“Coffee, Mr. Metcalfe?”
“Oh, no, I won’t trouble you.”
“It’s no trouble.” He went to pour the coffee himself. “Sugar? Cream?” Looking at the severe tailoring on the other man’s suit, he was quite sure that Metcalfe never had either.
“Sugar,” his visitor said after a moment. He accepted the cup and murmured his thanks, took a sip, and blinked as if trying to remember why he’d come.
Tad hid a smile as he sat. “What can I do for you?”
Metcalfe set the coffee on the desk. There was a hint of mistrust in his eyes. “I came to see if you had given any more thought to our offer regarding your son’s care.”
“And, of course, your threat of defamation,” he said easily.
The man, caught off guard by the sudden switch in tone from coffee to bluntness, sat motionless for a moment. “Believe me, Senator, my client would far prefer for this to remain a beneficial experience for everyone.”
“Your client has considerable control over that,” he observed. “It would seem to me, after all, that there is absolutely no need for defamation of my character. Your client is surely not compelled to do that. Nor, of course, are they compelled to rewrite legislation in a way that could more than triple the number of medical bankruptcies for my constituents.”
Metcalfe said nothing.
“Tell me,” Tad said. “What would you do in my place, Mr. Metcalfe? When one choice would be injurious to me and the other would be injurious to my constituents? If you were the representative, what would you do?”
“I would understand that not every matter of business is a moral issue,” the man said. He had been ready for this question.
He wondered if he heard it often. “You’re right,” he said. “Not every matter of business is a moral issue. This one, however, is.” He stood and buttoned his suit jacket, then began to put folders in his briefcase. “I was elected for a very specific purpose, Mr. Metcalfe—to represent the interests of my constituents, many of whom have been ruined by the costs of medical care. Despite your best attempts, you haven’t created a moral dilemma for me. Merely a personal one. Do you have children, Mr. Metcalfe?”
“No.” The lobbyist looked worried.
“If you ever do,” Tad told him, “I hope you will remember what I say next. I am raising a son, Mr. Metcalfe, and the one thing I have noticed about young men—having been one once—is that they do not pay attention to what their elders say. They pay attention to how they behave. If I wish to be able to look my son in the eye—and I do—I will have to reject your offer.” He snapped the briefcase shut. “The choice of what to do now lies with you, Mr. Metcalfe.” He made his way to the door with a smile on his face. “Enjoy the coffee.”
He sighed regretfully as he made his way down the hallway and past a group of people who chanted and waved signs outside another senator’s door. It was amazing how quickly he had become inured to all of it, and he was disappointed to think that he might be gone within a year, if not sooner.
But his relief was palpable. He had not realized how heavily the choice had weighed on him until he made it.
His phone rang and he muttered an expletive. He kept forgetting to silence it, half-worried that he would miss a call from Mary. Being away from California, even for a few days, troubled him.
He didn’t recognize the number. “Hello?”
“Senator Williams.” The voice was warm. “I wanted to talk to you about the care of your son.”
Tad stopped. All the fear he had cast aside rushed back. “Yes?” His voice was clipped.
“I’ve heard some of the treatment your son is receiving.” The woman’s voice had no inflection he could pin down, but her next words surprised him deeply: “I…would like to hear more.”
Mary looked up from her tea as Dr. DuBois came into the lab for the morning. Today was the first time she hadn’t seen him there when she arrived, and Amber had informed her that DuBois was sleeping on Jacob’s couch.
He said vague hellos to everyone in the office and placed his set of bags near the monitors he had claimed as his desk. One bag, Mary noted, was full of other bags of popcorn. A week before, she had noticed the other three keeping track of how many bags he ate, and the day before, she had added her guess to the betting for how many he could consume in a day.
Fifteen bags was high, but she believed in him.
“How are you this morning?” she asked him. “Can I get you any coffee to go with your popcorn?”
Amber narrowed her eyes from across the room and shook her head. With a guess of eight, she had been the first one knocked out of the competition and she was still bitter about some of the tactics the others had used to secure high bag counts.
“Oh, no, thank you.” DuBois gave a distracted smile. “It looks like Justin is still asleep, yes? Good, good. I’ve noted very small—but statistically significant—changes in his brain activity after long periods of sleep.”
The term “sleep” had resulted in considerable debate one night and Mary, at loose ends since Tad was in DC, had been able to witness it. Feeling very out of place in her cardigan and slacks, she had watched the debate unfold with a great deal of smartphone-searching and citations being thrown around. Before she knew it, she found she had drunk two bottles of beer and eaten her stir fry directly out of the carton.
All this pretending to be a college student would be much more fun if sleeping on couches didn’t make her back ache. Age was definitely not only a state of mind.
Now she stood and walked to the desk. “Has there been any progress on Justin’s birthday present?”
“It’s almost ready,” DuBois told her.
“You know,” Mary joked, “he used to ask for a dragon to ride when he was little. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to give him one.”
Amber smiled from across the room. “Man, that would be amazing.”
“Really?” Jacob asked. “I think I’d shit myself.” He gave Mary a horrified look. “Sorry, ma’am.”
“Believe it or not, I have heard swearing before.” She smiled. Young people were so delightfully naïve. “With age, one simply becomes more judicious with its use. The shock value is much higher that way.”
She looked at the pod, now surrounded by several of Justin’s favorite toys and stuffed animals. After a month or so, the lab had a much more lived-in look than it had at the start. It was never unattended now and there were couches, blankets, and several cold mugs of coffee to attest to the fact.
A thought occurred to her. “Could…you have more than one pod? I know this was vaguely mentioned but never really discussed but could I be in the game with Justin?”
“Um.” Jacob stared at her. Everyone in the lab had gone silent. “Uh, theoretically? It would be tricky to implement.”
“Right now, the game only responds to Justin,” Amber explained. “His periods of sleep are getting shorter, but we don’t want the game to stay on if he falls asleep—and, for instance, have an enemy find him.”
“Oh.” Mary looked at her hands. It had been a foolish hope, she knew, but for a moment, she had entertained the idea that she might be able to speak to Justin in person.
“We wouldn’t want to implement something that complex without outside guidance,” Nick explained. He looked genuinely regretful. “It wouldn’t be safe right now. And outside guidance…costs money.”
“Right.” She nodded and tried not to let them see the tears in her eyes. “I understand.”
“We’ll get funding,” Jacob promised her. “As soon as there are results from Justin, we’ll have funding.”
“Which means we need to speed that process up,” DuBois said, showing either a moment of unusual acuity or his usual logic—it was always difficult to tell which with him. She looked at him and realized that he was smiling confidently. “I thought about that this morning in the shower, and I believe I may have the answer—puzzles.”
Everyone paused. Amber had her coffee cup suspended halfway
to her mouth and she put it down slowly. “Interesting,” she said quietly. “As he gains mental acuity—which we can see but can’t necessarily prove yet—he’ll have more brainpower to doubt the game. We need to distract him from that and also begin retraining his higher brain function.”
“We could put a module in with a book of puzzles,” the doctor suggested.
“We don’t need to.” Nick was excited. “Games like this have puzzles all the time. It’s a kind of…tomb raider thing. You go into the old ruins and have to light the braziers in the right order or whatever. We could work puzzle elements into the game itself. It’s not too far from how games work anyway but it makes it a little more obvious.”
“You two get started on that,” Jacob suggested. “If we can show that he’s getting faster at solving puzzles, that might be the kind of evidence that could get us more funding.”
Mary smiled, but her expression turned to worry when Amber frowned at her phone, picked it up, and said, “Hello, Senator.” As she listened to whatever Tad said, her frown deepened. “No,” she told him. “Not on our end. A woman, though? Where was the phone number from?” She pulled a piece of paper closer and began to scribble notes. “Well, I’ll do what I can to find out who it is and what they want. If they know about this…” She sighed. “There’s no verifiable reason why we should be worried,” she said at length. “For all we know, they have a similar patient. We can only stay the course right now. Right. Of course, I’ll tell her.”
She hung up and looked at Mary. “Your husband is going into a vote and says he loves you. He called to say that he was contacted by someone who claimed to know what was going on with Justin’s care and asked for more information.”
Everyone looked worried at that—everyone except DuBois, of course, who was busy coloring something on a piece of paper that Mary hoped was a puzzle for the game.
“They’re onto us,” Jacob said. “We knew they would be eventually, right? DuBois says they’ve watched him for years.”
“They have.” The doctor crunched a piece of caramel corn. He didn’t look up from his coloring.
“And who knows how many other people have found his research over the years,” Amber said soothingly. “What I said to the senator is true—we don’t know that this person has bad intentions, right?”
Jacob looked doubtful.
“Jacob.” Amber raised her eyebrows. “Being doubtful and worried is kind of my thing.”
“Oh. Right.” He nodded. “Look, Amber, it’s not like we know this person is trying to screw us over.”
“But they could be!” she said. She folded her arms in mock worry.
“We have to stay the course,” he told her. “I won’t hear another thing about it.”
The two of them nodded decisively at each other, sat again, and returned to work, and with a laugh of her own, Mary sat as well. She propped her feet on the pod, smiled at it, and opened her book.
Stay the course. She could try to do that.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Justin hopped on one foot as the guards approached. He had barely managed to get both boots on when the first trio arrived. With a “Ha!” he drew his sword and shook a drip of water off the tip of his nose.
The good thing about a sword fight was that it warmed the blood. His fingers hadn’t had much feeling in them after his swim through the pipes, but after a few passes with his sword, he noticed sensation coming back with a prickle.
“Ow. Ow. Okay, never do a sword fight with pins and needles in your hand. Oh, this feels weird.” He looked at Zaara. “You don’t look happy.”
“And you’re awfully talkative for being in the middle of a fight,” she responded. She slashed with one dagger and retreated awkwardly. The second trio drew closer now and she grimaced at Justin. “I wasn’t able to get another dagger before we were tied in that wagon.”
“Maybe one of the guards has a good one.”
“Do you think they’ll let me borrow it if I ask nicely?” She grinned as she ducked under one’s swinging arms, but he could see that her humor was a mask for her worry.
The guards seemed to be able to sense it, too. They stayed out of range of his sword—and Lyle’s furiously swinging fists—and had converged on her. Justin lunged and caught one in the heel with his sword. The guard fell, writhing, and he smirked at the wounded man and took stock of the situation. The dwarf had managed to pull one of their adversaries away and was currently turning him into a bobblehead. The one who had met the slashing sword remained out of the fight.
That left four. He waited and tried to time his opening, and as Zaara cursed and threw herself into a full-body roll, he seized his moment. The fireball that surged from his hands was perhaps more impressive than it needed to be, but it eliminated two guards with the speed of a freight train. His mana bar went down to half and he chortled.
The other two guards seemed wary of fire—maybe it was a zombie thing, he thought—and Zaara seized her moment to attack and eliminated one with a stab directly in the eye socket. He dry-heaved as the guard collapsed in a crumple of limbs.
He’d forgotten the one he’d disabled. The guard, no longer alive, was down but not out. Apparently, human-like abilities couldn’t survive a stab to the brain but they could survive a tendon cut. That was good to know. Justin danced backward, steeled himself, and used the same strike Zaara had used but with a sword this time. He yanked the blade out and shuddered reflexively each time it got stuck. When it finally came free, he turned as Zaara and Lyle killed the last of their enemies in almost-perfect unison.
“There,” he said. “That wasn’t so hard, right?”
“Uh-huh.” She rolled her eyes as she checked the bodies. “This isn’t a great dagger but it’s better than nothing.”
“Ye could always use yer fists,” the dwarf suggested. “If ye ask me, humans don’t punch enough.”
“Given your personal history, I’d say that’s good for you,” Justin pointed out. “Okay, let’s get inside and kill this bastard. Does anyone need any bandages? Lyle, that tavern wench said you would be severely hungover.”
His companion laughed. “A human would be, aye, but not a dwarf. Come along, now.”
“He drank half a barrel,” he mouthed at Zaara.
She gave an elaborate shrug before she followed Lyle, and Justin paused to watch them with a smile. It was strange to think that only a few hours ago, he’d wanted her to find the nearest well and fall down it—and that she’d felt very much the same.
He followed his companions into the shadowy interior of the tower and they crept up the staircase that wound along the wall of the storeroom.
“This is not OSHA compliant,” he muttered at one point.
“Huh?”
“Nothing.” At the first door, he leaned close to listen. “I think this is the kitchens. Let’s keep going.”
“Shouldn’t we go straight to the top?” Zaara questioned.
“No way. The longer we take, the more XP and loot we get.”
“What?”
“I said…the longer we take, the more…you know, never mind. There might be something useful in here. We could get you a better dagger.” He paused outside the second door and listened intently. “I don’t hear anythi—”
The door opened and a giant, green hand yanked him inside and slammed it shut again. Justin yelped and proceeded to go airborne as the troll in the room threw him at the far wall. He impacted hard and slid down it with a groan. He was fairly sure his companions were pounding on the door and trying to get in, but it was difficult to tell what noise was made by the troll and what was made by them.
“Okay, maybe I made a mistake.”
“Just possibly,” the AI told him and made a return with its usual smugness. “But I don’t know what you expected. You threw fireballs at your own wrists in a wooden cart. You’re not the brightest tool in the shed.”
“That’s a low blow for a computer.” He wheezed as the troll waded into the attack. It
was tall, hairy in all the wrong places, and he thought it was the ugliest creature he’d ever seen. He stood, swayed on his feet, and tried to time his duck and sideways roll and barely made it. The troll smacked into the wall at high speed and bellowed in pain.
That gave Justin an idea. “Get out of the way!” he yelled at the door and he began to run. He tried approaching a different wall first to see if his attacker would fall for the same trick twice. Unfortunately, it was marginally smarter than that and he had to edge into range again before it would swing at him.
The pounding on the door had stopped and he could only hope that the others kept their composure and didn’t get found by a patrol. He made a game of getting in close, rolled around the troll’s feet, and sometimes nicked it with his sword. The giant health bar over its head told him he did little real damage, but that wasn’t his goal. Slowly but surely, they moved closer to the door.
FANCY FOOTWORK, LEVEL 3 flashed on the screen.
“You should try out for Riverdance,” the AI told him.
“Start the bagpipes, toaster.”
Now for the risky part. Justin lunged, pretended to overbalance, and pulled back sharply, only to sprawl on the floor while his sword clattered away. He crawled toward it but tried not to go too fast, and the troll bellowed and began to run toward him. Only at the last moment did he throw himself between his attacker’s legs.
The massive creature pounded into the door at top speed. It was so tall that its head struck the lintel, but its fists punched completely through the wood. It stumbled back, clutching its head.
With a bloodthirsty yell, Lyle launched himself through the aperture. He delivered a flurry of punches that knocked HP off the troll in a tiny cloud of red numbers. It turned and tried to catch him, and Zaara leaped onto its back. She hung on and scrambled up with a few grunts of effort before she managed to stab it in the ear.
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