Death March Read online

  “And if you don’t? If you die?”

  I drove up the onramp onto the elevated, flood-proof highway that had been built to replace the old I-95 interstate and punched the gas. I gripped the steering wheel with both hands so hard my knuckles hurt. If I died? How to tell her? How to tell her I couldn’t stand losing Justin as well?

  “Listen, Ev. I didn’t tell you, but Max called this morning. He said the prosecution’s going to push for the death penalty.”

  “What?” Her shock was as sharp as mine had been. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “I know. But Max said the government’s terrified of mass looting breaking out up and down the coast. That they don’t think the emergency disaster legislation is going to cut it. They’re going to blame Justin for Sam’s death and try to hit him with first degree.”

  Sam had been Justin’s best friend and partner in crime since middle school. His oxygen tank had been faulty and during their dive Sam had drowned while exploring a flooded parking garage. Justin had been arrested after calling 911. The situation was a clusterfuck of bad luck and even worse judgment on Justin’s part, and now the government was going to try and make an example out of him to keep all would-be looters out of billions and billions of dollars’ worth of private property.

  “All the more reason for you to stay, Chris! You’re going to leave him alone to go through that without you?”

  A memory came back to me. My mother in her hospital bed. The tubes. Her sallow skin. The beeping and the smell of disinfectant.

  Tears pricked my eyes. I wiped them away angrily. The truth hit me like a blow. I wasn’t strong enough to lose him. I’d used up those reserves. I had to do something. I had to. Even if the risk was leaving Justin alone if I failed. Maybe it was selfish. Cruel, even. But if it worked? If I came back rich beyond my dreams and with a pardon? Then I’d get to keep what was left of my family.

  My throat was tight, so I coughed and sat up straight. “If you can’t do this, I understand.”

  “No. Of course I can do this. It’s just that…” She trailed off, and there was silence for a spell. I drove like a madman past cars that were already driving like lunatics. It didn’t take much to imagine an accident causing me to meteor through the crash barriers to land in a flaming wreck on the flooded roads and homes below. The silence over the phone was textured. I could hear her helplessness. I could hear her struggling to find the words.

  “I’m sorry, Ev.” I didn’t look at her face on the console. Even though I was pushing 120 mph, it wasn’t the speed that prevented me. I knew that if I met her eyes, I’d crack. “Thank you.”

  “You’d better get through to Justin. I’m not going to explain this to him.”

  “I will.”

  More silence, punctuated only by the horrific blare of a horn as I slid past an eighteen-wheeler and into an empty lane on the far side. I hit the gas and surged forward. Any moment now, traffic was going to gridlock, and then getting there on time would be out of my hands. I was going to fight for every car length I could until then.

  “Take care of yourself,” said Ev. She sounded numb.

  “One weekend,” I said. “You’ll hear from me Sunday night. I promise.”

  “I told you already. Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” Before I could respond she carried on, voice suddenly heated. “And you’d better come back. You’d better.”

  Then she hung up.

  The elevated highway curved to the right up ahead, and as I tore around the huge bend I saw the brake lights. Gridlock, and it was barely past four. I loathed Miami traffic. I eased up on the gas, slowing down, slowing down, then finally came to a stop. I checked my console map. Forty-six minutes till I reached the Euphoria docking station. I glared at the traffic.

  “Call jail,” I said. I hated that I had Justin’s prison number on speed dial.

  It took twenty minutes to get through to him. Twenty minutes of being put on hold, ID’d, getting Max on the line to BS a pressing legal issue, until finally Justin’s face appeared on my console. He was eighteen, old enough to be tried as an adult. He looked wary and haunted and scared and defiant all at the same time.

  “Hey, bro,” he said. “I had this crazy dream last night. Remember our trip to Australia when we were little? We were by that lake, but as old as we are now, and these two gorgeous Australian girls wanted to hang out…” He smiled ruefully. “It was a good dream.”

  I smiled fiercely, tears springing into my eyes. “You keep me out of your dirty dreams, you hear me?”

  He laughed. “Yeah, all right. I’m making a note right here on the table with my shiv. So what’s up?”

  My throat closed up again. I had to cough to be able to speak. “An opportunity’s come up. A chance to fix things for us. I’m taking it, and if all goes well, I’ll be back Sunday night.”

  “An ‘opportunity’?” I could hear the scare quotes. “Mr. Reggio ask you to help with another truck full of stolen whisky?”

  “No, nothing to do with Mr. Reggio.” Not a bad guess, though. I’d never met a shadier math teacher in my life. “Look, don’t worry about the details. But if things don’t work out, you’ll be hearing from Ev. She’s agreed to make sure Max works his ass off for you.”

  His face tightened with suspicion, his eyes narrowing as he stared at the side of my face. “What’s going on here, Chris? What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I just wanted to let you know before—well. Whatever. You’ll be hearing from me Sunday night.”

  “Whatever it is, don’t do it.” His voice was suddenly heartbreakingly serious. “Please, Chris. Don’t do it. Don’t get in trouble because of me.”

  I lowered my chin, grinding my teeth as I fought for control. “It’s going to be OK.”

  “Please. This is my fuck-up. Whatever happens, I’ll own it. It’s my responsibility. But I can’t own you risking your—what? Risking your life? Committing some kind of crime? Whatever it is, I can’t deal with you doing that for me.”

  My throat was getting all tight again. I wiped my eyes with the back of my wrist. “Look, I gotta go. But I’ll be back Sunday night, and everything’s going to be better, all right?” I knew if I stopped he’d cut in, make things worse. So I bulldozed on. “So just hang in there. It’s all going to be fine.”

  “Please don’t,” said Justin, his voice thickening with the threat of tears. “Chris?”

  “Love you, little brother.” Then I jabbed my finger at the red button beneath his tear-streaked face and hung up.

  2

  The docking station was one of the few buildings in Miami that really looked like the future we were all supposedly living in. It rose against the skyline like an IKEA store and had the appearance of an Apple product. It gleamed in the Miami sun, smooth and pearlescent, all rounded curves and without any dirt to mar its surface. I’d seen a documentary on its construction and knew there were hundreds of windows in that smooth wall that nobody could make out from the outside.

  The parking lot looked normal enough, at any rate. Asphalt bleached and cracked by the sun, and as many BMW’s and Zero-Zeroes and Teslas as you could shake a stick at. I expected there to be a security gate or something, but nobody looked twice as I parked my beat-up Honda, leapt out and sprinted toward the front doors.

  They were massive, and of course they slid open silently just before I ran into them. I burst into a huge lobby that was easily four stories tall and impossibly elegant, but I didn’t have time to take in the decor. I ran up to the frosted glass reception desk and smacked both hands down on its surface.

  “I’m Chris Meadows. Brianna Sachdeva is expecting me?”

  The young man behind the desk froze, eyes wide, like a cat startled in an alleyway by the sudden flare of headlights. Then he forced an unconvincing smile, like one of those Uncanny Valley HugMe KissMe KillMe Dolls™. “B
ut of course, sir. One moment please.” He simply stared at me, eyes glazing over as he waited, and for a moment I thought he was being super passive-aggressive until I realized that of course Euphoria employees would have eye implants.

  “Welcome to Euphoria, Mr. Meadows,” said the young man with sudden animation. “My name is Carlisle Withers, and I’ll be your guide for your onboarding. I see this is your first time visiting. Will you please keep your palm on the glass?”

  A white handprint glowed to life on the frosted green glass beneath my hand, and I thought about the famous William Gibson quote: “The future’s already here – it’s just unevenly distributed.” My students were still working with old iPads and dead tree textbooks, and here was tech they’d probably only ever see in movies.

  I kept my hand on the print until it pulsed and faded away.

  “Very good. I see your session this weekend is being covered by Ms. Sachdeva, and all the paperwork has already been taken care of.” Carlisle rose to his feet and walked the length of the desk. I kept pace with him, moving deeper into the lobby. “Which means all that’s left to do is process you into the system.”

  He stepped out from around the desk and gave me an actual bow. “If you will follow me?”

  I tried for a smile that in all honesty probably looked more like a grimace as relief flooded through me. I’d made it. Trying to relax, I followed him through another set of opaque glass doors and into the depths of the station.

  All the paperwork was already taken care of? That nagged at me. How certain had Brianna been that I’d accept? She’d only asked a couple of hours ago, and I knew how complex the sign-up forms could be even just for public VR stations. Something like Euphoria had to be infinitely more complex, didn’t it?

  We walked down a broad hallway whose entire left wall was a continuous screen that displayed a forest at what had to be over 8k definition—it looked completely real to my eye, and I had to resist reaching out to touch the trees as we passed them.

  “Now,” said Carlisle, “Brianna and her friends are awaiting you in the main pod. They’ve already been vetted and passed their physicals, so we’ll just focus on catching you up to speed.”

  I nodded. There was nothing to say. Like everyone else, I’d geeked out about Euphoria at its launch. A computer game designed by our first true artificial intelligence? You bet I’d devoured every review and playtest. I’d even taken VR tours of the first docking center in Brussels, watched the onboarding videos, and spent countless hours exploring superficial VR facsimiles until I’d grown both frustrated and bored and forced myself to stop researching Euphoria altogether.

  So nothing that followed was particularly surprising. First, I showered then changed into comfortable woolens with socks so thick I never wanted to wear shoes again. Then I lay on one of the new bio-reader table things that I’d again only ever heard of but never seen. The table checked my vitals while I watched videos about the Salvation Six coders who had designed Albertus.

  When the physical test was complete, Carlisle popped his head around the doorway with a scary amount of animation and beamed at me. “Brianna has instructed us to skip all the orientation materials. She will be taking care of your in-world tutorial, and would like us to expedite the process. Is that all right?”

  “Sure,” I said, sitting up. “That’s fine.”

  “Then if you’ll follow me?”

  He led me to an elevator which rose of its own accord to what might have been the third or fourth floor—there were no buttons or indicators—and from there we walked to a set of double doors and entered the pod room.

  Seeing this space with my own eyes was surreal after hours spent examining it in VR. Subtle details made it more real, of course, despite the impeccable quality of the VR display; subtle markings on the gray carpet, smudges on one pod, the coolness of the air with a hint of mint, and the soft sound of the air conditioning.

  But I noticed all of that in the back of my mind, because Brianna rose to her feet as I entered. She stepped toward me, a smile on her face that didn’t touch her eyes.

  “Finally! Each minute here is forty-five we’re losing in Euphoria.” She looked me up and down. “Hello, Chris.”

  I hated to admit it, but she still looked good. ‘Voluptuous’ was a word I only ever read and never in my life felt inclined to use, but Brianna brought it to mind in spades. She was shorter than me, her skin a rich brown, her hair so black it had blue tints – and oh, her face. Those lips. The things she had said to me while we dated. The kind of stuff that made you shiver with arousal even as you wanted to rear back in shock. Her eyes, always calculating, always evaluating, even in moments of passion. Everything had always been an act with her. A stratagem to accomplish her next goal.

  It was also what made her such a fantastic gamer.

  “Brianna,” I said. “Thanks for this opportunity.”

  She waved her hand carelessly. “What can I say? I’m that magnanimous. Anyway, meet the rest of the team.” There were five others lounging in white armchairs, three guys and two girls. None of them got up to meet me, though I recognized one of the girls from the first night I’d met Brianna at the club on the beach. They smirked in a way I didn’t like until I realized what was up: in their eyes, I was just a level one noob. Of course they were going to give me attitude.

  After Brianna rattled off their names, I gave them an ironic little bow. “Pleased to meet you,” I said. Just you wait till you see what I can do, assholes.

  “Now,” said Brianna, “let’s get down to business. We’re all members of the Cruel Winter guild, and we’ll be spawning in our safe zone between Castle Winter and its attendant village of Feldgrau.”

  One of her friends snickered. I frowned at them. What was so funny?

  “The best part about Euphoria, of course, is how intuitive it is,” said Brianna, ignoring her friend. “I felt like all my time watching the intro videos was a complete waste of money. I know you’ll feel the same, given your skills. So. When you enter your pod, select Cruel Winter for your faction, set up your character however you like, and we’ll all spawn together and take it from there. I’ll teach you everything you need to know in-game.”

  I hesitated. This was overly simplistic. “Shouldn’t we discuss group composition? I should pick a class that rounds out the team, no?”

  Another snicker from the same dude. Arvid, was it?

  “Don’t worry about that,” said Brianna impatiently. “This isn’t Golden Dawn. Euphoria doesn’t work that way. Just make whatever you want to play, and it’ll be fine.”

  “All…. right,” I said. Weird. “Any advice on my first build? Things I should look for? Stuff to avoid?”

  “Didn’t you hear her?” This was from Arvid again. I was genuinely amazed at how quickly I was coming to hate this guy. “It doesn’t matter. Euphoria’ll handle whatever you pick. Go ahead and make something rando if you want. That’ll be even better.”

  Rando?

  Brianna walked back to her armchair and then made a shooing motion with one hand. “We’re all waiting on you, Chris. Sign your last contracts and waivers, generate your character, and then let’s go.”

  I nodded uneasily and turned back to Carlisle, who had remained by the door. He was standing stiffly, brow slightly lowered, but when I stepped up to him he beamed once more. “Very well, Mr. Meadows. Please sign these final release docs. Paper copies. Antiquated, but what can you do? There will be a few more forms once you’re in your pod, but you’re almost finished.”

  I signed and then hesitated. I wanted to ask him what was up. Why had he been frowning? Had he had issues with this group before? Was he sad for me that I’d be spending six months in their company? Didn’t matter. I wanted to tell him this wasn’t for fun. This was for the cold, hard cash and the pardon I’d be walking away with.

  “Great,” said Carlisle. “Here’s your pod, th
ough it’s not really a ‘pod’, per se. Lie down and I’ll link you up.”

  There were six cushioned tables around the perimeter of the room, each a perfect eggshell white. I lay down and found it to be luxuriantly, almost ridiculously, comfortable.

  “Now, this can be a little disorienting the first time,” said Carlisle from behind my head. “The best thing you can do is relax and focus on your breathing. Euphoria will occur before you know it.”

  Brianna appeared by my side. She was smiling down at me in a possessive manner, her eyes gleaming with anticipation. “I’m so happy you decided to come, Chris. We’re going to have so much fun together.”

  That look alone nearly made me sit up, but it was far too late. But if things got too obnoxious in there? I’d ditch her and her friends the moment I was confident in my abilities. So instead I smiled right back. “Yeah? So much fun, Brianna. I can’t wait.”

  A warm band pressed around my brow as the circlet was lowered into place. My vision swam immediately. The last thing I saw was Brianna staring down at me.

  I blinked, trying to clear away the white light, but to no avail. I was sitting in a cream-colored armchair like the ones Brianna and her friends had been using, but the room was gone. Instead, a white expanse surrounded me without limits or horizons.

  Goosebumps ran down my arms. This was it. I was in.

  To a degree, this was familiar. I’d been through enough VR character generation rooms that I actually relaxed back into the armchair, but even doing so hit home how amazing Euphoria was: I could feel the texture and coolness of the leather. As advanced as haptic feedback had become in even the most elite VR rigs, they were nothing like this.

  I reached down and prodded my leg. I knew my body was lying still in the pod room; that nothing had actually prodded my leg. But my brain couldn’t tell the difference. All this was taking place in my mind, controlled by the neural circlet I was now wearing.