The Lag

by Alex Bobl

  "It might be that the script writers wanted the city to have arrived from a different reality. The one that's sort of," Attila waved his hand in the air, "a totalitarian one."

  "Why totalitarian?"

  "Just a thought. Some world that has succumbed to the power of a horrible necromancer. He might have even turned the townspeople's minds into one collective mind, symbolized by this statue."

  Attila could have sworn that Beast had shuddered under that exosuit of his. "You've got some sick imagination, man! I wouldn't want to live there."

  Far south, past the river and its castle, beyond the towering poplars and a large field, Attila could just make out the outline of the Citadel. An enormous vertical eye rotated slowly over the Conclave Tower. What was it, really? This had to be some truly powerful magic. Was it the Eye of the Alpha Ray with which he could see everything that happened for miles around? The Citadel itself was a complex maze of large and small buildings, towers and defensive walls; he could see light blinking against the chaos of black granite, bright flashes coming on and going out. Definitely of magic origin even though Attila had no idea what that might be.

  He sat down onto the cold stone roof and produced the Book. Beast clanked around, pacing the roof for a while, then walked back to him.

  "I wonder if Alpha failed to gather his army in time? We can't see any Pioneers but we can't see his mobs, either. Should we really try and sneak in, the two of us? On the quiet, you know."

  "I'm sure some of his mobs have arrived," Attila said. "There's no way we can sneak in. Otherwise everyone and their grandmother would have done it already."

  The steel disk of God's Eye soared out of his bag, unfolding its star-like arms. It hovered over the roof for a while, then began floating sideways. Attila kept turning the crystal knobs, controlling it. He just didn't seem to be able to fine-tune it. All the close objects looked perfectly in focus on the Book's screen while all the far-off ones blurred in the distance. Besides, the Eye seemed to slightly deviate from the route he'd laid out for it. Attila's invention was definitely glitchy and not in the best of shape... just like its creator. His body was glitchy too like a mauled mechanism: its filters blocked, its parts missing.

  "Right," Beast pointed his flame thrower hand at the river. "Let's go to the River Castle. We don't have any other option, anyway. Am I right?"

  "We don’t have contact with Yanna, either. We have no idea yet what she's managed — or not managed — to achieve. I sent her my address but as I don't feel any better yet, it means that she... I'm not even sure she can do anything. Can she help me without removing the suit? She could at least give me a glucose injection if she drops in at the pharmacy on her way. She could in theory even hook me up to an IV drip. The suit has a special socket on the sleeve to do that. And I'm still sick which means she hasn't been to my apartment yet and it's only a couple of blocks away from RussoVirt. What on earth could have happened to her?"

  Beast reached his mechanical arm out to scratch his head. His steel gauntlet slammed against his helmet. "All right, so what do you suggest?"

  Attila concentrated on fiddling with the knobs. The picture on the screen stopped rippling and came into focus. Much better. What if he tried to zoom it in?

  He turned the Eye in the right direction. Slowly the Citadel began to approach. He could clearly see the wall, the moat and the raised bridge, the gate. And around it, a good dozen silhouettes... clerics! They stood there leaning against their staffs, unmoving.

  When the Eye came closer, it began to glitch again. Attila tried everything he could to make it approach the Citadel, lifting it over the Conclave Tower and lowering it to the ground, but with every couple of feet the glitches grew worse. He couldn't bring it any closer without risking losing the Eye. This had to be the Citadel's magic blocking its work. Most likely, some sort of force shield.

  Nausea engulfed his throat. His head span. Attila switched the Eye to float mode and gulped, closing his eyes. He could barely hear Beast's incessant blabbering. His vision darkened; colored circles flashed before his eyes. It was probably his body locked in the apartment losing consciousness, then coming round again.

  When he felt slightly better, he waited some more, then rose and staggered toward the staircase. Beast caught up with him and marched along.

  "Attila... Why do you think Wayfarer never came back for us? D'you think he's swindled us?"

  Attila didn't reply. Beast didn't seem interested in his answer, though. He just kept on blabbing simply to relieve stress.

  "I've also been wondering: if it was Alpha who ordered all those dwarves and goblins to attack us, how did he know which way we went? Didn't Wayfarer say that Alpha's abilities were limited? That he had to obey the game's rules like everybody else? All right, this eye on top of his tower, it could probably see everything on the surface. But we were underground! Can you imagine? Or maybe he can see with mobs' eyes? Of course! That's what it is. In other words, he knows we're coming. He's expecting us, right? This is something we need to understand: Alpha knows about us!"

  "Will you shut up, please?" Alpha muttered. "I don't feel well."

  As they walked down the stairs, he opened Skype and wrote,

  Yanna, what's up with you?

  No reply came, and that was the scariest thing of all.

  "How is it possible no one received our message?" Beast kept droning. "Or maybe they all ignored it? No one bothered to reply, that's not possible!"

  They walked out of the building and headed around it until they came to a street leading to the river and castle.

  Shadows flashed past. A powerful shove sent the uncomprehending Attila face down onto the sidewalk. Beast clattered to the ground next to him like a ten-ton truck. Feet stomped around. Weapons clanged.

  Attila rolled over to one side and saw two tall men and an Elf. Were they also Alpha-controlled players? If so, he and Beast were toast.

  They pulled his sword out of the scabbard and ripped the mythogun from his shoulder. Two spears and an arrow pointed at him at once.

  Beast was lying on his stomach, struggling, straddled by another Elf — a wizard, judging by his gear. He was holding a staff. The Elf sank the staff's emerald tip into the ribbed sphere between Beast's shoulder blades and rolled off him, covering his head. In a flash of purple and emerald light, the mithrinol ball stopped glowing.

  "What d'you think you're doing?" Beast bellowed.

  "Quiet!" the wizard snapped, jumping back to his feet and picking up his staff which had been hurled aside by the blast.

  The archer Elf lowered his bow. He snatched the Book from Attila and pocketed it, then crouched next to Beast and began studying his suit. The wizard joined him.

  "Guys, what's going on?" Beast sniffed huffily, trying to turn his head.

  The wizard stood up and placed the end of his staff onto Beast's helmet, pressing his head down. Still, you couldn't silence him so easily.

  "We're all Pioneers here, we're brothers! Leave it! Oh!"

  The archer chuckled and poked Beast's steel side with his dainty boot. "Go and be brotherly with dwarves and goblins. Come on, get the hell out of this tin can before we pluck you out. We might hurt you, you know."

  "You ingrates!" Beast grunted. "We've come here to save you, and you... stupid idiots!"

  The archer glanced questioningly at the wizard. The latter squinted. "This isn't just any old suit. It runs on mithrinol. Now where would he've laid his hands on something like this? These two must be Alpha's spies. The ones he controls."

  Chapter

  Eighteen

  Yanna rose in the scooter's seat, peering back. Apparently, all of the RussoVirt cars were parked out of sight — either in the yard or in some secure underground parking lot. And what with the protesters blocking all accesses, you couldn't very easily use them anyway. This was the only reason she could think of, watching Baboon Face and Ginger highjack a minibus.

  Baboon swung the driver's door open, dragged out the driver and jumped
into his seat while Ginger climbed inside the cab which immediately began disgorging passengers: some scared, others indignant.

  Cutting off an SUV, the minibus entered the traffic.

  "You okay?" the boy shouted without turning his head.

  "I suppose," she exhaled. "Those two, they're chasing us in a minibus."

  "You don't mean it!" he finally deigned to take a look back. His lower jaw kept laboring, his face vacant, his eyes empty... he definitely was high on something. Or was it the effect reggae music had on unaccustomed juvenile minds? "Relax, babe. No problemo."

  Babe? If it wasn't for the neckbreaking speed, she'd have torn his head off! Instead, she was forced to cling tighter to him, holding on for dear life as the scooter began threading its way through the busy traffic. It jumped a red light and entered a wider street, barely missing a honking tank truck.

  A police car wailed behind them, a cop's voice in loudspeakers ordering them to pull over. The biker shrunk his head into his shoulders.

  To the right of the street stretched an industrial site fenced off by a concrete wall. Streetcar tracks ran to their left, on the other side of which lay the opposite lane and a long parking lot in front of a shopping mall. The scooter bounced across the tracks, jumped into the opposite lane where the traffic was quieter and headed toward the parking lot. The wailing patrol car followed after them but rammed head-on into a Toyota. Or was it the Toyota that had rammed into it? Probably both. Tires screeched. Yanna heard another impact followed by the sound of breaking glass and the scraping of steel.

  "Wow," Yanna gasped. This wasn't what she'd expected at all.

  The minibus had already cleared the most dangerous area and began gaining on them, heading toward the parking lot.

  "Quick!" Yanna came out of her stupor. "They're catching up with us!"

  "Who are they, actually?" the junkie asked her in the same vacant voice.

  "It's my father!" she blurted out the first thing she could think of. "He wants to marry me off to that other guy! He's stinking rich like you wouldn't imagine!" she ad-libbed a story from one of those Mexican soap operas her Granma loved so much.

  The young reggae lover swallowed her story hook, line and sinker. "Bastards," was all he said before he put his foot down.

  Police sirens were wailing along the nearest street as even more cars rushed to the scene. The scooter rolled along the parking lot's fence. When it finally ended, the boy swerved onto the bumpy pitted tarmac. The scooter hobbled over the potholes. Yanna bit her tongue till it bled and very nearly dropped the laptop.

  They swerved again, scaring passersby away, then sped onto the parking lot and raced on between rows of cars. The huge shop windows sent flashes of light into Yanna's eyes.

  The minibus stayed in their wake. It brushed the parking lot fence and swerved, screeching its tires, speeding into the parking lot. Police sirens wailed in the street; drivers honked, passersby shouted indignantly.

  "Hold on tight, babe," the biker threw the scooter to the left.

  A police car entered the parking lot from the other side and took a sharp turn, emerging right in front of them. The brave reggae lover screamed, losing his cool, and banked his machine, avoiding a collision by a hair's breadth. The scooter lay on the ground. Yanna cried out, fearing she might have busted the laptop.

  The minibus behind them failed to turn off and screeched its brakes, very nearly ramming the patrol car. The two cars faced each other, their hoods almost touching.

  Yanna sat up and leaned a grazed elbow on the tarmac. The kid was scampering away, limping between the cars. She spat blood from a split lip, freed her leg from under the scooter and scrambled back to her feet. The cops were all running toward her. The expressions on their faces told her she was in trouble.

  * * *

  His hands bound behind his back, Attila staggered past the empty buildings. His reflection mirrored his shuffling gait. The cubes and pyramids of Deadville towered overhead; not a blade of grass in sight. The moss covering the wall around the dwarves' test range was the last vegetation he'd seen.

  His vision blurred, the world around him darkening and coming back into focus. Still, he could walk. Beast sniffed next to him, his hands also bound, his knotted beard swaying from side to side, his bushy eyebrows knitted, his face bearing the expression of an unfairly punished child.

  Behind them, the archer Elf clanged along in the exosuit. As the group leader, he'd appropriated it. The two others flanked the prisoners. The wizard strode out in front.

  "Where are you taking us?" Beast demanded for the umpteenth time. "We need to get to River Castle! Are your headquarters there? If you're Highlanders, then River Castle is your location. Is Wayfarer there already?"

  "Shut your mouth," the guard on the right boomed.

  Beast wouldn't be Beast if he'd obeyed. "Did you receive the message about the River Castle RV? We sent it!"

  "This idiot has some cheek," rasped the bearded guard to his left. The first one stepped toward Beast and gave him a slap on the side of his head. "Just shut it. Or I'll do you for real."

  Beast fell silent, if only for a while. They turned a corner. Attila raised his head, staring at a reflection on the wall of the building opposite. This was the tallest edifice in the whole town and the only one that had a spire — a black needle that reached into the sky piercing the gray and purple thunderclouds. Cut into the enormous flat wall, the giant figure of Him Who Has No Face overhung the city, reaching out for the spire, his empty flat face staring blindly at the dead streets.

  It was right below the statue that Attila noticed the reflection — and seeing it made him lose his step. He saw a road within the wall. Very wide at first, it narrowed into a fine thread as it headed toward a gigantic building hovering on the horizon. A building that big couldn't exist, it would have collapsed under its own weight. It resembled a planet rising over an alien skyline.

  An endless flow of hunched figures shuffled along the road toward the building. Attila could only see their backs but he had a feeling that their faces too were flat and empty.

  "What's that?" he began but the image disappeared, dissolving within the stone.

  "What?" Beast asked.

  The guards cast distrustful glances at Attila.

  "I thought I saw something. Some kind of image on the wall. It wasn't our reflection. It was something else."

  "Ah, that one," the wizard looked back. "It happens. All sorts of weird things here. Step up now!"

  They crossed the square in front of the spired building when Beast spoke again,

  "Now you, wizzy, why did you call us Alpha's spies? It must have been Wayfarer who told you about Alpha. If you apply logic," he elbowed Attila, "like most intelligent people do, it would mean that Wayfarer is here somewhere. In River Castle, most likely, safe and hopefully sound."

  "Why wouldn't he be?" the archer Elf's voice emitted from under the helmet. "Who would try to kill him — you two?"

  "You don't know what you're saying, man!" Beast took offence. "As if you don't see we don't look anything like those Alpha's spies! You think we behave like they do?"

  "You might be pretending. Imitating real people," the bearded guard offered.

  "Yeah right! We were with Wayfarer all along. We were his... his assistants, like. We visited Healer together, then we defended the Central Portal in the Necro Marshes, and after that we followed him here under the city. We really showed those mithrinol dwarf bastards!" He looked back at the Elf. "All you need is to send word to River Castle giving our names to Wayfarer. Then everything will be sorted."

  'Keep going," the Elf shoved his flamethrower hand into his back.

  "Going where?" Beast bellowed. "Where do you want us to go? You never told us, did you? Freakin' idiots! I've been going for the last twenty-four hours, crossed half the wretched Canyon already! You name it, I've been there: the marshes, the valleys, the dungeons..."

  "Just shut it," the guard on his left shook his head. "Gosh, you're a
pain. Viscount should have smoked you on the spot with that staff of his."

  The wizard — apparently the aforementioned Viscount — turned round and squinted at Beast, his unkind glare full of menace. Beast only chuckled, apparently realizing that no one was going to kill them at this point. Most likely, they were simply taking them somewhere — hopefully to River Castle — for further investigation. Attila realized it too, but unlike Beast, he didn't have the energy to celebrate the fact. All his powers went into fighting nausea and walking straight.

  On the edge of the city trees started to grow again. A mud road cut through their midst. An earthen hut stood on the roadside, its roof overgrown with weeds.

  "Wait!" the archer Elf commanded.

  Two Drow sentries emerged from the hut. Unlike High Elves, they were dark-skinned with a predatorial expression on their aquiline faces. Judging by the punk crest on the head of one of them and the recognizable logo on the other's green cap, both must have been from the Anarchists clan. But the scouts who'd captured them were Highlanders, of that Attila had no doubt. Anarchists and Highlanders cooperated? Well, well. Normally, they were sworn enemies.

  Having studied the prisoners, the Drow walked over to the archer Elf who then clinked something within his suit. The mithrinol ball stopped glowing; the hatch in the back opened, letting the archer out. He and the sentries began talking in low voices; Viscount the wizard joined them. The other two stayed guarding the captives.