Decimation Island Read online

  He laughs, knowing he’s won. He reloads and readies his weapon with a quick snick-clack of the slide.

  “I’ll give you credit,” he condescends in that swish accent of his. “You did good, but a game’s only as good as its rules, and to win you have to win. Good’s not good enough.”

  Fuck him. I did better than good.

  Yeah, OVRshAdo won the first game. We dropped into a level designed to look like a modern Middle Eastern city reclaimed by the desert, all mirrored buildings and sand dunes. The DI one-v-ones let you pick a weapon or support item to start with, and I chose the VL-27, a variable ammo assault rifle kitted with a grenade launcher, thinking I’d find him quick and overpower him before he could find a weapon, but that didn’t happen. He picked the auto-drone to start, and it found me first and had me down to half health before I knew where the bullets were coming from. By the time I took it out he’d tracked me down and even though he only had an SMG the game was over barely two minutes in.

  I did a little better in the second round, chose the heavy armor to start, and stayed alive for almost ten minutes while I searched around the Egyptian ruin level and kitted up, but in the end, even the armor wasn’t enough to keep me alive. He took a .50 sniper rifle, posted up in the middle of the safe-zone, and took shots at my head any time I tried to move.

  I had the bots closing on my back and OVRshAdo knew the map, always put himself in the best position to keep me from advancing on him. I did what I could to survive, but eventually I ran out of time and the bots ripped me apart.

  I’m about five seconds away from that happening again.

  “Bullets or bots?” OVRshAdo taunts. “How you wanna go out?”

  “It’s not over yet,” I reply, but at this point hollow words are all I have left to throw at him.

  Game three I surprised myself—and OVRshAdo even more—when I won.

  It was close. We ended up in a straight-up peek battle in a purple-tinged forest at sunset. I took the turret and he took the grapple, and between his enhanced move speed through the trees and me streaming bullets wherever he landed, we chipped away at each other. I was down to a sliver of health and scored a lucky headshot that neither of us was expecting and squeaked out a win.

  OVRshAdo came at me hard in game four, rushing to get the kill, and that’s why he lost. He was salty and overcompensated, choosing a Stinger to start, thinking he’d get close, out-aim and out damage me, but this time I took the sniper rifle and played keep-away with him. The Stinger chewed through the bots, and if he’d taken his time he could have outlasted me, but he was in a hurry and I took his dome off as he charged across an open field.

  Game five I knew he wouldn’t be fucking around, and I took the camo package, thinking I’d play the edge of the zone, out-position him, and get him when he wasn’t looking, but he was ready for me—he chose a scan drone that saw right through the camo.

  With my advantage blown we chased each other around the map. Eventually I took out his drone but by then my camo was gone, and we spent ten long minutes sneaking around, taking shots at each other and healing back up until little by little OVRshAdo out-damaged me.

  Now the bots have pushed us close enough together that we can have a conversation while my health slowly trickles away.

  If I lose they’ll hit Decimation Island without me, and maybe it’s just my pride talking, but they’re about to do something damn near impossible—they need me. More than some bot, anyway. I need make OVRshAdo see that.

  The safe-zone contracts past me and instantly the bots that had been biding their time pounce. There are two right nearby and I put three bullets in each as they spring to tear me apart, but that leaves me dry, the pistol useless. I fling the lump of metal over the crate, hoping I’ll get lucky and hit OVRshAdo. Not that it would do much, a couple points of damage at most, but the soft thud as it hits the snow and his amused chuckle tells me I won’t get even that.

  He’s right close now, still in the green. Three more prowler bots are approaching, stalking on their clawed feet like wolves. I could use the grenade, but they’re close enough and I’m at low enough health I’d die in the blast.

  If do nothing the bots get me.

  If I move OVRshAdo kills me.

  There’s nothing I can do. I’m dead no matter what.

  “Well, this has been fun and all, mate, but we’ve got matters to attend to. Stand up so I can shoot you.”

  Fine, but we’re doing it my way. If I’m gonna die, might as well be in style.

  I activate the grenade and let the detonator cook for a moment before I trigger my last few seconds of camo, and by the time my body is pixelating to invisible I’m already vaulting the crate, jumping up and over it. Shad’s directly ahead of me, no more than a few meters away, and he hears me coming, but it takes him a half-second to locate exactly where I am, and another half-second to swing his weapon up and open fire, and that’s all the time I need.

  I juke right, crouch and dive at him, get inside his guard so we’re right up close. He’ll shove me, and the melee attack that comes after will finish me off, but he doesn’t get the chance.

  The grenade I’m carrying explodes and zeroes our health bars at the same time, killing us both instantly.

  Stalemate.

  We load back into the DI lobby at the same time. He doesn’t say anything, and his aspect sits idle, running the neutral animation.

  Anika and Zara are waiting for us. The DI aspect’s facial responses aren’t great, but Anika’s clearly smiling like I won. I didn’t, but considering who I was up against, I’ll take the draw.

  “Spicy,” Zara says, the tension in her voice blunted. I think maybe she’s coming around on not hating me.

  “I told you, he’s good,” Anika says, then turns to OVRshAdo. “So we’re done with this shit about the bot?”

  He doesn’t even look at her. He’s still got his eyes fixed on me, and I stare right back at him. She snaps a look between us, clocks our staring contest, and makes a noise in her throat.

  “The fuck is wrong with you?” she says, talking to both of us. “We’re hours away from the single biggest game of our lives—this toxic masculine bullshit ends now, or I walk.”

  I fight off a reflexive urge to snap back but he started it, but keep my mouth shut.

  “I’m with Ani,” Zara says. “They don’t find Huggy in time, I’ll take him over the bot.”

  Now it’s my turn. Suck it up and let him have the win. “You had me,” I say, blinking first. “Another second and I was dead.”

  At first I think he’s gonna stick with the silence, or that he might have even gone AFK and left his aspect online to troll us, but suddenly he snaps out of it, looks away from me, and says, “He’s in. But only if Huggy doesn’t get back in time.” Then he raises his hands and he’s back to his smug self. “Twenty-one hours to load-in. We’d better get the fish here a few practice runs, just in case.”

  He shoots me a sideways glance, and chime sounds in my head. An invite to squad in Decimation Island.

  Looks like I’m in.

  GAGE, FINSBURY

  08:54:13 // 12-JUL-2059

  I’ll give this to OVRshAdo: he’s a self-important asshole, but he’s got a hell of a knack for planning a combat operation.

  Decimation Island is housed on a three-thousand-square-kilometer private island in the western Pacific. It used to be part of Micronesia, but was abandoned as the ocean rose, and eventually Jefferson Wood moved in and converted it to a home for the live game. It has no allegiance to any country and no qualms about using lethal force to protect itself.

  Enough people have tried to sneak their way onto the island over the years that it’s become a fortress. No one gets in or out without permission. It’s surrounded by a seawall, supplies are sent by ship and thoroughly scanned for stowaways, and the airspace is protected by a web of armed patrolling drones.

  Getting four bulky combat skyns onto the island undetected was only the first of OVRshAdo’s
obstacles. Other than the few invite-only events Jefferson Wood is the only person allowed on the island. Everything else is run by bots under AI control. Nevertheless, OVRshAdo found a way: a goddamn orbital insertion. It’s crazy dangerous, the entire plan is, but it could work.

  The rocket launch is exactly timed to drop the combat skyns so we arrive just as the next game begins. The AI’s gonna see us drop, nothing we can do about that, but we’ll be coming in hot, small and hopefully fast enough to avoid the drones. We’ll have the bots after us before we even hit the ground, but OVRshAdo bought us a little time there too. He had the arena skyns’ ID chips reprogrammed to mimic the Decimation Island internal security network. He won’t say where he got the code from, but it had to have cost him. Probably more than the rocket ride and the Chinese bot-launcher combined.

  However he sourced it, he claims it’s legit. Says as long as the skyns respond to the system requests with the right hash sequence, we should be able to hide from the AI. For a while at least. The bots talk to each other, and if we respond like we’re bots, they’ll leave us alone. Eventually the AI will devise a workaround—but it’ll give us a head start, time we’ll need to take down the island’s communications so it can’t transmit itself off to safety.

  The only hitch with the plan is the security hash shifts with every new game, and we need it to send back the right answer when we’re pinged.

  This is where things get nuts.

  Strapped into wingpacks, we’ll launch from the rocket in the arena skyns will and terminal velocity toward the island, dropping at fifty meters per second, and by the time the AI sees us coming it’ll be too late to do anything about it. That’s the hope anyway, otherwise our run will end right quick.

  We’ll arrive just as the player skyns drop from the tower and blend in to force the AI to figure out which of the plummeting bodies don’t belong while we each try to get up close to one of the game skyns and skim their hash code using the spoofers OVRshAdo’s built into our drop suits.

  The timing will have to be spot-on, and we’ll need a huge dose of luck, but the plan is solid. In theory, anyway.

  The good news is almost everything between now and the time we hit the tower is out of our hands. Most of the job is falling. If the launch is delayed or the winds around the island are a little too strong and blow us off course or if OVRshAdo’s spoofer takes two seconds longer to skim the hash than advertised, we’ll be fucked and there’s not much we can do about it.

  Once we land we’ll travel together straight to the communication’s array. Zara’s carrying the Bash Badger we’ll use to hack the comms array and take over control of communications to and from the island to make sure the AI doesn’t escape. It’d be easier to just blow the whole thing up, but we’ll need it once we’re done to cast ourselves back off the island.

  And all that’s the easiest part of the whole plan.

  After that things get complicated.

  We’re in a custom virt, unbodied and floating over a 1:1 scale map of Decimation Island. Shad has us zoomed in on the northwest side and we’re looking down on the communication array built out on a jutting finger of rock. There’s not much to it, just a bunch of satellite dishes pointing in various directions, a row of small structures housing the maintenance bots, and a power substation to keep it going.

  “After we hack into the array we’ll go find the AI core,” OVRshAdo says as he tracks the map to a high cliff edge on the northeast side of the island, directly across from the nearby smaller second island housing the control center. “Our skyns are coming in armed and armored, so we won’t have to fuck around looting, but once we’re on the ground we’ll only have two hours to get here, give or take. If we’re not on the control island by then, our shot of success plummets.”

  Here’s the first problem. There are six drop towers on the island, spaced out at the points of a hexagon fifteen kilometers to a side. Only one drop tower activates each game, selected at random, and that’s where the live players will be. Obviously, the tower closest to the comms array is the one to hope for, but what if the game starts on the other side of the island?

  “Worst-case scenario,” I say. “What if the wrong tower lights up? We’ll have a hell of a lot of ground to cover.”

  “Those gladiator skyns are fast,” Zara says.

  “Not that fast,” I counter.

  “Once we’ve got the security code skimmed, pull your chutes and glide as close as you can,” Shad says. “We’ll figure it out from there. We’ve run this enough times in practice. Getting the security code is an eighty percent lock. No worries there.”

  “But goes downhill quick after that,” Anika says, deadpan.

  “We’ll be discovered eventually,” OVRshAdo agrees, “no way around that, and Wood will come at us with everything. The closer we are to the control center when that happens the better.”

  A thought occurs. “How many times have you simmed this plan?”

  “About two hundred,” Anika confesses.

  “And how many did you win?” I ask, but no one answers. “That bad?” I say after a moment.

  “Three,” OVRshAdo eventually says, his voice rising in a vocal shrug. “But sims don’t mean shit. We’ll get through, I can feel it.”

  Anxiety does a little backflip in my gut but I don’t say anything as the map zooms down to the cliffside and stops as though we’re standing on the edge, with the control island directly ahead of us about five hundred meters offshore. Then without hesitating the POV leaps forward, like we’ve jumped, and plummets to the water and flies over the surface, tracing the route we’ll need to swim to the island and the functional grey complex housing the Decimation Island game control systems.

  “We jump and swim across, and then head straight up this path to the main building,” OVRshAdo narrates as the POV climbs over the rocky shore of the small island, through the trees, and zigzags through a thicket of branches up a steep hill and into a wide courtyard. “Entry’s here,” he says, pointing to a wall of glass doors leading into a cool white, high-ceilinged atrium. “We’ll go in hot, won’t be any reason to hide by then. The whole island will know we’re there.” We zip through the glass doors and down around a wide flight of stairs to a subfloor, then zoom through a maze of halls to the AI’s core storage room. “Zara will hack into the system and retrieve Anika’s game memories. Then we’ll blow the core with the explosive charges we’re packing and out we get.”

  “What about exfil?” I ask.

  “We’ll find a boat or something back to the comms array and cast out. I’m not fucked about it at this point.”

  Is he not worried about getting off the island because he’s confident, or ’cause he doesn’t think we’ll get that far?

  “Tell him the best part,” Anika prods.

  Oh no. “What?” I ask, knowing I don’t want to hear the answer.

  When OVRshAdo doesn’t respond, Anika goes ahead and tells me. “We don’t actually know where the AI core is. The Control Complex layout is a best-guess based on whatever we could pull from public feeds. No one knows where the AI is housed, or has ever even seen it as far as we can tell.”

  “You’ve run two hundred sims with intel you know for a fact is wrong?”

  “We still have the bot if you want out, mate,” OVRshAdo jeers.

  This suddenly seems like a bad idea. I was so hoo-rah to help Anika and shut down the Killr source I didn’t think the plan through. These three are all treating this like a game, but we can’t just cast into the arena skyns and ride them safely from our own heads, there’s no bandwidth for that in the middle of the Pacific. This operation requires a full rithm transfer. I’ll truly be there, and if I die on that island that’s it, I’m done.

  I’m sure these other three will be running real-time rithm backups. If the mission goes to shit they’ll lose a few hours at most, leave a hole in their afternoon like they took a nap, but that’s about it. I haven’t backed up once since I first restored last year.

/>   With Deacon riding shotgun in my head I can’t risk it, my rithm’s way out of sync with the reference pattern. If I tried to back up now red flags would pop at Standards like a Chinese New Year celebration and they’d be all over me.

  There’s a good chance I don’t come back from this. Am I about to volunteer for a suicide mission? My rithm quivers as it tries to reach my distant body to paralyze me in fear, but after a second the distress passes, leaving me feeling numb, and I realize I’m not too bothered by the idea. If I die, I die—had to happen sometime. Should have happened already.

  If I don’t make it back Shelt will eventually find my empty skyn in my room, and after a while he’ll probably try triggering another restoration to drag my original psychorithm imprint from storage, but I’ve signed the Do Not Restore clause with Standards, so that’ll be that.

  I’m okay with it. This is all borrowed time anyway.

  Besides, there’s nothing I can do about it even if I wanted to. I’ve already put up too much of a fuss getting myself invited to back out now.

  “What about Jefferson Wood? He must know where the AI is. We could nab him and make him tell us.”

  “If it comes to that,” OVRshAdo says. “A side quest if we can’t get there on our own.”

  This isn’t gonna work.

  “Works for me,” I say instead. “When’s go time?”

  “We need to load into the skyns by twenty-two hundred tonight,” he answers. “I’ll send the details. Any other last-minute problems, send up a flag. Questions?” he asks.

  Yeah, about a million, but I keep them to myself.

  “Good enough,” he says. “See everyone in the sky.”

  So, that’s it, I’m about to die on Decimation Island.

  For real this time.

  AniK@

  453:14:52 // 69 Players Remain

  It takes five medkits to patch Warrack up, and after you’re done you help him inside one of the huts to recuperate. While he’s healing, you collect the reward for finishing the Raptorwolf Rampage quest line, then go through the village to loot OVRshAdo and his team, and by then you’re geared to the gills and end up leaving half of it behind.