S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11)

by Tanpepper, Saul

  He shot me. He shot me!

  She lowered her eyes and saw that she was covered.

  Oh God. Oh God.

  The Player stopped in midstride.

  Ashley was standing a few feet away, one hand on her face, cupping her injured eye. The other hand was on her knee, and in it was the pistol.

  But how did she get it?

  The pistol was—

  It was—

  The world lurched before Jessie’s eyes, tilted, closed in.

  No, no NO!

  Ashley stepped back, still panting and moaning in pain. She regarded the two of them warily, putting less weight on the hand with the pistol, straightening, getting ready to shoot.

  Get her.

  Nothing.

  Jessie pictured squeezing Ashley’s throat, and the Player suddenly lurched forward. Ashley stumbled back, tripped over the edge of the walk and tumbled.

  Jessie tried to sit up. Her fingers curled around an object beside her and she pulled it up to her eyes and saw that it was the second pistol.

  It’s the other one. Ashley got the other one from the backpack!

  The Player stepped forward again just as Ashley sat up and raised the weapon. Her hand shook as she took aim. The blast shattered the silence and the bullet entered Kwanjangnim Rupert’s chest, exiting just below the shoulder blade in a spray of bone and flesh and blood, matching the hole six inches to its south.

  Ash’s arm jerked from the recoil and nearly knocked her back over. The Player advanced another step. Sobbing in fear, she swung the gun up and fired again. The bullet went wide.

  There was no time for a third shot before the zombie that was once Kwanjangnim Rupert was on her.

  ‡ ‡ ‡

  Chapter 68

  Jessie stumbled to her feet, pressing one hand to the hole in her stomach. The other still clutched her grandfather’s gun in front of her. Ashley had dropped the second pistol and was now pinned beneath Jessie’s Player, and it was only now, with its face just inches from hers, that Ash recognized who it had once been.

  Jessie became aware of the power she now possessed, and it terrified her. Aware of how easily that power had been given to her, how difficult it had been to wield, and how easily it could be stripped away again. And for just a moment, she knew how suffocated and helpless Ashley felt as she was crushed by it.

  One thought was all it would take to finish it. One passing wish, an image formed in her mind. When had she gained so much control?

  Power is about desire.

  Did she want Ashley to die?

  The girl struggled beneath the immobile zombie, but Jessie could see that her fight was half-hearted. The dead man had fallen gracelessly on her, and it held her down with its hands on her shoulders, its knee thrust painfully — or so it appeared to Jessie — into Ashley’s thigh. Ash grunted a few more times, then gave up as she realized it wasn’t going to bite her. She looked over, and Jessie could see that the fire that had once dwelled there, the fire that had forged this new Ashley, was gone. This fire, just as the old, had been extinguished.

  “How?” Ashley asked. “How are you controlling it?”

  Jessie didn’t answer. In fact, she was only barely aware of the question at all. But even if she knew, she was beyond providing any sort of explanation. Not because she wanted to deny her old friend the knowledge, but because of the grief that suffocated her now. Grief not for her dead mother — there would be time for that later — but for the fact that the girl she had loved as a sister saw her as the enemy.

  “Get it off of me, Jessie.”

  Jessie tilted her head, flashed an image, and the Player straightened, lifting its shoulders and releasing its grip.

  So easy.

  It rocked back and got to its feet. Ashley didn’t move. She remained on the ground, gawping up at the monster. It stared disinterestedly off into the middle distance between the building and the fence.

  Jessie lurched over to where the second pistol lay on the ground and kicked it away. Then she chanced a look at her wound. It appeared to have stopped bleeding. In fact, it appeared not to be bleeding at all. She lifted her shirt and saw the dark mark of a bruise and a scrape from the end of the pistol’s barrel as it had gouged into the soft part of her belly. But no hole. And then she realized that the blood wasn’t hers, but Kwanjangnim Rupert’s, from the first bullet Ashley had fired.

  “Get up,” she told Ashley. “It’s time to go.”

  But Ashley didn’t move.

  “Ash—”

  “Fuck you.”

  Jessie didn’t move.

  Ashley laid her head down on the ground and laughed bitterly at the sky. “You were always so soft. You never had the stomach, the will. You’d get just to that edge, the point of no return, and then you’d choke. That’s why you could never be the best.”

  “Being the best was never my dream, Ash. I always just wanted to be . . . .” She sighed, suddenly so tired. Bone tired. “I just wanted to be left alone.”

  Ashley pushed herself up onto her elbows, grunting from the effort and the pain. She lifted a hand to her ruined face, and Jessie wondered obliquely if she’d blinded her. It didn’t matter. The perfect little Ashley wasn’t flawless anymore. She was broken. Just like Ben had said of Jessie. And he had been right, of course. The only difference was, Jessie had always been that way; being broken wasn’t anything new to her.

  She looked down without pity. “Get up.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  Jessie stared.

  She watched herself point the gun at Ashley’s head and it was like she wasn’t her anymore. She was still inside her mind, still somewhat in control because she could blink when she told herself to. She could breathe. But the arm raised and the gun came with it, and it was pointed at Ashley’s head. All Jessie could do was watch.

  don’t do it

  She waited to see if the girl would plead with her, tell her it was all a big mistake, apologize for what she’d done.

  jessie, don’t

  The game would end then, because that’s how the game was played, wasn’t it?

  if you kill her, a part of you will die forever

  Jessie’s finger twitched.

  breathe

  Her hand began to shake.

  be water

  The gun clapped in joyful release.

  And it was only then that Jessie realized the voice begging her not to shoot hadn’t been her own.

  She turned and regarded Kwanjangnim Rupert for a moment. Then she instructed him to stay while she went to find a shovel.

  ‡ ‡ ‡

  Chapter 69

  Eric stepped into the hospital lobby holding his Link to his ear, waiting for it to connect. It was ten minutes before four o’clock and he wanted to be sure Kelly was connected to Jessie when the announcement was aired.

  He’d just received confirmation from Harrick that Arc acknowledged finding evidence of hacking in their systems, and that it had compromised some of their gaming streams. It wasn’t everything he had hoped for. He’d wanted Arc to address the ongoing failures they were seeing with the broader stream network. But it was a start. As a sign of good faith, they had just recommended that Reggie be released, so there was that bit of good news. Now, all that was needed was to negotiate for Jessie’s return back home.

  The ping connected and Kelly answered almost immediately. “You watching this?” Eric asked.

  Kelly nodded. “I just finished setting the gear up here and was about to switch on the television.”

  When Eric told him what his captain had said, Kelly answered, “I never thought I’d see the day. They’ve been denying the network is vulnerable for as long as I can remember. This is going to be a huge blow to them.”

  “They can’t keep denying what they can’t hide. At least now we’ll be able to focus on fixing things.”

  “I’d rather they got rid of it altogether,” Kelly grumbled. He bent down and flipped on the gaming console to warm it up. He
’d even brought the holo projector back up to the living room, even though it was of no use to him.

  “They’ll never get rid of Omega technology, Kelly. We’ve become too addicted to it.”

  “The cure will make it obsolete,” Kelly pointed out.

  Eric’s face darkened. “Or it’ll force someone to develop a resistant strain. You see the problem? I don’t like where we’ve come either, but the solution isn’t to go backward. We need to find a way to live with the monsters we’ve created, not because of the convenience, but to make the technology safer.”

  He could see Kelly’s hesitation, and he knew a lot of the younger man’s doubt stemmed from that one truth they both knew, that Jessie would never be happy until the world was rid of Reanimation technology once and for all. And it broke Eric’s heart because he knew it was a battle she’d never win.

  “I’m going to connect,” Kelly said.

  Eric nodded. “Okay. Six minutes before Survivalist.”

  Kelly slid Ashley’s Link into the slot and pressed the button to connect it to The Game stream. The light blinked orange for a second and a half, then green for a couple more, then remained lit. He pulled the goggles on and spoke Jessie’s name. The view he received was an indecipherable blur of gray and black.

  It’s in her pocket.

  “Jess? Can you hear me?”

  You hope it’s her pocket. It might be in Ashley’s.

  There was the rustle of movement, then a metallic clatter, as if something had been thrown to the ground. The patter of footsteps, hard and fast. The creak of a door opening and slamming shut.

  The image in his goggles smeared to pink, then Jessie’s face came into view. Beads of sweat dotted her forehead, a smear of mud on her chin.

  “Sorry,” she panted, out of breath. “I was outside. I couldn’t disconnect.”

  “Disconnect from what?”

  “The Game.” She gave her head a quick shake. “Long story. I’ll explain later. Why are you connecting now?”

  “Is that blood on your face?” Kelly asked.

  He watched as she rubbed her cheek, scraping away the dried spots with her fingernail and looking at it. He grimaced for her, even though she couldn’t see him. She nodded. “It’s not mine.”

  “Are you alone?”

  “I am now.”

  “Where’s Ashley?”

  Jessie didn’t answer right away. The scene in the goggle’s screen swiveled dizzyingly as she dropped the hand with the Link in it to her side.

  “Jess?”

  After a moment, she brought it back up. “I left her outside.”

  “She was the hacker, wasn’t she?” Kelly asked.

  Jessie nodded. “She had Ben’s gear and was using it to take control of our implants.”

  “Damn it.” Kelly pinched his nose. He felt like he was going to be sick. “Eric figured it out the moment he saw her there with you. I didn’t want to believe it.”

  “I still haven’t figured out how she managed to do it without fully activating the implants and killing us. The firewall prevented her from fully accessing mine.” She coughed.

  “It’s going to kill Reggie when he finds out.”

  “I think he already knew. I think that message he left inside Micah’s house, the words he spoke when he woke up, I think they were really from him and he knew that Ashley was behind it all. He was telling us to kill her.”

  Let her believe it, Kelly thought, if it helps her get past this.

  “I disconnected him,” Jessie said. “Is he alright?”

  “Yeah, he’s back to his normal self. The police are releasing him tonight.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Your brother deserves the credit. He took your theory to his captain and she forced Arc to look into their systems. They’re planning to make an announcement about it in just a few minutes. I wanted you to hear it.”

  “So, they’re admitting to the hack?”

  “Yeah. Eric’s hoping they’ll finally talk about the problems with the network so we can start addressing the vulnerabilities.”

  “You don’t sound so hopeful.”

  “Are you?”

  Jessie was silent for a moment.

  “Listen, Kel, I found something strange. Ashley had hardwired the Player’s implant to Ben’s Link. I found it in the gaming gear. I don’t know how she managed to extract it without it exploding, or what she was trying to do with it, but I suspect it’s not good.”

  “She won’t tell you?”

  Jessie’s face twitched. “She blamed me for everything, from G-ma Junie volunteering, to her parents taking the blood money and running off to Canada.”

  “They defected?”

  Jessie sighed. “I guess they’d been planning it for awhile.”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Jess. None of this was.” He lifted the goggles to check the television screen and saw that the previous show was just ending. He wished he had more good news to give her, something to cheer her up. “You get my text about your mom?”

  She nodded, and the line of her jaw tightened. “But, please, I can’t think about anything else right now, Kel. I’ll deal with that as soon as I get home.”

  Kelly frowned. He would’ve thought she’d be happier, celebrating even.

  Another check: The closing credits were ending.

  “You are coming home, aren’t you?” He wasn’t sure why he had to keep asking such a stupid question, and the look on her face reflected her confusion. But when she answered, “Of course, as soon as I can,” there was something in her eyes he didn’t like.

  “Any second now,” Eric announced, his voice sounding from the Link in Kelly’s lap.

  Kelly lifted the device. “Eric’s pinged in from the hospital,” he told Jessie. “We’ve got the television on and Arc is supposed to start with the announcement.”

  He could hear the dramatic opening sequence of the afternoon’s Survivalist episode.

  “They’re coming on. Looks like some kind of press conference, Jess. I’m going to turn it up and move closer so you can hear.”

  . . . aware that certain of our technology have recently been infiltrated. The compromised streams and associated devices represent an infinitesimally small fraction of our overall systems, while exploiting equipment not widely available to the general public. To mitigate any further risk, we are issuing an immediate recall of affected models. We have also put into place safeguards to prevent the spread of any malicious code into unaffected systems by isolating the impacted ones.

  There was a pause.

  I want to stress that this is a one-time incident, completely without precedent, and we’re working to quickly and completely contain it. There is absolutely no risk to the public. I’ll be happy to take questions now.

  “That’s it?” Kelly said. “No specifics. No mention of Jessie’s role in capturing the hacker?”

  Mister Beaucorps, is there any connection between this breach and problems being reported elsewhere in the streams? I’m speaking specifically about those in the Civil Workcorps Network.

  As you know Arc has a stellar safety record in all of its platforms. We provide the best, most secure technology to the best, most secure nation in the world. Our own investigations of these incidents you’re referencing have established several incontrovertible facts. First and foremost, they have affirmed that any negligence rests on entities other than Arc Properties. Second, most incidents, such as the recent one in Connecticut, were merely false alarms. We’re working to fine tune our monitoring algorithms to avoid repeating such incidents in the future. Third, they have identified specific examples of human error made by our subcontractors.

  Arc is actively working with our vendors to establish stricter protocols to ensure the highest level of public safety. It is imperative that the public understand that the vast majority of reports originate from the so-called black streams. As such, they are patently false. The black streams are, by their very nature and origin, unreliable. Storie
s coming from them are fabricated by parties wishing to do Arc Properties harm and should be completely disregarded.

  “That’s complete bullshit!” Eric exploded. “They’re still obfuscating!”

  And, sir, what is Arc doing to prevent future breaches of the type you found today?

  As you know, we take all attempts to gain unlawful access to our streams with the utmost seriousness. We aggressively pursue and prosecute any individual or group involved, including recommending immediate conscription. Our prosecution rate is unparalleled. We are also updating our equipment and programs to meet the heightened security requirements recently established by the government’s new strict mandates.

  Have you captured the individuals involved?

  Not at this time, but, as I mentioned, any extant damage has been partitioned off. We are working aggressively to bring the individual to justice, and plan to have this issue resolved within the next twenty-four hours.

  Can you tell us more about this person?

  Thanks to the hard work and diligence of Captain Lynn Harrick of the Greenwich PD, we now know that it is a single individual working in isolation, a female with a reputation in the community as a hacker. We also know precisely where she is located inside our Long Island gaming arena.

  How will she be apprehended if she’s inside the arcade? As you know, law enforcement agencies have no jurisdiction there.

  With the blessing of the National Security Committee, we have implemented a new protocol to aid us in the recovery of the perpetrator, one which utilizes our existing framework of Players and Operators.

  You’re using civilians?

  Absolutely. Who better than the ones with the most intimate knowledge of the arena and who possess the tools at hand to execute the task? And to demonstrate our commitment to bringing the person to justice, we have established a ten-million-dollar fund to be awarded for the successful apprehension of this individual.