Angel Eyes

by Nicole Luiken

A horrible scraping noise rent my ears. The hull continued to vibrate, causing my foot to slip. I gasped, my shoulders wrenching as I dangled by my hands. Adrenaline spiked my blood. I fished for a rung with my feet—found it. The noise kept going on and on as, outside, the iceberg slid along the Titanic's side, slicing it open.

  Water gushed into the boiler room. To my right, I could hear men yelling as the cold seawater swept them off their feet. I kept my face to the wall and climbed as if it were an Olympic event, Ron and Gerry pressing at my heels.

  Our boiler was the second closest to the breach. Hissing steam added to the cacophony as the cold seawater doused the flames.

  “The ladders!” the foreman bellowed. “Go, go, go!”

  I reached the first catwalk, but the ladder continuing up to the second catwalk and out was blocked by a line of four men. “Make room!” I tugged at the closest man’s ankle until he scowled at me. “Make room on the catwalks! Men are drowning below!”

  The blind terror cleared from his face. “Sorry.” He moved back, and I scrambled on my hands and knees onto the narrow metal pathway. Ron and Gerry followed, and we made room for the eight shivering men clinging below.

  I scanned the catwalk above for Maryanne, but didn’t spot her. I fought down my anxiety. She’s smart. She’ll get out on her own. I hoped she didn’t wait for us; we were now last in line.

  The green water foamed below, hungrily claiming a new rung every few minutes. My anxiety climbed with the water. I held tight the rail, morbidly counting the bodies floating by. It didn’t help that the catwalks rang with the footsteps of so many men, shuddering under us as if they might tear loose at any moment.

  By the time our turn finally came to climb, the hungry sea had claimed all but three rungs.

  I climbed steadily, ignoring the twinge from my wrenched shoulder and trying to avoid being kicked in the head by Gerry. If I slipped it would be Game Over.

  Finally, we emerged onto a higher deck and spilled out into a wide hallway along with the other survivors. Made it. But where was Maryanne?

  “That was intense,” Gerry said, eyes wide.

  Ron sank down against one wall, shuddering. “That man who got shut inside the coal bin. That could’ve been me.”

  “Did either of you get wet?” I asked Ron and Gerry.

  “Just my feet. They’re freezing,” Ron added. “I need to change socks.”

  “Is your cabin close by?”

  He nodded.

  “Go change then meet us back here. Oh, and if you have a spare shirt I’d appreciate it.” I gestured to my prim blouse. “And I’ll take this.” I pulled the cap off his head and started to stuff my VR-long hair under it.

  “Aye, aye.” He grinned and left.

  I turned to Gerry. “Go check the crew’s mess hall for Tad, then meet back here.”

  “Will do.” With a nod, he headed toward the ship’s bow at a jog.

  Alone, I started to hunt for Maryanne in earnest, weaving through the growing crowd of crewman spilling out of the affected boiler rooms. Some looked dazed with loss, a few were bleeding, while others were ebullient with relief.

  “That was close!” one of them gasped. “Good thing we’re on an unsinkable ship, eh?” Laughter and back-slapping followed.

  Their premature self-congratulation made my stomach twist. The Titanic was virtually unsinkable because she could stay afloat with two of her compartments flooded, but, according to Sahan’s report, the iceberg had opened gashes in four or five of the Titanic’s sixteen water-tight compartments. And water-tight was something of a misnomer since they didn’t possess a roof. The affected compartments had filled to the top of the bulkheads, then spilled over the top like an ice cube tray. It took over two hours, but slowly and surely the weight of the water had dragged the Titanic down to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

  Watching the doomed men put a lump in my throat, but I needed to get my team out of here. It's VR, not a real disaster with real people's lives at stake. I had to focus.

  But on what?

  My original purpose for entering the NextStep Immersion had been in pursuit of my clone, so I could beat her at her own game and prove myself the superior version. I hadn’t foreseen the sheer size of the Immersion. I couldn’t spike Devon’s guns four decks down from her. So I should head up into first class territory, hook up with Mike, figure out what Devon was up to and stop her.

  But if I jaunted off, what would happen to the rest of my team? In my arrogance I’d thought I could kill two birds with one stone and wipe out Ron, Gerry and Tad's education debt along the way. I’d made a commitment. Sure, if I failed they wouldn’t be any worse off and they’d known the chances of winning weren’t high, but the thought of abandoning them made my stomach twist.

  I’d also promised to help Maryanne prove herself to her dad.

  So what it boiled down to was friendship versus revenge and proving myself superior to my clone.

  I winced. Put like that the choice was simple: friendship first. My business with my clone could wait.

  No running off to hunt her down. I would play my own game and stick with my team and hope to have the satisfaction of beating her in points if nothing else. Though if Devon did happen to fling herself across our path I’d take her down.

  As for Mike, I could trust him to find me.

  For now, I had a game to win.

  To do that my team needed to both survive the scenario and score well. Dying in the scenario incurred such a huge penalty, it basically guaranteed a loss.

  So step one: locate all team members. “C’mon, Maryanne, where are you?”

  My heart kicked into a higher gear, and I realized that my absolute highest priority was her safety. Devon’s agenda might or might not involve Kenneth Jones’s daughter, but the ‘princess’ clue might lead others to her, too.

  Worried, I moved faster through the crowd.

  “Angel!”

  Maryanne waved from farther down the hall, and a rush of relief weakened my legs. She looked pale, but dry. “There you are!” She gave me a surprisingly fierce hug. “I was so scared!”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I should’ve warned you the whole catwalk would vibrate when we hit the iceberg.” I shouldn’t have left her alone.

  But Maryanne blinked. “No, no, I meant I was scared for you. When the water poured in like that….” She shuddered.

  “Yeah, that was a little dicey,” I agreed.

  “I wanted to wait for you, but the people behind kept pushing me.”

  “You did the right thing,” I assured her. Inside I felt pleased at her increase in confidence. Progress!

  Ron joined us. He held out a large white shirt to me and nodded to Maryanne. “Hey, Emily. How are you enjoying the scenario so far? I almost died three times.” While he and Maryanne compared experiences, I buttoned the shirt on over top of my blouse and thought hard.

  By the time Gerry returned, with Tad thankfully in tow, I had the beginnings of a plan.

  Unlike Ron and Gerry, Tad wore a blue naval uniform with brass buttons. Finally, a break. “What’s your rank?” I asked him urgently.

  “2nd class steward,” Tad said. As always, he hunched his shoulders and had a surly set to his mouth. Had he not wanted to be found?

  “2nd class? Have you seen Sahan and Jazzy?”

  He nodded.

  “Well? Where are they?”

  “Heading for the boat deck probably. Doesn’t matter. They’ve split off from our team.”

  I swallowed a curse. It wasn’t an unexpected move from Jazzy—she’d never respected me because I’d been given my ticket —but I’d hoped for better from Sahan. “Their loss,” I shrugged, putting on a good face. “Their specialty is puzzles, not survival.” Jazzy would probably be able to get a seat on a lifeboat; Sahan, not so much.

  “Time’s running out,” Tad said. “We’ve been ordered to wake up the passengers and issue lifebelts.”

  “What’s the plan, Angel?” Maryanne asked softly. �
��You always have a plan.”

  “We’re going to build a raft.”

  “A raft?” Ron frowned. “Shouldn’t we try to get to the lifeboats? They’re up on the top deck,” he added.

  Did they really not know? I guessed the disaster had been old news when they were born. “The Titanic doesn’t have enough lifeboats for everyone. The rule is women and children first. Almost all the men on board drown.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier to hijack a lifeboat than build one?” Ron persisted.

  I shook my head. “The other groups will be certain to try that. And they’ll probably get shot for their troubles. If we want to win, we need to be different.” Besides, stealing lifeboat seats from women and children, even if they were just VR simulations, sat wrong with me. Nor would it go over well with viewers, I bet.

  I side-stepped the argument. “Don’t worry, we’ve got time. It takes the Titanic two and a half hours to sink. The first thing we need to find is building materials. Boards, axes, tarpaulins, hammers, nails, tar. Access your character memories and see if you remember seeing stuff like that.”

  We all murmured softly to ourselves. I didn’t have any luck, but after a moment Ron frowned. “I’m getting a picture of the cargo hold. My character helped load some wooden crates. But we’ll have to move fast. Those areas are in the bow, and they’ll be flooding fast.”

  Gerry snapped his fingers. “The ship’s carpenter! He’ll know where to find nails and such. His cabin is only a few doors down from mine.”

  “Excellent,” I praised. “Okay, Gerry you track down the carpenter. The rest of us will plunder the cargo hold. No, wait.” Instinct tickled me. “Tad, I want you to perform your steward duties.”

  Tad balked. “Why?”

  "The Titanic had a huge loss of life. I have a hunch the programmers will drop an anvil on our heads if our actions result in more deaths." And hopefully pay bonuses if we saved more VR people, especially ones that had drowned in real life.

  Tad dug in his heels. “I can carry twice as much as the rest of you.”

  “He’s right.” Maryanne nervously tucked a strand of blonde hair behind her ears. "He should go with you. I can wake people up. And while I’m at it I’ll try to find more carpenters and keep my eyes open for useful supplies.”

  I opened my mouth to object.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said. “And you know it’ll be good for me.” She raised her eyebrows significantly.

  By which she meant if she was going to prove herself to her dad, she couldn’t spend the entire Immersion glued to my side. Which went against my bodyguard instinct. This building confidence thing was trickier than it sounded.

  But would it be safe? The 2nd class cabins ought to be less risky than the cargo hold and Devon probably wouldn’t be looking for her there. “All right,” I said. “Everyone rendezvous in half an hour back here or the next deck up if it starts to flood.”

  And we were off. Ron led the way. But when he came to an intersection he hesitated. From where we stood, I could see three different sets of staircases. “Why don’t they have any maps posted?” he complained, tapping the wall as if he could make a computer display appear by virtue of willing it so.

  Tad snorted, then pushed past Ron and turned right, assuming the lead.

  “You certain you know where you’re going?” I asked him as he clumped down yet another different staircase. I’d assumed he would only know the 2nd class areas of the ship.

  “I’ve got the deck plans in my head,” Tad said.

  Did that mean his character did, or was he using his Augment? I decided not to ask.

  Two flights of stairs later, we emerged in the postal station. A uniformed man with sparse white hair and a mustache was hauling up wet sacks. “Thank goodness,” he said when he saw us. “The mailroom below is flooding. I need help hauling the mail upstairs.” Water had soaked the postmaster’s trousers to the knee, and blue tinged his lips. Since he was skin and bones to begin with, the elderly man looked ready to collapse. I reminded myself that he wasn’t anybody’s favourite Grandpa, he was just VR, an obstacle whom the programmers would likely use to pester us.

  “Sorry, mate,” Ron said cheerfully. “We’re here to haul cargo, not letters.”

  But Tad shook his head. “The cargo’s below the mailroom. If it’s already flooding, it’s too late.”

  “There’s more than one cargo area,” Ron said, frowning.

  Another snort. “Yeah, but it’s behind the bulkhead. We’d have to go all the way up and then back down. There’s no point. It’s probably flooding, too. We can try the stern cargo hold, but the stuff there is mostly food supplies for the trip.”

  Lovely. Turning in a circle, I spied a door that said Luggage. “Ron, give the postmaster a hand, but don’t get your feet wet again.” Hopefully, that would keep the programmers off our backs. “Tad, since we’re here, let’s take a glance at Luggage.”

  The oddly shaped room beyond was filled with assorted steamer trunks, hat boxes, and wrapped packages, all neatly labeled. We could open some of the trunks, see if there was anything useful inside, but I suspected it would be a waste of time.

  I peeked around the corner, then beckoned to Tad, grinning. “Look.” I gestured to the unmistakable shape of an automobile.

  He stood beside me, close enough to brush my shirt.

  I casually stepped away. “Help me get the coverings off.”

  He frowned. “What good is a car here?”

  “Not the car,” I said impatiently. “The tarpaulins. They’re waterproof. We can line the raft with them.”

  “I don’t get you,” Tad complained while we folded the crinkly, noisy tarpaulins. “You and Emily could make it off on the lifeboats, easy, and incur only a small penalty for splitting the team. Why are you risking the prize down here?”

  I resisted the urge to pat his arm and reassure him that I wasn’t going to desert him like I sensed everyone else in his life had. If I used words like trust and loyalty and friendship it would only make him more suspicious. “Play it safe, you mean? Where would be the thrill in that?” I scoffed, folding the tarpaulins over my arm.

  “Crazy,” he repeated, thrusting his hands in his pockets. He had a strange expression on his face, almost—regretful?

  Before I could ask him what was wrong, the lights flickered. The walls briefly changed colour from white to grey and back. One wall moved closer, then receded.

  On the heels of the—VR glitch?—we heard a loud crash from the postal room. Raising a finger to my lips to caution Tad, I ghosted back to the connecting doorway.

  The two scavenger hunters I’d encountered before, the actress and the gamer, had apparently decided to get one of their ‘souvenirs’ from the mailroom.

  “You can’t be taking that!” the elderly postmaster exclaimed, tugging at a sack of mail the gamer was holding.

  “Think again, Gramps.” The gamer had lost his top hat somewhere, but his gold waistcoat still made him look out of place. “What are you waiting for?” he growled at his partner. “Hit him.”

  The actress wrinkled her nose and hesitantly raised the crowbar in her gloved hands. Her white silk dress had suffered some grease stains, and the hem draggled on the floor.

  Behind her Ron rose up out of the stairwell. He grabbed one of her ankles.

  Startled, she jerked free and swung the crowbar at his head. She missed, clanging off the metal railing. He swiped at her feet again, and she kicked him in the chin.

  “Ow!” He reeled back, barely catching himself from falling down the stairs.

  My blood iced. I perceived a flaw in NextStep’s mix of VR and reality. The crowbar was a simulated object—it could take Ron out of the game, but it wouldn’t actually hurt him. But if the woman kicked Ron in the head too hard or knocked him against a real bulkhead or made him fall down real stairs, she could crack open his skull.

  I darted forward. “Stop! He’s real, not a VR character, you’ll hurt him!”

  The
actress dropped the crowbar. As if that was the danger.

  Her partner snatched it up. “Back off!” he snarled.

  “Let them have the mail,” I told the postmaster. “You’ll never save all the bags anyway. It’s flooding too fast.”

  The gamer’s eyes narrowed. “What are you doing down here? I should’ve known you were a player.”

  “What does it matter?” the actress demanded. “Let’s just get out of here while we still can. Can’t you hear the water flooding in?”

  I could hear the water. And puddles had formed at Ron’s feet. Idiot. He was the medic; he should know better.

  “It matters because if they collect the same items we do, we’ll only get half the points,” the gamer said. “You lot, get down there.” He gestured toward the stairs.

  So he could lock us in to drown? A VR death, not a real one, but still likely to be unpleasant, not to mention putting us out of the running. Not happening. My vision grew acute, colours brightening, as adrenaline stormed my system, honing my reflexes to razor-sharpness.

  The gamer had taken a step back so he could keep an eye on me and Ron. Tad lurked out of sight in the luggage room, a secret weapon of sorts.

  The gamer hefted the crowbar like a baseball bat. I eyed it warily. I didn’t think it was real, but, in the context of the game, the heavy iron could break bones. If he used it as a spear, he could puncture an abdomen, ensuring Game Over.

  I concentrated on him, dismissing the actress as the type to stand aside and watch. At most she’d do a little shrieking.

  I feinted left, then jumped back as the crowbar whistled through the space where I’d just stood.

  Right on cue she screamed. “Snake!”

  Snake?

  If she was trying to create a distraction, a snake was an odd choice. Most people would have shouted, Look out, or Fire. I didn’t dare take my gaze off the gamer, but uneasiness prickled my nape.

  “It’s over there, behind those b-bags,” she stuttered. “It’s huge.” In my peripheral vision, she appeared genuinely scared, white showing around her irises. She must be a better actress than I’d thought.

  Her partner ignored her. He stepped forward and swung at chest height. I jumped back, narrowly avoiding a fall down the stairwell. Water now lapped only four steps from the top, flooding fast.