by A. J. Markam
“The other guys?” I asked, my heart suddenly lifting with hope.
Slothfart knew exactly what I was thinking. “When I say ‘guys,’ I am literally talking about people with dicks. Not Jen. Just so you’re not surprised when we show up and she’s not there.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah,” he said, and slapped me on the back good-naturedly. “Get out all that disappointment out right now.”
“How far are we going?”
“‘Bout a mile.”
“Why aren’t we using our horses?”
“You can’t ride a horse and enter Stealth, can you?” he asked.
“No – so?”
“Well then, just in case we meet any Russian assholes out here, I figure at least one of us can get away.”
I was oddly touched. “Thanks, man.”
“Only for you, dude, and only in this very specific situation. Otherwise I am NEVER walking a freakin’ mile I don’t need to ever again.”
We kept going until we reached the barrens surrounding the city. Russell was crouched next a campfire, and Richard sat cross-legged beside him.
“Hey guys, look who I found,” Slothfart said.
“Jimmy!” Russell yelled, and raced over and basically tackled my legs like an over-enthusiastic toddler. “I’ve missed you, mate!”
“I won’t be nearly as effusive with my displays of affection,” Richard said, “but the sentiment’s the same.”
I sat down next to them in front of the fire. “Hey, guys! I, uh… I gotta say, I’m kind of surprised.”
“About what?”
“I thought you all hated me.”
“He thought I was coming to kill him,” Slothfart chuckled.
“What?! We don’t hate you, Jimmy!”
“Quite the contrary,” Richard said.
“I mean,” Slothfart continued, “we were pretty shocked. You gotta admit, when a dude goes from telling you he’s got baby mama drama to telling you he’s trying to infiltrate the Russian mob, that’s a little surprising.”
“Mildly,” Richard said.
“I was friggin’ gobsmacked,” Russell said.
“I thought I got hold of some weed with LSD in it, to be honest,” Slothfart said.
I looked around in the darkness. “So… where’s Jen?”
The orc winced. “Well… she hasn’t exactly come around yet.”
“‘Hasn’t exactly come around’ is a mild is a very strong understatement,” Richard said.
“What made you guys come around, then?”
“Well, dude, as much as we like you, it’s not like we fell in love with you or anything.”
Again, if I had had a heartbeat, it would’ve stopped.
“She’s… in love with me?”
“Well…” Slothfart took out a flask, popped the top off, and offered it to me. “From what I know about Jen, I’d say ‘yes.’ She hasn’t exactly come out and said it, but…”
“The signs are evident,” Richard said.
“What signs?”
“No real interest in questing… complete loss of appetite… refusing to talk about you… refusing to let any of us talk about you… staring off into the distance for long periods of time… refusal to let any of us see her back in San Francisco, probably because she’s crying, which her game avatar can hide but she can’t, not in real life.”
“The bird’s gone crazy fer ya, Jimmy,” Russell said.
I can’t lie; hearing that Jen was reacting the same way I felt… well, it made me feel good. Not that she was suffering, but that she cared enough about me to suffer.
“So… you guys aren’t mad at me?” I asked.
“Not at all,” Richard said.
“Actually…” Slothfart glanced around at the others as though asking for confirmation to speak for the group, then looked back at me. “We think it’s pretty damn cool.”
“You do?”
“What, are you kidding me? You’re like James Bond over here! You’re a safe-crackin’ badass and you’re infiltrating the mob for the FBI! It’s like your life is a freakin’ movie!”
“More like a horror movie at the moment,” I said glumly.
“No – the other day when my butthole got threatened with a sword? That was a horror movie. This is a badass movie.”
“Bad… ass,” Richard enunciated carefully to Slothfart. “You do realize that was a poor choice of words to use in the context of the threat made upon your anus, correct?”
“Whatever – you know what I mean!” the orc protested. Then he turned to me. “So, what kind of shit did you steal that landed you in prison? Like, gold bars? Diamonds? Bearer bonds like in Die Hard?”
“Just money. A little jewelry here and there.”
Slothfart’s question started an avalanche of others.
“Didja kill anybody in prison?” Russell asked in a hushed voice.
“No!”
“Did you ever see anybody get shivved?” Slothfart asked.
“Once.”
“Did you shiv a guy but not kill him?”
“No!”
“Were ya in a gang?” Russell asked.
“No.”
“Did you ever… you know,” Slothfart whispered, “pick up the soap in the shower?”
“No!”
“You didn’t do the business to somebody else who picked up the soap, didja?” Russell asked in horror.
“NO!”
“Did you get adequate representation from your legal counsel at your trial?” Richard asked.
“Uh… I guess?”
“Did you – ”
“Guys,” I said, holding up my hands, “I don’t want to give you the wrong idea. I was strictly a low-level safe-cracker on the local scene. I never did anything big, maybe a hundred grand at most that I split with other people in the crew. I wasn’t some gangster with a Ferrari and supermodel girlfriends. I was a dude with a pickup truck who occasionally did jobs with other guys, and we’d blow our money on strippers and booze, and then I got caught.”
“Dude, I’m not hearin’ anything I don’t like!” Slothfart said, then quickly added, “You know, except for the stealing money part… obviously that’s no bueno…”
“But we heartily approve of the naked women and booze!” Russell hooted.
“I find your criminal lifestyle slightly more appalling,” Richard said, “but I salute your self-awareness and humility, and I know you ultimately to be a good person.”
“Thanks… I think…”
I paused.
“So what are you guys doing here? I mean, I’m happy you’re here, but – did you just want to say goodbye before you left? Like, a ‘no hard feelings’ kind of thing?”
Slothfart sighed. “We’re supposed to leave for another territory tomorrow, and we wanted to see if you’d join us. You should come, dude! You might have to hang back for a while, but we can convince Jen… eventually. She’ll come around, you’ll see.”
I smiled – at first happily, realizing that they really were my friends – and then the smile turned sad. “Guys, I would give anything in the world to leave with you right now, but I’ve got to take care of this other thing. I have to at least try, or the FBI is literally going to throw my ass in prison for the rest of my life.”
Slothfart nodded. “Yeah, we kind of thought you might say that… so…”
“What?” I asked, alarmed.
“So we thought we would ask if you needed any help.”
I jumped up next to the fire. “Are you kidding me?!”
Slothfart interpreted it totally wrong. “Look, dude, I didn’t mean to insult you – I mean, I know you’re like, a super badass safe cracker and you’ve probably got all sorts of FBI shit going on and all – ”
“No, no – you don’t understand – what you just did is the coolest thing anybody’s ever offered to do for me in my life! I am being forced to do a freaking impossible job by an FBI agent who hates my guts, and I thought I was going to have to pull it off 100% alone.
” I actually started to get choked up. “I never thought any of you guys would ever want to see me again, much less help me… not after the other day. I thought you all hated me.”
“Naw – we like you, Jimmy,” Russell grinned, and punched me in the side of the leg.
“Although we need to ask a few questions first before we sign the dotted line,” Slothfart cautioned me.
“Sure – like what?”
“Like exactly what are the chances of me ending up with a sword in my ass?”
I laughed. “With what I’ve got planned, I think probably around zero. But I can’t guarantee anything.”
“You’re not exactly selling me on this, dude.”
“Yes, some of us were already unenthusiastic to begin with,” Richard said.
I can’t lie – I was a little hurt that he would say that. I had thought Richard was on my side.
“You don’t have to help,” I said, trying to keep the irritation out of my voice.
“It’s not that,” Richard said. “I would gladly help you. It’s just that we talking about the Russian mob here, correct?”
“Yes.”
“I did some research on them over the last couple of days.” He looked at me square in the face, his spectacles glinting in the firelight. “These are brutal, horrible people we’re talking about, aren’t they?”
“Yes,” I admitted.
“What exactly are you trying to do here? Are you trying to expose them, arrest them, find out their true identities? What’s the endgame to what you’re trying to accomplish?”
“The problem is that they use something called the Shadow Bank for money laundering inside the game. All of their other funds got busted several years ago, so they’ve started using the videogame world to do all their financial transactions. They don’t commit as many crimes here, but the stuff they do in the real world, they get paid for here. And they all hide it all away in this black-market bank that nobody can touch – not the FBI, not Interpol, not anybody. What I’m trying to do is get into the gang.”
“What happens when you get into the gang?” Richard asked.
I smiled halfheartedly. “I haven’t even gotten that far. I figured it would be hard enough to get in, so it wasn’t worth it to plan any further than that.”
“I’m assuming from their reaction to you the other day that you had a meeting with them already.”
“Yes.”
“It doesn’t appear to have been successful.”
“That’s an understatement.” I suddenly thought of a related topic of conversation over the past week. “Speaking of meetings, how did your interview go?”
“Not quite as badly as your interview with the Russians. But I didn’t get the job.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. That leaves me more time to help undercover agents infiltrate the Russian mafia.”
He smiled faintly, and I grinned back at him.
But then I grew serious.
“I have a plan I’m working on. With the three of you, I think it’ll be that much easier – and I think it will be relatively safe. For you guys, at least. But again, I can’t 100% promise you anything.”
Slothfart was silent for a moment, then finally shrugged. “Oh well, it’s a videogame. What’s the worst that can happen?”
“Again,” Richard said, “you simply must stop saying things that sound like famous last words.”
“Yeah,” Russell said, “the worst they can do is shove a bloody sword up your arse.”
“Okay, that would be really bad,” Slothfart conceded.
“Guys, I can’t legitimately ask you to do this,” I said.
“That’s all right, Jimmy – we’re volunteering!” Russell said cheerfully. “Now gimme a drink!”
I looked at the others. “Are you sure?”
“No,” Slothfart said. “But why the hell not – we got into the game to have adventures. Might as well have a real-life one.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Richard said.
“Me too!” Russell said.
“Me three,” Slothfart agreed.
We all toasted to impossible plans, and then I told them my ideas over the firelight.
56
After the guys said goodbye and logged out, I spent the night by the campfire practicing on my lockbox. I still couldn’t stop thinking about Jen, but this time it was happy memories, colored by the knowledge that she was missing me. More than anything, I wanted to see her again.
When dawn broke on Monday morning, I headed back to Sillomar, slipped into Stealth, and made my way to the inn.
I’d been back for maybe 45 minutes when there was a knock on the door. I wasn’t expecting anyone – Arkova wasn’t slated to turn up for another hour – so it took me by surprise. I crept over and put my ear to the door to listen.
I almost got deafened by the next knock, followed by a familiar voice.
“Jimmy? Are you in there?”
It was Jen.
I flung the door open happily, still in Stealth – and got a terrible shock.
It wasn’t Jen standing there, but a creepy woman all in black with a white porcelain face and red eyes. She was wearing an ornamental black headdress that look made her look like the high priestess of some sort of death cult.
Holy shit – was this some sort of assassin sent to kill me? I whipped out my knives and was preparing to attack her with Shadow Strike –
The creepy-faced woman frowned as though confused by something. “Jimmy?” she asked, and her voice was exactly the same as Jen’s.
Something told me that this might not be as sinister as it looked.
And it would really mess up my chances if I killed the woman, and she turned out to be Jen in some kind of disguise.
I flattened myself against the wall and whispered, “Jen?” which of course brought me out of Stealth.
The woman walked into the room and closed the door. As soon as she saw me, her face brightened and she smiled.
“It’s good to see you,” she said simply – not over the top, just a warmth to her voice that I never thought I would hear again.
“I’d say it’s good to see you, too, but – who are you?”
“What?” she asked, confused – then she caught sight of herself in a mirror and laughed. “Oh, yeah, I forgot.”
She waved her hands, and the black robes and white face disappeared into vapor, leaving Jen standing there in her white robes.
I stared at her in shock.
She grinned. “I needed a disguise to sneak into the city.”
“That was a good one.”
“Thanks.”
We stood there awkwardly for a second, just looking at each other.
I finally broke the ice with a lame segue from I’d say it’s good to see you, too, but…
“Okay, I guess I can say it now: it’s really good to see you.”
She smiled. “You, too.”
“How did you find me, though?”
“I asked the innkeeper if there was a Revenant staying here. When he said no, I asked about Arkova. She rented the room, so…”
“How did you know about – ” I started to say, then closed my eyes. “Crap… I told you her name a long time ago, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, when you first mentioned her.”
I shook my head. “If the orcs wanted to find me, they wouldn’t have any problem at all. Everybody else can do it.”
“Not everybody else. Just people who know you really well.”
“I thought that was the problem,” I said quietly. “That you didn’t know me at all.”
She walked around the room, avoiding looking me in my eyes. “I’ve had some time to think.”
“…and?”
“I understand why you did what you did. I don’t like it,” she said sharply, as though she wanted to make that clear. “But I understand it.”
“I never wanted to hurt you.”
“I know. Sometimes we end up getting hurt matte
r what.”
“I’m sorry.”
She looked at me and smiled, though I could see the pain in her eyes. “I’m sorry, too. Especially for all the awful things I said the other day.”
I shrugged. “A lot of them were true.”
“No, they weren’t. Or at least they weren’t the whole truth. You’re doing something really brave. Maybe not by choice,” she said in a half-amused voice, “but you’re still doing it. So… that’s something.”
“I’m not a hero, though. I’m just a guy trying to stay out of jail.”
Her expression darkened. “Is that the only reason you’re doing it?”
I hesitated. “…no.”
Her brow furrowed. She looked concerned.
“They’ve got something on my brother, too,” I said. “I had no idea, but he was running a sports book while I was in prison.”
“Betting on sports?”
“Yeah. Which is illegal. And if I don’t help the FBI with the Russians, they’re going to bust him. It’ll take down the rest of my family – it’ll literally ruin them financially, not to mention it’ll break their hearts. My mom, my grandmother, my sister-in-law, my niece and nephew…”
Jen’s face suddenly relaxed, and sympathy flowed back into her expression. “So you’re doing this for somebody else, not just you.”
“Yeah.”
“You said the FBI framed you. How?”
“My best friend told me his little brother was into some people for a lot of money, and they were going to kill him unless he came up with the cash. I agreed to do one last heist to pay them off. I wasn’t going to take any money out of it, I swear – then I was never doing another job again. Except Leo didn’t owe any money. The cops caught him, he gave up my friend, and then the FBI flipped my friend to get to me.”
“Wow… you’ve hit a bad run of assholes lately.”
I laughed. “That’s putting it mildly.”
“So you risked your freedom – and your life – to help out your best friend’s little brother.”
“Yeah. Although he turned out to be a scum-sucking son of a bitch.”
“You still did it for the right reasons.”
“The FBI doesn’t see it that way.”
She smiled. “So let me get this straight: you’re risking your life to help take down a bunch of criminals… you’re doing it at least partially to save your family… and you originally landed in this whole situation because you were trying to save somebody’s life. And you say you’re not a hero?”