by J P Carver
"I ain't someone special, Plot. I just do my job."
He chuckled and turned to face me with grayish-blue eyes. I felt annoyance at the slight jump in my heart rate, but I didn't look away.
"You can't tell me you're blind to your own legend," he said. "Come on."
"Legend? Now you're just making crap up to annoy me."
"Search your handle sometime. After all that stuff two months ago, you're like the damn saint of crackers… is there a saint for crackers? I mean the food. Would that be strange?"
"You're an idiot." I canted my head and caught my lip with my teeth. The next thing would be hard to say. "About that… thanks for your help. I should have said it earlier, but what you got me probably kept me alive long enough to figure a way out."
He grinned. "No problem. You can count on my help anytime—like right now. I just got an IP hit for Autumn Sin."
I sat up, bumping him from the chair. "Which one?" He sent me the IP, and I ran my own trace, coming up with the same. "It's from the game server. How is that even possible?"
"I don't know, but our next step is pretty clear, I think." He dug into his bag and came up with a headset. "We gotta go in and track down that source."
"You use a headset for VR?"
"Only got the basics right now. I'm still saving up for the big-boy neural. Another couple jobs, and I should be there." He sat on the armrest again and put the headset on.
When I appeared at the waypoint for one of the larger towns in the game, I couldn't help but notice the lack of people. It was a bit creepy. The buildings were built of broken and aged wood and surrounded the town square. The square, which usually had a bustling crowd, lay empty, save for the few nonplayer characters. The blacksmith NPC looked dejected, and the NPC townsfolk seemed lost in the emptiness. They just stared at the forest that so many players used to filter through. I checked the player list. Only a few thousand players were on.
Marcus appeared beside me in a flash, his armor beaming in the fading autumn sun. It wasn't hard to guess who he'd based his avatar on: himself. The features were far more fantasy-like, with a strong jaw and brow, and his skin was flawless, but the frame was the same. He'd made his hair dirty blond and had the same sparse goatee as his real-world self.
He hoisted his sword onto his shoulder and turned to me. The grin on his face disappeared when he looked over my head. He stood at least a foot taller than me. "Oh… this is strange. The blacksmith looks like he's about to break down and cry any second."
"Guess news does travel fast. There are a few thousand players around, which is enough to make it take a while to track the source of the sentinel."
"How we gonna do that? Outside programs that do anything other than track your group are an automatic ban." He kicked a pebble off the step. "Besides, we just know it came from the server. I'm not sure where we start."
"What's your spell level?"
He cocked an eyebrow. "Fifty-two. Why?"
"Just enough for a lost-and-found spell." I stepped off the slab of stone onto the dirt path and into the square. "We know it came from the server, and the only way that can happen is if someone has access to it. Players can't do that, but game masters can."
"You think it's someone from the company, then?"
"I think we look for a game-master object and see what we find."
He followed me down into the square but still looked lost.
"What is it?" I asked.
He stopped and rubbed at the back of his head. "Have you dealt with GM objects before? Last I heard, messing with one is a ban if you don't turn it in right away."
"You're awfully worried about being banned…"
He motioned to his armor. "Almost six hundred hours, Doll. That's how long it took to get my gear. I don't want to lose it on a wild goose chase."
"Then log back out if you're that worried. I can handle this." I left him and made my way over to one of the stalls, trying to stifle my anger. This was for Winter, and Marcus was worried about his stupid gear.
A young woman spun around on her chair, doing her best to entertain herself. Behind her sat shelves of potions and jars of rare alchemy ingredients, all of which rattled with every rotation. She stopped when I stepped up to the counter, then she teetered on the seat for a few seconds. "Ooh, stomach is not happy with all that spinning… nope." She swallowed hard and grinned as she waved her hands in front of herself. A tiny explosion of colorful sparks flashed in the shade of her stall. "Welcome! I am Listor the ma—"
"Yeah, I know." As Listor ignored me and continued her introduction speech, I turned to Marcus, who had stopped beside me. "They really need a way to skip this junk."
"You're just too damn impatient to actually listen. If you did, you'd know you can skip it." He pushed me gently aside. "It's nice to see you again, Listor."
The mage gasped, and her hands clapped together. "Sir Knight Plotigan! Oh, it's wonderful to see you too. How goes that demon hunt you were last on?"
"Not as well as we had hoped," he said, and she pouted and placed her hands against her cheeks. "But we're on a new quest to find a rare item and could use your help."
She spun around in her chair and giggled in a way that made me want to punch her. "Of course! I still owe you for that little… thing you took care of for me, so just ask away, Sir Knight."
I cocked my head and smirked at Marcus. "And just what did you take care of for the pretty little NPC mage?"
He took an exasperated breath. "It was a quest, Doll. Don't get jealous."
I scoffed and laughed. "Jealous of what? Look, just get the damn spell."
The mage glared at me then gave a sweet smile, her nose scrunched up and everything. "I have all sorts of spells, but a rogue such as yourself is probably too dumb to do anything with them."
"I'm gonna kill her—"
Before I could get over the stall, Marcus grabbed me by the waist and pulled me back into the street. "Man, will you knock it off? Just let me handle this."
I stalked along the road, content with getting away from the stupid NPC. I'd always liked fantasy games, but the NPCs tended to get on my nerves. Luckily, if you were skilled enough, you could kill most of them without getting into trouble. I made a lot of gold that way, but I was fairly sure Listor remembered that I'd killed her three times. It was the only reason she would have given me so much crap when I talked to her.
Marcus continued to flirt with the computer. I couldn't explain why I wanted to murder her every time she giggled at him. I didn't get time to really consider it, as a scream drew my gaze away from them and out toward the trees. I could see two guards and another player at the entrance to the forest, and they were fighting something in arcs of color. One of the guards had been the source of the scream. He slumped to the ground, and his body quickly faded away. The pumpkin child who'd killed him stared, confused, at the loot bag that was left behind.
I swore as groups of the pumpkin children tumbled out of the bushes and made a horseshoe around the town. It was a sight to see as their heads glowed like candles in the twilight. I readied my chakrams.
Marcus showed up beside me, his sword and shield up. "These things again? Where the hell are they coming from?"
"My guess is they're coming from the same person who's holding Winter and the others."
The pumpkin children started toward the town and were met by the few guards that were still left. The guards didn't last long.
"Why send them here? You think they know we're looking for them?"
I glanced back at the mage, who had the pose of a stereotypical startled woman, with a hand over her mouth and an arm across her stomach. "Someone may have told them."
Marcus followed my gaze then looked back to me, startled. "You really think so? They got control of NPCs too?"
"Beats the hell out of me, but it's a bit strange that these guys show up right after we get here, isn't it?"
"Great. How's your heal skill?"
"Shit. Yours?"
"Be
tter," Marcus said, "but I put most of my points into health regeneration. All right, if we see Samhain, we log out, gold be damned. Agreed?"
"No argument from me." We jogged down the road toward the forest. The pumpkin children noticed us almost instantly and started to close the circle around us. The player who had been fighting went down in a flare of blue, and the second guard quickly followed. The children still did incredible damage for their size.
"You got the spell, right?" I asked.
"Yeah, ready to go for when this is over. How many bobbleheads you think you can take, Doll?"
"At least half, maybe more."
"Contest?"
I grinned. "I'm range and melee, Plot. I'll win."
Marcus gave a hint of a laugh and walked a few yards away from me. He stopped, rotated his shoulders, and slammed his shield into the ground. It sent out a wave of gold in a broad circle, and pumpkin children's heads exploded in orange-and-green gore around him.
"Oh, screw you! You bought a power spell," I yelled as he stood straight again. "Goddamn cheater."
"You want to finish this sometime today or not?" He tossed a scroll too high for me, and I had to jump to catch it. "Come on."
I cursed him as I read the scroll. Energy flowed through me in a shiver and entered into the chakrams. "Probably used the guild bank for the gold, didn't you?"
"Nope, came from the quest for that… what did you call her? The pretty little mage?" He swung his sword out in a wide arc, and blue sparks danced from the edge as he sliced through another gang of pumpkin children. "It pays to be nice to the NPCs instead of always killing them."
I took down my own group of kin in a throw of my chakram. "Nah. I'll keep killing them, I think."
"Of course. Why stop doing something you enjoy so much? I'm winning, by the way."
"Shut up."
Marcus used another heal spell on me as I sat in the shade of a yellow-and-orange–leafed tree. The knoll before us was littered with orange bits of pumpkin and broken vines. It had been a massacre, and Marcus and I were lucky we were so overleveled for the area. I sat at about ten health by the time the last pumpkin child went down. I found some solace in knowing that Marcus hadn't fared much better.
"I win by five," he said with a smile as he sat down, exhausted, beside me.
"Bullshit. We tied."
"Did we? I was counting, and I killed way more."
"You're terrible at counting, then." After a few minutes, I got to my feet and held a hand out to him. He took it, and I hauled him to his feet. "I don't think this will be the last we'll see of them."
Marcus looked out at the trees as he sheathed his sword. "They could have just been trick-or-treating." When I didn't laugh, he shrugged. "They're part of the update, no doubt about that. Maybe this was a random event."
"Nah. They're too powerful for a random event. Maybe for a quest, but I don't got a flag. Do you?" When he shook his head, I said, "It's too strange to explain away that easily."
"So you think they were here just because of us?" he asked. We started down the hill, sidestepping bits of pumpkin. My hand twitched toward my chakrams every time a leaf flickered or a branch snapped. "Doll?"
"I need to get some potions. Can you spot me the coin?" I turned down the road and headed back into town. He trailed behind until I came to a merchant and pointed out my selections.
"You're stalling." Marcus sent over five hundred in gold. "Something is spooking you about all this."
"No, I'm not stalling." It felt like he was staring holes into me, but I didn't look over. I sighed when I added the potions to my inventory. "It's just the poison… and then Samhain and the pumpkins and now this IP address. What if it's not just a hacked GM object in the wrong hands but an actual developer?"
"That would be—"
I turned to him. "I know, suicide, but what else could it be? Maybe it's an ex-developer or something. Can you cast that lost-and-found spell?"
He opened up his menu. "What are we looking for?"
"Anything that's leveled zero or less. Those will be GM objects."
He nodded, and a scroll appeared in the air in front of him. He took it and mumbled the few words on it. The scroll vanished in a flare of blue that faded into grey smoke. It had found something. As we were grouped, the scroll worked for me as well and placed a little marker on my HUD compass. "So there is one here."
"Yeah, and guess where it leads."
I gave him a questioning look.
"Remember that quest line for Samhain? The windmill that Crow, Winter, and I had to go to? Well, I still got the marker for the mill, and the spell says a GM object is in the same place."
"The witch's quest?"
"Looks like we're off to see the wizard—er, witch, rather." Marcus jutted out his elbow to me.
"I am not skipping down the road with you." I walked away from him.
He pouted. "Oh, come on. If you wanna go home, you can just click your heels together—"
"Stop, okay? Just… stop," I said.
He laughed as he jogged up beside me.
"You've been watching far too many of Ziller's movie streams," I said.
"Don't act like you didn't crack into Ziller's stream the other night to watch Wizard of Oz repeatedly until three in the morning. You're the only one who loves that movie that much."
"I don't know what you're talking about." I hurried away from him.
Five
The WindMill
"You're not where I think you are, right?" Merigold glared through the hologram projection in front of me. Marcus gave a snicker from a few feet ahead. He was supposed to be keeping an eye out for any more pumpkin children but seemed to be enjoying the thought of Merigold scolding me.
We had followed the quest marker through most of the forest and were so deep that I could barely see the dusk sky above us through the dead leaves. It was quiet, too, which set me on edge. I expected more random monsters than what we ran into.
"That entirely depends on where you think I am."
"Smooth," Marcus called over his shoulder. He was hunched down and peering into the clearing ahead of us. The windmill sat in shadow about two hundred yards away.
"Shut up and keep watch."
"Who are you talking to?" Merigold asked. "Is Plotigan there?" I turned so she could see him. "I bet he talked you into doing this, right? That jackass."
"Whoa, wait a second. I didn't do anything. This was all her idea."
"No, she's completely right. You're a jackass," I said. He gave me the finger and pushed through the brush. I watched him until he disappeared behind brown-and-yellow leaves. "We're fine, Merigold. Though I need you to do something."
"I think I've got my hands full already, Ragan. Of the people I've looked at, they are all hooked into the system via their I-Dent chips. It seemed to happen when they tried to log out, and it doesn't matter if you're using a headset or a neural… it was amazingly stupid of you two to go in."
"Well, that's something at least. What I need help with actually has to do with all that VR stuff." I explained to her what Marcus and I were searching for and our theory of it being a developer.
She sighed and leaned back into her chair. "Let me guess: you want me to see if I can find anything on a disgruntled employee? That's gonna be a joy. Fine, but you owe me."
I snorted a laugh as I followed Marcus into the clearing. "I'm afraid to ask what you want."
She grinned. "It's nothing like what you're thinking. Well… not really. I need a date."
"Merigold—"
"Shh. It's actually a double date. I got this drug convention-dance thing next month, and it's just so boring. Lots of stuffed-up doctors high on their egos, and shitty champagne with gross cheeses on plates. It would be nice to have someone to hang with and help me and Sera bat off the lonely docs."
"So I need to find a date?" She jerked her head back with a lopsided grin. I glanced at Marcus and felt my stomach flip at the thought. What annoyed me was I couldn't say t
hat the jolt was from disgust—it had been a long time since I was in any sort of relationship—but I shut the idea down quickly. "Sure, that'll totally happen."
"What?" Marcus looked back, his hand on the handle of his sword. "What's she saying about me now?"
"Forget you heard anything, and just keep an eye out." I looked back to the screen and followed Marcus as he made his way onto a dirt path. Merigold was doing her best to keep from laughing. "Fine, I'll do it if you can confirm or deny our employee theory, okay? But I'll be coming alone."
"We'll see." The bit of mischief in her expression made me nervous, but she ended the call before I could ask what she was planning.
The next moment, I walked right into the back of Marcus. "Whoa, what's up?" I craned my neck to see around him.
The clearing closed in a circle of wavering brown weeds on either side of the path we walked. A large wooden windmill dominated the area in front of us. The fins creaked and rocked in the ever-present breeze, and the few pieces of fabric still attached to the frame fluttered about. It looked abandoned. The only sign of someone being there was a horse in a stall to the right of the mill. It was tied off and eating from a tin bucket.
"Look, top window," Marcus said. "Like I needed more nightmare fuel."
My gaze followed the mill upward, and a shock ran down my spine when I noticed the white face staring down at us through a pane of dirty glass. "Well, she ain't a ghost at least. Check the local player list."
"Maybe they're here for the quest too," Marcus said.
"Maybe. Let's go have a chat and find out. Let me do the talking."
"You're just gonna piss them off."
I shoved past him. "Just keep your heal spell ready and your hand on your sword in case they try something." Autumn Sin was an open player-versus-player game, which meant anyone could attack anyone else outside of towns. There were some downsides, but not enough to stop most fights.
