Page 120 of Stripping Bare
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Tessa pickedher way through the dead underbrush and the trees with their grasping skeletal branches. Keith hadn’t outfitted her with a headset or mic before he told her to move out and play the game, so she was down two huge advantages. Of course, he hadn’t wanted her to be able to communicate withJonah.
But talking was only one of many ways to communicate. What if she could make Jonah understand what was happening here? She looked around for something sharp, but the best she could find was astick.
She was trying to maneuver it to scratch a T in the trunk of a tree when it felt as if her back had been flayed open. She was hit. Was it real or just thegame?
Her knees succumbed to the pain and she fell face first against thetree.
Don’t let him send you to theground.
That was the worst possible position for personaldefense.
Her back was throbbing, sending searing pulses through her. She touched her lower back, and her fingers came away dry. These sensors did more than burn. They simulated the painful damage of the opponent’s weapon. How had Jonah survivedthem?
Tessa forced herself to move, with an awkward shuffle around the tree trunk, and stumbled behind some stubby evergreenshrubbery.
When she got a good look at her attacker, her heart felt as if it had been run through with an icepick. Her mind knew everything she was seeing had been distorted by Keith’s tech changes to Jonah’s game, but that knowledge did nothing to thaw her frozenmuscles.
The person in front of her didn’t look like Keith, nor did he resembleJonah.
He looked like the teenaged version of Harrison Shaw, except zombified. Ragged khakis and a dark green repp polo with one arm dangling around his elbow. His light red hair partially ripped out, but the smirk… That was the exact leer Harrison had given her that night, not long before he’d slipped her aroofie.
That isn’t really Harrison. You know that. He’s in prison. This is KeithBenery.
She swallowed, trying to separate nightmare fromreality.
The other player—it had to be Keith—turned as if looking for her, giving Tessa a chance to come at him from behind as he’d done to her. But self-preservation kept her from getting too close. Instead, she used her gauntlet as a gun, hoping she remembered the right sequence ofmovements.
Her virtual shot went high and caught him in the shoulder. The force of the bullet made him stagger forward and drop to his knees. Virtual blood bloomed in a dark circle on hisback.
If she finished him here, would that mean the game wasover?
She didn’t get the chance to find out. Her attacker rose to his feet and whirled around, holding his hands as if he was brandishing a heavy sword. He came at her and swung his invisible weapon. It caught her across her abdomen, and Tessa looked down. The VR goggles made it look as though she’d been gutted side to side, her insides sagging out. Unable to help herself, she tried to push them backin.
Intellectually, she knew she was still whole, but the pain was excruciating. The mental toll from distinguishing reality from augmented reality was forcing her body into a state ofshock.
Although she was mortally wounded, her attacker kept coming. A jab in her right arm set off the sensors high on her shoulder, rendering her entire arm useless. It hung loose as if the muscle and ligaments had beensevered.
It went against every speck of her sense of self-preservation, but Tessa released her hold on her stomach and tried not to look at the visual trickery of her intestines looping down herabdomen.
She had to fight back, because with all this gear on, she’d never outrunhim.
In all the years she’d studied self-defense, she’d always pictured herself fighting off a rapist. No other threat. But she’d been trying to protect herself from a past that she couldn’t change. Trying to insulate herself from needing anyone else’s help. Trying to remain removed from other people’straumas.
But this was a threat to her future in a way she’d never imagined. Even in the darkest days of her sexual assault recovery, she’d known she was alive. Known tomorrow—however painful—wouldcome.
She’d understood her personal safety wasn’t guaranteed. But she’d never actually looked death straight in the facebefore.
Today, she was seeing it intechnicolor.
She advanced on her attacker. She could do this, take this risk. After all, she’d already risked her heart by giving it to Jonah, and there were no guarantees he wouldn’t hurther.
Although the fingers on her left hand still felt numb, she was able to fumble with the clasp on her right gauntlet and let it drop to the ground. Then she unfastened the other and allowed it to do thesame.
She shifted her weight onto her back foot, but held her arms away from her sides insurrender.
C’mon, Keith. Get close enough so I can take you down forreal.
