“Let me guess: he didn’t approve of your friends, but he thought you had potential.”
“It’s like you’ve met him.” He smiled. “So I don’t mind the anonymity of wearing a different face. Honestly I’m not used to being a part of my mom’s world.”
I touched his arm. “That sucks.” He shook his head, but I stopped him. “Look, you have the right to whatever you are feeling. You don’t always have to be agreeable.”
He swallowed. “It’s my job to make my mom happy.”
“No,” I said. “It’s her job to keep you safe.”
He wrapped his gloved fingers around mine. We were both quiet.
“I really like you, Dagney,” he said softly.
His heart thundered so hard, I could feel his pulse racing, even through the gloves.
I took a breath. “I really like you too, Ryo.”
“Dagney.” He sounded so surprised, and so happy. He couldn’t fake that kind of happy. His hands cupped my cheek. “If I kiss you, will you hit me?”
“I have no idea. I might.”
He bent closer. “Thank you for the warning.”
I was smiling when our lips met and smiling when he pulled his lips away. He breathed me in, both of us silent and feeling the aftershock, not of our sparks, but of our honesty. He moved first, bending his neck until his lips reached my hand, and he stole the last bite of my food.
I shoved his shoulder with my arm. His nose crinkled as he chewed with his mouth open, blatantly trying to make me smile.
I didn’t like mirrors, but I liked the way I reflected in his eyes. “This is my favorite level.” I cleared my throat. “But we should go.”
“All right. To the Kneult!” He made a soft accent on the k, then offered his palm.
I wished we could stay here longer.
I took his hand and aimed the boots. The step power meter raised and lowered. The words Obtain the Axes of Creation and Destruction ran across my vision, and the arrow in my mind pointed south.
I reached into my bag and pulled out my map. “Okay. Let’s do some math.”
“Here.” He handed me a pencil. His expression seemed eager. I scowled at him. Why did his expression seem eager? “You can hold it against your lip, if you’d like.”
I whacked his arm with the pencil, my cheeks warming. “This was a mistake, I can already tell.” I turned back to my map.
Okay. If I stepped about 15 percent we should be able to see the mountain peaks, and then I could course correct after pinpointing our location on the map.
I glanced at him and he grinned. Dang it. I’d placed the pencil on my lip.
I grabbed his arm and we took a step.
Traveling dried out my eyes, with the wind rushing forward. I could almost see our surroundings, like we’d fast-forwarded through them, but not clearly enough to pick out images. We stopped. There was that peak. Saint Gial’s Tooth. There was a story there, but I didn’t have time to ask.
I found our exact location and then measured the distance again. I’d say 20 percent. Or should I go 25? Hmm. Best to not overshoot, I think. Give us some time to make a plan as we approach the Kneult.
I stepped forward, but halfway there, we snagged to a stop. The momentum shoved me to my knees and knocked Ryo clear to the ground. The ground shook beneath us, like we got kicked out of traveling. Even the boots deactivated themselves, and my arrow just spun in place, like a loading screen restarting.
What on earth?
We were on a hill, overlooking the ocean. What had stopped us? Far to the west, near the Island of the Savak, the red sky tore at the horizon. And then another scar through the sky, three times as thick as the last one, ripped up and over, like a rainbow of broken pixels.
“That’s not good,” Ryo said. Way to make an understatement. I met Ryo’s eyes, and somewhere, behind that damaged expression, hid a boy who was dying. He could joke all he wanted, but I couldn’t forget that. He was programmed to be the main character in a game that was breaking down.
Of course it was breaking him too.
I wrapped my arm around his waist. “To the Kneult?”
“You meant K-neult.”
I pulled out the map again and tried to gather my bearings. “Why do you pronounce it ‘the K-neult’? I thought the k was silent.”
“Oh. It probably is for the game. My mom might have forgotten that my dad liked to pronounce the silent k. He’d say, “I k-now,” and then we’d laugh, or when he’d knock on my door, he’d always say, ‘k-nock, k-nock.’”
“That’s k-adorable.”
He smiled at me like what I said was actually funny, or maybe like he was just glad to have someone to talk to about his dad. Ryo smiling in his full armor was a sight, like some drawn perfection glowing in digital sunlight. But all I could see was the boy behind the screen. Lost and broken and the next to die.
I clenched my fists. He wasn’t just tall. I couldn’t let him die for real.
Engage Traveling Boots.
The bar reappeared at the side of my vision, but it didn’t go up or down. Resume step?
I clutched my fingers in his cloak and nodded. My spine tingled with the step, and the ground began to change from brown to deep red sand as we moved south toward the coast.
The staggered lights forced my eyes to blink, the movement sending drag on my back, pushing me closer against Ryo’s chest. Each blink brought a new vision as we rushed from horizon to horizon, following the packed dirt road toward Freedom Square, the capital city of the Kneult.
The step stopped us outside the city.
Disengage boots.
“So, we’re going after the Axes of Creation and Destruction,” I said.
“And hopefully a few more players with the Kneult,” Ryo said. His eyes narrowed as he read something in his vision that I couldn’t see. “Isabel and Marcus are the players in the Kneult sector.”
“What do you know about the Kneult?” I asked as I started walking up the road.
Ryo matched my stride. “My dad invented them, back when he would tell me bedtime stories, or when we’d go camping. They were short angry people with mold growing from their knees. Both the men and the women wore long tangled beards, and they traded their way to power, the person with the most money ruling the kingdom.”
“A plutocracy. Or is it capitalism?”
He chuckled. “That’s not the message of the stories.”
“So what is?”
He smiled a little. “There were a few stories my father told about the Kneult. One was about a boy and a girl, children of rival trading houses, who always competed for the best trade. They would haggle for a pair of shoes, and the girl would win, haggle for a sword of iron, and the girl would win, haggle again for a harp that played an angelic song, and the girl would win. But when she asked the boy why he never traded in his crops or his carvings, even when he had more and could have won the trade, he kissed her and asked her to marry him. And though the families despised the match, though he was a penniless fool, he’d won the one trade that mattered. He’d won her heart.”
I leaned into his shoulder. “I like that story.”
“I like it too. Because that’s how he got all the girl’s stuff.”
I elbowed him in the side, and he laughed again, free and easy. Lighter somehow.
My smile faded as I stepped into empty streets broken with streams and bridges—not one mold-specked person in sight. Freedom Square’s harbor was crisscrossed with empty piers, faded docks, and not a single ship. Empty streets fled through brightly painted buildings and a street market with no bustle except the clothing hanging from wires across alleys. The entire city seemed deserted.
Ryo scanned the street. “No welcoming committee?”
“It is only us.”
“We are incredibly impressive. There should be banners, ribbons, parades.”
I picked up a handful of the strange red dirt and threw it in the air. “Better, Your Highness?”
He didn’t smi
le. His eyes scrutinized the street. “No.” He took my hand and held me close to his side. “We should have allies here. The king, his council, General Franciv. This was supposed to be the last stand against the Savak.”
No shadows moved in the city. No footsteps sounded except our own. There was no movement except the water that seeped between the cracks on the cobbled streets. Constellations of mold speckled the base of all the buildings. The road led forward to an open area. At the center was a large dry marble fountain. Instead of a stream of water, a pair of axes balanced at the top.
I let go. “Well, that works for me,” I said as I crossed to the fountain edge in one step.
“Careful. It could be a trap.”
The streets were empty, and the soundtrack was incredibly generic. “There’s no one here.”
“Exactly. Where is everyone? Don’t touch it.”
“Why not?” I climbed over the stone lip into the dry basin. “We should grab them and go before the Savak catch up to us. This is why we came, Ryo. Have a little trust.” I stretched my arm and plucked the axes from the fountain’s base.
I froze as light struck my arms.
There was a soft rumble.
Items 3/6.
I took quick steps back and jumped over the lip. The fountain released a stream of water, and with the motion came the rumble of the city around us. The empty streets filled with Kneultians wearing bright colors and mucked boots that covered their knees. The women did not have the long beards that framed the faces of nearly every man, but they did wear gray aprons tucked right under their chins. They bartered in the markets and scolded children, and they barely gave Ryo and me a second look.
Why would retrieving the axes wake the city?
I held the axes in each hand. Their weight perfectly balanced and the workmanship seemed even finer than the axe I’d yielded as the King’s Executioner, and way better than the one I’d traded for the Traveling Boots. They felt natural in my grip. Solid. Better than any sword. Any dagger.
This was my character the way she was supposed to be, daughter of an Executioner, axe in both hands.
“Look at their expressions,” Ryo said. “Everyone seems so sad.”
I lowered my axes. He was right. Black mourning ribbons were tied around the necks of the villagers. At the end of every street, a man or woman carried a tin bucket to a door and slapped black paint on the door casings.
“What’s happening?” I asked a Kneult woman.
She covered her mouth with a lace handkerchief. “Down to the docks. It’s horrible. The Savak.” She blubbered on more words I couldn’t understand.
The arrow in my mind pointed to the docks.
Ryo took off at a full run. I struggled to match his pace. As I ran I could hear the names of those they mourned. Isabel, the daughter of the trading House Takkan, and Marcus, son of the trading House Biento.
Two of the names on the player guide.
We found their bodies struck through on spikes. A silver plaque hung heavy around both of their necks. The words Killed Personally by the Queen of the Savak were etched in fine calligraphy.
“We’re too late,” I whispered into Ryo’s chest.
While we’d kissed and talked and eaten lunch, the players we’d come here to save had died. That was why this area of the game was so quiet. It’d shut off.
There was no one here to play.
24
BLUEBIRD_OFDEATH
I threw myself back against the chair and ripped the VR screen from my eyes, like they were dollar store sunglasses and not the most advanced thing to come out of E3 since … well, anything.
I clutched my knees. I’m alive. I’m alive.
The neural net didn’t just catch me. I didn’t have to damage the source code in order to break out. I didn’t just make things so much more dangerous for Grig.
“You’re okay, Zoe. You’re okay.” A nurse checked my pupils. There were so many nurses on this floor it was hard to keep track of them. But I tried. I checked her name tag: April.
“Where’s Ms. T?” I asked.
April checked my pulse. “How are you feeling? Your heart rate is racing.”
“I’m alive, and I’m out. What’s happened since I plugged in?”
Behind the nurse’s shoulder, a massive flat-screen held camera feeds showing an overview of the players’ hall. A doctor sat with his head in his hands, and two more beds were empty.
My heart stopped, and April heard it through her stethoscope.
We lost two more? I sat up to look at the screens. I just saw empty beds. Who was missing?
April attached a blood pressure cuff on my arm. I tried to look beyond her.
Isabel and Marcus.
No. My vision blurred and I slumped back onto my pillow. They were doing fine before I hopped into the game and now they were gone.
It was too quick. I couldn’t fight the idea that I could have gone in there and done something to stop it.
Something to stop her.
After April tested my nerves for further damage and took my blood pressure, she helped me transfer from the game chair to my wheelchair.
She backed away as I rolled my chair to the screens.
I closed my eyes and started praying. There wasn’t anything else I could do. This room was too small, and there weren’t enough people in it. I zoomed in the image until all I could see was Grig’s sleeping face. His breathing slow and his heartbeat marching on, steady and calm.
I couldn’t say the same thing about mine.
My thumb traced the screen.
“Hi, Grig,” I whispered. “Wake for me. Please. Shake yourself free and come say hi to me.”
His heart beat on but he didn’t speak.
I ran my fingers across his hair. “That’s okay too.” A nurse pulled his blanket so it covered his shoulder.
I wanted him to grin at me again, to flash me those dimples and kind eyes. I wanted to go back in time to see him through my laptop screen, his hair rumpled, wearing a hoodie from a band I’d never heard of, three days’ stubble on his chin, drinking tea in a fancy cup. Or when he stayed up late talking to me with a fluffy blanket wrapped over his head, or the time I logged in wearing Princess Leia buns in my hair, and he wore a Batman mask, and neither of us planned it, and it was nowhere close to Halloween.
I touched the glass like the thousand times I’d touched my laptop screen.
He couldn’t feel it now either.
I zoomed out to check on the others. Ryo lay in one corner. Dagney’s and Grig’s beds were next to each other. Andrew had a thick tube coming out his mouth. And next to him was the girl who played the queen of the Savak. She smiled as she slept, beautiful even in a coma. Her skin shone like a night-light, her hair draped over her shoulders like it was styled, and her eyes … Eyes should not be that big, not if they weren’t animated by Disney.
McKenna Carrington. Only daughter of Preston Carrington, CFO.
Player killer.
25
MCKENNA
I had not spent enough time at the Seer Spring. The waterfall and carvings were so theatrical and glistening. I really should have done more training here. The camera angles would have been gorgeous with the waterfall as a backdrop. I landed at the cliff’s base, and the clerics scattered away.
I ignored them.
There was a player here. The indicator column rose from under the water.
Green.
That was Sir Grigfen Tomlinson’s color. Or, by his real name, Griffin McNaughton. In my prep work before the game I’d almost counted him out, but that last qualifying match was impressive. Almost like seeing Liza perform at the Palace. Just a genius in his art, working at the top of his craft. I didn’t know enough about game play to know how he did it, but I knew enough to be impressed.
This would not be an easy kill.
I leapt from the cliff top and let my wings carry me down slowly, gliding to the lowest bridge.
The water of the spring frothed at
the base of the waterfall, but I could see through the cresting water. Below the surface, Grigfen fought a massive snake, which seemed to disappear in the light.
Stop stealing my act, snake.
He drew bones from the ground, the water churning as they struck forward. Devout magic. Interesting.
It took three magic spells, and each approach to the surface for air seemed slower. The use of magic made him tired. Weak.
Hmm, last thing I wanted was to fight someone who felt cornered.
I flexed my wrist, palmed a blade, and aimed where he’d next surface.
It would be best to kill him before he could hurt me.
But he didn’t surface as I expected. He dropped to the bottom and then twisted, shooting daggers of bone into that water snake, and as he did the snake grew visible, silver and sparkling like it was scaled with mirrors, seeping blood into the water from its wounds.
He claimed the Crown of Visions. It didn’t slip through his fingers like it did mine.
A tunnel opened out of the spring.
Shoot. If he exited into the clerics’ tunnels he wouldn’t get out for days. The first time I came here, they conned me into side quest after side quest, and all I got for the trouble were a few thousand pearls.
But Griffin didn’t take the tunnels. Instead, he surfaced, the snake wrapped around his neck, the crown in his hands. His giant grin covered his face, and then he started convulsing … no, I think it was some sort of dance. My jaw loosened. He was charming in his dorkiness. He wasn’t my type of attractive, more cute than handsome, like a puppy dog right after a bath. Slightly pathetic, but arresting all the same.
But Andrew had taught me not to fall for any tricks. Grigfen hadn’t noticed me yet, but he was deadly enough to kill that giant water snake.
I fired the dagger.
His eyes met mine, and he stopped dancing. He moved his hand and my dagger changed its trajectory as if an invisible wind had knocked it off course. It splashed in the water.
Oh no. I palmed a new dagger and prepared for battle.
Glitch Kingdom Page 21
