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  Too late. He’s missed his chance. This nothingness is all there is now. This is what he’s become: a silent nonentity, falling forever through the ink-black emptiness.

  “Mervin! Jesus—Mervin help me!”

  The voice hisses in his ears amid a furious burst of fizzing distortion. It’s Jerry. His friend. His friend is in trouble.

  Engage.

  And this time, the system grabs him, holds him tight. A flash of energy jolts through him, racing across his skin like a thousand volts. Suddenly, there’s solid ground beneath his feet, breath in his lungs, and all around him, there are the lights—blindingly bright after the darkness of deployment. Mervin blinks, squints into the glare. I can see. And what a sight. His HUD shows him the battlefield, lays it out all around him as an undulating web of light: a tracery of dazzling beams, glowing even brighter where their paths meet. Wherever the beams join together, that brighter light is a node, a vital connection that must be protected. The troops call the battlefield, Tinsel Town, and in training, Mervin thought it pretty, like a carpet of magical lights. But here, the scale is beyond anything he ever imagined. The illuminated latticework stretches out to infinity in every direction: a vast, bleak desert of data. Men have no place here, nor any living creature. But here they are. Twenty yards in front of him, the men and women of his platoon are ranged out in a ragged line, made bright by the pulses of light spurting from their weapons. The troops fire, targeting the creeping carpet of green light that oozes slowly over the ground toward them. “Bots!” Mervin whispers.

  He focuses on his HUD, mentally adjusting the resolution so that it renders each bot as a perfect sphere of green light, two feet high. It’s meant to make the bots an ideal target, but to Mervin, they always look like giant snails crawling purposefully across a carefully manicured lawn. The bots are taking heavy fire from Mervin’s platoon, and as each sphere is hit, it explodes with a crackling discharge of energy. The troops are making good progress, moving forward one step at a time, maintaining the line. But one man does not move with the others. There’s a gap in the line, and behind it, a figure lies on the ground, writhing in agony. Jerry!

  Mervin looks down. His weapon is in his hands: his favorite pulse cannon. He checks the charge and settings then drives himself forward, running faster than he’s ever run in his life, powering over the terrain. “Jerry! Hold on! I’m coming, man!” In moments, he’s at Jerry’s side. He kneels down beside his fallen friend. “Jesus, Jerry.” It’s bad. Jerry’s right leg has been eaten away almost completely. There’s nothing left but a ragged stump. His left foot is gone too. “What the hell happened, Jerry?”

  But Jerry doesn’t answer. He stops struggling and flops back onto the ground. He lies still although his left leg twitches pitifully. Jerry stares up into space. His face is pale, his features drawn tight in pain.

  “Jesus Christ, man,” Mervin says. “You’ve got to log out.”

  A breath rattles in Jerry’s throat, and he turns his head slightly to look up at his friend. “Oh, it’s you, Merv. For a second, I thought it was Clyde coming to chew me out.”

  Mervin shakes his head. “No. It’s me. But listen, you took some serious damage. You’ve got to log the hell out, right now.”

  “OK, but wait a minute, man.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Jerry, you don’t have a minute. I’m logging you out.” Mervin reaches across to the emergency logout switch that’s built into the body armor on Jerry’s chest. He flips off the protective cover, but then he hesitates. An emergency forced logout is risky. There’s a fifty-fifty chance his friend will end up being fed and watered with the poor devils in the Vegetable Patch. But if he leaves him here, lying wounded on the battlefield, he’ll die for sure. Hell, he’s probably lost the use of his legs already. Mervin places his fingers on the plastic switch, but before he can flip it, Jerry grabs his arm.

  “Wait! I’ll log myself out. But you’ve got to let me tell you something.” Jerry takes a breath, and his lips tremble.

  “What?”

  “There’s something they didn’t tell us. My legs—it wasn’t just a bot. There’s something else out here, something... it’s green. It looks like a bot, but it changes. I’ve never seen... never seen anything like it.”

  A sudden cold certainty sweeps through Mervin like ice water flooding through his veins. Something they didn’t tell us. Yes. That’s always the way of it. The troops are first in the firing line but the last to know what the hell’s going on. And this is the result—good soldiers struck down: wounded or worse. Mervin shakes his head. It’s a sorry mess. But right now, all that matters is getting his friend the hell out. “OK, Jerry. Thanks, man. You did good. Now log off, or I’ll personally tell Clyde you spit in his soup.”

  Something like a smile flickers across Jerry’s face. “You bastard,” he wheezes. A cough shakes his chest, and then he lies very still. His eyes go blank, then suddenly he is no longer there.

  Mervin stands up. His friend should be safely back in the War Room by now. It’s time to get to work. He strides forward to join his platoon and takes up the gap in the line left by Jerry. The platoon is fighting hard, cutting down the green spheres with a hail of fire. But the targets keep on coming. Wave after wave of green spheres rolls toward them. For a moment, Mervin sees them as crawling insects, something like mites or ticks, but that’s just the perceptual filter playing tricks on his mind. “They’re just code,” he mutters. But the thought doesn’t comfort him. In here, so am I.

  He raises his weapon and targets the nearest sphere. One shot is all it needs. He pulls the trigger and adjusts his aim to the next target. He’s meant to wait and check the kill, but no one does that anymore. Why bother when the weapons cannot miss? He fires again then takes a step forward. He’s in his stride now, and his training kicks in. He pulls the trigger and selects a new target, then does it again and again, faster than he can think about it. The green spheres burst and sizzle. It’s like popping balloons at a birthday party, except here there seems to be an endless supply of balloons.

  Where the hell are they all coming from? He’ll never know. That’s the kind of intel the officers keep to themselves. He fires another shot then adjusts his grip on his pulse cannon and takes a few steps forward. And as he moves, he sees something from the corner of his eye.

  CHAPTER 5

  I Had No Choice

  SOMETHING’S NOT RIGHT. Mervin turns his head and gasps. The bot he just fired on is still there. It should’ve been destroyed instantly. I must’ve missed. But that’s impossible isn’t it? He turns, lining up a second shot, but the bot is growing, changing shape, uncurling. Mervin pulls the trigger, and a pulse of light spits from the muzzle of his pulse cannon. It hits the bot dead center, and Mervin steps back, expecting the crackle and buzz as the damned thing explodes. But no. The pulse flashes against the bot and ricochets, fizzing away into the distance.

  Mervin takes a sharp breath then thumbs the dial on his cannon, notching the power up to maximum. He takes aim and prepares to fire. But before he can pull the trigger, the bot is moving, shifting sideways, impossibly fast. It twists and turns, unraveling before his eyes. The sphere splits apart, sending out long, jagged beams of crackling light to probe the nodes below, like hungry fingers scrabbling at a carcass. Mervin backs away then sidesteps, tracking the bot’s movement with his cannon. His finger tightens on the trigger, but in that instant the bot seems to find what it’s looking for. One writhing tentacle of light locks onto a node and suddenly swells, pulsating with pure energy.

  Mervin hesitates, staring stupidly. It’s feeding, he thinks. He has to stop it. But before he can react, the bot erupts in a dazzling flare of light. Mervin’s HUD whites out, and a harsh howl of feedback wails in his earpiece. He staggers backward, roaring in anger and frustration. The bot will be on him in a heartbeat, and the whirlwind of his last thoughts races through his mind. He still has his weapon, but he can’t see or hear. If he fires now, he could hit anything, even his own platoo
n. But if he doesn’t fight back, he’s going to end up like Jerry, mauled and incomplete. Firing blind is his only chance of survival, and he has to take it.

  Mervin squeezes the trigger and lets fly with a burst of three pulses then steps back, cursing under his breath. The ground shifts beneath his feet, and something rises up, flicking against his leg. It’s a gentle touch, but then the pain comes: burning, white-hot, searing up his leg. It bites into his flesh and sends a jolt of agony shuddering along his spine. He lets out a snarl of pain and kicks out savagely, but his feeble response has no effect. The thing snakes around his legs, wrapping itself around him, climbing up his body. A rush of pure panic floods through his body. What can he do? He can’t run, and he can’t fight the bot if he can’t see. But maybe there’s something he can do.

  Mervin narrows his eyes and concentrates, channeling his thoughts.

  HUD reset, tactical mode.

  Instantly, his HUD darkens and redraws the battlefield as a simple schematic, reducing his platoon to a row of blue dots while each bot is marked out by a simple red cross. And there it is. One red symbol is closing in on his position and moving in a way Mervin has never seen before. It’s sidling up to him, circling around to one side as if it somehow knows to avoid his primary field of fire. Mervin focuses his mind on the bot.

  Select tactical target.

  The targeting reticle appears—a steady red circle centered on the bot—and this time, Mervin does not hesitate.

  Isolate nodes at target. Divert data stream. Interrupt power to target node.

  The system takes only milliseconds to carry out Mervin’s commands, and the bot stops dead in its tracks. Yes! The pressure eases on Mervin’s legs, and then suddenly he’s free. Whatever it was that grabbed him, it’s gone. He can move again, but Mervin stays right where he is. It’s time to finish this.

  Initiate tactical strike. Eliminate target. Extreme prejudice.

  His HUD responds immediately:

  WARNING! INBOUND TACTICAL STRIKE

  “I’ve got you now, you son of a bitch,” Mervin whispers. But he doesn’t have time to enjoy his victory. The whole platoon sees the warning, and the voice channel is suddenly awash with a barrage of shouted commands.

  “What the hell?”

  “Jesus! Everybody out!”

  “I can’t! I’m engaged. Got to finish these bastards!”

  “I don’t give a shit! Evacuate! Now!”

  Mervin shakes his head. This is his doing. They’ll all have to log out, and quickly. Most of the platoon is within the blast radius of the tactical weapon. A strike of this magnitude will flash through this sector of Tinsel Town and burn out everything that isn’t locked safely within a node. And that includes the men and women of his platoon.

  “Sorry, guys. I had no choice,” Mervin says. But no one is listening. They’ve just been asked to log out in the middle of a firefight, and it isn’t easy. Mervin chews at the inside of his cheek. They’re going to be mad as hell when they get back in the War Room. And as for Clyde—Mervin pictures the man’s face, white with fury, flecks of foaming spittle flying from his lips as he pours out a long stream of abuse. And the man knows how to hold a grudge. Mervin will have to bear the brunt of Clyde’s bullying for a couple of months at the very least.

  Mervin scowls. What else could he have done? The whole thing was a setup from the get-go. The standard bots were just cannon fodder—only there to draw the troops in toward the much more advanced morphing bot. That damned shape-shifter was sent to devour as many avatars as it could, to harvest their code and discover their vulnerabilities. If it had been allowed to succeed, it would have made their defenses useless.

  Mervin just saved all their asses. And what harm will his tactical strike really do? Sure, there’ll be a blip in the system. There’s always a delay when the system cycles and flushes the nodes with fresh data, but how long will that take—one millisecond, two? It’s got to be better than risking a full-scale breach.

  The warning changes on his HUD:

  TACTICAL STRIKE INBOUND. IMPACT IN TEN SECONDS, NINE…

  “Time I was out of here,” Mervin murmurs. He clears his mind, ready to focus on the single command that will take him back to his chair in the War Room. But a sudden yell shatters his concentration.

  “I can’t log off! Jesus Christ, the system must be down or something. It won’t let me log off.”

  “Me neither! We’re screwed, man. Somebody do something.”

  “No one can log off. Run diagnostics.”

  “There’s no time!”

  “Abort tactical strike! Abort, for Christ’s sake; call it off!”

  A sickening swell of doubt sweeps through Mervin’s mind, sends a chill to creep bone-deep through his body. He licks his dry lips. Log off. He closes his eyes tight and waits for the familiar sinking feeling in his belly as the system takes him out of sync, the sharp pinpricks of pain that tingle across his scalp as the connections are severed.

  Oh, my god!

  It hasn’t worked. He’s still in theater. He opens his eyes. In his HUD, the countdown flashes from six to five. And there’s another message, scrolling over and over across his field of vision:

  REQUEST DENIED: PERSONNEL COMPROMISED—MALWARE DETECTED

  Mervin stares at his HUD, watches the countdown numbers flicker and change in slow motion as his mind races. When the bot touched him, it must’ve infected his code. And it must’ve done even worse to Jerry. Christ! The system wants to purge them all. Clyde almost certainly has his finger on the button at this very moment. He probably knew about the morphing bot before the platoon even deployed, but he sent them out anyway, just to test the enemy’s strength. Now that he’s gathered his data, he’ll have no hesitation in sacrificing the whole platoon rather than risk a little contamination. To hell with that! There’s still one card left to play.

  FOUR, THREE...

  Mervin doesn’t even try to switch back to his standard HUD. It’s probably still broken anyway. But he doesn’t need to see anything to find the emergency logoff switch on his chest. He rips off the switch’s plastic cover. There’s no time left to worry about the consequences. It’s now or never. He puts his hand on the switch’s plastic lever, his fingers suddenly clumsy. “Hit your switches, everybody! Emergency logoff! Do it now!”

  Then he flips the lever, keeps tight hold of it. And as the first bright needles of pain pierce his scalp, he has but one thought: Please, God—let everyone get out in one piece.

  CHAPTER 6

  The House Always Wins

  KILGORE FROWNS. “You said Very few.”

  “What?” Will asks.

  “The defensive wall—you said very few weapons could get through it. What did you mean?”

  “There’s meant to be one thing that’ll crack it, but it’s not a weapon you or I could ever have.”

  Kilgore takes a step closer to Will. “Tell me.”

  Will smiles. “Sure, I’ll tell you.” He pauses, just to make the kid sweat a little longer. “Drones—Gray Eagles to be precise.”

  Kilgore lets out a low whistle. “What payload?”

  Will nods approvingly. “Smart question. The only one that’ll do it is the Hellfire.”

  “Well, you know, we could maybe lay our hands on a Hellfire, or at least a Javelin with a shoulder launcher, or maybe—”

  But Will doesn’t let him finish. “You’re not listening, kid. I told you before—it has to be a sustained attack. I’m talking five or more Hellfire missiles in rapid succession. Anything less, and you may as well bring a pea shooter.”

  “But that’s ridiculous! We could never get that kind of firepower together.”

  “Tell me about it,” Will says. “But you’re missing the point. Defensive walls can be carried by players, so they have to have a weakness. The only reason they can be breached at all is to stop people like you and me from becoming invincible. The game always has to have the upper hand.”

  Kilgore scowls and kicks out at a chun
k of gravel on the road. Will watches him for a moment. He’s young, he thinks. He wants the world to make sense. Too bad. “The house always wins, kid,” he says. “Get used to it.”

  Kilgore looks down for a heartbeat, then he pulls himself up to his full height and looks Will in the eye. “I’m not just some dumb kid, all right? And if I recall, it was you who asked me for help. So if we’re going to solve this thing, you can cut out the kid and all that other crap and talk to me with some goddamned respect, all right?”

  Will fights off the urge to smile. Maybe the kid’s right. Maybe he’s pulled his chain for long enough. “Fair enough,” he says. “But what shall I call you? You don’t like me using your real name, and Sergeant Kilgore is a bit of a mouthful, you’ve got to admit.”

  Kilgore hesitates. Back in the day, when he first played the game along with a bunch of kids from school, they gave him a nickname of sorts. “Sarge,” he says.

  “OK, Sarge, it is.” Will inclines his head back toward the barricade. “So, your HUD tell you anything else?”

  Will turns his attention back to the stacked cars, double-checking the readouts in his HUD. “No. I already gave you everything I got. Maybe, with time, I could work out a piece of code we could inject into the wall and...” He doesn’t bother finishing the sentence. He’s just clutching at straws. The game’s encryption system is as hard as nails. If there’s a vulnerability to be found, he’s never seen a trace of it, and with his enhanced HUD, he’s seen deeper into the code than most people. But even so, there must be a way in. It’s against the game’s own protocols to have a puzzle that can’t be solved. He just needs to take the right approach. He looks away from the barricade. Staring at the damned thing certainly won’t bring it down. “Let’s talk this through,” he says. He looks at Will. “I’ve only ever seen Gray Eagle drones flying on their own—one at a time. So what could bring out three or more at once?”

  Will runs his hand over his chin. “This barricade is clearly a high-value asset. We’ve seen that from the GDL response. But if we don’t just want to start another firefight, we’d need to present a bigger threat.”