Assault or Attrition

by Blake Northcott

  “I get high once in a while,” he shrugged. “Not socially – just by myself, alone in my crib. I spark up, hook myself in and hit the IG-Net...” He paused for a moment, before adding, “that’s the ‘Interactive Gaming Network’. It’s this virtual video game—“

  “I’m not that old,” I interrupted. “I know what the goddamned IG-Net is.”

  “All right, all right...” he said, holding up a hand in mock surrender. “So a few months ago I’m hooked in, buzzed, just grinding away for a couple hours in a deathmatch. It’s this huge map, man – this thing stretches like forty square miles. Me and some teammates are hiding in the trees of this alien jungle with our laser cannons locked and loaded, just waiting for a horde to come sweep the area. We had time to kill, so we were swapping war stories over the coms.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said flatly. “Video game war stories?”

  “Right,” he said without missing a beat. “So that’s when one of my teammates starts babbling away about this thing called the Schumann Resonance.”

  I nodded and took a short sip. “Spectrum peaks in the Earth’s E.L.F. I’ve heard about it.” I figured I must have heard just about every scientific theory, regardless of how inane or wildly unfounded. Reading old science journals and scouring holo-forums for data was one of the things I did with my spare time in lieu of having a functional social life.

  “Right!” he shouted, growing more animated. He seemed legitimately energized by the notion that I was aware of the theory. “The world’s Extremely Low Frequency something or other. Earth is actually slowing down because of a shift in the magnetic field – which means that time feels like it’s speeding up.”

  “Theoretically,” I added with a heavy dose of skepticism.

  “Yeah,” he conceded. “In theory. So I log out of the game and start researching...I’m up all night reading about time, perception, how people all over the world feel like time is speeding up – and then it hits me: I’d been feeling it all along! Time is actually moving faster.”

  “Or,” I said, “and I’m just guessing here, you were smoking some really good weed.”

  “Maybe,” he continued, “but if time really is speeding up, then shouldn’t we be doing something about it? Shouldn’t I be doing something?”

  “And coming here was your solution?”

  He plunked his empty beer stein onto the bar and pivoted towards me, and his eyes fired with an intensity that caused me to lean backward. “Dude, my life peaked when I was fifteen years old. Do you know how depressing that is? I was IG-Net champion three years running, and already had millions in the bank.”

  “So you were a teenage millionaire...sounds awful.”

  “You don’t get it,” he continued. “By the time I finished high school I was forced into retirement. My reflexes were shot...these new kids on the circuit were destroying me. So after I quit playing pro I spent years just sitting around, getting high – and then I find out I have superhuman abilities. What’s my reaction? Nothing. I literally don’t do a single thing with my powers.

  “That’s why the Schumann Resonance changed everything for me. According to this scientist, time has sped up so fast that twenty-four hours actually feels like sixteen...” McGarrity paused for dramatic effect, as if waiting for my expression to change.

  I didn’t flinch.

  “That’s like, a third faster,” he added.

  “Wait...” I dumped a cup of old peanuts onto the bar’s grimy surface and sorted through them, dividing them into piles. “Yup, your math checks out.”

  “So if I’m twenty-one,” he continued, “that’s halfway to forty-two. But it’ll only feel like fourteen years to get there. How crazy is that?”

  I nodded in agreement. “Something is definitely crazy.”

  “So,” McGarrity declared, throwing his hands in the air, “I figured, ‘What the hell, I can’t sit here forever’. I’m twenty-one, and in fourteen years I’ll be forty – which is insanely old. Then I see you kicking ass on Arena Mode, and it hits me: this is it. If I enter one of these tournaments I can go on a real adventure and use my powers. I can get out of the virtual world and into the real one – I can finally do something.”

  I wasn’t sure if I agreed with his logic, or even remotely followed his line of thinking, but who was I to argue with inspiration?

  McGarrity circled back around the far side of the bar and re-filled his pint to the brim, letting the foam pour over the rim and into the dust-filled sink. “Hell, man – if I die right now, all this will have been worth it. I fought a giant rock monster. I rode a manticore through the air and brought a lake down with a slash of a sword. Who knows what I’ll fight next? And if we make it out, this is just the first chapter of my story – this is the beginning for me.”

  In that moment I realized that as much as I thought I hated McGarrity – and as much as I envied his powers – I truly admired his conviction. This kid was young, and strong, and radiated with a confidence that was once as much a part of me as my own skin; and now, approaching thirty-years-old, I felt like a husk. It was as if I’d been hollowed out by nothing more than the passage of time, and in the fleeting years of my twenties, every ounce of hope and enthusiasm for what my life might have become was methodically gutted, scraped from my insides and discarded. I’d been eviscerated so gradually that I never felt it happening.

  The tumor that had been pressing against my brain for most of my life had given me some incredible gifts. My IQ was off the charts; problem solving, mathematics, a photographic memory...I could calculate cube roots faster than a calculator, and recall pi up to twenty thousand decimal places. But making a simple decision – like getting out of my recliner and doing something worthwhile with my existence? Apparently that wasn’t part of the super-genius package.

  Who knows what happened. Maybe the neurons in my hippocampus that controlled emotional response had been dulled, or were suppressed by the presence of the tumor. Maybe the mass prevented me from having the same kind of awakening that would have inspired me, or motivated me, or spurred me into action. Or maybe due to a chemical imbalance I was actually incapable of feeling the sense of urgency that everyone else felt.

  McGarrity’s hubris once again reminded me of Kenneth Livitski, and the reckless behaviour that landed him in a coma. I didn’t want to see another kid get his life slashed to pieces because he lacked a grip on reality. Although when I saw McGarrity leap into action without hesitation, I wasn’t frustrated with his behavior, and I wasn’t angered by his recklessness – I was actually nostalgic for a time when I felt young and vital enough to be that careless myself, and that I never let loose and actually embraced it; those years were squandered as I immersed myself in fictional worlds, avoiding every possible outlet that could lead to some sort of adventure or personal growth.

  I was a billionaire, and every cent I had couldn’t buy back that time. I couldn’t travel back and reclaim the moments that I should have experienced. Watching McGarrity live out his dream was my epiphany. I just didn’t know it until now.

  Brynja and Peyton came through the door just as McGarrity took his first swig. “Aww, did the boys hug and make up?” Brynja said with a condescending lilt, pouting her lower lip for effect.

  “I refuse to dignify that with a response,” I said flatly.

  “We have some good news,” Peyton replied with a beaming grin. She approached the bar and dropped a flat, circular device on the surface. It was a portable com – the first-gen design that projected a flat two-dimensional screen. “I already tried it out, and it works!”

  I couldn’t help but share her enthusiasm. We hadn’t received any new information from the surface in quite some time, and the second London unit was lost in the flood on level two. Without access to holo-forums and simulcasts we were essentially in the dark. This was our chance to see who – if anyone – had reached the third level, and what type of opposition was being mounted at The Fortress.

  Flipping open the com immediately tr
iggered a faded ten-inch screen that flickered above the bar. I scrolled to the nearest news station and, as expected, helicopters were hovering around Fortress 23, affording us a bird’s eye view of the entire surrounding area.

  It had been abandoned.

  Some supplies remained; tents, crates, a few Soviet flags jutting from the snowy landscape. But there wasn’t a single soldier to be seen. Every single member of The Red Army was gone, along with their vehicles, weapons, and – I assumed – their leader, Valeriya Taktarov.

  “I smell bullshit,” Brynja snapped. “This is a Trojan Horse. They’re hiding, trying to get us to return to the surface.”

  I scratched at the back of my hair, squinting at the low-resolution images flickering on the screen. “No, I don’t think so. Valeriya had no way of knowing we’d be watching.”

  McGarrity leaned in to get a better look at the screen. “Maybe they just got spooked.”

  “Law enforcement?” Peyton guessed.

  I shook my head. “They had enough firepower to take out every cop in the province. I think it was something bigger.”

  And as the words spilled from my lips a realization set in. There was only one way that I could suddenly become the proprietor of my own country in such a short span of time, with no intervention by my lawyers. And there was only one reason why it would be fast-tracked to today, of all days. It was no coincidence.

  I stood so fast the chair flew out from beneath me. “They’re going to nuke The Fortress.”

  “Nuke?” Brynja shouted? “Who’s gonna do it – America? Won’t Canada frown upon that? Being nuked?”

  “They won’t be bombing Canada,” I explained. “The land being hit is now a sovereign nation – it’s my country. No one gets their toes stepped on, and no treaties are violated.”

  “Why would they do that?” Peyton blurted out, wild and panicked. “This is insane!”

  “Not really,” McGarrity said as he flipped through the simulcast stations. Tokyo, Moscow, Cape Town, Berlin...one city after another was falling to looting and riots. The wildfire that began on America’s East coast had spread throughout the world, and every major city was now engulfed in flames. “If Mox gets vaporized it might calm things down.”

  Valeriya’s influence continued to embolden her followers, and their numbers were only growing; based on the simulcast footage, it was becoming apparent that law enforcement would be unable to contain the sheer number of protestors in most urban areas, leading to widespread chaos (and possibly a full-scale revolution in areas where the local population was especially well-armed – the ultimate doomsday scenario for any established government). The empty promise of Russia’s Son rising from the ashes would remain unfulfilled in the event of my death, and the US government knew this as well as I did; angering Valeriya’s followers was the best way to turn the tide.

  It was a no-lose scenario: ridding the world of The God Slayer was their best chance at quelling the violence, and returning things to the status quo.

  Brynja leaped to her feet and motioned towards the exit. “Isn’t this usually the part where someone says ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here?’”

  “We’re almost at the tunnel,” I said. “If we hurry we might be able to escape the blast zone.”

  With a few long strides I sailed across the bar and flung open the door. Peyton, Brynja and McGarrity followed closely behind as I sprinted into the street, where we were came face-to-face with a woman. A slender, serpentine figure with flowing raven hair and a matching dress. I caught a brief glimpse of her features, but they quickly faded from my memory...because everything I’d seen faded away when I glimpsed her eyes. Her dark, chaotic eyes that dragged me into an endless void.

  And in that moment, the threat of a nuclear strike became the least of my concerns.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “I would tell you my name,” the woman said in a low, otherworldly voice, “but you already know it.”

  I nodded without averting my gaze. I couldn’t have looked away if I’d wanted to.

  Her eyes trailed over to my friends, who stood frozen behind me. “You may have a moment with them.”

  “A moment to what?” Peyton shouted.

  I turned and placed my hands on her shoulders. “To say goodbye.”

  “No, no, no,” she pleaded. “I need more time. I can’t...it’s too fast. This is too much...”

  “You’re the strongest person I know,” I whispered. “And time is something I can’t give you. But no matter what happens next, I know you’ll make it out. Lead them to the tunnel. Don’t wait for me.”

  Peyton was incredulous. “Don’t wait? Have you lost your mind?”

  The Nightmare had given me an ultimatum; she burned it into my mind with a single glance. “If I don’t face her alone, right now, she’ll take all of us. This way you can get a head start and find the exit. Before...” I trailed off, opting not to mention the volley of nuclear weapons that were probably en route to this location, poised to bury the entire Spiral under a billion tons of radioactive steel.

  Peyton bit down on her lip and took a deep breath, exhaling through her nose. She blinked slowly. When her eyes opened they were infused with a new sense of resolve. “Fight her,” she said. “With everything you have. You can do this.”

  Brynja gave me a reassuring nod and tugged gently on Peyton’s arm. They both knew it was time, and precious moments were ticking away; moments we couldn’t to squander.

  “I won’t make you say it,” Peyton said, the words catching in her throat. “But, if you were ever—”

  “Since the moment I met you,” I interrupted. “and every moment afterwards.”

  The next few seconds were a blur, and my memories began to fragment. I remember a quick kiss from Peyton, and then swirling...I was tumbling through the vacuum of space, plummeting towards nowhere at incredible speed. I didn’t realize until later that I had been standing completely still. My feet were planted on the ground while an egg formed around me, massive and expanding. It’s shell was opaque, all-consuming...the darkness swarmed in and swallowed me whole.

  And then, without the aid of any light source, she illuminated before me. The Nightmare – Grace Weaving. Whomever or whatever she was, her superhuman ability had never been fully revealed or explained; even those who witnessed her attacks were left with no clear memory of what she’s done. Oddly, in that moment, it was my curiosity that filled my mind more than concern.

  “You want to know how I do it,” she asked. I didn’t need to speak – she was intuiting every thought as it drifted in and out of my mind.

  I nodded.

  Weaving produced a paintbrush from thin air and swirled it, altering her physical appearance with an elegant looping stroke. “I am a creator,” she explained. The Nightmare was no longer the raven-haired mistress of death that had first appeared before me. She was just a girl, like any young, auburn-haired girl you’d pass on the street, without any distinctive features that would stand out in your memory. “I design myself, and I design my surroundings. You see only what I want you to see.”

  “And how do you—”

  “Kill people?” She interrupted. “I don’t. I have never taken a single human life. It’s not in my nature.”

  “Then what is?” I asked.

  “Fear. It’s what destroys people – eats away at them, stripping away everything their life might have been. I simply open the door. Once their fears take hold, the physical representation of their worst nightmare takes form. And,” she added with a twitch of a smile, “it’s usually quite painful. Let us begin.”

  With a swirl of her paintbrush she became my father, enormous and looming, towering above as if I were a five-year-old boy. He scolded me, his angry words slamming into my eardrums. I saw a vision of myself: crouched, cowering in the corner of my room as I always had, waiting for the storm to pass.

  Another brushstroke created the vision of my best friend, Gavin. The young, accomplished man whom I’d always admire
d, but whose presence was a constant reminder of the potential I had wasted, and the years I would never get back. It was relief to see him, but my feelings of inadequacy quickly bubbled to the surface.

  And then she became Cameron Frost. A walking, talking corpse, bleeding profusely from a gaping wound in his throat – the hole I’d blasted before winning Arena Mode.

  All of the fears from my past, present, and future had been put on display. Every insecurity. Each regrettable moment. They were all manifesting before me, more vivid than my most horrific nightmares. Weaving had stripped away my armor, and struck me with the raw, unfiltered torment of each one, forcing me to absorb their full impact – though not for the first time. And in light of recent events, my fears seemed like trivialities.

  “I think we might be at a stalemate,” I said.

  “I think not,” she declared, brimming with confidence. With a swirl of mixing paint she resumed her previous form, dark and slender. “There is something deep within you...something that consumes you while you lie awake at night. What do you fear, Matthew Moxon? Let it wash over you, and choose the instrument of your death.”

  I just shook my head. “My fears won’t manifest into anything. Stabbed, shot, burned, sitting through the Star Wars prequels for all eternity...none of it scares me. Because I know exactly how my story ends.”

  I began speaking in a mixture of thoughts and words, exposing my innermost secrets. “When they went in—”

  Her eyes widened. “They didn’t get it all.”

  I shrugged. “You’d think a billionaire could get better treatment.”

  “In Argentina...you wanted them to give you powers. Make you like us.”

  “That’s right,” I sighed. “The neurologists went in looking for whatever acts as a catalyst. They found something else.”

  “How long?” She asked.

  “Months. Years. No one knows. The miracles of science, right? They can tell you the show is over, but not when the curtain is gonna fall.”