“That’s the one.” I replied hopefully, “Where is it?”
“Well, you know how you said you didn’t have time to finish the match? Looks like that’s your only option.”
My shoulders drooped and I let out a sigh, “How do you mean?”
“Don’t sound so depressed,” Mirri laughed as we entered the base where the rest of the troops had respawned, “it’s just that it’s in the red base, which means we have to win the next round, and the match as a result, then do a base swap.”
“Ugh…” Quinn groaned, “does this seem a little too convenient to anyone else?”
I agreed, of course, but at the same time what Mirri was saying made sense, to some degree anyway.
“Alright, so when does the next round start?” I asked, making no effort to hide the fact that I would really rather it didn’t.
Mirri shrugged, “Couple o’ seconds, depends on when the red team says they’re ready.”
My head tilted almost involuntarily at what she’d said before I looked around the room at the rest of our team, “Wouldn’t they have just spawned in?”
“Not if a bunch of ‘em dropped out,” Mirri clarified, “and I’m guessin’ they did following your little… show. Most people only stick around for a round or two at a time, can’t handle getting shot too much.”
“And, what? You guys are cool to just keep playing this?” I asked, gesturing at the world around us, “Doesn’t that seem a bit masochistic?”
“Nah, we inflict the pain.” one of the other soldiers laughed before Mirri could respond, “And we do play other stuff, all the time.”
“Like what?”
There was a drawn-out silence that hung in the base for a while before Mirri made a face of realization and smiled, “Have you ever heard of Frogger?”
KNIFE TO A HACKFIGHT
The next round started with a claxon being blared from the speakers I’d yet to see, and along with it came the return of a full clip to my gun and hearty, if not slightly frightening battle cries from my teammates.
“Okay, so I can confirm that the portal is indeed in the red base,” Quinn said as I charged through the desolated street before taking cover in a mostly destroyed building with a few of the other guys, “however I can’t tell you what’s going on with the enemy team. It’s a full game, but it would seem that they’re being more cautious than the last lot.”
“Is there any chance that they were warned before the others left?” I asked before vaulting through a shattered window.
“I doubt it, though there’s every chance that more of the original team stuck around than we previously expected.”
“Can you crack their comms?”
“I’ve been trying, but so far it looks like a hard no.” Quinn said in defeat, “Sorry.”
I shook my head and crouched down beside a broken down but still mostly intact sedan, “Not your fault, let me know if the situation changes though.” I said before making a break for what used to be a park.
“Sure thing.”
I’d played my fair share of military sims growing up, the sort of games that you thought were boring coming off of the frenetic action of games like Halo and Call of Duty but would slowly grow to appreciate over the years.
Problem was I never quite got to the appreciative part, and instead just ended up going into servers, getting killed by some hacker douchebag, then hopping back out to play something a bit more easy going.
Funny, me complaining about hackers, but I can honestly say that I’d never pull the kind of crap where you flit around the map killing freshies for kicks. I was more the guy in the LAN party who ended up getting bored after a few hours and implementing something to make the game interesting again.
“Watch your head!” Quinn yelped as bullets whizzed over the top of my helmet.
“What the Hell!? I thought you told me they were playing it smart!” I shouted after taking cover behind one of the few remaining dead trees left standing.
“They are, you’re the one who went running out without keeping an eye out.”
“Ugh, fair enough,” I growled begrudgingly, “where are they?”
“Edge of the park, two of ‘em.”
Spotting the two soldiers with the infrared out of the corner of my eye, I popped out from behind the tree and let out a volley of bullets once I felt the vibration, each shot hitting its mark with pinpoint accuracy despite the fact that Quinn hadn’t turned the red rings back on.
“One down.” Quinn announced right before I took cover again, “Second target’s closing in for the kill, if you jump out he’ll have the advantage, and your teammates are focused elsewhere. Might I suggest you take a different approach.”
“Heh,” I chuckled before checking my ammo, “I’m open to suggestions.”
“Alright, perhaps try talking to him?”
It seemed crazy, but maybe it was just crazy enough to work.
“He-” a section of bark exploding next to my head cut me off.
So maybe it was just crazy.
“You reckon I could use the revolver?”
“No way, he’s too close.”
We were in a tight spot, no denying it, and unless I used the all too attention-grabbing God-mode card I was sure to end up getting riddled with bullets.
“Dude!” I snapped, “Quit shootin’ at me!”
By some sheer miracle, that worked.
Well, I thought it did.
“Eddie!” Quinn cried.
I had maybe half a second to react as the bulky soldier came around the tree, his gun aimed at my mid-section, but I used that time well.
Using my gun as a club, I bat my opponent’s clear of me, causing him to fire three useless shots into the dirt beside me before he could stop himself.
I went to take the advantage, going in to elbow him in the face, but was stopped by his fist being driven into my gut, effectively knocking the wind out of me.
Luckily, I was able to use my doubling over to my advantage, and bashed my attacker’s gun clear from his hands as I lumbered forward.
“Nice job.” Quinn remarked before I could fully recover from my stumble, “I’d say you’ve done this before.”
“Eh,” I groaned as I straightened up and turned to face my foe, “let’s just say Code Jumpers weren’t always as feared as they are now.”
“I’ll say,” Quinn scoffed right after my opponent had drawn his big knife and turned to face me, “going back through these memories of yours… well, I’m surprised that there was once a version of you that didn’t know what he was doing.”
My attacker took a lunge for me, his serrated combat blade coming mere inches from my chest as I made a quick step backward and watched him stumble.
“Yeah, well, we’ve all gotta start somewhere.” I replied with a grunt before swinging a heavy right hook that damn near dislocated my opponent’s jaw, “Now, could I get a hand here? Or are you just gonna keep strollin’ down memory lane?”
“I’m not sure what you want me to do, it’s not like I can help you throw punches, unless you want me to upload some kind of fighting style into your brain?”
A smile played across my face, “I know kung f-”
I didn’t get the opportunity to finish one of my favorite quotes of all time, the enemy player had recovered from the blow I’d landed on him and had used my distraction as an advantage and punched me as hard as he could in my gut before taking another wild slash at me.
“You’re gonna want to finish up quickly,” Quinn warned, “you’ve got friendlies inbound, and based on their average accuracy I believe you may get caught in the crossfire.”
I went to say something catty, but decided to instead pull out my own blade and get ready to even the odds, “Alright, would you mind going ahead and deactivating infrared?”
“Not a problem.”
My eyes struggled to adjust to the lack of heat vision, but once they had things became a lot clearer and I instantly had better perception.
> The player went to stab me from above again, and instead of dodging it I grabbed his wrist and punched him in the mouth with the hand I was holding my knife with.
“Tryin’ to save the world…” I muttered before punching my failed assailant in the face again, bringing him to his knees, “and this is the thanks I get?”
“Finish him off, your friends’ll be here any minute.”
I stopped myself from throwing another punch and sighed, “Okay,” I muttered before pulling the handgun from the severely dazed player’s thigh holster, “but I need to blow off some steam, soon.”
“Perhaps you shou-” Quinn started then stopped as I stuck the gun in the poor bastard’s mouth and pulled the trigger, “So messy… Anyway, perhaps you should consider other, less vio-”
“Blue team wins the round.” the game’s narrator announced, “Match over. Blue team wins the match. Blue team will go to base two.”
Quinn didn’t even bother remarking on the announcer’s rudeness that time around, instead deciding to simply let out a dissatisfied huff as the rest of the remaining members of blue team, including the very bloody Mirri, approached me.
“Well, well, well,” Mirri said with a smile as she admired my handiwork, “looks like you’re more cut out for this sort of thing than I thought.”
“Yeah, I try my best.” I replied as humbly as I could.
“And it shows. C’mon, let’s get you over to that portal of yours.”
TINKERING WITH SPACETIME
“To be perfectly honest, I’m surprised this is here.” I said with a thankful grin while the rest of blue team did their best to stay as far away from the portal in the center of the room as possible, “And you said that no one else has been able to go through?”
“Not that we’ve seen,” Mirri replied, “but we’re usually at the other base, or on a completely different map.”
“Friend of ours went to go through last match,” one of the other soldiers said, “got thrown around like a toddler holding a firehose.”
Trying my best not to picture that either disturbing or hilarious imagery depending on the outcome, I closed my eyes and focused on the portal’s code.
“What’re you doing?” Quinn asked.
“Like you said, these things seem to be counting down the further we go,” I replied flatly while struggling to concentrate on the seemingly impossible to read code, “I wanna see if we can fast-track ourselves to Messiah.”
Quinn stayed quiet for a while after that, giving me just enough time to isolate the line she’d been talking about, “Are you sure that that’s the best idea?”
“Truthfully? No, no I don’t, but I think it’s a whole lot better than trying our luck digging through all these games.” I said before putting my thumb to my middle finger, “Fact of the matter is we need to do what we can to get to Messiah as quickly as possible.”
“But what if this slows us down, or worse? I mean, you could be turned into a potato for all we know.”
I understood her concern, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel it on some level as well, but at the same time I firmly believed that it was the best thing for us to do.
“That’s a risk we’re gonna have to take.” I muttered before snapping my fingers.
For a moment nothing happened, blue team was stunned silent, and I was waiting to be engulfed by the Elder Gods, but then, with an unholy scream, the portal started fluctuating.
“What did you do?” Mirri growled while we watched on in horror as the portal seemed to panic and contort.
“I… I don’t know…”
And then, just like that, it all stopped.
The screaming, the morphing, all of it, the portal had, as far as we could tell, returned to normal.
Well, except it was golden.
And it had this weird sort of weird code aura.
And it seemed to be shooting off small sparks.
So, in conclusion, it had not returned to normal.
“Was it supposed to do… that?” I asked, hoping to God that Quinn’d have an answer.
“I have no idea,” Quinn finally replied after spending a few moments in complete and utter awe, “but it doesn’t look like it’s going to revert to its original state any time soon.”
A sigh escaped me and I took a step toward the portal, “Yeah, I figured that’d be the case…”
“Wait!” Mirri shouted right as I was about to touch the frighteningly electrical looking rift.
“Hmm?” I replied, refusing to turn around for fear that I’d been ripped apart.
“Just… you’re sure you have to go through? We co-”
“Oh for goodness sake,” Quinn scoffed, “go through the portal before she tries to physically restrain you.”
Have to admit, there was some part of me that just wanted to hang around for the fun of annoying Quinn, but I thought better of it, and stepped through the portal.
It was bad. Very bad.
FRAGGED
I woke up screaming on a forest floor, looking up at the trees that seemed to stretch for miles and were bathed in a late afternoon glow. I found myself desperate to try and pat out the fire that I was sure my skin was being subjected to.
I was stuck though, paralyzed and afraid.
“Good morning, Eddie.” a soft female voice sang in my ears, “You’ve been asleep for a long time.”
“Quinn?” I whispered fearfully as my body, free of its pain, got to its feet seemingly of its own accord, “Quinn, is that you?”
“The world is a very different place now,” the voice continued, apparently unable to hear me, “little is known of how the events of today came to pass, but rumors of a failed time travel experiment are the most prevalent concepts of the new humans.”
My head started turning involuntarily, forcing me to look at the forest that surrounded me, “What in the titty-fucking Christ is going on here?” I growled in an effort to force my fear to submit as my gaze landed on an empty plot where I guessed some kind of small house should’ve been.
“Now it is your turn to survive in a land of dinosaurs, gangs, rabid humans, and worse. Will you create a community? Or take another’s? The choice is yours.”
I was terrified to say the least, and more than a little confused.
“Quinn?” I repeated in the hopes that she’d simply had a hard time catching up with me when I went through the portal, “Quinn? I could really use some help right about now…”
And then I saw it.
My hands.
“Quinn!” I shrieked as I turned my hands back and forth and wove them around, “Quinn! You were right! Please help me Quinn! I’m a fucking potato-man! A naked potato-man!”
Now, I’d like to tell you that it only took me a moment to realize that I was not, in fact, a potato but instead had simply been turned white by whatever had happened when I’d gone through the portal. However the truth is I panicked for a solid ninety seconds, and I probably would’ve gone on panicking if it weren’t for the small, white rabbit that came hopping to my feet, where it stopped and regarded me with curiosity.
I’m not sure what it was about the little critter, but something about its dull brown eyes looking up into mine calmed my racing heart, and its adorably twitchy nose warmed my soul to the point where I couldn’t help but let a quiet laugh escape me.
“Hey little fella,” I said as I squatted down and started patting him, “what’re you doing all alone out here?”
The rabbit, unsurprisingly, didn’t respond.
“Yeah, I’m pretty scared too.” I muttered nervously before scooping the rabbit up and cuddling him to my chest, “Any idea where we are?”
Again, the rabbit didn’t respond.
“Well yeah, I know we’re in a forest, but what ki-”
I didn’t get the chance to finish my sentence as a bowel-emptying roar rocked the forest.
“Wh-what was that?” I asked as I straightened up and looked around, “Wait… was that a dragon? Tell me Doctor Fu
zzles, was that a freakin’ dragon?”
Another roar shook me to my core, followed by the sound of gunfire that couldn’t be more than a few hundred feet to my right.
My first thought was to run, obviously, but then I realized that gunfire usually meant players, and players meant safety, and safety meant I could find the next portal and get back to Quinn.
“Come on Doctor Fuzzles,” I said as bravely as I could before starting my steady jog toward the nearby firefight, “we’re gonna get out of here.”
It didn’t take me long to find the source of the roaring and gunfire, though I remained hidden once I did for fear that I’d either get eaten by the roaring monster I was behind or shot by the players that were struggling to keep it at bay.
“Is that…” I trailed off as I started to recognize the creature for what it was, “is that a dinosaur?”
Fuzzles didn’t have to answer that one, it was pretty damn obvious that it was a dino. A tyrannosaurus rex, to be more specific, and it certainly wasn’t scientifically accurate, it was far too… reptilian in design.
I didn’t really care about that so much as the fact that it appeared to be intelligent, having trapped its prey in a sort of wedge between a truck and what I guessed was the players’ house.
“What should we-woah!” I yelped as three stegosauruses came crashing through the forest toward the rex.
I didn’t see the players at first, I was a tad distracted by the fact that I was watching a childhood dream come to life, but when I did I couldn’t help but be flattened by the concept of it.
They were riding the beasts.
At first the idea of it was shocking, I mean, it seemed incredibly unsafe to say the least, though as I continued to watch on in amazement I started to only feel jealousy that I wasn’t the one engaging in prehistoric combat.
No, instead I was sitting in a bush, buck naked, cuddling a rabbit like a child.
“I suppose we shou-hit…” I muttered as one of the stegosauruses landed a brutal blow on the rex, causing it to let out a howling roar before turning tail and running.
Code Jumper Page 18
