The Leveller (7 page)

Baby lets out one last screech before he dissolves into thin air and I fall to the sand. There's no time to brush myself off. If Papa and Mama were dangerous before, they're in a murderous rage now. They come charging at me from opposite sides and it's all I can do to hold my ground between them.

They skitter around me, their black-and-copper stingers raining down in syncopated rhythm. Two Papa strikes for every Mama strike. As I tumble and dodge, flipping in between their tails like a Chinese acrobat on speed, I take note of their
movements. Papa's strikes are more forceful and rapid, but Mama's got accuracy going for her.

Just as Papa raises his tail to strike again, I roll myself between Mama's coppery legs.
CRUNCH
. Papa's stinger plunges itself into Mama's back. Mama screeches and her body goes into defensive auto-pilot. I hear another
CRUNCH
as her stinger plunges into Papa.

Papa doesn't even complain, he just takes it like a boss and dissolves into the sand, locked in the fatal embrace of his wife.

Whew.

I sit down, shading myself with the oak shield until the desert turns back into the white room. I am exultant for a minute before a hideous realization descends on me like a school of poison jellyfish. If I weren't virtual, I would shiver. The known portions of the maze are now complete. From here on out, I don't know what to expect, how to equip myself, or what kind of monsters to watch for. It's all guesswork. And if I fail, it's back to the beginning. All of it—all over again.

It's enough to make a weaker person, a person who in no way resembles
me
, cry.

I tap into my inventory and take a look around. I change my mind several times, then finally decide to arm myself with the rappelling gun and crossbow. Fight and flight, both covered. I can always trade weapons mid-challenge, though that's often the best way to lose. In battle, every second is precious.

I follow the white wall, which has become like my own yellow brick road, without a comforting trio of friends or trusty dog to help me out. I snort for a quick second, imagining Hodee trying to keep up with Dorothy on his squat legs as she skipped and danced around in those red ruby slippers. Nope, Hodee wouldn't have made it past Munchkinland. On the flip side, there's not a flying monkey alive who could have lifted his roly-poly body off the ground. Toto 1, Hodee 1.

These images amuse me through several twists and turns of the maze until I finally reach a red button. I close my eyes and try to focus, ridding myself of Oz and dogs and other thoughts that might distract me from whatever comes next.

I push the button and step into the room, crossbow cocked and ready.

A face begins to appear on the white wall in front of me. It's a pretty woman's face, pleasant and smiling and all-American, like the kind you see in TV commercials for Oil of Olay.

“Checkpoint complete,” she says in a soothing, robotic voice. “Checkpoint complete.”

Praise the Lord and pass the life hearts! Wyn Salvador actually included save points in this horrid little game. I will not have to face those stinking sharks again, let alone all the other creatures. I'm so happy I could cry. I smile back at the nice checkpoint lady. Maybe she'll take me to Wyn.

Only now her face doesn't look as pleasant as it did a second
ago. Her eyes are turning red and her hair is turning white. Her teeth begin to . . . sharpen? . . . transforming her pleasant smile into a creepy, evil grin, as if she is now selling one-way bus tickets on the highway to hell.

I instinctively raise my crossbow, though she is no more than a projection.

The lights go out. I drown in the pitch darkness.

Panic freezes me to the spot until something in my brain kicks into gear.

“Inventory,” I yell, and quickly access the night-vision goggles Dad had insisted I carry. “He's feeding on phobias, Nixy, and fear of the dark is a huge one,” Dad had said on the plane just a few hours earlier, though it now feels like forever ago. “Remember how you used to turn on not one but three night-lights in your bedroom?”

I didn't say so to him, but sometimes I
still
sleep with three night-lights. After today I'm going to need four.

“It's just a game, it's just a game,” I repeat to myself as I slip the goggles over my head. Half of me can't wait to put them on so I can see what the hell I'm up against. The other half doesn't want to know.

“
Fy fæn!
” I yell, and jump right out of my skin.

The hag is directly in front of me, her demonic face inches from mine. An icy coldness seeps from her body like a thick fog. I feel like I've just stepped into a deep freeze.

“RUN!” she screams, her hideous voice stabbing my ears like a dagger.

She doesn't need to tell me twice. I take off.

The door to the room is open and I run back into the maze, which is now steeped in darkness. The night-vision goggles turn everything a ghoulish green. I run wildly, terrified of what I might find ahead of me, but even more horrified by what's behind me. I risk a quick peek back and wish I hadn't. The woman is flying behind me like a ghostly white witch, her teeth bared in that horrible grin. Her long bony arms stretch out before her, and her hands, which look more like sharp talons, try to grab me. She starts to cackle then, louder and louder until the cackle turns into a high-pitched shriek that makes my head feel like it might explode.

I run left and right and this way and that, completely lost, completely out of my wits. I can't think straight, can't do anything but try to outrun her outstretched claws, her hideous shrieking. I make another left and hit a dead end.

I feel her icy hands scrape across my back. Her talons cut through cloth and bone and a searing cold permeates my chest, freezing and burning all at once.

She's ripping my heart out
, my mind screams as I slip into unconsciousness.

Yep. Dead end.

Literally.

WHEN I WAKE UP, I'M BACK IN THE WHITE ROOM WITH OIL OF OLAY LADY
smiling at me from the wall. Damn. No rest for the wicked. I reposition my goggles, load my crossbow, and wait for the lights to go out.

A second later, all is dark. Leering banshee straight ahead.

I aim an arrow at her horrible mouth.
THWACK!

It goes right through her.

“RUN!” she screams.

Oh God.

I run. I can't help it. I can't bear the thought of those icy hands reaching into my body again. I shouldn't be able to feel them. Why
can
I feel them? I'm not sure I even care at this point. I try to keep my hand along the right wall, always going
right, but the inky green darkness confuses me, the night-vision goggles mess with my peripheral vision.

Think, think, think, Nixy
.

I try to remember what's left in my inventory as I run. Not much. I need to get back to the Landing and restock, but how?

“Inventory!” I yell, and arm myself with a laser gun.

I whirl around and pop her three times. It's like shooting a water gun at a piranha. Totally ineffective.

I keep running, but I'm lost again now that I've taken my hand off the right wall to shoot.

Damn damn damn.

I toss a grenade behind me. The banshee only shrieks louder.

I don't even notice the dead end this time until I run smack into it.

I feel a frosty stab of pain enter between my shoulder blades, like I've just been impaled by an icicle.

She steals my heart again.

I do the same thing twelve times in all, with slight variations. Each time, I try another weapon from my inventory on the witch. Gladius sword, rappelling gun, machete, more grenades. I might as well be battling whipped cream or clouds, only not so fluffy and pleasing.

Twelve times the lights go out; twelve times her ghoulish
face appears inches from my own; twelve times I try to kill her with something; twelve times she doesn't die; twelve times she screams “RUN!”; twelve times I run like my pants are on fire; twelve times I get lost; twelve times I feel her arctic claw reach inside my rib cage and rip my heart out.

Twelve flipping times I want to give up and yell out my return code frequency. But I'm not a quitter. I remember when I was little, maybe eight years old, and I was playing a Zelda game on Dad's old Nintendo. It took me twenty-eight attempts to beat Ganon, the final boss at the end. I remember begging my dad to fight the battle for me, but all he said was, “Keep at it, Nixinator. Each time you try, you sweeten the victory.” And it was true. That twenty-ninth attempt—that
successful
attempt—was so incredibly delicious that I jumped on my bed for ten minutes afterward out of pure happiness.

As I prepare for my lucky—ha ha—thirteenth try, I tap into my inventory once again and try desperately to think of some trick, some new thing, something “out of the box” to defeat the Hag of Olay, but once again I don't have
time
to think. The lights go out and the ghoulfriend's in my face again screaming “RUN!”

I haven't even armed myself this time. I access my inventory and grab the first weapon I can get to. I look down to find the potato gun in my hands. Oh for God's sake.

It's so absurd I start laughing. I look right into the banshee's
red eyes and only flinch slightly. I've looked into her hideous face so many times now I'm getting used to it. Might as well skip to the chase at this point, or skip the chase altogether, as the case happens to be. “Go ahead,” I say, sticking out my chest. “Just rip it right out.”

We both stand there for a moment—technically, I guess, the banshee floats—and engage in an intense staring contest. I am really good at this game, honed by hours of matches with Moose during eighth-grade study hall. I blow a puff of air into her eyes, and her icy eyelids flutter. “Made you blink,” I sing, mainly to amuse myself while I wait for the heart snatchery that is to come.

Only it doesn't.

The banshee backs away from me and the lights go back on. I remove my night-vision goggles and see the white wall swallow her up until only her face is showing . . . her horrible, witchy face, which slowly transforms back into my favorite smiling, well-moisturized lady.

“Checkpoint complete,” says the soothing robotic voice. “Checkpoint complete.”

I'm almost too stunned to move.

I don't know what happened back there, but I'm pretty sure I can now add Blinking Contest Goddess to my college applications.

A door in the white wall slides open and I see what looks
like a room full of Meeple on the other side.

“You've got to be kidding me,” I mutter, stepping tentatively across the threshold and looking around in wonder.

Yep. I'm in a bar.

Not just any bar either, but a really swank one populated by happy, beautiful Meeple, sitting at a long, glossy counter and raising shiny glasses at each other. They all look fabulous in a sort of half-retro, half-exotic way, like we're at some kind of tropical sock hop. Some of the Meeple are speaking English and others are speaking Spanish, I think, unless it's Italian. Or Portuguese. Obviously I need to pay more attention to Señora Jorgen in Español III.

“Welcome to the Floridita. What can I get for you, señorita?” asks a nice-looking, red-coated bartender.

I open my mouth to respond, but nothing comes out. My brain can't seem to wrap itself around the fact that A) I'm out of immediate danger, and B) I'm in a
bar
, for Pete's sake, and apparently, no one's going to card me.

“Mix the girl a daiquiri, Chucho, and put it on my bill,” says a big, white-haired, white-bearded guy from the end of the bar. He gives me a flirtatious wink, then turns back to the man sitting next to him. I know it's rude to stare, even if they are Meeple, but I can't help it. Both men look so familiar.

“Is that—?” I say, hoisting myself onto a bar stool.

Chucho starts pouring rum, lime juice, ice, and something
else into a shaker. “Señor Hemingway,
sí
. Ernesto's a regular here and he often brings his American guests, like Señor Tracy there.”

I nod, remembering now. We had to read some of Ernest Hemingway's short stories last year in English class. They were my favorites. Nice and lean, not a lot of extra words. After the dark hell that was Nathaniel Hawthorne's
Scarlet Letter
, Hemingway's stories seemed pleasingly crisp and clean.

“He can buy me a drink and wink at me anytime. He's earned it,” I say to Chucho, whose Meeple script doesn't know how to respond to this last utterance of mine.

Chucho just smiles at me and shakes my drink in a metal canister. I like the sound it makes.

“And Señor Tracy?” I ask, not recognizing the name. “Who is he?”

“That is Spencer Tracy, señorita, the big movie star from America!”

“Oh, right,” I say, taking another glance down at the end of the bar. No wonder I had a hard time placing him. I've only seen Spencer Tracy in black-and-white movies, when it's Chang's turn to choose the lineup for our weekly Friday-night TV binge.

Chucho slides me a martini glass filled with an icy lime-green concoction. Even though you can't taste things in the MEEP, it feels impolite not to take a sip.

I do, and nearly choke. “I can taste this!” I exclaim, making the men chuckle at the end of the bar.

“Chucho makes very good daiquiri, no?” says Chucho himself, his eyebrows raised in question.

“It's
delicioso
,” I assure him, then take another sip of the cold liquid, sweet and tart at the same time. How is this possible?

“Chucho, where are we? Is this Miami?” I ask, looking around at the smartly dressed Meeple, especially the women with their beehive hairdos and penciled eyebrows. “And
when
are we, for that matter?”

“Señorita, we are in the one and only Havana, Cuba. The year is 1958. Another drink?”

“No, no thank you,” I say, finishing off the last few drops of my daiquiri and hopping off the stool. Thankfully, I don't feel tipsy at all from the virtual alcohol; I've wasted enough time. I need to figure out what the hell is going on, and fast. If this is the custom world that Wyn has created, he'll be here somewhere. I spin a quick 360 to take a good look at the rest of the bar. There are two doors in the back, including the one I came through, and another big door in front.

“So that's
Havana
out there?” I ask, pointing my chin toward the front door.

“
Sí
,
señorita.”

I smile at Chucho. He is starting to look familiar too,
somehow. “Anything I need to worry about out there? Anything . . . dangerous?” I ask, trying to remember the date of the Cuban Revolution. Maybe Wyn's fantasy is to be some Che Guevara revolutionary type.

“No, no, a few tough guys here and there, but they shouldn't bother you,” Chucho says. “You go to the Tropicana, watch a show, maybe dance a little. Tell the doorman Chucho sent you and he'll take care of you, no worries.”

I look at Chucho's smooth coffee-with-cream complexion, his warm brown eyes, his long lashes. Maybe I've seen him in an old movie too? I look a little longer and then it hits me. He's the spitting image of Mama Beti. Younger, and male, of course, but the similarities are definitely there. This
has
to be Wyn's custom world.

“You don't happen to know a guy named Wyn Salvador, do you?” I ask the smiling bartender.

“
Claro que sí
,
señorita, Wyn is a regular around here. Nice fellow.”

Bingo. “Do you know where he is now?”

Chucho looks at his watch. “No, but come back again tomorrow. I tell him to wait for you here, Señorita—?” he asks, waiting for my name.

“No need, Chucho!
Gracias!
” I say, showing off one of the few Spanish vocab words I can remember at the moment. “
Adios!
” I add, to further impress him with my fluency.

I wave to Ernesto and Spencer and head through the front door. I'm shocked to realize it's nighttime, and I wonder if this MEEP's time zone has been synced to real world time. If so, I've been gone longer than I thought.

I'm at the corner of an intersection, where streetlights and headlights and neon signs light up the tall, balconied buildings lining the streets. The cars are big and wide and old-timey, with giant chrome fenders and hood ornaments, and painted with pretty pastel colors. Meeple stroll the streets, smiling and laughing, like they're all off to a party and not just strings of code. The air is warm, but a cool breeze blows, smelling of the sea. Again, I am astounded. I can
smell
things in this MEEP, feel and taste things. I'm also confused. I have no idea where to go, or how this world has been mapped. Also, given the dozens of Meeple walking around, Wyn could easily hide himself among them.

I start following a group of young Meeple up the street. The young men are dressed in lightweight suits and ties, while the girls wear smoking-hot dresses that cling to their curves. Maybe they'll lead me to Wyn. If there's one thing I've learned about levelling teenage boys, it's this: when in doubt, follow the hot girls.

We turn down a few more streets and now I can hear music throbbing from several clubs—bongo drums, maracas, and pianos all at once. I wonder if one of these clubs might be the Tropicana place that Chucho mentioned.

“Don't turn around,” says a gruff voice from behind me as I feel cold metal on the back of my neck. “Keep walking and
keep quiet.”

“Oh please,” I mutter under my breath. I was almost enjoying this custom MEEP world, but now I'm being mugged by some virtual Cuban thug. Oh well, it's better than a shark tank, and maybe this will lead me to Wyn. He's probably made himself a mob boss or something.

“Where are we going?” I ask, as he pushes me down a narrow alley. “And do they serve daiquiris there?” I joke, more for my own amusement than his. Most Meeple have a limited capacity to understand sarcasm.

“In there,” the voice says, directing me toward a door at the end of the alley. I open the door and the thug pushes me through a dark hallway and into another room. It appears to be a dressing room, and by the looks of the clothing strewn about, the woman who dresses here wears a lot of sequins, feathers, and . . . not much else.

“This must be your mother's room,” I remark, wondering how the MEEP thug will reply.

“My mother's dead, but she preferred cottons while she was alive.”

I twirl around then, not caring about the gun on my neck. Meeple don't talk like that. I recognize him immediately and fury overwhelms me.

“Wyn Salvador, you little pantywaist,” I say, and charge him, despite the gun aimed directly at my head.