SAVE POINT 6
Rosabella
The diner was busier than I remembered it typically being—crowded from the dinner rush. I was tired. I could feel it in the heaviness of my feet, swinging against the tile floor under the table, and the heaviness of my eyelids. We hadn't really thought about where we'd sleep for the night yet, and it felt like there was a giant, ticking clock over our heads with every unsuccessful stop we'd made so far that day. How long were we going to do this—search every hidey hole I could think of for Goran? How long were we going to blindly hope that we caught a glimpse of him in this enormous, rushing city? The red, plastic cushion of the diner booth was peeling in a few places around a tear, and I picked at it anxiously as Dormouse's eyes scanned the laptop screen I could barely see around the milkshake Sparo’d ordered for him.
Was this all just a giant waste of time? Would we ever find Goran? After an afternoon of wandering from place to place, the task was beginning to feel like a needle in a haystack. ...One that'd just led us, again, to the reek of fried food, the chattering, overwhelming conversation of strangers and heavy silence between all of us.
"Six—that makes six places he hasn't been," Mimi announced, somehow optimistically, checking off what appeared to be a list she'd made on a napkin with a pen from the waitress.
"—Out of six million," Dormouse lamented, rolling his eyes.
Unfortunately, the boy had said what everyone else was thinking... His fingertips clacked over the laptop keyboard like rapid gunfire as languid quiet blanketed us again. I chewed on a sagging French fry I’d stolen from Sparo's plate but didn't really taste it. It was true; we'd been all over the city today with little to show for it except no Goran.
No idea of where he was.
No idea if he'd already tried to breach The Game security measures until Dormouse checked it...
"I'm in," the kid announced seriously, his face leaning closer to the screen as his fingers began to type.
And I found myself holding my breath, waiting for Dormouse's answer to one of the too many questions swimming in my head. …Sitting here, cramped with the three others in a corner booth of the bustling, antiquated diner, trying to find a man who didn't want to be found...
There were memories in this diner; if I was back in The Game, MRP would have popped up the second I walked in here. …And, sitting at this table, it was like, if I blurred my eyes a little, I could almost see our shadows there: the shadows of Goran and me. This was the place he used to take me for breakfast after Sunday mass... or on my birthday if I’d pestered him hard enough. We’d usually gotten the booth by the door. They'd looked newer then—the fabric, shiny and not torn. In fact, the whole place had looked newer then—glossy like a freshly-waxed car.
Or, maybe, it'd been my own exuberance.
Because the ice cream came in those thick, glass dishes that you had to cram a long spoon into to get all the way to the bottom.
And the burgers were as big as my face when I was little.
Whenever I’d left here, Goran would say he had to 'roll me out the door'. I smiled a little about it. ...Till I remembered I was daydreaming about a murderer—the man who’d killed my birth parents.
"Rosabella?"
Dormouse's voice.
I started to attention, tucking my hair behind an ear to make it look like I hadn't been completely zoning out, "Oh, sorry?"
"There's nothing yet," the boy informed me, talking around a slurp of milkshake, "No activity on the firewall yet—
"You're sure?" I hated to pester him but—
The kid looked offended, "Of course, I'm sure. I'm only one of the best Coders in The Game..." Of course, Dormouse was one of the best Coders in The Game. He was Level 14, and I’d never met another Coder which meant it must have been a rarer Class.
Wait… Coders in The Game...
My brain started clicking, trailing a yarn of thought like I might finally be onto the ball of it, after all. What if we were doing this wrong—going about finding Goran all wrong? What if we were thinking about this wrong...?
"Dormouse," I demanded, "What does Goran have to do to destroy The Game? I know you said he needs a computer and wi-fi, but tell me the specifics."
"Specifics...now she wants to hear specifics," he groaned. He opened his mouth again to answer, but it looked like it was gonna be a long one. "Well, just like I said, Goran has to hack into The Game Code from outside of it—physically—around the security measures and firewalls and—
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"Wait, how advanced is it?" I asked.
The dark-haired kid balked at me, "What?"
"I mean, is this like algebra or calculus? Difficulty level," I pried. And hope fluttered in my chest like a bird I couldn't seem to pin down at the moment.
"Pretty difficult, that's why I can do it," Dormouse told me, fluffing his chest out a little thanks to the ego boost.
"But a beginning Coder can't? Like an L3 or L5?" I clarified quickly. Oh my gosh, if I was hearing this right...
The kid looked lost, "No, an L5 Coder wouldn't even get past the first few barriers. You’d have to be at least an L12 or specialized in magic ...Where are you going with this?"
My cheeks flushed with excitement. I was onto something. I really thought I was on to something! "Goran sometimes struggled with paying bills online. How would he even be able to do all this?!" I gushed breathlessly.
"Help," Sparo's face lit from across the table—he understood!—"Goran would need help."
"Someone who knows magic and coding..." I prodded.
...And there was only one, crazy-haired and -eyed lady who I could think of who fit that description and had the grimy morals needed to go with it…
A look of disgust and anguish creased Sparo's face as the same thought dawned on him, "Oh, Grand Dragon, don't even say her name—"
"Prickgada!" I slapped both palms face down on the table with my excitement, clattering the plates from our dinner. The Witch! Sparo’s ex-girlfriend who he’d made a trade with to revive my HP! She was L15 if I remembered correctly…
"No, no, no!" Sparo protested openly, throwing a two-year-old fit so that the elderly couple sitting one booth over peered above their spectacles at us...causing a spectacle... But the dragon-non-dragon barely lowered his voice to an insistent hiss, "I am NOT seeing that woman again. I just got free from her; it hasn't even been 24 hours!"
"Sparo, please," I pleaded with him, "It makes sense. Goran's going to need someone who specializes in magic and code, and you have to admit that she's definitely sleezy enough to aide someone like him for the right price..."
The dark-skinned man shook his head at me, disappointed, "Just when I thought I was moving up in the world..."
"Come on, Sparo, help us out," I urged, "You said Prickgada's into trading. Does she have any areas around here she frequents?"
The man looked particularly sour. "Lairs," he spat finally, "she calls them 'lairs', and, yes, she talked about having one on West 49th Street. But that was a long time ago—"
"Thank you, thank you!" I squealed, grabbing for his hand before I realized it.
His eyes looked just as surprised as mine as our skin met. His hands were warm and rough in a way that made me want to run the pads of my fingertips over them. I drew in a sharp breath, quickly grabbing my fingers back but...
It was too late.
Because we’d both felt it—I could tell.
A spark jumping between us—a zap.
Of heat.
I cleared my throat awkwardly.
Luckily Mimi jumped in to save me, "So we have somewhere to start!" I knew I’d liked her.
Distracted, I launched back into the conversation, "I actually want to check out one more place before we go to Prickgada's. We can stay there tonight and, then, find the Sorceress in the morning," I told the group. "There's this church—"
"What'd you say, we're in a lurch?" Dormouse asked around a mouthful of—what was he eating now?!
"Seriously!" I griped, "How are you still hungry?!"
It was a white-frosted donut this time that he was shoving in sticky portions into his piehole. The way the lanky kid had been scarfing down food, he was going to eat Sparo straight out of CM!
Dormouse seemed to read my thoughts, "I got it for free, okay? It must be like freaking free donut day or something because they had them free here too. The coffee shop had them...that McDonalds on the corner had them... It's not my fault! I see something free; I want to eat it..." He flicked a pink sprinkle in my direction across the table. It bounced off one of our plastic, red glasses and...
And my heart skipped a beat—not in a good way.
I froze. And I lifted a finger, pressing it into the sprinkle and lifting it, hanging onto my fingertip, towards my intent gaze. The tiny sprinkles were ribbon-shaped—pink ribbon-shaped for breast cancer awareness.
And there was only one bakery I knew that ordered such unique sprinkles for all their baked goods: Goran's favorite bakery. The one further downtown... Why would they be delivering here unless...?
"Dormouse, don't eat the rest of that," I warned, gesturing to the sweet treat.
The kid put the remainder down on his plate, his face growing ashen and his mouth dropping in uncertainty, "...Is there something...wrong with it?"
"I think so," I admitted.
"These were free?" I questioned the kid, raising an eyebrow, "At every place we've been today?"
He nodded. If that wasn't suspect, I didn't know what was...
I shifted on the plastic seat, sticking to my back, to flag down the waitress. She was a middle-aged woman with a lined face and kind eyes even though she was clearly working the busy shift. Her stringy, pale-blonde hair was pulled back in a messy bun, "You need something, hun?"
"I was just wondering," I started, "—These donuts? You had them free at the front. Do you make them here?"
The waitress squinted at the remains of Dormouse's treat, mushed up and desecrated on the edge of his plate, while the chalky icing still smudged his upper lip—something Mimi was trying to get him to remedy with a quick nudge.
"Oh, no, honey, those aren't ours. Some man stopped by late this morning. Said they were spreading cheer in the neighborhood. He had a bakery apron on. I don't normally let people drop their goods here, but I let it slide. My manager said it was okay and...well, he was cute." She winked at me.
"Describe cute," I sliced into the conversation.
The woman looked a little frazzled by my comment. She patted at her hair. "Oh, hun, you know, cute to me is different than to you probably,” she tittered. “Middle-aged. Slicked back hair. Muscles. Had this tattoo on the side of his face actually—hope he wasn't in a gang," she widened her mascara-lined eyes at me jokingly.
But, suddenly, I knew this wasn't a joke.
None of it.
Not even free donuts.
"Ed," I said grimly under my breath. Ed as in Goran's best friend at the bakery.
"What dear?" the waitress wanted to know, but I'd already turned away.
"Thank you for your help," I quipped with the uneasy end of a smile I could barely muster. When the woman was out of earshot, I leaned in low across the table. "Doesn't it feel like Goran's been one step ahead this entire time—like he knows where we're going and where we've been?"
The group nodded—Dormouse emphatically.
"It's because he does," I said—risking sounding completely paranoid—"He put trackers in the donuts Dormouse has been scarfing down all day."