“And that’s it? There’s only three of them left?” Djanet asked.
Old-timer nodded again. “As far as I know. Look, I don’t know what’s goin’ on here. I don’t know if…” he trailed off. He was about to say he wasn’t sure if he’d gone crazy, but he thought better of it. “Whatever’s happening, James and the A.I. need to know. James needs to cross over and help us out. But the condition for you two crossing back over without bringing them along was that I stay to make sure someone comes back for us.”
“Okay,” Rich replied, “but what about your body—”
“It’ll go with you too,” Old-timer interrupted, anticipating the question. “It’ll be fine. Like I said, it doesn’t need to breathe. It’s not indestructible, but it’s damn near close. I’ll be able to reenter it when James comes to get us.”
“What if they’re trying to trap James?” Djanet suggested.
Old-timer shrugged. “James and the A.I. will figure this out. There’s nothing those two can’t solve. We’re out of our depth here, guys. It’s time to bring in the big guns.”
10
The A.I. charged into the depths of the dark forest, blindly searching for any sign of Thel, the rain and the implacable black of the night making the terrain terrifyingly foreign and quite possibly lethal. The steady impact of heavy, wet droplets on the leaves and bark of the trees made listening for signs of struggle almost impossible. He wanted to call out for her, but he knew he couldn’t risk giving away his position.
He crouched down and put his face low to the ground, desperately waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness as he looked for patterns that might interrupt the randomness in the nearly black, soaked earth. He looked for claw marks, a footprint, or broken branches, but there was nothing to be discerned. He felt naked without his connection to the mainframe—without his connection to his brain. Like a human stripped of his neocortex, the A.I. had been cut down to size. His consciousness was small and limited. He felt like an animal—an animal in the woods, at night, vulnerable. He felt like prey.
“Get back!” he suddenly heard Thel shriek out in a guttural scream.
He turned his head to the right, in the direction he thought the scream had come from. In the rain, with plenty of boulders, trees, and embankments for the sound waves to echo from, he couldn’t be sure. There was no time to waste, so he sprung into a sprint, holding his arms up to guard against the sharp branches that cut into his clothing and raked painfully across his skin. He knew that his endorphins would kick in and dull the pain—he could push it out of his mind. He thought of what Thel had said back in the car as it sank into the simulated ocean. “There is no air.” She’d been right; there were truly no endorphins, no scratches, no body that leapt over a creek and sprinted to save another ghost with no body. They were playing a game—just some sick game—and he wondered who was really in control.
Thel appeared out of the darkness, the figure of a man having pinned her to a tree where she desperately fought to keep him from clawing her eyes out. She was seconds from losing her fight, and the A.I. knew he had no time to grab a weapon. He built up as much momentum as he could with his stride and made sure to collide with the NPC’s side, bringing the hollow man down hard into the mud and sliding with him through the drenched, cold foliage.
Before he could get to his knees, the NPC elbowed him hard in the face, just missing his nose, which surely would’ve broken. Instead, his cheek took the brunt of the impact, resulting in a likely fracture. Stunned by the power of his vicious opponent, the A.I. scrambled backward on his back, attempting to put as much distance between himself and the mindless apparition as possible. He tried to get to his feet, but the NPC moved so quickly, with such animalistic ferociousness, that he had no chance to prepare to defend himself. He was quickly tackled back down into the mud, the powerful NPC’s arms wrapping around him, bear-hugging him and eliminating any chance the A.I. had of using his limbs to fight back.
The A.I.’s eyes went wide as the NPC’s mouth opened wide, prepared to take its first bite. This is how I die? The entity that was supposed to facilitate the transcendence of man to a higher state of being, consumed by a mindless beast?
The NPC’s first bite was excruciating, when it sank its teeth into the enflamed flesh of the cheek it had cracked with its elbow. The viciousness of the bite caused the A.I. to cry out, forgetting himself as he did so, forgetting that he could be giving his position away to the candidate if the entity were still looming nearby. He forgot that he was putting Thel and James—if James even still lived—in jeopardy too. Those sorts of thoughts didn’t enter into one’s mind when the first bite of one’s flesh had been taken. Rationality went out the window when one was being eaten alive.