Hero's Journey: A LitRPG Adventure (Beta Tester Book 2)
Page 19
Jack rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Sure. Hey, Er’c, so this fortress…I don’t suppose you know where it is?”
The young man shook his head. “I’m sorry, Sir Jack. I do not.”
“Of course not.”
“But there is a man in the city of Kaldstein who might know.”
“Of course there is,” he sighed. “And let me guess: we have to go there next.”
“I would recommend we go there next.”
“Of course you would. And tell me, Er’c, are there any disguised werewolves or hungry dragons, or maybe temperamental ogres, along the way? Do we have to make friends with giants? Throw a little tea party, maybe? Get the giants and ogres and dragons altogether?”
Er’c stared at him like he was speaking another language, and Jack sighed. Clearly, he was overtired. “I’m going to take a nap,” he decided. He figured he’d nap in real life while his character slept. At the rate he was going lately, he’d be lucky to get a few hours of solid rest anyway.
So he laid down and closed his eyes. But he didn’t get to sleep.
Migli said, “Hey, Jack?”
He sighed, refusing to open his eyes. “Later, Migli. Tell me later.”
“It’s not Migli. It’s Jordan.”
He blinked and sprang up at that, glancing over toward the Migli avatar and trying to feign nonchalance. “I knew that,” he lied. He figured a little white lie was better than letting her catch him arguing with the AI. He didn’t want her to think he’d lost his mind or anything. “What’s up?”
“We…that is, I…I have something to tell you.”
Even through the Migli voice filter, her tone was so forlorn, so apprehensive, that even through his preoccupation, he couldn’t miss it. Jack frowned. “What’s wrong, Jordan? Are you okay?”
She glanced up, and then away. Her features – the dwarven avatar’s – were drawn and worried. “I’m fine. It’s – it’s not me, Jack. It’s…it’s you.”
Jack blinked. “Me? Oh God. I’m dying, aren’t I? My body’s giving out. Oh hell.” He took a deep breath. “It’s okay, though. I made my will. We were proactive, right? We did –”
“Jack,” she interrupted, “you’re not dying. You’re not – as far as I can tell, there’s nothing wrong with you.”
“Then…what do you mean?”
She took a deep breath too. “I found out what happened to William Xi.”
Jack felt his pulse race. He didn’t have to ask what it was. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to know. Her expression told him in no uncertain terms what kind of news it was. “Is it…how long before it happens to me?”
“Maybe never. I didn’t mean you were in any immediate danger, Jack. As far as we can tell, everything’s okay.”
He breathed out. “Okay. That’s – that’s not how you made it sound, Jordan.”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. Only – William Xi seemed fine, too. Until he wasn’t.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Jack decided he needed the full story, and Jordan obliged. There were still pieces missing. She’d had to hack her way into some secure servers to get what she had, so there were names and details she didn’t have yet.
But she had the overall picture. It wasn’t pretty.
William Xi had been an early developer and tester of the VR systems. He’d been up against a testing deadline, with a high-level demo the next afternoon. Then the hardware team alerted them that a new driver was available, with bug fixes that couldn’t wait.
But neither could the testing. Both had to be done before the demo. “Avery signed off on it, pushing the driver update while William was still in the machine. He wasn’t CEO then. Reading the notes, I get the impression that this was his big moment: his chance to make his pitch to the boss. He must have figured he had a lot – everything – riding on it.
“So he made the call. They’d done it before, once or twice. It caused the tester a lot of pain, but that was it.
“Only this time, William didn’t come back. They lost the connection.”
“What connection?”
“To his brain. They couldn’t reach him.”
“He died?”
She shook her head. “No. He was alive. He is alive, if you can call it living.
“His body is in some kind of high-tech cryogenic coma patient storage. Basically, they’ve got him on ice indefinitely, so they can avoid saying they killed him.
“That’s why it looks like he just vanished. He basically did. They settled with his family, big check, lots of NDA’s, plus it looks like they’re still collecting whatever his wages would have been.”
Jack’s head reeled. “My God. This lab or storage facility or whatever – where is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You need to find out, Jordan. I could end up there. On ice, forever.”
She shook her head. “It’s worse than that. Jack, he’s still in there. In the game. His body is on ice, but his mind, his consciousness…it’s trapped in the avatar he was testing, all those years ago. He’s stuck in the game, Jack.”
Thank you for reading!
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P.S. Want to find out what happens next? Book three is available for pre-order on Amazon!
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