The screaming of sirens jerked her head around. Three police cars were racing from the highway toward the dirt road. Alex sprinted off toward the nearest hills.
Chapter 11
"MY FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH a bona fide freak," said Alex. "I feel like I lost my psycho virginity or something."
Brandon made a sound between a grunt and a chuckle. "Well, you wouldn't expect a virtual serial killer to be normal, would you?"
"I'm a just a gamer. Someone who never thought I'd ever place 'just' in front of 'gamer.' But that person..." Alex rubbed the gooseflesh on her bare shoulders, though it was pushing ninety at eleven in the morning. "It felt real. It felt like I actually was hunting and taking down a killer."
"Is there any chance he or she's a killer in the Real?"
"Some chance, definitely. Though I haven't heard of any highway or freeway killers in the news."
Alex settled down on a bench in the park a few blocks from her home. Brandon stayed in his chair. A flock of grackles exploded into noisy flight from the oak tree they were sitting under. Alex thought suddenly of Robert, the tabby hellcat, who probably enjoyed hunting and slaughtering digital birds. She hoped without any rational reason that he was okay, that his over-devoted owner had rushed to the scene as he'd promised to do over the phone. Strangely, there was no mention of him telling his story to the cops yet.
Alex's cell beeped. A text message from Brad.
How are you doing?
She texted back: Fine. Just taking a walk.
Care for some company?
I'm with Brandon. We're discussing strategy.
Oh. Right.
Brad had learned the university had granted her a leave of absence to participate in a special Verse quest with an experimental twist, but beyond that, he knew nothing.
Maybe we could get together later?
Doubtful. A pretty tight schedule.
Okay. Well, let me know. And please take care of yourself.
I will.
Brandon was craning his neck to read the text. He straightened up when she tucked her phone away.
"Poor slob's in love." Brandon didn't sound compassionate.
"He's just glommed onto me as part of his GOOD GUY™ routine."
"He's in love with being a good guy, not with you?"
"Something like that. You may not have noticed, but I'm not especially lovable."
"But some people love you despite that."
"Even if they manage, with extraordinary effort, to get past my lack of charm, there's still the way I look. Men are simple, visual creatures. A skinny, flat-chested, mousy little female doesn't cut it for most men."
"Not to be offensive, but you are actually not bad-looking. And not every guy is into big boobs. I think they're rather gross, myself."
"Did I mention that I'm also flat-assed? You might not like big boobies but I'll bet you like yourself some nice fat booties."
"What I'd like is if you'd stop racial and gender stereotyping. All men aren't 'simple, visual creatures,' and all black men don't like big booties."
"Why, Bran, I never thought I'd see the day when you went all politically correct on me."
"What can I say? Sometimes you bring out the worst in me."
"I'll take that as a compliment."
Alex leaned back on the bench and half-closed her eyes. A minuscule breeze – so minuscule Alex thought she could feel each individual atom – cooled the sweat under her blond bangs a fraction of a degree. The sun soothed her muscles and contributed to her hint of a tan. She eyed the mini-gymnasium a few yards away. It had only been a few days under her new mellower routine but she feared she was already losing hard-won minuscule muscle mass.
"Come with me to that pull-up bar," she said. "Maybe with your help, I can do some reps."
"How would that work? Besides, you're supposed to be taking it easy, cutting back on the hard stuff."
"All I've been doing is taking it easy. I want to keep what little strength I have."
"I don't think that's a good idea, A."
"Fine." Alex reached for her cell. "I'll call Brad. I'm sure he'd be cool with helping me."
Brandon grabbed her wrist. "Okay, okay. You can be such a manipulative bitch sometimes."
"And here I was worried you were becoming politically correct," Alex laughed.
Alex walked over to the pull-up bars, which came in three varieties: midget/pre-school, middle school, and semi-adult. She selected the middle school bar. She hung on the bar, her tush three feet above the ground.
"What are you expecting me to do?" Brandon asked.
"Weren't you an engineering major before you switched to the easy programming shit? Grab ass and give me an assist."
Brandon muttered something under his breath and cupped her derriere in his strong hands. Alex pulled, Brandon pushed, and she rose inexorably.
"I'm surprised you're that strong," he said. "I'm not even pushing that hard."
"Which proves I'm not a total wuss."
"And you don't have a flat butt. There's definitely a tiny bulge of muscle..."
"You're just trying to make me feel better."
Alex strained out five assisted repetitions, with increasing assistance from Brandon. By the end, she was sure his hands had left permanent impressions on her ass.
A burst of snickering drew their attention to the three young men who'd seemingly appeared out of nowhere. She and Brandon had been so intent on the exercise that they hadn't seen them approach.
"That's got to be a gayest thing I've ever seen," one of them laughed. "You want help doing pull-ups why don't you let a real man do it instead of some nigger cripple."
Alex took slim solace in imagining what she would do to them in the Verse. She might start by tearing off their legs and watching them wobble around spurting blood from their stumps. Or maybe drive her fist into their leering faces and dance to the merry sound of collapsing cartilage. They might or might not feel the pain, depending on their immersion modules, but they'd remember the humiliation. That was something that stayed with you.
"I prefer someone with handicapped legs rather than handicapped brains," she said. Lame, but anger was short-circuiting her usual repartee. Yet it had the desired effect: the lummoxes' faces colored and then coalesced as one in malevolent intent. Only when they started toward them did Alex acknowledge their size – six-footers in their late-teens – and the very real danger they represented.
"Ah, Alex," Brandon muttered.
Alex whipped out her phone and snapped a series of photos, hitting send to her gmail account before switching it to video. "Smile," she said.
The three teens froze, their resolute expressions crumbling. Three proto-human thugs sabotaged by a miracle of modern technology. They about-faced and marched toward the nearest park exit – with any luck, she thought, back into the primordial sluck from which they'd slithered out.
Brandon's breath wheezed out. "Nice thinking. That could've turned ugly fast."
Alex stowed her cell and walked with him back to the bench. She longed to run home but the pull-ups and the confrontation had drained her. Man, being a gimp sure did suck sometimes.
"I know what you're thinking," said Brandon. "If I'd been Brad, they never would've even come over."
"Bullshit. I was thinking that if I could meet those slimeballs in the Verse what I could do to them."
A smile broke through Brandon's sour expression. "You and me both."
Alex watched with simmering anger as the three cretins left the park on a pathway between two large homes. She had assumed they'd come from outside the gated community but it was possible they lived here. The bylaws of this community didn't bar morons.
"I think I'm going to get a gun," she said.
"Why?" Bran nodded to the departing youths. "Because of them?"
"Next time they might not be scared off by a cell phone."
"I don't know, A. Seems like you're about as likely to shoot off one of your own body parts as a bad gu
y's."
"Why would you say that? I've spent time training with firearms."
"In the Verse."
"You don't think some or most of that doesn't carry over? Isn't VR filled with people practicing everything from sports to political speeches?"
"But people doing that are practicing in avatars and situations as closely matched to the Real as possible. You aren't doing that with Dionysus. He's three or four times stronger than you, for one."
"It doesn't take a lot of strength to shoot a pistol or rifle."
"Still isn't the same thing. Your avatar doesn’t match you, A." He raised his hands as Alex's scowling lips parted for what was sure to be a blistering reply. "Okay, okay. I'll grant you could probably do okay with the weapons you've trained on after some practice. But I still don't think it's a good idea in general principle."
"Why?"
"Because it's asking for trouble. What would you have done if you'd been packing a few minutes ago?"
"What? You think I would've blown them away?"
"Maybe not. But you might've drawn your gun on them. Then who knows what might've happened? Alex, you're a gunslinger in the Verse. You just went all Reservoir Dogs in Parallel New Mexico. You've been conditioning yourself to respond to threats with deadly force since you were a kid. Can't you see a possible problem with bringing a deadly part of that world into this one?"
Alex turned away from his earnest eyes. "Maybe I just want to exercise my Constitutional right to bear arms."
"Constitutional right?" Brandon snorted. "You do realize we live in California?"
"Ha. But I can still get a concealed permit."
Brandon gave her a thin smile. "They do have a 'good morality clause,' you know."
"Then I could carry one without a permit."
"Wouldn't that be a felony? I don't think they allow AFIRMs in jail cells."
Alex hissed out a curse under her breath. "Jesus, Brandon, when did you get so pussy-whipped?"
"After knowing you for the last years?"
"Not funny."
"You're right. It's kind of sad when you think about it." His smile withered under her glare. "Okay, sorry. My point is that, as beautiful as we find the Verse, this world is where we actually live. In our world, everyone is under surveillance just in case one of us might be a terrorist. ARs are banned, you're gonna be groped and/or X-rayed before boarding a plane, you need a government license to practice your First Amendment rights as journalist, you have to produce your 'papers' three hundred miles from any border –"
"All right, for fuck's sake. I get it. We're all pussy-whipped here."
"Exactly. Good thing we have each other."
"Uh huh."
"Hug it out?"
"How about I choke you out?"
Brandon chuckled softly. A thirty-something woman walked by pushing a baby stroller, giving them a quiet smile and a hello. Brandon raised a hand. Alex ignored her.
"Anyhow, weren't we supposed to be discussing strategy?" Brandon asked.
"If they don't give me Stage Three soon," said Alex, "I'm going for the gold."
"Free-range it based on the one lousy general clue."
"Not as if I have any other option. I've done as much as I can with the Highwayman bullshit. If capturing her and placing her under arrest wasn't enough, screw 'em."
"The Gamemasters might be waiting for the Verse cops to press formal charges," said Brandon. "So far they're saying 'Henna Flowers' is merely a suspect in the killing of the naked driver they found with her throat slit in the women's restroom stall."
"If she'd told me in my van that her last name was 'Flowers' I would've shot her on the spot."
Brandon laughed and shook his head. "Gotta hand it to her. She has chutzpah. Saying you forced her at gunpoint to dress in the driver's uniform, and she was only running away from the highway patrol car because she knew the Highwayman was driving it – that it all was an attempt to frame her as the Highwayman."
"And if she was the Highwayman, why did I shoot the highway patrol cop? Too bad someone on the bus witnessed that."
"And the lower torso captured on the police car cam clearly does not belong to Henna Flowers."
"The sim cops could take a long time to sort through all that. And even if they do charge her, it could take weeks or months to go to trial." Alex massaged her shoulders, already growing sore from her pull-ups. "I should've put a bullet in her brain. I never thought she had a chance of surviving. Second time I fucked up with her."
"Stone-cold -killer isn't one of your great gamer talents. And I'm starting to think the Highwayman might have some talent there." Brandon made a dismissive grumbling noise. "The important thing is that the police don't seem to have a clue where you went. Half of them seem to believe you succumbed somewhere in the desert east of the highway."
"They had trouble accepting I'd already run beyond their helicopter search parameters in ninety minutes," said Alex, with a small smile of satisfaction. "Funny how fast and far you can travel on foot when you can jog thirty miles per hour and never get tired."
Alex gazed uneasily across the greenbelt. She was supposed to be the best, the best of the best, and the Highwayman, if an avatar, was just some punk playing serial killer. Some nutcase eccentric who lacked any refined grasp of gaming. Yet here Alex was, possibly about to come out second in a head-to-head contest with the psycho. Completely unacceptable.
This Highwayman, this thing, got off on pain and death. And s/he was clever. That part pained her. This was no dummy. This was no young person. It took a while to build the scabrous hostility and self-confidence she'd seen in Henna's eyes.
"She implied she was practicing her black arts in the Real," said Alex quietly.
"Just trying to get into your head. Let's get something straight, A. The Highwayman could be a ten thousand pound gorilla in the Real, but in the Verse, you're the ten-ton beast. You're Godzilla and he's just a plucky little kid waiting to be squashed."
"You think he's 'plucky'?"
"Heh. Well, I know how much you hate plucky."
Alex's strained smile slipped into something more pensive.
"The GM gave you a near-impossible task," said Brandon quietly. "They put you up against someone with a mind of her own. Someone who doesn't play by the rules. You couldn't just kill her. Yet you had to stop her – to deliver her signed and sealed to the cops."
Alex nodded to herself, wanting to believe.
"I have an assignment for you," she said.
"Assignment? You mean you want to ask for a favor that you'd be deeply grateful if I considered performing?"
"Right. That." Alex kept her gaze forward, on the greenbelt. "Find a suspect for the Highwayman."
"You mean the person behind the avatar?"
"Yeah."
"Why? What's the point?"
"The remote possibility that she or he could be a threat in the Real."
"A threat to you?"
"As I said, the remote possibility."
"Okay," said Brandon. "How would you suggest I do that?"
Alex shrugged. "Pretend you're Dexter, tracking serial killers. Look for odd patterns of people disappearing and people who appear to be common denominators to those disappearances. People with the skill set to make it happen."
"As fun as that sounds, you do know I'm a full-time student, right?"
"A full-time student who could use some extra spending money?"
He turned to face her. "I'm listening."
"How about fifty dollars an hour for research?"
"Real or Verse dollars?"
"Verse. Okay, thirty dollars Real?"
"Let's stick with fifty."
"Done. But I'm talking serious research, Bran. Watching pornography doesn't count."
"Damn." Brandon grunted a laugh. "Okay, I'll give it a shot. If I suck at playing Dexter, I'll drop it and you won't owe me anything."
"Sounds fair."
MEANWHILE, BACK in the Verse, Alex felt like a boat with a fli
msy rudder navigating a turbulent sea.
She ran across a desert she couldn't name and ended up in Clayton, New Mexico staying in a Days Inn. It was a place that seemed to serve as a tourist nexus – Alex wasn't sure from where to where – so a grungy stranger with sweat-stained clothes wasn't an eyebrow-raiser.
Alex awakened in her Days Inn suite with a twofold mission: transportation and a new identity.
Walking through the quaintly historic downtown – a mélange of elderly and new buildings – Alex encountered a group of bikers on the main drag. Inspiration struck when she spied a good-looking biker roughly her avatar's height and build strolling down the sidewalk. The biker looked to be in his mid-thirties with plenty of sun-bleached road-miles etched into his handsome face. He flashed a big grin at Alex as she passed as if he was sharing her mirrored perspective.
Alex circled around and watched from across the street as the biker entered a hotel bar with two laughing buddies. An idea fast-forwarded into a dubious scheme. She crossed the street and entered the hotel/bar. Her avatar got his share of curious and surprised looks, as he usually did, but his soiled shirt and grimy, road-smacked face must've fit right in because the bikers returned to their drinking and jostling and laughing, barely missing a beat. Alex settled down at the bar a few seats from her double and his two friends. She asked the bartender for a beer.
"It's just something I've been wanting to do," said her double. "Don't take it personally, man. Need to go off by myself and do a little soul-searchin'."
"Aren't you kinda scared of what you might find?" a friend asked.
They all laughed. The doppelganger raised his beer in toast.
"To you guys," he said. "Let's meet in a year at Sturgis. I'll let you know what I found, soul-wise."
They clinked their beers. Alex nursed her beer while they made small talk about the weather, sports, bike problems, and similar bullshit. A trio of steaks and fries prolonged the agony. Alex muted her sense of smell, and the annoying odor of juicy steak and even jucier body odor retreated. After a time, the men rose, argued archetypically about the bill, and shuffling out of the restaurant. Alex stretched out a twenty beside her half-consumed beer and followed.
The Goddess Quest Page 17
