Nova Project #1 (24 page)

“Come in,” he says. He leads her to the living room, she takes the same seat the reporter had. Nerves flutter in his stomach; something about her expression makes him feel like that's not a coincidence.

“What's going on?” he asks, wanting to move closer to
her but keeping his distance. She's as beautiful as ever, even with the shadows under her eyes. “Did we end when the competition did?”

She doesn't answer. “I saw your interview,” she says instead.

“Uh, okay?”

“You said you were sorry about him, but you knew what would happen with Josh and the snake. You knew when you told him to let it bite him that he'd die. I could see it on your face.”

His heart sinks. Real or biomech, the sensation is exactly the same. “Yes,” he says quietly. “I knew.”

“Why? Why not find another way?”

His living room hasn't changed since he was a kid, but he looks around it, taking in every detail while he wonders exactly what Blake will do to him if he tells her. Blake could be sitting in a Chimera building somewhere with his hand on a button. One click.

Painless isn't the same as not knowing.

He opens his mouth. Another knock comes from the front door, and he glances at her, helpless, before going to answer it.

It's Nick. Maybe telling them together will be easier.

“Did you watch the announcement?” Nick asks. There's an edge to his voice that Miguel doesn't recognize.

“No. I figured it was them talking about when they're unrolling the new game to everyone. Come in, Leah's here.”

“It wasn't that,” Nick says, following Miguel inside. “It was just one of the Gamerunners,” Nick continues, “and what he said was pretty interesting. Hey, Leah.”

“Hi.”

“Okay, what did he say?” Miguel asks.

“They're saying,” says Nick, “that someone cheated.”

He shouldn't be able to feel the biomech beat, its pulse speed up, but he does. He touches his finger to his wrist, forgetting that it wouldn't tell him anything even if he was wearing his lenses to see the display. Leah gasps.

“What?” he asks. His voice sounds normal to his ears, which probably means it sounds anything but. He hadn't, he'd told Blake not to help him, but why would they be saying it at all if it was someone else? He won, nobody else would matter.

“The game got so much easier for us,” says Nick. “Other than the thing with Josh and the very last one, we raced through the final levels. You said you were just playing the way you always knew you could, now that your heart was fine, but if it was fine, why did you need another one?”

“Because—”

“The thing is, Mig,” says Nick, “cheating
is
the way you've always played.”

O
h, yes, Miguel, you cheated.
He
had
told Blake not to help him, though he'd changed his mind later, and Blake hadn't done
much.
Made a few levels easier, set up the boy to die . . .

Desperate times. The asking had been enough. Intent is everything.

Good boy. Or . . . not. That was the point.

Damn Lucius for going public with his suspicions, but that doesn't matter much, and he understands why. It is time for them to stop being friends. The end is almost here, and reactions to this piece of information will be as telling as those to the competition itself. Plus, of course, sending out that message was the honorable thing to do.

Which is why Blake hadn't done it.

He could of course have simply
forced
the boy to cheat. Human brains are remarkably receptive to having thoughts dropped into them, but he and Lucius made an agreement way
back in the early days. Interfering like that was unfair, they'd decided, and though it goes against nearly everything he is, Blake has kept his word in this one small way. It's so much more
fun
to watch people think up ways to hurt or help one another instead of doing it for them. Not to mention that more than once they've come up with things that make Blake wince and think even he wouldn't go
that
far.

“We want them released by the end of the week,” says the voice. It's different from the voice of the Storyteller, but that's where the inspiration came from. Disembodied voices, telling you what you want to hear, whether or not it's helpful.

“Yes, Masters,” he answers. There isn't one; there are many. The same is true on Lucius's side, which is where humans have mostly gotten it wrong. But there
are
sides, which is where humans have mostly gotten it right.

“Are they ready?”

“Yes, in fact I think you will be quite pl—”

“We will be pleased when we win, Blake. Cooperation has been essential up to this point, but that time is now over. The agreed-upon hour has arrived.”

“Yes. Um. How did that happen exactly? Did you all meet over lunch?”

“Blake.”

“Sorry.”

“Good-bye.”

They've never been ones for drawn-out farewells, and neither has Blake. He returns to his office, to a stack of virtual paperwork, paperwork one of those things that are, in his opinion, really just pushing the limits of decency. He's not a monster. Predictably, Lucius has read and signed everything already: the kid who does his homework long before it's due. Blake sighs. It's been a good run, really.

He signs his name to the documents that will lead to the worldwide dissolution of Chimera.

It isn't necessary anymore.

“I
didn't,” Miguel insists. “But something's going on. Come to my room.” His mind races. Something really fucking strange is happening, and he doesn't know what. It's a feeling, a tight ball of dread in his belly.

He's lost all faith that anywhere is secure, private, but his room is the best he's going to get. Leah and Nick sit on his bed, Miguel takes the chair at his desk.

“I didn't use the sim,” he tells Nick.

“Wait.” Leah holds up a hand. “What sim?”

“I have a simulated version of Chimera. Nick knows I invented it years ago, learned how to code so I could help myself progress through the game faster. Just a sim to try out different situations and strategies. It's probably not the only one in existence.” Thinking that makes him feel better. “I was trying to get to Twenty-five as fast as I could. A couple of months before the competition was announced, I realized I
wasn't going to get there no matter what I did. The game was getting harder, and I was getting weaker.”

Leah winces, then looks mildly impressed.

“Okay,” says Nick, “so you didn't use that.” His jaw is clenched. Always too concerned with doing the right thing. “You did something.”

Miguel inhales. Now or never. “It's more like . . . someone did something to me.” It must sound like he's searching for an excuse, a lie they'll believe, a justification they'll accept. Leah raises an eyebrow.

“One of the Gamerunners came to see me in the medical wing after my first transplant.”

Leah's other eyebrow joins the first. Nick blinks. “What?”

Back to the beginning.

“At first he just seemed concerned. Nice, almost, though pretty weird. He wanted to know if I was going to keep playing. I said yes. I thought they didn't want to lose a leader, like they were concerned about the publicity or something. I thought that was the end of it.”

Nick and Leah are silent, their arms folded over their chests.

“But it wasn't.” Miguel continues. “After we hit the desert level . . . Anna . . . I told him I was done. I didn't have to go on, and I didn't want to if it meant I was going to see shit like that.

“Turns out, it wasn't that easy,” Miguel says, swallowing.
“The biomech they put in me was infected with a virus. The Gamerunner knew all about me. He knew about that,” Miguel says, gesturing to the sim. “He knew—” No, he won't tell Nick, or Leah, about the night on the ledge. “When I told him I was done, he told me what
he'd
done.”

Nick shakes his head. “The fuck? Why?”

“There are two Gamerunners, apparently they had some kind of bet, and this one, Blake, wanted to win. Each of them picked a favorite leader. He told me if I won the competition, he'd exchange the sick heart for a healthy one. He made it sound like I owed him some kind of favor, because if it hadn't been for his putting the sick biomech in me, I would've died anyway. It's like you said,” he says, looking at Leah, “when you die in your dreams, you die in real life. My body thought I'd died that day on the boat. So he did save my life, he just didn't give me much more time. In exchange, I think he made the game a little easier for us, though I told him not to. To the outside world, I mean, how would they know? It was a different Chimera, they didn't know what was supposed to happen. To the other teams it probably just looked like we were really good. Even to you guys, it just seemed like we were progressing quickly, though Nick noticed.”

Nick wants to believe him, his expression a mix of skepticism and hope that Miguel can identify only because they've been friends for so long. He and Leah don't have that kind of history.

“Nobody's ever
seen
the Gamerunners. How do you know it was even one of them and not someone playing some kind of sick joke, trying to make the competition more entertaining?”

“I do think he was trying to make it more entertaining,” says Miguel, “but I'm sure he was one of the Gamerunners.”

“How?”

“The night before Josh died, he told me it would come down to our team and Zack's at the end. Who else would've known that for sure?”

“That's why you couldn't find another way to get the snake. You didn't have time,” Leah says, her voice almost a whisper.

“Yes. Plus I think he wanted me to do that.”

“Why?” Nick asks.

“He was really big on making choices. Kept telling me the game would teach me who I was. The Storyteller made a big deal of that in her speech at the beginning, too. I think he wanted to see if I'd choose to sacrifice Josh if I had to.”

“How did Josh's dying help us? He was an extra pair of hands, an extra brain.”

“Yeah,” says Miguel, “but on the final level, there were only four places in the boat.”

“So?” Nick asks. “You could've left him behind then.”

That's true, but— Miguel thinks. “Grace would've been pissed if I had. The two of them were close—you saw how upset Grace was—but at least his death looked unavoidable.
Like it
wasn't
a choice. Taking him away weakened her. Broke her. It was a shitty thing to do.” That doesn't begin to cover it, but he's running out of words. “It meant she didn't have the will to do much other than follow us to the end, though she was helpful because she just wanted to finish the game and then forget about it. And she won't speak to me now.” He'd sent her a message, she'd ignored it.

“Okay,” says Nick. “Let's say all of this is true. I can see why you'd do anything to save your life; anyone would. It's what you used to do with the sim, I got that. But if one of the Gamerunners
was
helping you, helping us—”

“Why are they going public with the cheating?” Leah finishes. “Yeah. That's the part I don't get.”

“Me neither,” answers Miguel. “So we're going to find out.” He presses a button to project his keyboard onto the expanse of desk, the only thing that's stayed clean since he got home from the Cube. They'll start here. If he can't get in remotely, he'll have to reconsider his options.

But he has a weapon. Two weapons: Blake's name and Blake's arrogance. People like that never believe they have a weak point.

“Give me one of those,” says Nick. Miguel shoots another keyboard onto the wall behind Nick's head.

“Me, too,” says Leah. “I want to know what the hell is going on. And if enough people think you cheated, they're
never going to believe the rest of us weren't involved. If they decide to name a different team as winner, they might reverse my procedure.”

He's an asshole. They've been so consumed by this he hasn't asked. “Did it work?”

“I think so. Haven't had a chance to do anything about it, though.”

“Help me,” he promises, “and I'll help you.” It's an unfair trade by any stretch, but it's all he can offer her. She kneels on his bed, facing the wall. The letters and numbers reflect onto her face, making her look like part of the machine.

Breaking into someone else's system isn't easy; he'd have no idea how if it weren't for building that kind of security for himself, his sim. He takes some satisfaction from the payback. If he can't have any privacy, Blake can't either.

His mother knocks on the door, gives Miguel a sly look when he introduces her to Leah. She offers dinner, but none of them are hungry.

The sun is rising when a complex file tree blooms on the monitors, blurring in front of Miguel's dry, exhausted eyes. “Look for communications between Blake and the other one,” he says, telling them what to type since their backs are to his screens. He prays that they did exchange messages about revealing the cheat, that they didn't discuss it out loud. He doesn't know if they even spend all their time
in the same place. “Wait. Stop. Here's something.”

They both turn around, see the message from a guy named Lucius to Blake: “‘We're not on the same side anymore, if we ever were. I must do the right thing,'” Leah reads. And a reply: “‘I know. I was expecting you to.'”

Not on the same side? What side? Nick and Leah watch as he types rapidly. What's happening to Chimera if they're arguing?

Here. Documents open, their text cramped and confusing. He doesn't speak lawyer.

“They're dissolving the company?” Leah asks, squinting. “Notifying governments?”

“But wasn't the competition supposed to be a beta test for new features? That makes no sense,” says Nick. “Why go through that if they don't want to run the game anymore?”

Miguel shakes his head. He has no idea, but he has time now, more than before anyway. So many
whys.
He'd asked Blake why, albeit with a different meaning. And Blake's refusal to give him answers means there
are
answers.

Click, click, click. The tips of his fingers—save the biomech one—hurt from striking the desk. He doesn't stop. Nick and Leah sit back on his bed and watch. If it wasn't a beta test, it was something else, and that must be in here somewhere.

But he can't find it. He's so close he can feel there's something
to
find, dancing in his peripheral vision, just out
of reach. It's a familiar sensation, one he's felt in Chimera a thousand times.

He throws a game-earned shoe at the wall. Leah jumps.

“Sorry,” Miguel says, clutching at his hair. Think. What does he always do in the game when his moves aren't working?

Approach from a different direction. He can't find the answers he needs here, but—click, click—yes, he has one thing. And when you're trapped in a room made of questions, you have to unlock the door from the inside.

“Come on,” he tells them.

“Where are we going?”

“Chimera.”

“We're going to play? Now?” Nick asks, climbing off the bed. “I don't get it.”

Miguel shakes his head. “No. Let's go. And we need to walk, I don't want them tracking us somehow. Don't post any updates either. They might be checking our geolocs.”

“What did you find?” Leah demands, her hand on the doorknob.

“Their address.”

All this time, and the worldwide headquarters of Chimera had been just a few short miles away. Miguel's not sure what he would've done if he'd had that information earlier. Banged on the door and demanded a new heart?

“They're not going to let us in,” Nick says. “The place is gonna have the best security system on earth.”

“Maybe,” agrees Miguel, “but its owners have spent years teaching us to get in and out of locked places. Ha. They always claimed Chimera would help us in the real world.”

“Okay, but it'll be full of people,” Nick says.

“They just shut down the company. My guess, it's as empty as it's ever been. If I'm wrong, we'll get out of there.”

“This is crazy,” says Leah. “What do you think we're going to find out?”

“No idea.” Miguel turns to her. “You don't have to come.”

Leah grins. “I said it was crazy, not that I didn't want to come.”

Nick's laughter bounces off the artificial trees that line the street. “You. I like you. Mig, I like her.”

Miguel shoots him a look and takes her hand. “Don't get any ideas.”

Nick laughs again, and Leah squeezes Miguel's fingers.

They take the quietest route they can find, not wanting to be recognized, stopped. Once or twice Miguel sees someone across the street staring at them a little too long, but he speeds their pace and turns the next corner. The sun beats down, blinding after weeks in the Cube, where the light had sometimes been harsh but not real enough to burn their retinas.

He's not out of breath, and his chest doesn't hurt, but an
even bigger change feels like it's looming. He can't explain it, it's the same instinct that has always helped him in Chimera, knowing when a boss is in the next room or the ground's about to split open. He's played through the levels, assembling what seem like irrelevant puzzle pieces into a coherent finale.

Blake's antics, his manipulations feel like puzzle pieces, and Miguel is sure as fuck going to find out what the picture is.

Miguel stops so suddenly Nick crashes into him. The answers are right there.

Chimera headquarters sit in a maze of identical buildings, nondescript and unremarkable. They're nice, glass fronts gleaming, the bricks well kept, but not nearly as slick as the skyscrapers downtown. They look like the offices of some company that manufactures a small but essential hoverboard component. For that matter, they look like Miguel's father's lab, on the other side of the city, where people in white coats try to make things taste like cinnamon, but if they fail, the world won't fall apart.

“Why here?” Nick asks, his thoughts obviously in line with Miguel's.

“Because they've always wanted to be anonymous,” Leah answers. “Or at least show themselves only on their terms.”

Through the glass he sees a marble floor, an empty desk that should hold some kind of receptionist, the leaves of potted plants. The front door beckons. It won't be that easy. He
remembers his thought in the hospital and amends it:
usually
the trick to getting in or out of somewhere is to pretend you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. There's no way to pretend that here. Other memories are more helpful, like that of their first competition level.

Miguel turns left, leads them through narrow lanes around to the back of the building. He curses under his breath at the mostly flat expanse of wall, no back door. There is, however, an air vent at waist height, and the line between reality and Chimera blurs again. He's done this before.

He curses again, louder this time.

“What?” Leah asks.

“I forgot I can't just summon a screwdriver if I need one.”

“Oh. Yeah. Oops.”