by Shiloh Hunt
“Okay,” William murmured. “Okay. Brad.” He raised his voice. “Brad? Brad, can you hear me?”
There was no response from the player. William tapped his paw against the lion’s chubby cheek.
“Brad, wake up. You need to open your eyes, okay? Can you hear me?”
The lion’s head lolled. William drew back, stiffening. Kitty’s heart thundered in her chest. She wet her whiskers with a swipe of her tongue, glancing at the ring of kids. They gaped at their immobile companion.
“Sherbet,” William said. “I don’t think—”
The lion moaned, his lolling head moving back. Tears filled his eyes, wetting the fur on his cheeks.
“I don’t want to play anymore,” Brad sobbed. “I want my mommy.”
“We’re taking you to her, Brad.” William’s voice was uneven. “That’s where we’re going, right now. But you have to get up. You have to come with us, then you can see your mommy, okay?”
Brad shook his maned head.
William growled, but the sound was soft, obscured deep in the back of his throat.
“Get up, Brad.”
“Don’t wanna…”
“You don’t get up, you’ll never see your mommy again, you hear me?” William lifted his head, teeth bared. “You hear me?” He asked of the gathered players. “This is it, understand? You come with us now or you’ll be stuck here forever. Is that what you want? You want to be stuck here forever? Never seeing your parents again? Pooping in your pants and losing your minds?”
Kitty took a step back, her paw raised as she stared at the wolf.
“William—” Kitty began, but he didn’t seem to notice her.
“This is it, you snivelling bunch of cry babies. You come with us, or you’ll all die.” The wolf’s tail slashed, fur standing stiff. “And in case you’re too idiotic to know what that means…” he let his fiery gaze slide over all the players. “It means you’ll never, ever, see your mommies or your daddies again. Get it?”
Howls broke out.
Players collapsed to their haunches, snouts tipping to the sky as they broke into wails of despair. William watched them and nodded with stern satisfaction.
“What’s wrong with you?” Kitty hissed. “You didn’t have to—”
William grimaced, lip twitching as if caught between a snarl and a smile. He laid a soft paw on her shoulder and his expression relaxed.
“They have to know what’s at stake, K. Come on.” William turned her with his paw. “We have to go.”
She let him lead her away. The players straggled along after them in a mess of fur and tears.
38
The pond was small enough to leap over, if Lucy wanted to exert the energy. He didn’t, so instead he sank to his haunches, glaring into the shadows of the small, rounded cave. Trees with long, dangling branches and a flurry of white blossoms shrouded both sides of the cave mouth in a delicate floral curtain. Tiny insects zipped around the surface of the water, occasionally landing on one of the bright green lily pads scattered across the pond.
“Cherry?”
A frog plopped off a lily pad at the sound of his voice, not quite disappearing beneath the shallow waters.
“You there?”
There was a rustle from deep inside the cave. Lucy tensed, shuffling his paws closer. A snow leopard emerged from the gloom of the cave, brown eyes fixed on him. The player’s name flashed on his HUD. Her avatar’s tail traced a sinuous arc behind her as she came to a stop inches from the edge of the pond.
Cherry Bomb stared across the water for a moment, blinking, before surging forward and splashing through the crystal clear water to reach him. Her teeth flashed as a smile tugged at her snout. She purred as she butted her head against his. Lucy tried to stop himself purring in response, but failed. Cherry Bomb swung around, sliding her body under his chin as he studied her with calm eyes.
“You’re still here,” Lucy murmured.
Cherry’s voice held too much strain. “I couldn’t reach you. I didn’t know what’d happened. If you were still coming. And I couldn’t wait in the cottage any longer. I reckoned, if I came here, you’d know where to find me. So I came here, like you said I should. I waited here, just like you said.”
“You knew I would come.”
The pale leopard finally stilled, sitting beside Lucy, her tail brushing against his flank. She turned worried eyes on him. Her ears pricked up.
“Something could have happened to you, Jason,” Cherry said. “Like what happened to Sam. It could have happened to you too. How would I know?”
“Something’s happened to Sam?” Lucy ducked his head closer to her. “What?”
Cherry looked across the still pond, her brown eyes growing distant before returning to him.
“He’s gone.”
“Gone.” Lucy rose, studying her. “Gone where?”
Cherry looked away again, her eyes serious, but her lips twitching into a smile. “It doesn’t matter where. I’m here. I’m ready, Jason.” Her eyes found him again. “And you’re here. Which means everything’s on track.”
“No, Sarah.” Lucy jabbed his snout toward her. “Everything isn’t on track.”
She blinked at him, her eyes seeming darker, brighter, for her avatar’s pale fur.
“But I’m the seeder now,” Cherry said. “You have to give it to me.”
“Where’s Serious Sam?” Lucy demanded. “He was supposed to—”
“This is what I signed up for.” Cherry took a breath that expanded her chest, her snout dipping as she rose to her paws. “Are you really going to jeopardize everything because you didn’t plan for your little sister to have to take Sam’s place?”
Lucy’s tail flicked out behind him, brushing the surface of the pond as he glared at Cherry.
“He ran off, didn’t he?”
Cherry shook her head. “It doesn’t matter, Jason. Just give me the fluffing loader already.”
Lucy’s eyes slid to the floor, and he pressed them closed so he didn’t have to look at Cherry’s paws.
“Something’s gone wrong,” Lucy said. “The game…” He shook his head. “Every time a loader’s deployed, the game glitches.” He lifted his head, fixing her with a stare. “The first glitch cost me all of my player stats and almost half my inventory. The second glitch did something to my Game kit so it keeps malfunctioning. The third glitch took out most of Polaris. I don’t even know if Cecil’s still—”
“But you’re here now.” Cherry took a step closer. She laid a paw over his, leaning closer and rubbing her cheek against his. “Which means it’s not over yet, Jason. That’s why they sent two seeders into every rift. That’s why there’s a time delay on the dropper. All those redundancies, all those fail-safes… the Party put them in place for a reason, Jason.”
“One hundred percent success rate,” Lucy whispered.
“And you’re still here.” Cherry lifted a paw, running it over Lucy’s head. His ear popped back and he gave it a violent twitch. “The mission can still be completed. The quest can still be completed.”
“I know, Sarah. It’s just…” Lucy squared his shoulders, meeting her eyes with reluctance. “When players run out of lives, they don’t wake up like they’re supposed to. And stuff’s going wrong. Weird things are happening. Players are getting turned into NPC’s and—”
“What are you saying?” Cherry turned her head, her lip lifting in a half-smile. A breeze shuffled around them, swaying a nearby cluster of branches.
“They don’t wake up. Or they get turned.”
“How could you even know—”
“I know. And it scares me.” Lucy cleared his throat. “You release that loader and the game could glitch you into Polaris. Which possibly doesn’t exist anymore. Then what?” He got to his paws. “Then what, Sarah? You stay here forever? I disconnect and there’s nothing left of you except a mindless body. I can’t—”
She cut him off with a short, acerbic chuckle. “This is not your decision. Gi
ve me the loader.” She held out a paw. “Now.”
“Sarah, you don’t—”
“Now.” Her eyes narrowed. “Nothing’s going to happen to me. I’ll be just fine.” She shook her paw, eyebrows lifting.
Lucy released a long breath and opened his inventory. He took out a pale yellow stone and placed it on the grass beside the pond. It disappeared a second later, and Cherry Bomb smiled at him.
“Now you get out there and make us proud,” Cherry said.
“Fifteen minutes.”
“Hurry, Jason. There’s not much time left.”
“I know.” Lucy paused in the act of swinging away. “I love you, sis.”
“And I love you.” She bared her teeth at him. “Now get on with it. You have a trillion dollar corporation to fluff up.”
39
The waterfall was beautiful, of course.
Water hung in a shimmering fog around them, dampening everyone’s fur as they waited for Lucy. The kids were clustered together a short distance away, large doe-like eyes flickering between Kitty and the precipitous drop of the waterfall. They needn’t have worried: you couldn’t fall off here.
One of the braver kids with a dozen lives had already tried and failed.
William flapped his ears again.
He sat on his haunches and began scratching at his ear with his hind leg, yawning. It was both utterly adorable and insanely infuriating. Kitty walked in a tight circle, but there was nowhere to go now that they were here. She sat down again and wriggled the toes on her rear paws, staring at them with her head cocked to the side.
“Do you think about the past sometimes?” she asked. “About how things used to be?”
She glanced up in time to see William start. Blinking, he turned his gaze on her. He lowered his paw and studied her for a few moments before replying. When he spoke, his eyes shifted between hers, as if to judge the effect his words had on her.
“Sometimes.”
“Like when?”
“When you’re depressed. Or when you’re angry.”
“Why only then?”
William’s eyes dropped, his head slowly moving back to the thundering waterfall. He remained silent for a few seconds.
“Because you were never like that, before.” William shrugged. “That was what I loved about you. It didn’t matter what happened, you never got angry. You never got sad. You were always just… you. You were always just Kita. My Kita.”
Kitty didn’t reply, sifting through the sands of her life; those massive dunes of memory filling her mind. He was right, to a degree. She’d always been an optimist. Happy for the sake of happiness. Sure that nothing could shake her. Convinced that nothing could break her.
And then something had broken her.
“Do you hate me?” William asked, startling her from her thoughts.
She stared at him, for a moment too shocked to reply.
“No,” she managed through a tight throat. “Why would you ask me that?”
There was a sudden fluster of cries and shouts from the children, growing louder, calling to them, but Kitty couldn’t look away from William. He stared pensively forward, snout tipped up as if preparing for a blow to the face. His tail was limp, his ears flopping atop his head.
“You should.” He glanced at her. “We both know I’m the reason they’re dead.”
Lucy’s voice came to her then, loud and insistent. Kitty ignored him. William twisted, studying something beyond the waterfall’s misty veil.
“You were looking for me that night weren’t you?” William asked. “You and your parents.” He turned, stalking closer, looking as if he planned to walk through her.
“You were looking for me because you were worried again. You thought I’d gone and overdosed somewhere, didn’t you? You asked your parents to take you to my house, didn’t you, so you could check on me?”
Kitty stared at him, transfixed, as anger spawned over his face.
“Tell me I’m right,” William hissed. “Tell me that’s why you were in the car that night. Why your parents were in the car. I’m the reason your parents are dead.”
“That’s not—” Kitty began, but he cut in, wet nose less than an inch away from her.
“I killed them, Kitty. It was me.” His paw slammed into the grass. “I did it. I’m the one responsible. It was me—” he broke off, voice wilting. “I was the one who paralysed you.”
He was breathing hard, his eyes narrowed.
“And that’s why, Kitty.” He blew air through his nose, the sound too animal-like. “That’s why you should hate me.”
Kitty barely heard the sound of Lucy padding up to them. Her ears were ringing, her heartbeat an elephant thundering in her chest. She blinked at William, pressure welling behind her eyes.
“Why would you—” Kitty began, but Lucy’s voice cut her off.
“Whatever you two are arguing about, it can wait. We have to leave. Now.” Lucy started off, pausing after a few steps. “You coming, or what?”
“Yeah,” William said softly. “We’re coming.” He started after Lucy, tail stiff behind him.
A few of the kids raced up to William, trembling in their excitement as they subjected him to a barrage of chatter.
“Did you see it?” a baby bear called out. “Did you see what he did?”
“He pointed at it and it went all weird, and then he—” a cougar began, a lion cutting it off.
“It was wicked! He says he hacked us into Play!”
Kitty stared after them, shaking her head in an attempt to focus the furious flurry of thoughts infesting her mind. Her paws felt numb as she followed them, eyes flicking dismissively to a wide, swirling vortex of multi-coloured iridescence that hung in the air ahead. The kids were huddled in front of it, pressed flank to flank, their fur a tangle of colours and patterns.
“One of us should go first, to catch the kids going through. It’s going to be weird for them.” Lucy looked up, catching Kitty’s eye. “Remember how it was for you? They’re kids: it’s going to be a million times worse.”
Kitty gently shook her head, subduing her thoughts enough to force out a small sound of assent. Lucy nodded, and glanced between them.
“So? Who’s it gonna be?”
“I’ll do it.” William stalked forward, shoulder blades lifting the fur on his back in smooth humps. His eyes met Kitty’s but she snapped her gaze away. Her intestines coiled.
“We’ll be right behind you,” Lucy said. “Just stay where you are and make sure the kids don’t run off.”
The wolf stepped into the vortex, the tip of his tail twitching just once before it disappeared. Kitty watched as Lucy herded the kids through. Her gaze blurred, eyes losing focus.
How did he know? She’d never told him about that night, about where they’d been headed. But she had been angry, afterward. She had blamed him. For more than a month after the accident, she would scream at him in her head, calling him every name she could think of.
She’d argued with him, cursed him, slapped him, told him to leave, told him to stay, told him she’d hated him, told him she loved him. Over and over, every night when she couldn’t go to sleep because of the pain, too afraid to ask for meds because then she wouldn’t remember falling asleep and would wake up disorientated and it would be a shock to again remember her parents were dead.
But how could he have known? Those hateful things had only been said in the privacy of her own mind, no matter how loudly she had shouted them. They were her thoughts, no one else’s.
If anyone was to blame… Kitty tried pushing the thought away, her eyes fixing on Brad as Lucy tried to coerce the kid through the barrier. The lion was digging in his clumpy paws, head blurring as he shook it.
“It should have been me,” Kitty whispered. She’d wanted to go alone after William that night, but her mother had seen the look in her eyes when she’d grabbed up her handbag.
“William?” All it took was one word, spoken so quiet as to be a whisper, to stop
Kitty in her tracks. She’d glanced at her mother, tears gathering in her eyes, and her mother had known. “I wasn’t in the mood for making supper anyway,” her mother had announced, standing. Kitty’s dad had looked up from his tablet, blinking owlishly at them.
“Take-aways?” he’d asked, tossing the tablet on the couch where her mother had been sitting. “I’ll drive.”
And that had been that. Kitty’s mother had explained in a quiet voice where they were actually headed while Kitty had tried not to listen. And then she’d curled up in the back seat, forcing herself not to think of the state William would be in when they found him.
Except… they’d never found out what state he’d been in.
That night, on that intersection, an SUV ran a red light, t-boning their car and sending it tumbling down the verge and into the road below. Two vehicles had slammed into the wreckage, splitting their car open like a ripe fruit.
Kitty regained consciousness three weeks later, paralysed from the waist down, legs nothing more than stumps.
A month and a half later, William had slipped into her hospital room, hands gripped together, his face pale and gleaming with moisture.
She could remember looking up, could remember the tightness she’d felt in her chest, the numbness where her legs had been.
But she’d reached for him — every angry word or hateful thing she could ever have said already screamed twice over — and he’d held her, and she’d cried until her head slammed with pain and the nurses had come inside and removed Will.
“Can you hear me, Kitty?” A paw touched her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
Kitty blinked, gaze focusing grudgingly on Lucy’s dark, gleaming eyes.
“I… sorry… I just—” She rose and shook herself, her tail snapping straight.
They were alone. The children had all gone through. Lucy watched her with a frown.
“Sorry, zoned out,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Lucy’s paw stopped her. “Tell me.”
Kitty stared at him. Her lips twitched. “What?” her voice trembled. “Tell you what?”
He stepped in front of her. “Something’s wrong.”
