S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (43 page)

There had been no sign she was being chased, whether by the living or the dead, neither sound nor sight of anything threatening. She tried to keep her guard up, but was finding it harder and harder to do so, and instead she kept lapsing into long, senseless arguments with herself.

They won't send anyone after you.

Why wouldn't they?

You're not part of the script.

She wondered if they would postpone the start of the Live Player program. The more she thought about it, the more she realized they probably wouldn't. They'd already invested too much time and money on the rollout. Every minute they delayed, every minute spent focused on her instead of
The Game
, was another minute they weren't selling it.

For the first time she felt grateful for
The Game
. It played to her advantage.

She did, however, feel bad for the guard she'd shot. She hadn't meant to. The shooting hadn't been part of her plan.

Neither had bringing your stupid Player along with you.

But when Grant had hit her, she'd inadvertently squeezed the trigger. She was glad it wasn't a life-threatening wound.

Not unless you nicked his femoral artery.

She cringed. Had there been enough blood? She hadn't had time to notice.

At least Grant had been right about one thing. If she'd knocked him out along with all the others, then the man might've bled out before someone could help him.

How is Grant going to explain letting you go?

“Not my problem,” she muttered aloud.

She stopped and turned around, squinting into the glare thrown off the road. She couldn't see Kwanjangnim Rupert, and it had been a while since she'd last tended to him.

It. Not him. Stop thinking of it as a person. It's not
Kwanjangnim Rupert anymore
.

“Damn it.”

Her voice was a croak, the word dying in her throat even before the hot, dry breeze could snatch it from her lips. How far back? Was it worth turning around?

She wished she could just write a program to make the Player follow her. Maybe even something as simple as:
Keep walking, staying ten feet back.
She could provide it a simple visual cue, like the back of her head.

Yeah, like that's not even the least bit creepy, a zombie staring at your brain case.

“Focus on your desired endpoint,” Rod had told them. “Pull from your pre-existing pool of executable actions to achieve it. Just like assembling a computer program from extant code. Then let the program run.”

A zombie on autopilot. Creepy, disturbing, fascinating and amusing.

And also inhumane.

You're tired. Your mind's slipping.

She let out a hot exhale of frustration, muttering to herself that the last thing she needed was an untrained puppy to keep an eye on.

That
thing
you call a puppy was once a man who taught you enough to save your life ten times over. Now go get him.

“Fine,” she whispered to herself, and started back the way she'd come.

† † †

“Eric? Kelly?”

Nothing on her Link. She still wasn't sure her idea of reprogramming the game gear with her Link identifier code and connecting was going to work. She had tried to ping Ashley's Link, but all she got was an error message that the client didn't exist on this stream.

The clock hit 12:01:00, and there was still no ping coming from Ashley's Link.

12:02:00.

The seconds rounded up to three minutes past noon. Finally there was a click from her speaker, followed by a faint
shooshing
noise that didn't sound electronic at all.

No ping though.

“Jessie?”

Hearing Kelly surprised her. “I'm here,” she sputtered, almost laughing with relief.

“Oh, thank God.” Kelly whispered. “I wasn't sure how this was going to work, or even if it would. You look okay. Are you?”

“You can see me?” she asked. Her own screen was black.

“Yeah, I've got the goggles on. Where are you?”

“Came in somewhere around West Babylon. I'm close to halfway,” she lied. “Is Eric there?”

“Arc is here. They're upstairs talking with him. I tried to get away sooner, but couldn't. They're expecting me back pretty quick or else they'll start to suspect something.”

“Upstairs?”

“I'm in the basement. Eric hid the gear down here this morning after he spoke with you. Jessie, what the hell have you done? Why are you doing this?”

“You know why.”

“It's reckless and stupid!”

She wanted to explain it to him, but there wasn't enough time. And she didn't want him getting into any more trouble.

“We have to make this quick,” she told him. “Arc might try tracing the lines.”

Probably already are.

“Listen,” she said, “I'm holed up in a house to get some rest. So far it's been pretty easy, no troubles at all.”

Except for shooting someone. And babysitting a zombie.

She craned her neck and squinted through the dusty window toward the shed where she'd hidden Kwanjangnim Rupert. She felt another twinge of guilt. The inside of the structure was filthy, thickly matted with cobwebs and stinking of rotten wood, but she couldn't risk having the thing inside the house with her, not while she napped. If she became disconnected and it sensed her, it would kill her.

“I'm going to try and get to the hill before sunset.”

“You need to be inside before dark, Jess.”

She ignored him. “Once I find Micah and stop him, I'm going to head over to Brookhaven, get Grandpa's Link. I should be there by this time tomorrow. After that, I'll make my way back to the ferry terminal, see if they'll let me back on.”

“Might not be so easy. Eric said you shot someone.”

“That's out already? It wasn't my fault. I know Arc's not happy with me, but once I stop Micah, they'll be fine.”

“And what about Micah? Will you shoot him, too?”

“If I have to.”

She could hear his sigh of resignation, and she knew it was because he didn't want to see her as someone who would put a bullet in someone at the drop of a hat. But she'd had time to think about it as she walked, and she'd come to terms with what she was doing. She'd kill him if she had to. Maybe not cold-heartedly, but she'd do it.

Grant was wrong about you, wasn't he?

She smiled thinly.

“How's my mom?” she asked.

“Still the same. You should be here with her.”

And here comes the guilt trip.

“We better disconnect,” she told him. “Same thing tomorrow. Noon sharp.”

“Wait!”

She stopped herself from disconnecting.
What now?

“Just . . . promise me something. When you're finished, you'll come back.”

“Of course I will.” She laughed, startled by the thought. It had almost sounded like he thought she'd prefer to stay. “You think I
want
to be here?”

He didn't answer.

You're reading too much into it. He just means that you'll come back safe and sound.

“Two days,” she told him. “Three tops. Once I stop Micah and get Grandpa's Link, I'll come straight home. Promise.”

‡ ‡ ‡

The two Arc representatives looked over as Kelly returned to the living room. One of them cocked an eyebrow at him, as if to indicate that the duration of his absence had been duly noted. Most people, after all, didn't require ten minutes to go to the bathroom.

Kelly returned to the armchair where he'd been sitting earlier and hoped they wouldn't ask him anything. He was deeply disturbed by what he'd just heard and seen. Two weeks had passed since their return from Gameland, and this was the most alive he'd seen Jessie. She actually looked as if she was enjoying herself.

It's your imagination.

“As we were telling your brother-in-law,” one of the reps told Kelly, “we're seeking a quick and quiet resolution to this developing situation. We want to see your wife returned home as quickly as possible just as much as you do.”

Kelly doubted that, but he didn't say so. As far as he could see, the only resolution they wanted was one that didn't make them look bad in the Media Stream or informed people about their vulnerabilities.

“This is, as you can probably appreciate,” the man went on, “a sensitive time for Arc, what with our new platform rolling out this week. It's absolutely vital that we make a favorable impression on our target audience. Our stakeholders have very high revenue expectations for this product, and any negative publicity could cost them billions. We have devoted considerable resources to making sure this goes as smoothly as possible, and even the tiniest hiccup can have negative and irrevocable consequences, not just for us, but for the overall economy as a whole. I hope you understand.”

Kelly understood alright. They didn't want Jessie to embarrass them by doing anything to jeopardize whatever they were going to announce, which he guessed was the launch of the Live Player option. Ever since the hunting permit debacle a few years back and the passage of the sport killing ban, Arc had been working hard to repair the damage to their image.
And
rebrand zombie hunting as something that was socially acceptable, yet essentially the same. But did they actually believe people wouldn't see right through their charade?

“As such,” the man continued, sighing, “your wife's unauthorized access into the gaming arena puts us in a somewhat untenable position. Especially,” he added, locking his eyes onto Kelly's, “coming so soon after recent events. We had hoped to simply move on from that, forgiving your criminal acts as the reckless consequence of adolescent poor judgment and inadequate parental supervision.” He glanced disdainfully at Eric. “But kids will be kids, as they say.”

“Arc sanctioned the break in,” Kelly growled.

Eric gave him a warning shake of the head.

The rep turned away, the muscles in his cheek rippling. He was obviously much too upset to continue.

Asshole
, Kelly thought.

“But,” his partner said, stepping in, “this new incident has forced us to take a more proactive stance. We can accept that one infraction might be a mistake, poor judgment and all. But twice becomes a troubling pattern of behavior. How can we be sure Jessica isn't trying to sabotage the Live Player format?”

“She's not,” Kelly stated.

“Then help us understand why she has returned.”

The two men stared at him and waited. From the corner of his eye, Kelly saw Eric give the slightest nod, and he realized what Eric had also come to understand: their only chance of getting Jessie back in one piece was to tell the truth— or at least a part of the truth.

“She believes the game codex has been hacked.”

The first representative, the taller of the two, look startled. He shook his head vehemently. “That's not possible. The program employs a sophisticated array of adaptive security protocols. When a layer breach is detected, the hacker is guided unwittingly down a series of increasingly complex but false paths from which he must extricate himself. This provides us time to track them down. We have never had a breach come close to reaching the system's kernal.
Never
.”

Kelly was about to explain that they had done it while in Gameland, but he realized that doing so would be an admission of a serious crime and, at least so far, nobody had even raised that accusation. So, either they didn't know about it or they didn't want to know about it. Either way, he wasn't about to throw himself into a prison cell by bringing it up.

“Arc's stream architecture is the most complex ever developed.”

“Maybe,” Kelly said, “but that doesn't mean it's not hackable. Someone with enough knowledge of program architecture might be able to crack it.”

“I presume you're referring to young Mister Sandervol. Yes, we've been aware of him for a while.”

Kelly jerked in surprise. “Software architecture was Micah's specialty.”

“And that's who your wife suspects has cracked the game codex?”

Kelly nodded. “She believes he's at Jayne's Hill, at your mainframe. That's why she went back, to stop him. She means no harm to the network or the codex.”

The Arc guys looked at each other for a moment. The shorter one started to laugh and shake his head, but the other one turned an unhappy stare back toward Kelly. “Mister Corben, we don't have time for such nonsense.”

“It's not nonsense. She's on her way there now.”

“How do you know this? You can't communicate with her while she's on the island. What proof do you have of any of this?”

Eric flashed a warning look, and Kelly didn't need him to say a word to know why. Alarm bells were ringing in his own head:
Don't tell them about the gaming gear! It's our only way of communicating with Jessie.

“At least tell us why she thinks he's at Jayne's Hill.”

“Because Jessie—” Another warning look from Eric. “Because she had a vision about it.”

The Arc men exchanged another look, but neither of them seemed all that amused this time. “A vision?”

“A sort of a . . . a daydream.”

The two men abruptly stood up. “I can see we're wasting our time.”

“You have to believe me.”

“No, Mister Corben. You may believe what you want, but we don't have to. In fact, you know what you've told us is patently false. Micah Sandervol was conscripted last week. You know that. You were a witness to it.”

“Jessie thinks it was faked.”

They shook their heads. “We know he was your friend.”

“He wasn't our friend!” Kelly exclaimed. “He betrayed us! He was working for the Coalition. He was trying to hack implants, trying to take down your network. He still is!”

“Mister Corben, Mister Daniels, I would advise you both to seriously consider getting help for Jessica, because she's clearly deluded. If you expect us to buy into this fantasy, then you're just as mistaken as she is.”