Chapter 57

James rotated his shoulders, feeling a bit of tension leaving them, as he made his way towards the door that would leave his parents’ room, back towards the regular portion of his home. The chair, once more, was the only thing in the room, the floor normal, showing no signs of the massive, secret lab that existed beneath the house.

He’d left behind, for now, his parents’ workshop. What his dad had shown him, the six robots in the special room, had him feeling, even if just a little, that they had a chance tonight. Those robots were going to be key to the success for the night. With them, with essentially his parents at his side, and everyone else, James felt, for the first time, that this was more than a pipe dream. They had a fighting chance. The pieces were coming together, and the government was going down.

As he crossed the threshold out of the special room, movement in his vision caught his attention. His eyes darted to the prompts, noting that he’d just received, in rapid fire, a string of messages.

No, that wasn’t quite right. The notifications for the messages were all instantaneous, but as he opened the list, he could tell there were different timestamps on them. He’d not noticed it before, but apparently his AR glasses hadn’t had any signal while he’d been in that room. Another security feature, he had no doubt. Did that mean, while he was in there, his government chip in his wrist had been disabled too? For the roughly two hours he’d been down there, had it just seemed like he’d disappeared completely? Just how secure was that lab?

He sorted the messages, scanning their message headers, and noting their timestamps. It was just past 9am. He had 13 hours to go, before they’d dive back into immersion. Fourteen hours until the government’s special 48-hour event started. The first message, from Z, had come in at 720am. The latest… dozen messages, had all been coming 2 and half minute increments. Considering immersion related one hour of real-world time to 24 hours within the virtual world, that equaled roughly once, every hour. Those were all from Rue, and he opened the last one, and replied to it quickly.

From: Rue

Subject: WHERE ARE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously, I’m starting to worry. I’m trying not to. Really, I am. But no one has heard from you yet, and they asked me, and I don’t know what you’re doing. And the camera feeds in your house that Fel left behind aren’t showing you anywhere. You’ve disappeared, and it’s scaring me. Please, James, where are you. I keep telling myself nothing bad has happened, but I can’t get ahold of you. I can’t see you. And no one knows what’s going on with you

Please please please be okay and respond as soon as you see this.

James quickly sent a message. He wanted to tell her everything, but he couldn’t. Not through these messages. And he couldn’t tell her what he’d been doing, or what’d seen. At the very least though, he could try and alleviate her fears. Her concern meant a lot to him, enough so, that he figured he’d ignore the fact she was using cameras that Fel had apparently still left behind, to spy on him.

To Rue:

Subject: I’m right here

Sorry for making you worry! I’m here, and everything is okay. I’m really sorry for making you worry though, and will try to make it up as best I can when I’m back in DCO. Everything will be okay. See you tonight.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Love,

James

P.S. Remind me to have a word with you and Fel about these cameras…

He sent the message, a small smile on his lips as he quickly skimmed the other spam messages from her. They all covered pretty much the same thing, but with an increasing degree of concern. Normally, Rue wasn’t this paranoid. But considering what they were up against, and what was at stake, he figured everyone was probably a bit on edge right now. With Rue taken care of for now, and very likely now spying on him through the cameras in the house, he moved on to the next message. Well, technically the first message to come in this morning. The one from Zach, aka, Z.

From: Zach

Subject: Health Check

Hey buddy, just wanted to check in on how you’re feeling today. I can bring by some more books later today, maybe some pizza and ice cream again too? I’ll be running errands all day with some of my friends, so you know, if you do want me to check in on you, they may be with me. Let me know if that’s okay?

Z

James smirked as he read Z’s message. The man was good. So very very good. Obviously James knew exactly who Z’s friends were. But Zach was sending this message, making it seem like a very innocent check up message. Same as he’d been doing ever since James’s fight at school. The carefree, charismatic, gamer that was Zach, had no doubt learned from his lifetime of dealing with the government. He knew how to cover his tracks, and he knew how to be sneaky. And this would provide him with the perfect opportunity to introduce James to the people he’d be working with, in the real world tonight, to try and take DCO’s servers offline, and to save the world.

To: Zach

Subject: Health Check

Z,

That sounds good. I could definitely do with some more ice cream. My jaw was feeling a bit sore, so I’d appreciate it if you did come over and check it out again? Just to make sure everything is healing up? Appreciate you telling me about your friends. Are they teachers from school? Either way, I doubt my parents would mind. Though I can’t get too distracted. Looking forward to starting this awesome DCO event.

James sent the message, his smiling fading as it went off into the virtual space. He had tried to be as normal as possible in the message to the school’s doctor. He was trying to act normal, nonchalant. But it wasn’t easy. His mind was abuzz with thoughts and plans and things he wanted to say and discuss with everyone. But he couldn’t. It wasn’t safe. The government had ears literally everywhere, and he had no doubt they likely had algorithms scanning messages for trigger words and phrases too. He needed to just smile and wave, to act like nothing was amiss, when everything, quite literally, was.

He sighed, and opened the next one. It was from Fel. As he read it, he sighed again, thinking hard on how to best respond. At the same time, he found himself wondering if this was how it felt, being a special agent or operative. Because this was nowhere near as glamorous or exhilarating as the movies always made it out to be. The media had lied. None of this was badass and fun, it was stressful, worrisome, and somewhat sickening, according to his nerves.

Thirteen hours, before immersion. Thirteen more hours, of feeling sweaty and sick from paranoia, anxiety, and nerves. Oh how he wished he could force sleep the time away. Honestly, living permanently within immersion, didn’t seem such a bad thing. Especially if it meant he could never feel like this again. But, this path, this battle against the government, was the right one. And doing the right thing, he knew, wasn’t always easy. It wasn’t convenient. It wasn’t comfortable. It generally fucking sucked at times, if he was being honest with himself, and it made sense why people more often than not took the easy way out, even if it was morally grey or just straight up wrong. But with the world at stake, James would do this. For Rue, he’d do this. He’d be the guy she believed him to be, he’d be the hero, that he needed to be. Or, well, he’d fail, the world would end, the rich people with power would get their way, and the masses would be trapped forever in a virtual world, living out essentially his dream existence, and he’d probably wind-up dead.

Which reminded him, there was one last thing about doing the right thing. The right thing, apparently, wasn’t always fair.