by Damien Boyes
You’ve lost your camo unit, and OVRshAdo’s was destroyed by the raptorwolf, but you keep the Stingers as your sidearms and add the powerful medium- to long-range DR-17 battle rifle to your arsenal alongside the Redeemer. Warrack chooses the other two Stingers and a fully kitted LMD80 marksman rifle with an 8X zoom. You’re also both able to mend and refill your adaptive armor. It was a close call, but you made it through, and now with OVRshAdo and Zara-Zee out of the way, you’ve got a shot at surviving until game ten. You’re still not even halfway there, but it seems more possible than ever, and you allow yourself to luxuriate in a moment of hope that this’ll all turn out for the best.
But only a moment. Start believing your own hype and that’s when a pherodart blows up in your hand and a raptorwolf tears your heart out.
After an hour or so the medkits have Warrack back on his feet. He’s shaky, and wouldn’t be much use in a fight, but he’s able to move. It’ll still be hours before he’s back to one hundred percent, and you take it easy as you leave the village and pick your way from compound to compound across the high grass and brackish water of the marshlands, heading for the edge of the mountains to the northeast. The zone is closing in that direction anyway, so you might as well get there early.
You come up to the banks of a fast-moving river and take a detour until you find a rickety metal bridge, but other than that the trip is uneventful. Eventually you clear a small research base in the rocky foothills south of the Caldera to let Warrack get his strength back while you each take a stretch of rest time.
After all the action back with OVRshAdo and the raptorwolves, the quiet is a relief. Not that you don’t love the action, but you were seconds away from eating it out there, and you never want to get that close again.
While Warrack is resting you climb up on the roof of the two-story modular structure, go prone behind the weather sensors, and keep watch for enemies through the Redeemer’s sights. Hours pass, and other than the patrolling bots and the occasional bird, the only movement you spot is a trio crossing the marshes way out to the west. They’re far enough away you let them go without engaging. No point calling attention to yourself when Warrack still needs a few hours to finish healing.
You lie there through the afternoon, watching the map in your head as the zone closes one hex at a time. The edge is coming, and it looks like the game will finish somewhere to the north of you. You’re nearly ready to round Warrack up and get moving when your head quavers—the audience, suddenly excited.
That can only mean one thing: you’re about to be attacked.
You’ve been covering the marshes for hours and haven’t seen anyone, so they’re sneaking up behind you. You immediately roll over and scan the Redeemer across the mountains, searching for movement or any sign of where the assault will come from, but the auto-aim doesn’t spot anything.
“We’ve got trouble,” you say over teamspeak, and Warrack shuffles around below you, checking out his windows.
“Are you sure?” he responds after a moment. “I don’t see anything.”
“My aud is going nuts,” you reply, eye pressed to the Redeemer’s optics. “What else could it be?”
“Mine hasn’t changed for hours,” Warrack says. “If anything it’s settled down since the raptors.”
You know your following must be larger than Warrack’s, but even still, if yours saw something that riled them up, his would have too.
Unless—
Your stomach drops as your thoughts go immediately to the next most likely reason, but you shut them down immediately. You can’t go there, can’t let yourself think that.
But if it’s true, this is all over. There’s no reason to be here anymore.
You shake the thought off and after another few tense minutes, when the expected attack never comes, you abandon your spot on the roof and take the ladder down to the second floor. Warrack is peeking out one of the large round windows.
“No movement, boss,” he says out loud. “What do you think set them off?”
You’re still not completely sure, but the audience pressure is different than before. Usually they vibrate with a high-pitched excitement, eager for action, but this feels different. Deeper somehow. Sadder.
Like they’re mourning.
But it can’t be. If it was Rael, you’d know. You wouldn’t need an audience in your head to tell you if something had happened to him. You’re his mother, you’d just know.
“Beats me,” you say, masking the tension clenching at your guts. “But whatever it was we shouldn’t stay here to find out. You’re good to move?”
“Right as rain, boss,” Warrack replies, clicking his heels together and snapping a salute.
“Move it then, fella,” you say with a smile, trying to keep it light. For yourself as much as for Warrack.
But even as you pack up and move out north the sorrow in your head keeps expanding, broadening, becoming more pronounced until the only thing you can do is ignore it and hope it doesn’t mean what you know it does.
GAGE, FINSBURY
14:13:51 // 12-JUL-2059
Anika’s already moved what little she owns out of the ludus, and after she left to meet me on Friday she never went back, ghosted the Gladiators completely. News of it hit the feeds a few hours ago. Humanitech spun it as she voluntarily stepped aside after deciding it was too soon after her ordeal in Decimation Island to handle the stress of another competitive kill-or-be-killed experience, but rumors are circling like vultures, claiming she’s been kicked off the team, or was caught shyfting, or even that she was involved in the arena skyns heist and been arrested—which is a pretty good guess based on absolutely no available evidence. But when there’s a thousand different conspiracy theories one’s likely to be right if only by accident.
Dub’s not taking it well. He’s pissed at me, and for good reason. I had a brief voice chat with him, and told him the ludus is in no danger, that Anika isn’t a threat to his adopted family, but that wasn’t nearly enough. He wants to know what’s going on. Anika didn’t just bail on the novi trials for no reason, there’s obviously something going on with her, and he doesn’t understand why I’m still putting him off, but I can’t tell him the truth. I can’t risk him going to Standards or the Service and shutting our plan down before we can launch. There’s too much riding on it.
If it was just Anika’s memories on the line, that’d be one thing, but this is the only chance we’ll get to shut down the Killr shyft. Yeah, we’re also going to cancel the biggest game show in history, and plenty of people will be pissed about that, but what are we supposed to do, just let Jefferson Wood keep right on outsourcing his AI’s tactical knowledge to anyone who can afford it?
The only other option is a military strike on the island, and that’d take time to organize and no way it’d remain quiet. The AI would have plenty of time to pack up and escape the island and nothing would change.
No, this is the only way this works, and I don’t like lying to Dub but that’s how it goes. I sent him his money back though. It’s the least I can do. I sure didn’t earn it.
Anika’s been stashing her skyn in a body locker in Midtown under an alt ID, keeping a low profile. She cast into my battle with Shad and the briefing, but after that was done she sent a message asking me to join her in that park she visits every week, and since I have nothing to do until it’s time to load into a walking weapon strapped to a rocket, I agreed.
Everyone’s trying to find her, so to keep from triggering SECNet’s biokin scans she rented a loaner skyn from the body locker, and when I get to the park I find a young dark-skinned man sitting on the bench where she said she’d be. I know it’s her but I still hesitate a moment before I sit.
She doesn’t say anything, and we sit and watch the kids chase each other around the plastic climbers as they play a game of Grounders. It’s a beautiful summer day, not a cloud in the sky, but not too hot. We’re surrounded by the city, but it feels peaceful here.
Eventually she sa
ys, “I used to come here with Rael. He was only a few months old but I’d bring him and imagine how he’d one day be the one out there playing. I wanted so much for him, he had his whole life …”
She reaches out and takes my hand and I look over and there’s a tear running down her angular cheek. Her slender fingers are cool in my palm and I give them a squeeze, and while it feels odd to be holding a strange guy’s hand in the middle of the park, the feeling doesn’t last. It’s just flesh, I know who’s on the other side, and she’s hurting. I hold her hand until she finally sniffs and drags her fingers across her eyes. She still hasn’t stopped looking out at the kids.
“What if we get there and I find my memories and learn the island had nothing to do with it?” she says. “What if I really did kill myself?”
“Then at least you’ll know,” I say. “Either way you can move on.”
She nods and goes back to watching a little girl digging in the sand nearby.
“Are we doing the right thing?” she asks after a few minutes.
“Having second thoughts?”
She shrugs. “Stealing Humanitech’s skyns was wrong, I know that, but no one got hurt, and after this is all done, however it goes, I plan on turning myself in.” I don’t say anything, just let her talk. “But still—look at all the trouble I caused, just because I couldn’t handle the empty space in my head. And now I’ve got you involved.”
And she doesn’t know it could be a one-way ticket for me, not that I’d ever tell her.
“You could always back out,” I say, but I don’t think she will.
“Too late for that now.” She sighs. “Besides, someone’s got to stop that AI, and if we don’t, then who?”
“The cops?” I suggest. “Standards? A nuke?”
She snorts, and for the first time since I sat down she turns to look at me. Her face is totally different, but somehow I can still see her smile all the same. “And let them have all the fun?”
“There’s the fragger I know.”
Her smile widens and she slides a little closer to me. “We’ve got time before the drop, want to invite me over?”
I do. I really do. We’re flirting, and even after everything we’ve been through it’s light and it’s easy and there’s part of me that wants nothing more than to take her home with me, but I don’t think I’m ready for that yet.
“How about we save that until we get back,” I offer instead. “Besides, you’re not exactly my type right now.”
“Oh come on,” she says with a laugh, then shoves me away. “You never know until you try.”
Well, I’m pretty sure, but … “Something to look forward to then.”
She laughs again. “Don’t think I won’t hold you to that.”
We fall quiet again, and then she slips her hand back into mine and we spend the next half hour together, just sitting, until finally she says, “I suppose we should go. I need to sync before we launch.”
“Yeah,” I lie. “Me too.”
She stands and lets my hand fall from hers. “See you at the drop, Mr. Gage.”
“Can’t wait,” I reply.
GAGE, FINSBURY
14:56:23 UTC+11 // 13-JUL-2059
I come to in midair, wrapped in a tank of a skyn with the wind blasting against my faceplate.
One moment I’m lying in my medpod, loading into the arena skyn, and then I’m twelve klicks above the shimmering ocean, high enough to see the curve of the Earth, with my head pointed straight down and hurtling toward the dot of an island below at nearly two hundred kilometers an hour.
And I thought the artificial vertigo from standing on the edge of the drop tower was bad.
My vision wobbles and I close my eyes and get my breathing under control. Our visors show readouts of the team’s vitals and I don’t want the others to see my heartbeat spiking. I cringe, waiting for the governor in my rithm to slam on and quell my adrenaline-spiked thoughts, but it doesn’t come. I thought this might happen. The Cortexes in these skyns are top of the line and probably have a lot more headroom than mine does. It’ll take a lot to get my neurohertz high enough for Deacon to be a problem.
I’ll be fine. But still it probably wouldn’t hurt to concentrate on something else for a while.
The thin air around us is minus fifty C or so, and the oxygen is negligible, but that’s not a problem. These skyns are built to handle worse than being shot out of a rocket into thin air. I could probably hold my breath underwater for ten minutes if I needed to.
I glance around and see the three other meteors plummeting toward the ground with me, their long bodies silhouetted against the twilight. We’re all wearing military-grade adaptive armor and have assault rifles fastened to our wingpacks. Not that we need them—where we’re going they have guns just lying around for anyone to pick up—but it’ll save us the hassle.
We’re connected through a short-range telepathy built into the skyns. As long as we’re near each other, we should be able to stay in contact.
“Everybody make it off the bus?” I think into the comms channel, trying to get my mind off the ground racing toward us.
“Yippee ki yay,” Anika responds.
“Cut the chatter, you two,” OVRshAdo warns.
“Give it a rest,” I say back. He may be in charge, but I don’t have to answer to him. “We’ve got two and a half minutes before the fun starts.”
I’m hoping for a nice distracting argument but instead he says, “Fair enough. Chatter away, mate.”
I try to think of something else to say, but now that he’s given me permission he’s taken all the fun out of breaking the rules, and instead I keep quiet and take the time to get used to my new loaner body.
My skyn back home isn’t what I’d consider small by any stretch, but this one is on a whole other level. I’ve never experienced anything like it. I feel like one of the power-loaders we used to run back in the Forces, like I could lift a crate of ordnance and run forever, but somehow still nimble, like an acrobat or a dancer. And all I’m doing is hanging upside down in the air. I can’t wait to hit the ground and see what this thing can do.
The island gets larger as I get accustomed to my body, but it still doesn’t feel like we’re moving all that fast. It’s only about three thousand square kilometers, which isn’t much bigger than Toronto and its suburbs, but it’s all by itself in a broad blue expanse and seems huge by comparison. It’s only when we’re close enough to see the drop towers and other structures around the tiny island that I start to get a sense of how quick we’re falling.
“Entering their airspace now,” OVRshAdo warns. “If they’re planning on shooting us down we’ll be dead any second.”
I angle my body so I’m moving a bit more unpredictably than simply falling in a straight line but I’m not sure what good it’ll do. If an AI wants to shoot me out of the sky, I don’t think wiggling around will cause too much added difficulty. We can only hope we’re small enough it doesn’t notice we’re coming until it’s too late.
So far so good though, because nothing happens.
Another few seconds and the island seems to double in size. The towers had all been dark up until now but the one on the southeast side of the island—the one straddling the edge of the lava fields and the jungle—lights up, and a moment later a cloud of black figures erupts from its sides. There’s our targets. Right on time.
Shitty luck though. Just as I’d feared, this game dropped from the tower farthest from our next objective. It’s gonna be a long walk to the comms.
“We’ll find a vehicle,” Anika reassures me, reading my mind. “No worries.”
“Who’s worried?” I say back, but we both know it’s me. The operation just started and already we’re behind.
“Get that code, bitches,” Shad says as he pulls away from us, diving toward the mass of players headed for the mountains in the middle of the island. It’s a good plan, it’ll give us less distance to travel once we hit the ground. The others do the same and I f
ollow, pulling up to ease off on my speed so I can get close to one of the falling skyns.
And that’s when the tower decides it’s time to kill us.
Glowing tracers fill the air, firing from two anti-aircraft weapons that slid out from panels high up on the tower.
“Incoming,” I yell, but they’re already scattering, swinging wildly to avoid the sizzling rounds. My helmet goes red with warnings, but all I can do is ignore them and keep moving, swing my wingpack erratically, and hope I can avoid being blown out of the sky.
I clench my teeth and heave my body from side to side, twisting randomly to confuse the targeting system. High-velocity fireflies split the sky around us but we’re doing okay, no one’s been hit, until Zara cries out in a ragged shriek of pain.
I glance down and see her falling, out of control, with a gaping hole punched through her—a comet of blood and guts blazing toward the ground.
“We have to help her,” Anika says as she angles to follow Zara down.
“Stick to the plan,” OVRshAdo snaps. He’s ahead of us, zeroing in on a cluster of players still gliding in their wingpacks. “We don’t get that code we’ll all be dead.”
“Play for yourselves,” Zara says. “Beat this thing for me.” I can’t believe she’s still conscious, let alone lucid enough to form sentences. Man, these skyns can take a beating.
“We’ll come find you,” Anika replies, and I know she’s concerned, trying to help, but Zara’s carrying the gear to hack the comms, so one way or another we will need to find her. Whether her skyn’s still breathing when we get there is another matter.
The tracers are still sizzling all around us, but we’re nearly below the tower’s effective firing range, only another second or two, and if it keeps shooting it’ll risk hitting one of the game skyns, but just before the guns go silent, just as I figure we’ve escaped, something on my back explodes and I’m thrown into a spin. The ground whirls below me as I brace myself, expecting the pain to hit—but it doesn’t come—and after another moment, when I can still move and my vitals scrolling across my visor still read green, I let out a loud sigh of relief. But I’m not out of it yet.