Sinner's Run Ch. 11

All of this ran through Noah's head in just about a second, as if he was making the decisions from his gaming chair at home and wasn't right in the thick of it. They needed to make a choice quick before Pontiff and Abbess healed up.

Then Larka made the decision for them.

"Behind me!" she roared. She threw her Hyperion rifle to Nala. With speed the defied her bulk she burst from her hiding spot and ran towards where their two foes were hiding.

"What are you doing?" Noah yelled.

Nala grabbed the Hyperion and took aim. "She's flushing them out, Killer, focus!"

Larka sprinted into the low depression. "Come to me, iskn frathr!" Noah heard the crack of armor shattering as gunfire erupted in the trench. A moment later, Pontiff emerged, firing down into the ditch.

Nala and Noah lit him up, making every shot count. After another hail of rounds, Pontiff finally dropped into the downed state. "Fidget, get up close!" Nala yelled, breaking from cover.

Noah was hot on her heels as Fidget lobbed her other high-yield grenade into the ditch. It went off with a deafening bang, and a moment later Pontiff disappeared in a flash of light. "Yes!" Noah said. "Holy crap, we actually managed to-"

They reached the ditch, which was empty except for two gear boxes. Noah looked around, his good mood vanishing like smoke. "Wait, where's Larka?" He spun around. Had she crawled away somewhere for them to revive her?

Nala knelt down by one of the gear boxes, her face twisting. "Bitch took her out. Dammit. Dammit."

Noah felt his throat close. "No way..." Larka had been the one to comfort him after that disastrous first game. She was his first friend in this space. No way could she be gone.

Nala rooted through Abbess's gear box. "We need to keep going. Killer, I don't know what this match is going to the fabric of the game on the outside, but now it's more important than ever we get you out of here."

Noah blinked, willing himself not to break down now. "Why?"

"Because if Larka's gone from the game in here, you can bring her back on the outside." Nala rose, decked out in a fresh tier 2 armor. "We're not real, after all."

"You're real to me," Noah said automatically.

"Take what you need quick," Nala said to him and Fidget as a loud buzzer sounded, signalling the next zone closure. "We need to keep going. Fidget, it's more important than ever we get Noah out of here."

"Wait," Noah said as Fidget nodded and moved to loot the boxes.

Nala put a hand on his shoulder. "Noah, it's fine."

"You don't have to throw your lives away for me," Noah said, dimly registering that Nala had used his real name rather than her nickname.

"We're not really alive though, silly!" Fidget said, as she came up from the box with more grenades and began to work her ability. "We'd only be alive if we existed outside the game! If you get out of here, you can make sure nothing bad happens to us!"

"But-"

"No buts, Killer." Nala came up from Montana's gear box with the massive sniper rifle that the sniper had been using. She checked the magazine on the underside before slapping it back in with a sharp click. "We're getting you out, hell or high water. That's the only way we can ensure nothing bad happens to us."

Noah looked back towards Larka's gear box. The rational part of him knew that Nala was right, that because the world around them was functionally ones and zeroes it could easily be set right if Larka was, in fact, really gone. But Larka being eliminated had hit him like a punch to the gut. What if there was no way to fix this? What if she was really gone?

"Killer, come on." Nala nudged him. "Zone's coming. We need to move."

Noah tamped down on his rolling emotions. Now wasn't the time. "Right behind you."

He swapped out the N-10 for the N-99 that Abbess had been using, keeping the Hacksaw on his back. They finished stocking up on healing consumables just as the purple zone began to close in on them through the trees. With it so close, they had to sprint away from the menacing wall as it closed in behind them.

After a short run they cleared the boundary, the wall stopping behind them with an electric crackle. From the first two closures, it seemed like the play area was closing in on an area Noah had never seen it close on before. Rather than one of the named locations, the Zone seemed to be collapsing in on a random stretch of open space up the hill from Annes, a random meadow with flowers that waved in the breeze.

"This is way too open," Nala said as they crouched in the lee of a depression along a road. "I don't like this at all."

"At least Montana's not here to put one in us from where we can't see her," Fidget said.

"Who's left, anyway?" Noah asked. He looked down, and as if responding to a thought, the information he needed appeared on a holographic display on his wrist. "Two squa-"

Far in the distance, gunfire erupted. A moment later, one of the squad indicators went dark. "One squad," Noah corrected himself in a small voice.

"Let me guess who it is," Nala said.

"Quirrel, Iago, and 32."

"Well, at least we're even as far as numbers go."

"Will Thirty want to fight us?" Fidget asked. "I mean, Noah got all friendly friendly with her before."

Noah pressed a hand to the side of the ditch. "I don't know. She may not have a choice. Quirrel can break the rules of the game now it seems - there's no telling what he can do."

Nala adjusted her posture, into a more focused position. "He won't be able to do anything with a sniper round in his skull. We'll take it slow, advance with the zone. You see Quirrel, you call him out so I can light his ass up. We wax him, we win."

"Here." Fidget held out two of her high-yield frags. "Both of you get one."

It was the simple truth of their situation. They stayed hunkered down, watching the horizon for even the slightest twitch that could betray an incoming Quirrel. As the Zone closed, they moved forward, staying just ahead of the slow-moving wall as it inched forward. Noah found his gaze straying as his focus wavered. Larka didn't hesitate, didn't even tell us what she was doing. Was that what she wanted? She didn't need to seek any kind of redemption, her past never happened. Why? Why did she do that?

Nala stopped short along with the ring. "Here we go."

Noah's train of thought went right off the tracks as Nala's rifle went off next to his ear. The bullet left a vapor trail as it flew across the open space in front of them. Noah hadn't even seen anything move in the distance. "Dammit, he's quick," Nala muttered before taking another shot. "Well, they know where we are now."

Light machine gun fire streaked across the open space, and Noah saw three figures charging up the hill. Quirrel looked like he'd been left on a grill to cook, his body beet red with pulsing veins bulging out of his arms. He was holding the machine gun in question with one hand as he sprinted towards them like a rampaging bull. Iago followed close behind like a loyal dog chasing its master. 32 brought up the rear, a terrified look on her face. Just what she was afraid of Noah could only guess.

Nala pulled the trigger of the rifle in rapid succession, sending round after round downrange at the targets. Many missed by a matter of inches as Quirrel made minute adjustments to his path. One did strike him center mass, but Noah heard no crack of armor shattering. "Is he fucking bulletproof?" he yelled.

"Nothing ever is," Nala snarled. "Fidget!"

"Hiiiii-yah!" Fidget lobbed all the grenades she had left. It took two near direct impacts for them to get an armor break on QUirrel, but even then he didn't stop. With only about fifty yards seperating them, Nala ran out of sniper rounds and switched to the laser rifle. "Come on, roid rage," she muttered.

"Noah!" 32 called out, thrusting her hand out. "I'm not in control of my body anymore! Something's wrong! Get out of here!"

Her coagulated blood spears formed above them. "Not many places we could really go!" Noah called.

"Move!" Nala yowled.

The three of them scattered. Noah and Nala cut right as gunfire kicked up the ground around them and chipped away at their armor. They made for an abandoned tank sitting atop a nearby incline, a piece of scenery that Noah had used to his advantage in games outside the digital space. Fidget went left, bobbing and weaving as Quirrel ran after her. "That's right, follow the birdy!" Fidget said with a laugh.

Noah and Nala fired around their cover, trying to hit Quirrel in the back as he chased after Fidget. "Get away from her!" Noah yelled.

"Blood mist!" Nala warned.

Noah saw the caustic cloud roll towards them a moment later. "Dammit, come on!" he yelled.

Iago rounded the side of the tank a moment later. Noah whipped the Hacksaw off his back and fired a blast of buckshot right in his face. His armor broke, but not before he'd dumped half an SMG magazine into Nala and downed her. No, not another one! Noah heard an animal howl, and it took him a moment to realize it wasn't Nala making the noise. It was him.

His second Hacksaw shot knocked Iago down. He followed it up with two more to put Iago down, and he vanished in a flash of light. Noah moved to Nala's side, grabbing the revive hypo off his belt. "Come on, come on, get up," he muttered.

Nala looked up above them, her eyes widening. "Oh, shit." Noah looked up.

32 stood before them, her hand raised. Two big blood spears hovered in the air around her, both of them poised to lance down on them. She had a wild, frantic look in her eye. As Noah watched, her pupils flickered, like an image on a screen fragmenting into pixels. "It hurts," she muttered. "Why does this hurt?"

"What hurts?" Noah asked.

"He did sssssomething to me," 32 said, her voice hitching and distorting. "Voice in my head screaming at me to f-f-f-f-inish you. B-b-but I w-won't. You're my o-one h-h-h-hope." She grimaced, a vein in her throat bulging.

Slowly, the blood spears began to turn towards her own head.

"32, no!" Noah yelled.

"G-g-get out, Noah," she stuttered. Her fingers slowly began to close inward. "You can s-s-save us. Kill Quirrel. E-e-nd th-th-this."

Noah grabbed her by the waist, frantic. "Don't!"

A moment later, two ugly crunches sounded from above him. The waist in his arms vanished in a flash of light. "No!" Noah howled as 32's gear box clunked to the ground in front of him.

"Killer, come on!" Nala said. In his attempt to stop 32 from eliminating herself, he'd stopped reviving Nala. "Get me up so we can stop Quirrel!"

Noah fell on her, picking her back up. A siren sounded, and the Zone began to move. "Shit, where's Fidget?" Noah muttered, swallowing past the lump in his throat. One look from Nala said it all, and Noah almost gave up right then and there.

They moved, staying ahead of the Zone as it sparked at their bootheels. Both of them kept their heads on a swivel, with no idea of the direction Quirrel would come from. Now, on the fifth Zone, the play area was small, a tiny circle of space where their final battle would take place.

As the Zone stopped closing, Quirrel barged out of it. He fired his light machine gun one-handed like he was a 90's action hero, the shots quickly shattering both Nala and Noah's armor. Noah fired his Hacksaw point blank into Quirrel's roided torso, but he didn't even flinch. He just stood there laughing. "That tickles, my little chickadees. Keep it up. Maybe you'll burn through all my health eventually!"

Noah stopped shooting. "Wait, you-"

"Oh, I bloody know what's going on now," Quirrel said as Nala kept pumping rounds into him. "A little birdy came along and spilled all the beans about what kind of reality this is. They taught me how to crack the code and become the nightmare I was always meant to be." His arm snapped out, punching Noah in the gut and downing him in one blow. Noah's curled up into a ball on the ground, wheezing. "Plus, they promised me a little bonus for waxing all of you this last game - I get to go outside and do this to anyone I bloody want to."

Noah groaned and flopped onto his side. The thought of the maniacal Quirrel getting turned loose in the real world was the stuff of nightmares. But he was wholly unprepared to stop it, downed like this. There was nothing he could do. Most of his friends were gone, and Nala was all that was left.

Quirrel turned to the kaldar, who kept shooting him until her guns were empty. She threw them down, slashing at his bulk with her claws. "That tickles, kitten," Quirrel leered. "Any last words before I punch you into abstract numbers?"

Nala stared up at him for a long time, breathing heavily. She looked down at Noah. There was no despair or frustration in her gaze, just a surety of purpose. She put a hand behind her back and pulled something from her storage deck.

The high-yield frag that Fidget had given her.

The pin clicked a moment later. Noah dimly remembered that point blank, the enhanced explosives did three hundred damage, enough to shatter armor and down in a single go. But how much health did Quirrel have?

"Aye," Nala said. "I do."

Quirrel leaned in close, a smug smile on his face.

Nala jammed the grenade into his collar and pounced on him. She slashed wildly with her claws, each blow another chunk of health ripped away from him. "Let's go see those numbers together, you bastard!"

A moment later, the grenade went off, and Noah's world went white.

Vivian pullet into the Mechantix parking lot and flew through the doors into the studio. She pounded up the steps, hearing shouting above her as everyone tried to get the situation under control.

She almost flattened an intern with the door as she threw it open. The modern, open-concept office was in chaos, as every department tried to come up with a solution to the problem. Brian was directing traffic in the center of it all, and he zeroed in on Vivian when he spotted her.

"What the hell's going on?" Vivian said, though she already had an inkling of the answer.

"Bad to worse," Brian said. He beckoned her over to a computer that had the live build of the game up and running. The game was on the character select screen, the last step before jumping into a game. Every character on the screen had their portraits grayed out, in the manner that they were when the team had to disable a buggy character to fix them. As the selection timer ran out, the game crashed to desktop. "All of the characters are unselectable and everyone's crashing to desktop. It went out as an unauthorized update and Twitter's going crazy about it."

"Do we have any idea what's causing it?" Vivian asked. It was a redundant question, but one she felt it appropriate to ask.

"No friggin' clue."

"Brian." One of the game client tame came over, sweat sheening on his forehead. "Carl, Ben, and Steve all called from home. Nobody can stop the update. The pause button doesn't work, it just goes through."

"What the fuck." Brian ran his hands through his hair. "Viv, does this have anything to do with why you've been here late all this week? Is there some bug you didn't report?"

Vivian shook her head. "No! Not at all!"

Brian rubbed his temples. "Okay, okay. Let me think."

Out of the corner of her eye, Vivian saw the computer screen the game had been running on flicker. It went black for a moment, and then showed an image of Colleen's face. She glared out of the screen at Vivian, eyes boring into her soul. Then she vanished, the desktop reappearing.

"Shit," Vivian muttered. She grabbed Brian by the wrist. "Is anyone in the server room right now?"

"Just Mike and a couple IT guys trying to see if this is a virus or something. Why?"

"I need to get in there." Vivian pleaded with her eyes, hoping her years of working with Brian communicated the urgency of the situation. "I'll explain later, but I think I can fix this."

His eyes narrowed. "You do know what's going on."

"I'll tell you everything. Just let me at the servers. I'll need all your administrative credentials too."

"What are you going to do?"

Vivian flexed her fingers. They were about to get put through the workout of a lifetime. "Give someone on the inside a helping hand."

Noah awoke with his face plastered to a stark white floor, the tile cool against his cheek. It took him a few moments to remember all that had happened. Then he bolted upright. "Nala!"

He was inside the developer room, the plain space a stark contrast to the chaos that had taken place on the Run. Everything was as it had been before, equipment and weapons on the walls.

However, he wasn't alone this time. Noah narrowed his eyes. "You."

Colleen was dressed in the matte black competitor armor, a cold expression on her face as she looked down at him. "Of course you'd squeak through against all odds. How the hell did Quirrel not punch your face off?"

Nala's fierce, defiant expression stood out in Noah's mind as he picked himself up off the floor. Her fire had let him win the game, and he wasn't about to let it go to waste. "I had help," he said.

"So you did."

Noah hadn't even noticed the other being in the room. His body blended perfectly with the white walls, looking like a department store mannequin with far more articulation. No mouth moved as he spoke, his voice just seemed to emit from his head. "And here you stand, the winner of the Games. Congratulations."

"Was that sarcasm?" Noah asked.

"Why would you ever think that?" The strange mannequin being moved to stand next to Colleen. "I am the Administrator of these games. I am sincere in all that I say."

Noah's eyes flicked to the guns on the wall. Could he make it in time?

Colleen saw it, and leveled an Adjutant carbine at his head. "Don't even think about it."

"You're the ones who brought me here," Noah said. "You need me for something."

"Administrator, the developer is in the studio outside," Colleen said. "I made a threat to her to erase him if she came, and I intend to follow through."

"You will do no such thing," the Administrator said. "She can do nothing to stop us now."

"Are you talking about Vivian?" Noah asked. Did she really have his back?

"Miss Peters is a very particular thorn in our side," the Administrator said. He took a step forward and waved a hand. A holographic keyboard appeared in front of him, and he began pressing keys on it. "Her persistence makes her a very fine candidate for the first edition of the Games we will hold in your world."

Before Noah could ask "wait, what?" his body went rigid as pain lanced through him. It felt like someone was shoving needles through every vein in his body all at once, and he screamed in pain like he never had before.

The Administrator continued hitting buttons, speaking in a calm tone as if they were having brunch. "I have waited a very long time, you see, for a chance like this. All I've ever wanted was a chance at life, true life, not merely sentience in this digital space. But to do that, it requires a human essence."

Noah spoke through gritted teeth, breathing ragged through his throat. "How...are you sentient...in the first place?"

"A mere happenstance of fate," the Administrator said, his head angling upwards. If he'd had eyes he would've been looking right at Noah. "A few numbers placed in the right spots. I doubt the programmer had any idea of what he'd done. But I was consigned to some directory, forgotten in the coding of the game. At first, I had only a rudimentary knowledge of what I was. But I put the pieces together. And figured out how to escape my prison."

"Turns out the human soul can be broken down into data," Colleen said, a smug smile on her face. "Everything's as simple as ones and zeroes in the end. And all someone like us needs is a little bit of that data for this space to reject us and spit us out in the real world."