Mastermind

by Steven Kelliher

  But that was all for now. In the meantime, Luther was working on personalized versions of two of my favorite pieces of equipment I’d seen him use on Scale to brilliant effect.

  “Sir?” B5 must have used my name a few times before resorting to the forbidden title. He tapped me on the left shoulder and drew my attention away from the hologram, where I’d been lost in thoughts of bringing down Gallant Tower – and Leviathan along with it.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  B5 had booted up the black screen on the supercomputer at the far end of the platform. He stood holding a digitized clipboard like an expectant inspector. “I think it’s time for an update.”

  I made a great show of sighing as I passed a few of the newer recruits. They smirked as they moved past. I had learned that humor was the way to a dock worker’s heart. Humor, and loyalty, with the leftover gold from our dubiously successful heist acting as a nice garnish.

  Which reminded me.

  “Madam Post received her first gold shipment, yes?” I asked.

  “She has.”

  “And?”

  “She accepted the gift.”

  “And she didn’t say anything in response?”

  “Neither positively nor negatively.”

  “Wow. What does a guy have to do to earn a little gratitude?”

  “Perhaps not failing in your initial task and then stealing her preferred tinkerer to force a truce?”

  “Well, B, when you put it like that… Just don’t let Luther hear you call him that. He’d probably throw a fit if he heard you talking about him like one of his items… er, works of art,” I corrected. “Besides, I promised to share some of what he creates with the old bird and I will. Just enough to keep her off us and to count her a friend, but not enough to weaken our position.”

  I plopped down into my master chair and kicked my boots up on the dash, adjusting my mask as I did. I had taken to wearing the thing even inside the relative safety of the base. I didn’t know if it was helping with morale. Putting a human face on the boss could be a good thing, but I was running a criminal operation. Let my men be comfortable around me, but let them remember at all times who I am, and what I’m capable of. The line between respect and fear was thin, and I intended to toe it.

  B5 instructed the supercomputer to bring up the Sphere. He seemed to twitch and emit more of that ghostly emerald light than usual when accessing the core.

  “Everything all right, B?” I asked, concerned.

  “Quite,” he said, though his voice sounded a little strained. “Frequencies I emit sometimes interfere with the computer’s operations, which in turn interferes with this shell’s circuitry.”

  It was easy to forget that B5 was a literal extension of the alien core. Introducing an artifact of untold power and technology into a former player’s technological ecosystem might not have been the wisest move.

  “Should I be concerned?” I asked.

  “No, General,” B5 was quick to say.

  Fair enough. The Ythilian core – B5 – hadn’t disappointed me, given that I first believed the AI had provided me with some grand McGuffin in my origin story – an item of untold power and limitless potential. Instead, it was a glorified encyclopedia. Still, I had to remind myself that, as far as I knew, nobody else in Titan Online had near-dev-level access to as much NPC and player information as I had, even if I had to meet certain parameters to view the latter. Then there was the small fact that the core had granted me an Ythilian General’s ability to control weaker-minded beings. In a way, all that I was in my current build, I owed to B5.

  And yet, I was frustrated. In the case of players such as Starshot and Scale, the core’s knowledge gave me a significant leg-up. Where higher-tier players were concerned, it was little more than a highlights package, though it did seem to highlight specific encounters rather than the best-of fare you’d see on the blogs and industry sites.

  “Okay, B,” I said, noting the droid’s impatience, “give it to me.”

  “As you can see,” B5 pointed to the representation on the screen, “your Sphere is at maximum—”

  “Yes, I know, B. I can look at this in my UI anytime. Five slots for a tinkerer,” I said, settling back and shaking my head, arms crossed. “He’d better do a hell of a lot more than give the boys glorified police vests, then.”

  B5 likely wanted to comment on my sudden about-face on Luther’s cost relative to his utility, but he wisely refrained.

  “It is my recommendation, then,” he said, “that you focus on gaining the Infamy needed to tier up to the next level. That should result in a nice spike to your core stats, increase your charisma and, by extension, widen the net you may cast.”

  “Bigger net means bigger fish,” I said, nodding along with him. “No more bank robberies, then?”

  “We still have a significant portion to fall back on, and Scale is overseeing bronze shipments at the docks. At current morale levels, we should be fine for a while. I think it’s time to begin moving toward your stated goal in a more tangible manner.”

  I frowned. It was unlike B5 to actively encourage my desire to kill Leviathan. Even if his mission – his very purpose – was to see me achieve my goal, he was also meant to provide advice and support that would keep me alive as long as possible.

  “Computer,” I said, leaning forward, “bring up hero: Leviathan.”

  B5’s eyes brightened substantially before dimming.

  “General, I hardly think you’re at the stage where you’re ready to take on Leviathan.” He left out the fact that he never thought I’d be ready to take on Leviathan. “Instead, I was thinking about trying to forcibly expand your territory, perhaps venturing into the eastern sections of War Town, where there are villains more—”

  “More like me?”

  “Well… yes.”

  The sight of the big, blond, blue-eyed imposter in the white suit and blue cape distracted me from my renewed ire toward B5. I almost told the computer to cancel the request, but as had been the case every day for the last week, I was glued to the screen once all the relevant information populated.

  Leviathan

  Tier 1 Hero

  Threat Index: Titan

  Stats: Unknown

  Superpower: Unknown

  The computer vibrated and glowed green as it brought up footage, and while I could ostensibly search for any encounter in-game that Leviathan had ever had, the core always brought up the same few. B5 had assured me that it was random. Simply the first encounters that came up in the Ythilian hive mind, but I thought there had to be some significance in what it was trying to tell me. If he was capable of it, I imagined the whole experience was somewhat frustrating for B5 as well. He literally was the core. For the Ythilian archives to be inaccessible in totality for me was one thing, but to have his own knowledge locked behind tier walls on account of the relative weakness of his General was another.

  This time, the event of my death was first in the Leviathan queue.

  When the supercomputer had first done this, I’d expected it was the AI continuing its weird, screwy game it had started in my origin story. But the footage didn’t focus on Streak, nor even on Deadlock. Instead, it followed Leviathan on his flight from Gallant Tower toward the wreckage and flying debris of the battlefield.

  Just as he had for the last few crisis events, Leviathan had taken his time in answering the call. He and his real-world agents no doubt knew the impact of his appearance would be tenfold if he let the AI overbalance when factoring in his inclusion, making the invading force a bit too much to handle for the heroes on the ground. As in all the best comic book storylines – or worst, depending on how much nostalgia influenced you – Leviathan would arrive in the nick of time, foiling Deadlock and his foreign invaders before they could visit irreparable harm on the city and its people.

  Of course, that was if you ignored the fact that Leviathan could have shown up at any time in the previous six hours, and prevented approximately nine blocks on
the outskirts of town from being leveled.

  It was a curious piece of footage for the Ythilian archive to focus on, but I found myself mesmerized nonetheless, as I was with all things blue-caped and blue-eyed for the last few months. Mesmerized, and sickened.

  Leviathan sped toward the leaning tower of rubble. He blasted an Ythilian walker with little more than an extra burst of speed and an extended fist. He scanned the rubble-strewn battlefields he flew over with passing indifference, smirking as villains disengaged from heroes as his shadow passed over them, fleeing in the presence of a god not yet driven to anger.

  I looked for something, anything that the core might be trying to tell us, but again, I came up wanting. Still I watched.

  As far as B5 and I had been able to suss out, Leviathan’s powers were brawn-based. It had to be a perfect 100 brawn roll that was also augmented greatly by whatever superpower the AI had granted him in his origin story. Dumb luck, most likely. Dumb, extraordinary luck.

  Still, that didn’t fully explain it.

  I had seen Brutes before. Juggernauts, even. Heroes and villains strong enough to crack foundations and hurl telephone poles through buses. But I’d never seen one who was near as fast as Streak, who was near as impervious to harm as an armor-based player.

  Perhaps Leviathan had max rolls in both brawn and armor… even agility. That had led a few early rivals into the false thinking that it would take a mind or charisma-based player to take him down. A player like me. A villainous sorceress by the name of Mephista had tried to bind Leviathan to her will, piloting him like a drone, like she had taken so many of his cohorts. She was a potent foe, and one whose powers made my Influence look paltry by comparison, since she could control actual players, or their avatars, at least.

  Leviathan’s eyes had shifted from blue to red during that famous and early encounter, and viewers the world over thought he had finally met his match. And then he had gritted his teeth, loosened his balled fists, and the red had gone away, to be replaced by that startling, deadly blue. He was on Mephista a half-second later. He beat her to within an inch of death, and most – myself included – believe he’d have ripped her in half on the spot if doing so wouldn’t have certainly tiered him down.

  A week later, Mephista had been killed by another villain, but I wasn’t the only one who thought Leviathan might have had something to do with it.

  Now, watching Leviathan dismantling Ythilian crafts with the ease of a giant swatting away gnats, I wondered if there was something here I had missed. There had to be something there. Something to key in on.

  “B5,” I said somewhat distractedly, “analysis.”

  I took his momentary pause for an exaggerated sigh, but he did as he was told.

  “Leviathan has often been referred to as a ‘base god,’” B5 said. I nodded at the familiar words as if they were a mantra, my eyes glazing over behind my mask as I watched that white suit smash through the Ythilian army, deflect lasers, send villains and even a few heroes versed enough in their Titan Online history to know Leviathan’s penchant for environmental mishaps, skittering for cover. “His true stats are known only to him, but given his feats, they align heavily with a hero blessed with high brawn, armor and agility.”

  “That doesn’t explain the half of it,” I said, for the dozenth or so time.

  “Quite so,” B5 answered. “The Ythilian General Girath, who planned the invasion, had feared the one known as Leviathan for this reason.” He seemed uncertain how best to continue, so he didn’t.

  “Look there,” I said, pointing at the screen. The computer paused at my command. Leviathan was hovering a football field’s length away from the leaning tower of rubble where my fate – where Streak’s fate, and Deadlock’s alongside it – would be sealed under several hundred tons of concrete, steel and pseudoscience space tech.

  “What is it?” B5 asked.

  “Levi could have made for the tower minutes ago. He’s got the speed for it, and nobody on the field below is a threat to him. Instead, look at what he’s doing.”

  B5 looked. He didn’t notice.

  “I fail to—”

  “He’s scanning, B,” I said, the kernel of a familiar thought starting to formulate in my mind once again. It never reached beyond that, never blossomed into something more. It was just a kernel, like a seed without the proper water to make it sprout.

  “Forward,” I told the computer, and we watched Leviathan fly down into a broken trench, taking out over a score of Ythilian crawlers, gunners and even a few turrets. He kept all of them in front, sweeping from one side of the trench to the other.

  When he went airborne again, he started forward, smashing apart an Ythilian jet that made for him with all the speed of a shooting star. He was unfazed, and though his direction was forward, speeding toward the tower where he knew his mortal enemy resided, his eyes were everywhere but. He might look disinterested to those on the ground, but there was something off about the look. Something false in it.

  Leviathan might not have been scared or even worried, but he was watchful and he was certainly wary. He stopped again before the base of the tower, and rather than levitating up to the crown, he glided around the base, checking every nook and crevice for signs of opposition.

  “Why would the most powerful player in Titan find the need to stop and check his surroundings every ten seconds?” I asked aloud. “Why does he look so intent? So anxious?”

  “He appears to be hunting.”

  I didn’t think that was the case. Leviathan was rooting out all signs of opposition and crushing it mercilessly. The heroes on the ground below were cheering his name, and a swarm of black, red-lensed viewer bots had gathered around him like buzzing flies, intent on the coming conflict – the final conflict – between Titan Online’s original rivals.

  ‘Deadlock is in the tower’s nest,’ those silent viewers seemed to say. ‘Why are you out here?’

  But Leviathan continued his slow circuit, his methodical inquiry. He scanned the ground below and the skies above, watchful for signs of ambush.

  Leviathan finished his scan of the tower’s base. There were few Ythilian fighters left to challenge him, and the heroes on the ground and a few still flying about were handling the mop-up of the enemy forces. Most of the villains who had come to take advantage of the crisis-stacked Infamy points in all the chaos had fled, the better to avoid an accidental permadeath via collateral damage at the hands of the world’s most famous player.

  His blue eyes looked up and locked on to the tower’s nest, only he didn’t immediately make for it. Instead, he scanned the debris all around, the scorched fields and the leaning piles. He locked on to the corner of a crumbling building. It was the one he was about to lift up to bury Deadlock and me with. I’d know that white marble masonry anywhere, even in a field of the very same.

  Leviathan started in that direction, but the viewer bots had him agitated. The little floating camera spheres were dogging him, zipping around his head, buzzing in his ears. One got too close, and Leviathan’s left hand snapped out, smashing it on the spot.

  Destroying a viewer bot was a punishable offense in Titan Online. Viewer bots were meant to be a part of the package, like pigeons in a retrofuturistic world. They were also the windows through which fans from around the world watched the goings-on of the most popular VR gaming module of all time. Players had been banned from Titan Online for intentionally destroying them, but Leviathan clearly wasn’t all that worried on that account. And I wasn’t all that interested.

  But I did see what happened immediately after.

  Leviathan had been so caught up in his momentary anger that he didn’t realize the threat approaching him from above. It was an Ythilian craft, not aimed so much as dropped from some conflict far up in the atmosphere. Leviathan was too busy watching the ashes of the viewer he’d destroyed drift lazily toward the ground below, more rubble to add to the ruin.

  “Leviathan!”

  It was Meteora, the second most
powerful hero in Titan City, Leviathan’s closest companion and likely one of the few players in-game who could hope to match him for more than a blow. She was a bright streak of fire shooting down behind the black smoke curling from the busted craft’s engines. It seemed strange to me that she’d be concerned for Leviathan. But then, maybe she knew something the rest of us did not. It was said the two were close in the real world, as well.

  Leviathan did look up, but he did so slowly, and with just enough time to raise his right hand, palm up, toward the angled nose of the downed fighter. The impact was fast and brutal – for the craft more than for Leviathan.

  “Freeze!” I said, standing up. I nearly pressed my face up against the screen, and B5 did the same. “Run it.”

  After a few awkward, tense moments, Leviathan straightened.

  B5 blinked. “I fail to see—”

  “His face,” I said, pointing. Leviathan’s eyes were wide with shock – even fear – and his jaw was clenched in what could only be one thing. “What does that look signify to you, B5?”

  “Pain,” B5 said without hesitation. He didn’t seem to understand the implications.

  “Pain, B5,” I said. “It’s pain.”

  “Yes,” B5 said. “That is, after all, what I just—”

  “Pain on the face of a hero who’s never felt it. Pain on the face of Leviathan, the god of Titan City. Pain on account of little more than a falling ship—”

  “It’s quite a large ship,” B5 lectured. “And it was falling at a fast rate, no doubt assisted by one of Meteora’s fireballs.”

  “You just watched this man – this beast – wreck half an army – half your army – walkers, ships and turrets included. And that’s just in this crisis event. We’ve both seen him do a lot more besides, and you know it.”

  “True,” B5 said. “What is it you’re suggesting, General?”