Warcross: Chapters 1-5

So, unless I can get my hands on $3,450, I’ll be homeless and in the streets by the end of the week. That’d put a damper on anyone’s day.

The air is thick with the smell of exhaust, and steam billows from an open vent nearby.

I’m a bounty hunter, one of many in Manhattan, and I’m fighting to capture Martin Hamer before another hunter can.

She’s dressed like her Warcross avatar—in a limited edition suit and webbed glitter cape—and dancing with a bunch of businessmen in bright pink suits.

TOP WARCROSS PLAYERS ARRIVE IN TOKYO, POISED FOR WORLD DOMINATION

Sure enough, one of the magazines features him prominently: a tall young man lounging in an office, dressed in dark trousers and a crisp collar shirt, sleeves casually rolled up to his elbows, his face obscured by shadows.

Sure enough, one of the magazines features him prominently: a tall young man lounging in an office, dressed in dark trousers and a crisp collar shirt, sleeves casually rolled up to his elbows, his face obscured by shadows.

A smattering of students and tourists sit at the tables.

I can recite to you the outfits and demeanor of every person in that coffee line, can tell you exactly how many people are sitting at each table, the precise way someone’s shoulders hunch just a little too much, the two people sitting side by side who never say a word, the guy who is careful not to make eye contact with anyone else.

I look for the break in the pattern, the nail that protrudes.

“And I’m sorry, sir.” The woman’s voice is calm and cynical, like she’s had to say this countless times before.

His face is covered in a sheen of sweat, and his hair is plastered against his forehead.

His voice comes out garbled by how hard I’m pushing him into the ground.

My smile falters.

The officer gives me a look that doesn’t seem to jibe with the fact that I just caught them a criminal.

“Who’s the other hunter? Sam? Jamie? They’re the only other ones canvassing this turf.”

My electric skateboard beeps once, snapping me out of my reverie.

Plastic bags line the insides of their threadbare clothes.

If Dad were here, he would be fussing about in his fashion professor mode, mixing paints and washing brushes in jars. Perhaps mulling over his spring class syllabus, or his plans for New York Fashion Week.

He would be wearing a black shirt that exposed the colorful tattoos winding up and down his right arm, and his appearance would be impeccable—his shoes polished and trousers perfectly ironed—except for flecks of paint staining his hands and hair.

He poured his meager salary into presents for me and art supplies and charities and clothes and wine.

Finally, they end with a slender line of words that run along my left collarbone, a mantra Dad used to repeat to me, a mantra I recite to myself whenever things get too grim.
Every locked door has a key.
Every problem has a solution.

But not a week goes by now without him being featured on some tabloid cover, dating this celebrity or that one, putting him at the top of every list they can think of.

After that comes gameplay footage—two teams battling it out in Warcross’s endless virtual worlds.

Considering that I have exactly thirteen dollars to my name right now, I’m at the most dire point I’ve ever been.

Unfinished homework lay strewn on my blankets, still there from the night before, when I’d fallen asleep staring at the blank pages.

My bones jutted sharply at my wrists and elbows.

He did it by inventing a thin, wireless pair of glasses with metal arms and retractable earphones.

For a long time, in order to create a realistic virtual reality environment, you had to render as detailed a world as possible.

With the press of a tiny button on its side, the glasses could also switch back and forth like polarized lenses between the virtual world and the real world.

Investors called with staggering offers.

The thought conjured an old memory of my father sitting on my bed and showing me the back of a magazine, where two drawings were printed that looked identical.

Our humble apartment—and, with it, all my worries—is replaced by blackness and silence.

Like me (and most other players), she’s designed her avatar to look like an idealized version of her real self, adorned with a few cool game items—a gleaming breastplate, a pair of horns—she’d bought.

His Warcross position is a Fighter, for sheer brawn and power, with the goal of taking others down instead of hunting for the Artifact.

He grins cheekily, crosses his arms against his chest, and calls out a challenge to the other team at the opposite end of the game world, which makes the audience go wild.

A flash of red light engulfs the scene, and the omniscient voice echoes all around us.

His voice, easy and refined, carries in it the authority of someone who runs a huge corporation.

My brow furrows. “What I need is a sec to think. I don’t understand.”

My emotions finally spill out, unleashing a torrent of thoughts.