Lost in the Game

by Christopher Keene

  Being the most tech-efficient of us, Brock grabbed the manual and flipped it open. “Huh. Runs off Wona’s satellite and links to our Dream Engines through radio waves. Old school.”

  Well, Windsor did say they can’t be traced.

  “And they’re so tiny!” David exclaimed.

  I lifted the foam padding from the case. “Pretty heavy too. Must be how they could even fly in a breeze. Still, I wouldn’t trust them in a strong wind like this.” I looked out the window, noticing the high winds outside. “We’ll need to practice with them while we wait for the storm to pass.”

  Chloe picked one out and lifted an eyebrow at Brock. “And you say they can be used through our Dream Engines.”

  Brock nodded, although he still had his nose stuck in the manual.

  “Windsor said that they are supposed to be untraceable, so I assume the software works without needing access to the Internet either.”

  Keri shook her head, seeming unimpressed by the drones. “We go from first class tickets and five-star hotels to staying in a shack until we can use these things. That’s nothing! Someone just died because of us, and if we get caught this time, we’re probably going to die too!”

  She had hit the nail on the head. We were taking a big risk.

  Brock looked up from the manual and inspected one of the drones. “These things are set to explode when deactivated without the command,” he said as though looking for the bomb and then returning his eyes to the manual. “But seriously, this tech is far superior to anything on that plane or in the hotel. The only thing that comes close is our Dream Engines, and even that’s a stretch.”

  Brock’s words seemed to shine a ray of hope on Chloe’s despair. Her determined frown returned and she pulled out one of the SD cards and held it up. The thing was tiny but undoubtedly powerful.

  “Well, after all we’ve been through, I’m not turning back now.” She stood up, strode to the door, and grabbed her bag with her Dream Engine in it. “If practice is what we need to control these things, then there’s no point in wasting time.” She inserted the card into the side of her Dream Engine. “Let’s get started.”

  Chapter 21: Raymond Cranel

  Frank hadn’t seen Siena since she had entered Malcolm’s Debug Room, let alone been in contact with her. Despite trying to message her over the DS messenger or on social media, she hadn’t replied, and Frank didn’t know if she couldn’t reply or had just been unwilling to. Either way, Frank was concerned.

  With no idea of where she lived IRL, the Dream State was the only place she could find her. She had resorted to roaming the Dream State, visiting each dungeon Siena had taken her to in the hope that she would run into her. The Snake Den, Dragon’s Nest, Lantis—she went to and completed each dungeon with Tessa. Tessa was happy to tag along, but she was just as baffled by Siena’s absence as she was.

  The longer Frank was in the game, the more annoyed she was getting with Fenrir. He actually made some of the dungeons more difficult, Lantis more so than the Snake Den considering most of it was underwater. After they had defeated the Leviathan, they were flushed down the slip-and-slide-like whirlpool and washed up on the shore of Jossi Island’s waterfall.

  Having seen how easily Ray had controlled his pet, Frank was considering switching hers up for a ghost monster herself. Considering it can possess other monsters, there’s no telling what monsters I could command . . . maybe even NPCs.

  As she came to her feet, her wolfhound padded out from the lagoon and shook its damp fur with a spray of water. Seeing the wet dog made her feel a little underwhelmed. After all, Ray had shown her that there was so much more potential to using the Tamer Niche.

  What other feats can pets achieve?

  The one thing she had liked about being a Heavy was the anonymity of being covered under heavy plate armor. If she could somehow combine the possession of monsters or NPCs with her hiding among other armored forms, she could gain an advantage that few Dream State players could claim. Being able to fool players into fighting the wrong avatar would be like having the game equivalent of another life.

  “Yet in order to achieve this, I’ll first need to know if it can be done,” Frank had pondered while talking with Tessa over the community chat. “And the person most likely to know that was the Screamer, Ray.”

  Tessa gave her a mischievous grin. “You say you want to learn how to do what he can do, but you really just want an excuse to talk to such a pretty boy.”

  Frank shrugged. “Chloe’s brother’s a Screamer, Siena’s old buddy’s a Screamer, and Brock was friends with most of them. Why don’t you just accuse me of trying to include myself in that list by creating my own connection with one of the bad guys? That might be a little more believable.”

  “More believable than you going after a cute guy?” Tessa scoffed as they walked to the steaming blue Gateway. “Why don’t you just admit that you’re interested in him and do some Internet stalking instead of wasting your time trying to convince me?”

  Frank nodded. “Alright then. Nothing wrong with doing a bit of research, right?”

  “Keep telling yourself that,” Tessa remarked.

  She selected the log out function and awoke slowly on her bed, a whine filling her ears. Being a clean freak, her room was as tidy as always, her bed made although creased and covered in several pillows and plush toys. Her desk was clean, with her monitor glowing through the dim light that pervaded her rainbow-colored curtains.

  She sat up, straightened her duvet, and sat down at her desk. She pulled up her social media contacts and typed in ‘Brock’ before messaging him: “Can you give me the full name of the Screamer who called himself Ray?”

  Ever since they had agreed to team up to fight Malcolm, Frank had all the contact details of Siena’s friends, but she hadn’t yet contacted Brock himself. Up until now, she’d had no need to. She didn’t know why, but she didn’t get a reply from him, so she decided to take a different approach. Looking up Brock’s in-game alias, Brockodile, she found his old blog, one he hadn’t updated since releasing the news of Malcolm’s Ghost. However, she found herself fortunate that his second to last blog post had a list of the names of the surviving beta testers.

  So his full name is Raymond L. Cranel.

  Turned out a name was all Frank needed. Putting on some music over headphones to drown out the ringing in her ears from her recurrent tinnitus, she looked up Raymond’s past social media accounts and read through his interests. She then scrolled down and read his most recent posts.

  One read: I’m hyped for this opportunity to join Wona’s design team. So many of the gamers I met at the Wona conference are going to be in on it as well!

  Frank assumed most of the beta players had been as naively optimistic.

  It only makes sense that he talked about it often, but there looks to be more above . . . Wouldn’t Wona have made him keep this in check?

  She continued to scroll up, becoming more and more confused as she read further. Why he had posted so much after being recruited by Wona didn’t make any sense. After all, she had heard they all had to sign confidentiality agreements. At first she thought the rest of his posts would have been about his personal life, but then she saw the gap in dates before and after Wona’s experiments.

  She frowned when reading updates concerning his time in the asylum, baffled that he was lucid enough to complain about its food and staff. None of this made sense to her. Raymond had been in the first set of tests concerning the DSD, yet from what she had heard, everyone from those tests had been killed from an overdose of the chemical. If that was true, not only was he the only who had survived the first round of beta tests, but less than a year after, he was writing like he hadn’t been affected to the same degree as the second round, either.

  What’s going on? Does this guy have some kind of immunity that allowed him to survive what others couldn’t?

  She continued reading about Raymond’s time in the Wona asylum,
noting his complaints about the drugs they were giving him, the dark humor in his words making her giggle all the while. What surprised her was how his symptoms didn’t coincide with how clearly he wrote. She got to the post with the largest gap in dates.

  “It seems Wona isn’t done with me yet, after all. Guess who just got offered another job?”

  Another job? Was this him being approached by Malcolm? And yet he continued to post, even after he was kidnapped.

  Why Malcolm allowed Raymond to do this, or even how he could communicate so freely when the others couldn’t, only increased the air of mystery around Raymond Cranel. From his social media posts just a month after, Raymond seemed unaffected by the aftereffects of the beta trials and, according to his later posts, he was now freely and willingly working for Malcolm.

  How did Brock not know about this? Did he block him after he was taken? What on earth is going on?

  She read his latest post, once again utterly baffled that date of the post was dated only a month ago:

  “Looks like my team has been given the green light. If you’re a fan of the Dream State and want to see some chaos go down, keep an eye on Heaven during its grand opening because things are about to go crazy!”

  Frank noticed the post was dated the day before Heaven’s opening, meaning that he had voluntarily caused the trouble that occurred that day with the other Screamers. Raymond wasn’t a hostage, he was an accomplice. Rather than frighten her away, it only made her more interested.

  Heart beating in her chest, she decided to try reaching out and see what came of it. She pulled up his user ID in her messenger, hands tingling as she typed out:

  “I want to try and possess an NPC or another avatar. Is this possible? Can you teach me?”

  She sent the message and let out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding. Although she knew the trouble this could cause for her, when Raymond didn’t reply she still felt a little disappointed.

  Chapter 22: Ghost Drones

  You can tell a lot about a person by how long it takes them to recover from a traumatic event. For people like Brock, Chloe, and I, witnessing the death of a stranger could be contrasted with events where actual friends and loved ones were killed. As heartless as it was to say, it truly did matter how much you cared for the person.

  Keri and David were another story.

  From her solemn listlessness, it seemed like she had escaped into another world without the need of DSD. Having witnessed such a gruesome murder would end up changing her. I could not tell at this point whether the change was for the better or worse.

  “Keri, it’s okay,” Brock said, trying his best to console her. “Look on the bright side: at least he has no family.”

  “Why? Because then no one will miss him?” she snapped back.

  “Yeah, I mean, that’s good right?” Brock sounded confused as he lost control of the conversation. “I mean, no one’s relying on him to—”

  “Leave her be, Brock. She needs time alone, and I need your help with these.” I gestured to the drones.

  When we’d all had a go with a drone, it became apparent that Keri couldn’t focus on practicing with them, so we decided as a group that she would be the one to be excluded from the mission. There were only four drones after all, and one screw up could have meant the rest of us being found out.

  It’s life and death now, and we can’t risk it.

  The drones themselves were amazing. The software they used was a direct link between reality and virtual reality. It gave the illusion that you were walking through a place in the real world, when really you were only controlling a drone while the software put its camera’s visuals and associated feelings directly into your head. The feeling of being in a dream in the real world was something else.

  Windsor wasn’t lying about these things being state-of-the-art.

  I could see why he called them Ghost Drones. In a manner of speaking, these drones really did allow you to astroproject. It worked similar to the mounts, the drone being directed to wherever you focused. The camera would then move, allowing you the feeling of moving wherever it moved, and although there was an out-of-body experience that came with it, it was something we had all grown used to in the Dream State.

  Not only did the Ghost software allow us to move like we were really there, but it also allowed us to see each other. My teammates’ avatars were each being projected over one of the three other drones.

  After I was confident we had mastered using the drones, or at least a level of mastery we were comfortable with in the time provided, I decided to travel into town and make a call home. Although the town of Tutuala was small—a discovery I had made with the drones themselves—there was a direct-to-satellite Wi-Fi connection center where tourists could make international calls, and I decided that I should call Mom, just in case things took a turn for the worse. I was thankful she picked up right away despite us being in different time zones.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Mom, it’s me.”

  “Oh, hi Noah. What a nice surprise.”

  “Yeah, I just wanted to call and tell you . . .” I stopped, thinking about what would make her feel happy. “Chloe has said she would be happy to spend Christmas with us.”

  “That’s good to hear!”

  I nodded although I knew she couldn’t see through my poker face over the phone. “I also want to say that . . . I love you and I appreciate that you were there for me.”

  “It was rough there for a couple of months, but you pulled through like I knew you would. I’m so proud to see you back on your feet again after the crash . . . and Sue.”

  I nodded, feeling like my eyes had sprung a leak. “Anyway, that’s all I wanted to say.”

  “It was good to hear it. It’s always good to hear from you, Noah, and you know I’m always up for talking whenever you need me.”

  I wiped a tear away. “I know. Goodbye, Mom.”

  “Goodbye, dear.”

  I put down my phone and breathed out, using my sleeve to wipe away the leftover tears before gritting my teeth and saying to myself, “Alright. Hard part’s over. The rest is easy from here.”

  I made my way back to the shack. On the way, I caught sight of a man in military uniform. I couldn’t remember if it was one of those who had killed Philippe, but I wasn’t going to take my chances. I took another road and made a detour back to the shack, luckily not running into any camouflaged men on my way.

  Entering the shack we had made our home for the past day, I couldn’t help but be thankful that the place had electricity, a fridge full of food, and a coal range to keep us warm at night. Without beds, however, it was the least we could have asked for.

  We decided to wait until dark before preparing for our flight over the strait, feeling the cover of darkness would be our best ally.

  The batteries on the drones were incredibly efficient. We had only had to charge them once over the last day, and that was for this mission. Even then they’d had enough juice in them for us to check out the entire village from end to end. We ghost-stalked some of the soldiers to make sure none of them knew we were still in the village. Despite no bus picking us up, it appeared that just telling Riccardo’s aunty we were leaving was enough to convince them.

  “You might want to take ol’ Barky for a walk while we’re under,” David said to Keri, having dubbed Philippe’s dog Barky, although it hadn’t barked once since we had arrived. “Can’t have him licking us and trying to wake us up at the wrong moment.”

  I sat down on a deck chair and picked up my Dream Engine. “Best not take the main streets though, just in case you get spotted.”

  Keri didn’t respond verbally. She just looked around wistfully for the leash and eventually found one on the nail that been hammered into the steel wall. She walked over, put it on tail-wagging Barky, and left without a word.

  “What are we going to do with her?” David asked, his voice more worried than his words sugg
ested.

  “We can’t do anything until we’re away and out of this mess.”

  Brock sat down, his helmet already crowning his head. “Alright, I’ve managed to scan and incorporate a picture of the map of Jaco Island to the corner of our Ghost Vision, as well as the map of the laboratory itself. We should all be able to access it and see our locations as we move over the island.”

  David grinned as he picked up his own helmet. “Couldn’t help but make this raid as game-like as possible, could you?”

  “Would you have it any other way?” Brock said with a wink.

  “It will definitely make it easier,” Chloe said. “Plus we’ll have a four-man team just like those old-school RPGs.”

  “Final Fan—”

  “Don’t even say it,” I interrupted. “We have enough distraction as it is. Remember guys, this isn’t a game, this is real life with real consequences.”

  David put his hands up in defense. “Alright, we do get it, Noah. Last game reference, I swear.”

  “And a fitting one at that.” Brock raised a water bottle filled with DSD. “I propose a toast to victory and finding Lucas.”

  Chloe raised her bottle. “Too right.”

  We all tapped bottles before taking a large gulp, pulling down our Dream Engine helmets, and activating the Ghost Drone software. Despite what was at stake, we were under in a matter of minutes. Once the drones were activated and airborne, the four of us hovered out of the shack and made our way to the bay.

  The wind was calm and we felt very little drift as we came to the shore. None of us had let our drones pass over the water before, but as Chloe took her first step and we followed after, it felt like we were walking over the water . . . and then flying. As quickly as the drones would take us, we glided over the ocean, determined to reach Jaco Island before midnight.

  “Can we talk? Well, I guess that answers my question already,” David said.

  Chloe nodded. “I tried it with Noah while you were getting some fresh air. No one in the real world can hear us, so we can communicate as we search the place.”