They needed to get into the boiler room and erase their guilt. And now the Game was throwing this at them.
“That’s not a hard question,” Peter said hurriedly. “Charlie, seems like you should have the honors.”
Charlie thought about the wrist cracking under his foot. Choices had consequences.
“I have no idea what picking Y does,” Charlie said.
“It’s just a question. If the Game does something to Tim, that’s not your fault,” Alex told him.
“It’s like the trolley problem!” Kenny added, always happy to quote philosophy.
“Oh, shut up, Kenny,” Vanhi said.
Peter ignored the squabble and turned to Charlie and said quietly, “He probably beats her.”
Charlie glared at Peter. “Leave Mary out of this.”
Peter held up his hands. “Just saying.”
“Oh, to hell with this,” Kenny said. “I hate him, and I don’t even know the guy. This is our butts on the line, remember? Blood on the wall? Let’s focus. We obviously have to answer this in order for the Game to help us.”
Kenny reached out and pushed the Y floating above them.
They saw Tim’s social media unfold in space above them. He wasn’t a big poster, but everyone posted about him. Look at me, at a kegger with Tim Fletcher! Look at me, cheering him on at State (Fletcher tagged in the background of the selfie, on the field, crushing skulls for that great American bloodletting).
The Game was moving between posts. It pulled Tim’s face and elements of his clothes and gestures, then drew on pictures of Kurt, too, creating an image of the two of them standing in front of a wall. Behind them, it began painting in a new element, a Confederate flag pinned to the wood planks behind them. The image was perfect. It didn’t look like any fake the Vindicators had ever seen. No telltale photoshopped clues—mismatches in graining or tone or lighting. On the deepest lizard-brain level, it felt real.
The Game said:
Post? Y/N?
On some level, Charlie felt relieved. He thought maybe the Game would murder Tim if Charlie hit Y. Who knew? This felt more akin to a prank. Like Alex’s Lord LittleDick poster, might it rest in peace. Charlie could live with that.
“It’s crazy how real it looks,” Kenny said.
“So we post it,” Alex said.
“Um, yeah,” Kenny said. “To save us? That’s a small price to pay.”
“Yeah, he probably won’t even get in trouble,” Alex said. “Football’s too important.”
“He’ll just say it’s fake,” Peter added.
“It is fake,” Kenny agreed.
“It doesn’t look it,” Vanhi said.
“Still, it’s a big deal to label someone a racist,” Kenny said, thinking it through.
“But he is a racist,” Peter said.
“We don’t know that,” Kenny said.
“Yeah, we do,” Peter shot back. “I don’t need to hear him say it. He reeks of it.”
“Kurt called me the Dumb Asian,” Alex said.
“There you have it.”
“You guys are missing the real problem,” Vanhi said.
“What’s that?”
“What if posting Kurt and Tim with that flag doesn’t bring them down? What if it brings the flap up?”
“Huh,” Peter said, considering it.
Charlie pulled on the door. He checked the hinges in the Game, looking for some clever way in. But it was obvious: the Game wasn’t going to help them until they posted that fake photo.
“It’s us or them,” Kenny said, coming to the same conclusion. “There’s no way in but to play along. That graffiti could ruin us.”
Everyone turned to look at Charlie.
“What do you think?” Vanhi asked.
Charlie wondered who should answer—Boy Scout Charlie from two years ago, dropout Charlie from a week ago, Game-playing, Mary-courting Charlie of today?
There was only one thing all three of them agreed with.
“I think I hate Tim Fletcher,” he answered, pushing the Y floating above them.
The boiler room door opened, the Wi-Fi lock unclicking automatically.
“I wonder if we’ll see Hephaestus again,” Peter asked, as they crept through the virtual mist pluming out. Vines wrapped around the pipes all around them. A python hung lazily from one, flicking its tongue in and out, sniffing them from above. A low moan came from the boiler.
“Oh! That’s disgusting,” Vanhi said, startling them all.
On the ground, in the corner, was little Hephaestus’ body. His head was torn off. Blood pooled around his torso, tacky in the oily black muck-water covering the ground.
“Oh-ho-ho,” Peter said. “The plot thickens.”
“Where’s his head?” Kenny asked helpfully.
He turned around and gasped. There in front of him was Hephaestus’ little head, stuck on a pike, tongue hanging out.
Kenny poked at it, and the eyes shot open.
“You did this!” it shouted, then fell dead again.
Kenny wiped his face, the digital blood coming off on his hand in the gameview.
Behind them, the door clicked locked and blue swords appeared in their hands. “What the—” Vanhi managed, then a roar tore through the room, so loud it hurt their ears. A creature raised its head from behind the boiler, then another head and another after it. The heads lashed forward, scaly and fanged, snapping at them. The creature rose from behind the boiler, as if the metal casing with the bloody pentagram was its armored belly.
Charlie didn’t move in time, and one of the heads lashed out and sank its teeth into his arm. Virtual blood sprayed out.
25 Blaxx!
flashed in text over him, spinning quickly, then disappeared.
Another head reared back, opened its mouth, and roared.
At the same time, one of the pressure-release valves sprung open on the boiler, spewing invisible gas, while the pilot light’s sparker triggered. A plume of real flame shot out, intermingling with the virtual fire pouring out of the creature’s mouth.
“Ow!” Vanhi cried. “That really hurt.”
She ran to the door, but it wouldn’t budge.
Peter tried chopping one of the beast’s heads with his blue sword. It lopped off with a bloody spray, then grew back instantly. Fire breathed out again, and this time the real fireball was bigger, as more gas poured out from the pressure valves and filled the room. Peter felt the heat as he ducked just in time. Any minute, enough gas would be in the room to burn them all to a crisp.
Vanhi and Charlie swung for other heads on the beast, but they kept growing back.
“What do we do?” Charlie asked.
But Kenny was laughing—he knew exactly what was going on, and he knew just what to do. “Burn the necks!” he cried out, elated. “Before they can grow back! Look!”
He dipped his sword into the oily muck on the floor, then raised it into one of the plumes of fire, where it ignited. Charlie did the same and looked at the flaming sword in his hand. He chopped the next head that flew at him, then held the blade against the oozing neck as it sizzled and singed shut. The stump fell down like a dead boa constrictor.
They chopped away at the other heads, which now shot out at them frantically with teeth bared and eyes wide. A final plume of gas ignited, so large they all had to drop to the ground, but then the last head rolled across the ground and the beast lurched back with a wild spasm and fell dead as the fire sprinklers came on.
Water poured down from the ceiling, soaking them.
“I will wash away all your sins!” Kenny laughed. He raised his hands to the falling water and began rubbing them over the furnace, smearing the pentagram. They all pitched in and scrubbed, until at last the image was totally erased, just a trail of reddish brown swirling down the drain in the floor, then gone.
Vanhi looked at Kenny with actual admiration. “How did you think of that? Burning the necks?”
“Hercules and the Hydra! The AI was built on world religion. While you guys were reading code, I was reading books!” Kenny folded his arms triumphantly.
“Holy shit. That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever played,” Peter said.
“Played? Done? Experienced?” Charlie asked.
“What is the word?” Kenny added.
“The word is mindfuck,” Peter said. “That was the most amazing mindfucking I’ve ever received. And I’ve been arrested in my home by Feds.”
“Wow.”
“That was better than sex,” Kenny said.
Everyone stared at him.
“Fine,” he amended. “That was better than I imagine sex to be.”
Everyone slept hard. Except Alex.
His physics exam was tomorrow. He hadn’t forgotten. He’d just blocked it out with the Game. Except now he’d failed that, too.
Only Vanhi had seen him hiding in the boiler room. When the fire started spraying out, he ran and ducked behind the pipes in the back. While his friends were chopping away, he was crouching in the corner.
When it was over and the water started, Vanhi saw him step out from the shadows. She pretended not to notice, but he was sure she’d tell them all.
His dad was a war hero, and Alex couldn’t even stand up to an imaginary dragon.
He’d peed his pants, a little. Did she see that, too?
For five minutes, he’d been the hero. The one who earned them the Aziteks. Who would remember that now? Kenny was the hero. Alex was shit.
As if reading his mind, the Game told him:
You don’t matter.
That was indisputably true.
He needed sleep.
But he couldn’t add another failure to the list.
Not now.
He looked at the bottle of pills Peter had supplied him. He hesitated, then popped an Adderall and felt his brain light up. Suddenly he was firing on all cylinders, and it seemed entirely possible that he could learn in the next five hours what he hadn’t in the last three weeks.
He had Red Bull and caffeine pills to boot, and he popped a couple now, to keep the juices flowing. His heart was beating too hard in his chest, but he focused on the equations in front of him. He could do this.
It was 2:17 A.M.
Plenty of time.
He woke up the next morning with his face on his desk, unsure if he’d studied at all.