“I’m starting to get worried,” Ash said in a soft voice, her voice was tight in the narrow space.
“Starting?” Zeek asked sarcastically.
“There should be puzzles to solve and other players, and…”
The path wound back and forth up the slope like a river. Before they knew it, they were standing in front of a massive iron door with a computer terminal next to it.
Zeek held out his hand. “Looks like a puzzle to me…happy?”
As they approached the terminal, Zeek saw a jumble of code. He pecked at the keyboard and fixed the first line, stepping back he said, “It’s all you, Persephone.”
Ash looked at the screen and furiously started to type, with a smile she said, “The great Zeek the Geek doesn’t know Janix?”
“It’s an old language, I haven’t used it since I was a kid. Figured you didn’t want to sit here all day while I tried to think back to my formative days.”
“Uh-huh,” she replied. She was on the last line of the coding when Zeek grabbed her arm.
“Wait,” he said.
“Why?”
“I have a feeling that there’s…maybe we should look for another way, this seems too obvious.”
“You have a feeling?” She cocked an eyebrow at him. “The only other way is that tunnel where the flaming dude came out screaming. You wanna go find out what set him on fire?”
Zeek let go of her arm and stepped back, raising his pistol at the door.
Ash made more taps on the keys and said, “There.” She approached the door slowly, her own blaster raised.
The door opened slightly with a creek and a muscular black arm with sharp claws took hold of Ash and yanked her inside. “ZEEEEEK!!!” she yelled as the door slammed shut and disappeared.
“Fuck,” he said as he raced up and placed his hand on the now bare stone where the door once stood. His foot kicked something as he turned to walk back to the computer terminal. It was her blaster pistol; he picked it up and stuffed it in his back waistband.
He stared at the screen, touching his chin and chewing his lip. “Think all I need to do is add back in the code for a door,” he said to himself. “Was that a troll that snatched her…or an orc?” The light from the computer screen was reflecting on his glasses as he stared at it unblinking. “Maybe I can splice in some code similar—”
Something smacked hard into his helmet and he lost his balance, the helmet went spinning off his head. All the air in his lungs rushed out as his side hit the cave floor. He flipped to his back, reaching for his pistol in its holster. When he looked up, he saw a player in blue holding a rock above his head the size of a cantaloupe, yelling inaudibly.
The sizable rock came down aimed at his head. Zeek rolled away and got off a couple of quick shots. One missed and hit the ceiling spraying dust on them, the other hit the man in the stomach where it left a black scorch mark. The man made a groaning noise as he held the wound and sank to his knees.
Zeek scrambled to his feet, pointing his blaster at him. He was supine and not moving. In the cave behind him, he heard shouting and calling. He quickly rounded the corner to see about a dozen players storming up the path holding clubs, torches, rocks, and rocks tied to clubs. He heard the whoosh of the flame as a torch went by his head and landed behind him. Ten feet below him, a fellow hacker was getting closer. Too close. Zeek sighted down his pistol lined it up with the yelling man. A laser bolt tore through his chest and sent him cartwheeling and rolling backwards down into the rest of the mob like a bowling ball into pins. Strike!
That should keep them busy for a moment, he thought.
He sprinted back to the terminal where he started typing as fast as humanly possible.
“New plan, make a door that locks behind me when I close it.”
Just a few more lines of code…
He could hear the men getting closer, their battle cries echoing up the large tunnel. Come on, come on. It’s amazing what you can remember when you have a group of nerds chasing you with primitive weapons.
A stone slammed into the wall next to him making him flinch and lift his arm up reflexively. He turned in time to see another baseball-sized stone hurling toward his face. Ducking under the deadly fast ball, he shot a couple of lasers at the closest ones. Hitting one in the shoulder, the other in the shin.
He spun and tapped the built-in keyboard so hard he thought he might break it. Afterward he stood by the wall, dodging to his right as a club crashed into the wall behind him, splintering into pieces. He shot his blaster wildly not even bothering to really look, less aim. He rolled under another rock that was thrown with scary speed.
I thought these were supposed to be computer nerds, not professional athletes, he thought as he turned his head to look at the wall behind him.
The door had appeared, and he grabbed the ring, pulling, using his foot pressed against the wall as leverage. He felt the door loosen, he was grunting with his efforts and almost fell over when the door finally cracked open.
The sound of wood clacking against his shoulder came to his ears before the pain from the club striking it. He staggered and his grip slipped off the giant ring. Without turning around, he wrapped his arm around his stomach and fired his gun. There were people yelling and scrambling for cover from what he heard.
He wrapped his fingers around the metal ring and with all his might, he pulled, bracing his foot against the wall once more. Losing his balance this time, he fell over and landed on his ass, at the same time a cudgel clacked against the wall above his head. He didn’t even look back, on all fours he squeezed and slithered into the doorway like a rat escaping a predator.
As soon as he stood up and went to close the door, a foot appeared in the threshold blocking his way. A club poked its way through the crack, whipping back and forth at his face. Zeek leaned backward but didn’t let go of the door as the weapon whooshed by his face. He pointed his blaster at the crack and fired a couple of shots, he heard a cry as the club fell to the floor and the foot retreated. With a grunt, he pulled the door close and heard the locking mechanism snap into place.
There were cries of profanity and pounding as his back slid down the door where he sat breathing hard and assessing his next move.
Ch. 9: String of Moments
He stared at his boots like a statue. It’s amazing the clarity you can attain after you’ve just finished fighting for your life.
His mind went back to a couple of nights ago when he sat on the living room floor, studying his black and white sneakers. Joey, Amber, and Ash were all laughing while he was lost in thought. It seemed whenever all the distractions cleared away, the emptiness of his depression would rear its ugly head. Usually it happened when he was by himself and coming down from whatever drugs he’d done the night before. This time was different, he’d realized that over these past few weeks, the string of moments like this were coming more frequently. He felt the void inside him that couldn’t be filled with drugs or anything external was because of her. Lisa. He felt like a part of himself was missing.
Now, sitting with his back against the metal door he felt it now, it was an odd sensation considering the circumstances. He thought that time would make it go away. If he just distracted himself long enough, he’d move on, but it hadn’t seemed to work.
And when his relationship started with Ash, surely that would fix this empty place inside him. He just needed someone new, but that didn’t seem to be the case either. He liked Ash. On paper, she was the perfect girlfriend for him; they had a lot in common. Maybe that was it? They had too much in common, they were too much alike? Screwed up geniuses with addict brains.
Lisa, on the other hand, was different from him; simply, she had her shit together. She wasn’t a broken person like him. The Yin to his Yang. He loved Lisa and, in this moment, he was kicking himself that he’d taken it all for granted and would do anything not to feel this void.
BANG! Something smacked the door hard and Zeek jumped to his feet. Okay, that’
s enough introspection. It won’t be long before they figure out how to open the door with that terminal. Better get moving.
The path wound upwards more until Zeek reached a dead end. He put his hand on the brown stonewall and cursed. There was no computer terminal nearby, no puzzle to be solved. A mouse in Tyr4nt’s maze, he thought. He backtracked and made his way near the door. There was a tunnel to the right he hadn’t seen before.
There was shouting coming from the door and a crack of light appeared in the doorframe. They’d breached his lock.
Quickly he jogged upward through the smaller tunnel until he came to an opening, a cavern. He saw a pile of boulders to his right. Since the cavern looked like something from Dante’s Inferno, he decided to scope things out from the cover of the rocks.
Tucked into the safety of the stones, he peered over one to look at the scene. Looks like I’m in the sixth ring of hell, just need to find a way to the seventh…
There was a lake of lava in the center of the cavern with a waterfall of molten rock pouring in from the ceiling. Ugly creatures with black scales covering their body circled the lava, using their massive arms like gorillas to chase each other around with snarls, and snaps of sharp teeth. One not too far from him was gnawing on a bone, its elongated bottom two front teeth looked like warthog tusks to him. Looks more like something out of World of Warcraft as opposed to Tolkien, he mused.
At this thought, the creature’s pointy ears perked up. Zeek went very still. Did it hear me? Slowly the creature turned its head to the entrance. He heard a low growl come from its throat and sank further down into the rocks.
To his side there were shouts and yells as the players entered the cavern, their weapons held high. By the time they realized their mistake, it was too late; trolls had circled around them and started attacking.
He had to give the mob some credit; for a bunch of nerds, they were pretty brave. They slashed, threw, and swung their weapons at the gorilla trolls to no avail.
The trolls tore into them like a pack of hungry wolves. The shouts of bravery and bravado turned to shrieks of pain and terror as the trolls tore their limbs off and sunk their fangs into their soft flesh.
Zeek had to force himself to move out from behind the rocks. One foot in front of the other, he told himself, this is my chance. He held up his blaster and slid along the wall around the lake as the hackers were massacred. He saw a large opening with what looked like sunlight coming through it.
He was inching towards it when a troll saw him. His legs pumped under him and his heart tried to beat out of his chest as he came to the opening. The creature was on his heels, he knew he couldn’t shoot it in the open because it would draw the others to swarm. A drop of blood in the ocean that would turn the trolls into sharks.
He was just inside the mouth of the opening when he felt the swipe of the thing’s claws hit his back. He stumbled forward as the claws bounced off his armor and cut through the adjacent wall. They slashed through the stone, but his armor held. Using his free hand to push himself up, he stumbled and ran up the tunnel as he regained his balance and held onto his blaster.
He turned when he heard a roar behind him and opened fire on the beast. The lasers only seemed to deflect off the black scales of its body and shoot into the walls. “Shit, shit, shit!” This wasn’t part of the plan. He was scrambling backwards now as he dodged a massive clawed hand. As he approached the opening, the light was bathing his white armor. He was practically crab walking but he held his gun out with a shaky hand.
The creature swiped at his boot, knocking him off balance even more. He fell onto his back; the troll’s roar was loud in his ears as he saw it jump into the air. Zeek aimed his gun at the gorilla troll’s face and fired. The troll’s head exploded, and he had to roll out of the way as its lifeless body came crashing down beside him.
Ch. 10: Tyr4nt
Slowly Zeek got to his feet, fixing his glasses. Can’t believe these are still on my face after all that! he thought.
His hand gripped the side of the opening and he emerged on the top of the volcano in one piece more or less. Amazing how real everything feels in VR. The warmth of the sun was on his face, the breeze rifled his jet-black hair; he had to push it out of his eyes. The breeze also held the smell of smoke and sulfur. A screech from above caught his attention, and he still couldn’t figure out what the circling creature was. Okay, the last one he could do without, but the details made him feel like it was actually happening to him.
“You made it. I wasn’t sure you would.”
Zeek held his hand over his eyes and saw a troll holding Ash near the opening of the volcano. When he moved forward, the man who spoke came into view. It was a Chinese man in a button-down shirt and khakis in his thirties. Zeek stopped. The Chinese man hovered in the air, he touched the joystick on the right arm of his chair and came closer to Zeek.
“You’re quite the hacker, Zeek the Geek. You’re the only one who was smart enough to hack through my barrier.” He gave a small clap and touched the joystick again, asking. “What? What’s that look about?”
Zeek had a deep frown on his face as if he were looking at a math problem he couldn’t solve. “You just look so…ordinary.”
A hearty laugh escaped the man’s lips. “What did you expect, a monster?”
“I don’t know. You’re Tyr4nt? I guess I expected…”
“A hacker? Me to look more like a hacker?” Tyr4nt cut in. “Now if you would be so kind, throw down your weapon, or your girlfriend here is going to take a dip.” He gestured to the opening of the volcano.
Zeek turned to Ash and said, “In the face,” as he tossed his pistol near her feet.
Tyr4nt gave another laugh and said, “I’m truly in awe of you, Zeek, but now it is time to die. Kill them!” He waved his hand at the troll, touching the joystick to make his hover chair float higher.
Ash writhed and turned in the troll’s grip. She kneed the thing between the legs, hard. The creature let out a groan and loosened its grip on her. She jumped and rolled, picking up the blaster.
Zeek was already reaching for the blaster in his back waistband when Ash shot the troll in the face. Pop went its head, little bits of brain flying everywhere. Its large gorilla-like body fell backward into the opening.
A green blur flew past Tyr4nt’s head. He fiddled with the control and went upward a little ways before another laser caught him square in the center of his chest. The Chinese hacker lay limp in his chair as it crashed to the top of the volcano. Zeek’s metal-gray pistol reflecting the light from the sun as he shielded his eyes from the dust and debris that flew everywhere like a bomb had gone off.
“TEAM PERSEPHONE WINS!” flashed in his eyes. He looked over at Ash, her body was turning into blue particles and rinsing into the sky. Beam me up, Scotty, was his last thought in the VR world.
Ch. 11: Win
When Zeek took off his visor, he was still in his capsule, he was breathing hard like he’d just come up for air after diving into the ocean. His body was slick with sweat. The officials were pulling the glass back from the capsule and helped him out. He took off his gloves and threw them on the floor.
The man who prattled on before in the DJ booth was making a beeline right for Zeek.
The announcer took his hand and said, “Congratulations, young man! You’ve just won the tournament! This is the first time in five years anyone has been able to defeat Tyr4nt. Congratulations!”
Zeek snatched his hand away, letting out a grunt. “What the hell? The server was hacked. Your safeguards failed!” He was practically shouting as Ash came to his side. He embraced her and whispered, “Are you okay?” And kissed the top of her head.
“I assure you there was no real danger. Even though our safeguards were compromised—”
Now that Ash was up to speed, she jumped in, “We could have been mind wiped! Why didn’t you shut down the server and restart the tournament?”
“Our admins were keeping an eye on things and if anyth
ing had gotten too out of hand—”
“Your admins couldn’t shut it down, could they?” she asked, interrupting. She glared at him with her hands on her hips. “We want our prize money in our bank accounts tonight by midnight. 12:00 AM not 12:01, 12, or we start talking to lawyers about emotional damages—”
The announcer waved his arms in the air with a laugh, Zeek noticed the sweat forming on his brow. “That won’t be necessary. We’ll have your money in your account within the hour. And with our sincerest apologies, we’d like to thank you for competing.” He tried to shake Zeek’s hand again, but they turned on their heels and walked away.
“Nicely done,” Zeek whispered as they headed to the door. Joey, Amber, and Nos were following, all smiles and congratulations.
Joey kissed the side of Zeek’s head and said, “Woohoo, time to party!”
“You think we could have gotten more money?” Ash asked Zeek as he opened the doors.
* * * * *
In Joey’s living room, the music was loud, the beer was flowing, and the laughter rang in Zeek’s ears.
Joey passed Nos a joint. “Can you believe that shit? Our boy here was incredible, fucking incredible!” he said.
“Hey, I killed a troll! And I got the last door open! If it wasn’t for my Janix coding, we would still be stuck in that cave,” Ash said, half joking.
“Yeah, that goes without saying,” Joey replied. “You two were incredible. To Team Persephone!”
They raised their glasses and echoed his sentiment. Zeek took a long drink from his beer.
Nos passed the joint to Ash and said, “I have to admit, I’m impressed. When Ash told me she was teaming up with you, I wasn’t sure about it, but she said you were the best. Now I see she was right.” He had a sly, fox-like grin and added, “If you ever need a favor, anything, you just ask and consider it done.”
Nos took Zeek’s hand, and he looked over Nos’ shoulder at Joey who was making eye contact and shaking his head no. The doorbell rang and Nos let go of Zeek’s hand.
Moon Base One: Tyr4nt: A Prequel Story Page 4
