Heir of G.O'D. Revelations Page 17

  With thirty seconds to go, I double-check my equipment. Clearing my route quickly, but moving slowly, will be essential for this to work. Denver, I am certain, will not approve of my tactics, but in ten… nine… eight seconds ‘Plan Dastard’ begins.

  The claxon echoes all around, and everyone in the Arena becomes visible. I drop like a stone to the ground and let the ghillie camo conceal me in the knee-high grass, then pull the camo blanket over the top. Scanning the area, I can see at least four people moving close by. Two head for the town of Dagotiere, but the rest head to my spur. Hoping the silencer attached to my PPK is enough to hide my position, I drop the first with a clean chest-shot. The second target drops to her knees, with her bow knocked as she scans for me. Her head explodes in a spray of red as someone on the spur shoots her from behind. Minimising the loot menu, I glance around, pull out my Barrett and focus through the scope. Every movement is slow and meticulous because I can’t afford to let anyone know where I am. There’s only one opponent on my spur that I can see, but there should be another.

  I focus on the samurai’s hip, the largest visible part of them. I aim, controlling my breathing, and fire. The bullet flies true in the windless Arena atmosphere and smashes through their hip bone. As they spin out, I execute a perfect headshot. My adrenaline is pumping as I begin my ponderous crawl towards the centre of the small spur. I continuously twist my head in an owl-like fashion, looking in all directions and rolling on to my back sporadically to see if anyone is creeping up from behind, whilst checking the blanket is still covering me from any cameras.

  I’m so focused on ground level that I forget to look up, and fail to see the ninja until he’s plummeting out of the tree above me. He draws twin blades from a back sheath as he falls. I manage to roll a little to the left, draw my PPK and shoot him in the head at the precise moment his sword pierces my side. It’s only luck that he misses anything important. The area he struck, just below my lower left rib, flashes red on my avatar’s layer map, but it makes no noticeable difference. I will need cyber-wadding on it soon though, or the injury will spread. I survive for the sole reason that my assailant was a newbie; a pro-ninja would have used a poisoned blow dart or shuriken.

  By my calculations, the small lake promontory should now be clear. I check behind me once more, climb to my feet and sprint into the trees, my PPK drawn and ready. The copse offers some shelter, and I go into the mode I like to call ‘Birdy’. Constantly checking around me for movement, I search for the best tree. It takes some effort, but I manage to find a perfect sympodial tree with a three-branch fork about twenty-feet up. Climbing it takes only seconds owing to the ladder-like spread of the branches.

  The moment I wedge my back foot against the rear branch, I stop and sweep 360 degrees a couple of times before continuing. Using the twigs and small branches from above as improvised hooks, I suspend the camouflage blanket over my tree-top position. It’s not ideal for woodland, but any cover, particularly from camera drones and spotters, is essential for my plan to work. The other item I brought with me is less rare, but equally effective – my ghillie net. After another sweep through the scope, I secure the netting around the three lower branches and tie it at the fork. I bend branches and twigs through the netting to mask any sharp lines, then break off leaved branches from above and push those through too. ‘Birdy mode’; I built myself a nest!

  The last action I take is to rest the barrel of my gun in a higher, smaller fork. By leaning back on the rear branch and placing my feet on each of the front two, I can sit here for hours. The Arena timer, replicated on the top left of my visor, confirms less than ten minutes gone. The walls begin contracting after half an hour. I draw my PPK and wedge my sniper rifle in place, trained on the respawn point located in Dagotiere, west of my position across the lake.

  By the time my visor HUD flashes red to announce that the Arena wall shrinkage has been triggered, over a quarter of the field has black-screened already. My kill tally is up to twenty-six, which is decent, but it’s almost two hundred behind the leaders, and puts me down in 80th place. I remain relaxed and calm though, ‘Plan Dastard’ is the long-game. The exact moment the flashing fills my visor, the shriek of my doorbell squeals through my container, making me jump. “Door command: Identify,” I instruct, my hand pressed to my heart in a vain attempt to slow the pounding.

  Whilst the automated command voice is a decent reproduction of speech, it still has a metallic monotone mediocrity: “Amazon drone, identification: Uniform-Mike-Echo-Tango-Charlie-Two-Seven-Victor-India-November-Niner.”

  That was quick, I think to myself. “Door command: Open and permit entry.” The door hisses open, allowing the increased din and stench of outside to invade my container. Riding on the waft of stinky air is the delivery drone that I’ve been expecting. My item is small, so the drone flies directly inside my container. As the whirr of blades gets louder, I wait for the drone to drop the parcel into my lap. “Delivery confirmed,” I instruct the drone. It chimes a series of acknowledgement tones and then flies away, the door closing behind it.

  I pull the box closer, grab the scissors from on top of the fridge, and hold my breath as I slice the package open. With a reverence I usually reserve for my fridge and microwave, I lift the new haptic gloves, the ones I tested on Mars, and mumble a ‘thanks’ to the supervisor at Haptical Illusions who allowed me to exchange the Immersive Suit voucher for them. After dropping the packaging on the floor, I strip my old gloves and discard them too, then slide my sparkly brand-new 1NX$-ME programmable haptic gloves over my fingers. They fit like, well, gloves. I press the sync button on the reverse of the glove and, as easy as that, I’m ready. I feel the briefest stab of guilt about what I’m about to do, but I let myself off, just this once. I quickly configure ‘load and fire’ macros for both my PPK and the Barrett, one set up on each hand. Lock and load.

  “Time to test the theory,” I say into the void of my container.

  I focus on the respawn point across the water, on the banks of the lake next to the town. A humanoid shape flashes into view. I count the obligatory three seconds immunity, and shoot. Even as the victim black-screens, I click my right little finger to the heel of my hand and wait for a nervous microsecond. The gun reloads itself, and I shoot at the next target whilst the first is still dropping. “This is fracking awesome!” I squeal in glee. “It fracking works!” Adrenaline courses through me as I settle into my first ever attempt at being a Dastard.

  Whenever there’s a lull in respawns, I sift through the loot menus which ordinarily stay minimised on my HUD. I pick up an M16 and an AK47. Neither are the most stellar weapons, or a match for the G28, but they’re common enough, and I have ammo for both. I set the Kalashnikov facing the approach to the promontory and keep the M16 handy for free movement. They both get a macro too, this time activated through my ring fingers. After that, I focus on looting additional bags of holding, or if the victim has one, a shield. I start to form these into a bowl-shape inside the tree fork, overlapping them like fish scales and crouching inside.

  I rack up over fifty more kills before I get to loot something special, a fabled item that I’ve read about on the forums, but never thought I’d actually see. They were a Festival victory prize the year Sol relaunched. Like the player I looted the blanket from last week, I assume that the stormtrooper I shot felt he had nothing left to lose with the imminent demise of Sol. It’s called a detection ring, which doesn’t sound like anything unusual or powerful. However, once activated, it warns the user (i.e. me), of every other player within half a kilometre in every direction. The ring does have a few limitations; it can only be used once every twenty-four hours, once activated the detection circle is static and won’t move even–if the user moves outside of it–and the effect only lasts for an hour. For my usual tactic of ‘move and kill’, it would be next to useless in an Arena this big, but as a sniper in a nest, it’s perfect. I put the ring on and initiate the detection zone. Then I return to sniping, enjoying the sil
ence and the thrill of taking out so many marks.

  “What the frack are you doing?”

  I nearly jump out of my skin – I’m so engrossed in killing people (well, in-Sim avatars), that I didn’t hear Denver enter my container. “Mass Rumble. What happened to you?”

  “Fracking Dastard got me.”

  It’s a little early for Denver to be caught out by the wall, but I never asked him his starting spot. I didn’t ask anybody. I’m not surprised that Dastards are covering the other respawn sites, not with so many newbs and no-hopers entered. I can’t afford to lose focus though, because two dots are approaching my spur from the north, and avatars are popping up like fish in a barrel just waiting to be hit. Three shots, three kills at the respawn. I twist and shoulder the Kalashnikov, using the thermal scope to pick out the two approaching targets. It takes me five shots to finish them both off.

  “What the frack’s gotten into you, Ana?” He’s angry, and he’s making no attempt to hide it. I ignore him. “Dastarding? Since when?”

  “Shush, I’m concentrating.”

  I hear him stomp across the room and pick up the empty Haptical Illusions box. “How did you get the 1NX$s?”

  “Got a voucher. From Marksmanship. Swapped them.”

  “Thanks for winning that. Got me some good $uns from your win,” Denver states.

  Me too, I think to myself.

  As the Arena continues to shrink, the rate of respawns increases from a trickle to a small stream. A glance at the Kills leader-board shows me up to sixth place overall and climbing rapidly. Two of those above me have black-screened already, so they won’t score any more kills. There are still tens of thousands of avatars left though.

  “Share your FPV,” Denver orders.

  Sending what I see on my visor to a screen is not something I often do, Denver usually spots using the stream cameras. I hear him fire up the screen hanging on the wall opposite, then pull out the foldable bench by the door.

  “Holy frack!”

  I can’t help but smile; my metal nest is a work of art that I’m immensely proud of.

  I must retain focus. By my rough calculations, I need to finish in the top ten in the Kills table to break even. Despite my success so far, I feel a Dastarder’s pang of guilt deep inside, like a spectre’s hand squeezing my gut from within. I don’t believe in ghosts, so I push it away. A swish of water washes down some of the sickly taste in my mouth.

  “You hate Dastards! Why the frack are you doing this?” People spawn in the town in a constant river of ready-made corpses. “You don’t need the cash for a visor. If anything, you should be getting your money back and buying food vouchers or something useful.”

  Denver’s distraction costs me, as three dots close in on my nest. I find them in the sights of the AK47 and open fire. A bullet rips into the nest from the eastern shore, pinging against the shield by my head, quickly followed by a second then a third. I duck and concentrate on the closest shooter first. A quick glimpse on the HUD and I can see the red dots of respawned avatars rushing into the relative safety of the buildings, shooting at each other as they move. I kill the three, a team of US Marines working together, then hit as many of the remaining visible respawns as I can, swearing each time one rat disappears up a metaphorical drainpipe.

  A bullet, fired from the opposite side of Dickson Lake to Dagotiere, cuts through the shield wall from the rear and makes it through my nest barely missing my head. A second pings uselessly off a shield, but the third round ricochets and catches me in the calf. My lower leg winks out of use. “Frack it.” I locate the sniper’s dot, spin my Barrett around and blast them gleefully between the eyes. The menu flashes up, and it’s my old adversary D0m1n3M0rti$. “Twice in a week, that fracker’s going to be so fracked off!”. I smirk at the thought because he’s one of those annoying frackers who’s created this whole online persona in Sol, he even brands all his Sol clothing with his own dumb insignia. Some image of Death stolen from Edvard Munch, with a crown and a weird decapitated head gripped in a skeletal hand with six fingers. His name is a play on ‘Death Lord’ or something, but in Latin.

  “Yeah, good shooting. But Dastarding? Ana, how could you? Why? Unless… You found another engineer, didn’t you?” Denver accuses. I ignore him and hop around in-Sim to face the respawn point. “How much did this one cost you?” Familiar Denver-stomps echo through the container. “Well?”

  “If she can do it, two million,” I admit with a sigh.

  “Frack. Do you really think that she will be any safer than Celal?”

  “No, probably not. But frack, Denver, I don’t care!”

  Denver kicks the box that the gloves arrived in. It hits my leg, cutting through my suit into my knee. I squeal in pain as the woven bamboo pierces my skin.

  “Sorry. What’s that green circle anyway?” he asks, trying to change the subject.

  “Frack you,” I spit back. I want to rub my leg, because I think I’m bleeding, but I don’t have time.

  “I’m sorry. I just… This isn’t you. Wait. Is that a detection circle?”

  “Yeah. Looted a ring from a stormtrooper.” I select another shield, this one from a Roman Centurion, and pile it up behind me, protecting my head and neck from further range shots.

  “If Nele knew you had one…”

  “No.”

  “I was just…”

  “No. She can’t have it!”

  “But consider how awesome it would be in Team. With that on and Nele in the centre of it, able to detect anyone…”

  I growl because everything with Denver comes back to the fracking Mouse. Why would I ever give it to her? “Frack you. And frack that fracking Mouse!”

  I hear him stand and the bench slam back, dully ringing the sidewall of the container and making my home shake. He stomps angrily towards me and I cower, a reflex I learned young surviving in the orphanage, then needed later living with Hamilton. Denver gets closer, his leg brushing against my injured knee, then sighs loudly. To my amazement he turns and leaves without a word. The moment before the door closes, I fire a final barb. “That’s right, fracker, you go and tell your darling little Mouse what I looted.”

  After Denver leaves, concentration is as hard to find as the treasure on Oak Island; no matter how deep I delve, all I find are pointless distractions and broken promises. On Mauritius, the flow of respawns has grown into a flood that’s too fast for me to keep up with (despite the advantage from my new gloves). If earlier was like fishing in a barrel, this is like plucking Sol-lemons from dwarf trees; I don’t get everyone, but my kill-count rises with impressive speed.

  I knew my plan would fail eventually, and without the ring, getting this far would have been impossible. I watch as red dots in the town across the lake begin to converge together, forming into equal groups instead of fighting each other. I brace myself for the onslaught.

  Without warning I hear a crash in-Sim beside me. I check the detection ring display, but there are no dots on the spur with me. Something lifts the netting and slips inside; freakily I still can’t see what it is.

  “Move over, Ana,” grunts a familiar voice.

  Samir appears beside me, his shoulder gushing blood and his arm hanging by his side. Otherwise, he appears well. “Samir? How?”

  “Cloaking hat.”

  “Wow, how the frack did you get one of those?” It appears that the end of Sol is enough reason for people to use their best items at will. The hats haven’t been available since the competitions during the second year of Sol. Shortly after release, they were banned because they give the user too much of an unfair advantage. “I didn’t know those still worked.”

  “Usually not, but they opened the free-roll, everything works here.” It hits me how weird this is, to be having a chat while competing in the largest PvP event of the year. It’s good to hear a friendly voice after my fight with Denver though. “When we realised who it was in here, we couldn’t believe it. What’s come over you, Ana?” His tone is serious, like I
imagine a fathers would be, so I twiddle with my necklace. For reasons I cannot explain, I’ve been humming that fracking tune ever since Denver left.

  The red mass in the centre of the town begins to move towards the shore, only a few dots on the periphery attacking them, then quickly blinking out for their trouble. “Why do you care? You set me up.”

  “Is that what you think?” Samir sighs. “Whoever it was that started that fight and shot Celal, it wasn’t us.”

  “You think I should believe you?”

  “If you value our friendship, yes.” As he speaks, the mass of red dots wink out and my HUD is empty and serene. I swipe the ring only to be told that a full hour has expired. A few heartbeats later, a wall of bullets start bouncing off the shield nest. “COGOD,” Samir confirms. “They organised themselves. Been running into the walls for the free port here.”

  The hail of bullets increases, and the two of us come under sustained fire. I’m clear top of the Kill charts and might remain top five, but my time Dastarding is over. I collect the weapons and store them away, then pull the largest shield down to cover us.