Multiplayer (24 page)

That evening, his mother drove him over to Sabrah’s house. She collapsed into his arms and he held her tight, feeling her slender body heave with sobs. She’d been crying all day and her eyes were swollen and bleary and lifeless. The two of them spent the rest of the evening talking about Chaz. Mostly Hector listened. That’s what he remembered from when his father had died. The people who would sit and listen to him talk about his father, smile with him at the good memories, and weep with him at the loss. It made him feel less alone. And while his own sense of loss at Chaz’s death was surprisingly poignant, like having a great treasure swept out of grasp just as it was discovered, he knew Sabrah’s pain must be far deeper.

She wasn’t in school the next day, or the day after that. Hector went to her house and they talked some more about the details of Chaz’s death. He’d been hit by a car after walking her home. No witnesses. No one stopped. Random. Life was like that, Hector figured. Entirely random. Nine-eleven, random. Chaz, random. His dad getting killed. Random.

After a few days, they headed to the school. The rooftop wasn’t the same. Without their friend’s mirth, it became a cold, lonely place despite the heat radiating from the bricks after a day in the sun. Still, it felt like the right place to be.

“Irony,” said Sabrah, leaning against the brick wall. “At lunch last week, you said Chaz was dead. But you meant Rada. He dies in the game, then dies in real life. Ironic.”

Something prickled on the back of Hector’s neck when she said it. Something disturbing, but he couldn’t pinpoint it. He was missing something. Something obvious.

“I’ll never play
Omega Wars
again,” said Sabrah. “It’ll remind me of Chaz.”

Hector took her hand in his. It was cool and smooth and he liked the way it made him feel. “That’s not really a bad thing, is it? I tried for a long time not to think of my dad and it only made things worse. Sometimes I like to think about the good times, even if it makes me sad.”

“Is that why you keep your dad’s character in your online lair?” she asked.

Hector felt a rush of anger.
Deion!
He forced himself to remain calm. “I guess Deion told you that, huh?”

“Yeah. When he called. We were talking about Chaz, and you’re the only one we know who’s lost someone close. I guess you enjoyed playing OW with him.”

Enjoyed, Hector thought, as a mixture of rage and frustration twisted in him.
Enjoyed?
That was pathetic. What he’d enjoyed was real life. But C0L0N3L W35T was the only thing he had left.

“Hey,” she said, and he glanced over to see her shining eyes gazing at him. She rubbed her hand along his arm. “I didn’t mean anything by it. Relax.”

It was only then Hector realized he was crushing Sabrah’s hand. He loosed his grip. “So, are you coming back?”

Sabrah looked blankly out over the rooftops. “I’m not even any good, Hector. Veyron is a waste of bandwidth.”

“I tried being an empath,” Hector said. “My dad and I played them for a couple of months. I got to where I could cause a pressure pulse, and hover a little bit. My dad actually teleported a few things.”

“That’s way more than I can do,” she said bitterly. “Why’d you stop?”

“Because it made my head feel like someone was pounding on it with a sledgehammer.” He had been looking for a way to bring this up. “Maybe you just need some more practice. Why don’t we log on tonight. Just you and me. I’ll keep the scarobs and thorks away, and you can work on your powers. If everything goes okay, we can try to get into Alanya and scout around a little.”

Sabrah thought about it for a moment. “Chaz’s funeral is tomorrow, Hector.”

“al-Nib said the rehearsal for Operation Scimitar is tonight. I was sort of wanting to see what it was. Scimitar.”

Sabrah’s body became rigid. “How could you be so insensitive?” she blurted, tears suddenly welling in her eyes. She lifted his hand and plopped it on his leg.

Hector felt a rush of blood go to his face. “I didn’t mean –”

“Chaz is dead, and you’re going to go on with the game he was playing like nothing happened?”

“We’re still alive,” said Hector. “He would want us to go on.” Even as he said it, he cringed. It had been a stupid thing to say. Hollywood at its worst.

Sabrah’s face contorted in a scowl. “Want us to go on? Want – us – to ? This is real life. And you’re worried about a stupid game! How can you even think about playing?”

“I just want to – Look…” Hector paused. She was right of course. Somehow he was having trouble saying what he meant. He tried again. “Chaz didn’t die for the game, Sabrah. He was killed in an accident. The only reason the killer will be trouble is because she drove off. It isn’t like she was out roaming the streets looking for someone to run down.”

“She?” Sabrah scoffed. “Why do you think it’s a woman?”

“Sabrah, it’ll probably turn out to be some old lady who didn’t even know she hit him. When she takes her car to the body shop, the owner will call the cops and they’ll find her.” Sabrah paused for a moment in thought. Then agreed with a nod. “So,” Hector went on, “there is no reason we can’t go on with the quest.”

That comment brought tears to Sabrah’s eyes. “I played my first
Omega
with Chaz. I can’t even pick up a controller without thinking about him.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. She swiped them away. “I would think you, of all people, would understand that – since you –” She paused and glared at him through her tears. “You torture Sanjar just because terrorists killed your father.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

Sabrah jumped to her feet. “Everything!” she yelled in his face, then climbed down to the ground and ran off sobbing.

Hector sat on the roof feeling at once confused, idiotic, and angry. At any moment he expected Chaz to vault over the edge, sit down beside him, and tell him women were irrational and not to worry about it. But of course he didn’t. And he never would.

No respawn. No replication chamber. Game Over.

Ch. 21

Hector’s mom was in the kitchen cooking dinner. “What’s up, hotshot?” she said pleasantly, when he came in through the back door. Hector had noticed a change in her since the night on the couch, even before Chaz’s death, and far more striking after. The TV wasn’t on. Instead, soft rock music came from a docked iPod.

“Just hanging out,” he said, and swiped a celery stick from a vegetable tray, wondering if Sabrah really was mad or just emotional. Or both. Girls could be so difficult.

“Who with?”

“Sabrah,” he said, crunching down on the crisp vegetable. He braced himself but his mom just smiled and didn’t say anything.

“Mom,” said Helen, barging into the kitchen. She greeted Hector with a scowl then turned back to their mother. “Can I go out tonight?” She was holding an opened cell phone.

“Who, where, when?”

“Shah and I were going to get together at his house and study for an English test tomorrow.” Hector rolled his eyes and groaned, but they both ignored him.

“Are his parents at home?” Mom asked.

“They’re up at the store. But Sanjar’s home.”

“He’s welcome to come over here and the two of you can study in the dining room.”

“You’re so old fashioned!” she said, and stomped out. “You’re even worse than his parents!”

“Thank you for the compliment,” she called after Helen, and chuckled softly, “That girl.”

“She’s been spending a lot of time with him,” grumbled Hector.

“He’s a nice boy.”

“Sabrah’s a nice girl, but you don’t want her over.”

His mom didn’t look up. She just kept stirring the pot. “Hector, don’t you have some studying of your own to do? Your history report won’t finish itself. And your math grade is still way too low.” Hector took another celery stick off the tray and headed out. “It’s time to study!” she called after him. “If I catch you playing games, I’m going to smash that game console out in the street. Savvy?”

Hector went to his room and shut the door. He needed to get into
Omega Wars
to find out what Operation Scimitar was, but wasn’t sure his mother wasn’t joking. He usually accessed Omega Wars from a game console but it ran on a computer too. Hector didn’t have the computer version but Chaz had showed him how to use a computer as a terminal across a local area network. But if his mother caught him… And he did need to work on his Alanya report. It was due in just a few days.

His mom had dropped his
Omega Wars
vacation when Chaz was killed, but he hadn’t been ready to go back to it before now anyway. He glanced at the notes he’d taken the night Mal-X killed Rada.
Visas.
Tickets
.
Operation Scimitar
. Obviously they were rehearsing for this Operation Scimitar. But what was it? And why would al-Nib pay GoreFiendHell to keep people off the peninsula?

He stared blankly at his computer screen thinking about his fight with Sabrah and everything else that was happening. Frustration built inside him like a boiler with too much steam. Eventually, it would explode. He didn’t know what to do. He mindlessly checked his email only to find a message from MegaSoft telling him his terrain change request had been approved. He could get into the citadel now without being seen if Alkindi’s sub was finished!

“I hope you’re working,” came his mother’s voice from the kitchen. “I’ll be up to check on you in a few minutes.”

“Okay,” he hollered back. There was just no way to do it right now.

Hector opened up his Alanya report, a combination of word processing and slide presentation documents, and the website he’d been using for information; www.alanya-for-peace.com. Today’s main topic was the itinerary of the summit. Most of the meetings were going to take place in the resort Izaak had broken into the other night. But they were going to open the summit with the President and other world leaders in the ruins of the citadel. The ancient Byzantine church and mosque in the courtyard were to demonstrate how Christianity and Islam had peacefully coexisted.

He read three pages, but the words didn’t sink in. He read them again. After a dozen times, he stopped in frustration, and stole into the bonus room. He removed
Hello Kitty
from the game console, then had to search for the
Omega Wars
disc which wasn’t in its case. All the while, he kept glancing over his shoulder expecting his mother to come walking in. He finally found the disc in the
Hello Kitty
box and swore in frustration as he inserted it into the game console. But instead of straightening out the filing system, he put the
Hello Kitty
disc in the case of a skateboarding game no one ever played.
Let her try to find that!
Hector thought, satisfied.

Back in his bedroom, he connected to his game console in one window and minimized the Alanya presentation in the toolbar, so if his mother came in, he could click on it and it would instantly fill the screen, hiding
Omega Wars
. He just wanted to see what Pappous’ cave looked like. And maybe, if there was time, check out the training exercise.

Ω

It was the first time he’d been to Alanya in a week. But when Izaak awoke, there was a new set of armor laid out beside him. Probably from Deion, Hector thought.

Instead of a solid breastplate, Hector recognized it as similar to a type of armor worn by Roman Legionnaires; horizontal strips of metal wrapped around the waist and stacked to form a flexible metal cuirass. And it didn’t have large, solid shoulder guards either, but more overlapping strips of metal which were flexible but highly protective. The helmet was different too, an ancient Spartan design except the crest was cropped close and the eye-slits and open face were covered with a tinted shield. It also had optics that dropped down over the right eye and the link-antenna Izaak had grown so dependent on.

He donned the armor, which his inventory registered as Lorica-SAC and immediately discovered it enhanced his mobility without sacrificing protection. Like his old armor, it featured refractive camouflage. The helmet was also improved with a targeting reticle that not only zoomed, but featured several image processing modes that helped locate camouflaged targets and could also see infrared. As Izaak tinkered, he discovered it could be mapped to the scope of a weapon. He could fire around corners or over obstacles now and still be able to target. And Alkindi had been busy. The mini-sub sat low in the water just beside the dock. It didn’t look like a boiler anymore but had a cruciform tail at the rear, a large propeller just behind the tail, and a periscope.

Before trying the sub, Izaak headed upstairs to see what had been happening in Alanya over the last week. Since - the thought blew up in his mind like a bomb - since Chaz had died. The last time he’d been here, Chaz had been with him. He’d been here, doing this same thing, when Rada had appeared behind him. But that would never happen again. He glanced at the monitors as he had done that night too, wishing with all his might that Rada would appear. Wishing as he’d done a thousand times with his father. A million times. Sabrah had been right. Why was he here? How could he have been stupid enough to ask her to join him? His friend hadn’t been dead for a week.