7. A Proper Threat

Sonnet’s quiet over the next couple weeks. When Barley gives a command, he listens. Our scrimmages go down smooth. We’re performing better than ever in the arena. After training hours are done for the day, the real work begins. Some nights we meet with Angela, other times Edmondo tunes in. These days, he is almost happy. Press obligations come up maybe once a week, and I think I may be getting the hang of talking at unblinking shutterbugs. Most nights, though, it’s just the three of us.

On those nights, we talk strategy. Sonnet keeps us in the loop on caster gossip while Barley and I dig deep into the other teams. At the same time, we’re keeping up with the tournament at large. This week, the big news revolves around the Socialites. They lost their game, barring them from the third round of games. Apparently their fans have taken to Qttro in the millions, using the social media platform to express their displeasure and explain in fine detail how the game was rigged. This is how it goes every year. A top-ranking team gets dethroned due to roster changes, balance adjustments that wreck their composition, or a dozen other factors, and outcry follows.

Other games have less surprising results. The Overdogs grab a first-place qualification. So do HydraQ’s Hellions, Holtow’s Adjusters, Dissun’s Power Houses, others that don’t ring a bell. Once the second-round games wrap up, MultiCo puts out an updated bracket. We’re set to go against the Midnight Riders, the Sound and Fury, and, once again, the Vogues. As usual, Barley drills us with the names, loadouts, and playstyles of everyone we might face in the arena.

“The most fundamental mistake,” she says during a strategy session, “is to see your opponents as non-player characters. Everyone has their own plans. Everyone is as much an agent as you are.”

Weeks pass before our next game. We’re slated for the first week of October. As the third round of play begins in earnest, we tune in live to each game. The Overdogs knock out the Warlocks and the Old Hands. The latter, I feel a bit sorry for. Vet players who grew up on the last gens of mouse-and-keyboard twitch shooters back in the ‘60s. Can’t have many more seasons left in them. Then again, making it to round three is plenty respectable by most standards.

I let the weeks run their course. I avoid thinking whenever possible. When thoughts do come, they come with pincers. We will lose this game, says my brain. We have become oversure. Our last win was a sham. Not once did we beat the Vogues head-on. If they don’t give us trouble, we’ve still got to contend with two other seasoned teams. At this point in the season, everyone we fight will be the best at what they do. The Midnight Riders are a state-sponsored team with headquarters about four hundred miles up the coast, in the capital. Not sure where they’re getting the money, but the feds shelled out this year for some high-caliber contestants. Then there’s the Sound and Fury. We’ve gathered that they’re theatre nerds and not much else. They’re an unknown quantity. Recordings show they’re versatile, switching up their loadouts between games. Can’t know for sure what we’re going up against until the game kicks off.

Here I am, the next game just around the corner, sunk deep in the bleed. Late. Or early. My stomach reminds me of physical obligations. An uncertain number of hours since my last meal. Information streams down my face. I take in what I can. Soon the words, written or spoken, lose meaning. The whole world is only color and noise. Still the bleed floods into me. I am drowning in data. The harder I breathe, the less air enters my lungs. I gasp and find no oxygen. I throw my hands to the rim of my headset, just below my chin. There is no headset. Only a face I cannot feel. I scan for an anchor, some unchanging bit of light or a steady bassline in the earworm static. No luck. Everything is changing all the time. The variegated fire rends my brain. Google—that is my true name, I realize at the end—suffers a thousand strokes and ceases to exist. What replaces them is less and, somehow, more. A whole array of realities intersect and spread impossibly atop one another. This is the world discovered when one steps out-of-bounds in a curated Naturata experience and the world goes gray. This is Naturata’s recursive genome. This is God.

A deep sense of wrong permeates the scene. I have transgressed, thinks a mind that has put itself back together. Data coalesces into words and audio and images with meaning. My hands tug at my headset, and this time, they connect. The helm comes off. I am slumped in my headroom. Sweat stings my eyes and glues my neck to my chin. The chronograph on my wrist says I’ve lost about three hours. I wipe my eyes and drag myself to the shower.

The dream comes off with the sweat. There is too much to remember. When I look back on tonight, I will recall a sense of transcendence. I will believe this was important without knowing why.

---

The game starts like any other. We spawn in the market district. Conveniently, there’s a cashbox about thirty meters south of us. Sonnet takes to the rooftops while Barley and I run straight down the road, keeping close to the high rises. I can visualize the room where the cashbox sits based solely on its direction and distance from us. Century Stadium has become a second home, these past few months. In typical fashion, Sonnet arrives first and sets about unlocking the box. We haven’t yet reached him when the fire begins. Real fire, not gunfire. They’ve lit the main entry point with pyro and tossed more flame through the windows.

“You see them out there?” Sonnet asks.

“Yeah.” Across the street, in elaborate frilled costumes, the Sound and Fury torch the building. I open fire. More as warning shots than anything else. A couple bullets nick one of the mavens. They ignore me, which is unfortunate. Better to have their eyes on me and Barley while Sonnet flanks. Not gonna happen, I guess. So we’ll do it hard. Barley finds an alley. I set my turret on the side of the building ahead of us, aimed so that it’ll target the Sound and Fury, and duck into the cover with her. She tosses a frag in their direction. No one goes down, but they scatter. Their zephyr dashes down a block and up a level. I ping him for Sonnet. Barley charges forward, trusting me to back her. Her grenades take out the mines left by the mavens to cover their exit. Though we’ve lost visual, they can’t have gone far. Must be in the buildings. In a moment of reprieve, I check the stats. Cashboard says Midnight Riders hold the other point. Nothing on the killfeed from their side of the map in a minute.

Barley turns back. “Google, take the box. Sonnet, watch us. They will return.”

They do return. More than once, in fact. We coin a maven, the other defibs, they coin Barley, I defib, and so it goes. Neither they nor us want to commit to a full-scale engagement at this point in the match. No real benefit to a team wipe for either side. Better to wait until the box is in. So they pester us from the outer edge of our effective range until I push the box into a cashout station situated on the mezzanine of a luxury apartment with a view overlooking the colosseum. Then they come in earnest. The first rounds come from an office building across the street at the same height. They shatter the windows of our apartment, where I’ve already set down my usual defenses: a turret bat-hanging in a corner of the ceiling, gas mines spaced equidistant from each other and the cashout station, and a jump pad positioned sideways to jettison anyone who comes at the cashout from the wrong angle.

Barley and I return fire, but she can’t do much with the arc of her grenades and I’m not in a position to confirm kills. Below us, Sonnet finishes setting up his breach charges and climbs the stairs to join us. That’s when they come. While we’re firing at one building, they come at us from another, situated to the left. It’s far enough that we hadn’t deemed it a potential threat. Our mistake. One of their mavens has set up a zipline, and by the time we notice, they’re through the window and on top of us. These contestants aren’t dressed as fairies or witches. They wear sleek baby blue. Sonnet goes down first. Barley charges into their ranks and meets the three-pronged end of an incendiary shotgun. I am ready to go down next. Except they don’t shoot, not right away. They wait until I snatch up Barley’s totem for a defib. They do not fire until I have rubbed the paddles together for a charge. Only then do they attack, all at once, the grenades from a CL-40 rocking Barley’s totem out of reach. They take their time with me. I die later than I’d like. 

“Fuck that,” Sonnet mutters. If they manage to steal the cashout, we’ll be hard-pressed to win it back in time. I can only hope that the Sound and Fury distract them with a good fight while we make our return.

“Spread out more,” Barley says when our boots hit the ground. “No more wipes.”

When we arrive at the tower again, the Vogues hold the point and the Sound and Fury are down two contestants. Killfeed says two Vogues have died. Spawnlog says they’re all back up now. We take my jump pad up three floors, stairs the rest of the way. Sonnet leads to give recon. I stick a mine on a stairwell landing behind us to deter any flankers. With all the time in the world, we could do a preliminary sweep of each floor. As it stands now, speed is key. Time’s running out.

Gunfire dies when we get to the tower’s top level. Siren wailing indicates an ongoing steal. Can’t figure why. Going by killfeed, the Vogues should still be up on the station. Doesn’t matter. We’re practically on rails now. Sonnet breaches the penthouse, opening with a flashbang. Barley follows up with a wave of grenades. The siren shuts off four seconds in. The Sound and Fury’s zephyr goes down with the bombs. Sonnet and I blast the two mavens. They find cover behind shelves where they can safely return fire. With Barley on our side, they must know any cover is temporary.

Doesn’t matter, though. Kills give pocket change. The real money’s in the cashouts, and the Vogues have just claimed ten thousand MultiBucks without even being here. They knew we would show up and protect their station for them. Now they’re free to go after the next box while we fight for scraps. I recognize the pattern. The Vogues want us out. Suppose that’s a good thing, in a way, them rating us a proper threat.

My gun is empty. I’m rezzing Sonnet by hand. Guess we’ve finished off the Sound and Fury. Doesn’t feel like much of a score. In a courthouse out past the colosseum, the Midnight Riders deposit a cashbox, their income slotting them in second on the cashboard due to a no-contest cashout in the first round of play while the rest of us were occupied. Odd to see the Riders deposit and not the Vogues, though they’ve had plenty of time to interfere after bailing early on their first cashout. Ah.

“Vogues are kingmaking,” I say. Sure enough, they tag the second cashbox rather than going for the deposit in progress. Leaving us a choice: contest their chosen runner-ups, or face the Vogues directly. If we go for the Midnight Riders, we’ll likely be dropping into a third-party situation. No shot the Sound and Fury go after the Vogues. When you’re trailing behind, you go for whatever money looks most within reach. Iseul-T’s champions will sit on their station and enjoy the next few minutes of peace. They just might get first place without dirtying their hands for the rest of the match. Unless we do something about it.

“Go to the courthouse,” Barley commands. We drop back to street level and I enter formation with her. However much I may disagree, I’m not about to undermine her in front of Sonnet.

The courthouse cashout station is hidden behind barricade walls. Explosive mines wait behind those walls, I’m sure. The Midnight Riders’ sole stalwart is doing what he can to keep the space defended. No contestants in sight. Cautious, we move around the edge of the room, Barley looking forward and me looking back. Quiet, until it’s not. I duck when I hear the glass break. A sniper round drills into the wall behind me. That’s one of the zephyrs accounted for. With the stalwart presumably lurking near the cashout station, that leaves one contestant on the loose. Their third runs a magazine-fed shotgun, and he’s pretty good with it too, judging by the recordings of their last two games. I make sure to keep an eye out.

Spawnlog says the Sound and Fury are back in the game. In a minute or so, they’ll be right here. It’s now or never. Barley gives the signal, and I sprint forward. Behind me, Sonnet leaves the building the way we came. Barley lets loose with her grenades. She triggers the explosive mines behind the barricades. The whole setup goes to rubble. Here comes the big man, as expected, both hands on his flamethrower. I pick at him from a safe distance. The room around us burns.

The shotgun zephyr pops up behind Barley. Bad play. She charges him, crushing him against a wall and through it. Still, she goes down. At that range, there’s no competing with the shotgun’s damage output. Barley knew what she was doing, though. Push the shotgun and distract him while Sonnet dispatches the sniper, whose tag enters the killfeed a moment after Barley’s. The rest hangs on me. I dive into the adjacent meeting room through the hole Barley’s made, and her totem fizzles to life at the end of my defibrillators. Flamethrower’s closing in. I move to the farthest edge of the room, pick a spot with line of sight to the cashout station, and deploy my turret on the end of a long conference table. Footsteps reach my ears from outside. Two sets. Another team.

Between us, Barley and I make short work of the flamethrower stalwart. Shotgun zephyr’s run off to avoid a wipe. I inform Sonnet. The zephyr’s probably going for his fallen sniper mate, which should put him and Sonnet in the same lane.

“Steal?” I ask. Barley shakes her head. She pings a door behind the judge’s bench. The door opens for two mavens, one draped in a cloak and the other in elaborate robes. A pyro grenade flies from the robed maven and bursts on the floor between the cashout and us. My turret locks on to the cloaked maven. The other sprints for cover behind the cashout. Sirens. Barley’s grenades pummel the station until it falls. Remarkably, the woman in robes behind it still stands. She’s getting heals from the one in the cloak, who falls shortly to my rifle and my turret. With her gone, the other maven coins soon after securing a steal. The cashout is theirs for now, but we have time. Barley skirts around the growing pit of flame and ducks beside the station. I set one gas mine near my turret, another by the Sound and Fury’s point of entry. Their zephyr is still on the loose.

Sonnet reports in. The Midnight Riders’ shotgunner is giving him trouble, but he’ll be here soon, he says. No sign of the other zephyr, though. Barley drops a dome shield around us before initiating the steal. She begins. Sirens cry.

I see him first in a corner of my periphery. A distortion by the entrance we came through, like the air above a fire. He doesn’t take solid form until he’s much closer. Then he’s a zephyr with stubby wings and a rapier in one hand. I don’t hesitate. My rounds melt half his health in a breath. He’ll be clinking on the floor before his blade can reach my flesh or Barley’s. But that’s not what he has in mind. The sword vanishes and a stun gun replaces it. We are so close. I move to shield Barley with myself. My legs are not faster than the speeding, electrified dart. Silence where sirens used to be. Barley frozen in place. Sonnet coining the third Midnight Rider only for the first two to use their tokens to avoid a wipe. Blade grazing my bicep. So much, all at once. It is a kind of ecstasy. The butt of my rifle connects with the zephyr’s fae features while he comes in for another swipe. I do not end him right away. First the station dissolves. Then he dies. Twenty-five percent of their earnings go down the drain with him.

For a moment, we do nothing. Barley’s avatar has recovered, but I think she’s still a bit stunned. Sonnet joins us. He is quiet, for once. I imagine the same thoughts burden all of us. We do not resign ourselves, however. We will press on until there is nothing left. I do not dare voice and make corporeal my fears. Sonnet pings a box. Barley and I follow him down an avenue.

Vogues hit the box before us. There’s another one out of the way, tucked in the northwest corner of the map. Just under two minutes on the clock. We’d have to get moving to lock that one in before the match goes into overtime and any cashout stations not in use vanish.

“No choice,” Sonnet says, panic creeping into his words, “Vogues gotta go. We push in, take the box, and wipe ‘em out.”

“Stop.” Barley marks the farther box. “Sonnet, you will move to claim. If another team gets there first, do not engage. Follow. Do not draw attention. Keep us informed. Google and I will follow the Vogues. Either we will prepare to capture their cashout or we will meet you at our own, depending on your success.”

Though Sonnet’s facerec registers his open mouth, he says nothing. He turns, and then he is gone, riding air to the far box. I do as Barley says, for loyalty in part, and also because this is the only way we can win. Looking at the situation practically, the Vogues are too far ahead to get bumped. They’re going to the next round. If we scuffle with them, even assuming we do push them back and take their station, odds are they’ll let one of the other two teams hold the remaining cashout. That’d put the Vogues and whichever team succeeds on the other side of the map in the two qualifying slots. Boxes this round are worth twenty-two thousand; enough to get us to second place right now, but not enough to keep that spot if anyone besides the Vogues scores along with us. Like it or not, we need the Vogues to win. As if in agreement, their deposit initiates unchallenged in the academy district’s bell tower.

Sonnet fills us in as he slips between rooftops. Says the Midnight Riders are on the box. He agrees to stay on their tail and under the radar. Last round of cashouts kicked them down to third, which means they aren’t making the cut unless they get the box in. We can trust them to play it right. Barley and I weave through the streets to join them. Station’s in a market district parking garage about fifty meters down the road. Excited, Sonnet tells us the Midnight Riders’ stalwart has been left in the dust as their two zephyrs race the clock. Twelve seconds to overtime, a second cashout timer begins in the garage. Plug-in bonus bumps the Riders back up to second. With Barley’s say-so, their stalwart is dispatched. I hop over a defunct toll booth arm and into the garage, the edges of the location demarcated by waist-high concrete barriers. Barley is close behind me.

The cashout station’s abandoned. Still, we take our typical precautions. I set my turret about six meters from the point. Barley drops a protective dome. No one stops the steal. Most likely they’re going back for the stalwart Sonnet dropped. Prepping for a full-on assault. If we happen to get hit by the Sound and Fury in the meantime, all the better. Cash ticks toward our wallets.

Sure enough, by the time my gas mines are planted, we’re in someone’s sights. A sonar grenade rolls down a car ramp to our level. My bullets rip the gadget to pieces, but its first ping has made our whereabouts known. Barley rearranges our formation, hopefully enough to throw them off. I brace myself.

The Sound and Fury drop from a level or two above. A wall of foam sprouts up between us, soft and bubbling, then concrete-dense once it’s fully formed. They’re using goo grenades to wall off the cashout.

“Hold,” says Barley. Don’t push too hard, she means. No need to wipe them out. Better not, actually. Keep them off the station until the other team arrives, and our problems might just cancel out. Circling around the plaster-ball wall of goo, I spot a robed maven. So it’s the Sound and Fury. Barley and Sonnet move up a level at my back. From her new vantage, Barley bombs the station. Sonnet moves constantly. He is a vulture, scanning for isolated prey, swooping at times to do damage but never too far. Should a stray zephyr come for Barley, he’ll be there to step in. As for me, best course is to stay put on the station’s level. We know goo’s in play, which means it could be used to block off the upper levels. Wouldn’t kill us, but might just buy enough time for a steal. Hence the need for a second sightline.

Sound and Fury back off short of making the steal. More than Barley’s grenades spook them. Their full strength restored, the Midnight Riders carve a new entrance on the garage’s far side. Eager to take back what they started, I assume. Wonder if they considered the other option. If they’d gone for the Vogues’ station, those bluejackets might have let them take it. Depends on what takes precedence, kingmaking or cash in hand. Seems the Riders aren’t in a gambling mood. Better to go with what they know: killing and taking. No matter how much you think and plan, everything reduces down to that core loop.

And so they come. They skirmish halfheartedly with the Sound and Fury around the garage perimeter. To expend the resources needed for a decisive victory against the other team is to ensure defeat when we Tough Shells inevitably capitalize on that moment of weakness. The conditions leave us in something like a stalemate, except my team is the only one in a position to wait it out. Probably why most of them go up to Barley’s floor in tenuous truce, each team taking a stairwell far enough from the other to avoid the temptation of backstabbing. A zephyr on each team, apparently clueless to the metagame, duel in a back alley. Still, moments later, there are four bodies firing on Barley’s position. Sonnet drops an inky globe, turns himself and Barley transparent. They’ll be harder targets for the next few seconds.

Forty-five seconds on the cashout. Shame time doesn’t slow this much when another team’s got the point. Much as I’d like to help Barley, she tells me to stay. So I do. Pays off, too, when the victor of the alley duel dashes in to claim the cashout while everyone else is distracted by the three-way standoff a floor up. I wait for him to crouch down and turn his back. Line up my barrel for a sequence of headshots, anticipate the recoil and how he will dash for the nearest cover after my first shot cracks the air. He gets two seconds in. I pull the trigger. Headshot. Next round goes wide because he doesn’t make the right move. He’s panicked. Messes up, goes for a concrete support pillar farther back, which throws me off. I squeeze one more round into his lower back before he dives into cover.

“Sword zephyr at one shot,” I say, pinging where I last had visual. Sucks he’s alive, but he’s not much threat at this distance. Thirty-nine seconds. Barley coins a thespian. Vogues finish their deposit. On the cashboard, the chasm widens. Above my head, a clamor of gunfire. With the Ranzio tech wrapping my ears, I can make out the characteristic register of each separate firearm. The raspy exhale of a flamethrower. The hollow, piercing needle of a sniper. The light belting of an FCAR. The whistle of an RPG. That last one caves the ceiling down by the swordsman and coins Sonnet on impact. Barley falls alone. The zephyr seizes his chance, plunging his blade into and through her. Can’t get a shot from here. Can’t do much but watch. Unless I can close the distance. Concrete chunks everywhere, gotta be one at the right angle for a jump pad. I do what looking I can without putting myself out in the open.

“Don’t.” Barley in my ear.

Sonnet agrees. “You wipe, we’re done.”

“He’s sitting on your totems,” I bite, “I can’t hold alone.” Jump pad deploys, tosses me across the pavement. Don’t register what Barley says. The zephyr doesn’t even see me; he’s looking for a way back up to his mates fighting a losing battle on the level above. My defib paddles sizzle against Sonnet’s plastic, melt his totem into the outline of a short but full-size man. I go for a manual rezz on Barley. She’s shouting now. Wolf snarls.

Happens quickly. New kinds of fire upstairs. Sound and Fury wipe first. Then the Midnight Riders. Sonnet nearly coins halfway through my revive attempt, grapples up to the rubbled, voided second floor. Fourteen seconds left. Need to stall for nine. My turret keeps them back for two of that. The Vogues are still three mavens strong. One of those taps into the station. Sirens plead for intervention.

No time to weigh options. Can’t go down hiding. I slide into the open. Sights not on the bodies, but on the gas mines they’ve so carefully avoided. Green mist chokes the air and the bluejacket on robbery duty. Timed it right—that one’ll be dead before their steal goes through. Me too. The others are already on me. Shotgun and a burst rifle. I return fire, a little amazed I can. Should be coins. Their shots are sloppier than they should be. Farther back, the robber ducks out early and finds Sonnet waiting. Their ‘nade launcher doles out splashy rounds made to counter zephyr movement tech. Best I can hope is Sonnet delays for the next, oh, six seconds.

Can’t think about him. A frag comes at me from the shotgunner, tossed long to stop me running away from it. It’s forward into their guns or back into the grenade. Then there is no grenade. There is only a flower pot defying gravity, a large clay bowl that shatters against a wall. Have I finally slipped? Perhaps. I don’t hold my fire in any case. The shotgunner dies. Another frag from the one with the rifle, tossed underhand to roll at my feet. What touches my toe is a bright red fire extinguisher. Something in this world has broken.

The burst rifle ceases its patter then. Its wielder retreats. Despite the contestant’s erratic weaving, their health drains as if I am landing every shot between their eyes. I can hardly believe it myself. I am good. I am not this good. Sonnet dies. It’s OK. They have no time. I have no idea what I’ve done.