Staying with Ripta, Flaygray and Nega, I shared my plan: while they were undead and I was their legate, my guardians needed to level up with Plague Boost.
“The dead army created by the lich is useless to me. I suggest you take control of it and start to slowly feed them to the local monsters, absorbing experience from the minions as they die. The temple of the Sleepers needs defense, and I can’t handle it on my own. Better to have five high-level guardians than a hundred weak soldiers…”
“Weak?” Flaygray snorted. “Shazz leveled his troops up pretty well.”
“You’ll get even stronger. Objections? I don’t get it, don’t you want to get stronger?”
“Sure we do,” Nega answered peevishly, licking her lips. The succubus was nervously flicking her tail. Something was bothering her. “And we’ll defend the temple without regard to our own lives, never fear, boss. But you said ’five guardians’? Where’s the fifth?” She looked this way and that, counting off on her fingers. “Me, Flay, Anf, Ripta. Four.”
“Sharkon will be the fifth.”
“But why? When the Sleeping God returns our life to us, the monster will simply disappear. Maybe it would be better to…” The succubus slowiy ran her finger along her throat.
Anf heard her and broke away from Iggy for a moment to chitter something indignant. Ripta supported him with a crackling squeal. Flaygray coughed to draw my attention.
“My colleagues believe that our brainless friend deserves at least a chance. If Tiamat can return his life, then he probably won’t be so kind, and may immediately try to swallow us all, but at least then he’ll have a worthy send-off.”
“Or we will… And I don’t care if it’s worthy or not, it’s a risk. You love creating problems out of thin air, you old fart!” Nega snapped, shaking her head. “What else should I expect from a drunken and sentimental old demon crusty with sand? Diablo with you. Do what you want!”
Ignoring the angry succubus, I appointed her and the other guards as commanders of the undead squadrons.
I didn’t wait for the army to reach the temple. I’d already missed school yesterday. A second day’s absence wouldn’t be forgiven. I needed to get a good nights sleep, and be ready to hit the books with a fresh head. I also hoped that the dismal foggy memories of the events in the Nether would pale, that I’d stop having nightmares.
Before I left, I walked around the temple grounds. Gyula told me that everything would be restored by morning—the builders planned to work without rest. The guardians went to meet the dead troops to get started with leveling up right away. The sand rippled on a distant dune, showing Crash’s movement underground… Wait!
What better time than now to level up my pets? Along with Iggy, I walked away from the temple and summoned Storm. Kicking up sand with her mighty wingbeats, the dragoness landed nearby. Her bluish-black skin covered in mithril plates sparkled, and although I couldn’t smell it, I was certain it smelled of ozone.
Once my pets were assembled, I pulled out a legendary scroll…
Of One Blood…
A legendary onetime-use scroll.
Unique item.
On activation, equalizes your pets’level with yours.
…and, breaking the seal without hesitation, I activated it. The figures of my pets—a huge fearsome dragon, a predatory dragonfly-like insect with a huge stinger sticking out of the lower segment of his body, a monstrous segmented worm gleaming with diamond dust—all lit up with the flashes of levelups.
The logs replaced each other at a furious rate, reporting not only my pets’ increase in level, but also their new skills. I had time to lament the fact that my mechostrich wasn’t leveling up. It would have made a decent small siege tank.
My empty thoughts lasted around twenty seconds, but there was still a long way to go before my pets’ light show ended. So I got started on a not particularly important, but unfinished task.
The desire to see everything through to the end pursued me as ever, forcing me to read the last unopened notifications. They were all in the All hail the hero series—for three First Ever achievements. Each gave me three thousand reputation with all the main global factions and a bunch of fame.
All the same as usual. Out of sheer habit, I decided to go down in history as ‘a player who wishes to remain nameless…’ And that’s when it happened. Both the achievements for reaching level four hundred and five hundred gave me a new version of All hail the hero: All hail the hero!
Would you like to make your name public? Doing so will give +1000 reputation with all the main global factions and +5000 fame.
Attention! The achievement First Ever: Level 500! is of great significance to all Disgardium. All sentients must know the hero’s name. You carmot refuse to make your Jiame public.
Global rwtification in: 00:00:09… 00:00:08… 00:00:07…
Seven seconds passed. The sky darkened, fanfares trumpeted and silver bells began to ring over the whole world.
All hail the hero!
Herald Scyth has performed a feat that will go down through history! He is the first in the world to reach level 500!
People of Disgardium! Glory to Herald Scyth! All hail the hero! Hail Scyth!
Without reading to the end, I hit the logout button. The door chime rang while the intragel was still draining off me. An unfamiliar fat man spoke clearly into the camera.
“Alex, it’s me, your uncle Esteban. Your dog brought me the slippers.”
That was the code phrase that Hairo Morales had forced me to learn by heart.
I opened the door. The man quickly entered, pushing me aside and locking the door, then touched his skin just behind his ear. His figure morphed, the holographic mask of a stranger’s face disappeared. It was Hairo himself. I wasn’t surprised. The security officer had warned me that he wouldn’t be leaving me alone anymore. Only I never suspected that it would start tonight, and that Hairo would turn up in a disguise.
“What the hell, Alex?” he said, shaking his head. “Not a good idea! Pack your things. Grab some warm clothes too.”
The April weather was warm enough, but I didn’t bother asking questions for now.
“Five minutes,” I nodded and ran off to pack a backpack.
“You have two!” the security officer shouted after me. “Willy’s picking up your friends, they already know. And don’t forget to put the house in Vacation mode!”
Just my luck—mom had hidden all my winter clothes. I had to make do with a universal hoodie with climate controls. I ordered our home assistant O to secure the apartment: switch off all the electrics, darken the windows, draw the blinds, activate extra electronic locks on every room…
I switched off AT the catdog last. Right now he was a German Shepherd. I looked into his intelligent eyes.
“I don’t know when we’ll see each other again, AT, but I’ll miss you.”
He licked my face and I scratched him behind the ear. The robot pet curled up as if going to sleep, then shut down.
Before leaving the apartment, Hairo brought his disguise back, pulled the door open an inch and threw a flight of miniature drone eyes through the gap to check the path to the roof. While they did their work, the man spoke quietly: “Stay behind me, don’t stick your neck out, and if anything happens, go back to the apartment and call the police… Got it? Let’s go!”
Hairo’s flyer was as ordinary and unassuming as they came. Maybe it was used only for work, but I was in no state to be pick}. We began to take off. The security explained: “We’re going to meet Willy and the others at a hiding spot and spend the night there. In the morning we’ll fly to school and apply for a transfer to distance learning. Your parents can confirm it remotely, but you have to be there in person.”
“I know. They check the student’s biometrics. I’ve looked into it…”
“Right.
Hairo flew the flyer not just with confidence, but with mastery’—he shot ahead at the fastest possible speed, overtook, maneuvered, hopped from one
skylane to another. Closer to the edge of the district, he suddenly gained height above the directing lights of the skyway and rewed the flyer to even greater speeds. At the same time, he kept talking.
“I’ll talk to the local police department, get them to send some droids just in case. There’ll be plenty of journalists and rubberneckers at your school. Decide for yourself what to tell them, if anything. I can’t advise you there, and you don’t pay me to. That said, you can’t go wrong with ‘no comment.’ We’ll fly from there to Alaska. We have a fully-equipped bunker there.”
“What about the capsules?”
“We can rustle up a couple. Not like the ones you have, of course, a little more basic. But that’s just until the end of the week. By then, we’ll have the base in Cali ready. It’s a waste, but you’ll have to buy a new capsule. We can’t take yours. They’ll track it down.”
“And they won’t track down another we buy?”
“It’ll be billed to someone else, on the other side of the planet. Without add-ons. Yoshi will deal with that. He’s a good guy, knows all about networks, encryption, AIs… I want to bring him in, along with a few others. What do you think?”
“Let’s discuss it later,” I suggested. “Are you sure the building in Cali is a good fit, Hairo?”
“It would have been compromised if I’d stayed in Excommunicado. But Willy and I activated our old ‘New Leaf plan when we left. We signed up our families as Mars colonists, but sent some noncitizen acquaintances in their places—the checks there aren’t particularly thorough. They take all comers. By the way, we don’t have to rent that building. We could buy it. They want ten million for all of it…”
I nearly swore when he mentioned money and reminded me of tomorrow’s auction. If we sold the Portal Key, then we could hire more people and buy the building…
“…and that will solve the security issue,” Hairo continued. “I have friends among the Wild Ones. They live in the Zones. They have nowhere else to go. If you offer them a place to live, then the Triad will never reach you. Some financier will need to calculate it all. The wild ones can’t pay until they get back on their feet. They might want to go into Dis, apply for those free noncitizen Snowstorm capsules. I don’t know…”
He seemed to be thinking aloud, but expected no decisions from me. I thought there was some sense to his ideas. But there was an even simpler way—delete Scyth, accept Snowstorm’s promised rewards and live out my life in peace. A high citizenship category, money, an education, a job—all my dreams were a few clicks away. Goodbye Scyth, hello calm and prosperous future… I spent the rest of the journey deep in thought, realizing that I was blindly trusting someone I didn’t really know, essentially placing my fate in his hands.
My already sour mood worsened when my parents called. I saw mom first:
“Alex! What’s going on? The hotel is crawling with journalists.
We’re shut up in our room! Our comms are blowing up! Everyone wants a comment from us! Where are you? Are you going somewhere? What’s going on, Alex?! We’re on our way to you right now!”
Mom’s worries and questions poured out without pause until dad interrupted her.
“Relax, Ellen,” he said gently. “Let Alex answer.”
Mom fell silent. I told them what happened in brief, explained who Hairo was and what we planned to do. I also asked dad to hire a guard with my money.
“That’s unnecessary,” dad said. “The hotel is perfectly secure. Could I talk to Mr. Morales, son?”
I have to credit Hairo. He answered all dad’s questions confidently and calmed down mom, comincing them that they’d best stay on the Moon for now—it would be safer there. On parting, mom said: “Mr. Morales… Hairo… Alex’s life depends on you. Keep my son safe! Swear that…”
“I swear on my life, Mrs. Sheppard. I’ll do everything I can to keep Alex out of danger.” Hairo crossed himself. “God as my witness.”
A tear rolled down mom’s cheek. I, on the other hand, felt calmer, as if Hairo’s vow was proof that he wouldn’t betray me. I knew it was silly to trust him blindly, but staying home would be even worse. If I didn’t trust Morales now, then why offer him a job in the first place? Situations like these were exactly why I hired him, after all.
Five minutes after the conversation with my folks, Hairo tapped me on the shoulder, interrupting my thoughts.
“Write to your dad and ask him to go somewhere quiet. I need to talk to him alone.”
Dad didn’t answer my message, but soon enough he called. I handed the comm to Hairo.
“Mr. Sheppard…”
“Just Mark.”
“Mark, the situation is critical. You aren’t safe. Alex is going to send you the details of a dependable man. Contact him. He’ll give you security, and without giving your wife any reason to worry.”
“Thank you, Mr. Morales.”
“Just Hairo,” the security officer smiled. “No problem, it’s my job.”
“How much do we owe you for the help?” dad asked.
“Nothing. The clan will get the bill…”
Half an hour later, the sky was fully dark and the flyer landed at the Rocky Mountains. There, by a loud waterfall, there was an inconspicuous hatch camouflaged with fir branches. We waited by it for the others to arrive. Hairo lit a cigar, and when the lights of a flyer flashed in the sky, he gave the signal with his torch.
The cargo flyer softly descended. Its doors opened and a little girl ran out, then the guys and Willy, Hairo’s partner.
The girl turned out to be Ed’s sister, Pollvanna. His grandmother, on the other hand, refused outright to go anywhere. She even threatened Willy with a shotgun.
“She said she wasn’t about to start surrendering at her age and we’ve all gone mad. But at least she let me bring sis,” Ed said as we descended into the bunker. “She didn’t believe me, of course, but Willy managed to find a way.”
“Mrs. Rodriguez is a tough nut,” Willy smiled. “But Hung’s parents are worse…”
“That’s for sure,” big Hung agreed. “They didn’t even want me to go anywhere. They said they’d protect me themselves if something happened. My family nearly had a whole HQ set up. I never thought we had so many guns in the house, and I’ve searched the whole place in my time.”
“Same deal,” Malik added. “Only mine wanted to do the opposite; my dad, cousins and uncles wanted to come with me and hide the women somewhere else. Mom said she was proud of me… Why? For being Alex’s friend?”
“For pulling your family out of poverty,” Ed muttered.
“So your parents all know now?” I asked.
“Your face is all over the news, Alex!” Hung shouted. “Don’t you even check it?”
“We’re catching a lot of attention too,” Ed said. “Like, here’s that team of juniors, the Awoken clan. The class-A Threat and his buddies, damn it. Nether! Did you agree to All hail the hero deliberately? Was that part of the plan, revealing your name?”
“No way,” I shook my head, explained how it all happened.
“By the way, Tissa’s been in the news too,” Malik added. “Some journalists managed to get onto the White Amazons’ island. But she didn’t even comment. Just pulled up her hood and hid inside the Ochre Witch’s I suspected that going public would cause a furor, but so quickly? The boys told me they were watching the news the whole flight over. Snowstorm made an announcement: if there was so much as a hint that the elimination of the class-A Threat involved real-life pressure, then any clan found to be involved would receive a lifetime ban and no rewards for eliminating the Threat.
The Alliance of Preventers held a shared press conference, where Hinterleaf, Horvac, Colonel and others spread their hands amicably and said they wouldn’t comment until they reviewed their play strategy after some of the players were turned undead. As for me, nothing had changed from their point of view; they would still try as hard as they could to eliminate the Threat, but nobody had any personal grievances against Alex Shepp
ard.
“Alex, kid,” Otto Hinterleaf said, a serene expression on his face. “In the name of all the Alliance, I guarantee that none of our people will try to interact with you in real life. Just keep playing. You’ve been doing a great job!”
The other preventer leaders said the same, with the same fake smiles. They tried hard to change the subject from me to the outcome of the battle with the undead army. But nobody revealed any details, or even answered the direct question of whether anyone in the Alliance had decided to reroll. “All in good time,” Horvac said. “Anyone who decides to change race will have to wait forty-eight hours to reroll. Be patient, there isn’t long to wait.”
Mogwai had gone underground, along with his whole clan. Nobody knew what was happening in Elite, but I still heard something important; as it turned out, after he escaped from me, Mogwai gathered all his clan mates and jumped through a portal to the undead battle site. He and his ’elite’ friends were seen a few minutes before Shazz died…
We lay down to sleep at four o’clock in the morning. Hairo told us we were getting up at six, and flying to school at six-thirty. We didn’t plan to stay for lessons; we needed to get to Alaska as soon as we could to get a capsule ready for the auction.
The boys decided to switch to distance learning too, which made sense. We had to stay together from now on, at least until all this ended.
Without even taking off our clothes, we lay down next to each other on damp old mattresses on the floor. Just as I was drifting off, I got a message on CrapChat. Hello, Mr. Sheppard! I hope your promise of an exclusive is still valid. If so, now is a great time for an interview. The editor has authorized me to offer you three million. Ian.
My answer was short: Agreed. Tomorrow night. Ill send a cipher.
Chapter 13: A Hundred Million— Going Once!
MORNING CAME and my comm beeped out an alarm—the security system back at the apartment had gone off. There were three of them, all in holographic masks. The robbers didn’t take anything, judging by the stream from the security cameras. They just searched the apartment, checked the capsules and left before the police arrived.
Holy War Page 20