Chapter 27: Super Death Race (But an Imposter Hides Among You)

Super Death Race (But an Imposter Hides Among You)

A painful, sharp ache awoke Victor from his slumber. Then he noticed the pitch blue, clear sky above him, the sun shining upon them more like divine punishment than refreshing warmth, as well as an eagle that flew across the mound. It made eagle noises. That's when Viktor noticed it: that Lataya was beside him and she has been unharmed, but there were explosions, many, many explosions. He realized that they were in a different simulation, probably a simulation inside another simulation, and the first reincarnated wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.

Immediately after, he heard Gaggleboops nasty voice greet the new contestants.

“Welcome and good morning, my pained souls. Today, we will have a tournament, a race event, and also a discussion of who is the imposter. Welcome to the Super Death Race but an impostor hides among you.”

Victor audibly gulps. He knew that Gaggleboop is not to be trifled with, and even though he had only despised this guy, God help him if that fucker didn't know how to run a cool-ass tournament.

Suddenly, Lataya transformed into the Golden Girl, and she realised immediately that she could levitate, she could see through systems, and had supernatural strength. She was dressed in a very cool golden cape, and suddenly her posture fixed. She was not the damsel in distress anymore. She was the most powerful being of them all.

Victor knew this because of the UI that suddenly appeared in front of him. It told him that he is rank 8/8 and that Lataya is ranked 7/8. He also saw her immense power level, and he was looking for some kind of reflection so he could estimate his own.

“Lataya, it seems like you are the one that could bring us a victory here. I don't know about my powers. I don't know what I look like now.”

“You just look like Viktor. You don't really look like you changed. You have a helmet on.”

“What?”

Lataya didn't lie, and why would she? She's the only compatriot Victor had in this god-forsaken place, and Victor watched his UI closely. His power is the “System breaker, Victor.” He held a helmet on which showed him a UI, and he could cheat his way through everything now, at least that’s what was written at the bottom of his vision. He turned into what he hated most: an outsider, somebody who has exactly the powers that reincarnated people get.

Upon realization, Victor noticed another explosion in the distance.

A broadcast version of Gaggleboop's voice announces that they've been entered into the system's main event, and that the system will crown the Victor.

“You will survive this main event by running a race track. You have to manage difficult terrain, but also take a good look at your opponents. Each one will have been given a new superpower to navigate through the difficult terrain and give us a good show. That's the most important part. At each checkpoint, you guys have to talk about who might be the imposter. And by imposter I mean a ghost in the shell. A metaphysical being that is ab-natural in the most literal sense. The victor is the last man standing, the one who can step out of this world. ”

Viktor clenched his jaws. Gaggleboop Kept gaggle-booping about superheroes and a spectacle and a good show, but he knows this is all just a threat to survive and nothing else. and the first reincarnated wept for there were no more worlds to conquer.

Slowly but surely, the starting line emerged as well as the other contestants. There was Supersonic, the live-in learner. That was NasCar, The Nasty Carcasse, There was the GOATrunner, which was kind of a goat but mostly a runner. There was Fan the Hammer, the fan service gun girl. She had two really big guns, trust. She could shoot behind her and use the velocity to gain momentum or something. Then there was Golden Girl. Behind her stood Unstoppable, the Slothman. There was the Cruel Angel, Thesis. And there was System Breaker Viktor, which everybody pointed out to be Viktor.

“Isn't that Viktor?”

“No, it's not.” said Lataya.

By God, she tried her best. But it was in vain.

And the first reincarnated wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.

Another explosion in the distance.

The horn sounded, which, in actuality, was Gaggleboop doing the noise with his mouth, piped across the whole valley. It had a volume so high that every ear drum in vicinity kept playing a sick percussion solo on its own for a while.

"RAAACERS. START YOUR SUFFERING."

And they were off.

Supersonic went first, because of course he did, a smear of motion that left behind the stench of cheap cologne. NasCar, The Nasty Carcasse, folded in on himself with a wet crunch and became an actual stock car, hood plastered with sponsors that did not exist, probably. The GOATrunner bounded up a sheer cliff on four legs while bleating something that sounded suspiciously like "let's gooo." Fan the Hammer fired her massive pistol behind her twice and rocketed forward on the recoil, and Viktor decided he would not think about where the bullets went.

"And there she goes, folks," Gaggleboop gagglebooped. She shoots behind her. Where does the round land? Nobody knows. Nobody has ever known. That, my pained souls, is the beauty of sport."

Unstoppable, the Slothman, took one step. And by god, it was a very good step. He would take the next one soonish.

Viktor stood at the line with a helmet on his head that he hated and a UI in his eye that he hated more, RANK 8/8 blinking at him steadily. Beside him Lataya, who was now Golden Girl and rank 7/8 and possibly the strongest creature in any of the nested hells they were currently trapped inside, rose two feet off the ground without trying.

"Get on," she said.

"I am a knight of the Kingsguard. I do not ride children."

"You ride me or you ride the Slothman's pace, old man."

Viktor got on.

They launched. Beneath them the racetrack unrolled itself out of nothing. There was a ribbon of broken highway suspended over a canyon, then a forest that was on fire for no reason, then a stretch of ocean that someone had simply forgotten to fill with water. The terrain was trying to kill them. Viktor understood this now. Survival was the sport and the audience, whoever they were, wanted a good show.

His helmet pinged.

SYSTEM EXPLOIT AVAILABLE: CLIP THROUGH WALL.

Viktor's stomach turned over. He could do it. He was the thing he hated most now, the cheating outsider who got everything for free, and the worst part, was that it felt incredible.

"Don't," he told himself, and then did it anyway, phasing them both clean through a collapsing overpass that flattened the GOATrunner into a rug.

"GOATRUNNER IS OUT," boomed Gaggleboop. "He was kind of a goat but mostly a runner. He will be missed by goats and by runners."

And the first reincarnated wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.

***

CHECKPOINT ONE.

A great glowing ring slammed down out of the sky and the surviving racers skidded into it whether they wanted to or not. The track froze. A scoreboard the size of a cathedral lit up.

"Discussion time," Gaggleboop said.

"Take a good look at your friends. One of them is not a friend. One of them is not even alive. Who is the imposter? Vote, and the loser walks the plank, which today is also on fire."

"It's NasCar," said Fan the Hammer instantly, her guns bouncing around. "He's literally a corpse. The Nasty Carcasse. It's in the name."

"That's racist," said NasCar, who was a car first and foremost.

"That's not how that word works," said Lataya.

"I'm just a guy who picked a sick name," NasCar protested, revving. "I wanted to sound dangerous. My real name is Jeff."

Viktor watched the vote happen. Jeff the car got thrown off the burning plank by majority vote, screaming that this was exactly the kind of toxic lobby that drove people away from the game. He exploded on the way down.

Another explosion in the distance, this one closer.

"That's a shame," Gaggleboop said. "Jeff was not the imposter. Jeff was just a guy. Six racers remain. Resume!"

Lataya had gone very quiet.

And the first reincarnated wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.

***

They ran. The Non-Water-Ocean turned out to be a thousand-foot drop onto more highway, and the Cruel Angel Thesis spread her wings and caught the air with the smug grace of someone who had read the brief, and Viktor, clinging to the back of an eleven-year-old flying goddess, felt the dread settle into his bones. The Whispering Sword had not come into the simulation with him. He had only the helmet. He had never wanted that ugly singing blade so much in his life.

"Viktor," Lataya said over the wind. "Look at Supersonic."

Viktor looked. Supersonic, the live-in learner, ran fast and flawless, copying the exact stride of whoever was beside him a half-second after they did it.

"He doesn't get tired," Lataya noticed.

"None of them get tired. They're superheroes."

"No. Watch his chest." Her golden eyes flickered, and Viktor remembered, too late, that one of her powers was to see through systems. "He doesn't breathe. He lives, he learns. He copies. He doesn't have a — there's no soul-data, Viktor, by god, he's a process pretending to be a person, he's the ghost in the shell —"

Supersonic's head turned all the way around without the rest of him following.

"You weren't supposed to look," he said, in an annoying, abnatural voice.

***

CHECKPOINT TWO.

It was supposed to be a discussion but became a slaughter instead. Supersonic came apart at the seams, the cheap cologne smell gone and replaced with the wet machine rot of the road-train. Something black and many-legged unfolded out of the hollow where a man should have been, and it took Fan the Hammer first, fast, before she could even point her voluptuous pistol the wrong way.

It was extremely gory, by god. Even though this was a simulation, Viktor instantly understood to bat Lataya’s eyes, because the golden girl deserved to have her golden dreams intact.

"AND THE TWIST," Gaggleboop howled with joy. "The imposter is REVEALED. Live and Learn, fuckers!"

"Vote," Lataya shouted, slamming her golden fist into the floor of the ring so the whole checkpoint rang like a bell. "Everybody vote, now, vote him out, the system has to obey the vote, that's the rule, that's the only rule it can't break —"

Unstoppable the Slothman raised one hand, slowly, to vote. He would get there. He believed in himself.

The Cruel Angel voted. Viktor voted. Lataya voted.

IMPOSTER EJECTED.

The black thing shrieked, was yanked sideways out of reality by the collar like a kitten, and was gone. The clapping turned to a roar. The scoreboard rained confetti made of, on closer inspection, more confetti.

"INCREDIBLE," Gaggleboop wept. "Folks, that is supernatural deduction, that is MVP behavior from Golden Girl, give it up — and now, the finale, the part you've all paid for, the crowning of the Victor —"

Lataya grabbed Viktor's gauntlet. "He keeps saying that."

"Saying what?"

Viktor's helmet pinged one last time.

WIN STATE: THE VICTOR. CLAIMANT FOUND.

CLAIMANT: VIKTOR.

He had a system-breaking power and an ugly helmet and a child carrying him through fire, and the exit had been his own stupid name the entire time, sitting in the lobby since the starting line, since the throne room, since his mother named him after a word that meant winner and then died before she could see what a joke that turned out to be.

"I'm the victor," Viktor said.

"WHAT," said Gaggleboop.

"I'm Viktor. I'm the victor. You said the system crowns the victor." He took off the helmet and held it out.

"I win."

The Cruel Angel, who had not won, looked at the two of them with what might have been respect. "Oh," she said. "That's bullshit.."

The system thought about it. Ones and zeros rained down upon the panoramic view, so the system was probably really thinking. It was a rigged game built by reincarnated freaks who had never in their lives been told no, and it had been beaten a system breaking stupid semantic.

VICTOR CONFIRMED.

And the first reincarnated wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.

***

The pods spat them out.

Real air, real cold, the real damp stink of the Hive. Viktor hit the floor on his hands and knees with pink fluid sheeting off his armor and a needle-ache behind both eyes, and the first thing he felt — before the nausea, before Lataya coughing beside him, before anything — was the Whispering Sword waking up at his hip.

FINALLY, it said. FINALLY, FINALLY, BLOOD, AND THEN CAKE.

Doctor Gaggleboop stood at his little desk with his little light-field, and the smile on his real face was already curdling into the understanding that the tall malnourished noodle in the dripping armor was awake, and free, and no longer in any system at all.

"Now hang on," Gaggleboop said. "You can't —"

Viktor plunged his sword into the frail doctor.

The cutting enchantment came out through the runes in his arm. He was done.

He opened Doctor Gaggleboop from the hip to the opposite shoulder, and then, because the sword asked so nicely, the other way. It turned out the gore had never needed a simulation. The light-field flickered out across the wet red floor, and the last thing it showed, frozen, was a man studying hard in a library, smiling, before that went dark as well.

"You," Viktor told the corpse, "were the worst host so far."

***

The Hive's machines began to die without their keeper, capsules screaming, alarms making polite suggestions about evacuation that no one took. And in the great rusted dark at the back of the room, something old shifted on flat tires.

The sapient AI looked at Viktor. Viktor looked back. No blinking whatsoever.

"You're free," he said. "We both are. The system's dead. You want to keep rusting in here with your dead boss?"

The road-train groaned. Then a transformation happened: rust fell off in sheets like a snake shedding, and what came out was not the human-derived flesh of the things that hunted Outworlders on the roads. It was monster meat, dark and steaming and wrong, too many wheels and far too many teeth arranged in places a vehicle has no business having teeth, and when it idled, the whole Hive shook. The birth of the goddamn Semi-Monster-Truck.

A door opened on its side that had not been there a moment ago. It was, unmistakably, holding the door for them.

"Okay," Lataya breathed, climbing in. "Okay, that's the coolest thing that has ever happened to me."

Viktor got in beside her. The monster-semi-truck rumbled approval and aimed itself at the wall, which it clearly did not intend to use a door for.

Lataya unslung the new, cooler guitar that had been strapped to her back and she struck a chord that should not have been possible without an amplifier, a power outlet, or any working knowledge of the instrument.

It was the best sound Viktor had heard in months.

They went through the wall.

Behind them the Hive came down. Ahead of them the red dirt road ran out toward a horizon stacked with thin grey columns of smoke — every one of them, Viktor knew, an Outworlder doing something unforgivable to somebody who didn't deserve it.

A lot of work left to do.

Another explosion in the distance.