Ultraviolet Ultraviolence

  Their footsteps were as stant and uured as the rest of it, increasing in volume like someone was slowly moving a slider on some unseen soundbradie heard them stop and shuffle then move, stop again and shuffle, then move again, and got the rhythm. They were cheg the other rooms, only taking about two seds to do so. Either they were really good, or…

  Oepped in through the doorway with an ultra light hop, twisting in mid air as he did, taking advantage of the worlds light gravity and cartoon physics to get the full s of the room iion. Maybe ah of a sed after Gradie saw him, the boung blue man was aiming right at him.

  Unfortunately for Mr. Blue, the motion had bee, probably sometime on the previous floor, just a mindless movement with barely any iion, and he didn’t start shooting until Gradie had shot him three times.

  After about the sed shot, Gradie saw why Mr. Blue was so rexed. He had a shotgun in his hands. He pulled the trigger without even looking up and the bst caught Gradie in his left arm and knocked him back against the wall. Before the bst had registered in Gradie’s head, Mr. Blue had flown backwards out the door, propelled by a single paomp.

  A single shotgun shell floated through the air and bounced on the ground, looking like a stray piece of blue sidewalk chalk. Gradie saw without taking his eyes off his sight that his left arm was pletely white, a dappled texture out of p the uniformity of everything else, and about half a sed ter, he recalled that Mr.Blue had also turned white on his chest before he had retreated.

  “You good bro?” Nova asked on the s.

  “Yeah. Fug shotgun guy. He’s still in here.” In his panicked adrenal state, Gradie had actally said it all out loud. He hoped for a moment that the enemy hadn’t heard, but then a sed ter,

  “Ha ha, fug shotgun guy gon your ass bitch!” from out in the hall.

  The strangeness of hearing another human voi this inhuman pne of existetled Gradie’s mind like a sudden siess. The guy sounded like something off the TV, and it took Gradie a moment to realize it was because he had a slight northern at he wasn’t used to hearing. Which meant the Spirit he had just shot was from some far northern state, noorted via a straral proje to a dream game Gradie was fearful of losing. The idea that here he could run into anyone from anywhere in the world shot through him like a current, terrifying aig, and the slow ice bath realization that every crayon colored humanoid in this pce was a living breathing soul washed over him in a strange, indescribable way.

  Then Angel spoke, and added to the weirdness.

  “Sit tight. I’m trying to get to you.”

  Gradie’s existentially agitated mind zeroed in on the fact that Angel was also someone very real with a life outside this iherworld, and that if they saw each other there, in the Real, there would be nnition.

  Before he could think too much more about it, another voice sounded off.

  “Bye bye mother fucker!”

  This time it was a gravely smoker’s voice without any at that he could detect, followed by a k sound that took a moment for his ear to identify.

  It was a grenade uhe baseball sized yellow orb sailed through the door and bounced off the far wall then rolled into the ter of the room. It felt like ages watg it roll, and just about the time Gradie got the idea that he could pick it up and toss it out the door, it went off.

  The bst was a white fsh with big blue fa the edges, and even at a distance of five feet with Gradie pressed into the er of the room, he took damage, the lower part of his legs turning a spackled white.

  “They have grenades,” he said, this time only on s, managing to imagine his headset activating.

  “Shit!” Nova said.

  “Throw em back bro!” Luke offered. Gradie ughed through his teeth, but then Angel gave him an idea.

  “If the grenade rounds impact a surface after less than a sed of flight time, it goes on a timer.”

  At about the same time, the sed grenade bounced off the far wall and rolled into the room. This time Gradie dove to the ter of the room with a low g glide and snatched it in his left hand, a motion that was unnaturally easy, as if his avatar had mags in its gloves.

  As he wound up to throw it out the door, a question caught up to him and broke out into the s.

  “How long?”

  “Two seds,” Angel said gravely.

  The grenade had just cleared the doorway when it went off.

  “fug shit!”

  It was Mr. Blue. Rather than wait for yellow guy to unradie stepped out through the door way in a practiced motion, aiming to the left at first while hugging the right wall, but after seeing nothing but bare hallway, springing out the doorway with his rifle aimed to the right down the hall.

  There was a yellow guy two feet from him. He started firing at his head, and after three head shots the guy pulled the trigger on his grenade uncher. Luckily, he had been aiming through the door and his first rou inside and bounced harmlessly. The on cycled, and the barrel snapped over tradie’s stomach just before the fourth and st headshot turned yellow man into a white fsh.

  It was about that time that Gradie noticed that Mr. Blue was not the only other person in the hallway. An e guy was squatting dowo him with a shotgun, with two ures formed up behind him, and a red figure holding something long and thin was halfway down the hall

  “Shit.” Gradie dove bato the room, fortunately a sliver of a sed after the grenade went off.

  The hallway behind him erupted with fire, a right bato his er and aimed at the door.

  “There’s like fug five of em!” he thought on the s. The wall o his head made a strange sound and started crag. They were shooting through it.

  Then the shooti up, slightly, and a strange sound, like a saw roar softened by an old ies teo dj into something more musical echoed down the hall.

  “Mother fucker!” yelled Mr. Blue, and his shotgun boomed.

  There was a sound like the saw was being swung through the air, and the erminated in a k like a hollow pipe hitting crete but with more reverb, then something shot ihe room, leaving a glowing green trail behind it.

  Angel rolled over in a mid air summersault and nded in the far er, staring daggers at the wall o Gradie, a glowing green sword in his hand.

  “Shoot that wall!” he said in the s, as Gradie watched his scowl tighten. Gradie turned his gun on the crag wall and opened up with his AR.

  “Wide circle!” Angel advised, and Gradie made a wide circur motion with his barrel, crag the entire surface of the blue wall in dark seemingly drawn on cracks.

  Then, suddenly, the shooting stopped. Gradie looked down and realized the bolt was locked open. For a moment, he saw the grey whisp of gunsmoke and the shadowed steel of an AR a, but the vision only sted until his eyes pleted their arc downwards, and then he was looking at a red pstic quasi-firearm with a dark pit of shadow iop.

  “Uh, what—” He thought on the s.

  “Mag on your chest!” Angel replied, the forward and swiped the wall with his sword in a single sudden motion that made Gradie jump back. The bde glowed neon green as it arced and made the same saw roar turned into a teo chord sound Gradie had heard earlier, and the wall exploded outward in a burst ments.

  Suddenly, he saw the crayon hued figures waiting out in the hall, and his panic triggered a practiced motion in his mind.

  “Reloading.” This time, he said it out loud in a low tone quiet enough to hide under gu loud enough to be picked up by the teams earbuds, had they been in a Hardworld, and snatched a magazine off the magpou his chest, which he had not till then noticed, and reloaded, only absently taking hat aical magazine appeared in the empty slot on his pouch a sed ter.

  Angel apparently didn’t give a shit to wait fradie to reload or even if he was there at all. Befradie had gotten the word ‘reloading’ out, one of the figures exploded into white at the ter of a neon green sword swipe. Others fired, and Angel did something that made Gradie’s chest pang with that jealous sensation of watg someone py a game that you havnt had the moo buy yet.

  He swiped into the ground, and the bde made that same eleic metal pipe on crete noise and unched himself up at the ceiling. He rolled midair in anraceful somersault and paused with his feet on the ceiling as if gravity was now a thing he trolled, and sliced downward and another ourned white and exploded, then he kicked off the ceiling, rolled into a crou the ground, and swiped up samurai style and the lone figure left standing near him vanished in a burst of white.

  “Multikill! Holy Shit!” Nova yelled on the s.

  “Fuck!” the red guy at the end of the hall yelled, and aimed his sniper. Angel swiped the flain and unched himself diagonal across the hall and disappeared into another room. The sniper fired and the red beam missed him by a mile but zipped just inches above Gradie’s head.

  “Shit!” Gradie opened up with his AR, but the sook two hits before stepping into a nearby doorway, being just half of a red fad a long barrel peeking out from the frame. Gradie kept firing, but the sniper went off anyway, its red neon beam screaming in the air as he stepped sideways.

  A green blur shot out of the other door and Angel bounced down the hall right towards the sniper. Another red beam bzed through the air and then there was a neon fsh as Angel cut him down.

  “That’s gotta get on the reels!” Nova ughed on the s.

  “Any more e in?” Angel asked.

  “Nah, that should be it,” Nova said. “There’s a big cluster fuck at the other er so you should be clear up to the pad.”

  “Alright. Hey Gradie, e here.” Angel motioned him over hastily. Gradie bounced down the hall to where Angel was standing, passing two open doors on the way that he cleared as best he could.

  “There’s no one in there, e on.” Angel sounded annoyed, almost panicked, and when Gradie got to him he hurried ihe room and poio the wall.

  “Put your hand on that!”

  Gradie just looked at it.

  “It’ll heal you, e on put your hand on it!”

  Gradie put his hand on the red wall, and after a few seds his arm up to his elbow seemed pletely invisible. Then the color flowed up his arm and spread to the rest of him. It took about five seds for all the white to turn back to red.

  “Woulda been o know that before the game started!” he ughed.

  “Sorry. We fot.” Angel said stiffly.

  “No, I meant the game narrator or whatever.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Let’s go.”

  Gradie followed him down the hall, up the stairs, out onto the roof of the building, which was flush with the level of the terrad ected by a short bridge. They took the bridge across and headed for a squat building with a wide opening like a Mexi street shop and a pulsing glow i was a white pad, much like the ones boung around other pyers out in the big area behind them, but with a steady white light and poiraight up to a skylight. Aepped on and shot upward, and Gradie followed.

  They nded softly on the end of one of the long pier like structures Gradie had seen spread around the massive open space. At the other end was a circur ptfed with machicotions, with an angled color-ging unch pad at the ter.

  Out in the main open space, the fight was still raging, but did seem clustered, as Nova had said, in a far distant er, where colored silhouettes bounced and flew, and suddenly something like a roman dle shot through the air.

  “Oh fuck, they found a rocket uncher. Must be fighting over it.” Angel said. That reminded Gradie.

  “Where’d you get the sword?”

  “On a pedestal, behind a mirror. You have to shoot your refle, then its like a mini game where your refle is shooting at you and you have to take him out.”

  There ause as Angel looked over at him, but Gradie couldn’t read anything in his monoatic goggled face.

  “It didn’t take that long,” he added.

  “Ok, youre clear, e on!” Nova shouted on the line. “Its almost there!”

  They sprinted down to the ptform and Aopped at the pad and sliced into the blocks supp it. Part of it shattered, and the pad, ongled out towards the open spad another dock about a hundred yards away, was now fag almost vertically, which arently what Angel was after. He sliced again and the pad was pletely ft on the ground. Angel looked up in the air and pointed.

  “That’s where we’re going.”

  The blocks supp the big crystal on thing up on the ring were about fifty feet above them, moving along the circur track.

  “I’ll go first, then you get on and it’ll unch you when it turns red.” Aepped onto the pad and it turned fre to yellow. The pause gave Gradie the ce to think about how ridiculous his situation was, not just the standing here waiting for a blinking light to send him flying, but also the fact that he was deep is of some overstructured gameworld when he could be tripping through realities. Was this really the best the Other had to offer?

  “You’re just g because you got your ass kicked in that white room,” his own voice said, snaking out of the silence. Before he could respond, the light ged from yellow to green and Angel went flying. He watched him sail upward, seeming to hover in the air he bck rail, then slowly nd on it, and it occurred to Gradie that he might not be able to duplicate the movement.

  He stepped onto the pad, and something bounced on the long pier behind him. Before he could look back, it exploded.

  “Shit, I got him!” Nova said. Gradie crouched down and looked around, but there was only still shadowed blocks of color. Nova’s e sniper beam fshed towards some recess iall buildings ringing the top level above him, and the ptform at his feet zily ged from green to blue, then from blue to purple, and Gradie tried to vince himself that this ointless and he didn’t care if he died a sed time and got sent back to the duel room.

  But by the time the bright pad shifted from purple to red, he had to admit it. He was hooked.

  There's nothing like a melee kill. ime, get to higher ground. episode, Refle.