They had been able to stay level before, but were now tilted sideways as they passed through higher elevations. Frequent rockslides tugged at the track and threatened to drag it down.
Whenever the tracks slipped, Drogan started singing a nursery rhyme about a cradle falling. She'd never heard it before, but the words were surprisingly cruel for the intended audience. He seemed to break into the song whenever he got nervous.
Gabby was nervous, too. Her stomach and fists were clenched, but she kept a smile on her face as she didn't want the Frags to know.
Celia's pauses and obvious frustration didn't help. Michael explained that they neared the zone that patrols frequently passed.
Celia had even stopped and turned off the Caterpillar for a ten minute stretch. They waited in silence and Gabby kept expecting guys with guns to run out of the forest. She checked her system more than once to make sure she was not broadcasting her location during that ten minutes.
Eventually, they reached the ridge of a mountainside. They were on the north side of an angled slope that led to the peak. They hiked up another hill. The forest was unnaturally quiet on the way up. Gabby hoped it was their presence making the wildlife nervous.
A small silvery black bug rested on Gabby's shoulder. When she noticed it, she swore that its tiny black wings waved. Celia was smiling, so Gabby restrained the urge to smash it.
As they neared the ridge, Milton motioned for them to crawl. Drogan had to be pulled down with the others as he didn't understand why they had to get dirty. Gabby found it amusing since the big redhead had grease stains on his shirt and pants.
While the four of them elbow crawled to the edge, Celia stayed below, cross-legged and concentrating.
A brisk wind had rustled up from the south, waving the needled edges of the pines. Their deep greens faded to autumn's brilliance further into the valley, though many were losing their leaves.
Smack in the center of the valley, a wide lake twinkled like a bed of jewels. Between two clumpings of mountains behind the valley, a narrow pass lead to a broad plain stretching out toward the horizon.
The Frags each craned their heads in various directions as if they were watching invisible birds. Drogan's lips were working though no sound was coming out. She could guess he was repeating the nursery rhyme about babies and cradles.
"You know where those plains are?" Milton asked. His tone had the smug sarcastic tones that he overused. Gabby ignored it and answered the words alone.
"No, and I'm assuming you don't want me to pull up a map to find out?" She smiled.
Any map location would instantly broadcast their location. She hadn't seen any evidence of these patrols, but she didn't want to chance it.
Milton narrowed his eyes when he realized she was joking.
"That's the western edge of the Independent States," he said in a lecturing tone. It would have been more annoying had his voice not been so high and whiney. "Freeland, actually. The land of the double eagle. Everything is free, even the freedom."
Michael cleared his throat. "It's one of the larger independent states. Further east there's a whole cluster of smallish ones, each one doing its own thing."
"How do you know all this?" she asked.
"Projections," Milton said quickly, clearly cutting off Michael from answering. "Though we have to shield our broadcast and use a laser repeater to tap into their networks, we're able to explore some of those lands digitally."
"I've gone as far east as the Great Lakes," Michael interjected. "The strangest place I found was some weird walled town filled with kids that didn't even know they had eye-screens."
"Well I've been further east," Milton said. "Right up to the edge of the Old Colonies."
"They keep the old ways there," said Michael. "I'd like to visit in person."
Gabby expected Milton to add to his experience, but he seemed truly disappointed, which Gabby found odd. The two boys had been competing with their stories. Milton must have been unhappy with his experience or found something he hadn't expected.
"Is that what this is about?" Gabby asked. "You want to leave the GSA?"
"No." Milton rolled his eyes. "We like living in old farmhouses without power and fearing for our lives."
"Okay, I get your point," said Gabby. "Then why don't you leave?"
Milton squinted incredulously at her while far to her right, Drogan was whispering another nursery rhyme.
Michael nudged Milton with his hand. "Remember, she's using the LifeGame reality binder."
She'd never heard the term reality binder before, but the implications bothered her.
"Two reasons," Milton said. "The first you won't understand until you take this temporary reality blocker."
Milton held out his hand, upon which lay a golden pill. It wasn't really a pill. It was a program, that by "ingesting" she would trigger.
She took the pill and rolled it around her fingers. She hadn't come out all this way for nothing, shrugged and threw the pill into her mouth.
The illusionary pill's tactile impact didn’t extend to her tongue, but her eyes registered changes immediately.
The far ridgeline exploded in polygons and other visual artifacts. Geometric shapes ballooned out of the trees and mountainsides as if the soil was having a horrible allergic reaction.
Two morphing geometric shapes were slipping across the sky like a stone across the ice. They changed from spiky isomorphs to lumpy polygons, one moment to the next.
The temporary reality blocker was having a battle with her operating system. She'd seen minor graphics errors before, but never at a magnitude of what she was seeing across the valley.
Eventually, the battle settled down and the agitated polygons retreated into the ground. What was left made her jaw drop.
A menacing wall split the valley in half, disappearing to the north and south. Squat black towers bristling with sensors hunched at intervals along the stone wall. The only area free of the wall was the lake.
The two geometric shapes that had been slipping across the sky turned to flying machines. Each was a cluster of four turbines.
"Are the Independent States going to attack us?" she asked.
She knew she was wrong from their reactions.
Milton pointed into the valley. "Those towers have automatic guns on them. See which direction they're facing?"
The guns faced inward and the hovercraft patrolled the inside of the wall. The barrier was meant to keep people in, not the other way around.
"So that's why you haven't escaped yet," she said.
"That and we don't know where the losers of LifeGame are going," said Milton.
"You know why we're called the Frags, right?" Michael asked.
"I figured you mean to frag or kill someone in a shooter game?" She shrugged.
"Fragments." The tiny voice startled them. Celia had her face turned to them. Her features were so pale and smooth, like marble. The black bandage reminded Gabby of a statue she'd seen once that had a blindfolded woman holding a pair of scales.
"We're fragments," she continued. "Castaways. Not worthy to be a whole person. To be removed from society and...." Her voice quivered with weight.
Her head tilted as if she were a dog and her tiny doll-like mouth slipped open, just slightly.
"Patrol coming," said Celia.
The two boys crawled from the edge, while Drogan's nursery rhyme resumed.
Milton and Michael accessed their interfaces, clearly working in tandem. Gabby didn't know why they weren't running back to the Caterpillar.
Celia whispered. "Hurry."
Not wanting to disturb the boys, she asked Celia: "What are they doing?"
"Hiding us," she said.
She imagined they were doing the same thing the GSA had done with the barrier. She wished she could help.
Suddenly, Milton collapsed onto his side, growling frantic grunts. His face pressed into the ground, smearing dirt into his nose. His mouth gulped like a fish out of water.
Celia stayed cross-legged and Drogan, upon seeing Milton, jumped to his feet, but not towards the fallen boy. He started repeating portions of his nursery rhyme and wandering around in circles.
"Cradle will fall. Cradle will fall. Cradle will fall," Drogan repeated.
Unless Michael had hidden him, the tower might see Drogan wandering along the ridge. Gabby hesitated for a moment, deciding between helping Milton and making Drogan sit. Deciding Milton needed help first, she crawled to him.
His gulping and grunts were getting worse. She was afraid he was going to bite his tongue since it was hanging from his mouth. The purpose of the wooden rod with teeth marks suddenly made sense to her. She shoved it between his teeth.
Michael's hands frantically danced through the air as he worked.
"They come," said Celia, still sitting cross-legged.
Gabby tried to pull Drogan down but when she grabbed him it was like wrestling with a brick wall. She held on as he dragged her in a circle repeating: "Cradle will fall."
"Get him down," Michael said through gritted teeth. "I can't hide us if he's moving."
Gabby couldn't hear anything approaching, but she knew she didn't have much time. The only way she knew to stop Drogan quickly was a scissor leg trip she'd learned in her martial arts games.
Gabby threw herself at his legs, twisting around so Drogan's legs passed between hers. Then she rolled backwards, hitting the back of his knees with one leg, knocking him from his feet.
Drogan tumbled to his belly and immediately tried to get up. Gabby threw herself on top, whispering: "Stay down, it's okay."
"Cradle will fall."
"Shut him up," Michael growled.
Milton was still grunting and convulsing slightly, but it seemed the worst of his attack had passed.
"Patrol's here," said Celia.
Gabby tried to contain Drogan's movements as best as she could. She clamped one hand over his mouth and kept her knee pressed into the back of his crotch, nudging him if he tried to move. It was a painful lock but she couldn't risk a lesser hold.
Slipping silently over the trees, two hovercraft appeared and passed over. Black guns hung from their bellies like a mosquito's proboscis. As quickly as they'd come, they were gone.
Gabby found it hard to believe they hadn't seen the five of them laying on the open ground, or the Caterpillar further down the hill. Michael must have done the same trick that the GSA had, hiding the barrier.
With the hovercraft gone and Milton's seizure over, Drogan relaxed beneath her. She moved to Milton and cradled his head in her lap. The wooden rod had fallen from his mouth. He was hissing softly like he was having a bad dream.
She took her sleeve and wiped the muddy drool that had congealed onto his face.
"We're safe," said Celia.
Through the whole ordeal, the pale waif had just sat on her rear, and that bothered Gabby for some reason. She knew she'd alerted them to the danger and had been monitoring the situation, but she wished she would have helped more.
Eventually, Milton sat up, rubbing his face. His brown eyes were brimming with shame. "I'm sorry. It always seems to happen at the worst times. I know we were close to getting caught there."
Michael put his hand on Milton's shoulder and squeezed. "No problem, buddy. I know you can't help it.
Drogan had resumed his mumbled nursery rhyme, but he was no longer stuck on: "Cradle will fall."
"We should leave," said Milton.
Before they left the ridge, Milton removed the reality blocker. Gabby peered over the edge to see the wall had disappeared.
Not long after they had resumed their journey, they came across an old tent in a hidden hollow. Frayed strands of the camouflaged material flapped in the wind. Even before they approached it, Gabby sensed something very wrong.
The campfire in the middle appeared old as previous rains had washed mud into the small rock lined pit. Celia and Drogan stayed with the Caterpillar, and the other three went ahead to investigate.
Michael took a long stick and peeled back the front of the tent revealing two bloated corpses wrapped in sleeping bags. A small ponytail stuck out of the first bag.
Gabby held her hand over her nose as the stench of death reached her. Michael and Milton retreated, visibly retching. Gabby picked up the dropped stick and opened the tent back up.
When she was a young girl, she'd had a pet gerbil that had escaped into their vent system. When her father had finally found it weeks later, it'd partially decomposed and reeked of rot. The two bodies smelled ten times worse, but Gabby needed to know something.
Using her stick to roll the bag over, she saw the bag with the ponytail was littered with holes. She assumed bullets fired from above. She realized then how close they'd come to being killed. Celia's ambivalence annoyed her even more now.
Gabby rejoined the others. They wordlessly handed her a canteen. She took a long draw. Even a hundred feet from the campsite, she could still smell the rotten flesh. She didn't know if she'd ever be rid of the smell.
"Who were they?" she asked.
"Other Frags," said Michael.
She almost spit out her water. "You know them?"
"Don't know, and I’m not going to try and find out," said Michael. "There are hundreds, maybe thousands of Frags, living in the mountains away from the cities."
"Thousands?"
"Yeah. And that's not the first campsite like that we've found," said Michael. "They camped way too close to the wall."
"So it's not just the four of you," she said, the revelation exploding through her mind. "It's like a movement?"
Michael shrugged. "Most are just scared kids trying to survive a system that didn't want them anymore. We talk with a few other cells like us, but for the most part, we're alone. The distances are so great and the dangers are so real."
Gabby glanced up, expecting to see a hovercraft appear suddenly. The place between her shoulder blades itched.
The ride back to the farmhouse seemed abnormally quiet, even with all the racket from the Caterpillar. No one spoke, clearly thinking about the two dead kids in the tent.
Gabby wondered how Michael must feel, having given up his spot in society to be on the run with his sister, risking his life to save hers. It made her feelings about the Frags all the more complicated.
At least she would have a week to decide, though she was sure to be plenty distracted with Final Raid looming. Gabby checked her LifeScore out of reflex and nearly leapt up in surprise.
Her score was not a bland gray, but a crimson red. She was losing points and fast.
The Frags, lost in contemplation, didn't notice her reaction. Using secure channels she'd developed when learning how to hack, Gabby checked her messages.
Dozens waited for her, spiked with urgent tags. She had at least ten from her parents and another ten from Zaela and Dario. Even Administrator Bracket had tried to contact her.
The messages were projections, so Gabby selected the most recent one from Zaela and set it to private so the Frags wouldn't see it.
Zaela appeared halfway out of the bench Drogan sat upon. She wore tightly woven chain armor with gold hues that brought out the exotic tones of her bronze skin. An elaborate helmet with lions on each side was festooned on her head. Her sheet of silky black hair hung like a waterfall against her shoulders.
Zaela was beautifully twinked and Gabby had no idea why until her best friend spoke.
"Gabs, hope you make it back soon from where ever you are. I'm feeling majorly debuffed without you here. This is the last message I can send before going into the Final Raid. Please come home soon."
The tears welled up in Zaela's eyes, and before she could wipe them away, the projection disappeared.
"Oh no," she whispered.
They had started the final week of competition early and she wasn't there. Not only was she not gaining points, she was losing them, and fast.
Before she dropped connection, she checked her ranking. It didn't take her l
ong to figure that by the time she got back to school, she'd be in last place.
Chapter Eleven
When they reached the farmhouse, Gabby had to restrain the urge to run to the FunCar. She didn't want them to think something was wrong. She knew now the stakes were much higher than she'd previously envisioned.
Gabby didn't suspect that the Frags would harm her if they thought she would turn them in, but she didn't want to chance it. And she hadn't decided, anyway. First she would have to survive Final Raid.
"You said you'd get me back by morning," she said, pointing at the sun, now directly overhead.
"I said anything I thought would get you to stay," said Michael. "We got you back earlier than I thought we would."
Gabby threw her backpack in the FunCar. Milton handed her a piece of paper.
"Bet you haven't seen one of those very often," he said.
The paper had a crude map drawn on it. It looked like a child had made it.
She shrugged. "I read books. Real ones. And speaking of." Gabby pulled the owl book out of the backpack. "Have you ever seen this one before?"
Milton stared blankly. "Nope. Never seen it. Why do you ask?"
"Just curious," she asked.
Gabby wasn't sure why she thought the Frags might know about the book. Maybe she hadn't believed Michael when he said the owl wasn't theirs. It just seemed like a strange coincidence.
She would have to ask Blair if she knew about the Frags next time she saw her. If she got to see her again. Even if she survived Final Raid, she'd still have to survive her parents.
Though that might explain their willingness to work with LGIE. They probably suspected what happened to the kids that failed and didn't want that to happen to her. Her opinion of her parents dropped, realizing that they allowed this system to continue.
Gabby had one leg in the FunCar when she felt the heat from another person behind her.
Michael stood nearby, staring at his feet and glancing up at her between half-started words. A halo of bugs floated above them.
Choking on his words, Michael finally gave up and lunged forward, pressing his lips awkwardly against hers. Gabby turned slightly, startled by the movement, and the kiss missed her mouth, settling halfway between her lips and cheek.
Gamers - Amazon Page 7
