…almost like he wasn’t logged in.
Like the game was animating his character’s motions.
The other two people – the shabby man and the woman – both hurried to the wyverns.
What the hell is going on?
137
Daniel
“Eric and a man and a woman and… some sort of black ghost are all on top.”
Daniel couldn’t explicitly mention the AI, since Jerome was listening in and Mira wasn’t supposed to know about it, so he said, “That’s the Unnamed One.”
“Oh,” she said in surprise. “There are two wyverns, too. The man and woman are getting on them. Eric’s getting on the dragon – but it’s weird, Daniel. He looks like he’s sleepwalking, like our characters do when we’re not logged on. Like he’s not even inside the game right now.”
That couldn’t be right.
Eric wouldn’t abandon the game and risk losing everything he’d accomplished over the past few days.
Had they caught him unawares? Wherever he was in the real world, had he overslept and just not logged on?
That seemed likely. He’d known this was coming.
“Do you see an armored knight with horns on his helmet?”
“No.”
Korvos must be down in the city square with his men, awaiting the massacre.
The two wyverns took off, and so did the dragon.
“They’re leaving – they’re abandoning the castle, and the black ghost just disappeared!”
Something was wrong. He didn’t know what it was, but something was definitely off.
Then it began to happen in a cascade of events.
Out in the center square, lines of black fire shot out from the center of the huddled skeleton army. The Blackstone soldiers surrounding them scurried away as the lines arced into circles and shot back straight towards the center.
A pentagram of black fire completely encompassed the skeleton army.
He knew what that meant.
“Daniel – ”
“I see it.”
The black fire leapt up in a dome over the Hell soldiers. When it dispersed a second later, the army was completely gone. All 8000 of them.
The entire center of the palace square was empty, with only a few flickering wisps of black fire left behind.
“Shit,” Daniel whispered.
There were only two options. Either it was a standard retreat for the army from Hell, or it had been planned from the beginning.
In which case, everything that had happened in the last thirty minutes – the unexpected and strategically inept way the Hell army had charged into battle, their hasty retreat back into the castle, the huddled mass in the center of the city, Eric’s leisurely escape –
“IT’S A TRAP!” Daniel screamed to the men on the wall. “GET OUT OF HERE – MIRA, SWOOP DOWN AND TELL THEM TO – ”
He was cut off by the explosions.
138
Eric
98%…
Almost there…
The bar hung up, wouldn’t move.
Eric started sweating even more than he already was.
Come on, come on…
Ten seconds… twenty seconds… thirty seconds… no movement…
And then suddenly it finished.
100%.
He typed out Did you get it? into the prompt.
Nothing.
No answer.
Are you there? he typed.
Silence from the Unnamed One.
“Son of a BITCH!” Eric yelled, and took off around the edge of the cubicle. He jogged through the aisle in the opposite direction from where Neck Beard and White Shirt had run.
He was almost to the stairwell on the opposite side of the floor when the door opened up and several burly guys in navy blue uniforms poured out.
Eric immediately turned back and started walking in the other direction.
One of the guards called out, “Hey you!”
Eric kept walking.
“Hey, I’m talking to YOU!”
Eric turned the corner and started running.
He raced past the desk where he’d done the hack –
Down the hallway, White Shirt was standing with a couple of other guards in navy blue.
“THAT’S HIM!” White Shirt screamed, and flapped an arm at Eric. “THAT’S THE GUY!”
Oh SHIT.
Eric turned around –
And was immediately tackled to the ground by a security guard.
139
Daniel
Gigantic underground blasts erupted throughout the entire city – ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred. Streets blew up in bursts of cobblestone and fire. Tenement slums collapsed like houses of cards.
The sewers. They must have hidden devices in the sewers – that was the only way the explosives could be spread throughout the entire city like this.
But we didn’t see anything along the way!
Then the realization hit him:
Eric had known which way Daniel would be coming. He’d even posted skeleton warriors to intercept the invading force.
But not nearly enough to stop us.
The explosives could have been planted somewhere in the sewers – like Merridack’s room –
Which had been locked.
Planned. All of it had been planned.
Daniel watched in horror as Blackstone turned into one giant sinkhole.
Individual explosions punched a lattice of holes into the city’s structural support. Streets – buildings – entire blocks caved in.
The only thing that seemed unaffected was the massive wall encircling Blackstone. Everything else crumpled like sandcastles under a waterfall.
The palace towers and walls fell in on themselves, folding neatly inwards like a flower blooming in reverse.
The Temple of Mages collapsed, its giant marble pillars crushed under the weight of its roof. The fifty-foot-tall statue out in the courtyard snapped at the base, tipped over, and exploded into a dozen boulder-sized pieces.
Byrel’s army was swallowed whole.
Men and horses slid and tumbled down into the gaping maw of the earth.
Twenty thousand men, gone within seconds.
In every other street, where the tens of thousands of players didn’t fall into the abyss, they were crushed by falling buildings.
And above it all, untouched by the carnage and chaos, Eric’s dragon and the two wyverns flew away across the forest.
It was destruction on a scale Daniel had never seen before, and he could only stand there in wide-eyed shock.
Until he felt the wall beneath him shift as well.
“DANIEL – the walls are breaking up – you’ve got to get out of there!” Mira screamed.
She was right. With all the buildings leveled, Daniel had a clear view of the 200-foot walls surrounding the city – and massive cracks were ripping through them. Entire sections were falling away like icebergs calving from a glacier.
The entire wall beneath him was tipping. He could feel it. Suddenly his feet were sliding out from under him as his heart hammered in his chest –
Mira’s griffin swung around hard and fast, heading right for him.
“Hold on – I’m coming!”
But it was too late.
The wall tipped over into space.
A thousand voices screamed.
Daniel was falling, the ground racing up at him at an unbelievable speed –
A bone-crunching impact –
And everything went black.
140
At first he thought he was trapped in darkness like every time he’d died in hell, but a text box appeared:
You have died in the game.
There is a mandatory lock-out of one Real-World hour (equivalent to four hours within the game).
Please play again soon!
He reached out to touch the message –
And realized, unlike in Hell, that he could move his arm, even if he couldn’t see it.
The blackness was not some otherworldly limbo, but his mask.
He pulled it off his head and emerged from darkness into chaos.
Red emergency lights glowed in the ceiling.
Everyone in the room was either glued obsessively to a computer or frantically scrambling around.
Daniel got out of the pod.
Over to his right, Mira got out, too.
She ran over to him and he swept her up in his arms – not in a passionate embrace, but one of two people clinging to each other who had just seen horrors beyond comprehension.
“You’re okay!” she choked out. “I mean, I knew you would be, but… it was so scary…”
“I know,” he whispered, and stared above her shoulder at the monitors on the walls of the room.
Blackstone appeared on the screens from every angle – street level, bird’s-eye view, at a distance.
In every single shot it was a smoking ruin, a giant pit in the earth with a only few broken sections of its once-great walls left standing.
Mira looked up at him, then followed his gaze to the screen. She flinched as soon as she saw the footage of the destruction.
“I can’t believe he did it… I can’t believe he would do something like that…”
Eric’s voice rang mockingly in Daniel’s mind:
It’s only a game.
But looking at those screens, the devastation felt real.
Suddenly, the regular lights came on and the red lights shut off. Apparently the main power was back online.
Daniel’s father came running up. “You two alright?”
“Yeah, we’re fine,” Daniel said, his voice slightly shaky.
“They caught him.”
“Who – Eric?!” Daniel asked in amazement.
Mr. Lauer grinned and nodded.
“He was flying away on the dragon,” Mira said. “Who got him?”
“Not in the game – here,” Mr. Lauer said. “He was in Varidian. They caught him breaking in.”
141
Daniel stood looking through a glass window at his best friend.
Eric sat handcuffed to a table across from an older guy in a blue uniform – maybe the head of security. A phalanx of other blue-uniformed men stood behind him as backup.
Eric looked like a smaller version of them in his ill-fitting guard’s suit. He seemed exhausted, overwrought, and sullen. He kept resting his head in his hands, as though he were so tired he wanted to fall asleep right there.
The guard would occasionally slam the table with his hand and jar Eric back to consciousness – but no matter what, Eric wouldn’t speak. He kept his mouth shut tight.
Every so often, though, he would look over at Daniel through the glass window and smirk.
Daniel just watched without reacting, though his heart felt heavy.
Mira stood silently next to him, her arm around his waist and his around her shoulders.
The CEO was talking to Mr. Lauer just a few feet away. Another ten guards and department heads stood around in silence.
“We’re not turning him over to the police,” Mr. Akiyama said.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Lauer protested.
“If we turn him over, he gets a lawyer and clams up. Even if he said anything, the police wouldn’t necessarily keep us in the loop. If we don’t turn him over, then we’re the ones who get to question him.”
“That’s illegal!”
“No it’s not – security is talking to him, same as any department store’s guards would if he’d shoplifted. And do I have to remind you that everything he’s done over the last hour is illegal?” Akiyama hissed. “We just want to detain him for questioning. That’s all.”
The door opened and the head of security walked out. “He’s not talking.”
“We can see that,” Akiyama snarled. “It’s your job to make him.”
“With what?” Lauer snapped. “A blowtorch and pliers?”
“He did say he’d speak to someone in particular,” the security officer said.
“Who?”
The man pointed. “This guy right here.”
Everyone looked at Daniel.
He felt his cheeks burn hot as all eyes bored into him.
“Why him?” Akiyama asked.
“Wouldn’t say. But that’s the only thing he’s said in the last hour, besides asking for a lawyer.”
Akiyama looked at Daniel. “Will you do it, young man?”
“I’m not sure I feel good about that,” Mr. Lauer interjected.
“He’s not dangerous,” Akiyama argued. “He’s in custody, he’s in handcuffs, there’s nothing he can do.”
Daniel’s father sighed. “It’s up to you, Son.”
Daniel looked down at Mira.
“I think you should,” she whispered.
He hugged her, then nodded at Akiyama. “All right.”
“Try to find out as much as you can about what he did when he hacked our system.”
“I’ll try.”
“And don’t mention the – ” Akiyama cleared his throat and looked around at the guards. “The program.”
“Do you want him to sign anything for you before he walks in?” Mr. Lauer demanded angrily. “Maybe name his firstborn kid after you?”
“It’s okay, Dad,” Daniel said, then nodded at Akiyama. “I understand.”
Then he walked into the room and closed the door behind him.
142
The guards had all cleared out, so it was just him and Eric.
His best friend sat at the table, face weary but smiling. “I’d stand up, but…”
He rattled the handcuffs binding him to the table.
Daniel warily sat down across from him.
“They’re probably taping all this, but…” He lifted up a hand to the glass window. “Screw you, assholes! Where’s my lawyer and my Coca-cola, huh?!”
“This isn’t a joke,” Daniel said quietly.
“I know. I could really use a Coke right about now.”
“What were you thinking? Breaking into Varidian and – ”
“We’ll get to that. When did that happen?” Eric asked, gesturing out the window with his head.
Daniel frowned, not understanding. “What?”
“You and Mira. When did you two hook up?”
Daniel glared at him. “We didn’t ‘hook up.’”
“Okay – became close friends. Butt buddies. Whatever. When?”
He didn’t want to say ‘last night’ because of the way it might sound, so he left it at, “Inside the game. Before you slaughtered about 100,000 people.”
“That sounds really bad, until you rearrange the sentences: ‘before you slaughtered about 100,000 people… inside the freakin’ game.” Eric shook his head. “It never gets through your skull, does it? Game, game, game, it’s a game…”
“You didn’t just kill NPCs this time. You killed tens of thousands of players.”
“And…? So what? They have a one-hour lockout, and then they go on playing. Big deal.”
“Still – ”
“‘Still’ nothing. It’s a game. Besides, I didn’t even do it. I mean, well, I planned it, yeah – but I wasn’t even there to watch it. So, tell me – what happened? Did you convince all your dwarves to come rushing in and get crushed?” Eric winced mockingly. “Ouch.”
Daniel glared at him. “Like I said: you slaughtered 100,000 people.”
“So your armies rushed in, and the entire city collapsed on them? And me and my guys got away?”
Daniel’s silence answered the question.
Eric grinned. “Believe it or not, that was the plan all along, from the very beginning.” Then he sighed and sat back in disgust. “My greatest moment of triumph, and I was back in the Real World getting tackled by a couple of dudes making minimum wage.”
“This isn’t a joke. They found the guy you were impersonating.”
Eric’s eye twitched the tiniest bit, but he kept up the jocular front.
“How is ol’ Mike? He was fine when I left him.”
“What, taped to his apartment floor with a concussion?” Daniel scoffed. “You’re looking at assault and kidnapping – ”
“I didn’t kidnap him,” Eric sneered.
“Well, whatever they call taping someone to their bedroom floor so they can’t get up, then, after you bash their face in.”
Eric rolled his eyes. “His face wasn’t – ”
“What happened?” Daniel asked, sincerely bewildered. “You only cared about the game – why would you come here to Varidian and sacrifice yourself like this?”
Eric just looked at him, his face blank. “It wasn’t supposed to be a sacrifice.”
“What did you do, exactly?”
“I pre-arranged everything on a timer and kept track of it on Mike’s cell phone. First I crashed the power grid that handles the city block. Once the emergency power kicked in, I targeted Varidian’s least secure systems – the public intercom – ”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it. What did you do for that… that thing?”
Eric stayed silent.
“Eric, the only chance you have now is to cooperate. With the break-in and what you did to that guy, plus breaking in here and hacking Varidian – in addition to what you did at my house? They’re never, ever going to let you out. Not unless you give them something.”
Eric’s whole tough-guy demeanor slipped, and his shoulders slumped. For the first time, Daniel saw the hopelessness and betrayal on his friend’s face.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” he whispered.
“What do you mean?”
“I wasn’t supposed to get hung out to dry. Even if I got caught, there was supposed to be a backup plan…”
“But there wasn’t,” Daniel said. “Was there?”
Eric didn’t say anything. He just stared a thousand yards into the distance.
“What did it promise for your help?” Daniel asked. “Was it going to make you a god inside the game?”
Shattered Lands 2 The Fall Of Blackstone: A LitRPG Series Page 32
