Devastator

by Jason Cordova

  “Whenever you can,” Leo said in a soothing tone. “We’re testing something out and need alpha testers who know the game. Specifically, people who knew tiered realms like Crisis.”

  “A lot of my friends quit playing after…everything,” she paused as she struggled to breathe. The therapy was helping, but she was still nowhere near where she felt she ought to be at this point in the healing process. “I don’t even think Dylan goes into Crisis anymore. It’s not the same without any prize money to be won.”

  “You still have your contacts though?” Leo pressed. “You’d help us out?

  “Well…yeah.” She looked at the SEAL team, who were now doing their best to ignore her conversation. She smiled at that.

  “I’ll hire you at an hourly rate, say seventy dollars an hour, to locate some people for me you’d trust to go into The Warp,” Leo stated.

  “Seventy dollars an hour?” she squeaked.

  “Plus any other expenses you might need,” Leo replied. He sounded a little stressed, Tori realized.

  “Uh…”

  “I won’t ask you to do anything you don’t want to,” he said. “Actually, if you don’t mind, I’ll fly to Norfolk later this afternoon, and we can talk about it in person. I’ll bring one of my tech gurus, if you want the nuts and bolts explained. It’s a problem I feel you’re uniquely suited to help solve.”

  “Seventy an hour?”

  “Plus expenses.”

  “This afternoon?”

  “I could put it off until tomorrow, but, given the window of time, today would be best. I’ll even pay you a retainer fee of five hundred bucks just for meeting me on such short notice.”

  “Um, okay.” She breathed out. “We can talk this afternoon. Uh, can you come by my school? I mean, a campus location, not my dorm. No boys are allowed in my dorm, and I don’t have a car. Well, I have a friend with a car, but he doesn’t like driving…” she stopped as she realized she was beginning to ramble.

  “Tell you what,” Leo began. “Bring someone you trust, and if you start to feel bad, they can be your support system while you repeatedly punch my arm. I’ll meet you at the David Student Union this afternoon at around four your time. I’ll get a meeting room arranged. If I have to, I’ll throw some money at the school. Seems like an up-and-coming tech college, and good PR is what I’m all about right now.”

  “Sure, sure…”

  “You still look the same, or do you have some facial piercings I need to tell your dad about?” Leo asked her.

  “I dyed my hair black and blue,” she admitted after a pause. “No piercings. Yet.”

  “Oh, a rebel,” Leo said with a chuckle. “I’ll bring some paperwork for you to sign if you accept the job offer. See you later this afternoon.”

  “Sure, bye,” she said and disconnected. She closed her eyes and focused on her breathing like the therapist had instructed her. After a few moments, she opened her eyes again. She saw all of the SEALs were looking at her, concerned. She offered a weak smile. “Job offer.”

  “Sounds like it was more traumatic than that,” Lieutenant Massa said. He rolled his massive shoulders and gave her a protective look. “Need someone killed?”

  “I hope you’re joking,” she said and giggled slightly as the stress began to bleed out of her. “You are joking, right?”

  The SEAL grinned. “A gentleman never tells. Well, good luck little lady. We have our own stuff to do. Hope to see you soon.”

  The SEALs quickly began to run back toward the naval station six miles away, their pace now incredible. She considered that her top sprinting speed, but it still appeared as though the SEALs were merely jogging at a faster rate than before. She shook her head. The Special Forces men were scary, but they were still nice guys overall.

  Though she did feel very sorry for the lieutenant’s pregnant wife.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 2

  The David Student Union wasn’t the oldest building on campus by far, but it certainly wasn’t the newest. Tori had fallen in love with the beautiful brick building from the moment she’d first set foot on campus for her tour. Large windows allowed lots of natural daylight into it, and the open area in front seemed to be the epicenter for most student life activities. The majestic stone pillars only added to the décor and appeal of the building.

  If she wasn’t in class or her dorm, then the Owl’s Nest was where people could find her. The game room was filled with NIDs, or neural interface devices, where one could hop into The Warp. These devices were provided by the school if students couldn’t afford their own. She didn’t use them, but oftentimes helped some of the gamers out if they had any questions. She preferred to play board games with some of the older graduate students. “Old school gaming” is what they liked to call it. For her, it was an entirely new experience. Since college was all about new experiences, she embraced her nerdiness fully and continued down the path to Nerd Godhood.

  Today, however, the Owl’s Nest was empty. True to his word, Leo Champion had managed to reserve a room for them to talk. Surprisingly, the college had lent him the Owl’s Nest for two hours. For a rather small donation and a guest lecture in the Cloyd Technical Hall at a later date, the president of the university had sealed off the room for WarpSoft’s CEO. She had to show both her student ID and her German driver’s license before security would let her in. It was even harder to convince the overzealous guard her friend Shane was supposed to come inside with her.

  Shane Taylor was what they’d termed a “big,” an older student assigned to help mentor incoming freshman. Due to her notoriety and fame, it’d been decided she’d get to pick her big from the list of volunteers. She’d gone over the list twice before she’d asked if there was someone who was a computer science major and a gaming nerd. Surprisingly, there had only been a few, and only one of them was even remotely interested in being a big. It had taken some convincing, but Shane had finally come around and agreed to mentor the precocious teen.

  “Tori!” The tall Australian greeted her loudly the moment she walked into the room. He was dressed immaculately as always, his three-piece suit a stark contrast to the more relaxed American style. His hair was perfectly groomed, and he smiled easily at her. She couldn’t help but grin back. It was almost impossible to be mad at someone who had given you twenty million dollars, after all. “How’s college?”

  “Love it so far, Mr. Champion,” she replied and shook his hand. Even though she knew him, her father had instilled manners into her from a young age. She looked behind him and saw a second person seated uncomfortably in one of the many gaming chairs provided. She jerked her chin at the mysterious stranger. “Who’s that?”

  “Who’s that?” Leo countered and stared hard at Shane. She smirked and looked over her shoulder, where Shane was trying to make himself as small as possible.

  “He works for you,” she grinned. Leo looked at her in confusion and she laughed. “He’s a part-time Moderator for WarpSoft.”

  “That explains the deer in the headlights look I’m getting.” Leo chuckled and offered Shane his hand. “Nice to meet you. What’s your name?”

  “Uh…” Shane’s voice trailed off as he shook the hand of the wealthiest man in the world.

  “His name is Shane Taylor,” she helpfully supplied. “He’s shy, but you said I could bring someone, so I brought him.”

  “Well, the man with me is Dr. Vilim Boussard,” Leo offered and motioned for the shorter man. It took a second for the older man to get out of the chair and then over to the trio. “He’s one of my most trusted employees.”

  “Like my dad?” she asked. Leo clucked his tongue and looked thoughtfully at the other man.

  “I don’t know,” Leo said. “Vilim is closer to the top of the food chain than your father is. He’s no Jorge, though. No offense intended, of course.”

  She shrugged. Whoever this Vilim was, he sure wasn’t head of the entire European branch of WarpSoft like her father was.

  “So what in the
world is going on that you need a retired gamer to help you out?” she asked as she sat down at one of the larger tables in the room. It was the one she and her group typically used on Wednesday game nights. Shane sat down nearby, while Leo and Vilim sat opposite her. Vilim set his laptop on the table and opened it. He typed in a few commands before turning it to show her.

  “Since we did the launch of Warp 2.0, we’ve changed how the system works while logging in,” Vilim stated as she watched the demo video. “Now we’re adding a new feature. We created an intermediary point called the Nexus to ensure gamers can log out whenever they want. Sure, there would be penalties involved if in a PvP zone, and as long as the system believes you’re in a non-PvP zone, you’ll be locked in until the combat is complete or the timer in your NID expires and boots you from the game, but otherwise this is the best option for preventing another incident like the one in Crisis.”

  “Sounds cool,” she said with a shrug. “So…?”

  “So…” Vilim looked at Leo with uncertainty. Leo gave him a curt nod, and the other man sighed. “So we can’t turn it off.”

  “The Warp? Well, duh,” she rolled her eyes. “Gamers get mad when a couple of realms are down for a few hours during patch updates. You turn the entire thing off and you’ll have a riot.”

  “That’s true,” Leo chuckled. “Someone uploaded a video saying that exact same thing. ‘If you kill The Warp, we riot.’ Hilarious vid. Got something close to ten million hits and went viral within hours of being online.”

  “Not The Warp, no,” Vilim said, perturbed. “We can’t shut off the Nexus.”

  “Uh, unplug the server that hosts it?” she asked, confused. “That’s basic knowledge right there.”

  “Well, surprisingly enough, we did that,” Vilim retorted in a snide tone. Leo gave him a look, and Vilim backed off slightly. “Every single computer that runs the Nexus has been disconnected from The Warp, as has every server. Yet it remains, running smoothly and perfectly according to plan. Except it’s not according to plan.”

  “Okay, so what’s the issue?” she gave them a curious look. “Isn’t this good?”

  Leo pinched the bridge of his narrow nose and sighed. “Tori, ignore the attitude of Dr. Boussard for a moment and think about it.”

  “Uh…oh,” she gasped as everything fully sunk in. “What’s running and powering the Nexus?”

  “Precisely,” Leo nodded. “Now you understand why we’re so confused about this.”

  “It’s not even possible,” she said. “You had to have missed one.”

  “That’s what we thought,” Leo agreed. “So we did a server ping. Nothing. So then we pinged the Nexus.”

  “And the ping told you the Nexus…”

  “Was there, but wasn’t,” Leo finished. “It’s like Schrödinger’s Cat. It both exists and doesn’t exist at the same time.”

  “Ugh, quantum mechanics,” she said with a sigh.

  Shane chuckled and shook his head. “Tori, you’re going about it all wrong,” the young man from Alabama stated. “Heck, your brain could technically be considered quantum mechanics because you store all those smarts in your head. Infinite amount of space in such a tiny little area. How? You compress information and tuck it away in various neurons waiting to be opened…or they open on their own. Random thoughts, right?”

  Shane had a point, albeit a confusing one, she allowed. Still, it was something she didn’t really want to delve into yet. Maybe in her junior year. She’d rather focus on coding more than anything else at the moment.

  “So why do you need a list?” she asked.

  “I want people you can trust to go into The Warp in four various worlds to check and see if any of them are what’s powering the Nexus,” Leo said. “The only possibility, other than a rogue computer we somehow missed, is that one of the games is inadvertently keeping it up and running. If we can eliminate that possibility, then we know we have a server we somehow missed.”

  “Why only four worlds?” She queried. “There’s, like, over a hundred realms in The Warp.”

  “There’s a time window coming up when we can take down almost every realm without people complaining,” Vilim stated. “It’s limited though, so we have to hurry, or we’ll miss the event. We tried to do a dump of player profiles and go through it that way, but there were too many. Then Leo had the idea of reaching out to you.” She stared at him for a moment before she realized what upcoming event he was referring to.

  It’d been all over the news for the past few weeks. The World Gaming Tournament, hosted by WarpSoft, was to feature the best teams in the world, battling it out across separate realms for prizes and bragging rights. Individuals and teams alike had been through months of grueling qualifiers, and the field had been narrowed down to just a few teams per realm. These surviving teams were being flown to Orlando, Florida, where they’d all do battle in The Warp.

  “Oh, that’s brilliant,” she said. “Everyone will be either in or watching the WGT, which will help eliminate the other realms from your list of potential worlds. You leave the four most likely realms up and running, and you can also narrow down your search pattern. You’re a very smart man.”

  “Thank you,” both Leo and Vilim said simultaneously. They shared a look and laughed. Leo continued, “The World Gaming Tournament offers us a cover we can’t afford not to use. All the other servers will be down for maintenance while it’s occurring, which means we can set up a server dump to see if any of them are the problem. Meanwhile, we have four teams scouring each of the four realms looking for…something.”

  “What would it look like?” she wondered. “Like a graphics glitch?”

  “Maybe,” Leo shrugged. “I honestly don’t have the foggiest. We’re suspecting it’ll be fairly self-evident, though. A second sun in a world without two, a moon…”

  “Okay, so I’m making a list,” she said as she fought the conflicting emotions within. On one hand, she really dreaded the idea of being within The Warp again. Recovering emotionally from what Gavrie had done to her was taking time, and she didn’t want to lose any of the progress she’d made in the healing process.

  On the other, she was being offered a lot of money to play a game once more. Granted, she’d be working for WarpSoft, and it wouldn’t be all fun and games, but it was still a videogame. She knew people who’d kill to do that sort of job full-time. Plus, a small part of her absolutely missed running missions with her friends and discovering the cool little points throughout the various worlds.

  “We’re offering to fly everyone you hire down to Orlando, so we can use those specific servers with minimal outside interference,” Leo said temptingly. Tori bit her lip and tried to control herself. “On the company dime, no less, and we’ll throw in accommodations as well. Good rooms, too. Really good rooms.”

  “I get final say over who goes?” she asked suddenly as the idea of riding Splash Mountain came to the forefront of her mind. She’d heard the new version of it was absolutely sick. “Or am I just recommending people?”

  “Depends,” Leo said as he leaned back in his chair and intertwined his fingers. He looked at her thoughtfully. “You want to be one of the ones who goes in?”

  No! a small part of her screamed in terror. A much bigger part, however, was starting to feel competitive. She frowned at her surprising emotional response. That was unexpected, she thought.

  “Can I hire him?” she asked and jerked a thumb over at Shane, who looked at her in surprise.

  “For less than what I’m paying you,” Leo confirmed. “You’d be the boss of this.”

  “Company picks up the food tab as well?”

  “Sure,” Leo nodded. “Sounds reasonable. Besides, it’s all a tax write-off for me. Pretty sure my accountants can get as creative as Hollywood does when it comes to this type of stuff. Worst case scenario, it’s a public relations stunt. I could use some good publicity right now.”

  She exhaled and looked at the solid wood table for a moment. There was s
o much going on in her head she was confused. The inner turmoil wasn’t lost on the men in the room, but each remained silent and let her battle with her demons on her own terms. After a few minutes of silence, she looked up, decision made.

  But is it the right one?

  There was only one way to find out.

  “Okay, I’ll do it.”

  “Great!” Vilim said. He turned his laptop to face her. “This is a livestream recording of the Nexus when we first went live. Watch this and tell me what you think, and if you see anything we didn’t. It started…”

  * * *

  Tori looked away from her tablet and stretched her back. She’d been at it for hours, trying to come up with a list of gamers and Mods she thought were both highly skilled and reliable. It’d grown as she included other open-world games, like Hel, and she now had almost forty people jotted down. There were many more on her other list; they were people she knew were good at the games, but she didn’t trust them completely. She’d send those along as well, but with a caveat. She glanced at the clock on the lower corner of her screen and blinked in surprise.

  2:32 AM

  She glanced over at her roommate’s bunk but saw it was empty. She pulled out her earbuds and called out.

  “Casie?”

  Nothing. She set the tablet on her bed and checked the bathroom. It was unoccupied. She wandered out into the hall where the general study room was and found her roommate curled up in a ball on one of the oversized chairs which filled the room, asleep. She reached out and shook her awake.

  “Casie? What are you doing out here?” Tori asked.

  “You were mumbling and talking to yourself,” her roommate said with a giant yawn. “Wouldn’t shut up. Earbuds wouldn’t even drown you out. Annoying.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tori apologized earnestly. “C’mon, I’m done. I’ll finish up in the morning.”

  “What are you working on?” Casie asked as the duo returned to their dorm room. “Sounds like a TCS class.”