by Terina Adams
Jax focused on the rest of the group. “Nothing changes, guys. You know what to do.”
An impressive warrior in sea green, scarred across his shoulder and down his chest, strode toward me. “Pretty cool, huh? The scars make me look rough, don’t you think?”
Since he’d changed his voice in Dominus, to a deep rumbling tone, the enthusiasm bleeding through his voice was my only glue to who it was—Patrick. “You’re looking pretty hot.”
“It’s an image. I’m not very good in Dominus.”
“You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t good.”
“That’s a matter of opinion.”
“Holden, your party approaches from sunder. I suggest keeping Reg and Malvo at the bottom. You and Sable can secure the top with Elva and me. We’ll enter from moondine. I want everyone coordinated. Once we’re in, no one enters, no one leaves.”
That was what it meant to be GM. Holden subordinated himself to Jax’s command, as did the other Persal. Without another Persal at the top of the hierarchy, it meant Aris ruled.
“We split as soon as we’re in game mode. I want you at Central no later than thirty. You run into trouble, you sound the warning. We’ll hang back until you arrive.”
“Gotcha,” Holden said.
Orders delivered, Califax City appeared in front of us, rendered in the beauty that was game mode. I was beginning to pick out landmarks, like the obelisk and Dome, plus a mountain range bordering the city on one side, running moondine to sunder. I would perhaps be able to pick the direction of Persal HQ, a handy backup in case things went terribly wrong. At least at Persal HQ, I wouldn’t be attacked. A digital timer on the right of my vision now joined everything else on the screen. Already the numbers were counting down.
“Why didn’t you guys give us virtual maps?”
“Ups the stakes,” Holden said as he patted my back.
A looming monolith of metal and glass rose above the buildings surrounding it. In the background, the Dome was the only piece of architecture taller than the Central Airways terminal. Tiered platforms stacked ten high serviced a myriad of skytrains, which came and went like bees swarming a hive. Air traffic converged from one side; the other was for departures. Once away from the terminal, the skytrains diverted onto their path and zoomed off around the city and beyond.
I moved up beside Holden. “How do we stop the skytrains from coming and going?”
“There’s a coms room in the glass bulb at the top. We’ll breach that first with the help of Jax and Elva and divert all traffic. We’ve lost minutes already. Let’s go.” He sounded like Jax when barking orders.
Reg and Malvo followed Holden as stone-faced avatars, their powerful legs striding down the paving. Remembering the last time we’d played and how neutral bots could turn nasty real quick, I quick stepped to catchup with Holden. Jax and the Aris party were nowhere to be seen, meaning there were only four of us to deal with any trouble along the way, or maybe I should say three since I would not include myself as a fighting force.
With his long legs, Holden kept the pace high. I knew the reason. The longer we were in transition to the tower, the more likely we were to be attacked. Right on cue, a harsh cry came from behind. Malvo responded swiftly and buried his sword into the bot’s chest. I looked away when blood seeped around the blade and down the warrior’s chest to his stomach. Why did they have to make that part so real?
Holden grabbed my hand. “Pick your pace up. One attack tends to trigger the rest, and I want to reach the tower before the horde descends on us.”
So did I. Would four fighting be enough to survive level five?
Malvo caught up within seconds and he and Reg dropped behind, both with their swords at the ready. I flicked a glance all around, darting my eyes from one bot to the next as they kept appearing out of nowhere, a ceaseless wave directed at us. Something inside my mind shifted like a slider door opening. I glanced at my power status bar to see it had shifted to orange, but my skills and health status bars remained unchanged.
A female bot dressed in a small yellow leather fight suit spun in front of us and raised her ball and chain over her head while bellowing a war cry. On instinct, I reached for my tri-blade, held within a belt that appeared at my waist the moment I chose it.
As if her cry sounded the alarm, a few more bots hurled toward us from the side. Reg and Malvo, coming up the rear, confronted those, leaving Holden and me to deal with the lethal-looking female.
Everything ran through my head in one nanosecond, a dozen defensive moves, counter offenses, and attacks. My skills status bar turned orange, which meant I was thinking the right sort of defense. The ball and chain she swung around her head formed a protective shield; I wasn’t getting close. I risked a distracted glance sideways to see Holden hung back, giving me the clear.
“Make this your kill, Sable. It will give you a good head start.”
It sounded wrong—my kill. This wasn’t how it should be, but in Dominus there was no way out except to play through to the end or death. It didn’t matter how I felt or what I wanted. I needed to make this my kill. My skills status bar had not increased, but at least it wasn’t back in green. My power status bar was the one to keep a watch on. Already it was tinged a deeper orange. The result, perhaps, of all my training with Holden, my factional nature sliding through more readily without too many barriers.
The woman approached, eyeing us both, swinging her ball and chain from side to side, swapping it from hand to hand as if to show us she could handle her weapon from either hand equally well. Two enemies made her cautious.
The tri-blade felt light. I positioned it into a pinch grip at the tip of one blade and waited with my blood rushing through my ears, adrenaline spiking, sending a tingle through my limbs. One inhale and I forced some calm into my body and channeled my focus on my opponent, noticing the minute detail, like the way she favored the right side for her weight, which told me she would likely use the right hand to wield her ball and chain. The computer liked my tactic as my skills status bar increased, sliding farther to the right.
Her move opened up her left side. My dominant side was my right, which couldn’t be more perfect.
Our moment stretched to infinity, but the mission niggled at the back of my mind. One hour was all we had, not enough time to waste on every fight we encountered.
The ball and chain swung like a pendulum in front of her. I followed its arc while, inside my head, gears churned and barriers rattled. My factional nature wanted out. Heat tunneled through the recesses of my mind, expanding, forcing through cracks in the defenses I mounted to keep it in. The training with Holden strengthened my ability to access my factional natural, but it also welcomed it in, made my restraints weaker.
My power status bar inched up farther, melding the orange with the red. If I released destruction now, I would end this, but I would also end my party. I dug my nails into my palm to force my concentration, force my factional nature behind whatever barrier I could find. My heart jumped around in my chest, and I could feel myself losing my grip, feel fear sliding through. It would make me sloppy and the unleashing of my factional nature chaotic.
Her attack was so sudden, I froze for the split second it took my mind to catch up. A flood of adrenaline seared through my body, burning as it went, weakening my hold on my power. Pressure built inside my head, hot, sharp lancers, as my factional nature nudged to the surface. My power status bar edged up to red. If it flashed, I was done for. I couldn’t get out of the game without frying my brain for not reaching my kill quota nor completing the mission, but if I remained inside with a flashing power status bar, my brain would also fry.
The tri-blade left my hand, an unaimed throw as a force knocked me sideways. I crashed to the ground with Holden coming down heavily on top and the whoosh of something heavy splitting the air above my head. With the loud crunch of the ball and chain hitting the cobbles, we looked to the warrior on her knees, the tri-blade protruding from her chest. Blood pooled around
the wound and spread fast, stained her yellow outfit red, then dripped to the paving.
Holden climbed off me, then hauled me to my feet. “That was close. Another second and you would’ve been wearing the ball as a headdress. Good shot though. One kill down. You’re on your way to reaching your quota.”
I looked away from her bloody chest, then spun and bent double as my stomach threatened to release. “Why does that not please me?”
My skills status bar sat in the red. The computer disagreed with my mood. With the threat over, the pressure inside my head eased, decreasing the color on my power status bar from the light red back to deep orange. To my left, the kill score changed to one. To the right, the number changed to nine. Nine more kills were needed. I pressed my hand into my stomach and inhaled to soothe the shake in my hands.
“You’ll have to get used to it. It’s part of the game.”
“Do they have to die so realistically?”
“It’s just a game.”
“No, it’s a desensitizer.”
Holden rested a hand on my shoulder. “You stress too much. Come on, let’s get to the tower.”
I glanced to the digital counter to see the numbers whizzing down too fast.
Feeling sick with seeing so much blood was stressing too much? This was a side of Holden better hidden.
In an instant, the warrior vanished along with any trace of her—like the blood that had pumped from her chest—leaving my tri-blade to clatter to the cobbles, clean. I stared down at it, hesitant to pick it up, clean or not, but Reg swooped in and did it for me.
“It gets easier,” he said, handing me my weapon.
Why should it? How was it right to train to find killing easy? If I wasn’t feeling so depleted and flat, I’d make an argument of it. If the clock wasn’t ticking toward our demise, I’d refuse to move until I made everyone realize the reality of Dominus. This was a game now; soon it would be reality. Instead I kept my mouth shut and followed the rest of my party. The people who were supposed to be my family.
“You did well to contain your power. But it’s all right to use it,” Holden said once we were striding away from the kill zone.
“I still don’t feel confident in controlling it.”
“You’ll only get better if you try.”
I kept my eyes ahead, unable to look at his avatar face, a fabrication, just like the game. But underneath the game was a reality, so too underneath the avatar was a man willing to reach deadly limits to fulfill his belief.
“Not with you guys around.”
“I have more faith in you than that.”
“Shame I don’t have it in myself.”
I couldn’t help but glare at him. Feeling my eyes on him, he turned and winked, something that came through on his avatar’s face, but kept silent.
“Can I just say this game sucks.”
“You’ll grow to respect it once you see yourself improve.”
He strode on, which I took to mean end of conversation.
I’d somehow managed to divert my powers from harming him the other day and instead blew the roof off his club, which Holden thought a major success. With no club left to train in, and the authorities scratching their heads over what happened, we retreated to an abandoned graveyard on the outskirts of the city, where I accidentally demolished a historical church, built turn of the century, and half the headstones. To me that said I was dangerous; to Holden it was progress.
With the next bot attacks, I found myself caught in the middle of the skirmish as Reg, Malvo, and Holden surged forward and engaged. My tri-blade rested in my hand, but I stayed paralyzed, mind and body betraying me. Blood oozing from the female warrior’s chest kept replying through my mind. I couldn’t do this. There was no satisfaction within me at being the victor, relief I wasn’t dead, maybe, but no triumph at my achievement. While the guys clocked up an impressive kill count, I fell behind. If I didn’t reach my target, I would be unable to exit Dominus.
That we were all desperate to amass our kills was the sickest part. It was a game for now, which made it fun for the three of them, but I’d been to this other dimension, to Califax City, filled with people just like us. Carter would see it destroyed along with us. The bots we encountered in Dominus would become real people.
Chapter 28
At a junction between three streets, Holden stopped and pointed in the direction the moon traveled across the sky. “Central Airways terminal. Right on schedule. Our way up is off to the left side.”
I looked both ways before I stepped off the curb, habit from my world, but since there were no cars in Dominus, it was a waste of time. Like a horse bolting for home, Holden’s pace quickened, forcing me to jog-walk to keep up. It meant we’d reach our destination without too many more disturbances, which I wouldn’t complain about. At the right corner of my vision, the number of kills I needed to exit the game loomed like neon lights. I would have to fight to kill nine more times. Bots disappearing after bleeding onto the paving made what we did only marginally better. Next to my kill quota, the digital numbers said we’d lost twenty-five minutes already.
At the end of the street, the paving opened out onto a large pedestrian space surrounding the base of the Central Airways terminal. Three massive legs formed a tripod base upon which the tower was constructed. See-through lifts raced up and down the metal legs, ferrying bots to and from the terminal. I scanned the base for the Aris party. If they were there, they’d blended well with the surrounding bots.
“Come.” Holden strode forth toward the first metal leg and the mass of bots scurrying around the base like ants.
I craned my head up the side of the tower to the glass bulb at the top, which disappeared up into the sky—heights weren’t my thing.
At the base, everyone remained vigilant for possible attack. We couldn’t enter the lifts until Aris arrived, but the longer we remained here, the more vulnerable we became. I still needed nine kills before I was out. Nine times I would be forced to embed my tri-blade into someone’s chest.
“There,” Reg said.
I scanned in the direction he looked and saw Elva first, behind her, Striker and Nuke. At the third leg, Jax, Tyren, and Sam moved in line to the lift.
“Things could turn at any moment, so stay alert,” Holden said as he strode toward the remaining tower leg.
Jax and his party hovered toward the front of the line. At the other leg, Elva and her party had muscled to the front, preparing to board the lift. With one swift downward motion of his arm, Jax signaled our ascent up the tower in the lifts.
Holden unhooked a small black canister from his belt and turned to the other two. “When the fireworks happen, you two secure the entrance.”
Reg and Malvo nodded.
He took my hand. “Up we go.”
“I feel queasy.”
“Then don’t look down.”
He pulled me into the lift with some bots but maneuvered us both so we were toward the front. With his elbow, he hit the screen to our left and we shot skyward so fast I left my organs behind. I shrieked and grabbed Holden’s arm. He laughed and swept me close.
“Sad thing is, it will all be over…now.”
Despite our speedy ascent, the deceleration of the lift to a halt was unnoticeable.
We stepped out into a large open space, the rest of the bots spilling out behind us. The sun’s rays shone off the smooth marble surface and the bots, scurrying about the platform like they were real people with a real need to get somewhere. On one side, skytrains arrived; on the other, they departed. Bots climbed up stairs to the platforms and disappeared inside the doors of the skytrain while others disembarked in steady streams and joined the chaos. Moments later, in a well-choreographed dance, the arrival side turned to the departure side and vice versa.
Holden tugged my arm, and I turned to see Jax and Elva heading for a lift on the other side of the large open space.
“That’s our ride,” Holden said of the lift that descended on their arrival
at the base.
Not waiting for my questions, Holden pulled me through the crowd. At this point, the only benefit to being in Dominus was the cleared path we made as we headed across to Jax and Elva. If they weren’t attacking us, the bots diverted from us.
The expanse of the platform was such my heart had plenty of time to crawl up into my throat as my eyes flittered from one face to the next, until all the NPCs blended together into a potential lethal opponent. Tracking the assortment of weapons adorning those passing by raced my nerves faster than a bullet train. I refocused on the lift we were meant to take, then to Holden, marginally comforted in seeing his diligent attention to the bots surrounding us. We were in the center of enemy territory. Around us milled hundreds of bots, who could became potential warriors at any moment.
“Get in,” Jax said once we reached them, no congrats on making it this far, no quick words about what we faced in the coms room.
It was only once inside did I realize the lift was not made of glass and the railing that ran the circumference was all that kept us from falling hundreds of feet below. I turned and moved to the center of the lift, away from the edges.
“It’s worth the look.” Holden stood at the edge, with the front of his boot in space.
“I don’t think so.”
He held out his hand. I shook my head, so he wiggled his finger as a come on. “Seconds are ticking away.”
“We can reach the coms room with me standing here.”
“Master your fear, Sable.”
Elva sauntered past me to stand next to Holden. “Quite a view,” she said as she leaned over the railing.
Childish. Holden as well. But he was right. I wouldn’t win if I stayed lost in my fear.
I accepted his outstretched hand, and he reeled me in, slipping an arm around my waist as I drew near enough.
Look. My eyes stayed closed. Just look, dammit.
Below was a skytrain hovering at a platform, below that was another, and then another, ten platforms in all. I wavered and the railing dug into my stomach. Holden pulled me away, and with hands on my shoulders, he gently shook me. “Not so hard. You’re doing just fine.”