It looked like the guy had gotten even wider: his head was like the tip of an upside-down beet, his eyes were puffy, his cheeks drooped downward and his entire body jiggled at every step, his three chins quivering.
Nodding to each other and saying nothing, we walked side by side deeper into the woods, further away from curious ears. We stopped beneath a tree large enough to hide us from above.
“What did you want to talk about?” we asked each other at the same time, then paused.
“You first,” I said and stealthily aimed my scanning bracelet from Yoshi at him. “Karina said you were looking for me.”
He’s clean, came the Japanese man’s voice in my head. No tracking devices. Nothing recording.
“Yeah, I wanted to…” Now Wesley didn’t look as sure of himself as he had then outside school, blackmailing me and threatening me with the Triad. “You know, Alex, I could have been in Mogwai’s place. Or in yours. You were Supreme Legate, right? Mogwai said the Nucleus demoted you for something, and then you somehow turned human again. How?”
“I don’t have time for this, Wesley. What you’re asking about… What makes you think I’ll answer?”
“I get it. Alright, I’ll get to the point. I can’t do anything to you now, everyone already knows your name. I could leak info about this meeting to the preventers or the Triad, but I didn’t, because I don’t want to.”
“What do you want?”
“The same as before.” His narrow eyes glittered with greed. “Well, minus that million I asked for. You know, ever since I became a Threat myself, just the thought of a career as a normal player makes me sick. But I love Dis! Just now all that garbage that once seemed like big achievements isn’t worth jack. It’s boring. In other words, I want to join your clan.”
“And why would we want you?”
“Because I’m a good analyst, strategist and a promising player all-round,” Wesley chuckled, his cheeks wobbling. “When you eliminated me, I hadn’t leveled up my Threat status much. So apart from a hundred thousand phoenixes, Snowstorm gave my new character a fun perk — Ferret Fancier…”
He paused, shivered, rubbed his hands — the morning was cold. Mist rose from the earth. I kept a neutral expression on my face, stayed silent, showed no curiosity. A shadow of disappointment passed over Wesley’s face.
“I know the name doesn’t sound like much. What could a ferret fancier have to offer the great and terrible class-A Threat?!” Wesley exclaimed, barely detectable bitterness in his voice. “But they aren’t just pets, Alex. That is, they aren’t pets at all. Basically, every member of the clan I’m in gets three ferrets. They can’t be summoned or desummoned, they just appear if they smell loot nearby and pick it up. The loot goes into your inventory and the ferrets disappear.”
Although my Magnetism perk made Big Po useless to me, this would benefit the whole clan. And it sounded funny, too. But I agreed not because of that, but because I’d already decided to bring him in. The Awoken was in desperate need of hands. There was nobody to level up the workers who had taken advantage of the clan loan to buy capsules! Irita was busy trading, Bomber would go off to complete his quests for Orthokon the kraken. Crawler already had a mountain of things to do; he was leveling up Alchemy to craft resistance potions for the heat of the Lakharian Desert and the poisonous fumes of the Ursai Jungle. Infect… well, he was a Bard. I never spent any time at the fort. The clan needed a good administrator.
“Alright,” I said.
Wesley seemed taken aback.
“Just ‘alright’ or ‘alright, you can join the clan, Wesley?”
“You can join,” I clarified. “I can’t decide alone, but you definitely have two votes, mine and Hung’s. As for how the others will vote, I don’t know. Now here’s what I need from you. I need you to carefully write down everything that happened to you from the moment you became a Threat. Make a holovideo, talk or write it down, I don’t care. Put it in CrapChat, you’ll get the channel from the same comm I called you on. Pay particular attention to the interaction with the emissary of the Destroying Plague who gave you the quest.”
“You want to fight the Nucleus?” Wesley guessed. “You’re gathering information?”
“I’ve decided to destroy it.”
“No way! Now that’s what I’m talking about!” Wesley brightened. “Sure, of course I’ll do that.”
“After that, you’ll get a clan invite. I’ll send you a message to tell you when and where we’ll meet in Dis. Got other fish to fry right now.”
Wesley nodded and I continued:
“As a gesture of good will, I can accept you into the followers of the Sleepers. That’ll give you a nice bonus. But only if you agree to sign a mental agreement — kind of like a psych…”
“I know,” he interrupted, nodding. “Uncle told me. They have new recruits sign those in the Triad too, before initiation. I’m ready.”
Alex, this is Hairo. On my way to you, I heard through my earpiece.
Even as a follower of the Sleepers, Big Po wouldn’t learn anything about them. Unity would appear in his list of skills, but that was all.
The bushes behind us rustled. I thought it was Hairo, but I turned and saw a ragged drunk with grass in his hair and trousers so filthy it was hard to tell what color they started in.
“Hey, kids, got anythin’ to drink?” he slurred with a grin, loudly scratching himself. “Sniff? Inject? No? Any spare change on your account? Toss a veteran a phoenix, will ya?”
The man smelled of piss and sour sweat. I saw dried blood in his unkempt beard. One eye was bruised, the other so swollen it barely opened.
Hairo appeared behind him in a holomask and barked in his voice of command:
“Sniff your armpit! Where did you serve, soldier?”
A neutral question, but asked in a tone that made the drunk turn round and look over the fearsome figure of our veteran. He started to back off, then turned tail and disappeared into the bushes. Maybe it wasn’t all about the tone; Hairo held a compact pulse cannon in his hand. The security officer watched the drunkard go, looked at me and pointed at his watch.
“Remind you of anyone?” I asked Big Po.
“Give a copper to uncle Patrick…” he drawled nasally.
We both laughed.
“Shut up! Let me sleep!” came an angry shout from behind the trees.
Hairo shook his head and tapped his wrist again:
“It’s time, Alex!”
I answered with a nod and turned to Wesley:
“This is our security officer. He’ll give you the mental contract to sign.”
Hairo offered Big Po a black bracelet with metal insets and brought up a hologram of the oath text from his comm:
“Put this on, wait for my signal and read out what’s written.” While Big Po put the bracelet on, Hairo turned to me: “If you’re done, head back. This place is getting dangerous.”
It was true; from all around came rustling, the sound of tent zippers, footsteps and hushed conversations. I caught the scent of marijuana. Someone was noisily sick. Someone plucked a chord on a guitar, tapped a tambourine. I heard singing from afar, but couldn’t make out the words.
“Alright. See you soon.” I clapped the fat boy on the shoulder.
“See you, Alex,” he answered.
“Roj will meet you,” Hairo told me. “I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”
“I forgot to ask, Wesley…” I said, stopping and turning. “You still have the same nick? Polynucleotide?”
Wesley smiled widely and shook his head.
“Nah. Now I’m Polydeuces. So you can still call me Big Po.”
“Polydeuces?” I asked in surprise. “Isn’t that a moon of Saturn?”
“Or a son of Zeus. You know the Gemini constellation? Polydeuces is one of the brothers.”
“Wait, wait… Those are the two bright stars Castor and Pollux.”
“Yep. Pollux is the Roman name for Polydeuces. Learn your history, Sheppard.”<
br />
I smiled and walked away. As I moved off, I heard Wesley rapidly reading out the words of the mental contract, then footsteps and heavy breathing.
Wesley caught up to me, touched me on the shoulder. I turned around. Wheezing, he said:
“Thanks for meeting with me. I know the risk you took. I appreciate it. Sorry for everything that happened between us. For the threats… For the fact that I didn’t apologize right away.”
“The past is the past.”
“Good luck! It’ll come in handy.”
“Don’t worry, luck is on my side,” I smiled, remembering Fortune. “Don’t waste any time, go get started leveling up… Polydeuces!”
Chapter 2. Citadel
WE ARRIVED in Cali quietly. Yoshi parked the Barracuda in a specially built hangar on the roof. The hatch opened with a sigh.
“Welcome to the citadel of the Awoken!” Hairo announced with a certain pride, casting his gaze around the empty roof. “The whole building is ours. The builders are done with your section, boys. Now they’re working on the non-citizen floors. We’ll move them in as and when the apartments are finished. I see a silent question in your eyes; yes, the capsules have arrived. They’re all premium Altera Vita versions like yours, Alex.”
Hung raised his arms in celebration:
“Yes!”
“I need to log into Dis right away,” I said with a certain regret. I really wanted to check out the new place.
“You’ll have to wait for your capsule to be configured,” Hairo said. “Come on, I’ll show you around.”
That was even better; my curiosity would be satisfied.
Our first stop was my apartment. We walked through a door on the roof and down one floor via a metal staircase, then reached a lift.
My apartment was in the center of the building. Over ten normal rooms had been combined to make it, but on the whole it was humble and tasteful. Clean beige walls, a stone counter made to look like marble separating the kitchen from the lounge, and two rooms: a small bedroom and a game room, where the new capsule had been installed. Out of concern for security, there were no windows, but there were huge light panels installed in the low ceiling.
The floor was littered with construction debris and chunks of plasterboard.
“Been low on time,” Hairo shrugged. “Haven’t hired cleaners for you yet.”
“Doesn’t matter, I’ll clean up,” I answered.
“This is just awesome!” Hung said, grinning happily. “You could play football here! Not like back home, where there’s no room… But there isn’t much furniture. A little Spartan…”
It was true; the only furnishings in the apartment were a chair, bed and nightstand.
“It’s the same in your rooms, Hung,” Hairo said. “You can choose your own furniture and order it through Maria. I ain’t your mother! The main thing is the doors are armored and the walls are reinforced — they’ll withstand a targeted explosion of up to thirty-five pounds of TNT.”
He said that last part with pride.
Noticing a bottle of pills on the nightstand by the head of the bed, I asked:
“What’s that?”
“A course of radiation meds. Take one a day. Don’t forget, if you value your health. There’s heightened background radiation here. Not as bad as in the Guyana Cesspit, but still, not good…”
Yoshi sent me into the capsule, took some biometric data and suggested I take a walk while he set everything up.
The fast lift took us down to the first floor and we stopped by the deserted supermarket, where we bought some soda and hot dogs from the machines, walked past the row of other fully automated stores and cafes. Wide corridors, glass display cases, trees at the intersections, manicured flowerbeds and drinking fountains. It all created the impression that we were on the street of an ordinary town. The thirty-foot-high ceiling gleamed with daylight panels that changed their brightness throughout the day.
“At night, the ceiling imitates a starry sky,” Hairo said. “And the street lamps switch on.”
“Hard to believe we bought a building like this for just ten million,” I muttered, gazing down the street-like corridors.
“Don’t be fooled,” Hairo murmured. “It’s all cheap. Building materials of this quality don’t cost anything. It’s all blocks of reprocessed garbage. They wouldn’t pass a single check by the Department of Health. Buildbots threw up all these buildings in three weeks. We spent the same time again reinforcing your floor.”
While Yoshi configured my capsule, I managed to swap greetings with Ed as he came in, along with his sister Polyanna, Malik and Willy Brizuela, who led the boys to their apartments. Right after that, Hairo and Roj found themselves in sadistic mood and dragged me to the gym. Hung stayed behind to wait for Yoshi.
Cali Bottom wasn’t the best place to go for a run. So the gym, in the bodyguards’ view, was the best thing about this building. I didn’t agree with them, but then the sight of Maria’s bulging biceps embarrassed me. My waist was skinnier.
A ten-minute warm-up on the elliptical already had me exhausted, but it didn’t end there. After stretching a little with Maria and feeling like I was made of wood, I did some squats… No, not with a barbell, but with two seven-pound dumbbells. Then some push-ups — I barely managed to do ten, — plus two pull-ups. Three sets and I was dead. Maybe only figuratively, but I couldn’t do anymore. I was done.
“Good enough for a first session,” Hairo said, offering me a hand and helping me up from the bench. “The shower’s there.”
My legs weren’t shaking exactly — just trembling. My head span and my vest was stuck to my back.
“It’ll get easier each time,” Maria encouraged me.
“Don’t believe her,” Hairo objected. “The kid needs to learn some self-defense. That won’t be easy, I guarantee it!”
On that threatening note, our training session, which had lasted half an hour at the most, was over. I washed, then the bodyguards and I went back to my apartment. Sergei was busy attaching a mini-turret to the ceiling on our floor. Another was already installed nearby, and when we appeared it turned its barrel with a quiet hum, aiming right at me. I froze. The fortifications expert quickly reassured me:
“Chill! The AI’s friend-or-foe system uses a bunch of parameters to detect subterfuge. The gun is armed with electroshock rounds. It paralyzes on hit. If there are more than three targets, it changes ammo and shoots to kill.
Roj didn’t enter the apartment, just stayed by the door. Maria checked out the bedroom first. I followed after her.
The woman lifted up the bed. At first I was amazed at the ease with which she did it, but then I saw the square hatch.
“Dive in here if you need to. The hatch will open if you press this button. There’s a hatch like it in the game room, right beneath the capsule. Yoshi did a good job; the capsule’s floor moves aside with the voice command ‘Shit!’.”
The AI recognized the word and the hatch moved aside soundlessly. I approached it and looked into the blackness.
“We’ll run a few drills with you so you can escape with your eyes closed,” Maria continued.
“Where does the passage go?”
“The floor beneath us is non-residential. It isn’t even in the lift’s floor numbers. You can’t get there from outside, but if you know the code, you can get out either downwards or upwards, right into the flyer hangar. I’m showing it to you now because although Hung is one of ours, it’s best he not know the code. Keep it secret. Got it?”
I nodded, walked away from the hatch.
“Hungry?” Maria asked.
“No. And it’s time I logged into Dis.”
“Mind if I tidy up in here? I’ll make something for dinner too. Any preferences?”
“Of course not. Your cooking is great,” I said, completely sincerely. Maria’s smile was barely perceptible.
But I expressed no preferences — I was mentally already in Kharinza. I don’t know how it’s possible, but I could h
ear, feel in my heart the call of Behemoth.
Maria escorted me to the capsule and then tactfully turned around while I got undressed, waited for the capsule to fill with intragel, then left.
The capsule completed the initialization process, the world fell into darkness, but instead of familiar Dis, I awoke in a vacuum of space. Green text popped up, narrated by a woman’s voice:
Path of Spirit (Disgardium Book #6): LitRPG Series Page 5