by Louisa Lo
“This thread is anchoring her to this site.” Vera cursed profusely as I slumped against her. “That's what's stopping us from leaving here. We come as a group, and we must leave as a group. That’s how the combination was programmed. Every variable is calculated and non-negotiable. If she's stuck here, then we're stuck here with her.”
Gregory pulled me into his arms and tried to pull the arrow out of me. It refused to come out even an inch. My eyelids fluttered. They felt so heavy. Maybe I’ll just take a nap…
“Megan, don’t you dare fall asleep on me. You still owe me a second date,” Gregory commanded. “Come on, think of all those frog legs.”
He was trying to keep his voice coercing, but I heard the underlying panic in it.
“I dunno, maybe it’ll just taste…like…chicken.” It took too much work to talk, so I stopped. I closed my eyes, but Gregory shook me vigorously.
“Ouch,” I complained. “My neck.”
“Stay awake, damn you!” Gregory growled.
Madeleine, ever so practical, conjured a nasty-looking sword and came toward me with a determined glint in her eyes. I guess she figured if my arm got chopped off, then we’d all be free. I mean, maybe the combination didn’t say we have to have all our limbs intact to get out of here. I wished I could work up the energy to freak out, but I was barely hanging onto my consciousness as it was.
Gregory lowered my body onto the ground—if it could be called ground—and stood to his full height, blocking Madeleine’s path. “Knock it off!”
“Move away, mercenary!” Madeleine yelled, banishing her sword. “We’re going to die here thanks to her.”
There was a scuffle, and that was when I slipped into unconsciousness. I was kinda sure that it wasn’t because Madeleine had cut my arm off, but I was too out of it to be sure.
PART THREE
FRIENDS & FOES
Chapter Twenty
The Pit
If I was dreaming—could I even dream here?—then I was more clearheaded than before losing consciousness.
I blinked, trying to adjust to the semi-darkness surrounding me. I was at the bottom of a deep, dim pit, next to its side. The pit was around the size of a baseball field, carved right out of the earth at least twenty feet deep. There was a clear space in the middle, with gym mats covering half the area, and office furniture such as desks, chairs, and lamps dominating the rest. It was such a weird combination, and in such a strange setting, that I had no idea what to make of it.
And there were plenty of people here. Bulky men and women engaging in all kinds of physical combat on the gym mats, and, on the other side, nerdy-looking supernaturals sitting in front of office desks, seemingly lost in their own world in a variety of activities.
Fearful of being discovered, I dove behind a trio of large, towering utilitarian shelves positioned by the wall that stored all manner of practice weapons on its upper half, and paper supplies on its lower half.
I half-expected to be spotted, but after a long while, when no one came after me, I carefully took a peek out. The shelves, located right by the dividing line between the two crowds, gave me an excellent vantage point to observe both of them discreetly.
I had never seen a group of brains and brawn coexisting with each other without one side trying to intimidate the other with their muscles and the other side twitching their nose at the smell of sweat and unwashed gym clothes. Yet these two groups just minded their own business as if the other didn’t exist.
In the brawny group, there were firbolgs, trolls, ogres, and dwarf-giants. I saw tattoos, scars, and some kind of brand on the forearm of everyone that looked like an upside-down octopus with a spike through its middle. Like a Hail Hydra gone wrong, with the octopus being served like a delicacy on toothpicks. I smelled the stink of pent up sexual frustration, which explained the brute force and ferociousness each man and women brought to their matches.
But it was the sight of the geeks that bothered me the most. Well, “geeks” was an overly-general term. I just meant everyone who weren’t actively fighting. There was a broad range of supernaturals in this group, including two guys working on some kind of computer programming, and an oracle-like creature waving prediction bubbles with skills that rivaled Mel’s. And then there was a chess fairy contemplating the game that made his race famous, a shapeshifter who was practicing his transition from man to feline, a dark elf polishing his bow, and a goblin drawing up a design for a new dagger.
Every member of this group wore long sleeves, but I had a feeling if they were to roll them up, each of them would have that same upside-down octopus brand on their forearm.
Then I saw the nymph. A male. Unlike the female-only race usually found in human fantasy literature, real nymphs had two sexes, though the females still tended to outnumber the males.
I almost missed him as he was leaning over a table in the corner—if one could call anywhere in the opal-shaped pit a corner. He was a year or two younger than me, his face as beguiling as his kind would be. He was—was he for real?—performing some sort of erotic massage on a female mannequin lying on the table, applying oil on the her inner thighs with practiced hands. The mannequin, obviously enchanted to respond to his every touch, moaned as he intensified the pressure. Thanks to her skimpy outfit, I could see her privates had begun to dampen.
Great, a lustful nymph out for his own pleasure was one thing, a lustful nymph who was honed in the act of providing pleasure was practically a weapon.
“They all are, Megan.” An achingly familiar voice said from behind me. “In their own way, everyone here is a weapon.”
There was only one person in the world who could read my mind almost word for word.
I spun around, staring at Grandma disbelievingly. She was standing with her back to the wall, dressed in a low-key, plum-colored designer suit that she favored. She appeared healthy, not a hair strayed from her bun.
With a strangled cry I ran into her arms, and she cradled my head on her shoulder, her hold surprisingly solid. I sniffled, taking in a whiff of her Chanel perfume. She looked and smelled so normal that I was almost tempted to convince myself that the last few months didn't happen, and that she was never lost to me.
“But oh, I was, my child.” Grandma pulled me away from her and shook her index finger at me with a non-nonsense attitude. “I am still lost to the Internet, but then so are you. For now, anyway.”
“How…how have you been?” I swallowed. I mentally kicked myself. What a silly thing to ask someone who was injured and was forced to flee into a place that disconnected her from everyone she loved?
Grandma merely smiled. “I’m not in pain. At least that’s something.”
“What corner of the Net have you been in? Esme and Cynthia have been looking for you.”
Grandma sighed. “I know. I’d been trying to reach them, to send a message. I’m afraid it came out rather distorted. I’ve been investigating this pit. When I sensed that you were inside the Net and were getting close to the truth, I brought you here to show you what I’d found. A vision within the land of illusions, so to speak. I’m becoming rather adept in manipulating space, time, and location within the boundary of the Internet.”
“The truth? What truth? What is this pit, anyway? And what are these guys doing here?”
“You already have all the information to answer those questions. Think,” Grandma encouraged, as if this was nothing but one of our mentoring sessions.
Yes, as varied as the creatures in front of us were, and despite the contrast that divided them, I had seen this grouping of supernaturals before—most of them anyway, except the oracle and the computer programmers.
I knew them through the poor souls who’d taken their places in Hell, if the switcheroo was matched by species.
“Do you see the pattern?” Grandma asked. "Do you know what you’re looking at now?”
“This is an army.” I breathed.
Shit, shit, shit! Could Lucifer really be behind all this, and was
his plan to raise an army to take over the Cosmic Balance? What better way to do recruitment than to offer wrongdoers a way out of eternal torment? It was an offer most would find impossible to refuse. And what a pool of diverse talent the Lord of Hell could choose from, with so many arrivals landing on his doorstep every day?
It all made a sick kind of sense.
“An army, indeed.” Grandma nodded in confirmation. “The first group is all about the muscles—firbolgs, trolls, ogres, and dwarf-giants. But what makes this army especially dangerous is the second group. Dark elves for their precision use of bows, shapeshifters for infiltration, chess fairies for strategy, goblins for weapon forging, and nymphs and succubi for the art of seduction.”
“And oracles for predictions, and programmers for hacking?” I guessed.
“Not just any programmers, dear. Tell me, what species are they?” Grandma gestured at the pair who were still poring over their computer codes.
I sent my senses out. Now that I was focusing on just those two, I realized what was missing about them. They had no supernatural signatures. My breath caught. “They’re humans.”
That means they weren’t just the regular, run-of-the-mill computer programmers. They were Geekomages, human geeks who garnered supernatural power through an overdose of comic books, D&D, video games, and The Big Bang Theory.
“Before coming here, one was designing drone prototypes for the human military, while the other was the owner of a new social media platform that promised to become as big as Twitter and Facebook,” Grandma added.
Those who controlled these guys, controlled the development of the human world and beyond.
That meant Lucifer was dead serious about taking over permanently. He understood that it took more than muscles to win for good, and he had the resources to cover every aspect of the fight in both long-term and short-term, from active combat to intelligence gathering.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t entirely thrilled with the Council, aka the Greys, but that didn’t mean I wanted Lucifer to rule. And to think that I might have played a role in his plan—I hate the idea of it. I hated myself more for not listening to my initial mistrust of him.
I turned to Grandma. “Your message, rain raw, what did it mean?”
“I had to send the message character by character and some got dropped in the distortion. I meant to say brains and brawn, hoping to give you a hint of what you’re dealing with. From this end, I could see and hear a lot from the physical world, but to help and guide was another matter altogether.”
I barely got the chance to be truly horrified before my body felt lighter, as if I could be blown away with a gust of wind.
“Your friends are calling you back. They managed to remove the arrow,” Grandma said gently. “Go back to them before Ginny Smith’s site shuts down and you’re even more lost than I am.”
“Come back with me,” I pleaded.
Regret filled Grandma’s eyes. “I can’t.”
No, I refused to believe that. I had to try. “If you won’t leave with me now, at least tell me which website you hang out at, and I’ll come get you. I know people who can get me the right combination now.”
“You don’t understand. I cannot leave with you even if you can find me again. When you and your friends came to the Internet, you left your body back at the physical world. You were able to properly split your body and soul because they were both healthy and whole. In my case, I had to leap in here while my body was severely damaged, to go back now might just send me crossing over to the afterlife altogether.”
“Does that mean you’re stuck here forever?” I bit back the sob that threatened to escape from my throat.
“I don’t know, dear.” Grandma’s usually severe face softened. “But I do know that I’m not leaving here today.”
“Should I go get your body when I get back? Would it help?” I asked desperately. She couldn’t be trapped here for all time. I wouldn’t have it.
“It should’ve healed itself by now, but that’s not the point. The initial separation was done rushed and forced, and there’s no quick way to fix it. Now go, dear.”
“But—”
“You don’t have a choice.” A female voice, haughty and hard, came from behind me. A cold hand was placed on my shoulder. Grandma’s eyes widened with recognition, then nodded grimly at the unseen newcomer.
“Get her out of here,” Grandma commanded whomever it was behind my back. She might’ve been surprised by the new arrival, but there was no mistaking the authority in her voice. Lost in the Internet or not, she was someone used to being obeyed.
Before I could spin around and see whom the newcomer was and beg Gran for more clues to help her, I was yanked from the pit and woke up in Gregory’s arms. Ginny’s website had darkened to the level of an opera house right before the show started, with Vera and Madeleine peeking at me over Gregory’s shoulder.
“I was afraid you’d never wake up.” Gregory blew out a breath of relief.
I didn’t reply to him, and instead stared at the person standing behind everybody else, the one who took me out of the pit.
Cynthia.
Chapter Twenty-One
Enemy of My Enemy
With Gregory’s help, I got up. I had a lot to tell him, but here was not the time or place. Upon standing, I could see that there was someone else standing next to Cynthia—Esme. Save for the age difference, they looked like carbon copies of each other, all pale skin, green eyes, wine-red hair, and black pantsuit.
“Megan!” Esme ran to me. “I got your message as soon as we got back to the physical world. Then Mel told us where to find you and we’re here. Are you alright?”
“I’m okay.” Then I turned and glared at Cynthia. “Couldn’t you have waited a few more moments? I needed a bit more time with her.”
Logically, I knew I shouldn’t be mad at Cynthia. Hack, Grandma basically ordered her to get me out of there. But a part of me simply rebelled at the idea that there was not much I could do to rescue Gran. Feeling angry beat feeling helpless.
Cynthia seemed unmoved. “The outcome would’ve been the same. You still have to leave her. And then you and your friends would have died because of the delay.”
Trust Cynthia to be super blunt even during the worst situations. That was where Esme got her inborn abrasiveness from. Thank Hades a lot of it had rubbed off by having me in her life.
But regardless of her attitude, Cynthia had a point. I had my friends to think about. And Grandma seemed to be safe for now.
I took a deep breath, checked my arm, and found the arrow gone. I didn’t feel any pain where the arrow had penetrated. Maybe that wasn’t how it worked.
“It went limp and fell out around when you woke up.” Madeleine showed me a thread caught between her fingers. “We should be able to get out of here now.”
“Gladly,” Vera said, taking her keyboard out again and began typing on it. Cynthia let out an exasperated sigh.
“Too slow,” she said, lifting her hand.
Our surrounding dissolved and we were back in Mel’s office again, the set of Castle felt like something I’d seen from a previous lifetime.
Wow, Cynthia managed to maneuver out of the Internet even better than a shade. That was truly impressive.
And yet, if someone like that had a hard time getting Grandma out, what chance did Grandma really have of ever escaping?
“You’re back!” Candy cried, rushing to hug Gregory around the middle. “We weren’t sure if you were going to make it.”
“Of course we did, kiddo.” Gregory ruffled the little girl’s hair.
“Thank you,” I said to Cynthia, my tone formal.
“You’re welcome,” she replied just as formally, even more so than her usual robotic voice.
To be frank, I had no idea what else to say to my father’s ex-wife. Well, I was never anyone’s favorite vengeance demon, especially these days, but Cynthia had more reasons than most to dislike me, even when she was h
elping me out upon her daughter’s request. I was something that never should’ve happened if Dad and Cynthia were truly soul mates.
I’d had no time to dwell on that, though, because at that moment, Cindy shot from Gregory’s side and came straight at me like a high-speed cannon ball. “Gregory told me you got hurt!” she said after giving me a fierce hug. “Are you okay?”
I hugged Candy back. “I’m alright. What’s a little fainting between friends, right?”
“You should’ve waited until Mother and I could join you,” Esme reproached me.
“I’m sorry.” I turned to her. “I figured you were busy.”
“I was. But you should’ve waited.” Esme’s voice was tight.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated. Not sure what else to say.
“So, you broke the distortion spell,” Candy stated, clearly excited by the feat.
I snorted. “For like, a few seconds. Did that give you time to download anything at all?”
Candy smiled smugly and showed me a stack of computer printouts in her hands. “I got about a thousand names before the blanket distortion was back up.”
I took the stack of paper, staring at the names. What do I do with it, now that I knew what I knew?
“With that, I should be able to establish some patterns, figuring out what the conspiracy is,” Mel said with satisfaction.
“Don’t bother.” Still staring at the names, I heard myself say. “I already know what’s going on.”
I proceeded to tell everyone what I saw in that pit with Grandma. Every detail of the vision, down to the description of each soldier in training. I saw the dawning horror on their faces, reflecting how I was feeling inside. Given what Boyce and the other innocents had been forced to endure, everyone knew what a Lucifer regime would look like. Gregory’s face grew taut, and despair filled Vera’s eyes. Even Cynthia seemed shaken.