by Natalie Grey
Only a few heads turned to watch the woman with the glowing 1 above her head.
It was a quick walk out of Kithara and into the starting zone, where a dirt road climbed gently through fields of tall grass. Gracie walked with a smile as the sped-up server time turned the deep blues of night into golds and reds. Birds were chirping, wind rustled in the grass, and she held out a hand to brush it through the grass.
If she closed her eyes, she could imagine she felt it sweeping against her palm.
She opened her eyes again and stared at the lightening sky. This was her world—a world she belonged in. A world where instead of engagement parties and awkward dinner-dates, she had friends backing her up, jokes about magic, and a fight for something worthwhile.
She looked over her shoulder, back at Kithara and went still.
Two characters were standing there, watching her: an Aosi male, a summoner with greenish-blue skin and jet black hair, and a human man, tall and slim, with deep brown skin and a hooked nose.
Gracie sighed.
“So…is one of you Dan, and the other Dhruv?” she asked. “Or are you both Harry and this is some new mindfuck?”
Chapter Two
THE FORGOTTEN KING RETURNS.
Rage. Absolute rage.
For a long moment, Harry could think of nothing at all except his blinding fury. He could not speak, and he was hardly aware of his body or the world around him.
Then it resolved enough to make him want to smash everything in the immediate vicinity.
He didn’t. Barely. He ripped the headset off and used every ounce of self-control he had not to scream his fury. He sank into a crouch, fingers rigid, clenched on air. This wasn’t happening; it couldn’t be happening. Disbelief followed quickly on the heels of anger.
Harry’s mind retreated from the reality of it almost quicker than he could chase it. This wasn’t happening. It was a daydream, and a bad one—a waking nightmare. It wasn’t real, because it couldn’t be real. Who could have known to take that first quest?
No one.
None of them deserved it. None of them cared enough to save pixels. They didn’t think there was any reason to expend their energy being polite to computers. This had been going on for decades, becoming increasingly clear in recent years, and it terrified Harry. He had listened to the things people laughed about doing in simulators, the things they taught one another to do.
They spread cruelty. They learned it from each other, and they spread it into the world.
Because it was never just computers they hurt, it was each other. The cruelty sickened them. It sank into their minds and tinged them with darkness until they could not help but hurt and twist others.
Harry had built himself into the game for exactly that reason. People needed a guiding influence. And, because he was the only one who could see what was going on, they needed him to be that leader.
They could hate him if they wanted. He had expected it; almost, he welcomed it. He had seen from the start that they might try to rise up against him and unite to bring down a common foe. Inspire one another to feats of courage and selflessness.
He didn’t fear that. The bonds between them would stretch into the real world as well.
Writing Yesuan’s story had been bittersweet. When others had heard it, they were not yet willing to step past their initial disbelief and try to understand Yesuan’s struggle.
So it had to be Harry who led them.
He just thought he’d have had more time, but the others had been far too clever at keeping him out of the game as a player. Dan and Dhruv were many things, but stupid was not one of them. They had successfully prohibited Harry from setting up an account. How, exactly, they had tracked him, he wasn’t sure. It wasn’t his name, because he’d used fake ones. It wasn’t his IP address, because he logged on from different locations. He couldn’t think of any way it could be embedded in his VR suit, but he’d even purchased another one of those.
It still hadn’t worked.
They hadn’t closed off all of the game, however. They could hardly manage that when he knew the workings of it so intimately. He’d been poking around, trying to find how they’d set their ban so he could undo it when he saw that someone had begun his quest.
Callista.
The name made him want to yell. He had been so damned stupid—that was the worst part. He hadn’t thought to fear her at first. He had watched her progress, even spoken to her from behind the masks of the bosses he’d constructed.
Part of him, he knew now, was simply grateful to have found someone else who saw the game world as he did. Someone else who was willing to extend courtesy and kindness to everyone. She loved Metamorphosis Online. He’d observed the way she lingered when she examined little details of the game, and how she spoke to her team.
He hadn’t ever expected her to win, so he’d let the whole thing go on far longer than it should have. Like a fool, he’d enjoyed the way she challenged him.
In the end, of course, she’d been like all the rest: grasping for power that wasn’t hers to chase after God only knew what sort of goals. She didn’t understand what needed to be done, and when he’d tried to explain it to her, she’d defied him.
Her. A nothing of a person. Barely graduated from college. A blackjack dealer, for God’s sake. What the hell did she think she knew about the world or about the game?
It was supposed to be him.
Harry stripped the VR suit off, hardly caring when he felt fabric tear and snag on his clothing. He left it in a heap on the floor when he left the unadorned second bedroom of his house in semi-rural Washington.
He’d gone to Las Vegas to find Callista, and when he met her and realized she would never be his ally, he’d had nowhere to go back to. He might as well go somewhere no one could track him. All he needed was the internet. The cost of living hardly mattered after the buyout Dan and Dhruv had forced on him.
His cabin was surrounded by trees, the sky often cloudy, and the sound of the birds constant. He still wasn’t used to that…or the utter silence at night. No cars passing, no people walking outside.
He stood in the tiny living space and swept his eyes over the boxes he hadn’t yet bothered to unpack. There had been no time for that; he’d planned his drive here in tiny hops, always close to high-speed internet, always ready to jump into the game if he needed to do so.
But in the end, even though he’d been there and waiting, it hadn’t been enough.
He wasn’t made for real-time strategy, he thought sullenly. He specialized in thinking ahead. In understanding how people would interact on a grand scale. How they would strengthen or warp one another’s characters.
This imposter, this usurper, was a good strategist one-on-one, even if she was a coward.
She should have fought him. If she believed she was meant to hold the throne, she should have been willing to fight him. Honor had demanded it. Who was she to come after him with a whole team at her back and then claim she had a right to rule? Who was she to taunt him that she had a team with her and he did not have one with him?
A ruler should be alone. She could not rule if she was not willing to do so without a team behind her.
Of course, he had always believed, somewhere inside himself, that Dan and Dhruv would be there with him. That they would come around and see that he was right. He’d really believed that.
Perhaps it could still happen.
Harry hesitated, then opened the door and went out into the dark night. An owl’s hoot nearby made his heart leap. He still wasn’t used to the wildlife. He’d seen deer not too long ago and was glad of it…and then he saw a pack of coyotes the next day, and was viscerally reminded of how little nature cared for his survival.
It didn’t matter that he was the only one who understood human nature, who understood what humanity needed in this new era. A coyote would tear his throat out without thinking twice—or thinking at all.
Perhaps that was the problem, he mused. His mind drifte
d to the opening scenes of one of his favorite science fiction novels, to the Gom Jabbar. The Bene Gesserit had known that not all who looked human were human. Some were animals, never rising above their base desires.
He was asking too much of them.
Harry took a deep breath of the night air and tried to calm himself. He had known they were going to rise against him, he told himself. People did not like being ruled, even when it was for their own good. He had known they would fight him. This would not be the only challenge he faced.
He was smarter than this upstart, and he certainly knew more about Metamorphosis Online. While she did this out of some misplaced desire to give people choices, he understood the way the world truly was.
He would win in the end.
After a moment’s hesitation, he stepped off his porch and into the grass around his house. Claws and teeth aside, most wildlife wasn’t going to try their chances with a human. This was a time when facts and logic went against primal instinct, and Harry was not going to let the dregs of his animal brain hold him back.
He made his way through the trees, eyes adjusting to the darkness, and steeled himself to look inward.
Thinking of his eventual triumph hadn’t calmed him, and he knew why.
He just didn’t want to think about it.
But this was his Gom Jabbar, and he was not going to flinch. He was going to face the truth: he could not do this alone. He needed others to support him. What Callista had said was true in its own way, even if she didn’t understand.
That last thought made him stop in his tracks. Yes. Callista had spoken the truth, even though she did not understand. That was the key. She believed that a team of knowing allies was the only way to win. She believed in leading from the front, in being an ideal.
Harry knew better. He did not intend to let his allies understand his true aims. Some, perhaps, might not even know they were on his team.
Yes.
He turned around and headed back to the house. All it had taken was a few moments in the peace of the outdoors, and he was already refreshed, filled with purpose. In the city, surrounded by people living their meaningless lives, he would have been distracted by their petty concerns. Coming here had been the correct choice.
In the house, he left the door open to catch the sounds of the forest at night and pulled a pad of paper out of one of the boxes. Even when he’d worked all day on programming, his desk had been littered with pieces of paper. He planned best in ink.
It was not long until he had a full list of potential allies, both knowing and unknowing.
His confidence was restored. It was the nature of kingship that people would attempt to overthrow you. That was something Callista would find out soon enough. This had simply been his first test, and he fully intended to pass it.
After all, if he could not rule, if he could not ensure that this game was a force for good, there was only one choice left.
To destroy it.
Chapter Three
The dark-haired human nodded to Gracie. “I’m Dhruv.”
Where the air above his head should indicate a name, there was nothing. His skin was a deep brown, and he wore the leather armor of a low-level melee fighter.
“And I’m Dan,” said the Aosi summoner. Unlike most male characters in the game, he wore his hair long, and it blew in a magical breeze.
Gracie had to admit, she’d love a world where long hair always blew around glamorously while somehow never getting in the way. She’d bet it didn’t tangle, either. Real life really needed to step up its game.
She sighed. “Well, I suppose I can appreciate you showing up here instead of at my apartment.” She blinked and considered. “Actually, I don’t like this any better.”
Dan said nothing but she thought she heard a snicker from Dhruv. She got the sense that he preferred blunt honesty and a screaming fight to carefully-chosen words.
“Why are you here?” Gracie asked them flatly.
They looked at one another for a moment, and she had the sense they might be speaking on a private channel. When they looked back, it was Dhruv who spoke first.
“To meet you,” he said. Behind the minimal voice filters of a human character, his tone was quite brusque. “You’re a fixture of the game now whether we like it or not.”
The Aosi looked at him sharply, then back at Gracie. “What he means is—” Dan started to say.
“No, I get what he means,” Gracie shot back. “He means you two don’t like that I’m a fixture of the game. And, like him, I would much rather we just said what we meant—because, frankly? It’s been too long with you two sneaking around and doing things behind my back when I goddamned tried to make things right from the get-go. You’re the ones who turned this into a battle, not me.”
For a very long moment, neither of them said anything. At least, they didn’t say anything to her. What they might be saying to one another, she didn’t know. They stared each other down through the tall grass, Gracie’s golden armor shining, the Aosi’s hair blowing in the imaginary wind, heroes and villains in some sort of cinematic showdown.
It was enough to make her wonder if every showdown was this way. When generals met on a battlefield with their armies behind them, did they feel swelling, epic camaraderie and purpose, or did they feel this utter annoyance that the other side couldn’t just behave reasonably?
She was beginning to think it was the latter.
“So?” she said, finally. “Anything to say?”
“We prioritized the game over you,” Dan said finally. “We have spent over a decade creating Metamorphosis Online. Thousands of people play it—”
“Yeah, I get that.” Gracie couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice. “I really, really do. Which is why I tried to fix it from the start. You had options—”
Dan cut her off with a small gesture, one green-blue hand moving slightly. “This isn’t about that anymore.”
“Oh?” It was a pity they couldn’t see her expression because she was pretty sure her eyebrows had shot off her face entirely.
“This is about moving forward,” Dan said. From the way he spoke, she guessed he was used to being very businesslike and crisp. Unfortunately, his voice now sounded echoey due to the Aosi voice filters. “This is about what we do in the future.”
In Gracie’s opinion, that was awfully convenient. After someone trampled all over you, it was certainly more advantageous to them to say that you shouldn’t focus on all the bad things they’d done. That you should just move on and focus on the future.
Some quiet part of her, though, wanted to see what they would say if they thought she was agreeable. She wanted to know where their heads were, after all.
Because she intended to drive a very hard bargain.
So she crossed her arms and waited. She didn’t quite have it in her to simper.
Dhruv, however, had her number. “What do you want?” he asked her bluntly.
I want to be able to play the damned game in peace. I want to be able to have a place where my friends and I can meet and help one another and feel a little bit like the world is a nice place.
She wasn’t going to say that, of course. And, as she tried to figure out what she would say, inspiration came to her in a flash.
“I want you to keep Harry off my back, for one thing.”
She was pretty sure that was the last condition they wanted her to put on things. For another, she was sure they would actually try. It meshed with their own goals, after all. They didn’t want Harry in the game any more than she did. They certainly didn’t want the ghost of corporate blunders past to come around and harass their players.
She felt—as much as one could feel something like that—Dan’s desire to say she could have given the quest back to Harry. But he wouldn’t want Harry to be where she was standing now, and they both knew it.
He wisely kept his mouth shut.
That was when she realized it: they didn’t want to be here, either. They had no idea
what they were doing. They weren’t masterminds, running the whole game like puppet masters. Instead, they were scrambling to keep up with a situation that had blindsided them.
She wasn’t as out of her depth as she’d thought.
“As you’ll have noticed,” Dhruv said, “Harry isn’t exactly easily controlled.”
“Yeah, well,” Gracie shot back, “that’s the bargain you took on when you started a company with him, isn’t it?”
“Are you holding us responsible for his behavior?” Dhruv was shifting angrily.
“You’re the ones who helped make him who he was,” Gracie snapped. “I know the stories you tell yourself. You say that Metamorphosis Online was his idea, but you two built it, don’t you? You say that. Well, if he couldn’t have made it without you, then you had a hand in giving him that power. I’ll bet he used some of your code to work himself into the game.”
There was ringing, icy silence. She was fairly sure they weren’t talking to each other. She could practically feel the fury rippling off them in waves.
“Harry’s choices,” Dhruv said finally, “are his own. You would say the same if we blamed you for what he’s done.”
“Mmm.” Gracie smiled. Anger warmed her, heating her blood. “If you really believed that, you’d have been open with everyone about what was happening. You would have issued a press release about how Harry was interfering in the game. You would have told your sponsored teams what was happening. But you didn’t.”
Dan and Dhruv looked at each other now. They were talking, she could tell.
“I tried to help,” Gracie said again. She couldn’t get past this part, no matter how she tried. “I sent you a message as soon as I got into the Top 10. I said it was a mistake.”
“So you do think it was a mistake,” Dan said quietly, and she had the sense that she’d stepped unknowingly into a trap.
“Not anymore,” she told him simply. “Now I know it was part of the game’s rules, because it was. I did quests no one else did, and I fought bosses no one else fought. I made a gesture no one else made to end a war between two non-playing races. And I don’t think—”