by Dan Wells
“I’ll respawn in five seconds,” said Marisa. “Maybe I can—”
“No, you can’t—” shouted Sahara, but then Marisa reappeared in the base, right next to the vault. She started firing immediately, and then took stock of the situation. Jaya was almost dead, but they were ignoring her and pouring damage into the vault, eager for the win. All five Thunderbolts were there, at various levels of health. Marisa looked at her powerset: her holds wouldn’t do any good, because they were already where they wanted to be anyway. She had a single target freeze, but that was useless against five targets. Stupid Feather Fall, of course, was an absolute waste. She picked the one power she thought might help, and blasted them all with a chilling wind to slow them down. It was a channeled spell, which meant she couldn’t do anything else while she was casting it: just stand there exposed. She’d be dead in seconds. All they had to do was turn and kill her.
They didn’t.
The Thunderbolts’ damage output dropped as their attacks slowed, but they stayed focused on the vault—it was almost dead, and then they’d win. Jaya kept hammering on them with her magic blasts, but they ignored her and fought stiffly through the chill, beating on the vault with everything they had. Its hit points fell to triple digits. Jaya killed their Jungler; the vault had 500 hit points left. Marisa kept her chill going, but she was going to run out of energy soon. Fang respawned, and joined in with Jaya. They killed the Thunderbolt Sniper. The vault fell to 99 hit points. They killed the Spotter. Sahara respawned, and they killed the Thunderbolt General. Anja respawned. The vault dropped to 10 hit points. Marisa ran out of energy, and her spell fizzled to a stop.
The last of the Thunderbolts died.
The vault had two hit points left.
“What?” asked Anja.
“Run!” screamed Sahara. “Hit their vault before they respawn!”
The five of them tore across the map, ignoring the minions and the zombies and everything else. The Thunderbolt turrets were already down, so they swept into the enemy base like a storm and attacked the vault with everything they had. The Jungler respawned, and Sahara shouted for everyone to take him down.
“Don’t make the mistake they did!” she shouted. “Drop each one as soon as he comes back! And don’t let any of them escape!”
The Thunderbolts were better practiced, and better equipped. The Cherry Dogs were poorly specced and barely alive. But as long as they camped on the vault, killing each enemy agent as he appeared, they outnumbered them five to one. It took another three minutes, with barely a moment to take a breath, but they kept the enemy down and attacked the vault when they could, and finally it exploded. The minions started dancing, and the computer’s announcer voice boomed across the laboratory:
“Cherry Dogs win! Cherry Dogs win!”
Marisa stared at her hands, still gripping the stupid sniper rifle she’d been using to attack the enemies three feet in front of her.
“How on earth did that just happen?” asked Jaya.
Sahara simply stood there with her mouth open.
“Wake up,” said Anja. “We have adoring fans to celebrate in front of.”
Marisa blinked out of the map and into the lobby, then blinked again to exit the game. She didn’t even look at her stats. She opened her eyes slowly, shocked by the brightness of the real world’s lights, and then remembered she was on a stage. The thunder that seemed to echo through her ears was cheers and applause. She sat up, unplugged the cable from her headjack, and looked out. The whole audience was on its feet, and the roar almost made her dizzy. Anja stepped toward the crowd and raised her hands triumphantly, roaring back.
“That was one of the most nail-biting wins I’ve ever seen,” said a voice behind Marisa, and she turned to see Su-Yun Kho smiling and clapping her hands. “But it was also the luckiest win I’ve ever seen, so don’t get cocky, because you’re never going to be that lucky again. Now: if you don’t want to be branded as bitches for the rest of your tournament career, get over there and shake hands with the Thunderbolts.”
“Cherry Dogs forever!” shouted Anja.
Marisa walked to the Thunderbolts, still sitting in stunned shock in their VR chairs, and hugged every one of them.
TWENTY-TWO
“‘A stunning upset and a classy show of sportsmanship,’” said Sahara, reading the article out loud for the seventh time. “‘The Cherry Dogs have made a resounding entrance to the international stage.’ I could read this all day.”
“You have read it all day,” said Marisa, reaching past her to grab a brush from Sahara’s bathroom counter. “Now start looking hot or we’re not going to get into this club. And C-Gull doesn’t seem like the kind of person who gives rain checks.”
“We could set up an automated routine to read it for us,” said Jaya, carefully applying bright blue eye shadow in the mirror.
“I can read it for you,” said Fang softly, standing just outside the doorway in her oversized hoodie. “I don’t have anything else to do.”
“You need to get dressed,” said Jaya.
Fang looked at the floor. “I’m not going.”
“Come on,” said Marisa, “it’ll be fun.”
“You could wear one of my dresses,” said Sahara.
Fang walked away, mumbling, “You’re like five feet taller than me.”
Marisa sighed, and pushed past Sahara to go into the living room to talk with Fang directly. “She wasn’t trying to offend you,” she said softly.
“I wasn’t offended,” said Fang.
“Then why are you acting so . . . downtrodden all the time?” asked Marisa. “I’ve been trying to figure you out ever since you got here, and I have no idea, so I’m just going to ask. Are we being mean? Are we not including you? Are we overwhelming you with . . . something? With Mexican food? What’s wrong?”
Fang kept her head down. “Nothing’s wrong.”
“Then why are you being so quiet?” Marisa demanded.
“Because I’m quiet,” said Fang.
“You were back to your old self again in the match today,” said Marisa. “I thought we had you back, but now you’re clamming up again, and you won’t come with us tonight, and I just don’t understand.”
“Then think about it for two seconds,” said Fang, her voice growing annoyed. “Do I look like the kind of person who likes to go to dance clubs? Who likes”—she searched for the right word—“people?”
“Is this because of Zi?”
Fang frowned. “Why would it be because of Zi?”
“Because she was so mean to you?”
“Oh,” said Fang, “so now I’m a coward.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s what you said.”
“Look,” said Marisa. “This is a secret meeting, but we’re going to stick out if we don’t look like we’re having fun. And clubs, my dear, are fun. Have you ever been to a club before?”
“Why would I ever go to a club?”
“Because . . . they’re fun,” said Marisa. “Because you get to let your hair down, and lose some inhibitions, and dance around and move your body—”
“I hate dancing,” said Fang. “Everyone just, what, jumps around? In unison?”
“It’s not choreographed,” said Marisa.
“But everyone’s still doing the same thing,” said Fang, “at the same time, in the same way. It makes me angry just thinking about it.”
Marisa sighed. “We’re not trying to make you angry—”
“Then stop telling me how to have fun!” shouted Fang. Marisa’s eyes went wide, and Sahara and Jaya leaned through the bathroom door to look. It was the loudest Fang had been since she’d gotten to LA. She looked at the floor, saying nothing.
“I’m sorry,” said Marisa. “I just want you to . . . come out of your shell.”
“I like my shell,” Fang snapped.
Marisa nodded. “Okay. You’re right. You don’t have to tell me anything, and you don’t have to go to the club. I’m s
orry for trying to . . . drag you around.”
“I’ll patch in through a djinni call,” said Fang. “I want to be there for the meeting, I just don’t want to be there there for the meeting. You know?”
“Anja’s outside with an autocab,” said Sahara. “Ready to go?”
“Let me finish my hair,” said Marisa. She dragged the brush through her hair one final time, then looked at Cameron and Camilla. “And you, Pati, are going to make sure Mami doesn’t see the vidcast.”
A message from Pati popped up in Marisa’s djinni: no text, just an image of a thumbs-up.
“How did you know she was watching?” asked Jaya.
“She’s always watching,” said Marisa, and set down the brush. “Let’s do this.”
Sahara spun on her heel, showing off her dress. “How do I look?”
“Amazing,” said Marisa. It was another of Sahara’s own designs—a brown base almost the exact color of her skin, overlaid with a pale white thicket of fabric in the shape of crooked aspen branches, growing denser as they climbed up toward her neck. Her bust and upper arms were covered with actual twigs and tendrils, and underneath them it was almost impossible to tell where the fabric ended and her skin began.
“You make the rest of us look terrible,” said Jaya.
“That’s Sahara’s specialty,” said Marisa. “You look great too, though.”
“Thanks,” said Jaya. She was wearing a dark red dress made of folded diagonal layers, covered with rich golden embroidery. “You’re not bad yourself.”
“It’s Sahara’s,” said Marisa, looking down at the black vinyl panels and the giant, asymmetrical collar flaps. It was at least one size too small for her, but the interlocking panels did a tolerable job of hiding it. “I’ve wanted to try it on ever since she got it, so I guess that’s one good thing to come out of losing my own best dress BASE jumping.”
Te ves chidissima, sent Pati.
“Anja’s going crazy out there,” said Sahara. “Come on.”
“See ya, Fang,” said Marisa, waving as they walked out the door.
“I’m right here,” said Fang, initiating the call, her voice piping out through the speaker in Marisa’s purse. Marisa laughed. Maybe Fang would feel more comfortable interacting with them online.
Anja was waiting in the autocab, wearing what looked like a navy-blue military jacket, with matching booty shorts and thigh-high boots, all of it accented with a wine-colored bustle of thick, ruffled taffeta.
“Epic!” said Anja, helping Sahara into the cab. “This is going to be awesome. And check it out . . .” She held one finger in the air, listening, but Marisa didn’t hear anything. She shook her head.
“What?”
“Nothing,” said Anja. “No ads! That ad-free membership thingy is the best yuan I ever spent.” The cab waited for everyone to get settled, then pulled away and started the drive to Santa Monica. “Can we talk about how amazing that game was yesterday?” asked Anja. “I’ll start: it was amazing.”
“We’ve been talking about it all day,” said Fang.
“Hi, Fang,” said Anja, and laughed when she realized where the voice was coming from. “Some girls keep a dog in their purse; Mari keeps Overworld’s best Jungler.”
“It was amazing,” said Sahara, “but it was sloppy.”
“We won,” said Anja.
“No,” said Sahara, “they lost. There’s a big difference. If they hadn’t gotten greedy trying to kill our vault, we would have lost everything. We play Canavar tomorrow, and we can’t rely on them making the same bad decisions.”
“You’re absolutely right,” said Marisa.
Sahara looked at Marisa pointedly. “The other thing we can’t do is disappear for fifty-two seconds in the middle of the match, getting ganked at the spawn point while you pick your nose.”
Marisa’s mood plummeted as she remembered her massive mistake. “I’m sorry.”
“You want to tell us what that was about?” asked Sahara. Her voice was firm and angry, and Marisa couldn’t blame her. Disappearing like that was a terrible thing to do.
Marisa was careful not to look at the camera nulis. “I thought I saw a rhinoceros.”
“You saw a what?” asked Sahara. “Oh.” She shook her head, taken by surprise, and then blinked. “Rhinoceros” was the code word for “I’m about to say something that can’t go out on the public video feed.” Now that the nuli dive video had made them famous, Sahara’s viewership was bigger than ever, and they’d started taking extra precautions. “Speakers are off,” said Sahara, “and the cameras are pointing at Anja and Jaya.”
“We’ll dance,” said Anja, and started to wriggle in her seat to some music only she could hear.
Marisa looked at Sahara. “The tournament’s being played inside of the Sigan airgap.”
Sahara’s eyes went wide. “You’re kidding.”
“I blinked out to look at the server, thinking maybe I could find whoever was controlling the lag spikes, but I found the entire system—the same exact system I was in at the gala.”
“It’s part of their setup,” said Sahara, nodding as she thought about it. “We’re playing in a closed network, so they can simulate connection issues and make sure nobody cheats.”
“Except Chaewon,” said Jaya.
“This means we have hard-line access to the private database,” said Marisa. “We didn’t think we could help Alain because we couldn’t access the top level of their security, but now we can. Every time we’re logged in to the game, we can hack into Sigan.”
“There’s no way they’d just leave themselves open like that,” said Anja, still dancing for the camera. “I’m trying to be vague in case someone’s reading my lips.”
“She’s right,” said Sahara. “They wouldn’t give sixteen teams full of total strangers that kind of access.”
“Maybe they thought we wouldn’t find it,” said Marisa.
“Maybe it’s booby-trapped,” said Fang.
“I already tried it,” said Marisa. “I used the buffer overflow and got in just fine—they didn’t protect it at all.”
“Then they don’t know it’s there,” said Jaya.
Sahara hesitated a moment, thinking it through, and then laughed out loud. “Chaewon, you gorgeous little brat!” She looked at Marisa, practically bubbling over with excitement. “Sigan doesn’t know about the hole! Chaewon must have been so desperate to cheat she made a hole the company doesn’t know about—Sigan is evil, but even they’re not petty enough to rig a silly little tournament like this. The other megacorps playing against them would take it as a huge insult. So: Chaewon put a back door into the game server to allow her accomplice, probably a worker somewhere in the company, to get in and mess with the lag manually. Think about it: she’s the only one with the motive and the access to do it. And Mari found the back door.” Sahara smiled, and pointed at Marisa. “You’re amazing.”
Marisa beamed.
“This could be our ticket to getting Alain out,” said Fang. “How, though?”
“The pieces are coming together,” said Marisa. “Bao can get in physically, and now we can get in digitally.” Her face fell. “But access isn’t enough. We need something more.”
“We’ll see what C-Gull has to offer,” said Sahara. “Alain seems to think he can help, and back door or not, we need all the help we can get.”
“We’re almost there,” said Anja. “Now everyone start dancing with me before I punch you!”
Sahara turned the nulis’ microphones back on, and blinked into the cab’s music system to pick a song—a Taylor Swift dance song from her comeback album in 2048. All four girls started dancing in their seats and singing along at the top of their lungs. Marisa imagined Fang rolling her eyes, and smiled.
The cab rolled up to the Daze dance club about thirty minutes later, and even Anja was astonished at how easily they got in. The line was long, but the bouncer recognized them from the nuli dive video and jumped them right to the front of it. Once
they were inside, they were immediately disoriented: no two surfaces in the room were perpendicular to each other, including the floor, and the walls and ceiling were covered with bright, spherical lanterns in various shades of pink and blue and purple, which only added to the chaos. Marisa felt dizzy, but Anja pulled her through the maze of oddly shaped tables and platforms to the actual dance floor, which was comfortingly stable. An Aidoru band was playing, and the girls, already energized from their karaoke in the cab, started bouncing to the music.
Shouldn’t you be looking for C-Gull? sent Fang.
“You don’t have to send a message,” said Marisa, “just talk. No one can hear you anyway.”
Don’t talk, send a message, sent Fang. It’s too loud; no one can hear you.
Marisa smirked at herself, and shot a message back. It’s still early; it’ll take him forever to get through that line outside.
Better safe than sorry, sent Fang.
“Blah,” said Marisa. She touched Sahara’s arm and leaned close. “I’m going to go claim the booth and wait for C-Gull.”
“Good idea,” said Sahara. “He said ‘third on the left.’ I’m going to keep dancing for a while; it plays great on the feed.”
Marisa nodded and worked her way back through the tables, trying to figure out which booth would be the “third on the left.” She started at the entry, counted two tables, and moved past a tall purple pillar that seemed to change shape every time she looked away from it. Beyond the pillar were two tables that might both lay claim to the title of “third on the left,” and after a moment’s hesitation she decided to simply pick the emptier of the two. She slid onto one of the couches, nodding at the touchy-feely couple on the far side, and tapped out a drink order on the table’s touch screen. Water, because she couldn’t afford anything else. She sat back to wait for the waiter nuli to bring it, and sent a message to the other girls.
There’s a couple here trying to make out at the table. If enough of us show up and start talking really loud they’ll probably look for somewhere more private, and we can have it to ourselves.
