by Gwynn White
“I… I don’t know. I’ve never seen it before.”
Ax looked up at Donny.
“It came in the mail,” Donny said.
“The mail? Curious.” Still on his haunches, he bounced on the balls of his feet. “Shipped here, then?”
“The address was ripped off,” Sunny said.
“Why would he hide the address?”
“Does it matter?” she said. “Focus on right now. What are we going to do?”
“You keep saying we.”
“Me, goddamnit! Me! What am I going to do?” She kicked the door against the wall. She’d been asking that cursed question all her life. What am I going to do now?
“Can you get me some coffee?” Ax said.
“No.”
He looked up. Donny went to the kitchen. He came back with a mug of tepid coffee and a splash of creamer. Ax pulled a chair from Grey’s desk to sit, but not before wiping it with a balled-up shirt. He pushed a few items on the desk with a pencil and tapped the tin can with the stickers, the snake eating its tail.
“It’s called a punch,” he said.
“I know what it’s called.”
“Well, then you know in order to get one, you have to be invited. They don’t sell them online.”
Sunny crossed her arms.
“It arrived in a plain box, right? Inside was a velvet bag and that was it.” He sipped. “You won’t find a return address, no way to track it. I’ll give your son this, as idiotic as that is right there, he was smart enough to know someone with enough connections to the…” He tapped his forehead like Donny had done. This time he didn’t mean the needle. The symbol. “Are you rich?”
“Does it look like it?”
“Then you must know players.”
“Players?”
Ax sniffed a quick glance at Donny. His uppity nature was going to get his head buried in the wall.
“Players,” he said slowly, “means the game.”
He touched his forehead again. Even in conversation, he didn’t want to say it out loud, as if someone could be listening to them in her shitbox apartment.
“You don’t sign up to play the game, Ms. Grimm. You don’t log on or make an account. You have to be invited. You have to know people to invite you. And then you need lots of money to accept the invitation. You see a pattern?”
“You think…” She swallowed. “He’s in the game?”
She wasn’t going to touch her forehead. Up to that point, she’d assumed he was just awareness leaping with some insidious gear, one that licked the frontal lobe with a surgical steel tongue. But the game? She’d ignored the symbol, hoping it was just gear.
She could hardly stand.
“If it was something else, like a VR headbox or channel glasses, you know, something he could just take off, then of course he wouldn’t be in the game. But he’s got a needle in his head, Ms. Grimm. That’s total commitment. I don’t smell any gel, so he didn’t sterilize. He just strapped on and punched in before you got home. Before you could talk some sense into him, I’m guessing.”
“Why would he do this?” she whispered to herself.
“For the money, I suppose.”
“What?”
“Immediate family collects the player’s winnings, win or lose.”
“You think I care about money?”
The grim line drawn between her lips erased any sharp retorts that he was entertaining. Instead, he scooted to the edge of the chair, leaned forward and spoke in a softer tone.
“He’s not there anymore. We can’t just peel the straps off and uncork him like a bottle of wine. That needle sucked him out of his body, through that cable and into some distant network. That’s not a short trip. What I’m saying is I don’t think he planned on coming back, Ms. Grimm.”
“Where is he?”
Ax flicked a glance at Donny.
“Stop looking at him or I’ll hang you on a hook. Where’s my son? If he’s not in his body, where is he?”
The little man didn’t answer. Donny sighed.
She swallowed a hard knot. “Are you saying he… he’s in the Maze?”
“Don’t say that.” Ax pointed a stubby finger. “That’s the last time you say it out loud, you understand? You want that thing off his head, then you need to be very careful. You start asking questions, start throwing around words, people start listening. You think this game has been around for all this time because people are nice?”
He put the mug on the desk.
“I’m sorry, but your son chose to go down a very dark alley, Ms. Grimm. He’s not a child; he didn’t get kidnapped or lost. He sought that thing out, talked to the right people, had it shipped, put it on his head and went there knowing exactly where it would take him and what reward it would get him. Or get you, I should say.”
“What did you say?”
Donny intercepted her before she took a step. The little man retrieved his coffee without flinching.
“I’m not insinuating you had anything to do with this, Ms. Grimm. Others might not see it that way, being that you will inherit a small fortune from your son’s mischief.”
“No one has contacted me.”
“Yet. There are a lot of moving parts to fall in place. Investors reward the players handsomely. It’s an illegal game, a felony in most countries, but it doesn’t stop them from making money. There is a rich undercurrent beneath the Internet of all things, Ms. Grimm, one where you can get anything or anyone to do what you want. Currently, access to watch the game is highly coveted.”
Donny put his arm around her. She walked off, didn’t want to be touched, and stood over her boy, her eighteen-year-old son, lying in the bed where he grew up.
“This is his fault, just so we’re clear,” Ax said. “Your son did this. No one can be forced to play. Only the willing enter the game, Ms. Grimm. He made the choice.”
“I know,” she said. “I know.”
Donny muttered to his friend. She imagined he was gesturing for him to tone it down. He’d heard that tone from her before, when she’d just had enough, was on the verge of dropping everything and walking out, leaving her car in the garage and just walking until her legs gave out. Or drilling the first dipshit to say the wrong thing.
“Look,” Ax started, “this game… it’s complicated. I don’t know how much you know or how much you want to know, but I suggest you don’t go looking. It’s a gambling empire, but instead of taking your mortgage, it eats your mind, a modern-day version of feeding peasants to the lions, only worse. At least the peasants died. People in the game don’t come back the same. Your boy has decided it was worth the risk. Maybe it’s better he doesn’t survive. You won’t like who comes back.”
“The one who wins comes back,” Donny said.
“There’s a… a winner?” she said.
“He’s not going to win, Ms. Grimm.”
She brushed her son’s hair, careful not to touch the knob. “So what do I do?”
“Not the police,” Ax said. “The people that run the game are everywhere. They have ears in the government and spies in law enforcement. Personally, I think they were behind making the game illegal, lending it a certain edge of danger that cranked up the demand. The authorities bust a lab every now and again, but that’s just for show. If you go to the police, they’ll only make it harder for you. There’s even a chance they’ve been listening to us ever since you blurted out the word.”
Maze.
“Is that why you’re using the name Ax?” she said.
He shrugged.
She chuckled drily. Life was like this. The best she could hope for was a long, boring life and to die without drama, without happiness or sadness. She had found peace working at a manufacturing plant, chose third shift so she didn’t have to see many faces, hired Donny because he was gay and there would be no chance of romance.
Maybe I deserve this.
“So what then?” she asked.
“I know a place you can get started, but
you’ll need to do it now. Your boy isn’t going to last long like that unless you know how to insert an IV.”
“Where?” She towered over him.
“You’ll need money.”
“Okay.”
“Lots of it.”
“Are you fleecing me, Ax?”
“I don’t want the money. I’m just pointing the way.”
“You’re not taking a cut?”
He jumped out of the chair and wandered past Donny with the mug hooked on his finger. “If I wanted a cut,” he called from the kitchen, “I would’ve already taken your money. I’m just telling you the truth about your boy. And I want nothing to do with this after I leave.”
A scribble of a pen, the tearing of paper. He returned with a scrap folded between his fingers.
“I only came here as a favor.” He looked up at Donny.
Then he left the apartment, taking the black umbrella propped on the wall and quietly closing the door. He was whistling as he left.
Sunny deflated, the paper still folded on the desk.
“Do you need money?” Donny asked.
“No. You’ve already done enough.”
“I don’t mind—”
“No, Donny. No, thank you.”
She toyed with the paper, needed to make a decision, needed to get moving. The clock on the stove wasn’t working, but the one on her son’s forehead was ticking.
“Maybe you should tell Henk,” he said.
Another dry chuckle. The police was a better idea than her ex-husband. Everything was a better idea. She wanted Henk out of her life no matter what. So did her son.
“Maybe we should go to the police?” he said.
“We?”
“Ax is a little over the top, likes a good conspiracy. It’s just, he’s short and gay, likes to push buttons. You know the type. The police aren’t going to arrest you, Grimm. I know a lawyer.”
She opened the note and read the address. “Can I ask a favor?”
“Yeah.”
“Will you stay with Grey? You can sleep in my room, get some rest. I just want someone here in case he, uh…”
“Of course.” He pulled her against him, the curly hair poking out from his open collar tickling her cheek. “It’ll be all right, Grimm.”
No, Donny. It’s not all right. It never was.
2
Sunny
After the Punch
Sunny took cover beneath an uptown pawnshop. The rain raised gooseflesh along her arms. The buildings disappeared in a gray pall that continued to weep.
Cars honked as her driver pulled back into traffic. Puddles crashed on the sidewalk in waves. She huddled against the wall with a shred of paper damp in her palm. The address matched the storefront across the street. Ax had written a name as well, which she had assumed was a person. Maybe it was a business or a studio. There was no name on the glass wall that exposed the room inside. There was just a number stenciled in white.
511.
Track lights illuminated off-white walls. From this side of the street, it looked like an empty dance studio.
Why was she listening to a guy named Ax? And how would he know the survival odds of someone with a needle in their head? The fact was this: he couldn’t know less than Sunny.
Desperation makes fools of us all.
Branches sagged on street trees trapped in sidewalk planting boxes. The traffic was as relentless as the rain. She timed her escape and hit a small gap in traffic. She leaped beneath the blue 511 awning and shivered outside the door, shaking the rain off her head like a dog. Her work shirt stuck to her back.
The glass door provided a view of the open room. Half a dozen products were stationed along the walls. There was no name on the door, just the number. No bell when she opened it, no buzzer or signal. Just the silent swish of the hinges. The door sealed out the traffic behind her. Her shirt dripped on the bamboo floor.
“Hello?”
A white door was on the far side of the room. Two of the walls displayed tech gear and ongoing video adverts for surgical implants and sensory augments, the kind that were susceptible to hacking and body-jacking, the sort of thing a vendor wouldn’t admit to.
The wall to her left displayed the address in raised, backlit numbers and letters that matched the sopping paper scrap in her hand.
“Can someone help me?”
Her shoes squished. There was only one other item in the room. Not a desk or register, just a simple stand that held a stack of postcards. The address, once again, was printed in the center, the font small and thin.
511 South Forest
Find a way to please yourself.
The card was thick, the corners sharp. No information was on the back except for thick, random lines, like the printer had made a mistake. It contrasted with the minimalist design, everything so orderly and planned.
The white door opened.
A woman closed it quietly and carefully. Like the card contrasting with the room’s décor, the woman’s black skin was sharply displayed against her ivory white dress. Lips painted red as her nails, she approached with long, even steps.
“Do you have an appointment?” she said with an accent.
Sunny cleared her throat. “Micah,” she whispered.
The woman didn’t answer, didn’t step away. She only cocked her head with a silent question. Sunny took her hand, the fingers long and slick with lotion, and pushed the damp wad of paper into it.
“Are you Micah?”
The woman didn’t respond.
“I need help.” Sunny’s whisper bounced around the room. “Someone told me… he said Micah could help me.”
The woman slowly opened the paper, staring for several seconds before folding it four times and placing the tight square in Sunny’s hand.
“Is he here?” Sunny asked.
A smile haunted the woman’s painted lips.
“What do you… do you want something?” Sunny stepped closer and leaned in. “I have an eighteen-year-old son that’s in trouble. He has taken a, uh, a punch to play a… play the game.”
The woman twitched.
“Can you help me?”
There was no response. No rejection. Barely a recognition of what she was saying. Sunny dug into her pocket.
“He said it would cost me. I don’t have money right now, but I can get it. I do have these though.”
She pried open the lid. Holo lenses floated in clear solution. They belonged to her employer—circuited contact lenses that enhanced her vision and retrieved information. If someone else put them in their eyes, such as non-coded personnel outside the company, they would shut off and a signal would be sent to her superiors. She would be fired. They weren’t cheap and the right people could recode them.
“Use this as a down payment, please. I just need to talk to someone. My son needs help.”
The woman cupped her hand, snapped the lid closed and pushed the offering back. Her eyes were severely lined. She turned with the same even stride and walked back to the white door.
Sunny continued to drip.
She waited for her to return as the cold soaked past her flesh and into her bones. The shivers turned into shakes. Traffic silently passed outside, puddles swelling on the sidewalks. She turned around when the sound of an opening door echoed in the open room, but the door was still closed. No one had returned to help.
When she turned back toward traffic, the ghostly image of an old homeless woman looked at her, a plastic chrysanthemum tucked in her hat. She was desperate for help, begging for attention, as if she had something to say and just needed to be heard. Please listen.
Sunny Grimm was looking at her reflection.
She was lifeless. A haunted ghost trying to escape the present, running from a damaged past that rattled like tin cans. Her history was a long train of railroad containers following her to the end, each day getting longer and heavier. If she could just pull the lynchpin and leave them behind, start a new life, lay a set of tracks in another
direction, one that wasn’t heading for a cliff.
She would never look back.
Was that what Grey felt? Did he feel the weight of his family inheritance, the genetic disposition that brought so many of her relatives to their knees? Her father ate a bullet. The father before that used a rope.
Is that why he took the punch? Is he trying to unhitch the past and lay new tracks?
Maybe he wasn’t in the Maze, just using the punch to change his life. There were transformative therapies that reorganized thought patterns and turned off self-destructive genes. They were known to be invasive and effective, but none that came in a do-it-yourself kit.
But the symbol…
She dialed a number. The call ticked over to Donny’s voicemail. He would be crashed on the couch by now. It was well past bedtime.
Sunny walked to the white door and quietly turned the handle. It wouldn’t open. When another ten minutes passed, she knocked. Politely, at first.
“I need help,” she called. “I need to see Micah.”
The thick door absorbed her blows. She kicked it.
“Help me, someone. He’s all alone. He doesn’t have much time and I need help. He’s in the Maze. Someone told me you can help my son. I need to know if—”
The door pushed back.
The woman stepped out forcefully, a long cool breeze exhaling from behind her like that of a concrete warehouse. It was pungent, clawing at her sinuses, stinging her throat. Sunny’s eyes itched and she was suddenly nauseous.
It seems so familiar.
“I’m sorry, you’ve been misinformed.” Her accent was thick, South African maybe. “There is no Micah for you to see. We have no affiliation with black-market wares. We are a federally licensed retailer of sensory augments.”
“He said you could—”
“If what you say is true, you need to go directly to the police. Go there now because this is very serious. Your son will need help as soon as possible.”
“He’ll be in trouble.”
“There’s more at risk than legal trouble, ma’am.”
Sunny backed away. It was suddenly clear how stupid she was. Why would she listen to a stranger like Ax, let him fill her head with conspiracy and urban legend, wasting precious time on secret societies?
