S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (39 page)

His laugh boomed through the lunchroom. A few of the half-dozen or so others in the same black coveralls he was wearing looked over. She could see them laughing among themselves in amusement.

“Okay, you caught me. I lost the bet.”

“Which bet would that be?”

“To conduct a little recon,” the man said. He sat down, setting his tray next to hers. The entire table shifted in response to his bulk. “Hope you don't mind.” He extended a hand. “I'm Grant Pearson. Stock analyst by day, gamer by night.”

“What kind of stock do you analyze? Cattle?”

His grin widened. “Always been big. Econ was my major in college, but I was really there to play football. Never thought I'd actually have to use my degree. But, as you know, not a lot of call for linebackers anymore.”

“You're one of the Live Players.”

“Proud to be among the first wave of competitive Live Players in history.” He leaned over and whispered conspiratorially, “
Arc finally took it out of beta mode last week. Ask me, it's about fucking time. They've been fiddle-farting around with it too long.
” He dug into his meal, a steaming pile of meat and mashed potatoes. Not a vegetable in sight. “They'll be televising us, the entire thing, from point of entry tonight to egress a week from now.”

“You're going in tonight?”

“We get on the bus at two
AM
, then take the ferry to the island. Three teams of two. Me and Josie over there. We're not actually a team, but Arc wants us to pair up until they decide if it's more entertaining to go in singly. Ask me, I work better alone. Besides,” he said, winking, “less hassle with the wife. She can get a wee might jealous sometimes.”

“You're married?”

“With kids. Did I mention the kids?” He shrugged. “Anyway, they drop us into the arcade a couple hours before daybreak, while the IUs are still active and on the move for a little while. That's their logic. Don't want to overtax us the first day. Whatever. Either way, should be fun.”

Jessie couldn't help but scowl. Thankfully, Grant was too busy stuffing his face to notice. He wiped a meaty fist across his lips, inspected it before wiping it on his pant leg, and said, “You're my competition, thus the recon mission.” He winked again, and Jessie couldn't help but smile at his infectious good-nature. “Well, your Player is my competition, I mean. Have you seen it yet? Been hooked up? I hear you're also doing a bit of groundbreaking yourself with the new gear.”

Jessie nodded. “Just started training today.”

“Going well?”

No.

“Kicking ass, taking no prisoners.”

Grant snorted. He took a drink of his monster-sized soda, draining half of it in a series of swallows that sounded like frogs croaking. “Know your competition. Mess with their minds. That's my motto.”

“Competition? Don't you mean your target. You Live Players are going in to fight the Undead ones.”

“Which also makes me
your
target, young lady. Don't forget that. All's fair in love and war games, right?”

Jessie opened her mouth in shock.

He flashed his grin again. “You're going to have to get over your squeamishness. It's a whole new game. Dead versus Dead. Live versus Dead. Now, Live versus Live would just be a throwback to the Gladiator days, would it not be?”

“Are you serious?”

“Kidding you. But wouldn't that be fun?”

“You have some kind of death wish?”

“Never said that. But I did volunteer for this. I know the risks. And the rewards. I also know what I'm capable of doing.” He looked at the broad dinner plates that were the palms of his hands and flexed his fingers. They looked like they could do a lot of damage.

“If you kill a Player, they're just out of
The Game
,” Jessie said. “If a Player kills you, you're dead.”

“Ha! Ain't gonna happen. I broke level eighteen in
Zpocalypto
. There's maybe a dozen people who've ever done that. Me, I'm the best gamer in this group. How far have you gotten in
Zpoc
?”

Jessie felt her face turn red. “Fifteen.”

“Hmm, decent. The boardwalk's a tough level. Took me the better part of six months to break it. Even so, I wouldn't count on your Player sticking around for more than a few days once it goes live. Those folks over there? Not a one below level sixteen.” He shrugged. “Just calling it like I see it.”

“Anyone ever tell you not to count your kills before they're . . . .”

“What?”

“Hatched.”

“Hatched?”

“It's a metaphor. Sort of.” She could feel herself shaking, and she knew he could see it, too.

“Can I give you a little advice? You can't let anyone psych you out.” He dropped his fork onto his tray and burped loudly, and Jessie was surprised to see he'd already finished his meal. She'd barely touched hers.

He stood up. “Have you had the tour yet?”

She shook her head.

“Good. Hurry up and finish. I'll take you.”

“We're allowed to do that, to just walk around?”

“Certain areas are okay. But don't wet your pants. It's mostly just window dressing, Miss . . . .” He raised an eyebrow, waiting. “You never told me your name.”

“Jessie.”

“Okay, Jessie. It's not like Arc lets us wander around freely or anything, but at least I can show you what they want us to see. Sure beats sitting in this rat hole they call a cafeteria.”

Jessie pushed the tray away. “I'm not hungry anyway.”

“Suit yourself. Come on, we'll start with the grapple room. That's what we've dubbed the Live-Dead combat arena.” He held out his hand and helped her away from the low table. “It's much more interesting than the classroom.” He rolled his eyes. “Boring lectures about rules and shit. Just set me loose inside the arcade. I'm ready to break me some necks.”

They exited the cafeteria and headed down a nondescript hallway, brightly lit and painted gray. Panel doors interrupted the walls every twenty feet or so. None had windows.

At the end of the hall, Grant pointed left. “The viewing galleries are this way. I can't believe they didn't show you around.”

“I got here late last night and only stayed long enough to get registered and fitted with my suit. Then I had my corneal and auditory implants put in this morning.”

The man chuckled. “Yeah, I heard about it before lights out last night. A couple of the Arc guys were complaining, said some spoiled bitch — their words, not mine— got here late and demanded to start right away. You got cannonballs, gotta hand that to you. But, hey, way I see it, you pay the big bucks, so you should get to make demands. Anyway, now that you're here, there's no hurry. You've got a whole week, so try not to ruffle too many feathers too early. Don't want anyone spitting in your soup, if you know what I mean.”

“They'd do that?” Jessie asked, horrified.

Another loud guffaw. “Once you show them you can actually move a Player with reasonable efficiency, you'll earn their respect. Then comes the hard part: they send it into the arcade. Working with it remotely isn't so easy. Or so I've heard.”

“Sounds like the old gear might've been a better bet.”

“No, the better bet is to trust in your own abilities rather than hiding behind some machine.”

He saw the horrified look on her face and chuckled. “Tell you what, if they send your Player in with me tonight, I'll make sure nothing bad happens to it.”

“Gee, that's awful generous of you.”

“Now that's the spirit.” He grinned at her. “Truth is, trainee Players are off limits for kills the first week anyway. But I'm on the two-week program. After probation, I'm coming for your Player. Fair warning.”

“Yeah, good luck with that.”

He gave her a sympathetic look. “Luck is what you'll need. But I'll make you a deal you can take to the bank. If your Player is still alive by the end of my two weeks, I'll fork over half my earnings.”

‡ ‡ ‡

Until her tour of the training facility with Grant, Jessie had been desperately trying to come up with a plan to break into the island. She hadn't a clue how she was going to. She knew the tunnels were out of the question. And she couldn't very well rent a boat and try on her own. Without knowing exactly where the mines were located, she'd blow herself out of the water. She'd already been through that once; she wasn't all that eager to repeat the experience.

By the time she made it to her group training session at two o'clock, however, she'd collected enough information from the talkative giant to come up with an idea. As to whether or not it had a decent chance of actually working, she didn't know. So much of the plan relied on luck, and it assumed that certain security measures would either be lax or lacking altogether. But if anything worked in her favor, it was the fact that nobody in their right mind would want to break
onto
the island, certainly nobody here. They'd already paid for the privilege.

And there were no refunds.

She had waited in her dorm room after her evening session had completed, anxiously checking the time on her Link every few minutes, cursing them as they ticked slowly past. Midnight approached, arrived, and departed with the stealth of a burglar. Then, as the morrow settled solidly into its rightful place, Jessie slipped from her room. She ignored the watchful eyes of the evenly-spaced cameras in the hallways. She planned to be long gone before anyone figured out she was doing something wrong.

She trailed the group of Live Players from their rooms, keeping at a distance to avoid being spotted. She sprinted from shadow to shadow as they exited the loading dock and crossed a large, open parking lot. The floodlights illuminated the tarmac with a blinding bluish light, but the brightness also made the shadows that much darker. Her backpack was cinched snug against her body to prevent making any noise as she ran. The pistol was inside, as were a few other essentials she'd brought from home.

Now she sat watching from the darkness beside a supply shed in the loading docks behind the training facility. The men and women of the first Live Player teams stowed their gear bags into the luggage compartment of the bus, and Jessie smiled with relief as she saw that her chances for making the plan work might actually be a lot better than she had hoped. At least this part of the plan, anyway.

It was already twenty past two in the morning, but the Live Players were still standing about outside the bus, chatting anxiously among themselves, ribbing each other good-naturedly. Jessie could feel their nervous energy, even from where she was hiding a hundred feet away. Nearby, a couple of Arc employees were shouting impatiently into their Links. The rumble of the bus's engine and the echoes off the buildings' stone edifices distorted their voices and made it hard for her to make out any of the words. It sounded like someone was missing.

To the left of the bus, adjacent to the driver's side door, was a small security shack with a low floodlight angled toward the closed gate. The guard was checking a tablet and chatting with the driver. Both ignored the shouting of their coworkers on the other side of the bus.

The luggage compartment doors had already been swung open. She'd watched the Players toss their bags in before heading around the bus.

She could see that the transport was partitioned into front and back halves, a wire cage separating them. Each part was accessible by its own door on the right-hand side of the vehicle.

The Undead Players going into Gameland — she counted eleven, including her former hapkido instructor — had been loaded earlier. They now sat in their seats, their bodies stiff, their faces pointed forward. Outwardly, they took no notice of the people milling about below them; whereas several of the Live Players took turns taunting them until one of the guards told them to stop.

Grant Pearson was standing off to one side by himself, staring off into the darkness beyond the fence. For once he wasn't talking.

Finally, a door opened in the main building and a figure emerged and jogged across the tarmac toward the bus. The sound of his shoes hitting the pavement was a muffled patter, though it was ground nearly away by the rattle of the bus's engine. He disappeared from Jessie's view beyond the high hood of the vehicle. A few moments later, the driver stuck his head out and shouted for the Live Players to load up. Grant took up the rear of the line and they began to file toward the door.

That's your cue, Jessie. You only get one shot at this.

She took a last quick look around, then launched herself from the side of the shed and closed the distance to less than sixty feet, sticking as much to the shadows as she could manage. She slipped behind an oil drum and estimated how long it would take to cover the forty feet of open space between it and a large pallet off to one side of the guard shack. Fifteen seconds was an awful long time, and the lights cast a harsh, unrelenting glare. It would be more like twenty seconds with this pack on her back. She had to pray no one looked out the windows.

She ducked as she ran, her feet scraping quietly. Halfway there, she slipped and nearly stumbled. If someone were to come out of the main building now, she'd be caught for sure. Would they buy her sad excuse of wanting to wish the Live Players luck? Not after searching her backpack.

She reached the pallet and squeezed herself down behind it, panting from the run and the tightness in her chest. When she was sure she hadn't been spotted, she carefully peeked around the side.

Piled between the pallet and the shack was a loose collection of paint buckets, too low to hide behind, too numerous to navigate through with any speed. They forced her to run at an angle away from the gate, exposing herself more than she would've liked. But once she cleared them, vaulting several at the end, she headed for the fence line and finally reached the backside of the guard shack. There, she crouched down to keep well below the bottom edge of the window.