And it's hungry.
00110110
“I want snipers in the corners,” I say, pointing to the edges of the rooftop.
A robotic cyclops makes hand gestures to the three other remaining snipers in his team. They spread out and set their high-tech rifles on tripods, adjusting their scopes and scanning the disappearing horizon.
We can all see the worm now. Its mammoth form curls over the rooftops of the city, looking as if it's inhaling existence itself. It leaves behind an imposing trail of deletion, blackness that exists in the absence of the world. I wonder what will happen, even if we can stop it. Will we move on, accepting this new edge to our reality, a cliff into the abyss that will hover over the southern horizon?
I shake the pointless worrying from my head when Cyren emerges from the stairwell.
“The civilians are fortifying the parking garage,” she says before looking into the distance, toward the doom that draws closer, “though I'm not sure how much good a few parked cars blocking the entrance will do.”
“It's only there to stop any monsters that might wander nearby,” I say, trying to keep my mind in strategy-mode. “The last thing we need to worry about are multiple opponents. I want all our attention focused on... that.”
“I helped them gather more vehicles from the surrounding blocks,” she says. “Fast ones. Just in case...”
“Smart.”
I hate considering failure, but we need to have an escape plan, even if I have no idea where we could run.
“I don't understand where that thing came from. Who would want to attack this game with a virus?”
I stop to consider her question, then shake my head and say, “There will be time to worry about that later.” I hope. “We need to focus.”
The group of Level Zeros are all silently preparing themselves. A part of me wishes they hadn't spent so much time studying and developing their emotional depth. Maybe then they wouldn't know fear. What I see in their eyes, I have to assume is the dread of what awaits them.
For them, deletion is death.
As the worm reaches the edge of the city, we all watch in horror as it destroys the first of the buildings. The beast shaves off the top ten floors in one swoop, turning into the park and scooping out the ground as it swings around to obliterate the rest of the building. It coils and retracts, its flabby bulk sagging and bulging as it consumes the contents of our world. Its movements seem random, but I continue to watch, counting out the seconds before each twist, each turn, each dive, and each reemergence from below. Within a few minutes, a pattern appears.
“Listen up!” I yell, calling out to the entire group.
My words are so fast and excitable that I need to consciously slow myself down. My hands slash through the air, physically describing the pattern. The Level Zeros nod their heads. This is math. This is logic. There's no need to explain a second time.
“The snipers are going to have the greatest distance with their attacks, so they're going to fire first. We don't know if that will draw its attention, but even if its direction changes, it will most likely fall right back into the same pattern. Watch for the signals, the twitches. You'll be able to predict what it's going to do, and that will give us the advantage.”
I point at the two remaining Level Zeros left in the demolitions team. “You're up next. We want a huge volley as soon as that thing comes within range. Look for weak spots and concentrate your fire there. Normally I'd say to aim for the mouth, but that thing is a vacuum. It would delete your explosives like everything else. We need to destroy the body.”
I motion toward the leader of the ranged team, a woman in a bright red suit and fedora carrying an ancient Thompson submachine gun. “Then it's your turn. If that thing comes anywhere near us, I want a wave of bullets crashing against its body every second that it's within range.”
She and her team take position.
Turning around to talk to Cyren, I notice her stance is stiff, with her hands clasped behind her back. She's in full-on soldier mode, ready to take my commands with a salute of confidence. She stands in front of her melee team, all fifteen of them mimicking her exact posture. They're the biggest group, with the most survivors, all of them armed with swords, clubs, and spears. I understand her need to be professional in front of her troops, so I resist the urge to offer her comfort.
“You have the most important role.” I'm speaking to Cyren, but loud enough so the whole team can hear me. “It's also the most dangerous.”
I point at the worm spiraling into the sky, deleting a large gray cloud that hangs over what used to be the city park.
“It's going to require some precise timing, but when that things comes near us, I want you to jump on top of it.”
The eyes of the team grow large, but Cyren doesn't flinch. She accepts my words without hesitation. Her strength emanates outward and the rest of the team finds their bravery in her, settling back into a firm, defiant stance.
“Use everything you've got,” I say. “Carve into that thing. Open up wounds that our sniper and demolitions teams can exploit.”
“Yes, sir!” the entire team shouts with a salute.
When they spread out to take their positions, Cyren lingers. Her face softens. She reaches out and wraps her fingers around my arm, squeezing a bit.
“It's a good plan.”
I let out a breath. “It's a plan. We'll find out how good it is if we survive.”
“We couldn't do this without you.”
“I know. You need my Level to-”
“No,” she says with a sharp yet quiet voice. “We need you. You're an amazing player. You can look at this game like no one else does. Not even us.” She gives me a knowing smile. “And they programmed us to play.”
“Sometimes I think I was too.” I look out over the world, watching the worm delete everything I've held dear to me. “All that time, in all those games... I always felt what I was doing was important. More important than I could explain to anyone else. It was like every shot, every kill, every skill I learned... it was all building up to something.”
“Maybe it was.”
“Maybe,” I say.
She grabs my face, her leather gloves holding on to my cheeks, forcing me to look into her eyes.
“No matter what happens today, no matter how this turns out, whether we win or lose, you must know how cherished you are in this world. You've already sacrificed more for us than any other player ever has.”
I do my best impersonation of someone confidently accepting her words, but when I turn away from her and look out over the city, only to see the worm dive from the sky and devour half of a shopping mall, I can't help wondering how many more sacrifices I'll be making.
00110111
The robotic cyclops counts down for his sniper team, timing their first shots all at once. The rest of us stand with our weapons gripped tightly in our hands. I tap my foot as each second counts off. When the cyclops reaches zero, and the four sniper rifles fire in unison, it makes me jump. I'm not startled by the noise. It's the simple release of anticipation, the thrust into the present. I can't think about “what ifs” anymore. It's happening right now. I need to stay ahead of the game.
The bullets strike the thick skin of the worm, but they leave no trace of damage. The worm continues on its path, carving into an already bombed-out office building twenty blocks away. Its gargantuan body digs into the ground, leaving a pit of nothingness where the street used to be, before turning back up as its programming tells it to.
“Again!” I shout.
The sniper team fires. Still nothing.
It doesn't exactly inspire anyone. Is this thing following the same rules that we are? Can it take damage? Am I misreading it because of its graphical representation? I ignore my doubts. We have a plan. We have to stick to it.
“Keep firing!” I turn to the rest of the group and yell over the gunfire, “If it doesn't change its movements, at least we'll know when it's coming for us.”
> It doesn't take long. The worm devours entire city blocks in just a few swoops. As it destroys a nearby complex of buildings, the demolitions team steps up. Rockets stream across the sky and explode in blooming clouds of fire as they strike the worm. We all wait with anticipation as the smoke clears. There is an unspoken reaction of disappointment that washes over us when we see the worm descend toward the street without a single mark.
The sniper team continues to fire. The demolitions team releases six more volleys of rockets before the head of the worm makes its preprogrammed turn toward our building. All six members of the ranged team raise their weapons as the melee team readies themselves to launch into the air.
Our group's barrage blocks my view. It's a constant rattle of gunfire all around me. The Level 100 attacks of bullets and rockets and explosions turn the sky into a blinding storm of warfare. When my eyes adjust to the chaos, I see the worm break through, pushing past the rolling fire and the swarm of explosive rounds. It falls toward the building slowly, and I'm able to gauge the true size and magnitude of the creature. Its shadow casts over us like an approaching storm. I can see behind the spinning rows of teeth, directly into the blackness, the void widening as it draws closer.
My hope is lost.
Luckily, my feet know what to do. I run to the side of the rooftop with the melee team as my gamer instincts calculate the worm's descent. I watch the worm crash into the rooftop, shaving off half of the building as it drops. The teeth continue to spin inside the mouth, helping the creature inhale the graphics like they are simply breaths of air.
As the worm falls, the underside of its belly rolls past. Among the flabby mounds of flesh, I notice a symbol marked on its skin. It falls past me so fast that I barely have time to see a single logo that looks like two question marks, back to back, before it drifts out of view.
The melee team rushes past me, toward the massive body. Reaching the edge of the rooftop, they leap into the air, latching on to folds of flesh as the beast rumbles past. They drop from view, carried on the worm's back like parasites. When the tail drops below the building, I follow the ranged team as they rush to the fractured edge.
It's a strange thing, staring down into nothing. There is no sense of depth. No height to judge how far up we are. In the dimensionless field of black, the tail of the worm grows smaller until it swoops back around for another pass.
The tiny bodies attached to the side use their weapons to pound and slash and stab at the flesh, trying to break through, but they aren't making any progress.
The worm chews through the neighboring office building, deleting a diagonal slash through the structure. Two of the melee team are scraped off the side as the worm slides past the steel and concrete walls. Their limbs flail as they tumble into the black, disappearing in to the emptiness.
The leader of the ranged team, the woman with the red suit and fedora, stops firing her Tommy gun and leans in closer to me, shouting, “This isn't working!”
I grit my teeth. I try to summon the puzzle in my brain. My problem-solving abilities rise up, ready to tackle the question in front of me, but nothing happens. I hit a wall. There is no solution. The invincible worm will continue its relentless deletion until there is nothing left.
I can't kill that which will not die.
I can't escape when there is nowhere left to go.
Deep within my stomach, there's a boiling, festering frustration that burns me from the inside. I want to lash out. I want to stomp my feet and yell at the game.
“This isn't fair!”
There are supposed to be rules. There are supposed to be laws and limitations. There are supposed to be balanced powers that give everyone an equal chance. This isn't a game. I can't win.
So I decide to cheat.
“Fall back!”
I send the group-wide audio-cast and back up toward the stairs. As the worm dives at our building, the melee team leaps from its back. The remaining twelve Level Zeros land with precision on the rooftop and join the rest of the group running toward me. I hold the door open for them, and when Cyren runs in last, I spin through the opening and follow the group down.
We're racing as fast as we can, leaping four or five stairs at a time, using the railing to keep our balance. Not being able to see the worm from inside means we can no longer calculate its approach. I try to mentally picture it in my head, but by the time we've descended ten floors, I've lost track of my orientation.
We descend another five or six floors before I hear the hollow moaning of the worm outside the building. Directly below me, the beast cuts the building in half, deleting floors thirty-five through fifty-one. What remains of the top half of the building still floats in the air as if the deleted section was still holding it up. Past the blackness, three Level Zeros look back at me in horror from the lower floors. I stand with Cyren and two others, the rest of the group swallowed. Gone. Their existence erased.
Cyren's fists clench. The other two Level Zeros look at me with a panicked sadness, but we don't have time to mourn. We don't have time to remember our fallen comrades. We need to survive.
“Grab on to me,” I shout, holding out my arms.
There's a moment of confusion, but I thrust my hands toward them. They fumble, but eventually find a tight grip on my trench coat. I step off the deleted staircase and activate my Anti-Gravity Belt. The weight of all four of us still pulls us through the black at an accelerated rate, but the belt gives us enough pause to tumble on to the staircase below unharmed. We waste no more time and run down the rest of the stairs as fast as we can. I hear the worm pass overhead a few more times, devouring the rest of the rooftop and the remaining upper floors.
When we erupt from the doorway into the underground parking lot, half of the area is gone. A row of cars and trucks idle near the gate, packed full of civilians, but not as many as there were before. I can see a look on their faces that must be mourning. It deepens when they see only seven of us running toward them.
I don't have time to explain anything. I swing myself into the bed of a pickup truck and Cyren joins me. As soon as the other Level Zeros find a vehicle I shout, “Move!”
The tires squeal as each vehicle launches up the ramp, turning on to what remains of the street. I tell them to head east, toward the ocean, while I watch the worm continue its ruthless decimation of the city behind us. I can't look away, but when I hear Cyren say my name, I pull my gaze forward. The group in the back of the truck are all staring at me, all awaiting some kind of order. Some kind of direction. They want a plan.
I look into Cyren's eyes and among the sparkles of light that reflect back toward me, I see her. The real her. The girl I love. I realize, in that moment, that I'm no longer playing a game. I'm only fighting to win another day with her. So I push past my disdain for cheating and I accept the absence of rules.
“I need you to change the code,” I yell to the civilian dressed like a baker that is sitting near the back of the truck.
“What can we do?” The baker summons his code book and opens it up, flipping through the pages, showing me how many are now blank. “That worm isn't a part of the game. It doesn't exist in the code.”
“But the airport does,” I say as I look forward, toward the untouched coastline.
“The airport?” Cyren asks, flashing a nervous look over her shoulder at the rest of the group. “Escaping in a plane would only be a temporary solution. Eventually we'll run out of fuel.”
“I know.” I flash a smile of confidence at the baker and say, “That's what I need you to change.”
00111000
While our caravan of vehicles makes its way out of the city and travels down the coastline, toward the airport, I'm still watching the worm. I'm timing its consumption against our speed and I don't like our odds.
“How's it coming?”
As the baker searches the text that scrolls across the page of his code book, he holds up one finger, as if to silence me.
Cyren tries to assure me by sa
ying, “I have faith they can accomplish a simple hack of an airplane's fuel supply. They were able to change your spawn point-”
“When they changed my spawn point, they brought down the game's firewall and let in a virus.”
She cracks her knuckles and says, “Fair enough.”
“At this point, I'm not worried about if they can do it or not,” I say, looking away from her at the great beast consuming the sky, “I'm worried about how fast they can do it.”
“With their combined processing power, it shouldn't be long.”
“I hope you're right. I just-”
The driver of our truck locks his brakes and I'm thrown against the cab. Peering over the top of the cab, I see two Level Zeros climbing out of a van that's now parked sideways on the street. They lift their guns and raise their barrels upward. I follow their aim, instinctively pulling my own pistols from their holsters, readying myself for whatever flying monster is approaching. But the threat isn't in the sky, it's towering over us.
Two Tyrannosauruses are charging down the middle of the road, their mouths hanging open, salivating at the sight of us. Their powerful hind legs crack the pavement with every lunging step they take toward us.
The Level Zeros ahead of me start firing and Cyren is already leaping over the side of the truck, ready to join the battle by the time I register what's happening. I'm trying to keep too many things balanced in my head. The multitasking is slowing down my reaction time. I glance over my shoulder at the worm, calculate its approximate distance, and then turn back toward the immediate threat.
As the bullets pierce the first dinosaur's hide, trails of blood stream behind it. I let out a sigh of relief. Finally something that we can hurt. My own pistols join the gunfire, tearing small chunks from its body. A Level Zero lets loose a rocket, which slams squarely into the monster's chest. The attack on the first dinosaur is continuous, draining the creature's hit points until it falls face first into the street. Its body lays motionless as the second one climbs over it.
The NextWorld 02: Spawn Point Page 5
