The ropes let go of him. As Michael crashed to the ground, the sounds of their retreat filled the room, a ringing metallic hiss as they slid back into their cubbyholes. The breath knocked out of him, Michael rolled over to look at his friends. They were free, too. He glanced back at Stonewall, saw her body slumped forward on the counter.
“What…,” Michael started to say, but he came up empty.
“I hacked her,” Bryson said from behind, his voice trembling with exhaustion. “She’s a Tangent—I shut her down. I’ve never been able to do that before—I got lucky, found a weak spot. Barely.”
So that’s why his eyes were closed
, Michael thought, so relieved he wanted to laugh.
“Let’s get going,” Sarah said.
And Michael knew exactly what she meant. Into the game.
CHAPTER 10
THREE DEVILS
1
It took a few moments, but Michael was finally able to get the air flowing normally into his lungs. Sucking in one deep breath at a time, he walked over to Bryson and Sarah. Without speaking, they knew what to do. All three of them turned and made for the hallway in the back of the lobby.
A familiar voice rang out from behind them, and Michael turned to see Ryker standing on the concession stand again.
“Y’all are as clueless as can be,” she called out. “You think you know what you’re lookin’ for, but you don’t.”
Her words felt ominous to Michael. He knew how the Sleep worked, and he wondered if they had some deeper meaning that spelled trouble. Was she talking about the Portal or something bigger? Like Kaine himself.
“Oh, go lick your mama’s wounds,” Bryson replied.
Before Ryker could answer, the three broke into a run. Michael hoped he never had to lay eyes on that girl again.
2
The hallway grew dark, then cold, and Michael began to shiver. Though there was no light source, they could see just enough to be able to keep moving forward, and the hall went on and on and on. Gradually, when they realized no one had followed them, they slowed to a walk, and as they pressed forward, the temperature dropped. Soon Michael could see his breath in front of him.
He guessed they’d gone well over a mile before anyone spoke.
“This is the weirdest entrance to a game I’ve ever seen,” Bryson said, breaking the silence.
“You don’t think it’s a trap, do you?” Michael asked. “Maybe they dropped us into another game since we didn’t have access.”
“That’s against the law,” Bryson responded.
“So is breaking into a game,” Michael said.
Bryson shrugged. “Yeah, well.”
“Look up there.” Sarah was pointing ahead. “The walls change. And it gets lighter.”
They started running again and soon came upon a place where the walls were covered in ice that seemed to glow from within. Suddenly Michael could see better, and everything was
different
.
“Holy crap,” Bryson said, looking down at himself.
Their clothes had changed from their daily wear into puffy white snowsuits littered with pockets, all kinds of gear strapped to the belts. Michael noticed straps over his shoulders and realized he and his friends wore stuffed backpacks as well. Its weight didn’t hit Michael until he’d fully examined his new uniform.
He tightened the pack’s straps a little and started examining his belt. He had five grenades, a canteen, a knife, and some rope. “Well, guess that answers that question,” he announced. “We’re in.”
“And it looks like we’re on the glacier front,” Sarah said. The gold vein—the thing everyone was fighting over—ran mostly below Jakobshavn Glacier, one of the bigger ones in Greenland. But the battlefronts ran all the way down to the tundra as well, a messy goop of swamp and mud.
“They better have real weapons waiting for us up there,” Bryson said, nodding down the tunnel. “I don’t know if I can stomach fighting with a knife today, game or no game.”
Michael pulled his blade out and looked at it—solid and gray and sharp. “Yeah, me neither.”
“That makes three of us,” Sarah said as they started walking again. “Maybe we can code something in from another game. I just hope we don’t end up in jail for any of this.”
Michael waved his hand, dismissing the suggestion. “We’re doing all this
because
of the VNS. They’re not going to throw us in jail for following orders.” Though even as he said it, he wasn’t sure he was right.
“Oh yeah?” she replied. “You positive about that? All that stuff about how top secret this is? They’ll look the other way when you come crawling to them for help someday, say they’ve never even heard of you.”
Michael knew his friends could see the anxiety on his face. “All the more reason to find Kaine.”
They grew silent and picked up their pace, jogging down the long, icy tunnel. The gear was heavy and started to wear on Michael—he could tell he was slowing. Then the tunnel began to slope upward, making it even harder.
“How long
is
this stupid thing?” Bryson asked.
No one answered. No one could.
3
They finally reached the end: a metal door held closed with a heavy bar anchored by two enormous iron rails. Wooden benches lined the walls, and there was a huge open locker full of machine guns and ammo. Michael took a moment to catch his breath.
“I assume that when you die out there,” Sarah said, “you end up right back here.”
“Probably so.” Bryson started rummaging through the locker. “But I’ve got news for you. I don’t plan on dying out there.”
“Me neither,” Michael said. “Let’s get going.”
He and Sarah followed Bryson’s lead, and soon they each had a heavy gun and several spare clips of ammo. Michael loaded his and checked the weight and settings—he’d used similar weapons plenty of times. Maybe they wouldn’t need to risk trying to hack into their other games after all.
“I’m just as worried about the cold,” Sarah said. “Maybe that’s one of the reasons this game is A.O. Most kids would run out there and think killing people was all that mattered. We need to make sure we stop and warm up now and then so we don’t get frostbite.”
Bryson was shaking his head. “That can’t be it. There’s gotta be something worse out there. A lot worse. It’s hard to get rated A.O.”
Michael agreed completely. They’d all seen plenty of games that
weren’t
A.O., and many of those included some truly mentally scarring experiences. “At least we studied up. Nothing to do but get started. Find that gateway to the Path.”
“Prepare to freeze your heinies off,” Bryson said as he walked over and hefted the bar off its rails. He tossed it on the ground, where it clanged, then rolled to a stop at Sarah’s feet.
“You were born to be a soldier,” she said.
Bryson winked at her, then yanked open the heavy door. A burst of arctic wind and swirling ice crystals tore through the tunnel. It was the coldest thing Michael had ever felt in his life.
Bryson yelled something unintelligible, then stepped into the world of Greenland. Michael and Sarah followed.
4
The sky above was a brilliant blue, and Michael realized it wasn’t actually snowing—the frost in the air was just snow and ice carved off the ground by a fierce wind. At least they didn’t have a blizzard to contend with, too.
The wind ripped at Michael. It was so strong it felt like it could pull his clothes free. When he left the tunnel, he stumbled and fell onto hard-packed snow. His hands—which he’d used to break his fall—burned, then went numb with cold, and he knew he wouldn’t last ten minutes without gloves. What a stupid detail to forget. There didn’t seem to be anyone nearby, so Michael and the others took a moment to manipulate the code and create warm hats and gloves. Once those were on, Michael felt better, but not much. He thought the programming had seemed a little tougher to crack than normal—especially for such a simple thing—and wondered if the tougher effects of Kaine’s firewall were already evident.
Michael adjusted the backpack on his shoulders and readied his gun to defend himself. It was harder to get a finger on the trigger with the gloves, but it was manageable enough. Looking around, he saw that fields of white stretched in every direction and there was no one in sight. But far in the distance, smoke floated skyward, marking it with a long black streak.
Sarah leaned in and spoke loudly. “Makes sense that the action would be in that direction.” She pointed at the pillar of smoke. “The maps showed we should walk due north from the starting point in a direct line. Based on the sun…”
“Yeah!” Michael yelled back. “Let’s get moving.”
Bryson stood several feet away, watching them as if he already knew what they needed to do. Michael pointed where Sarah had indicated, and Bryson nodded. They headed off toward battle.
5
Michael thought trudging through the wind and snow had to be far worse than any fighting could possibly be. Every step was an effort, mainly because he was walking into the wind and his boots sank into the icy ground an inch or two with every step. He gripped his gun tighter as he pressed on, eager to get close and learn what was happening on the fronts.
Careful what you wish for
, he thought glumly.
When they finally topped a rise, a scene of horror opened up below them. As soon as it came into view, the three friends dropped to the ground. Michael pushed the muzzle of his gun forward and propped himself up on his elbows to get a better look through the sight on his weapon.
A huge valley stretched for miles in every direction and was covered with seemingly random trenches dug into the snow and ice. A rough path yawned down the middle of it all. Each trench looked like it had been lined with something, a dark material, probably to keep the moisture at bay. He couldn’t see too deeply inside the wide ditches, but every now and then a head would appear and a soldier would lean out. On the other side of the valley, at the end of that long corridor between the trenches, tents had been set up, but it was impossible to make out what they were for.
It was the blood that upset Michael the most. Everywhere he looked, it dotted the otherwise white landscape. It was concentrated along that middle corridor. There, countless fights were going on, mostly hand-to-hand and brutal. He caught sight of a man stabbing another in the chest and then jumping on him to twist the knife in deeper. A few dozen feet from that, a woman slashed the throat of a soldier from behind. Other groups were punching and wrestling each other. A horror show, through and through.
No one seemed to have noticed the newcomers at the top of the hill.
Michael put his gun down and looked at Bryson to his left, then Sarah to his right. “What
is
this place? We haven’t fought wars like this for at least a hundred years. They look like a bunch of Neanderthals fighting over who gets what cave. I know our research said it was chaotic, but this is nuts.”
“And the position of the trenches doesn’t make sense,” Bryson said. “Or the uniforms—I see at least four different kinds, and some of them are fighting people wearing the same thing. And why do you have tents and trenches in the same area?”
Sarah crawled forward a bit so that they could all see each other. “I’m starting to understand why this game is A.O. I don’t think
Devils
has much to do with the actual war of Greenland at all. Maybe the setting, but not much else.”
“What do you think it’s for, then?” Bryson asked. “I mean, why didn’t we receive a mission as part of the game? Something. Do people really just come here to beat the tar out of each other until they’re ready to come back for more?”
“Maybe that’s exactly it,” Michael answered. A thought had occurred to him about the tents, too. “And maybe they have rewards when you’re done. Things innocent kids like us shouldn’t be doing or watching.” He smiled. “To the victor go the spoils—it’s something my dad used to say.”
“Devils of Destruction,”
Bryson said absently. “Well, that’s exactly what it looks like down there.”
6
Guns pointed forward, they started making their way down the long slope to the mayhem below. The red blood against the white snow only made the scene more horrific to Michael. The sounds of battle carried on the wind, and they were as horrible as the sight of it all. Grunts and screams and bloodthirsty growls. But for some reason, Michael didn’t hear much gunfire.
“Wait a second,” he said, a terrible thought occurring to him. “Do these things even work?” Pointing the muzzle skyward, he gripped his machine gun and pulled the trigger. There was a clicking sound, but that was all. Disgusted, he threw it to the ground.
Bryson tried his and chucked it away when it didn’t fire. “You’ve got to be kidding me! This is nothing but a disguised game for barbarians. Why don’t these people just go back to the Dark Ages?”
“Do I even waste the strength to pull my trigger?” Sarah asked. She did, and of course nothing happened. She blithely tossed it over her shoulder and continued walking toward the battle. “We might have some serious programming ahead of us.”
7
Michael didn’t dare admit it to his friends, but he was beyond terrified. They’d paid a lot of money for their Coffins, making the VirtNet drastically real—which was great for the pleasures in life. Not so great for getting stabbed, beaten, and strangled. Michael had done a lot of stuff inside the Sleep, but what lay below him looked worse than any of it. He was walking into sheer brutality. And bringing in other skills or weapons through the code didn’t look like the brightest prospect after the difficulty they’d had programming hats and gloves.
Scattered fights dotted the perimeter of the valley, but most of the battle was concentrated in the middle, around the trenches. The noise had steadily increased as they descended the hill, and it was so brutal that Michael was tempted to turn around and run back. Somehow hearing the sounds of pain made the sights worse. Choking gurgles and lunatic screams and hysterical cackles of glee. The laughter might’ve been the hardest part of it all.