by Parker Tiden
"Yo, guys," I nudged Nick on my left and George to my right. Nick turned and nudged Jamaal on his left. "Strategy session." They all cut their mics and pulled in close. Nick was the nominal team leader, but this was my war, and I was gonna command it.
"So, we are so close to getting out of this round alive," I explained, "and I'm not going to let some treasonous FBI agent ruin it." George glanced over at his screen every few seconds to make sure we weren't waylaid in the middle of our session. "But we need to face the fact that we are fighting a two-front war, in two different worlds."
"Two-front wars have a tendency to end in disaster," Jamaal said. "Just ask Hitler." Nick rolled his eyes.
"As long as this round continues, we are safe," I continued. "I don't think Maxwell wants millions of online witnesses as he carts us off."
"Us!?" George yelped.
"Don't kid yourself, George, we're all deep into this shit," Nick said. "We're a team after all."
I glanced up at one of the massive screens in the front of the hall, and there, suddenly, I saw him. I'm sure of it. He was oblivious to being filmed, but there he was in a huddle with two others. I couldn't figure out where he was from the image on the screen. How am I supposed to fight an enemy I can't see?
George suddenly swiveled away and flipped down his visor. "We're under attack. Engage! Engage!" he cried as his fingers slammed into the keyboard. The other guys did likewise, getting right back into Alphacore. This was crazy.
"Luna, come on! We're getting slammed here!" Nick yelled. I put on my headset and flipped down the visor, just in time to duck as something harpoon-like whooshed passed Luna's head. I looked at my HP, I had less than 50 percent left. Must have been hit without even noticing it.
"Come on! Let's pull back," Nuffian yelled. "See those trees over there, I'll cover."
When JRN were in relative safety again, Nick ripped off his headset and turned to me. "What the hell are we going to do?"
I just shook my head and then stopped. "I think I've got an idea."
There was, by now, a significant crowd around us. Fellow gamers were gathering in the hope of witnessing live one of the top 128 teams finishing. Maxwell must be watching us, but I couldn't see more than six feet in any direction, my view blocked by a wall of nerds. Maybe the nerds can be turned to our advantage.
"You guys, we've got incoming." George looked worriedly at us. "You better get in the game now."
"Yeah, we've got incoming alright. On multiple fronts," Jamaal chimed in.
"Playing for eight hours straight can do a number on your mind," George said. "On one of my 36-hour marathons I started seeing—"
"This is not the time for a story, George," Nick sighed.
I looked up at the giant counter. 147 teams left in the game. Only 19 more teams needed to fall off the face of the earth. "Let's frag these mofos." I lobbed two grenades at the oncoming warriors. "Beyond fear!" I shouted.
"Beyond fear!" the boys replied in unison.
In less than a minute, the ModeratorsXX were toast, so was Girth. Smoke was rising from his contorted body, they'd got him with a flame thrower. George ripped off his headset and reached under his shirt, wincing as he pulled the electrodes off his nipples, and stood up. He was about to walk off when I reached up, grabbed him, and pulled him down hard into his seat.
"No need for violence!" he cried. "I need to take another leak, and you can't expect me to pee in a bottle in front of dozens of strangers, or millions of viewers!"
I toggled off my mic and leaned in close. "Haven't you been listening? Maxwell is here. Whatever the reason, it can't be good. You can't be separated from the group, you'll be too easy a target. We need to stick together." George grimaced, doing everything he could not to grab his crotch. "I'm holding gallons of pee and puke under pressure here too, you don't see me complaining," I said. "Man-up and use your skills."
I glanced up at the counter again. Other teams had been doing their jobs and the number was down to 132. Four teams left to kill. We were fighting fast and loose and taking risks. Jarno was down to 20 percent, Nuffian 35, Luna 48. I looked up at the giant screen and saw myself. Damn, that's the last thing we needed, our mugshots for the world to see. A roaming cameraman was standing not more than ten feet away.
Then, in my headphones, I heard a familiar rumbling. I turned back to Alphacore. Coming right at us, across an open field, was the black semi from the very start of the battle. It was dented, parts were falling off, one tire was out, and it was riddled with bullet holes. But that wasn't about to stop it from running us over. We were nestled behind a couple of boulders, not protection enough against a 40-ton weapon on wheels.
Nuffian was opening up on the remaining wheels of the truck as Jarno tried to sniper the bastard on the roof who was lighting us up with a tripod-mounted autocannon, powerful enough to blast chunks off the boulders.
"Guys, we stay here, we die," I yelled over the sound of approaching death. "Remember the plan!" I shouted. "I'm going." I swung over the boulder in front of me and started to sprint straight for the truck.
The bastard on the roof taking hits from Jarno didn't have time to react and train the autocannon on me. The driver grinned and gunned the truck even harder as he shot through his own windshield, shattering it and hitting me square in the shoulder. I stumbled briefly but recovered, down to 15 percent. The truck was less than 50 feet away now—I didn't have a plan, I just ran on a lethal mixture of adrenaline and fury. The truck was a second from smashing me into annihilation when I slid. I slid feet first, like a baseball player sliding into home plate, under the truck. As I emerged on the other side, I grabbed onto the back bumper. I used the truck’s own momentum to swing all the way to the roof of the trailer (lucky that the game’s adaptive algorithm even allowed this). I staggered along the roof towards the front. The bastard with the autocannon had no idea what was coming. My combat knife sunk into his throat and his knees buckled as he keeled over and slid off the truck.
Nuffian threw himself out of the way as the truck smashed through the boulders. Jarno wasn't so lucky as the truck slammed him into the ground knocking off the last of his HPs. "Shit!”
I clung on for dear life while the truck swung back to finish Nuffian off. I regained my footing and grabbed the autocannon mounted on the roof of the trailer with both hands. I aimed it downwards and into the truck's cabin below and let her rip. The sound was overwhelming as 20 MM explosive round after 20 MM explosive round punched holes into the cabin’s roof. The truck started swaying uncontrollably as blood spray blew out of the holes in the cabin like water out of a whale. I jumped off, landing hard and knocking off nearly all my HPs, just before the truck smashed into a grove of trees,
The crowd gathered around us went wild. I felt hands slapping me on my back. I pulled my eyes out of Alphacore and onto the giant screen in front of me. I saw Luna firing into the cabin on the 30-second delayed loop and heard the even larger crowd upfront in Hall A roar. The counter stood at 128. JRN had survived to fight in the next round—now all we had to do was survive in real life.
I flipped up my visor, ripped off my headset, and turned to Nick. His eyes met mine, sweat trickling down from his hair onto his temples. He nodded. Jamaal, to Nick's right, was already in motion. He was on his feet and moving in to shield me and Nick. George was a bit slower, but did the same on his side. They had their backs to us looking for the enemy. We had no plan for what to do if they encountered said enemy. The crowd was still closing in on us, some of the nerds even going in for hugs. Blondie yelled something into the sound system, but I couldn't take in what he was saying. I cast around wildly trying to find Maxwell, or one of his henchmen, but all I saw were pasty white kids with various stages of failed facial hair. I grabbed Nick's hand. We counted to three and then we were gone.
We slid off our chairs, down into the cable jungle below, and began a long crawl under the row of tables that stretched to the aisle. We dodged cables, shoes, soda cans, half-eaten protein bars, legs
, sleeping gamers, and wet patches that were better not to linger on too long. Behind us, something crazy was going down, but we couldn't stop to figure out what it was.
I crawled ahead and Nick brought up the rear. Speaking of rears, for a second, while fleeing for my life, I worried about how my rear might look to Nick as he crept behind me. I should have upgraded my jeans before going to the tournament. The row was coming to an end. I saw legs pass along the aisle. This was about as far as our plan had taken us. Which way to run?
Mosh Pit
Tristan heard the crowd go wild in the hall. He had no idea why, but there were a hell of a lot of excited nerds milling around. How were they supposed to find Luna_tic in this mess? Tristan as Master Chief, Maria as Star Lord, and Rajeev as Rajeev, had decided to split up. They started asking around if anyone knew where Lily or Luna was. They'd been at it for at least 20 minutes when, as Tristan turned into one of the countless rows of kids in front of computers, he was knocked sideways. His Master Chief helmet slid up and off his face. "Hey! Watch it, Bozo," someone yelled as Tristan grabbed the helmet just in time and pulled it back down over his face. He looked up and saw a face full of disdain and hate and, maybe, fear—Maxwell.
Maxwell continued right past him, clearly in a hurry and with a goal in mind. A couple of thugs, with crew cuts and bulging muscles under t-shirts and lousy leisure suits, were right behind him. They gave Tristan a shove just for good measure as they passed. Tristan briefly saw himself pull out his Glock and fire a hail of slugs into all three backs—an unproductive yet satisfying fantasy.
Tristan swiveled around in his plastic suit of armor just in time to see Maxwell charge into a sea of nerds like a bowling ball into pins. Nerds started to fly outward in arches to the left and right. But as one nerd was removed, two nerds came running to replace them. Total mayhem ensued, compounded by Alphacore corporate security in tight black t-shirts, like some fascist paramilitary group, joining the fray on Maxwell's side.
It was risky, but Tristan had no choice… he had to go in, for Lily's sake. The helmet made it hard to see, let alone fight, but he could still tell the difference between good and evil. He was discreet about it, slamming his fist into fascist kidneys, felling one security guard after the other as he made his way to where he thought Maxwell might be. By the time he'd reached the center, what security guards were left standing had formed a perimeter, behind which he saw Maxwell choke-holding a pasty fat gamer, and one of his leisure suite thugs was pushing some scrawny gamer’s face into a table while twisting his arm behind his back. The screams of enraged nerds trying to breach the perimeter made it impossible to hear what was being said. One of the nerds just in front of him took a swing at a guard with a keyboard and was immediately felled by a Taser to the neck. It became clear that these nerds had some pretty serious pent-up anger issues when a computer monitor came flying from behind Tristan, hitting a guard in the head and knocking him out cold. This only served to egg other nerds on, and more objects came flying, from cans to mice, to chairs.
Tristan could see that none of the gamers Maxwell had in his hands were Lily, let alone female. One of the thugs tapped Maxwell on the shoulder and pointed to the giant screen at the front of the hall. There, on the screen, was the girl in the yearbook picture. She ran past a camera, followed closely by some other kid. She was older, thinner, and sadder, but it was her. Maxwell let the pasty kid go and proceeded to extricate himself from the crowd, taking down any nerd that got in his way. He butted heads, elbowed faces, and kicked gonads on his way out, passing not five feet from Tristan.
Tristan was just about to follow when he felt a crack to the back of the head and went down. On the floor, he had a second to think that it must have been one of the guards he had punched in the kidney that got him when he was slammed in the stomach and nearly passed out. He looked up from the floor, all around him, a mosh pit of nerds and guards. One particularly angry guard stared right down at him with a foot in the air ready to stomp him in the face. Tristan squeezed his eyes shut and braced for impact, all the while cursing himself for his carelessness, for taking his eyes off the ball, for his general ineptitude, for not fighting hard enough for Charlie, and for not being the one who died in Helmand. But the stomp never came.
Instead, Tristan was pulled off the ground by both arms. "Let's get the hell out of here," Maria smirked. He nearly tripped over the bloody face of the guard as Maria led him swiftly through the crowd. He looked back, a shell-shocked Rajeev was bringing up the rear. Tristan could barely keep up, something was wrong with his leg, something worse than usual.
Beyond Fear
Those damn cameras wouldn't let up. We crouched along row upon row of battle stations. My brain was still tingling with the mental watermark of victory—like I had just walked out of an Avengers movie with the conviction of infinite possibilities. I hadn't felt like this since on the water with my dad. It would be a shame to die now.
I thought of George and Jamaal doing exactly as they said they would do, going beyond fear for the team. Going beyond fear for me, and meeting the enemy head-on, with honor. We still had no idea where we were going. I don't believe in fate, but I felt like something was guiding me, like someone was protecting me.
We came to where Hall A and Hall B intersected. I swung left instinctively, and pushed through two tall black doors marked ‘Do Not Enter’. We stopped cold as the doors swung closed behind us. Silhouettes of masts stretched out before us like a forest in nuclear winter. Hulking sailboat hulls towered in rows, their centerboards hoisting them into the air precariously like a giant's domino run. The boat exhibit lay deserted and dark. The only thing breaking the silence was a slight clucking as if there was a body of water somewhere in here.
"Come on," I whispered and pulled Nick along the carpeted aisles. I was thinking tactically like I didn't know I could. I must have honed the skill in Alphacore without ever realizing that it could come in handy in real life, like when you're being hunted by a homicidal federal employee. I kept thinking, escape route, vantage point, weapon, high ground, element of surprise, overwhelming deadly force.
I must have been to the boat show at least a half-dozen times. The club got free tickets, and my dad and I used to go and dream. We dreamt of sailing around the world, just the two of us, and would walk down the different aisles making fictional purchases of all the sailing stuff we would need: life raft, man overboard module, water maker, submersible emergency pump, sonar, radar, satellite phone, ham radio, autopilot, binoculars, fishing gear. And, of course, a boat. A 50-foot beauty that could carry us through the roaring 40s and furious 50s of the Southern Ocean, help us outrun pirates in the Indian Ocean, and dodge supertankers in the Singapore Strait. We would snorkel with amberjacks and yellow-tailed grunts off the Galapagos, run on the endless beaches of the Maldives, round Cape Horn on Tierra del Fuego, and anchor off Sydney Opera for lunch. All dreams of a life with my dad… a life that was no longer mine. A life that had been stolen from me.
We had just turned down the water sports aisle, somewhere in the middle of the exhibit, when I heard Maxwell behind us.
"Lily! Come on now. I know it's you."
I wasn't about to waste my home court advantage. We stopped in front of the fishing gear. In one of the cases lay a beautiful mahogany spear gun. No one had bothered to lock the case, so I just slid the door open and grabbed the gun. It had a two-foot steel-tipped spear set sweetly in its rail. I pressed the butt of the gun against my stomach and, with about as much force as I could muster, pulled back the two heavy-duty rubber slings. The gun was ready to fire.
"Here, this one's for you," I handed Nick the spear gun.
"Gee, thanks!" he whispered. "What do you expect me to do with this?"
"Use it." I handed Nick a spare spear. "In case you miss."
"Miss what?"
I heard Maxwell again, closer this time. "Just hand over the key, Lily! That's all we want! We won't hurt you!"
We rushed past fishing poles, tackl
e, fins, wet suits, tubes, wakeboards, surfboards, and water skis. Finally, we came to what I'd been looking for—the safety aisle. We were halfway down the aisle when I stopped. I pulled on one of the cases, this one was locked. That wasn't going to stop me. I kicked the case, the lock broke off with a pop loud enough to give away our location. I grabbed the biggest flare gun I could find and stuffed a handful of flares in my pockets. I wasn't sure if you could actually kill anyone with a flare gun. I think I might have heard of someone shooting a charging bear with one once. But would it stop a charging, corrupted, lethal, bastard of an FBI agent?
“Let’s go,” I said as we set off again, weaving down the aisles. I heard steps and voices behind us, sometimes close, sometimes far away.
"Is that him?" Rajeev asked, pointing to the giant screen above the main stage. They saw a man in a suit, filmed from above and behind, push through two giant black doors followed by the two goons.
"Damn if it isn't," Tristan said, surprised at his own luck. The picture cut away to show some random kids. They scanned around them, desperately trying to match what they had just seen on the screen with their own surroundings.
Rajeev pointed toward the back of the main stage, "Looks like it's this way." They rounded the main stage and kept going toward Hall B, weaving in and out of nerds as they went. Just before they reached Hall B, they stopped, and there in front of them were what looked like the doors they had seen on the screen.
As the three of them stood at the doors, ready to push in, Tristan realized to his dismay that Maria wasn't wearing her flak jacket. She hadn't got it to go with her Star Lord outfit. Maxwell had murdered twice, at least, and wouldn't hesitate to do it again. He looked at Rajeev, pathetic with his baton.