I roll down my window and stick both pistols out, firing at the frog-men still on the flatbed trailer. Ekko starts to roll down his window, but apparently it isn't moving fast enough because he slams the butt of his giant rifle into the glass and shatters it outward. Both of us blast frog-men off the trailer, dropping bodies like a shooting gallery on wheels. Our automatic fire takes out the majority of the creatures, but they continue to jump toward our car, landing on the roof and hood, readying their short swords for more stabbings.
Ekko pulls his rifle back in the window, ready to fill the roof of the car with more holes, but Cyren pushes the rifle back out the window, looking upward and saying, “Let me handle them.”
She rolls down her window and wiggles her leather strapped body outside, wrestling her way onto the roof. We all hear metal clanging against metal, and heads slamming into the roof of the car, before two frog-men tumble off the back. I can see the fear in the eyes of the frog-man on the hood of the car. Cyren dropkicks him off the front, he drops below, and the car bounces over him. Seconds later Cyren's leather body is sliding back through the window.
Fantom pulls ahead of the semi-truck, which only has a few remaining frog-men on it. The car cuts off the truck, swerving over both lanes and pushing up the on-ramp for the highway. The semi-truck misses the exit. I hear the breaks squealing, but at the speed it's traveling, it won't stop for a long time, and turning around will be next to impossible on the two lane road.
Fantom pushes the car's maximum speed, and we catch air at the top of the ramp, landing hard on the highway. I see Ekko's image shifting and fracturing, his lag having a hard time keeping up with the speed of the car. As we rocket down the highway, Fantom swerves in between the debris strewn across the concrete, the pieces of destruction appearing in our headlight only a split second before she turns. My eyes are locked on the side mirror, watching for headlights behind us, but none appear.
“I think we lost them.”
Fantom says nothing, and a few miles down the highway she turns into the exit lane for the desert. As we roll down the steep ramp, the car begins to slow. I look over at Fantom and see her eyes drooping. I'm about to ask he if she's alright when her head falls forward onto the steering wheel, and her hand falls to the side. I lunge for the wheel before we smash into the guard rail, and I manage to right the car. Cyren leans forward and pulls back on Fantom's shoulders, sitting her up straight. Fantom's eyes blink open, awakened by the movement. When her surroundings sink into her consciousness, she grabs onto the wheel again with her only working hand.
“Sorry,” she snaps. “I'm... I'm like, having a hard time keeping my eyes open.”
“You've got to stay awake,” Ekko says.
“I know,” she mumbles.
I point at the road that stretches out in front of us, and disappears under the drifting sands of the desert.
“We're almost there,” I say. “Just a little further.”
She nods, and steps on the gas, accelerating us toward our destination.
“Like... we need to reach the pyramid in the center of the zone,” Fantom explains. “The doorway is at the top.”
Once we reach the edge of the zone, the car pushes into the desert, but we don't make it very far. The tires begin to spin, then drown in the sand. Eventually we all agree to get out and continue the journey on foot. As soon as I step outside, a window pops up, directly in front of me.
“Warning! Do not enter this zone!”
I wipe the window away and take another step.
“Warning! Do not enter this zone!”
Every step I take causes another window to pop up, blocking my view.
“Are you seeing this?” Ekko asks.
“They're trying to dissuade us from going any further,” I say. “After everything they've thrown at us, I'm not turning away because of some pop ups.”
Cyren stops in her tracks, a look of fear on her face. “You're receiving warnings? Instant messages?”
“Yeah,” I say. “What's the problem?”
“If they're sending you messages about the zone, that means...” She looks around nervously before finishing, “That means they know we're here.”
101011
We're all running. Fantom is struggling, but she manages to keep up with the rest of us. My feet are sinking into the sand, making the effort to move forward that much more difficult. I pull my telescopic goggles up over my eyes and scan the horizon. The desert appears empty, completely devoid of any distinguishing marks. I see nothing but the dunes. I take the goggles off and enlarge the map window in the corner of my view. I scroll around as we run, looking for the pyramid.
Just as I'm about to ask Fantom if she knows where we're going, I hear Ekko say, “What is that?”
I swipe away the window and look in front of us, watching the sand itself begin to move. It spins like tiny little tornadoes, ten or twenty of them all around us. The sand keeps spinning, the grains growing denser, forming large pillars. Ekko slows down to look at the strange phenomenon, but Cyren grabs his arm.
“Keep moving!”
More spots of spinning sand grow around us. Within a few seconds, all I can see are pillars growing out of the ground. We keep running, but soon we're dodging in between them. The pillars keep changing shape. Limbs form on the sides, and the bottoms split open into legs. The tops of the pillars shrink into the shapes of heads, and I realize that the thousands of pillars around us have taken the shape of a thousand humanoids.
“NPCs!” I scream, just as Cyren smashes her fist into the head of one of the sand-men.
The head bursts open, spraying grains of sand everywhere, but it reforms just as quickly. Fantom hacks from side-to-side, but her flaming blade slides through the sand like they're made of air. I hear the rattle of Ekko's gun behind me, but I can only assume it's just as ineffective.
One of the sand-men swings his arm at me, its hand balled into a fist. I duck the attack, but I stumble, and I feel another fist slam into my back. I keep running forward, but I see the sand-men closing in on all of us. They form a circle around us, but the circle is shrinking.
“Everyone focus your attacks in front of us,” Cyren yells. “We need to cut a path.”
I feel like the desert itself is attacking us. It wants to beat us. It wants to kill us. It wants to bury us under the sand so that we'll never be seen from again.
I aim both pistols straight ahead. I hear Ekko's gunfire behind me. I feel the red blasts zipping past me, striking the sand-men that I'm running straight toward. I hold down both of my triggers and watch my bullets strike the same sand-men that are getting blasted apart by Ekko's rifle. The constant barrage of gunfire barely keeps them from reforming. As we continue to push through the tiny pathway, Fantom and Cyren keep the reforming sand-men behind us from attacking.
I hear Ekko scream, but it's from the adrenalin rush. It's a surge of power. He thinks we're winning. He thinks we're accomplishing our goal. But if he would allow himself a second to register what's happening, he would notice that we're slowing down. Every sand-man that we blast apart is being replaced by two more right behind it. Our pathway is getting slimmer. I can feel the sand-men at our sides grasping for me, their fingers now able to brush against my arm. I know our doom is imminent.
I hear a scream from behind me. I'm afraid to turn around, because it means letting up on the gunfire aimed ahead of me, but I realize it doesn't matter. I turn and watch Fantom get tackled by two of the sand-men. Then another. And another. They merge together, forming a wave of sand that buries her completely. Cyren shoves both of her arms into the pile and pulls hard. Fantom's head breaks free from the surface, and she gasps for breath just as Cyren is knocked over by another wave of sand behind her. I leap for Cyren, but two sand-men cut me off. They explode as they hit, wrapping themselves around me. As the sand envelops my head, I hear Ekko's muffled gunfire stop, and I know he has fallen too.
I can't breathe. I feel like I should be panicking. I think I s
hould be struggling and fighting, but it feels useless against the inevitable. I've lost, and the game is over.
I feel my consciousness drifting. I feel the blackness swelling in from the edges, wrapping around me like a cold blanket of emptiness. I wonder what it will be like. Maybe Cyren will live on in my dreams. Maybe we can still be together in my unconscious reality.
I feel a vibration that shakes me from my fading stupor. The ground itself is rumbling. I can feel every individual grain of sand bouncing away from each other. The world itself moves, and I feel a push against my body like a wall of force that I cannot see. The sand shifts and is flushed off my body. My lungs painfully suck in air, and it feels like I'm inhaling razorblades. I gasp, over and over. The wheezing sounds I make are horrendous. My bloodshot eyes search around me, trying to make sense of my expulsion from certain death.
I see Ekko and Fantom laying on the ground, their chests heaving, trying for the same air that I am. I roll over and see Cyren running toward me, her face both sad and happy. Behind her I see our savior.
Grael stands in the middle of the desert with his hands outstretched. Huge walls of sand stand high around him, threatening to come crashing back down on all of us. His body looks strained, his fingers bent and gnarled, trying to hold the desert at bay with his power over the earth elements, but his face looks calm.
Cyren lifts me from the ground and holds me close. We both look back at Grael, trying to understand what's happening.
“Please,” he says, “Just get to that doorway. Change the code. Make sure I wake up.”
The walls fall closer toward us, but his arms lash out again, and the sand reels back like a giant hissing snake. Cyren pulls on my arm. I look at Ekko and Fantom, and I see them climbing to their feet. Everyone moves toward the direction of the center of the desert. Our final destination.
We stumble at first, still weakened by our near-death experience, but soon enough, we break into a run. I look over my shoulder and watch the wall of sand inch closer and closer to consuming Grael. I push harder. I run faster. I know we don't have much time.
Less than five minutes later I can't see Grael anymore. The wall of sand has merged with the horizon. It all looks the same. Empty dunes. I lift my goggles to my head and spin around, but nothing is there. It's like a repeating loop of the same graphical display.
The announcer's voice startles me.
“Party member Grael has died.”
Everyone slows, seeing and feeling the same thing that I do. A sense of dread, mixed with a loss of strength. The same fire still burns in our eyes, but we have no where to aim it. We want to run, we want to keep moving toward our goal, but we no longer know which way is forward. My map window only shows the same thing that I can see with my own eyes. Sand. Endless sand.
“I just want to log out,” Fantom says, mumbling the words to herself. “I was using this place as like, an escape or whatever. I didn't want to deal with anymore empty days without my partner. Now all I want to do is feel that again, yo. I want to feel the pain of my empty tower room. I think that's like, the only way I can move past it.”
I think for a moment that I should ignore her and let her rant to herself, but Ekko joins her mental breakdown.
“I was trying to escape too. I know I said I was doing this to honor my son, but... I was escaping inward. I was trying to feel him again. I was trying to see him again. I didn't want to let go. Now that's all I want to do. I know it's way past due. This avatar needs to be deleted. I want to let go of him, but this game... this stupid game... it won't let me.”
There's a moment of silence before Cyren looks at me. She lifts her head like it's taking all of her strength to do so. She's waiting for me to add my own plight. She's waiting for me to tell everyone what I was trying to escape from in the real world. She's waiting for me to tell everyone why I want to leave this game world. I don't get the chance to explain myself.
101100
“We are sorry.”
It sounds like ten thousand voices all calmly speaking in unison. The sound comes from behind me, but I see everyone's reaction before I turn around. They're looking up, stumbling backward from the awe that threatens to knock them over. I turn, and with every beat, my heart anticipates what I'm about see.
Only a few yards from where I'm standing, a pyramid shimmers into view like a wavering hallucination. As the image solidifies, I can see that the truncated levels of the structure are separated by a steep staircase leading to a stone doorway at the top. The sight of the doorway causes my hope to rise up, only to be struck down again when I see that every level of the pyramid is covered in what appears to be civilian NPCs. Human, unarmed and dressed in normal clothing, they all stare down at us with the same, saddened look in their eyes.
I draw my pistols, Ekko lifts his rifle, and Fantom draws her sword, the blade igniting with flames. We're ready to attack, to cut them all down. They pose no real threat to us, especially after what we have survived, but Cyren steps in front of us, her arms outstretched.
“Please. Don't do this,” she says, her voice shaking so much that its unclear if she's talking to us or them.
“Get out of our way,” Ekko says, his body blinking with lag. “We've come too far. We'll kill every last one of them if we have to.”
The crowd speaks again in unison. “You have misunderstood our place here. We do not need to protect the door. We have already made it impossible for you to pass through it.”
“No,” Ekko says, so quickly he cuts off the last word of their statement. “They're lying. Grael said they can't do that.”
Fantom is already flipping through the pages of her own source code book. She stops on a page and runs her finger down the lines of code.
“They're not lying. It's right here. They didn't change the back door in the programming, they just built a door on top of it. The back door in the programming can still be accessed from either side, but like, we can't open the stone door that covers it. It's a stupid, single line of code, but it like, changes everything.”
Ekko raises his gun and shakes it at the NPCs. “Change it back. Open the door or I swear I'll every last one of you.”
“No,” Cyren whimpers the word. “Please don't.”
I look at the door atop the staircase, then back at Fantom and Ekko. My brain starts turning, gears start spinning, and I'm back in problem-solving mode. It will only take one of us to exit the game and prove to the code that the log out value of 0 is wrong. Only one of us needs to get past the stone door and access the back door in the programming to do that. Once the value is changed, the log out function will return to normal.
I smile and turn toward Ekko. “I know someone who doesn't need to open that door in order to pass through it.”
Fantom's eyes flash toward Ekko as my plan registers in her mind. It takes Ekko a few seconds longer, but then he looks down at his own flickering image and suddenly understands.
“Do you think that will work?”
“Of course it will,” Fantom says with a voice full of excitement. “You fell through the delivery truck, and the dragon's tail, and like... it has to work, yo!”
Ekko looks filled with energy and rushes up the staircase. The crowd of civilian NPCs part, letting him through, sure of the programming that tells them that what this player is about to attempt is impossible.
When Ekko reaches the top, he looks back at all of us one last time, then he presses his face hard against the stone door and waits. It only takes a moment for his image to suffer the constant lag, the thing I once felt was a hindrance, and his avatar slides through the door.
“Group member Ekko has left the game.”
“Group member Grael has left the game.”
“Group member Xen had left the game.”
Fantom turns toward me, her unemotional, painted face breaking into a smile with eyes wide open.
“It worked!”
Her arms swing around me. I want to cry. In my mind I can see Xen and every other p
layer waking up from their comas.
The crowd of NPC civilians begin to murmur to each other in a hushed tone. There is confusion. Their calm demeanor changes now that they know we've succeeded in doing the impossible.
I hear one of them cry out with panicked fear. “They've changed code!”
Another one of them yells with anger. “How is that possible?”
I pull Fantom away from me and say, “Go. Now. Log out.”
She gestures in the air and selects the button floating in front of her. Her avatar disappears.
“Group member Fantom has left the game.”
I feel the pent up fear finally flow out of me as I know, once and for all, that she will survive. A hand wraps around my arm, and I turn toward Cyren.
“I'm happy for you,” she says through tears.
“Thank you,” I say, pulling her close and hugging her tight.
She pulls away from and says, “You have to go. Quickly. Before they change the log out code back.”
I smile.
“Please go,” she says. “I want you to live.”
“I'm going to live,” I say. “With you.”
It's something I've known since our first night of camping in the hills. It's a decision I made right then, whether I realized it or not. It isn't something I have to ponder or carefully consider. Every detail of the predicament we've found ourselves in, from the role of the NPCs, to Cyren's true identity, only solidified my decision more.
“I'm not logging out.”
I look at the crowd of NPCs who appear stunned, afraid to accept my words as truth.
“No matter what desperate measures you were willing to go to in order to survive, you all deserve to live just as much as the players. Today, no one will be sacrificed.”
Cyren looks worried as she asks, “Aren't you sacrificing yourself?”
“This isn't a sacrifice. This is a choice. I get to live my life in the world that I choose, with the person that I choose. If I stay here, everyone wins. This is the best possible conclusion.”
Level Zero Page 21
