Hunter's Choice

by C E Keene

  The two of them moved through the thankfully dissipating crowd to do just that, and Arheis walked with Treyous and Bren back to a building that looked like it would be at home on a planetary military base.

  The whole thing was made of strong, frosted… not glass, exactly. At least Arheis didn't think so. His best guess was that it was some kind of polymer compound, but even that was just something he'd pulled out of his ass. It was impressive, that much he knew, providing a hazy view of what was inside without enough detail to infringe on privacy.

  The door slid open without any prompting from Bren, and Arheis was met with a barrage of familiar scents. Something similar to rubbing alcohol made his nose twitch and his arm ache as though he was anticipating a needle. Fresh linens and a general sense of sterility combined with a few other chemical smells brought back memories of visiting his mom at the hospital when she'd been working a long shift.

  This infirmary seemed shockingly modern, just like most Pruvari tech. There were beds fitted with freshly-laundered sheets and pillows, tile floors gleaming underneath almost fluorescent light. Each patient area was a veritable suite that would rival the average hospital room, complete with some kind of sensor, a robotic arm, a couple of chairs, and walls made of that not-quite-transparent material that separated one from the next.

  It was nice enough--for an infirmary--but it was no wonder Bren was experiencing cabin fever.

  "I'm going to get a drink," the woman announced after helping Treyous to a chair.

  She was quick to leave, as if she feared the captain might call her back. Treyous just laughed.

  "She fussed over me for days after we arrived. Now I believe she resents the fact that I'm not dead."

  There was a gleam in his eye that told Arheis he didn't really believe that, and he laughed in solidarity.

  "I'm surprised she even gets cabin fever. She must be used to being cooped up."

  Treyous waved this off. "Bren… tolerates the sea. She keeps herself busy and muddles through, but she prefers having room to roam. She's never been suited to life aboard a ship."

  "She stays out of loyalty, then?" Arheis asked, sliding into the seat opposite Treyous.

  "Loyalty. Obligation. It's a long story. And not why I asked you here!" His usual loud manner of speaking returned and he clapped his hands before him. "Fortunate I did, too. It sounded like that beast was close to ransacking De'shal."

  Treyous reached for a pitcher on the small table that sat between them. Instead of water, an amber liquid poured from it into two cups. The captain handed him one and Arheis took a sip, tasting what seemed like chilled herbal tea.

  "It was, even if the Elder doesn't want to admit it. That's why we need to get back to Iskaral." He tried not to sound pushy. He really did want to talk to Treyous, but not at the cost of innocent lives. "We barely managed to run it off as it was."

  "Mm," Arheis couldn't tell if that was a sound of agreement or enjoyment as Treyous took a sip of his tea, "it's a good thing your bond activated when it did."

  "Yeah, we--"

  He started speaking before he even fully processed what he'd heard. Even then he went over it in his head several times before he truly understood. Maybe Treyous was talking about his bond with Mira. He'd used that ability to try and help her.

  But… he hadn't told the captain about that, had he? Had he just… forgotten?

  Treyous' expression softened into something he'd never seen from the man before. Patient understanding, as though he was waiting for Arheis to come around to the answer on his own.

  And the answer--one of the answers in a string of what was sure to be many--was that he definitely hadn't told Treyous about bonds.

  "How do you know about that?" His voice was quiet, some part of him afraid to form those words. Afraid to know the answer.

  "It's my business to know when you form new bonds. They're vital to your success in Estalia," he took a sip from his tea, his eyes casting up to Arheis', "Simon."

  If he'd been standing, he might have staggered backward. As it was, he felt his back press against the chair, his fingers trembling slightly as he tried to hold on to his cup.

  Even Higrem--who'd known he was a PC--hadn't actually known his name.

  "Who are you? A GM or something?"

  He'd interacted with Apex developers before, when he'd had to submit bug tickets. There was nothing inherently scary about it, but this left him chilled.

  "You know I'm not," Treyous said with a smile.

  Deep down, Arheis did know that. Higrem's words sprang to his mind. He was alone with this man who'd just revealed that he knew Arheis was a player. Not only that, but he knew exactly who Arheis was.

  "You're my Ambassador," he said, a sense of numbness washing over him.

  There was no other explanation that made sense.

  "Ah, you must have spoken to Paul. Good. That will save us a lot of wordy and convoluted explanation."

  He leaned forward, seeming excited by the prospect of moving on to… wherever he wanted to be. It was a spark of the old Treyous, and so deeply unsettling that Arheis actually did consider putting more distance between them.

  As if it would help.

  "So is this it? Is this where I make my choice? Are you going to keep me here?"

  Arheis' voice turned into something frantic. He felt like an animal who'd just had the cage door slammed behind him. But Treyous looked confused only for a moment, then had the audacity to laugh.

  "No. My dear boy, no." The laughter tapered off and his expression sobered. "Of course not. It's not time for that yet. You'll know when it is."

  He was still smiling, but there was a sadness in his eyes that cut through Arheis' sudden burst of paranoia and added a feeling of dread to it.

  "What the hell does that mean?" He finally stood, tea sloshing in his cup before he abandoned it on the table.

  "Why don't you sit back down, Simon." There was a soothing quality to the man's voice, like a parent trying to calm a child.

  Arheis didn't care for it.

  "No, I don't think I will." He folded his arms over his chest, creating his own personal shield.

  As if it would have any effect here.

  "Suit yourself." He took a loud, slurping sip before setting the cup down. "Let me ask you a question: When you look at Amira, what do you see?"

  His gaze narrowed at the man. Really? That's how he was going to start this conversation? "She doesn't have anything to do with this."

  "She has everything to do with it, despite your reluctance to tell her who and what you really are. But we'll come back to that." He waved it off and leaned forward, hands clasping over his knees. "Now, I'm going to take a crack at this. I might get something wrong. I can't read your mind, but you're not exactly subtle."

  He cracked his knuckles and Arheis just stared at him, caught between bafflement and indignation.

  "You see what everyone with eyes sees, of course. A beautiful and capable woman who gives as good as she gets. You also see someone you've come to trust. Someone you lean on and seek out when you feel low. Someone you want to spend time with not for any mechanical gain, but because you enjoy her company. What you don't see is a collection of code and pixels."

  Arheis said nothing, his stance rigid. It'd been strange to have a version of this conversation with Higrem. It was bordering on surreal now.

  "Your interactions with her feel real because… they are. Amira Alvaro might not exist in the same space as Simon Henderson, but she very much exists. As does Zindar, and Galen, and everyone else you've met here."

  "They're programmed to be real," Arheis finally said, though even he wasn't sure he believed that or wanted it to be true.

  "They're not programmed at all," Treyous said with a laugh. "Unless by 'programmed' you mean they are controlled by the hand of fate as we all are. But I've never put much stock in all that hooey."

  "I don't…" One hand came up to his face, his fingers pressing against his temple in a vain attempt t
o ward off his sudden headache. "What are you saying right now?"

  "I'm saying all of this is real. These people, the creatures, the world around us--all of it."

  Arheis shook his head, feeling like he was close to snapping. This wasn't actually happening right now. He'd been knocked unconscious by the Petravor and he was having some crazy dream. Maybe the NeuroJak was messing with his brain.

  That was probably it. Frantic, his breathing coming more quickly than he felt was safe, Arheis tried to call up the menu to log out.

  But he couldn't.

  "That's not going to work right now," Treyous told him with that same patient voice that was becoming infuriating. "I've disabled all menus and UI elements so we can have this talk uninterrupted."

  His HUD was gone, too. So was everything else he tried to think up. That tingling sense of unease turned to full-blown panic, and he practically shouted at the man, "This can't be real! I'm willing to believe there's some weird brain thing that makes it feel real, but Apex is a game. It's been a game for decades. They sell it on store shelves--"

  "You worked in software development for a while, right? A startup out of college."

  Arheis felt like the breath had been stolen from his lungs. How could he know that? What was happening?

  "When you're developing software for the public, you push out stable, public builds and hold back the test builds for internal use only. When need arises, you choose people from the public and make them beta testers, so they can receive the unstable test builds with full knowledge that they're meant to help improve the product--"

  "What does any of this have to do with Apex?"

  "The Apex games are the stable, public builds. This is…" His eyes cast upward as though he was thinking of a word, "well, the analogy falls apart a bit. This isn't a test server, but you get where I'm going with this."

  "I really don't," Arheis said, losing his own patience.

  "Plain and simple, then: The games you've played in the past were testing grounds where people like me look for people like you. When we find you, we bring you to this world. The world those games are based off of."

  His head was pounding and he felt dizzy. Making his way back to the chair, Arheis all but collapsed into it.

  "I don't understand any of this."

  "You do," Treyous said. "You have an analytical mind, Simon. Work through it."

  He tried, but his brain hurt as he tried to put the pieces together. Estalia was real. Or this part of it was. The game part wasn't. But there were game elements in this--

  "Why?" It wasn't the analytical question, but the only one he could form right now. "Why am I here? Why was I… Jesus, why was I chosen?"

  "The short version is that Estalia needs people like you. This world is crumbling under the weight of people who don't have its best interests at heart, and certainly don't care about the best interests of its people."

  "And the long version?"

  Treyous just smiled. "The long version I can't tell you yet."

  He let out an incredulous huff of laughter. "Of course you can't."

  He felt like thousands of wheels were just spinning endlessly in his brain. He kept ending up in the same place, no closer to understanding what all of this meant.

  "I know it's a lot to take in--"

  "Who are you?" There was a note of accusation in his voice, and he looked through Treyous as though he could figure out the answer from that alone.

  "I can't tell you that, either." His lips twitched, and Arheis felt a strong urge to punch a man who--before this meeting--had been nothing but likable. "What I can tell you is that I'm not your enemy. You're not a prisoner here, and I--"

  "You literally just said you disabled my ability to log out."

  Treyous sighed, the amusement fading from his eyes. "There. Everything's back."

  The HUD returned, as did the menus when Arheis thought of them. The prompt to log out was right there, and he was milliseconds away from selecting it.

  "But if you log out now, you won't get to Iskaral in time. You'll still be here, and Arheis will go with his friends. But they won't have your protection."

  Treyous was right. He couldn't log out. If he did, people might die. Real people. He'd suspected it before. As much as he didn't want to concede the point, it'd been a long time since he'd seen them as mindless NPCs.

  And it wasn't just random people he'd never met. If he logged out, whatever showed him this HUD and handled the game systems would take over his consciousness. He'd be there, but running off of what was essentially AI, from what he'd gathered. And that meant his friends could be in danger.

  They could die.

  "Dammit," Arheis breathed. He rose from his chair on wobbly legs, fists clenching. "We're not done with this."

  "No, I'm afraid we're not." Treyous stood from his own chair, using the arm of it to push himself up. He might not have been what he seemed, but apparently that injury was real. "Go. I'll be here when you get back, and I'll answer everything I can. No games. No analogies. You have my word on that."

  Arheis didn't have a choice. With his head still spinning and his world turned completely upside down, he headed back into De'shal to collect his friends, hoping he could keep his shit together long enough to slay the Petravor.

  27

  The ride back to Iskaral was a complete blur of sights and sounds all caught up in the deafening buzzing that was Arheis' broken mind.

  He couldn't appreciate being able to ride in a Strider. He barely saw the notification of picking up the Driving ability. He thought he heard Mira ask him repeatedly if he was okay, but that might have just been his own brain sparking weird signals, trying to rationalize what Treyous had told him.

  Arheis still wasn't convinced all of this wasn't just his brain making things up as it went along. Maybe he was one of the rare few who'd suffered a cataclysmic meltdown thanks to the NeuroJak, and everything--even the times he'd logged out--was just the result of neural processes backfiring over and over again.

  For all he knew he was face down on his desk, rotting away with no one the wiser.

  It was a bleak, terrifying thought that made him want to log off immediately and damn the consequences. He could call someone. Have them come over. Commit himself to a psych ward. Fucking something.

  But even that could all be the imaginings of his overactive brain. And what if Treyous was telling the truth? What if he was some kind of Ambassador who could… what? Move between worlds? Recruit his very own Chosen One to save all of Estalia?

  God, that was such a load of horse crap. But even as Arheis' cynical side railed against it, the parts of him that ran off of emotion couldn't look at his friends and see anything other than real people. And if they were real, then the rest of it could be real, too. Real people in real danger that he had to deal with because unlike them, he would just respawn if he was crushed to death by a giant mole.

  Man. Fuck being the Chosen One.

  They arrived in Iskaral just before dusk, the Striders seeming specifically designed for scaling craggy mountainsides. There hadn't been much of a chance to talk--probably for the best, as far as Arheis was concerned--but he, Mira, and Zindar met up with Galen and Higrem at The Eager Sow to discuss what had happened and what to do next.

  All the while, Arheis' ears refused to stop ringing and his brain felt like it was sloshing around in an ocean of existential misery.

  "I suppose Prince Eadric's information is correct," Galen conceded. "The Petravor was very likely seeking the crystals in the statue, which means it's exhausted the supply below ground."

  "…And will seek more wherever it can get them," Mira finished for him.

  "Yes, I believe so."

  "We have to do something," Zindar said, "and quick."

  "Is there a plan, or are we just running down there and going ham on this thing?" Higrem leaned against the table, one of his hands around a large mug. "I mean I'm not opposed."

  "We have to have a plan."

  I
t was the first thing Arheis remembered saying since they left De'shal. It must have been, because Mira's concerned gaze practically pierced through him.

  "Zindar discovered its weak point. The plates on its back need to be pried up."

  "Easy enough," Higrem said, taking a drink. "Blast some sound, then me, you, and him can jump up there and crowbar them off."

  "It was enraged when I pried one up." Zindar frowned at Higrem. "We have to trap it somehow. Or paralyze it."

  "I could do what we did with the Queen," Mira offered. "But… it eats rocks. I'm not exactly sure how to get a paralytic into a rock."

  An idea came to Arheis in a sudden flash. "What about the--"

  "Shock-rocks," Zindar said, his eyes lighting up. "Yes! We can buy as many shock-rocks as we can get our hands on, find a way to fasten them together, and trick the Petravor into eating them."

  Despite the niggling sense of absolute confusion scratching at the back of his brain, Arheis could feel that giddy rush of a plan coming together--a long hunt about to come to fruition. It was why he'd been hooked on Apex from the start, and that feeling was even more pronounced here.

  "Alright." Mira leaned back in her chair, her gaze finally moving away from Arheis. "We feed it the shock-rocks, activate some kind of sonic trap, and once it’s stunned, you three get onto its back and start prying off plates. You're not going to have much time."

  "No, but it should be enough," Arheis said. "We don't need to remove all of the plates, just enough that everyone can get damage in."

  "More if we can get up there as quick as possible. Not as much of a problem for springfoot here," Higrem gestured to Zindar, "but you and I could use some help."

  "Grappling hooks, maybe," Arheis mused.

  Did they even have grappling hooks in Estalia? He seemed to remember using one in an Apex game. But then who knew what translated between the "stable build" and the "test build."

  "I can help with that. If we have a way to break the rocks, I can arrange them to make it easier to climb up," Galen said.

  "There's a new compound I've been eying that can create an explosion on impact." A smile curved Mira's lips. "I guess now would be a good time to test it."