Networked: A gripping sci-fi thriller

by LK Chapman

  ...The deaths of teenagers Matthew Reed and Stacey Fitzgerald are thought to be linked to online game Affrayed... The teenagers are described by friends and family as being “obsessed” with Affrayed before their deaths... Affrayed’s developers, DAWN Industries have already faced criticism over the content of the game...

  I looked at Dan. I looked at Lily. And on both their faces I saw my own feelings echoed back at me. This had gone beyond now. This was serious- serious on a scale I never thought I’d have to face. Because it was one thing to upset people, to frighten, to disturb, to anger them. That our game had done that was bad enough. But whatever Interface was doing now, it was killing people. It was making our players carry out a final, irreversible action. It was taking lives.

  Chapter 38

  All the way home Lily was practically hysterical, and as the miles and miles of road stretched out between us and our flat I thought I would actually go mad. Behind us, Dan followed in his own car, face white with shock.

  ‘My parents!’ Lily said suddenly when we were about halfway home, ‘what if they’ve heard?’ She pulled out her phone and turned it on, throwing her hand over her mouth as she looked at it.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Oh God,’ Lily said, ‘Oh God, oh God.’

  Her phone started to ring in her hand and she let out a little cry and dropped it onto her lap like it burned her.

  ‘Is it them?’ I asked.

  ‘They’ve called me... twenty four times,’ she said.

  On her lap the phone kept on ringing, the sound incredibly loud and piercing.

  ‘So, answer it,’ I said, ‘or don’t. Just, please... stop that noise.’

  Lily picked it up and out the corner of my eye I saw her turn the phone of off and slip it back into her pocket.

  ‘I... can’t,’ she said. ‘I can’t... talk to them.’

  She was still upset about it as we neared our flat, feeling completely unable to speak to her parents but sure that if she didn’t they’d just keep calling, or turn up at our door. But she soon forgot about it when we reached our flat, and seeing the crowd of people outside she gasped in surprise, while I was so shocked that without thinking I slammed on the brakes, almost causing Dan to drive into us.

  ‘What... what do we do?’ Lily asked as the journalists spotted us, a couple of them peeling away from the larger group to walk towards our car.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, shaking my head, ‘I just...’ I looked round at Dan in his car and I could see my own feelings echoed in his face. This was just insane. By my side Lily had covered her mouth with her hands, her eyes wild and frightened.

  ‘Let’s just get inside,’ I said to her.

  But it wasn’t easy. Even though I had no intention of giving any answers, the questions still hurt me as we pushed through the throng of people towards our front door, more so for the fact I knew they were justified. I knew they deserved answers, that everybody deserved answers.

  ‘Why do you think your game is affecting people this way?’ asked a short woman with frizzy hair.

  ‘Do you have anything to say to the families? asked a man in a pink shirt with a red face, ‘what would you say to the parents of teenagers Matthew Reed and Stacey Fitzgerald?’

  ‘How do you feel about Affrayed being linked to suicide?’ asked a tall, slim man in his twenties. I stared at him stupidly for a second, thinking I’d seen him before, and then I recognised him as the same reporter who had tried to give me his card after the rape scandal.

  ‘Please,’ I said helplessly, ‘just leave us alone.’

  ‘Twelve deaths have been linked to Affrayed so far,’ said a young red-haired woman to my right, ‘do you think there could be something about-’

  ‘No!’ I said. I got to our door and tried to unlock it, but my hands were shaking and I dropped the keys on the floor. Behind me, Dan had his arm around Lily, who was crying, and for a second I felt like shouting, screaming, anything to make it all go away. By the time I finally got us inside my body was filled with a strange, tearing sensation that seemed like the start of me losing my mind.

  Even with the door slammed in their faces the reporters wouldn’t give up- knocking on the glass and saying our names.

  ‘What do we do?’ Dan said, while Lily clung to him, inconsolable.

  ‘Take Lily upstairs,’ I said.

  ‘What about you?’ he asked, looking at me closely, ‘you going to be alright?’

  ‘Just do it,’ I said. ‘Please.’

  I watched them walk upstairs and the second they’d disappeared into the living room I sank onto the floor and buried my face in my hands.

  I’m not sure how long I stayed there but at some point Dan came down to get me.

  ‘Nick?’ he said, placing his hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Leave me alone.’

  ‘Look, I would mate, but you’ve got to come upstairs. It’s Lily.’

  The second I saw her, I guessed what the problem was. And sure enough, her first words confirmed it.

  ‘We should talk to them,’ she said, ‘Dan kept trying to stop me. But if it’ll save people’s lives we’ve got to do something.’ She took a step towards the door and I caught her arm to stop her.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she said, ‘why are you stopping me? We need to tell them the game is dangerous!’

  She tried to shake my hand from her arm and stared at me in confusion when I tightened my grip. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she said, ‘why are you being like this?’

  ‘Lily, sit down,’ I said. ‘We need to tell you something.’

  But explaining Interface’s threat didn’t put her off. In fact, she seemed more determined than ever when she stood up again.

  ‘We’ve still got to talk to them,’ she said, ‘if people’s lives are at stake and exposing Interface’s research will save them-’

  ‘Lily, Interface didn’t mean he’d just have us slap you about a bit,’ I told her, ‘he meant he’d have us put you in hospital.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, ‘but we’ve got to do something and if you won’t, I will.’

  ‘No!’ I said, ‘that’s not the answer.’

  But she ignored me and started walking towards the door so that I had to grab her again to make her stop. ‘Let me do it, Nick!’ she cried, ‘I don’t care what Interface makes you do to me.’

  ‘Well I do,’ I said. ‘Me and Dan would go to prison for what he’s saying he’d make us do. You’d never be able to trust me again, our marriage would be over.’

  ‘I wouldn’t let you get in trouble,’ Lily said as she tried to twist her arm out of my grip, ‘I’d say it wasn’t you...’

  ‘I don’t care about getting in trouble,’ I said, ‘I care about you. Jesus, Lily, how would I ever live with myself if I hurt you?’

  ‘At least we’d be alive. That’s more that can be said for these other people.’

  She started towards the door again and I stood in front of her.

  ‘Lily,’ I said, my desperation making it hard to think of the right words, ‘I absolutely forbid you to talk to them.’

  For a long while she just looked at me and the tension almost crackled in the air.

  ‘You forbid me?’ she said.

  Helplessly I looked at Dan and I could see he thought I’d made a serious miscalculation. But I’d said it now. I couldn’t take it back.

  ‘Lily, I just mean...

  ‘I know exactly what you mean,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think my suffering is more important than a human life.’

  For a while I stared at her, unable to talk or move or even think. ‘Lily-’ I said.

  ‘Do you forbid me?’ she asked again.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘it’s just words. All I know is I don’t want you to get hurt-’

  ‘Do you or don’t you? Yes or no?’

  ‘Yes!’ I said, ‘if that’s the only way.’

  Lily looked at me a while longer, then she nodded and sat down.

  ‘W
e’ve got to do something though,’ Dan said, looking at us both with a mixture of relief and surprise. ‘We can’t let people die because of us.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, ‘but we don’t need to talk to anyone. We can figure it out ourselves, there’s got to be a way.’

  But there wasn’t any way, or certainly not one that we could think of. All we could do was leave the TV on the news channel and read about the story online but it was getting us nowhere. Hearing about all the people who had died just made it harder, as I discovered one of the suicides was man who’d just become a father, one was a woman who left behind an eleven year old daughter, another had just started his first job. It was a harrowing waste of life. I was beginning to get so frustrated and upset that I could barely even carry on reading about it, when from amongst the background noise of the TV I picked out that there was some breaking news about Affrayed. My heart was in my mouth as I turned to watch it and to start with all I could make out through the roaring in my head was that another victim had been discovered. But then on the screen they showed a drawing, something which was being described as the first suicide note from any of the players.

  It was a picture of a cityscape. But on top of the skyscrapers were little stick people, many with their hands thrown skywards, as if in celebration. Above them, the sun was beating down, but the rays of light were not portrayed by lines on the page, instead they were shown as strange combinations of letters and numbers, like some kind of code, and likewise some of the outlines of the skyscrapers were not just lines, but tightly packed writing, more meaningless combinations of letters, numbers, but often trailing off into nothing more than zeros and ones. Then, at the top of the drawing, in large capital letters, were the words:

  I’m not Affrayed anymore

  As soon as I saw the strange image, the landscape made out of ones and zeros, I turned to Dan.

  ‘No,’ he said, mouth open in horror, ‘I don’t... I don’t understand.’

  I turned back to the screen, though they’d moved on from showing the picture. But it didn’t matter. I could remember it. And I knew that although this had been a city and Dan’s had been countryside, the pictures were far too similar for it to be a coincidence, the theme of objects made out of code too unusual, too specific. For whatever reason this person we’d never met had drawn the same thing as Dan. And now they were dead.

  2007

  Chapter 39

  I got rid of Lily’s collection of painkillers while she was in the shower the next morning. I sat on her bedroom floor and popped all the little white pills out of their foil sheets, before replacing the empty sheets back in the packets and doing them up again. I didn’t want Lily to open the drawer one day and find the packets gone, because she’d just go and buy them again. But I reassured myself that if a day came when she decided to take them she wouldn’t be able to, and hopefully before she managed to replace them all again she’d change her mind.

  Once I’d finished, I scooped up the mound of pills from the floor and wondered what to do with them. I couldn’t go in the bathroom because that’s where Lily was, but I didn’t want to dispose of them anywhere that either she or one of her housemates might stumble across them. Then I caught sight of an envelope on her desk so I grabbed it and put all the pills inside before stuffing it right down to the bottom of my bag, underneath my laptop and a load of lecture handouts. It was unlikely Lily would look in there and that way I could get rid of them later, in my house. Lily came back in just as I finished hiding them and I stood up awkwardly, trying not to look guilty. I felt like I had the fact I’d just done something written all over my face. But I needn’t have worried. She didn’t even look at me, she just closed the door and took off the towel she had wrapped around her body, then lay down naked in her bed and pulled the covers over herself.

  ‘How about you go in today and talk to your supervisor?’ I suggested. ‘I’ll walk with you.’

  ‘I’m not going in today,’ Lily said.

  ‘Think how much better you’ll feel when you’ve got it over with,’ I said, ‘I know it’ll be difficult, but you could just go in, tell her you’re struggling with your work, then everything could be sorted out.’

  ‘How would that sort everything out? What, you think I’ll go in there and she’ll wave a magic wand and make me well again? I’ve missed so much work. There’s nothing she can do.’ She grew angry and fixed her eyes on me. ‘This is what I’m like now, Nick,’ she said, ‘or don’t you listen to a word I fucking say?’

  I sat down next to her on the bed and she pulled the covers tighter around her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry I swore at you.’ She buried her fingers in her hair and started pulling at it, twisting her curls around her clenched fists and trying to tear them clean out of her head.

  ‘No, Lily,’ I said, ‘don’t hurt your hair.’

  ‘I hate my hair.’

  ‘No you don’t. You’ve got beautiful hair.’

  ‘Maybe I should cut it all off,’ she said, ‘see how beautiful you think I am then.’

  ‘I’d still think you were beautiful.’

  Lily twisted her hand in her hair even harder. ‘Fine. Then I’d find something else to do. I’d cut my face. Do you think you could deal with that?’

  ‘That’s enough now,’ I said. ‘Please, let go of your hair. It looks really painful.’

  Lily let go and looked at me, her eyes burning. ‘I think about that sometimes. About hurting myself really badly.’

  ‘Great,’ I said before I could stop myself, ‘why don’t you just do it then?’

  Lily frowned and I intensely regretted what I’d just said. I knew Lily wouldn’t understand that I’d only spoken that way because her words had hurt me, and sure enough, her voice turned to a whine and her face crumpled as she said, ‘why would you say that? I thought you loved me. I’d never say that to somebody I loved. You don’t love me. Leave me alone.’

  She turned her back to me and I took hold of her shoulder to try to turn her round again. Her poor body was freezing cold and she felt thin and bony. She’d lost a lot of weight.

  ‘I’m sorry Lily,’ I said, ‘I didn’t mean it. I do love you. You made me sad, that’s all. What I meant was, if you feel like you want to hurt yourself really badly, what is it that stops you?’

  She looked up at me with one of her unpleasant little smiles. ‘I don’t want to have to go to hospital,’ she said. ‘They’d realise I’d done it myself, and everyone would know.’

  It took me a little while to digest the fact that the only thing standing in the way of Lily doing herself some serious damage was the thought of people finding out, though I supposed that as long as something was stopping her it could only be a good thing.

  ‘Why don’t we get out of the house?’ I said. ‘It’s sunny, perhaps a walk would do you good.’

  ‘I don’t want to walk. I want to be in bed. In fact, I don’t even want to be in bed. I don’t want to be anywhere.’

  For a moment, I felt total, complete despair. She was so unlike the Lily I’d first known. That Lily had talked with me for hours, had had conversations with me where I told her things I’d never told anyone before. That Lily had enjoyed having sex with me, had liked me being affectionate to her, had felt pleasure in me touching her. She’d been kind, and funny, and thoughtful. But this Lily didn’t seem able to do any of that. She didn’t even seem able to look after herself.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, desperate to change the situation, get her out of this environment. ‘We’re going for a walk.’

  …

  To my surprise, Lily did get out of bed and she started getting dressed. She did it slowly, almost stopping once or twice, and though she moaned that she didn’t want to go out I wouldn’t listen to her. Finally, I got her down the stairs and out of the door.

  It was a cold day, sunny but with a biting wind, and I put my hands in my coat pockets to keep them warm. Lily looked cute wrapped up in a purple coat with big black buttons, her hair t
umbling over her shoulders, and she seemed a little better, though I knew her mood could change again in an instant.

  ‘We’re near the train station,’ Lily said, when we’d walked for maybe ten minutes, ‘come on.’

  I wasn’t sure why she was so interested, but I followed her down the road until she stepped up to the bridge over the tracks, but instead of going over it she stood next to it, her gloved fingers interlaced through the wire fence and we watched as a train sped past.

  ‘I like trains,’ she said, ‘I think I associate them with going somewhere exciting.’

  ‘Yeah?’ I said, ‘we could go somewhere. Right now, if you want.’

  ‘Don’t you have work to do?’

  ‘Yeah, but screw it,’ I said, ‘I don’t care about that today.’

  We went into the station and Lily stood looking at the rail map on the wall. It was a little station that didn’t have a ticket office, just a self-service machine, and there were hardly any people around, apart from a man in a tracksuit and woman with a little girl in a bright pink coat.

  ‘I like rail maps, as well,’ Lily said, ‘don’t you? I like how all the places are laid out in lines and it looks so simple. And I like how you can get on a train all the way down here where we are and go right up to the other end of the country if you want to.’

  ‘That’s the idea,’ I said, and she turned and gave me a little smile.

  ‘I’m silly, aren’t I?’

  ‘No, you’re not silly at all. Where would you go right now? If you could go anywhere?’

  ‘Nowhere,’ Lily said. ‘That’s the thing. Sometimes I think about running away. But if I ran away nothing would actually be any better. I’d just be somewhere else.’