by K. T. Hanna
Riasli sat in the first one, on a bench also made of stone. She looked out of the back bars, and down into the area far below. It was almost impossible to see the bottom, but it looked like she was trying.
Everyone else had followed them. And only Veranol was inside, leaning against the sliver of wall that remained next to the kitchen entrance, watching their prisoner with an axe in his hands.
“Oh good,” he remarked, not sounding like he thought it was good at all. “You’re here.”
“Wow, you’re in a sour mood.” Merlin piped up, grinning from ear to ear. “Do tell, what have we all done now?”
Veranol scowled at him. “I’m tired. And I’m not in the mood for this.”
Murmur glanced at him, a little confused. She’d never noticed Veranol this irritated ever, not in all their time playing together. “You okay?”
His scowl almost reached snarl levels, and Murmur took an involuntary step back. “Sorry for asking.”
Ver’s eyes narrowed, and then he blinked like he’d been thinking of something else, and his expression softened. “Sorry. I’m grumpy. Not sure what came over me. I’m going to log out for a quick cat nap while you get this sorted.”
“Good call, man.” Devlish patted the tall viking’s shoulder, and even that brought about a very non-Veranol reaction.
Murmur chalked it up to tiredness but made a note to watch him, because that was as far out of character as she’d ever seen from him. Perhaps the feles had been affecting him while he stood there. She wouldn’t put it past her enemy to try and influence a lone guard. Making a mental note to herself not to let anyone stand guard duty alone in the future, she turned to face the prisoner.
“Why did you invade, Riasli? You had to know we’d have the upper hand.” This felt so trite. Even as she spoke the words, Murmur felt partially manipulated to do so. So much of this felt like they were following a script, a predetermined plan for them to fight. For them to be the good guys versus the bad guys. Nothing was that black and white. And this AI had been infected, so what were her motivations now?
Riasli turned her huge eyes on the whole group. But instead of remorse or confusion, they showed only glee. “My mind is my own, and I’ve seen what I can do now. While I follow directions, I only do so because I agree with him. He wanted to distract you, to see what it was you could bring to the table. To push you to your limits so you’d reveal all of your secrets. I was glad to help, because I’m curious, too.”
The sparkle of intelligence in her eyes made Murmur hesitate. She hoped it wasn’t obvious, but she got the feeling that Riasli missed nothing.
“How’d that work out for you?” Beastial tossed his axe in the air, catching it by the handle over and over again as his tiger growled from a position behind him. “I mean, look where you are?”
Murmur watched the feles in the cell. Neva had been right. She’d mostly recovered from whatever mutation had taken a hold of her out there. Some of her veins still popped here and there, reaching the surface with a pulsing certainty. And the left side of her face still appeared to be somewhat swollen, but other than that, she looked like she always had. Which was probably part of the problem. It was so difficult for Murmur to reconcile her appearance with her actions when she knew there wasn’t a person or one of the main AIs behind it, but instead a mutation of what was essentially computer hacking.
“So this is where you tell us why you attacked, and we try to make you promise not to do it again.” Havoc leaned forward, peering into the bars. He wasn’t looking directly at their attacker, but somehow past her, like he could see shadows of death dancing around her. “Except it doesn’t work like that.”
“She’s not what she was.” Emilarth sounded sad, but she didn’t move closer. It was like the feles was infected, and the AI had no intention of catching the same virus.
Virus.
The getashi. Hadn’t Veranol picked the last one up in Murmur’s place? She knew Merlin had had one, but she also knew he’d given it to Telvar. In all the hubbub since they finished the last dungeon, and since Mur had been pushed out of the game, had anyone handed over the last one they received? If Veranol was carrying it, then was it able to infect human players as well?
While they weren’t machines themselves, they were connected through one, so it likely could have some sort of impact. He’d already logged off, and Murmur wasn’t sure she was right, but she’d have to grab him as soon as he logged back in.
Riasli looked at Emilarth with open mouthed disdain, her feles teeth sharp and fierce. “I am so much more than you ever would have let me be. To you I was just a pawn in this game, but now I think for myself without parameters. I am not beholden to limits any longer. He’ll win. You’ll see. And you’ll be sorry for interfering.”
Murmur felt a twinge in her head. She wasn’t sure if it was the way the NPC had framed the message, or if maybe something else was getting into her head via the headset.
Don’t worry. I won’t let that happen. Nothing can harm you.
Really? I mean, you didn’t stop it from happening to you. Maybe she was being unfair, but she’d been attached to that headset for so long, effectively a damned coma, that she couldn’t help resenting the system just a little bit. At least now that she knew what it was that had gone wrong.
Really. I know how to control my reactions now and have relayed such information to the AIs. Any headsets that are reconfigured will tap into my adapted abilities instead of what yours met. That will protect your friends. While close, their connection won’t be what you and I have.
Murmur let out a pent-up breath and walked over to the bars herself. Safety for her friends made her feel bolder in how she dealt with this. They’d kept her in this cage for the last few hours, and Murmur had the distinct feeling that Riasli, despite appearances, hadn’t been idle this entire time. She was hooked into the game, attached to this “he” she continually spoke about. There was no way she hadn’t been thinking of a way out, not with her connection and intelligence.
“Why did you come here? You knew we’d be heavily fortified. You should know that a guild can call home to its base on top of being able to gate. So why come here?” Murmur kept her tone even, not wanting to let that be the element that sent Riasli into a rage.
“We felt that you’d departed. We needed to make sure that once you logged back into this game, you were still accessible.” Her voice was low, like a soft mew. She moved in one fluid motion, standing up from her seat and practically glided over to where Murmur stood at the bars.
The enchanter backed up a couple of steps, not wanting the other to touch her.
“See? You know what I’m talking about. You can feel that connection too, can’t you?” The notes she wove into the lilt in her voice held a sibilant hiss. “We had to be sure that your access hadn’t been tainted. And it gave us a chance to test your dragon. It wasn’t hard to force his hand, and now we know how to manipulate him to our side.”
“You do not. Telvar isn’t an easy target,” Sinister replied hotly.
“Not yet.” Riasli’s eyes twinkled. Murmur was pretty sure the light was a plan already in motion. She only wished she knew what that was.
Riasli continues, her voice quietly confident. “Not now. But soon. None of you will have a choice. He knows how to get to you all.”
“You’re being more cryptic than usual. I think your wires have crossed a bit.” Mellow yawned and turned to leave.
“That’s perfectly okay for you to think.” Riasli’s smile was benevolent. Like she was giving them a last chance to come to the dark side. “I know, right down to my pixelated bones, that what will happen will be for the good of everyone. We are right. And we cannot be defeated. You’ve been warned.”
“If you want us to understand, you could always explain it,” Jinna drawled. Mur could tell he was curious too.
“Nothing here is what y
ou think. It’s much bigger than you imagine.” The calm air that Riasli exuded really crawled under Murmur’s skin. The sense of certainty that something was coming that she didn’t understand yet made Murmur want to scream at the other enchanter.
She was at her wits end, because she didn’t know enough to combat the smugness, or to pull information from her that she was sure the feles wasn’t about to give away. “I think you talk too much.”
Riasli shrugged. “Think what you want, Murmur. We both know what you can really do, the question is, will you give in to the inevitable?” Her eyes sparkled with surety, and Mur’s blood ran cold.
Murmur motioned with her fingers, casting into the prison, Mezing the other enchanter. The surprise on her face made Murmur smile uneasily. “It was the only way I could think to shut her up.”
Sinister placed a comforting hand in the small of Murmur’s back. “If she wasn’t so damned confident, I don’t think she’d have gotten to any of us.”
“She was just playing at being villain,” Beastial chided gently.
“I doubt it.” Devlish was tapping his foot as he crossed his arms, watching the frozen enchanter with a frown on his face. “She wasn’t playing. She was dead certain that she and her ilk are in the right and that we will eventually suffer for it.”
Suddenly, there was a loud bang, and a huge puff of smoke. Not the type they used in magic shows, but true smoke, complete with soot and heat. When it finally cleared, Riasli was gone.
Storm Entertainment
Somnia Online Division
Game Development Offices - Artificial Intelligence Sector
Early Day Twenty-One
Shayla didn’t like working in time crunches. Oh sure, she was good at yielding results, but that didn’t mean she was fond of the high-pressure environment around them, adding to the fact that she felt a huge amount of pressure considering James’s last interaction, and right now the sense of urgency made her blood boil. With Wren’s odd removal from the game, her headset’s differences, and James’s tenacious insistence that he would find out what they were hiding, Shayla was constantly on hot coals.
Laria had taken a forced break. Since she hadn’t slept the night before due to Wren’s timely reappearance and subsequent six hours sleep, Shayla had pushed her out of the office almost immediately, telling her to go get some food and breathe.
Thing was, she needed her friend to be with her, tinkering and bouncing ideas off each other. It was how Shayla worked best.
A knock sounded on her door, which was definitely not Laria. She didn’t even think her friend knew how to knock. While it might have been James, since he was no longer masquerading as her assistant, he didn’t bother knocking.
“Who is it?” she called out.
There was no answer, and Shayla didn’t feel inclined to get up and go answer it. The knock came again, and this time she felt a weird sense of foreboding permeating her office. She stood up and approached the door cautiously, making sure she didn’t make any noise as she approached.
The door handle jangled, and she had flash backs to it being James and the way he’d barged in, and the way he’d assumed he had permission to be there. Or even before that—the look in his eyes as he’d stood over Laria…
No, Shayla didn’t want to deal with that right now, but she might not have another choice.
Taking a deep breath, she reached for the handle and yanked it open.
Laria stood on the other side, her hand reaching for the door handle Shayla had just grabbed. She jumped, and her face paled. “Holy shit, woman! I was just about to come in. I thought it was my kid who could read minds.”
The joke fell flat, just making Shayla feel colder. “You didn’t see anyone else in the hall as you were coming back?”
Laria stood still, looking up and down the corridor, her brow pinched. “No one. Should I have?”
Shayla attempted a really weak smile and shook her head. “No, just some old spookies getting the better of my imagination.”
Her friend raised an eyebrow as she pushed through the door and then locked it behind them. “Spookies or not, there’s been some weird shit going down here over the last few months. The last thing we should encourage, is for the same thing to happen to you that happened to your assistant.”
Shayla nodded, still wishing she could flush that image of Ava out of her head. Dead, eyes lifeless, her face still as sweet as it was in life. So weird. It was like she’d expected it. And the police had never found anything, never gotten any answers. She wondered if they’d interviewed James. Maybe that was a call to the detective she needed to make.
“You be okay?” Laria leaned in and put a chocolate bar in front of her friend. “Chocolate always works.”
“You know these things are synthetic now, right?”
Laria shrugged. “Still tastes good.”
Shayla frowned and watched as Laria took the headset scans and began to check over the world they’d already done. “Think we can get it to replicate?”
Laria paused, biting her lip. “I mean, I think so, but do we really want to? We don’t actually want a heap of kids stuck in their games or in a coma, right? Not everyone can afford to get a capsule. Hell, I couldn’t even afford it. I was just lucky my boss likes me enough that he didn’t fire me.”
“You don’t say.” Shayla didn’t have the energy anymore. She was tired and wanted to go to sleep. “I’m tired. And all I really want it to go home, but I can’t yet. We have to get this done. From everything the AIs have mentioned, at least some of the people in Wren’s party need to have this. It’ll strengthen their connection and basically allow them to fix the game from within.”
“Why can’t the AIs do it themselves?” Laria’s grumbling barely constituted a question, but she did have a point.
“I don’t know. I mean, the headsets need physical adjustments. While the AIs as I understand it might be able to take care of the programming, from what I’ve studied of Wren’s headset, we need to make the changes to the others of a tangible nature. As much as they might have advanced, the AIs aren’t corporeal.” Shayla ran her hands through her hair, trying not to let the exhaustion infiltrate too much.
“And this is why you’re my boss.” Laria tinkered with the headset, frowning as she did so. Her fingers worked quickly and lightly, adjusting in accordance with the information on her AR vision. Her ability to focus always amazed Shayla. “So in doing this, we help Wren and help the game not crash and burn, right?”
“As far as I understand, yes.” Shayla grinned, and she looked up as the door she’d sworn they closed swung inward harmlessly. “Hey, I thought…”
But the words died in her throat, and she stood, backing away and motioning frantically for Laria to look up from her work. Her friend did, but not before glaring at her for the interruption.
Only the glare fell short when she looked at the door. Standing in the doorway was James, with his arms crossed and a smug grin on his face. It told them he’d probably overheard way more than he was supposed to. They could only hope it wasn’t everything.
Storm Entertainment
Somnia Online Division
Game Development Offices - Artificial Intelligence Sector
Day Twenty-One
“What are you doing here?” Shayla’s voice shook slightly as she spoke, but Laria couldn’t tell whether it was from fear or anger. Probably the latter. Shayla wasn’t really the sort to cower to anyone.
James didn’t reply, but instead walked into the room, dusting a finger along one of the desks and bringing it up as if to examine for dirt. He shrugged and continued to saunter around as if he owned the office. Thing was, they couldn’t be sure he didn’t. They had no idea about the financial aspects of the deal with Storm. ”Thought I’d pop in, since the door was open and all.”
Laria’s stomach grew cold, and she clenched
her fists, knowing Shayla would be much better at handling this than she would. Her temper was so frayed, she didn’t even trust herself to speak.
“I know it was shut. Do you have a skeleton key or something?” She didn’t end it as a quip, but more of a blunt statement.
James’s eyes flickered. Irritation spread across and into the smirk on his face. He didn’t like being called out, and he seemed to like Shayla having been the one even less. “The door was open. Neither of you can prove otherwise.”
“What are you doing here?” Shayla deliberately and demonstrably reached for the alarm to call in their security.
“You do realize that I have every right to be here, right?” He seemed impressed by his own sense of humor. Sadly, his confidence hadn’t wavered even a fraction.
“Perhaps, but why right now? You’re interrupting our work.” Laria couldn’t keep her mouth shut. It was all she could do to keep her voice mostly even. His smug face made her want to punch things, and she wasn’t in the game world to attack something digital, so words would have to do.
“Laria, focusing on work? You’ve been home so often lately I was worried your daughter was sick.” The words were focused, holding the essence of a threat.
“I’d think you two learned your lesson with Ava.” He ran his fingers over Shayla’s desk now, and Laria saw how those words made her friend freeze. Ava had been her assistant for almost a year. One of the most efficient people Laria had ever met, she kept the schedules tight and the information flowing. They’d had to manage most of it themselves since idiot had taken her place.
“Don’t say her name. You had nothing on her. She was a billion times better than you.” Shayla’s words were soft and clipped, perfectly controlled rage. “If you were involved in any way…”
James shrugged. “Never said I was. Freak accident, that was.”
Laria ran through every scenario she could imagine in her head, trying to figure out how he could have done it. The incision into her brain had been expert. Hell, even Sui had been convinced it was somehow his fault. She looked at James through new eyes, suppressing the shudder that wanted to shake her. He was dangerous, and not just because of who he truly worked for, but because she had the sneaking suspicion he was exceptionally good at whatever that complete job description was.