Blood and Cupcakes

by Taj McCoy El

  “Yes sir!” Hicks started giving the shutdown orders

  Auset thought back to the hallway of the high school where he had placed the Nano flea on Mayah. He at least could’ve done it without knocking her down. But he wanted a chance to see if she would bolt, like her teacher had. If she did, he would know that he was onto something and track her. She had seemed wary around him, and that was enough for him to trigger the device and hack Majesta through her pod. But his gut was telling him Mayah had no idea what her teacher was doing with her research. What were Hobson and Bannon making?

  “Hicks…”

  “Yes, sir?” Hicks called from across the room.

  “Get me Hazer.”

  “Yes, sir,” Hicks said as he sat at a keyboard.

  “And if they get anywhere near our data, pull the plug. Back up what you can and let’s get everyone ready to go.”

  …..

  Josh Bannon walked into the waiting room on the 45th floor of the Attactus Philadelphia building. He had flown in from his private island in the Caribbean. He had only been home from work for thirty minutes before he had to turn right back around. It had been a very rough, Mach 4 suborbital commute. The trip had only taken one hour, instead of its usual two, but comfort wasn’t the purpose of this trip. He had spoken to his tech team en route, looked over the preliminary data, and gotten the reports from the department heads. It was discouraging, but he was in this to save lives, not take them.

  He walked towards the couple sitting in a sad lump of sniffles and hugs. “Mr. and Mrs. Butler,” Josh said by way of greeting, “we have some news on your daughter.”

  “Mr. Bannon,” Gyasi Butler hurriedly stood, extending his hand. Brenda pulled herself up on Gyasi’s arm, wiping her eyes and nose.

  Josh took the hand, placing his other hand on Gyasi’s shoulder and gave a heartfelt nod to Brenda.

  “Please call me Josh.” He tried to usher them back towards the seats they rose from but they showed no signs of sitting. Their eyes were nailed to his, causing him no little discomfort.

  “I want you to know that we are doing everything we can to place Mayah in another pod in order to remove her from the game. Her vitals are perfectly fine and my med techs have introduced nutrients intravenously to maintain her present state of wellbeing. Her health and safety are at the top of my list. We’ll get her back.”

  His eyes darkened in rage momentarily. Whoever threatened his players threatened him. “I swear to you.”

  “Thank you for all of that, but tell us what’s really going on? I saw those fused boards and burned crystals. We both work in pod repair and remanufacture.”

  The dossiers he read while in flight made him suspect these questions were coming. “As you know, there is a foreign signal in her pod. To make matters worse, it’s shadowing Mayah’s neurological inputs, masking itself. At this point we haven’t had any success separating the two.”

  Her parents looked at each other in disbelief. “I thought you used torlock pulse signals as countermeasures against hacking,” Gyasi said.

  “We do. But this signal,” he said, scratching his chin, “this signal emanated from inside the pod and was inserted as neural code through the neural receptors in the helm. My techs scanned the pod and found a very small surveillance droid with signal interception technologies. My AIs began a trace and found some pretty powerful firewalls connected with the foreign system. Someone tried to… well they did piggyback her signal into the game. Even though we’ve isolated some of the frequencies they were using, they cut off contact. But since they went dark, the fragmented code has been looping and growing. The AIs are figuring out the code transmutations and trying to determine if there are any subroutines that we can access. Half of my AI’s are running simulations against it and data sharing. 2,000 IMCs are still more than triple redundant. Once we have that figured out, we hope to disable the pod and bring Mayah back.”

  Brenda wilted. It was around 1:00 in the morning and it had been a long day. She slowly turned to a seat, sat down and looked up at her husband and then Bannon. “You know she’s special?”

  “Yes, I do.” He nodded.

  “She’s really special.” Brenda’s face began to twist in agony.

  “Yes Mrs. Butler, I understand.” Josh struggled to maintain his composed exterior.

  Her chest heaved like the ground was falling out underneath her. She was close to tears. “Do you?” her voice became loud and cracked.

  She spun into Gyasi’s arms, practically knocking him back into his seat. Gyasi’s eyes met Josh’s. Pain shone through the thin veneer of his fortitude that was hiding the unspoken fear that lay between the two of them.

  “Yes…” He stepped over and knelt in front her. He took her hand in his looking into her eyes. “I’m the one who arranged her high school scholarship.”

  Brenda looked like her heart dropped again. She reached out to pat him gently on his cheek and then buried her face into Gyasi’s shirt.

  This is too much, Josh thought. The only thing falling faster than his heart were her tears.

  He sat down next to Brenda, still holding her hand. “The best news that we have so far is that we can communicate with her and her in-game experience hasn’t been altered in any way that we can see. So, it’s just a matter of time before we can bring her home. Her physical body is being taken care of. We’re monitoring her situation very closely and I have the best minds available looking into this. I’ve even broken some laws getting help from some black-market engineers. Also, my dev team is writing a patch to stop anything like this from ever happening again. That should happen by morning.

  “I’m leaving the decision up to you whether or not you want to go public on this. I won’t try to buy your silence, and no matter what you do, I will honor my word and do everything—and I mean everything—in my power to rescue your little girl. Here is my private number.” He shot his information to their crystals. “Don’t be afraid to use it.”

  Brenda squeezed his hand and then suddenly let go to reach for the tissues in her lap. She turned into Gyasi’s chest again, her own shoulders heaving. He stood up, nodding to Gyasi and turned to walk away, not wanting to see this woman fall to pieces any further. He had work to do.

  As he walked out, he was met by one of his assistants. “Make sure they have someplace to stay on the same floor as Mayah and get them anything they need. Clear out an office and bring in some beds. Assign someone from the assistant’s pool and keep this quiet until they decide whether or not they want to go public. I want to get some concrete evidence as to what happened and shut it down before this turns into a freak show.”

  …..

  It was after midnight when Mayah was almost through with the pile of stones. She hadn’t seen or heard Grax in about an hour. And even then, that had only happened because she had accidently kicked him when she lost her concentration. A stone exploded in her hand and she stumbled into him. He was getting good. Her mana was up 7 points and her stamina had risen by 2. Iron will was up by another point as well. She was weary from the 2 tired debuffs she was experiencing. She kept going, knowing that a special ability was going to pop up any second. She wanted to get her Enchantment up to level 3 today if she could.

  DING!!!

  New ability

  Wellspring Level: 1

  The ability to transform your stamina into mana

  +10% to mana regeneration

  Ratio: .4 stamina / 1 points mana or 2 -5

  Ratio will increase with every level.

  Finally!!!

  “Jensen, Wellspring?”

  Aye that’s it. Might as well keep going since that dundercat hasn’t gotten there yet. And moving shadows will drain his mana faster.”

  She groaned, but kept going. “Hurry up, Grax. I don’t want to be here all night.”

  Grax’s voice came from off to the side behind the small mountain of enchanted stones. “I got Wellspring an hour ago. I’ve been laying here ever since.”

  S
he eyed the rock she had in her hand and threw every ounce of mana she had into her enchantment. As it started to buzz out of control she hurled it at him. Even though it landed two feet from him it exploded in a shower of small sharp debris and fire.

  Ding!!!

  New Ability and New Title Created

  Enchanted Grenadier

  Level: 1

  You can make items explode by enchanting them. Sounds a little counter intuitive since you usually enchant something to you know… enchant it, not blow it up. Item will deal physical damage based on the type of material of the item and magical damage based on the type of enchantment. You will be able to better determine the level and the fuse of the grenade in higher levels. Damage will rise in higher levels

  Fuse length 2 seconds from enchantment

  Cost 100MP

  Damage: 10DP

  Bonus for creating a new Ability 100XP

  “Ahhhh… that thing took 10 health off of me.” Grax roared. “I’m gonna get you back, you little witch.”

  “Sorry,” Mayah said, laughing. “I just wanted to scare you a little bit.”

  She looked over to Jensen who was staring at her in awe.

  “What?” she asked reluctantly.

  “I have never in my life seen the likes from an enchanter before. What did you do?”

  “I poured all of my mana into the stone and let it go out of control and then threw it at Grax.”

  “Glory be, I didn’t even know such a thing was possible. That is amazing, lassie! First that kerchief and then that bomb.”

  “Grenade,” she corrected him. “The skill is called enchanted grenadier. I seem to have created it, and got an XP boost and almost another level from it. Let’s see what I got.”

  Name:

  Pretty Princess Cuddle Fluff

  Title(s):

  High Empress of the Pie Mountains

  Enchanted Seamstress

  Enchanted Grenadier

  Race: Princess

  Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

  Level: 3XP: 125/156

  HP: 155Regen: 0.51HP per sec.

  Stats

  Strength:11Max lift:78 lbs.

  Mana: 12Mana pool360MP

  Regen:0.39MP per sec.

  Stamina: 22

  Depletion rate at max effort:

  0.34SP per sec.

  Regen: 1.08SP per min.

  Attributes

  Constitution:5 +15%

  Endurance:5 +17%

  Intelligence:1 +14%

  Agility:1 +15%

  Perception:1 +19%

  Presence:3 +15%

  Abilities

  Awareness Level: 3 (+9% to Perception)

  Iron will Level: 2 (+7% to Endurance +4% to Intelligence)

  Survivalist Level: 1 (+5% to Constitution)

  Achilles Heel Level: 1 (+5% to Agility)

  Skinflint Level: 1 (+5% to Presence)

  Adamant Level: 1 (+10% to all Attributes)

  Enchanted seamstress Level 1

  Enchanted Grenadier Level 1

  Wellspring

  Marathoner Level: 1 (Stat bonuses)

  Dynamo Level: 1 (Stat bonuses)

  Skills

  EnchantmentLevel 2

  Trades

  SewingLevel 2

  God… I'm almost at level 4 and I have 155 HP! She threw her arms around Jensen. “Thank you, Jensen I couldn’t have done this well without you.”

  Jensen blushed a little at the hug. “Yer welcome, little Fluff. It’s been a long time since someone wanted to learn something the hard way instead of just trying to be a dunderhead like some mewling punks I know.” He let out a deep breath, “Now that that’s over with, why don’t we head on over to the tavern for a bite? It’ll help yer stamina and mana recharge.”

  “Your treat?” she asked.

  “Sure, why not.”

  “Yaaaaaay, the cheapskate’s buying!!!!” Grax shouted.

  “For Mayah, you sassy, shadow stepping vermin!”

  “Awww c’mon. You know I don’t have much money.”

  Mayah laughed as the pair continued to argue.

  …..

  “So, let me get this straight, Auset. You want me to one, find out who hired the surveillance team that’s watching you and two, find the whereabouts of one Ms. Delilah Hobson? What have you got to go on?”

  The man speaking to Lieutenant Auset on the Holo was Elias Hazer. The two had met on a “job” in Malay back in ’23, before Hazer had gone freelance. They kept in contact with each other from time to time, but nowadays it was usually more for business than friendship. He was a very tan Caucasian man that could have been from any European country minus Ireland, The United Republic, or anything on the Scandinavian Peninsula. His brown hair looked like he had spent the day surfing and let the sun do the drying. He had a toothpick in his mouth that had been there every time Auset had ever met or talked to him. It bounced around on his lips as he talked.

  “The surveillance is most likely Attactus. I just want confirmation. As for the elusive Ms. Hobson, I'll send you her file. Also, if you could find a way to disable the surveillance drones for a while, I'll add 50% to your check. We can’t do anything from down here.”

  “The usual amount times three then?” he lisped slightly around the toothpick.

  “Times three? You back on the shine???”

  “Hey, I'm just a businessman, and you’ve just given me three jobs ...and I believe you said that you were, ‘trapped in your bunker.’ So yeah, times three.”

  Auset’s knuckles tightened on the arms of his chair. “Fine, just get it done Hazer,” he spit, slamming his fist on the disconnect to shut off the holo-projector. He growled loudly, making Hicks take an involuntary step back from his customary place at his elbow. He slowed his breathing, returning to his chair and to his thoughts of one day choking Hazer.

  …..

  “So now ye two need to get to level 5 so ye can go onto the advanced hunting grounds. Ye could probably dust off some of the lower level creatures without much trouble, but there be some beasties over there that offer a fair dinkum of trouble. Tomorrow I want ye two to go out and get some joint kills. Party up and share the rewards.”

  “Sounds like a good idea.”

  “Why do I have to team up with this noob?” Grax asked, giving Mayah a sarcastic grin. “Plus, I gotta go to school in the morning.”

  “This noob is gonna dust you if let your mouth keep doing all of the work,” Mayah sneered at Grax playfully.

  “Yeah right. If that happens I'll sign a loyalty pact with you and quest all over Majesta with your sorry skirt.”

  She didn’t think he said skirt but the maturity filters would keep her from hearing or seeing anything inappropriate.

  “And if I win, I get to put a bow on you. Deal?”

  “And if you fail, you carry me everywhere. Like a mount.”

  They shook on it.

  “S’not gonna happen, noob.” Grax’s eyes were slit into daggers.

  “Just you wait.” Mayah stared right back, unfazed.

  “Okay, I gotta log and get some sleep. I'll play sick and see you in 36 hours game time.”

  “Fluff, that means tomorrow ye’ll be on yer own or ye can team up with another player and try to get to level 5.”

  “No fair she’s stuck in the game! She’s gonna level up a bunch before I get back. There’s no way that deal is still valid.”

  “So, what color bow do you want?”

  “Not gonna happen, princess.”

  “I’m gonna make you wear It,” she laughed in his face.

  “Look, Your Worshipfulness, let's get one thing straight. I take orders from just one person: me.” Grax growled at her.

  “It's a wonder you're still alive.” Mayah stared him down. “Now get out of here, you walking carpet.”

  Grax glared at her for a moment and then gave her a knuckle bump. “For your ‘quote game.’ Better get a cat sized saddle,” he zinged as he faded from the tavern.


  “Please feed that feline terror a piece of humble pie for me?” Jensen’s eyes begged.

  “You got it. I might as well turn in. I'll bring you your share off my loot tomorrow.”

  “Oh no worries about that. I'm expecting great things from you. Come and see me before you head off to the beginner’s woods though.”

  “Will do. I got something I want to finish before I go out. See you around noon.”

  She walked back to the dorm and up to her room. The piles of swatches lay there waiting for her. She dropped her bag onto the bed, feeling the weight drop from her. She sat down and called up her MemCrystal desktop. All of her comfy settings were here. She reorganized the swatches as the chair began to soften and recline into her familiar oversized chair and she began to work. 10 swatches of speed soon lay next to 10 swatches of mana regeneration. Next were intelligence, stamina, fire, ice, earth, and then air. She sewed each kind of swatch end to end using the thread that boosted the same stat. She paid no heed to what color went where. She just mechanically grabbed the next swatch off of the pile.

  The strips were spread out across her bed. She put them in a hurried order. It’s all over the place anyway. She stitched them together, making a patchwork sheet that was 36 by 40 inches. She fashioned a cord from a few of the swatches, cutting them into four lengthwise strips each, sewed those end to end. She finished the cord by rolling it, then running a stitch down its length. Then she folded the top of the large sheet to place a small hem along the top of her square. She passed the cord through the finished hem and cut small eyelets for the cord to pass through. She finished the hem and looked at it for a second. Not quite finished.

  She took the swatches of perception and made a 6x3 swatch rectangle that she folded and seamed on a side next to the fold. She then hemmed the entire edge of the folded rectangle to get rid of any loose threads. Then she stitched it across the loose gathers of the larger sheet.

  “Well, might as well try it on.”