Copyright

HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2015.

Copyright © Nick Cole 2014

Cover illustration and title type by Bastein Lecouffe Deham.

Cover design by Richard L. Aquan.

Nick Cole asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © January 2015 ISBN: 9780007501250

Version: 2014-10-04

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

The Last Chapter

About the Author

Also by Nick Cole

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

The war starts at 6 A.M., in-game time. By 6:45 we’re losing Hamburger Hamlet as our entire line begins to disintegrate.

It isn’t a total collapse. Pockets of resistance hold out in key positions, buying ColaCorp time, expensive time, to fall back and reorganize. On my right flank, Kiwi holds a high hill overlooking the Song Hua river basin. We call that hill WonderSoft Garage because of the small power station and vehicle spawn depot located there. WonderSoft had made the capture of that hill and power station a primary objective in the last three battles we’d fought at this end of the basin.

And it looked like they were gonna try for it again today.

Over BattleChat, Kiwi swears as he burns through the ammo that an air resupply Albatross barely managed to get through. In my mind, I can see empty lager cans parading around the workspace that is Kiwi’s keyboard and monitor, as ambient in-game sound resounds in a metallic symphony of ammo brass expended in adult-sized doses. If the sound of auto rifles and explosions is a kind of music, and to some of us it is, then Kiwi is Beethoven.

Through graphically rendered feathery willow trees and the game-supposed heat waves of the day, I can barely make out what’s going on up at the top of the hill in brief glimpses. Three fast-attack WonderSoft Goats, their version of a jeep, and a Thrasher light mech are burning. Thick oily smoke belches from the mech, and a moment later it explodes in a shower of sparks. More WonderSoft Goats and Thrashers climb the road to the bridge that leads to our side of the river.

WonderSoft infantry scramble from cover, racing to other cover, as Kiwi fights hard to keep them from crossing the choke point at the bridge and capturing WonderSoft Garage. It’s about to get real intimate, real quick.

“Command, we’re gettin’ killed up here,” shouts Kiwi over BattleChat. His transmission is broken and distorted by automatic weapons fire in the background. “I’m down to three grunts,” he continues. “Request reinforcements or evac, A-S-A-P! If you’ve got fire support, I’ll take it now, but you’d better drop it right on top of my position, your choice, Command.”

Minutes earlier I’d requested Command point two transports of grunts our way as reinforcements. One of our dropships got jumped by a flight of WonderSoft Vampires as they’d approached the LZ. The other, piloted by RiotGuurl, had gotten away.

I hope.

RiotGuurl is as good a pilot as I’ve ever worked with. Losing the first transport hadn’t been an easy choice for her, but when a WonderSoft Vampire caught your electronic scent, there weren’t many options left for a transport squadron other than to split up and run like hell to get away from that wicked ground attack jet.

Since then RiotGuurl was maintaining radio silence. I know she’s chasing every nook and cranny in the jungle-clad hills that surround the basin on all sides, flying her gunship way too close to the computer’s representation of the ground, looking for a route back into Hamburger Hamlet so we can resupply and reinforce the river crossing. Maybe even help Kiwi.

“Be advised, Command, it’s just me now. All my grunts are KIA.” Kiwi again. “Two ammo packs left and multiple Softs inside the wire.” Kiwi never gives up. Even when he’s being overrun. Maybe it’s an Australian thing. Once this war is over, I plan on taking some of my winnings and heading down under to spend some time in Gigaboo Flats at the Wonky Boomerang, Kiwi’s favorite postbattle watering hole. But hopefully the Cola Wars will never end, or else how will I get paid?

“Kiwi, evac not possible at this time. Sorry about that, son.” It’s RangerSix, ColaCorp’s tactical commander. The fact that he’s overseeing our little firefight reinforces how crucial this battle really is for ColaCorp.

Using my targeting monocular, I scan the sloping hills and tall grass behind and above Hamburger Hamlet for our commander’s avatar. RangerSix is the kind of guy who can change a battle with a basic rifle kit and some explosives. As usual I can’t find his hiding place.

Across the river, WonderSoft artillery begins throwing everything they’ve got at us. Head down inside my command post, I crank my speakers to full ambient in-game sound, cutting off Catherine Wheel’s seminal late-twentieth-century album Ferment. I’m waiting to hear RiotGuurl’s turbines. She’s Kiwi’s only hope now.

“Sixty rounds left. How about fire support, RangerSix?” It’s Kiwi.

“Negative at this time.” I hear the quiet frustration in RangerSix’s smoke-stained voice.

“Die in place again, huh?” grunts Kiwi.

Behind me, in the detailed squat bamboo and stone village that is the game designers’ representation of a fictional Southeast Asian river basin village, a place we call Hamburger Hamlet as a nod to the often bloody struggles for online supremacy that take place there, our armor rolls through, retreating farther to the east. We’ve been holding this side of the river, waiting for our massive Charger IV battle tanks to cross the muddy brown shallows under heavy mortar fire. Now, it’s time to bug out.

WonderSoft Garage has always been the key to control of the river crossing at Hamburger Hamlet. There’s no bridge, but the river’s shallow enough to get most vehicles across. Now that the overwatch Kiwi was providing at the garage is on the verge of being taken, the battle, at least here alongside the river, is lost for ColaCorp. Any of our units on the far side of the river aren’t getting back to our lines without an airlift. The game day still promises more fighting. It’s Saturday, and the network goes big on coverage for the weekend. But to lose good armor this early would spell disaster for whatever Command has in mind for us to do next. We’ve gotten the Chargers back to this side of the river. That’s enough for now. We’ll have to fight another battle somewhere else.

“Afraid so, son,” says RangerSix to Kiwi over BattleChat regarding any kind of assistance. Or to be more specific, the complete lack thereof. “Sorry.”

Kiwi doesn’t reply.

The turbines of RiotGuurl’s Albatross scream loudly as she coaxes the VTOL transport slash gunship into a tight bend south of my position. The fat hover jets that hang beneath the stubby wings of the wide-bodied OD green Albatross kick up a spray of water as she bleeds altitude and speed getting close to the surface of the river.

For a brief second there’s hope.

But, as I swing my avatar’s view around, locking her craft into my HUD, I don’t need imaging software to tell me her ship’s already down to 48 percent integrity. The Albatross is vomiting black oily smoke while blue flames climb from the turbines across the fuselage, licking at the pilot’s canopy. Seconds later a dart-winged fast mover, camouflage shifting from sky gray to river brown as its onboard computer tracks position relative to target and adjusts the color scheme, comes into view. It’s a WonderSoft Vampire and it vaults the bend farther down the river, rattling out short bursts from its forward-mounted 30 mm chain gun directly into the Albatross’s burning fuselage.

The pilot’s an amateur.

RiotGuurl’s finished.

Any good pilot would just let her crash into the ground, but this jerk wants a special gun camera “kill” to put up on his webwall. A professional player kill worth bragging about. Or at least he’s hoping to brag about it.

“Not today,” I mutter and order my air defense grunt to take out the Vampire, an easy kill at this range and altitude with a preoccupied pilot. The grunt, skinned in jungle camo and battered light body armor, leaps out from behind the barn at the far end of Hamburger Hamlet and scrambles to shoulder the ground-to-air HammerClaw missile.

With in-game ambient sound cranked up to full, I hear an unseen WonderSoft sniper’s Barret3000 go off like the sudden snap of a dead branch. A moment later my grunt is flung backward from the impact of the supersonic round.

That means WonderSoft has snipers in the hills on our side of the river. Things are actually worse than they seem.

“C’mon you lazy … ,” growls RiotGuurl over BattleChat as her Albatross loses an engine and begins to list badly to starboard. I know she’s scrambling to maintain some kind of altitude in order to get the replacement platoon she’s carrying out the door and somewhat near our position alongside the river. Parachutes puff to life just beyond the flaming fuselage, but the falling stick of badly needed grunts and players will be scattered all along the river at best. With our line currently collapsing, they’ll be less than combat effective. They probably won’t even be able to link up with any friendlies.

I hit E on my keyboard and then Spacebar, making my avatar jump up from behind the sandbags I’m using as the command post I’d set up back when I thought there might be some kind of contest for Hamburger Hamlet. But that’s not happening today.

I race for the air defense grunt’s gear, knowing the sniper sees me. A good sniper will wait for me to reach the dead grunt. It’ll take two point five seconds to exchange my rifle kit for the shoulder-fired HammerClaw Air Defense System the downed grunt carried. That’ll be all the time the sniper needs to blow my avatar’s head off. My hope is that a good sniper, and I hope this sniper is good, is waiting for another grunt to appear and pick up the valuable Air Defense gear. My other hope is that he’s not expecting a real live player. Or at least that’s what I tell myself as I reach the grunt’s prone body.

ColaCorp SOP insists live-player avatars look just like the AI-controlled grunts. Hypermuscled, digital depictions of frontline real-world combat troops. Dirty green jungle-stripe fatigues, dull green and grease black tiger-striped face and arm camo. Even the same gear with the rare exception of a shotgun or a favorite sidearm. It’s good policy. The enemy expects an AI grunt’s reaction to any given circumstance. So we all look like grunts; that way the expectations are lower. Except a live player can do the unexpected.

RangerSix is probably behind that smart idea.

I pause at the kit and roll left a heartbeat later. A spray of dirt blossoms on-screen as the Barret’s round explodes in the mud just beyond the dead grunt’s body.

Where my avatar’s head should have been.

Now the WonderSoft sniper will need to pull the slide back and chamber another massive round, a serious drawback to using the Barret3000.

I exchange kits with a tap on the keyboard, raise the shoulder-fired missile, and select Shotgun Mode, firing on the fly, not even waiting for the high-pitched tone indicating lock. The micro missiles that scatter away from the launcher don’t have far to go as the Albatross and Vampire streak straight over the top of Hamburger Hamlet. They sidewinder skyward and punch right into the bottom of the frost-gray SkyCamo of the WonderSoft Vampire.

Kaboom. No Vampire. Musta hit an armed weapon or maybe even the fuel tank.

Meanwhile, RiotGuurl’s finished.

“Lateral’s gone … I’m going in,” she says just before the Albatross smashes itself into the cliff wall below WonderSoft Garage above the river.

I know RangerSix sees it happen. Seconds later he’s broadcasting an areawide alert. “Albatross Two-Six is down. Repeat, Albatross Two-Six is out of action. All units, we are leaving this AO! Be advised we are evacuating the river. Fall back to rally points appearing on your HUDs now.”

A moment later, a yellow triangle indicating a rally point has been established a kilometer to our rear appears on my avatar’s CommandPad. The tanks rumble away dustily into the foothills behind Hamburger Hamlet, unbothered by the snipers. Across the river I can see WonderSoft grunts swarming into their slate-gray troop carriers. A missile streaks away from one of them, crosses the river, and smashes into a nearby barn, turning everything into sudden flying, flaming matchsticks. Casualty reports flood in from my platoon. I order my two heavy-machine-gun units to open fire on the WonderSoft transports as they approach the river crossing. Smoking tails of depleted uranium rounds streak low over the river at hypersonic speeds as plumes of water blossom in the shallows and on the far bank. My gunners are just finding their range as the first WonderSoft transports wallow into the muddy brown water.

On the hill above my position, WonderSoft Garage, the rattle of gunfire and brass has stopped. Kiwi’s out of assault rifle ammo. The fight up there is over.

“Kiwi, what’s your status?” I say over BattleChat as I retrieve my rifle kit.

“Not good, mate. Not good at all. It’s a real knife and gun show up here.”

“I can hold the Hamlet for a few more minutes if you can get out,” I tell him.

“Negative. Perfect, not happening. It’s too hot, hot, hot to leave.” I hear the pop pop pop of his sidearm as he spits out the repeated word.

“Be advised.” It’s RangerSix again. I can tell he’s pointing this message at me and me alone. “We are leaving this AO now, PerfectQuestion! Get your platoon moving and cover those tanks. Watch for antiarmor mixed in with snipers above your position.”

“What about Kiwi?”

RangerSix says nothing.

“No worries here, mate,” Kiwi breaks in. “I’m havin’ a barbecue and I’ve invited all the WonderSerfs. Main course is a whole lotta thermite.” Seconds later, “See ya, Perfect.”

The entire jungle hilltop around WonderSoft Garage blossoms in rosy red, flaming destruction. The explosions billow and rise above the soft feathery jungle haze and the sleepy yellow-brown river. Several smaller, secondary explosions accompany the blast, indicating WonderSoft’s APCs, probably just arrived to establish control of the captured objective, have also been invited to Kiwi’s barbecue.

Kiwi loves his explosives.

“G’day, mate,” I whisper, watching the apocalyptic ending of ColaCorp’s hold on WonderSoft Garage. Then my squad is up and moving into the hills, low and slow, watching for snipers.

Chapter 2

My grunts were getting chewed up the whole way back to the evac point. I lost twelve.” I’m telling Sancerré about my bad day.

“Oh, where did you lose them? Go to the last place you’d look. Whatever it is, it’s usually there, in the last place you’d look.”

My girlfriend does not understand my job.

“You’re not listening,” I say.

“Yes, I am. You said you lost your little grunts.”

“Yes, I did say that, but you don’t know what I mean by grunts. If you did, you would know I cannot go back and ‘find them’ in the last place I would look for them. They’re dead. KIA.”

She pauses from packing her camera bag. I notice there’s a little black dress and heels inside.

“I understand. You don’t need to get testy with me; it’s not like I’m two years old,” she says as she snaps up some memory sticks from the floor. “They’re something to do with your game. Just go find them, or better yet, get some new ones.”

“First off, Sancerré, grunts are computer-controlled AI bots assigned to each player. They look like basic versions of our avatars. Like real modern combat troops. Once they get ‘killed’ they’re dead. They don’t respawn. Second off, it’s not a game. It was, when I was paying to play like all the subscribers, but now I’m a professional and if you’d get your head out of your viewfinder, you’d realize the ‘game’ I’m playing is paying the rent right now.”

“We don’t use viewfinders anymore; SoftEyes shows exactly how the shot might be composed.”

She’s a photographer.

“I understand that because what’s important to you is important to me,” I say. “But that doesn’t always seem to be the case in reverse.”

“Okay, okay, enough. Tell me about your bad day playing war. What happened to all your grunts?”

“They got killed. Happy?”

“People got killed?”

“No, my grunts got killed, and every grunt under my command is my responsibility and gets deducted from my total score, which gets deducted from the ColaCorp victory point total, which gets deducted from my weekly bonus.”

“You shouldn’t let that happen.” Her tone indicates she understands the seriousness of the loss. Or at least that we won’t be getting as much money as we need in next week’s paycheck. “Who killed all your grunts?”

“Listen, there are real players fighting me online … fighting my team, ColaCorp. Got that?” I feel a rant coming on. I feel an argument in the air. Like an afternoon storm coming straight at you.

“Yeah, duh! I wasn’t born yesterday,” she snaps.

And … I love her.

“Goon.”

“You’re a goon.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.” She sighs and sits down next to me. “I’m sorry I haven’t been listening. It’s just that this is a really big spread for Vanity. And being an assistant for fashion’s greatest eye, in his very own opinion, is … very … let’s just say it has its problems.” She sighs again, and there is enough in it that I know the world is bigger than me and my problems. I know I’m not here just for me. That … I want to rescue her.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I feel bad for just coming in here to vent. It was a bad day all across the board. We were fighting for advertising space at Madison Square Garden and Channel Two. It was kind of a big day.”

“Is that why they pay you? Because if you and your friends win your little games, then they get to own those places?”

“Well, they don’t get to own them, but they get the right to pay to advertise in them. Plus LiveNet broadcasts the best parts of the action with lots of product placement.” It’s surprising to me that Sancerré, a trained commercial photographer, doesn’t understand advertising-gaming rights. But fashion seems to be its own little world. Hence the photo shoot last year in which she’d had to hide under a model dressed as an undead Marie Antoinette carrying a light saber as the dust children of Mogadishu ate red apples on a dirty street full of cheap PrismBoard advertising. I think it was an ad for jeans.

“I guess today was pretty important then,” she offers.

“Yeah, it was. But forget about it. How long do I get you for?”

“I’m afraid that’s it, soldier boy. I’ve got to be there early. Miss Thing threatened not to show up over shoes and they want me in just in case she actually makes good and doesn’t show.” She shoulders her bag and checks her makeup in the mirror one last time.

“Is she really that bad?”

“Worse. She actually will show. She will get what she wants and then she’ll play the martyr as everyone grovels for her forgiveness. It’s disgusting.”

“I guess I might just chill tonight,” I say with a stretch and a yawn. “I’m pretty wiped. If you’re back by midnight we can go watch the big PrismBoard at Madison Square Garden change over to WonderSoft.”

“I wouldn’t count on it. Mario made us clear our schedules. He wants to buy us all drinks at Burnished.”

“Do I need to worry? I mean, I know you love those things. I’m sorry I don’t have enough. I wish I had more. I’d spend it all on you … honest.” I would.

“I know you would. You don’t have to worry about those things. Everything will be okay. It won’t always be like this.”

But somehow I do worry, and I imagine it being much worse.

Later after she’s gone, I bring up my compilations. I’m feeling very ’Nam. I mix a scotch and SevenPlus, ColaCorp’s new not-cola and light a smoke just as this great remix from the 2030s of “White Rabbit” by the band that first did it comes on. Outside, the late winter sun drops below the horizon. New York locked in winter is even more depressing than getting pwned by WonderSoft. I want jungles and golden sunsets. I want a hot yellow sky and murky haze and gurgling brown rivers. I light some incense, crank up the humidity control, put on an army surplus T-shirt and ’Nam out.

I settle into the warm glow of the scotch, dragging absently at my smoke. I think about WonderSoft Garage and Kiwi. He’s near the end of a bad streak of getting killed. ColaCorp doesn’t like that kind of thing, and it’s only a matter of time until he gets reduced from professional status back to overqualified amateur. He needs a win. In truth, the whole team needs a win. We all do.

WonderSoft had come into its own in the past six months of online warfare, dominating most of the battlefields for advertising supremacy. Eastern Highlands was my first campaign as a pro player-officer and already we’d lost some major advertising venues in and around New York. Losing everything to WonderSoft is probably going to get me booted back to freelance, which will cut down on any future campaign actions. Worrying about Kiwi only reminds me that his situation is only slightly worse than mine, and everybody else’s at ColaCorp for that matter.

My ’Nam set gets psychedelic, cascading over remixed hits almost a century old. I mix another drink and log in to the bunker, the gathering place for ColaCorp professionals after battles. Senior commanders generally don’t drop by after a loss, but after a win they come in and hand out bonuses and slap our backs over the feeds. Today’s beating at Eastern Highlands and the loss of Madison Square Garden and Channel Two ensured we wouldn’t be seeing them tonight.

It sucks to lose.

Kiwi’s avatar, large and hulking, shirt off and showing curling tribal tats, leans against the bar talking to JollyBoy, an intel specialist, and Fever, a great medic who’s managed to revive me on the battlefield more than a few times, including one time I swore I was really down for the count. I double-click them and bring up all three of their feeds. Kiwi looks even more frightening in real life than his avatar. Huge, hulking, tattoo overdose, a leering lecherous grin, almost drooling into the monitor. His eyes are the only feature that tell you he’s a friend and not foe. His eyes say, I’m kind; you can trust me, mate.

“Perfect, Perfect, PerfectQuestion. Did ya make it back to the rally, mate?” he asks me.

“Cheers, Kiwi. It was touch and go, lost a lot of grunts. But, yeah, we got picked up at the rice paddies just as WonderSoft started dropping their artillery all over us.”

“We lost three slicks at the LZ,” JollyBoy announces happily. The joker he is never fades, even when he’s delivering the worst of news. Losing three Albatrosses made me glad I was on one of the slicks that got out of there. What a cheap way to get it. It’s one thing to be out there fighting, making a bad choice, getting caught in the cross fire, whatever, and losing your day’s winnings and bonuses. But catching a slick and feeling safe as you hear the turbines spool up and thinking you’ve just escaped one bad day of gaming and that you’re gonna get paid and make it to the next fight only to have it explode a moment later—well, that’s another thing. A bad thing.

“Any players?” asks Fever. Fever cares little about the fighting. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen him running around with his weapon out. He only carries his med packs, boosts, and revival pads. He cares more about us than the battles.

“Yeah,” JollyBoy says with a smirk. “ShogunSmile and WarChild …”

“These laughin’ newboys with their haiku tags. Serves ’em …” Kiwi’s drunk, but just drunk enough to catch himself at the beginning of a lecture on tag choice. His discipline isn’t long for this world.

“What’re you listening to, PerfectQuestion?” asks Fever, catching the music in my background.

“Lemme see … ‘Vietnam’ by this reggae guy, Jimmy Cliff.”

“Sounds good. … feed me.”

“Me too,” says Kiwi. I patch them into my music, inviting JollyBoy also.

“No thanks, PerfectQuestioney. The Harlequin likes his industrial trance calliope mixes.”

JollyBoy is weird.

We play music for a while and watch funny clips from the day’s battle, usually something we or our grunts did that was dumb. We talk about what went wrong and what we should have done, all the while each choosing a song, not realizing we’re saying something about ourselves, the day, and maybe life. Finally Kiwi plays “Waltzing Matilda,” mumbles something about the long ride to the Wonky Boomerang and logs off without further good-byes. JollyBoy has long since faded into other conversations. Fever smiles and says, “Keep your head down, Perfect,” and is gone. I scan the cantina for RiotGuurl.

Why?

Because it was her first battle as a professional. That entitles her entrance into the bunker. I tell my empty apartment it wasn’t her fault that we lost and put on “Black Metallic” by Catherine Wheel. Another drink and I force myself to think about Sancerré and a relationship that’s coming apart at the seams. But my guitar-driven thoughts keep returning to RiotGuurl.

Who is she?

Where is she?

And why do I care?

Chapter 3

At twenty to midnight I wake, still sitting, still holding the remnants of a watery glass of amber scotch on my stomach.

This is my life. Digital death, destruction, and some computerized mayhem by day, long lonely nights with too much scotch and too little of the woman I loved.

Love? Loved?

Love.

Too much of some, and too little of something else.

“Do I love what I do?” I ask myself as I throw on my trench, a vintage leather piece purchased as a reward after promotion to professional, and hit the streets for the short walk to Madison Square Garden. I guess I do, otherwise why else be out on a dark winter night, dirty green glowing frost clinging to the sidewalks, just to see the fruits of my defeat?

Just before midnight, across the street from where I stand in the shadows, the giant PrismBoard goes dark. It had been showing a blond construction worker slaving away in a hot suit setting up a thousand reflector assemblies. Slowly, dawn’s first rays hit the fragile plantlike assemblies, which then burst into life like so many exploding crystals. Around the construction worker, Mars begins to turn green as plants grow, cities rise, and the construction worker begins to age into a handsome silver fox. His hot suit is suddenly gone and now his tanned skin shows through a brilliant white cotton shirt and khaki trousers as an equally beautiful little girl, presumably his granddaughter, grasps his hand and holds up a cola. He smiles and drinks. Then the ColaCorp logo emerges.

The ColaCorp ad runs two or three more times while I wait and then, at just the moment the Martian colonist begins to age for the fourth time, the PrismBoard goes dark. Now, only the blue lights of the tall towers that disappear into the cloud cover below Upper New York remain. Upper New York blocks out the night sky. Strange, eerie lights move back and forth up there, above the cloud bottoms. The dark feels more sinister as those faraway lights provide the only illumination down here in the dark remains of a mostly forgotten old New York.

I feel that preconcert moment before the main act comes on. When it’s dark and you feel like something important is about to happen. Or at least you did, when you were young and a band seemed like it might be something more than it was.

The WonderSoft logo appears on the PrismBoard as French horns, mournful, tiresome, noble nonetheless, begin to serenade the nearby streets with the coming of WonderSoft’s endless barrage of SoftLife products. In front of me, in the middle of the street, a bum in silhouette passes by while techno-Gregorian chants promise both of us hope in a bubble.

What does that bum want from life? Glory days remembered, youth retained, a friend long gone, never returning, suddenly appearing. WonderSoft wants him to have the latest SoftEye. He passes on, oblivious to the expensive marketing of WonderSoft’s next gen product, my defeat, their victory.

“Two sides of the same coin,” says a voice from the shadows behind me. I turn and see a tall and very thin man. Shadows abound all around us as the light from the PrismBoard shifts, and for a moment all I can see is a long coat, a wide flat hat, and a SoftEye gently pulsing purple in the left eye of the stranger. Then I can see all the images of WonderSoft’s ad playing out across him and the light-turned-bone-white alley he stands in.

“I say, two sides of the same coin, isn’t it?” he repeats. His voice reminds me of some English actor from one of the period piece dramas Sancerré watches only for the outfits, or so I suspect. Like a violin playing Mozart. With malice.

“I don’t follow … ,” I mumble.

“One’s defeat, another’s victory. Your loss, someone’s gain.” Now WonderSoft’s Voice of the Ages begins to sell product above and behind me on the giant shining PrismBoard.

“SOFTLIFE, IT’S NOT JUST A DREAM ANYMORE …”

“Who cares, though? We were tired of the old, give us the new,” continues the thin man from the shifting shadows. “A new liberator has come to save us from the shackles of ColaCorp, or U-Home, or UberVodka, or TarMart, or, yes, even someday, WonderSoft.” Golden light erupts across the street as the PrismBoard gyrates wildly to the exciting new life WonderSoft promises. From the shadows the thin man steps forward and I can see him clearly now as the light display floods his face with a thousand sudden images.

“DREAMS, LIFE, LOVE, SEX, FRIENDS, FAMILY, POWER, SOFTLIFE OFFERS ALL THIS AND … ,” intones WonderSoft’s Voice of the Ages.

“Death to the tyrant, hail the new Caesar!” shouts the thin man above it all and throws his long arms sickeningly wide. In the golden light of the PrismBoard I see that he is not so much a thin man, but more a bony man. A man whose skin is so tightly stretched, it shows all the bones in his face.

A man made of bones.

“Faustus Mercator, commenter on things past, things to come, and …” He laughs. “All things in general, really. Butcher, baker, and of late, kingmaker. At your service.” He removes his hat—doffing it, I think they used to say in old bound books—and makes a slight bow, never once taking his SoftEye off me. The skin of his skull is dry and tight and, as I said, bony. Every ridge, protrusion, and scar is seen beneath the shaved, dark stubble of his bulbous head.

A character. Out here on a night like this. I wonder if he’s just a fan, or even a reporter blogging on the changing of the marquee. I’ve started getting a lot of e-mail for PerfectQuestion, and not all of it can be classified as fan mail. Many times there’s an undercurrent of disgust, rage, or sometimes something worse. For a moment I stare at him contemplating what he’s capable of. Hoping for the best, I shudder and wrap the trench tighter around my body. I don’t have much body fat or warmth to spare. Borderline poverty does that to you. I smile, nicelike, testing him. His response will let me know if I should fight … or flee. His agile build and height, three inches above my six feet makes a good argument for flight. He smiles back, immediately, beamingly.

“Picking up your check tomorrow, I s’pose?” he asks, drawing out the last word.

He knows I’m a professional. Maybe the only people down here at this time of night are the winners and the losers. Since I know who the losers are when I look in the mirror, that must make him one of the winners.

WonderSoft. But which one? BangDead, Unhappy Camper, OneShot, CaptainCarnage, maybe even Enigmatrix. WonderSoft had been recruiting the best for much of the past year. Their national battlefield advertising wins reflected as much.

“SOFTLIFE, A NEW WAY, A NEW HOPE, A NEW TOMORROW …”

“No bonuses I’m afraid, though.” He continues on, his smile a sudden row of large white headstones erupting between thin lips. “At least not with … your present company.”

“Do I know you?” I ask.

I’m not a fighter. I don’t mistake my online capacity for rapacious violence with my real-life code of nonviolence, which isn’t so much a code but more of an excuse for not being the toughest guy in the world and all the problems that comes with. I don’t make that mistake.

“I know a lot of things, PerfectQuestion. A lot of things.” He also knows my online tag. Great, what else does he know?

“Monday morning, after tonight’s match, you’ll show up at Forty-Seventh and Broadway, ColaCorp’s once proud headquarters,” Bony Man continues. “And you’ll be shown to the seventy-fourth-floor meeting room. Checks will be handed out, and poor old RangerSix will discuss what went wrong and how things might get better. In the end you’ll leave and prepare for Tuesday night’s big match in the Eastern Highlands. Forget Sunday night, later today, tonight in fact now that yesterday’s dead and buried. Sunday night’s just small change, just a bunch of brushfire skirmishes to be stamped out. Tuesday’s the real big game. We all know that, PerfectQuestion. Big things are afoot, heavy lifters moving in, all kinds of nasty tanks and antipersonnel platforms. Should be a real—what did your pal Kiwi call it?—a real ‘knife and gun show,’ I believe. But while you’re sitting there, PerfectQuestion, listening to all those really nifty big plans of RangerSix’s, and when you leave that ever so small, I mean tall, building, ask yourself …”

Big pause. He beams, holding his breath. Like the suspense is supposed to kill me.

“Are you happy, PerfectQuestion?”

“What?”

“Are … you … happy, PerfectQuestion? You know, a feeling of joy, optimism, ecstatic belief. Are you happy?”

“All right, I’ll ask myself if I’m happy, OneShot, or Unhappy Camper, or Enigmatrix, or whatever your name is. And if I’m not, what’s it to you?”

“Tsk tsk and pshaw,” says Bony Man.

Someone read a little too much Dickens.

“I’m no such animal, PerfectQuestion. You’re the killer, online. You would know those worthies if you met them in real life. They’re killers, like you, online of course. Not me. I haven’t the skills for such pursuits. I have only the highest respect for people like yourself who can keep track of so much, all the while pointing and shooting, managing the little lifelike dolls you call grunts, dodging the bullets of the enemy, once again, online of course. No, my fingers get all crossed up and, to be honest, they’ve got minds of their own. You wouldn’t believe the things they’ve done, the trouble they’ve gotten me into.” He held up one long spiderlike hand in front of his face. Images from the PrismBoard slither across its length.

“My brain gets so discombobulated with all that hectic killing, online. No, no, I’m made for other pursuits. I have talents better used in the real world. But as for you, young PerfectQuestion, you young golden boy, you young Pericles, this is your day, your battle, and you would easily defeat an amateur like me, online of course. I even wonder how much of a challenge Enigmatrix herself would actually be for you. You’re quite a killer, online of course.” Again he smiles, leaning in at me. I clutch the sawed-off broomstick I always carry in the deep right pocket of my trench. It isn’t much, but it just might have to do.

“Which brings me to my original command, or request, if you prefer. Ask yourself, tomorrow on the seventy-fourth floor: Am I, PerfectQuestion, happy?” His polished patent leather shoes grind roughly on the pavement as he spins away from me, turning to leave. It makes me think of stone crypts being opened. He’s leaving now, still talking talk and leaving.

“Ask yourself, PerfectQuestion,” he throws over his shoulder, “are there meeting rooms higher than the seventy-fourth? Who’s getting the bonuses? Where is Sancerré? Where will she be tonight? And don’t forget to ask yourself the most important question”—he turns at the edge of the shadows deep in the alley, almost enveloped, almost swallowed whole by the darkness that brought him—“Am I happy?” Then he’s gone.

“SOFTLIFE STARTS TODAY, INSIDE YOU.”

Chapter 4

The Sunday Night Game starts and I’m tasked with clearing out a small village of WonderSoft insurgents as the battle lines attempt to coalesce. The insurgents are players who’ve volunteered, by paying their monthly WarWorld Live subscription, to fight for WonderSoft. The insurgents crossed the Song Hua River downstream and have been ambushing ColaCorp units using a small village up in the jungle highlands as a base.

I haven’t lost any troops because I like to play it safe, and all my grunts are fairly leveled up. They don’t make many of the mistakes the basic AI-controlled grunts often do. So we take the village and neutralize five insurgents. I check my bonus pay on all five as soon as WhippySFX, the last WonderSoft insurgent, goes down in a hail of gunfire near the village’s central raised hut. At twenty per, I make a cool hundred. Not everything I need, but every bit helps.

“PerfectQuestion, this is Six; what’s your status?” I switch from my CommandPad to BattleChat and reply.

“We’re finished here, whaddya got for us next?”

There’s a pause. I wonder if the connection’s dropped, or if we’re even being jammed by WonderSoft’s electronic warfare units. Then, “PerfectQuestion,” says RangerSix in his signature matter-of-fact drawl, “I need you to order your unit to link up with ShogunSmile four clicks west of your position. Give him command authority …”

I’ve been fired.

Then, “I need you to log in to OpsDeck for a briefing, Question. We’ve had a superlab opportunity open up for us, and I need you to take command of the operation. I’m countin’ on you, son. Get this done quick and clean.”

Not fired.

I order my unit to pack up and move out to ShogunSmile’s AO. Three minutes later I’m in the OpsDeck screen and going through the briefing on the superlab.

“Scouts have discovered a hidden complex up-country in the mountains near the city of Song Hua,” begins the briefing program avatar, a military admin type. The high-res photos show a small complex nestled beneath a mountain that’s more a giant oblong piece of rock erupting from the jungle than anything else. Stunted trees cling to one of its misty sides. The other side is a sheer rock face above the complex.

“Satellite imagery,” continues the briefing, “indicates the complex is a laboratory-class facility where dangerous and illegal superscience research has recently been conducted.”

WonderSoft will want this, but ColaCorp needs this. Whatever it is. These labs can provide bonus game-changing tech. No doubt WonderSoft will go for it, even if it’s just to deny us the asset.

The briefing camera, mounted on a recon drone, overflies the facility revealing a night-vision look at what we’re going into. It’s an open perimeter and a jumble of squat buildings in two adjacent locations. One location has the distinct look of a dropship landing pad, but slightly different from any I’ve seen before. The other looks too industrial to be anything but a lab. There’s a construction crane on the far side of the lab complex. The complex is mostly composed of octagonal interconnected modules that lead to a main multistoried building. The briefing asks me to choose which type of unit I’ll request to take into the superlab.

I tell it to give me the light infantry template.

The briefing hesitates, then takes me to the unit loadout screen. I try to activate my personal unit, Delta Company, but it won’t let me. “All main force ColaCorp units engaged at this time,” it tells me in its calm, computer voice. The only option available is to pull unknown players from the ColaCorp Special Forces reserve unit.

Great. I have to use amateurs. I stare at the facility map again. There’ll be three maps. There’re always three maps. I’m probably looking at the first one. So what’s the game?

Death match? Domination? Infection?

I check the ColaCorp Special Forces reserve roster. Currently there are over a hundred thousand plus ColaCorp fan-players waiting, worldwide, to join the network televised fight.

“Isolate veteran-status players and above.”

“Done,” replies the briefing avatar.

“Isolate light infantry skill sets.”

“Done.”

I want to tell the avatar to remove the ones with poor social skills and negative sportsmanship reviews, but sometimes those ratings are just the results of complaints filed by sore losers. Sometimes being good at online combat doesn’t necessarily make you great at being human.

“Isolate kill counts ten thousand and above.” Sure it’s WarWorld Live kills, the home game played on console with other amateurs, but ten thousand kills means they’re serious about the game and they’ve got some skills. That’s when I started getting noticed by professional teams.

“What’s my pool?” I ask.

“47,754 players meet your requirements,” replies the avatar.

“Isolate on-target percentage. Above 50 percent.”

I don’t even ask how many that leaves. I just want shooters now. “All right, fill all five squads from those requirements.”

A moment later the avatar sends invites to all players fitting my requirements. The first fifty to respond and log in to the OpsDeck are going in-game during prime time with me to take the superlab.

Within seconds the rosters are full.

“Please choose tactical insertion method,” the avatar tells me.

I check the map again.

I check my options. I’ve only got one. Dropship. In the map, I set the spinning holograph of the LZ marker down on the landing pad. There are three back-blast fences that surround the site. We can use those for cover before going into the main complex.

WonderSoft, on the other hand, can go in any number of ways. They’ve always got options because they’ve always got money.

Next I choose my weapons. I select my standard loadout for close-quarter matches like this. I take a gray and graphite black-striped Colt M4X assault rifle with extended banana clips and holographic tactical sights. Three dots, predator style. For my sidearm I take a nickel-plated long-barrel .45 loaded with hollow points. I also take five grenades: three flash-bangs, two smoke. I take my personal avatar skin, which is okayed by ColaCorp for tactical instance maps like this. ColaCorp jungle-pattern camo cargo pants and green tank top T-shirt. Jungle boots. Shaved head and a camo pattern I call SnakeFace. My guy even has stubble. Like me. Except the avatar skin is based on some action hero from the last century. Guy named Schwarzenegger. I’m big on last-century stuff. Things were better then.

“Going live in fifteen seconds … ,” says the briefing avatar as it begins the countdown to tactical map insertion.

I switch to BattleChat. Before saying anything, I bring up the unit roster. Most of the player IDs have been set to the default position by the network. Can’t be showing all kinds of disgusting images to the entire world. I check the names. They are the usual assortment of half-thought-through, misspelled crud that marks amateurs. Some outright obscene name choices, almost half, have been changed by the network to “Player” then a random number.

That’ll teach ’em to take this seriously. It’s their one shot at going online to fight in front of the whole world and no one will ever know who they are because the network changed their tag and used a placeholder name instead.

On-screen I see the red-lit interior of the dropship Albatross. I pan right and look out through the cockpit canopy. We’re cutting through a thick miasma of dark blue and black clouds. Rain assaults the windshield. I try to get a look at the facility from the air, but all I catch are tiny twinkling lights and shadowy buildings.

Moments later we’re down on the landing pad and rushing from the Albatross. Players head away from the dropship and go prone in a circular perimeter.

So far so good, and I didn’t even need to tell them to do that.

The dropship’s engines spool up and the craft lifts off and away from us, cutting its lights and retracting its landing gears as it disappears into the rain and clouds above.

King of the Hill appears across my screen.

I hate this type of match. Means we’ve got to secure the access point to the next map and hold it for three minutes. A King of the Hill match always turns into a shooting gallery for the side that doesn’t want to hold the access point.

“Listen up,” I say over BattleChat. “Name’s PerfectQuestion and this is the op …”

Meanwhile I’m selecting the streak rewards I’ll receive after each kill plateau.

“We’ve got to secure the entrance into this lab. That’s Map One. WonderSoft will try and do the same thing. Your first job, always, is to kill WonderSoft. Next, identify the entrance to the lab. Last, we’ll hold that entrance for three minutes. This is a movement to contact for now, squad tactics. I hope you took weapons you can run and gun with, ’cause we ain’t fightin’ no defense. Okay?” No one replies. “All right, now’s your chance to show ColaCorp something.”

In the dim blue light of the storm, a wild collection of jungle combat warriors rises from the tall grass near the LZ. I use my CommandPad to organize five squads of ten. Sure, we’re all wearing the same faded ColaCorp jungle green so that we look like a team and are only slightly different than WonderSoft’s standard digital gray jungle-camo pattern, but the similarity ends there. Some avatars have shaved heads. Some are wearing boonie hats. One guy even has a K-pot from World War Two. It’s all stuff they’ve either bought through WarWorld’s online store or earned as achievements. I couldn’t care less how they look. I’m just hoping they’ve leveled up their weapons. I’d hate to be going into this with someone using the basic unmodded AK-2000 you start WarWorld Live with. But I quickly notice many of the weapons are skinned with high-tech paint jobs and scoped with state-of-the-art targeting systems. That bodes well for impending current events.

The network feed goes hot. Right now the game director is cutting in to watch the action. This superlab objective is critical, but not to today’s battle. That’s happening, win or lose, somewhere else. But the tech the lab might yield could be a game changer later, if ColaCorp pays to develop it, in the strategic outcome of the ColaCorp campaign against WonderSoft for Eastern Highlands. But we have to get it first.

I break the first three squads off into a group and form a wedge. The other two squads I put in reserve behind the main body and order them not to move until I tell them where the action is. With First Squad on the left flank, Second leading the tip of the wedge, and Third Squad on the right, we move out from the LZ, heading through the wet mud and dark for the dimly outlined facility. Low-hanging mist shrouds the tops of the high mountains. Over ambient I hear nothing but the slap of rain as it sluices down from the tops of buildings and into the muddy streets below.

“Move forward,” I say over BattleChat. “Watch for targets; call ’em as you get ’em.”

“Lock and load, rock and roll!” screams some hillbilly named SonnyJim over the chat. Another player, LilStreet, opens up his feed. Hard-core drum and bass rap starts pouring out across BattleChat. The first spoken lines are about murdering hoes who cheat and being pushed down by white “so-sigh-et-tee” while someone chants “Monee- Monee- Monee” over and over. I cut his feed.

It’s so far so good as we move beyond the back-blast fences and onto the main street of the complex. The pouring rain begins to let up as a small breeze shifts the grass and some hanging industrial heavy tow chains nearby. They creak and jingle while our boots suck at the wet mud. It’s only a matter of time before we engage WonderSoft and then all bets are off on whether I can keep everyone under control long enough to find and hold the access point.

“Hey, Question?” says a player tagged AwesomeSauce15. A girl’s voice. Sounds young. I can hear the bubblegum snap in the background of her mic. “Sign over here says this is a bioweapon research facility. Weyland-Yutani. Never heard of ’em.”

Smart. She’s looking for clues. That’s the other half of this type of match: solve the puzzle. Most people think WarWorld’s all about shooting at one another. It is. But smart players use everything they can learn about the map to then shoot each other.

“Noted,” I whisper over the chat. “Tighten up, Third.”

We move farther down the main street of the complex. There are a few abandoned construction vehicles on the street. Their wheels are sunk in the mud.

“No sign of any Softies,” whispers Bronco24, point man for Second Squad. We pass the first two buildings guarding either side of the small muddy street leading up to the main hub of the complex.

That’s when it goes down.

“Comin’ in from above,” says AwesomeSauce15 as she cuts loose with three short bursts from her HK Mini submachine gun. I check the sky and see nothing but cloud cover, then, drifting down through the mist, I see WonderSoft troops with night-gray parachutes blossoming above their avatars. They must have had the Base Jump option and gone off the top of the rock that overlooks this place. Bullets begin to strike at the wet mud all around us.

“First Squad, take that alley on the left. Third, go to the right. Secure both ends of the alley and set up a base of fire. Second, on me!”

I actually hear someone say, “What squad am I in?” But it’s too late for that.

“Squads Four and Five, hold the entrance to the landing pad. Stand by, I’ll advise you shortly on where to concentrate your fire.”

I go wide right behind the building. I check my CommandPad as we hustle into the dim wet alley. I’ve already lost two out of Second. The kid playing hard-core gangsta rap got it first. Probably for the best.

The firefight begins in earnest as WonderSoft gets onto most of the roof of the main complex. It’s not the worst scenario. I can handle that as long as we control the ground. Sometimes coming in the boring old way, out of a dropship and then in on foot, is the best way. I can control my troops and keep the unit cohesive for a time before it gets all “tag with guns.” WonderSoft’s arrival had some surprise value in it, but they didn’t get much out of it. Now they’re strung out all over the rooftops. We, on the other hand are still together, which allows us to work together.

“Who’s got sniper rifles?” I say over the chat.

Bucklebee and IrishRogue tell me they’re each carrying. “Good,” I say. “Fall back and circle wide through the jungle. Get up on to that construction crane at the far end of the facility and get us some cover fire going. Anyone with a heavy, watch the road ahead.”

I scan the other side of the street and see Third Squad already moving into the other buildings and engaging targets.

So they’re useless to me.

“First and Second, bound up the left side of the street and try to sweep this end of the complex. Watch the rooftops. Second Squad, moving now. Follow me.”

I push out into the muddy alleyway running alongside the main street. I take a couple of shots at a WonderSoft grunt on a nearby platform and hit him in the legs. He goes forward off the roof and falls into the mud farther down the street with a wet splat. Most of Second has followed me, and while someone uses a couple of grenades on a nearby roof, I check the dead WonderSoft player in the mud and realize we’re facing a Special Teams unit. The guy’s wearing a grinning skeleton motorcycle mask over his avatar’s face. WonderSoft must’ve spent some dough to get this unit involved in the fight, which sucks because it means, yes, they’re amateurs, but they’ve also trained together.

“Question,” says AwesomeSauce over BattleChat, “I can see a couple of guys from Third on the other side of the road. They’re about even with us.”

So maybe they are useful, jury’s still out.

The gunfire from both sides is deafening.

Ahead, there’s a small street and then what looks to be some kind of garage or hangar across the way. I check the CommandPad and see that Third Squad is down to half strength.

“Okay, First,” I call out over BattleChat. “Poppin’ smoke. Get ready to move up the street. We’ll cover you from here.” I scroll my mouse and right-click a smoke grenade. I toss it out into the main street to cover First’s movement. WonderSoft begins to fire into the thick, erupting smoke. Everyone with me begins to unload on the rooftops.

I get a head shot on one.

Now I have two. I need one more for my first streak reward.

“AwesomeSauce,” I call out over the chat. “Check that garage across the road and tell me if it’s clear.”

I watch as her avatar, a lithe, young, impossibly perfect-figured female soldier wearing standard-issue fatigues, oversize boots, and a cocked jungle hat with a black feather in it dashes across the road and into the hangar. A second later I hear the tight braaap of her lethal HK Mini.

“Clear now,” she says breathlessly over the chat.

“Good work. Get ready to move into that hangar, Second, as soon as First says they’re in position.”

I check the CommandPad and see Third’s now completely decimated. I’ve lost two with Second Squad, and First hasn’t lost anyone.

“Four and Five, stand by to move up,” I say over the chat.

“Covering,” screams someone from First. Then, “Suppressive fire on that two-story at our one o’clock.” Someone’s got leadership skills. I make a mental note to watch the replay and find out who took charge of First.

“Move, Second, into the hangar!”

The gunfire from First is cacophonic, but we still lose a guy, Player9000177, as we cross the street firing and race for the low dark mouth of the hangar entrance. Once we’re inside, I tell what’s left of Second to watch the exits.

I bring up my CommandPad, watching as my avatar exchanges the smoking M4X for the battered CommandPad with the nicked and camouflaged edges. Game designers like to make things look frontline authentic. The satellite feed shows me where my squads are and any known WonderSoft positions that have recently fired weapons or been observed by any of my troops. WonderSoft appears strung out across the complex. We’re concentrated in three areas—First on the street, Second with me in the hangar, and the rest back at the LZ. Good. Now it’s time to find the “hill” and try to be king of it for at least three minutes.

Even though WonderSoft is firing on the hangar, I’m able to stand back and use my tactical monocular to scan parts of the complex. If I happen to land on the King of the Hill entrance, I should get an intel analysis timer. But it doesn’t happen.

I need my first streak reward.

Baaanngg! Suddenly my screen turns a blinding white as ambient sound dissolves in a high-pitched whine.

Someone’s just flash-banged us.

My first thought is that WonderSoft is trying to take the hangar.

Seconds later my screen shows me shifting, distorted double images of my surroundings. Someone fires wildly as tracers blur across my vision. I hit Z and throw my avatar to the floor of the hangar, watching my screen throw wild ghost images everywhere.

“Boycott TarMart because of their racialist policies!” screams someone on my team. When my on-screen vision returns, I can see that the someone is SGTSmokeLoveWeed, and he’s preparing to pop another flash-bang and blind us all. I set my three-pronged aiming reticle over his chest and ventilate him with a short burst from my M4X. His avatar’s body sprays blood spatter across the wall of the hangar, ragdolling from each impact, jerking in time to some grotesquely hip dance. He’s dead and out of the game before he even hits the wall.

Great!

Third Squad was useless to begin with, and now I get a bonus round of “let’s take this very public opportunity to make a personal statement at the expense of my online job.”

Don’t people ever get tired of protesting? Not everything’s a March on Selma moment.

AwesomeSauce is hit, but she’s not dead.

“What’re we gonna do, Question?” she asks me over the chat.

Yeah, I ask myself. What are we gonna do?

One of Second Squad took a Medic perk and he’s throwing out medical packs emblazoned with the red-and-white ColaCorp logo. In the dim little hangar, AwesomeSauce’s health starts to return.

Surprise, surprise, terminating SGT-whatever has rewarded me with the kill I need to start my first streak reward. The refs were on that one. Good call.

Now I have access to extra equipment, supplies, air strikes, and a whole host of options depending on which streaks I’ve selected to unlock each time I reach a kill tier.

I activate my first streak. A moment later the gritty voice of the unseen game announcer calls out, “Drone Recon, inbound.”

I scan the overcast skies and see the shadowy outline of the spindly recon drone circling the complex. I check my CommandPad.

Recon Drone Intel package available.

I click on it.

Two reports.

I can see everyone on the battlefield. WonderSoft is concentrated around a small area west of our position on the street. The main building separates us. They’re moving toward it. The rest of the Softies are on the buildings all around us. I distribute the report to my squads, and seconds later I hear our two snipers begin to fire from the distant construction crane. I watch as a Softie blinks out of play on my CommandPad.

The other report reveals the entire tactical map, where the King of the Hill zones are and also other possible intel locations. I spot a King of the Hill zone at an entrance to the main building just ahead of us, a loading dock. But there’s another entrance on the other side of the facility right where that smaller group of Softies is heading. Back near the landing pad there’s another small secondary intel site, simply titled Sulaco Uplink.

I don’t have time for that. We’ve either got to crack that King of the Hill zone at the end of the street or somehow stop WonderSoft from starting the clock on theirs.

“Listen up, Fourth … I need you to double-time it to the location I’m marking on your HUDs now. That’s the King of the Hill zone WonderSoft’s gonna try and use. I need you to stage here.” I draw a red circle behind some smaller buildings near the WonderSoft door. “Fifth, I need you to move to this location and put some fire onto that target. Once you’re in position, open up on ’em. Fourth, as soon as Fifth Squad works the target over, move in and finish off any survivors. You shouldn’t have much resistance between here and there, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a Softie out there running Stealth perks, so watch the shadows.”

“Question.” It’s AwesomeSauce. “We can’t take that zone at the loading dock with just what’s left of First and Second.”

“Have to,” I reply.

I watch the map as both the fourth and fifth squads move out to intercept WonderSoft. In five minutes it should all go down.

“All right, First, we’re gonna need you to keep all the Softies heads down for a minute. We’re moving all the way up the street to the loading dock. Once we get there, we’ll hack it and start the zone. Try and keep them off us.”

“Roger that, Question,” says a guy named BubbasChoice.

“Well, AwesomeSauce, we’ve gotta take the hill, that’s the name of the game. You with me?”

“I’ll go first.” Her tone is bored. Flat. Condemning.

“Anyone got a streak goin’ yet?” I ask over BattleChat.

“I got Death from Above,” says one of the snipers. “Three kills already.”

And you haven’t activated it yet, I’m thinking. “Could you go ahead and use it?” I ask him.

“Sure ’nuff.”

A moment later I hear a low-flying aircraft high above the battlefield.

“Air strike, inbound,” warns the game announcer.

“We need to hit the entrance now,” I shout over BattleChat. “Go! Go! Go! Everyone take the hill. Snipers, do what you can to give us some cover.”

I rush out into the street, beating AwesomeSauce. Hoping at least one person will follow me, I head toward an abandoned cargo truck canted in the middle of the muddy street, firing short bursts at where I think WonderSoft might be. I reach the truck and pin my avatar against the side. Bullets are flying everywhere, smacking into the side of the truck on galvanized, crushed soda can notes. I can hear the loud, distant cracks of our snipers’ rifles. I lean out from one side of the truck and watch as most of Second Squad rushes up the muddy street around me, heading for the loading dock. Three of them get hit instantly. I draw a bead on one of the WonderSoft shooters and double-tap him in the chest.

I need four more kills for my next streak.

What’s left of Second is with me on the truck.

“Keep firing, First, until we reach the door,” I call out over the chat.

“Hey, Question, truck’s on fire,” notes AwesomeSauce.

She’s right. In seconds it’ll explode.

“Get away!”

Everyone sprints toward the loading dock.

The truck explodes behind us.

Casualties.

Above us, a small close-air-support aircraft is making missile strikes on the Softies near us—Death from Above. One rocket goes straight down into a building ahead of us, and a second later the entire building explodes, sending a shock wave of debris and flame out at us. My avatar is knocked back and onto the muddy street. I take 50 percent health damage.

I’m up and moving just steps away from the shadows of the loading dock. I make it to the loading dock. A small sign near the security door welcomes everyone to Hadley’s Hope.

First Squad is firing from behind a concrete wall down the street.

I hack the lock, watching as my avatar inserts his high-tech hacking tool into the computer lock and starts the operation. Fifteen seconds later, the game announces, “King of the Hill starts now.”

The clock starts, and we’ve got three minutes to go.

“Enemy Drive-by, inbound!” yells the in-game streaks’ menacing announcer.

“Take cover!” I call out needlessly.

Down the street, a low-riding flat windowless APC with thick ceramic tires and a small swivel-mounted Hauser minigun turret races toward us.

I’ve never seen an APC like that on a streak.

I briefly wonder if it’s some kind of new WonderSoft vehicle, just as I hear Bluuuuuurrrr; it’s the gun erupting in a loud, high-pitched sound as it sends hundreds of miniballs ripping into what remains of Second Squad—except for me, AwesomeSauce, and another guy. And seconds later, that guy’s heavy machine gun–wielding avatar disappears in a shimmering haze of lead as his body receives hundreds of hits almost instantly. AwesomeSauce switches out her HK Mini for the RPG on her back. She fires fast and skips the RPG off the muddy road with a small splash and right into the undercarriage of the APC. It explodes upward and lands on its side with a metal-rending crash as it begins to burn.

“That worked” she yells over BattleChat as if I need to be told.

The King of the Hill clock is already up thirty seconds. Two and half minutes to go.

For the next two minutes it’s a shooting gallery and we’re the ducks. WonderSoft’s elite unit keeps us pinned down behind the narrow confines of the loading dock, making sure they keep up the fire while they reload. We take sporadic shots and I get two of them.

I need one more kill to activate my next streak.

I check the CommandPad and see that Fourth Squad is engaging the WonderSoft unit on the other side of the facility. WonderSoft has started the clock on their King of the Hill zone. For some reason, Fifth never ended up where I told them to and they’re moving in way too soon and too close on WonderSoft.

“Enemy Gunship, inbound,” warns the game announcer.

If they drop it in on us, we’re finished. I hear the approaching engines of the gunship. It’s an HK. A hunter-killer. It streaks over the darkened sky and begins to hover above WonderSoft’s zone. Its auto cannons roar to life and I watch on the CommandPad as both fourth and fifth squads are wiped out.

One minute.

I spot a distant Softie shifting position and drop my sights over him, squeezing off a quick burst. I hit him, and he keeps running. I track a second longer, lead him, then fire again. This time he goes down, and I’ve got my last kill.

And my next streak reward.

I call in an Auto Gun Drop and just after the game announcer says, “Auto Gun package, inbound,” a dropship streaks underneath the gray canopy of the storm and drops a parachute containing the Auto Gun package off its back cargo deck. It lands near the beacon I’ve tossed onto the floor of the loading dock. I only have to crawl out onto the platform a little way to unlock and activate the package. Once I do, I watch as the sides of the crate flop down and the gun unpacks itself. Within seconds, its targeting lasers activate, cutting through the gun smoke and gloom as it begins spitting out short staccato bursts of hot lead at any WonderSofties within range. I get six more kills in the space of a minute.

“Thirty seconds!” calls out AwesomeSauce over the chat.

I’m down to nine players from both surviving squads, including the two snipers at the far end of the complex.

WonderSoft cracks their zone and advances to the second map just after our timer hits zero.

We get the King of the Hill bonus as the loading dock’s main door slides open, revealing a shadowy, wide, low-ceilinged hallway where overhead lights flicker on and off at random intervals.

“RangerSix, this is PerfectQuestion,” I say as I call in our status to Command.

“Six here; go ahead.”

“Command, we need reinforcements. I’m down to nine total, including myself.”

“I know, I’ve been watching the network feed, son. Heckuva a job. Bad break on Third Squad, though … but I was hoping you’d get the main door open, at low cost, and you did. I’m authorizing you one of our fan SF units. I think they’ll do the job considering where you’re at.”

Where I’m at?

“Where am I at, exactly?”

Long pause. Hairs rising on the back of my neck.

“You didn’t read that sign at the front gate, the one that said property of Weyland-Yutani Corporation?”

“Saw it. Didn’t mean anything.”

“And the big identifier on the face of the main building,” continues RangerSix. “LV-426. C’mon, Question, you’ve never seen the greatest sci-fi combat film ever made? Aliens.”

I pause. On-screen my avatar crouches on the platform as the eight other surviving players reload their weapons. My avatar is holding one hand to his headset, indicating I’m in communication with another element. Over ambient sound I hear the high-pitched whine of an Albatross’s engines powering into its braking hover. I turn. The Albatross rotates above the street. In front of the loading dock. it hovers above the mud.

“Everybody wants to play Space Marine, Question, but this is where it all started … Colonial Marines,” says RangerSix over the chat with a wheezy laugh.

Some fan units go beyond just training together like old gaming clans hoping to get picked up for a network battle. Some take the next step and modify their avatars to effect a cosplay element. I guess these were that sort. I’ve even heard of fan units who go on vacation together and try to live like their characters in real life. That’s a little much for me.

Colonial Marines.

Their armor and camo is similar to ours with only slightly different touches. It reminds me of images I’d looked at of soldiers from the Vietnam War. But spacier. They have helmet-mounted small lights attached. I can’t see how that will be any use in online combat. The trick is to not attract attention to yourself so you can shoot first. Headlights seem to be the opposite of that.

“Are these guys somehow … relevant to this map?” I ask RangerSix.

He laughs briefly. “Yeah, they’re real relevant, Perfect. Listen, this is how I see it. I just did a little checking. This is some sort of advertising stunt for the network. The map, that is. I just talked to a guy over at programming who told me they’re debuting a trailer for the Aliens reboot after the match tonight. Really, you never saw Aliens?”

“No, never. Is it good?”

He laughs again.

“You need to watch it, son. Listen up, this map will somehow relate to the movie. Whether it’s original source material or something from the reboot, I don’t know. But the bioweapon you’re looking for is most likely an alien. So watch out, there might be a whole lot of them inside the main building. If there are … well, your team’s in big trouble.”

“An alien?”

“Roger that, Perfect. An alien. If, and I’m just guessing here, we can get that tech unlock, if we can get the alien as a combat unit or something, that could be a game changer for us. So, if you can get it, get it. If you can’t, make sure WonderSoft doesn’t. The last thing we need right now is a bunch of those crazy things running around my battlefield, playing for the wrong team.”

“One question, Six? What does this alien look like?”

Again he laughs. I don’t think I’ve ever even heard him laugh once. Or express emotion. Anything. “I really can’t believe it, Question,” says RangerSix, still laughing. “Look like? It looks like a cross between a gorilla and a shark and a scorpion. You’ll know it when you see it, son. Six out.”

Two new squads of Colonial Marines come up the loading dock ramp.

“What’s the mission, sir?” asks a player tagged MarineSgtApone.

“We’ve cleared the first map. King of the Hill,” I tell him. “Now we enter the second map. No idea what match it might be, but we’re all about to find out. This is a superlab op, so the endgame is to retrieve the tech and get out. You guys down?”

“Straight up, Question,” says MarineSgtApone, a black burly commando-type avatar chewing a short stubby cigar.

“Listen up, Marines,” he says over BattleChat. “We got to go in and clear us some Softies out. So you know the drill; watch the corners and clear the shadows. We’ve done this on our own mods. WarWorld’s level design might be a little different, maybe even a lot different probably, and the AI on the aliens is most likely gonna be insane, can’t tell. But in the end they’re just big bad bugs, and we’re probably the best suited for this one ’cause we be the bug stompers. Who’d a thought?”

Everyone cheers. This must be like the Super Bowl for them.

“All right, let’s squad up and move in,” I announce over the chat. At the lead of First Squad, I head into the alien-infested remains of a place called Hadley’s Hope. LV-426.

Chapter 5

So, Apone,” I whisper over the chat as we proceed slowly down the dimly lit passageway leading into the belly of the main building, “what exactly are these aliens?”

There’s a pause. Wait for it, I tell myself.

“Never seen the movie, sir?”

“Aliens?”

“Yeah. Never seen it?”

“No. So go ahead and tell me what we’re walking into.”

Pause.

“Well, sir … I don’t know. Uh … Never know with the WarWorld programmers. Somethin’ trickylike no doubt. But uh … basically an alien is like a tiger that’s been crossed with a spider and a T. rex.”

“Huh …” I think about that. “Not a gorilla, shark, scorpion?”

Pause.

“Yeah,” says Apone. “Those too.”

“They don’t have weapons? Guns or explosives or laser beams or anything like that?”

“Uh … no. They are the weapon, sir.”

“I don’t understand …”

“You should just watch the movie, sir.”

“It’s a little late for that.”

We arrive at a massive security door. The numbers 01 are stamped in a large space-age font across the door’s surface.

“We open that door, sir,” whispers Apone over the chat, “be ready ’cause I got a feelin’ it’s on real properlike.”

“I read you five by five on that, Sergeant,” says one of the other marines.

Everyone takes up a position across the wide hallway. The overhead lights flicker intermittently and without pattern as gun-toting avatars cling to the sides of the hall, kneel, or lie on their bellies. Two heavy gunners take up the center position; one is a big male avatar, the other a short, curvy, tough-looking Hispanic chick. Apone advances to the door controls.

“Ready, sir?” he asks over the chat.

“Do it.”

The doors part and slide open.

There is a moment.

A whole entire moment of stunned surprise.

The door opens onto a wide multilevel room. It looks like some sort of administrative complex: clean, sterile; soft blues and plastic whites. Partitioned spaces surround the perimeter of the room. Part office, part medical lab.

But that’s not the surprise.

We’re the surprise. And so are they.

WonderSoft.

Us.

Fully armed for bear, loaded with heavy weapons and explosives and separated by thirty meters of flimsy space-age office cubicles.

WonderSoft’s elite SF unit has just entered the far side of the sprawling office space. They’re still in a patrol column on the walkway that surrounds the room and leads to the lower level of administrative desks.

“Let’s rock!” screams one of the heavy gunners, and it is indeed on. There’s no time for the CommandPad. It’s old-school run and gun. In seconds, both sides are pouring into the room, firing at everyone. Heavy gunners are cutting the place to shreds, their weapon fire echoing brutally through my fragile speakers. I lob flash-bangs and slide behind a row of cubicles for cover. Paperwork and computers are exploding all around me. Several marines are already down. I hear the distinct brraaap of AwesomeSauce’s sub Mini doling out a short, unhealthy supply of bullets. I pop cover and engage a death-masked Softie with a burst that punches into his neck and head. His avatar goes down spraying fire, dropping a grenade. A half second later, the cubicle he disappears into splinters from an explosion.

Within seconds, both sides are behind cover and firing at each other from opposite sides of the room. I’m crawling toward one of the walls, hoping to start a flanking action, when I pass a row of active computer monitors showing various security cam feeds of different locations around the complex.

That’s when I see the alien.

Aliens.

Yes. It is all those things.

Gorilla.

Shark.

Scorpion.

Tiger.

Spider.

And T. rex.

On the monitors I see views of the outside of the facility. Others of some unknown part of the lab. I also see some sort of dimly lit maintenance area, and another monitor shows the hall we just came down. Or one very much like it.

Aliens are racing down it. Aliens are filling every shot. Aliens are coming for us.

All around my position, WonderSoft SF, Colonial Marines, and what remains of my squads are shooting at anything that moves, like there’s a moonlight madness special on ammo. A Colonial Marine lunges past me, auto rifle firing short bursts at some unseen foe. He goes down, slumped over another cubicle.

Team Fortress Death Match appears across my screen.

The second map has started.

In a Team Fortress Death match, both sides attempt to construct a defended position while trying to destroy the other team’s defended position. This should be very interesting, what with all the gorilla, spider, tiger, shark, scorpion, aliens running amok. Oh yeah … T. rex, can’t forget the T. rex part.

I check my CommandPad for tactical updates.

“Hey, Apone, listen up. Those things are right outside, and my guess is, they’re coming in after us. It’s a TFD match. We’ve got to find a position and fortify before those things get in here.”

“Yeah, I saw that, sir,” he says between bursts of auto-rifle fire. “Real cute of WarWorld.”

The Hispanic female gunner chick is advancing through the field of desk debris, raking WonderSoft’s positions with short bursts of her very large, heavy-caliber machine gun.

“We gotta get outta here now!” shouts someone over the chat.

On my CommandPad tactical display, I find two air shaft vents leading away from the room. One is on WonderSoft’s side; the other, on ours. That’ll lead somewhere. We can’t defend this room unless WonderSoft’s willing to stop shooting at us—which I don’t think is an option right now.

A quick look at the roster on my CommandPad tells me I’m down to just nine players again.

“Apone,” I call out over BattleChat. “Rally everyone … here.” I mark the access hatch nearest our position. “I’m popping smoke … should give us some cover.”

“Roger that,” says someone whose chat gets overrun by a staccato burst of sharp-edged weapon fire. I’m not sure if it’s Apone. Maybe he’s dead.

I hear a loud hammering sound beyond the gunfire erupting against the doors and walls. Thunderous. Sharp. Growing and turning into a thousand grasshoppers smacking into a windshield at high speed. A quick check of the security door we came through and I see why. It’s denting inward. Those things are flinging themselves into it.

“Covering fire!” yells the Hispanic chick over BattleChat. MarinePFCVasquez. An immense amount of weapons fire resounds across the cavernous room as her weapon switches into overcycle mode. She must be running the Rapid Fire Freak perk.

I pop smoke and shout “We are leaving!” over the chat.

By the time we make the access hatch, I hear the door metal tearing apart. There’s too much smoke to see anything else, and there’s nothing to block the access hatch with.

Eight of us make it into the ducting.

I’m glad to see little AwesomeSauce along with the rest of the survivors, all marines.

“Follow me,” I hear MarinePvtWierzbowski shout frantically over the chat. He must be at the head of our dwindling column inside the large air duct. Behind us we can hear screeching—animal alien screeching.

MarinePFCVasquez’s gun falls silent back in the main room.

I check the CommandPad to see who’s left. Vasquez is KIA.

I have to admit; I’m a little tense right now.

“Keep following the duct. It should lead to an area we can fortify,” shouts Apone over the in-game screeching of distant aliens and our echoing passage along the galvanized metal ducting. I hear automatic gunfire ahead of us. Behind us again. Off in the distance … then, not at all.

If WonderSoft gets taken out by the aliens, does that mean we get a default win? I’m guessing not.

“Wierzbowski!” someone screams over the chat. “They got Wierzbowski!”

“LOL … just like in the movie,” someone else says, laughing.

“Take the left fork,” shouts Apone over the chat and automatic weapons fire. Pistol shots. Behind us, on ambient, I can hear scrabbling claws and a leathery slithering against the outside of the ductwork all around us. WarWorld has gone all in on this map. The muscles in my neck feel like iron bands. I open and close my jaw to shake out the tension, then blink twice and look at the screen again.

We pass a torn-out section of the ductwork. It gapes outward, covered in dark inky blood and rising steam.

“Keep moving, Marines!” says someone not Apone.

I chance a look behind me and see an alien scrabble around a corner in the ducting. An alien. I cut loose with the M4X and hit it multiple times. Acid and tentacles explode in steam and blood. More of them are scrabbling behind the dying thrashing shrieking thing, to get over it, to get at me. To get at us.

“Anyone holding a ’nade?” I shout over the chat.

“Last one,” says MarinePvtFrost. “After that, we’re down to just the magazines we got left and some witty banter.” He laughs over the chat.

“Use it behind us, now!” I tell him.

The corridor’s tight, but he gets it behind us and destroys the ducting and some of the aliens.

“Something ahead … ,” says MarineCorpsmanDietrich. Her voice is frantic. “I think it’s an opening!”

“Check it first,” warns Apone.

“Like we got a lotta choices right now, Sarge,” adds Frost.

After a moment Dietrich calls out “All clear” over the chat and we’re in. Then, “Hey, we’re in Operations!”

I crawl through the last of the ducting and drop down into a small room with two doors. The marines are already opening them, guns aimed outward.

“If this is anything like our mods,” says Apone, “then we only need to seal the two doors that lead into Medical. Those and the duct we just came through.”

“Yo, heads up, there’s a materials station here!” calls out someone named MarinePvtDrake.

“Good, grab it and start sealing these doors, Marines,” orders Apone.

I walk out into Operations and find desks, displays, and transparent walls. The marines are already welding steel plates across the two main doors to the section. I see AwesomeSauce bent over a nearby display. Its light turns her avatar’s face a soft blue.

“We’ve got feeds on most of the facility,” she says as I approach. “They’re everywhere. The aliens, that is. WonderSoft is probably in the living quarters section but I can’t get in there. So … if they made it, they’re there.” She snaps her bubble gum. “What now, Question?” I check my CommandPad.

We’re down to AwesomeSauce, Apone, Drake, Dietrich, Frost, and a guy named Crowe whom I haven’t heard from much.

That makes seven of us.

The goal of the TFD match is to destroy the other team’s defenses before they destroy yours. With the aliens surrounding everything, that means if teams don’t have a fortress, then they don’t have much of a chance at survival. WonderSoft is on the other side of the station. Between us and them, there are … a whole lot of those things. I watch the monitor as one of the aliens drags the body of a Softie avatar down a dimly lit grated corridor.

“Can we hurt them from here?” I ask AwesomeSauce. “Using the computer system?”

She’s silent for a moment.

“Nah, doesn’t look like it.”

I’m thinking.

“Listen,” I say over the chat. “Obviously you guys are fans of the movie. I’ve never seen it.” I pause, waiting for the various shouts of incredulity to pass. Then, “Does anyone have an idea how we can hurt WonderSoft? I mean, anything from the movie.”

No one says anything.

“In the movie, the atmosphere processor blows the whole place up,” offers Apone. “We could blow ourselves up. Not much use in that, I guess.”

“Yeah, kinda defeats the purpose, Sarge,” says Frost.

“I don’t suppose anyone’s got a Bunker Buster streak? We could drop it on the living quarter section and take them out or at least expose them to the aliens.”

“I got a Special Delivery,” says Drake. “But we need to be out in the open for that. We could use the weapons package option it comes with, though. That’d be real nice right about now.”

And I’ve got Hang in There, Lil’ Buddy. My final streak. A dropship escort for two minutes. But we’re inside. What’s it going to do, fire through the windows?

“I haven’t seen this old movie either,” says AwesomeSauce. “Why do they blow up this atmosphere thing?”

“Oh, they don’t mean to,” says Dietrich. “Just happens after a really awesome firefight when they get ambushed by warriors … those things. The aliens. They damage it when they walk into the nest.”

“The nest?” I ask.

“Yeah, that’s where the alien queen makes her nest.”

“What if … ,” I’m thinking out loud. “What if that’s map number three? What if this map TDF match has an inherent destruction feature? The aliens. They destroy your fortress, forcing you to find and move into the third map before that happens. It’s probably a matter of time before …”

There’s a dull thump on one of the doors. Everyone swivels, guns pointing at the door, watching the dent that’s just appeared there. Then another.

“They’re here,” whispers Apone.

“Yeah … matter of time,” says Frost. “We better do something fast ’cause if they get in here, it’s gonna be a real short meet and greet.”

“I think this isn’t the game,” I say. Everybody’s still watching the door. It’s dimpling inward even more. Everyone’s slowly backing away, putting desks and displays between themselves and the rapidly deforming door. “We’ve got to get out to that atmosphere processor. That’s where the next map is. The aliens will destroy both fortresses in a matter of time. We don’t need to wipe out WonderSoft, the aliens will do it for us. Drake, have you unlocked the vehicle upgrade on that Special Delivery?”

“Played for three years … what do you think?”

“Good, call it in and drop it right outside those windows there.” I point out into the dark landscape of wind and rain. I can see shadows moving out there among the rocks and debris. There’s nothing human avatar–shaped about them.

“Uh, we can’t get through those windows with just rifles and no explosives, genius. That’s a transparent wall. Guns are useless. We need, at least, a 30 mm chain gun or explosives,” says Dietrich.

Seams are beginning to appear in the door leading to Medical.

“Hang on … ,” I say, activating my third streak. “It’s about to get real hairy for a couple of seconds.”

A seam in the door’s thick welded-plate metal rips open like a shirt. One of the aliens sticks its shiny black bullet-shaped head in. Its grinning jaws snap open as another set of smaller teeth shoot out, dripping thick saliva.

I fire a quick burst and the thing’s head explodes, its jaws still snapping as the body goes limp.

“I think ‘hairy’ might be an understatement, Question,” whispers AwesomeSauce.

“Yeah … we’re, like, done,” adds Drake. “I got sixty rounds left and …”

“Call in that vehicle now, Drake. Do it! Select the APC!” I shout over the chat. Meanwhile I’m dialing in my last streak. I set the spinning red target hologram on the door the aliens are about to come through.

“Ready, everyone … you know the drill. Conserve your ammo. Check your targets. Everyone stay frosty and we’ll get through this,” says Apone over the metallic pounding and concussive thuds. The door is coming apart.

“Escort Gunship, inbound,” announces the game.

“Heads down, everyone!” I yell over the chat.

The aliens are crawling through, tails whipping, teeth gnashing, claws reaching, opening and closing. Drake begins to fire.

I turn to see the dropship lowering beneath storm-leaden clouds and the darkness outside, swiveling as it hovers beyond the large windows. Guns extend, centering on the spinning red targeting reticle I’ve placed over the door the aliens are coming through.

“Get down!”

The dropship’s 30 mm cannons whir to life, smashing the explosive-resistant window to shards, sending a hazy stream of ball ammunition right into the splitting door. Aliens explode, ejecting yellow acid and greenish guts everywhere.

“Drake, call that APC in now!”

“Done.”

The spinning guns of the gunship wind down for a moment, waiting for a new batch of targets.

I shout, “Move now! Everyone through the window and out to the APC.” Aliens are still climbing through the Swiss-cheesed metal opening that was the door to Medical. The guns of the Albatross spool up again as AwesomeSauce and Crowe clear the smashed window. More aliens explode. Even more are coming through.

“Something’s got me!” shrieks Drake over the chat. I look over to see an alien coming through the floor. I fire a short burst into the dark hole beneath his feet and the thing explodes down there in the dark. Drake’s avatar screams. Nice touch, WarWorld.

“I’m down to 25 percent,” notes Drake over the chat.

The whining death pitch of the dropship’s guns recedes.

“C’mon, we are leaving, Marines!” says Apone.

It’s a small fall out through the shards of the window and into the mud and rain. I take 2 percent damage. Rain falls across my HUD as my avatar gets to his feet. Ahead of me the others are already scrambling toward the APC. It’s an identical version of the APC used in the Drive-by streak earlier. Above us the hovering dropship swivels, its chain guns dispensing a blurring barrage of death in a wide arc at multiple closing targets all around us. Over in-game ambient sound, I can hear the dying screeches of the prehistoric-like aliens mixed with the howling wind and splashing rain.

An alien comes charging and thrashing out of the dark, tackling Drake’s limping avatar. The other marines and AwesomeSauce are firing at a swarm of aliens trying to cut them off from reaching the APC. I close with the one on top of Drake and execute the hand-to-hand kill option by clicking both mouse buttons at once. I can’t chance shooting the thing, it’s all over Drake. A quick cut-scene plays out as my avatar reaches one hand out and grabs the thrashing head of the alien. My long-barrel .45 comes into frame against the skull of the alien and fires, putting a hot bullet through the elongated skull. Its jaws snap shut, then open, going slack in death.

I get Drake up and we’re moving. We barely make the red emergency-lit interior of the APC as the vehicle’s autoturret fires madly at the swarming aliens. The dropship above us turns, engaging multiple unseen targets. Like I said, we barely make it.

We’re moving fast over dark terrain. AwesomeSauce is driving. I check the CommandPad and mark the location of the distant atmosphere processor.

“ETA in five,” she shouts over the chat and the rumbling drone of the APC.

“You think there’ll be more of those things out there?” I ask Apone.

“Can’t say, sir. Can’t say that at all. But my guess is that most of the aliens are probably based around Hadley’s Hope. The only thing we’re for sure guaranteed to find at the atmo’ processor is the queen.”

The queen is probably what we need to defeat to gain the tech option.

Dietrich’s running the Medic perk so we get our health back. The APC also contains a full-reload supply point. We can’t swap out our weapons, but we’re totally rearmed. Magazines and ’nades.

The APC pulls up in front of the massive sloping pyramid that is the atmosphere processor. Outside it looks like we’ve traveled to another world. The jungle and the mountains are gone. Here, there is only twisted rock and fast-shifting clouds of purple blue and shadows that almost seem to streak across the low sky. Small red and white lights twinkle and blink from the superstructure of the plant, signaling in the gloom of the storm.

“In there,” says Apone over the chat. “ ’bout nine levels down we should find the nest … and the queen.”

We move in. Tactical formation.

The place is crawling with aliens.

The marines seem to know where the access stairs leading down are.

“We’ve run this mod on our own, several times. ’Cept this is way better,” says Drake calmly over the chat as he cuts down three warriors with a burst from his auto rifle.

At level five, strange growths, almost like the bone structure of some ancient dinosaur, cover the tight passages and narrow descents. At level six, things move from intense to insane, as aliens start crawling along the walls and ceilings, leaping in at us. But we stay tight and figure the shifting AI out. In time we’re working as a team, cutting them down as they come at us in sporadic waves. We’re calling out targets, burning through ammo just to keep them back. At level eight we find nothing. Just a wan red light and darkness covering the entire empty level.

“We made it,” says AwesomeSauce. I don’t hear the bubble gum.

“Yeah … ,” says Drake, his voice high pitched and triumphant. He’s cruising on a cocktail of success and gunfire. “Sometimes things turn out way different than you thought they would. In the movie we all …”

“Sulaco Uplink, established,” interrupts the game announcer abruptly. “Orbital Strike, imminent.”

“ … died,” finishes a much subdued Drake. Then, “Man, Orbital Strike’s like game over for all of us. Both sides.”

So that’s what that was, I think, remembering the intel point back on the first map.

RangerSix told me that if I couldn’t get the tech, then I was to make sure WonderSoft didn’t get it either. I guess the WonderSoft commander had the same orders.

“One minute to Orbital Strike,” says the gravel-voiced game announcer.

“Those cheaters,” swears AwesomeSauce, her voice petulant, bitter.

“Yeah,” says Frost. “Losers gotta lose.”

We’re done. Nothing survives an Orbital Strike. The only reason you use it is to make sure the other team doesn’t win. No matter how good they are. Or how hard they played.

“Listen up, Marines,” says Apone over the chat quietly. “We made it this far. Let’s go down there and finish this thing now. Who cares what happens after that.”

Silence.

“Straight up,” says Crowe. “Let’s do it to it.”

We rush. We rush the stairs to level nine and find the shadow of a massive alien queen looming like some otherworld prehistoric nightmare in the mist, surrounded by large elongated eggs. She hisses, then roars, her jaws opening and snapping shut.

“You guys did great tonight,” I say over the chat just before it all goes down. “Good job.”

“Hey, Question,” says Dietrich. “You’re no Gorman … thanks, everybody, that was the best game of my life.”

I didn’t get that Gorman remark, but everyone agrees in their own way. It reminds me for a moment that games are supposed to be fun. Just fun. That’s all. We were terrified all the way. Nervous. Laughing. Solving the riddle of the game together. Y’know … fun.

Then …

“Marines!” yells Apone as we enter the ninth level.

We’re firing, bullets smashing into the rushing, looming queen. Acid splashes everywhere, away from and into us. Her tail is whip-snaking up and then down upon us. Claws wide …

“Stand by for Orbital Strike,” says the game flatly.

And the screen turns white … then gray, outlining everything in drifting ash. Slowly freezing. Dissolving. I’m looking into the jaws of the alien queen.

Game Over appears across my screen.

Chapter 6

Sancerré doesn’t come home from the shoot that weekend, or the club the crew was going to afterward, for that matter.

Sullen gray morning light reminds me I came home late, after standing outside Burnished, trying to catch a glimpse up at the candlelit club entrance that led to an interior I’d never see. I’d stood outside in the snow, listening to the sound drifting down from the floors above: clinking glasses, too loud bar chat, and a coy laugh that reminded me of another one I knew all too well. I came home and drank scotch and watched a replay of Sunday night’s battle. I drank and tried to focus on the business of work. I lost myself in memorizing WonderSoft weapons charts, APC hard points, and everything else that might give me an advantage. If ColaCorp ends up defeated in the Song Hua Eastern Highlands campaign, then we were finished for most of New York City’s best advertising.

What then?

My paycheck, rent, Sancerré? All three seemed tied together. My only answer was to get better at killing WonderSoft, grunts and players.

In sleep, I dreamed hot dreams of sweaty candlelit battlefields of still, tall grass in the night. Billowing white clouds barely moved against the almost light blue of night beneath a bone china moon. In the dream the air felt warm and smelled of sandalwood. Kiwi was there, in the gunner’s mount, and I drove the armored, in-game jeep we call a Mule. Both of us guzzled gallons of amber scotch and listened to a surreal mix of the opening march from “White Rabbit” on a small portable radio as phrases and words from across time and politics, Eastern chanting and wailing, things Sancerré had said, formed a soundtrack for our efforts to kill every one of our enemies.

WonderSoft.

Landlords.

Mario, the world’s greatest fashion photographer, in his own, not very humble in the least, opinion.

Rich guys, kids I knew in high school, rock bands we hated, corporate America and the open source hackers who ruined everything for everybody. Everyone and anyone got it, and even when they should have stopped, they kept coming at us in waves. They kept closing in on us as Kiwi worked the revolving matte-black triangular twin barrels of the Hauser minigun atop the Mule. Kiwi shirtless, sweating, grinning, screaming over and over again, “It’s beautiful, man, it’s beautiful.”

I dream of war …

… and wake to early, soft gray light, watery scotch, and the lock chime beeping softly as Sancerré comes through the door, mumbles a “sorry,” and goes into the bedroom and closes the door behind her.

Chapter 7

Downtown, at Forty-Seventh and Broadway I take the express elevator to the seventy-fourth floor. In the mirrored walls I see my cleanest khakis can’t stand up to the shave I need. My whitest shirt, my only white shirt that might pass as acceptable for mainstream society, can’t look clean enough against the gray-green pallor of my face. At least I had my Docs polished on the way over. And the caramel-colored leather trench, what can you say, it’s the best; it goes with my entire wardrobe and it’s full of surprises, like the aviator shades I find in the inside pocket along with a random matchstick.

Nervous?

Sure. Who wouldn’t be after a couple of beatings like this weekend’s, an assured dressing-down and impending bonus possible termination, rent due, girlfriend probably cheating, and oh, yeah … I’m hungover.

I don the aviators, bite the match, and try to convince corporate America I am the problem. An invisible Do Not Disturb sign wraps itself around me. The suits in the elevator, bright boys of banking and finance and higher education and weekends in a place I’ve heard called the SkyVault, cease their inane chatter of ultramodels, back ends, deals, points mergers, options, and blah blah blah … Bang.

I am the problem!

Mayhem made to order.

I can tell they get the message when they shuffle out whispering to each other as the doors close behind them. I ride out the last stretch to the seventy-fourth alone. In the silence, the bony man, Faustus Mercator, asks me Are there meeting rooms above the seventy-fourth? and …

… Are you happy?

The large, polished mahogany conference table shines thickly as drop-down monitors, paper flat, slide from the ceiling. I can hear Kiwi bantering with JollyBoy. Outside the immense windows, gray morning wafts by in misty cloud banks. Soon all the screens are filled with the fifty-nine others who make up ColaCorp’s professional online army. Of late, an army beaten repeatedly by WonderSoft.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” says RangerSix from the largest screen on the main wall. He’s represented by neither avatar nor real-time image, just an old-school radio wave pulsing with the steady intonations of his speech.

“First off I want to start with the obligatory ‘compliment sandwich,’ which all my self-improvement books tell me I need to use when talking to nonmilitary personnel. S’posed to help me in corporate America. But, dammit to hell, kids … there’s no time for corporate double talk. Everyone gave it their best and we still got beat, and we got beat badly. In the process we lost several assets we very much needed to take back the Song Hua river basin. Vampires got into both tank battalions, and now we’re down to three. I repeat, three tanks. Three tanks ain’t gonna support any kind of counterattack. So, in short, we’re down to the Eightieth Infantry Brigade; two artillery companies, the 661 and the 663; and what’s left of our air wing, which boils down to an attack squadron and the Albatross platoon.”

“We’ve always got snide remarks … oh, and lots of sticks and stones,” Kiwi offers cheerily.

“Not funny, son.” RangerSix sounds like he wants to stomp on Kiwi. On my Petey, Kiwi messages me, “Too bad WonderSoft has rubber armor and we’re made of glue.”

“Right, sir, sorry,” Kiwi says, chastened.

“You’re a good soldier, Kiwi, but I would be remiss if I didn’t let you know our next battle will determine whether you stay on professional status or not. Frankly, it might mean that for the rest of us also. The number crunchers at ColaCorp feel salaries, our salaries mainly, asset fees, and sponsorship could be better spent on more traditional advertising. So we have to do something right here, right now to prove them wrong. In short, boys and girls, we need a win and we need it Tuesday night. So here’s our plan …”

I think about the plan.

I think about it as snow drifts in from the front that’s making its way down onto Manhattan. High above, above the seventy-fourth floor, the bottom of Upper New York pokes through the clouds. Down here on the ground it’s business as usual, as the few commuters who still live in the old city hurry through the fading afternoon light, hoping to get home before the storm hits.

I need to go home. I need to confront Sancerré about where she was all weekend and why she didn’t come back last night. But the check ColaCorp gives me is way too small to pay the rent. So I head to Grand Central Station. I’ve got an hour to get there, and if I don’t make it in time, I won’t be able to earn any money tonight.

It’s money we need, Sancerré and I, to have a relationship before we end said relationship. We are, as of midnight last night, officially ten days overdue on our rent.

Sancerré once told me that Grand Central Station used to be beautiful.

I hate the place.

It smells like bad patchouli and cheap disinfectant. Supposedly it once handled the entire commuting workforce of old New York. Now it’s just a series of huddled stalls. Old hippies from the double “0”s hawking their incense candles, FreakBeads, and tie-dyed Blue Market SoftEyes. I could care less about sand candles and cheap monocles that reconstruct everyone naked.

Some people I don’t want to see naked.

The only thing I’m hoping for right now is to buy into tonight’s tournament and get on Truth and Light.

I hate Darkness. Only freaks play Darkness.

Right now around the world, Darkness fans, many more than those who make a habit of actually playing Darkness, are hurrying home to make sure their subscriber accounts have hand-shaked with the Black so they can watch the sick fantasies of others come to life.

I meet Iain near a stall where two old hippies are listening to Pearl Jam Redux as they try to sell SoftMat knockoffs that probably won’t last out the year. They’re stoned, so who cares if Iain lays a disk on me that carries a minimum two-year Education sentence, federal I might add, along with the obligatory sex offender rap for a take-home bonus. That’s hard time if your log jibes with what the feds will be watching for tonight.

“What’d I get?” I ask him while thinking, Please be Light. Please be Light. I repeat it over and over to myself.

“You never know, bucko,” says Iain. “You … never … know, so buy the ticket and take the ride.”

I stare at Iain. He sports two SoftEyes, both anthracite gray. I wonder what’s going on behind those lenses. Does he care? Is he worried or scared, like I am? If some sicko used the disk he’s just handed me in the last match, I’m now liable for any crimes he committed while logged in using the program contained on that disk. A routine stop, a minor altercation, and the cops run a cursory data surf on anything I’m carrying and I’m busted for sure. If so, who knows? With a good lawyer I could fight it, but good lawyers cost good money, and the only money I’m holding is a small supply of increasingly rare cash, the only form of currency the Black deals in. Iain does not accept MasterVisa.

“Are you in or out? It makes no difference to me?” says Iain, as if he’s trying to push me.

Iain has always been one cold cat.

“I’m in.” Even though I shouldn’t be. Please be Light.

Please be Light.

“Then that’s one large, my brother,” he whispers. I hand Iain a grand. My last grand. The grand earmarked for half the rent.

Please be Light.

I’m home by five just as the storm hits the streets hard. I crank up the heat and find a note Sancerré has left for me.

Back tonight. I promise. I’ll explain. Sorry.

Love,

Goon

It’s Monday. She doesn’t have any kind of shoot I remember her talking about. I’ve got four hours until I can crack the disk, so I pour a small scotch and fire up a little reggae. Soon I’m asleep and Kiwi and I are once again fighting our way across that nightmarish landscape, a battlefield of candles and sawgrass. Night winds drive unseen wooden wind chimes against each other. We kill a hundred medieval knights conjured up from an Eiger nightmare. Kiwi works the twin Hauser, screaming, as the sound of our guns turn orchestral at some point. Gregorian darkness. The knights are lurching, off perspective, bullet-riddled charcoal sketches that remind me of Picasso’s Don Quixote. They’re too much for us and they refuse to die, swinging wide-bladed two-handed swords as we are overrun. The moon fades, the barrels melt down, and only the medieval chanting remains in the dark and the shadows that survive.

“It’s beautiful, man … ,” whispers the voice of an unseen Kiwi.

I wake, wonder where I am, remember, then mutter, “Please be Light.”

Chapter 8

At nine thirty I’m mostly sober, though I’ve filled a nice big tumbler of scotch and pulled out half a pack of smokes I’ve been meaning to throw away.

The stuff you’re liable to see on the Black is often just too much for a sober mind.

I lock my disk in, run my cracking daemon on it, then my computer screen turns black.

Maybe my computer couldn’t handle it.

Abandon All Hope … appears on-screen.

I hate this stuff.

I’m trying not to run the lights in the apartment to keep our electric bill down, and I know there’s no one in the room with me, but already I have a case of the willies. The pervasive sense of dread that accompanies the Black is already making its way into my mind. My old speakers begin to thud out the beat of ancient tribal drums as hammers strike anvils, nailing out high ringing notes. I look at the clock.

9:33 P.M. New York time.

Across the world, weirdos with a taste for the twisted that can no longer be satiated by the SimDungeons they’ve constructed in secret are logging on to an illegal open source i.p.

Looking for thrills.

The words open source are enough to get federal data surfers interested in what you’re doing, while at the same time dropping the AG’s office an e-mail to start filing blanket charges. Open source just isn’t done anymore. I know the reason why, all the reasons why. They teach them in history class. But it’s the only way to make money tonight, right now. Money I need yesterday. Who cares if open source was once responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of lives and a worldwide global collapse, pandemic, and famine. I need rent money.

Please be Light.

On-screen, blood red fades to gray, becoming concrete, stone, then finally grit.

I’m wondering what kind of game we’re playing tonight as I catch myself again repeating inside, Please be Light. Please be Light. Please be Light.

Will it be third world dueling crime syndicates in an open-world version of Kinshasa in the never-ending quagmire that is Greater Africa? Drugs. Hit missions. Gang warfare in the streets. Genocide.

Or …

Some over-the-top science fiction classic that’s been rewritten for the Black and its particular take on lust, torture, and ultraviolence? There was a Star Wars tribute Black game that got busted and made the news last year because some Hollywood actor hadn’t told the feds about his undeclared income from the game. He’d made an extra hundred thousand dollars playing a rapist C3PO who was fairly good at poker.

I stop.

Please be Light.

“Boys and girls, gents and ladies,” begins a soft, malevolent voice through my vintage Grundig Sharp speakers. Vintage meaning old, but they still do the trick. “Saints and sickos, tramps and troublemakers, predators and prey … it’s dyin’ time … again.”

Please be Light.

“Worldwide we are registering over fifty-five million subscribers for tonight’s event,” continues the announcer in his overstylized carny-of-the-damned tones. “And we ask ourselves, my fellow little perverts …”

Pause.

“Who will hack, slash, rape, and loot their way out of our little horror show tonight and for all the nights we play our game until everyone be dead or damned? Who’s ruthless enough to backstab, steal, and cheat their way out of hell? Tonight, my lovelies, we begin … again, in”—the voice is musical, singsong, melodic, its cheery note a counterpoint to the death carnival I’m sure I’m about to find myself in—“the lost World of Wastehavens.”

The music crescendos and then, after a short interlude of silence, returns to the wanderings of a mournful flute.

I have no idea what the World of Waste-whatever is.

“Behold the tower of the Razor Maiden, the Marrow Spike,” continues the announcer.

My screen clouds over. Blue shadows resolve into swirling dust, and from somewhere nearby over ambient in-game sound, I hear a crack of dry thunder followed by the patter of rain falling mutely into ancient, thick dust. Water drops cascade and echo and I’m struck by the certainty that if Sancerré is truly gone, out of my life, I’ll listen to the rain and think of her and it will be little consolation to a very lonely me.

On-screen a fat gibbous moon, swollen, corpulent, and odd, makes its way across the night as its light falls on a lonely desert. In the distance, a rising tower, more perversion or malignant growth than structure, stands out in the moonlit night. Its crazy architecture rises, feasible only in computer-rendered graphics, pushing away from a crumbling city that is slowly being consumed by the dunes of an endless desert. I let go of a fading hope I’d harbored for a simple AK and the clear-cut purpose of merely machine-gunning my way through this game until I’d earned enough money for rent.

Modern warfare is my specialty. Fantasy, not so much.

The spire is jagged and thorny, a black silhouette against the desert night, rising from the jumble of odd-angled ruins in an arid waste devoid of anything living, all made colder by the moon’s pale light. Only the most morbid tourist would choose such a place for an online vacation.

A piano in minor chord ponderously strikes cryptic notes as the camera pulls focus. I’m scanning for landmarks, features, anything I can use later to navigate my way to some cash and prizes. I don’t see any obvious enemies. Yet.

“Even now, pretty and not so pretty little things,” continues the announcer abruptly, “you’re awakening from your crypts, graves, tombs, and sewers …” On-screen the view switches to a collapsing graveyard in some courtyard near the the tower, forgotten and abandoned millennia untold. Gravestones with Gorey-like inscriptions denote fallen warriors. The sound of grinding stone caressing stone erupts across the ambient soundscape. A necrotic hand pushes from the earth. The piano continues to strike those minor chords, alternating now with other diminished chords that seem full of suffering and hollow all at once, turning the soundtrack into a march, into a call to nothing good.

I hate the undead.

They make me jittery. In most games, they just come at you in waves. Guns are basically useless. In fact, most things are useless against the undead. In the end it comes down to baseball bats and lead pipes. Which doesn’t matter—the more of them you send back to death, the more of them appear. I always wonder, after games I’ve played that involve the undead, after killing a thousand, two thousand, what that does to my mind. It can’t be good. One time I played a game where I had to kill fifty-seven-thousand-plus undead just to unlock an achievement. I can distinguish between reality and games, but … some people can’t. What does killing fifty-seven thousand humanlike once humans do to players?

The undead are a hard way to spend a thousand bucks.

A hard way to make rent.

“Prisoners and fiends, victims and in-betweens … ,” continues the game’s unseen announcer. The rattling of chains, a tortured scream, a woman sobs. Everything happens fast and just moments before the game reveals my avatar, the unknown character I’ll play as I attempt to beat this game, I see the tower above and hear the whimpering of a child.

“Razor Maiden, devourer of the innocent, eater of life, queen of hell, commands that you die tonight, or live trying.”

In these online tournaments, and might I add, illegal open source online tournaments, the goal is to figure out the game and then beat it before all the other players find and beat you. You’ve got to start somewhere, and often that’s a game in and of itself that must be beat before you can actually start beating the main game. Just like life. I’m guessing the game I’ll be playing to start with is “escape.” But from where and how, I don’t know just yet. Along the way is where I’ll really make money. Contests, treasure troves, even in-game bargains can lead to big cash and interesting prizes. Or so I’ve been told.

The intro is over and now my story, the story of my avatar, begins.

“Please be Light,” I whisper once more in my empty and very dark apartment.

Gloomy clouds thicken on-screen, then a golden shaft of light, something my eyes are starving for, stabs down through the clouds.

In Olde English script, the word Light appears as I hear a distant trumpet play a fading call to arms.

“Noble Son”—it’s a different voice than the game announcer, kindly, a sage or a king perhaps—“I am Callard the Wise of Rondor, and I’m here to help you. You must rescue a child of hope from the clutches of the diabolical Razor Maiden. Your training as a Samurai of the mysterious East has given you the Focused Slash ability and the Iron Hurricane attack. Armed only with your katana Deathefeather, you have journeyed many leagues into the southern deserts to reach a fabled lost city buried beneath shifting sands so that you can climb the jutting ruin of the Marrow Spike and confront evil itself.”

Pause.

Wait for it, I tell myself.

“Alas, you have been captured by the nightmarish horde of the black witch Razor Maiden …”

There it is. Captured.

I hate games where you start off in the hole.

The question now is, How many of my fellow contestants are also captured? Whoever’s not captured has a big advantage. Even worse, am I captured by one of my fellow players? Someone playing Darkness?

“The Black horde has taken your hand in payment for daring to approach their forgotten realm,” continues Callard the Wise of Whatever. “But fear not, Samurai, there is hope! Somewhere within this ancient desert lies the Pool of Sorrows. If you can find it, maybe its restorative waters will return your lost hand, and then, once you’ve found your legendary blade Deathefeather, perhaps you might dispense the justice Razor Maiden so richly deserves.”

I feel cheated.

Damn Iain.

A thousand bucks down the drain on a one-handed Samurai that’s probably being tortured and raped from the get-go.

The picture on-screen dissolves as the voice of Callard reminds me to “find the child.” What child, I’m not sure, but apparently a child must be found.

The screen changes from panorama to point of view. I’m inside the avatar’s skin. The HUD comes online and I’m checking the layout. Vitals are down 50 percent. But who’s exactly a million bucks after having their hand lopped off? My right clicks are enabled, so I scroll through a menu of available feats I can slave to the mouse and bind to the keyboard. I like the old-fashioned mouse, none of these reticle-cued, SoftEye enhancements everyone’s trying to sell me these days.

With part of my mind on the screen that shows my surroundings, and the other scrolling through a submenu checking what skills I can employ, most of which are offline, I see the grotesque feet of a large monster shuffling toward me. My POV is only responding to the vaguest of movements, like I’m drugged or chained up or something. Over ambient, beyond the scrape of the jailer-monster’s feet, I hear an agonized scream followed by repeated cries for mercy. Then the obligatory tormented scream punctuation as hot iron sears flesh. Again, the screaming.

The Dungeon of Endless Despair flashes across my screen.

The jailer nears my body and hauls me upright. I stare from the darkness of my snow-swamped apartment in midtown Manhattan, into the face of an Ogre on-screen. Protruding canines and bleeding gums compete for computer-rendered audacity with an oozing gash that was once an eye.

“Wot’s yur name, maggot?” growls the Ogre through my DellTashi display, something I purchased on credit after being confirmed for professional status with ColaCorp.

A QuickMenu opens up asking me to type in my name.

“Loser” springs to mind along with “Thousand-Dollars-Down-the-Drain Guy.”

I can’t use PerfectQuestion. If ColaCorp knew I was gaming in the Black, I’d lose my pro status immediately.

What comes next comes from nowhere. It doesn’t mean anything to me, and I can’t remember ever hearing it before.

“Wu,” I type in.

“Wu!” shrieks the Ogre and roars with laughter and flying spittle right in my face. My POV spins crazily about as the Ogre, easily well over seven feet tall, hurls my Samurai at a far wall. Ragdoll physics take over as the laws of the universe in this online world send me flying through the air. After a bone-rattling impact into a wall, I land on a thin pile of straw in the orange light of a nearby guttering wall torch. The damage deducts 2 percent from my Vitality and now I’m down to 48 percent.

I’m still searching all the Samurai’s submenus. He has some awesome skills and devastating attacks. But all of them are offline, probably due to the missing hand and damage. I find one called Serene Focus. It’s live, so I enable and drag it onto the right mouse button. I read the quick hint description of the skill as once again the Ogre lumbers toward me all grunts and wheezy laughs.

“I’ll baste yur bones with yur own blood ’n’ crack yur skull between me teeth, I will.”

A very ogre thing to say.

Meanwhile back at the skill description, I read that Serene Focus allows the user to slow down in-game time while still moving at an intensely fast speed.

Yay, now I can watch the Ogre beat me to death in slow-mo.

I scan the jail cell. Torchlight and shadows, more alcove than cell, it opens into an undefined gloom beyond the flickering light. I do not see my Samurai sword, Deathefeather, anywhere nearby. The guttering torch along the wall of my cell reveals nothing that would be useful right about now. The Ogre is almost on me again, grunting and laughing. I pan up and see the great sabers of his fangs rending his own scarred and bloody welt of a lip.

I have to admit, whoever wrote this software, even though they’re stealing my thousand bucks, did a great job. It sucks to be me right now.

The Ogre’s tumorous Adam’s apple bobs up and down. The game’s soundtrack cranks up to do or die with the bleating tribal horn of triumph every dark beast that ever walked the worlds of fantasy is known by.

Imagination.

I know what to do.

I right-click Serene Focus, and the blaring war drums and horns slow down as though drowned in a thick syrup of sugary sonic deadness. The edges of my screen distort to soft focus. From somewhere nearby, I can hear the delicate strings of the Japanese koto plucking out singular, poignant notes.

I don’t know why, but I understand now.

It’s as if the programmer wrote a quick cut-scene illustrating the point of Serene Focus and dropped it onto my mental deck for a frame or two.

“The hands of the Samurai are like the legs of a crane in a shallow pond. Early morning, fog and mist, they do not disturb the water, or hesitate. They lift and descend and the water remains unmarked.”

Yeah, I understand how the crane walks through a shallow pond and doesn’t disturb the mirrored surface of the water.

Creepy, huh?

I target the Ogre’s bobbing throat and attack with my left mouse button. The Samurai’s only hand reaches out from my POV. In this instant, I hope the developer spent good money on things other than great graphics and good physics. A well-built game will render an opponent’s entire body, allocating damage based on anatomy and physiology. When computer games were first invented, all you could do was attack another player. It couldn’t differentiate if you hit him in the legs, head, or chest. Hell, even a hit in the nuts or gouging out an eye were undefinable. Computers couldn’t crunch that level of data. But games evolved. Eventually you could make head shots. That was at the beginning of the new millennium. Now, technology can target specific muscle groups. I hope whoever built this circus of pain paid enough for that level of design. Otherwise, I’m dead digital meat. And homeless.

On-screen the Samurai’s hand reaches out. The represented on-screen digital world fixates on the great bobbing tumor that is the Ogre’s throat, as the hand of the Samurai grasps …

… then crushes it a second later.

In a game like this, where players and watchers are looking for the sickest of not-so-cheap thrills, the likelihood was high that the designer went all-in for the best in blood and gore. My Serene Focus gamble pays off as the Ogre stumbles backward, gasping and reaching for its shattered throat. It stumbles, falls, then dies in the shadows beyond the cone of torchlight.

Now, I’m in the game.

If you count having one hand, 48 percent of your health left, and most of your options offlined, as “in the game,” then yes, I am in the game.

I check my Samurai’s inventory. I find only the robelike gi of the Samurai and a pair of wooden sandals. Both equipped. No lacquered armor or sword for that matter.

I move forward and hear chock … chock … chock, the wooden sound of his sandaled steps, echoing in the dark. Underneath that is the breeze-whipped guttering sound of a torch. And underneath it all, wandering rhythmic drums and the full chords of a baby grand piano play, striking out harsh tone clusters that cry doom, gloom, and the loneliness one finds beneath the earth in lost and forgotten places.

Music is important in games. A tempo change can mean an impending attack. A certain chord can indicate the state of affairs, good or bad. Even though I like to keep my own tracks going, I still keep ambient in-game sound and soundtracks in the groove just so I can check in on that level. Some gamers don’t, and more often than not they pay for it.

I proceed forward, using my keyboard to move the Samurai into the darkness beyond the torchlight. The game factors time and vision in and adjusts my POV to the dim lighting. I see a great buttressed hall stretching away and above me as batlike architecture embraces high shadowy reaches, unconquered by the dim, barely tossed illumination thrown from small guttering torches along the wall. I stick to the shadows as much as I can.

I’d taken the Ogre by surprise. Now my Serene Focus is offline and waiting to recharge, which could take some time. Not if, but when I meet new enemies, they’ll probably not be as vulnerable as the stupid Ogre who was probably just a “bot,” controlled by the game’s artificial intelligence. When I meet other contestants, other players, they’ll be quicker to hack me to pieces and loot my body before any questions can be asked. In fact, I seriously doubt there’ll be any kind of Q and A.

Right now, I need a weapon.

In the alcoves to my right and left, I see hulking creatures performing obscene acts on their unwilling and occasionally willing victims. I’m sure these are just appetizers for the weirdos who can no longer apply for a simple pornography permit, the mentally ill who’ve failed the psych test and proved themselves to be a danger to society. Open source Black games are their last resort to get any kind of fix—even if it means ten to fifteen years’ hard Education if they get caught.

With just one hand I’m next to useless. I proceed forward despite the pleas for help, cries of agony, the delight of the deviant.

A menu option opens, letting me know I can tuck the Samurai’s damaged left hand under his opposite arm to control the bleeding, but I’ll be at a combat disadvantage. Still, it’ll control the damage loss. I’ve already lost another 2 percent health.

I do. I curse Iain again. And I wonder where Sancerré is right now.

Then I stop. I’ve got to focus and make this thing pay, regardless. So I force myself to play the game and let go of all the other junk in my life.

If I’ve started in the dungeon, I reason, then the child I’ll need to rescue is most likely at the top of the tower. That’s the obvious path and the only goal I can think of right now. Somewhere, I’ll probably find a staircase leading up from the dungeon and into or near the tower.

I need to go up.

Instead, all I find are rendered rough-hewn stone steps leading down into a faintly green iridescent well of darkness. Dripping water from fanged stalactites above provides a tympanic counterpoint to the lonely wooden chock … chock … chock … chock of my Samurai’s cautious steps down through the mostly silent descent. The steps finally lead me to a natural cave. I move the Samurai close to the wall and, cleverly, the avatar turns sideways and hugs the rocky surface. Once again I’m amazed at the authorship of the game.

In the cavern, a long-legged dark figure, with slender thighs but misshapen by a large potbelly, prowls about. Fat arms and tiny hands caress a ropy bullwhip. Above this, a curiously odd-shaped head, covered by a leather mask, cranes itself side to side from the short stump of a neck. In my gut, I know it’s another player.

I call him Creepy.

Probably Darkness.

Beyond Creepy, a natural bridge heaves itself over a gaping chasm. The other side is little more than a lone, distant torch and flickering shadows. I wait, back to the stone wall, hidden in the dark of the passage. Once again I scroll through the Samurai’s submenu looking for some ability that might be of use. I find nothing. Serene Focus, which I could employ to push Creepy off the ledge after a quick rush, refuses to come back online as it slowly recharges.

My brain begins to tickle, and I wonder for a moment if I’m being watched. I check the stone staircase behind and above me. Nothing. I watch the stone ledge where Creepy seems to be patrolling, looking for something, even waiting for someone. A new submenu, which I’d been prowling, opens up the history of my Samurai. After I get past all the code of honor and devotion to the art of combat stuff, I catch a line that intrigues me.

The Samurai, a master of balance and grace, employs these traits to deliver decisive death blows and evade enemies.

I unpin the Samurai from the wall and walk forward. Creepy instantly stops pacing. The whip hangs limply from one studded-gloved hand.

I send him a message in text.

“HOLD, friend, let’s talk.”

I open up a chat channel and send him an invite. My quickly evolving plan, in short, is to do a little role-playing. If Creepy likes to play with his food, and if I can maneuver him into a position near enough the edge of the chasm, I might be able to push him over said edge, or even get myself onto the bridge and away from him. I might be able to evade him if I catch him off guard or lure him into a sense of complacency or even, perhaps, do something more lethal. The bullwhip is a weapon I could probably use with one hand. The Samurai were masters of every weapon, and if I am going to make my thousand bucks pay off, then I need to think like a Samurai and get a weapon.

Will Creepy go for it, and if he does, what does he want? Role playing involves me looking into his room, his world, wherever in the world that is, and him, even more frightening, looking into my world, my apartment.

I take a quick sip of scotch, consider lighting a cigarette, and wonder again where Sancerré is right now.

Shortly my worst fears are confirmed. A visual channel opens in the top left-hand side of my screen. Creepy in real life looks exactly like Creepy in the cave. He’s cosplaying himself in the game. From behind the black mask I see two beady eyes alight with feverish intensity.

“Guten abend, mein freund.”

Crud, a German.

“I don’t … sprechen … English?”

For a moment Creepy’s face seems to twist with frustration. Then, “Ja, my English is nicht sehr gut. But I make it for you.” Red lips painted with lipstick smile awkwardly back at me. For a brief moment he seems nice, harmless, like a kid I knew in school who just wanted to make friends but didn’t know how. I feel sorry for him and instantly I degrade Creepy’s threat level. Maybe he’s just playing for kicks, looking for a good time and, more important, a friend. I can use that against him. Maybe I can even get him to leave me alone, or help me.

“You vant to make vis der role playing or maybe you vant to vatch me do stuff?”

This is too easy …

… and I know it’s too easy.

And nothing is ever too easy.

“Yeah,” I say, “I like to watch.” I feel a million tons of sludge oozing through my veins.

“Ja, really?” says Creepy flatly. Watch out, I hear my mind scream.

“Okay, I’m gonna lock my door so no one comes in, vait a second.” He gets up from his keyboard as I wonder two things.

One, who is “no one”?

And two, wouldn’t you lock your door before dressing up like a weirdo sadomasochist pervert to play an illegal Black game?

He gets up from his computer, turns his back, and goes to the far end of the room, receding into the fish-eye lens of the visual chat.

It’s now or never. I run for the bridge. The head start I get on him now that he’s away from his keyboard might give me just the edge I need to at least get onto the stone bridge. Maybe the bridge narrows enough that I can make him fall if he chases me or at least slow him down.

But from the moment I slew my POV toward the bridge to begin my dash, I know it’s doomed. Ten steps out and, crack, the whip’s sonic slash echoes over ambient. A POV-spinning second later and I’m facedown on the digitally rendered grit and gravel of the ledge. I slew my POV around and see Creepy pulling hard to haul me in. On-screen, the visual link’s still active, and I see Creepy smiling, drooling, chuckling softly to himself as the glimmer of a crimson SoftEye burns malevolently inside the cheap shiny leather of the mask. He’s got some kind of motion-recognition software running. He’s pulling hard at an invisible whip, dictating the movements of his on-screen character.

He’d kept an eye on me the entire time.

No deception. No gain.

I send my cursor scrambling through the Samurai’s submenus looking for anything to use. Serene Focus still refuses to activate, but it’s crawling toward a full charge. Under a menu called Posture I find all kinds of things. Sitting, Standing, Relaxed, Entertaining, and even something called Breakdancing. But it’s the combat postures listed there that intrigue me the most. Creepy’s almost passing out from glee on visual, so I cut the link. Focusing on the Posture menu, I find a variety of weapon and martial arts stances for different combat situations. Some are online, but all the powerful attacks seem to require both hands. Some even require the Samurai’s lost sword, Deathefeather, specifically. I quickly scroll through the martial arts, searching for anything to use in the next ten seconds. I find Hopkido, even something called Hwa Rang Do, but it’s Judo that attracts me the most.

Creepy drags me upright. His avatar’s grinning, sweating face thrusts itself into my monitor like a fiend. I can only imagine what’s going on in Berlin, or wherever Creepy resides. This is probably like the Super Bowl for him. Creepy wraps his bullwhip around my neck and my screen suddenly hazes over in a red mist as a thudding heartbeat begins to pump slower and slower through my speakers.

He’s strangling me.

My health meter drops quickly to 40 percent. I switch combat postures to Judo, even though Creepy’s got me by the neck. Now his avatar begins to fumble at my clothes.

Man, the developer didn’t slack on any of the options.

At 35 percent I execute a Judo attack. If I just thump him hand-to-hand style, I don’t know how much good it’ll do. I suspect not much. But sometimes good games build in finishing moves and cut-scene attacks.

I’m rewarded with both as once again the game dazzles me. The Samurai slams his head forward into Creepy’s leather-clad face in front of my POV. Then the screen switches to a circling overhead view as the Samurai, now holding Creepy by the skin of his chest, falls backward in slow motion. The attack off-balances Creepy and he’s flying through the air toward the lip of the chasm. He’s still holding the bullwhip, and it trails away after him as he disappears over the edge.

My Vitality bar is now at 28 percent. The red mist has cleared. I move to the edge of the chasm peering into the darkness below and the lash of the whip comes flying out of the darkness and hits me again, deducting another 2 percent from my health. The labored breathing of the Samurai erupts on ambient. I’m down to precious little health, and being that this game is sadistic, chances are I’ll pass out before zero. That way all the deviants get the thrill of knowing that, though their simulated victims are unconscious, they’re still alive and watching from the other side of the screen at whatever comes next.

But I’m not done.

I’m still in the game, and my thousand bucks isn’t gone, yet.

Below, I see Creepy. He hasn’t fallen down into the blackness of the pit. He’s on a rocky outcrop just below the ledge, winding up for another attack, his whip dancing out behind him in the pale green light from above. I target him, press Spacebar, and jump while moving forward, executing a flying kick. Once I’m airborne I realize the potential for catastrophic error. If I miss, or if Creepy moves, it’s off into the dark pit beyond and below. With 26 percent Vitality left, I probably won’t survive any kind of fall.

Slipping in the bathtub would probably kill this Samurai right about now.

Also, I’m jumping down almost twenty feet; even if I hit Creepy, I’ll probably kill myself from residual damage. But who cares. I hate Creepy, I hate the world’s greatest fashion photographer, and I hate WonderSoft. I focus my rage squarely onto Creepy’s leather vest and plan on driving my foot right through his chest cavity.

Serene Focus comes online.

At the last second I quickly right-click it and a cut-scene of raindrops falling into a quiet garden superimposes itself over my fall into Creepy. I’m moving slowly. Syrupy. I hear the strings of an ancient era recall sorrows past.

All that Serene Focus jazz.

Time slows even further, and I plant my foot lightly into Creepy’s chest, backing him just to the edge of the outcrop as his whip falls from his hand. I bounce off him, taking less than 1 percent of damage, and backflip onto the rocky outcrop in slow motion. For a single moment, maybe fifteen frames in the camera of life, I face Creepy on the outcrop, across the world.

Then I attack.

One click.

A quick roundhouse hot key spins my POV in a great circle as the Samurai grunts in satisfaction at the well-honed spinning kick connecting with Creepy’s jaw. Crunch. It shatters as Creepy launches outward, backward, and then downward into the empty black void beyond us. I watch him go and he doesn’t seem to stop until he disappears into the darkness way down there.

Wherever “there” is.

No one could have survived a fall like that in real life. I remind myself this isn’t real life. It’s a game. I pick up the fallen whip from the black dust of the outcrop.

Now, I have a weapon.

I turn to face the rock wall. I’ll climb back up onto the ledge above, I’m thinking.

My screen begins to shake and the rock wall in front of my perspective begins to race past my eyes.

I’m falling!

I pan down and see the entire outcrop is sliding into the abyss after Creepy. Great!

The floor begins to tilt, threatening to dump me right into the avalanche, but I balance on the sliding rock with light taps on my direction keys. I spare a glance upward and already the green glow from above is a distant blob, and soon after that it’s just a small pinpoint of sickly light. Then it’s gone. The rock wall rushes by me in gray and sudden red hues as if passing indeterminate fires. The stone face of some fanged demon leers up at me as I fall toward it. I pass it and consider trying to get onto its jutting head, but it’s gone too quickly and the rumbling rock carries me farther down into the dark.

At that moment the screen goes black and the game dies.

Chapter 9

An hour later I’m standing in the dark, watching the storm roll in underneath Upper New York. Everything is darkness; outside on the streets below, no one. It feels like the night after the world ends. I’m nursing a scotch, confused and wondering what to do with myself. The Black went down for a reason. The only one I can think of is that the feds got close to someone important and the Black runners freaked out and went dark. Like the city.

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