Theoretical Computer Science was a new class offered at CNU and was another reason she’d chosen it over some of the others. The ideas and innovative creations which came from such a class boggled the mind, and she couldn’t wait to sink her teeth into the design projects she’d get to do the following year. First, though, she had to pass Advanced Computer Science 313. It was a fairly fun class for the most part, though it was difficult being the only almost-seventeen-year-old in the group. Or the entire school, for that matter.
“No, I’m doing some contract work on the side,” Tori admitted as Casie flopped down, face first, onto her bed. She closed her laptop and moved it to her desk so she could lay down, too. “Pay is great, but it means I have to go back into The Warp.”
Casie rolled onto her side and eyeballed her roommate. While they weren’t exactly friends, Tori was famous enough even someone like Casie knew why the idea of her going back into The Warp was a terrifying prospect. She pointed this out to Tori, who shrugged.
“I don’t want to, not necessarily,” she admitted. “But the pay is amazing, and I won’t have to set foot in Crisis. Plus, I’ll be running as a Mod instead of a gamer, so I won’t be eliminated permanently. Side bonus is I can exit whenever I want, which is nice.”
“Sounds like you’re okay with this.”
“No, but…my therapist would say this is a step in the right direction,” she replied as she rolled onto her back and shut off her desk lamp. She draped her arm across her forehead and stared at the darkened ceiling. That conversation would be interesting, she thought. “Probably say this is healthy. I could do something healthy which doesn’t involve working out all the time. My muscles are starting to develop little muscles of their own.”
Light snores came from the bed next to hers. She glanced over and saw Casie had passed out. She sighed and rolled onto her side.
I hope I’m doing the right thing, she thought. She realized something else. I need to get excused from my classes for a week.
* * * * *
Chapter 3
As had been the case for the past three-quarters of a century, Orlando International Airport was packed with tourists either coming or leaving the city in the middle of the swamp. Most, if not all, of the tourists were there to visit one of three destinations: Sea World, Universal Studios, or Disney World. Nobody, so far as it could be judged, was there to visit the swampy wetlands of Central Florida.
Of the three tourist destinations, however, it was fairly obvious from the amount of Mickey Mouse ears on the heads of people leaving which was the most popular. Tori grinned as a pair of cute little boys walked past, their eyes staring at her as they passed, mouse ears perched on their heads. They gawked at her as she walked past, their eyes tracking her like radar. She heard them giggle insanely behind her, and she sighed.
“Blue hair isn’t that uncommon,” she complained under her breath as she weaved her way onto the monorail transport, which would take her to the main terminal area of the airport. She briefly wondered if she should grab something to eat, but the nauseating thought of greasy fries and half-cooked hamburger changed her mind. She worked out way too much to give up on her diet for something along the lines of grease and heart attack foods. She ignored the small protest regarding her ice cream fixation from her gut and looked at the proffered restaurants near the monorail. She scowled and moved past a small gaggle of teenaged boys who stared at her.
Not paying attention, she accidentally jostled a teen carrying a backpack. The boy turned around to yell at her, but he stopped and stared.
She knew she was in good shape from her workout regimen, but being around college age students all the time tended to distort what she considered good shape and what great shape was, as compared to the rest of American society. She fairly exuded confidence and competence, while the poor kid just seemed to radiate the raw smell of greasy food. The boy mumbled something under his breath which vaguely sounded like either an apology or a curse. Or both, she decided.
Tori, however, wasn’t offended. She and most of her friends in high school had been hardcore gamers, and she could spot one of her fellows from a mile away. Despite the common misconceptions, it wasn’t the greasy face or the unwashed hair. One could usually tell by the eyes. They had the dazed, thousand-yard stare about them. It was the look of a gamer who wasn’t used to being in this world. She shot a friendly smile at the teenager.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized. She looked at the boy’s olive-green backpack and spotted what she was looking for: an alien head patch with two swords stitched to the backpack around it, encircling the head. She grinned as she recognized the symbol.
The Alpha Legion Gaming Club was the largest online gaming community on the west coast. She’d battled a few of their characters in the past, but they were a surprisingly coordinated group that shared information among their team members. She had no animosity toward them; if anything, her respect had grown over the years as their subdued approach to the game had changed the way some of the younger Moderators hunted. Braggarts had no place in the Alpha Legion, and Moderators full of themselves usually didn’t last long on a hunt when going after the few en finites they had.
If she hadn’t been on Sergio’s team when she had played Crisis, she probably would’ve joined them.
They also defined themselves as geeks and seemed to revel in the name, using it as a weapon online. They had some serious coders and hacks, she recalled as her smile grew slightly wider. The kid stepped back nervously as he noticed her smile, but she shook her head and offered her hand instead.
“You here for the qualifying?” she asked. The boy stared at her for a moment before he shook her hand, albeit cautiously.
“We qualified out in Burbank,” the teen replied as he let go of her hand. “We’re in the quarterfinals already, actually. I’m Rich Clark.”
“Tori,” she replied with a nod. “Nice to meet you.”
“You with a club or qualified solo?” he asked her. The swampy environs of the airport flew by underneath them as the monorail sped along quietly, the gentle rocking the only reminder they were, in fact, moving.
“Oh, I’m with a club you’ve never heard of,” she said, thinking of the clubs from her area for a moment. Newport News had only a few, and she knew she was taking a risk if the boy did some checking. “Uh, the Spaced Invaders. Out of Newport News.”
“Cool,” he nodded. It was obvious to her that he’d never heard of them, which was good for her. It was doubly good he didn’t recognize her. Of course, a year can change anybody, and she’d managed to stay out of the limelight for the past eight months. “Well, hey, if you guys want to hang out, we’re going to hit the Magic Kingdom tomorrow before the main tournament starts. Maybe we meet up there? Trade some in-game strategies?”
“Stay away from narrow corridors,” she offered, sage wisdom learnt from battlefields from deep within The Warp. He laughed.
“No concussion grenades in small spaces,” he retorted. Tori snorted, thought back to an incident in a dark alley and massive explosions within Crisis, and silently agreed.
“And remember kiddies: friendly fire is definitely not,” Tori intoned. Rich howled in laughter and wiped his eyes, clearly amused. Tori grinned and shifted her backpack on her shoulders as the monorail came to a stop at the main terminal. “Hey, well, nice meeting you.”
“You too,” he said. He gave her a business card. “This is our team. My cell number is on there. Uh, give us a call if you want to hang or something. If your team is like you, we’d probably get along with them.”
“We tend to be kinda informal,” she said as she took the card. She made a mental note to upload it to her cell phone later, in case she was bored and wanted to hang out with some teens closer to her own age for a change. “I’m pretty sure I can hang out, at least.”
“Sweet,” he replied. Together they stepped off the monorail and said their goodbyes.
Her eyes swept past the security gates, and she spotted a man holding a sign wi
th her name on it. Her first name only, she was glad to see. Next to him she noticed Rich had joined up with a group of boys with similar backpacks and had left the terminal. She silently wished the group luck and walked over to the man with the sign.
“Looking for me?” she asked the man. As usual, his eyes widened slightly at the sight of the young gamer, his expectations of what a geek should look like blown to pieces. She withheld a sigh. She was getting far too used to the looks. Dylan had convinced her she was pretty, but what did the stupid boy know? He was in love.
“Uh, yes ma’am,” the man said and offered to take her backpack. Tori shook her head.
“I’ll hang on to it,” she said. “I have two bags checked though. Just clothes.”
“I’ll get those,” the man said. “I’m Russ, the limo driver. I’ll show you to the limo, and then we’ll get your bags to the hotel.”
Leo got me a limo? She was shocked. It didn’t occur to her, as a multimillionaire herself, that she could easily have purchased multiple limousines to ride around in. Her father had raised her to be frugal with money, though, and the lessons had stuck.
“Where am I staying?” she asked, curious. Leo hadn’t mentioned where she’d be staying, only that WarpSoft would be treating. He grinned as he led her out into the sweltering heat of the midday sauna. The high humidity and high temperature reminded her vaguely of Newport News. Very vaguely, she thought with a grimace.
“The Dolphin Resort, Executive Suite,” he replied and led her to a large white limo parked in the loading and unloading zone. He opened the back door, and she slid inside. He leaned down to look at her. “Soda in the fridge, with ice. Champagne on the right-hand side of the compartment, but you’re younger than I thought you’d be, so don’t drink that, please. Glasses are on your left, miss. Feel free to help yourself. Mr. Champion has taken care of everything for you.”
“Uh, thanks,” she said, slightly flustered. For what she’d been hired to accomplish by WarpSoft, this was royalty treatment. Even if she was tracking a potentially dangerous individual and was the point person for the entire operation. She inwardly smiled. She’d already started thinking of the mission in gamer terms, though one rarely enjoyed creature comforts like a stretch limousine while in game. She wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth, however. “I think I’ll manage from here. Do you know when the rest of my team will arrive?”
“No miss, I don’t. Possibly tomorrow. I’ll have to double-check my itinerary,” Russ informed her. “I’ll be right back with your bags, miss.”
“They’re green and white, with the WarpSoft logo on them,” she called out to the driver as he made his way back into the lower levels of the terminal. She closed the door and sighed as she leaned back into the plush leather seat. She felt the cool breeze of the air conditioning and exhaled loudly. “First class flight, then a limo? This is a pretty awesome day.”
* * *
“What a room,” Tori whistled as she looked around the Executive Suite of the Dolphin. The majestic hotel was spread across the grounds near the Epcot Center, where WarpSoft’s World Gaming Tournament was to take place in three days. Gamers from around the world were competing for over fifty million dollars in cash and prizes. It provided WarpSoft the best way to ensure competitors stayed active within the gaming community and bragging rights over all the other gaming companies. No other company dared compete with the tournament, deciding instead to buy advertising space for their own games. WarpSoft, secure in their place atop the food chain, allowed this without too many restrictions.
The massive number of gamers who’d be playing also gave her and her team the right amount of cover needed to move around and determine just how big of a threat the problem with the Nexus was to the system. The servers themselves were assisting her, most of them programmed to filter any unknown characters or bugs into the four worlds being used for the tournament and keeping them from accessing the Nexus. This would enable her to isolate the issue within the Nexus before it could harm The Warp.
It vaguely reminded her of the way the terrorists had attacked Crisis the year before. They’d used an underlying virus command file to isolate and lock in every gamer, with another code uploaded into the neural interface device that was designed to overload the neural pathways should they not receive their money in time. She doubted the Nexus had done this to itself, and she wondered, not for the first time, if WarpSoft had a saboteur within the system. Of course, there was past history which showed The Warp was hackable and could be subverted.
That was the scenario which she dreaded the most, though she hadn’t told Leo about that. If the issue was indeed within the company, then they had no clue who had hacked their way into WarpSoft’s systems using the Nexus. This could potentially take them straight back to the Crisis situation and the massive snipe hunt that had ensued.
Fortunately, in this case, a general reboot was available now for the designers to use for all of the worlds within. So the need for a gamer to defeat the game, like she had been forced to, wasn’t necessary or even required. Yet she still worried. If it became the case a target could lock anybody in or out, WarpSoft would have a bigger problem on their hands than they thought.
Thus, Epcot Center and the tournament came into play. If the target had managed to find or create a way where she could track any potential threats, the mass amount of interface linkups within the Epcot Center would nullify any sort of trace. She set her bags down inside the door and waited for the bellboy to leave before she pulled out her cell phone and dialed. The phone was answered in two rings.
“Hello Tori,” Leo said at once.
“I’m here,” she said as she looked around the beautiful room. “Nice suite.”
“You’re welcome,” he replied. “Try to keep the massive parties to a minimum, please. Your father went along with this reluctantly, so don’t make me regret talking him into this. On the other hand, kids make mistakes, and sometimes it’s just expected of you…”
“Yeah, I figured as much when the limo driver met me at the airport with a bottle of champagne,” she replied. She walked over to the large windows overlooking the lake below and pulled the curtains aside. It was a view to die for, she thought. In the distance she could see a ferry shuttling guests from Epcot to Dolphin, using a small waterway which connected the park to the hotel. Beyond that she could see the space golf ball. “Are my teams here in Orlando yet? I really want to hang out with them before we go in, get a better feel, you know?”
“Not yet arrived,” he answered in a soothing tone. “They’ll get there tomorrow afternoon. Are you sure about these choices though? I have my... concerns regarding a few of your picks.”
“They’re the best at what they do,” she said definitively. “I’ve worked with them before or know them by reputation. Besides, some of them were your choices. All twenty of them, though, are good enough. I would’ve asked for my boyfriend as well but I doubt you want me distracted. No, these are the best I know. Good Mods and gamers. That’s what you said, isn’t it?”
“I know,” he admitted. “I’m just nervous about your well-being. I’m almost tempted to tell Dylan and invite him down to be your rock, but then I’d have an enraged father beating me to death with a keyboard. No, he played football, didn’t he? He’d just use his fists. Not how I want to die, mind you. So for now, let’s just focus on the task at hand.”
“Okay, I’m going to take a tour of Epcot tomorrow morning and check out the set up before I head over to the Magic Kingdom,” she told him.
“Why the Magic Kingdom?” he asked, his confused tone clearly evident through the phone. “The tournament is taking place at Epcot.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I still can’t enjoy myself in sunny Florida at Disney World,” she grinned. “I want to ride the new Splash Mountain. I mean seriously, an eighty-foot drop at a thirty-degree angle? Do you know how loud I’m gonna scream while riding that thing? Worth it.”
“Have fun, kid,” Leo sa
id, and the cell phone cut off. She looked at the device in her hand and smiled.
“Okay, dad,” she whispered and rolled her eyes. How many parents do I have now, anyway? She stared out the window and across the lake toward the nearby Epcot Center. “Just because I can, I’m going to hit it twice.”
She dove onto the bed and was surprised at the softness of the comforter. She grabbed one of the pillows and folded it in half before she flipped over onto her back. She pulled the pillow under her head and stared at the painted ceiling for a moment before she closed her eyes, deep in thought.
She’d developed a keen sense of danger, a sixth sense almost, over the years. She’d cultivated it while being what they called a “latchkey” kid, coming home from school and being home alone until her dad got off of work. It’d only gotten more acute after the Crisis mess. It’d served her well within The Warp when she gamed; she always seemed to know where the trap was going to hit just before it did. It’d helped her to be prepared and become one of the best.
Now that sense was tingling, and she didn’t like it one bit.
She sighed and tried to shut down her brain. Early afternoon or not, she hadn’t slept since the day before. Like a silent assassin, sleep did come for her eventually. Her dreams were haunted ones, old memories that continued to torment her while her active mind was no longer able to defend against them.
* * *
He watched the tether steady and grow strong. The timer he’d set up earlier told him a mere ninety hours remained until the full link to the Path was established. He was wary still, however. Somebody had noticed the problem within the Nexus and had taken steps to try and isolate it. It was too late, though, and he had full control over it.
He stifled a yawn. He’d been working too hard on this, and it was time for some rest. He decided to send off a progress report before he slipped off to sleep. His superiors would want to know precisely where he was.
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