I’m falling.
Wind whistles in my ears, a fluting, high-pitched monotone, backed by a heavy whooshing of air pressure. It grabs at my coat, pulling and flapping, the tails snapping like flags behind me.
Below is the world of Rithium, laid out like a map. I’m a satellite that’s fallen off its orbit, on a collision course with the planet. I holler into the wind, whooping and yelling.
At first the expanse between me and the surface is so vast that progress seems miniscule. I pass through wet clouds and turbulent air currents, flipping and toppling. I’m pulled, carried inexorably.
At the farthest point of visibility, near the curvature of the planet, I can see a dark shape, surfing on the west horizon. Whether a dragon, or a great bird, or some kind of player-designed airship, I can’t tell.
Below, the world is a mesh of mingling colors and shapes, like an atlas. Streams squiggle across the landscape, spindly fingers connecting to hands that are lakes, connecting to arms that are great rivers that cut through hundreds of miles of land.
Far to the north, arcing up into the clouds like the hilt of a giant’s dagger, is a tall black tower, the centerpiece of the city of Opus.
My descent starts to pick up in speed, as if there’s a giant hand above me, pushing me downward.
I can start to make out individual details on the ground. It’s possible to count the trees. The jagged points of rock on the cliff faces and plateaus. Dustdevils swirl, mad ballerinas on the stage that is the Redstone Desert.
Redstone—named after the patches and crags of red rock throughout—is one of my least favorite areas in Rithium. There’s a lot to see and explore, but you have to be patient. Because of the storms and the shifting nature of the landscape, it can take a while to maneuver the inner sanctum of the desert and find what you’re looking for.
The buggy, though, isn’t heading toward the middle of the desert. It’s heading north, toward the Red Cliffs, and the Andante Mountains.
And it’s not alone.
Trailing behind is a serpentine formation of five dune buggies, kicking up a cacophony of dust and smoke like a herd of restless cows.
Below me is the dune buggy. My body hovers over it, tracking it, like GPS. Until it’s closer, and closer, and closer, and then—
There’s a flash of black, and suddenly I’m sitting in the back. My butt bounces uncomfortably on the seat, which appears to be a layer of rouch, hard brown leather stretched over a metal chair thing.
Sater, in the passenger seat up front, turns and winks at me. “Thought you were gonna miss the fun!” He yells over the engines. He’s wearing a puffy white shirt and a gray vest. His hair is slicked over, obnoxiously, the frayed ends flopping in the wind.
Not three seconds after he winks at me, a bullet sparks off of the metal frame just next to him.
“Crap!” Sater ducks down in his seat.
Tanya doesn’t react. She’s completely focused on driving, leg extended against the gas pedal, swerving around hunks of rock and over dune bumps, surfing desert waves.
I crouch down in my seat, making myself a smaller target. The pursuers are gaining on us, and I can’t help but notice that they’re breaking their long, serpentine formation, stretching out into battle lines. The kind of formation that would allow them to open fire without hitting each other.
I lean forward in my seat. “Tanya, now would be a good time to have a plan!”
Tanya’s head snaps sideways as she glances behind. Her eyes are wide, bloodshot. “I didn’t want to have to do this yet!” She yells.
I blink. “Do what?”
With one hand on the wheel, she holds up the Black Dart. “I’m gonna use it.” She turns to Sater. “Ditch the buggy!”
“D—how!?” Sater yells.
She grabs Sater’s hand and puts it on the wheel. Her eyes glint, a flash of light, like a lens flare. And then, she disappears.
It happens in a microsecond. It’s as if the material making up her avatar curls in on itself, disappearing with a whoosh sound and a puff of air.
The buggy skids, spraying sand. Sater has one hand on the wheel, but apparently wasn’t prepared to jump into Tanya’s seat, or even steer from his own position.
Just then, the sounds of gunfire break out from behind. Volleys of bullets kick up rock and sand to the front and sides of the buggy. Another bullet pings loudly as it bounces off the frame. Sater winces, whole body jerking, pulling sideways on the wheel.
The world flips. Not the buggy(or so it feels), just everything else, like a snow globe tilting on its axis.
I put my head between my knees, tightly gripping the seat, praying the frame of the dune buggy will protect me from the landing.
The buggy spins, airborne, then lands on its side, impact slamming me sideways, bonking my shoulder into the frame bar.
Ow. Owowowowowow.
It’s amazing how well the simworld can approximate pain, sometimes. Nothing too extreme. People don’t feel brutal stabbings, or their arms getting chopped off. But the smaller bumps and bruises are weirdly annoying in their authenticity.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
A continued barrage of bullets cuts through the sand just above my head, loud FFFFFTT sounds in my ears.
I pull myself out of the buggy and slide over to the nose side just as three of the pursuing dune buggies, engines whining, blast past on the opposite side. They keep going, engine sounds doppler-effecting in their intensity. They’re already starting to make a circle so they can head back for round two.
Sater’s eyes are shut. He’s slumped sideways in his seat. There’s a small spot of blood on his forehead. There’s a layer of dust on his face and bits of sand in his hair.
“Hey!” I grab him by the shoulder, shake him. “Please don’t be out, already.”
His eyelids flutter for a second, then snap open violently. He wriggles out of the seat, pulling himself upright with one of the frame bars. “What-what’s happening?”
I can’t help but crouch there and glare at him, even under the circumstances. I shake my head. “You are all talk, Mr. Cool Guy.”
Now he’s glaring. The engines are getting louder again, more distinct. “How—how was I supposed to know—”
“Sit tight there, buddy, I gotcha.”
Rolling my eyes, I heft myself upright from the crouch, and turn to face the dune buggies. The riders have already started to open fire again, puffs of sand shooting up here and there in the vicinity.
The rifle slides easily out of the holster on my back. I flip up the sight. My vision flashes as I activate my Action Skill.
Time slows. So do I, but this still allows me to be more accurate with the few crucial seconds I have.
Three drivers. Three pairs of hands gripping their wheels. Three heads with goggles reflecting simworld sunlight.
I zero in on the nearest one to my rifle’s sight. The dunes make the movements of the vehicles erratic, unpredictable, until the one I have my sights on goes over a jump, trapped in a predictable, mid-air moment.
My finger clenches in the trigger well. There’s a loud thump, a cracking gunshot. The soundwave is sluggish, stretched out, distended. The butt slams backward into my shoulder. For a second, I can just make out the bullet itself as it hurtles forward, a black, diminishing dot in my vision. Then the goggled head jolts backward, spouting red.
Gripping the reload lever, I spin the rifle. The motion is painfully lethargic, a windmill slowed down to one-tenth it’s normal speed. There’s an echoing clack. A black shell casing with white lines exits the chamber, flipping, hovering just next to my face as it courses through the air.
I raise the sight.
The vehicle with blood spurting from the driver’s seat drifts sideways, nose heading into the broadside of the buggy just next to it.
Time speeds back up, jarring me, like a record player scratching.
The two buggies slam together, both lifted off the ground by the momentum, hitting the dunes, splashing sand like whales on a desert sea.
I take aim at the remaining dune buggy’s driver, fire.
Nothing.
Suddenly Sater is standing next to me, a chrome-colored longbow in his hand. He loads an explosive-tipped arrow and pulls it back. I can’t help but wonder why he didn’t use it before, but it can’t be easy to aim something like that while riding a jostling dune buggy. Same reason I didn’t just open fire while I was sitting in the back—waste of bullets. Only in Sater’s case, one mess-up could have led to their own vehicle going up in flames.
Sater tenses, one eye clamped shut.
“Wait!” I yell, almost without thinking.
Sater growls, carefully releases the pull without letting the arrow loose. “What!?”
I don’t know what part of my brain worked it out. Maybe it was a subconscious deduction. Intuition of some kind. In all the immediate chaos after the dune buggy flipped, we hadn’t looked at or thought of Tanya or the two other vehicles behind us.
Just as Sater yells “What!?”, Tanya’s material poofs into existence in the backseat of the vehicle roaring toward us. It’s like seeing something unravel in reverse, the way all her parts furl together out of nothing. She’s holding a dagger, the blade slick with blood, shining in the sun. It glints as she flicks it around, nicking one of the passengers across the throat, impaling the other in the side of the neck.
The driver turns toward her, pistol in hand. A mere second before he lets off a shot, muzzle flashing, Tanya unfurls again, re-furling a dozen feet in the air above the car, the muzzle of her own pistol flaring, pointing downward.
The driver’s head slams forward, into the wheel, sounding the blare of the car horn.
Reeling in the air, Tanya unfurls again. She furls back on the ground, legs in a wide stance, leaning forward, one arm low as the momentum from falling pushes her across the sand.
Her back is to us, bent forward, and I can’t help but be reminded of Trinity in the opening scene of The Matrix.
Heaving, she pulls herself upright and turns toward us, huffing a curl of hair out of her face.
“Well,” I say, “I can totally see why you wouldn’t want to use that.”
Tanya is still panting as she walks back toward us. “It gives off a signal. They’ll be able to pinpoint this location.”
Passing the halted dune buggy that’s still blaring it’s horn, she puts away her knife and gun so that she can gently lift and move the head of the driver. The horn stops immediately.
“Thank you.” Sater says, folding his longbow and sliding it into a holster on his hip.
“Didn’t they already know?” I say. “These Rifter guys; they were already scouting for us, weren’t they? And they found us.”
Tanya nods, shifting weight onto her other hip. She’s wearing jeans, a white button-down shirt, and a brown, long tailed coat. She holds up a hand, shielding her eyes from the sun. “I’m not talking about the Rifters. I’m talking about the feds. Can’t say I want them on our asses, just yet.”
“Ah.” I say. “Wait, if they know what we’re up to, why are the Rifters in the way? Shouldn’t they be trying to help us? Doesn’t it bother them that there’s undercover cops in the mix?”
Tanya shakes her head. “Think about it. The Rifters, criminal simworld groups—they’re like the Cartel, running cocaine. What they do is illegal, but that’s why people need them. If coke is legalized, what happens?” She wipes her dusty hands on her jeans. “They may hate the cops, but in a weird way, they kind of need them.”
“Not to mention that Rifters actually do run coke, among other things.” Sater says. “Safely, without being traced. Except for the cops that are now in the system, obviously, but it’s still more secure than the internet, or meeting in person.”
“Sounds like I bowed out just when things were starting to get...interesting.” I say.
Back then, after wide circulation, Rithium had been made illegal. And people had kept synchronizing, anyway. But at the time, it had always been about the game. Now, it sounds like things are a bit more complicated than that.
“‘Interesting’ isn’t quite the word I would use.” Sater says. “Rithium used to be an escape. There wasn’t always the risk of having to deal with pieces of scum like the Rifters or the Wolves. You might think you’re playing a game, but to them, it’s life or death. They’ll track you down in the real, if they think you’re messing with them. They’ll cut you.”
As if people in the mainstream needed any more reason to be afraid of Rithium.
Jesus.
“Wait,” I say, “What about the Black Darts? Doesn’t that change things? Is the risk even worth it, at this point?”
“Look,” Tanya says, “As much as I’d love to sit here and debate the finer points of illegal substance economics…” She turns toward the dune buggy with the noisy car horn. “You think this thing is still running?”