by Wyatt Savage
“How do you know?” Dwayne asked.
The doctor held the Noctem’s severed hand up and pressed the tips of the alien’s fingers to the screen, which began to glow an eerie reddish color.
A beam of light lanced out of the device. The doctor waved the device like a wand, creating gelatinous cubes that hovered in the air.
“What are those?” Sylvester asked.
“Tesseracts. Building blocks,” the doctor replied.
Noora held one, smiling, admiring its beauty. “It feels like Play Doh.”
With the aid of the device, the doctor was able to separate and bend the blocks, like a magician creating balloon animals for children. The resulting materials resembled taffy and the doctor was able to pull and push it, creating shapes. He stood back and we looked at his creation.
“What is that?” I asked.
“Go and see.”
I brushed past him and crouched, running my hands down the clear blocks, which were growing firmer by the second. They had the consistency of putty. The doctor continued his work and quickly created two longer lengths of material, six feet each in length, crisscrossed by shorter, fatter ones.
“It’s a ladder,” I muttered.
I grabbed the edges of the thing. It was heavier than it first appeared. Grunting, I hoisted the thing up and planted it in the ground. It was indeed a ladder. The others were smiling and that’s when I realized what we had.
A way to get over the wall.
39
“This is it, buddy,” Dwayne said as we ran over a trail through the woods. “Our final Level 1 quest.”
I scanned my HUD and checked the scoreboard. Dark Daze, The Duchess, SeekNdestroy, Xenomorphing, Streetsweeper, MGMT, and The Crimson Parson were all still the top scorers in our area, although The Crimson Parson had been reduced to 3860 points. I was no longer up on the board, having lost all of my points when I was killed and resurrected.
“Don’t you think this is strange,” I whispered to Dwayne.
“You mean the Melee?”
I shook my head. “I mean us finding a way around the implant and killing the Noctem.”
“I’d thought it was a little convenient, yeah.”
“I mean this ain’t their first rodeo, D. They’ve been doing this for God knows how long and I doubt there is a potential loophole they don’t know about. They are the fucking game masters after all.”
“What are you saying?” Dwayne asked.
“Maybe this is all part of some larger plan. Maybe they let us kill one of their own.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “That’s above my pay grade.
“I saw things, Dwayne. Back there, when I killed the alien.”
Dwayne’s mouth dropped open. I was silent and Dwayne gestured for me to keep talking. “C’mon, spill the beans, man. What kind of things did you see? Inquiring brothers want to know.”
“I think I saw the Melee.”
“You mean us?”
I shook my head. “Other versions of it. On other planets. There were these buildings, these stadiums I guess you might call them.”
“Jesus.”
“People were fighting like gladiators. Like something out of ancient Rome on acid.”
Dwayne scratched his head. “You think that’s what we’ve got to look forward to?”
“I don’t know.”
The others shouted for us and we dashed along after them.
Everyone moved slowly, eyes everywhere, searching for any hint of danger. Espinosa tossed a backpack to Sylvester, who opened it and handed everyone cans of soda.
“Might be the last ones you ever get, so sip slowly,” Sylvester said.
“Where’d you get them?” I asked.
“Had cases of ‘em in my truck,” the big man said. “I drove a big-rig for Pepsi.”
Agent Pei held up his can of soda. “Sonofabitch tried to drive the damn thing through a barricade on the Anacostia Freeway an hour before the Melee started.”
“What happened?”
“I got arrested,” Sylvester said. “Suspicion of terrorism.”
Agent Pei smirked. “Which is where I came in.”
“Ole Steve here was questioning me downtown, reading me the riot act when those sirens began wailing,” Sylvester said, referring to Agent Pei by his first name.
“What happened?” Dwayne asked.
“It wasn’t as bad in D.C. as it was in the suburbs,” Agent Pei said. “At least initially.”
“Then they dropped those fucking things down,” Sarah said, shivering.
“Monsters,” Espinosa said. “They dropped twenty or thirty of them down on parachutes when people wouldn’t kill each other.”
“Goddamn things looked like dinosaurs,” Sylvester said. “They just started rolling across the city, attacking anything that moved. That’s when the doc came in,” he continued, pointing to Doctor Throgmorton.
The doctor gave a slight nod. “I was merely the right man at the right place at the right time.”
“You saved our asses,” Agent Pei said.
A flare arced across the sky out ahead of us and everyone stopped. Agent Pei ran ahead, looked out, then motioned for us to follow. We did, drawing up behind him, looking over his shoulder as he parted some brush to allow us to see it in the distance.
The wall.
With the aid of my HUD, I saw that it was less a construct than some great beast, an immense apron of shiny black metal whose base and peak could not be seen.
“Jesus,” Dwayne said. “Am I losing my mind or has it gotten bigger?”
I didn’t know what to say. The thing was so large it was like looking at the edge of another world.
“How are we going to get over that thing?”
Doctor Throgmorton held up the Ex Nihilo device. “I think you’re gonna need another one of those, doc,” Dwayne said.
The doctor was not amused.
Explosions suddenly sounded in the distance along with the rattle of small-arms fire. Screams echoed and lights danced up and down the wall.
I saw on my HUD that there were other participants massing near the wall or trying to mount it.
“I count fifty-eight participants,” I said.
“Fifty-nine,” Sylvester corrected.
“They’re not attacking each other,” Agent Pei said. “They’re trying to get over the wall.”
“Then what’s with the shooting and explosions?” Dwayne asked.
“Look at the wall,” Espinosa said, muttering a curse in Spanish.
Zooming in on my HUD, I saw that sections of the wall were rippling and that long, fleshy trunks were snapping out in various directions. In others, sections of the wall folded in to reveal what seemed to be yawning mouths and snapping jaws full of huge teeth.
“Jesus, it’s alive,” I whispered. “The fucking wall is alive.”
“Let’s go,” Agent Pei said.
“Aren’t we going to come up with a plan?”
“The best plans come on the fly,” Sylvester said. Sylvester crossed himself and muttered with his eyes closed: “Fast cars, fine ass, these things will surely pass.”
We shuttled together across a field of scrub. Something moved on the ground up ahead and we tensed. It was a bald, cleanshaven man pinned to the ground by a long, metal spike.
“B-boo-boobytrap,” the man said, coughing up blood. “The whole place is boobytrapped and you can’t see it on SecondSight.”
Everyone froze, their eyes ratcheting in every direction. I searched the ground, the undergrowth, looking for any sign of a trap.
“Give him some water,” Agent Pei ordered.
Sarah reached down and handed the bald man a bottle of water. The man took the water and then grabbed Sarah’s wrist, moving his other hand to use a concealed knife. Agent Pei shot the bald man through the mouth.
“Trust no one,” the agent said. “Even if the others are wounded or trapped, they can still get enough to restore their health points by kil
ling each of us.”
We moved slowly forward.
The other participants, those we could see out on the periphery, paid us little mind. They were too busy trying to figure out how to get up and over the wall.
I saw men and women operating individually and collectively. Some of them sported the armor and equipment of higher classes or what you could acquire via a Ragetag, while others were barely protected at all.
“Check it,” Dwayne said, elbowing me in the side.
He sent a message to my HUD that popped up, revealing an image of another section of the wall. A twenty-foot-tall, green-scaled monster with the body of a T-Rex and the head of a man was visible thundering toward the wall. The thing began battering the wall, kicking and punching at it, before smashing its fists into the wall to climb up.
“He’s got the Monster Ragetag,” Dwayne said. “He’s actually become a monster.”
“Who?”
Zooming into the face of the monster, I gasped because I knew who it was.
It was Bryson!
The ex-manager of our dollar store was very much alive. There was a look of bloodlust in the bastard’s twisted face, steam rising from his enlarged nostrils as he grabbed other participants from the wall and heaved them down.
“Not cool,” Dwayne said.
“Let’s just hope we don’t run into him.”
The images on the HUD changed to various shots of the wall where some of the other participants were clinging to the face of it with special gloves or using suction and other climbing devices to scale up. Still more of the participants used conventional ladders or metal bolts that they drove into the wall, one by one, to create handholds. There were even a special few who used flying contraptions to lift off and soar up and over it, presumably to reach Level 2.
“I’d give my left nut for a helicopter right about now,” Sylvester said.
“What’s the SITREP, Sue?”
“You have approximately forty-seven minutes to scale the wall.”
“Am I right? Is it alive?”
“Portions of it are both biological and mechanical, yes.”
“Can it be destroyed?”
“It cannot be destroyed. It must be scaled.”
Closer now. We were only twenty yards away from the wall.
Espinosa was out ahead of us, pointing out hidden dangers. The man had an unnatural ability to see things the rest of us missed. A boobytrap connected to explosives here, a concealed pit there, a battery of metal darts in a can connected to a depression plate obscured by the dusty ground. He saved our asses on multiple occasions.
We’d soon drawn to within three hundred feet of the wall and it was a truly impressive structure. The exterior was matte-black, glistening like the side of a cave. There were tiny ledges and handholds at various heights, almost like a climbing wall, and certain sections pulsed with movement and I zoomed in, but couldn’t discern which portions were “alive” and which ones weren’t.
“How can we tell what’s alive and what isn’t?”
“It cannot be done,” Sue replied. “This was by design.”
“Can you tell us where the traps are?”
“No,” Sue answered. “My ability to discern is blocked by a device the Noctem have implanted in the wall.”
“They did it so we couldn’t make it over.”
“They did it to make the final stage of the Melee more difficult. You will have to scale the wall without the full aid of SecondSight.”
Fucking aliens. Not only had they established a barrier that was nearly impossible to get over, but the damn wall was a living thing and boobytrapped.
Thankfully, we had a secret weapon on our side. Doctor Throgmorton was using the Ex Nihilo to fashion a much larger ladder. Crafting it in seconds, he barked orders at the others. Espinosa and Sylvester grabbed the side of the translucent ladder and moved forward toward the wall.
“We’ve got eyes on us,” Dwayne said.
Dwayne was right and my HUD was blinking as red dots, some of the other participants, were approaching.
“They’re onto us!” Agent Pei shouted, raising his gun.
“Maybe they’re not hostile,” Dwayne said.
Bullets began flying as Sylvester and Espinosa ran with the ladder. They hit the wall and positioned the ladder as Sarah began climbing up toward the first narrow ledge, which was twenty feet off the ground.
The others helped Doctor Throgmorton up as we returned fire. Crouching, I fired the spark-hammer, cutting down several shadowy figures who were shooting at us with automatic weapons.
My HUD reflected that thirteen additional participants were out beyond us, along with a figure who’d acquired the status of a Sonic Warrior.
“What’s a Sonic Warrior, Sue?”
A popup revealed stats and information:
Species: Homo Sapiens
Level:1
Class:Sonic Warrior
Health:10/10
Attributes: Possesses the ability to harness sonic waves and energy; can also “ghost” through cover and obstacles and siphon points from other participants.
“Let’s go!” Agent Pei said as we backtracked while firing.
Dwayne went up the ladder first, then Agent Pei and Noora. I was the last one up, pausing because I noticed things I’d missed before.
There were objects attached to the wall and littering the ground. Photographs, pieces of jewelry, hand-scrawled notes. People had left these things, I realized. It was as if they had to discard everything they carried with them to make it to the next level. No turning back. One tiny object caught my attention.
A pin impaled in the wall. A fist in the shape of an American flag. I pinched the top of the pin and removed it. It was Lish’s pin! It had to be. Maybe she left it behind as a sign to us, that she’d made it over the wall. I had a mental image of her waiting for us in Level 2. I pocketed the pin.
“Does that mean something to you?” Noora asked, looking down.
I nodded. “I think someone left it for us to find.”
Noora pointed and I looked back to see halos of blue-white light shooting out of the darkness toward the wall. Toward us!
Running up the ladder, Noora helped me up and I touched the wall with my hand for the first time.
“Congratulations,” Sue said. “You have reached the wall! The wall is currently two hundred and twelve feet tall. The reward for ascending it is 2000 experience points. In addition, you will receive 200 experience points for every twenty feet of vertical wall scaled. Please note that if you do not scale the wall in full within the allotted time you will reach your journey’s end.”
I barely made it up to where the others were on the first ledge before the blue-white halos slammed into the wall, obliterating a section along with a portion of the translucent ladder.
“SONIC WARRIOR!” Noora screamed, pointing.
We peered down and spotted a female figure hovering off the ground, surrounded by a vortex of red dust. Her arms were outstretched and the air near her fingers was swirling like an upside-down tornado. For a moment I wondered if it might be Lish. She’d mentioned wanting to be a Sonic Warrior before, hadn’t she? But then I caught sight of her profile as she turned to glare at us and I could see that it wasn’t Lish. It was another woman with eyes that glowed like bits of blown glass.
The Sonic Warrior began bombarding the wall with halos of light, her sonic weapons. We fired down at her, but she spun a barrier of light that either melted our bullets and grenades mid-air, or caused them to harmlessly ricochet.
Then she lifted off the ground, ten feet into the air, working to get a better angle at us.
“Here she comes!” Dwayne screamed.
Doctor Throgmorton whipped the Ex Nihilo out, using it to summon a clear dome, what he called a suppression shield, for protection.
The Sonic Warrior flung the explosive halos at us that smacked off the dome, vanishing in plumes of orange-red flames. The wall shook and I cursed and Sue said, “The
protective structure will cease to be functional in four more strikes.”
“What else can you create with that thing?” I asked the doctor, pointing at the Ex Nihilo.
“I imagine the possibilities are endless,” the doctor replied, teeth gritted, trying to hold the dome together.
Two more of the explosive halos slammed into the suppression shield, weakening it.
“We’re down two strikes!” Sarah shouted.
The doctor stared at the Ex Nihilo and then he closed his eyes and created a golden orb that floated in front of him, casting all of our faces in a warm glow.
The doctor muttered something I couldn’t make out and the orb began to change shape, growing thinner, more elongated until it had taken on the shape of a bomb.
He raised his hand and then, as if throwing a football, heaved the bomb down at the ground.
The bomb hit the ground and vaporized the Sonic Warrior. The resulting explosion cratered the ground and flung a dozen other participants back on their asses, buying us some time.
“Can you use that thing to build us an airplane?” Dwayne asked.
The doctor shook his head. “I haven’t had the chance to explore the nuances of the device. I’m sure there might be a way at some point, but I only know the basics right now.”
“The basics are good enough,” Agent Pei said.
Doctor Throgmorton used the Ex Nihilo to lengthen the ladder. The others climbed up to the next ledge, which was fifteen feet up.
“Congratulations,” Sue said as I picked my way up the ladder. “You have successfully scaled more than twenty feet of the wall and have been awarded two hundred experience points.”
I focused on her words, willing myself not to look down, especially since I was perched on a ledge that was only twenty inches wide while the wind whipped past us.
Waiting for the others to ascend above me, I pressed my hands against the wall and this portion differed from the one below in that it was pliable, rubbery, and soggy. For a moment I thought I saw something open in the middle of the wall, like a yellow eye. I blinked and whatever had been there was gone.
Dwayne shouted for me to hurry and I mounted the ladder and climbed up.
Straining, I craned my head and spotted what I thought was the top of the wall. It was well over a hundred feet over our head and we were down to thirty-nine minutes.
