by Vic Connor
Niko paused, toes peeking over the edge. He watched chunks of dirt crumble, falling down and down. It’s just a game, NOT a suicide. The sudden sound hit him like a wave, the low whistle of the elk bugling. It startled him, his feet slipped, and with a sickening lurch, Niko realized he was falling. He had time to look up at the elk’s black hooves before he heard—felt—the crunch of his own spine.
There was a thunk as Niko thrashed around in the cold liquid, extending his limbs as if just to be sure he still could. He didn’t realize he’d pulled the feeding tube out until the Vat’s liquid was in his mouth. It tasted acidic and foul. The water drained snail-slow, and Niko crushed his nose pressing up to suck in the first inch of air. At last, the Vat’s lid unlocked and he shoved it open, gasping, sputtering, spitting the horrible, medicinal taste of the Vat’s liquid goop from his mouth.
“Good morning, my boy.”
Niko looked up at the tall figure of Clark, standing with hands clasped behind him at the foot of his Vat. He was flanked by guards on either side.
“What an absolutely fascinating development. I had…ah, suspected, of course, that you could wake yourself up, but…this confirms it.”
Putting his hands on each side of the Vat, Niko pushed himself to a sitting position, glaring. “What, you don’t monitor all these vats centrally, so you have to place these guards next to me? I’d have, y’know, thought…”
Clark shifted on his feet but said nothing.
Anger flared up in Niko’s heart. Do they not even care about what happens to the people they keep in these vats? What if someone has a heart attack? What if a vat, y’know, malfunctions? Clenching his teeth in a futile attempt to control his temper, he asked, “You knew my parents, didn’t you?”
Clark’s expression twitched for a moment, lip curling to show a rotten, yellow tooth. “What an interesting accusation, my boy. What…led you to this conclusion, might I ask?”
Niko realized his error then. If what Niko overheard the first time he woke up was true—that the glitches blocked all surveillance—then Clark didn’t know about the memories. Niko smacked his mouth shut, and Clark laughed.
“You’re not entirely without wits, I see. But that’s quite all right, my boy, quite all right! I don’t need you to talk. You see, we have access to your biology.”
Niko clutched the Vat harder. “M-my…biology? Why does that matter?” He shot an entreating look at the guards as well, but they remained facing stoically forward.
“We’ve learned…so much studying you, my boy,” Clark said. “Your data was so tempting, I just had to…move you up in the queue.”
Niko’s whole body shook. He wanted to jump out of the Vat and knock Clark’s frail body to the ground. “Are you sure it’s not because the government is threatening to reset the game?” he snarled.
The two guards finally moved, sharing a brief look.
Clark jerked a hand up to scratch his nose. “I don’t know where you…well. There’s no fear of that, now that you’re here. You see, despite your unique…indiscretions, Niko—for which I now must employ these two fine fellows to watch your…Vat at all times—I’m quite pleased you decided to participate in our…user testing.”
“You didn’t give me a choice.”
“You could have just died,” Clark said with a shrug. “But that wouldn’t have been very conducive to our research. I wish we could push the testing harder, but you’re so unique we have to be…careful. You see, people subjected to too much of the experimentation eventually can’t…sustain themselves. Take your friend Mr. Sohbi—Hunk—for instance.”
“What are you doing to him?”
Clark chuckled. “I must say, it’s odd,” he said. “You have a…very specific history. Antisocial, a loner, someone who could rely only on himself. And yet, against all that, you entered Territoria and made…friends. You seem to care a great deal about these…stains on society. Or did you forget that everyone you meet in the game is a…criminal worthy of the queue?”
No, Niko hadn’t forgotten that. He thought about it all the time. What could they have done? Sure, Alonso wasn’t a stretch. He had a mean streak a mile wide. But Jeny, Cal, Hunk? They couldn’t have been bad kids, or at the very least, not as bad as he was. “I was in the queue too, y’know. I’m as bad as any of them. A convicted murderer.”
Clark smiled his half-smile. “Is that so?” There was something underneath his tone, a sad suggestion of many things unsaid. I know so much more than you do, my boy.
“What does it mean?” Niko demanded. “Clark, what does it mean?!” As he tried to push himself out of the Vat, the two guards rushed to his side and held Niko still. With a nod from Clark, they forced him to lay back in the shallow slosh of the blue liquid.
“You should thank me, my boy,” Clark said. “As you were, your potential was absolutely squandered. Now, you and your…aha, friends have gone from being drains on society to…helping advance a vastly important technology. I’m sure this thought will be a comfort to Mr. Sohbi in his…final hours.” Clark turned, leaving for the door.
“Leave him alone, Clark.” Niko wanted to sound commanding, but even he felt his words came out in a powerless howl as he struggled against the guards’ iron grip. “Leave him—” Niko’s voice cut off when a guard shoved the feeding tube down his throat, then cracked his skull against the bottom of the Vat. While stars danced in Niko’s vision, they slammed the Vat shut.
21
The Scrim
“Niko…come on. We have a scrim today.” Hunk gently shook Niko, who was curled up in his dorm room bed.
Niko grunted, then rolled over. “All right,” he grumbled.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Hunk asked for the ten-thousandth time over the past few weeks, despite the fact that he had been doing much worse than Niko. Hunk’s hot headaches were getting really bad, and with guards posted at his Vat, there was nothing Niko could do about it.
Almost worse was knowing there wasn’t a single person in Territoria he could talk to about it. If he did, he’d sound nuts; his friends would abandon him. For the first time in a long while, the idea of being alone wasn’t comforting but frightening. It had sent him into a kind of hopeless lethargy. He kept up practice as something to do, to not disappoint his team, to…well, he didn’t like to admit it, but spending time with Cal, Hunk, and Jeny was the silver lining to it all.
So he got out of bed. “What’s a scrim?” he asked, rubbing his eyes and stumbling to his digital closet.
“It’s a practice match! Cal got permission to use the Support classroom. It’s best to fight on the Hunting Ground itself, haha, obviously, but only seniors are allowed to scrim there.”
Niko selected his usual outfit, went down the hall to piss, brush his teeth, and do all the other hygienic things that didn’t make a lot of sense in a game, but were kind of comforting regardless. He and Hunk met downstairs and left the dorm.
Hunk led the way, since Niko had never been to the Quartz Lake before. They passed the stone spires and the clocktower, finally coming up to Ravenscroft’s great library. Hunk circled around it, and Niko followed him to a lightly wooded path that sloped down a few yards to the lake’s small beach of pink sand and tattered, white ghost pine roots.
Quartz Lake was a massive geode filled with water. The lake itself was huge and clear, with the mountain range behind it reflected on its surface. Down beneath the water, jagged, cloudy-pink crystals reached up from the bottom.
“Dr. Goseyun!” Hunk left Niko’s side, jogging up the beach to the short, craggy cowboy who had healed Niko during the Hunt. Niko caught his eye and nodded. Goseyun pursed his weathered, wrinkled lips, then tipped his Stetson.
Goseyun wasn’t the only one here. Further down the beach, Kiele chatted animatedly with Cal and another boy Niko didn’t recognize. He was tall and handsome, with silvery hair that went down to his waist. He spun a circle of white energy, like a chakram, around his index finger. When he caught Niko staring, he tilted hi
s head toward him, and Niko saw he had a third eye on his forehead.
Jeny was sitting by herself on the shore, reading through a book and drinking from a steaming mug. She saw him and smiled; a clever, secret smile that he coveted. He smiled back, and started to approach, readying a jab about her weak tea. Instead, Jeny looked away from him, scanning the lake until she spied Hunk talking to Goseyun. She got up and walked over to join them, leaving Niko standing alone on the lake’s shore. He sighed, and sank down onto the sand, staring at the clear, lavender sky and enjoying the gentle touch of wind on his cheek.
Footsteps approached. Kiele’s face filled his vision, her swampy hair hanging down around her face. “You look so sad,” she said. “Really. Like a kicked puppy.”
Niko wrinkled his nose at the smell, then sat up as Kiele dropped down on the beach beside him. “Thanks,” Niko grumbled.
“Pining for so long is not good for your health, you know.”
“I know.” Niko sighed. “Not that I hate, I mean, I like my team, but it would be a lot easier if we weren’t training together all the time, y’know? We’ll be talking and I’ll think, ‘this works,’ but then…” Niko made a gesture at Hunk and Jeny, laughing together.
“Mmm, I don’t know…”
“What do you mean?”
Kiele raised her mossy eyebrows at him. “My summation is that Jeny has been nursing that crush since freshman year, and she’s not exactly the type to bottle up her feelings, right? And yet, they have remained capital F Friends.”
Niko gawked at her. “You think Hunk turned her down?”
Kiele put up her hands. “It’s just a guess,” she said. “That doesn’t make you any less pathetic, I’m just saying, it might not be entirely hopeless.”
Niko grinned, looking back over at Hunk and Jeny, at the way her hair fell down her back, at the excited lilt of her voice. “She’s so relaxed with him. Even now, she always seems guarded around me, like she’s got her fists up.”
“Well…” Kiele crooned, “maybe it’s because she feels she has something to guard against. I mean, you’re a pretty far cry from Hunk, tough guy.”
“I always thought that’s what girls liked, y’know? Tough, dangerous guys. Me.”
Kiele smacked her tall, heart-shaped lips. “The world’s a scary place for us girls. They want a guy that makes them feel safe. Sometimes, that means someone strong who can protect them from other people. Sometimes, it means someone who they know won’t hurt them.” Kiele nodded at Hunk, who smiled his open, guileless smile.
Niko searched for any sign of a joke. Jeny was the toughest girl he’d ever met—who could possibly mess with her? But Kiele looked wholly serious.
“Regardless, this sulking thing has got to go. There’s nothing less attractive than some sad-sack guy who can’t take no for an answer. So nut up and tell her how you feel, or move on. I can’t possibly be friends with someone so pathetic.”
“Thanks, Kiele. I think.” Niko pushed up from the sand and dusted himself off. There was some indistinct chattering in a distance near the path. “So are we, uh…what’s the word…‘scrimming’ against your team today?”
“Um…sort of?”
With a rustle of bushes, Tim and Alonso descended the path to the beach. Niko glared. “What are they doing here?”
“They’re some of the best players in the school, kid,” Kiele said. “You wanted to be on their team anyway, right?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Kiele grinned her crocodile grin, then raised her hands up, making her bracelets clatter. “All right, sports fans. We’re shuffling for the scrim today.” The group approached Kiele, creating a circle of people around her. Dr. Goseyun was the exception; he tucked a book under his arm and wandered back up the path toward the library.
“Rules go this way,” Kiele went on. “No more than three members from the same team together, and no current captains can run the show. That means Cal, Tim, and I aren’t bossing you around today. Anyone want to volunteer?”
“I will,” Alonso announced, standing by Tim with his arms folded.
Kiele nodded. “Good. Anyone else?”
The group all shuffled, looking at one another. Niko didn’t realize Cal was beside him until she spoke. “You should try it, Niko,” she said.
Niko gaped at her, with his mouth wide open. “Me?”
“It’s good experience,” Hunk added, then shrank under Jeny’s glare. “Unless…there’s an objection…”
Jeny folded her arms, twitched her hips, looked Niko up and down. “Aye, I suppose we can let him call the shots fer one afternoon,” she said. “Even if he is a duck-footed wad of sinus snot.” Her dark eyes sparkled, with a smile wired tight to keep a laugh in.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Niko said, “you human incarnation of a mom putting her arm across the passenger seat while swearing at the guy in front of her who stopped too fast. Y’know.”
Jeny snorted. “Whae does this even mean?”
“All right, you two, get a room,” Kiele quacked. “Here’s everyone’s comms. Now, we need to do a roll-off to decide who picks first.”
A UI with two animated dice appeared, each of their names assigned to one. The dice bounced, rolled, then landed. Alonso got 5. Niko got 2.
“There,” Kiele said. “Alonso first.”
“I pick Cal,” Alonso said.
Cal shrugged and walked over to his side.
“Okay, Niko, sounds like you and I are teaming up again,” Kiele said. “Now you get to pick both your healer and tank.”
Niko started to call Jeny and Hunk out of instinct, then paused. The point of the exercise was to shuffle the teams up. Besides, knowing what he did of Jeny, there was no way she and Alonso would make a cohesive team. “Hunk and Tim,” Niko said.
He almost regretted the choice when he caught Jeny’s look. It wasn’t angry, or even annoyed. She looked almost…hurt. Niko tried not to think too hard on that.
“I get Jeny and Fob then, I guess,” Alonso grunted. Jeny moved over to Alonso’s side, along with the stranger with the three eyes. Oh, that’s Fob, Niko surmised.
“Great,” Kiele announced. “Each team gets 60 seconds to strategize before the match starts. Teams, get to your corners.”
A countdown started on Niko’s UI. Jeny, Alonso, Cal, and Fob went into a huddle. Tim turned to Niko. “So what’s the opening strat, captain?”
Niko opened their profiles from his team menu and scanned them quickly. He already new Kiele’s skillset from their first game together, so he focused on Tim:
YOU HAVE TEAMED UP WITH:
TIM SHARP, LEVEL 12 GOLEM MYTHIC CLASS
Passive: All allies in a 10-meter radius of you gain 15% damage reduction
ABILITIES:
Rock Wall – Summon a 1-meter wide, impenetrable rock wall in front of you.
Cleave – Deal 20 damage to all enemies in a 3-meter range in front of you.
Stun – Choose an enemy in a 5-meter radius of you and stun them for 1.5 seconds.
Ultimate: Earthquake – Stomp the ground and create an earthquake, knocking down any enemies in a 10-meter cone.
Niko looked between Kiele and Tim, belatedly realizing he had two seasoned captains on his team. Cal would take charge of them easily, already knowing the best strategy to employ. What would she tell him to do?
She’d tell me I’m new, he thought bitterly. She’d say it’s fine to lose, it’s fine to make mistakes, it’s fine to not know something. Niko sulked on it for a moment, then looked over at Kiele’s raised, mossy brows.
He swallowed. If he was Cal, he’d know what to do, but he wasn’t Cal. “Um. I was thinking, that is… Can you guys tell me about your teammates first?”
Kiele cocked her head. “Sure. Fob is a long-distance healer. He’s pretty fragile but his hex has a lo-o-ong range.”
“What’s hex do?”
“It makes someone take more damage for a second or so,” Kiele said. “Those r
ings of his bounce from player to player, doesn’t matter what team. It’ll heal teammates and damage enemies. It’s got a big manna cost, but it does a ton of work if it hits a lot of targets.”
“Okay,” Niko said. “I know Alonso’s moves a little better. What strategy do you think he’ll use? Why was Cal his first pick?”
“Yeah, Cal’s a weird pick for him,” Kiele said. “Fob’s heals work way better if both teams are on top of each other in a fight, but Alonso is barely a melee DPS. That means Fob will be throwing the chakram into his own back line, where it won’t do any damage to us. Hunk seems like a way better first pick.”
“He just wants Cal because she’s good,” Tim said. “I doubt he thought about the bigger picture.”
The timer hit thirty seconds.
“All right,” Niko said. “All right. I want to, uhm, focus Jeny down, but don’t necessarily kill her. Just get Fob to drain his mana trying to keep her up. If they go after Hunk, protecting him takes priority.”
Kiele, Tim, and Hunk all answered with some form of affirmative. The counter pinged down from three, and the scrim started.
The lakeside exploded with action. Stone armor formed across Tim’s skin as he drew his hammer. Alonso charged a shot from his gauntlet. Jeny’s jacket peeled from her back, blowing up like a balloon until it became the imposing seal-monster.
“Let’s go, Kiele,” Niko said. Kiele nodded then swam through the ground like water. She leapt out, chomping down on Jeny’s beast. Niko snapped behind them, then used ABIL_IfElse. Niko had learned through practice sessions that it was a trap he could set. He chose the effect when he dropped it, and it would affect whomever sprung the trap. He thought of what he wanted the trap to do, and the odd, garbled text showed up on his UI, spitting out an X, Y, and Z.
Niko attacked Jeny, and Alonso came after him just as Niko hoped he would. As his mid-charged punch zinged, Alonso stepped on the trap and got teleported into the middle of the lake. He fell in with a satisfying splash.