by Natalie Grey
“That was you?” Gracie shook her head. “How did you get in?”
“I made a character!” Harry shouted. “To make you lose the quest!” When he saw Gracie’s expression, he groaned. “If I could make you fail it, I could pick it up,” he said, through gritted teeth.
“And I beat you.” Gracie was starting to smile. She didn’t want to rub it in, not necessarily.
But she did like winning.
“Yes,” Harry said. He clearly wasn’t happy about this turn of events. “You did. Good for you.”
“Sorry. Well, not very, but you see what I mean. It’s just, after you’ve fucked with my life a ton and given me this giant pile of frustration, it’s kind of nice to see you get a dose of it too.” Gracie grinned at him and leaned against the other wall, crossing her arms. “Go on.”
He gave her an unfriendly look. “You didn’t back down,” he said. “You never took the out. You wanted to fight for something more, for the right thing, whether or not it was easy. You understood. You couldn’t just watch an injustice happen and walk away, even in a game.”
Gracie shrugged.
“You don’t get it,” Harry said. “Dan and Dhruv thought I was nuts. They said it was just a game, they said people got to learn their limits and test out things they would never do in the real world, but when you make a dystopia, when you make people start to choose between amoral options, when they get used to it…that can do more harm than you could imagine.”
Gracie frowned at him. “Not sure I buy that. I’ve made some bad choices in games, regretted them, and come out the other side with the impetus never to do that again.”
“You’re different,” Harry argued. “That’s why you triggered the quest. No one else had, and there were already thousands of players.”
Gracie chewed on her lip. Harry sounded frustrated, like he was absolutely sure of his conclusion, but she wasn’t sure she agreed.
“Okay,” she said finally, noncommittal. “So why did you come to see me?”
“Because I wanted to know who you were.” Harry lifted his shoulders and shook his head. “This was supposed to be my way to stay in the game. Do you know what it’s like, dreaming up something like Metamorphosis, and then it becomes real, and there’s no place for you there? Do you have any idea? Because I made my place, and you have it.”
Gracie stared at him, shaking. In her head, she’d called Harry a lot of names. She’d thought badly of him for messing with her life, for making her a pawn.
But she also knew what the game meant to her, and she couldn’t even imagine what it meant to him.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “You did a good job, you know.”
Harry gave a single shake of his head. “I don’t want to hear about it.” He looked away for a moment. “What I want to know,” he said finally, “is that you’ll do what I made that character to do. That you’ll make sure they don’t slide into chaos and backstabbing. That you’ll keep them on the right path.’
“Them?”
“All of them.” He met her eyes. His were brown, set beneath thick dark-blond brows. “The players.”
“I…how the hell am I supposed to do that?” Gracie demanded.
“Figure it out,” Harry said. “You were the one who cared enough to save the kobolds, and they aren’t even real. So you should care more about actual people, right? Figure it out.” He gave her a look that was not entirely friendly and left.
Gracie stared after him, her head whirling. She hadn’t expected to sympathize with Harry, not at all.
And she definitely hadn’t expected him to give her an even more impossible task than she already had.
Chapter Fourteen
“I still don’t know why they agreed,” Thad was saying heatedly as Jamie got into his VR suit. “We don’t owe them a damned thing. They owe us—”
Jamie lost Evan’s reply as he put on his helmet. Thad was probably looking for backup in this fight, but Jamie didn’t want to take the time and frustration for that. Evan wasn’t the person they should be arguing with anyway. That would be whoever had agreed to a livestream.
And even that wasn’t really on his radar.
Callista was.
While they were all descending into accusations and in-fighting, Callista was taking her ranking to the bank. She was making herself an icon in the world of Metamorphosis. Everyone loved a damned underdog story, didn’t they? And here she was, running away with the title without a sponsor. She was probably beating the advertising offers away with a stick by now. It made Jamie’s chest feel tight. Hot, and filled with anger.
She’d made a mockery of the rest of them, and he would bet she didn’t even care.
He loaded into the middle of a guild conversation that sounded anxious. The members of the guild were practically whispering to one another, a human urge that hadn’t quite caught up to the fact that they were in a virtual world.
“What’s going on?” Jamie asked. He’d loaded in near Kithara, in one of the fields that had a reliable scattering of herbs. As he progressed in his cooking, he was going to need more ingredients, and while he hoped he was almost done with this farce, he did need something to do in the meantime. He headed for one of the small lakes that dotted the landscape.
“Hey, Cas.” Alan sounded somber. “Something weird is going on with Gracie. I don’t know exactly what. She and Jay are talking about it.”
“I hope everything’s all right.” What he actually hoped was that his voice didn’t sound too happy. Had all of this finally caught up with Callista?
He could only pray.
To his manifest frustration, however, no one knew anything more, and it was more than two hours before Callista emerged from her closed-door session with Anders. By then, most of the other guild members had logged off, and Jamie was beginning to think that tonight wasn’t a good night for getting any intel. He wondered, amused, if the Dragon Soul devs were still watching or if they had given up.
And then it was only the two of them online, and he felt the adrenaline start to kick in. This was it. He was going to bring her down, make her give all the details.
Slow and steady, Jamie. He bounced on his feet, trying to burn off the extra energy. His character was collecting herbs to use in cooking, and he sank back into the shadows as a pair of wolves padded by.
“Hey,” he said to Callista, knowing that the wolves couldn’t hear him but still feeling a spike of adrenaline. “Up late too, huh?”
“Yeah.” Callista sounded exhausted. “I should sleep, but I just…I can’t.”
“Are you all right?” Jamie asked as innocently as he could. He stepped out of the shadows and made for a bunch of herbs near the lake. “Everyone was really worried.”
Callista swore under her breath. Jamie made out “monkey-brained” and “canoes up their asses” and decided not to try to put the pieces together.
“Sorry,” she said, after a moment. “It was just, that was exactly what I didn’t want.”
Of course. You don’t want to be the center of attention. You don’t want to milk this for all it’s worth. Jamie felt his lip curl. He’d been starting to get tired, but this was energizing him. “They’re just worried about you,” he said. “They care about you.” He’d stroke her ego and see if that got him in her good graces.
“Right.” Callista sounded like she was trying to be happy but wasn’t managing it particularly well.
There was silence, then she said, “Thanks for helping out with the cooking, by the way. You made Alan’s week, I swear.” She sounded a bit happier now. “He’s been on our case to learn to craft, and no one’s taken him up on it. It’ll be nice for him to have a buddy.”
“He’s a good dude,” Jamie said honestly. “Which is a weird thing to say about a tiny blonde chick.”
Callista gave a full-throated laugh. “Don’t I know it! This game messes with people’s heads. I thought Alan and Kevin were women for a while there, and they all assumed I was a dude, which
was hilarious. Lakhesis actually is a chick, if I remember correctly, and I have my suspicions about Dathok.”
“I can’t tell if it’s better or worse than WoW,” Jamie said. “Because there’s the voice-filter thing, so it really feels like you’re getting to know them. Then you remember, ‘Oh, right, no one has a built-in echo in their voice.’” He waded into the water, making for a small island, and disappeared under the water when the ground fell away sharply. He shut his mouth by instinct, his throat seizing up, and thrashed…
And then remembered he wasn’t actually underwater. It was hard to force himself to breathe, though.
“You okay?” Callista asked.
“Just fell into a lake while looking for herbs.”
“Oh, I’ll come help you gather. That’ll level my gathering, too. Sec.” She sent a party invitation, and he saw the ether symbol appear next to her name in the guild list, indicating that she had teleported.
“You don’t have to help,” Jamie said awkwardly.
“I don’t mind. Actually, it’ll be nice and calming. I’m worried that if I try to do anything combat-ish, I’ll throw my back out. It’s been a day, let me tell you.”
It was a couple of minutes until Jamie saw her running through the tall grass. Her usual bright golden armor had been replaced with a gathering outfit, a long tunic in a singularly unflattering shade of brown, sandals, and a wide-brimmed straw hat. He gave her a thumbs-up.
“That’s a good look.”
“Sewed it myself,” Callista said, returning the gesture. “I can feel my Aosi forebears turning in their graves. I’m sure a proper Aosi doesn’t leave the house in anything less than black tie.”
“Sounds about right.” Jamie had never been a huge fan of the Aosi. He didn’t usually like elves, and the Aosi had all the qualities that made him roll his eyes: height, good looks, smug superiority, and long lives. It didn’t seem the least bit interesting to him. “Why’d you choose an Aosi?” he asked, waiting to hear her say that she’d wanted to be graceful and elegant…or stammer something out about how she wasn’t quite sure.
“I wanted to be blue,” she said after a moment of musing. “The more I see of them, though, the more I like it. I keep playing around with backstory in my head, you know?”
“How so?” Jamie hopped up on a rock and went sliding back down. It was just like the times he’d spent climbing outcroppings in other video games, but here he got a jolt in his haptics every time he fell.
“I love elves, usually,” Gracie said. “I don’t think writers do much with them, though. What I like best about Metamorphosis is that it really drives home that they aren’t all high and mighty, right? Like, they were made to be these superior beings, but they made the same mistakes as everyone else.”
“Huh.” Jamie considered this. “So you like that they’re…normal?”
“Yeah.” Callista’s character shrugged. She was also hopping up the embankment, trying to get to a different clump of herbs. “Oh, son of a bitch, I really thought I had it that time.” She landed with a little puff of dust, one of the incongruous things about the game world. No matter where you were, you landed with dust puffing up.
“So, not like Tolkien elves,” Jamie said after a moment.
“No, I think they’re pretty much like Tolkien Elves,” Callista said. “Think about it—the elves also fell prey to the rings of power, they also have infighting and gross people in the ranks, and they die in battle. They look down their noses, but it’s really nothing more than any other faction dispute. They just dress it up in what sound like good reasons.”
“I suppose,” Jamie said doubtfully. “So, then my question would be…sec.” His character picked the herbs, and he gave a whoop when a rare-quality one appeared in his inventory. “Oh, hell yes. I’ll finally have a shot at making roasted antelope. It needs rare oregano or no dice.”
“Who knew it was so finicky to cook?” Callista asked whimsically.
“You should have seen the kougin aman. I wasted eight batches of dough in a row before I figured out the hand motion. Anyway, sorry, I was going to ask, why did you start thinking of elves that way? And why would you want to play one, if that’s how you think of them?”
“I don’t know. I guess it just reminds me that people are people. You can think you’re above everything or you’re better, but no amount of smarts or good looks or riches or anything will keep you from experiencing all of the hard stuff.”
Jamie blinked. He worked in silence, turning that over in his head.
“Not that I wouldn’t like to have the chance to prove that money doesn’t buy happiness,” Callista added.
That snapped him back to himself. She was trying to cheat other people out of their money. Of course, she was focused on it.
“What was your job before this?” Jamie asked. “I mean, you do this now, right?”
“Yeah. And it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, I promise.” She shrugged. “Though I expect saying that is like a rich person saying that being rich isn’t so great, huh? I don’t mean to be rude. It just all happened very suddenly. I was a blackjack dealer before this.”
“And then your rank started to climb, and—”
“No, it wasn’t the game. Well, it kind of was.” She stopped, and he heard her blow out a sigh. “This is going to sound weird. Basically, the game gave me a spine.”
Jamie looked at her. “I, uh…”
“I got told to do something at work, and it wasn’t the right thing to do. Before starting Metamorphosis, I probably would have just knuckled under. I was used to doing that you know? Having other people run my world for me, and—huh.”
Jamie waited. When she said nothing, he prompted. “Huh?”
“I just, uh…just put something together. Can I ask you something? A—friend—and I were having an argument about the game. I wonder which side you come down on.”
“I’d rather not get involved in arguments.” Lord knew he had enough of that in his life right now.
“It’s more of an opinion question. I don’t think there’s a right answer. And I won’t even tell you whose side is whose. Basically, one of us thinks that the game is a good place to try out things you’d never do in real life because it means you get to experience regret and learn where your limits are morally, and the other one thinks that how you behave in the game is directly parallel to how you behave in real life. So, if you start doing immoral things in the game, you’ll start doing them to other people too.”
“I’d guess you’re the person who thinks they’re parallel,” Jamie guessed, “given what you just said about how you’ve changed. And I don’t know. I could go either way. I did two run-throughs of Mass Effect, one on Paragon and one on Renegade. Other than being bored as fuck playing Paragon, I don’t think I changed much as a person.”
“Hmm.” Callista considered this. “Want to try that hill over there? My mini-map says there’s a ton of stuff.”
“Sounds good.”
“And I was actually the other one,” Callista explained as they waded into the water and swam to shore. “But now that I describe what happened, I realize maybe my friend is right. I don’t know.”
“Like you said, it’s an opinion question,” Jamie pointed out. “You’re probably both right. Who were you arguing with, Anders?” He grinned. “Was that what the big two hours away was all about? You were actually talking philosophy?”
Callista burst out laughing. “Yep, that was it. Went to get dinner, had a big serving of ennui, and came back to talk Kant and Aristotle.”
Jamie snorted. “You guys live it up around here.”
“I don’t want to say we’re the coolest cats,” Callista said. “But we pretty much are. I don’t want to brag, but last night I had caffeinated tea after dinner.”
“Look, I don’t mind hearing about your depravity as long as you keep it private,” Jamie said, pretending to be prim. His mouth was twitching, though.
What was happening? Was he actually st
arting to like this woman?
“Uh, so you didn’t do the thing at work?” he asked.
“Ugh, yeah. I quit before they could fire me. We sort of had to make the month-first after that for me to make my rent. Let me tell you, we did not think we were going to pull it off.”
I’ll bet the rest of them didn’t, at least, Jamie thought sardonically. “Oh?”
“It’s been a weird few weeks,” Callista said with another shrug. “Frankly, having a bunch of new people coming on board is sort of stressful all on its own. But I’m glad you’re here, really. Please don’t take that the wrong way. I’m just super-awkward.”
“Bet you’re happy being number 1,” Jamie suggested.
“Not…really?” Callista sighed. “Don’t get me wrong, it is nice to be able to make rent. It really is. I don’t want to be ungrateful. It’s just, well—I don’t know if anyone’s spilled the beans yet, but we might as well. There’s been this weird thing happening with some of the dungeons, and I honestly don’t know what’s going on with my rank. There’s a bug report open, so we’ll see what happens.”
“Huh.” Jamie hadn’t expected her to admit that.
“I wish they’d just get back to me,” Callista said. “But it is what it is. I’m sure they’re just trying to figure out what to do, you know?”
“Right.” Jamie thought of the conference calls, the tip-offs about the month-end raid, the spying they were doing, and he felt another unexpected pang of guilt.
He shoved it down deep. He wasn’t going to get taken in by this act, he promised himself.
Chapter Fifteen
“All right, Altar of the Gods, Round 2.” Gracie squared up and rolled her neck. She and Jay had come to the conclusion that they should redo the original steps of the quest in order to learn more about Harry’s goals and motivations and predict where the next steps might be found. So far, no additional pieces had come open, and Gracie wasn’t feeling good about asking Harry.
She hadn’t told him yet, but her hope was that redoing this stage would give her a chance to throw the quest. Fail intentionally, and then have Jay remove the starting condition so that Harry could never begin it.
