Alt control enter, p.8
Alt Control Enter, page 8
part #1 of Kingsman Online Series
It twists under his pressure.
“Thank God,” I say.
Leon smiles and is about to push the door open when the sound of gunfire resounds outside the apartment building.
We instinctively duck.
“Go,” he says, pushing the door open.
I do as told—stepping into the apartment, then pushing myself against the wall. Waiting until Leon has entered, I shove the door shut behind us and twist the knob to lock it.
Outside, the gunfire continues, then stops abruptly.
Leon and I stare at each other in the darkened space.
“Where are they getting guns?” I decide to ask.
“I don’t know,” he says, grimacing as it starts up once more. “Can you tell if it’s just one gun?”
I listen. “Yes,” I say as the rapid-fire rounds continue to echo throughout the streets. “It’s the same kind of gun. Machine-gun fire, most likely.”
“They’re gonna draw trouble.”
“Which is why we’re going to stay and wait it out,” I reply. “Come on. Let’s get the curtains pulled over the windows.”
What little light remains is glaring into the apartment building from across the living room. We are much too high up to be seen directly, but as we approach the windows that face the street, I am instantly struck with the paranoia that we’ll be spotted. I gesture for Leon to crouch as he reaches for the curtain rods, given his height and broad shoulders. But it is this moment that I haven’t considered my own place at the window.
I look down.
The middle-aged man in the street is looking directly at me.
I swear.
Leon turns.
I say, “Get down!”
He does.
I lower myself slowly, raising my arms in surrender.
It is at this time—while staring at the man in the street, armed with a weapon whose bullets could potentially reach the apartment—that I see movement beyond him.
I want to save him. I really do. He is like Leon and myself, caught in a world we did not want to be in. But at the same time, this stranger is a potential enemy. For that reason, I don’t do anything.
In mute awe and horrific fascination, I watch as the first monster of Dystopia crawls from the darkness of the nearby ally. Tall, bony, resembling a skeleton, and covered in ash, the creature stumbles forward.
The man doesn’t see it.
Its footsteps, likely masked by the ash in the road, are silent as it approaches.
Within moments it is upon him, sinking its teeth into his neck.
I pull the curtains shut as his screams echo throughout the street.
“You could’ve gotten shot,” Leon says, rising to stand beside me.
“I know,” I say and gaze through the thin curtain as the man is devoured in the street. I turn to look at my companion while trying my hardest to force a smile. “But we’re okay. We’re safe.”
“For now.”
That knowledge is enough to chill me to the bone.
Only two words reverberate throughout my consciousness.
Player Eliminated.
Chapter 7
We find little food in the apartment and are still hungry by the time we wander into the bedroom. Leon, having agreed to take first watch, sits in a chair in the corner, listening to the sounds of the night while I struggle to sleep. It is impossibly cold in the apartment even beneath the blankets, and though I want nothing more than to succumb to unconsciousness, I am unable to.
Each time I come close to falling asleep, a cannon fires, and that disembodied voice says, Player Eliminated across the sky.
In all, the cannon goes off six times before it finally stops, bringing the total number of players to a resounding forty-two before the night truly descends.
In the darkness of the apartment’s bedroom, I watch Leon’s barely-visible form as his chest rises, then falls with slow deliberation.
“Are you okay?” I decide to ask.
He shifts, startled. “I’m fine,” he says, a hint of caution in his voice. “What about you?”
“I’m okay,” I reply. “I… I think.”
“You think?”
I nod, even though I know he can’t see me.
Leon sighs and leans forward to examine me across the few feet that separate the bed and the chair. “So,” he says. “About our plan.”
“We don’t have one,” I reply, bundling the blankets up beneath my chin.
“Exactly. I think we should make one.”
“I know we should, but we can do that in the morning, after we’ve had some sleep.”
“You don’t want to do it now?”
“Not really.”
“Why?”
I push myself into a sitting position and brush my hair away from my face. “Because, I’m tired, and I know you are too.”
“What difference does that make?”
“You really want to formulate a plan now, in the middle of the night, when we’re both tired and scared and unsure what’s coming next?”
“Yeah,” Leon says. “I do.”
“This is ridiculous.”
Leaning back against the headboard, I try to keep from watching him out my peripheral, but his movements are erratic, his fear beguiling my own. I had been somewhat-calmer. But now?
I exhale a long, pent-up breath and turn to face him as he rises to pace the floorboards. “Stop,” I say.
“Why?”
“For one, you have your shoes on.”
“How does that—”
“If anyone—or, should I say, anything—is downstairs, they’ll hear you walking around.”
“So you want me to take my shoes off?” he asks, then laughs, as if unable to believe my request.
“Exactly.”
He grumbles something under his breath, though what I’m not sure. Regardless, he settles down on the bed next to me and reaches down to remove the ash-covered boots on his feet.
“Thank you,” I say when his footwear is finally off.
“Now can we talk?”
I nod, defeated.
“What’re we gonna do about tomorrow?” he begins. “We’re both going to be hungry in the morning, and it’s going to be hard to break into every individual apartment without making a lot of noise.”
“I know.”
“So… what do you suggest?”
“I never had to worry about finding food in the game before,” I offer, allowing my hands to fall limply into my lap as I consider the young man’s silhouette. “So, honestly… I’m not sure what we can do, beyond leaving the apartment and seeking food elsewhere.”
“Where do you think we should look?”
“The border of the city is always less effected by the ash falling down from… wherever it does,” I say. “I think we should consider looking there.”
“Aren’t there… well… Lobo out there? In the woods?”
“There’s all sorts of things out in the woods. But fact of the matter is: we don’t know how long this game is going to last. I mean, we could always try and wait out the other players. It’s not an unrealistic thing to try.”
“But we’d be hungry,” Leon says, “for a long time. And that doesn’t count the water we’d need to find.”
“Exactly. So, with that in mind…” I trail off to allow him the luxury of finishing my sentence.
“You think we should go for the outskirts of the Ashen City.”
“Yes. I do.”
With a nod, and a hefty sigh that causes my heart to thump hard in my chest, he rests his elbows on his knees and cups his face in his hands. “God, Sophia. How the hell did we end up in this mess?”
“It’s my fault,” I say. “I’m the one who signed without looking at the fine print.”
“You think they were going to tell you about this?” Leon laughs. “Come on. You’re smarter than that.”
“I—”
I stop before I finish as a thought strikes me.
I never read the fine print. This is knowledge I have always been aware of. What I consider now is the fact that it could have said absolutely anything. We are not responsible for damages, it could have begun. By signing this document, you are waiving the right to sue for any malpractice we could commit. Blah blah, yadah yadah. Sincerely, Kingsman Online.
I shake my head as I realize this, closing my eyes while I think of all the horrible things that could be happening out in the real world.
My mother, cold—
My brother, hungry—
The Grays, wondering—
Leon stands and begins to pace anew. His footfalls, now soft, are reminiscent of rain pitter-pattering upon the window, and they remind me of times when I could not sleep for fear of succumbing to nightmares.
The only problem now is that we are actually living a nightmare, and there’s no way to get out of it.
One way, my consciousness states.
I sink my teeth into my lower lip.
Yes. There is a way out of this game. But to get out, we have to win.
Or worse, I think. Die.
“Leon,” I say.
“Yeah?” he asks, pausing his incessant movements to acknowledge me.
“We have to promise each other something, before… well, you know.”
He waits for me to continue, his breathing shallow, his silhouette unmoving.
“Promise me,” I say, “that if something happens to me, and you win, that you’ll use my portion of the winnings to help my mother and little brother.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to you, Sophia.”
“Promise me.”
“Okay, okay. I promise.”
“Thank you.”
“With that in mind: promise me that if something happens to me, that you’ll use my share of the winnings to take care of my family.”
“You know I will,” I state.
“I know.” He settles into the armchair and sighs. “We should probably get some sleep.”
“Yeah,” I reply. “We should.”
He doesn’t say anything after that.
Breathing, slowly, the dusty smells of the stagnant apartment, I spread out along the bed, roll over so my back is facing Leon, and close my eyes.
Nothing I do or think can console myself over what may be happening out in the real world.
Here, in the wasteland of Dystopia, I can only wonder:
Will I survive? Or will I succumb?
There is little we can do but pack what few supplies happen to be within the apartment and make our way to the road. With crackers in hand, flashlights in pockets, and packs slung over our shoulders containing a few scant blankets and a pair of hunting knives that will do little to actually defend us, we step out of the derelict apartment building and onto the barren street.
Above, ash falls.
Before us, the street appears untouched.
There is no body from the night before.
“Where—” I start, but I stop before I can finish.
“What?” Leon asks, stepping up beside me. “What’s wrong?”
“I… was wondering where the player was.”
“The one from last night?”
I nod.
Leon frowns, purses his lips, then steps forward. “Maybe it really is just a game. Maybe we don’t really die in this world.”
“It sounded like he did. You know… complete and total immersion and all.” I shiver at the memory of the man screaming as his carotid was ripped out and his life force drained from his body.
Crouching, he buries his hand in the foot-deep ash that lies beneath his feet.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for the gun,” he replies. “Help me.”
I fall to my knees and push my fingers into the cold ash below, wracked by unease almost instantly.
What if you don’t find it? my consciousness decides to ask. What will you do then?
What we’ll do, I then think, is move on. There will be nothing to do but that. Yet, at the same time, the thought burrows into my brain, festering like a malignant tumor on the verge of spreading disease throughout my body. It causes me to pause; and by pausing, it draws Leon’s attention from his work back to me.
“What?” he asks. “Why’d you stop?”
“Nothing,” I say. “I was just… thinking.”
“About what?”
“About what we’ll do if we don’t find the gun.”
“We’re gonna find it,” Leon says, scrambling through the debris. “We have to.”
I say nothing. Rather, I continue to search through the ash, trying unsuccessfully not to think about how we might fare on the outskirts of the city without a weapon.
Fact of the matter is: we won’t survive without a gun. This has been a predetermined factor by the powers that be—or, rather, the man who designed this game.
Leon’s hands stop moving beneath the ash.
“What—” I start.
But he is lifting them back up before I can finish, and revealing, in stunning detail, the simple sidearm that was buried beneath the ash.
“So,” I say, exhaling. “It was here.”
“Yeah it was.”
“But again: where did the body go?”
“Beats me. All I care about is that we have this.” He flicks his hand, and the gun within it, forward, as if saluting every soldier that came before him.
I stare, unsure how or if to respond.
“What?” he asks, then laughs. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Where do you think the body went, Leon?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it disappeared after the guy was eliminated. I mean… that’s how it should work, right?”
Maybe. But just because something should have worked a certain way doesn’t mean that it had. For all we knew, the body, and the belongings upon it, had remained in this world. And if that were the case… that meant that someone, or something, had come along and taken it.
Leon’s smile fades soon after he realizes I am not as happy as he is. “What?” he asks again, then pales. “Wait. You don’t think—”
“I’m wondering if we actually die here, Leon.”
“That’s ridiculous. They wouldn’t send us in here just to kill us.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Yeah we do.”
“No, Leon. We don’t.”
His silence is answer enough.
I step forward; and, with hesitation I know is born from uncertainty, reach to lower the barrel of the pistol until it is pointing at the ground. “We don’t know if we really die in here or not, because they drugged us to put us in this game. How they did it I’m not sure, but fact is: we can’t take any chances, no matter how slim they are.”
“I know we can’t,” he says, “because we have to win.”
“Because we have to survive,” I stress. “It isn’t just about the million dollars anymore, Leon. It’s about making sure we get out of this alive.”
“You really think we could die outside by being in here, don’t you?”
With grave certainty, I nod.
His eyes fall to the gun, as if unable to face my gaze any longer. “You know how to shoot this?”
“No, but I can learn.”
“I can teach you. My dad taught me how to use one.”
“Okay.”
We both turn our eyes to the alley that cuts through the block beside us.
“Will that way to the outskirts of town?” he asks.
“It might.”
He leads without bothering to ask if he wants me to take point.
And I, not knowing what else to do, decide to follow without question.
We cut across the wasteland that is the Ashen City in silence. Afraid to speak for fear of drawing attention, and unsure what could be around every corner, I remain close to Leon with the hope that, should we be attacked, he will be able to defend us with the gun he holds in his hand.
You never learned how to shoot, my conscience is quick to remind me.
Not that I’d ever had a choice in the matter. My mother had refused to let me touch the gun we have in our apartment, even after she’d fallen ill. It’s dangerous, she’d said. You could get hurt, she’d said.
But now?
I shiver in the cold air that skirts around my body, stirring ash at the ground and the hair atop my head. The knife I hold firmly within my right hand trembles, but not from the chill of the air.
No.
The fact that I’m so vulnerable—and, in a way, useless—is what causes me to shiver so uncontrollably.
Why did I ever think this was going to be a normal game? How could I have ever signed that document without looking at the fine print? How could I have coerced Leon into coming here without knowing anything about what would happen when we arrived at Kingsman Online Headquarters?
Regardless of my skills within the video game world, I realize I am completely helpless now.
No, my consciousness whispers. You’re not helpless. You have knowledge.
Knowledge of what, though? Guiding a joystick around an imaginary map and shooting at people with digital guns?
I curse myself for everything I could have brought to this game, for the trick that Kingsman Online has pulled on us, and draw up beside Leon just in time to see he has come to a halt.
“What—” I start.
Then I see it—the forest, lingering beyond the riverside line of town houses, looking on at us as if we are prey just waiting to be devoured.
“You said there might be more supplies here.” He swallows a lump in his throat as he looks upon the dark, nearly-black foliage and the pine needles that appear like knives in the strange light of this unusual afternoon.
“Yeah,” I reply, matter-of-factly. “I think there might be some out here.”
“Do you want to lead?”
I don’t, but realize he’s deferring to me due to my supposed knowledge of the world. Because of that, I step forward, brandish the knife ahead of me, and head toward the row of townhouses along the river with the knowledge that anything could be awaiting us this far out.
Rogue Ashen—
Marauding bandits—
Lobo—
My, my, what big teeth you have!
“All the better to eat you with,” I whisper.
“What?” Leon asks.
