“Oh really?” she said, releasing my hand and crossing her arms.
“Uh…” I stammered, not wanting her to know about the cooldown. “We’ve got other business to attend to. How about we meet back here tonight around ten?”
“It’s a date,” she said as she reached out and ran a claw gently across my lips. She looked to the rest of the table. “See you soon, ladies.”
I watched Cecilia walk away, fully appreciating the sway of her hips and the alluring wave of her tail.
“Earth to Loverboy,” said Trinity as she snapped her fingers in front of my face. “I said, what do we do to kill 10 hours?”
“Well, we’ve all leveled. We need to see our trainers, and we should store our stuff in the bank.”
“That’s good for a few hours,” said Ember. “I guess we could use some of the time to level our other skills too. I need to do a bunch of shit for alchemy.”
“I need to log off for a few hours anyway,” said Kit. “I gotta take care of my sister in the static world. I’ll find you guys when I get back on.”
“Alright, Kit, see you in a bit,” I said.
She smiled and faded away.
“Imma go see my trainer,” said Ember. “How about we meet back here in like an hour?”
“Sounds good,” said Trinity. She gave me a peck on the cheek and then walked past Ember and slapped her on her ass.
Not to be outdone, Ember bent and kissed me full on the mouth so aggressively that I was left disheveled and covered in dark lipstick by the time she was done. I watched my ladies go, and grinned to myself.
I had been in game for less than a week, and already I had a guild made up of smoking hot woman who wanted my magic stick.
Things could have been worse.
Of course, some things were worse. Anna had been Kincaid’s captive for nearly two days, and it seemed that everybody knew about him stealing my gold. I found myself wondering if he had already spent it all. He probably bought himself a sick new dragon or some legendary staff with it.
Thoughts of Kincaid and Anna led me to wonder what exactly the mage’s special ability was that made everyone, even higher-level players, afraid to move against him. It had to be pretty serious for high level players to steer clear of him, but what could it have possibly been? I knew that the special abilities in the game were just that, special, meaning that no two powers were alike, and they weren’t all good either. Some were said to be a straight up curse, like the guy that I had heard of who reportedly had the power to attract fire, which turned out to be a real problem.
Supposedly, he quit that avatar and paid to buy back in.
That was the problem with a game that was so expensive to even try out. You ended up with a lot of rich kid douchebags playing, coming in with fat pockets, epic armor, and even bigger egos. I mean, I bought my way to level 10, sure, but I’m not some rich kid who doesn’t appreciate a buck, or the game.
The makers of the game may have known this, because they’d reportedly given away more memberships than they have charged for. It was a good way to ensure that the game wasn’t completely full of rich boys.
With the girls doing their own thing, I decided to get to the mage trainer to catch up on my new spells and spend my attribute points. I had unlocked a new spell called Fire Shield, and I was eager to try it out in the blasting range.
I finished my beer and got up from the table to head back out into the city, and I came face to face with a minotaur.
“Anna sent me,” he said with a heavy-browed glance around the pub. “We need to talk somewhere a little more private.”
Chapter 14
“How do you know Anna?” I asked the minotaur as we walked through the cavern lined with shops.
He didn’t answer, and instead gestured me into a wand shop that smelled like hickory and mold. The door closed behind us and a crow cawed on the perch above it. An old goblin with a crooked nose, one good eye, and a smile only a mother could love offered us a nod.
“Help you find anything?” he called in a nasal voice.
“No thanks, just looking around,” I said, and followed the minotaur down an old dusty aisle lined with wand boxes.
“Anna wanted me to send you a message,” said the minotaur in a deep baritone voice.
“Where did you see her?” “I asked excitedly. “Where is she?”
“I spoke with her in the Static World,” said the minotaur. “She doesn’t even know where she is in the game. It’s a dark cell with no windows, no sound, and no doors.”
“What’s her message?” I asked.
“She said to forget about finding her.”
“What? Why?”
“Because you’ll never stop Kincaid, he’s too powerful.”
“She didn’t seem to be too afraid of him when he ambushed us. And that doesn’t sound like something that Anna would say.”
“Look man, I’m just the messenger here,” said the minotaur as he turned to leave.
“Wait!” I reached up and grabbed his big shoulder. He stopped, offered a dangerous glance at my hand, and I released him.
“I’ve delivered my message, do with it what you will,” he said as he headed toward the door.
“Why’s everyone so afraid of Kincaid?” I yelled, knowing that my raised voice would get his attention.
He turned around and offered me a scowl.
“You should learn to keep your mouth shut,” he warned.
“I want some goddamn answers,” I said. “Or I’ll yell his name from the rooftops.”
He glanced around and walked back over to me, using his imposing form to back me up a step.
“Look, you don’t know who you’re messing with. People who cross Kincaid, well, let’s just say that things end badly for them.”
“Why are high level players afraid of him?” I demanded. And when he didn’t offer up an answer I pressed harder. “Come on, you say that you’re Anna’s friend, then help me. Tell me what I need to know to defeat him.”
The minotaur gave a sigh and glanced around the shop again. There was another customer in the aisle across from us, so my mysterious friend led me deeper into the store.
“You didn’t hear this from me,” he said nervously.
“I don’t even know your name,” I reminded him.
“Kincaid doesn’t have a special ability in game that makes everyone afraid of him. It’s his power out of game that they are afraid of.”
“What do you mean?”
“Rumor has it that Kincaid is really...Arthur Gains.”
“Gains? As in Charles Gains, the CEO of Horizon?”
“Exactly. Arthur Gains is Charles Gains’s son,” the Minotaur said with a look that said Now do you get it?
“What does that mean? Is Arthur hacking into the game or something? Erasing people’s accounts?”
“I don’t know the details. All I know is that people who cross Kincaid too many times end up disappearing or worse. One dude that killed Kincaid when he was a level 10 ended up dying in the real world. Rumor has it that Kincaid tortured him so badly in game that it actually killed him. You’ve heard about the small percentage that plugging into Rebirth Online will fry your brain, right?”
I nodded as a chill ran down my spine.
“Yeah, well that’s Kincaid’s work. Or at least that’s the rumor. That’s why Anna wants you to just leave it alone. There’s no stopping Kincaid, not when he can write his own rules.”
“Has anyone reported him?” I asked. “Surely the game developers would put a stop to this. They can’t have a spoiled daddy’s boy going around doing whatever he wants. If people believe that Kincaid actually killed someone—”
“I’ve told you what you wanted to know,” the minotaur said abruptly. “I’m outta here.”
I let him go and gave him a few minutes to get out of sight before I exited the shop. My mind raced as I went over the conversation again and again. If Kincaid was really Arthur Gains, then I was in way over my head. But I
couldn’t just abandon Anna, no matter how powerful Kincaid was. She was in real danger now, and I had to do something.
I glanced at one of the clocks on the wall, I still had a half hour before I was supposed to meet back up with the girls. Dread washed over me when I thought about my guild members and the real-life danger that they were in, and I had the urge to track them down and warn them. Aeorock was supposed to be a neutral city, but if Kincaid was as powerful as people said he was, then no place was safe.
Especially not a hospital bed deep below corporate headquarters.
I shivered to think of Arthur Gains creeping into my room one night and unplugging my life support, and I suddenly understood why every player was afraid of him. I thought about Dr. Marks and wondered if he could be trusted. Surely once the company heard about what the CEO’s son was doing, they would put a stop to it.
But what if they couldn’t? What if they didn’t believe me? What if Kincaid had hacked the system so that all complaints filed against him vanished?
And worse yet, what if Dr. Marks already knew what Arthur was doing? Was that why he hadn’t done anything when I told him Anna had been kidnapped by Kincaid?
As I walked through the city I became more paranoid by the second. Every passing player who glanced my way became a potential spy in my mind. Every NPC who passed became suspect, and I wondered if Kincaid could hack into them and see through their eyes.
I found the mage trainer and unlocked my spell without bothering to try it out in the blasting range. There was no time. I needed to meet back up with the girls and tell them what I knew.
“Don’t forget your attribute points,” the trainer yelled to me as I turned to go.
“Oh yeah. Uh, put them all in spirit,” I told him, knowing that I could use all the spell damage that I could get.
I left the mage trainer and sprinted back through the cavern full of shops. My heart raced as I turned the corner and approached the pub, and I eagerly peered through the glass to see if the girls had arrived yet.
Then the pub suddenly exploded.
A ball of fire and broken glass washed over me, and I was lifted off my feet. I sailed through the air, dinged off a tall pillar, and landed in a heap among the terrified crowd. The rolling ball of fire licked the high ceiling, and spread throughout the crowd, incinerating NPCs and real-world players alike. I covered myself with my cloak as a warning flashed on my interface.
Warning! 5% Health Remaining!
When the pyre died down and the sound of the rolling flames was replaced by the terrified screams of the injured and dying, I fought through the pain of my seared skin, retrieved a healing potion from my inventory, and shakily guzzled it down. My health instantly began to climb, and I waited for my burns to heal before dragging myself to my feet.
The scene was pure chaos. Dwarven NPCs were rushing toward the burning pub with buckets of water, players were crying out to one another, their limbs blown off and their skin seared and raw. Healers cast spells on the injured, and healing light fought through the dark smoke. A deep horn blared somewhere in the mountain as more NPC’s, mostly soldiers, began rushing toward the scene.
I spun circles searching for my guild mates.
“Sam!”
It was Trinity, and I found her standing with the girls on the edge of the crowd. I rushed over to them and urged them all to follow me.
“What’s going on?” Ember asked. “How the hell did that happen?”
“I think it was Kincaid,” I said as we hurried through the crowd of players rushing in and out through various portals. “Come on!”
I led them to the nearest portal and ushered them through. The sounds of chaos plaguing the city disappeared and were replaced by near silence. I stepped out onto hot sand and glanced around. We were in a desert, and my map indicated that this place was called the Gilded Waste. Not only was it a boiling wasteland, but it was also for players 21-25.
“What the hell are we doing here?” Ember insisted.
About a dozen players were passing by to get through the portal and see what all the fuss was about in Aeorock, so I led the girls to the small village nearby. The huts looked to be made of bricks of sand, and the thatched palm roofs hung over the sides creating shade for the many high-level players congregating in the streets.
“We’re in some serious trouble,” I said as I stopped beneath one of the overhanging thatch roofs. We were beside one of the buildings on the outskirts of town, and there were only a few players about.
“What happened?” Kit and Trinity said in unison.
I told them all about my talk with the minotaur, and with every word their apprehension grew more apparent.
“Kincaid is really Arthur Gains?” said Ember.
“Shh,” keep your voices down,” I warned.
“Holy shit,” Kit said as she fanned herself with her tail. “This is crazy.”
“We’ve got to go to the police with this,” said Trinity. “The real world police.”
“And have Kincaid find out? By the time they make an arrest we’ll be long dead.”
“What do you mean, dead? Sam?” Kit asked in a voice that was barely a whisper.
“I mean he’s fucking dangerous,” I said. “My real-world body is sitting in the underground lab below Horizon headquarters. I don’t know where you three are in the real world, but I doubt that it’s inside Arthur Gains’s basement.”
“We’ve got to do something,” said Trinity.
“No,” I said. “You three should just bounce. Quit the guild and disassociate yourselves from me. I don’t want anything happening to any of you.”
“And abandon Anna?” Trinity asked. She shook her head. “No fucking way.”
“This isn’t a game,” I reminded them. “And I don’t see it ending well for any of us.”
“I know it’s not a game,” she said. “But I’m not backing down from some little rich puke who thinks that he’s a god. And I’m not going to ignore that he’s killed someone for real.”
“Isn’t that like, aiding and abetting or something?” Kit asked.
“Yeah,” said Ember. “We have a responsibility to the rest of the Rebirth Online community, not to mention real world laws.”
“You saw what happened to Cecilia’s place,” I reminded them. “I’d bet anything that Kincaid blew up her place to send a message, not only to her, but to everyone. He doesn’t play by the same rules, and for whatever reason, the developers haven’t done anything about him. You should all just log off. It’s not safe for you in game.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” came a voice that I easily recognized.
I turned around and found Cecilia standing in the hot sun with a tall ogre warrior and a thin, hooded goblin warlock. Behind them a dark portal swirled with magical light.
“Cece, what are you doing here?” I asked as I prepared myself to cast a magic bolt at the first sign of danger.
“Relax, Sam,” she said as she glanced at my glowing hand. “I’m here to help. Come on, I have a safehouse. We need to talk.”
“How do I know that you’re not working for Kincaid?” I asked skeptically.
“Give it about 30 seconds and he’ll show up, then he’ll kill us all, and you’ll know that I’m not working for him. Or, you can trust me.”
“We’ve got a safehouse of our own,” I told her.
“Really?” she said, and her fox ears perked up along with her expression. “Then why the hell are you here? Listen, I was killed, I lost a level, and my pub was blown to pieces. The way I see it, you owe me a moment of your goddamned time.”
“What do you think?” I asked my guild mates.
“I trust her,” said Kit.
Trinity glanced around. “If she was working for Kincaid then he would already be here.”
“I agree,” said Ember.
“Alright, Cece. Lead the way,” I told her, eyeing her two bodyguards warily.
She stepped through the portal, and with one last glance aroun
d to see who might be watching, I stepped through as well.
I walked out onto a stone balcony overlooking a hazy mountain range. A quick glance around showed me an arched entry to the left that led into a lavish looking room full of fine rugs, large tapestries, and well-crafted antique furniture. Some of the same furniture sat on the large balcony, and beyond the half wall the world opened wide. I assumed that we were in a castle or a fortress tower, but no other structures could be seen from my angle.
“Care for a drink?” Cecilia asked over her shoulder as she strode through the swaying curtains and into the room.
I waited by the portal until all my guild mates had come through, and then led them past Cecilia's bodyguards and into the room. A piano sat open directly across from me in the center of the room, and a large fireplace sat another ten feet behind it, burning with low light. To the right of the fireplace was another archway to a dark room, and to the left was a hallway and a large sitting area. The high walls were decorated with various coats of arms, weaponry, and paintings depicting the many lands within the realm. Beyond the sitting area was a tall bookcase and a small bar, and Cecilia was already behind it pouring amber liquor into crystal glasses. She downed a drink and refilled it, before carrying four crystal glasses over to us.
“If your day’s been anything like mine, you’ll need this,” she said and handed us our drinks.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“First things first,” she said, offering up a toast as we gathered. “To being on Kincaid’s hit list.”
We all tapped glasses and tossed back the potent liquor. Fire erupted in my throat, and I let out a slow breath in an attempt not to cough.
“You going to explain why you brought us here?” Ember asked.
“Of course,” said Cecilia, gesturing to the other chairs as she sat.
I took the armchair next to her, while Kit and Ember sat on one of the loveseats. Trinity, on the other hand, turned a straight-backed chair around and straddled it so that she was between the bodyguards and her guild mates.
“This is the Tower of Baalarask. It cost me nearly twenty thousand gold to unlock it, but it was worth every penny. We are protected by about a hundred different wards, and even if Kincaid could find it, it would take him days to get through the enchantments. So rest assured that you’re safe here.”
Rebirth Online Page 13
