Rabbits(37)

“Yeah, so listen,” I said. “I need to ask you a question.”

“What is it?”

I lowered my voice a little. “What do you know about Rabbits?”

Russell’s face twisted up and changed before he’d even heard the last syllable. He shot out of his chair, yanked me up, and dragged me through the Reading Room, outside, and onto the front steps of the library.

“Whatever you’re doing, you need to stop,” he said, looking around nervously as he spoke.

“What do you mean?”

“The game isn’t what you think. You’re not going to get rich or become a secret agent, K.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about real people actually dying while playing.”

All of the color had drained from his face and his eyes were wild. I suddenly felt scared, exposed.

“Jesus, Russ, did something happen?”

“Look, it’s not a game—or, at least, it’s not only a game. It’s something else. Terrible shit has been happening around that thing. It took me a long time to get my life back, and I’m not getting pulled in again. It’s nice to see that you still exist, K, but please, leave me the fuck alone.”

And with that, Russell Milligan turned and made his way back into the library while I stood outside on the steps, trying to work out exactly what the hell had just happened.



* * *



—

“So, how freaked out was this guy?” Chloe asked, sitting cross-legged on my couch.

“On a scale of ‘who gives a shit’ to ‘totally freaked out,’ I’d put him somewhere just shy of ‘Scanners-style exploding head,’?” I said, handing Chloe a cup of tea.

“Thanks,” she said.

“I don’t get it. I mean, I barely knew him, but he always seemed cool—not the kind of guy who’d lose his shit at the mention of a game.”

“He told you to stay away from Rabbits, that people had died while playing,” Chloe said.

I nodded.

Chloe took a sip of her tea, then added one more packet of sugar.

“He’s right, you know,” I said.

“About what?”

“That people have died while playing Rabbits.” I did my best to judge Chloe’s reaction to my statement. She didn’t even blink.

“People die playing all kinds of games, K.”

“Yeah, but what if this is…different?”

She stared at me for a moment. “Did you read that thing on death and videogames I sent you from VICE last year?”

“I don’t remember.”

“I sent it to you twice.”

“Maybe?”

Chloe shook her head, unimpressed. “So, that article talks about how game addiction creates the same changes in your brain as drug addiction.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. A kid actually died just this year from playing Diablo for forty hours straight without eating.”

“That’s messed up.”

“It’s fucking horrifying is what it is. I love Diablo. I’ll send you the article. Again.”

Chloe toyed with the handle of her mug for a moment before she looked up. “K…”

“Yeah?”

“Did you know somebody who died?”

I’d told Chloe that I’d been in a car accident as a kid, but I never mentioned the fact that the accident had anything to do with Rabbits.

“Yes,” I said.

“Playing the game?”

“I think so, maybe.”

“What makes you think it was Rabbits?”

“I don’t know. I’m probably just seeing connections that aren’t there,” I lied. I didn’t want to get into what had happened in that truck with the Connors sisters. I noticed my mouth was a bit dry, and I was starting to feel a familiar buzzing in my head.

I looked down at my hands and realized I’d been tapping out an Australian Open match between Andre Agassi and Michael Chang.

I casually slipped my hands beneath my thighs. I didn’t think Chloe noticed.

“You know Rabbits is all about connections,” Chloe said.

She could tell I was hiding something, and I got the feeling she was thinking about asking me a direct question I most likely wasn’t prepared to answer.

She put her hand on my thigh and looked into my eyes.

She was worried.

Maybe she had noticed my weird thigh-tapping ritual, after all.





13


    PROPERTY OF SHIRLEY BOOTH


A couple of weeks after I’d spoken with Russell Milligan, Chloe and I met up at my place to go over everything we had so far. We invited Baron, but he didn’t show. We tried calling, but it went straight to voicemail.

“When’s the last time you heard from him?” I asked.

Chloe scrolled through the messages on her phone. “Nothing since right after he started working at WorGames.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. You?”

I shook my head. “Same.”

“I’d probably go AWOL for a while if I got to spend time living in Sidney Farrow’s latest digital dreamscape.”