Chapter 28: Games Within

The doctor, a man with great bedside manner for an NPC, encased Dozer’s forearm and hand with a cast. Once it hardened, he had an orderly show Dozer to the patient’s quarters. The room had about twenty beds, half under the large windows along the outside wall, half on the other side, and most of them empty. It reeked of cleaning chemicals.

Errorist lay in a bed underneath one of those windows. He had his face buried in his tablet, engrossed in whatever video played on it. Thin, metal tubes, held in place by braces, attached to clear tubes, funneled a slow stream of medicine into the healing wound. A square contraption regulated the fluid.

In the far corner, a yellow curtain surrounded the bed, the only one in the room. The sunlight lit up a vague outline of whoever made it their tentative home.

“Sylvester,” Dozer stood at the end of his bed and put out a hand, “or should I say Errorist?”

Errorist almost dropped the tablet. “What the… What are you doing here?” He grinned and brought out a hand.

Instead of shaking hands, Dozer used his left to curl Errorist’s hand into a fist. He curled his fingers over the edge of the cast and fist-bumped. “They got me on some good painkillers, but no need to hurt myself anymore.”

“How did you hurt yourself?”

Dozer pulled the chair beside Errorist’s night table toward him and straddled it backward. “Picked the wrong fight.” And the same way when I lost it on you. He didn’t dare say it. If Errorist didn’t bring it up, Dozer wouldn’t either. “What are you watching?”

“Some detective show.” Errorist held up the terminal. “It’s crazy. They’ve got movies, tv shows, books all set in the game. Even other video games.”

“Of course, they made games for the game. Are they any good?”

“Nope. It all seems like they made it all fast like it’s all supposed to be background noise. Until we stuck in here, that is.”

The sound of metal wheels on a metal railing filled the room. Errorist jumped. The other patient had pulled his curtain back. The other hand held an old-style print book. A transparent container, filled with a blue, bioluminescent fluid, enclosed his calf. Dozer closed an eye and checked the guy out: PVT Reynold ‘Buttstroke’ Bauer(ROH) - 1.

Holy fucking shit.

A chill splashed up Dozer’s spine. He had never seen Bauer in the flesh before he sold that information to the brothel. The pseudo-memory from the pod didn’t count since it must have been a construction of his mind. But here he sat in his bed wearing the same face as in the pseudo-memory, albeit with the close-cropped haircut the barber’s gave all the recruits.

How many other people got sent here because of me?

“So,” he put his book down with his finger still on his page, “did they order you to sit there and look like an idiot?”

Errorist stared down at his hands and didn’t dare to make eye contact. Dozer tried to say something witty or, if he failed to do that, anything at all.

“Great. Now, this room has got twice the stupid.” Reynold pulled the curtain closed.

***

With his left hand, Dozer peeled off his socks, balled them up, and threw. The throw with his non-dominant hand felt like his arm fought against him. Despite this, the socks bounced off of Errorist’s long nose. Errorist flinched. Yet again, he had been so involved in his TV show he didn’t notice Dozer’s subtle ambush.

“How come,” Dozer nodded toward Reynold—or Buttstroke—and said neither of his names, “gets some privacy and we don’t.”

Errorist picked up the socks and listened. A faint snore came from the behind the curtains. He threw them back. “Dunno. The first day I got here, he limped outside and brought them back.”

Dozer thought about doing the same, but if two of them asked for forgiveness and not permission, the doctors might assert their authority and take both curtains away. Perhaps it was better to let sleeping Buttstrokes lie.

“Why are you watching that shit?” Dozer tossed the socks back.

Errorist caught them with both hands. His eyes slid to the side toward Buttstroke. “Not like there’s anything else to do here.” He tossed them.

“We could play catch.” The socks tumbled out of Dozer’s fingers and headed to the space between beds.

With a grasping hand, Errorist reached and almost fell out. The socks bounced off his fingers and rolled underneath the bed beside. He took one of his crutches and used it to scoot the socks closer to the bed.

“If I could catch,” Errorist reached down, “I wouldn’t be here.”

Over two months had passed since that fateful gutterball game—or seemed like it. Almost like someone else threw that punch.

“If you could catch,” Dozer held up his cast and smirked, “I’d be able to throw with my right hand.”

Errorist froze, stone-faced. Dozer had thought the guy made a joke, albeit one tinged with black. No. He communicated something.

I’m responsible for him being here.

A wave of heat leaped off Dozer’s chest and splashed his cheeks. His stomach tilted and his throat constricted. Errorist had at long last said what Dozer dreaded. Maybe the time to repent had come.

“Listen, I,” Dozer sat up straight, “I think I owe you an—”

“Fearless leader!” The voice came from the door, Coldcase’s voice. A smile beamed from his face even though he sat in a wheelchair. His leg rested on the extended footrest of the wheelchair. Model, with a cast over one forearm, pushed from behind. He grinned as well.

A long gash, open but cauterized, ran from Coldcase’s ankle to his sole. “Did you guys,” Dozer scratched his head, “do something to yourselves?”

“Well,” Model shrugged, “since you didn’t leave our Errorist behind, we weren’t about to let you leave us behind. So I punched a wall until something broke.” He held up his cast and waved to Errorist.

No way could I do that. Model must have an attitude about his own body that I don’t.

“Help me onto the bed?” Coldcase held his arms out. Model and Dozer lifted him out of the chair. “I had a bit of an accident on the rifle range.” Their corpsman groaned and settled into his new mattress. “Figured I’d get saddled with a bunch of zeros on my fireteam, did the math, and concluded the hospital would be preferable to the recycler.”

The grin dropped from Model’s face. “I thought we wouldn’t say that.”

“You thought that, yes,” Coldcase shifted in his bed, “but you didn’t give me much chance to respond. Information wants to be free.”

Model glanced at Dozer from under his brow and winced. “Sorry you—” His gaze moved past Dozer to the far end of the room. “Oh, fuck me.”

Buttstroke, awake, held his curtain open. “What the fuck?”

“Reynold.” Model straightened his back. The name came out in a snarl.

“Is that you?” Reynold squinted. “You look different. Guess you got what you wanted.”

Dozer scrunched up his face and mouthed “what” to Errorist. Errorist shook his head.

Model put his arms on his hips. “What are you doing here?”

“Same as you, it seems.”

Dozer looked to Coldcase, but he put his hands up. Seemed only Model and Buttstroke knew what they talked about.

“You stay the fuck away from me.” Model took the bed beside Errorist, so the old man of the room would become a buffer between the two.

Buttstroke laughed like only he understood the joke. The humor drained away and left a scowl on his face. He closed his curtain.

Whatever that exchange meant, Model wouldn’t tell. He kept himself locked up tight.

“So,” Dozer, the only one on his feet, addressed the rest of his fireteam, “what’s new with you guys?”