Armchair Safari (A Cybercrime Technothriller)

by Jonathan Paul Isaacs

  “I want you to take your dress off.”

  Valentina started a slow turn and swayed around until her back was to him. Her movements were fluid and hypnotizing. Krystian thought she was getting into what she was doing—maybe the vodka shot was helping. He saw her hands go up to the top of her dress and start to pull the zipper. The fabric parted into a narrow V that exposed the skin of her bare back. Krystian couldn’t take his eyes off her as she continued to flow and the little red dress lost its battle to gravity, sinking down from her sides, to her hips, and then to the floor. All Valentina had left on was her necklace and a black thong that matched her hair.

  Krystian was trying to think through his options of what to ask for next—all of which involved him getting into a similar state of undress—when Valentina looked over her shoulder. She started swaying her way back to him until she was standing across his knees at the edge of the couch. She lowered herself seductively down onto him. Krystian let out a little moan of disbelief as Valentina continued moving her body into what was now a full-on lap dance, grinding against him and causing him to clutch his own hands into tight fists. He quickly realized what sort of opportunity he was squandering and reached to run his fingers up her sides. He felt her abdomen, her ribs, until he was at last cupping her breasts from behind. Valentina continued to grind. Some distant part of Krystian’s brain started to puzzle out how in the world he was going to get his pants off.

  His phone buzzed again. This was getting annoying. Krystian fumbled into his pocket, which was difficult now with a woman wriggling on top of him, and silenced it again before tossing it to the side on the couch. At least if it buzzed again it wouldn’t be pressed against him. It landed screen-up on the leather cushion next to him.

  Valentina’s body was amazing. Her abs were firm and Krystian let his hands glide across them before moving to explore further down. How was he going to get her thong off? He stuck his fingers through the strings across her hips and started to push them down. Valentina lifted herself up slightly so that he was able to get the thin twist of underwear over to her thighs. Krystian wondered how it was that a girl learned to give a good lap dance. Did she get coaching from the men that she did this to? He wanted to shake each of their hands.

  The thong had just hit the carpet when there was another buzzing from Krystian’s phone. He felt the vibration through the couch. Annoyed, he reached over to hit End again.

  Krystian had a different graphic or image for every entity in his Contacts list that would display when they tried to call or text him. He wasn’t really trying to look at his phone considering he had a very pretty, very expensive whore sliding up and down against him. But despite the distraction, he couldn’t fail to see the picture of stacked gold coins on his smartphone screen. It was a text update from Armchair Safari.

  From Safari? Why would he be getting a text from them? Reluctantly, he reached over and pushed a button to see the message.

  It was a robbery notification with his new, remaining account balance.

  Krystian stared uncomprehendingly at the text. When he finally understood what it was saying he was left with disbelief. This was a mistake, or maybe a joke. Was it a joke? Had DarkZeus hacked his phone? He felt himself starting to panic. This had to be a mistake. A robbery alone was impossible. The stronghold was too well hidden. But that amount, the balance it was saying was left... it was so much smaller that there was no way it could be right. Just no way. No one could haul that much away at one time... what the hell was happening?

  Valentina could even tell something was wrong and was trying to move more vigorously to keep him aroused. Krystian squirmed against the couch’s cushion so that he could hold his phone up close to his face. The number was unmistakable. He kept glaring at it, his mind darting between denial, anger, incomprehension, confusion.

  “What’s wrong?” Valentina had turned sideways across his thighs and was gawking at him, worried perhaps she wasn’t going to earn her fee.

  Krystian stared at her dumbfounded. He had momentarily forgotten that she was even there. He looked back and forth between her and his phone. A gnawing, empty feeling in the pit of his stomach had formed and was growing rapidly in his insides. The walls felt like they were closing in on him, the air stale and too hot to breathe. He had to get out. He had to get some fresh air.

  He pushed Valentina off his lap and she made a little noise as she landed unceremoniously on the floor. Krystian stumbled over her and stormed out of the private room, then turned right down the little hallway leading back to the dance floor. He flung his way into the main building and breezed past the bouncer without so much as an acknowledgment that he existed. He had to get outside—fast. He could taste the bile in his mouth and he was going to run out of time. Krystian dodged and ducked his way around people dancing, patrons headed to the bar, even two spikey-haired girls making out with each other near the entrance. His stomach was doing backflips. He jammed past some club goers that had just arrived and others that were waiting in line until he got past the front door. Then he broke into a run. Before he knew it, Krystian found himself outside the club in a deserted side alley that smelled of trash and piss.

  He puked everything out in a great heave. And again. And again.

  Minutes seemed like hours. Krystian realized he was sitting down in the alley with his knees drawn up, unable to support him. He felt marginally better physically, but very weak, very wobbly. What had happened again? He was having trouble remembering. He had been sitting on a couch with Costin and Nicu. Hadn’t someone else been there? Why couldn’t he recall?

  Suddenly Krystian realized he was holding his cell phone. He looked at it, saw the text update, and it all came crashing back into his memory. He stared once again in disbelief at the screen, a sense of panic building steadily from his gut.

  His account balance. The account that had all of the money.

  His money.

  Yuri’s money.

  It was gone.

  23

  The Lost Continent, Armchair Safari.

  The party hiked back toward the shore single-file but split into two groups, with Haas, Kalam, and Megan in the front three, and Sameer, Father Corman, and Boris in a rear guard a hundred yards behind. Between the two squads was a long row of shimmering disks gliding through the air, each one carrying a large load of gold crowns and carefully tied down with a tarp to minimize spilling. Megan would periodically glance over her shoulder to check on her companions far behind. Sameer was stone-faced as he concentrated on his magic. Father Corman was watching his feet in an effort to not stumble. Boris would wave at her if he saw her watching, which made Megan smile. She couldn’t wait until their next rest break, where they would change up the marching order and she could be with him.

  Megan tried not to daydream about her newfound wealth. The lure of financial security was intoxicating. Being able to finish school with confidence, not having to worry about mounting bills, no more crappy jobs to make ends meet, no more exhausting nights after working her tail off, only to come back home and start studying... all of it would be done. Instead, she would have freedom. Liberation.

  She came to an odd S-shaped bend in the path that ascended up a small hill. Good luck getting the Floating Disks around that little twist, Sameer. She stifled a wry smile at this thought while struggling herself to make it to the top. Megan used her hands to pull herself up towards the peak, stumbled over, and immediately ran into Haas’s chest.

  “Wha-huh?” she said, startled. She reached out and grabbed Haas’s elbow to keep from tumbling backwards. “Why did you stop?”

  Haas didn’t reply. He was staring at the jungle far in the distance. The ranger’s face was somehow harder than normal.

  Kalam was standing a few feet to Haas’s right. He too was looking back into the jungle, but with more concern, and kept stealing glances at the ranger. Something wasn’t right here.

  “Haas? What is it?” Megan asked.

  The ranger didn’t take his e
yes off the jungle. “We’re being followed.”

  The words hit like a boulder rolling down a mountain. It took a moment before Megan could speak.

  “Who is it? The owners?”

  Haas jerked a thumb over at Kalam. “Ask him.”

  Kalam stared at the ground and refused to meet her eyes.

  Her stomach was twisting into knots again.

  “Kalam?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Megan’s anxiety was suddenly replaced with anger. Something was going on here and Kalam owed them the truth. If there was a mess, they were all in it together.

  “Kalam?”

  He took a deep breath. “I was afraid this might happen. I didn’t think it would, but....”

  “What? What’s happening?”

  Kalam spoke slowly, reluctantly. “The treasure. It’s owned by some nasty people. The Mob.”

  Megan cocked her head. “Feel free to keep talking,” she suggested sarcastically.

  The big, bald warrior sat down on a nearby rock, as if he needed extra support to keep his balance. “Um... yeah. Well, it’s not the Mob, really, but it’s a gang. Eastern European, I think? They’ve, uh... been stashing a lot of money inside Safari. That’s my guess as to who’s after us now.”

  The air around them seemed to freeze. Megan couldn’t believe what she was hearing. A gang? From Europe? Did they kill people?

  Haas was still gazing far into the distance behind them. “Tell her how old you are, pal.”

  “Huh? How old you are?”

  The reluctance was very plain on Kalam’s face.

  “Tell her,” commanded Haas.

  “I’m fifteen.”

  “You’re freaking fifteen years old?” Megan practically screamed.

  Kalam visibly jumped. “Yeah, I’m fifteen, okay? Lay off.”

  “What was all that crap about being an accountant, then?”

  “My dad’s an accountant,” Kalam explained. “I just sort of borrowed what he does and used it as my own story. I needed you all to take me seriously.”

  “Oh, yeah, great. You needed us to take your lies seriously so you can have us steal a bunch of freaking mob money? What... how in the hell are you even connected to this?”

  “My older brother used to work at Netertainment. He was a Quality Assurance tester. Netertainment hires all these guys on contract to play around and find bugs and stuff whenever there is going to be a new version release.”

  “I know what Q.A.is,” Megan snapped.

  “So my brother is listening to some other Q.A. guy he’s working with about all this time he spends in hacker chat rooms. This guy says he caught wind of a bunch of criminals wanting to launder stolen money through Safari. Says that they put it in, and when it comes back out it’s untraceable.”

  Megan thought back to the spawn killing rubble near the pyramid. She was feeling sick.

  “Well, my brother and this other guy start looking around for it. Only they can’t find it. My brother’s contract ends and he moves on, but I got this other guy’s name from him and wanted to see if I could figure out if this money really exists. So I reached out to him.”

  “Let me guess—in a chat room?”

  “Uh... yeah.”

  Oh, God.

  Haas cleared his throat. “Well, I guess it does exist, huh, pal?”

  “Hey, look,” Kalam said defensively. “It all started out fine. I just wanted to see if I was smart enough to figure out how a gang would do such a thing. It took a lot of trolling around, a lot of research. It wasn’t easy to uncover a path to get into the Beta instance. By the time I got that far, I thought maybe we could just sort of, you know, sneak around the edge and dip our hands in for a little pocket change. Something small that wouldn’t be missed.”

  “We’re hauling away two million dollars, you idiot!” Megan yelled.

  “Hey, you and everyone else kept complaining about how much time it took to get down here,” Kalam said. “I couldn’t just say, oh, let’s not take the treasure after all that work.”

  Megan was seething. “And now, it’s taken this gang—wait, did I say it properly? This gang—the Eastern European gang—exactly one day to realize someone’s taken off with their loot.”

  Kalam bowed his head. “It appears so.”

  The world around Megan seemed like it was shattering to pieces. Oh my God, tell me this is not happening! Maybe we’ve stolen drug money. Was it drug money? From some sort of post-Soviet East European crime family? Are there bodies of victims beheaded and buried in the woods somewhere?

  “I can’t believe this,” Megan whispered. “Damn you, Kalam! Why didn’t you tell us this? How do we know these guys aren’t going to kill us for real? Are they going to track us down in the real world and blow up our houses? You had no right to sign us up for any of this!”

  “I’m sorry,” Kalam replied. He was looking at his feet. “I guess I didn’t think through that part. I thought we could just grab a little bit and leave without being noticed.”

  “Of course you didn’t think the consequences through,” Haas said dryly. “You’re only a fifteen year old.”

  “How come you don’t sound like you’re fifteen?” Megan said.

  “I don’t know. My voice changed last year.”

  Megan rubbed her face with her hands. “Shit.”

  Haas hopped off the rock he had been standing on. “We left a lot of crowns in that pyramid. Whoever this is will still be a strong adversary.”

  As if to punctuate the reality of their situation, Megan noticed two of the floating treasure disks now hovering near the edge of the ridge behind them. Boris’s distant but booming voice sounded from the rear of the treasure train. “What’s the holdup up there?”

  Megan sat down on the ground in despair. She didn’t want to die, not now. She certainly didn’t want to die in real life. It was amazing how deeply her morale had plummeted in the span of just a few minutes.

  “Okay, fun time is over,” Haas said. “Get ready to fight.”

  “Huh?” said Megan.

  Kalam looked up, his face pale.

  “That clearing near the gorge, where the rope bridge is. We can prepare a defensive position there. But we need to hurry.”

  Megan stared at the ranger. Was he insane?

  “Haas... let’s just get the hell out of here. Even after all we took, this gang still has, what, another million dollars in the bank? That’s too much power. We can’t fight them!”

  Haas shook his head. “There’s a cap on how much treasure will translate into fighting ability. It is significantly less than what’s left in their vault.”

  “There’s a cap?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know... never mind. Look, they’re still too well resourced—”

  “We don’t really have a choice, Megan.”

  “Why not?”

  “Look how fast they’re gaining on us.”

  Haas pointed into the jungle behind them. Barely, she could make out their pursuers: a dozen or so adventurers were mowing their way through the vegetation. The pace was unnaturally fast and smacked of magic. That didn’t bode well for combat.

  Standing still was not helping matters.

  “All right,” she replied hoarsely.

  Haas nodded. “Go back and tell Boris and the others. I need Sameer to move these piles of coin as fast as he can—we’ll use them to set up a defensive wall. I’ll meet you at the clearing along with the Boy Wonder here. Hurry.”

  “Okay.”

  Haas shoved Kalam down the path. Megan glared at the burly warrior for a moment before she turned to find Boris. This was quite a mess they were in, that he had gotten them in. Being chased by killers and crooks. Great.

  Megan learned long ago as a player in Armchair Safari that to be successful, one had to gamble. Now she had to prepare for the biggest gamble of her life.

  24

  Megan and Boris scrambled at a breakneck pace to get to the rope bridge. The cl
earing was as Haas had remembered and described it. Fifty feet wide, good, hard ground, free of trip hazards that could instantly change the tide of a melee. Haas was dragging his foot in the dirt to mark a perimeter. Megan watched with curiosity until the first of the levitating treasure disks appeared. Haas immediately jumped next to it and shouted back down the path. “Sameer! Release your control of your spell! I need to steer!”

  There was a moment’s pause, followed by Haas digging in his heels and leaning hard into the pile of floating riches. The heavily laden disk drifted slowly to the side until it was levitating over the line Haas had drawn. The ranger turned and jogged back to the path where the next disk appeared and repeated the process. Megan saw what he was up to now. He was building a defensive wall from the piles of treasure around where they were to make their last stand.

  “Quite a ranger, isn’t he?” Boris said, looking at Megan.

  Rapid footsteps announced Sameer jogging into the clearing. “What’s wrong? Why did you want me to stop steering?”

  “Can you let those disks drop to the ground, wizard?” Haas asked.

  “Yes, but—”

  “Do it.”

  Sameer waved his hand. There was a tremendous thud as several piles of crowns dropped onto the hard rock. The echo thundered across the gorge behind them.

  “What’s going on?” said the little wizard.

  “We’re being followed,” Megan said. She jerked her head toward the treasure. “By the owners.”

  “Oh, my. Why are we stopping then? Shouldn’t we be running?”

  “They’re too fast.”

  “Oh.” Sameer looked around, sizing up their situation. “We could cross the rope bridge and then cut it down. The gorge will make a better defensive barrier.”

  Haas replied without stopping his forceful arrangement of the treasure. “How long would that take, to float these disks over the length of that bridge?”