Charlie walked into the Tech Lab, and it was pitch-black.
“Put your glasses on,” Peter whispered from behind.
Charlie fished his Aziteks out of his pocket.
“Oh, come on.”
Instead of the four or five candles Peter had lit in real life on the first night, in the gameview there were thousands.
“You just couldn’t help yourself?”
“Nope,” Peter said contentedly. “I modded it myself.”
“You guys are late,” Kenny said from the shadows, and Charlie and Peter both jumped.
“Jesus Christ, you scared us. Why are you sitting in the dark?”
“Feels about right,” Kenny said gloomily. He didn’t elaborate.
Vanhi came in behind them. She looked worse than Charlie had seen in a long time. Vanhi was usually so carefree, but now she looked wound up and riled.
Alex was the last the arrive. Charlie breathed a sigh of relief when he came in. He looked annoyed to be there, but at least he showed up, Charlie thought.
“All right, what’s this about?” Kenny asked in a way that seemed like he already knew.
“I think we should quit the Game,” Charlie said, jumping right into it. Fuck it, he wasn’t Peter. Charlie didn’t know how to whip them into a frenzy with a dramatic prelude or a thousand candles hanging from golden candelabras and rising like organ pipes from rows of baroque candlesticks.
“No,” Alex said.
“Here me out. Tonight, I was attacked at the mall. I could’ve been killed.”
“Maybe you just can’t handle yourself,” Alex said.
Charlie ignored him. “I had twenty-five Blaxx before and got hit in the arm. Hard.” He shot a look at Alex. “Then I had twenty-six hundred Blaxx and got beaten with a bat. By some guy I’ve never seen before. I don’t want to know what happens when it’s twenty thousand. Or two hundred thousand. ‘Die in the game, die in real life,’ remember? We thought that was a joke. I don’t want to find out.”
“I saw a man, too,” Vanhi said. “There are other people playing.” Vanhi had gone scissors in hand to the window, only to find the yard outside deserted, a new box waiting for her.
“Of course there are other people playing.” Alex had never before been this vocal. This animated. They were playing on his turf, it felt like.
“We need to vote,” Charlie said. “And it has to be unanimous. The Vindicators are a democracy.”
“Well, which is it?” Peter asked softly. “Are we a democracy, or does it have to be unanimous?”
“You know what I mean. We’re a team. I don’t think half of us quitting will work. We need to stick together.”
“One for all and all for one,” Alex said sarcastically.
“What is your problem?” Charlie was finally losing his temper. “I risked my ass for you. What do you want?”
Alex buckled. All his bravado vanished. His head lowered and he couldn’t meet Charlie’s eyes. Charlie instantly felt rotten.
Please no one say I peed myself at the Hydra, Alex thought. Please.
“I got us into this,” Charlie told them. “It’s my fault. Please let me get us out.”
He waited.
No one spoke.
What are they waiting for? “Kenny?”
“What?”
“What do you think?”
Kenny hesitated, trying to pick his words. “I think it’s not that simple.”
“What? Why not?”
“If that story runs, we’re toast. There are real consequences. We have to stop it.”
“Then we’ll stop it. Us.”
“We can’t. It’s basically true. We did those things.”
“We’re not satanists for God’s sake!”
“We broke in. We used blood to deface the school. We can’t get out of this without help.” What Kenny didn’t say was There’s something I have to do tonight. Something that might save us.
“Vanhi?” Charlie asked.
“Charlie…”
“Oh, come on! Not you, too?”
She couldn’t bring herself to tell him about the new box, with the simple note:
Deliver me, and the essay is yours.
She’d let the essay slip away once and felt the crushing regret. She couldn’t lose it again. “It’s complicated.”
“It’s not. I can’t believe you guys. When something is wrong, you walk away. You don’t find shades of gray. You don’t split hairs and make excuses. We fucked up? All right, then we face the consequences. We don’t go deeper. Come on.”
“No, you come on,” Kenny snapped, and it cut right through Charlie. Kenny had never, not once, raised his voice at Charlie. Kenny was their rock, their most decent friend. “You don’t understand what my parents would feel if I got caught. What they’ve already dealt with.”
“You don’t understand what’s at stake for me. For any of us,” Vanhi added.
Charlie felt baffled, blindsided. Peter and Alex, sure, he expected them to fight this. But Vanhi? Kenny?
“What are you all talking about?”
“Don’t you see, Charlie?” Vanhi’s voice was anguished. “You already gave up. You already threw everything away. Your grades. Student council. Harvard. You dropped out. It’s easy for you to say just quit and suck up the consequences. You’re not a hero. You have nothing to lose.”
The truth of this hit him so hard that he nearly fell down.
“Do you all feel this way?”
Everybody just stared at him. No one disagreed.
“This Game … it’s coming between us. It’s doing it on purpose.”
“Maybe it’s not the Game, Charlie,” Alex said. “Maybe we’ve changed.”
“Maybe you have,” Vanhi whispered.
“Fine,” Charlie said. “Forget it. I’ll quit. By myself. I wanted to help you guys.”
“I never asked for your help,” Alex said.
“Charlie,” Vanhi tried, coming toward him.
“No.” He looked them over, his Vindicators. “I have to go.”
In the parking lot, someone ran after him, and for a split second he cringed, imagining the guy with the bat bringing it down onto his head.
But it was Peter, of all people, who chased after him.
“What do you want?”
“Why are you mad at me? I didn’t say a word in there. I told you I’d go with the group. I kept my word.”
“It was rigged from the start. You knew they wouldn’t quit. You’ve probably been spying on them.”
“You sound paranoid. This isn’t a conspiracy.”
“Why did you even follow me?”
“You were right about that video of Kurt. I won’t release it.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.” Peter shrugged. Easy come, easy go. “Look, you want to quit, fine. It’s your choice. But don’t google it. Ask it.”
Charlie almost asked how Peter knew he’d googled it, but of course Peter knew.
“Ask the Game?”
“Ask God.”
“Just go to the chatbot and tell it I want to quit?”
“Yeah. Don’t try to cheat on it with some slutty search engine that takes all comers. Have the balls to stare God in the face and say, ‘I want to be done with you.’ At least it would respect that.”
“This is from your friends online?”
“This is from me.
“Why are you telling me this? Don’t I have to go with the group?”
“No. You should go with yourself. I always do.”
Charlie studied Peter’s face. “Okay, thanks. I’ll try it.”
“Honestly, I think it’s the only way. And I tricked you into playing. I might as well help you out.”
“I knew it. You didn’t forget your weed in my room. You went back and accepted for me.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
Peter gave a sad little smile. “Because I didn’t want to play alone.”