Armageddon Heights (a thriller) (28 page)

‘I’m a character in a fucking game? Are you serious?’

‘OK, so I know how extreme it sounds…’

‘You bet!’ said Samuel Wade.

It was a typical reaction, Keegan thought. She’d seen it so many times before. But here in Samuel Wade she had been witnessing something quite different. Unique.

‘Your mind is screaming for you to disbelieve it, I’m aware of that,’ she said. ‘But there are also parts of it that are telling you it’s got to be true. Your life has been something of a cliché, has it not? I mean, look at how you met your wife – attractive nurse ministering to the needs of a damaged ex-soldier, you fall in love, get married. Cliché. That’s because you started out as a character in a small and almost insignificant part of this screwed-up game called Armageddon Heights. The place is filled with the unimaginable, the bizarre, the insane, and all because it can be. It can be anything the designers want it to be. A coach load of passengers on a bus transported through space and time? Easy. Why? To create yet another exciting challenge for gamers to encounter and overcome on their way to whatever score they need to progress to the next level of complexity. A coach full of fearful passengers being held at gunpoint by a suspected murderer on the verge of insanity over the loss of his murdered wife and daughter. The passengers have to be rescued from the gunman. Gunfights, hostages, a rescue mission, the bonesnappers making things harder – you’re right, it’s the stuff of a movie. Or a game. But the scenario was never more than a small-scale affair, nothing really in the grand scale of the Heights, like a ripple on the sea. Something to pass the time for gamers on the way to bigger things.

‘That’s why your recollections are so fragmented. You were given only what you needed to operate as a character, so too were all your fellow passengers. But they were never going to be the memories of a full life, only snippets, enough for a character to operate smoothly. Memories were originally programmed into characters to make them more believable, to allow them to interact with the environments designed for them. Memories started out as little more than simple data – tantamount to a basic robot being programmed to be able to ‘remember’ how to do simple tasks. But the software Melissa Lindegaard developed became so sophisticated that it went beyond simple data files with which to instruct a character to behave in a certain way. It allowed them to have deeper personalities, to have motivations, to exhibit emotions, to become far more human-like than ever before. All within a defined programmed parameter, of course. But what wasn’t allowed for was the progression in some characters from programming to sentience. Why this happens in some but not all characters is still a mystery. But that’s what happened to a great deal of them. It happened to you.    

‘You became sentient some time ago, not all at once; it was a gradual process, an awakening, you might say. But you started to develop your own mind. Think about it, I’m betting you occasionally thought you’d seen all this before. That’s because, quite simply, you have, countless times. I’m right, aren’t I? You have thought that.’

He said yes, begrudgingly. ‘I couldn’t understand why…’ he said, his voice now becoming faint.

‘And as a result you finally went off-piste, beyond the shackles of your programming. You fought the urge to shoot the man called Hartshorn, remember? And you had the urge to do so not because he was an arsehole – designed to be that way, I’m afraid – but because in the game laid out for you, you killed him and a number of the others. Shot them dead, held the rest as hostages as your mind went into total meltdown.’

He shook his head. ‘But I feel so damned
real
!’ he said.

He felt the touch of her hand soft on his arm. ‘That’s because you are, Wade. You’re as real as me. You think, feel, touch, smell – you’re human. That’s what CSL have been fighting for. It’s why I’m here now, risking my neck.’

‘How can goddamn pixels be real?’ he said, his anger starting to bubble to the surface again.

‘You’re real, Wade,’ she said determinedly. ‘And not only that, I’m fast realising you’re special, even among Sentients.’

‘Oh yeah? How special? Can I fly, too?’ he snorted derisively.

‘Just by interacting with you it appears you encourage sentience in other characters. I saw it with my own eyes – well, through an avatar’s eyes – but I didn’t want to believe it. I saw how emotional the other passengers were getting and their strong feelings towards you – it shouldn’t happen unless they, too, were becoming sentient. That’s why I was so cold towards them in the beginning; to me they were still characters in a game, and you were the target. But trying to get at you made me blind to the others. Christ, I’ve even seen subtle changes in Cain’s character during his interaction with you…’

The mention of Cain made Wade stiffen. ‘Okay, tell me this. Why is Cain the spitting image of John Travers, the man who killed…?’ He stuttered into silence. The images of his murdered wife and child were branded into his mind. So could he actually believe they weren’t real, that his deep anguish over their supposed non-existent murder wasn’t real either? He groaned with the effort of dealing with his emotions – emotions by rights, according to Keegan, he shouldn’t have.

‘Because Armageddon Heights relies heavily upon character archetypes,’ Keegan explained. ‘There are millions of characters, and it’s difficult to design each one to be different, so, partly because of cost-cutting and partly through necessity, the same physical design for a character will pop up all over the Heights, though ordinarily you’re not likely to see them bump into each other. Your memory of John Travers is based upon the same character archetype as Cain, as indeed Cain is replicated elsewhere in the Heights, except appearing in a different role, obviously. I hate to say it, but you’re not original in looks, and neither is the avatar I’m occupying right now. There are many more of us out there. But you are original in the fact that you’re sentient. That makes you fundamentally different.’

‘If that’s supposed to make me feel better about myself and what you’re telling me, it isn’t working,’ he said. ‘Right, say all this is true. Prove it. Step out of the game, disappear in a puff of smoke or whatever it is you do when the game’s over.’

‘It’s not as easy as that. The company uses a Big Data system at their New Mexico headquarters to analyse all parameters of the game every ninety seconds, checking for anomalies. An unauthorised incursion initially shows up as a signal, a blip in the system – not very strong, because we’ve been working on trying to keep that first sighting as invisible as possible. Once in, the CSL operative can be shielded. It’s a delicate cat-and-mouse game, Lindegaard developing ever more complex systems to spot us, and CSL developing software to counter it. It has to be a pretty special person who can spot our incursions these days through all the analytical chatter that is thrown up. But they continue to do it, and we continue to sidestep it if we can. That’s why we have to drop into the Heights at no less that a fifty-mile radius of where the target is and hope we get to it before Lindegaard’s Sentinels do. So, to cut a long story short, I’m not going to give up and go back to square one after coming this close to getting you. Anyhow, Lindegaard will know you’re here by now due to the data anomalies thrown up by you crossing over the edges of your programmed border and into Cain’s Territory.’

He smirked. ‘I thought as much.’

‘I’m serious, Wade. I can’t leave you now, not after discovering what I have about you. You were valuable before; now you’re nothing short of precious.’

‘You say the nicest things…’ he said, his voice softening somewhat. ‘What about the others? Even if we find a way out of this place I’m not leaving without the others. They have to come, too.’

As she studied the shadows moving at the base of the door she gave a shrug of acquiescence. ‘I have to agree with you. They’re exhibiting all the characteristics of sentience.’

‘To me they’re more than characters in a game, Keegan,’ he said stiffly. ‘Or targets for your beloved CSL. Whatever the real explanation is for all this, I’m going to get them out and we’ll pick up this conversation later.’ He rose to his feet. ‘One thought…’

‘Yes?’ she said.

‘Say I believe you. Say all this is like you say it is…’

‘It is. You have to trust me.’

‘Then somewhere out there are my wife and child, still very much alive…’

‘A version of them, don’t forget, Wade,’ she warned.

‘But out there nonetheless. They look and sound exactly like them.’

‘Well, yes, that’s true. But their memories won’t be the same as yours. They won’t share your particular memories or past.’

‘That’s all I needed to know,’ he said decisively.

‘And what does that mean?’

‘It means they’re not dead. And I’d rather exist in a world where they’re alive and breathing than go back to one in which they’re a pair of corpses.’ He closed his eyes against the dark. ‘Even if this world is a crazy hellhole dredged from an acne-peppered programming team’s shittiest nightmares,’ he said. ‘I want to find them.’

‘That’s not going to happen, Wade. Like I said…’

‘I’m going to look for them even if you won’t help me.’

‘But they won’t be the same people.’

‘I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. So, what’s the plan?’

The search for his wife and child aside, he’d taken it far better than she expected. His stoicism was reassuring, though she knew that wasn’t the end of it by a long means. ‘There’s no plan, as such…’ she said.

‘Great. Some rescuer you turned out to be.’

‘That’s not to say I didn’t have one. It was your fault it hit the rocks; your run-in with Cain happened before I managed to get to you.’

‘Fine, lay the blame on me,’ he said. ‘Okay, so you know all about Cain and his little settlement here. What else can you tell me? What function does it play in the Heights?’

The soldier in him was kicking in again. Cold logic for the moment drowning out unreliable and unstable emotion. ‘Cain sits on supplies, lots of them. Food, guns, ammunition, that kind of thing. Gamers looking to replenish diminished stocks will find it here. It’s a challenge getting to it, as you can imagine. Getting inside this underground city is difficult enough, but navigating through the many corridors is like traversing a maze from a very bad dream. It has other minor functions, but its existence as an oasis-like supply dump for gamers is the primary one.’

He silently digested the information. ‘So where are all the gamers, if this is a game?’

‘Lindegaard’s teams would have closed down all zones within a certain distance of a possible incursion to gamers so he can send in the Sentinels,’ she explained. ‘And talking of the Sentinels, I can guarantee they’ll be on their way here as we speak. A double whammy, you might say. But we have one advantage…’

‘Which is?’

‘I know the layout of this place. I know where we are, where the supplies are being housed, and I know where they’ll be holding the others prisoner.’

‘How come?’

She smiled thinly, studying Wade’s figure edged in the feeble light from the doorway. ‘Let’s say I know someone who had a hand in designing it all.’

There was a sharp tinkling from beyond the door. The sound of a key being inserted into the lock. The door swung open, the hinges complaining as it did so, and both Keegan and Wade, having been immersed in almost total darkness, blinked in the sudden light from the corridor, weak as it was. They backed away as two men approached them with rifles, another – a far older man – entering the room behind them holding up a lantern. This last man was dressed in the same leather and fur garb as his companions, but his sun-bronzed scrawny neck and wrists were covered in gold necklaces and bracelets, every one of his fingers adorned with a large ring set with precious and semi-precious stones that caught the light from the lantern. He hung the cobbled-together lamp on a hook in the wall. His eyes looked like empty slits in a piece of wrinkled leather, and his mouth bore few teeth, those that did show were not the prettiest shade of black. He had a savage-looking dagger shoved into a leather belt that skirted his slender waist, and stick-thin legs encased in dark-brown leather.

Wade had no doubt that this was the Magwer Keegan had told him about. Cain’s wise man. He sure looked the part, he thought, casting a glance at the two guards as the Magwer waved them away to stand back near the door. They took up their places like two stony-faced pit-bulls.

‘Don’t say anything to upset him,’ Keegan whispered to Wade. ‘He’d have you disembowelled in an instant.’

‘Nice man,’ he said coldly.

‘Untie them both,’ said the old man to one of the guards, and Wade was relieved when the wire was cut from his wrists, the pain seeming to rise in intensity as the bloodied wire fell away. Keegan massaged her freed wrists. ‘Sit down,’ he ordered, and the two prisoners did as they were told. The old man took a small bottle from a leather pouch at his waist and began to sprinkle the foul-smelling contents in a large circle around Wade and Keegan, while they watched on silently. He appeared to be mouthing some kind of ritualistic prayer, moving slowly behind them and out of sight. Unexpectedly Wade felt a sharp pain as his neck was slashed with a knife. He cried out, turning. The old man slapped him in the face, but Wade did not rise to it. The Magwer aimed the knife at a point between Wade’s startled eyes, and reached out to smear his free hand in the fresh blood, putting it to his lips. His tongue darted out to taste the blood and Wade watched with both revulsion and fascination.