The Game Within

Chapter Five

CHAPTER FIVE

SUNDAY, AUGUST 15, 2027 6:44am

Present Day / (04:08:43:29)

Joey Fitzgerald had been in The World Within for fourteen hours when he reached the castle. His health alarm blinked in his peripheral vision. He had silenced it two hours ago, but his gaming rig didn’t allow him to turn off the visual warning. Outside the game his body would be suffering. He’d pushed the limits many times. Once he almost didn’t get out. He spent that night in the hospital getting rehydrated. Since then he had upgraded his rig to include hydration, but he still didn’t have StimPaks. At fifteen he couldn’t acquire those legally. That meant his body would tire and eventually pass out. That nagging alarm suggested his physical body hit that wall two hours ago. When his body passed out, he’d drop out of the game.

The game backed up his progress continuously. He could come back in later and resume in the same location at the exact second he left, but breaks destroyed the whole engagement. And this had been a long campaign. His friends fought beside him for hours, suffering against superior forces, falling back over and over again to regroup, recharge, and reload. But slowly, painfully, they chipped away at the enemy and breached the outer wall. Now only the castle stood between them and the next level.

They’d been playing The World Within most of the summer, but had only beaten the easiest levels. Between the puzzles, the distances, and the non-player characters, advancing took time. That made it all the more amazing. Nothing came easy. You had to earn it through sheer effort. Joey never skimped on that effort. The others always dropped out first. Maybe he was lucky to have parents who didn’t pay attention. The others could never stay inside as long as him.

This session started late Saturday afternoon when Joey’s parents left for some party with plans to be out late. He smiled, told them to have a good time, and entered the system five minutes after their car left the driveway. Their return didn’t matter. They wouldn’t bother to check on him.

The nagging throb of the health alarm reminded him that time was short. And now he was alone.

Dinesh had suffered some pretty serious damage and bailed when his health monitor went off.

“I’m a dead man walking, Joey. I’m no use to you. Besides, my alarm is singing. Last time I waited this long to bail I had peed my pants.”

Jenny laughed at that. She was the only girl Joey had ever found willing to campaign with them and she was bad ass.

“They have gear for that, numb nuts,” she said to Dinesh. But then she bailed, too. Something stupid like homework.

They wanted him to wait. They would take the castle together tomorrow.

“I’ll just check the defenses,” he said.

“Yeah, sure you will,” Dinesh said. “I’m thinking we’ll be mopping up the puddle that was once you. See you tomorrow, loser.”

“Tomorrow then, quitters.”

And they were gone. Outside tomorrow had already come, but they didn’t mean that. In the game the sun was setting. Time was different here.

Joey checked his supply of arrows, hefted his sword, and rose to a low crouch. The castle stood dark, no more than two hundred feet from the low wall he hid behind. The main gates stood open wide enough to admit a single column of men. A dull glow emanated from that opening.

The castle was one of the lessor structures of the age, beaten and dreary, lonely on a vast dry plain that provided little cover on their approach. The battlements crumbled and numerous places exposed sections of the ramparts beyond. Large sections of the upper wall were gone as though from catapult attacks. At the ground, scorched stone and black residue spread around the wall. It suggested burning oil.

By now the sun was a memory, only the faintest glow in the western sky, painting long, fuzzy shadows across the courtyard. There was no sound. Light faded quickly. In five minutes he wouldn’t be able to see a thing. Time to move.

Joey stepped over the wall as quietly as his armor allowed and trotted across the barren soil, slowing and crouching lower as he neared the massive iron bound gates. He hesitated outside the opening and listened for any movement from within. Only his own coarse breathing and a rattling of chest plating disturbed the silence. He held his breath, waited two beats, then rushed through the opening, sword at the ready.

Inside the gates it was brighter, barely. Man-sized torches adorned the outer walls in three or four locations, the flames dancing through iron holders, spraying crazy shadows around the bailey. The keep, now a decimated granite shell, provided an eerie backdrop to the torchlight, its once formidable walls fractured and bowing where buttresses had cracked and fallen away. The wooden parts of the courtyard were all in advanced decay. Dry grasses pushed through ancient wooden walkways while other wooden features rotted in place. It appeared nobody had been here for ages.

Joey wandered toward the keep, his ears almost ringing in the silence. Something wasn’t right about this place. He reached the inner wall, a massive wooden structure originally plastered, but now loosely covered with crumbling gypsum and patchy sections of decomposing lime. A hundred years of decay surrounded him.

Centered in the wall a fallen door blocked a smaller opening. Gaping rusty holes on either side of the opening exposed the original door mounts.

Joey stepped into the inner courtyard where he got a better look at the keep. It was massive for the space and the bowing walls convinced him the entire structure might collapse on him at any minute, but light trickled from the structure. Somebody had been here or still was. Joey moved toward the keep where no door was visible at all. Hinges protruded from either wall, but all the wood once attached to those hinges had long since decayed to dust and blown away.

He hesitated only a second, listening, hearing nothing but the crackling of the fire in torches behind him. He stepped into the keep, a space claustrophobic with heat. A small stairway, barely maintaining its form, rose to his right. Rusty hoops that long ago surrounded wooden barrels lay jumbled in the shadows. The oppressive heat was generated by more torches mounted on the walls. There were too many for the space. The air was thick with oily smoke, throbbing with the flickering light, pulling moisture from his eyes, scratching at his throat.

Joey tried taking shallow breaths to keep from coughing, but it was useless and he gagged on the foul air, leaning forward on his knees as his lungs revolted. He bent lower, finding fresher sustenance and didn’t notice the shadow growing behind him. The comfort of cleaner air distracted him from the presence as it rose over him, filling the entry, blocking escape.

When the coughing finally stopped, he knew it was too late. He heard the breathing behind him, dull, slow, unbothered by the smoke. Joey turned and nearly fell back, startled by the sheer size of the thing. He fumbled for his sword, forgetting for a second he held it already, tight in his white-knuckled fists. It seemed terribly small against the thing standing before him. He wasn’t surprised when it was torn violently from his hands, crashing into the nearest torch with a raging explosion of steel and fire. His hands screamed with the vibration of the weapon leaving his grip, hot like fire pouring over them. He saw the twisted steel of his sword on the ground in the distance, his hands still gripping the handle, torn from his arms just below his elbows.

He looked at his arms extended in front of him, useless stumps pumping blood out into the sand. The false tingling in his hands faded as he dropped to the ground, his knees splashing in the muddy mix of sand and blood. He wanted to catch himself, but didn’t know how to use the bloody appendages left to him. He landed roughly on his shoulder, turning upward just as a massive steel blade slid into his chest and buried itself in the dirt beneath him.

In that last instant a strange quiet rolled over the tiny space. The smoke cleared. The air cooled. Joey squeezed his eyes shut, working the water out, clearing his vision when he opened them again. He didn’t feel anything when the sword pulled back out of his chest, dripping blood, dragging entrails. He stared up at the thing towering over him, expressionless as it turned and left him. The faintest crackle of fire rose again in his perception even as the light dropped to black. The last thing Joey Fitzgerald realized was that the sound he heard wasn’t the crackling of fire but instead the gurgling of blood as he gasped his last breath.