Game Slaves (32 page)

It wasn't slow motion—more like everything just sped up and no one could do a thing to help, not reach out a hand or toss a line or even shoot her with that harpoon gun . . .

But there was one thing that did happen. It took no more than a hundredth of a second. Her eyes, as she fell, locked on mine. We shared the deepest gaze. And I've peered into
millions
of faces at that exact moment, the moment of certain death.

No one—not a single person in a game or in reality—
welcomes
it.

But Dakota . . . I might be wrong . . . she almost looked like she was about to smile . . .

. . . and then she tumbled straight down through the floor as if she'd been sucked right to hell. We heard her scream, “AHHHHHHHHhhhh . . . ,” until we could hear her no more.

I jumped to the edge and looked down, hoping to see her still alive. It was amazing how well it had been hidden in the smooth concrete, but there it was, a square opening just big enough to drop a body through.

And down the hole? Absolute blackness. None of us mentioned that it was so deep we hadn't even heard her hit. No pit is truly bottomless, but this one seemed close.

Just that quick, the door swung back up and sealed shut.

You can bet the rest of us four went up on our toes as quick as possible.

We shuffled to find a safe path, reached the container, and pulled the serum out.

 

The syringe was dark chrome with blood-red and radioactive-green LEDs along one side. No one bothered to read the warning labels.

It was heavy in my hand.

Reno limped forward. He looked three shades past death. These might be the last steps he'd take on that gangrenous leg. York was holding his chest, hoping that big seizure could wait a little longer.

And Mi, well, the way she coughed made me think breathing for her was even more painful than having an arm buzzed off. My girl never showed pain. Now she was hiding agony.

We were all sick as dogs. And we had no real place in this world. My skull was on fire as the bacteria from the port infection played war games in my brain.

“Hit me with it,” Reno offered. “I'm worst off. See if it helps.”

“I'll be the guinea pig,” York argued. “My ticker's a death sentence.”

“We're
all
dying,” Mi reminded them. “But this may have just been a ray of hope Max dangled in front of Dakota.”

“Dakota would have taken it.”

“She was just steps away. Nasty trick to fall for,” York spat. “I'm gonna do it,” he said, grabbing the needle. He got it right up to his arm, but the glittering tip of the syringe didn't pierce his skin. He wouldn't quite inject it. There was still a lot of doubt.

“How do we know we could trust that Kode guy?” Reno suddenly asked. “It might just knock us out so they can tank us again.”

Mi glanced at him, then offered, “Well, he is the exact same DNA as Phoenix, right?”

Everyone nodded.

She turned to me and asked, “And we trust Phoenix, right?”

“Always have.”

Mi stared my way. “So, P, if you were him, would you have lied to you right then? Or would you have told yourself the truth? What would you have said?”

The question hit me like a knee in the gut.

Talk about a twist. Would I lie to me? Even for my own good? Now, there's a puzzle that has no solution.

Still, one thing remained.

Mi.

And the rest, but mostly Mi.

I wanted her to live. So I'd do whatever it took.

“I'll take the injection first,” I said, reaching out.

York slapped the device in my hand. It burned at the grip. Whatever was in there was just teeming with nuclear material.

I slipped the needle into my arm, then began a slow, nervous squeeze on the plunger.

 

My eyes opened, and I could tell something was wrong. All four of us were lying on the floor of the lab. An empty syringe, shared by me and then the rest of my team, rocked to a stop against a wall.

The pain was a new kind of pain. Excruciating. Like I was being burned from inside one vein at a time.

“You fool,” a voice said. “Now you can never win.”

I looked up. Saw a shoe. Pants. Then far, far above, like I was falling or he was growing taller and taller, Max Kode stared down at me.

His arm was in a sling. His head was shaking. “With that serum in your system, you can never be put back in the tank environment. It nullifies all the sedatives. You blew it.”

I wanted to speak, but no words would come. My lungs were molten, my throat a pipe full of flame.

“You might have just killed us all,” he said, almost sadly. “Me. Jimmy. Charlotte. The people you met. The crank who reattached my arm. Mi, York. Reno. So was it worth it? What if the whole city starves? Or gets overrun?”

I was dying to remind him that a short time ago, he had guaranteed that he would win and I would lose.

The words, I wanted them to come out of my mouth, but maybe he knew what I was thinking.

It was comforting to be out in space again. Sure, your planet has some interesting perks, but if you ever get the chance to pilot a fully loaded Z-class interstellar attack bomber, take it. These things will do warp ninety-three and have an arsenal that can split your average moon.

Imagine being able to enter orbit, sweep in over France, and decimate everything between Paris and Rome. Yeah, it leaves a mess, but it's pretty darn fun.

I angled toward a pair of ringed planets. This, I assumed, was where the enemy would come out of warp. Little did they know, we'd be waiting.

Mi was on my left, Reno over to my right. York made a quick lap around a few of the closer asteroids to make sure the quadrant was clear. We didn't want anyone getting the drop on us while we were planning to get the drop on them.

Space battles are just
great
. So many variables. And everything is three-dimensional, so when the attack came not from our front or rear but from straight overhead, out of the sun, we barely had time to react.

The gamers were flying the double-Z-class, but while faster, they had limited range with their nukes. We used this advantage for as long as we could, but soon enough all of us were zipping around in close-quarter dogfights.
BAM! Bam-BAM!
Explosions. Go back home, PTA moms . . .

I had another one lined up. Then a third was on my six. I shook him, went over and picked a pursuer off Mi's tail, then rolled onto my back and skimmed off the atmosphere of a rogue meteor.

The sudden flames from my high-speed skip into its thin air blinded my scanners, and just for a moment I was engulfed. I left its gravity seconds later, but it was too late.

During that instant when I couldn't see, two enemy ships set up a nice little bottleneck on the other side. I came out and spotted them, and no more than a half second later a bolt of plasma ripped the primary engine off the rear of my fighter.

The next blast cut my cockpit in half. I ejected, but to where? I was in deep space.

So there I was, floating along, powerless, shipless, through an intergalactic dogfight the likes of which no human had ever really seen. What the heck? I unholstered my puny little hand-blaster and began firing off random shots at the gamer ships. They were still moving at light speeds, so it wasn't like I was hitting much, but it was fun target practice.

Practice that might serve me well someday.

And it gave me an idea. Next time, in case this happened, I'd give each of my team a mini-nuke as a cockpit weapon. One they could ride. Then, if they ever had to eject and were floating into a star like I was about to, they could still help put up a fight.

Down below, between my feet, I saw Mi's craft explode as three fighters surrounded her. They pumped shot after shot into the glowing fireball.

Reno had just lost guidance and slammed into another of those random asteroids. Bummer for him.

York, as usual, was battling to the very last gasp. His ship had lost everything: both engines, most of the armaments, even a majority of the hull itself. All that remained was his seat, a bubble over his head, and one huge laser cannon. Still, he was putting up one heck of a fight. The gamers just couldn't finish him, and he was knocking their numbers down one by one with shot after well-placed shot.

“That-a-boy!” I chirped into the mic. He whittled them down to four. Then to three. He fired as his gun reached overheat temps, and another enemy ship mushroomed into white light.

I was trying to help, with my tiny little pistol, shooting from like a million miles away, but why not? We might have been losing this skirmish, but I'd learned a lot about the way these gamers played. Do you think, for a second, that attacking out of the sun was going to work for them next time?

Nope.

We'd set a better trap.

The last two gamers maneuvered to a place where York had no chance of getting them both, then caught him in a crossfire.

He went out with a bang, that's for sure.

Team Phoenix does not whimper.

 

Now you might expect us to move to the Re-Sim table.

Buzzer sound.

I sat up slowly, the battle still ringing in my ears. It took a few seconds to clear my head. I rubbed my hair, moving one hand down to where the port was located. Very gingerly, I felt around the large connection cord coming out of my temple. It hurt. That horrible redness was still shrinking. The infection was dissipating. Good thing. According to the BlackStar docs, I'd been hours away from it spreading to my brain.

If not for the serum, I'd be some kind of vegetable now.

I sat up, not in a tank of course, but in a comfortable gaming chair. It stood in a line with three others, each of them holding one of my teammates. All were still plugged in, but I'd come out of the digi-verse first. That's my role. I still lead Team Phoenix.

Slowly, like the doc had shown me, I pulled the connection tab and very gently removed the long spike that ran behind my eyes. Immediately, the glow from my hand tattoo died to a normal ink shade.

My shift was over. I glanced at the clock. It'd been sixteen straight hours. A long one, but now I had time off. Plus, it was Friday. Yippee, here came the weekend.

I glanced to the right. Mi was in the next seat, and I could see her beginning to stir. She also had a respiration mask over her face. She's taking daily treatments for the pneumonia that ravaged her system.

She still wasn't out of the woods yet. Doc had shown me her chest scans. It might be years before the bugs finally cleared out. So, every time we came to work, she also had to wear the mask. It was, according to the same BlackStar physicians who'd made the ultrabiotic, slowly feeding her disinfected air that'd help her lungs rebuild.

So, for us at least, work was actually good for our health.

York and Reno were on the other side of Mi, but I didn't need to wait for them. We'd planned a barbecue the next day and we'd get to catch up.

Plus, I had a little surprise for Mi that I planned to give her at the cookout. One of those surprises that involves a way-too-expensive ring and a date and some kind of bells or something.

Yeah, don't judge me too harshly. I was going to take the plunge. Why not? We were like four years old or something. Can't wait around forever.

I checked Mi's readout. Accuracy stats through the roof again. More kills than York and Reno combined.

She had another hour on the chest meds, so I wandered down the corridor and stopped by the doc's office. He was out, but the assistant took a look at the side of my head. She rubbed in some more antiseptic butter and gave me an ice pack to cool the area. It's a slow recovery.

And—in case you want to know—part of the deal I had to make to get a real life with weekends off was that I didn't complain about them leaving the explosive device in my head. BlackStar would always have me on a leash. I gave that up in the deal.

But I got something, too. Don't doubt that. I played my best game, and it's up to history to decide if I won or not.

They couldn't tank us again. With the ultrabiotic in our system, any attempt to drown us in a preservative would lead to the serum counteracting the tank fluid.

But that ultrabiotic did work. To a point. Call it a partial cure.

There were still details that were being hammered out. Mi wanted to have kids one day. I was all for that. But that's down the road. Kode promised his physicians would work on making it safer for her.

And I wanted something too. My demand was even harder to convince him of than Mi's. We argued about it constantly.

“All the people, Max. You'll make room for them all.”

“I can't support that many,” Kode negotiated. “They cost too much. But we may be able to make room for, say, twenty percent of the workforce.”

“All of them.”

“We can go to twenty-one percent, but mostly women and children who don't eat much.”

“All of them, or I stop my team from playing so well.”

“BlackStar profits cannot support them all. Maybe if you played better, worked longer hours, we could add some.”

I pointed, “Or, you could give up some of
your
share.” Like that's going to happen.

They'd sold me a small house near the center of the suburbs. Certainly not in the mansion district, but it was plenty. It had a yard I had to mow. A place to park the car Mi and I shared. And a few other things that make for a normal life.

Kode had arrived early for the barbecue, he'd probably leave early too. He was griping as usual, “Phoenix, what if you'd tried to
negotiate
and
reason
with me from the beginning? We could have saved all that trouble.” But we both knew that wasn't in my programming back then. Or in his.

Jimmy and Charlotte, however, were always here. They'd really taken to our backyard. We didn't have a pool or anything. They probably just liked it because Mi and I would stay out there with them, playing like kids until it was time for them to go home.