by Hugo Huesca
If someone recognized me, my real-life self wouldn’t be in danger, but playing would be almost impossible. The planet would get swarmed with players searching for their own moment of fame, or doing some weird hero worship—or just trying to kill me for fun.
Van understood this a little better than most, since a good part of a streamer’s job consisted in dealing with griefers (people whose entertainment came from pissing people off).
“Sure,” she said, “we’re off the air now.” A little flying ball which was hiding in a corner suddenly turned off its lights. I hadn’t realized the drone was there until it moved. Either I needed to work on my Perception skill, or the thing was a great camouflage user.
“Camera’s off,” she said. “Now, are we going to talk about what the hell you were doing going off on your own this morning?”
I sighed. This was coming either way, it would be best to face it head-on and get it over with. We walked over to a corner of the cargo bay, away from the scientists and Van’s friends. I lowered my visor so we could talk face to face.
“Well, I was gathering intelligence,” I said.
“You mean snooping around? Don’t try to Irene your way around it, Cole.”
Last year, I had lied to my family about my involvement with the Rune Event. Mom and Van had thought I was merely going to my new office job, while in reality, I was falling nose-first into a dangerous conspiracy.
I was trying to change that. Both Mom and Van had stepped up to the plate for me without having any idea what was going on. My sister had tried to break me out of jail and had lied to the police for me. Mom had defended me without any proof, live on air. She would still be in jail if things had turned out differently.
So, what I was doing now was this: I always told my sister everything and we both decided what we could tell Mom without causing her a nervous breakdown.
“You’ve seen the drones around the city?” I asked Van.
She raised her eyebrows in a gesture that said, “Really?”
I remembered Van wasn’t sneaking out of the house like I was. Not because she was being a good law-abiding citizen, but because she preferred to play videogames all day.
“Fine. You must’ve heard about them. They’re all over the place. Not Government from what I can tell. The FBI knows nothing, the CIA, of course, won’t talk to me… I honestly don’t blame them; they have their hands full with world’s tension so high at the moment. Crestienne is the only one I know who has been investigating them, but you know how she is.”
“I actually don’t,” Van pointed out. “She’s the Paladin Defense Force’s leader, right? The one who put you in jail in the first place?”
“Yes. She has this evil mastermind thing going on. Anyway, I knew she wasn’t going to tell me anything, but I wasn’t willing to wait here until some terrorist organization comes and takes us all as hostages. So I went into one of her PDF planets and stole the name and address of one of her informants.”
Van nodded. This she understood. It may seem strange that sensitive spy data could be kept inside a videogame, but anyone who had been around this year would understand it. Rune Universe was the most secure data network in the world. There was a mysterious alien signal hidden behind the quests, and the mobs, and the items. The only way any shady organization could get their hands on information hidden here was to be inside said signal.
In Rune’s case, that meant playing the game.
Crestienne’s organization was the first governmental team that had done so, at least that I knew of. She had created an Alliance that consisted of a mixture of players and actual soldiers. The only reason I had managed to infiltrate the facility was because the real-life security procedures (guards, shifts, protocols) were still slowly being translated to Rune’s game-like mechanics.
The States had a huge advantage over the Rune Universe turf thanks to the PDF, but this advantage wouldn’t last forever. More and more real corporations and governments were expanding their reach into Rune.
Of course, the userbase had skyrocketed, too. If—when—we made contact with an alien intelligence, people wanted to be there to see it. Some wanted to influence it.
I had a feeling that we were seeing only the beginning of the changes the Signal would bring to our society. The world was changing.
Some days I felt like I was right in the middle of it all, like a kite caught in the eye of a hurricane. If I moved too far away, the forces in collision would tear me apart just like gravity and a jetpack would do to a player character. But to stay in place was just delaying the inevitable since hurricanes moved faster than kites.
“You think Crestienne knows what data you stole from her?” asked Van. I realized I had been lost in thought.
I shrugged. “I don’t think so, but if she does, there’s no way we’ll find out. In any case, she’ll probably claim later that whatever I do with this data was part of her plan all along.”
“I’m not sure you should get comfortable messing around with powerful people like her,” Van said. “They have spent so much time at the top, a human life must appear awfully small to them.”
“Either way, we’re at risk,” I told her. “And it’s my fault, Sis. I can’t just let everyone else decide if we live or die.”
She smiled. “I know there’s no persuading you otherwise. I’m only saying we have to be careful. Right now, what’s keeping us safe is that no one really thinks we’re a threat.”
I wasn’t sure about that. The drones that scoured the city in search of me were geared with crowd-control tasers. She continued:
“What’s the next step?”
“This morning,” I said, “I went to the Financial District and bugged an informant of Crestienne. If I go back to the place where I stashed my Berry, I can find more about what’s going on.”
“So, we’re into the recon step of our operation,” Van said. “We find out who’s sending those drones after you. Then…?”
“We persuade them to direct their business elsewhere,” I said with finality.
She thought about this and then nodded. “OK. But we’ll have to get Mom on our side, first. It’s not fair to her if you keep running out.”
There’s no way we get her to agree to this, I thought. Our other option was to keep lying to her. I remembered her expression a year ago, her tear-covered face grim with resolve as she fought the officers that tried to keep her away from the camera.
I’ll trust my family.
Van’s squad walked towards us. The raptor was beginning to shake off the effects of the drugs. The other members of the squad and the scientists were arguing about who got to keep the baby dinosaur.
“Uh,” said rainbow-hair, “how’s your Persuasion skill, Spark Bandit? The PDF wants in on our Raptor cake.”
Van snorted. “Persuasion skill? What am I supposed to do with that, kill the mobs with words?” She turned to me. “Can you like, flush the NPCs out of the ship?”
“Should I begin the purge protocol, Master Cole?” said Francis.
My eye twitched a bit. “I’ll talk to them. Everyone chill the hell out.”
“Wait,” said Van as I walked toward the heated argument over dinosaur ownership. “Something else, bro.”
“Yes?”
“About Crestienne informant. If you’ll risk going out again, you’ll need backup,” Van said. “Someone to watch your back. You have to gather your team.”
I clenched my jaw. Working alone was always a bad idea. But I had put my friends in enough danger already. And they all had their own problems…
Walpurgis was AWOL. Russia was in turmoil, same as the States, so Gabrijel was out of the picture. Irene…
She was right here in San Mabrada, not answering my calls, probably knee deep in something dangerous.
No. My friends had enough problems on their own. People had taken enough bullets in my stead.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I told Van. “But for the time being, it’s only the two of us.”
She bit her lip and pretended this didn’t worry her. “I’ll try to pick up your slack.”
“This is very touching,” said Francis over our comm line. “But Master Cole has to work on his Counting skill. There are three of us, not two.”
I smiled. “Of course, Francis.”
“There’s a Counting skill?” asked Van.
“No. No, there isn’t.”
After dropping Van’s squad in the Terran Federation Space Station and renting a secure hangar for the Teddy, I logged out early. My mindjack was warm to the touch of my hands. The sun was high up in the sky when I looked out of the tiny window of my bedroom, but of course, it didn’t mean much. It wasn’t a real window, and that wasn’t the real sun. I made a lazy gesture that switched the image to nighttime.
Outside my room, I could hear Mom watching the news. I should really talk to her, but the house was still as bugged as ever. The only option would be to get her to Rune Universe and either I or Van on the other mindjack could brief her.
There was the risk that she would freak out and alert the FBI agents in the other room that there was something going on.
Trust your family, I thought again. They’ve earned it.
I took a deep breath and walked into the living room. Mom had it in kitchen mode, which meant a small electrical stove had come out of the floor and the furniture had disappeared inside the walls. A wooden table protruded of the other wall and a couple stools emerged from the floor. The refrigerator and the cooking utensils were in compartments inside the walls.
Mom was cooking chicken soup. No real chicken involved, but the taste was easy enough to reproduce and it had plenty of vitamins. For something flavorful, I could go back to Rune later and roast a dinosaur.
Without exchanging a word with her, I set out some vegetables in a casserole and began to help her.
This had been our little ritual for a couple months. Cooking relaxed me, and it was something in which I had some degree of talent. I could take insipid ingredients and make them more appealing by adding whatever I could manage, mostly salt and cheap home-grown spices.
We had never talked about the reason why I’d learned to cook in the first place. Mom had been through a rough patch.
I learned to cook because, during that time, she wasn’t able to do it. And Van may be one hell of a gamer, but if cooking had been her responsibility the entire family would have died from intoxication. I’m only half-joking.
This made Mom and I’s little ritual a bittersweet one. Cooking together was filled with mixed meanings for us both. That was why we had to cook in silence. We had to live in our little worlds, after all, and they were made of glass.
Healing could be painful, and it is always very slow. Just like watching water boil, most of the time it happens when you aren’t looking.
Finally, we were done with the soup. Working together, we’d managed to transform it into something more substantial. The smell of vegetables, spices, and fake chicken filled the entire safe house and probably spilled over to the other apartments.
Van came out of her room of her own free will, still wearing her mindjack. Apparently, she was determined to eat while playing.
“Oh, no way,” Mom told her. “Don’t even think about it.”
“Ugh,” Van said, “you’re no fun. I’m trying to get better at multi-tasking!”
“What are you even doing in-game?” I asked. Curiosity was always a weak point with me.
“Eating in the Station’s crew-quarters,” she shrugged. “It adds a bonus to my Endurance.”
Mom smiled dangerously and her hands crept towards her youngest child’s mindjack. “You’ve ten seconds to log off. Either way, I’m pulling this thing out.”
I winced at the threat of a sudden disconnection. Van reeled in horror. “Fine! Fine! You don’t have to get all barbarian with me, you want me puking all over the food?”
“You need to have something in your stomach before you can puke it out,” Mom shot back with a triumphant smile.
Van logged out and put away the mindjack.
“I live with a pair of cavemen,” she complained. She took a spoonful of soup. “But at least you can cook.”
“We’re glad the shut-in princess is happy,” said Mom.
Van rolled her eyes and I had to grin.
For a moment, it was like we weren’t living in what amounted to a fallout shelter. For a long time, we had only had each other (and my pal Kipp), so we knew we could get used to anything. Even this.
Then, someone knocked on the door. “It’s Agent Doyle,” came the familiar voice. “You have a moment to spare, Cole?”
Our little blissful window was shattered. Back to reality. Reality involved dealing with FBI agents, debriefings, death threats, and drones scouring the city.
“Don’t sweat it, girls,” I told them. “I’ll be back in a bit.”
“Actually,” Van saw an opening and seized it. “Mom, do you mind taking Cole’s mindjack for a while? There’s a mean 3D movie we downloaded yesterday I’ve been waiting to show you.”
I clenched my jaw. When I said we should get Mom on the level, I didn’t mean right now. Obviously, Van was right. The agents would be distracted talking to me. It was as better a time as any. I nodded and gave Mom a meaningful look. “You should check it out. It’s really something.”
Mom picked up that something was wrong and frowned. “Sure. I’ll check it out.”
I left the house as she and Van finished their meal in silence.
The FBI agent that waited for me at the door was named Erin Doyle. His face was covered in bright, playful freckles that gave him somewhat of a class-clown vibe.
It would be wrong to think of him as a class-clown, though, since Erin Doyle had quite the temper. He stood at the door, staring sternly at me.
“You thought we wouldn’t realize you were gone?”
I figured you wouldn’t do anything about it, I thought.
I shrugged. “We’re supposed to be in witness protection, right? Not detained. There shouldn’t be any problem with me taking a stroll every once in a while. We’re a bit cramped in here, if you haven’t realized, Agent Doyle.”
“You know very well this is not a normal situation, Cole. We can’t protect you if you refuse to play by our rules. My office,” said the man. “Now.”
The office was the apartment next to ours. It was as cramped as ours, so at least the agents were playing fair in that regard. It was filled with surveillance equipment and empty beer cans covering every available surface.
Are the FBI allowed to drink on the job?
As long as they weren’t actually drunk, I realized I didn’t care. Even if we were enemies, I wasn’t the person to go and snitch on them to their bosses.
It was easier to take this kind of altruistic attitude nowadays when we had easily available anti-intoxicant pills in every drugstore. In fact, I saw one such tablet atop the tiny monitor they were using to watch the street of the building.
Agent Kris Martinez was Doyle’s partner. She was in her thirties and looked the part. Instead of sporting the wrinkled gray suit of Doyle, she wore black trousers and a tight black t-shirt. Everything about her attitude said she was a former hacker turned officer.
Martinez looked at me and flashed a brief smile. She may work for law and order now, but she still kept a spark of disregard for the rules. When Doyle looked to her, the smile was gone and she was again focused on the surveillance.
“Martinez found the Berry you used to turn off security cameras when you left,” said Doyle as he pointed an accusatory finger at me. The Berry was in the middle of a work table, surrounded by tech equipment. “You put our entire network at risk during your escapade.”
“For thirty seconds,” I pointed out. “If someone was ready to take out the building in that window, they wouldn’t have needed security to be down to do so.”
“I told him the same thing,” muttered Martinez under her breath. Doyle gave her a with
ering glare. She snorted and looked away. “Suit yourself.”
“The States are taking a great deal of risk by protecting your family,” Doyle pointed out. “If you won’t cooperate with us, we could put you on the streets before you can say ‘I’m an ungrateful prick.’”
A spark of raw anger boiled through my veins as I listened to Doyle speak. I shouldn’t let things like this get to me, but his bravado hit a sore spot.
“You sentenced me to death,” I said, my voice low enough to be mistaken for a growl. “You think I’ve forgotten that? Police, CIA, FBI… You all would have had me executed along with my best friends without even looking into what really happened back there.”
Doyle had the gall to act disinterested. “As far as I remember, you most likely doomed mankind to an interstellar war. If that isn’t terrorism, I don’t know what is.”
Instead of giving him a piece of my mind, I forced myself to remain silent and stare him down. For a bit, it was all we did. Stare each other down, like a pair of angry bulls.
“You both are ridiculous,” intervened Martinez. She sounded bored. I broke eye contact and realized she was playing games on her phone. “Seriously, my kids have more interesting fights than you, and they’re twelve.”
“Well, that’s your opinion, Kris,” Doyle told his partner.
“Can you just tell the kid why he’s here? I’d kinda like to go back to my movie if you don’t mind.”
“You’re watching a movie on guard duty?” I asked incredulously. There were no pills for plain slacking off.
“The surveillance feeds are my movie,” she laughed. “I love the way the dust moves around one side of the street to the other.”
Doyle coughed loudly to reclaim control of the conversation. “Dorsett. I’m trying to get you to understand what’s at stake here.”
“I think you’ve made your point clear.” As I said that, I realized something was off about the whole thing. Doyle and Martinez were looking at me expectantly. They exchanged one brief look filled with meaning.
They wanted something from me. I stopped talking and eyed them suspiciously.