She flew over Michael and fell, screaming, to the trench floor. Before she had time to get to her feet, Michael was sprinting for the next trench. If he was lucky she’d broken a leg.
6
There was a man sleeping on the bench inside the next trench. Other than that, it was empty. Michael was ecstatic. He ran to the steps and climbed down. At first he considered doing a quick search without bothering the guy, but then thought better of it. The man might wake up while Michael was under the tarp, and Michael would be wide open for attack. He couldn’t take any chances.
Michael stood near the sleeping man, watching his chest rise and fall. Not wanting to get too close, he quietly pulled out his blade and aimed, then shot a clear laser of power across the man’s neck, trying not to gag as the soldier sprang awake and grabbed at his bleeding wound. He fell off the bench, and for the second time that day, Michael had to remind himself that he hadn’t actually killed a person. It looked so real.
The man bled until his body was empty, then vanished.
A quick but thorough search of the trench revealed that once again Michael had struck out. Three down, dozens to go. He groaned.
“Not happy down there?”
He glanced up to see a man and a woman standing directly above him, right on the edge of the trench. The woman was bouncing a grenade from hand to hand.
“Um, no, I’m just taking a breather is all.” Thankfully his clothes were now dirty and smeared with blood. He fit in much better, looked like he belonged.
“Nothing but a dumb kid,” the man said to the woman. “Think you’re going to get away with using code from other games? And there’s no doubt you’re a rookie.”
Michael narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?”
“Because you haven’t turned to run yet. You’re probably pretty sure this grenade doesn’t work.”
Michael started to answer, but before he could get a word out the woman pulled the pin and tossed the grenade. It landed with a wet thunk in the slush at Michael’s feet. He looked at the pair of soldiers with defiance. They turned and ran.
When the grenade blew, Michael felt it. This time there was a brilliant explosion of pain so acute and short he didn’t even have time to scream. Then came the void of dark space that they called death.
7
He woke up back at the beginning, in the icy tunnel. Bryson was sitting there and didn’t seem the least bit surprised when Michael appeared before him.
“Sucks being killed out there,” Bryson said. “I hurt.” He paused. “All over.”
“Yeah, me too.” Michael stood up and stretched, felt the lingering aches and pains from his two deaths. They weren’t quite the same as real injuries—the Coffin stimulated nerves for physical reactions—but enough to ensure you wouldn’t forget too quickly.
“How’s Sarah doing?” he asked.
Bryson shrugged. “I don’t know. We got separated.”
“How many trenches have you seen?”
Bryson held up two gloved fingers. “But nothing yet.”
“Man,” Michael groaned. “This is gonna take years.”
“Nah, we’ll be fine,” Bryson answered, climbing to his feet to join him. “Having fun?”
Michael looked at him for a second. “No, I hate every minute of it,” he finally said, then held up his knife. “I ended up borrowing a little something from Dungeons of Delmar.”
“Yeah,” Bryson replied absently, his face screwed up in a grimace. “It’s weird how these old geezers like to kill—like they’re animals. I need to program myself a little help.”
Michael nodded. “Let’s just find that stupid Portal.”
Out the door they went.
8
The next couple of days were pure hell for Michael.
He died twenty-seven times, in every way imaginable, within the borders of that brutal, icy arena. Some deaths were worse than others, but somehow he kept going back out there. His knife trick helped a few times, and he tried other things like a special leaping ability from the Canyon Jumpers game and enhanced speed from Running with Ragers. They were hard to isolate and program, and ended up only delaying his inevitable doom.
But he pressed on.
Oddly, every day a horn blew at dusk, and the battles ceased immediately. People who’d been going at it like lions were suddenly pals, walking—often limping—toward huge dinner tables with arms around each other’s shoulders, laughing.
Michael and his friends joined them to eat, then headed toward a place where warming lamps and sleeping bags had been laid out. The first night, they’d tried to sneak toward the trenches to search, but they’d come across a temporary firewall and were all too tired to hack it. The security programming in the frigid place was definitely above average.
The next morning it all started up again. Kill, kill, get killed. Pain and suffering. Kill some more, get killed some more. For the first time in his life, Michael understood why real soldiers coming back from real wars often had a hard time getting over the things they’d seen and done. And had done to them. If Michael had a soul, it was starting to leak out of his pores.
The one solace he had was that he and his friends were together. They didn’t say much—or have time to—but at least they were together.
In the late afternoon of the third day, Sarah found the Portal.
CHAPTER 12
A DIRE WARNING
1
Michael had just been killed again by a working grenade. If he’d learned anything in Devils of Destruction, it was that no matter how many times your body exploded, it never got any easier.
Sarah was waiting for him back in the tunnel. She was sitting on the ground, back to the wall, legs folded underneath her, and she looked exhausted. Michael sat down across from her, and she told him.
“I found it,” she said softly. Her voice sounded dead. Michael felt just as empty, and he thought he knew why: they’d paid too heavy a price. He knew he’d never be the same.
He did feel some sense of relief, though. “Where?” he finally asked, and the way Sarah looked at him, he knew she was just as relieved as he was.
“It’s five trenches in from the tents, near the middle, on the left side. There are five or six people inside, who knows what kinds of weapons. I barely detected the Portal before they killed me.”
“We’ll be fine,” Michael told her. “We’ll wait for Bryson, and we’ll come up with a plan. Maybe we can even do it without jumping in there and going medieval on everybody.”