Two ideas were fighting in my head: run while I still had the chance, or go try and find Clayton? I turned my head, bewildered and saw the old man in the wheelchair beckoning to me.
And so I went.
"Hey, jerkoff, I'm not done with you yet!" the skinny one shouted behind me.
I quickened my pace, hearing running behind me, but I turned around and saw the skinny one standing in place and staring at the old man. He made a hand gesture I didn't understand. The boy nodded and lost interest in me.
I walked up to the old man. He studied me for some time. The donuts were lying untouched on his legs, which were covered in a blanket. Only then did I realize the hunchback was no kid, just a very small adult. He came up to my shoulder, if not lower. His face was too aged. There were deep wrinkles in his forehead, and his skin looked unhealthy and gray.
"Hello. I was invited here by someone named Clayton. Sorry to say I don't know his last name. He lives in block thirty-six."
"No Clayton livin’ here," the old man mumbled.
"Mhm," the hunchback nodded. "No Clayton."
"I talked with him this morning! Well, not here..." I stumbled, not knowing if I should talk about the game. "He asked me to come here..."
"Clayton is gone now!" the hunchback looked at the sky.
"Where did he go?"
"This morning he kicked up daisies. He died," the old man said, taking a nibble of a donut. His shoulders heaved and I couldn't tell if he was laughing or crying. "He bought the farm."
"What happened?"
The old man choked and coughed for a long time before he could answer. The hunchback knocked heartily on his back but that didn't help. Finally the piece of pastry dislodged from his windpipe. The disabled man wiped away sweat and tears.
"Why did you want to see him, sonny?"
"I... owe him," I muttered. "What happened?"
"Too much Dis," the boy answered.
"What do you mean?!"
The old man sighed and said:
"He and I... were neighbors. He used to be one of those – one of those citizens. He piloted freighters, said he'd even been to Mars. Then one day he crashed and got crippled like me. In the end they took his citizenship and he ended up here. He worked in Dis, taught common sense to Trixie here," he said, nodding at the hunchback. "He was a good man."
"Good man!" Trixie confirmed, nodding rapidly. "What a shame!"
"So, what happened?"
"Uh..." the old man mumbled, choosing his words. "This morning his pod alarm went off. A medical module flew in and took his body. He was already dead. As for what happened or why, they don't tell us. The dickheads!" the old man clapped a hand on the wheelchair lever. "I hate them so much!"
Dying in a pod was business as usual, considering that many people spent most of their lives in one. And that went double for Clayton, considering his disability and the conditions he lived in.
I had nothing more to do here. Apparently, Dargo/Clayton had no relatives or close friends, and his body was immediately taken away for recycling. I'd never get the chance to thank him. That thought made me feel bad even though, just a few days ago, I had no idea he even existed.
"Very sorry for your loss," the proper words just bubbled up in my memory. "May he rest in peace."
"You're a good kid," the old man rasped back. "Clayton can hear you from the heavens."
"Clayton can hear you!" the hunchback's face melted into a smile and that smile was kind, open and sincere even though his mouth was missing many teeth.
With a nod farewell, I silently walked to the flying car. No one got in my way: the young people were up to their own business, having lost interest in me, and only the old people on the bench, actively gesticulating and arguing, wouldn't take an eye off me.
Once in the flying car, I saw them run over to the wheelchair to ask what happened. The hunchback was not next to the old man. In fact, I saw him next to my flying car. I lowered the window. He moaned and groaned, pretending to be a zombie.
"Oh-wah-yah, Scyth! Oh-wah-yah!" he started grinning into the window and gave a rollicking laugh.
I took off sharply, not realizing right away what he was saying. As soon as I left Cali Bottom, a sticky sweat came over me. It was not hard to connect Trixie with the unusually smart zombie from the instance, plus the hunchback recognized me and called me by my nick. That connection led me to a logical conclusion. What if Dargo giving up and Clayton's death were connected?
And what if someone from the corporation decided to try and line up my passing the temple crypt with my trip to Cali Bottom...
My leg slammed unwittingly into the floor, sharply speeding up the flying car. Considering the vast amounts of interest and money in Disgardium, cheating in the virtual world could lead to a very real prison sentence.
Interlude One. Clayton
"HE’S GONE NOW," said Trixie.
"How is he?" Clayton asked.
"He's a good kid, Clay. He didn't chicken out! He just flew away!"
Clayton nodded. Trixie's uncle had already called and told him that the boy was driving the flying car manually. To him that said a lot. From his window on the thirty-sixth floor he watched a flying car pass by. That must have been Scyth.
A sad smile crawled onto his wrinkled face. With his one good hand, he raised a donut to his nose and drew in the long-forgotten smell – an aroma of childhood. His Russian grandmother called them "pyshky" and when her grandson came to visit she made so many that, for the next few days, Clayton himself would look like a donut.
Pyshki fried in oil... Clayton laughed and took a little bite, taking in the flavor. The last time he ate something like this was many years ago when he was a successful spaceship pilot. And he had more than five thousand days in space! If only he hadn’t gotten in that accident! The rescue shuttle didn't work right when entering the atmosphere, the harsh landing... Almost his entire body was paralyzed, his status was changed, he lost his citizenship. The months in a coma ate through his savings and the compensation payed out by the company before he even woke up. And he could only dream of an operation and implants.
"Sorry, Clay," said the man from the union, his eyes downcast. "The guys are sympathetic, but... We already spent so much on keeping you alive."
The only thing he had left, other than the easy way out of suicide, was Cali Bottom and dis. Only that, nothing else. Just dis, an inferior product. A mere substitute for real life.
And now he was locked in the body of the Cursed Lich, boss of the local crypts, but that wasn't so bad. At the very least he could walk in that world.
In Disgardium, the developers didn’t bother making multiples of the same instance for different groups of players. It was thought this would make it more realistic. An instance was a separate, persistent part of the game and, if there was someone inside, no one else could enter.
As a rule, they were populated by scripted hostile characters, but this year the corporation cautiously started implementing the "human factor" in some locations.
A number of non-key characters in less densely populated locations started coming under control of hired noncitizen players, selected by some criteria known only to Snowstorm. It was all top secret and disclosing it could be punished with a lifetime ban. And for a noncitizen, a lifetime ban in dis was basically like being sentenced to death by starvation. No one in their right mind would share that they were playing a “mob” or “bot,” as the players contemptuously called them, instead of some miner, cleaner or lumberjack.
But Trixie was not in his right mind. To be honest, he was mentally a child. And to Clayton and his uncle, he was just a boy even at his nearly forty years. He was significantly behind in his mental development, stuck at the level of a kid. So he quickly shared his new role in the game world – he was a zombie in the temple crypt. No one took the hunchback seriously, or believed him. Other than Clayton who was friends with his uncle, so he immediately realized what was what.
He then became an Emissary of Destroying Plague, w
hich would the next global cataclysm dreamt up by the corporation. Dargo the Cursed Lich! Ha!
For the first few weeks, he reveled in his role as crypt boss. As soon as he was alerted that players had come into the ins, if he wasn't in the game, he dropped everything and loaded up dis. Sometimes, he stayed in the game to sleep during the odd gap between incursions.
The first few skeletons and zombies obediently got in line, carrying out his commands. As he grew in level, he learned new things, and his crypt army gained new slots.
He managed to infect a rat with the Curse of the Undead, and it spread the infection. That was how a new type of mob appeared in the instance – zombie rats. It was a shame, but they did not obey him. That said, they didn't take up any slots in his army, so he left them locked in the wine cellar to stop them from gnawing at his human zombies.
After that, he experimented with the cursed magic he had available and managed to create the Foul Quease – a disgusting creature sewn together from bits and pieces of human bodies. This particularly strong mob might be crypt boss one day, if it leveled up enough. A little work on his abilities, combining attributes and skills, was fun although also stomach-turning. Still Clayton had long stopped turning up his nose and now looked on his mobs as pets – his personal guard. And really, that was basically what they were.
One day, as the alarm rang out to say a new group of players had entered, he cleverly changed tactics, placing limited contingents throughout his dungeon. Obviously, sooner or later the group would pass his crypt, killing everything right down to the lich himself. But Dargo studied his enemies and changed tactics every time, not letting them just have it and tricking groups of players that came into his – his! – dungeon for easy gain.
Dargo and his underlings all earned experience and slowly but surely grew in level. Too bad only one of them was being controlled by a person and didn't obey the primitive behavior scripts. And it was doubly bad that this underling was Trixie. He was, to put it lightly, not the brightest bulb. Still, say what you will, it was company. And when there was nobody in the instance, they found things to discuss.
As for earning experience, it was slow going because every time he died some of it was lost. But they had an eternity ahead of them. A game eternity at the very least, or so said the introductory briefing Snowstorm sent him when he started this assignment. At least until the threat of the Destroying Plague was eliminated by the forces of all Disgardium.
And there would be new assignments after that, not necessarily playing evil. Although to Clayton's eye, they were the evil ones. Fat and happy, having replaced real life with three-dimensional renderings.
Damn these game conventions! If only it were possible, he would gather up all his mobs and have them greet the players together at the front door...
In two or three years, Dargo might take over the whole temple of the Radiant God and grow beyond a local instance into a global one like, for example, the infected ruins of Tristad.
But yesterday that weird kid came by. He wouldn't die or disappear from the crypt, time and again respawning right where he died. At first Clayton figured it was some bug and sent a ticket to tech support. But he was told it was all part of the game.
A crypt boss complaining about a cheap player, haha. Clayton smiled. Trixie interpreted that chuckle his own way and handed him another donut. The last one.
"Here you go."
"You're still here? Go on, Trixie. Your uncle's waiting."
"Okay," the hunchback nodded.
He didn't need to say anything twice. Said and done. For Trixie, that was the easiest way to live.
"Trixie, wait."
"Yeah, Clay?"
"If you come across that kid... Alex..."
"Scyth?"
"I always said you're smart, Trix! Yeah, Scyth. If you meet him – here or in dis – help him out. Alright?"
"I'll help. I'll help Scyth. Clay says, Trixie does."
"Thanks. And another thing. Tell your uncle he's a good guy."
"Uncle, good," the scamp smiled, revealing his sparse decaying teeth.
When the hunchback walked away, Clayton, slowly savored the donut, finished his UNB and spent a long time sitting and staring out the window. Yeah! He had a window. And from it he could see the sky. Sure it was tantalizingly just out of reach but, in a way, it kept him anchored to earth.
Seeing that kid, who kept trying to kill him even when it was obviously hopeless, had stirred something in him. He wasn’t like the others. They always gave up after a few failed attempts. The lich could sense their frustration. No, his kid reminded him of himself at that age, when the sickly asthma-stricken Clay used to smile, running around the building until he coughed his lungs out so he could finally earn a commission and one day join the flight academy.
All his rage at the injustice of the world, at life, at how fate had turned its back on him, found embodiment in this series of killings, which he quickly grew bored of. Clayton killed the boy every way he could, mocked him and sneered, using all the phrases in his control panel – the corporation didn't let him talk on his own.
But the boy wouldn’t break. At a certain point he thought this Scyth must have been a bug, not a player. Just a system error.
But it was no error. Tired, Clayton decided to figure out what was happening, and didn't kill him. Apparently, this was a real teenage boy. A real person, and he was reaching for the stars.
And then Clayton broke. He activated hardcore mode, which made character death final, then the instance disappeared and he allowed himself to be killed. That option was put in for spice, giving those like Dargo the Lich ten times more experience and letting them play on their nerves. He stood to lose months of progress, after which he would be starting over in the body of, perhaps, some brainless zombie. Not much of an alternative. And that wasn’t exactly the risk Clayton was taking.
This morning he decided to quit this job and get back to what he was doing before – working in a quarry. He still had old friends there and, even if the pay was less, at least he had more people to talk to than Trixie the zombie.
Scyth killed him, the temple crypts were cleansed of evil, and Clayton himself was completely satisfied with his decision, left dis and wheeled down to the only shower for the whole floor to get cleaned up. When he came back, he discovered a notification from Snowstorm. He had been accused of unfair conduct and breaking his contract. And at the end of the sparse message, they slapped a lifetime ban on the noncitizen Andrew Clayton. And that applied to all game worlds.
There was no longer anything to live on. Or for. Clayton figured the boy didn't need to know, so he asked Trixie's uncle to keep an eye out for him. If Scyth came, he asked him to say that Clayton was dead.
But still, something made him wait until evening. Either he wanted to make sure he wasn't wrong and the boy was worth his salt and would keep his promise or he was simply dreaming of having one last donut. Maybe it was a bit of both.
But now his final goal in life had been achieved. And there was no more reason to stick around. But in the afterlife... there might still be some fun to be had.
Clayton rolled over to the narrow, wide-open window, pulled himself up onto the sill and, for the last time in his life, he flew.
Chapter Twelve. Threats and Rewards
THE SUN WAS almost down when I got home, tired and harried by the traffic on the airways.
Mom immediately flung herself at me.
"Alex, where have you been?" she asked insinuatingly.
The question seemed strange considering she could always track my location and see exactly where I was and when.
AT poked my arm with his wet nose and licked my hand. I pet the catdog, he wagged his little tail and, not raising my gaze I answered:
"I went to see a friend, mom."
"How could you have any friends in Cali Bottom?"
"From Dis. He's gone now."
"What does that mean?"
"He died."
"What?!"
I walked coolly into the bathroom, giving curt answers to all my mom's questions. Based on her reddened face and somewhat raspy voice, she and father had just come off a ghastly squabble. And now father was nowhere to be found, probably off drinking in some bar to wait out mom's rage. When she got mad, it seemed to me, her eyes flared, her voice turned pebbly and some black wings sprouted from her back. I mean, you know, like in movies about the devil possessing people.
Finally, she said her fill and left me in peace, mumbling that my lunch had turned into dinner, and I could heat it up myself if I cared to. And I did not. Not tasting anything, I shoveled down the cold synthetic-meat cutlets and dove into my pod.
Class-A Threat (Disgardium Book #1) LitRPG Series Page 10