Game Slaves (27 page)

No big deal, right? We were all friends.

But not so . . .
intimate
. Mi and I shared something special, and that made some lines the other guys were not allowed to cross.

Reno was stretched out on the deep cushions. His leg was elevated, and it looked better. At least it'd stopped gushing. Now it just oozed.

Mi was horizontal too. They were watching a movie on one of the TVs, some romantic story, I think. Her head was on his chest, just lying there, like he was her pillow. She was all snuggled in, as comfortable as she'd be with a stuffed animal or, straight up, with me.

Mi's hair spread out, soft, flowing, and Reno was absent-mindedly stroking it with his fingers.

They both giggled. The movie. One of the characters was being sensitive and funny.

When they laughed together, it felt like someone had stabbed me in the gut.

He squeezed her tight. His hand kept moving, brushing a stray lock out of her eyes so she could see. They were so cozy. Like old friends, and more, like lovers. Like two lost souls who'd finally found each other.

And who'd found a private, quiet, tender moment in the middle of the chaos that was our lives.

Betrayal.

I felt like throwing up.

Nausea flooded my throat, head went dizzy, knees felt crippled.

How
could
he? I felt like killing him. My hand reached for a shotgun. I'd just blow his backstabbing head off, the blood would soak Mi, served her right. That'd teach them. No one betrays Phoenix. Not if they want to live.

They had no idea I was watching. They had no clue they'd been discovered. Private moments like that are not made for three.

But my hand didn't grab the pistol grip. It wouldn't slay him. Why not? It should have. I wanted it to. Anger burned through every pore. Crazy how my brain calculated it in a military assessment kind of way, but . . . killing him would, unfortunately, deplete my forces by twenty percent. That would hurt the team.

Still, he deserved it.

Mi belonged to me. We were meant to be together.

And this, the snuggling, the laughter, the shared joy: it was the lowest form of treachery. As new as we all were to the flesh-and-blood world, this was as close to infidelity as any of us could get.

Mi was mine. Everyone knew it. Reno would die for stealing her affection this way. There were plenty of pillows around. She didn't need him. She didn't need him for anything. I was supposed to be enough.

Enough? Even in this small body? Weak? Powerless? On the run? Scurrying around in a world where I was the very bottom rung of the ladder, instead of the very top?

Then he leaned over and softly, deliberately, kissed her on the side of her head. Right above the port. It was slow, it was tender, and it lasted forever. His other hand held her soft cheek so tenderly, with so much love. It was the kind of thing you only see between two people whose bond has long history and goes deeper than those around them can imagine.

I almost murdered him. I almost splattered his skull right there. But for some reason, as my brain swam with this new, ugly emotion, I slunk off, leaving the two of them to finish their movie.

To finish it together.

How long had that taken to develop? A few hours? Our siege wasn't even one full day old. In the tank, everything moved at game speed. Out here, it was slow death, but the five of us must still have been on our NPC clocks. We couldn't settle in for long. We'd always be cursed with the need to make big moves and make them fast.

I waited. I didn't lash out. I found a way to back off and bide my time.

Mi went on patrol. York was checking the vehicle bay. Dakota was sacked out. I gave Reno an extra sleep shift and took his rounds. He was hurt bad; he needed more rest.

BlackStar
had
to be planning something. And it had to be big. What would their next move be? That helicopter, armed with guns instead of drugs? Explosives along a wall? A tunnel?

One surgical or tactical strike and they might just take this store back. I could just see the five of us—the ones who lived through the firefight—kicking and screaming as they plugged us back in, shoving our heads under, into the blue murk. Holding us there until we stopped squirming, until we drowned. Then we'd go back to work. And with no meddling children allowed to find a way to bring us back out.

Reno, man, I hated him on a gut level, but he did not look good. The hollows under his eyes were darker. The skin around the bandages was blotched and pocked and turning white. How long does it take humans to heal from three large-caliber supersonic rifle bullets? In-game, it barely slowed us down. Out here? It'd been twenty-four hours. What was the problem?

Maybe I'd smother him in his sleep. It wasn't exactly a warrior's death, but he didn't deserve one. Never mess with another man's woman. It's part of the male code. It's the primary element in great stories, love and war: we
have
to defend our princesses.

I picked out a pillow. A square yellow sponge creature. Then I crept over to where Reno was napping and raised the weapon over his face.

I'd just press down. No one would know why he'd passed away. It wasn't like we would run an autopsy. Everyone would figure Reno finally died from the wounds . . .

But I knew immediately I couldn't finish him. I wanted to. I
had
to. In my mind, I could easily snuff him out. But there was no way my hands would push down. He was my brother. Mi was much more, but still, even if they
were
interested in each other now . . . even if that tenderness was genuine, I had to learn how a man handled these things, not how a gamer did it. The human Phoenix must prevail.

“What's the pillow for?” Mi asked, standing right behind me.

My heart almost stopped.

Tears flooded my eyes. But she couldn't see that.

I thought quick. “I wanted to elevate his leg more.” I put the cushion under his mangled limb. “He doesn't look too good.”

“No, he doesn't,” she agreed.

Then I slunk away. I did shoot a backward glance. Yeah, she had tears in her eyes too.

I went back to the loading bay. I'd help York get the truck ready.

“Phoenix, up front,”
York chirped into the mic. Daylight had just broken, and it sure wasn't a bluebird day. Clouds had packed in thicker, and everything was covered in a dense mist. Our cameras were having a hard time seeing the trucks, let alone what might be lining up beyond them.

“Rain is over the city wall,” Mi told us as we assembled, “and moving our way. If making some kind of break under cloud cover is the plan, this might be our best chance.”

“We've got enough food in here for centuries,” Dakota reminded her.

“Yeah, but the people outside don't,” Mi argued. “They'll never let us just hold out, no matter how valuable we are.”

York again on the radio:
“Phoenix, get to the front of the store! You really want to see this.”

He was right.
But something else came up before I'd see what it was.

I heard a painful hack. Mi was wheezing even more. Almost every few seconds now.

I kicked into the hospital again and pulled down the highest-price prescription bottle Winters had available. Mi was gulping all that stuff like soda pop. And it helped. It helped a lot. I might have been really angry with her for the Reno thing, but you just can't sit and watch a person cough so hard you can tell it hurts on a rib level.

Great. So I catch them together, and what does the mighty Phoenix
actually
do? I give Reno a pillow and Mi some medicine. What a tough guy.

Back to York and the front of the store.

Our enemy was right outside now. There he was, the hooded shadow from the limousine.

“He just strolled up, not a care in the world,” York said, pointing his rifle center-mass even though his bullets would never get through the Plexiglas. “I'll open the door, you pretend like he gets to come in to talk, and then I cap him here on the inside floor so we can take his stuff. Then they'll know we mean business.”

“No,” I answered.

I couldn't see his face behind his tall collar, just the eyes, but immediately, I knew Mi was right.

Under that hood I was sure was someone who, at the least,
looked
a whole lot like me.

“Let him in. I want to hear what he has to say. We all do.”

York stared at me, cold, as I gave the order. Not because he thought I was losing it, but because he knew about letting the enemy behind your lines. He knew about suicide bombs and tracking devices and surveillance gear that can be hidden in a freckle.

“He's wired for sure! They'll fix on our positions. They'll plot our weapons capabilities. They'll know our
health
. Phoenix, this is a
major
mistake.”

“Let him in.”

The gate slid up. York unbolted the main door, and then there was one more of us inside.

 

Our gun sights never left his head. All safeties were off. My heart, and it'd taken a beating lately, was hammering away.

Why? Because of one man? Maybe because this was
the
man. Just from his confident gaze, you knew he was a player.

We moved toward the electronics section. You couldn't even hear his feet touch the floor, and this was a big, empty echo chamber now.

His hood panned around, eyes taking in everything. A nod.

“Very impressive, Phoenix.”

I nodded back. I didn't need his approval.

“My experts said we'd catch you trying to make a run into the wasteland. So in different spots, we left all our defenses down to bait you. Why didn't you run?”

“Is there a better life out there?”

A shake of his head under the hood. “No. There's no life out there, it's all fed out. Then we thought you'd try to take a truck and a squad, so we drove out a bunch of vehicles and fried some buildings. Didn't bite there, did you?”

“What good would one van do against hundreds?” I asked.

“But we found you eventually. Nice run. A great run. Sorry to see it end like this.” His voice was so sure, so confident. Like he had the ultimate ace left to play.

The man said, “We really didn't expect this kind of offensive. Ingenious. You've got everything we need. People are already hungry. We need the new rivet and plate shipment down at the wall.” Outside, lightning cracked, but I was sure the construction on the metal beast would go right on.

Then the cloak came off.

So there he was. The man was almost my perfect twin. Older, yes. Some gray hair on the sides, but he wasn't past his thirties. There was no port, of course, but he did have that beautiful tattoo around his palm. The BlackStar brand.

And those eyes of his, they burned with power. He was in charge. He
was
BlackStar.

“Hello, brother,” he said.

“Not brother,” I answered. “More like
spawn
.”

“Spawn. Good choice of words.”

“I assume you're BlackStar_1.”

“That's right. Number one.”

I stared at him. A lotta hate. In the back of my mind this guy's chances of leaving the store alive were about the same as my chances of sprouting wings.

“What
is
he?” asked Dakota, dying to know. “Your older brother? Young father?”

“No,” I answered for him, “but we are related, aren't we?”

“Twins?” she guessed.

“No,” he told her, “much more than that.”

I got it now. Originally, he was the world's top player, right? He ran the most successful gaming company on the planet. Something in his DNA helped him rise right to the top.

So once we escaped, what should we have expected but a master strategy? We weren't going up against some novice. We'd been playing the guy who wrote all the mission code.

If there is a digital god, it's the guy who typed the
first
line of binary. The original 1010 himself.

“I'm going to win this, you know,” he said to me.

“What do I call you?” I demanded, the old commander coming out.

“Max, you can call me Max. Or Mr. Kode, or just sir. Daddy? Master? God? What's it matter? I have a thousand gamer tags. You have even more copies yourselves. I've gone in there. I've tested you over and over. I've hung out at your CO sometimes. Just to see what kind of new edge you're working on.”

Then he turned to my team. “But you, and Mi, Dakota, York, Reno, I want you to know before things get really out of hand, there's
no way
you can win this. You simply cannot walk away from us. There's only one end to this race, and that's for you
all
to go back in the tank.”

“Oh, we'll play,” York promised, itching to blast something. “And we'll win. We always win.”

“You
sometimes
win,” Kode replied harshly, “and you sometimes lose. The analog world out here is just as much a crapshoot as the digital one you escaped. What needs to happen now is for you to realize that in this environment, on this
frontier
, you, Phoenix, absolutely can
not
win no matter what. Your own bodies are already telling you why. The clock is ticking down. Your biological doomsday devices have no shutoff code.”

“What doomsday devices?” Dakota asked.

At that moment, someone coughed. I thought it was Mi again, but when I looked up, I saw that she'd given the chest bug to Reno. He was wiping a spot of blood off his lip.

My lungs, to be honest, were also on fire. So was the skin around my eye.

Kode went on. “But if you come with me, then I'll give you a way where you can walk out with whatever you want. Or
think
you want. I offer you complete defeat and certain death . . .
or
. . . partial victory. No more, no less.”

“
Whatever
we want?” asked Dakota.