Deadline

by Domino Finn

  "Seattle? Sir, I do believe you are making up words."

  "What? No, the city in Washington."

  "Washington DC?"

  "Washington state!"

  "Oh dear, there's a Washington state?" Varnu frowned and ticked his fingers to a silent count. "You have one hundred and seven such territories, am I correct?"

  I gave him my heaviest sigh. "Varnu, sometimes I think you're screwing with me. But I'm serious, real people are dead. There's been sabotage. What's left of the dev team are cut off from outside communication." I canted my head. "I'm actually surprised I could reach you."

  Varnu Johnson took my facts with somber nods. "I am sorry to hear of the troubles in the headquarters. Fortunately, the hard line in India—er, Texas—is far away from that mess." He paused a moment before leaning forward conspiratorially. "Texas is far from See-Ah-Tell, is this correct?"

  My eyelids spasmed. "Yes."

  "I'm from Texas," he added glibly, just in case.

  Trafford cleared his throat. "Listen here, I don't know what you two are on about, but Saint Peter was working on a set of quests for us, and we need access to them. Right now."

  Varnu pouted, studying the old man but speaking to me. "This inebriated game construct appears tattered around the edges. Are you sure letting him inside your faction hall is wise? If you wish, I can relocate him to the slums."

  "The slums?!? Why I oughta..." Trafford drew his arquebus.

  Varnu's eyes widened. "What a beautiful firearm!" He extended his hand. "May I?"

  Trafford traded glances with me and the resident companion. "Uh, sure, I suppose. Just don't scratch her."

  "I wouldn't dream of it." Varnu accepted the arquebus with reverence. Gentle hands flipped it back and forth during his inspection. "Wonderful engraving, wide bore, precision muzzle rifling. Tell me, how many drams of powder per charge?"

  "Depends which dram you're talkin'," said the shopkeeper.

  "Oh, too right. I would've assumed British but, now that I think about it, you must be using the Roman drachma."

  Trafford flashed a proud smile. "Greek."

  "My word," whispered Varnu, eyes wide. "Six whole obols worth!" He nodded in approval. "Audacious and wildly dangerous. I'm impressed."

  Trafford grunted as he accepted the return of his weapon. "I see. Well, you're not such a bad guy, I suppose."

  "Guys," I cut in with a huff. "Now that we're done geeking out over guns, can we get to the quests?"

  The resident companion snapped to attention and interfaced with an invisible workstation. "Yes. I have access to several query options that are unavailable to you, but it would be easier if I knew the details. You said Saint Peter constructed this quest chain. Is he not available?"

  "He's dead."

  "Impossible, sir, saints cannot be—"

  "In real life. He's dead in real life."

  Varnu's face lost color as he sputtered for a reply. "I see..." He silently stared at the pending database query.

  "We just need to get through this," I told him. "For Peter."

  Trafford nodded. "The first step is to find his quests. As questkeeper, I get a steady feed of the latest broadcasts, but I don't get to see anything before it's ready."

  "We were hoping you had a better search function and some inside knowledge."

  "I will do my best, sir. What are your search parameters?"

  I frowned. "Can you search by user?"

  Varnu shook his head. "Unfortunately, I am unable to parse developer credentials."

  "What about new quests?" suggested Trafford. "If Peter added something, it has to be recent, right?"

  "Oh dear, there are several thousand entries queued into silent patches. Furthermore, there are any number of dates we could inspect: initial creation, last edit, patch creation, patch deployment..."

  "What about type?" pressed Trafford. "This has gotta be an epic quest."

  "Yes. Most of these queued entries are grind quests to fill time, so the epic category eliminates many of them." Varnu did some additional typing. "I don't see..."

  "No," I said. "Not epic. Try a search on fepic."

  Varnu blinked and typed it in. "This is curious. I see the new quest type with several entries. Inactive, of course."

  "That's them!"

  He paused in thought. "What does this fepic mean, sir?"

  "Uh, it's a private joke. Fucking epic, fepic. You know, so you don't need to curse."

  "I don't see the fucking point." Varnu entered several commands. "There you go. I've activated the new content. Your questkeeper should be able to query them now. However, I'm not confident of their integrity. The quests appear to be incomplete. They contain numerous broken script references."

  Trafford grunted. "Can you fix that gobbledygook?"

  "Oh, reincarnations, no. If you need someone to bust a cap into thirteen-year-olds in death match, I'm your man, but I know nothing about programming."

  "At least I can access them," said Trafford, thick index finger rapping his quest tome.

  "Very well. If that will be all, gentlemen, I have some fools to murder."

  "Varnu," I called, pausing his dismissal. "Thanks. I mean it. And I'm hoping I can lean on you for support in the next few days?"

  He set his jaw. "Saint Peter personally trained the inaugural team of resident companions, of which I am proud to be considered one. It was a grueling two-and-a-half hour lunch meeting, but in that time the man made an impression on me. I like to think I made an impression on him too." Varnu bit down, gave a firm nod, and disappeared.

  I watched the empty space for a reverent moment, speechless that Peter's death had such a profound effect on people. Not that my dead friend didn't deserve the praise. He really seemed to care about everyone he worked with. Anytime someone like that left the world, it was a true loss.

  And now one thing was clear: our enemies made a huge mistake by killing him. Like sand draining between the fingers of a clenched fist, they'd pushed and squeezed too far. Now it was time we turned things around on them.

  I set my eyes on Trafford and the tome of quests. "Okay, old man, lay it on me."

  Tad Lonnerman limped back into the office and placed the second monitor Christian had asked for on the floor. "There's no one else in the studio," he reported.

  The CEO wordlessly attended cables to give his makeshift workstation on the carpet an additional display. Tad chuckled bitterly. Here he was, still recovering from a bad car accident and forced to use a crutch, and he was the better option of the two to play errand boy. Christian Everett, well, Tad wasn't sure he could even stand up anymore.

  "I wonder how long this will take," said Tad idly.

  Christian hiked a shoulder. "Not as long as I'd like."

  "Really? I would've thought the hole in your gut would urge you to get somewhere safe."

  "Will you carry me?" chortled the CEO. "You smothered the fire so there's no immediate danger. The alarm triggered, the elevators are offline, and neither you nor I can make it down forty flights of stairs in our condition. At some point you need to stop worrying about factors outside your control. There's nothing to do but wait for help." Christian rapped at the keyboard. "Ah, here we are."

  Tad moved beside him. The newly plugged-in monitor displayed an array of video windows of empty rooms. "You've hacked into building security?"

  "It's not a hack. Building management sets public permissions to the security feeds in common areas. Kablammy has additional cameras within the studio. They're all here."

  Tad noted the main lobby and glass doors of the building entrance in a high-def window. Another covered the main plaza outside. Fire trucks were parked at the curb, with paramedics directing workers away from the building. The videos lacked sound and the faces were too small to make out. Even then, Tad detected a note of panic in the way people moved.

  "What's that one?" he asked, pointing the tip of his crutch at a video of pure black.

  Christian sighed. "That's the feed from my
alternate launch site on Harbor Island."

  Tad turned to the wall of windows facing Elliot Bay. The industrial island was a flat smudge of gray in the distance. "Ah," he realized. "No internet access."

  "That's right. We have the building feeds because they're on a hard line, but anything at Harbor Island is a blank."

  "Should we be concerned?"

  "I see no reason to suspect anything amiss with the launch site. It was the Southern California location that was heavily publicized."

  "It may not be sabotage, but doesn't the lack of internet access compromise Harbor Island all the same?"

  "It's fully automated. That satellite is capable of launching and hosting Haven all on its own. Set and forget."

  And just like that, Christian turned his attention from the second monitor back to a custom-colored wall of text.

  Tad wiped his face. "You're coding."

  "My workstation is keyed with special privileges. The server portal was loaded with a slew of launch changes Pete had planned. With it destroyed, I need to hack something together from an old integration."

  "Isn't a new patch risky? I don't need to tell you that attempting last-minute changes causes more problems than it solves."

  "There's no choice."

  Tad rolled his eyes. Right, factors outside their control. Although Christian was focused on Visual Studio, Tad chose to watch the exterior feed of the first responders.

  The CEO was correct. This could be a while. The fire control room in the lobby would confirm the end to the danger. The building would be evacuated just in case, firefighters sweeping the floors one by one. Talon was inside the game executing their plan. There was literally nothing for Tad to do but wait.

  He frowned as Christian typed with one hand while the other stemmed the blood seeping from his stomach.

  1810 King's Quest

  If Trafford and I were expecting a simple set of instructions—fetch this or escort that—we were in for a long three days. Varnu had technically located Saint Peter's pet project, but that was only the beginning of the puzzle.

  Luckily I was in a peculiar mood. Pissed but productive, driven by the type of righteous anger only achieved by equal parts tragedy and injustice. There was nothing pulling me off this scent.

  As for Trafford, well, he was just about the most stubborn bastard I'd ever met.

  "This dang path is all tangled," he complained. "It's a quest string all right, of that I'm sure, but it's unlike anything I've ever seen."

  I frowned at the illegible book. Trafford furiously scribbled notes on a separate scroll, trying to make sense of things. "What's the goal of the string?" I asked.

  "I don't know. It's not a normal string. Fepic isn't a searchable category. The possible paths are branching out in all directions, like a crazy, winding—"

  "River," I finished. I strolled to a side window and gazed toward the Albula that skirted Oldtown. "A new start. For good."

  The old man cranked open his good eye. "What's that now?"

  I shook my head dismissively. "Just something Peter said to me this morning. I'm not sure what to make of it yet, but he was trying to help us. He was a good friend."

  "Aye," said the questkeeper. "I just wish he was a better scripter."

  As the salty veteran pored over the details, a few Black Hats caught wind of our impasse. Dune and co. wandered in and watched. Izzy and Errol took places at the bar. Even Jixa came by to coordinate with Trafford, saw the puzzled expressions crowding the room, and decided to mull along with everybody else. She planted her hammer on the bar and parked her butt beside it.

  "Please don't sit on the quest book, dear." Trafford's tone was surprisingly gentle. He slid the book over and wiped at a sticky substance on the pages. "What is that, blood?"

  "Sorry, boss mans," chimed the girl. "Todayses lunch was a little frisky."

  "I find cooking usually takes care of that problem." He shook it off and returned to impatient grumbling over his book. "Best I can tell, there's not one quest, but a few of 'em, knotted together with no clear start or end."

  "Any common threads?" I asked.

  "Murky at best."

  "Any advice that doesn't come from a Magic 8-ball?" chuckled Dune. He leaned against a mahogany pillar with his arms crossed.

  The old man's face went hard. "Outlook not so good."

  I smiled. "So forget the top-down mentality."

  Trafford arched an eyebrow my way.

  "Okay, when you're programming a system with a lot of moving parts, it's common to look at the problem from the top down. You prioritize what you want the system to do. All the subsystems serve that goal. It's smart and keeps the big picture in mind, but it sometimes glosses over the details.

  "A bottom-up approach is the opposite. You look at all the subsystems needed to serve the greater whole. Unpack what needs to be done on the ground level, in order to get closer to where you want."

  "Talon," he grumped, "I'm an NPC. Programming theory is out of my wheelhouse. You're fortunate I grok the concept of scripting at all."

  I sighed. He was right, of course. "Okay then, don't get caught up in the programming part. The point is you're trying to unwrap some overarching quest with a bunch of vague pointers to moving parts. I say scrap that approach and go straight to the nuts and bolts. What are those gears and cogs doing? Look at the subquests, which should be more straightforward. Let's see which actions get us nearer to our overall goal."

  Trafford scratched his wild silver hair. "But I don't even know where to start. The subquests aren't ordered in any chronology."

  "Just pick one," I said. "Just pick a random section of string and parse whatever logical block is closest."

  "Okay," he said uncertainly. He took some time weeding through the text and applying the new tactic. "So... for instance"—he rammed a fat finger onto a page—"here's one."

  "Unpack it. Not the big picture, just the smallest goal. Let's start with a single directive."

  The questkeeper fiddled with the pages a moment before a prompt flashed before us.

  Quest Abandoned: Reunite the Trinity

  Quest Type: Epic

  Reward: 20 silver bars, 4,000 XP, royal treasure

  What remains of the Oakengard Trinity appears well, but they require a bishop to return to full form.

  My eyes widened. The current Oakengard quest, first given by Colonel Grimwart of the crusaders when he noticed something wrong in his city, disappeared from my quest menu.

  "What'd you do? My epic quest is gone. There was sweet loot in there!"

  Trafford winced. "Sorry, kid. It's what I'm saying. These quests touch everything."

  "Put it back."

  He flipped the page back and forth, scanning for something he missed. "I can't. But I suppose the quest is being rewritten as a new one. Let me push on."

  Quest Offer: Restore Oakengard's Glory

  Quest Type: Fepic

  Reward:

  Oakengard has been compromised by a Trojan and a fractured Trinity. Restore them to their old glory.

  Accept Quest?

  I grimaced at the new version of the quest as I noted it had no reward. It was just like Saint Peter to focus on the non-materialistic stuff first. I got my second surprise when the quest appeared in my menu, grayed out.

  Restore Oakengard's Glory

  Blocked by: Bring Vagram to Justice

  Quest Type: Bounty (public)

  Reward: Crusader Alliance

  Cleric Vagram leads the rogue catechist faction in guerrilla warfare. Find and return him to Oakengard.

  "Great," I hissed. "We can't restore Oakengard's glory until we take care of the Cleric Vagram quest." Dune scowled at the thought.

  "This is what I'm talking about!" moaned Trafford. "Enough start and end points to make a Tasmanian devil dizzy."

  Izzy snorted. "You've been watching too many cartoons with Kyle." She rapped the bar with her nails. "You think it's a coincidence the Trinity gave us this quest to begin
with?"

  Dune frowned. "You think they were playing interference? Making sure we couldn't get to them?"

  "It makes sense," she reasoned. "One bad apple spoils the bunch. Grimwart saw the trouble. He gave us the old quest. Then the Trinity gives us a filler quest to stall our progress."

  The ornery shopkeeper nodded along. "As if this wasn't tangled enough."

  "It doesn't matter," I decided, putting a definitive edge to my voice. "This is progress. We have a fepic quest unlocked. Cleric Vagram is the last vestige of the Trinity, so maybe we can kill two birds with one stone. All we gotta do is catch him."

  Caduceus scoffed. "You say that like it's easy."

  "Easy doesn't come into it. It's what we need to do." I turned to the questkeeper. "Find another one, Trafford. See what else we can unlock. It can't be as bad as the first."

  He muttered to himself as his finger slid over the page. The fruit of his labor appeared a minute later.

  Quest Offer: Rally the Errant Folk

  Quest Type: Fepic

  Reward:

  Various so-called wild races inhabit the land, pagan or otherwise. There is no greater army, given they can be rallied together.

  Accept Quest?

  Errol burst out in wild guffaws. "Be this a joke? Them scrubs outside these walls have numbers, I'll give 'em that, but they ain't a shinin' beacon o' teamwork."

  Jixa hopped off the bar. "You take backsies! Goblinses work together real goods."

  Stigg stepped in. "No offense, lass, but I agree with the pirate. I'll believe in the goblin horde when they can put together a real fight and see it through without running. There's a reason we're in here and they're out there."

  "Bah! Pirateses and Vikingses knows fighting, but they don't knows my people!"

  Frustration among faction members was manifesting into hostilities. As the guild leader, it was my job to put a positive spin on this. "The horde has rallied before," I pointed out. "Azzyrk has a small army, but with the right support it could grow again."