Solarversia: The Year Long Game (36 page)

“OK, now I’m really worried. Why is everyone running in the same direction? What do they know that we don’t?”

“I think it’s because the nearest Right Flights and Dockingtons are too far away — look at the map. Everyone’s making a run for the closest Greasy Wrench.”

They spoke in fits and starts while they ran down Via Espana, surrounded by several hundred other players heading in the same direction. The street was lined with deserted vehicles, but whenever Nova checked, the keys had been taken. Her display told her that the nearest Greasy Wrench was half a mile away, just over three minutes’ running time.

“Don’t look at the death counter, it’s off the friggin’ scale. This is ludicrous, turfing everyone out like this. I bet my pizza arrives in the middle of all this.” Nova volleyed back to room to find Jono passed out on Burner’s bed.

“Don’t worry, I don’t think you’ll have to share it.”

“Shit, what the hell are those?”

She volleyed back again. “They’re giant pterodactyls. But why are they carrying those crates?”

“I don’t wanna know, but I’ve got a funny feeling that we’re about to find out. What items have you got?”

She checked her inventory. “A jar of Skidz, a Sword and a Turbo Boost.”

“I’ve got a Battle Axe, a Time Whisk and a Musical Chair. I’d been saving the whisk for a special occasion, but I think that might be now.”

The crowd stopped running as the winged dinosaurs swooped down a short way in front of them, smashing their crates against the tessellated tiles on the ground. The wild flourish of colour that rippled out from the impact points was wholeheartedly ignored by the panicked players, who were far more interested in self-preservation.

As the wooden crates splintered, a menagerie of wild animals burst forth onto the tarmac, beating their chests, grinding their teeth and licking their lips. The players at the front launched whatever weapons they had to fend them off. For some it was too late. Nova watched a guy get torn apart by a two-headed wolf, and another squeezed to death by the largest sandworm she had ever seen. There were more screams behind them as half a dozen other crate-carrying pterodactyls came in to land, cutting off their return.

An eight-foot ogre picked up a trash can that had been set alight by a fire demon and hurled at them. In that instant, with the trash can frozen in mid-air, the rest of the Gameworld drained of colour and seemed to fade into the distance. A large counter appeared, counting down from three. Nova steadied herself and tried to remember the four-move Combination for a flaming trash can.

When the counter hit zero she executed it as calmly as her nerves allowed. She Moonwalked backwards a few places, busted out a Scooby Doo lock, dove into a caterpillar and flipped onto her side. The split second she performed the last move, her avatar automatically righted itself and skilfully dodged out of the way of the can. Burner, who had performed the same Combo, glanced around in desperation.

“Good Science, Scotia, but what do we do now? This place is crawling with freaks.”

“In there,” she yelled, pointing towards a player hurling a brick through the glass frontage of a department store.

“I don’t like the idea of going into a building; there’s more chance of being trapped.”

“And I don’t like the idea of staying out here to be ripped to shreds by a—” She scrolled through her datafeed for the name of the creature in the vicinity with highest death count. “By a Huntropellimous. Whatever that is.”

Scraping through the hole, they tore past the perfumery section, past arrays of watches and suits, and arrived at a bank of escalators leading to the other floors.

“What now?” Burner asked, eyes darting back and forth.

“I say we get to the roof, where we’ll have a good view of everything going on at street level. We can make an escape along the rooftops if we need to.”

“No way. We’ll be stuck up there and a sitting target for those pterodactyls. Let’s head out the back and get to the Greasy Wrench. My Route Planner shows at least five different ways of getting there.”

She nodded, and they dashed towards the back doors, through the homeware department. They’d passed the pots and pans, kitchen appliances and imported goods when the room suddenly darkened. Nova looked up at the plate glass back door and took an involuntary step back.

“That wasn’t the lights going out. That
thing
is casting a shadow.”

Clawing the panes was a giant creature the datafeeds classified as a ‘quadrupedal arthropod’. It looked like a scorpion that had made a similar evolutionary leap to mankind. Its abdomen was bent at a right angle in the middle so that it walked upright on its rear four legs, enabling the front four to partake in a range of extracurricular activities. As they watched in stunned horror, the creature whipped its disjointed tail over its head, caught the door frame with its grappling hook-like stinger and yanked it clean off. Burner turned to Nova.

“So that’s what a Huntropellimous looks like. Run for your life!”

Other players had entered the store now, and people were screaming, running and loading weapons. Burner and Nova fought their way back towards the escalators.

“Suddenly being on the roof doesn’t seem such a bad idea.”

In her rear-view camera, Nova saw the Huntropellimous skate and slide. Its armour-plated claws clattered on the laminate flooring, unable to get much purchase, but still it lumbered onward, crashing against shelves lined with bottles of olive oil, which flew through the air and smashed onto the ground. She was watching, laughing as the beast’s legs slid out from underneath it on the slicked floor, when two more Huntropellimi appeared at the back of the store, wielding their stingers high above their freaky heads. They thundered over the broken doors lying on the shop floor, filling the air with the sounds of smashing glass and contorted metal.

“Get some of this, Huntropellimous.” Burner activated his Time Whisk and fired a shell in the direction of the nearest beast, who had regained his balance and looked angrier than ever. A vibrating cone of space-time spiralled towards its husk of a head, hitting it square on its dagger-like mandible. The five-second whisk reversed time for everything in its path. Smashed glass bottles reformed, arcs of Greek and Tuscan oils soared back into them, and they sprung back onto their shelves. The Huntropellimous clattered backwards a few metres, tumbled to the ground, and, his legs retracting from the splits, slid upright like a tripod being closed.

Behind them, Burner and Nova heard a woman player shriek. A serrated claw was clasped around her ankle. Nova leant over the side of the escalator to witness her bisection. The two halves of her body fell apart, spurting blood over the mess on the floor. The gore slid out of view as the escalator glided them up to the roof. They gulped at what they saw.

“Not exactly an ideal escape route.” The buildings either side of the store towered above it. They ran to the side that overlooked the street they’d run down and saw nothing but death and destruction. All that remained of the players who had stayed behind was a sinister collection of body parts: severed limbs, disembowelled torsos, and a battered head that a couple of trolls were playing football with.

“What now, Scotia? Those animals will be up here any second.”

Before she could answer him, a burly middle-aged guy barrelled through the door, turned on a sixpence, and slammed the door shut behind him. He pulled down the iron bar to lock it, and then paced backwards, away from it. Within seconds the door was being pummelled from the inside, leaving watermelon-sized dents in it.

The three Solos did what was customary in such situations. Instead of shaking hands and making small talk, they scanned the information in their datafeeds. Pedro was a red belt from Brazil with fewer than 60 health points left. Nova judged that to be a good thing — he’d be as desperate to escape as they were.

“What was the plan then, guys? Tell me you had a plan. I reckon we’ve got five seconds until the door breaks.”

“You can add ten seconds to that.” Burner held out his hand, palm up. It contained a miniature chair that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a doll's house. “Musical Chair. It’ll distract whatever’s about to burst—”

The door exploded, and Burner threw the chair to the ground. Its nursery rhyme started to play and the animals that had crashed onto the roof danced around it in a prim little circle, compelled by the music.

“I’m sorry,” Nova said, “but there was no plan. The buildings either side are too tall, and we’ve got no way to get down. We’re trapped.”

“You’ll have to owe me one then.” The back of Pedro’s chequered shirt ripped apart as two Winged Beauties sprouted from his muscular shoulder blades. He gestured for the pair of them to affix themselves to the clasps either side of the wings, and together, the three of them ran for the north side of the building. Nova, on the side nearest to the chair — whose music had just screeched to a stop — hastily drew her Sword and managed to deflect the Acoo-Stickular as it soared towards them, sending it into the heavens. Then Pedro launched off the side of the building, dragging Burner and Nova with him away from the screaming beasts.

“Where do you reckon we teleport to?” Burner asked, once they were in the air. “There’s still two minutes left before we can safely enter Corona Cubes.”

“I’m going to teleport to the north of San Miguelito. A whole group of people have surrounded the teleport machine there and are killing any animals who follow players through it.”

“I guess you’re driving, so you get to choose. Shit! What was that?”

They veered and jolted as a pterodactyl, screeching an unholy noise, plummeted straight for them. Pedro switched trajectories, banking hard to the left, leaving Nova to hang on for dear life, her legs flapping wildly in the air. The pterodactyl zoomed past her head, not missing by much, then looped round for another try.

“This is no good, that thing’s way faster than I am. We’re going to have to land and make a run for it. The machine’s still a way off, but if we stay in the air we’re all goners.”

“Burner, do you have any shells left for your Time Whisk?”

“One left. Loading it as we speak. It’s got three seconds on it. I can’t fire while we’re in the air, so the sooner we land the better.”

“We’re in the northern hemisphere,” Nova said, after she’d checked a map to make sure, “which means we need to make a circle around the keypad in a clockwise direction.”

“Brace yourselves,” Pedro called. He lowered the wings. “Geronimo!”

It seemed for a long moment that they would be smashed into the ground, and Nova clenched her eyes shut and waited for impact. But Pedro managed to stay upright by running at top speed as he hit the ground, and it was just enough to keep them from tumbling over. As soon as they were able, they unlatched themselves from his feathered clasps, and the three of them pegged it toward the machine, still fifty metres away. Nova volleyed one eye to her rear-view cam. The pterodactyl was gaining on them fast, its talons outstretched, ready to snatch them away to their deaths.

“This is going to be close. Burner, how are you doing with that shell?”

“Whisking as fast as I can.”

The pterodactyl’s talons were a hand’s width from Nova’s head when Burner took aim over his shoulder and fired the shell into its face at point-blank range. Nova watched with relief as it receded into the distance, retracing its way through the patterned sky behind them. But by the time they reached the teleporter, the shell had already worn off and the pterodactyl had resumed its forward momentum. Pedro punched the coordinates into the keypad and dialled his finger round the circle.

The top half of the machine, with its innumerable signposts to destinations all over the world, began its rotation, and at once, the players’ pixels ceased being in one place and started existing in another. The pterodactyl was a few milliseconds too late. It slammed into the machine at top speed and impaled its elongated head on a sign that pointed to Pontefract.

But instead of materialising at their destination, the Gameworld drained of colour and faded out of view. Third person perspective kicked in for a few seconds. Nova’s view swung round to show the side of the machine and the rectangular metal box clamped on to it: a TeleTrixis device. The view swung round again to display something she couldn’t believe she’d missed. The circle surrounding the keypad — the one she and Burner had watched Pedro dial his finger round — was pink rather than yellow. A message flashed in her display: “Attention: TeleTrixis attached. Combination forfeit.”

Before she could remonstrate, the forfeit kicked into play. She had three seconds to remember the Combination for an Anvil Crawler. This was a flash of lightning, which branched like a tree up in the clouds and never reached Earth. She’d practiced Lightning Combos several times, and knew there were six of them.

An Anvil Crawler was the second hardest of the lot and started with a box step. The blood rushed to her head as she performed it. A heel spin, that’s what came next. Another rush. And then she froze. What came after the heel spin? She had no idea, and had to suffer the indignity of watching the counter time out. When the Gameworld kicked back into focus she jolted forward as if waking from a temporary slumber. She turned to face Burner and Pedro, who had popped into existence next to her.

“Presume you guys screwed up your Combo too?”

“Anvil Crawler,” they said in unison, with expressions that suggested their attempts had been as pitiful as hers. Pedro looked around uneasily.

“Looks like the machine sent us to a random destination. This definitely isn’t San Miguelito. I know it well. I’ve been there dozens of times. And this place is deserted — there was nobody here to greet us, no group of people guarding the machine like the datafeeds said there would be. It’s all wrong.”

“You’re right,” Nova said, as she read the machine’s location. “We got teleported to a small town in Peru. So what do we do now?”

Burner held up his hand as if to stop her in her tracks. The teleporter was starting back up.

“Listen: the jingle’s playing in reverse. Which means—”