“Lua, you’re breaking the rules. I didn’t bring you on this mission.”
He kept wrapping the log, affixing it to another log he pulled from the underbrush. “Boss,” he said softly, “you need to see what is real.”
I stepped back; that was what Armando had said. I reached for a stick to use as a weapon, pulling at it, but it was stuck in the underbrush.
Lua went faintly transparent, as if he weren’t all there. “I guess,” he said as he worked, “we have different ways of trying to make you confront it. Armando, he always was a little loony. He had a loony solution.”
I glanced in the direction the others had gone. I really didn’t want to be alone with a possible nightmare.
“Don’t mind them,” Lua said. “They’re getting pulled into the simulation, you know? Rolling with it.” He yanked on his log and pulled—from the underbrush—a fully formed catamaran ship, made of logs and vines. “Not the best I’ve ever made,” he noted, “but it’s not bad, considering what I had to work with.”
I gaped. That was a serious breaking of the rules.
“In here, you are the rules, boss.” I could still see through him, and got the distinct impression that in his outline—as if he were a window—I could see a concrete floor, some desks with computers.
Voices.
He’s up and walking. The brain has stopped suppressing his movement, even when we tell it to. That’s new.
How are the readings?
Interesting. Completely different from Sandra—and completely different from when he broke in. These readings mean he’s adding aspects into the simulation, though. The program should be able to interact with them, like we interacted with Sandra’s aspects.
“I could live here,” I said to Lua. “I could let them create my reality, and I could just … go with it.”
“Isn’t that what you do anyway?” He smiled, then turned and waved at the other three, who were walking back along the beach. He gestured toward the boat, looking very proud.
“Lua,” I said. “What does it all mean? Why is this happening to me? How do I stop it?”
“You think I know? I’m what you made me to be—the guy who can get you off an island. In the end, we’re all just trying to help.” He got behind the boat and shoved his weight against it, pushing it along the sand toward the water.
J.C. and Ivy arrived to help push, while Ngozi complained that seawater was “full of animals.” Finally she climbed aboard, then J.C. and Ivy joined her—with Lua ready to push the boat the rest of the way out into the water. He waved me toward the last seat in the catamaran.
I stepped into the warm water. “They can just stick me into another VR world if I escape this one.”
“Nah,” Lua said. “You can see through it.”
“That’s crazy,” I said. “I can’t even see what is real in my own bedroom.”
“And tell me. Who is the strongest, boss? The guy who never goes to the gym, or the guy who tried—but failed—to bench his best yesterday?” He nudged me toward the boat, looking even more transparent than before.
I sat down, then realized there were only four seats. “You’re not coming?”
“Gotta stay here now,” he said, giving the boat a good shove. “Broke too many rules. But don’t worry about me. I’ve got a day job.” He winked. “Call center for an insurance company. Something boring. Normal.”
He pushed us out into the water, then waved as we picked up oars and began to row. I watched him as he vanished, and I braced myself for the ripping sensation, the loss of knowledge and information. But this time it was more … more like a subtle fade. Like falling asleep.
The simulation barely lasted twenty feet beyond the small bay. One second we were rowing, and the next, the four of us were standing back in the warehouse. I reached up, wiping the tears from my eyes.
“That was awful,” Gerry—the tech—complained from his seat at the computers. “He didn’t follow any of the quest paths. He just broke the thing.”
“A ton of hard work, flushed right down the drain,” the female techie complained.
“It’s the aspects,” Kyle said. “They’re letting him cheat. We’re going to have to remove them. He’ll be helpless without them.”
“No,” I said. “Listen. I—”
“Don’t worry, Steve,” Kyle said. “They aren’t actually people. No loss. Mob scenario, Gerry.”
The room flashed white, and we were standing in an old-time casino, next to a spinning roulette wheel.
A man burst through the door. “Big Salamander is here!” he shouted. “He’s wise to—”
Gunfire blasted through the door, ripping through the man’s body. He collapsed as men flooded into the room, then began shooting people indiscriminately.
THIRTEEN
Ivy fell first. She clung to my arm as she looked at the bullet wound in her stomach. Then she began to slide down.
“No. No, no, no!” I screamed, kneeling beside her. Gunfire tore up the room. Ngozi dove for cover, but a bullet hit her in the forehead, and she collapsed. J.C. kicked over a table, then grabbed Ivy, hauling her behind cover.
I scrambled over beside them, bullets blasting wood chips from nearby tables. People screamed, but for once, J.C. didn’t return fire. He pressed his hand against Ivy’s wound. “Hey. Hey, stay with us. Ivy?”
“Steve,” she whispered. “Steve!”
I huddled beside the overturned table.
“You need to promise,” she said to me, “that you won’t abandon the rest of them. That you won’t let us end like this.”
“I promise,” I whispered.
She smiled, lips bloody. “That was a lie.” She nodded toward J.C., and tried to sit up. He helped her, and then she kissed him. An intimate last kiss, amid a hail of gunfire. Our table wasn’t doing much good. A shot went right through the wood and hit J.C. in the shoulder, but he lingered on the kiss until Ivy was gone.
He reverently lowered her body back down onto the floor. Then he looked at me, bleeding from one arm. “You’re going to have to handle this alone, Skinny.”
“I can’t, J.C. I can’t.”
“Sure you can. You had an awesome teacher.”
“Don’t—”
“Why do you think I’ve been training you all this time? I knew.” He tapped his head. “See what’s real. You can do it.”
“J.C.…”
He raised his fist toward me. “For good luck.”
I raised my fist, then tapped his. He grinned, then pulled one gun from a holster under his arm and a second one from a hidden holster strapped to his right ankle. He stood up.
And was hit with about a hundred rounds at once. He collapsed back to the ground without getting off a single shot.
“No!” I screamed. “NO!”
I let out a ragged, raw screech, a moan of pain and frustration. Of anger. I rocked back and forth on my ankles as the bullets demolished the room. But they didn’t hurt me. They weren’t real.
Not … real.
The shooters grew faintly transparent. The splinters flying off the table, the spilled casino chips, the fallen corpses. It all … faded. The roar of the gunfire became a buzzing. In its place, I heard voices.
We need to learn why he’s still up and moving.
We could tie him down maybe.
I could see them gathered around, watching me. Shadows looming, all save for one man at a desk of computers. Chin, I thought. I need you.
I stood up. Then, for effect, I ducked in a low run and scuttled across the casino room, as if trying to dodge bullets. That put me close to the computer desk in the real world.
To my eyes, the virtual casino faded further, and I could see real-world details. Kyle, grinning as if amused to see how helpless I was. The two guards approaching, perhaps worried that I’d hurt myself or ruin something in my thrashing.
The computer monitor.
“Yeah,” Chin said in my ear. “That’s easy. Not a bad UI, for what has to be an ear
ly build.”
“Emitters are along the ceiling of this warehouse,” Arnaud said. “In the whole room.”
“Click that radio button,” Chin said, “and change the target from ‘single subject’ to ‘entire room.’ See that checked box at the bottom? The one that says ‘Debugging mode.’ I suggest turning that off, as it might prevent them from using backdoors they’ve made to get themselves out of the simulation. Good luck.”
I leaped for the computer, shoved Gerry aside, and clicked as Chin had instructed.
The guard from the hot dog stand rushed for me, but moved too slowly to stop me. Instantly, we were all there together. Kyle, the two guards, Gerry and the other techies. We stood in that casino, surrounded by dead people. The mobsters had stopped shooting, and were now picking through the wreckage.
“Oh, hell,” Gerry said. He scrambled for the now-vanished computer controls, but just waved his hands through empty space. “Oh, hell!”
The hot dog guard grabbed me by the arm. “This won’t accomplish anything. You’re still in our prison.”