Zoe thought, My boyfriend? Oh, right, he obviously meant Colton.
Before she could answer, the other two guys took out chains. Swinging them threateningly in their hands, they surrounded Colton.
The guy with the mangy beard growled, “Let’s see how tough you are, big guy!”
Suddenly, there was a blindingly bright flash of blue light. Putting her hand over her eyes, Zoe tried to figure out where it was coming from.
Trumpets played. Drums boomed loudly, with the rhythm of a steady heartbeat. Boom! Boom! Boom! It felt as though they were about to go into battle.
It turned out they were. But the two sides were sorely mismatched. To Zoe’s complete shock and amazement, it turned out her side had the advantage.
As stunned as Zoe felt, the bullies froze on the spot.
Colton also froze for a moment, looking confused. In his right hand, he held a mage’s staff. Dazzling blue light pulsed from a crystal ball at the top. As his survival instincts kicked in, he pointed the staff at one guy after the other, striking them all down with a quick succession of mage bolts to the stomach.
Within minutes, all three lay unconscious on the sidewalk.
Zoe felt shocked. Colton had taken out three people in quick succession. Her OCD kicked in. She counted them over and over again. One…two…three… One…two…three… One…two…three…
Her brain counted and re-counted in a continuous hypervigilant loop. Finally, she stopped counting and assessed the situation. Colton had knocked them all out. They seemed to be breathing and one guy was moaning, but Colton could have killed them.
Was he a monster…or a hero? He had saved her life, after all. If he hadn’t attacked those guys first, she was pretty sure they would have killed her or… She didn’t want to think about it.
In the blink of an eye, the staff disappeared from Colton’s hand. He said, “We gotta go. C’mon.” He acted like nothing extraordinary had happened. Obviously, trying to play the tough guy.
Zoe followed him in silence the rest of the way, climbing over piles of trash, stepping around mounds of poop, and trying not to gag at the stench or twist her ankles on broken slabs of sidewalk.
Finally, they arrived at an abandoned grocery store. The large plate-glass windows were smashed, every single one of them. All that remained were sharp triangular pieces on the top and bottom of the metal window frames, monster teeth ready to tear trespassers to shreds.
Colton said, “We’re here. Follow me.”
As he pushed open a rickety door squealing on its broken hinges, rats went fleeing into the shadows. Zoe thought she might faint.
“Don’t mind them,” Colton said. “They stay up here, scrounging for leftover food. When this place was ransacked after the company went bankrupt, a lot of stuff was spilled. Look over there.” He pointed at mounds of food on the floor: rice, corn flour, dried beans.
Zoe’s heart started racing. This was a completely empty grocery store. The shelves were bare, the cash registers gone, the conveyer belts ripped to shreds. The walls had been covered in graffiti—the colorful expression of the anger and passion of artists trapped inside the Exe. Now, Zoe was trapped here. Colton hadn’t brought her to any kind of gaming place. He was going to hurt her.
She started to speak, but her voice came out weak and shaky. Clearing her throat, she tried again. In a deeper, more controlled voice, she asked, “Where’s the gaming equipment?”
Putting a finger to his lips, Colton said, “Shh… There are always ears, enemies listening. We have a pretty sweet setup in a very secret location.”
Zoe felt she had no choice but to follow him. She’d never find her way back home without him. And Colton wasn’t acting too menacing.
She followed him across the store into the back storage room. At the far end of the space, Colton unlocked a heavy steel door. Down a long flight of concrete steps, there was a pool of golden light. There were also voices and the chirping, pinging sounds of sim rigs and people playing.
Relieved, Zoe followed Colton down the stairs.
The room at the bottom was filled with kids wearing silver helmets and silver gloves dotted with glowing LEDs. They were sitting in simming chairs, waving their arms.
Colton gestured toward the group. “Welcome to Hacking Central.”
Trying to make sense of the scene in front of her, Zoe replied, “Hacking Central? Okay, you have to explain.”
Leading her into a smaller room with a coffee pot and a box of chocolate-covered donuts, Colton offered her both.
“Thanks, but I feel too nervous to eat,” Zoe said. “I need an explanation first.”
Colton lifted a Styrofoam cup off the top of a stack and poured himself a cup of coffee. Dumping sugar and powdered cream into it, he asked, “Aren’t you sick of the people in the View?”
Zoe collapsed into a chair. Her leg started bouncing uncontrollably to let off pent-up nervous energy. “What? You seriously want to gossip about the kids in the View right now? Some of them are actually very nice.” She thought about Ella, what had happened to her. She wanted to cry.
“They get all the perks,” he said. “And they’re living their awesome lifestyle because their parents work for VirtuMax. Everyone in the other room is a hacker. We hacked into their latest top-secret game, Feyland, in order to get a piece of the action for ourselves that we’d never be able to afford when it’s released. A few of us went even further. We created mods that are frustrating the VirtuMax developers. They suspect there are hidden corners in the game now that they can’t get into. They think it’s corporate sabotage or a problem with their own design. They’ll never suspect a bunch of ne’er-do-wells in the Exe.”
Zoe said, “Yeah? So what does this have to do with me?”
“We saw you inside the game. You and one of those spoiled brats from the View. She wandered into one of our mods. And now your friend and a bunch of our friends can’t get out. In the real world, they’re in a coma. In-game, they’re trapped in the mod. No one can get out without a balanced team. We want your help. We could tell from your gameplay that you have some tweaked skills. You help us rescue our friends and you can join our hacker world if you want to. We need as many skilled players as possible to save our friends…and your friend. Money won’t buy her way out.”
“Give me a cup of coffee,” Zoe said. “Black. And a donut.”
Colton laughed and fulfilled her request. After she’d fortified herself with sugar and caffeine, she said, “Okay. Show me to my simming chair.”
In a normal situation, she’d be introduced to the team. In this case, though, everyone was inside a helmet and largely cut off from the real world. She’d meet them in-game.
The equipment was incredible. She mentioned that to Colton. He said, “Yeah. We’ve made a lot of money with our hacking skills.”
After placing the shiny silver helmet on her head, pulling down the visor, and pulling on the simming gloves, Zoe itched to get started.
She created a new Spellcaster character and double-clicked her thumb and index finger to bring up the keyboard. She named this character after another faerie in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Mustardseed.
The words appeared: Enter game?
Colton said, “Okay. Let’s go.”
They tipped their thumbs up. A fanfare of trumpets blared. Golden light washed over their vision. Zoe fought against throwing up as she became consumed with nausea. Damn. She forgot. She should never have had the coffee and donut. What was she thinking?
Then everything calmed down. She was fine. Better than fine. She was inside Feyland! And she had a real mission to accomplish! She had to save Ella—for Ella’s sake and to wash away her own guilt.
Colton’s avatar looked like him. He was a Spellcaster with fiery red hair—so silky inside the game that the sunlight gave it an incredible sheen. He had on a long, flowing blue robe and brown leather boots. In his hand, he held a mage staff with a glowing blue crystal ball o
n top—the same weapon he’d used to fight the thugs in the real world! How was that even possible?
Zoe admired her avatar. It was eerie how much it looked like her: green eyes, dark hair, her same thin build. She had on the most beautiful emerald-green robe that made her eyes sparkle, and brown leather boots. In her right hand, she held a mage staff similar to Colton’s, except it had intricate carvings on the staff, and the glowing ball on top was green.
They both stood in the familiar circle of pale mushrooms. Zoe felt a thrill of excitement in her stomach when she stepped over the mushrooms onto the luxurious green grass. She took a moment to enjoy the feel of cool air against her skin, wind ruffling her hair and robe. “This is amazing! I love this place!”
Colton’s avatar smiled. “There’s a lot more to experience. Let’s go.”
Zoe followed Colton down the mossy path that led into the trees. There was a rustling in the underbrush, and out popped a faerie about the same size as Shadow, with rainbow-colored wings.
She planted her bare feet on the ground, looked at Zoe with intense blue eyes, placed her hands on her hips, and said, “You’re late. You’re supposed to follow me. Some friend you are.”
That stung. Did she mean friend of hers or friend of Ella’s? Zoe already felt tremendous guilt. The faerie didn’t need to make it worse.
“This character isn’t a regular part of the game,” Colton explained. “She appeared first in our mod and then went out into the rest of the game.”
The faerie turned on her heels to face Colton’s avatar, put a finger on her lips, and said, “Shh. Secrets we don’t tell within this silver-leafed forest.”
Colton replied, “Zoe needs to know, my dear, or we’ll spend all afternoon trying to carry water in a sieve.”
“What?” Zoe asked.
“Normally, that’s the first quest.” He pointed. “We meet a Brownie named Fynnod over there at the edge of the wood. We give him a bowl of milk. Brownies like that, so he gives us our first quest: filling a sieve with water from the river and carrying it back to him. Then he grants us passage to the next level. But we’re not going there. We’re going directly into our mod.”
So, that was the first quest. Spoiler alert. Normally, spoilers would bother Zoe. Now, there were much more important matters to attend to, like saving her friend who was apparently lost inside the game.
Zoe was about to ask how they got into the mod, when the faerie turned to her and said, “Silly girl. What leads to both prison and freedom?”
“Your riddles aren’t needed here, Nissa,” Colton said. “Just do it.”
Nissa stamped her tiny foot. Kicking up a thimble-sized cloud of moss, she muttered, “Hmmmpf.” Lifting a square patch of the forest floor and knocking the grass from a wooden door, she said, “The answer to my riddle is: trapdoor. You may enter.”
She glowered at them, then leapt into the hole in the ground.
Colton said, “You next.”
Zoe thought, How unfair. Nissa has wings. I do not. With her heart pounding against her chest, Zoe took—literally—a leap of faith.
The fall was weird in Feyland. Zoe definitely had the sensations of falling, of her hands touching a tunnel slick with mud, of hitting the walls of the chute, and yet there wasn’t any pain or butterflies-in-the-stomach sensation of free fall.
Suddenly, she landed. Moving out of the way so as not to be knocked over by Colton, she looked around. It was weird that she had landed perfectly on her feet, but was happy for not tumbling out onto the floor or smashing her head. She looked down at her robe. It should have been covered in mud; but it was still a brilliant green, not a spot of dirt on it.
She laughed at the irony. Colton’s mage staff could materialize in real life, but, like in a lot of games, her clothes would probably remain pristine no matter how many times she traveled through muddy places or how many battles she fought. At least she didn’t have to wear sexy battle armor with her midriff exposed.
Nissa sat cross-legged on the floor, her chin resting on the palm of her hand. She looked bored.
Zoe looked around. They were in a small space that reminded her of a dungeon carved out of the musty earth.
Colton came through the chute with a thud. His boots smacked down hard against the dirt floor.
The second he landed, a golden light bathed the entire area. Zoe felt only slightly nauseated. The entire dungeon spun around. The light swirled even faster.
When the motion came to a stop, the chute was gone. They were now in a huge cave. The walls were made of crystalline stone. Stalactites hung from the ceiling; stalagmites rose from the floor. Everything sparkled and glittered. Zoe couldn’t determine the location of the light source, but the cave was brilliantly illuminated. She wondered if the structure itself produced light.
A sparkly path formed on the floor. Colton said, “We should follow that.”
Nissa rolled her eyes. “Obviously.” Fluttering her wings until she lifted into the air, she flew alongside the gamers.
The cave turned out to be only the first in a series of caverns connected by long, dark tunnels. Each cave was illuminated, with the source of light a mystery. The crystal walls twinkled. Quite the opposite, the tunnels were dark and dank with walls that were wet and cold and slippery. The only illumination there was the twinkling path.
After they walked for what felt like hours, Colton said, “Turkey leg.” A turkey leg appeared in his right hand. He tore a chunk off with his teeth.
Having been hungry bordering on ravenous for the past half-hour or so, Zoe shouted, “Hey! How did you do that?”
“It’s a handy feature of the game, so we included it in the mod. If you think about anything in your inventory that you want—food, weapon, whatever—it will appear in your hand. You should eat, for stamina and health points.” After taking another huge bite of turkey, he said while chewing, “Whatever you do, though, don’t accept food from any character or creature in the game. That could end badly.”
“Oh, right. It’s the same way you access the inventory in the main game. How you get milk for Fynnod.” She shouted, “Cheese! Cheddar cheese!” and a brick of orange cheese appeared in her left hand. “Nice!”
“You don’t need to shout. Really, you don’t even need to say anything. You just need to think about the thing you want.”
They hiked through the cave while eating—Colton munching on the turkey leg, Zoe eating her fill of cheese and then biting off mouthfuls from a loaf of bread. After eating, they summoned frothy mugs of root beer. Feeling certain they must be at maximum health, they trudged on.
Eventually, they came to a place where the path changed. It led into yet another narrow, darkened tunnel. The way was lit only by the sparkles on the floor, but they had turned to neon green that reflected eerily off the slick walls.
Zoe hesitated.
Nissa flew past her into the tunnel.
Colton said, “C’mon. Let’s go.”
Music began to play, incredibly haunting and beautiful music. Zoe yearned to find its source. Blue and green light flickered from a room at the end of the path.
As they stepped into that room, they were confronted by the woman Zoe had seen in her bedroom. The hallucination. Skin as ghostly white as a porcelain doll, eyes a fathomless, gorgeous shade of violet. She wore the dress with the swirling aurora borealis. She lifted a staff made of something resembling ivory. Goblins and sprites surrounded her, and a knight with a silver sword stood at her side.
Waving her arm, she revealed something that had been hidden. A shelf carved into the cave wall held a collection of glass jars, each illuminated with brilliantly colored mist. Zoe searched the jars. There was one with the shade of blue in the flashback she’d experienced back home.
The woman walked over to Zoe. Lifting her right hand, she poked Zoe in the chest with a two-inch long fingernail strong as metal and as pointed as a needle. “Have you been feeling weak or tired, my dear?”
> Zoe knew she had. Afraid of the menacing look in the woman’s eyes, she answered, “Yes.”
The woman cackled. Then tears ran down her face. “That was me. I did that. One of these jars, the one with the blue light, holds a bit of your life essence, your soul. I have to return it…” Grabbing the jar, she turned the lid and stuck the open jar under Zoe’s nose. “Inhale or you will die. I will see to it.”
Afraid it might be poison, but more afraid not to obey the woman who seemed both dangerous and on edge, Zoe took a sniff. As she did, the glowing blue light escaped the bottle, coiling around like a cobra coming out of a basket to the sound of the snake charmer’s flute. It floated across Zoe’s lips and flew up into her nose. Immediately, she felt energized.
The woman grimaced. “You have no idea how much the life essence of humans means to faeries. It keeps us alive. My Queen has kept the limited resources for herself until we open a more reliable gate to your world.” Poking Zoe in the chest with a metallic nail once again, she said, “Appreciate what I’m doing for you. My Queen demands that I return the bits of souls I’ve worked so hard to collect. Her jealousy and spite know no end.”
Nissa laughed. “Well, of course. The paltry amounts you collected aren’t worth the Queen’s time, Dulcina. But you did this without consulting her. Your punishment is just.”
As Zoe felt increasingly stronger, she acknowledged that the glowing blue light certainly seemed to be a missing part of her soul. She’d been weakened by the loss. Inside the other jars must be the souls of the kids languishing in comas in the real world.
Dulcina raised her staff. As she did so, the sleeve of her dress fell away, revealing pale white arms streaked with red veins. She was deathly ill. Blue light shot from the tip of her staff and knocked Nissa from the air. The tiny faerie plummeted to the floor of the cave with a horrifying splat sound.
Trumpets blared. Drumbeats bounced off the walls. Boom! Boom! Boom! A team ran into the room, and Colton shouted, “More of our game modders have arrived!”
Through the Trapdoor: A Feyland Story Page 3