Dagger of Doom: A LitRPG Adventure (Beta Tester Book 5)

by Rachel Ford

  Once he’d seen William creeping toward Jack, knife at the ready, Karag rose. “It was a touch of extraordinary fortune, I suppose, that he didn’t hear me approach.”

  “I’m sure your trainers in the Obsidian Isles would be devastated to hear you say that,” Jack declared, with a snort of laughter, “after all the years of work they put into turning you into the kind of master assassin who can sneak up behind someone and squash them before they know what happened.”

  Karag smiled. “Alas, your imagination continues to outpace your sense of humor, Friend Jack. But if there were any truth in those ridiculous rumors, I promise you: my trainers would expect nothing less than absolute denial.” His smile broadened, and something in the smugness of the expression put a shiver up Jack’s back. “But as I was saying…”

  The scream that had woken the rest of the party had been of necessity. “The snake got too close to you. I needed to draw his attention.”

  As for the rest, well, it was pretty much what Jack had already gathered: Karag had leaped over the remaining distance and smashed the vagabond into the earth. It had been an instant kill, breaking just about every bone in the dead man’s body, and pulverizing all the tissue.

  Arath heard this with a mixture of disgust and admiration. “Shame of it is, well, there’s no way to know what he was carrying now.”

  “No,” Karag agreed. “Not unless you want to sift through his remains.”

  The very idea made Jack a little queasy. Arath recoiled too. But then he hesitated. “He would have been carrying his payout from Kalbidor, wouldn’t he?”

  In the end, Arath couldn’t resist the temptation. It took him a few minutes to work up the nerve. Karag egged him on, laughing first at his hesitance and then at his greed. Jack tried to avoid the entire business, so he didn’t throw up.

  But declaring him a pussy willow, the ranger rolled up his sleeves and plunged his hands into the mass of sludge.

  This was too much for Jack. He hustled out of the area before he puked. Even Karag, whose taunts had fueled the other man’s greed, gave up after a while. He joined Jack by the roadside, declaring, “He’s not a man. He’s an animal.”

  Eventually, Arath joined them too, bloodstained and reeking. Dawn had just started to break, and Jack could see a grin plastered across his face. “You two ready to head out, then?”

  Jack figured that meant he’d found a good haul. He looked too satisfied for anything else. But he didn’t want to inquire. He wasn’t sure his stomach could take it. So, he nodded. “Let’s go.”

  They did, walking in silence for a bit. Then Arath said, “You know, Jack, I was thinking about the boil thing.”

  Jack groaned. “Not this again.”

  “What do you think about ‘a mouse in the granary’?”

  Arath had plenty more thoughts, all of which he shared with his unwilling listeners. He suggested they might be considered the grounds in the coffee of evil – which bothered Jack as much for the historical inaccuracy as anything else. A character living in a world based on medieval Europe would be extremely unlikely to know anything about coffee, he figured, much less filters and grounds.

  But he had more. They were the poison in the wine, the turds in the shoe, and the spies in the castle of evil. They were the fleas in the fur, the vermin in the garden, and the venereal disease in the harem of evil.

  The hours rolled by slowly. Terribly, terribly slowly. In the end, only Karag’s threat to do unto Arath what he’d done to William silenced the other man – and then, it was a smug silence, punctuated now and then with private laughter.

  Jack considered how wretchedly unfair the game had been so far. He’d been close – so very close – to ridding his party of Arath once and for all. And instead of replacing the miserable ranger with a character who might, at the very least, not make his life difficult, what had happened?

  The game had taken away most of his companions. Now Arath made up half of his social circle. Half.

  Frankly, the whole thing pissed him off.

  Jack was scowling to himself about it when the game paused. A voice rolled over the horizon – a most welcome voice. “Jack?”

  He glanced around, looking for an avatar. But he saw no one other than Arath and Karag; and they had both frozen fast. “Jordan?”

  “Yeah,” she said, breathing out a sigh of relief. And he realized that he was hearing her voice as it really was, and not passed through the Migli filter. “Thank God.”

  Jack felt a wave of relief wash over him, but confusion too. “Jordan, what’s going on? Where’s Migli?”

  “He’s frozen. I can’t access his avatar until you finish the Ivaldi’s Hall part of the quest.”

  “Oh.”

  “I mean, I can take over one of the other characters, if you like: Arath or Karag.”

  Jack shook his head. The idea of Jordan inhabiting the loathsome avatar of the ranger, or even the quietly sinister figure of the giant, did not at all sit right with him. “No, it’s fine. Anyway, I – well, I kind of like hearing your voice. You know, as you. Not as Migli.”

  “Oh.” He would have sworn he heard a smile in her voice. “Well, I’ll, uh, keep that in mind moving forward.”

  He didn’t know what she meant by that, and though part of him wanted to inquire, he had more pressing matters to discuss. “Jordan, what’s going on there? Does Avery know you’re talking to me?”

  “Yeah. Listen, Jack, I know our radio silence probably freaked you out; and I told him we should tell you first. But you’re never going to believe what’s happened.”

  “Let me guess: hackers. Alex Turing. Tomorrowprise Tech.”

  Jordan said nothing for a long moment; and when she spoke, she sounded astonished. “Yeah. But – well, how’d you know that, Jack? Avery said he terminated contact four days ago.”

  “Four days?” Jack felt himself stagger at that. “You mean, it’s been four days since I talked to anyone? In real life?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sugar.”

  “Jack, how did you know that?”

  He glanced around, like he was looking for surveillance devices. It was a stupid move, of course. He knew there were no cameras here. The game didn’t need surveillance equipment. It was surveillance equipment – the whole thing was. It could record his speech, his movements, his reactions. But that wasn’t how the real world worked, and for now anyway he was more used to the real world than the game world.

  “I…I can’t tell you, Jordan,” he said in a minute. He couldn’t tell her the truth while Avery and Roberts probably watched – not without putting a target on her back. And he couldn’t ask her to shut off recording, because if they were watching, that would be a good indication that he was bluffing. If he couldn’t even figure out how to shut off the surveillance protocols in the game, why would they believe he could crack their firewalls and secure servers?

  “What do you…”

  She trailed off suddenly, just as a third voice started to speak. “You can tell her, Jack. I turned off recording. They’re going to be blind and deaf to everything that goes on here.”

  His first reaction was relief. But the second – panic – quickly pushed it aside. “You gotta bring it back, William. They’re going to think she knows, and it could put a target on her.”

  “Wait, what?” Jordan asked.

  “You’re not going to tell her?” William said at the same time.

  “I don’t want to put her in danger. If they’ll kill me, they might kill her.”

  They both responded to that, talking over one another. Still, he managed to make out William’s, “You didn’t let that stop you from spilling the beans to Richard.”

  He deciphered her, “What the hell are you talking about, Jack Owens?” too – no profanity filter, because she wasn’t using any of the in-game interfaces. “Kill you? Who is trying to kill you?”

  Jack glared daggers at the other man, and he shrugged. “You better tell her. Cat’s out of the bag now any
way.”

  “You’re damned right you better tell me – right now.”

  So Jack did, regretting that he hadn’t thought to tell William he wouldn’t be bringing Jordan into the loop earlier. But it was too late now. She already knew, which wasn’t the part that worried him. He’d wanted nothing more than to be able to confide in her these last days. His concern lay with the terminated recording, and the implications for her.

  Avery Callaghan would realize that she knew as soon as he saw the recording end. He seemed to have bought Jack’s bluff, so maybe he’d leave her alone. But maybe not.

  Maybe this would be the tipping point for him. Maybe he’d decide he couldn’t risk it any longer. Maybe he’d figure there were too many involved parties, and it was time to start eliminating some of them.

  None of which seemed to worry Jordan. Her focused remained on Jack, and his well-being. The news that Roberts had tried to kill him shocked her in a profound way. It left her speechless for a long time, and then she’d needed him to confirm and re-confirm the facts several times.

  “You’re sure – you’re sure that’s what he was trying to do?” she asked. “There couldn’t have been any mistake about it?”

  And then, when she’d finally satisfied herself on that point, she needed William to confirm what he knew. Which the other man did, recounting the telephone calls he’d spied on, and the emails he’d read. They’d been discreet in their written communications. No one had put down anything like kill him. They’d talked instead of terminating nonproductive research, and protecting company assets. They’d talked about reducing risk and liability.

  On the phone, though, they’d been more explicit. And not surprisingly – there would be no paper trail there. Unlike the lower echelons of the corporate machine, the CEO’s phone calls weren’t recorded. They didn’t have to worry about evidence coming back to haunt them later.

  So William had heard Avery reassure Roberts that he’d made the right call. They’d agreed Jack’s death would be the most convenient outcome. “Provided he’s full of shit about having a way into our systems.”

  So they’d concocted the story about Alex Turing, and the Tomorrowprise corporate espionage. They’d engaged their entire team in tracking down the mythical hacker, who was really Jack. Or, in a twist neither Avery nor Roberts had anticipated, William.

  Which in turn clarified matters for Jordan. “So that’s why they shut us down when we found evidence of intrusion. They weren’t outsourcing the work to a security firm. They just knew – or thought they knew – that you were telling the truth.”

  William nodded. “I’m still monitoring their calls, and their emails. They think they’re beaten. They think Jack figured out their system, and they’re afraid of tipping him off if they keep looking. So, for now, they’re backing off. That’s why they let you back in, Jordan.

  “They didn’t figure out how to shut him out, and they’re afraid of pissing him off too much. They’re afraid that if they do, he’ll send the emails anyway.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Jordan had spun up her character and joined the game in cooperative mode. Jack grinned at the sight of her, decked out in her boss armor and weapons. She was a sight for sore eyes.

  She wrapped him in a hug, and then William. “Thank you so much, William. I can’t believe I didn’t figure this out before. I – I can hardly believe it.”

  William nodded sagely. “Believe me, I get it. I spent half a year thinking Avery was going to come back on the line and talk to me. He was busy, that was all. Each new day – I convinced myself that was going to be the one.

  “He’d remember me, stuck in here. He wouldn’t just shut me out.” His lips twisted in a grim expression. “But you can believe it. There’s no low beneath him, Jordan. Do not ever underestimate Avery Callaghan. Whatever he tells you, whatever he says to your face, whatever he promises: do not ever, ever let your guard down.”

  They talked for a long time after that about what came next. Jack urged her to leave and not come back. It wasn’t safe, and he didn’t want her to die trying to help him.

  William regarded him like a madman. “Are you nuts? Right now, they’re probably too scared to act. But you get rid of her, or she leaves of her own volition, they’re going to put someone they trust on you.”

  In Jack’s mind, whatever risks that entailed would be worth the payoff: Jordan’s safety. But she would hear none of it. She wouldn’t leave him, she said, and nor did Avery scare her. “Let him try something. I want him to try something, the son-of-a-”

  “That’s the last thing we want, Jordan.”

  “Oh no it’s not, Jack. Because it’ll give me an excuse to kick his hindquarters.”

  She said it so emphatically that Jack couldn’t repress a laugh.

  She didn’t laugh – she looked far too angry for that – but she did crack a smile. “That is not what I said. That’s the filter.”

  “I guessed. But listen, Jordan, the point is, I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “Trust me, it wouldn’t be me getting hurt.”

  “He’s right, Miss Knight,” William said. “On this, anyway. A confrontation with Avery at this point will benefit us nothing.”

  “I didn’t say I was going to go looking for a fight. But if he comes at me, well, he’s going to have a lot worse than emails to worry about.” She frowned now, though. “But, William, if you can do that – if you can get through their firewalls and everything…why haven’t you?”

  “Why haven’t I what?”

  “Well, contacted reporters. Got your story out. Warned the world about Marshfield Studio.”

  The other man blinked at the question, as if he hadn’t been expecting it. Then, he shrugged. “I thought about it, a long time ago. But…well, if I thought there was a way back, a way out of the machine, I would have. But they never found anything.”

  “Yeah, because they hushed it up right away.”

  William shook his head, though. “There’s not a damned thing Avery wouldn’t do if it meant saving money. My folks – they got a good settlement from Marshfield Studio. Better than I would have got for my time in here if I got out after a few months.

  “If Avery could have saved the money, he would have. No, there’s no way out for me, Jordan. It’s too late. So the way I saw it – until this business with Jack, anyway – was, scrutiny and press just risked shutting the studio down. And if they shut the studio down, well, they shut me down.”

  They went on talking until Jordan’s shift ended. William decided he would leave Jack to the game. “I should be keeping an eye on Avery anyway.”

  Jordan promised she’d check in first thing when she got back. “Take care of yourself, Jack. Okay?”

  He grinned and promised he would. “They haven’t killed me yet, Jordan. Not on purpose and not by accident. So you go home and get some sleep, and don’t worry about anything. Okay?”

  She said she would – a lie, Jack felt confident. There was nothing but worry in her expression. And even though he didn’t want her worrying…well, knowing that she did touched him in a way he didn’t quite understand.

  So Jack was in pretty high spirits when the game resumed. It didn’t make sense. His life was still under threat, and now Jordan’s was too. By rights, he should have been sick with worry.

  But he wasn’t. He felt alright. Heck, he felt better than alright. He felt darned good, like life was back on track and things were looking good again. Probably, he figured, because he knew Avery and Roberts really had fallen for his ruse.

  So he didn’t mind Arath’s prattle. He barely noticed it. He didn’t pay much heed to Karag either as the day wore on. But when the giant lowered his voice and whispered, “Jack?” he realized that maybe he should have – because Karag was wearing a deeply troubled expression.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Do you remember when I told you that I thought William had come alone?”

  He nodded. “Of course.”

&nbs
p; “I fear I may have been mistaken.”

  Jack felt his heart sink. They still hadn’t figured out the problem where game damage registered in his mind as real damage. He didn’t want to find out the hard way what happened in real life when someone cut his throat in the game. “Sugar.”

  “We’re not alone. There are at least two creatures in pursuit of us.”

  “Demons?”

  “Perhaps, but I don’t think so. I didn’t get a clear look at them, but they seemed too small to be demons.”

  “Then they weren’t human, either?”

  “Definitely not. They moved in a low, creeping way.”

  “Fantastic. That doesn’t sound at all creepy.”

  “We should watch our backs tonight.”

  The pair decided not to run the sighting by Arath. They didn’t need him panicking, and they didn’t want him running. And Jack didn’t trust him to do anything else. So they walked on in silence. He kept a discreet eye on their six, and once or twice while pretending to stretch or throw a casual glance around at his surroundings, he saw a shape rise above the top of the grass far behind them – but never long enough for him to get a good, clear look at it. Never long enough for him to even be certain it was anything more than imagination.

  The mountains came into view, and grew larger on the horizon. Arath speculated that they’d reach them by midday the following day. “We better hope this way of yours opens up, Karag. I hear tell that those mountains aren’t welcoming places. I’ve heard stories of men disappearing up there. Dying of cold and starvation and worse things.”

  “Ever the ray of sunshine in our midst, Arath.”

  “Don’t string the messenger up, mate. But them’s the facts.”

  “Those are, by your own admission, rumors.”

  “But all rumor is based on fact, or as good as.”

  Here, both of his companions glanced askew at the ranger. The pedant in Jack wanted to dispute the point. Either something was a fact, or it wasn’t. There was no as good as when it came to truth. That was about as binary as it got: true or false, yes or no, fact or fiction; zero or one. But the more practical part of his brain asserted dominance and checked his urge to argue. He knew already what came of disagreeing with Arath: a protracted argument that got nowhere, and took a very long time to do it.