Gameprey

22

Maj looked around the packed convention center. A lot of the people around her hadn’t left the room at all, but most of them had returned over an hour ago. The Realm of the Bright Waters game was due to go online in less than twenty-four minutes. Excitement was building.

“Man, if I’d known this was going to be this big,” one of the guys next to her grumbled, “I’d have reserved a room with an implant chair. I’ve called every cyber café in the city and they’re booked.”

“I know,” the guy next to him said. “If you don’t have access to your own system, you’re not going to get on for a little while. At least we’re not alone, and we’ll get to see what it’s like.”

“Yeah, but it’s not the same as being there.”

Maj listened and felt edgy. Too much stress and not enough sleep was a bad combination. But there was no way around it. Sleep was out of the question. Even knowing the Net Force team lurked in the shadows wasn’t as helpful as it might have been for the her stress levels. Once the game was launched, Eisenhower Productions and D’Arnot Industries didn’t need Peter Griffen alive. That realization left her feeling cold.

Her foilpack buzzed, and she answered it.

Matt’s bruised face appeared on the small screen. “Mark’s inside the system. He made contact with your guy. A Net Force team is already en route to his location. If anything’s going to happen, it’s going to happen quickly.”

“I know. I’ll stay in touch.” Maj closed the foilpack. Matt and Catie were handling the comm-loop for their end of the operation, patching the Net Force teams in through the pass-through communications ports Mark had created in the Net. Leif and Megan were on the move through the hotel, watching for Heavener.

Maj walked through the game booths, listening to the excited chatter of the gamers. She felt all wound up inside. It didn’t make sense for Heavener to be in the hotel, even though the woman didn’t know she’d been identified. But Maj knew she couldn’t have just gone to her room and waited.

Her foilpack vibrated in her pocket again. “Yes.”

Matt’s worried face filled the vidscreen. “I just got a patch in from Andy. He’s hacked into Heavener’s cyberguy’s systems. They’re tracking you on the hotel cameras. Get out of there. Go somewhere safe”

Anxiety filled Maj. Why is Heavener tracking me?

“Get moving,” Matt said. “I’m on my way.”

Struggling to keep from glancing around, Maj headed for the nearest door. Maybe they’ll think I’m meeting someone for breakfast.

She kept her steps unhurried but purposeful, weaving through the crowd. She didn’t look at the ceiling where the cameras were. But when she opened the door leading out of the convention center into the main hallway, she came face to face with Heavener.

The woman smiled cruelly, not a blond hair out of place. “Hello, Madeline,” she said. Three men stood behind her, blocking any chance of escape.

Seated in her veeyar workspace in her hotel room, Catie opened the comm-patch to Agent Roarke, Matt, Leif, and Megan, who were converging on the convention center.

“Heavener found Maj,” Catie said. She stared at the screen and tried to remain calm.

“Where?” Matt asked.

“At the main entrance on the north side,” Catie replied.

“I’m on my way,” Roarke snapped. “You kids stay back.”

Hooked into the hotel security system through the spycams from the gamers Andy and Mark had met, Catie watched as her friends ignored the agent’s orders. She knew they weren’t going to let one of their own down. But why would Heavener be after Maj? The woman’s profile doesn’t read like she’s into grudge matches. Catie sat and watched, feeding information to Captain Winters.

Andy monitored Mark’s progress through the Eisenhower Productions systems, marveling again at how his friend slipped through security like a greased eel. No one equaled the Squirt when it came to evading intruder programming.

Then Catie’s message about Maj’s situation came in. He opened a com-link to Catie. “Use Catie’s foilpack vibrator to send a message in Morse code. They can’t intercept that.” The programming wasn’t normally on most foilpacks, but Mark had recently added the option to theirs after a Net Force mission debrief. “Send the words Hocus Pocus.”

“Mark’s spoof program?” Catie asked. “Will it work with holoprojectors?”

“We’re going to find out,” Andy said, then relayed a message to Mark to let him know he was going to be gone for a moment. He reached up into the Net and launched himself at the Bessel Mid-Town Hotel. He stepped into the virtual world only a short distance behind Heavener and the three men with her. “Catie?”

“I sent the message.”

“Then here comes trouble,” Andy said. He accessed the programming that gave him holoform in the real world.

“Net Force knows about you, Heavener,” Maj said.

The woman’s smile only turned frostier. “Do they?”

“They know about the bleed-over effect in Peter’s game, too. They know you’re going to use the bleed-overs to access the computers of anyone who downloads the game.”

Heavener shrugged. “It seems a little late to stop that now. You even had your own little part to play in this. If your own veeyar hadn’t inadvertently picked up Griffen’s game, we wouldn’t have had to kidnap him.”

Maj felt relieved. Kidnapped was a long way from dead.

“And if we hadn’t kidnapped him, we would never have gotten the media coverage we did. Maybe I should have planned for that all along.”

“Don’t you mean D’Arnot Industries should have?” Maj asked.

The announcement took some of the smile from Heavener’s face.

“With kids and adults downloading the game onto computers owned by the government,” Maj continued, “the private business sector, and military installations, they could have used the bleed-over effect to hack into almost anything they wanted. Someone would have gotten suspicious, but even a few hours free access could have meant potential billions in earnings for D’Arnot Industries. They could have seized secrets, research and development, and military emplacement information to sell to terrorists across the world.”

“Bright kid,” Heavener rasped. “Too bad you’re a dead kid.” She took a small 9mm pistol from her pocket.

“I’m only telling you this,” Maj went on, “to let you know the game’s over. You lose.”

“Oh,” Heavener said, “there’s still time to take a few pieces off the board.” She raised the pistol.

Clad in his crashsuit, Mark eyed the heart of the Eisenhower Productions game engine. On the Net, linked through his perceptions and programming, it took on the form of a man-shaped mechanical dreadnought easily fifty times as large as he was.

The blank, featureless face turned toward him. Yellow lights glimmered where the eyes should have been. “Your access code, please.”

Mark offered the code he’d been given.

“Access denied,” the ponderous giant replied. It stretched out a hand, launching rockets immediately.

Closing his hand, Mark activated the crashsuit’s boostjets, throwing him from the path of the rockets. Another switch on his palm brought down the HUD system, giving him a 360-degree view around him. After thousands of hours logged into the crashsuit as well as the games he played, it all felt entirely natural.

Onscreen, he watched the five rockets pinwheel around and lock on to him again. His left glove contained the suit controls for the boostjets that fired from his boots, back, chest, and the top of his helmet. His right hand controlled the weapons array he had in the form of attack and defense programs he used in hacking.

Laser beams lanced from Mark’s fingers, swiftly targeting the rockets closing in on him. The rockets evaporated in a rush, shimmering, then gone. He spun around and launched himself at the game engine’s near-AI. He knew the systems alarms had to be ringing back in the real world and that he wouldn’t be alone with the game engine for long.

Only six minutes remained till Realm of the Bright Waters went online.

Andy stepped toward Heavener and her group, waving at Maj.

Maj’s eyes widened as she saw him.

“Hocus Pocus,” Andy mouthed slowly. He accessed another program from his own veeyar workspace and created a holo of an MP5 submachine gun from one of his training programs.

Maj gave a brief nod.

The movement alerted Heavener, who spun instantly and brought up the small pistol from her pocket. She grabbed Maj’s arm.

“Catch you international terrorists and industrial spies at a bad time?” Andy asked, raising the MP5. He squeezed the trigger and the ripsaw of autofire filled the hallway.

Heavener and her group dropped to the floor. Maj swept a hand across Heavener’s in a martial arts move that tore the woman’s grip from her arm.

Andy kept firing even when the ruby sights lit him up. Bullets hammered through his chest. He smiled. “Good shooting.”

“He’s a holo!” Heavener snarled, pushing herself up from the floor. “After the girl!”

Smiling, Andy accessed the spoof program Mark had written that they’d used in various games and hacking runs on the programs they’d been asked to test for flaws. He slammed it into the hotel’s holoprojector system, targeting Maj as she ran back inside the convention center.

Instantly, instead of one Maj fleeing through the crowd in the convention center, there were over a dozen. All of the holos were dressed exactly alike, and they ran in different directions, scattering through the crowd, crisscrossing each other’s tracks. In a heartbeat even Andy didn’t know which one was real.

Andy dropped back onto the Net, knowing Mark had begun the final attack on the game engine. He scanned the screens that appeared in front of him, noting the arrival of eight security personnel in space-bound fast-attack craft.

He opened the comm-link to Mark. “Are you ready to rock and roll, buddy?”

Maj ran through the convention crowd, bumping into people and throwing apologies over her shoulder. She streaked for the other side of the center, knowing Matt, Roarke, Leif, and Megan were on their way.

A young man stepped around one of the booths too late for her to stop. She slammed into him, taking them both to the ground. Her martial arts reflexes made her roll instinctively. She got to her feet as the guy stayed there and groaned.

Other convention attendees opened a path before her, shouting out warnings.

Glancing to the side, Maj spotted one of her holo-induced doppelgangers running through people. Their reactions were a little delayed, and they stepped aside after the doppelganger had burst through.

Heavener and her men charged through the convention center, roughly shoving aside anyone who got in their way.

Maj opened her foilpack and punched a quick dial number. “Catie, where are Holmes’s police teams?”

“Investigating a break-in alarm at your hotel room,” Catie replied. “I’m trying to get through to Holmes now to call them off.”

Maj ran toward the nearest door. Before she reached it, a man burst through with a pistol leveled at her chest.

With Andy at his back, Mark turned his attention to the search engine, jetting straight for it. The HUD relayed the information about the eight security programmers streaking toward him, overtaking him quickly because this was their home ground. The home team always had the advantage because their programming interfaced more directly and more quickly than someone breaking in.

“Andy,” Mark called calmly.

“I’ve got your back, buddy.”

In the next instant Mark’s HUD picked up Andy’s arrival. Since he didn’t have to worry about stealth anymore, and he could use Mark’s signal from inside the program to transport to, Andy arrived in a spacetank copied from a Space Marines game. The spacetank was an armored nightmare, fully stocked with weapons. Lasers cut through the virtual world as it locked on to targets and fired.

Three of the attacking security personnel vaporized immediately, thrown off-line by the savage attack.

“Boo-yeeaahh!” Andy cheered. “And we’re rolling up a score.”

Less than two minutes remained until game launch. Even if Captain Winters overrode the Net and had a warning issued by Net Force, a lot of gamers would ignore the warning and download the files anyway, thinking it was a prank by jealous gamers who didn’t have the game pack, or an attack by rival gaming companies. It had happened in the past.

He initiated a systems diagnostic using the access code he’d been given, hoping to find a weak link that would allow him into the gargantuan game engine before him. Lasers flashed from the thing’s eyes as it sought to protect itself.

Mark evaded the lasers as Andy blasted another security man out of the loop, checking over the program’s codes. Surely there was a feed coming in from somewhere. He fired two disruptive virus programs in the form of thermal nukes, but they glanced off the search engine’s armored body like a flat stone on water.

The diagnostics flashed on the HUD, stripping away the mechanical body the search engine inhabited. C’mon, c’mon. There’s gotta be something to work with.

“I’m hit,” Andy called out.

The system defenders were down to three, but Andy’s spacetank hadn’t gone unscathed. Internal gyro problems had developed, a visual interpretation of the defense coding attacking his intrusion into the system.

A bright green blip flared into life on Mark’s HUD. It dawned at the tip of one of the search engine dreadnought’s fingers. Mark tapped out a search-and-identify program. “I’ve got the weak point,” he told Andy. “There’s a satellite feed coming in from the Balkans that Net Force broke into a couple weeks ago for black-market software trafficking that hasn’t been changed. The story never made HoloNet, so D’Arnot Industries wouldn’t know about it. I can get in through there.”

“Go,” Andy called. “I’m on a full-fledged crash-and-burn here.” His spacetank remained barely viable, breaking down even as Mark spotted it on the HUD.

Mark left the Net, knowing his pursuers would think he’d logged off. He streaked through the upper atmosphere and into the telecommunications array. In seconds he flashed through England, France, Australia, South Africa, Brazil, Israel, then into the Balkans, disguising himself every step of the way. When he hit the satellite feeding the Balkans connection, he insinuated himself into the satellite feed D’Arnot Industries was using to coordinate the world launch of Realm of the Bright Waters.

He returned to the Eisenhower Productions site just as Andy’s spacetank was reduced to cybernetic ash. Powering the crashsuit’s jets to the max, Mark streaked into the dreadnought’s finger, following the hollow tube of the arm toward the brain.

“Stop! Police!”

Maj experienced a momentary burst of relief as the man in front of her shifted and pointed his weapon at Heavener. But the moment was short-lived. Two shots rang out, one hammer blow on top of another, and the plainclothes policeman flew backward into the door behind him.

Instant pandemonium spread throughout the convention center. Andy’s earlier gunfire might have been mistaken for gameplay, but the man smashing up against the door with blood on his jacket was too real. Gamers screamed and tried to get away, knocking each other down in their haste.

Knowing that she’d be the next target if she stopped to help the policeman, Maj shouldered her way through the door, smashing through, hitting the floor and rolling. She caught herself against the far wall of the hallway, feeling the vibration of bullets smacking the tiles to pieces only inches from her.

“Over here!”

Instinctively Maj crawled toward the voice, recognizing it as Roarke’s only a second later. The Net Force agent stood in a Weaver’s stance, his pistol resting lightly in both hands.

Heavener burst through the door first, dropping into a flat slide on her stomach across the tiled floor. Her pistol spat flame as Roarke’s first shot split the air above her head. The agent’s next two rounds caught both men who hurtled through the door after Heavener, punching into them.

As Maj got to her feet and ran past Roarke, she saw the agent stumble backward, blood spraying from his left shoulder. Even as he went down, Roarke fired again. Then he was hit once more, sprawling backward.

Horrified, Maj ran on, knowing the Net Force team in the area had to be closing in. The rapid slap of shoes against the tile floor came up behind her. Then an arm went around her waist and a shoulder hit her back. Off-balance, she went down hard, Heavener on top of her.

“You’re dead, Latke!”

Heavener’s promise rang in Gaspar’s ears as he stared at the screen showing the hallway where the woman had captured Maj Green. Heavener grabbed a handful of Maj’s hair and held her pistol to the girl’s head.

“Get up,” Heavener ordered, yanking Maj to her feet. “You’re my ticket out of here.”

Gaspar logged off the Net. There was no doubt that Heavener had commed instructions to the men where he was being held to kill him. He pushed his way out of the implant chair, his heart thudding in his chest. Weakly, exhausted by lack of sleep and stress, he staggered for the door. He twisted the knob, but it was locked.

Then the knob turned in his hand. He stepped back, hoping.

When the door opened, it revealed one of the hard-faced men he’d seen with Heavener. The man raised the pistol in his hand without a word.

Gaspar closed his eyes when he heard the shot ring out, waiting to feel the bullet smash through his chest. But he didn’t feel anything. Maybe that’s how it feels. He was surprised when he opened his eyes.

The man in front of him fell, revealing a black-clad warrior with an MP5. “Net Force agent,” the man said. “Down on the floor. On your face. Move it.”

Gaspar dropped instantly, grateful for the feel of the plastic cuffs pulling tight around his wrists. Bursts of gunfire echoed in other parts of the building. There weren’t any prolonged gun-fights.

“If you’re who I think you are,” the Net Force agent promised, “we’ll get you out of here.”

“I know,” Gaspar said, tears running down his face. “I know.” But he felt guilty as well as relieved. He should have warned Maj.

Mark sped through the dreadnought’s interior. Defensive programs inside the game engine tried to overload the crashsuit’s parameters as well. He fired a phalanx of rockets ahead, clearing the tunnel of the machine guns and lasers that lined the way.

He wasn’t sure how much time remained before the game launched.

In the next instant he was through the shoulder and up into the dreadnought’s neck. The central core of the game engine opened to him. It looked like a huge orange gem, twirling madly, showing him countless reflections of the crashsuit.

Mark raised his hand and strafed the game engine with every nasty bit of programming at his disposal. Fractures ran through the jewel at once, then it went to pieces in a silent, explosive rush.

“Game over,” Mark said.

“Get on your feet,” Heavener ordered.

Pain shot through Maj’s head as the woman yanked her to her feet by the hair. Black spots danced in front of her eyes.

“Move.” Heavener shoved her down the hallway, keeping the pistol muzzle buried between Maj’s shoulder blades. She shifted her grip from Maj’s hair to one of her wrists, using the hold to pin her arm behind her back.

“You’re not going to get out of here,” Maj promised. “Net Force has this hotel surrounded.”

“They won’t hurt one of their own.” Heavener pushed her from behind, almost at a run.

A group ahead spread across the hallway, freezing in place.

“Net Force won’t let you get away,” Maj said.

“Out of the way!” Heavener ordered. When the group didn’t move fast enough, she pointed the pistol and shot one of the men at the front of the group. The rest of the group fled.

Before Heavener could place her weapon back between Maj’s shoulder blades, Maj dropped to the floor and swept her leg back, knocking her captor’s legs from under her. Heavener tried to maintain her grip on Maj’s wrist, but Maj twisted her wrist toward Heavener’s thumb as she’d been taught. Her hand came free immediately.

Heavener tried to bring her pistol to bear.

Maj kicked out, connecting with the woman’s wrist and sending the pistol flying. She tried to get up, but Heavener backhanded her across the face. As Heavener pushed herself up and toward the fallen pistol, Maj grabbed her ankle and tripped her.

Heavener came down hard, snarling curses. She kicked her foot free of Maj’s hand, then drove it at Maj’s face. Maj caught the kick on her arm, blocking it to the side. She rolled to her feet as Heavener did, placing herself between the woman and the pistol.

“You can’t take me,” Heavener said, raising her arms.

“I don’t have to,” Maj replied. “All I have to do is delay you.”

Heavener attacked without warning, launching a kick at Maj’s head. Maj ducked, then curled an arm up around the ankle. She halted the foot, but slammed her other hand behind Heavener’s knee, breaking the woman’s stance. Heavener leaped, rolling in the air and bringing her other foot around to smash into Maj’s cheek.

Pain flared in Maj’s head and she released her hold. Concentrating was difficult, but she focused on finding the pistol as Heavener got to her feet. Maj ran across the hallway, dropping to her knees and sliding on them to reach the pistol. She picked it up and pointed it at Heavener, using both hands and keeping her finger out of the trigger guard the way she’d been taught.

Heavener’s smile curved as sharply as a shark’s. “Are you really going to use that on me, little girl?” She took a step forward.

Maj’s hands shook. “D — d—don’t move!” Please don’t move! She couldn’t imagine actually pulling the trigger. But maybe Heavener was the only person who could tell them where Peter Griffen was.

Heavener’s smile stayed in place. “If you want me to believe that you’ll shoot, you’re going to have to do better than that.” Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. She kept coming.

Maj watched the woman helplessly.

“How about this, little girl?” Heavener popped the sleeve of her jacket and a short, wide-bladed knife dropped into her hand. “Think this can inspire you?” Light twinkled from the hard metal.

Maj’s finger curled over the trigger. I can’t do it, I can’t do it!

“You can’t do it, little girl,” Heavener said. “You’re just a child playing at spy. And you’re going to die unless you can take my life first.”

Maj stared through tear-blurred vision as the woman approached. She had no doubt that Heavener would do exactly what she said.

“Come on, little girl, shoot me.”

Suddenly a dozen ruby lights lit up across Heavener’s chest.

“She doesn’t have to,” a cold voice said. “Take another step and we will.”

Heavener froze, pulling her arms up at her sides.

Maj glanced over her shoulder, spotting the Net Force team that had taken up positions in the hallway. Captain Winters stood at their side in holoform.

One of the agents came forward and plucked the pistol from Maj’s hands. Other agents rushed forward, pushing Heavener facedown on the carpet and handcuffing her.

Maj stood on trembling legs.

Winters approached her, his face grim and concerned. “Are you all right?”

“Now,” Maj whispered. “I’m all right now.”