The Aftermath (13 page)

No, no, no.

I cannot think about him in any way that’s not conducive to our mission.

He’s my way out, nothing more.

I’ll pretend he’s not the only boy I’ve ever met whose eyes are alive.

“They’re all...asleep.”

Snorting, he shrugs his shoulders. “Can you really call it that?”

No. I guess I can’t. But I refuse to say what they really are: shells. Corpses who breathe and move but can’t think or act for themselves. Even if I couldn’t control myself a few weeks ago and I spent all my time wondering why—at least I had my thoughts.

Most of the time.

“No,” I say.

“What are you doing here? Do you know their habits well enough to predict them? For all you know, midnight is when they want to unwind with a little chaos. And I wouldn’t want your boyfriend sneaking up on us again.”

There’s something off about his voice, but I can’t put my finger on it. “You know about that?” My voice is tinny. He nods. Of course he knows. I wouldn’t put it past him to have some high-tech machine in his bag of tricks that lets him hear and see everything I’m doing while he waits for me.

I shift uncomfortably at the thought.

“If it’s so dangerous, why’d you answer the door before I made it down the steps? How’d you know it was me?”

His head pops up. That sardonic look is back—the one that extends from his half smile to his gray eyes. “Your smell. Like soap that’s not been sold in the Provinces in years, decades,” he replies. I cross my arms tightly over my chest.

“What happens when you’re deleted?” I blurt out. “I need to know.”

Something disturbing happens to his features, like something’s wiping them clean. “One of the characters in your girl’s clan getting deleted?”

He must know I hate it when he calls Olivia “my girl,” but I don’t mention it. “Yes, I— It’s Ethan. Landon, his gamer, plans on deleting him.”

I almost expect Declan to mock Ethan again. He doesn’t. His eyebrows knit together and he pushes himself to his feet. He paces the length of the cellar—back and forth, forward and back—until I’m dizzy and must lean against the wall to wait for his answer.

“Well?”

“His cerebrum link—it’ll be broken.”

If not for the tremor in his voice, I might believe a broken link is a good thing. That maybe Ethan will be freed and get a chance to thrive away from the game. Except Declan’s voice is shaking and he’s pinching the spot between his eyes as if he’s in pain.

“He’ll die,” I say.

Declan slides his fingers up and down his nose and starts pacing again. I watch him, with my heart lodged so far into my throat, I feel as if I’m suffocating. Finally, he looks at me. I never expected to see much of anything besides cynicism in his eyes, especially not pity and grief.

“Yeah,” he says. “Ethan’ll die.”

“How?” I whisper.

“Later, Virtue. I’ll explain later.”

I won’t accept that. Not after he just told me Ethan may not live past next month. He can’t possibly expect me to let it go until later. “No,” I say. “I need to know now.”

He squints at me. He looks so tired that I’m not surprised when he says, “I can’t tonight. I can’t until you—”

“Why can’t you? Because you’re tired? Exhausted? What exactly do you do all day while I’m out on raids and missions, wanting to puke because I’m so hot and tired? While I’m forced to kiss a boy I don’t even know, simply because our gamers are in love with each other?” I tremble. “I don’t understand your world.”

“Neither do I,” he says.

Sliding my back down the wall, I bite my lip, then hug myself as hard as I can. “What happened to make it like this?”

And then he tells me. He won’t explain deletion, but what he does say will haunt me for days, weeks, years. “There were two wars,” he says. “One that began in 2034, where this state and another called Texas rebelled, and then a second war in 2041 started by three different states.”

I learn that after each war, the government condemned the states that initially started the conflicts and all the residents were evacuated. “Why do away with them completely?”

He lifts his shoulders. “Because they started the problem, I guess. Here, let me show you something.” After bringing up the menu on his tablet, he taps the image of a book. He scans through a long list before selecting text near the very bottom entitled “United Province History.”

A holograph of a man emerges between us. “Thank you for accessing the AcuTab history library. Please select a topic.”

“The Reconstruction Initiative,” Declan says, enunciating every syllable.

“Launched in 2052 following the end of the United States’ third civil war, the Reconstruction Initiative was a project spearheaded by President Callaway to eliminate the feeling of dissent throughout the nation. Over the next two years, the forty-five remaining states were zoned into seven provinces and renamed the United Provinces. Officials were elected to each province, and, according to U.P. law, would serve no more than a single two-year term to prevent political corruption and give citizens a choice. These first officials were given the harrowing task of rebuilding the areas of the nation that were affected by the wars.

“First on the agenda was employing U.P. civilians and establishing a twenty-hour workweek that left ample time for rest, recreation and family. Under new mandates, voted on by U.P. civilians, laws were put in place to manage the ever-growing population with the child cap—a maximum number of children based on income and projected job availability. Space-efficient housing was also introduced, along with new methods of travel.”

Digging my nails into my palms, I lean in closer to the projection.

“With the political system and social programs in place, the United Provinces embraced an era of prosperity and peace, but our young nation also faced its biggest hurdle of all—preventing another war.”

The man disappears and it takes me a moment to realize Declan’s tightly gripping his AcuTab.

“So where do the games come in?” I demand.

“The Reconstruction Initiative hired a team of scientists to research ways to avoid violence. The theory was—is—that if you do away with violence, you don’t have crime or war.”

“But you can’t do away with violence,” I say.

“Exactly. But this one scientist, Natalie Lancaster, claimed giving people a violent channel was the cure. It took over twenty-five years to perfect the treatment and it was—” Scraping a hand through his messy hair, he points his gaze behind me, at the room’s exit. “It was Lancaster’s son who did it, but the games seem to work. Real crime is unheard of in the Provinces.”

“So violent people play the game and earn points that count toward their treatment.” I’ve already basically figured this out just from spying on Olivia, but it doesn’t make the brick in my stomach feel any lighter.

Nodding, Declan drags in a wobbly breath and then says, “They test for the violence gene. They say it’s a disease. They treat the affected to save the world. If you’ve been diagnosed, you can’t get a job unless you have documentation that you’re in an approved treatment program. And treatment— Well, it’s expensive. If you’re well-off enough to afford the therapy—”

“You buy a character,” I finish for him. “But if you don’t have the money? What then?”

“Then you’re the character the wealthy people buy. Homeless people, orphans—they’re the ones who go into the games. If you can’t find work because of the gene, then there’s no other choice but to sign a contract with LanCorp. You agree to let someone play you, to go into Rehabilitation, until you beat the illness.”

I shake my head because what he’s saying doesn’t make a bit of sense to me. “But I don’t understand. If the Provinces are so prosperous, then why the hell would there be destitute people to begin with?”

Unable—or maybe even unwilling—to answer me, Declan glances down at his boots. I don’t even have the strength to ask him what Rehabilitation is, not tonight. “Guess there’ll always be people who get the short end of the stick,” he finally says.

“You know a lot about this.”

He sneers. “History is an important part of anyone’s job.”

Then I remember what Landon made Ethan say about the other games. “How many are there? How many games?”

“Four. LanCorp bought the condemned states and turned them into the gaming locations. The game that someone’s assigned to depends on which mutation of the violence gene they have. Your gamer has— I can almost guarantee your gamer has Violence Gene B.”

“What does that mean?”

“That she’s a premeditated psycho. Because The Aftermath? It’s the worst game of them all.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Two days later, I drop in on Olivia while she’s at school. Though I’ve heard plenty about it, this is the first time I’ve seen the academy, and I’m stunned by it. There are dozens of school campuses in the game and even colleges, but they all look the same. Red brick and hundreds of grimy four-paned windows and classroom doors falling off the hinges.

Olivia’s academy is high-tech and sleek. The only thing I see when looking up at the several stories of see-through walls is sunlight and clear skies. Olivia steps onto what looks like an escalator without actual steps, talking softly to a short, overweight boy in a dark school uniform that’s too tight around his middle. While he looks up at her like she hung the moon, I drink in the surroundings.

A girl is quietly arguing with another girl a couple of feet away about leaving class to go to something called an airbus exhibition.

“Well, I’m going—” the first girl begins, but the rest of her sentence is cut off when the machine stops on the sixth floor and my gamer steps off. Olivia and the boy walk to a stainless-steel podium in the center of a courtyard and stand in line behind other students. When it’s Olivia’s turn, she stops directly in front of the podium and a red light encircles her, scanning her body before fading. A screen appears with a message “Thank You for Signing Into Fourth District Academy, Olivia” and the date “Monday, August 19, 2099.”

A biometric scan. Just like Declan had mentioned.

Did I ever go to an academy like this? A school with moving ramps instead of stairs and a biometric scan roll call?

Even if I did, will I ever remember any of it? The fear I’ve tried hardest to push away finally surfaces—that I may spend the rest of my life with no memories of my childhood, no memories at all apart from what I’ve seen in The Aftermath. Memories that halfway belong to another girl.

“I’m going to cut out early today and go to the Calwas Province,” she tells the boy after he finishes signing in to school. Her voice is calm, happy, nothing like the last times I checked on her where she was either raging about the game or wishing death on Landon’s parents.

They duck into an open, rounded classroom. Inside, compact white desks are arranged in circular rows around a stage in the center of the room. There’s a shimmer of glass on the stage, and I’m certain it’s there for a hologram.

The boy waits until they’re seated in two chairs farthest from the platform to ask, “What are you going to Calwas for?”

“I’m going to meet my father. He’s sending an exclusive aircraft for me. And nobody else from the academy is invited,” she brags. “So don’t expect me to come back to the game until tomorrow morning at the earliest.”

No wonder April’s gamer despises her. But if she’s offended the boy, he doesn’t say anything. He places his hands flat on something in front of his seat. It takes me a few seconds to see that it’s a transparent desktop. Olivia waits for him to respond for another moment, and then she pulls her AcuTab from her bag. When she places it down, the desk illuminates and a bunch of words and pictures appear.

“What did you do yours on?” the boy asks.

“Population control—you?”

When he doesn’t answer her, she leans over and looks down at his desk. Most of the type is too small for me to make it out, but the heading is clear.

Visionaries of the Twenty-First Century: Natalie Lancaster

HIS 117: U.P. Society and Culture (2034 to Present)

Natalie Lancaster. The scientist Declan told me about who came up with the theory that started the games in the first place. The mother of the games’ creator.

Olivia stares up and looks at the boy for a long time. “There’ll be at least five more papers like this, you know?” When the professor appears via hologram in the middle of the stage, she drops her voice to a whisper and says, “Your parents mad about you skipping out on your grandma’s birthday?”

This is when I leave her. My eyes catch Jeremy’s dark, blank ones across the room, and I’m aware that I was with both of our gamers just moments before. I’m aware of something else, too. Olivia’s plans for the rest of the day will give Declan and me our first chance to search the city for his assignment.

I’m almost ecstatic, walking on air, when I go and retrieve him. When we step out of the bar and into the heat, though, my excitement starts to fade. It’s at least 115 degrees. So muggy I can see condensation on a bit of unpainted glass when I turn around to make sure the doors are locked.

“You sure you’re safe?” Declan says once I turn to face him. I roll my eyes—this is the third or fourth time he’s asked the same question. He motions for me to turn around, and I comply. He adjusts the straps of my bag so the weight doesn’t strain my shoulders. His fingertips brush my rib cage as he draws his hands back.

I suck in a quick breath and say, “We’re fine for the next several hours.”

Declan comes around to walk beside me and presses something crinkly into my hand. A CDS package. “Eat, Virtue. You look like you’ve lost five pounds since we met.”

“But—”

“There’s enough in my bag to last three months. Besides, I don’t want you fainting on me. I’d hate to carry you back here.”

I jerk the packet from his outstretched palm hastily. He laughs, then follows me to the side of the building, where I sit on the steps beneath the side door. I shake the pack a few times by knocking it against the inside of my wrist, like he showed me before, then open it. I rip the smiling boy on the front into two pieces.

“What’s the plan?” I ask between bites.

“His last known location was a shopping mall on—” Declan takes out his AcuTab. I click my fingernails against the concrete. I’m starting to wonder if he can function without that tablet. Once he finds what he’s looking for, he gives me the name of the shopping center and a pleading look. “Please tell me you have any idea how—”

“It shouldn’t take too long.”

“What?”

I crumple up the empty wrapper and stuff it between a couple of loose bricks behind me. “We better get going. It’s a few hours from here, two if we’re fast.”

“You don’t even have to think about it?” he asks as I walk to the corner of the alley.

I smile a little. “Nope,” I say. How can I possibly tell him that I’ve been to that area of town so many times I’ve lost count? Some of our earliest missions had taken place across from the mall, inside the concert hall overgrown with foliage. When Olivia had accessed her completed missions a day ago, I’d found that particular one. It had been a main mission—the only one we’ve finished out of the three required to complete the last levels of the game.

I wish I could tell Declan all of this, share just a few of my memories, but I can’t. Doing so will reveal my lie—that I’ve been somewhat sentient far longer than two weeks. That my glitch is far more complex than he ever imagined.

“You coming?” I ask.

He blows his dark hair out of his eyes and nods.

At first, we travel quietly. Unlike the last time we did this, we’re not irritated with one another; this time, we go back and forth, making small talk. I’m just about to ask him about the deletion process again when his AcuTab beeps and we take a quick water break outside a crumbling vinyl-sided building. When I finally do broach the subject, his face clouds over and he refuses to talk about it. The same thing happened a couple of nights ago. He dropped a bomb on me when he said Ethan would die, and then he refused to explain. And thirty seconds after he told me about the history of the Provinces, he asked me to leave.

No, that’s not right—he told me to get the hell out before he physically carried me back to The Save.

“Then tell me why LanCorp sent you into the game to retrieve a character,” I say. Because I’m having a hard time understanding why a company with such intricate technology can’t fix a glitch from outside the game. Unless, of course, Declan is lying and the character we’re looking for is just like me. Sentient. When I ask if we’re searching for a self-aware character, though, he shoots me a harsh look and shakes his head curtly.

“I told you already—you’re the only one I’ve ever met who’s like that.”

“Then what’s the matter with this character?”

He cocks his head to one side. At first, I don’t think he’ll answer because he walks away, leaving me behind. But then he sighs, glances at me over one of his shoulders and says, “My assignment was given to someone new, but he was still picking up signals from his previous player. When LanCorp shut him down manually, they didn’t realize his old player had changed his location. Nobody was able to get in touch with this guy, but my boss pulled enough game footage to determine he’s in a flesh-eater save point...but we aren’t sure which one. My job is to find him and take him back to the Provinces so that his chip can be synced to his new player. Happy now?”

Absolutely not. Because now I’m very afraid for this character who has had not one, but two players controlling his mind, making dangerous moves that could result in his death. “And there’s not a faster way of tracking him down?” I ask, catching up to Declan. The left side of my body brushes against his. His gray eyes dart over me—his expression is frightening. I veer to the right to put some distance between us.

“LanCorp promises an authentic gaming experience. Sending a huge team in to retrieve a single character would irritate gamers,” he says. “Now can you drop this? Your questions give me a headache, and I’m about twenty seconds away from electrocuting you.”

“Don’t be an ass,” I say. Even though I don’t like the idea of ending our conversation, I change the subject. “Tell me about Rehabilitation.”

He parts his lips to say something. Then he pauses. “There’s not much to tell.” When I frown, he shakes his head and releases a low whistle. “But since you’re asking—why don’t you explain it to me. You’re the one who was there up until two weeks ago.”

And now I want to kick myself. I’ve put myself in a corner where I can either tell the truth—at least partially—or remain ill-informed. He must notice I’m conflicted, because he slides closer to me and gently touches his fingers to my left shoulder. I try to keep walking, but he stops me. He grasps my other shoulder and stares into my eyes.

“According to LanCorp, it’s the simulation characters’ brains go to while they’re being played. Where they’re rehabilitated—taught how to be nonviolent members of society. But that’s just what LanCorp tells the press.” Declan snorts. “There’s no real simulation. Just the character being trapped inside of his own mind—nightmares, nothingness, insecurities—while he’s completely unaware of what’s being done to his body.”

“That’s awful,” I hiss.

Declan doesn’t confirm or deny this. “Do you remember any of it, Virtue?”

No, I don’t. I remember the real nightmares. Pursing my lips together, I say, “No, but I’m sure it’s the glitch.”

I’m starting to hate saying that word.

“Just so you know, your memory is a disaster.”

Frustrated, I shrug myself out of his hands and stalk past him. “Yeah, I know.”

* * *

The theater and mall are still standing. Both look the exact same as they did three months ago when Ethan and I came to this part of town to steal weapons from a clan living in a restaurant a few blocks away. One of the women had been pregnant, and I remember feeling so remorseful for taking their only method of defending themselves. It was the same feeling I’d had a couple of days ago when Ethan and I had raided the Survivors after completing the quest to help them—like I was scum.

Now, thinking back to that pregnant woman, I have a better understanding of what I saw and it makes me feel queasy and light-headed. The gamers controlling our bodies can make us do whatever they please, most of the time without our knowing it. They can make us mate with one another, or shoot ourselves in the head, and the only thing they face for breaking the rules is losing points or having to restart the game with a brand-new character that they can ruin all over again.

Part of me wishes I had the luxury of not knowing what’s going on—but then I shake that thought from my mind. Desiring ignorance—no matter how blissful it might be—is silly and weak.

I nearly pass out when Declan covers my mouth with his hand and drags me with him behind a crushed sign. There’s glass everywhere, but he’s careful to avoid it. I tilt my head back until our eyes meet and silently question him. His rough fingertips slide from my lips and down the side of my face.

Touching the back of my neck, he guides my head to the right. My eyes bug. At the entrance of the shopping mall is a small group of characters ranging in age from early teens to late twenties. And they’re flesh-eaters. I can tell by their blood-caked clothing and the way they’re acting—feral, shoving each other around and teasing. I’m so used to Olivia steering me everywhere that I’ve forgotten how to get around undetected.

“Pay attention, Virtue. Keep your mind off your boyfriend before you get yourself killed,” he growls in my ear. “And don’t think I’ll save you if it comes down to between the two of us.”

My nostrils flare. He’s punishing me for what I told him about Ethan two nights ago, and it twists my stomach into knots. I won’t let him know that his words bother me. If I do, he’ll never let it go. “Nice to know you plan to just let me die,” I say angrily.

“Only if it comes between me and my assignment,” he says, laughing; although part of me is sure he means it. Warm breath fans the back of my neck and shoulder blades, ruffling thin strands of my hair. I hope he doesn’t notice the sharp jerk of my body or feel my heartbeat pick up. He’s so close, though. And when I look back at him, he’s wearing that cocky partial smile again.

Stupid, stupid girl. Use him and get the hell away.

“And you’re sure this is his last known location?” I say, turning my eyes back to the mall entrance.

He chuckles. The sound vibrates in my ear. “It’s not.”

“You’re such a liar.”

“But it made you feel better, didn’t it?”

For about half a second.

I ease from his arms and twist around to face him. We spend a few minutes kneeling down like this, almost touching but not quite, running through our plans. I suggest finding out if there’s a way into the mall through the sewage system. It might take some time, but at least it would reduce our chances of getting caught by flesh-eaters and tortured to death.