Melee

by Wyatt Savage

  The final shell, longer, slightly wider, dropped to the ground at my feet.

  “What are we supposed do with that?” I asked.

  “We aren’t,” the doctor said, placing his hands against the dome again. “But you are to go outside, retrieve Sylvester’s shotgun, and take that beast down.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because you’re the slayer, kid,” Agent Pei said.

  I grabbed the shell, simultaneously terrified and adrenalized. The time had come to strike a blow against the aliens, to give all of us a chance to reach the wall and if that meant I had to risk my ass, then so be it.

  Dwayne looked through a gap in our shelter and shouted, “IT’S COMING BACK!”

  I tucked my arms against my side and ran out through a tiny gap in the shelter, hooking to the right, making a beeline for Sylvester’s shotgun.

  The wind from the dragon’s wings whipped my hair and I could feel an electricity that caused the tiny hairs on the back of my neck to stand at attention.

  The three seconds it took to cover the ground between me and the shotgun seemed to last an eternity.

  Diving to the ground, I grabbed the shotgun, perusing my HUD, which provided a schematic of how to load the thing. Thankfully I was familiar with how to operate a shotgun from the days when Dad and I had gone deer hunting.

  Holding the shell between my pinky and index finger, I slid it into the shotgun’s magazine and used my thumb to slide it into place. Then I engaged the slide and took aim at the dragon that filled the air out in front of me.

  The monster had already begun its descent and there was a predatory look, almost like a grin, on its gargoyle-like face.

  I brought the shotgun up and rested it against my shoulder. I was still wounded, still down two health points, so the gun felt heavy and my breathing was bad.

  Hands trembling, I fell back on an old trick I’d learned in baseball, about how to drop down inside yourself, find your zone when you’re working to strike a hitter out.

  Plumes of steam rose from the dragon’s nose, followed by a keening whine. The thing’s massive wings created a whirlwind that, in my weakened state, knocked me back.

  The gun came down and I was worried I wouldn’t get another chance when someone started shouting.

  “HEY, ASSHOLE!” Dwayne screamed from just outside the shelter. “COME GET ME!”

  The dragon was thrown off only for a second, but it was enough time for me to bring the shotgun back up and sight down on the dragon.

  The creature turned back to me and its mouth opened.

  The dragon scythed toward me, spitting a silver plume at me when—

  BOOM!

  I fired.

  The shotgun’s recoil knocked me back and the wave of silver fire swept toward me, over me. I held the shotgun up defensively as the flames covered my body!

  I blinked, waiting to feel the heat, the intense pain, but somehow I wasn’t scorched.

  Opening my eyes, I saw that my body was covered in a clear sheath. My eyes rolled to the right to see Doctor Throgmorton kneeling at the exit from the shelter next to Dwayne. He’d conjured up the shield to save me.

  The dragon flew past, but something was wrong.

  Its movements were off and it was bucking wildly as if something was lodged in its throat, and when it angled off to my right, I saw that its silver head had turned black. In fact, a large black smear was moving quickly, covering the whole of the dragon’s body. The silver scales were turning black and falling off and then the great beast, all twenty-five feet of it, let out a strangled cry and plummeted into the dead forest, crashing through the trees.

  Holy shit, I’d done it. I’d actually taken the dragon down.

  “Congratulations,” Sue said. “You have killed a Level 1 monster and gained 25 experience points.”

  I couldn’t believe I’d risked my ass for 25 points, but it didn’t matter. The bad guys were all dead and we’d lived to fight another day.

  Shouts of joy rose up from the others as they exited the shelter, which collapsed as the dome kept in place by Doctor Throgmorton gave way.

  “You did it, Slayer,” Agent Pei said, throwing several mock punches at me. “You took that big bastard down. Now we’ve only got one thing left to do.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Kill one of the Noctem.”

  “How?”

  “Like this,” Agent Pei said, pulling out a revolver, shooting me in the chest.

  36

  The pain I felt was sudden and excruciating. It felt as if someone had struck me in the chest with a sledgehammer. Someone evidently expected me to be shot, because I tumbled back and was caught and laid gently to the ground as my HUD blinked, all readouts in red.

  -9 Health Points!

  My vision faded to flickers and flashes. Blood was in my mouth, pooling between my teeth and the wound made a sucking sound, misting blood, as I wheezed.

  There was a look of astonishment creasing Dwayne’s face. He screamed and the others held him back as Agent Pei came into view, smoking gun still in one hand. He had a look on him, feral, hard enough to drive a nail. The bastard had done it after all. He killed me for a measly 25 points!

  With one final burst of energy I spit in Agent Pei’s direction as he received a syringe from Doctor Throgmorton that he held up. The syringe was filled with a golden liquid.

  “Why?” I coughed, spitting up a ball of dark, gelled blood.

  Agent Pei didn’t answer.

  Instead he pulled back on the syringe’s plunger and rammed the goddamn thing into my neck.

  A profound darkness followed, a vast space that was completely without light. I was there, hovering as a drum beat a slow steady cadence, like the rhythmic thump of a heart. I tried to scream or call out, but it was like I was under heavy sedation, my body wracked by paralysis. It reminded me a little of the time I’d had a febrile seizure when I was five years old. One of my earliest memories, and one of the worst, because when you have such a seizure as I did, it looks to outsiders as if you’ve died.

  Unlike that time, I felt something stir out in the darkness. A thrumming, like a plucked guitar string. The cold energy that resulted from that plucked string somehow gathered itself around me, vibrating, pushing me up into the air.

  The sky overhead opened like an iris.

  There was a splash of white light and then I was jettisoned up into the light and found myself back outside, on my back.

  Agent Pei was leaning over me and I woke with a terrible start.

  I screamed and flailed my limbs and rough hands held me down.

  “Take this, take this,” Espinosa said, holding out a bottle of water, his eyes as wide as a Chihuahua’s. He made the sign of the cross and muttered something to himself in Spanish as I took the water and drank.

  My mouth still tasted of pennies, so I spit blood and propped myself up on my elbows and my HUD blinked to reveal the following stats:

  Species: Homo Sapiens (James, Logan)

  Chattel:

  Health:10/10

  Level 1:1

  Class:Fighter

  Kills:

  Vitals:BP – 120/80; T – 98.06f; RR – 10bpm

  XP:

  “You there, Sue?” I asked via Mindspeak.

  “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “You met your journey’s end.”

  “I know that, I mean…what happened to my stats?”

  “They reset.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you reached your journey’s end.”

  I looked over at Agent Pei.

  “You’re welcome by the way,” Agent Pei said.

  “Thanks a bunch for killing me,” I replied, wanting to sock the asshole in the jaw even as I was too disoriented and groggy to throw a punch.

  “You’re probably wondering why I did that,” the agent said.

  “That’s one of several things I’m wondering…”

  “I did what had to be d
one.”

  My nostrils flared. That kind of bullshit response wasn’t going to mollify me. Sensing my anger, Doctor Throgmorton moved between me and Agent Pei as Noora and the others stood at a distance. “We knew that you were unique, Logan. Agent Pei told us as much and when you passed out that first time I used an instrument to scan you down to the subatomic level.”

  “What else did you do?”

  The doctor smirked, ignoring this. “We knew that you had a cerebral implant that was acquired prior to the time the aliens arrived. Noora told us. Your mind is…differently circumstanced.”

  I looked to her and she forced a smile.

  “We knew you were the one,” Sylvester said.

  “One what?”

  “One that could help us kill a Noctem,” Agent Pei said. He offered me a hand and I swatted it aside. Instead, I turned to Dwayne, who helped me up.

  I’d been hit in the head with a pitch when I was a sophomore in high school and I felt a little loopy like that. Still, I could stand on my own and process information, which wasn’t too shabby for a guy who’d just died. My fingers went to my chest and the fabric where the wound had been was frayed, but my skin had reknit itself and was completely healed.

  Dwayne came over and hugged me. “Be honest, Logan,” he whispered. “On a scale of one to ten, with one being a papercut and ten being stepping on a piece of Lego in a darkened room, how are you feeling?”

  “I’m off the scale, D.”

  Agent Pei waved the now-empty syringe.

  “We brought you back,” he said.

  “You respawned,” Sarah said.

  I felt both my eyebrows lift. “I still don’t understand why you shot me.”

  “Because I’ve got a theory,” Doctor Throgmorton said, moving slowly toward me on his braces. “I believe that the alien implants, the ones that are automatically triggered if you try to harm them, are directly connected to the body’s signatures of consciousness.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The implants function so long as you’re alive.”

  “But if you die,” Agent Pei said. “So do the implants.”

  “Of course, that’s just a theory,” Doctor Throgmorton said.

  “Why would the aliens allow someone to respawn?”

  “They likely wouldn’t,” the Doctor Throgmorton replied. “At least technically. You already have an implant, however, something the aliens wouldn’t have accounted for. So my hypothesis was that when you died and were, for lack of a better word, rebooted, your implant would block the alien signal, thereby allowing you to potentially harm the Noctem.”

  I rubbed the back of my head. “You killed me to test out a theory?”

  The doctor nodded. “Yes, I suppose we did and for that I’m sorry.”

  Sorry wasn’t going to cut it, but I was no in mood or shape to kick ass. Besides, we had more pressing concerns. “How much time do we have left to reach the wall?”

  “Sixty-eight minutes,” Dwayne said.

  I took in the stares of the others. “What’s the plan?”

  “We need to kill that,” Doctor Throgmorton said, pointing to the distance where the alien figure, as insubstantial as mist, hovered over the dead forest.

  “Easier said than done,” I remarked.

  Doctor Throgmorton placed his hands on my shoulders. “It will not be easy, but nothing worth doing ever is.”

  “We’ve seen the Noctem in action,” Sylvester said.

  “A bunch of participants tried attacking one near Cheverly,” Agent Pei said, referencing a town on the border between Maryland and D.C.

  A series of images danced before my eyes, condensing into something substantial. Images of the fight that had been beamed into my HUD by Agent Pei.

  I witnessed the battle between the Noctem and at least eight participants, all of them with heavy weapons and armor.

  The fighting took place in the middle of a freeway filled with bodies and burning cars. Black smoke hung in thick drifts over the road, as I struggled to observe the action.

  The participants weren’t attacking the Noctem, but waiting for it to attack them. I wondered whether this was a loophole, whether a participant could defend himself or herself without triggering the implants.

  The participants shouted and cursed the Noctem and then the alien attacked.

  There were puffs of orange as the alien fired what looked like energy darts in every direction. Blobs of light lanced out in every direction. Two of the participants were struck, one killed, the other wounded.

  The Noctem flew toward the first participants, a woman protected by a set of olive-colored armor. There was a bone-crushing impact and the woman was catapulted into the air, but not before the other participants attacked.

  One of them raised a rifle and pulled the trigger.

  The fighter’s head exploded.

  The others saw this and waited as the Noctem attacked. The second participant fended off several blows from the Noctem with a massive blade the size of one of those devices they use to toss the ball in jai alai.

  With brutal efficiency, the Noctem parried the blade with its metallic hands and then conjured a razor-sharp staff out of blue light. The alien swiped the staff in a cutting motion, bisecting the participant. Then it turned on the others who tried to shoot at it. Those who did, lost their heads. Those who didn’t, immediately turned and ran. The images faded to black.

  “As you can see, the aliens do not die easily. Before you can hope to kill a Noctem, you will need to train.”

  “We don’t have the time to train,” I said.

  “We’ll buy the time,” the doctor replied.

  “The doc has enough points to purchase a Time-Out,” Agent Pei said. “An application that suspends the game and allows a fighter to train for a precise amount of time.”

  “You will be able to undergo the equivalent of three days of high-intensity training in a matter of moments,” Doctor Throgmorton said.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Couldn’t be surer,” he replied with a thin smile.

  “Sue, are you listening to this?”

  “I have heard your conversation, yes,” Sue replied.

  “Have the implants been deactivated?”

  “Access to that technology is strictly limited to the Noctem.”

  “You can’t answer that?”

  “No.”

  “Can the Noctem be killed?”

  “In theory, anything can be killed,” Sue replied.

  “I assume you’re going to say that you can’t tell me one way or another whether I can actually kill the one watching us?”

  “I have no way of knowing that,” Sue answered.

  “What would someone get from killing a Noctem?”

  “There are no points associated with the Noctem if that is what you mean.”

  “Then what?”

  Here Sue paused and I heard the sound of static, as if Sue had put me on hold. “Each of the Noctem carries an object,” she said softly. “A device that is able to both create and destroy matter. Theoretically, that object could be obtained if one of the Noctem was killed.”

  “Why would they let someone kill one of them?”

  “I do not know.”

  It didn’t make sense. If the aliens were aware of the game, surely they’d considered every possible angle. Still, there was the thought, however fleeting, that maybe they’d screwed up. Maybe there was a loophole, or maybe the Noctem wanted all of this to happen. Maybe everything was preordained and us possibly killing one of their kind helped to further the game. My mind reeled with the possibilities.

  “If we’re going to do this, we need to do it soon,” Doctor Throgmorton said. “I can’t force you into the training. The choice has to be yours.”

  I climbed up onto a stone and squinted.

  The wall was visible in the distance, a mass of black girders and beams that stretched from the ground to the heavens.

  A little over an hour. That’s
all the time we had left.

  I turned to the doctor and nodded. “Okay, let’s do this. Let’s get the training started.”

  37

  Doctor Throgmorton stood six feet away from me, his expression unreadable.

  “Okay,” I repeated. “Let’s do this.”

  He just stared at me.

  “Did you hear me? Let’s go!”

  That was when I noticed that he was moving while everything else had frozen in place. Dwayne, Agent Pei, a griefstricken Sarah, and all the others were standing like wax statues, their mouths still crooked open as the air warped all around the doctor.

  A powerful force gripped me and I found myself rising off the ground as a cyclone of green wind, a vortex of sorts, churned all around us. In seconds I couldn’t hear a sound apart from the cyclone, which howled like a pack of wolves.

  I thrust out a hand, reaching for Doctor Throgmorton. “What the hell’s going on?!”

  My HUD flashed with a message that read:

  Congratulations, you are about to participate in Level 1 Shock Training.

  Objective: Evade enemy soldiers and projectiles.

  Accept: Y/N

  Doctor Throgmorton hovered toward me. The wind whipped his hair back and I could see the whites of his eyes. He looked like he was gripped in some kind of mania, like an old-time preacher filled with the Holy Spirit. “You will not be able to defeat the Noctem on its terms,” Doctor Throgmorton said, whispering into my ear. “The most you can hope for is to evade its attacks and strike when the time is right.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “First you must learn the dance,” the doctor said. “Will you accept the training?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Yes or no?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  BOOM!

  There was a percussive blast and we dropped roughly to the ground to find that the terrain had changed.

  In place of the bleak landscape was a long, flat reef of impossibly white stone. The doctor stood behind me as I stared over the reef that was heavy with obscured silhouettes. I looked left and right. Dwayne and the others were gone.

  “Where did everyone go?”