by Drew Cordell
Ejecting the heavy magazine of the gun, I counted the rounds loaded inside as we passed under a bright street sign hanging above battered, oil-smeared dumpsters. The metal of the box magazine was freezing in my hands through the fingerless mechanic gloves I wore. 12 bullets, it was one short from full capacity, and there wasn’t another magazine in reserve. I didn’t plan on firing the gun, but I pulled back the slide, letting it click back into place before I checked to be sure the safety was still on like I’d been shown. I holstered the gun, trying to control the shaking in my hands.
This whole thing had seemed like a bullshit scam from the start, and I wasn’t sure yet if I was glad I had been wrong about that. The agent that recruited her was an utterly forgettable man in his later fifties with a receding hairline and a beer gut that didn’t like the ambitious tightness setting on his belt. I was about to punch his face in at the dive bar where we met him until he gave Stacy an innocuous case containing a handgun, datapad, dataknife, and 2,000 standard credits. He had paid for our round of drinks and told her to wait for his instructions before he left out the back door. He hadn’t even given his name, and Stacy hadn’t been asked to prove her skills before he ‘activated’ her in their initial encounter.
“This is it,” she informed me as we climbed up a set of concrete stairs and stopped at a reinforced door in the frame of a large building towering into the neon-lit space above the city street. I couldn’t tell what building it was, but Stacy seemed confident this was the right place. Perhaps Beergut was feeding information to her through the earpiece she wore.
“I love you, Stacy,” I told her, grabbing her hip and pulling her in for a kiss. Her lips radiated heat as they came into contact with mine, soft and sweet. My heart was already hammering in my chest and we weren’t even in the building yet. This was supposed to be a quick in and out. Infiltrate an empty building, steal data hidden on the fifth floor with the dataknife, then make a quick escape and wait for Beergut’s instructions on how and where to deliver the asset.
“I love you too, Kyle,” she said after returning my kiss. Color flushed her ashen cheeks, but the kiss had felt half-hearted and rushed on her part. Returning her focus to the job, she moved her gloved hand to the small security panel lining the frame of the door, unsheathing her dataknife with the other. “This is what he said to do.” She drew back the knife and slammed the tip into the panel with all her might. The razor-sharp blade bit into it with ease, sinking through the plastic and metal with a subdued clank that was swallowed by the patter of rainfall. The red light on the security panel turned green, and the door clicked open without sounding any hidden alarms.
“That should be the hardest part,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt. The flimsy panel was supposed to be the only security in the building. Pushing it open, we stepped inside into the darkness. The information was accurate, and I was certain there hadn’t been anyone here in a long time. The inside of the building was only a few degrees warmer than the outside, and the darkness was haunting. I clicked on my LED flashlight, the narrow light beam lingering in the dusty air.
The synthetic floors were dirty and scuffed, as if the contents of what was probably an old office workspace had been hastily cleaned out to sell the furnishings at auction to repay disappointed shareholders. It was utterly empty and lifeless and reeked of neglect.
“Come on, let’s hurry so we can get out of here,” I said, closing the heavy door behind us. Aside from the faint ghost-like patter of the rain on the windows, there was an incredible, profound silence in this building.
Why us? Why her? I thought. Anyone could have done this job. I wanted to believe that this man—probably a very wealthy one—simply hadn’t wanted to do this job himself because he managed a lot of different agents. But something was nagging at me, something Beergut had said. “This is how we change the galaxy. From here, everything changes for the better. We’re going to save countless lives.” If this was so important, then why send us? I chalked it up to nervous paranoia as we moved through the open space to the wall on the opposite side of the room. It didn’t matter now; we had already committed ourselves to this job.
We reached the stairwell, pulling open the door and stepping inside. I scanned the darkness with my flashlight, leaning in and peering up the empty space between the handrails lining the edges of the climb. It was as empty as anything else, and we started to our destination, moving as fast as possible and taking the stairs two at a time to the fifth level. I shone the light through the windows of the doors on each of the levels, unsurprised to see the others were just as empty as the first despite having different layouts. By the time we reached our floor, we were both breathing heavily.
The fifth floor had a similar open layout to the first, but there was an office built against the back wall—it was where we’d find the data relay we were here for. “Should be in there,” Stacy said. I fought the urge to draw the handgun as I swept my flashlight across the emptiness of the massive room. I was feeling uneasy, and the opaque glass of the office we were walking toward wasn’t helping. There could have been anything waiting for us in there.
We arrived at the door, and it clicked open. The smell was the first thing to hit me. It was strong and metallic. The smell of tangy metal, dust, and something sour. I crept closer to the frame, scanning the small space with my flashlight. There was a man on the floor, but there was no way he was still alive. Most of his head was missing where a bullet had punched through his skull. Blood was splattered on the back walls of the office—the shooter had to have been in the building since none of the glass was broken.
The pool of blood around the corpse was congealing on the carpet, but the body didn’t smell like rot or what I expected a dead body to smell like. Probably still fresh. There was a single bullet cartridge on top of the pool of blood, sticking out like a floating piece of trash in a puddle of water. This had to have been a point-blank execution. I was absent from the present, surprisingly calm and analytical as I made my grim observations, but I knew the moment of clarity wouldn’t last. The real terror of the situation hit like a brick.
“Oh my God. We have to get the hell out of here,” I said, feeling my stomach flip violently at the sight and smell. Sickness was overwhelming me as the adrenaline surged through my body, threatening to make me lose the last remnants of my cheap dinner. I held on, forcing it back and scanning the rest of the room to look for our objective. I found what we were looking for: a cylindrical pod no more than a meter tall. It had flashing lights across its blocky metal surface. A small satellite dish and antenna were anchored to the top, pointed toward the tinted window behind it.
“We’re not leaving without the data,” Stacy said. Her voice was tight and constricted, and she was hesitating now. My body screamed for me to protect Stacy and run out of this place.
“Grab the data and let’s leave. Don’t touch anything,” I said, drawing my gun, but keeping my finger off the trigger as I flipped the safety off. I was confident we were alone on this floor but was listening for any sounds of someone coming from the stairs or elevator. I hadn’t touched anything in the building, had I? Were my prints all over a murder scene now? I’d have to wipe everything I possibly touched on our way out. It was a surprisingly sober thought given the surreal, terrifying scene. Why wasn’t Stacy moving? Was she stuck in shock at the grim spectacle? I couldn’t pry my eyes away from what was left of the victim’s head—most of it was simply erased.
Something stung the side of my neck, but there was no pain after the initial pinch. I only felt a freezing numbness that sent cottony bliss surging down my spine before it radiated through my body, spreading in waves of hot and cold. I was falling now, but I didn’t feel pain as I hit the ground and my head bounced off the hard floor, sending black stars swimming through my vision like vat moths. The imaginary bugs blocking my vision fluttered away.
The gun and flashlight I had been holding were on the floor next to me. The LED beam cast wicked shadows o
n the walls of the small room, making the sudden change in perspective even more disorienting. Had I been shot by whoever killed this man? Was the shooter still in the building? Why hadn’t I heard a gunshot? Stacy is in danger. I have to protect her.
This must have been an ambush—the shooter had been waiting for us in the darkness somehow. This was my fault for not checking our surroundings better and letting the assailant slip by unnoticed. “Stacy, get out of here,” I tried to shout, but it took an impossible effort just to mumble the slurred words. Time wasn’t behaving normally for me. It was slowing and speeding up in odd, erratic intervals.
Stacy was looking down and observing me, standing still. How long had she been standing there like that? There was wetness on her cheeks, glistening in the dim light from my flashlight that had fallen to the floor next to me.
“Not rain,” I said, smiling at the beautiful simplicity of my words as they passed through the warm haze of my mind. “Tears. Why are you crying?”
“I really do love you. I’m so sorry.” Her voice was breaking, and in that moment, all I wanted to do was reach out and comfort her, to tell her everything was going to be okay. She would find happiness without me, she would live a new life and get out of this horrible place once I was gone. I wanted to hold her but my arms wouldn’t move or respond to my mental commands. The bullet had probably cut right through my neck and sliced my spine. That’s why I wasn’t feeling any pain. I must be paralyzed and bleeding out on the carpet.
“You need to run, get out before he shoots again. Take my gun,” I slurred, feeling raw emotion rip at me like a blade as I forced out the heavy words. My tongue may as well have been coated with mercury. Was this what dying felt like? She would be okay if she got out of the building now and left me behind. I would die, but she would live and that was all that mattered now. Why wasn’t she running like I told her?
My eyes drifted to her hand. She was holding something that hadn’t been there before. It was a syringe, and the long, exposed needle was coated in blood. My blood. The tube part was empty, and the plunger rod was pushed all the way to the base where the needle started. There was no bullet wound through my spine. I hadn’t been shot.
“Stacy, what did you do?” This voice didn’t belong to me, it was sluggish and bordering the line of impossible, silent distance. Adrenaline exploded through me, hammering fragments of terrifying, heartbreaking revelation through the numbness of my mind. The gun with my fingerprints all over it. The bullet that had been missing from my magazine from the start. The single bullet cartridge lying in the pool of congealing blood next to the body of the man without most of his head. Stacy bringing me here.
She knew.
She did this.
“Help me understand,” I pleaded, those three words just strong enough to clear my lips. I didn’t have much time left.
Stacy started to talk again, but I didn’t hear her words. I couldn’t hold on any longer, and the heavy darkness pulled me under.
12
[11:31:09 UXT, March 33rd, 3146. Tiyvan IV Rollings Mining Company Gamma HAB]
The transition from Eternity Online into real, unaltered sleep was seamless, and I was surprised to feel rested when I woke up. The turmoil, frustration, and anger returned once again as the events of the previous night flooded back, filling my mind with venom. It wasn’t going to be a good day at work. I threw off my sheets, sitting up and swinging my legs over the side of my bed. It was cold in my room—I liked it that way, but it always took me a few minutes to warm up and get accustomed to the frigid room when I woke up. It wasn’t pleasant, so I went right to the shower, pulling off my shirt and boxers and turning on the water.
The shower saved my heat preference, and instantly heated to that number: a toasty 41 degrees Celsius. I stepped into the water, soaking in the heat and letting the water cascade over my body. I was paying for the water I was using, so I would try to keep the shower short. I wasn’t sure exactly how much of a financial impact I had taken by losing Exowurm, but it would at least be a few months of work on Tiyvan IV even with the insurance money I’d get from the loss. I still had a few months’ worth of credits in real life in my bank account, but I’d probably need to channel more of it into Eternity Online to get us back on track.
Brandon was probably a lot better off than me financially now, even though his contractual salary with Rollings was probably a little lower than mine. He had his reasons to work on Tiyvan IV. He had come from poverty like me—with an underpaid job working in a production line running quality assurance on robots that ran the quality assurance on manufactured wares. It was as ironic as it sounded, and he was way too qualified for the work he did. Brandon also had a sister he was trying to help get out of the Dalthaxia Prime slums. Working with Rollings was a means to change the situation for the better.
Exowurm wasn’t Brandon’s ship, though he had considered working toward owning a stake in it. We had agreed to split everything we earned 50/50 after all the costs of travel, resource expenditure, and maintenance on Exowurm was covered. You can’t fix what doesn’t exist anymore. The thought was like some kind of cruel joke and I felt like the punchline. There wasn’t a clear path of what to do next—other than to try to fix our situation and get a new ship, even if it wasn’t as fancy. Whatever happened next, I wasn’t going to make Brandon pay for my mistakes—even if he would probably try to.
I thought about telling Brandon about Stacy’s message and the “opportunity” to claim our stake in Eternity. I decided that I wasn’t there yet—we weren’t that desperate, and there was still a lot of time left in the war according to every major news outlet from Dalthaxia and Salgon. Both sides in the conflict were competing in a huge arms race, and the digital war remained cold for the time being as the mechanics and secrets of the game were learned.
For now, Brandon and I would continue on our current path in Eternity Online, but I couldn’t be careless again. I had no one to blame for the loss of my ship but me. It sure as hell wasn’t on Brandon for not shooting well enough. I was the reckless one who hadn’t listened to my sensible friend. The greed and thought of never feeling like I wanted or needed Stacy again had been too tempting, and it had cost me greatly.
I finished my shower, turning off the water and stepping out into my bathroom. My mirror was fogged, so I wiped my hand across it, feeling the cooler water coat my hand. I needed a shave, the dark stubble on my face was getting longer, but I wasn’t in the mood for it this morning. I needed to discuss some things with Brandon during breakfast or the start of our shift, and we needed a plan going into our play session for the night.
Dressing in my undersuit, I walked out of my room into our common area, unsurprised to see the others had already made their way to the mess hall. Checking to make sure I had everything I needed, I walked out of our dorm and joined the others in the mess hall.
One of the cook bots served me a big scoop of scrambled eggs, sausage, and a wedge of toast. I nodded to the robot, grabbing one of the bottles of hot sauce before scanning my employee badge to pay for the food. Salsa was an additional charge—the synthetic hot sauce was free, and I had the feeling I’d be pinching every credit I could until I could fully recover from my loss. I took my seat with my friends, and they glanced at me with something resembling pity. They knew something—Brandon probably told them about losing our ship, but likely nothing else.
“Kyle and Brandon lost their ship last night and died in Eternity Online,” Chad declared, suddenly standing and pitching his voice to carry through the room. Cold anger flooded my gut, but I took a deep breath, trying to remain calm. I couldn’t risk losing my employment with Rollings. How did Chad find out though? Had Brandon told him? That wasn’t likely.
Nick Ramirez, our foreman, looked over at me; he was still in the middle of chewing a forkful of eggs. I met his gaze but kept a blank face. I didn’t need him to intervene on my behalf, but he apparently saw the need to shut Chad up and spoke. “That’s enough, Chad. Sit down. What
Kyle and Brandon do in Eternity Online is their business, not yours. Eat your eggs.”
I grabbed the bottle of synthetic hot sauce, not as good as the real stuff, but good enough, dousing the watery eggs and sausage with the red liquid. I took a bite of toast, exchanging a glance with Brandon, who shrugged. He didn’t seem to know how Chad knew either.
“They decide they’re too good to be working for Rollings in Eternity Online as well as real life, and this is what they get. Some adventurers they are,” Chad continued after he sat down. Eyes were moving between me, Brandon, and Chad as the others listened in.
“That’s enough! Eat your damn eggs,” Nick raised his voice this time, apparently not up for any nonsense today.
I finished chewing. “You know what, it’s fine, Nick. Yeah, we lost our ship, and that’s my fault. I’m more curious how you know that, Chad. Especially since I don’t think Brandon told you.”
Chad grinned again. “Brandon can’t talk quietly to save his life. That was an expensive Interceptor too, probably a good few months’ worth of pay here on T4. That’s what you get for thinking you’re better than us.”
I took another deep breath, trying to stay calm. I wasn’t about to start a fight—this wasn’t worth it. Shrugging, I addressed Chad directly. “I wish you all the best, Chad. Maybe Brandon and I will choose something else to do in Eternity Online. It’s all very new, you know.”
One of Chad’s buddies, Un, joined in. “You’re not even aligned with Dalthaxia in the war. How do you explain that? Last I checked, we’re still flying the Dalthaxian flag on T4. You two traitors?”
Brandon slammed his fork down too hard, it bounced off his tray and clattered to the floor, silencing the few remaining side conversations that were still going. “We’re not traitors. I’m here on T4 for the same reasons as you, Un.” He spat the word ‘traitors’ out as if it was poisonous, glaring at Chad and Un and inviting them to escalate the situation. Brandon could usually keep a level head, but I knew he didn’t want anyone thinking he was a traitor. All he was trying to do was secure a better life for him and his sister. I could relate to the bond—at least the idea of it after my life was flipped upside down.
