“The dude hasn’t worked a day in his life,” Sam replied. He flexed his arm. “That’s why the ladies prefer us farm boys. We have the muscle.”
“Harriet barely tolerates you,” Lulu snapped. She was in a particularly prickly mood today. I didn’t blame her. She, too, hadn’t slept. She still blamed herself for the death of Mr.Gonzales.
After striking out, Droog went off to another apartment—the one of his ex-girlfriend Lady Diva. He didn’t knock. He kicked in the door and stormed in, intent on shooting her.
…Only to get a baseball bat to the head. Isabella Machado, too, had been warned of what had happened. She’d knocked him over, and her dog—Puddles, the large-sized poodle—had pounced and ripped his throat out.
Droog was dead. Literally dead. He was the first true casualty of the war on their side.
“I never knew those fluff dogs could get that big,” Sam said, looking at the picture of Puddles on the screen.
“Good dog,” Lulu repeated.
The screen changed to the image of Lady Diva sitting on the lap of Goat Sects. A huge blinking banner appeared over the photo.Warning: AI-Generated Image.
It didn’t take long for someone who’d been watching the feed to realize what had happened, though the conclusion that the Earth media had jumped to was completely wrong. They’d believed me when I said that we had agents on Earth and that we were coming for those who participated in the game. After Apex confirmed that Droog truly had been speaking with someone on the surface of New Sonora, the media immediately assumed that “sleeper agents” on Earth had all started activating and were getting ready to—I don’t know—start blowing things up and saying nasty things on the feeds of streamers.
This was causing a relatively confusing firestorm back on Earth, and I had the impression that the media as a whole was strugglingwith how to spin it. Many parents were now forbidding their minor children from playing. Meanwhile, someone else reported that interest in the game had risen exponentially, despite the limited number of available slots. Apex promised that anyone who wanted to play would get a chance during “Phase 2,” which would be on a different planet in a month.
There were calls that participants in the game be given the same benefits that “real” soldiers received, though most seemed to think that was ridiculous. There were also renewed calls for revoking something called “section 17,” which was a ban on people owning both chemical and electric firearms. Apparently, gun violence was pretty common, despite guns being illegal.
To me, the whole planet sounded like a dystopian nightmare.
I was reminded of something Grandpa Lewis had once said: “Miserable people are fond of laying blame on someone else for their problems. Sometimes they’re right but usually not. Usually, the responsible party is themselves. Or nobody. Sometimes things just aren’t good, and that’s all there is to it.”
I remembered Lulu had asked, “How can you tell when they’re right or wrong?”
He’d chuckled. “That’s easy. Usually if the party they’re blaming is weaker than them, then they’re making it all up. If the party they’re blaming is stronger…well, that’s when you really gotta pay attention to why they’re complaining.”
We still had the communications tablet sitting out in the woods, constantly monitored by a UAV. This morning, during the funeral, they’d dropped twelve crates filled with nothing but dozens of heat-seeking missiles. Beyond that, they had not yet sent us another communication other than the display adding a countdown to the next wave. It would happen at just about the same time as last night. Right after sunset.
We were expecting five hundred mechs.
Online, people were complaining about it. Apex Command hadblacked out the whole area, meaning people could no longer freely choose to jump into the south half of the peninsula. They’d have to sign up for a chance to participate in the assault tonight. After the incident with Fat Landing, Apex was trying to control the chaos. That was good for us, but that also meant pretty much every player was now laser focused on the peninsula. Apparently, last night had consisted of similar raids across the whole planet, but nobody had put up a fight like we had. And while there were to be multiple “organized raids” tonight, everyone wanted in on this specific raid—the one against us. Apex had supposedly instituted a lottery system to choose participants.
Strangely—at least I thought it was strange—nobody had yet made the connection between us—as in the real us—and the events of the last few days. I had no social media presence whatsoever other than the single song recording Sam had put up on some site that would supposedly earn us money if people listened to it. The last I heard, we had fifteen streams total, and I was pretty sure all of those were Sam. Though that could be explained away by the fact that we were listed as the “Rhythim” Mafia with an extra “i” in “Rhythm.”
But Lulu’s Real-Friends account had “A grain farm on New Sonora” listed as her location, and at least at first, she’d been using it to shout from the rooftops about the invasion. I had no idea how popular her feed was, but it sounded like she had a lot of fans. She hadn’t posted in two days now, but surely some of her fans would have put it together.
I wasn’t sure if Lulu’s face had yet appeared on anyone’s feed. She’d been behind cover for most of the skirmishes so far. Sam’s face—and his dick—was everywhere. And his face was in the “About the Band” section of the music website. Despite the misspelling, surely there was some sort of facial recognition that would connect the two. Then again, I had no idea what was and wasn’t illegal on the net. There seemed to be so many rules, especially when it came to images of people.
…Yet sites like Real-Friends and others were more popular than ever. I didn’t get it. As much as I loved movies and video games, that world seemed so big, so confusing to me.
And I had—sort of—killed one of them.
I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I wasn’t sure how I wassupposedto feel about all of this, but I knew how Ididfeel about it.
It felt pretty damn good. Ilikedthat this Droog guy was dead. I wished that more of them were.
And despite feeling that, I had the presence of mind to wonder if I should have been alarmed at this revelation about myself. What would Grandpa Lewis have thought about this?
He’d probably have said that he was proud of me, that I had done what needed to be done. And nobody in this room felt less of me because of what I’d done.
But what about Grandma Yolanda? What about my mom?
I felt ashamed of being happy that the guy was dead, ashamed that I liked that he was dead, and it didn’t make sense.
“Shouldn’t it be theraccoonblaming thesquirrelfor wearing a mask, then?” Axel said. “Don’t raccoons have masks built in?”
