Eden's Gate_The Sands_A LitRPG Adventure

by Edward Brody

  “Ughh yeah,” I groaned. “You’re a Reborn too?”

  Loco nodded.

  “Spanish? Mexican?” I asked, correlating the name he chose with his nationality.

  “Samoan actually,” he said. “I just thought Loco was cool.”

  “Loco and I were rounded up while we were grinding in the desert. It’s his first time here too,” Dent explained.

  “Are there other Reborns here?” I asked.

  Dent groaned as he spoke. “I can’t be sure. You know how hard it is to tell NPC from Reborn sometimes, but I as far as I know, it’s just us three. The boy down on the end of the log is suspicious, but he doesn’t say much.”

  I tried to look down to the edge of the log, but the position of my head and bodies of the others prevented me from getting a good look.

  “And what exactly happens here? What do we do?” I asked.

  “Whatever they say,” Dent said. “They want you to move stones, you move stones. They want you to dig a pit, you dig a pit. They want to fuck your ass, you get fucked.”

  “What?!” My heart jumped.

  Loco and Dent both started laughing, holding it in as best they could so they didn’t make too much noise.

  “I’m just fucking with you,” Dent said. “Your ass is safe here—“ He raised an eyebrow. “—I think. But everything else is true. You do whatever they say or prepare to take a lashing.”

  My last round of Divine Sight wore off, and with the night sky out, I could only see what the fires around us allowed. I wiggled my hand and focused on casting the spell again, wanting a good view of the camp.

  Your magic is nullified!

  I tried again.

  Your magic is nullified!

  “What the hell?”

  “What?” Dent asked. “You can’t take a joke? I said we were just fucking with you.”

  “No,” I replied. “I can’t get my spell to cast.”

  “Oh, that…” Dent grumbled. “You know those shackles on your feet? They’re magic nullifiers. Surely, you didn’t think they’d leave us out here with the chance to cast some crazy spell? Imagine if they captured some high-level mage who burned their camp down.”

  “Damn…”

  “Like I said,” Dent continued, “Escaping will be easier once you’re sold off.”

  Two of the slavers slid a single, long, metal container in front of us all without notice. It was eerily similar to a pig trough. Actually, it probably was a pig trough. Another slaver followed behind them, carrying a large wooden barrel. He tipped the barrel over, and a thick, foamy brown liquid spilled out and into the trough, some of it splashing on to us and into the sand.

  The smell wasn’t terrible, though definitely a lot worse than that of food rations. But it looked and sounded so gross when it splashed in the container that I immediately wanted to vomit.

  “Eat!” the slaver spat.

  Dent looked over to me, raised an eyebrow, and smiled sarcastically. “Yummy, yummy!”

  I had no intention of going anywhere near the vile liquid, but being tied to the log gave me no choice. As soon as the other slaves leaned over and started lapping up the liquid like animals, my head dipped face down as well.

  The moment the liquid touched my lips, I gagged, but no sooner than I tried to move away, I felt another lash from the whip against my back. I cried out, and the pressure from the other slaves caused my open mouth to dip further into the liquid, giving me a mouthful. The texture was horrendous, but the taste wasn’t the worst thing I had ever tried. I was going to have to learn to eat it anyway, I supposed. I had no idea when I’d be able eat something normal again.

  I had no idea what was going on, really.

  You are well-fed! Stamina and Vitality increased by 15% while this effect is active.

  I was surprised that I didn’t get a status indicator telling me that I was ill and my stamina and vitality were reduced by 15%. The liquid food was nauseating.

  I was supposed to be eating elven pie in The Vale that day. How the hell did I end up there?

  Chapter Eighteen

  Day 20 (Earth)

  “What the fuck is this!” Marcello grunted and slammed his hand against the wall.

  The four Crylight members had been rounded up and taken to a nearby empty room in an abandoned office building. There was a long presentation table in the room surrounded by chairs, but otherwise, the room was empty.”

  “Yo, were those guys even cops?” Sung asked. “This isn’t a police station.”

  Gustov smirked. “It doesn’t matter who they are because they had guns. If we didn’t come with them, they might have killed us.”

  “I just want to go home.” Sar put her head down and started weeping into her hands.

  The door to the office creaked open and two men dressed in grey suits and one woman dressed in a black skirtsuit entered. One of the men had dark skin and black hair that was greying at the sides, and the other man looked like he had just graduated college with a medium-length shaggy cut of brown hair. The woman had stiff blonde hair and looked like a soccer mom.

  The dark-skinned man reached his hand out and began rounding the table and shaking the hands of each member of Crylight. “My name is Todd Watson. I’m director of the Central Intelligence Agency.”

  The younger man followed suit. “Jeff Riggs. I work for the FBI.”

  The woman also introduced herself and shook everyone’s hands. “Marsha Walsh with the Department of Defense.”

  The Crylight members all nodded their head and frowned timidly as they shook everyone’s hands, making it obvious that they weren’t happy with the situation.

  “Yo,” Sung suddenly said. “What’s going on here? What do you want from us?”

  Todd flipped a few up a few papers were attached to a clipboard he was carrying. “I assume you’re Sung Ngen?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Sung answered.

  “An avid consumer of chicken fried rice, a girlfriend named Aoi, and an expert data hacker, right?”

  Sung’s eyes went wide. “Yo, what the fuck?!”

  Marsha turned to Gustov. “You’re the leader of the Team Crylight.” She turned to Sar. “And you’re the megabrain. Am I correct?”

  Both Gustov and Sar said nothing in return.

  “And you,” Jeff pointed out with his index finger. “You must be Marcello.”

  Marcello nodded. “What do you have to say about me?”

  Jeff chuckled and folded a paper on his clipboard back. “Not much, actually. You’re kind of the boring one in the log.”

  “Boring one?!” Marcello barked. “I’ve got lots of shit going on! I’m a—”

  “Shut up!” Gustov snapped.

  “Hey, hey,” Todd said, raising and lowering his hand. “Let’s keep the levels low for now. Just answer our questions.”

  Marsha cleared her throat. “What happened on the island?” Marsha turned to each of the Crylight members but no one spoke. She landed her gaze on Gustov. “Gustov? Do you want to explain?”

  “Just visiting….” He said.

  Marsha turned to Sung. “Really now? Just visiting?”

  Sung nodded.

  Marsha turned to both Sar and Marcello, but both of them just shook their heads like they didn’t know anything.

  Todd sighed. “Let’s just cut to the chase. We know you were working with deathknight35, and we know he’s dead. We know everything that happened.”

  Gustov’s face reddened, and he watched as his team member’s jaws dropped. “Don’t say anything more to these guys. We’d like to talk to our lawyers.”

  Todd snapped his lips and drooped his shoulders. “So you want to play the lawyer card then?” He sighed. “Alright then, I guess we’re done here.”

  Todd walked over to the door, pulled it open, and looked at the Crylight team.

  “Yo, we can go?” Sung asked.

  Todd nodded.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Gustov said.

  The whole team stood fr
om their seats and headed towards the door, but just as Gustov was about to pass through, Todd slammed the door and smiled.

  “I’m just fuckin’ with you,” Todd said with a devilish grin. He pointed to the seats with his clipboard. “I don’t give a fuck about your lawyers. All of you sit your asses down, now.”

  Gustov’s face went from red to pale, and the team slowly backed up and sat back down in their seats.

  “We’ve had a close eye on Crylight for a long time,” Jeff said, “and I’ve got to say you guys are impressive. You always cover your tracks, you keep your wealth hidden in cryptocurrency, and you’ve never gotten greedy enough to blow your cover.”

  “Impressive indeed,” Todd agreed. “And almost equally impressive is the number of gaming titles you managed to win without hacking. You have the upmost respect for the gaming community but zero respect for the law.”

  There was a long moment of silence and no one from Crylight responded.

  “Oh, you can talk,” Todd said. “There’s no lawyer coming, and we’re going to be here as long as we need to be.”

  “You can’t keep us here,” Gustov said.

  Marsha snickered. “You wanna bet?”

  Jeff flipped up some papers on his clipboard. “We’ve got you all on at least twenty counts of felony wire-fraud, data breaching, money laundering, the list goes on…”

  “How?” Gustov asked.

  Jeff smiled. “The archive you downloaded from deathknight35—“

  “Kevin,” Gustov corrected.

  “Kevin…” Jeff cleared his throat. “Basically, the archive was infected with a worm that gave us total access to your computer and any network you were connected to. Once we were in your system, we were able to connect the dots to every financial hack you’ve committed over the past five years.”

  “So you planted the Nexicon headset blueprints to trap us?” Gustov asked.

  Jeff shook his head. “Actually, someone released the blueprint on the deep web, and it started to circulate on file sharing sites like wildfire, faster than we could’ve stopped it. We just took a copy of the files, created a version that included the worm and put it on a porn site, hoping that it would lead us to criminals looking to enter Eden’s Gate.”

  “Yo, why a porn site?” Sung asked. “That’s weird.”

  Jeff shrugged. “People tend to think a little less cautiously when they’re aroused. They’re more likely to open a strange, unencrypted archive.”

  Todd coughed loudly. “We got more than we bargained for when Kevin and you, Gustov, both opened the archive on your computers. Not only did we finally get the evidence we needed to charge your group for hacking, but we also saw everything that happened in Asia.”

  Marsha tapped her nails on the table. “So now we can add purposeful use of an illegal device and murder to your list of crimes.” She bobbed her head a bit. “Maybe first degree manslaughter if things go your way.”

  “Aw fuck,” Marcello said and dropped his head down.

  “We didn’t mean to kill him!” Sung blurted. “I mean, we didn’t kill him! He volunteered to hook himself up to the headset.”

  “If someone volunteers to kill themselves, and you hand them a gun, did you commit a crime?” Todd asked. “What if you built the gun for them and encouraged them to pull them to pull the trigger?”

  “So if you already know everything, what do you want from us?” Gustov asked. “Why did you bring us here? Do you want a confession or something?”

  “We’ve got plenty of evidence,” Todd said. “We don’t need a confession.”

  “What we’ve got for you is a proposition,” Marsha cooed.

  “A proposition?” Sar asked.

  “Todd…” Marsha said with a nod of her chin.

  Todd pulled out his phone and started dialing. He held the phone to his ear, and after a few seconds, he said, “Mr. President? Yes, the whole team has been briefed on their crimes. Yes sir. Just a moment.”

  Todd put his phone on speakerphone and slid it to the center of the table.

  “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” Todd said. “I’ve got you on speakerphone.”

  “Yo, the President?” Sung asked. “What is this? The President of what?”

  “The President of the United States of America,” the voice said through the speaker.

  Todd frowned and he glared angrily at Sung.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there personally,” the President said. “I hope they’re treating you well.”

  “They’re fine, Mr. President,” Marsha said. “We’ll make sure they’re taken care of.”

  “Good.” The President coughed a couple times before continuing. “So you’re all aware that you’re facing some pretty serious charges then, right?”

  No one said anything for a few seconds, but Todd smirked and waved his hand, encouraging someone to speak.

  “Yes, we’re aware,” Gustov finally answered, “but here in America, we’re innocent until proven guilty.”

  “That’s what they say, don’t they?” The President laughed. “Todd, why don’t you explain to them what’s going on?”

  “Yes, Mr. President.” Todd cleared his voice and moved to the head of the table to make sure everyone could see him. He pulled a Manilla folder from under his clipboard, opened it, and retrieved a handful of a large photos. He slid the first one—an old photo of Rupert Winston—out to the center of the table. “As everyone here is aware, a few weeks ago, Dr. Rupert Winston committed the worst crime in modern history by killing millions of people and transferring them into Eden’s Gate.”

  “According to all of you, no one is really living in Eden’s Gate and the system has been shut down,” Gustov proclaimed.

  “Let’s not play games,” Marsha said. “Everyone in this room knows that isn’t true. It’s the message we have to send to the general public to prevent as many people as possible from trying to cross over.”

  “Why try to prevent people who want to go from going?” Sung snapped. “It’s their lives. What happened to freedom?!”

  “That’s a discussion for another time and another place,” the President said. “For now, just listen to what we have to say.”

  “We would’ve expected that everyone would be terrified of crossing into some unknown virtual world, but surprisingly, the idea has been attractive to many people,” Todd explained. “Including you.”

  The Crylight team looked at each other almost like they were having a conversation together without speaking.

  “Whether Dr. Winston was wrong or right by creating this breakthrough in human history is debatable, but one thing is for certain: Dr. Rupert Winston is a criminal who violated the law.” Todd paused to let his words resonate in everyone’s ears. “If we’re going to accept that Eden’s Gate is an alternative reality where people are living and going about their lives—potentially forever—then we have to have to also accept that Dr. Winston has essentially gotten away with murder and has no fear of prosecution.”

  There was another long pause where no one said anything. Marsha tilted her chin to Todd, encouraging him to continue.

  Todd lifted another photo from his stack and slid it on the table. It was a selfie of a man with dirty blond hair, a brown mustache, and deep acne scars. “This is Tony Rodrigues. A computer technician with no prior criminal history.”

  “Prior?” Gustov asked.

  “A week ago, Tony came home and caught his wife in bed with another man. He shot the wife and beat the man to death. No charges were filed.”

  Marcello creased his brow. “No charges filed? I don’t get it…”

  “When police arrived on the scene, he was slumped over in his chair with a Nexicon headset on his head.” Todd frowned. “His body was still warm. He must have just logged in.” Todd slid another photo on the table—a man with short brown hair and a business suit. “This guy logged in after running up over seventeen million dollars in debt on hookers and gambling at a Vegas c
asino.”

  “Do you get where we’re going with this?” Marsha asked.

  “The problem is,” the President said, “having an alternate world that we can’t control in any way is giving people the ability to flee prosecution from the real world. Suicide is always a problem, but now we have people essentially starting over and leaving their crimes behind them.”

  “What does this have to do with us?” Gustov asked. “You’ve already got us. We don’t have headsets, so we can’t exactly flee.”

  “We need your help, Gustov,” Marsha said. “We need the help of the Crylight team.”

  “What? I don’t understand.” Sar shook her head.

  “We’re living in different times,” Todd explained. “We can’t allow people to think that they can just do whatever they want and get away, so long as they have an internet connection and can get their hands on a Nexicon headset. We need a presence in Eden’s Gate.”

  Jeff tugged the collar of his suit. “We need a team of individuals who can track down and prosecute anyone who violates the laws here on Earth.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Marcello blurted.

  “We’re dead serious, Marcello,” Todd said. He rolled his eyes to each of the Crylight members. “We think Crylight can be that group.”

  Sar smiled, blinked rapidly and shook her head. “Wait, what? You want us to be some sort of law enforcement group inside of Eden’s Gate?”

  “In so many words, yes,” Todd answered. “We don’t care what happens inside of the game, but if someone is charged with a crime here on here on Earth, it needs to be known that they’ll be prosecuted whether they’re there, in Eden’s Gate, or whatever other virtual, alternative world might appear in the future. It’s the only way ensure the safety of people here on Earth.”

  “It’ll only get worse if more people learn and accept that Eden’s Gate is another world,” Marsha said. “We’ve done our best to get as many headsets off the ground as possible, but now that the blueprints are out there…” She raised her eyebrows and sighed.