“Makes sense,” Mordred told him. “You’ve seen their code and the database. How much left over junk is there?”
Suddenly an idea flashed into his mind and he wondered if his alter ego was thinking the same thing. “So maybe the AI entity is left over from beta as well, and Damian just repurposed it to hide his victims.”
Mordred thought and then nodded. “That makes sense. It’s much easier to re-use something without being noticed than to create something brand new without being noticed.”
“Did you ever contact support?” Charlena interrupted and then flushed when Jace and Mordred both looked at her. “Sorry.”
Jace watched as Mordred put his hand over hers and wondered exactly how close the two had become and what that meant for him, if anything. “We did. That’s where I ran into Damian and found out he was a Duke. He pretty much admitted that he had done this.”
“And you told all of this to support?” Mordred asked.
“As much as I could. After I met Damian, he logged off and then rushed back into work to change the position of the Help Desk,” he explained.
“Then what happened?” Mordred asked.
Jace shook his head and nodded towards Mordred and Charlena. “First, what’s going on with you two?”
Chapter 31
Mordred and Charlena both blushed and looked at each other. Mordred cleared his throat. “We’ve gotten to know each other over the past couple of weeks.”
Raising an eyebrow, Jace motioned for him to continue.
“I woke up in the hospital and Charlena was there,” Mordred looked over at Charlena. “She told me a little about what was going on and came to visit me in the evenings all week until they released me. She also let me know I was dead.”
“Dead?” Jace echoed.
“Officially, I mean,” Mordred clarified. “You’re right that I was declared dead at the scene. But then they must have lost my id and when I got to the hospital, I was a John Doe. From what I can tell, I lost my job, lost my apartment and everything else.”
“The apartment?!” Jace exclaimed. He saw other patrons of the tavern look over and he lowered his voice. “And all of our stuff?”
“Gone,” Mordred said sadly. “The retro posters, the pirated vidstreams, our pod, everything.”
On an intellectual level, Jace knew the stuff wasn’t his. It couldn’t be since he could never enter the real world again. But on an emotional level, he felt the loss of all of his stuff deeply. The pod had been the only thing he’d really inherited from his family, after paying for college. And his retro collection was priceless to him. It had taken him years of collecting, trading and searching underground forums to find some of that. Now, it was just gone.
He knew his real self must be feeling it even more acutely. He actually was in the real world. Plus, he lost his job. Could he get it back? Well, maybe get it back after the company fired or arrested Damian.
He looked up at Mordred. “Wow. I’m sorry. I mean, that stuff meant a lot to me, but I could never see it again anyway. You must really be taking it hard. Wait! Where are you living now?”
Charlena and Mordred glanced at each other. “I’m staying at her place. At least for now. Until her roommate comes back when classes start. That’s how I was able to login. I’m using one of the college pods.”
Jace gave his real self a sly smile and raised an eyebrow. “Staying with Charlena, huh?”
Both Charlena and Mordred blushed, and he guessed something else was going on, other than just a place to stay. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Part of him was glad that his real self actually might be having a relationship, or whatever it was. Another part of him felt betrayed. Like Charlena had traded up for the other him. It was so confusing. He really didn’t know what to think or feel.
He looked over at Charlena. She lowered her eyes with a guilty expression but then looked at him. “Listen Jace, I know we kind of kissed and stuff, but that was when I thought you were alive. I mean, that’s what I wanted. Something real. Not just a virtual boyfriend.” She looked over at his real life alter ego. “He’s just like you, or you’re like him, but he’s real. And that’s what I want.”
From the corner of his eye, he saw Mika grinning broadly. He knew she had feelings for him too. Had she been holding back because of Charlena? Jace knew he had. After all, they’d started some sort of relationship before he’d met Mika. It wouldn’t have been fair to just dump her or expect her to be happy that he was showing affection to another girl.
He laughed inwardly. Who would have guessed he’d have two girls interested in him at the same time, let alone that they’d both be gorgeous? Of course, he only knew them in their optimal DNA form, but still. He had to admit, it sounded like the subplot of some cheap novel.
Charlena must have seen Mika’s grin because she turned to the Japanese girl. “I guess this one’s mine and that one’s yours.”
Mika intertwined her arm in his and nodded curtly. “Yes, he is mine.”
“This is like some weird episode of the twilight zone,” Diana said, breaking into the conversation. “So, there’s two Jaces now. And Charlena seems to be shacking up with one while the other is a backup like us and stuck in the game. And now it’s like Charlena passed off the virtual Jace to Mika.” She let out an exasperated breath. “I take it back. It’s like an episode of the Jerry Springer show!”
Everyone looked at her in confusion. Jace, and his other self he assumed, knew what the Twilight Zone was but what was the Jerry Springer show? He kept forgetting that Diana had actually lived in the 20th century. She had a first-hand knowledge of the retro stuff he liked so much.
“Nevermind,” Diana said, waving them away. “Go back to your story. Ignore the old woman in the corner.”
Jace and his counterpart both had red faces, as did Charlena. Jace cleared his throat. “So, uh… about getting your life back.”
Mordred nodded, obviously happy to change the subject. Jace wondered if the real him felt guilty at all that Charlena had gone for him first and then switched over to his real world version without so much as a breakup message. Jace thought he’d feel guilty if the situation were reversed. He’d still keep the girl, but he’d have some guilt.
“I’m not sure what we do from here,” Mordred replied, looking over to Charlena. “Since Charlena got your message, we’ve been lying low. Your message mentioned Damian and implied that he might harm us. For now, we thought it would be better off if I stayed dead to the world.”
“I’ve been making some discrete inquiries,” Charlena cut in. Her face had finally resumed its normal color. “I pretended to be a bill collector who is looking for him. That’s how I found out about the apartment. The job, I just called and asked for Jace Burton and they said there was no person with that name working for them.”
Jace snickered. “A bill collector. Not bad. Hopefully that will keep Damian from figuring out someone’s checking up on me...uh… him. You know what I mean.”
Mordred nodded. “Trust me. It’s confusing for us too.”
“How long are you going to lie low?” Jace asked.
“It sounds like Damian could come after me, and by extension, Charlena,” Mordred replied. “So we have to wait until he’s arrested.”
“Assuming WorldCog moves their butt and actually investigates him.”
“But you told everything to support. Why wouldn’t they investigate it?” Mika asked.
“Remember I said I met Damian right before I got to the Help Desk. He logged out and I assume he went into work to move it. Who’s to say that he didn’t revert the code? He’d made millions of dollars already. He might just cut his losses,” Jace suggested.
“In which case,” Mordred nodded. “They won’t find any traces of the code. I doubt they’ll look through the code archives if they don’t see anything suspicious in the current code.”
“No, not if he rolls back all of his changes,” Jace agreed. “If he does, means, they’ll never know what
’s going on, unless they dig deeper.”
“Are two even speaking English?” Charlena asked, glancing between the two Jaces. They both shrugged at the same time.
“Then they won’t be able to set me straight,” Diana complained. “Right? If he erases all traces of what he did, they won’t know about people like us and those still trapped in the monster bodies.”
“I don’t mind so much.” Mika smiled.
“That’s because you got the guy,” Diana rolled her eyes. “I’m supposed to be living on an estate with servants catering to my every need. Not that our little adventures haven’t been fun, but I would like to relax for at least the first twenty or thirty years of my afterlife.”
“Yes, I got the guy.” Mika beamed. The small Asian girl looked defiantly at Charlena, as if daring her to contradict her.
Charlena held up her hands. “That one’s all yours. I have my own.”
“I suddenly feel like a piece of meat,” Jace said to his alter ego.
“Or a toy,” Mordred grinned. “Or a piece of candy.”
“Don’t get a big head,” Charlena told them. “Either one of you.”
“Right,” Mordred said. “So what do we do about Damian then?”
“The first thing we need to do,” Jace told him, “is neutralize the in-game version of Damian.”
Mordred gave him a dubious look. “Why the in-game version first?”
“Because,” Jace replied and gestured to Mika and Diana, “we are stuck in full sensory feedback. If Damian comes for us, he can literally torture us to death. Only he could do it over and over.”
“Ow,” Mordred made a pained face. “I didn’t think about that. And there’s no way to turn down your sensory level?”
Jace shook his head. “The menu option isn’t even there. I assume that’s because we’re not in a pod and I’m guessing the real inserted people have a similar menu. Which means we’re stuck at full sensory.”
“That sucks,” Mordred sympathized.
“Dear one,” Diana said. “You have no idea. I’ve felt every little blow since I woke up here. It’s no picnic.”
“But wouldn’t getting Damian arrested in the real world have the same effect?” Charlena asked. “If he’s in jail, he can’t log in.”
“Do you have any ideas how to get him arrested?” Jace asked. “Because at the moment, it’s basically our theory versus his word. And I don’t think we can even really give any evidence to support our theory.”
“What about us?” Mika said. “We are proof.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Mordred said before Jace could answer. “No one would disagree that you’re bugged. But trying to pin that on Damian might be difficult without proof.”
“What about all the money he has?” Diana asked. “That’s what cued off Jace.”
“Yes,” Jace agreed. “But nothing would stop him from saying he earned it in-game.”
Mordred nodded. “Right, technically, he doesn’t have to declare it as income unless he moves it outside of the game, into the real world.”
“So what are you saying?” Charlena interrupted. “That he’s going to get away with it?”
Jace and Mordred both looked at each other. Jace guessed the real him knew it would be an uphill battle for them to prove anything. It would have to be WorldCog. They’d need to look at the logs, the old code, everything to figure what he did and when.
“You know what they need to do,” Mordred said, as if reading his mind.
“I know,” Jace nodded. “And that means getting to the Help Desk here. But first, we’d need to neutralize Damian in-game, so he can’t stop us.”
“Wait,” Diana said. “How will getting to the Help Desk again help anything?”
“We can tell them where to look,” Mordred and Jace said at the same time. They looked at each other and grinned.
“Yes, yes,” Diana said. “You two are adorable.”
“But won’t they erase you?” Mika said, her brows furrowed.
“Hopefully not,” Jace said. “Last time I told them I was your twin brother.”
Mordred chuckled. “Nice. We would have the same DNA. But what happens when they don’t find any trace of you?”
Jace didn’t say anything. That was his fear too. That WorldCog would try to find information on him and, finding none, would discover that he was actually a brain backup of someone still alive. Then they’d be forced to delete him.
“We can’t let them delete you!” Mika pleaded.
Neither Jace nor Mordred could think of anything to say. It was a very real possibility and there was very little either of them could do about it. A movie line popped in his head unbidden. “In the end, there could be only one.”
Chapter 32
“So, we need to go to the Help Desk,” Diana said after an uncomfortable silence. “How are we supposed to do that? It was hard enough to get into the palace in Whitecliff. And that’s with Jace, er.. Um… our Jace, becoming a Baronet. How are we supposed to manage it here?”
“Especially if Damian is looking out for us,” Mika added.
“Are we even sure Damian can really hurt you?” Charlena asked.
Jace exchanged a glance with Mordred. His alter ego shrugged. “You seem to have more experience with him than I do at this point.”
“You know how cruel he could be at the office,” Jace reminded his real self. “And that was more or less just for his amusement. We’re actually threatening his livelihood.”
“Can’t you guys just wait until support does its investigation?” Charlena asked. She gave Mordred a concerned look. “You know you shouldn’t be in the game much.”
Jace raised an eyebrow at his real life counterpart.
Mordred waved away their concern. “I’m still weak. I sleep a lot. Apparently being in a coma does that.”
“I’m surprised they released you,” Diana murmured. “I mean, shouldn’t they be keeping an eye on you or something?”
“Apparently,” Mordred sneered, “when you’re dead, you don’t have insurance. And when you don’t have insurance, they are all too happy to give you the most minimal treatment and send you out the door.”
“We haven’t started the process of trying to have him declared alive,” Charlena told them, “because of your concerns about Damian. But it will be a long process for him to prove he’s alive.”
“So what you’re saying is,” Diana interrupted, “that it’s going to all be on us.”
Mordred shook his head. “No, I can help out where I can, but I can only be on for a few hours a day. Had you guys shown up a half hour later, we would already have logged out.”
“Can you help us out with money to buy a title?” Jace asked. He remembered he had quite well over 200,000 gold on Mordred. Or, his real self did.
“No, sorry,” Mordred apologized. “I want to help you that way but that is all I’ve got. I’m going to have to cash that gold out for real money. It won’t be enough but it will help until I can find another job.”
Everyone at the table was quiet. Jace realized his real self was right. If he had lost everything in the real world because he was declared legally dead, then he’d need every dime he had to buy even the basics, like food and clothing. He was staying with Charlena for now, but her roommate would be back in a couple of months and he’d be out on the street if he didn’t find a job.
Jace nodded and looked at the girls. “We have to go after the rest of the treasure.”
“Treasure?” Charlena and Mordred said at the same time.
“Oh,” Jace said nonchalantly. “We have some treasure maps to some buried pirate treasure.”
“How’d you get those?” Mordred asked.
“I decoded a pirate journal.” Jace smiled.
“An encoded journal?” Mordred asked enthusiastically. “Which cipher?”
“Caesar shift cipher,” he replied. “And not just a normal one, he used the day of the week as the number cipher, so every page was different until the
day of the week repeated.”
“Nice.” Mordred smiled. “How much treasure is it?”
Jace shrugged. “We don’t know. He doesn’t say anywhere how much each stash is.”
“But the first one was Bob,” Mika announced.
“Bob?” Charlena and Mordred said together, confused looks playing across their faces.
“He’s a giant dragon turtle,” Jace replied. “We met him on the first island and he let us take some of his treasure. He just wanted to be left alone.”
“You spoke to a dragon turtle?” Mordred asked incredulously. “And it didn’t eat you?”
“It was a player,” Mika supplied. “He was very nice. He was sad though.”
“I don’t think that one had a very good life, especially at the end,” Diana said bitterly. “I understand that. At the end everyone’s like a flock of circling vultures.”
“He didn’t want to be human again,” Mika said solemnly.
Diana shrugged. “That part, at least, I don’t understand. Though maybe being an enormous turtle is very zen.”
Jace cleared his throat. “So, long story short, we don’t know how much treasure is in each location since the first place we went had an epic dragon turtle’s loot as well. We’ll just have to start going out and collecting them to find out.”
“Assuming it’s enough, what then?” Charlena asked.
“Then we get into the parliament building and search for the Help Desk,” Jace told her.
Charlena crossed her arms. “And what about Damian?”
They went quiet again for a good minute before Jace spoke up. “We have to neutralize him somehow.”
“How?” Mordred shot him a dubious glance. “I’m sure I could kill him with my assassinate ability, but he’d just respawn. He’s high enough level that all his gear is probably soulbound. At most it would annoy him and let him know that I’m alive.”
“No,” Jace shook his head. “We need to keep you under wraps as long as possible. We don’t need him finding you or Charlena in the real world. He already tried to kill us, I mean you, with a car. Who knows what else he’d try.”
Veil Online - Book 3: An Epic LitRPG Adventure Page 20
