EARTH ONLINE

Chapter 6 — Cole, Save Me

The game was over, but the library did not let them go.

They tried the stairs; the invisible wall was gone, but the elevator stayed dead and the windows stayed white. They were still in the sandbox. Still nowhere.

The wall clock swept past six, and Cole's whole body went rigid.

It came back without warning — the wrongness, the panic with no source — and his heart began to race. It pounded harder than it ever had, hard enough that he thought it might tear loose from his chest; he grabbed for a shelf and his legs went out from under him and he slid to the floor. Hale came running. "What's wrong?"

The blood moved too fast. Cole's face went red in under a minute, every inch of his skin a boiled scarlet, and Hale stumbled back a step before he made himself kneel at Cole's side. "You're— why are you so red, you're burning up — is this a fever?"

It wasn't a fever. Cole's mind stayed perfectly clear. He forced out two words. "My heart—"

Hale understood and pressed a hand to his chest, and his face drained. "It's — that's two hundred a minute — no, three hundred—"

Three hundred and ninety-four, Cole corrected, silently. He couldn't speak anymore.

There was nowhere to take him and no one to call. Hale half-carried him to the front desk, swept it clear, laid him out flat. Then he ran to the bathroom, soaked paper towels, and laid them across Cole's forehead — useless, and they both knew it, and Cole was grateful past speaking. He could only watch with red, streaming eyes as the man ran back and forth, soaking towel after towel, pressing them to every inch of Cole's bare skin, sweating through his own shirt.

Cole's heart hit five hundred and thirty-two beats a minute. He didn't know the ceiling for a human heart, only that every next second felt like the one it would burst — and it didn't. Against every law of medicine, the thing held.

An hour later, counting, Cole found the number falling.

By the time it let him move again his throat was scraped raw. He peeled the wet towels off and dragged himself upright, hands shaking.

Hale came out of the bathroom and rushed over. "You're alright?"

"…Better." Cole swallowed. "Thank you."

"Don't. I couldn't just leave you on the floor." Hale's father had been a doctor, he said; a normal heart quits supplying blood at two hundred and fifty, and a person dies in minutes. "Whatever you are, there's no one else like you in the world."

It had pulled them closer, somehow — the man who'd dragged Cole into a lethal game, and the man whose collapse that same man had sat through with wet paper and bare hands. The space between them had narrowed into something almost like trust.

Then, in the silent library, a sound: click.

They looked at each other. The front doors of the library — someone had turned a key in the front doors.

They ran. Whatever had sealed the third floor was gone; they took the stairs at the fastest pace either had ever managed and reached the tall red doors just as they swung open a crack, and real sunlight — not the false daylight of the game, the actual sun — fell warm across both their faces.

Cole shut his eyes against it. The warmth loosened every pore in his body.

"Cole? What are you doing here?" A bright voice. "You came for your stuff this early?"

He opened his eyes. "Zoe?"

Right — he'd come back for his things, the day before, because Walsh said the branch was being requisitioned. It took him a few seconds to assemble the thought. "You're here for your things?"

"Yeah." She grinned. "My folks think this whole Spire thing is too creepy, we're going to lie low at my grandmother's. We leave at ten, so I came to grab something. Hey — I asked first, why are you here so early? What's that in your hand, a match? And— Mr. Hale?" She caught sight of the prophet and her grin faltered. "Why's he here?"

Hale swallowed, nervous.

"Ran into him getting my things," Cole said smoothly. "We got to talking."

"You and him…" she muttered. Then, brightening: "Anyway, I'm gonna run in and grab my stuff." She stepped toward the door.

And as one leg crossed the threshold, Cole's eyes went wide, his pupils shaking.

"Zoe."

She'd worked there six months and almost no one used her name that sharply. She turned, puzzled. "What?"

His lips parted and nothing came out. He only stared at her, at the lower half of her body, with an expression that made her follow his gaze down — and when she saw, she dropped, scrambling backward on her hands.

"What is — what is this — my legs — where are my legs—"

The tears came all at once.

She was twenty-three years old, a year out of school, and she was sobbing, clawing at her own body, at the empty air where her legs had been. In Cole's eyes there was a thin, invisible line, creeping up from where her thighs had been toward the rest of her, and everything it crossed simply ceased — as if the world were quietly erasing her. He didn't know when it had begun. When he'd noticed it, her shins were already gone, and she'd been standing there, talking to him, and hadn't felt a thing.

Snot and tears streaming, her waist gone now, she crawled to his feet and clutched the cuff of his trousers. "Save me, Cole — save me — what's happening to me, what's happening to me — Cole, help me—"

He caught her hand in his. Two seconds after he closed his fingers around it, the line reached her arms, and her hands were gone.

The line moved to her throat.

A head on the floor, eyes brimming, looking up at him — terrible, impossible.

"I don't want to die," she wept. "I don't want to die. I never even fell in love. I never had anyone I liked. I want to go home and watch cartoons, the show I'm following isn't even finished — Mom — Dad — I don't want to die, I don't want to—"

Her mouth went.

Those wet eyes stayed fixed on him until the very last of her was gone.

In under a minute, a whole living person had vanished.

Cole's mind went white — and what frightened him most, in that moment, was that even now he was calm. He stared at the empty doorway for a full half minute. Then something occurred to him, and he spun around.

In the dark library, Daniel Hale was already gone from the waist down. He looked at Cole and managed a small, pitiful, frightened smile. "Cole. Is this— is this the penalty for losing the game?"

He toppled to the floor.

Cole was on him in an instant, gripping his hand.

Hale was crying — tears down his whole face, snot on his lips — clutching Cole's hand, saying it over and over the way Zoe had: "I don't want to die, I don't want to die — Cole, save me, I don't want to die—"

There was nothing Cole could do. He pressed his hands over the part of Hale that was still there, and when the line swept through, what should have vanished vanished, and his palms closed on air.

Only the prophet's chest and head remained.

"Don't be afraid," Cole said. "There's a way out of this. There's always a way."

The grown man sobbed. "What way? I don't want to die, I really don't — Cole, save me. You eliminated me — so save me. Save me."

Cole could not say a single word.

Hale stopped speaking and only wept. Time crawled. When the line was about to take his chest, he suddenly seized Cole's hand and stared at him with bloodshot eyes and said, almost a scream:

"I have a daughter. She's in New York. Her mother and I divorced. Go and see her — see if she's still alive. Her name is Cassie. Cassie Hale. She has to be alive, she has to be — go and look, just look at her, once—"

His hand vanished.

"Help me, Cole, I'm begging you, help me. She's alive, I know she's alive—"

"Where does she live?" Cole said.

"Manhattan — she's in seventh grade, she—"

His mouth vanished.

His eyes stayed locked on Cole's, red and straining as if with the last of his strength.

"I'll find her," Cole said. "She'll be alive."

The line erased the last of his ears, and the strain went out of his eyes. He was still crying; he couldn't speak; he only looked at Cole, and before his eyes were gone he blinked, once, and a single tear fell and struck the floor.

Cole knelt alone in the doorway of the library. Outside it, Zoe was gone. Inside it, Hale was gone.

The clock began to strike eight. On the eighth stroke, Cole was still kneeling on the cold floor.

> Lullaby, and goodnight…

A gentle, tender woman's voice rose over the whole of the city.

Cole turned his head, stiff, toward the black tower two hundred meters off. Color rippled across its dark face. A day ago, thousands had pressed against its barrier. Now there were seven or eight people left, slumped to the ground like Cole, staring blankly up at the Spire and its lullaby.

The woman finished the first line, and a chorus of children's voices came in beneath her.

> Lullaby, and goodnight,

> with roses bedight,

> lay thee down now and rest,

> may thy slumber be blessed…

It sang on and on. The wind moved across the land and carried the lovely thing further out.

When the song ended, the bright, familiar child's voice returned.

> [ Ding-dong! 498,160,000 players successfully loaded… ]

> [ Saving… Loading game data… Loading player profiles… Save complete. Load complete. ]

> [ Ding-dong! Welcome, players, to the game. ]

> [ The Three Iron Laws of the Spire— ]

> [ One: All interpretation belongs to the Spire. ]

> [ Two: 6:00 to 18:00 is game time. ]

> [ Three: All players, strive to climb the Spire. ]

> [ Ding-dong! Enjoy the game. ]