by Alex Mulder
“Come on,” said Luke. “We can’t stay here.”
He took her by the hand and continued through the jungle. He hurried, as though hoping to outpace his own emotions, and lead Tess in doing the same for hers. The entire jungle was alive with the noises of creatures and insects, but Luke ignored it.
They only stopped once they’d gotten back to the narrow strip of cleared land on the edge of the sand cliffs, where they had stopped for lunch. Luke gave Tess’s hand an encouraging squeeze and then sat down.
“We can set up the tent here for the night,” said Luke.
“Are you sure?” Tess asked, in a quiet, shaky voice. “We could just keep going.”
Luke looked at her, and saw the vulnerability in both her eyes and body language. He shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I think we need to get some sleep.”
Tess pulled out the small, collapsible, wooden stick and wolf skin tent that she’d brought with her in her satchel. Luke began setting it up, while she pulled out a couple of food items for dinner.
They ate quickly, and then unrolled their bedrolls inside the tent. Luke wasn’t sure about how much time they had until morning, but it didn’t matter.
“Tess,” he said, leaning in close to her. “I have to log out now, so I can eat and get some sleep in…”
In real life? How can I say that to her? This is her real life…
Tess nodded and smiled at him solemnly.
“I know,” she said. “It’s fine. I’ll be safe here.”
She brushed a couple strands of hair out of her face and then turned toward the edge of the sand cliffs. The azure blue moon was low on the horizon, shining its light with a deliberate intensity.
“It should be at least four or five hours before sunrise in-game,” said Luke. “I mean… In Yvvaros.”
Tess nodded to him without turning around. Her actions tugged at Luke’s heart strings a bit more than he’d thought it would.
Between what happened on top of the volcano and this… It’s like I’m pushing her away without being able to stop myself.
“Tess, after we’re done claiming the Elemental Wells…” Luke walked up behind her and pulled her into a soft reverse hug. “And after we’ve stopped the Arbiters, I want us to go somewhere quiet, and peaceful.”
Tess leaned her head back against his chest.
“I’d like that,” she said.
“Remember that day right after we’d first met?” Luke smiled. “After we met in Yvvaros, I mean.”
Tess nodded.
“The time we were up on the hill,” she whispered. “It was peaceful, and quiet.”
Luke leaned in and kissed her. She let herself be held by him for a moment, and then gently pushed him away.
“You should go,” she said. “There are still things you need to do in the outside world for us to get those kinds of moments back.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Don’t forget about what Kaoru asked you to do,” said Tess. “About finding your dad.”
Luke sighed, and then nodded slowly.
I won’t forget, though I wish I could. I’m not sure if finding my dad is going to do any good.
“Alright,” he said. “I’ll see you first thing tomorrow, Tess.”
She smiled at him.
“Bye, Luke.”
He pulled his character record from his satchel. Tess turned away from him and walked back over to the tent, sliding inside of it and out of his field of view. The scene was a lonely one, and almost painful for him to watch. His fingers slowly signed his name in the log book, and Luke was back in his room.
Before moving from his seat, he took a second to let his mind catch up with everything that had happened. They were making progress with the plan and pushing forward. It wasn’t easy, but Luke had never expected it to be.
I’m doing it for Tess. I’m doing it so that she can really, truly be safe.
Luke pulled the VR headset off and then slowly stood up, his legs half asleep and full of aches. It was almost the same time in the real world as it had been in Yvvaros, midway through the night. The lights in the house were all switched off and he had to fumble his way over to his bed to flick on his lamp.
I need to eat and I need to sleep. My needs in the real world have become mechanical.
He took his phone out of his pocket as he started downstairs. The email notification flashed along the top and he tapped it open to find a new message waiting for him in his inbox.
Hey Kato,
Here’s the decryption software you need to crack open that zip. It’s brute force, but still shouldn’t take more than a few hours on your computer, as long as your dad didn’t get too outlandish with his password.
Kaoru
Luke stopped and turned back to his room. Eating could wait. If there was any chance of the information on the drive being mission pertinent and time sensitive, even a couple of minutes could make a difference.
He opened the email on his laptop and installed the software. It was one of the first times he’d used it for something other than Yvvaros in a while. Once the program was loaded, he opened it, plugged in the USB drive, and then selected the zip file. It didn’t give him an estimate of how long it would take, but that didn’t surprise him.
I’ll get some food, get some sleep, and check on it in the morning.
There was almost no food left in the kitchen. Luke cringed as he pulled out a loaf of bread, discovering that a thick layer of mold had formed across the top crust. He ended up munching on dry, stale cereal, washing it down with water and wishing that it tasted half as good as the food in Yvvaros.
Luke headed back upstairs. He headed into the bathroom to take a shower, turning on the water only to find that it didn’t run hot. Without his dad around, the bills weren’t being paid, and that meant that the propane for the hot water heater wasn’t being refilled.
How long will it be until we lose electricity, too? What am I going to do about this?
He gritted his way through an ice cold shower, and headed back into his room with traces of shampoo still clinging to his hair. The program was still running, efficiently racing through passwords at inhuman speeds.
Luke climbed into bed and closed his eyes. His mind was still active, and even after taking a couple of deep breaths to clear it of thoughts, he still felt his heart racing.
Is Tess sleeping in Yvvaros right now? Curled up all by herself, in the tent?
Minutes went by, possibly more than an hour. Luke couldn’t sleep. He sat up in bed and squinted over at his laptop screen across the room.
The program was still, no longer cycling through passwords as it had before. Luke climbed out of bed, feeling the cool night air against his bare chest. He walked over to the laptop and saw that the archive had been unzipped to a folder. A single text file was inside of it.
New Office Shipping List
Luke double clicked on it. It popped open immediately, and he began parsing through it. As the title suggested, it was a long list of computer supplies, office equipment, and notes about renovations. What caught his eye was the street address at the top, above the list.
135 Hartman Road, Suite 209
He didn’t need the city or state along with it to know exactly what it referred to. Hartman Road was only a couple of miles away from his house. If his dad had a personal office, separate from Gamesoft’s main headquarters, it was an ideal location for it.
Luke tapped on the side of his desk and chewed on his lower lip.
If I’m not going to get any sleep tonight anyway, I might as well…
Ten minutes later, he was dressed and on his way out the door. His phone was at a quarter charge, but he knew the route without needing to rely on his GPS.
Streetlights ran up and down the street that he lived on. There was just enough light pollution in the sky to block out the stars. After becoming so familiar with the glory of the bright, decorated night sky of Yvvaros, it felt a little strange to have a d
ull, grey, empty slate overhead.
Luke had forgotten just how quiet the town was during the night. He walked down the street with quick steps, the sound of each one echoing a little beyond what felt appropriate. Luke brushed by a bush growing through a chain fence on his way around the corner, and a dog started barking from within a nearby house.
There are always players out in Yvvaros, even at night.
The trip out to Hartman Road took him away from the suburbs and into the town’s small industrial area. The lamp lights grew few and far between, and for the final stretch, Luke was using the flashlight on his phone to make his way forward.
135 Hartman Road was a medium sized office building, only three floors high but long and rectangular. The double doors out front were made of glass and securely locked. Luke briefly considered smashing a rock through before thinking better of it.
There must be a side door, or an unlocked window, or something.
He looped around the building slowly. The pavement was cracked and studded with potholes, and broken glass bottle shards glittered faintly under the light of his phone.
There was a door in the back of the building, and unfortunately, it was also locked. Right next to it was a handicapped door with an electronic open button at waist level. He tried opening it, finding that it was also locked, and then pushed the button on a hunch.
The door slowly opened. Luke juked a fist in the air and quietly walked into the building. A bulletin board was directly to the right of the entrance, with dozens of pamphlets and advertisements pinned to it. To Luke’s left was an ancient looking wooden staircase.
Suite 209… That’s on the second floor.
He started up the stairs slowly, silently cursing as each step creaked underneath his weight. The one possibility that he hadn’t considered, hadn’t even really bothered with, suddenly began rattling around in his head.
What if dad is here? What if this is where he’s been hiding out for the past ten days?
Luke couldn’t decide whether the idea made him eager or anxious. He took slow breaths through his nose as he continued up, stepping off into the hallway after making it up the first flight.
The hallway was only dimly lit by the occasional strip of light poking out from one of the rental spaces. Luke tried to walk by those doors with even more care, keeping his steps as silent as he could.
Suite 209 was at the end of the hall. There was no light coming from underneath the door. Luke took a deep breath, and then tried the door handle. It was locked.
I didn’t come this far just to give up after finding it.
He pulled an old, plastic gift card out of his pocket and slid it in against the door handle’s locking mechanism. It was the oldest trick in the book. Ben had taught it to him years ago after they’d been locked out of the house by Emily after a late night out.
It took Luke a minute, but it worked perfectly, popping the door open with little more than a click. He slipped in through it and closed it behind him, straining to find a light switch in the darkness.
It was a few inches away from the door, and Luke flicked it up as soon as his fingers touched it. The room… wasn’t what he’d been expecting.
Compared to the way his father had lived at the house, a volatile tornado of alcohol and chaos, the office didn’t fit at all. It was clean and cared for. Even the garbage can next to the door had been recently emptied.
The only pieces of furniture in the room were a desk, an office chair, and a filing cabinet. A computer was set up on top of the desk, with a neat mousepad to the side of it and a printer poking out of an open compartment underneath. There was no closet, and the room was perfectly square, no more than twelve feet across in either direction.
Why would he need an office like this? It’s too neat, too simple.
Luke walked over to the computer and sat down at it. The chair was a couple of inches too high for him, and he lowered it down before pressing the power button on the desktop. It booted up quickly, and he stared into the login screen, scratching his head.
He went through every password he could think of, including the one that had given him access to his dad’s laptop less than a dozen days earlier. Nothing worked. Luke tapped his finger on the desk in frustration and tried to think outside the box.
There has to be something…
He tore through his father’s desk, finding nothing more than pens and paper clips. He stood up from the chair and paced around the room, wondering how often his dad had done the same thing.
There was a photo on the window sill that Luke hadn’t noticed when he’d come in. It was one of the few of the entire family, taken on a trip to the beach they’d gone on when he was just a boy. Luke stared into the eyes of his four year old self. His parents were both smiling, and warmth radiated out from the scene.
I’ve almost forgotten what she looked like. She was beautiful.
Luke sighed and set the photo down. A single happy memory wasn’t enough to outweigh all of the shame and guilt he felt over his mother’s death. It was because of that guilt that he’d never questioned his father’s brooding, volatile outbursts.
Maybe it was finally too much for him in the end, and that was why he left.
He picked the picture back up, carefully plucked the photo out of the frame, and tucked it into his pocket. Then, feeling a sudden frustration welling up inside of him, he flung the frame across the room, into the waste basket.
The little metal bucket tipped to the side as the picture frame landed in it. Luke started toward the door and then stopped, noticing a crumpled piece of paper that had slipped down behind the waste basket. Luke walked over to it and picked it up, smoothing it out enough to read the hastily scribbled message.
Chris,
I get why you’re doing what you’re doing, and I won’t try to stop you. If you’re right, nothing will ever be the same, and it’s only a matter of time before it happens.
The world state server outside of Plattsburgh is the one you’d want them to secure first. Make sure they don’t touch anything. The government has a way of inadvertently fucking up everything it touches.
It won’t end with this, Chris. I believe you when you say you have to do this, but the problem is bigger than us.
Stay safe, and please, try not to self-destruct.
Josh
Luke stared at the note, turning the words over again and again in his head. It was exactly what he needed, but something about the tone of it made the words sound prophetic and frightening.
He folded the note, slipped it into his pocket against the picture, and then left the office.
CHAPTER 16
The sun was rising by the time Luke began to make his way back home. He didn’t feel tired, rather, he felt out of place. The shadows no longer hid the fact that he was operating outside of the bounds of regular society. He felt like a stranger in a land that had once been familiar.
He was planning it from beginning. The government, the Arbiters… is it really all because of my father?
Luke frowned. The note had only left him with more questions. It was exactly what they needed. It would allow them to narrow their search to a single city. And yet, the vague and ominous undertone of it continued to gnaw at his psyche.
There was more to his father than what Luke saw on the surface. And there was more to Yvvaros, too.
Dawn had fully arrived by the time Luke made it home. He went straight to his room and pulled his headset on.
It was already mid-morning in Yvvaros. Luke was right where he’d been before logging out. The tent still stood a few feet away from him. The only thing different about their campsite was the fact that Tess wasn’t in it.
He spun around, looking down the sand cliff and then back into the Msitu Wilds.
“Tess?” He started toward the jungle. “Hello? Tess?”
There was no response.
“Tess!” Luke sprinted toward the path they’d taken to get up. Panic fluttered inside his chest, and he on
ly took the time to push the foliage out of his face before running forward. He was moving so fast that he couldn’t stop in time, and crashed into the familiar figure stepping out of the bushes. Luke fell forward on top of Tess, pinning her against a small patch of flowers.
“Ow, jeez, Luke!” Tess pushed him up slightly and rubbed a hand on her head. “Watch where you’re going, why don’t you?”
“Sorry…” He pulled himself off of her and climbed to his feet. “I just thought…”
I just thought the worst. I thought I’d failed again, at protecting her.
Tess dusted herself off as she stood up and then plucked one of the flowers from the patch and tossed it to Luke, winking.
“If only you had some way of making it up to me, a gift perhaps.”
Luke smiled.
“Here,” he said, “Have this.”
He took the flower and tucked it into her hair. Tess leaned in and planted a quick kiss on his cheek. A warm wind blew from the desert, tugging at the hem of Tess’s armor. “We should probably get going soon,” said Tess. “The next Elemental Well is in the far north, on the far edge of the Blue Void.”
Luke nodded.
“Yeah,” he said. “I just need to send a private message to Kaoru.”
“Okay. I’ll start tearing down the tent.”
Luke pulled out a page of parchment from his bag and a quill. He began to pen the note, feeling Tess’s eyes on him.
“You found something, didn’t you?” She crossed her arms and leaned over him, watching as he scribbled his message.
“Tess… I think we’re closing in on the world state server.” Luke smiled at her. “Kaoru’s plan might actually end up working.”
“You found your dad?”
Luke sighed, finishing the letter and signing his name at the bottom. It glowed white briefly and then disappeared into the air, destined for Kaoru’s satchel.
“No, I found his office,” he said. “I don’t know where he is. I don’t really care where he is.”
