by Shiloh Hunt
“Killjoy tell you he’s coming for you?” the man asked, snapping her eyes up to his.
Kitty managed a nod.
“Fuck.” His eyes flashed away, returning seconds later; wide and pleading. “You hear from Lucy? Is he going to get us out of here?”
She gave her head a shake.
“Nothing? Not even a message or nothing?” There was obvious panic in the guy’s voice.
“No, nothing. I haven’t even tried to get hold of him yet. Let me—”
The player released her and spun around, a hand going to his brow to slash away a layer of sweat.
“No. Not now.” He beckoned her fiercely. “Follow me.”
The man stormed up the beach, head ducked low between his shoulders. A compact machine gun appeared in his hands.
“Who the hell are you?” Kitty yelled after him. And then realized there was a name flickering above the man’s avatar. Panda Guy. Wait, Panda Guy? This was Panda Guy?
“Wait up, kid!” Kitty sped after Panda Guy, it being obvious that he was either ignoring her or couldn’t hear her.
A tangle of trees engulfed the kid before she could reach him. The wall of green reared out from the fog of war, a swaying palm leaf the only indication that someone had passed through. She hesitated for a second, glanced behind her at the mutilated seaside, and dove in after him.
“Hey, slow down!”
“No time. Got to escape Killjoy’s radius. Still nothing from Lucy?”
“No.” Kitty’s foot caught on an exposed root and she stumbled. “Hey, kid!”
There was a muffled curse, and Panda Guy’s avatar stopped crashing through the foliage. He turned back to her with a thin-lipped mouth.
“I don’t play these games, okay?” Kitty said, hauling herself up with the help of a deformed tree trunk. “Please just slow down and tell me why the hell we’re running.”
Panda Guy grabbed hold of his waist, taking a visible breath as he glanced around them. Then he reached forward, grabbed hold of her collar, and tugged her after him.
“Not yet. We’re not safe.”
“For fuck’s sake just—”
“Shut it, player.”
He continued to ignore her bleated protests until they were in a small clearing, ten minutes inland from Devastation Dunes. Panda Guy swung around, glaring at the surrounding foliage as if expecting ten ninjas to jump out at them from every direction. Kitty opened the code console, trying to remember the code Lucy had told her. Using it, could she bring William and Lucy to her? But… why didn’t he just use it to bring her to him? And if he knew codes that did things like that, what else did he know? And how? Why?
Several other questions began pressing against the inside of her skull at that point. She tried ignoring them to focus on the task at hand, but her internal struggle must have shown on her face.
“What are you doing?”
“That thing, the code…” Kitty began, trailing away as she struggled to recall it. Had it been two hashtags, or a hashtag and then a percentage sign?
Snapping leaves brought her thoughts from their frenzied hamster wheel just in time to see Panda Guy swoop down, draw a knife from the region of his ankle, and flick said knife against her throat as he charged into her. His momentum carried them to a nearby tree, where Kitty wriggled until the knife pressed deeper into her throat.
“No codes.” Panda Guy's pale eyes augured into her. “No calls. We’re trying to avoid notice, not draw attention.”
“Lucy—”
“Can go fuck himself,” Panda Guy said. The player didn’t sound like the same mewling kid Kitty remembered. “He’s bad news, got it? You call him and none of us leave. So we’re going to the Arena and getting ourselves the hell out of here before this fucking game crashes for good.”
Kitty’s breath came in too sharply. “Crashes? Why do you think it’s—”
“Look, I get it,” Panda Guy said, his blue eyes serene. “You want to wait for that guy, William. Get out together.” Panda Guy cocked his head. “But you don’t realise. If you get out—” the knife drew back “—you get to disconnect him. Then you both get out. Got it?”
“Got it,” Kitty said.
“Now give me your radio.”
“My… what?”
“In your inventory. Hand it over. That and your rifle. I’m not a trusting kind of person.”
Kitty opened her inventory. A beaten up radio transmitter lay in her inside, amongst a few magazines of ammunition, rations, and what looked like a backpack. There was also a rifle. But it was dwarfed by the weapon taking up three slots beside it: something that resembled the enormous plasma rifle Lucy had worn in Polaris. A rocket launcher? Was this supposed to be standard inventory in this rift?
“Now, player.” The man applied more pressure on the knife.
She dropped the transmitter to the ground. Panda Guy glowered at her and bent to the side, fumbling on the ground for the object.
Kitty thought really, really hard. She scanned her brain for any brief glimpses of William playing games like ‘A Commander’s Duty’, and ‘Heroes Brave’. Her avatar drove its elbow into the side of Panda Guy’s head. She slid to the side, drawing a line of fire across her throat as she shied out from behind the blade.
Panda Guy made a surprised noise and stumbled to the side. Kitty kicked away from the tree, shoving the man on his back as she leapt past him and shot into the underbrush.
The jungle was a raucous, living thing. It grabbed at her feet, tripping her up and scratching at her with innocent looking fronds dangling in her path. Small animals scattered in her wake. Light leeched from the environment too; obviously Bang-Bang had a day/night mode and night was approaching. At a hundred times the speed it would back in the real world.
Crashing footsteps followed her, but she tried to ignore them, focusing instead on staying upright and moving forward.
Eventually, the sound of pursuit faded. When the jungle ahead of her cleared, opening into a wider, well trodden foot path, she hazarded a backward glance.
Nothing.
Kitty opened her chat console, but it had been greyed out. Obviously the transmitter thing had been an important part of sending and receiving messages: go figure. Her avatar’s stamina ran out, so she slowed into a walk and began scanning the jungle she passed.
What the hell had that kid been on? She tried to recall every time she’d ever seen Panda Guy but thought was a slippery thing out here, in the middle of the chirping, chattering jungle. There was a brief commotion beside her, hidden by the deepening shadows. Kitty tensed. The rifle appeared in her hands, rising so she could squint through its sight, but the noise moved away from her and died away seconds later. She let the gun sink down and took a step back, swinging around to start down the path again. After all, it had to lead—
“Next time I’ll gun you down.”
Kitty drew up, her eyes fluttering unnecessarily to the sawn-off shotgun an inch from her heart. She would never be able to lift her rifle before her torso was split in twain.
“Drop it,” he said.
Kitty let the rifle fall to the ground. She considered plucking out the rocket launcher, but there was so little space between her and Panda Guy that she would obviously get caught in the blast radius, her avatar torn to shreds along with Panda Guy’s.
The man cocked his head toward a smaller path branching off a few yards away.
“Come on, let’s go.”
So the launcher wasn’t standard inventory stock, then. Else Panda Guy would undoubtedly have asked for it. So where had it come from? Kitty thought back to the golden bow Lucy had given her in Chimera. She’d thought Miss Tilly had destroyed it, but maybe…
Panda Guy made a sweeping gesture with the gun.
“We’re going to the Arena?” Kitty managed.
“That we are. And just in case you get any smart ideas, I’m an excellent shot.”
45
Lucy took a few quick breaths, machine gun held up beside
him as he strained for sound over the incessant percussion of rain drops on leaves. There had been five. He was pretty sure he’d gotten at least four of them with his last spray of gunfire, but he couldn’t be sure they were fatal wounds.
He made an emphatic gesture toward the soldier hunched beside him with his back against a thick shock of ivy.
The soldier nodded and leaned out, firing two short bursts into the group of NPC’s they were trying to eradicate. A flurry of returning fire forced the soldier to straighten, and he shook his head at Lucy, lifting three fingers.
Shit: so three had survived.
Lucy nodded and leaned out from behind his cover, peering into the darkness of the jungle ahead. The NPC’s had painted their faces to match the jade shadows they skulked in; they were almost impossible to spot until you had a bullet in you and your avatar was going through the game’s programmed death spasm.
He swapped his machine gun for a scoped rifle. Training his eye through the sight at the highest magnification it offered, he attempted to separate shape from shadow. He found the suggestion of an ear. The rifle coughed genteelly, and a form slumped down to the jungle floor.
Rinse, repeat.
Lucy took out the second NPC. A reciprocal spray of gunfire got him in the shoulder and upper arm.
Retreating with gritted teeth, Lucy applied a med-pack and sat back while he waited for his health to inch back to full. The kid beside him leaned out again, responding with an aggressive volley of machine gun fire that left smoke curling around his face. The kid wasn’t half bad, actually. It had been a surprise. A welcome surprise, for a change.
“I think I got him,” the kid whispered.
He leaned out further. Lucy winced, willing the kid back with the power of his mind, but not before a bullet tore through the kid’s skull, opening up the back of his head in a spray of blood, brain and bone.
Brad’s avatar sprawled over the moss, his eyes staring upward with no regard for the rain that pattered on them.
“Dammit, Brad.” Lucy glanced at his health, and used his scope to scan the shadows beyond. He found the semblance of a human form and took aim, putting a bullet through the NPC’s neck. It fell forward with a gurgle and died after thrashing around a few times in a dramatic death throe. Brad must have hit the third NPC before dying: there were no more men lurking in the shadows.
Lucy returned his rifle to his inventory and opened his console again. Why couldn’t he reach Kitty or William? It didn’t make sense: they’d both come into the rift with him. But spawning knee-deep in a patch of kamikaze NPC’s hadn’t allowed him any time to make contact with them yet. And now neither of them was available?
Beside him, Brad groaned and got to his feet. “No fair! They can’t just—”
“How many lives you got left, kid?”
“Two,” Brad said. “You seen what they done? They just came out and—”
“I told you, kid. The difficulty settings have all been disabled. This is war. No one’s going to go easy on you. Try and keep your head down, will you?”
Of everyone he could have spawned close to it, it had to have been this guy? He’d have taken Kitty in a heartbeat; not because she could fight worth shit in this rift, but because she was the less annoying option. Brad had already lost two lives, and had snivelled and whined about every one. The kid could aim, but it wasn’t worth it when he missed.
Lucy couldn’t think about William and Kitty anymore. He had to get to HQ and do what he came here to do; there wasn’t any more time. What he’d set in motion six rifts ago was coming to a head. The initial dropper had primed the game’s code to ensure each loader could be successfully deployed. And they had, as far as he could tell. The glitches had never been part of the plan, but with the amount of redundant security layers the game had launched with, was it really so hard to believe that there were measures in place the Pirate Party hadn’t fathomed?
“Where’s the Arena?” Brad asked.
“Up ahead, mate.”
“That’s where we’re going, right?”
“Enough with the questions. Follow me.”
Brad hurried after him, head drawn down between his shoulders. Lucy glanced back occasionally, checking to see if the kid was keeping up. The player’s constant vigil was apparent in the quick peeks he shot to either side of their path.
Lucy knocked aside foliage with his elbows as he pushed his way through the overgrown jungle.
Maybe Killjoy had scooped up both players. The other kids, too. It was a strong possibility: they wouldn’t have known to remove their headsets before the mod tracked them via GPS. Maybe he should be looking for Killjoy, instead of trying to contact them.
No. He couldn’t detour now to look for a pair of players. He didn’t need them anymore: the kid seemed to be doing a good enough job of helping him blend in. Unless the mods were excellent at bluffing, he was pretty sure they hadn’t localised the attacks to his player profile yet. Which meant he had to make his move before they did.
“Uh sir?”
“Yeah?”
“Where’s everyone else?”
“Around.”
“They’re safe?”
“You betcha,” Lucy said.
For the first time, the lie tasted bitter in his mouth. Not here, of course, but back in the real world. He’d almost forgotten about his comatose body: the last sensation it had provided him with had been waves of unquenchable lust, closely followed by brief spurts of panic. But that was more than two hours ago now.
Was he still alive?
Would he even know if he’d died?
It was impossible to force himself to feel his real world body; he’d tried.
The kid was talking again. Lucy pushed away the thought, scrambling to recall the kid’s question. Brad was worried they’d get lost? Lucy glanced aside at the tangle of the jungle.
“Just stick with me, kid. I won’t leave you behind.”
The soldier beamed at him and snapped off a salute.
Lucy suppressed a groan.
Minutes later, as he was sidestepping the bulk of another palm tree, he heard the short burst of a rifle: standard-issue, same as the kid’s. Lucy bolted forward, ears straining for more sounds above the crash of his own feet as he tore through the jungle.
46
“You know where we’re going?” Kitty asked, her avatar dragging creepers aside as she wove her way along the footpath.
“Yes,” Panda Guy said.
“Of course you do,” Kitty said under her breath. “So any particular reason why you want this journey of ours to remain all top secret and stuff? You planning on some man-on-man action or something?”
Panda Guy snorted. “I like my privacy, is all. And enough with the questions. I’m the one holding the gun, remember?”
“What, you can’t walk and talk at the same time?”
There was a muffled click behind her. Kitty swallowed, trying to force her spine not to stiffen and her stride not to falter. When no grapeshot of death followed, she relaxed. Had she known she could equip her rocket launcher, spin around, and release a missile into Panda Guy before he could shoot her with the rifle already trained on her, then she would have done it. Except she didn’t. So she hadn’t. She could bide her time.
“How do you know where the Arena is?” she asked.
There was an exasperated sigh from Panda Guy. “You really don’t grasp the gravity of your situation, do you?”
“Didn’t take science in high school.”
“Funny. I meant: you’re in no position to ask questions. Just keep walking, and keep your gab shut.”
“Gab? Where are you from, the eighteen hundreds?”
She half expected to hear him storm up to her, to feel a knife sliding into her back, but instead there was nothing. Kitty risked a peek over her shoulder. Panda Guy stared at her nonplussed, head cocked to one side as if considering a long and particularly interesting train of thought. She wrenched her eyes forward.
�
��You sure you know where we’re going?” Kitty asked, glancing around at the same bits of jungle repeated every few paces.
“I’ve been here before. Many times.”
Kitty pulled her mouth to the side. Where had she heard that before?
“It going to take long, getting there?”
“Nope. A few minutes. No more.”
“Good.” She batted a palm leaf out of her way. “Because you’re really terrible company.”
“And you’re not exactly a model prisoner,” he retorted. “Now keep walking and quit yapping.”
Kitty rolled her eyes, but decided not to try and probe the man further. It gave her time to think, anyway. How was she going to signal Lucy or Will? Where were they? Why hadn’t they spawned by her, if Panda Guy had been a few yards away? Ill luck… or something else? This transition had been as rough as the previous, but it had been different. No climbing through a vortex. No fleeing through a pre-built exit. This had just been them, disappearing… reappearing. With a line of code. Supplied by Lucy. Who’d also, incidentally, hacked the kids out of Fantasia and into Play.
Hacked.
Her steps faltered. Behind her, Panda Guy’s gun made a menacing, mechanical sound as if he was taking aim at her. She straightened, walking with purpose again.
So, Lucy was a hacker, then.
It made sense now, looking back. All the lies, all the weird, convoluted paths he’d taken her down. Cecil. Nick the Dick. Ilyena and Borris. Some acquaintances, some apparently friends. Other hackers? Why were they all here, all in the game at the same time? And didn’t hacking happen from outside, you know, in order to get in?
And where did this kid fit in? If he was even a kid. He didn’t act like it anymore. And he’d been asking questions about Lucy since Fantasia already. Her mind scrambled for purchase on a ninety-degree slope of confused thoughts.
“You’re a mod, aren’t you?” Kitty asked, glancing over her shoulder at Panda Guy.
