by S. K. Holder
EIGHTEEN
Ted arranged to meet Luke in the skinny side street that divided Tridan Entertainment and a block of corporate offices. Pedestrians rarely ventured down it because they thought it was a dead end or too secluded for a safe passage.
Luke appeared half an hour later than scheduled.
‘What kept you?’ said Ted. He checked over his shoulder twice before taking Luke down into the basement. He was particularly agitated and jumpy after downing three espressos in one.
He showed Luke the capsule, opening the door so the kid could look inside. He eyed Luke closely. The kid didn’t look up to giving him a beating today. He looked kind of beat up himself, standing at the door’s threshold with his matted hair and crumpled clothes.
‘I’ll hold the door open in case it closes,’ said Luke. ‘You get the laptop. Bring it to me.’
Ted wasn’t happy about the new arrangement. He didn’t want to touch the laptop in case it was still ‘active’.
Luke leaned in the doorway while Ted tottered over to retrieve it. He was terrified the kid would double-cross him by locking him in and going to search for Steve. He carefully placed his hands around the laptop. The base was still warm. He planted the charger on top of it and made his way back out.
Luke released the door and took the laptop and charger from him. ‘And the bag,’ he said, nodding at Connor’s rucksack.
Ted went back for the bag, chancing a glance at Luke to make sure he was still holding the door open and that the only objects in his hands were the laptop and charger. He plucked up the rucksack and dashed to the capsule entrance, tripping over his own foot on the way out. The bad foot. Yelping, he thrust the bag at Luke.
Luke swung the bag over his shoulder. ‘What now?’
‘You have to play the game The Plague of Pyridian. You have to play the game to get him back.’
Luke nodded, hugging the laptop to his chest. ‘Where can I play?’
Ted showed him into the cafeteria. So far it was going well. Luke hadn’t belted him. The kid had the laptop and was minutes away from accessing the game and in doing so would disappear from his life forever.
Luke placed the laptop on one of the tables. He found a plug socket and hooked the charger up to the laptop. He leaned over the machine and stared at the monitor.
‘You’re better off sitting down,’ Ted advised, thinking it would give him more time to make for the door when the machine flashed purple. ‘Can I get you something to drink?’
Luke grabbed Ted by his shirt and shoved him into the chair. ‘You sit down. You’ll be the one playing. You can talk to me while you play. Tell me what you think is going to happen.’
Ted swallowed and gaped at the laptop monitor. His fingers hovered over the keyboard. How was he going to get out of this one?
Luke sat on an adjacent table, resting his feet on the empty chair.
Ted scowled. He should be the nonchalant one and Luke should have been on the verge of cracking up, not the other way around. ‘Don’t you want to see what I’m doing?’
Luke gave a casual shrug. ‘Not really. Start talking.’
‘I installed a Beta version of The Plague of Pyridian on your laptop at Steve’s request.’
‘You ask him why?’
Ted moved the cursor to a blank section on the computer’s desktop and tapped the ENTER key. ‘I didn’t ask. I know you’re Mr Brailey’s nephew. I assumed he had asked a favour.’
‘And The Quest of Narrigh, did he ask you to install that on there too?’
‘No,’ Ted looked at him. ‘I thought you put it on there.’
Luke cocked his eyebrow. ‘I did.’
He’s playing a game that only he knows how to play, thought Ted. He’s not gullible like his little bro. Ted had noted the shift in Luke’s emotions. Yesterday, he was all upset about his brother’s disappearance and today he was acting as if he couldn’t care less.
‘Connor’s still alive, isn’t he? He’s trapped in the game.’
Luke smirked. ‘You think he went into the game. You think we have a Tron-like situation on our hands Ted?’
‘I don’t know.’ He really didn’t. He had watched the film Tron about a world set inside a computer’s mainframe. It was one of a few theories he had tossed around in his head to explain the Tridan disappearances. He had also considered alien invasions, ghosts and mind-altering technology. He had sort of mashed the theories into one in the hope that someone would slip up and fill him in with the details. To date, he had not been successful. No one had cracked.
Luke cupped his hand to his ear. ‘I can’t hear fingers on keys, Ted.’
Ted’s fingers weren’t on the keys. He clutched his temples. ‘I don’t know how to get him back okay. I don’t know what happens when they disappear and I don’t know why. I’ve tried. I’ve looked into it. The only person who can bring him back is Professor Hatleman and he’s not here.’
‘Do you have his home address?’
‘Of course I don’t have his home address. Do I look like I work for the missing persons bureau? I don’t even know his first name! You can contact the Institute of Science and Technology. They might have an address for him.’ Ted knew the institute wouldn’t give the professor’s personal information to some stranger. All they would do was take a message. He also knew he could get the professor’s address off the internet any time he wanted, though he didn’t know what good it would do; Steve Lepton had openly admitted that he didn’t know of the professor’s whereabouts.
‘I’ll get it off the internet,’ said Luke as if he had read Ted’s mind. ‘Who created the games?’
‘No single person creates the games.’
‘The storyboard then? The names of the worlds? The teleportation platform. Come on, give me a name.’
‘You’ve been in here before haven’t you?’
‘Course I’ve been in here before. Come on. Use your head. If it wasn’t Steve Lepton, then who?’
‘I don’t know, Professor Hatleman maybe.’ Maybe not. Professor Hatleman was responsible for the game engines and the mechanics in the basement. He also gave semi-insightful lectures about collision theories and holography. If he was responsible for creating the games, he certainly wasn’t taking any credit for them now.
Ted thought he had better pay attention to what he said. He didn’t want to get his lies all in a tangle. The guys in the Lasgrove Department must have had a hand in the games creation. Then there were the script writer services the company outsourced to Asia. And the super geeks on tenth always came up with new-fangled ideas. Ted had never given much thought to who created the games. He wrote his code modules for the games as they were assigned to him. Tridan Entertainment shared their workload. He had worked for the company for five years and that’s the way it had always been.
‘I can write the code,’ he said, ‘but I’m not very good at playing the games.’ In reality, he could play the Tridan Entertainment games in his sleep. These days, he spent more time playing on the fruit machines in his local casino, trying to recuperate the money he had lost in the betting office.
‘Play.’ Luke jumped down from the table and stalked over to the cafeteria doors.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Take a look around.’
Somehow, Luke had got hold of the cafeteria keys and Ted could only watch helplessly as he went through the door, locking it after him.
He waited a couple of minutes before trying to escape. He shook the door handles. The lights went out. He shrieked and then blew a sigh of relief when they came back on seconds later. He reached into his pocket to take out his phone. It wasn’t there. It must have fallen out of his pocket when Luke had assaulted him at the vending machine. A clammy panic came upon him as he thought of it lying out there for Steve to find. He would see the text message from Luke and know he had duped him.
He returned to his chair and the laptop. He had to keep it together. There was always email. Hell, there was Twitter! He knew a few of
his colleagues were working late. They could spring him out. He rubbed his forehead. The problem was they didn’t have a key card. Even the side exit required a key card. They weren’t supposed to know about this place. Steve had trusted him to keep it a secret. One of the security guards knew, a man called Alec, but he wouldn’t be on duty until tomorrow night. A few other employees knew about the basement. Unfortunately, he didn’t know their names.
He stared at The Plague of Pyridian’s shortcut icon. Wasn’t that the game Beth Crosswell had been playing when she disappeared, or was it the other one, The Quest of Narrigh? Now he wasn’t quite certain.
He wandered into the shiny new kitchen at the back and helped himself to a black coffee and a packet of biscuits. He thought he saw a purple flash coming from the laptop monitor. His heart went thump.
He made his way over to the machine. He had trouble holding his mug of coffee. It had gotten awful heavy. He set the coffee down, tore into the packet of biscuits, stuffed one in his mouth and chewed hard. He took a gulp of coffee and burned the roof of his mouth. He felt the folds of skin peel away. There was no purple.
He yanked the charger free of the laptop and clicked on the shortcut link. No harm in that. He wasn’t playing. Howard Collins had been playing. According to their progress accounts, Howard had got all the way to Level 43, and Beth Crosswell had made it to Level 56 of whatever game she’d been playing. Ted pressed enter. He saw nothing human-like on Pyridian’s inky-purple landscape; nothing alien either.
‘Guys,’ he whispered to the laptop. ‘If you can hear me, now would be a perfecto time to answer.’
When Ted got no reply, he accessed the player’s communication box. There, he typed a message:
CONNOR CAN YOU HEAR ME? ARE YOU OKAY?
He slammed the laptop shut. He then sat back and swilled some coffee around in his mouth. He didn’t need to do any more than that. Luke was playing him. He knew something about the games; something about the way the laptops worked. For all he knew the kid was in league with Steve Lepton. Professor Hatleman too. All in on it. Well he wouldn’t be fooled.
He finished off his biscuits. It seemed he hadn’t had enough coffee because eventually his head and shoulders sagged and he dropped off to sleep.
NINETEEN
The Swordul compound serves as training quarters for the Citizen fleet. It is an impregnable structure with walls of steel. It has a prison block and living quarters to accommodate 5000 Citizen soldiers. One sector of the compound is reserved for the Octane Resistance, the special unit of the Citizen fleet who unknowingly serve The Maker and the other worlds under his domain...
The ship touched down in a landing bay. The hatch opened below them. The roar of suction buffeted through the air.
Connor disembarked, his pulse beating faster as he thought how much closer he was to getting home. They had landed in an area surrounded by a perimeter wall. Situated inside the perimeter was a building with walls of glass and braided steel. The sign above its doors read:
ZONE 14 TELEPORT STATION
A shadow swooped down. The ground shuddered. Connor looked up. A ship fitted with rotating laser turrets was preparing to land. It reminded him of a fossil with its grey shell and spiral bands. He watched its wings fold back. He was curious to see who or what came out of it, but Lin was already trudging to the station entrance and he had to run to catch up with her.
The civilians leaving and exiting the station cleared a path for Lin, and she and Connor shunted through the doors where they joined the end of the long queue.
He craned his neck for a better look. He could just about make out the platform from where he stood. It looked like the one he had seen in Tridan Entertainment’s basement and the one on board the ship which had sent him home. There were two cylindrical structures positioned at each end of the platform. They had transparent walls and were twice as big as the one located in the gaming company. Two operators dressed in weathered green suits sat inside in one; three in the other, all fingering holographic controls. People had to pass through a security checkpoint guarded by soldiers of the fleet in order to access the platform.
‘This will take us to Swordul city,’ Lin informed him.
There was a generous gap in front and behind them. Lin kept her eyes on the platform, her face tense. She rested her hand on the hilt of her blade.
The queue went down quickly. He watched people board the platform and disappear in a blazing tube of light. He was amazed by their calmness. They teleported as if it were nothing. He wondered where they were all going. None of them were dressed for battle. A man, carrying a metal cart laden with crates, tried to mount the platform. He was pulled aside by one of the security guards and led away by the arm.
‘Will it take us to the ship that took me home?’ he asked.
‘Shhh,’ Lin replied in a harsh whisper. She whipped out her hand and slapped him on the back. ‘Don’t speak.’
Silently fuming, Connor didn’t speak, not the whole time they edged their way forward in the queue, not when they went through the security check, not even when Lin announced to one of the guards standing at the gate that he was an unregistered defector and she was taking him into custody and wished to go the Swordul prison compound.
It wasn’t until they had stepped onto the platform and teleported onto another one, in an unmanned station, that he finally spoke.
‘Why do I have to sneak around a planet populated by my own race?’ he asked Lin. ‘I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m no different from the other Citizens here.’
‘But you are different,’ said the Authoritative Voice.
Lin doesn’t know that, thought Connor. No one would guess he was a Dream Emissary just by looking at him. If he was different, it was for some other reason.
‘So far you’ve had good fortune,’ she said. ‘Don’t lose it by opening your mouth until I permit you to do so.’ She wrung his arm. ‘Do you understand?’
Connor felt her sharp nails through the fabric of his clothes and the forcefulness of her grip. He nodded, quietly seething. He couldn’t understand why his journey home had become so complicated. He imagined he would be in his bedroom in the blink of an eye, not teleporting from one platform to another and moving from ship to ship.
They left the platform and passed through the doors of a control room overseeing a hanger which held a bulky ship with silver-blue metalwork. Laser turrets and guns were mounted to the ship’s flank.
Lin tapped the control cuff she wore on her wrist and a boarding ramp opened up. Neon lights flickered in the ship’s windows and its back thrusters produced a soft blue beam.
They marched up the ramp and made the short walk to a cockpit, crammed with flashing screens and instrumental panels. Portions of the floor were transparent giving Connor a view of the undercarriage, which stored several multi-coloured metal crates, canisters, helmets and spacesuits.
Lin slid into the pilot seat and immediately started activating the controls.
Connor went to slide into the seat beside her.
‘No,’ she said, jerking her thumb over her shoulder. ‘Sit behind me.’
Connor sat in the rear passenger seat, his rage starting to fester again. He knew she wouldn’t have treated his brother in the same way. For a start, Luke wouldn’t have put up with it.
As soon as he sat down, a belt slid out of nowhere and strapped him down like a bear in a trap, which infuriated him further. The strap practically cut off his windpipe. He readjusted it and watched Lin flick some switches above her head.
The ship rose. As it went higher, Conner saw the city from the broad window. He watched other ships swoop over the city like hawks. One moon had vanished; the other crescent moon stood forlorn in the sky. The city looked as if it had been created from Obsidian and green moss. It was surrounded by jagged high walls. All that was visible were the highest buildings rooftops, connecting bridges and the sparkling waters of the conjoined streams. Some of the rooftop gardens were blooming with flowers a
nd clusters of trees. Many more held landing bays for ships. A colossal glass tower stood in the city centre.
Connor could make out figures moving within the observatory dome situated on its roof. He would have found it breathtaking if it were not surrounded by aliens and a forsaken landscape.
‘I shall take you to our quarters within the compound,’ said Lin. ‘My commander will want to question you.’ She gave an aggravated sigh. ‘You’d better hope Luke doesn’t come looking for you.’
Connor hoped Luke didn’t come looking for him too because he had a feeling that if he did, they would come to blows.
The ship landed in a hangar in a deserted part of the city. The journey hadn’t taken long, but Connor felt as if he was suffering from some sort of jet lag. He was so exhausted he could hardly keep his head up. His feet ached. His throat was dry and his stomach growled because he hadn’t eaten in hours.
They took a cargo lift to the roof, and then proceeded down a barrel vaulted passage. Lin stopped outside a steel door mounted with vertical rods.
A droid sentinel, holding a laser gun, stood outside the entrance. Its optical sensors flitted back and forth.
Lin pushed her hand between the rods on one side of the door. A flashing panel emerged and the rods snapped out of sight as the door swung open. It exposed a stark grey living area with a table set with chairs and a large bed, which stood an inch from the floor.
The stench of blood and ashen rock shot up Connor’s nose. He saw a hunched figure in the bed. Hair covered their face.
‘You’re to wait here,’ said Lin. ‘You’re not to leave this compound. And no matter what happens, neither must she.’ She nodded to the woman curled up on the bed.
‘Who is she?’ The woman’s face was stark white. Her clothes were soiled with blood. She didn’t look as if she would be going anywhere for a long time.
‘Beth Crosswell.’ Lin plucked up an ID card from a table and brought it over to him.
