Nova Project #1 (8 page)

“We suggest you all return to your homes, rest, spend time with your loved ones. You won't be seeing them much for a while after we begin. We will summon you individually to meet your teams when they have been assigned. Wait for our message.”

Nick joins him as soon as he gets outside. “Zack? Seriously? That asshole?” he says as Miguel spies his parents and Anna and sees Zack talking to Sarah in a cluster of reporters behind them.

“I'm trying not to think about it.” Miguel grimaces. The reporters catch up, and Miguel can picture his face appearing everywhere online, captured by their eyes.

“Mr. Anderson, how do you feel about taking part in the Chimera competition? Are you ready for the challenges the Gamerunners have promised?”

“More than ready. I didn't see anyone in there who makes me worry,” says Miguel, loudly for Zack's benefit, grinning for the camera's. He's sure every one of the two hundred others have said exactly that, or close enough, in twenty-five languages.

“And you're ready for the world to be watching you? Following your status updates and cheering you on?”

“I guess I'd better give them something to watch, huh? Don't worry.”

“Well, congratulations, we look forward to seeing you play.” The cameras move away.

“Handled that well,” says Nick. “Anyone'd think you'd been famous your whole life. I put a tag trace on your name this morning. A
million
mentions between breakfast and now.”

“Fuck.” He's glad he didn't know that before speaking to the cameras. “Seriously?”

“Look for yourself.”

He blinks. Jesus. Okay. He can do this.

“You can give your place to me if you're too nervous, you know. Keep playing like normal.”

“Please. You got the girl, you want my spot as well?”

Nick blushes.

“That's what I thought,” says Miguel. “Come on. I'm supposed to spend time with people, right? Let's do this.”
Say good-bye to your loved ones,
says Dr. Spencer's voice in his head, and he shakes it free. She was wrong, she must've been or they wouldn't have picked him. Some other doctor looked at his test results and overruled her. He has nothing to worry about. Now he just gets to play. To win. He pushes through the crowd to Anna and his parents, his mind already on his team. He hopes they don't all suck, that's the last thing he needs: a bunch of idiot deadweights who can't Chimera their way out of a box. And the equipment they've promised . . . what will that be? He's used to his clothes changing the moment the visor
goes on, the heft of a weapon in his hand. It's mildly concerning that he won't have time to game with the new gear, but part of the fun for the spectators will be watching the competitors do dumb shit while they're learning, and it probably makes things more fair if none of them have warning or time to practice.

Still, it would be nice to know. Then he could code the stuff into his sim, get a head start.

He can't have everything, and he
has
just been given the thing he wanted most, or the chance to get it.

[Zachary Chan]
Miguel Anderson
Ha-ha I am going to kick your ass.

[Self: Miguel Anderson] You can try. I'd kick yours, but I'd need to earn myself a bigger foot first.

[Zachary Chan] You suck.

Miguel blinks away the messages. It is now officially the longest he's ever gone without playing Chimera since he was twelve. He wonders, again, if this is part of the plan. Get them all itching, twitching, so the start is as explosive as possible. When he'd had his first free day, he'd gone for a walk, enjoyed the real world for a while, but the real world is now something that happens to other people. Reporters have been camped outside his little house for two days, kept at bay by another Chimera uniform, who clears a path for his parents when they need to leave the house.

He blinks, opens a window on his lenses, speaks for the benefit of the mic, sends a fourth message today to Nick, who still isn't answering. Anna's quiet, too, and he's fine with it, really, but couldn't they wait just a couple of days? Spend time with your loved ones, sure. His have ditched him to spend time with each other.

“You hungry?” His mother knocks on his open door.

“Nah. Thanks, though.”

“You need to keep your strength up.”

He turns his head on his pillow to look at her. She seems older than she did a few days ago. “Okay, sure,” he agrees.

His mouth is full when the knock comes, the uniform steps inside. “Mr. Anderson. Time to go meet your team.”

Miguel pushes his chair back so quickly it falls over. “Will I be coming back here?”

“Yes, it should only take a few hours.”

No need for good-byes then. He gives his mother a brief hug and follows the uniform, a lackey who either knows nothing or is a very good liar, his face blank to all of Miguel's questions. But he's strong, pushing his way through the cameras to create space for Miguel to get in the car. They shout questions through the glass, but Miguel can't answer them because he doesn't know what's coming. He has nothing else to say.

The Cube he's taken to is edged in green. The one just across the river. He's played in it before, but when he steps
inside, he sees instantly that they've changed it. Usually a Cube's front doors open onto a small lobby containing only a map on the wall of where to find an empty gaming space in the maze of floors. The map is still there, but it's different. Hundreds of tiny rooms have been replaced by a single huge one taking up most of the ground floor. One flight up, five large rectangles fill the square footage, divided by hallways. The floor above that is marked only with a
C
superimposed over a single red cross. He knows what that means.

There's no time to inspect the rest too closely. The uniform nudges him toward the inner doors that lead to the large room, they slide open a few inches from his toes.

A gaming room, the biggest he's ever seen. Spots on the walls ready to flare to life and read the sensors that will cover his body. One step inside, the floor springs gently under his feet.

It isn't empty. Miguel's eyes adjust to the light, and a grin splits his face. “You're kidding,” he says.

“Thank fuck it's you,” Nick answers. “I was afraid I was gonna get Zack.”

“I
mean, the Gamerunners would probably frown on killing your leader, right?” Nick continues.

“I would,” says Miguel. “So don't get any ideas.”

“Never. Come on, meet everyone else.”

Right. Time to look. He closes his eyes briefly and prays that the Gamerunners haven't given him a couple of morons.

Two girls. Good. Sure, it's different with a virtual team, but he knows how tough they are. Excitement grows to match his intrigue at the idea of having teammates who can think for themselves. They aren't just here for muscle, though they'll be that, too. Miguel can't remember the last time he bested Anna in any problem that called for logic. And a guy, shorter than he is but stockier, hair cut short and dyed blue, a choice that doesn't look exactly right on him. But Miguel doesn't care what he looks like.

“Uh. Hi. I'm Miguel,” he says. He really needs to remember
to sound more like he's in charge, especially the first time he gives them an order.

“Grace.” Tiny and blond. Telltale pupils betray camera eyes.

“Leah.” Almost his height, hair as black as his own but her skin a much deeper olive.

“Josh.” He of the blue hair.

Their physical characteristics are all he has to go on right now, the only things he really knows about them. That in itself is weird. So much of his life has been lived in words on a screen, personalities rising over the physical, real people just objects moving around him. Most of the rest of it has been spent alone, in a Cube like this one, though this one is different now. His parents, Anna, and Nick are almost the only sustained, meaningful human contact he's ever had. He's had other friends, and teachers, but they don't feel like they count.

And doctors, but there haven't been many of those since the last one gave up on Miguel, and Miguel on him.

“Welcome,” says a voice, not the same one that presided over the gathering of all the leaders. Everyone knows there are two Gamerunners, maybe they're taking turns. “Please turn to face the cameras. Step forward when your name is called.”

On one gray wall a bank of tiles slides up to reveal a row of blinking lights, red eyes staring at them beneath a line of screens.

“Citizens of the world, Chimera players, our audience. Please meet Team Eighteen, who will be assigned to their city's Chartreuse Cube. We request that you use the Team Eighteen tag in all communications to and about them during the competition. Send them messages of luck or criticism, let them know how much they are entertaining you . . . or not. Our leader, whom you have already met, is Miguel Anderson.”

Gulp. But he isn't stepping off the same kind of ledge. The floor is flat, slightly bouncy underneath him.

“Nicholas Lee.”

Heat radiates off Nick beside him.

“Grace Morgan.” She only comes up to Miguel's shoulder.

“Leah Khan.”

“Joshua Cunningham.”

“We are very excited about our Team Eighteen and look forward to tracking their progress. Thank you.”

The red eyes blink out. The voice goes silent.

This is it.

His last night at home.

The dinner table is silent. Both his parents have tried to make conversation, but to Miguel it feels more like the night before one of his surgeries than just going off to play Chimera. And yeah, he knows it's different, he isn't taking off to the nearest Cube for a couple of hours, but there's no
reason for the kitchen to feel like a funeral parlor.

“I'll be fine,” he tells them. “Don't worry so much. It's only Chimera.”

His mother inhales. “It's not,” she says. “But you're right, we said you could do it, we're not going back on our word. We're just worried about the exertion.”

“Don't. I push myself in the normal game anyway, and I've been fine so far.” They don't need to know what Dr. Spencer said. She was wrong.

He is tired, his chest does ache, but he blames that on three days of gaming with his new team. It's been . . . interesting, which is always a good word when nothing else quite fits. Not good or bad—yet—but interesting.

“Well, at least we'll be able to see what's happening,” says his father.

It's hard to imagine that. It's one thing to know someone is reading his updates, seeing where he is in the game based on his geoloc tags and their own knowledge of Chimera, another to know he's about to be a rendered image, broadcast on his own dedicated feed to anyone in the world who wants to watch him. Productivity is going to go way down, he bets. People sneaking off at work to check on how their favorite team is going, comparing with the others.

Will he be anyone's favorite?
Someone
has to like him. His parents and Anna will be watching him for sure, though in
Anna's case she'll be paying more attention to Nick.

“What are your teammates like?”

He shrugs. “You know Nick. The others I don't know that well. I checked out their Presences, their feeds, but knowing what kind of cereal someone likes or seeing the messages they post on whatever board isn't the same as actually knowing them.”

“You have everything you need?” Typical mother.

“You should see it,” Miguel says. The living quarters in the ChimeraCube are the swishest place he's ever been. A bed big enough for a dozen people, smooth glass and soft carpets everywhere. Someone's been working hard to make the players comfortable—and ensure they don't have to leave the Cube for anything during the competition. A button, pressed, will summon food. A spoken word will fill an enormous bath, like water conservation doesn't matter inside the Cube. A closet is full of all the clothes he's ever lusted after in the game or online, brand new and his size.

“You'll have to take breaks. Come and see us.”

“I will. And it won't be that long. Summer always passes too fast.” The Gamerunners estimated two months. They've underestimated him. He's beaten every level he's ever played before the projected time, that's not going to stop now.

It's going to suck for the Gamerunners if they've made it too easy. Built up this whole worldwide comp only to have it end in
a week. But he's pretty sure they haven't made it too easy, the testing level alone had been kind of a bitch. Then again, they can't have made it impossible, either. Chatter online theorizes that the only way the Gamerunners got permission for this, the extra bandwidth for heightened traffic, to occupy so much of the media, was to assure the worldwide governments that anyone under eighteen would make it back in time for school. Because that matters.

Education for the end of the world. It's weird what people will cling to.

Like hope. Hope that it all can somehow be reversed. That somewhere in some classroom is an undiscovered genius who will know what to do.

“Gonna go pack,” he tells his parents. His room at the Cube has everything he needs, but not everything he wants, hard as they tried. Some Chimera minion somewhere had trawled through his Presence and put his favorite soap in the bathroom, loaded a tablet by the bed with his favorite books, stocked some distant kitchen in the underbelly of the building with his favorite foods. They know a
lot
about him. But they can't duplicate the leather wrist gauntlet he'd earned way back in his first week of playing, broken in to fit like another skin and thick enough to offer some protection from a boss's blade. It had been the first thing he'd ever seen in the game outlined in green light, embossed with the Chimera logo. And they can't
find another strange blue rock like the one Nick found the day Miguel had defeated his first level and had designated as a trophy. Miguel knows every smooth side and sharp edge of it in his palm.

On the street outside his bedroom window, sunset turns camera eyes to red mirrors. The pack of reporters looks like a group of Chimera demons in the twilight. He's lost count of the number of interviews he's given over the past few days, every time he goes anywhere, all saying the same thing. All
not
saying the same thing.

Nick he knows. No worries there. And playing with him has felt like having a double, an extension of his own mind.

Leah is wicked smart.

Josh goes to his school, though it took Miguel a day or so to remember that. He's seen him around, another person, another thing that's not as interesting as his feed or the inside of a gaming room.

Grace he could throw pretty far, petite as she is. Farther—by a long way—than he trusts her.

He can't say why. She turns away, typing on her sleeve or talking as if posting a status, only for nothing to appear in her feed. Private messages, maybe, but why be so secretive about them? While they've been practicing, she's right there, concentrating as if eager to help solve the puzzle in front of them, then the answers never come from her.

She never meets his eyes.

He's briefly entertained the thought that she could be some kind of Chimera plant. It feels unlikely, not right somehow, but it gives him pause. None of them really know what the Gamerunners have planned, what their aim is for all of this, if they have one. A beta test, sure, they said that, but they didn't say why. The normal game works fine. It's like they're counting on the players—and the spectators—being too excited to ask many questions. Grace could be watching them from inside the game, reporting back on what they think.

Miguel
is
excited.

He'll just have to keep an eye on her.

His parents insist on going to ChimeraCube Chartreuse with him, like it's his first day of school or something. Ridiculous, but when he arrives, the others have brought their families, too, everyone milling around on the street in front of the green doors. The gaming room will unlock at exactly nine. Wherever the Gamerunners are, whatever time zone they're operating on, at least this is bearable. Miguel feels a little sorry for anyone on the other side of the world who has to start at two in the morning or whatever, but they've presumably had enough time to adjust their biorhythms to be fresh and ready. And if not, well, sucks to be them.

So he's not
that
sympathetic.

The chorus of good lucks merges into one voice as Miguel
and his team gather together. Good-byes have been said. Silly, really. He can leave and go home whenever he wants, he just doesn't think he's going to want to.

He is the first in the gaming room, itself almost a living thing, waiting to see what they'll do with it.

The floor bounces gently, ready for running, jumping feet.

“Hey.”

He turns. “Hey,” he says, and Leah smiles, a real, excited smile, bright in the dimness. Like him, she has spent a few minutes in her suite, changing into clothes that will translate well when rendered by the sensors: sturdy boots, pants with lots of pockets, close-fitting shirts that won't catch or snag while they wick sweat from skin. “I think we shop at the same place.”

“Ha. Yeah. You're not going to get us killed, right? In the game, I mean?”

“I hope not.”

“Comforting, from our leader.”

His shoulders stiffen. “And could you do a better job?”

“Sorry,” she says, taking a step toward him. “I didn't mean it like that. Sometimes I forget I don't know people well enough to tease them. You're good, from what I've seen.”

“But we don't know what's coming.”

“Right.”

“Cool, though, isn't it?”

“God, yeah. I can't wait. The hell are the rest of us?”

“Right here,” Nick answers, stepping inside, Josh and Grace close behind. “There was a note in my room about not bringing my gear down with me. Are we getting new stuff?”

There'd been one waiting for Miguel, too, broadcast on the blank wall over his new bed. “In there, I'm guessing,” he says, pointing to the cabinets that have appeared on the opposite wall. As one they move forward to solve the first puzzle the game has to offer. After swapping places with Josh and then Leah, Miguel finds the one that opens with his fingerprint, re-created perfectly at the tip of his biomech.

A new, uncracked visor sits on a shelf at eye level, between new gloves and strips of sensors, laid out in rows. He swaps his glasses for the visor; it fits as if he'd been measured for it, the molding snug against his brows, not too tight around the back of his head. A speaker tucks into one ear. A microphone on the nosepiece is ready for any command he sees fit to give.

Inside it, for now, is only blackness, a deep, empty blackness that can hold a whole imaginary world. He doesn't want to take the visor off, but he does, none of them are ready yet. Also, it's a good idea to move away from the glass. He knows how to jog in place, move in the game without moving his actual body more than necessary, but still. He's broken cabinet doors in a couple of gaming rooms before, kicking out too hard against a boss.

“Good stuff,” says Nick, inspecting the outside of his own visor, tapping it with his knuckles. “Strap up?” he asks.

“Yes.” Miguel takes the sensor strips one by one from the cabinet, buckles them around calves, thighs, forearms, biceps, waist. He reaches behind his back to snap the final one into place across his chest, it slips from sweaty palms to the floor.

“Here,” says Leah, her own sensors already taken care of. “Turn around.”

He thought he was the one supposed to be giving orders. But he does as she says and barely feeling her fingers she deftly clicks the two ends together. A shiver runs down his spine anyway, and he feels a puff of air on the back of his neck, a silent laugh at his reaction. Hey, he wants to say, it's been a long time since anyone but Anna touched him. It's been a pretty long time since even she had, and it was never going to happen again.

But she doesn't know who Anna is, and it doesn't matter.

It's time to play. Finally.

Finally.

“How does this even work?” Josh asks as Miguel leads the way to the open space in the middle of the room and directs everyone to stand in a circle, each several feet apart. “Do we know? Did you get any instructions?”