by L. E. Price
Beyond the glass, one of the “mechanics” had spent the last hour giving two detectives the stink-eye. They’d pulled an ID from his prints, though they already had his professional history from the prison tattoos on his knuckles and back. He was a trigger-man and general dirty-deed-doer for the Kiselev crew, Russian Bratva to the core.
“Is very simple,” he was saying, his accent thick as motor oil.
“Then explain it to us again,” one of the detectives said.
“We were paid in advance for this. They say, here is the address, here is the man. He will be…” he said something in Russian, then frowned, shaking his head as he looked for the right word. “—sleeping? Hooked up to game deck. Make as much noise as you want, he will not wake up.”
“You were hired to harvest his organs,” the other detective said.
The mechanic snickered. “We were hired to kill him. Why waste a good body? We make money for the hit, we make money for his parts. Is a good payday all around.”
“Who hired you?”
“Santa Claus,” the mechanic said.
On the other side of the glass, Reynolds talked out one side of his mouth, keeping it soft.
“Recovered three computers from the chop-shop. Tablets, not immersion rigs. Got our techs combing through them right now, but these Kiselev boys are surprisingly technical. Good with encryption.” He studied the faint ghost of Jake’s reflection. “Want to tell me what we’ll find?”
Technical, maybe, but these kinds of mobsters dealt with hard trade and contraband. Jake knew this from experience. They were more likely to run flesh-and-blood girls out of a cheap motel than set up an elaborate sex party and money-laundering scheme in a virtual world.
“The people I’m looking for,” Jake said, “they’re corporate. They live Inside and they stay Inside. You don’t get an executive job interview at SDS with prison ink on your knuckles.”
Reynolds regarded the glass. “And yet. There’s no phone-book entry for your friendly neighborhood hitman. They knew these boys from somewhere.”
Not a chance the Kiselev gang was behind the key-laundering scheme, let alone Trevor’s mental abduction. That said, there had to be a point of contact. Jake walked through it, thinking about what the Elect might want or need with a rough-edged crew like this.
“When you crack those tablets,” he said, “see if they’ve had any play on auction websites that cater to immersive sims. Real-money trading, it’s called. Cash for virtual goods.”
“You think they’re propping up the cash end of that transaction?”
Jake stared at the man behind the mirror. He was back to sullenly hostile, playing off the detectives’ questions with a silent glare.
“Maybe,” Jake said. “The people behind this thing need as much legal insulation as they can get. I could see them using a crew like this, people outside the arcologies, as one more layer between them and the money.”
“Patsies,” Reynolds said.
“For a cut of the loot. But it’s just a theory.”
A theory that one person, and only one person, could confirm or deny. Timothy Miller. “Rolen the Blue” had last seen Jake plummeting to his virtual and possibly very real death. Jake’s activation of the pinion-breaker patch would have sent up red flags throughout the system, alerting every active GM — and, quite probably, the members of the Elect. Would they warn Tim that Jake was still alive? Would they punish him for his failure?
The smartest thing they could do right now was to put Tim in an electronic coma just like his friend Trevor. The smartest thing Tim could do was to stay offline. Offline and out of reach, safe beyond the armored walls of Barrymore Arcology.
Reynolds knew what Jake was thinking. He always did have a knack for it.
“You know, this kid, the one who set you up.”
“What about him?” Jake said.
“Sometimes, you know, these snot-nosed rich kids, they like to come down here and go on safari. Tear things up, smash a few windows…”
“Not this one,” Jake said. “He’s clean-cut. Not the safari type.”
Reynolds continued as if Jake hadn’t said a word.
“When we catch ‘em, the arcology lawyers come out in force. Jurisdictional arguments and all that jazz. And we have to hand the little pukes over, eventually, but I usually tell our legal rep to drag her heels as long as she can. A few hours in a holding cell, down here in the real world, is a great cure for a bad attitude.”
Jake turned to face him. Now he heard the captain. Really heard him.
“So, if your officers just happened to find an arcology kid out wandering the streets,” Jake said, “looking suspicious…”
“Well, they’d have to run him in for his own protection. Could be a while before anyone gets notified. Could be, he gets locked up in a quiet room with a big-shouldered and angry man who asks him a lot of very pointed questions, with no lawyers around and nobody to make him ease off.” Reynolds shrugged. “Probably find out everything the kid knows and every sin in his heart, if that were to happen.”
“That’d be real useful,” Jake said. “For your case and for mine.”
Reynolds stretched and yawned.
“Alas,” he said into his hand. “If only I knew a man whose specialty was retrieving wayward teenagers. A man with no legal authority and no connection to my department. You know, for purposes of deniability. If I knew such a person, I couldn’t voice such a thing out loud, but I’d certainly hope that he and I were thinking on the same wavelength.”
“I might know somebody,” Jake replied. “Let me ask around.”
* * * *
A night of questions and answers at the police station had dragged on into the small hours of morning. Jake grabbed two quick hours of sleep, shocked himself awake with a cold shower, and got to work. By now the Elect had to know that he was still alive, that he knew exactly how Trevor had been trapped in the game, and that he had a custom patch capable of breaking the teenager’s bonds. In the virtual world, the next move was theirs to make.
And here, in the physical, it was his. He had to make it count.
Getting into Barrymore was easy. Jake had an iron-clad excuse, paying a visit to Trevor’s family to provide a status update. Getting out, with Tim, was going to be a hell of a lot harder. As the chauffeur drove him in, he studied the hard angles of the arcology parking garage in a new light. Hunting for security blind spots, access doors he might be able to finesse, any exit that would get him Outside with his bounty and his skin intact.
He couldn’t even bring in weapons; the mandatory security check made sure of that, so he didn’t bother trying. He just stripped off his overcoat and rebreather under the guards’ watchful eye, stowing it all in a guest locker. Beneath, he wore his one good suit; with a neatly-knotted synthetic silk tie and a confident walk, he could go just about anywhere in Barrymore without drawing a second glance.
He knew exactly where Tim would be right now. School was in session. Jake was at the edge of the steel honeycomb, bathed in the golden sheen of the hard-angled walls, when a pack of teenagers nearly blindsided him. They were stampeding, wild-eyed, aiming to go anyplace but here, and a klaxon sounded on their pounding heels.
“This is an active-shooter lockdown,” a recorded voice said, serene over the sirens’ wail. “This is not a drill. Stay in your classrooms.”
Jake wasn’t planning to set foot onto school territory, not after the security guards nearly gave him the rubber-hose treatment last time, not to mention pointing out how they could legally shoot him and get away with it. He was still in the early stages of formulating a plan, leaning toward intercepting Tim on his way home after classes were done for the day.
Now he was barreling up the golden corridor, wading against the tide of panicked, fleeing students. This was no coincidence. If the Elect decided Tim had to be silenced, and they couldn’t capture him in the game world, they’d have to take drastic measures. They’d hired the Kiselev crew to murder Jake, w
hich proved they had underworld connections; paying one more hitman to take Timothy out was just an added expense. Crazy, desperate maybe, but people facing hard prison time did crazy and desperate things.
The echo of a gunshot told him which way to go. Jake hit a swinging door with his shoulder and skidded to a stop at the edge of the recreation quad. They’d already tidied up the path where Mr. Rickey died, bleaching the once-bloody stone. Digital clouds blew across the ceiling screens, glitching, jumping in place as one quadrant of the ceiling flickered and died. A flat blue box and a fatal error message took its place, ruining the illusion of outdoors tranquility.
Jake had gotten it wrong. Timothy wasn’t the target of an assassin.
Timothy was the shooter.
He stood at the heart of the manicured lawn looking lost, alone, horrified, with a gun in his hand and a dead body face-down at his feet. One of the school security guards, with a dark stain spreading across the back of his uniform shirt. Students were huddling along the edges of the quad, hunkered down behind the bushes, frozen with fear and too far from the doors to run.
Tim wasn’t shooting, now. He just stood there, staring at the gun in his hand like he hadn’t really believed it would fire, not until he pulled the trigger and killed a man.
Jake steeled himself. He stepped out onto the edge of the lawn, hands empty and on display at his sides.
“Tim,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just going to talk to you. Okay?”
Tim didn’t respond. He stared at Jake, head tilted slightly, barely comprehending.
“I’m going to come a little closer,” Jake told him, “so I don’t have to shout.”
The grass whispered under his footsteps. Above, the digital sky flashed dark and stormy, just for a heartbeat, before lurching back to three-fourths of a sunny summer day with the clouds moving too fast to be real. Jake closed to about ten feet and stopped. Not close enough to grab the gun, but far enough — he hoped — to keep Tim from getting spooked and using it.
“I look a little different in the game,” Jake said. “Do you recognize me?”
“You’re…Jacius. Of Cam’s Den.”
“That’s right. I’m Jake. See, I’m okay, Tim. I’m fine. If you’re doing this because you think you’re going to be in some kind of trouble—”
“You’re not fine, Jake.” One of Tim’s eyelids twitched. “You’re here to kill me.”
“Whoa.” Jake raised his empty hands. “See? Empty. No weapon. And I’m not going to get any closer unless you tell me it’s okay. You’re in control here, just take it easy.”
“This is a trick. Just another trick. Like the gun. Last time, there wasn’t a gun. Time before last, there was a gun but it wouldn’t shoot.” He stared down at the dead man. “I didn’t think it would shoot. Doesn’t matter. He’s just an NPC.”
The kid had snapped. Jake wasn’t sure what he meant about the “last time,” but if Tim thought this was some kind of simulation, nobody was safe. He thought fast, hunting for a way to talk him down.
“Tim, this…this isn’t Paradise Clash. Look around. You recognize this place, don’t you? This is your school—”
“It’s fake,” Tim seethed, shooting an angry glare at the broken screens above. The clouds flickered, glitched and went dark again, becoming a roiling black storm.
“I can prove it,” Jake said. “I’m going to reach into my pocket and take something out. Not a weapon. Okay?”
Tim’s head bobbed, uncertain. Jake dipped two careful fingers into his hip pocket. They came out holding a ballpoint pen.
“See, when I first started playing, I got a little hazy on what was real and what wasn’t. Then I figured out a solution.” Jake slid back his sleeve and showed Tim the tiny spots of faded, nearly washed-away ink on his wrist. “I just give myself a little jab with this pen. See? It’s easy. And when it stings, just a little, I know I’m in the real world. You want to try it? I’ll throw it to you, and you can see for yourself.”
Tim gaped at him, incredulous.
“That’s stupid. Do you really think I’d fall for that?” Tim waved the gun, more erratic now, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “They turned off the pain limiters. I felt it every time you murdered me.”
Jake stared down the barrel of the gun. At this range, even with his hand trembling, gripping it too tight, Tim wouldn’t miss.
“Listen to me,” Jake said. “I’m the real Jake Camden. I’m not an NPC, none of these people are.”
A tear ran down Tim’s cheek. His finger closed over the trigger.
“You say that every time,” Tim whimpered. “I didn’t want any of this to happen. I just wanted to meet the Sea Dragon. They told me — they told me, if I did what they said, if I followed their instructions, they’d show me the way. But they lied. They were just using me.”
Jake kept his hands up, showing his open palms. His heart pounded against his ribs like it was trying to burst loose.
“I really need you to trust me, okay? Everything is going to be all right. First, put the gun down—”
“They lied, but it’s okay. You know why? Because I figured it out. I solved the mystery. I did what Trevor and Mr. Rickey and all the others couldn’t. I found the way to the Sea Dragon. The secret path. And I’m going to go there. Right now, I’m going to go there.”
Tim smiled, his cheeks wet and glistening under the artificial clouds. Then he put the gun to his head.
“I’m logging out,” Tim said.
“Tim, no—” Jake shouted, lunging for him.
Too late. He pulled the trigger and the pistol barked and he tumbled to the manicured grass, an arc of ruby droplets following him down. His glassy, open eyes reflected the error message in the broken sky.
38.
The press had a field day. “Teenager suffers psychotic break from role-playing game” was a headline designed for clickbait, and Jake watched mute from the sidelines — SDS’s lawyers scrutinizing every breath he took — as the story unfolded with most of the details wrong. Jake didn’t miss the sim industry’s mouthpieces working the other side of the street, either; within a day of the shooting an anonymous source leaked Timothy Miller’s arrest, two years ago, for possession of hallucinogenic mushrooms. Another source leaked his medical records and his history of depression. Smearing a dead kid was all in a day’s work, Jake supposed, anything to stem the tide of think-pieces asking renewed questions about the safety of immersive sims.
But he knew the truth. Maybe Tim had suffered a psychotic break, but it wasn’t from playing Paradise Clash. Jake went back over his final words, again and again in the aftermath. He didn’t think he was standing on Gaia Prime when he fired that final bullet. He knew exactly where he was, he was lucid, and he still believed he was in a simulation.
A simulation stuck on a loop. A simulation where Jake — or an NPC copy — had killed him.
They turned off the pain limiters. I felt it every time you murdered me.
The Elect had gone beyond mental kidnapping this time. They’d stuck him in a custom sim and tortured him. And his torturer wore Jake’s face, ensuring that when Jake escaped his own would-be killers and came looking for Timothy, just like anyone could predict that he would…
Jake felt sick to his stomach when he saw the big picture. They drove Timothy insane, then they gave him a gun and a reason to use it. That was the plan. He’d shoot Jake, campus security would shoot him, finishing it with every loose end neatly snipped.
SDS was furious, in full damage control mode, and Jake knew they wanted him off the case. He didn’t care if the Kensingtons fired him or not. The Elect were going down. He’d expose them, every last one of them, and make damn sure they paid for this. Nothing else mattered now.
“Do yourselves, and us, a favor,” Anton said. “Terminate Mr. Camden’s employment and let us take the lead here.”
SDS’s senior counsel spoke from a wall screen, hanging above the artificial fireplace in the Kensington family’s c
ondo. A faint, synthetic hickory scent washed from a concealed vent behind the hologram flames, but no warmth. Anton was at his desk, imperious and grim, with the haggard face of a man who had aged a decade in less than a week.
Gordon and Emily Kensington stood at Jake’s side. Trevor’s parents hadn’t been sleeping, either, though Emily hid her baggage under stage-quality makeup. Jake was going to keep fighting, with or without them, but if they canned him, he’d never be able to set foot in Barrymore again. He needed their access.
He looked to the open doorway down the hall. Trevor’s room. In the sudden stillness he heard the slow and steady beeping of the machines keeping him alive.
“I’m getting results,” Jake said.
“You have nothing,” Anton replied. “You have accomplished nothing—”
Gordon and Emily held their silence, but Jake had their undivided attention. This was his chance, his last chance, to make his case. He still couldn’t tell them everything, though; if the Elect knew what he knew, they’d double their efforts to bury their tracks and bury Trevor for good. That meant picking and choosing the details and keeping some of the truth — like the fact that the Elect were SDS employees, gamemasters gone rogue — concealed for now.
“I have accomplished,” Jake said, mirroring Anton’s tone, “finding the exact means and method by which Trevor was kidnapped. The perpetrator is a hacker who used legacy code, buried inside the game, to abuse an old bug and keep him from logging out. I contacted one of the original developers, who created a patch to correct that bug.”
Anton’s teeth clenched. “In other words, you hacked our game.”
“Pretty sure I’m fixing your game. You’re welcome.”
“Do we know why yet?” Gordon asked. “Is there a motive?”