Nova Project #1 (26 page)

He's heard of people going crazy after procedures, claiming to have seen something weird while they were unconscious. A few neuro tweaks and their status updates make sense again.

The face in the fire opens its mouth, forms a word Miguel can't decipher. He moves back again.

“Too hot,” he explains, letting go of Leah's hand to wipe his clammy one on his leg.

“We really need to decide what we're going to do,” she says.

“What
can
we do?”

“I don't know!” She glares at Nick. “Is sitting around here waiting for the world to end really the answer? I've been reading—”

“Of course you have.”

“Shut up. I've been reading everything I can get my eyes on.” She taps her lenses. “Our souls aren't the only thing
living forever online. There are—were—a million and one theories about what happens at the end times. Some pretty weird stuff. Rains of fish and plagues of locusts. The world just disappearing as if it were never here; one minute we'll be sitting in this park and then nothing. A nuclear explosion that wipes out all of humanity.”

“There're no fish in the oceans, but they're going to rain from the sky?” Nick raises an eyebrow. “Okay.”

“A few days ago you didn't believe in any of this,” Miguel says. “Neither did I. I'm not sure we can draw lines around what makes sense anymore. Besides, according to her, there's no such thing as a fish anyway, so maybe it is unlikely.”

“I tried to tell Anna this morning.” Nick shakes his head. “I couldn't do that to her.”

Ignorance is bliss, until it isn't. She's going to find out sooner or later. Blake and Lucius have been sneaky, clever up to now, but they probably can't hide Armageddon. Unless the world-disappearing thing is right. Like just going to sleep and never waking up. You'd never know.

Painless.

“We don't know
when
,
”
says Nick.

Miguel shakes his head.

Leah's face is shadowed; suddenly it clears like clouds after an acid storm. “I'm going to do what I set out to do,” she says, standing up. “The game is supposed to teach us who we are,
give us the skills and enhancements to do what we need to, right?”

Miguel nods.

“Fine. Then if our souls really exist, if there's really some kind of heaven or hell, I'm going to make sure my sister's is at peace before all this ends. That's the right thing to do, and if I do the right thing, it might not be too late to save myself. We don't know when they're going to stop assessing us, we only know where we are right now. Just accepting it is
not
the right choice.” She pushes herself to her feet and bends down to gather her stuff.

Does this really matter now? Does anything matter anymore?

Leah reads the question on his face as easily as if it were research. “Yes, you idiot, it matters. Little things matter. Lives matter.
Stories
matter, human stories, our experiences. They need to be shared, passed down, remembered. The Gamerunners and their bosses might not get that, but I do. If I'm going to do one last thing on earth before we all go to actual, literal hell, it's going to be something that
matters.
” She's yelling now, and a security guard in a green uniform exactly the shade of the grass moves slowly toward her. “We're going to try to stop this.”

T
he two men meet on a hill overlooking a city. It doesn't matter which city. They weren't expecting to meet again at all.

Below them a battle rages. Somewhere out there, the horsemen are lurking. Close enough to have an effect, but hiding from view.

“Do you know what this is about?” Lucius asks. He's not talking about the war.

“We have been summoned back,” says Blake.

“I
know
that. Do you know why?”

“I do not.”

“Would you tell me if you did?” Lucius asks.

“Possibly.” Blake carefully keeps his face blank. There is no one on earth or anywhere else better than Lucius at reading his expression, and he doesn't want to show how worried he is.

Although, perhaps, he isn't alone. “We could just . . . not
go,” says Lucius. A very un-Lucius-like thing to say. “They'll come and find us wherever we are.”

A shadow falls across the hilltop. Blake swallows, looking over Lucius's shoulder. “They already have,” he says, gazing at the tall black horseman. “What are you doing here?” he asks it.

“Performing one of my assigned tasks,” it says, huge metal hand gripping a weapon. “Though you were not the one who gave me these instructions.”

Lucius steps forward, edging his shoulder in front of Blake. “Who was?”

“Your superiors. They suspected you might not obey your instructions if you guessed why they were given. You are no longer needed, you see. I have been directed to tell you that you have performed your jobs admirably, but they have come to an end. Now you are simply in the way.”

“Wait,” says Blake. If he had a heart, it would have stopped by now. Skipped a beat at least. “They still need us. People are hiding in the Cubes here. We're the only ones who know everything about the Cubes and the game inside.”

“I think you'll find that is not the case,” says the horseman. “And we are intelligent, you created us to be so. Artificially intelligent, ha-ha.”

“We invented you.” Blake's mouth is dry.

“And I can speak for all of us when I thank you for it. Now, come.”

“I don't understand,” says Lucius. “If you're going to do this, why not do it here? Why must we go back?”

“Because your respective superiors have a sense of humor. They wish to see your end in the place where the end began.” Around the horseman's feet, a spreading patch of grass is turning brown.

“We can talk about this,” says Lucius, his eyes cutting to Blake. “Give us a chance to tell the ones upstairs—and downstairs—that we can still be useful.”

“I'm afraid that time has passed. And soon so will you.” The weapon raises another inch. It would not kill a human.

Blake swallows.

Is this what it feels like?

He doesn't want to die.

“Follow me,” says Death. “I will not ask again.”

“I
'm going back to Chimera headquarters,” says Miguel.

“We're coming with you.” Leah stands and brushes off her jeans.

“Guys, no. You can live a little longer, however much longer there is. They don't have to know you're involved at all. And you,” Miguel says, looking at Leah, “you have something else to do. You need to find out what happened to your sister.”

“We don't actually know what they know,” says Leah. “They're . . . gods, or close enough. They probably know everything. They could have been listening to every word we've ever said. We have to assume we have no secrets. You hear that?” she says, louder now. “We're coming for you. And what happened to my sister can wait. I can't save her. We might be able to do something about the rest of us.”

Miguel shakes his head. “We got lucky; it was empty last time. That might not happen again, and if it doesn't . . .”

“Then bad luck for us,” says Nick. “But there's still no chance in hell you're going alone.”

Miguel winces at the word. He never used to. “I don't want it to be empty,” he says. “I want to find Blake. I want him to tell me the truth. I want to see it in his damned eyes.”

“You really think that's smart?” Nick asks. “What's going to stop him from killing you?”

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. But that's going to happen no matter what. He can
try
to make it happen on his terms.

“That's the fourth,” Miguel says, looking from Leah to Nick and back again. “I've been reading. War, famine, pestilence, death. Technically I've already cheated death once. Probably not lucky enough to do it again, so let's make it happen.”

“Mig—”

“If this is all really happening,” Miguel says to Nick, “I don't want to watch it. Come or not. I'm going.”

They take hoverboards this time. Miguel hopes Blake and Lucius are tracking him. In the air it's too windy to talk, which gives him time to think. From what he saw last time, the computers in the building control and gather information only from Chimera and the various online services it's plugged into—there hadn't been any files on Blake's and Lucius's entire . . . pantheon, or whatever. Miguel probably can't do anything to them from there or anywhere.

But he can speak to the world.

He still means what he said to Leah, that given the choice he'd rather not know at all, but that choice doesn't really exist anymore. Everyone's going to find out sooner or later, and the sooner they do, the more they can prepare. Already people across the world are gathering inside Cubes because it's where they think they're safe. They're trusting the very last people they should trust.

He can stop that, or he can try. Guaranteed people are going to think he's crazy. Better to be crazy than complicit.

The building comes into view, its windows faintly aglow with the light cast from monitors busy measuring, filing souls on either side of an arbitrary line. Miguel grits his teeth, commands the board to descend, and lands right at the front door. Screw it. He's not crawling through the vent again.

“Anything?” he asks Leah as the boards rise again, soaring off to return to their station.

She cocks her head. “I don't think so.”

The door is unlocked. Miguel would've broken the glass if he'd had to. He knows where he's going now, and Leah and Nick have to run to catch up with him on the tile, seconds before it ascends.

On the third floor he sits at the same desk he had a few days earlier, in the same chair from which he'd watched Leah and Nick run, the truth too much to take. It had frozen Miguel
in place; he'd sat here for an hour, watching millions, billions of names scroll past.

He wonders now if this is where Blake or Lucius sat when they made the first competition announcement. Probably not, but there's still a pleasing symmetry to being in this building when he does what he's about to do.

Attention, Chimera gamers of the world.

Miguel takes a breath. The microphone light on the computer blinks in time with ones in his chest.

Okay. It's time.

Leah puts her hand on his shoulder. She offered to do the talking, so did Nick, but Miguel won't let them. Very little of this is his fault, but it is his responsibility.

“Status update,” he says.

Attention, Chimera gamers of the world. No, this is not your Gamerunners, but it is your champion.
Far more people follow him now because of the competition. A wider audience. He's counting on that.
And I'm here to tell you that everything you think you know about Chimera is wrong.

Replies start appearing. He ignores them.

You may think Chimera is just a game. You may think it was invented for the benefit of humankind, because we have all benefited from it. In speaking out, I might lose what I've won . . . permanently.

His biomech heart flickers.
Just in posting this message, I'm
risking my life. Remember that as you read. You're going to think I'm crazy, a lunatic. You're going to think something happened to me during the competition that messed with my mind. That's not totally wrong, but I promise you, this is the truth. Or at least, if it's not, the lie comes directly from the Gamerunners. I found it in their systems.

There have been rumors that someone cheated in the competition. It was me. I admit to it. I could explain why, but it doesn't matter anymore. It wasn't just to win, I'll tell you that much. I did it because I thought I had to.

More replies now, an endless stream of them as his words are shared from his followers to their followers to their followers. He ignores these, too. Leah squeezes his shoulder again. Nick holds his breath, blinking behind his lenses.

I'm doing this because I think I have to, too. Chimera wasn't invented to save us. It was invented to sort us. The men you know as the Gamerunners are rivals playing a game with our lives. Some of us are good. Some of us are evil. The Gamerunners want to know who is who, and every moment we spend online, or in the game, they are gathering that information. They are looking through everything we've ever said, every choice we've ever made, and deciding.

Something bad is coming. It's already started. Read your news feeds and look around you. These wars aren't accidents. The problems with the food supply aren't human mistakes.

Chimera was invented to start Armageddon, and it's coming. Believe me, or not, but it's coming.

He turns off the microphone. Nick starts to speak, but Miguel shakes his head. He doesn't want to know what people are saying, at least not yet. One weight lifts, replaced by a new one. This should never have been his job; this shouldn't
exist.

He's done everything he can do. It's up to other people now.

“Okay,” he says, standing. “Time to get out of here, I guess.” It's disappointing—that actually isn't a strong enough word—that Blake isn't here, but he might never come back. Miguel can't just sit here waiting for him.

They're halfway back down the corridor when Leah slams her hand into his chest, forcing him to stop. Nick bumps into both of them. “Wait,” she says urgently. “I hear something.”

“What?” Miguel asks, trying to speak and hold his breath at the same time.

“People,” she answers. “And something else. Not sure.”

Even he can hear the front door open, the voices that come in with the wind. A light in the atrium blooms to life before them.

“You really don't have to do this,” says a voice, amplified by the glass. “We can come to an arrangement.”

“You have already given me the only thing I could ever want,” says another. “You gave me life. You made me into
this.
There is nothing else.”

“Who gave you these orders?” asks yet another voice, and
Miguel's shoulders stiffen. That's Blake, he's certain of it.

“I have already told you. I feel now that you are simply trying to buy time, but I'm afraid, gentlemen, that there is none for sale. You have been assets for a long time, but now you are liabilities. Too influenced by the humans around you. Say your good-byes.”

Miguel feels Nick try to grab him, but he's too quick. “Wait!” he yells, reaching the end of the hallway, feet skidding to a stop where the tile meets the edge of the floor.

For a moment he thinks he's inside Chimera again. A horse waits outside the building, so out of place as to be laughable if anything, anything could be funny anymore.

He's seen that horse before. There are three others like it, of different colors, out there somewhere. It stomps its foot, blows air through metal nostrils.

Its rider stands in the atrium below, huge, black, robotic, gleaming. A skull formed of metal bones, a kind of weapon he's never seen before in the rider's hand, and he's seen a few. It turns at the distraction, glowing eyes staring up at Miguel, Nick, and Leah now. Behind it, weapons appear in Blake's and Lucius's hands. Well, Miguel's so glad to be of service.

“Mr. Anderson,” says Blake, “how nice to see you. Why don't you come down here and join us?”

Miguel had wanted Blake to come here. Now he's reconsidering. “Uh, I don't think so.”

Blake snaps his fingers. “It wasn't a request,” he says, as Miguel, Nick, and Leah land on their feet on the atrium floor. “You're outnumbered,” Blake tells the horseman. “I don't think they're going to take your side.”

“And what makes you think we'll take
yours
?” Leah demands. Her voice doesn't shake, and when death itself is facing you, that's a thing.

“You want answers.”

“You can read our minds now?”

“Oh, sweetheart.”

Triumph flickers briefly across Blake's face and shatters when the horseman wheels around again. “You think I can't kill all of you?” it asks. “That's what I'm for. My name and my purpose. You built me this way.”

“Wait,” says Nick. “You built this thing?”

Lucius smiles weakly. “In a manner of speaking, yes, but it is no longer beholden to us.”

Miguel watches the Gamerunner, the one he hasn't met before. Dressed in white, which is appropriate, if a little clichéd. He smiles more sincerely, staring into the eyes of the horseman. The appearance of the gun in Miguel's hand is so sudden, unexpected, he almost drops it.

Giving him a weapon isn't very angelic. Nick and Leah have weapons, too.

They want to live.

And they are afraid.

“Let us answer him,” says Blake, meeting Miguel's eyes. “He has come this far. He deserves this much.”

The horseman nods impatiently.

“You invented Chimera to sort us,” says Miguel. This isn't a question, he knows it. He's told the world already. But he wants to see Blake tell the truth for once.

“We did. Our superiors needed more results, and technology makes things faster, you know. Automates the process.”

“Your superiors—”

“We don't call them by any of the same names you do, but the base of every story, good and evil, is correct. Those are hard to hide.”

“Story,” says Leah. “The Storyteller, the story mode of the game. The twelve labors, that's a story. And death, at the end, is a kind of immortality.”

Miguel stares at her, impressed. It isn't the first time he's marveled at her ability to make connections.

“Story is important,” says Lucius. “Story is what defines people, story and memory. You know that as well as anyone. Besides, some of them are funny.”

“You think this is some kind of joke?” Miguel can feel the anger radiating off Nick, silently begs for him to calm down. If this all goes to, ha, hell, he won't get the rest of the answers he wants.

“When you've been alive as long as we have, you'll look for amusement anywhere. Trust me on that.”

Miguel doesn't trust them on anything. Blake can read his mind, shrugs. A “fair point” kind of shrug. The weapon in the horseman's hand twitches.

“So why did you pretend you were helping the planet? Humans? All the biomech, saving us. Why make us think we were going to survive?”

“Because the easiest way to go about our business unsuspected was to make it look that way. And because we had things we needed to test.”

“Like the horses.”

“Not only them, but we needed to see how they moved, behaved, yes. Animals are more difficult than people, more unpredictable. Our first experiments with them were dismal failures, but we wanted them. They're one of the best parts of the story, any story. Not to mention that they are known, identifiable, effective. When people see them, see what they do, they will know what's happening. Powerless to stop it, of course, but they'll know.”

“War, famine, pestilence, death. All the things you need to bring about the end of the world.”

“Yes,” agrees Blake, “and this is the most important thing: all things that humanity
does to itself.
What we can do to you is nothing, and I do mean nothing, compared with what you have
always done to one another. But it is time for all that to end.”

“Any more questions?” asks the dark horseman. “I have a duty to perform, and then I must join my fellows.”

So many more. But he knows he's not going to get the chance to ask them all.

Unless . . .

He won't take their side, either of them, but for now he wants them alive, and they have—albeit indirectly—spent years teaching him to defeat monsters. With four people to help him. Years teaching him to defend himself with weapons that just appear in his hands.

Years showing him heaven and hell and the world they have set out to destroy. They're not very creative, but maybe that's a good thing here.

The horseman advances on Blake and Lucius. It's saying something too softly for Miguel to hear, though he's sure Leah can. He can speak with silence, he hopes.