Warcross (Warcross #1)(52)

I smile. I’m past the shields that protect the surface level of Warcross and have dived into the sprawling, encrypted, anonymous underground world of virtual reality that has sprung up right under the Warcross platform. It’s a second home, this place where everyone speaks my language, and where those who might otherwise be powerless in real life can now be incredibly powerful.

Most people who frequent the Dark World don’t even bother with a name for it. If you’re here, you’re “down under,” and anyone who knows what they’re doing should know that you’re not talking about Australia. The world I walk through now makes no logical sense, at least not in the usual way. Narrow, dilapidated buildings stand right in the middle of the street, while some doors leading into buildings hang upside down, as if impossible to get into. The main street intersects with other streets in midair that lead from windowsill to windowsill, connecting the impossible. Like one giant Escher painting. When I look skyward, a series of dark trains run parallel to one another, disappearing into both horizons. They look weird, stretched out, as if distorted through some sort of circus mirror. Water drips nearby, running into the gutters and pooling in potholes.

I glance up at the neon signs. If you look closely at them, you’ll notice that they aren’t really signs at all, but lists of names highlighted in neon. If you’re stupid enough to visit the Dark World without knowing how to protect your identity, then in no time, you’ll see your real name and your personal info—Social Security numbers, home addresses, private phone numbers—listed up there on those signs. That’s what the names are: a running list of all the users who dared to come down here unprepared, broadcast to the rest of the Dark World and leaving them at the mercy of those who walked these streets.

That’s where I’d been listed, the first time I went down here.

I pass a sign for the main street. Silk Road, it says. Underneath the lists are rows of shops with their own neon signs. Some of them sell illegal goods—drugs, mostly. Others have a little red lantern hanging outside their door, offering virtual sex. Still others have a video icon over their doors, signaling live virtual voyeurism. I look away and hurry on. I may be hidden behind a black suit and a randomized face, but just because I frequent this world doesn’t mean I’m ever comfortable with it.

Now I bring up a search, then tap Pirate’s Den when the result scrolls by. The world blurs around me, and an instant later, I’m standing at a part of the street where the buildings give way to a pier. A pirate ship looms along the shore, lit up with strings of lanterns that dangle in intervals to the top of its masts, the lights reflecting against the water in a sheet of glitter.

The Pirate’s Den is one of the more popular hangouts down here. The ship’s bow displays an ornate wooden carving in the semblance of a backward copyright symbol. Information wants to be free, I mouth the Den’s slogan silently. A scarlet banner hangs over the gangplank leading up to its main deck, where a steady stream of anonymous avatars are now walking.

Today, the banner advertises betting on a Warcross game happening inside. These are matches with haphazard rules run by gangsters, the matches where I find and catch the gamblers who get in trouble with the law. Darkcross games, everyone jokingly calls them. I can only imagine how many indebted Warcross gamblers are going to come out of this one.

Ren’s probably here for this, I add to myself as I head up the gangplank.

On board the ship, the speakers are playing an electronic track pirated from an unreleased Frankie Dena album. A glass cylinder looms in the center of the deck, upon which a list of names and numbers constantly updates and loops. The names on this list are famous ones—prime ministers, presidents, pop stars—and beside each name is an amount of notes offered. The assassination lottery. People pitch in money to whichever person they’d like to see killed. Whenever one of these pots rises high enough, some assassin in the Dark World is bound to be motivated to assassinate that person and win the pot.

It happens rarely, of course. But the Pirate’s Den has existed in one form or another almost as long as the internet’s been around, and every decade or so, there’s an assassination that actually goes through. In fact, Ronald Tiller, a universally hated diplomat acquitted of a rape charge, had died several years ago in a mysterious car explosion. I’d seen his name at the top of the assassination lottery list a week before it happened.

I glance up to a balcony that overlooks the cylinder of names. There are a couple of avatars sitting there, watching. One of them is leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, observing the list silently. Potential assassins, waiting for the right amounts of money. I shiver and look away.

On the other walls are lists of statistics about each official Warcross team. The stats on the Phoenix Riders and Demon Brigade take up one entire wall. Beneath it runs a scrolling list of betting odds against the two teams. The favor is overwhelmingly on the Demon Brigade’s side.

Groups of unnamed avatars cluster here and there, deep in their own conversations. Many of them are hulking in appearance, even monstrous—bulging arms and long claws, black pools in the place of eyes. Some Dark World folks really like to look the part. I search for Ren. He could be any of these avatars, disguised just like we are.

I check the time. Almost one. I crane my neck, scanning the crowd as I tap out commands, searching for any sign of Ren’s signature in here. Nothing.

Then—