Matt backed away from the unconscious Sandy Braxton, his eyes on the three Confederate soldiers who’d left their places in the battle line. All around him, Pickett’s Charge moved on to its bloody climax. But Matt had eyes only for the three socket bayonets aimed at him.
Maybe he should have been watching where he was going. His heel caught in something, and suddenly he was tumbling. He’d tripped over a soldier, killed or wounded earlier in the charge! Long-drilled training from the Net Force Explorers’ dojo took over. Matt twisted even as he went down, lashing out with his hands to break his fall. He rolled as he hit the ground, quickly getting to his feet.
As he moved, his hand touched wood and metal. The wounded man’s rifle!
Matt grabbed up the weapon as his three deadly enemies came running up. The one in the lead had a bushy brown beard and sergeant’s stripes. The man behind him had a ferocious-looking black beard. The third was scarcely older than Matt, with just a couple of patches of hair on his chin.
The sergeant didn’t wait for the other two, but launched an awkward attack on his own. Matt began to feel some hope. He wasn’t facing trained soldiers, just interlopers who’d invaded this simulation. They didn’t know how to handle their rifles.
Not that Matt was an expert. But he had worked out with pugil sticks — padded quarterstaffs — under the Net Force’s Quantico-trained drill instructors. Those guys had been tough as Marines, and they’d at least thumped the basics of stick-fighting into the Net Force Explorers.
Matt parried the sergeant’s wild thrust on the barrel of his borrowed rifle. He forced the bayonet down and aside. It stabbed uselessly past his left hip. Then Matt shifted his grip on the weapon, ramming the stock into his attacker’s gut. The sergeant doubled over, and Matt smacked him in the head. The man was down before the other two had reached him.
“Computer!” Matt shouted. “End simulation! Execute!”
Nothing happened. He was still trapped in the Gettysburg reenactment, with a pair of guys who clearly meant him no good advancing on him with their bayonets at ready. His new attackers came on more cautiously after seeing what had happened to their pal.
Blackbeard went to the right while the Kid moved left, forcing Matt to divide his attention between them. He began backing up again, trying to keep some distance between them. “Computer! Pause!” he yelled.
But the action kept unrolling around him. Whatever Rob Falk had done, he’d taken control of the simulation right out of Matt’s hands.
The black-bearded soldier began a series of short jabs. Matt blocked them, then spun back and to his right, foiling an attempt by the other guy to get around behind him.
Matt brought up his rifle as if he were going to fire, sending both attackers scrambling back away from him. But as he tried to engage the weapon, the hammer fell with a dry
Blackbeard suddenly broke into a run, swinging his rifle in a wide, looping movement to slash with his bayonet. Matt braced himself to receive the attack. But suddenly, the black-bearded man was falling!
The look on his attacker’s face would have been comical in any other situation. A brilliant red stain appeared on his gray uniform jacket, and down he went.
Matt couldn’t help glancing at the Union battle line, where jets of flame lanced from the muzzles of massed rifles. Did they have to worry about stray bullets on the battlefield?
No, that was impossible. This was a reenactment, not the actual battle. They couldn’t have been using live ammunition.
Then Matt realized. When Rob had sent his pals into the sim, he’d simply picked the three closest soldiers to Sandy and Matt. Now it turned out that one of those soldiers had been slated to become a casualty. His number had come up, and down he’d gone!
That meant Matt had only a lone opponent to face — for the moment. The youthful face opposite him looked a little worried as the Kid feinted and jabbed with his weapon.
Matt parried almost mechanically, his mind busy on something else. The “death” of Blackbeard meant that Falk didn’t have complete control over the simulation. The computer was still doing what it was programmed to do.
The Kid glanced over Matt’s shoulder. That was the only warning Matt received. He thumped his opponent in the chest, knocking him back, and spun round as a Confederate officer lashed out with his sword. The blade made a chilling noise, worse than fingernails on a blackboard, as it scraped along Matt’s rifle barrel. If he’d been a little slower, people would have had to call him Lefty!
Even if Falk didn’t absolutely control the computer, he could keep sending his people back into the simulation. Just two of them now, it seemed — maybe Matt had managed to hurt the third.
That didn’t matter. Sooner or later, one of these clowns would score with a lucky shot.
And then Matt would suffer the fate of Gerald Savage.
Unless….
Matt retreated again as his attackers came in from opposite sides.
What was the first command Sandy had given the computer? The one that had set up this particular run of the simulation?
Hoping he’d gotten the numbers right, Matt shouted, “Computer, reload Gettysburg simulation, cue two-two- seven!”
It was like time travel. Matt and Sandy were between the two battle lines. Nothing was moving — and that included Sandy. He lay on the weirdly stiff grass.
But Matt couldn’t worry about that right now. His end run had succeeded! He’d managed to yank control of the computer back from Rob Falk!
“Computer!” he shouted quickly. “Cancel. And exit!”
The slopes of Cemetery Hill winked out, and Matt was back in Veeyar Lab Six. He leapt from his computer-link chair. Sandy Braxton lolled in his seat, unconscious.
“Mr. Braxton?” A voice suddenly filled the room. Matt recognized it as Mr. Petracca, the school librarian. “What’s going on in there? My monitors are giving some very odd readings for that simulation you’re running.”
“Something’s gone wrong,” Matt called. “Sandy Braxton is unconscious. I think the sim has been tampered with. Get the school doctor!”
He made sure Sandy was okay, then pulled out his wallet. After this attack, all bets were off. He was calling Captain Winters.
Even as he hit the option for phone configuration, sparks flew out from under the foilpack keypad. Matt dropped the wallet to the floor as the polymer smoldered. Coughing from the acrid smoke, Matt stamped on the wallet. It didn’t burst into flames, but it was obvious the circuitry was a complete loss. So much for phoning.
Mr. Petracca, the doctor, and a nurse had come bursting into Veeyar Lab Six. “The boy is in shock,” the medical man said after a quick examination.
“I’ve already called for an Emergency Services ambulance — and the police,” Mr. Petracca said.
A few minutes later, Matt sat in the school office, waiting for the cops to arrive. If only this hadn’t happened! He didn’t like blowing the lid off Rob Falk and the virtual vandals before he spoke to Cat Corrigan.
At that moment, Caitlin walked into the office.
The two of them stared at one another. Then, at almost the same time, they both asked, “What are
Cat responded first. “I was pulled out of class. There was a message from my father’s office. He’s sick — he collapsed. I’m just checking in before I go home.”
She looked at him, expecting his answer.
“Finish what you’ve got to do first,” Matt muttered.
Caitlin got a pass from the office staff, and Matt walked her to the door. “Sandy Braxton picked up a sim for the research project we’re working on,” Matt said quietly when they were in the hall. “We were in the veeyar lab when things began to go very, very wrong.”
She stared at him. “How wrong?”
