by Ramy Vance
“Oh, yeah. Guess I kind of forgot about that. You aren’t setting up an elaborate trap, are you?”
“Honestly, if I had that kind of planning and foresight, I wouldn’t be working a bullshit spy gig in the heart of the Dark One’s prison camp. I wish I had that level of cunning.”
“So where to?” Beth asked.
“All right, first you’re going to head left. Then—”
Suzuki could hear the sound of a door opening over the earpiece. Then there was some scuffling and a couple of loud voices. It sounded like someone was shouting, then silence.
“Ansalm?”
No reply.
“Ansalm!”
Still nothing.
Suzuki tossed his arms up in defeat. He knew that everything had seemed way too easy. When did anything ever really go according to plan?
Beth crossed the room and clapped her hand on Suzuki’s shoulder, and Suzuki’s heart raced. He knew she was trying to comfort him. He must have looked extremely stressed out. Even when they had been playing on VR, Beth always seemed to be able to tell when Suzuki was getting ready to lose his cool. “Your mole get dug up?” Beth asked.
Suzuki nodded as he tried to keep himself from pacing, a bad habit that he knew always annoyed Beth a little. It annoyed him a great deal more. “Yeah, that’s what it sounds like,” Suzuki said. “Fuck. That was supposed to be our way out of here.”
“What’s the back-up plan?”
“Honestly, I don’t have one,” Suzuki admitted. “I’ve kind of been making this one up as I’ve been going.”
“Oh, free-balling, eh? Didn’t know that you had it in you. Isn’t that more Stew’s role?”
Suzuki chucked. “Eh, yeah… gotta try new things, right? Don’t want to be the same emotionally stagnant and timid jack-off that you’ve always known, right?”
“Uh…that seems a little self-deprecating but all right.”
Suzuki laughed nervously. He almost felt like he was on a first date or something, which was ridiculous given where they were.
It must have just been jitters from the mission.
In his mind, Suzuki had imagined that he was going to swoop in and save the day. He was going to be cool and calm.
Beth was going to be extremely impressed.
Maybe even swoon.
So much for that, and Suzuki mentally kicked himself for having such childish expectations. Then he kicked himself again for thinking about that teenage shit when he knew that he could be in a life or death situation within a few seconds. This was game time. He had to get his head back in the mission. There would be time to fawn over Beth later.
Beth crouched down and touched the dirt floor of the cell. She looked up at Suzuki and smiled.
Suzuki’s heart skipped a beat. It started pounding so hard that he could hardly think. His heart had never beat this fast in a fight. All he could think about was leaning over and kissing Beth. So much for fawning later.
Beth took a handful of dirt from the floor and watched it fall in between her fingers. “What we got, Suzy?” she asked.
Suzuki knelt down beside Beth so that their knees were almost touching. Beth shifted her weight a little so that she wobbled backward and smiled at Suzuki as she laughed lightly. Her eyes were dancing the way that Suzuki always loved dancing as if they were little fireflies.
“Nothing,” Suzuki finally said.
“You know, if I have to die in an orc shithole, I’m glad that you’re here to die with me,” Beth said.
“I have lost track of how often I’ve shared that sentiment.”
“We just going to wait here until the orcs come get us?” Beth asked.
“We could get information from them. Like maybe how to get the hell out of here.”
“Oh, not these fuckers, especially the ones who come for me. It’s usually at least four. And they are some tough sons of bitches.”
“How tough?”
“Not as tough as me. They have been trying to break me since I got here. Hasn’t happened yet, and it ain’t gonna.”
Beth stared at Suzuki, and he could see the pain in her eyes. She wasn’t broken, but she was hurt, and whatever had happened to her in the tunnels of the prison would stay with her.
Suzuki wanted to find the orcs responsible, to rip their arms off and beat them to death, to watch blood drip from their heads as they begged for help. Everyone who had hurt Beth was going to pay.
Anyone who had laid a hand on her was going to die.
Beth wiped a tear from her eye as she stood up and cleared her throat. “Fuck it,” she said. “We could dig our way out.”
“We’d need a shit ton of spoons.”
“I think shovels would be more useful.”
“They’d lack the classic prison break feel.”
“Fuck, I’ve missed you.”
Beth threw her arms around Suzuki and held him tight. He could feel her face nestled up against his neck. She was warm and crying. They sat there for a little bit, the door of the cell still open as if, for these moments, they didn’t need to care about being found, about living. They were together. Suzuki had always wondered how Beth had felt about him. Now he felt he knew.
Finally, Beth pulled away from Suzuki and dried her eyes. Suzuki kicked at the dirt floor, trying to figure out what to say. He knew that there had to be something, but nothing was coming to him. There was too much. Then it clicked. “Close the door,” he said.
Beth didn’t ask any questions and shut the cell door.
“This whole place is a fucking ant colony. That’s why it’s dug into the mountain like this. We need to think like ants.”
Beth chuckled and shook her head, every movement she made reminding Suzuki why he loved her so much. “Dude, you’ve been here for a couple of hours, and you’re already starting to lose it,” Beth joked. “You would be prime for reintegration.”
“Fuck off, just hear me out. When ants are building their colonies, they don’t have a clear idea of what they’re doing. It still works out. But sometimes, a few ants get separated while they’re tunneling. They just start a new tunnel. That tunnel becomes part of the colony’s framework. None of the other ants even notice it because they’re all in different tunnels. If we dig our way out, no one is gonna catch us. We’ll just be adding one more aimless tunnel to the list of other tunnels.”
“What about my squad?”
“We get out first, then come back for your squad.”
“And you think you and me can dig our way out of this? Dig ourselves out of a whole goddamn mountain?”
“Not just you and me. The Mundanes.”
Suzuki opened his HUD and scrolled through the various menus and options. He set his location to broadcast to his party members, then he started typing a message.
The rest of the Mundanes and Horsemen were sitting around a campfire, talking quietly. They had made camp on the outskirts of the second defense ring. After Fred and Suzuki left, they had spent most of the last day performing reconnaissance. They had split into two groups, Sandy and Diana had taken the Northern part of the rings. Stew, Chip, and José had explored the Southern and Western section of the rings.
One they had finished, they had gathered to exchange their information. The two sections of the defense rings were nearly polar opposites. The North was predominately thick forests, not unlike what the two parties had seen when they had first left the dragon’s lair. There were a few sentries sporadically throughout the forest, but nothing to have raised any alarm. Sandy and Diana had been able to easily avoid being detected. They had taken a detailed survey of the area, jotting it down on a magical scroll that allowed them to be able to see a photorealistic depiction of any spot on the map that they were interested in.
The Southern and Western sections of the ring were nothing like the North. Instead of forests, there were black deserts that looked as if they had been lifted from the Sahara. There was a sudden temperature change and, if José hadn’t mocked Stew so thoroughly, it woul
d have been easy to assume that they had walked onto another continent.
Now the Mundanes and the Horsemen warmed themselves by the flames, the night air crisp and even as their noses filled with the smell of roasting meat. The mood of the camp was tense. No one could say why exactly. It could have been boredom. Fred and Suzuki had been gone for a long time. There was only so much recon that they were capable of. More likely, though, it was a rising feeling of dread. It had been unspoken, but everyone had assumed that Fred and Suzuki would have been able to roll into the prison camp like the wind. Yet they were still gone. And no one had heard from either of them as well.
Stew pulled a piece of meat from the fire and offered it to Sandy, who was sipping a cup of tea, staring out at the trees that surrounded them. “They should be back by now,” Sandy whispered to no one in particular.
Stew took a seat beside her and wrapped his arm around her shoulder as he picked at the meat on the plate. “It makes sense that it’s taking them so long,” Stew consoled. “You’ve seen how big these fucking rings are. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were still trying to figure their way around the damn place.”
Sandy wasn’t so sure. “It’s been a whole day. Something might have happened.”
“Knowing Suzuki, something probably did happen. But he’ll get himself out of it.”
“We should have gone with him.”
José yawned as he stood and walked over to his tent. He laid down so that his head was poking out of the tent, resting on his hands. “You two worry too much,” José said. “They’ve been gone for a day. That’s nothing. Chip, you tell them about the time that you were shipwrecked for a week on that one hydra quest that we were on.”
Chip looked up from the HUD that she was tinkering with. She killed her soldering iron and placed it in her lap as her lips curled into a smile, her eyes taking on the dreamy look of reminiscence. “Nay,” Chip squeaked. “I have yet to entertain them with my various misfortunes.”
“You should tell them. Put their stressed little hearts to sleep. Maybe we’ll get some sleep if they decide to stop acting like a bunch of pansies.”
Sandy snapped at José as lightning crackled around the edges of her eyes. “We're not pansies,” she growled. “Our friend could be dead, trying to help our other friend, who could also be dead. Sorry for not being a detached asshole.”
“It’s a joke, kid. Get those panties out of their bunch and nut up, all right? We’ve all been here before. It ain’t easy. It ain’t comfortable. But sitting around and feeling shitty ain’t going to help anyone.”
“What the hell do you think we should be doing?”
José disappeared into his tent for a moment and returned with a smile and a bottle of ale. He tossed tankards to Stew and Sandy before crouching before them and pouring the tankards full. “No,” he said. “It’s time to trust your teammate and prepare for the worst. Not obsess about the worst and try and outthink fate. It’s time you listen.” He cupped his ear as he said those last words.
The wind blew through the camp, and the flames from the fire flickered slightly before reasserting themselves. There was a bit of a chill. Stew inched closer to Sandy and held her tightly. “What are we listening to?” Stew asked, his voice betraying his irritation.
“Just wanted to shut you up for a few seconds.” José laughed as he poured himself another drink. Chip and Diana watched from the fringes of the campfire. “Didn’t realize that you both were going to become blubbering crybabies once Suzuki was out of here,” José chided. “Would have thought—”
A short sword flew past José and landed firmly into the tree behind the MERC. It was a narrow miss. José looked at Stew, who hadn’t bothered to lower his arm, allowing José to soak up how serious Stew was. “We care about our friend,” Stew said. “Fuck off if we’re worried.”
José pulled the sword out of the tree and tossed it at Stew’s feet. “No one is saying that you shouldn’t be worried,” José explained. “I’m saying you two shouldn’t be acting like he’s already dead. For someone whom you both love so much, you both seem to have pretty low expectations for him.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“A few years back, we were contracted to take care of a hydra infestation on the coast. Generally, that’s a pretty boring gig, nothing much to pay attention to. This was back when we still didn’t know what the Dark One was doing. There were all these explosions of monster activity, and we couldn’t figure out what it was. Hindsight is a bitch. Anyways, we didn’t think anything of it at the time. I told Chip that she can take care of the hydra. I didn’t really think much of it at the time. The last time that I’d seen a hydra infestation, it was a little thing, hardly bigger than a dog, running around a village and scaring the goats. I figured it was something like that. I should have thought better, though. But I didn’t. Chip went to go take care of the problem.”
José downed the last of his ale and poured another. He watched out from behind the fire. Both Diana and Chip had faded into the darkness of the forest as the last bit of sunlight disappeared behind the horizon.
“Chip had to catch a boat from the MERC encampment. That should have been my other clue. Why the fuck would they need to sail to who the fuck knows where just to take care of a poodle-sized hydra. But I was young. I didn’t ask the right questions. And that’s really what the difference boils down to most of the time. Whether or not you’re asking the right questions. Most people aren’t. That’s something that I had to teach myself. Anyway, Chip ended up on the coast of where Mexico would be on Earth. I didn't think twice about it. Neither did Diana. Then we started hearing these reports. Apparently, this wasn’t a poodle with five heads. Half the coast had been torn up. The military was out there as well. The number of casualties was easily more than the MERC or the military had seen up to that point. And we had sent our Chip out there to take care of that hydra all by herself. None of us there to watch her back. How the fuck do you think we felt?”
Sandy and Stew were silent, waiting for José to finish whatever it was that he had to say. Instead, José turned to Chip and tossed a rock at her shadowed silhouette. “What the fuck did you do?” José asked.
Chip sighed and leaned out of the shadows so that only her face was visible, bright and fiery as the flames tap-danced across her irises. “I done already told you, I ain’t got much to add to the story,” Chip stated. “If you’re going to embarrass me, might as well finish up the job, ya wanker.”
José lifted his hands in a mock-defensive manner. “All right, all right. Like I was saying. Chip was out there in a kill zone off the coast of Mexico. After the first day, we started seeing reports about the coast. Everything is shut down. The hydra has apparently gone nuclear. As far as I knew, Chip was dead. Every other MERC who went out that way was. But that was before I trusted Chip. I should have back then, but we all have shit to learn. I guess my lesson was learning to trust my guy’s skills.”
Stew was completely into the story. His eyes were wide as he waited for the tale’s resolution. “What happened? What happened to Chip?”
“Well, as you can see, she’s still alive.”
“I mean, how’d she get out?”
Diana stood up from the fire and went over to Chip, who was lounging lazily near the trees. “Come on, Chip,” Diana coaxed. “You have to see how much suspense is in the air.”
“Nope. How about you tell them about the time your wee lil ass got stranded in the seven deserts? How’s that one for a tell?”
Diana chucked. “Hell, no, that shit was embarrassing.”
“I’d say more gross than embarrassing, but aye, your desert trek was embarrassing. As was my hydra incident. So, that said, you show ‘em yours, and I’ll show off mine.”
Diana smiled devilishly, the way that teenagers grin at each other when they’ve been egging themselves on for too long. “Fine,” Diana said, causing Chip’s jaw to drop. “I’ll show them.” Diana walked back to the campfire as C
hip jumped out of the trees and followed. She sat down and pulled a small crystal ball from her HUD and tossed it over the flames. The ball exploded into a thousand shards that floated above the flames and spread out as if they were stars. Then lights started to bounce in between the lights until they connected, little silver threads tying them all together, stitching together a screen that seemed to stretch out over the entire night sky.
The screen showed Diana in a desert. There was nothing but sand in the sort of desert that looks like an extension of the infinite. Each grain of sand reinforces the unstoppable heat and vastness of the geography without the least concern for the plight of humanity.
Diana was hunched over, kneeling. Her hands rested on her kneecaps. Her robes were drenched in sweat, huge dark spots underneath her armpits. She looked like she was barely able to stay conscious, swaying side to side as she struggled to breathe. After a couple of minutes of resting, she took a deep breath and forced herself to her feet. She started forward, wandering the desert like a lost wraith, a dead thing already defeated by the heat and starvation.
Stew leaned back on the ground, and Sandy lay next to him as they stared up at the screen. The fire crackled around them. “What the hell were you doing out there?” Stew asked.
“I was supposed to be securing an ancient artifact. We were ambushed and a spell that I cast teleported me to the middle of nowhere. José and Chip didn’t even know where I was. Neither did I. I had to figure out how to get back or at least let them know where I was.”
Sandy sat up and grabbed one of the Jive Bugs Diana had set out for a snack. They were little insects, coated in a magical glaze that made them taste like a cross between a pretzel and sour candy. They also had a nice little punch of energy. “How’d you get out of this one?” Sandy asked.
Diana leaned back and motioned for Sandy to pass her the Jive Bugs. “Just check it out,” she said.
The desert-bound Diana struggled to make any headway. She had been walking for some time. There was nothing around her whatsoever. But beneath her feet, there was something moving. The sand was disturbed, and then the tip of a fin appeared out of the sand. Diana saw it and her eyes went wide. She stopped walking, held herself perfectly still as she muttered the words of a protection spell, a thin blue aura extending over her body. Her wand was in her hand instantly.
