by Vic Connor
Niko spared a look back at the Black Fire. Alonso was staring daggers at him.
17
Z Minus
When Niko looked up from a scribbled, notebook-paper map in his hand, he froze.
He sat in a dark, cobblestone hallway in what Hunk called the “administration building.” Sconces with electric-blue orbs flickered nearby like candles. The open door up ahead was plastered with the RCTV logo, signaling it as the room he’d been wandering around looking for. He stayed in the hallway, eyes fixed on the grey, speckled back of a familiar leather jacket inside the room.
“The audio from yer commentary is on here, too?” Jeny asked, waggling a thin, flat diskette.
“As usual,” came Kiele’s scratchy voice in response. “I’ve started preloading it in with your team’s footage.”
“Aye. Cal puts a lot o’ stock in yer analysis. She talk to ya about next year?” Jeny shifted and her thighs brushed together. Niko made himself look at his feet.
“The coaching thing? She’s asked me, yeah. I’m thinking about it…”
A chair squeaked, and then Kiele’s green-haired head peeked around Jeny and looked over at Niko in the hall. “You comin’ in, Somov, or are you just gonna skulk in the hallway?”
Jeny spun around, eyes big, until she saw who it was. Her face contorted into a snarl. She stuffed the diskette in a pocket then passed him, slamming into his shoulder as she did, and sweeping out of the room. Niko watched her go. She hunched forward, which made her jacket pull up to her hips. The suit she had on underneath it was…tight. Niko looked at his feet again.
“Oh-ho-ho.” Kiele laughed and leaned back in her creaking office chair. “That’s hilarious.”
Niko spun, swallowing the dry lump in his throat. “W-what?”
Kiele nodded at Jeny receding down the hallway. “If you’d stared any harder, her butt would have turned to stone.”
Niko flushed from the crown of his head all the way down to his stomach, and closed the door. “Shut up, she’ll hear you, and then she’ll come back here and kill me.”
“I dunno, Somov, if you like Jeny, maybe you’re into that kind of thing.” Her tall lips peeled back from her crocodile teeth as she grinned at him. “So, what brings you to my little slice of media influence? Or are you just here to ogle girls?”
Niko frowned at her. “I was wondering if you had footage from that night of the Hunt.”
Kiele stretched in her chair, making the gears squeal. “Just gave it to Jeny, my guy.”
“Not during a fight. It was when I was upgrading my gear.”
“Gear upgrade? Why would you want to watch the tape of that?”
“Do you not record it?”
“We record everything,” Kiele said with a haughty laugh. “I just don’t know why it’s something you’d bother to rewatch.”
Kiele tapped clawed fingers on a typewriter keyboard and a number of thumbnails came up, spread across a holographic display. “Let’s see… I-I-R-C, you and Cal dropped by the Gear Depot at around minute 15…here.” Kiele ran her finger across the display to select a frame. The screen enhanced and showed frames from that specific stretch of time.
“You know it’s an uphill battle, right?” Kiele said, still tapping through the screen.
“What?”
“Jeny.”
Niko flushed again. “Guess you saw how pissed she was at me after the Hunt.”
“I did, funny stuff, but that’s not what I mean. Jeny’s got a crush of her own you’ve got to contend with.”
He furrowed his brow. “Who?”
“Who do you think?”
Niko shrugged, bewildered. He tried to imagine Jeny with a crush, blushing and shy. No, that wouldn’t be her at all. She’d punch him in the arm and demand to be taken on a date. She’d kick around anyone who so much as looked at the guy wrong. That’s when it hit him, like a train.
“Wait. Hunk?”
Kiele smirked over her shoulder and nodded.
“Hunk?” Niko repeated in disbelief.
“What, you think he’s a bad kid?”
“Well, no—”
“Think he’d treat her bad?”
“No, I’m sure he’d be great to her, it’s just—”
“Just what?”
“He’s…Hunk. Wouldn’t she want a guy who’s, y’know…tougher?”
“I think Jeny’s tough enough for the both of them.” Kiele laughed. “Not all nice guys finish last, kid.”
“So they’re…together?”
“No. She’s clutching that torch pretty hard, is all I’m saying.” Kiele turned her screen for Niko to see. “About here?”
“There,” Niko said, pointing at one of the preview frames. “When Cal leaves to check outside for an ambush.”
Kiele tapped the box and the video started playing. Niko saw himself beside the gear-goblin’s hut, and Cal disappearing offscreen.
Then, the screen started to fill with static, creating stripes of distortion over the video and garbling the sound.
“Ahhh, not again.” Kiele smacked the side of the box. “It’s been doing this a ton lately, drives me up a wall.”
Niko saw brief glimpses of the gear-goblin’s erratic movements, and hiccups of its computer-generated speech. Then, for a moment, the sound cleared. “Recover the… Library basement… X985Y789Z-018.”
“Do you have something to write on?” Niko asked frantically.
Kiele pawed around her desk for a moment, then handed him a flower pen and a moist pad of sticky notes.
“Could you rewind that?”
Kiele nodded, sliding the timer back almost exactly to the point Niko needed. He took down the number and time from the computer-generated voice.
“What do all those numbers mean?”
“I’ve got a guess.” Niko pulled the note from the pad and stuffed it in his pocket. “Thanks, Kiele.”
“Hey, Niko? What happened there? That voice didn’t sound like any gear-goblin I’ve ever heard.”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.” Niko started to leave, then stopped. “Kiele... You’re the announcer for the games here. So…you’ve seen a lot of Hunts, right? Have you ever noticed anything…weird, y’know, like broken, almost?”
Kiele frowned. “At Ravenscroft? Aside from the camera problems we’ve been having lately, no. But there’s been reports of some weird cheating issues like that in the Phaeton League.”
“Someone’s cheating in the professional games?”
“One team keeps getting, er, weirdness happening during matches. Entire mountains crumbling, monsters running across air, one time a hot spring went all…spiky.”
This got Niko’s attention. “Spiky?”
“Yeah, like the surface of the water became this mass of pointies. They wobbled or snapped around. I don’t know how to describe it.”
“But they were, y’know, like, dimensional? Pyramids, not triangles?”
Kiele looked at Niko like he had suddenly become a puzzle. “Yeah.”
Just like the branch I ran into. “But nothing like that has ever happened at Ravenscroft?”
“Not that I’ve seen, kid.”
Niko frowned, nodded, then left.
The Ravenscroft library was big. It had the campus’ usual tall, thin windows and vast shelves with books you needed ladders to get to; an ornate rug, overstuffed chairs, and a fireplace. Everyone had mugs of a steaming something you could buy from a cafe near the entrance. Niko kept to the privacy of the shelves, serpentining through them as he searched for a door, any door, that might lead to its basement.
After testing a few locks and barging in on a few club meetings, at last Niko spotted a door near the checkout with a holographic pictogram showing a character descending a stairwell. He headed for it.
“Niko?”
He was the last person Niko wanted to talk to right now. He groaned, looking at the distance to the door and wondering if he could play it off like he hadn’t heard, but then Hunk was right there, smi
ling, a massive stack of books in his arms. Niko gritted his teeth, hoping the guy wouldn’t try to follow him around when he had something important to do and a time constraint on doing it. What had he ever seen in this kid to begin with? He was an obnoxious goody-goody, one of those annoying A-students with no life. What’s to like about that?
“Hey!” Hunk’s grin clearly showed he didn’t notice Niko’s annoyance. “I’m glad you’re here, I checked out this really great book for you.” Hunk peeled a thin paperback from his stack then handed it over. It was blue, with gold lettering that read “Player Statistics.” Hunk beamed. “It’s a list and brief overview of every stat in the game; I thought it would be perfect for your first ability, right?”
Niko took the book and frowned. “Cal already drills me on this stuff,” he said, trying to stay annoyed in the face of Hunk’s earnest enthusiasm.
“Well, sure, but see, this one breaks down different Mythic abilities and how they use each stat, see?” Hunk opened the book in Niko’s arms and flipped through a few pages. “So you can understand how other Mythics use them and learn cooler ways to use yours. Man, that ability is so cool, it opens so many doors, it can be used creatively. It’s really amazing!”
“I didn’t, I mean, it’s not like I, y’know, picked it out or anything.” Niko made a show of glaring at the clock on his UI. 9:40PM, still plenty of time, but that wasn’t the point.
“Ahaha, right…of course.” Hunk shrank a little into his pile of books. “Uhm, Niko… I was thinking… Well, aha, they’re showing the big Phaeton game in the amphitheater in a couple weeks. Jeny gets so into it, she does the facepaint thing and wears her team’s colors and yells at people rooting for other teams, it’s really fun! I know you two are… I mean, I know she’s still mad about what happened in the Hunt, but I think you should come! She’d be so into it, I don’t think she’d even notice you, heh.”
Niko frowned at Hunk. He was a big kid, yeah, and not very manly, but he was still good-looking in a Hallmark Channel sort of way, with his coiffed hair and suit jackets. “Yeah,” Niko said. “She probably wouldn’t.”
“Maybe even Tim or Jacob or…E-Erica could come,” Hunk ventured. “You know, patch things up with them.”
“Why should I patch that up? They’re the ones who screwed me over.”
“Well…yeah, that’s true, but you were friends once, right?”
“Apparently not.” Niko scoffed. “Look, you and Jeny go ahead, I’m just fine on my own. Always have been.”
Hunk frowned, adjusting the books in his arms. “Uhm, heh, Niko, I wanted to say… Cal is analytical. She picked you, and after seeing what Alonso is really like, whether we win or lose, I’m glad. But…”
Niko puffed his chest out, rolled his shoulders, and waited for Hunk’s inevitable criticism. Was that it? Was this book some subtle hint that he needed to work harder, use his abilities better? That he wasn’t good enough for them, or their team, or for—
“…she doesn’t always consider people’s, aheh, feelings.”
Niko’s train of thought screeched to a halt. “W-who? Cal?”
“She cares, she does,” Hunk said quickly, “but…she picked you strategically. She didn’t consider, I think, that letting Tim choose first would test the only friendships you had early in the year. Or that, being on our team, you would be thrown in with people, maybe…you’re not so close with.”
“I don’t need your pity.”
“I’m not—!” Hunk frowned, shifting his books again. “I only mean to say that, being on a team is more than just scrimming and drills and listening to your captain. I know you and Jeny have a hard time getting along. She’s a good person, and so are you, but neither of you can tell.” Hunk laughed again, shy and cautious. “You both try so hard to hide it.”
Hunk adjusted the books in his arms again, his arms looking stiff. They must have been heavy to carry for that long, just to stand here and worry about Niko’s feelings, as if they mattered. Niko’s twisted face smoothed into a hint of a grin. Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t be mad at Hunk, but without his anger all it left him was sadness, and he didn’t like it. Anger was something you did. Sadness was something that did you. “I’ll think about it,” Niko said. “I’m… Well, I have to go, I’ve got a…thing.”
“O-oh. Y-yeah, haha, me too. Have to be back by ten for lights out, after all, haha.” Hunk nodded, and his small smile somehow shrank. He carried his books away down the hall toward the exit.
Niko breathed the words a few times in his head before stuttering them out. “H-hey, Hunk?”
Hunk paused, turning to blink at him, expectant.
“They weren’t…” Niko shoved his hands in his pockets, licked his teeth inside his mouth, and stared at the floor. “What I mean is… Erica and Tim and Jacob… they weren’t…the only friends I had then.”
Hunk didn’t seem to catch it at first because he was a self-deprecating sort of humble, but when Niko refused to look at him, he appeared to get it. A smile as big as the sun split across his face, showing the gaps between his teeth. He held his books awkwardly between one hand and his chin and waved at Niko frantically, then left, still grinning. Niko had to stifle a laugh, waiting for him to get outside. Then, he turned and walked for the stairwell door. Thankfully, no one stopped him.
The stairwell was dark and full of cobwebs, which hung from metal-plated walls. The stairs were worn, uneven, made of stone that winded nonsensically downward until at last Niko found a rickety wooden door at the bottom. A single blue globe lit it on one side, like an afterthought. He pushed the door open. It creaked like a horror movie sound effect.
For as long as he had to walk to get here, the library’s basement was dark and barren, almost unfinished. There were bare laminate tiles in the floor, concrete walls, bare support beams. It looked more like Earth than Territoria. Was he in the right place? How could he even tell? Niko fumbled around in his UI menu for a time, checked the time (9:52PM), then swapped back to his HUD. His position, in X, Y, and Z, wasn’t listed anywhere. How was he supposed to use the coordinates if he didn’t know where he was? The only time he saw them was when he used his first ability.
Niko wasn’t sure if it would work, but he activated ABIL_EditValue and concentrated on moving, but not on a location; on movement in general. The white text printed in the upper-left corner of his vision.
X = 980
Y = 791
Z = 002
Niko pulled the crumpled sticky note out of his pocket and checked the numbers. X985Y789Z-018. Doing his best to remember the numbers, Niko snapped across the room and checked them again. His X and Y had changed, but his Z stayed the same. He waited out the cooldown and tried it again, and again his Z refused to budge. The third time, he activated it, brought up the coordinates, then walked around the room, watching them as they changed. X and Y scrolled up or down depending on his direction, but Z remained at 002. Looking in his UI, the time was 9:56PM. He growled aloud, sitting down in frustration.
His Z changed to 001.
“What the…” Niko stood. It shot back to 002. Scowling, Niko jumped in place. It went to 003, then back. He checked the sticky note again. Z-018. What did the dash mean? Should he go up? He thought back to the tape, to that night on the Hunt. He didn’t pay attention at the time, preoccupied with writing down the numbers correctly, but now he thought the gear-goblin hadn’t said “dash”—it had said “minus.”
“I have to go down,” Niko whispered aloud. But he was already in the basement. If he snapped down, he might end up in the foundation, and he didn’t know if he could hold his breath for the duration of his cooldown. What would happen then—would he wake up in his Vat, or get teleported to Dr. Goseyun’s revival table? He knew one thing, though: He didn’t want to get himself buried alive.
He looked at his watch. 9:57PM. “I came this far… If I’m the second roommate to disappear, Hunk, then…sorry.” He took a deep breath and snapped to the coordinates.
; The new place didn’t feel like dirt, or being surrounded by concrete. The air was stagnant, yes, but it was air. Niko tentatively opened his eyes, then let out his breath when he saw he was in a room. The floor tiles from the room above him were on the ceiling, but inverted, showing their hollows. The walls were a flat grey, the color too smooth and even to seem natural. Some walls had sections cut out, which opened into absolute nothingness, just a flat color too solid to be real. The sound of his feet didn’t match the feel of the surface. Sharp, flat edges stuck out from certain corners like a spiky, gyrating explosion. Otherwise, the room was empty—save for a golden, glowing orb in the center of the room.
So he was in the right place after all. Niko took a deep breath, then closed his hands over the orb.
Niko was strapped in. Hands, arms, belts, buckles, pressing him into the car seat like tentacles. His mother’s dark hair was a wave in front of his eyes, rolling as she fumbled with the seatbelt. On the radio, a man with a nasal voice talked about the water shortage—specifically, the strict sanctions put on everyday citizens, compared with the lack of government regulation on corporations. His father, Yuri, changed it to a top 40 station, then drummed the steering wheel, humming along.
“How’s the engine coming?” his father asked, and it made Niko wonder if his mom were working on some car or something. He was speaking Russian again, and Niko understood him without a problem.
“Oh, you know.” Anna sighed, finally clicking Niko’s belt into place. “We’re stuck on the memory mapping.” She shut Niko’s door, circled the car, and slid into the passenger seat.
Yuri pulled out of the parking spot and turned onto a split-lane road. Niko watched his day-care center disappear behind fall foliage. “Yes, it’s hard to imprint a brain like this,” Yuri said. “Simulating the time passage is difficult. Erasing or downloading? Easy. Creating? Very difficult. We’re going to have to build entirely different equipment for this.”
“I just don’t understand why he needs to do it in the first place.” Anna huffed. “Isn’t it enough for players to just make up their own backstory and recite it?”