by Alex Knight
“You’re going to die, Kaiden,” Manson shouted, taking another step closer. “You’re going to die in here.”
Kaiden’s pulse thrummed, and for a moment, his eyes slipped past Manson and focused on the exit, just beyond. And then something snapped inside him. His fear boiled away, replaced instead with a burning anger.
Manson raised a guard’s taser baton and switched it on, the weapon crackling in a series of sharp, violent snaps.
“Any last words?” he asked.
“Shield Charge,” Kaiden said, looking at the ground.
Manson frowned.
“What?”
“Shield Charge,” Kaiden said again, then scooped up a discarded riot shield by his foot, let out a primal battle cry, and charged forward. He ran with everything he had, fueled by the injustice of his sentence, of Bernstein’s murder, of everything he’d been through.
Manson lunged, stabbing with the baton, but it slid ineffectually off the shield as Kaiden plowed into him. The blow drove the criminal backward, stumbling and off balance. Kaiden didn’t let up, however. He pushed even harder, leaning into the shield until he felt Manson slam into the railing, flip, and fall over the edge.
Manson's scream was drowned out almost immediately by the roar of the riot as he plummeted several stories down, slammed into another railing, and was sent tumbling away, lost in the carnage of the riot below.
Maybe I missed my calling as a shield warden.
Kaiden dropped the riot shield and sprinted the rest of the way to the exit.
A smile crept onto his face, but happy wasn’t the right word to describe how he felt. More...relieved.
He caught up to Titus at the start of the hallway, a look of concern plastered across the big man’s face until their eyes met. He breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
“Cafeteria’s just around the corner,” Titus said, then led on.
They reached it after a mad dash, then pushed through the cafeteria’s double doors.
It was immediately obvious something was wrong.
Rubble coated the floor, great chunks of stone and burned plastic, and smoke lingered in the room, burning Kaiden’s eyes and nose with its acrid scent.
Something caught under his foot and he fell, landing on something soft. Something warm. And wet.
A body, he realized, rolling away in horror.
It was a prison guard. But he hadn’t been killed by the inmates. He was wearing full body armor, but nonetheless, a hole the size of a baseball had been blown through his chest.
More corpses were scattered across the room. All of them armored guards, and all of them apparently dead from bullet wounds.
“This was military grade stuff that put them down,” Titus said, inspecting one of the dead men.
“What happened here?” Kaiden asked, taking in the bodies of several inmate cooks now, their white aprons stained with soot and blood.
He’d become so used to seeing digital bodies in Nova, he almost wasn’t affected by these. But then the smell hit his nose. The smell of blood, coppery and sharp, and the smell of burned flesh, disgustingly similar to that of an overcooked meal.
“Is Zelda here?” he asked, a terrible thought striking him. “Do you see her body?”
A panic-filled minute followed as Kaiden searched the floor, dreading that any moment he’d find her lying amongst the other corpses.
“What are you doing?”
Kaiden froze, then turned.
Zelda stood at the back of the room, very much alive.
Relief flooded through Kaiden as he let out a long breath. He realized that he was seeing her for real for the first time. She looked exactly like her avatar did, same dark hair, same face, same eyes. The only difference was in the real world she was panting and sweaty, and her eyes were wide with what he thought might be fear.
“Come on!” She waved them over. “We have to leave. Now!”
“Where are your friends?” Kaiden asked as he jogged over. “I thought they were meeting us here?”
A soldier in full combat gear stood up from among the corpses, and Kaiden found the barrel of a rifle in his face before he even had time to blink. Several more soldiers followed, training their guns on Titus as well.
“This them?” one of them asked.
Zelda nodded.
“Very well.” The soldier turned to Kaiden, his eyes hidden behind a reflective pair of smart combat glasses. “Congratulations, you’re being rescued. Give me your hands.” He produced a pair of handcuffs.
Kaiden recoiled and Titus cursed, stepping back as well.
“This is just a precaution,” one of the soldiers said. “You’re being rescued.”
“Funny. It feels exactly like it did the day I was arrested,” Titus said, snarling as he spoke.
“Do it,” Zelda said. “Just trust me, please.”
Kaiden sighed, then extended his wrists. Titus cursed again, but did the same.
What choice do we have? It’s this, or back to prison. We’ve sided with the rebels, for better or...He looked at the bodies around them. Or for worse.
“Did they kill all these people?” Kaiden asked Zelda as the handcuffs snapped around his wrists, then auto-tightened uncomfortably tight.
Zelda frowned, remorse in her eyes.
“It wasn’t supposed to go down like this.”
“Alright, time to move. Let’s go!” The soldiers led them into a supply room. A hole had been blown in the wall, revealing an open courtyard. More dead prison guards were scattered throughout. At the center of them, a tank-sized hovercraft waited, engines whirring with a high-pitched whine so loud Kaiden could hardly hear himself think. An enormous military grade mounted gun faced the prison wall, it’s barrel still spinning as it cooled down.
“Focus on the good,” Zelda said, pausing a moment before they headed out. “We’re getting out of here.”
Epilogue
The hovercraft lifted up and out of the courtyard, the prison dwindling beneath them, then disappearing entirely as they shot off toward the horizon.
“I thought we agreed not to kill anyone!” Zelda shouted as soon as they were underway. “This was supposed to be a quiet extraction!”
“They fired first,” one of the soldiers grunted. “We answered back.”
“I saw civilians in there. Shot all the same.”
“You ever heard of collateral damage?” The soldier shrugged. “Sometimes people get hurt. It wasn’t you or your friends, so what’s the big deal?”
“W-what’s the big deal?” Zelda spluttered, disbelief clear in her face. “I’m taking this straight up the chain once we’re back.”
The soldier laughed and several others joined him.
“Have fun with that.”
Zelda cursed, then snatched a portable VR headset from a nearby soldier’s hands.
“I have to open this file, but you haven’t heard the last of this.”
The soldier waved her words away and turned to talk to his friend.
Kaiden frowned at the whole exchange. Clearly Zelda was not as high-ranking as he’d assumed. She’d given him the impression -- or maybe he’d just imagined – that she was someone important among the rebels. But from what he’d just seen, he was a lot less sure.
“Hold still,” one of the soldiers commanded, standing over Kaiden with a knife in hand.
“Why?” Kaiden asked, recoiling from the imposing figure and his even more imposing blade.
His question was answered only by a firm grasp as hands reached out and secured his shoulders, planting him in his seat. Another set came in from above, forcing his head to the side and exposing his neck.
“What are you doing?” he shouted. “Stop!”
From across the hovercraft, Titus shot up from his seat. A rebel stepped forward and slammed the butt of his rifle into his chest, knocking him back down.
The soldier above Kaiden leaned in and jabbed the tip of the knife into his neck.
Kaiden yelled in pain. “What
are you doing?” He squirmed as the cold steel bit into his skin. A trickle of blood rushed down the side of his neck.
“Got it.” The soldier pulled back, withdrawing his knife. Its point was tipped with blood.
“Got what?” Kaiden spat, clapping a hand to his bleeding neck as the hands released him.
“The tracker chip they put in your neck, kid.” The soldier turned his hand toward him, revealing a small chip stained with blood. Kaiden stared at it for a moment, then the soldier crushed it. He turned toward Titus.
“Your turn, big guy.”
Titus made to struggle but several soldiers held him down, just as they’d done Kaiden.
“This is ridiculous,” Kaiden said, turning toward Zelda. “Are you sure we escaped, Zelda? Because it still feels like we’re prisoners to me.”
“They can be a bit…gruff,” Zelda said, the top half of her head covered by the VR headset. “Look, Kaiden. Not everyone’s like this. There are good people with us. Well-meaning people.”
“So you keep saying.” Kaiden crossed his arms and looked to Titus as a tracker chip was cut from his neck as well.
What have we gotten ourselves into? These are the people we’ve cast our lot in with? Maybe Titus was right when he said, we should be wary of the rebels. The Party was fine just to lock me up before, but now that I’ve stolen that file…who knows what they’ll do if they catch me? And my only hope, my only allies…are these people? Kaiden swallowed the feeling of vomit rising in the back of his throat. Maybe I’ve made a mistake.
Across the space, Titus’ tracker chip came out of his neck with a series of sharp inhales from the big man.
“Great. Awesome,” he said, voice dripping with sarcasm as he rubbed at his bleeding neck. “Now we’ve got that out of the way, would you mind dropping me off downtown? I have to talk to my brother.” He rose out of his seat, turning toward the back of the hovercraft.
The same soldier hit him again with the butt of his rifle.
Titus fell into his seat with a grunt, then locked his eyes on the man and growled.
“Don’t let me catch you in a dark alley anytime soon, friend.”
The soldier only laughed, nudging one of his friends as if sharing a joke.
Zelda was still fiddling with the VR headset. Old tech, from before pods allowed for full immersion play. Based on what she said, Kaiden assumed she was in Nova, examining the file they’d stolen.
“This was Bernstein’s, alright,” she said. “But this thing’s encrypted so tight I don’t think there’s a computer powerful enough to break it.”
“So you’re telling me, after all of that, after all of this,” Kaiden nodded to the soldiers, “you can’t even open the file?”
“That’s not what I said.” She spoke slowly, as if she were working on something at the same time. “He was a creature of habit – his password is the same as when we worked together. Nobody else knew it.”
She frowned. “No. Wait. There’s another security measure here.”
“Just let us know when you’ve actually got it open,” Titus said, clearly aggravated. “Oh, and if you happen to find the keys to these cuffs while you’re in there, that’d be cool, too.”
“There’s another password,” Zelda said, biting her lip. “And there’s some text – a riddle.”
She sighed and pulled off the headset. Her gaze was vacant, and Kaiden could see a deep sadness there.
“It’s a clue only I’d understand. I guess, in the end, he thought I was the next best person to have it.” She spoke in barely a whisper, the reminder of her friend’s death seemingly overwhelming her.
“So what’s the riddle?” Kaiden asked.
One of the soldiers slapped him on the back of the head.
“Quiet. This is our business now.” The soldier turned to Zelda. “Out with it. What was Bernstein sitting on?”
Zelda sucked in a deep breath before answering. When she finally did, some of the old grit in her voice had returned.
“He’s hidden the next password in Nova Online,” she said, shaking her head with a nostalgic smile. “And you’re not going to like where.”
Afterword
Hello, Alex Knight here, author of Warden: Nova Online. If you’ve reached this far, it means you finished my book (hooray)! Writing Warden has been a real labor of love and I’m so grateful you gave my book a chance.
As a thank you, I have written a free bonus novelette for all you readers that made it to the end; Survivors: Nova Online. Please go to:
www.subscribepage.com/survivors
Plug in your email on the landing page and my publisher will get your new book to you straight away!
I also have a favor to ask of you. Reviews make a huge difference to authors. More reviews means more readers will discover my books, which gives me the support I need to dedicate more time to my writing.
If you’ve enjoyed Warden: Nova Online, it would mean the world to me if you would consider taking the time to leave me a rating and write a short review, letting me know what you thought of it, be that on Amazon or Goodreads.
For those of you that want to discuss my books further, you can check out the Portal Books Facebook group:
www.facebook.com/groups/LitRPGPortal/
For more general discussions about the genre, these two groups may be useful to you.
www.facebook.com/groups/LitRPGsociety/
www.facebook.com/groups/LitRPGGroup/
Thank you again for taking a chance on my book. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it.
Best wishes,
Alex Knight
P.S. Look out for Occultist: Saga Online, coming from Portal Books in 2018!
About the Publisher
Portal Books is a LitRPG focussed publisher working with authors to create and distribute great books to readers.
We bring authors’ stories to life, providing editing, proofreading, formatting, cover design, print distribution, concept art and marketing.
We’re deeply passionate about the books we publish, and we hope you enjoy them as much as we do.
For more information visit:
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Copyright © Alex Knight, 2018
Published by Portal Books, 2018
Cover by Hugh Pindur, 2018
The right of Alex Knight to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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