Virtual Vandals

Chapter 15

Matt backed away from the unconscious Sandy Braxton, his eyes on the three Confederate soldiers who’d left their places in the battle line. All around him, Pickett’s Charge moved on to its bloody climax. But Matt had eyes only for the three socket bayonets aimed at him.

Maybe he should have been watching where he was going. His heel caught in something, and suddenly he was tumbling. He’d tripped over a soldier, killed or wounded earlier in the charge! Long-drilled training from the Net Force Explorers’ dojo took over. Matt twisted even as he went down, lashing out with his hands to break his fall. He rolled as he hit the ground, quickly getting to his feet.

As he moved, his hand touched wood and metal. The wounded man’s rifle!

Matt grabbed up the weapon as his three deadly enemies came running up. The one in the lead had a bushy brown beard and sergeant’s stripes. The man behind him had a ferocious-looking black beard. The third was scarcely older than Matt, with just a couple of patches of hair on his chin.

The sergeant didn’t wait for the other two, but launched an awkward attack on his own. Matt began to feel some hope. He wasn’t facing trained soldiers, just interlopers who’d invaded this simulation. They didn’t know how to handle their rifles.

Not that Matt was an expert. But he had worked out with pugil sticks — padded quarterstaffs — under the Net Force’s Quantico-trained drill instructors. Those guys had been tough as Marines, and they’d at least thumped the basics of stick-fighting into the Net Force Explorers.

Matt parried the sergeant’s wild thrust on the barrel of his borrowed rifle. He forced the bayonet down and aside. It stabbed uselessly past his left hip. Then Matt shifted his grip on the weapon, ramming the stock into his attacker’s gut. The sergeant doubled over, and Matt smacked him in the head. The man was down before the other two had reached him.

“Computer!” Matt shouted. “End simulation! Execute!”

Nothing happened. He was still trapped in the Gettysburg reenactment, with a pair of guys who clearly meant him no good advancing on him with their bayonets at ready. His new attackers came on more cautiously after seeing what had happened to their pal.

Blackbeard went to the right while the Kid moved left, forcing Matt to divide his attention between them. He began backing up again, trying to keep some distance between them. “Computer! Pause!” he yelled.

But the action kept unrolling around him. Whatever Rob Falk had done, he’d taken control of the simulation right out of Matt’s hands.

The black-bearded soldier began a series of short jabs. Matt blocked them, then spun back and to his right, foiling an attempt by the other guy to get around behind him.

Matt brought up his rifle as if he were going to fire, sending both attackers scrambling back away from him. But as he tried to engage the weapon, the hammer fell with a dry click. Either the gun had already been fired, or it needed something that Matt didn’t know about.

Blackbeard suddenly broke into a run, swinging his rifle in a wide, looping movement to slash with his bayonet. Matt braced himself to receive the attack. But suddenly, the black-bearded man was falling!

The look on his attacker’s face would have been comical in any other situation. A brilliant red stain appeared on his gray uniform jacket, and down he went.

Matt couldn’t help glancing at the Union battle line, where jets of flame lanced from the muzzles of massed rifles. Did they have to worry about stray bullets on the battlefield?

No, that was impossible. This was a reenactment, not the actual battle. They couldn’t have been using live ammunition.

Then Matt realized. When Rob had sent his pals into the sim, he’d simply picked the three closest soldiers to Sandy and Matt. Now it turned out that one of those soldiers had been slated to become a casualty. His number had come up, and down he’d gone!

That meant Matt had only a lone opponent to face — for the moment. The youthful face opposite him looked a little worried as the Kid feinted and jabbed with his weapon.

Matt parried almost mechanically, his mind busy on something else. The “death” of Blackbeard meant that Falk didn’t have complete control over the simulation. The computer was still doing what it was programmed to do.

The Kid glanced over Matt’s shoulder. That was the only warning Matt received. He thumped his opponent in the chest, knocking him back, and spun round as a Confederate officer lashed out with his sword. The blade made a chilling noise, worse than fingernails on a blackboard, as it scraped along Matt’s rifle barrel. If he’d been a little slower, people would have had to call him Lefty!

Even if Falk didn’t absolutely control the computer, he could keep sending his people back into the simulation. Just two of them now, it seemed — maybe Matt had managed to hurt the third.

That didn’t matter. Sooner or later, one of these clowns would score with a lucky shot.

And then Matt would suffer the fate of Gerald Savage.

Unless….

Matt retreated again as his attackers came in from opposite sides.

What was the first command Sandy had given the computer? The one that had set up this particular run of the simulation?

Hoping he’d gotten the numbers right, Matt shouted, “Computer, reload Gettysburg simulation, cue two-two-seven!”

It was like time travel. Matt and Sandy were between the two battle lines. Nothing was moving — and that included Sandy. He lay on the weirdly stiff grass.

But Matt couldn’t worry about that right now. His end run had succeeded! He’d managed to yank control of the computer back from Rob Falk!

“Computer!” he shouted quickly. “Cancel. And exit!”

The slopes of Cemetery Hill winked out, and Matt was back in Veeyar Lab Six. He leapt from his computer-link chair. Sandy Braxton lolled in his seat, unconscious.

“Mr. Braxton?” A voice suddenly filled the room. Matt recognized it as Mr. Petracca, the school librarian. “What’s going on in there? My monitors are giving some very odd readings for that simulation you’re running.”

“Something’s gone wrong,” Matt called. “Sandy Braxton is unconscious. I think the sim has been tampered with. Get the school doctor!”

He made sure Sandy was okay, then pulled out his wallet. After this attack, all bets were off. He was calling Captain Winters.

Even as he hit the option for phone configuration, sparks flew out from under the foilpack keypad. Matt dropped the wallet to the floor as the polymer smoldered. Coughing from the acrid smoke, Matt stamped on the wallet. It didn’t burst into flames, but it was obvious the circuitry was a complete loss. So much for phoning.

Mr. Petracca, the doctor, and a nurse had come bursting into Veeyar Lab Six. “The boy is in shock,” the medical man said after a quick examination.

“I’ve already called for an Emergency Services ambulance — and the police,” Mr. Petracca said.

Fine, Matt thought. I can report all this to them — in person.

A few minutes later, Matt sat in the school office, waiting for the cops to arrive. If only this hadn’t happened! He didn’t like blowing the lid off Rob Falk and the virtual vandals before he spoke to Cat Corrigan.

At that moment, Caitlin walked into the office.

The two of them stared at one another. Then, at almost the same time, they both asked, “What are you doing here?”

Cat responded first. “I was pulled out of class. There was a message from my father’s office. He’s sick — he collapsed. I’m just checking in before I go home.”

She looked at him, expecting his answer.

“Finish what you’ve got to do first,” Matt muttered.

Caitlin got a pass from the office staff, and Matt walked her to the door. “Sandy Braxton picked up a sim for the research project we’re working on,” Matt said quietly when they were in the hall. “We were in the veeyar lab when things began to go very, very wrong.”

She stared at him. “How wrong?”

“It was the re-creation of a famous battle. But some of the soldiers departed from their programming and began attacking us.”

Cat’s eyes went wide. “Oh, no!” She turned back to the office. “Where’s Sandy?”

“He’s going to the hospital. As far as I can tell, he’s no worse off than the people who got shot at Camden Yards.” Matt’s voice was grim. “I don’t know how I’d have ended up, though, with three guys with bayonets coming after me.”

Whatever color was left in Caitlin’s face just drained away. “Rob!” she whispered fiercely. “It has to be Rob!” She looked sick. “One of the first places we stuck trapdoors was in the school’s veeyar system. I never thought—”

“Neither did I,” Matt admitted. “I should have been more careful, especially since we passed through one of the veeyar system sites on our way to see Sean McArdle.”

Still, Caitlin looked as if she blamed herself for the ordeal Sandy and Matt had gone through.

Matt took her arm. “Where’s your car?”

“In the lot out back,” Caitlin said. “I was kinda late getting in today.”

“I’ll walk you out.” Matt’s brain was going into overdrive. The cops would be arriving any minute. It was now or never to convince Cat to cooperate with the police and Net Force.

“This has gotten way out of control,” he told Caitlin as they stepped out of the rear exit of the school. “You know already that you can’t control Rob Falk. Isn’t it time to admit you can’t keep protecting him, either?”

“It’s not like I have a choice!” Cat cried. “Rob is—”

“Rob’ll be mad at you, if you keep flappin’ your mouth about him,” a voice interrupted.

Matt turned from Caitlin in complete shock. He hadn’t expected to find anyone in the school parking lot during classes.

Instead, there were three kids surrounding the doorway. And no way were they Bradford students. They wore ripped jeans and armless shirts over T-shirts, bandannas, and gold jewelry. The one who’d spoken was a big, husky kid with dirty-blond hair — the accent of the mountains was still thick in his voice. To his right was a wiry Asian youth, while the boy on the left seemed to mix several nationalities and races.

Though these street kids all looked wildly different, Matt noticed that each of them was wearing some combination of green and black.

Gang members.

Matt couldn’t believe that they were being confronted by gangbangers at the doors of Bradford Academy. But there was no arguing with the evidence of his own eyes.

And there was no arguing with the gun the blond kid suddenly whipped from behind his baggy shirt. “Let’s have the car keys, honey.”

They were marched across the pavement to Caitlin’s car. It was lucky she hadn’t taken the Copperhead this day. Even so, it was a tight squeeze for the five of them. The blond boy sat in front behind the steering wheel with Cat beside him. Matt was in the backseat, wedged between the other two.

“Tuck your hands under your butt,” the blond boy had ordered as Matt sat down. “I don’t want to see you moving a muscle. ’Cause if you do, Ng here will have to use this.” He handed the pistol to the Asian boy. “And what he’ll do is blow a big ol’ hole through the front seat and right into this pretty li’l girl here.”

The big guy nodded at Caitlin, who sat frozen in the passenger’s seat.

“Wh-where are you taking us?” she asked in a strangled voice.

“Why, we’re takin’ you to see Rob Falk,” the big blond boy said as he twisted the key in the ignition and started the engine. “Seems only fair, with you takin’ such an interest in him an’ all.”