by Vic Connor
“Could be,” Tim said. “Even with those odd occurrences. I have to admit, this one seemed worse for them. If the Stingers are using them for an advantage, I can’t tell what it is.”
They all got to their feet, joining the crowd that was now dispersing. The message had said “23d”—Niko guessed it meant twenty-three days from now, at 11 p.m. If the glitches did exist to communicate with Niko, what did it mean that it had been done through this apparently famous team, on such a grand scale?
Kings 14:23. For they also built for themselves high places and sacred pillars and Asherim on every high hill and beneath every luxuriant tree. If the message was meant for him…then he knew exactly the place it was referring to.
19
The Third Memory
Twenty-three days later, Niko loitered in the clocktower after team practice, re-reading the book Hunk had taken out for him to kill time until 11 p.m. After weeks of dorming with the Hunk-the-rules-encyclopaedia, he knew better than to try and sneak out anytime after ten.
By 8 p.m., he regretted the decision, and at 10:50 p.m. when he set out, he was in too much pain to feel regret or anything else save the growing heat centralized in his head. If what he’d seen happen to Hunk back in the real world was any indication, it meant Clark and his cronies were experimenting on him right now.
At least the freezing air cooled his head a little. The night was biting cold, and it was only going to get colder when Niko arrived at his destination. Altitude and all that. After a brisk walk, Niko arrived at the base of the spires, eying the sky-lift warily. Would it even work when class wasn’t in session?
Looking around to ensure no one was watching, Niko walked into the lift and closed its metal door, throwing the switch. Sure enough, with a shudder it started up the side of the great stone pillars where they held his DPS class. The night wind made the lift rattle in a very unnerving way. Niko feared it might fly off the side of the spire mid-ascent.
Thankfully, the lift managed to trundle all the way to the top. It felt strange, coming to the stone spires at night instead of the foggy mornings of their class. It would be easy to imagine the rope bridges that connected each spire were made to cross over dark, shallow water instead of a hundred-foot drop. The only light came from Phaeton and the moon, both half-full, and it was even colder up here. Wrapping his arms around himself, Niko scanned the horizon.
Maybe it wasn’t actually meant for me, he thought. Maybe it was just another glitch that happens to that team.
But then he spotted it, a winking dot of pale-golden light on a distant spire, connected to his place by a long rope bridge. It rattled against the wind. Niko winced, wiping sweat from his brow. His breath came out in puffs of steam.
Should I even retrieve the memory right now? he wondered, tip-toeing to the bridge. What if Clark sees it?
As if in answer, the memory orb flared, illuminating the spires for the instance of a lightning-flash. It immediately went back to twinkling in the distance. Niko wasn’t sure if this was a yes or a no, but he remembered now that he’d been in the experimentation room when he found the first memory too. That Tala woman had said the recording cut out.
The first step he took on the rope bridge came out creaking and unsteady. The bridge swayed beneath his weight, and Niko had to hunch forward to hold on to the frayed ropes that served as railing. It scraped against his palms as he dragged himself across. Hot sweat popped from his forehead, then reached down his face in cold, unpleasant streaks. It itched, but Niko didn’t dare release his grip to wipe the sweat away. The boards sank, soft under his feet, like packed snow, making Niko tread lightly.
Nearly there, he thought, jaw clenched so hard his teeth hurt. Looking down, he could only see an inky abyss. Niko wasn’t sure if this was better or worse than being able to see the full distance to the ground. Up ahead, beneath a great, craggy tree, the memory orb bobbed and twinkled. It should have been getting bigger as he approached but wasn’t. It took Niko some time to realize it was slowly fading, the light dimming. After checking the time, Niko saw it was past 11. They must only stick around for so long.
He couldn’t wait another month to find the next memory. Loosing his grip on the rope railings, Niko jogged the rest of the way, the bridge shuttering under him. The boards creaked and cracked, and Niko leapt the final sprint as one of the bridge’s boards gave underfoot. He fell forward onto blissfully solid rock, stumbling but not falling on his face. Back on the bridge, he saw one of the boards had caved, making a splintered V. Niko let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
Turning, he didn’t find the memory orb at first, and panic clenched his throat. But it was still there, a dim spark beneath the knobby branches, hardly brighter than a distant star. Niko jogged over, closing his hand around it like trying to catch a firefly.
The dark world melted away.
“I feel like I’m in a nightmare.”
His mother’s voice from down in the dining room sounded distant—dreamlike, when heard it through the wall. Two walls on either side all the way to the ground floor turned the stairwell into a corridor. Niko crept to the bottom step, then peered around the wall’s edge. His parents sat at the dining room table, holding hands. His mother Anna was crying—not wracking sobs, but silent tears carving track marks down her pale cheeks. Niko ducked back behind the wall.
“I never thought… I never imagined my work would be used this way. This goes against everything I stand for.”
“It might not be that bad, Anna,” Yuri cooed. “It’s just government funding.”
“This government doesn’t fund things that aren’t in their interests. You know as well as I do the state gets involved because they want something. We accept this funding, this means we’re in bed with them, and they get a say in what our tech is used for. I don’t want to know what that could be. I can’t stand for this, I won’t.”
Yuri sighed. “If it’s so important to you, we’ll quit.”
“We can’t quit. We both work there, we’ll have no income. Plus, if we stay, we can still influence things…maybe. Niko—”
“Niko is who I’m worried about,” Yuri said. “If you’ve made up your mind to leave, I want to get out of this as soon as possible.”
Anna grunted.
“If things are as bad as you think, maybe a time will come when we can’t get out. Look, we’re both senior staff. We know things about the game they wouldn’t want getting out. If we stay on, this will only get worse.”
“You think… They wouldn’t…go after Niko, would they?”
“I don’t know. Clark said something to me today, I…”
Clark? Niko felt like he’d been punched in the gut. It couldn’t be the same Clark from Territoria…could it?
“What did he say?” Anna sounded panicked.
“Just that…the game will be ready for Niko’s generation.”
A muffled sob. “Ready to erase his generation, he means. Bury them on a hard drive like inconvenient history.”
Niko peered around the corner again. His mother had her face in her hands, and his father had taken his glasses off, looking more tired than Niko remembered.
He ducked back around the corner, looking down at himself. He was tall, taller than he should have been, longer and leaner than any six-year-old. His parents should have left him by now.
“I can’t quit,” Anna said. “I can’t just walk away knowing what he plans to do.”
“Anna—”
“You said it before. I’m in a strong position. I’m going to learn things that could take them down.”
“Our son—”
“Our son is one of millions of children who will be hurt, erased, by Clark if we don’t stop him.” Anna paused. “We’re building a perfect soul-catcher for them, Yuri.”
“A what?”
“I’ve been thinking. I know you’ll tell me I’m putting too much religion into this, and maybe you’re even right, but…after we’re done living, our souls should
ascend to Heavens to continue their journey. They shouldn’t be held forever on some hard drive.”
Yuri was quiet for a long time. “I don’t believe we’re capturing any souls, Anna. Minds, maybe…but souls?”
“Yuri—”
“All right. All right. If we’re really going to do this…then…I need you to promise me something. Promise me…we’ll prepare Niko for what’s coming. If we put ourselves at risk, it risks him too, and we’re responsible for this. I want to prepare him.”
“Prepare him…how?”
Niko peered back around the corner in time to see Yuri put his glasses back on. “In a way only we can.”
Niko jolted back from the memory, falling backward onto the stone of the spire. The cold wind bit, and the rope bridge creaked a few feet away, the broken board now hanging off in two pieces. His UI exploded with text.
QUEST COMPLETE: COLLECT MEMORY_3
800 EXPERIENCE GAINED
PASSIVE EFFECT: 800*1.5 = 1200 XP
5200/4500 XP
DING! YOU HAVE REACHED LEVEL 4
HEALTH: 175 HP (+30)
ATTACK: 80 (+15)
CRIT RATE: +0.7% (+0.05%)
ATTACK SPEED: 1.6 HITS/SECOND (+0)
DEFENSE: 8 DAMAGE MITIGATION (+2)
ARMOR: 40 (+10)
NEW SKILL ACQUIRED: ABIL_IfElse
Eventually, the text faded away, leaving only a view of the half-moon, the stars, and his HUD. The time in his UI read 11:05 p.m.
Every time he’d found a memory, it had logged him out of the game. No, that wasn’t quite true—each time he’d found a memory, he had “died” right after. First was the fall; second was the gun with the engraved words “LOG OUT.”
Niko chewed his lip, tip-toeing to the edge of the spire, looking down into the inky blackness that he knew was a long, long drop.
Niko scooted closer to the ledge by a few inches. Maybe it wasn’t the memories that logged him out… Maybe, when he died in the game, it brought him back to the real world. If that was the case, the easiest thing to do now…was jump. He scuttled further, until the toes of his black boots peeked over the edge of the spire.
Like an alarm, the sound of the wind froze, belching the same loud monotone against his ears. The sky snapped from starlight black to an eye-bleeding blue. Startled, Niko squinted against the sudden brightness, covered his ears, and then stumbled back onto the pillar, gasping for breath. White text printed across the sky in that same garbled mess of words and punctuation that he could see when he used his abilities.
if (hp = < -10)
{
Boot.FromItem (NeckSlot_AvatarItemId=”000000000”);
Location.Read (vat= “SOMOV_000002”);
}
“I don’t know what it means!” Niko yelled at the words in the sky, as if they could hear him. “What do you want?”
The words floated in the sky like clouds, and they had about as much meaning to him. He saw shapes in the strange formatting, but he had no idea if they were real, or just his mind trying to form patterns from nonsense.
“Who are you?” he asked, quieter, cowed by the searing blue sky. “Why me?”
Then, like a light switch turned off, the sound stopped, and the sky returned to black. Niko shook his head, then marched to the rope bridge, stepping over the broken slat and white-knuckling the ropes the whole way back to the sky lift.
20
A New Glitch
A strangled cry jolted Niko awake. He blinked the sleep away, then looked around. Hunk was curled up, his sheets pushed off in a wrinkled puddle at his feet, hands clasped on his head.
“Hunk? You okay, man?”
“Hot.” Hunk’s voice was choked with tears. “It burns. It burns!”
Niko swept his covers off, getting up to cross the room to Hunk. After some wrangling, Niko managed to get him up and out of bed.
Hunk leaned on Niko hard, whimpering as they walked down to the dorm’s restroom. A few minutes with his head in the sink, the faucet pouring cool water over his movie-star haircut, calmed him down, like it always did. Niko watched the water gush out from the faucet, trying to guess how many gallons were going down the drain.
“I’m sorry.” Hunk’s voice was barely audible under the hiss of running water. He reached up, twisting the faucet off.
Niko leaned against the mirror and didn’t look at him. “It’s okay.”
A stretch of time passed, filled with nothing but the drip of water and Hunk’s labored breathing. “It’s getting worse,” Hunk said into the drain, “isn’t it?”
A slice of light cast through a cracked door, and the brief view of Hunk laid out on a table, surrounded by cords and lab coats, flashed across Niko’s memory. “Yeah,” Niko said. “It’s getting worse.”
“You blow yer cooldowns like a 15-year-old losin’ his virginity, ya gloomy pusshead,” Jeny said, puffing as her running shoes crunched on the stomped-down earth of the path.
Jeny had shown him the jogging trail, a serpentine oval that cut through the ghost pine forest near the amphitheater. It was quiet there, forest-quiet, birds calling and trees creaking. As frustrating as the past months had been waiting around for more memories to show themselves, Niko was in some part grateful for the time spent in the game. This morning run, for example, had become a treasured half-hour the past few weeks.
“Yeah, well, you run slower than an octogenarian with a wooden leg,” Niko shot back, feet thudding against the trail in a steady rhythm.
“Aye, but at least I don’t put enough sugar in my tea to bake a biscuit wi’ it, ya rotten egg on a hot day.”
“Maybe so, but I don’t make my tea weaker than a T-Rex trying to do pull-ups.”
Jeny snorted, halting her jog and leaning on her knees, gasping.
Niko slowed to stop. “You okay?”
Jeny looked up with a big grin, and Niko realized she wasn’t gasping but laughing. “A T-Rex doan’ pull-ups? Me own Pa wouldn’t make a joke this doaty.” She laughed again, eyes shut, still out of breath from the run.
Niko laughed too then, a little sheepish, sucking air into his lungs. “Made you laugh though.”
“Only because it was so bloody stupid,” she shot back, punching his arm with a grin.
They took a breather on the pathway. From his own private exploration of the area, Niko knew there was a natural hot spring just off the path from here that steamed and sprouted mushrooms and algae in defiance of the winter cold. Jeny swallowed, waving the lapel of her leather jacket like a fan as she caught her breath. Did she ever take that thing off?
“So why didn’t Hunk come out on th’run with us today?” Jeny asked between short breaths that came out as pale-blue clouds.
Niko’s mood dropped. “He…had another headache last night.”
“Again?” Jeny spat in the dirt. “What is Dr. Goseyun doing? Shouldn’t he be taken to hospital fer…I don’t know, tests or something?”
Niko thinned his lips. Not if the game keeps people from looking too far into it. For the hundredth time, Niko considered telling Jeny about the game, the Vats, the penitentiary, everything. But he knew she’d just think he was nuts. He’d been waiting, hoping for any sign or signal of more memories since the one he’d found under the basement. But there had been nothing for months, and Hunk’s episodes—as well as his own—had only gotten more frequent, and worse.
“I hate this,” Jeny whispered. “Something’s hurting him, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.”
Niko took long, deep breaths, trying to slow his heart rate. He was staring too hard at one of the ghost pine’s branches, one that jutted out at about his height. A phantom pain pulsed in his forehead. There might be something I can do.
It was freezing this high up. Icy drops from the rushing waterfall spattered the exposed skin of Niko’s cheek, and the wind threatened again and again to toss him off the cliffside and onto the rocks below. He wished it would. That would make this easier.
While Niko had managed
a few sparse escapes out to the woods to search for the edge of the world, every one had come up empty. Either he was completely mistaken about the direction in which it lay, or the game developers had patched it up. All he’d found was a herd of shaggy, lavender elk, the rocky hot-spring grotto, and a huge waterfall that plummeted to a sharp pit of rocks and rapids. He’d found it again today without too much trouble.
It’s just a game, Niko reminded himself as he looked over the drop. This is how he’d logged out the last two times, but there had been memories nearby, and Niko didn’t pretend that he knew the game mechanics enough to know the difference. All those places had been glitchy. What if the game had to be broken for his death to make him wake up in the Vat?
A gust of wind sent Niko tipping out from the edge of the cliff, nearly tumbling off and into the rushing torrent of water. Instinct kicked in, and he stumbled back, falling on his butt. Heart racing, Niko lay back and stared up at the sky.
This was crazy. The gun had been directly correlated to the memory. It had instructions engraved on it, for God’s sake. Why did he think he could just launch himself off a cliff and do it himself? I’ll find some other way to help Hunk, he told himself, pushing up from the ground, then turning to leave. He spared a last look at the waterfall, then froze.
There it was, out in the breathless gap of open air: a Cygni elk. Its shaggy fur was a pale lavender, almost but not quite white. Its antlers were a wet black, smooth and massive, curving up into the sky. The elk pawed at air; dipped its head and cropped grass that wasn’t there. Niko could barely breathe.
A glitch, he thought, swallowing. “Okay,” he said aloud, wiping the sweat on his face as he took a few cautious steps toward the ledge. “Okay.” The elk watched him approach with glassy-black eyes, stomping its hoof on a surface which wasn’t there; standing on one hundred feet of nothing.
