Firebreak Read online

  “Hey, you found yourself a runner,” new guy calls from up the street. “Good job, man. Now get rid of her and let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  22 takes another second to size me up. As in real life, in-game 22’s hallmark is this exactitude of focus. I have no idea what purpose it even serves here, he’s so ridiculously high level he could one-shot me by flicking me in the forehead with two fingers. Whatever it is, it’s intense. My feet are rooted to the spot, my blaster hangs at my side. Some way-back part of my brain has to be forcibly reminded that this is just a game. I want to turn and run.

  Except for the part where I really, really don’t. I’ve never been anywhere near this close to 22 before, and 22 is one of the few operatives who are still alive. I need this footage for B. I need to stand my ground and keep streaming as long as I can. I tell myself that’s what I’m doing, but in reality I can no more break eye contact with 22 than I could deliberately look away from an oncoming train.

  “Keep him talking,” Jessa cuts in. “Get him to say something else.”

  I’d love to. Really I would. I want to ask him about Elena, see if I get a different answer somehow than I got from 08. I want to ask him if B was right and they were all stolen as kids and not made. Honestly, it seems unlikely. Even more so than the others, 22 makes me doubt B’s story on a visceral level. Standing here in his presence, I see no reason to disbelieve the official company line, which is that the Stellaxis SecOps operatives are some kind of bleeding-edge top secret humanoid biotech, and the in-game personalities we see aren’t extrapolated at all, but straight-up copy/paste, just like in the documentary.

  No matter how hard I try, no matter how much B wants me to see the operatives this way, I can’t picture 22 as a real person, a real kid that got nabbed from a real family or picked up out of the ruins of a dead one. Nobody’s ever seen him walking around in-game reading comics about himself. Or sitting at a statue eating donuts. Or posing with a skateboard. Nothing to hint at the kind of person he’d be if he wasn’t entirely busy being entirely the person that he is. Which is cold, calculating efficiency, all the way down.

  He sounds boring as all hell when I put it that way.

  And yet it’s exactly all those things that I find so relatable.

  Maybe he’s just an asshole. Maybe that makes me the exact same brand of asshole as him. I don’t know. What I do know is that, ever since the first time I saw him in the news, some incomprehensible part of my mind clamped on to him and hasn’t let go since.

  When I was a kid, I used to have these stupid daydreams of finding out 22 was my long-lost twin brother or something, and we’d go on adventures together. Even though I knew that was impossible for about sixty different excellent reasons. And why 22 and not somebody like 17 or 06 or 02 or anyone who you’d think would be more appealing to the mind of a kid, which is literally all of them, I couldn’t even begin to tell you. That clamped-on part of my mind has always been infuriatingly immune to logic. And so here we are. I’m about to die and respawn and lose all my shit, and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.

  “Jesus, Nycorix. Say something.”

  I want to ask him who he is. What he wants. Where he’ll go when new guy loses him. What the real him does when he’s not busy delicately vivisecting citykiller mechs in the street.

  Why I give a shit in the first place. Like he knows. Like I do. Like any of this makes any sense at all.

  22 still hasn’t taken me out like new guy told him to. He’s just looking at me, like he’s waiting to see what I’ll do. In the aforementioned idiot part of my mind, this action, or lack of action, is heavily invested with arcane meaning. Like this is some kind of test.

  I clear my throat, open my mouth to say Do you know a girl named Elena? or Who are you really? or I can’t tell if I feel sorry for you or if I want to be you, can you help me process that please?

  —and collapse dead on the ground behind the dumpster, 22’s sword having gone through my throat and out the back of my neck, then retrieved, all too fast for me to notice until it’s all over and 22 is on one knee on the sidewalk, wiping the blade on my shirt in the seconds before my corpse despawns.

  The street and dumpster fade out as 22 walks away, and the empty white room of the save point fades in as I respawn. Jessa is there already, grabbing my shoulders and jumping up and down. I keep the stream muted. They’re so supportive and so awesome and so great, and I really don’t want to deal with it right now.

  CHANGES TO CHARACTER APPEARANCE DETECTED, the game notifies me. SAVE/DISCARD?

  I look down.

  The game doesn’t save death wounds. We’d all look like something out of a zombie apocalypse if it did. But you’re given the choice to keep pretty much any other alteration to a character’s person and clothing. A lot of people keep them. Like a record of their adventures. Never mind that most of those “adventures” involve grinding thousands or slogging through side quests or stalking NPCs for footage that hints at the secret lives of the secret molds they’re cast from.

  Then again, a lot of people discard them because they don’t want to be reminded that much of the war they’re living in. It’s a game, not a newsfeed. If they wanted to go look at blood-splattered bodies, they could go visit a checkpoint, or a barricade, or subscribe to any of the drone channels that bring us news of the front, which is everywhere. Or they discard them because they want to look good. The game, like life, is performative, and evidence of damage suggests failure. Or because, like me, they don’t care enough about in-game appearances one way or another, and discarding all alterations is less effort than deciding which ones to keep.

  The outfit I’ve had on Nycorix since forever is this pitch-black, three-piece salaryman suit with the sleeves ripped off at the shoulder. There, across the waist of my shirt and the right side of my jacket and the edge of my shiny new crow-colored cape, is a long dark smear of blood from where 22 cleaned his sword.

  Against the white of the shirt it looks like a Rorschach test from some movie. The pattern looks like nothing at all. I wonder what this says about me.

  I consider the entire wholesale raft of shit I’d get from Jessa for doing what I’m about to do, and then I realize I don’t care.

  I blink at SAVE.

  Jessa is already staring at me. Shaking her head slowly with this look of fond wonderment, like I’m a toddler showing off a dump I just took on the floor. Claps me on the shoulder. “You’ve got issues, my friend,” she says matter-of-factly, and it is, of course, as it is of all of us, true.

  0007

  THERE’S ONLY A BIT OVER AN HOUR left before power curfew at this point, and no chance whatsoever of making my thousand, and I feel like we’ve gotten enough footage to earn our keep with B for the day, so I log off right there at the save without remembering to say goodbye to the audience and just lie in the darkness of my blackout mask, replaying my ten-second encounter with 22 in my mind. It’s gotten under my skin in some kind of way I have no idea how to begin to unpack and examine.

  Have you ever felt drawn to someone for no reason that makes sense to your rational mind? I don’t mean like a crush or wanting to fuck them or whatever kind of normal-person obsession. I wish it were that. That at least would make some kind of fucking sense. No, what I get to deal with is this situation where you don’t want anything from the person in question at all, you just find there’s something in them that speaks to something in you, and all you want in all the world is to figure out how to reply.

  Jessa would say I need to get on top of the leaderboard and take 22 for some quality alone time and get this weird fixation out of my system behind closed doors. I know what she’d say because she does say it. Frequently. In more colorful language, and usually with some helpful instructive gesturing. But if this was a problem that orgasms could solve, I’m reasonably sure I would’ve figured it out by now. 22 is a deeper itch, unreachable.

  Like I said. Under my skin.

  Worse, it’s a fixation with no orig
in story. I don’t have an anecdote about how 22 pulled me out of the rubble of my bombed-out building, the way some younger kids on the internet do about some of the operatives, because when I was eight they were still somebody’s R&D dream, solid years from being released for duty.

  Whatever this is, I have no excuse for it. But I don’t know how to reason it away.

  That daydream I used to have about him and me being long-lost siblings, going on adventures together? I used to make up such elaborate stories about that, used to run these stories through my head when I was trying to fall asleep in the camps. I used to lie there on my cot in the dark and blink twenty-two times, carefully, firmly, like it would summon him to that shitty, sour-smelling, overcrowded tent in order to deign to befriend my sorry ass.

  Is it stupid? Yes. Is it sad and hopeless and lonely and pitiable and desperate? You bet. But whatever this is, I’ve been waiting to outgrow it for almost a decade, and from where I’m standing, it’s looking like I’ll be taking it to my grave.

  I’m lying there wallowing in my shitty mood when Jessa pries up my blackout mask without asking. I fight down an urge to push her off my bunk. She looks legitimately concerned.

  “You didn’t say the outro,” she says.

  “I never say the outro,” I reply dully. “That’s all you.”

  “Yeah, but you usually stick around.”

  “Mm.”

  The fact that I’m not arguing seems to throw her. There’s a long pause. “You okay?” she says at last.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  She doesn’t even bother dignifying that with a response. She’s giving me this awful sympathetic look, like I’m broadcasting all my thoughts right on my face. Probably I am. I stare resolutely at the ceiling.

  “You got some really sick footage today,” she ventures. “B’s going to die. I mean, everybody else sure did. Did you hear them losing their shit when you stood up and bumped right into 22? He just came out of nowhere, dude, it was—” At this point something in my stony silence seems to reach her. “Sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry about,” I tell her loftily. “It was a good first day on the new job. I’m just tired is all.”

  “So I see.” She reaches out with one hand, appears to realize she has no idea what she’s going to do when it finds me, and ends up kind of balling it into a fist and booping me gamely on one shoulder. Then she goes.

  I stare at the ceiling another few minutes, listening to the noise of the room. It’s actually pretty quiet. For once I logged out well before power curfew, and it seems like most everyone else is either still online or out working various gigs. Out of the corner of my eye I see Jessa climbing back up to her own bunk, unwrapping a candy bar, casting one more furtive glance in my direction, then pulling her blackout mask back on with a sigh.

  Everything’s quiet. There are probably half a dozen people in this room right now, but for all intents and purposes, I’m alone.

  Which reminds me.

  My regulation ninety-six cubic feet of personal space looks nothing like Jessa’s. No posters, no promo items, no merch of any kind. One time Jessa gave me an action figure of 22 for my birthday, and I tried to keep it on my shelf so as not to look like an asshole, but every time I looked at it, it just made me inexplicably sad, so I traded it to someone down the hall for some batteries.

  My personal space contains two pillows, one blanket, one sheet, all regulation. Regulation shelf, unmodified. On that is my solar headlamp, my reusable bottles and travel cup, my dry shampoo and face wipes, my collapsible bike helmet, a few old books I hardly ever have time to read, some other assorted junk. Nothing on the walls.

  Jessa would say (has said, will say again), At least I exercise my obsession like normal people. Not… whatever you call that. Her pointer finger taking aim at my regulation ninety-six. Or are you going to tell me that isn’t based on how you imagine 22’s sense of, um, decor?

  I just like it, I tell her, not fooling anyone. Maybe not all of us want to be merch groupies.

  At least that’s healthy. You want to support their efforts, their sacrifices, you buy the memorabilia. Read a poster sometime. Watch the news. Or ask, like, literally anyone. It’s common sense.

  Which is why I waited until she had her mask back on before I did this.

  I pull out a hardcover dust jacket from my shelf and open it. Inside isn’t a book at all, just a loosely folded stack of papers. Printouts from newsfeeds. I couldn’t really say why I went to the trouble and expense of printing them on actual paper in the first place, rather than just saving the relevant articles digitally like normal people. I guess there’s no good reason. I started doing it, and I never stopped.

  There are about a hundred pages here, a physical record of all the missions and engagements in which 22 has been involved. This stuff spans years. All the way back to his first major engagement, when they sent him and 06 out to zone 4, deep Greenleaf turf, to disrupt a convoy. If I flip back to that printout, I’ll see him, maybe thirteen years old, bloodied gloves, smudged face, averted eyes. I don’t. But I’m still thinking about what B said, so in light of that: Is this the face of a person who used to be a little kid with a favorite toy and a pet kitten and a bedtime story routine? It feels like a stretch.

  My most recent printout is still in the back pocket of my jeans. It’s sat there for the better part of a week while I’ve waited for my opportunity to take it out and put it with the others. But getting a few minutes of privacy when you live in a hotel room with eight other people is not something that happens every day.

  I lift my hips to get the paper out of my pocket and unfold it.

  ARMY OF TWO, the headline reads. Then under it is a picture of 06 and 22 standing in front of a pile of rubble that apparently used to be a Greenleaf weapons-development lab.

  There are a lot of articles about 06 and 22 in my collection. They’re the only two operatives left who were partners originally. All dozen of them were partnered up in some kind of buddy system nobody fully understands. All three surviving operatives run missions together sometimes, but 08’s partner, 21, died this past autumn, killed in action like the rest.

  I skim the article, like 06 and 22 would have magically gotten names attached to them when I wasn’t looking. Names that aren’t numbers. People names like Elena. But no. In the game, in real life, everywhere, they remain, unstoppably, eternally, iconically, 06 and 22.

  B’s out of her mind, obviously. But water’s water, so I’m fine with playing along if that keeps everyone happy. I shake my head and add the paper to the hidden stack, then flop back against the pillow and pull my blackout mask back on.

  Finding 08 and 22 in such quick succession seems to have been pretty popular with our viewers. Sure, there’d been hundreds of people there ogling 08 and his skateboard, but none of them were teamed with Jessa and got the rocket-fist-to-the-sternum treatment. The only decent footage of 22 that came out of that mess was mine. It doesn’t really count as a sighting in the same way finding 28 did, because 22 was being piloted by that dipshit and steered directly toward the highest population density in the zone, but I don’t know. I guess what happened next was amusing enough to earn us some likes and subscribes.

  Are people out there making “hilarious” memes out of Nycorix getting skewered through the larynx? Almost definitely. But all my wiped inventory has already been more than replaced out of the goodness of the hearts of randos, so as far as I’m concerned, let the internet go on internetting. I’m doing the best I’ve done in months.

  Not only do I have an impressive little pile of in-game items, but some credits and cash and water, too. And almost a hundred more fans have joined our stream. What that is is insurance. B could think better of her conspiracy theory, decide not to pay us, but if our streak holds, this will be worth doing for the subscriber swag alone.

  Fifty minutes until power curfew. I pull up the footage I got of 22. I replay it all, from the suborbital drop to me bleeding out on the sidewalk. And then I
replay it again. I touch the place on my throat where the sword went in. I genuinely don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me.

  The next time I replay the footage, I skip back just a few seconds too far. There’s 08, being mobbed by three hundred dumbasses just like me. I hear my own voice saying, Do you know a girl named Elena? and Jessa protesting at my shoulder.

  “Elena?” 08 says, and shakes his head just like before. “Sorry, can’t help you.”

  And down comes the suborbital drop, and 08 and Jessa and three hundred dumbasses are incinerated in a bowl of fire all the colors of an oil spill.

  But this time I know it’s coming, and it doesn’t distract me from something I didn’t really notice before.

  As the street beneath his boots ignites and liquefies, 08 is still talking. To me.

  I freeze the replay. Skip back a second. Play.

  I can’t make it out. The background noise is too loud. Hell, the foreground noise is too loud. It’s three hundred death cries and the sound of an eight-lane highway being blasted into fondue. I can’t do anything with this.

  But Jessa can.

  hey. you still have all that shit you used to clean up the audio file that time we found 11 singing that weird song in the middle of that hurricane?

  A couple minutes pass. I have to physically restrain myself from scrambling up to her bunk and peeling back her mask. Eventually she responds.

  oh, now you want to talk to me

  it’s about the footage we just got

  oh. yeah, that’s kind of why i came up to your bunk in the first place. you looked like you needed to talk

  not about that. about 08. i just went and watched the footage. he’s still talking to me as the drop comes down

  what’s he saying??

  that’s the thing, it’s hard to make out. i was thinking we could maybe scrub the background crap off of it a little

  The pause this time is shorter. can do