Decimation Island

by Damien Boyes

  So suck it up, Anika. You’re gonna survive no matter who tries to stop you—and that includes yourself. Most of all.

  GAGE, FINSBURY

  15:24:16 // 9-JUL-2059

  “You only call me when you want something,” Yellowbird says as she walks up, playing wounded. “I’m not your mother.”

  She puts her hands on her gun belt and squints at me. She’s wearing a dark green vest over a white shirt with standard-issue grey slacks. Her head is shaved on the sides and the hair on top is long and pulled back from her face, but for once it’s all one color, deep black.

  “My mother thinks I’m dead,” I quip back, and offer her a plate of tacos. They’re only ground veat but they smell great all the same, lots of cumin and green chilies. “If I called she’d think the devil was on the line.”

  I messaged Detective Karin Yellowbird a few hours ago, asking for help—while very little stays private for long these days, the Service still has its trove of secrets, and since I can’t find anything about OVRshAdo on SECNet or the wider link, maybe she can. But she wouldn’t agree to meet me until I promised to buy her lunch first. We compromised on stand-up tacos, and I got to the row of food trucks parked down by the lake before her and ordered for both of us.

  “For real?” she asks, serious now, and for some reason I tell her the truth.

  “Last time I talked to her she made it clear her son was dead. Then my dad told me never to call back. So I haven’t.”

  Her lips press together and she holds my gaze. “That sucks.”

  I shrug. “Is what it is. They’re old. If it’s easier for them to believe I’m living in the clouds with Jesus and not a few hours down the highway, who am I to take that away from them?” But by the time I finish the sentence I realize it bothers me way more than I knew, and by the way Yellowbird’s eyes have gone all soft she can see it too.

  She cocks her head at me. “You want to talk?”

  I miss my mom and dad, boo hoo. Pull yourself together, man.

  I don’t feel right. Gotta be this thing with Anika, messing me up. I’ve got a little crush and it’s hitting me like a drug. Or maybe Vaelyn’s shyft to keep Deacon quiet is screwing with my rithm. Or it could be both. Who knows.

  “Forget it. I don’t …” How did we even get into this? Change the subject. “Thanks for coming. I know I’m not good at keeping in touch”—I glance down at the taco plate—“but I bought you tacos to make up for it.”

  Yellowbird rolls her eyes. “Remind me why we’re friends again?” she deadpans.

  “Because you demanded it,” I tell her, mirroring her tone. And while it comes off sarcastic, it’s true. I don’t know if I would have made it this far if it wasn’t for her insistence that I’m not a complete write-off. Even after all this time, and I still have no idea why, for some reason she seems to care what happens to me. “And because you’re an incredible person,” I mumble.

  “A what?” Her eyes go wide and her lips spread in a surprised grin. “Is that a moment of genuine affection? What’s wrong with you?”

  “Don’t worry, it won’t happen again.”

  She studies me for a second then shakes her head, grabs a taco from her plate, and takes a bite.

  “Cod?” she asks through a full mouth of tortilla and deep-fried flaky white veat.

  “They said haddock,” I answer, and try a bite from mine, but I don’t know if I could tell the difference. It all tastes like deep fried fish to me.

  We carry our plates over to a nearby bench and sit, balance them on our laps, and stare out at the water.

  “Chaddah said she ran into you,” Yellowbird mentions, nonchalant, then takes another bite of her taco.

  “I picked the wrong place for dinner and one thing led to another. How’s the guy who got shot doing?”

  “Still in the hospital, but won’t be much longer.”

  “And the crew that shot him?”

  “Who knows,” she says with a shrug. “Unregistered skyns, no match to biokin. We don’t even know what they were after—could have been nothing. For some of these guys armed robbery is a game.”

  Skyns are still expensive, but they’re getting cheaper. And the explosion of unregulated fleshmiths cranking out an endless supply is only making things worse. There’s a whole underground of immortal, anonymous bit-heads who’ve escaped the notion that actions have consequences, and no one knows how to stop it. Even with the Standards’ rapid response teams and lawbots constantly at the ready, the cops are barely keeping a lid on it.

  “You guys any closer to finding the source of that Killrshyft?”

  “All we know is it’s super easy to get, growing more popular by the day, and we have no idea where it’s coming from. It’s been used in three more shootouts in just the past two days, and who knows how many more we don’t know about. At the rate the violence is increasing, if we can’t put a lid on it soon, the city will end up a warzone.”

  “Sounds rough,” I say, and again I find myself missing the job, but the feeling doesn’t last long. It’s not like I could do any better than they are. I’d be just as powerless, trapped by bureaucracy and going out of my mind with it. At least out here I can pick and choose what to beat my head against.

  “Swimming against the current, but we’re keeping our heads above water.”

  “Maybe I can help,” I say.

  Yellowbird hesitates a beat. “Is this about you witnessing that heist at the Mundi?”

  Here we go. “You know about that?”

  “Your name was on the guest list, Fin.”

  I shove the last half of my taco in my mouth, buying myself a moment. Yellowbird watches me chew and swallow.

  “Well? You want to tell me why you had front-row seats to two shoot-outs this week?”

  I shrug. “Shitty luck?”

  “I’ll need more than that.”

  “I’m friendly with Ari Dubecki—the Gladiator Dub, you know him?” She nods. “He gave me his ticket. I was just there for the free drinks and the eye-candy and then everything went to hell.”

  “No way you’d get all prettied up to attend an event like that without good reason. You’re working on something, aren’t you?”

  I don’t want to say too much, but I need her help, so I can’t just deny everything either. “Maybe … I’m not sure.” She purses her mouth at me, impatient. “I need some information—”

  “Christ, Fin,” Yellowbird says, and drops her plate beside her. “Is this why you called me? I’m not your personal information faucet. I can’t keep opening Service intel to you. If you know something, tell me what it is and let us look into it.”

  “It’s sensitive.” I don’t want anything getting back to Anika. The last thing she needs is the cops banging at her door. The link would go nuts.

  “No shit it’s sensitive. Someone stole four lethal skyns and no one knows where they are or when they might turn up, but we’re all perfectly clear about the damage they’re capable of. Think what could happen if someone ran Killr and then took one of those bad boys for a spin.”

  “You think it’ll come to that? They must be too hot for public use, right? SECNet would hit the panic button the second they showed up on the streets.”

  “We haven’t heard a peep from their trackers, so they’re being kept off-grid somewhere. Or shielded from the link. Fin, so help me, if you know something about where we can find them …”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “But there’s something?”

  “It’s probably nothing…” Might as well just come out with it. “There’s a gamer, calls himself OVRshAdo—”

  Yellowbird straightens, and her high cheekbones become even more pronounced as she squints at me. “From Decimation Island? What about him?”

  “He’s a chronic tuber, spends his entire life online, but his feed was on highlights when the heist went down.”

  “You think OVRshAdo stole the Humanitech arena skyns?” Yellowbird asks, obviously skeptical. “He was
probably taking an hour off, or linked under an alt.”

  “Maybe, but I don’t know any of his alts. And I checked—there’s a 73.4 percent biokin match between him and the guy who was leading the raid.”

  She sighs. “That’s not near enough for a warrant and you know it.”

  “It’s close though,” I counter, which isn’t much of an argument but it’s all I’ve got—at least it’s all I can tell her. “Look, I know it’s thin but I’m asking you to trust me. You’ve got nothing to lose.”

  “Except my job,” Yellowbird says.

  Fair. “How about this. Is there anything in his record that, if he were a person of interest, would trigger as suspicious for you?”

  She sighs but her pupils flare blue-white as she activates her lenzes. Her eyes dart around in her head for a moment and then she shakes her head. “He’s clean,” she says. “Not so much as a parking ticket. What aren’t you telling me?”

  I ignore her question. “Can you at least tell me his real name?”

  “Finsbury, no,” she answers flatly. “You want his Union ID too? That’s protected info.”

  She’s right. She has to play by the rules—but I don’t. I could get someone from the link to work up a full dox on him. It’d probably take a few days and it wouldn’t be cheap, but it’d likely be just as thorough as anything the Service has on him. I was hoping to avoid the hassle.

  “Okay, I get it,” I reply. “I should know better.”

  “You should,” she says. And then my head thrums, Connie telling me I’ve just got a new message—from Yellowbird. I give her a look and she flashes her eyes at me, warning me to keep my mouth shut, and I nod in return. Best she can do.

  I open it and see it’s a list, link ID names from the looks of it.

  QwenTastic, CaFFeFreak, phatcawk, aimBott69, and a bunch of others including the highly inventive n0tSHAD. They’re OVRshAdo’s alts. If can cross reference all these, maybe I’ll come up with a better picture of what he’s been up to. It’s not his real name, but it’s something. And if I don’t find anything at least I can feel like I did everything I could.

  “Want another taco?” I ask, glancing down at her empty plate, but she shakes her head.

  “I better get back to the station,” she says. “Thanks for lunch.”

  “Anytime,” I say and then open my arms and give her a hug. I think it surprises her as much as it does me, because her first reaction is to flinch, but then she leans into it. Her head barely comes up to my chin.

  “Something is definitely wrong with you,” she says as she pulls away.

  “Shut up,” I say back. She turns to leave. “I’ll try not to be such a recluse.”

  “Yeah you will,” she says as she walks away. “And next time tacos ain’t gonna cut it.”

  AniK@

  383:26:14 // 44 Players Remain

  They found you.

  You knew it had to happen eventually. After two games of playing hide and seek with OVRshAdo and his crew they’ve finally caught up with you. He’s back to four strong again. No matter how many of his squaddies you kill, he just recruits more. For some reason, he’s made killing you his personal side quest.

  They come in hot, bouncing across the grassy plains from the west toward your hiding spot high up in the skeleton of a comms tower, two on motorcycles with a buggy close behind. Problem is they’re moving faster than the Redeemer can project a firing line, and the third time the aimbot throws an error you’re forced to switch it off and take the shots yourself, picking your moments as the targets become visible in the rolling terrain.

  You try to take out one of the bikes and whiff the first few shots, but the fourth connects on one of the riders and they nearly lose control, but don’t go down. It’s late game and they’re armored up, probably level-four adaptive head to toe, and they just tank it, reset, and keep coming.

  The buggy might be easier to hit, and you sight in on it, thinking maybe you can take out a tire or put a few shots into the windscreen and hope you get lucky. You’ve only got a few seconds left, they’re only a mile away, and once they hit the line of trees surrounding the compound you’ll lose line of sight.

  The optics keep the buggy steady as you lead your shot, aiming for the driver, but then you realize something—there’s no passenger. There are only three of them.

  This is a trap.

  Your head ripples with adrenaline. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, y’all. I think we’re dead.”

  You anchor the Redeemer to your back, hook yourself into the rappelling line you set up, and slide down from your perch, scanning all around for any sign of the missing enemy. Someone’s here already, one hundred percent. Send three of them at you in vehicles while the fourth sneaks up from behind.

  They probably ran the Observatory hotspot and scanned for you. It’s one of the quest rewards, gives you three codes to ping out player locations. You’ve been camped here for hours, plenty of time for them to set up an ambush.

  This is your fault. You got comfortable hiding behind the long reach of the Redeemer, and now you’re gonna pay for it.

  You hit the ground and dash immediately inside the antenna building, put a wall to your back and switch out the Redeemer for your assault rifle. It’s not legendary but still good, with a high-capacity magazine and low recoil. You’ve got level-three armor with a full visor and your skyn’s muscled-up, plus the reflexes and the aim to take just about anyone one-v-one, but their teammates are only seconds away.

  You stashed an escape truck in the garage on the north side of the compound, got it ready to bug out, but for sure that’s where they’ll be expecting you to go. You could run, try to lose them in the trees, but the forest around here is thin and you’re on the edge of the zone as it is. Even if you managed to evade them you’d have to spend your safe-time to hide in the red, and if you burn it all now you’ll have nothing left for the endgame, when solos are the first to get picked off.

  You’re not moving but still your breath is ragged. You’re pinched. Death is certain unless you can miracle yourself out of here.

  The engines grow louder as they roar up the tree-lined road toward the compound. They’re almost here. You need to move—do something. If you’re just gonna sit here waiting for them to surround you, you might as well end it yourself. At least then OVRshAdo won’t get the satisfaction.

  Your ears burn with sudden anger. Screw OVRshAdo. No way you let him win. You push up off the wall, weapon ready, switched to full auto. You’ve still got time. That fourth goon’s got to be around here somewhere—if you can take him out before his buddies get here you just might have a fighting chance.

  You jiggle peek out of the doorway, keeping your head moving, searching for any signs of movement, but come up empty. Nothing in sight and all you hear are engines. The other guy could sneak right up on you and you wouldn’t hear him coming. They’ll be crashing the compound from the west side, so you move east, skirting around the edge of the building toward the garage.

  The good news is you’re not entirely defenseless. You set up a proximity charge across the west entrance to the compound, and that’ll slow at least one of them down, if not give you an outright kill. It’s not over yet.

  The compound is small and surrounded by trees—just the antenna building, the garage, and two boxy guardhouses on each end of the road splitting through the middle. Not many places to hide. You swallow, then kick off into a sprint across the open area, aiming for the garage. OVRshAdo’s fourth could be anywhere, set up to snipe from the trees or even waiting for you to get in the truck, but you make it into the cool shadow of the garage without a problem, and other than the truck, the place is empty, just the way you left it. The big open door looks out east through the thin line of trees to the rippling grassland below. It’s a straight shot out of here, down the road and away to safety. All you need to do is get in and drive. You might even make it.

  But they knew you were here, went to all this trouble to find you. No way they’d let y
ou just drive away. OVRshAdo’s too good a player to set all this up and not have a better plan than that.

  Then you realize you don’t hear the engines anymore. They should have breached the compound by now, should have set off the proximity charge…

  Your spine tingles. There’s something else going on.

  You jump into the truck, drop your backpack and weapons on the passenger seat, and power up the engine. You grab the wheel and squint out into the sunlight, ready to full-throttle out of the garage, but at the last second you change your mind—this isn’t right.

  The audience pressure in your head builds as you switch the truck to auto, pick a random destination on the nav screen, and set it to drive. Then you grab your stuff and jump out the second before it pulls out of the garage and angles onto the road. You strap your pack back on and follow the vehicle out, watching your best chance at survival drive away, and only seconds later a figure materializes out of the tree line, blurring from invisibility as their camo disengages. There he is—OVRshAdo’s fourth.

  You pull up your AR as the figure raises something—a detonator—and an instant later the truck whomps up in a fireball on the road, spewing flames and wreckage into the sky. So that’s what they were up to, flush you out of your hiding place and booby-trap your escape. It almost worked too. But it didn’t, and now you have a chance to react, but you need to be quick. When your name doesn’t hit the kill-feed they’ll know something went wrong and come looking.

  You take the target presented and pump the guy holding the detonator full of bullets. You’ve got the extended mag on your weapon and from this distance you don’t miss. Forty-two bullets later his name pops onto the kill-feed.

  AniK@ downs survivor HuggyJackson. 43 players remain.