lied to me.
She told me she hadn’t talked to him since DI, that she didn’t want anything to do with him.
So what the hell are they doing partnered up in Decimation Island?
GAGE, FINSBURY
00:15:55 // 11-JUL-2059
They were in on it, OVRshAdo and Anika, both of them together. That was OVRshAdo at the heist. I may not be able to prove it yet, but now I’m sure of it.
Anika didn’t react because she knew it was coming. It’s the answer that makes the most sense and I knew it from the start, but I let her convince me she was someone she wasn’t.
Some detective I am. All it takes to scramble my instincts is a pretty smile and a bit of attention. My stomach is churning and I can barely see straight. Even sitting next to the fire in my virtual cabin I’m shivering.
I’m a fucking moron.
This is what I get. For letting my guard down. For ignoring what was right in front of me. For thinking I could let someone in.
I let her play me. She must have known from the beginning what my intentions were. Whatever her game is, I’m no more than another NPC to her. Well, at least I don’t have to feel bad about how this all got started anymore, I’m not the only asshole here. We played each other.
But what if I’m wrong?
Of course, there could be another explanation. I’d barely known her for a few hours when I asked about OVRshAdo. There are plenty of reasons she might want to hide her contact with him. She told me people ask her about it all the time, think they should be a couple, or at least running pro duos, and it’s the first question pinned on her AMA feed. She thanks him for helping her get to the end, but makes it clear she isn’t interested in a partnership, professional or otherwise.
But that’s for public consumption. I’ve seen what they went through to get to the end of DI; they formed a bond, everyone watching could see that, and neither of them have any memory of it. That’d weigh on anyone. There must be plenty of reasons why they could be meeting up in secret.
Or could be I just want to think she’s innocent because I’ve got feelings for her.
Dammit, she’s in my head, got me second-guessing myself.
I don’t know what to do, but I need to talk this through with someone, and it can’t be Connie.
Even though it’s after midnight Dub answers my call and a second later he’s standing in my living room. His aspect is identical to his skyn, and moves like silk, no off-the-shelf animations for him. He’s even wearing the same uniform of tight black T-shirt and compression shorts, and his purple photoos ripple in the firelight.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, his forehead furrowed. It’s the middle of the night, he must know this is bad news.
“Your gut was right,” I say, struggling to control my voice. “You remember OVRshAdo? Anika said she hadn’t talked to him since DI, but I just saw them together.”
Dub’s head bobs as he processes the news. “So you’re saying—”
“OVRshAdo stole your arena skyns, and Anika was in on it.”
His eyes narrow as he works the implications over in his head.
“That scans,” he mutters after a moment, his deep voice rumbling in the small cabin. “The stolen skyns’ safeguards were hacked before the gala even started—and the techs say it had to have happened at the Mundi, or somewhere en route. Had to be someone on the inside.”
“Anika.”
Dub growls, and the tendons in his neck go taut. I’ve never seen him mad, but I’ve seen him fight, and I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be on his bad side. “We need to get her off the ticket,” Dub says. “Confiscate her skyn before she hurts someone.”
I take a second to enjoy the feeling, knowing she’s caught, but it’s fleeting. Mostly I’m disappointed, like I discovered something precious and immediately had it stolen from me.
And still there’s a chance I could be wrong.
“Wait,” I say. “Just hold on. We need to be sure.”
“But you just said she was in on the robbery—”
“And I think she was, OVRshAdo too—his biokin’s a 70 percent match to the leader—”
Dub hesitates. “Only 70 percent?”
“73.4.”
“Still,” Dub says, uncertainty in his voice.
“That’s the problem, a lot of what ifs, but I can’t prove anything. All we’ve got is her dead-eyeing through an armed robbery and then lying to me about talking to OVRshAdo. It’s thin and it’s circumstantial. We need more than that. We need to be sure.”
Dub slumps down on the couch and buries his head in his hands. “I don’t know, Fin,” he says, his voice muffled in his big palms, then he looks up at me. “What if we wait and she does something else? Then it’s on us.”
“Or we can launch an accusation with nothing to back it up and then how’s that help the ludus?” Dub drop
s his head back into his hands with a meaty slap. “We need something concrete. Something tangible.”
“Like what?” Dub asks, raising his head once more.
“Those skyns they stole, still no leads on them?”
He shakes his head. “Standards makes the ludus run passive location tracking on all the arena skyns. The second one of them comes near an active link signal they’ll ping the Ministry, but so far nothing.”
“Could they have removed the trackers?”
“No way, they’re built right into the Cortexes. It’d take a full cortical replacement, and reseating the diganics with the skyn’s nervous system would be next to impossible.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. They’d have known about the trackers. They wouldn’t have gone to the trouble if they didn’t have a way around them.”
“Humanitech has them lowjacked too,” Dub says, his voice low, as if someone might overhear. “A secondary tracking system even Standards don’t know about. It’s distributed, wouldn’t show up on scans. I doubt anyone who wasn’t looking would know it was there.”
“Does Anika know about the second tracker?”
Dub shrugs. “Could be, though I only found out by accident. I think they want it kept quiet.”
“So if the skyns had been out, we’d know about it.”
“As far as I can figure, yeah.”
“That’s something at least. We’ll see them coming.” We both fall silent, neither of us sure what to do next, but then a thought occurs. “Let’s say I’m right, and OVRshAdo and Anika stole them. What I still don’t understand is why.”
“To sell, don’t you think?”
“From what I can tell, you and Anika share a similar problem—neither of you need money. No, this is something else.” Or I’m wrong and this is all a giant misunderstanding. I need to come at this another way. “There were two other people grouped with them tonight. XeroFacks and RainBowWow. You know who they are?”