Nova Project #1 (19 page)

Choices. Right ones, wrong ones, ones that fall on both sides of the line at the same time. Miguel closes his eyes.

“I'm not going back,” he says. His team is going to be pissed, but Nick will forgive him, Leah he can try to talk to if she'll let him, Grace and Josh he doesn't care as much about. It's not worth the risk, something else could happen.
What's damaged stays damaged.

His parents will get their son back, for the first time. Maybe they will take a trip somewhere, let him see the world outside Chimera when he has only ever seen it through the lens of a visor. He can always go back to playing Chimera like normal, when he's ready.

“That is . . . a shame,” says Blake, turning to face Miguel. “I did not want to have to do this.”

“Do what?”

Blake raises a hand, points one of those long fingers at Miguel's chest. “The heart you were given is not the one you would have earned had everything gone according to your plans. And mine. It is programmed with a virus and is degrading as surely as your bioheart was. You are no longer in any danger if you exert yourself, but it will kill you regardless.”

“You can't do that.” He can't breathe. He finds the nearest wall, leans on it.

“I invented Chimera. Do you really think I couldn't make this happen?”

“No— But—”

“But finish the game, Miguel. Don't speak a word of this to anyone, win the competition, and you'll have what you want. I promise you.”

“You said you'd already given me what I wanted. Before. Why should I trust you now, when you've told me I shouldn't?”

“Because I had no need to tell you the truth before. You wanted to keep playing, so why tip my hand?”

“Because you're killing me!” When it'd been his own heart, he couldn't do anything. Now the betrayal is outside his body, and Blake's game taught him to hit things. He crosses the room in seconds, fist raised. Blake steps neatly out of the way.

“I don't think you want to do that.”

“You know,” Miguel says, panting, “I really do.”

“Calm down, Miguel. There's no reason this has to change anything. Just keep playing. I can even make it easier for you if you like.”

The best weapons, invincibility orbs around every corner, easy bosses, not to see someone he loves burn alive.
“I won't cheat.”

“Not even with your clever simulation?”

Who
is
this guy? Black spots pop across Miguel's eyes. He gulps the filtered air.

“Why? Why are you doing this?”

“Because I can. Because you intrigue me. Because I want
to. Mostly because my partner and I have what you might call . . . a bet. One I wish to win.”

Miguel swallows dryly. “If you're so big on choices, do I have one?”

“Of course. You may choose to die.”

“You're insane. Nobody would choose that.”

Blake smiles, a knowing smirk that Miguel wants to slap off his face. He guesses that wouldn't end well, though. “You already did, once before. I saved you from yourself then, too.”

The room starts to spin. “How do you know about that?”

“It doesn't matter.”

“And if I say fuck you and go home anyway?”

Blake moves swiftly to the door. “Then you have a few weeks, perhaps a month, to live. Enjoy it.”

L
ucius is going to be furious. Blake smiles. It's a certainty that Lucius already knows what he's done but for his own reasons has chosen not to intervene. Divine. The boy will return to the game to play harder than ever.

Lucius angry is a rare but highly enjoyable sight.

Dawn is breaking as Blake leaves ChimeraCube Chartreuse, departing silently from the roof on his hoverboard. The city awakes beneath him, those foolish electric cars humans still insist on coming to life and moving around like so many vividly colored little beetles. His grin widens as he spots his . . . friend, standing in the doorway atop Chimera headquarters, artificial eyes sparking with righteous indignation.

“That was
cheating
! And cruel!”

“So?” Blake asks mildly.

“So!”

“Your eloquence astounds me.” Blake laughs, claps Lucius
on the shoulder. “I'd like you to point out where I ever promised to play either fairly or nicely. Don't tell me nature should have taken its course; we both know that's a myth. Every aspect of Chimera is designed to defy that.”

“That is completely beside the point.”

“It's really not. Coffee?” Blake asks, sliding inside and waiting for Lucius to follow. “I picked up some of the good stuff you like. It's getting more difficult to find. Not for me, but, you know, in general.”

“You're too kind.”

“Sarcasm doesn't become you.”

“What can I say,” says Lucius. “I am . . . perturbed.”

That's exactly the word, too. Only Lucius would use a word like that. They step onto a tile and descend to an office that doesn't belong to either of them but does have a coffee machine on neutral territory. Neither of them wants to imagine the wars that would break out if they kept it anywhere else. Of course they could each have one, but this gives them a place to meet.

Lucius's mug has a bunny on it, an actual bunny. Sometimes Blake completely despairs of him.

“I'm not saying we should have let him die,” says Lucius. “I was against his inclusion from the beginning for that very reason.”

“Not enough for us to forbid people with such handicaps
from playing at all. It could have happened anywhere at any time. Inside a Cube or on the street. Lucky it happened now; the resources were close by, and response was quick. He might not have been so fortunate otherwise.”

“Right,” Lucius agrees, “but if he wanted to stop, that's his choice.”

“And he can still make it. He wants to play. He doesn't know how badly yet, but he wants to win.”

“Do you think he can?”

“Yes. And there is nothing stopping you from taking your chosen and giving them advantages, you know.” Except they both know there is everything stopping Lucius from doing precisely that. Lucius takes his coffee and sits on a chair designed to look comfortable without actually being comfortable. Blake's never known how humans manage that, or why they'd want to, but there you are. “If it makes you feel better, he refused to let me help him. That
should
make you feel better.”

They sit in silence, which means the debate is over. Lucius knows when he's beaten, and soon, very soon, he and his employers will know just how beaten.

Blake told Miguel the truth about how much longer he has, how long the competition has left to run. All he and Lucius needed was enough time to—briefly—unite the population, get them focused on one thing and voicing their opinions
about it. Millions of messages scroll by every second, each one an indication of the personality of the human who sent it. The competition won't last long enough to give them time to reconsider their choices. The first indication is always the purest, the right one. Which isn't to say the world will end the moment they crown their victor, but it will dictate the start of the next phase.

Blake knows what his plans are. Lucius does not. And the other way around.

“M
ig? What's wrong?” Leah sees his face and his hands gripping the door frame, but not the sweat slicking his palms. “Sorry, is only Nick allowed to call you that?”

“What? No. No, it's fine. Did I wake you up?” He doesn't know why he stumbled here instead of to Nick's room when Blake left. He'd only known he couldn't be alone, now here he is.

“I couldn't sleep.” She shrugs.

Can't sleep?

He shakes Blake's voice from his head; it does nothing to quell the rest of his racing thoughts. Blake
can't
be doing this. Breath tight in his chest, he focuses on the details around him. Leah's suite is identical to his, though less messy. “Seriously, are you okay?” she asks. “You don't look so good.”

“Yeah, well, you're beautiful.”

“Now I
know
there's something wrong.” A smile tugs at her lips. “C'mon, sit.” She leads him to her couch. An empty
plate and a half-f water glass sit on the table in front of it.

“Am I interrupting?”

“No.”

“I had a nightmare.” It's not the right truth, but it's not a lie. He can't tell her the truth. He can't tell anyone. This can't be happening. The tips of his fingers are numb.

“About what happened today?”

And other things. “Yeah.”

She nods. “Man, that was intense, huh? I take it she really is okay?”

Understatement. “Yeah. Are you?”

“I'm fine. I mean, that was awful, but worse for you and Nick. Listen,” she says, taking his hand, “it wasn't real. She's okay. You're okay.”

He almost believes the lie she doesn't know she's telling. In this room he feels okay. Her voice is soothing, her hand warm. His next breath comes a little easier. Blake will keep him alive as long as he stays, plays, wins. He's safe . . . for now.

“I'm glad you're here,” Leah says. Miguel raises his eyebrows, and she continues. “You seemed to need some time alone, but I think—I think I need to talk to you about something.”

“Are you going to yell at me again? Because I probably do deserve it, but let me get comfortable.”

She laughs, a single huff of air. “No. After today, I forgive you for not trusting Josh and Grace, and it's not like you know
me much better. I don't like it, but I get it.”

“Thanks. So, you know now what I wanted. What are you trying to get?”

“You can still get comfortable if you want.”

He shifts on the couch, drawing his knees up to sit cross-legged, facing her. Waits. Her lips twist as she thinks, decides where to begin or what to say. He has no idea what it is. He has no idea about a lot of things lately.

“I want to find out what happened to my sister. There's a procedure they can do. Implanted memories.”

“Oh.” He's heard of that. As the world disintegrates, learning where dangers lurk from people who didn't have time or skill to survive them could be important.

“I think I know the point of the competition,” she says.

He leans forward so suddenly she jumps. “Sorry,” he says, pulling back. “But . . . what?”

“Maybe not the
point,
exactly. It's . . . something. We said, from the first level, that there being a story is new, right? Normally Chimera's just a collection of levels, there isn't a common thread. I think I know what the thread is. How much history have you done at school?”

“Enough, why?”

“Myths and legends?”

“Not a lot. Some.”

“Twelve levels,” she says. “Twelve labors.”

He thinks, combs through a brain that for years now has mostly regarded school as something to do between Chimera sessions. A vague spark of recollection ignites. Hercules? “The twelve tasks all were completely different,” he says. “Weren't they?”

“Mostly, yeah. But there are a couple of weird similarities. Golden apples, those horses, which . . . I've never seen anything like them in Chimera before. And there was a sea monster, I think, though that was a hydra, not a leviathan. But the point of all the labors was that at the end of them, he would be made immortal. A god.”

“You think they're trying to make us immortal?” Miguel laughs.

She frowns again. “I don't know. I think maybe they're testing something. They said they're beta testing, but what if it isn't the game, what if it's the parts they're giving us as rewards? I know this sounds crazy, okay? But
can
they actually give us so much biomech we'll live forever? Giving different parts, different things to different players. They could've done it in the normal game, but this gives them an excuse to watch us really closely. Even after the competition ends. Maybe their plan is to eventually combine everything into one person, who will barely be a person anymore.”

He's had the same thought—about the one person at least. He should tell her about Blake.

When he doesn't answer, she shrugs. “Maybe I am crazy. Maybe they're just not very original. They knew the story and stole the idea.”

“You really believe that?”

“No—”

You will never guess at my motivations.

“So, the girl today.”

“Anna.”

“Anna,” Leah says, drawing her knees up to her chin. He knows a little about body language. “You sure she's your
ex-
girlfriend? The way you looked at her wasn't the way guys usually look at their best friends' girlfriends. If they do, pretty soon they're doing it out of a couple of black eyes.”

He knows what she's asking; she's hinted at it once already, but that was before she found out he'd lied to her. He won't assume he knows what she's thinking, feeling now.

“Anna's been one of my best friends since we were little. Me, her, and Nick. She was my girlfriend until a little while ago, but it's complicated. She stayed with me because of my . . . issues,” he says, gesturing at where his human heart once was. Now a scar, a machine, twinkling lights, a ticking bomb. “I stayed with her because . . . I'm seventeen and I like girls. She deserved better, and she always liked Nick. It just took me a while to realize it. And that I was being a selfish jackass.”

Her knees drop to the side. “In that case, good.”

“What's good?”

She smiles. “I wouldn't consider kissing a guy again if I knew he'd ditched someone he cared about and left her to be squashed and burned to death in some freaky glass box of doom, whether it turned out to be real or not.”

“So you are considering it.” His stomach flips, in that good way. “A few hours ago you hated me.”

“Signs look favorable. I'm a complicated girl.” She inches closer. “And now I'm mad at other people. Grace and Josh,” she adds.

Oh. Them. Yes. Anger he'd been too afraid and then too shocked to feel simmers up from somewhere, lava finding a crack in the crust.

“Yeah,” he says through gritted teeth. It's too late to ask the Gamerunners to replace them, even if he wanted to ask Blake for anything. And if he did, and they did, it would just be with people with the same alignment. What's that phrase?

Better the devil you know.

“Any ideas?”

She shrugs. “Watch them. Don't give them any tasks unless you have to. Don't trust them.”

He'd gotten that far already, which isn't to say he doesn't appreciate the advice. It's good to know he's thinking straight and that Leah has his back again. According to their geolocs, they're both in Grace's suite, but Miguel will wait for Nick
before confronting them and trying to figure out how they can continue to work as a team.

Nick can spend as long as he wants with Anna. Leah's suite is quiet, peaceful, and has her in it. He knows what his task is, what he's been ordered to do, blackmailed into doing. He knows what will happen if he doesn't. But for only the second time he can remember, the real world holds more appeal than the game does.

[Self: Miguel Anderson]
Nicholas Lee
where are you?

[Self: Miguel Anderson] Come on, we're all ready to play. We're waiting for you.

[Self: Miguel Anderson] Are you okay???

[Self: Miguel Anderson]
Anna Kasperek
Have you seen Nick?

[Self: Miguel Anderson] Okay, I get that you need time together, but answer me.

[Self: Miguel Anderson] That's it.

He doesn't have time to wait for the rain to stop. Here's hoping that they actually are right, that the chemicals aren't too damaging. The green edges of the Cube glow brighter in the gloom. Hoverboarding in the rain
sucks,
but he doesn't have time to walk either, or to be recognized.

Droplets fall on his gritted teeth. Of all the times for Nick to
disappear, when the biomech in Miguel's chest has turned to a ticking bomb and the only way to diffuse it is to stay inside the Cube and keep playing.

Some things don't change, at least not for long.

And some things do. The first time he'd been able to tell Nick what was wrong, the first time he'd ever told anyone who didn't already know. God, they'd just been kids then. Nick had been feeling bad about Miguel's beating Level One before him, even though Nick had started earlier, his birthday a few months before.

So Miguel had explained why he needed to play so much, get ahead so fast. Speeding through the air, he pictures Nick's expression, remembers its changing from one frown to another then to determination. He'd walked away, leaving Miguel terrified that he'd lost his best friend and that his best friend would tell everyone his secret. But Nick had come back a minute later, a blue rock in his hand. Miguel's trophy, he'd said, because he wouldn't be able to collect many in the game if he was only waiting for a heart at the end of Twenty-five.

It wasn't the last one. In his room at home, a shelf holds a line of stones, all different shapes, sizes, colors. Twenty of them.

The board descends, landing in front of Anna's building. Officially there's a security lock. Unofficially, if he hits the door just
there,
it pops open.

Not that he's ever used that before, of course. He runs up two flights of stairs, skids to a halt outside her door.

“Guys, let me in,” he says, knocking. “Please.”

Footsteps. Voices. Creaking hinges and Anna's frustrated but smiling face. “You guys are gonna need to figure this out yourselves.” Nick's behind her, sitting on the couch, scowling.

“Figure
what
out? What's your problem?” he demands, staring at Nick. “Hey,” he says more quietly, kissing Anna's cheek but not taking his eyes from his friend, “glad you're okay.”

“Are you?” Nick asks. “I saw you look at that door. You were going to leave, too.”

“Oh, come on. I was not.” Anger bubbles. A single glance in the wrong direction isn't in the top ten of his list of problems right now. “Yeah, I looked and I didn't leave. I'd never let anything happen to her. She knows that.”

“I do know that,” she says, sighing. “I told him that. Nick, come on. I get it was scary, and I'm not, like, superimpressed that they used me, but it makes a sick kind of sense. I don't understand the pair of you. You're somehow both cool with knowing the other's kissed me, but you're going to fight over me for this?”

“More than kissed,” Nick mumbles. Miguel suppresses a smile.

“We don't need to get into that,” says Anna. “Are you going to grow up now?”

“Please,” Miguel says, stepping closer to the couch. “I need you. We've got to get back in there and play.” He hopes Nick can hear the undercurrent in his voice, even if he can't explain it.

“What about Grace and Josh?”

“We need them, too.”

“Nick,” says Anna, “I'm fine. Look at me.”

Nick takes a deep breath. “I still don't trust them.”

“You don't have to.”

“Okay.”

“Excellent,” says Anna. “Get out of here, both of you. Go make me proud.”

They hoverboard back together, Miguel sitting, Nick standing behind him. Inside Cube Chartreuse, they head first for Leah's suite.

“I'm glad she's okay,” says Leah softly when she answers her door. Nick blinks, half smiles, strides over to her, and kisses her swiftly on the cheek.

“Thank you.”

“Anytime.”

Three of five. A majority at least. Good against evil, if you're going to look at it that way. Josh and Grace answer Miguel's knocks, which are hard enough to bruise his knuckles. Too much time playing; he forgets when he's not wearing gloves.
Their joint defiance and self-assurance make him want to slam his fist against something else.

His team, his choices. “We're not going to talk about it,” he says. “Either of you pull anything like that again, you're out. I don't care what it does to our chances.”

Or to his own.

“Whatever you say, boss.” Grace slides neatly past him. “We going back in now?”

They have to. The moon will rise in a few hours, but they've got to keep catching up. A quick trip to the cache, where the golden apple gleams on its shelf, and into the next level. It's a relief to be back in a city. All cities, known or unknown, are familiar landscapes. People, stores, museums, restaurants, offices,
life.
It doesn't matter if it's fake.

Every step is one forward, and for the moment he can walk without pain, breathlessness. He doesn't know how the virus will manifest, and so he sets a pace the others complain about. Whatever. He's not taking a leisurely stroll from one object to the next. Get them, get out. If they make it to the next save point soon, they can grab a few hours' sleep and keep going at dawn. Maybe they can catch up.

He doesn't feel any different, can't feel the virus, but apparently that means nothing. Funny how this has never occurred to him before. He always assumed all biomech was safe, if the given value of
safe
is that they do their recipients no harm.