Nova Project #1 (20 page)

Turns out that's a hell of an assumption to make.

Democracy rules again; they trade off gathering the rewards, though Miguel winces every time one goes to Josh or Grace. They'll both have to do something miraculous to worm their way back onto Miguel's gracious side, and given the type of players they are, that doesn't seem likely.

His fingers close around a new gun. Shooting them would be a bad idea, one he entertains for only a second. Leah catches his eye and shakes her head with a slight smirk. She knows that he wouldn't, that everyone has thoughts not meant to see the light of day. Yeah, he doesn't like them, but he's becoming more and more sure that maybe that's the point. Working as a team would be too easy if they all were sitting around singing songs together at the end of every level. Josh and Grace are here for balance.

They're here to make the decisions the rest of them can't. To show him who he is by showing him who he isn't.

So far he's mostly made the right calls.

He grips the gun.

So far.

B
lake had underestimated Miguel's love for the girl; he had stayed to save her. It's not an enormous setback, but it's a good thing to know.

It feels like the old days—not the
very
old days, when the most exciting things Blake had to look forward to were watching grunting men and women invent fire and the wheel on a predetermined schedule—but the early days of Chimera. Good coffee, darkness, an unending stream of code on the monitors before him. Elsewhere in the building, Lucius is almost certainly doing roughly the same thing, setting up rewards, putting glowing green dots on things, and dropping random invincibility orbs around the place like the angel of immortality.

Eh, close enough. He should have T-shirts made. He'd only have to drop the first
t
in
immortality
for his own.

“You're not as far behind as you think, Mr. Anderson,”
Blake says to himself. He won't give Miguel a pass to catch up, that would be far too simple.

He wants him hungry. He wants him desperate. But in Blake's experience, humans are desperate only when they think there's a way out, however small the crack they have to squeeze through. Seal it off completely and they give up.

It won't take much, a tweak here, a tweak there. He's been doing this for a long time, but it's still almost impossible not to laugh when he hears people say computers were invented by the forces of evil.

They weren't, but some of the code was.

Quickly Blake makes the necessary changes and stands, draining the last of his coffee. The tile takes him to the middle floor of Chimera headquarters, roughly halfway between his office and Lucius's. Extra security measures are in place here. His retinas can't be scanned by normal means, nor his fingerprints. The equipment won't even recognize a human, but that's not who they're trying to keep out. It's rare that their respective superiors drop by for a visit, but it's happened occasionally. He and Lucius aren't ready to show off their handiwork yet.

Their superiors are quite happy for Blake and Lucius to work together when it suits them. So it is written, they say. And if it's written down, in proper letters and everything, that's the way it must happen. So make it happen.

The enormous room is scrupulously clean, dust sucked away by huge vents. At various times it has been home to many inventions, including the first model of the heart currently in Miguel Anderson's chest. All that is gone now, however, the medical advancements relegated to hospital labs.

He and Lucius needed the space.

“Please tell me you're not making adjustments without me,” says Lucius. He can be incredibly light-footed when he wishes.

“Would I do that?”

“Yes.”

“You're probably right,” Blake concedes. “I'm not, though.”

“Good.”

The four cells in the room are very like the cell that held the girl, but these don't shrink, and their occupants have long since stopped screaming or trying to escape. Nobody knows they exist, and for now it will stay that way. Blake and Lucius have been very careful to erase any hints, any signs that anyone has completed all one hundred levels of Chimera, let alone four people. Their families think they perished in various tragic, real-world accidents long before they reached the hundredth level. They were given dedicated gaming rooms in another anonymous Chimera building, cut off from the rest of the world. Four early players, talented enough to rise above the hordes and progress rapidly through the game. It had
still taken them many years, years in which they have become testaments to biomechanical engineering and innovation.

They thought that they were being rewarded.

Nobody looking at them now would guess that they had ever been human. Hearts and lungs, limbs and torsos and skin all the innovations that have so benefited the world. Their brains came last, a delicate balance between human enough to be cruel and machine enough to act on it.

In deference to tradition—their bosses are the very epitome of traditional—Blake and Lucius have customized the colors. The usual silver of biomech is stylish but makes it difficult to tell them apart. Instead, they are red, black, gray, and the off-white of a nuclear mushroom cloud.

They aren't ready yet.

They will be soon.

I
n the morning Team Eighteen is four levels behind the leading group, if status updates can be trusted. A quick, easy demon guarding a bell, and by lunchtime it's only three. Miguel assesses the spoils of another treasure hunt and decides not to question his luck.

It isn't luck, is it? This is what Blake wanted. Him desperate enough to play quickly, recklessly. His feed is full of people cheering him on.
Status update: I'm being blackmailed. The Gamerunners aren't who you think they are. I'm playing for my fucking life here.

They quit out; he eats lunch with Leah while Nick takes off to see Anna for an hour, to remind himself again that she really didn't die in that glass box. Anna will put up with that for another day, maybe two, then tell Nick to stop being such an overprotective idiot and get back in the game.

Grace and Josh disappear . . . somewhere. It's been like
that in the game, too. No conversation or input from either of them unless absolutely necessary, which suits Miguel just fine. He won't do anything to hurt them, but he's not about to become best friends. He has best friends, and they don't run away when things get tough.

Besides, he's not complaining about more time alone with Leah. They haven't done anything except kiss yet, but he's hopeful.

He likes her. He likes that she collects bizarre facts the way he used to collect heartbeats. It's kind of cute, really—if
cute
can be a euphemism for
She's so much smarter it's slightly intimidating.
Intimidating because it's not just the morsels of information but the way she links them when they talk over lunch, waving her hands to illustrate why this random thing affects that random thing.

How it's all connected. She's the one who put together the twelve labors thing, if she's right about that. He doesn't know how helpful it is, but any insight into the Gamerunners is a good thing to have. Are they really looking for immortality? And if so, why would Blake threaten to kill Miguel to achieve it?

He forces food down his dry throat, feels the heart in his chest, watches Leah as she explains something else. And listens, because she's the kind of girl who might quiz him later.

They all meet in the gaming room after lunch, go back in.
The overworld leads them to a maze of old, cobbled streets, their narrowness providing shade from a baking sun. Every door handle they try is locked. The windows of closed shops display objects he's never seen before, though some look like ancient precursors to modern-day things. All are covered with dust.

An expanse of brick wall greets them at the end of the lane, blocking their exit. The first twinges of frustration pinch at the base of Miguel's neck, and he checks his feed, not expecting to find anything helpful. The other teams have been as cagey as Eighteen about what they reveal, not wanting to give their rivals any hints. But geoloc tags can help a little, and they're not the only ones playing this level, though—he blinks—they do seem to be the farthest ahead.

“Where are we supposed to go?” Nick asks. The words are still hanging in the air when the wall begins to crack, a neat doorway carving itself in the brick.

“In there, I guess,” says Miguel. Yeah, there's a door, but there's no handle.
Thanks, Blake,
he adds silently.

He could ask Josh for help, but he doesn't want to. The toes of Miguel's boots are capped with steel. Good enough.

Brick dust billows up at his kick, rubble falls to the ground. The hole is big enough for his hand, and he peels bricks away, throwing them behind him, until there's a gap big enough to step through.

You have entered a library.

As usual, the Storyteller is truthful without being helpful. He can see that, but it still takes his breath away. Libraries are mostly online these days, though the Library of Congress still stands, along with some others across the world. Anything can exist in Chimera, and anything can be made beautiful. Even time travel is possible, and that's what this feels like as he stands in the middle of a polished floor.

He's read a lot, mostly while lying in bed, too sick to do anything else, but he's never held many books, felt their weight, and smelled their thin, crackling pages. Trees are precious, too valuable to chop down and pulp when everything can be stored electronically instead. This whole place is a memorial to forests long gone: not only the books themselves but the gleaming wood. The floor, the tables lit by green glass lamps, the railings around the upper floors that rise in circles above them, the shelves creaking under the weight of human knowledge. The books fill the still air with a scent of snow and calm and the feeling of possibility, that he has to read to discover their secrets. More than the oceans and the deserts, the wind, rain, earthquakes, fire, this is an impressive collection of pixels. Grudging respect for the Gamerunners mixes with his hatred for one of them. Miguel has his sim, isn't bad with programming, but this is something else. They must have worked for years to achieve it.

“Okay,” says Nick finally, breaking the spell. “Why are we here?”

Good question. “Books . . . knowledge . . . information . . .” Miguel begins.

“Logic. A puzzle?” Leah asks.

“Better not be like the last one.” Panic crosses Nick's face. Miguel agrees, but he doesn't think it is.

“Codes, maybe?” he says. “Books were used for that a lot, right?” He didn't completely check out of his history classes, even if he didn't always pay as much attention as he should have. He liked learning about wars won and lost, spies, the way messages were passed.

Leah nods. “Absolutely. But we need a key. It'll tell us what books we're looking for.”

“Could this be it?” Wow, Grace actually said something. Nick ignores her, but Miguel walks across the room to the chalkboard Grace is studying, the numbers scrawled on it faded, smudged. Legible enough.

“It looks like a computer address,” he says. “But those are usually four sets of numbers, not three.”

“Well, this is three.”

He grits his teeth. “I can see that.”

“Page, line, word,” calls Leah. “But that doesn't tell us which book.”

“Right.” There are tens of thousands here. He could lose
himself for days, weeks, years. Shame he can't take any of them out of the game. Can he? He glances over the nearest shelf, sees no glints of green light.

He doesn't have time to lose himself. He doesn't have time to lose.

The first book he grabs is an encyclopedia of plant life. The word, according to the code on the chalkboard, is in a language he doesn't speak. A few rows down, he grabs a car maintenance manual. Then a romance novel. Then something about aliens. He discards each one as he did the bricks, tossing them behind him and moving on to the next.

It has to be here somewhere. He just needs to find it.

“Stop!” Nick yells over the sound of breaking glass. Miguel turns. “What the hell is wrong with you?” Nick demands. “You're playing like Zack! Slow down! Think. We'll find it.”

Miguel looks at the confetti of glittering green fragments on the floor. Leah, Grace, and Josh are staring at him.

He inhales. “Okay. Sorry. Let's think.”

“Famous books?” Nick turns his head sideways to read a line of spines. “One that's out of place?”

“Would we ever find it in here?” Impressive. Josh is talking, too. Defeatist and grumpy, sure, but talking.

“Never mind that the code there gives us only one word.” Leah folds her arms, thinking. Methodical, not diving in without a goal. “I guess when we find the right book, there'll
be something to tell us the next one.”

Grace picks up a volume at random and flips through it, more gently than Miguel had. “How long will it take us to get through, like, a million books?”

Miguel feels every second passing. He blinks down his feed: they're still only five levels behind Zack. He doesn't want it to go back up to six—or more. Think smart. Work, brain.

“What's the most famous book in the world?”

“That unofficial instruction manual for Chimera,” says Nick. “The one the dude got sued for.”

“I doubt it's that.”

Think. There are always clues. What has the whole level so far made him think of?

Age. History. Ancient things.

“What's the oldest book?” he asks, knowing the answer, needing the others to scoff at him.

Leah gazes at him for a split second and runs off, her footsteps echoing through the hush. He follows her, hears her muttering under her breath but can't make out the words.

Her
aha
is audible.

“Ever read it?” she asks, holding up a massive tome, withered and crumbling.

“No.”

“Me neither.” She strides back to the middle of the library to read the numbers on the board, turns the pages carefully.
“It's the right one. First word,
Your.
There's another code here. Two numbers, so same book.”

She flips quickly through the pages now. A look of disgust creases her face, and Miguel sees the effort with which she pushes it away. “Well. Congrats.” She raises her head.
“Your turn, Grace.”

Grace smiles widely, the first time he's ever seen her truly happy. She takes the book from Leah, reads the words, caches it.

Great.

More delays. It's unfair to begrudge them, but not difficult. Immediately after they quit out, two doctors, the Chimera emblem emblazoned on their white coats, come for Grace. Nick seethes quietly, watching them go. Miguel's not any happier.

“Wonder what she's going to get,” Leah says, coming up behind them. “This isn't like Josh's arm, which he found, or your heart, which you needed.”

Yeah, he really needed a biomech heart infected with a virus that's going to kill him soon. Definitely going to kill him, because now he can't keep playing, catching up. He needs to wait for Grace.

“I don't care,” he says. Whatever it is, he hopes it won't take too long to implant and heal.

“Come on,” she says.

“Where are we going?”

“Outside. Let's go remember there's a world beyond this fucking game. Nick, look at the bright side. Go see Anna again.”

Nick manages a smile. “She's going to get sick of me.”

“Probably,” Miguel says. “Ow.”

The sun is blinding; he can't remember when he last saw it, the real one.

“We shouldn't stay out in this for too long,” says Leah. “Follow me.”

Food cooked by someone other than a Chimera hireling is a good choice—at first thought. He's barely sat down when someone comes up to him: a girl maybe a few years older than he is. Her biomech is obvious: arm, eyes, patches of skin. Things he could have earned if less necessary surgeries would have been worth the risk to his heart.

“Oh my god, you're Miguel Anderson. And you're Leah!”

“Do we know you?”

“I'm Thea Johansen, Eighteen's biggest fan. Gotta root for the underdog, you know. The way you took down that leviathan and solving the maze in the desert . . . Pretty cool. What's going on? I've been following all your feeds.” Behind her lenses, her eyelids flicker. “Why aren't you playing now? What happened?”

“Oh.” Miguel shifts in his seat. Across the table, Leah is trying very hard not to laugh. The temptation to kick her in the shin is almost overwhelming. Everyone in the restaurant
is watching them now. The girl's name is familiar, but he can't place it. “Grace is getting a reward.” Reward for what, Miguel doesn't know. She's barely done anything to help. Whatever. “We'll be back in there soon.”

“You'd better be! I mean, you have so much catching up to do if you want to beat that asshole Zack. Have you been watching him? He sucks.”

Her loyalty is appreciated, but the lie isn't. Zack is good. Not as good as Miguel, but good. He's ahead now only because of luck. Because he's lucky enough not to have anything Blake can blackmail him with.

When Miguel loses, he won't just die, he'll die knowing Zack probably won. Fantastic.

“No charge,” says the waitress, setting down their food. Miguel pushes his away.

He feels the gazes of everyone in the restaurant like heat. Fusions of human and machine, staring. He's been sheltered from this so far and wishes now he hadn't left the Cube. Leah was wrong for once: there is no life outside Chimera. She sees his face and isn't laughing now.

Not all biomech is visible. Miguel knows that as well as anyone. Blake and his partner—and all the doctors, scientists, engineers they employ—haven't figured out how to make working brains yet, but they know how to alter them.

Grace is on the Cube's roof. Miguel doesn't care how she got up there, though he can guess why. She's not afraid of heights anymore. “Get her down,” he tells Josh. “Carry her if you have to. It's time to play.” Another couple of days lost, and he doesn't yet know whether a fearless Grace is a blessing or a curse. It may have been the only thing holding her back from her true in-game nature.

Which may have been the point. Balance the teams, but give them the ability to use their fears against one another.

The point. He's been thinking a lot about that the past few days, at least when he hasn't been with Leah. The point of Chimera, the point of Blake's blackmailing him, the point of everything.

All he'd need to do is open a new status update:
Dear viewers, I'm being threatened with my life into playing Chimera. What game is worth this?

He can guess how that would go down. Jeers from people who think he's bitter that he's losing. General mocking and disbelief.

And Blake, with his hand on a button, who was right about several things, but one in particular. Miguel would have died anyway. Somewhere, somehow. He is living on borrowed time, an unpayable debt. Blake gave Miguel an extension on his life that he wouldn't have had otherwise. What right does he have to claim the gift isn't good enough?