Chapter 10

Linda laughed at us.

“I hired you,” she spat at us. “The plumber doesn’t ask the client how to fix the pipes.”

“Plumbing hasn’t even been invented yet,” I countered. I was annoyed with the witch. Clearly, we would be taking her with us. The fact that we had to conduct a job for her before she would do so was stupid. I understood that this was how it worked, but it was dumb and one of those rare moments where I was entirely aware that I was not in the real world.

“Actually,” Bear just couldn’t keep his mouth shut, “the Romans had plumbing. So, it was invented, just not that convenient, yet.”

“Fine,” I said without looking at my currently-least-helpful ally. Returning my attention to our supposed ticket out of here, I said, “Then don’t worry about it.” I gave a very exaggerated thumbs up. “We’ve got this.”

I spun back to Bear. “Assuming none of these assholes heard what we were just saying, do you have any ideas?”

The long shadows of the setting sun were making my friend look a little more disturbed than he probably was, but I saw his lip lift at the start of a smile. “Maybe.”

“Well, I won’t say we don’t have all day, because,” I shook my leg to make the shackle rattle, “we do, but I’m impatient, so just say it.”

“They won’t kill us, right?” Bear asked.

“Death is just another escape to them, and if we escape, they lose,” I agreed.

“Then the plan is simple,” Bear got closer as his voice dropped into more of a whisper. “I find the largest man here, and I hit him as hard as I can.”

I laughed. It sounded like a joke, with the dark shadows, the whispering, and just how serious he was. I laughed a lot. When I was done, Bear was frowning at me. “What?”

“It’s a good plan.”

“Wait,” I wiped tears, “you’re serious? How is ‘me hit big man,’ a plan? And have you forgotten that you can’t see your HUD? Are you just planning on treating this like a real-life brawl? Would this have even been a plan in the real-” I trailed off realizing that I had forgotten something. “Where’s Winnie been?”

Linda, who had slinked off into the tent, poked her head out. “Are you referencing that lonesome looking girl who’s been following you around and mumbling to herself?”

“She’s here?” I asked. “Where? Why can’t I see her?”

Linda looked to my right and ignored my questions. “I have no idea if telephones exist, yet, sweetie, but I promise you that when they do come along, they won’t look like frozen hags with shackles. I’ll relay one message and then you’re on your own.” She listened for a moment and then turned to me. “Your granddaughter says she’s been here for the last few hours. She’s streaming everything. She also said, wait,” she turned back to where I assumed Winnie was and smiled, “no, darling, I can’t tell her that. That would spoil the fun.” My hand was rubbing my leg where my holster should have been. I hadn’t realized but when the shackles had disconnected my access to my inventory, all of my equipment must have gone to the same place. Linda wasn’t telling us everything that Winnie wanted us to know. I was liking this witch a little less every second.

“Why can’t I see her?” I demanded.

Linda just pointed at the shackles.

“She can hear me?” I asked. The witch nodded. I turned to where Linda had been talking to Winnie. “Alright girl, get the camera ready. I think we’re about to do some big dumb stuff. Also, if you can get a message to Coot, let him know where we are.”

I spun back to Bear. “Alright, who do we hit and remind me again why this is a good plan?”

“Two ways,” he explained. “First, everyone will be looking my way, and I still have my health and strength. I’ve been in a lot of brawls already, so my strength is up there. Strength and brawling are what get experience when you’re hitting people. When I fight this guy, he won’t kill me, so I can kite him around while you sneak into the building and get the brush.”

“What does kite mean? You’re going to tie some string on him?”

He shook his head. “It's a gaming term. It means, I’ll piss him off and get him to follow me around, you know, like a kite on a string.”

That made sense. “Alright, I follow, but this assumes you even can. What happens when you tap his shoulder and instead of getting kited, he knocks you out?”

Bear smiled. “That’s the best part. This plan can’t fail. If he knocks me out, where do you think they’ll take me and you to shout at us?”

I smiled. Bear was right. There was a couple of ways this could go, with the first being absolute failure. What Bear wasn’t saying is that failure had two outcomes. We could end up just like he said and in the center building being shouted at by Agent Hayes, or we could end up dead. They weren’t supposed to kill us, but knocking someone out, even in this game, wasn’t a simple task. Bear could get killed.

Which was also a successful option. If Bear died, he would at least have a split second to send a message to Coot or one of our allies.

No matter what we did in this scenario, I felt like this was the best possible plan.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

Our best plan was “go hit a big guy.”

I sighed.

***

The “biggest guy” was harder to find than we had expected him to be. On top of the fact that everyone, except for our freezing selves, was wearing a lot of layers in order to stay warm, it was also a video game that had a cap on how big everyone could be. This made it so that the biggest ‘guy’ was a title shared by almost half of the fort.

Add to that the fact that everyone was huddled around fires near each of the clusters of tents and this wasn’t going to be easy.

While we hunted for this perfect target, we started coming up with other rules, too. The first of those was that we wanted to make sure we fought a Redbriar Agent. If Redbriar was anything like the Pinkerton’s then they weren’t the Federal Government. Instead, they were a third-party hired by the government. That meant that fighting them would have far less repercussions than if we picked a fight with a soldier. Bear also assumed that the soldiers were the ones who had put in the no-kill order. So, if we wanted one of them to kill us then the Redbriar Agents might be more likely to do so.

We finally found our target while eating a bowl of ‘I don’t want to know,’ about an hour after the sun went down. His name was Upton and he was wearing one of the Redbriar’s bowler hats. He sat with a group of soldiers not far from our group.

We didn’t pick him for any special reason outside of fitting our needs. He actually seemed like an easy-going kind of guy. Honestly, I picked him because I hated his laugh. That was about all it took.

Eeny, meeny, miny, wow, your laugh is horrible.

To Bear’s credit, he seemed both way too excited for this as well as hesitant. Some of this behavior might be his old life experiences, but I wasn’t sure which part.

We were huddled around our own small fire with Linda. When the target was picked, she voiced her opinion.

“Upton? I kinda liked him.”

Thanks for nothing, Linda.

Then Bear stood up and slowly made his way over and behind Upton.

He stood there, with his back to him, acting like he was staring at one of the horses. Then he spun and ran at the sitting agent.

He hit Upton hard in the back and drove him forward like some sort of football tackle or push thing. Agent Upton was entirely surprised and tried to pivot, but he just wasn’t prepared for this attack.

Bear propelled Upton, face first, right into the campfire.

As far as distractions went, that was perfect.

I won’t even try to lie, those screams were nightmare fuel, but I didn’t have time for dreaming and needed to do my part. I had no idea how long Bear could keep them distracted, but no matter how long it was, it wouldn’t be long enough.

I cast another glance over my shoulder as I made my way toward the building in the center of the fort. Bear was on his feet and folks were trying to grab him, but he was punching his way out of most of it. Even so, I didn’t have long.

People were flooding out of that room now that they could hear the screams, so I did my best to fall back and toward the shadows of a tent. Shackles or not, people weren’t looking at my feet while a man was burning alive only a couple yards past me. They all ran by completely ignoring me.

Once I was sure that the last of them had exited, I made my way to the door and pushed it open. I ducked in quickly and used my hands to ease the door quietly closed.

When I turned around, there were two soldiers in the room and one of Hayes’ men. Just beyond them and in the same place that it had been when I saw it earlier, was the ivory brush.

“Well, shit,” I ran at the closest one. He was a soldier in an all blue uniform. He reached for his pistol, but my eyes had been at the knife on his belt. I pulled it from its sheath and then plunged it into his chest. That was when the bullets started coming from the other two. I rolled the dead man onto my back and ducked behind the closest side of the table. I did this while trying to find the pistol he had just been reaching for.

The Redbriar agent knocked the table over to get to me and I was distracted from my pistol hunt by the sight of the brush landing on the floor and sliding toward the opposite door. Now my only cover was a dead man with a lot of holes in him and that wasn’t going to do. Then I thought about something that Bear had said earlier.

“Hold your fire,” I said from under the corpse. “You’re not supposed to kill me, anyway, right? So, how about a good ole fashioned beat down? You strapping young men can beat me until I can’t see straight. How’s that sound?”

They both started to chuckle softly. I peeked out from under my ‘cover’ and saw them holster their pistols.

“What do you boys think?” I asked as I shrugged the body off of me. “Maybe two minutes before people start coming back in here and our fun is done?”

“More like thirty seconds,” the other soldier said.

“Plenty of time,” his Redbriar companion agreed.

I threw the knife into his chest. I wasn’t sure who was going to get the knife until he got cocky about it.

The fort soldier stared at his dying companion as I ran at him next. He punched me across the jaw in a solid swing that I had not expected. It knocked me down hard, but I rolled, as best as my still spinning mind would allow, and came up near the brush. I grabbed it and held it by the handle like it was a knife.

“Are we gonna braid hair now?” He asked.

I smiled.

Then I straightened and reached behind my back. After I had tucked the brush into my waistband, I drew the other soldier’s pistol.

When they were still shooting at me, I found the pistol, but Bear was right. He said we can’t lose, so I thought I’d try and bluff them with a fist fight that I certainly wasn’t going to win.

He raised his hands slowly. “What’s this going to get you? Three dead men and a comb? You think they are going to let you walk out of here? If you could see your HUD, you’d know how screwed you were. So, let me give you a hint; if you were riding across the plains outside of Aberdine, two full cities of law would be hunting you. If I were to let you leave out the gate right this moment, you’d be smarter to stay inside. They will-”

The gun was really loud in the stone room, but at least that asshole wouldn’t be talking again for an hour.

He was right, though. I needed to move.

Running for the door, I kicked it open and ran toward my tent. I looked toward where Bear had been fighting and saw him on his knees, bloodied pretty bad, with a gun to the back of his head.

“Ms. Sammy,” Agent Hayes was holding the gun, “would you mind accompanying your friend?”

I stopped and turned, slowly, before marching over to Bear and kneeling.

“Well,” Bear spit blood onto the ground, “that was fun.”

“Yes, it was,” I agreed.

“Shut up,” Hayes hit me on the back of the head. From the grunt Bear gave, it sounded like he got hit, too. “Whatever the hell you think you’re doing, it ends now. Do you think this is as bad as it gets? Do you think that the worst I can do is lock you up and take away your HUD? You shitheels are going to be working for the rest of your immortality digging up rocks that respawn almost instantly. You’re never going-”

A shout came up from the direction of the gate.

Then an explosion.

“What the fuck was that?” Hayes shouted at the nearest soldier.

“Players,” he said. “The fort is under attack.”