Excerpt: Third Eye

They shiver in. Two of them. Lion Henry. Carmella. The giant praying mantis behind a steel desk is motioning to a door, and they walk through it, laughing. Pushing each other. In a closet with weapons. Lion Henry is massive, like his steroids take steroids. He picks up a weapon the size of a motorcycle, barely flexing. An amber chamber in the center of the rigid black steel frame glows with sharp lightning. A tempest of fusion waiting for discharge.

Carmella picks something smaller. More dainty. A rifle with a two inch bore. A seventeen inch bayonet strapped to the shaft.

Lion Henry leans out the door. "Humiliation at three frags," he says. The mantis nods and clicks a reply. She enters the game rules into a small hand-held computer.

"Humiliation?" Carmella asks.

"You need something to keep you focused this time." And then, with a smile "Bitch."

"You are so dead, asshole."

Beyond the weapon closet, a rusted steel door with a porthole. Behind it people. Animals. Ghosts. Running, flying. All have guns. Body parts bouncing in bloody chunks. Screams. Laughter.

Lion Henry opens the door. They run in. Gravity lets up a good 20 percent. A skinny guy in a peter pan outfit comes straight at Carmella, flying at her, arms outstretched. Pink mouth screaming. His gun aimed.

"You mother fucker," she says. "Don't even give me a chance…" Bam. Right in the head. A flash of something like pain, but more like pressure. Her body falls to the steel floor, unmovable. She dithers.

She appears across the room, ghosted. She can see Lion Henry rolling across the grates in the center of the room, a wet beam of energy surging from his gun and cutting people in two.

"Solid body in three, two…" the echoing voice above her head. She has to move fast. She runs through a door, finding a half-wall to duck behind.

Where are they? They're on the spaceship. She can see a window, Mars turns precipitously below them. The broken satellite spaceship level. She's played this level before.

Peter Pan runs through the door Carmella just cleared. She fires into his kneecaps. He falls, unable to get up.

"Oh, you," he says, his voice helium and bubbles. He tries to raise his weapon, but Carmella slices both arms clean through at the elbow with two quick swipes of the menacing blade. Then, just to be cruel, she chops his legs off at the thigh.

"Now why'd you have to go and do that?"

He wiggles his stumps in frustration and Carmella laughs.

"Just get it over with so that I can respawn, okay?"

"No. You need to learn some manners," says Carmella.

"Oh Jesus H," he whines. "Would somebody please kill me?" He crawls back out the door. "Shoot me please!" She can hear him pleading as he goes, leaving a trail of lumpy blood.

Carmella moves to a ladder in the corner, straps the gun on her back and hauls her self up through a hole in the deck. She's in the cargo area. No sign of life.

She continues on the ladder, which continues 30 feet up through the open room. One eye scanning behind her. No good to get capped on the ladder — she's a sitting duck.

The ladder ends in a round pressure door. She turns the wheel, assuming they turned the forcefield on for outdoor battle. No rush of oxygen leaving the pressurized cabin. Some gamers were physics freaks. Most just wanted to frag. She cracks the cap and peeks out.

A boot lands heavily inches from her eye. It pivots. Laser fire. Then it lifts, heavy footsteps trace its path away from her. She leaves the door cracked just a bit while she waits for the laser fire to fade into the distance. Then her footing is gone and she's dangling from the steel wheel on the pressure door, it clanking shut as it takes her weight. Lion Henry poking up behind a cargo crate. Laughing in huge guffaws as he razes the ladder with machine gun fire so rapid that it sounds like a whoosh of wind. He already switched weapons? That was fast.

Carmella pulls herself tight to the pressure door, gains leverage on the last rung of the ladder, and shoves the door open, diving for the roof, but Lion Henry had lobbed a grenade, and Carmella is dangling from the opening in the roof with no parts below her torso. Her exposed spine tip wriggling painlessly.

She grabs her gun with one hand, and then lets go of the lip. Firing as she falls, nailing Lion Henry in the forehead and cheek. He rolls backward, spraying bullets that buzz her ears as her legless torso hits the steel plated floor and everything goes dark.

"Solid body in three, two, one…"

And she's outside the ship. Finally, a break. Where she wanted to be. She'll have to be careful now. Two frags down, one to go. And Lion Henry with only one down.

Above her, Mars turns, red swirls of angry weather on its surface. Gravity is low, but tight enough that she's not going to go flying off the hull. The lanky, long top of the craft, stretching, the sides coming together in the distance towards a vanishing point, then capped by a round head. That's her destination. The bridge.

She runs, her soles magnetizing with her will, keeping her tight to the deck. An elevator shaft, acting like a spring board, pops a sixteen point buck with rocket launchers under each ear thirty feet or so straight up. Carmella fires without a second thought, tracers arcing until they find the target, sending the brown body sailing into the void with a horrifying shriek and a red rent in his side.

Explosions sound around her, behind her. She focuses on foot after foot, stretching her muscles. They ache and respond, elastically propelling her with great speed. A fist sized rocket buzzes her left ear. By the time she turns, whomever launched it is floating in four different directions, torn asunder.

She's at the hatch to the bridge. She cracks it, throws three grenades in, and then stands on the hatch. After all three sound — along with a few screams — she lowers herself into room.

It's like the bridge of an aircraft carrier. Big windows overlooking the rotating martian facade. To the side, the environmental control panel. She jumps over. Turns off the forcefield for outside battle. An alarm sounds, red-flashing lights. This keeps things good and chaotic.

She steps over the body of a huge dude, and takes his rocket launcher, dropping her gun. She turns on her communicator, and directs a message to Lion Henry.

"I'm on the bridge, you asshole. Come and get me."

"How many you down?"

"Two, you?"

"Two. So, this is the showdown, eh?"

"I am not going to Humiliation Corner. Not on your life."

And then she's yanked backward. Being pulled. A voice right in her ear.

"No way I'm going either." Lion Henry. He's dragging her by her coveralls. She can't spin and get him — the rocket launcher no good at this close range.

He pulls her into a supply closet. The door closes behind them, and he knocks the weapon from her hand. Spins her like a rag doll, and cups her face he kisses her. Carmella pushes herself into him. Foosteps, gunfire, explosions, all muted by the closet door. He positions her on some cart. The coveralls unzipped and shed. It's quick — anybody could open the door at any moment. Lion Henry is desperate and rough, throwing his weight behind his movements. Carmella wraps her hands around his massive arms, onto his shoulders and pulls him into her. It's over in a few minutes.

"Should we make a truce? No shooting each other on the bridge?" Lion Henry asks as they're pulling their clothes back on.

"Deal," she says. He peeks out the door, and then motions that all is clear.

He runs across the bridge away from her.

"Lion Henry!" she cries. He stops and turns. "This doesn't count as shooting you," she says, and lets a rocket fly towards the huge glass windows.

He shakes his head, smiling at her wickedness. The window explodes. Carmella wraps her arm around a standpipe. Lion Henry, along with any other debris is sucked out the window, hurtling towards the Mars. Where, in a stunning display of satisfying physics, Carmella watches his tiny body burn up in entry.

Her legs pulled towards the broken window. Like a flag in the wind.

She straps the launcher over her back, and works at pulling herself towards the control panel to turn back on the outside forcefield. Before she gets there, something in the corner of her eye. Something green. Peter Pan. Standing in an open doorway, holding on to each side with a hand. Hatred in his eyes. Under his foot, holding it from flying out the window, Carmella's rifle with the bayonet.

Carmella sees his plan, and works on pulling herself to the panel.

Peter Pan reaches down with one hand, securing the rifle. His body kicks up, the vacuum pulling him horizontal. He holds on, positioning himself just right.

Carmella pulls herself in, trying to wrap her arm around the pipe for better achor.

Peter Pan lets go, and he's screaming and flying towards her. He has one try, and he takes it. He moves the gun in an arc, and the blade falls cleanly on Carmella's forearm, slicing it easily.

They tumble towards the window, his laughter in her ear. Then they're outside, and in the vacuum Carmella launches a rocket right up his ass before the atmosphere does its worse to her.

And then she's on a street corner. Rafters, like a high-school football game, surround her. They're packed with laughing people. In a wave of mortification, she realizes that they're laughing at her. Crippling humiliation moves from her head down her entire body like a shiver. Lion Henry is next to her, and he looks her in the eye, tears streaming from his face. His huge body hunched, attempting to protect his heart from the extreme emotions its feeling.

"I fucking hate you," she says to him, between sobs. She knows, somewhere in her brain, that this is funny, but she feels like she'll never recover. She'll never own anything ever again, but the extent of her own shame.

Humiliation corner. No worse punishment in Lucid. All of your emotions turned off, except for abject humiliation, which is cranked up 300%. Nothing to do but live through it. Carmella turns back to the stands, where one man seems strange. He's not laughing. He's watching her. It feels like everybody is watching her, but she sees their eyes moving to other humiliation subjects. He only watches her. Long stringy hair, and sallow eyes. Why would anybody make themselves so ugly when they could look anyway they want here?

His gaze sears. It takes her already overwhelming emotion and focuses it into a tightening of her chest. It turns it into pain.

No! There can't be pain here. Carmella's pain controls are dialed way down. She hates pain. Her face red and flush. Her breathing — simulated breathing, really — chopped. She should only be feeling shame. There it is, though, cutting through the degradation like her bayonet on Peter Pan's arm, is pain.

An expanding worm in her heart, exploding it. She gasps for breath. The humiliation drops away as the pressure pounds. The worm becomes a knife edge. An awl into her ribs. A blade cutting her esophagus. She falls to her knees, and then catches her self with one arm before she falls on her face. She looks up at the stringy haired man, and in the corner of his mouth a smile as her arm gives way.

Her eyes open at home in the TV room where the TV is missing. Holy fuck, Charmichael thinks. I've got to call 911.

And then back into Lucid. Into Carmella. Into the greasy-haired man's gaze. The white pain erasing anything else she's ever felt.

The greasy man stands, making sure he sees the whole show. Carmella reaches and grabs Lion Henry's ankle. That man is killing me, she thinks. She transmits. But there is no clatch of recognition for the thought going through. Just a noise — a buzzing, and she knows its the greasy haired man blocking her transmission somehow. Blocking her from talking to Lion Henry.

Lion Henry, she thinks. Lion Henry will save me. He has to.

The buzzing is so loud in her ears, like hornets. She collapses. Everything goes white.

The TV room. Cheek on the brown carpet. Stained carpet. Dust mites. Breathing shallow. Oh god, he thinks. Oh god oh god. I have to call…