Kei

  The faint buzz of approaching drones catches my ears, and I duck into what had been a shopfront. The shattered glass windows and doors are no barrier, and neither are the crates piled up in what had once been a makeshift barricade.

  I hop it like a trained gymnast. Which I sort of am, when I get excited enough. At least when it comes to diving for cover, anyway.

  The quadcopters zoom by outside while I take shelter behind my pile of boxes. A cursory laser scan sweeps over the interior of my shop as they pass, but they don’t even slow, and I expect they’re doing it automatically to every building they pass. The green plane of laser light sweeps over my covering crates – penetrating wherever there’s a hole – an apparently notices nothing different as I crouch down behind them, out of their line of sight.

  The buzz of their rotors doesn’t even change as they fly by, just grows softer as they move away.

  I notice more than a few holes in the crates sheltering me – some torn through like railgun rounds perforating cheap plywood. Those crates are half gone, massive circles a meter wide blown through them. Other holes drill neatly through, the edges scorched or melted as if a plasma or laser beam had cauterized its own passage.

  In neither case does it look like anyone using the crates has gotten much cover out of them, though I suppose there’s something to be said for not being in a shooter’s direct line of sight.

  I guess. Though the havoc wreaked on this broken barricade suggested otherwise.

  Honestly, other than some video games and the occasional paintball park to test my self-control, straight-up military training was about the only thing my father hasn’t given me.

  Which might not sound like much of a gap for an average 17-year-old girl, but the more I think about it, the more I can recall him teaching me all kinds of things, no matter how obscure.

  I shake my head and push away the thought.

  It’s too much. Not in an overwhelming way, but a ridiculous one. I have this sudden sense of an infinite sea of knowledge – far more than I could have possibly learned if I’d spent every day of my 17 years doing so. Or even if I’d had 70 years to try.

  Yet somehow, skills are there, buried just below where I can access them.

  Unless my Gift stirs. At which point, I’ll need a lot more than the ability to tap dance.

  To raise the dead, maybe.

  Speaking of the dead, the virtual dead, and the soon-to-be dead, I look around at my surroundings and wonder what happened here.

  Yes, it’s a simulation, and maybe this is just random filler or a glitch. But with so much processing power available ever since America got through the Compute Crunch, people are more apt to let AI go crazy whipping up backgrounds and backstory. It’s almost easier to let them go nuts, than to keep track.

  Which doesn’t bode well for maintaining control over our AI agents, but there you go.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  I look behind the barricade and back into the room, and notice armor scattered around like fallen bodies, but each one I glance at is clearly empty. And either has a neat hole drilled through it, just like the crates, or lays in a scattered blast field of parts where presumably a railgun round went through them.

  I wonder if other virtual players had “died” here, or if someone simply automated in-game power armor and deployed them like robots.

  But the only bodies scattered around are those of mannequins, their blank faces seeming shocked whether they lay in peace or in pieces, or as scorch marks on the walls and floors. Looking like a live target must be risky in this kind of simulation.

  My gaze wanders back to the street, and I wonder if I should just walk out in the open – or stealth down side alleys or over rooftops – or if I need to move through the buildings towards the obelisk or any other goal which catches my eye.

  After a minute, I shrug and decide to stealth along outside until I knew more. If there are two sides already fighting, presumably I’ll be seen as an enemy by at least one, or get caught in the crossfire.

  Fun.

  Based on what little I know, I could be seen as being on the human-dominated side… or I might be wearing the armor and insignia of the mainly AI troops. So I could be seen as an enemy or a rogue element by anyone I encounter.

  Again, fun.

  My thoughts are a little ironic, sure, but being trapped in a video game is a more interesting first hour of orientation than I’d expected. I pull a dark, enveloping raincoat off a rack in the Men’s section, throw it over my shoulders, and peer out into the street. A bit of urban camouflage can’t hurt in a game like this, all things being equal.

  I look everywhere I can see, listen for the now inaudible quaddrones, and ease into the street, staying under the eaves, just in case the game simulates satellites watching. Y’know. For more fun.

  I dart down the avenue, ducking under cover where I can, hopping rubble, and hoping to avoid “enemy contact” in a game which probably thrives on it. I shrug mentally. Maybe this game is more oriented towards problem solving and social interaction. Crafting and community building, even.

  A burst of plasma fire rips through the air in my direction, and I have a problem.

  The stylish, untouched stone wall of the bodega next to me hisses and spatters as sparks of ionized matter turn its surface into drops of liquid fire. I duck the burst of energy and the backspatter of molten stone and dive through the open door.

  Plasma barrages follow me in, turning a plate-glass window into melting shards and some hapless falafel ingredients into spicy ashes.

  I wince. A less-obvious side effect of my abilities is I hate wanton property damage. Hits a little close to home.

  Or close to me, personally, in this case, as I sprint at a crouch through rapidly igniting shelves of some really nice groceries. A whole row of artisanal flatbread goes up in roaring flames around and then behind me as I hurtle towards the back of the store. Pastrami and salami sear and ignite in a refrigerated display a few paces to my right as I shoulder check a door marked “Employees Only,” dart through their rear storage area, hop a pallet of organic rice and then several cases of Dr. Brown’s Cream Soda and finally make it to the rear exit. Or rather, the exit to the loading dock, which is better still.

  The door’s cracked open, and despite everything, I peer through the gap, my gaze flashing everywhere before I commit. If someone’s really hunting me, flushing their quarry into an ambush is an excellent way to do so.

  And an AI controlling a simulation wouldn’t have to worry about positioning or planning. It could just spawn the entire ambush and even the terrain in an instant.

  But no, if anything’s planning a spontaneous elaborately planned trap, they’ve yet to do so, or are at least trying to hide it. That probably means something, but there’s no time to think.

  I move. Trying to outrun or outthink a machine may sound insane, especially if you can’t move faster than a fast human.

  But when a supercomputer crunches data, the more factors it manages, the faster the processing power it needs skyrockets. The demand isn’t one-to-one, or even a typical exponential. But even faster.

  Something as ambitious as turning an entire city against me can break whole server farms. And even a normal, fast girl who plays her cards right can break her enemies.

  Just by refusing to play their games, on their terms.

  And say what you will, I’m great at breaking things.

  So I move. Fast and unpredictably, because the quicker it finds it can’t guess what I’ll do or where I’ll go next, the sooner it’ll try to run the numbers on every environment and scenario within reach.

  Only to find my reach exceeds its grasp.

  As I shoot across the loading dock to the exit, I grab a bulk sack of onions, pretty big, but not that heavy for me at just a fraction of my full strength. As I reach the open garage door I spin, hurling the oversized bag in a two-handed toss across the street to crash through a second-story window. I tap the button to lower the garage door, staying out of the sight of any security cameras in the avenue.

  I hear a clatter behind me in the bodega, as something follows me in. Then more movement, as feet crunch their way across a floor now covered in burnt and broken bits of bodega offerings.

  They’re coming for me now.

  And that’s close enough.

  Patreon page. The first chapters released on here are already up there, even for free subscribers, and you can also see the art which didn't upload to Royal Road.