Solarversia: The Year Long Game (57 page)

Nova snapped back to her predicament. It was time to change up a gear, to go on the offensive. She wanted
them
to be scared of
her
. She charged at Captain Moreno, shield braced at her side, spear at the ready. They clashed head on and then pushed one another away. When her shield was lowered, Moreno took a mad swipe at her face. His spear connected with her cheek, nearly taking off her nose. Her visor flashed to give her the bad news: a whopping 20 health points knocked off, down to 75.

He cackled at his handiwork and then came at her again. She sidestepped his advance, grabbed his arm and pulled him so that he tripped over her leg. He fell, face first, onto the coals and let out a mighty screech. Groaning with pain, he pushed himself up but his legs remained spreadeagled. She grabbed her spear in both hands and rammed it into his crotch as hard as she could. Another trumpet, another flag: another £500,000 in the bank.

When Gorigaroo struck his gong again a few minutes later, more weapons appeared, fastened to the perimeter wall. Each player was rewarded with a Battle Axe and a larger, heavier rectangular shield. Not wanting to get stuck against the perimeter wall, Nova quickly headed back to the centre of the arena, but was distracted by a zigzag hole in the ground on the way.

She wondered what it was there for. Barely half a foot wide, it wasn’t as if anyone could have fallen into it, even if they’d tried. And she could have sworn that something inside it was glistening. She shuffled closer and peered into it. The thing that shot out of the hole very nearly took her head off. She leapt back, startled, amazed at her own stupidity.

Remembering the danger around her, she took stock of her situation. The new weapons were in her hands. Only six players remained. Thirty metres away, Ozwald the Destroyer and van der Star were tumbling around on the floor together, a short distance from a pit of poisonous snakes. Beyond them, Pedey Gonzalez was giving The Dump Truck a hard time, aiming a sortie of Battle Axe combinations at her head.

Nova paused. Something didn’t feel right. She remembered sparring practice with Burner. What would he have suggested? An image of Matas flashed before her mind.
Always watch the quiet ones
. Feinting to her left, she twirled around to find that he’d crept up behind her and was now only metres away, charging, spear in one hand, axe in the other.

Her large shield deflected the blow, but the collision knocked her back a few metres. Again he came at her, ramming her hard with his shoulder before she could take a firm stance. He was quick, she’d give him that. Knocking her backward for a third time in a row, he also took a sly swipe with his Battle Axe, snatching a few points when the blade caught her thigh.

It was the fourth impact that sent the two of them crashing to the floor and rolling along the ground to end up in each other’s arms. Nova smiled awkwardly, and then grimaced when he headbutted with all his might. She saw him arch his head back to repeat the move and then freeze. Something was wrong. It felt like someone was squeezing the side of her body that she was lying on. She watched as Matas sunk an inch into the ground.

“Quicksand,” he shouted at her. “We have to get out right now, or else we’ll both die.”

She flailed madly, ripping herself from his grip, and then pushed hard against him to roll onto her back — and on top of her large shield. Leveraging herself against it, she pulled her limbs free from the pit and clambered back to safe ground. She stood to watch as Matas’ movements became increasingly constricted until at last the sand swallowed him whole.
Or else we’ll both die.
Nice try, Mole boy.

The trumpet signalling his death was followed by the gong and then another familiar noise. It was a nasty grating screech that assaulted her ears. Three Obarians roared into the arena, cruising through the air at top speed. Nova switched to the smaller, circular shield. Her time fighting and fleeing these balls of teeth taught her one thing: speed was of the essence.

The Dump Truck was the first victim of the Obarians. As they swooped toward her, she panicked and ran — the worst possible combination of actions. As she checked over her shoulder to watch their advance, she slipped into a trench of poison ivy. The vines came to life, wrapping themselves around her arms, legs and neck. They seemed to be squeezing the life out of her while simultaneously stretching her out, long and taut. She lay there immobilised, struggling and writhing as much as her torso could manage while her health score trickled to zero.

Pedey paid the price for her negligence, though to be fair, her eyes couldn’t be everywhere at once. She’d managed to keep all three Obarians in her sight lines, suavely ducking and weaving out of their way, but failed to notice the bookies’ favourite, Ozwald, creep up behind her. He seemed to have a special affinity with the Battle Axe and the crowd were treated to their first beheading. The death was played over and over on the giant screens.

Van der Star was the third Obarian fatality, a victim of poor luck and even worse timing. As the fanged spheres criss-crossed the arena, he found himself in a position where all three were headed toward him at once, a trifecta of dental danger. As his mutilated body sagged to the ground, minus large chunks of his neck and face, the gong sounded. The Obarians departed the arena, and only Nova and Ozwald were left standing.

She was struck for a second by how little emotion she felt at watching van der Star’s demise. She’d dreamt about it a number of times, always taking the starring role of the player to land the fatal blow. But right at that moment she didn’t have time to gloat. Ozwald had an iron glare that said he’d never back down. Moving slowly, he never took his eyes off hers. He didn’t laugh or scoff at her; he appeared to respect her as an opponent. Putting away his small shield, he started to swing his Battle Axe, cross-hatching the air in front of him. He increased the speed, faster and faster.

It made more sense to attack than to defend, but she couldn’t muster the courage. She switched to the larger shield and held it up on her left arm, brandishing the spear in her right. They came together. His axe battered her shield and the crowd went wild. Again and again they clashed, each time more forceful. The swings of his axe were relentless; he was a fighting machine.

She hated the way he was in control, perpetually keeping her on the back foot, making her retreat from him. With every incursion his confidence grew. It was as if he could smell her fear. He came at her again, harder, faster, stronger. His axe flew through the air, aimed at her neck. She didn’t have time to block it with her shield, and had to make do with her spear. It worked, just. She blocked the blow. But then, with a flick of his wrist, he knocked the spear clean out of her hand and into a patch of barbed wire.

She switched to her axe and edged backwards carefully until she was out of space. Patches of broken glass and barbed wire were either side of her, behind her a large pit of coals. She was trapped. For the first time in their battle, Ozwald smiled, sensing her unease. And he wasn’t the only one. With their faces plastered across the giant screens, spectators were calling on him to finish her off. Without her spear she felt hopeless. Why hadn’t she spent more time training with a Battle Axe? She needed something unorthodox, something unexpected. Something like the zigzag gap.

Hope coursed through her body. It might have been a long shot, but it felt like her
only
shot. She took a deep breath and charged straight at him. Surprised at her sudden aggression, he braced himself. She smashed into him as hard as possible, then pirouetted through the air, landed and leapt as far as she could away from him, onto the patch of broken glass.

It took her a hop and a skip to clear it. Her feet were bloodied, her health had taken another hit, but she had escaped him. And more importantly, she had a plan. Behind her, Ozwald cursed, before calling after her, “You can’t run forever, little girl. Come and give the crowd what they want — your blood smeared down my axe.”

She snaked her way around the death traps toward the gap in the ground, making note of the likely route Ozwald would take on his way to her. Then she ran around the gap and positioned herself in what looked to be the optimal place. As he approached, she did her best to remain calm and tried especially hard not to look down. She started to swing her axe, like she had seen him do.

“Been practising, huh?” He followed her example. At first he matched her speed, a couple of rotations every second. Then he ramped his speed up a notch. She copied him, doing her best to keep up.

“You think that’s fast? Get a load of this.” He ramped up once more. His smile turned to a smirk. “Too quick for you, huh?”

This was her chance, she knew it. She tried to emulate his new speed and then did her best impression of fumbling it. When the axe clattered to the ground and disappeared into the gap, Nova emitted the most convincing gasp she could muster.

“Don’t worry, second place is still very admirable.” He kept swinging his axe, but now walked toward her. She fixed his gaze and clutched her shield tight to her chest.

As he stepped over the gap he came to a standstill. His smirk disappeared. He looked at Nova and then down at whatever had just clasped hold of him. A razor-sharp set of Huntropellimous claws protruded from the gap. Its pincers straddled the lower part of his body. A look of horror spread across his face. The claws snapped shut, slicing clean through his body armour. He collapsed forward, open like a banana split. The beast’s second claw appeared and started snipping at his body, cutting it into pieces small enough to pull back into its lair.

As she watched him disappear into the hole, chunk by chunk, Nova realised that she had done it. She was the winner of Solarversia, Grand Champion of The Year-Long Game. There could only be one — and she was it. She looked up to the crowd in shock, hoping their response would help her take it all in. But the crowd seemed strangely still. Looking closer, she discovered that the arena wasn’t just still, it was
silent
.

She turned slowly on the spot and surveyed the crowd. Everyone was frozen. Arkwal must have been halfway through a clap; it looked like he was holding an invisible football. Ludi Bioski was in the middle of turning a dial one way or the other. Except for the area within the arena, time had stopped functioning at the Colosseum. Nova gulped. What was going on?

She’d just won Solarversia. Hadn’t she?

Chapter Forty-Nine

Arty kept volleying between the cams in the Colosseum, trying to work out what had just happened. It wasn’t unheard of for a cam to freeze, especially with so many people logged in at once, but it
was
unusual for all of them to freeze at once. Theoretically it was impossible — the cams were programmed to automatically reboot themselves. But as he volleyed around the Colosseum, he saw the same thing from every view — the crowd frozen mid-action. He swiped the visor off his face and glanced around the Olympic Stadium in a state of panic. Next to him Hannah was speaking, words he could barely take in. In the stadium people had started to boo. He hurdled his seat and made a dash for the Command Centre.

“Carl, why has every cam frozen?” Arty held out his thumb and forefinger a centimetre apart. “Tell me you’re
this
close to fixing whatever has gone wrong.” Most of the screens in the room were flashing warnings of some kind or performing diagnostic checks. Some people were shouting into their headsets, others were frantically tapping away at their keyboards.

Carl looked like he was about to throw up on his desk. “The Celebratory Program should have started running the instant the person in second place died. But it didn’t. Something called the MetaMyth Program has kicked in. There’s a ReadMe text file attached. It’s from Theodore Markowsky.” He cleared his throat. Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing. The clacking of keyboards hurriedly ended, leaving only the sound of catcalls emanating from the crowd outside.

“Unless you want blood on your hands, tell whoever won to remain seated and logged in. Do
not
try to stop MetaMyth from running. Further instructions will follow. Enjoy the different ending.”

The room remained silent as two hundred people tried to process what they’d just heard. Hands went to ashen faces, wide eyes betraying their fear.
Blood on your hands
? Arty’s brain fired a hundred thoughts a second: Theodore Markowsky, the MetaMyth program, a different ending.

None of it made sense.

Arty stared at Carl, his eyes narrowed. “This MetaMyth program. What do we know about it?”

“Nothing, I’ve never heard of it. I didn’t know it existed. Arty, this is not something we’ve programmed.”

One of the techs spoke up. “It doesn’t look like there’s any way to interrupt it, bar performing a hard reboot. And you know what that means. We’d lose access to everything — including the Colosseum — for about three hours while we brought Solarversia back online.”

“Find out everything you can about it: when and how it was installed. There must be a password. Liaise with the security team. Get every spare machine on it. I want an estimate of how long it would take to crack. Hannah, prepare a statement of some kind. Say something about the enormous strain of people viewing live virtual footage being too great for the servers. We’re on the case and hope to welcome people back shortly. Call MI6. Someone get Max and Maurice on the phone and bring them up to speed. See if there’s any way that Gogmagog can help. Ensure the defeated finalists are escorted inside. Get every spare security guard to surround Nova’s rig. Find out what friends and family she has in the stadium, bring them here. And get me Nova on the line.”

The atmosphere in the room changed in an instant. Those who had been too stunned to act now had a purpose. Arty flicked his headset down and ensured that one eye was focused on Nova’s avatar in the Colosseum, the other on her gaming rig in the stadium.

“Nova, this is Artica Kronkite, CEO of Spiralwerks. Can you hear me?”