Assault or Attrition (28 page)

I ripped the
second breathing device from my belt and pressed it over his nose
and mouth, quickly strapping it into place behind his head. My
muscles screamed as I swam forward with McGarrity in tow, dragging
him towards the pod. I pressed him into place, but he remained
unresponsive. His lips were colorless, and his eyes had rolled to
white. Bobbing gently inside the glowing pod, I shoved him once
again until his back pressed into the sensor behind him, sealing
the unit shut. The suction pulled it downward, along with several
hundred gallons of water, and the force almost dragged me down with
it.

By the time I’d
locked myself into my own pod and the door sealed shut around me,
my breaths became shallow and labored. My breathing device was
running out of oxygen.

Locked into an
upright coffin completely filled with water, I wondered if
McGarrity had drowned. I wondered if Brynja and Peyton had made it
down to safety. I wondered if Melvin had died in the undertow. And
as my head became light and my eyes fluttered closed, I wondered if
I’d survive the trip myself.

Everyone
bags on Aquaman.
Part of it is the outfit – there’s just no way
a man can pull off an orange bodysuit. And most of it’s because, in
a comic book universe where heroes can fly, shoot lasers from their
eyes and travel through space, one of his most impressive abilities
includes being able to swim like a fish. Sure, he has his fans, but
you’re never going to walk into a store before Halloween and find a
child clinging to his mother’s leg, crying and begging for an
Aquaman costume. The guy is like the anti-Batman: he’s the
antithesis of everything that’s iconic and bad-ass in the comic
book world. But admittedly, as I spent more than a minute rocketing
through the darkness in a capsule filled with water, Aquaman’s
water-based superpowers no longer seemed so laughable.

I gasped when
the door slid open, spilling my half-conscious body onto the
pavement with a wet splat. With my cheek scraping the asphalt I
inhaled, so deeply that I felt the lungs dilate inside my chest. It
was a sensation so painful I thought I’d cough them into the
street.

As I gulped
down oxygen I was stricken with a pang of guilt. Mac, Chandler and
Melvin were gone, and McGarrity might be dead as well – but in that
moment I was just thankful to be alive myself; and, more
importantly, that Brynja and Peyton had made it out before me.

I rolled onto
my back and glanced from side to side, trying to regain my
bearings. The sidewalk, the buildings, the streetlights –
everything that surrounded me was eerily familiar. I blinked a few
tears from my eyes, rubbing the sting away, and the details
gradually drifted into focus. The entire third level was a
re-creation of Manhattan; a replica of Arena Mode’s inaugural
battleground had been reconstructed in The Spiral, and I was lying
in the middle of a replica of Times Square.

It wasn’t all
of Manhattan, of course. In reality, the affluent borough was
eighteen square miles (though it was closer to thirty-four prior to
the devastation caused by the tsunami of 2031), and I estimated
this reproduction was a quarter of that size. It reminded me of Las
Vegas’s attempts to recreate the Eiffel Tower and the canals of
Venice – the surrounding landmarks came as close to authenticity as
humanly possible – just without matching the scale.

As I stumbled
to my feet, Brynja’s distant voice reverberated from inside my
head. She was making contact with me from somewhere on the level.
“We’re okay,”
she assured me.
“I’ve already found
Peyton.”

I gave Brynja
my location and she suggested I stay put. They had landed somewhere
in the West Village and were already heading north. Ready to
collapse from exhaustion, I didn’t need much convincing. I agreed
to hold my ground and await their arrival. Once we’d regrouped, we
could scout the area for McGarrity.

I gazed around
at the surrounding cityscape. It was still under heavy
construction, and a number of the downtown buildings were in
various stages of completion. The mammoth advertisements that
adorned Times Square were all in place, but only about half of them
were illuminated. A Coke bottle that occupied most of a skyscraper
remained grey and lifeless, and 3D hologram projectors spun
listlessly in the distance; without bulbs or a sound system, they
served to do little more than provide the faint ambient noise of
grinding gears.

So I ambled
around and peered through dusty storefront windows, cupping my
hands around my eyes to adjust for the darkness. They were shells.
The interiors were vacant concrete cubes containing no more than
the odd toolbox, a pile of sawdust, or a half-eaten sandwich
abandoned by a construction worker.

Still soaking
in my surroundings (and regaining my equilibrium after nearly
drowning) I failed to notice the hologram that had appeared in the
street. Near the location where I’d been ejected from the pneumatic
tube was Valeriya, standing patiently with her hands clasped behind
her. There was something about the way she carried herself; back
straightened, chin leveled, and an icy stillness to her posture
that made a definitive statement:
I have all the time in the
world, and yours is about to run out.

This battle,
after all, was never about firepower or superhuman abilities. And
realistically, a truce wasn’t going to be negotiated since
diplomacy was never on the table. This siege was always about
tactics: a chess game where the attacker moved the right pieces
into place, patiently awaiting her chance to topple the king.
Sieges have worked this way for centuries: the raiding party
enjoyed a distinct advantage because they were on the outside, with
freedom of movement and access to the resources they required.
While the castle’s inhabitants – unable to leave due to the
military blockade that surrounded them – watched helplessly as
their rations gradually depleted. With weakened soldiers and
crumbling fortifications, the attackers would fight their way in;
or, if the defenders were on the brink of starvation, the white
flag would be raised before the first sword was pulled from its
scabbard. As far as Valeriya was concerned, sacking my castle was
inevitable. And the clock, as it often was, remained my worst
enemy.

“So many lives
have been lost,” Valeriya stated plainly, without any trace of
remorse. “How many of your friends need to die before you
surrender?”

I made my way
to the edge of the sidewalk and sat on the curb, joints aching as I
crouched. “Let’s not insult each other with any more lies,” I
grumbled. “If I gave myself up you’d kill my friends just to spite
me.”

She shrugged; a
lazy, half-hearted gesture, as if she were still making up her mind
as to whether she’d honor her bargain. “Perhaps you are correct.
There is no way for you to know if I am telling the truth. But
believe this, God Slayer: you have run out of levels. The Spiral
has come to an end.”

We were just
one step away from the end of The Spiral. And as far as I knew,
Valeriya wasn’t aware of the construction tunnel we were counting
on for our escape. I’d erased all evidence of its existence, so she
was likely convinced the lowest stage was nothing more than a dead
end; we’d be rats in a cage, scrambling for our lives until The
Nightmare captured me and disposed of my remaining allies.

I wasn’t sure
why Valeriya made the effort to contact me at this point. I guessed
it was just another attempt to rattle me and shake my
concentration. Either way, I had her undivided attention, and a few
minutes to kill until Brynja and Peyton arrived. I took the
opportunity to uncover a mystery that had been bothering me since
I’d spoken with my lawyer. “I have to hand it to you,” I said
nonchalantly. “Transferring ownership of the land was pretty slick.
You have no chance of getting arrested now that Fortress 23 is in
its own country. Did you pay off politicians, or were they dumb
enough to buy into your cult-leader bullshit?”

Valeriya
remained silent. She was perfectly still, unflinching, for just a
solitary heartbeat...it was a heartbeat too long. A small nod of
affirmation quickly followed, but it was too late: she’d given
herself away. There was hesitation floating behind her eyes. It was
just the slightest, most infinitesimal indication that she was
searching her memories for an explanation. Of all the emotions
human beings are capable of experiencing, the most difficult to
conceal is confusion. She
didn’t
facilitate the land
transfer, making me the proprietor of my own country. She wasn’t
even aware it had occurred. My question had been answered, and it
had been replaced by two more: if Valeriya wasn’t behind the
transfer, who was? And for what purpose?

Without warning
her hologram winked off, leaving me alone in the street once
again.

I wandered
around for a few moments, searching storefronts for a casket, or
anything else that could pass as a makeshift weapon. I no longer
had a firearm or any explosives, and the stun-guns built into my
gauntlets were on the fritz. I tried to activate them as a test;
the left one resulted in a few sputtering blue sparks followed by a
plume of smoke, and the right once remained functional, but had
only a single charge remaining. The suit was water resistant, but
completely submerging the electronics for so long had evidently
caused some damage. Last month it had occurred to me that I
probably should have included some underwater drills while I was in
the testing phase, but at the time I had more pressing matters to
attend to (most of them being comic book or Lego-related).

I scoured some
abandoned workstations. A few oversized wrenches and crowbars
seemed too cumbersome to be effective weapons, so I continued my
search, wandering south until I noticed a squat, red-stoned
building wedged between two larger ones; there was a poster that
depicted a beer stein plastered above the wooden door, which was
slightly ajar. Watery footprints led from the sidewalk through the
entrance and into the darkness. I immediately knew who was
inside.

The hinges
creaked as I pushed the door, casting a stretch of light into the
dusty room. It was a makeshift pub. Folding metal chairs were
loosely arranged around overturned crates that doubled as tables,
and the floors were littered with empty bottles and cans. And at
the bar – the only authentic piece of furniture in the
establishment – sat Steve McGarrity, stooped over a pint of
beer.

“Not exactly
the Flash, are you?” He turned and raised his glass, cocking an
annoying grin. “What took you so long?” McGarrity looked no worse
for wear aside from being soaked through from his t-shirt to his
jeans. Just ten minutes ago I’d been mildly concerned that he might
be dead, but here he was – alive, and as irritating as ever.

I circled
behind the bar to find a trio of functional beer taps, and a row of
mostly-clean glasses. I wasn’t a beer drinker, but at that point I
was willing to chug just about anything with alcoholic content – a
near-death experience tends to have that effect.

Beer stein
in-hand, I pulled up a stool next to McGarrity and took a sip. “So
why are you here?” I asked. “It can’t be
just
about the
money and this ‘ultimate freedom’ thing that’s supposedly sitting
right below us.”

“Naw,” he
smiled. “it’s about the fame, too.”

I just shook my
head. I downed the first half of my pint in silence until he
abruptly asked a question.

“Do you ever
get high?”

“No need,” I
replied. “I’m high on life.”

“I get high
once in a while,” he shrugged. “Not socially – just by myself,
alone in my crib. I spark up, hook myself in and hit the IG-Net...”
He paused for a moment, before adding, “that’s the ‘Interactive
Gaming Network’. It’s this virtual video game—“

“I’m not
that
old,” I interrupted. “I know what the goddamned IG-Net
is.”

“All right, all
right...” he said, holding up a hand in mock surrender. “So a few
months ago I’m hooked in, buzzed, just grinding away for a couple
hours in a deathmatch. It’s this
huge
map, man – this thing
stretches like forty square miles. Me and some teammates are hiding
in the trees of this alien jungle with our laser cannons locked and
loaded, just waiting for a horde to come sweep the area. We had
time to kill, so we were swapping war stories over the coms.”

“Uh-huh,” I
said flatly. “
Video
game
war stories?”

“Right,” he
said without missing a beat. “So that’s when one of my teammates
starts babbling away about this thing called the Schumann
Resonance.”

I nodded and
took a short sip. “Spectrum peaks in the Earth’s E.L.F. I’ve heard
about it.” I figured I must have heard just about
every
scientific theory, regardless of how inane or wildly unfounded.
Reading old science journals and scouring holo-forums for data was
one of the things I did with my spare time in lieu of having a
functional social life.

“Right!” he
shouted, growing more animated. He seemed legitimately energized by
the notion that I was aware of the theory. “The world’s Extremely
Low Frequency something or other. Earth is actually slowing down
because of a shift in the magnetic field – which means that time
feels like it’s speeding up.”

“Theoretically,” I added with a heavy dose of skepticism.

“Yeah,” he
conceded. “In theory. So I log out of the game and start
researching...I’m up all night reading about time, perception, how
people all over the world feel like time is speeding up – and then
it hits me: I’d been feeling it all along! Time
is
actually
moving faster.”

“
Or,
” I
said, “and I’m just guessing here, you were smoking some really
good weed.”