Nova Project #1 (14 page)

He does, and he does. “This is a bad idea, Mig,” Nick says, jogging to catch up. Their boots echo on the stairs. “We need all five of us.”

“Do we? We know how the level goes between the last save point and the boss. Simple treasure hunt.” He opens the door to the gaming room, breathes in the dim light and air of expectation. “And we're not re-collecting any of the stuff we found, not even the arm. That never works, once you pass the next save point. If we could keep going back and collecting invincibility orbs over and over, that's all we'd do. We'd never get through the game. So we're just going to go to the
building and see if we can trigger the monster.”

“And if we can't? Or the arm was the only thing we could take?”

“Then we can't.” Miguel turns away, opens his cabinet, takes out his visor and sensor strips. “But at least I tried,” he says more quietly. He feels Nick's hand on his shoulder.

“Mig, man, no matter what, you're going to get it. Whether through the competition or out in the normal game when it's over, you're going to get what you need.”

The gaming rooms always have their own special kind of hush, soundproofed, protected from the world outside and containing an entire world within. He doesn't want to tell the others what's wrong with him. Don't show your weakness to the world. Cover up your flaws. But this is Nick, who already knows most of it, and maybe it's the right time, the right place, for Nick to know everything. He closes the cabinet door, visor hanging from one hand, and leans against the glass. “I'm not going to make it in the normal game. I don't have enough time.”

Nick visibly pales in the soft light. “Did a doctor tell you that?”

“Yes.” He bows his head. He's been telling himself she was wrong and that's why they let him into the competition. He remembers the look of certainty on her face, and that was before he'd entered this Cube for two months of solid gaming. “But I think I knew anyway. I could feel it, and I was trying to
ignore it. The game getting harder, me getting weaker. This competition is my last chance. I either have to find a new heart in the game, or I have to get one as a prize when we win. Or—”

The first time he told Nick he was sick, they both were too young to totally understand it, Miguel repeating stuff his parents and doctors had said without fully grasping what any of it meant.

Nick had nodded slowly, and then he'd walked away.

It seems they're both remembering that. “I don't have any rocks right now,” he says, putting on his visor, “but I've got your back. Come on.”

They grab pulse guns from the cache, hit the save point on the overworld. The level, the city, is different at night, the extreme detail blurred by the moon. Different digital people go about different businesses in the semidark. Lit up, the hoverboard station beckons more than it had the first time, waiting to release two of the disks into their hands. They don't need to wait for Grace's fear, for Leah or Josh, and so they speed through the sky, aiming for the landmark they'd seen explode a few hours ago. What's damaged stays damaged, but they have rewound time, gone back to the moments before the destruction. They land on the observation deck and don't linger in the weird living room in the sky or stop on their way down to the ground floor. It's a good thing they're not repeating the treasure hunt, no way could he hold Nick down that elevator shaft alone.

Under the chandelier, Miguel pauses, shrugs. A clue, in
hindsight, but just because he hasn't seen anything to indicate a heart, that doesn't mean he's not supposed to take it.

He exchanges a glance with Nick. They're both ready. The ground had started to shake just after they stepped outside the first time. He pushes open the door and strides out, into the empty square surrounding the building. Far enough to avoid the explosion, but this time he's not running.

He waits.

Stillness. A perfectly rendered cloud drifts across a hand-drawn moon.

The weapon is heavy in his hand. “Come on!” he screams, stomping the concrete with a steel-capped boot. “Come and get me!”

Nothing happens. He looks helplessly at Nick. He's so close to getting it. Josh said it was full of green light. He wants to live. “Come on!” he screams again.

“It's not going to work,” Nick says, softly to counter Miguel's panicked volume. “Either because we don't have everyone here or because we just can't repeat ourselves. Let's get out, get some sleep, wait for Josh to recover.”

Numb, Miguel nods. A sound is building in his ears, mixed with rushing blood, and it's not until the second he quits out that he thinks he identifies it. He stands in the gaming room, visor still over his eyes, with the Storyteller's laughter echoing through his mind.

“N
ice try, Mr. Anderson,” says Blake, watching one of many monitors. The outside world might have to wait for a status update to know where their favorite team is, but Blake and Lucius can see what's happening whenever they wish. Creator benefits. Several other screens are active, too, teams in various parts of the world obeying biological imperatives of day and night in their respective time zones.

Not much surprises Blake these days, his eyebrow had raised only a fraction at the sight of his favorite player reentering a level he'd already played. He knew instantly why the boy had done it, but he wasn't going to make it so easy. The boy knows now how he might get himself a new heart even before he crosses the finish line, he will simply have to wait and see if there are any more opportunities to do so.

Blake smiles and gives the monitors a final, cursory glance
before he stands. He's hungry. Perhaps Lucius could go for a bite, there's that all-night place downtown that does the incredible shrimp thing. He spent part of the evening double-checking the coding on the water level, he could just go for some seafood, artificially farmed though it may be.

Nothing's the same as it once was. That thought might cause Blake some sadness if it weren't for the far happier one that things are heading in exactly the right direction.

He fetches Lucius, and they hoverboard to the restaurant. Nobody knows who they are, but they have no trouble getting a table in the corner where they can talk without being overheard.

“Horses for everyone next,” says Lucius between bites of shrimp.

“We need to test them.”

“Oh, agreed. A handful of teams have progressed to the third level already, I notice, but they're all still in the early stages. And Eighteen, of course, has been delayed.”

Blake's lips twitch. “I wouldn't call it delayed, Lucius. All the teams will experience off-line time while one or more of their numbers are undergoing surgery. You're trying to provoke me.”

“I would never,” says Lucius, the very picture of innocence.

The lie doesn't really count since they're both aware of it. “If I haven't said so before,” Blake says, “your choice of story
was inspired. I have of course told my superiors it was my idea, but between us . . .”

“Well, it's a good story,” Lucius replies, pleased. “The fact that it's complete lunacy doesn't change its creative appeal. Besides, we didn't steal the whole thing, just what we needed. We're not”—he waves a hand and lowers his voice as if about to curse— “
plagiarists
or anything. More of an homage, really, when you think about it.”

“Are you trying to convince me or the people you visited the other day?”

“Should've known you knew about that. Both, I suppose.”

“You're fine,” Blake assures him. “Dessert?”

[J
acques Vernier] Come on,
Eighteen
, you were looking good, now you've just stopped.

[Leonardo Pereira] Right?
Eighteen
rocked that boss they met on the second level, way better than some of the other teams.

[Jacques Vernier] Ha, yeah, did you see
Twenty-six
? I could've beaten that thing faster than they did. Hurry up and get your dude back,
Eighteen.
I wanna see what he looks like with that new arm.

[Hona Ojima] And what he can do with it. One hundred and ninety-nine other teams to beat,
Eighteen.
Get on with it.

T
he next destination glows on the overworld. Two levels down, two items collected. A knife, an apple. No idea yet what they're for.

Miguel pulls off his visor. Going in alone would be dumber than going in with only Nick, and probably even less effective. It's been three days, and he's tired of waiting. No wonder the Gamerunners said the competition would take two months if half the time is going to be spent doing nothing while team members are busy getting upgrades. It's not just Josh, several other teams are a member down now, and so Eighteen isn't the only one whose tag is filled with messages from people who for whatever reason have decided to cheer for them but are getting almost as impatient as Miguel.

He doesn't care much about the spectators; he's been reading the messages only out of boredom. He doesn't need fans to win, but he does need his team, and at this point it feels
like Josh is just enjoying lying in a hospital bed upstairs and having his every whim catered to.

The door opens behind him.
The door opens behind you
, says the imagined voice of the Storyteller inside his head, narrating his life. He needs to get back into the game.

“Hey,” says Leah.

“You're back.” She had disappeared the morning after Josh's surgery, after Miguel and Nick had so fruitlessly sneaked back into the game.

“Yeah, I went to visit my family. They worry, you know. Typical overprotective parents.”

“Oh, believe me, I get that,” he says, though given what happened to her sister, he guesses her parents' protectiveness isn't typical. He still gets it. “Look, I don't think I ever said I'm sorry about what happened to her.”

She shrugs, steps toward him, her large eyes shadowed for a moment, clearing again. “Thanks. How've you been?”

“Fine. Ready to get back in there.”

“Me too. He's still lazing around in bed, right? Where are Nick and Grace?”

“Nick's probably talking to his girlfriend. Grace, I don't know. She hasn't made an effort to be sociable.”

“Something tells me that's normal for her. Nick's girlfriend . . . who used to be your girlfriend.”

“He tell you that?”

Leah shakes her head. “You're not the only one who can use a computer.”

“Ah.”

“That's not a problem for you?” she asks, eyeing him curiously.

“That you can use a computer? No. No, I'm okay with that.”

He gets the distinct impression that it's a good thing the gaming room is empty, their visors and sensors locked in their cabinets, because there's nothing handy to throw at him. But he also doesn't think she'd throw anything that'd hurt too much. “You know what I mean.”

“It's not a problem.” He walks past her to the door but holds it open, invitation more than chivalry. She doesn't actually need anyone to hold the door for her, she could probably rip it off its hinges. She's slim, but there's a poised strength to her that makes him glad she's on his side. Like she's just waiting for the right target to let loose.

He's doing better, he thinks, at treating her like a person and not a digital helper. He's even treating her like a friend, albeit not a close one. She knows as much about him as Seb or Taz or Amanda. Man, he hasn't thought about those guys in ages. He should ask Nick how they're doing. Check in. They've probably been following the status updates he's posted about the game, but he hasn't followed theirs about whatever they've been eating for breakfast. He doesn't care, but he should still say hi.

Leah is just behind his shoulder, where she'd be in the game. She still has questions for him, an idiot would guess that. He's not ready to answer them, but he'll have to at some point, after the competition is over, if not sooner.

“There are sixty-four bones in the human arm, starting from the shoulder,” she says. He stops, the doors to the medical bay visible ahead, decorated with a stylized
C.

“What?”

“Just thinking about Josh and what he had replaced.”

“Um. Okay.”

“I like weird facts.”

“Good to know.” The doors open with a hiss. It doesn't matter what Josh lost, it matters what he gained. That biomech is guaranteed to be stronger than what he had before, and strength is never a bad thing in Chimera. If it ends up helping them, he might forgive Josh both the delay and the stupid stunt he pulled to get the thing in the first place. Whether he'll ever forgive Josh for not telling him about the arm while the boss was still alive, not giving him a chance to check— Miguel's not thinking about that. It's easier that way.

The arm looks good. Josh is in a secluded room, eating cake with it. His bed is half shielded by green curtains, two shades lighter than the walls. Chimera's designers take this whole color theme business seriously. “You ready to put that thing to the test?” Miguel asks from the doorway.

“Dude, I've been ready since yesterday morning, it was those damn doctors.” Yeah. Another thing Miguel knows about. “They said I could go once I'd eaten something, though.”

“You're never going to put a shirt on again, are you?” Leah asks.

“Nope.”

“Oh, good.”

“And you won't believe what I can lift now. It's awesome.”

“Can you find Nick and Grace?” Miguel asks Leah. She nods and jogs back toward the exit, excitement lighting her eyes in the brief look she gave him before taking off. They're all ready to keep playing, catch up with the teams who have overtaken them, run ahead,
win.

Josh has figured out—or been taught—how to use the claw pretty well; he moves it easily as he dresses. Miguel looks down at his own finger, his singular piece of biomech. There are other things he could have earned along the way, most people he knows are more chimera than he is, but surgery for things he doesn't need hasn't been worth the risk. Despite their skill, that the game's doctors can take someone's arm off and have them up and running again in a couple of days, his unpredictable body can't handle the stress. The next time he goes under a laser knife, it will be for the thing he wants.
Needs.
Anything else can come after that.

Tiny lights flicker around Josh's bicep and in a line from
elbow to wrist. It is functioning properly, receiving signals from his brain. Josh reaches up to scratch at his hair, the silver arm gleaming. It's made of tough stuff, but it won't stay so pristine forever.

A tiny part of Miguel hopes that Josh will struggle with lacing his boots, curses internally when they present no challenge. Oh, well. There'll be enough challenges in the game. Nobody stops them as they go, Miguel doesn't see any doctors at all, so either Josh picked his moment or he was telling the truth about being allowed to leave. Miguel doesn't really care which. He wants to get back inside.

Nick, Leah, and Grace are in the gaming room when he and Josh get there. Their sensor strips on, visors in their hands, they almost look more impatient than he feels. Almost. He posts a quick status update—that Eighteen is about to enter the third level—straps on his sensors, and swaps his lenses for his visor. They have no idea what they might need from the cache. A supply of weapons, the first-aid kit. Leah grabs a length of rope. Miguel's invincibility orb beckons from a shelf. It will make any challenge easier, but only for ten minutes. He's not going to use it until he has to.

In the overworld, the save point he'd returned to with Nick catches his eye, but this time he touches the new glowing spot, halfway across the green globe from the first one. He is expecting the air change, the scenery, but with any new level
there is always an instant of held breath, of anticipation, of not knowing what he's about to see. A lake of fire or the top of a skyscraper? A mountainside or an empty gray room?

You are on an old dirt road. Fields and woods surround you. To the west, there is a village. It is raining.

He remembers her laughter. Miguel grits his teeth as a particularly fat drop of rain splats on his head. “Can you get that thing wet yet?” he asks Josh.

“Fully waterproof.”

“Then let's go.”

“Wait,” says Leah, holding out her arm. “I hear something.”

Miguel holds his breath as she cocks her head to listen. The others stop moving.

“What is it?” he finally asks in a low whisper.

She shakes her head. “Like . . . thunder? I think.”

“Makes sense,” says Grace. “It's raining.”

She's like a physical manifestation of the Storyteller. Stating the obvious and mostly unhelpful.

“Yeah,” Leah agrees. “Okay. Do we know which way west is?”

Miguel calls up a compass on his visor, checks it, points. The road is washed out, slick with mud, but it is a path to follow. The sky darkens, the rain falls heavier. Somewhere, in a gaming room, his body is warm and dry, walking in place on a sprung floor. He shivers as the water seeps down to his skin.
Nick summons coats and hands them out; Josh can barely get his claw through the sleeve. A pulse of envy beats Miguel's heart, and he touches his biomech to his wrist. He's fine, just walking. He likes to walk. But he'd prefer it if it felt like they were actually getting somewhere. The village still hasn't come into view, no lights or buildings to indicate any signs of life. The trees are pointed shadows, the fields patches of deep gray fading to black.

He has the feeling that they should be spending this time bonding . . . or something. Talking at least.

He falls into step beside Leah. “What are you hoping to get out of this?” he asks, voice low, covered by the sound of rain hitting the road. She can hear him.

“Rewards, you mean?”

He has to lean in to catch her answer. He doesn't have her hearing. “Yeah.”

“Whatever I can pick up, whatever I can find. But at the end, if I can get it, there's a procedure I want.”

He turns his face to her, raises his eyebrows in question.

And she shakes her head. “I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours, and I'm guessing you don't want to.”

“What makes you say that?” Years of pain and secrets, of not showing his weakness, have given him a very good straight face.

“There's something about you. You're super private, even
your Presence doesn't reveal much about you except that you play Chimera a lot. So either that's all there is to you, or you're careful about what you share.”

“Maybe that's all there is to me.” It does feel like that, sometimes. Wake up, go to school, play. On and on and on, for all the time he has left.

She laughs, the sound swallowed by a rumble of thunder. “I doubt that. Either I'll figure it out or you'll tell me when you've decided you can trust me.”

Another pulse, guilt this time. A familiar emotion, but a strange one to feel inside Chimera.

“You know what this reminds me of?” Josh asks, stopping in the middle of the road and turning to face Miguel and Leah. Up ahead, Nick stops, too. “That part of Seven where you have to walk through the city for ages, not finding anything, and I mean there weren't even any weapons or a damn piece of rope, because the point was that by the time you got to the boss you'd be too tired to fight it. It took me weeks to get past that, I kept not being rested enough.”

Miguel's mouth opens. Josh is right. Another of Chimera's clever tricks.

“Yeah, but there was a shortcut,” says Miguel.

“Was there?”

“Through the shopping mall. Don't worry, it took me a while to find it, too.”

“So where's the shortcut here?” Grace looks around. Nothing but fields and woods and darkness.

“I have no idea. Cache: summon flashlights.”

It takes an hour of searching, a black night fully drawing in around an increasingly heavier storm. They haven't found a save point, they can't stop or they'll have to do this all over again. There are tents in the cache, but he doesn't love the idea of putting them up in the rain.

Finally a path, splitting off the road and heading through the trees. A few minutes later a village appears through the leaves.

“Good thinking,” he says to Josh, clapping him on the new arm. Ow.

They're tired, but not too tired to keep going. Hungry more than anything, and the lights of a tavern on the edge of a main square beckon them.

“Let me,” Nick says, pushing around Miguel to open the door, as if there might be some boss lurking behind it. Which, okay, there might be, but Nick going in first won't make much of a difference.

No demons, but no people. Not regular Chimera people. Those . . . can't be called people, can they?

And yet, when he thinks about it, that's what they're all looking to become. Humanoid robots, sitting at tables, drinking god knows what from steel mugs.

Miguel doesn't think they can eat here, and there's no green light.

“Hello?” he says. None of them look up. Well, that makes them more like regular Chimera people.

Okay. They need to find out why they're here, what the point is. There are always signs, in every level, every challenge. He looks around the tavern. The incongruity of the brick and wood and fireplaces with the gleaming metal is both startling and familiar. All worlds are a blend of history and future, of the impossible and the certain.

“Can we spend the night in here?” Leah asks. “The storm's getting worse.”

He trusts her hearing. He doesn't know. Putting up a tent in the rain is suddenly a more appealing prospect than bedding down around these guys. They're not looking at anything with their glowing eyes, not speaking to one another with their metal mouths. He shivers again, and not from the cold, wet clothes fused to his skin. He's used to seeing people who are part machine—he can't remember the last time he saw anyone over the age of twelve who wasn't. He's never thought of them as creepy before.