“No stats that I could see. I figured it was just ornamental.”
Brand moved toward Kat, fingered the collar around her neck, as well. “And they can’t be removed?”
Kat shook her head as he handled the collar. His fingers brushed against her skin and Tasha saw a bright color in the girl’s cheeks.
“Yuri could be tracking them with these.”
Misha asked him, “Don’t all harlots have them?”
“No. A few do, but most don’t.” Brand spread his arms in a motion of embarrassed explanation. “Hey, I’m not a huge expert on harlots, but I am a guy, you know, and I have played this game from its inception. So…you know. I’ve had my share of experiences here.” He looked away from Kat, a bit embarrassed. He went on, almost as though speaking to himself, “Okay, working hypothesis: The harlots who are forced into service here, like you two, are tracked by their, uh, pimps, via the collars around their necks. So what we have to do is get rid of the collars.”
Tasha gave him a serious look. “And how do we do that?”
“I know a guy.”
……….
Actually, Brand knew a dwarf. “In the far-off land of the misty night, beneath the mountain of Tanna-Thule, lives a famed blacksmith, Dway-un the dwarf.”
“Dwayne?” Misha interrupted.
“Not quite. Dway-un. More stretched out into two syllables.”
“Dwayne,” Kat said.
They were on the road to Tanna-Thule. Kind of a road, Tasha mused. Not paved or anything, but it was a well-traveled walkway, once a footpath, probably, that with use had been delineated out to a couple yards wide. “Too bad we can’t just teleport there,” Misha said.
“Brutalia isn’t like other games,” Brand told him. “It hasn’t been ruined yet. You have to actually live it, travel around from place to place like real life, rather than just teleport where you want.”
Tasha grimaced at that. “I’m really not interested in this place as a game.”
“I have no idea what you all are talking about,” Orlando chipped in. That seemed to be a running refrain with him.
“One more thing,” Tasha went on. “Say we get the collars off. Say Kat and I find some kind of peace here in this world. What then? Is there any chance we’ll ever get back to the real world? And will there be any way to take control of our bodies? What will stop Yuri from simply murdering us in real life, once he realizes he can’t control us here in Brutalia, pimping us out for plat and pleasure?”
Orlando reached out to take her hand. He might not be able to follow all the nuances of Real World discussion, she thought, but he knew when she was distraught. Brand also moved closer to Kat, and Tasha saw their fingers brush.
“When I leave the game,” Brand said, “which I’ll do as soon as we get your collars off, I’ll look into Yuri’s businesses more. I might be able to find where your bodies are stored.”
“Stored,” Kat said. “Ick.”
“You know what I mean. You’re hooked up to life-support somewhere, and plugged into the Brutalia gaming network. There must be paperwork attached to that somewhere, work orders and whatnot. Everything that happens, everywhere, leaves a digital fingerprint.”
“About that,” Misha piped up. He stopped in the middle of the road, went to the hard desert sand at its edge and abruptly sat, taking out a muffin and beginning to eat. The rest of the band joined him. It was a good spot to take their rest as any, with visibility on all sides and a bright shining sun overhead.
“I’m not supposed to talk about any of this, so you have to all swear to secrecy.” His words were directed especially at Brand. Of course. Orlando was near clueless as to what they talked about, lacking any sort of context to place it in. Tasha and Kat were…well, not really “dumb girls,” though sorta kinda, she thought, but most def out of the loop of even understanding the high tech mumbo-jumbo that Brand and Misha lived for. And they were stuck here, with few people in the Real World they could communicate with anyway. But Brand was a hacker, his digital fingers extended throughout the cyberworld, and information was power to people like him.
Brand raised his hand as though offering a pledge. “It’s between us. What intel you give I’ll try to use to help these girls get out of here, but that’s it. Won’t sell it, won’t use it for personal gain in any way. Scout’s honor.”
Misha nodded. “That’ll have to do. Here’s the deal. I’m in the military.” Tasha had known that. Misha had gone in straight out of high school, some kind of nerd branch of the military, where they’d put his computer and gaming skills to use. “I work in our government’s drone program. I don’t have a high-ranking position, but it’s a key techie spot on the team that deals with the interface between our human assets – our pilots – and our mechanical assets – our drones.”
“I take it you’re not just bringing the pilots coffee.”
Her ex-boyfriend laughed. He was looking good these days, actually. He had been kind of soft in high school, spending most of his time on the computer or reading. He was lean and hard now. Probably had to meet basic fitness requirements even if he was in the army’s nerd program. Then she realized she was looking at his avatar, not his actual person, and shook her head. This was all too confusing.
“No. I work on the team that improves the interface between pilot and drone. We use tech that’s similar to the immersion tech used in current games like…” He gestured around at this richly textured world Tasha was trapped in. “Like Brutalia. Our pilots don’t really ‘operate’ the drones anymore, at least not at the cutting edge. They become the drone.”
……….
That certainly got Brand fired up. He asked a dozen questions of Misha as they sat beneath the gentle sun of Brutalia. The weather on this planet was pretty much perfect, though everything else seemed about as fucked-up as it could get. It would be fun, Tasha decided, if she was around eighteen years old, and could run around killing monsters and quaffing ale, but she wasn’t here under my own volition. She wanted out, and Misha, apparently, was building up to offering a possible way to do just that.
A potential way out.
Scratch that, a highly risky, statistically unlikely, remotely possible way out.
Accent on remotely.
……….
As night fell over the Desert of Korath (which was apparently the name of the mass of arid pixels they were now in, she had learned), Brand said he would be logging off soon. “I have to research Yuri’s crime syndicate some more. Have Misha ping me if you guys get attacked by something you can’t handle. My Death’s Hand ability is available for use again, and it might turn the tide.” He turned to look at Kat, who gazed at him with adoring eyes. “Umm, could I talk to you for a minute?”
They drifted off away from the makeshift camp, which was basically just their avatars sitting cross-legged in the pool of light made by the two moons of Brutalia. “Don’t go too far,” Orlando called out to them.
“I think they need a little privacy,” Tasha whispered to him. Misha gave her a look. It was something like a cross between, “Why do you treat the NPC like a person?” and “I wish you’d go off with me into the desert…”
“They should wait,” Orlando said grumpily, “or if they can’t, then they should just go about their business while we turn our backs.”
“Tell me something, ‘Sergeant,’” Misha said with a scowl, “do you have any memories of your childhood?”
Orlando glared at him. “I am no longer in the City Guard. You may call me Orlando.”
“Well, do you, Orlando? Remember being a child? Anything? Where you grew up, what your parents were like?”
“I remember my youth as a Guardsman Privet, before receiving my first promotion, training with sword and shield, patrolling the more peaceful areas of Elsinore.”
“You realize you were never actually a child, right?”
“Misha,” Tasha said sharply. She put her hand on Orlando’s.
“I don’t expect it to
know what it is,” Misha said to her. “Self-awareness isn’t too likely in an NPC. I just want you to remember who, or what, you’re involved with here.”
It was an ugly moment, though made almost humorous by the noises of lust that were coming from a few dozen yards out in the desert. Kat and Brand had indeed slipped off for a tryst. Tasha didn’t know how much Kat really liked the guy, or if she just wanted him to keep helping them, but she was definitely showing him a good time. Tasha glanced at their shadowy forms moving like pistons, Kat bent over with her robes up around her hips. Tasha was distracted to the point that she didn’t see Orlando slap Misha across the face, but she heard it. And she saw the aftermath.
The two guys stood facing each other, both with their swords out. The erstwhile city guardsman and the twinked-out paladin. Misha’s armor was much better, but Orlando had a decent sword and was a higher level fighter. This could get ugly.
“Speak to me that way again and I will kill you,” Orlando said in a tight, quiet voice. He obviously meant it.
“Get rid of this thing,” Misha told her. “We don’t need it. We don’t even know for sure what it’s programmed to do.” He looked imploringly at Tasha. “I’ll protect you. I have a plan, babe. I…I’ve missed you…you were the only girl I ever…”
He was choking back tears. Orlando looked confused. A moment ago he was about to get in a duel with a scrappy paladin, now he was facing a heartsick young man barely out of his teens. The sound of mutual orgasms wafted on the breeze of the cool desert air, giving the scene an even more absurd aura. “Guys, just chill,” Tasha said. “We have to pull together here. Misha, log off for a while and get some rest. I appreciate all you’re doing for me, but I thought we were…you know. Over it. Long over it, like over two years now. I’ll have to think about all this. And when you can, read about Brutalia’s artificial intelligence program. I’m pretty curious about it myself.” She stood and moved next to Orlando, again putting her hand on his, hoping to keep him from pulling his sword. “I’m no computer expert, but I know…I really know that Orlando is…how did you put it. Self-aware. A conscious entity. Please, read up on it. Now just go away for a while, okay?”
Still almost in tears, Misha sat cross-legged on the ground again, went into meditation mode and, upon logging off, winked out of existence.
“I will never get used to that,” Orlando said.
……….
With Misha and Brand both logged off, Tasha felt quite a bit more at peace. Men could be a real pain sometimes, that was for sure.
But they could also be a pleasure.
Kat had drifted off to sleep, no doubt basking in the afterglow of her lovemaking session with Brand, and Tasha had moved so close to her NPC lover that she could smell the strong masculine smell of him. This world was amazing, she thought for the hundredth time, her hand straying down to his lap. He wasn’t wearing armor, having been stripped of it when he got bounced out of the City Guard. Her hand slipped inside his breeches, over the hard rock of muscle that was his belly to the equally hard rock that was his male member, erect now, pushing at the leather of his trousers. She freed him, lifted her own robes, and climbed on top of him.
They tried to be quiet but didn’t succeed. If they woke Kat, she pretended not to notice.
……….
The sun rose not long after. Days and nights were shortened on Brutalia. She hadn’t timed it yet, but she guessed that each lasted about four hours. She and Orlando had taken turns keeping guard, letting Kat sleep all night. As the sun appeared high in the sky – rather abruptly, she realized, no slow crawl over the horizon on this fake world – Brand also appeared, shimmering into existence. “Is Misha here yet?” he asked immediately.
Tasha shook her head. She wasn’t completely sure he’d come back at all, not as long as she was flaunting a virtual boyfriend in his face.
“First off, let me say that the dude is the real deal.”
“Misha…?”
“He knows his shit. They even gossip about him on the dark web, quite a big player in the drone-interface thing his country – your country, I mean, Russia – has going on. The U.S. is up on it too, of course, they’re up on everything in the military sphere, but Russia is pouring a disproportionate amount of resources into it. Misha has written a lot of the code that makes it work.”
“Wow,” Tasha said. She’d had no idea. Her ex-boyfriend was a brainy guy, she knew that, but she had always thought his brains extended more to Halo and StarCraft than cutting edge military technology. Maybe video games and military tech were becoming more synonymous all the time. “How does this affect me and Kat?” she asked.
Brand’s black-armored shoulders noticeably shrugged. The armor here seemed to be form-fitting, even though it was made out of metal. Then Tasha remembered that it was merely pixels she was seeing, if “seeing” was even the right way to describe it, and the game makers could design the pixels to possess any properties they chose. “That’ll be up to Misha to tell you,” Brand said. “I don’t know exactly what he has in mind, but I can guess.”
The air near them began to shimmer. “Speak of the devil,” Brand said as Misha the Paladin winked into view. “Good to see you here. We need to talk.”
Tasha hazarded a smile at her ex-boyfriend, but he ignored her. No doubt his feelings were hurt, but…but then she saw behind him, off in the distance but approaching fast, several flying shapes which seemed to transform from far-off specks into what looked like –
“Guys!” She pointed in the distance, almost jumping up and down, drawing her rapier and getting ready to use her disappearing skill. “We have company!”
The specks had grown in size to what were quite obviously…flying monkeys.
“Flying monkeys?!?” Kat shouted. She had her harp out. The bizarre thought crossed Tasha’s mind that the girl might have a flying monkey song. “We’ll need your healing spell, Kat,” she said, as she noticed the size of the monkeys’ claws. She also noticed the size of their…well, they were naked from the waist down. And they seemed somewhat aroused by the prospect of battle. Quite aroused, actually. Their stubby red penises were visibly engorged, she noticed, suddenly worried that more than murder was on the minds of these monkeys.
“Kat!” Brand called out, “get to the rear, and start your healing spells! Tasha, go invisible and try to get behind one of them when they land. Misha and I have the armor to tank up front, while you and Orlando slice them up when you can! Go!”
The thought briefly crossed her mind that she wasn’t too thrilled Brand decided he was in charge, but she quickly let it go. He was the highest level among them, and what he said was sensible. Her eyes briefly met Orlando’s. He winked once at her as she went invisible.
The first minute of battle was an absolute mess. Monkey parts flew wildly about as the three guys hacked and slashed at the beasts, who landed about them like parachutists, their screeching cackles like something out of a chillingly effective though somewhat retro horror movie. Her invisibility gave her a bit of distance, watching the battle as she maneuvered into a decent position behind the pack of marauding primates. Orlando’s swordplay was a thing of beauty, economically slashing at the throats of the hideous creatures, blood spraying as he seriously moved to the next victim. Brand and Misha were more hack and slash. She had noticed that players lacked the same elegance of bladework that the locals possessed, as though the gameplay function limited their abilities to number-crunching math and virtual die rolls, while the locals actually believed themselves to be engaging in serious martial arts. But they were effective. As the highest level member of the group, Brand dispatched one assailant per strike; monkey blood sprayed outward from him like cotton candy in a carnival machine. Misha took several more blows to take down one of the chimps, but most of them seemed to focus on attacking him. Probably something to do with his religious affiliation – as a follower of the Lord of Light, he was anathema to these hideous creatures of hell. At one point he had to pause from the
battle to cast healing spells upon himself; as a paladin he possessed a few basic healing spells. Still, he was getting weaker, and three other monkeys were converging on him.
Tasha chose that moment to break her invisibility spell and backstab. She took out one of the beasts attacking Misha with a critical hit, then immediately backstabbed a second, seriously wounding it. Several of them turned on her, and she backed away, using her rapier and parrying dagger more for defense than offense. But their backs were exposed to Orlando now – he took advantage of the situation, slaughtering three of them in rapid succession.
The battle was abruptly over, with a few of the wounded beasts flying off toward the far horizon as the remainder lay dead or dying about them, wings flapping weakly, claws twitching as though in sorrow.
Kat continued with her healing song. Tasha had been knocked down to 20 percent health, she saw in her stats window, and Misha had been close to death as well. But they had survived, and now they looted the creatures with abandon, picking up coins and the occasional healing potion. She refrained from using a potion, willing to let time and Kat’s spells bring her back to 100 percent.
Misha fell to the ground next to her, exhausted. “Ten platinum pieces says Yuri was behind that attack.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it,” she agreed.
“The sooner we get those collars off you two, the better.”
“Again, no argument.”
Misha gestured toward the hunched back of Orlando, bent over one of the malicious monkeys looting its corpse. “I still think it’s a spy,” he said.
“He’s not a spy,” Tasha told him. The words came even harsher as she spat them out a second time: “He is not a spy.”
What happened next seemed to occur in slow motion, her eyes seeing it, but her brain unable to react, as filled with disbelief as she was. Misha crossed the hard-packed desert sand the several yards to where Orlando had his back to him, drawing his sword in a smooth motion, then charged forward, spitting him through the black with the sharp blade. Orlando fell forward, his head turning, his eyes taking in the sight of Misha standing before him, then meeting Tasha’s gaze as she cried out in sorrow and pain.
Bounty Harlot Page 8