You are that target.

  The words thundered through me as I leapt across another alley, bulling my way through a window with my new 10-point Strength stat. I landed in a halo of glass and found myself next to an elevator, surrounded by doorways marked with numbers and letters. A residence.

  I was the highest-rank target in the whole City area. Why would anyone want me that badly?

  I ignored the doors on the residence floor and maneuvered into another straight, long hallway. Everything in this city that could be a grid was a grid, and that included the insides of buildings.

  The soldiers outside the doctor’s office. The thought hit me like a brick. There were soldiers there, waiting for me.

  So I’d been important to my own people, not just to the aliens. But if the aliens had just waited a few more minutes, I would have been chipped, and under their thrall.

  There was something here I wasn’t seeing. And there was something here that I was seeing, something I didn’t want to think about.

  I’m not special on my own. But when you factor in my family….

  I couldn’t follow through on that thought. I had to survive Setup Mode, first.

  I reached the end of the hallway and skidded to a stop. There was a window here, and through it, I could see the distorted glass of the city wall. I had reached the City’s outer limits, but I was a few levels down. I needed to go up again.

  Before I could move, a dark shape blurred past on the other side of the window. It had to be another Hunter, and I’d been standing right there. It might have seen me.

  I turned and wrenched open the nearest door, breaking the lock with the force of my pull. An alarm began to blare. So much for hiding. I ducked into the foyer of the residence beyond, glancing back to check for Dave. He was gone.

  I slammed the door closed and leaned my back against it, breathing hard. There was only one Hunter. You can take one. You just need your laser gun back.

  I had the katana with the jingle bells, tied around my waist with the flamingo necktie. That was about it.

  I scanned the room. The place was a sty. Clothes littered the floor, most of them basic white bio-fabric or flannel-patterned pants that suggested a considerably overweight owner. A huge, stained arm chair took up most of the living room, facing one of three bare walls. A VR headset sat abandoned on the arm of the chair.

  Through a glass door in the outer wall, I could see the underside of an aircar, parked vertically up against the building. There must not have been enough car owners in this residence to justify a parking lot floor, but whoever lived here must have rented wall space to park his. I could walk right out of the door and into that car. I just needed the owner’s permissions get it running. Where was he?

  I turned to see a large man kneeling in front of the open refrigerator in the apartment’s tiny, shabby-looking kitchen. He was unconscious like all the others, with his forehead stuck in a bundt pan full of blue gelatin while he drooled into a pat of butter. Next to him, an empty bag of cheese snacks had missed the trash can, and lay bunched up on the floor.

  I noticed a keyring of access cards sitting on the counter, untouched. I rifled through them, and one was marked with a vehicle logo. A coded car key. I wouldn’t need his chip to make his car work.

  “Gotcha,” I said.

  Keyring in hand, I bounded across the room to the access door. I scanned the keys, but nothing happened. Damn it, I still need his ID.

  I cursed and retraced my steps to the kitchen, taking the unconscious dude by both arms and yanking him toward his living room.

  I yelped when my first pull sent him scooting five solid feet, tipping me over. I keep forgetting my new Strength stat, I thought, fighting back to my feet. What sort of technology could make me stronger like this? I’d heard of super-soldiers and muscle shots, but this?

  On my second try, I used a gentler, less panicked hand to drag the poor guy over to the access door. I swiped his wrist across the control panel.

  The door opened, leading straight to the driver’s seat.

  I paused on the threshold, then shrugged as I tossed the man inside, throwing him over the seat so he fell into the back of the car. He weighed nothing. I might as well try to get him out of here, even though he was probably even less safe with me.

  I followed him in. Parked vertically, the car was more like a bubble. The man had dropped against the back seats, which currently served as the floor. There was only one front seat, horizontal, but I was able to sit in it. I felt like an astronaut in a rocket or something.

  Is this what Lore felt, on takeoff? But no, my brother’s ship had been constructed in orbit. There had been no takeoff for him.

  I settled into the pilot’s chair and turned on the car. The presence of the man and the keycard made the thing buzz to life.

  Tapping on the window alerted me to Dave’s presence. He was perched on a side mirror. I let him in.

  Dave swept through the opened window and sat on my chest.

  “Do you know how to drive one of these?” he asked me.

  “I know how to drive a backhoe,” I said. “I mean, how much harder can this b—”

  Gravity pushed against me hard as the lower end of the car burned fuel and launched the whole vehicle upward. Damn, it was fast—and when we crested the roof of the tower, it automatically swung forward. My head nearly hit the dash, but I threw up my arms to protect myself.

  “You should probably wear the safety belt,” Dave said, his talons tight on my shirt. If there had been a steering column, he might have been squished.

  At least the car now hovered in a proper horizontal position. The back seat pivoted along with it, flipping up and out under my passenger. The unconscious owner rolled off and hit the floor.

  I spread my hands, searching the panel of buttons in front of me, and then I pressed the button for the manual steering handles. They emerged from the console, and I gave them a test push. I trundled forward a couple of meters, and by pulling back, the aircar went in reverse.

  There was a pedal under my foot, and I tapped it, thinking it was a brake, but no. It made the car rise higher in the air.

  The crunch of breaking glass made me turn. My back windshield had broken, showering the man and his seats with glass. I’d been shot at.

  Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

  Anger sprang to life behind my eyes. I was getting tired of being shot at.

  This time, I wasn’t going to run.

  #

  I pulled a hard right, turning the air car until I could see a dark figure across the roof. I leaned all the way forward on the handles, and the car shot straight at them. I caught sight of a raised gun and shaggy black fur in the moments before I hit the Hunter head-on.

  A satisfactory thud sounded as they struck the front fender, and their hairy shape flew past over my head.

  I didn’t stop. I raced full-throttle toward the city wall, pressing down on the ascent pedal. The aircar rose as the wall loomed, and I worried about the defensive electromagnetic netting, but I needn’t have bothered. The car sailed straight across the wall, not pursued. Seems like the aliens had taken down the City’s defenses.

  Achievement! Kinderkiller!

  You have killed a Level 1 Hunter. You sexy, sexy monster! He never even got a chance to reach his potential, which would have been dying to a rat bite on the third Instance or something. Who knows. Clearly the guy wasn’t that good.

  Reward: A [Rank1] Brutal Drop!

  “You’re getting an awful lot of those Brutal Drops,” Dave muttered. “You took Remnant’s helmet. You didn’t become him. Oh, cock waffles. What have I gotten myself into?”

  While he spoke, the AI overlaid his every word with more of her own:

  Achievement! Needs New Wipers!

  You have killed someone using a vehicle! I mean, come on, she was just standing there, minding her own business, trying to murder you. You didn’t have to go and do her dirty like that. I’d much rather you did that to me. You can leave tire tracks up my ass anytime you want, baby.

  Reward: A [rank1] Waster Drop!

  “Pause auto-commentary,” I said, finally cresting the wall.

  “That’s not FATE, it’s the Game Host. It doesn’t listen to voice commands,” Dave said. “You’ll have to do the gesture for mute, but the helmet reset to default, and I don’t know what the default gesture is. Remnant would just flip it off.”

  I was thinking I might program the same gesture. “Can’t you do it? Like you did before?”

  “Nope. I can only interact with FATE, since we are both in your Party.”

  This was confusing. FATE listened to me. The Game Host didn’t. FATE was a monitored line, but the Game Host, which was announcing game updates, wasn’t?

  I would have to poke around for the mute gesture later, since I couldn’t see the inside of the helmet, just the overlay. It projected the world around me as if I weren’t wearing a helmet at all, and if not for the weight of it, I wouldn’t even know it was there.

  The helmet AI was quiet for now, anyway. I’d only managed the two achievements this time.

  Dave flapped off my lap and retreated to the backseat. “You have to trigger Host commands with gestures,” he explained. He must have picked up on my confusion. “Think of the Game Host as your game menu. It tracks your stats, inventory, drops, controls, abilities, and your map, and allows you to interact with those things.”

  So the Game Host was my HUD. I could roll with that. I’d played Seven Keys with my brother enough times to get the gist of what a HUD could do.

  “Okay, but why isn’t the Host monitored?”

  “Oh, it will be. It will record and film you. But during Setup Mode, the Conduit is spending computing power elsewhere, so this function is turned off. Also, they don’t really want people seeing the butchery. It doesn’t make for great telecasting.”

  Telecasting. Is that like television?

  Dave’s seatbelt slid into place with a subtle click, and I wondered how he’d managed to buckle in without opposable thumbs, and how exactly the belt was supposed to protect his little body in case of a crash.

  “And what’s FATE, then? Compared to the Host?”

  “FATE comes with your NerveGear,” Dave replied. “That’s the helmet. She’s an artificial intelligence called an Auxiliary, basically a permanent party member. Anyone with a NerveGear has one, but Remnant chose FATE for his. The acronym stands for Field Adviser slash Technical Entity, or something like that.”

  That sounded useful, at least. I hadn’t seen anyone else with a helmet yet, so apparently, I’d started off with good loot.

  “By comparison, the Game Host isn’t AI,” Dave continued. “It’s just a program. It might sound horny, but that’s a setting; it doesn’t actually want to bone you.”

  I looked forward to changing that setting. “What are they both used for? Specifically,” I said. I wanted to have this stuff straight.

  As Dave pondered this, my tenement came into view. It was essentially a city, mostly composed of recycled-plastic tents, sodiprene shops, and 3D-printed cement barracks.

  My heart sank. Clearly some other Hunters had already gotten to the place, because the enormous mass of tents had either been flattened, upended, or torn clear out of the ground. Half the cement residences had been reduced to rubble.

  I also saw corpses. Dozens of them. Most looked to have been running for their lives when someone cut them down, either with a blade or a bullet. The dunes were stained with splotches of red.

  I waited for the bile to rise, for the fear to curdle in my gut, but there was nothing. I had barely made acquaintances in this place, much less friends, and I had no family here. I’d kept to myself ever since Lore got conscripted, and because of gangs like the Black Ibis, that’s what most other leeches did, too.

  Then again, my neighbor and his wife were all right. Niko and Greta invited me over for water sometimes. They asked after my brother, and no one else ever did.

  “The Host doesn’t help you directly, aside from allocating your stats or letting you equip and store items,” Dave said, oblivious. “It’s also not unique to you, like FATE is. Everyone has a gaming suit with the Host implanted in it. Its main function is to announce game updates like achievements and quests and things.”

  I slowed the aircar, hovering over my home for the past decade, trying to figure out what to do next. I saw no movement. Maybe the Hunters had moved on? It might be a good spot to lie low after all.

  “Meanwhile, FATE can make assessments for you.” Dave was still talking. “She can monitor data from the Game Host and tell you about things you don’t notice, like the guy in the bushes that your eyes might have missed. She can do calculations, or she can look up information on the Conduit. She can even override a core match, but that… isn’t strictly legal.”

  I turned sharply to look at him. “Not legal? I thought you said FATE was monitored?”

  “It’s… complicated,” Dave said. “You just don’t want her knowing that you aren’t Remnant, that’s all.”

  I gritted my teeth, but I didn’t ask more. I had the basics for now, and that was enough.

  “How do we get Setup Mode to end?” I asked.

  “I already told you. All the Coreless in the area need to die.”

  “How many are left?”

  “How should I know? Check your HUD.”

  I focused on the interior of my helmet and searched for some kind of quest bar. There—a diamond icon. That sounded about right.

  I tapped the air in front of me, which triggered the violet button to expand into an info box. It listed one Quest. I tapped it, hoping for more information.

  Setup Mode World Quest!

  Locate all remaining Coreless [natives-species] in your Instance and either terminate or conscript them. You will receive 1 unallocated stat point for terminating, while conscription will cost 1 unallocated stat point. Terminating will also result in more experience.

  Remaining Targets: 14

  I frowned. So few people were still alive? I didn’t have high hopes for Niko and Greta.

  I reread the quest, and noticed that the words terminate and conscript were shown in a slightly different shade of purple, so I tapped conscript. A smaller info box appeared, explaining Trash Planet’s version of conscription:

  Conscription. The ability to control a non-Hunter.

  To conscript a non-Hunter, you must get close enough to see the Conscript option above their heads. Tap it to offer conscription. The Conscript must be sentient, and must accept conscription of its own free will.

  Cost: Conscription costs 1 unallocated stat point.

  “Why are you punished for conscripting people?” I burst out.

  There was a pause before Dave answered. “Because they’re useless, and the viewers find them boring. Mercy doesn’t sell as well as blood.”

  “Well, that’s a shitty reason. How many stat points do I have left?”

  Dave groaned. “Please, please, please tell me you’re not thinking of wasting stat points on conscripts.”

  I ground my teeth, then found another icon on my menu, this one in the shape of a small humanoid figure. It expanded into a character menu, which showed my equipped items on one side—a NerveGear Plasma Retardant Body-Skin, a Klinefelter Vaporaser, and a Bell Katana—plus a list of stat points on the other.

  I eyed the other items, but right now, it was the stat points I cared about.

  “Ten points left unspent,” I said aloud. I’d been hoping that I’d gained more somehow. I swapped back to the Quest to check the target count again.

  Remaining Targets: 11

  It had dropped three people in one minute. Cursing, I took the aircar down into the tent city. It was possible the remaining leeches weren’t here, but this had definitely been the highest concentration of them in the area. Besides, we were a tough crowd. We could hide if we needed to, and hide well.

  Ten points, I thought. And eleven people left….

  I cut off the thought, and headed for home.