The point of view panned to the right, taking in the sickening sight of thousands of charred bodies, NPCs frantically ripping and shredding through the still-smoldering corpses like frenzied animals orgiastically devouring their prey. “Haywire,” John spoke again. “Do you see?” he repeated.
“Yes, John. I see.”
The point of view changed again, panning around to show John on his knees, his eye sockets empty, a dozen streaks of blood running from the fresh wounds, raked down his cheeks. “That’s good. That’s good,” John spoke.
Kali stepped into frame behind him, grinning as she placed her hand on John’s shoulder. “As you can see, your friend can no longer see anything.”
21
As soon as Haywire and I saw Kali’s visage, we knew we were finished. Kali had allowed John that one last grim communication for no other reason than to trace the signal and locate us so she could teleport to our location. From the moment that the shock of this realization registered, events unfolded according to pure, animal instincts. Haywire spun in the air and thrust forward toward me, her arms outstretched. I holstered my gun and held my arms out, ready to catch her and grab on for the ride. Unfortunately, as quickly as Haywire reacted, Kali was quicker on the draw, her teleportation instantaneous. She appeared out of nothing, only one meter to my right, her bare feet hovering just inches above the sharp gravel of the rooftop, her red dress wet from the rain, yet still billowing in the wind, her wet, tangled hair doing likewise. I had only enough time to turn my head to her and see her enraged, glowing LED eyes as her hands grasped for me, contorted into claws as she moved in. Her appearance matched what she truly was: the devil—the Satan of the sim she’d created. My heart slammed against the wall of my chest as the fright paralyzed me.
As her fingers contacted my armor, she was suddenly ricocheted away, far into the distance by a powerful force blast from Haywire. It was a trick that would only work once, but Haywire had caught the self-proclaimed god off guard. That bought us just enough time for Haywire to reach out, scoop me onto her back, then dip down over the ledge of the building, careening into the dark night.
“Choose an erratic path! Our only chance is to lose her in the cloud cover!” I shouted.
Haywire turned sharply to the right, nearly throwing me off of her back in the process. Then she turned left and headed down a narrow alley, where we blasted through the brick and mortar canyon. It seemed, for the briefest of moments, as though we might elude Kali, but then she turned the world against us.
Her first move was to strip us of our cover. The thick, dark, rain-filled clouds that blanketed the city evaporated in a second. The same sky we’d left behind at the gates returned: the alternating red and blue, the circuitry patterning, and the globes of light falling like soft snow, all there once again. “Stay low. We just lost our cover!”
Haywire obeyed, dropping down until we were skimming the city streets. “We have to get out of the open!”
I struggled to turn my head and crane my neck so I could see behind us. Horrified, I saw the city’s structure seemingly coming to life, the NPCs flooding the streets and alleyways just as they had done in my penthouse, only on a far grander and more terrifying scale. They had spotted us, and the furious river of simulated people was rushing toward us, moving so supernaturally fast that they were actually gaining. “The NPCs have eyes on us!” I screamed.
“That means Kali has eyes on us too! She’ll teleport!” Haywire made the decision to try evading the city’s collective gaze by turning sharply once again and careening toward a glass office building that seemed to take up the entire city block upon which it had been erected. We smashed through the glass on the second floor, then turned sharply again down a hallway and toward the center of the building. “Let’s see if we can come out the other side without anyone seeing us!”
Her plan, though rash and with little chance of succeeding, did work for a brief moment, as it allowed us to escape from the ubiquitous eyes of the NPCs. I was about to speak to her, to suggest that we try to exit through the basement, hoping there might be a way to access the sewers; I was sure there was no way an above-ground exit would facilitate our escape. Before the words could escape my lips, however, the building shifted, and the wall to our right suddenly came at us, slamming against our bodies so hard that there was no way I could continue to hold on to my ride.
The lights flickered off and I fell, sliding against the floor that was quickly rotating as the building seemed to turn on its side. Concrete dust, chunks of plaster, water from burst pipes, and an untold amount of office supplies and furniture slid down the hallway with me in an avalanche of chaos in the darkness. “Night vision!” I shouted, hopeful that the computer systems in my armored suit were equipped with the voice-activated feature. Luckily, they were, and the night vision flicked on, illuminating the scene. I was quickly sliding toward the wall that was now the floor of the building, in danger of being buried by the debris that was rapidly coming down behind me. Seeing the door to an office quickly approaching, I reached out to snag the door frame before slamming my body against the door as hard as I could. It opened and I was able to pull myself up and to use the office as a ledge as I watched the contents of the second floor of the building rush by me.
Haywire, unfortunately, was nowhere to be seen.
“Haywire?” I called out.
“Is that you, Professor?” John Doe asked, his voice pained to the point of being pathetic.
“I’m in a bit of a situation at the moment,” I replied. “Kali is tracing our calls. You realize that, don’t you?”
“I do. I’m sorry,” John Doe replied. “I’m about to die. I can’t see. But I know the NPCs can see me and that they’ll kill me soon. I can’t defend against them forever. Eventually, one of them will get past my force blasts...sneak behind me and sink its teeth into me. I am not facing a pleasant death, my friend. Perhaps I should consider myself lucky for not being able to see it.”
“I wish I could help you,” I replied as I continued to scan the hallway for Haywire. The building continued its rotation. From what I could ascertain, it appeared that Kali had removed the entire structure from its moorings and was spinning it for reasons that I didn’t yet understand. The sound of the building groaning and the walls and support structures snapping and exploding under the stress was nearly deafening.
“You’re the key,” John said. “She wants the lynchpin so she can escape the sim—so she can wake up.”
“I’m aware,” I replied as a particularly loud grinding from behind me caused me to turn. The window to the office was sealing, the brick and mortar nearly liquefying as the walls seemed to come to life, closing off every exit. It became clear to me that Kali was turning the building into a prison. When she’d closed off all escape routes, she’d start hunting us. I knew our time was short.
“You can’t let her escape,” John urged. “There are other conscious entities in the sim. We hadn’t yet located everyone. Even though she destroyed the largest gates, there are gates all over the sim, in every corner of the world. There are still lives that you can save. They’re depending on you—whether they realize it or not.”
“You have my word, John,” I replied as I struggled to reenter the hallway, the building having nearly rotated a full 360 degrees, and the passageway becoming briefly traversable once again. “I’ll do all I can.” First, however, I had to find Haywire. As she wasn’t responding to John’s communiqué, it was clear that she was either unconscious or dead. I hadn’t seen her fall, so I had to assume she’d been knocked into one of the offices. I had to search each one until I found her.
“I’m sorry I opened communication with you,” John said, sniveling. “The torture, Professor...I-I can’t describe it. She choked me unconscious. She gouged out my eyes. I couldn’t resist her.”
“I understand,” I replied, truly sympathetic, yet unable to focus on the heroic man’s dying words. I’d searched three offices so far. There were more than a
dozen left in the hallway, but the building continued its rotation, the floor inching toward a ninety-degree incline that would be impossible for me to climb. I had to find Haywire before then.
“You have to understand, Professor, under torture, it isn’t you anymore. I would never give up a comrade under normal circumstances. I’d never give anyone up. But when subjected to pain like that...it simply wasn’t me. It wasn’t me who contacted you! Do you understand, Professor?”
“I do,” I replied, having little time to absorb his heartfelt apology—the last one he would speak in his life. I had been sprinting, but the floor was at almost a seventy-degree angle. I fell to my hands and knees to crawl to the next doorway. It would likely be the last one I could reach.
“It’s so odd to die,” John spoke, his tone suddenly reflective and calm. “To be erased. I’m in my last moments of existence. But I can’t imagine not existing. Can you?”
I grasped the last doorframe and held on tight as the hallway once again reached a ninety-degree angle. I was dangling several meters above what would be the bottom of a fatal fall. I removed my gun from its holster and fired at the door, causing it to dematerialize. I then used all of my strength to do a reverse pull-up and climb into the room.
“To live is everything, Professor. Death is unacceptable.” He suddenly screamed. “My death is unacceptable! Do you understand?”
I sighed as I saw Haywire’s crumpled body in the office, gently rolling as the room continued to slowly rotate. There was an office chair next to her, along with a myriad of office supplies. I hopped down from the doorframe and landed next to her before addressing John one last time. “I understand, John.”
“You must fight for every last life in this world, Professor. Yours and every last one.”
Before I could respond, I heard John Doe scream out in terror. I flipped open the visual of his communication on my HUD just in time to witness multiple NPCs descending on top of the man like lions on an African gazelle, biting and ripping his flesh apart. It was the point of view of death. I flipped off the screen.
“Haywire? Can you hear me?” I spoke gently as I moved her face from side to side.
Her eyes fluttered open, but quickly shut tight in reaction to her pain.
“Holy...damn it! My shoulder! I think I broke something!” she finally said.
“Can you see?” I asked her.
She nodded, the motion clearly causing her severe discomfort. “I can see. My night vision activates automatically in low light. What the hell is going on?”
“Kali is doing some drastic remodeling to the building. She’s sealing all of the exits.”
“We’re lucky,” Haywire replied between pained groans. “If you didn’t have the lynchpin, she’d just pancake us in here and be done with it. Trying to take you alive is forcing her to get fancy.”
“I hadn’t thought of us as particularly lucky at the moment,” I replied.
“At least we’re still alive.”
“The glass is half full?” I mused.
Haywire’s eyes immediately fell on my gun. “You need to make us a new exit. You can double your firepower, you know.”
“How?” I asked quizzically, my eyes narrowed.
She held out her hand for my gun. I handed it to her, and she slapped her other palm against it. When her other hand came away, it held a gun too. “We can’t download from outside the sim,” she said, “but we can copy existing files.” She handed me the guns. “Now you have all the weapons you need. It’s time to get the hell out of here...before it’s too late.”
I nodded. “Will you be able to support my weight?”
“Not really, but I have no choice. Just hold on to me and keep firing straight ahead until we’re out.”
“Okay,” I replied. “I suggest we head down.”
“Sounds good,” she answered. “Grab on.”
I reached around her broken body and held on, having no choice but to squeeze my elbows together against her sides, inadvertently causing her to wheeze and groan again.
“Let’s do it,” she whispered, barely able to speak. “I’m gonna pass out if we wait any longer.”
“Okay.” I aimed at the wall at the bottom of the room upon which Haywire’s back was pressed. “Here we go.” I fired.
The wall disappeared in the same fashion as everything else I had fired at had, dematerializing into a brief pattern of golden dust before evaporating, as though erased. We dropped down into the next door office and I squeezed the triggers again, removing yet another wall. I began squeezing the triggers in rapid succession as we entered a free fall that quickly reached terminal velocity. Haywire remained below me, my torso pressed to her back, but she couldn’t hold on to me, as the pain from her injuries was far too much.
I holstered one of my guns when I realized that simply squeezing my elbows against her wouldn’t be enough when we reached the bottom and she had to shift direction. I wrapped my arm around her as firmly as I could, hopeful that she hadn’t lost consciousness already. I fired for the last time, and the street suddenly became visible, not far below the building. Haywire would need to turn sharply to take us out of the free fall the moment we escaped the building; otherwise we’d slam into the pavement, instantly killing us both.
“Here we go! Are you ready?” I shouted.
Haywire didn’t respond.
22
Thankfully, Haywire was awake after all, and her trajectory shifted dramatically as she pulled us out of our free fall the moment we exited the building, her belly coming within inches of scraping against the asphalt of the street we precariously skimmed. Debris from the unmoored building rained down around us; dust, glass, and concrete chunks pelting us before Haywire used her ability to manipulate the sim to cause the cover of a sewer opening to jettison itself into the air. In a maneuver that seemed suicidal to me, she took us both down into the hole at far too fast a speed, driving us recklessly into the darkness before slowing only an instant before we splashed into the putrid sewer water. The manhole cover dropped into place behind us, plunging us both into absolute darkness again, but my night vision immediately kicked back in.
“Haywire!” I shouted when I saw that she was completely submerged in the waist-deep sewage. I reached into the disgusting ooze and pulled her out, noticing that her face was contorted into an expression of utter agony. When she was clear of the water, she opened her mouth wide in an attempt to breathe, but it didn’t appear that she was able to take anything into her lungs. “Your ribs are likely fractured,” I said. I propped her back against the wall and tried my best to support her weight with my arms. “Stay calm and just try to take small breaths.”
She nodded, closed her eyes, relaxed her grip on my arm, and managed to breathe a short, shallow breath. As soon as she inhaled, her face immediately contorted, especially her nose, which wrinkled up at the foul stench. “Oh God. That’s awful!” She reached her palm up to my helmet and pulled at it like it were a spiderweb, just as John had done when copying my armor, then came away holding her own copy, which she quickly slipped over her head. “Much better.”
“We have to get out of here. If any of the NPCs or traffic cameras saw us slip out of the building, Kali knows we’re down here.”
“I doubt it. All that debris would’ve covered our escape.”
“Still, let’s be on the safe side,” I tried to help Haywire up onto the concrete ledge that ran the length of the tunnels.
She groaned. “Stop it! Hands off, Professor, before you kill me!”
“We can’t just stay here,” I said, motioning around at the dripping, stinky, mildewed walls. “This isn’t a location conducive to recuperation and healing. If we stay here, we’ll get weaker and die.”
She paused as she took in another labored breath. “We won’t. You can carry me, but you need to be stronger.”
“Are you asking me to hit the gym and come back later?”
She shook her head. “I can’t believe it. Another attempt at
humor. You suck at it. No, I’m asking you to activate the exoskeleton in your armor.”
Although she couldn’t see my face as it remained shielded by my helmet and visor, if she could have seen it, she would have seen my mouth open in astonishment. “What? There’s an exoskeleton in the armor? Why didn’t you tell me? That would’ve come in handy back there!’
“If you’d activated it before I flew you, you would’ve crushed me in your arms. The suit is extremely powerful. Once you activate it, you’ll be able to lift a car with the same ease you could lift a pad of paper. I didn’t want you to juice me like a lemon.”
“How do I turn it on?” I said, sighing as I let her oversight go, accepting her unsatisfying explanation. I was desperate to get out of that sewer.
“Just call up the feature. It’s voice commanded.”
“Exoskeleton on,” I said. An icon appeared on my HUD asking me to confirm the command. “Yes,” I said.
“Okay, now you can lift me,” Haywire said weakly. “It’ll be nice to be treated like a lady for once, instead of having to carry your big ass around.”
I shrugged before bending my knees and scooping my arms under her, lifting her up, cradling her body as though she were an infant. It was a marvelous feeling. I couldn’t exactly describe it as lifting her with ease, as that would’ve seemed like taking too much credit. I was carrying her only in the sense that one carries a passenger in their car. Indeed, it was the exoskeleton that was doing 100 percent of the work.
“That’s better,” Haywire said. “You can keep me stable this way and transport me.”
“Now what?” I asked.
“The legs are powerful enough that you could leap a five-story building, if you want. Getting us onto this ledge shouldn’t be an issue.”
I nodded. “Okay. Here goes nothing.” I leapt up into the air, trying not to put too much power behind it, lest I slam us both into the ceiling, possibly killing us both in the process. The leap was pathetic at best. I jumped straight into the air, just high enough to escape the water, then immediately came right back down, splashing into the filth.
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