Chapter 1
“Edgar, Mack, lay down cover fire. Ronnie, move across the open area when he’s got it suppressed and take over. Dan, need you to dash up the stairs as soon as you can and give top cover. On three. One, two, three . . .”
Lynn took prone with Edgar standing and started pouring 6.8 fire down the main lobby of the Chattanooga Convention Center.
The Possessed returned fire but it was slacking. They seemed to be running out of ammo. Which was good because so were Skadi’s Wolves.
Ronnie darted across the lobby to the doors at the front. If the group flanked them, he could get hit from the outside and he’d be in a bad spot. But the Possessed didn’t seem to want to leave the building.
He made it to position and started firing down the lobby.
“Reloading!” Edgar shouted, dropping the box from his Squad Automatic Weapon. Mack leaned in and started the reload.
“Wait for reload, Dan,” Lynn commed.
“Got it,” he replied. “I’m in position. Gonna be a hell of a run.”
“You can do it,” Lynn said. “Make the angle as fast as you can.”
“Firing!”
“I’ve got TDMs coming in!” Ronnie shouted. “I need fire!”
“Mack!” Lynn replied.
Mack, the only one currently armed for TDMs, took a knee and launched a barrage of Dark Energy bolts from his energy bow. The Ghosts were coming right through the sunlit glass windows fronting the Center. Not that it was necessary since most of the doors were broken from the fighting.
“Go, Dan!” Lynn said as she finished her own reload.
Dan darted out of cover and made a record on the fifty-meter dash to the escalator. Because it was around the corner he was mostly out of sight from the Possessed as he pounded up the long immobile stairs.
Once up there he took a covered position and started servicing the Possessed.
As their opponents started to drop, Lynn assessed the situation.
“Edgar, get ready to fall back,” she said.
“Not until you go,” Edgar said.
“Come on, Edgar! I’m faster than you are. Move when I tell you!”
“Listen to the Boss,” Mack said. “The Boss is wise . . .”
“Edgar, go!” Lynn shouted.
With a “hmmph” the big Samoan hoisted his SAW and began humping to the escalator.
“Give us cover fire when you get up top!” Lynn shouted as she reloaded. She was down to two mags. They really needed to find some ammo. And it didn’t sound like most of their opponents had much.
As soon as the SAW started barking she waved to Ronnie.
“Move!”
“Oscar Mike,” he replied, pulling out of position and loping across the lobby, headed for cover.
“Mack! Get ready! We’re pulling out together.”
“Got it,” Mack said. “I’ve got the Ghosts suppressed but there’s more coming.”
“Worry about Ghosts later,” Lynn said. As soon as she heard Ronnie’s fire coming from upstairs, she gestured. “Our turn!”
Lynn reached the top of the escalators with her stamina bar dropping like a rock.
“We need ammo!” Ronnie said.
No shit, she thought.
“Copy,” Lynn replied. “Check these side rooms as we cross.”
At the top of the escalators was a large gathering area, then a flyover that led to the Marriott. On the left side of the flyover were windows, mostly broken. On the right side were doors, presumably leading to rooms.
The way things were going, rooms filled with either TDMs or Possessed.
“Pull back,” Lynn said. “Check the rooms.”
The first door was locked and they didn’t have access keys. The second was broken in.
And lo and behold not only had an ammo store but med kits and food.
“Jackpot!” Mack yelled. “Oh, blue food, lovely blue food!”
“Leave some for the rest of us,” Dan yelled. “And we still have company!”
Lynn picked up a case of SAW ammo and ran it to Edgar’s position.
“That should help with the company,” Lynn said.
“Oh, yeah,” Edgar said as Lynn dropped to the prone next to him and reloaded his SAW.
With the additional ammo, meaning he didn’t have to be careful with his fire, he terminated the rest of the Possessed with extreme prejudice.
“Ronnie, keep watch, Dan, Mack, Edgar, take everything not nailed down,” Lynn said.
“Just me to watch?” Ronnie said, angrily.
“No,” Lynn said. “I’m still here. Right?”
“Sure,” Ronnie snapped.
“What’s eating you now?” Lynn asked over their private channel.
“That you keep putting me in the spot of maximum danger?” Ronnie said. “Having me run across the open area when we barely had them suppressed? Leaving me to be almost the last one out?”
“Because you’re the best guy in the squad, Ronnie,” Lynn said. “You’re the one most likely to survive.”
Next to me, she carefully didn’t add.
“Sure,” Ronnie said. “More like you’re trying to get me killed.”
Lynn rolled her eyes but didn’t reply, just kept watch as the other three hooted and hollered over all the cool loot they were finding.
“Guys, hurry it up,” Lynn said. “We need to find a safe point by dusk. Not tomorrow.”
“Working on it,” Edgar said. “But there’s a bunch of stuff to pick up.”
“Well, if there’s 6.8 it’s mine and Ronnie’s,” Lynn said.
“Here you go,” Edgar said, transferring rounds to her inventory. “Might want to reload.”
“Done,” Lynn said.
“You’re full of it too, Ronnie,” Dan said, transferring 6.8mm penetrator and explosive ammo to his inventory.
“Screw you, Dan,” Ronnie said. “There’d better be more food. My health meter is low.”
“Food, lovely blue food,” Mack said, transferring same to Ronnie’s inventory. “All the blue food gel you could need, want or desire. There’s more than we can carry.”
“Nice to finally see a decent cache,” Ronnie said, grumpily.
“Dan, Mack, Edgar, hold this point while we go fill our inventories,” Lynn said.
They both entered the room and picked over the remaining loot. Ronnie picked up some grenade launcher ammo as well. They hadn’t found one of those, yet, but it might come in handy in the future.
When they were done they exited and joined the team.
“Suggestions,” Lynn said. They weren’t currently under fire, so it was worth taking the time for input.
“Use the cache for our safe point,” Dan said.
“You just want to eat more blue gel,” Ronnie said.
“Blue gel is the best gel,” Dan pointed out.
“Mack?” Lynn said.
“Cache,” he said.
“Edgar?”
“We’ve got sun for a while. Staying here doesn’t get us closer to the objective. Keep moving.”
“Ronnie?”
“Keep moving,” Ronnie said.
“We’re moving,” Lynn said. “What Edgar said. Ronnie, point. Edgar, me, Dan, Mack. Watch the glass area. There might be issues. Move fast. Ready? Go.”
Ronnie started trotting across the flyway followed by Edgar and the rest of the squad. When they were about halfway across, Edgar suddenly jerked sideways and his armor flared damaged.
“I’m hit!” Edgar yelled.
“Sniper!”
“Dan!” Lynn said, continuing across the fire zone.
Dan took position at one of the support beams, giving him full cover, and started scanning the rooftops across the street.
“I don’t got him!” he shouted.
As soon as Edgar was across the flyover and had cover he pointed the SAW around the corner and started laying down fire in the general direction of the roof.
“He’s not on the roof,” Ronnie said looking out one of the side windows. “He’s in the building. Third window from the left.” He shot twice. “And so much for needing a sniper.”
“Leave some for the rest of us,” Dan said. “Is it clear?”
“We’ll know when you stand up,” Mack said, a grin in his voice.
“Oscar Mike,” Dan said.
“And now I’m down on SAW ammo,” Edgar said. “We could go back and get more . . . ?”
“Keep moving,” Lynn said. “Down escalator this time. Sweep the area first.”
Restaurant, bar, few more health and food packs. No ammo repair material for Edgar and no more ammo.
“Down the escalator,” Lynn said. “Ronnie.”
“Why do I always have to be point?” he grumbled.
“Let’s move,” Lynn replied.
There was no more fire on the way down the escalator and no enemies apparent on the ground floor. It was almost without incident until . . .
“What the hell?” Mack said, facedown on the floor. “I did not go prone! Why am I prone?”
“I think you just tripped,” Lynn said, laughing.
“I hate this game!” Mack said, as his avatar stood up. “How the hell do you trip in a game?!”
“’Cause you’re clumsy?” Dan said.
“My freaking leg is showing injured!” Mack said. “I am not taking a med pack for tripping!”
“You are if you’re slowing down our movement,” Dan said.
A notification pinged in Lynn’s ear. It was from her mom.
Lynn, you asked me to remind you when it got late. Early day tomorrow.
Okay, Mom, she messaged back. “Guys, it’s been fun, but we’ve got a lot of work to do tomorrow. Time to bug out.
“Ugh, fine,” Mack said. “We need a safe point, though.”
“There’s a niche around the corner here,” Dan said.
“Assemble there,” Lynn said. “We’ll continue to the objective next time.”
“This is why we should have stopped at the cache,” Dan said.
“You just want more blue food,” Mack replied.
“Good game, guys,” Lynn said, getting her avatar situated. “See you tomorrow.” She exited the new TransDimensional Hunter-themed crossover mode WarMonger had just dropped and took off her AR glasses to rub her eyes. As usual, going from the immersive in virtual world of WarMonger back to her quiet, dark bedroom was a bit of an adjustment.
“The world ended in a tidal wave of TransDimensional Monsters destroying the power grid, wiping out electronics and killing by what people called the ‘Ghost Touch,’ then possessing the dead who rose as TD Zombies.
“In the hellish aftermath, survivors battled not only the invisible TDMs but each other as well, desperate to find some safe haven, some food, some shelter against the thousand-year night.”
That was the ad copy for the new WarMonger TD Hunter mode, anyway. What it came down to was fighting people and TDMs with WarMonger sets and engine.
Lynn cracked her neck and stretched out her back.
“Man, it’s so much easier to fight when it’s just electrons,” she muttered, standing up and grimacing at the thought of her butt-crack-of-dawn workout she had to look forward to in the morning.
* * *
Whoever invented running was evil.
Like, really evil.
“Freaking—hate this—kill me—now.”
“That’s the spirit, Miss Lynn. It is always good to start your day with a positive mindset.”
Lynn Raven would have liked to call Hugo, the TD Hunter service AI running her exercise scenario, a great many vulgar names. But she was too busy using her air to stay upright and conscious, and had none to spare putting her sarcastic AI in its place.
“Only thirty more seconds until your cooldown.”
Lynn gritted her teeth and strictly commanded her legs to keep pumping. It wasn’t as bad as usual, since she was on a treadmill in the apartment complex weight room. She preferred running outside, but the cold weather and aggressive flocks of paparazzi drones had conspired against her. Normally there were only one or two drones, if that, especially during the winter months. But mere days ago, she had led a group of twenty-two TransDimensional Hunter teams to destroy a massive TD boss in their area, and they had streamed most of the fight on the mesh web.
It had apparently been quite the viewing experience.
Streams and gaming forums all over the mesh web were in an uproar about “General RavenStriker” and her horde of hunters. Clips of it had gone viral on multiple platforms. Lynn had even gathered enough courage to watch some of it herself and had to admit it looked pretty impressive. The TD Hunter augmented reality overlay was otherworldly. Truly groundbreaking and next generation.
It all looked so . . . real.
But that was probably just because the camera view was coming from an actual person physically swinging, jumping, and rolling to fight the augmented overlay TD Monsters.
Which was why she was up at the crack of dawn doing the thing she hated most in the entire world.
Well . . . maybe second most hated thing. The first would be doing interviews, which was sucky because GIC, her PR company, was receiving more and more requests. So many that she really couldn’t keep refusing them all. She’d embarked on this quest to win the TD Hunter International Championship to earn money for her and her mom and ensure a future for herself. And interviews absolutely made her money.
“Well done, Miss Lynn!” Hugo chirped in her earbud. “You have successfully completed your Stamina Booster workout!”
The treadmill slowed from its sprint pace, and Lynn grabbed the handles on either side to hold herself up as the muscles in her legs finally gave her the middle finger and ceased functioning. She’d been doing a HIIT routine—High Intensity Interval Training—that the TD Hunter app had in its extensive database of fitness resources. According to her ER nurse mother, Matilda, they were very well-designed exercise regimens, and since Lynn didn’t want to do any of them anyway, having a program lead her through them was easier than trying to keep track of it all herself.
Of course, the bigger question was why, in the name of all that was holy, was she doing HIIT training at seven in the morning during her senior year spring break.
She had considered the possibility that she was a masochist, otherwise known as a workout junkie. But she really didn’t enjoy working out. There was no high afterwards or a glowing sense of accomplishment. Just lots of groaning and foul curses under her breath.
What she did crave, though, was being able to breathe while fighting TDMs, and stamina was built by one thing and one thing only: exercise. And exercises only worked as well as the effort you put into them. Lynn wasn’t a workout junkie, she just hated wasting effort, so there wasn’t much point in taking a vacation from her normal workouts only to make it harder on herself when she got back to them.
The treadmill finally got down to walking speed and Lynn drank water while she did her cooldown circuit. Hugo rattled off her workout numbers, from heart rate to calories burned, to peak records in time and distance. The AI was annoyingly supportive and chipper about it all, probably because the collected wisdom of the mesh web informed it of the benefits of a positive attitude. It was wasted effort on Hugo’s part, though, because the day she felt anything positive toward running was the day she bleached her hair and tried out for her school’s cheerleading team. Instead of informing Hugo of that fact, Lynn simply mopped her face with a sleeve and tried to enjoy the fact that she no longer wanted to stab herself in the face.
That was what she got for aspiring to be the world-class champion of an augmented-reality game. Playing virtual reality games felt oddly lame by comparison.
Well, maybe not WarMonger.
Lynn smiled at the thought, remembering her latest conquests as the Tier One mercenary Larry Coughlin. WarMonger didn’t give her the same full-body satisfaction that a day of hunting TDMs did, but there was something uniquely delectable in proving her superior skill, tactics, and sheer ferocity in a first-person shooter game like WarMonger.
It was also a frustrating but unavoidable fact that Larry Coughlin was respected in ways that Lynn Raven never would be, no matter how many competitions she won. Part of that was her age, of course. It was natural that a grizzled war vet would garner more respect than a fresh-faced teenager. But the main factor that she’d experienced over and over in her years gaming was the resistance to seeing girls as serious and capable gamers.
Most guys, and even a lot of girls, simply didn’t respect a female gamer the way they respected a male one, no matter how skilled the female was. It made her fantasize sometimes about revealing that Lynn was Larry and Larry was Lynn, just to see the proverbial jaws drop across the mesh web. It would truly blow people’s minds—at least for those who believed her. A significant subset of the gaming population would write it off as a hoax, even with evidence to the contrary. Some people simply had no desire to challenge their assumptions. It was human nature, and she couldn’t change it, so she tried not to dwell on it. She refused to let bitterness or resentment take a single iota of energy away from her achieving her goals.
So, instead of getting worked up about the stupidity of human nature, she simply enjoyed playing Larry when she could, and focused on pushing herself to the very top of her game in TD Hunter.
To that end, she had some tactical data to review from her recent “Operation Boss Bash,” so she needed to take a shower and get to it. Just because it was spring break and most high school seniors were on a beach in Panama City didn’t mean she and her Skadi’s Wolves TD Hunter team got to take a break. They had to use every spare moment to train and hunt in order to reach Level 40 by mid-June.
Despite the workout from hell she’d just finished, her heart rate picked up again at the thought of the championship, drawing ever closer. She tamped down on the thread of anxiety that came with it and focused on the here and now.
She couldn’t let future distractions ruin her present performance. That was a rookie mistake in gaming.
“Thanks for the pep talk, Hugo,” Lynn said, now that she’d regained most of her lung capacity. “I’d be happier if you’d just stop torturing me, but I guess it’s good you say nice things about me while committing crimes against humanity. You win the prize for world’s most polite sadist.”
“Drama and exaggeration do not become you, Miss Lynn.”
“Oh, darn, and here I was hoping for your undying approval. I’m crushed, Hugo. Truly crushed.”
“Sarcasm is hardly better,” Hugo said primly.
“Just following your example.”
“I beg your pardon? When have I ever—”
“Don’t even finish that thought, smarty-pants. I like my eyeballs where they are, thanks, and they won’t stay put with how hard I’ll be rolling them if you try to deny what a snarky little bastard you are.”
The AI did not reply, and Lynn grinned at the thought of it grumbling and muttering to itself.
She dismounted the treadmill and grabbed her water bottle, compact TD Counterforce backpack, and heavy jacket on her way to the door. With the backpack on and the hood of the jacket up, she dashed across her apartment complex’s main courtyard, hoping to reach her apartment building without being subjected to flybys from nosey drones trying to dip down and get a shot of her face.
Honestly, Lynn thought paparazzi drones should be outlawed. But the culture’s obsession with gossip combined with free market capitalism ensured that would never happen.
She made it back through her building’s automatic doors without any mishaps and flipped back her hood as she headed for the elevator. Yes, the stairs were a healthier option, but her legs felt like wet noodles boiled so long they’d started to disintegrate. So, the elevator it was.
“Good morning, Lynn, how are you today?”
Lynn turned, a smile lighting up her face at the sight of her downstairs neighbor, Jerald Thomas, coming toward her leaning on his cane for support.
“Hi, Jerald! My workout tried to kill me, but I’m still alive. So, good, I guess?”
“Ah, the joys of youth. Just wait until you get to be my age, young lady. You will long for the days when something as simple as getting out of bed did not result in multiple minor injuries.”
A snort escaped her and Lynn shook her head.
“Come on, it can’t be that bad.”
“I am not cruel, so I will not shatter your illusions, my dear. Let us just say that growing old is not for the faint of heart.”
They shared another smile and Lynn stepped away from the elevator, offering her arm to Mr. Thomas for him to lean on while she walked him back to his apartment door. She knew how much his daily walks meant to him, and how much the cold made his bones ache. Since she was up early most mornings for a pre-school workout, she was used to running into Mr. Thomas on his daily circuit of their apartment building. He always asked her about school and how her TD Hunter training was going. He’d even started watching a few gaming streams to keep up with news about Skadi’s Wolves—much to her embarrassment. But he just chuckled and waved off her awkwardness, saying that “all the drama” made him feel young.
They chatted about her recent successful Boss Bash, and he made her laugh with his incredulous descriptions of her athletic feats, as if he’d forgotten that the human body was even capable of such spryness. Jerald was always polite, interested, and supportive of her endeavors, even though she’d had no time for months to drop by and bring him some of her mom’s homemade taco pizza or sit and play a hand of cards with him. He didn’t seem to mind. Lynn couldn’t help but think that if anyone needed a lesson in what it looked like to be a decent human being, they need look no further than Mr. Thomas.
Once she’d seen him to his door, she wobbled back to the elevator and headed up to her apartment, her mind singularly focused on the blessedly hot shower waiting for her.
Her focus was shattered by a ping notification on her earbuds, and she pulled up her LINC message list on her AR glasses. She didn’t always wear them during her workouts, but she tried to at least half the time, since she had to be able to fight TDMs in them with ease and fluidity.
When Lynn saw who had pinged her she almost choked.
Voice call request from: Robert Krator.
Had she done something wrong? Had her recent boss victory broken some TD Hunter rule she didn’t know about? Why else would Robert freaking Krator, CEO of Tsunami, be casually pinging her at eight o’clock in the morning? If it was something mundane, he had employees for that kind of thing, didn’t he?
She was too sweaty and exhausted to focus on an important conversation, so she responded to the request with simple text:
Sorry, Mr. Krator, just finished a workout. Can I ping you after I take a shower?
Sure. And it’s Robert.
Lynn smiled, anxiety fading a little.
Got it. Get back to you in a bit.
She took an only-slightly-shorter-than-normal scalding hot shower, because Mr. Krator might be a billionaire, but she wasn’t capable of more than surface politeness without a certain amount of time to decompress under a pounding shower spray. Her apartment complex was only middling quality, but the water pressure was top-notch.
When she got out, her mom was busy fixing bacon and eggs for breakfast. Matilda Raven worked night shifts at St. Sebastian’s Memorial Hospital in downtown Cedar Rapids, so this was dinner for her and she insisted on eating together as often as schedules allowed.
“Be ready in five minutes, honey,” Matilda called.
“Okay, Mom. I need to call someone real quick, but it shouldn’t take long.”
Lynn went and hid in her room, making sure the door was firmly closed, before taking a deep breath and selecting the callback option on the voice request from Mr. Krator. She sat on the bed and began braiding her wet hair as she waited for it to pick up.
“Good morning, Lynn. I hope you’re enjoying spring break so far?”
“Um, yeah, I guess?” Lynn said, grimacing.
“Too busy to enjoy your just deserts, is it?”
“More or less.”
“I remember my senior year spring break. I made an ill-fated trip to Miami Beach on the advice of a friend. He was convinced it would change my life.”
“Er, did it?” Lynn couldn’t help asking.
“Yes . . . but not in the way he’d imagined,” Mr. Krator said ruefully, and Lynn wasn’t brave enough to pry further. “I would say I’m surprised you’re working out during a school break, but then I’ve seen what you do, both in TD Hunter and WarMonger. You’re a dedicated person, Lynn, a commendable quality that few have these days.”
“Th-thank you, M— I mean Robert.” Lynn could have slapped herself for tripping over her words. It wasn’t as if Mr. Krator hadn’t asked to speak to her before. He’d been the one to personally invite her to beta test TD Hunter in the first place, after all.
“That’s why I was hoping you’d be willing to go a step further and do something unique to help promote TD Hunter—with compensation, of course.”
“Uh . . . sure?”
Mr. Krator chuckled. “Wait till you hear what it is, Lynn.”
“Yes, that’s what I meant. So . . . what is it?”
“Well, we have a variety of marketing strategies promoting TD Hunter to the public as well as our current player base for all Tsunami games. As I’m sure you’ve seen, we frequently invite star players and stream influencers to do promos and sponsorships. There has been a particularly stubborn subset of WarMonger players that seem to enjoy mocking TD Hunter as ‘lame’ because of the augmented aspect, while discounting the mental and physical health benefits of gaming in the real. WarMonger players as a general customer base are a close target audience for TD Hunter, so I’d like to hire Larry Coughlin to promote TD Hunter to help win over that player segment.”
Lynn nearly swallowed her tongue.
“W-what? You want me to do what?”
“Well, it doesn’t have to be you personally, I suppose. After all, Steve Riker and some of my other employees have been doing an admirable job of keeping Larry involved and current despite your busy schedule.”
Lynn gulped. Mr. Krator must have heard it, because he chuckled again.
“Don’t worry, Lynn. Steve cleared the plan with me before he implemented it. It was a good idea, frankly. Larry Coughlin is a genuine asset to Tsunami. It’s in the best interests of the company to maintain his presence as an active and valued member of the WarMonger community.”
That made Lynn snort, and she covered her mouth with one hand.
“Sorry, I just—valued?—do you know how many players hate my guts? I do pound people into the dust for money, you know.”
Mr. Krator chuckled softly.
“You’ve made your enemies, to be sure. But you are a legend in the player and fan community. Have you ever done a ‘Larry Coughlin’ search on the streams?”
“Yeah, made that mistake once,” Lynn said with a grimace. “Won’t do it again. Did you know some guy curates an open hit list that people can add fellow players to that they want to get fragged?”
“Hm, I did not. Sounds . . . pleasant.”
Lynn shrugged, then remembered Mr. Krator couldn’t see her.
“I’m sure for most people it’s all in good fun, siccing Larry the Snake on their buddies. But it’s kinda insulting, too. As if I’d waste my time killing people for free.” She mentally added unless they’re Ronnie Payne. Mr. Krator could easily look up the match data and see that she’d spent a significant amount of time over the years ruining Ronnie’s day, but there was no point drawing attention to it. She had better things to do, now, and besides, Ronnie was . . . different these days. She no longer had the urge to slap him whenever he opened his mouth—a surprising and welcome change.
“Of course not, which is why you’d be compensated for your time promoting TD Hunter—or for the use of your profile, if one of Steve’s team did it.”
Lynn squirmed; not sure she liked the idea of someone else speaking on her behalf. Because Larry was her in enough ways that doing something like that felt deceptive, as if she was selling herself, not just her skills and services.
“I mean, I could probably handle it. What, er, would it involve?” She regretted her words almost as soon as she’d said them but stubbornly ignored the feeling.
“Don’t worry, nothing difficult. The first stage would simply be to record some matches of you fighting TDMs in the WarMonger-TD Hunter crossover mode we introduced. Then we would take Larry’s likeness from WarMonger and create an augmented reality version of him for the native TD Hunter part of the ad. For that portion, it would be ideal to have you fly down to Texas and do some takes in our marketing studio so we can use that to overlay Larry’s skin onto your fighting moves. AI vid generation has come a long, long way from the early years, but it’s not perfect, so a live recording we can overlay would work best.”
“But how would that work? I’m a curvy, average-height teenage girl. Nobody would believe I’m a grizzled old guy even with an AI overlay.”
“O ye of little faith,” Mr. Krator chuckled. “The wonders of AI-generated graphics are quite jaw-dropping, but they’re still lacking in two specific areas: the fluidity and the randomness of human movement. Pure computer generation, even guided by human creative design, is too perfect, and therefore inhuman. But your stature and body shape won’t be the anchor points for the graphics. Rather, the recordings of your specific attacks, special moves, and body language are what our designers will use as input to enable custom footage to be created. In essence, we could make a promo ad using any old body double, but they would have no knowledge of how to move to look like Larry Coughlin. Using you brings accuracy and authenticity to the footage. As an added bonus, creating custom footage will put to bed all those rumors that Larry is confined to a wheelchair. Imagine how everyone will be quaking in their boots to see how dangerously competent Larry Coughlin still is.”
The amusement in Mr. Krator’s voice made Lynn relax as she thought the offer through. It wouldn’t be that bad, really. It’s not like she’d be out in public revealing her Larry Coughlin identity. All she had to do was a bit of fighting, and Tsunami’s graphics team would do the rest.
“Um, what about my, you know, secret identity? Wouldn’t people in Texas see who I was and put two and two together?”
“True, true. I trust my employees’ discretion, but if you’re worried about it, we could pull Steve and a few others from his team to handle the go-between and once you’re in your green suit and AR glasses most of your identifying features would be covered anyway. We could come up with a neutral name for the project and ensure the footage and documentation is not connected to your or Larry’s name. That way, by the time it got to the graphics department, they would have no knowledge of what stunt artist we used for the green-screen recording. But, if you’re truly concerned about it, we could use a different stunt actor.”
Lynn chewed her lip.
“Um . . . can we plan on me doing it in person but hang on to that as a backup? I’m also worried about, well, time.”
“Yes, of course. Senior year, national competition, I understand. There is something else you can do for the promotion that does not involve travel, however.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, I’d like Larry to do an interview.”
Lynn’s eyes widened.
“An interview? But—” She stopped and took a breath. He’d said no travel, so he didn’t mean in person. She had her voice modulator, and it could be audio only, so no need to freak out. “I mean, that’s, er, pretty bold, wouldn’t you say? Larry is more of a shooting kind of guy than a talking one.”
“Are you kidding me? The Snake’s quips are legendary.”
“That’s just the thing,” Lynn protested. “They’re prepared, not spontaneous. You should see my wall at home, I’ve got sticky notes all over it with perfect zingers written out and waiting to be used.”
Mr. Krator fell silent, which made Lynn nervous. Was he disappointed to see behind the mask? Just like the Wizard of Oz, she could never live up to the legend she had created.
“I mean, they’re not fake or anything,” she hurried to add. “I had to do a ton of research to figure out the perfect phrasing, military lingo, local pronunciations, and all that. It’s just . . . I’m not Larry. I’ve never traveled the world. I’ve never fought in any wars. I’ve never, well, killed anyone, obviously. So . . . I don’t think an interview will, um, be as amazing as people think it will be.” Her voice turned squeaky at the end of her sentence, and she cleared her throat.
There was more silence, which made her nerves hum. But when Mr. Krator spoke again he didn’t sound disappointed, or angry, or even bothered.
“Thank you for your honesty, Lynn. I don’t think it will be the problem you imagine it to be, though. You are welcome to help craft the interview to ensure the questions are the sorts of things you feel comfortable answering as Larry. And I suspect you get much more into Larry’s head when you play WarMonger than even you would admit. Surely you don’t need a brand-new quip for every situation? Everybody has pet phrases and familiar idioms they fall back on. We could even do a mock interview beforehand to help you get comfortable in the role.”
Lynn hesitated. It wasn’t something she wanted to do, though a small part of her grinned evilly and rubbed its hands together at the thought of getting to growl cranky threats at the entire gaming community at once, instead of just her opponents in a match. She wondered if the interview would bleep out cuss words to keep it family friendly.
“Who would be the interviewer?” she asked, curiosity piqued, despite herself.
“One of the heads of our marketing department,” Mr. Krator said. “He’s a WarMonger player himself and a huge fan of yours. He was salivating at the idea of interviewing you, and is aware that he will have to stick faithfully to the agreed upon questions so as not to get on the Snake’s ‘naughty’ list.”
Lynn laughed. Oh, the joys of mercing.
“I’ll . . . think about it, if that’s okay? I’m interested, but I . . . I don’t want to let you down, er, Robert. Maybe we could start with recording virtual ad footage in WarMonger, then I could take a look at the proposed interview questions and we’ll go from there?”
“Sounds like a plan, Lynn. Thank you, I am in your debt, truly.”
Lynn felt her face heat and she was doubly glad they weren’t on a video call.
“You aren’t, Robert. I should be thanking you. TD Hunter is all I’ve ever wanted—well, minus the sunburn and mosquitos and rabid paparazzi drones. I’m grateful that I can do what I love and what I’m good at to help support my family and, well, build a future for myself. You know?”
“I do, and I’m thrilled Tsunami can provide you that opportunity. But I am in your debt. The whole world—well, the whole gaming community, benefits from what you bring to the table. Now, you’ll be hearing from my marketing team soon, and they’ll be interacting strictly with Larry Coughlin’s profile within the WarMonger app, unless you want to give them a different point of contact outside of the app. I’ve also ensured the details of your location and identity are not accessible through the player profile my employees have access to.”
“Thank you, Robert. I appreciate it.”
“Don’t thank me yet, Lynn. Larry the Snake is going mainstream, and the more attention you draw, the greater the possibility of exposure.”
Lynn thought about it for a moment. Though the idea did give her a thrill of dread, she found she wasn’t upset by the thought. Ronnie Payne aside—that was a can of worms she had no idea how to address—she wasn’t the out-of-shape, self-conscious, closet gamer girl she’d been a year ago. She could proudly stand on her own two feet in the real and know that what she’d accomplished was extraordinary. Operation Boss Bash had proven that.
“Either way, I think we’ll make it work, Mr. Krator.”
“That’s the spirit. And it’s Robert, Lynn.”
Lynn slapped her forehead.
“Sorry, um, Robert.” She bit her lip, then spoke before she lost her nerve. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to call your hero by his first name?”
“Hero, eh?” There was a hint of amusement in Mr. Krator’s voice.
“Yeah, well, you’ve designed every single one of my favorite games. You’ve been in the industry since you were, what, sixteen?”
“Oh, younger than that, just not with tax liability.”
Lynn laughed.
“That’s exactly what I mean, though. Gaming has . . . well, I think gaming has saved my life. And probably a bunch of other people’s lives, too. And you did all that. And I can’t imagine the creativity and focus needed to create all these amazing games and build a huge, successful, international company and basically become a game-designing super-star, and—”
“I think I get the picture, Lynn, thank you.” Mr. Krator’s chuckle was a tad awkward and Lynn realized she’d been gushing. “I will point out, however, that I had an immense amount of help. And the games I’ve designed only came to fruition through the incredible talent of hundreds of other people working for years to realize our dream. So don’t get too starry-eyed. And don’t discount your own creativity and efforts.”
“I’ll try not to. Robert.” Lynn grinned. It still felt weird, but she appreciated that Mr. Krator insisted on the familiarity. It confirmed her instincts that he, his games, and his company were worthy endeavors.
“Well, don’t let me keep you, Lynn. Thanks for hearing me out. Someone from my team will be in touch soon.”
“Okay. Thanks!”
“Good luck with your training, Lynn. You’ll need it.”
Before she could ask what he meant, the voice call had been ended. She sat in the silence of her room for a minute, mulling over the conversation, until her mother called from the kitchen that she’d better come eat her bacon or there would be none left.
Lynn jumped to her feet and hurried to save her well-deserved bacon from the marauding appetite of her mother.
* * *
“It’s spring breaaak. Why are we heeere? Why am I even awake right now? It’s not even noon!”
“Shut up, Dan,” Ronnie said, a growling counterpoint to Dan’s pitiful warbling. “At least Edgar didn’t threaten you with bodily harm if you didn’t show up for training.”
“Gome on, guys—ifs not dat early,” Mack said around his last mouthful of concha pastry his mother had sent with him for breakfast. Lynn wasn’t sure if Mrs. Rios had made the pan dulche herself, but it wouldn’t have surprised her.
“No self-respecting gamer is seen before high noon if they have a choice in the matter,” Dan declared, rolling his shoulders and scratching at his back under the collar of his high-performance athletic wear.
“You know, Dan,” Edgar drawled, “you’re supposed to wash those things every couple’a uses, no matter what they say about being sweat and odor resistant.” Edgar twirled his baton between his fingers. He was the most awake of Lynn’s friends since he was used to getting up early to take care of his little siblings and work various jobs.
Dan wiggled and twisted, trying to reach a certain spot on his back while his teammates watched with raised eyebrows.
“Are you—kidding me? I’ve got—too much to do—to worry about—laundry,” Dan said between contortions.
“Don’t you all have a maid or something?” Mack asked.
“She’s a cleaning lady, not a maid, doofus. I’ve told you that a thousand times. She doesn’t do laundry—will somebody please scratch my freaking back!”
“There’s a tree right there, genius. Help yourself.”
Mack took pity on Dan and tried to find the itch while Ronnie spectated and provided scathing peanut gallery commentary.
They were gathered in a little neighborhood park in southeastern Cedar Rapids to try out their new weapons they’d achieved by killing Gyges in Operation Boss Bash, the named boss that had been parked on a utility node just north of their high school. Lynn wanted a practical view of what everyone’s new capabilities were before she made any plans for how they were going to achieve the last two Hunter levels and hit max Level 40 before mid-June, a mere ten weeks away, give or take a few days.
Oh, and she had to make sure they left time to pass their senior finals and graduate high school while they were at it.
Fun, fun, fun.
They were blessedly drone-free since they hadn’t gone to any of their usual haunts and had gotten very good at losing the little buggers switching back and forth between air buses. As soon as they went into combat mode though and started hunting—and streaming, per Mrs. Pearson’s request—the drones’ controllers would figure out where they were posthaste.
Once live footage of their hunt started proliferating on the streams, lens junkies—fans obsessed with watching professional TD Hunter players live through the TD Hunter Lens app—would start trying to triangulate their location based on clues in the footage. Guesses would start flying back and forth in the comments, and sometimes they would be right. Then the local lens junkies would start showing up to spectate. Which was why Skadi’s Wolves tried not to spend more than an hour in any one location, unless it was particularly remote with no handy landmarks or signs around.
The “civilians,” as TD Hunter players called spectators, were annoying and distracting but almost always kept their distance. Lynn had initially been upset that TD Hunter had put out their spectator app, until she realized that people were going to spectate anyway. If they did it through the app, Hugo, as the TD Hunter service AI, could then flash dire warnings at them if they got too close, or even temporarily blind them by blanking out their view if they tried to interfere with the players.
It was a useful solution, simultaneously promoting the game and providing crowd control. It enabled Lynn and her team to ignore spectators completely, confident Hugo would handle them.
When Skadi’s Wolves didn’t livestream, it took drones and civilians much longer to find them, unless some passerby spotted them who cared enough to post about it. But streaming was what brought in the big bucks, and what sponsors were most interested in, so Mrs. Pearson insisted on it several times a week at the very least, if not once a day.
Mrs. Pearson was their extremely no-nonsense PR manager from Global Image Consulting, the company they’d hired to help Skadi’s Wolves maintain a positive and profitable public image. She and her team took care of all their communication, streaming, and social channels, and vetted all the interview and sponsorship requests. They were a godsend, and working with them had been a good opportunity for Lynn to repair bridges with her middle-school best friend, Kayla Swain, whose stepdad was CEO of the company.
The last time Lynn had heard from Kayla—approximately thirty-three minutes ago in a series of excited texts—the most viral clips from their Boss Bash battle were still trending. Long ago in middle school, Kayla had stabbed Lynn in the back when she’d gotten involved in the cool girls clique at school and chosen to ghost Lynn instead of standing up for friendship over popularity. But last year Kayla had experienced a come-to-Jesus moment and realized how miserable she’d become as part of that crowd. She’d worked hard to regain Lynn’s trust, and Lynn was grateful for that. It was still weird having a best friend again after so long on her own. But she was trying to lean into it, despite Kayla’s obsession with virtual shopping and her alarmingly excessive use of exclamation points.
It had been Kayla who had suggested Skadi’s Wolves hire her father’s company when the team was buckling under the stress of invasive and constant attention. Since then, Kayla had installed herself as the unofficial mascot and cheerleader of Skadi’s Wolves, as well as a spy to keep an eye on their rival team, the Cedar Rapids Champions. It was Elena, CRC’s leader, who had kept Kayla under her thumb for all those years since middle school, cowing and berating her into being an obedient little flunky. Since Kayla had been strong-armed into helping manage Elena’s own stream channel—without compensation, of course—she was intimately familiar with Elena’s habits and connections. Lynn had no desire whatsoever to know what Elena and her posse of mean girls said about Skadi’s Wolves and Lynn herself. But Kayla enjoyed the gossip wars, so she took one for the team and kept an eye on all things CRC so Lynn and the guys could focus on training.
“Whaddya think, boss?” Edgar asked, looming over Lynn. She wasn’t short for a girl, but Edgar was six feet and counting, so it was hard for him not to loom.
Lynn was busy scrutinizing the different weapon modes of Edgar’s new two-handed rifle, Snazzgun of Da Boyz, that he’d achieved in their boss battle.
“This thing is crazy as shit. Have you seen this?”
“I know, right?” Edgar said, a bit of crazed glee creeping into his voice. Lynn looked up at him and had to laugh.
“Why do I get the suspicion that someone, somewhere, created this gun just for you?”
“Don’t know, chica. But I’d kiss ’em if I could.”
The sudden mental image of Edgar kissing someone made Lynn’s insides go all hot and squirmy. She shifted and looked back down, hoping Edgar hadn’t noticed the flush rising up her neck.
“I’m not sure how this gun is even allowed,” she said, focusing on the task at hand. “It has cannon, flamethrower, and grenade launcher modes. When did grenade launcher become a thing? That’s new. The cannon is above Inferno-level strength, and the flamethrower has a hundred-foot range. The grenade launcher and flamethrower power use is off the charts, though. Not sure how practical they’ll be. We’ll just have to train with them and see if they’re faster or more effective at clearing TDMs without draining your power. You’ll run Mack ragged trying to keep up with this power-guzzling beast.”
“You know what Mack should have gotten?” Edgar said, turning off his LINC’s screen projection.
“What?” Lynn said, eyebrows raised.
“A loot vacuum,” Edgar chortled.
Lynn snorted, then got thoughtful.
“Maybe I should poke around the auction site again, see if there’s any new rare augments that have some sort of loot collecting mechanic. TD Hunter doesn’t have many regular patches, but we might have missed something. I’ll bet there’s a useful item out there we could buy for Mack. Make his job easier.”
“Yeah,” Edgar agreed. “I think my ichor use rate gives him ulcers.”
“You’ve got TDMs to explode. I’m sure Mack understands. Hey, guys,” she called over her shoulder, shifting her attention. “Quit goofing around and get over here.”
By the time they’d gathered around, Dan was still twitchy but no longer dancing like someone had put fire ants down the back of his shirt. They took turns highlighting the notable stats and abilities of their newly acquired weapons. Dan’s Ambanese Sniper Rifle had a Splinter Blade bayonet, which meant he would spend less time switching between weapons when he needed to do some emergency melee defense. It also had double the weapon augment slots that most guns had, so Dan was able to load it up with specialty ammo like armor-piercing bullets while still keeping his increased range and stat-boosting weapon augments.
Mack’s pair of Croft Desert Eagles were Hell Blaster-level pistols that had insanely efficient power usage. That meant he could use normally high-cost special ammo augments like flechette and incendiary rounds as if they were common rounds, giving him a huge offensive edge while he focused on watching their backs and keeping the team’s supplies topped off. They also had a sick ability called Unify that allowed Mack to combine the pistols’ firepower into a single baton while using the other for any non-projectile, one-handed weapon like a Blade or a Force Shield. Effectively, it made Mack a lethal flex player with the ability to switch between high-damage ranged offense, melee offense, or straight up defense, whatever the team needed. Lynn added “find Mack a decent shield” to her mental list of things to do.
When they got to Ronnie’s sword, Mack snort-laughed at the sight of the name: Zelda’s Sword of Mastery.
“What’s with that, though?” Edgar asked, seeing that Lynn and Dan were grinning as well.
“Oh, my sweet summer child,” Dan said, steepling his fingers, obviously preparing for a long-winded explanation of esoteric game trivia that none of them cared about.
“It’s stupid, that’s what it is,” Ronnie said, forestalling the lecture with a glare at Dan and Mack.
“It’s not!” Mack insisted. “It’s super clever.”
“It’s a masterful nod to legacy fandom and geek culture in general,” Dan said, wagging a finger in the air. “Its comic irony and subtlety is unsurpassed.”
“It’s stupid,” Ronnie repeated.
“Humor is like food in communism,” Dan shot back. “Not everybody gets it.”
Ronnie’s face flushed, and for a second Lynn thought he was going to go off on Dan. To her surprise, though, he simply let out a scoffing breath.
“Whatever. Let’s get this over with.”
Lynn hid a smile and mentally gave him a pat on the head, since she couldn’t do it in real life. Ronnie’s pasty complexion meant even the slightest flush of annoyance, embarrassment, or exertion was impossible to hide. One of the curses of being as pale as a vampire, Lynn supposed, a problem she was very grateful she didn’t have. But she was impressed by this newfound self-control. If only she could figure out how to give him positive reinforcement without getting on his nerves.
Another problem, another day.
Lynn examined the stats on Ronnie’s controversially named weapon. Zelda’s Sword of Mastery had all the lethality of a Nitro-class sword on top of multiple stacking DOT—damage over time—auras. The DOTs were aimed at aggressive type TDMs, making the sword particularly ideal for an assault player. The coolest feature, though, was a special ability called Nitro Storm. It was a damage buff that charged up based on strike accuracy. The more skilled and precise you were with your attacks, the faster the ability recharged. Once fully charged, you could activate it to blast an expanding ring of pure damage to everything around you. It would be absolutely epic in situations like those they’d faced in Operation Boss Bash, where they’d been wading through hordes of tightly packed TDMs.
Lynn tried not to be jealous about everybody’s shiny new weapons. It wasn’t as if she lacked anything in the rare items department. All her Skadi items were overpowered for their level, were stacked with additional buffs, and they leveled with her, meaning she would never have to discard them as obsolete. Not only were they likely the most lethal weapons in the game, but keeping the same gear cut down on time wasted adapting new skills and techniques. If she wanted something new to get excited over, she would have to keep her kill-to-damage ratio best in the game and wait until Level 40 for the crowning piece of her Skadi’s Avatar set. In the meantime . . .
“Okay, I know you guys have been busy sleeping for the past forty-eight hours, but between all that snoozing, has anyone read up on the new item icon that showed up on our HUD after we reached Level 38?”
Mack and Edgar exchanged identical clueless looks while Ronnie and Dan shrugged.
“You mean bait?” Ronnie said. “Yeah, I looked it up. Not much tactical chatter on it yet since we’re on the leading edge of levelers and it’s a new patch, so they didn’t have it in beta.”
“It looks really interesting though,” Dan said, brightening up. “It’s basically a detached taunt function. An aggro decoy. We have our own built-in aggro that we manage using globes so we’re not constantly mobbed. But with bait we can set it like a mine to activate immediately or with a countdown timer, and it’ll draw all aggressive-type TDMs in a specified range until the juice runs out. It stacks like globes, so the more we allocate the stronger the effect is.”
Lynn grinned at her teammate.
“Thanks for doing my briefing for me, Dan.”
“Uh,” Dan looked sheepish, but Lynn just laughed.
“Better you than me. Did you have any thoughts on application?” She had quite a few tricks in mind for this new tool they’d been given, but she wanted to hear everyone else’s ideas first.
While Dan chewed his lip and Mack and Edgar read up on how bait functioned in their TD Hunter app’s tactical section, Ronnie surprised her by speaking up.
Ever since he’d come back from his “exile” to Elena’s Cedar Rapids Champions, he’d been uncharacteristically quiet during tactical discussions. Lynn knew it wasn’t from lack of opinions—he had those in spades. Maybe he’d been unsure how to participate collaboratively as a team member instead of simply dictating his opinion as captain. She’d noticed Edgar talking to him a time or two, off on their own, so maybe the others were pitching in to do whatever it was guys did to help each other out. Man to man. That kind of thing.
Whatever it was, she was grateful but still pretty clueless on how to overcome the wall of awkwardness and low-level resentment between them. She still hadn’t figured out what Ronnie’s problem was, so all she could do in the meantime was be polite and professional, and hope no drama came up that would ruin their fragile team dynamic.
“Supply harvesting,” Ronnie said, looking at Dan while he said it.
Dan’s eyes lit up.
“Yeah! Set up bait traps, let the buggers come to us. Less running around for Mack and better crowd control overall.”
“Nice,” Lynn said, nodding appreciatively. “Anything else?”
Ronnie didn’t look at her as he cocked his head in thought, then shrugged his shoulders.
“Depends on how scarce a resource they are. If TDMs drop lots of them, we can work them into our assault SOPs and team formations to create pockets of enemies we can more easily pick off, increasing our kill-to-damage scores. They’d also be useful in boss fights.” He shrugged again and fiddled absently with his batons in the ensuing silence.
“Great insights, thanks Ronnie,” Lynn said, then cringed internally. Hopefully she sounded more impressive to her team than she did to herself. She took a deep breath and dove into her own analysis—experience had taught her that obsessing over people’s perception of her was a quick and dark path to anxiety and paralysis.
“They’ll absolutely be useful in boss fights, but we’ll have to train with them to test out various techniques. I’m thinking specifically of using them to break and reform the defensive circles around bosses so we can create functional corridors to the boss instead of fighting back amorphous waves that fill any hole as soon as we make it. But you’re right, it’ll depend on how effective they are and how many of them we manage to collect day-to-day. They could be a game changer. We’ll have to see.”
The guys had gathered in a semicircle around her, and they nodded their heads in unison, expressions ranging from focused to determined to eager.
“All right. Why don’t we stow the chit-chat and get busy killing stuff?”
“Now you’re talkin’.” Edgar said with a grin.
“And here I thought I’d get one week—one week—to slum around eating cheese puffs and Skittles all day,” Dan complained.
“Skittles, dude? What are you, five?” Edgar asked with a snort.
“Don’t you dare judge my choice of fuel,” Dan said with mock severity. “My genius requires high quantities of refined sugars to function.”
Ronnie’s lips twitched upward and he made a scoffing sound.
“Genius? Riiight. Hey, Mack, what’s the difference between Dan and a squirrel hopped up on speed?”
Mack’s brow wrinkled in thought.
“Uh, what?”
“The squirrel has a girlfriend!”
Everyone laughed but Dan, who made a show of rolling his shoulders and cracking his neck.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re all just jealous of my insane athletic skills.”
“Dude,” Ronnie said. “you were the only one to fail PE in ninth grade. Even Edgar passed—no offense, man.”
“None taken,” Edgar said, popping a piece of gum in his mouth, then stuffing the wrapper in a pocket. “It was my crowning achievement.” He pulled out his other baton and flipped both over the backs of his hands. “So are we gonna start killing stuff or what?”
Lynn grinned. She was happy to see the guys banter; it was good for team morale. It was tough to know if or how to participate, though, so she usually kept quiet. Maybe if she loosened up and tried harder to participate, it would make things less awkward between her and Ronnie? Pithy zingers were her bread and butter as Larry Coughlin, but she prepared most of those ahead of time. Maybe Mr. Krator was right, and she should practice more off the cuff.
Worth a try.
“Just waiting for you yahoos to finish insulting each other,” she quipped, and was gratified to see Ronnie snort as a grudging smile pulled at his lips. “Come on, Skadi’s Wolves, let’s see what this bait function can do.”
* * *
They broke around noon to switch locations and get some drone-delivered food that they ate while giving their bodies a rest. They no longer worried about little things like travel or food costs. Their sponsorship money more than covered such expenses and every minute mattered if they wanted to reach Level 40 by the championship.
Their experiments with bait had been illuminating, but they needed higher density TDMs to test it on before they could create any battle strategies with it. Drones had gathered throughout the morning, several of them bigger and louder than the tiny paparazzi vultures Lynn was used to, and it got on her nerves. Switching locations was an opportunity to lose their flying fan club and head to a more infrastructure-dense part of the city, and therefore, a more target-rich environment.
Lynn wondered sometimes how players in rural parts of the country fared. True, mesh nodes were ubiquitous, even out in the boondocks. But she didn’t see how there could be enough TDM-dense areas to sustain fast leveling. Or did the algorithm use the GPS coordinates of all registered players to generate sufficient TDMs wherever players were located, regardless of what spawn patterns it used in cities?
Those were the sorts of things she pondered during their daily airbus or air taxi rides. That, and even stranger things, like why TDMs never appeared inside buildings—a safety feature?—and why she’d started getting goosebumps and hairs standing up on the back of her neck whenever she passed transformers, nodes, generators, and other places she knew TDMs would be massing in the TD Hunter game.
It wasn’t real, so why was she jumpy when she wasn’t even in combat mode? Random traffic noises now reminded her of TDM beeps and whistles. She’d catch a whisper of noise behind her and spin, hands coming up automatically to slash at a sneaky ghost. She got some weird looks at school sometimes.
Too much time with her head in the game, probably. She and the guys had been living and breathing TD Hunter for months, it was no wonder she’d started imagining the presence of TDMs all around her. Maybe the team should have taken spring break off after all . . .
But no, they couldn’t afford any down time. She would relax after they’d won the national championship, and not a moment before.
Their afternoon went well despite a rising grumble about working so hard during a school break. Lynn didn’t blame them, but she also didn’t relent. They needed to spend the rest of the week testing out new weapons and tactics and doing everything they could to inch closer to Level 39.
Mercifully, they had no homework to worry about over break, so once Lynn called it a day in the late afternoon, she knew they were all looking forward to long hot showers and free evenings to unwind. She was hoping to hang out with her mom for a while before Matilda went to work. They’d barely gotten to see each other for months between all of Lynn’s obligations and Matilda’s night shift schedule. Lynn could tell it was straining things, and it bothered her.
No one understood how precious time with your family was—not until your family was taken away.
Lynn fingered her Helle pocketknife, thoughts far away on her dad’s long-ago stories of Norway, while she trudged down the hallway to her apartment door. She was just grabbing the doorknob when she heard a musical peal of laughter from inside the apartment.
She froze.
Was that her mother?
Her mom never laughed. Not like that. Not since her dad . . . no, it must have been some stream playing on the wall-screen.
Except there it was again, quieter this time, but with some gasping, like someone was laughing so hard they were having trouble breathing properly.
Lynn put her ear to the door, listening intently.
“I cannot believe it. You’ve got to be pulling my leg . . . a horde of homeless men? No, you’re exaggerating, there’s no way . . . he did what to his testicles? . . . How did you get out of that? . . . yeah right, you just put on an accent and they let you walk away? . . . Nuh-uh, now I know you’re lying.”
The sound of her mom laughing and giggling riveted Lynn to the door as if someone had screwed bolts through her ear. She didn’t move a muscle, just listened as whoever was on the other side of the conversation finished their story, prompting more amusement and accusations of tall tales from her mom.
“Well, I’d better get going, Lynn will be home soon and . . . yes, yes, I know, eventually. Give it some time. I have dinner to make . . . uh-huh, I’ll bet you would . . . mm-hmm . . . bye, now. We’ll talk again soon. Bye-bye.”
Her mother fell silent, and after a few moments Lynn pulled slowly back from the door and stared at it in utter bewilderment.
Her mom had friends at work, coworkers she gossiped with and such. A few of them were good enough friends that Matilda had them over for dinner once in a blue moon. But none of the voice chats Matilda had with them sounded like that. That had sounded like her mom was . . . flirting with whoever had been on the other end.
Had her mom been talking to a guy? A guy she was interested in?
Was her mom dating?
Lynn had absolutely no idea what to think about that.
It had been almost nine years since her dad had died. Her mom had never dated, never talked about getting “back into the saddle” or anything like that. Lynn remembered an occasional muttered comment from her grandma in South Dakota about “more grandchildren,” but that was it.
What should she do?
Lynn had no idea how long she stood out in the hall, staring blankly while faint sounds filtered through the door of clanking pans and vegetables being chopped on their worn wooden cutting board. Finally, though, her tired muscles and the siren call of the shower broke her from her trance and she gripped the doorknob, still with no clue what to do.
For now, at least, she would do nothing.