Saviors 101

Chapter 34

Chapter 34

Theresa woke early despite the amount she’d drunk last night. It was barely eleven in the morning. And, exactly as she’d gone to bed, she was alone in her tiny trailer. A double bed filled one end, a settee the other, and a tiny kitchen and bath fit in the middle.

Her first thought was how much she’d like to trash all the other drivers’ asses for not helping her celebrate her first win.

She considered getting into the car-transport rig and driving the semi-tractor back and forth inside their garages for a while. But destroying a driver’s ride was a cut too far below the belt. And she’d never get back on the circuit if she did that.

Another thought was e-mailing her entire collection of driver photos, with their girlfriends, off to their respective wives. But she knew that once she set out on that path…She had to admit that she did work with these assholes, and that paybacks could be hell.

So, instead, she did something she’d avoided doing before.

It was time to level the playing field.

She’d always played Chraze in groups where she wasn’t likely to plug in with any other race drivers. Still in her tank top and underwear, she sat on the bed and pulled out her laptop. It only took a minute to log into the track’s Wi-Fi connection and she hopped into the game.

Username: Morgan La Fey

The woman had brought down Camelot and her half-brother Arthur which was good enough for her.

Password: ViciousBitch

PlayArea: Car Racers

And she was in. She scanned the list of “handles” and recognized more than she’d expected. These guys didn’t have much imagination. “Slider” had to be Jim “Slider” Jones from the dirt circuits. “Snake64” was the unrealistically-proud-of-his-prowess driver of old #64. Duh!

Bobby Joe was “BobbyJoe.” Pathetic.

They were locked in a piddley-assed battle that involved four Roman chariots, six VW beetles, a pair of dune buggies, and a black-garbed monk on a scooter who she didn’t recognize at all.

Didn’t these people know anything about how the game worked?

She flew over as a seagull and s**t right through the sunroofs of three of the beetles which promptly halted, causing the Roman chariots that had been chasing them to crash in from behind. Massive horses trampled tiny cars. Chariots flipped and half the field was now cleared off as users were shunted off to Ms. Pac-Man hell.

A long, wiry dude rose from beneath his flipped dune buggy and aimed a ridiculously small bow and arrow at her character.

She dodged the first missile easily and dove down at him to poop his face but good. Another arrow passed close enough that she could see the color of the feathers this time.

Bright pink.

With tiny wings along the side.

Cupid arrows. Stupid Cupid arrows. This guy at least had a bit of creativity.

A glance over her shoulder showed trouble. The two arrows had turned and were following her closely.

Maybe he was better than she thought. Time to find out.

The third bolt was almost upon her before she dodged it.

Tucking in her wings tightly, she pulled a Jonathon Livingston Seagull and rocketed toward the archer who had a game label by his hip that she didn’t recognize. “Jack Flash.”

The fourth arrow skimmed so close it brushed her feathers. She could hear the chorus of the pink arrows singing a Weird Al Yankovic version of a Michael Jackson love song as they gathered for their final strike. At the last second she pulled aloft and all of the arrows drove into the chest of “Jack Flash.”

She slid a mirror in front of him. And while the odd puncture wounds faded, he spotted his own reflection and fell madly in love. Little cartoon hearts floated around him as his character was caught in a Narcissistic Vortex that would snarl up his character for at least twenty minutes of play, an absolute eternity in Chraze-land.

Morphing into a horsefly, she dodged downward to see who remained on the field of play. A couple of well-placed stings on horse’s asses and the final chariots were running off in different directions, the drivers hanging onto the reins that no one, least of all the horses, were paying attention to.

She sensed the reality shift before she felt it.

Sliding left and up she did a back flip into a reality of blue light and golden Gods all mounted on machines of flaming metal.

This section’s info-control stated that she’d dropped into a beginner’s circle. And would be stuck there for at least thirty seconds. Since she was stuck here that long, Morgan Le Fay might as well give them a taste of her upper-level skills.

There was one character here who shone brighter than any of the others. Hotter. Higher level of potential energy of an advanced player. The black-robed cleric on the scooter, who’d she left behind at the Coliseum racetrack. How had he gotten here?

The nameplate on his hip was masked.

She tried to sidle up next to the bow-wielder’s God and ask how that was possible. She had to dodge around a bit to avoid the heat of the monk’s flaming machine. At the last moment, she realized that the monk’s golden God was muttering an incantation of unraveling. This chunk of the Chraze universe wasn’t going to last more than a few more seconds.

Dive!

Down!

Drill!

Monster mole from hell!

Theresa burrowed Morgan Le Fay downward past all blockades.

Past the local blue-light reality.

Past the over-arching car race theme.

Out of the local metro-verse of vehicle mechanization.

Into black space.

Nothing on the screen.

No screen and no trailer.

Theresa called for info-control.

And got none.

She had never found a null before.

There aren’t any.

Nor been trapped like this. She spun a quick three-sixty.

Totally alone. In a null.

Not a null.

Something was reading her mind.

The disengage key was right below her thumb in the real world. It should be simple to press the key.

No action.

Again she told her thumb to do press down. Move up. Anything.

It didn’t. She couldn’t move her real body, and her game body wasn’t doing so much either.

The game shouldn’t be able to reach her in realspace, in her own goddamn RV.

It can’t.

“Then what the f**k is going on?” She shouted at the darkness.

Nothing.

A great presence was studying her.

A chill slid down her spine.

She recognized that feeling. She’d only felt the chill of fear once before.

She’d been sixteen. She’d knocked on a door, a sample of Girl Scout mints in one hand, order form in the other. The woman who answered the door could have been her mother’s younger twin. Same eat-off-the-floors-clean house. Same well-behaved children at the table doing their kindergarten homework. The mom was just enough older than herself that Tee realized it could be herself in a half-dozen years. Graduate. Marry a banker’s son. Good manners. Happy, well-balanced home. Hoping her kids would grow up to be good Girl and Boy Scouts.

Theresa had freaked. Gone to Dana’s, talked through the night, and, after a breakfast of leftover pot roast and potatoes, run away from home the next morning. That was true terror, growing up to be her mother.

For the first time since she’d quit Girl Scouts, she was afraid. Whatever was studying her had now brought her to this place. This non-place.

She blinked. It wasn’t that the screen was dark. There were times she got so wrapped up in the game that the screen became the reality. But this time she truly was in the dark.

No…

Black.

Like someone had flipped the switch on her optic nerve.

Precisely.

Her arms jerked up then down. A nerve cried out and sent little distress signals up her arm that she couldn’t interpret.

Amazing reaction time. Race cars, you say?

She nodded in the dark. She hadn’t told the voice in dark. No, she had, when she logged in.

How fast can you go, Morgan Le Fay?

“Fast!” She snapped out at the voice-force.

A brilliant flash and the world came back. A 3D spatial-tank obstacle course. The speeder between her legs pulsed with a power that Luke and Leia had never felt on the Ewok-infested moon of Endor.

She laid into the throttle as a trio of black machines slid out from three points of a triangle with her above the center. But she’d bet it was a tetrahedron and the trap must be at the fourth point atop the pyramid.

Rolling until she hung beneath the scooter, she aimed away from the trap, right at the logical center of her three attackers and fired all four engines. Found a boost switch and rapped that hard for good measure. She warped between them leaving a wake that snarled up all three pursuers. By rights, Chraze should have opened a dimensional twist that would permit her two impossible choices. Whoever had written this thing had a real penchant for variations on the old myth of the two doors, one to the perfect mate and the other to the perfect lion.

A whole bunch of choices lay open before her.

Two hundred and fifty-six, she’d make a bet.

Eighth power of two.

She aimed for the eighth door, which had the advantage of also being the first power of eight, and fired a cannon behind her as she flew through it—and landed back in her computer chair.

The early sun had moved to mid-afternoon. She was sweating inside the RV, the temperature in here must be over a hundred. The sheet wrapped over her shoulders was soaked. Two o’clock. And her body certainly felt as if it hadn’t moved in three hours.

Maybe she’d fallen asleep and it had all just been a weird-ass dream. She certainly hadn’t been in that section of Chraze ever before. A sneaking suspicion, that little warning that helped her avoid accidents that were occurring just around a blind corner, told her that it wasn’t a part of Chraze at all.

Maybe…Just maybe, that black space wasn’t in Chraze.

Nor the speeders with the power-of-two choices.

A knock she recognized thudded on the door. Tommy and Jane would have prepped the car. There was the race last night, and time trials beginning this afternoon for a race later in the week, double-header at this track before they’d move on to Salt Lake.

As she rose to get dressed and let them in, she noticed the screen message.

She sucked on the bleeding fingernail where whatever it was had reached into realspace and mashed her hand down against the edge of the laptop.

The knock repeated.

Just before she slapped the lid closed and scrambled for shorts and a t-shirt, she saw the note blinking on the screen. It faded even as she read it.

But is Morgan fast enough to outrun Armageddon?

A thin-faced man had been cartooned below the message. Dressed in red, complete with goatee and horns. The Devil image did nothing to make her feel better.