by Mia Archer
Maybe she wouldn’t be one of the assholes who had their back against the wall when my revolution came. After all, she seemed to be warming up to me. Though there was still a part of me that had a sneaking suspicion that part of the reason she was starting to warm up to me was because she was trying to get info for Chelsey and Tori.
“Think I’m gonna call it a night,” I said. “But you bet your ass I’m going to be back here soon.”
“Maybe I’ll see you around,” she said, biting her lip as she said it and causing a little fluttering of butterflies to go off in my stomach.
Well that was certainly an interesting development.
As I stepped out of the Etherea lab I paused. I turned in time to see Jessica leaning back, and then a steadily pulsing glow appeared beside her. A moment later her eyes were glassy as they moved around. She still blinked, but it was like she was in some weird open eyed REM sleep.
She was logged into the game. She must’ve been spending time gaming while she was down here babysitting the lab no one ever came to. If that was the case then I could totally understand why she was annoyed that someone might come along and force her to actually do some work.
Also, if this was what I looked like when I was playing the game then it was totally fucking creepy. I could understand why they built individual rooms. I really hoped Etherea fixed that so people’s eyes were closed while they were logged into the thing in the near future. The thought of me sitting with my eyes open when I couldn’t see anything was creepy, for all that I knew my eyelids weren’t going to do much to stop damage if something happened while I was asleep.
The walk through campus was pretty short. Though it was also just a touch odd. I was used to bigger crowds being out and about at this time of night.
Most of the people going here had gotten here because their parents paid to make sure they got in, after all, which meant they didn’t have any problem with partying it up when they were supposed to be studying.
Why bother to study when you knew you had a job at whatever your parents’ company was when this was all said and done?
Campus looked different tonight, though. Sure the lights had gone down just a bit from up above, but that wasn’t it. No, the problem was campus was deserted. Nobody was out and about, and it was fucking weird. It reminded me of a zombie movie or something. Or maybe a zombie video game.
Like we’re talking I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if I rounded a corner to find a bunch of perfectly beautiful zombies staring at me for a beat before they all started groaning and coming at me because I had the sweet human flesh and brains they desired.
Only when I rounded the corner to go to the cafeteria nothing like that happened. I breathed a sigh of relief even as I thought about how ridiculous I was being. It’s not like there’d been a zombie outbreak in at least fifty years, and even that one had been a custom virus manufactured to turn people into creatures that resembled the walking dead without actually being the walking dead.
It turned out an outbreak of zombies that were actually living people under the influence of a virus that was created by some asshole who was a little too fond of ancient George Romero movies weren’t all that terrifying since those designer zombies could be killed just as easily as a regular person, for all that it’d been a minor inconvenience when the authorities first encountered something out of a horror movie for the first time to read the history books about the incident.
I stepped into the cafeteria which was empty, though that wasn’t all that weird. The place was always empty because nobody who was anybody ate here. Which was a polite way of saying that the only people who ate here were the rizons, and I didn’t see many of them around since we were all on different schedules.
I’d tried making friends with them once upon a time, but it turns out other rizons weren’t all that interested in getting all buddy buddy with each other. I wasn’t sure if that was because they’d absorbed some of the self-loathing that was part and parcel of being here at the Academy, or if it was that they were terrified that gathering in groups would make us more appealing targets for the rich assholes.
I walked up to the line, totally ready to enjoy some pizza or maybe tacos or something, but to my surprise the only thing available was the autovendor. My eyes narrowed. What the fuck was going on that the autovendor was the only option?
Autovendor food was okay, but it was nothing compared to the food that was prepared by the actual cooks here. Sure none of the students but scholarship cases actually came here, but that didn’t mean they didn’t do their best. Their best was pretty fucking good considering the clientele they were supposed to be catering to.
“What the fuck is going on here?” I muttered.
“Haven’t you heard?” a voice said from behind me. “Everyone’s playing Etherea. I heard there are a couple of profs who’ve even gone so far as to cancel classes until people have had a chance to work it out of their system.”
I jumped. I’m not ashamed to admit it. I’d like to see someone not jump when they were snuck up on like that. I wheeled around to see Katie staring at me. Her smile was radiant as always. The rest of her was just as radiant. A reminder of the kind of fun I wasn’t going to get to have while I was up here in the elevator.
“Seriously?” I asked. “They’re cancelling class?”
“It’s an epidemic,” she said. “Everyone who’s anyone is getting into the game, and even some people who aren’t anybody.”
She winked at me. From anyone else that would’ve sounded like a really bitchy thing to say, but coming from Katie it sounded like the simple truth that it was.
“Tell me about it,” I said. “Thanks for the tip about that lab, by the way. I’ve been having a good time.”
“We can talk about that in a minute,” she said, turning to the autovendor. “Two tacos, please. Chips and salsa too. And what the hell. I’ll go for the queso dip as well.”
I looked at her order with envy. No doubt she had a couple of implants in her system that made sure she could eat stuff like that without ballooning up and ruining her perfect figure. Which must’ve been nice.
I had to lose weight the old fashioned way. Though there were times when I wondered why I bothered since there wasn’t a chance I was getting any around here with the way the social scene was set up at the Academy.
“Care to join me for dinner?” Katie asked.
I blinked with just a touch of surprise. Sure Katie was one of the only people I considered a friend around here, for certain definitions of the word friend, but that was mostly because she was the only person I knew up here who would actually talk to me.
That’d never extended to actually sitting down and having a meal with her though. Or interacting beyond pleasantries between classes. I looked around the cafeteria to make sure there wasn’t anyone filming what might be an ill-advised prank video or something that’d no doubt be all over the Academy soon enough if I was stupid enough to fall for it, but the place was empty.
If they were doing a hidden camera thing then they were really fucking good about hiding that camera.
“I guess I could do that,” I said.
“I guess I could do that,” Katie said, talking in a deep voice with a look on her face that made it clear she was having some fun at my expense. “Come on. We have to talk anyway.”
Well that was interesting. First the girl in the lab giving me the time of day when she didn’t want anything to do with me previously, and now her was Katie actually sitting down to have a chat with me over some food.
I wasn’t sure what was going on here, but I wasn’t going to knock it. Besides, I was curious what it was we needed to talk about that was so important.
17
Dinner Date
“So there’s been some interesting stuff going down in Etherea today,” Katie said.
I almost choked on the pizza I’d grabbed from the autovendor. Pizza that was better than just about anything I could get down on the surface, for all that it was mad
e by a machine and not a human.
Yeah, there’d been some stuff going down in Etherea today. I’d seen all of them going down on each other while I was in that room. I had a screenshot that proved what was going down in that room, and a lot of them had been pretty pissed off about me getting that screenshot for some reason.
“I don't know what you're talking about,” I said, though the big red blush on my cheeks revealed me for the liar I was. Damn it.
“Now that’s an interesting reaction,” Katie said. “Is there something you want to tell me?”
“That this pizza can be classified as a deadly weapon,” I said, coughing a couple of chunks of cheese up in time to keep them from entering my windpipe.
“Are you sure that’s all you want to tell me?” she asked, leaning a little closer.
I couldn’t be sure, but I almost thought I saw her pupils dilating. She also seemed to take in a breath that had me even more curious. Had something happened while I was in the game that was suddenly making me irresistible to people outside the game or something?
“Um, why would you think I had anything to do with anything crazy that was going down in that game?” I asked.
I figured playing things nice and innocent was the way to go. She didn’t have anything on me. Sure she was leaning in and acting like she had something on me, but I’d learned a lot from my time down on the surface, for all that I’d been the model student type who ended up making it off the surface.
One of the first things I’d learned down there was when the cops came sniffing around acting like they knew something about something you’d done, you clammed up and didn’t say a fucking thing if you knew what was good for you.
Sure Katie was a hell of a lot better looking than any of the cops I’d ever seen sniffing around trying to get their perp down on the surface, but the idea was still the same.
I couldn’t help but think about Chelsey and Tori and how they’d been sniffing around the lab earlier. That couldn’t help but lead me to thoughts about how they might’ve figured out that I had something to do with what happened at that inn. And if they really were the succubus and the blue hottie then I didn’t want them knowing that.
Which meant I wasn’t going to say a damn thing to Katie if I could avoid it. She'd always been nice enough to me, but I had no way of knowing whether or not she was working for them.
“I didn't say I thought you had anything to do with anything crazy,” she said. “I just said there was interesting stuff going down. Guilty conscience much?”
Shit.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, taking another bite of pizza that conveniently meant I didn’t have to talk to her for as long as it took me to chew.
“Oh I think you do know what I’m talking about,” she said, her eyes twinkling.
“What would make you say that?” I asked.
“Because I happened to tell you about the Etherea lab this morning after class,” she said. “And I know for a fact that you weren’t in any other classes for the rest of the day. At least not any of the classes we share.”
It was a surprise to find out she kept track of me in those classes.
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” I said. “Lots of people were playing the game today. What makes you think I had anything to do with anything weird that may or may not have happened? And that’s not admitting that I know anything, either.”
I said that last bit while spearing a breadstick at her. I didn’t want her to think I was giving something away.
“Yeah?” she asked. “So what were you doing in the game today?”
“I was in the starter zone trying to do some quest that had something to do with the goblins,” I said. “Getting gold from them or something like that.”
“Oh yeah?” she asked. “And you were so busy doing that quest that you didn’t have anything to do with a massive explosion that happened out in front of the capital city for the humans?”
“That’s about the size of it,” I said. Then continued when it was clear she had no idea what the fuck I was on about. “That means that’s what happened. And I’m not changing my story.”
“Uh-huh,” she said. “So if you were busy doing the goblin questline do you want to tell me what weapon you chose after you finished liberating the mine? I’m assuming you had no trouble getting one of the asshole mid level players who hangs around there offering to run people through the mine to do your bidding, right? I really hope you went with one who takes gold and not one who works for Calixia. Bad business getting mixed up with that red bitch.”
I nearly choked again as she mentioned a red bitch. I could think of a red bitch I got mixed up with today, and it sounded ominous that Katie was specifically warning me against that.
That also explained why there was a guy who was a slightly higher level with two lower level players.
“I got by just fine,” I lied.
“So what weapon did you choose?” she asked, leaning forward and searching my eyes.
“The warhammer,” I lied.
It was the first thing that came to mind. I don’t know why. Maybe I was thinking about some of the weapons I’d seen being wielded by that angry mob following me through the starter zone.
“The warhammer,” she said, her voice flat. “One handed or two handed?”
“Two handed,” I said.
“Right,” she said. “And what class did you choose, again?”
“Bladedancer,” I said, without thinking about it until her hand slammed down on the table with such a loud smack that it had me jumping all over again.
“I knew it!” she shouted. “You are so full of shit!”
Fuck! I’d fucked up, and the real bitch was I didn’t even have to know all that much about the game or its mechanics, which I totally didn’t, to know exactly how I’d fucked up.
Bladedancer was a class that relied on stealth and shadows to sneak up on people and deliver a shitload of damage. It was the kind of class that could be found in just about every MMO that’d ever existed because who didn’t like kicking ass by dealing a shitload of damage from the shadows? That’d been the whole fucking appeal that drew me to the thing in the first place, for all that it’d been a bust when I actually got behind the wheel.
Not that all that many people got behind the wheel these days in a world where most everything was automated and driven by computers, but whatever.
The point is a stealth class like a Bladedancer wasn’t the kind of class that would wield a two handed warhammer. By admitting that I’d picked something like that I’d pretty much admitted that I hadn’t done the starting quest.
“Fuck,” I said. “Am I that fucking obvious?”
“Definitely considering you don’t get a weapon at the end of the goblin questline,” Katie said, winking at me and wiggling her eyebrows.
My mouth fell open. She’d played me!
“You sneaky bitch!” I said.
“You’re the sneaky bitch,” she said. “Playing a Bladedancer! What the hell were you thinking?”
“I was thinking I wanted to be the kind of badass who struck from the shadows and made the assholes attacking me regret the day they decided to cross me.”
She rolled her eyes. “So you’re basically a walking and talking gamer cliche, is what you’re telling me.”
“I resemble that remark,” I said.
She leaned forward again, but not before pausing to look around the room as though she expected someone to be listening in on us. Then again, considering what I’d heard from Chelsey and Tori earlier I guess it wasn’t all that odd to think that someone might be listening in on us.
Not to mention there were all sorts of spy devices and miniature drones that could be used to watch people when they thought they were in the clear. All those things were strictly banned around here, of course, but it’s not like something being banned was enough to keep the assholes here from buying and using them.
Not when
the worst they could expect was having whatever drone they’d used confiscated. That sort of stuff cost more than I expected to make for most of my life, but it was a drop in the bucket for the assholes up here. Which was pretty much the story of my entire fucking experience in this place.
“So do you want to tell me what the fuck you were doing blowing that inn up?”
I looked around as well. Thought about Chelsey and Tori and what they might do to me in the game and out of the game if they had any idea who I was or what I’d done. Then I turned back to KatI'd and tried to school my face to the most neutral expression I could come up with.
“What makes you think I had anything to do with an inn exploding?” I asked.
“Don’t bullshit me,” she said. “I knew that was you when I saw you in the inn. Sure the whole butch look threw me off just a little, but I knew that had to be you.”
I blinked a couple of times, and then it hit me exactly what she was talking about.
“You were the woman who was stumbling around drunk off her ass bitching about people making out!” I said.
“None other than,” she said. “So does that mean I’m right in thinking you’re the infamous inn destroyer?”
“Maybe,” I said. “I guess whether or not I’m the infamous inn destroyer depends on what you’re going to do with that information.”
“That depends too,” she said, her voice suddenly sounding very casual. So casual that I knew there was something going on here, and I couldn’t be sure if that something was a good thing or a bad thing for me. “I heard you might’ve gotten into one of the parties that’s going down on the upper level most nights. Can you tell me anything about that?”
I suddenly felt like I was playing a dangerous game. The kind of dangerous game that could get me in some real trouble out here in the real world.
The people all around me had resources. If they really didn’t want information about their little parties getting out of the game world then they could do some stuff in the real world to make my life a living hell. Hell, they could pay off the kind of people who could make sure that my life wasn’t a living hell any longer because I’d no longer be living.
