Game Slaves (12 page)

That's when the fun began, not just for us, but for all those poor humans out there in the real world who, honestly, would
never
fire a gun for real. One after another, groups of gamers formed their own gangs to try to take us down and steal our gold.

We sent them all back. Then we hunted them like scurvy dogs, dealt hot lead, and planted 'em in boot hill. It became a global quest to try to take us out and claim our loot.

So after a long chase one day, York and Reno and Mi and Dakota and I had finally cornered some fleeing gamers. They were holed up in a box canyon about ten miles outside Vulture Hollow.

We still had three other riders with us, but those guys were expendable extras. I put them out front and hoped they'd draw some fire. That'd give us an exact location where our enemies were hiding out.

“They've got to be low on rifle ammo,” York said, taking a long look through our spyglass.

“Good,” I said. “We'll get in close, but not close enough for their pistols to be accurate. Let's take up in those rocks on the ledge and pick a few of them off before we start the main assault.”

I turned to York. “Can you actually see them yet?”

“Not clearly. They're in an old mining shack. Horses are out front, though. And there's nowhere else they could have gone.”

We too were getting low on numbers. The Skinner gang had started out twenty strong, but by now the gamers had whittled us down to the last eight. That was pretty normal. As the gang leaders and henchmen, York, Reno, Dakota, Mi, and I could take a lot more damage than our goons. Goons usually get popped in just one or two blasts. It takes a bunch of well-placed headshots or sticks of dynamite to finish the strongest of us.

“It might be a trap,” Reno pointed out. “Been seeing a lot more of that lately. Gangs teaming up.”

“I see nothing up in the cliffs,” York reported. “No snipers. No cannons. No cavalry.”

“I think they got themselves in a bind,” Dakota added. “Probably didn't mean to ride up this dead-end canyon. New to the game map, is my guess.”

“Makes sense,” I agreed. The last place any gamer wants to end up is cornered in a spot where there's no alternate escape. But that's what these players had done. Ridden up the wrong road. Their loss, our win. Now to finish them off.

After waiting a few minutes, I realized we weren't going to get any easy shots. Either the horses were in the way or the gamers in the shack were too well hidden. We watched the windows and the door, but no heads appeared. No weapons poked up. Whoever was in there was just going to wait for our approach.

Fine by me. I'd show them some tactics they'd never seen from NPCs before. That's what I do. That's why we win.

York and Reno stayed to the right. Mi took the left with our three gang riders. Dakota and I would hold down the road and wait for the gamers to get flushed out front.

On my signal, both Mi and York unloaded a hail of fire into the side windows. Wood shattered, bullet holes ripped open, and splinters flew onto the dusty ground.

No response. Were they still in there?

Mi used the first diversion to create a second: one of her gang riders dashed toward the open shack with a Molotov cocktail. His throw was perfect, and the roof exploded in flames. The guy turned to retreat, and just as I began to think there was no one inside, my man's hat sprang off and his bald head mushroomed in blood. The gamer inside had picked him off, one bullet, at a full run. It was a nice shot, considering these old weapons.

Two more rifle rounds rang in the air. The shack was still burning, but Mi's other men went down.

“Whoa,” Dakota groaned in my ear. “That's some
deadly
aim.” She was right. This player was no novice. He'd taken them out with pinpoint accuracy.

Strange that he'd made the mistake of letting himself get cornered in this box canyon. Kind of a rookie move, if you ask me.

The flames had spread and the walls looked about to crumble. Sooner or later, whoever was inside would have to come out. That was the only escape, the front door. They wouldn't just stay inside and meet their doom and lose all their progress. No chance of that.

But nothing moved.

How about another surprise? I waved and Reno took off his ten-gallon lid. It just happened to be stuffed full of slithering rattlesnakes. I recommend everyone carry a lot of them, especially if you're immune to the bite, in your own hat. They're good in a pinch—and trust me, when you chuck vipers, you gain a tactical edge.

Reno tossed them all through a window. With the flames and heat, those rattlers would be in a very bitey mood. Sorry, gamers, surprises like that are what make us the best, or didn't you hear?

We could hear the snakes snapping. The hissing was so angry it made the nearby trees quiver.

Nothing. Not a peep from the gamers inside.

Eventually, the shack burned to the ground. We watched as the final flames licked black timbers and the walls began to cave.

I waved and Reno moved forward.

He kicked away the rubble. Jumped back, waiting for someone to spring out.

The ruins were completely empty. That was odd. I knew the pinpoint shots had come from inside.

That's when York found the opening to the mine.

The shack had blocked our view of the entrance.

This game had a
huge
map. And now we had to pursue the deadly sniper down into the dark tunnels below our feet.

More work ahead, but, hey, unexpected twists and turns like that?
That
makes good vids. The designers deserved a pat on the back. No wonder this game was so popular.

We checked our ammo—unlimited—and began crawling single file through the entrance of the narrow vertical shaft.

I could feel the air cool the deeper we went. This was not some standard mine—no rail tracks on the floor or support beams overhead. It was a tiny crevasse, more like a wormhole, and it dropped ledge after ledge with little room to move at all.

I was up front, Dakota behind me, then York, Reno, and Mi. That was it. There was no way we could switch order, either, as the rock walls and dirt ridges stood so tight that there were spots I thought we'd never squeeze past. I know, it doesn't sound like a gold or silver mine you would find in the real Wild West, but this one hadn't been dug by normal miners, had it? This was a game designer's interpretation of a mine. Or at least, a hole in the earth that led to . . . where?

The farther we went, the more I realized this was not something you'd usually encounter in a game. How would gamers, once done with the mission down here, find their way back?
HIGH PLAINS
is an open world. That means the players move around the environment as they please. There's no linear set of rooms or settings they're funneled through. If they came down here, well, eventually, they'd either have to climb back out or shut off the system and lose all their progress.

Kind of a cool feature. A one-way adventure. Inventive. Maybe it came out on the other side of the canyon. Or under a bank vault. Or inside the territorial prison. Who doesn't love a secret passage?

Along the way, I kept seeing big bootprints from the enemy who'd passed before us. Yes, we were chasing them, the one or ones who'd so easily picked off my men.

Finally, after what might have been a vertical mile, my feet hit a flat surface. I squeezed down, lowering my inconvenient bulk under a rafter, then crawled forward about twenty yards. It was dark down here, and cool, but there was just enough
light from a series of evenly spaced lanterns.

Something
was ahead. We hadn't accidentally left the map. That happens with designers who don't close off every nook and cranny of the environments. All “worlds” have some sort of boundary or edge. But in rare games, if designers are rushed or the artists aren't paying attention, there can be glitches where a gamer or an NPC might simply fall and fall until their system reboots.

But not here. No, this was as real and solid as the ground under your feet or the roof over your head. I could smell the damp air. I could run my fingers over the jagged rocks. Spider web stuck to my face and rats squeaked as I scurried along on my belly. Creepy design. Great design.

Then it got pitch-black. No more lights. But there was no going back. Not enough room. Dakota was right on my heels. I raised my rifle, panning around, listening for the click of a hammer or the chambering of a shell.

Nothing.

So I crawled another ten feet.

Nothing moved. Just blackness.

Another five feet and the ground suddenly changed. It was smooth. Flat. No more dirt.

A light popped on, and there, in the red glow, two cowboys stood twenty paces in front of us.

They were both tiny. So
that's
how they'd gotten through the tunnel so fast.

One had boots that were way too large and a hat that fell over his eyes, and his denim clothing looked like he'd borrowed it from Daddy's closet.

I pointed my Winchester straight at his nose. His gamer tag glowed in the dim light, but I didn't care what it said. This was the sniper who'd popped my guys.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the other cowboy. No, she was a cowgirl. Her ten-gallon hat almost covered her face, and her yellow dress draped over bright pink riding boots. She had no gun, she had no weapons at all. Just a small lasso, also pink, and a teddy bear tucked under an arm.

These
were the gamers? Just little kids?

“Freeze, hombre!” the boy yelled, his long gun barrel centered on my right eye. “We've got the drop on you stinkin' varmints!”

“Y'all,”
the girl corrected him. I recognized that voice.

“Oh, yeah,” the boy replied. “I meant to say we've got the drop on
y'all
stinkin' varmints!”

“Charlotte!” Dakota exclaimed, now squirming into the chamber with us.

“Oh, brother,” I moaned, lowering my gun.

“Dakota!” the girl squealed, running up to hug my troublemaker. “That's my big stupid brother, Jimmy.” She pointed to the boy.

They sure looked cute, all dressed up like that, but this was an M title (mature audiences only—yeah, like that kept kids out of it). No wonder the clothing wasn't programmed to fit right. Tell you something, though, if that was Jimmy up on the surface picking off my men? Well, this kid was no amateur.

Out of curiosity, I looked at his gun. It wasn't like anything you'd see in any other frontier game. No, this was a specialized rig. Probably a .55-cal full auto with a 4,000-meter scope, night vision, motion detector, and an x-ray probe. Plus, it had a flamethrower and a grenade launcher.

York was staring at it too.

He smiled, then shouted, pointing at the kid, “CHEATER! I don't think
that's
standard equipment for an Old West game.”

Jimmy replied, “Deal with it, old-timer. I hacked it in here. Found the rifle in a
BORDERWARS
folder and dragged it into the weapons locker for my
HIGH PLAINS
. So there.”

I stared at the boy. Dakota and Charlotte were still hugging, but now the kid pulled the huge hat off his skull. He couldn't have been more than twelve years old. But corrupting video game files? How did that work?

“So you're
REAL?
” Jimmy asked, staring intently at me, then my men, then Dakota. He poked me with a finger like I might be a ghost. “You can feel and think and act independently?”

I stared back. “Of course we can. Because that's how we're programmed to behave.”

But Jimmy was shaking his head back and forth like he couldn't figure something out.

Reno interjected, “You just pulled other weapons into this game?”

“Yeah,” the boy answered, but his brain was still wrapping around the shock that he was having a
conversation
with enemy NPCs. “Simple, really. Any game is basically just a series of files and folders like on any computer. I opened my Pandora directory, control-C'd the sniper rifle, then control-V'd it into the
HIGH PLAINS
weapons folder on my dad's work console.”

“Smart.” Dakota smiled, now sitting down with Charlotte on her lap. They really did look kind of cute together in a big-sis/little-sis sort of way. That is, if the youngster is the cutest thing on the planet and the older one is a burly, battle-hardened, musclebound war machine dressed in flannel and chaps.

“Can you copy-paste me over a nuclear missile?” Reno asked. “I've got a sheriff in that last town I'd like to crispify once and for all. He hanged me twice this week. Neck stretching hurts.”

“That's, uh, probably the least of your problems,” Jimmy said to him, actually writing on his hand with a finger. “Charlotte doesn't get how weird this is 'cuz she's still such a little kid. Dudes, I'm like
totally
creeping out. She was right, you guys are
way
messed up. You should
not
be blabbering with me.”

“See, Dakota?” I pointed out to her. “We shouldn't yap so much.”

But Jimmy had some for me. “And
you
, Phoenix, should be pumping me full of hot lead. Right?”

That shut me up.

“Something's corrupted,” Jimmy muttered. He started stabbing in the air like he was punching buttons. He might have actually been doing that, back in the lab where he was playing the game.

Then he turned to me. “Phoenix, where are you, like, from? Like, your origin story or whatever?”

“Your dad's
BLASTERS OF FREEDOM
code,” I told him. “I was tempered from nuke steel, then bronzed in hellfire, the comet of doom delivering an indestructible element from deepest—”

“No.” He laughed. “Knock it off. For
real
. That fiction doesn't add up anymore. Where do you think you might actually be
from
, if you had to pick?”