The Shipwreck: An Official Minecraft Novel

by C. B. Lee

  “You grew up in Pacific Crest, right?” Jake asks.

  Isabella smiles. “Sure did. Your dad tell you that?”

  Tank gently places the folder they saved of all the news articles on the desk. On the top is the photo of Isabella and her parents standing proudly in front of the community center.

  Isabella picks up the photo gingerly. “Look, I appreciate you kids standing up for what you believe in. It’s great. It really is. There are so many nonprofits and clubs and programs for kids to do in L.A. Wouldn’t it be cool if there were restaurants and shops right outside the complex?”

  Emily shakes her head. “Look, we’re so close to the mall and all this other stuff. We don’t need more shops and restaurants. This place has been empty—”

  “Right. An eyesore. A waste of space,” Isabella agrees.

  Jake fans out the photos and newspaper clippings. “But it was so important to so many people,” he says.

  “I wouldn’t have met Jake and Emily if it wasn’t for the center,” Tank says. “We wouldn’t have gotten to know one another or become friends.”

  Emily nods. “What if instead of just putting something new in there, you can remake the center? Fix it up and bring it back? There would be so many possibilities, like you could hold classes or workshops, kids could hang out and play games or learn to code!”

  Isabella laughs. “Look, the nonprofit my mother ran was very ambitious. She was always spending time there, organizing trips or busy at work.” She shakes her head. “Why am I telling you this? It doesn’t matter. She lost interest in the center at some point after I went to college.” She plays with a paperweight on her desk, a haunted expression on her face. She looks like Ellen, Jake realizes; the same eyes, the same nose, and the same soft sadness.

  She picks up the stack of paperwork on her desk and straightens it neatly before putting the papers away in a drawer, and then leans back to look at them. Her gaze settles on Jake’s. It’s not exactly the easy dismissal Jake was expecting.

  He stumbles forward, trying to remember the speech he prepared. Maybe it would have been easier if Isabella had come at him with a counterargument already, one he’s planned for. But she just looks tired, like she’s had a long day and it’s not going to be over for a long while.

  “You know, it’s not too late to reach out,” Jake offers. “I think she misses you, too. Why else would she want so badly to talk to you every time you’re at the building?”

  Isabella sighs. “It’s too late.”

  “Look, can we just have a little more time?” Emily asks, her eyes alight. “I totally get wanting to run your business the way you want to, but this center is important to us. While we were working there this summer, we found this game.”

  Tank nods. “It’s on a server on the LAN in the community center, and we haven’t solved it yet, and we’re so close.”

  Isabella lifts her eyebrows, tapping her fingers impatiently on the desk. “I really appreciate you coming all the way down here to my office, and I certainly applaud your determination, but this project has already been approved by the city. I’ve worked too hard on this to let your attachment to this videogame delay hundreds of people’s hard work—”

  “It’s not just a videogame!” Emily snaps. “Someone created this mystery, and it’s all tied to the server in the community center. If you get rid of it, it’ll be gone forever, and we’ll never know the answer!”

  “Please. It’s important to us. To me. I know it’s just a game, but this Minecraft server is special, and I really can’t—” Jake takes a deep breath.

  Emily puts her hand on his shoulder and squeezes it.

  On his other side, Tank nods empathetically. “It’s a good game, Miss.”

  Isabella pauses, looking at the three of them. “Hm. What makes this server so special?”

  Tank pulls up a photo on his phone: the mermaid kingdom glimmers in the light, merfolk swimming amongst the monuments and towers.

  “Haven’t you ever wanted to finish a game?” Jake asks.

  Isabella shrugs. “Like get to the End and defeat the ender dragon? Sure.”

  Tank flips to the next photo, showing the castle surrounded by lava and the precarious bridge. “So you know Minecraft already! This is something new, something exciting, and it’s still changing.”

  Emily nods. “The Wizard kept adding things and making things challenging. We’re almost at the end, and there’s this whole underwater kingdom that’s in danger. That’s all we want to do: solve the mystery and help this lost city.”

  “The server is hosted on a LAN in the community center. If you tear it down, it’ll all be gone.”

  Isabella stares at the images on Tank’s phone and gets up, smoothing her suit jacket. “All right. I’ll have a look. But just a look, and only because I happen to like Minecraft and I don’t have any other meetings today. But I’m not promising anything.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  EMILY

  Emily’s not quite sure what to make of Isabella. First of all, her outfit is super cute. Professional and powerful. She walks with a commanding presence, the kind that even Mama would appreciate and be intimidated by. She’s an award-winning architect, according to the multiple seals and certificates in her office, having designed tons of beautiful buildings and complexes. She’s got great taste in shoes, and Emily’s sure the Patties and Nitas of her world would certainly respect her.

  Jake whoops from the back seat. “We’ve got a shot! I can’t believe it!”

  “How did you know talking about the game would work?” Tank asks.

  “I didn’t,” Emily says simply. “I just had a hunch.” There were little nods in Isabella’s office that made her think she’d appreciate the mystery of a game: the pixelated swords hanging on the wall, the figurines on her desk, the giant twenty-sided die paperweight.

  Isabella arrives at Pacific Crest Apartments before them and is already waiting outside, clacking her heel impatiently, when Carmen pulls into the lot.

  “You all have weird hobbies,” Carmen says, rolling her eyes.

  “Thanks.” Emily laughs. “I’ll see you at home.”

  Isabella lifts up the caution tape and strides into the fenced-off construction site like she owns the place. Which she does. But still. The presence.

  Jake pulls out a chair for her and lets her sit at the center computer. Emily’s come to think of it as Tank’s, even as the one on the right is hers, the way it’s right next to the plug where she charges her phone, and the left one is Jake’s, right next to the aisle so he can keep getting up to go to the water fountain once in a while like he does. Emily isn’t sure when she started thinking of the lab as theirs. Now that there’s someone else in it, she feels protective of it.

  Isabella sits gingerly at the computer, touching the stickers on the monitor. Emily used to wonder about those; she thought they were just left over from some kid and Ellen would junk the computer like everything else in the building. She wonders now if this used to be Isabella’s computer, if those were her seashell stickers.

  “So these are riddles we’ve solved so far,” Tank says. He pulls up the folder where they’ve been saving the screenshots. Emily’s saved other grabs there, too, and she realizes as she looks at the sheer number of images that they aren’t just of the riddles and clues that they said this folder was for in the first place. There are shots of the impossibly gorgeous mountain that is shaped like a wolf, a beautiful setting sun. Tank’s detailed farm. Jake’s intricately decorated library and organized chests, his avatar standing proudly in front of them. Her own collection of swords. Jake’s and Tank’s avatars trapped on top of a tree. The zombie that got stuck in their sheep pen. The automated inventory sorter Emily built. A million little in-jokes and moments from the time they’ve spent here.

  Emily at first feels embarrassed at how many pictures s
he’s saved, but her images aren’t the only ones. There’s her avatar, too, bedecked in diamond armor, that first time she got the full set and ran around the base all excited and thrilled. Jake had laughed at her, but she had no idea he was saving this. And then there’s a shot of her diving headfirst into the cave filled with spiders, Tank right behind her.

  “It looks like the three of you have had a lot of fun in this game,” Isabella says slowly.

  “We didn’t build all this,” Emily says, gesturing to the images. “Look, redstone is one thing, and I’m decent at it, but this is advanced computer programming!”

  “I think it’s sweet that you kids are really attached to this game. I get it, I really do. I used to play Minecraft, too, and of course you don’t want to lose your progress—”

  “Did you play with your mom?” Jake asks.

  “Yeah, a little. She got really busy, though, with work.” Isabella sighs. “I shouldn’t have come here, it was a mistake to think…”

  She trails off, staring at the screen.

  Tank has an image of the shipwreck open, and he’s zooming in slowly on the side of the ship. Emily’s not quite sure what he’s doing with the blurry image—it’s not a great shot to begin with. Jake was trying to catch the mermaids swimming around in it, and he doesn’t quite have Tank’s eye for framing and aesthetic. Emily likes Tank’s photos best, the way he can capture the right amount of drama and beauty in one shot. Jake tends to just shoot whatever he’s looking at.

  Tank stops, gesturing at the screen.

  On the side of the ship are letters, barely visible in the zoomed-in frame, but there.

  BELLA.

  Emily hadn’t even noticed it had been named in the first place.

  Isabella goes still.

  “How long has this server been here?” she asks after a long moment.

  Jake shrugs. “I dunno. I mean, years, probably. From the amount of work that went into them, and how many versions there are. There’s tons.”

  “Show me.” Isabella takes a set of wire-rimmed glasses out of her purse and puts them on. She ties her hair back and watches as Jake brings up the multiplayer screen. “This is all just on the LAN?”

  “Yeah. That’s why we can’t connect to it from anywhere else. And if you get rid of the community center, it will all be gone.”

  Isabella scans the list of the server names, her mouth pressing into a severe line. She looks back at Tank’s computer, her face unreadable as she flicks through the images: the mermaids swimming around the shipwreck, the ocean monument looming amidst the depths, the stone pathway leading to the underwater kingdom, the Leviathan rising up from the ocean floor.

  “Do you want to play?” Emily asks suddenly. She recognizes the look: Isabella’s fingers twitching, the way she’s taking in all the images.

  “Yes, I do,” Isabella says, her voice suddenly small. Emily can see the hints of the little girl who put seashell stickers on her computer.

  Emily logs in for her. The world loads, glittering and full of promise.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  TANK

  “I can show you where we are,” Tank says. He logs in and appears right next to Emily’s avatar. He looks at the three beds surrounded by torches on the bare strip of shore, where they kept coming back to every time they were defeated. The last time they were all there they had given up on the game, on ever seeing one another again.

  Tank reaches out and touches Jake on the shoulder. Jake turns and gives him a reassuring smile. From the other computer, Emily makes a silly wavey gesture with her hand, and Tank chuckles: the jellyfish handshake he taught her. She remembered.

  They’ve been through so much together, have traveled this whole world the Wizard created, solved all the riddles the Wizard gave them except this one.

  “Come on,” Tank says, bouncing as he dives into the water. The ocean monument is still, all its guardians defeated.

  Isabella’s voice shakes as she opens the door at the end of the long prismarine hallway, the kingdom glittering just a short distance away. “I don’t believe this,” she says, her voice trembling with awe.

  “It’s cool, isn’t it?” Emily hums.

  Tank smiles at Jake and Emily. Isabella looks mesmerized by the sight of the merfolk building their wall, the warriors swimming back and forth in anticipation.

  “The Leviathan wakes up as soon as you try to cross to the kingdom,” Jake says. He nods at Tank, who takes a step forward. The ground rumbles and the massive monster rises up, smashing through the wall, shooting powerful blasts of energy and taking them all out in a single blow.

  They respawn back on the beach.

  Emily places the storybook on the table. “We figured out that the Wizard was basing the story in the game on this,” she says.

  Isabella reaches for the book. Her fingers brush gently over the crayon drawings of the mermaid kingdom, the Leviathan. “I drew this,” she says softly. “I can’t believe she kept it.”

  “It was here in the community center,” Jake says. “We found it in all the stuff that Ellen couldn’t bear to throw away.”

  Isabella shakes her head. “It’s too much to believe. The details…I thought she never paid attention to me and my stories, and all of this?” She clutches the book to her chest, her eyes brimming with tears. “She’s the only one who could have created this world with my story.”

  “Your mother is the Wizard?” Tank’s mouth falls open in shock. He thinks about all the times Ellen had come to check in on them, and it falls into place. After all, the Wizard hadn’t noticed they were in the game until that time Ellen saw them in the lab.

  Isabella nods. “She’s a programmer. When I was a kid, she was always working, either at the community center or at her company, and she’d always promise to spend time with me, but it never happened. After my father died, she threw herself into work and I hated it. We got into this huge fight when I was a little older than you all—I left and never looked back.”

  She flips through the book slowly and looks back at the game. “I thought she didn’t care.”

  “It sounds like she did,” Tank says. “She just didn’t know how to say so.”

  Isabella wipes at her eyes. “The kingdom, the mermaids, the quest to get the trident…it was an ongoing story that I made up. My parents and I—we used to hang out in the pool all the time, and I would act it out with my toys.” She laughs. “I had this old dinosaur figure that was the Leviathan, and all my stuffed animals would hang out by the side of the pool in their kingdom. The pathway—that was the walkway that separated the shallow from the deep end.” She turns and smiles at them. “I haven’t thought about that game in forever.”

  “How does the story end?” Jake asks. “How do you find the trident to defeat the Leviathan?”

  “We’ve tried everything: bows, swords, enchanted weapons. It’s like trying to defeat the ender dragon but with every disadvantage,” Emily says.

  Isabella pauses on one of the pages. “I believe the trident was hidden in an underwater temple very close to the kingdom. I thought it was funny, coming up with a story where the princess spent the whole adventure going all over the world only to come back and realize that at the end of her quest, all of the riddles had brought her right back home.”

  “The monument! I knew we hadn’t looked everywhere,” Jake says.

  Isabella leads the way, Emily’s character diving back down toward the monument. Tank and Jake walk her through each floor, showing her the different rooms, the treasure chamber with the statue that activated the pathway. Isabella pauses, swimming into the room filled with note blocks.

  “I thought this was just for ambiance,” Emily says. “You know, to add to the mystery.”

  The room is expansive, the floor decorated with a number of note blocks that each play a musical note when stood on. They
echo through the water, resonating with a deep bass.

  Isabella touches a stone, a high note pinging in the air. She taps on all of them experimentally, trying out the notes. “No way,” she says.

  “What?”

  “There’s a song that I used to hum all the time, it was just this silly melody I made up,” Isabella says. She presses three notes, the beginning of a familiar song—Tank realizes it’s the music that’s been specially programmed into this server, that same light and playful melody that has followed them throughout the game.

  Isabella finishes out the song with one ringing note, and then pistons clank and clatter, revealing a hidden compartment in the prismarine wall. The golden trident is floating inside it, and Emily picks it up.

  Isabella pushes back from the computer, standing up. “I can’t—this is too much. Here, you go ahead.”

  “Are you sure?” Jake asks.

  Isabella nods, folding her arms around herself. “I want to see how it ends. Go on.”

  Tank, Emily, and Jake follow the stone pathway out to the kingdom like they have so many times before. This time, though, he can feel the energy radiating off Isabella as she watches the scene unfold intently.

  The Leviathan rises.

  The merfolk scatter.

  Emily raises the trident, and it shoots out a beam of golden energy right at the Leviathan.

  It roars in pain, and Tank realizes with satisfaction that it’s actually done a significant amount of damage.

  “It’s gonna blast us, it’s making the face!” Jake calls out. “Evasive maneuvers, come on!”

  Tank remembers the plan—he scatters to the left just as Emily dodges to the right and Jake dives into a stand of nearby coral. They barely escape the blast, and Tank’s health dips, but he’s still alive. He drinks an Instant Health potion, watching Emily dart to the base of the wall, readying the trident again, but the Leviathan is already preparing to send a blast at her.