“Mmm, maybe we want more QA on our end before we roll new zones out to players.”
“Quite possibly.” Amber tapped her foot. “Ugh. I’m supposed to sleep but I drank way too much coffee for that.”
“I’ll go home,” Nick suggested.
“You do it, you die.”
“I merely offered.” He stood and served himself a third piece of cake. “Anyway, Jacob, about Ben… His doctors keep calling to ask if our progress metrics are correct. They insist that he shouldn’t be able to do any of the things he did when we took him out last time, much less what he can do in the game.”
“Well, they can argue about it all they want.” The other man took a long sip of coffee. “He’s on video doing all of it, so it’s indisputable.”
“I think they’re more worried that they didn’t think of using this system.” Nick shrugged. “Or, it might be that they don’t like it because they can’t understand why it works. DuBois says that’s it, but it doesn’t make sense to me.”
“As a doctor, I am telling you that a lack of clarity is precisely why they dispute it.” DuBois approached, holding his customary bag of popcorn. “There is any number of vital, useful, effective treatments that have never been utilized because doctors could not find the underlying mechanism and didn’t want to prescribe it.”
“Just when you thought you knew all the things to be angry about,” Nick muttered to the others.
“Well, while you spend time being angry about it, I may have a solution.” The doctor took a seat on one of the lab stools. “I’ve been in contact with some neuroscientists who study proprioception and kinesthesia to ask if avatar control in virtual reality might not be subject to the same constraints as moving a body.”
As per usual, it took the others a moment to parse his words.
“Wait,” Jacob said.
“Because he thinks of himself as someone who can control his body,” Amber said slowly, “he’s more able to bring his virtual self into line with that?”
“Exactly.” DuBois nodded at her. “Much like the fact that Justin and Dotty were able to use magic—or that Taigan can summon objects.” Somewhat testily, he added, “That should not be possible.”
“Now, now, simply because you can’t explain it…” Nick gave him a bland smile and quailed when he glared at him. “It’s a joke, a play on your words earlier.”
Jacob ignored them. “So because his actual physiology doesn’t get in the way quite as much, it means he was able to re-learn the movement pathways more easily in the pod and it continues when he wakes up? Do I have that right?”
DuBois nodded.
“Huh.” Jacob chewed as he thought and helped himself to another piece of cake. He hadn’t bought breakfast on the way there, so the cake was welcome. “Does he know how well he’s doing, statistically speaking?”
Amber shook her head. “I don’t think so. Eliza told him that he’s doing off-the-charts well, but I don’t think he fully absorbed that.”
“He was distracted,” Jacob observed. “What with his crush and all.”
“They’re so cute together.” She grinned.
“In the meantime,” DuBois said, clearly hoping to hasten the conversation along from this topic, “as Jacob has astutely pointed out, self-doubt could be fatal. Ben appears to not know how unusual his abilities are, and I say we continue to challenge him—not so much that he gives up but enough that he doesn’t stop to dwell on how far he’s come.”
“We should be able to arrange that,” she said dryly. “Now that he’s gone all hitman on us. Boy, was that a turnaround.”
“It has been strange to watch,” the doctor conceded.
“Very John Wick-ish,” Nick agreed. “But on the other hand, he is stepping out on his own and that’s good.”
“True.” Amber scrunched her face and leaned on the table. “Okay, maybe another piece of cake…” She reached for the server before her conscience could intrude.
“Personalities can appear to change wildly when push comes to shove,” Jacob said. “And we’ve seen this in other patients. It’s not only him. Justin had much more of a background in video games so the killing didn’t faze him like it did with Ben and Dotty, but even he came out of it wanting to make a difference in the world.”
“Yes,” she said and grimaced, “but if Ben comes out of this as a hitman, we can expect some uncomfortable questions.”
“Maybe he’s merely doing what you suggested and exploring his morality in a world without the same constraints and permanence as this one,” Jacob countered. “Remember that?”
“Oh, right.” Amber hunched her shoulders. “I hope that’s what it is, anyway. I don’t want to embroil us in endless lawsuits when a vigilante hops through various countries assassinating dictators.”
“Don’t worry,” he told her. “The best-case scenario is that, at this rate, he’ll have swung to full-on pacifist again in a few days. If not…we sell this to the military as an assassin training program.”
She punched him in the shoulder and laughed. “Stop it. Okay, I’ll try to sleep. If anything cool happens, get more cake.”
“There’s half left,” Nick protested.
“And you cretins will be around it for eight hours. I don’t think there’ll be any left when I get back.” She smiled at them and wandered off to retrieve her coat.
Jacob smiled after her.
“How’s it going with you two?” Nick asked him.
“It’s going fine.” He glared warningly. The manipulation might have worked out well in some ways, but he wasn’t entirely ready to let his friend off the hook.
Not to mention that both he and Amber were a great deal more cautious in relationships than they had been at eighteen when the world seemed like a giant game with no consequences. They had skirted a few issues for a week now, including who got keys to whose home and whether there would be any PDA in the lab. Neither of them was yet willing to talk about the issues.
It was the kind of minefield of a conversation that would make everything much easier but was utterly terrifying to have for no good reason.
From the look on Nick’s face, he knew some of what was going on. Thankfully, before he could say anything about it, DuBois broke the tension by crinkling the cellophane on his popcorn bag loudly.
“Damn,” he said. “I’m already out.”
“You could mix it up with some cake,” Nick suggested.
“No, thank you.” The doctor drifted away to the breakroom, where his popcorn inhabited almost half the cupboards.
“How that man is not malnourished is beyond me,” Jacob said.
His friend nodded gravely. “I think he’s a robot.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Lord Kerill’s ancestors had been some of the first elven nobles to take up residence in Heffog. When they arrived, the settlement was nothing more than a few huts with human fishermen and an area on a nearby cliff where the caravans could camp while selling goods or buying them.
The Kerills had bought almost all the land. With a combination of cunning and outright lies, they had bought the houses in which the fishermen lived, the piers at which the boats docked, and the camping grounds where the caravans stayed.
Not everything that happened after that was bad. Trade flourished in Heffog, a link between Insea and the countries it could not reach easily by land. The family had connections to any goods people wanted to sell and the more trade flourished, the more new buildings were bought. Land nearby was tilled for crops, silver was discovered in the hills and mined, and a trade sprang up in medicines and ointments made from the bounty of the sea.
Increasingly, elven nobles came to make their home in the city. There was nowhere to fall in Insea and nothing to be lost—but nothing to play for, either. By contrast, Heffog always seemed to be on the verge of something. It never became the center of any trade route, yet it was a hub on many and indispensable. As it became richer, so did the nobles who owned it.
When
the new elven monarchy was established to challenge Insea, many families left outright and sold their land to Kerill or to the merchants who wanted to rise in the world. On the one hand, it was a coup, a chance to snatch up the land that had slipped from the family’s grasp over the years.
On the other, it was the sign of change, and change could doom old money.
Lord Kerill had not been one to sit by and watch his family’s fortunes diminish. Slavery had been rare in Heffog before the elven nobles left and there was a strong prohibition against it in elven culture. Other races must be subjugated via trade and armies, or so the wisdom went. If one could not prove one’s superiority via cunning or military might, one was not superior.
The present incumbent did not particularly care about that. Slavery was profitable and that was enough for him. The dearth of elven nobles meant that fewer disagreed with him on the matter, and he took that as a license to continue.
It was what had caused the rift between him and his son, however. Once close, the two men had diverged sharply on this issue. His son now sought—both legally and less legally—to undo everything his father did, while Kerill—unexpectedly, in Ben’s opinion—did everything in his power to bring his son into the fold again.
That was the twist that made his plan better than he had even imagined. Birra had worked hard to make herself a worthy successor, but everyone knew there was a chance that Kerill would make peace with his son. A notably ruthless woman, she might do anything if she thought her hard-earned inheritance would be lost.
Nemon, who knew a great deal about the family—he decided to not ask how—forged the letter himself. It had the understated, self-important tone of elven nobles yet still held the pathos of a parent begging a child to return. It announced Kerill’s intention to cease his operations and do anything his son wished to restore their relationship.
Birra would be furious. He considered letting her find the letter and murder Kerill herself, but there was too much of a chance that her father would deny it and their hand would be tipped.
He snuck into the house at dawn when the courtyard at the back of the manor was bustling. Farmers on their way into Heffog would stop first at the wealthy houses to give cooks the first choice of vegetables and fruits from the country. Carts with bolts of cloth, herbs, or animals also called there to trade.
In the crush of people and shouting, it was fairly easy for him to gain entry without raising suspicion. As a cart unloaded burlap sacks of grain, he hefted one over his shoulder and strode into the house—after staggering sideways, of course. Not only was his coordination not what it should be, he hadn’t ever carried a huge sack of grain before.
While he was an unknown, no one thought to stop him because he brought the grain into the house. His expression carefully neutral, he followed another porter to a basement and piled his bag of grain next to theirs. He dawdled so the man ascended the stairs ahead of him. Once he was alone, he slipped quickly into the shadows to explore the storerooms.
As he had expected, there were other routes into the house—and, to his relief, many places to hide.
With surprising patience, Ben waited. His supply of food was easily accessible—and better than he would have outside—and he had various locations where he could remain undiscovered. He waited for almost two days while he mapped the quiet times for the house and the voices of those who came and went. To occupy himself, he practiced moving his fingers by sorting beans and counting grains of rice. He drew and redrew the floor plan of the dwelling in the hard-packed dirt of the floor and removed all trace of it each time.
In the deep of the night before the second dawn, he made his move.
He had studied people as they ascended and descended the stairs so now knew which creaked and which did not. Also, he knew where the guards patrolled. He snuck up a set of stairs that ended somewhere along the side of the house and listened at the doorway.
The silence was encouraging.
As quietly as he could, he unlatched the door and began to open it. There was no movement beyond, although there was some light.
Ben looked out into a small antechamber off the kitchen. This room held large bowls, a wooden barrel of flour, and jars of spices, along with a heavy wooden table for kneading bread and making pastries.
Better still, it was uninhabited at this time of night. He slipped into the room and closed the door almost entirely. It made sense to leave an easily accessible escape route.
The vault that held Kerill’s jewels was part of his study. The room contained a false wall that could be activated by pressing one of the carved fish on the wooden panels behind the desk.
What the elf seemed to not know was that there was another entrance to it. A very different mechanism was concealed in the library, a sliding panel behind one of the bookshelves. “Like many old houses,” Nemon had said with a smile, “there were more secrets built into it than have been remembered.”
He now needed to find that library, although he knew where it was, of course—he had mapped the house out in paces while he was in the basement. His target destination was about twenty yards to his left but he had no idea what occupants he might find in the corridors between here and there.
The first step, though, was to get through the kitchen. He paused at the open doorway, listened intently, and counted two different snores plus breathing from others, although he couldn’t tell how many.
There was nothing for it. He would have to look. Caution made him pause to confirm that he wouldn’t cast a shadow when he poked his head out before he stepped slightly around the door.
The kitchens were massive. The light came from banked fires in three hearths. Ropes of garlic and onions hung from the ceiling, along with sausages, haunches of meat, and—in his opinion—far too much fish. One of the cooks dozed in a big chair by the fire, while another slept on a bench nearby. How they didn’t fall off, he wasn’t sure, but they seemed to have considerable practice.
The quiet breathing came from a young woman who stared at the fire. She looked dwarven to his eyes, although she might simply have been a very short human, and she did something that looked very much like amateur magic. It wasn’t the kind Zaara did but rather what he was familiar with from his world—a scattering of leaves and a diagram on the floor.
Hopefully, she would remain engrossed in it while he snuck out. He considered how best to creep across the tiles. There was no path that would take him from his current position to the door without her seeing him…unless he crawled.
Well, there was no point in clinging to his dignity. Ben grimaced, lowered himself to all fours, and crawled painstakingly across the floor. He went under a table that had drips of blood under it, silently bemoaned the fact that there was no such thing as hand sanitizer there, and stopped near the door to listen for guards.
No one seemed to be patrolling the corridor.
He snuck out of the kitchen and into the hallway.
It was quiet, which was a boon. On the first night, there had been a big dinner of some kind and guards had patrolled for an hour or so after everyone left. Tonight, there had been nothing of the sort.
He was surprised to see a light still burning in the study and heard the murmur of voices. Was Kerill still up and working? That gave him a moment’s grudging respect for the man. Unfortunately, it also meant he had to be quieter in the vault.
The door to the library was locked but the mechanism was old. He was able to pick it with only two of the tools and eased inside. A magical lantern kept the room illuminated in a reddish hue of light he assumed was to preserve the books but which made the space look like a horror-movie set.
Ben found the panel and opened it. It wasn’t complicated, but there was a difference between “simple” and “easy.” For one thing, it hadn’t been opened in generations and would almost certainly creak. He lifted it an inch and took another tool from his belt, a long piece of wire with an oil-soaked cloth around it. Working quickly, he wiped the cloth up and around all
the mechanisms he could find and repeated the process every inch until the panel was open and he could release it.
By then, his entire body ached, he had a crick in his neck, and he didn’t care overly much about the damned necklace.
Still, he was in place now. He retrieved his next tool, a small crystal infused with magic and encased in a metal pyramid. When he flipped one of the sides open, a dim light illuminated everything around him.
The first thing he discovered was that elven nobles preserved the jawbones of their ancestors. It was a revelation that made him jerk back, fling the pyramid in the air—he wasn’t quite sure why—and curl into a ball on the ground. He barely managed to uncurl in time to catch the artifact before it clanged noisily and alerted Kerill, and he sat for a moment, glowering at the bones.
Honestly, who hid bones in a vault? Ashes in an urn, he could understand. In a mausoleum or somewhere you wouldn’t stumble on physical skeletons by accident.
Of course, he was robbing the guy.
Ben gave himself a moment to gather his focus before he pushed to his feet and began his search. He looked over his shoulder every few seconds as if to make sure the jawbones hadn’t come down from the wall to attack him.
Involuntarily, he shuddered.
The necklace was where Nemon had said it would be—in a jewelry box that took a great deal of finagling before he could open it silently. Not only that, but it also took several attempts to make each movement work. He was better at fine motor control but he was far from perfect at it.
He had barely slipped the necklace—it was as ugly in person as he’d thought—into a pouch at his waist when a commotion sounded from the back of the house. In a panic, he pulled the door closed behind him and stood frozen in the darkness.
How did they know he was there? No one had seen him. He was sure of that.
Unless there were spells in the room that triggered some kind of alarm. He waited, his eyes closed in terror as booted footsteps drew closer to the library…and passed it. The door to the study slammed open.
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