Nothing.
He walked once more down the center, kicking through the slush and checking the code for anything weird. Then he examined the bench. Another check of the programming.
Nothing.
As Michael climbed the ladder out of the ditch, he tried not to think of how much time he’d just wasted. There’d be no way of knowing which trench held the Portal until he and his friends searched them—one by one. He sighed again. He supposed no amount of effort was really a waste.
At least that’s what he told himself. He couldn’t shake the hopeless feeling that they’d never find what they were looking for. There were still at least a hundred more to go.
No one was running at him—at least not yet. And a glance around the battlefield showed no sign of his friends.
Michael headed for the next trench.
5
No one was inside that one, either.
Michael scaled down and began his search. He slipped under a wall tarp and made his way down one side, then up the other, checking the code now and then. But it all looked fine. There was nothing there.
He climbed out, discouraged but ready to check the next space. He’d let his guard down, so he was surprised when he saw a woman standing there, waiting for him. Dressed in the same winter camouflage Michael wore, she looked clean and fresh, like she’d just walked out of the tunnel. Her face would’ve been pretty if it wasn’t screwed up into a nasty snarl.
“Micky told me I’d have an easy kill over here,” she said. “Nothing like a stray kid who’s tippy-toed his way in without permission. You’ll be a good game-starter for me.” Her expression had warmed a bit as she spoke but twisted back into a snarl when she finished.
“Easy?” Michael repeated. “What makes you think I’m gonna be easy?” He casually took a step backward, lining up the heels of his boots with the top edge of the trench. He wanted to look like someone who was scared but trying not to act like it.
“How many times have you been in here?” she asked, again relaxing that horrible face only to pull it back when she was done talking.
“This is my first time,” he said innocently. “But I did have a kill already. That’s not too bad, right?”
She shook her head. “I’m going to enjoy this way too much.”
Michael just grinned and said, “Go for it.”
He wanted her to make the first move, and it worked. She came at him, her angry face flushed a deep red.
She pulled back her fist, and right before she hit him Michael dropped to the ground, onto his side. He knew there’d be a risk of slipping over the edge and into the trench, but he was willing to take it to avoid another fight. He squeezed the handle of his knife and sent a bolt of invisible power at her torso, and she catapulted forward.
She flew over Michael and fell, screaming, to the trench floor. Before she had time to get to her feet, Michael was sprinting for the next trench. If he was lucky she’d broken a leg.
6
There was a man sleeping on the bench inside the next trench. Other than that, it was empty. Michael was ecstatic. He ran to the steps and climbed down. At first he considered doing a quick search without bothering the guy, but then thought better of it. The man might wake up while Michael was under the tarp, and Michael would be wide open for attack. He couldn’t take any chances.
Michael stood near the sleeping man, watching his chest rise and fall. Not wanting to get too close, he quietly pulled out his blade and aimed, then shot a clear laser of power across the man’s neck, trying not to gag as the soldier sprang awake and grabbed at his bleeding wound. He fell off the bench, and for the second time that day, Michael had to remind himself that he hadn’t actually killed a person. It looked so real.
The man bled until his body was empty, then vanished.
A quick but thorough search of the trench revealed that once again Michael had struck out. Three down, dozens to go. He groaned.
“Not happy down there?”
He glanced up to see a man and a woman standing directly above him, right on the edge of the trench. The woman was bouncing a grenade from hand to hand.
“Um, no, I’m just taking a breather is all.” Thankfully his clothes were now dirty and smeared with blood. He fit in much better, looked like he belonged.
“Nothing but a dumb kid,” the man said to the woman. “Think you’re going to get away with using code from other games? And there’s no doubt you’re a rookie.”
Michael narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?”
“Because you haven’t turned to run yet. You’re probably pretty sure this grenade doesn’t work.”
Michael started to answer, but before he could get a word out the woman pulled the pin and tossed the grenade. It landed with a wet thunk in the slush at Michael’s feet. He looked at the pair of soldiers with defiance. They turned and ran.
When the grenade blew, Michael felt it. This time there was a brilliant explosion of pain so acute and short he didn’t even have time to scream. Then came the void of dark space that they called death.
7
He woke up back at the beginning, in the icy tunnel. Bryson was sitting there and didn’t seem the least bit surprised when Michael appeared before him.
“Sucks being killed out there,” Bryson said. “I hurt.” He paused. “All over.”
“Yeah, me too.” Michael stood up and stretched, felt the lingering aches and pains from his two deaths. They weren’t quite the same as real injuries—the Coffin stimulated nerves for physical reactions—but enough to ensure you wouldn’t forget too quickly.
“How’s Sarah doing?” he asked.
Bryson shrugged. “I don’t know. We got separated.”
“How many trenches have you seen?”
Bryson held up two gloved fingers. “But nothing yet.”
“Man,” Michael groaned. “This is gonna take years.”
“Nah, we’ll be fine,” Bryson answered, climbing to his feet to join him. “Having fun?”
Michael looked at him for a second. “No, I hate every minute of it,” he finally said, then held up his knife. “I ended up borrowing a little something from
Dungeons of Delmar
.”
“Yeah,” Bryson replied absently, his face screwed up in a grimace. “It’s weird how these old geezers like to kill—like they’re animals. I need to program myself a little help.”
Michael nodded. “Let’s just find that stupid Portal.”
Out the door they went.
8
The next couple of days were pure hell for Michael.
He died twenty-seven times, in every way imaginable, within the borders of that brutal, icy arena. Some deaths were worse than others, but somehow he kept going back out there. His knife trick helped a few times, and he tried other things like a special leaping ability from the
Canyon Jumpers
game and enhanced speed from
Running with Ragers
. They were hard to isolate and program, and ended up only delaying his inevitable doom.
But he pressed on.
Oddly, every day a horn blew at dusk, and the battles ceased immediately. People who’d been going at it like lions were suddenly pals, walking—often limping—toward huge dinner tables with arms around each other’s shoulders, laughing.
Michael and his friends joined them to eat, then headed toward a place where warming lamps and sleeping bags had been laid out. The first night, they’d tried to sneak toward the trenches to search, but they’d come across a temporary firewall and were all too tired to hack it. The security programming in the frigid place was definitely above average.
The next morning it all started up again. Kill, kill, get killed. Pain and suffering. Kill some more, get killed some more. For the first time in his life, Michael understood why real soldiers coming back from real wars often had a hard time getting over the things they’d seen and done. And had done to them. If Michael had a soul, it was starting to leak out of his pores.
The one solace he had was that he and his friends were together. They didn’t say much—or have time to—but at least they were together.
In the late afternoon of the third day, Sarah found the Portal.
CHAPTER 12
A DIRE WARNING
1
Michael had just been killed again by a working grenade. If he’d learned anything in
Devils of Destruction
, it was that no matter how many times your body exploded, it never got any easier.
Sarah was waiting for him back in the tunnel. She was sitting on the ground, back to the wall, legs folded underneath her, and she looked exhausted. Michael sat down across from her, and she told him.
“I found it,” she said softly. Her voice sounded dead. Michael felt just as empty, and he thought he knew why: they’d paid too heavy a price. He knew he’d never be the same.
He did feel some sense of relief, though. “Where?” he finally asked, and the way Sarah looked at him, he knew she was just as relieved as he was.
“It’s five trenches in from the tents, near the middle, on the left side. There are five or six people inside, who knows what kinds of weapons. I barely detected the Portal before they killed me.”
“We’ll be fine,” Michael told her. “We’ll wait for Bryson, and we’ll come up with a plan. Maybe we can even do it without jumping in there and going medieval on everybody.”
She gave him a smile. It was weak and small, but it lifted him up a little. “At least we know where it is. I don’t think I could’ve lasted much longer out there, running from one trench to the next, wondering what joyful way I’d die next.”
“I’ll take a nice trip through space killing aliens with lasers anytime over this.”
Sarah’s eyes met Michael’s and stayed there, both of them silent, sharing the experience they’d just endured. Then pain exploded inside his head.
2
Michael collapsed to the cold floor and curled up into a ball, barely aware of Sarah by his side, leaning over his shoulder, yelling at him to tell her what was wrong. He couldn’t form words. He gripped his head, rocking back and forth as the pain pounded inside his skull. He was aware enough of what had happened to him in the alley back home that he refused to open his eyes.
The visions. Those creepy, terrifying visions. He didn’t know if the effects on his mind would be the same in the VirtNet as they were back in the Wake, but he didn’t want to find out. He kept his eyes squeezed shut and waited for the pain to fade.
Finally, just like before, it vanished in an instant. No slow recovery, no lingering ache. He was in agony one second, totally fine the next. Though he thought he’d heard a voice….
According to Sarah, the episode had lasted three minutes—it could’ve been an hour for all Michael could tell. She put her arm around his shoulder and helped him sit up. He leaned back against the wall and stared at the ceiling. What a splendid week he’d had.
“You okay now?” Sarah asked.
Michael turned to look at her. “Yeah. When it ends, it totally ends. Doesn’t even hurt right now at all.” But he was exhausted and sick with fear—he hadn’t had an attack in a few days, and he’d been hoping that maybe they’d stopped.
She ran her fingers through his hair. “What did that monster do to you?” she murmured.
He shrugged—he assumed she meant the KillSim. “I don’t know. I just remember it felt like it was sucking my brain out. Maybe it did—part of it, anyway.”
“At least you went a while without an attack, right? Let’s just hope it happens less and less frequently. Maybe it’ll eventually stop altogether.”
Bryson appeared back from the game then, a look of pride brightening his face, and Sarah dropped her hand from Michael’s head.
“Hey, I found it!” Bryson called. “I found the Portal.”
Sarah smirked. “Big deal,” she said. “I beat you to it, slowpoke.”
But her face filled with a genuine smile. Michael’s heart felt a bit less empty, though he was still concerned. He hoped it had just been the delusion of his attack, but he could’ve sworn he’d heard a voice, whispering a phrase inside his mind.
You’re doing well, Michael
.
3
Bryson described which trench he was talking about, and it was indeed the same one Sarah had found. Michael and his friends racked their tired brains to come up with a plan. They had to get close enough, and have enough time, to probe the Portal and hack their way through its code. But jumping inside that ditch, knives and fists first, was the last thing any of them would ever want to do again.
Which is what made Michael think of grenades. He’d been killed by them three or four times, so he knew they were effective. And he’d be lying if he said he didn’t want the tiniest bit of revenge.
When he suggested it, Bryson said, “Well, it sounds good, but we’ll need something extra to make sure they go off.”
Sarah answered, “We’ll just bring a whole bunch and start tossing them. I’ll program a Spectacular Spark from the
Munitions Maniacs
game and hope it triggers them.”
Michael grabbed his backpack and unzipped it, then took everything out. “Let’s start stuffing.”
4
Once everyone’s backpack was full, they hitched them over their shoulders, got gloves and hats, then headed back out the door into the wintry air.
Michael and Sarah followed Bryson around the left side of the valley, careful to stay below the ridgeline, out of sight. When they got to the rise, they dropped to their stomachs and crawled to the top.
Then it hit Michael. “What if we just wait until morning and try to get there before anyone else?” What he really wanted to say was,
Please don’t make me run down there into that mayhem again
. He didn’t know how much more of it he could take.
“I’m dreading this, too,” Bryson said. “But we can’t afford to lose another night. Let’s just try this thing. Guards or no guards.”
“Okay,” Michael grumbled. “But remember—either we all get through or none of us do. We can’t go through the Portal alone or we might never hook back up.”