“What’s he mean?” Dance asked, feeling a sprinkle of panic.
“I think he’s asking for your country or the guild you’re in. There’d be hundreds of them. I don’t know any in this game. Tell him you’re a newbie.” He spelled it. “That’s somebody new to a game, but who wants to learn.”
“just newbie, play for fun, thought u could t33ch”
There was a pause.
“u mean u r sum n00b”
“What’s that?” Dance asked.
“Newbie’s just a beginner. A n00b is a loser, somebody who’s egotistical and incompetent. It’s an insult. Travis has been called a n00b a lot online. LOL him but say you’re not. Your really want to learn from him.”
“lol, but no d00d, i w4nt to learn”
“R U hot?”
Dance asked Boling, “Is he coming on to me?”
“I don’t know. It’s an odd question under the circumstances.”
“sorta people tell me”
“u board funny”
“Shit, he’s catching on that there’s a delay in your keyboarding. He’s suspicious. Change the subject back to him.”
“like really w4nt to learn, what can u t33ch me?”
A pause. Then: “1 thing”
Dance typed, “whats that?”
Another hesitation.
Then words appeared in the balloon Travis’s avatar. “2 die”
And though Dance felt an instinct to slam an arrow key or slide the touchpad to lift an arm and protect herself, there was no time.
Travis’s avatar moved in fast. He swung his sword again and again, striking her. In the upper left-hand corner of the screen a box popped up showing two figures, solid white: the headings “Stryker” was above the one on the left, and “Greenleaf” on the right.
“No!” she whispered, as Travis slashed away.
The white filling the Greenleaf outline began to empty. Boling said, “That’s your life force bleeding out. Fight back. You have a sword. There!” He tapped the screen. “Put the cursor on it and left click with the mouse.”
Filled with unreasonable but feverish panic, she began clicking.
Stryker easily deflected her avatar’s wild blows.
As Greenleaf’s power slipped away on the gauge, the avatar dropped to her knees. Soon the sword fell to the ground. She was on her back, arms and legs splayed. Helpless.
Dance felt as vulnerable as she ever had in real life.
“You don’t have much power left,” Boling said. “There’s nothing you can do.” The gauge was nearly drained.
Stryker stopped hacking at Greenleaf’s body. He moved closer and looked into the computer monitor.
“who r u?” came the words popping up in the instant message.
“i am greenleaf. Y did U kill me?”
“WHO R U?”
Boling said, “All caps. He’s shouting. He’s mad.”
“pleez?” Dance’s hands were shaking and her chest was constricted. It was as if these weren’t bits of electronic data but real people; she’d plunged wholly into the synth world.
Travis then directed Stryker to step forward and drive his sword into Greenleaf’s abdomen. Blood spurted, and the gauge in the upper left-hand corner was replaced with a message: “YOU ARE DEAD.”
“Oh,” Dance cried. Her sweaty hands quivered and her breath stuttered in and out, over her dry lips. Travis’s avatar stared at the screen chillingly, then turned and began to run into the forest. Without a pause, he swiped his sword across the neck of an avatar whose back was turned and lopped off the creature’s head.
He then vanished.
“He didn’t wait to loot the corpse. He’s escaping. He wants to get away fast. He thinks something’s up.” Boling moved closer to Dance — now it was their legs that brushed. “I want to see something.” He began to type. Another box appeared. It said, “Stryker is not online.”
Dance felt a painful chill rattling through her, ice along her spine.
Sitting back, her shoulder against Jon Boling’s, she was thinking: if Travis had logged off, maybe he’d left the location where he’d been online.
And where was he going?
Into hiding?
Or was he intent on continuing his hunt in the real world?
LYING IN BED, the hour closing in on midnight.
Two sounds confused: the wind stroking the trees outside her bedroom window and surf on rocks a mile away at Asilomar and along the road to Lovers Point.
Beside her, she felt warmth against her leg, and exhaled breath, soft in sleep, tickled her neck.
She was unable to join in the bliss of unconsciousness, however. Kathryn Dance was as awake as if it were noon.
In her mind a series of thoughts spun past. One would rise to the top for a time, then roll on, like on Wheel of Fortune. The subject the clicker settled on most frequently was Travis Brigham of course. In her years of being a crime reporter and a jury consultant and a law enforcement agent, Dance had come to believe that the tendency toward evil could be found in the genes — like Daniel Pell, the cult leader and killer she’d pursued recently — or could be acquired: J. Doe in Los Angeles, for instance, whose murderous inclinations had come later in life.
Dance wondered where Travis fell on the spectrum.
He was a troubled, dangerous young man, but he was also someone else, a teenager yearning to be normal — to have clear skin, to have a popular girl like him. Was it inevitable from birth that he’d slip into this life of rage? Or had he begun like any other boy yet been so battered by circumstance — his abusive father, troubled brother, gawky physique, solitary nature, bad complexion — that his anger couldn’t burn away as it did in most of us, like midmorning fog?
For a long, thick moment, pity and loathing were balanced within her.
Then she saw Travis’s avatar staring her down and lifting his sword. like really w4nt to learn, what can u t33ch me?
2 die…
Next to her the warm body shifted slightly, and she wondered if she was giving off minuscule tensions that disturbed sleep. She was trying to remain motionless, but that, as a kinesics expert, she knew was impossible. Asleep or waking, if our brain functioned, our bodies moved.