by Allen Zadoff
I press Y, and the map races toward me in 3-D, like I’m being beamed down from space. The world of the encampment comes alive around me on-screen. My avatar stands in the area near the main road. I hear him breathing in a way I never breathe. He is winded, his breath ragged.
There’s a scream next to me. I turn and see a man on the ground at my feet writhing from a gunshot wound to the stomach. He turns over and I see a name on the back of his shirt: P. MERCURIO.
The earth jumps a foot from my feet. It’s a gunshot impact. I see flashes coming from the main road.
I run.
I note a statistics box on the lower right, and I see there are fourteen active players currently in this scenario. Suddenly P. Mercurio’s name pops up in red before the box fades out. Now there are thirteen active players.
I’m starting to get the hang of this.
I move through the digitized world of Camp Liberty. There are a lot more than thirteen players on the board. When these avatars turn their backs, they’re identified numerically, for example as COMPUTER 1249, which means the computer is generating additional characters to populate the world. These characters stream out of the buildings, confused and upset. Some of them are caught in the open and mowed down; others carry weapons and run in a zigzag pattern like they know what they’re doing. Almost everyone is moving toward the main building in the center.
The earth rumbles beneath me, and I hear large armored vehicles moving down the main road toward the encampment.
“Daniel, this way!” a character shouts.
He runs in front of me, motioning for me to follow him. The back of his shirt says L. MOORE.
It’s Lee.
I follow him toward the main house. If the game world is as realistic as I suspect, I can use it to learn the layout inside the house.
I lose Lee in the throng of running people. Some of them are panicked and screaming, others calm. There are different entry points to the main house, and they seem to know which to head for. The ones who make it are let into the safety of the house.
I watch a character run through the front door. I make for the same door and turn the knob—
It’s locked.
“Access denied,” the game says, and sends a painful warning vibration through my controller.
Gunshots pepper the wood around my head. I duck low and run for a side door.
“Access denied,” the game intones again.
I turn and see a figure watching me from across the way. There’s something different about him, something unlike the other characters on the map. At first it seems like he might be dead because he’s not moving while people pass by him.
But I note a subtle swivel of his head. He’s standing still, but he appears to be monitoring me.
Who inside the game might be watching me? It’s not Lee. I saw him disappear into the main house.
I move toward the unknown figure, trying to angle around to see the name on the back of his shirt. I slide along a wall, edging ever closer to him.
Suddenly a bullet impact throws wood splinters past my character’s eyes.
I’m temporarily blinded. When my vision returns, the unknown figure is gone.
I hear shouts behind me. Men in blue jackets are racing into the encampment, the letters ATF emblazoned in gold across their front. They carry assault weapons.
ATF. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
I’m beginning to understand why the camp is set up like it is. They think they’re going to be raided by the government. Not just raided but attacked. And they’re preparing to defend themselves against it.
I watch the ATF agents streaming into camp inside the game. My first feeling is that I should trust them. They work for the government, and though they’d never know it in real life, so do I.
In the game, I step out where the ATF agents can see me, and I raise my hands in surrender.
They lift their assault rifles and commence firing on my position.
This should never happen in real life, law enforcement firing on unarmed civilians. But in the ethos of the Camp Liberty game, it’s us versus them. This ATF has shoot-to-kill orders.
I turn and run.
I make for a small house set apart from the main structure. I fling my avatar’s body against the door.
“Access denied,” it says.
I feel my pulse quicken as the ATF agents advance on the encampment.
This is just a game, I remind myself.
But it’s amazingly realistic in its depiction. The screaming voices, the rumble of trucks, the hiss of tear gas cartridges falling and releasing their contents around me.
I even hear my character coughing. His movement slows. I press harder on my controller, but I cannot make him run faster.
I cannot get away from these agents with guns.
One last chance, a glass window in a small building off to the side. I run toward it and throw my character into the air, hoping to hear the window shatter.
Instead there is a loud buzzer.
“Access denied,” the game says again.
That’s when the bullets hit me.
A vibration passes through the controller along with a mild shock that causes the muscles in my hand to contract.
I look down at my character’s stomach, blood seeping through his shirt.
I press the controller, but it’s like trying to move through wet concrete.
I glance up to see an unknown figure standing passively to the side, watching me. It’s the one from before, the one who was monitoring me.
My screen begins to dim.
The character turns and begins to walk away. I look at the back of his shirt through the encroaching haze. Every character has a name or a computer code imprinted on the back of their shirt.
Every character except his.
There is no name. His shirt is blank.
My screen goes black. There is the sound of wind, a low howl like a storm blowing through an empty field. A single word appears on the screen:
Terminated
A data block floats in and centers itself on the screen. These are the stats for my character, Daniel X.
Active player ranking: 14 out of 14
Chance of survival in an equivalent real-world scenario: 0%
Chance of survival in all scenarios: 32%
Universal ranking: 128 out of 128 statistical players
I’m not only dead, I’m dead last.
No matter.
Because in playing the game, I’ve seen a map of Liberty for the first time. Now I can find my way around.
Enough play. It’s time to get my mission on track.
I have to call Father and let him know where I am.
I take my iPhone from the desk. I glance at it and see there’s no service.
I think about how a group could accomplish electronic blocking in an environment like this. I imagine a primary device radiating from the center of the encampment, with additional devices, electronic repeaters, up in the mountains.
Up high. That’s where I’ll have to go to defeat the jamming and acquire a signal.
It’s late now, well past midnight. It’s time to use what I have learned from the game.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CALCULATED RISK.
That is what I am trained to assess. All actions carry risk. Stepping out of the house in the morning, walking on the street, getting into a car, flying. All of them are risky, but a normal person doesn’t see it that way. Because once the level of risk falls below a certain threshold, a normal person no longer sees the activity as inherently dangerous.
Not me. I know the truth.
All actions carry risk, but the risk must be assessed.
Leaving my room in the dark and walking through an armed encampment? Attempting to escape into the mountain, high enough that I can get a signal and call The Program?
Extreme risk.
Staying in my room without contacting The Program, knowing that I am unde
rtaking a mission that was not planned and for which I can receive no support?
Greater risk.
My decision, then, is simple. I have to talk to Father or Mother.
So I choose the lesser of the two risks and prepare to go outside.
I explore the room, looking for anything that might be helpful to me. When I open the closet, I find a row of forest-themed camouflage pants and brown T-shirts. I select something in my size and slip it on. I put my iPhone into a buttoned pocket on the camo pants. I make sure to wear my special glasses.
I walk down the hall to the door. I turn the handle. It’s locked, just as Lee said it would be. But I know the code. I type it into the digital pad.
A moment later the door lock clicks open, and I step outside.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE MOON HAS DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY BEHIND THE CLOUDS.
I walk out into a dark so profound that my eyes are useless.
No matter. I will use my other senses. I listen for the distant metallic pounding coming from the workshop. I track the way it bounces off the mountainside and triangulate that back to where I am standing. In this way, I can echo-locate the mountain and move toward it, making my way to the edge of the encampment.
I have one primary objective.
Ascend.
Ascend until I can get a signal on my iPhone, until I can inform The Program of my location, and together we can develop a contingency plan for this mission.
Ascend.
But I must remain undetectable as I do it, or my mission will end tonight.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
IN THE DARKNESS, I USE WHAT I HAVE LEARNED FROM THE GAME.
I head behind my building, walking silently across dirt and grass, my arms in front of me feeling for obstacles. Several times I note sentries moving in the darkness, but I drop into a crouch and wait for them to pass, moving on their assigned rounds.
The moon moves out from behind the clouds, and I can make out the great mass of the mountain in front of me. I see that I am near the perimeter, the open zone between the edge of the encampment and the forest on the other side. It looks like a clear shot into the forest, but I doubt it’s that easy.
I pause at the edge of the perimeter and study the scene before me.
The wind blows, picking up leaves from the forest and scattering them down into the open zone. I catch a glint of red light off one of the leaves.
I pick up a handful of dirt from the ground and rub my hands until it breaks up into fine particles. I move forward slowly, blowing dust in front of me as I go.
That’s when I see them, quadruple red lines marking an invisible laser perimeter. The lowest line is maybe seven inches off the ground, the rest spaced at eighteen-inch intervals above it. Too low to crawl under, too high to jump over. A system like this will link to a monitored computer somewhere inside a building. In a forest setting, a regular laser perimeter would be riddled by false alarms—falling branches, animals, any number of things could break the beam and cause an alert. This system must be sophisticated enough to screen out false positives, so if a raccoon runs across the line, it won’t trigger an alert that will call out the sentries.
I could take my chances and move through the beams low and fast, replicating the characteristics of an animal, but instead I blow another shower of dust, scope out the distance between the lowest two beams. If I do this right—
I back up several steps and I leap between the beams, flattening my body so I pass through without triggering the perimeter alarms. I roll up from my leap, then dart into the forest without hesitating.
I stop inside the tree line and listen. There are no guards, no shouts, no sound of a chase.
I am clear.
I move out now, zigzagging from tree to tree, not stopping until I know I am fully hidden by foliage. Then I pause to examine my surroundings, looking for the most viable path up the mountainside.
As I climb, I think about the idea of a central jamming unit radiating outward with repeaters placed in the forest around and above the camp. How high would those repeaters have to be in order to cap off all communication? At least as high as the tallest building, plus additional distance to overcome line of sight interference.
I estimate the height of the repeaters in the mountainside, and I move forward and up, working to ascend above them.
I’ve made it no more than ten meters when I hear a crunch in the woods below me.
I wait, listening.
A twig snaps, the sound coming from behind and below me. It’s not an animal. The pattern of movement is human.
Someone has followed me from the encampment. I don’t know who or how they’ve accomplished it, but I know.
I am being tracked.
I set off deeper into the woods, moving in a herky-jerky upward spiral, backing down and around my own tracks and making it as tough as possible on the person who is following me. An amateur will show himself quickly in a situation like this, either losing the track entirely or revealing himself without knowing it.
But whoever this is, he is not fooled by the spiral maneuver. He moves when I move, and stops when I stop with only the barest overlap.
I’m impressed. He’s good.
But I’m better.
When I start out again, I feign movement without going anywhere. I stay behind a tree, stepping in place, allowing my footsteps to get louder and softer, using different angles on the tree to bend the sound, drawing the person closer to me. A genius tracker might be able to discern what I’m doing, but anyone at a level below that will fall for it, eventually flushing himself out.
Half a minute later I hear footsteps approaching, and I see the outline of a figure with a hoodie pulled tight around his head.
He stops when he comes close, sensing something is amiss. This may not be the highest level of tracker, but he is close. He waits and he listens.
I allow the tiniest sound to escape, no more than the whisper of fabric against bark like a pant leg brushing against the base of a tree. I want to draw him toward me, let him think that he has located me.
I note caution in his steps as he changes position, circling back around and moving toward the source of the sound from a different angle, perhaps thinking he’s going to surprise me.
It’s a good move. Just not good enough.
I dart noiselessly to a nearby tree and I wait.
I count down the steps until he’s on top of me. Three, two—
The figure passes by, and I step out from behind and grab him, one hand around his chest, another at head level. I don’t mean to harm him, only take him down, neutralize any threat until I know who I’m dealing with. Then I will decide what comes next.
As I clamp down, he tries to spin away, and I feel something soft across his chest. Surprisingly soft.
A woman’s breasts.
I release my grip too quickly, and the figure spins back toward me.
“Let go of me!” Miranda says.
I see her face now, an angry scowl outlined by the hoodie, red hair tucked out of sight.
“You snuck up on me,” I say.
“You broke curfew and got out of camp,” she says. “You’re lucky it’s only me who snuck up on you.”
“What are you doing out here?”
“Following you,” she says.
We stand facing each other in the middle of the woods. She’s right that she could have called the guards, raised an alarm, prevented me from getting this far.
But she didn’t.
I remember her warning to me in the back of the truck when we had a flat tire. Why did she help me then, and why now?
She adjusts her jacket around her breasts.
“Did I hurt you?” I say.
She puckers her lips. “It’s a sensitive area,” she says, “but I’ll live.”
Her eyes track me in the darkness.
“I heard you pass by me in the woods outside of camp,” she says. “How’d you get out?”
“I
walked.”
“That’s impossible. You would have triggered an alarm.”
I shrug. “You got out without a problem, didn’t you?”
“I know how.”
“Then I guess I got lucky,”
“Twice in one night, huh?” she says.
“What do you mean?”
“First you grab a gun, then you get through a laser perimeter. You must be the luckiest guy in the world.”
If she wanted to turn me in, she would have done it already. So I play it brazenly, showing her the arrogant side of Daniel Martin.
I say, “Actually, I got lucky three times in one night.”
“What’s the third?”
“I’m in the woods with a cute girl.”
That stops her short. But only for a second.
She says, “You didn’t come out here for the hot singles scene. So why are you here?”
Just then my iPhone chimes. She glances toward my pocket.
“You’re trying to make a call!” she says, thinking she’s figured something out.
Most operatives would be tempted to lie and cover their tracks in a situation like this, but I’ve learned that the truth is the most powerful tool I have.
I take out the phone and hold it up. “You got me,” I say.
I glance at the screen, hoping it’s a return text from Father, but it’s a simple reminder about a school assignment that’s due Monday. The iPhone has been preprogrammed with the data of the fictional student named Daniel Martin.
“You know there’s no reception in camp,” she says, “so you snuck up here hoping to find a signal.”
I see her putting it together. They’re used to playing strategy games in this camp, solving riddles. Maybe I can use that to my advantage.
“You’re right. That’s why I’m here,” I say. “But who am I calling?”
“Let’s see,” she says, intrigued by the question. “You’re trying to make a call in the middle of the night, which is stupid. You sneak out of the compound to do it, risking getting thrown out. Also stupid. And you get caught, which is—”
“Stupid,” I say.
“Right. So I have to ask myself: What makes a guy do stupid things?”
