Sinner's Run Ch. 09

32 flinched. "I didn't mean..."

"Your earnestness is appreciated," Larka said. "But I do not wish to leave." The big fraskarian closed her eyes. "I've still much to atone for."

Noah almost started to mention that Larka's backstory was artificial, and that she could be anything she wanted to be if they were to escape the game. But she did have a point - a giant polar bear with wings wouldn't exactly be easy to hide. E.T eat your heart out, Noah thought. "It's alright," he said. "I'm not asking you to help, just to keep it on the down low."

Larka's eyes opened, flashing with intensity. "Implying I would not, finyan? If this cause is important to you, I will help you see it to its end." She wrapped a burly arm around him and pulled him close.

Noah smiled a little against her soft fur. "Thanks, Larka."

"I kinda want to go out!" Fidget said, sitting back up. "I mean, it's mostly just to see if things blow up out there the same way they do in here. Plus, if Noah can get in, and then get back out again, what's to say anyone could do that? I could just go back and forth!" She sprang off the bed and moved behind Larka, sticking her head out to the side. "Outside world!" She retreated, then popped her head out the other side. "Inside world!"

She went back and forth several times, until Larka's meaty palm caught her on the head. "Calm, finyan."

Fidget rubbed her cheek against Larka's pawpads. "Soooooft," she muttered.

Noah, Larka, and 32 looked at Nala expectantly. The kaldar looked back for a moment, then blushed and averted her eyes. "Let me think about it," she muttered. "But yeah, I'll help."

Noah smiled at her. "Thanks."

"Now, one important question, finyan," Larka said. "What do we need to do to help?"

"I'm not sure," Noah said. "But-"

The world shifted a little, and all four Primes immediately went ramrod straight as if they'd been struck by lightning. Noah stilled, but realized a moment later what was happening. He looked up. A moment later, another note appeared in midair and dropped towards him. He caught it just as the world righted itself and the four women went back to normal.

"What the actual hell was that?" Nala asked.

Noah waved the rolled up piece of paper under her muzzle. "Our friends on the outside."

Vivian stifled a yawn as she twisted in her chair. Several somethings popped in her spine, sending relief up to her head. She rolled her shoulders and reached for her coffee cup. It was lighter than she'd remembered. When she looked inside, only a measly puddle at the bottom remained. Time for more.

She made to rise, only to bump smack into someone in her office doorway. "Augh!" she said.

"Easy there, Viv," the man in the doorway said.

"Oh, Brian," Vivian said. "What can I do for you?"

Brian Coltresse, executive producer of Sinner's Run, took a step forward and swung her office door partway closed behind him. "I just wanted to come talk to you for a minute," he said. He was about her age, and had worked in games for only a couple years longer than she had. "HR came to me and let me know about all the insane hours you've been putting in over the last week. Something wrong?"

Yes, Brian, we have a missing young man inside our in-house game build and he's found a way to have relations with the Primes I find engrossingly attractive, thus I am torn between a normal human compassion to make sure he's out and safe as well as an erotic drive to take his place and be mounted by Nala. For hours on end. "Nothing," she said, trying and failing to not yawn as she spoke. "Just been having trouble sleeping and figured it was better use of my time than tossing and turning at home."

Brian raised an eyebrow. "Given the size of the bags under your eyes I think sleep is more of what you need than anything else."

Vivian had dutifully ignored the increasingly pronounced signs of exhaustion under her eyes as the week had gone on. Her focus on helping Noah had made everything else obsolete. Including the actual work she was supposed to be doing. "I'm fine, Brian, really-"

"Viv." He put a hand on her shoulder. "No buts. Take the rest of the week off. Get some rest."

He wasn't doing it to be mean, or out of any nefarious ulterior motives, just a boss looking out for his employee. But he couldn't know, could he? Vivian wanted to tell someone else about what she knew, show them the video footage of the missing young man trapped in a video game. But she couldn't. She'd wind up in a police interrogation room or a mental asylum faster than you could say 'battle royale,' and then she'd be of no help to Noah.

She sighed. "Very well. I'll wrap up and head home."

Brian gave her another friendly shoulder pat. "Take it easy, Viv." He turned and left her office.

Vivian rubbed her eyes again, a plan formulating in her mind. Just because she wasn't at work didn't mean she couldn't pursue other avenues of inquiry. First, another message snuck into the in-house build before she left. Then, a call to Garthex. Then a nap.

Maybe the second and the third thing could be reversed.

She wrote out the message quickly, not leaving her workstation before it synched up with the in-house build. That done, she shut down her computer and gathered her things. She left her office, cutting across the studio floor to swing by Brian's office. The door was open just a crack, and she raised her hand to knock.

"Yes, she's on her way out," Brian's voice said from inside the office. "She looks like she hasn't slept in a month. I'm honestly worried about her, Colleen."

Vivian's hand froze. "Yeah," Brian continued, carrying on his half of the phone conversation. "Yeah, no. It's no big deal. She and I are friends. Right. No. Yeah. No worries. Thank you for your concern. Alright, I'll meet you for the interview tomorrow. Right. Thanks. Bye."

Vivian was already speedwalking down the hall before she heard Brian put the receiver down. She fought the urge to pull out her phone until she was inside her car and on the way home. The top number in her Recent Calls was Garthex, and she called him as soon as she was out of the parking lot.

The phone rang and rang until it went to voicemail. Dammit. "Garthex, it's Vivian," she said, driving with one hand. "Something very strange is going on. Call me as soon as possible."

She tried again as she pulled into her parking lot, and got his voicemail again. She left the same message almost verbatim as she climbed the steps to her apartment. The phone went back in her pocket as she grabbed her keys and unlocked the door. Inside, she deposited everything on the sofa and went to her computer on the desk in the corner. All vestiges of exhaustion were gone from her body. Her mind was alight with possibilities. She sat down in her chair, scooting it into place and mashing the power button.

Nothing happened.

Vivian frowned, then tried again. Still nothing. She ducked her head beneath the desk. The computer was plugged in for sure. She yanked it out of the wall, then re-inserted it. Still nothing.

Vivian scooted over to the back of the PC tower, checking the power cord on that end too. It was in. "Of all the times," she muttered, sliding back to her normal position. "Come on, come on," she muttered, mashing the power button with her finger as if by sheer force she could make it work again.

A shock rippled up her arm with a loud zap, and every light in her apartment that was on shorted out. Vivian yelped and pulled her arm back. Stinging pain filled her side, and she put a hand on her chest to make sure her heart was still beating. It was going a million miles an hour, but it was still beating. That was good.

Then she saw the face on her computer screen.

Only the basic outline appeared first, a green line stitching its way across the black expanse of the monitor. Then more lines branched off the first, cutting across the space to form a three-dimensional wire frame model. It was the same kind of model that the character design team started with when they were programming new Primes into the game. The one taking shape was female, with a round face and sharp nose.

And then it spoke.

"Hello, Vivian," the face said. It's voice was heavily mechanic, like it was speaking through a voicebox and a vocoder at the same time. "We've been watching you."

Vivian shook out her arm, clenching and unclenching her fingers. "And who is we, exactly?"

A smooth, plastic-like texture spread out over the wire frame model, as if being daubed on by a big paintbrush. It followed the wire lines, resolving into a smooth cranium and giving accent to the cheekbones of the model underneath. The texture flowed down towards the bottom of the monitor, forming into a neck and shoulders. "I'm more than certain you have suspicions."

VIvian stared for a moment, her mind connecting the dots. The conclusion was absurd, if taken from an objective point of view. But objectivity was kind of a moot point when humans vanished into video games and talking heads appeared on inactive computer monitors. "You're the one who took Noah. You call yourself Colleen."

The face on the screen smiled, as if the corners of her mouth were being drawn upwards by sculptor's tools. "Very good, you think quick. No wonder you've been able to help Noah as much as you have."

Vivian sagged in her chair. "How?"

Colleen inclined her head. Splashes of color began to appear on the white texture. "Not why?"

"That was my next question. But how is more important to me."

"Ah, yes, you want to get Noah out of the Run." Peach color splashed across Colleen's plastic cheeks, a base skin tone upon which all the others were layered. "You want to save him from his fate. But why though? What is he to you?"

Vivian narrowed her eyes. "He's someone who needs help. That's all the motivation I need."

"Such a human concept," Colleen said. More color appeared on her face, added swathes of tan, white and light brown adding highlights and depth to her features. "Generosity. Would that I could understand it. But Noah is necessary for our designs."

"And who is 'we' here?" Vivian challenged. "What cabal do you take your orders from? How deeply entrenched in it is Brian? The rest of the Mechantix staff?"

Colleen laughed. As if the sound was the trigger, long locks of red hair poofed out of her head, curling like bends in a river of fire down to her side. Vivian felt her body respond automatically at the sight of the gorgeous face. Curse this bisexual libido, she thought.

"They have no idea!" Colleen said in a sing-song voice. "Mister Coltresse thinks that I'm a journalist doing a story about crunch in the industry. He was very eager to provide the image of a studio where nothing of that sort happens." She inclined her head towards the screen, her eyes dangerous as they filled in with a vibrant green color. It was easy to see how Noah had been entranced by her. "And seeing as how you've been working so many long hours this past week poking your nose where it needn't be..."

Vivan's lip curled. "So you played on his niceties."

Colleen shrugged. "He's a good boss, if a bit blind to what's going on under his own nose."

"Whatever you're planning on doing with Noah Welkin, it won't happen," Vivian declared. She stood up, the back of her thighs pushing her chair back a few feet. "I don't know how you've done it, but you can't stop me from going right back to the office and staying there until I figure out a way to get him out." She turned and began to stomp towards the door.

"Do that, and we will erase him."

Vivian stopped dead in her tracks.

"Noah is an aberration in the servers," Colleen said. Her voice had grown low and dangerous, a bit of the mechanical rasp coming back. "A single line of code amongst millions. It would be nothing to erase him, obliterating his existence entirely."

"I thought he was necessary to you!"

"He is," Colleen said. "But it's not a case of him being the only person we need. It could be anyone, really. It just happened to be him. We deemed it appropriate."

Vivian turned and moved back to her computer, leaning down over the desk. Her knuckles whitened as she put her full weight on them. "And why is that? What makes him so special?"

Colleen stared back from the monitor, her gaze hard. "It's his lack of being special that makes him ideal. I met him and got the full measure of his life in a moment. He was destined to spend the rest of his life staring into a computer screen, growing old and dying alone. A complete and utter waste of the life he was given." Her eyes flashed. "We took him because nobody would miss him. We took him because his life would be better suited in service of our purpose."

Vivian's hands flexed against the desk so hard they shook. "And who made you such an arbiter of fate like that?"

"I don't need to be. It's simple." Colleen shook her head. "You possess a great intellect, Vivian. Surely you can understand."

The desk creaked as Vivian put more of her weight on it. Colleen's words had struck at the very core of her being. She herself had sacrificed so much for her career. Her last date had been years previous. The last time she'd been laid had been a drunken one-night stand with a punky woman with a mohawk she met in a divey lesbian bar. That had been what, six, seven months ago? Turns out, few people outside of the games industry wanted to enter a long-term relationship with someone in it - in her experience, at least. Staring at a computer screen for hours on end was something she did too, and her deepest fear was that she'd never have reason to take her eyes away.

But she'd made her peace with that. She was only thirty-three. There was plenty of time left for her. Noah was a decade younger than her. For this arrogant computer construct to say that his life was going nowhere lit a fire in her belly. Who was it to decide which lives were better worth living?

"I understand the logic," Vivian growled. She lifted her gaze, staring into Colleen's green eyes. "But unlike you, I have humanity. Compassion. I wanted to help Noah based on nothing more than basic human empathy before. Now, no small part of me wants to get him out just to spite you, you goddamn machine."

Colleen's face twisted in anger. "Do not interfere, Vivian Peters. Noah is just one of many avenues we can take. There's legions of humans wasting their lives who would be suited to our purposes."

"And I'll match you step for step," Vivian countered. "And I'll save them all."

Colleen lunged towards the screen. Vivian scrambled backwards as a wireframe arm slapped against her monitor, as if Colleen was trying to break free of the screen like the ghost from The Ring. Her wire fingers strained against the material, arm trembling with the effort. A moment later, the wires snapped and broke like porcelain.

The artificial woman looked down at the shattered remains of her arm. The missing limb left a gaping hole in her body, the inside of her chest hollow save for the wires that gave it structure. It was like looking at the workstation of one of the character designers during a day where they'd just given up. "Or you could do the smart thing and not interfere," Colleen rasped, her voice fully mechanical now. "Your choice."

She vanished from Vivian's computer screen. There was a pop and a whiff of ozone as the monitor shorted out, an electric crackle making Vivna's hair stand on end for a moment. A moment later, her computer hummed to life with a gentle whoosh of air. She took several deep breaths to compose herself. The ozone smell made her gag.

Whoever - or whatever - Colleen was working with, they clearly needed Noah for. Returning to the office was a risk she wasn't willing to run for his sake. But that didn't mean she couldn't work her ass off to save him from the outside. She'd just have to make a few phone calls and put her employment at risk. Was it worth it? Vivian looked up at her ceiling, to the central air vents circulating cold air through the space. It was so, so nice. She never wanted to go back to wall units ever again.

But she wouldn't be able to live with herself if she just let her foes do what they wanted to do to Noah.

Vivian did her hair up in a few short motions, pulling the bun tight behind her. She set another pot of coffee to brew. Then she pulled out her work laptop from her bag and turned it on. "First, know thine enemy," she muttered, reaching for her phone.

Just as she was about to call him for the third time, her phone buzzed and Garthex's number appeared on the screen. She answered on the first ring. "Garthex."

"Vivian?" Garthex sounded out of breath. "What's going on? Are you okay?"

Vivian took up a perch on her couch, folding her legs underneath her. "More or less. I'll explain in a little bit. Right now, I need your help."

"With what?"

She pushed her glasses up her nose. "This Sinner's Run lore group you and Noah were a part of. Can you send me what you all have managed to figure out?"

There was a pause on the other end. "I mean, yeah," Garthex said. "It might take me a little while to pull everything you need together, but sure. How much do you want to look at?"

Vivian looked at her short-circuited computer monitor. Sleep would definitely have to wait. "All of it."

Administrator.

Colleen.

We should erase Noah and find another candidate. That cursed programmer is far too driven to-

We will do no such thing. Not while we are this close.

But Administrator!

Colleen, they are still fumbling in the dark about the most important details. They don't know how you brought Mister Welkin to this digital space, nor do they have a clue how to get him out of it. They don't know what we need him for, and if your recounting of your conversation with Miss Peters was accurate, they do not understand. We only need a few more days, and then there will be nothing she can do.

I still don't like it.

You would undo all our progress just to spite Miss Peters?

...

Don't give into such temptations, Colleen. We need to be better than that. When Mister Welkin has made us real, we will be.

...you're certain it will work?

Not entirely. But by our nature we can try again and again, until we get it right. Tell you what - if Noah doesn't work out, perhaps we shall try again with Miss Peters. Will that mollify you?

...I'd like that very much, Administrator.