by Pavel Kornev
Still, I knew the answer. I knew exactly what I’d done. They must have thought that my use of the charmed skull was a breach of agreement, which they used as a formal excuse to forcefully log me out. Formal being the operative word. I was 100% sure of that.
Status: Offline
THE MESSAGES faded. So did my mind.
I came round in my virtual capsule. People in white coats helped me out, laid me on a gurney and, ignoring my protests, wheeled me away to do some tests. Unlike last time, there was no question of muscular atrophy. I was in excellent shape. My aching left cheekbone, sore neck, tender back and the itching in my scorched hands the only reminder of-
Wait a sec! Scorched?
I focused on my sensations, forcing myself to forget the injuries I’d received while in the game. Or should I say, I tried to force myself to forget them. I felt marginally better but the discomfort was still there.
Oh great. Was I supposed to suffer from phantom pains now?
Having said that, I was much more worried about the real-world consequences of my escapades than I was in the virtual ones. Namely, I wanted to know what was going to happen to my contract.
Would they cancel it? Sure they would, but under what pretext?
That’s why, when I saw visitors entering my ward — the familiar stern lady and the Asian guy — I went straight on the offensive.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?! Why did you have to abort the game? That wasn’t the agreement!”
My protests didn’t seem to have any effect on them. Unsurprised, I listened to them quoting the paragraph prohibiting the use of any undocumented game features which was followed by what sounded like an open threat,
“John, your actions give us grounds to believe that it was you, and not any mythical hackers, who were behind the initial hacking attempt.”
I chuckled. “Oh, give me a break! You started it all, didn’t you? Who set the Spawn clan against me? Who told them to offer a reward for John Doe’s head? It’s common knowledge that the Spawn work in close cooperation with admins who monitor their actions at all times!”
The lady frowned.
The Asian just shrugged my arguments off. “No one promised you special treatment, John. No one was obliged to sort out your conflicts for you. And in any case, this is not what it’s all about...”
“Oh yes, it is!” I shouted, losing control. “Had it not been for them hunting me down...”
“I don’t think so,” the Asian said softly but resolutely. “The decision to abort the experiment was made already yesterday. We just needed some time to collect all the necessary data.”
“Or really? Why, may I ask?”
“We weren’t happy with your brain activity readings. Or should I say, with its overly intensive interactions with the VR equipment. When immersion is limited to eight hours a day, the human mind has enough time to adapt to ensure it doesn’t confuse VR with the real world. That allows us to maintain a perfect balance of both tactile and painful sensations. In your case, however, the many months you spent in full immersion seem to have altered your mind to what appears to be an irreversible degree. You have embraced the game to the point where you believed it to be equal to the real world. Your pain threshold became abnormally low. Is that not the case?”
I nodded. “Can’t you disable painful sensations?”
He shrugged. “We can, but they’re only an indicator of the degree of your mind’s immersion into the game. Let me repeat: this process is irreversible. One day your brain will believe in your character’s death so much that it might extrapolate it to itself, causing your heart to stop. That’s why we’ve made the decision to deny you access to the Towers of Power, effective indefinitely.”
I struggled to keep my mouth shut. He must have noticed the grimace that flitted across my face because he shook his head.
“You’ve been lucky, really. Even a highly adaptive mind like yours could still crumble under the consequences of...”
Adaptive mind? The scumbag!
Bursting with indignation, I mustered all my willpower to restrain myself. “So what’s gonna happen next?” I said in a stifled voice.
The lady handed me a manila file with some more paperwork. “Next, you’ll sign the final non-disclosure agreement. The monies due to you for the levels you’ve honestly gained will be transferred to your account within three work days. Here, look. Our lawyer has already signed all the paperwork.”
I could have continued to protest, I suppose, but by now I could see it was all pretty pointless. Without uttering a word, I scribbled my signature in all the right places. Sixty grand was still sixty grand. Any way you looked at it, I’d still managed to get my pound of flesh out of them.
The two were already headed for the exit when I stopped the Asian. “Can I have a word in private, please?”
Surprised, he dismissed the woman and smiled. “Yes, what is it?”
“The Angel of Darkness, right?” I shot the question at him like a heavy lead bullet.
“Pardon me?”
“You’re the Angel of Darkness, aren’t you?”
It was his earlier mention of my “adaptive mind” as well as a few other slips of the tongue which had given me the idea. Some things that the Angel had said sounded too similar for comfort to some of the Asian’s own remarks. And even though I’d once got a glimpse of the Spawn’s virtual supervisor — who looked perfectly Caucasian — that meant nothing: a corporate officer of his level could generate any kind of appearance for himself.
He shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t think I understand...” he turned back to the door.
“So you want to try your hand at the auction, great!” I spat. “But how can you be sure that the skull of the bone dragon will end up in your possession? A unique artifact, one of a kind! I’m locked out of the game, aren’t I?”
He slowly closed the door, turned around and gave me a long look.
I made a show of checking my hospital gown. “All clear! It’s not bugged!”
“How much?” he asked.
“A million and a half in the game gold,” I repeated the sum I’d heard from Lloyd.
“Deal.”
That’s when I realized I must have sold myself too short. “Plus fifteen percent to get the money out,” I added, trying to rectify my blunder.
He gave me a doubtful look but nodded, apparently unwilling to haggle.
“Plus the answers to my questions,” I continued to dictate my conditions.
He didn’t seem to like this last one. “Why would you want to know, John?”
I tapped my temple with a finger. “I just want a confirmation of my own deductions. One Robert Young, a dark paladin — he’s your man, isn’t he? He’s got nothing to do with my old friend Garth a. k. a. Barth, has he?”
“First time I hear about him. Robert Young, a dark paladin?” the Asian said with a meaningful smile. “And as for your Barth, or Garth, or whoever is known under a multitude of other names, he’s been banned for numerous breaches of our terms and conditions. The blocking principle is based on the method of brain activity data analysis so there’s no way he can possibly get around it.”
“When was he banned?”
“Six months ago.”
Shit! I knew it! I should have known they’d manipulated me into using the wretched skull! I was supposed to turn into the bone dragon and die! And it was the Spawn who’d lured me into the trap, or should I say, the Angel of Darkness?
I heaved a sigh. “But why? Why did you need to make it so convoluted? Of course, in order to destroy the Lord of Decay you need a full set of bone dragons’ skulls, but couldn’t you have tweaked the quest conditions a little?”
“Initially, we made a mistake of badly formulating the quest conditions. Instead of a full list of all skulls, we just said, ‘the skulls of all bone dragons’. How were we to know that one day a certain John Dow would become one of them, thus putting himself on the list? The game mechanics is rather, er,
adaptive. Any intervention on such a global scale requires the approval at the very highest level.”
“And you weren’t sure that the resulting decision would be favorable for the Spawn, was that it? That’s why, once you realized that I wasn’t up to much in my role as a guinea pig, you launched plan B and did everything possible to see me turn into a bone dragon?”
He didn’t comment. In fact, he didn’t say anything at all. The Spawn’s controller was in fact a picture of unperturbability.
I winced and added, shaking my head, “Was it so hard to just come and talk to me?”
“Don’t tell me we didn’t try!”
“You should have told it as it was, plain and simple! If push came to shove, you could have always retrieved my own skull from Inferno and made me an offer I’d have found hard to refuse...”
The man raised his hand in protest. “The skull you’re talking about was the direct consequence of the hackers’ attack. Anyone who knowingly activated it would have been banned for breaching the T&Cs. Any advantages gained as a result of such abuse would be revoked.”
“So you didn’t want to take the risk,” I said slowly.
“That’s irrelevant. The skull of the bone dragon, however, is a bona fide artifact, and we’re quite prepared to buy it. Only how can we do so? You can’t go back in the game.”
I paused, wondering if I should tell him about Mr. Lloyd now or later, after Lloyd had contacted Neo and retrieved the skull from him. The problem was, would the boy be willing to give the skull to him? What if Neo decided to wait for my return instead?
Something dinged melodiously in the man’s pocket. He produced his phone and stared at the screen, then gave me a startled look and returned his attention to the incoming message. “What on earth...”
His mask of impassiveness crumbled from his face. He ran out of the door and darted down the corridor with a speed quite remarkable for a man of his size, leaving me standing there open-mouthed.
What was this now? What about our deal?
A chill of bad premonition ran down my spine. A new surge of insecurity flooded over me, bringing the phantom pains back.
Bullshit! Everything was bound to work out just fine!
Still, the Asian showed no intention of ever coming back. At which point I got dressed, retrieved my smartphone from the receptionist, booted it up and entered a new query into the search engine, looking for the latest Towers of Power news.
The very first search result sent me into a stupor:
The Tower of Decay Has Fallen!
It has what?! How was it even possible? That was too much of a coincidence!
Then it dawned on me. Neo.
Neo had double-crossed me. Contrary to his assurances, he’d never abandoned the idea of capturing the Tower of Decay. And now that he’d laid his hands on the skull of the bone dragon, he must have collected the full set, killed the old Lord of the Kingdom of the Dead and taken his place.
Stupid boy! Brainless little brat! They would rip him apart! They’d destroy him, and he would never resurrect again! The young Commander of the Order of the Black Phoenix, who’d bitten off much more than he could chew... I’d told him, hadn’t I? And the fact that he was only a piece of program code was little consolation...
Then I realized that his little escapade had just cost me a million and a half in game gold. The thought pushed any worries about the kid’s fate I might have had to the background.
Shit. No, no, no, no. It couldn’t be happening.
The money had been as good as in my pocket. Talk about a rip-off! My mood plummeted irreparably.
I TOOK A CAB home, walked upstairs to my apartment and slumped onto the couch, not even bothering to take off my coat. I focused mentally on the television, then realized my blunder and reached for the remote. Just as I’d expected, the only function blocked was the actual VR entry. I still had access to all the other game services. I logged in, opened the feed list and selected the one entitled The Storming of the Tower of Decay.
My premium subscription allowed me to select any viewpoint, so I spent some time soaring in the skies over the deserted city of the dead watching the players’ attempts to fight their way through to the tower’s new owner. I wanted to scream. Then I thought I noticed an interesting pattern and doubled my attention to the scene.
The players’ storming attempts were rather half-hearted; despite the impressive forces thrown into battle, they couldn’t boast much progress. I wasn’t surprised to discover that the attackers were affiliated to the powers of the Dark: apparently, the Spawn intended to get what they considered their own by hook or by crook. The amazing thing was, they were fighting against Chaosites. I noticed several orc squads, as well as a remarkable number of Drow manning the barricades.
What kind of nonsense was that? Neo was with the Darks, wasn’t he? Had he turned coat and joined the Chaos? This just didn’t sum up...
I selected one of the virtual cameras at the center of the city and focused it on the tower. Jesus. According to the prompt that had popped up, it was now the ‘Tower of Shadows’!
I really wanted to walk over to the screen, lay my hand on it and go back into the virtual world to sort it all out by myself. But unfortunately, it was off limits for me now — for good this time.
I winced as the phantom pains returned, and continued to inspect the battle from a bird’s eye view. Apart from players, the tower was defended by some creatures which appeared to be woven of shadows — and it was their support which had actually allowed the Chaosites to contain the Spawn and even force them back at some of the strategic points.
I glimpsed a familiar figure and hurried to focus the camera on it. No, my eyes hadn’t failed me. But it only confused the situation even further.
Isabella Ash-Rizt, the right hand of the Lord of Shadows
The right hand? Of what? Who was this Lord of Shadows? How about the Mistress of the Crimson Moon?
Isabella was fighting shoulder to shoulder with some of the Black Trackers whose profiles didn’t bear any mention of their old patroness, either.
The shadows... The Lord of Shadows... Could it be...
The Shadow Puppeteer?!
I felt like I’d been hit on the head with a hammer. I took a close look at the Tower of Power. It was indeed wound with shadows all over. The decay and the aura of death were completely gone. A ghostly figure which seemed to be woven from millions of shadows stood at the base of the grandiose edifice.
The Lord of Shadows
That was him! The Shadow Puppeteer!
But how had he managed to lay his hands on the skull of the bone dragon? What had happened to Stone Harbor?
That’s when the invisible hammer hit my head again.
The Tower of Stone Harbor.
There was only one live feed from Stone Harbor on the list. When I switched over to it, I wasn’t at all surprised to find out that the tower was now called The Tower of the Black Phoenix with none other than Scarecrow perched on top of its spire.
As if sensing my presence, the dead phoenix opened his beak, shattering my earphones with his all-too-familiar Craaaah!
That Neo! Cheeky bastard!
He hadn’t lied to me. He must have indeed realized that he wouldn’t be able to keep the kingdom of the dead under his control. So he must have played it safe and made a deal with the Shadow Puppeteer. I could bet my bottom dollar that Isabella had her own finger in this pie. It can’t have been for nothing that she’d quit her dead-end service to the Mistress of the Crimson Moon and became the right hand of the freshly-minted Lord of Shadows.
I’d have admired the kid’s quick thinking, had it not been for my million and a half. The loss of such a sum isn’t exactly a prerequisite to positive thinking.
My phone dinged. I checked the incoming message which informed me, much to my surprise, of a transfer of a rather considerable amount to my bank account. Although it was nowhere near the price of the skull of the bone dragon, it was still a surprise.
What was going on?
What was this for a party of generosity? Who was playing Santa to my Scrooge?
A new message dinged, in the TV speakers this time. A message from Mr. Lloyd appeared in the corner of the screen.
I’ve forwarded you 200K. The rest I’ll send later. I’ve also sent 30K to Goar.
You’d better stay away from him for the time being. He is absolutely furious.
How crazy was this? Lloyd was sticking to his end of the deal as if I’d indeed given him the skull of the bone dragon. But I hadn’t done anything of the kind! Nor had I asked Neo to do it.