Wrath

by Nicholas Knight

  I swore and sprinted on, circling around them. Halira’s HP began to drop. It wasn’t a fast loss. I’d only been hit by a single Venom Beam, after all. Only HP had been one of my dump stats. My girl was specialized, optimized for hit and run sniper-like strikes, not taking hits.

  Irwin had just neatly undermined my attempt to drag things out. I had moments before Halira died and I was automatically logged out. Then Irwin would logout and discover Isabella raiding his hotel room.

  He laughed, as if sensing my frustration. “You lose,” He said to me. “I thought I’d let you keep this place as one last refuge where you could pretend you had some measure of strength, but you know what? Fuck that.”

  He turned to Ursavore. “She’s only got a little bit of time. I’m going to check on some shit IRL.” He returned his attention, more reptilian than avian, to me as I circled in for another attack. It was a fruitless endeavor. Nothing would come of it. I did it anyway, screaming as Halira roared, claws raised.

  “Kick her ass,” he said to Ursavore. “I’m logging out.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Ursavore roared and opened fire with a purple energy bomb. It nearly caught me square in the face. I barely managed to leap out of the way in time and it exploded in violet light a safe distance behind me. It was a smaller explosion than the ones he’d been delivering. Ursavore had recovered much faster than I’d expected from the last attack…except that a quick glance at his rage meter proved that he hadn’t.

  Ursavore had figured out Halira’s weakness. He didn’t need a massive attack to hurt her. Especially not with her HP dropping from the Venom Beam’s effect. One good hit was all it would take. Instead of letting fly with one huge attack, he was conserving his rage energy for smaller blasts, forcing me to keep on the defensive.

  His own HP was in the red. I didn’t even need to soften him up with my Desiccation Ray. One cut was all it would take, and he’d go down, but I had to close with him to do any damage. The only way to do that was to draw out his attacks and wait for him to run out of rage energy.

  I couldn’t afford to do that. Time was my enemy. The longer I waited, the lower my HP dropped. If I waited for him to simply run out of energy Halira would die and I’d be logged out.

  What’s more, I had to keep Keuketon in the game. If Irwin logged out he’d wake up and find Isabella in his hotel room. She was a badass but I couldn’t imagine that ending well for us.

  “I knew you were a limp-dicked coward!” I shouted at him as he made to log out. I had to distract him, keep his attention focused on our fight. That meant keeping it interesting.

  Waiting for Ursavore was out. My only option was to press the offensive and hope that it was flashy enough to keep Irwin logged in long enough for Isabella to finish and get out.

  It was like being armed with a katana and trying to run down someone armed with a gun. One hit and either of us was dead. He had multiple shots and range. If we were operating by the normal rules it wouldn’t even be a fight. He’d kill me before I could take two steps, but I wasn’t limited to human levels of speed and my optimization shown through.

  Halira was glorious.

  I charged again. He blasted again. I dodged. The heat of his attack scalded my side with the nearness of the explosion. I closed. He still had rage left in his meter. One good shot. We were close. Too close. I couldn’t dodge at this range and still wasn’t close enough for my claws.

  “What the fuck?” Irwin demanded. It was a sound of pure frustration and confusion and it saved me.

  Ursavore glanced away at Keuketon and in doing so gave me room to maneuver. Not much. The ground around me erupted with purple light and I was forced to leapt to the side. My claws were so close to finding a home in his flesh but not close enough.

  “Die, you sushi fuck!” I screamed, slashing out and missing as I pulled away.

  Golden liquid-energy beams fired at me, cutting me off from Ursavore and forcing me to sprint away again. Keuketon’s Venom Beams. He was still in the game. Thank God for small favors. Men are so sensitive about their junk.

  “What the fuck did you do, bitch?” He screamed. His rage meter flashed and flared. It had dropped when he’d used his special attack, but it was recovering faster than I had ever seen, the energy inside pulsing. Whatever was going on, he was pissed.

  I filed that piece of information away for later. Genuine anger made the rage meter fill up faster. The implant at work, no doubt. It was supposed to be a therapeutic device. Maybe there was a connection between using our rage energy and how much catharsis we got out of the game?

  He blasted again, and I moved. I moved faster than I’d known Halira capable of. My HP was down to less than half and still dropping. If either of his beams hit me, it would drop even faster.

  Ursavore blasted at me with his own energy attack, and I barely got out of the way in time as the earth before me erupted. Halira moved like the wind as our enemies roared at us and unleashed their literal rage. None of it touched us. I found myself grinning, then realized it didn’t matter, because I was still losing.

  I had their attention. This was exactly what I wanted. It wasn’t enough.

  I wanted them to suffer.

  More, I couldn’t let Halira die. It was important. Irwin had said it himself earlier. This was the last refuge where I had power. Here, I wasn’t caught up in the power and control of Daddy’s influence or societal pressure to be perfect. Here, I was a monster. Here, I was free. Here, I did not lose.

  We roared and closed, racing through the storm of gold and purple energy hurled at us, claws extended.

  “Why the fuck can’t I log out?” Irwin screamed.

  One of his golden beams clipped me. The rate of my HP dropping increased. In moments, Halira would die.

  I wasn’t going down without taking these fuckers with me.

  More blasts came at me. I countered with my own Desiccation Ray, catching Keuketon again. With his HP total lowered and Halira’s attack so high, that one hit was all I needed. Everything else faded away in my battle fury. I hated him. I wanted to kill him. No, not wanted. Needed. I needed to kill him.

  I dodged another purple explosion and realized it was the last of them. Ursavore was out of rage. He bellowed and rushed me.

  In doing so, he blocked Keuketon’s Venom Beams and I saw one of them strike him from behind.

  I lashed out, aiming low with Halira’s claws. They were long enough that I was able to reach Ursavore’s ankles before he could reach me with his own smaller but still impressive claws. He went down, falling forward. I leapt, kicked off the back of his head, driving him into the ground, and flew over him.

  I was airborne, and the space between Halira and Keuketon was devoid of energy. Irwin must have stopped blasting when he realized he was hitting his ally. Halira and Keuketon’s eyes met, and I looked through them and saw Irwin. Really saw him.

  He was afraid. Deeply, truly afraid.

  I reveled in that sensation. Drank it down.

  It lasted only the space of the instant it took me to reach him.

  He threw up his stinger wings between us, trying to ward Halira off. My baby sliced through the appendages like butter. They fell, spraying ichor.

  Keuketon’s head followed.

  Halira’s taloned feet struck the ground and she slid past him, carried by her own momentum as Keuketon’s head soared upward, away from his body, and fell to the ground hundreds of feet away. It rolled into a burning wreck of a building and went up in flames.

  The black feathered body continued to stand for a moment, then collapsed to the ground. He was dead. Halira had killed him. No, I had killed him.

  Blood oozed from the body, spilling out over the dead town.

  I cocked Halira’s head. Something about that was wrong.

  The chiming of Halira’s HP reaching the red tore my attention from Keuketon’s corpse.

  Ursavore was back up. His rage meter was full enough th
at he could have blasted me while I’d been distracted. Why hadn’t he?

  “Why isn’t the body vanishing?” he asked, voice trembling beneath the sound of his kaiju’s roar. “The bodies always vanish when we die in the game.”

  That was it. When I’d killed Ursavore and Xenatlas, their corpses had dissipated seconds after they’d died. They didn’t stick around bleeding.

  Ursavore spoke faster, his roars becoming whines. “He said he couldn’t log out. Why the fuck would he say that? Why’s his body still here?”

  His HP, so low from my hits and still dropping thanks to the Venom Beam, hit zero. Ursavore fell over. A moment later, his corpse vanished into nothing as he logged out.

  Congratulations, Miss Church, Mr. Australia said, his words accompanied by a now familiar chime. You have hit level five.

  That…was that important? I didn’t know. Couldn’t tell. Something was wrong. I’d been willing to kill Irwin earlier but now…something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.

  I logged out an instant before Halira’s HP hit zero and came to on my bed. “Isabella?”

  I rushed from my bedroom, calling out for her. She wasn’t in the house. Had Irwin caught her? No, she couldn’t have been caught. But something was wrong. Why hadn’t Keuketon’s corpse vanished? Why had he said he couldn’t log out?

  The front door opened.

  I raced to it and found Isabella. She was dressed all in black and her sleeves, too long for the weather, were wet with something the dark colored fabric made unrecognizable. She’d worn gloves when she’d broken into Irwin’s hotel room. We’d discussed it. The gloves were gone now. Her hands were immaculately clean. Her face was not.

  A trio of blood droplets clung to her left cheek.

  “What the fuck happened?” I asked, grabbing her in a hug.

  She hugged me back. “I-I’m not sure.”

  I pulled back. “Isabella, I need you to be fucking sure. There’s blood on your face, and Irwin just went fucking nuts in the game, and his corpse didn’t vanish when I killed him.”

  Isabella blinked then shook her head. “Okay, maybe that makes sense in crazy speak, but it doesn’t here in the real world.”

  “Why the hell are you covered in blood?”

  Isabella reached into her back pocket and withdrew a blood-spattered plastic baggie. It was full of clear, orange-tinted goo. She stared at it.

  “It’s gone,” she said, voice barely above a whisper. Even so, there was no mistaking the surprise in her tone.

  “What’s gone?” I demanded. This was getting ridiculous. Something had gone wrong and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what the hell it was.

  “The implant,” she said. “Irwin’s implant. I cut it out of his hand while he was in the game.”

  I stared at the bag. My eyes darted to the blood on her face, to the stains on her clothes. “You did what? Why?”

  “I cut it out of him,” Isabella repeated. “You said he’d dropped out of school, that he was counting on the game to make all his money and control you. Maybe to do more. It seemed like a good idea to take that away from him.”

  I gaped. I knew Isabella was a fighter. I’d had no idea she’d be willing to do something like this for me. I was…touched, I think is the word. I’d never had anyone willing to cut someone for me before.

  “Only…Lusitania, the thing that I pulled out of him, it wasn’t some kind of microchip. I think…I think it was alive.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “It moved,” Isabella said. “It had these little tendrils and made noises. It freaking squealed. I don’t think it liked being taken out of him.”

  I had no idea what to make of that. “And you put it in a baggy?”

  She nodded. “I was going to show you. I thought you needed to know, considering.” She flicked her gaze toward my own hand where my own implant—which might not really be an implant—resided in my palm.

  “What happened to it?”

  She jiggled the bag pointedly. The goop inside sloshed about. All that remained of whatever it was that had been inside of Irwin.

  I held up my own palm. Was whatever it was that had been put inside of me alive as well? What was it, and what was it doing to me?

  I had no answers.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Two weeks later, I walked into our house and found Dr. Warden in my living room drinking one of our beers.

  Mom had called a few days ago to let me know that Irwin had been found completely unresponsive in his hotel room and had been rushed to the hospital. His parents had transferred him to a private facility and were very upset. So was Mom. According to her, I’d lost my future husband and must be absolutely devastated.

  I was overjoyed.

  I’d realized in the game that I’d been willing to murder Irwin. To realize that I actually had, or very nearly had…I’d never felt so empowered. My strength wasn’t some illusion. It was real.

  I’d played along with her call, mostly to milk information out of her, but Mom hadn’t known much. She was a consummate gossip, not a real investigator. Rumor, hearsay, speculation; all the fun stuff that amounted to nothing was thrown around while she probed, trying to get me to open up about my feelings. If I’d been more imaginative, I might have spun something better than I had. Fortunately, Mom heard what she wanted to in my voice and I was left alone again.

  Isabella and I had become genuine friends. Maybe best friends.

  You don’t do what she did for someone and not have it create some kind of bond. We’d been friends before. We’re besties now. I’d kill for her. I knew it with the same sharp clarity I’d had when I realized that I would kill Irwin.

  With her, I’d discovered someone I didn’t need to wear my mask around. Ever. She could take my rage and anger and give her own right back, and it was all cool. I hadn’t thought it was possible. I’d never had a bestie before. It was kind of nice. It also made me nervous, because I knew now how far I was willing to go to protect her.

  She was out when I got back and found Dr. Warden in our house. She had a fight coming up in the summer and was training her ass off.

  “You’re trespassing,” I told Dr. Warden as I walked by him and into the kitchen. I grabbed a butcher knife from the drawer by the stove and walked back in, casually holding it by my side.

  Dr. Warden eyed the knife with his sharp eyes, too sharp for that soft, round face, and smiled. The blade amused him.

  “I don’t blame you for arming yourself,” he said. “But I should warn you, attacking me would not only be futile, it could have dire consequences.”

  “I’m shaking in my Louis Vuitton’s,” I said dryly.

  He laughed too hard. Seriously, there was something wrong with this bastard.

  I held up my right hand, palm facing him. “What did you put into me?”

  “Not just you,” he said, the laughter dying on his lips. “But I’m glad you brought that up. You’ve caused me and the Game Masters a problem. Your implants are not cheap or easy to manufacture. Worse, you deprived us of a player.”

  “You plan on turning me into the police?” I asked.

  He waved a sausage-fingered hand. “Don’t be absurd. What good would that accomplish for anyone?”

  I smiled. I did it without my mask, letting the ugly show through, and held my butcher knife aloft. “Let’s start over. Tell me why you are here and what you want.”

  “I am here,” he said, standing up with a grace his rounded form should not have possessed, “to make sure that accounts are settled. You destroyed our property and deprived us of an asset.”

  “You want to make sure I don’t do it again,” I said.

  “On the contrary,” he said. “It was the most entertainment we’ve had since the project launched. I’ve been sent to let you know that further player versus player activity on your part in the game will be met with greater incentives.”

  He took a lon
g drag from the beer bottle, finishing it off. “We don’t really care what you players do to each other, so long as everyone’s having fun.”

  So long as everyone’s having fun? What. The. Actual. Fuck? There had been nothing fun about being blackmailed or stalked, even if it had only been for a few days. Not that I gave a damn about his happiness, but I somehow doubted Irwin was having fun wherever he’d ended up.

  “Keep in mind, though, that if you escalate things, other players are likely to as well. We’d hate to see what happened to Mr. Collier happen to you.” He waddled past me into the kitchen, completely ignoring the naked blade in my hand, and dropped his empty bottle in the recycling bin. Our psychotic psychiatrist cared about the planet. Wasn’t that sweet?

  “What exactly did happen to Irwin?” I asked.

  “He’s a vegetable,” Dr. Warden replied offhandedly. “His brain is quite dead. Only vital life functions remain, but no higher cognitive abilities. He’s breathing without help, so there’s that, but he’s got this horrible tube going straight into his stomach that they use to feed him.” He turned to face me full on and leaned casually back against the countertop. “It’s ghastly. His parents have hired a caretaker to clean him up and change his diapers. They’re hoping he’ll recover.” Dr. Warden gave me a pointed look. “He won’t.”

  “Good.” There was a savagery in my voice that would have surprised me a few weeks ago. Now, though? Now it’s just a part of me. I’m not a good person. I’m a dangerous one.

  More, there’s a sense of relief brought on by his words. We hadn’t exactly known what had happened to him. He could have come back, maybe gotten a replacement implant.

  “And that will happen to me if anyone cuts out my implant?” I asked.

  There’s nothing soft about the smile that flashes across his face. Gone is the tubby teddy bear, and in its place is a great white shark. “I advise that you not find out.”

  He pushed off the counter and headed for the door.

  “I have more questions,” I said, going after him.