EARTH ONLINE

Chapter 17 — Kill Them, Then Survive

Under the tall pines, Mr. Reyes spoke low. "I'm sorry. We were genuinely afraid you were a bad man — a Stowaway. We couldn't take the smallest risk. This is the most dangerous hour of the day, and you came in the middle of it; we had no way to be sure of you. Better to be wrong and turn someone away than to let one of them through."

Cole nodded. "Eleven at night to two in the morning. Deep sleep. It's the most dangerous stretch of the day — if someone means to strike, that's when they'll do it."

A student piped up. "That's exactly what Cassie said."

Cole glanced at the short-haired girl in the center of the group.

Mr. Reyes sighed. "You're right. We were afraid someone would creep in under the dark and kill us in our sleep. Eldridge had over a thousand people, students and staff. When the Spire said the game had begun, most of the school vanished — and we were left with two teachers and sixteen students."

"Where are the rest?" Cole asked.

The teacher's voice went dry. "They're here."

They had reached the gymnasium. Mr. Reyes pushed the doors, and Cole looked up, and his eyes stilled.

Along the gym's corridor floor, laid out in a neat row, were six bodies, coats drawn over their faces. Three were small and slight — children, plainly. Three stood over five-and-a-half feet. They lay quiet on the cold tile, and the moonlight came through the tall window at the end of the hall and fell across them, and it was freezing.

Mr. Reyes's voice had gone rough. "Too many students, only two of us. Sixteen kids, all living in different places, near and far — we couldn't get them home. When the game began two mornings ago, Ms. West and I decided to wait at the school for the parents to come. If a parent hadn't vanished, they'd come for their child; if we drove the kids out blind, we might miss them on the road. And if a parent had vanished — then we'd see the child through it together. Five parents came and took their children. Eleven were left with no one."

Cole looked at the six bodies and his fingers tightened. He turned his head. "How did they die?" It plainly hadn't been the Spire's erasure — one of the small bodies was covered in knife wounds, hacked to death.

Mr. Reyes's eyes went red all at once, and his voice shook with fury. "It was those Stowaways."

Wes took it up, grim. "This afternoon, Cole — every one of us got pulled into the Spire to run an assault game. Eldridge's people too. When it ended, two kids never came back; nine came home, and Ms. West. Three of our kids got dropped into the same game — six players in it, the three of them and three adults. And two of the three adults were Stowaways."

Cole's gaze sharpened.

"The kids are just Reserves," Wes went on. "All they tried to do in there was survive. But one of them — Wade — finished a side quest by accident, and the reward was a giant match."

Cole started. "A giant match?"

Wes nodded. "Identical to yours."

Mr. Reyes gestured, and the tall boy went into the gym's equipment room and brought out a giant match — the great red head, the familiar wooden shaft. Cole took it and turned it over. "It's exactly like mine. The boy met Mosaic? He cleared one of her quests?"

"I don't know," Wes said. "He's dead. He's lying right there."

Cole held the match a moment. He had collected Quill Sandoval's ability — One Cheat Code Short of a Protagonist, a one-time seal that took a single kind of lifeless object into the body. He found he could draw this match into himself the same way, the way he had his own, turn it to a tattoo and carry it hidden. He didn't. He handed it back to the boy.

The boy took it, eyes rimmed red, and a single tear fell before he scrubbed it away. "It was Wade's. All three of them died — those Stowaways killed them. Wade told me, before, that the second he got the match a Stowaway tried to take it off him. The Stowaway could tell it was a treasure. And honestly, if he'd really pushed, Wade would have just given it to him — Wade was a coward, we used to tease him, said he was jumpier than the girls. But—" the boy choked. "But in the game, before Wade could even decide, the monster announced it had found a Stowaway, and that it would eat the Stowaway, and that if we didn't hand the Stowaway over it would eat us one at a time."

"It was the same as ours," Wes said quietly. "But two of their three adults were Stowaways. The two of them agreed to throw the kids to the monster first. Terrified, Wade just — pointed at random, said one of the adults was the Stowaway. The monster said adults had more meat, turned to eat that one, and it actually was a Stowaway."

"He pointed at random," Cole said.

"Yeah. Three terrified kids who only didn't want to be eaten, pointing at anyone. That adult had been the loudest about handing Wade over, so Wade pointed at him. And he was right by accident."

"Did the monster finish him?"

Mr. Reyes's jaw clenched. "Why didn't it. Wade said the thing had only eaten one of the Stowaway's arms when the assault game ended. All six of them walked out alive. We thought it was over — we were about to celebrate that everyone had come back from the Spire's games — and then the two surviving Stowaways recognized the Eldridge uniforms, and half an hour later they came for the school. They'd found three more. Five Stowaways, come for a building full of children."

The red-eyed boy's voice cracked. "They said they'd kill Wade, and we had to hand over the match. At first we wouldn't — it was Wade's, he earned it, why should they have it? But all five had abilities, they were so strong, they killed one of us, and we decided to give them the match. Except they didn't only want the match. The one who'd lost his arm said — said he wanted Wade's arm, to pay for his. We could never agree to that. They attacked twice. We killed two of them. But Wade, and the others — and Ms. West — Ms. West is dead, all of them—"

Mr. Reyes took Cole to the gym bathroom. Two bodies lay across the floor.

Every student but Cassie, the moment they saw the two corpses, went red-eyed and rushed them, stamping on their faces, again and again.

"It isn't about the match anymore," Mr. Reyes said. "They've lost two. We've lost all these children. And Ms. West. We don't stop until they're dead."

"Kill them!"

"Kill them!"

Hatred like that, in the mouths of children, was a terrible thing to hear.

Cole did not try to soothe them, did not tell them to set it down.

The world was not the peaceful one it had been a week ago. No one could keep these children safe forever; the only ones who could protect them were themselves. The world had turned cruel, and thirteen was not so young, and perhaps they had to learn to grow up early. Evil had always existed somewhere — there were corners of the earth where the fires of war had never gone out — only it had been kept far off, held back by people who'd spent themselves to hold it back. Now the wicked had put out their claws, and the only thing left to do was cut them off, and live.

Cole felt an anger he hadn't felt in a long time. He breathed, and let it settle, and looked at the clock on the gym wall.

"It's three in the morning. There were five Stowaways. You killed two; three are left. If they're smart, they won't move on the school again tonight. But to be safe we keep someone on the gate."

The short-haired girl, who had said nothing the whole time, spoke. "They'll come tomorrow night."

"Yes," Cole said. "Tomorrow night."

She lifted her head and looked at him, this girl who stood a head shorter than he did. "I want to kill them. And then I want to live."

Kill them first. Live second.

Cole looked at her, seriously, and nodded. "Alright. We kill them, and then we live."