by Wyatt Savage
“Since you are adept with unfinished materials that can be repurposed into higher-value weaponry, I am inclined and obligated, in keeping with the spirit of the Melee, to generally inform you of one of several potential Ragetags that could, in theory, suit your skillset.”
Simon paused before continuing. Jackie was already beginning to hate it when he did that. The act itself went against his directive of assisting her, and it implied that she was at a disadvantage within the game from being at too low a level to access vital information.
“What’s the holdup?” she asked, upset, ready to cut Simon’s voice out of her head, even if it meant her own death.
“My apologies, Jackie,” Simon replied. “I am not withholding information out of choice. All games have rules. Yet, I do believe that the Melee favors you.”
“Is that your version of a compliment?”
“Yes.”
“Great. Thanks. Now let me know something that actually helps. I’m on the clock, as you’ve made clear.”
“As I said before, you must heal yourself in full. Do not forget that you are still infected with parasitic worms. Your ability to accumulate enough experience points to acquire Ragetags is inhibited by your current malady. By that, it is meant that you may be faced with a difficult decision: healing your current malady or acquiring a Ragetag.”
“My current ‘malady’ has kept me alive as much as it’s tried to kill me,” she said, thinking about how she’d used the worms to take down the small monster, but flinched as the worms slithered through the wound on her hand, causing an unbearable itching sensation. “If it’s possible to keep it, if it will continue to be a last-resort weapon, I have to consider that option as well.”
“Very well,” Simon replied. “Remember, you require one thousand experience points to heal yourself in full, or you will not finish your journey.”
Jackie pulled up her HUD and checked her stats, which reflected her survival time and decrease in health points as a result of the roundworm infection, which was still included as chattel.
Species: Homo Sapiens (Leon, Jaqueline)
Chattel: 5.7 mm pistol; Roundworm Parasites; ANFO Salt; Spud Gun; Potato Launcher; Grenades
Health:7.5/10
Level:1
Class:Mage
Kills:28
Vitals:BP – 122/80; T – 98f; RR – 13bpm
XP:755
It was time to spend points and use a medpack before her health dropped too low from the parasitic worms still coursing through her body. She selected the option to spend twenty-five points and got the job done, putting her back up to 10/10 Health, but decreasing her XP to 730. Strangely, her hand did not completely heal even though she was at full strength. The wound partially closed, but the movement of the worms kept the margins open so that her palm continued to smear with blood. She didn’t have time to worry about this, however, as she was going to have to find a way to get one thousand XP for a full healing, or else she’d die before being able to acquire a Ragetag, something she anticipated needing once inside the dungeon.
As much as she didn’t want to admit it, Simon was proving useful. Maybe it was time to open up more and listen to the voices. Maybe it was time to embrace that everything everywhere had changed—herself included. Boxes flashed on her HUD. Red dots. The other participants, two dozen of the Los Antrax, the cartel killers, were on the move, headed toward Jackie and the others.
14
Point of Departure
Armando, Jorge, and the others were aware that the bad guys were on the way. “Hurry!” Armando shouted. “We must reach the dungeon before they reach us!”
They stagger-ran through the darkness. Armando had enough points for nightvision and guided the way, but the going was tough for Jackie and the others. A few stars shone through semi-darkness, but she struggled over a section of boulder-choked bottomlands. Behind her came the sound of men and machines. The other participants were coming. It would be a race against time and her HUD timer reflected that they had a little over three hours to reach Level 2 of the Melee.
An unholy light began to build, illuminating the desert. Jackie could see a dim, meandering path up ahead that led through a barren stretch of arches and knobs sculptured from a single slab of bare rock.
“What is that?” Jackie asked. “What’s that light?”
Nobody replied and so she followed after the others. The path climbed and snaked past little tufts of shrubbery and scarecrow-like junipers and pinyons sprouting from scalloped ledges of shale and limestone.
Dust was everywhere and Jackie had a hard time orienting herself. She followed the others past stands of gnarled, storm-blasted trees, and down over rocky gulches, and through terraces of sandstone. The group filtered down through a canyon, following a trail that wound into another valley. Jackie exited the canyon and there it was, stretching out before her, a hundred yards off. A massive structure, what looked like a city made of glass that was bobbing in the sky.
The construct was composed of translucent and interlocking horizontal and vertical towers and panels with wing-shaped towers jutting out at odd angles. It was even more incredible than she’d imagined. Defying every known law of physics, she saw on her HUD that the structure, the dungeon in the sky (for that’s what it was), was four miles long and four miles high, lying suspended in mid-air, partially blocking out the moon.
As awe-inspiring as the sight was, however, she began to wonder how they were going to make the final leg of the journey from the ground up into the sky. There didn’t appear to be anything between the surface and the floating dungeon—no staircase, no technologically advanced elevator, and no readily apparent means of transportation.
“Armando,” Jackie said, getting his attention. “How did your men get up there?”
Armando shrugged. “The man who returned was unable to explain how they gained entry. He guessed that the dungeon wanted them to enter, and he felt invited, but couldn’t explain how it was done. Only that there was a specific spot on the ground that served as a kind of gate.”
Disappointed in Armando’s answer, Jackie checked with Simon. “You probably already know what I’m going to ask, Simon, but I’m checking anyway. How do we gain entry into the dungeon?”
“You do not ‘gain entry’ into the dungeon,” Simon answered. “The dungeon permits your entry, or it does not.”
“Could you be any vaguer?”
“Yes,” Simon replied.
“Never mind.”
“I am permitted to provide information on how the dungeon will determine your worthiness to access its shortcut to the second level of the Melee.”
“That would’ve been helpful, Simon. Why didn’t you lead with that?”
“There are rules, and you asked in the wrong way.”
“Fine. What are the criteria?” she asked.
“First, you must be deemed worthy. The dungeon will be uninterested in allowing your entry if you are not intriguing. If you are defeated, the dungeon will either bring your journey to an end or incorporate you into its litany of enslaved participants that are kept alive and used as weapons against would-be intruders.”
“How am I doing on the first one? Not that I wanted to be enslaved and added to a collection as if I’m an artifact in a museum…”
“By my assessment, you meet the first benchmark, Jackie.”
“Any other requirements?”
“Second, entry requires an offering.”
“What kind of offering?”
“A sacrifice at the dungeon’s altar.”
She paused here, trying to wrap her hands around what that might mean. “Is there anything else?”
“Last, you must be worth killing,” Simon said.
“What does that mean?”
“Countless participants seek the treasures, upgrades, and powers that can only be found in a dungeon. The dungeon will have no reason to defeat a level one participant for anything other than nourishment, which can be done at the entry gate
and without allowing entry, unless you are in possession of something that holds value, or you intrinsically hold value.”
“How am I doing on that one?”
“That information is beyond your current level, Jackie. The path you are following does not come without risk.”
BOOM!
An explosion detonated nearby, the backblast strong enough to double Jackie over. Her ears rang and a jet of pain coursed through her temples. She cast a sideways look at Jorge and Armando.
“They’re here!” Jorge said, bringing his assault rifle/grenade launcher up.
Jackie saw a pack of participants on her HUD, the Los Antrax that Armando had mentioned, descending like wild animals. They were riding in the back of souped-up trucks, but the boulders had forced them to dismount. They were sweeping forward, firing while on the run.
Armando shrieked at his men, telling them to take cover. Jackie secured the pistol in the waistband of her pants, then loaded every weapon but the grenade launcher into the backpack. She cradled the launcher and shrugged on the backpack, combat-running toward Jorge when the other participants struck.
Orange tracer-fire rang out, splitting the night, illuminating the shadowy cutouts of the cartel killers. Armando’s men rose up and returned fire and Jackie and Jorge did the same. Another explosive round pounded into the ground, kicking up a geyser of dirt. Jackie ran laterally.
A red dot appeared and Jackie saw another participant, an older man dressed all in black, a cartel killer, fire a machine pistol at her. Bullets sprayed in every direction, striking a bunching of spiked rock, sending flintshards into the air. Jackie was hit in the face, losing one health point. Momentarily blinded, she sank to the ground. The cartel killer ran toward her and Jackie turned and fired a grenade that caught the man in the chest.
The physician in her immediately wanted to use a trauma pager, something like GSW, gunshot wound, to refer to the impact of the grenade on the killer, but that didn’t suffice. Instead of boring a hole through the man’s chest, the grenade vaporized him, turning him into a kind of red-black bone confetti that filled the air. He was the first human that Jackie had ever killed in close-quarters combat, and it took her several precious seconds to process this, to process just how little she cared about taking the man’s life and then—
WHACK!
Something snapped past her head, trailed by a burst of air.
A bullet!
Jackie panicked; flailed; flopped to the ground. The motion of a shadow caught her eye. Another participant was taking aim!
Jackie tried to fire her grenade launcher, but the other participant squeezed a burst of bullets from an automatic rifle.
The bullets kicked up dirt all around Jackie, who loped forward, leaving her weapons behind. She fumbled to the ground next to a few boulders and a withered Juniper tree, groping, hunting for a weapon and that’s when she found it.
A length of wood from the tree. Surprisingly heavy. A crude cudgel.
She grabbed the cudgel and waited, closing her eyes. The sound of her attacker grew closer and Jackie shimmied around the boulders, squinting from the dust that clouded the air. Her attacker fired another burst, but in the wrong direction. The participant paused and Jackie charged.
She expected to be shot down at any moment, but her movement surprised the assailant. Before the fighter could aim, Jackie was swinging her stick.
The fighter, and Jackie could see that it was a woman, had her hair pulled back in a loose ponytail. She was clad in a tight black shirt and sporting a respirator in order to function in the dust and smoke. Her head was unprotected and that’s what Jackie struck first. The club came down hard on the woman’s temple.
She dropped her gun.
Jackie hit her again.
The woman grabbed her gun and swung at Jackie, who parried the blow. The assailant worked to shoot Jackie, who chopped the gun out of her hand. The woman made a move for the gun and Jackie battered her skull.
The cudgel came down again and again. The woman’s head was soon shockingly red and glossy under the moonlight. Something made a wet, sickening pop in her skull and then Jackie dropped the cudgel as the female assailant dropped to the ground and twitched.
Simon congratulated her on the kill, but there was no time to dwell on it. She moved away from the fresh kill, tracking down her lost weapons. She fired her grenade launcher several more times, cutting down three of the cartel killers as Simon congratulated her on the additional kills.
Diving behind another formation of spiked rock, Jackie checked her HUD, watching the gunfight. The cartel killers and Armando’s troops were battling it out. A dozen fighters had already been killed and the sounds of the wounded filled the air. Her HUD reflected additional points for survival and the four kills:
Species: Homo Sapiens (Leon, Jaqueline)
Chattel: 5.7 mm pistol; Roundworm Parasites; ANFO Salt; Spud Gun; Potato Launcher; Grenade Launcher
Health:9/10
Level:1
Class:Mage
Kills:33
Vitals:BP – 126/80; T – 98.08f; RR – 16bpm
XP:849
Jackie remained in her position, listening to the firefight rage for another three or four minutes. Finally, the exchange of fire faded away and all that remained were the cries of the wounded. A few scattered gunshots rang out and the cries ended. Jackie picked herself up and waited, checking the HUD, making sure that the bad guys were dead. Jorge appeared first, sliding through the smoke and dust like an apparition.
“You’re wounded,” Jorge said, gesturing at Jackie’s hand and face.
“I’ll live,” she replied.
Armando appeared next with five of his men, all that remained of his original troop of foot soldiers. Nobody said a word and then a new sound filtered across the desert. At first, Jackie thought it was wind-chimes or some kind of bone flute, the sound was so eerily beautiful, but then she closed her eyes and recognized that it was something else entirely.
Voices.
Hundreds, possibly thousands of hushed voices whispering all at once. The others heard it too.
“Laberinto,” Armando said. “The labyrinth, the dungeon beckons, it calls for us to enter.”
Jorge repeated Armando’s words, as did the foot soldiers. Jackie simply squinted and narrowed her eyes at the dungeon in the sky.
“Is that true, Simon? Is the dungeon calling us to it?” she asked with doubt in her tone.
No response from Simon.
The sounds ended and Jackie and the others trudged forward. She scoped her HUD, scanning the dungeon, searching for information. The translucent superstructure was simultaneously majestic and terrifying. As far as she could tell from her HUD, it was composed of exotic materials, definitely not of this world. There were no curvatures along the transparent glass-like surface, which glowed with the same unholy yellow light she’d seen before. The outline of the construct was visible but there were no structural supports or distortions. She needed to know more, and if Simon wasn’t going to divulge the necessary stats, she’d find them herself.
After swiping through a multitude of boxes and icons on her HUD, she found what she was looking for. The dungeon’s stats remained unavailable, but a clue as to what she was facing jumped out at her.
An enhanced image of an incredibly small portion of the superstructure revealed microscopic etchings. Most interesting of all, the etchings looked intentionally random and chaotic. They definitely did not look like coherent symbols, inscriptions, or exultations to ancient alien gods or ideologies. She zoomed in on her HUD to further study the etchings.
“Do you see those markings, Simon? The etchings?”
“Yes, Jackie.”
“Decipher and translate please.”
“Translation is not available,” he replied.
“Not available or doesn’t exist?”
Simon did not respond, which made her feel certain that the etchings were arbitrary, which meant they had to serve a purpose, and th
ey had to be made at random but with intention. Otherwise what would be the point?
Jackie was no expert in metamaterials, or any man-made substances displaying properties not found in nature, but she was familiar with microscopic etchings. During residency in Chicago, she’d experimented with fine mesh that could shrink the radar signature of objects by a thousand-fold. The metamaterial surgical tools had proven useful in one very specific manner. When operating on a patient with a remote viewing radar camera focused on a microscopic area, if she utilized a sonar-based overlay, the surgical instruments became invisible to not only radar, but also the naked eye.
In other words, etching tiny grooves into the mesh scattered radar waves in a million directions, creating a kind of super-lens that outperformed conventional medical devices. The only other uses of metamaterials that she knew of were capturing light better than conventional materials, which allowed the harvesting of solar power during blackouts, which the world was currently experiencing, as well as an alternate form of stealth.
Without the aid of Simon, Jackie was still able to decipher the first riddle on mettle and merit. She’d always been ahead of her peers in medical school, but she’d also been ahead of her professors and senior medical professionals every step of the way. This time was no different. She’d reverse-engineered the information she had at her disposal and determined what they were up against, which gave her an edge.
“Simon?”
“Yes, Jackie.”
“I’ve decided on the type of Ragetag I want,” she replied, a hint of excitement in her voice, anticipating the incredible discoveries she was about to make inside the dungeon in the sky. “In fact, I’d like to acquire two Ragetags—one defensive for countermeasures and one offensive for attacks. Without knowing the specifics, I’d like to make a blind purchase of a metamaterial-based shield and a metamaterial-based navigation device. It doesn’t matter what they are. Just give me what I can afford.”
“Interesting,” Simon replied. “It appears that blind purchases reduce your XP cost by half. I was not aware of this exception. This is an impressive feat of knowledge.”
