Flesh and blood and misceptions
Sam led Gradie down the hall and into the back bedroom.
“If the cops or any other baddies show up, EP will set off an arm on your earbuds,” she said.
The door opened against the left wall, and two bookshelves struck out into the room, flush with the door jamb on the right, making a kind of sed hallway ihe bedroom. Gradie followed her through to a window in the back wall, between a cluttered work desk and a makeup and product topped dresser.
Gradie looked around the room and saw a b and mattress against the wall oher side of the bookcases. If anyone broke through the door, they wouldn’t have line of sight on Sam in her bed, and he would bet money she knew which part of the bookshelves to shoot through.
“If that happens, we’ll e in here, quickly, and grab the AR. I’ll put it right here.”
She poio a bare space of wall o the open door.
“Then I’ll pull on this.”
She touched a piece e extension cord striped with red reflective tape hangio the window, with the pull cord for the blinds ed around it. It disappeared ihe curtain rod, which sagged in the ter and was held up by tws bolted to the wall. If the cord ulled, the curtain rod would colpse and the curtains would fall, while at the same time the blinds would fly up.
“And you do this.”
Sam stood a few steps back from the window and aimed an invisible gun out toward the street, then moved up in a low stride to the bookshelf on the right, which held file boxes that he guessed were filled with sandbags.
“And I’ll move out the window with this.” She lifted a rope off the ground. There were two of them coiled up o the window, sprouting out of a polygonal hole cut through the carpet and floorboard. She held another invisible gun in one hand and made a motion like knog the s out, then squatted down.
“Cover me while I drop down, then I’ll cover you and give you the all-clear. Then you grab the other one and e out after me. All the lights are dead out there so be sure you have your nods on. Then we’ll head that way down the side of the creek.” She poiowards the right wall of the room.
“It goes behind the houses, and we’ll e out on Churchill. Zoey, or Max I guess, will have a car waiting oreet. Ill drive it dark with the nods, like we did at the POE, until we get to the highway.”
She got quiet and stared at him. Sometime during her expnation, his imagination had taken off and he was already halfway through a sario that involved carrying a tour legged Sam to the getaway car while nding precision shots on shadowy gunmen as the rain fell without mercy. The rain-soaked Sam in his head looked at him in a way at odds with the Sam in front of him, who had the signature disappoiare of someone who had realized they had been talking to no one.
“All right, anyway!”
She waved him out of the bedroom and shooed him down the hall. He ched his fists as he walked, gd to have his back to her.
You stupid fuck. You want to be the hero? You really want to save her? Then keep your head in the game and be ready to do it for real.
Somewhere, he could feel Philip shaking a cigar at him.
“Oh, I fot about those buns!”
They were ba the living room. Sam was swiping through the menu on her phone. Bojo meowed at them.
“What? Do you need water?” she said, pig up a ceramic bowl i.
“Is that really the same cat?”
“Yeah. He was my cat. In the real.” She said the st part relutly, as if she had already said too much.
“Was?’
“Yeah,” she sighed.
He would have left it at that, but the implications had already set his brain to work.
“So, you push that he’s still alive? Before you drop in?”
“No. It just happens. Philip used to give me shit about it. They were trying to find out what I was good at, and every time we dropped in, he would be at my house. I was shit at everything else, but Bojo is ol’ reliable.”
She looked at Bojo like he was doing something impressive just by ying there. Gradie watched him flick his ears and got lost in thought.
If someone died in the real, could you go into a Hardworld and find them? If I die, they find another me in here?
Sam popped the top on a and brought him back to reality. She was squatting in front of the open fridge, her body a cluster of tight curves, silhouetted against the bright shelves. She hadn’t turned o light, and the fridge light back lit her fad made her hair glow. It reminded him of the Otherworld. She seemed to be floating in space. Her eyes shot to him, and he knew she had seen him staring, but she didn’t react at all.
“You want a drink?”
“Ill take a water.”
She nodded and came out of the kit with a Dos Equis and a Fiji.
“You drink if you want. Might help you calm down.”
“Thanks. I like being sober.” Sam opehe bottle with a knife from the coffee table and took a drink.
“Wait till you get in a gunfight.”
“I did already.”
“That wasn’t really a gun fight. Hahat box.” She poio ay amazon box.
“What? What defines a gunfight, then?”
“You get shot at and you shoot back. For lohan ten seds.” Sam started dumping trash from the coffee table into the box.
“I’ve had plenty of training with Max.”
“Oh, so you’ve never been afraid in a Hardworld?” she said, like he was trying to lie to her.
He thought about getting shot at by the cops at the Clubhouse. He thought about the fear that had taken him at the POE. It had been like dreaming he was about to die, then waking up moments ter. Had that been real fear? Had it taken any trol away from him? How bad could it get?
“A little, but—”
“Well, it won’t be a little if you get in a real gunfight. So just be ready—”
“What, you think I’m gonna freak out?”
“Everyone freaks out. That’s why we prime a self that deal with adrenal dumps and all that. Bring that bag over and stack all these games in the chair.”
He set her bag o the coud started clearing the game cases and disks off the coffee table and moving them to the couch. The cover of Splinter Cell Chaos Theory reminded him of Sam in the rain, and the dusts on his hands reminded him of searg the POE. ue memories floated out of the nostalgia kicked up by the PS2 games, but he pushed them away a back to the couch.
Sam was already getting guns and ammo out of the bags. The coffee table was bare now, but not . There was a yer of thin bck film oop of it and in the recesses of the curves on the lip around the edges, years of spilled drinks and dust bined into something uniform and final. It made him nostalgic again, but he had no idea why, as if the memory was locked in some untouchable other him.
He got sick of the quiet.
“An adrenal dump’s a physical rea, though. I’m talking about my Spirit. It’s hard to be really scared if I know I ’t actually die here.”
“That’s cause you haven’t been shot yet,” Sam said. “Trust me, it’s not fun. Your only options are to push the pain out of your head, whily Boss and them know how to do, or just deal with it, or drop yourself out.” She made a gun out of her hand and poi at her temple.
“And if everyone did that every time they got a booboo, we wouldn’t get any jobs done. So, you’re probably gonna have to suck it up. And you won’t be saying ‘oh it’s just a physical rea’ if that happens.”
He couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so he just watched her move. She set a box of ammo oable with a soft rattle, and he felt that every bullet was searg for him, as if the Hardworlds wao make him pay for taking them so lightly.
Always have an escape pn. EP and Philip, I mean Zoey and Max, put oogether in minutes if necessary, but some things are inescapable. ime, time for you and time for me, and time to load the magazine. episode, Reload.