Cipher's Quest: (A Scifi Fantasy LitRPG) (Ciphercraft Book 1)

by Tim Kaiver

  He considered the risk and reward, and decided that an ally he could bounce ideas off would be an invaluable boost to their survival. "Okay, but this might be a little harder to believe than telepathy."

  Ehli chuckled. "Try me."

  Cullen prepared himself. "Your husband." She didn't blink. "I think he's alive."

  She inhaled a deep breath as anger and tears welled in her eyes. "Willo told you this?"

  "No. She never mentioned his name."

  "Then who?"

  "Ocia. He... before we left. He told me not to tell you."

  She kept shaking her head. "No. That's impossible. Why would that even come up?"

  "He's the one running the experiments at Fel Or'an, where we're going." Her face puckered harder in anger. "He told me not to tell you or Emmit, and it sounded like this was meant to be a good surprise. But Willo warned me that maybe we can't trust him, so I thought I should bring it up."

  Ehli shook her head. "No. He can't be alive. I saw the explosion. Took eight months to grow my eyebrows back. My hearing has never been the same." Her words ran together, nearly too quick to decipher. If he was alive, could she trust him? His head spun at the thought.

  "Easy," he said, hoping to calm her down.

  "How can I?" She took a breath. "If he's alive, either he or someone else crafted quite the trick—one that has caused..." She growled and turned to rip a stalk from a plant. "Emmit and I have suffered." She turned back, the thin branch gripped in her fist. "If this is true, Ocia knew and didn't tell us... because he wanted to surprise us with Schaefer telling us in person?"

  "It didn't sound like Ocia was lying. But Willo said not to trust them. I'm not sure who to believe."

  She bent over and rested her elbows on her knees, chest heaving as though she was about to vomit.

  Cullen slid to her side and helped her keep her balance. "You're not in this alone." He searched the jungle along the riverbank. Where were Torek and Huls? Did they give up on us? Nassib and Jolnes weren't across the river either. Everyone was gone, and he started to wonder if it might be on purpose. Ocia needs my memories to get to Vijil. He wouldn't let me die in here, would he?

  "Thank you," Ehli spat into the grass, then wiped her mouth as she rose back to standing.

  "Schaefer and Ocia want one of us to pull your memories, making you expendable," Willo 'pathed.

  Is that true? he thought.

  "It is. But I'd rather get your help willingly, since I wouldn't piss on either of them if they were engulfed in flames."

  "Is she talking to you right now?" Ehli asked.

  "Yeah," he said, glancing to his side for a route from their position. They shouldn't stay in one place for too long, in case any maras were onto them. His earpiece had lost its signal after the mara attack, so he couldn't comm Torek and see where they were. He took it out and tossed the broken tech on the ground. "We should keep moving. Are you okay?"

  She nodded. He checked his compass and found a nearby transmitter. "The Cipher gave me a mission to repair transmitters so I could get the texts from the Ancients." He waved her on. "I see one this way. Maybe Emmit and Adi also went this way."

  "What'd she say?" Ehli asked.

  The gradient incline got his heart beating again. "That they want her, you, or Emmit to pull my memories of Vijil. Then I wouldn't be needed for the pullspace back. It doesn't sound right, so I doubt she's telling the truth, but we know they can hold secrets, so it's at least a curious accusation."

  Ehli caught a branch that swung back, blocking it from hitting her face. "And if Willo's telling the truth, then it sounds like they might not be interested in keeping you involved?"

  "Yeah. If she's telling the truth."

  "Since she's spoken to you, have you... have you day-dreamed of being elsewhere?"

  "Elsewhere?" He grabbed a tree to help make a long stride over a slick incline, then reached back to help Ehli up. "What do you mean?"

  "You asked if Willo's spoken to me. When I was swimming across the river, I went somewhere else. Like, far more real than a daydream, but I don't know what else to call it. There was a woman who showed me a picture of Schaefer. Said he hadn't told her about me, and that if he had done so, she would've tried not to fall in love... then warned me not to let him trick us, that he only cares for himself. She said he's here, so I guess I already kind of knew."

  The terrain leveled out, but the undergrowth continued to prevent visibility beyond a few meters. The transmitter was close by. Insects hummed a vibrating drone, and birds squawked and chirped their incessant calls. If maras were on their trail, he didn't hear or see them. He located the transmitter, but stopped when he spotted a long snake wrapped around its pole. The video on the train had identified it as a hawk snake, the most lethal on the planet. And he assumed the transmitter was inside the box beneath it. Jolly.

  "That's a hawk snake. Ocia's video said its venom can kill in less than a minute. I could shoot it, but maybe you could use your pathing on it to gain some XP?"

  His level-up to Level 2 Bounty Hunter had come with a bonus ability to be used within thirty minutes: his choice of either increased hearing or increased speed, duration five seconds, but neither seemed necessary right now, and this might be good practice for Ehli. Now wasn't the time for that, especially if Ehli could use some XP.

  ***

  Ehli wasn't sure if what she'd done to the mara charges was repeatable, or what it meant for how she'd been changed without her permission. She checked her XP.

  Level 1 Ultra. XP 50/130.

  She repeated it for him. "Yeah, I could use some more." She checked his:

  Cullen Re, Level 2 Bounty Hunter. XP 5/130.

  "Level Two?" she asked. "How'd you do that?"

  He shrugged. "Our pullspace successes. Some missions in between. You know, just being an overall hero."

  "Lucky me," she said, and eyed the snake. It watched her with bulging yellow eyes. "I guess it's time to catch up."

  Ehli thought of her son and his wolverine. She stopped and looked deep into the snake's eyes. "How'd you like to ride on my shoulders?"

  The snake hissed its yellow forked tongue and inched back as though readying itself to strike.

  Cullen slowly raised his rifle to his shoulder, and took aim. "Careful."

  She was. A sensation itched under her scalp. Was it fear or her power?

  "Touch it."

  The voice sounded like the one from her dream, or whatever it was. Willo. What do you want?

  "I want you to run your finger between its eyes. What you did to the maras was lucky and foolish. You need practice to build your skill before you meet the next pack."

  "Ehli, are you okay?" Cullen asked.

  "Yeah. Shiny. Willo just called me lucky and foolish. She also says I need practice." The thought of her vulnerability in this jungle skipped her focus and concern to her son. Emmit, can you hear me? Where are you, Son?

  13

  When Emmit reached the mossy overhang on the far side of the river, he lifted it to reveal a crawl-space tunnel. I've been here before.... This leads to... He struggled to picture the details, but below and inside this hill was a man-made bunker where he'd be safe and able to rest.

  "In here, you will find the real muscle to our growth. And our need for you."

  Dad?

  "Come in, Son. I'll show you."

  He obeyed without telling Adi anything. He crawled blind. He crawled because, for too many years, he'd been stuck where progress existed on a different plane—there was never a point to trying. He'd gone through the motions and hadn't cared if his heart stopped in his sleep or while hefting stone up desert mountains. As he crawled, when pain in his knees and back drove him to stretch, he reached up and found open air. Enough to stand. He crawled through the pain in his knees, palms, shoulders, and hips.

  He walked until his hands planted on a cold metal surface, sticky with grit. He found a hole at waist height, and inside it, the loop of a handle. He pulled, but it didn't giv
e. A memory sprang forward of the need to turn it. He rotated the handle clockwise until it clicked into a new groove, then pulled. The door was heavy, but he managed to open it wide enough to walk inside.

  "Emmit!" Adi's scream was distant, strained by terror.

  Emmit had forgotten about him. How long was I walking? "Over here! I found a door."

  "Emmit!"

  A bright white light forced Emmit to shield his face and close his eyes. He squinted them open and let his sight adjust. Somehow, he'd left the tunnel and was now in his old room. His sight rose from panel wood floors to his single bed with the faded blue sheets, untucked and bunched on the end from last night's sleep.

  He turned around to see his window overlooking the grass-covered valley and tree-bordered cliff's edge—not the tunnel he'd just walked through. "Dad?"

  "I'm here, Son."

  Emmit whipped around, saw his dad, and lunged into his chest. He wrapped his arms tight enough to squeeze the life out of the taller, stronger man—the father he'd thought taken away, stolen from the years that mattered most.

  Emmit's eyes burned. His body took on the weight of ten men, all wanting to lie down and hope for the moment to pass before the strength needed to endure took him with it and left him for dead.

  "Dad... how?" Emmit wiped a snot-ridden nostril on the man's button-down front. "Why?"

  His dad responded with a tighter hug, and his body shook. It sounded like he too was crying. Their moment of weakness lasted ten more breaths, but Emmit still couldn't believe it. His dad eased back and gently separated from Emmit to get a good look at him. His glossy eyes bore down on him in their reddened sadness. "I've been trying to figure how and why for a long time. I hoped at least to have this moment to give you an answer, and yet, looking down on you—" Sobs choked his words. He wiped a sleeve across his face. "How you've grown...." His face puckered against the need to break down again. Emmit's face pinched with the same strain. "I don't know that any answer could justify what I've taken from you—what I took from myself. And your mother."

  Anger grew inside Emmit, an unwelcome presence, but a reminder of an argument long held silent. Before he could give it voice, his dad cut him off with another embrace.

  "I'm so sorry, Son."

  Emmit let him have two breaths before he pushed back. "You're sorry? Is that supposed to go back and save me from being alone, from my sleepless nights and nightmares? Days and nights clouded together in questions of why you weren't there and if I should be mad at you, or if not you, then who? What part are you sorry for?"

  "All of it, Son. Every second." He reached out as Emmit backed away. "Please let me explain."

  "I don't...." Emmit glanced around the room. This room had been located above the explosion that had killed—supposedly—his father and destroyed the mountain-facing side of their house. "Where are we? Is this real? Are you even here?"

  "You're on Saemera." As he spoke, the room shifted from one reality to another, transporting them, without their taking a single step, to another room, one that overlooked a tree-shielded village of huts. The pace of those he could see walking around exhibited a calm atmosphere, though none Emmit saw wore smiles. Some were children—none without an adult. Their place overlooking the village was a cooled office, equipped with action screens and a solitary desk that faced the door behind them.

  "This is where I've been stuck for years," his dad continued. "Nowhere near the cell I hate that you shared with your mother, but a cell none the less."

  "Why?" Emmit asked. "How? Mom said she saw you enter the kitchen before it exploded. She told me you were dead."

  His dad turned his back on the long window, sat on the shelf, and folded his arms. A gulp passed down his throat. "They found me. I—"

  "Who?"

  "The Osuna. They found out about my research into the Cipher, and knew I was close."

  His mom had never given specifics on what advances his dad had made in his research, or where it was going. With what he'd seen of the Cipher today, Emmit was eager to find out now. "What if you'd killed Mom in the explosion? What if I'd been upstairs when they broke in?"

  "I knew they'd arrived, and had known they would arrive for days. I sent you on the errand to fix our fence that morning. I had cameras and multiple options of where to set off the explosion so that your mother would not be hur—"

  "She was hurt," Emmit shouted. "Have you seen the scars on her face? Her left ear? You did that!"

  His dad looked at the floor for a moment before returning his reflective gaze to his son. "I am sorry, but they did that. The people or things that lead their empire. Every day they continue their enslavement of our galaxy, leaving us with two choices: bow down or fight back. I chose to risk our lives for our future."

  Emmit didn't know what to say. He hated the Osuna, possibly more than he hated his father for leaving them, even with this new information. It still hurt to think that his dad had set off the explosion that had scarred a patch by his mom's ear and torn off the lobe—and failed to keep them out of prison for the next six years.

  "If there had been any other way," his dad started. "If I—"

  "How could you have known for days before and not rescued us? You made it out somehow."

  "Em—"

  "You said you had cameras? Mom said she saw you run into the kitchen. How did you survive? How did you escape? Why'd you leave us?" Emmit's face burned as anger tightened his jaw. He could bite through bone if given the chance.

  His dad held his hands up in placation. He exhaled. "I wasn't there."

  That put Emmit on his heels. "What?"

  "I wasn't there." His dad paused. "I was at the lab. One only I knew about. Fifty meters underground. It had to be. If the Osuna—"

  "If Mom said she saw you, how weren't you there?" Emmit had to sit, and took advantage of the low shelf by the window.

  "Hoppers access the wormhole through memory and the Ancients' technology. The Osuna's control of transportation is the root of their hold on our galaxy. They control the hoppers and, in turn, our ability to travel without generation ships. But what if we could capture memory and the link that activates bubble travel?" His fingers connected in a circle between his hands. "If we could take that and plant it in the minds of our pilots, we could travel without their knowing. We could start a colony. Or put a… misleading memory in your mother's mind to protect her from interrogation of where I was."

  He rose from his seat on the window sill, snapped his fingers, and pointed at a newly opened holoscreen rising above, and spreading the width of, his desk. An image of a spiral galaxy Emmit had never seen appeared, with a heavy concentration of yellow dots. "Those yellow dots are Osuna ships searching for the Rucien homeworld. They're close, but space is big."

  "What does this have to do with why you weren't there for us when the Osuna arrived at our door? If you found a way to get here, why couldn't you have taken us with you?"

  His dad looked him in the eye. "I had to create a scenario that prevented them from digging deeper. If it looked like I made it out with my family, it would indicate that I made it off with the research they were looking for. If it looked like I'd killed myself to take a few of them with me, while being unable to save my family from capture, it made me appear less of a threat—just one more rebel without a worthy-enough plan to do any real damage."

  Emmit opened his mouth.

  "Their raid was based on a vague tip. My name was on a list of people associated with Julian Handl, a trader they'd captured two days before with a stash of levitor rifles in the undercarriage of his ship. I don't think they knew who I was or what I was researching, only that I was part of Julian's customer base, which the idiot failed to code well enough to hide in the event he got caught. If they had come for us and we were somehow able to skip the planet without a trace, it would have triggered a deeper investigation."

  Emmit didn't like that justification. "You couldn't have thought of any other way to save us? Your research couldn't have bee
n stashed or whatever so that you could protect us?"

  War held some importance, and Emmit understood the value of overthrowing the Osuna, but that dream wasn't as close as the ache that was his and his mom's imprisonment.

  "Emmit, I couldn't. But Ocia, he was my way of protecting you. He—"

  "We still suffered!"

  His dad swallowed. "I never said my plan was perfect. No plan is in war. Each piece and person must recognize the need to stand up for itself in order to remain standing for another day and chance. Your mother—and you—are both strong willed. You've both fought for every day, and the chance to fight again."

  "I hate you." The words fell out before he could stop them, and as soon as they did, he knew they weren't true—not entirely. He just felt sick. The way Schaefer's face cringed at hearing them, Emmit regretted them immediately.

  "I understand that," his dad said, "and will bear it until I finally lose this fight. But I'm not done yet, and neither are the two of you. I hate what happened to you and your mother, but we can't dwell on that. We have a new mission, and I want to make sure we succeed so you're both okay in the end."

  New mission? Does he know about the Cipher? "What do you mean, new mission?" He couldn't speak of the Cipher to anyone but Cullen and his mom. Something deep within seemed to lock the notion from escape.

  "The one where we turn the tide of war on them." Something chimed on his dad's wristcom. He looked at it and scowled. "I have to go. The trial set before you, just like the one behind, is absolutely necessary." The room blinked, and Emmit found himself back in a dark room. This was obviously the bunker he had remembered, and was evidently where he'd entered the neuronet. A panel on the floor closed behind a thin pole that dropped beneath it. The floors were bare, and the musty smell of the underground returned.

  A deep click sounded behind Emmit. He spun around to face a door that lacked a handle and was flush with the wall. He pounded on it with his fists, but it didn't budge.