by Alex Knight
“I don’t even know how long we were in-game there, but it’s a sure thing we’re all dehydrated. Not to mention exhausted. If we’re going to convince The Syndicate tomorrow, we’ll need to be fed and rested.”
Kaiden took a long drink and realized just how parched he’d been. His throat was dry and swollen. Hurt a bit as he swallowed, but the water was doing its work. He was feeling better by the moment. Food would be good, too. It was easy to ignore the body’s needs in-game, but now that he was out, he could feel the hunger inside of him. How long had it been since he’d eaten last? Fourteen hours? More?
We’ve been busy, he told himself. Busy, and making progress.
He took another long drink of water and leaned back to take in their surroundings, the small bunker they’d been calling home. He’d been in Nova so long he’d almost forgotten they were living here. Hiding out in a swamp while a savage crackdown searched for them back in the city. It was easy to forget, honestly. They’d been so busy in-game and he’d been so focused on the goal. Thorne was right, though. They couldn’t allow the game to be their only focus. They still needed to eat, drink, and sleep. And probably shower, too, if he could make time for it. It was suggested to never spend more than a few hours a day in VR but they’d been putting every waking moment into the game.
“Guys,” Zelda said from where she’d been coiling her headset cable into a tidy pile on the table. “I don’t want to speak for anyone else, but I’m pretty sure Bernstein would be proud of us.” She hesitated a moment, then nodded. “We’re finishing his work. Finishing the work he dedicated his life to. The work that the Party killed him for. And I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but it feels like we’re finally making progress. Real progress.”
Kaiden nodded at that, thoughts of where they’d started and how far they’d come welling up inside of him. It’d all begun less than a year ago – half that, even – and still it felt almost longer than everything else in his life. Probably that was just because the warden program, the hunt for Bernstein’s database, and now their struggle to topple the Party, had consumed his every waking moment since it’d all begun. But for the first time, there was an end in sight. A victorious end.
“He would be proud,” Kaiden said, looking over to her. “Proud of how far we’ve come. And how far we’re going to go. We’re going to make this happen.”
“All right, enough sappy crap,” Titus said, playfully pushing Kaiden as he strode toward the kitchen. “Let’s get some dinner. Then we can get back to talking about how much ass I kicked in that tournament.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Location Discovered: Aqukinho
Faction Alignment: None
Resident Guilds: None
“This is... it?” Kaiden asked, standing at the open rear door of the Borrelly. As far as he could see, the planet was entirely ocean. And the scans had confirmed it: there was no land here. No continents, no islands, nothing. Just water and wind across the surface of the entire planet.
A crashing wave reached up and broke against the bottom of the shuttle, spraying him in a fine salty mist as Thorne and Titus joined him at the rear door. Zelda came last.
“This is the meeting place, but there’s nothing here. Nowhere on this entire planet. It’s just empty space. One of the dozens of procedurally generated planets they have in-game waiting for content.”
“It’d be a fine place for an ambush,” Thorne said, eyeing the skies.
“I’ve got the engines primed to go if so,” Ellenton said through comms from the cockpit. “If anything unexpected shows up I’m ready to bolt.”
“How about that?” Kaiden asked, pointing to where the surface of the ocean had suddenly begun to boil. “Is that unexpected enough?”
“Oh, come on,” Titus said with a low laugh. “Now they’re just being dramatic.”
“Who is?” Kaiden began to ask, then paused. He’d just noticed the ocean wasn’t boiling, it was bubbling. And as he watched more, something began to emerge. The bubbling water was mostly white foam, but then it darkened as a shape neared the surface. A metal shell made of interlocking plates. There were no windows in it, or anything to indicate what it was. Water rushed off its smooth sides as it broke the surface then bobbed in place.
“Is that some sort of ship?” Kaiden asked, trying to focus on it with his visor but getting no results. Even as he wondered, though, the metal plates at the top of the shell retracted, sliding back and into each other to reveal a hollow interior with two figures standing on it. PlayaSlaya and Nando.
“‘Sup?” PlayaSlaya said with a casual nod.
“Let’s go,” Nando said, waving them over. “You don’t want to be late.”
“Where are we going?” Kaiden asked as Ellenton eased the shuttle down, coming in slow seeing as she was flying backwards in order to line it up so they could step off the ramp and onto the platform.
“Down, dude. Duh,” PlayaSlaya said. “Come on, we don’t have all day.”
Zelda took a small jump and landed on the deck of the platform with a thud that reverberated through the metal.
“This thing’s like a space elevator,” she said, bending down to get a closer look at it. “Except it’s in the ocean. So... a sea elevator?”
“Pretty much,” Nando said.
Kaiden went next and the others followed until it was just Ellenton left on the Borrelly.
“I’ll be waiting here in case you need a quick evac,” she said. “Never much cared for water anyway. Swimming’s bad enough, but that?” She paused, and Kaiden could imagine her shudder. “No thanks.”
“Hit it, Nando,” PlayaSlaya said and the second in command flipped a switch on a panel off to one side of the platform. The metal plates extended back into place, shooting out over the top of one another and extending to close completely around them with a series of clanking bangs. A whirring sounded from somewhere below them and then they lurched downward. As they did, video screens on the inside of the metal plates flashed to life. They took a moment to get focused, then all at once, Kaiden could see the Borrelly and the sky, and the water around them. They were moving down, though, and the view was quickly lost as they sank below the surface and the ocean swallowed them.
Once fully underwater, the platform picked up speed and the light began to darken, diffused more and more by the deepening water around them. The result was a strange blue half-light that transitioned to green, then to an ever-darkening black. Kaiden kept his eyes peeled for any signs of wildlife around them – only partially out of worry at the thought of what might happen to them if the shell were breached at such a depth – but nothing seemed to be nearby. Only more and more water. And then the light was gone and it was black all around them.
“Well,” Thorne said, the first to break the silence. “This explains why we never found Syndicate HQ. Scans can’t penetrate this deep, and there’s no surface infrastructure here to give anything away.” She paused a moment, then looked to PlayaSlaya. “It’s gotta be a pain to get people in and out of here, though. You can fit, what? Eight people in here at once?”
“There’s other elevators,” PlayaSlaya began to say but Nando quieted him with a hiss.
“Ah, right. We’re not supposed to talk about the base.”
“We’ve agreed to help you raid Warden HQ,” Nando said. “But as far as our friends go, today is just a meeting of general interest. Feeling you all out. They don’t know you and they certainly don’t trust you, so don’t ask any prying questions.”
“We were invited here,” Kaiden said. “Surely that means The Syndicate – er, your ‘friends’ – have more than a passing interest in what we’re trying to do?”
Before Nando could answer, a groan moaned out through the platform, no doubt the contraption battling against the increasingly intense pressure of the depths they were traveling through.
“It’ll be fine,” Nando said, waving away the noise, then returning to Kaiden’s question. “Being invited here means you have
their attention. But if you want their help, you’re going to need to capture their curiosity. You’ll have five minutes.”
“Five minutes?” Zelda frowned at that. “We’re going to need to be convincing.”
“This isn’t a group presentation for extra credit,” PlayaSlaya said. “None of that ‘teamwork makes the dream work’ crap. Pick your best speaker and pitch your idea. From what I’ve seen, that’d probably be Thorne, but she was a well-known warden captain, so probably not too well-liked around here. Nah, I’d send Zelda, maybe Kaiden. But it’s not my choice.”
Zelda’s probably a good choice, Kaiden thought, while simultaneously swallowing hard at the thought of the entire group’s hopes resting on his oratory skills. He’d never been much of a public speaker sort – or any type of speaker, for that matter. No, probably it was better to let Zelda handle this one. Right?
The elevator groaned to a stop and a door in front of them hissed open to reveal a long corridor. The floor was metal with a cross-hatched grating and the walls curved up into a smooth, transparent dome. The water outside was visible, or would have been if there’d been any light at whatever insane depth they were at.
PlayaSlaya strode off the elevator and waved them after him.
“Welcome to, well... let’s not use any names, huh? If The Syndicate throws you out on your asses, the less you know, the better.” As he led them forward, water dripped from above in infrequent streams.
“Should we be worried about that?” Zelda asked, nodding up to one of them.
Neither PlayaSlaya nor Nando replied. Instead, they continued down the corridor at a brisk pace.
“Okay, we need to figure this thing out,” Thorne said, speaking to Kaiden and the others. “Who’s going up there to pitch our case?”
“Zelda,” Kaiden said.
“Kaiden,” Zelda said.
They both paused for a moment, looking at one another with confusion.
“You’re way smarter and you’ve been the driving force behind this thing since the beginning,” Kaiden said. How did she not see that? “It should be you up there.”
“I’d only piss them off. Say something I shouldn’t.” She shook her head. “My habit of being blunt doesn’t always translate well to winning sympathy.”
Well, she has a point there.
“Besides,” she continued, “you’re obviously the leader here.”
Thorne and Titus nodded at that, but Kaiden balked.
“You’re kidding, right?” He choked back a laugh. “The leader? I don’t even know what I’m doing half the time. Flying by the seat of my pants.” How could they think he was the leader? At best he was the one who’d brought everyone together, but even that hadn’t really been planned.
“Nah, you’re pretty much the boss man, dude,” Titus said simply.
“What?”
Thorne nodded in agreement.
“Even when I was with the Warden Corps, they pegged you as the party lead. Had you on a fast track for promotion. You’re a natural leader.”
“I don’t even know what I’m doing half of the time!” Kaiden reiterated, exasperated.
Zelda clapped a hand down on his shoulder.
“And that’s okay. You don’t have to have it all figured out. None of us do, if we’re being honest. But you’re the one who brought this whole group together in the first place. You trusted Titus when I wanted to do anything but. You trusted me when you had no reason to. Hell, you even brought Thorne into the fold.”
No I didn’t!
“I mean, it was me that found you,” Thorne said. “But yeah, after I joined and everyone was suspicious of me, it was you, Kaiden, who gave me a chance. Helped ease me into the dynamic.”
“I didn’t try to do any of this!”
Thorne chuckled. “Like I said, a natural leader.”
“Ay, rookies,” PlayaSlaya said from in front. “We’re here, and they’re ready for you. Send your speaker up.”
All eyes turned to Kaiden. His mind was still reeling.
“You got this,” Titus said and punched him in the shoulder.
Chapter Forty-Four
“Any, uh, last-minute tips?” Kaiden asked, fighting the panic building in his chest.
He stood in the antechamber. The door in front of him undoubtedly led to the meeting room of The Syndicate. He could picture it already – expensive decorations that illustrated the group’s wealth, intimidating bodyguards looming over the shoulder of each of the members, and probably some sort of bizarre execution method – a shark pit or something – if he displeased them. Or maybe that was just tropes from old mobster and spy movies getting the better of him. Either way, he could picture what he was about to walk in to, and it didn’t take much imagination beyond that to see how out of place he was going to look in the middle of it all.
“Any tips?” Kaiden asked again. PlayaSlaya had slipped off to join the meeting – or maybe to fight something, it was hard to tell with him. Either way, it’d left just Kaiden and Nando in the antechamber. The others had been forced to remain in the corridor.
“Don’t BS anything. These guys’ll sniff it out in an instant,” Nando said with a shrug.
Okay, cool. Thanks. That helps so much.
Kaiden swallowed hard and focused again on what he was going to say. The Party is a clear and present danger. The crackdown in the real world is evidence enough of that. But we can do something about it. We can make a stand. Light the spark. Ignite the fire that will burn down the old order, and from the ashes, a better world will be born. Or was that too dramatic? Did people actually say things like that? Or maybe...
Kaiden took a deep breath to calm the shaking in his hands. Sometimes Nova Online was too realistic.
“You got this,” he said to himself. “You got this.” Look calm. Look confident. He pictured The Syndicate again – all wealth and propriety and calculated wisdom – and tried to mimic what he imagined that looked like. Gotta look the part.
“You’re on, and the clock’s running,” Nando said as the door in front of them slid into the floor with a hiss. “And hey. Good luck, yeah?”
A blast of noise so loud it near knocked Kaiden over poured out. He frowned, but Nando was pushing him forward already.
“Ridiculous! That’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard!” someone was yelling.
“Your mother’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard!” someone else yelled back and the room was filled with a chorus of “ooohs” as if that comeback hadn’t been dead since long before Kaiden’s lifetime. Another retort was shouted back and then a dozen different parties joined in, all shouting in favor of or against, well, whatever it was they were... debating? More of a shouting fest than a debate, Kaiden thought, his senses still reeling. This is The Syndicate?
He couldn’t see who was yelling – couldn’t see anyone, for that matter – on account of the fact that the room didn’t have anyone in it.
It was a cavernous space full of massive pipes that vented steam up toward the ceiling. Condensation covered everything such that Kaiden began to wonder exactly how watertight the whole place really was. In between the pipes and in every crevice and cranny visible, semi-opaque glass had been installed, creating what appeared to be small private booths. At least fifty of them, tucked into every corner and available spot and each reflecting back an image of Kaiden as he stared at them. The sounds of the ‘debate’ emanated from the front of all of these booths, from speakers there, no doubt. The glass was just translucent enough that shadowy forms could be seen behind it, but there was nowhere near a clear enough view to make out any sort of detail. The most Kaiden could tell was that every booth was occupied, and, at the moment, all of those occupants were seemingly shouting.
Kaiden worked his way to the center of the room, unsure if he was supposed to do something. He half raised a hand, as if to wave, then thought better of it.
“Ahem,” Kaiden tried, but he couldn’t even hear himself over the noise.
�
��Hello!” he shouted next to no avail, then waved both arms above him. “Hello!”
“Enough!” an echoing voice boomed across the space. Deep and gravelly, it resounded through the room so loud the pipes vibrated with it and Kaiden could have sworn he felt it in the floor beneath his feet. The shouting began to die down. Some voices kept going, but with no one responding to them, they soon fell to silence.
“The next item on the agenda is a pitch from…” The voice paused. Kaiden felt like he recognized it. Why does it sound familiar? It was deep and rough such that each word seemed a struggle to speak.
“...from player name: Kaiden, former warden and now outlaw. He comes before us representing a group of free wardens. The Warden Corps has added each of them to the most-wanted list.”
Thanks for the excellent introduction, Kaiden thought with no lack of sarcasm. Off to a good start. Though The Syndicate are mostly criminals, right? Or see themselves as beyond the law, at least? Maybe being outlaws earns us some cred? He wasn’t sure and there wasn’t time to think on it. The clock was running, as Nando had said. Five minutes to convince them. That was all.
He sucked down a deep breath, and began.
“Thank you for your time,” he said, leading with his best attempt to sound official and respectable. “It’s a pleasure to be here, and I think the plan I bring before you today is one that is going to change the—”
“Get on with it!” someone shouted and a chorus of agreement followed from a few other booths.
Kaiden bit back a curse.
Okay. Fine, then.
“I represent a powerful group of free wardens who have inside knowledge of the Party. This knowledge, combined with our skills, has made us a pain in the rear for the Party and the Warden Corps. They’re after us with everything they’ve got. That’s why I’ve come to this…” He hesitated a moment. Screw it. I’m all in already. “This esteemed organization.”
