“No,” I said. “I’m not playing in Capture mode.” Surely I hadn’t accidentally enabled it as well. Hell, one of the park attendants had helped me with my settings.
“Seize him!” the sorcerer said.
His goons each grabbed one of my forearms. The harness clip opened by itself.
And I almost started fighting. Why not? The goons weren’t really mountains of muscle, and they weren’t really carrying swords. I was pretty sure I could break free.
But I didn’t try, because I suddenly sensed they wanted me to. Probably because of something else I’d read in the brochure.
The park provided “a fully immersive experience for serious role-players.” Visitors who disrupted the games or broke the rules would be “counseled” by Security. In other words, they’d kick you out.
Pissed at myself for being so slow on the uptake, I said, “Donna hired you guys, didn’t she? I’ll double whatever she’s paying.”
“Take him away,” said Carpet Boy.
The harem-guard types marched me toward a col onnaded temple built of weathered, mossy stone. I let them. It was ridiculous, but my goggles still said I was Helpless, and I didn’t know what else to do.
It all started when Augie Clarke told me, “The old man’s dying. There’s nothing more the doctors can do.”
“The old man” was Wallace Baxter, the fuel-cell and battery manufacturer, one of the Green-Tech billion aires. Augie was his lawyer, and I was an investigator who’d done a lot of work for Augie over the years.
“That’s too bad,” I said, fidgeting in the weirdly shaped chair opposite Augie’s glass-topped table of a desk. He claimed the seat was a marvel of ergonomics, but I could never get comfortable in it.
Augie shrugged. “It’s his time. The problem is, Donna’s convinced him to change the will.”
Donna Darling was the twenty-six-year-old porn star who’d married Baxter two years before. His kids and grandkids figured she’d done it for the money. So did everyone else.
“Let the lawsuits begin,” I said.
“I don’t want the estate tied up in court,” Augie snapped. “I want the family—the real family—to get what’s rightfully theirs. Wallace would want that, too, if his mind weren’t failing.”
“Do you want me to look for dirt on Donna?” I asked. I doubted there was anything Baxter hadn’t already downloaded.
“No,” Augie said, “I want you to find Jason.”
Now that made sense. Jason was the youngest grandkid and, maybe because he’d resisted the urge to complain about Donna, Baxter’s favorite. There was a fair chance that contact with him would make the old guy want to reinstate the original will. The problem was that, disgusted by the constant family squabbles, he’d left home, and, when his parents kept pestering him via phone and the net, taken steps to make himself unreachable.
“I can do that,” I said.
Actually, it wasn’t even hard, or not the first part, anyway. Jason was a rich kid, not a professional criminal. He didn’t understand what it really takes to disappear.
But there were two problems. I’d barely started looking when Augie phoned to tell me Baxter was slipping even faster than expected. He could go at any time. And when I figured out where Jason was, the park officials wouldn’t help me find him. As defined by their policies, the situation wasn’t an emergency, and I wasn’t a family member. Singapore’s just like that. It’s why I hate the place.
I considered watching the exits and catching Jason when he came out that night. Then I found out he might not. A visitor could buy a multiday pass, go on multiday adventures, and sleep on the grounds. And the kid, with money to burn and a love of LARPing, likely would.
So with time running out, I had to go in after him, and the park wouldn’t admit me unless I took on my own role-playing persona. Otherwise, it would detract from everybody else’s “fully immersive experience.”
Which is how I wound up a crippled superhero at the mercy of three heavies out of the Arabian Nights.
There were dungeons under the temple. My captors stuck me in a dank cell with a glowing blue pentagram on the floor.
Carpet Boy sneered at me. “The magic nullifies your powers.”
“Whatever,” I said, and switched off my goggles. The others turned from a wizard and a pair of hulking toughs into three skinny teenagers.
In the real world, that would have been a good thing. Here, maybe not. They all looked like hardcore gamers who knew everything there was to know about the park. That was why Donna’s agent had hired them to get in my way. Not that it mattered at this point, but I wondered how she knew what I was up to. Maybe a spy in Augie’s office.
The kids tramped back out into the torchlit corridor, clanged the door made of steel bars shut, and left me alone. It would have been smarter to guard me, but maybe the game system told them they couldn’t. Every prisoner got the chance to escape.
For me, it came in the form of a video screen displaying red, yellow, and green squares packed in a grid, with one black square representing empty space. If a colored square was next to the vacant spot, you could touch it, slide it over, and create a new hole. A picture made it clear that the object of the game was to herd all the pieces of each color into particular areas. Presumably, when you did that, it signified you’d picked the lock on the cell door, or maybe cast a counterspell on the pentagram, and the dungeon would let you go.
There was also an unobtrusive little red panic button for players who couldn’t solve the puzzle or suffered an attack of claustrophobia. If I hit that, I’d get out immediately, but it would mean I’d forfeited my game. I’d have to give up being Storm King and lose time hiking to one of the gates and taking on a new persona.
I decided to tackle the puzzle, and was still fooling with it when I heard footsteps in the corridor. A moment later, a plump teenage girl stalked into view with a badass scowl on her face.
“Hey!” I said. “Can you let me out? It’s important.”
She pivoted slowly, like a queen astonished at the peasant who’d dared to speak to her, then laughed a scornful laugh.
She was playing her character, and if I wanted to keep her from walking away, I had to relate to her on those terms. I switched my goggles on.
She turned into a tall, impossibly slender she-demon with bone-white skin, black lips, fangs, and two extra pairs of arms. A silver spiderweb pattern ran through her long high-collared gown, and gore smeared her chin and bodice. Maybe she’d needed to lure a jailer into her deadly embrace to escape her own cell.
“Dark lady,” I said, “I fight for what’s right, and you’re obviously evil, so I don’t expect you to sympathize with me. But if you let me out, I’ll let you drink some of my blood. Think how powerful you’ll be with the, uh, life force of a superhuman running through your veins.”
Her silver eyes narrowed. “Fair enough, but no tricks.” She pressed a button set where a prisoner couldn’t reach it. The door opened, squealing as through swinging on rusty hinges.
I stepped out into the corridor, and my goggles told me Storm King had his powers and vitality back. That was something, I supposed. I offered my neck, and Spider Princess pretended to bite it like celebrities fake-kiss on talk shows.
My Health dropped by about a quarter. Hers presumably went up. She stepped back and licked her lips with a forked black tongue. “That was delectable,” she purred, then started on her way.
“Wait!” I said. “I need a partner.”
She sniffed. “You said it yourself. You serve the light and I’m a daughter of the dark.”
“Okay, but I’ve never been here before. I’ve never done any LARPing before. And there are some experienced players ganging up on me to keep me from accomplishing anything.”
“Griefers?”
“If that’s what you call it.”
“I hate griefers. Although it almost serves you right for adventuring in Cosmopolis. Didn’t anybody warn you cross-genre games are the hardest?”
“Let me see your goggles.”
I handed them over, and, a short, pudgy adolescent once more, she put them on and tapped on the frame to call up various displays.
“You’re right,” she said. “Your program is set so people can attack and capture you pretty much wherever.”
“God damn it,” I said. “Somebody must have gotten to the guy who sold me my admission, too.”
“What are you talking about?”
I told her the whole story and ended with, “It’s crazy. I’ve had people try to stop me from doing my job with the threat of real violence, and I handled that. But this make-believe stuff could delay me long enough for Wallace Baxter to die.”
Actually, for all I knew, he already had. Inside the park, I had no way to check. But I had to keep working and hope for the best.
“And then this Jason guy loses his inheritance?”
“Most of it, and his relatives lose theirs, too.”
She pulled off my goggles. “And this is really real? Not just a scenario?”
I waved a hand to indicate my bare middle-aged face and the rest of my unmasked self. “It’s not Storm King talking to you now. It’s a real person. Who will pay you real money if you help me get to Jason Baxter in time.”
She gave me back my goggles and pulled on her own. She stood up straight, sneered, and said, “Then Duchess Eclipsia will aid you, Champion. It will amuse me, and with my reward I will raise a host to storm the Sapphire City.”
Eclipsia knew where hidden doors connected the dungeons to other underground adventuring areas. That let us come up out of an Old West-style mine with a cart on a track. Which seemed like a good idea in case the griefers were lying in wait outside the temple.
Of course, it was also possible they weren’t, so I kept my goggles switched off as my new partner led me down the concourse. That way, I’d recognize the punks even if they’d switched personas.
One of the harem-guard griefers was buying a can of Coke from a vendor with a pushcart. He was alone, so maybe his buddies were staking out the temple, but had sent him on patrol on the chance I’d find another exit.
The kid noticed me an instant after I spotted him. He backpedaled away from the cart, leaving the Coke in the vendor’s outstretched hand.
I switched on my goggles. The vendor turned into a robot, the soda can into a curved, spindly metal bottle with blue vapor fuming from the neck, and the griefer into a Prohibition-era gangster with a fedora, pinstripe suit, and violin case. I raised my arm to throw lightning, but the kid scrambled behind a strolling group of elves, barbarians, and other fantasy characters.
“Shit!” I said.
“Was that one of them?” Eclipsia asked.
“Yes.” And if I’d succeeded in forcing a fight on him, she and I could have double-teamed him, probably “killed” him, and made him take a timeout. But as it was, “and now he’s running to get his buddies.”
“If we reach the Warriors’ Guild, we’ll be safe. Combat is forbidden there.”
“Then run for it!”
Unfortunately, our destination was still a way off through the twisting streets and alleys, and while VR could give Eclipsia the illusion of long legs and a lean body, it couldn’t actually turn her into an athlete. I considered hooking up to the flying rails and carrying her in my arms. But the park would deem that unsafe and never allow it.
The red light appeared to warn me an attack was starting. Tommy guns chattered. I grabbed Eclipsia’s hand and yanked her behind a big tree with a gnomish face made of bark about six feet up the trunk.
Flashing gun muzzles stuck out the windows, a vintage touring car hurtled down the street, and people scurried out of its way. Not that they had to. The park had safeguards to keep vehicles from running anyone over. But acting like it didn’t was part of the fun.
I checked my readout. I hadn’t lost any Health. My dive for cover had kept me from getting hit.
The car screeched to a stop, and the griefers—four of them this time, all in Al Capone drag—piled out. Meanwhile, the face on the tree opened its eyes, yawned, and said, “Who wakes Old Man Oak?” Apparently the character animated automatically whenever a player got close to it, even in situations where nobody cared what it had to say.
Eclipsia jerked free of my grip and stepped into the open. Her eyes glowed, and her six hands spun hypnoti cally. “Slay each other!” she cried.
Two of the griefers turned their machine guns on one other, or at least, their VR images did. The figures jerked and blood splashed as the imaginary bullets slammed home.
Unfortunately, Eclipsia’s magic didn’t get all of them, and the other two aimed their weapons at her. I only had time for one lightning bolt, and it couldn’t hit both of them.
But it could hit the car. I took a guess where the gas tank was and threw at that.
My goggles flashed the message Critical Hit. The car exploded into a fireball, and pieces of it tumbled through the air. Hidden speakers served up a boom to go with the flash. Only the lack of heat revealed that nothing had really blown up.
Burning like torches, the remaining gangsters staggered around and then collapsed. But that was an illusion, too. I wanted to see what the griefers were really doing, so I killed my VR feed.
They were glaring at me, and that was all. Which was what I expected. Security would have swooped down on them if they’d tried to continue the fight in real life. But you never know what people will do when they’re mad.
I smiled and gave them the finger. Childish, but then, the place was one big playground. Maybe I was getting into the spirit.
The Warriors’ Guild was a wooden hall full of long tables with a thatched roof and rushes on the floor. Carved dragons slithered up the support columns and along the rafters.
A number of players lounged on the benches. The Guild was a safe zone where they could take a break from all their fighting, exploring, and puzzle solving. It was also a place where they teamed up with others, and Eclipsia thought that was what we needed to do.
Apparently there was a “community” of over a dozen griefers infesting the park, and for all we knew, Donna had hired them all. We needed our own little army to contend with them. But we couldn’t recruit everybody we met. The rules capped adventuring parties at eight.
Eclipsia peered about. “Looking for anyone in particular?” I asked.
“Aye, mortal.” She hesitated. “The griefers come to the park almost every day. We need gamers who are just as experienced. Otherwise our group will be outclassed.”
“That makes sense. Will you know the experts when you see them?”
The she-demon brushed back a strand of her hair. I realized what she’d actually done was shut off her goggles. “I will now.”
“Good. I’m willing to pay them, too.”
“That doesn’t really matter all that much because we’re all rich kids. We have to be. A season pass costs a fortune all by itself, and on top of that, our parents have to fly us to Singapore, put us in hotels, and give us spending money for the summer.”
If that was so, I wondered how Donna’s representative had persuaded the griefers to help her. Maybe they liked the idea of doing a favor for a porn star. What teenage boy wouldn’t?
I wondered about my companion, too. “If you don’t even care about a reward, then I’m even more grateful that you partnered up with me.”
“I told you, I don’t like griefers. And I thought it might be fun to do something real.”
I winced at the wistful note in her voice. “You know, you’re a smart kid. You could do—”
“Don’t pity the Duchess of Stygius! She fills her days with the joy of slaughter, and a glorious destiny awaits her.”
“Sure. I didn’t mean to speak out of turn.”
“I’ll forgive your impudence this one time.”
“Thanks. Who should we talk to first?”
&nbs
p; She pointed to a guy who looked like Zorro except for the red bird-of-prey emblem on his shirt and the back of his cape. “Tommy. The Crimson Hawk. But don’t tell him the truth.”
“Why not?”
“Some of the hardcore players are weird.” She smiled. “I know, you probably think I am, but they really are. While they’re in character, they won’t talk about anything mundane.”
I assumed that in this context, “mundane” meant real. “Okay, how about this? Jason doesn’t know it, but he’s an orphan prince from another planet. The evil lord who’s next in line for the throne sent bounty hunters to kill him, and I have to find him first so I can protect him.”
Eclipsia nodded. “That sounds like a mission a superhero would go on. It will probably work.”
It did. We enlisted the Crimson Hawk and five others, including a witch with a shawl and pointy hat. And with her, we got a bonus. When I showed her the photo, she said, “That’s Jason.”
“Right,” I said. “Obviously, you know him. Have you seen him lately?”
“I saw him go into the Nightlands a couple hours ago.”
The entrance to the Nightlands looked like the gate to Hell. A three-headed watchdog the size of a truck growled at us, and demons laughed and jeered to see us willingly seek admittance to the realm of the damned.
But before the latter would pass us through, I had to switch personas. Apparently superheroes and horror didn’t go together. So I became a commando armed with an assault rifle that looked real in VR, but was light and soft enough that you couldn’t possibly hurt anyone by clubbing him with it.
Eclipsia was okay as she was, but some of my other teammates had to swap out, too. As they considered their options, I whispered, “Since they’re turning into new characters, does this mean we have to recruit them all over again?”
Eclipsia shook her head. “It would be boring to play through the same thing twice. We’ll just pretend the party is the same as it always was.”
“Good. That saves us time.”
To my annoyance, though, we wasted it in another way. My GI was a standard package, but Tommy and another kid had to tinker with their new identities, fine-tuning their abilities and appearances until I felt like screaming. Finally they were satisfied, and then the devils ushered us through the tunnel on the other side of the gate.
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