Tori accessed her private codes and noted with no small amount of satisfaction that the programmers had been true to their word. Not only did she have the same powerful codes she’d bought over the years, but now she was also upgraded with master-class codes that could level cities if she wanted. She shifted her display board to the worlds where the issues within the Nexus were confined. While only four, they were still enormous realms and would take some time to search thoroughly.
She still wasn’t entirely certain what she was looking for. A glitch in the system? An area where the world was corrupted by some coding that caused the Nexus to create some sort of feedback loop? Nobody at WarpSoft knew precisely what they were looking for, which led her to start thinking something big was going on. Theoretically, that meant the event—or whatever it was—would be easy to spot.
Theoretically.
She’d start in Ganymede, she decided after a moment. The tournament was a free-for-all across the rocky, airless plains of the moon of Jupiter. The star base there would more than likely be swarming with finalists running around trying to off the others for the grand prize, leaving the plains open. She doubted the moon would be the source of the glitch and would be easiest to clear. Even though it was the biggest, the habitable zone was small. It also featured the lowest number of players, since the teams involved were all top-tier pros. There would be only eight teams, which meant roughly 72 players for them to deal with.
Ganymede was set up originally as an alien invasion world, where masses of screaming, slobbering aliens crashed in hordes against the stout defenses of the star base. Gamers there earned points and experience defeating the alien hordes and pushing them back away from the star base. Teams also battled one another for access points within the station to earn more experience and achieve the secondary objectives, which led to a higher overall score. It was general, mindless slaughter, and thus was fairly popular with the science fiction crowd.
She knew the other dangers of the moon, but gave them little thought as she accessed it. She’d start within the base proper and meet the first team there. The Ganymede team was possibly her best team overall, with both Moderators and gamers alike who excelled at on-the-fly coding and splicing.
The Nexus twisted around her, and she was sucked into The Warp, hidden among the millions upon millions of blocks of coded data being transmitted throughout The Warp at any given moment. Just another piece of data, hidden from any potential prying eyes.
She hadn’t admitted anything to Leo or anyone else, but she remembered they’d missed one terrorist target during the Crisis incident. While she was positive this was unrelated, she hadn’t become one of the best gamers around by not being cautious and more than a little paranoid.
* * *
Tori pixelated into being on a platform just inside the main portion of the Ganymede Station, the star base from which the truly insane and adventurous launched their space vehicles into the infinite reaches of the galaxy. In truth, the gamers were limited to Jupiter and the orbiting moons, but that was still plenty of space for the hardcore gamer to explore unmolested. There were also multiples nodes somewhere out there, she recalled. She grinned. She loved nodes, as did every other gamer in The Warp. Nodes were the best and primary source of real, hard-earned income both in virtual and meat-space. They were secret upload ports cleverly hidden and disguised within The Warp. If a player was lucky enough to find one of the nodes buried deep within whatever world they were in, they could upload their own personal codes into the game and could sell them from there, making money to assist with their gaming habits. If a player found two, they were extremely fortunate and eventually wealthy.
If a player sold their code from within The Warp via node, other players could use that code, so long as they paid the creator for them. They weren’t allowed to turn around and sell it to others, since they didn’t control the code from the node. This helped prevent piracy from within The Warp, though there were a few minor changes from the original design based on what an individual could buy through a node now. Another problem resolved by what happened in Crisis, she thought.
She looked around once the pixelation process was complete and was satisfied. Her Moderator mode on “standby,” she was undetectable to almost every gamer in the station. They couldn’t interact with her in any way nor could they accidentally hit her. Which, she figured as she looked at the riotous fighting surrounding her, is probably a good thing.
She recalled there had been something like five thousand team entrants into the Ganymede Tournament, and the finalists had been narrowed down to the top eight teams, who were all competing in Orlando that weekend on WarpSoft’s dime. With millions upon millions of viewers watching via livestreams on the internet and even on cable television, it was a marketing bonanza for Leo and his company. The teams knew they were being televised and, with different sponsors for all clamoring to be seen, everyone seemed to have upped the ante for the carnage they wrought.
Those teams seemed to be doing more damage than a tide of aliens could’ve wreaked upon the station, she noted as blaster fire rang out, and a gamer dropped to the ground, stunned or killed. Killed, she saw a moment later as the body melted into the floor, the pixelation process quick and visual. A loud, victorious whoop erupted from a man who was dressed in brown, flowing robes. She covered her mouth and tried to suppress laughter as the red-skinned space monk ran past with a smoking blaster rifle in hand.
“That’s awesome,” She grinned. She couldn’t help it. She’d been a George Lucas fan her whole life. Apparently, in spite of the man’s death ten years before, there were other hardcore fans out there. Not that she was too surprised.
Tori looked for and spotted her first target, a small dive of a bar just off of the main ramp leading to the launching bays on the west end of the station. Smokey Joe’s, she read. Nice. It’d provide a relative safe haven, since it was technically a tavern. Taverns were still non-combat zones and, so far as she knew, would forever remain that way. Of course taverns might not be as safe as they once had been. The terrorists had proven that during the Crisis incident, when they’d corrupted the codes enough to launch attacks within taverns.
Incident, she mentally grumbled. Is that what you’re calling it now?
She moved carefully down the tunnel-street of the station, occasionally stealing a glance up to look at the gas giant Jupiter far overhead, which shed some light on the planet. It was terrifying and yet majestic at the same time, she realized. The programmers of Ganymede had thrown caution to the wind when designing the world and had painstakingly crafted one brilliantly visual masterpiece. The planet might not be Eden, but it was eerily beautiful in its own right. Of course, she recalled, stepping back as she heard footsteps fast approaching, Eden had gotten its name for a reason. She grunted as another small cadre of gamers ran past, wildly shooting at one another. She ducked down slightly as energy bolts crackled through the air overhead, leaving the faint aroma of burnt ozone. She smiled at herself. You can only get hurt when you go active within the game, girl.
She walked into the small tavern and was immediately greeted by a jukebox blaring hits from the 2000s. She mentally groaned and looked around, but apparently her Ganymede team had yet to arrive at the prearranged meeting point.
“I’m not listening to Beyoncé until they get here,” she grunted and walked over to the jukebox. She could see the proffered listings and was pleased. They not only featured music from the 2000s, but they had more modern music as well. She pushed the buttons for one of her favorite groups and pressed play. Immediately, the haunting digital tones of XkaP5 filled the air within the tavern. She nodded in time with the music for a moment before she walked over to one of the larger empty tables to wait for her team. Immediately after she sat down, a server robot appeared, checkered cloth napkin draped over his right forearm. She smiled.
“Lemonade,” she ordered, and the server robot wheeled away quickly. She shook her head and laughed quietly to herself. “The pro
grammers must have watched way too many episodes of Lost in Space.”
She spotted movement by the entrance, and she stiffened as unwanted memories flooded through her. She briefly wondered if one of the battles between the contestants was threatening to spill over into the run-down tavern. The man who entered, though, was Asian and not carrying a weapon, exactly as she’d expected. She felt her shoulders relax and realized she’d her own blaster already out of inventory and into her left hand. She returned the gun to her inventory and wondered when she’d pulled it out. Odd, she thought as she smiled at the newcomer.
The server robot brought her drink, and she waved to the man, who returned her wave and approached. She noted with satisfaction that, despite his apparent friendliness, the man was wary and cautious. Good traits for anyone to have, she knew from past experience. She took a sip of her lemonade as the man pulled out a chair. The drink was perfect. She drained the entire glass quickly and set it down as she looked at the man seated across from her.
“Royce,” she nodded, her tone formal and stiff. The man across from her smirked and shook his head.
“Tori,” he replied. He cocked his head and smiled at her. “Still pissed off at me?”
“Sorta,” she shrugged. “But you’re also one of the best coders I know of so I’m trying to forget the fact you bailed on us.”
“I told you I’m sorry a thousand times!” Royce Ng said in a frustrated tone. She hid her smile as she watched her old friend flounder for a bit. “I had no idea the attacks were going down, and I didn’t want to do the Helldivers mission! I thought staying as far away from other people was my best course of action when the terrorists took over. But you know I showed up at the Battle of the Bridge. You saw me there, didn’t you?”
“I did,” she acknowledged as she finally let her smile show. “It’s good to see you.”
He stared at her for a long minute before he sighed. “You were messing with me, weren’t you?”
“Always.”
He buried his face in his hands. “I was wondering why you didn’t talk to me at dinner last night. Figured you were still mad and ignoring me, but needed me for…whatever this is. I didn’t know I’d run into you first thing. I figured you’d wait in the Nexus until we found an anomaly.”
“And miss all this fun?” she asked as she waved a hand about. “As much as I hate being in The Warp, I also missed it.”
“If not for whatever is wrong with the Nexus, this could be a lot of fun,” Royce conceded. “I’ve never been to Disney World before.”
“Splash Mountain’s where it’s at,” she nodded in affirmation as the door swung open. She looked up and two more men walked in, each the size of a small house. Both men wore armored body cover, which made them appear to be even bigger. She knew who the two were, having worked with them before she joined Sergio’s team. She also knew they were just as big outside The Warp from dinner the night before.
“Tyler, Michael,” Tori nodded to the two men as they each grabbed a seat, the chairs groaning under the combined weight of the armor and weapons. Tyler, his smooth face betraying his youth, grinned. Michael Gants, his older brother, simply nodded and looked away, silent as ever. It was his character, she knew from past experience. Silent and large, yet possibly one of the more intelligent gamers around.
The brothers worked as a team, which usually meant trouble for any other gamer or Moderator alike who crossed swords with them. They made a lot of money by using the Board to find and eliminate targets like bounty hunters. They had the third highest success rate on battling Moderators as well, trailing behind only the legendary Parish. And Hoshiharuna, she remembered, the most successful female Moderator in the history of the game. The duo had racked up a list of impressive victories over some great gamers and Moderators alike, she knew from past hunts with them.
“How you doing?” Tyler asked. She shrugged noncommittally.
“Surviving,” she said. Tyler’s grin turned slightly malicious.
“For now,” Tyler muttered ominously. She grinned back at him.
“Same to you, jerk,” she retorted. Tyler guffawed loudly, his laughter boisterous and joyous. Despite the gravity of their situation, she knew Tyler would always be smiling in the end.
“You cut your hair,” Tyler pointed out. “I like.”
Tori reached up and fingered her hair self-consciously. Her dyeing her hair black and then adding the blue streak had been a spur of the moment decision, one she’d hoped would change her feelings about the game. While she’d cut her hair similarly on the outside, she’d only just been brave enough to go with the additional blue in the real world.
“It was time for a change,” she said in a neutral tone. “I’m not a little girl anymore.”
“Not sure why you wanted me in a science fiction realm,” Michael complained in a low tone. “I’m much more a fantasy guy.”
“Guys,” Royce nodded at the brothers in a respectful manner. He knew their reputations.
Reputation was what drove the new and updated system. Early on in The Warp they’d simply allowed gamers to lie about their ability levels, which made it harder for Moderators to hunt them. Once a gamer became an en finite, however, every Moderator in the game began to target them as various programs within the servers pinged the system, informing Moderators an en finite was nearby. It’d created a backlog with the Moderators, who had begun to outnumber the en finites ten to one. Something had to be done, but there wasn’t a good time to do a server update without disrupting millions of gamers and losing massive amounts of revenue.
The compromise came when the system was reloaded with the new full immersion system. Alongside the security updates came a brand new reputation system. Instead of lying, a gamer was identified by his reputation level. Yet even then, if someone had a five-star reputation, it didn’t necessarily mean the person was an en finite. It’d taught the Moderators a great deal of caution when approaching someone with a reputation level of three stars or higher, and allowed some of the lower reputation gamers some leeway to not fear the Moderators. At least, not until their reputations grew. Even then, only their reputation could be seen, not their identity. It provided the en finites with a small bit of cover as well, much to the chagrin of Moderators who’d stalk a lower reputation gamer for hours before realizing it wasn’t their target.
It was a compromise; she wasn’t sure how she felt about it yet.
She knew every Moderator across the four worlds she was going to be working with was at least a four-star or better. They had to be, since everyone needed to be at least close to her own reputation level. Everyone knew what Tori’s had been before defeating Crisis; the Moderator body count she’d left behind had terrified almost every Moderator into avoiding her. Apparently, it was decided that letting the newbies die gloriously by her hand was the best course of action.
“Who’re the last two joining us?” Royce inquired, picking his nails onto the smooth plastic table top.
“Buddy Kat and the Mad Rocketeer,” she said. Seeing their blank faces, she sighed in exasperation. Why bother having screen names when nobody seems to ever use them, she asked herself for the millionth time. “Stacey Helton and Shane Taylor.”
“Oh, cool,” Michael said. “I like Shane. Dude’s crazy as a bat.”
“Stacey’s solid, but is she good enough?” Royce asked, curious. Tori nodded.
“She’s a five star,” she replied calmly. Royce, taken aback, smiled sheepishly.
“Ah, so she’s better than me,” he grunted.
“And cuter,” a female voice called from the tavern door. The three men turned their heads and watched as Stacey, accompanied by Shane, sauntered into the tavern. Her body was covered in a one-piece leotard which left little to the imagination, and she swayed sensuously to the soft strains coming from the jukebox as she walked toward them, forcing Tori to wonder if she’d deliberately changed the music upon entry just to torment the guys. The men at her table, despite claiming to being jaded by
the amount of flesh they’d seen within The Warp, were nonetheless taken aback. Each of them knew this was what she looked like outside The Warp as well, remembering the extremely attractive female from dinner the night before. Each had also struck out multiple times with the part time model.
Stacey had her red hair cut very short with black streaks running through it, with an almost boyish appearance, and her slender frame was perfect for her short height. Her matching blue eyes were only second to her smile, which melted the hearts of all the boys and men in The Warp. It was always at this time when she eliminated the en finite, using her feminine wiles to distract her targets. Of course, female en finites tended to be harder to charm with flattery and good looks alone. Thankfully for her, Stacey was just as adapt with the battle axe and plastic explosives as she was with her charm.
She was also one of the few Moderators Tori had run across who hadn’t viewed her as just some massive bounty to collect on.
“So, anybody got any money on who will win this campaign?” Stacey asked as she sat down, jerking her head toward the outside of the tavern. The sounds of battle raged on, heedless of the possible threat which loomed across the Nexus and, potentially, The Warp itself.
Shane chuckled throatily and Tori, who was no stranger to changing appearances within The Warp, wondered why Shane kept his normal appearance the same within The Warp as when he was out of it. While Shane wasn’t too bad looking, in his geeky redneck way, the temptation for change within The Warp was always strong. Even Tori had enhanced her own physique and looks slightly.
“Redneck,” she greeted her friend.
“Million Dollar Princess,” he retorted. Her smile grew.
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