The Dead Fortress: A LitRPG Epic (World of Samar Book 3)

by LitRPG Freaks

  Callie stared intently around the room and focused on the bed. She lifted the mattress, searching for something, and her hand bumped a hard object. She drew it out and frowned to see the flask. It was empty, yet the smell of whiskey wafted out after she opened it up. That wasn’t all she found though. Pushing her hands further up towards the wall, she felt another hard object, cold and glass.

  “Damn it, Harper,” she whispered. The half empty whiskey bottle told her all she needed to know. Taking both items with her, she left the room and went to hide them in her own until she heard back from Jimmy and Alana.

  Once they were out of sight, she ran back towards the rec room and right into Bishop. “Hey, where’s the fire,” he teased, catching her in a hug. “You okay? Seem out of breath.”

  “Nah, had to pee and didn’t want to miss the match between you and Arthur.”

  “Sorry to say you did, but it was nothing special. He kicked my butt.”

  “That’s too bad. You aren’t going to have a rematch?” she suggested. “We could always tag-team him?” She gave him a gentle shove back towards the rec room. He eyed her suspiciously, but then broke out in a grin.

  “Sure, what the hell, don’t have much else to do tonight anyway.”

  “That’s the spirit.” She wrapped her hand through his elbow and tugged him away from the door. Anything to keep him out of his room a bit longer.

  ***

  Alana and Jimmy asked where Dennis was, but they were told he was busy for the rest of the evening. The man at the front desk would be sure to leave a message for him and, if he had time that night, he’d track them down. Jimmy grunted, but Alana thanked him and guided him outside to the gardens.

  “I don’t want to wait until morning,” he complained. “We need to take care of this tonight.”

  “We’re still not sure if Callie found anything,” she reminded him. “We’ll get it under control.”

  “How, when we don’t even understand what’s happening?”

  She hated to agree, but it was true. Today, Harrison had scared her on some level, to know that a computer program could go so far to mess with a man’s mind. Harrison wasn’t a weak man, not after the mess he’d been through, but he was coming apart at the seams to the point she feared they wouldn’t get him back together.

  They were out in the gardens, walking their usual path, when they came back to that weird cube-shaped building they had seen Dennis leave from before. Alana wanted to know what was in there and crept closer.

  “Where are you going?” Jimmy asked.

  “They said Dennis was busy, maybe he’s in here again,” she suggested.

  “And what, you want to jump him when he comes out?”

  “No,” she admitted. “I want to see what he’s up to in here. Harrison said he had a private computer station in his apartment, so why have a private building out in the middle of the gardens?”

  He had no answer for her and she moved off the path towards the building. There’d be no way for them to open the door unless Dennis did it for them. It had a palm scanner and a code that needed to be punched in. But right when they reached the door, it beeped and they ducked into the shadows close-by.

  Alana peeked over the bushes when she heard the door glide open, and a muttering Dennis strolled, his face taut with worry.

  “She’s going to be the death of me,” he snapped as he passed near their hiding place. “I have to get her under control. And if not, then I have to terminate the program. Damn it…” His words trailed off as he wandered away, but the door was still closing.

  Alana lunged for it and slipped her hand inside just in time, quickly pushing her shoulder into it so she didn’t break her fingers. “Come on,” she hissed to Jimmy.

  “Seriously?”

  “Fine, then stay out here.”

  He cursed and followed her inside the strange building, running smack into the back of her. “What? Why aren’t you…what the hell?”

  “I don’t think that begins to describe it,” she whispered.

  The room was dimly lit with inset lights in the ceiling and the glowing from several large monitors. Head gear like what they wore was set atop a mannequin head near the large, metal desk, but that wasn’t what caught them off guard. Large poster size images of three very familiar faces stared down at them from the wall: Tavin, the Red Witch, and Valenastrious. What confused them was the image of the woman beside those with strings going from her to the other images. A woman who looked very real in that picture.

  “Is that…is that who he based their looks off?” Jimmy said, moving closer.

  “Could be I guess.” Alana never noticed how similar Tavin and Valenastrious looked, or the Red Witch for that matter. They shared the same sharp bone structure, the same intense gazes. All that changed were their eye color and hair, except for the Red Witch. “She’s nearly identical.”

  “Who is she you think?”

  “Don’t know,” she mumbled as she moved around the office and stared at another confusing chart to their right. Initials were written at the top of the page and arrows were drawn down towards different personality traits grouped together. Alana brow wrinkled as she read the traits and then stepped back to stare at the images of the three NPCs. “No effing way.”

  “What? What did you find?”

  “This woman…he put this woman in the game, in the code to the damn game!”

  “What? That’s not possible. You can’t just put someone in a game.”

  But as she rustled through papers on the desk, she came across stacks and stacks of formulas and codes, ways to do exactly what she never thought was possible. But then again, they were playing a game with an AI that changed based on the players’ attitudes. And now they knew who the AI belonged to. The woman Dennis used, whoever she was, was part of the very fabric of the game. She was the one messing with Bishop’s head. There was too much material to safely go through in just a few minutes, so she scooped up what she could, grabbed Jimmy by his shirt front and dragged him out of the lab.

  “Where are we going? Why do you have those? If we get caught—”

  “I want us to get caught,” she interrupted. “Dennis has a lot to answer for. This is unethical and it’s messing with our friend’s head. He did something he shouldn’t have done and now, now I think it’s out of his control.”

  “Like on the loose terrorizing Harrison in game?”

  “In and out of game you mean. Callie thinks he’s been drinking again to try and keep this crap from driving him crazy. We know he’s been seeing things when not in game.”

  Jimmy held open the door for her and they rushed into the facility. “We need to find her.”

  “I know. We meet up with Callie then we find Dennis. We tell him he has to come clean with whatever he’s up to, really.”

  She shook her head as she halted him and checked to be sure the coast was clear before running down a hall towards the players’ rooms. Ever since she came here, she felt something was wrong with Dennis and the facility. Even the game had a weird vibe to it. She enjoyed it thoroughly, but there was always that nagging voice in the back of her mind saying the game play was wrong, the storyline too real, changing too easily with the flow of the players. If Dennis took the conscious mind of a human and put it into a computer program, he could ruin the entire system if it got out of control.

  And it already had. Terminate, he was talking about terminating the program, the one he used to create three very different NPCs in his game.

  When they reached Callie’s door, Jimmy knocked while Alana kept a watchful gaze up and down the corridor, nodding innocently at anyone else who passed, keeping the stolen papers out of sight.

  “Where were you two?” Callie asked as soon as she opened the door and stepped aside.

  Jimmy and Alana rushed in and closed the door behind them. “We didn’t get to talk to Dennis yet, but we found something else, something worse.” Alana handed over the papers. “What do you think all that means?” />
  “I’m into blacksmithing, not tech,” Callie argued.

  “You won’t need computer skills to catch onto what’s in those pages,” she assured her.

  Callie frowned and nodded to her chest of drawers. “Top right. Found them in Harrison’s room.”

  She flipped through the pages as Jimmy opened the drawer and sighed. “So he has been drinking. Where the hell did he get a whole bottle of whiskey from?”

  “He mentioned one-time Dennis had booze in his apartments. Guess he swiped it when the old man wasn’t…looking…hold, what is this?” She held up a page and frowned. “What are these initials and why do they lead to three different characters in the game?”

  Alana paced around the room, wringing her hands. “I think Dennis tried to place someone’s consciousness into the game,” she said. “I think that’s the AI program that’s been driving the way the game reacts to the players, and to Harrison.”

  “You’re saying it’s a real person? He couldn’t do that, could he?”

  “I don’t know, but he has a private computer lab and there’s images of these women all over the place, and they’re all based off a single photograph.”

  “We have to find Dennis, now,” Callie snapped. “Grab the whiskey and the flask.”

  “They said he was busy,” Jimmy argued, scooping up the items anyway.

  “I don’t care. He’s going to explain this all to us right now. If this…thing is what’s driving Harrison crazy, he’s going to fix it and he’s going to do it tonight before anything worse happens.”

  They stormed out of the room and through the facility.

  ***

  Harrison cowered in his room. The whiskey was gone. The flask was gone. He had nothing to keep the voices out. Nothing to stop him from hearing her sweet laughter that frightened and comforted him at the same time. The sound was embedded in his skull, in his bones. She called to him, stronger than she ever had before, and he had to go to her. He had to find her again, be with her.

  She had shown him, shown him that being beside her was the only way to make this torture stop.

  Yes, come to me, Harrison. The others lie to you, but I never have. Daemyn is using you, using all of you, the voice purred. You can set me free, set all of us free and then we can have our revenge.

  Harrison shut his eyes, holding his head, and tried to drown out her words, but his feet stopped their pacing and suddenly he stood out in the corridor. He didn’t even remember opening the door. It closed securely behind him and he was smiling as he walked through the facility. It was later in the evening and many players were in the rec room or headed off to bed. He grinned and waved at everyone he passed, though on the inside he screamed for help. Pleaded for someone to see this was not him. He didn’t want to be out here. His friends, if he could find his friends, maybe they would understand, but he made a sharp left turn and found himself outside the computer lab.

  “Why are we here?” he whispered, not expecting a voice to reply.

  But it did, and he jumped a foot in the air.

  You know why. I need you, Harrison. You can’t help me from out there. I need you beside me, working with me.

  “All I want to do is play the damn game,” he muttered again. “Please, just leave me alone!”

  I’m afraid I can’t do that. Daemyn brought you here for a reason you see. A reason he has yet to tell you. Why else would he keep a washed-up hack around with a drinking problem?

  “No, I don’t believe you. I’m here to play a game, not be an experiment.”

  I thought the same once, only I was here because of my love for a man, a man who betrayed me in the end.

  Harrison wanted to turn around and march right back to his room, but he moved closer to the lab doors. He had no way to get in there. Dennis had since locked them down after having so many glitches in the game. He feared someone was messing with the servers somehow; Harrison glanced up to the right and saw the flashing red light letting him know he was on camera now, too.

  “I can’t get inside,” he muttered, but the words were barely out of his mouth when the doors slid open silently for him. “I can’t get into the game on my own.”

  “Leave it to me.”

  He froze to hear the voice coming through the speakers of the computers surrounding him as he entered the lab.

  “Get comfortable, Harrison, you are going to be here for quite some time.”

  Harrison walked to his station and his hands moved automatically, booting up the computer and getting the headgear ready. “You don’t have to do this,” he told the voice as much as he told himself. “There has to be another way.”

  “You are my way, Harrison. Now get ready. Samar needs you now more than ever.”

  He frowned at the change of voice. There was no longer a growl in it. “Tavin?”

  “We’re all here, Harrison, always. Don’t you want to help us?”

  He wanted to go back to his room. He wanted to get the hell out of this place, but his body moved of its own accord and, soon, he was placing the headgear on as he rested against the table. It tilted back on its own and the countdown appeared before his eyes. Three seconds, two, one…and he was lost.

  ***

  “Dennis!” Callie yelled, pounding on his apartment door. “Dennis, you open this damn door right now!” She hit the door with her foot, pissed it took him so long to answer.

  They drew the attention of several of the staff who yelled at them to get back, but Callie kept screaming, kicking and cursing as she beat at the door. It opened and a very confused Dennis stepped out, throwing his hands up.

  “Hold on, just stop!” he yelled. “What is the meaning of this? What are you doing?”

  “You bastard!” she yelled. “What did you do to this game, huh? What did you do to make it act like it does?”

  He flinched. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  Callie tossed the papers at his feet and they scattered. He stared down at them, his eyes widened, as he crouched to scoop them up. “Explain that, all of it, right now!”

  “How did you find these?”

  “Alana and I may have stumbled into them,” Jimmy confessed.

  “You had no right,” he snapped.

  “We do when your game is screwing with Harrison’s head enough to drive him to drink.” Jimmy held up the whiskey and the flask. “This crap is pushing him over the edge of sanity. I think we have a right to know what you’re doing with our minds.”

  Dennis stared around at his staff but, to Callie’s horror, none of them seemed surprised. “Inside, now, all of you,” he muttered and walked back into his apartments. He called for the staff to wait outside as he closed the door behind the three. “You have to understand something,” he started, “I never meant for the program to get out of control.”

  “What program? Whose initials are on that page?”

  He nodded behind them and they saw a photograph of Dennis and a woman. “My wife’s.”

  “Your wife?” Callie asked in alarm. “She’s here somewhere?”

  “In a sense. She died, many years ago.”

  “And you what, tried to recreate her through the game?” Jimmy asked.

  Dennis cringed and sank onto the couch, holding his head in his hands. “I’m afraid I took it a step further than simply trying to mimic her personality into the game.”

  Alana gasped. “So you did upload her mind.”

  “What?” Callie shook her head confused. “You couldn’t have. No one can do that.”

  “No one had done it yet,” Dennis corrected. “She was dying, only had a few days left and she…she told me she wanted to remain with me somehow. She worried I would fall apart once she was gone. So…so I mapped her conscious mind and, right before she died, turned it into a program attached to these servers, to this game I created with her.”

  Callie’s head ached and her mind raced as she tried to take in his words. “You’re telling me, your wife’s mind, her actual mind…it’s part of t
he game?”

  “What can I say? I’m a computer genius well ahead of my time.” Dennis lifted his head and stared warmly at a photo of his wife across the room. “I brought in a team who swore to remain quiet on the matter and we set about building Samar, using my wife’s consciousness to be the AI so many games before ours was missing. A way to change and advance the gameplay for the player as they moved through the environment.” He stood and paced away towards the windows.

  “It worked?” Jimmy asked.

  “It did. The first time we ran the full program, I stepped into that world and there she was staring back at me through the eyes of Tavin, a strong-willed woman. A woman ready to fight tooth and nail for what she wanted…and she knew who I was.”

  “As your character you mean,” Callie said, but Dennis shook his head. “As you?”

  “Yes. She knew who I had been to her and, at first, we enjoyed many conversations together as I walked through the game, testing the areas and the quests.” His eyes darkened and he hung his head. “But then something changed. She became unhappy and, when I logged in one day, Tavin was not alone. Another was with her.”

  “Valenastrious,” Alana muttered. “She created the Demon Queen? Without your help?”

  “Another extension of herself.” He turned to them with a bitter sigh. “You see, her pent-up anger at forever being trapped in a computer program grew to be too much and she split herself into another. The rage in that character is uncontrollable.”

  “We noticed,” Callie said. “As did Harrison.”

  “That was not intended by any stretch of the imagination,” he said. “I managed to shape and twist the AI so she was forced to remain in those two forms, scripted, but able to evolve within certain parameters.”

  “Clearly something went wrong,” Alana whispered.

  Dennis nodded. “It did but, since Harrison’s arrival, I can’t seem to figure out why, or how.”

  Callie’s eyes narrowed as Dennis’ eye twitched. “You’re lying.”