Gamerunner (13 page)

Then the sobbing stopped, suddenly, and her breathing was louder, as if she’d turned to look at the cupboard.

Yes, that’s right, Rick thought. I’m here. Remember? I heard it all.

Not that she moved immediately. Rick counted under his breath: forty-one, forty-two, forty-three. He got to forty-nine before she opened the door.

She was hoping he hadn’t heard. She said, ‘Rick?’

The space and light hit him between the eyes, like a punch. He wanted to get up, but he couldn’t. He looked down at his legs. He knew that they ought to move. The joints ought to do clever things to make him stand up. But there was something missing. He thought: I need to reinstall software. If I could only reconstruct the code . . .

Perdita said, ‘You heard.’

Every word, Rick said, but it stayed inside his head.

She understood anyway. He could tell from the look on her face.

He concentrated on getting up. He tried to lever himself up with his arms. The only thing that happened was that the book-thing fell off the shelf. He’d never seen anything like it. It lay face down with its covers spread, like a dead bird. He looked for a better place to put his hand.

Perdita said, ‘Please, Rick, I’m so sorry you had to hear that . . .’ She was searching his face as if he was a puzzle she had to solve. Her eyes had an extra layer of water. She blinked and a drop slid over her cheek.

Rick felt cold horizontal metal under his fingers, and pulled himself up. His legs felt like they were different lengths. There was too much air, too suddenly.

‘Are you OK?’ she said. ‘Are you ill? Talk to me. Do you need a med?’

That was what she’d said to Daed. Rick shook his head.

‘Say something,’ she said. ‘You’re scaring me. Anything. Shout at me. Tell me you hate me.’

I do hate you. I
do
. But if I could say it, Rick thought, I wouldn’t mean it. Don’t you understand anything?

‘I can’t explain, Rick, but please, believe me, I wasn’t — if I could help Daed I would, I promise, it’s just that —’ Her eyes overflowed again. It was disgusting, like she was incontinent.

He was still on his feet. His head was spinning. He was breathing too fast, too deep. But the door was only a few ems away. He thought about where he was and where he was trying to go. In the Maze there’d be a trap, somewhere. He’d probably die before he got to the comms panel.

He stepped forward. He thought: Oh. It
is
easy. I can just —

The floor blurred, rippled, and came up to meet him.

Chapter 12

He didn’t know where he was. He was lying on his stomach, like he’d been washed up from a shipwreck. His temple was pressed against something flat and hard. He remembered that something bad had happened before he remembered what it was.

Perdita’s voice said, ‘Rick?
Rick
. Oh, no.
Rick
. I’m calling a med. Are you OK? I’m going to call a —’

He wasn’t supposed to be here. He didn’t have clearance to be here. He said, ‘Don’t,
don’t
call a med,’ and then struggled to a sitting position. ‘I’m OK, just, too much air, after the cupboard. I’ll call a med when I get back to my room.’ He didn’t want to talk to her, but he had to make sure she didn’t let anyone know he was here.

‘Thank gods,’ she said. ‘I thought you were dy—’

Silence.

Dying. Oh really? Rick wanted to say. And did you care?

‘Do you want anything?’ she said. ‘Tea? Water?’

Asterion, Rick thought. Whatever it is.

‘Let me get you a glass of water,’ she said. She got to her feet and looked around for a glass. The workbench was clear and everything was on the floor. Most of it was broken. Rick saw the glinting shards of a glass, and the two halves of his tea-bowl. Perdita stared helplessly at the mess, and then round at her shelves. But there was nothing to drink out of. She said, ‘I’ll be back in a sec.’ She went over to the comms panel and logged out. The door opened and closed behind her.

Rick wrapped his arms round his chest and wished he could cry again. It had been like being sick: it got something out of his system. But he didn’t know how to do it.

He didn’t want Perdita’s glass of water. He wanted to leave now, so that she came back to an empty workshop and nothing but mess on the floor.

He needed to stand up. He got on to all fours and hung his head, trying to summon enough strength. His foot caught on something and he looked round. He was still half in, half out of Perdita’s cupboard. His foot was wedged between the cardboard spines of the book-things. He tugged it out, and they flopped forward. White rectangles spread out on the floor like wings. He thought: How histro. Paper. Ink. Handwriting.

He shuffled backwards, so that he’d be able to grab the shelves to get up.

The nearest bit of paper caught his eye. The writing was distorted and hard to read, like a page-long captcha. He focused, like a camera, and after a while words arrived in his head:
Thoughts for Daed re: Centre of the Maze. Ultimate solo — not instance? (Better name, perhaps? Heart of the Maze? Roots?).

He imagined Perdita and Daed, getting drunk together, leaning towards each other. He thought Daed always worked alone.

The page underneath was full of sketches. He stared down at them, spreading his fingers on the paper. He knew they were Perdita’s because of the clarity of the lines; Daed’s drawings never looked like anything but ideas.

He thought: Traps.

Every trap he’d run, in the Roots of the Maze — every trap he’d ever seen — was there. He flipped over the next page, and the next, and after a while he felt like his spine was melting, slowly.

Daed’s ideas, in Perdita’s writing.

But Rick thought Daed had built the Maze alone. He’d thought Daed was —

It was stupid to care. Everyone worked together, didn’t they? That was the point of Crater. There was a whole team of Creatives. Why did it matter so much, that they were Perdita’s ideas?

But it did.

He remembered Herkules404:
Daedalus is a myth
. Rick wanted to block the voice out, but he couldn’t.
You think one person could create this? It takes
hundreds
of designers, years of work, player feedback, and a hell of a lot of AI code to create this.
Daedalus
is just a convenient idea. Not a person.

I’m so stupid, Rick thought.

Daed’s probably not even my father.

He flipped page after page, and familiar things looked back at him. He got to the end of that book-thing, and pulled the next one off the shelf. He opened it, but he couldn’t bring himself to read the handwriting. He ripped the pages across, and then into quarters. He dropped the bits, in handfuls. The cover was too stiff to tear, so he shook out the last scraps of paper and chucked it on the floor. None of that made him feel better, but he reached for another book-thing anyway. He covered the floor around him with white, like he was sitting on an island. He went through book-thing after book-thing until there was a pile of them beside his feet and only one left on the shelf.

The last book-thing — the
file
, Rick thought, that’s it, I think it’s called a file, like on a computer — was thicker than the others. It was a different colour, and dustier, and it had been wedged sideways in the corner of the cupboard. It had been hidden, before he’d taken out the other files. He wouldn’t have known it was there.

He picked it up. It was heavy, and the cover felt softer, like skin.

It’s older, he thought, without knowing how he knew.

He opened it.

He turned the pages. There was nothing here he recognised. There were drawings of things he’d never seen. Diagrams he didn’t understand. There were whole pages of code — program code or maybe just a cipher, he couldn’t tell — but nothing here was familiar. It wasn’t the Maze; but it wasn’t the real world, either.

Just — ideas. Ideas Perdita had never used.

But there were names, and the occasional phrase that made sense.
PROCRUSTES
.
APOCALYPSE — NB: some amendments necessary.

He rolled a corner of a page between his fingers. The paper was thicker, better quality. He wasn’t going to tear it up. Not this file. Not this one. Because . . .

He already knew — didn’t he? — what he was going to find.

He turned the pages slowly, his heart beating double-time.

He was sure, he was almost sure —

What had Perdita said?

If, somehow, you get hold of the roughs — and I don’t know, I honestly don’t know where they are
. . . He’d believed her, when she’d said it. She
hadn’t
known where they were.

But . . .

He turned the pages, and he was thinking: It has to be. The gods are on my side. They’ve given me this, for Daed. It
has
to be —

ASTERION
.

It was coded, and there were pages and pages of it. After the word
ASTERION
there wasn’t anything Rick could read: only numbers, letters and symbols that could have been Chinese or just invented. It took up nearly a third of the file, in dense unparagraphed text. There weren’t any diagrams. Nothing broke up the pages, except lines of black where Perdita had made a correction.

But he didn’t care, because Daed would be able to crack it.

He shut the file, and held it to his chest.

He looked down at the mess of white papers around him. It looked like an iceberg; and if it was an iceberg, it was melting. He had to get out. If Perdita came back —

But now he could move. He was the gamerunner he had been, before he ran the Roots: slick, fluid, fast. He was himself again.

He flipped to his feet.

He logged out and got through the door. He knew he was untouchable. He knew he was going to get back to his room without anything going wrong. The door buzzed and closed behind him, obedient.

He crossed the atrium — the Nucleus — silently, holding the file over his chest, running lightly. Everything was going to be OK. The relief was like a drug: he couldn’t remember how he’d felt an hour ago, couldn’t even imagine it.

The comms panels let him through, like clockwork. He went up the stairs, up and up and up, and he wasn’t even tired when he got to the top. He was laughing under his breath.

So this is the endgame, he thought. I love it.

He skimmed down his corridor, his feet hardly touching the floor. If he hadn’t been carrying the file, he’d have front-flipped and tumbled, just for the hell of it.

He smacked his hand on to the comms panel outside his room and jumped from foot to foot while the door slid open. He bounced through the gap, through the antechamber and into his bedroom. He danced towards the window and spun, his arms spread out wide. His room whirled around him, high-spirited.

A door opened and closed, somewhere.

He stumbled, stopped spinning. The window blurred and suddenly he was dizzy. A shadow crossed his peripheral vision. There was the sound of rain on the chemiglass; and the rustle of clothing and feet on carpet.

He turned round. Everything slid to the left, uncontrollably, and then reset itself, over and over again. He cursed himself, thought: You’re so stupid, Rick, making yourself dizzy, like a little kid, when you blacked out a few minutes ago, in Perdita’s office . . . The floor rocked like a ship. Even his bed was spinning. He wanted to throw up. He was going to throw up.

And there were men in his room. Three men. In black uniforms.

They came towards him.

He opened his mouth to call for Security and had just enough time to realise there was no point. They
were
Security.

Then they’d got hold of him. One of them yanked his arms behind his back. He felt the soft merciless cuffs snap over his wrists. He tried to fight. But in a second he was on his knees, his head forced down, a half-em from the carpet. He shouted, ‘Hey — what the hell — let me
go
, I haven’t —’

Someone jabbed something hard into his kidneys, and a white wave of pain rolled up his spine. A voice said, ‘Save your breath.’

He went on struggling, trying to get to his feet. He knew it wasn’t any good; there were three of them, and he was in no shape to take them on. He said, ‘I’ll tell Daed about this —’

One of them laughed. There was a hand on his neck, and it tightened until he could hardly breathe. Someone said, ‘It’s Daed’s orders, mate.’

‘But we didn’t need much telling,’ the first voice added. ‘Because we’re loyal to our friends. And we don’t like it when little losers like you send them to ICU. You better pray he doesn’t cop it.’

Rick twisted his head, trying to see their faces — anyone’s face. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt hi—’

A hand smacked across his face, from behind. It was deafening. For a fraction of a second it didn’t hurt. Then it did; more than he could bear. He felt the water spill out of his eyes. Slowly he brought his face back to the front and tried not to sob aloud.