by Parker Tiden
In the end, the four bodies of the opposing team lay on the floor. Jarno had taken a 50 percent hit. Nuffian and I were unhurt.
"No time for celebration," Nuffian said. "Others are closing in."
I was still in shock over my own bloodthirstiness, it was as though I felt her warm blood on my hands.
"We need to find better cover. What now, Luna? Luna?"
I had stopped listening. For there, in front of me in the supposed real world, in Hall A, not more than 20 feet away from me, he stood. What the hell was he doing here? Had he gotten wind of my own private investigation? Had I been exposed when I visited the FBI Alphacore office?
I toggled off my mic. I nudged Nick. "Don't look up. Just pretend that you're gaming."
"I am gaming! I am actually trying to win," he said.
"Turn your mic off," I instructed him. "The feds are here. Maxwell, the guy who handled my dad's case."
"What! Is he here in Alphacore? That worthless mother. Let me blow him out of the water."
"No, you dope, he is in the next row over, looking right at me, here in SF, California." I kept on pretending I hadn't seen him. "Let's just stay calm and carry on. Don't let him know you've seen him. We need time to think. He probably doesn't want to cause a scene."
"Incoming! Get with it!" Girth cried in my headphones.
"Common ladies! I see two from the west at 180 degrees, behind those trees," Jarno added.
I toggled the mic on again and took a deep breath to regain focus. "Let's roll. No flinching."
Look Who's Here
A little while later, with a few more kills to our name, we were in some desolate village. Although night never really came in Alphacore, and the numerous moons contributed a complicated light, some sort of dusk had descended upon us. If there ever had been people in this village, they had fled for a better place a long time ago. They had left in a hurry, leaving the artifacts of their lives behind—a rusted tricycle stood crooked, barely visible in the tall grass that had once been a lawn. In the houses, on the tables set for dinner, the food had rotted and then turned to dust.
I looked up but couldn't see Maxwell anywhere. The red lights in the hall were starting to overwhelm the green lights. I kept my visor on in the hope that it may shield my eyes. As I swiveled around on my chair casually, there was still no sign of him.
"Clear," Nuffian said as he came out of one of the houses.
"For now," I said.
Jarno rested his sniper rifle on a broken fence and used the scope to scan the horizon. Girth looked despondently at nothing much while he fidgeted with his machine gun. The hours of gaming were taking their toll, we were losing focus. Some time to breathe was welcome.
Suddenly, a rustling in some bushes not 20 feet from us. We swung around with our weapons raised and fingers triggered. Girth took out one of his grenades and prepared to lob it into the bushes.
"Wait!" I shouted. "Hold fire!"
"Are you kidding?!" Nuffian countered, "Girth, throw it now, we need to strike preemptively."
"Stop!" I yelled again. Girth looked at me and slowly lowered his arm.
Some more rustling, and out of the bush stepped a cloaked figure.
"Ezio?!" we all exclaimed in unison.
"I don't know who this Ezio person is you're talking about." Ezio continued his approach, an incongruous cigarette still glowing in the corner of his mouth. "But yes, it's me, the guy you met back in good old Rossiya."
I noticed that the others still had their weapons aimed and ready to fire. I guess they were still a bit miffed about last time. "Stand down," I told them. They lowered their weapons, Nuffian most reluctantly.
"Much appreciated. I don't have the powers here that I had over there," Ezio explained. "If you shoot me, I bleed… metaphorically, so to speak."
"What the... how did you?" I tried. I looked up from the screen and out over the hall. "Are you here?"
"The information I have is time-sensitive. I needed to find you. No, I am not in the USA—too many warrants out for me over there."
"What happened to having no interest in helping us?" Nuffian growled.
"But how did you get in? It's a closed server," I said, ignoring Nuffian's petulance and giving Nick a hard slap to the back of the head in real life.
"If there's a will, as they say in America. Really no need to get into details at this point." Ezio took a quick step to the side and an RPG whipped past his head, with only inches to spare, and hit the tree not ten feet behind us. "I think we've got company."
"Incoming from the south at 130 degrees," I yelled. Girth stepped out in front of Ezio, shielding him. Jarno, Nuffian, and I all opened up at the enemy.
I could see at least seven warriors spread out in various covered positions—behind a bush, in the broken window of a house, and crouched in the tall grass. An eclectic assortment of danger. The teams must have entered into some unholy alliance with a temporary common goal—to wipe us out.
"Isn't inter-team cooperation illegal?!" Girth exclaimed.
"Maybe, but what are you gonna do about it?" Jarno said. "Go crying to management?"
"Our overarching objective is to protect Ezio," I found myself saying.
"Uh, winning the tournament on the side would be nice, too," Nuffian said. Could he be jealous?
"We need to back-up into the house, now!" I ordered. Girth and Ezio began to run towards the house nearest to us.
Jarno shouted to me and Nuffian, "You two go, I'll hold them down until you're inside." He took a hit to the leg and got down on one knee, but continued spraying hellfire at the bastards.
We escaped into the fleeting safety of the house. Girth started picking the enemy off one by one with his sniper rifle. Jarno stumbled through the door a few seconds later and joined Nuffian, returning fire through the windows.
I turned to Ezio. "We have no time to lose, this could go either way. Talk."
"We used some methods to improve the quality of the audio and video, and ran some voice and face recognition through it. What we could tell was—" one of the outer walls suddenly collapsed in a cloud of dust and we threw ourselves backward. We retreated into the downstairs bathroom.
Ezio took out a small object from under his cloak, it was the virtual thumb drive he had stolen from me. He flicked a button and pointed it to one of the tiled white walls, then a projection of the video appeared. It was the same video we had seen before, showing the four men in conversation. Only, this time, we could hear and see. "That man there is Gregory Abanov, FSB, Russian secret service agent and arms dealer with direct ties to Putin." The house shook and tiles fell to the floor around us. "This guy here is CEO of Westcap EnviroTech, Simon Lut." Jesus. My dad's boss. He had been to our house for dinner. "And this is—"
I could hear the rush of blood to my brain. "FBI agent Jonathan Maxwell," I said weakly. I glanced up at the real world. Still no sign of him. Had he been a figment of my imagination?
"Indeed... and based on the furniture, lighting, and partial view out of the window, the meeting likely took place at a Super 8 Motel outside of Campbellsville, Kentucky, in springtime." If Desmond's face could display pride, I am pretty sure it would right about now. "It is pretty obvious that these merchants of death have no idea that they are being filmed. What we don't know is, who was carrying the concealed camera. Only that, whoever it was, wasn't very good at it… an amateur."
"I know who the cameraman is," I almost whispered.
"Luna! We need back-up out here!" I heard cries come from the adjacent room.
I turned back to Ezio, taking a few deep breaths, "We're getting creamed, I don't know how long we can hold them, so if you could cliff note?" As if to emphasize what I just said, the inner wall started to disintegrate as bullets punched through.
"Cliff note?" Ezio asked.
"Never mind, just hurry!"
"They were planning to export weapons technology to Russia, some sort of nano drones," Ezio continued.
"The drones. I've he
ard about the drones."
"The drones can be used to effectively deliver chemical or biological weapons in a more targeted manner than has been previously possible." A round hit Ezio in the shoulder and he stumbled backwards. "The US has something called the arms export control act. The president, no less, needs to sign off on any deal. Didn't sound like these guys were planning on calling the White House any time..." A second round hit Ezio square in the face and he went down for good.
Holy fury overtook me as I understood, finally, the depth of the betrayal… the treason. I could feel my jaw clench in real life as Luna picked the drive off Desmond's corpse and turned to join the ongoing battle. I rushed out into what was left of the living room. I could sense that my teammates were there, barely hanging on, but I didn't stop. I let my rage carry me out into the courtyard. I shot at everything and everyone, pumping lead into anything that moved. I didn't think, I just killed. Had my dad tried to stop this treason, or was he a part of it? I was overcome with shame for even having the thought.
When the dust and blood spray settled, I looked up again from my screen. Maxwell had gone from being a nuisance to being lethal, and I didn't know where he was. Cans of Jolt were littered around me and the pressure on my bladder was becoming unbearable. I wasn't about to do a George and pee in a bottle. Apart from the obvious risks involved when trying to hit a bottle with a vagina, I didn't want to draw unnecessary attention with that whistling sound Sarah had so helpfully pointed out.
I shut off the mic again. "Nick," I nudged his knee with mine. He turned from his screen and looked at me. I did the universal ‘cut it’ sign, and he cut his mic too.
"Lil, you look like crap," he said. "What did Ezio say?"
"I can't explain now," I said, nausea suddenly supplementing my exploding bladder. Would be a real shame if I short-circuited Speed Freak with my cascading vomit and wet myself at the same time. "All you need to know is that Maxwell is the enemy."
"Oh shit…"
"Yeah, oh shit. He double-crossed my dad and had him murdered," I said, jaw clenched, barely believing the words coming out of my own mouth. "Maybe he did it with his own hands."
Rajeev
If Tristan was anything, he was a jaded and cynical bastard. What little self-awareness he had was enough to know this. So, he was surprised when his jaw dropped. The landscape of computer screens and nerds stretched out before him was a truly awesome sight to behold. There were thousands of them spread across the floor of the cavernous hall. How the hell were they going to find anyone in this chaos?
Something caught his eye. In a corner of the hall, he spotted the letters FBI on a large rotating rectangular screen hanging over one of the corner booths. "What the hell?" he pointed to the corner.
Maria explained, "It's the new outreach program the PR people cooked up. You know, winning over hearts and minds."
"Christ... good luck with that."
They walked as briskly as possible given their clumsy outfits, over to the corner. They past gamers in intense battles, gamers sleeping heads on keyboards, gamers sleeping on floors, gamers stuffing their faces with Twinkies and Jolt, gamers making friends, gamers flirting. The booth was framed by screens flashing various corny messages about the FBI and career opportunities, with the motto scrolling on one side: Fidelity - Bravery - Integrity. Some glass cases along one wall exhibited tools of the trade, from flak jackets to weapons, to battering rams. A lanky 20-something with a sparse goatee and an FBI t-shirt stood handing out pamphlets to whoever was willing to accept one. One of the passing gamers took a pamphlet, threw it on the ground, trampled on it, and yelled, "You suck, pigs!"
The goatee tried to spin on the impossible, "That's exactly the kind of energy we're looking for! Do you know that the FBI can cover up to half of your student loans?"
Tristan walked up to the goatee and flashed his badge. "We're from the CGU HQ."
"Uhhh... Master Chief," the goatee said, swallowing. "You with the FBI now?" Tristan pulled up his helmet.
"Rajeev," Maria said, reading his name tag. She pulled off her helmet. "Let me be blunt, a girl's life is in imminent danger, and we need all the help we can get. We need to find her, we know she's somewhere in all this."
"Eh... Star Lord? You know I'm a civilian employee, right?"
"So? You've taken the oath, haven't you? You know," Tristan said, raising his right hand. "I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies—foreign and domestic."
"Of course, still, I mean, shouldn't you deputize me or something?" Rajeev said, beads of sweat breaking out on his forehead.
Tristan wasn't sure if he was joking or not. "Christ, fine," he said as he approached one of the glass cases and gave it a good smash. As the glass scattered across the carpet, he grabbed one of the FBI badges on display and an expandable baton and a flak jacket.
"You know I had a key for that," Rajeev said, looking at his destroyed exhibit.
"Giving you a gun would probably do more harm than good," Tristan said. "Here is some protection." He helped Rajeev slip on the flak jacket and pinned the badge on to his chest and said, "You are hereby deputized." Then flipped the baton expanding and then retracting it again, and placing it in Rajeev's hand. "A good whack on the head and the perp is out cold, a whack on the arm and the arm breaks, got it? You look like a cosplayer, you'll blend right in."
"Sure," Rajeev said, eyes widening. The poor kid has probably never even skinned his knees, let alone played touch football.
"We are looking for a gamer with the handle Luna, underscore, tic," Maria said. "Real name Lily Anderson."
"Alphacore corporate are not cooperating, citing a lack of warrant and privacy issues." Tristan continued as he unfolded the page he had ripped out of the yearbook and pointed to Lily's picture. "As we have no time for their crap, we need to find her ourselves before the other guys do." Tristan pulled out his Glock 19M, checked that a round was chambered, and re-holstered it, keeping the safety off. He pulled his helmet down. "Let’s go."
Seeing the gun, Rajeev hesitated, "I don't get it, why the costumes? Why not just send in the big guns and shut this shit down?"
Tristan stopped, turned back towards Rajeev, and pulled off his helmet again, his hair was already soaked in sweat. He got real close. "I shouldn't be telling you this, but we have reason to believe that the bureau has been compromised." Rajeev's eyes widened. "The fact of the matter is, we have to do this alone, us three." Tristan paused. "There comes a time in every man's life, Rajeev, where a risk has to be taken for the greater good."
Rajeev took a deep breath as if steeling himself. "I understand," he said, serious. He unpinned the FBI badge and slipped it into his pocket. "Probably for the best."
Blood Spray
Shrapnel whizzed by my head, along with what could have been brain matter. "Luna, goddamnit, haven't we talked about close-range use of explosives?" I looked over at Nuffian, he wiped blood off his face. It wasn't his blood.
"Sorry about that... not." I was still working on rage.
We'd been at it for nearly eight hours by now. It was approaching midnight. JRN had just wiped out yet another team. We had changed our tactics midway through, from defense to all-out offense—which I sometimes took a bit far. Enough teams had been decimated to make it less likely to be knocked out by some stray bullet and for JRN's superior skills to come into play. On the other hand, the teams that were left were, by definition, the best ones or the luckiest ones. I looked up at the sea of red lights, punctuated by the occasional green light. Above me, JRN's green light pulsated mercifully, a beacon of hope. I still hadn't seen Maxwell again. But the hate in the pit of my stomach told me, like a radar, that he was close.
"They could have sort of programmed in a break or two," George said. I glanced over at him. He was looking even less hot than usual, pale and sweaty, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. "I don't know what I would have done without my trusty throne."
The fact that there were no br
eaks meant that the competition became one of both mental and physical stamina. My eyes were sore, my wrists were experiencing some serious carpal tunnel syndrome, and my neck was so stiff I could barely see my fellow teammates. My brain was on overdrive, but felt like it was running on fumes and could crash and burn any second. I had heard that some of the professional teams had PTs and dietitians on staff nowadays, which suddenly didn't sound that crazy.
Many of the gamers stayed at their battle stations to follow the action, or pick up non-tournament games for consolation prizes. Others milled around the front stage or sat along the stadium seating provided along the sides, catching the action on the big screens. Others were probably off in Hall B scrounging for more loot. Still, others had passed out on the floor or with their heads on the table in front of them. Now that the number of green lights had dwindled, the number on the board stood at 165. Some gamers, eager to get close to the action, gathered around the remaining active battle stations, including ours.
I looked up at the screens on the walls above the main stage. They seemed to show what was being broadcast out to millions of viewers across the globe, selected action from the ongoing battles in Alphacore, cut with shots from real life in Hall A of gamers sweating away at their battle stations, cut with real-life commentators like Monday night football, holding mics and spouting platitudes (I guess as I couldn't hear them). Pictures of the gamers were captured by roaming camera teams and cameras moving along brackets in the sky. The battle scenes themselves were broadcast with a half a minute delay, according to Jamaal, apparently to prevent giving any team an unintentional advantage.