by Lucas Flint
Blizzard looked at me as if I was an idiot. “Can we talk first before we go running away on another adventure? Just you and me?”
Uh oh. I could tell she was angry, but I also didn’t dare tell her we couldn’t, so I said, “Sure, Blizz. Whatever you want to talk about.”
“Okay,” said Blizzard. She gestured at the door. “Let’s stand outside the conference room for some privacy.” She looked at Black Blur, Brains, and Vanish. “Don’t worry. We won’t be long.”
Blizzard stood up, grabbed my wrist, and practically dragged me out of my seat. As we walked to the door, I looked back over my shoulder at the others with a pleading expression on my face, but Black Blur just smirked, while Brains shrugged his shoulders and Vanish looked like she was praying for my life. I guess even they didn’t want to get in the way of an annoyed Blizzard, though I couldn’t blame them given how powerful she was.
CHAPTER FOUR
Outside the conference room, Blizzard let go of my wrist and turned around to face me. Although I was a few inches taller than her, her blazing blue eyes and the way she leaned toward me made me feel smaller than I was. It helped that I knew just how powerful her abilities were. She wasn’t as physically strong as me, but her ice powers were a credible threat in their own right.
“So, uh, what did you want to talk about, Blizz?” I said, smiling as best as I could.
“Our date,” said Blizzard. “The one that got ruined by Mixer showing up and forcing us to be superheroes.”
I titled my head to the side in confusion. “Why’s that an issue? Sure, it sucks that we had to cut it short, but we’re superheroes. Trouble seems to follow us like a stray dog.”
“I’m not upset about that,” said Blizzard. “I am upset that you’re so eager and willing to run off on another adventure before we’ve even had time to reschedule our date. I was hoping that after we stopped Mixer, you and I could resume our date or at least reschedule it for another time. But it seems to me like you’d rather run off and play games than do that.”
“Play games?” I repeated. I tried not to sound angry, but I didn’t do a very good job at it. “Black Blur didn’t invite me over to his house to play video games. He needs my help finding Mecha Knight. Don’t you want to find him, too?”
“Sure I do,” said Blizzard. She clasped her hands behind her back and stood up straight, although that didn’t make her look any less intimidating. “He’s the supervisor of the Young Neos and a mentor to me as much as he is to you. But we can’t keep doing this.”
“Keep doing what?”
Blizzard sighed heavily. “Letting our obligations get in the way of our relationships. It’s bad enough you were sent out here away from me, but I figured we could make long distance work with phones and stuff. But even when we get together, it seems like we’re always forced to put other things first.”
I rubbed my arm, beginning to understand where Blizzard was coming from now. “Yeah, I think I see what you mean. It’s really easy for us to get distracted. Even when the world isn’t at stake, I do a lot of things every day that take up a lot of my time.”
“I know,” said Blizzard. “Me, too. Still, if we’re going to do this—if we’re going to be together—then we need to be an actual couple. Actual couples do things together every now and then, you know? They get days off from their jobs to go on dates together and spend time with each other. And I feel like we really haven’t been as good about that as we should.”
I bit my lower lip. The amount of truth in Blizzard’s words was undeniable. It reflected a lot of my own thoughts that I’d been dwelling on for a while. If I didn’t know any better, I would say Blizzard was a telepath in addition to an ice person. “You’re right. We really need to finish that date. Once I get back from the Vaultwork—”
“Once you get back from the Vaultwork?” Blizzard interrupted. “Weren’t you just listening to what I said? I said I wanted us to finish our date and have some time together. Not just run off on yet another adventure. What if you don’t come back? Or even if you do, what if you have to do something else right away? Will we have to put it off yet again?”
“Blizz—”
“And I can’t stay here forever,” said Blizzard. She rubbed her forehead. “Stinger gave us the week off for Christmas and New Year’s. I already told my parents and my sister I would be heading out to Arizona to spend Christmas with them. My flight to Arizona is tomorrow and it’s too late to reschedule it, not unless I want to wait another day out here, which would ruin my plans entirely.”
“Oh,” I said. “Yeah, I forgot about that. And I’ve also got plans to visit my mom and brother in Texas sometime next week, too.”
“See? You forgot about it,” said Blizzard. She tossed her hands up into the air. “How the heck can you forget that? We talked about it before I got here, had everything planned out, but I guess in the rush of things, you just forgot about it.”
I could feel my temper rising, but I still didn’t want to shout at Blizzard, so I said in a calm voice, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to. You know how forgetful I can be sometimes. I’m just so busy and—”
“So busy you can’t have a date with me?” said Blizzard. She put her hands on her hips. “In that case, why am I even here? I could be in Arizona already hanging out with my family.”
I grabbed Blizzard’s hand, making her look at me in surprise. “You’re here because I want you to be here. We are going to finish that date. I won’t leave you hanging, not any longer than I have to. I just need to do this one thing with Black Blur first. I won’t even be gone all night. I’ll go to the Vaultwork, find Mecha Knight, and return. Between Black Blur’s speed and my Teleportation Buckle, we should be back before you know it.”
Blizzard, however, pulled her hand out of my grip and stepped back. She folded her arms across her chest and did not meet my eyes. “Well, if that’s what you’ve decided to do, I can’t stop you. If you can get back before the night’s over, then we can resume our date. But if not …”
Blizzard’s sentence trailed off, but I understood her point. I might not be a telepath, either, but I knew Blizzard well enough by now to know what she was thinking.
“Maybe we should go back into the conference room now,” I said, breaking the awkward silence that had settled between us. “Black Blur isn’t a very patient guy.”
“Yeah, I suppose we should,” said Blizzard, her tone flat.
I opened the door and let Blizzard go in first. I hesitated for a second before entering myself, wondering if I was going to regret putting off the date yet again. I hoped not.
CHAPTER FIVE
Less than ten minutes later, Black Blur and I appeared somewhere in the beautiful Colorado mountains. We stood in a forest, which was blanketed in thick snow, visible under the stars of the clear night sky. It was far more beautiful than Showdown, even more so than Showdown’s Christmas decorations, because the snow here wasn’t melting nearly as quickly as the snow in the city. I heard the soft hooting of an owl somewhere in the trees above us, but other than that, we seemed to be alone out here.
“Is this it?” said Black Blur, taking a step forward, his eyes scanning the snow and trees around us. “That was quick.”
“That was my Dad’s Teleportation Buckle,” I replied, patting my Buckle. “You seem to handle teleportation pretty well.”
“I do it all the time,” said Black Blur with a snort. “I’ve been teleporting for years, much longer than you’ve been alive. Plus, the effects of teleportation and the effects of super speed on the body are extremely similar, so my body is already well-prepared even for lengthy teleportation trips like this one.”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at Black Blur’s boasting, though I found myself wondering if I should have stayed back in Showdown and finished my date with Blizzard instead. It would certainly be more pleasant than listening to Black Blur’s condescending words. “Right. Well, I didn’t teleport us outside the entrance to Vault F exactly. It should be clo
se by, though, so we can walk to it. Follow me.”
I walked past Black Blur and soon heard the crunch of snow behind me, which indicated that Black Blur had decided to follow me. Not that he had any real choice in the matter. It wasn’t like he knew where the Vault was, after all. Only Valerie had a complete list of the locations of the various Vaults and I had specifically told her not to share it with anyone but me. A lot of Dad’s old tech was still stored in those Vaults and I didn’t want them falling into the wrong hands.
As we walked, I thought about my conversation with Blizzard outside the conference room. It pained me to realize just how right she was about, well, everything. I still loved Blizzard and she still loved me, but it seemed like everything was determined to keep us apart. Even then, I realized I was thinking in a passive way. I needed to be more aggressive in maintaining our relationship. Truthfully, I shouldn’t have agreed to go with Black Blur at all, or at least asked him to wait, but the speedster sure didn’t seem to know the definition of patience. Rather appropriate, given his powers, but very inconvenient for me.
“You seem upset,” said Black Blur. He was walking beside me now, keeping up with me well despite the snow.
“Huh?” I said, glancing at Black Blur. “Oh, I am. Sort of. Just thinking.”
“About your girlfriend?” said Black Blur, ducking underneath a low-hanging tree branch. “I take it she wasn’t thrilled about you having to go with me to save Mecha Knight?”
I started. “How did you know that?”
Black Blur glanced at me. “I had a girlfriend very similar to her when I was your age. My old job as an EMT meant we didn’t always get to spend as much time together as we’d like, but we made it work and got married in the end.”
“Oh,” I said, smiling. “I didn’t know you had a wife.”
Black Blur chuckled. “Emphasis on had a wife, Bolt. We got divorced five years ago this Christmas.”
“Oh,” I said again, this time not smiling. “I’m … sorry to hear that.”
One of Black Blur’s hands fell on my shoulder. “Don’t. She was the worst woman I ever knew. I used to say that marrying her was the happiest day of my life, but really, signing the divorce papers and not having to see her ever again was the real happiest day of my life.”
I could not help but feel a little uncomfortable when Black Blur said that. He seemed a little too happy about divorcing his wife, to be honest, regardless of his reasons for doing so.
“So consider this advice from a man who has been there and seen it all,” said Black Blur. He looked down at me, a rather chilling smile on his face. “Have as much fun with women as you want, but don’t trust them or marry them. Especially when you’re young. Worst mistake of my life.”
I didn’t quite know what to say to that. I had never been married, after all, and his advice was certainly different from what Brains and Vanish had told me about marriage.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to answer, because Black Blur looked ahead and said, “Is that the entrance to the Vault?”
I looked ahead and saw a thick metal door set in a small hill ahead of us. I was surprised that Black Blur had seen it, given how dark it was and how well-hidden the door was, nestled among several thick pine trees that were piled with snow.
“Yeah, that’s it,” I said as we approached it. “Let me open it for you.”
I walked up to the door and inspected it briefly to make sure no one had opened it since the last time I was here. Maybe that was unnecessary—no one else knew about the Vaults other than me, after all—but after everything I’d been through, I liked being safe rather than sorry. I didn’t see any signs of forced open, but given all of the freshly fallen snow, any tracks left by another human being would have been lost a long time ago.
With a grunt, I forced the door open wide enough for both of us to enter. As usual, I led the way, holding up my hand and channeling red electricity through it to give us some light by which to see. It was as cold and dark in here as ever, and this time the security robots did not attack us, although that may have been because I destroyed them all the last time I was here. Even so, I had this odd feeling that we were being watched, although there was no place for anyone to hide.
We walked down the stairs that led deeper and deeper into the earth. Neither of us talked, but I could tell that Black Blur was very interested in the Vault. He kept looking at the walls around us and I could tell that his mind was analyzing the place. Perhaps he was just keeping an eye out for ambushes, but I had a feeling he was really more interested in figuring out how to use this place to his advantage than anything. I had no intention, however, of letting even the NHA have access to any of the Vaults, because I firmly believed that their contents needed to remain locked away from the world so villains and other bad guys couldn’t get their hands on them.
When we reached the door at the bottom of the staircase, I opened it and stepped inside, with Black Blur following closely behind.
The Vault itself was a big, wide-open concrete room, with fluorescent light bulbs hanging from the ceiling providing enough illumination by which to see. The room was almost entirely bare of decoration and furniture except for a single old-fashioned computer terminal and three VR chairs complete with headsets sitting in the center of the chamber. Other than that, this Vault was the oldest as well as the emptiest Vault, but that didn’t mean it was any less important than the rest.
“Is this it?” said Black Blur. He rushed over to the chairs and began inspecting them, a disapproving look on his face. “So simple, but also very silly. I didn’t take Genius for a gamer.”
“He wasn’t,” I said as I walked over to the computer terminal. “And please don’t touch any of them. If you break anything, we won’t be able to replace it.”
Black Blur took his hand off of one of the VR headsets and glared at me, but I ignored him in order to focus on the computer terminal. I intended to speak to the AI assistant for this Vault named Olga, who was also the first and oldest AI assistant Dad had created. Unlike the others, she couldn’t speak vocally and had to be communicated with via text, kind of like a chat room or email. I’d let Olga know we were here and see if she knew where Mecha Knight was as well.
I typed this message on the keyboard: HI, OLGA. THIS IS BOLT. I AM GOING TO ENTER THE VAULTWORK TO SEARCH FOR MECHA KNIGHT, WHO I HAVE REASON TO BELIEVE HAS GONE MISSING. HOW ARE YOU?
I waited for her response. Usually, Olga responded pretty quickly to my messages, but this time it felt like forever before a reply appeared on the screen. It appeared slowly, one letter at a time, but even before the message finished appearing, my jaw dropped when I read it:
BOLT. GO AWAY. THE VAULTWORK HAS BEEN INVADED. AND MECHA KNIGHT IS NO LONGER MECHA KNIGHT.
CHAPTER SIX
“Mecha Knight is no longer Mecha Knight?” said Black Blur. He was standing by my shoulder, staring at the message on the screen, although I hadn’t heard him walk over to me. “What does that mean?”
Snapping out of my reverie, I said, “I don’t know. Let me ask.”
I typed out another message: OLGA, WHAT DO YOU MEAN? WHAT DO YOU MEAN THAT MECHA KNIGHT IS NOT MECHA KNIGHT? ARE YOU OKAY? HELLO?
I waited for a response, but this time the response I got wasn’t from Olga at all. It read: ERROR. MESSAGE UNABLE TO DELIVER. ADDRESSEE UNKNOWN.
“And what does that mean?” asked Black Blur in a slightly sarcastic voice.
“It means Olga is in trouble,” I said. I walked over to the nearest VR chair and sat down. “And I am going to help her.”
I grabbed the VR headset, but before I could pull it over my head, Black Blur caught it. I looked up and saw Black Blur glaring down at me.
“Hold on, there,” said Black Blur. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Into the Vaultwork,” I replied. “To find Mecha Knight and make sure Olga is okay.”
Black Blur frowned and looked at the headset. “So this will make you feel like you’re in some kind of
virtual reality game?”
I sighed, but said, in a patient voice, “Yeah. I’ll be immersed in a virtual world that is almost identical to the real world in every way. While I’m in the Vaultwork, I’ll be entirely unconscious and unable to defend myself in the real world.”
“So you need me to stay out here and keep your body safe while you go in there?” said Black Blur.
I nodded. “Yeah. Doubt anyone is going to attack me, seeing as we’re the only two people here, but I think that would be for the best nonetheless.”
“Fine,” said Black Blur. He let go of my headset and stepped backward. “I don’t like video games, anyway, especially these new-fangled ones kids these days are always playing. But don’t take forever. This Vault is ice-cold and I can’t stand cold weather even in my costume.”
“Don’t worry, Blur,” I said. “I’ll be back so quickly that I’ll make even you look slow.”
With that, I brought my headset down on my head. My vision was obscured by the inner darkness of the VR headset, which still smelled like a new car, although less so than the first time I put it on. As soon as I strapped it securely to my head, this message appeared in my vision:
PLAYER IN PLACE AND HEADSET ATTACHED. PREPARING VAULTWORK ONLINE HYPER REALISTIC 3D SIMULATOR NOW.
A splitting headache thundered through my skull. I’d been expecting it from the last time I played, but it still hurt like hell and would have made me rip the headset off entirely if I could move, which I couldn’t anymore, which was a sign that the immersion process was active.
Then the pain and darkness faded away and I found myself in a new world.
Well, it wasn’t entirely new, of course. It was Keoria, the setting for the Vaultwork Online game. Even more specifically, it was the starting meadow for players just beginning the game, which was odd because I definitely wasn’t a newbie. I found myself standing in a quiet forest meadow, surrounded on all sides by tall, green trees, with the sun shining overhead and a soft breeze sending bird fluttering through the air. It felt like spring, which was a big contrast to the winter in the real world, although a welcome one. I knew this was all VR, but VO was so realistic that I just stood there in the sun for a moment, allowing myself to soak in the rays on my skin and warm up a bit before I did anything.