What was she supposed to do with five minutes? There was too much to ask.
“Do you have any idea where people were taken too?” Jiyu thankfully asked to start them off.
Vidar shook his head no. “We’ve had search parties all over Evarus. Nothing. We thought they might have been taken in the real world, but based on what you just said and that video, we were wrong. They’re in cyberspace somewhere, but we can’t find them here either. This Decay is the first lead we’ve had in weeks.”
She hadn’t planned on Vidar knowing less than her. “Okay,” Sadie said, “What about the key? Do you know where that might be?” If she couldn’t find Mom, they could at least redirect back to finding the key and trade it for her and the other missing people.
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Vidar shook his head and settled on a piece of rubble. “How much do you know about the key and its purpose?”
“Only what they told me.” She gestured to Jiyu and Fawkes. “It generates in the Sky Fortress every season, and BRINK use it to stop the deterioration event.”
Vidar nodded. “I’m sure you’ve put together by now the deterioration event name is very literal. It and the Sky Fortress are a counter-response to the game of Evarus existing as far as we can tell. Though you can see the Sky Fortress in the game, it rejects any game assets from entering the dungeons. Basically clamps down and spits you back out.”
“What’s that have to do with anything?” Jiyu asked, checking the time on her phone.
“Give me a second. I’m getting there. It not only rejects the game but collects its expended energy, the energy it has to use trying to maintain one world, the game Evarus Falls, on top of the real cyber world of Evarus. Think of the game like a computer overheating, and the Sky Fortress is the fan cooling it off. Except that only works for so long. The energy builds and builds until Evarus is full to bursting and ready to pop. When the energy becomes too much, the Sky Fortress generates the null key within its walls to unleash that pressure from a valve at the top of the fortress. Until now, we’ve always managed to unleash the pressure before Evarus began its deterioration event.”
“Wait,” Edson said, “So cyberspace itself created the Sky Fortress and this key? Not Ben or Evergames?”
Vidar nodded, and it confirmed what she accused Ben of in the Decay.
“I don’t get it,” Jiyu said, “Why would cyberspace create all of that and make so many steps to unleash the built-up energy? It’s almost like cyberspace wants Evarus to implode on itself.”
“Cyberspace can’t want anything,” Edson said. “Can it?”
“I think it’s best not to think of cyberspace as analogous to Earth,” Vidar said. “We’re not sure, but some theorize cyberspace is alive in a way.”
“Okay, but—” Edson tapped Gus to his chin. “Where does the pressure go? To the Decay or somewhere else? Is Evarus like a star shooting off solar energy into empty space? Or could cyberspace be like a massive tree system where it's not thinking in the way people do but reacting to stimuli to protect all the trees? And if that’s the case, what are the other trees?” He took out his phone and opened his notes app. “And if so—”
“Okay, so it’s living and breathing or whatever,” Jiyu said. “And we need the null key to stop the bubble from popping.”
He had enough to fill in some of the blanks, but even BRINK hadn’t known about the Decay. A few days ago she never imagined Evarus being anything more than her ticket out of college and to a better life. Instead, it was a virtual world with wants and needs that reacted to the people within it. She supposed that wasn’t so different from Earth in a way, only cyberspace seemed more proactive instead of reactive.
“Exactly. There are other things too. For example, the Endless Sea isn’t so endless. There’s no invisible wall out there creating a boundary, but if you go far enough, the sea fights back, from the clouds to the winds, everything. It becomes hostile and refuses to let you venture farther.”
“Do you think there’s more out there?” Sadie rose on her tiptoes. “Like other islands?” All the annoyance she felt at Vidar dissipated at this new theory of the world as she imagined venturing into uncharted waters. Her muscles tensed. Her excitement at the very idea of it is probably why cyberspace blocked access. If players caused this much damage on one island, what would happen if regs and travelers alike were unleashed on all of cyberspace?
“Sorry, I can’t answer most of those questions because we don’t have all the answers, but it’s good you're asking. These questions are why BRINK exists. It’s not about the money and fame. Those are only tools and means to an end. We want to protect Evarus and keep it from imploding, but we also want to know more about cyberspace itself.”
Jiyu scrunched her face. “Then why weren’t me and Edson told this?”
“We don’t tell it to initiates.” He looked towards the tear in a mix of concern and wonder and stuck his hands in his pocket. “Not usually. It’s already a lot just finding out you can travel to cyberspace at all, and we’re wary of Ben and Evergames sending spies. Instead, we let mentors tell initiates as they see fit. You three already found out a lot of this information yourselves and told Edson, so there didn’t seem to be a point holding it back anymore.”
Jiyu groaned. “Okay, okay. Get back to the key.”
Sadie found it fascinating but agreed with her. He only gave them five minutes before he stalked off like a giant man baby again.
“Right, what we do know about the null key is it can’t be taken out of cyberspace. We tried and it just regenerated in a new spot in the Sky Fortress. If Ed tried to take it out of cyberspace, it's there. If not, then he hid it somewhere within Evarus, and it’ll be much harder to find if that’s true.”
So back to square one. Ben believed her dad hid it somewhere, and she should assume the same. It’s not like they had the skills and team size to take on the Sky Fortress anyway.
“Has Ben ever done anything like this before?” Sadie asked. Maybe something else he’d done could give clues.
“No, never.” Vidar looked irritated. “He’s never interacted with Evarus directly whatsoever other than updating the game, like the recent Glitches event and game announcements. It’s always been done through other people at Evergames who don’t have the Gate app.”
“And paying the PIGs,” Fawkes said.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
“True,” Vidar admitted, “but they are still regs regulating regs. They can’t do anything about us.”
“Why don’t people at Evergames have the Gate app?” Edson asked. “Ben’s here, so he’s not a reg.”
“Because we limit access to ourselves. Adriana Mendez created the Gate app and organized Brink. The four guilds followed after to divvy responsibilities, but we’re all under Brink.” Vidar leaned back on the rock he sat on and looked at the tear. “We don’t know how Ben first got to this world or created Evarus Falls’ link to it, but we assume he has something similar. For obvious reasons, we want to limit how many people are coming to Evarus and who those people are.”
“So Ben could release something like the Gate app in the future and cause even more damage?” Jiyu asked. She gestured at the tear domineering over them. “Fucking son of a bitch.”
Sadie raised her brows at Jiyu surprised that Korean had a phrase that equated to exactly her sentiment and what she wanted to call Ben. What did people do in online gaming before real time translators? Learn dozens of languages just to interact with others? Jiyu didn’t notice her, too focused on Vidar.
“Theoretically. My opinion? I think he’s selfish and doesn’t even like us being here, like he owns the place. He has a lot more control through the video game, so Evergames won’t do that.”
“What are we supposed to do then?” Sadie asked. “We don’t know where the people or the key are. Even if they were in the Decay, we don’t have any idea how to get there.”
“You lot will do nothing.” Vidar stood taller and stared at each of them to emphasize his point. “We already have people looking for those missing and the key. It’s best now that you sit aside and let us handle it.”
“Are you joking? You wouldn’t even know about that cloaked guy stealing people or the Decay if it wasn’t for us,” Jiyu said, nearly yelling.
Vidar shushed her. “Don’t shout it from the rooftops. You want to cause a panic?”
“You guys not telling people everything got a bunch of people trapped in cyberspace in the first place,” Jiyu retorted.
Sadie’s skin burned hot, and she clenched her fist to keep from throwing anything else at Vidar. It wasn’t just him and his attitude though. It was Mom’s secrecy. It was every not seeming to care like they did. It was herself.
All this time she had been hurting something she loved. Once she rescued Mom’s butt, they needed to have a serious conversation.
Why couldn’t people just trust their friends and family from the start? If Mom told her about cyberspace, maybe she could have helped find Dad or prevented her from being kidnapped. If the Brink leaders told everyone the key might be missing, they all could have searched for it.
Secrets only screwed everyone over.
“What happens to everyone if you fail? What then?”
Vidar’s eyes softened for a moment. “I don’t know.”
To his credit, he sounded remorseful and conflicted. Could she blame him too much when she essentially made the same choice? Maybe they all needed to be a little more honest and let people make their own decisions.
“What I think though,” Vidar continued, “Is that Ben wants us distracted. He wants this deterioration event to proceed while also wanting the key. Rachel was the last taken right after Ravi, so I assume he learned something that leads him to believe Sadie here can find it.”
“So why tell me to sit on the sidelines?” She didn’t get Vidar, or Ben for that matter. Why would he want Evarus to be torn apart, his game destroyed? Or did he want to stop the deterioration too, and he didn’t trust Brink to do so?
“Because that’s what he wants, and we don’t need to play into his hand anymore than we have already. For your safety and others.”
“That won’t matter if we all get chewed up into little exobits,” Fawkes said.
Vidar sat on a chunk of blown colosseum seat. “I promise you we are doing everything in our power to stop this and find the missing people. Is there anything else you can think of that might be helpful?”
Sadie shook her head no. “Well, maybe one thing. Every year on my birthday, Dad sent me a loot box in-game to open for fun. He sent it early this year, and I never opened it because... because I was mad at him.”
It felt good to admit that out loud. Both her parents acted like jerks recently, did things without telling her changing their lives but hers too. Only she didn’t get input. She knew now there was other stuff going on now, but they could have just been honest with her instead of shredding her life to bits while leaving her in the dark.
“We’ll send someone to have a look and see if there’s anything to it, just in case.”
Sadie shared her last known avatar location with Vidar.
“I’ll let you know what I find off your avatar.”
“What about my Dad?” Sadie tried not to let the desperation to know anything about her parents come through her voice. “Do you have any leads on him?”
“Sorry, kid. I don’t know much. His crew cleared floor thirty-three first this season. He tried to push a floor further alone and never came back. That was about a month before the other disappearances started. With that time difference, we’re not sure if they’re connected.”
“Do you think he found the key on the next floor?”
“What about that cloaked guy who took Ravi?” Jiyu asked.
“It’s hard to say too much right now without having others look over the video, but I have no idea who that guy was. He could have used a spell of some sort to mimic the looks of a tear.”
Sadie seethed. She wasted days trying to reach Vidar hoping he could help her find Mom or the key, but all she got was the end of the world in exchange. The stuff they found out was cool, but it didn’t help them locate the key or the missing people. He was just as in the dark as them.
Edson checked his watch. “One last thing, if the pressure isn’t released, what happens to all the regs logged in?”
“They’ll be fine. Logged off, I think, and Ben’s message supports that. But us? If the pressure isn’t released, the world will continue to tear until it folds in on itself and everything in it. I’m assuming the outcome won’t be super great.” He stood and dusted himself off. “Guess it wasn’t the worst thing to hear you kids out. I’m serious about staying put.” He pat Edson’s shoulder and raised an eyebrow at the rest. “We’ll be moving others to a safer location in an hour if you want to join them in the garage.”
As Vidar walked away, Fawkes turned to them. “Well now what?”
“You heard him. The key and missing people are nowhere to be found in Evarus but are in cyberspace.”
Edson paced and wrung his hands. “Ohhhh, no. I see where you’re going with that. You heard Vidar. You should stay with us and let them figure it out.”
“Because they’ve figured out soooo much by themselves already.” Jiyu pat Edson’s shoulder mimicking Vidar. “You stay here and leave it to us.”
“I can’t just ignore you guys trying to leave.”
“Trying to leave where?” Fawkes asked.
“The Decay,” the other three said in unison.
“And we don’t think that it’s a trap?” Fawkes said. “Kinda seems like Ben is luring you into a trap.”
“Yeah, probs,” Sadie said.
“You don’t even know how to get there,” Edson moaned. “Seriously, don’t do this.”
“Who said you had to come?” Jiyu said.
“My friend is missing too. If you have a lead, I’m coming, but not on some wild goose chase.”
“Oh, I have a theory,” Sadie explained her thoughts. “So want to come? It’ll be dangerous.”
“You know it,” Jiyu said. “Don’t worry, Edson, we won’t blame you needing to study for chickening out.”
“Alright, let’s do this,” Fawkes said. “But how are we getting out of here?”
Edson sighed and coughed. “Seeing as I am officially no longer your jailer, maybe I can help with that. Studying seems a bit pointless if the end of the world is coming anyway.”
Fawkes threw his arm around him. “Glad to have you aboard. We needed some more testosterone in the crew.”
Jiyu rolled her eyes. “Why exactly should we let you in? Don’t you have directions to follow or something?”
“My directions were to stay put, so I will stay put on newly acquired raider property. Say an airship?”
Sadie grinned wolfishly. “You’re in. Let’s go get our airship back.”
But as they sprinted—more like snuck—into action, Sadie ran the plan over in her mind. If she found the key and used it to trade for her mom and the missing people, would Ben even use it to stop the deterioration event? Because if he didn’t, it’d harm not only all the travelers stuck in cyberspace and the inhabitants of Evarus, but cyberspace itself.