by Natalie Grey
Her mother would be horrified to hear that, but then again…
“Oh, also, my mother is icing me out,” Gracie said with a brittle smile. “She wants me to go play happy family at my sister’s engagement party, and I don’t want to. It’s not like Katie wants me there, either. We’ve hardly seen eye to eye for a while, but my mom is insisting… Ugh, not important.”
“Katie’s the golden child,” Alex pointed out. “So everyone has to see her win.”
Gracie stared at him. “That’s disgustingly true. I’d never thought about it that way. Seriously?”
“Gracie, you’ve got a life a ton of people would kill for,” Alex told her. “Including you, a few months ago.”
Gracie, who had been opening her mouth to retort, closed it again. “That’s…also a good point. I’ve missed you, man. You give good advice.”
“I know I do,” Alex said serenely. “Look, you hated your job before—justifiably, I might add—and now you’re making more than that from playing a video game with people you like hanging out with. I mean, aside from Caspian. I’m still not sure why you’re not throwing him out on his ass.”
“Me neither, honestly.” Gracie finished her food and looked sadly at the empty plate.
“I think there’s a black hole in your stomach,” Alex informed her. “I’ll have you know that when I ordered this much food, they asked if I was having a party. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that my roommate was an open pit that food falls into and never escapes.”
“You make me sound like a menace.” Gracie licked her fork off and began cleaning up.
“Yeah. You’ve massacred how many packages of cookies this week alone?”
“I don’t have to answer that,” Gracie said with great dignity. She threw a smile over her shoulder. “Seriously, thank you for dinner. And for listening to me ramble.”
“Yeah.” Alex leaned back in his chair. “So, what are we going to do about Caspian, then?”
“We?” Gracie raised an eyebrow as she loaded the dishwasher.
“Hell, yeah. I’m playing with you all tonight, and maybe I’m gonna get Caspian alone in a dark alley and feed him to a giant spider.” Alex gave an elaborate shrug. “It might happen. Totally by accident, I assure you.”
Gracie snorted.
Alex got up and wandered over to the pile of papers in the corner. “Is this the research you did for the next dungeon run?”
“Yeah.” Gracie chewed her lip. “And I honestly don’t know whether we should run it. They’re just waiting for us to do it—Harry is, and Dragon Soul. Maybe we just let them rot and go off and do other things.”
Alex considered this silently as he scanned the documentation she’d put together.
“On the other hand,” Gracie said, wandering around the living room with her hands in her pockets, “if Harry still wants the quest, he must think it’s valuable. So, is it? Maybe it would protect me from Dragon Soul.” She chewed her lip and admitted, “And part of me just wants to win because they so clearly don’t want me to. Real mature.”
Alex held up a finger. “But understandable.”
“Ha. I’m glad you get me.” Gracie flopped back onto the couch and curled up. “So, if Caspian can be trusted, we’ll basically get the normal Yesuan’s Haunt run. Which means, I guess, that Harry will be one of the normal end-bosses?”
“He’s been able to take over bosses before, clearly.” Alex brought the papers over. “What does Jay think?” He looked up in time to catch the evasive flicker in Gracie’s eyes. “What? What happened? Did you two have a falling out?”
“No! No.” Gracie shook her head. “I just…uh.”
“Gracie. Wait, what’s your middle name so I can middle-name you? Hell, what’s your full name? Grace? Gracetopher?”
Gracie snorted water up her nose and mock-glared at him as she grabbed a paper towel. “Yes, my full name is Gracetopher. Nice that you remembered.”
“I pay attention to things.” He settled down in a chair. “So what happened with Jay?”
“I’ve just been a mess,” Gracie burst out. “You’re moving on and getting a girlfriend, and I’m happy for you. I am. It just makes me realize how much of a mess my own life is. I don’t really have a career, my job is playing a video game that the creators are actively trying to throw me out of, and I have this crush…” She shook her head, her cheeks going pink. “You didn’t hear that.”
“Awww.” Alex gave her a look.
“No.” Gracie hid her face in her hands. “Stop. Stop looking at me like that.”
“Gracie, you have a crush. So you’ve… Oh, I get it—you decided not ever to talk to him anymore so that you could… Uh, no, never mind. That makes no sense at all.” He glared at her. “None.”
“I know!” Gracie flailed her arms. “But I called Kevin to sob at him about being a total failure, and the last thing I want is for Jay to see me like that. I’m supposed to be running this guild. I’m supposed to be strong and have my shit together. People depend on me.”
“Gracie.” Alex sounded stricken. All of the humor dropped away and he reached out to take her hand, totally serious now. “We started playing this game for fun, and we liked playing with you because you made us laugh. We ran through dungeons and never expected to make it. We did a crazy shot-in-the-dark insane thing to make that month-first dungeon run. It wasn’t like we really thought we’d become the top-rated guild or anything. When we made you guild leader, it wasn’t supposed to make you crazy.” He squeezed her hand.
Gracie squeezed back and managed a small smile.
“Seriously,” Alex said. “If this is too much pressure on you…”
“It just fucking sucks!” The words came out of her sounding all strange, her voice blaring oddly. “I showed up in the game, and all of a sudden, people hated me. Like, hated me, Alex. I have some douche showing up at my fucking house. I have the people who run the game trying to ban my account. It’s a mindfuck. I didn’t ask for any of it. It just came out of fucking nowhere.”
“I get that.” Alex squeezed her hand again. “I’m going to murder Caspian. The last thing you needed was someone fucking with you even more.”
“Ughhhh.” Gracie tipped her head back. “That’s the thing. Do I trust him? At all?”
Alex thought about this for a while. He settled back in his chair, spinning the bottle of beer in his hands and staring into space.
“I’d almost say yes,” he said finally. “Actually.”
Gracie frowned at him.
“It would have been easier not to tell you anything,” Alex said. “You said he really didn’t seem to know that you had found out who he was. That means that if he wanted to keep lying, he’d have just said nothing, right?”
Gracie nodded. She got up and began to stretch, reaching for her toes. She’d found out the hard way that if she didn’t stretch at the end of the day now, her tired muscles would get very tight while she slept and she’d spend the next day hobbling around like a caricature of an old person.
She stretched out her arms to place her hands flat on the floor and slowly lengthened her back, feeling the backs of her legs gradually loosen.
“I thought he liked hanging out with us,” she said finally. “We ran that one dungeon against Harry and everything went to shit, and Jay said that Caspian was just loving the hell out of it, throwing heals around and cheering people on. He seemed like our kind of people.”
“Maybe he is,” Alex said. “Just for a second, take his story at face value. Does it hang together? Does it fit with what you know of him that he would infiltrate the group and then realized he actually enjoyed being there?”
Gracie thought about this as she rotated her shoulders, stretching one side and then the other. “Yeah,” she said finally. Blood was building up in her head and she stood up, wincing through the rush. “Yeah, honestly, it does.”
“So it could be true,” Alex said quietly. “It makes a lot of sense, and telling you would be much riskier
than just letting you go in on your own. Hell, he could even have sat this one out to put you at ease, but no, he told you what was going on. Gracie, I think he’s for real.”
Gracie sighed. “So…”
“So you figure out what you want,” Alex said. “Not what you think we want. What you want. Do you want to run this guild? Do you want to beat Harry?”
A sense of purpose pulsed through her. Gracie picked up her head to stare at him. “Yes,” she said fiercely. “Yes, I do. I don’t know whether I want to be some crazy empress or whatever, but I know I want to protect the game from those jackasses because they’ll rip it apart if they get the chance.”
“Good,” Alex said decisively.
“So I’ll tell people that,” Gracie said. “I’ll tell, uh…Jay.” She felt her cheeks get hot. “But should I tell him the rest?”
“Maybe take this thing one battle at a time,” Alex said, reaching out to pat her hand. “Once we’ve done this dungeon run, you can tackle the next problem, okay?”
“Good call.” Gracie felt a rush of relief. “I’m not nearly brave enough to tell him, so that was the right answer.”
“Given what I’ve seen of you two together…” Alex began.
“What?” Gracie looked at him.
“Nothing. Let’s focus on one thing at a time.” He nodded at the VR headsets. “I’ll start texting people. Once we log in, I think we can assume we’ll be on the clock, so as much as we can do outside their systems, we should do.”
“Oh. Right.” Gracie wiped her palms on her jeans. “Now. We’re doing it right now. I, uh…”
“Don’t give yourself time to overthink it,” Alex advised. “You’ve done your research, now trust your instincts and go for it.”
Gracie gave a determined nod. “Right. Let’s see when we can get people online, brief them, and then go.”
“With Caspian?” Alex asked curiously. His tone made it clear that this was her choice. He simply wanted to see what she would pick.
Gracie hesitated. “Yeah,” she said finally. “With Caspian. I’ll text him last.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Jay wasn’t sure how many times he’d opened his messages to send Gracie a text and then closed the app without doing so.
Hey, are you all right?
Haven’t heard from you in a while. Everything okay?
Harry hasn’t been back, has he?
Please tell me you’re all right.
He hadn’t sent her any messages, though. He knew what was going on, after all. She was occupied with more important things. She was hanging out with her family, or she’d gotten a new job, or—
Or she had a boyfriend now. Jay always felt a sick drop of dread in his stomach when he thought of that. It wasn’t exactly unlikely, was it? Gracie was drop-dead gorgeous. All she’d have to do was go to the grocery store, and she could have five new boyfriends by the time she got home.
She’d probably stab him if she heard him say that, though. Even thinking it seemed risky. He looked over his shoulder to make sure she wasn’t right there.
Then his phone buzzed and he saw her name on the notification, and his stomach flip-flopped and completely disappeared. He could hear a buzzing in his ears. She’d texted. About what, though?
Yesuan’s Haunt. Get people together, send texts as much as possible, send me a message telling me who you get hold of. We’ll load in together and start the run.
He sat bolt upright. One kind of nerves was replaced by another. Gracie was going to run the final dungeon in the quest—because Jay believed whole-heartedly that it was the final stage. When she finished this, she’d be untouchable.
She just had to get past Harry first.
And Dragon Soul.
He texted back, Roger. A moment later, he added, Look, I don’t want to be a downer, but what are the odds that they pull the servers down?
There was a pause. She started typing, then stopped. Started again. Stopped. Finally:
Sam?
That was it—just one word. Jay pondered, pictured exactly what series of curses Sam was going to level at him when he asked for this, and then decided to go for it anyway. Sam could always say no, after all.
He just wasn’t going to.
On it, he told Gracie.
Right. There was a pause while she typed, I’m going to bring Caspian in with us. I’ll explain after. I think he’s on our side.
Jay raised his eyebrows but decided not to second-guess her. They had enough stacked against them now; she wouldn’t make this choice lightly. Okay, he typed.
He sent off a few messages to the team, asking Kevin to continue spreading the word, and then gave a sigh and called Sam.
Sam didn’t pick up right away, so Jay waited. He paced back and forth and was just considering getting in his car and driving to the Dragon Soul offices when his phone rang. He smiled slightly and picked up.
“What’s going on?” Sam began before Jay could even say hi.
“We need a distraction,” Jay said at once. “We’re doing a run, and need them not to notice. Can you hold a strategy meeting or something?” There was a very long pause, but Jay said nothing. He knew that trying to cajole Sam would backfire. Sam was weighing the options, and he would make what he thought was the right decision.
“I’ll come up with something,” he said finally. “Give me an hour.”
“An hour?” Jay could only imagine them all waiting, twiddling their thumbs.
“An hour.” Sam was adamant. “Take it or leave it.”
“No, no, an hour’s fine. Sorry. Thanks, Sam.”
“Yeah, yeah. And instead of a nice bottle of Scotch for Christmas, maybe you could get me a new job?” Sam sounded wryly amused. “Since I’m pretty sure I’m going to need one.” He sighed. “I’ll send a text when I can.”
Sam hung up and sighed again. There were a few ways of distracting people in offices, but he had learned the most effective one a while back. Nothing else even came close to this particular strategy. He sent two texts, made a call, and then went to do the other step he needed to do while he waited for his strategy to unfold.
Dan and Dhruv had alerts set up to tell them when Callista logged into the game. These alerts had occasionally not worked, and Sam briefly considered unhooking them, but then he thought of a better way to go about things.
The interoffice email system had been designed by a former employee who was very good at building databases and very bad at building email systems. It worked. Sometimes. When it felt like it. The rest of the time, the teams used various chat programs.
But it was this email system that sent the alerts to Dan and Dhruv, and Sam knew he could use that to his advantage.
First, he set up a cache to harness any alerts that did come in about Callista, then he set the system to cycle at unstable intervals. With the system going down a lot, he knew that Dan and Dhruv would be glued to their phones, waiting for alerts that weren’t ever going to show up. And in the meantime…
“Sam?” One of his employees stuck his head into the room. “Pizza’s here, and Ruchir says he’s on his way back with the donuts and coffee. Also…” He gave a meaningful nod. Sam had told him to spread the word that no one was to mention if they saw Callista’s team log in, and all of them were to set their screens to watch different guilds.
“Awesome.” Sam stood up and strolled into the main room. “Hey, everyone, I know it’s been a stressful few weeks. Make sure to get up, stretch a bit, and have some food. You know what? Paul, see if you can work out a schedule to get people home early in shifts for the next few days.”
People clapped and swarmed over to the pizza.
“Oh, hey.” Sam looked at one of the newer people. “You know, Dan and Dhruv have been working long hours too. Could you go let them know there’s food?”
“Sure.” The newbie looked wide-eyed, but he trotted off to get the two founders.
Sam took a slice of pizza and gave a grim smile. Between email troubles,
blocked alerts, and pizza, he was as confident as he could be that Dan and Dhruv wouldn’t know about the run until it was too late to stop it. He pulled out his phone and typed a quick text.
You’re on. Go now.
Gracie had sent a cascade of texts explaining the Yesuan’s Haunt run from start to finish. Caspian, having been a part of Demon Syndicate, already knew the details, and she wanted him to be as surprised as possible.
The less time he had to turn on them, the better.
Right now she was running through the fight with Yesuan.
Now, Yesuan can’t be killed while Azrael and Lirael are still alive, she typed out. This message was being sent to Kevin and Alan, who were sending the messages on to others. And he’ll back them up. His main mechanic is interrupts.
Is there any warning on them? Alan asked.
Yes, and it’s doubly important, because on the third interrupt, he’ll follow up with an AoE stun and then follow THAT up with a strong AoE damage spell. People HAVE to scatter as soon as they see him gearing up for interrupt number 3. Drop whatever they’re doing. The signal is he’ll yell, “Your spells have no power here.” We’re going to put Alex on the count.
Got it, Kevin typed back.
Azrael is vulnerable to holy magic, so Caspian and Alan will need to both heal and do holy corrupts on him. We don’t have any paladins, but I have some holy damage from my new shield, so I’ll be on Azrael, and Lakhesis will tank Lirael. Lirael is vulnerable to fire, so brief Ushanas on that, and Alex will be doing fire enchants on his arrows.
Her phone buzzed with a message from Jay: Sam says go NOW.
Roger. To Alan and Kevin, she typed, Pass the word, everyone log in NOW. If they need to pee, they should have done it a few minutes ago. LOG IN.
She already had most of her VR suit on and was settling the headset over her head when she remembered Caspian. “Son of a bitch.” She considered, then sent him what she’d planned. Can you log in without your team knowing? Need to talk details, but in-game.