Vortex

  And wreak havoc they had.

  They’d served in Attila the Hun’s army and massacred Mason’s group, playing the Romans. They were the Romans and massacred Cadence’s group, playing the Carthaginians. They’d fought Ralph’s group in the Persian Gulf, and they were lions who tore apart Emefa’s hyenas. They’d been space aliens and destroyed Britt Schmeiser’s old Soviet army, and played peasants battling a Mongol invasion led by Karl Marsters. Tom had died because of parachute failure; by drowning; gunfire; and various stabbing, burning, and biting wounds. He’d been ritually sacrificed by Heather and her Incan warriors, and he’d gotten beheaded by Yosef and his fellow samurai. He’d racked up the highest kill-to-death ratio of all the Middles, and he’d even killed Karl three times, which Tom maintained grew more fun each time he did it.

  If he hadn’t systematically alienated every single Coalition CEO, he would’ve stood a chance of getting promoted. As it was, Wyatt was the only one of them moving up the ranks, finishing Middle Company in six months.

  Their last hurrah under Snowden found them in the old Western Wyatt Earp vendetta ride scenario. Wyatt Enslow herself was in the enemy group, on the opposite side as the historical figure who shared her name, playing an outlaw called a Cowboy. Ironically, Vik was the one playing Wyatt, as in Wyatt Earp, the old Western lawman. Tom was the gunfighter Doc Holliday, and since he and Vik were working together to hunt down Elliot’s cowboys one by one, the inevitable moment came when they faced her at the O.K. Corral.

  Wyatt avoided the petty gunfights and headed to a saloon and rigged up a bunch of Molotov cocktails. Her firebombs against members of Tom and Vik’s posse had destroyed the scenario’s promise of so many wonderful gun duels. She’d killed most of their group, too, and shown everyone that she wasn’t getting promoted only because of her programming skills. Her dislike of fighting had paradoxically turned her into a lethal killing machine.

  Tom and Vik were wary about an open confrontation. The guns were wildly inaccurate, and the bullets were primitive. They had to strike once, and strike carefully.

  Luckily, Wyatt had one weakness: Giuseppe was on her side.

  He was lounging right in the open on a chair in front of the saloon, boots idly kicked up on the railing of the porch. Wyatt clutched her pistol and peeped out every few seconds from behind a shattered window, while Giuseppe discussed how much his boots chafed. Tom had tied himself underneath a wagon for the slow, rattling sneak attack, and he could glimpse them from where he was hanging. He tugged out the knot holding him to the bottom of the wagon, trusting his arm strength to keep him up until it was time to drop down and pull off his ambush.

  “I’m getting a terrible blister on my heel,” Giuseppe said. “Why did someone have to program real blisters into the simulation? It seems petty to me. I want to write a complaint to someone. I don’t think I should have to put up with—”

  Wyatt grew tired of it. She raised her pistol and shot him in the back of the head.

  Tom couldn’t help it. He busted up laughing so hard, his grip loosened and he dropped prematurely from under the wagon, his gun knocked out of his holster. He rolled out quickly to dodge the wheels about to run over him and the shots Wyatt fired his way.

  “That was AWESOME!” he yelled over his shoulder as he escaped her.

  “He’s so annoying!” Wyatt yelled back, then sent a Molotov cocktail sailing past Tom’s shoulder. It ignited the wooden postmaster’s office beyond him, which unfortunately flushed Vik out of his hiding place with a startled shriek. A few dozen simulated townsfolk began running around frantically, trying to put out the fire.

  Wyatt and Vik shot furiously at each other for several seconds, then they ran out of bullets. Black smoke curled up from the guns, and it cleared to reveal the fact that no bullets had connected with flesh. Since Wyatt was also out of Molotov cocktails, and Tom’s gun had slid off somewhere when he’d fallen from the wagon, they found themselves standing there in the middle of Tombstone, dust and smoke swirling around them, the post office burning behind them, sort of looking awkwardly at each other.

  “Now what?” Tom asked. “None of the townsfolk have guns. They’re banned in town.”

  “I suppose we can go the fistfight route. Maybe.” Vik swiped off his cowboy hat, then wiped his forehead, his character’s voluminous mustache flapping in the wind.

  Wyatt began scratching at her own mustache. “I don’t like having facial hair. I keep getting crumbs in my beard.”

  Tom leaned in to see, and discovered that Wyatt, indeed, had crumbs in her beard.

  “I have a proposal.” Vik raised a finger. “I believe we should call this duel a draw and pretend we never had this battle. We part ways, then if we run into each other again, we resume our shoot-out.”

  It sounded reasonable to Tom. Wyatt nodded, too, busy picking at her beard.

  “Next time, there will be blood,” Vik promised cheerfully, aiming a finger gun at her.

  Wyatt aimed a real gun back. “Death and mayhem will certainly ensue.”

  They parted ways. Tom and Vik rode out of town together. Desert stretched out around them.

  “You gonna find Lyla?” Tom asked. Vik had been trying to seek her out in sims a lot lately and impress her with his fighting skills. So far it hadn’t worked.

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  Tom squinted at him in the sunlight. “This might’ve been our last fight together, man.”

  Vik flashed a grin. “Until CamCo, you mean.”

  Tom smiled, too, but he said, “Come on.”

  Vik’s grin slipped.

  “You don’t need to pretend.” Tom shrugged. “Unless some freak accident obliterates every executive in the Coalition, I’m pretty much done for. We both know it.”

  Vik said nothing for a long moment. “You know, Tom, when we climbed that roof, I would’ve climbed that transmission pole. If you hadn’t, and if Blackburn hadn’t been there to see us or anything, I would’ve done it.”

  “Yeah. I know, man.” Tom reached out, and they clasped arms. “See ya.”

  “Bye, Doc.”

  And then Vik set off toward Mexico, and Tom launched his horse off into the vast, scorched desert in search of the most ferocious of the Cowboys, Johnny Ringo, played by Elliot.

  Tom hadn’t tried to avoid killing Elliot in the sims, mostly because Tom wasn’t that merciful, but he hadn’t gone out of his way to hunt Elliot down. There was something about the knowledge that Elliot had been trying to help him that chastened him a bit.

  This time, though, Tom felt compelled. Elliot’s character was the best gunfighter on the enemy side.

  It took him a full six hours, sim time, to finally locate Elliot, and Tom’s character had tuberculosis, which really forced him to rest more than he cared to. He located Elliot taking shelter in a bar with two of his trainees, Grover Stapleton and Art Mackey. Tom flushed them out by lighting the barn on fire. Grover was the first to dash through the door. Tom yanked Grover’s gun right out of his holster and then shot him with it. It jammed when Art tore out of the barn next, so Tom snared him around the neck with a lasso, then whapped into motion a horse tied to the other end. It dragged him off across the landscape.

  And then Elliot charged out into the rippling heat, and they faced each other down.

  “I’ve been expecting you,” Elliot said simply.

  Were this was anyone else, Tom would probably be on guard, since those were the type of words spoken by supervillains to warn of a devastating ambush. In Elliot’s case, it was simply an observation.

  “I’m here,” Tom said, reloading his pistol. “Let’s do this the honest way. A proper duel.”

  They began circling each other, boots kicking up dust, the hot Arizona sun beating on their shoulders. “I heard something about you this morning,” Elliot remarked.

  “How bad is it this time?”

  “I’m hoping it’s true. Obsidian Corp. wants a meet and greet in January. Apparently, Joseph Vengerov contacted General
Marsh this morning and specifically named you as a trainee he’d like to see.”

  Tom paused for a split second, before he remembered himself and resumed circling backward. “Oh. Great.”

  “I thought you’d already alienated Joseph Vengerov? It sounds like he’s willing to give you a second chance.”

  “What does it matter? Most trainees don’t want to go to Obsidian Corp.’s meet and greet, anyway. Vengerov doesn’t sponsor Combatants.”

  Elliot considered him. “Tom, I know I said I was done with this, but I’d still like to give you some advice.”

  That surprised Tom. “Uh, sure. Hit me.”

  “Try to win Joseph Vengerov over.” Elliot pulled off his hat and wiped his sleeve over his forehead. “I know his stance on sponsoring Combatants. Obsidian Corp.’s clients are all governments or fellow corporations, so they really don’t need Combatants for public relations, but maybe something changed his mind. If that’s the case, it won’t hurt to put in some face time. And if you can at least get one of these people to put in a good word for you, you’ll stand a better chance of redeeming yourself with the others. . . . I’m getting dizzy circling you.”

  “Let’s do this thing.”

  They both drew their guns. Tom’s shot rang out first, its impact hurling Elliot to the ground. He launched himself forward, and delivered another bullet right between Elliot’s eyes.

  “Thanks for the advice,” he told Elliot’s corpse. And he meant it.

  He whirled around, squinting into the bright sunlight, trying to calculate how many members of Elliot’s group were still alive. His horse returned, still dragging Art Mackey, now unconscious, and Tom shot him before getting ready to ride off. Then a bullet smacked the dirt at his feet, startling the animal into bolting.

  Tom raised his gun at the figure moving toward him in the shimmering heat. A woman. His neural processor flicked rapidly through character profiles, trying to ID her character and role in the sim.

  Finally, it registered: Annie Oakley, a legendary female sharpshooter.

  She did not belong in this sim.

  Could it be . . . ?

  Tom’s heart clattered in his chest. His hands grew sweaty, and he became oddly embarrassed about all the blood he’d hacked up onto his sleeve, even if his real lungs weren’t the ones bleeding. He moved toward her, and Annie Oakley’s silhouette closed the distance, until they were close enough to make out each other’s squinting eyes beneath the wide-brimmed hats.

  “This is a far more discreet entrance into the system than hijacking a drone, wouldn’t you say, Thomas Raines?”

  Tom gave a start. She knew his name? How did she know his name?

  A fierce smile crossed the lips of Medusa’s avatar. “I was in your system already, so I looked at your personnel file.”

  “See, that’s not fair. You made me swear to stay out of your system, so I don’t get to check for yours.”

  “I know. It’s so unfair for you.”

  It was. He felt almost like she knew so much about him, but he knew nothing of her. If he just had her name, it would make a huge difference. “Come on, you could tell me your name.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because if you don’t, Medusa, I’m gonna have to guess. You may not like my guesses.”

  “Every single word can basically be used as a name in China. It would be virtually impossible for you to guess, so feel free.”

  “Fine.” He holstered his gun. “Is your name ‘Rong’?”

  She stopped short. “What?”

  “‘Rong.’ Is it ‘Rong’?”

  “Why ‘Rong’?”

  “I met a ‘Rong’ once. It was the name that popped into my head. Obviously, I guessed wrong.”

  She stood there a minute. “That was a terrible pun.”

  Tom laughed. “Yeah, I know. This is what I mean by ‘you don’t want me guessing.’”

  “I think we need a gun battle now.”

  “Oh, yes,” Tom murmured.

  They began circling each other in the swirling dust, and Tom found himself remembering Capitol Summit vividly. Remembered her face, her burned skin, and what he’d done—the way he’d thrown that at her to win. He was a scumbag. He knew it.

  “So before I kill you,” Medusa said, “I’m going to give you a chance to explain why you were so persistent in trying to contact me. Then I’m going to explain to you why you are never going to do that again.”

  Tom didn’t like the sound of that. “Do it, then. You go first, then I’ll go.”

  She nodded. “After you faced treason charges for being in contact with me, someone on your side leaked back to my side that we’d been meeting. My military found out I was communicating with an American. I was questioned, too.”

  Tom grew rigid. “How did they find out?”

  She brushed off the question dismissively. “I’m sure someone on our side paid off a senator on your side.”

  Tom felt a flash of irritation. He should’ve guessed. His dad was right—congressmen should just pledge their allegiance to their bank accounts and cut the lip service to country.

  Suddenly, he grew cold. “What did they do to you?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said harshly. “It’s over. The military’s started monitoring me. Everything I do, everywhere I go, every time I hook in. So you see now why your repeated visits into our system are making my life difficult.”

  “Yeah.” Tom felt numb. “I see.”

  “And there’s more.” She drew closer to him, a dark silhouette against the setting sun. “I laced our server with data-mining programs that let me know whenever there are digital communications about me. I discovered a communiqué between members of my military and executives at LM Lymer Fleet. Apparently, LM Lymer Fleet has them keeping a close eye on me. There was no explanation about why, but it makes me suspect they’ve noticed that there’s something unusual about me.”

  The hot Arizona day felt like it had grown cold around him. LM Lymer Fleet was the maker of the Russo-Chinese neural processors, and basically their version of Obsidian Corp. In fact, before he defected, Joseph Vengerov even headed the company. If they had a particular interest in Medusa, it couldn’t be for any good reason.

  “You think they’re on to you?” Tom said quietly. “What you can do?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “What will happen to you if they learn what we can do?”

  “Nothing good, Mordred. They’ll try to find out how we can do it. They’ll want to isolate whatever it was about us that’s different and use it in other Combatants—and they’ll do whatever they have to do to accomplish that. That’s why I’m trying to lie low. Whenever you try to contact me, you put me at risk.” She drew closer. “You said you had a question. Ask me now. Then no more gnomes and no more visits. There’s too much danger right now.”

  Tom pulled his hat off his head and mopped at his sweaty forehead. His reason for endangering her now sounded stupid, self-serving. He felt like a scumbag even saying it. “I wanted to ask you how you got into space without a sponsor.”

  “That’s it?”

  He tried to tell whether he was imagining it, or whether she really sounded hurt. “And I missed you,” he added. He realized it was true as he said it. “I did. I miss fighting you and . . . I know what I did at Capitol Summit sucked, but I want to—”

  “To shoot me?” She drew her gun. Her dark silhouette blocked the sun from his eyes.

  Tom realized she wasn’t comfortable with anything too personal. Not anymore. He had to take the out she was offering. “Yeah. That’s great, too.”

  Tom wished there was some way he could erase the past and return things to the way they’d been. That was the thing about real life. Video games could be reset. There were second chances. There was no way to walk through the same scenario in a different manner when it came to Medusa.

  “To answer your question,” Medusa said, fingers hovering centimeters from her holstered gun, “I don’t
have a sponsor for a reason that’s very obvious.”

  “Because of your . . .” Tom faltered.

  “My good looks?” She bared her teeth. “I chose the call sign Medusa. No one forced it on me.”

  “Yeah, I figured.”

  “I never told you that.”

  “I know you,” Tom said. “I’ve seen you in action. You’d never let someone stick that name on you or have that power over you. Every weak point becomes another weapon for you. That’s why being low and underhanded was the only way to beat you in a fight.”

  She slowed a moment, and he sensed that he might’ve said something she liked. Her tone grew softer. “There’s no secret to circumventing the Coalition, Mordred. The companies all chip in for me because I win territory for them. ‘Medusa’ will go public one day—but she’ll be some other girl with some other face, and when she does, Harbinger Incorporated will be her sponsor, not mine. I’ll be invisible.”

  Tom stopped. So that was it. That was the end. The realization was like a fist socking him in the stomach, driving the air from him. His last hope, the last shred he’d been clinging to, and now it was gone.

  He was never going to be a CamCo. The realization made him laugh.

  “What’s funny?”

  “Nothing,” he said lightly, jerking back into motion. “I’m an idiot. That’s all. I think I’ve destroyed all my chances here.”

  It was her turn to smile and shake her head. “You said that last time, too. I don’t believe it.”

  “You don’t know what I’ve done.”

  “No, but I know you. You’re too stubborn to lose. You always come back.”

  It was strange, but her words were exactly what he needed to hear. Happiness swept through him at the utter confidence in her tone. He drew his gun, but Medusa had drawn hers a bit earlier, more than making up for the speed of his character. Their guns blasted at the same time.