Nova Project #1 (13 page)

He looks up. A giant chandelier glows despite the daylight flooding in through the windows. It looks like the twisted metal claw of some robotic god, something now wandering out in the wild, handless.

The bulb pulses. His mouth opens.

He found one once. Only once, and that was lucky. He's the only one he knows who ever has.

“I need those boots,” he says.

“Will they fit?” Leah asks.

“They'll fit.”

“I could get it for you,” she says, but he shakes his head. No. He's going to claim it. It's his. He needs it most.

“Cache,” she says, blinking. “Summon boots.” They appear in her hand. “I still haven't used these,” she says, passing them over without argument. They're tight, not as bad as they must've been for Josh. He can put up with it for a few minutes. Also, how big are her feet?

“Don't even. Buying shoes is a pain in the ass. I have most of them custom printed when I can.”

Oops. He hadn't meant to be that obvious about it. Oh, well.

“Mig—”

“I'm fine,” he tells Nick, walking to the wall. He just needs
to walk up it and then hang upside down for a while. No problem at all.

The wall actually
isn't
a problem. It's a little weird, leaning forward and trying to pretend the laws of physics are just optional guidelines, but in Chimera they kind of
are
optional guidelines, and he's done stranger stuff in the game when he's had to. One foot in front of the other, one breath and another, one prayer that the soles will cling again every time he lifts his foot.

He stops with his face six inches from the wall.
Ceiling.
Now for the fun part. His arms automatically spread for balance, like that's important, but it's better than letting them hang down above his head. Or below. Whatever. No wonder bats use echolocation, this seriously fucks with perspective.

Each step is more careful now. One, two, three toward the middle of the ceiling that has become a floor. Cool air blows across an inch of belly; he tucks his shirt tighter before it can blindfold him and show his crisscross of scars to his team below. His head sways, and the claw blurs, reaching for him. Come, let me crush you in my fist.

Half expecting it to burn, he reaches carefully for the bulb. Far below, Nick says something indecipherable.

“Mine,” he whispers under his breath, fingers closing around it.

As is always the case, the return journey is quicker, easier.
Miguel barely notices the rising blood, the pounding in his head increasing with every beat.

Relief floods him, a better drug than oxygen, when he plants both feet on the actual floor.

“So
that's
what they look like,” says Josh. “I always figured I'd know when I saw one.” An orb of living light, swirling and shifting inside something that feels like glass but that compresses slightly under Miguel's thumb as he tightens his grip on it.

“You good?” Nick asks. Miguel nods.

“Small price to pay for ten minutes of invincibility.”

“Damn it.” Grace pouts. “Wish I'd found that one.”

“Cache,” he says, and it vanishes from his hand. “Status update: landmark achieved.”

T
he darkened chandelier, looking even more like a claw without its bulb, glints in the daylight. It
feels
as if this Chimera, like the normal one, is operating on a standard clock. That could change anytime, but for now nobody's tired and they don't yet have to quit to get some sleep. Good thing because they haven't found a save point yet.

There are patterns everywhere, as a team they've fallen into some already. Miguel leads the way outside, the brilliant preciseness of the world not so overwhelming now that he's used to it.

But his senses are still heightened, maybe from the blood rush. And there's something—

“Run!”

The inhuman pixel people on the street don't hear his shout, don't respond. Thankfully his team does. In this world of insane detail, the seconds are crystalline, individual as time slows. The
earth shakes, rumble to roar, and the explosion is deafening, a chasing hellhound of sound. All that glass, metal, concrete, not real but more than real, shattering. It fills the air around them, a razor shard misses his shoulder by a whistling breath.

Not real. More than real. It's more contained than it should be, would be in the real world, because they're meant to escape it. The building has fulfilled its purpose: to lure them in, reward them, keep them in one place.

He slows two blocks away. Whatever's behind them, they aren't going to outrun it, and he doesn't want to. They have to get rid of it to move on. As one the five of them turn around.

It stands where the tower did, a demon of metal and mirror, mouth bared in a toothless, soulless grin. Red eyed and angry, it fixes on the five and crushes the ground under its first step toward them. Humanlike, but clearly not. He was right about the hands—just the Gamerunners' little joke. Chimera is full of them.

“Get everything you have!” he shouts, scanning the monster. It will have a weakness. Somewhere, a critically weak spot.

“Don't we all?” he asks himself, raising his gun. Aiming.

Bullets ping off its shell, hailstones off a window. Not doing anything, but he has no other ideas except to keep shooting, looking through the sight for the right place. Nick is beside him, Leah just behind to his left. “Flank!” he shouts to Josh and Grace, but they already are, running in different directions to circle it.

The machine monster's head swivels, attempting to keep all of them in view at once. A faint glow seeps from the seams made by its joints.

“Cache! Summon pulse gun!” The weapon in his hand changes to an early, heavier version of one of his favorites in the normal game, one he wishes he had more excuse to use. It should still work even if it's not as good as his old one.

Or it would, if Josh wasn't about to be stupid.

“What the fuck are you doing? Move!” he screams at Josh, who ignores him and runs, leaps onto the monster's back, slipping and scrambling for a grip on the slick sculpted metal. Confused, enraged, the boss staggers, arms flailing. Miguel dives around a corner in a haze of searing red light, a fountain of sidewalk pluming up where he was just standing. He rolls to his back, gasping, hand still curled around the gun. Nick screams his name. Chest burning, fingers numb, he points it but doesn't shoot. “Get off! I can't shoot it while you're on it, I'm gonna fuck up your biomech!”

Josh pretends not to hear him, or actually doesn't hear him. Noise crashes everywhere, and Miguel doesn't know how loud he was, how much voice he squeezed from his burning chest. His eyes still work. Nick and Leah are a few feet away on either side of him, crouched, unable to do any more than he can. Grace is somewhere on the other side of the monster, which is still flailing, swatting at the irritating human on its back.

“What the hell does he think he's doing?” Miguel asks, not expecting the others to answer. Josh is going to get himself or the rest of them killed. He votes for the former, if he has a choice, but damn it, he doesn't want to lose a team member at the first boss.

It takes another heavy step forward, roaring, its eyes blazing fire in its silver skull. Josh is clinging to its neck with one arm, the other hidden behind its shoulder. What
is
he doing, besides pissing the damn thing off? Its clawed hands curl to fists and open again as its eyes focus with laser precision on Nick.

It reaches. Swipes.

“No!” Miguel screams as Nick is lifted in the air, the monster's twisted fingers closing around him. “Josh, you have five seconds to get off there or I'm shooting anyway and fuck your biomech!” But it's an empty threat now, and they both know it. He doesn't mind fusing out the inhuman parts of Josh, but he won't destroy the things Nick's spent years earning.

Seconds feel like minutes. Does he have time to summon the orb, use it so he can just plow the monster down?

Metal screams. So does the monster as its arm disconnects from its shoulder, falling, Nick with it. Josh releases his grip and jumps, landing hard but on his feet. “Now!” Miguel tells Leah, and they both raise their weapons, firing electromagnetic pulses at the roaring, angry robotic hulk. He has no idea how many times he fires, who gets off the kill shot. He doesn't care. The boss raises its
remaining fist for a last furious swing and stops, staring curiously at its own hand as the light in its eyes fades to black.

Miguel scrambles out of the way just in time to avoid being crushed by the tumbling body. He doesn't stop moving, running to Nick, still on the ground. “Where's that first-aid kit? Cache!” He summons it, rifling through, ignoring the disintegrating boss behind him. “Nick? Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” whispers Nick, blinking. “Jesus, stop shouting. I'm fine. Ow.” He points at his ribs and winces. Miguel finds a preloaded syringe, places it against Nick's arm, and presses the button to send the painkillers flooding into his system. Only then does he turn, just in time to see the last metallic flash of the boss wink out of existence, leaving a glowing blue save point in its place. Grace runs over and stomps on it. Like she'd helped at all.

“He okay?”

“Yeah,” Miguel tells Leah, standing. “Want to tell me what that was about?” he demands, advancing on Josh, who smiles, still holding the monster's disembodied arm.

“Quit out,” Josh answers. “I'll show you.”

They do, Nick grimacing as he pulls off his visor in the gaming room. Leah moves to help him with his sensor straps, Miguel follows Josh to his cabinet in the wall.

Inside is a gleaming new biomech arm, its hand a claw, hooked to a power hub, the nicest, most impressive one Miguel's ever seen. “When I got behind it, I saw a green light
where it joined the shoulder. Green light all over it, actually, from the back.”

Oh. “Meaning it could be taken out of the game.” Sort of. Meaning that a replica would be waiting on the outside. “And you decided to risk the whole team without telling me? And not mention that maybe there was other stuff we could take?” Thoughts spark in his brain.
Chimera.
Until now biomech rewards have been selected at the end of certain levels, a restaurant menu of transhuman technology. Turning them all into cyborgs, piece by piece.

This is . . . different.
Rewards that will make your previous enhancements look like toys.
But not earned the same way. Of course the Gamerunners didn't tell them that.

“Sorry.” Josh shrugs.

The doors open, two women in medical uniforms walk in. “We are ready for you,” one says to Josh, gesturing at the open cabinet. “Does anyone else need assistance?”

“I should get checked out.” Nick joins them. “So should you,” he says to Miguel.

“I'm fine.”

“Mig—”

“Seriously.” He is. He didn't go into the gray zone for more than a few seconds.

“We'll be upstairs,” says one of the doctors. Grace follows them out, leaving him and Leah alone. “Well,”
she says, “we beat our first level. Go us?”

“Ha. Yeah. Thanks for the help there.”

“What I'm here for. Do you want to come eat with me? I'm starving.”

He does, but— “I should actually go keep Nick company.”

“Okay.”

He waits for her to leave, walks over to a corner of the huge room. The sprung floor isn't uncomfortable to sit on. His bed or the couch in his suite would be nicer, but she's proven she can get in there, and while he doesn't think she'll check on him right away, he needs to be alone. Needs to think. He puts on his lenses, lighter than the visor he's been wearing for hours.

“Status update: first level passed,” he says, giving no hint how or what was waiting at the end of it. Later he'll read through some updates, see where his competition is.

There's so much he needs to do. Lead his team, keep track of the others, find treasures, defeat bosses.

Find another metal demon.

And tear its heart out.

Ten minutes with the doctors upstairs, and Nick is healed because some things are easy to fix. Miguel's heart can't be healed like that; some things are beyond repair from the moment they begin to exist.

Well, he's one step closer, despite Josh's stupid stunt, which
he'd resent a lot less if it didn't mean a delay. It'll be a couple of days before Josh can play again, and they have to wait for him. Miguel could go home, but it sort of defeats the point of proving his independence, his ability to do this, if he runs back every chance he gets, and the Gamerunners might think he doesn't have what it takes if he leaves again so soon. He's answered his parents' many messages, and Anna's, too, that's enough.

Anna. He's pretty sure that's what Nick's doing, talking to her. His geoloc tag on his last public message had him in his suite, then silence. Miguel's just enough of a masochist to imagine what she's saying to Nick, the same kinds of things she used to say to him, ages ago, but he's still not mad about it. Relieved, if anything, that they're happy and he doesn't need to worry anymore about what being with him did to her.

Which isn't to say there aren't some things he misses.

Leah's in her suite, too, also not saying much publicly online beyond a few vague comments about the level. Maybe she has someone she's talking to.

As with every night of his life that he hasn't been able to play Chimera and hasn't been forced out of the house to do something else, he winds up online, blinking to scroll through page after page on his lenses. Clothes he doesn't need, news he doesn't care about, video game history he's already trawled through too much of. He wouldn't call himself a scholar on the subject, but Chimera fascinates him, and not just the playing of
it. The why, the endgame no one has reached. God, he can only imagine what'll happen when someone finishes the hundredth level: the cameras will be worse than the crowd outside his house when he was named to the competition. That person better enjoy their last Chimera experience because they're never going to get a moment's peace once they defeat it.

He envies them the fame he imagines and the surely completely metallic reflection in the mirror. A body built, small at first, fingers and toes, to spine and ribs and heart and kidneys. Plastic composite skin wouldn't look as cool as silver or black, but it would make them appear more human.

But how much humanity would they have left? They would be full, true . . . chimeras.

A message interrupts his thinking. From the one person he doesn't want to talk to.

[Zachary Chan]
Miguel Anderson
Congrats. I see you beat that boss.

[Self: Miguel Anderson] What do you want?

[Zachary Chan] Nothing, man. Just saying, don't get too cocky. You aren't going to win.

[Self: Miguel Anderson] Go away.

He blinks, sending the text off into nothingness, pulls off his lenses, stares at the ceiling of his suite. He should be thinking about how to do what Josh did. Not all bosses in Chimera are robotic, some are as much flesh as he is. More so, with wings and
talons and tails. Even if he could take the heart of one of those, he doesn't want anything like it put inside his chest. He needs something like the boss they defeated today, another machine.

A sick feeling floods through him. He puts his lenses back on, opens a message to Nick.

[Self: Miguel Anderson] You still talking to Anna?

[Nicholas Lee] Just finished. What's up?

[Self: Miguel Anderson] Come to my suite?

[Nicholas Lee] Roger that.

The knock comes a minute later; Miguel lets him in, wanders over to the sofa, and waits for Nick to slouch down at the other end.

“She okay?” he asks.

“She's great. You haven't talked to her?”

“Not as much as you have.”

Nick smiles. “Fair. She's great. Wanted to know all about the level.”

“Yeah, about that . . .” He stands again, moving to a small fridge the Gamerunners had thoughtfully included among the many benefits of his room. He grabs two bottles of water, tosses one to Nick, who catches it easily. “Josh's new arm,” he says, sitting back down.

“You think that's how you're going to get a new heart.”

This is why they're friends.

“What if that was the only one and I missed it? Sure, the
rest of the bosses we have to face could be humanoid machines, but what if none of them are? I want to go back in. Fight it again. Crack it open and see what's inside.”

Nick's eyes widen. “It's gonna be a couple of days before we can. And, uh, how do you plan on telling the others that we need to go back and repeat half a level we've already beaten without telling them why?”

He knew Nick was going to ask that. “I'm not going to tell them, and I don't want to wait.”

“You mean—”

“Your ribs okay? Awesome. Let's go.” He walks to the door, swings it open, and keeps moving down the corridor, giving Nick no choice but to follow him. If Nick wants to talk him out of this . . .