Sadie’s knees hit something hard. In the blink of an eye, blackness replaced the white tear, or maybe she passed out.
It swirled around her preventing her from seeing if she fell up or down or sideways, and a sense of floating provided no sense of direction even though she one hundred percent knelt on something solid.
She gagged and wanted to hurl, but her mouth was dry.
“Hello.” The voice echoed around. A man’s voice, assured to the point of cockiness and soft at the same time. “I’m glad we are finally able to meet in person.”
It took her a second, but she placed the voice.
Ben stepped out of the shadows, and the black faded revealing an entirely different world than the mech suit she’d just been in. “Sort of.”
Light green lines ran back and forth across a sky that blended back and forth between gray and a green so dark it was almost black, giving the appearance of a circuit. In the distance, a tower rose beneath a floating bulk that resembled the bottom of the sky fortress.
Black mist covered the ground as far as she could see concealing whatever sporadically poked up from beneath. When she looked to her right, she jumped as she realized what they were, digital corpses.
A half-decayed giant scorpion lay on its back with its guts stretching out in exobits around it.
“Fascinating, isn’t it?” Ben asked.
“Creepy is what any non-insane person would use.”
Sadie stepped away wanting space between herself and the creature that nearly killed her only a few days prior. Its stinger twitched, and she jumped. But the stinger only detached so it too could digitally decompose.
“Why did you bring me to this… place?” Or was it an accident from what happened at the tear?
Ben cocked his head. “Progress report?”
So not an accident.
“You know I don’t have the key.” She moved her feet around below the mist feeling for a rock or anything she could pick up to throw at him if needed but found nothing. “Especially after your stupid jellyfish rooted through my memories.”
When he smiled wryly, she knew she guessed correctly. He controlled the Glitches, and sent them after her. Which meant he also knew about not Jiyu and Fawkes about his impossible ultimatum.
He tapped the scorpion’s stinger so it finished detaching. It dropped to the ground in an explosion of exobits. “I know because you never left the island, but I had to make sure you didn’t miss any potential clues for me.”
“And?”
“Nothing, unfortunately, so it appears we are both in a pickle.”
She laughed out loud. “A pickle? That’s what you call it? You stole my mom!”
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“And your father stole the key from me.” He inched forward; eyes trained on her. “We both want what is ours returned to us.”
She gulped. She’d held on to a shred of hope until now that Mom has escaped him, and he was bluffing. Better that than thinking she died going through a tear. But the amusement and casualness in his words and movement told her he wasn’t.
“If it's your key, why would you even make it obtainable in the sky fortress?”
“It’s not so simple.”
“Because it’s not your key.” She’d had a moment of doubt about Ben, but a dude standing around in a digital graveyard didn’t exactly scream trustworthy. “BRINK get it every season to prevent that.” She gestured behind her thinking the tear would be there, but there was nothing except the mist stretching out as far as she could see.
“You don’t get it,” he sneered, dropping his polite veneer. “The details are irrelevant. I have your mother to trade. Find the key.”
“Then why did you even ask for a ‘progress report’, you bloated…” She stopped mid-insult as a burst of scorpion exobits flew in her face. Insulting him wouldn’t get answers. “Is this another part of Evarus? A place regs can’t go?”
“The Decay,” he spat through a curled lip.
She whirled to take it all in again, the magnitude and… sadness of it. “Do others know about this place?”
“I think some suspect something like it exists, but only your father knew it was real.”
Sadie spun on him. “My dad? What do you know about him? Where is he?”
He held up his hands in mock surprise. “I know he’s the one who stole the key and took it from the Sky Fortress. After that?” He shrugged and made an explosion with his hands. “Disappeared.”
“You know something. Tell me.”
She tried to stomp up to him, but every time he floated back. Was this place even real? Was it another trick by Ben? A mirage?
“I know the fact the deterioration event has gotten this far is his fault. He found the key on a raid months ago and instead of doing the proper thing, decides to let the world burn. A bit selfish if you ask me.”
Sadie bit her lip. She already knew that from Ravi’s message and still didn’t understand. Why would Dad do that knowing the risks? He wouldn’t let her or Mom become trapped online only to be ripped to shreds as the world collapsed.
“You know you could just hand Mom over? And she could help me find the key.”
Ben snorted. “Four days. That’s all you have left. Bring me the key, and I’ll return all the missing players.”
He snapped his fingers, and the Decay faded around her.
She landed back into her body out of breath from the return… trip? Fall? She couldn’t tell what it was, and cyberspace made less sense by the minute.
People still shouted over the comms, and they were still stuck to the tear with a scythe in their mech’s arm. It seemed like only seconds had passed.
A pirate airship glided into view and fired a cannon at the scythe in their arm. A direct hit. It broke the scythe free and twisted the mech around.
“Fawkes, now!” Edson yelled. “Hit the big red button!”
A volcano-sized plasma blast ripped out of the rear of their mech, and they flew forward. Sadie lost her connection to the controls and tumbled onto the front glass of the mech’s face along with Edson and Jiyu.
The force counteracted the tear and knocked them out of their connection. When the tear clawed at her mind trying to reconnect, it seemed to focus instead on the contents of the plasma blast.
The mech crashed to the ground with parts clattering off and gears whining. As the dust settled, she realized it wasn’t the mech making the whining noise at all.
The mechanical whining came from the tear as it fought off the last of the plasma. Finally, the angry red tendrils retreated within the tear as it stabilized and stopped expanding.
“That was a blast,” Jiyu said, throwing her head back in laughter.
Sadie’s chest heaved as she lay on the floor and stared at the tear through the video feed, glad for any separation between her and Ben. Any doubts she had about Ben’s intentions were now gone. That concerned, noble front he put on back in her home was all bullshit, and whatever role her dad may have had in this happening, she trusted he did it for a reason. Because whatever Ben wanted was possibly worse than Evarus imploding.