Dragon Web Online: Dominion: A LitRPG Adventure Series (Electric Shadows Book 2)

by S. R. Witt

  My mother wasn’t moving. The mechanical harness on her chest kept her heart beating and her lungs moving, but there was something very wrong. She needed medical attention, and she needed it fast.

  I unplugged her from the main machine, strapped the head unit to my chest, and looped the umbilicals over my shoulders. I tucked her sheets in around her baby, swaddling her like a baby. Then I lifted her from the bed and went looking for my brother.

  “We can’t take the car,” he gasped from the doorway. “Smokey won’t give it up.”

  “Subway.” I didn’t have time or to waste. It was a shitty way to get to the hospital, but it was our only choice. “Hang on, mom.”

  She didn’t stir in my arms. Karl held the door for us, and we emerged from the gloomy apartment building onto the cold sidewalk. The sun was a distant white ball hidden behind a wispy layer of winter clouds, and the wind reminded me of Frosthold’s bitter weather.

  Too late, I realized I was still barefoot and wearing my pajamas. The freezing wind cut through the thin material of my clothes like a knife, and I was shivering in seconds.

  Karl pushed through the angry crowds clogging the sidewalk, throwing elbows and shouting to make a path for us.

  Why does anyone stay in New York City? It’s crowded and expensive, and there are more rats than people, more garbage than grass. Yet, more come every day, and none of us ever quite manages to claw our way free of its smothering, concrete embrace. When you’re poor, sometimes it’s too expensive to make your life better. Sometimes you just stay where you’re planted even if the only sun you get is what squeezes through the cracks between the fingers of the people above you.

  The turnstiles to the subway were clogged with people. No one was moving as fast as they should, everyone was struggling to operate the card readers they used every day. Karl shouted for people to move, yelled at them about a medical emergency, but this was New York. The best reaction he got was an annoyed shrug. Most people just ignored us and kept on going through the same dull routine.

  The harness creaked and groaned as it massaged my mother’s chest and compressed her lungs to keep her breathing. The metal struts and flexible joints moved against my arms like the rhythmic spasms of a landed deep-sea crab. My skin crawled and, for one shameful second, I thought about throwing my mother down and running away.

  Karl forced his way to the front of the line, dragging my mom and me along behind him. A businessman barked in protest as Karl snatched his Metro card out of his hand and slammed it into the turnstile slot.

  “Hey!” The man shouted.

  Karl shoved me through the turnstile before ripping the card free and slamming it back down. Then he slipped through and flicked the man’s Metro card into his face with a shouted, “Thanks!”

  For once, luck was on our side. The subway train arrived at the platform just as we did. Karl cut through the waiting commuters, and I followed along in his wake, ignoring them just as they ignored us. Another day in the city.

  Another day in hell. Invernoth, for all its troubles and worries, seemed like paradise by comparison. I yearned to go back there, couldn’t wait to get through this so I could strap the CIN around my throat and let my real troubles dissolve into the white static.

  Miraculously, I found a seat and flopped down in it. I cradled my mother against my chest, and Karl stood in front of us to shield us from other careless passengers.

  My mother whispered something, but the words were lost in the roar of the departing train and the incessant grumbling of the other passengers.

  Numbers ticked through my skull and piled up like an enormous weight on my thoughts. We had some insurance, some government bullshit, but the cost for an ER visit started at 500 bucks, out of pocket. That didn’t cover treatment, or any medicine she might need. Getting my mother in and out of the hospital was going to cost a small fortune.

  And that’s if we got her out of there.

  That thought circled the inside of my skull like a vulture. She was so small, so weak. Her skin was cold, but she didn’t shiver. Despite the steady pumping of the harness, her lips were blue, and the veins on her eyelids stood out as black as ink.

  Something was wrong.

  Something bad.

  “How are we going to pay for this?” Karl worried, giving voice to my unspoken concerns.

  My phone was stuck in my pocket, but I didn’t need it. My bank balance was so low I had to keep track of every cent at all times. “What do you have?”

  Karl stared at me. “A hundred bucks? Maybe not even that. We just paid rent, and I covered the last round of meds.”

  I’d squirreled away more than Karl, from my first crime spree and from the jobs we’d taken since. He’d be pissed when he found out I’d been skimming from his share, but what was I supposed to do? He spent money as fast as it came in, and if I didn’t hold something back, we’d be even more broke than we were.

  And we were broke. After paying for this trip, I didn’t know if I’d even have enough for a few days of in-Game connection charges.

  The train screeched to a stop, and Karl helped me up and out of the molded plastic seat. We hustled up the stairs from the station, and he stopped traffic so we could cross against the light.

  The ER was packed, but the duty nurse took one look at us and bolted from behind her station. “Come with me,” she snapped.

  She led us into an examination stall. The flimsy shower curtain partition around the narrow bed didn’t offer much privacy. Other patients moaned around us. Pained sobs echoed through the floor.

  I lowered my mother onto the gurney and stepped back as a tide of scrubs flooded in to circle her. The hospital staff formed a blue wall between us, holding Karl and me away as they tried to save our mother.

  The duty nurse looped an arm over my shoulders and guided me away from the frantic scene. “We have some paperwork for you to fill out.”

  Of course. The professionals would save my mother, but they wouldn’t do it out of the goodness of their hearts. This was going to cost.

  A lot.

  The nurse sat me down in a plastic chair even less comfortable than the subway seat and shoved a clipboard and pen into my hands.

  She tapped lines on the forms with a chipped fingernail. “Sign here, initial here, sign here.”

  My hands did as they were told, shaking and stuttering over my own signature. “We have aid,” I started, but the nurse shut me up with a chop of her hand.

  “Here.” She shoved a thumbprint reader at me. “Right thumb.”

  The system scanned me, fed my information into a great digital brain hidden somewhere on the other side of the Internet. The biometric keys to my identity and bank account shuffled back and forth, and the nurse watched the back of the thumb reader like a fortuneteller waiting for tea leaves to settle in the bottom of a cup. “Okay. Have a seat over there.”

  She pointed at a row of uncomfortable chairs against the wall, and I stumbled over to them. Hollow-eyed men and women huddled in their seats, eyes fixed on horrors only they could see. From their tattered clothing and unkempt appearances, we were all in the same leaking boat. Just a bunch of dirt-poor people praying the doctors could save their loved ones, and praying just as hard it wouldn’t bankrupt them.

  The nurses pushed Karl out of the examination room. He wouldn’t look me in the eye, and his lips trembled when he spoke. “It’s not good.”

  There wasn’t any point in pressing him for more information. The doctors wouldn’t tell us anything real until they had her stabilized or she died.

  “How did you pay for it?” Karl asked. He didn’t look at me, but I could feel the weight of his attention on me.

  “I save everything. I don’t spend a dime on anything but the game and mom. It’s still not enough. We’re going to be deep in the hole.” Which was true, but it wasn’t the whole truth. Some doubt in the back of my mind kept me from telling Karl that I held back part of his share on every job. I didn’t want him to know what I was d
oing.

  The truth was, I didn’t want my big brother to know I had money because I was afraid he would steal it from me.

  Karl kept staring straight ahead, but he gave a little shake of his head. “You’re always logged in. That’s not cheap.”

  “I’m just trying to keep us in the black.”

  “Stop shutting me out.” His words were soft and quavered with suppressed emotion. To my surprise, it wasn't anger. My brother was sad that I hadn't confided in him. “Stop keeping secrets.”

  “I’m not,” I started, but I didn’t have the strength to keep up the charade. I could’ve lied. I could’ve up come up with some excuses, but I was just too worn out to imagine anything convincing. “I’m not.”

  Karl might have been an asshole, but I'm not so sure I was any better. We were brothers, and we were cruel to each other in different ways.

  Maybe that's true for all brothers.

  We didn’t say another word for the rest of the day. We sat in the hospital next to each other for hours while the doctors labored over our mother.

  We sat, and we waited, and we prayed.

  Together.

  Alone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The hospital let us take Mom home, but only after they’d drained my bank account and made me sign out a credit note for another fifteen hundred dollars. The law said they had to leave me at least a hundred bucks because even the new government knew its citizens needed to eat. Even if all we could afford after a trip to the doctor was a half-share of ramen and the filthy water that trickled from our shitty apartment building’s rusty pipes.

  I bundled my mother up and accepted the bag of tiny translucent pills the doctor promised would keep her from having another attack.

  Karl didn’t speak to me on the way home, and he didn’t say a word when I put my mother back into her bed and retreated to my room. He watched me with sullen eyes and let me do what needed to be done. A fight was coming, it hung in the air like the promise of a summer storm, but I wasn’t going to let it happen today.

  The CIN stung my skin as I wrapped it around my neck, but I didn’t have time to care. I flopped back on my bed and into the world of Invernoth. There was a moment of terror when the login sequence took longer than I expected, and I wondered if the drain on my bank account had triggered a credit warning that would lock me out of the game.

  The tavern’s warmth folded around me like a blanket fresh out of the dryer, and my nose filled with the scents of roasted meats and spilled alcohol. It was more home than my actual home, and I knew that feeling should bother me.

  “But not today,” I muttered to myself. I had things to do.

  I pushed my way through Frosthold’s increasingly crowded streets and ducked down a narrow alley between rows of cozy little homes. I pulled my stilettos out of my backpack and shoved them into my belt. I wasn’t about to get caught without them on hand, again.

  The city was still changing, but not at the frenzied pace it had been. The devs must have decided to stabilize the population to give the residents time to get used to some of the changes. Thankfully, I found what I was looking for without an hours-long search.

  The Grandfather sat in one of the Sanctuary’s pews, feet splayed out in front of him, hands folded over his stomach. His hood was pulled down low over his face so I couldn’t tell if he had his eyes open or closed. He could have been sleeping or merely lost in thought.

  I decided to play it safe, because sneaking up on the old man was a good way to get a knife through the gizzard, and cleared my throat from a few yards away.

  The Grandfather brushed his hood back and offered me a warm if tight, smile. “Saint, just the person I was looking for.”

  A seed of uneasiness took root in my stomach, but I tried to ignore it. “I found the map,” I said, “but I need your help.”

  He raised one gloved hand. “Before you start, we need to talk.”

  Arguing with the Grandfather wasn’t a very good idea, but I was desperate. I felt stupid spilling my guts to an NPC, but I didn’t know what other choice I had. “It’s an emergency. Please, I need more work. My mother--”

  His smile faded, and he sat up. “You’re right, it is an emergency. But not the kind you think.”

  He gestured to the pew next to him. I took a seat, aware of how close we were. The air between us crackled with tension, and I wondered if I’d made some terrible mistake without realizing it. “What’s wrong?”

  “The others are worried.”

  “Others?”

  “The rest of the Shadows.” He looked up at the altar, at the statue of a cloaked figure hanging above it. “They believe you’ve endangered us.”

  “I would never—”

  “I’m not sure they’re wrong.” He rubbed his chin in the stubble on it rasped beneath his fingertips. “You are pursuing the Dominion.”

  This again. “That’s not my fault. It was part of the quest—”

  “Your assignment was to steal the Burning Codex. Not to soulbond it.” It wasn’t a question, but a flat statement of fact. “And, yet, you did. I overlooked that because what you’d done kept the book out of the wrong hands. But now you’ve done something even worse, haven’t you?”

  I didn’t dare look at him. He had to be talking about the Dominion quest I’d triggered because I had more curiosity than sense. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Shadows disrupt the plans of others. We ensure power remains diffuse, that no one can hold the reins for too long. But, most of all, we do not draw attention to ourselves.” Disdain dripped from his words. “But you’ve put your feet on a path that will lead you out of the Shadows.”

  His words grated my nerves. If I weren’t so tired, I would have had the sense to keep my mouth shut and take my beating like a good boy. But I was exhausted, and scared for my mother, and terrified my whole life was about to come crashing down around my ears because I couldn’t afford a trip to the hospital. “I’m not trying to cause any trouble. I just wanted to know—”

  “I warned you.” His words were quiet, little more than an exasperated sigh. “I warned you there would be consequences if you were not very careful how you handled this assignment.”

  “I’m not trying to disrupt any of your plans. I thought I was helping you.”

  “It’s out of my hands. The Church knows what you are. They know that a book went missing from their library. The priestess put two and two together and decided you’d pushed things too far. There’s a sizable reward out for your head.” He turned to look at me, but I couldn’t meet his eyes. “The other Shadows want me to give you up in exchange for a truce with the Hoaldites.”

  “You can’t.” I didn’t have the words to explain why. The Grandfather wasn’t going to care about what was happening to me back in the World, any more than I really cared about whatever goals or plans he had in place in-Game. We used each other, me for money to help my mother, him to further his machinations. “I can’t let you do that.”

  There was a blur in the air around me, and then I was flat on my back. The stone floor of the Sanctuary dug into my shoulders, and the Grandfather straddled me. His stiletto hovered over my right eye, so close when I blinked I lost a few eyelashes. “I don’t need your permission.”

  I gulped. Point taken.

  “You might as well kill me, then.” He tensed, and my stomach rolled over in terror. “If you give me to them, that’s what they’ll do. Kill me and claim the thief’s bounty.”

  There was something else in the old man’s eyes, something that hurt worse than anger.

  Sadness. Disappointment.

  “You think I would do that?”

  Before I could answer, he yanked me to my feet and shoved me back into the pew.

  “I know you need money, Saint. I know there are other worlds than these, and your concerns pierce them all.” He let those words sink in for a second, before continuing. “But you’ve opened up a can of worms here that I can’t seal for you. What you have done affec
ts all of those worlds, and my power is limited to this one.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, and he pointed his blade at me. “Don’t talk. Just listen.”

  He paced in front of me, then stopped and spread his arms wide. “All of this is more than you think it is. What the Shadows do is important. Because there are other worlds than these.”

  Silence surrounded us again. He turned away, and his shoulders sank as he struggled to find the words. In the end, he shrugged and gave up.

  “I can’t take this burden from you. It’s dangerous, and it’s liable to get you killed.” He sat down next to me and put his hand on my shoulder. “You’ve put yourself into this danger, and only you can pull yourself out of the fire. But, if you’re careful, you can undo the damage you’ve done. If you can keep anyone from claiming the Dominion, if you can assure the Shadows the Burning Throne will not be claimed, then perhaps they will welcome you back into the fold. Perhaps there is a way for you to solve all of your problems. But you will have to find that way on your own.”

  My thoughts spun in eccentric orbits inside my skull. What did the Grandfather mean when he said the Shadows were important in other worlds? It made no sense.

  In a very short time, I’d come to depend on the Grandfather and his cranky bullshit. What was I going to do on my own?

  “This isn’t what I wanted.”

  “It never is. But you have to deal with things as best you can.” The grandfather flopped down in the pew next to me. This close, I could see the exhaustion etched into his face, the sorrow carved into the wrinkled grooves under his eyes. He rested his head in his hands. “Remember what I told you. Remember what I’ve tried to teach you. These things will be important. They may even save you.”

  My heart sank, and I felt sick to my stomach. Everything I’d thought I could depend on was crumbling into dust. “Please,” I started.

  “You have to choose your own path now, Saint. You can find your way back to the Shadows if you believe as we do and follow your gut.