by Dawn Chapman
Drayk and Leenz moved in closer to listen in on the exchange. Bobby’s eyes widened as she inspected Max’s eyes. “If there is a way I can believe you, I’d really like to see something from these nanites you say are in your head.”
Drayk instructed Max. Their double conversation here helped Leenz as her heart rate increased, and her breathing faltered. This could have been it for her mate. She wanted him home but not at the cost of a real kid’s life.
Drayk grinned. This was indeed one of the first things he’d thought of. No one would believe a kid, or even another human if they couldn’t see proof.
Max spoke clearly. “Ask them to turn my eyes any colour you like.”
Bobby’s face changed, “Really? It’s not you? With just augmented eyes?”
Max picked up a scanning device, said, “No. Here. You check the integrity. See? There’s nothing there.”
The woman leaned in. “Go ahead then, turn orange.”
Drayk focussed his own mind and turned to the computer system, “Max, this is up to you now. You’re in control remember.”
Max cursed under his breath. Then his eyes closed. Within a second, they were open again, looking into the dusky green of Bobby’s. Her face changed, “How about blue? Do sky blue, but not the iris, just the whites.”
Max closed his eyes again and breathed in deeply. When he opened them, his whole vision had changed; now everything was tinged blue.
“Looks like you’ve been eating spice out of that old movie, forget its name.” She laughed. “Amazing. Right. I believe you. If Pierce is alive, they have him somewhere. We’ll find him.”
Drayk sighed as he felt Leenz’s hand on his shoulder giving him a squeeze. “Thank the Gods.”
Drayk nodded, but Max couldn’t see this. “Pierce may have a chance now, which means we all might.”
Pierce
Pierce sat with Cale and Gerard, discussing training techniques. Cale was more interested in the small conversations he’d had with Drayk and wanted him to try his best to emulate them.
Pierce’s biggest problem was the alien guards who wanted him to train with the others, but his wheelchair kept getting in the way. Pierce could fight the best with any weapon in-game. When I have legs. Now, he cursed his accident and wished he’d had the guts to get the operation to have transplanted legs.
Cale’s voice was the only thing that brought him around. “Come on. You can do this. Learn. Move. Fight. It’s not a disability; you’ve got to use that chair to your advantage.”
Cale was right. Pierce knew it.
The guards also watched him closely now, as if they knew something else was going on. They waited for him to drop the ball, try to escape. But Pierce wouldn’t. He wanted to know what the room was, what they were fighting for.
Cale got called to it first. His worry showed, big time. Pierce tried to calm him, but it wasn’t working. At all.
“We need you to go in there, do this to get all the information you can on the process.”
Cale held his head high. As the door moved, someone called his number. He smiled once, then was gone.
Pierce didn’t like the waiting, he really didn’t. He was the one now, wheeling himself around and around, waiting to hear something, anything.
Then he saw it: Cale’s body being brought out into the corridor. They wheeled him past on a trolley into what Pierce could only hope was a medical bay. His face was battered, bruised. Blood running a trail behind the trolley.
Pierce held his breath and waited outside the room. There were guards who came and went. Scientists also, doctors he could only presume. He tried to chase after one, to get into the room, but they blocked him. That along with the constant questions finally got him an answer as one doctor finally turned to speak to him. “He’s alive. Healing with the meds and mages. But he’s a long way to go. Get back to your room. Train, if you wish to see him again. Hope he heals right, stronger. Or they’ll euthanize him.”
What? Pierce didn’t actually ask. They couldn’t do that! He had to get out, quick. Get help for Cale. There must be a way to get him out of this.
Pierce returned to his room, his mind working overtime. He needed to work on the one thing he could, his body’s nanites.
Still undetected, learning, working with me. But his control lacked, and he knew it.
Practice was all he could do. If he could, Pierce wanted them to invade this game’s systems. Maybe—He checked his stats, but he wasn’t a master like Drayk. He had to learn to be. He wouldn’t let Drayk down. Too many other people to help who deserved to live.
“I’ll not fail you, all of you.”
The master nanite inside Pierce’s system responded with a click.
“Yes?” it asked. Its monotone voice very strange in his ear.
“I need something from you. I need to change some programming. Will you trust me?”
The master nanites lights blinked, and the side of his metallic skin opened up revealing the internal systems he needed access to.
Pierce lost his concentration as the real world flooded his system.
A knock came at the door. Gerard. “Cale’s back in his room. He asked for you.”
“You think he’s okay?” he asked Gerald over the back of his chair as they rolled down the corridor.
“I don’t know; he’s asking for you. That’s all the guards say.”
Pierce wanted to do the one thing he couldn’t before. “Got something sharp? I need to cut him, his hand and mine. Without them seeing.”
Gerard slowed the chair down. “A small razor blade? Think that could do it?”
“I don’t know, but I have to try it.”
Gerard pushed him on again and slid a stolen item down Pierce’s shoulder, then into his hand.
Pierce gripped the blade, purposely cutting his flesh. He ordered the nanites, Don’t heal me, not just yet. He needed access.
“Stand by,” he ordered. “I need a few hundred to scale the pathways and enter the bloodstream of another.”
“Affirmative,” the reply came back.
Pierce waited for them to enter the room. He stayed by his friend’s bedside. He then went to lift his hand and take it in his, the blade cutting in deep enough to get blood but not to make him curse. Pierce held on, kept their hands together. Pulling Cale in close. Pretending to kiss the side of his cheek.
“There’ll be none of that, here,” the guards separated them. Pierce was pulled away, the guard hitting the side of his face with some sort of weapon. Gerard wheeled him out.
“Did it work?”
“Don’t know. Get me back to my room. I’ll wash up then we need to have dinner, and see where things lie.”
Gerard did exactly that. He waited to take Pierce to dinner.
It wasn’t till after dinner that Pierce got back to his room. He tried reaching Cale, focussed deep, waiting. Then he heard the blip.
“Pierce? That you?”
Pierce let out a quick, “Yes! Keep your thoughts low. Don’t attract attention.”
There was a smugness to Cale’s tone. “You did it, bro. Drayk always was a smarty pants.”
“Do you think you can help me get one into their computer system?”
Cale went quiet a moment. “I might. Language isn’t something you’re used to; it’s ours. Even though they’re trying their best to translate, it’s hard on them.”
Pierce asked, “What did you see in there? The room?”
Pierce felt a pained anguish from Cale. “Just don’t ask, stick to your lower training schedule. You don’t want to go in. You don’t want to see what they do.”
The shiver, the image still came forward from him. Pierce leaned over and vomited his just-eaten dinner. A bleeping sounded, the red light above his door chimed. He had no more time to focus. The cleaners were summoned. He was forced to get to bed.
The dreams came, filled with monsters. Or were they dreams?
Giants with six eyes, and three legs. Arms the size of his own body.
They picked him up, threw him around. Battered him and bounced him against every single wall inside the room. Bones broke, blood splattered everywhere. The pain intense, stabbing, aching.
Every day he threw up. Appalled at their torture, and then the horrendous visions they fed him, one after another, after another.
Children, tortured, just as he had been.
Woman, beaten, raped.
When he tried to look away, they forced him not to.
The monsters he tried to fight the most looked just like him, clones, but clones without a soul.
Pierce wheeled away as fast as he could when they had beaten him so weak he couldn’t fight them any longer.
Then he’d wake up, strapped down, where they’d torture him all the more. They’d pretend to cut off his legs. Show him pictures of his family, his sister.
The other warriors in the room around him were fighting to stay alive too. Many died.
No, these were not dreams, these were something much, much worse.
Pierce didn’t ever want to be in that room again and tears ran down his cheeks.
Chapter Forty-One
Drayk
Soul destroying, watching through the eyes of someone else, as they walked through a whole other world; but Max was good. And in one sense, it was just like Max was a viewer for this game world. He made sure they saw and heard everything going on.
“So that’s where we can bring him,” Bobby said. “All this acceptable for you?”
Max moved around the unit. Drayk noted the interior systems, the computers, the whirring of mechanics. He’d not seen anything like it before, but he knew it was Pierce’s only chance.
“I think we have to accept it,” he said to the kid.
“You’re sure? I could try other avenues.”
“No.” Drayk motioned to Altus and Leenz. “We’re running out of time; the sooner we can get him here the better.”
“Okay.” Max turned to Bobby with an outstretched hand. “We’ve got a deal; just send me the bill.”
Bobby pulled out her mobile phone, touched a few sections, then a ping came across the board for Drayk to see. The unit’s price, their protection, rang in at over ten million.
Drayk swallowed. 40 million gideo. He looked to Altus. “Have we got that?”
Altus frowned at his station. “Pierce just bankrupted this village. I hope he’s worth it.”
Leenz moved to his side. “No.” Within a second, she’d paid him back. “Pierce is worth it, but I don’t want this village to suffer. You’ve a war to prepare for, and that means you need trade funds.”
“So, now all we need to do is locate where we think he is,” Max voiced across the main screens.
Drayk pointed. “Just a short hop, we’ll be meeting Wayne.”
They followed Max as he went back out into the choking heat.
Max
Having Drayk and his team behind him was different, more so than that of a TV crew. This almost felt like he was a player but in his own world. The short ride across town to find Wayne’s haunt took mere minutes. Now that the biggest part of his job had been done, he paid the driver and walked into the restaurant.
Max had been there a few times to watch Wayne, not in stalker mode, but just to make sure he kept to his regular routine. At the time he wondered why they were so interested in the man, but now Max knew differently. Something had led him to do this, as much as it had been Wayne that kept that routine.
Drayk’s voice almost seemed to whisper in his ear. “There he is. Go get him.” Max didn’t hesitate; he marched straight over to sit at Wayne’s table. Wayne had just picked up his burger. “Hey,” Max said.
“I’m eating, kid.” The growl was evident. “Get lost.”
Max leaned, picked up one of Wayne’s chips, popping it into his mouth. “Wayne, I have Drayk, Leenz and Altus in my head. So, we need to talk.”
Wayne only glanced at the kid, and then called a waitress over. “Get him the same as me,” he ordered, still with a growl. He turned back, “You’ve got my attention. I guess.”
To Wayne’s annoyance, Max pinched a few more chips. “I know you’ve been coming for years. The place has door guards. Computer programming, so nothing is ever hacked.”
“Correct,” Wayne paused to chew. “Always thought I’d need it someday.” Delight spread to a grin. Tomato sauce dripped down his chin. He wiped it away, “You’re the kid who was supposed to meet Pierce weeks ago, Max something. Be brave kid; this isn’t a game.”
Max waited until the waitress put his plate in front of him and walked away. “No, no it isn’t. I wouldn’t be here if it was. This is real, the stakes higher than anything we’ve ever imagined.”
“What? Risking your life for someone you think is an ass?” Wayne held his gaze, “Why?” But Max tucked into his burger with relish. Hungry, needing the distraction. His reasons were numerous. Once he had a nice mouthful, Max pulled his sleeves up. “Because of this, I feel it’s the right thing to do.”
Wayne nodded, eating. “I’ve two contacts who say he’s in a possible two locations. One’s not fortified, the other is.”
“We’re going to the one that’s not fortified?”
“I think the other’s a given. They won’t have taken him there. Seems too easy. I think they’ve got him at the other.”
“I know they won’t have.”
“How many people do you think we need?”
“I’ve two friends I’ve called in, I don’t really know. I’ve no weapons, no access to anything like that. What about you?”
Max swallowed. “I have access. Don’t think we need much more than me, you, maybe two more. I’d like a doctor with us. There’s one I trust. A family friend ever since I had these implants put on.”
Wayne looked again toward the kid’s arms. Nodded. “Call them in, we’re doing this tonight.”
Max felt his heart skip a beat. Drayk asked in his ear, Everything okay?
“Hoping we’d have some more time, but I can understand. You want to be quick.”
“The more he’s in a different game, under their control, the more I fear we may lose him for good.”
“Get your people together. Take a 3665 taxi over here. They don’t keep records. We’ll move later tonight.”
Wayne handed him a card; an address, to meet later. They finished their meal chatting about the games they’d played over the years. To any other café-goer, they were two geeks enjoying lunch.
Drayk
It looked good. He hoped they had a plan, but, Drayk couldn’t sit watching everything. Once Wayne and Max sorted things in the café, Max shot off in another taxi to a different part of his city. Drayk had to take a break. The constant pounding in his head was hurting. A lot. He was sure something was wrong with Cale, but he couldn’t pinpoint what it was exactly.
Sitting to take a warm drink, he slurped in the liquid. Drei sat next to him. “There’s two raid parties on the village’s outskirts,” she reported. “Haal and Bahol’re going with some others to intervene.”
Drayk put the cup down, took her hand in his. “Do you need me to do something?”
“Don’t think you can, but I’ll be joining them to defend.”
Drayk pulled her in closer and kissed the side of her cheek. “You’ll be fine. It’s a small party, right?”
Drei sighed, and her tongue flicked out. “Yes. See you soon.”
Drayk watched her as she stood, then moved away without looking back. He sipped the rest of his cup in thought, waiting as the cafe emptied.
Marik moved over to him. “Drayk, seems like you’re hiding?”
Drayk didn’t need to nod. Marik glanced out to the lovely gardens. “You asked me something before I left to go to the Gragalor Mountains. You asked if I thought this game was real.”
“Yes. And the answer now?” Marik asked.
“I think this is very real. It might be a game, but the outcome for a lot of people has more than mere consequences. We don’t have a c
hoice in things; we’re pushed, pulled in all directions.” Drayk turned back to look where Drei had gone, “No way we change the outcome. We fight for what we believe in, be it a game or not. What we do in putting lives at risk won’t alter the way we fight. Not now.”
An explosion hit the building’s side. A tremendous force. Glass shattered all around them. Drayk pushed Marik to the floor as another projectile hit.
“What the hell was that?” Marik pushed Drayk off. Then both noticed the blood. Drayk had been hit. An arm wound. Pain minimum, Drayk patted Marik’s fumbling hands away. “I’ll be fine.”
Drayk motioned to the door. The pair waited to see who’d come through first. “You are thinking it’s not friendly?”
“I’m thinking this whole thing isn’t friendly. No way these came from outside the city, they have sleeper agents in here, like Amy was.”
“Then they’re after Leenz.”
Drayk’s heart beat faster. He shoved himself up onto his knees then ran for the corridor. He couldn’t get to the labs quick enough. Pounding footsteps ran their way. Both quickened their pace. Drayk could only hope Altus and Leenz might be ready for a fight after that hit.
Marik, close on his heels, panted, “They won’t kill her, not this time. You know that.”
Drayk hadn’t thought of that. The last thing he needed was Leenz going missing, more so with the weapons she possessed. What if they turned it on Altus? One more time wouldn’t hurt if he died? He’d be dead either way but in the real world.
“They couldn’t have carted her off without Altus knowing, could they?”
Marik shook his head. Rounding the corner, the door was cracked open, but, nothing, no noise came from inside. Drayk approached with care and peeked in. Altus. With his back to the door, watching the screen with Max. No sign of Leenz, then he saw it, a small trail of blood. “Think she came out to see what was going on?” Marik asked.
Drayk followed the trail, spying two large men carrying a body. It could only be Leenz.
What could he do against two massive men? Nothing but get himself killed. Drayk had no choice but to follow. “Marik, I need you to get Drei and Haal, then follow us. I have no idea where they’ll take her, but I can’t leave her on her own. Pierce would never forgive me.”
