Chapter 112: Homebound

A dead city for a dead player.

If offered a kind of symmetry, so of course, my stupid monkey brain instantly latched onto it as correct. See a pattern, believe it’s significant. That’s how human beings work. ARGs play on that mindset, so you know damn well it’s my instinct.

I couldn’t afford to cave to it.

“I’ll be honest,” I said. “If Matt didn’t say he’d dropped Allen’s HP to zero, I might have actually considered the possibility of Third Eye creating undead. We know the game can do a lot of insane things. We also know almost everything it does shuts off when your HP run out.”

“No!” Jan banged her fist on the table. Another cough wracked her body before she could keep speaking.

“Quit it, Jan,” Allen said. “It’s none of their business, and you gotta be more careful.”

She wiped spittle from her mouth. “Is! Am.”

I didn’t believe the latter, at least. Her cough seemed to grow worse the longer the conversation dragged on, the more agitated she got. I couldn’t imagine the freezing environment outside did her any favors, either.

Why didn’t her HP?

Because she didn’t have any.

I’d wondered why Allen had bothered to abduct a “mediocre” player. Or, on the other hand, why another strong player couldn’t tip a team fight in his favor if she had his back. Now it seemed obvious. She couldn’t help him in Third Eye because she wasn’t a player at all. She supported him against the other captives because he’d never abducted her in the first place.

She’d been with him from the start, and he must have brought her to the cabin when they fled whatever had happened to them.

I felt like an idiot for not seeing it before, and like an asshole for not knowing what to do about it now.

Lena did. She swung her leg over her chair and stood. She took a step towards Jan.

Jan’s eyes snapped up, her glare almost as venomous as when we’d talked about Omar.

Lena bore up beneath it. She swept around the table and offered her hand.

Jan slapped it away. “Don’t you pity me.”

“Just trying to help,” Lena said softly.

“I’m.” Jan gritted her teeth. “Fine.”

Which would’ve sounded more plausible if she hadn’t coughed again. It was hard to tell, because her gloves were red, but I thought I saw blood in with the spittle she wiped away.

Allen’s fists clenched.

“We all know you’re not going to convince her, Allen,” Matt said. His voice sounded gentler than I’d ever heard it. “Isn’t it safer for you to just tell us?”

“Fine.” Allen rose. His mask focused on Jan for a moment, then tilted up to Lena for long enough her shoulders began to tense.

Then he turned his back on all of us and faced the wall.

“I’m not dead,” he said, as if that explained anything. He hesitated a long time before adding, “This wasn’t supposed to be my account.”

Lena glanced back at me. I shook my head.

We could hand our phones off to other people and they could open up Third Eye. They could browse its menus, look through its filter – hell, they didn’t even need the official app for that, and I wondered if we should at least provide Jan with Zhizhi’s camera software.

They could even tap the menus and cause an object to be conjured. But the object would appear in front of the actual, registered player, not the person they’d loaned their phone to.

The player was the one with HP, the one whose MP pool got depleted.

Considering what we’d seen Allen do as Mask, he sure as hell had access to Third Eye.

Jan reached out and nudged his side.

“It’s my dad’s,” he said. “He died.”

Were Third Eye accounts inheritable?

I realized otherwise when Allen added, “Five years ago.”

Shortly after Third Eye’s crowdfunding campaign.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Why?” he asked. “You kill him?”

My shoulders slumped.

“Signing up for this game he backed was supposed to get me ‘closer’ to him.” Allen’s voice changer crackled with static laughter. “Almost did.”

Jan flinched. “Not funny.”

“Nope.” He didn’t say anything else.

In the silence, I sank back in my chair. When Lena realized Jan wasn’t going to change her mind and reach out for a hug or something, she slunk back and joined me. I took her hand when she offered it, but I was lost in my thoughts.

From Jan’s reaction and the fact she had already known about how Allen got Third Eye, I had to assume they were siblings. I’d previously pegged her for his girlfriend. A family relationship, on the other hand, explained why she didn’t seem to give a shit when he obsessed over what size parka to steal for the internet-famous girl he wanted to kidnap.

And the Realm? A dead city for a dead player. It would be pretty screwed up of the devs, in my opinion, but perhaps not the worst thing we’d seen them do.

“Well, Cameron, Lena?” Matt asked. “You’re the experts.”

I spread my hands. “Whoa, hold up. I just said we knew some things we hadn’t shared with the public yet, or maybe even with all of the wiki team.”

“Don’t tell us what you know, then,” he said. “Tell us what you think.”

I thought a tangled mess of wishes and fears. I thought people shouldn’t trust us with their lives.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

“I think,” Lena said, “it makes more sense than the future being set somehow, and the devs knowing it, and them deciding that for just this one specific dude’s Realm, they’re going to pull from that instead of the past.”

I started to nod along.

Matt raised an eyebrow. “Your sample size is what, nine Realms? Very Norse, but not very scientific.”

“Twelve, now, counting Allen’s,” I said. The others must have been added to the wiki since the last chance he’d gotten to peruse it. “It’s not much of a difference, though. What more do you want, Matt? All we can tell you is what we’ve seen.”

“You’ve seen Third Eye mess with time before.” Matt had been on the support team for our expedition to the construction site. Allen’s Realm wasn’t actually his first encounter with one of the creatures. “You’ve seen monsters attack people. I suspect, since you get more out of conversations with AlephLambda than most of us, you’ve been told the devs expect ‘PVE content’ to expand after the end of the beta.”

It didn’t surprise me that Matt had continued to message Albie. He was probably one of the best people around at translating her odd, pablum, game design jargon into something that reflected the truth of Third Eye.

It didn’t exactly put my mind at ease, though.

I looked down the table. “Did you try to contact the devs, Allen? Jan?”

“No help,” Jan said.

Allen punched the wall. “Just a load of chatbot bullshit.”

I felt weirdly relieved. The devs might still have set things up to shape him into Mask, but at least they hadn’t come out and said so.

“What’s your point, Matt?” Lena asked. “You buy this time travel crap?”

“Not especially,” he said. “I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if things get worse rather than better, though.”

Lena crossed her arms over the back of her chair. “So you’re just gonna hide out here in the middle of nowhere and wait for it to all blow over? Screw everybody else?”

He scowled. “I’m going to study the game, get better at it, and figure out as best I can what the devs want and what they’re capable of. And in case you’ve forgotten, it’s not like I chose to ‘hide out here!’”

Lena glared. “You sure as hell aren’t raring to leave!”

“Shut up!” Allen’s voice rose so loud that some got past the soundproofing of his voice changer and left him with a weird echo. “Shut up, shut up, shut up! It doesn’t. Fucking. Matter!”

Lena and Matt had bent further and further over the table as they argued. Now they shrank back from it.

Just in time for Allen to smash his fist into the surface. From his hiss, I guessed he would’ve broken his hand if not for his HP. “I don’t give a shit what you believe. Did you forget? I didn’t give you a damn invitation.”

Matt folded his arms. “There is also that, yes.”

“Do you actually want to stay here, Matt?” I asked.

“Don’t ask him,” Allen shouted. “It’s not his decision! I put up with your crap for a while, but we’re done here.”

I glanced at him. “I’m afraid we can’t be.”

His neck cricked. “What do you mean?”

“Lena and I came to rescue our friends,” I said. I panned my gaze over the table. “I hope all of you will leave, but that’s not our call. It’s different with Gerry, and even if only because absence makes the heart grow fonder, Matt.”

“Which I appreciate,” Matt said. “I wish you’d worked a little harder on your plan so you could have presented a viable alternative.”

Gerry hunched on his chair, making himself as small as his big frame allowed. “Yeah. It’s cool you tried to come for us, but basically, you just got yourselves stuck, too. Even if we wanted to go back – which, I mean, I guess, you for sure gave us something else to think about –”

“Don’t,” Allen said. “What’s the point?”

I ignored him. “Thing is, you guys aren’t the only friends we have to save.”

Gerry peeked over his crossed arms.

Matt frowned. “Ah hell. Erin?”

I nodded. “She used your login to present our scouting expedition as a school trip, run by you. Which bought us a couple weeks, tops. If you and Gerry aren’t around by the time you’re supposed to be back in Denver, the cops are going to start poking around.”

“Cops ain’t shit,” Allen said. “Don’t you get how much bigger this is? When we get out of ‘beta’ in four months, if the admin’s still out there, she’s probably dead anyway.”

“Even if you’re right, that’s her last four months spent rotting in a jail cell.” I shook my head. “Or years, if we don’t unquestioningly accept an assumption you made when you were panicking because reality was falling apart around you.”

Allen went for his phone.

Iron sizzled against Stone inches from my face, invisible with my phone tucked into my coat but loud enough to hear.

I could tell the Materials just from the sound they made. Interesting.

“Thanks, Lena,” I said.

She gave me a thumbs up.

With Allen’s object still grinding against the shield she’d conjured, I turned back to Matt.

I either wasn’t acting, or was doing such a good job I’d fooled myself. My calm amazed me. I observed it as if from a distance, coldly, dispassionately.

It was simple, I decided. The lovely assistant had to trust the magician unreservedly.

How could I not? She was magnificent.

“You have to go back, Matt,” I said, like the interruption had never happened.

Third Eye objects clashed behind me.

I ignored them.

Sweat beaded on Matt’s forehead. His eyes kept shifting first to Allen, then to Lena. Every other face I saw remained fixed on their invisible battle.

“Shouldn’t you –” he began.

“Nah.” I waved it off. “Look. If you really believe things are going to get so much worse that you want to flee civilization, this is a pretty good place to hide. I’m not saying you can’t come back here! That goes for you too, Gerry.”

Two pairs of wide eyes dragged back to me.

“You guys going back long enough to make some excuses so Erin isn’t the top suspect in your missing persons cases? And, yeah, so Lena and I aren’t suspects numero dos and tres? I’m afraid that part is nonnegotiable.” I reached across the table – past the feeling of heat and pressure where blazing Iron met reinforced Stone – and offered my fist to Matt. “I want you guys to come home. But I need you to come send some emails.”

Matt eyed the clash happening inches from my outstretched fist, but after a moment, he met my gaze. “I think Allen might be right about the future, Cameron. I might even be willing to bet my ass on it.”

I raised an eyebrow.

He smiled. “But I’m not willing to bet my student’s.”

He bumped my fist.

When I shifted it, Gerry uncoiled enough to do the same.

“That’s not your choice,” Allen snarled. “You can fight me if you want, but you’re not getting out of here! The only person who gets to decide where you go is me.”

“Wrong,” I said.

I didn’t need to see his face to know it would be contorted with rage. His shoulders shook, more visible when his cloak was just a scrap of inert cloth and not a billowing, shadowy Daimon.

For a second I let myself feel smug, watching his tantrum and, far better, watching Lena render it irrelevant.

Jan sat beside him, though, and she didn’t wear a mask. She had her head in her hands. Her shoulders shook, too, with angry tears.

The bravado leached out of me. Spent, I collapsed into my chair.

“That’s right,” Allen said. I could tell he didn’t understand my reaction.

He flicked his fingers to the side and dismissed his conjured object. It clattered atop the table. The wood discolored where one edge of the heated Iron touched it; if it had been fully aligned, would it have been like pressing a woodburner to it, or a blowtorch?

I didn’t have to ask if it would have taken the rest of my HP, had it hit.

Nor did I worry about it for a second. Lena had my back.

She patted my shoulder. Her fingers never uncurled, though. Her object remained selected, active.

“You get it now?” Allen asked. “What? You gonna wander around in the wilderness for weeks?”

Talking to him sounded exhausting. Knowing what I did now, I couldn’t even enjoy my victory.

But, as much for his and his sister’s sake as for ours, I still had to win.

I rubbed my eyes.

I took my phone from my pocket and tapped the screen. Everyone watched me.

I think they expected me to open Third Eye. And then what? Reveal that I had a Key of my own?

An hour ago, doing that would’ve made me feel like a total badass..

Oh well. I didn’t have one, anyway.

“No, Allen.” I showed my Maps screen to the table. “We can hike about eighty miles east.”