"You can't work for DARE," said Alex. "You were zeroed out in this game as we all were."
"True, but they didn't zero-out my knowledge." He tapped his head. "In DARE, I developed a close personal relationship with Ralph, also a high-level agent. Though he couldn't remember me, I remembered him, and you could say I used it to my advantage. We fell for each other again." He touched his companion's arm. "And I convinced him to join me in my quest."
"You hearing this, Ralph?" Alex asked. "Dude's been playing you, pretending to be your 'partner.'"
"Oh, no," said Taylor, looking offended. "No pretense was involved. I love him. He loves me. We truly are life-partners."
"Uh...this is virtual reality."
"In this reality – in all realities."
"And now you will be my god." Ralph extended a gloved hand and grasped his lover's shoulder. "And I will worship you."
"And I will be a most generous god," Taylor laughed. "To you and my disciples, anyway."
For several moments, Alex was at a loss. She imagined she was staring at them, slack-jawed. Maybe it was the effects of the Sarin-3, but she felt she'd entered a whole new level of virtual insanity.
"Funny," said Alex. "But I'm not getting any godlike aura from you, Taylor. Maybe you should check for a message on that flask. Win or lose, there should be one."
Taylor's grin contracted a notch. He lifted the glass. Alex saw a shiny logo of a leprechaun wearing a bad wig attended by gold words: To Your Health! But judging from Taylor's slowly dawning expression of horror, he was seeing a slightly different message on the glass.
"No," he whispered. "It can't be!"
"I'm guessing it can," said Alex.
Taylor whirled on him. "You son of a bitch! You conned me into drinking the wrong drink!"
"Imagine that."
Taylor tossed the glass against the wall, where it shattered into a hundred purple-stained pieces. Ralph wrapped an arm around him but Taylor shook him off.
"You will always be my god, sweet boy," said Ralph.
The backdoor blew open and a dozen individuals in gas masks and black uniforms emblazoned with blood-red DARE insignias charged into the room, TASER rifles blazing.
Taylor and Ralph dropped, quivering, to the floor, steel spikes protruding from their chests. Spikes struck Alex in her right arm and side. Red-hot poker pain branched out from the points of entry and converged in her brain.
Chapter 20
ALEX KNEW SOMETHING WAS wrong when she woke up and she was still feeling woozy. Worse than that, her head was pounding and her bedroom had developed odd, fuzzy, carnival-mirror curvatures: her night table appeared to stretch to within inches of her AFIRM unit, though she knew it was several feet away, while her bedroom door appeared tiny and distant and bent sideways like a model cocking her hip.
Alex blinked hard, but the room remained obdurately warped. Another seizure? Migraine? She reached up and touched her face. The skin felt cool, rubbery, droopy.
Stroke. Terror rippled through her. Transient Ischemic Attack? But the fact that she could mentally pronounce those words suggested she wasn't too bad off. Still, she needed to get out of the AFIRM and make that dreaded 911 call. Not the first time, and it wouldn't be the last. Hopefully.
She tugged off her restraining cuffs and shuffled out of the AFIRM. Despite her vision issues, this time her footing was firm. There must exist a merciful if mischievous god. She walked to the night table, left foot dragging, and picked up her cell. The numbers danced and squiggled on the keypad but tapping Emergency on her favorites was easy enough. She knew her mom was out on a date with "Dr. Letch" tonight.
"Please state the nature of your emergency," the dispatcher asked tonelessly.
"I..." Alex was surprised to find a sharp disconnect between her thoughts and her words. "Need...help. Maybe stroke..."
"I understand. We have your address. I'm dispatching an ambulance. If possible, please unlock your front doors."
"Okay."
Alex dropped the cell on her bed. She glanced down at her body, which she seemed to be viewing from the wrong end of a telescope. Her feet appeared far too tiny to support her. Christ. She steeled herself. This wasn't the end. She'd make it. Just a little brain attack. Might even be only a migraine. But it would be nice to greet the ambulance in something other than underwear and her bony body.
She was waiting with the doors open on the living room sofa when the paramedics barged inside.
LATER, IN the hospital bed, Alex had a lot of time to think about things. Not especially fun things: her mortality, career, future, and whether she should keep dying her hair blond.
The CT scan hadn't shown anything definite. The doctors guessed it was either a migraine or a very mild TIA. No hemorrhage, thank Zeus. She didn't know either of the doctors, and was ashamed to admit she missed Dr. Walters, who hadn't been available. How thoughtless of her to desert Alex in her hour of need.
But the ER docs seemed to know what they were doing. They shot her up with a clot-buster just to be on the safe side. Of course, her mom put on a brave front that lasted a few lip-quivering moments before she dissolved into tears. They'd be keeping her overnight, and Alex told her to go home.
The worst part of it all was her status in the quest. So close, and it had all slipped through her fingers. She needed desperately to get back into the game and see where she was. She didn't have time to be sick or dying.
Not that the quest prognosis was necessarily bad. A shitload of competitors had come at her, and a lot of them had died or been eliminated. For all she knew, she was the only one still standing. Or sitting in an interrogation cell in some DARE facility, more likely. The TASER shots hadn't killed her, she was certain of that. No, they'd hauled her off and no doubt a few other competitors as well. What a confusing mess that would be, sorting through their testimonies. Taylor had checked out, and his avatar might blather about everything or nothing at all. His DARE-agent paramour...Zeus only knew what he would say. Any competitors still in the game, if any, would likely try to talk their way out or escape. From what Alex had seen, they wouldn't fare well. The odds weren't good for her, either.
Oh, well. Worst case, she'd sit it out and enter the open-to-the-public version of the Goddess Quest. Had to say how that would play out. A goodly number of savvy gamers would've been following the recent unprecedented Donnybrooks in Parallel U.S.A. and would know something serious was up. As soon as Oink announced the contest, in a few short days, they'd start piecing it together. Wouldn't take long to narrow it down to the drink list at the Green Mac.
If the drink ingredients were publicly available, they'd start assembling them and throwing the dice. But Alex was close to dead-certain that those ingredients were "proprietary." That meant finding an employee who knew how to make the drinks and compelling or bribing them into the reveal. Or going straight to the Mac owner himself. It could all either turn into an epic shitstorm or go out like a lamb.
Alex was betting on lamb. Because she had one incomparable advantage over everyone else: she not only knew the identity of the drink – she knew how it was constructed. One nice benefit of having a near-photographic memory. She'd watched them assemble the Sweet Hemlock, and every ingredient, every amount, was right there in her adorable little steel bear-trap mind.
All she had to do was rejoin her studly avatar, locate those ingredients, and concoct an ambrosial drinkie-poo. Those ingredients might be inside the drive-in's fridges. More likely, the authorities had confiscated them. They'd lock the restaurant down in any case. Chances were, legions of players would soon be converging on Mac's Green Drive-In. And this time they could bring all their toys – all the awards and weapons in their portfolios. The Friday night Battle at the Green Mac Corral might seem like a love-fest in comparison.
Alex planned to skip all that excitement and go straight to the source. Which she should be able to find online...but her cell was at home. Her mom claimed to have forgotten it, but Alex suspected that had been int
entional. Still, that's why she had willing servants. It was only one-thirty. Lucky Bran was a night owl and middle-of-the-night communiqués between them weren't unusual.
She rolled over in her hospital bed and grabbed the land phone.
"What's up, A?" Brandon sounded half-asleep.
"Not much." She wasn't about to waste critical time panicking about her medical situation. "Could you do me a favor?"
"Of course. That's what I live for, my queen."
"Could you track down who supplies drinking ingredients to Green Mac's in Madison, Wisconsin?"
"Is that the location of the Ambrosia?"
"It was."
A few seconds later: "Holy fuck! They had a war down there tonight! How'd I miss that?"
"You probably were doing homework like a good little boy scout."
"Jeez.. You were involved in that?"
"Up to my eyebrows."
"What happened?"
"Later, dude. Right now, I need that information, ASAP."
Alex could hear him tickling the keys.
"Ah, this could take a while. Nothing direct is coming up on Google."
"That's fine. Just keep plugging away at it, okay?"
"Yes, milady."
"Thanks, Bran."
"That's it? You're not going to tell me anything about the last couple of days?"
"Only...well, I had it in my hands, B. One ticket to paradise. And then it all blew apart."
"I'm reading here that some gameroid dropped nerve gas on the party!" Disbelief strained his voice. "And someone else showed up with an armored vehicle and a machine gun!"
"I have no idea how they pulled that off with the armored vehicle. The asshole with the nerve gas had been working for DARE for years, and had a boyfriend within the department. He used that knowledge for a quick seduction and twisting his squeeze to his evil ends – including implanting me with a tracking device while I was in custody. He had me on his radar the whole damn time."
"He didn't even try to solve any stages? Just let you do all the work and followed you around?"
"Exactly."
"What a fucking droid!"
"Tell me about it. Some people have no fucking pride."
"So where does this leave you now?"
"I'm still in the game." Alex took a weary breath. "I might be the only one. But I'm in DARE custody now. At least I think I am. I checked out while they were arresting me."
"When was this?"
Alex glanced at the wall clock. "A few hours ago."
"I'm surprised you haven't gone back in."
"Yeah, well, I needed a break. My avatar isn't going anywhere. I'm not sure how I'm going to play this, but if I do escape, I need to get my hands on the secret ingredients. That's where the supplier comes in. I'm sure they have the drive-in under house arrest."
"You know how to make the Ambrosia?"
"Unless the employees were screwing with me. I watched them make it."
Some mouse-clicking and plinking of keys carried over the connection.
"You should oil that mouse or something," said Alex. "Sounds like it has arthritis."
"Ha, yeah." More clicking and plinking. "You know what? Just found an article about how the owner, Sam Macintyre, has a small production plant on his property. A rural address – some farm property outside the city. The article's dated 2013, about ten years ago, but I don't see why it would change. Not like the dude's got a nationwide franchise or anything, though the article says he's turned down big money to do just that."
"Okay. That's great, Bran." Alex stifled a yawn. Nothing like a little virtual nerve gas and a mystery brain-attack to take the stuffing out of you. "I should get some rest. I'll check back with you manana."
"All right." A hint of concern or perhaps suspicion had entered Brandon's voice. "Manana, then."
"THAT MACHINE is killing you," said her mom over breakfast back home the next morning. "I'm sorry, honey, but I'm going to have to insist that it be off-limits for the next week or two. Maybe longer. Your body needs rest, real rest. You heard what Dr. Walters said. REM induction changes the chemistry in your brain – does exactly the opposite of the brain-healing real dreams are believed to do."
Alex sipped her hibiscus tea and told herself to remain calm, to ride out the parental storm. It wasn't as if Cindy didn't threaten to shut off her AFIRM every other week.
"You know that over fifty percent of people who've had a TIA have a large stroke within a year?"
Alex regarded her with flat, lizard eyes. "They don't know I had a TIA, Mom."
"They don't know you didn't. The precautionary principle needs to apply here, don't you think?"
Alex closed her eyes. Oooohhmmmm.
"I'm not trying to stress you out, honey." A quiver of nervousness in her voice. "I know how important this game – this quest – is for you. I'm not dismissing that. But the most important thing is your health, isn't it?"
Her mom, of course, would never understand. The litany of all young people, sure, but in this case it really was true. Cindy had worked hard to get her degree. She was a perfectly respectable geneticist and she liked her work. She also now liked one of her coworkers, Professor Letch, who'd apparently slobbered after her for years while she was married. But she didn't have a Calling. An all-consuming passion. That was what she couldn't understand. And there was no point in trying to explain once again. Also no point in getting pissed off and reminding her that she was an adult and that the AFIRM was actually her property. Better to be all Zen and reasonable about it.
"This game has been more stressful than any I've ever played, I'll admit that," said Alex. "But it's almost over. Everything's come to a head. When I finish it, I'll take a break. I promise."
Cindy stared at her with skeptical eyes. "You'll take a break after you become a virtual god?"
"Thanks for the vote of confidence. But yeah, why not? Nothing says a god has to be industrious. I could be a lazy-ass, truly Dionysian god. Lie on a beach for a week and have handsome, scantily clad servants bring me fancy drinks."
"Men?"
"Or women. Or both." Alex smiled as her mom rubbed her brow. "My point is that gaming can be stressful, and as I said, this is the most stressful contest I've ever been in. Trust me when I tell you I'll have no trouble taking a break from gaming. My plan is to take it easy and have some fun – until my worshippers turn against me and I have to smite them or something."
Cindy gave her a pale smile. "When you say it's almost over, what's left to do?"
"Just need to get my hands on the drink's ingredients and put on my mixology cap."
"You know how to make this drink?"
"I think so. If I'm wrong, it's game-over." Alex neglected to add that if this game ended without a winner, it would resume. Also, she thought it better not to mention possibly needing to fight her way out of a DARE prison.
"What's involved in obtaining these ingredients?"
"I need to locate the supplier."
Her mom shook her head, her gaze turning wary. Returning to its default, that is, when it came to the Omniverse.
"How long will this take?"
"I can't say, precisely, other than the quest is set to end in three days. Sometime before then." Her mom's frown was deepening. "My guess is today or tomorrow. It's kind of an all or none deal."
"I was reading on Verse News that there was a terrorist attack involving sarin gas and a tank with a machine gun in Parallel Wisconsin."
"Yeah." Alex shrugged. "Weird how our sick world seems to have infected the Parallel Earth. Too bad they don't have the Department of Homeland Security to protect everyone from terrorists."
Cindy leaned forward, giving her the stern blue-eyed "let's cut through your b.s." gaze she reserved for special occasions.
"That incident in Wisconsin, did it have anything to do with you? With the Goddess Quest?"
Alex was sorely tempted to lie. But what the fuck. Her mom already had her suspicions and could dig up the truth if she pu
t her mind to it.
"With the quest, yeah," said Alex. "More than a few of my competitors were tracking what they presumed was my movement and deduced that this drive-in, the Green Mac in Madison, was my probable target. So they were there waiting when I showed up."
"I'm not sure I'm following. How would they track you? And why would they? You told me they're the best of the best. Wouldn't they just attempt to solve the stages as you were?"
"You'd think. My best hypothesis is that they guessed I was too far ahead and decided to free-range it."
"'Free-range'?"
"It means to skip the stages and their clues and go for the gold – try to solve the final stage based on the initial general clue. Like guessing a phrase when you only have a couple of letters."
"Okay." Her mom nodded slowly. "So they were waiting for you at this fast-food place."
"That wasn't too surprising. The nerve gas and the armored vehicle – those surprised me. I wasn't expecting anywhere near that level of violence."
"Are you expecting it when you go back?"
"Uh, no."
"You know what I'm going to say?"
"That you can't wait for me to rush back, kick some ass, and claim my glorious prize?"
Cindy shook her head, unsmiling. "I was thinking more that you could be surprised again, that you could find yourself in the midst of another maelstrom, and it could have the same effect on you as the last one did."
"You think it caused whatever sent me to the ER?"
"That seems likely, doesn't it?"
"If it's any comfort, I see no chance of a repeat of that. For one thing, the people who pulled that crap are gone from the contest. Now if no one wins the quest, it will go public, and anything could happen. But for the next three days, before the contest ends, it's down to the survivors – me and possibly one or two others – to claim the prize. Not enough time to put together anything like the fireworks show we saw at the Green Mac Friday night, even if they wanted to. Which I doubt. The gameroids already shot their wad –"
The Goddess Quest Page 31