by A. L. Davroe
Swallowing hard, I glance over my shoulder, trying to decide if everyone here looks like she does. I’ve heard about the cannibals who live in the wastelands. They often raid the Outer Block, abducting unfortunate Disfavored and stealing valuable resources. They sharpen their teeth like this girl does. “Um, n-nothing,” I mumble, holding up my hands. “I’m sorry.”
Rushing away from the girl, I duck into a side street and press myself against the wall. I stay there for a long moment, heart pounding, trying to discern if she’s following me. All I can hear are my own terrified gasps and the stamps and snorts of the four-legged creatures tied beside me. Fingers clutching the brick like I might need to climb it, I glance around the corner.
She’s gone.
I duck back into the alley and swallow hard. Where’d she go? Is she following me? My eyes rove up, inspecting the roofs above. Nothing and no one standing on the flat rooftops or peeking through the sun-bleached canopy stretching between the two buildings. I inch along the wall, progressing toward the adjacent street. One of the massive animals seems to startle at my approach. He lets out a cry and stomps backward until the leather line tying him to a railing pulls taut.
Holding my breath, I slink in front of him, slide up against the other side of the building, and inspect the next street. I don’t see the girl, but there are other people walking down the road. Should I go out? Are they all cannibals? Should I just go to a different city? Leave the game? My stomach grumbles again, choosing for me.
I take a deep breath, though my throat is tight with fear, and step out onto the street. For an intense minute, I stand there waiting for someone to notice me and raise a call. But, as it was near the fountain, no one seems to notice me or care. I begin walking briskly down the street, trying my best to remain in the long shadows of the building, because the merciless sun is beginning to make my skin feel tight and dry.
Chapter Fourteen
Post-American Date: 7/2/231
Longitudinal Timestamp: 5:53 p.m.
Location: Free Zone, Garibal; Nexis
I’m lost. I’m hungry. I’m thirsty again. I plop down on one of the wooden crates stacked against a wall and slump my shoulders. It feels good to sit down. Exhausted and overwhelmed, I pull my legs up toward my body, press myself against the wall, and bury my face against my knees.
I’ve never walked so much in my life or had to deal with being hungry and thirsty for so long. My throat feels like it’s going to crumble inward. My stomach feels hollow. I wish I had one of those big animals to ride like everyone else seems to be doing. Those animals seem a little scary, but I’d chance a ride to give my legs a rest and cover more ground faster.
“You know, you can sell your Mod chips on the black market. Maybe get yourself another outfit or something.”
I look up, confused by who would be talking to me. There’s a boy standing above me. He’s a Natural. At first, my brain starts to re-design him—nipping, tucking, implanting, and ornamenting. Stop it. I have to look.
I blink at him. He’s maybe a little older than me, but something about his presence is as commanding as Quentin’s. Interesting. I unfold my legs and straighten, my attention now fully diverted. “What?”
As if exhibiting some sort of patience, he smirks crookedly at me. “You’re new here, right?”
I examine the people passing by then look back up at him. “How do you know?”
He props a foot on the crate and rests his elbows on his knee, leaning in and over like he’s about to show me something he doesn’t want anyone else to see. There’s something so compelling about his dark, lean features and self-assured body language that I find myself instinctively heeding the cue. I hunch and lean a little toward him, curious about what his big secret is.
His deep brown eyes flash up and across the street, surveying and watching… Predatory. Something about that expression makes my stomach stir, and I find myself inching close to him, drawn. “You’re not carrying any weapons,” he whispers in the same sort of purring manner Zane uses.
I blink, forcing myself to break my trance and look around. “Weapons?”
Most of the people passing by are wearing some sort of utility belt, like mine, or a holster, like the boy standing over me. But, unlike me, their utilitarian accessory actually serves a purpose. Nearly everyone is indeed carrying a weapon. Whether it be some kind of gun, Taser, or bow, they’ve all got something. Even that girl had her teeth. Everyone except me. I blush. He must think I’m an idiot.
“It’s a pretty sure sign of a newbie around here.” There’s a slight teasing humor in his tone. “It’s not safe to wander the Wild West without a weapon.”
Embarrassed, I give him a nervous sidelong glance. “I-I didn’t know.”
He rolls his eyes and makes a “figures” face. “Not knowing won’t save you from getting attacked by a gang of marauding robbers. You learn pretty fast, though. You have to in Garibal.”
“Garibal?” I repeat, trying to look as if his opinion that I’m a few circuits short of a switchboard doesn’t matter to me. “That’s where we are?”
He scoffs, revealing a deeper, more genuine boyish grin. Slightly crooked, a little bit mad, and all the way stirring. No sharpened teeth. I take that as a good sign. “You’re joking, right? Have you even looked at your map?”
At my confused face he sighs and drops a pack from one of his shoulders. It hits the ground with a thump, leaving a cloud of dust. “Move over.”
I stare at his dark, commanding face, wondering if it’s normal for seasoned gamers to take to tutoring newbies in their spare time or if this one has some kind of trick up his sleeve. He doesn’t look like a bad guy. In fact, I believe I might find him attractive, at least, for a Natural. But then, looks can be deceiving. Then again, I’m not certain if it’s just his looks I’m drawn to.
Vowing to keep my guard up, I scoot over and allow him to sit beside me. While I know I should feel nervous about a stranger sitting next to me, his presence makes me feel safer from the other gamers. He has weapons, after all, and something about his large frame and earnest eyes tells me he’s not going to hurt me.
“Okay,” he breathes, shrugging out of a long leather overcoat. “Let’s see it.”
It takes me a minute to compute what he has requested of me. I’m too busy staring at him, half confused, half intrigued by his natural body—lean, well-muscled arms with tawny skin, a black shirt—sleeveless like mine—across his broad chest. “What? Oh. Um…” I glance about my person wondering where one might find something called a map.
Reaching out, he puts his hand on mine, his warm, electric touch effectively bringing a cease to all physical movement and brain function. He touches like Zane does, in a dangerous too-intimate way, but I like it. In the time it takes me to find my senses, register that I should probably say or do something, and vow to do so, he is dragging my arm across his knee and flipping it over in front of him.
There, on the inside of my wrist, is some kind of circuit patch—like an ingrown version of my flex-bracelet.
“Let’s see,” he muses, his breath sending goose bumps up my arm as he hunches over the patch, poking at it with strong fingers. “You’ve got an updated version of the OS, but it should still be…” With a beep, the circuit patch lights up and a holo-map comes into focus a few inches above my arm. He turns to me and grins again, the map throwing sandy yellow and rich tan land features against his high cheekbones and square jaw. “See, easy as trans.”
His smile makes me want to smile back, so I do.
He leans back so that we can both see the map clearly and releases my arm, but I don’t move it. “This is you.” He points to a bright green triangle sitting on the far edge of a deep brown depression marked “Garibal.”
Fully expecting the patch to respond to my chip, I mentally request 30X magnification. Nothing seems to happen; there’s still only a brown
depression. “It’s empty,” I argue. “We’re in a town, aren’t we?”
He taps a series of gray bars on the side of the map. The image centers on me and zooms forward, the blurry brown smudges of Garibal rising up and coming into clarity as buildings.
“Oh,” I breathe, feeling stupid. “You have to zoom in manually?”
“You’ve never played a game before, have you?” he asks, his voice softer now, somehow kinder and more intimate. It occurs to me that his face is very close to mine.
I shake my head. “First time. I’ve never felt the need until now.”
Retreating from the odd magnetic pull that drew him close to me, he leans against the wall and crosses those well-muscled arms over that broad, equally muscled chest. If I were to see a boy like him in Real World, I’d say he was a Disfavored laborer. No one in the Aristocracy is built like him—there’s no need with robotic service and labor. However, while I may not know much about games, I do know that inside this game, gamers can change their physical appearance to anything they wish with the use of Mod chips. Just look what I did with my legs. This boy could be from any class, could look completely different in Real World.
“If you haven’t noticed yet, G-Chips don’t work here,” he explains. “You do things the old-fashioned way here. The game is modeled off of older technologies. The creator was a history buff, I think. There are a lot of arcane additions.”
Hearing someone talk about my father makes my chest feel heavy, and heat slips up my throat. Wanting to change the subject, I say, “You know a lot about this game. Do you play often?”
He shrugs. “Yeah, I guess I do. It’s my way of escaping.”
I look down at my feet, moved by the quiet way he said those words and the sad expression in those bottomless, nearly black eyes. This escape means everything to him. Dad made this game for boys like this one, who have something they want to pretend doesn’t exist in Real World. That’s why this game won the Civil Enrichment Award. Suddenly I feel very proud of my father.
He clears his throat, the deep rumble of it sliding up my spine and drawing my attention back to the map. “You’re going to want to go…” He zooms out and then traces a zigzag across the map, blazing a bright yellow dotted path toward a larger open space on the other side of town. “Here. This is the market. You can trade in your Mod chips and get a weapon there.”
I frown at him. “Again about my Mod chips?” I’d forgotten about them in the sudden onslaught of his presence, but here he is, drawing attention to them again. “I don’t have Mod chips.”
He frowns back at me. “You don’t?”
“No.”
Cocking his head, he stares at me for a long period of time in which I begin to feel hot and squirmy. Not many people have looked at me in the open, appraising way this boy is currently doing. If he finds something particularly garish about what he’s seeing, he’s hiding it well. “You can’t have used them.”
I knit my brows, my stomach suddenly sinking. He doesn’t think I’m pretty enough to have used a Mod chip. “What makes you think I haven’t? You have no idea what I look like in Real World.”
He reaches out and touches my forehead, making my eyes go wide.
“W-What are you…?” I stammer, my words liquid and ungraspable under his touch.
He runs his finger over a long thin scar that I got in the accident with Dad. I’d almost forgotten it was there. I don’t bother trying to look in the mirror anymore; I can’t see over the counter without my legs. “The world outside has a nasty habit of seeping in here. A newbie girl never arrives with a blemish. It’s unsightly.”
I feel my cheeks flare hot under his touch. Putting my hand to my forehead to hide the scar, I pull away, ashamed. “Pardon my unsightliness,” I mutter.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” he growls back, his voice suddenly defensive. “I was being sarcastic.”
Glaring sideways at him, I try to find the truth in his words, but all I feel is hurt. Hurt that even here, in a world meant to be an escape from judgment, I am still found lacking; hurt that while I gave his Natural body the benefit of the doubt and found positive things about it, he won’t do the same for me.
He rolls his eyes again, frustrated. “Look, I just meant that when given a chance to Modify themselves, most girls choose to do so, because that’s how they are programmed to think in Real World. They use Nexis to be what they can’t be in real life.”
Forcing my hand away from my face, I cross my arms, wanting to prove myself strong enough to deal with my blemishes but also wanting to cut myself off from this boy because he speaks the truth, and I find myself not liking that I’m so easily pegged. I came here to have the legs I don’t have in real life, to be closer to a father who I can no longer see or ask questions of. “Yeah, well, maybe I just want to be myself. There’s nothing wrong with being different. Or for being how nature intended you to be. Natural things are wonderful. I mean, just look at the trees,” I reason, trying to argue this to myself as much as him.
He leans forward and places his elbows on his knees. I can feel his eyes on my face, staring at my scar. How can someone stare for so long at someone else?
Nervous, I glance at him again. “What?”
Smirking so that a deep dimple appears on his lean cheek, he gives me an endearing sort of expression. “Personally, I think the scar adds something. It makes you look very mysterious.”
Again with that spine-tingling purr talk. I look away, embarrassed, and clear away the hot lump in my throat. “So, um, yeah, where were we?” I fumble with my wrist, trying to call up the map that dissolved at some point during the discussion.
He chuckles to himself as he waits for me to figure out my patch, and his chuckle just makes me even more scattered. I hit a random button and a different screen pops up. There is a column of words with numbers beside them, and I grasp at the opportunity to lessen the intensity between us. “What’s this?”
“That’s your stat grid. Your attributes are here.” He points to a descending row of words that begin with “Stamina” and end with “Sense” then points to the numbers. “These are your ratings.”
“Ratings?”
“The game assesses your personality traits and assigns numbers to them. See the green ones? Those are ones you are currently using and the ones that are flashing are the ones you are currently building.”
I seem to be using everything but my Strength right now, but the ones I’m building are my Dexterity, Acuity, and Perseverance. “But what do they mean?”
He shifts beside me, his leg brushing mine, and I almost jump out of my skin. “It’s a little complicated.”
Eager to prove to him that I’m worth his time in training me, I point to the number associated with my level of Acuity. “Somehow, I get the impression that I’m not an idiot.”
“Yes, you’ve got a number of fine qualities,” I feel my jaw drop, but he moves on like he didn’t just compliment me. “Let’s take ‘Strength’; it’s a measure of your physical strength. The higher the number, the greater your ability to lift something or push yourself physically. But,” he says, leaning close and pressing an arrow on the screen, making everything shift to the left to reveal another set of words and numbers, “there are a lot of other associated aspects of strength. Your ability to heal, for one, and an association with your Dexterity for another. It’s not entirely important in VR games, because we’re actually in our bodies and can read them much more clearly. However, it does help if you want to examine exactly where your strengths and weaknesses are, and it helps you assess what will improve your abilities.”
Nodding, I suddenly find myself staring at his close features. “So,” I breathe, groping for words though they seem so evasive all of the sudden, “all these numbers are pretty useless?”
His eyes swing to meet mine. They’re big and framed with long, thick eyelashes. He is, quite
literally, pretty. Then he grins, and I’m glad I’m sitting. “Yeah, I guess. But they are fun for the hardcore gamers.”
I turn away, unnerved and confused by what’s going on. “Well, that’s not me.” I scoot away, trying to find the brain that I know Ellani possesses. “On to something else.” I push another button, and a different screen comes up.
“That’s your skill sheet.” He leans over, purposely re-invading my space again, and reads a set of random words like “sneak” and “thief” and “repair” and “science.” “No weapons skills, hardly any physical or battle training, but you’re pretty promising in the brains department.”
Feeling both bold and embarrassed at his compliment, I roll my eyes and sass him. “I told you I wasn’t an idiot.”
He continues scrolling. “And a healthy dose of beauty to go with those brains,” he notes offhandedly, making me look away from the screen and back to him. He continues staring at the screen. “But how will you get by with those?”
“Same way you do.” It takes him going still and turning to look at me for me to realize I just said that. Eyes wide, I sit upright and try to recover from my slip. “I-I mean… What do I need to fight for?”
Smirking in a different sort of way—one that just reveals the dimple on his pinkening cheek—he turns away and clears his throat. “Everything about being alive is a fight.”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. He’s taken my words, my breath… What a beautiful person. My mind begins to race, searching for something to say that’s just as profound, something that will make him think the same thing about me, because I suddenly want him to feel that way about me, as well. I want to be beautiful too…and for once there’s nothing a Mod or an Alt could do to fix it. “I—” But my stomach growls again, making his eyes go wide.
He blinks, obviously amused. “Are you hungry?”
Blushing, I cover my stomach. “N-No.”
Knowing I’m lying, he narrows his eyes at me.
“Yes,” I admit.
