by Natalie Grey
Everyone nodded, chastened. Sam rarely asserted his authority, but when he did, you tended to go along with it—even if you were technically his boss.
"We're looking at anything vaguely related to PvP," Sam told Jay. "We know that last time, Harry hijacked dungeons and inserted himself as the boss. What we don't know is how he intends to confront Gracie this time, beyond everyone's general suspicion that it will happen on one of the battlegrounds.”
Jay nodded. "There are a few main possibilities, right?" His mind was running ahead, and he let the words out with no filter, hoping he wouldn't say anything ridiculous. "So, it's possible he's doing the same thing he did with the quest: eventually, she'll go into the right battleground, and he'll be there waiting. But that's tricky.”
"Especially because he shouldn't be able to make a character," Dan said. "We blocked him from doing that, and to my knowledge, he hasn't gotten around it.”
"That's one hell of a block," Jay exclaimed.
"Didn't you wonder why he hadn't shown up to claim that quest?" Dhruv asked. "It's why he went into the game as the bosses. He could still do that; he just couldn't be there as a player. As far as we know, he still can't, but none of the battlegrounds have NPCs in them that he could inhabit.”
"Quarry Ridge has the potions master," Sam said, surprising Jay with his knowledge. He took their surprised looks in stride with a small smile. "Once we started focusing on PvP, I thought it would be prudent to do my research.”
"Okay, so Quarry Ridge has the potions master," Dan said. "Do we focus there, then?”
There was a pause while they all thought.
"No," Jay said. "We focus on how he's going to force the confrontation. That's more important. It'll be something like a duel mechanic, right? Something she can't ignore.”
The other three nodded. Dan was taking notes in scrawling longhand that looked like it was filled with symbols.
"And is it going to be one on one?" Jay asked. "Or as teams? I'm guessing one on one because he was so crazy about that last time—“
"Crazy?" Dhruv raised an eyebrow. "Because I would have guessed teams, but I wasn't able to hear anything he said in the last dungeon last time, only Gracie's responses." He looked at this watch but made no comment on why.
"He basically challenged her to a one-on-one fight," Jay explained. "He was a boss, so that would be stupid as hell to do, but he kept calling her a coward. Much like you did," he added whimsically.
"Yeah, yeah," Dhruv said. "Die mad about it." He gave Jay a grin that conveyed the friendliest “Fuck you” Jay had ever seen.
Out of the corner of his eye, Jay saw Dan and Sam exchange looks. Sam shrugged slightly, and Dan shook his head with a sigh.
"Anyway," Dhruv said, "Harry was never good at PvP, so my guess is that he'll have a team. Whether or not he'll let her have one."
"That, I think, depends on when whatever mechanic it is was built," Dan interjected. "As Jay pointed out yesterday—Dhruv told me about your list, Jay—he didn't write the quest until we started trying to boot him. Was this written at the same time, or is he utilizing some other mechanic we don't know about? Something he put in there before? The earlier it was put in, the fairer I think we can assume it is." He gave Jay and Sam a tight smile. "Harry loves to think of himself as fair," he explained. "And then someone wins, and he makes things less fair. So, you can tell how fair an encounter with him will be depending on whether or not you're at the first stage of the conflict.”
Despite himself, Jay laughed. He could just imagine that: Harry, determined that he knew best, wanting to rule by right of strength—and then later wanting to rule by right of winning, no matter how much he had to slant the encounter in his favor to win it.
"Okay," he said a moment later. "So, here's my guess: whatever he's going to do, it's something that was already in the game. He envisioned a world with kings and war. You two have been pretty cagey about it, but it seems like there's the possibility for factions to form and war to break out. That's basically a forced PvP encounter, right? So, I'd bet there's something already in there." Then a thought coalesced: "Demon Syndicate.”
"Huh?" Dhruv asked. He exchanged looks with Dan.
Dan settled his face into a blank customer service smile. "I don't think it would necessarily be wise to reach out to Demon Syndicate," he said blandly. "Certain...situations have—“
"No, not us reaching out," Jay said. "Harry." Everyone stared at him blankly, and Jay wanted to beat his head on the table. "Harry needs a team, right? That's where we're going. So he needs a bunch of people who are willing to side with him against the game's creators and some goddess-queen hybrid thing. They have to be good, and they have to have some animosity he can use. He's all about that, isn't he? About getting into people's heads and making them want to do things for him?”
Dan's mouth opened and closed twice. "Oh, dear God."
Dhruv didn’t waste time processing the idea emotionally. He looked at Sam. "Do we still have the link into Demon Syndicate's feed?" he asked.
"Yes, but that was just to the account they were using for watching Red Squadron," Sam said. "I don't actually know how they set it up.”
"We can make another one," Dhruv said, "it would just be quicker to go through a channel that was already built. We'll want to look at what they're doing now.”
"I can check." Dan stirred to life and opened his laptop. "Give me a character name. No, never mind, I'll go through the guild lookup." He tapped his fingers on the trackpad as he waited for things to load, then began searching. He murmured to himself as he did so, checking and cross-referencing, and after a few searches, he started to frown.
The frown got deeper as he continued.
"Is something wrong?" Jay asked.
"Kind of." Dan sat back. "They're in a non-active zone. Well, a part of the Sea of Sand they shouldn't be able to get to, and they're all there.”
"What part?" Dhruv stood up and went to look, along with Sam and Jay. They peered over Dan's shoulder, and all of them frowned when they saw the zone name.
Saladin's Keep
"You know that zone is active, right?" Jay asked quizzically.
"This isn't the battleground," Dan said. He pointed. "There'd be a battleground notation in front of it if it were—and there would be no major zone. This is the actual place. It's in the Sea of Sand, and we were theoretically going to open it up at some point. That's how you all had that Christmas party PvP there," he added to Jay.
"Oh," Jay said. "So, they're not supposed to be able to get there?”
"No," Dhruv said flatly. "They're not. The only way is by flying transport, which you'd have to be able to utilize. Someone helped them.”
"I think we have our answer," Sam said a moment later. He'd been scanning the list of names and typed something into his phone. "They lost a healer, right? Well, now they have a recruit called TrialHealer whose account is five days old, and who is nonetheless top-level and has a full set of Elite armor.”
He held up his phone, which displayed the global rankings lookup, and there was a long pause while they all stared.
"I didn't think he'd ever in a million years go for a Piskie character," Dhruv remarked finally.
"How. The hell. Did he get into the game?" Dan asked far too pleasantly.
"Account lookup," Sam suggested. They all leaned over the screen again as Dan searched until he gave them all a look. Then they stood up while he kept typing.
"Registered to..." Dan frowned, "an LLC, which means we had to have given them a dispensation, and—“
"Front Range," Sam said. "That's Brightstar. They funnel their charity and sponsorships and so on through there.”
Dan went very still. "So they're now employing Harry?" he said. This time the pleasantness was so strong that Jay found himself breaking out in a cold sweat.
"Apparently," he said. He chewed his lip. "If they made him his own account, they must be, right?”
"Possibly," Sam said. He sounded cautio
us.
Dan rounded on him. "Possibly? He's using their account. What other explanation—"
"We don't know," Sam said patiently. "We should find out before doing anything rash, that's all I'm saying. For one thing, we have an active contract with them, so knowing exactly how they breached it would be useful.”
"How who breached what contract?" asked a new voice.
Jay looked up, and his jaw dropped. “Gracie?"
There she was, standing with her hands in the pockets of some rolled-up jeans, an oversized green sweatshirt draped over her slim frame, and her long light-brown hair pulled into a ponytail.
"We flew her in," Dhruv said. Jay now remembered him looking at his phone and his watch. "We figured it was past time to join forces officially."
Chapter Twenty-Two
"Gracie." Jay looked like he'd been hit by a truck.
It was him, but he was real. For the first time, Gracie could reach out and touch him if she wanted, and her fingers wouldn't go right through him. She was shaking, she realized—adrenaline pounding through her veins. She'd been on the lookout as the receptionist led her through the halls, but it had still been a shock to come around the corner and see Jay.
"Hi," she managed.
One of the other three, a man who looked to be about forty with thinning hair, cleared his throat. "We'll give you two a moment.”
"We have things to do," said a man Gracie assumed was Dhruv.
The first man interrupted him. "A moment," he reiterated. He ushered the other two men out firmly, giving Gracie a nod as he went by. Then the door shut and they were alone in the room.
Neither she nor Jay moved for a good few seconds, and when they did, it was to edge closer to each other very slowly. Gracie reached out, and Jay did the same. They were both, she realized, having trouble believing the other person was actually there. Then, at the same time, they curled their hands into fists and did a fist bump.
That broke the weird unreality of the moment, and they both dissolved into laughter. Gracie leaned on the table with one hand, hand over her stomach. The problem was, she didn't seem to be able to stop laughing. Her head was a whirl of thoughts, from everything she'd heard them discussing as she came in to what Jay thought of her now that he could really see her. When she looked up, he was watching her.
"I, uh..." She didn't know what to say. Then, because she'd never been good at either subtlety or flirting, and she was going to throw up if she let herself wonder, she opened her mouth and blurted, "I really want to kiss you. I—that is, if you don't mind now that you've seen me. Maybe it’s—“
“A bad idea” got cut off by the kiss. Jay took two steps and cupped her face in his hands. She was almost as tall as he was, but she was distracted enough not to worry about whether he minded. With some hesitation, she wound her arms around his neck and kissed him back. It wasn't that she hadn't done this before, but she wasn't exactly Casanova.
What were you supposed to do with your tongue while you were kissing?
Eventually, she gave up trying to think about it. For one thing, Jay didn't seem to be complaining. For another, kissing was too absorbing for her to devote much thought to anything else.
When they finally broke apart, she couldn't remember how long it had been since she had taken a breath. She stared at him. “Um."
Jay kissed her again, then groaned in frustration.
"What?" Was she doing something wrong? But when she followed his eyes, she realized the other three were outside the door staring in.
"They did say a moment," Jay muttered, resigned. He looked down at her. "Why did they bring you here?”
"They said they needed to figure out what Harry was up to, and since Harry had been bending the rules, maybe it was time for them to do it too." Gracie stepped back and twisted her hands together, frowning. "I know you don't always approve of that—"
"I didn't approve when it was them manipulating rankings," Jay said. "I do approve when it's keeping a crazy asshole from nuking the game." He sighed and went to open the door, gesturing with overblown courtesy for the others to come in.
"All right." The man who'd spoken up earlier seemed determined not to dwell on what they'd interrupted. "I'm Sam, Jay's boss. This is Dan, and this is Dhruv.”
“Hi.” Gracie brushed her fingers over her lips, blushing, and then settled down in a chair. She cleared her throat. “Um, may I have some coffee? I didn’t eat on the plane.”
“That’s why we put all this out,” Sam told her gently. “Have you slept enough to talk now? We can get you set up in one of the break rooms for a nap if you want, or take you back to your hotel—”
“No, I’m fine.” Gracie managed a smile. “Honestly. Just tired.” And distracted by kissing. She got herself a cup of coffee and a donut.
“So, I don’t know how you did it,” Jay said, “but you were absolutely right. It’s going to be Saladin’s Keep.”
Gracie’s head jerked up, and she stared at them. “Really?”
“We don’t know that for certain,” Dan pre-empted. “But it does seem like it. It also appears that he’s joined forces with the Demon Syndicate. He’s playing a healer.”
“Yesuan,” Gracie murmured.
“Ah,” Dhruv said. “Of course.”
“He sees himself as a healer,” Gracie explained, rolling her eyes. “Unifying everyone against him, something-something.” She waved the donut.
Jay laughed slightly, and she looked at him. She could still feel his lips on hers, and—
Focus, Gracie.
Gracie cleared her throat. Right. She could do this. “So, how do you know it’s Saladin’s Keep?” she asked.
“That’s where Demon Syndicate is right now,” Jay explained. “Along with a decked-out top-level healer whose account has only existed for a few days.”
“So they’re working with him,” Gracie muttered. “Charming. Risky, though. We should ask Caspian about that.”
“Good point.” Jay nodded and pulled out his phone. “I’ll text him.”
“Whoa, wait. Hey.” Dhruv made a cutting motion in the air with his hand. “Who is Caspian? We don’t want to be bringing in any other people on this.”
“Caspian was Demon Syndicate’s plant in our guild,” Gracie said. “Which I’m given to understand you knew about.” She raised an eyebrow at him. “Now he’s in our guild.”
“Really.” Dhruv looked at her like she was crazy. “And you…don’t think this is another attempt to spy on you?”
Gracie opened her mouth, then closed it. “No,” she said. “I don’t. I doubt I could prove it to your satisfaction, but I really don’t.”
Dhruv raised an eyebrow but shrugged to show that he’d accept that for now.
“We should be watching what they’re doing,” Gracie said. “If Harry’s there, what he’s doing is our best clue.”
“I’ve been working on getting a feed pulled up,” Dan said. “Well, I asked Paul and Tim to pull one up. They just sent me a link.” He plugged his laptop into a projector and clicked a few keys. “Do we want a birds-eye of the whole map or one of the players specifically?”
“Harry,” Jay said at once. Gracie nodded in agreement.
They were dropped into a players’-eye view from Harry’s camera. He was pacing around the greenery of the oasis, staring down at the ground.
“Interesting tactics,” Gracie said, after a moment. “Think that’s D or O?”
“That’s about Harry’s level of skill at offense,” Dhruv muttered. His mouth twitched in a smile. “Seriously, though, what is he looking for?”
“I’ll be back. I’m going to get my laptop.” Jay headed out of the room, letting his fingertips brush Gracie’s shoulder as he went past. He smiled at her when she looked at him.
She curled up to sit cross-legged in the office chair and wrapped her fingers around the coffee mug as she stared at the screen. Harry was being very methodical, whatever he was doing. He would pace, crouch, look through the undergrowth,
look up, and then repeat. Nearby, Gracie could faintly hear the sounds of spells and shouts, and once or twice, Harry looked toward the sound, but he never spent much time observing.
Jay was back less than a minute later, sliding into place beside Dan and checking several things on his screen before beginning to type furiously. Gracie glanced over curiously, but he was entirely engrossed in his work and didn’t look up.
Eventually, Harry circled toward the back of the oasis, the most remote area, which was filled with larger blocks of stone and had plants everywhere. A tiny Piskie hand came up out of reflex to push the plants out of his way.
“I’ll say this for him,” Dhruv said. “He’s finally learned how to ask other people for things.”
“I don’t think using other people as tools really counts as personal progress,” Dan replied drily.
“You are so difficult to please.”
Gracie smiled despite herself. She hadn’t wanted to like these two, not after what they’d put her through. In person, though, she could see both their intelligence and their work ethic, and she found herself liking their humor. Dhruv was a straight talker, not afraid of a confrontation. Dan came at things sideways, but he had a low-key, observant way of looking at the world that Gracie liked.
She’d be lying if she said that seeing Jay wasn’t one of the biggest reasons she’d come out here, but she’d also been interested in meeting the two Dragon Soul founders.
“Did they move it?” Harry muttered.
Everyone at the table stiffened, then burst out laughing. Harry was very conscious of his dignity, and hearing the Piskie voice filter was hilarious.
Unaware that they were listening in, he continued to mutter. “No, they’d take it out. But where is it?”
“Did we make any changes to this zone?” Dan asked quizzically. He rubbed his forehead and looked at Dhruv. “I didn’t think we had.”
“I didn’t think we had either, but here we are.” Dhruv sighed. “Wait. Wait. No, we flipped it. The whole thing.”
