reigns of the apocalypse: this was a new world. And what was a world, in video games or in life? It was an arena on which you placed an avatar: an image of yourself.
But everyone’s still trusting their old pictures.
No, Jopek was not the saving soldier who would be found at The End.
Jopek was the accidental idiotic survivor of a war that he was convinced was his destiny.
And who are you, Michael?
I’m the one who can save us. I’m a Gamer. And the Master.
So what are you going to do?
I’m going to remake the world.
And after that? I’m going to beat that world.
Day 25:
First date ever. (I think.) Went well. (I think.)
Also:
I know why Jopek’s eyes look empty.
He’s lying to himself.
He believes that he knows best. That he’s The Man In Charge, even though the world changed around him.
“You ever feel like you were born for some special greatness?”
Like the mirror-eyed mannequins in the Coalmount church, the captain looked so much like what he pretended to be that it was hard to tell the difference. Until you looked very, very closely.
And then it was the clearest, most yes-yes thing in the world.
So I am going to lie, Michael thought, and grinned to the jack-o’-lantern in the secret dark of the Senate chambers. I will lie to save Patrick and Holly and Hank, and leave.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow, Captain, you get your next mission. You’re going to become part of The Game.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“What’s a Betrayer?” Patrick asked.
Michael gripped the metal bars on the end of the gurney and ran down the hall. Patrick, sitting cross-legged on the gurney, whooped for joy and wrapped his hands around the sidebars.
“It’s what the Game Master said we have to find today,” Michael explained.
“Yeah, but—waaaaahh my butt tingles!” Patrick shouted as they rumbled over a patch of busted marble.
“The Betrayer is the reason The Game’s been all weird, Bub,” Michael said. “It’s a person who’s not playing by the Rules. He’s someone who looks good, but isn’t. The Game Master wants us to figure out who it is, so he can’t mess up The Game anymore. And guess what, duder? After we find the Betrayer, we’re road tripping to the real Safe Zone.”
“The Game Master said so? He said we can really go to The End this time?” There was hope on Patrick’s face, but Michael’s heart ached at the skepticism and worry that were also there.
“He promised. And we’ll do whatever it takes.”
“Michael?”
“Yeah?”
“Ya-ya.”
“Ya-ya.”
So that was the first thing Michael did that day.
“Hank. My man,” he said, an hour later. Hank stood at a urinal in the bathroom.
“Faris,” said Hank coldly, “do you notice the piss I am taking?”
Michael nodded, raised his palms up: my bad!
He leaned against a stall, sucked the strings of his hoodie, waited until the pee-sounds stopped. Then said, “Man, the captain can shoot, but his handwriting sucks, right?”
Hank went for the sink. Their eyes met in the mirror. “Huh?”
“So the note he left you wasn’t messy, too?” Michael said.
The implications of the question settled on Hank’s face. He looked like a fangirl who has asked for her favorite singer’s autograph and received a “maybe later, babe.” Michael actually felt a twist of guilt, remembering what Holly had said about Hank last night, but he couldn’t help but feel a yes-yes satisfaction that his lie was having the perfect effect.
“What did it . . . what did yours say?” said Hank.
“To talk to him, later, where he sleeps.”
“I don’t think that crazy asshole ever sleeps,” Hank replied, trying to sound like he wasn’t upset about Jopek’s “snub.” “I heard, uh, Michelangelo never did, either,” he added.
“And the note didn’t even say where that was, which is super nice,” Michael said.
Hank raised his eyes, quickly, and Michael was suddenly afraid he’d overplayed his hand.
Hank squinted for a long moment, then dropped his stare moodily. “Governor’s office, Faris, if that’s what you’re here to ask me.” He left the bathroom, his broad shoulders hunched so low that Michael felt sorry for him. Aaaaalmost.
Michael had been in some semi-exciting situations since Halloween.
But as he jogged past a headless governor and climbed the rotunda stairs, he decided that the best had been Halloween night, before the first Bellow appeared across the street from his house. In those seconds, there was only this: his brother, his plan, and his total control.
That was the first time he had ever felt that way.
Except. Right. Fuggin’. Now.
The marble stairway, which curved wide and stately around the rotunda, overlooked Government Plaza. A snowstorm