The Battle

by Karuna Riazi

  Before he could properly respond to that, she was settling down next to him, without even asking. He had to shuffle away quickly before their elbows bumped. He plopped down on the nearest bench.

  She followed and frowned down at the screen. “This was a cartridge game, right? Why is it taking so long to load?”

  “Maybe you were rough with it while you were playing Robin Hood earlier,” Ahmad grumbled, but without much heat to it.

  She said they were friends. Since when, and how? Ahmad was too embarrassed to admit that he had no experience with friends to his teachers, much less perfect Winnie Williamson. He tried to think back over the previous days and weeks but was interrupted by Winnie’s whisper.

  “Paheli.”

  At the same moment, there was a wash of scent in the air. Cardamom and scalded milk, with a deep musky undercurrent—like a favorite uncle’s leather jacket slung carelessly over your shoulders when you were cold, bearing with it the remnants of his last cup of chai and maybe a sweet crumbling in the bottom of his pockets—wafted under Ahmad’s nose.

  But he was stuck on the word. The hair rose on the back of his neck and he turned slowly to face her. “What did you just say?”

  Winnie blinked at him. “That is what you call it, isn’t it? That city you’re always doodling in the margins of your notebooks.”

  “How did you—”

  “You’re not the only one who looks around during class.” Winnie beamed at him. “Your drawings for art are amazing! That’s why I knew we would make a great team. Are you drawing the world from this game?”

  Winnie pointed downward and Ahmad followed her gaze. She was right. There were the blue-inked buildings of the skyline from his drawings on the case, and the odd flying rickshaws. When he hovered over the icon, it read in block letters: THE BATTLE.

  And then, in smaller print, Paheli awaits.

  “Is Paheli a real place or something?” asked Winnie. “Your sketches always look so real. It’s amazing.”

  “Honestly, I always thought it was something I dreamed up,” Ahmad admitted. “I traveled to India and Bangladesh as a little kid with my parents and sister. I thought Paheli was from those memories.”

  Except that it had always felt so real. Ahmad could never understand why the actual Taj Mahal and the experience of careening through Dhaka in the back of a rickshaw seemed dull and colorless in comparison to the new city cobbled together by his brain as he slept. It was a place of glittering palaces, of marble domes and marvelous creatures that he knew couldn’t be found anywhere else in the world.

  “I don’t think it’s an actual place,” Ahmad said again aloud. “So this is weird.”

  Winnie shrugged. “Won’t know until you play it, right?”

  She shifted on the bench, and Ahmad prepared himself to shuffle closer to the edge, but she paused.

  “Hey, what’s this?” She leaned in over his shoulder. Ahmad impatiently tapped his fingers against his rectangular Switch screen to zoom in on what she noticed.

  “It’s really weird, but this game seemed to come with some sort of bizarre avatar system, like one for a game you would play online,” Ahmad said, peering closely at the screen. “You choose them to represent your character. Oh, do you want one of the controllers?”

  “Yeah!” Winnie hummed distractedly. “Is it just me, or do these avatars seem really detailed?”

  “In what way?” he asked.

  She leaned in and tapped against the screen. “The hair on this one looks just like mine. All my frizzy curls. They look so real. . . .”

  Ahmad looked up at her.

  Winnie’s brow was furrowed. “Ahmad,” she said, “do you have something to tell me?”

  Oh no.

  He knew that tone of voice.

  It was the same tone Mrs. Evans used on him when she had her doubts about who actually started the skirmish at the lunch table or threw an eraser at her back when she was writing on the board.

  “No. Like what?”

  “You were just freaking out at me for following you home, but this avatar on the screen totally looks like me! It’s even the same shade of brown as me. Did you talk to your sister about me or something?”

  “I didn’t! I swear!” Ahmad spluttered. “I just—it doesn’t really look like you.” But he had to admit, it certainly did.

  Winnie raised her eyebrows and tapped her finger against the screen. Under her touch, the avatar twitched and shook out its—her—fluffy tight curls in a very Winnie way.

  “Well, maybe it does, but I really don’t know how! Honest, I don’t!”

  Ahmad really didn’t. He wasn’t the type of kid who was in school plays or exhibitions, so Farah had no opportunity to size up his schoolmates. Besides, this type of deliberate friendship arranging was more of Ma’s embarrassing style.

  But it was bothering him now: How could this be?

  Before either of them could say more, though, the machine in Ahmad’s lap caught their attention. “It’s ready,” Winnie whispered.

  Ahmad took a deep breath and clicked start. For a moment, the screen flickered—and then returned to the same menu. He growled in frustration. “All that time and it won’t even turn on?”

  “Let me try,” Winnie said, and took the Switch from his hands. She tapped one of the avatars—the girl that she said looked just like her—and dragged it to the center of the screen.

  They waited one moment.

  Two.

  Ahmad shook his head.

  “Forget it. Nothing’s working right today.”

  He reached out to take the machine back from Winnie. Their hands met over the avatar.

  With a sudden crackle and pop, the machine’s screen went dark.

  And around them, the world froze.

  CHAPTER THREE

  AHMAD DIDN’T NOTICE IT at first. He was too busy smacking the back of his Switch.

  “No, no, no! Please don’t do this to me!”

  He tried to tug out the cartridge, but it was good and stuck. Maybe it had been jammed in too tight, or Farah had sent him a bootleg of some sort. His thoughts jittered and jostled against themselves in his head.

  “Ahmad?”

  It didn’t help that Winnie’s voice had suddenly risen several octaves. Ahmad shook his head, pressing the power button.

  “Why . . .”

  “Ahmad!” Winnie shook his arm.

  “What?” Ahmad snapped, raising his head. “Gimme a minute. And stop shouting in my ear.”

  His voice trailed off as his eyes finally took in the world around him. The sun was still shining, and Winnie’s hand on his arm still sent little shocks of disbelief into his brain. So it took him a full minute to realize what was wrong.

  For the first time in Ahmad’s life, Central Park was entirely still.

  Nothing moved: not the pigeons dotting the pavement or the jogger in the distance, or the tree branches above their heads. Nearby, a mom leaning over a stroller did not lift her head, though her neck was craned at an awkward angle. The ice cream vendor’s mouth was frozen as he shouted a greeting to the unmoving businessman strolling by with a newspaper under his arm. A dog floated in midair with his paws off the ground, lunging for a Frisbee. As Ahmad and Winnie watched in horror, he did not show any signs of plummeting back to the ground.

  “What’s going on?” Ahmad breathed.

  “It’s like someone hit a pause button,” Winnie whispered back. But her hush was as loud as a shout. There was nothing to compete with: no honking taxis or loud radios. “But why? How could this happen?”

  Ahmad opened his mouth to respond. “Ouch, ouch, ouch! That hurts!”

  His Switch clattered out of his fingers and onto the pavement. Winnie seized his hand, turning it back and forth. “What happened?”

  Ahmad yanked it away, sticking his fingers in his mouth.

  “Ith burnth me,” he mumbled. A very small part of his brain was pointing out that Winnie Williamson was concerned about him, but the rest of him was too
freaked out to care. In his twelve years on earth, three things remained a constant: his family, his game consoles, and his beautiful city. And suddenly, two out of three were changing the rules without warning.

  What was going on?

  “Oh my God, Ahmad!” Winnie exclaimed, and pointed at the ground. Ahmad’s gaze followed her finger. The Switch, which had cracked against the concrete, was bleeding what appeared to be black blood. The dark mass spread out in a puddle, and Winnie tugged Ahmad up with her so that they both stood on the bench, hugging each other.

  “Is it supposed to do that?” Winnie asked.

  “I—I don’t think so.”

  One time when their parents were out at Baba’s office Christmas party, Farah and Ahmad had done a classic monster mash marathon. They’d watched Frankenstein, Dracula, Creature from the Black Lagoon, and The Blob. That last movie had been funny to Ahmad at the time. Who got scared of something that looked as easily smashable as Silly Putty?

  He understood it now—especially when the black . . . whatever it was . . . reached the edge of the sidewalk, and started creeping up, skyward, forming a wall of darkness in the midst of all the stillness. A low whine buzzed through the air, which itself was picking up into a fierce wind, blowing their hair over their eyes.

  “I don’t like this,” Winnie whispered beside him. “Ahmad, pinch me.”

  She extended her arm in front of him, without even turning to look and see how he reacted.

  “What? Why?”

  “That’s what you do when you can’t wake up from a dream, right? This has to be a dream. No, it’s more than a dream. It’s a punishment, because I—” She clamped her lips tight and squeezed her eyes shut. “Just pinch me, Ahmad. Please.”

  Ahmad swallowed hard. The little experience he had in friendship, based off enviously observing his sister and her best friends, hadn’t prepared him for a moment like this. Still, the black mass continued to spread, bending and warping around them to form a dark chamber. If this actually was a dream and waking Winnie up would rescue them both from it, he had to listen to her.

  Tentatively he closed the tips of his fingers around her arm. “Does that work?”

  Winnie’s eyelids fluttered, and when they opened, she looked like her usual determined self. “Not in the way I wanted, but it does prove it isn’t a dream.”

  “Why?”

  “The Ahmad I might have expected in a dream would pinch harder.”

  Before Ahmad could ask what that even meant, there was a resounding crackle. The black “walls” around them shimmered and popped with static, like a television screen.

  An oversized head bobbed to life from the scattered pixels.

  For a moment, Ahmad thought he was seeing something from The Wizard of Oz: that horrible face surrounded by green flames. But it wasn’t a mysterious, wizened wizard. It was a girl. She looked around their age, with a long pale white face, short blond hair, and a leopard print hat jammed over her ears. A lollipop rolled around her lips as she smirked at them.

  “Hello,” she purred. “That took a little while to boot up. I was supposed to do a trial run earlier, but I don’t believe in trial runs. It’s better to just launch in and figure it out as you go, right?”

  Ahmad and Winnie blinked at her.

  “What—” Ahmad started. “What are you?”

  The girl deliberately lifted a hand and turned it in front of her eyes.

  “Well, I’m not sure how native they are to your area of the world, but where I come from, I’m called a human. Also known as Homo sapiens.”

  “You’re not cute,” Winnie broke in harshly. Her cheeks were flushed, and her chest heaved. “Is this some sort of prank? Did you really waste a ton of money on some special effects and a projector or whatever this is to freak out two kids on their way home from school?”

  She looked angrier than Ahmad had ever seen her. It was both awe-inspiring and a little scary.

  The girl on the screen did not look as impressed. “And here I thought I wouldn’t need a monologue to get you guys started. What a waste of my time. If some people would just do their job . . . Okay, listen up.”

  She clapped her hands. Out of nowhere, there was the ear-popping wail of sirens and a canned applause track. Ahmad covered his ears and Winnie jumped, nearly jostling him off the bench.

  “What was that for?”

  “Congratulations!” the girl said cheerily. “You two are the latest in a long and privileged line to play one of the oldest and most exciting games the world has ever known, in its newest and finest rendition. Thanks of course, to yours truly, the MasterMind!”

  On the large, floating screen formed the blue, sparking words from Ahmad’s game cover:

  THE BATTLE.

  The words faded, giving way to a brief jumble of images: marble palaces, lush green courtyards, and an aerial view of a skyline that seemed more suited to India than New York City. Ahmad’s heart pounded.

  “Why does this all look so familiar?” he mumbled. He felt like he knew what the MasterMind was going to say next as she gloated about “state-of-the-art” levels and “immersive technology.”

  “The great city of Paheli,” he mouthed.

  And he was right.

  “. . . meaning that the great city of Paheli is bigger and better than ever,” the hologram girl gushed. “All new and upgraded for the twenty-first century.”

  Before Ahmad could say anything, Winnie interrupted, her eyes wide. “Paheli? You mean, Ahmad’s Paheli? Do you really expect us to believe this?”

  Before Ahmad could stop her, she hopped nimbly off the park bench. They both flinched as a sharp crack came from beneath her sneakers. The MasterMind gave a frustrated howl. “Look what you’ve done now!”

  Winnie gingerly lifted her heel. Beneath it, the black mass had shattered like the glass on a dropped phone screen. She looked at Ahmad with wide eyes. “This is real. It’s not special effects.”

  “It’s my screen, and now I’m going to have to waste time on repairs,” the girl seethed. “Oh, you’re going to be so sorry once the game’s started.”

  Ahmad’s heart was lodged in his throat. All of this felt so familiar in the worst way: games, and players, and Paheli. “This is real, Winnie,” he mumbled. “All of this is real. I don’t know how I know, but it is.”

  “Ahmad, are you serious?” Winnie flung out her arm toward the screen surrounding them on all sides. “This has to be a prank. It has to be. This weirdo heard us talking about Paheli just now and set up this whole reality TV show nonsense. This can’t be real.”

  “Look at his face,” the MasterMind jeered. “It’s starting to sink in for him, at least. But if you don’t want to believe me without some further evidence . . .”

  She waved a hand, and the screen directly in front of them shimmered out of existence. Disappeared into thin air. They were once again staring out across their frozen city.

  “What—” Winnie started, but a rustling in the tree beside them had Ahmad seizing her arm. Something felt very, very wrong.

  “Ask him if he’s made of smoke and mirrors,” the MasterMind’s voice floated over them.

  And then Winnie let out a shriek. “What is that?”

  Crawling deliberately down the trunk, every one of its beady eyes trained on them, was the biggest spider Ahmad had ever seen in his life—at least, while he was awake. He was sure he’d seen it in a nightmare one time, only different. With a metallic sheen to its fangs and an odd hum of a voice.

  Its back bristled with tan hairs, and with every step something seemed to pop and slide off them. Whatever it was crackled under the monster’s feet as it moved forward.

  “Sand,” Ahmad said softly, another of his strange dream-details popping into place. “Everything in Paheli is made of sand. This is a sand spider!”

  Winnie jerked him backward, her eyes glancing about wildly for some form of escape. “Okay!” she yelled. “Okay, we get it. This is real. Now make it stop!”

  �
�Already?” The girl’s disembodied voice sounded disappointed. “And you haven’t even given him a chance to have a taste.”

  But she snapped her fingers, and the spider dissipated into a pile of dust.

  Winnie slowly walked forward until the tip of her sneaker was in the dust. She kicked it tentatively, watching the dust rise, and then looked up at the screen.

  “Okay. So this is real. But what if we decide not to play this game of yours? Will you just keep generating scary spiders to rush at us?”

  “That does sound like an idea,” the MasterMind said, giving a horrible grin that made Ahmad shudder. “But I’d say the stakes are higher. I won’t give away too much, because what’s the fun in that? I will tell you, though, that the game tends to hold on to the players who can’t make it past the finish line.”

  That sounded bad enough.

  And then a horrible thought occurred to Ahmad.

  “This park . . . is the only place frozen right now, right? Our parents must be missing us.”

  That was an understatement. Honestly, his parents probably called the police by this point. Ahmad’s heart squeezed. It was just another way to disappoint them. But the MasterMind only smiled.

  “Are you kidding me?” The MasterMind rolled her eyes. “Wake up and get with the program. Of course they are frozen. You see, I’m the type of girl who goes for big plans. If I have to freeze any corner of this grubby, crumbling city you call home, why not take it all? And then maybe the entire world?”

  She waved her hand, and her face faded to an aerial view of the city. Ahmad and Winnie gasped in horror. It was all frozen. New York City, the city that never slept, was as still as a cemetery. Tourists’ feet hovered over crosswalks and little kids skipped in midair, never landing.

  “Go big, or go home,” the MasterMind said smugly as they stared at her handiwork.

  Winnie dug her fingers into Ahmad’s arm. “My parents,” she whispered.

  Ahmad stared at the screen, at the cheery couple in the middle of their kitchen. Winnie’s father was still reaching toward an open cabinet for a set of dishes. Winnie’s mother was frozen in laughter, her head thrown back.