The Deadliest Game

“So Leif told me,” Winters said. “She didn’t know you were there, though.”

“No.”

“Tell me something,” Winters said, and then held up a hand. “No, wait a moment. Before we go on to that…” He glanced down at the pad again. “I’ve got a note here from the hospital at Bloomington. She’s going into surgery now. Most of her injuries aren’t too serious. It’s the usual problem with brain trauma, though. You can’t tell how bad it is until the brain’s had time to ‘register’ the injury and react to it. She apparently has a case of what they call ‘contrecoup,’ where the brain hits the inside of the skull and bruises with the impact. If they can get the swelling to go down in time…she’ll be all right. At least it doesn’t seem as if she’s in any imminent danger of dying.”

“Oh, God,” Megan said, “we should have tried harder, we should have found some way to warn her anyway, we should have—”

“Yes,” Winters said, only a little dryly, “hindsight does tend to be twenty-twenty. But in this case, you need to step back from the events a little bit and see if your judgment’s being clouded by what’s happened. I’ll admit, it’s shocking.”

He sighed, and pushed the pad away. “In any case, I want you to step right back from this whole business and let us handle it now. When it’s just machinery involved, burglary, destruction of property, that’s one thing. But when assault starts coming into it — in this case, vehicular assault with a deadly weapon — that’s when it becomes no longer merely Explorer business. I value anything you can tell me, though, about your own suspicions.”

“Suspicions are all we’ve got,” Megan said. “But I can’t get rid of the idea that they would have been enough to save her.”

“Maybe so,” Winters said. “Leif spent a while telling me about a character named Argath.”

Megan nodded. “Just about anyone who’s had a fight with him in the last three game-years, and beaten him, seems to have been bounced.”

“But you’re not sure he’s responsible.”

“I don’t know anymore. Yesterday I was really suspicious, but…there wasn’t enough data.”

Winter smiled a little grimly. “There still may not be. We need to be rather Holmesian about this. Of course, when Net Force proper comes into it, we’ll be able to get the Sarxos people to cooperate with us and release proper names, game logs, and other such information. Of course it’ll still take due process. They never like letting proprietary stuff go easily.”

Megan said, “Maybe if a player approached Chris Rodrigues.”

Winter said, “We can’t spend too much time with the ‘maybes’ at this point. We’ll do this one by the book. Anyway, from what investigation you’ve done so far, is there anyone else upon whom suspicion might genuinely be thrown?”

“Nobody who’s obvious to us, no. The problem is that there are so very many players. Even if we could get at it, the database is so massive. I keep thinking that there must be some way to winnow through everybody, but I don’t know what that would be. Lots of players would have characteristics that would match a possible motive for attack, but only one of them is responsible. You can’t go around accusing innocent people just on the off chance that they might be guilty.”

“There speaks a future operative,” Winters said, and there was a grim note of approval in his voice. “Well. Megan, you’re still in shock. It’s understandable. Leif was, too. Let’s part company for the moment. But I’d appreciate a written debrief from you in the next eighteen to twenty-four hours: something to brief our operatives with when we send them in. Make it as detailed as you can. In fact, I’d appreciate it if you’d speak to the Sarxos people and give us access to your game logs from last night.”

Megan blushed hot at that. “Mr. Winters,” she said very softly, “I think some of the things we said were construed as threats—”

“I heard Mrs. Richardson’s niece’s statement,” Winters said. “I understand you have some concerns about what your legal status might be in this situation. I think you know that you have my confidence. Should there be any legal repercussions, you know that we’ll support you. But just in case it comes up, can anyone at your home alibi you for last night?”

Megan shook her head. “Nobody except the Net itself,” she said. “There’s no faking your identity when you log in, after all. It’s your brain, your body, and your implant. And as for the rest of it…” She shrugged, and then added with just the slightest smile, “I’m not sure how I would have driven from here to Bloomington, Illinois, in time to run Elblai — Mrs. Richardson — off the road with a car.”

“There is that,” Winter said, and cracked a small smile himself. “Never mind. You’re covered for the moment. Go on, go to school, and get that report done for me tonight, if you would. We’ll be sending in operatives ASAP. Meanwhile, you should consider yourself relieved of responsibility for this business. But I want to thank you very much for your help so far. You’ve at least given us a lead to follow, you two, and some potentially useful theories. Plus a much better strategic assessment than we could have managed on short notice. It’s much appreciated. You put your talents and your time on the line…and possibly, considering the nature of the person we seem to be hunting, your personal safety as well, if that person got any sense of who you were and what you were up to.”

“I don’t think we were anywhere near him,” Megan said. “Thanks anyway.”

She cut off the connection, thought a moment, then spoke to her implant and had it call Leif.

He was sitting in his workspace in the stave-house, looking profoundly depressed — an unusual expression for him. He glanced up as Megan appeared in his space.

“You talk to him?” Leif asked.

“Yeah.”

“We’re off the case.”

“Yeah.”

Leif looked up at Megan sideways. “Are we off the case?”

“What do you mean? Of course we’re off. He took us off.”

“And you’re just going to sit back and let it be that way? Just like that?”

“Well.” Megan looked at him.

Leif got up and started pacing. “Look,” he said. “I don’t want to sound unduly heroic or anything. I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling a little bit responsible.”

“For what? We didn’t run that lady off the road!”

“We tried to warn her. We did it wrong. She didn’t get it. Don’t you feel responsible for that?”

Megan sat down on that severely plain couch and dropped her head into her hands. “Yeah,” she said. “I do. A lot. And I don’t know what we can do about it, now that it’s happened.”

“Not just give up,” Leif said.

“But, Leif, you heard Winters. He’s taken us out of the loop. If they catch us—”

“How are they going to catch us? It’s not like we’re not Sarxos players. It’s not like we don’t have a right to be in the game when we want to. Isn’t that so?”

“Yeah, but — Leif, if we do that, they’re gonna know right away what we’re doing!”

“Are they? But we’re good little Net Force Explorers, aren’t we?” Leif’s grin popped out, and looked unusually mischievous for a moment. “Who’d ever suspect us of disobeying orders? Intentionally, anyway.” Leif held his head high and looked for a moment impossibly noble, innocent, and dim.

Megan had to laugh at the sight of him.

“Not that they can give us orders,” Leif said. “Suggestions, yes…”

“You are amazing,” she said.

“Thank you. And modest.”

“Oy,” Megan said.

“Look,” Leif said. “Think about it. The reason we’re lucky enough to be Explorers in the first place is because they saw something in us that was not the usual kind of behavior. A little more willing to swing out into the unknown, maybe. If we just give up now because we’re told to—”

“If we were in Net Force, we’d have to do what we were told, Leif! Discipline—”

“Frack discipline,” Leif said. “Well, I don’t mean that. But we’re not fully in. It gives us a little—”

“—Latitude?” She scowled.

“Megan, I’m telling you, I’m right on this one. And you know I am. That’s why you’re making those weird