Two in the Gut

by Siege, Matthew

  From even a cursory glance I could tell that there was a lot here worth grabbing, especially if all she had to do was skim the pages to unlock the abilities held within. Sasha wasted no time, practically ripping off her backpack and unzipping it before stuffing it with book after book. She moved so quickly that I could only catch a few of the covers, but I liked what I was seeing.

  Remote Systems: A Sense of Self in the New Information Age

  Applied Sciences: How to Draw Technical Schematics

  And then, on the top shelf, a gold mine. Whoever had put it up there must have had some sort of death wish, because a book that thick should really have been called a tome. This one, in particular, was so imposing that Sasha needed both hands even to lift it. There was a chance that she’d be able to fit it in the backpack along with the other books she’d just stashed, but it would take some doing. Even then, the backpack would become a huge liability, an anchor strapped to her body that would both slow her down and make all her movements into an unbalanced, ungainly ballet of awkwardness.

  Still, as she flicked through it and I crowded close to look at the blueprints and the technical specifications, I knew that there was no way we’d be leaving it behind. When she closed it again, the gold embossing of the cover gleamed up at us.

  A Technical History of Useful Ideas and Remarkable Patents

  My eyes just about fell out of my head. Whatever she had to leave behind to bring this with her would be worth it. Sasha had chosen to be an engineer and that meant that she was only as good as the things that she could either repair or create.

  This one manual alone could be make or break, and I could see by the look on her face that she knew it too. I had no idea how rare these things were, but the sheer speed with which she crammed it into the backpack and then leaped to her feet told me just about all I needed to know.

  This was a windfall, but it also put a target on her back. I don’t know how long it would take for her to get these schematics into her brain, but until she did, there was probably a whole bunch of people willing to fill her with lead for the privilege of taking it away from her.

  The right thing would’ve been to retreat. I couldn’t imagine that she didn’t need a quiet place to digest all this information. Knowledge might be power, but only if you could make use of it. Sasha needed to cut and run.

  I was sure that she knew that too, but even so, I watched her hesitate on her way past the 620s. That was where the hardcore engineering stuff was tucked away. I could see her get greedy as she slowed, and the sinking feeling in my stomach told me that I was right. Sasha was going to hang around and grab a few more things, despite the fact that it meant that she’d be stuck in this library for longer than she had to be.

  She ran her finger along the books, and now I realized exactly why it was going to be so hard for her to walk away. Right next to the engineering books were the medicine ones. I was sure that all the human anatomy and physiology stuff would have been able to boost her ability to heal wounds and fight off infection, but if she were smart, she would leave them here to line someone else’s backpack.

  “Come on,” I told her, my voice creeping me out because it didn’t echo in the big open space. It was just one more clue that it wasn’t really here, not even in the way that a computer simulation would’ve pretended. Headshot wasn’t bothering with the niceties for me, and now that I knew how hard it was for it to make the world for all of the players, the fact that it didn’t think I was worthy of that type of processing power told me all I needed to know.

  The servers didn’t know I was here. The game couldn’t see me. I was a phantom in this place, the spirit that could haunt the code but never really impact it.

  Sasha didn’t react to my voice, but that didn’t shut me up. “This is dumb… You and I both know that we’ve got better places to be. Take whatever you’ve already pilfered and get the hell out of here, or I guarantee you’re going to regret it.”

  It didn’t work. I had known that it wouldn’t, but the fact that Sasha didn’t even flinch when I spoke right into her ear somehow made me feel even lonelier than I had before.

  Don’t start feeling sorry for yourself now, I growled. This isn’t a vacation. Keep your eyes on the prize. Besides, what difference does it make if Sasha overplays her hand in here? Even if she does get taken out, it’s Sunday. She can just respawn.

  And you’d do well to remember that she’s as much the enemy as any of these Survivors are. No going soft on me, you hear?

  But when she spoke, my heart banged away in my chest for an instant before I realized that she wasn’t speaking to me. “There are book bags behind the main desk,” she said, obviously remembering their location from a previous playthrough.

  I sighed. The only reason to be worrying about more book bags was that she was going to be dragging along more books, and that meant that Sasha’s survival instincts had been overridden by her desire to make the most of her time in the library.

  Even if it killed her.

  But I had to roll my eyes at how melodramatic I was being. We’d been here a while already, and once we got in the front door, the place seemed pretty safe. I couldn’t even hear random gunshots outside anymore and if I had to guess I would say that the sniper had decided that Sasha wasn’t worth the mile-long hike and moved on to other, easier targets.

  She was probably right about the fact that there would be book bags downstairs. In my experience, libraries were so hard up for funding that they would take just about any opportunity to turn a buck. The one near my house was pretty notorious for weekly book sales and charity drives, not to mention an annual $500 a plate Christmas dinner with the proceeds going straight back into the community.

  Sasha left the heavily laden backpack behind and spun on her heel, hurrying down the main stairs again. I didn’t have much choice, and so I followed her. I think that she was trying to convince herself that she wasn’t making the wrong decision, but she was amped. Judging by the quickness of her stride and the way her eyes flicked back and forth to scan the darkness of the library foyer again, I knew that she was aware of the risk that she was taking by staying here even this long.

  She was on the customer side of the main desk, but I stepped behind it and started to look around. Sure enough, there was a stack of cheap Hessian bags back here with the Silicon Valley logo emblazoned across the front in red ink. Beneath that it said, “wear the old coat and buy the new book.”

  I watched Sasha fight the urge to hop over the desk and instead come around the same way that I had. She was obviously concerned about making too much noise, and I was heartened to see that she hadn’t completely forgotten her survival instincts in a rush of loot fever and greed.

  I hoped that it wouldn’t make a difference, though. If someone was close enough to hear her boots crunching through the broken glass that littered the floor, then they were near enough to rush her from the darkness and probably take her out.

  I’d watched enough play by now to have come to terms with the fact that even though she was careful, she was way too cocky. I guess it was to be expected. After all, she was the daughter of the guy that designed the game. And if that weird security footage could be believed, she had been there at its inception.

  If I’d grown up in a similar situation, I wouldn’t be any different. I’d bet on myself in any situation, and the more I won, the more I would grow to believe my own hype. How long before I thought I was bulletproof? How many weeks of kicking ass would it take before I accepted that there was nobody in the game who could beat me?

  It wouldn’t take long.

  She also had to take into account the fact that any little injury she picked up along the way in here would add up. Something as simple as a sprained ankle might slow her down enough to rob her of whatever advantages she thought she had, and without the ability to heal it just might be enough to turn the tables.

  As she reached around and found the little hidden latch on the metal gate that separated the back
of the desk from the front of it, I realized with a jolt that I hadn’t had to bother. I’d gone right through it…

  By way of experiment I reached out and tried to force my hands through the wall behind me, and now I was surprised to find that it was solid. What the hell was going on? Was I a ghost or not?

  When Sasha stepped past me and grabbed three or four of the Hessian book bags, I tried something else. I closed my eyes and willed myself down to the ground, and when that didn’t work, I risked feeling like a complete moron and trying to fly. Or at least hover…

  Nothing.

  Okay, so I still had to follow some of the rules but not all of them. The trick was working out which ones were which, and so I started with the one I’d just broken accidentally. I walked through the closed gate and, just like the first time, I didn’t feel a thing as I phased through it.

  Right. I tried it with the desk and was only rewarded with a nasty jolt. I didn’t know why it didn’t work, but it didn’t. Maybe there was too much virtual material that went into the creation of the damn thing. Maybe it was coded differently than the gate. Whatever the reason, it seemed like my newfound superpower was just about useless.

  Sasha didn’t know any of this was going on, of course. Even though it would’ve been a bit embarrassing for her to see me try to take off for the rafters or step through the desk unsuccessfully, I’d have taken that in an instant over the reality that I was forced to live in right now. This was worse than being ignored.

  Shadowing Sasha like this was starting to make me question my own existence, and not for the first time the dark thoughts crept into the corner of my mind. How long until this drives me mad?

  How long before I break?

  Cut that shit out, I told myself. Whether Headshot is running under time dilation or not, it hasn’t even been that long, so suck it up. Nobody put a gun to your head and made you crawl into that Vault. You’re the one that broke the game, and if the worst that happens to you is that you get ghosted for a week, then you got out of it easy. The rig’s IVs will kick in, if you start to dry out…

  Sasha, never one to miss an opportunity to grab something that might be useful later, had yanked open all the drawers back here and was going through them with a fine-tooth comb. Whatever she found she plunked on top of the desk, and that made it easy for me to see what treasures she’d discovered so far.

  A box of pens, a whole bunch of little sheets of paper for taking notes. Stamps and stamp pads. A cigarette lighter.

  Nothing earth-shattering, that was for sure. I thought that the whole thing would be as disappointing as the first few items had been until I saw her eyes light up and a wicked little smile find a home on her face.

  And she didn’t leave me in suspense, either. An instant later I heard the jangle of what I thought was another set of keys but what turned out to be, as she slapped it down victoriously on the desk in the middle of the rest of the junk, a pair of sturdy-looking handcuffs wrapped in faux pink leopard skin.

  I didn’t care if she could hear me or not, I laughed anyway. It was hilarious. I didn’t know why Headshot would decide that this was an appropriate moment to insinuate that the librarians at the front desk were hiding sexy handcuffs, but the fact that it had cracked me up.

  It was the perfect amount of randomness and insanity. The handcuffs were just enough to embarrass and not enough to get fired over, especially if you were smart enough to keep your mouth shut and not admit that you were the one who put them there in the first place.

  I wondered how they determined what was in these drawers. How realistic was it? I didn’t know how possible it was, but it seemed too out of place to just be random. Were we supposed to believe that there really was a pair of handcuffs in this very drawer in the real world?

  And, far more importantly, was there?

  At first, I found their inclusion funny, but the more I got to thinking about it the scarier it was. Sasha’s father had made this place, but now she wanted to burn it to the ground. Even worse, and far more damning, it was getting harder and harder for me to convince myself that she would be doing it without his blessing.

  I couldn’t pretend that she was just some jealous psychopath out for blood on a whim. No way. From what I could see, she didn’t even take pleasure in the hacks that she’d successfully pulled off so far. If she legitimately believed that Headshot needed to be taken apart from the inside, then she’d have a damn good reason for it.

  And what better reason could there be than the game spying on all of our brains at once? There were laws against it, but as long as you didn’t get caught, they didn’t have to worry about the legality. And Absolute Reality was so far ahead of the courts that they would basically be untouchable.

  It didn’t look like Sasha was sharing any of my suspicions, though. She scooped up the stuff she’d found in the drawers, handcuffs included, and jammed them into the pockets of her coveralls before grabbing the book bags again and rushing back upstairs.

  It seemed like we’d been here forever. I didn’t like it, and with each passing second, I found my gaze drifting back to the front door. If this place was as valuable as Sasha seemed to think it was, where was everyone else? Why wasn’t it crawling with Survivors by now?

  Even if I let myself believe that a few of the scavengers had been scared off by the sniper outside, I knew gamers. They would be more than willing to get their head blown off if it meant a chance to get their hands on things that would boost their skills in the game.

  So where was everyone? And why wasn’t Sasha bothered by that as much as I was?

  Because she knows what she’s doing, moron. She’s the one that’s played this a million times, not you. Why don’t you shut up and take her lead?

  Maybe. And maybe she just played so much Headshot that she took a lot of it for granted.

  Either way, after she hurried through the darkness with the aid of the LED flashlight and completed the short hike back to the 620s, at least she didn’t waste any time cramming the book bags full to the brim. There was some good stuff here, but even though it was the reason that she had come back in the first place, I didn’t see anything worth risking her life over. It was obvious to me that the real prize was that big tome she’d found in the first place, but trying to argue with her was like screaming into the wind.

  Finally, she got the backpack on again, hefted all four of the bags in her hands, and then got to her feet. It was a good thing that she decided to put those extra points into strength because there was no way that the average player would be able to lift all that extra weight at once. Not without a movement penalty, at least.

  I could see that she was pretty damn proud of herself. She’d made a judgment call to go back for these books, and it turned out all right, and instead of the shit hitting the fan she was going to walk out of here with enough knowledge to rebuild the whole fucking city if she wanted.

  Of course, that was when she heard it. The crunch of glass from downstairs. The scuff of a footfall on the way up the stairs.

  The unmistakable sound of the fan cranking up to full speed and a massive pile of shit impacting the blades.

  ELEVEN

  At least she didn’t panic.

  It would have been easy enough to do. Hell, I probably couldn’t even get shot and my first instinct was still for her to drop the dam bags and for us to run like hell. Sasha had theorized that she had time to plunder this place, and it turns out she’d been wrong. No shame in that, as long as she was willing to realize that the game had changed.

  We were in a completely new phase of things now, and unless I missed my guess, all previous theories were about to be thrown out the window.

  Headshot had always been billed as an evolving game. It was one of its many appeals. The developers had never hesitated to throw a stack of wrenches into the system, and as soon as one group of Survivors worked out exactly how to beat the game, they quickly found that their strategies had to change.

  The people that didn’t
like the game were always saying that it was just the same apocalypse over and over. That wasn’t true, not really. Every week things were different, and even though the basic Zombie versus Survivor dynamic didn’t waver, every week there was a raft of new variables to take into account.

  Sometimes the streets were already littered with corpses and other times they were as pristine as the day the city planner had first whacked one of those bullshit artist renditions into the 3D software so that he could peddle it to the Council. Sometimes the sun never came out no matter what type of day it was. Once the power had still been on. I could even remember a time when it was clear that a different Apocalypse had hit the world before the zombie one, one that looked alien to me.

  Regardless of the week, there were subtle differences from one game period to the next. They didn’t necessarily change the outcome, but they forced the Survivors to evolve along the way.

  But I could tell right away that this guy coming after us wasn’t the same as any of that. This wasn’t a random permutation that Deep Dive Studios had decided to spring on the player base.

  Suspecting that wasn’t going to help anybody, and so I finally worked out that the best thing I could be doing right now was getting off of my ass. Sasha hadn’t panicked, but she had frozen against one of the bookshelves. It was smart since moving would draw whoever was stalking her in the right direction.

  But I was a ghost. I couldn’t be seen, and if I was just going to stand here and let her get taken down, then I was as useless as I’d always feared that I’d turn out to be. I darted toward the stairs, and sure enough, when I got to the top of them, I could see him about a quarter of the way up. He looked completely unlike anything I’d ever seen in the game before, dressed in black with a helmet that reminded me far too much of Blake Redhook’s initial drawings.