by Damien Boyes
“Then we need to get you out of here.”
Anika shakes her head. “Shit, Gage, let’s both get out of here.”
“Works for me,” I say as I trigger the countdown, step back, and throw the explosive pack as high up the core as I can. This skyn’s got a hell of an arm and the pack gets nearly to the ceiling before it explodes.
The sound is incredible and the blast shudders the room. The pressure wave knocks me to my knees and I cover my head from the heat, but when I look back up the core is still glowing. Some of the spheres nearest the explosion have gone dark, and a latticework of cracks have spread through a bunch more, but one explosive wasn’t enough to take it out.
Good thing I have two more.
“Stop this now,” Wood commands, but I’m done listening to him.
Anika’s picked herself up again and she’s moving toward the door. She grabs one of the remaining two charges and tosses it to me. “Kill that thing, would you?”
“With pleasure,” I answer, but just as I get the timer set Anika yells my name.
I spin and look up and the entire scaffold is swarming with bots, eyes blazing red as they crawl down over the metal railings like angry insects. The bullets start first, and then a moment later the bots begin to drop, kamikazeing to the ground trying to stop me from setting the next charge.
“Get back to the cart,” I shout at Anika. “I’ll be right behind you.”
She turns and shuffles out the door and I back toward the exit too, trying to finish setting the explosive while dodging bullets and the raining bots.
I finally get it set for another five-second charge and cock my arm to throw when a bot lands on me and knocks it from my hand. The explosive skitters away across the floor and in the second it takes to get the bot off me I know I’m already too late.
I scramble to my feet and sprint for the door, only slowing to bend and grab the last charge on the way, and just make it down the short hallway and duck around the bend before it goes off. The ground shakes and the metal hatch to the AI room imbeds itself into the concrete wall across from me and rings like a gong.
A wall of smoke billows out as everything goes quiet, and for second I let myself hope that the second charge was enough to take out the core, but when I peer around the corner and see the dozens of glowing circles moving toward me through the dust, I know we failed.
The AI’s still ticking, and now the whole island will be after us.
I’ve still got one charge left but I can’t do anything with it. I turn and streak down the hall as the bots round the corner behind me and open fire. Bullets thud into my back but I’m almost at the next corner and only one hot slug penetrates my armor before I get back out of their line of sight.
Anika’s already in the cart, has it turned to face back the way we came.
“Doesn’t sound like you killed it,” she says as I jump in the back and land next to the half-empty box of grenades.
“Not quite,” I answer, and she floors the vehicle up the inclined path toward the mouth of the tunnel at the far side of the staging room while I start tossing grenades. I grab one out of the box, pull the pin, and toss it, but it lands on the concrete with a tinkle and just sits there as we pull away. The AI must have deactivated them too.
“Might be neither of us getting out of here.”
I’m not ready to give up yet, but I don’t think she’s wrong. The bots have spilled out and are shooting as they chase us. Bullets whiz around our heads and plunk into the back of the cart, but it looks like we’re pulling away—until I glance to the side and see that the rows of prowlers that had been dormant when we passed on the way in are waking up. They come alive one row after another, eyes warming to glowing cinders, and peel off their charging stands to give chase.
“This thing go any faster?” I yell as the bots nip at our heels.
“If I press any harder I’ll put my foot through the floor.”
We stay ahead of them long enough to get into the tunnel, and when the pathway narrows the bots slow to funnel themselves in. They keep charging, bounding red circles pursuing us in the darkness, and when the inclined ground finally levels out the cart’s able to go just that little bit faster and we start to pull away—but we’re only racing toward a bigger problem. The next hotspot isn’t too far ahead, and no doubt the bots stored there will be awake and waiting. The pressure increases as we sink deeper into the tunnel and presses on my ears.
At least Anika will keep most of who she is when she restores back home. Sure, the island will have us, and likely torture us for the rest of eternity, but a version of her will still exist. Hopefully she knows better than to try something like this again.
“Sorry I got you into this,” Anika says as she tosses me a pained look over her shoulder.
“I’m not,” I answer. “Besides, we’re not done yet.” Though come on, who am I kidding? We’re racing through a concrete tube at the bottom of the ocean with hostile bots on either side of us, and our only weapons are the skyns we’re wearing and a single explosive pack. Not a lot of wiggle room for miracles there.
Maybe I could set the charge and drop it. It wouldn’t help with what we’re racing toward but it would clear some room behind us. For a few seconds at least, make a speed bump for the rest of the bots to climb over.
Though with our luck it’d probably crack the tunnel and drown us…
I take a moment to think it through, but immediately know there’s no other way. It might just be the wiggle room we need. I arm the charger, set the timer to three seconds, and drop the pack into the box of grenades.
“Hold on,” I say. “I’m gonna do a thing.”
Anika turns and sees me holding the primed explosive. Her lips spread in a wide grin. “Send it!” she yells.
I hit the detonator, slam the lid shut, and toss the pack at the charging bots, then turn and press myself flat against the bed of the cart.
The explosion knocks out my hearing and shatters my vision. There’s a flash of light and a shock wave of pressure and then everything goes black as we pick up speed. For a moment the cart rides the rushing column of water like a cork, and I suck in a deep breath just before the wave engulfs us.
There’s no noise, nothing but darkness and pressure and the question of how long this skyn can go without breathing. Nothing changes for what seems like a very long time, but then a faint roar rises and an instant later we’re spit out into the staging chamber under a hotspot. Probably the Sunset Wild.
Emergency lights are on, casting harsh shadows over the bots struggling with the unexpected water. The cart is deadweight now, uncontrollable and starting to spin in the rising flood.
“Jump!” I say through teamspeak, and Anika and I abandon the vehicle just as it slams into a line of bots and the water carries them away toward the other side of the tunnel.
The water’s already to our mid-thighs and rising fast. The prowlers are having a hard time dealing with it, but a few have managed to climb atop crates and are yipping at us. That trick with the explosives might have bought us a few more seconds, but now we’re about to drown, which isn’t much better. We need to find a way out.
There’s an elevator on one side of the room, but the water is already over the control panel and it’s gone dark. Apart from that, I don’t see any other way out.
“Up there,” Anika says, pointing to one corner of the ceiling. There’s a hatch, like in the core room, one of the manual kind with the wheel to spin the lock open, but it’s way out of reach.
“We need a ladder or something—” I say, but Anika doesn’t let me finish.
“Toss me,” she says.
“Seriously?” I say out loud.
She just turns around and looks up and waits and I figure, what the hell? I grab her under the ass and by the neck of her armor and heave her up. She catches the wheel on the hatch with one hand, but now what’s she gonna do?
I climb up onto a stack of crates and watch as Anika grabs hold of the whee
l with one powerful hand and swings herself up so her feet are braced against the wall, with her body parallel to the ceiling. She takes two steps on the wall and spins on the wheel, loosening the seal. Two more revolutions and it catches, unlocked, and swings down open, letting the daylight in.
“Once the water gets high enough we can climb out,” she yells down.
“Can’t wait!” I yell back.
The room is filling quicker now but there are four prowlers left, and they’re getting desperate. They’re pacing back and forth on what little high ground remains, stacks of crates and the tops of shelves, but before the water rises to sweep them away they rear back on their powerful haunches and fire themselves at me.
I kick the first two away but can’t get around to the third in time, and it knocks me off the crate and down into the black water. The current is strong, sucking me toward the tunnel, and I fight the bot one-handed while I swim against it. The prowler’s claws scrabble for purchase along my armor and it bites down on my free arm and doesn’t let go. Pain shoots up my arm and through my side and I stop fighting the pull of the water and deal with the bot trying to chew me to death.
I surrender to the current and get my free hand around the bot’s head and squeeze. The robot’s curved skull puts up a moment’s resistance but I give it everything I have and my fingers collapse through the plastic. Blue sparks fizzle in the water as it dies.
By now I’m lost, tumbling in the darkness, and I slam against a concrete wall and something tugs at my feet, another bot, clinging to me as it tries to drag me down the sucking drain of the tunnel.
My fingers scrape against the smooth concrete as I search for something to stop myself, unable to do anything about the bot clawing at my legs, and then the weight increases as the bot swings around the edge and into the tunnel mouth, pulling me right along with it.
I just manage to catch myself on the lip of the tunnel and dig my fingers into the concrete before it can pull me in. Water is rushing around me, pulled through the tunnel like a straw, and it’s all I can do to hold on. The bot still hasn’t let go and I swing my legs up and crush it against the tunnel wall, then again, and it finally loses its grip and is swept away.
I heave and try to pull myself out of the tunnel but the force sucking me the other way is too strong, strong enough the weakened concrete cracks and falls away and leaves me dangling by one slipping hand—and that’s when Anika catches me, her fingers wrapped around my arm like a vise.
“Got you, soldier,” she says, and her voice is music in my head.
“What took you so long?”
I reach up and grab her arm and I hear her bubbling scream as she pulls me out of the tunnel far enough so I can climb the rest of the way myself. Away from the mouth of the tunnel the current is far weaker, and we’re able to swim to the surface. There’s only a few centimeters of air at the ceiling but it’s all we need. A few strokes later and we’re at the mouth of the hatch and able to pull ourselves up and out.
The hatch is up on a concrete riser just outside the tree line next to the beach, and I close it behind us, then seal it with a spin of the wheel. The Control Center compound is high on the island off the coast, and the AI is still locked safe inside. It nearly killed us but we made it this far, and now all we have to do is make it across an island of hostile bots, hack the comms, and cast our way out.
No problem. Except I don’t think we’ll make it off the beach.
Dozens of bots are emerging from the trees. Prowlers. Combots. Floaters. Even a couple warbots. The island’s not playing around anymore.
I get up and raise my hands and even though I still feel strong, I’m finally tired. I’ve been beaten, shot, and nearly drowned. I could use a break before I take on a bot army.
Anika gets up to stand beside me, and she’s even worse off than I am. With all the damage her skyn’s taken I’m surprised she’s still moving.
“Still interested in taking me out for a meal?” Anika asks, casually, like all this isn’t about to end, and I can’t help but laugh.
“More than ever,” I reply, and she knocks her shoulder into me.
“Kill all these bots and I’ll consider it.”
I’d do it, gladly, but I don’t know if I have it in me.
Luckily, I don’t have to find out.
There’s a pop from behind us and I whirl around and notice black smoke rising from somewhere on the island. Then there’s another pop, louder this time, followed by three more in quick succession. More lines of smoke billow up.
The water. It must be flooding all through the complex, tearing shit apart.
“Holy shit,” Anika says, then whoops in joy, and I spin around. The bots have stopped advancing and their eyes have returned to neutral green.
We did it. We killed the island. “The salt water must have reached the AI core and knocked it out,” I say.
My knees go weak and I drop to the sand and whatever it is my face is doing makes Anika chuckle, then she collapses next to me and winces.
“Oww,” she says with a pained laugh as she examines her skyn. “I’m wrecked. Good thing it’s a rental.”
“I bet the deductible’s a bitch.”
She snickers and lays her head on my shoulder. The sun is just setting, an orange ball of fire sinking into the water, and we watch it sink while the Control Complex burns.
“Care for a stroll?” I ask, after a few minutes, once the sky has turned to shades of pink and purple. “We have a long walk ahead of us.”
“Yeah,” Anika responds. “I’m ready to get off this damn island.”
GAGE, FINSBURY
08:01:21 // 13-JUL-2059
True to her word, once we get back and resettled, Anika turns herself in. But I don’t let her go alone.
It took us a few hours to cross the island and hack into the comms to cast out, but nothing tried to stop us, and by the time we got back the link was already buzzing about how the stolen Humanitech skyns invaded Decimation Island and knocked it offline. So far no one seems to know why, only that the game servers are down and the feed gone dark. There’s plenty of speculation—everything from a rival game company to thrill-seekers on the spree of their lives—but details are scarce. Our drop was seen by millions in real time, and the replays by millions more, but nothing that happened after we found Zara’s corpse made it off the island.
Everything else is a mystery.
Anika and I are the only ones who know what happened. We could keep it to ourselves easily enough, no one would ever know, but Anika says she needs to do the right thing and confess, so I have her meet me at 57 Division so we can talk to Inspector Chaddah.
It’s still early on a Sunday and Chaddah is off duty, so we wait in the conference room and twenty minutes later Yellowbird comes to get us. She’s wearing a Service tee and jeans and looks like she’s been up for a while but only rolls her eyes when I give her a questioning look. She takes us through the station to an interview room near the rear of the building where Chaddah’s already waiting, dressed as casually as I’ve ever seen her. Her suit jacket is a reddish brown with a neat matching yellow shirt and headscarf combo—but she’s wearing flats instead of her usual heels.
She stands as we enter and waves to the two chairs set up by themselves against the wall. “Please come in, Ms. Reyes. Finsbury.”
We sit and Chaddah and Yellowbird take their seats behind a table across from us, then Chaddah folds her hands in front of her and locks eyes with Anika.
“Ms. Reyes, thank you for coming,” Chaddah starts. “I understand you have information about the Humanitech robbery.”
“I do,” Anika answers.
“Before you continue, have you been informed of your rights to counsel?”
“Yeah, and I don’t want a lawyer.” I tried to talk her out of that part, but she’s made up her mind to face the consequences, whatever they may be.
Chaddah doesn’t look at me. “Let the record show Anika Reyes has waived her right to coun
sel.”
“Noted,” the AMP replies. It’ll be listening in too, putting the pieces of her story together as she tells it.
Chaddah raises her hands in invitation, and Anika lays everything out. She starts at the beginning, with Rael’s sickness, then her aborted run through Decimation Island and her nagging insistence that the game cheated her, her invitation to join the Gladiators and how she used her position inside the ludus to help steal the Humanitech skyns.
“And the other two?” Chaddah asks.
“I’ll tell you everything else,” Anika says, “But I won’t give you names. This is about what I did.”
“I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way,” Chaddah says, but by the time she’s done talking the AMP pipes up, letting everyone know he’s already concluded who her accomplices were: OVRshAdo, HuggyJackson, and Zara-Zee. Yellowbird smirks at me and shakes her head. I knew this days ago and she wouldn’t listen. She’s never gonna hear the end of it.
“And it would seem you stole these skyns to infiltrate Decimation Island. Why would you do that?”
The Inspector’s expression has remained stoic so far, but when Anika explains to her how the AI behind the game was also releasing the Killer App shyfts and planning for a whole lot more, her thick eyebrows rise, and she and Yellowbird share a look.
“How did you come to know this?” Chaddah asks.
Anika shrugs. “I don’t know exactly, but Jefferson Wood as much as admitted it. The app was just the beginning. He wasn’t specific, but they were set to turn the whole world into an extension of their game.”
“You talked to Jefferson Wood?” Yellowbird asks. I don’t think she believes her.
“A bunch of them,” Anika says, but continues before anyone can ask what she means. “Jefferson Wood doesn’t exist, never existed. He was a facet of the AI. A human face to hide behind.”
“And you can verify this?” Chaddah asks.
“Nope,” Anika says. “Not unless you want to take a trip back there.”
“Very well,” Chaddah says. “Continue.”