by gipsika
There was a soft, tinkling sound outside her cave, and a breeze that carried some subtle fragrance. She stepped outside, and gaped at the fairy facing her.
“I’m Benita,” the wispy little thing introduced itself. She was clad all in pink ballet getup with a petal hood-and-cape from what had to be sweetpeas. “I’m the Sweetpea Fairy!”
“Cool!” exclaimed the teenager in Nadisda. “Ben, that’s awesome!”
“Oh, I’d rather you call me Nita,” peeped the flower fairy. “Send me a foe so I can show you what I do.”
“If you’re a flower fairy, I’d assume you look after the flowers,” replied Nadisda.
Just that moment a convenient Lesser Stinkbug the size of a Maltese poodle dropped from one of her trees – who had allowed it into her grove? Nadisda was furious. The bug approached Nita with menacingly waving mandibles. “Click-click, zip-zip.” They sounded like someone sharpening a pair of knives.
Nita lifted her hand and flung something at the stinkbug. There was a bright red flash of lighting and a pong of undiluted evil, and the stinkbug exploded into myriads of droplets. Nadisda squeaked in disgust and instantly pulled a cleaning spell over herself, Nita and the grove. Stinkbugs didn’t smell good in any format.
“So you do black magic?” she asked.
“That’s the one magic where you needed some reinforcement,” said Nita.
“Cool! Come and join me with Valentine against Hero Hugo!” Nadisda grabbed the flower petal fairy’s hand and unfurled her wings, and off they flew, direction town.
*
8: Invader
As they flew high above the meadow towards the town, Nadisda saw something disquieting happening to the place. A yellow fog was wreathing its way along the valleys and gulleys. It had almost reached the town gates.
“What do you think is that?” she asked Nita.
The electronic-turned-fairy shrugged. “Never seen it before. Maybe one of Mike’s tricks?”
“Hope so,” said Nadisda. “Hope he’s aware of it.” She set down at the town gates with Nita following suit. They entered by Nita giving the poor gates a good blast of black magic to open them and Nadisda decorating them all over with black roses from the fright; then they went searching for Valentine’s party.
The yellow fog had started seeping into the town too, wreathing low between the cobbles. Where it touched, things went a bit fuzzy. Nadisda tried not to step on it and found that she had to fly low over the ground to avoid it.
“I don’t feel easy about this,” said Benita, who had taken to low flying as well.
“I think you need to tell Mike about it,” suggested Nadisda. “In his world. I just want to know that it is something he planned.”
Nita froze. Nadisda waited. The fairy unfroze again and reported back.
“Mike says he’s coming over to look. It isn’t in his part of the game.”
“Let’s find Valentine so long,” suggested Nadisda and carried on along the cobbled streets, passing dozens of disinterested-looking citizens. And she heard the commotion up ahead.
She flew faster and arrived in the town square, and saw what it was about.
A group of twelve assorted low-level warriors had surrounded Hero Hugo. Amongst them were Valentine and the Heroine; but both seemed to be frozen in time.
“Mike says his system is frozen,” Nita reported back. “He can’t move. He’ll have to restart, and if he does, he and Jen both get cut down.”
Nadisda flung a fistful of fire at the evil Hero Hugo, who laughed and pushed his way through the valiant low-level fighters, cutting them down with a single blow of his sword for each.
“So now you show your true colours, fairy!” he said triumphantly. “I was wondering about the tricks you played on me yesterday. So you’re fighting with the evil Villain?”
“You’re not talking old-fashioned anymore,” observed Nadisda. She saw that there was a red circle around Hero Hugo’s feet, marking him as an attacking enemy.
“And you have become a player,” added Hugo.
“Stop killing them,” demanded Nadisda. “You’re a hero, not a villain! Stop the slaughter! Good guys don’t do that.”
“Good guys sometimes have to cut down crooks,” replied Hugo. “Sometimes they have to stop people from thieving and breaking into other people’s treasure chests.”
Benita launched a ball of pure undiluted evil at Hugo. It was impressive; it hit the mark. His shield splintered dramatically into thousands of shards that disappeared in mid-air.
And the yellow fog wreathed around Nita’s dainty fairy feet. Its tendrils caught her and enveloped her; at the same time they swallowed up the heroine. Jen and Nita both fell into death-like rigidity and then crumbled to dust, that blew away in the wind. Valentine still stood frozen with his sword lifted high.
Hero Hugo glanced at Nadisda’s face, then casually turned to Valentine and struck him down with his sword. The Villain’s form collapsed to the cobblestones.
“Valentine!” exclaimed Nadisda and rushed to his side. The avatar was dead, and already going transparent. Behind her, Hero Hugo laughed.
“You can pour as much healing magic on him as you like, forest fairy,” he said. “He’s out of the game.”
“But – that’s not possible,” she gasped, staring at Hugo, her hand on Valentine’s shoulder. That shoulder became unreal under her touch, and when she looked, Valentine’s shape disappeared completely. He was gone.
Shaken, Nadisda got to her feet, fending off the yellow fog with a white shielding spell. Around her, the fog had conquered buildings and roads, and everything started crumbling and falling apart. Where buildings disappeared, dark voids gaped.
“What have you done?” she whispered. “What’s happening to the town?”
“Not just the town, fairy. The entire realm. Everything. I’m taking it over, and I’m rebuilding it my way. That yellow fog is a virus that is destroying the program. But before it deletes it, it copies it to my hard drive. So eat your heart out, fairy. You’re not even going to be in my version of the game. I’m calling it ‘The Everrealms’.”
“You can’t hijack it!” objected Nadisda, upset. “Mike programmed it and Jen created the artwork. You can’t just – steal it from them!”
“Ah, but you see, I can,” replied Hugo. “Because they are villains, and I’m the hero. Or in real-world terms, I’m a cop, girl. And they are juvenile delinquents, hackers, jail-breakers, on the run. The one riddle I’m still trying to decipher is where you fit in. Mike gave you the forest fairy for an avatar, that’s very unusual. He had the forest fairy as a fixed feature of the game. So who are you? Another thief? A hacker?”
Nadisda shook her head. “You can’t do this! Good guys don’t do this!”
“So you think good guys hack into people’s bank accounts and steal their money?” challenged Hugo. “Tell that Mike from me that his game is up. The virus has a tracker in it too. I know exactly where he is, and he won’t be there for much longer. He’ll be behind bars, where he belongs. In state penitentiary. He’ll be a guest of our president.”
The fairy in Nadisda wouldn’t have understood a single word; but the juvenile delinquent memories Mike had so kindly endowed her with (no doubt gathered from his own) interpreted everything perfectly for her. Hugo’s words chilled her to her bones.
Still, it was deeply unfair.
“He’s turned over a new leaf,” she protested. “We’ve got him on the straight and narrow. You can’t take the game away from him! It’s his ticket to an honest life!”
“Yeah – created on stolen equipment,” said Hugo scathingly. “Girl, or guy, whoever is behind that fairy avatar, I suggest you log out now before your computer gets wrecked with my virus.”
Nadisda’s patience was up. She launched herself at Hugo like a cat, her fingers spraying sparks of fire and ice magic, and clawed at him. The world went up
in smoke around her and Hugo’s avatar disappeared, and she fell into the void.
*
Mike swore heartily at the computer that would simply not restart. Ben, Jen and Nancy all battled along with him; but the whole system was down, every last machine connected to the LAN had shut down.
Ben was the one who voiced the dreaded words.
“It’s a virus.”
“Trojan, more likely,” said Nancy.
“Whatever it is,” growled Mike, “it’s destroyed all our computers! Lucky that I took the external drive offline before we restarted. Who knows what it could have done to the backups?”
“So we need to check if the backups are alright,” said Jen urgently. “Reload it, to get Nadisda out of there.”
“Reload, on what?” asked Mike.
“Let’s try the old Dell,” said Ben.
“That’s what knocked the program out last time,” objected Mike.
“But at least you can check if your backups are still there,” said Ben.
Mike shook his head. “No ways. Not risking that. I’ll check on the library’s computer tomorrow. Nadisda organized me a friendly relationship there, I’ll go in and return the book and ask them a favour.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Jen. “So what do we do in the meantime?”
“You mean, except trying to resurrect our systems?”
There was a knock on the door.
“Positions!” hissed Nancy, but she herself dived for the external drive, slipped it into her pocket and left through the back door.
“It’s Nadisda,” said Jen.
“We can’t be sure of that,” said Ben.
Mike was already at the door, opening it.
Two large police officers pushed their way into the room, one immediately handcuffing Mike. It went so fast that the programmer still had his mouth open trying to formulate a protest. A third one followed the first two.
“Hey!” exclaimed Jen. “On what grounds are you doing this?”
“You are under arrest,” the officer who had got a hold of her, told her in a bored voice that had recited these words far too often. She was handcuffed too. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be held against you.”
“I have a right to know my charges,” she snapped angrily. Ben had been immobilized by now, too.
“Theft, cyberfraud or accessory, and jailbreak,” said the policeman coldly. “Now be quiet. You should never have broken out.”
“I’m a digital artist,” she said indignantly. “I was arrested under false charges the first time too! I’ve done nothing!”
“You broke out of jail,” the police officer replied. “That’s a criminal offence.”
“Some justice system!” she snorted derisively as the three policemen bullied her, her brother and her friend out of the house to the police van, and into its back.
Something gave her hope. Nobody had asked about Nancy. Maybe the Goth girl would get away.
*
This time, as she fell through the void, Nadisda spread her wings immediately to break her fall, and grabbed the USB stick that hung from its string around her neck. She focused on Detroit and Mike’s place. She had to warn him. But instead she landed with a bump before her wings could find a proper air current. It was dark, but not that dark. She was inside a room, on someone’s carpet.
She folded her wings away, got to her feet and took a critical look around. She was certainly not in Mike’s house; the traffic noise and din of a big city came from far below. She went over to the window and took a look outside. It must be an apartment on the twentieth floor, or something. She turned and studied the room in the sparse city light that fell through the window.
It was nicely balanced and well furnished with a high-class leather settee in a dark colour with some light scatter cushions on it, a low TV shelf housing an enormous plasma screen and the necessary paraphernalia underneath with a few little controller lights glinting green and red, a glass-topped coffee table, a deep plush carpet which she had fallen onto, and not much else. No clutter. Feng shui.
She had to find out where she was. She lit a small mage-light from her fingertips and investigated the flat she found herself in. From the balanced lounge, a door led away into a passage which ended in two rooms, a bedroom and a study. The bedroom resembled the lounge in its very Zen and peaceful furnishings, with a king-sized poster bed of dark wood, made perfectly with luxurious beige linen; a dark wooden bedside table with a very modern-looking white reading spotlight, and a well-worn Dean R Koontz novel lying on its face. She looked more closely. Twilight Eyes. She hadn’t read that particular one, which meant that probably, Mike hadn’t.
Beige curtains were open to reveal the panorama of an endless sea of lights, a large city by night. She went over to the window and peered down here too, this time taking a closer look at the kind of street scene underneath the flat block, and found that it was not so great at all. This flat may be well furnished, but it was positioned in an iffy neighbourhood. That was odd.
She turned and went to investigate the en-suite bathroom. The colour theme continued: Beige, dark-brown and black. It was a very stark, male design. She peered into the mirror cabinet and found shaving cream, various shaped razors including an electric one; hair-clipping equipment; dandruff shampoo, a nail clipper, mouthwash and toothpaste, and that was it. The electric toothbrush lay on the rim of the basin, next to a small cake of soap.
Not a hint of a feminine presence. No make-up, perfume, anything. Could it be a single man lived here alone? She left the bathroom and returned to the bedroom, and followed her nose to the study – the second bedroom.
Once again the stark dark wood theme was there; but the neatness was missing. The large, dark office desk was littered with papers, except for the PC screen and keyboard sitting at close reach slightly to the left. Whoever lived here, used his computer and his papers with equal intensity – and that was a lot of intensity.
The PC was only sleeping. She touched the mouse, and the screen came into life – showing folders open, and an action window that reported that something was being copied at the frantic pace of several GB per second. She read the file names and gasped.
‘Mike Nickells’ version’, read the one, and ‘The Everrealms’ was the name of the file being copied to.
“What,” asked a menacing voice from the doorway, “are you doing in my apartment?”
She turned and stared into the mouth of a handgun, and into the angry face of the man she had never yet seen but still recognized. Connor the Cop.
*
9: Connor McNaught
Nadisda went as still as an ice sculpture, staring into that evil-looking gun. Perhaps Mike hadn’t meant to, but he had programmed fear of death very efficiently into her when he’d given her his memories. She could barely breathe; her thinking cut out altogether, and mindless panic gripped her every muscle in a dread version of rigour mortis. All she could think of was that she didn’t want to die. Behind Connor, black cast-iron roses involuntarily began to crawl up the cupboard.
“I’m asking what you are doing here,” demanded Connor angrily. “You are trespassing!”
Nadisda’s lips parted, but beyond that and a look of utter terror, she couldn’t get anything across. Connor McNaught flipped the light switch on. She saw now that his short-cropped curly hair was light-brown. A vague four-o’clock shadow was apparent on his shaved chin and cheeks. In his rumpled police shirt with his bullet-proof vest and his badges, he looked formidable, an invincible foe – one that the fairy had not expected to be encountering in Mike’s ‘real world’. She had no idea how much genuine damage a superhero like that could wreak in the solid, non-magic heavy gravity environment called Earth; but she knew from her inherited memories that whatever damage was done, would be practically impossible to undo and could swiftly lead to death. And this man, young but fully adult, looked like the
kind of merciless character who’d squish a kitten if it bit him on the toe.
She tried again, and this time she managed a squeaky whisper past her uncooperative lips.
“Don’t kill me!”
Connor studied her with intensity; then he gave a despondent huff and lowered his gun. She nearly collapsed from relief.
“Damn, do you delinquent kids always have to be the prettiest of the whole damned generation?” He circled her once, switching the gun for a pair of handcuffs that he clipped around her wrists behind her back. “What the hell are you doing trespassing in my apartment?”
Her eyes flitted all over the room, mainly looking for inspiration. They found none. She was paralysed; she couldn’t even access her magic.
“How the hell did you get in?” he challenged.
Nadisda swallowed a few times, trying to get her voice under control.
“I don’t...” By now she had started to shiver over her whole body.
“Let’s get you sitting down, you look like you’re going to fall over!” Connor grabbed her arm. Something like an electric current zinged between them. He let go of her in shock, recoiling and staring at her. And then he shook his head and took her arm a bit more gently, and led her to the lounge, making her sit down on his deluxe leather settee. “You sit here, understood? I’m making you some... tea, I guess.”
Nadisda nodded mutely. There was nothing else she could do. Connor left the room, to head to his ultra-zen kitchenette.
That had been a spell of some sort! She scowled, and breathed. Connor, a.k.a. Hugo, was as unmagical as they got. Handsome as hell, true, and fearsome and threatening... wait!
With the menacing superhero out of the room, she was beginning to breathe again, and think clearly. A curse for Hero Hugo. Oh blast, what a trap! She found her centre of pure light and tapped into her magic to draw a protective wall around herself. An invisible second skin that made her impervious to enchantments, including her own vile spell. Valentine, I’ll get you for that! She had to find that moonstone, and soon.