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Dance found herself sitting forward, knee bobbing--a classic indication of stress. She gasped when one warrior beheaded another right in front of them.
"There are real people guiding them?"
"One or two are NPC--those're 'nonplayer characters' that the game itself creates. But nearly all of the others are avatars of people who could be anywhere. Cape Town, Mexico, New York, Russia. The majority of the players are men, but there're a lot of women too. And the average age isn't as young as you'd think. Teenage to late twenties mostly but plenty of older players. They could be boys or girls or middle-aged men, black, white, disabled, athletes, lawyers, dishwashers. . . . In the synth world, you can be whoever you want to be."
In front of them another warrior easily killed his opponent. Blood spurted in a geyser. Boling grunted. "They're not all equal, though. Survival depends on who practices the most and who has the most power--power you earn by fighting and killing. It's a vicious cycle, literally."
Dance tapped the screen and pointed to the back of a woman avatar in the foreground. "That's you?"
"One of my student's avatars. I'm logging in through her account."
The name above her was "Greenleaf."
"There he is!" Boling said, his shoulder brushing hers as he leaned forward. He was pointing at Travis's avatar, Stryker, who was about a hundred feet away from Greenleaf.
Stryker was a tough, muscular man. Dance couldn't help but notice that while many other characters had beards or ruddy, leathery skin, Travis's avatar was unblemished and his skin as smooth as a baby's. She thought of the boy's concerns about acne.
You can be whoever you want to be . . .
Stryker--a "Thunderer," she recalled--was clearly the dominant warrior here. People would look his way and turn and leave. Several people engaged him--once two at the same time. He easily killed them both. One time he stunned a huge avatar, a troll or similar beast, with a ray. Then, as it lay shaking on the ground, Travis directed his avatar to plunge a knife into its chest.
Dance gasped.
Stryker bent down and seemed to reach inside the body.
"What's he doing?"
"Looting the corpse." Boling noted Dance's furrowed brow and added, "Everyone does it. You have to. The bodies might have something valuable. And if you've defeated them, you've earned the right."
If these were the values that Travis had learned in the synth world, it was a wonder he hadn't snapped sooner.
She couldn't help but wonder: And where was the boy now in the real world? At a Starbucks Wi-Fi location, with the hood over his head and sunglasses on, so he wouldn't be recognized? Ten miles from here? One mile?
He wasn't at the Game Shed. She knew that. After learning that he spent time there, Dance had ordered surveillance on the place.
As she watched Travis's avatar engage and easily kill dozens of creatures--women and men and animals--she found herself instinctively drawing on her skills as a kinesics expert.
She knew, of course, that computer software was controlling the boy's movement and posture. Yet she was already seeing that his avatar moved with more grace and fluidity than most. In combat he didn't flail away randomly, as some of the characters did. He took his time, he withdrew a bit and then struck when his opponents were disoriented. Several fast blows or stabs later--and the character was dead. He stayed alert, always looking around him.
This was a clue, perhaps, to the boy's strategy of life. Planning the attacks out carefully, learning all he could about his victims, attacking fast.
Analyzing the body language of a computer avatar, she reflected. What an odd case this was.
"I want to talk to him."
"To Travis? I mean, to Stryker?"
"Right. Get closer."
Boling hesitated. "I don't know the navigation commands very well. But I think I can walk all right."
"Go ahead."
Using the keypad, Boling maneuvered Greenleaf closer to where Stryker was hunched over the body of the creature he'd just killed, looting it.
As soon as she was within attack distance Stryker sensed Dance's avatar's approach and leapt up, his sword in one hand, an elaborate shield in the other. Stryker's eyes gazed out of the screen.
Eyes dark as the demon Qetzal's.
