Table of Contents
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
End Notes
The Destroyer excerpt
Michael-Scott Earle
Chapter 1
“Where are we going, Leo?” my mom asked as we walked out of the lobby of her care home. It was a spring morning, but the early fog hadn’t quite lifted from the Vermont forest that surrounded the estate where my parents were being treated, and the air was a bit chilly.
“We are heading to a new place, Mom. They have a new treatment that I think is really going to help you.”
“But why?” my father asked. His walk was awkward, and one of the Arnacript aides had to assist him with some stairs that led down the well manicured front garden of the estate.
“It is to help you get better,” I sighed, but then forced myself to smile.
It had been about three months since I had seen them, and our last visit hadn’t gone well. My mom hadn’t remembered me and thought I was trying to rape her. She was a tall woman, and had tried to fight back with her nails. Dad had also attacked me, but he no longer had the muscles of his youth, and the orderlies had been able to keep him off of me while I restrained my mother.
They were both in better condition this visit. They almost seemed normal, and they hadn’t remembered the circumstances of our last meeting. Of course, they hadn’t remembered that I was the world champion of Astafar Unlimited, and they didn’t understand why they were in a home. They had been this way for the last six years, and I hated that the disease had taken so much from them so quickly.
“Mr. Lennox, it is not optimal to move your parents at this time. Which new facility are you taking them to? There isn’t a single clinic in the United States that is as advanced as our facility here.” Doctor Augustine was one of the head honchos of the facility, or maybe he was the owner, and his words were mixed with a bit of anger. I could understand where he was coming from. I paid him a shitload of money every year to care for my parents, and I was sure that he’d leveraged my name to get more clients.
Soon no one would care about me, or what I was working on. Dinah had the retirement memo ready to send to President Arnesto, and a slightly re-worded one to send out to all the media outlets. By this time tomorrow the whole world would know that I had retired, and in another few months I’d probably be forgotten.
The opinion of the news talking heads didn’t matter. I’d have my parents, I’d have Ohlavar Quest, and I’d have my job.
“I’ve seen the results for myself. The treatment is somewhat experimental, but I’m confident that it will work for my parents,” I said to Augustine with a shrug.
“Experimental treatment? Mr. Lennox, we are the top rated facility in the USA for treating Alzheimer’s. I’ve made it my life’s work. There is no better treatment than what we have here,” the white-haired man said with a frown. He had a slight German accent, and I’d grown tired of his voice after twenty minutes of him trying to prevent me from leaving with my parents.
“If it doesn’t work, I’ll bring them back, but your results haven’t changed their illness in the last four years. I’m ready to try something new.” I held my mother’s hand as she walked down another set of stairs, and she gifted me with a smile that made my heart warm. It was going to take us a few hours to drive through the Vermont countryside before we got to Albany, and I was looking forward to talking to them during the trip.
Hopefully their condition wouldn’t deteriorate on the ride there.
“Mr. Lennox, we are making significant progress in their treatment, and—”
“Leo, why do we need treatment? What is this van?” my father asked as one of Arnacript’s aides opened the doors to a white van. It was one of the full sized passenger ones, but the inside had been retrofitted to look more like a limo. I had all their favorite movies ready to play on the screen inside in case their memories deteriorated during the ride. The chairs also had restraints in case they tried to attack me, or exit the van while it was moving.
“We are sick, honey. Leo’s been taking care of us,” my mother said as she raised her hand to my father’s cheek. The tall man blinked a few times with surprise, and then he smiled at the woman before nodding.
I felt the sting of tears hit my eyes, but I blinked them away before I nodded to the Arnacript aide. The man nodded back at me and then directed my parents to step inside of the unmarked vehicle.
“Please, Mr. Lennox. This move will not be good for your parents,” Dr. Augustine growled.
“You know, the head doctor of their old facility said the same thing to me when I moved them to your facility. They said that they were at the forefront of research; that your ‘experimental’ treatment was rubbish, and that, well, you get the idea. Sorry, Doctor. I appreciate everything that you have done for them, but I’ve paid you the money you asked for these four years, I haven’t seen improvement, and now it is time to try something else.”
The man stared at me for a few seconds and his jaw hardened. I was somewhat surprised by his anger, but I guess that it figured. No one wanted me to leave. I imagined that President Arnesto was going to be much angrier than this doctor. I was only costing him a few million a year. Astafar Unlimited might lose billions of dollars when I retired.
Or maybe not.
I’d been the champion for so long; this might be exactly what the game needed to make it interesting again. Jax and Garf would probably compete for the top spot, maybe against each other, and I figured that the world would love to see that drama. I’d be quickly forgotten and be able to focus on my parents’ treatment and developing Ohlavar Quest to its full potential.
“Won’t you please consider—” the doctor began to say, but I raised my hands as I shook my head.
“Sorry it didn’t work out, but I have to do what is best for them.” I extended my hand out, and the man sighed before he shook it.
“Ready, Champ?” one of the plain clothed guards asked me.
“Yep. Let’s get going,” I said as I slid into the van after my parents.
There were two orderlies in the van, as well as a driver, and a guard riding shotgun. There were also two unmarked cars driving with us, and each carried four more guards. The men in the cars were wearing suits, but each wore bullet proof vests, dark sunglasses, and had ear pieces. The guy sitting next to the driver was actually wearing exposed armor, and it looked like something a SWAT police team would wear.
Zarra had told me that she was increasing security, but this seemed a little overboard. Then again, I didn’t want to risk my parents’ lives if anyone made another attempt to murder me. I’d already lost two friends because of my fame, and I didn’t want to put my parents at risk.
“Clear.” I heard the driver say as the black sedan in front of us pulled out of the cobblestone driveway of the Alzheimer’s treatment home. The red bricked facility and surrounding property was beautiful in the spring, and I wondered if my parents had actually enjoyed their stay. I debated asking them, but the vac
ant look on their faces as they stared out the window already told me what they would say if I asked them.
“Did you drive all the way here from Los Angeles?” My mother asked after a few minutes of staring out the window.
“No, Mom. I’m staying in Albany now. It’s only a few hours’ drive, but I actually took a jet pod here instead of the van,” I said.
“What is that?” my father asked.
“It is kind of like a taxi, only it flies really fast through the air, and ummmm it kind of looks like a round pod.” I felt like an idiot explaining to them that a jet pod looked exactly as it sounded.
“Like Flight of the Navigator?” my father asked with a smile.
“Yeah. Dang, Dad, I didn’t think you remembered that movie.”
“Of course I do. Remember when we watched it with your grandfather on the laser disk thingy?”
“It was an old DVD,” I said. This was great. My father had been worse off than my mother with most of our visits, and I wondered if the treatments had been working. Was I making a mistake by taking them out of the environment that they were used to?
“It was your grandfather’s favorite. Said he loved it when he was a kid. Is your sister here?” As soon as he said the words, my heart dropped.
“Sister?” my mom asked. “Leo doesn’t have a sister.”
“What are you talking about? Monique? Of course he has a sister. She looks just like him. Well, without all the muscles, and facial hair, and the short hair, and the—”
“Dad, Monique was your sister,” I said as I blinked some of the tears away from my eyes. “Do you remember her?”
My dad turned his face from me and then looked out the window for a few minutes. I didn’t say anything more, and neither did my mother. The silence stretched on for what felt like an hour, and then he finally cleared his throat.
“Yeah. I remember Monique.” A tear slid down his cheek and he turned to look at me. “Where is she?”
“Dad, she died when you were—”
“No. Where is my sister?” His eyes began to look a bit wild, and he glanced between the two aides. The men were big dudes, and they leaned forward in their chairs a bit in case they needed to keep my father from doing anything violent.
“Honey,” my mom said as she stroked his arm. “It is going to be okay.” She smiled at him, and the tall man nodded in return before he stared out the window again.
Then the car in front of our van exploded into a fireball.
“Shit!” the driver and guard in the front seats screamed with surprise.
The van drifted to the right and a flurry of gunfire sprayed across the side of the van. I unbuckled my seatbelt with a jerk of my hands and then threw myself over my parents. I half expected the bullets to rip through the side of the van and shred us into tiny bits, but a dozen pinging noises sounded from the outside flank of the vehicle, and I guessed that the van was armored.
“Go, go, go!” the armored guard screamed at the driver as he twisted the wheel back around.
The van felt as if it was tipping on its side, and then it came bouncing back down with a thud that made my stomach jump in my chest. My mom and dad started screaming, and I felt the driver gain control of the van’s swinging tail.
There were more bullet sounds bouncing off of the side of our vehicle, and I pushed my parents down under my chest as much as I could to protect them. I heard a whoosh sound, and then a bright light filled the window of the van from behind us.
The second car filled with Arnacript’s guards had turned into an orange fireball.
“Shit!” both the driver and the guard screamed.
I felt the van brake hard, and I turned from the rear window to glance out the front. There was a roadblock ahead of us, with three gray colored SUVs on the road, and half a dozen armored men pointing assault rifles toward us.
“Behind us!” the driver yelled, and I turned back to see a pair of matching colored SUVs swerve around the burning carcass of the sedan.
“Mayday. Mayday. This is Lion One. We are under attack from several enemies. Where are our drones? Shit!” The guard riding shotgun ducked down below the glass of the windshield as a burst of gunfire smashed into the van. I guessed that the glass was bulletproof since none of the stuff broke. It just kind of turned into a spider web design.
My body felt frozen. I’d been in hundreds of thousands of video game combat situations, but other than the attempt to kill me at the gym in the Bahamas, I’d never really had to face someone trying to shoot me. I wasn’t driving the car, I didn’t have a gun, and I feared that if I left my parents, they would get shot. It seemed obvious that these men intended to kill me, and I didn’t feel as if I had any agency to protect myself.
At least my parents weren’t screaming. They did look terrified, but it might just be because I was practically laying on top of them. The two aides held onto each other, and their faces were white as a bleached sheet, but neither one of them had screamed yet.
“Get out of the van!” a thickly accented voice called across a megaphone from the direction of the roadblock.
“Armed assailants. At least a dozen. Multiple SUVs filled with hostiles. We are on Herrick Brook Road about half a mile from highway 30,” the guard continued from under the dash.
“If you do not surrender immediately, your van will be destroyed,” the voice shouted into the microphone. The accent sounded weird, but I couldn’t place it.
“Shit. What do we do?” the driver asked the guard.
“Your support drones have engaged in a dog fight and eliminated enemy aircraft, but we have lost them all. We are sending armed jet pods to your location. Stand by,” a surprisingly calm female voice said over the guard’s radio.
“Get out now!” the man with the megaphone shouted. He sounded pissed off, and I knew from the tone of his voice that he would fill the van with holes if we didn’t follow his orders.
Then his black helmeted head disappeared in a spray of red.
The other men standing beside him also exploded into showers of crimson. It was as if they all wore water balloons filled with red ink on their bodies, and there was some sort of timer that made them all go off at once. The group of men were standing one second, but then they were all laying on the ground with huge chunks of their bodies missing.
I yanked my head back around to stare out the back window of the van. The other attackers had gotten out of their SUVs, but they also exploded into a shower of blood, and the large vehicles bounced on the road as dozens of massive holes appeared all over them. It was as if the SUVs suddenly decided to turn into Swiss cheese.
“What the fuck?” the guard with the radio said.
“They are dead?” the driver asked as he moved his head around the marks on the bullet proof glass.
“How?” I asked. “What the fuck is going on?” My voice was halfway between a choke and a shout.
“Shit. Look!” the driver pointed out of the side window and I followed his finger.
The forest seemed to shift on the side of the road, and I blinked my eyes a few times in order to force my brain to process what I was seeing. It wasn’t that the forest was alive, or actually moving, there was just dozens of expertly camouflaged people coming out of their hiding spots.
“There has to be thirty or more of them,” I said after a quick count.
“This way too, behind us in the blind spot,” the driver said as he thumbed back to his window.
“Leo, what is going on? Who are these people?” my father asked.
“I don’t know, Dad, but I think we are—”
“Leo!” a familiar voice shouted from outside of our van.
“Oh, shit. Chip?” I yelled as I moved to the door.
A second later I was standing on the road and embracing the man I had seen a few days go. He was wearing one of those crazy military suits that looked like it was made of forest, and he carried a sniper rifle that was at least five feet long.
“What are you doing her
e? How did you—” I began to ask, but the man interrupted me with a wave of his hand.
“Hold on a second,” he said as he grabbed a small walkie-talkie from under the foliage of his suit. He said a few words into the thing that sounded like military speak, and then he smiled at me. His teeth looked a bit sinister through his black painted face, but I was more than a little thankful to see him.
“Dinah said you were picking up your parents today. She thought it might be a good idea for me to check out the route you’d be driving them home on. I got out here last night, saw these guys scoping out the road, and I figured they might have been planning something. Took a few calls to get some extra bodies out here, but Dinah gave me money for plane tickets and I called in a bunch of favors,” he whispered to me.
“Damn, dude. I don’t know what to say. You’ve just saved my life, and my parents. I re—”
“Leo, I’m your friend, and your bodyguard. This is what I do, man. We didn’t think they would hit you until the roadblock.” As Chip spoke, a pair of drones whizzed by from above us. My big ex-SEAL friend didn’t flinch at their arrival, and I guessed that one of his teammates was flying them.
“Half of these guys already work for you. I hired them on when Dale and Sal were … well. The other half are old military buds that just wanted a chance to shoot assholes.” There was a beeping sound from his walkie-talkie and the man reached for it again.
“Smith,” he said.
“Jet pods incoming. Looks like they are from Arnacript,” the voice said.
“Let them land. Over.” Chip gestured to the guard that had gotten out of the van to follow me. “Tell them we’ve got the situation under control.”
“Got it,” the guard said as he grabbed his radio.
“We fucked up. I thought they were going to hit you at this roadblock, so we prepared our setup here. Then the second group of SUVs drove up, and we had to scramble a bit,” Chip sighed as he looked back at the wreckage of the two smoking Arnacript sedans.
“Yeah. I uhhh,” I choked out.
“Leo?” my mom called from inside the van. “Is that Jax? Why is he dressed like it is Halloween? Is it Halloween? I’ll need to take you guys to the mall for candy.”
Lion's Quest: Dual Wield: A LitRPG Saga Page 1
