By the time Kenny got back to school, the virus had had plenty of time to propagate, embedding itself into remote patches of code, implanting itself in the past, where no harm can occur because it’s already passed. Unless they were right, alongside Thomas Aquinas and C. S. Lewis. Kenny locked his bike and went into the school. He met Charlie behind the Dumpsters as planned, where no cameras could see them, they hoped.
“Did it work?”
“I think so,” Kenny said.
“How much time?”
Kenny looked at his watch. “Soon. It should be soon.”
“Let’s get back online.”
When Charlie got his Aziteks out of the locker and put them on, he shuddered to see the halls swarming with players. There were avatars of all types, chimeras and characters from games and graphic novels and Watchers, too, moving among them in their masks and robes. They were everywhere, more players than he’d ever seen in one place. Blending in with the students, moving among them in the crowds. Was Peter right after all—did the Game know about their virus? Surely all these people hadn’t gathered just to see their program fail? None of them seemed to be looking at him at all. Was something else happening? Charlie figured this many players would only gather to see something magnificent.
Kenny came up behind him, from his locker. “Hey.” Kenny slipped on his Aziteks and yelled, “Jesus Christ!” In front of him, through his glasses, Charlie was white masked in a black cloak and robes.
“What?” Charlie had no idea what he looked like.
Kenny shook his head. “I forgot you were one of … them … now.”
Charlie glanced down at his hands, horrified to see they were skeletal thin in black leather gloves coming out the sleeves of a dank robe.
Kenny gestured at the stream of players moving past them. “Why are they here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Should we follow them?”
Charlie nodded. He had an inkling of an idea, too horrible to let form.
Whatever was happening, word had spread far and wide, but it hadn’t spread to him, and he was a Watcher, too, wasn’t he? So why was this news being withheld from him?
“I know what the Game’s about now,” Charlie whispered to Kenny, as they climbed the stairs, following the rush of visitors moving virtually through the halls. “It’s crowdsourcing morality, creating situations to see how players judge each other’s choices.”
“That’s insane,” Kenny said, as they turned the corner. “If that’s how morality works, Donald Trump will be our next president.”
The players seemed to be heading to the third floor. Charlie and Kenny ran after them, pushing past the students trying to go in the other direction. As the two made it through the crush of the stairwell, they saw the players moving in different directions, like eddies in a current.
“Where the hell are we supposed to go?” Charlie asked.
“That’s it!” Kenny shouted. “Look!”
The goat, Azazel, was limping along the hallway, worse off than ever. He’d already been slaughtered and thrown on a pyre. Now he was charred and decimated, just a burned skeleton clacking down the hallway. He looked mournfully back at them, like, Oh, shit, you assholes?
“We should follow it,” Kenny said.
“No,” Charlie shot back. “I think it’s a distraction.”
“Trust me, the last time I saw it, it was important.”
“Fuck, I don’t know.”
They followed the goat as he led them down the hallway, back to room 333, where Abraham had been. Azazel reached the threshold of the door and set himself down, spent, as if he couldn’t bear to go inside and return to the scene of his ritual sacrifice.
Charlie and Kenny went in.
But instead of the art supply room Kenny had seen last time, on their Aziteks now it was dark and unadorned until floor lights came on abruptly with sound and music. The cheerful game-show melody had the occasional sour note, like a memory run through a meat grinder. The tune was a convoluted perversion of countless theme songs, the tempo slowing down and speeding up, an organ grinder distracted by his monkey. An announcer spoke as lights shone into their eyes, blinding them temporarily, spotlights lighting their stage, only the front row below them visible, Plasticine white faces staring back.
The voice was both familiar and artificial. If real announcers were intentionally transhuman, this voice was their perfect amalgam, so generic it was every voice and no voice at once:
“Welcome, friends! It’s time to play.…”
The title card came up before them, happy and bright, as if all life were a game:
WILL VANHI DIE?
The unseen audience cheered the name in unison.