Mastermind

by Steven Kelliher

  As the AI told me a moment later, it had also packed a bigger punch than the hero had anticipated.

  Alert: Luther Smith has been killed.

  Sphere Update: 5 Slots Vacated. 12/22 Slots Filled.

  Encounter Ends

  Despot vs. Meteora

  Meteora has been killed due to Environmental Damage.

  No Infamy Awarded.

  Threat Index unchanged.

  It had worked. And another loyal minion had gone down for my plan. But hurtling down the staircase of Gallant Tower, I hadn’t the time to spare a thought for poor Luther.

  When we finally reached the first floor, I shouldered Blackstrike roughly out of the way and slammed my palms down on the silver push bar, throwing the door open roughly and spilling the three of us back out into the same lobby we had entered just a short while before.

  We ran over the field of broken glass, glass that was now bouncing and tinging like wind chimes as the building shook in the aftermath of Meteora’s fury.

  I smiled again as I broke through the press of rushing NPCs and tripped over one of the jagged cracks in the broken square.

  I noticed Atlas standing triumphant in the center of the square, hands raised like a gladiator. Starshot was kneeling at his feet, her light dimming rapidly as she sent short, fading blasts at the villain. At first, I thought he had actually done serious damage to her, but when she saw me fall unceremoniously among the broken tiles, she winked.

  Atlas roared to the heavens, calling for Leviathan to come down and meet his maker. There was some overly-dramatic weeping from the few NPCs who were sticking around, and some of the heroes started to warm up, debating amongst themselves who would get to take Atlas on now that Starshot had failed.

  I admired the effort and I cursed their indifference as I rolled over onto my butt and watched the zenith of Gallant Tower.

  A smoking, fire-choked ruin had replaced the penthouse level. All around, heroes looked up at the tower. Meteora’s explosion must have been quite the sight, given their expressions. Later, some would tell me that Gallant Tower had shone like a lighthouse for a brief moment, and that the ensuing blast at its crest had stolen the day from the sun.

  “And… now,” I whispered, pulling the detonator out of my pocket. I clicked the button. Smaller flashes lit the lower floors of the steel and glass behemoth.

  Now it wasn’t just the NPCs screaming.

  The dagger and hilt atop the tower began to sway, and the whole building began to twist, like a drunken snake. Before the first bits of shattered, ash-stained glass from the tower’s nest rained down around us, the building began to fall.

  If it had chosen to fall toward the west, I’d have been killed, along with half the heroes logged in at the time, and all of my team, players included. As it was, those heroes not stunned to the point of inaction exploded into motion.

  Some shot their beams, rays and torrents of power at the tower’s base and crumbling midsection. Others took off, snatching up other players and NPCs alike as they attempted to save as many as they could from the carnage. Hulking brutes – Atlas wasn’t the only big one in town – formed a line in front of Emerald Park, as if they might simply catch the falling tower if it chanced in their direction.

  When the building did fall, it was the loudest thing Titan Online had ever heard.

  It was my call to war.

  The crumbling tower took out half a city block to the north, the top of it having been turned into fiery comets of molten metal that took out the homes of the innocent and virtuous of Titan City.

  I allowed Castle to pull me back up to my feet. We watched slack-jawed as the dust and smoke billowed from the site. Starshot abandoned her act and now floated above us, her radiant energy warming us in the temporary absence of the sun. She didn’t forget her part, though, and sent a few weak shots at Atlas to keep up his momentum.

  I peered through the chaos of rushing capes and dashing speedsters and imagined a little purple smudge in the center of the pile, glowing like a windblown ember, though I knew Meteora was dead and gone.

  I began to walk toward the ruins. I only had to climb up a few leaning, jagged shelves of concrete, the twisted iron poles sticking out like the building’s bones to stand at the new top of Gallant Tower. A stunned, windswept silence followed, broken only by the blaring of sirens and the cries of AI-controlled actors doing their best to lend gravity to the situation.

  I hadn’t known it was going to go quite this way, but now that I stood among the ashes of Gallant Tower, it felt right. Meteora had tried to bury me in my home. Now, I had returned the favor.

  I turned from the spot and looked up into skies that should have been brighter than the ground below, and I saw them darken.

  My challenge had been loud and clear.

  God would come. And I was going to kill him, too.

  Twenty-Five

  God’s Folly

  Meteora is dead.

  The notification was emblazoned over my user interface, and those of every other player in-game… and plenty more besides. Phones would be buzzing, forums would be alight. Every digital screen up above with any tangential connection to anyone who had ever watched or played Titan Online would know.

  The words were red as blood, standing out starkly against the dark. I wasn’t sure if the clouds were the work of the AI or a side effect of the tower’s fall, but it made for a suitably ominous presentation, though the sun was already fighting its way through.

  Crisis Event Triggered: Fall of Gallant

  Gallant Tower has fallen. The Mayor has been abducted. Titan City needs its defenders.

  Hero Objective: Rescue the Mayor

  Villain Objective: Ensure the Mayor is taken to War Town

  Death of the Mayor will result in failure for both sides.

  “Boom.”

  Atlas, Blackstrike or Starshot remained silent. The three players were standing on the dust-covered stones around me, as stunned as I pretended not to be.

  This was, after all, a part of the plan.

  Sphere of Influence – 12/20

  Single-Slot Members

  1) Hobb 2) Brooks 3) Sascha 4) Kayde

  5) Ratchet 6) Maria

  Multi-Slot Members

  Castle (4 Slots)

  Bartol (2 Slots)

  I ran over the mental calculations. I had lost a few soldiers. A few very good soldiers. On the bright side, I had picked up my most lethal NPC yet, and I had a bit of Influence capital to play with should things get as rough as I intended them to.

  I tried not to focus on Luther. Time for that later.

  I remembered the mayor and walked quickly back down the slide of rubble I’d climbed, wading through the choking smoke and bitter dust until I found him standing next to Blackstrike. The villain had let go of him, and the NPC was too stunned at seeing the tower fall to remember to run. That, or he was a bit smarter than he looked.

  Seeing me, Blackstrike snatched a hold of the mayor again. Behind them, Castle came walking out of the choking dust around the base of the ruined tower, his black suit turned gray. The white command icon was still shining like a ward above his head. I nodded to him as he joined us, seemingly unsteady, like a zombie at my command. Good to have a capable soldier in a pinch. Four slots well spent, by the looks of things.

  The heroes around me – those rooting through the wreckage and trying to strike just the right poses for the buzzing, swarming viewer bots all around – stilled, standing or floating in stunned silence as they saw the last pixelated remnants of Meteora flit away like dust on the AI-conjured winds.

  For a few seconds, I thought some of them might make a go at me. If they did, there was little I could do to stop them. The servers hadn’t been full just a half-hour ago, but now, there were hundreds of players flooding into Titan Online, appearing out of thin air to see the place where Meteora died, and to see what Fame they could garner by capturing the ones who’d killed her.

  Prism’s death had made waves on th
e industry sites, but he was not a well-liked hero. Meteora wasn’t necessarily loved; she had her detractors, and was more divisive than unifying, but she was absolutely famous, second only to the big man himself. And she was powerful.

  “Looks like we’re about to have a fight on our hands,” Starshot said.

  “You have one already,” I said pointedly. “Keep it up with Atlas. We can’t have him dropping his momentum.”

  “Right.” She put some more energy into her legs and shot off before peppering Atlas with a few extra-weak blasts of energy. The pair moved off to continue their faux fight, although their acting wasn’t as necessary now the chaos had begun to unfold.

  For now, the spectacle of Meteora’s death and Gallant Tower’s fall acted as all the cover we needed. As if the game-wide AI notifications weren’t evidence enough, the sudden influx of a veritable hoard of brightly-colored heroes appearing in-game let me know that I had my crisis event. They flew down with capes fluttering like banners, zoomed in from the neighboring streets and boroughs, teleported, decloaked, rode armored cars, hitched rides with NPC police and paramedics. Some probably took the train.

  A good number of them busied themselves trying to save pedestrians, direct law enforcement, and search for survivors in the wreckage. I overheard commands coming from the north side of the square, in the direction of the federal building. Shots had come from there, they said. There might still be terrorists inside. Most simply gawked, frozen in the grip of shock and indecision.

  I blinked, recognizing the growing need for action. Currently, we were surrounded by heroes. Blackstrike and I might still be dressed as heroes, but we were far from it, and soon enough the mayor would be noticed. With the crisis event ostensibly about him, many players would come searching.

  Pressing two fingers to the bud in my right ear, I radioed for any of my NPCs in the area.

  “Sir?” a raspy male voice answered. Bartol. He sounded like he was trying to stay quiet.

  “Location and situation,” I said.

  “We’re still in the fed.”

  “Condition?”

  “Alive, sir.” I was beginning to like him. Cut and dry. “We’re in the… something wing. Supers snooping around. We’ve got two spears on hand.”

  “Make your way to the square. I need you to take the mayor and deliver him somewhere for safe-keeping.”

  “We’ll try, sir.”

  While I waited to see which of my minions – if any – would make it out of the federal building, I nodded at Blackstrike. “Smoke’s clearing a bit. Some capes are starting to remember your fight with Starshot.” I saw a woman in a neon-red biker outfit replete with a glowing chain leaning over to whisper to a man dressed in furs with swirling tattoos that seemed to move on their own.

  I pressed my fingers back down on the transmitter, listening to the static for a few seconds as I watched the mayor twitch in Blackstrike’s grip.

  “Post,” I said. I waited for a response that didn’t come. “Cut the bull, Post. I know you’ve been listening. I’ve got a request.”

  Some static coming back the other way. Post had provided Luther with the headsets, after all. It stood to reason she’d have a set herself.

  “Why am I not surprised?” came the old hag’s morose response. “Despot gets himself into a sticky situation and Auntie Post is supposed to help him out of it, thereby inviting precisely half of Titan City’s heroes to the docks in his wake.”

  “I have a request,” I said again, “but I also have a gift.”

  I smiled at the silence that followed. Post knew, or hoped, what I’d offer.

  “What sort of a ransom could you get for our lovable old mayor here?” I asked. “Buck, was it?” I winked at him and he nearly fainted. I had thought of Influencing him, but I knew the AI would have given him a mind score far out of my reach. Too easy to game the system if the heart of Titan City was under my command. Still, fear worked well enough.

  “Must be a fair number of villains who would pay for a private audience, right? You would know.”

  “I would.”

  Madam Post would be an excellent poker player, but I had the read on her. She was interested. In fact, she had already made up her mind.

  “How long will it take you to get your men he—”

  “Your goons in the federal building are as good as dead,” she interrupted. “Special forces will be in there soon, if supers aren’t already. Look south. There’s a white van parked on Stone Boulevard. Hand him off.”

  I nodded at Blackstrike, seeing that he was following along. He dragged the sputtering mayor through the thicker plumes of dust, ignoring his hacking, strangled, pitiful coughs and pulling him inexorably toward his doom.

  “And in return?”

  “En route,” Post said. “I assume you want them to engage all hostiles?”

  “No hostiles to speak of yet,” I said, eyeing the pair of heroes across the way.

  “They’re all hostiles,” she said.

  I heard the click that typically signified someone cutting off their receiver and thought Post had abandoned me.

  An explosion went off behind us. I spun, expecting to see an NPC crew detonating a piece of the fallen tower to get to those trapped beneath it. Instead, I saw more players climbing up from the eastern side of the collapse. Players dressed in blacks and grays, and some in white. Players holding guns and swords and axes. Players of an entirely different persuasion than the colorful folks that had filled the server ahead of them.

  Villains.

  They were either heeding my call from the forums or taking advantage of the XP bonuses inherent in the crisis event. Either way, it was my doing. I had the battle I wanted. I had the chaos.

  I saw a line of heroes rush up the broken, tumbled rise to meet the new threat. Sirens blared in the distance, coming closer – the city dumping all its NPC defenders to the site of the infection like white blood cells.

  Rivalries would be settled here, and started. Heroes would fall, and villains with them. Some might even die.

  Grenades were lobbed and exploded in bright yellow and orange flares wreathed in black smoke. Colorful beams of light – some from spandex-covered palms and others from blasters, guns and mystical blades – pierced the murk around the tower’s bones. Battle cries filled the air, mixing with the screams of NPCs, and behind it all, the faint buzzing of a swarm of viewer bots as they darted in and out of the storm of power and destruction, searching for the best bits of action in the mix.

  Meteora was dead by my hand. Gallant Tower had fallen by my will. The war we now witnessed was my doing. It was as if we had ripped out the spine of the city itself, and set fire to its guts.

  In that moment, I felt proud. I felt, in a word, transcendent.

  I felt that way even for a few brief moments after Leviathan appeared in the sky. I felt that way right up until he floated down on invisible currents, all eyes in-game – NPC, hero and villain alike – turned his way, onto the white and blue that made up the emperor’s clothes.

  “It’s about time,” I said, licking my lips as I watched him descend.

  Encounter Imminent

  Leviathan

  Tier 1 Hero

  Threat Index: Titan

  I saw Starshot out of the corner of my eye. She was still darting this way and that over Atlas as the giant attempted to clumsily pluck her from the sky. Both subtly changed the direction of their fight and carefully moved closer to me. They too must have seen the notification, or the man himself.

  I heard footsteps behind me and whirled to see Blackstrike returning from his errand. He nodded at me and I looked at the place where he’d gone. The white van was nowhere to be seen, along with the mayor.

  “Remember,” I said, pressing my fingers into the transmitter, “We need to throw enough at him to force him to Shift off armor. Starshot, break off once Atlas engages and take cover until you’ve got that beam at max power. Then take your shot on my signal. Make it count.”

 
“And if you’re in danger?” she asked.

  “You do care after all,” I said. I thought I could see her eyeroll from here.

  “I’ve got his back,” Blackstrike said.

  Leviathan landed in the center of the broken square, not far from where our group was. He took stock of the chaos all around – the players had turned on each other once again now that the shock of Leviathan’s arrival had passed. His emotionless eyes alighted on the remnants of a tower that had belonged more to him than to the mayor we had just secreted away, and I saw the first tell.

  We had struck a nerve.

  It wasn’t so much that Leviathan was fond of the tower, or that he had some sort of nostalgic attachment to it. It was the principle: that it had fallen without his consent, and likely, that it had fallen precisely to bother him.

  I had already been calculating before Leviathan’s heels had touched the ground. Charisma would be a wash, and I doubted if the beast had any points concentrated in that attribute by the time he landed. Leviathan wasn’t trying to get over on any sort of high-level NPCs. Probably hadn’t for years. He also wasn’t trying to control anyone through means other than overt threat.

  No. I guessed ol’ Levi was already stacked in the big three: brawn, agility and armor. If my rough 400-point guesstimate wasn’t completely off, that put him at a max of 133 in each. Too much to take down quickly. Too much for any of us to take down alone. But I knew the armor was just there for cover. Automatic insurance. I knew if I pushed Leviathan – not physically so much as mentally – he would Shift where I wanted him, low enough for Starshot to kill him. Or try to.

  It only remained to be seen if I’d survive long enough to do it.