When Hazel made it down the stairs, she seated herself on the bottom step, letting the cold air wake her up. She had never intended it. She would not follow through with it.
But it feels better than I would have imagined to kiss him, she lamented.
She pulled out her handheld and checked the time. She had approximately seven minutes to make it ten minutes away. Springing to her feet, she unlocked her bike and headed the few blocks to the coffee shop, arriving exactly three minutes late. Can’t make time go slower.
When the billboard’s lights intruded on her vision, she raised her eyes like an automaton subject to programming. There won’t be names, she assured herself. But there was a name, and its presence hit her almost as hard as the lists that had scrolled across screens after the Crash.
“Famous gamer collapses during broadcast.”
“Liliana Goros, daughter of Nikita Goros of the Eurussian national Fine Arts council, has fallen into a coma. Yesterday, live on air, the young woman, who goes by the gamertag Piroulette, lost consciousness in the middle of a Stream. Though little known in America, she is a regional celebrity in Eur-Russe and Bavaria.”
Hazel couldn’t move.
Piroulette. Letty. What had happened to Letty? Hazel could clearly picture the code unzipping and dissipating into the virtual air – it was a horrifying memory. Even more concerning Hazel had led her to the site of her demise, to some strange glitch in the virtual world. Impossible, Hazel reasoned, but her mind wouldn’t let go of the thought: what if that glitch had shut Piroulette down in the physical world? Was that possible?
She had to tell Peter. Maybe the strange anomaly he had encountered on the Bridge had something to do with the glitch in the game. Of course, if she told Peter about Piroulette, she would also have to tell Peter how she had intercepted his message and then used his unique identifier code to enter a restricted area. What had she done?
After he had called her name three times, Rel finally stepped in front of Hazel, leaning down to look her in the eyes. “Hey, are you okay?” he appealed as she slowly registered his presence.
The opposite of okay in so many ways, she considered, not quite able to answer.
“I’m not sure if it’s something I bring with me, but I think you’re in shock again,” Rel continued. “Please forgive the imposition, but I’m going to help you to a table.”
Gently gripping her shoulders, Rel led her through the door and to a little table in the corner. He accessed a menu and ordered two cups of coffee, hers with a sprinkle of cinnamon. Once it came, he pushed her cup to her.
“Drink,” he commanded.
Without processing what she was doing, she lifted the cup to her lips and sipped the hot liquid. Once she had swallowed it, the breath that she had held finally sucked in, and she realized she didn’t remember walking in the door or sitting at the table, or even encountering Rel. All she remembered was the words on her screen.
“We have a meeting?” she asked, her mind slowly turning on.
“That’s totally irrelevant, Hazel. First thing is to make sure you’re okay.”
“I killed my friend. I mean, I didn’t kill her, but I put her in a coma. And she’s not really my friend; I met her yesterday. But, what have I done?” Hazel knew she was babbling, but she couldn’t hold the words in. She lowered her face to her hands.
“Slow down, Hazel,” Rel instructed, falling into his trained authority voice. “Sip your coffee, and when you feel better, we’ll talk about what you want to talk about.”
The hot liquid trickled down her throat, and she slowly realized that she was shaking. Apparently, Rel realized it to – maybe she had just started shaking – because he grabbed his huge jacket off the back of his chair and draped it across her shoulders before reseating himself.
Finally, Hazel trusted her voice. “You don’t have to arrest me or anything,” she quavered. “I didn’t actually do anything to anyone. I just did something virtually. It’s hard to explain.”
Rel reached across the table and placed his hand on hers. “I’m not going to arrest you. Maybe I can help.”
Still not trusting her voice, Hazel lifted her handheld and did a quick search for the headline. Once she found it, she held it out to Rel.
After reading the entire release, Rel did not understand any more than before he had read it. “Who is Liliana?”
“Piroulette.”
“Right, her gamertag. You knew her in the game?”
“I just met her today, but I think she collapsed because of me.”
“She’s in Eur-Russe. How could you have caused that?
“Trip,” she answered, finally meeting his eyes. “I was in Trip today, in this special section where I get some cloaked gear, and I found a glitch. I couldn’t access it even though it was coded as a door. So I asked someone else to do it. Piroulette. I met her in the pub there, and I took her to the cave, and she evaporated.”
“Cloaked?”
“OP.”
Rel’s eyes registered empty confusion.
“Over powered, special weapons and skills that are better than normal.”
Shaking himself, Rel huffed a laugh. “Got it…but maybe she evaporated because she collapsed and not the other way around. My theory at this point has been a Jolt. It kind of eviscerates the Wire and everything connected to it.”
Despite the vivid imagery, Hazel felt the tightness in her chest start to release. His theory made so much more sense. “But that’s not a sure thing. Disappearing in a game because you pass out doesn’t usually happen. Players go AFK all the time, and their avatars just sit there. It’s one of the first things a player learns, not to step away in the middle of the battlefield, but to park in a pub or a diner or somewhere battles don’t happen as often. And there was something about the code…”
“AFK?”
“Away from the keyboard. It just means you don’t want to quit the game, but you want to take a break for something. I mean, maybe frying a person’s brain would affect the code in the game, but I don’t know if it works like that. From what I read of the code, she just spun off into the ether.”
“Wait,” he backtracked. “You can read code?”
“More or less. I can recognize types of things in code, like doors, scenery, avatars, and stuff like that. I code a little. Peter taught me a lot, but I never intended that to be my life.”
“So, what was so strange about the code where you were that it makes you think you did this?”
Hazel closed her eyes, rubbing the back of her neck. “For one thing, the timing. She passed out close to the time that I saw her avatar evaporate. For another, the code didn’t reject her. That’s usually what happens when you bump into a glitch. You either get kicked out or the game starts lagging, the scenery or the avatar looks weird - the code doesn’t unzip and insert new code like DNA. Whatever happened to that code, I think it affected Letty.”
“I think it’s strange that two Trip players have fallen into comas. I’ve been batting around some theories, but they involve civilians gaining government technology. I don’t see that as such a widespread possibility”
“Three. At least…maybe a lot more.”
“Three?” Rel had to backtrack. Not two Trip players – three. Who was this unknown factor, and what could he or she mean to Rel’s case? Despite his concern for Hazel, all his instincts prickled with anticipation.
“Sophie – she plays Trip with me.”
“Sophie…Sophie DeSoto. There are all sorts of reasons people would be interested in her. But Sophie doesn’t know this Piroulette?”
“No. And there is at least one more player who has a history with me: Freddy Nako.”
“The Lagos ambassador’s son?”
“We went to high school together, were in the gamer club together.”
Rel blew out a breath. “So, Sophie, Freddy, Mani, Piroulette. They all know you. Do they have anything else in common besides their age?”
“I mean,” Hazel shrugged, “they all play Trip. But honestly, those two things kind of go together. I don’t really have friends outside of Trip besides Peter.” She thought she caught a tightening of Rel’s jaw at the revelation of her choice of friends, and she suppressed a smile.
“And like I said, though there are obviously a lot of fascinating things about you in your own right, the most obvious reason someone would target you would have to do with Peter. It might have been Sophie, but she’s stuck in a coma with all the others, which hints at her being peripheral.”
“A coma…after watching what happened to Piroulette, I have to wonder. Seems more like a one-man, extended Crash than a coma.”
“But what would it accomplish to put these people in comas?”
“Are you saying the people were targeted?” Hazel begged, shocked.
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“My evidence points at yes,” Rel agreed. “I just haven’t figured out why.”
Hazel tapped her fingers on the table. “Decrease the competition, maybe.”
“For you? Like a crazed fan?”
Shivering, Hazel shook her head reflexively. “That would be insane.” She studied the row of lights along the opposite wall. “Before you said it was targeted, I had considered a virus. Peter thinks it’s not really possible, but I just can’t escape the feeling that there is something going on here.” The idea spoke too much of conspiracy theory for even Hazel, but her mind grasped for any option but the “friend of Hazel” theory. She glanced up to gauge Rel’s response, but before he could manage one, her handheld buzzed, and she glanced down at it – Peter had sent her a message. When you get back, it said, I have a surprise for you.
Hazel pursed her lips. From experience, she knew better than to get too excited by Pete’s surprises. Not that they weren’t amazing or generous, but they tended to come with strings. That had been bad enough when they were just good friends; what would it mean if he started putting romantic pressure on her? Suddenly, nausea churned her gut.
“Are you on a schedule?” Rel wondered as she consulted her device. “I can wrap this up if you need me too.”
With a quick shake, Hazel forced herself to look at her companion. “I’m fine,” she insisted. “Go ahead with whatever you need to ask.”
Rel peered at her with marked skepticism, but he pressed forward. “Okay, then. Can I ask about the other night.”
Though she shivered, Hazel nodded her acquiescence.
“The place where we met, though I didn’t know it at the time, turned out to be relevant to my investigation. I was just trying to find someone who knew Donnie Yates, and what I found was much more significant. Do you know what the place was?”
“Not at all.”
“Why were you there?” he prompted, and Hazel sucked in a steeling breath. The memory of the experience still clinched her muscles in anticipation of danger.
“I was trying to gain access to a private area in Trip. I traced a notification about the secret section of Trip to that location, and I thought I might be able to appeal to whoever was there to invite me. It was a long shot, and I’m not exactly the daring type, but I’m a little compulsive about Trip. If there was a chance…”
“But you didn’t get in.”
“There was this weird symbol there, and with the whole ‘Wired-only’ aspect of the invitation, it struck me as very strange. It was a symbol for an anti-Bridge activist group. They hate Wires and want to abolish them. Why would they be inviting people to a Wire-only group? When I saw it, I just…lost concentration. Then the Queue car came, and it froze me because of what had happened with Sophie.”
“An anti-Bridge, anti-Wire group?” he wondered.
“Yeah, pretty much. They think it’s immoral to read people’s brains.”
“Makes sense, I guess. Though it might gel with the theory of the crazed fan. Certainly more likely than my Jolt theory now,” Rel complained.
“Jolt theory?”
“The two coma patients I knew of had just dropped into comas, no warning. Neither happened with witnesses, and I had decided that maybe the victims had been knocked out with Jolts. The symptoms were very similar, though at least one of the patients had not shown the spike in vitals that I would have expected. I thought it was an anomaly. I also thought it unlikely that a strictly monitored device like the Jolt would have fallen into civilian hands on two sides of the world, but it was my only theory. Now I have none.”
“Well, certainly no one jolted Sophie. I was with her.”
“Can I ask about that night, or is it too much?”
“I mean, I’ll just sum up so I don’t have to relive it. Sophie and I were in a wreck in a Queue car, and now Sophie’s in an inexplicable coma.”
Glancing up at Hazel, he seemed to remember himself, and he reached for her hand as he made eye contact. “I’m really sorry,” he offered kindly. “And now I understand why this Liliana thing has hit you so hard, especially paired with Donnie Yates…”
To her surprise, talking about it seemed to lighten the weight on Hazel’s chest. She and Peter had never really talked about anything that had happened – the Crash, the people they had lost, the role they played in each other’s recovery. They had just kind of existed together, burying their grief in fun and activity and the development of the Bridge. Since Sophie had passed out in that car, Hazel had not said a word to anyone about her own heartbreak. The pressure from Peter had increased rather than decreased the burden she felt – she was giving in to Peter for all the wrong reasons.
Rel’s compassion pulled her from a dark hole she had lived in for over two weeks since the accident, and in some ways, ever since the Crash.
Though her words came out weak, Rel thought her expression more open than he had as yet seen it. “It’s been really hard,” she agreed. “I lost Sophie, and she was the closest thing I have to a real friend.”
“What about Peter?” Rel wondered, not entirely successful at keeping the interest out of his voice. Hazel closed off immediately.
“My relationship with Peter is really, really complicated,” she acknowledged with a grimace.
“I didn’t mean to pry.”
Hazel laughed. “It’s not your fault that I am totally confused right now. Anyone would be curious about Peter Donovan, but he’s just Pete to me, and we have a history.” She lowered her chin into her hands and studied the tabletop. “I don’t think the situation with my friends has anything to do with my relationship with Peter, though I guess the SOA could be involved.”
“SOA…”
“Sorry. Soldiers of America. The weird anti-Bridge group I mentioned. But that location where you and I met – it had something to do with SOA, and someone or something called Haywire. I had assumed Haywire was a reference to fighting against the Wire, but the whole thing is so confusing.”
“Any idea why there would be a huge use of electrical power in that building? Where the SOA people were.”
“Actually, yes,” she nodded. “Besides the Wire, the main issue for the SOA group is the Bridge itself. Without the Bridge, the Wire is much less powerful. So SOA groups often maintain ground servers – or alternately, data centers – separate from the satellite system.”
“Ground servers. Seriously? Those were made illegal fifty years ago, outside of large major companies that would otherwise create too much air chaos.”
“I mean…outlawed?” Hazel shrugged. “It’s pretty much impossible to outlaw ground servers unless you outlaw personal computers. I know most people have given up hardware, just storing everything on the Stream, but you and I both know there is a huge faction of people who are determined to be ‘in control’ of their own stuff. Gamers even.” She grinned. “And it’s not like the government made everyone turn in their old equipment. Plus, the governments of each country still maintain their backup ground server. It was part of Peter’s plan to protect from what happened with the Kessler Event that caused the Crash. Even if all the satellites failed, the governments could keep running.”
“So the governments would keep the Bridge running?”
“Not even close. The major governments would keep themselves running. There aren’t enough currently functional data centers to manage the whole Bridge. An exabyte or so data center just for the government. Only a handful of individuals in each country could afford that kind of server space and maintenance, and not all of them care. Sophie’s dad may have one. It would probably take a thousand of those data centers to keep the Bridge going, and maybe a thousand existed at some point a hundred years ago, but not now. Now it’s a hundred of the wealthier governments and a few wealthy individuals.
“I only have evidence of about eighty unusual power drains.”
“I mean, you could search some historical events that used data centers for espionage or whatever. You know, pre-Platform days when everything ran on ground servers. Not sure the servers would be connected to anything that could wreak that much havoc, though. Everything disconnected from those and went satellite over fifty years ago. Ground servers are my first thought when you mention SOA and heavy use of electricity. The old-school servers were famous for just sucking up energy. Maybe you just have someone trying to establish an alternate, private network – maybe unmonitored and untraceable.”
“There are a lot of reasons someone would want a global network that wasn’t attached to the Bridge.” Rel’s mind went crazy. “Or, someone wanted to lure people away from the Bridge onto the private servers. You said that the SOA might have sent an invitation to people with Wires? What if it was an invitation that, when followed, disconnected people from the Bridge?”
For several seconds, Hazel’s mind spun the possibilities. Finally, she managed agreement. “Or, like sabotage? These SOA people hate the Wire so they entice people with a Wire with Trifecta and then shut them down? That makes sense. Even I have often complained about the inherent advantage of having a Wire in Trip. I wouldn’t put it past a highly competitive player to want to level the playing field…Maybe it’s not some grand scheme at all. Maybe it’s just some gamer with a vendetta and a jealous streak. Eighty data centers, distributed around the globe? That could take out a thousand competitors. A thousand out of thirty thousand elite – that’s significant. And I imagine there could be more people you don’t know about.”
Though he agreed with Hazel’s assessment, Rel held knowledge that she did not. He didn’t believe that the kids in comas could be explained by some game rivalry. Still, he thought there was a good chance she had access to information that might help him. “If you’re okay with it, do you think you could do a very small amount of research for me? Research from inside the Trip community?”
“Maybe.”
“Could you find out about players who have disappeared like Donnie and Sophie? See if there are more and if they have Wires?”
“I mean, of course they do. Every single one of them. Almost all gamers get Wires. Now that I’ve had some time to calm down from Piroulette, I can think of at least ten wired players who have disappeared right before this major competition. PrincePrincely, StepWise, Pandem2102, FenderCat, Optigon. I suspect several more, and I know of at least one player who has died in an accident.”
“Do you know any of their real names?”
Hazel shook her head. “It’s rare for us to come out from behind our tags. Especially the elites. We can hide behind the Stream. It protects us from the cruelty of humanity but gives us access to a fanbase and sponsors.”
“How hard would it be for you to find out their real names?”
“I could probably find out their locations, but not their names. I know Pandem2102 was in Europe. Her grandfather is some kind of rich guy.”
“Donnie’s father is head engineer at cityworks. Not exactly powerful, but in a position to create problems. Piroulette, rich grandfather in Eur-Russe. Don’t know his specific position. Do you know anything about the other ones?”
“No, but I will try to find out, as well as finding out who else has gone missing and where they are.” Now that Rel had pointed out the significance of the information, Hazel found herself driven by curiosity.
“What time do you need to go?”
Hazel’s heart sank; she didn’t have any desire to go see Peter again. Still, she pulled out her handheld and sighed. “I need to go. You’re right.” She could probably have stayed, but she worried about Peter’s patience. Maybe she didn’t have to go back to him immediately, but if he lost patience and went looking for her, she needed not to be sitting with a good-looking man. There were plenty of legitimate excuses she could make up, but she doubted that her meeting with Rel would seem acceptable to Peter – not after the kissing. She needed to go.
When Rel rose to his feet, she rose, too, and handed him back his jacket.
“Thanks,” she offered a crooked smile, and Rel couldn’t help but return it. She really was so pretty.
“Are you going to be okay?”
Her chest rose and lowered, and she answered in the affirmative. “I told you,” she explained. “Pete and I have a complicated history.”
“You’re not defined by your history. And even though Peter rules the world, he doesn’t rule you.”
With a sad smile, Hazel offered Rel a grateful look. “I’m not afraid of him in the traditional sense. I just hate confrontation, and I think it’s pretty inevitable that he and I are heading there.”
Despite her reassurances, Rel felt no confidence that she was safe with Peter Donovan. History ran rampant with instances of the corruption of power, and Rel had not at all liked the dominance he had read in the architect of the Bridge. Made sense in a general way. A man who could create and control something so detailed and intricate? A man like that did not exist in a state of internal peace or balance. If Hazel caused any significant disruption in Donovan’s world, she might find herself in the path of a very destructive tornado.
All he said was, “Okay. You’ll let me know what you find?”
To his surprise, she pulled out her handheld. “I’ll research tonight, and we can meet back here tomorrow for lunch.”
She wasn’t exactly sure what she thought she was doing, but she needed to know what had happened to Sophie. Beyond that, though she tried not to examine the fact too closely, she wanted to see Rel Martins again. He was not like most of the men she had known in her life. Though he had legitimate and self-serving reasons to seek her out, he was tamed by his conscience. Somehow, though he definitely wanted her information, she had a feeling that if it put her in danger or inconvenienced her too much, he would tell her not to worry about it. That he wanted her well-being more than he wanted her information. Obviously, he was like that with everyone and not just her. But she still enjoyed the sensation of his concern.
“It’s a date then?” he prodded, and though her eyes popped open in surprise, she just nodded and smiled before walking out the door.
With a huge grin, Rel accessed his calendar and set a reminder. Not that he needed it. He would not forget something like a “date” with Hazel Hops.