Zaara smiled at him. “So, you’re worried the same as me and Lyle then. We’re all afraid that death means the end. But that’s why we’re here, isn’t it? Because Sephith is killing those villagers and now, their stories are ended before they began.”
He rested his chin on his knees. She didn’t understand. No matter what he said, the game wasn’t made for characters to acknowledge the fact that they weren’t real.
“Justin.” She stretched her hand tentatively toward him before she rested it on his shoulder. “Answer me something.”
“Yeah?” he asked her wearily.
“What does it change?” she asked him. “You think we aren’t real. But whether we are or we aren’t, you’re here with us. Whether or not any of this is real, your death here could mean your death in your world. In the village, you told people it made more sense to fight Sephith than to wait for him to take them all one by one. Didn’t you mean that?” She sounded almost sad.
“I…did.” Justin swallowed. I merely never thought I’d be the one with my life on the line. It didn’t seem real to me then. “It’s easier to say than to do, I guess.”
“It always is,” Zaara agreed. “But you’re still here. You’ve believed this whole time that you might die, but you’re still here. You could easily have run away to the city. You could have spent all your coin renting a room in Riverbend.”
“That’s true,” he said after a surprised moment.
“Instead, you came to find me,” she said. “And you’re still here. You didn’t simply leave when you found out who I was.”
“Of course not. I was tied to you.”
She laughed. “You know what I mean. Think of it this way—defeating Sephith means these people will be free. They won’t be afraid anymore. You coming with me and Lyle means we’re less likely to fail. I know you’re about to say that it doesn’t matter because we aren’t real. But I think it does matter…to you.” She gave him a half-smile and went to speak to Lyle again, giving him time to rest his chin on his arms and stare across the room, his gaze blurred with tears.
In the PIVOT labs, Amber sat abruptly and pressed her lips together so hard she thought one might split. She was about to cry, and she hated crying.
Not only that, but she also hated people to notice that she was crying, and she cursed internally when Jacob spoke.
“Amber?”
She shook her head. If she spoke, it would come out all squeaky and strange and she would inevitably and unavoidably sob. She looked away and focused on her breathing for a while.
“It’s stupid,” she said finally. “Because it’s exactly like Justin said—none of this is real. And the AI only tells him what he needs to hear.”
“The point of stories isn’t only to be an escape,” Nick said. He patted her shoulder awkwardly—he wasn’t great at emotions. “It’s to make you see the world differently and do things differently, right? I feel like maybe Justin’s not only getting all his puzzle-solving abilities back. Maybe he’ll come out of this with a different attitude toward life.”
Amber nodded and a single tear broke free of her lashes. She wiped it away and groaned. “Okay, I’m swearing all of you to secrecy. I did not cry over this. I didn’t.”
“Crying is embarrassing?” DuBois asked doubtfully.
“Yes.” She wasn’t sure if she wanted to hug him or roll her eyes. “Why?”
“Because if so, we should also remember not to tell anyone Justin cried,” he said seriously.
She laughed. “He probably wouldn’t like anyone to know. I’m glad Mary had gone grocery shopping. I feel like she’d have bawled if she heard that.”
“Then we’d have more secrets to keep.” The doctor shook his head. “This kind of thing gets out of hand so quickly. All right, I think he’s going to sleep again. Everyone get some food and rest. I think we’ll want all hands on deck when he reaches Sephith. I’ll put his birthday present into the game while he’s asleep.”
When Justin stood, his mind was clear. For the first time he could remember, he truly felt calm.
“Are you ready?” he asked the others.
“I think so,” Zaara replied. “I won’t get any more ready sitting here, though, that’s for sure.”
“The girl has the right idea.” Lyle strode to the stairs. “So let’s see what monsters Sephith has cooked up for us now. Wizards have no sense of moderation.”
“You drank half a barrel of ale in ten minutes,” he said.
“Exactly. Moderation.”
He rolled his eyes and followed with a chuckle. Zaara snatched a torch and ran ahead to hand it to the dwarf, who proceeded as if he had not the slightest worry. It seemed like a very long time until they reached the next floor, but Justin remembered how much bigger the keep was on the inside than it had seemed from the outside. It must be taller as well.
When the wooden floor appeared above them, Lyle held the torch up.
“I can’t see anything,” he said. “I can’t hear anything, either.”
“We haven’t exactly been quiet,” he remarked. “Whatever’s up there, it’s probably heard us coming. We might as well go up. Weapons ready, everyone.”
The three of them clutched their weapons as they entered the next room. To his surprise, instead of rough wooden boards, the hardwood floor was ornate and brilliantly polished. On it, laid out in several concentric circles, were pieces of stone that he could see might interlock via small bumps and grooves along their sides. The three of them walked through to look at the runes carved onto the surface.
“Do we arrange them?” Zaara asked. “Or does that summon a monster?”
“There are no stairs,” Justin pointed out. “And no door. So we must have to arrange them to get to the next room.” This was a puzzle and he knew how puzzle games worked. “Okay, let’s start trying things. Do they make a few circles or only one big one? And do they slide?” He braced his hand on one of them and pushed, pleased to see that it glided easily across the floor.
Beneath them, the wood shuddered and began to rise.
“It’s a lift,” Lyle told them and sighed with relief. “Dwarves have these to get from level to level in the mines. It’ll take us to the next level.”
“No, it won’t.” Justin was suddenly overwhelmed with certainty. “No, it’s put a clock on us solving this.”
“What do you mean?” Zaara asked him. She looked warily at the blocks.
“There’s a ceiling up there somewhere, right?” He began to study the blocks hurriedly. “Well, I’d bet anything that this floor won’t stop moving until we get the blocks in place. And if we don’t get them in time, we’ll be crushed. Everyone, take a set of blocks—quickly. Lyle, you look for ones with all the jagged lines like that one. Zaara, you look for the squares. I’ll take the squigglies. We’ll deal with the triangles later.”
The other two, thankfully, didn’t question him. They raced around in the semidarkness, muttered curses, and shifted blocks. Much of the time, he simply felt for complementary sets of grooves to fit the blocks together.
“It’s two sets of two circles,” Zaara called. “I see eight center pieces and ten outer pieces.”
“Good,” he responded. “Okay, let’s find out which goes with which—once we have the sets assembled, of course. Move the pieces for each set into one corner and let’s start organizing them. Move, people, move!”
“You should work in the army,” she muttered.
“Less jokes, more puzzles!” He did not want to get smushed. Justin arranged his four pieces with far too much trial and error and hissed his annoyance each time the blocks didn’t go perfectly into place. He was supposed to be hooked into this game, and if he died because his fingertips weren’t sensitive enough, he would be very annoyed.
Or not, as the case might be.
“Got my set,” Lyle called a moment after Justin finished his.
“Still working on mine,” Zaara replied. “The grooves on the inner part of my circle have dots an
d squiggles. Which one of you has those that match that?”
He felt around. “Not me.”
“I do.” Lyle began to haul his set to her.
“Wait!” Justin stopped him. He took the torch and peered at the floor. “Lyle, you have jagged lines…put them there. See the pattern on the floor? Zaara, you bring yours to arrange around his. That means my set should go over…here. Okay.”
They worked furiously, aware of the constant shudder and creak of the moving floor. He glanced constantly into the darkness and saw nothing but was always aware that the ceiling must be getting closer.
He had barely slid his inner circle into place when Lyle yelled, “I see the ceiling!”
With a hasty upward glance, he swore. He had sincerely hoped he was wrong but the spikes on the ceiling left little to the imagination.
“Go, go, go!” Zaara yelled.
Justin didn’t need to be told twice. He worked as fast as he had ever worked. Pieces slotted into place in his outer circle and it wasn’t long until the other two gave a triumphant shout and ran to join him. He spared a glance upward and his heart leapt into his throat. The spikes were no more than a yard above his head and the floor was still moving.
The three of them passed the blocks of stone with the triangles between one another with frantic efficiency, and as he ducked out of the way of one of the spikes, the last piece slotted into place. With a groan and a creak, the floor stopped moving.
He slid reflexively into a seated position. His legs shook and he laughed, not entirely able to control himself.
“Holy shit,” he managed. “Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.”
“Holy shit,” Lyle mused. “Now there’s one I haven’t heard before. I like that.”
“There’s a door over here,” Zaara said. She pointed. “I think we took a little too long but the door is technically here.”
“The door to…the outside of the tower?” he asked. He wondered if this was a moron test.
“There was an outer section before, remember? Maybe we can go out to it.”
That was a good point. He approached the door and pushed it open. She was right. The floor had moved them beyond it enough that they had to lever themselves out somewhat awkwardly, but they were able to make their escape. With a final look at the room and shake of his head, Lyle stepped into the corridor and held the torch into the gloom. Justin couldn’t hear the footsteps of any lich soldiers, for which he was grateful.
The trio climbed in the semi-darkness until they reached the next wall and door.
“I wonder what the puzzle is this time,” Zaara joked. She smiled at them. “Weapons out anyway?”
“Always.” He drew his sword.
“Aye.” The dwarf held his fists up.
She pushed the door open and entered, Lyle at her heels. “I don’t see—” Her voice cut off in a gasp and she vanished, yanked sideways.
“Zaara?” Justin pushed into the room. “Lyle!” The dwarf had been yanked away as well. Both hovered now, their arms outstretched and encased in shimmering blue light. Their mouths moved but he could not hear them speak. He looked worriedly from one to the other. They seemed to be breathing, which was something, at least.
A door on the opposite side of the room opened and a figure stepped into the light.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “You only count on two adventurers at a time?”
“No,” a familiar voice said. “I wanted to face you myself.” The figure walked closer and pushed his hood back to reveal a face Justin knew very well.
It was his own, after all.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Justin’s jaw dropped. “Sephith?” Had he been brought all this way simply to defeat himself? Was he the person who had terrorized the villagers? He recalled his thoughts about having a castle full of pretty serving girls and swallowed convulsively. Had the wizard he saw in town been nothing more than a disguise?
“Sephith?” His other self laughed. “No. I’m not Sephith—I’m you, only better.” Without warning, lightning erupted from his fingertips and Justin threw himself sideways. “Did you think you were the only piece of your consciousness that had come here?”
“Whoa.” Amber reared away from the screen as the machines wailed to life.
“What? What is it? What’s happening?” Mary had been in the kitchenette, but a mug clattered on the floor and she ran into the other room.
“His vitals are going crazy,” DuBois called to Amber. He flipped the lid of the pod open to make sure Justin’s chest still rose and fell. “Everything is spiking off the charts.” He looked at her. “What’s going on in the game?”
“He’s…” She pointed wordlessly to the screen. Warily, she looked at Mary, not wanting to say it out loud, and stepped aside as the doctor came to look.
“Ah.” He cupped his jaw with one hand. “I should have anticipated that.”
“You should have anticipated what?” Mary demanded. She shoved between them. “One of you had better tell me what’s going on or I swear—”
“One of the aspects of the game,” DuBois said, “is the ability to make ethical choices. The ability to choose the path of morality or immorality.”
“And?” The woman looked like she would jump out of her skin.
“And Justin is at war with himself,” he said quietly. “He’s made some choices and he’s not sure about them. As a result, he has to be sure.”
“So why are his vital signs going crazy?” She sounded close to tears as she walked to the pod and stretched a trembling hand to stroke Justin’s hair away from his face.
“The game has made two of him,” the doctor said. “He is both of them right now and he’s tearing himself apart. Unfortunately, he has to choose because only one of them can go onward.”
Justin’s throat closed in horror. No. This couldn’t be real. He barely clung to reality as it was, immersed in the game, and he now wasn’t the only version of himself?
“If you were me,” his other self suggested, “you’d want to reunite the two of us. You’d want all the shards to be whole.”
“Or I’d recognize that you’re a useless, whining brat.” His counterpart launched a hail of fireballs, one after the other, that followed him as he ran around the room. Finally, he charged directly at his other self and only barely skidded to a stop in time to avoid the point of a sword—a much better weapon than the one he carried.
His copy advanced quickly and Justin stumbled away, drawing his sword as he did so.
“You had the chance to be anything,” his adversary said and shook his head. “You could have had all the power of a wizard.” He attacked and swung the sword in a complex series of strikes that left him on the defensive. “But what are you instead?”
Justin narrowly avoided the last assault and spun away as he shoved his other self away with a kick. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being toyed with.
“You’re nothing,” the other him said contemptuously. He gestured with a hand and slick ice appeared around Justin’s feet so that he slipped and tumbled hard. His tormentor advanced and slashed viciously with the sword as he scrambled away. “You let the rest of them claim your XP and your loot. You heard there was a wizard who could level cities and you decided to kill him rather than learn what he knew? You could be anything. You could have any woman you wanted. You could command armies—and you’re merely a nobody with a Level One sword and a dirty cloak!”
He rolled out of the way with a curse. When he cast a look at his friends, he realized to his horror that they had begun to look pale and sluggish in their movements.
“What are you doing to them?”
“The same thing we’ll do to you,” the other him said. “Why do you think I’m so much better than you, Justin? I have the life force of dozens inside me. Dozens like them. And once I take yours, I’ll be even better. Do you see where the blue power leads? That’s their soul—their energy—feeding the machine Sephith made. He made himself a god and h
e’s making me one too.”
“You’re an idiot,” Justin said. He knew that for a fact. “A guy like Sephith never shares power. He’s using you to do his dirty work and then, he’ll hook you up to that machine and drain all your power into himself. He’ll never let you survive.”
Despite his bravado, he was panicking. He had to end this and he didn’t know how. Power still crackled at the end of his other self’s fingertips.
How did you defeat a master swordsman with almost unlimited power?
Then, he had an idea. After all, this was apparently another shard of himself. He began to laugh.
“What?” his counterpart demanded.
“Nothing.” He shrugged. “It’s funny to see you throwing fireballs around. I mean, clearly, nothing’s changed with all that power.”
“What do you mean?” His opponent looked rightfully wary.
Justin had never tried to outwit himself before. He would have to do this carefully. “Come on. We both thought the same thing—come into this world, find a sword, start slaying monsters, and get all the tavern wenches, right? And it didn’t work for either of us. So, off you went to get magical lightning and better sword skills. And…” He laughed so hard, he snorted. “And it still didn’t work. You’re still a loser in a coma.”
“Shut up,” the other Justin yelled at him. “You shut up. Once I kill you, I’ll be more than you dreamed. You’re the only one who’s still a loser because you want to wake up. I’ll stay here and rule the goddamned world, and once I kill you, I’ll have the power I need to—”
His monologue cut off with a gurgle and he fell to his knees as blood spread from the wound in his chest. With his eyes wide and disbelieving, he fell sideways and lay still.
Behind Justin, two bodies thudded to the floor—and, to his great relief, two voices muttered very ornate curses about pain and magic. With a sigh of gratitude, he ran to see to his friends.
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