Border Zone

[Namira]

"HUD. HUD. HUD. HUD. HUD. HUD. HUD. HUD. HUD."

It wasn't doing anything. Not except the things that it was supposed to do anyway.

Jon scowled like this was a personal affront as he spun on a slow vertical axis. He'd thought that it was a pretty good idea, and that perhaps it would result in some kind of crash.

A short puff through the nose.

"HUD. HUD. HUD. HUD. HUD."

Nah. It wasn't working.

"Fuck, fuck, fucking fuck."

This wasn't an attempted glitch, but it was just as effectual.

Actually it would be really funny if he got booted because of some kind of language filter but uhhh nope.

Fuck. Unfair.

[EllisWilson]

((Ray Sullivan and a bunch of other people continued from The Stand By Me Experience.))

Ok, homeroom was a bust, Ray could admit that. Everyone was scared shitless at this point; Ray could admit that too.
Well, he could admit most of it.
Three out of four.
Ray wasn’t scared. He had a fucking gun, what did he have to be scared of? He just needed to point and shoot and he wouldn’t have any problems at all. Besides, he knew for a fact that there would be no ruined corpses in the planetarium. No broken boned, blood soaked—

HUD. HUD. HUD. HUD. HUD

Oh, Jesus Christ, what now?

Ray had just gotten through the entrance, had just started floating, when he heard some kid losing his shit inside. While it wasn’t reallyunexpected it still made Ray heave out a sigh as he gripped the railing with his free hand, keeping himself somewhat grounded as he considered his next move.

[Lilith]

Jill wanted to sit down somewhere, but the last time she had tried sitting down, there was the digitalized corpse of someone she used to talk to. Her group, at least two of them, believed that she was home and hugging her parents, probably talking with the media and replying to their questions. They assumed the police were talking to her, trying to figure out a way to free everyone else that was trapped in this Cyber Hell reality.

But Gillian believed otherwise.

She didn't speak up about it because, well, she had no evidence other than the pain she was feeling was so fucking real. She was moving in a space like she had never moved before, and it made her dizzy - which was probably the simulated blood loss getting to her now blood-starved brain.

And now, this half-emptied pixilated vessel of hers didn't enter the planetarium. She didn't want to see what would happen to her stemmed wound in an anti-gravity field. Instead, she sat down, and looked at the group.

"I'll keep a lookout if someone comes." She whispered. "Just need, just need to sit down."

She looked at Drea and Ray. "Be careful, okay?"

[MonteCristo]

Ripley gave Jill an unsteady thumbs up with his free hand. “We’ll try. You be careful too—you see someone try something funny, just, uh,” he mimed activating and chucking a grenade, though it looked awkward with the axe firmly gripped in his right hand, “Blow them up and run.”

As he entered the planetarium, Ripley turned back and added, “Stay safe.”

((Ripley continued from The Stand by Me Experience))

The familiar sensation of weightlessness set in, as did a feeling of uneasiness. Ripley held on to his axe, never letting go for fear it would drift away, but the weapon brought little comfort to him. What good would an axe be here, where he couldn’t even swing it properly? As for the grenades, Ripley didn’t know what would happen if he used one in zero gravity, and he didn't feel like wasting one to find out. In short, he'd be out of luck in a fight.

Ripley pushed off the floor and used his arms to propel himself as best as he could. With the axe in his hand, Ripley found it much more cumbersome to move through the air, but he could still maneuver well enough to make his way towards Ray. He extended the axe to hook it on the railing, missed by a few inches, waited to drift closer, then tried again. After managing to reel himself in, Ripley took notice of the person cursing and circling in the air. Grey hair, bad mood—Ripley recognized the guy; he was pretty sure his name was Jon.

[Namira]

Jon was suddenly a lot less alone than he had been.

For once, adding some extra people didn't make his mood substantially worse, but the secret to that was that he was near enough rock bottom already.

Except from the part where the man second in line was rocking an axe. That dug a little into the bedrock.

Jon looked at the metal hilt in his hand. Cyber reality. Not that weird for it to be what it look like it was.

He didn't press the button yet. Just looked at Ripley, then Ray.

"...what do you want?"

[Spindarene]

((Drea Patson continued from The Stand By Me Experience))

Drea’s thoughts had been churning as she followed her group into the planetarium, trying to think of a way out of this mess, hoping that Sunny and her parents were contacting the police right now, and that they’d find a way to get them all out of here…

She was so distracted that she only gave Jon the quickest of glances as they entered the planetarium, where he was clearly upset about something. Her brain only registered mild surprise when her body began drifting lazily toward the ceiling.

A few minutes after they entered the room, their Heads-Up Displays flickered to life, and the announcement played out in front of their eyes. Drea watched in disbelief and horror as the stream showed their bodies at the hospital, and the bodies of their teacher and Sunny, as they showed the streams of this stupid fucking game all over the internet.

After the announcement closed, Drea’s body remained frozen for several more minutes, still drifting lazily through the air.

This…this was fake, right? They’d faked…the streams would be easy enough to fake. But, their bodies. Their bodies being transported to the hospital, with their devices on. Was that–was that–?

“What the fuck?” she murmured quietly. Then louder. “What the fuck? What the fuck? WHAT THE FUCK?” she screamed, slamming her crowbar into the wall nearby. It impacted with a loud clang as her body was propelled towards the center of the room.

[EllisWilson]

Ray wouldn't have been able to tell you the specifics of that space of time between finding the kid in the planetarium (Jon Crumble, the poor fuck) and the first announcement, even without that announcement happening. There just wasn't much happening, it wasn't his fault. Ray knew he spent most of that time playing with his gun, batting it into the air before pulling it back down, a lazy juggling attempt that took his mind off the scabbing cut on his arm and Sunny in the homeroom and the stupid, fucking, bullshit game.

Then Zeph popped up in his eyeballs.

Ray's body locked up as he was made to watch all of the livestreams, all of the news reports, every little word from every little person outside of the game. And there was an outside, one that was reacting to Omega squad... Zeph... What the fuck is Initative Earth? Who the fuck is Daniel Arista?! Ray could do nothing but watch as this kid, this huge fuck, beat Sunny to death and put a dent in her head.

But he didn't actually break her skull, did he? Zeph didn't blow Mr. Franklins brains out either, it's insane. It's fucking crazy.

The prank is...

Omega Squad just...

"Oh my god." Ray muttered, his voice dry and crackling in his throat. There had to be an explanation, some big conspiracy, right?

CLANG

His eyes dart around his tendons unwound themselves enough so that he could flail around in midair. Gun, where is his gun. He looks up and sees it floating above him. Looking back, he saw Andrea, and he saw her capacity for violence. Panic took him as he swung his arms down to propel himself up to his gun.

"Andrea shut up!" His words spilled out before he could stop himself. "Shut the fuck up! It's- We're fine, it's all fucking fine!"

Get the gun get the gun get the gun get the gun!

[Lilith]

Gillian had only started to compose herself, trying to settle down and think about everything she had seen in the last couple hours, before the silence was interrupted with a beam of torment she could only blink away from. Paralyzed, Jill had three questions on her mind:

1. What was the purpose of all this?

2. Why them?

3. Why Sunny?

Gillian had seen animations in the past in CR that seemed to be so, so real. This entire world appeared to be real, but it couldn't be. She wanted to assume that the images she had seen had been simulated. Sunny could just be alive, and it could be fine. Daniel might not have killed her. He wouldn't do that. He shouldn't, at least. He should have known better and so, when Gillian wrapped her question from question three to question two, she tried to think about connections. The dying sounds of Sunny conflated with her own breathing. She could still hear them, scratching at the back of her brain. But she only think of herself for a brief moment.

Was all this because of her dad? If she died, could everyone else go home? She shakily got up, thinking about the first question. And then she realized there was a fourth, or rather original, question.

What would Light Yagami do?

"Guys-"

People were screaming, panicked. So was Gillian - but hers manifested with this paralyzed her movements and her thoughts. She looked around the low-gravity room, feeling like she was about to vomit as a knot started grow thicker. She almost said something until her eyes landed on Ripley. He should be the one saying something.

[MonteCristo]

Ripley hadn’t done much aside from floating around. He told himself he’d at least extend Jon a greeting, but one look from the other boy was enough to make Ripley back down.

He and his mind had been drifting when a familiar ringing brought him to his senses. Soon after, Zeph popped up out of nowhere, lounging in an office, and began his spiel. Ripley tried to turn his head away to look in another direction and ignore him—ignore him like he’d ignored the death game, the growing sense of dread, the pain in his left arm, the corpse—but—as always—no matter where he turned, he couldn’t ignore what was right in front of him.

It blotted out his vision. It messed with his mind. And with the myriad voices now talking about what had happened to his class, it silenced everything and everyone else. Ripley could only watch as Zeph directed his attention to a cacophony of sirens and shouts, where, one after another, a bunch of bodies, some Ripley could put a name to, some he couldn’t, were brought into the local medical center.

But one of the bodies stood out to Ripley. Its face was blurred, but he could have recognized its weak, diminutive build anywhere. How could he not, when it had brought its imperfections before him every night? Ripley caught a small glimpse of what it was wearing: a loose set of red-and-white striped pajamas—the kind that he would ever admit to owning. That well-concealed item, plus the intricate details of the body, shattered the brittle idea that the whole situation had been faked. That was Ripley's body, those were the clothes he slept in, and this was how he was going to die.

But the announcement wasn’t over. As if it wasn’t enough to dash that illusionary comfort into pieces, Zeph—or, more accurately, the one wearing that name and skin—unveiled the full truth of Sunny’s death. Ripley bore witness to a simple picture of the horrific reality at hand: two kids, with desperation, determination, or death in their eyes, fighting to survive, fighting until there was only one left. There were no tricks; there were no pulled punches; there was no hope of Sunny waking up. There was only one shot at survival, and Ripley had been wasting his convincing himself of a half-hearted reassurance.

Even as Zeph reappeared to conclude the announcement, the scene of Sunny and Daniel, the boy—the killer—who towered above Ripley and could smash his head in with less effort than he had Sunny’s, replayed in Ripley’s mind. How close had Ripley and the others been to meeting him? If they had stayed back in their homeroom for a little longer, would they have proceeded Sunny in the announcement, their final moments memorialized in a brutal display of Daniel’s strength and conviction?

The announcement ended, and where Daniel and Sunny had been, Ripley now saw Ray and Andrea. He heard a clang, and he heard shouting, but it took Ripley a moment to realize that the two were freaking out.

Something about the way they were yelling and holding their weapons sent waves of terror cascading throughout Ripley. He heard Jill speak up and saw her look at him as Andrea and Ray’s shouts crescendoed.

“Stop!” he shrieked, his voice trying to pierce into their chaotic chorus.

[Namira]

Well Jon didn't get to hear what they wanted because he was too busy experiencing Shit.

Didn't really know how else to frame it. Just that it was viscerally Shit.

He didn't deserve this, man. He was too—he didn't deserve this. It was the kind of thing you heard about on the news. Yeah he was sort of a poessimist but like... the really, really bad stuff. The Shit. That was supposed to be distant and detached. Not here.

The others were taking it great too. First they came and bothered him and now they... did it... more?

Hell Jon didn't know how to frame it, just that it ticked him off.

A moment later it occurred to him that things getting volatile could have much worse results than that, and he slapped down a hand on the closest surface, magnetising himself against a handrail with his glove.

He sure wasn't about to yell.

[Spindarene]

"Don't tell me to fucking shut up, you idiot!" Drea screamed at Ray. She ignored everyone's protests, her attention fixed on him. "Don't you see? It's real, it's all real, and we're all going to fucking die!" she screamed that last word out, accentuating it by throwing her crowbar as hard as she could at the wall. It impacted with another loud clang! and fell to the floor.

[EllisWilson]

Rays hands found the grip of his gun, wrapping around it as if he wanted to fucking choke it to death. It wasn’t right, none of it was. This wasn’t something that could happen to people, least of all a bunch of kids in Los Angles. They were supposed to be a first world country, where the only major issue high schoolers had to worry about was some psycho pulling a columbine or calling a bomb threat, and Sycamore wasn’t the place for that either. How could this—

“You think I don’t fucking get that Andrea?!” Ray hollered down at her, still floating beside the gigantic hologram of earth. “I’m not stupid! I know what I fucking saw, I know people are fucking dying!” The harsh metallic sound of the crowbar was piercing his ears; a boring drill through his drums and jabbing at his brain, at the black slime coalescing over it as his thoughts turned downward.

They’re all gonna die.

Sure.

They’re all gonna die.

He leveled the gun down at the girl.

“I won’t be!”

BANG

[Lilith]

Gillian had heard gunshots earlier today, and a small part of her had expected them to not scare her anymore, but she still responded the same: electric shocks. They were up and down her spines, sending a shock wave of tingling digital adrenaline through her peripheral nerves. She had touched an outlet once as a child, and the sensation of hearing gunshots were similar, except instead of pain, she only felt the strange vibration.

Her breathing stuttered, her body floating into a paralyzed statue as she didn't see the bullet enter Drea's body, and she didn't see them come out. Frozen in time, Jill didn't take a single breath no more.

[MonteCristo]

Was there really any other way this could have ended?

Everything at the bridges, from the conflict to the glass in his arm, had warned Ripley about the boy he called his ally.

A threat, not just to himself, but to others—Ángel’s prophecy had come to fruition.

Ray fired.

Ripley flinched.

[Namira]

Jon felt paralysed. Someone should do something. Just he had a difficult time turning someone into a less nebulous concept than uh...

not... him.

They were screaming at each other, and then there was a gunshot. Jon recoiled, despite it being nowhere near him.

Fuck. Fuck.