Chapter 0001 0001 THE FIRST TIME IN WEEKS I SEE a SecOps NPC up close, I''m coming up on my daily thousand, my mind is long past numb from the repetition, and between that and the dehydration and the lack of sleep, I''m pretty sure I''m starting to hallucinate. Immediately I start second-guessing the figure in the distance, because what else can I do? Try to sprint over to it across a sea of mobs and wipe my thousand when I inevitably get pasted? That''s six hours of work, and I''m getting really thirsty. Besides, power curfew is approaching faster than my kill counter is climbing, and if it''s been weeks since a sighting, it''s been a month since I''ve actually made my thousand, and if there''s one thing I''m shit at letting go of, I''m staring down the barrel of it now. The thing in the distance is another player, I tell myself, or some random unimportant NPC. Something in the scenery. Tired eyes playing tricks on me. There are upwards of fifty million people in-game at any given time. Be reasonable, Mal.

Since when has getting your hopes up gotten you anywhere. Except that this figure is glowing. Glowing in a very distinct way. A way that I usually see in other people''s streams, or much more distantly than this. The beacon rises off it, a column of light stabbing the sky, close enough that my pointer finger doesn''t eclipse it when held at arm''s length. It can''t be more than a quarter mile away. From here I can''t see what''s at the base of that column of light, but I don''t need to. Only one kind of thing in-game throws beacons like that.

But if it''s what I think it is, there''d be a crowd swarming it. A couple hundred players easy. Trying to talk to it. Catching their glimpses. Streaming their footage. But there''s nobody here except mobs and me. And the figure in the distance and the light spiking up from it, and both of those things moving off, one slow, sure step at a time. "Hey," I call out, but whoever it is keeps walking, away and steadily, not so much as breaking stride.

There''s a field of gunners and mechs and an entire three-ring shitshow between me and it. One by one these mobs would be no effort for me to kill, but all at once it''s another story. Which is, of course, the point of the thousand: it takes time. An ungodly lot of time. Speaking of. Twenty minutes to power curfew, and my kill counter''s stalled at eight hundred eighty-seven while I''ve been standing here like an idiot. My health bar is flashing ominously, but I''m down to four heal patches, and I have to be smart. I allow myself exactly one second to stand and squint after the retreating figure, but either the graphics resolution or my eyes just aren''t that good.

What''s floating above its head looks shorter than a regulation username. It''s a number. But which? There''s only one that''s going to make me cut bait on my thousand and brawl my way over there, no matter what stands in my way. One of twelve. The odds, again, are slim. I just barely resist the urge to rub my eyes and risk accidentally dislodging a lens. Instead I slap a heal patch on an empty arm slot, reload, and battle my way up the landing strip, vaguely keeping note as the daily ticker climbs--eight hundred eighty-eight, eight hundred eighty-nine, eight hundred ninety--heading toward whoever it is I''ve seen, now receding in the distance. I''m taking on bullets like a leaky boat takes on water, though, and my health is dropping fast.

There might be heals on some of these corpses, but no time to loot them and see. Every second is a scramble. I need to duck behind something, just for a moment, to fix myself up. There''s nothing to duck behind. There''s nothing, period. The place is dead. Just the tarmac, and the purple sky, and what I fucking well hope is the remainder of my thousand, an untouched spawn from who knows how long ago. I''ve never been out this way before, don''t know the lay of the land, and I''ve been low on supplies for days because I haven''t finished out a single thousand since I don''t even know when, and I''m not going to get the time to try again--really try, out here on my own, no stream, no viewers, no Jessa dragging me off on side quests and wild-goose chases and fuck knows what to amuse the audience--until late next week at best.

It wouldn''t be the first time I lost a job because of chasing a thousand on someone else''s clock. Free time''s like free water, that rare. It''s getting dark, and worse, my timer''s blinking: eighteen minutes to power curfew. If I don''t make it back to a save point before those eighteen minutes are up--if I get disconnected here, in this mess, surrounded as I am--not only is today a wash, but tomorrow''s not looking so great either. An uninterrupted loss streak like the one I''m looking at is a slippery slope straight to shutout city. No heals, no ammo, no credits to pay for more. And that''s not a possibility I''m exactly thrilled to entertain. But for now I''ve got to stay alive just long enough to make my thousand, set myself up for climbing the boards tomorrow, and get the hell offline before the power cuts and strands me here.

I call up my last ten-second cloak, load another fresh clip, slap on another heal patch, hesitate, then chase it with a third, nearly the last in my bag. It''s getting dire. If you stood in my inventory right now and shouted, it would echo. Even through the cloak I''m pulling aggro from all sides, and there are only three seconds left on the stupid thing anyway. Then the three seconds are up and the mobs pile onto me again and I have to blast my way free. Single headshots when I''m lucky, multiple body shots when I''m not. Their health is dropping way too slow. Mine is having the opposite problem.

I switch the blaster to auto and start strafing. It chews through my next-to-last clip, but at least they''re going down a little faster. Nine hundred thirty-two, nine hundred thirty-three, nine hundred thirty-four. I''m running on autopilot. If I wasn''t almost out of heals and ammo, I could do this in my sleep. That thousand is my only ticket onto the boards, which is my only shot at something better than some middle-distance sighting, so I grit my teeth and keep grinding. I blink at an empty corner of my visual field and pull up a chat window. Not overly concerned if I strike the proper half-joking-but-only-half tone when I project the message to Jessa: going to kill you when i get out of here The reply pops up almost instantly: going that well, huh? you said this place was safe.

easy thousand, you said i said it wasn''t a pvp zone. forgive me if i assumed you could aim I resolve to let that slide. i thought i saw one of them out here I''m not sure why I tell her, and I immediately regret that I have. Apparently six hours of mind-numbing grind can induce even my thought-to-text interface to make small talk. Any case, the beacon was way too far off to investigate in the next--I check the clock--eleven minutes before cutoff. Power curfew waits for no one, no matter what they saw or didn''t see. This time the reply is instantaneous. wait, what? which one? where? you know where i am, you sent me out here I send over my coords.

Back in real life my hand, curled around the invisible blaster, is starting to cramp. seriously though it was probably nothing By which I mean, of course, there''s no time , but Jessa wouldn''t buy that if I paid her. it isn''t nothing, nycorix, she says, and I roll my eyes a little at her chronic insistence on using my in-game handle. you''re telling me you of all people don''t want to go over there and see who it is? Like I haven''t thought of that. Like I''m not thinking it every second of every day I''m out here. Every time I see a beacon in the distance, its player crowd dense enough to spot a mile off, no chance of getting close and no real point in so doing, not really. Intellectually I know this. And yet.

There''s no intellectually about why I''m still squinting after that retreating figure, trying to make out the number above its head. I''m starting to kick myself pretty hard for bringing it up in the first place. Jessa''s great and I love her, but there''s a reason I came out here alone. it''s someone else, I tell her, willing the just drop it to come through in text. A pause this time, which I realize is probably Jessa frantically checking the boards. Four years of being her roommate and teammate have endowed me with a pretty well-developed sense of what''s coming. i''m staying here and finishing this out, I say preemptively. tomorrow''s my only chance at the boards until my schedule calms down next week.

i''m not wiping this thousand, jessa, i can''t nobody asked you to, comes the reply, which I immediately flag as bullshit. ok, so i''m looking at the boards right now and none of them are out that way. not remotely that way This pause is very likely Jessa weighing her options. Sighing. Crinkling up the corners of her eyes the way she does when her internal monologue is steering her toward a bad decision. Or in this case, steering her toward steering me toward one. Even odds, most days. seriously, I repeat, just to head off whatever I''m about to have to refuse, probably just my eyes crapping out on me, i''ve been out here all.

I trail off, defeated, when I realize a reply is already inbound. which one did it look like? i''m guessing not 22 or your ass would''ve run over there fast enough to leave scorch marks I grit my virtual teeth and elect to choose my battles. too far away to te.