Chapter 14
New Message
The sudden prompt pulled James away from his stream. The Knights Who Go Ni had just begun to leave the Chem-Era’s room for the right-hand path. Meaning they were going to face off against the When-Wolfs. While he was keen to see how those time-manipulating mobs did, the message, or more importantly, who it was from, demanded his full attention.
“Uh,” he said, glancing from the message to Rue, and then Steve. “Any idea why Hades would be sending me a message?” That was who the message was from. The notorious hacker. The original founder of Cyb3ru5. The mysterious man who’d helped James defeat the hacking group. A man hunted by the government and secret agencies alike, and yet, a mystery. In short, not really the type of person James wanted messaging him.
“What’s the message say?” Steve asked, his attention fully on James. Gone was his carefree attitude. The perpetual smirk in his eyes was gone, replaced with shadows. His face aged in mere seconds before James’s eyes, the pure mention of Hades seeming to change the developer.
“That he misses James.” Rue offered, though she too was suddenly more serious. Forgotten was the stream of Dungeon Core chat. Her focus, just like Steve’s, was fully on James.
“No idea yet,” James said honestly. He looked at the message, which was blinking, waiting for him to open it.
From: Hades
Subject: Underworld Dreams
“Well, what’s the subject line?” Steve asked. “Come on, details James.”
James told him the subject line, wondering what exactly Hades had sent him.
“That’s… less than helpful.” Steve muttered. He furrowed his brow. “Given he helped us previously… it’s probably safe to open the message.” Steve paused, thinking. “But then again, this is Hades we are talking about…”
“He can’t hurt James here, can he?” Rue asked, worry evident in her tone.
“Theoretically, no.” Steve shook his head, “and he’s not the type to go after people in that regard. What happened with Persephone was personal for him. That was the exception, not the norm, for how Hades works.”
James shuddered as he remembered what had happened to Persephone. She’d been the one running things when Cyb3ru5 came after James and the other Dungeon Cores. Tipped off to their existence as players by Xander, Persephone had aimed to use the Dungeon Cores as tools, spreading wealth and power to her followers. Because of how much the digital world and real world intersected now, controlling resources in DCO would allow for a gross transfer of wealth in the real world for those who could manipulate the system. Abusing the system, or revealing the truth, could completely throw all of DCO into chaos. Something that the government, James had learned, was extremely keen to prevent. To the point of mobilizing the Enforcers to eliminate the entire organization.
“Then, why would he be messaging James?” Rue pressed. “Cyb3ru5 is gone right?”
“They are,” Steve said with a nod. “Completely eliminated from what I’ve been told, and the secrets they’d learned were silenced with them.”
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A memory played through James’s mind. The strange, mind-altering substance Persephone had tried to ply him with. The very same substance that then was turned against her. Turning her into putty at the hands of Fel, or more appropriately, Fel’s scary alter ego, R. The image of Persephone, helpless, haunted him. He’d left her there, given her over to R, and fled the room. It was something he knew he’d needed to do, and yet, it left a bad taste in his mouth.
“So then,” James pushed the memories away, still looking at the blinking message. “Why would Hades be messaging me?”
More memories came to him as he tried to fathom why Hades was messaging him. He recalled the one time he’d spoken with Hades, in person, if he could call it that. Hades had been there, the night he’d been captured by Cyb3ru5. Hades had appeared in Persephone’s special virtual space. He’d told James, back then, that his purpose in life was gathering information. Everything he did was a means to an end. To learn something. He’d left before telling James anything of note. The only bit of information James had gleaned from that, had come from Persephone’s final words. Her musings. She’d claimed he was a part of something deeper. Something past his parent’s work even. Whatever that had meant.
“No use pondering what ifs.” Steve said, pulling James from his thoughts. The developer looked to have aged a good ten, no, maybe twenty, years. He looked exhausted. And even more chilling, he looked serious, and worried. James could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen Steve look like that. It never boded well. “Might as well open the message and tell us what it says.”
“You don’t think opening the message will cause us a problem?” James asked, hesitating. If there was one thing he knew for certain about Hades, it was that the man was a master at all things virtual. His hacking skills, coding skills, whatever you wanted to call them, were legendary. He’d done the seemingly impossible and broken into Persephone’s personal virtual space. His technological skills were why he was impossible to track down. For however long he’d been on the run, he’d somehow, to even this day, avoided getting caught by the government. A feat that, considering all the government had at their disposal, should be impossible in today’s day and age.
“If he wanted to cause you problems, he’d do so without sending you a message.” Steve stated. “But Hades isn’t the type to ‘do’ things. Not anymore. That version of him died a long time ago, with the remnants of Anonymous.” Steve shook his head, “no, whatever his reason for contacting you, I think the message itself, should be safe.” He paused, before he continued. “Though, what the message contains, the knowledge within… that, could be dangerous, in a way we can’t even process until we know what it is.”
James shuddered at Steve’s tone. He didn’t like that. Not at all. Especially since everything was finally going smoothly for James. Hadn’t he been through enough? Hadn’t he suffered enough? Why did he have to keep getting pulled into things? Why couldn’t he just enjoy life, enjoy DCO?
“We, could just ignore it.” He offered sheepishly, looking at Steve, and then Rue. “Ignorance is bliss, right?”
“You know your curiosity would get to you eventually.” Rue said, trying her best to smile at him, attempting to hide her own anxiety about the message. Hades knew about her, about her father. Something that shouldn’t be known. And that level of knowledge, and of course, how he’d been involved with getting James kidnapped, even if it were part of a plan to capture Cyb3ru5, had made Rue wary of the individual. “Might as well open it now, so we have more time to sort through whatever it is he’s sent.”
“She’s right.” Steve concurred, “gotta treat it like a band-aid and rip it off. Whatever it says, we’re here, and we’ll figure it out, together.”
James nodded, took a deep breath, and opened the message.
Stare into the Void, until it stares back.
~H
Beneath it, was a massive ink blot. James instinctively looked at it, his eyes drawn to the strange black mass. He’d never seen something quite like it in a digital message before. It shimmered and shifted, like oil perhaps, but then at the same time, seemed to draw in all the light around it. It suddenly clicked, that there was more to it than he expected. That realization came a split second too late though.
“Oh shit,” was all he managed to say, before he felt his mind leave his body, the world turning dark, as he was pulled from DCO, across the virtual space, into darkness.