Kill your friends guilt free

  It shifted uhe eye like so much else iherworld, but had a defieady rotation. It was like seeing a city from space, a city not fio a single hemispherical pne, but spread out across tless separate shapes that didn’t align to a single gravitational dire. Its pulsating colors aures were strangely familiar; along with the glitter of metal and warmth of t, there was also the green of forests, the blue of o, white of snow or clouds, and even the dark of night in a seemingly random distribution. There was no great artificial sun to be seen. It glowed from within, or maybe from nothing.

  “There it is,” said Nova.

  “All right, thanks. I see it.” Gradie looked at them then back at Gunmaze. Nova started ughing.

  “Bro we’re not going this slow for your be. Gunmaze won’t let us approach faster than this.”

  “Why?”

  “Some kind of sing procedure,” Angel said. “It may seem like a funhouse to the average visitor, but it’s as locked down as any fortress world.”

  “People take the games seriously, huh?” Gradie must have let some of his pt leak out through his voice. Angel gred at him.

  “Gunmaze makes more mem per day than the Allworld. Some people spend every scrap of mem they have here, so yeah, the Makers have to take that seriously.”

  “Makes sense,” Gradie said ftly looking back at the swirling cloud, w if his pt was a reflex against his fear, and Angel’s words caught up with him.

  “So, how much does it cost to get in?” He wasn’t especially attached to his money, but he had always held some sliver of hope that he would find something worth spending it on somewhere iher. Though it seemed an ironic tragedy to think he would spend so much money on games in both his lives.

  “Getting in’s free,” Nova said. “Pying’s free. You pay for skins and ports and other venience shit. When it es to shit you use to py, you gotta earn in the hard way. Absolutely no pay to win in Gunmaze.”

  Gradie had heard about a thousand simir spiels about games in the Real, almost all of which were at least partialy PR bullshit, but he just nodded along. Stu the back of his mind like an itch was the stant remihat the twins were probably only taking him along because Michael or Kra had pressured them to.

  “And you make some good money if you’re not a nerd about it,” Luke said, grinning.

  “What?”

  “If you take your winnings and flip em for cash instead of buying outfits and shit, yeah. I usually up.”

  Gradie couldn’t help himself.

  “They let you do that? Trade the game tokens for real money? Wouldn’t that kinda ruin the spirit of the game?” He raised his eyebrows at Angel, who gave bare.

  “Guokens are real mohey used to be the fug reserve currency before MEM. They have value everywhere iher. You just s them out for mem for venience.”

  “I thought memory was always the currency here?”

  “Yes, but not—”

  Nova interrupted Angel loudly.

  “Ok bro, you wan into the financial history of the Other, e by the HQ once Boss lifts your ban. Right now let’s go over how this is gonna go down. First of all, stick together. Yonna see a lot of cool shit but don’t go running off on your own. Strength in numbers.”

  Gradie felt, once again, that he was tagging along like a little brother, but he kept nodding and watg the swirling mass of light and activity grow in the window, trying to temper the excitement growing in his stomach.

  Nova raised a sed finger.

  “Sed of all, be vocal. Our s will work inside, so call out what you see, what you think, and especially what you’re about to do. We gotta be on the same page.”

  Gradie had to focus pretty hard to use the s normally, which was usually only when Kra or Michael called him out of the Vault for a briefing, aed in him standing perfectly still with his hand to his ear while responding with his mind’s voice.

  “Grandpas on the phone,” EP had said once, flying past him into the office, but despite the ribbing he had never gotten the hang of doing anything else while unig. He doubted trying it while in the middle of a tense session of dreamworld PVP would make it any easier.

  But again, he just hey could find that out on their own.

  Somewhere during his spaced-out thoughts, Nova had raised a third finger.

  “- so don’t be afraid to dip out. And finally,” He raised a fourth finger and smiled at Gradie. “Look for work. You already know that ohough.”

  If Nova had expected that borrowing one of the Gunmaze as from Philips Hardworlding creed would make Gradie feel more fortable, it had the opposite effect. Suddenly, Gradie wished he was ba the Clubhouse, or flying down the highway, or in Lucy’s ir, ready to drop in.

  Luke raised two fingers.

  “Fifth, have fun. And sixth, be yourself.”

  Nova smiled.

  “Five is guaranteed, bro.

  Angel rolled his eyes and groaned.

  The ship came to a sudden stop just as Angel and Nova stood up in a way that told Gradie they had dohis a million times. Something zipped up to the window and shined a light inside. An orb made of a thousand camera lens like eyes. The light became a proje and the orb dissapeared behind a wides banner.

  ‘wele tUNMAZE

  ‘please present id’

  The wunmaze was made of block metal letters with mazelike tracks inside, floating in front of a shifting background of various moving images depig destroyed cities, space stations, wide fields strafed by fighter jets, and even a medieval siege.

  “Uh, ID?” Gradie asked. The other three were already holding up watches and rings to a beam of light ing from the proje.

  “Your wallet,” Nova said. “It’s tied to your Real self with a bit of your Real mem.”

  Gradie looked at his digital watch like it had betrayed him. Michael had set it up, but hadn’t mentiohat little fact.

  “How do they, uh,”

  “Boss used some of the mem pulled when you first joined,” Nova said.

  First joined? He saw Lucy’s glowing eyes. Great. He felt like throwing the watto the bd flying off food. Maybe even dropping into the Hardworlds on his own. Up till then, he had enjoyed his retive anonymity. He had gotteo the idea that no one in this world ever had to know a thing about his Real life. Flying over the Allworld, watg from afar, he had felt like a visitor, an alien. Now that his real life was tied to this pce, he felt a nagging urge to run from it, to escape to the only pce he could, the Hardworlds. For some reason, the sensation reminded him of Phillip.

  But they were all looking at him and even the repeating animation behind ‘GUNMAZE’ seemed impatient, so he raised his watd the light swept it with a ‘beep’, and a slightly robotic but very sensual female voice oozed out of the s.

  “New Pyer, would you like to create an avatar, or observe as a Specter?”

  “Uh,”

  “Avatar,” Nova said. “Specters are for solo noobs and streamer simps. We’ll show you the ropes.”

  The s was now blinking the text of the woman’s question in neon red.

  “Avatar, please,” Gradie said.

  “A mirror room has been summoned and will be attached to the team leader’s station. Wele to the Gunmaze, and pop that cherry with a bang.”

  The proje disappeared and something floated in from the swirling haze. A castle melted onto a sci-fi space station. It looked like the Twins from top to bottom and he guessed it was ade, as out in the bck simir rendezvous were happeniween ships and stations that looked nothing alike.

  The structure rotated and a crystal orb like a geodome was stuck off the side of it.

  “That’s the mirror room,” Angel said. “It’s where you’ll make your avatar.”

  “t I just go like this? I’m not really into dressing up.”

  Nova ughed.

  “An avatar isn’t an outfit. It’s a sed body that meshes with the schema of a Gameworld. You’ll see whe in there.”

  The castle door approached a drawbridge extended right through the front viewport, which Gradie realized for the first time didn’t have any kind of gss pane or barrier. Gravity had returned and Nova bounced on the balls of his feet as they walked across and spoke to someo loud.

  “Yeah, we just pulled up. Gonna be running some small unit shit for today. Oh, fuck I fot about that. Ok yeah, we’ll probably make an appearaer. All right bye.”

  Nova groaned and Angel asked him what was wrong.

  “Fu Bartoth’s having that post viewing thing today at the orbital. We’re gonna have to swing by after this.”

  “Thought you liked Bart.”

  “Yeah, Bart’s fine, but he’s still doing that series for that fug Bombfa captain, so I know all his guys are gonhere.”

  “It’s our orbital, if they get on your nerves, you just—”

  “No bro, I ’t just, cause like I’ve told you a thousand times, you gotta maintain rapport with those assholes if you wan tracts.”

  “We don’t heir tracts.”

  They were fully ihe castle now, in a wide carpeted circur room, the walls alternatiween tall doors and hanging tapestries depig all kinds of ses apparently plucked from different parts of Gunmaze. Luke had been eyeing the twins sihey stepped inside, and now that it was clear the versation didn’t have an ending point in sight, he sighed and turo Gradie.

  “All right, guess I’m gonna have to try and expin. So I think it’s in there,” he poiowards one of the tall doors that looked more like an airlock than a castle portcullis.

  “Yeah, that’s it, sorry,” Nova said, while Angel was still in the middle of a sentence. Despite the interruption, Angel didn’t look put off, but instead smiled smugly at the back of Nova’s head as they moved towards the airlock.

  “So the mirror room is pretty user friendly. It’s gonna show you a bunch of options and you arrow them down. Pretty much just like creating a character in an RPG.”

  Angel’s smile vanished, but Nova tinued

  “If you have any questions just call em out and the announcer will help you.”

  “All right bro, get in there!” Luke yelled with moguish. “I’m ready to blow shit up!”

  Gradie looked at the airlock, and it slid open on its own. A childish excitement fluttered in his stomach. The windows fnking the door showed other crafts and stations rotating around the swirling mass of Gunmaze, and small lights in singles and swarms dropped to the surface. It felt alive, active. Millions of them. A dreamworld MMO. The kind of game he had always dreamed about but had proved to be just beyond possibility.

  The rest of him tried to beat down the feeling, now more vihahat Gunmaze would be a waste of time, made of the same cheesy escapism as that navy seal revenge sim he had seen advertised on the ball. But maybe that’s what he needed. Despite the thousand other hims he had inhabited sihe job, he still couldn’t shake the feeling that the ime he would wake up in a burning warehouse, Sam’s corpse staring at him with dead weeping eyes.

  When the first spirit met the sed, it's said they asked each other, want to py a game? ime, some izatio episode, Mirror Room.