I wonder if I’ll register the bullet before it scrambles my brains. The finger begins to tighten, and I tense.
A message of death screams across the room, a sharp retort echoing harshly from the tiled walls. I flinch, then my brain catches up and I realize I’m still alive. The shot missed.
“What… what are… hurghh… you… doing!”
The Gamer has Ham’s father in a chokehold, one hand fighting against two to control the gun. Another shot coughs out, painting the Gamer’s midsection red, and he falls to the floor, dragging Ham’s father with him, tendons standing out on the older man’s hands as he tries to wrestle the weapon away. The chokehold never wavers.
“I…”
The Gamer’s voice sounds rusty, as if he doesn’t know how to actually speak.
“I’m… sorry… Father… Love… her… You never… listened… Just wanted…”
The gun fires again, and again, swift lead eviscerating the Gamer’s abdomen, but he only squeezes tighter, turning the pale-haired man’s face purple. The gun falls, perfectly manicured nails scrabbling and clawing against the constricting pressure. I start crawling over, nearly weeping at the pain. The pale-haired man’s foot twitches, then goes limp. Finally I make it to the Gamer, my hands slipping through the rapidly expanding pool of blood.
“Ham!”
Sightless eyes stare at me.
“Ash… still… alive…”
“I’m here, baby, I’m here. We need to stop this, get you out of there.”
“…can’t. He… locked me out… stuck… encounter…”
“I’ll get Jase to find a way! Stay with me, baby.”
“…no time… losing… Ash… end it… please…”
“No, no no no, Ham, I can’t do that, please don’t ask me to do that, please…”
The Gamer goes limp in my arms, and I realize he’s dead. Shaking, I look around the room. Wind is still unconscious, slumped against the wall, Slend on the floor, unmoving except for the faintest rise and fall of her chest. The armored walls guarding Ham stand like a monolith, marred only by several bullet scuffs and a thin slice where one of the Shredder’s molyblades swung through. My rifle, its strap neatly cut in two, lies nearby, the Musashi still piercing the Shredder’s heart.
Just another encounter. Just another encounter… JUST ANOTHER FUCKING ENCOUNTER… Find the clues…
I claw my way over to the rifle, then use the strap to lash it around my injured leg as a splint. Suck in several deep breaths, then push myself to my feet, walling off the pain as best I can. Tears roll down my face and my teeth clench tight, but I am Ashura the Terrible, and I do not lose. Not even when no one is watching. Especially when no one is watching. I yank the Musashi out of the Shredder and toss it over by one corner of the armored core, steel clattering.
I stumble my way to the torn-off Shredder limb, parts of Slend’s mecha scattered nearby, my friend’s chest rising and falling in shallow waves. No time for friends. Screaming, I lift the meter-and-a-half length off the ground, balancing it on my shoulder like a claymore, inner molyblade edge still exposed, its weight crushing. The room spins around me, blood loss becoming noticeable, but I force it under control.
The walk back to the armored walls is an eternity of pain, each step its own private hell. Time passes. Eventually, the trial ends, vision clearing to reveal the corner where I tossed the Musashi. With another scream, I bring the leg chopping down, an oblique cut shearing off the bottom half of the corner. The Shredder limb thuds to the floor, and I know I won’t be able to lift it again, but I don’t need to. Panting, I slide to a seated position, wincing when my wound hits the cool tile. I swivel the molyblade leg so it cuts the bottom of the corner, then pick up the Musashi, levering it into the thin cut. Twin thumps sound, the metal sections falling away, leaving just enough of an opening for me to crawl through. A minute later, I’m leaning against Ham’s tank, staring at him through the watery glass, blade propped point-down as a crutch. A haphood of unfamiliar design sits in a cradle next to one of the control consoles, a sleek, hard thing, like a chrome beetle. Small tendrils dangle from its interior, almost too fine to see. Gently, I grasp it in both hands, lifting it from its perch. Displays come alive, running through their initial diagnostics.
I slump down, tank cool against my back. Trembling, I place the hemisphere over my head, linking it to my glasses, and dive into his thoughts.
Vision fades, replaced by nightmare.
Scenes flash in front of my eyes—scattered fragments of surveillance cameras, social streams, and first-person perspectives stitched into terrifying kaleidoscopic wholes.
Frantic soldiers, overwhelmed beneath concentrated fire from haphood-adorned Gamers, armories and vehicle parks broken into across multiple nations and countries. Drone control centers swarmed under and infiltrated, their command pods utilized by blank-eyed men and women coordinating multi-pronged assaults. Madness on a global scale, warning alerts flashing across every ’Net, citizens urged to stay inside, masses of people rioting and fleeing the chaos, the social fabric revealed for the thin facade it’s always been.
I feel myself falling deeper, my mind spinning down the whirlpool drain, thoughts subsumed beneath the overwhelming immensity of data. Just when it seems like I’m going to drown, a single viewpoint clarifies.
Three men in a familiar clinic monitoring room, puffy bandages swelling their groins under their tight-fitting clothes, more bandages covering the face of the largest. A red haired man in a doctor’s coat huddles in the corner, his face bruised, a deep cut across his lower lip. A window in the wall looks through to an older woman, her movements slow and sure as she glides through her stances.
“Time to have some fun,” the bandage-faced man sneers. “That black whore’s gonna regret the day she fucked with us. We’ll do her mom first, then her.”
“Please,” the doctor cries. “She’s a patient!”
One of them kicks him into silence, and they step through the revolving entrance lock. A short scene of violence unfolds, necks snapped with ruthless efficiency, but only after limbs break and shatter, accompanied by high-pitched shrieks, streaks of blood dripping down the window’s inner surface. Sobbing, the doctor taps a command into his hapgloves. The lock revolves back, and the woman steps out. She nods at him.
“Thank you, Freddie. Do you know where my children are?”
“Try… try Johnny’s. Ash always hangs out there.”
“It’ll be good to see that old scoundrel again. Be safe, Freddie. Dark times. War times.”
She strides out of the room, hospital gown flapping around her brown, bare legs.
Is… is that…?
The whirlpool drags me down once more, spitting out another scene.
I’m walking through a plush ballroom, smiling visages of Han emperors beaming down from the walls. Mirrors bounce my reflection back at me, a blank, acne-scarred face, gray haphood covering my head, red-tinted hexagonal glasses my eyes, form-fitting shorts and t-shirt my dark body. The pupils staring back at me don’t seem to have anyone home.
A door swings open, two figures striding through.
“Look, Ilya. A noodle shop lump, come creeping into our domain. What should we—”
My hand rises lightning fast, a pistol in it, and I shoot them both in the eye, their coiling tattoos vanishing in a spray of blood and bone and brains. Half unsheathed molyblades slither back to quiescence. I step past and through the door. A terrified man huddles behind a sumptuous wooden desk.
“Look, I’m the ambassador, I can get you whatev—”
His face disappears too, and I walk out, my movements the finely tuned ticking of a precision machine.