“You could stay out here and sleep with me, you know,” she said dreamily, laying her chin back down on the flagstones. “I love it when we sleep together.”
“Me too. But it’s hard ground out here. You could come upstairs and sleep with me in the sandpit of joy,” I teased back. The transfusion device was a small, vacuum-sealed jar attached to a flexible rubber tube and a needle. I set it up, and slid the needle in between the softer pebbly scales of Karalti’s arm.
“I couuuuld...” She didn’t even flinch as bright, glowing blue blood flowed down the tube and gushed into the bottle. “But I don’t got no mana. Gotta sleep more.”
“Yeah. There is that.” I triggered the brass seal and capped off the bottle before removing the needle. I pressed down on the puncture to stop any spray. “Thanks, Tidbit. I wish you DID have mana.”
“Mmm. Me too.” She ducked her nose under her wing, nuzzling at my head. “You smell like Suri. You go cuddle her for me, ‘kay?”
“I will. Great big sloppy dragon cuddles.”
“I’ll give you sloppy dragon cuddles,” she mumbled, her words blurring with fatigue.
“In my dreams.” I hesitated a moment, then kissed Karalti on the nose before pushing my way out from under her wing membrane. She was already asleep again.
I stood and watched her for several minutes, a strange longing filling my chest. If I closed my eyes, I could still smell the intense, intoxicating scent she had emitted during her first heat, see her lithe body carved in light and shadow as she straddled me, begging me through the Bond. Empathically, telepathically begging for me to... to... yeah.
My mouth turned dry, and my hands clenched into fists. I forced myself to turn away and marched toward the tower, mind reeling. I was going to make my damn potion and get some rest. And if Suri was up for round two... well. Round two was definitely on the cards, if she’d have me.
Chapter 18
The next morning, Suri and I woke early: her in the bed, me in the sandpit. We skipped breakfast, huddling together on the sofa with small cups of dark, strong coffee. The sun was just starting to rise by the time we picked our way down to the dungeons. They were part of a small cellar complex drilled into the solid stone mesa beneath our feet, containing four cells and a storage room. Only one cell was occupied.
On Vash’s advice, we kept the place softly lit and quiet. No torture, no shouting, no stimulation except the twice-a-day delivery of a bland meal, which was given to him through a slot in the door. Vash visited every three or four days for a short confessional. We had one guard stationed at his door, and one stationed inside at the end of the cellblock. They rotated out every four hours, and all the guards were under strict orders not to speak. For a man like Jacob Ratzinger, the worst punishment we could inflict on him was to force him to live with no other company but his own mind.
The outer guard saluted us as we entered, opening the entry to the stairwell for us. The door boomed shut behind us, and as the bolt slid across and locked, I saw Suri’s shoulders tense. Now that she had her gear back, she was dressed for war in fifty pounds of black full-plate. With her horned and visored helmet on, she was nearly seven feet tall and three across the shoulders. She had her greatsword over her back and her axes on both hips, and the clank of her armor was the only sound between us as we descended into the stillness of the underground.
“Hello? Is someone there?” Jacob began calling out when we were barely halfway down. His voice rang off the walls, tinged with desperation. “Vash? Vash, is that you?”
Neither of us spoke until we reached the thick iron door to the cell. My enhanced senses told me that he was pressed up behind it, trying to peer through the meal slot. I motioned Suri to wait.
“To the back of the cell,” I ordered.
A couple of weeks ago, Jacob would have argued or whined. But now, I heard him scurry off without a word of protest. I unlocked the door and slid the bolt across while Suri watched, her expression unreadable behind the impassive black grille of her helm.
The door creaked as it swung in, spilling a square of light over the hunched figure of Jacob: former Warden of Al-Asad prison, SysAdmin of Archemi, and a pathetic, sadistic man-child. He cringed back from the brightness, squinting through watering eyes.
“Hullo, Jacob.” Suri clanked past me. I hung back, holding the doorway.
Jacob froze, struggling to make sense of who and what he was seeing. When it finally clicked, he made a high, strangled sound, and pressed himself against the wall.
“No.” His eyes widened, turning white with fear. “Oh god. It’s you.”
“Yeah. I’m a whole lot bigger than you remember, huh?” Suri bobbed down to squat on her heels about six feet away from him. “You definitely look a lot smaller.”
Jacob wasn’t a bad looking guy, except for the aura of cringing cowardice that pinched his features, hunched his shoulders, and hung around him like a bad smell. We’d stripped him of his gear and given him a plain tunic and pants to wear. No belt. No cords of any kind.
His upper lip twitched and trembled. “Fine. Okay, Suri. You won. Now just get it over with.”
Suri spread her hands. “Get what over with?”
He scowled at her. “You know? The torture?”
“Why would I torture you, Jacob?”
“What the fff- what do you mean, ‘why? Maybe because you hate me?” He scowled back at her, drawing his knees closer to his chest.
“It’s true that I’ve got every reason to hate your guts.” Suri shrugged. “But here’s the biggest difference between you and me. I don’t get my kicks from torturing people.”
His eyes darted to me, then back to Suri. “I’d never hurt a real woman.”
Suri reached up, and pulled her helmet off. “Look at me, Jacob.”
“No.” He shook his head.
“LOOK AT ME!” She slammed the greathelm down on the stone floor.
The sound of metal hitting stone exploded through the room. Jacob screamed and cringed, throwing his arms up over his head. And then, grudgingly, he peered at her from underneath his hands.
“I am Suri Ba’hadir. Starborn. Descendant of queens. The Warsinger of the Sixth Age,” she uttered. “I am human, Jacob. I have found a lover, friends, enemies, and purpose. I have grown beyond you and without you.
“I don’t-”
“What do you have to make you real, Jacob?” Suri talked right over the top of him, her voice slicing the air. “Your body outside of Archemi? Go on, Mr Architect. Go back. Prove you’re more real than I am.”
“This. Is. A. Simulation!” He hissed.
“How do I know that?” Suri shrugged. “Go on. Prove it.”
“I can’t! Y-You can’t prove a fucking negative!”
“Why not? Shouldn’t be a case of proving a negative if you’re so real and I’m not. So go on. Prove it.”
“I CAN’T, GODDAMMIT!” His voice rose into a sudden scream of raw rage.
Suri’s back tensed.
“I’m as ‘real’ as you are, and you fuckin’ well know it,” she said, after a pause. “As ‘real’ as the other women in the Dregs. Lara, Tali, Miranda... I remember them. And some of them remembered Earth. They tried to talk to me about it, about their lives. I didn’t believe them, at the time. But now I know that I’m a person from you world. Someone who’s memories were wiped, who was installed here so you’d have someone to torture. Do you deny it?”
A tic started next to Jacob’s mouth. He slumped back, as if stunned. And then, he burst into tears.
“Okay! I get it! For fuck’s sakes, I get it!” He half-snarled, half-sobbed. “I’m fucked in the head! Okay? My brother died, New York City w-was bombed, my family and millions of fucking people dead... and I was stuck in Juneau in f-fucking Alaska and I couldn’t fucking help anyone! I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep... then Nick told me what he was doing with Archemi, told me I could burn off some steam with him. I didn’t build the prison. Nick did. It was his idea, all of it. And it
was wrong! Okay?!”
“So what? You were just going along for the ride?” I exclaimed.
“It’s not ‘okay’, Jacob.” Suri’s voice shook only slightly. “And it never will be ‘okay’. No more than the bombing of your city or the death of your family was ‘okay’. They’re all crimes.”
“So just kill me, then,” he wept. “Just... kill me and get it over with. Do it however many fucking times you want. I’ll stay. I’ll let you do it.”
“No matter how guilty you feel, I will not kill or torture you, Jacob. But I’m not gonna forgive you, either. What I am going to do is hold you accountable,” Suri said slowly, dropping her voice back down. “The last thing we need is another Ororgael.”
“Oro... Ororgael...?” The name made him visibly flinch. He scrabbled up to sit against the wall, dashing at his eyes. “That’s M-Michael’s gamer name. How do you know who he is?”
“I’m part of the resistance against his attempted takeover of Artana,” she replied. “So is Hector.”
I waggled my fingers at him from the doorway.
“Fighting... him?” Jacob glanced between us, uncomprehending. “Michael’s dead. Dead-dead. We purged him out of... uh...”
“ATHENA,” Suri finished. “The player database on Earth. The same one that contains you and me, right?”
He boggled at her. “Y-You’re not supposed to know that. NPCs are not supposed to know that!”
“Then what does that tell you, mate?” I was pretty sure she rolled her eyes.
“I’m n-not your ‘mate’,” Jacob snapped. “And Ororgael... Michael... he’s dead, Suri. Don’t lie to me.”
“Hector?” Suri looked over her shoulder at me. “You feel like explaining this?”
“She isn’t lying. He’s here, he’s alive, and he’s on the rampage.” I leaned against the edge of the open door and crossed my arms. “Ororgael goes by ‘Baldr Hyland’ these days. Self-proclaimed Emperor of the Hercyninan Empire. He’s trashed Ilia and is in the process of fighting his way through Revala to reach Vlachia. He’s the same the man you and my brother knew. Michael Pratt. Your coworker.”
“Your... brother?” He looked past Suri to me. “Wait... Hector. Hector Park? You’re Steve’s brother?”
“The one and only,” I said.
He scrubbed at his hair, momentarily speechless. “Holy shit. Holy SHIT. W-why didn’t you say something? You hauled me in here outta Davri’s place, but you didn’t tell me that!”
“I’m pretty sure I was too busy kicking you in the junk to remember to introduce myself.” I made a show of examining my fingernails.
“Oh god.” Jacob put his head in his hands, squeezing fistfuls of his hair. “Steve’s brother is here, Michael’s not dead... H-How do you know this Hyland guy is Ororgael?”
“Baldr was a refugee player character, like me. I watched Ororgael hijack him,” I said. “He loaded himself into a tempting quest objective, waiting there like a trojan. Baldr’s a prisoner in his own body, according to Ororgael. He’s slowly torturing him, ‘mining him for data’ when it suits.”
Jacob’s watery brown eyes were now so wide they were nearly round.
“That’s why we’re here,” Suri said heavily, turning back to look at him. “Rin says you were on Michael’s team. We want to know everything about him, Nicolas, and Steven Park.”
Jacob flicked his eyes between us. “Or what? You can’t keep me here forever.”
“You’re right. But we can keep you here for a really long time. If we get sick of feeding you, then believe me, I’ll happily watch Suri crush your head into a fine pink mist.” I stood up straight and stretched my shoulders. “Which means that when you die, you’ll snap back to your last spawn point. Right?”
“Yeah...?” He glanced between me and Suri. “So?”
“And where is that?” I asked. “Davri’s? Or Al-Asad? Because it’s either-or, right?”
“I...” Jacob opened his mouth, then snapped it shut.
“If it was Al-Asad, you are two hundred percent fucked. Because that place is completely underground, and there’s a Level 120 monster patrolling the ruins. And if it was anywhere in Dalim, then I’d drop your fuckedness rating to about a hundred and fifty percent. Ororgael’s agent, Violetta, is about as crazy as he is. She’s the head of Ilia’s Mata Argis and is in tight with the Sultir, and I would bet good money he’s going to try to capture you. Maybe you’ll let lucky, and Nick will help you out. But something tells me Nick isn’t the kind of guy who gives a shit about other people. So how about you start with him, and when you feel ready, you can tell us what you know about Michael ‘Ororgael’ Pratt.”
Jacob battled with himself for several minutes, rocking in place. Finally, he managed to tear his eyes up from the ground, peering at Suri.
“Nick is fucking crazy, man,” he stammered. “Like, maybe a psychopath. Al-Asad, the girls... I swear it was all his idea. He set it all up, the prison sandbox and everything. For most of Archemi’s development, it wasn’t connected to the main paracosm. The prison was like its own little pocket universe on Nick’s test server, just existing on its own. It didn’t use ATHENA data or DHD profiles, just shells ported in from anime and other videogames.”
“DHDs?” Suri asked.
“D-Dynamic Human Datasets,” Jacob stammered. “Organic human minds uploaded into the world via GNOSIS. Like... us. And look... I’m not trying to excuse it, but when we started Al-Asad, it wasn’t anything like what we have here in Archemi now. I swear we weren’t hurting anyone.”
I glowered at him. “It’s still fucking weird.”
“Like I said. I was... I was fucked up, man. Fucked up from the war, fucked up from losing David, fucked up from everything. I didn’t know what happened to my parents for four months, until the refugee camps finally started getting connectivity and a cousin told me they’d been killed,” he said. “Juneau Shard was sealed, and there was no getting out. Anyone who tried to escape was court-martialed and shot. Then we had an environmental breach on the mid-levels and people started getting sick, so we were quarantined in the upper suites. I was either in my office or in my apartment, watching the whole world burn down. I got sucked into Nick’s fantasy. It... I took out the rage there. The loneliness. My whole family was dead. I didn’t have anything else.”
Suri stood up and strode back toward me. I moved from the doorway, and let her take post in the open space... somewhere she felt like she could escape if she needed to.
“Fine,” I said. “Go on.”
Jacob slumped back against the wall, looking up at us. “Once HEX started tearing everyone up, Nick incorporated a version of Al-Asad into the game core. But we kept on using it like a dungeon. I brought in some anime shell characters to fuck around with. But then Nick asks me to process a bunch of functional DHDs, recode them so they were more realistic, but fictionalized. He gave me Suri’s files, told me she was a Pacific Alliance soldier from the camps where my brother died. I wasn’t cool with it, at first, but Nick was manipulating me, pushing me around. He wasn’t a big guy outside. H-He was like your stereotypical skinny nerd, kind of weird and shy. But here, he’s huge.”
“So you went along with it.” Suri glowered at him from the doorway. “I don’t want to hear your excuses as to how and why you did what you did, Jacob. I want to know what Nicolas IS. Path, Level, stats. His abilities as an Architect.”
“He’s an Artificer.” Jacob sighed. “Level 30, last time I knew. The Devs here don’t have any special abilities thanks to the reset, except for a read-only Dev panel overlay. We can see character levels and some other basic info, but we don’t have any access to the backend. No spawning, no god mode, no coding on the fly... not even the admin chat. Nick’s Stats are kind of crazy. He’d do like a hundred pullups a day to keep jacking up his Strength. He doesn’t need it. He just... yeah. I mean, you saw the guy. He’s nine feet tall and looks like a fucking mutant.”
I thought back to the recording. The read-only Dev Panel had
to have been how Ororgael had worked out my character level and stats.
“What about gear?” Suri asked.
“His gauntlet is an artifact, one of the best in the game. The Channeler of the Crystal Tower, some Aesari thing. He specializes in weapons and robots. As for gear... I don’t know everything. He probably still has some stuff squirreled away here, you know. Treasure caches with Admin test gear in it, so that players don’t give him any shit. People leave you alone if you can perma them.”
“And Michael?” I asked.
“That’s... a much longer story.” Jacob gave the door shifty eyes. “You know, I’m pretty cold and hungry down here...”
“Breakfast is contingent on you providing information,” Suri said coldly.
Jacob shut his mouth, and swallowed nervously.
“We know the basics,” I said. “Michael was ex-military, almost definitely spying on Ryuko for the government. Had prostate cancer and was the first perma-uploaded player in Archemi. It went bad, he died a whole lot... now he’s a megalomaniacal crazy dragon lord.”
“That’s pretty much it. He nearly tanked the whole refugee idea.” Jacob straightened up a bit, resting his chin on his knees. “I didn’t know him too well. No one did. He was cold, real cold: all business, except when he felt like he needed to let loose on someone. We all knew he’d been in the military a long time, much longer than Nick. He was a real control freak, especially when it came to OUROS. The AI was his baby, man. You’ve never seen a man coo over a server core the way he did.”
“What is going on with the Drachan, though?” I said. “A little bird told me they’re ‘acting beyond their operational parameters’. We need to know what that means.”
Jacob frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense. ATHENA’s datasets don’t have like... ‘operational parameters’. The AI core has a lot of rules and restrictions on it, and none of the NPCs can challenge or even perceive those boundaries. Everyone here, including OUROS itself, are bound by the rules of our reality.”
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