Casey Brown placed his foot on some loose shingle and felt his leg slide out from under him. It was probably the fourth time that hour, but right now his grasp of time was even worse than his grasp of space. Each hallucinogenic episode had been more intense than the last.

They began when the colours of his surroundings started to move, until eventually trees merged into bushes, the hills became waves in an ocean, and the sky looked like it wanted to swallow him whole. Scarier still was when time appeared to move in reverse for several seconds and he’d somehow known the answers to questions he hadn’t yet asked. Or had that even happened yet?

As his leg slid out, his shoulder came forward to cushion the blow, the instinct to protect the head kicking in despite his state. Pain coursed through his central nervous system, and for a second he thought he’d never make it. But he’d thought that a thousand times over the last few days and had willed himself on, desperate to make it. Only twenty more yards, Case, you can do it. Warriors win.

He felt dirty, his brow caked in sweat and mud, God-knows-what matted in his hair. A hot shower, a greasy hamburger and his bed: these were things he’d never take for granted again. His bloody hands shook despite the mild Mississippi afternoon, and his wrists ached from the chafing of the old piece of fishing rope that tied them together and attached them to the net of rocks he dragged behind him.

Going up the hill, like he was now, had always been easier: the rocks were below and couldn’t fall on him, as they’d done countless times on his journeys down. The task had been to climb the hill a hundred and forty-four times and this was his final ascent. He was nearly there. Only fifteen yards to go. Warriors win.

Willing him on from the top of the hill was Wallace, one of the people that had introduced Casey to the Holy Order in the first place, and the guy in charge of these initiation rites. Wallace wasn’t much older than Casey but years of smoking had taken their toll and the crow’s feet around his eyes gave him a craggy, hardy look.

“Come on, Casey, ma boy, you’re on the home stretch! You’ve gone done the hard bit. That’s right, put your back into it, soldier, it’s mind over matter.”

On his hands and knees, Casey grabbed hold of a grassy tuft, hauled himself another yard and could now make out his comrade’s grin beneath his black Stetson. Dragging the net of rocks with a renewed sense of purpose, he powered through the final few yards and collapsed at the base of his target, an old wooden pole.

The circular disc on top of it was engraved with a series of curly swastikas, the Holy Order’s emblem. During one of his hallucinogenic episodes the pole had looked like a magical toadstool. The symbols had grown hands and legs, which had interlinked and danced around, taunting him in his weakened state. Using the pole to steady himself with one hand, he held the other out and looked at his friend.

“The knife, please.”

Wallace smiled a yellow-toothed grin and flipped the knife in the air. Casey caught it by the blade and turned to face the pole. “Hope I never see this fucking thing again, long as I live.”

Suddenly aware that his cigarette smoke was making it harder for his friend to catch his breath, Wallace wafted the air with his hand, took one last drag, and flicked the butt to the ground. He retrieved an emergency ration bar from his backpack, removed the silver foil, and broke it into pieces while Casey carved his final notch.

“She’s a bitch, ain’t she? The first hundred ascents are bad enough. The next forty-four are pure torture. Never thought I was gonna make it, right up ’til the end. It’ll all be worth it, trust me.”

His hands shaking, Casey swapped the knife for the ration bar and collapsed on the floor. Three and a half days of mental and physical exertion had broken him. Wallace rummaged through his backpack again, this time pulling out a walkie- talkie. He flicked a switch, waited for it to crackle and hum, and then held it to his ear.

“Looks like we have ourselves a winner. Get the truck ready, I’ll be down soon to help pack the tents away.” He switched frequencies and spoke again. “Tell Father that the eagle has landed. I repeat, the eagle has landed, over.”

***

Artica Kronkite pulled his jacket tight and cursed the biting February wind. As he walked the last stretch of his daily commute, he spoke into the mic embedded in his glasses. Costing more than the average Londoner’s monthly mortgage payment, their thick oblong frames incorporated technology that was able to augment his surroundings, but also kept the swirls of unkempt hair out of his stubbly face.

“Hannah, let Carl know that I replied to the HGR guys. They reckon there’s an issue with the larger drones, bloody ridiculous. We’ve been working on this thing for six months, and now there’s a problem. I told them, they screw up the opening ceremony, we never do business with them again, period.”

He rounded the corner into Redchurch Street and looked up to the roof of the building opposite. A black hand appeared from behind and clamped itself round the Victorian chimney, cracking it down the centre. Another hand appeared and grabbed onto a spare satellite dish.

Using its newfound brickwork grips, the hulking gorilla poked its head over the building and let out a scream that Arty thought sounded more like a dying giraffe. It stared right at him, and then was gone, as fast as it had appeared. Bricks and tiles, dislodged by the impatient primate, smashed as they hit the pavement below. Six commuters walked on by, unaware of the virtual carnage that his glasses had made seem real.

A new message from Hannah appeared in his field of vision: “Where are you? Meeting in Chess. Urgent.”

His voiced reply was automatically transcribed to text and sent to her: “Two minutes away.”

The area in front of Spiralwerks HQ buzzed with reporters, gamers and fans, some of whom had turned up every weekday for the past year, so eager had they been to meet the staff. Arty signed promotional posters for the fanboys, posed for selfies with the gamers and ignored the inane questions from the reporters. Unmanned aerial drones hovered overhead, fulfilling various tasks. Some captured live footage; others delivered breakfast orders to nearby digital agencies.

Arty pushed through the mob and entered reception, admitted through the sturdy metal gates by a robotic security guard whose facial recognition software could tell identical twins apart at a hundred metres. The intelligent paint covering the circular edge of the double-storey lobby displayed an aquatic scene. Orcas, tiger sharks and scuba divers accompanied his ascent in the lift, which made a bubbling sound when it reached the sixth floor.

High-resolution floor-to-ceiling screens at the front of the room told visitors everything they needed to know. This was mission control. Although the entire room buzzed with activity, heads still turned when Arty entered the room. It was a big day for everybody, but they all knew how much it meant to their CEO. He popped his bag on his desk and dashed over to the chess-themed meeting room. The colleagues he passed offered a nod and a smile but didn’t engage him in the usual banter.

“... They’re telling me it’s a credible threat, and we need to be taking it seriously. Hang on. For those dialled in, Arty’s just walked in.”

He declined a seat, joining those standing round the table instead. The screen on the wall displayed the avatars of the dialled-in management team. The smart table around which they crowded was overlaid with images and holograms pertaining to the meeting.

“OK. Tell me what we’re dealing with here.” Arty addressed Hannah McCreadie, the Head of Communications and a close ally. She was a patient woman whose ability to understand and react to complex problems had gained her a lot of respect within the organisation.

“You remember those nutjobs in the US we heard about a few weeks back?” “You mean the techno-mystical wannabe terrorists?”

“Them indeed, ‘the Holy Order’. They just issued a hit list of corporate targets.

Guess who’s on top?”

Hannah nodded at the list on the large screen at the front of the room. The

room fell silent while Arty studied it.

“Is there any indication why? We build games in virtual worlds, for God’s sake,

it’s not like we sell crack-laced sweets to kids.”

Hannah shrugged, exhaling through pursed lips.

“When you say that they ‘issued’ the hit list, how exactly? To whom and when?” “Emailed to a generic address at each of the companies on the list. Arrived at

one minute past eight this morning. They used an anonymous remailing system making the original source untraceable. We’re expecting the story to break any moment.”

“So you’re telling me that this, rather than the start of The Game, is going to be the news tonight?”

“We’re doing what we can to stay on message.”

Arty stared at the list for a long while. Finally, noticing the worried expressions on the faces of his team, he clapped his hands and smiled, hoping it looked more genuine than it felt. “Let’s not lose focus on what we’ve got to do today. We’re only fourteen hours from the opening ceremony. Everyone needs to be at the top of their game.”

Members of his team started to move. “That’s it, get a move on, we haven’t got time to waste. Except for you, Carl. I want to know what’s going on with those bloody drones.”

****************************************************

Full book available on Amazon here:

https://www.royalroad.com/amazon/B00ZFF6NVK

Chapter 3 coming on Friday