Gamers - Amazon (19 page)

Avony spoke up in the silence after. "It's so Bowser that they made the Raid worth so many points. Almost making it worth more than the last two ranks combined."

As Avony spoke, she turned to each member of the raid, making eye contact and giving them a worried smile that indicated how much she felt for them. Gabby remembered why Avony held such a monopoly on the smartest girls, she made them feel important just by looking at them. Even Gabby had felt her heart leap slightly when Avony had smiled at her.

Avony continued. "It's not fair that they did this to us. But we all need to stick together for a few more days and then we can move on with our lives."

She moved in front of Stephan and held out her slender pale hand with the doll wrist joints. "Can you tough it out a little longer?"

Stephan nodded grimly and took her hand. With Stephan on his feet, they gathered their meager supplies and headed down the tunnel.

Their injured Blaster needed frequent breaks and the girls gave him extras sips of their water to help him recover, rubbing his back when they stopped.

Unthar, however, eyed Stephan with distaste. Gabby couldn't imagine that Unthar would have ever taken the babying that Stephan was now receiving.

They moved languishingly slow. Gabby kept wanting to push the group faster, but Avony usually silenced her with a disapproving look. She trusted the leader of the Evil Dolls in this regard, even though she itched to move faster.

Gabby knew her nature was more like Unthar's than Avony's, though not a sociopath like Unthar. She just preferred the role of the defiant loner with her ragtag band of misfits.

At least injured as he was, Stephan wasn't trying to lead them. They took guidance from Mouse, though she wasn't always sure, and a few times they had to double back when they realized they were going the wrong way.

The tunnel floor changed to wooden runners and the change in scenery perked them up as if they'd hit some minor power boost, but the last challenge had been pretty difficult and Gabby worried that a new challenge would tax them to the point of collapse.

The lone planks turned to whole wooden floors, walls, and ceilings. Their hollow footfalls echoed and an eerie sense of dread crept up her spine.

The wooden tunnel ended in a deep shaft about three meters wide. On the far side, at intervals beneath them, tunnel lights punctuated the darkness of the shaft. Mouse pointed to a big red button on the wall. They stared at like it was a bomb.

Stephan collapsed on the ground, leaning against the wall.

"Can we wait a while before we hit that button? I don't like the look of it and I'm not feeling great," he said.

His black eyes were dark-purplish clouds making him into some Goth rocker type instead of the pretty boy he was.

Gabby leaned over the edge, peering down into the depths, making sure no one was near enough to push her in. They'd been cheered by Avony's speech earlier, but she still didn't trust them.

"I can see other tunnels leading away from the main shaft going way down. I bet there are dozens of tunnels," said Gabby.

Mouse and Avony joined her at the edge while Unthar stayed back, brooding and aloof.

"Just blackness above," whispered Mouse.

"I wonder how you get to those other tunnels?" asked Avony.

Gabby pointed to the button. "Probably that. Maybe summons an elevator."

"An elevator I'm not keen to trust," said Avony.

They stared down the shaft for a while until Mouse spoke up. "I bet the top tunnel--" She pointed to the hole of light not far below them on the other side. "--gets us to the best location, and the lower tunnels get progressively worse."

Gabby frowned at the two boys who weren't participating in their discussion. They could use all the brainpower they could get right now.

"Sounds about right," said Avony. "But how to stop the elevator at the right floor?"

"I would estimate that we do not find out until we step on the elevator," whispered Mouse.

Gabby noticed that Mouse wasn't hanging back like she had before and wasn’t hesitating to speak her mind. She liked they were coming together as a team, at least the girls were. She just hoped her concerns about Mouse betraying them were not true.

She was ready to ask the others how long of a rest they would need when Unthar strode to the red button in long powerful strides and punched the button.

"Why wait?" he stated with a mocking smile, aimed directly at Stephan.

So much for their developing teamwork, she thought.

A grinding sound erupted from somewhere above, like a train starting, and the floor rumbled enough to force Gabby to put her hand on the wall.

Mouse pointed up the shaft. "Something's coming down."

Seeing Stephan still on the floor, she dragged him to his feet.

Moments later, an elevator, as she had suspected, drifted level with them. It wasn't an elevator as they were used to. Really it was a platform with ropes at the corner, not unlike the Prisoner's Dilemma challenge.

They moved onto the platform, Gabby and Stephan stepping on last, and it lurched downward as their heels touched the wood.

Gabby wondered why the elevator needed to be so wide. The five of them barely took up the space. They could fit all the raid teams at once if they wanted to.

The light of the first tunnel appeared on the far side. If they thought they were just going to run into it as the platform went by, their hopes were smashed by the rows of bars.

As the platform matched elevation with the first tunnel, it slammed to a stop, knocking them to their knees, except for Unthar who had his two-handed sword speared into the flooring.

Before anyone could act, an object appeared in the middle. Gabby recognized it instantly as a neural pathing problem. The pulsing blob looked like a cross between a jellyfish and a porcupine. Solving it would require at least an hour, for Gabby it would anyway.

Avony quickly stepped up. "I'm probably the best at these." Everyone nodded their approval, Stephan even giving her a flourishing wave.

The blonde leader of the Evil Dolls dove into the seething mass, pulling out fibers and tagging them as she went. She had to figure out the neural pathways controlled by certain actions. It was the advanced theoretical form of neural shaping.

Gabby was impressed by the way Avony picked through the threads, throwing them over her shoulder in practiced hitches and occasionally bundling a group together. Gabby figured Avony could solve the problem in a third of the time.

When a giant red TEN appeared over their heads and began counting down, Avony freaked out.

"Holy Mario! Have the game designers got a major dot to the head? There's no way I can solve it that fast," she said, throwing her hands up and letting the bundled fibers fall off her shoulder.

Avony's obvious anger turned to pain when the countdown hit zero. She practically lifted off her feet as if something had hit her. Avony threw her hands across her chest and crumpled to the floor.

Gabby and Mouse ran to her side. Avony peered up at them through her perfect doll hair, eyes brimming with water, holding her chest as if it would split open.

"Let us see," said Gabby.

When Avony moved her hands, she revealed a red stripe that started on her collarbone and dove down her chest, past the fabric of her white robe.

"A sword appeared in the air and cut me across the chest. It burns," said Avony.

The elevator lurched again and resumed its ride downward. Before they all had curious stares, wondering what their challenge would be. Now that they understood the basics, their gazes cast shadows.

Sooner than Gabby would have liked, the elevator came to a stop at another tunnel. Again bars blocked the way off the elevator. And like the previous stop, an object appeared in the middle of the platform.

It was another advanced problem--a bioeconomic game structure tree chart. Hundreds of spheres, connected by different color lines, rotated lazily.

Unthar surprised them all by moving up to the chart and touching a sphere. As he touched it, a little box of information appeared. He quickly read it and then randomly picked another, or at least it appeared random.

As he concentrated on the problem, his faced softened and if Gabby looked at him just right, he didn't seem so bad. The others collectively held their breath as Unthar worked.

When the red ten appeared, Unthar tried to apply a solution. Gabby had been following along and realized what he was attempting to do. He had to have known that he wasn’t going to get much time to solve the problem, so he set off to give himself the best chance of getting lucky in that short time.

Unfortunately, he did not answer correctly because the countdown disappeared at six and Unthar fell to his knees as if he'd been hit in the back.

No one ran to the big Brute and the elevator started up again. This time they were ready for its movement.

"Unthar was given an additional ten seconds to solve his problem," said Mouse. "I surmise that the time frame to solve the problem will grow as we go further down, or the problems might get easier."

"But by then we'll all be passed out from the pain," said Stephan, leaning heavily on his staff.

The elevator stopped and a quark uncertainty problem appeared. Raw physics problems were the basis of the Blaster class. Gabby, along with the others, looked to Stephan.

Stephan refused to make eye contact, staring at the base of his staff instead.

Gabby was about to move forward to attempt the problem, when Mouse leapt forward. "Fine. I'll try it," she said with uncharacteristic vigor.

Mouse gave it her best attempt, utilizing the strategy that Unthar had used and made an educated guess when the countdown began. She was wrong and yelped and grabbed her leg, falling onto her side.

Gabby and Avony both shot Stephan nasty looks.

"What?" he asked. "I'm not fully healed from my fall. If I get that wrong then you'll have to carry me to the next challenge."

Gabby frowned at Stephan's cowardice, but as the elevator left the third stop and headed downward, Gabby saw the movement of people in the tunnel.

"Hey!" she yelled. "Another team was in that tunnel."

Avony nodded. "I saw them, too. If we can get one of these problems right soon, then we won't be too far behind. Besides that dead guy, we haven't seen any sign of the others."

"We can have a good chance of winning if we try," said Mouse, clearly indicating Stephan.

They didn't have long to think about it when the elevator stopped again. Gabby's heart leapt when the bizarre cube appeared.

"What in Mario's name is that thing?" said Avony.

Gabby moved forward as she spoke. "A fractal-recombination cube."

The others hadn't ever seen one before because it was an obscure branch of cryptography that only showed up in highest level of math games, and a required skill to learn if one wanted to be even a low-level hacker.

Gabby set to work right away, spinning the sections in practiced motions looking for a pattern she recognized. The problem she was working on was not too far different than the one she'd used on the track exploit last week.

But it was still different enough that she would need every ounce of her concentration to solve the problem in the allotted time.

Gabby blanked her mind of anything other than the patterns before her, spinning the cube and resetting the fractal angles to create new designs, hoping she would recognize one.

Her arms flew in a blur of motion and in some distant portion of her mind, she heard the others gasp. She ticked through the various fractals, recombining a few times and then moving to the next. A vague clock was ticking in her head and she knew she was running out of time.

When she made the next adjustment, the pattern fell into her mind like an avalanche. Her moment of joy that she knew she could solve the problem was quickly squashed by a big red ten appearing at the peripheral of her vision.

Gabby began recombining the fractal cube as fast as she could. She was racing the countdown and the numbers were winning.

She couldn't see the countdown any longer, her focus had dialed down, laser like onto the cube and the reality around her was completely shut out. The countdown felt like a dead weight around her neck, she didn't think she had enough time.

Gabby spun, pushed, and yanked; manipulating the cube in a frenzy, until at last she shoved the keystone into the final position. She expected the burst of pain, thinking she was too late.

Instead she was rewarded with silence. A big red "TWO" hung off to her right. Avony's eyes were wide in amazement.

Then the cube and the red two disappeared, and the grating covering the tunnel slid into the wall, leaving the way open for them.

They hobbled off the platform and into the new tunnel. Mouse patted her on the back as she went by and Unthar gave her a strange nod that she assumed had to be a sign of respect.

Only Stephan seemed uninterested in the result of her display. Gabby didn't like the way he was sulking off to the side on his own, almost looking disappointed.

Gabby filed that thought away as they moved into the tunnel which quickly led into a wide cavern. They didn't have long to get used to their new surroundings, when from atop an outcropping of rocks, two figures leapt into view, aiming a bow and a staff at them.

"Stay where you are, unless you'd like to be frag-bait," said the boy with the staff.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Their defensive position couldn't be any worse. The two ranged classes had them pinned down in a narrow tunnel. The Hunter and Blaster could kill at least two of them before they could even get halfway to the rock outcropping, and Gabby had to assume that the other three were lurking somewhere nearby.

"I didn't realize we were PKing in this raid," Gabby yelled out.

"Kill or be killed," said the boy with the staff. "We got ambushed this morning."

Gabby couldn't remember the boy's name, she was always forgetting their names.