Lost in the Game

by Christopher Keene

  “It’s a Tertiatier dungeon?” David exclaimed in horror. “He made Heaven’s Coliseum a Tertiatier dungeon? Is he mad?”

  Brock shook his head. “More like a genius.”

  I nodded in agreement. “It’s no wonder this place is more popular. Windsor just introduced an aspect of gambling to his game, where players risk losing their most valuable items but also afford to gain their opponent’s stronger items as well.”

  Chloe didn’t comment. She simply stepped up to the Gateway and walked through. We followed after her, appearing in a lobby designed to look like the surrounding amphitheater of a steampunk racing track. I moved over to the screens above the desk, squinting to see either Siena’s name or mine. Neither of us were on there. I walked over to one of the interactive screens and flicked through the records but found nothing.

  “They must have started clean for this one,” Chloe said, looking at it over my shoulder. “It makes sense. It wouldn’t have been fair if they just transferred over your Survival Records to here considering you didn’t risk your items the same way the people on here did.”

  “It’s not just that,” I said. “If Siena isn’t on this list, it means she hasn’t competed since our match.”

  Keri smiled at me from across the screen, her first smile for a long time. “She’s been waiting for you, then.”

  We made our way up to the stands and watched as a Battle Royal took place. Another difference, it seemed, was that guns could be used in this Coliseum. Several of the Range fighters were pelting their enemies with bullets from across the pit.

  I guess Shardik did make a good point for how pointless it was to keep such an era-specific consistency considering how fast an archer like him could fire his arrows. Then again, guns are allowed in steampunk era.

  As one of the Warriors in the pit fell, I noticed how the items he dropped after he exploded weren’t picked up by any of the other players. At first I thought that the items would just be drawn toward whoever had killed them, but then I saw that there were other items on the dust from the players that had fallen previously.

  “So the last one standing gets all the items from the fallen,” Brock said, sounding grim. “Really adds meaning to the saying ‘to the victor go the spoils.’”

  “You can say that again,” David said, eyeing up the items. “There are a few down there that I wouldn’t mind myself.”

  Keri eyed me. “Considering you’re going to lose on purpose, it would probably be smarter to fight Siena with only disposable equipment.”

  “It’s not so easy as that,” I countered. “After all, I have to put on a realistic enough performance that she thinks she won fairly.”

  David eyed me in amusement. “Honestly, that sounds harder than winning normally.”

  Chloe winked at me. “And on top of all that, you have to recruit her to help us find the locations of the photos, remember?”

  “I didn’t agree to that.”

  She grinned evilly. “You didn’t have to.”

  Chapter 27: Rally

  It was noon on Sunday by the time we landed. After what we just been through, needless to say I was happy to be back. The five of us parted ways at the airport. Chloe and I took a taxi back to the facility while Brock dropped David and Keri off in his truck. I had no doubt that the three of them would be in the Dream State tomorrow to watch my rematch against Siena, and no doubt they would be entertained by my dramatic performance as I did everything in my power to make her the winner.

  Is this really what I’m focusing on now? What about the betas? Chloe wants me to convince Siena to help us find them, but after what happened to Keri, I’m still not sure how wise it would be to involve her.

  For now, I decided it was time to tell Windsor everything I had learned on my trip. As the cab pulled up outside the facility, I paid the driver and we got out. I only had the clothes on my back so I could keep my Dream Engine in my carry bag, as well as the drone suitcase, one drone short. I wasn’t all too keen to see Windsor’s reaction when I told him we needed to sacrifice one, but if my boss had taught me anything, it was that if you need to deliver some bad news, make sure you put the right spin on it.

  He might even like the tale of how we rigged our infiltration of the lab like a game. Might even give him some ideas.

  Chloe and I swiped our cards to open the gate and walked into the facility before any of the dwindling protesters could harass us. Being that it was the weekend, Wanda wasn’t at her desk. Instead, I was surprised to find Lisa had taken her place and was eating lunch while listening to music over her headphones.

  I smiled as I came in and saw that she wasn’t actually working but just looking through the Wona system after having hacked into Wanda’s computer. As we walked up to her and I slammed the suitcase onto the table, she jumped with a start and took off her headphones.

  “Noah, are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

  I eyed her suspiciously. “I doubt security would like you looking into Wanda’s computer like that.”

  I spun the monitor and around to see what she was looking at and smiled. She was trying to find out if she had passed the tryouts to get into Cipher. All of my old responsibilities as the leader of that team returned to me.

  “Looks like you got in,” I said and spun the screen back. “Congratulations.”

  She rolled her eyes at me and said, “I know,” before returning to eat her lunch.

  “Any chance you could tell Win that we’re back?” I asked.

  Lisa picked up the desk phone and handed it to me before pushing a button. I put the phone to my ear and heard it click.

  “Noah!” Windsor said, sounding a lot more jovial than when I spoke to him in Tutuala. “Good to see you managed to get that case back to me.”

  My browed knitted together and I looked around. “How did you . . .”

  Then I saw a security camera peering our way.

  “Come up. I’m sure you have a lot to tell me.”

  “I’m going to take a shower first. I was forced to leave my stuff behind, remember?”

  “Ah, yes. Good idea. I will see you in my office shortly, then.”

  I put the phone and down and looked at Lisa. “I’m technically your boss now, right?”

  She took one of her headphones out. “I guess so.”

  “Then do me a favor and get whatever they’re serving in the food court and bring it to my room.”

  “Wait.” She sat upright and looked at Chloe. “I have to do that kind of stuff now?”

  Chloe smirked. “Make that two of whatever they’re serving.”

  Leaving our new teammate confused by our gentle hazing, Chloe and I ascended to our rooms.

  ***

  We came to Windsor’s office on the sixth floor just over an hour after we had called in. Yet as we moved into his office, he didn’t look too upset about it. He seemed eager to hear about what had learned.

  “So, how did it go? Did you find anything?”

  I told him everything that had happened on our trip, embellishing our most desperate moments as much as I could to justify the destruction of one of his expensive drones. As he listened, Windsor simply nodded. He only interrupted me once after I told him about going into hiding after Philippe was shot.

  Even then, he only frowned and said, “That was smart. There’s a good chance they would have paid off the police to frame you and have you all locked up instead. Sonics has more than enough influence to do something like that if they need to cover their backsides.”

  I continued the story, finally concluding with, “There was no way of getting through the vent, and thus getting the next clue, without sacrificing David’s Ghost Drone.”

  He nodded, rubbing a beard that wasn’t there. “They had a self-destruct mechanism so they could not be traced, but I can clearly see the argument you are making for why you used it the way you did. They had a purpose, and you used them for that purpose. I can’t really as
k for much more than that. But that didn’t really answer my second question. Clearly you didn’t find the beta testers, only photos of places you believe they might be. How do you plan on finding them?”

  I looked down in thought. “Honestly, I don’t know. Even though the footage is HD, the pictures of the doors we got from it are grainy when zoomed in on. An imagine search won’t work on them either.” My lips pulled inward in a grimace. “We’re kind of stuck at the moment.”

  “Here we go again with Mr. Doom ‘n’ Gloom,” Chloe blurted. “Our plan starts with finding anyone who can trace these photos back to their locations. For all we know, they might even be nearby.”

  I stared down at my hands, wondering if Chloe was trying to ignore the shaky ground we were standing on by relying on such photos, or if she truly believed following this lead would bear fruit. After everything we did to get them, I didn’t think Chloe could admit to herself that the most direct lead to the betas was a far sight from reliable. Even so, it was our only chance.

  “There’s a small possibility that will work, so we might as well try. Right now there’s a duel that I have to lose.”

  Windsor raised an eyebrow. “Lose?”

  “He wants to get on Siena’s good side so she’ll help us, and he thinks losing to her at the Coliseum will convince her.” Chloe frowned at me, looking confused by my somber reaction to this, then smiled back at Windsor. “Oh, by the way, I was impressed with how quickly you set the new Coliseum up in Tertiatier.”

  Windsor leaned back in his chair, looking pleased. “Well, we already had the specs stored in our archive; I just had to get my graphic designers to give it that steampunk flare.”

  “Just one question. Why did you decide to make it Tertiatier?”

  “The truth, Chloe, is that our last two expansions nearly killed our budget, not to mention slaughtered our design team with the marathon of a workload they had to pull off.” He twirled his fingers in the air. “My thought was that to give them a break I would add some real competition with real stakes so that interest in the game can be focused on that side of things before we’re expected to design even more dungeons and places to explore. Who knows?” He frowned in thought. “If you find the beta testers, I might hire some of them on to design some new games. After all, many of the concepts they came up with we are still using to this day.”

  I remembered Brock’s stories of the fun he and his team had had making their games.

  “Would you consider hiring on Brock for that?” I asked. “It was the one part of beta trials he seemed to like the most.”

  Windsor grinned. “I’ve always told you that you should hire your friends, Noah. If you think he would prefer a job in the graphic design department, the more the merrier.”

  “Cool. Well, time to face the music.”

  Chloe turned to follow me, but Windsor stopped us.

  “This has something to do with the ability I gave you, doesn’t it?” he said, clearly guessing.

  I turned. “It does. It’s way too overpowered. If you are considering adding it to the game, maybe turn it into a rare item that only lasts a small period of time. Otherwise it will break the game.”

  “A rare item, you say?” He nodded at the idea. “Noted. Oh, and I almost forgot. While you were away, we figured out how the Screamers force people to log off. It has something to do with a high noise frequency in the inner ear affecting the DSD. I’m not a physician, so the exact reason goes right over my head, but we made some adjustments to the Dream Engines that might help you stay in-game.” His eyes squinted. “I think the techies called it an inner ear stabilizer, and no, I don’t know how it works, let alone even if it works yet. We won’t know until we test it.” He bit his lip and stood up quickly, as though a thought had just struck him. “But if it does work, we’ll have to do a mass recall of the product . . . Vanessa!”

  We might have just found a way to avoid being logged off by Screamers, and he’s more worried about how much this oversight is going to cost him.

  Seeing him wrapped up in his revelations, Chloe and I left Windsor’s office. I needed to prepare myself for my fight this evening. However, I also knew I needed to share the videos with Dice and Data to help with tracking down the photos’ locations. Although it was a faint hope at best, Dice had worked miracles in the past when it came to digital files. We reached our rooms and collected our Dream Engines, then descended to the basement level and made our way to Cipher’s GC. Again, Dice was there looking at his laptop, so engrossed in his work that he didn’t even look up when I entered.

  “Ah, hi.”

  He replied with a grunt.

  I was about to ask him to analyze the pictures we found, but hesitated. I could already feel the heartache of hearing him saying, “I can’t do anything with these.”

  Knowing our match was coming up, Siena sprang to mind once again. She had always been pretty tech savvy, at least when it came to hacking the Dream State. There was a lot higher chance she would know a way to find the photos’ locations than anyone else I could think of. However, after how I beat her last time, there was a low probability she would help me.

  Not to mention the fact that the photo quality from the drone footage might end up making them unrecognizable.

  It seemed Chloe didn’t share my reservations about finding out. She slammed her Dream Engine helmet on the pullout table next to Dice’s monitor and pulled out the SD card. “Alright, Dice, you’re gonna look at some photos, enhance them, and find out where they were taken from, got it?”

  Dice eyed her in annoyance. “You do know that whole “image enhancing” thing is science fiction BS, right? You can’t enhance data that’s not there.” His gaze then met mine. “I suppose if it’s an order that I can try and render them a little. But unless there’s a street sign in them, which there doesn’t seem to be from what I can make out, I doubt it’ll help us find their locations.”

  Putting on a brave face for Chloe, I nodded my assent. “Try anyway.”

  “Goody,” he replied sarcastically as he slid the SD card into his laptop. “Nice to see you both, too, by the way.”

  I sat down on my recliner. “So I heard our guys found a way to not be forced to logged off by the Screamers.”

  “The Overseers did. It’s just a theory so far. None of us have run into a Screamer since it’s been implemented to see if it actually works yet.”

  Chloe shrugged. “Who knows? We might be able to actually have a conversation with them and get more hints on where those street pictures came from. Any chance you could load them onto our Dream State accounts so we can share them in-game?”

  “Give me a second, geez.”

  I shook my head in amusement, once again noticing how Dice took Chloe’s requests as commands. Patting him on the shoulder to get his attention, I gave him my most winning smile.

  “We put a heck load of money and effort into getting these images. I’m relying on you, buddy.”

  Dice smirked. “Glad you’re back. It was almost getting peaceful around here without you two to give me more work.”

  “Glad to help.”

  “Alright, so that will clean up the photos. Now for figuring out where they are.” Chloe’s brow furrowed in thought.

  I shrugged. “Data?”

  “Alright then, you ask Siena and I’ll go ask Data.”

  “Wait, shouldn’t I be the one to ask Data and you be the one to ask Siena?” I raised my palms. “I mean, after last time . . .”

  Chloe shook her head. “You need to patch things up with her. If she ends up deciding to help us, I can’t risk your quarrel being the thing that changes her mind, particularly if your fight with her goes badly.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “That sounds like an order. I thought I was the leader?”

  “And you’ve been acting like a wimp since we got back, so I’ve picking up your slack for you. We can’t waste time, Noah. Talk to Siena. You need to convince her to hel
p us.” She smiled slyly at me. “Or am I acting above my station?”

  I exhaled and shook my head. “No, you’re right. I’ll ask her. But remember, if my fight with her does go badly, there’s a chance she might refuse.”

  “Get her to agree before then.”

  I had to admit she had a point, yet if I knew Siena, even if she agreed, her winning or losing could be the deciding factor. Not only would I have to give her a good enough reason to agree, I had to fight her in a way that would make sure she would follow through. Getting her on board would be tough, but it was our best chance, and although dragging Keri in had been a mistake, this would be different. It wouldn’t put her in any danger, and if we were cautious, we wouldn’t put anyone else at risk.

  We can only hope for the best. That’s the only way we’re going to move forward.

  The time for our match was close at hand. I bit my lip and nodded. After taking some DSD, I let the recliner drop me into a resting position as the curtains blacked out the room. As I pulled down the helmet, I noticed that the sides had been altered and guessed it was for the modifications Windsor had mentioned.

  The Dream State was pulled over me, and I found myself yet again on Heaven’s bridges.

  I sent Siena a message: “Chloe and I need your help with something regarding finding the locations of the Screamers. Will you help us?”

  Siena_the_Blade: “I’m not going to let you talk your way out of our match.”

  I was insulted that she thought I would, but simply replied: “I’m not trying to. We sincerely need your skills to find something online.”

  Siena_the_Blade: “Flattery won’t work on me, Noah. I’m not so easily distracted.”

  I gritted my teeth. “Damn it, Siena, can you take me seriously for just this once!”

  Siena_the_Blade: “I mean, if you really are being serious, don’t you think it would be better to talk about it face to face and not over a software that’s easily bugged? That is, if you’re even going to show up.”