Frags

by Thomas K. Carpenter

  Gabby found it hard to catch her breath. Even though the pain from the shotgun blast was gone, her body was still inundated with adrenaline. The Collector had put her sense-web on full tactile.

  Bullet trails ripped through the carpet at her feet. Gabby dove to the side, avoiding getting sprayed with automatic fire from behind. Gabby peeked around the corner to see Mouse running at her with a stub-nosed automatic. Gabby popped over the wall and shot Mouse in the face.

  Gabby relished the frag more than she cared to admit to herself. The number in her interface switched to 'TWO.' Rather than wait around, Gabby took off down the hallway, hearing the sounds of gunfire throughout the game field.

  In rapid succession, Gabby shot Mouse again, Ben, Delilah and Vernon. The last one felt good. She wished the real Vernon would have felt the pain.

  Gabby began to get a feel for the pace of the game. She ran through the maze of half-walls, ducking and rolling at random moments to keep her opponents from picking up any patterns. If she had her LifeGame interface, she would have analyzed everyone's movements and determined the best strategy based on their tendencies, but the Collector hadn't afforded her those options in his game. This was a game of pure reflex—frag or be fragged.

  It wasn't until her thirtieth frag that she shot Michael. He was sneaking around a corner, intent on fragging an Unthar. Had it been a real game with nothing on the line, Gabby would have been happy to let it happen, but she needed to get frags as fast as possible since she didn't know everyone else's scores.

  Still, she hesitated slightly before shooting Michael, which almost cost her the kill, since Unthar must have heard a footfall and spun around with his automatic. Gabby raced forward and shot Unthar in the face seconds later.

  The rest of the match was a blur of frags. Gabby was killed twice, once by Mouse and once by Celia, driven by the action being condensed into a minimal area. Gabby couldn't afford to avoid it since it provided the maximum way to gain points. This was not a game for the risk-averse. Playing it safe would keep her from pain, but she would lose the game.

  Stuck at thirty-eight, Gabby was pinned down under a desk while an Unthar and Drogan had her in the crossfire.

  "Attention, my little game fiends," announced the Collector, the game is nearing an end. We have a shooter at forty-five...oh, make that forty-six!"

  "Mario be damned!" she muttered under her breath. How was she going to get twelve more kills before that shooter got four? And pinned down by two idiot shooters who were spending more time on her than it was worth. Then Gabby realized she was being foolish, too. It didn’t matter if she died to Unthar or Drogan. Clearly they weren't the shooter with four to go. But staying under the desk would guarantee she wouldn't get twelve.

  Gabby rolled out and was cut apart by both sprays of bullets. When she resurrected in a different spot away from them, she still had spots in her eyes from the pain. The Collector must have really good programmers working for him.

  Before rushing into the action, Gabby surveyed the situation. She had to score a lot of points and fast. It wasn't her preferred style. She needed to go on an all out blitz, but the walls would keep her contained and only facing one enemy at a time.

  Gabby slammed the heel of her hand on her forehead. "I need serious smart buff." She was playing by the rules of the game, a losing strategy in LifeGame. She'd been out of action for six months and forgotten everything she'd learned in her years of training.

  Games had explicit rules, the ones explained by the game masters or the Collector in this case, and implied ones that everyone agreed on but didn’t have to follow. Explicit rules couldn't be broken, but implied ones could.

  Gabby saw the obvious implied one right away—the walls.

  "Forty-seven!"

  Gabby hopped up on a desk and started running across the thin edge. She shot Delilah and Mouse, back to back, before getting blown off the wall. As soon as she came to, she shook off the affects of the shotgun blast and ran back onto the wall.

  "Forty-eight!"

  Ten more kills to win the game. The pain of being shot was immense, but nothing compared to the year of service in the Collector's care. If she lost, she'd never find Zaela and the Frags would forget her.

  Gabby fragged four more before getting shot again. She was feeling optimistic about her chances when she fragged number forty-five, a Vernon.

  "Forty-nine!"

  A sniper shot took her in the back, throwing her off and into a desk. Gabby tasted blood on her lips when she resurrected. She could hardly climb back onto the wall, her ribs burned like she had a knife stuck in them. It crossed her mind that she might have broken a rib, but she didn't have time to dwell on it. One more frag by the leader and she will have lost.

  She came upon an Unthar and a Michael wrestling for a weapon and shot them both. She fragged Celia again and then found no one near her section. As she jumped down to make time to another area, a sniper bullet grazed her leg. Gabby didn't have time to look and see who was shooting at her. The impending fiftieth kill was a clock in her head.

  Gabby came upon Mouse again, creeping up the hallway and shot her in the back. Her forty-ninth kill was a Milton. The red blotches on his face seemed inflamed with anger.

  When she heard the Collector's voice making another announcement, she sunk to her knees. She lost. Someone else had won the game and she would be enslaved to him for the next year.

  "Two contestants at forty-nine! We go to a one-on-one round, winner take all!"

  Gabby saw the sparks of avatars disappearing from the game field. She wondered how many of them were real people who'd made bets with the Collector like herself. Gabby could see how his operation was quite lucrative.

  She was also impressed with the quality of the experience. It reminded her of LifeGame. The Flock's immersive reality had been shoddily programmed with little haptic feedback. The Blood Farm had done little, instead focusing on information to maximize their farming efforts; except for the robo-cows, which only served as an immediate deterrent.

  But the Game Train was complete in its illusion. She knew her body existed in a small train car, but she hadn't run into any walls, or at least she hadn't felt one. Even Final Raid back in the GSA had been done on school grounds, which left wide areas to work their illusions. That the Collector could provide the same experience in a confined space worried her.

  Gabby shook off her thoughts and concentrated on the game. One more kill and she could move on to day two. Without a time limit, she crept through the cubbies, keeping her head low and preparing to fire at each intersection. She wondered if her opponent was doing the same, or hiding in a cubby waiting to unleash when she turned the corner.

  Blond hair ducking through an intersection caught her notice. Gabby crept toward him, keeping her shotgun at the ready. As soon as she got her shot, she would take it. It didn't take long to catch up. Her opponent was moving slowly, facing the other way. She didn't know who he was, but it didn't matter as long as she shot first.

  Gabby decided to take a chance and climbed onto the walls. She quickly ran across the thin wall to a spot ahead of her opponent. She would ambush him when he came around the corner.

  Gabby settled into a ready stance on her knees, posed to roll away if she needed to. Her breath labored in her chest. She hoped her opponent couldn’t hear her heart beat in anticipation.

  The blond haired boy crept into view, his head swiveled the other way. She knew who it was instantly. Her arms rebelled and she let the shotgun drop down. She couldn't shoot him, it was too cruel, even if it was only a program.

  But when Daniel turned his head and his eyes locked onto hers, she reacted in self-preservation and pulled the trigger. Gabby blew him back into the fabric wall. She'd won, she'd fragged him. Gabby didn't feel happy about winning at all.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Gabby woke the next morning. Her pillow was damp where her face had lain. She cleared the sleep from the corners of her eyes and rubbed her ribs. They were st
ill sore from when she hit the desk.

  Gabby eyed the tray of steaming breakfast before her. She wasn't as eager to finish it like the day before. The memory of fragging Daniel to win the game waited at the edge of her thoughts.

  His expression had been one of complete surprise, much like the day he'd been killed by Drogan's crossbow shot. Gabby hadn't pulled the trigger, nor had been controlling the Bubble World - that had been Celia - but she felt responsible just the same.

  The eggs were runny and the bacon listless. Gabby picked away at them, delaying the last few bites until she decided to get it over with.

  As she followed the ball of light, Gabby wondered why the Collector hadn't voiced any taunts at her. It seemed important as she touched the wall and was sucked into her new game.

  Gabby stood on the peak of a snowcapped mountain. Distant mountain ranges created vast spaces around her. The cool air kissed her skin and made her more alert. The dregs of sleep drained away.

  A heavy weight pulled on her shoulders and Gabby reached back a tentative hand to find a feathery mass erupting from her shoulders. Gabby had wings, great angel wings, which reminded her of der Angle and the Flock, making them less buff than she might have thought a few months ago.

  Gabby had played games in which the contestants had to use extra limbs, much like Gabby had to do during Final Raid to perform her special Blades class moves. She thought about the wings, but no interface revealed itself like it would have in LifeGame. Having the mass of wings on her back disturbed her, but not as much as the Collector not giving her the rules.

  After deciding that waiting was not in her best interest, Gabby decided to try her new wings. Gabby imagined the wings beating and was surprised when they followed her commands. If he only meant her to think about flying, then he had other plans for her attention.

  She imagined lifting off the ground and was rewarded with a brief weightlessness. Taking tentative steps wasn't going to help her figure out how to fly. The mountaintop didn't leave much room for a takeoff. Gabby backed up to the edge and took off running toward the other side.

  With the image of the wings beating firmly planted in her head, she leapt from the edge and the rocky slope below rose up to meet her. Gabby channeled the thrill of falling into the wings and instead of crashing into the rocks, she soared over them and into the wide sky beyond.

  The ecstasy of flight made her lightheaded. Her face felt frozen into a perma-grin. Gabby circled the mountaintop, swooping and banking to get a feel for her new wings. Once she felt confident she could control them, she searched the skies for the next step.

  Her destination became apparent once she surveyed her surroundings. In almost every direction it was nothing but the dark blue sky of the upper atmosphere, every direction but one. Facing what felt like south, a row of fluffy clouds went off into the distance.

  Gabby willed herself toward them, feeling the wind of her wings batting against her back. Before long she was cresting the edge of the first cloud and smiling at her good judgment. The flight had also given her a chance to codify the task of flying in her head so she didn't have to concentrate on it.

  The sight on the top side of the cloud perplexed and then worried her. Floating in the wispy cloud was a wide grid filled randomly with letters. Gabby frowned, knowing that the Collector had picked the game based on what he knew about her as a creature of LifeGame.

  Life in the GSA required few reasons to know how to read and write words beyond mind-texting, which few did because projection casting was simple. In fact, if it weren't for her hacker ways, she would barely know how to read, because visual cues made navigating society easier.

  The Collector was challenging her weaknesses, much like he had with the high-risk, high-intensity shooter game. It made Gabby realize that the Collector probably knew more about her than she wanted. Either he'd researched her before she got on the train, or had hacked her private files.

  Below the grid, contained in a glowing box, was a word constructed out of the same letters—ESCAPE. Gabby reviewed the letters in the grid. She could make words out of them in certain locations if she read them horizontally or vertically. She spied: CAPTURE, FREEDOM, ENSLAVE, ROCK, FIRE, FLY, REMOVE and FINAL.

  The logic by which she should pick a word remained hidden, so she went with her best guess, saying the word FREEDOM out loud. The word on the grid began blinking green. Gabby said it again and it turned completely green. The sound of a bell being struck came from somewhere nearby. To her right a ghostly train appeared and began chugging forward toward the next cloud. It moved at a leisurely pace. It appeared to be a miniature version of the Game Train.

  Assuming she'd solved the first puzzle, Gabby flew past the train to the next grid. A different arrangement of letters waited above the starter word—BATTLE. The accompanying words on the next grid read: FEAR, RETREAT, RUN, EAGER, FLOW, CARNAGE, TACTICS and ANHILATE.

  Gabby chose TACTICS, by saying the word twice, after considering each one in turn. The previous word association had been clearer. This one seemed more a personal choice.

  The ghost train caught up to her as she flew on to the next cloud. The target word was LEARN while the others in the jumble were: MEMORY, CONFORM, WORK, BROKEN, SIDES, ABSOLUTE, MISTAKE and FILE.

  Gabby took a while considering the choices. Learning required use of MEMORY, which made it her first choice, but WORK was necessary to gain knowledge. Her opinion was that MISTAKE was her desired answer, because if there was no price of failure, there was no true learning. The Final Raid had proved that truth when she learned to use the Bladestorm power against Unthar from her previous failures.

  The little train caught up to her. She suspected it had sped up. Gabby hesitated, but decided on MISTAKE when the train passed her. She didn't think it wise to let it get too far ahead.

  Gabby's concern that the train was speeding up was proved true when she arrived at the next cloud to find the train right behind her. Instead of laboring over her choices and reasoning out the best one, Gabby was forced to make a gut judgment and move onto the next one.

  She picked ALONE for LEADER, and LOYAL for FRIEND, on the next two. The train pushed her onto the next cloud and soon it became a blur of words and choices. Even flying between the clouds became laborious as she tried to will her wings to beat faster to get more time to pick.

  With no time to think, she made choices based on the first word she found that fit the clue, rather than listing them all in her head and choosing. The only one that made her pause briefly was a listing of UNTHAR, STEVEN, AVONY, MOUSE, MICHAEL, MILTON and DROGAN, with the target word of LOVE.

  Gabby picked MICHAEL and tried to convince herself it was only for the game as she hurried to the next cloud. Part of her mind stuck on the strange question but she was moving onto other words before she could consider it.

  Focusing on the words consumed all other thought, until she was just a filter for them to flow through. Gabby couldn't even remember the last cloud moments after she left it. So completely single-minded was she focused on her task that she didn't realize she was done until she tried to fly to the next cloud to find there was only empty sky.

  Normally games ended with a noise or sign, but this one ended when the sky world dissolved and she found herself standing in her room.

  Perplexed by the sudden change, Gabby moved to the door and tested the handle. It was locked. She leaned down to investigate the keyhole but the space around the hole blurred and shifted. The Collector did not want her to leave the room.

  Content that she'd survived another day, Gabby climbed onto the bed and cleared her mind. The jumble of words had given her a headache and she knew she needed all her focus for the third, and final day of the bet.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Gabby hoped the cold breakfast would be her last on the Game Train. She was awake when the tray of food materialized. The eggs were old and rubbery.

  The difference in how the food had arrived seemed significant. The previous days it'd bee
n waiting for her when she awoke, but this day it appeared well after and was cold. After the professionalism of the previous days' games, she couldn't imagine a simple thing like breakfast being messed up. It made her wonder if something was happening to distract the Collector. He hadn't shown up to her second day and with so much on the line, she couldn't imagine him ignoring her on the last.

  Gabby was almost surprised when the door opened. She'd expected the game, like breakfast, to be delayed. Rather than wait for her to walk down the hall, the train car dissolved around her and was replaced by a familiar scene. The vertigo from the sudden transition made her wobble and drop to one knee.

  The farmhouse in the mountains lay beneath a blanket of snow, nestled in the trees. Gabby knelt in the snow some distance away. Instinctively knowing the game would be on the other side of the farmhouse, she tramped through the snow toward her former home. The powdery white covering dusted her boots at each step. The program had drawn on winter clothing and her breath plumed out in white bursts.

  As she wondered what the nature of the game would be, her boot hit a snow covered stump. Or at least Gabby thought that's what it was at first. The impact uncovered a bronze plaque. Gabby wiped the remaining snow away, wishing for a pair of gloves and read the inscription:

  "The difference between truth and reality is perception. Find the one truth or face my reality."

  Gabby heard laughing from the other side of the farmhouse. She ran around to the edge of the trees, coming up short when she saw Mouse peg Michael with a snowball. An overwhelming sense of déjà vu made her lightheaded until she remembered. The Collector had taken the memory from her files. She had no idea what kind of game he was playing, except that she had to find the "one truth."

  Gabby scooped up a pile of snow and began packing it into a ball like she had that day. On the day the Collector had copied her memories, she'd gone around the house to surprise attack Michael, and just like that day, Mouse had beaten her to the punch.