Most of the free space-dark and shadowy without lights-was given to racks of games in the center of the room. He prowled around them, going in low, coming up in shooter-ready position, finger aching to fire at every shadow or hint of substance, but the only thing to behold were the games themselves, neatly racked cover out-not just FPSes, but every war game known to man, from every war known to man, for every style of computer known to man. No sign, no sound, no movement. He declared the place cleared.
The door to some interior chamber stood behind the cash register counter, and he went to that, kicked it hard, went in low-profile, and again was met by silence and stillness, perceiving a gloom penetrated by the glow of electron light.
It was the room of screens, the lair of the beast. It felt empty too, but Ray dashed from position to position to make sure. Yes, clear.
Now he freed his concentration up to assess. This had to be the HQ of the mission. On the wall, security feeds lit screens that showed mostly empty corridors, except for the first level, where frenzy was the mode of the day: medics hustled, the wounded were attended to, SWAT guys offered perimeter security, and everyone tried to help and get a hold on what exactly had transpired, who were good guys, who bad, the whole law enforcement crime scene drill.
But on the other wall, he saw an odd array of camera feeds displaying, well, nothing. All seemed still. The images were black or horizontal and meaningless, though occasionally there was the blur of boots and shoes hustling by or the nothingness of a wall a few inches away. What the fuck was this? One seemed more agile than all the others, number four, and he looked closely and saw a pair of shoes, New Balances, the same model he was wearing and Jesus Christ! Those were his shoes! This little fucker had clamped a wireless camera on the rifles!
He looked, and behind the muzzle of his Kalash he saw a neatly milled unit connected to the barrel by some kind of clamp, and the unit held a lens. Among all the tactical geegaws mounted on the AK-vertical foregrip, a receiver with a Picatinny rail, new iron backup sights-he hadn’t even noticed it. He pointed it at the screen and got that infinity of mirrors thing-where the camera records itself recording itself over and over again and the image diminishes in size as it sinks toward nothingness-but kept it moving, so if Andrew was watching, he wouldn’t tumble to the fact that Ray had tumbled to the fact.
The game! Lavelva was so right. In his sick mind, this strange genius boy had invented in real time and space the biggest first person shooter in the world and had recorded it with wireless video for some editor in some bunker to put together some giant cyberdeath tournament based on imagery from today’s adventure in slaughter.
But now he realized, For the first time, I know something he doesn’t. I know that he knows where I am and what I’m doing at all times. That’s how he knew I was coming through that door. Even now, on the move, he’s receiving my feed. He’s laughing at me, waiting for me to come.
He set the rifle down, pointing to nothing, and moved to a central chair in a mesh of Star Trek consoles wired into everything by a jungle of cord hanging behind them, and went and crouched at the big screen of what appeared to be the mother computer. The image still seemed to hold the security system main menu, and he quickly slid the mouse around until he’d nested it on ELEVATOR ACCESS, punched enter, saw some flickers and heard some clicks, and finally an icon lit up explaining ELEVATORS ENABLED, then ESCALATORS ENABLED. But, he noted, the doors had already been opened. Huh?
The phone on the desk rang.
He paused, waited, finally picked it up.
“You’re the hero,” someone said.
“Is this Andrew?” Ray said. “You’d better give yourself up. The place is full of cops. They’ll shoot you in a second. I’ll take you alive.”
“God, you are a hero. You are fucking John Wayne. This is so cool. I could never have written this.”
“Look, kid, you’re going to ride the needle for sure, no lie. But that’ll take years and for all those years you and I both know you’ll be god to millions of people as fucked up as you are but not nearly as resourceful. You’ll love every second of it and you’ll love the hatred everyone else pours on you and you will have the time of your life. Don’t pretend that’s not what this is all about.”
“You’ve got it wrong, Duke. It’s not about that. I’m shallow but not that shallow. It’s about the game. And the game needs a big bang finish. So you better come for me before all those Minneapolis ice fishermen get up to this floor and shoot me to Swiss cheese. It’s so much cooler if you kill me or we kill each other and give the thing a gleam of mythic tragedy. By the way, if you want to find me, here’s a subtle hint: I’m in the movie complex.”
“Give yourself up!”
“I can’t. We’re at the hyper level of the game. I have to see who wins.”
8:47 P.M.-9:35 P.M
Andrew was disappointed in the popcorn. It had gone cool and stale and had toughened somewhat. Now, a good employee of the Regal Theater chain, a true professional, would have stayed on station, keeping the popcorn hot throughout the massacre, because you never could tell when somebody would want some fine, freshly popped popcorn. You just can’t find good help these days.
He sat in one of the megaplex’s fifteen auditoriums down the hall a quarter-mall rotation over to Mississippi from First Person Shooter, watching a flow of images above him. It was an old favorite, and he was happy to see that the robo-screening mechanism had kept the images on-screen even if the human part of the system seemed to have failed, though you wouldn’t want to judge a whole program on just one example. In this movie, lots of gunfire, lots of dying, lots of smart, snarky talk, the hero in an undershirt with a Jersey accent. It was pretty good, maybe the best in the series, even if some of the conventions of audience appeal-the cute, rotund black cop, for example-were by now a tiresome trope. He would have fast-forwarded through them if it were possible.
Now and then he looked at his iPad, which still received the camera feed from number four, that is, the gun muzzle view of the hero who was now stalking him, giving Andrew the man’s precise location. He doubted he would show up in an undershirt. No, no, Andrew imagined some SWAT captain in a black combat outfit, maybe with a wool watchcap and one of those mikes bent around his face. Probably a dad, never done this before, scared to death the whole way, yet in the obdurate squareness of mind-set utterly committed to the Rules. “Give yourself up!” Yeah, right, you have the right to remain blah blah blah and blah.
The guy should have warrior-pure thoughts at this time. He should be thinking, Kill this little motherfucker. But no, not in modern America. He was probably thinking, Will I get in trouble because I snapped at Commander Jackson a few minutes ago, will this count as overtime, will I be so hung up in paperwork I’m not free to go on my Caribbean cruise with the unit next week, should I hire an agent for the movie version, or should I write a book first, and if so, where would I find an actual writer to put the words on paper? That kind of thinking could get you killed.
Andrew checked again. The guy was outside the movie theater, running his gun muzzle over the box office. Now the camera bounced hard as he made a dash to that structure, took cover behind it, and tracked the gun muzzle through the door, scanning the vast but abandoned refreshment stand, peering hard into the darker “lounge” areas where sofas and chairs had been set up in pathetic imitation of the typical American living room. Then another dash as he moved into a position to scan the corner closet where the maintenance people ran their operation, seeing a few tipped-over garbage cans on wheels, dumped sweeper brooms, stacks of toilet paper for the johns, and vats of soap for the sinks. No paper towels, though. This theater complex clearly had those awful blow-dry things.