by G. D. Penman
The shaking stopped, but Speckles was still looking at him with fear etched on his features. “Nothing before Strata. Me born in the …”
Martin cut him off before he could launch into his spiel. That could help too. Stopping confused people from falling into their cycle of confusion. He remembered hating it when people did it to him, but the technique worked. There was no denying it. “What do you remember before Strata, Speckles? What do you remember about life before you came here?”
“No life before Strata.” Speckles was rapidly shaking his head from side to side. “We came from the Heart. From the gods below.”
Ever so gently, Martin tried to get him to open up. “The sun was before Strata.”
“No. No.” Speckles clapped his hands to the sides of his head, where ears would have been on a human. Like he was trying to block Martin’s words out. “No hurt.”
“What? I’m not going to…”
It came out as a guttural croak. Deep enough to reverberate out of their alley and through the resurrection square. “No!”
Martin backed right off. He had never been afraid of Speckles, not since their first encounter, but if the Anurvan went on bellowing he was going to bring the whole settlement down on them, and there was no way that Martin could get both of them out alive.
“Okay. I’m sorry. Forget I asked.”
“Me am forgetting. Me… forget.” Speckles had passed through pain and panic to despondency now. He sank down onto his haunches. Staring past Martin into the empty space beyond. “So much me forget.”
The frog was having an existential crisis. Good job, Martin. With no better ideas, Martin tried to press on past it. “Tomorrow morning. You’ll be here. You’ll stay safe.”
“Yes, friend. Me stay here. Me… always here.”
With that ominous statement, Martin helped Speckles back into the oversized cloak that hid him from sight and logged out before he could do any more damage.
Coming back to this was getting harder every time. To the dark and dismal aromas of a trash can he should have emptied days ago. Most of the time it didn’t matter, he was never here, but in the moments when he came back to his human body Martin couldn’t shake off the feeling that something had gone seriously wrong. Not just the immediate dysphoria of having two eyes, no tail and a body that seemed much too big, but the more general sense that his life shouldn’t look like this.
He shouldn’t be like this. He shouldn’t live for a game. He shouldn’t live in a slum. The world wasn’t meant to be this way. He was a clever, diligent worker, and he lived in squalor. It made no sense.
He spent all of his time in Strata thinking about the things there that didn’t add up. The graphics quality that was too high for the feeble processors of his computer, the mysteries within mysteries within one great big mystery. Yet at least there was some hope in there. He might make sense of it. He might make it through to the end. He might win. There was no winning out here – or there was no way for someone like him to win, anyway. Somebody that hadn’t been born with the right class and stats out of the gate.
His phone was buzzing on the bedside table. A steady persistent thrum. Nobody used their phone as a phone anymore. Not even Lindsay in her most harassing mood would ever actually call him. Beyond that, he didn’t even know who had his phone number. He didn’t even know his phone number. Of all the numbers he’d memorized, that one had never seemed important enough. It was a withheld number, but after it had finished ringing off he saw that it wasn’t the first time the call had come in that day. Seventy-three missed calls stared up at him.
After all day and night in the game, his eyes felt sticky with dehydration. He bypassed the bottled water arranged by his bedside and went straight to the tap. Sure, there might have been lead in the supply, but he could drop a few IQ points and still top out the curve.
When he could feel the weight of the water sloshing around in his stomach, he cut off the tap and went back to contemplate his phone. Who could have been calling him? There was no question of ringing back, that would introduce too many potential variables. He had to assume that it was related to his little fieldtrip, there had been an upper limit to how far he could remove his own details from those of the personas he’d used. He wasn’t a professional spy or hacker, or wealthy enough to employ either.
The idea that the innocent had nothing to fear from having their data tracked by their government didn’t really hold up when anyone could get a hold on that data.
He tried very hard to slow down his breathing. Panicking wouldn’t help him. Nothing would help him. The Masters had corporate money at their back, while he was a nobody. They could carve him into pieces in broad daylight while loudly announcing their names and the police wouldn’t even look directly at the bloody mark he left behind. If there had ever been a time when they weren’t above the law, it was long past now.
Deep breaths did little to steady him. His brain was the enemy now, making all the usual leaps of logic. Plunging forward into possible scenarios. None of them ending well for him. It wasn’t often that Martin wished his imagination was worse than it was, but when it came to situations like this he could have done with being more like Lindsay. Living in the moment, not the shadow of futures that might never come to pass.
He sat down heavily on the bed, his phone in his hand, and thought. Methodically backtracking from all the worst-case scenarios to this moment. Speculating out from there. Why were they calling him?
If they were calling him instead of kicking his door in, that meant they weren’t sure it was him, or they hadn’t been able to track his location. If he answered the phone they’d be able to get his location. If he spoke to them, there was a non-zero possibility he would fumble the interaction and confirm whatever suspicions they had about him. The best solution at present was to go on ignoring the calls. If he searched their number, the algorithm would detect it and give him away. If he called them back, he was handing himself over on a silver platter. So long as they kept on calling him, it meant they didn’t have him yet.
Eventually, his lack of answer would be seen as suspicious. In a world of prevalent VR, ignoring calls for blocks of eight hours or more wasn’t ridiculous. He was past that window now but there would be some wiggle room.
The phone began to buzz in his hand and he dropped it to the floor like it was a live scorpion. It vibrated across the bare cardboard-wood sheets of his floor, as if it was trying to creep closer to him. He lifted his feet up onto the bed.
His breathing. Martin had forgotten all about it. Now he placed his hands over his ears, ignoring the feeling that they were too small and in the wrong place, and concentrated exclusively on drawing in and expelling air. To the beat of his internal metronome. In. Out. In. Out.
The only way he survived this was to go against all of his instincts and become visible. Too visible for them to make him disappear. He had to take the story to some rival corporation’s news outlet and let them all know. Except he had no evidence and no idea which corporation even owned Strata, so he might just be handing himself over to the people hunting him.
It wouldn’t work, of course, even if he managed to produce evidence. The story was too wild and unbelievable. Too like the tales of fantasy that the Masters had already spun. He’d be a laughing stock, and when that attention faded away he’d be dead.
There was only one way out of this, and it was the same way he’d always had. He had to beat Strata. With the game beaten, there would be no reason for the deranged developers to come after him. With the attention that beating the game granted him, he’d be protected from any repercussions. There was no way they could come after him if he beat Strata — he’d be world famous. There was no bigger business than VRMMOs, and there was no bigger VRMMO at this moment than Strata. The whole world would know his name.
This changed nothing. He needed to win. He had always needed to win. He had been treating this whole game like it was life and death since the moment he arrived, why would this
change a thing?
He picked up his phone when it stopped ringing, and carefully keyed a message to Jericho. They would be starting early. An hour and a half before the others. Plenty of time to use the bypass that Martin had found, to secure the deep key and meet up with the girls before they even logged in.
Jericho responded with a terse “OK.”
Normally, this would have been when Martin started browsing the internet on his phone while digging around in the snack pile beside the bed, but tonight he wrapped the phone up in a pair of socks and slid it under the bed so he wouldn’t have to hear it ringing and sat himself down by the computer and his old VR headset – the one that shocked him if he turned his head too quick – to do some browsing that way instead.
Taking care to stay away from anything that had the potential to be incriminating, he did his usual browse through the Strata Online websites and forums searching for any auctions of new items that he hadn’t encountered yet, and listing the Ophidian Sentinel’s Spear to see if he could make a little extra cash.
He didn’t search for Klimpt, though it pained him not to. There must have been some story in the news by now. Something. Even if it had only been planted there as a snare to draw him in and trick him into giving away his position.
There was still once line of investigation that he could risk, however. One that the Masters wouldn’t connect directly with him. Jessie Beldrum.
Jessie had made it into the news by dying while playing Strata. One of the usual cases of gaming addiction that were reported every year. It was considered something of a black mark against a VRMMO if at least one or two addictive personalities didn’t die while playing it. She’d managed to bypass her NIH’s restrictions and played nonstop until her body, back in the real world, gave out.
When Martin first found the story he’d assumed that the Masters’ control over the newsfeeds had been insufficient. Now he suspected that their media control was as watertight as ever, and this story was merely their version of the old poop-socking tales of bygone MMO ages. Released deliberately to show how wonderful their game was. Good enough to die for.
From what Klimpt had told Martin, she could not have been the first to die like this, nor would she be the last. She just happened to be related to a seated Senator, from a wealthy family and pretty enough that the press wanted to plaster her photo about. She was an ideal poster child. Most of the previous games had only managed to kill people with little else going on in their lives. Jessie had everything going for her, and she still chose the game over life.
That wasn’t what interested Martin about her death. He had met her. Not in real life, but in the game, travelling with her own guild through the depths of Strata. She had been quite mad by that point, obsessed with the reality of Strata in the same way that Klimpt and the Masters seemed to be, even if she didn’t have all the background information they had used to build a whole mythology out of it.
Even that personal connection wasn’t sufficient to hold Martin’s attention. The dates didn’t line up. Her body had been discovered a day or so after he had encountered her in the game, but she had been dead for anywhere between one and two weeks according to the reports. He was dubious about the reporting, of course. Doubly so since Klimpt made his insinuations about the news media.
The medical reports were sealed, but there were things that Martin could determine from the news reports. Prurient details they’d added to titillate, but that added up to something he could understand. Descriptions of her skin clinging to musculature like she’d been mummified. Dehydration, just like he’d been suffering moments before, coupled with the NIH working to keep the muscles toned. Pushing the body toward fitness as it lay still, eating away at the fat.
Martin had no idea how long the NIH could keep somebody alive like that. Deliberately and methodically keeping their heart pumping, even when the natural strength of the body gave out. He was willing to bet that Jessie was still alive when they pulled the headset off her. He was willing to bet that was what killed her. He didn’t need to believe in ghosts in a machine, or any other kind of afterlife, when there was science to fall back on.
The NIH was a medical device, meant to keep people alive in a comatose state. It had done that, until somebody who knew nothing about anything yanked it off her head. His own timeline, accounting for the NIH carefully managing the body’s upkeep while Jessie was otherwise occupied, easily allowed for her to have died after he met her. There was no need to consider the supernatural.
A bowl of ramen and a quick scrub in the sink and Martin was ready to sleep. The regular thrum of the phone beneath his bed was easy to ignore after a while. Their calls were automated, coming every seven minutes. The vibrate function lasted for twenty seconds before the call cut out. It was as regular as a heartbeat. A comforting rhythm that drew him down into the darkness when he stopped thinking about what it meant, and just accepted it for what it was.
Thirteen
Fiend or Foe
When Jericho logged into the game, Martin was waiting for him with Speckles’ cloak in hand. Even as the fearsome aura of the Heretic took on its dull red glow, Martin smothered it. The Whitefeather Cloak was by no means large enough to hide the whole of Jericho’s impressive bulk, but it was sufficient to mask the truth of his identity from the NPCs. Their heads turned to follow Martin as he ran through the streets with his shrouded and loudly complaining companion, but weapons were not drawn. They made it through to the cavern’s edge without being challenged, or having to accrue any more Sin fighting through the townsfolk.
Once he was sure they were out of sight, Martin whipped the cloak away again.
“If you ever do this again, I will break you, little rat,” Jericho rumbled.
Martin was already moving off into the tunnels, safe in the knowledge that there were no monsters here. The Felidavans had seen to that. “It worked, didn’t it?”
“I do not care if it worked.” Jericho shoved Martin off balance, and he had to catch himself on the wall. “You do not put a bag over my head.”
Martin’s temper was frayed enough for him to snap back. “You get enough of that at home with Julia?”
The Wulvan towered over Martin. Growling, “You do not speak her name.”
Martin then did the worst possible thing. He turned his back on Jericho and walked away. “That will make telling her what to do awkward.”
Like all dogs, when something ran, Jericho chased. Martin stalked along the corridor with Jericho dogging his footsteps. His growl growing to a roar. “Then you do not tell her what to do. I do not know why we take orders from the likes of you. I do not know why you are tolerated.”
Martin stopped abruptly, and before Jericho could lay hands on him he gently tapped him on his loincloth. Martin had drawn his sword as they walked and held it out behind him now. The blunt tip was the only reason Jericho had not impaled himself. “Because I’m better than you at this.”
“Better than me? Better than me?” Jericho snarled. “I am three times the man you are. You want to fight? You are tiny. I would make you into minced meat.”
Martin carefully withdrew his blade and sheathed it. Never once showing fear or weakness. Even a waver might have set the wild beast off, and they had no time for it. “With all due respect, I don’t believe that you would. As a Martyr, I’d struggle to get through your damage reduction and self-healing, but I worked out how to circumvent the Heretic’s Vengeance mechanic back when we were still fighting Celaphox. Meanwhile, you’d be slapping away with a whip and no damage stored up to pass along to me, hoping to overcome my self-healing and all the other tricks I’ve got up my sleeve. Math is not on your side.”
Jericho’s mouth fell open and for a moment Martin truly believed that he was going to have to fight the other man. He had always been unpredictable thanks to his temper, but what he was displaying now went well beyond that and into dangerous territory. Jericho was stacking up a grudge against him. He’d seen it plenty of times before in ga
mes and in his office jobs, people who took a dislike to him for whatever reason and who made that into a hobby. Keeping a mental spreadsheet of every slight. Every word that could be interpreted as an insult. Every time that Martin could possibly have been at fault. As if eventually they would be able to give a tally and have Martin voted out. He needed to nip this in the bud, even if it meant bringing the whole thing to a head now.
“And, for the record, this is why you follow me. This is why you take orders. I am better than you at this.”
“You think that you are so great, if I met you out in the real world…”
Martin spun on his heel, cutting the other man off abruptly. “You are here. I am here. This is the world we are talking about. So either have your temper tantrum, attack me and lose, or suck it up.”
He let his hand fall to the hilt of his sword, then he waited. Emotions were racing across Jericho’s face. Mostly unabated rage, but a few other less easily recognized ones too. He was still making his mind up when Martin rolled his eye and walked away. “That’s what I thought.”
This time there was no wolf nipping at his heels. The maneuver had been successful. When the time came, and Julia and Jericho had their messy break up, Martin could work with either one of them. His preference was going to be for Julia, but if things shook out differently, the situation would still be manageable. Just like a dog, now that Jericho had been batted down he wasn’t liable to raise his hackles again any time soon.
Speckles was waiting for them in the Deep Gate room. Bouncing in elegant arcs between the upper walkways with a grace that his usual waddle belied. “You have found frog-man!” Jericho cried in delight. “Of course you have found frog-man, I was wearing frog-man’s cloak.”
Martin smiled, “Speckles knows his way around the Felidavan encampment, and I’ve managed to find us an alternate route in. If we can move relatively quietly, I think we’ll be able to take them.”