by Jack Crosby
And that didn’t take into account our other problems. A rock slide was happening and that quickly became priority number one. Using a series of quick brake and then acceleration moves, we managed to pull through relatively unscratched. The worst of the damage came when a smaller sized chunk of rock ricocheted towards us and hit the top corner of the windshield. The glass held, but the spider web crack was a reminder of how dangerous this was.
As we continued to drive, we passed a tall beacon that lit up as soon as we zoomed on by. “Well, we’re halfway there as the checkpoint marker just signaled.”
“Checkpoint marker?”
It was going to be a mouthful to explain to Zoe, so I dumbed it down as best I could. “In my world, as you’re playing the game, checkpoints appear in case your character dies. That way you don’t have to start all over again.”
She scratched her head. “So you can die?”
“Well, no I can’t. The way it was explained to me is I get one shot at this.” The light from the checkpoint was fading in the rearview mirror. “That checkpoint does very little for me, but it is a part of the game.”
****
This was the calm before the storm. The road smoothed out a bit as we continued deeper towards the abandoned power grid. The second half of the Canyon Run was going to be a bitch. The road tightened up and the inclusion of land mines made things a lot worse. This was going to take my full concentration. It was one thing to use a controller to move a car around from a top view angle; it was another to be behind the wheel and needing to make split second reactions.
The walls were starting to tighten up on us. “Okay, this is going to be bumpy as fuck. If we make it out of here in one piece, thank whatever digital God you pray to, okay?”
“Don’t be so melodramatic, it’s not that –”
I caught it at the very last moment. Just as the land mine went off, I slammed on the accelerator and hoped for the best. The back wheels jumped as they took a bit of the explosion, but the car held. The small crater the land mine created that was still smoking behind us was all the confirmation I needed we were in the deep end of the pool now. Looking over to Zoe, “You were saying?”
Her eyes were glued to the explosion site. “Fuck me running.”
“We’re not out of this yet. Land mines have one telltale sign – the ground has a small crack over it where they are buried. Help me look out for them.”
This took a bit longer than the first part of the canyon as I slowed the pace down so we could hunt the land mines easier. We avoided four in a row and I was starting to like our chances of getting through this. Then, as we entered the final stretch, the cracks in the ground tightened up, along with the passage. We weren’t going to be able to avoid all of them.
“What should we do?”
It was a decent question, one I didn’t have a great answer for. But I did have an answer. “Hold on tight, I don’t know if this is going to work.”
I jammed down on the gas pedal and let the small car do its thing. We were cruising now and I drifted to the left to avoid the first land mine. The second was unavoidable, I just hoped at the speed we were traveling, the damage would be minimal. We passed the first and the second we were clear, the front wheels ran over the second. The car went airborne, just for a second, as the explosion hit the armored underbelly. We landed a few yards from the bomb and kept going.
I had to grip the steering wheel hard to keep us from spinning out, but I never once let off the gas. The next one we barely activated, but were far enough to the side that the blast didn’t bother us. We passed the fourth and were in the final straight-away.
Zoe’s finger was pointing straight ahead. “How do we avoid that cluster?”
Right in the exit to the canyon were five landmines, all bunched up in such a way that hitting them was unavoidable. I gripped the wheel tighter and gave the car everything she had. “The moment we hit that, you be ready to jump, okay?”
This was a trick I learned in the game. After getting blown up multiple times, I figured out abandoning the car at the last possible second after impact was the only way to survive. “When I say jump, you do it.”
She acknowledged the command at the same moment as I unlocked the doors. With only seconds left, I removed my left hand from the wheel and put it on the interior door handle. This had to be timed perfectly. The front wheels hit the bombs and the chain reaction went off. The car was slammed into the air and a ball of fire was directly underneath it. Looking forward, the moment we were clear of the blast zone, “Jump, now!”
I opened the door and leapt out, propelling myself as far as I could go. I hit the ground and rolled a few feet as the car blew up right above me. I was safe, but was Zoe? Across the area from me, she was laying down, coughing. She survived as well.
As the noise from the car explosion died down, it was replaced with a low humming sound. I picked myself up and turned around. Where a desolate power grid should’ve been sitting, off from years of not being used, was the exact opposite. Zoe, as she walked over to me, was perplexed as well. “I thought this was the abandoned power grid? It looks like it is operational to me.”
That couldn’t be a good sign. “Come on, let’s go see what’s happening.”
Chapter 13 – Freewill
We slowly walked to the outer fence that encircled the power grid. Blue bolts of electricity shot into the air from different points inside. This was all wrong. In the game, the power grid had been taken off station by Zeus Industries years ago as a way of putting the B.O.R. into complete desolation. But someone turned the power back on, yet that person was supposed to have been me.
Once the grid was back on, the electricity provided opened the west road up, giving the player a way back towards Spark City; only it took you through the heart of the pirates’ territory. I probably should’ve just left the power grid and continued onwards in the game, but something really bothered me about this. I wanted to check it out and Zoe didn’t seem to have a problem with that.
At the fence, I didn’t see anyone inside. More to myself than Zoe, “I wonder if Zeus turned the power back on… but why?”
“Let’s go inside and find out.”
To our right was a gate that was unlocked. This was the traditional entrance to the dungeon, but it worked for me. We entered and immediately accessed the first building we came to. It was the records and administration office. At this point, I wouldn’t have been too far from the boss fight – a giant scorpion that had taken up residency here. Could he still be alive?
Zoe grabbed the first file folder she came to. “These are all records from years ago. It is obvious someone was here and reading them before we got here.”
I wasn’t really interested in old files. “The next corridor is going to lead us to the heart of the facility. We need to be on the lookout for the scorpion. He was a right bastard to defeat.”
She seemed to want to keep reading, though the moment I headed towards the door to go deeper; she dropped the files and followed. Out in the corridor, the humming sound was a lot louder than it had been previously. The pylons that were carrying the currents of electricity were just on the other side of the wall, so from our vantage point, we could see just how much power they carried. It was all quite impressive.
I got my gun out and was even contemplating activating Heart of the Oracle. Though at the last second, I decided against it. If the scorpion was still alive, we’d have time to get prepared. I grabbed the handle and slowly twisted it. As the door opened, the scene in front of me caused me to drop my gun. The boss had been defeated; its rotting body left to fester in the room.
“Shit, this gives us more questions than answers.”
Zoe walked over to the body and began looting the corpse for goodies. “Whoever killed him, they left behind all the good stuff.”
One of the key drops from the scorpion boss was the stinger from its tail. When inserted into a gun in replacement of the usual energy source, it gave you more round
s before overheating and added poison to the shots. I went over and sure enough, it was still there. I took it and upgraded my weapon, still leery of how all of this went down.
“With this guy killed, where do we go next?”
That was easy. The next room over was the control room that housed all the switches and panels for the power grid. It had been a puzzle challenge, trying to match up all the circuits and wires together to bring this place back online. Obviously, that much had been done too.
Entering the room, the surprises kept rolling in. The head of the Oracle was impaled on one of the levers that operated the power system. At first, I thought this was a mask or something, that is until I realized that nope, that was certainly her head and it wasn’t attached to her body. Zoe walked up to it slowly, shock written all over her face.
Before we could even address that, the door lurched closed behind us. Standing there was a Kabuki mask wearing guy decked out in all black. “Draxler.”
“Bravo, Vector – you made it much further than we assumed,” he said; his voice a bit mellower than I would’ve guessed. I’d never heard him speak in the game come to think of it. He’d always been a shadowy figure, the muscle for Zeus Industries and never a talker. “I hope you enjoyed my gifts, the grid back on and the scorpion’s tale. Consider them a token of my respect.”
“Why are you here? This isn’t where you’re supposed to be?”
His slid up his Kabuki mask, revealing just a blank, black face. There were no facial features – no there was nothing. It was like he was incomplete. “Did you know the ones who created me thought so little of my character that they didn’t even bother to give me a face? No, I was just supposed to be a challenge for gamers, like you, to overcome. A great scary enforcer who served no purpose other than that.”
Draxler was always a late game enemy. Over the course of the play through, he would appear at random times in cut scenes, here and there to set everything up. However, outside of the first encounter early on when you needed to get out of Spark City, the main character never came into direct contact until they returned to Spark City after defeating the pirates. Never, at any point, did you encounter him in the abandoned power grid. “So it was you who killed the scorpion and turned the grid back on.” His mask covered face just kept focused on me. “Does this mean you have left Zeus Industries?”
He laughed, and it sounded like just a regular old laugh. For some reason that was more off putting than if it had been scary or mechanical. “No, I still work for the CEO and am obliged to carry out his biding. All of this, I’m just exercising my newfound freewill.”
“What are you talking about?”
He pointed to Zoe. “When the system spawned the anomaly, something inside all characters in the game changed. No longer were we bound by the direction the game wanted us to go. Our choices are our own.”
Zoe sounded defiant in her response. “I had nothing to do with the system granting freewill to the characters. Don’t you blame this on me.”
“You’re mistaken. Why would I blame you for something that has given me new hope and meaning? If anything, you should be praised for this.”
“I hate to break this up,” actually I had no care in the world breaking this up, “I’m just a bit perplexed where this leaves us going forward.”
Draxler clapped his hands together and another entered the room. “If you’d like to think of me as the General in the Zeus Industries army, consider Avrel here to be one of my captains.” The large man was dressed very similar to Draxler, except instead of a kabuki mask, he was wearing a standard issued SWAT type head gear. He was also carrying a large, club like weapon that had a bunch of little metal rods sticking out of it.
“Consider Avrel to be the boss, in replacement of the scorpion. You’ll find the challenge to be acceptable.” Draxler began to back out of the room. “Should you survive, Vector, I look forward to seeing you on the daunting Electric Mile, and perhaps after. Do not disappoint me, I so wish to challenge myself against a player’s skills.”
“Draxler wait!” He responded to my request. “When you attacked The Neon Underground, were there any survivors?”
He seemed puzzled by my question. “Attacked The Neon Underground? I have no reason to attack that hole in the wall black market.”
“But the Oracle’s head – you obviously killed her.”
“That I did do. It was my destiny, but she was here, waiting for me. I didn’t have to seek her out, she came to me.” So if Draxler didn’t attack the last known place where Ali was, who did? “It seems to me there are more mysteries floating around than either of us knows, Vector. Now you have me curious.”
I was too, yet there were bigger fish to fry. “No chance you’ll let us outta here without having to go through big and ugly, huh?”
“I’m afraid not.” Draxler exited the room and locked the door behind him. Avrel, who must’ve taken an oath of silence, slammed his club into the ground. On the handle was a button. When he engaged it, electric currents began to run from all the little metal rods sticking out of the club.
I couldn’t help myself, “Fuck me…”
“Not to be pessimistic or anything…”
“I know, Zoe. This is going to take some teamwork.” And maybe a lot of good luck.
Chapter 14 – Dirty Deeds
The behemoth known as Avrel went on the attack. He was swinging that electrified club around wildly, like some sort of berserker. Zoe went one way and I went the other, trying to get away from the rage filled man-beast in the room with us. His club slammed into the Oracle’s head, sending it into a million, bloody, digital pieces. Zoe cringed again at this, but kept moving.
“Heart of the Oracle!” The minute I shouted the command, a red aura glowed beneath my feet and Zoe’s. With our stats boosted, it was time to show Avrel who was the real boss. Gun in hand, “Bullet Burst! Mass explosion!” Doing the combination of the two skills at the same time set off the achievement tone on my oculus. I’d have to check that out later.
When it comes to gaming, there are two schools of thought. The first is, never, ever waste all of your skills right away. Try to chip away at the boss’s health and sprinkle in a skill here or there when the time calls for it. The second is, fuck that – let’s blow shit up as soon as possible. In the real world, I may have been more of a rule number one kinda guy, but actually living this game, rule number two was much more appealing.
The scorpion tail powered shots went all around him, blowing up upon impact with either him or the desks/consoles all around. As shit blew up, smoke filled the air, obscuring my view of the new boss of this level.
I guess Zoe wasn’t in the mood to wait to see how my attacks went down. She jumped to the top of the nearest console still standing and had her sword held high. Jumping into the smoke, she disappeared, but I heard the noises of metal connecting with metal. As the dust settled, above Avrel was his health bar (he’d lost over half his life) and a little poison bubble. He was hurting in a bad way.
Still he was fighting off Zoe, who landed an occasional blow here or there, but she was also taking quite a bit of punishment. I ran in and grabbed her from behind and pulled her away. As we retreated, I fired off a few quick shots – two were blocked but the third one nailed him in the mask, sending him to one knee.
Zoe pushed off of me and ran back to the fallen man. She executed a perfect flying knee, putting him on his back. I’m not sure what happened to her, but this new hyper aggressive girl was a whirlwind of devastation. Her last attack put Avrel to the twenty-five percent mark on his health bar.
A pulse wave pushed us back away from him. He slammed his fist into the ground and the current from his club began to arc on to him. Zoe looked confused, “Vector, what’s going on?”
“Our friend is preparing his final form for one last assault. We need to be prepared.”
Avrel split the club in two, taking in all the energy that it was producing. In essence, he’d turned himself into a liv
ing weapon. The poison effect was still going and little by little, it was chipping away at his health. Knowing he didn’t have much time, he created a giant ball of blue electricity to send towards us.
I felt a brief moment of letdown. It was the Heart of the Oracle running out. Now wasn’t the best time for that particular skill to wear off. Seeing that Avrel was getting ready to put an end to my game, it was time to unleash another skill. One well-placed shot powered with Mass Explosion might end this.
Avrel lifted his hands above his head, the blue ball of death fully charged. I pointed my gun at the projectile and, “Mass Explosion!”
Just as he lurched forward with his arm, the shot hit him and set off a chain reaction of total annihilation. Zoe and I needed to take cover fast, as the area of effect from the Mass Explosion skill was close to us. We got out of the way just in time, avoiding getting caught up in the attack. I knew he was dead as my oculus went off twice, leveling up to sixteen.
We waited though, until everything was settled and our breath was under control before we got back up to see what was left. While we waited, I flipped over to Achievements and saw that using Bullet Burst with Mass Explosion unlocked the Dirty Deeds achievement and gave me more gamer points. By this time, the room cleared up enough for us to take a look around.
What was left of Avrel was smoking on the ruined floor. Still there were rewards to be had, so I went over to the body and picked up his gauntlets, which were in pristine condition all things considered, and a set of keys. “Looks like we have a brand new set of wheels.”
Zoe gave the dead body a swift kick to the gut. “You sons of bitches!”
“Whoa, whoa – what the fuck’s gotten into you?”
She kept kicking him, over and over again. “They must pay for killing the Oracle! How dare they do such a disgraceful act?!”
