"Suspect spotted on roof of Science Center."
"Roger. Seal off all entrances and exits."
"Did you hear that?" Coggins asked the voice.
"Yes. Go to the Science Center," the VR-helmet voice said.
Coggins searched the signs until he found one that pointed the way. He rode the elevator up two floors and got off.
And stepped right into an ambush.
There were two Secret Service agents crouching before double doors signaling to one another as if about to kick in the doors.
They heard the sound of the elevator door open, started turning-and Bud Coggins got off two shots a fraction of a second apart.
Both agents went down, painting the door with their blood.
"Looks like they had the suspect cornered behind those doors," Bud muttered. There was a sign that said Herbert Lipke Auditorium.
"It's an auditorium. Shit. I have only three shots left and I have to track the suspect in a theater."
"You are allowed to acquire any weapons you find along the way," the helmet voice instructed.
"Good," said Coggins, picking up a fallen Delta Elite automatic. With a weapon in each hand, he eased one of the double doors open.
The theater was dark. The seats appeared empty. Three bays of red-covered seats sloped down toward the stage at a steep angle, backed by a horseshoe-shaped pinewood backstop.
Hunkering low, Bud Coggins began to move down one aisle, sweeping his pistol muzzles from side to side. If anything moved in these deep shadows, he was going to get it before it got him.
The curving ranks of seats fell behind with every step. All were empty. He was holding in his breath so that if he had to fire he could exhale with the shot, the way the pros did it. Coggins had picked up a lot of pointers over his stellar career of playing electronic games.
The voice in his helmet was quiet now. He could hear tense breathing, and knowing it wasn't his own, realized that the control technician was just as excited as he was.
This was a great game. Still couldn't figure out why it was called Ruby. Then again, he never understood why Tetris was called Tetris.
The doors on either side of the stage blew open under the hard shoulders of sunglassed men with guns.
Flashlights blazed and a voice cried, "Freeze! Don't move! Secret Service! Don't move!"
Coggins dropped to one knee, waiting. Had they seen him?
And the agents converged on a man who had been sitting in the front row, waiting in sinister silence.
The man stood up. His back was to the seat rows. He was short and slight and might have been some harmless professor of astronomy waiting to expound on the top quark.
The Secret Service agents treated him like a coiled asp.
"Keep your hands where they are!"
"I'm not resisting!" the man shouted suddenly. "I'm not resisting arrest!"
A human wave, they converged on him, threw him to the floor and cuffed him. He submitted without a struggle.
"You are under arrest for attempting to assassinate the President of the United States," an out-of-breath Secret Service agent said.
"I didn't assassinate anybody," the man said in a nervous voice. "I'm a patsy."
When they hauled him to his feet again, someone hit the lights. Everybody got a good look at the assassin then. Except Bud.
"Holy shit!" an agent exploded. "He's wearing one of our countersniper windbreakers."
"I don't recognize him," another said.
"He's not from the Boston office," said a third.
"Still, this guy looks vaguely familiar," a fourth agent said.
"We'll sort it out later. Let's get him out of here."
They spun the handcuffed prisoner around and marched him roughly up the aisle.
Bud Coggins ducked behind the pine barrier and watched the knot of men approach, their captive stumbling before them, his pasty face sweaty and drained of blood.
"Did I fail?" he whispered into his helmet.
"No. Do you see the man's face?"
"Yes."
"Does he look familiar to you?"
"Yeah. Yeah, he does! But I can't place him."
"Then here is a clue. The name of the game is Ruby. You are Ruby, Bud Coggins. Do you understand now? You are Ruby."
And Bud Coggins understood perfectly. He came out from behind the pinewood barrier in a marksman's crouch and shouted, "Oswald! You killed my President!" He then emptied the contents of both guns into the handcuffed prisoner. The man gave out a groan, twisted on his feet and sprawled on the carpeted aisle.
A storm of return fire tore into Bud Coggins's wildly pounding heart, lungs, spleen, kidneys, liver and most importantly, his '7R helmet. It cracked open like an Easter egg.
As he lay broken and bleeding in the cavernous auditorium, looking at the real world through real eyes, Bud Coggins smiled through his pain.
This Ruby is a great game, he thought. He felt totally, absolutely, scarily immersed in the experience of dying.
And then he did die. Happily. He had been the first human being to play Ruby and he had won first time out.
Chapter 4