Sinner's Run

My supervisor has taken notice of my spending so much time in the office these past few days and is insisting I take some days off at home. Hang on through this weekend, I'll return in a few days with a new message. Until then, keep pushing the boundaries of the game as much as you can. Good luck. -Vivian Peters

Noah thumped the stock of his Hyperion rifle against a seam in the wall. He tapped a line down the seam to the floor, looked around to make sure nobody hostile was around, then fire a few rounds into the space where wall met floor. They made deep dents in the metal, but didn't do anything otherwise out of the ordinary.

"I think you're going to have to push things a little further than that," Nala said from where she was perched, watching through a window for any approaching enemies.

"I wish she'd been more specific," Noah grumbled, getting up from his squatted position. Balance came much more easily to him now after over a month in the game, a sharp contrast to his awkward gait in the outside world. "She could've pointed out some glitches or something that we could futz with."

"That's because you two aren't thinking that far outside the box!" Across the room from them, Fidget was combining grenades into their bigger versions that she could make with her ability. "Stand back!"

Noah scurried to the side as Fidget lobbed one of the super grenades into the corner. She then tossed two med kits into the corner atop the grenade, along with a stack of shotgun rounds. The shells landed just as the grenade exploded. The only result of Fidget's strange experiment was that both med kits and the shotgun shells went in three different directions, the latter almost cracking Noah in the face.

"Well, tits," Fidget said. "That didn't work."

"What did you think was going to happen?" Nala asked, sounding bemused.

"I dunno!" Fidget said. "Something!"

In the distance a siren sounded, and the violet zone started pushing towards them slowly from where it had been quietly humming some distance away. "Can't stay here," Noah said, shouldering his rifle. "Let's get a move on."

"Wonder how Larka's getting on with Quirrel and Iago," Nala said as they jogged out of Annex and followed the trajectory of the closing Zone. "Kind of a weird team, that."

"Larka won't take any of his shit," Noah said as they hurried down a hill, his eyes scanning for opponents coming close. "She can't teamkill him, but she'll play to win in her own way."

Nala nodded, cutting to the side and hopping atop a boulder in the hillside. She crouched down, pulling the sniper rifle off her back and scanning the distance with a scope. Fidget fiddled with more grenades on her way down the hill, skipping merrily as she melded the explosives. Noah kept an eye on where they'd been behind them, in case anyone was stealing up behind them through the storm. It was so strange to him how tactical his thought process had become. Then again, it had been a matter of necessity. Despite the fact that so far death hadn't been permanent, Noah had done his best to make sure that he was dying as few times as possible.

He hadn't succeeded very much in that regard, but still.

A rifle round zipped by his head and he ducked down. "Where did that come from?"

"West, distant," Nala said, hopping off the rock and staying low. "That was Larka. She missed on purpose."

"She's so good to us!" Fidget said, yanking the Hacksaw shotgun off her back. "Let's go say hi to her! With bullets!"

Nala made a face. "That's...okay."

The three of them hurried down the hill into the small crevasse at the base. Rocks jutted up from the grass beneath their boots, rustling with each step. The breeze blew through the formations, making a whistling noise as it went. Noah weighed his options, then pulled the N-10 off his belt. Better to use the pistol for closer range than burn Hyperion rounds. "Nala, where are they?"

Nala darted between several rocks, sneaking peeks through her sniper scope. "Wait...wait...there. Two hundred yards, moving towards us." The kaldar frowned. "Is it just me or is Quirrel a

lot

faster than he used to be?"

Noah blinked. "Maybe they buffed him on the outside? I don't know why they would, but it seems the most reasonable-"

His words were cut off in a choked

hurk

noise as Quirrel rounded the corner and delivered a devastating chop to his throat. Noah made a disgusting noise and reeled from the blow, only to feel buckshot blast across his back a moment later. His body locked up as he fell to his hands and knees.

Holy

crap

he's fast now,

he thought through the haze of pain.

Nala hissed, followed by gunfire close by. Feminine hands flipped Noah over, and he looked up at a shock of magenta hair as Fidget grabbed a revive hypo out of her bag and jammed it into his chest. "Hang in there, Welks," she said, her voice dead serious for the first time Noah had ever heard it.

A moment later, Noah was able to move his limbs again, and he popped up as Fidget yanked the needle out of his chest. "Yikes, he's quick."

"Like super quick," Fidget said. Her head whipped around as she looked around them. "We need to get out of here before-" The gunfire stopped suddenly, and the both of them froze. "Uh oh."

Quirrel was back a moment later, jamming shells into his Hacksaw. "Split up!" Noah yelled, moving to run away. A moment later, another shot seared into his back, and he was back in the down but not out state. "Dammit!"

A moment later, another shot rang out, and a chill ran through his body. His stomach did a flip, and everything went black.

It has begun.

Noah jerked awake on the Atrium floor. He groaned, then sat up, rubbing at his temple with one hand and feeling up his back to make sure the buckshot wasn't still buried in the skin. As always, it wasn't. "Damn, what kinda juice was Quirrel on?" he muttered.

Nala padded over and offered a hand to help him up. "I'm beginning to think that maybe that was a warning shot from Larka," she said.

"Probably." Noah dusted off his pants as he stood, looking around at the Atrium. Fidget was picking herself up, while some of the other Primes stood around watching. All of them looked agitated, whispering among themselves.

"Am I not picking up on something here?" Noah muttered to Nala.

Her tail flicked as she picked up on what he was noticing. "Not sure," she said. She looked up at the viewscreen, watching the rest of the game unfold.

The only other team left now was Archangel and two other Primes that Noah hadn't really interacted with - Snow and Marker. They were hunkered down in the center of the shrinking circle, all of them watching different approach vectors. There was no sign of Quirrel or Larka or Iago.

Then Quirrel zipped around the corner like the Flash incarnate, flattening Snow with a Hacksaw shot. He turned and fired the other shell into Marker's back before pulling out a Hyperion rifle and unloading half the clip into Marker to put him on his hands and knees. The other half of the clip went into Archangel's armor, which shattered with a crack. Quirrel ran forward, not even bothering to reload.

"Is he going to punch Archangel to death?" Noah muttered. Melee attacks only did twenty-five damage a hit, plenty of time for Archangel to fight back.

Archangel made an attempt. He turned and raised the N-99 in his hands. A solid burst at that range would knock Quirrel down quickly.

With one punch, Quirrel belted Archangel a good ten feet away, and both he and his allies vanished with flashes of light. Noah and Nala's jaws dropped.

The eliminated three all appeared in the Atrium a moment later. Snow and Marker groaned and writhed on the ground. Archangel was as still as a board.

"Was he...not healed up?" Noah asked.

"I think he was healthy," Nala said, her voice very quiet.

The winning team appeared a moment later. Larka took several big steps away from Quirrel, her arms moving as if to aim a rifle but finding them empty. She snarled, lips pulling back from her teeth. Noah expected to hear yet another boisterous tirade from the mercenary. Instead, he looked around at all the other Primes, his eyes wide and dangerous. He said nothing, just looked around for several long, quiet heartbeats. Then he turned and walked away, his movements stiff and awkward, as if his knees were held in place by metal braces.

"What the hell is going on with him?" Noah muttered. He moved over to Archangel, kneeling by the bio-mech angel's side. "What

was

that?"

"Nothing right." The Prime slowly sat up, a hand on his chest. Noah looked down. There was a fist-shaped dent in the metal of his chestpiece. He let out a shaky breath, then looked up at Noah. "Nothing right at all."

"I was trying to warn you, finyan."

Noah turned to look at Larka. "I mean did you have to get the shot so close to my dome?"

Larka gave him a bemused look. "I was trying to impress upon you the urgency of your need to get away."

32 had been given the bye for the day. She sat on Larka's bed, legs folded under her. Over the past few days she'd taken to wearing more casual clothes in the Barracks than the jumpsuits she'd favored before. The clothes were still long and baggy to cover the mechanical bits that stuck out of her skin, but it made her seem more casual and less standoffish. "I mean, a bullet near the head tends to send mixed signals," she said.

"Is this really what we're discussing?" Nala said from her position in the corner. "And not the deep indent in Archangel's body that one, shouldn't have been possible for a normal human like Quirrel to pull off, and two, that stuck around after the Game was finished?"

"Multitasking is a thing!" Fidget piped up from her seat next to 32 on the bed.

Nala sighed. "Not really the point, Fidge."

"It's totally a point!"

Noah looked around the room, at the small cadre of allies he'd gathered together from his time on the Run. He had a lot of trust in every single woman in the room by that point, and wanted nothing more than to see all of them safe. Quirrel's newfound powers presented a giant problem for all of them, especially since they were trying to get out of the digital space.

"I don't think it's a coincidence that the day after our outside support gets sent home, this happens," Noah said.

"Are you sure this Vivian is really on our side?" Nala asked. "You didn't know her at all before."

"I don't know if I really have a choice." Noah shrugged. "She's the only person on the outside who's been in contact with us this whole time. Plus, if she's really a developer at the studio that makes Sinner's Run, she holds absolute power over this digital space. If she had it out for us she could probably just delete me from existence. Hell, she could disable any of you, for that matter."

All of the women looked at one another. "Well that's a cheery thought," Fidget said.

"All the more reason we need to get a handle on this now."

"But how do we even do that?" Larka asked.

"I have

no

idea." Noah looked around to everyone. "Ideas?"

All of them looked at the floor as they thought. Noah ran through every battle he'd fought, every attack he'd eaten from everyone out on the Run, trying to think of anything he might have missed in the past. Looking back, it all seemed like the craziest fever dream that could have ever been dreamed. What could he possibly-

He and 32 reached the same conclusion at the same time, the both of them looking up at one another. "The dev room," they said at the same time.

"The whosy what now?" Fidget asked.

"The hidden room you all caught me coming out of," Noah said. "I was able to take a healing hypo out of it, it's still in my room down the hall. Every item in the game is in there, guns, explosives, you name it."

"But what exactly does that get us?" Larka asked.

"Maybe nothing," Noah said. "But maybe a way out."

"What's in your head, Noah?" Nala asked.

"I get a bunch of grenades, and Fidget can work her magic on them." Noah mimed pushing two grenades together. "And then we try blowing holes in the wall."

The kaldar's eyes narrowed. "And then?"

"I...don't know." Noah threw his arms up. "I'm spitballing here!"

Nala sighed and stood up. "You guys figure it out. I'm gonna go shoot."

The kaldar left as Noah sat down next to Fidget and 32, putting his head in his hands. "She could at least stick around to help think," he grumbled as the door slid shut.

"Nala is a creature of action," Larka said, coming over to join them on the soft sheets. "She will help us with whatever course of action we come up with. Until then, she will bide her time and do as she normally does."

"I don't know. I get the sense that she doesn't really want to get out."

"I mean, she said as much herself," 32 pointed out.

Noah pinched the bridge of his nose. "You're right."

Larka's dark eyes studied him for a moment. "You would like her to leave with you, wouldn't you?"

Noah looked at her. "I mean, yeah. I'd like you to come with too, but I can understand why that might be a bad idea." He gestured to her thick white fur and bearish features. "My world just isn't ready for a woman like you."

Larka chuckled. "You flatter me. But think, finayn. Nala is just as alien as I am. She would not fit in."

He rubbed his temples. "I know, I know."

Fidget leaned forward to look at him, so far she almost did a somersault off the bed. "That's not really the problem though, is it?"

Noah stared at the wall. Fidget's astuteness lay hidden under her bubbly, whackadoo exterior. "No," he admitted.

She leaned in close, twisting her head until it was almost upside-down. "And what is it then?"

He took a moment to put it into words. "If I go back to the normal world, what happens then? I never gave much thought to that until now. My life was pretty lackluster before all this. What if I just go back to being the same mundane shut-in I was before all this? I mean, I can't exactly use the skills I've acquired here in the real world and go around shooting people."

"You really think your life will go back to normal?" 32 asked. "You went on a journey to an entirely digital space. You'll be a case study for..." She trailed off, old memories clouding her gaze. "Oh."

"And that's the other option." Noah got up, lacing his fingers behind his head. "I don't want to just be a...specimen or whatever. The last thing I want to do is have to answer questions day in and day out about what's happened over the past month. It'll be all that I'm known for. And I can't really just show back up and pretend everything's been hunky dory while I've been gone."

"Is that such a bad thing though?" Larka asked. "It seems better to be known as a scientific curiosity than not be acknowledged at all."

"Yeah!" Fidget chriped. "You'll be a celebrity!"

"But that's not what he wants," 32 said. "Normal is the goal here."

"But my old normal sucked." Noah sighed and rubbed his temples. "It's a mess."

"Let us remain focused on getting you out first," Larka said. "The rest will come as it will."

Noah nodded. "Step one - avoid the shit out of Quirrel for the next few days."

The four of them bandied about more ideas for how to push the boundaries of the Run for a little while, before Larka announced that she was tired and asked for her bed back. Noah, Fidget, and 32 all vacated, the latter two going their own way as Noah made his way to the gun range. No reason to not practice, especially with Quirrel being on the hunt as he was.

Nala was there, as usual, practicing with a pistol in her usual spot. Noah took up a carbine and moved next to her, shooting in short bursts into the target downrange. He still missed a fair amount, but could at least hit half the bullets in a mag now instead of one, or two if he was lucky.

The kaldar had noticed. "You're getting better."

Noah smiled a little. "Thanks. Maybe I can make going to shooting ranges a regular things when I get back. Might get me out of the house more often, you know?"

Nala nodded. Her eyes shifted a little, her ears going a little flat. "You're not upset that I don't wish to accompany you, are you?"

He blinked. "No. Why would I be?"

She slowly dropped the mag from her pistol before loading a fresh one. "I don't have Larka's reservations about blending into an environment I don't belong to." The slide on the pistol snapped back into place with a sharp noise. "I just...don't really want to leave."

"I mean, if that's your decision, I won't stop you," Noah asked. "Though I am kind of curious as to why."

"It's just..." Nala sighted down the pistol, but didn't pull the trigger. "If I'm the creation of some developer, as you called them, some outside force, am I really meant to do anything else but this? It's like..." She spun the pistol around her finger a few times. "What happens to me if I leave and pursue something other than what I was explicitly made for?"

"I mean, 32 seems to think that she'll find what she feels is missing from her life," Noah said. "I don't think she's wrong to search for meaning where she feels she's lacking it."

"But that's my point." The pistol stopped spinning, and Nala snapped shots, one round after anohter, until the magazine was empty. SHe lifted the still-smoking gun up by her head, the gray wisps swirling around her muzzle. "I don't feel like I'm lacking meaning at all. Even knowing that some outside force created me to exist in this space, to do

that

without any effort." SHe gestured downrange to the holes in the target. "I feel like my life would be more confusing if I left this space, because if I went to your world, what would my purpose be?" Nala reached up, running the tips of her claws along the rim of her ear. "It's quite the thought puzzle, isn't it?"

Noah ran his fingers through his hair. "I mean, I like to think that it's up to us to figure out what meaning we have in our lives, and if we need more or less of it. That's kind of the cool thing about life." He sighed, laying the carbine down on the firing range shelf. "The problem comes when you get to my situation, where I'm trying to figure out if I want less or more, and what form I want it to take. It's not an easy thing to think about."

Nala set her pistol down. "Well, let's think about it like this. What's changed about you since you came here."

"Well, I learned to shoot for one." Noah thought for a moment. "I've got a new appreciation for cardio. I've lost a little weight." He lifted up his shirt to expose his flat belly. The little pudge that had always been there was gone now, smoothed out by running back and forth across the map every day.

Nala's eyes flicked down. "You got good at getting into people's pants too, it seems."

Noah quickly dropped his shirt down, his face burning. Nala laughed. "That wasn't an intention of mine!" he protested.

"Sure, Larka and the others just happened to throw themselves at you." Nala smirked. "You're more charming than you give yourself credit for."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"I don't think you need to be worried about what happens when you get out of here is all." Nala stepped close to him and poked him in the chest. "You've got plenty to work with, you just need to get out there and use it. Yeah, you might become a scientific cause celebre, but that'll go away with time. Beyond that, you can easily make your own meaning. So don't worry about it."

He got what she was trying to say, in a roundabout sort of way. Still, the thought of going back to the real world filled him with a dread he had to admit was a little Stockholm-ian. For almost two months he'd been living a life full of consequence-free gunfights by day and bedding one of several different women by night. There was no pressure from employment, no worrying about the state of the world at large, just a blur of action and amory.