“You’re simply going to see if I die, aren’t you?” he asked her.
“Of course.” She looked bemused that he would even ask. “If you want power, it’s always preferable to have someone else fight your battles.”
“She’s big on that,” Taigan said as she ducked out of the necklace and clasped her hand with Jamie’s. She drew her staff with her other hand and stepped out of range so her brother could draw his sword. “I don’t know how you’ve worked with her without discovering that by now.”
“I’m new,” Ben said. His face went cold and he added, “And I need this training. I will do anything to earn it. Anything, do you understand me?”
His voice was so flat a pit opened in her stomach. She tried to keep the betrayal from her face as Gwyna laughed and looked at the twins—only for Ben to wink behind her back.
Hopefully, none of her answering humor had shown in her face.
“Let’s test that,” Taigan taunted him. She lunged and thrust her staff toward the woman.
Ben knocked the staff aside with the flat of his blade, forced it down, and stamped hard, although she narrowly managed to yank it away before he could trap it under his foot. She had the momentary opening to pull it up and hit him hard in the groin but remembered at the last second that this wasn’t a real fight.
His wide eyes told her he’d seen the same possibility.
He recovered in a moment and stabbed directly at her. His free hand, hidden from Gwyna by his body, gestured for her to move toward her brother. She threw herself sideways and he made a show of putting all his energy behind the sword thrust. Taigan thwacked him with the staff as he stumbled past, harder than she intended to.
She somehow managed to stop herself from calling an apology.
“Well, this is fun,” Prima commented.
Jamie pulled his sister behind him and raised his sword. He and Ben began to circle so the man’s back would be to Gwyna.
“There are two of us,” the boy said.
“With only one hand apiece and not a good range of movement,” Ben retorted. “You caught her by surprise last time, but she knows what you are now.”
“What they are is nothing.” Gwyna slashed her hand angrily through the air. “Kill them and bring me the stones they carry.”
Jamie surged forward to lock blades with Ben. With their faces close together, they muttered what sounded like curses at one another, although Taigan was fairly sure it was a strategy meeting. The boy broke first when his opponent used two arms to force his sword down, and he managed to twist away.
“We do not need to have any quarrel with you,” Jamie said as he circled. “Stop doing her bidding and you can walk away from this.”
“Spoken like someone without the will to grasp power,” Ben said. He darted a look at Gwyna, who smiled at him.
“Now you understand,” she murmured. She didn’t smile and instead, looked smug.
It made Taigan nervous.
“You see,” Ben said to them, “you have something she wants. You can give it to her or you can be destroyed by standing in the way.”
“It’s bold of you to say so when we’re the ones who won last time,” Jamie told him.
“And have you any other tactics to use?” Gwyna asked sweetly. “Or was it only the amulet with wild magic? Because it seems to be that.”
Ben attacked while she was still speaking. His blade and Jamie’s flashed with parries and blocks, slashes and thrusts while the two circled, both sweaty. Taigan did her best to make sure she didn’t hold Jamie back or slow him. He and Ben had never trained in fake combat before, and these weren’t practice blades.
The last thing they needed was for one of them to get hurt by a stray strike in a fake fight.
Without warning, it all went wrong. Her brother lunged sideways in an attack that would have been both sneaky and wonderfully effective if she hadn’t held onto his hand.
She caught her foot on a root and tumbled down a small hill. Instinctively, she threw both hands out to catch herself. She wasn’t hurt so it wasn’t a problem, she thought. And she managed to recover without completely wiping out and getting sticks in her hair, so that was something. When she stood, her gaze met the horrified looks of Ben and Jamie.
The necklace, she thought in panic. She still held it, the leather strand wrapped around her wrist, and Jamie was unprotected.
Gwyna stepped forward and lightning crackled around her fingertips. The distant sound of thunder rumbled and the sorceress spoke although her lips did not move. “This has gone on long enough.” Her hands rose to point at him.
“No!” Taigan screamed. She could not feel the ground beneath her feet but she was running.
“Taigan, no!” Ben’s voice was a roar. “Not while you’re sick! You’re vulnerable!”
“He’s my brother!”
“Taigan!”
His sword thunked to the forest floor and gleamed silver amongst the leaves, and he caught Taigan to yank her out of the way as the bolt of power left Gwyna’s fingertips.
“Jamie!” Her voice was raw.
But it wasn’t Jamie the lightning struck. It was Ben, his hands out to keep the boy behind him. His back arched and a scream burst from his lips before he crumpled.
“Ben,” she whispered in horror.
He was still breathing. That was all that mattered. But as she scrambled up, a shield appeared around Ben’s prone body. Gwyna strode into the purple-and-black bubble and knelt to clamp her hand around his arm.
“A traitor,” she said and her voice resonated in their bones. “A traitor sent by whom? Kerill?”
“No,” Taigan whispered. She took the amulet and drove it against the side of the shield, but the magic held. She brought it down repeatedly. “Give him back. Give him back!”
The sorceress met her gaze through the shield. “I will have my answers. If not from you, then from him.”
The shield disappeared and with it, Ben and Gwyna. The girl sprawled on the ground, the amulet still clutched in her fist.
“It was me.” Jamie sounded miserable. “He sacrificed himself for me. This is my fault.”
“And I was the one who left you unprotected.” She pushed to her feet. “And we can both beat ourselves up over that, or we can get to Yulia and find out how to save Ben. There’ll be time enough later to feel terrible. Right now, he needs our help.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
DuBois wandered into the main part of the lab, where Amber sat cross-legged on a stool, watching one of the monitors intently. He popped a piece of caramel corn into his mouth and came to watch.
“Good heavens. Is that Taigan and Jamie and Ben?”
“Yes.” She barely spared him a glance. “Their storylines…” She gestured. “Collided,” she finished.
The doctor nodded bemusedly. He had spent much of the past week crunching the numbers for some of PIVOT’s first reports. Reviewing differences between patients and baseline testers had revealed a few surprising qualities that did not break along expected demographic lines.
He had missed watching the progress of his patients, however. Now, he dragged another stool closer to watch the confrontation. “Who’s the fourth person?”
“NPC,” Amber said. “Sorry—non-playing character. Not one of our patients, only a little computer code.”
“We’re all snippets of computer code,” he said philosophically.
“Uh-huh, and the whole universe is an AI simulation.” She thought about that. “In which case, of course, it’s laughing at us as we try to develop our own AI.”
Although he could tell she wanted to say more, she did not do so. Jacob had briefed him this morning on the change in protocol regarding Prima. It was yet another thing they would have to address in their results, as not everyone’s recovery could be explained through their medical understanding.
Thankfully, having worked in research about comas for decades, DuBois was well-versed in writing papers that used numerous big words and boiled do
wn to “fuck if I know, the human brain is weird.”
He also agreed with their choice to keep Prima a secret for now. While he might have spent his career studying human cognition, he felt a certain duty of care to any fledgling intelligence. Prima had been an ally, and he secretly hoped they could turn the narrative of dangerous rogue AI on its head.
That said, he also thought it prudent to draw up the protocols Anna Price had asked for. Over the years, he’d held out hope for a number of treatments that did not work. If ever there came a time that Prima was a threat, he hoped to respond to that appropriately—as he would if any of his other colleagues became a threat.
After a moment, he realized he had missed some of Amber’s explanation of what was happening in the game. He nodded, ate a few more pieces of popcorn, and hoped there wouldn’t be a quiz.
“I suppose you weren’t around for the early clashes, though,” she said and looked at him.
“No,” the doctor said. That seemed the safest.
“Jamie got all prickly that Taigan was hanging out with an older dude, which does make some sense—every woman I know had that one friend of her dad’s or guy in the neighborhood or whatever—and Ben was super good about it.”
DuBois frowned into his popcorn. He had probably missed something earlier in the explanation, he thought, because Ben certainly did not seem like a patient or long-suffering person.
“I know, I know,” Amber said. “We hardly believed it when we saw it. I’ll show you the tapes later if you want.”
She watched as the two groups drew closer to one another. Taigan and Jamie moved through the forest and approached the edge, and Ben and his companion were shrouded in dark mist as they walked into the shadow of the trees.
“Is that one of the changes Ben’s friend was worried about?” he asked. They had received a letter in addition to some statements made during a video conference. Ben’s good friend, the one who had been in the climbing accident with him, was still worried about whether or not the game was playing havoc with his personality.
“No,” Amber replied. “But maybe we should ask Ben if we can show Mike those tapes—I think that might put him at ease. He’s worried about how Ben is willing to use violence now. I think he only sees the willingness to use violence, not the willingness to exercise patience, and they’re both part of the same thing.”
“Are they?” DuBois looked confused.
“Yes, they’re—oh, fuck, what is she doing?” Amber leaned forward.
On the screen, the dark fog around Ben and the sorceress began to flare and spread. It rushed through the trees toward Taigan and Jamie, who stood for a moment in indecision and then clung to one another. The doctor squinted at them and she zoomed in to show them clutching an amulet. In the view from the monitors, it was possible to see the fact that the amulet had a protective layer of code around them.
The fog did not touch them, although it caused trees and bushes around them to start to wilt. When it disappeared, Ben and the sorceress had come within a few steps of the twins.
“Yes,” Amber resumed and leaned back. “One of Ben’s defining traits was that he wasn’t willing to be in conflict with people. Whenever he got in a fight with someone, he’d simply nope out.”
“Nope out?” DuBois repeated, mystified.
“Sorry. Uh, ghost? No, also not familiar? He would leave. If it was a fight with his boss, he’d quit. Or if he wasn’t getting along with a friend, he wouldn’t call them. It wasn’t like the silent treatment but more like him not being there anymore. Now, he’s willing to see situations through. In this world, that sometimes means violence. Sometimes, like with Jamie, that means he has an awkward discussion.”
“Ah.” He watched as Taigan attacked. “Is she not aware that they’re friends?”
Amber grinned at him and rewound the tape. She pivoted the camera so he could watch Ben put a finger to his lips, then paused and re-pivoted so that he could see the twins give each other a long look.
“A fake fight?” he asked.
“I don’t know, you made me rewind.” Amber pressed a button and the fight snapped back to being live. Ben and Jamie were turning, their blades locked. She turned the volume up and both she and DuBois leaned forward to listen.
“What’s our end game?” Jamie asked roughly. He seemed to be keeping his face unfriendly on purpose.
“I don’t know,” Ben replied, doing the same. They spoke so low that they wouldn’t be overheard, but they knew they were being watched. “I’ll try to make an opening so you can attack her and she’ll want to teleport out.”
“Yell ‘no’ when you want me to go in,” Jamie told him. He let his arm drop and twisted away before the two men started to circle again.
“Look at them,” Amber said and grinned. “All planning and working together. Thinking on their feet.”
They watched as the fight unfolded, the two men enjoying the task of keeping each other on their toes. They danced in and out, careful not to settle into a rhythm for too long. The two watchers cheered at some of the tactics, especially at the close calls.
The doctor had begun to think he should try fencing when Jamie’s sideways lunge made Taigan trip and fall. She rolled to her feet easily enough, and both DuBois and Amber exchanged a relieved look before they realized at the same time the girl did that she had left Jamie unprotected.
They both shoved out of their seats and leaned forward as Taigan scrambled to defend her brother and Ben took the attack for both of them. While the girl screamed and tried to help her friend, Gwyna grabbed Ben and disappeared. On his monitor, she flickered in again a moment later, dragging his limp body through a cave.
“Oh, no,” the doctor said.
That was when he and Amber realized they were clutching each other’s hands tightly enough to make the bones ache. They both loosened the death grasp and cleared their throats.
“I wasn’t worried,” she said and shook her head.
“Of course not—me neither.” DuBois took another mouthful of popcorn. “Ben’s in fine shape psychologically. His monitors barely flickered.”
“Exactly,” she said. “Which we knew would happen. Because we remember this is a game.”
“Exactly,” he agreed.
Silence stretched while they watched Taigan help Jamie up and Gwyna dump Ben in a dungeon.
“Let’s never speak of it to anyone else, though,” Amber said.
“Agreed,” he said and flexed his hand. “You have a very strong grip. I don’t suppose there are any painkillers around.”
“Sorry. Sorry, I’ll go get some.” She hastened to the other side of the room.
Nick and Jacob joined DuBois while she was gone, having returned from lunch with sandwiches for the others and a bag of jalapeno popcorn for DuBois. He tried a few pieces and smiled in appreciation.
“What happened?” Jacob asked when Amber approached with the painkillers.
“He has a headache,” she said at the same time the doctor said, “I stubbed my toe.” After a pained look at one another, they resumed watching the monitors. A hint of red crept up Amber’s ears.
“Uh…huh.” Jacob grinned at her. “There’s definitely not an embarrassing story here that we’ll be able to hold over your heads forever.”
“Nope,” she said, although her face was beet-red.
Nick chortled as he sat to eat his sandwich. He stopped with it halfway to his mouth. “Wait, what happened to Ben?”
“He got hurt trying to save Jamie and Taigan,” Amber said. She cleared her throat. “Which did not freak either of us out and did not result in me crushing the doctor’s hand.”
“I thought we would never speak of it,” DuBois said plaintively. True, she hadn’t mentioned his lapse in logic but still, promises were promises.
Jacob stifled a laugh in his sandwich. “But everything’s good on the monitors? No cardiac arrest or anything?”
“Barely an arrhythmia.” The doctor took a bite of popcorn and choked. “I
thought that would be caramel and instead, it was jalapeno.”
“Oof,” Jacob said, through a mouthful of sandwich. “Anyway, while I was out, I got the latest results from the PT. Basically, Ben’s made about as much progress as he can make in-game. If he doesn’t progress out of the game, we can try bringing him back but they all seem to agree that he should work on strength in the real world for a while.”
“That seems about right,” Amber said. She unwrapped her sandwich while she watched the two monitors. “I haven’t seen him stumble or lack even fine motor control in a while.”
“To tell the truth, I’m not sure he wanted to go back in for that,” Nick said. “It seemed like it was more about the story and the game than the recovery.”
The others looked at him as they ate.
“I think the accident happened during a time where he wasn’t happy with his life,” he said. “I…feel weird talking about this if he hasn’t talked to the rest of you, though.”
“No, he’s been fairly open about it,” Jacob said. “And we all talked to Mike and so on. What’s weird is…” He hesitated. “For Dotty and Justin, this world was a way of doing all the things they’d never been able to do in real life. It was hard sometimes, but it was also wish-fulfillment, right? For Ben, it’s like a specially tailored hell.”
Amber nodded contemplatively.
“What’s interesting,” DuBois said, “is that he could have chosen the easy path at any time. He didn’t have to get involved in trying to stop the assassination of the fae king or the slavery issues in Heffog. He put himself in those situations.”
“So he did,” Jacob mused. “I wonder if we’ll see other people like that.”
“Probably.” Amber smiled at him. “I wonder if we could advertise it as therapy? Not officially, you know, only…hey, you have a lot of student debt, you had a terrible day at work, so why don’t you beat the crap out of some raiders?”
“Price would have a heart attack if we tried that,” Nick predicted. “But let’s make a mock-up ad, anyway.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Grasping The Future Page 14
