CyberWorld

CHAPTER SEVEN: CRASH LANDING

When I leave my room after a long restless night, my mouth is so dry it feels like a desert has spawned on my tongue. I actually stick my tongue out so the wind stirred up my Stratoskimmers' engines to cool it down.

Wait a minute. There was a water tap when Hachiyo brought me and Yoona to meet Tokoshima, right?

I take the elevator shaft to the ground floor and step into the city of tents. Barely any time has passed since I joined, but there's already five to six people to a tent now compared to the average number of four faces I caught peering out of their tents as Suki strolled by.

I'm not stupid. CyberWorld may have given rise to tons of jobs, but it won't do much for places affected by the War without a stable network connection.

A hyper realistic virtual world loses its charm when it begins to mirror the real one.

When I catch a glimpse of her distinctive dark hair, I realise Yoona is here too. She looks like she's guiding a fellow player on the various attachments that make up his rifle. He takes apart his weapon and puts it back together, receptive to Yoona's advice.

"Kinergy becomes more reactive when you shake it, right? Why don't we just do that to make the weapon more powerful?" He asks.

"Oh. No, you don't do that. It'll explode in your face in a few seconds.." She says.

There's several players huddled around mini folding stoves for warmth. They lean with their arms wrapped around their guns, relying solely on the weapon's stock to avoid sagging to the dirt ground. As my legs pass the barrel of a player's rifle raised to the top of the mountain, a cooling warmth radiates across my thigh, giving me a taste of the bloodshed that stretches beyond the Town Square.

I almost slip when I nearly step into a crater in the ground spanning around 2 metres long and half a metre deep. A shovel's head plunges into the ground above the hole and drops a pile of dirt into the crevice. When I look up, I recognise the shovel's owner.

It's Brianna Welsh, the girl with the yellow poncho. Her jacket has been sullied until it looks like manure churned into batter with urine and mouldy cheese. More dirt falls from the shovel's head and lands onto a hand sticking out of the dirt, its fingers clenched with the finality of rigor mortis.

Around its wrist is a familiar-looking bracelet with spikes.

Brianna bends over and unclips the spike-lined bracelet, dropping it into her pocket. Next, she drives the shovel into the dirt like a stake meeting a vampire's heart. She drops to her knees and hunches forward, watering the grave with her tears. Then, she slumps over on her side while tears stream along her cheeks sideways. I scan the tents for anyone taking notice of her. Some players are looking up from their stoves, but no one's coming to help her. There's no telling what they might have lost too.

Brianna finishes smoothening the barren piece of land, her face sinks deeper into the ground as her fingers claw into the dirt, desperate for a final parting touch.

"We can't win," She says to herself. "They've been stockpiling resources for years. They could go at this for decades for all we know." She hoists himself up and wipes the snot from her nose, smearing her cheek with sickly green mucus and grime.

"You hear that? They've taken our water, our weapons. My boyfriend! " She yells so everyone around us can hear. "What was Suki Hachiyo talking about an attack? We're not soldiers."

Without even bringing up her Wristool, Brianna pulls out a pistol that appears in the arm lying limply at her side. Now, his outburst is drawing warranted attention from the players around the stoves including Yoona, who cuts her conversation short to check on the commotion. Realising what the guy might do next, she tip-toes over to Brianna from behind and catches sight of me being frozen into place, but she doesn't break eye contact. The look on her face is akin to watching a cat get mutilated and tossed into a hellish inferno, its cries of anguish only muffled by the dancing flames.