by A. J. Markam
Crap.
Oktar was still pounding the cobblestones as he ran after me, shouting to the others in Russian. Lots of curses and needlessly descriptive phrases about what he was going to do to my balls when he caught me.
Because I was officially still in combat, I couldn’t go into Stealth.
And I didn’t have anywhere to run. I didn’t know Sillomar well enough to know any good places to hide.
The walls of the city were fast approaching. There were long, sloping ramps that went up to the tops – apparently for wheeling cannons and things up to the ramparts.
In my mind’s eye, I remembered what was outside the walls:
The moat.
I prayed that there weren’t any horrible monsters in the water as I ran up the ramp, past the city guards, and jumped off the top of the wall.
Down, down, down I fell, and splashed into the water. It was actually easier to see than I thought – like looking through green Coca-Cola bottle glass.
Along the bottom of the moat were a ton of dead bodies mired in the mud– some of them recent, most of them not. Skeletons, cracked shields, and rusted armor were everywhere.
After a few seconds, though, I started to float to the surface. I had to make an effort to swim down so I wouldn’t bob to the top of the moat.
How the hell am I going to get out of this one? I thought. I’m going to have to go up to the top and breathe SOMETIME –
And then I realized that I wasn’t feeling any sort of sensation like I needed to breathe. No panic or anything like the burning chest you usually get after 45 seconds underwater.
There also wasn’t any sort of visual indication that I was running out of breath. No warning, no colored bar, no slowly depleting hit counter.
And then it hit me:
I’m already dead. I don’t HAVE to breathe.
I thought about it for a second, considered the options – and then decided, What the hell. The worst that will happen is I’ll reappear as a ghost back in the graveyard.
If I became a ghost, then at least I could spy on what the orcs were doing.
I forced myself to breathe in heavily, wincing as I did it.
Nothing happened.
Well, that’s not exactly true. I felt liquid fill my lungs and weigh me down so I didn’t float anymore – but I didn’t feel a panicky sense of Oh my God my life is about to end.
I didn’t even choke.
I really was dead. Water couldn’t hurt me – at least not by drowning.
I didn’t really want to take my chances against a tsunami or Water Mage, though.
Just to play it safe, I decided I was going to walk a ways away from where I jumped in, just in case the orcs were waiting for me to come out.
I was able to go into Stealth, too, which was an added bonus. There were some nasty-looking giant crocodile things in the water with me, but they couldn’t see me in Stealth mode. They didn’t even care about the barbed blade and chain still attached to my invisible body, now floating along five feet above the bottom of the moat.
I walked at least a quarter mile underwater around the curving wall of the city, then finally pulled myself up out of the moat and looked up for any sign of the Russians.
Nobody was looking down from the walls at me.
Okay, that part was good.
Now I had to deal with the thing stuck in my back.
I arched my arms around, first up over my shoulders and then around the sides, until I was able to grab the chain. I tried pulling –
DAMMIT!
Even with my sensory levels turned down to near zero, it still hurt like hell. And it wasn’t coming out. All right, I decided, I guess it’s staying in. At least until I could get out of the water and get to a doctor. Or Richard. Maybe Slothfart could push it through, and Richard could heal me –
Suddenly a chat window appeared right in front of me.
You asshole – where are you????
Crap.
It was from Jen.
I knew that running away had probably seemed like a dick move – or a cowardly one – but it had worked to draw the orcs away from my friends.
Or maybe not.
But I still had to answer for it.
I typed in, I jumped in the moat.
Well, that’s convenient – because they killed all of us and threw our bodies in the moat, too!
Oh shit…
Who the hell WERE those guys? And why’d you run like a coward?
Suddenly another message popped up from Slothfart: I think you mean ‘a little BITCH.’
Crap. Time to face the music.
51
I found them in the wilds far beyond the moat, trying to dry out their clothes.
Russell and Richard were vying for the ‘Most Disturbing Friend to See Half-Naked’ award. Russell had stripped off his armor and was just walking around in a speedo. Imagine a green, three-foot-tall bodybuilder in a black banana hammock – or, rather, try not to.
Richard had pulled off his robes and was drying them on a flat rock in the sun. As trolls go, I suppose he was normal – but his beanpole body and weirdly elongated arms and legs just looked wrong. He looked like an 80-pound, seven-foot-tall NBA player in spectacles and an Indian holy man’s bandage loincloth.
Slothfart had stripped off his chain mail but still wore his pants. He looked okay – think a green Arnold Schwarzenegger from Conan The Barbarian with pointy ears, bald head, and two giant incisors in an underbite.
Jen had taken off her white robes and was drying them on the same rock as Richard. I tried to look only at her eyes, but it didn’t help that she had a seriously amazing body – and now her little white slip was plastered to every curve.
Normally she’d be fending off catcalls from the other guys – except they were all steaming mad and could only argue amongst themselves about one thing.
As soon as she saw me fifty feet away, she yelled, “Who the hell WERE those guys?”
“Yeah man,” Slothfart roared, “who DOES that? Killing people and throwing them in the moat afterwards! Nobody, that’s who! Friggin’ psychos!”
“Bloody gits!” Russell yelled.
“Rather unsportsmanlike,” Richard added.
Jen jumped back in accusingly. “And how the hell could you run away and leave us there after we stuck up for you?”
“Yeah man!” Slothfart said. “DICK move!”
“You’re a right bastard, Jimmy!”
“Not very gentlemanly of you,” Richard said in quiet disapproval.
“I’m really, really sorry, guys,” I said, and meant it. “I was hoping they’d run after me and leave you alone.”
“Who were they?” Jen demanded.
Might as well continue with the lie. “That was my ex’s boyfriend and his friends.”
Except Jen wasn’t having any of it. “No they weren’t. Cut the bullshit, Jimmy, and tell us the truth.”
“I am!” I said, trying to sound as sincere as possible.
“Then why did they tell me right before they killed me, ‘Tell your little thief he’s never getting a job from us, and if we ever see any of you again, next time we’ll take you all out in back of the city and rape you before we kill you’?”
Oh shit…
“They didn’t really say that, did they?” I asked, my stomach constricting in fear.
“YES, they DID,” Jen snarled.
“Even the dudes, man! They’re even gonna rape me!” Slothfart yelled. “Except with a sword, if you know what I’m sayin’! Dude, that shit’s effed UP!”
I winced.
Jesus, the Russians were animals.
“Who the hell are they really, Jimmy, and what the hell have you got yourself messed up in?” Jennifer demanded.
“Guys,” I said with real pain, “I… look, I want to tell you, but I can’t.”
Jen got right up next to me and pointed a finger in my face. “No more of your lies, Jimmy! No more of this mysterious bullshit! Come clean and tell the
truth right now, or you’re out!”
“Yeah!” Slothfart and Russell said angrily. Richard just folded his arms and stared at me.
I looked around at them helplessly.
I could try to lie my way out, but I was pretty sure they wouldn’t believe me.
Jen interpreted my silence as refusal.
“Fine. We’re done,” she snapped, then turned away. “Go away, don’t ever contact us again, and if you see us coming, walk the other way.”
“Guys, please,” I pleaded. “Don’t do this to me – not now.”
I’d just lost my family the night before. Now I was going to lose the only friends I had in the world. People I cared about. I’d had the only really, truly good times in my entire life with them – at least since I was a kid, back before my father died.
“I swear, I would tell you if I could.”
“You don’t have to tell us anything anymore, because you’re out,” Jennifer snapped. She pulled her still-wet robes off the rock and wriggled into them. “Come on guys, let’s get the hell out of here.”
They started getting dressed, alternated with giving me dirty looks. Only Richard looked somewhat sympathetic.
I can’t even describe the despondency I felt at that moment. I’d lost everything – my freedom. My family. My self-respect. Everything was gone.
The only thing I had was these people. And I had lied to them. I’d led them on. And I felt like shit about it.
I knew that my mother and grandmother would eventually take me back after this whole thing with the FBI got sorted out. My brother? Other than not wanting him to take everyone in my family down with him, I didn’t really care whether he took me back or not.
But if these guys walked out on me, I was utterly and completely alone. And they’d never take me back. They weren’t obligated by blood like my family was – and I’d lied to my friends even more than I had lied to my family.
I guess you might say I could just make some new friends, but I’d actually come to really like Russell and Slothfart and Richard. If you ever spend three weeks straight with people, 12 to 14 hours a day, and you still look forward to seeing them in the morning? Those are good friends.
And Jen? I was falling in love with her.
Hell, scratch that – I was in love with her.
How do you walk away from that?
I’d never had friends before. Just other assholes I stole cars and burgled houses with, and then got drunk with afterwards. So no friends at all, really.
Well, I’d thought I had one. But he went and betrayed me.
Just like I’d gone and betrayed Jen and Russell and Slothfart and Richard.
Okay, not exactly like that – but what I’d done was still shitty.
The truth was, if I had to choose between going to prison, and lying and hurting people that I really cared about, then I was through with the lying and hurting part. I would take prison if that’s what it came down to.
“Wait!” I yelled. “I’ll tell you the whole truth. Every bit of it.”
They looked back at me with a mixture of defiance and expectation.
I paused… then jumped right in.
“I’m an undercover FBI agent.”
There was a long silence as they stared at me.
Then they burst out laughing.
“Okay,” Jen snorted, “I didn’t expect you to follow up bullshit with even worse bullshit.”
“It’s true!” I protested.
“Whatever. Thanks for one last laugh,” she said bitterly, and turned her back on me.
“I’m an ex-con safe cracker who lives in Los Angeles,” I shouted after them. “I just got out of jail after six years inside. Two nights after I got out, the FBI framed me and blackmailed me into helping them. Those orcs who killed you guys? They’re Russian mobsters. I’m supposed to infiltrate them and help the FBI take them down. The baby mama? She’s not my ex-girlfriend and there’s no kid. She’s my FBI handler. She’s been checking up on me the whole time to make sure that I did what she wanted. I swear to God, hand on a Bible.”
They stared at me again, their expressions caught somewhere between shock and utter bewilderment.
“Holy shit,” Slothfart muttered, “I think he’s telling the truth.”
Jen walked up closer to me. “You’re an ex-con?”
I hesitated… then nodded. It hurt to admit it to the woman I was crazy about.
Seeing the hurt on her face was even worse. “You were lying to us about everything this entire time?”
“I didn’t have any choice. I’m not supposed to be telling you any of this. If the FBI finds out, they’re going to send me back to prison. It’s my third strike, which means I’ll spend the rest of my life behind bars.”
“Why did you even join us in the first place?” Jen asked, her voice trembling. “Why would you even involve us in this at all?”
Oh shit.
Because I’d become such good friends with them, I’d totally forgotten about that part.
With utter and complete shame, I said, “Because I needed to level up faster. I needed somebody who could help me get to where I needed to be, so I could do what the FBI wanted me to do, so I could get back to my life.”
She stood there for a moment, her face totally in shock – and then she slapped me.
Hard.
I saw the others flinch and wince.
“You know what that’s for?” she asked me, tears in her eyes.
I didn’t say anything.
“It’s not for using us, which you did. I mean – you were just some stranger we found in a field. We should’ve known better. I should’ve known better. So you wanted to level up faster – big deal. That’s not a crime, it’s just selfish to use us like that.
“And it’s not for stringing us along, although God knows you did that. Lying to us all the time, just so you could do whatever it is that you’re doing.
“No, that was because you’re an asshole. Because you put us in danger.” She jabbed my chest with her finger over and over again. “You let us fight for you back there, and you ran out on us. You’re a coward.”
Her voice was on the edge of breaking as she said the thing that hurt the most:
“And you let us care about you, when you didn’t give a damn about us at all.”
I knew what she’d really meant was, You let ME care about, when you didn’t really give a damn about ME at all.
“That’s not true,” I whispered, my heart breaking. “You guys are all I have left. You’re the only thing I have left.”
“And you just lost us,” she said, her voice cracking as the tears began to roll down her cheeks. “Screw you, Jimmy. I thought you were different. You’re just a liar, full of bullshit like the rest of them.”
She turned around and walked away swiftly. I couldn’t hear her crying, but I could see her shoulders shaking silently.
The others all looked at me like they felt sorry for me. But they eventually glanced at each other, then over at Jen as she walked away… and one by one they turned and followed her.
I silently watched them go.
I was alone. Utterly and completely alone.
52
I sat down on the ground and went into a deep, dark depression. Hating myself, hating my life, hating the FBI, hating Arkova, hating Rod, hating my brother, hating the Russians…
The only people I didn’t hate were Mom, Baba, my friends… and Jen.
I’d lied to them, even though I hadn’t had any choice.
Well, not much of a choice, anyway.
I’d finally told Jen and the others the truth – but after weeks of constant lies, why wouldn’t they hate me?
After an hour of self-pity, I knew I had to get a move-on. Real darkness was coming, and I needed to get back to the city.
Duty called.
Ha.
Whatever.
The FBI still had a gun to my head. If I was going to lose everything that mattered to me, at least I was gett
ing out from under that goddamn gun.
But first I had to take care of the spike sticking out of my back.
Funny – despite how messed up it was, I’d completely forgotten about it since the moment I’d gotten Jen’s text message. And the pain in my heart was ten times worse than the one in my shoulder.
So I took care of it.
It was a nightmare. To get out the barb, I actually had to cut through the front of my shoulder and pull it out the front of my body. My pain levels were all the way down, but let me tell you, it’s freaking brutal cutting a hole in your chest, then pushing a barbed blade by falling backwards onto a rock. Then I had to pull the barb out along with three feet of iron chain. The anguish was more mental than it was physical, but I still nearly threw up from the effort.
The only thing that kept me alive was I still had several vials of cherry-flavored healing potion from the night I dueled Jen.
Every single one I drank might’ve kept me alive, but the taste was bitter in my mouth as I thought of everything I’d just thrown away.
To be honest, I guess I had been throwing it away little by little all along, with every lie I’d told over the last three weeks. The big finale had happened an hour ago, that’s all.
Once my wounds had healed back up and my hit points were at their maximum, I snuck back into the city.
It wasn’t a big deal – I basically stayed in Stealth the entire time. I wasn’t sure where I might encounter the orcs again, so I stayed cloaked – and I definitely kept away from the Thieves Market and the Dark Quarter.
I stole some food from the regular vendors that lined the main road. A loaf of bread, a couple pieces of fruit, a hunk of salted meat. I mean, that’s what I was – a Rogue, right? Thief, outlaw, criminal?
In both the game and in real life.
I found an empty room in the inn and didn’t take the chance of paying for it. I just picked the lock, barricaded the door, and even stayed in Stealth inside the hotel room. Just in case.
I set about practicing on my lockbox. It was the only thing I had left.
But my thoughts kept drifting back to Jen… the way she laughed… the way she smiled when she was looking mischievous… the way her body felt under her robes when I pulled her close… the taste of her mouth when we kissed…