Devastator

by Jason Cordova

  For while he was in awe of the young Tori Adams, it was the father who truly scared Gargoyle.

  He checked the man’s travel itinerary and began to nod. Rodney Adams wouldn’t arrive in Chicago until the link had been firmly established within the Nexus. While the mildly famous programmer could still be a potential threat, it’d be much too late to prevent everything from happening. All was in order.

  Still, though, he had a lingering sense of doubt. It’d be prudent to be safe. He activated a code and slipped into the servers. He’d go to his next destination and prepare. This way nobody—not Tori, nor her father—could do a thing about it.

  Still though, that nagging sense of loneliness wouldn’t go away. He’d need to do something about it before it became a liability. Perhaps he could do more than communicate with home? He smiled a little at the idea of returning to his birthplace. It’d been…very long indeed.

  Too long, in fact. Nobody should be kept from home forever.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 13

  Tori moved through the bustling city, ignoring the rare non-player characters that moved around her. They were nothing more than codes designed for one task or another, and thus completely irrelevant to her needs. If she needed weaponry or armor repaired, an NPC could fix it for the right amount of money. Some NPCs, she recalled as she looked for signs of the problem, sold old codes that were open-source. She’d normally be interested in finding one of those vendors, since the code could then be modified to her needs, and she could then sell it to a gamer offline or even through her node.

  Get your mind off that, she chastised herself. You’re not coming back in. One and done, no more.

  She felt foolish. There’s no way someone like me can resist The Warp forever, she thought. It simply offered too much in the way of entertainment.

  The city around her was fairly mellow, in spite of the apparent bustling nature of the NPCs, with vendors selling their wares as they were programmed to and the other NPC’s reacting as they should. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. But if everything is normal, she asked herself silently as she turned the corner of a cobblestone street and looked at the wares in the window of a pastry shop, then why do I have a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach?

  The town of Taruna was old, older than most of the other cities programmed in Kadashter. Taruna was where the beta testers had originally worked out the kinks in the world and had enjoyed the town so much that the designers at WarpSoft had left it there, standing majestically atop a large hill overlooking the rest of the valley below. The narrow streets were designed after classic Victorian England, down to the shoddy nails the carpenters had used to “build” the shops lining the streets. Above each shop, she saw as her gaze turned upward, were the small apartment-type homes of the shopkeepers and their families.

  The streets, as expected, smelled of a horrible combination of feces, garbage, and unwashed humanity, something she wasn’t pleased with. The smell was worse on a hot day, she remembered, happy that the day was relatively cool. The smell was merely overpowering and not eye-searing, vaguely reminding her of the synapse lord’s breath.

  Behind her followed Shane, his hand resting easily on the hilt of his sword as if her friend appeared to be enjoying a casual morning stroll. She wondered if she’d ever be able to carry herself with his aplomb and majesty while wearing heavy armor. Despite being technologically more savvy and smarter than she was, he could apparently swing a sword better than her as well. She bowed her head ruefully and looked back at the buildings.

  The Moderators had split into two-person teams as they explored Taruna. She’d insisted on using the buddy system, since she wasn’t quite certain the Kadashter team, with Gloom in charge, would work well with the Ganymede team. She’d been forced to send Tyler, one of her Ganymede team members, with one of the Kadashter teams, and had also told Gloom about Andre. The other man had admitted to her that another team member, Frost, had left The Warp due to a family emergency, without telling her first. She didn’t say anything about Frost but reminded Gloom they all needed to work together.

  “I love this environment,” she said to Shane as she continued to inspect the buildings they passed. Compared to modern day construction, they looked shoddy and as if they’d fall over in a gentle breeze. She knew better, though.

  “The smell or the feel?” he asked as he fell in beside her, his eyes looking around in interest.

  “The feel,” Tori corrected. She waved a hand in front of her nose dramatically. “I could do without the smell.”

  “Ah,” he nodded and kicked a loose pebble. His eyes tracked it down the street as it bounced away from them. “So... I hear you have a very serious boyfriend?”

  “Huh?” Tori’s head snapped around to look at her friend. Shane grinned.

  “Did I stutter?” He teased her for a moment before laughing. “Nope, no stutter. So spit it out. Just how serious? Wedding bells?”

  “No way,” she replied, embarrassed. He knew about Dylan, so why was he teasing her now?

  “He flew down to see you in Orlando, on his own dime and completely spontaneous, and that’s not a serious boyfriend?” he asked incredulously. She closed her eyes and swore.

  “Stacey?” she asked. He grinned.

  “Stacey,” he confirmed. “Look, we’re all rooting for you. God knows you could use some sanity after that train wreck with…well, you know.”

  “Therapy has helped,” she said with a grunt. “But why the sudden interest?”

  “Oh, you really are clueless sometimes.” he laughed. “You’re ripped, extremely intelligent, unfailingly polite and respectful, and from the whispers I’ve heard, have a cute butt.” Shane leaned back dramatically and placed his hand on his chin thoughtfully. “I’d only give it an eight though.”

  “Hey!” Tori laughed, the earlier tension bleeding out of her as Shane joined in. Between choking sobs of laughter, she managed to continue. “Quit looking at my butt! Wait a second…only an eight?”

  “Well, we rednecks are picky,” he replied with another laugh.

  “No, seriously,” she finally managed to get her laughter under control. Thankfully, the NPCs who walked passed them paid them little heed. Laughing maniacs were fairly common in this part of Kadashter, apparently. “Why the twenty questions?”

  “You’re the closest thing to a kid sister I have,” he admitted after a brief pause. “You’re probably my best friend at CNU as well, though take that with a grain of salt, since I did just downgrade your butt to below what I scored Stacey’s at.”

  “Oh my God, you’re such a guy,” she exclaimed and laughed again.

  “Okay, you got the chick answers out of the way,” Shane chuckled as he glanced around. The newer buildings were better built, which told both of them they were heading into the higher income area of the city. However, the smell remained; indoor plumbing wouldn’t be around for another hundred years in England, and Kadashter was set in an even earlier time period. At least when the chamber pots were emptied, a warning call came from above, she thought. Shane followed her as they turned left down another, narrower, street. “But I want to hear Tori answers.”

  “I told him about the warehouse,” she admitted after a few moments of silence. “I told him everything I could remember.”

  “When?” he asked curiously.

  “Last night.”

  “I’m impressed,” he acknowledged. “That’s a good sign for you. You’ve shared that, what, once? Twice?”

  “I told my dad the full story once,” she admitted. “My shrink knows most of it, but not all.”

  “Why’d you wait so long to tell? I mean, why now?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “He told me he wanted to hear the story, as much as I was willing to share with him. I’d dodged it since we started dating. I think... I think he thought it’d help me.”

  “Did it?”

  “I don’t know,” she repeated with a shrug. “I mean, I think it did. But I
’m not sure if it’s my willingness to trust him that helped or just getting it out.”

  “You young kids these days,” he teased. The southerner wasn’t much older than she was. “All caught up in reasons instead of trusting your emotions.”

  “I don’t see anything,” she grunted as she changed the subject. “If Rich was telling the truth, whoever or whatever it was is long gone.”

  “If he was telling the truth,” he repeated to her. “He’s a gamer. We’re…marked as Moderators. Hello?”

  “We’re officially referees,” she countered. “They ‘know’ they don’t get points for eliminating us. No reputation points, nada.”

  “Well, okay,” he grudgingly admitted. “You think it’s a glitch, or him?”

  “Neither, really. But…”

  “Then why are we wandering around aimlessly?” he asked, dumbfounded. “We should be out doing something about it!”

  “I know,” she said with a nod. “But we do need to act like we’re refereeing. And if a gamer in the tournament asks for our assistance, we should at least look into it.”

  “You know Rich from outside The Warp?” Shane looked at her curiously. Tori shrugged her narrow shoulders.

  “Kind of,” she admitted. “I bumped into him at the airport when I first landed. Nice guy. Didn’t tell him my full name, though, I don’t think. I forget.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yeah, and I know of his gaming club,” she continued. “Generally, I wouldn’t trust him, because that’s just me. But I believe him on this.”

  “So then, who are we looking for? Or rather, what?”

  “I’m looking for where Alex set up his Gêmeo program,” she answered. Shane stopped and looked at her.

  “What?!” he nearly yelled. “You’re tellin’ me that, that, Gloom is behind this... thing the gamer said?”

  “Either him or another Moderator,” Tori agreed. “But I know Alex. I know his Gêmeo program. The little turd is trying to rig it so when a bounty comes up after the tournament ends, he has an angle on it.”

  “What makes you think he’d do that?” asked Shane, his voice incredulous. “I mean, WarpSoft would skin him alive!”

  “If he got caught,” Tori corrected. “Think back to the Crisis incident. Remember the random hunting that was going on while my team and I were on the run?”

  Shane nodded, slowly. The terrorist rogue Moderators, while dangerous, hadn’t been the main cause of gamer elimination during their takeover. It’d been Moderators who suddenly discovered they could bend the rules of the game to their own will. While not being able to leave Crisis, they were still able to access the older bounty boards near the supposed “safe” zones, the Taverns. This allowed them to track and eliminate gamers who weren’t even en finites, which was against their core rules. Many Moderators had lost their jobs after the mess had been sorted out and gamer accounts restored due to their actions.

  “Okay, but we’re not under attack,” he murmured carefully.

  “Yeah, and?” she asked him. “He hasn’t broken any rules yet. More like bent them. However, since the tournament is going on, who all’s in here right now?”

  His brain suddenly caught up with hers, and he gasped. Tori smiled mirthlessly as he looked back at her. He spoke. “Of course. The en finites.”

  That was all he could manage for a few minutes as his mind processed the implications of her words. She waited expectantly for the second shoe to fall on his head. It took longer than expected, but eventually he shook his head and looked at her. “But wait. The Gêmeo code is weak in comparison. Isn’t it?”

  “It is,” Tori admitted. “But think about what it’s observing right now.”

  “So he created a clone of himself, and... what?” he asked.

  “He herds en finites to the clone’s location,” she answered. “Then he collects every single bit of information about them, including their code capabilities, and saves it for after the tourney.”

  “He’s not going for the bounty?”

  “He can’t,” she reminded him. “In the tournament, we’re basically ‘banned.’ His Gêmeo code isn’t running under a Moderator’s rules, I’d be willing to bet. He probably made it when he was a gamer, long ago.”

  “So... this isn’t about bounties,” he thought aloud slowly. “It’s about reputation?”

  “Pride,” Tori corrected. She looked at her friend. “How many reputation stars do I have?”

  “Uh, six?”

  “Try eight,” she told him. His jaw dropped in amazement. “I reached eight when I set foot in The Warp, a holdover rating for defeating Crisis. So since things are retroactive, Tyler is going to go up one for blowing the hallway on our way to get you on Ganymede. He inadvertently took out an en finite as well. If Tyler jumps a star for only one, then what would Alex manage if he got a few on ‘accident’?”

  “Oh,” he nodded. Tori set off once more and Shane hurriedly followed. He walked silently for a few minutes, keeping his thoughts to himself before he spoke again.

  “Now that you put it that way,” he murmured, thinking back to what he knew about Alex, or “Gloom” as he forced his team to call him. “I think you may be right.”

  “I really hope I’m not,” she replied. “But I’m afraid I am.”

  “Gargoyle, the glitch in the Nexus, and now Gloom,” he grumbled. “What is it with The Warp that makes gamers stab one another in the back?”

  “Total lack of real world consequences,” she answered quickly. “It’s why people act like idiots. ‘Oh no, my character was banned for 24 hours.’ Like that’s consequence real punishment. It’s not like someone can actually get punched in the nose in here for real.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “I have to find the Gêmeo code,” she informed him. “And then, after I do, I get to kick Alex out.”

  “He won’t go quietly,” he warned her.

  Tori shrugged. “Oh, you think I’m looking forward to this?” she asked frostily, her mind thinking of the potential of a fight under the tournament’s rules, where not only wasn’t she the best in the realm, she wasn’t even considered to be in the upper echelon. She activated a brief message to her contact on the outside and hoped he got it before she had to confront Alex. “Luckily, I can just have the plug pulled on him from the outside if I find that code...”

  “You’re looking for an ambush spot, aren’t you?”

  “That looks about as good a spot as any,” she said with a nod toward a darkened alley. Shane looked at her quizzically.

  “That just screams danger,” he pointed out. She nodded.

  “Of course it does,” she said as she moved closer to the pulsating darkness. She paused and brought up a digital simulator from her inventory and tried out a few codes. She then took the coding involved and inspected the pulsing darkness code line by code line. Eventually she saw what she expected. She double-checked for traps before closing the simulator, satisfied. She hated using Moderator tools to hack gamer codes, but this time she figured nobody would complain too much. “What gamer wouldn’t look at this and say ‘Oh, spooky. Must go in’?”

  “Your gaming experiences are much creepier than mine.”

  “You’ve never done a night crawl through a dead city in Crisis with zombies everywhere, while being chased by terrorists with a traitor in your group,” Tori countered with a dismissive wave of the hand. “This? This is child’s play.”

  “Point,” Shane conceded. He peered at the darkness, which throbbed and pulsed in the bright daylight. “This is creepy.”

  “It’s just a Shadow code,” she said in a disgusted tone. “It’s not even new. Pretty sure mine was better.”

  “Yeah, but the pulsing makes me sick,” he admitted. She looked at the blob of darkness and shrugged.

  “If I were a Gêmeo code, I’d be hiding within the Shadow code,” she murmured thoughtfully. “Easiest place to ambush, don’t you think? For any unsuspecting gamer who was looking for a fight and thinkin
g, ‘Hey, I’m going to fight the mini-boss in here?’”

  “If you say so,” he replied.

  Tori walked toward the darkness but stopped when she realized Shane wasn’t following her. She looked back over her shoulder. “You coming?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I’ll be right here if you need me,” the man replied.

  “Fine, coward,” she called back to him. She walked forward and stepped into the darkness. “And he teases me because I won’t watch Jaws with him,” she muttered under her breath.

  The darkness enveloped her, surrounding her immediately. It blocked all sounds and sights from the street and seemed to place her in a whole new dimension where nothing existed. She blinked and tried to see through the darkness for a moment before giving up. The Shadow code, surprisingly, was very well written. No sign of daylight even began to pierce its way through. She grunted and opened her inventory. The proper response to darkness, she recalled as she found the code she was hunting for, was light. Lots of light.

  She activated the Starburst code she’d used in Crisis long ago and waited as it began to load. The Starburst code, she recalled, could penetrate any darkness and could be seen for miles around. It was similar to a signal flare, except she knew from personal experience the starburst would last much longer. The effects of the code were even greater if it was launched at the ground, she remembered.

  The Starburst code streaked away from her and landed on the stained cobblestones, immediately lighting the alley and chasing away the shadows. The Shadow code dissipated, leaving nothing in the alley for a moment. Tori waited expectantly for the Gêmeo code to appear.

  The secondary code erupted suddenly, and a small portal appeared in front of her, glowing a bright purple as the light from the Starburst code touched it. The wavy, smoke-filled portal started to rotate slowly clockwise. The purple light pulsed and dimmed as the speed which the portal spun increased. She watched, impressed, as not one but two figures emerged out of the portal. Tori coughed and waved a hand in front of her face as the breeze the portal kicked up washed the horrid smells of the city into her nostrils.