by Jenn Stark
“But you saw the room itself,” Nigel continued encouragingly. “You could take us there and—say, if one of us could open the door, then you could see what was on the other side too. And that’s where you think Lin Wei would go, isn’t it? To whatever’s on the other side of the door?”
“Yes,” Katya said, so softly we could barely hear her. For a long moment, she stared at the screen. Then, without saying another word, she lifted her hands to the keyboard again, retracing her steps through the village of the damned. This time, she passed by the shop and the building with the Message Room inside, and moved on to the church.
“Lin Wei said it was only right that it would be in a church,” she murmured almost reverently. “He said the calling was a pure one, and those who could respond to it should know how important they were to the world as we would soon know it.”
I tried to hide my grimace, but Nikki, standing behind Katya, didn’t bother masking the concern on her face. “That kind of sounds a little intense, you ask me,” she said. “You think he got that line from Simon?”
“Not from Simon,” Katya said proudly. “From the other members of the crusade. The ones who could go through the door and see what was on the other side. The ones who could take part in the war on magic.”
The alarm that rippled through the room was almost a tangible thing, but Katya didn’t seem to notice. She’d breached the doors of the church, and her character now ran down the length of the nave, angling around the altar to the little room off to the left, filled with vestments. The vestments were all in high Catholic style, white cassocks along one wall, richly embroidered robes on the other. Her character ignored the robes, however, and instead turned to the cassocks. She reached up to pull them apart, revealing a paneled wall behind.
“A true believer would be able to sense right away where the door was,” she said quietly. “I didn’t even know it was here until Lin Wei stared at me long enough that I knew something must be up.”
She leaned forward and did something with the keys. On the screen, her avatar’s hand reached up and touched the door. Nothing happened, and her smile slipped. “He so wanted me to be special.”
“You are special, sweet pea,” Nikki said, and she casually lifted her own hand to thread her fingers through Katya’s hair. Katya gave the slightest jolt, then her avatar pushed again on the door.
It opened.
“Oh my God,” Katya murmured, her eyes filling with tears at the sight that lay beyond the doors.
“Jesus Christ,” Nigel contributed, also jolting in his seat.
I could only stare. Because though I’d never personally seen that vista with the rolling mists and pink mountains, I most definitely knew what it was.
Katya had just opened the gates to Shambhala.
Chapter Twenty
The meeting didn’t take long to break up after that. Katya, still amazed that she’d been able to open the door to the mystical second game, had willingly left with Nikki. Nigel and I briefly discussed the wisdom of giving the girl some sort of memory-wiping drug, but in the end, decided against it.
“He’ll ask about me, maybe go easier on her because of it,” I said as we finished sweeping Lin Wei’s apartment and appropriating his laptop. “He’ll ask about what happened in his apartment, and she’ll have my description. He’ll know it was me.”
“So will anyone else who interrogates her,” Nigel pointed out, but I shook my head.
“We’ll have her watched,” I said resolutely. “She’ll be safe.”
“And you’re willing to let her walk away with all her memories of this meeting intact, as well as the idea that she’s Connected enough to mentally affect some randomized generator in a game module to open the door?”
I cocked a brow at him as we exited the apartment, emerging back into the faceless hallway. “You think that’s all it is, some random generator?”
“What, as opposed to believing that I can open a door on my computer screen with the power of my mind?” Nigel asked sardonically. “I am not saying that this particular doorway doesn’t appeal more with those with psychic persuasions, but I do not believe that it is the game that calls to them to demonstrate their talents. I think it is Lin Wei’s sensitivity to them. He identifies a psychic, brings them to the game, they open the doorway, Nirvana is achieved.” He smirked. “In this case, quite literally.”
“But Nikki touched Katya as she was manipulating the screen, while the first time she tried, she failed,” I countered. “I believe there’s something to this. We should’ve had you try to open the door.”
“And whether I’d been able to open it or not, I fully suspect you’d be able to twist the narrative to fit to the story you wanted to tell yourself,” Nigel replied smugly. “That is the beauty of the human condition.”
“You know what your problem is? You are no fun.”
He grinned. “I consider it one of my greatest attributes.”
By the time we reached the first floor, Nikki had summoned a vehicle and was waiting for us in her usual mode of chauffeur. Nigel and I piled in the back of the car, and I was surprised to see a very familiar backpack waiting for us there.
“What is this?” I asked, frowning. “I wanted this to stay with Chichiro.”
“And she wanted it out of her house,” Nikki said. “Ma-Singh arranged for a driver to bring it to Tokyo, and that was that.”
“Did she offer a reason why?”
“Well, if you really want to know, she did,” Nikki said. “She said you needed them more than she did. And believe me, dollface, when you hear what we’re about to walk into, you’re gonna want any and all tools you can scare up at your disposal.”
I stared at her in the front seat. “Okay, so catch me up here. Nigel said you were working the Dixie angle, and yet, here you are.”
She lifted her brows as she stared into the rearview mirror. “I was, four days ago. Then you and he disappeared into Mount Chichiro, and I, shall we say, relocated at Ma-Singh’s express request. For your safety.” She grinned. “Good thing too. I was already in the city when you blew the doors off the warehouse earlier today.”
“You were here.” For the first time today, I clutched at a shred of hope that we were going to get real answers. “You handled the interrogation of the teams at the warehouse.”
“That I did. And it’s about the same story that we got from Katya. Those kids, all of them were Connected. Some only a little, some quite a lot. None of them augmented. They believed they were going to the warehouse to learn the next clue in a worldwide quest to protect the world from, and I quote, ‘the war on magic.’”
I grimaced. “And what did they think that actually meant?”
“They didn’t seem to be too worried about explanations,” Nikki said. “They were all jacked up about playing some newly discovered modules in the game, and learning about their hero being attacked by a rogue bomber in the Japanese mountains, and what she did when that happened.”
I tried not to feel nauseated. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Oh, it gets better than that,” she chortled. “You’re absolutely going to love the name of the game itself.”
“What, it’s not Mongol Horde II?”
“Not even close. Try Arcania, Champions of Atlantis.”
“What?” I demanded as Nikki dissolved into laughter. “That is not the name. You’re making that up.” I wheeled to Nigel. “Tell me she’s making that up.”
He cocked a brow at me. “You’re surprised that this is the name Simon came up with? Considering his last attempt was Mongol Horde?”
“But…” I flopped back in my seat. “How is anyone even taking this seriously? That’s not a real name for a game. Assassin’s Creed, Call of Duty. Those are real names.”
“Yawn,” Nikki offered from the front seat. “Those are boring old man names. Arcania, Champions of Atlantis has some sex appeal to it.” She flounced her pink hair. “I could get behind being a Champion of Atlantis. You
know the guys in that game are going to be super hot. Like Aquaman hot.”
“Well, Atlantis was surrounded by water. It only makes sense,” Nigel agreed.
“This is my game, though,” I protested. “I’m the star of it. I should have gotten a chance to name it.” I frowned, letting the moment of levity slip away. “Connecteds all over the world have access to this thing?”
“Well, they certainly do in Tokyo,” Nikki said reasonably. “Who knows how it’s playing in London. Or Rio. Or wherever else Simon has hooked people into it.”
I nodded. “What I want to know is, why? Why is he hooking so many people?”
“I’m a little more concerned with ‘where,’ right now,” Nigel said. He shifted his gaze to Nikki. “You have the plane?”
“Ready and waiting. It’s a little dicier on the other side, though. I’m not sure we want to set a flight plan for the Himalayas. That’s kind of a big stretch of territory.”
Nigel eyed me. “Can we narrow it down?”
“Maybe,” I said. I felt the comforting weight of my cards in my pocket. I usually didn’t like to use the cards for gross identification of landmarks. They were usually better for smaller targets—where to look in a room, a house, even a city block. A mountain range that stretched the length of Tibet was a little more daunting. Still… “Might as well give it a try.”
I pulled the cards out of my pocket and shuffled them a few times in my hands, blinking at the bright lights outside as we crawled through Tokyo traffic. “Shambhala, Shambhala, Shambhala,” I muttered, working the deck. In all my travels, I’d never been to Tibet. Primarily because I always associated the Himalayas with freezing-cold temperatures, avalanches, and death. Mostly death.
I pulled three cards at random from the deck, then handed them to Nigel. He stared at me in horror for a moment, as if I’d just offered him a baby. “Take them,” I said. “We’re moving, and I don’t want everything sliding all over the place.”
He handled the cards awkwardly, shoving them back toward me after I pushed my deck into my pocket again.
“Have you never had your cards read before?” I demanded. “Geez.”
“I have not,” he informed me stiffly. No one could do stiff like a Brit. “I haven’t had any desire to know my future, nor have I had any need to ascertain the future of another person.”
“N-F—Nigel Friedman and no fun in one acronym,” I informed him again, but I had good reason to have his mojo on the cards. He’d been to Tibet, Nepal, and all those other places where Sherpas liked to hang out. He’d seen the beauty and majesty of the Himalayas firsthand. Hopefully that would help the cards triangulate on the right position.
“What are the major cities in the Himalayas?” I asked.
“Kathmandu, of course,” he replied. “That’s in Nepal. After that, there’s Shimla in India, Dehradun, also in India, Lhasa in China, and Pokhara, also in Nepal.”
“Kathmandu’s the biggest deal?” I asked, pulling a card. It was Justice, and I nodded. “Governmental seat there on top of whatever else they have going on in the city—I guess that’d be a lot of travel stuff, yeah? Like…hiking, or whatever?”
He looked at me like I’d soiled his shoes. “Kathmandu has been at the core of Nepal’s history, art, economy, and culture for thousands of years,” he informed me. “It’s a religious center with temples still standing that are hundreds of years old, and artifacts unearthed in the area that are more than two thousand years old. It’s hugely important to both Buddhist and Hindu adherents, known as the City of Light.”
“Right, so, Justice, seat of the country, we’re looking at Kathmandu.” I pulled the second card, then hesitated, flipping it around. “Fool.”
Nigel scowled down at the card. What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked. “That Simon has sent us on this chase with his game?”
“Yeah, but look behind him. He’s walking off a cliff, and there’s a gigantic mountain range in the background. So maybe not a city.”
“I’m still voting for a city, not going to lie,” Nikki chimed in from the front.
“Kathmandu is considered the gateway to the Himalayas,” Nigel said more reasonably. “And, to be fair, Shangri-La or Shambhala is traditionally believed to be in the heart of the Himalayas.”
“Okay, so maybe a city, maybe not, great.” I turned over the third card. Groaned. “I hate it when you do this to me,” I muttered to no one in particular, but more to the universe in general.
“The Five of Pentacles?” Nigel frowned down at the cards. “What are those figures—impoverished supplicants? That’s a church they’re in front of—so what does that mean?” He snatched up the card and stared at it more closely. “There are hundreds of temples in the city. That isn’t useful at all. Draw another card.”
I lifted my brows at him. “It doesn’t work that way.”
“What do you mean it doesn’t work that way?” he protested. “I thought that was the point of the clarifying card. We need clarity. We’ve got a church or temple or whatever, a mountaintop, and a seat of justice. And we’ve got a deadline. Draw another card.”
Amused at his exasperation, I did that. I snickered, tossed the card at him. He flinched back as if it would explode on contact.
“What’s this?”
“You tell me,” I said, settling back in my seat. “I’ve done the hard work already. I drew it.”
“It’s the Queen of Wands,” he said petulantly. “Nepal hasn’t had a monarchy in nearly a decade. Though, yes, it had one once. Does that signify?”
“Could be. What else could signify?”
“I have no idea,” he growled, scowling at the card. “She’s sitting on a throne, she’s holding a wand, there’s a…” He glanced up at me. “No.”
I grinned back at him. “No, what?”
From the front of the car, Nikki was already cackling. She knew the cards well enough to picture them, so she knew what Nigel was seeing. “Don’t feel bad, sweet cakes, sometimes it is that easy.”
He still held the card in his hand, shaking his head. “A cat. There’s a cat at her feet, and you have now decided that we’re looking for something in Kathmandu?”
“You wanted a tiebreaker, you got it. What we’re looking for is a seat of government or, more likely, a temple, if you take Justice as being the original indicator for the city proper. Especially if it’s a temple that’s known for blessing people as they set off on their foolish journeys, whether those journeys are the mountains or religious treks or whatever one sets off from Kathmandu to find. Bonus points if there’s a temple that does that, and it’s got something to do with flowers.”
“Why a flower?”
I flicked the Fool card to him, and despite himself, Nigel looked more closely at the image on its face. He blinked. “That thing he’s holding in his hand? That matters?”
“Yes, it matters. It’s a flower, and once you have the key information down, like the city, and the building, those details count. So what do we have that’s a flower?”
The answer was a religious monument called the Boudhanath Stupa, and after a ten-hour flight, a night and morning hiding out in a luxurious private residence arranged by Ma-Singh, making sure no one had followed us, Nikki, Nigel, and I stood in front of the august monument in the gathering twilight of the mountains, staring up at its far-seeing eyes.
Nikki had dressed appropriately for the sacred site, in a simple black neoprene bodysuit and black hiking boots. Nigel and I were less stylish, as usual, but still managed to look like we might possibly consider hiking to something more daunting than the restaurant we’d scouted out for breakfast the next morning. I was even rocking a Patagonia ball cap. I’d left the right and left hands of disaster back in the hotel, guarded by eight of Ma-Singh’s best Swords in Nepal—two of whom were Connected. Part of me actually hoped someone would attempt to steal the artifacts…at least we’d have a clue who we were up against.
But that was a problem for later. Now we squinted up a
t the gorgeously lit Boudhanath Stupa, impressed with its size, its popularity, and with the streams of prayer flags extending from its central spire. The monument was built in the shape of a mandala—as close as we were going to get to a flower, I’d decided, and on each of its four sides were painted the eyes of the Buddha. Those eyes seemed to be watching us now, as we dithered over next steps.
“Now what,” Nigel muttered. “You draw another card?”
“Sometimes,” I said, frowning up at the monument. “According to Ma-Singh, a young woman matching Hayley’s description flying from Tokyo landed in Kathmandu two days ago—then promptly fell off the radar. Additional checking uncovered an entire raft of young adults coming from various ports of call, most of them, thank God, aged at least twenty-one years, given the fact that they had to fly overseas.”
“How much does that differ from a typical Tuesday in Kathmandu, though?” asked Nikki. “This place is hiking mecca, and we’re at the tail end of the hiking season, right? Last-minute hikers are all crashing the place for one last chance to get their rocks off, as it were.”
“So that doesn’t help us at all,” Nigel sighed.
“It does and it doesn’t,” I said. “With the added knowledge that the gateway is through this holy place, that narrows down our search to young Connecteds gathering at the Boudhanath Stupa, especially if they don’t look like they’re merely here to get a blessing for their upcoming hike.”
“But they could be anywhere,” Nigel protested, waving at the sea of tactical fleece. “Any of these hikers might qualify for that, and Hayley might well have already left. There’s no way we could pick out the game players from this crowd.”
“We’re not talking government agents here. We’re talking Connecteds who may or may not even be decent gamers. Gamers whose usual form of adventure involves a comfortable couch.”
“In other words,” Nikki said, “these kids will probably be sticking out somewhat. At least as much as we are, anyway.”
“Exactly,” I said. “In the meantime, we should start circling the place. Look for anywhere there’s a collection of these prayer flags in particular, since this monument doesn’t actually have stained glass windows.”
