What I found most interesting were the purple and silver portals appearing everywhere, and people using them to reach the pocket dimensions which lay beyond. It was certainly different from how enchanted bags worked.
Things progressed smoothly. The huge competition in here made buying prices lower and selling prices higher for the customers, and each one of us ended up one gold and twelve silver coins richer after selling everything we had stolen from the other players.
After that, I decided we should take a distant look at the place we would be robbing.
We ran into a con artist who thought he could mess with us. A single punch from one of the zombies discouraged the artist from trying to pickpocket us, and we got to a common fruit stall without further issues.
We looked for a tavern close to the entrance of Robert's house and decided on a watch schedule. The guy at the tavern's entrance, a vampire, asked for one silver coin to open the entrance and I paid for the group.
The vampire did nothing that I could detect, not even use morbs, but a purple and silver oval-shaped portal appeared right in front of us. It wasn't that wide and we had to form a line to get inside. The zombies, including Bear, went ahead of me.
The party hadn't disbanded even though they were theoretically very far away from me, in an entirely different dimension. However, even though I could see Bear's HP bar lose some points, as I had told him to do, I wasn't receiving any reply from him. No chat between dimensions.
Daggers and I waited until Bear came back and said everything was okay before following. We should have done it with the first guy to go through, and only then send the rest of the zombies, but I only thought about it after almost all of them were already inside.
My mind wasn't working correctly; we should have also walked separately when entering the city. Each person should have traversed the tunnel alone and only then should the next person follow. That way, even if something happened, we would only lose a single person and the others could have fought whatever came their way.
Why? Why am I so slow these days? I asked myself.
The answer came with the image of people getting shot in the head without warning. The blood sloshing out. The mercenaries firing more bullets into the corpses on the ground.
So many people dead. Why did they have to force me to do it? Why did they have to be mind rapists? Why couldn't they just use this technological marvel to give people an escape from the messed-up world we lived in and earn money the right way?
The images kept coming like a damn hurricane. I felt tears in my eyes and I knew my character was crying blood.
Some people felt nothing when they killed people although psychiatrists said it changed them whether they noticed it or not.
Although I had felt something, it had been so minor and easily suppressed, that I thought I was one of those who felt nothing.
But I had been wrong. I had just been in denial.
It didn't matter if it had been completely justified, and I didn't think for one second that I should have done things different. Those assholes deserved to die. I just didn't have the mental fortitude I thought I had.
They were still humans, real humans, in the real world, and I had killed them.
After finding out I hadn't killed my parents, the first thing I did was kill other people.
In the end, that was who I was:
A murderer.
Medical warning!
Your real body...
The message flashed in red in front of me and before I could read the rest I was ejected from Valia.
Things were rotating around me and I felt the bile in my throat. I ran to the bathroom with the VirBridge still on my head and vomited hard.
"Incoming call. Caller ID: Daggers," the robotic voice in the VirBridge said after a few moments.
"Accept," I said when I was sure I wasn't going to vomit more. "Hello?" My voice had suffering all over it and I steeled myself before repeating, "hello?"
"Jack?" Daggers said with a hint of concern in her voice. "What happened? Are you okay?"
"Kinda. I'm not feeling well and the VirBridge force-logged me out."
"Oh." She sounded quite relieved.
We didn't speak for some time. We didn't speak for some time. Meanwhile, I washed my the bile out of mouth and went to the kitchen to drink something.
"After the V-Soft scandal," Daggers said suddenly, way less rigid than usual, "I feared this whole Immersive Reality thing could have other hidden dangers. I still do."
"Why? Don't you trust our government?" I asked sarcastically. "They said it's safe and there's no way they would lie to us, right?"
She sighed and more silence followed. However, while the first silence was kind of comfortable and natural, this was awkward.
Damn. It's happening again. People want me to comfort them.
Why couldn't she say 'give me money so I can buy a drink and forget my troubles'? Why did people expect me to say actual words to make them feel better?
If this had happened five minutes ago, I would just have ignored her expectations. But I was feeling so fucking alone.
My parents were dead and my family probably wanted me dead too after I had released the political kraken on the world. I had killed people and knew how easy it was to die.
We could die at any moment, alone, with no one who cared about us to hold our hand. In pain, in terror, unwilling to go.
I had no friends to talk to about how I felt; I made it clear to everyone that got close to me, that my feelings were my own and my alcohol bottle was enough to help me suppress them.
Because that's how I dealt with feelings: I locked them up and never visited them again.
'Feelings,' mother had taught me. 'You can't show them or your enemies will use them against you. Unless, of course, you want your enemy to misuse a perceived weakness.'
'So I should just not feel?' The seven-year-old me had asked.
That had been one of the few times mother had looked at me with a strange look. I had never realized it until now; she had been looking at me with pity.
My mother. Feeling pity. Hell, was she even capable of that?
'How wonderful would that be,' had been her answer.
Until now, I had just internalized that the right thing to do was repress any feelings. They were weaknesses that my enemies would exploit. It had been one of the few teachings from my parents that I had kept on practicing after they died.
But now, it had come back. The moment I realized I was a murderer. The moment I realized I was alone.
That's when Daggers tried to get a step closer to me. That's when I also realized mother had felt something other than contempt for me; she had felt pity.
Pity can't exist without sympathy.
Mother had felt sympathy for me.
And so, I cried. Like a little child, I cried. I didn't try to hide my feelings by doing it silently or hanging up the call.
I knew Daggers was hearing me and I kept going for a very long time.
That was my answer to her; I can't cheer you up, girl, because I'm a broken thing myself.
Eventually, I calmed down. Daggers was still with me, her silent presence over the phone an unexpected type of comfort, and that was the most beautiful thing anyone had ever done for me. I mean, Richard had tried, but I had always shunned him because he looked at me with pity and I didn't need his pity.
&
nbsp; Not Daggers though. For some reason, I couldn't see that decisive in-game killer being anything other than... Supportive. She could be feeling sympathy for me, yes, and I bet she would help me if I asked for it. But she just expected me to deal with it in some way myself, instead of pitying me and intruding.
Suddenly, I realized that through everything we had gone through, she never once said she felt sorry for me. Even when Eternal had been faking worry for me after I lost my legs to an explosion in the game, Daggers had just told Eternal to shut his mouth or it might attract more gabats.
When I messed up, she told me. When I did good, she stood by me.
She looked at me as an equal, as a human being. She didn't put herself either above or under me in value; she did place herself in a subordinate position but as a military woman, she probably viewed it as an unsaid agreement for the good of all. If everyone commanded, nothing would be done because there would be no one to obey. If everyone tried to act without leadership, anarchy would ensue and whatever was accomplished wouldn't be useful.
No. She knew I would suck at being commanded and had decided our positions using her military background — her dad being in the military — and experience. She knew that by commanding from the rear I would be more useful than standing in her way while she tried to kill things.
She had concluded I had inferior combat capabilities and pushed me to be a leader.
Although she had placed herself beneath me hierarchically, she saw us as two equally valuable parts of the same machine; each had a specific job, but we couldn't execute our functions properly if we didn't have each other. And I damn sure couldn't do her job as well as her. Maybe it hadn't been true initially, but by now I was certain that I could lead our merry group better than her.
"Daggers," I said, breaking the now comfortable silence. "My real name is Jack, too. What's yours?"
"Alice." Her reply was faster than I expected, but this was something common when it came to Daggers. Her ability to adapt to the unexpected was amazing.
"Alice," I tested the name in my tongue. It was so different from the way I thought about Daggers. It was... Human. "Thank you, Alice."
"You're welcome," she said, now using a softer tone.
I took a deep breath. "Don't worry about DIR. I can't tell you how, but I know for sure they can't use the mind reading capabilities of the Immersive Technology for evil anymore. And their hardware is somewhat safe."
"Even if I believe you, and even if that is true for now, it doesn't mean it will always be so."
Hearing her using contractions was weird. Outside the game, Alice was obviously behaving like herself, instead of acting as Daggers.
"That can happen," I agreed, "but I also know that it's as unlikely to happen as it can possibly be. I don't think we'll be alive to see it, and by then, countermeasures will probably have been invented."
"Hmm." That was her whole answer.
"I can't ask you to trust me since I'm all but a stranger you met online. But I do believe completely in what I'm saying."
"Okay, I believe you." And after a sigh, her tone changed. "Are you coming back, sir?"
I smiled. "In about fifteen minutes. Since I'm already out here, I'll check a few things before logging back in. If you can, move my character to the tavern."
"Your character has already left, sir."
"Oh. Then do whatever you want, just stay close so you can come when I'm logging in. I don't want to play Valia alone even for a second if I can help it; the White Tree ambush shows us how my enemies will hold a grudge, and they are just waiting for the right opportunity to attack."
"Not your enemies, sir. Ours."
I smiled even more. "Damn right you are, Alice. Ours."
Unlike how she did with Eternal when he called her Samantha, she didn't tell me to keep calling her Daggers. I still found it somewhat weird to call her by her first name though, and I definitely wouldn't do it where Bear could hear.
"Talk to you later, then, sir," she said, dismissing herself and hanging up.
A long forgotten, but pleasant feeling welled up inside me and I realized I had just made a friend.
The whole problem was that the feeling was similar to how I felt about the hooker that I had thought was my aunt.
All the good vibes died right there and I called the private detective.
"Hello," the man answered the phone.
"Hey, Jenkins. It's Jack McHolen. Have you found the woman yet?"
7. Tavern Time
"No," he said quickly and hung up.
His response wasn't unexpected. When I had hired Jenkins to find the hooker, he had said that 'because your grandfather was probably involved, we can't keep in touch.' That meant I shouldn't call asking for updates, as it could get him killed if I his phone rang at the wrong time.
This had been the first time I called and he made it clear that when I did that, he would get rid of that number and I would have no way whatsoever of contacting him until he was done with the investigation.
Of course, I could just stop the flow of cash to his account and he would come to me, but that would have negative consequences, and I probably shouldn't use this card lightly.
Still, it had already been one week and he was supposed to be one of the best that money could buy. How could he have nothing? Was he working for grandfather?
I would give him some extra time. If he didn't appear, I would cut his money.
And that was only the thing that was bothering me the most. The second was the lack of coverage on the investigation of what I did to V-Soft.
The political scenery was just as expected: the implicated politicians, judges, cops, governors and officials were trying to save their asses by distorting laws while the populace was at the brink of civil war.
New Orleans, where I was currently hiding, for one, had declared martial law and almost no one was walking the streets if they didn't have to. Online business was thriving while local commerce was dying a painful death. And this only fed the fire.
But even though the people in New Texas had done as expected and killed most of the implicated politicians they could get their hands on, and the chaos everywhere else was progressing in a predictable manner, there had been no word whatsoever about the investigations on the murderers in V-Soft.
Why? What was going on? If the media had been feeding me fake news I could at least infer what they were trying to divert my attention from. But if there was no word at all, then all I could infer was that very powerful people were interested in keeping the investigation a secret. It could be anyone and the reasons for it could be anything.
After confirming that there was no new information circulating about it, I ordered some food, then called Daggers and logged back in.
* * *
My character was standing at the same place as before, just like Daggers. The first thing I did was invite her to a new party.
The Black Lotus Tavern was as luxurious as the rotten wooden sign at the entrance stall indicated; rich enough to afford wood, but not rich enough for the wood to be fresh.
Some twenty or thirty well-maintained metal tables with expensive looking tabletops, accompanied by cushioned metal chairs. Only a third or so of the tables had customers, and only two or three people on each table. The metal bar top had been polished until it was very close to a mirror and the floor was made of solid stone.
The scary thing was the lack of walls in the place; it felt as if we were all surrounded by an ever moving thick white fog. It wasn't that the tavern's owner didn't care enough about his customers' comfort to place walls. The fact was that walls in pocket dimensions were dangerous.
Thing is, no matter how stable the pocket dimensions in Margs Market were, no one wanted to be inside one without being able to see for themselves that it was safe. Small pockets of black lightning, for instance, sig
nalized instability and anyone inside would want to get out as quick as possible.
Margs Market was three hundred years old. Not nearly enough for the immortal undead of the Underworld to be perfectly confident in its stability.
Beside the pretty female vampire barkeep behind the stall, three handsome male vampires wearing butler's uniforms walked around serving the customers.
"Hey," I said to the closest butler. "I was supposed to meet some zombies in here. Any idea where they are?"
He bowed to me. "My good sir, your friends were... Unfit for this place. They have been invited to leave after they refused to act in a proper manner."
"Huh?"
The vampire sighed. "They tried to eat another customer."
First I stood there, looking dumbfounded at the vampire. Then, I laughed hard.
"They what?"
"One of the customers was bragging about his strength and one of the zombies bet against him that he could win in an arm wrestling contest. The zombie won and bit the muscled arm of the competitor as the reward. Something about liking hard meat, for which he was mocked by the other zombies."
I kept laughing for a while before finally calming down.
"Sorry," I said to the annoyed butler. "It's just... Anyway, any idea where they went?"
"No." He was annoyed at me, and so were all the customers around.
"Alright. Thanks for the tale. How do I leave this place?"
"That would be one silver coin."
I paid the man and walked out when the portal reappeared.
Finding the zombie currently responsible for watching over the entrance of Robert's house wasn't difficult, since zombies were quite rare in these parts. The guy wore light armor and was looking sleepy.
"Hey there," I touched his shoulder from behind.
He startled so hard he almost jumped. Turning quickly and seeing it was me made him calm down.
"Man! Not cool!" His voice was quite childish.
I didn't apologize; he was supposed to be on watch and being caught like that was shameful, to say the least.
"Do you know where everyone went?"
Unbound Deathlord: Obliteration (The Unbound Deathlord Series Book 2) Page 8