Shadows

by Terry Schott

  The meal lasted for approximately ninety minutes. Occasionally Dawn would look in the direction of Logan's table, as if glancing randomly around the room. A few times, she noticed him doing the same in her direction, with brief smile exchanges. During one of these moments, she heard her father growl. She looked, and found him staring at her with one eyebrow raised.

  "What?" she asked innocently.

  He looked at her for a moment and then shook his head. "Nothing."

  After dessert was served, but before anyone began to eat, a tuxedoed server approached and stood in front of the leader's dais, pausing for a second before clapping his hands loudly.

  "May I have your attention, please!" he shouted, reaching into his breast pocket and removing what looked like a pen. He turned to the frowning leaders. Pointing his finger and making a sweeping motion, he clicked the pen and then flicked it repeatedly, as if attempting to spray the elders with ink. "Cut off the head of the snake, and it can do no more harm!" he shouted. "The Game is a farce. Your rule of terror comes to an end now!"

  The whole scene, from the time the server approached the dais until he uttered his last word, lasted less than thirty seconds. Five security men tackled the man and shoved him to the ground face down, wrenching his arms behind his back.

  He was subdued in less than a minute.

  One minute. Enough time to change everything.

  Screams of alarm erupted throughout the great hall. Dawn looked around in confusion. Her father and uncle had already jumped into action. They ran toward the dais, as did other members from the different Families.

  "What just happened?" Sam asked as he stood to get a better view.

  "I don't know," Dawn replied. Then she saw what the commotion was about.

  The leaders at the main table were all slumped forward with their heads on the table.

  None of them were moving.

  39

  Josh arrived at the Thorne estate less than an hour after the incident.

  There had been a flurry of confusion, quickly brought under control by the senior Family members who were still standing. Only those sitting at the front table had lost consciousness, and they had all been taken to an on-site medical facility for emergency attention. Dawn and Sam stayed close to their father, who had taken charge of the estate security forces. Most of the guests had left for their respective estates, with only senior lieutenants and bodyguards remaining.

  Harry, William, Dawn, and Sam were sitting in a large conference room when Josh walked in.

  "That was quick," Harry said.

  "You told me to be fast," Josh shrugged. "There are three police cars at the front gate who want to arrest me. I picked them up on the way here."

  Harry nodded and looked at his brother. "William, can you take care of that?"

  William nodded and took out his cell phone. "Give me five minutes." He walked out of the room and closed the door.

  "What have we got?" Josh asked.

  Harry gave Josh an account of the dinner events. "We have the perpetrator in an EMF-shielded holding room. He has revealed nothing. Says he will talk only to the person in charge of the Thorne Family."

  "That's you, right?" Josh asked.

  Harry nodded grimly. "With my parents out of commission for the moment, I'm calling the shots."

  "Are they dead?"

  "They weren't last time I saw them," Harry said. "Been waiting for you to get here.

  William returned to the room and nodded at Harry. "Police have left."

  "Thanks," Harry said. "We're going to the infirmary. Come with us."

  William nodded . "The lieutenants from the other Families want to know what's going on, and I don't think I can put them off much longer."

  "That's fine," Harry said. "They can come with us to the infirmary, but only them."

  "They will want to bring backup," William said.

  Harry took a breath to argue, but Josh nodded agreement. "There's no way you would go in alone if we were at one of their estates," he said.

  Harry closed his eyes and nodded. "I know they think we're responsible for this," he said.

  "We are responsible for this," William said. "It's our house, our security breached."

  "They can each bring two bodyguards," Harry conceded.

  "That should be acceptable." William left the room again.

  "It will have to be." Harry walked to the only desk in the room and picked up the phone. He punched in three numbers and waited for an answer. "Are they still alive? Good. We are bringing down the lieutenants from each Family. We'll be there in ten. Please do your best to have some idea as to what happened to them."

  Harry hung up the phone and looked at his kids. "This room is safe. I'll return as soon as I can, or send for you when possible." He smiled confidently and gave each of them a quick hug. "Don't worry, everything will be fine."

  "What if they die?" Dawn asked.

  Harry frowned. "If they wanted them dead, then they already would be. I think they are trying to keep us off guard and confused."

  "Who might 'they' be?" Sam asked.

  "That, son, is the million dollar question."

  "You look pretty calm, Daddy. Is it always this exciting around here?" Dawn asked.

  Harry chuckled as he opened the door. "Things do pop up from time to time," he said.

  William returned and nodded to Harry.

  "I'll see you both soon," Harry said as he exited, with Josh close on his heels.

  ***

  "You're Kyle, right?"

  Kyle looked up from his phone to see a girl standing in front of him. She was likely sixteen, about five feet six, brown-eyed, with shoulder-length brown hair tucked under a blue wool hat. She was wearing a dark brown coat buttoned up halfway. Her hands hung loosely at her sides, French-manicured fingertips pointing straight down.

  "Yeah, I'm Kyle." He leaned back and tucked his phone into his jacket pocket. "I don't recognize you, though."

  "How's that make you feel?" she asked with a confident smile.

  Kyle fought the urge to smile back. It sounded cocky, like something he would say. "It doesn't bother me."

  The girl laughed, but didn't sit down. "I'm not from around here, and in a few hours I'll be long gone."

  "You here just to visit me?"

  She chuckled. "Let's say, yes."

  "Who sent you?"

  "Friends of yours."

  It was Kyle's turn to chuckle. "Friends don't send strangers from out of town to give me messages."

  "Of course they do, Kyle. In fact, that's the only way these particular friends give messages."

  "No friends of mine would do it this way, lady."

  "New friends would," she said, taking a look around.

  "Well, I don't like it." Kyle reached into his pocket to retrieve his phone. "Tell them I'm not interested."

  "Oh, I think you'll be interested. The game board of SHEPHERDS is about to change, and I'm here to offer you an opportunity to stay on the dominant side."

  Kyle laughed. "I am on the dominant side." He paused and narrowed his eyes. "You can tell your Hearthkin bosses that I'm not interested in working for them."

  The young girl laughed, a musical sound. "Kyle, if you think that I'm here on behalf of the Hearthkin Family, then you are quickly losing touch with the way this game is going." She pulled out a business card. "Hearthkin, Thorne, these are all names that will soon mean nothing in the game. Careful, or soon you'll find yourself sinking to the bottom of the ocean with them."

  "What are you talking about?"

  She placed the card on the table in front of him with a hand over it, leaned in close and whispered. "There are new players in the game, Kyle. Soon we will control the majority of the continent, and from there we will move to dominate the rest of the world." She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and stood. "Only a few are being invited to play with us. This is a great honour for you. Think about it and let me know if you're with us or not. My number is on the card."

>   She turned and began to walk away. "Let me know by the end of the week. Join us, Kyle." She looked at him over her shoulder, her eyes twinkling. "You won't regret it, I promise you that."

  40

  "That's it?" Sarah-Marie looked up from her phone.

  "That's it," Kerstin said. "There's no big difference between shearing people and locations."

  "Except people can move out of range."

  "Okay, there are some differences. The basic shearing process on your phone is the same, though."

  "Fair enough." Sarah-Marie put her phone away and looked around the small bistro. "Nice place. I've never been able to afford to eat here before."

  "Higher level, more cash in your pocket," Kerstin said with a smile.

  "You haven't given me a route to travel for shearing individuals."

  "There are no set routes to walk every day. As long as you shear the target number that they give you in your weekly challenge email, everyone is happy. Theoretically, you could sit in one spot and shear your quota as people walk by."

  "Sweet." Walking a route reminded Sarah-Marie of the drudgery of the paper route from her earlier years. "You talk to Dawn or Sam yet?"

  "Dawn," Kerstin said. "She said that both of them are out of town with their dad and wouldn't be back for a few days."

  "No worries."

  "I will make sure we are both there to talk about what went wrong the other day."

  Their meals arrived and they began to eat quietly, enjoying the music and ambience. "It's pretty cool that playing a video game on my cell phone allows me to pay for this kind of thing," Sarah-Marie said. "I spend a lot of time, lately, wondering how such a thing is possible."

  "We're lucky," Kerstin admitted. "There are a lot of people playing, but those who don't play have no idea it exists. I wish my parents could get a chance to opt in. My mom lost her job last week, and my dad is miserable at his. I took a look at one of his pay stubs, and I make as much as he does now."

  "Wow, that sucks. Maybe you could ask about getting them invited to a recruitment meeting?"

  "Already did. They absolutely do not fit the profile for playing SHEPHERDS."

  "Well, then, the best you can do is help them out financially when you're making the big bucks like Dawn and Sam."

  Kerstin laughed. "There's no way my mom and dad would ever let me help them out financially. They already think I'm dealing drugs."

  "To be fair, drug dealers would be making more money. We do very well, but not drug dealer well."

  "That's what I told them! They just look at me doubtfully and nod their heads. It would be so much easier if I could just tell them the truth."

  It was Sarah-Marie's turn to laugh. "You play a cloak-and-dagger style game, and you want to tell them the truth? There's no point to that. Besides, even if you did tell them how you were earning a paycheque, they would never believe you. I barely believe it myself most times!"

  Kerstin nodded and opened her mouth to reply, but her phone vibrated twice and its light flashed quickly. The front door to the bistro opened and two people walked in.

  "Uh-oh," Sarah-Marie muttered. "This could be trouble."

  Kerstin glanced from her phone to the door and her body tensed. An attractive middle-aged woman in a business suit stood waiting for someone to show her to a table. Standing beside her was Red Hoodie. Kerstin looked at her plate. "Is he looking at us?" she asked, quietly.

  "Not really," Sarah-Marie said. "He's looking around, but he didn't stop and stare, at least no more than boys usually do."

  Kerstin frowned. Sometimes being pretty wasn't an advantage when you wanted to avoid being noticed, especially around teenage boys.

  A waiter approached the newcomers and guided them to a seat on the other side of the restaurant in a corner, out of the girls' vision. "Turn all the sounds and lights off of your phone," Kerstin instructed.

  "Already done," Sarah-Marie said, without reaching for her phone.

  "Same," Kerstin said. "You have all the security alarms turned off as well?"

  Some noises sounded only when being attacked by other players, or if targets were in jeopardy. Players rarely disabled those, and Sarah-Marie's expression as she reached for her phone made clear that she hadn't disabled them.

  "Thanks," Sarah-Marie said. "You think he might suspect us?"

  "I think he's here for lunch with his mom or aunt or something. It's worth being extra cautious, just in case he is here looking for info and does suspect us."

  Sarah-Marie's phone emitted three sudden, short, loud beeps followed by a pause, then a repeat set of three. "What the hell?" she exclaimed.

  "Shut it off!" Kerstin hissed.

  "I'm trying!"

  "Well, try harder!"

  Sarah-Marie did, to no avail. Kerstin looked around and mouthed 'sorry' at the other scowling diners. Then she saw Red Hoodie walking toward their table with his phone in his hand and a grim smile on his face.

  He stopped beside their table, glanced casually at Sarah-Marie's phone, and then pushed a button on his own. The beeping ceased. Red Hoodie shook his head, grabbed an empty chair from the table behind him, and sat down to look at each of the girls. He was their age. Good-looking, with brown hair and an athletic build, thought Kerstin. He needs a shave, but he's not a mess.

  "Do we know each other?" he asked.

  "No, I don't think so," Kerstin said.

  He looked at Sarah-Marie. "I see you in the mall quite a bit."

  "Yeah, we go to the mall," she said. "So do lots of kids."

  He nodded and reached a hand out to tap her phone. "When one player tries to shear another, the target gets three ping attempts. You know what that is, right?"

  "Yeah, of course," Kerstin lied.

  "That's a shame," his head swivelled to focus on Kerstin. "I was hoping you didn't. Someone who just got the skill unlocked, I can see them not knowing any better and making an honest mistake. Someone like that wouldn't know about the rules, and it would be easier to forgive them for playing stupidly."

  Neither girl spoke. Red Hoodie shrugged. "I'm boring you, since you do know what a ping is. I'll explain it anyways just in case it wasn't covered properly. If I try to hack you, and it doesn't work, then you get three pings. You have a week to initiate them. What you do is get within range of the phone that tried to hack you, and then send out a ping. If that phone is in range, then it responds to the ping with a really loud alert to announce itself. The player can't turn it off, unless they are your level or higher. If they are too high a level, the ping won't even work." He reached forward and grabbed three French fries from Sarah-Marie's plate, munched them. "Pings are only useful if you have a good idea of who tried to shear you, and they are your level or lower." He finished the food in his mouth and smiled. It was not a pleasant expression. "I caught you. If you were guys, we'd go outside and I would make this a physical lesson. You're not, though, so I'll do this the other way."

  "Do what?" Kerstin asked.

  He grabbed his phone and turned it on. "Teach you a lesson."

  "I'm sorry," Sarah-Marie blurted out. "We did just unlock this skill. We shouldn't have tried to shear you. We had no idea what we were doing. To be honest, we still don't! What's the big deal? We figured it was just like taking any other target."

  The guy paused and looked at Sarah-Marie in puzzlement. After a moment, he laughed and shook his head. "Oh wow, you're serious, aren't you?"

  The girls' blushing faces answered for them.

  "I don't know who your sponsors are, ladies, but they are not doing a very good job teaching you if you don't know how a new skill works before you start trying it out for real." He stood up and grabbed the untouched half of Kerstin's sandwich, taking a bite and chewing as he looked down at them. "I'm gonna show you what the big deal is ." He pushed a button on his phone and waited for a couple seconds. The screen on Sarah-Marie's phone flashed quickly a few times, then turned off.

  "Turn it on," he nodded at the phone.

  Sar
ah-Marie picked it up and pressed the button to turn it on. Nothing happened. She tried again; still nothing. Next, she flipped it around and removed the back cover. Sometimes pulling the battery out would force a phone to reset.

  "Don't bother," said Red Hoodie. "It won't come back on for twenty-four hours."

  "What?!" both girls said in unison, as he took another bite of sandwich.

  "That's right. When it does come back on, the game won't load for at least an hour, maybe three. That puts you out of the game for over a day."

  Sarah-Marie's eyes grew wide. She felt trickles of sweat in the usual places. "That's unacceptable," she said.

  "That's what you would have done to me," Red Hoodie snapped, dropping what remained of the sandwich onto the table. He stood up and put the chair back where he had found it, then turned toward the girls and smiled. "There's more to it than that, though. Every target you held when you got hacked was released, and went to me."

  "I'm no longer earning," Sarah-Marie blinked rapidly, feeling panic approach.

  "Correct. You are no longer earning. When you do come back online, it will take another twenty-four hours before you can attempt to shear anything." He pointed a finger first at Kerstin, then Sarah-Marie. "Attacking other players costs them money. A lot of money. It disrupts your whole team's earnings. Just to keep your group goals on track, everyone else in your team will have to step up and go shear more targets. It's a real mess." He shook his head and frowned, hard-eyed. "Okay, that's all I've got for today's lesson. Have a good lunch. And don't try this with me again. I won't be so nice next time."

  Neither of the girls said a word as he started to walk away.

  He was halfway to his table when he stopped and turned to look at them. "You know what? I think this is a better punishment than punching you in the face would have been. Maybe I'll start doing this with guys too."

  41

  Harry, Josh, and William came into the room where Dawn and Sam waited. Harry wore a grim expression.

  "That bad?" Dawn asked.