“He’s so annoying!” Wyatt yelled back, then sent a Molotov cocktail sailing past Tom’s shoulder. It ignited the wooden postmaster’s office beyond him, which unfortunately flushed Vik out of his hiding place with a startled shriek. A few dozen simulated townsfolk began running around frantically, trying to put out the fire.
Wyatt and Vik shot furiously at each other for several seconds, then they ran out of bullets. Black smoke curled up from the guns, and it cleared to reveal the fact that no bullets had connected with flesh. Since Wyatt was also out of Molotov cocktails, and Tom’s gun had slid off somewhere when he’d fallen from the wagon, they found themselves standing there in the middle of Tombstone, dust and smoke swirling around them, the post office burning behind them, sort of looking awkwardly at each other.
“Now what?” Tom asked. “None of the townsfolk have guns. They’re banned in town.”
“I suppose we can go the fistfight route. Maybe.” Vik swiped off his cowboy hat, then wiped his forehead, his character’s voluminous mustache flapping in the wind.
Wyatt began scratching at her own mustache. “I don’t like having facial hair. I keep getting crumbs in my beard.”
Tom leaned in to see, and discovered that Wyatt, indeed, had crumbs in her beard.
“I have a proposal.” Vik raised a finger. “I believe we should call this duel a draw and pretend we never had this battle. We part ways, then if we run into each other again, we resume our shoot-out.”
It sounded reasonable to Tom. Wyatt nodded, too, busy picking at her beard.
“Next time, there will be blood,” Vik promised cheerfully, aiming a finger gun at her.
Wyatt aimed a real gun back. “Death and mayhem will certainly ensue.”
They parted ways. Tom and Vik rode out of town together. Desert stretched out around them.
“You gonna find Lyla?” Tom asked. Vik had been trying to seek her out in sims a lot lately and impress her with his fighting skills. So far it hadn’t worked.
“Yeah, I think so.”
Tom squinted at him in the sunlight. “This might’ve been our last fight together, man.”
Vik flashed a grin. “Until CamCo, you mean.”
Tom smiled, too, but he said, “Come on.”
Vik’s grin slipped.
“You don’t need to pretend.” Tom shrugged. “Unless some freak accident obliterates every executive in the Coalition, I’m pretty much done for. We both know it.”
Vik said nothing for a long moment. “You know, Tom, when we climbed that roof, I would’ve climbed that transmission pole. If you hadn’t, and if Blackburn hadn’t been there to see us or anything, I would’ve done it.”
“Yeah. I know, man.” Tom reached out, and they clasped arms. “See ya.”
“Bye, Doc.”
And then Vik set off toward Mexico, and Tom launched his horse off into the vast, scorched desert in search of the most ferocious of the Cowboys, Johnny Ringo, played by Elliot.
Tom hadn’t tried to avoid killing Elliot in the sims, mostly because Tom wasn’t that merciful, but he hadn’t gone out of his way to hunt Elliot down. There was something about the knowledge that Elliot had been trying to help him that chastened him a bit.
This time, though, Tom felt compelled. Elliot’s character was the best gunfighter on the enemy side.
It took him a full six hours, sim time, to finally locate Elliot, and Tom’s character had tuberculosis, which really forced him to rest more than he cared to. He located Elliot taking shelter in a bar with two of his trainees, Grover Stapleton and Art Mackey. Tom flushed them out by lighting the barn on fire. Grover was the first to dash through the door. Tom yanked Grover’s gun right out of his holster and then shot him with it. It jammed when Art tore out of the barn next, so Tom snared him around the neck with a lasso, then whapped into motion a horse tied to the other end. It dragged him off across the landscape.
And then Elliot charged out into the rippling heat, and they faced each other down.
“I’ve been expecting you,” Elliot said simply.
Were this was anyone else, Tom would probably be on guard, since those were the type of words spoken by supervillains to warn of a devastating ambush. In Elliot’s case, it was simply an observation.
“I’m here,” Tom said, reloading his pistol. “Let’s do this the honest way. A proper duel.”
They began circling each other, boots kicking up dust, the hot Arizona sun beating on their shoulders. “I heard something about you this morning,” Elliot remarked.
“How bad is it this time?”
“I’m hoping it’s true. Obsidian Corp. wants a meet and greet in January. Apparently, Joseph Vengerov contacted General Marsh this morning and specifically named you as a trainee he’d like to see.”
Tom paused for a split second, before he remembered himself and resumed circling backward. “Oh. Great.”
“I thought you’d already alienated Joseph Vengerov? It sounds like he’s willing to give you a second chance.”
“What does it matter? Most trainees don’t want to go to Obsidian Corp.’s meet and greet, anyway. Vengerov doesn’t sponsor Combatants.”
Elliot considered him. “Tom, I know I said I was done with this, but I’d still like to give you some advice.”
That surprised Tom. “Uh, sure. Hit me.”
“Try to win Joseph Vengerov over.” Elliot pulled off his hat and wiped his sleeve over his forehead. “I know his stance on sponsoring Combatants. Obsidian Corp.’s clients are all governments or fellow corporations, so they really don’t need Combatants for public relations, but maybe something changed his mind. If that’s the case, it won’t hurt to put in some face time. And if you can at least get one of these people to put in a good word for you, you’ll stand a better chance of redeeming yourself with the others. . . . I’m getting dizzy circling you.”
“Let’s do this thing.”
They both drew their guns. Tom’s shot rang out first, its impact hurling Elliot to the ground. He launched himself forward, and delivered another bullet right between Elliot’s eyes.
“Thanks for the advice,” he told Elliot’s corpse. And he meant it.
He whirled around, squinting into the bright sunlight, trying to calculate how many members of Elliot’s group were still alive. His horse returned, still dragging Art Mackey, now unconscious, and Tom shot him before getting ready to ride off. Then a bullet smacked the dirt at his feet, startling the animal into bolting.
Tom raised his gun at the figure moving toward him in the shimmering heat. A woman. His neural processor flicked rapidly through character profiles, trying to ID her character and role in the sim.
Finally, it registered: Annie Oakley, a legendary female sharpshooter.
She did not belong in this sim.
Could it be . . . ?
Tom’s heart clattered in his chest. His hands grew sweaty, and he became oddly embarrassed about all the blood he’d hacked up onto his sleeve, even if his real lungs weren’t the ones bleeding. He moved toward her, and Annie Oakley’s silhouette closed the distance, until they were close enough to make out each other’s squinting eyes beneath the wide-brimmed hats.
“This is a far more discreet entrance into the system than hijacking a drone, wouldn’t you say, Thomas Raines?”