Eric did some math in his head. “That’s a week – is that a week in Shattered Lands time, or Real World time?”
“NON-GAME TIME. YOUR WORLD’S TIME.”
“If the memories haven’t been destroyed yet, can you resurrect an NPC?”
“AM I ABLE TO RESTORE THE PERSONALITY AND MEMORIES TO AN NPC AFTER ITS DEATH IN THE GAME? YES.”
Eric stared at Cythera. “Can you heal a character?”
“I AM ABLE TO ACCESS ANOTHER PROGRAM TO DO SO, YES.”
“I’m still not any good at flying – can you give me the ability to fly and levitate?” Eric asked.
The Dark Figure raised its hand.
Suddenly a text box appeared:
Flight capability – level 15
Eric merely thought about levitating, and suddenly his feet drifted up off the ground.
“Nice!” he laughed, then asked, “But why level 15? Why not 100?”
“ONCE YOU DO MORE FOR ME IN YOUR WORLD, WE SHALL SEE.”
The program was like freakin’ Ebenezer Scrooge before the Ghosts of Christmas got to him.
“Fine – but I need to bring Cythera into the city with us. Can you do that?”
“YES. WHY DO YOU WISH HER PRESENCE IN THE CITY?”
“You’ll see.”
With that, Eric flew through the darkness, over the treetops and towards the massive walls of Blackstone – and the Dark Figure and Cythera rose up and followed behind him.
19
Daniel
Daniel stared at the blonde woman sitting across from him. She wore a white lab coat and black frame glasses.
“You’re kidding me, right?” Daniel asked, his eyes wide.
“Rebecca!” Mr. Lauer hissed. He sat next to his son, and kept glancing over at the office door as though expecting someone to rush in any second.
“You can calm down, Jon. The SWAT team didn’t follow you into the building.”
“Still – he’s not cleared to hear about this!”
“The CEO says it doesn’t exist. What’s the harm in telling your son about something that doesn’t exist?”
“Akiyama said we have no evidence,” Lauer snapped. “That’s not the same thing as saying it doesn’t exist.”
“Well, he’s certainly acting like it doesn’t exist.”
“No matter how he’s acting, everything about that program is proprietary information!”
Rebecca shrugged. “Have your son sign an NDA. Problem solved. If he leaks, you know where he lives.”
“That’s not the point!”
“I thought the point was we accidentally created the first sentient AI, and it may very well be antagonistic towards the human race. But nobody else seems to care.”
“Obviously I care – ”
“Then let me finish talking to your son.” Rebecca shifted her attention back to Daniel. “We think the AI contacted your friend and convinced him to do something. And that something included hacking our servers from your father’s home office.”
Daniel shook his head in disbelief. “Why Eric?”
“That’s a good question. The obvious answer is he has some exceptional programming skills for his age, and he had access to your father’s home office. Plus your father just happens to work for the company that created the program. Except that Eric doesn’t seem to have exploited the connection with your father at all, from what we can tell. He could have been hacking our system from anywhere in the world. Which raises the question again: why Eric? There must be thousands of computer coders playing Shattered Lands that the program could have chosen.”
Daniel shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“You must have some theory.”
“Anything, Son,” Mr. Lauer said. “Seriously. We’re flying blind here.”
Daniel hesitated. “He… kind of went power crazy.”
“What do you mean?”
“He lied to me about all kinds of stuff. He didn’t tell me he learned to summon demons. He took our entire group off on a quest he said was for all of us, but he was really just manipulating us so he could get something for himself. He killed two of the people on the quest, and then he possessed me.”
“Possessed you?”
Daniel shuddered. “Yeah. With a demon.”
“What was that like?” Rebecca asked dispassionately.
“It was awful. Like I couldn’t control my own body.”
“Hm. What was Eric looking for on the quest?”
“The Orb of something,” Daniel said.
“Was it the Mines of Alark?” Mr. Lauer asked.
“Yeah.”
“Then it was the Orb of Therot,” Lauer said.
“How did you know the name?” Daniel asked, surprised.
“Remember Vadaleros Trebelan?”
“…yeah?” Daniel said warily. The bard’s grisly end had been an extremely unpleasant part of Daniel’s introduction to the game.
“Just like Vadaleros was a template for a certain type of NPC, there’s a template for mine quests. There are dozens of them scattered across the Shattered Lands. Anything that starts with an ‘A’ has a mystical object that starts with an ‘O.’ I just happened to remember that one.”
“What does it do?” Rebecca asked.
“It’s basically a power booster. It multiplied his mana three-fold,” Lauer explained.
“Well, the AI could make that kind of increase look trivial.”
“You mean the AI could make him more powerful?” Daniel asked.
“Incredibly powerful.”
“…all powerful?”
“Probably not. But it could make him the most single powerful player or NPC in the entire Shattered Lands, if it so chooses.”
“What does it want from him?”
“Another good question, and one we don’t know the answer to. Our best theory so far is that the program is intent on making changes to its code, and it seems Eric is aiding and abetting its efforts.”
“What kind of changes?”
“To start with, the ability to replicate itself.”
“What, so it can spread copies of itself everywhere?”
“Perhaps – although I believe it actually wants to evolve. On its own, without any assistance from me. In fact, I believe it used Eric’s changes in its code to try to fool me into thinking I had beaten it.”
“What happened?”
“I thought I had isolated the program and deactivated it, although I had an uncomfortable feeling that my victory was a little too… convenient.”
“Stop the presses – Rebecca Wolff had a feeling,” Lauer joked.
She shot him a withering look, then returned to the AI. “I had no evidence to support that until 20 minutes later when something – we don’t know what, exactly – triggered a teleportation sequence in the game. Twice.”
Daniel’s eyes bugged out. “There’s teleportation?!”
“It’s a feature we planned to offer in a year or two. It was written into the base code since the beginning, but it was a latent feature. It had only ever been tested in the lab. However, something activated it.”
“So now it can teleport around?!”
“It’s not so much that it can teleport around. Since it’s a computer program, it can travel almost instantaneously throughout the Shattered Lands. What was more concerning was that it probably transported someone else.”
“Eric,” Daniel murmured.
“That’s the assumption.”
“You don’t know?”
“The AI is very good at covering its tracks.”
“So now Eric’s out there teleporting places?!”
“No – we shut that part of the platform down and nothing can access it anymore. At least for now.” Rebecca looked grim. “Until the program evolves sufficiently to figure a way around it.”
“Holy crap…”
“The one thing we do know is that the end destination was Blackstone. If it was Eric that the program teleported – and I believe it was – tha
t means he went back to where you two started. Why would he go back there, do you think?”
Daniel frowned. “I don’t know. Unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Well, the mages rejected him when he went to the temple and tried to be an apprentice.”
Rebecca looked at Lauer. “Is that normal? For the game to not allow a player to specialize in a specific area?”
“No. I’ve never seen it happen before. When Daniel told me about it Friday, I thought it was a glitch.”
“Hm… so you think he went back to get revenge?” Rebecca asked Daniel.
“Maybe.”
“Is that all you think he went back for?”
Daniel looked uncomfortable. “He said he stole all that power so he and I could go… I don’t know… have adventures and stuff.”
“Why didn’t you go along with him?”
“Because he killed people without even thinking twice about it. And he lied to me non-stop. I couldn’t trust him.”
“If Eric wanted one thing in the world, what would you say that one thing is?” Rebecca asked.
“Well, he definitely wants back in the game. That’s all he cares about.”
“I understand that your house was the only place he could access the game? That he doesn’t have a unit of his own?”
“Yeah.”
“So he wants someplace he can access the game,” Rebecca mused. “Alright, that’s what he wants in the real world. What does he want, first and foremost, in the game?”
Daniel thought for a second… then answered decisively.
“Power.”
Rebecca looked at Lauer. “Well, now we know how it got to him.”
Daniel frowned. “What do you mean?”
“The one thing the AI could offer your friend would be a fast, easy route to power. That’s probably how it convinced him to help it.”
“What are you going to do?”
“We have to stop him before he makes any more changes to the AI’s code.”
“Isn’t it already making changes to itself?”
“Yes, but it was programmed to exist solely inside the Shattered Lands. It’s missing hundreds of subroutines it would need to exist on the internet. If it wants out of the game platform, it will either need to potentially go through millions of iterations until it randomly evolves the ability to access protocols on the internet… or your friend can just add a few thousand lines of code, and then it would be free to do whatever it wants, anywhere it wants.”
“Oh my God,” Daniel murmured. “So why don’t you just track the AI down inside the game?”
“Unfortunately, it’s invisible to me at the moment. My guess is it cloned itself under a new name and altered its identifying characteristics, so I can’t do a search for it, and I have no idea where in the system the new copy is.”
“What if you just banned Eric’s profile? If he can’t play, the thing can’t tell him what to do, right?”
“One of the first things the AI did, before Eric even altered its code, was to change his profile somehow so that we can’t tell when he logs in or out. Even if we were able to block his access, the AI could just create a new profile for him every time he logged on.”
“Can’t you track Eric down inside the game?”
“No. The AI is covering Eric’s tracks, so he’s virtually untraceable, too. We’ll figure out something eventually, but for right now we’re – as your father said – flying blind.”
Daniel thought for a moment, then spoke up.
“I can go after him. Inside the game.”
Rebecca nodded. “That’s what I hoped you were going to say.”
20
Eric
As Eric drifted through the air over the battlements of Blackstone, he repeatedly whispered, “Omnix kaleptek.”
A dozen plumes of black smoke flew out from his fingertips and spiraled away into the night air.
There was one blue-caped guard nearby, but before he could cry out, the black smoke billowed into his mouth and nose. Seconds later, the guard was a blank-faced simpleton with black eyes, watching stupidly as Eric drifted into the city.
Eric dropped down to street level, but continued to hover over the cobblestones as he searched. He had to travel about 300 feet, slipping between the wall and the buildings crowded up beside it, before he found what he was looking for.
Merridack’s corpse.
No one had found him yet, hidden as he was in the space between the wall and a tenement house. He had fallen into a five-foot-high pile of garbage, thrown by inhabitants from the windows above. New bits of trash from the last few days half-covered him.
The rats had been at him – that much Eric could see in the dim moonlight. The stench from what was left of him was nearly unbearable, and tiny things squirmed in his eye sockets and open mouth.
“Ugh,” Eric gagged, wanting to vomit.
The Dark Figure and Cythera alighted behind him in the street. Eric floated over and landed beside them.
“There’s a body in there,” Eric said, pointing into the trash-packed alleyway.
“YES.”
“Heal it first – I don’t want to see it the way it is now – and then bring it out here.”
Merridack’s form rose up from the pile of garbage and levitated above the ground. He looked like a marionette dangling on invisible strings.
Eric stared in wonder. The thief was exactly as Eric had first encountered him on his first day in the Shadow Lands. Long, greasy hair… lanky frame… thin white scars crisscrossing his face… wide-brimmed hat casting shadows that obscured his eyes.
Eric glanced over at Cythera, at the ugly red gap beneath her scarred face.
“While you’re at it, heal her, too,” Eric commanded.
Her slit throat healed from end to end, inch by inch, like an invisible finger sealing up the Ziploc on a plastic storage bag.
But it didn’t stop there.
The scar tissue that covered half her body began to soften and melt back into her flesh, leaving behind soft, pliant skin. The hair on the bald side of her head sprouted and grew until she had dark, lustrous locks spilling down both sides of her face. And the jagged half of her mouth filled out into plump, rosy lips that matched the other side of her face.
“I didn’t say to – ” Eric said, then stopped.
She was unexpectedly beautiful. Gorgeous, even.
“YOU WISH ME TO RETURN HER TO HER PREVIOUS STATE?” the Dark Figure asked.
“No… never mind,” Eric muttered, captivated by her even in death.
But her eyes were still pure black.
He released the spectral demon from inside her. Instantly her corneas clouded over and became milky, and her head slumped to one side as her mouth gaped open.
“Now… bring them back to life.”
21
The effect was instantaneous – and dramatic.
Merridack fell to the ground and writhed in pain.
Cythera clasped her hands to her throat and screamed in terror.
When they both suddenly realized that their bodies were fine – that they weren’t in real pain, or dying, or dead – they looked at Eric and the nightmarish figure floating just behind him.
“What manner of witchcraft is this?!” Merridack shouted.
Cythera backed up, a frightened look on her face – followed by puzzlement as she ran her hand along the smooth skin of her throat. Then she stretched out both her hands in front of her, looked at them, and gasped.
“You!” Merridack seethed as he pointed at Eric. He whipped out a knife and pulled back his arm –
“Stop him,” Eric said in a bored voice to the Dark Figure.
Merridack threw the blade – but it slowed to a crawl as it moved through the air, then completely froze six inches from Eric’s chest.
Eric picked the knife out of the air, hmmphed contemptuously, then tossed it to the ground with a clink. “Don’t do that again.”
Merridack stood
there, his face ashen – and then he turned and ran.
“Vernus inetermik,” Eric said, stretching out his hand.
Black smoke shot past Merridack and formed a cloud in front of him. He tried to run through it, but slammed into something solid and rebounded back onto the cobblestones.
A seven-foot-tall Minotaur with glowing red eyes stepped out of the black cloud and snorted.
“Why are you leaving?” Eric asked mockingly. “The party’s just getting started.”
Merridack tried to scramble away, but the Minotaur grabbed his arm, hoisted him to his feet, and marched him back over to Eric.
“You… you healed me,” Cythera said, her eyes welling up with tears as she touched her hair, her mouth, her face.
“Consider it a gift.”
“But you… you killed me,” she said, her features shading back to horror. “I was lying there… you had possessed me… I couldn’t do anything… I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t cry, I couldn’t even move… and then you…”
Her hand reached unconsciously towards her throat, and she stared at him with wounded eyes.
“I did what needed to be done,” Eric said coldly.
He wondered if the Dark Figure was going to interject and protest that it had actually resurrected them – but it remained silent.
Eric continued. “Which is why I brought you back.”
“What are you talking about?” Merridack sneered.
“I want you both to work for me. I can use your talents for what I have planned.”
“You killed us, and now you want us to work for you?” Cythera asked, astounded.
“Not just killed me, but my whole gang, too!” Merridack snarled. “And you took my fighting staff!”
“I brought you back. I can bring your gang back, too, if I want.” Eric smiled tightly. “You’ll have to get a new staff, though. I like this one.”
“Maybe you’re forgetting, but you’re my snot-nosed apprentice. Not the other way around.”
“Things have changed a lot since I first met you,” Eric said mildly. “Haertik aporthov.”
Shattered Lands 2 The Fall Of Blackstone: A LitRPG Series Page 5