Sicora Online_The Sorting

by S. W. Clarke

  “Powwow?” she said.

  “You know, strategize about our plans, how we’re going to find each other in the next level.”

  Veda pressed her hair behind her ear, lowered her chin to mask the smile. “You want to group with us, Eli?”

  “With the healer? Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. What other words are there for yes?”

  “Affirmative,” Galen said. He sounded begrudging.

  Eli snapped her fingers. “There’s an FPS guy.”

  Veda let a small laugh; Eli was almost irresistible. “Okay,” she said. She knew Galen disapproved, but he’d already gotten his promise. “Dinner tonight. But we’re not calling it a powwow.”

  “Shindig,” Eli said as they started down the hall. “Confab. Conference. Get-together.”

  “War room,” Galen said.

  Eli laughed. That was the one: a war room. But the words sent a frisson up Veda’s back; she didn’t want to be at war, didn’t want to kill Sarai and Wilt Waters. Wa had given her choices that allowed her to help, to heal. All the same, the image of Sarai’s throwing star returned to her mind, the chase to the bluff, the howl in the forest. Wilt in the trees with a bow and arrow aimed at Veda’s head. She felt the anger again, pooling through her silent and easy. Cutthroats, she thought, even as she regretted thinking it. Maybe it was the right word.

  Thirteen

  Sarai was in the dorm; the far bed creaked when Veda entered, and Veda’s aural aids bloomed with the sound. “Sarai,” she said.

  “How did you know?” It was the first time they’d been alone, and Veda was struck again by her buttered, sweet voice. She found it so appealing she had to remind herself that this was the player who had tried twice to kill her.

  Veda felt her way to her bunk, leaned against the frame. “You moved when I came in.” She didn’t want to mention the aural aids—better to let her think Veda had super-senses.

  “You know my movements?”

  “I know which bed is yours.”

  The wood creaked again as Sarai stood. Her footsteps—soft, hardily audible, a rogue’s—took her toward the dresser. “Half the beds are empty now.”

  “Do you know how they went?” Veda asked.

  “A few to orcs. A few to us.”

  Veda’s head lifted. She felt of a sudden very vulnerable, the same sensation as when she knew she was being watched. “Us?”

  “Me and Wilt and Jess,” Sarai said. “You know, you’re a real fox in game.”

  Jess. Veda plumbed the registries of her mind: Jess Snow, one of the other women assigned to her dorm. “A fox?”

  “A turn-tail. You smuggled yourself away every time.”

  If Prairie were there, Veda knew what she would have said: Better a fox than a hound. Her sister didn’t bother with velvet gloves.

  “Why, Sarai?” Veda said, dropping to a seat on her bed. “We didn’t want to fight.”

  “You sweet, genetically engineered copy,” Sarai said, almost in sing-song. “That’s what you do in Sicora: you fight. You win. Well, not you, but that’s the general aim.”

  “Fighting me wouldn’t have won you the level.”

  “Of course not.” Sarai pulled one of the drawers out; it rolled like it had been recently oiled. Everything about her was this easy: no awkward noises, movements, missteps. She made Veda feel harsh and frayed, grasping. “But NPCs and mobs sure don’t compare to people.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “People surprise you. Cornered, they sometimes get crazy.”

  “Are you going to come after us again?”

  “Oh, sure,” Sarai said, pressing the drawer shut with a click. “As long as you’re around.”

  Delivered as simply as if she were promising an easy favor. “You don’t have to,” Veda said. She knew if she pleaded, Sarai would scent blood.

  “No, but we choose to. That’s what humans do: choose.” Sarai was moving around the room now, making noises of closure, departure.

  “Wait.” Veda lifted her hand.

  Sarai stopped. Her silence told Veda she was listening.

  “Who was the third in your group? The one in the trees?”

  Jess laughed. It was an out of place thing to do—she had such a full, generous laugh—and it made Veda uncomfortable. “He’s dead, too.”

  “He’s out?”

  “No, but he will be.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “You don’t have his voice memorized?”

  “I remember it, but I don’t know the name.”

  “His name is Eben Ness. I’m telling you because he’s a fox, too.” And then Sarai was gone.

  Veda didn’t remember that name; she repeated it three times aloud until it was familiar on her tongue. Eben Ness was the reason she was still in the game, and she didn’t have any clue why he’d done it.

  A chair dragged from the table, and Amy Park’s voice came ringing and clear above the din of the mess. “Veda Powell,” she said, “you are the second person to completely tilt me.”

  Eli and Galen lifted their heads from napkin she’d been drawing on. Veda sat with her better ear inclined. “Who was the first?” she asked.

  One of Amy’s utensils clinked. “Stick with me and you’ll find out. I complain a lot.”

  “You’re alive, Park,” Galen said.

  “I lost my right hand, man. Do you know how strange it is to be lifting this fork right now?”

  “You’re the scrapper,” Eli said, her voice tinged with awe. “Are you joining us? We could use your DPS.”

  “It’s either you or them,” Amy said, and Veda knew by her tone she meant Sarai and Wilt. “All the ones left over are just noise.”

  “How many are grouped with the Waters?” Galen asked.

  “Looks like they’ve got two clinched, one in the pipeline,” Amy said.

  “They’re good at that,” Galen said. His teeth sounded gritted.

  “Anyway, napkins? You know they’ve got like…tablets for each of us?” Amy said.

  “Welcome, Amy,” Galen said, “to The Great Napkin Round Table.”

  “It’s easier for me to think this way,” Eli said. Her pen was scratching again.

  “Amy,” Veda said, “I didn’t get a chance to thank you—”

  “For saving your life? Good, thank me. I want you to remember I saved your life if it comes down to healing Cole’s ass or mine.”

  “Hold on now,” Galen said.

  Veda smiled. “Noted.”

  “So with Amy, we have four viable formations,” Eli said, the nib of her pen scribbling over the napkin.

  “As long as you don’t put me up front with Cole in any of them, I’m good,” Amy said, muffled around her food.

  “Okay,” Eli said, “we have three viable formations.”

  “Assuming we find each other,” Amy said. “Seeing as how none of us were touching when we left the last world.”

  “Touching?” Veda asked.

  “If you’re physically touching when you exit a world, you spawn together in the next one,” Galen said. “I screwed up.”

  Veda was about to ask what he meant, but she remembered then: Galen had been with her at the end. He must have been too sick to remember that rule.

  “Shit happens, Cole. Point is, we can’t send each other private messages. Fortunately, I happen to have picked up something helpful in the last level.”

  “What is it?” Eli said.

  “A compass,” Amy said; her utensil let a triumphant twang as it hit her plate.

  “A compass?” Veda asked. That made sense, after all: it was a world shaped like a compass, but she didn’t know how a tool for pointing her north would help very much.

  “Not just a compass. The compass. It points toward whoever you imagine.”

  Eli let a breathy whistle. “And I thought my velvet robes were a sweet drop.”

  “That’s good. So Amy has the compass,” Galen said. “Can it tell you how close you are to that person?”

  Amy sho
ok her head. “Just their direction.”

  “You should find Veda first—she’s the healer,” Galen said.

  “Agreed,” Amy said.

  “But you have no way of telling how close I am. If we aren’t underground or something else strange, what if I send up a flare with my staff at sunrise and sunset, and then stay put for a half hour following?” Veda said.

  “Your staff?” Amy said.

  “It has an effect: damage or healing. If I don’t set a target, it just sends up a flare.”

  Amy whistled. “Pretty piece.”

  There was a moment of contemplation at the table.

  “Could attract trouble,” Galen said.

  “It would be worth it if it leads to finding you,” Amy said. “Okay, I’ll keep an eye out for our flare in the morning and evening.”

  “What about Galen and me?” Eli said.

  “Once those two are together, they can come for us,” Galen said.

  “But in the meantime, shouldn’t we try to leave some indication of where we are?” Eli said.

  “What if we just leave bread crumbs?” Galen said.

  “That’s good,” Eli said. “What kind of crumbs?”

  “If there are trees, you can carve cross-hatches at eye level,” Amy said. “Otherwise you can traumatize every NPC you come across so they’ll be monosyllabic by the time we get to them.”

  “Uh, let’s go with the cross-hatches,” Galen said.

  “Let’s say we find each other, then what? How do we get out of the world?” Veda asked. “You and Amy are vets. Have you seen any patterns?”

  “There were vague similarities between this year’s compass world and the sorting level from our first trial: a circular map, warring factions,” Galen said. “But beyond that—no.”

  “The name of the game,” Amy said, “is survival. You survive long enough to find a way through, and then you survive in the next world.”

  Veda nodded.

  “That’s why the healer needs to live,” Galen said. “How many healers have there been in this game?”

  “Maybe one,” Amy said. “And even then, the fourth world crushed him.”

  “Exactly,” Galen said.

  Silence fell, and Veda sensed the other three were looking at her. She was the healer. She lowered her face, cheeks warm, and pressed most of her biscuit into her mouth.

  At 7:30, Jon and Anya funneled them all in for Circle.

  It was a time to talk about what they had experienced in the compass world, how they’d felt, and mostly—as Amy had explained during dinner—to get a few good quotes for social media.

  Nine tester chairs remained empty, and Veda heard the change: less movement, rustling. Their voices echoed with more resonance, and when Jon asked Veda to rate the sensation of having her head severed from her neck by an orc’s axe, she gave it a 1/10. “I didn’t feel anything—it happened that fast,” she said, and Jon seemed pleased by this.

  “Totally realistic, right?” he said, and because he’d prompted her, Veda nodded. “So that’s more like a 10/10.” Anya only typed.

  But physical and psychological pain were different. If he were asking about the memories, the residual pain…but Jon had already moved on. And what she really wished he had asked about was the pain of Wa’s death; that kind of pain didn’t exist on a scale, and she felt it like a thread tugging her rib every time she recalled the old face.

  “Eben, you got into a little kerfuffle with the Waters,” Jon said. “What led to your sudden—but perhaps inevitable—betrayal?”

  “We got off the mark,” Eben said from the seat beside Veda. Her face flicked left, her ear inclining toward the calm, carrying tenor of his voice. He was nineteen or twenty years old. Why had he chosen that seat? “We were supposed to focus on the orcs, not sniping players.” He sounded reluctant to talk.

  “What difference did it make?” Wilt Waters said across the circle. “Orcs, players—it’s survival, Ness.”

  “I like this,” Jon said. “So we’ve got Eben playing the lone wolf, and then—what, three, four with the Waters twins?”

  “And me.” Veda recognized that voice: Jess, the one Sarai had mentioned taking down a few other players with her and Wilt.

  “Jess Snow,” Jon said, his voice trailing into question and admiration. “That’s right: we’ve got two healers.”

  Veda went rigid in her seat.

  “I see some interest from Veda over there,” Jon said. “Well hang on to your pants, boys and girls—this trial’s gonna be a wild one.”

  So she hadn’t misheard. Another healer. Veda didn’t realize until Jon had said it that a voice had been whispering to her the whole evening. And at times—eating her dinner, strategizing with Amy and Galen and Eli, taking her seat at circle—it had whispered: You’re the only one. You matter.

  And though nothing had really changed—maybe she and Jess would never meet in the game—that voice was gone. And so was the fizzing sensation in her stomach.

  “Last bit of news: we’re still playing out the stream from the first level, but we’ve already hit 150,000 viewers. That’s before the orc-flaying finale, featuring your own Wilt Waters.” This elicited a smattering of murmurs, and Veda imagined Wilt slung low and smug in his armchair. “How did that level compare to past sortings, Wilt?”

  “It was pretty good,” Wilt said. He was overconfident, Veda realized. He’d been at this game too long. “I liked the sorting from the third trial better.”

  “Why is that?” Jon asked.

  “A drow, a halfling, and a mermaid fell in love with me. That first night, the halfling let me stick it in her—”

  Jon’s hands clapped together. “All right, that was good. Drama, antagonism, alliances.” He paused, and then his voice came tumbling into the momentary silence. “Get your butts in those dorms and do whatever you need to do—push-ups, meditation, crying, decent sleep—because it’s back in tomorrow.”

  Veda waited until the others had left, as was her custom as a blind dupe: humans went first, clones second. Plus, even with her aural aids she still didn’t know the campus well enough to navigate fluidly. And she wasn’t going to trip in front of anyone. Least of all the Waters, or Jess Snow.

  When she was finally alone, she slumped into the chair, reached into her pocket for the note. She had taken to rubbing it between her fingers, touching the indents when she felt uncertain. What would Prairie do? As children it had been a joke between them, but over the past year—and especially now—she often found herself asking for real.

  What would Prairie do about Wilt and Sarai and Jess and a world that didn’t want her to survive it? Veda traced the letters.

  “Veda.” She jerked upright, pressing the note back into her pocket. Eben Ness. He was still in the armchair. “I’m sorry—that was creepy.”

  She nodded. “A little.”

  “Listen, you need to know—Wilt wants you. And not in a good way. You’re the other healer, which makes you a threat.”

  She opened her eyes. “Why?”

  “Because you can heal—”

  “No, I mean, why turn against Wilt? Why are you even here, saying any of this?”

  He was silent except for the jiggling of his leg. “I want to join you.”

  She shook her head. Cutthroats. Don’t trust any of them. Eli had just barely made the cut. But then, why would Eben have helped them in the first level? “I’m sorry—you can’t.”

  “That’s all? No explanation? I did stick my neck way out, you know.”

  That was true. “Why do you want to join us?”

  “I want to join you,” he said. “You’re a healer. You’re smart and capable.”

  “You could tell all that from a five-minute encounter?”

  “Maybe not the smart and capable,” he admitted. “But you’re—”

  She held up a hand; he was backpedaling too much, his body language making her nervous, just sitting next to him. “It doesn’t matter. Thanks for helping us, whatever y
our reason, but we’re not allying with anyone else.”

  He stood. “You’re blind, Veda—and not just in that way. You’re welcome for the help.” And his footsteps sounded on the carpet. The door opened, closed, and Veda was alone.

  She sat with her lips parted, listening to him go. His footsteps were light, jaunty; she realized she still hadn’t even seen his face. Back in the compass level, he’d been hidden by the trees. What a strange thing: she already expected to see someone’s face to make a full judgment of them.

  Eben Ness. He was a question mark. And then there was his message—what she was already beginning to suspect: Veda Powell was a threat.

  Fourteen

  In the night she listened to the others sleeping; dupes only needed six hours, but she had been trained from childhood to act as human-like as possible. Veda didn’t mind the two extra hours: she often woke early, collated her thoughts and feelings during the stillest time of night.

  Her fingers dropped to the bunk’s baseboard. Here someone had carved their initials–A.T.–and nearby, a heart and two names she didn’t know. These were clones, dupes—it was the dupe bunk, after all. And then her fingers passed over the slickness of black marker. This one had been determined, proud, the letters thick and looping. She followed the first letter around to create an R. The second was I, and then N, and by the time she got to G, her hand shook. She knew the last two without touching them. RINGER. Prairie’s nickname.

  She had started calling herself that when Veda was six. They’d never heard the term until a man yelled it in daylight—“we’ve got a pair of ringers out,” another term (the worst one) for clones—while they walked to formatory. And Prairie, unflappable, had laughed. She’d laughed all the way to class, and then she’d told the others, and by the end of that day, she was calling herself Ringer.

  She was never afraid to be hated, feared, disliked. In fact, Prairie Powell preferred anything to being ignored. At least hatred, she used to say, wasn’t nothing.

  Two hours later, Veda lay in the capsule while Anya applied the sensors. Neither were big talkers, but after a few minutes of silence thick as butter, Anya cracked. “Sleep well?” she asked, lifting Veda’s hand to clip the finger sensors on.