As it turned out, traveling with a pranking narcissist sucked just as much as she thought. As they traveled through Sticky Plains, an errant gum ball bomb Fawkes set off blasted her sideways into a very sticky taffy bush. When they reached Glitter Dile Lake, they opted to take a boat across to save their boosters and time. It went smoothly until he played with her club, put a hole in their boat, and sunk them and her club. It’d taken nearly an hour to swim out of the lake since their boards didn’t work over water yet.

“Can’t you take anything seriously?” She grabbed the crocodile and tossed it back in the water before it could shoot glitter at her as she trudged to shore. “No wonder the pirates haven’t given you the time of day.”

He scoffed. “The pirates are supposed to be the most fun-loving of all the BRINK guilds. Seems like they’d appreciate my sense of humor.”

I don’t think PirateQueen would appreciate someone damaging one of her ships.” Mom flipped a gasket when she accidentally put her body through a wall. A sunken or nose-diving airship? Sadie shuddered at the thought. Mom was cool about a lot of things but serious damage to property was not one of them.

She turned around to roll her eyes in his face only to find herself staring at the croc she just threw. Fawkes pulled its tail, and pink glitter shot in her face. “I bet she loves glitter though.”

“Have I told you that I hate you?”

“At least twenty times in the last hour.” He stroked the croc’s back. “Come on. You were going to buy a new weapon anyway. What’s the big deal?”

“Lost time,” she snapped. She cut herself off before saying anything else. “And now I have to rely on you if we get attacked, which is even worse.”

He used his foot of height on her to lean on her shoulder. “Ah, so it just comes down to ego. Don’t worry. My mother always taught me to honor women. I will protect your ego and won’t tell anyone when I use my dashing heroics to save you.”

“This is how you honor women?”

“Sadie,” Fawkes said solemnly, and she regretted telling him her name now. “My mother is a great feminist. I would not be here if I didn’t respect and listen to you.”

She stopped and raised her eyebrows at him. Before she could say, “You’re full of it.”, he pulled the crocodile’s tail again. She spat out pink glitter and sank in the water to wash it out.

“See! Even now I pay attention to your needs. I knew you were thirsty and needed a drink of water.”

“I could kill you.”

He nodded in agreement. “Though it would be difficult without your club.” She huffed at him and hurried the rest of the way out of the water. While Fawkes annoyed her, she honestly thought he’d be way worse.

More cracks spread across the sky by the hour as they boarded towards Hicto, and the quest Ben forced on her grew heavier in her mind until she had to remember to breathe.

Her mind flashed back to the scorpions. Was looking for Mom first like looking for items in the dead zone? Seemingly the right option in the moment but nearly fatal. If she went after Mom first, was she potentially endangering hundreds of other lives?

She spent the next several hours in silence as Fawkes chatted about anything under the sun until the mercifully reached Hicto.

Thick fog swirled beneath trees similar to California Redwoods, except bigger, taller, and with literal bright red wood causing an ominous red hue to tint the entire area. They stepped into the fog and lost all sound and all but a few feet of vision. The silence amplified her senses, and she hated the way her heart beat faster when Fawkes leaned in to point out a tree marker. If he wasn’t so irritating, maybe she could relax.

Refocusing, she mapped her plan. Find a sword first over by the weapons merchants while asking around for the Ragarav guy. Sadie flexed her fingers to pull up the map in front of her but realized she’d lost all her markers for the good weapons dealers.

“I know a few,” Fawkes said.

Of course he did. He led the way through the fog preening like a peacock, and Sadie grumbled behind him. She pulled up Pidgeon and found Gate had already created a chat.

Sadie: Do you have markers for weapons merchants?

Gate: Unfortunately that is not in my database

Sadie: 🦊🤮🏃‍♀️

She wasn’t actually going to ditch him. He was still useful, but it didn’t change the fact that she wanted to.

Gate: I currently cannot access the internet as it is likely related to the lack of a logout option. I will continue to search for a solution.

Sadie liked the last text and put her phone away, so she wouldn’t lose Fawkes in the fog. They passed a few stalls that clearly didn’t have any s-tier goods, much less banned weapons. At an armor dealer staffed by a mech raider, a few PIG members questioned the merchant, whose only response was to hit a fart button on his desk every time they spoke.

Sadie suppressed a giggle. You couldn’t identify banned items just by looking at the displayed items unless the item literally wasn’t in the game yet, and pissing off the PIGs wasn’t enough for them to examine the actual inventory. It just scared customers away. Her giggle turned to a scowl. Fawkes still needed to pay for ratting her out and getting her suspended.

They drifted between fogless pockets looking for a weapons merchant with decent wares. Players talked about the Glitch event at nearly every stall they passed speculating about the prizes, or key, or the cracks in the sky. Everyone knew about tears as an end season indicator, but the rest of this was new. Was the event backup in case she fell though? A way to gather more info? Or was it hiding something else?

Maybe Ben wanted something else entirely.

At a promising stall, she examined the stock. It contained mostly heavier melee weapons with a few rune guns specializing in elementals similar to what the girl at the jade egg quest had. For swords, he lacked diversity. She selected his best sword to show as a 3D hologram, a two handed silver broad sword, but not only did it not suit her fighting style, it was entirely overpriced.

“I see we have an eye for swords.” He selected the sword to form, so she could weigh it in her hand. “I’ll drop it to eight thousand loons just for you.”

Sadie turned it over with both hands. Way too heavy and still overpriced for the quality. She shook her head. “Thanks but I’m looking for something lighter and minimum S tier.” S tier would still break unlike banned items, but it would at least take a while and prevent her from taking this kind of detour again. She placed the sword back into the 3D hologram.

As she turned to walk away, the merchant whispered, “Do you have the loons to spend for such an item?” His eyes glinted at the prospect.

“I’ve got plenty.” She intended to use all her loons for a good sword if necessary, but even then she didn’t have enough for a banned sword. A little lie didn’t hurt anyone.

The fog flashed from dull to bright red for a fraction of a second, and the merchant’s face changed from keen interest to stern businessman in an instant. He quickly pulled the broadsword back up. “Best I can do is six thousand. Take it or leave it.”

A man appeared in the corner of her vision, whoever set off the alarm system. She kept her eyes on the merchant, playing along. “That’s robbery. I’m not paying that.”

The merchant made a show of rubbing his beard. “Maybeeee for a good customer….”

The man in the corner of her vision moved out as quickly as he’d moved in.

After a few seconds the merchant relaxed. “PIGs,” he scoffed. “Always out to ruin an honest businessman.”

“You call your prices honest?” Fawkes asked.

The merchant narrowed his eyes. “I don’t like you. Stay there.” He pointed his finger at Sadie. “And you with me.”

Fawkes tried to protest, but Sadie shut him down. “I’ll be back out in a sec.” She followed the merchant into the fog and, after a few feet, he stopped in front of a redwood with multiple runes etched into the side. He tapped them in a flurry, and a section of redwood slid to the side revealing a dimly lit stairway descending into the caves hidden underneath. He nodded for her to follow, and they descended.

“I have a few banned weapons at the moment,” he said as they entered the small cave, barely the size of a living room. A few knocked stone later, and the wall shifted to reveal the weapons.

“You with BRINK?” Sadie asked.

“Hardly.” He laughed as if the thought itself was ridiculous. “I have a friend in the Sanzhu crew who gives me a deal on a few weapons from every raid.”

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“Lucky you.” She wished she knew someone in the pirates to contact or the raiders to get in touch with Vidar. There were only two swords in his inventory, a swift cutlass and flaming great sword. Both in-game items too, so they wouldn’t be suspicious like the newer banned weapons.

She picked the cutlass and moved through basic footwork. She felt clunky and out of practice without the neural gear helping to guide her.

“That sword,” the merchant said, “not only has increased speed but can learn air elemental magic to increase the speed of your footwork and agility to superhuman levels.”

“How much?”

The merchant spread his hands and shrugged. “Three hundred thousand.”

Ouch. No way she could pay that. Even with all the grinding she did over the summer, that price would dent her savings.

“You do have the funds?”

“I have them.” On an account with an avatar and base leagues away. “That’s not the problem.”

“I assure you this is a first-class weapon.”

“I was actually wondering if you know a merchant that goes by Ragarav?” With the privacy of the cave, it was the perfect time to get some more info.

The merchant nodded. “Yeah, Ravi. Does business mostly in rune mods for clothing. Looking for something?”

“A friend of mine got some good gear from him. Was looking to upgrade.”

The merchant pulled up his map and swiped a digital marker her way. Sadie thanked him and continued to play with the sword in her hand.

“What do you think of it?”

She twirled it in her hand. It was balanced perfectly, and she could feel it cutting through the air. Honestly, three hundred thousand wasn’t far off a fair value. She brought the hilt to eye level to study the details. The blue and gold carvings reminded her of clouds and air currents.

The merchant pursed his lips. “I can drop the price by five, but I can’t bargain like I did upstairs.”

She traced the sword’s edge with her finger. It practically sung for her. It almost felt like a betrayal to her poison sword to want this one so bad. But she couldn’t afford it. Unless.

A boom sounded upstairs. They both spun as shouts and commotion traveled down the stairs. “Stay here,” the merchant whispered, and he left her alone.

She couldn’t afford it, but… she could steal it. And she doubted banned items had the same game theft protections of other items.

Loan. Loan is a better word.

Pulling up his payment system, she transferred ten thousand loons and left a note. “Down payment for the sword. I’ll come back with the rest plus interest.”

It crossed her mind to not pay him back at all, but she’d feel guilty. It’d also be a great way to ruin a pro career and her reputation before it even began. Either she’d grab the funds from her old avatar or better yet guilt trip her PirateQueen mother into paying as compensation for saving her life.

Sadie raced up the stairs bracing for the theft alarm to sound, but it didn’t. As soon as she left the cave, a notification came through on her phone adding the sword to her equipment. The shouts increased ten-fold when she emerged from the cave. Her phone pinged; Fawkes sent her a marker. Perfect. Red lights flickered on and off everywhere, and she caught glimpses of a few PIGs running through the fog as she made her way to Fawkes.

Her arm jerked to the left. She yelped as she was pulled behind a tree. “Miss me?”

She pushed Fawkes in the shoulder. “Got a weapon to cut you through if you try anything like that again.”

Fawkes smirked. “How much you’d pay?”

“Ten k.” He raised an eyebrow. “I’m going to pay the rest back.”

He shook his head. “Honestly. I go through all that trouble to create a diversion and you don’t just steal it?”

“I knew you had something to do with it.” He held his hands up innocently, and she rolled her eyes, though thanked him silently. “I got Ragarav’s location. Let’s go.” She guided them through the chaos he created until they reached the general location.

Her phone buzzed, and she opened Pidgeon.

Gate: Now that you have a weapon, I suggest you separate from Fawkes posthaste.

Sadie glanced at Fawkes out of the corner of her eye to make sure he wasn’t watching, but he was busy blowing bubbles into the fog. Where did he even get bubbles? Still, that didn’t mean he wasn’t paying attention.

Sadie: If I get attacked looking into this, two is better than one, right?

Gate: It depends on who is the two and who is the one.

Sadie frowned. If Fawkes wanted to hurt her, he’d already had plenty of opportunities. Maybe he really did just want to join a pirate crew, but then why not just ask? He said he had a connection to another pirate. Why ask her for help when he’d had over a month to meet with other new brink players?

Unless there was a reason he couldn’t. What he if made his way to Evarus without an invite like her?

Sadie: Do you know if he has the gate app, like you?

Gate: he does not

Sadie: But every brink player does?

Gate: correct

That didn’t make sense. He had to get here like she did.

Sadie: then how did he get here?

Gate: I do not know. His information is hidden from me

Well that explained why Gate didn’t trust him. But if her phone was experiencing issues, there’s no reason his wasn’t too.

Sadie: I’ll blow him off as soon as it makes sense

Gate: 🙄

Sadie rolled her own eyes. It sure learned emojis fast for a program. Just as fast as she was growing used to traveling with Fawkes. He did help her get a good weapon and was being genuinely helpful in his own annoying way.

They walked around looking for Ragarav’s, Ravi’s, tent. While searching, he blew a big bubble and balanced it on his nose and then looked at her to make sure she saw. Before she could tell him to cut it out, if only to avoid laughing at him, he ran into a tree.

He rubbed his nose and pointed at the markings on the tree. “Found it.” They walked around to find the tent but instead found the sliding bark door already open on the other side of the tree and hanging off one hinge. Not a great sign.

“Think anyone is even here?” Fawkes asked.

“Not likely.” Which meant Ravi really was missing. Not just missing. If this was a break-in, someone targeted him. From what Vidar said, this was recent, and they still hadn’t confirmed him missing this afternoon. Yesterday? She wasn’t sure of the time.

She pulled the door open and entered an elevator. Fawkes squeezed in beside her so close they nearly touched, and she suddenly found a piece of bark stuck in the elevator very interesting as they descended.

Unlike the door, the shop inside the cave lay virtually untouched. A green geometrical rug lay across the floor, and wares hung from the cave walls. They browsed the inventory containing dozens of valuable rune-powered clothing and unattached weapons mods. He also had plenty of rare monster-dropped items only Mage Outlaws somehow seemed to get.

“Odd. Someone broke in and didn’t take anything,” Fawkes said.

“Maybe they weren’t after things.” Sadie scanned the room more carefully. There had to be something.

“So this guy pissed off the wrong people?” He turned a boot halfway through being modded over in his hand. “Why would the pirates tell you to come here?”

Shoot. “I was supposed to pick something up.” She gestured around. “But it doesn’t look like that’s happening.”

A glow caught her eye in a back corner of the cave. An open menu floated in the air. She thanked her luck and searched through it. Nothing out of the ordinary in the inventory or sales logs. She pulled up messages to see if Ravi had any communication with her parents or Vidar.

She searched ‘PirateQueen’ and jackpot. Vidar was strictly business chats. She searched PittPeng and no matches. Navigating back to PirateQueen, they communicated fairly regularly in general but specifically about searching for her dad and theories about what happened.

Sadie’s breath quickened. On one hand, Dad really didn’t leave them. Something really did happen to him. But heat pulsed underneath her skin equivalent to Fawkes hitting her with a dozen pranks at once. Why couldn’t Mom just tell her? Be honest? She wasn’t some little kid who couldn’t handle the truth. Why let her think Dad abandoned them?

“Anything on Ravi?” Fawkes asked as he inspected the rest of the room.

“No, not yet.” She wasn’t ready to explain anything about her dad and mom yet.

Skimming through, they boiled down likely explanations about her dad to two possibilities. Either he was the first taken in the string of recent disappearances of Brink players from within Evarus, or he was trapped somewhere inside the Sky Fortress. Neither considered the possibility he was dead, or were just too afraid to mention it.

Ravi mentioned a message from her dad right before he disappeared. She scrolled back to his old convos.

PittPeng: The key is secured. I’ve sent it for safe keeping, but we can’t turn the valve yet. I’ll explain more in person.

A string of messages followed from Ravi asking Dad to call him. He never responded.

So Dad did have the key. Took it. But what was the valve? Why couldn’t he turn it, and what did he need to explain in person?

They needed to find Ravi, or find out what happened to him. He could give her some answers. An exclamation point blinked over the surveillance archive. Sadie selected it, hoping it’d contain a clue, and a video played.

Ravi sat at his workbench in sweats and mussed hair working on a mod. A boom blasted from above, and Ravi jumped to action grabbing the shield he’d been working on.

“Who’s there?” he asked.

A cloaked figure descended the stairs. “You had to have been expecting me.”

“I don’t know who you are, mate, so that’s a no.”

“That hurts, though I suppose this body is different.” The cloaked man casually perused the wares on the wall. “Tell me where the key is.”

“Piss off.”

The cloaked man touched a shadow on the wall and flickered out of existence. A second later, an invisible force punched Ravi in the face, and the cloaked man reappeared in the same spot.

“The deterioration event will begin soon, and the key must be returned.”

“It’s too soon. We should have at least another few months!”

“The deterioration event will begin soon.” The cloaked man held up his fist, disappeared and punched Ravi in the face again. “Where is Edward? Where is the key?”

Ravi spat spewing exobits up into the air. “Even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you.”

“You’ll tell me more than you think.”

The cloaked man snapped his fingers, and a bright light burst through the room spinning and tumbling in flashing colors. It collapsed in on itself in a scream of white into a tear. The cloaked figure shot something from beneath his cloak. Ravi yelled at the pain and then froze, yell still echoing, hand outstretched, and dispersed into bits of data suspended in air for a moment before the tear sucked him in.

The video ended.

“Oh my god,” Sadie said, barely above a whisper. That cloaked man completely ripped apart his body. Did he do the same to her dad? Her mom? Were they even still alive?

No, they had to be. She couldn’t believe anything else. Because if Ravi was dead, so were her parents.

At least she confirmed Ravi did know something. Taken because of something her parents did. Did Dad know what the key did when he took it? That it was needed to prevent this deterioration event? He couldn’t have. Dad wouldn’t purposefully put people in danger or cause Evarus to collapse.

But Ravi’s voice. It sounded familiar. It scratched at her memory like when you’re running in a dream and never quite get to your destination.

Before she could finish processing the video, a girl’s voice thundered from behind them. “What did you do?”

They whirled. The girl from the jade egg quest stepped into the cavern, radiating fury. She drew her pistols and attacked.