Paradise Clash: Bounty Hunter

by L. E. Price

  Dutton’s eyes widened. “Not only would it show you what you’re looking for, it would betray the identity of his kidnapper. Yes. If you can retrace his steps, that might just work. Can you?”

  Jake wasn’t sure, but he was damn well going to find out.

  “Leave that part to me. What happens when I find it?”

  “Come with me.”

  A door at the opposite end of the greenhouse whisked open. Dutton led Jake down a maze of white antiseptic halls. Beyond another set of double doors, a room that was half-den, half-laboratory sat under cool amber lights. Old full-immersion gear cluttered a pair of workbenches, a museum of vintage technology, beside a black leather reclining bench. Dutton yanked open cabinet doors above softly glowing monitors and hauled down stack after stack of old hard-copy binders.

  He ruffled the pages. Dense code in eight-point type lined thousands of printed sheets.

  “I was supposed to turn all of this in when I left the company,” Dutton said. He gave Jake a feral grin. “Lars can sue me.”

  “Is this all your work?”

  “Every line of it,” Dutton said.

  His fingertip hunted along lines marked in yellow and pink highlighter. They could have been ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs as far as Jake was concerned, but the man seemed to know what he was looking for. He flipped a few more pages and rapped his soil-caked nail against the printout.

  “I can write a code injection that will disassociate your kidnapped player from the object that’s binding them. Find the object, execute the code, problem solved.”

  “How long will it take you?” Jake asked.

  “An hour, maybe two. It’s dirt-simple. All they’re doing is exploiting a glitch, using my old design. It can probably be fixed in a handful of lines; the worst bugs usually are once you figure out what went wrong. I’ll mail it to you. Open it up in-game and attach it to a weapon, any weapon.”

  “And then?”

  Dutton’s smile grew. “Are you good at smashing things, Jake?”

  “I’ve been told that’s one of my more marketable skills.”

  “There you go, then. Just one thing: I’m fairly certain the injector will slip under SDS’s security protocols, exactly like your item-tracking app. When you actually execute it, though? That’s going to light up every alarm on the servers. Every on-duty gamemaster is going to know about it, more or less instantly.”

  “Which means the kidnappers are going to know about it, too,” Jake said.

  Dutton nodded. “Whatever you need to do — hopefully, coordinating a mass arrest — make sure everything is lined up before you activate the patch. And do me a favor? If you see Lars, tell him, ‘I told you so.’”

  * * * *

  The bullet-train barreled across state lines, carrying Jake home. He made a call to Woody and got his I’m-busy-working message.

  “It’s Jake,” he said. “Jeff Dutton checked out. More than that, he’s working on a silver bullet to fix this mess. All I have to do is point and shoot. I’ll be back in the office in a couple of hours; send messages to Prentise and Tim and have everybody meet me at the Dented Chalice tonight. I’ll fill you all in and then we’ll plan our next move.”

  The ride back felt longer than the ride out. Jake wanted to be working, boots on the ground, taking action. The finish line — and saving Trevor’s life — felt closer than it ever had.

  And part of him just wanted to be back on Gaia Prime, standing under clear blue skies. Breathing clean, fresh air that only existed in a computerized hallucination. That got him thinking about Amos Beiler.

  Jake had some time to kill. He pulled out his tablet as the train-car swayed. Dutton mentioned that Amos mostly painted, these days.

  A gallery in New Hampshire was the exclusive patron of “A. Beiler’s” oil paintings. Jake scrolled slowly past landscapes where the ground seemed to melt under the shadow of sagging clouds. Impressionist portraits frayed at the edges, the faces of his subjects dissolving like a tablet in a glass of water. Nothing in Beiler’s world was certain or solid; he painted from the perspective of a man whose reality was a shifting and treacherous uncertainty.

  Jake slid to the next image. He froze.

  Beiler had painted an ocean, restless, deep blue fading to abyssal black. And rising from the darkness, wings spread with a sense of planet-devouring vastness, was a dragon. It streaked toward the surface, maw open and roaring in the drowning deep, and the span of its wings dragged roiling ripples of shadow along with it.

  Beneath the picture, a title: “The Sea Dragon, the Glory of God, the Triumph and the Rapture and the Judgment Come.”

  34.

  Night fell over Jeff Dutton’s namesake village. The stars came out, twinkling and burning bright. Jake stood at the edge of town, in the shadow of the foothills. The developer had come through twenty minutes ago, sending the fruit of his labor — a tiny file called pinion-break.gr2 — along with a terse note.

  “You know what to do. Good luck and give ‘em hell. – JD.”

  The file blossomed above his forearm in the shape of a slim black window. A chevron of neon light pulsated, expectant. He needed to stick it onto a weapon — any weapon, Dutton told him — and prepare it to deliver the antidote. Better to do that now, Jake figured, and have it ready to go.

  He glanced to his tonfas. No, he thought. He might need them, and one swing of whatever weapon he picked would put SDS security — and the Elect — on high alert. He had a better option.

  The black window shimmered against the dangling, leather-wrapped balls of his bolas. Then it melted like Beiler’s oil paints. He brushed his fingertip over the near-useless weapon, calling up a display of its stats.

  Instead of the expected readout, the corner of Jake’s vision flooded with garbage. Blocks of flashing, mangled text streamed by as the server tried to parse the corrupted data. All he could make out was:

  Weapon”” Bolas

  Attack power”” pinion-break.gr2

  Level required”” 3 && Relevant skills”” screw you lars, you’re welcome for fixing your mistakes AGAIN, hugs and kisses, jd

  Jake snickered and banished the text. He’d have to hope that meant the patch worked. He wouldn’t know for certain until he put it to the test.

  * * * *

  “Wait a second,” Tim said. “Good news? Actual good news?”

  “Hard to believe, I know,” Jake told him.

  “Hold on. This is on me.”

  Tim hustled over to the bar. They’d taken the corner table. Prentise sat with her back to the wall, scrutinizing the crowd in the Dented Chalice as if any one of the usual late-night revelers could be a member of the Elect in disguise. Woody had just shown up, running late as usual and gasping apologies about a tournament that went into overtime as he dropped, breathless, into the last open chair.

  Tim came back with four battered pewter goblets and a bottle of honey mead. He wrestled with the cork, his ebullience fading into embarrassed frustration. He looked to Jake and wriggled the bottle, asking a question with his eyes.

  “Really?” Woody said.

  Tim sniffed at him. “Rolen the Blue is built for speed and catlike grace, not brute strength.”

  Jake took the bottle from him. The wax seal cracked under the curl of his fingers. He pulled the cork and did the honors, splashing mead into the goblets until the last dregs drizzled down. He set the empty bottle aside and raised his cup.

  “We still have a long way to go,” he told them, “and it may be a little early to celebrate, but I’ll say this much: here’s to good friends, here’s to hope, and here’s to getting the job done.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Prentise said. Goblets clinked, and everyone tossed back a swallow. It went down smooth. Honey-sweet, tinged with the taste of raspberries, like the memory of a warm summer afternoon.

  “Just wish this stuff could actually get you drunk,” Woody muttered. He looked to Jake. “So one of the Elect had to have approached Trevor the day he got min
d-napped.”

  Jake nodded. “And given him the trapped object, then taken it back from him. The Elect are celebrities: there’s a damn good chance someone saw them meet, and they might remember how it happened. That’ll help us narrow down the possibilities, and we can use the item tracker from there.”

  “Someone might have recorded it. I’ll start combing the big streaming feeds.”

  “Then we have to find the item,” Prentise said. “Though if I was the Elect, I know exactly where I’d put it.”

  “Ameryil’s palace,” Jake said. “Their ‘Carnival of Flesh’. It’s their stronghold and it’s cut off from the rest of the game-world. There’s nowhere safer.”

  “But how can we get in?” Tim asked. “The portal won’t open again until next month.”

  Jake leaned back. He sipped his mead, the din of the crowded tavern washing over him. Once this place had been strange, uncomfortable, alien. Now it was cozy as a corner bar.

  “Maybe we can convince them otherwise. One problem at a time: first, let’s figure out what we’re looking for.”

  “Still can’t believe you put Dutton’s patch on your bolas,” Prentise said.

  “I still can’t believe he picked the bolas,” Woody told her. “I mean, I partially blame myself there, but still.”

  “There’s a method to my madness,” Jake said. “Good chance, wherever this thing is being kept, we’re going to have to fight our way to it.”

  Prentise swirled her goblet. “About that. The second you activate the patch, Trevor can log out. Hostage freed, which is great, but the Elect are going to know exactly what you did. There’s a good chance they’ll know the jig is up, and they’ll try to flee.”

  “Sure,” Jake said.

  “I think it’s time to go to the feds. We need to tell them everything, so they can be in position to raid SDS’s corporate offices. They’ll round up everyone, lock the place down, and stop the Elect from covering their tracks.”

  “Still not a big fan of talking to the GRA,” Woody said. “I’m kind of under a wrath-of-God level non-disclosure agreement.”

  Prentise narrowed her eyes at him. “An NDA isn’t a shield against prosecution for criminal activity. Technically we’re all aiding and abetting by not coming forward. Getting charged for concealing evidence on the bad guys we’re trying to stop would be equal parts ironic and shitty.”

  “You’re right,” Jake said.

  She almost looked surprised. “Really?”

  “Do you want me to argue?”

  “No,” Prentise said. “I just expected you would. I thought you didn’t trust the feds.”

  “Like I said, I don’t trust anybody who isn’t sitting at this table.” He raised his goblet. “Which includes trusting you. And trusting your judgment. Look, I just don’t want any chance of the GRA tromping in, scaring off the Elect and getting Trevor hurt in the process. But now we’ve got a lead, a solid one. Saving Trevor is still our job, but if the feds want to coordinate and close a dragnet on these creeps at the same time — only once we’ve gotten Trevor out of here and home safe to his family — I’m all for it.”

  Woody shifted in his seat, chewing on his bottom lip.

  “Uh, Jake? You need to think about all the angles here.”

  Jake glanced at Woody. “Such as?”

  “Such as the epic wheelbarrows of money SDS will pay us if we keep this in-house. I mean, I don’t know what the Kensington family promised you, but I’ve seen two checks on Anton’s desk, just waiting for a signature from the CEO. One for you, one for me. Lots of zeros.”

  “Do you know what happens if this is ‘kept in-house’?” Prentise asked him. “SDS will sweep it all under the rug to protect their reputation. Not only with the Elect get away with everything they’ve pulled, they’ll probably get promotions just to keep them happy and quiet.”

  Jake sighed into his cup. He couldn’t lie. The money would be nice. That was upgrade money. Arcology citizenship money. He could go back Inside and live in a place where he didn’t have to put a rebreather and goggles on every time he opened his front door.

  But right was right. Jake knew he wasn’t a great guy, but he tried to be a good one.

  “They kidnapped a kid and they killed a man, Woody. They’ve got to go down for it. They have to pay.”

  Woody’s shoulders slumped. He slouched in quiet defeat.

  Tim tipped his cup back, polished off his mead, and tapped the side of his head. “And that’s my logout timer. Ten-minute warning says I gotta go and do something productive, like my homework. I’ll catch you all later.”

  Jake waved him off. “Safe travels, Rolen the Blue. Be swift and catlike or something.”

  Prentise stretched her arms above her head, languid.

  “I don’t see any reason to waste time,” she said. “Woody, send us a list of the streamers you think might have been following the Elect around. Find one of them in the same footage with Trevor, and we might spot the object they whammied him with.”

  Woody still looked like someone had yanked a winning lottery ticket right out of his hand. All the same, he didn’t argue. Jake knew he wasn’t happy; he also knew, at the end of the day, Woody would do the right thing.

  “Sounds like a plan,” Jake said. “Let’s look for footage, get a good night’s sleep, and meet up tomorrow morning.”

  He subvocalized the command to log out, expecting to see a countdown timer as the game eased him back to the real world.

  Nothing happened.

  Something must have shown on his face. Prentise frowned.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Jake tried it again. An angry red line flashed in the corner of his vision.

  Invalid command. Character already logged out. Logout impossible.

  At the same moment, a harsh buzz in his inner ear jolted him like a splash of ice-cold water, followed by the calm, electronic voice of his Eva.

  “Motion detector triggered. Emergency disconnect program failed. Motion detector triggered.”

  “Jake?” Prentise reached out, putting her hand over his, worried now. He swallowed, hard, his mouth suddenly bone-dry.

  “I can’t log out,” he said. “I can’t log out, and somebody just broke into my office.”

  35.

  Eva was a distracting, repetitive voice in his ear, buzzing and warning him every time someone passed in front of the mounted webcam in his office.

  Camera. Jake snapped open a command window and patched himself through. The emergency disconnect had failed, but he could still get a bird’s-eye view of his office in the real world.

  The intruders were gone. And so was he. Jake stared at his own empty couch, his body and game deck stolen.

  “Think back,” Prentise said. “They must have trapped you online the same way they trapped Trevor. When were you last in-game? What did you touch?”

  Jake took deep breaths, fighting to keep his panic under control. His heart slammed against his ribcage like a stallion’s hoof. He walked backwards in his mind’s eye.

  “Something from Ameryil’s palace?” he said. “The keys we used to get in.”

  Prentise shook her head. “The keys get consumed by the portal. The game deletes them, so it can’t be that.”

  “That was the only thing she gave us, at Starcrest Farm, and I didn’t touch anything inside the palace. I didn’t take anything, didn’t pick anything up…”

  “Earlier, then,” Woody suggested.

  Jake stared down at his hands, pressed to the ale-sticky wood of the tavern table. And for a moment, the world went still. He saw everything. And he saw what was missing, the puzzle piece that tied everything together.

  “Tim,” he breathed.

  Woody’s bushy brows scrunched up. “What about him?”

  He’d looked almost comical, wrestling with the cork, asking Jake for help with his eyes. The wax had cracked and the cork had pulled free in Jake’s strong grip, sliding out with a satisfying pop. He had poured the glasses and
set the empty bottle aside.

  The bottle that was gone, now. Prentise followed his gaze and put it together.

  “He took it with him,” she said.

  “Took what—” Woody stumbled over his words as he figured it out. “Son of a bitch.”

  Jake shoved his chair back.

  “He’s not logging out. He’s running with the bottle. Probably taking it straight to the Elect, so they can hide it out of reach.” He rose to his feet. “We’ve got to chase him down. Fast.”

  “I’m more worried about your actual, physical body,” Prentise said, circling the table to stand at his side.

  “Yeah, you and me both. And since we don’t know where they’re taking it, my best chance of survival is to smash that bottle, free myself, and wake the hell up. For all I know, they’re getting ready to feed me into a wood-chipper.”

  Not that they needed to do anything that elaborate. They could just drag his body out to the alley behind his office and leave him there, comatose in the acid rain and smog. Nature would kill him faster than a bullet. Splash a cheap bottle of booze over his pale dead lips, and the police report would write itself; nobody would bother investigating any deeper than that.

  “Tim’s got a head start,” Woody said. “He could be anywhere by now.”

  Jake gave himself permission to stand very still, take one more slow and deep breath, and center himself. Panic was the enemy. Panic got people killed. What they needed was a plan of attack, and Prentise and Woody were both looking at him, waiting to hear it.

  “Okay,” he said. “Prentise, I need you to call the police department in Philly. Thirty-seventh precinct, and ask to talk to Captain Reynolds; he knows me, we used to work together. Give him the short version of what’s going on. There’s a chance they can hone in on my implant and find my real body that way.”

  Assuming somebody hasn’t already wrenched it right out of my neck, he thought. He didn’t say that part out loud.

  “On it,” Prentise said. “Be right back.”

  She shimmered out of existence, leaving tumbling motes of light in her wake. Jake turned to Woody.