Two in the Gut

by Siege, Matthew

  Some idiots were already testing out the friendly fire options, walking up to people and pumping twenty or thirty rounds into their chests, laughing with glee when no damage was done.

  It wasn’t just a cast of idiots, though. The merchants, they were the ones that obviously knew what was up. As I got close enough to inspect what was on those long folding tables, I knew that hardware like that wouldn’t come cheap and it wouldn’t come easy. There were some big players out tonight, and big players like that had to have big guilds behind them.

  Shit. That reminded me. Here I’d been walking up the street like a moron, trying to pretend like I belonged and I hadn’t even considered the fact that there was every chance that at least three Survivors out here knew exactly what I looked like.

  Winter_Will, Bonbon, and Harker. They wouldn’t miss out on the raid, not for anything. Maybe the rest of the Eternals never really did get a chance to log back in for whatever reason, but those three would be here, somewhere. And even worse, Deep Dive would’ve told them a bit more than what that systemwide message had let everyone know. It wouldn’t be hard for a company who lived squarely on the grid to grab my picture off of a dozen different sites and hand it out to the people looking for me.

  I didn’t have definitive proof that they were working more closely with the developers, but every sign sure pointed in that direction. They’d known Mark Stringer. They’d betrayed me, to get to the brick. I didn’t know exactly what knowledge they had, but those three were dangerous.

  I should’ve looked for a hat or a hoodie before I left the hospital, anything to try and disguise myself. I hadn’t though, and here I was walking up to a group of some of the best-outfitted Survivors I’d ever seen, and I was wearing my game face.

  Too late to turn back.

  Not really, but I had meant it when I’d spoken to Sasha a few minutes ago. If I got nabbed, it wasn’t that big a deal. Even if Deep Dive worked out who I was and captured me, I could probably talk my way out of it. Maybe if I played dumb and lawyered up, I’d be all right. I could probably even get a message to Lori so that I could let her know that I was in custody. She could tell enough people where I was to make sure that I didn’t just up and disappear.

  I swallowed hard. It was hard to be brave in the face of a conversation with myself that involved the possibility that I was going up against forces that could kill me. And worse, ones that might do so, if it was expedient.

  You sir, are in way over your fucking head, I warned myself.

  But what Deep Dive Studios had done to Blake Redhook was wrong. What they were using his game to do to the rest of us was even more wrong, and the newfound fighting spirit that I didn’t even know I had was burning brightly, an ember that the fear and the cowardice that I experienced in every other part of my life had yet to put out.

  I wasn’t going to go quietly. I wasn’t going to give up. Even if it were the best thing for me, I wouldn’t.

  I’d go down swinging.

  Some of the merchants and shopkeepers were selling armor as well as weapons. I thought about buying a helmet to conceal my identity, but the thought didn’t last long. I didn’t have any money, and I had nothing to trade. I didn’t even know what the economy here was like, and it wasn’t like there were price tags on things. I walked by the goods slowly enough and feigned enough interest in a few items to eavesdrop on several conversations, and they were all talking about rarity and salvage points.

  I was a gamer, and I could work out the basics of what and how they were trading, but I didn’t have any of it.

  Some of the places weren’t just selling weapons. They were selling vehicles, and one girl with the front of her hair dyed purple and the back of it blood red was shining her flashlight at a loaded Mustang on one side and a neon-blue armored van on the other. She had a spiel, and she went through it with all the flair of a well-practiced carnival barker. “Step right up and take your pick, one for speed and one for muscle. You want to be the first one to the hospital, right? Well, this is how you do it. Make an offer, and I’m sure we can turn a trade.”

  It was an odd situation. As I browsed the stalls and tried to both keep my head down and glean information, I realized how strange it must be on the Survivor side of things. In theory, today had been about salvage. The whole point of Sunday and all of its secrecy was to allow them to cement their place in the game for the week that was soon to start. Anything they grabbed, they could keep.

  At least until Saturday night, when the server reset again. But, if they were part of a Guild that was big enough or rich enough or smart enough, they’d have a Vault. And the really good stuff would go in there, safe from the wipe.

  But all this shit, cars and rocket launchers and a pile of grenades that looked like it came up to my waist? For a lot of the smaller guilds it wasn’t worth the space to store it or the manpower to protect it, and so they’d sell what they could. The prices would drop and drop and drop until the raid began and then they’d basically be giving the stuff away, if they wanted it to see action.

  When Sunday ended the Survivors would go on with their hard-won equipment, but Sasha and I would have already been slain, victims of Deep Dive and their Raid. Nothing more then dust on the wind, a story the other players could share without knowing any of the truth behind it.

  That was what my brain was telling me, and all of a sudden that worried me immensely. I forced myself to remember that we were all dust in the fucking wind, ashes flickering from the fire and dying away to nothing at all. Don’t forget that none of this is real, I told myself. All of it is smoke and mirrors, a puppet show played in your brain. We are in a sick man’s head. Your body is sitting in your rig. It isn’t glamorous, but it is fun. Despite the inhibitors, and all of the safety programs, you’ve been in here too long. You’re in your house, covered in your own piss and shit.

  Remember that.

  There were emergency systems, of course. When Absolute Reality had first come out everybody over the age of sixty had freaked the fuck out. They’d read way too much science fiction, and they had overreacted. The geriatrics were worried about people getting stuck in the game, and so by law, we had to have IVs and lifesaving solutions that could be pumped straight into our veins if things went to hell.

  It didn’t matter that everybody had told them that there were so many fail-safes in place it was impossible for all of their nightmare scenarios to happen.

  Well, those old idiots had been right. Everybody else was wrong, and I was sure that by the end of this I would be thanking my lucky stars that a bunch of old-timers had read Isaac Asimov, or whatever, when they were teens.

  Somebody bumped into me on my left, and I fought a little war with myself. The Zombie part of me wanted to reach over and throttle them as I lunged forward and bit a piece of flesh out of the side of the neck, then waited to see how long it took before they stood up and helped me on my quest to rid the server of every single Survivor.

  But even the Zombie side of me was a schemer. Maybe that was part of what was making this work, letting me fight back that initial reaction and allow the human side of me to hang on.

  I didn’t attack. Instead, I took a step away and muttered, “Sorry,” and they ignored me.

  The music was dying down, now. The party wasn’t over, but it was entering a new phase. It looked like groups of people were beginning to break off, and some of them had similar uniforms or had decided to all paint their weapons gold. I knew Guild meetings when I saw them, and this was going to be an issue. They’d never let me listen to their plans. There’d be too much competition for those big prizes, and cash was too often king. Even people as rich as these guys would want the prize, even if it were just to show off to the rest of their friends.

  Just as I was about to try and get in on the edges of one of the larger Guilds unnoticed, somebody clapped their hand on my shoulder hard and spun me around. “Hey, you’re new.”

  It wasn’t a question. “I am,” I said to a big bruiser of a
guy in SWAT armor and a riot shield. “Is that okay?”

  His beefy face reddened as he laughed. “Want to come with us? The Monster Makers are letting just about everybody into their guild, for now. They’ll boot us when it’s done, just so you know. But they’re trying to get a whole bunch of people in to see if they can win that prize, and a small share of something is better than a small share of nothing. Don’t you think?”

  I nodded.

  The guy kept going. “They’re letting everybody they recruit have invite permissions. I’ll send you an invite to the Guild, okay?”

  He must’ve been fairly new to Headshot, because instead of the practically instant reaction that I expected, it took a moment of concentration as his voice dropped off and his face got that slack look that I’d seen Sasha have when she was going through some of the more complex menus. It shouldn’t have been hard, but when the blank look was gone, and he was smiling at me again expectantly, I realized I was really in trouble.

  He’d obviously invited me, but I hadn’t gotten it because I wasn’t here. You can’t invite a ghost to your guild…

  THIRTY-TWO

  Awesome man, thanks for the invite!” I beamed, trying to err on the side of Academy Award Nomination as opposed to sappy telenovela drama llama. “I was worried that I’d have to go it alone.”

  The big guy looked confused. Obviously, he was expecting some notification that I’d joined the Guild and, clearly, that wasn’t going to happen. Time to sort this out. “Yeah, I heard about this happening a couple of minutes ago. Apparently, the servers are lagging, or something. The Guild invites are going through, but the people who sent them aren’t getting happy little responses to let them know they worked.”

  He shrugged. “There is always bugging out with this game, isn’t there? I hope they sort it out.”

  “So what’s the plan?” I didn’t want to be too eager, but I was hoping not to have to wait around, either. The longer I stood there, the less time I had to find out whatever I could.

  “Take a few minutes and move through the crowd. See if you can find anybody else who isn’t in a Guild and invite them along for the ride. It should be easy. Their name will be blue, just like yours.” He frowned, and I got the impression that this guy wasn’t a threat in the brain department. “Your name should be green to me now, but I guess that’s part of the server lag you were telling me about.”

  I froze, feeling like my feet were suddenly one with the asphalt beneath them. I shouldn’t ask because there was no way I could phrase the question without raising suspicion in the guy… But I had to know. For my peace of mind, at the very least. “I had some problems logging in. My name was even screwed up. What does it say above my head?”

  The SWAT guy looked at me long and hard. He had little piggy eyes, and they were starting to burrow into my soul. “Are you saying that you don’t know your own name, now? You aren’t playing on somebody else’s account, are you? It’s supposed to be really hard to do, and you can get in a lot of trouble for even trying. Didn’t you read the Terms of Service when you signed up?”

  I nodded blankly. “It’s nothing like that. The servers are-”

  He kept right on going, running over my words. “It says right there in black and white-“

  I jumped in and interrupted this time, eager to derail him. He sounded like the kind of do-gooder who would happily turn me in regardless of the offered reward. “Slow down, man. It’s not like that, and I already know that sharing is against the rules. Logging in took forever, and when it finally happened, my name was screwed up. I just want to know if it’s fixed, that’s all.”

  I couldn’t be sure if I’d thrown him off the scent. “You must be Russian, right?”

  This was getting stranger and stranger. “Why do you say that?”

  “Just a guess based on your name. I’ve heard it can be male too, over there.”

  His comment threw me. I could almost feel the gears in my brain grinding away, whirling faster and faster as I desperately tried to work out what this dude was trying to get at. Russian? What the hell was he talking about?

  I felt the urge to run shoot up my spine again, but I held my ground. He was still looking at me, and I was too far away from the barrier anyway. I had to remind myself that he’d made contact me with at the beginning of the conversation. These guys could touch me, and even if they couldn’t shoot me because of the friendly fire rules, they could probably just swarm me and drag me to the ground.

  The advantages I’d had as a phantom in the game were gone. I was at their mercy.

  And maybe they were at mine…

  And then the answer to all this name stuff finally hit me. “Sasha! My name says Sasha, then? Thank god it’s fixed. Not Russian, though. I just have crazy parents who wanted me to be stuck with something unique. “

  I must’ve been right about the Sasha thing because he went from wary as fuck to clapping me on the back like we were long-lost frat brothers. He pointed at a big group of gathered players that had shown up in the last couple of minutes. “You had me worried there,” he confided. “Head over in that direction. The Monster Makers are in charge, and their briefing’s about to start. Listen up, and maybe we can help them get that top prize. I’ll be there in a sec, right after I swap this shield for something a little more deadly.”

  He wandered off into the crowd without another look, clearly still keeping an eye open for more people to invite to the Guild. I ignored him and took his advice, joining the Monster Makers intro session.

  That stuff about my name was strange. The only thing that made sense to me was that I’d been too close to her account for too long, and when the game had been forced to rummage through whatever minimal information it had on me, it had assigned me a name and somehow dredged up something it shouldn’t have. Whatever slice of her programming I’d been piggybacking on didn’t come with the same countermeasures that she’d been running for the codes that should have been in contact with Headshot’s systems.

  Now that we’d been indirectly compromised, I had to be even more careful. With her name hovering above my head, if any of the Eternals spotted me it was even more of a certainty that they’d put the whole thing together.

  I was trying hard not to panic, even though I could sense that the odds of success were shrinking. I could feel them closing in around me, and I was surprised to find that I was actually getting claustrophobic.

  Global spanning corporation? Check.

  Random players out to get me? Check.

  And don’t forget the cherry on top, the name of my co-conspirator, the daughter of the guy whose mind we were living in right now, emblazoned above my head?

  Fucking check.

  Headshot hadn’t decided I was a Survivor, though. I couldn’t see anybody’s name, and even if I could, there wasn’t any point in trying to invite anybody. I’d graduated from specter to something else, but the game was still trying to work out what it would let me do. I was only partially here, and the more times the Deep Dive-controlled parts of the game were forced to check on my status, the more chance it would burst through whatever nonsense algorithm it’d come up with to explain my presence.

  I made a beeline for the briefing. There were about thirty-five guys and girls standing in a loose circle around a man in the middle. He had a blonde mohawk with alternating stripes of white and black, as well as some type of night vision goggles over his eyes. He was already talking, and it was odd the way he refused to take them off as he stared straight at everyone’s faces.

  If he was expecting us to read his expression through the gear, he was going to be sorely mistaken.

  The gathering had a lot of questions for him. It sounded like people were polite at least. He was answering everything they threw at him, and I had to admit that he was doing a good job of rattling off responses. If this was the guy in charge of the Monster Makers, I didn’t have a hard time believing that they were one of the preeminent guilds. Adding everybody to their ranks was jus
t a lark for them, but when I looked past him at the dozen or so massive trucks and the people handing out equipment out of the back of them, I knew exactly what his plan was.

  It wasn’t about the money Deep Dive had offered as a raid reward. He may even have been personally well-financed, but even if he wasn’t, I could see that the only thing he cared about was taking that prize from the other guilds.

  This guy was competitive. He struck me as the type of player that had been in the game since day zero, and bragging rights were far more important to him than a bank account.

  I realized that I’d been spacing out while building my mental profile of him, and I dragged myself out of my thoughts so that I could see what the hell was going on. “I hear what you’re saying,” he told a girl in a camouflage jacket and white combat boots that laced all the way up to her knees. She was wearing a skirt too, but it was so small that she probably shouldn’t have even bothered.

  She crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “And?”

  Mohawk smiled. “And you’re right. It might not be fair that you’re part of the Guild for now and then at the end of the day you won’t be. And if that’s not okay, then you’re free to leave. But I’d encourage you all to look at it as a learning experience. Use your time amongst us as an opportunity to see how the Monster Makers operate. And we’ll be watching, too. Make a name for yourself in the raid, and come Monday morning you might just find that there’s an invitation waiting for you when you log in. We’re always happy to accept the best of the best. It’s just your good fortune that this time we’re happy to accept rabble because we’re willing to prove a point to the other Guilds.”

  Some of the other players spoke up. A lot of them didn’t like being called rabble, although I had only to compare the gear they were carrying to the stuff coming out of the trucks to be damn certain that Mohawk was right about their place in the pecking order. It might not have been the most diplomatic way of phrasing it, but that didn’t make what he was saying a lie.