This is a good thing, I tell myself. I should be happy about it, and Hideo is right to do this to the Dark World. Haven’t I spent years hunting people down here? This isn’t a good place. There are pockets of the Dark World so disturbing that they ought to be permanently wiped out, people so perverse and evil that they deserve to rot in jail. They should be afraid.
But . . . the idea of one person having that kind of reach down here, to put his hand inside someone’s mind and compel them to leave this place . . .
“What’s going on over there?” I ask when we walk past a stand in a night market. Even though it’s a small shop, there must be a crowd of well over two hundred people gathered around it. When I look long enough at the stand, a number appears over it.
50,000
The sheer volume of visitors keeps causing the shop to crash, and from here, it looks like the stand is collapsing into a pile and resetting itself over and over.
“They’re auctioning off cases of beta lenses,” Zero replies. “Rare commodities, as you can guess.”
I realize that the number over the stand is the price that the beta lenses are currently going for. Fifty thousand notes for a single pair.
The bidders obviously have their own beta lenses to even be in the Dark World, so my guess is that they’re here on behalf of others. There’s a desperation in the space that makes it feel dangerous. Already, arguments are breaking out, and overhead, I can see users being doxed by angry competitors, their private info thrown up on the neon-red signs spanning the sides of the building walls. I quicken my pace until we’ve left the stand behind us.
We’re somewhere close to where the Pirate’s Den was the last time I saw it, although the roads have shifted since then. When the black lake comes into view, there’s no ship floating on the water.
I turn to Zero, startled. The Pirate’s Den has never been successfully shut down. “Is it gone?” I ask him.
He looks skyward. I tilt my head to follow his gaze.
High above the Dark World’s nonsensical buildings and Escher-like stairways, under a smoky brown night sky, is a pirate ship suspended in midair. Rope ladders dangle from it, far out of reach. Its masts are lit up with cascading neon colors that highlight the clouds with electric shades of pink and blue and gold.
“After Hideo activated his algorithm,” Zero says, “one Dark World user afflicted by the new lenses went to authorities and ratted out where the Pirate’s Den was. There was a raid down here. But cockroaches are hard to eliminate.”
I give him a humorless smile at that. The Dark World won’t go down without a fight. The pirates just move out of the water and into the skies.
Zero cocks his head slightly to one side. He must already have the entrance code to the new Pirate’s Den figured out, because a second later, one of the ship’s rope ladders starts descending toward us. It stops right in front of us, at the perfect height.
Zero holds a hand out at the ladder and turns to me. “After you.”
I walk past him and grab one of the ladder’s rungs tightly. He steps on it after me, his gloved hands clasping the rope on either side of me. As we rise, I look over his arm and down at the city. I’ve never seen the Dark World from the sky before. It looks even less logical than it does from the ground. Some of the buildings resemble spiral staircases that disappear into the clouds, with dozens of window lights that shift colors in gradients. Dark, anonymous avatars walk sideways along other walls, as if the people were held up by strings. Other buildings are painted all in black, with no windows at all—only thin neon lines that run vertically along its walls. Who knows what the hell goes on inside there. There are spheres that hover in midair, supported by nothing, with no obvious way of getting inside. As we rise as high as the clouds, I can look down and see some of the towers forming circular patterns on the ground, as if they were alien crop circles.
We finally reach the floating ramp leading into the Pirate’s Den. Now that we’re close enough, I can see how enormous this new ship’s masts are, stretching up like screens on the sides of skyscrapers. What I’d seen as gradients of neon colors on the masts are actually advertisements showcasing that day’s matches, as well as the current bets on the Phoenix Riders and Team Andromeda rematch.
Zero steps off first. He walks onto the ramp and gestures for me to follow. My eyes shift from the broadcasts to the ship’s entrance, where dozens of avatars are walking in underneath the Pirate’s Den slogan.
INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE
We step inside. I can hear the pulsing rhythm of my heart in my ears, the blood pumping in time to the soundtrack playing around me, no doubt some stolen track from an unreleased album. Fog hugs the ground. The avatars here are as twisted and strange as ever, a weird mix of people with random, forgettable faces, and users who have remade themselves with monstrous features.
But what makes me freeze is the sight of the glass cylinder looming in the center of the cavernous space. The assassination lottery looks like it always does, with its list of names in scarlet letters and the current bid beside each one. Up on the higher deck and looking down at the list are assassins and hunters carefully analyzing the list.
What looks different is the name at the top of that list.
Emika Chen | Current Offer: 5,625,000
No wonder everyone’s after me: 5,625,000 notes for my assassination.
“They can’t see you,” Zero says, cutting through my paralyzing terror. When I glance at him, he gives me a simple nod. I can’t see any part of his expression behind his dark helmet, of course, but his body is turned vaguely toward me, giving me the sense that he’s protecting me.
In spite of everything, I feel oddly safe beside him. It’s hard to believe that, not long ago, I’d first seen Zero in this very same space as my enemy, the bounty I was hired to hunt down by Hideo. Now the bounty has reversed.
Betting on the Final rematch is happening in another corner of the space, while others are clustered in a large crowd around the current Darkcross game, throwing amounts of money around at an increasingly frantic pace. Over the onlookers is a banner showing the match, followed by how much is at stake.
MIDNIGHT RAIDERS vs. HELLDOGS
Current Odds 1:4
“New game!” a voice calls out. An automated announcer is speaking now, its androgynous voice echoing around us. “Match ends when a player takes their opponent’s Artifact. Bets may be placed two minutes before the game’s opening call and can continue until the official start.”
I look at the chaotic audience. All of the patrons of the official Warcross teams are public figures with deep pockets, each one well-known. But the identities of the patrons of the Dark World teams are a mystery. Rumor has it that they are mafia bosses, gang leaders, and drug lords. None of them are stupid enough to publicly sponsor a team—but one Dark World team can earn double the profits of the Phoenix Riders. No wonder the teams down here can recruit such talented players. Some of them are even ex-Warcross professionals, those whose reflexes can’t keep up with the younger, upcoming stars. If you don’t mind playing an illegal game that could get you arrested at any time, then you’ll be showered with riches far beyond that of a legit, official Warcross player in the real world.
Of course, as with everything else down here, playing Darkcross comes with its own unique risks. Unlike Warcross played legally, where the only consequence of losing a game is your money and your ego . . . the patrons of Dark World teams are a dangerous crowd to disappoint. If you lose enough Darkcross games, you might see your own name up on the assassination lottery list. I remember one Darkcross player who was found hanging in his garage, his body bloodied and broken, and another who was pushed in front of a train.