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  The little boy stares back at me. “Sissy,” he says.

  Then he is in my arms, crying like he’s never cried in front of me before.

  “It’s okay,” I say as I half-drag, half-carry him into the apartment. “I’m okay. I’m safe.”

  “Where were you? Why didn’t you come home?”

  “I was playing the game,” I answer, closing the door behind me. “Something happened, Diego. Something went wrong.”

  “But did you win?”

  I lower myself to his level and nod.

  A smile appears upon his tearstained face. Then he is in my arms once more, crying harder than he ever has before.

  “So… phia?” my mother’s voice asks.

  “I’m here, Mom,” I say, reaching up to brush my own tears from my face before rising and leading Diego toward the bedroom.

  Pausing to consider what she might say, how she’ll feel, and how she may act, I the door open.

  Inside, my mother sits upright in her bed—her face pale but her eyes wide with wonder. The exhaustion in them has vanished. Worry has arrived in its place.

  “Mom,” I say. “Are you all right?”

  “Why were you gone for so long?” she asks. “What did they do to you?”

  “It’s… a long story.” I step forward. “How are you feeling?”

  “Thankfully Missus Gray was just next door, so we didn’t go hungry after that first day. She… hasn’t been over today though. Diego had to fix my food.” She stares at me. “What happened, Sophia? Why were you gone?”

  I consider Diego at my side. “Go play.”

  “But—” he starts.

  I shake my head. “I have to talk to Mom about something grown-up.”

  “Why can’t I be here?”

  “Go, Diego,” my mother says.

  Though his lips puff into a pout, he doesn’t argue. Rather, he slides out of the room and closes the door behind him, leaving me and my mother to our own devices.

  There are several moments where I cannot speak. I do not know how to feel, how to act, what to say, what to do. So I simply wait for the courage to rise within me, only to find that it can’t—or, more aptly, won’t.

  You can do this, I think. You survived Dystopia. You know you can survive this.

  With a nod, and with everything I can muster, I ask, “They didn’t tell you?”

  “The Grays said that something happened—that the two of you had to stay a few days longer. That was yesterday. I haven’t heard anything from them at all today, which was why I was getting worried.” She leans forward to look at me and covers her mouth to cough. “Sophia, what happened? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I say. “At least… as fine as I can be after what I went through.”

  My mother’s eyes widen. “What do you mean?”

  Sighing, I settle down in the chair which rests perpendicular to the bed. “It’s a long story.”

  “I’m here,” she says.

  I tell it slowly, effortlessly, with feeling I know comes slightly from triumph and partially from dread. Born from insecurity, it begins simply enough—but as it transpires to what occurred therein, my mother’s expression begins to change. The moment I say the needle hit my neck, she becomes horrified; but it is only when I speak about completely experiencing another world that panic rises within her throat.

  “Sophia—”

  “Please, Mom. Let me finish.”

  As she purses her lips, she nods, still coughing but listening as intently as she possibly can.

  I struggle to speak of the days we spent in that terrifying wasteland—to speak, and act, on the crimes that were committed out of the need for survival. From watching other people suffer, to ignoring others in need, to being cheated by Cheyenne, then offered resolution by the game’s devices, everything leaves my lips.

  When I finally come to how we scaled that mountain, however, I struggle to piece the words together.

  “Leon… fell,” I say, “down the mountain, and landed at the foot of the it.”

  “Near these… Moth Men?” my mother asks.

  I nod. “They… grabbed him… and then… started shimmering in and out of existence. They were glitching, Mom, out of the game. Then Leon disappeared, and the game announced that I won.”

  At this point, I’m near tears, but whether or not my mother can see them I can’t be certain. However—I know she can hear the trembling in my voice, so when she attempts to climb from bed, only to stumble back in, I shake my head and rise to face her.

  “Leon is in a coma, Mom, because of something that happened in the game. They say his brain activity is minimal, and that they’re working to try and find a way to bring him out of it.”

  “Those monsters.” Now she, too, is trembling—not, I know, from fear, or because she is distraught, but from rage. “How dare they do that to you kids.”

  “I—”

  “Do the authorities know?”

  “I don’t know, Mom. Rudolph Kingsman basically laughed in my face and said that the government wouldn’t do anything, because a contract is a contract, and I signed for both of us.”

  “That’s why the Grays haven’t tried to come over,” my mother says. “Because they’re in mourning. Or trying to figure out what to do. Something.”

  “I already told them I would go back into the game if I have to.”

  Her face pales a shade. “No,” she says. “Absolutely not.”

  “It’s my fault he’s there, Mom.”

  “No. It isn’t. What happened is not your fault, Sophia. You cannot say that.”

  “But I… they—”

  “They are the ones who did this to you. They are the ones who made it so you had to gamble with your lives and sanity in a world that you used to believe was make-believe. But now, this…” She balls her hands into fists. “This is monstrous.”

  “I know it is.”

  My mother remains silent for several more moments before lifting her head. “You said you won,” she says. “Did they… did they—”

  “Did they what, Mom?”

  “Give you your prize?”

  I reach into my zipped jacket pocket and withdraw the card with our million-dollar winnings.

  “A black card,” my mother says.

  “We can take you to the hospital,” I say, “in the city. So they can give you the cure, or whatever it is they do to make people better.”

  “What about the Grays? Are you… are you going to speak with them?”

  “I don’t know what I’m gonna say. How do I tell them that what happened to Leon was because I invited him to play what I thought was a game?”

  “You tell them exactly what you told me: and say, point blank, your brave heart was willing to face whatever monstrosities exist inside that world.”

  “Is, Mom.”

  “No.” She shakes her head. “I won’t allow it. I won’t let you expose yourself to those monsters or their game ever again.”

  “It’s my duty to get Leon back.”

  “It’s your duty to survive, Sophia. If… what you said is true, and Leon really is stuck in there… possibly permanently… then there’s no way I’m going to let you go back to Kingsman Online headquarters.”

  I stand.

  “Sophia?” she asks, terror in her voice over what she likely feels is my defiance. “Where are you going?”

  “I have to get this over with. I have to talk to Mister and Missus Gray.”

  “Maybe someone should go with you.”

  “Who would go with me?”

  “Someone from the authorities, maybe?”

  I shake my head. “No. I have to do this on my own.”

  “All right.” My mother leans back and rests her head atop her pillow. “Godspeed, Sophia.”

  “Yeah,” I whisper.

  Godspeed.

  I stand before the Grays’ apartment door with the knowledge that I will deliver upon them an unfortunate truth. Terrified beyond belief, but knowing it
has to be done, I lean forward to knock on the door, but stop before I can do so.

  What will they say? I think.

  I fully expect to be blamed. This is because, in the grand scheme of things, it was me who received the invitation to play in the Kingsman Online Regionals, me who invited Leon to play, me who convinced him that I needed him beyond a shred of a doubt.

  Me who ushered him toward his eventual fate.

  The reality is: this is all my fault, and I should be blamed accordingly. But for all of it?

  No.

  I shake my head.

  This was not all my fault. This was not all my doing. This was not my mistake.

  It was Rudolph Kingsman’s.

  Standing there, I try to find peace in the knowledge that they are doing everything they can to help Leon, but find that nothing I, nor they, can do may change that.

  So, with that in mind, I lean forward and knock on the door.

  It takes several moments for there to be any kind of movement—for there to be any kind of sign.

  When the curtain parts, I am filled with dread.

  When the door unlocks, I am struck with panic.

  And as the knob turns, I feel, in the pit of my gut, a feeling I have only experienced in the game of Dystopia—sheer, unadultered panic.

  The door opens.

  Missus Gray looks out. “Sophia.”

  “Muh… Missus Gray,” I stutter, unable to keep my voice from trembling.

  “Please. Come in.”

  Her words are cold and without emotion—frigid in the landscape that is her personal suffering—and leave me feeling wind-burnt by their power.

  One would think that stepping into a friend’s home would inspire warmth and happiness.

  Instead, it leaves me feeling remote and isolated.

  Like you’re stranded on the moon, my conscience says, with no way to get down.

  There is no feeling worse than this.

  As we enter the home, and as we come to stand in the kitchen, I wonder, for a brief moment, where Mister Gray might be. Then I realize he must be at work, slaving away on machines to make a living for his family, and realize just what a horrible predicament these people are in.

  The only words Missus Gray can say are, “What happened?”

  And I, not knowing how to respond quickly, merely say, “Sit down. I’ll tell you.”

  So we sit, and I talk, and I explain, in short and plain detail, about the needles, about the inoculation, about how we were trapped in a game where death seemed like a permanent fate and where each and every feeling was like that of the real world. Missus Gray’s eyes are glassy in these moments—filled with disbelief and unsurety, regret and pain—and though I long to reach out to set my hand over hers, I know this cannot happen, for in a moment like this there cannot be restitution, nor recovery.

  I know, wholeheartedly, that there can only be suffering.

  When I finish the story, all I can do is watch Missus Gray.

  I want so badly to cry—to be the person who through weakness and pain can emerge triumphant like a phoenix reborn—but know that cannot be the case. I have to be strong: not only for me, but for the woman before me.

  There is little emotion on her face, but what I can see is wrought with tension, twisted between various feelings that only the privileged can claim to know.

  “Missus Gray?” I ask, struggling to inspire courage in what is undoubtedly my darkest hour.

  “What is it?”

  “I’m… I’m sorry.”

  There is a lull of silence between us after my apology. Slowly, however, it ends, with only four simple words: “It wasn’t your fault.”

  It wasn’t your fault.

  “How—” I start.

  “You couldn’t have anticipated what they would do,” Missus Gray says, “or what they would put you kids through. Hell—when Leon told me about it, it seemed like a fun day out: an escape from a life too hard for anyone’s own good.”

  “I have my card,” I say, thinking back to the simple black object that happens to lie in a drawer in the kitchen, hidden away from the rest of the world. “I… I only have my half of the earnings, but I can offer you something—anything—that could help make you more comfortable.”

  “The only thing I want is for my son to come home.”

  The declaration, though horrible to hear, is honest in its integrity, and leaves me reeling with emotion.

  “I’ll do everything I can to help bring him back, Missus Gray… even if it means going back into the game and finding him.”

  “Sophia,” she begins, a sigh cursing her words, a frown her lips. “I… I don’t want you to go back there… or do whatever you think you might have to in order to get him back. This is not in your hands anymore. This is on their heads.”

  “I don’t trust them.”

  “Neither do I. But… I have to have hope they’ll do the right thing—that everything will be okay. I… I just don’t want you to put yourself in any more danger. Not after everything you’ve gone through. Not with having to take care of your mother.”

  I close my eyes, exhale, and stand. “Thank you for helping take care of them while I was gone.”

  “Your mother would’ve done the same for Leon if he were a boy and I the one sick.”

  “I’m sure she would.”

  Missus Gray stands and leads me toward the doorway. “Sophia?”

  “Yes, Missus Gray?”

  “Please… I beg of you… don’t do anything reckless.”

  “I won’t,” I say, and can’t help but feel that she knows my statement is a lie.

  She doesn’t say anything, though. Rather, she lets me out the door, then closes it behind me without another word.

  In the cold winter of my unnatural suffering, I can’t help but be reminded of a world that is not my own—and because of that, cannot resist it any longer.

  I cry as I walk home—not for me, and not just for Leon, but for his parents who are suffering so.

  3

  Though helping Leon is currently beyond my control, there is one thing I can do to ease my spirits and make my experience feel like it was worth it in the end.

  I can help my mother.

  So, on the morning after my return from Kingsman Online Headquarters, I boot my computer up, look up the directory for the city hospitals, and take a moment to prepare myself before scribbling a number down and walking it to the old corded phone in our apartment.

  A short moment later, a voice asks, “Hello?”

  And I’m saying, “My name is Sophia Garza. I’d… like to have my mother admitted to the hospital for treatment.”

  “For what, dear?”

  “The illness the doctors call the Bite.”

  There is a long pause. Then, “Where do you currently reside, ma’am?”

  “The Sunset Suites in Sector 78, just outside the city.”

  “Do you require transportation?”

  “I—” I turn my head to look at my mother’s bedroom door. I take a moment to compose myself before saying, “Yes. I do.”

  “You do realize that emergency medical services will have to come to your home in order to transport your mother to the hospital.”

  “I know.”

  “And you are aware of the costs associated with the transport and then housing for victims of AID-38, correct?”

  AID? I think, then realize the anagram is little more than its medical name, simply titled as an auto-immune disorder. I swallow a lump in my throat. “Correct.”

  “And you’ve means to pay a deposit upon your arrival?”

  “Yes ma’am. I do. I have a continental card I can pay on.”

  “I must inform you that your account will be screened prior to us admitting your mother to the hospital. I can assure you, however, that this is done in the strictest confidence and won’t be done over an unsecured telephone connection.”

  “I understand.” I look down as a glimmer of movement appears out my periphera
l, only to find Diego standing near the kitchen table. “When can the Emergency Transport Service come?”

  “I will put in an order now. Please be advised that the medical technicians will arrive in hazmat suits. Do not be alarmed when they knock on your door. Thank you, and have a nice day.”

  “Thank you,” I say, and set the corded phone back into place.

  I inhale a long, deep breath in the moments thereafter, holding it in before reaching up to take drop my head in both hands.

  “Sophie?” Diego asks. “What’s going on?”

  “The hospital is sending some people to take Mom to see a doctor.”

  “Doctor Sullivan?”

  “No. It’s gonna be someone else—someone from the city.”

  “Are we gonna go too?”

  “We will. I just… have to figure out how to get us there.”

  “You mean we can’t go with Mom?”

  “I don’t think so, D.”

  “I wanna go with Mom!”

  “Diego!” I snap. “Stop!”

  He cringes and shrinks back against the wall.

  Sighing, I take another deep breath. “I’m sorry. I just… we don’t have a choice. Either they’ll let us go with her in the transport truck or they won’t. My guess is that they won’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s sick, D. They don’t want us getting sick too.”

  “But we haven’t gotten sick.”

  That is the mystery I cannot unravel, or even begin to fathom. We’ve been in such close contact with my mother that it seems impossible for us not to have caught the illness. But at the same time, I can’t help but be thankful, because if I’d have been sick…

  None of this would be happening, my conscience decides to finish.

  I swallow the ever-growing lump in my throat and turn my attention to the bedroom door. “Stay here,” I say.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m gonna tell Mom what’s going on.”

  He doesn’t reply. Instead, he reaches out to touch my hand. “Sissy?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can they help her? The people at the hospital?”

  “I—” I start, then stop before I can finish.

  His big black eyes are magnetizing. Like my polar equal, they draw me forward, beckoning me to reassure him that everything will be fine even though it may not be.