Life: Online: A gamelit novel

by Shiloh Hunt

  Lucy pounced her. His shoulder knocked into William’s as the wolf dashed forward at the same time. The three of them tumbled down the cellar’s stairs, landing in a confused bundle at the bottom.

  “What the heck—” Kitty paused to extricate herself “—is the matter with you two?”

  She shook herself violently, glaring at them. Lucy showed her his teeth and William walked up alongside her, bumping her hip with his flank.

  “Glad you’re okay,” William said.

  “Yeah,” Lucy said, suppressing an urge to walk closer to the pair. “Glad you’re safe, Kitty.”

  Kitty harrumphed and spun around, dislodging the paw William had slung over her shoulders.

  “Okay, now that everyone’s happy,” she muttered. “We’ve got a situation that needs taking care of.”

  Lucy looked past her, his shoulders slumping when he saw the line of expectant faces. “Kitty—”

  She turned back, eyes flaring. “We’re not leaving them behind. They’ve been trapped here for hours, Lucy.”

  “You don’t get it.” Lucy growled as he gazed at row upon row of wolves, tigers, lions, bears, and various assortments of other baby animals, their faces etched with near-comical angst.

  “They’re too young. They—” Lucy cut off. He pressed his lips tightly together. “Darn it, Kitty. They’ll never make it through the exit.”

  Kitty glanced at William. He was watching them silently, tail slashing from side to side.

  “Will, we have to—”

  “We can’t take them into Play with us,” Lucy said.

  “Play?” William asked. “Thought we’re going to the Arena?”

  “You mean you haven’t figured it out yet?” Lucy asked. His lip twitched with the beginning of a snarl, quickly suppressed with a flick of his tongue. “Those exits on the map? They’re not for going to the Arena. Each one takes us to the next rift, in the order that’s on the map.”

  Something appeared in William’s paws — a piece of scraped-clean hide with crude letters scrawled on it. The wolf fumbled, trying to unroll the scroll on the cellar floor with clumsy paws.

  “It’s too dark,” William said. “Can barely see anything.”

  “Put it down,” Lucy said.

  William frowned up at him. “What are you—”

  “Giving you more light, mate,” Lucy said.

  Lucy’s chest went tight: he could feel Kitty’s eyes on him, a hushed anticipation filling the cellar. How did he ever get to this point, where his entire mission depended on the speed of his thoughts?

  William dropped the hide. Lucy left it for a moment, forcing his gaze into the corner of the cellar as he searched his inventory. He retrieved a glowing stone — Fantasia’s equivalent of a torch. It was a rare one: a brilliant sapphire with white and pink veins crawling over its surface. It thrummed with some inner luminance, drawing every eye in the cellar.

  He held it out, using his free paw to snatch up the hide. The object flickered as he accessed the game’s code console and thought out a quick line of code, tweaking the co-ordinates of this map’s exits to match those that Kitty had on her altered map. Then the hide was back on the floor. Lucy carefully laid the stone beside it.

  William shuffled closer, lifting the hide and scanning it in the light of the glowing stone.

  “It just says…” William squinted at the hide. “It doesn’t say anything about that. It just says we have to get to those points.”

  “You think the mods care?” Lucy rose to his paws and shook himself. “If they really gave a darn, they’d be going into every rift looking for players and herding them out of the game.”

  “Then why don’t they?” Kitty asked. “You make it sound like it should be so easy to get out.”

  “It should be, for them.” Lucy peered at her over his shoulder. “But like I said, they don’t give a fluff. They’re so busy trying to figure out what the heck happened to the game, their masterpiece, that they couldn’t give two fluffs if hundreds end up in catatonic states because they couldn’t disconnect and their minds eventually caved in.”

  Three bears at the far right of the huddle of players began whispering urgently. One of them snivelled into the fur of the other, while the third patted it absently on the shoulder with a massive paw.

  “He’s right, Kitty,” William said, putting away the piece of hide. “If the next stop’s Play, then no ways these kids are coming with.”

  “We can’t leave them here.” Kitty was avoiding looking at Lucy, perhaps hoping William would be easier to convince. “He just said they’ll turn into vegetables if we—”

  “Play’s an R-Rated rift, Kitty,” Lucy said, taking a step closer to the furious lioness. “If they entered their real ages when they registered their accounts, then there’s no way the game will let them through.”

  She spun to Lucy, face a furry storm. “What are you talking about?”

  William sighed. “Play is adults only, K. You can’t drag a bunch of kiddies into it. What’s wrong with you?”

  “But… they can’t stay here. We have to…”

  “Why do you think there’s so many of them here, Kitty?” Lucy stepped forward. “The kids can’t use the exit, so they’re stuck here.”

  “But, can’t the mods—”

  “Again with the mods?” Lucy broke in, speaking through his teeth. “How many times, Kitty? The mods don’t give a fluff about any of the players. You think they’re going to care about a bunch of kids?” His sentence ended with a snap of his jaws.

  “We can’t just leave them here.” Kitty glanced at William again. “Will, please—”

  William shrugged. “I’m not about to go dragging a bunch of kids with us. I heard Play’s like really…” William didn’t finish the sentence. “It’s not right,” he added lamely.

  “Leaving them here to die isn’t right!” Kitty yelled. “And if you guys aren’t going to help me, then I’ll do it myself. They can… they can just close their eyes or something.”

  “So you’re going to hack the game’s code, then?” Lucy said. “Or did you think you could persuade it to let them through? Perhaps say they’re under parental guidance, or something? How exactly, Kitty, are you going to get them into an age-restricted rift?”

  The lioness’s jaw worked for a few seconds, but nothing more than a strained attempt at words came through. She sank down on her haunches, her green eyes glittering with anger. Lucy watched as the fire behind them died down, simmered and sputtered out.

  “Then I’ll stay here,” Kitty said.

  “What?” William stormed up to her. He cocked his head to the side and leaned in so close that she shrank away from him. “You’re not staying here. We have to get to the Arena, K.”

  “You two go.” Kitty nodded, her quavering voice gradually steadying. “You tell the mods what’s happened. And you tell them that I’ve stayed behind. They have to figure out something. If not for—” Kitty glared at Lucy “—the fluffing kids, then for me.”

  Lucy’s tail slashed to the side. He padded up to her, but stopped short, glaring at her.

  “They won’t come back for you, Kitty.”

  Kitty bristled and rose to her paws, her head jutting forward.

  “Really? You’re that sure they don’t give a darn?”

  “I am,” Lucy said. He glanced at William. “They wouldn’t come back for either of you.”

  Kitty growled. “Because you’re just such good friends with these—”

  “Furthest thing from,” Lucy said. “You’re pirates. Both of you. They wouldn’t blink to leave you here until your physical bodies are nothing but skin stretched over empty bones.”

  Behind them, a chubby cougar burst into tears.

  William and Kitty glanced at each other and then turned twin glares on Lucy. He shrugged.

  “How did you know?” William whispered.

  Lucy cocked his head toward Kitty. William nodded once and stood again, padding with measured steps toward the ce
llar door.

  “Will!” Kitty called out. “We can’t just—”

  William didn’t pause. “There’s nothing we can do.”

  Lucy turned back to Kitty, but she was gazing at the floor, eyes flickering from side to side. When she lifted them, they caught the light for a moment, reflecting a silvery disk.

  “I can’t leave them here.” Kitty shrugged, the movement small and insignificant. “Maybe if the mods don’t know… if you keep quiet and just tell them…”

  Lucy watched her for a few seconds. Her green gaze was timidly insistent, darting between his own eyes as if trying to catch the first glimpse of his reaction. Lucy glanced away, his eyes running unintentionally over the ranks of players standing behind Kitty. A few of their avatars flickered with names: players he’d met the last time he’d been in Fantasia.

  But Cherry wasn’t here.

  On impulse he opened his chat console. It was still empty. That second glitch had screwed up things real good. He had no idea if Cherry and Sam were still here at all, or if they’d been glitched into a different rift like him. It hadn’t happened to Cecil and Bonzo, or Ilyena and Borris, but maybe… maybe it was different here.

  “I need time I don’t have,” Lucy began under his breath. He shook his head. “I’ll get them through.”

  “Who, the kids?” Kitty glanced over her shoulder at the players.

  A few of the players had pricked up their ears and were staring at them.

  “Who else?”

  Lucy let his eyes run over the players, slower this time in case he’d missed his seeders the first time round. But he hadn’t: they weren’t here. They were supposed to have been here. That was the plan.

  But nothing, so far, had been to plan. All the primary seeders, except those waiting in Torque, had gone AWOL. Nick’s brother, Greg, had been the first. Whining about wanting to keep playing, and how fantastic the fluffing Game was. So Lucy had put a bullet in him. And had kept putting bullets in him until he hadn’t respawned again. Which had made Nick the primary seeder. And since Nick had gone all ape-doodie about his brother, the idiotic fluffer had deployed that first, crucial loader when Lucy had still been in the rift. Which was undoubtedly the reason Lucy had been glitched back to Chimera.

  Then Cecil had lost it. He’d always been a loon, but he’d been around since the beginning, so he’d pulled strings to get in on the action. Why hadn’t the overseers listened to Lucy when he’d told them Bonzo would make a better primary seeder? Probably because Cecil was buddies with so many of them.

  “How?” Kitty demanded, interrupting his despondent train of thought.

  “That you don’t need to worry your pretty little head about.”

  Kitty growled, but he ignored her.

  “Go with William,” Lucy said. “And take these kids with you.”

  If Cherry wasn’t here, then there was only one other place she could be. Lucy opened the rift’s map and scanned it.

  The witch’s cottage was a crude outline of a house with a pointy roof, a dashed line leading away from it: the path they’d followed to reach it. More dashed lines criss-crossed Fantasia’s map, twining through the forest, looping around the base of gentle hills, leading every which way. The river — a child’s ham-fisted scrawl in blue — cut a thick swathe through the map, snaking from east to west.

  “Head down to the river and turn east. Follow it until you reach the waterfall. I’ll meet you there. And hurry.”

  Lucy turned on his heels, but Kitty’s voice stopped him.

  “How, Lucy?” She lifted a paw, pads facing the ceiling. “You said we’d have to—have to hack the game to get them through.”

  He swung his head around, watching Kitty for a moment. Then the edge of his lip drew up in a tiny smile.

  “Yeah? So then I’ll do that then, mate.”

  Kitty blinked, eyes widening. Lucy padded up the cellar stairs, ignored William’s interrogatory stare, and pushed his way out of the witch’s cottage.

  Outside, light struggled to filter through the forest’s canopy, emerging in a smatter of geometric shapes that danced on the mossy ground. Lucy took a breath, gave the cottage a last backward glance, and bounded away.

  37

  The river was little more than a brook. And, yes, it babbled as it hurried over its smooth, pebbled bed. Kitty tore her eyes from the mesmerising play of sunlight on its rippling surface. Everything here was so fluffy and cute. Everything except the witch, from what Will had told her.

  “I don’t get it,” Kitty said, detouring toward William. “How could they let that witch and her chopping block into a kiddies’s game?”

  William shrugged, head hanging low between his shoulder blades as he padded beside her.

  “’Spose it knew me and Lucy weren’t like five.” William shook his head hard enough to flap his ears against his cheeks. “Maybe kids don’t see the blood and stuff.”

  “But they still know one of their friends’ve just been hacked to bits, right?”

  “Hey, I didn’t make the game.”

  Kitty watched the river again. Just follow it east, Lucy had said. They’d been walking for what felt like hours. The sun hadn’t moved: it seemed this rift didn’t have a day/night mode. Then again, neither had Torque or Polaris. Okay, maybe Polaris did, but their nights apparently lasted a few hundred years or something.

  “Um, Kitty?”

  Kitty spun around, watching as a panda bear cub disengaged from the throng of kids following them.

  She couldn’t see the kid’s name on her HUD.

  “What’s up?”

  “What happened to Lucy?”

  She started forward again. The panda bear hurried to catch up, staying a pace behind her.

  “He’s coming back now. Just went to… do something.” Kitty was overly aware of William’s sudden silence beside her. “He’ll be back soon.”

  “He’s going to get us out?” the panda bear asked.

  “That’s what he said.” Kitty cleared her throat. “Don’t know how, but I guess he’s busy coming up with a plan.”

  “So he didn’t just leave us?”

  Kitty opened her mouth, ready with some lame reassurance, but closed it without speaking.

  “No way, kid,” William said. “Get back with the others, ‘kay?”

  The panda bear gave William a brief glance before nodding and falling back to merge with the small cluster of kids. William was quiet for longer than Kitty had expected before breaking the silence with another furious flap of his ears.

  “He didn’t say anything else?”

  “No, Will.”

  “So he’s just going to hack the game like it’s nothing?”

  “That’s what he said, Will.”

  “Because that’s just something he know’s how to—”

  “I don’t know, okay?” Kitty snarled. “I didn’t exactly get a chance to interrogate him. Plus, he looked really… distracted. Like he was thinking darn hard about something. Let’s just—” she took a deep breath “—let’s just focus on getting the kids to the end of this fluffing river, okay?”

  She glanced behind her. The kids were slowing.

  “Hey! Hurry up you guys,” she called out. “You want to get out of this rift or what?”

  A few of the kids sped up, but most just carried on plodding at the same pace.

  “Besides, he was probably talking doodie, anyway,” Kitty said. “He’s never been an Honest Rodger.”

  “And you still stayed with him?” William’s lips twitched in a tiny snarl. “You sure know how to pick them, K.”

  “I do, don’t I?” Kitty said.

  William glanced at her, eyes narrowing for an instant. “Look, I’ve been thinking, right?”

  Kitty waited, eyes sliding back to the children. They looked no different to her and William and Lucy, but there was something about the way they moved. Hesitant, cautious almost. And erratic. Like they had difficulty controlling their avatars. Why? It hadn’t been like learning
the controls of a new game. Life: Online was intuitive. You pressed play and there you were, larger than life, in a new world. A 360 degree, virtual reality dream that you controlled.

  But that also controlled you: forcing you to obey its physics, its role playing, its rules.

  She shivered, dismissing the thought.

  “After Play, there’s only Bang-Bang Island left, right?” William went on, his voice pitched low.

  “Ja,” Kitty agreed distantly.

  One of the kids had stopped and was twitching. It was a lion, possibly one she’d shared the cage with, as big as any of the other baby animals.

  “And the Arena’s in Bang-Bang, right?”

  “Right,” Kitty said.

  The lion sank to the ground. What the heck was—

  “So, we don’t need him anymore. Not once we get into Play. Once we know where the exit is, we can ditch him.”

  Kitty spun to William. “You want to ditch Lucy?”

  William shrugged. “The man’s a freak.”

  She opened her mouth, wanting to demand a definition of the word ‘freak’, but her eyes were drawn back to the lion. It had fallen over and was lying with its legs pointing to the sky.

  “Sherbet.” Kitty raced over to the player, kicking up grass as she skidded to a halt beside it.

  “Hey, kid!” She tapped the lion’s shoulder with a paw. “Kid! Wake up.”

  She heard the drumming of paws drawing near.

  “What is it?” William asked.

  “I don’t know. The kid just fell over.”

  “Move aside,” he said.

  Kitty shuffled away from the lion, glancing at William with eyes the size of saucers. William pressed a paw down on the lion’s shoulder, then on its chest.

  “Wake up, buddy.”

  Softer paws approached them. Kitty glanced up, motioning wildly at the approaching group of kids. Some stopped, but most just stepped closer, surrounding them in a ring of worried, furry faces.

  “This kid have a name?” William looked up and snarled. “Any of you know his name?”

  “Brad,” a voice said from the crowd. “It’s Brad.”