Author's Note: This one is the direct fault of the song that this story is named after (honestly, most of my fictions start with me innocently listening to a song that generates a plot bunny). I couldn't decide whether to post it or not, but it's not doing any good languishing here inside my computer. In case there's someone out there who might enjoy it, here it is.
To those who had nice words about 'Grimferno' and to those who didn't review or e-mail but still enjoyed it, just know that you rock and are fully and whole-heartedly appreciated.
Side note to my wonderful readers from the "Pair of Kings" fandom: You all are also awesome and appreciated (alliteration anyone?), and I have received your requests for a sequel to 'Book of the Shaman'. Truthfully, I'm having trouble finding my muse for the fandom after this season's big change to show. I haven't even watched the new season. But, I will do my best to try for you.
Disclaimer: I don't own 'Level Up', but I sure LOL watching it. I do own my original characters (not many this time out) and, as always, my typos (sorry).
Rating/Warnings: Strong T for violence, AU OOC behavior, more crude language than I'd normally use, mentions of sex (nothing much shown), and whump of pretty much everyone in varying degrees. It should also be noted for my epilogue purposes, I have written Lyle's father as a single dad.
Pairings: Definitely, but I'm not telling who here. Gen.
Level Up
"No Man's Land"
By llnbooks
Prologue
September 30, 2011
It was a creature created for a singular purpose: Alter history in favor of its master by whatever means were required. After its task was complete, it would cease to exist. The robot avatar had no emotions to feel regret for the brevity of its existence or contentment when its purpose was finally accomplished.
The Doubleback had been programmed with the whole of Maldark's knowledge of its targets, Black Death, Wizza, and Sir Bickle. Its orders were simple: Using that knowledge, choose one target. Kill that human, if possible. If not, a permanent injury, an incarceration, an abduction, whatever was required to prevent the human from interfering with Maldark's plans to invade the human realm. Never Fail must never exist.
The human known as 'Black Death' was out of reach. A scan of his "blog" indicated he was two hundred miles away competing in something the humans called a 'Mathcathelon'. Traveling such a distance increased the risk of interference with its mission.
The Doubleback's counterpart had already tracked the human known as 'Sir Bickle' and would dispatch that game warrior.
The human called 'Wizza' was within reach. He would be the robot's target.
A disguise afforded the best chance for catching its target unaware while concealing its presence from the larger human population. It was not capable of caring if the people saw its true form, except that it might create a disturbance that would jeopardize the Doubleback's mission.
The humans took no undue notice of the last player in the Crosstown High line up as the football team ran onto the Trojans' football field. The helmet covered its shiny metallic head. The long sleeves and gloves hid its mechanical arms and hands. It scanned the faces of the rival players until it locked onto the one it sought.
Wizza.
The Doubleback lined up opposite the human boy, ducking its head so that Wizza would not see his face until it was much too late. Wizza took his place as what they called the 'quarterback'. The game leak targeted the areas of the human's body most vulnerable to lasting injury and decided it would shatter Wizza's knee. Such an injury would take sufficient time to heal that he would never recover in time to interfere with Maldark.
Before the ball was snapped into play, the Doubleback lunged…
1
December 1, 2012
Lyle had completely choked.
Reggie had snapped him the ball perfectly. Lyle moved into the perfect position for his throw, looked for Kowalski among the rushing players…and the next thing he knew, he had a face full of the Crosstown Tornadoes' linebacker. As he landed flat on his back with a bone-jarring thud, Lyle heard the referee blow his whistle. Seconds later, an air-horn sounded the end of the game. Daventry Hills Trojans 14, Tornadoes 21.
He laid there for a few seconds, somewhat hopeful that the ground might open up and swallow him. That was three times, three damn times in one game that Lyle had screwed up. Miserably, he noticed Mike and Kowalski and a few others of his teammates were glaring. Reggie looked worried. That was okay, Lyle was worried, too.
Involuntarily, Lyle's gaze was drawn to the bleachers, where his father sat. Maynard Hugginson was a politician, so he was quite good at keeping a stoic façade no matter what he was thinking. But, he was also Lyle's dad, and Lyle could have sensed his paternal disappointment if he were blindfolded in a blackout.
Sitting beside Mr. Hugginson, Wyatt was cringing. He forced a pitifully fake smile and thumbs up when he saw Lyle glance in his direction. Lyle shook his head. Thank God Dante wasn't there to do his 'crash and burn' pantomime…
Reggie at least gave him a hand climbing back to his feet. "No, no, no…Lyle, man, what was that?" he whisper-yelled as the team trudged off the field to the waiting lecture from Coach Farber. The spectators in the stands added a few comments that Lyle pointedly ignored.
"Turtle play?" Kowalski mimicked their quarterback lying on his back with the football in his hand, kicking like a tortoise stuck on its back.
Behind him, someone coughed what sounded like 'choke'. Lyle knew it was McCobb, irritating freaking Mike McCobb, second-string quarterback and general pain the butt. Lyle whirled, startling the other boy by suddenly standing toe-to-toe and eye-to-eye with him. "You got something to say? Think you can do better? Let me clue you in: Having the playbook memorized doesn't make you a quarterback, McCobb."
Reggie, Kowalski, and a few other players moved to stand behind Lyle. Mike's gaze briefly flicked from the quarterback to the other players. They'd been teammates for two years, and friends since middle school. Moreover, Lyle was the undisputed king of Daventry Hills High School. That had been McCobb, during his brief time as quarterback at Fairview High School before coming to Daventry Hills last year. Here, he was, the reserve quarterback who provided some amusement with his photographic memory but who was not allowed to snark on the team's hero no matter how badly Hugginson had stunk up the field that day.
That didn't make Mike wrong. He stood his ground. "Maybe not-but it does tell me we have a better chance of scoring if our quarterback actually throws the ball."
Lyle knew he needed to calm down. He backed away from McCobb, not bothering with a retort. He couldn't lose his temper this way, not in front of the guys and certainly not during a real game.
"That's enough! Everyone, hit the showers. Not you, Hugginson!" Farber was beckoning the quarterback with his 'a butt-chewing is a-coming' two-fingered wave. As the team somberly filed towards the locker room, shaking their heads and muttering under their breath, Lyle walked to the sidelines where Farber waited.
"Sorry, coach," he apologized, for what else could he say?
"Hugginson, take a knee."
Lyle rolled his eyes, but did as he was told. Farber was gripping his clipboard so tightly that his fingers were losing circulation. "We have the Fulton High Falcons next week. Playoff game. Kind of a big deal. Scouts from five universities are going to be here."
Like I needed reminding, Lyle thought.
"I know it's a lot of pressure, but we've all got a lot riding on this game. Whatever's on your mind, whatever's twisting up your insides until you can taste your own intestines in the back of your throat…"
Lyle cringed at that mental picture.
"…whatever doubts you have, I just want to say…" Farber reached down and laid a hand on Lyle's shoulder, giving an encouraging squeeze. Then the calm façade popped like a balloon and the coach suddenly turned into a panicky, ashen-faced lunatic. "GET OVER IT! Do some yoga, for crying out loud! Meditate! Play your video games. But get over it! I need this game…I can't go back to coaching tee ball at the Y." Farber turned away, voice catching as the visions of small children whacking his shins with bats filled him with dread. "Please, Hugginson!"
He started to sob on Lyle's shoulder. Weirded out, Lyle patted his. "It's okay, coach…we got this. We'll be ready by next week." Carefully, he pried the coach off his shoulder and handed him a handkerchief. Predictably, the coach blew a headful of tears and mucus into the cloth. "Better?"
Farber nodded, forcing a smile although his voice still squeaked a bit with unshed tears. "Sorry. Lost my cool for a minute there. I'm good."
To Lyle's immense relief, the coach dashed off to have a private cry in his office.
"You know what happened out there, don't you, son?"
Lyle was glad his father had come up from behind, so he couldn't see his son wince in anticipation of the lecture that was coming. He already knew what his dad was going to say. He'd been cautioning Lyle about it all week.
He turned around to face the firing squad and answered: "I psyched myself out, overthinking instead of listening to my instincts."
Maynard folded his arms, nodding. "What are the three P's of success?"
Automatically, Lyle recited the words that had been drilled into him since his first day in kindergarten. "Plan. Prepare. Prevail."
"Exactly. When the scout from Notre Dame sees you play next week, he'll see the best quarterback in the country…perfect planning, perfect execution, perfect game. Jim Peterson is an old classmate from my days with the Fighting Irish. He's looking forward to seeing you play. This is what you've worked for and sweated for, this is your moment. The only one who will defeat you is you, son. Okay?"
He meant to be inspirational, but all Lyle heard was 'perfect', 'perfect', and 'perfect'. This was Maynard Hugginson's standard and he would accept nothing less, Lyle knew. He had made his plans for his son's future down to the last detail and, like everything else his father did, success was the only option. He'd had the successful high school and college football career. He'd pursued and won his place as Mayor of Daventry Hills. He was adored by pretty much everyone in town. Lyle didn't think his father had failed at anything or had moments of doubt ever in his life.
Lyle wished he could say the same for himself. He wanted to say that he was scared out of his mind that he was going to screw up in front of those scouts. He wanted to say that barding computer-spawned monsters was a hundred times less scary than having the hopes of the entire school pinned on his every move during a game, no matter how confident Lyle acted. He wanted to say that he had his own plans for his future.
But none of that would have been acceptable to his father, either. So, what Lyle said instead was simply, "Okay."
Maynard nodded his approval. "Good. Go get changed. I'll give you a ride home. We can go over some strategies for next week's game."
"Great."
It wasn't until Farber and Lyle's father had departed that Wyatt finally joined Lyle. "There's nothing as inspiring as watching Coach Farber sobbing into his Gatorade. Bad game?"
Wyatt knew nothing about sports and, beyond school pride, the computer nerd had no real interest in the game. He showed up and cheered for the home team because the quarterback was one of his best friends and that was simply what you did for your best friends. His disappointment at the loss owed simply to the fact that he knew Lyle took the defeat personally. He knew that Lyle hadn't been himself out on the field, but, unlike Lyle's teammates and the other spectators, Wyatt knew what was really bothering the school's star.
Lyle sighed. "The Cumberland-Georgia Tech game of 1916 was a bad game. This one was a disaster."
Wyatt scratched his head. "See, I know that's a sports reference of some kind, but I have no idea what it means."
"It means I'm going to end up eating Falcon feathers and dad will probably make me wash cars to pay for his buddy's plane ticket out here when I don't sign that Letter of Intention for Notre Dame," Lyle spelled it out. He slumped onto the empty players' bench, trying to figure out what he was going to do.
Shoving his hands into the pockets of his hoodie jacket, Wyatt sat down next to Lyle. "So, I'm guessing you haven't told him about wanting to try for UCLA?"
"In case you haven't noticed, my dad is not an easy man to say 'no', too."
"In case you haven't noticed, avoiding the argument with him so far has tended to bite you in the butt." Wyatt was thinking of the previous year's homecoming game and the speech Mayor Hugginson had badgered Lyle into giving. He was remembering Mayor Hugginson pressuring Lyle to run for Student Body President, a position that hadn't interested Lyle in the least. Caving in to his dad's pressure had ended badly for Lyle both times.
"Arguing with him doesn't work well for me either. Dad controls the college fund, dad picks the school. If I don't get a scholarship, I don't get a choice."
Wyatt nodded. "Yeah, you have a problem, then."
Lyle made a face. "Thanks."
"He's right about you psyching yourself out, though. You really are one of the best players in the state," Wyatt said.
"Competing for the scouts' attention against the best players in the country…"
"You know, you're really raining crap on my pep talk." Wyatt chastised him. "A couple hour smashing Timiga Hunters and Lava Belchers in the game will take your mind off the scouts."
Lyle stood up. "I'll have to catch up with you at the warehouse-hey, where are Dante and Angie? I thought they were going to be here."
"Same place they've been for the last twenty-six hours: In line at the Tech World for the new Cobra T160 4.0 phone." Wyatt reached into his book bag and pulled out his new Cobra phone/game/pad with a flourish. "I got mine three weeks ago. I have connections," he bragged.
"It's good to be the King of the Geeks," Lyle said.
If there was a slight dig included in the compliment, it didn't bother Wyatt one bit. "It really is."
As Wyatt approached their warehouse headquarters, book bag slung over his shoulder, he heard familiar voices arguing inside. He groaned to himself, Not again. Apparently, Dante and Angie were back from the computer store. He entered the room with caution, never knowing what to expect when the two of them were bickering.
Wyatt saw the problem immediately: They had only one Cobra T-160 4.0 Phone-Pad and were having a tug-of-war over it much like two children fighting for a candy bar. He sighed.
"I ordered that three months ago!" Angie was trying to snatch the phone from Dante's hand, while he was doing an impressive job of keeping it just out of her reach no matter which way she moved. She was giving him the Glare of Death as usual, and, as usual, it didn't intimidate him one bit. Wyatt guessed in about thirty more seconds Angie would take back the phone by demonstrating her Krav Maga skills on the vulnerable parts of Dante's body.
Dante countered: "Well, I ordered it yesterday!"
He continued holding the device out of her reach. Glaring, she lashed out with her leg and kicked his feet out from under him. Angie followed that by tackling him to the floor, still wrestling for the device.
"You are so not doing this to me again-" Angie choked, mid-sentence. She'd momentarily forgotten Dante was not without his own-unique-defenses until she got a little too close to him in their prone position. Her eyes start watering at his ever-present, pungent smell. At this close proximity, it was almost as strong as it had been when she was stuck in that Skunk Bear costume with him. "-do you just never shower?!"
"Only when Barbra ambushes me with the garden hose." While she was coughing, he scrambled out from under her.
Wyatt cleared his throat. "Problems?" he asked them.
Angie turned her glare on him. "I ordered this phone three months ago-"
"Yeah, I caught that part."
"-I camped out twenty-eight hours to pick it up, and this cramp gets the last one because his buddy, Philbert, is a stock boy at Tech World."
Dante circled away from her, putting the couch between himself and the volatile girl. "What do you need it for? You don't even play games!"
Angie climbed over the couch, forcing him to run again. "You are aware it has other features besides game aps?"
He blinked as if she had no idea what she was talking about or didn't believe her.
She rolled her eyes. "No, of course you're not. And that is so not the point! Your buddies are always sneaking you stuff-the last slice of pizza in the cafeteria, the last ticket to the midnight premiere of 'Nearly Dusk'…"
Wyatt gaped at his friend. "The Vampire-Zombie love story? Really?"
Dante's ears turned red, but he defended himself. "It's vampires and zombies together in one movie…that's a chick flick…that I've never seen…"
"You have a 'Team Derrick' t-shirt that would beg to differ," Angie reminded him as she made another grab for the phone.
Mid-tussle, he raised his arm above his head. Angie recoiled again from the smell, her eyes burning now. She lost her grip on the phone during the ensuing coughing fit. Dante escaped to the opposite end of the room, giving the girl a triumphant smirk.
She was going to blow. Wyatt saw it clearly as if a neon danger sign was blinking over Angie's head. "Guys-"
Angie went for the booty box so fast that Wyatt couldn't get to her before she'd snapped open the lock.
"Where'd you get the key-Angie, no!" Wyatt shouted.
She pulled out a weapon they'd stolen from a carpenter leak. The Rubber/Glue gun was completely non-lethal (only used in the game for construction purposes), but that didn't make it less frightening to see the device pointed at Dante.
Wyatt's attempt to snatch the weapon only caused her to press the trigger. "Whoah, no, Angie! Dante, watch out!"
Dante looked up at Wyatt's warning just as Angie fired a big ball of glue at him. He wasn't fast enough to dodge before the goo enveloped the phone in his hand-along with his upper right arm. This time, Angie smirked at him…until the rubbery glue rebounded off him. The backsplash of glue caught her left arm. Unable to stretch any farther, the glue dragged Angie across the room to collide with Dante. They landed in a tangle on the couch, now glued together at their upper arms.
Wyatt shook his head as he picked up the weapon Angie had dropped. "It's called a Rubber/Glue gun, Angie. Did you not kind of see that coming?"
Angie tried to pull herself free of Dante, causing both of them to yelp in pain. They'd lose all the skin on their upper arm before the adhesive bond would break. "Yeah, yeah. Does that thing have a 'reverse' switch or what?"
Wyatt was about to put the Rubber/Glue gun back into the box, but thought better of it. They'd just break into the box the minute he wasn't watching and then they'd be right back to wrestling over the phone. "Yes, it does."
They exchanged glances as if telepathically debating how to attack Wyatt and take back the gun. He didn't pretend to understand their bizarre relationship. They switched from trading insults the way other people traded greetings to off-kilter protectiveness without warning. However, Wyatt had learned one thing about them during the group's battle drills and when they hunted game leaks: Give Dante and Angie a common enemy (preferably an enemy game leak begging to be barded) and they became a fluid, butt-kicking, skull-cracking pair.
A pair that was now staring at Wyatt like he was that enemy game leak. He took a step backwards, swallowing with sudden nervousness.
…Speaking of Leaks…Their pagers suddenly beeped a familiar warning. Wyatt checked the display on his device. "That's a Leak. Gotta go." He headed for the door.
They tried to follow, but ended up tripping over each other trying to walk in opposite directions around the coffee tables.
"We can't fight like this!" Dante held up their fused arms.
Wyatt agreed. "No, you can't…and you'd better decide who gets custody of the phone, because I'm not ungluing you until you do. I'd do it quick, because you two can't go home like that." He tucked the Rubber/Glue gun under his arm and took it with him, just to make sure they stayed put. He left them that way, shouting threats at him as he shut the door behind him.
It might have been an idle threat. If this Leak turned out to be something that he and Lyle couldn't bard on their own, Wyatt would have to go back to the warehouse for Dante and Angie…and his Blast-A-Ton. He was halfway to the park when he realized, with irritation, that he was still carrying the Rubber/Glue gun, which was going to do him almost no good in terms of getting rid of whatever monster had just escaped the game. He was going to have to go back for his Blast-A-Ton…
As he stared at his pager, Wyatt noticed something that stopped him in his tracks: The clock on his phone had begun to turn back…and the closer he moved towards the site of the Leak, the faster the numbers rolled. His first thought was that his brand new phone was a super-expensive piece of junk, but a quick glance at his watch showed him that it, too, was running in reverse.
In fact, the closer he moved to the site of the leak, the faster the numbers on the watch rolled backwards.
It rolled back a little over a year, to stop on the date September 30, 2011.
He puzzled over the bizarre phenomenon. What the heck?
Lyle never heard the pager. The small device was tucked into his equipment bag, which was stuffed into his locker. The noise of the team locker room-booming voices bragging and swapping insults, the noise of running water from the showers, and the banging of locker doors—drowned out the soft beeps.
His mind was a million miles away, replaying every minute of that day's practice and imagining all the different ways he could screw up his big chance tomorrow, so Lyle probably wouldn't have noticed if someone set off a stink bomb in the locker room at that moment.
Listening to Farber having another weeping fit behind the closed door of his office was also not helping Lyle's concentration. Reggie and several other players listened to the muffled sobs, exchanging shrugs that said neither one was about to knock on his door. "I really hate it when he does that…he's going to get me started…" Reggie's voice cracked and empathetic tears glistened in his eyes. "…I can't keep crying like this…"
When heard Farber clear his throat and the sound of his heavy footsteps crossing his office, the boys gathered outside his door scattered, doing a pitiful job of acting nonchalant. Farber was too preoccupied with mentally revising his resume to take notice.
He paused long enough to force a smile and give Lyle a hearty pat on the shoulder. "There's the quarterback who's going to lead us to state, Hugginson. I feel it in my gut. You ready for tomorrow, kid?"
Lyle thought the words would have been more inspiring if the coach's bottom lip wasn't trembling. He played along for the older man's sake. "Sure thing, coach."
Wyatt had barely made it to the outskirts of the forest when a second Leak warning appeared on his pager….almost at the precise moment he spied the wormhole with the twin avatars standing before it.
They were faceless automatons with bodies made of smooth white steel. Their only distinguishing features were the chronometers that hung from chains around their necks.
Doublebacks, Wyatt recognized the monsters. This monster had the ability to split itself into two identical beings of equal power (which, obviously, it had already done). In the game, the Doublebacks had the ability to send players back to earlier points in their game play-deleting all badges and booty and experience points they'd accumulated. Being hit by two Doublebacks simultaneously could completely delete an avatar from the game.
That explained why his watch had suddenly gone haywire. Time-traveling game leaks. Not good.
The Doublebacks were preparing to jump into the vortex. Wyatt really wished he had stopped to unglue Dante and Angie or at least thought to grab his Blast-A-Ton. There wasn't time to go back for his friends or his weapon-maybe he could use the Rubber/Glue gun to glue the avatars to a tree or something until Lyle got there.
Since they didn't have faces, it was almost impossible to tell which direction the creatures were looking. They must have been facing Wyatt, for they reacted to his arrival at once. The chronometers around their necks began to emit a blinding glare and unleashed a beam of temporal energy at him. Wyatt dodged, remembering from past experience how unpleasant it was to be caught in a temporal field. He fired the Rubber/Glue gun at the first Doubleback as it headed for the portal, but the string of adhesive missed the metallic creature and rebounded at the human, forcing Wyatt to again dive for cover. By the time he'd rolled back to his feet, the first Doubleback had vanished into the time vortex.
Being glued together had not interfered with Dante and Angie's stand-off over the cell phone/mini pad…it only meant that they tripped over furniture and each other's feet, occasionally landed an accidental elbow to the other's stomach or chin, and let out little yelps of pain when they pulled too hard against the hold of the adhesive.
Dante warned her, "You know I can do this longer than you can. I never do homework, so I have all the time in-"
At the moment, Angie wanted the phone more than her next A+. She'd show Dante she could out-stubborn him if she had to strap on a gas mask against his smell and stay there the entire weekend. "If you tried studying once in a while, maybe you'd be a-"
She gave one powerful pull against his grip on the phone, hard enough that she spun away from him, reeling from an ensuing wave of vertigo.
Angie opened her eyes as a car horn blasted at her. She jumped back, barely avoiding being creamed by a speeding Fiat. She hadn't realized she'd stepped off the sidewalk during her unexpected moment of dizziness.
She was thankful she hadn't dropped her new Cobra T160 4.0 during that near-miss. After sitting in line twenty-six hours to get the new phone, Angie would have kicked herself if she'd let it be demolished before she even got it home-
Angie blinked. She suddenly realized she didn't remember how she got from the store to the sidewalk in front of the Cherry Tree Mini Mall.
She was by herself. Hadn't she just been talking to someone-? She was keyed up as if she'd just been in the midst of a heated argument…but there wasn't a soul within one hundred feet of her, save for the idiot in the runaway Fiat. Had she been talking to herself? Talking to herself was not good… How long had she been standing there? Angie turned to check the mall's clock tower.
The clock's hands were running backwards.
Weird. She rubbed at her eyes and looked again.
The clock's hands were running backwards faster than the first time she'd looked.
She frowned. "What the-?"
The second Doubleback jumped into the wormhole an instant before Wyatt fired.
The ball of goo followed the creature into the vortex. Seconds passed until the adhesive rebounded. Wyatt felt the ball of glue tugging something that he hoped was the game monster.
The glue bounced back, dragging not the Doubleback, but the monster's chronometer. The device landed in Wyatt's hand, frozen and not functioning in the absence of its owner.
Just like Wyatt's watch, the chronometer read 'September 30, 2011'.
When they heard Farber clear his throat and the sound of his heavy footsteps crossing his office, the boys gathered outside his door scattered, doing a pitiful job of acting nonchalant. Farber was too preoccupied with mentally revising his resume to take notice.
He paused long enough to force a smile and give their quarterback a hearty pat on the shoulder. "There's the quarterback who's going to lead us to state, McCobb. I feel it in my gut. You ready for tomorrow, kid?"
The coach was putting on a show of confidence in their quarterback hoping that the confidence would spread to the rest of the team. McCobb felt the stares of the other players, overheard a few of the rude comments they whispered to each other. The words 'cheat' and 'not Hugginson' burned his ears, but Mike did his best to ignore it. He refused to be intimidated. "You know it, coach."
Farber nodded approval. The team continued to glare in distrust. Reggie actually managed to bump McCobb on his way to the door.
In their distraction, the boys never noticed their watches…and the clock on the wall…beginning to turn backwards.
As soon as the time vortex closed, leaving him standing in the woods with the broken chronometer, Wyatt's watch began to roll forward until it finally stopped at the current date.
That was the moment things got weird…which was saying quite a lot for Daventry Hills.
The world around him began to transform. As he stood staring, an unnatural purple energy spread across the sky, forming a dome that stretched across the entire city from what Wyatt could tell. It blocked out the evening sky, casting a surreal glow like that of a purple sun, if the sun occasionally crackled with pale purple lightning.
The trees and bushes and basically anything that had been green seconds earlier faded to sickly brown and gray hues. Some of the plants sprouted mouths and began snapping at Wyatt's feet and snatching insects out of the air. He jumped out of the reach of the plants, only to be deafened when yellow flowers sprouted from the ground, their blossoms making a noise like screams as the breeze blew them. Shrieking Delilahs, Wyatt recognized the blooms. Those are from the game…so are the Snapping Shrubs…
Water rose out of the earth and pooled, rising up to Wyatt's knees. It was a disgusted green color and stank of sulfur. Creatures he couldn't identify were swimming past his ankles, some of them nipping at him. With a yelp, he ran until he finally made his way out of the newly formed marsh…The Stenchwater Swamp? That was part of the game, too.
Skelehawks glided overhead, moving from tree to gnarled tree. Red frog-snake mutants tried and failed to blend against the gray and brown foliage. Wyatt heard the chirps and growls of dozens of strange animals and birds all around him…and he smelled a Skunk Bear close by.
This was more than a game leak.
This was a game invasion.
"Really not good." Wyatt reached for his phone and texted Lyle, Dante, and Angie a plea for help.
The device beeped at him: Send Failed.
"No bars? Now?!" Absurdly, Wyatt shook the pager like that would make a difference.
"Human!"
The word-the venomous inflection-sent a cold shiver of dread down Wyatt's spine. The word had been formed by a mouth not used to speaking English, or maybe just not used to speaking at all. It was as if a dog or a gorilla was trying to talk. It had come from the nearby blood-red bushes, which rustled as something very large approached.
The monsters that emerged from the forest were human-shaped, but their entire torso was covered with quills like a porcupine. The uniform they'd somehow worked around their needles bore an insignia Wyatt recognized from the game.
Three-Toed Tenrecs. Maldark's foot-soldiers.
"Human, you are not at your assigned labor facility and you have been found carrying a weapon. By the edicts of our glorious Lord Maldark, you are sentenced to execution. Do not resist." The leader of the trio of Tenrecs aimed its quill-covered fist at Wyatt.
"Choosing resistance!" Wyatt lifted his bookbag, shielding himself from the first volley of the needles. This bought him only a few precious seconds, during which his mind calculated what to do with astonishing speed. He had only the Rubber/Glue gun, and Wyatt really didn't want to become a human pincushion by gluing himself to mutant porcupines. That left him only one other tactic.
He turned and ran away as fast as he could, noticing all the while that the forest was filling with more and more game creatures. For the moment, he only cared about the three monsters that were trying to kill him.
What the hell was going on?