Nova Project #1 (11 page)

Several more pairs sit on the bottom shelf of the cabinet.

Nope. He's here to defeat monsters, not turn himself into one. There'd be something kind of awesomely Frankenstein about doing the operation on himself, complete with terrible stitching job.

Nah, he'll wait. This is probably what the Storyteller was talking about, traps set for him to choose between personal gain and the larger aim.

He's not that stupid.

But he will take that knife. It sits on a tray of surgical equipment, but it is not a knife for cutting someone open unless you don't care whether they live. A long dagger with a carved handle, out of place among the sterile steel. He lifts it,
feels the motif of apples and vine leaves etched into the brass.

Object number one. His com system still doesn't work, he has to wait until he finds the rest of the team before he can tell them he found it. He might be wrong, but he doesn't think the map counts. Normal Chimera has those. And okay, it has knives, too, but not like this one.

The next room contains a table, five chairs, four other doors, no windows, a spotlight reflecting off polished wood. A blue button shines in the center; he'll save when everyone else gets here. His fingernails click against the tabletop, next to the knife. Waiting. His clock glows in the corner of his visor.

“Status update: I am in a room,” he says because he hasn't updated in a while. He wants the other teams to know he's making progress without telling them anything helpful, and the Storyteller's taught him well. He won't broadcast to the outside world that he's alone and has no clue where his team is. It doesn't matter how safe he is inside this private Cube, that just feels like an admission of weakness. Of vulnerability.

And he doesn't trust the game.

He blinks. Is that true? This Chimera is different, but he's always felt safe inside a gaming room, the only true risk lurking inside him, not around a corner.

This Chimera is different.

When the others arrive—and where the hell are they anyway?—he won't tell them this. Maybe when they've given
up for the day and gone back to their cushy suites, he'll talk to Nick, but there's a problem with that, too.

He doesn't trust the Gamerunners. They could be listening to anything and everything. Miguel would be surprised if they weren't.

“I get it,” he whispers. “I'm alone.” The four other chairs stay empty as the minutes tick by. Rhythmic, hypnotic.

He startles awake. Grace steps slowly into the room, her face etched with fear and tears. Her chair scrapes against the floor as she sits down, eyes darting to every corner. She apparently decides Miguel isn't a threat, and her shoulders relax slightly.

“You okay?” he asks. Someone waiting for an eye upgrade could see she isn't.

“Fine.”

“Do you want to—”

“Nope. But you seem okay. Are you that good at Chimera? You've been waiting for us for so long you've calmed down? Or aren't you afraid of anything?”

“I'm a pretty Zen guy.”

A hint of a smile. “You're so bottled up, if I cut your head off, you'd bleed champagne.”

“Bad vintage, though.”

Her smile widens just enough to make her look almost nice, almost friendly. Another door opens, and Josh appears.
Grace's mask slips back into place, matching Josh's expression of determined fear, doubt that the horrors are over.

“I guess you don't want to talk about it either,” says Miguel. Josh doesn't even answer.

Nick arrives next, paler than Miguel's ever seen him. Miguel's stomach does a slow, uneasy somersault. He doesn't know what could scare his friend that much.

The final door opens with a crash. Leah bursts in, a gun waving wildly on the end of a shaking arm. “It's okay!” Miguel shouts, his chair falling back, the thud echoing around the room. “Don't shoot. Leah, it's us!”

Frantic, she looks at each of them. Miguel approaches her, cautious, hands up, and from the corner of his eye he spots Nick edging around behind her. “We're your team, Leah. We won't hurt you. Whatever it was, it's over.”

“It was . . . They said . . . I—”

“Just put the gun down.”

He doesn't trust this game. Doesn't trust the bullets.

She draws a juddering breath. “Oh.” Her hand drops. Nick clears his throat as a warning and swiftly disarms her. “Sorry,” she says.

“It's okay. Come on, sit down.”

She's in no shape to talk now, and the others probably aren't ready. Miguel could, but he doesn't want to. Something tells him it's necessary for the game that he know what scared his
team members so much, but that would mean reciprocating.

Compared to what they seem to have experienced, his own fears seem . . . small. Or maybe not small exactly, but things he can easily pack into boxes and put away on the back shelves of his mind. Boxes of fears. If he dreams of a box of cockroaches tonight, he's not going to be happy.

“It's almost midnight,” he says. “I vote we call it quits, get some food, some sleep, and talk about this in the morning.” The others nod.

“Hold on.” Nick leans over the table and slaps the blue button.

“Thank god that's there,” says Leah.

“Yeah,” Nick says. “Look, we can talk about this tomorrow, but does anyone have any idea what the fuck that was about? That doesn't fit with Chimera at all. I don't get it.”

“I do,” says Miguel. It's only fair, he's had more time to think. “It's the game telling us it knows us better than we know it. The Storyteller told us to expect demons. It didn't say what kind.”

“So the first ones we had to face—” Nick begins.

“Were our own.”

[T
erry Schulemann] That first level is weird.

[Avril Anaya] Weird and
boring.
What's the point in that? I want to see them kill something.

[Olivia Sellers] I'll bet it wasn't boring for the players. Would you want to face your greatest fears?

[Brian Bochenek] You can learn a lot about a person by finding out what they're afraid of. Maybe the Gamerunners want us to get to know them before we decide who to root for.

[Catherine Carr] I'll root for whoever causes the most bloodshed. It's coming for sure, between them finding these objects they're supposed to collect.

[Terry Schulemann] Yeah, what's up with that? You think once this beta test/competition is over, we'll all have to do that in the game? That sounds kinda cool, actually.

[Anselm Lokuta] Ha, you go on your treasure hunts all you want, give me a boss to fight any day.

[Avril Anaya] Anyone have a favorite team yet?

[Olivia Sellers] Too soon to tell. There's a team in London that's looking pretty good.

[Avril Anaya] We can all see your geoloc.

[Olivia Sellers] Whatever.

I
t's good to be alone. A few hours ago, when he was sitting at that table under the spotlight, it had been weirdly disorienting—weird because he's used to playing Chimera with digital assistants he can never shake but who also never speak. Somehow, quickly, he's become accustomed to having his team of real people around him.

Now it's good to be alone because he's getting the hell out of here.

There's no rule about their not being able to leave, and if there was he wouldn't mind breaking it anyway, but he didn't expect to leave this soon, after just a couple of days.

Okay, they know about the heart, he took their medical, and they can even be forgiven for guessing the fears that go along with it. And he's been trapped in the game before, so maybe they've noticed his heart rate go up.

But he's never seen a cockroach in the game before that he can remember.

Which is why he needs to go home. If anyone asks, he'll say he wanted to see his parents. If the Gamerunners asked, they'd probably believe that, knowing what he saw on his path of fears.

No one stops him on his way out of the Cube. His code works just fine to get him a hoverboard. His front door unlocks the same as ever.

It's the middle of the night. His parents are asleep. His Chimera sim, though, wakes up at the touch of a button.

The sky is lightening when he sneaks out again, retracing his route through the air. A few hours of sleep and he'll be ready to go again, the itch of an idea lodged in the back of his brain. He's not sure yet, can't grasp the full shape of the thing, but it's coming.

Maybe.

“Hello.”

He jumps. Leah doesn't move from his couch, only her eyes, catching what little illumination there is, giving signs of life.

“How did you get in here?”

“Why did you leave?”

“I think, seeing as you're in my room, you should answer first,” he says. “Code duello, or . . . something.”

“I bring the duel, you choose the weapon? Ha-ha. Clever. I couldn't sleep.”

“That's a
why.
”

“Is it?” she asks, all innocence in the near dark.

“I went to see my parents.” The lie is easy because it isn't one exactly. He had opened their bedroom door an inch. Just his luck he got a faulty heart and not their joint ability to sleep through anything.

“Oh.”

He joins her on the couch, carefully measuring the distance between them.

“You're still treating us like we're a regular team,” she says. “Random renderings who only exist to have your back.”

“Funny. I was thinking earlier how surprised I am that I've gotten used to you so quickly.”

“We've played exactly one competition level together, and half of that we all were split up, plus a few days of training.”

He shifts. “Then I don't understand your point. How can you say I'm still treating you like anything?”

“A feeling. You have . . . a wall.”

“Last I checked, this was a competition, not a friendship-building exercise.” He's arguing for the sake of arguing, knows she's right.

“Does it feel like a competition to you?”

“Not yet, but as you said, we've played one level.”

“Yeah, it just feels like we're missing something. Already.”

He opens his mouth, hesitates, but maybe this is the first step. “No,” he says. “I think I've got it.”

Her eyes light up, almost transforming her, and for a second he regrets her disappointment when he says he'll explain later, to everyone. But he doesn't want to go through it twice, not before he's thought some more and not before some sleep. His brain feels like porridge. He won't get much, but even an hour will help.

In fact, after she leaves, he doesn't get any rest at all. The pillows are soft, exactly the way he likes them because the bed was designed for him, but his mind races as fast as his heart. Trying to get to the end of a thought.

There's a big difference between
how
and
why.
He doesn't know why the Gamerunners invented the competition, or Chimera at all, for that matter, and there's a good chance he never will. The
how
of the competition is a different story, and the answer to that was in his sim, sort of. The end of a tangled thread was in there, and it had never occurred to him to pull it before. It had never mattered, until someone had tied the end of the string around a cockroach. What he hadn't told Leah was that it was a good thing he'd been thinking of them as a digital team these past few days. That was the key.

Eventually he gives up on sleep. Through his lenses, he watches all of their statuses switch to green. Awake, online.
Leah first—he doubts she went to sleep either. Josh, Grace, Nick. A cold shower is a crap substitute for a good seven hours, but it'll have to do. Teeth chattering, he dresses in more new comfortable gaming clothes from his stocked closet. But they won't really be playing, not yet.

The breakfast that arrives a few minutes after he pushes the button on the wall is, predictably, porridge.

“Okay,” he says when they've all gathered in the gaming room. “Suit up.” Leah nudges his shoulder with hers as they walk to the cabinets, and he nods. He hasn't forgotten. He puts his visor on last, selects start, calls up the overworld. A new spot glows on the globe, linked by a path to the city they were in yesterday, but he ignores its temptations for now. Yesterday's level has become a series of tiny, linked dots, the save points they hit.

“What are you doing?” Nick asks as Miguel reaches to touch his biomech to the last one.

“We need to talk.”

The room changes. There's the table and chairs.

“We could have talked outside.”

You are in a room.

“One we've seen before, thanks, Storyteller. Yeah,” he says, addressing Nick, “but if we're being listened to, I feel better knowing it's because we were in the game and not because nowhere is safe. We're being broadcast, sure, but people can't hear us unless we update. That might not be the same outside.” He has no illusions
about their being watched, overheard. There's likely not a square inch of the Cube that isn't covered. They could be anywhere, and so the
where
doesn't matter except in his own head.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Grace demands.

“Sit, everyone,” he says. Nick is curious, Josh confused, Grace outright incredulous that they're not immediately going to investigate the next challenge. Part of him thinks they should be, if only because he's almost certain that what will be there now, and what will be there after this conversation, aren't the same thing.

Miguel isn't just sure the Gamerunners are listening, he's counting on it.

Quickly he scrolls through updates from other teams. Every one of them has started the second level; he has to hope that some, if not all, haven't found the real one yet. If he's right. If he's right, they'll spend the day running around in circles on some bullshit landscape and achieve absolutely nothing. Random treasure hunts aren't the point of Chimera.

“What's up, Mig?”

Miguel takes a deep breath. “I think we're all agreed yesterday was weird, right? Not just for us, for all the teams? Has anyone encountered anything like that in Chimera before?”

“Well, it's a different kind of Chimera,” says Grace.

“Right, but why that? Like I said, the first demons we had to face were our own. The game is telling us it knows us. Why?”

“It wanted to scare us, but they're just getting us warmed
up, so they didn't want to throw us in with a boss right away?” offers Josh.

“Well, maybe. I can see them giving us an easy time of it in the beginning, even after our training levels together. Lull us into a false sense of security, give us a chance to learn to function as a team.”
Team.
That was it. That's what he'd spent all night looking at, going back over the notes he'd made about his virtual bodyguards in all the levels he's ever played. The ones who'd been with him for years, the ones who'd flickered out thanks to his own mistakes, only to be replaced by others.

That wouldn't happen this time.
What's damaged stays damaged.

“We need to talk about what happened to each of us yesterday, the things we saw,” he says. “We need to talk about ourselves.”

“What the hell for?” Grace demands. “I signed up to game, not for some stupid group therapy session. I've been through that already, thanks very much.”

“It's not about that.” Miguel looks at Leah. She's about to get the answer she wanted in the middle of the night, and for some reason it matters that she be the one to understand this. To think he's right.

“What do you guys know about alignment?”

“That it's good for your spine?” Josh says. Miguel cracks a smile.

“Gaming alignment.” He might get some of these wrong, but he can guess. “Lawful good,” he says, pointing at Nick. “Good,” he says to Leah.
He hopes.
“Neutral.” He taps his chest. “Evil.” That's Josh.

“Chaotic evil,” says Grace. She doesn't seem unhappy about it. Proud, if anything.

“Necessary,” says Miguel. “I'm not saying you're horrible people in real life or anything, but you play a character in Chimera, right? Even if that character is you. You know that what you're doing isn't real, so you can do whatever you want, within the limits of the game. The visor is a mask, if you want it to be.”

“I never looked at it like that,” says Leah.

“I hadn't either, but I started to wonder when the Storyteller placed such an emphasis on choices and then the thing with the fears. I haven't told anyone I'm afraid of cockroaches in years. Shut it,” he says to a sniggering Nick. “The game is saying it knows us better than we think, it knows who we are and what choices we'll make. I've noticed that before, like needing codes in the game that mean something to me in real life, as if it's scouring our Presences or something to find information to use against us. Now it's—it's trying to get inside our heads.”

“Hasn't Chimera always been about choices?” asks Josh. “Choose to go right, go left, whatever.”

“Sure, but in the normal game, your team has to follow you no matter what, even though”—he looks pointedly at Nick, the
only other person alive who knows about the secret in Miguel's bedroom—“I'm pretty sure our digital assistants follow the same alignment pattern. When it's just you and a bunch of pixels, that doesn't matter. You can overrule what they're programmed to do. I might be the leader here, but I can't overrule you guys unless you let me. There's literally nothing stopping you from shooting me in the game and taking your chances without your leader.”

Grace's expression is as clear as a status update:
don't tempt me
. Miguel fights back a smile.

“All right,” says Leah. “Why?”

The eternal question, applicable to almost everything. Often there's an answer, but Miguel doesn't have one now, at least not on a grand scale. On a smaller one . . .

“Because whatever's coming, however we win this game, it's going to require us to play to our natural strengths and instincts. That has to be why we're all aligned differently. To win, we have to work as a team even when we disagree.”

Nick will want to do whatever is the right thing, the best thing for the whole team, every time. Leah will try the same, but context will matter more. Josh will watch out for himself if he has to. Grace will do whatever is right for her, regardless of the wider effects, to get what she wants. She might actively sabotage just for fun.

Miguel can go either way. Left or right. Up . . . or down.

He doesn't say any of that aloud, but he can tell from their faces that they're all putting it together, coming to the same conclusions. That is
if
he's right in his guesses about them, and mostly he thinks he has to be. If he's wrong, he'll find out soon enough.

None of them especially want to talk about their experiences from the day before. He could make it slightly easier on them and go first, but what's the good in being the leader if he doesn't take his privileges?

Up . . . or down.

Nick starts instead, with the simple stuff. His life, his family, and Miguel tunes out. He knows all this already. Leah's eyes are on him, have been ever since they first sat down. He shifts in his seat. Either she's so astonished by his idiocy she can't bring herself to argue with his ideas, or she agrees and, like him, is trying to figure out the point.

In the original Chimera, the little hints that it knew him had just felt like the Gamerunners showing off.
Look at us. We can provide such a personalized gaming experience that the code you need to open that door is your girlfriend's birthday.
That still might be all there is to it. It's not like all of this information about him isn't searchable online. Find out what clothes he's been looking at, put them in an in-game closet. Look up who his girlfriend is, check her birthday. Almost his whole life is there. Almost all of his hopes, dreams, fears.

“Anna.”

Miguel blinks and glances sharply at Nick. His friend's face is pale, lips thinned.

“So you had to save a girl and you couldn't? That's what you're afraid of?” The scorn in Grace's voice makes Miguel's hands itch. She doesn't know how Nick feels about Anna.

But he didn't either, not how serious it was.

“Guess I'm next,” says Leah. Miguel sits up a little straighter. She talks about her four sisters, which he knew, and being the youngest, which he also knew, but he hadn't done much digging on her family. She's about to be older than the one who died, frozen permanently at seventeen. They never caught the guy, and so it was a nameless, faceless dude in a mask who had chased her through a warped Chimera landscape, calling to her that she was next.