Gamers - Amazon (12 page)

The water wicked its way up the giant's sand body and the cold air froze it solid. The upper half of the giant slumped over, mouth agape, and icy mortis set in. Stephan kept up the frost until the pond was frozen solid around the giant.

Carefully making their way across the ice, the team examined the frozen sand giant. Its mouth was as tall as Stephan.

Mouse tentatively pushed against the giant's cheek with her dagger while Avony crossed her arms, smirking at Gabby.

"You just wanted all the points for yourself. Didn't you Gabs?" said Avony.

"We all got LPs for that kill. I don't understand?" said Gabby.

"But you got bonus points for figuring it out and making the kill," Avony remarked.

Gabby glanced at her LifeScore, it had finally turned green after days of gray and red. She'd gotten a nice bonus from the kill, though she was still way behind.

"Look Gabs." When Avony used that nickname it drove Gabby crazy. "We know you're way behind on points and will do anything to get ahead, including offing one of us so you have a better chance. So I'm just telling you right now, I'm watching you."

Gabby checked with the others to see if they were on Avony's side. Unthar was sharpening his massive sword with a whetstone, looking disinterested as usual. Stephan leaned on his staff and shrugged at her when they made eye contact, and Mouse stood quietly by the cave-like mouth, staring ambivalently through her hair.

"You've always done your thing," said Stephan. "I don't think you'll betray us, but I'm certainly not expecting you to be a good team mate."

Gabby clenched her fists. Her face turned red, so she stalked off the frozen pond so they wouldn't see it.

What gave them the right to judge her? Avony was a backstabbing schemer, Stephan an egocentric know-it-all, Unthar a muscled headed psychopath, and Mouse, well, she didn't even know Mouse.

She made her way to the top of the dune, keeping her back to them. Looking out across the dunes, the next one the same as the last.

Gabby wondered how Zaela was faring. She hoped her team was better. Knew it had to be better because hers couldn't be any worse. Gabby wasn't sure how they were going to get through the Raid when they didn't trust each other.

Her four teammates waited by the frozen giant. Beyond the pond and the depression, the desert seemed to be growing and the sky shrinking.

Dusty clouds were rising from the sand. Gabby spun around. The horizon disappeared in every direction, replaced by an approaching sand storm.

Gabby ran down the sand dune, shouting at the others. "Sand storm!"

They milled about frantically searching for shelter from the storm.

"Wasn't there a hole in the rocks?" Stephan asked.

"Yeah, but we wouldn't all fit. Unthar would be left out for sure," Gabby said. "We need to find something soon."

The winds rose up around them, the first edges of the storm reaching the depression. Sand stung their faces and whipped their hair around. Mouse was pushed across the ice by a sudden gust.

"There's nothing out here for us to hide in," Avony yelled.

The winds wailed and drowned out their voices. Soon they wouldn't be able to see each other.

Mouse flailed against the wind trying to get back to them. She was yelling something but they couldn't hear it. Gabby slid across the ice toward Mouse and helped her to her feet.

Mouse yelled something, but Gabby couldn't hear, so she huddled up with her.

"The giant's mouth," said Mouse.

At first Gabby didn't understand, so Mouse said, "The raid is called Asphyxia."

She understood what Mouse was saying at once.

Using their weapons, they poled across the ice. Wind gusts threatened to throw Mouse, so Gabby put away one sword and grabbed her arm. The two made it back to the others, who were huddled around the giant's mouth.

Gabby pushed Mouse into the mouth and motioned for the others. The others quickly followed to get out of the sand storm.

As Unthar ducked under the giant's teeth, the mouth snapped shut. Gabby nearly fell over as the wind stopped pushing her.

"You led us into a trap, you idiot," said Avony. "We're so debuffed now."

A faint blue nimbus appeared from the tip of Stephan's staff. "I don't think so," he said, examining the inside of the giant's mouth.

The darkness led back further into the giant's throat.

"Looks like we go that way," said Mouse.

Gabby restrained herself from giving Avony a nasty told-you-so look. It wouldn't help their team one bit if she did, even though it would make her feel good, temporarily, anyway.

Stephan took the lead, holding his staff before him like a lantern. The rest of the team followed him down the giant's throat.

Chapter Fourteen

Gabby knew Mouse had found the answer when the cave led back farther than the length of the giant's body. Plus, the air had an unnatural warmth to it rather than being frigid from being trapped in the frozen pond.

As they traveled deeper into the giant's cave, Gabby wondered where they were on the school grounds. She'd grown up with the eye-screen technology all her life and had played plenty of alternate reality games, but never before had one been so immersive.

Normally, the games painted over the objects that were already there. This one had painted over the whole world so she couldn't actually see what was there. Gabby had the sudden feeling that she was about to run into a wall and had to steel herself to take the next step.

When she didn't, she let out her breath and remembered that running into a wall was the least of her worries here.

Now she understood how they had hidden the wall in the mountains and Mr. Johnson had appeared out of thin air. If they painted a new world over her eye-screens, one mostly the same as the one she expected, then they could hide anything they wanted within the rest.

Is that what the Coders did? They changed the way people saw the world? That would explain why no one questioned the missing kids and families. They were too busy playing LifeGame to notice.

She wondered what the rest of the team would think if they knew failing here wouldn't just get them a lesser job, but result in their total disappearance. Gabby couldn't quite accept that they killed kids if they failed. They must be taking them somewhere. Probably huge automated trucks filled with the loser kids driving right next to the FunCars as people played their games.

The two bodies in the tent haunted her thoughts. They'd just been sleeping in a tent, no danger to anyone. And though the GSA was still at war with the Southlands, the two bodies in the tent had just been kids. Maybe it'd been an accident that had killed them.

She thought about Michael and his sister, Celia. She'd love to have some of her spy bugs right now. The tunnel was making her feel claustrophobic. They'd been traveling for over an hour now and no one had said a word.

When she was about to open her mouth to break the silence, she noticed a dim light farther down the tunnel. Eventually, the others noticed it too. A faint noise appeared as well. They each pulled out their weapons and moved more deliberately as they closed the distance.

The noise was human made and individual voices, shouting commands, condensed out of the clatter. Each of them was thinking the same thing and so hurried down the tunnel.

When they broke out onto a flat ledge overlooking a stacked town, Gabby was disappointed. She'd assumed the shouted commands had been another team. She had hoped it was Zaela's.

A crowded bazaar occupied the center of the town. Adobe houses stacked on top of each other like errant building blocks, belching black smoke that hung in a haze over the town.

The whole town sat in a huge chamber. A dusty caravan rolled out of a wide tunnel on the far end, led by squat four-legged creatures that resembled obese horses.

"This smoke is awful," said Stephan, holding his sleeve to his mouth.

"Probably dung fires," whispered Mouse. "No trees in the cave."

"From a sand storm to a shit storm," said Gabby, laughing at her own joke.

Avony sighed heavily, dismissing the joke with a flick of her fingers.

"Just trying to lighten the air," said Gabby, following up with another joke.

Gabby thought she caught Mouse smirking behind her curtain of hair.

"So what now?" asked Stephan.

"We don't even know what the purpose of the raid is," said Avony.

"Mr. Johnson called it the Asphyxia raid," said Gabby.

Avony squinted at Gabby. "Who's Mr. Johnson?"

"He's LGIE." Gabby quickly realized they would wonder why she knew he was LGIE. "I met him when I was late for the raid."

"And why were you late for the raid, again?" asked Avony. The others turned toward her, except Unthar, who'd been off to the side by himself.

"I was stressed from the constant grinding and took a joy ride in a hacked FunCar," she explained.

Gabby didn't think it would matter if she admitted the FunCar hack, since she'd already told Mr. Johnson. Only Mouse seemed to view her news favorably. For the others, it was confirmation of her normal deviant behaviors.

After a moment of concentration, Avony asked, "Do you think that Mr. Johnson designed our raid?"

Gabby thought Avony might have a point. Michael had called him retro-fantasy in the Black Gate. And Mr. Johnson had chosen to announce the start of the Raid. At the time, she'd thought it'd just been for her benefit.

"It makes sense," said Gabby. "He was decked out in some cosplay outfit with a magic sword on his back."

Unthar stood away from the group, arms crossed, staring at the town. He didn't seem interested in the conversation, which in itself, made Gabby suspicious.

"The name Asphyxia doesn't give me a warm feeling about this raid, given the max pain levels," said Stephan, interrupting her thoughts.

"I suppose it will allow us to metagame," said Gabby. "But I'm not sure how that helps us right now, except maybe to be on the lookout for the usual tropes."

Avony started heading down the hillside toward the town. "Let's see if we can learn anything in town."

Gabby was annoyed by Avony taking defacto leadership of the team, but she wasn't about to cause a scene about it. Their current level of cooperation was tenuous, at best.

They threaded through the bazaar, pushing past the townsfolk bartering for partially rotten vegetables and thread-bare fabrics. When Gabby stumbled against a woman, she barked an insult at Gabby, exposing few remaining teeth and a lazy eye.

The rest of the townsfolk weren't much better. Though her sense-web wasn't supposed to be able to transfer much smell, the thick odors of unwashed bodies and dung-smoke made her eyes water.

When they got stuck in the crowd, Unthar took the lead, barreling the townsfolk out of the way, under cries of protest. They weren't making friends already.

"Now what?" Stephan yelled over the throng.

Gabby remembered how games like this normally unfolded. "A tavern! That's usually where we find out what to do next."

They checked around the bazaar hoping to see a tavern sign. When they didn't see one, Unthar picked up the nearest villager, an old fellow with wispy white hair and milky clouded eyes.

After he set the wrinkled old man down, he led them from the bazaar through narrow side streets until they stopped beneath a sign reading Smoke and Barrel.

Their entrance brought stares from the hardscrabble patrons of the smoky bar, including a one-eyed man in the corner that leered at them long after they sat down. After they huddled around a table, a buxom waitress with all her teeth attended them.

"What do you desire?" she asked in a husky voice.

Stephan put his hand under her skirt, pulling her against his side. "I think I'm beginning to like this Mr. Johnson."

"I'm hungry, and we don't have any money," said Avony.

Mouse surprised everyone by throwing a small bag of coins on the table. "Dinner and drinks, please."

When the waitress left, Mouse shrugged and said, "Found it in the bazaar."

Moments later, the waitress returned with five plates of steaming turkey legs, tubers, and a mug of water.

Avony tentatively took a bite and closed her eyes, savoring the flavor. "Real food. Mmmm...," said Avony. "I don't even care how it got here."

"The waitress is a robot, I could tell under her skirt," said Stephan. "Chairs and table are real, too."

After dinner they sat around staring at each other.

"Now what?" Gabby asked.

"I'm not sure what's next," said Avony. "But the smoke in this town is totally debuffing me."

"If we figure out what's next then we can get out of here," said Gabby. The one-eyed man in the corner was still staring at her. Or maybe he was checking out Avony. Either way, he made her feel creepy.

"Any brilliant suggestions?" Gabby didn't reply to Stephan's comment. "The smoke is giving me a headache. Think we can get some rooms so I can lay down for a bit?"

Mouse shook her coin bag and left to find the innkeeper. She came back soon after and threw a handful of keys on the table.

"We really don't have time for lying around," said Avony.

Stephan held his hands to his temples. "You'd understand if you felt the hammers inside my head right now."

Unthar grabbed his key and left the tavern. His leaving brought their conversation to a standstill until Stephan finally grabbed his key and marched away from the table.

"I'm going to get some rest," said Stephan before he left.

"Fine," said Avony. "I'm going to ask around town. I think the air outside is better than in this tavern."

"Guys," said Gabby. "I don't think we should be splitting up this early in the raid."

Avony and Stephan ignored her and went their separate ways. Mouse shrugged and started spinning a coin on the table.

Frustrated, Gabby left to find a place to practice with her swords. She needed to clear her head. A secluded courtyard in back of the Smoke and Barrel proved to be the best spot.