Tattoo Atlas

by Tim Floreen

  Outside, thick clouds blanketed the sky, with the sun lighting them up from behind.

  “I also like being around the mice,” he said, “especially now that they’re not so afraid of me.” I imagined him pressing his zigzag nose into his mouse’s soft fur. “But not as much as you. I like being around you more. You’re a much better kisser.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to think of something to say, but the tightness in my stomach seemed to have traveled all the way up to my throat.

  “So yeah,” Franklin said. “If I have to feel horrible, I’d rather feel horrible like this.”

  I gripped my cramping belly. My eyes still shut, I said, “Okay. I’m not going to tell.”

  “Thank you. Christ, thank you, Rem. You won’t—”

  “For now,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to tell ever. If you do anything to test my trust in you, I’m saying something. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Franklin.” I opened my eyes and grabbed the metal steering wheel with my free hand. “Just so you know, if you try something really bad, like if you escape from the lab and come to my house again, but this time to do something to me so I won’t talk—”

  “Rem, I’d never—”

  “—I’m leaving a letter in a place my mom will find telling her everything. So don’t—” I squeezed the steering wheel tighter and peered again at the lab, the sky a uniform blinding white behind it. “So don’t kill me, okay?”

  About two seconds after I hung up with Franklin, my phone buzzed with another call from Mom. I almost ignored it again, but then I figured that would only make her worry.

  “Honey.” She didn’t say anything else for a while, probably because she’d had enough experience with death to know whatever she might come out with would only sound inadequate. The two of us, we were death pros now.

  I got through the conversation as fast as I could, mostly just telling her school was canceled and I was heading home. At least if my voice sounded strange, she’d figure it was because of my grief. Casting one more look at the Mother Ship, feeling suddenly paranoid she might glance out a window and spot my Saab, I started up the car and sped back toward the highway.

  I went over and over what I’d just done the whole way home. My hands shook on the wheel. My nausea built and built until I thought I might puke again. I knew very well the longer I went without telling, the harder it would be when the time finally came, but the arguments Franklin had made felt so true. The Franklin I’d talked to last night hadn’t been someone planning to commit murder.

  When I got home, I found Tor and Lydia waiting for me on the front steps. I parked in the driveway and got out of the wagon. “What are you guys doing here?”

  “We wanted to make sure you were okay,” Lydia said. “You weren’t answering my texts.”

  Fresh tear tracks still marked her cheeks. Tor looked shell-shocked, the charming glint that usually inhabited his eyes snuffed out. Lydia peeled herself away from him enough to wrap her arm around me. She pulled me close, and I found myself nose to nose with Tor. We looked away from each other, embarrassed by our closeness even in the middle of our heartbreak.

  A moment later, though, I forgot about the awkwardness with Tor. I forgot about Franklin and whether I should turn him in. I just thought about Callie. I softened into their arms, and together the three of us sobbed. That was another thing the grief counselor had told us: “It’s good to cry. It’s good to let out your grief. But as much as you can, do it with your friends. Help each other through this.”

  She’d been right about that, too.

  “You just took off,” Lydia choked, drawing back so she could look at me. “Where did you go?”

  “I couldn’t believe it was true. I wanted to find out if I could get close enough to see for myself.”

  “And did you?”

  I felt Tor’s eyes on me now. He knew I’d have made for the steam tunnels. “No,” I answered. “I couldn’t find a way in.” Loosening my grip on the two of them, I wiped my cheeks dry and glanced over my shoulder. Across the street, a police car stood in front of Callie’s house. I’d noticed it as I’d driven up. “Did Billy tell you anything else?” I asked Lydia. “Do they know who did it?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I talked to Callie late last night, maybe two a.m. or so. She mentioned hearing a noise in the house while we were on the phone.”

  Lydia put a hand to her mouth. “So you were talking to her while her murderer was right there?” She hesitated over the word “murderer” like it was one of the swearwords she wouldn’t allow herself to say. “All I can think is it must’ve been someone copycatting Franklin, going after his targets.”

  The nape of my neck prickled. “I thought nobody ever found out who Franklin’s other targets were.”

  “I don’t know, maybe nobody did, but it’s not much of a stretch to think Franklin would’ve had his sights on Callie.” She nudged a chunk of snow off the porch step. “Plus, last night I found something on the Internet. I was going to tell you guys about it this morning. A game. Son of War High.”

  Now the cold, prickly feeling washed from my nape all the way down my back. “What is it?”

  “A player-built mod. Not an official Son of War release.”

  Tor squinted at her. “How do you know so much about Son of War all of a sudden, Strawberry?”

  She slid a glance up at him, her cheeks reddening. “Yeah, sorry, your girlfriend’s a closet Son of War freak.”

  He started to say something else, but I cut him off. “So what’s so special about it?”

  “Last night I was reading a Son of War subreddit. I don’t do that a lot, but I figured people would be talking about Franklin—you know, because your mom just did her procedure on him, and everybody knows he’s way into Son of War—and I wondered what they’d be saying. One guy mentioned this obscure low-res mod someone made. Even though the game didn’t use any actual names, a few details made the guy think it was based on the Big Bang. I was curious, so I did some digging and found the game, and he was right: it’s basically the Big Bang, except packaged like Son of War. Same look, same rules. You have a mission.”

  “Which is?”

  She sank onto the front step, her knees knocking together, and reached back to pull her ponytail over her shoulder. She twisted it between her hands while she spoke. “You’re supposed to eliminate five targets in five specific places. Target One you’re supposed to kill in the history classroom. Like I said, the game doesn’t mention any names, but that target has a buzz cut and a letterman’s jacket just like Pete’s. Then Target Two has a bunch of black hair piled on top of her head. You’re supposed to kill her in the cafeteria.”

  “And who are the other three targets?” Tor asked.

  She flicked a gaze up at us, her forehead knitted. “Who do you think? The three of us.”

  Tor and I glanced at each other. Maybe a shiver had passed down his back too, because he shoved his hands into his pockets like for once he felt cold in his thin long-sleeve T-shirt.

  “You don’t know who built the game?” I said.

  “I don’t think anybody does, but it must’ve been someone who knows a lot about Franklin and our school.”

  “What about Franklin himself?” Tor suggested. “Maybe he built the game before the Big Bang. Maybe it was how he prepped.”

  “It couldn’t have been him,” Lydia said. “Some of the details in the game come from the actual day of the shooting. Like, the dress I’m wearing in the game is the exact same color as the one I was wearing that day. The game had to have been created later, and Franklin was in custody by then, so he couldn’t have done it.”

  Unless he could’ve, I thought. What if he’d hacked himself a connection to the Internet at the detention center the same way he had at the lab? But then again, could even Franklin manage to get himself online and design a whole video game from inside prison without anyone discovering?
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br />   “If it wasn’t him,” Tor said, “then it must’ve been someone else who was in the classroom with us that day. Someone who saw what dress you were wearing. Someone we know.”

  “Nil Bergstrom.” The name just dropped out of my mouth.

  “I figured it must be Nell too,” Lydia said. “She loves Son of War just as much as Franklin does.” Lydia refused to call her Nil. She thought the name was cruel, even though, as we’d reminded her many times, Nil used it herself.

  “Do you think she based the game on inside knowledge of Franklin’s plan?” I asked. “She and Franklin were pretty close. Maybe he told her what he was plotting beforehand.” My stomach was a mess of knots. Another wave of queasiness had started to build.

  Lydia shook her head. “The police questioned Nell after the Big Bang, remember? They determined she’d had no prior knowledge of the attack. I mean, I guess they could’ve been wrong about that, but she might’ve just as easily come up with the idea on her own. Like I said, considering Pete was the first target, and the four of us were Pete’s best friends, and Franklin lived on the same street as all of us, it’s not exactly a huge leap to think we were all probably on his list.”

  Then how could Nil have known Franklin had named his mission Son of War High? I wanted to say. Unless he told her, how could she have known that?

  “Admit it,” Lydia said. “We’ve all sort of assumed the same thing, haven’t we? That if it hadn’t been for Ms. Utter, all five of us would’ve died that day?”

  We passed around silent looks for a second, but nobody said anything. It did seem crazy that we’d never spoken about it out loud. Not even Callie, who’d usually said everything that went through her head, with a generous dollop of profanity mixed in.

  “Anyway,” Lydia continued, slinging her ponytail back over her shoulder, “whether we actually were Franklin’s targets or it’s just part of that game, what’s really scary is that someone’s following the game’s playbook in real life. Or at least that’s how it seems.”

  “So you’re saying you think there’ll be more murders?” Tor said.

  Lydia stood and hugged herself. “I wish I knew.” She grabbed Tor’s shirt and twisted it in her fist. “I hope not.”

  I gripped the railing on the side of the front steps. The nausea still hadn’t passed. “If Nil made the game, does that mean she killed Callie too?”

  “Either Nell or someone else who knows both the game and us,” Lydia said. “That’s what it seems like to me.”

  My phone buzzed in my pocket. Mom had sent a text.

  Would you send me a message when you’ve made it home, Rem? And lock the front door behind you? It’s looking like whoever murdered Callie abducted her from her house.

  “It’s my mom. I should get inside and text her back. Lydia, do the cops know about the game? And about Nil?”

  “I’m not sure. The game’s sort of buried on the Internet. I’ll tell Billy, just in case. You should let the police know about your phone call with Callie too.”

  I nodded. “I’ll call them.” The idea of talking to the police freaked the hell out of me, though, since it almost certainly meant I’d have to lie to protect Mom and Franklin. “And can you send me a link to the game?” I asked her.

  Her eyebrows lifted. “Why? It’s horrible. Trust me, Rem.”

  “I just want to see if I can spot any clues.”

  Lydia studied my face. I wondered if she could see I hadn’t told everything I knew. But then she said, “Okay, I’ll send it.” She shook her head and pulled me and Tor close again. “I still can’t believe it. How can this be happening?” Her fingers dug into my back. “Now we’re down to three.”

  I locked the front door behind me and tapped Mom a quick message. I also checked the doors to the garage and backyard to make sure they were locked too. It wasn’t even noon yet, but outside the clouds had turned so dark it looked like twilight.

  I knew I should call the police, but the thought of it still made my stomach roil, so instead I sat down at my desk, tore a blank page from one of my sketchbooks, and wrote out a full confession for Mom, just like I’d told Franklin I would. My hands shook so hard I could barely write.

  What Lydia had said about the Son of War High video game had sent my mind spinning in whole new directions. On the one hand, maybe it backed up Franklin’s story by giving someone else a motive—a totally insane motive, but a motive—for killing Callie in just that way. But now I had a bunch of new questions snaking through my head. Who had built the game? Why? What did it mean? And the question that had been sticking in the back of my brain for almost a year cried out for an answer louder than ever: had I been one of Franklin’s targets?

  I slid the letter under my mattress. I figured if anything happened to me, somebody would find it there eventually. Opening my laptop, I found Lydia had already sent instructions for downloading the game from some obscure site. I settled onto my bed with a mug of Mom’s coffee from that morning, now cold, and went to work.

  When I finally got the game up on my screen, it looked a lot like the regular version, with SON OF WAR splashed across a black background in red letters. Then HIGH appeared below that. From there, instead of segueing into a dramatic, beautifully-rendered, explosion-filled opener explaining the backstory, the game cut straight to a view of Duluth Central High School. The level of detail didn’t come close to that of the original—this looked more like a game from twenty years ago—but I still recognized the school’s red-brick-and-limestone facade, the flagpole out front, even pixelated snowdrifts banked on the lawn on either side of the walkway leading up to the front steps. Digital high school students milled around in front of the building, putting off going inside in spite of the cold weather, the same way we always did in real life.

  At the bottom of the screen, just like in the real game, hovered the score, time, and other game-related data, and next to those, in the right-hand corner, a button labeled MISSION DOSSIER. I clicked it and sucked in a breath. The screen now displayed pictures of the mission’s five targets for elimination. The fourth one down wore a blue scarf around his neck.

  I’d known I’d find something like this, but seeing a face clearly meant to represent mine messed with my head anyway. My guts writhed like I’d swallowed a bunch of snakes. On the right side of the screen, across from the list of targets, the mission brief had appeared.

  YOUR MISSION: KILL THESE ASSHOLES, IN THE ORDER IN WHICH THEY APPEAR ON THE LIST, IN THE LOCATION WHERE EACH ASSHOLE HUMILIATED YOU. THEN KILL YOURSELF.

  I clicked on the first target. The one with the buzz cut. Pete. The mission brief vanished, replaced by a floor plan that resembled Duluth Central’s, with a big red X near the location of Ms. Utter’s former classroom. I moved down to the next target, who had a towering black hairdo and a smirking expression. Callie. The X moved to the cafeteria. The third target had reddish hair and freckles. Lydia. When I clicked on her, the X shifted to the school’s main hall, right next to the cafeteria entrance.

  I paused, my fingers hovering above my laptop’s touchpad, before selecting the next target. The one with the blue scarf.

  The X settled on the boys’ locker room, marking the spot where I’d become, at least for a while, an asshole myself.

  I leaned back against the headboard and tried to breathe deep. My lungs felt too small, though, or too weak. The red X on the map pulsed at me. I shook my head, hunched over my laptop again, and navigated back to the game’s main screen. Under my direction, my avatar—Franklin, obviously—moved up the stairs, into the school, and down the hall. The details, though low-res, rang true. The ugly institutional green of the lockers. The twists and turns of the corridors.

  Without having to think about it, I guided Franklin to Ms. Utter’s classroom. By the time he got there, everybody else seemed to have arrived. I made him pause at the door near the front of the room so I could scan the other students. My cheeks and fingers went cold when I spotted a digital Jeremy Braithwaite seated in the midd
le of the room wearing a digital blue scarf. I imagined if I got close enough I might see digital paint smears on his shirt and hands.

  Callie, Lydia, Tor, and Pete occupied their usual spots too, all of them with telltale details that made their identities unmistakable. Tiny Ms. Utter sat at the front of the room behind her enormous desk.

  I steered Franklin to his regular place in the back. Class started. Ms. Utter began to speak, but in a muffled, indistinct voice, sort of like the grown-ups in old Charlie Brown cartoons. She motioned for Pete to come to the front of the room to make his presentation.

  Pete started his speech, his voice similarly indistinct. I’d gotten so used to watching this scene unfold in my imagination and my nightmares, it felt bizarre to see a computer-generated version play out on my screen. Little by little, as Pete spoke, my muscles coiled tighter and tighter. I could feel the moment approaching, even though I couldn’t understand the words Pete was saying. I selected EQUIPMENT at the bottom of the screen, which brought up the contents of Franklin’s overstuffed backpack: the Beretta, some spare ammunition, a bowie knife, various other pieces of military gear, and the Son of War mask. I selected that. The edges of the screen went dark, just like in the actual Son of War game, to indicate I was now looking through the mask’s goggles.

  Next I made Franklin pull out the Beretta.

  My mouth had gone dry. My heart had started to drum. It felt like someone had taken control of my movements in the same way I controlled Franklin’s. I used the touchpad to make Franklin aim the gun at Pete, who went silent. It reminded me of last night’s nightmare, in which I’d held the Beretta in my own hand for the very first time.