“No, I don’t think so,” Davidoff replied, glancing around him.
They all stopped and regarded their surroundings. It felt different this time. Before, when the psyker had pinpointed them, the vibrations felt cloying and dangerous, like they would drill each character to pieces before long if given half a chance. Now, however…
“It feels more like when the computer was jacked,” Mara said, and Davidoff nodded.
“Yeah, and look,” he said, pointing at a couple of rocks. Their jagged sides were beginning to fall apart as pixels buzzed apart and the graphics began to fail. All around them, within a minute or so, every single piece of scenery was becoming pixelated and indistinct. Then they each blacked out for a second, all falling sharply to the floor as something in their very programming seemed to glitch.
“Ah, my head,” Zeke muttered, coming up onto his knees.
He was the first of them up, though he looked giddy, like he would collapse once more at any point. The bandages around his hip and forehead were stained and the blood began to spread out some more, his wounds reopened. Then he jolted, his image shifted from one frame to the next and his bandages grew pixelated, the same as everything else.
He barely moved an inch in the jolt, but what Davidoff and Mara could see of him had changed. The bandages were gone, but so had the wounds themselves. Zeke’s pasty skin, made wan from pain, exhaustion and blood loss, looked healthy once more. His clothes and body armor were tattered, almost in rags in some places, but now they were fresh, and he was back up to full defense across all areas. In a word, he had been made anew, like the previous few hours had not happened. His HP had risen back up to 100%, as had his morale, and the fight looked like it had been put back into his eyes.
Mara jolted next, and almost as soon as she was thrown from one frame to the next, the same thing happened to Davidoff. He felt all of his aches disappear. His HP and morale both rose to 100% and the rips in his body armor and the overcoat he had over it all repaired themselves.
The same thing happened to Mara, finally, restoring her to newness.
“What the hell just happened?” she asked, looking from Davidoff to Zeke as though she could not believe her eyes.
Before they could answer her, telling her that they had no idea what was going on, a loud buzzing hit them all in the ears and knocked them down, as though somebody was using some kind of sonic weaponry against them. None of them took any damage, but they were all dazed, stunned for the moment.
Davidoff squinted, and as he blinked another box appeared before him, like the ones from earlier. However, this message was a lot more encouraging than the previous ones. Then another message came, and then another. They said:
USER ERROR: TAKE HEART DAVIDOFF
USER ERROR: GAME SYSTEMS PUSH BACK
USER ERROR: GAME SYSTEM WILL AID YOU
“Huh, come again?” Davidoff began, but Mara cut him off.
“Look at your mission brief, look at the timer,” she said.
Davidoff pulled it up and saw that a few things had been changed. Most notably, the timer had been pushed back five hours, giving them more time in which to execute the mission. Other than this, he noticed that they had been given a secondary objective, to complete before proceeding to the castle.
The game appeared to be exerting some kind of control over the situation. It did not have the capacity to release them, nor to actively fight the hackers (or whoever was behind this) back, but it seemed to be inserting aid for them: it had healed them all completely, had refreshed them, and it had provided them an AI guide to help them. The village that Mara had told them about, which they were meant to avoid in favor of climbing straight up to the castle, was now their next target. In the village, the mission briefing told them, there were some AI characters being held prisoner. The village was in the control of a nasty group of ghouls and some modified zombie followers of theirs, and it was now the trio’s job to infiltrate the place and find and release one of the prisoners. The prisoner would have crucial knowledge about the warlocks’ castle—
“A route in that even the warlocks do not know about ---- SYSTEM GENERATED, NEW”
—as the brief stated. The system had made a route into the castle for the characters to take, enabling them to catch them unawares. This is amazing, Davidoff thought. If the operating system can fight back, and it is on our side, everything should begin to look a lot brighter.
“You don’t think it’s a trap, do you?” Zeke asked, though he looked doubtful. He looked like he already believed it was the operation system messaging them, helping them to stay alive long enough for the teams outside the game to rescue them.
“No… I… I think it’s legit,” Mara said, and Davidoff nodded beside her.
“Yeah,” Davidoff said. “I think it’s real. I think we need to go to this village and rescue this new character of ours.”
Chapter Eleven
It took them fifteen minutes to get to their new destination. It was not so far away, but they had to take a harder route. As Mara said: “It’s a longer way around, but we can stay undercover and sneak up on them. It will be a bit of a slog, I’m afraid, but it’s the best we’ve got.”
She led them here, and now they stood hidden in the trees, crouched behind another fallen log, watching the edge of the village, a hundred meters or so away. They all observed, Mara through her binoculars, Zeke through the scope on his bolt rifle and Davidoff through his little telescope.
The village looked like it had seen better days. The walls of every building were cracked and broken. All of the windows were smashed in and the couple of cars they spotted had all been lit on fire some time ago and then left to rust. Large gashes seemed to have been rent across some of the buildings’ outer walls, as well as in the earth and pavement surrounding the settlement. The road leading into it was overgrown and gouges had been taken out of its surface. The village lay clustered in its own little valley as two long spines of rock broke off from the main peak, cradling the couple of dozen houses and buildings, but it did not look as though it had been protected.
Then, after a few minutes of watching, they eyed the first zombies. They were slavering beasts, moving slowly, but not as the zombies in the city had done. They looked like they were stalking around, filled with unspent energy that they were eager to be rid of. They looked like the zombies from the battle at the compound, only these ones had no targets to fix their fury onto. Only three emerged, snarling, wild-eyed, but there were signs of movement from other places. Rustling noises came from a couple of alleyways and dark shadows moved inside some of the shattered buildings.
“I reckon the place is crawling with them,” Davidoff whispered.
“Yep,” Mara nodded. “I’d say you’re right about that.”
“Any idea where the prisoners are?” Zeke asked them both, and they shook their heads. Zeke took a breath like he was about to speak again, but then he fell silent. They had all just seen the first of the ghouls. It was a small creature, about half Zeke’s height and frail-looking. But as it came down the steps from one of the buildings, the three zombies began to back away from it. “Are they… scared?” Zeke asked in amazement.
“Yeah, I think they just might be,” Davidoff replied.
Even in their clueless, rageful states, devoid of any emotions but anger and of any sensation but hunger, the zombies retreated before the ghoul. The ghoul itself was dragged in rags and walked aided by a stout, wooden staff. They heard the staff knocking against the pavement as it walked past a few houses. Then a couple of other ghouls appeared, walking along the street to greet the first. They were bigger, with horns jutting out of their heads in identical patterns and long teeth extending upwards from their lower jaws. Their skin was a mottled grey and they had scaly flesh over their arms and their bare chests.
“There’s the muscle,” Mara whispered, training her binoculars over them. “Hey, what’s that?” she asked, moving her binoculars down the str
eet slightly and pointing with her free hand.
Davidoff and Zeke both followed her gaze and soon saw what she was referring to. The whole town was in the mountain’s shade, dark and dank. Even before the rifts had opened, it must have been a miserable place to live. All of the buildings were dark now, as the trio watched. The ghouls preferred darker places and had no need of heat or comfort. The zombies did not care for such things either.
However, as they kept looking in the direction pointed by Mara, Davidoff and Zeke both discerned the only lights on in the entire village. A basement was glowing slightly with a flickering, electric light. The flickers were irregular and pulsed every so often, but it was light nonetheless.
“I reckon that’s where the prisoners are,” Mara said. “Don’t you think so?”
“I wouldn’t be so positive,” Zeke said, “but that’s our best bet. Besides, why would there be light there if they weren’t?”
Davidoff made the final decision. “OK, that settles it. Mara, do you think you can get to that basement easily enough?”
“Just me?” she asked.
“Yep.” Davidoff nodded, panic rising in his chest. His nerves were tight and he hated what he was about to say. “Me and Zeke can’t move as quietly as you. We can’t stay hidden, so we would be a liability. We can head around to the far side of the village, instead. If you need a distraction to get you through, just radio us and we will give you one.”
“What do you plan on doing?” Mara asked.
Davidoff turned to Zeke. “Have we got enough of that plastic explosive stuff to spare?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Zeke said, nodding with a childish gleam in his eyes despite himself, despite the situation they were all in. “We packed enough of the bad boy to blow the whole game to pieces,” he carried on.
“Well, then,” Davidoff said. “Zeke can rig a building with them, and if needs be, I will distract them and pull as many into the building as I can. We can dispatch a fair few that way, I think.”
“I don’t like it,” Mara said.
“Do you have a better plan?” Davidoff asked her.
“No,” she replied. “But I still don’t like it.”
Before they set off, Zeke bent over his large backpack and pulled out a couple of boxes and a few lengths of wire. He began fiddling, making up a large enough bundle to blow a whole street away, he said. Mara closed her eyes, looking at the interface’s map of the village, clearly plotting her best route.
Meanwhile, Davidoff went to his profile screen. He had 86 XP to use and had been planning to spend it on making himself as tough as possible. However, he was a stealth fighter as much as anything, and now called for stealth more than ever. It would be as likely to keep him alive as just pure brute toughness. He had Agility 71; it was pretty high, and his gymnastic abilities had helped him a great deal back in the woods, but it could always be better. With 86 XP he could afford to add a superfluous amount, as each Agility point cost only 2 XP.
And so, he spent half his XP on Agility, giving himself +22 and bringing himself up to Agility 93. He felt a change in his body immediately: his lungs grew stronger, more able to sprint and perform explosive movements with ease, and his core and leg strength seemed to beef up as soon as the command was confirmed.
This taken care of, he decided to spend a little each on Resistance and Melee Weapon Skill, as close quarter fighting was sure to get quite intense in the near future. He gave himself +4 Melee Weapon Skill, costing him 20 XP, and he gave himself +5 Resistance, again costing him 20 XP, leaving him with 2 XP left over and a stronger-looking profile:
Agility
93
Melee Weapon Skill
52
Ballistic Accuracy
32
Damage
44
Resistance
62
Initiative
48
Morale
78
HP
462
XP
2
Skills
Ambidextrous, Knife Fighter, Acrobat, Counter Strike, Medic
With each new foray into the profile screen, spending his hard-won XP, he felt his body change. When he returned to the other two and found them ready, Mara content with her route and with a knife held in her right hand, Zeke sitting placidly with a bundle of explosives the size of his beefy forearm resting in his lap, Davidoff felt the alteration he had just been through. He felt the new muscle, both in his power output with his Agility and in the density of being hardier with his increased Defense.
As he drew his kukri in one hand and his silenced pistol in the other, he felt keener with these, too, as he did each time he improved his Melee Weapon Skill.
Despite it all, despite the mess and the danger, I still love building my character up, he thought with a wry smile. The thrill of an MMORPG is still there, even with the stakes so damned high. Is it normal to feel that way?
“Ready?” he asked, and both Zeke and Mara nodded.
“You two go around the north side, keeping to the treeline,” Mara told them. “You’ll find an old garage up there, with easy enough access round the back, I’d say. That’s the place I would make your trap. It’s tight, but not so tight as a house, and you’ll be able to get more people in whilst having a back door to make your escape.” She eyed them both and nodded. “Right, then, let’s get to it. I’m off. If I don’t radio you for backup, I’ll radio you when I’m back here with our man. Then you can double back and meet me, and we can see what he has to say for himself. Sound good?”
“Yep,” they both said.
With a final nod of farewell, Mara skipped away through the trees to find her way in. She had disappeared within a few seconds, her ranger’s abilities lending her aid and allowing her to blend in and lose herself.
“Come on then, buddy,” Zeke said. “We’d best get in position sooner rather than later.” So saying, he turned and began to run, quite noisily, though he tried not to be, through the woods, aiming for their garage on the village’s north side.
***
They got to the garage easily enough, even with Zeke’s hulking presence making more noise than Davidoff was happy with. He is an obvious man to mark, he thought as they broke cover and dashed to a low brick wall. They vaulted over and Davidoff landed silently, like a cat, before bounding straight forwards for the garage’s back door.
Behind him, he heard Zeke tumble over the wall, having found the jump harder than he did. He heard his friend crash down on the other side and he winced. How was the whole village not on top of them already, he wondered? Nevertheless, they ran into no trouble at all. Zeke picked the padlock on the back door, letting them inside, and they got into their shelter without raising the alarm.
Inside, the garage was the size of two houses, with a selection of old and useless gear lying about, rusting in the darkness. They dare not try to turn the lights on, as that would be a dead giveaway, and so they used their torches instead. Zeke took a good look around as Davidoff stood by the front, garage door. It was broad enough to let a couple of cars come and go, and he thought that if they lifted the shutter then a whole mob of zombies and ghouls could make it in.
Zeke made himself busy. There were a couple of concrete pillars spaced throughout the garage, holding the ceiling up. “If they go, the roof will destabilize,” he muttered, half to himself. He tied a couple of explosives to them, fitting each with the same kind of receiver. Then he put some larger explosives against the walls, once more fitting them in the same manner. Finally, he laid the biggest one, the one the size of his forearm, right in the middle of the room, about ten feet back from the garage doors to the front.
“If they come in,” he whispered, pointing to the doors and tracing their route back over the middle of the room and then, finally, to the back door through which he and Davidoff hoped
to make their escape. “If they come in, they’ll have to go over this bundle. They’ll do it before they’ve even realized it’s there, in this darkness,” he continued. “We’ll get out, quick, and blow it all at the same time. The ones in the middle will be like they’ve stepped on a landmine, the ones on the edge will be hit by the smaller ones on the wall, and the whole building will come down on the lot of them.” He grinned, a little too enthusiastically for Davidoff’s liking, as his plan unfolded before his eyes.
It was a good plan, Davidoff thought. It was a very neat way to deal with a good fifteen or so pursuers. “But we likely won’t get them all in one go,” he told Zeke.
Zeke shrugged. “We’ll get enough, disorient the others, and then we can finish off the stragglers with our Uzis,” he said. “Either way, it’s the best odds we’ve got.”
Davidoff could not argue with him on that. If ever there was a way to defeat a whole village full of goodness knows how many zombies and ghouls, and goodness knows what power level ghouls, then it was this. They might not make it out, but they stood a better chance this way than any other.
A couple of minutes went by and Davidoff grew hopeful. He had seen enough of Mara these past few hours to know how good she was, how skilled a ranger she was. If anybody could get in and out, rescuing someone without alerting the ghouls or the zombies, then it was her.
However, just as he was beginning to think they would be able to make it out without resorting to blowing the garage up, their radios buzzed, quiet yet insistent.
“Guys,” Mara’s voice came through to them. “I don’t think I’ll be able to do it. There are seven or eight ghouls in the streets and a good couple of dozen zombies. The place is packed; I’ll never get through unnoticed.”
“When do you want us to do it?” Zeke asked, grim resolve plastered over his face.
“On my mark,” Mara said, her voice strained as though she was preparing to jump from a plane. “Three… two…” Davidoff grabbed the bottom of the garage door and hefted it, bracing his legs and rolling it up to permit the wan daylight through. He stepped out, looking up and down the street. There was nobody near them, so he took a grenade from his belt, pulled the pin as Mara said “one!” and he threw it, as hard as he could, into the building opposite, smashing through one of the glass windows.
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