Nova Project #1 (22 page)

L
ucius frowns at the screen. He didn't
want
the boy to die, and Blake's side claimed him afterward, no question about that, but having his influence out of the way isn't a terrible thing. It isn't the game that causes actual death, he'd seen to that, but the boy's fear and belief had been immensely powerful.

It's not an angelic thought; Lucius has always been surprised by how much of what his side does
isn't
angelic. Good and for the greater good are not the same thing, not at all. When they have to do something unsavory, they can simply hold up their hands and say it's all part of the grand plan. Can't argue with the grand plan, can we? Now do your job, Lucius.

He has always done it well, to the best of his infinite ability.

Blake has been speaking to Miguel Anderson, Lucius knows that. That's fine, Blake can have his little pet. Lucius has one, too. In fact he has several. His side has always played the
numbers game. Blake's tends to go in more for laser focus.

That's why Blake is going to lose. Numbers are all that matter now.

“Good morning, Zack.”

He says it gently. Blake delights in startling people with his sudden, silent appearances, but Lucius takes no such pleasure. It's not
his
fault he moves so soundlessly, that's just the way he's built.

“Oh, it's you. Morning.”

“Did you sleep well? Do you need anything?”

“Yeah. Um. Coffee?”

Zack is too bleary eyed to notice the cup simply appearing in Lucius's hand. The human brain has a magic way of glossing over the actually magical. He's probably assuming it was there the whole time, which makes Lucius generous, not capable of creating coffee from firmament on a whim.

It's pretty vile coffee, to be fair, and Lucius is always fair . . . to a point. There are reasons he and Blake have a proper machine at the office; Lucius doesn't drink this swill except when forced. His superiors apparently can't tell the difference.

Living among humans for thousands of years gives you two things: humor and taste buds.

Oh, and paintball. Lucius had quite liked that before it went out of fashion.

He waits for Zack to sit up and take a few sips. It's the kind thing to do. Lucius before he's had his in the morning is the closest he gets to demonic.

“You are nearly at the final level,” he says. “I am merely here to remind you that mistakes will be forgiven if you make good decisions. I will offer what assistance I can, within the rules, of course.”

“I'm doing okay so far,” says Zack, chest puffed. There is a line between obnoxious swagger and pride in one's work; for the moment Zack remains on the right side of it.

“Yes, you are, and I would be delighted to see you crowned victorious. You have already received some enhancements, well done. Have you decided what you might wish for as your final prize?”

“Not yet. Still thinking.” Zack yawns.

“All right. Please don't hesitate to let me know what you decide. I'll leave you to prepare for today's gaming. Your team members are awake and waiting for you.”

“Cool.”

Lucius can't vanish the coffee cup, Zack is too lucidly observant now. One of the staff will clear it away later. Lucius moves swiftly, silently from Cube Cobalt and summons his hoverboard.

Gentle encouragement. Do good. Be generous to others. Live with honor. His is, if he's honest (and he is always honest),
a more challenging job than Blake's. A better one, of course,
of course
, but he gets less sleep.

And he can't rest now. Blake is waiting for him, together they will complete the final touches on the four in the lab at headquarters. Are they beings yet? They cannot move or think for themselves. That will change soon, very soon. Today they get their brains, and after a few more tests, a few more experiments, they will be ready to venture forth on their own.

It will be heaven. It will be hell.

It will be war.

For the greater good.

T
he eleventh level passes in a blur, a coin, spotted by the observant Grace, the only souvenir. They quit out for food, sleep. No one is ready to talk about Josh. Miguel feels Nick and Leah watching him, sure they're running through those final moments in their minds.

But they haven't asked. Maybe they just don't want to know, or they want to get out of here as much as he does now.

They step into the gaming room for what is, he hopes, the last time. Miguel can't look at the cabinet that no longer has an owner. He keeps his eyes on his own, carefully wrapping sensor strips around arms and legs and chest. He takes his lenses off last, checking the team feeds one last time.

[Zachary Chan]
Miguel Anderson
Are you ready to lose?

He tosses the lenses in his locker. “Ready?” he asks. He is ready, ready to be finished, ready to see if he can win, ready
to see if Blake will keep his word. Blake. Miguel wants to spit just thinking about him. The problem is that Blake keeps his words, they're just never the ones Miguel thinks he's hearing. A diseased heart, a dead teammate.

“Ready,” says Leah, stepping across the sprung floor to kiss him. He blinks in surprise. “Let's finish this,” she says as Grace turns away, disgusted or angry or both.

“Chimera: overworld,” he says. The globe appears, spinning gently. It glows with the light of success, a string of lit markers across its surface.

He touches the final spot with his biomech finger.

They are plunged into absolute darkness.

“Cache,” he says. “Summon flashlight.”

His hands are empty.

“Did anyone get anything?”

“No.”

“No.”

Silence. He takes Grace's lack of answer as another no.

“Summon matches?” He tries again. Still nothing.

“All the items we found,” says Leah, “we need to use them on this level.”

He closes his eyes, nonsensical in the utter black, but it helps him think. Knife, coin, water, oil, ashes, book, snake, apple, staff, bell, flame.

“Cache: summon staff, oil, flame,” he says.

Only the staff appears. His fingers close reflexively around the wood he can't see.

“I got the oil, and Nick got the flame,” says Leah. They summon their objects, the tiny fire lighting their efforts as they coat the staff in oil and set it alight.

Uh-oh. He foresees a problem. His stomach turns over, but he says nothing. He'll see how far they get.

“Good job,” says Nick. They are in some kind of tunnel. The light from the torch casts several yards ahead, illuminating damp walls, a stone floor stretching into darkness. There is a wall at their backs. Only one way to go.

“Can you hear anything?” he asks Leah.

“Water, I think. And . . . chewing?”

“Ew, I hate hearing people eat,” Grace says before she can stop herself. He glances at her, but she has her lips pressed together as if to keep in any other normal human conversation that might be tempted to escape without permission.

“Can you see anything?” he asks her.

She shakes her head. “Except— These tunnels remind you of anywhere?”

Miguel looks around. The first level. Walking through the tunnels, then being dropped into his path of fears. The demon had surrounded itself with everything its enemies were afraid of. And they were right next to it, right at the beginning.

Clever trick, Gamerunners.

“Okay. Let's go.”

The shadows shift, grow, shrink with the movement of the torch as he walks. Their footsteps echo, warning anything lurking ahead of their arrival.

“I see something,” says Grace. “A different shadow.”

“Thanks,” he says. She shrugs.

As one they slow down, peering into the flickering gloom. The flame bounces off wood and glass. Miguel steps up to a table, reaches for the object upon it, and turns it over in both hands. Beautiful and strange, like an 8 made of glass. “Anyone know what this is?”

“I think . . . may I?” Leah takes it from him, turns it over one more time. “It's an hourglass. It used to be a kind of clock, there'd be sand or salt in the top, and it would take a set length of time to fall through to the bottom. But this one's empty.”

“We didn't find any sand. Or salt. Salt water, yes, but how would we divide that with what we have?”

Take out what they've used. Knife, apple, water, ashes, bell, book, snake, coin.

“Ashes. Could they be used like sand?” Oh, the Gamerunners' little jokes. The level where'd they'd gotten the ashes had been timed, too. “Leah, that was you.”

She summons them, holds the box in her hand, remembering. “You should do it,” she says, handing the box to Nick. She holds the hourglass steady on the table as Nick
carefully fills it through a small hole in the top. As the last ash lands on the rest, the voice of the Storyteller comes.

You are in a tunnel. You have found an hourglass, which, true to its name, will give you exactly one hour to make your way through. The clocks on your displays have been deactivated. There are no save points, no opportunities to reclaim anything already used. You have one chance.

They may not even have that much, but still he holds his tongue and checks his feed. Zack's team has just entered the level. Eighteen has a head start, but only by a few minutes. He hopes Zack's too stupid to figure out what he needs to do with the torch and the hourglass right away.

Right. Next. They start walking again, Leah carefully carrying their timer. No point in leaving it and not knowing how much time they have left, though it looks like it's already passing too quickly and he has no idea what's waiting for them ahead.

Now
he
hears the sound of chewing. He walks just far enough and stops dead. A scaled, toothy demon, surrounded by a pile of unidentifiable food, raises its eyes to him and grins horribly. It's not that much bigger than he is, but most of that is mouth.

Behind it is a door.

“Feed it?” Leah asks.

Knife, coin, water, book, snake, apple, bell.

Zack has figured out the hourglass. Damn it.

“Cache: summon apple,” he says. Nothing happens. Wait. That one was Nick. Nick nods and summons the apple.

“If we can only summon the ones we ourselves claimed,” Leah begins, “what are we going to do when—”

She makes connections. “I know,” he says. “I'm hoping we'll be allowed to summon them because he can't.”

“Hoping?” Grace's voice is choked. “Yeah, okay.”

“Got any better ideas?”

She doesn't answer.

Nick tosses the apple at the demon. It plucks it from the air with a creepily tiny hand, stares curiously at it, attempts to take a bite.

And spits it out. Not that then. It rolls across the floor, and Nick picks it up, making a noise of disgust and wiping his hand on his pants. Miguel recites the list again in his head, but it's Leah who tells Grace to get the book. She takes it from Grace and flips furiously through the pages.

“When we were solving the code . . . I saw— Password. Aha.” She steps forward, right up to the demon, and says a single word.

The door opens. The book vanishes.

Zack is at the demon. Right behind them, as if they were in the same place. Miguel runs through the doorway, the others following, into a smaller, narrower tunnel. The sound of water
is loud and rushing now, a swift underground river. Miguel runs along the tunnel and stops at its bank, looking left and right, up and down. The torch illuminates only a few feet of the black depths in both directions, but there is nothing to see in the pool of light it casts.

He curses under his breath, turns to shine the light on the walls. Hanging from one wall is a broken chain, identical to the chains in the building that housed the horses. He hopes there isn't a horse down here. He's sure he doesn't have another orb with which to slow one down, or Josh to catch it with his enhanced arm.

Knife, coin, water, oil, ashes, book, snake, apple, staff, bell, flame. He blinks. Zack's team is still struggling with the demon, trying to kill it with the knife. He wonders where Zack got the dagger; it's unlikely he found it in the same place Miguel found his. He can decode the intricacies later, there isn't time now.

When the time comes, it will be painless.

“It looks like the same metal as the bell,” says Grace. “But—”

But Josh got the bell. He tries to summon it. No luck. Nick, Grace, and Leah aren't any more successful.

“Enter cache,” says Grace, and disappears so suddenly Miguel stares at the empty space where she stood for several long seconds, seconds he doesn't have, before realizing she's truly gone.

“Is she coming back?” Nick asks.

“I have no idea.” Ashes fall into the bottom bulb with a whispering hiss. Miguel swallows. He touches his finger to his wrist. It tells him nothing. He closes his eyes.

And opens them again at the sound of Grace's voice.

“Fuck,” she mutters. Miguel doesn't have Leah's hearing, but he knows pain. Grace's hand is covered with blood. In her other, she holds the bell and the snake. Josh's trophies.

“How did you do that?” Leah demands, impressed.

“I didn't think I could summon them, so I actually went into the cache. Josh's locker was damaged, remember? Big hole, right in the glass. Don't look at me,” says Grace, jutting her chin at Nick but keeping her eyes on Miguel. “He's the one who shot it. What? I had a better idea after all.”

“And what's damaged stays damaged,” breathes Nick.

“The hole wasn't big enough, but it damaged the glass. Had to punch through the rest of the way.”

“Are you okay?”

“I'm fine.” He suspects her definition of
fine
falls somewhere alongside his but doesn't press her on it. Instead he steps back as she reaches up, stretching to the tips of her toes to hang the bell on its chain. He doesn't dare offer to do it for her.

The bell rings, echoing through the tunnels.

And from the darkness a boat slides into view.

There are only four places on the boat, the fifth taken by a cloaked figure, pushing through the water with a long pole.

He would have chosen Josh to stay behind. Grace looks at him as if she can read his mind and wordlessly passes the coin she'd found to the cloaked figure. A skeletal, metal hand reaches to take it, and the hood nods. Nick jumps into the boat too eagerly, nearly making it tip. Miguel can practically feel the glare from the boatman as Nick helps Grace and Leah step in. Leah reaches for Miguel's hand, but he chooses the seat beside Grace.

“I didn't trust you when we first started playing,” he says. He won't mention the desert, Anna. That's gone now. Past. History. “But you've been great. I thought you wanted to sabotage me or something.”

“I did,” she says impassively. “All I want now is to finish this.”

Well. Okay then.

The boat glides down the river. Zack is in his boat, too, though there is no way of knowing whether he is ahead or behind. He's updating frequently enough, much more so than Miguel, who hasn't posted since they entered the level. He doesn't have the time or inclination and doesn't care whether people are rooting for him or praying for his demise. Like Grace, all he wants to do is finish this.

Water, apple, snake, knife. They must be getting close.
Something will be waiting for them at the end, and they will need enough time to defeat it, if they haven't used that up already. He peers over Leah's shoulder at the hourglass in her lap. Half full. Okay. He keeps leaning forward, as if that will help the boat go faster.

The boat slows, pulls up to the entrance to another tunnel. The boatman turns, and a shiver runs up Miguel's back. Its hands aren't ordinary biomech; Miguel can see every gleaming knuckle and silver bone as it points. The message is wordless yet loud: get out.

Back to business. He steps out after Grace and jogs down the tunnel, the flame from the torch whipping close enough to singe his eyebrows. An ornate gate brings him to a screeching halt, the others stopping behind him. Through the bars, a large room awaits, lit by sconces on the walls. The knife, maybe? He's picked locks in Chimera before. He passes the torch to Nick and bends down to take a closer look. There is no keyhole. He runs his fingers over the cold steel, and he allows himself one last moment to marvel at the detail the Gamerunners have brought to Chimera. In a quiet gray gaming room, Miguel's body walks, runs, jumps on a sprung floor, a visor covering his face, but here he can even smell the tang of the metal. Whatever pain and horror Chimera has brought, whatever awaits him on the other side of these gates, they have created something remarkable.

And this is the last time Miguel will ever be inside it, win or lose.

“Could they be hydraulic?” Nick asks. Miguel searches for wheels, pipes, channels, Leah and Grace do, too.

“No, but I think you're on to something,” says Leah. “Where did we get the water? That ocean level. It's salt water. Salt water is corrosive.”

“Cache: summon water.”

The bottle appears. He hands it to Leah, she unseals it, and the scent of the ocean fills the space. She'd better be right about this, their only chance.

As soon as the first drop touches the lock, it starts to smoke, hiss, the steel dissolving at their feet. She empties the bottle, staying out of the way of the billowing cloud of steam and rust. Miguel kicks the gate open. The torch vanishes from Nick's hand.

You have opened the dungeon. The boss awaits. Good luck.

One last check. Zack's team is still figuring out how to open the gate.

Snake. Apple. Knife.

The floor shakes, and a
thing
is coming at them: all teeth and claws and scales and spines, fleshy and grinning. They dive in different directions as Miguel shouts for the cache, for the blade found on the tray of surgical equipment. He rolls, searches out Leah. The hourglass is safe, cradled in her arms.
What would've happened if it had smashed?