Nova Project #1 (18 page)

“Sorry.”

“Okay, let's say you're right that we need to split up,” says Nick. When Miguel had done his first maze, years ago, his digitized team had come with him because they'd had to. This time they have five real people, five working brains. At least in theory. His isn't helping him much right now.

“Hold on.” Grace is out the front doors before she's finished speaking and back a few seconds later. “We did miss something. This Cube is smaller.”

“What?”

“It
looks
huge because the desert fucks with perspective, and it's the only thing for miles, and we were so glad to see it, right? But it has only five floors. Normal Cubes have seven. You think that's a coincidence?”

Hell no.

Five floors. Things keep coming in fives. The first, five underground tunnels.

He's been an
idiot.
“The last time we were faced with something like this, what happened?”

“The fears,” says Nick right away.

“And what did we learn from that?” This means the other teams have figured it out, too.

“Oh, shit. Our alignments.”

“Right.”

Leah pushes herself away from the wall. “Took you long enough.” Miguel turns on her.

“You knew?”

“I guessed.”

“And you didn't say anything?”

“Oh, look at who thinks he has a right to say anything about
that,
” she spits. “If you're not going to treat us like actual people, why should we help?”

“If you're not going to help, why are you here?”

“None of your business. Something else you know all about.”

“I said I was sorry!”

Nick, Josh, and Grace back away. “You should be!” Leah yells, the sound too loud in the small space. “Look at you! You're the most instinctual Chimera player I've ever seen. I've checked your feed, I've watched you since we started. You
get
this game. You make decisions and you trust them. You trust Chimera. But you didn't trust us.”

“I don't trust Chimera,” he retorts. He doesn't realize it's true until the words come out of his mouth. That meeting with the Gamerunner left an unsettled feeling he's been trying to ignore. Maybe that was the point. The game—and Gamerunners—know everything else about him, why wouldn't they know how good he is at ignoring discomfort?

But his words surprise her. “What?”

“I don't trust the game,” he says. “I trust me. I don't understand this competition the way I thought I understood the regular one. I don't know what's going on here or why we're doing this. I only know we have to win. We have to keep going. Nick, go to the room above this one on the fifth floor. Leah, you're on four, and Josh, you're on two. Grace, stay here. And everyone, message on your com when you're in position.”

“I have questions,” Leah says, following him up the stairs.

“And I'll answer them when I have answers. Not now, not here.”

Behind him, her feet pause. “Okay,” she says, frustration echoing up the walls.

He opens the door onto a third-floor corridor, she keeps climbing.

Hand over the doorknob, he hesitates. Breathes.

It opens, and this one isn't empty.

“What was that?” Grace asks through her com link. “The entrance hall just totally changed around me. It looks pretty much like an ordinary gaming room now. I think the lights mean something.”

“That was success.”

“Damn.” Josh chimes in.

An ordinary gaming room, almost. Pinpoints of light dot only one wall. In normal Cubes they're all over, rendering his image from every angle. His sim at home is two dimensional, more of an out-of-body experience. He watches himself on a screen.

“How many gaming rooms along each outside edge of this Cube?” he asks.

“Ten,” says Leah swiftly. “Fourteen in real ones.”

He counts the dots, lit and unlit. The one in the center at the bottom of the grid glows slightly brighter than the rest. That always means something. It does in the overworld. Okay. That's where he is now. To get to the next one, he has to go out again, turn left, then right down one of the
corridors that cut through the grid. Four rooms along on the left side.

“I need to go left,” says Josh. So they're not all tracing the same route. Interesting.

“Go. Check in at the next room.” Miguel runs down the hallways, doesn't pause this time. The door opens. Score. It works for everyone else, too.

Three right, two left. He finds his little bright light. Only one more. Left, right, left.

“Um,” says Leah, looking at him. “How did that happen?”

“I didn't feel the building move. And we were all on different floors.” Grace purses her lips. “Weird.”

You are in a large room. Along one wall are two doors. Behind the first is a save point you may use at any available time that will allow you to progress to the next level undeterred, with the item you seek. Behind the second is a prisoner you have five minutes to save. If you do, you may also continue on to your next challenge. If you do not, you must restart from your last save point.

The beginning of the level. They hadn't found a single one in the desert. Still . . .

“Actual information,” says Josh. “That's useful.”

Yeah. That aside . . .

“We save the prisoner,” says Nick. Leah nods.

“Oh, come on,” Grace protests. “Who cares? Whether we
save them or not, we still get to go to the next level. Why waste the time?”

It's the wrong question for her to ask because it's the one that gives Miguel pause. Time.

“I'm with Grace. In an ideal world, sure, but we're behind as it is,” says Josh.

Miguel's would be the deciding vote even if it weren't the last. He looks at the doors, as if they'll tell him the right choice to make. There's a reason the prisoner is there—maybe there's other stuff behind that door: gear they can use, a shortcut, anything.

Sometimes you think you're prepared for what you're going to see. Sometimes you think you know the game you're playing. He doesn't think that about Chimera anymore.

Miguel opens the second door. His hands drop to his sides, his mouth opens. Over his shoulder Nick lets out a strangled gasp at the room, the seamless glass cage within it.

Anna.

I
n the corner of Miguel's visor, a countdown timer begins. Four fifty-nine. Four fifty-eight. There is only one thing in the cell apart from her: a small fire in the farthest corner. She fills the box with soundless screams, the glass too thick to hear her. Mouth bared, showing all her teeth. Fists clenched, she beats against her prison, knuckles landing bruising blows an inch from their faces.

“She can't breathe, there's no vents! She's going to burn to death! How the hell do we get her out?” Nick screams. “Cache! Summon ax!”

But he doesn't have it anymore. It broke on the ship, right before Miguel woke up in a hospital bed. Leah summons hers and throws it to him. The glass doesn't even chip under the blade.

“I'm using the save point,” says Grace over the noise. “She's not even real.”

Nick wheels on her. “You . . . don't . . . know . . . that.”

Miguel is frozen. Potential choices cartwheel through his mind. He hears the other door open, two sets of feet stomp through it.

Fuck them.

This game will teach you who you are.

He doesn't know what's real anymore, doesn't know who he is, but he knows there is no world, anywhere, where he will leave Anna to die.

Like so many of Chimera's rooms, this one is empty, gray, windowless. There is nothing in it but the cell, and nothing in that but Anna and the fire.

Three forty-seven. “Your boots,” he says to Leah. “Can you climb the walls? Maybe there's something on top of it?”

Her mouth twists in pain. “I think we'll find out soon anyway. It's shrinking,” she says, though she doesn't need to. He can see it.

Wasted time, spent watching the glass box. Tears run down Nick's face. “Stop screaming.” He begs the caged Anna. “You're using up the air. Move away from the flames.” But she doesn't seem to hear him. “Please, Anna. Please.”

Three fifteen. “Cache!” Miguel says. Maybe a laser gun? He has no idea. “Summon!” He motions to Anna to move to one side of the box. Shards of light bounce around them and inside the cell, Anna's mouth closes. Her face is as wet as
Nick's, the blaze in her eyes turning from rage to pure fear.

Two thirty-one. The cell is half the size it was. The fire starts to lick at her skin, and she screams again.

“Do we have anything else?” Nick begs. As the cell shrinks, the room around it grows. “Is there anything else here? There has to be something else. Come on. Please.”

Nothing. An otherwise empty room. Miguel doesn't need the Storyteller to tell him that.

At two minutes, he can nearly reach the top of the glass. The outside is cool. He feels along the edges for cracks, weak points. Places to land a critical hit.

Still nothing.

“Hold on, Anna, please.” He pleads under his breath.

At a minute and a half, she can almost touch both sides of the cell. The door behind them is still open. Beyond that, another room and another door. Safety for all three of them.

No.

Miguel swaps out his gun, laser for bullets, hefting its increased weight.

“What the hell are you doing?” Nick screams. “You're going to kill her!”

“Gunshot wounds can be fixed!” Miguel shouts, but it's a moot point. The bullet ricochets off the glass, orange with flames now, spins out into the gray oblivion.

At fifty-nine seconds, Anna is locked inside a perfect glass
coffin of fire. Together, Miguel, Nick, and Leah kick, punch, push at it, anything to break it or tip it over. “Okay,” Miguel says, panting. Fifteen seconds. Not enough time to get to the save point, probably. He'll do the fucking level over again, because he's not leaving. “Stop.” He and Leah manage to pull Nick away, struggling, arms flailing. “Don't look.”

Miguel can't either. He turns his head, watches the timer count down.

Three. Two. One.

Slowly they raise their heads. On the floor, in what was the middle of the cell, a blue button flashes. Atop it sits a box of ashes. They were meant to lose. It was never about saving her. Miguel caches the box, whatever the fuck that's for, and stomps on the button hard enough to break it, though it doesn't break. The outcome was always going to be the same. He quits out, tears off his visor, replaces it with his lenses from his locker. Nick does the same thing, faster even, is already sending a message to Anna when Miguel starts talking into his mic.

Surprisingly, she answers him first, in seconds, but she probably has less to say to him.

“Yeah? What's up?”

Thank god.

Miguel's voice shakes, but the mic on his lenses translates to text just fine. “Talk to Nick. He'll explain. But you're okay?”

“Dude, I'm fine. Watching the feeds. You're getting your asses kicked.”

He knows.

“Gotta go, Nick's messaging. Talk later.”

A hand touches his shoulder. “You okay?” Leah asks.

“Yeah.” He tears off his sensor strips. No, not okay. “Yeah. I need to . . . I need to go.”

He should talk to her. He should find Josh and Grace and give them unholy amounts of shit for flaking out. He should eat to counteract the adrenaline still coursing through his veins.

Alone in his suite, he does none of those things. For the first time, he opens up the special inbox he was given as a team leader in case he needed to communicate with the Gamerunners.

“You're listening,” he says to the empty room, watching the words translate to text. “I need to talk to you.”

Nothing happens. He washes his face and gets a bottle of water, throat still dry with memories of desert and fire. Dry as ashes. If the game is about choices, he should feel good that he made the right one, the one that will let him sleep tonight. Except he won't, he'll be wondering what the hell to do about having two team members he can't rely on and whether he needed that five minutes more than a box of dust.

He's researched Chimera before, but that was out of curiosity for a game he loved and needed, a game that had
never made him watch something like that. He's wondered about imaginations before, not sick minds. “Search: Chimera, Gamerunners, benefits.” What are they getting out of this?

Article after article. “Organize by date.”

The first, a tiny piece from years ago about a pair of unnamed tech geniuses preparing to launch an “experience” they claimed would revolutionize not just the gaming industry, but the world.

Well, they'd kept their promise on that front. The skeptical reporter probably feels like an idiot now.

Next, quotes from world leaders about the sneak preview they'd been permitted, lots of platitudes about how the game will be of untold benefit to humanity. In return, of course, the Gamerunners would be granted certain allowances to ensure their success. Details are scarce, but Miguel knows what those are, it's hard to keep that kind of secret. News of tax breaks and access to special resources gets out because that's the kind of thing that pisses people off.

But nobody was mad, or at least the few dissenting voices were quickly silenced by a swelling roar of approval for the game. Chimera is fun! It's cool! The biomech is awesome!

He flicks through the screens. More of the same: excitement, feedback from the first players. Interesting, but not really what he's looking for, and he read most of it years ago.

The first real criticisms come a few years later, from a
direction with which he is all too familiar. Yes, it's a positive thing that everyone, not just the rich, suddenly has the opportunity to earn top-notch medical care, necessary in these dangerous times, but the divide hasn't vanished, simply shifted. The world's best doctors have been lured to Chimera with astronomical salaries, state-of-the-art equipment, and, there are rumors, faster progression through the game for themselves. Soon enough, Chimera didn't need to bribe existing doctors, they merely trained their own, offering free training to anyone who agreed to work for the game.

He blinks.

From medical debates to environmental ones: people questioning the resources Chimera uses. But those had pretty much stopped eventually, too. He knows all this already.

He skims through more search results. Nothing else jumps out. An online forum is populated with theories about why the Gamerunners invented Chimera, but it's just an excuse to talk about money and power, and there aren't many new posts since the last time he checked. The game must make them a fortune from product placement alone; the clothes that appear on Miguel's body, on anyone's, when he enters the game come from a large, popular retailer who have paid to put them there. He has real-world versions of them, too, earned in the game. A dot of green light spotted a shirt or jacket or new pair of boots in the glass cabinet in his gaming room when he quits out.

Money is usually a good reason for most things, be it incentive or deterrent, obstacle or what smooths the path. When talking to the Gamerunner, though, Miguel hadn't gotten the impression that Chimera is just some giant coin quest for him and his partner.

The game will teach you who you are.

You are in a bed. People are coming at you with strange objects in their hands. They wish to make you bleed, take part of you away and replace it with a machine. You want to move, but you are paralyzed. The light above you is bright, blinding if you look at it for more than a second. You thrash and scream, but you cannot stop them from coming, coming, coming . . .

There is no bright light this time when Miguel's eyes snap open. It's the middle of the night, and everything has been dimmed to some scientifically determined optimum level for restful sleep.

He was not sleeping peacefully. He has to hand it to the biomech designers; his heart hammers just as the old one did, pounding in time with his gasping breaths. It feels real. He touches his artificial finger to his wrist, a habit he'll probably never lose, and counts.

He was dreaming about Anna until the light of the blazing fire became the light above an operating table.

“Can't sleep?”

“God!” Miguel sits bolt upright and stares into the darkest corner of the room. A pair of eyes glimmer in a pool of black. “Are you trying to give me another heart attack?”

“Can't happen, not now.”

“I beg to differ.”

“No need to beg.”

“What are you doing here?”

“You called for me.”

Miguel blinks. “That was hours ago. Wasn't it?” The curtains are closed; even if they weren't, the window wouldn't necessarily tell him the truth about the sky.

“If you expect that people are simply sitting around waiting for you to beckon them, I'm not surprised your last relationship failed.” The Gamerunner smiles. “Apologies, that was cruel. Better luck with the next one.”

“There isn't a next one.”

“Oh? Shame. Now, what was it you wished to discuss? I assume there was something.”

There was. “Yeah,” says Miguel, swallowing. “What the hell was that about today?”

The man's face is the picture of innocence. “You mean, what you found at the end of the maze?”

“Yes, that!” Miguel pushes himself off the pillows, sitting up. “Did everyone see someone they love in that box?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes, it matters.”

The Gamerunner shrugs. “It was part of the game. A choice you had to make.”

“Did I make the right one?” He had, of course he had.

“Again, does it matter? You want to stop now,” the Gamerunner says, the last part not a question.

“I don't ever want to see anything like that again.” Miguel shudders. “I'll go back and take my chances with the normal game. I know it doesn't pull crap like that.”

“Oh, no, I think you'll stay in the competition.”

Until this moment Miguel had been prepared to be convinced. It's the Gamerunner's absolute certainty that cements his resolve. He climbs out of bed, the lush, thick carpet squishing under his toes. Living here had been nice.

“You know, I realize I didn't introduce myself before, and because you are doing me a favor, continuing to play, you should possibly know who you're doing it for.” The man steps away from the wall, moves to the end of Miguel's bed, long-fingered hands curling around the bar at the foot.

“You seem pretty sure I'm going to keep playing,” says Miguel, finding a clean shirt. “I told you, I'm leaving.”

“Oh, I am certain you'll stay. Well, Miguel, my name is Blake, and you are one of only a handful of people who know that. Tell me, is there anything else you need here?” Blake gestures around the suite. “Anything you'd like?”

Tons of stuff. Better breakfasts, more books, help inside the game. The best weapons, invincibility orbs around every corner, easy bosses, not to see someone he loves burn alive. “Answers. Before I go.”

“That depends on the questions.”

“Why?”

“Because I can't tell you everything.”

Miguel clenches his jaw. “You're not stupid. Don't pretend to be.”

Blake—if that is truly his name. Miguel's not a hundred percent sure he believes it—smiles widely. “Ah. Good boy. I suppose the answer is because someone has to, and as it turns out, that's me and my . . . business partner. Governments are utterly incapable of repairing the damage that people have caused for thousands of years. Humanity needs to feel as if it is fighting for something. Survival. Rewards in Chimera give people a real chance outside the Cubes. It's a public service really.”

“Why don't I believe that?”

“Because you don't trust me. Which is probably the smartest thing I've seen from you.”

The uneasy feeling that has curled through Miguel's belly and up to his heart since the moment he first met Blake squeezes painfully, reminding him it's there. Blake walks to the window, parting the curtains an inch to look outside. Admiring the view, if it's real, or inspecting his handiwork, if it isn't?