Decimation Island

by Damien Boyes

  It’s only when I try to pull myself out of the spin and my wingpack shears off that I realize I have a bigger problem. I slap the release on my chest and the ruined wings pull away, and when I deploy the reserve chute it billows out with a slight tug but barely slows me at all. I glance behind me and there’s only strips of ruined fabric fluttering in the wind.

  “Uh … I may have an issue,” I say to the team.

  “Deal with it,” OVRshAdo cuts back. He sounds tense. I glance down and it looks like he might have overshot his target. His parachute is open and he’s maneuvering it to get close to one of the players, but they’re trying just as hard to get away from him.

  “What happened?” Anika asks. She’s off to the west, zeroing in on another player, but there’s nothing she could do to help me even if I told her. OVRshAdo’s right. I need to handle it myself.

  “Never mind,” I say. “Tell you later.”

  I’m still probably half a klick above the ground, but at the rate I’m falling I only have a few seconds before that changes with a splat. There are still players below me, not too far away, floating with their chutes open. Maybe I can hitch a ride the rest of the way down.

  I cut the remnants of the reserve chute and then I’m back in free fall, except this time without any way of stopping—other than the ground. I lay my arms flat against my sides and point my toes and arrow toward the closest player, a male skyn from the looks of it, hanging under a drab green parachute.

  “Shit,” Anika suddenly yells. “Missed.”

  “Me too,” Shad says, the frustration clear in his voice. They’re below me, their black rectangular parachutes popped, and about to land.

  “Fin?” Anika says, but I don’t answer. The wind is strong and I’m moving so fast it’s tough to keep a bead on my target, and I need to concentrate, but another second later I’ve caught up and the moment before I impale him I flare, spread my arms and legs and slow myself down just enough to crash into him from behind, catch him around the back and hang on tight.

  That was close. I wonder if he can feel my heart beating through my armor.

  He yells, startled, and tries to shake me off as we rock back and forth under the straining ropes of the parachute, but no way he can out-muscle me. I’m not going anywhere.

  “Howdy,” I say in his ear. My hands are shaking but my voice projecting through the helmet is deep and untroubled. “Mind if I catch a lift?”

  “Da fuq?” he cries, whipping his head around to try to get a look at who’s just smashed into him. “Who you be now?”

  “Lost my chute,” I reply as I reach out and take the handle with my free hand to steer us closer to where Shad and Anika landed. “Mind if I drive?”

  “Get offa me,” he says, trying once again to wriggle his way free, but I’ve got my arm around his neck and my legs around his. He’s not going anywhere.

  What must he be thinking? This guy finally makes it to Decimation Island Live and launches from the tower, keen to murder, and he’s only playing for a few seconds before there’s a beefy stranger in full armor all over him. He hasn’t hit the ground yet and already his game is over. And all this will be going straight out to the feeds too. I bet this game’s gonna attract a huge audience.

  “Fin!” Anika yells over the comms, then she’s shooting. Her vitals have spiked, OVRshAdo’s too. The bots will be all over them. “Where the hell did you go?”

  She won’t see my chute, but since she can tell I’m not dead it must look like I disappeared.

  “Be right with you,” I say, then with my free hand I initiate the skimming sequence from the screen on my arm.

  “Any time, Gage,” Shad says, and he’s projecting enough of an attitude I almost want to keep him waiting, but it won’t help us if he’s dead. A moment later the scan registers success, and once I’ve secured the code I send it out to the team. The shooting stops a second later.

  My co-pilot and I are only a dozen meters above the ground, passing over OVRshAdo and Anika and a bunch of ruined bots, when I tap him on the head in thanks and let go.

  I drop and land in a hard roll, come up facing them, and brush the lava rock off my armor. My visor is down so they can’t see me, but I’ve got a huge smile on my face. I’ve never felt like such a badass.

  “And you wanted to bring the bot,” I say.

  AniK@

  704:32:51 // 96 Players Remain

  The next few games go by in a blur. You and Warrack finish game five and afterwards in Camp Paradiso you team up with a two-game survivor called LarryCheese and a three-gamer called finitoburrito and you dominate the next two hundred hours as a four-man squad. The anguish in your head eased off between games, and it’s mostly gone now, replaced by a swell of attention as you’ve gained momentum toward the endgame. It’s to the point where you can dismiss the surge of sorrow, pretend like it didn’t happen, or that it meant something else, but just under the surface of your game face there’s a terrible well of grief just waiting to erupt—you can feel it, simmering like an emotional abscess.

  Instead you channel your fear, play aggressive, take fights when you need to and back off when you don’t. With OVRshAdo gone you’re now the biggest threat—and the one carrying the highest bounty—so you need to be cautious, but not too cautious. It’s a fine line.

  You’re at the point though where even your teammates could be a danger. You’ve lasted over seven hundred hours, and that puts you in the top ten percent of anyone who’s ever played. Only a game away from OVRshAdo’s record, and any second one of the three players around you could decide now’s the time to collect the bounty on your head and put a sneaky bullet in your back.

  Realistically, this is the last game you can run as a group, might be pushing it as it is, but once you get into eight hundred hours the temptation to turn on you will be too great. Even Warrack can’t be trusted. You’ll have to play the last two games as a lone wolf again, but you’re prepared for that, you’ve got the gear. There’s a chance you could go all the way.

  Seven hundred hours of hyping yourself up to believe you can win has kept you going, but now it’s real. You’re close—too close. Losing now would be devastating, but winning could be even worse.

  At least out here you have fighting for your life to keep your thoughts occupied. What happens when you get back home?

  You’ve got three hundred hours to worry about that. All you can do is focus on what’s directly ahead of you.

  This game launched from the Northwest Tower, and once your team hit the ground you secured vehicles and made straight for the sponsored drop beacon near the cliffs on the northwest of the island. It’s an easy way to loot up, especially with the audience you’re commanding. The sponsors are falling all over themselves to kit you up. You’ve still got the Redeemer and the Stingers and you picked up a recon drone last game, but with this one drop you’ll get the upgrades you need to run the Wreck of the Seastar hotspot off the coast, and once you’ve cleared it you can hang out on the boat for a while. You’ll be safe there, the only threats the ones you brought with you, and as long as you never turn your back on them, you should be fine.

  For now.

  “Target ahead,” Warrack says out loud. He’s driving, following a single lane road toward a soaring concrete pylon, like a massive upside down “Y” sitting near the cliff’s edge. Once you get there and activate the beacon a countdown will start, and thirty minutes later a launch pod filled with weapons and supplies and other goodies will shoot out. You don’t think anyone’s likely to contest the drop, but you never know, and the squad fans out and takes cover around the concrete pylon to wait out the timer.

  The terrain up here is mostly rocks and scrub grass and little purple flowers—like what the English Moors look like in your imagination, not that you’ve ever seen them. You scan the horizon with the Redeemer, and when you don’t see anyone approaching you figure you’re safe. Warrack’s beside you, posted up nearby with his eye pressed to his DMR’s scope, keeping a
watch out for approaching enemies.

  After a few minutes, he looks up from his weapon. “I won’t turn on you,” he says, his voice low. “I don’t know about the others, but I’m with you to the end.”

  You wish you could believe him, but you can’t risk it.

  “Thanks, Warrack,” you say. “But we can worry about that later.”

  He lowers his weapon and his face is drawn. “Permission to speak freely?” he asks.

  “Christ, Warrack,” you say, and can’t help but smile at his earnest expression. “I’m not your commanding officer, you can say anything you want.”

  He nods and clears his throat. “I’ve only made it this far because you carried me here. Without you I’d be dead already—”

  “You don’t know that—” you start, but he just keeps talking.

  “I know it’s supposed to be every man for himself out here, but I want you to win, for your son.”

  Your throat catches. “Warrack, you don’t—”

  “I promise you,” he says, like he’s taking an oath. “I won’t turn on you. Not ever.”

  Your eyes well up and for a goddamned second you think you’re about to cry. You’ve been out here for almost a month now, seven hundred hours of constant stress, with death around every corner and no one to trust but yourself. And the thing is, you believe him. Right now, he’s fully committed to helping you win, but that’s only because he hasn’t had to make any other choice. When he’s trapped in the red with the bots snarling in his face and only one spot in the survivor circle left, who knows how he’ll react.

  ’Cause the thing is, if it came down to it, you know you wouldn’t hesitate to put him down.

  “I appreciate it,” you say. “You’re a hell of a partner. I couldn’t do this without you.”

  He presses his lips together and quickly turns and wipes at his eyes. He’s a good kid, and who knows, maybe he’ll even keep his word, but you wouldn’t bet Rael’s life on it.

  The care package lands a few minutes later and as you and the team are looting up the audience pressure surges through your skull. You whip around, searching for the threat, but once again nothing’s there. Then your kill-feed dings and your stomach drops.

  OVRshAdo downs PenguinNipples. 97 players remain.

  GAGE, FINSBURY

  16:12:53 UTC+11 // 13-JUL-2059

  It takes more than an hour to track down Zara’s corpse, and by the time we find it, crumpled and bloody on the lava rock near the edge of the mountains, another squad has already beaten us to it.

  There are four of them, but the game’s still young and they’re not well geared. One of them has an AR and the other’s claimed Zara’s gun for herself, but the rest only have pistols. They’ve taken Zara’s helmet and the explosives from her pack and searched through her belt pouches, so they must have found the bash badger—if it survived the fall.

  We don’t try to hide as we come across the waves of black rock, and the instant they see us they back off and raise their weapons.

  We don’t exactly look like the other game skyns, and the three hulking figures striding toward them in black armor must throw them off, because they don’t immediately open fire. Not that they could hurt us much if they tried. They probably figure we’re part of some new quest line they’ve stumbled onto.

  “Yo, back off, we found her first,” one of them says. He’s got Zara’s AR and must think he’s the leader of their group.

  “Drop what you took from her and we’ll let you walk,” Shad replies. His usual half-joking tone is gone. He’s frustrated—we’re already behind, our backdoor protection from the bots can’t last much longer, and losing Zara complicated everything. He’s got no patience for this.

  “It’s four against three,” the guy says. “How about we keep everything and take your shit too.”

  I chuckle behind my visor. Wrong choice.

  Shad draws his pistol and puts a bullet between the eyes of each of the other three guys in his squad. Just like that and the fight’s over.

  “Now it’s three against one,” Shad says.

  The guy staggers and his eyes go wide, then he tosses Zara’s weapon like it’s burning him and swings his backpack off. “It’s all in there, man, I swear!”

  “We’ll see,” Shad says as he fires once more and blows the guy’s Cortex out. He takes a breath and exhales deeply. Then he claps me on the shoulder. “Nothing like a little murder to lift your spirits, huh?”

  Anika moves over to claim the guy’s backpack while I check out Zara. Other than the dried blood around her lips and ears—and the massive ragged hole through her chest—she doesn’t look too bad. Though I imagine that’s only because her armor kept her from exploding on impact. As strong as her skyn was, even it couldn’t hold up against hitting the ground at two hundred kph. No doubt her Cortex is shattered, but at least she won’t have lost much time. She’ll wake up from the brain bank and with only a few missing minutes to mourn.

  “Found it!” Anika says, holding up the small slate-grey wafer that’ll let Shad take over the island’s communications. “The rest of it’s here too. Explosives and everything. Looks like we’re back in business.”

  It’s possible we’re too late and Jefferson Wood has already ejected the AI from the island to safety somewhere, but somehow I don’t think so. It has a whole army to defend itself with, what harm could three people do to it?

  “Hopefully the impact didn’t mess it up.” Otherwise we’re trapped here.

  “It’ll be fine,” Shad says. “Those things are designed to take a beating.”

  Anika runs the diagnostic and it flashes a green light. Looks like we’re still in the running.

  “What’s the plan now, boss?” I ask. We were supposed to hit the comms array next but we’ve wasted so much time now there’s no way we make it there before our protection runs out. And then fight across the island to the Control Center.

  Anika pulls up the map of the island on her arm. “We’re about forty kilometers from the comms and roughly the same to the core. I vote we take our chances and head straight for the AI. It’s known about us long enough, if it was gonna bug out it will have by now anyway.”

  “Seconded,” I add. Shad’s a blank slate behind his darkened visor. “Our camo won’t last much longer. Hitting the AI has to be our top priority.”

  Shad turns and gazes off in the direction of the comms, and for a moment it appears he wants to argue, but then he says, “Agreed. We get to the AI and hope it’s still contained.”

  Once Shad’s mind is made up he doesn’t waste any more time. We leave Zara’s corpse behind and take off at a run, and our powerful skyns eat klicks for breakfast as we race toward the mountains.

  Navigating our way through the rocky peaks slows us down some, but the mountain range is relatively narrow and after only an hour we’re on the other side. Instead of trying to leapfrog through the marshes, we cut north and stick to the high ground. It’s a longer route but easier running, and we can open up and run flat out.

  These skyns are incredible. I’m carrying my weapon and a pack with explosives and a bunch of extra ammo and we’ve been moving for hours and I’m not remotely tired. I’m not even breathing hard. No wonder these things are outlawed.

  It only takes us a quarter hour to get to the highlands, and then just before we reach Trinity Landing we turn west and make a straight shot through the light woods toward the coast.

  Ten minutes later we’re on the outskirts of the fields around Aurora City, a hotspot about fifteen klicks from the edge of the island. It’s designed like a space-aged but somehow also medieval town, with concentric rings of garden and game land surrounding the high hexagonal wall protecting the town. The bot activity will be heavy there and we plan on giving it a wide berth, but even with the slight detour around it, at the speed we’re moving we’ll be at the cliffs and ready to make for the Control Center in a little more than twenty minutes.

  “Told you we’d make it,” Shad says a
s he leaps over a downed tree. “And you all doubted me.”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Anika replies, but even she sounds optimistic. “We’re not there yet.”

  We’re all feeling it—our luck is improving. So far the bots have let us be, longer than we thought the protection would hold out, we’re deep inside the current game’s red zone, so we don’t have to worry about meeting any hostile players, and even the weather is cooperating.

  Which is why I’m hardly surprised when everything goes to shit.

  Up until now the bots have completely ignored us. We haven’t seen any of the lethal prowlers since we left the mountains, and the two-legged utilibots we passed were busy restoring damaged buildings and restocking loot for the next game. But like luck always does, it changes instantly, and one minute we’re running through the light bush while the bots reset the island, and the next they’re coming for us.

  The prowlers appear first, from out of nowhere, silently sprinting at us on all fours, and if it weren’t for Anika checking our rear at just the right time they’d have taken her down before we knew what was happening.

  She yells a silent warning just as the three prowlers launch their attack, and while it only takes Shad and me a second to swing our weapons out and blast the two flanking bots, the lead prowler is already airborne, its black fangs and claws aiming to rip Anika’s throat out. She doesn’t bother going for her weapon, just catches the bot around the neck as it hits her, and rolls over backwards, hugging it close to avoid the claws while she wrenches its snapping jaws to the side and rips its head off.