Player Messaging has been unblocked. You have pending Messages from: Molly.
My eyes widened at the prompt, and I immediately opened the pending message as I ducked into a small alcove on the roof I was crossing. A trail of messages from Molly appeared in my vision, each separated by an unknown period of time.
Molly: Lazarus, what happened?! Something just killed me and I was dropped from the group! I’m trying to make my way back!
Molly: Damn it! The window has been sealed again! I can’t get back in! Message me when you can!
Molly: I know my messages must be going into a queue at this point, but I still haven’t heard from any of the others. I’m assuming something went wrong with the heist and they tried to cut us out. If you see this, meet me at the blue safe house or send me a message.
I reread the messages several times before dismissing them from my vision, leaning my back against the wall while I closed my eyes in thought.
So, whatever happened to me started back at the heist, I concluded, probing at the completely blank spot in my memories, feeling greatly unsettled that the game was capable of manipulating my memory in such a way.
The realism in Ascend Online was unparalleled, putting every other game humanity had ever created to shame and proving to be the reason for its incredible success. But when it started to play with your very memory, treating it like just another variable to be adjusted and controlled, it made me feel like the game was going too far.
Is it any different than what we would read in a story, or have played in other games, though? I couldn’t help but ask myself. This game is pure imagination come true. Anything and everything we can think of can actually happen. Be it good, or bad.
I opened my eyes and looked up into the night sky, spotting the twin full moons, Eris and Ananke, in the distance. Notably larger than its sister moon, Eris shone dominant with a bright crimson light, contrasting with Ananke’s pale azure hue as the two began their ascent into the sky.
The night’s still young, I thought to myself, pushing away from the alcove and beginning to make my way towards the safe house Molly had mentioned. Maybe she’ll have more answers for me.
W
Half an hour later, I had crossed the city with the speed and familiarity only a well-practiced local could achieve, and I was carefully looking out at the safe house Molly had mentioned to me.
Set within the Market Quarter on the opposite end of the city, the safe house was actually a small room that had been blocked off from easy access in a three-story apartment building, with the only entrance being through a skylight on the very roof of the structure.
At least that was what I had told Molly.
Seeing nothing suspicious, I crossed the street with purpose and entered the tall stone building, taking the stairs to the second floor. But instead of continuing to climb to the roof, I darted down the hallway, passing by several apartments until I arrived at a small closet that I knew to be directly under the safe house. Checking the door to ensure that it was still locked, I pulled out my lockpicks, and had the simple lock open in a heartbeat.
Pulling the closet door open, I stepped inside the small space, quietly pushing a pair of brooms and buckets to the side, then closed and relocked the door behind me. Craning my head straight up at the ceiling, I grabbed a thick iron handle set into the wall as I braced my feet on the sides of the closet and began pulling myself upwards.
Secret trapdoors are always handy, if you’re the only one who knows that they’re there. I couldn’t help but smile to myself as I triggered a hidden latch set into the ceiling of the closet, causing it to swing downwards silently.
Climbing upwards through the trapdoor, I pulled myself into the safe house’s closet, carefully closing the hidden entrance under me. Light gleamed all around the edges of the closet door, followed by a steady rustle of activity in the room beyond. I knew Molly wasn’t one to pace, especially in such a small room as the safe house, but she did have a tendency to grind her foot against the ground when she was lost in thought, or working on something intensive.
Pushing the closet door open ever so slightly, I peered through the gap, spotting Molly sitting at the sole table in the room with her back towards me. Dressed in a white linen shirt, her long, curly black hair cascaded down her back, shifting from side to side as she shook her head at something in front of her. Looking down, I saw she was wearing dark leather pants, complete with calf-high boots.
Shifting the door open a little further, I spotted her leather armor hanging from a peg on the wall, my eyes picking out a large bloodstain marring its otherwise immaculate appearance.
Looks like she was telling the truth, I noted after seeing the stain, remembering Molly’s earlier message that she had been killed. While I trusted Molly implicitly, Fairfax had made sure to drive the concept of excessive paranoia home, teaching us to expect betrayal from anyone at any time.
Even close friends.
Especially close friends.
Checking one last time to make sure that Molly was the only person in the room, I stepped out of the closet, silently closing the door behind me. A careful glance around the room showed nothing out of place, though I couldn’t help but notice that the bed directly beside the closet didn’t appear to be slept in at all, leading me to think that Molly had spent the last two days awake.
She was worried. I felt a strange feeling come over me as I looked towards the woman sitting on the other side of the room.
“Molly,” I called her name softly, hoping not to startle her too badly.
Unfortunately, it didn’t help.
With a shout of surprise, Molly launched herself out of her chair like a startled cat, her dark hair billowing wildly in the air as she spun to face me. An orb of pure darkness filled one of her hands as she pointed a heavy sabre straight at me.
A devout follower of Azmus, the God of Secrets, I knew that Molly was more than capable of defending herself, and if she chose to throw it at me, the inky black orb that she held would temporarily render me blind and deaf, giving her more than enough time to put her sword to use.
“Gavin!” she exclaimed after a second, calling me by my real name as her blue eyes went wide. The orb faded from her hand, followed by the sabre clattering to the ground as she rushed across the room and wrapped her arms around me tightly, pushing her head into my chest.
“How the hell did you get in here?!” she asked while staring up at me with tired eyes. “I didn’t hear you come in through the sky—wait, there’s another way in and out of here, isn’t there?”
“In the closet,” I admitted, knowing that Molly wouldn’t let the issue rest unless I told her, or until she tore the place apart and found it.
“What happened, Lazarus?” Molly asked, refusing to let go of me. “I haven’t heard from you or the others in over a day! Did Edith and Ransom cut us out? Were you caught?”
“I don’t know,” I replied hesitantly, motioning for the two of us to sit down on the bed as I tried to find the words to explain what happened.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Molly pressed, taking a seat on the bed beside me. “Where have you been for the last day? What exactly happened inside the Arcaneum?”
We broke into the Arcaneum? Surprise flashed across my face as I wondered what the hell I had been thinking to even dare to attempt to break into the Mages Guild building. Breaking into the Arcaneum was more suicidal than attempting to break into the Royal Chambers.
“I don’t know,” I repeated with a shake of my head as I held up a hand to indicate I had more to say. “Until you mentioned it just now, I didn’t even know that we broke into the Arcaneum. The last thing I remember from yesterday was getting ready for a heist…then after that, nothing.”
“Nothing?” Molly gave me a look that was mixed with both confusion and concern. “Gavin, are you feeling okay? Have you had any headaches or vision problems that you can remember?”
“What?” It was my turn to look at Molly
in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“A stroke,” Molly clarified as she reached out to touch my face. “Do you think you may have had a stroke?”
“What?!” I replied, completely surprised that she would jump to that conclusion. “No, it wasn’t a stroke. When I awoke, I saw a quest alert telling me that my memories had been blocked by something that had happened the day before.”
“The game is blocking your memories?!” Molly practically shouted in disbelief as she reached out to grab my hand. “How can it can do that?! Is that even legal?!”
“It must be if the game allowed it to happened,” I told Molly with a shrug.
“Okay,” she said slowly as an uneasy expression crossed her face. “So that terrifying fact aside…what happened to you? You said you woke up somewhere?”
“Yeah,” I began, trying to figure out where the best place to start. “Two hours ago, I woke up strapped to a table in Cayden Onyxbone’s personal torture chamber, with Fairfax’s body right beside me.”
“What?!” Shock and surprise filled Molly’s expression, causing her to lean backwards away from me. “Fairfax is…dead?”
“He is,” I affirmed with a sigh. “And Cayden didn’t kill him.”
“How can you be sure?” Molly asked, her hand gripping mine tightly as she spoke.
“Because I asked him, right before I put a bolt in his throat,” I replied, an angry expression crossing my face. “He said someone else did, another Adventurer, a woman.”
“Anyone we know?” Molly’s voice took a hard edge to it as she asked.
“He never saw her face, nor did she give him a name.” I paused to take a deep breath as I summarized everything that Cayden had told me, making sure to hand her the ledger that I had stolen.
“Fuck,” Molly cursed as she rubbed her eyes with a hand. “This is going to light the Underworld on fire as soon as the word gets out.”
“I know,” I said softly while looking into her eyes and seeing the same sadness I had felt earlier reflected in them. “But unfortunately, that’s not everything that happened. When I woke up, I had some sort of new ability linked to a sigil burned into my chest, and I have no idea how I got it.”
“A sigil?” Molly repeated with curiosity. “Can you show it to me?”
“Sure,” I replied, standing up from the bed and loosening the straps on my armor, eventually pulling it free and taking my shirt off.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Molly whispered, reaching out to running her hand across the sigil. “It almost seems like it’s divine in nature, but also not…”
“Your guess is better than mine, seeing as you’re an actual Priestess,” I said, feeling my skin tingle as Molly’s hand touched my chest. “From the description of the ability, it mentions that it’s written in the Primal Tongue, but I’m not a lore expert, so I have no idea what exactly that means within the context of the game.”
“Me neither,” Molly replied with a shrug. “Makes me wonder what happened in the Arcaneum.”
“What were we after?” I asked while grabbing my shirt after Molly finished with her inspection. “Pretty much everything to do with the heist is a black hole in my memory…I have no idea why we even attempted a breakin, the place is a deathtrap.”
“We were after an artifact, no idea what kind. All we had was a drawing of it and a rough location of where it was stored in,” Molly replied, eyeing my chest as I pulled my shirt on. “As for how we got in, we had an inside man…or at least, Ransom and Edith did.
“I don’t know how he managed it, but their mole managed to somehow key us all into the security wards in the building and even unlocked a window to let us inside,” Molly continued, motioning to herself. “But the only catch was that every few minutes, a secondary ward activated, which would automatically relock the window and cut off our only way out. I had to stay behind to constantly disrupt the ward while the rest of you searched for the artifact.”
I nodded to show that I was following along. As a priestess of Azmus, Molly had the unique ability to be able to temporarily obscure an object or single person, essentially blurring them from the world for a short period of time. It wasn’t something that could turn a person or object completely invisible, but would instead cause eyes to glance over the object or person as if it wasn’t something worth noticing. Given our profession as criminals and thieves, it was an extremely useful and powerful ability. Though, given my lack of magical expertise, I really wasn’t sure how that ability directly interacted with the wards in the Arcaneum.
“Everything seemed to be going according to plan.” Molly’s eyes glazed over as she recalled yesterday’s events. “I had a vague sense of you three moving through the building via the Party Sense, and it was reasonably easy work keeping the ward from seeing the window, but after a while…something happened. I suddenly lost Party Sense, and before I realized what was happening, I felt a quick flash of pain in my back and then I was at my bind spot.”
“Damn,” I replied, shaking my head slowly.
“I tried to get back before the wards relocked…” Molly trailed off with a shrug. “But there was really no chance of that happening. I waited around for a while in case you guys found another exit out, but eventually…I gave up. I’ve holed myself up in here working while waiting…hoping that you’d eventually make contact. I’ve only left twice to go check my drops and speak to my contacts.”
“You did the best you could,” I told Molly with an empathetic nod. “Have you been able to figure out who hired us?”
“No.” Molly shook her head with obvious frustration. “I did my best to find out before the mission started, and even after everything went to hell, but Edith and Ransom held the deal pretty close to their chest. They were pretty clear that they just wanted us for our talents and muscle, not to actually be involved in dealing with the client.”
“Hmmm,” I mused. Given the risk for betrayal, it wasn’t uncommon for criminal players to keep their clients, contacts, and fences to themselves, refusing to reveal their identities to anyone. A good client or fence usually took a long time to cultivate, and no one wanted to have one stolen out from under them.
But what really concerned me about this particular situation was that Molly hadn’t been able to find anything out about the mystery buyer, or what had happened to me or the rest of the group once the heist went bust.
People always had something to say in the criminal underworld, especially when a big heist went down, and if Molly of all people couldn’t find or figure out at least the barest details of someone’s plans, then there was something seriously wrong.
“What were they offering for our help?” I asked after thinking for a moment.
“Four-way split of the artifact’s sale, which Edith expected to be around three hundred gold pieces,” Molly answered.
“Yeah, that’d definitely have to be an NPC buyer.” I shook my head at the staggering sum of money. With that amount of gold being offered for a single item, it almost had to be one of the major factions in the city that was buying the item. “Either that or the buyer just planned to take it from her.”
Molly and I stared at one another quietly for a moment, silently thinking of the implications.
“You think they got thrown into the Tower of Atonement?” Molly asked after a moment, referring to the massive prison tower in Eberia that troublesome Adventurers found themselves locked in. “After I hadn’t heard from any of you…I’d started thinking the worst…”
“I don’t know,” I said, frustration entering my voice. I had hoped that Molly would have had been able to uncover more information, but unfortunately it seemed like she was just in the dark as I was. Clearly someone had tried very hard to make sure that anything we did yesterday wouldn’t easily be traced. “I wasn’t, which makes me think Edit and Ransom weren’t either. But, at this point, anything is possible; maybe Edith and Ransom double crossed us, or maybe they’ve gone to ground like you did.”
“A lot has happened in the last day, Lazarus,” Molly commented, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. “When I checked my drops yesterday after the heist, there was word from Isabella ordering me and every other guild member to go dark. She didn’t give any reason why.”
“Damn, what the hell is going on?” I felt my heart quicken, realizing that Molly and I were on our own. “If everyone’s gone into hiding, we can’t go to the guild to ask for help.”
Isabella was another NPC within the guild and was considered to be Fairfax’s right-hand woman. Her responsibilities tended to lean more towards the organizational aspects of the guild, but given that Fairfax had been killed, she was the lead candidate likely to replace him as Thief Lord.
“Our guild isn’t the only one that’s gone dark,” Molly continued speaking, nodding with me in agreement. “All of the major players have gone to ground over the last twenty-four hours, and a good chunk of my sources and informants are long overdue in checking in with me. I have no idea what’s happening out and have been struggling to piece together even the barest picture of what’s going on out there.”
“Oh?” I asked, nodding towards the table where Molly had been sitting at. “Is that what you were working on earlier?”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “I’ve been correlating every bit of information I’ve been able to beg, buy, or threaten out of the contacts that have even bothered to reply back to me. Based on what they’ve told me, there seems to have been a sudden drop in criminal activity all throughout the city.”
“What do they know that we don’t?” I asked out loud. “Do you think the Thief Lords might have started moving against one another?”
“If you’d asked me yesterday, I’d have said no, but after Fairfax…anything’s possible,” Molly replied with a shrug, then waved down at Cayden’s ledger that lay on the bed between us. “The information you recovered from Cayden’s office might help me paint a clearer picture on what’s happening throughout the city, but that’s going to take some time to piece together. We might even have to wait and bring it to Isabella. She would have a bigger picture of what’s happening in the city than I do.”
Hell to Pay (Ascend Online Book 2) Page 5
