Jason Hawthorne walked into the conference room and nearly jumped for joy when he saw the pot of coffee in the middle of the table. He had been up since three that morning to catch a 5:30 flight from O’Hare to DC. The flight was a little under two hours, and after a 15-minute drive, they were at CIA headquarters for a 9 am meeting. He imagined the locals got up two hours ago, but he’d already been awake for seven with the time change. He needed coffee.
Gracie was with him, but she had been smarter, smuggled an empty thermos through customs, and then filled it at each Starbucks they’d passed. Many long nights of operating had trained her body to rely on caffeine.
Conor had also made the trip, even though Gracie and Jason had insisted the man was still too weak to travel. It had been just under ten days since he had been shot. Besides needing a shuttle to move through the airport, he had handled the trip well thus far.
The group leader had relayed this summons request to come to DC last night just as Jason was getting ready for bed, not allowing him much time to pack and even less for sleep. As nervous as he was, he didn’t fall asleep till after midnight. He assumed he would be logging into The Realms of Infamy soon, so his body could get all the rest it needed. But he would need a sharp mind. Maybe Gracie could set up a caffeine drip into his IV.
Conor had told Jason that most of their contact with headquarters was done through the phone, but for some reason, they wanted this, their first official mission, to be handled in person. Maybe they wanted to meet the legendary Jace Thorne in person to see if he really was cheating like every other user in the game assumed. Conor was guessing it was something more.
The aid that led them to the room excused herself after they were settled, and Jason was soon guzzling down lukewarm coffee. They were early and had to wait another five minutes before their hosts arrived. Jason had only ever talked to Ross Fordier over the phone, but they had met once in the game when the senior agent had shown him around Safe Haven to let him know how he could use the city. Jason hadn’t been impressed. It offered healing, shops to buy equipment, and training facilities where you could swap out spells without waiting for a level-up. Basically, anything you could get in any other city, only without the threat of being mugged or killed.
In real life, the man was a bit different than his character. He was the same age as Jason, in his mid-forties, but hadn’t kept himself in shape. He was balding, with graying brown hair over his ears and a poorly trimmed goatee. He was the head of this special task force and spent more time convincing his superiors that they were doing good work and deserved funding than he did trying to understand what his team actually did.
Conor told Jason he had three other teams working across the country, but none were as promising. Two were around level 15, but the third had died recently and was still a few days from level 10 again. They mostly did espionage work, trying to infiltrate other strongholds and gain information. If they ever tried to fight the international criminals they hung around, they would be killed instantly.
Ross wasn’t alone. Two others entered with him. Stephen Dexter was less than a year into his CIA career but had joined right when this task force was started and was considered an expert. He knew about as much of the game as Gracie or Conor, even if he wasn’t quite as good a player. He was mainly an interpreter for Ross, so the older agent could understand what was happening. He had a level 12 character in the game but only used it for meetings and financial transactions. He was too scared to do anything else. He looked like your typical nerd, with a tall, skinny frame and glasses that were a little too thick for his bony features.
Beside him was an even younger woman. Gracie told Jason her name was Allison Frye, and she was barely a month on the job. She was familiar with the game and was hired as another Stephen. She looked like the stereotypical Hollywood bookworm, where if you took off her glasses, shook her ponytail out, and added five seconds of makeup, she would be a bombshell. But as it was, she was just cute.
“What’s this about?” Conor asked once the others were seated. “Why did we have to come all the way out here?”
“The FBI is contracting us,” Ross said, his displeasure at the circumstance evident. “They have a situation in the game, and they don’t really understand what is happening and want to meet the team we will use to resolve it. Plus, we’ve never formally met.”
Ross walked over to Jason, who was working on his second cup of coffee, and shook his hand. “It’s good to have you on the team. We are very excited about the possibilities.”
“Thank you,” Jason said. “I hope I don’t let you down.”
Allison laughed and then covered her mouth in embarrassment. “Like that’s possible,” she said in a squeaky voice. Stephen glared at the young woman, obviously jealous of her praise. “Nothing you have done so far has been close to disappointing,” she continued, gushing a bit. “I’m still curious how you knew . . .”
“We aren’t here to relive the past,” Stephen cut her off. “We’ve got work to do. There will be time for that later.”
The young woman cleared her throat and accepted the rebuke, reigning in her hero worship for now.
“So, what is the situation?” Conor pressed once Ross found his seat again.
“Hostage,” the senior agent replied. “That’s all I know.” He looked at his watch. It was two minutes past nine. “Figures he’d be late.”
As if on cue, another man entered the room. Jason had his low expectations drop even further. The FBI agent was short, stocky, and wearing the most obnoxious toupee Jason had ever seen. He carried himself like some hideous cross between an ambulance-chasing lawyer and a used car salesman. “I’m sorry I’m late,” he said hastily, “but you guys obviously don’t like FBI visitors. The large woman with the rubber glove was particularly unpleasant.” He waited for a chuckle at his off-color joke, but none came. Even Allison, who seemed eager to please her new colleagues, gave him a beleaguered look.
Seeing he wouldn’t get a response, he launched into his rehearsed introduction. “My name’s Quinton Fenrikson, senior FBI agent, assistant to the Cyber Division’s secretary. We have a unique hostage situation that needs your help.” He pulled one of his cards out of his shirt pocket and tried to flick it across the table at Ross. It didn’t come close, diving underneath and hitting the floor three feet in front of him. He took a hasty seat and thought about retrieving it but didn’t.
“Fendrickson?” Allison repeated slowly. She had a slim computer out and was taking notes.
“Fennn-riKson,” the man repeated, emphasizing the spelling. “No D’s and no C’s. My mother always said she didn't want to see any bad letter grades when my name was at the top of a school paper.” He had obviously said this many times but laughed as though he had made it up on the spot.
“But your name starts with an F, right?” Allison clarified.
“Uh, yes, um, it does,” Quinton replied, wondering how he had never seen that flaw in his stupid anecdote.
Jason smiled as he moved Allison up a few notches in his estimation and Quinton even further down.
Ross sighed. “We understand this situation is time sensitive, so please, let’s get on with it.”
“Right,” Quinton agreed. “Yesterday, we got a call from MIT that two of their students were trapped in a game called The Realms of Infamy and were being held hostage. We didn’t know what that meant or how it was that serious, but our contacts at the university insisted it was vital, and the students’ lives were at risk. After we asked around, we heard about your division and requested this meeting. They sent us a picture or screenshot or something of the situation, and I emailed it to your group on my way over here.”
Stephen pulled out his laptop too, and after a few seconds of hasty typing, he connected to the in-room projector and soon had a picture on the side wall. Jason and Gracie sat next to each other and had to turn to see the image. They both nearly fell out of their chairs at what they saw. When Jason heard that people were being held hostage in the game, his mind returned to his experience in the level 50 module, where players were imprisoned in a crystal maze if they failed, and their minds were tortured. It didn’t kill them or let them fall asleep, so they had no safe way to log off. There were probably dozens of ways to force players into a situation like that, and this was one of them.
Four players sat in steel cages set up in a circle. The room was only fifty feet across, with heavy stone block construction. Walking around the cells were two giant cats. They looked like demonic hybrids of a panther and a tiger. It was a still image, but Jason imagined that the cats would swipe at the players if they ever got too close to the edge of the prison. This forced the characters to stay in a tight sitting position in the middle. Still, it looked like the space between the bars was wide enough that a cat could reach their paw in and attack, forcing the players to be constantly alert.
Three totems stood in the center of the arrangement that Jason didn’t recognize. Stephen helped him out. “They have a Mana Siphon, a Lightning, and a Healing totem. The first will steal mana as the characters regenerate. The second will do damage, while the third heals them. The first will power the second two. Will this setup, those characters will never generate enough mana to cast any type of spell. Once the siphon becomes full, it spends half its mana to deal them damage and the other half to heal them again. Assuming these characters were rendered Helpless when captured, they would have been stripped of any equipment that would have helped their saving throws. And, depending on how long they’ve been down there, they probably have so many fatigue banes that even a 20 wouldn’t help them.”
Jason understood all this and probably would have figured it out given time. That wasn’t what shocked him, however. “I know these characters,” he said. “Or, I know one of them. The female half-orc. Her name is Karen-something.”
“She’s a real piece of work,” Gracie added. “No surprise she got herself caught like this.”
Quinton pulled out a crumpled piece of paper from his pants pocket. “The, uh, orc,” he said, obviously finding it difficult to mention the fantasy race, “uh, her name is, um, Illya Tykarentoscue.” For someone who protected the pronunciation of his own name with superficial valor, he sure did butcher this one. Jacen recognized it only because he had heard the barbarian say it herself.
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“And the others?” Ross asked.
“The human and the dwarf are Robert and Darren. They are the MIT students.”
“I’ve heard rumors that MIT had an underground ROI club,” Stephen said.
“It’s not underground anymore,” Ross quipped.
“No,” Quinton agreed. “It looks like the other students tried to solve the problem independently but couldn’t and eventually reached out to the faculty who called us. Apparently, the kidnappers gave demands to the players, and the, uh, Operators,” he said the word carefully, not sure it was the right one, “relayed those demands to us. It turns out the elf is the one they are really after. He is South Korean and uses this game to help fund and communicate with North Koreans trying to defect. The kidnappers are North Korean.”
“Ah,” Stephen said triumphantly, “I know where they are.”
“Stormhold?” Allison asked.
Stephen nodded but didn’t answer, typing furiously on his computer again, and the image of the hostages disappeared.
“Yes,” Quinton said, consulting his paper. “They are being held in Stormhold.”
In seconds Stephen had another image on the wall. It was a spinning 3D picture of a pentagon-shaped castle atop a mountain. Three sides sat above sheer cliffs that rose hundreds of feet from the planes below. Another bordered a large clearing, while the fifth side was the entrance and faced to the north, where mountains rose to dominate the horizon. A rickety, narrow bridge connected the entrance to the neighboring peaks, and a long winding path through the mountains looked like the only feasible way to access the stronghold.
“The North Koreans joined the game a few months ago,” Stephen said. “They rose in power quickly and took this stronghold from a guild using it for mining. It wasn’t very profitable, so they didn’t fight hard for it. It’s called Stormhold because vicious storms rise quickly when the warm, moist air of the planes hits the cold mountains and swirls over the foothills. The wind and lightning are tremendous. Plus, the mountains generate storm shamans who can summon lightning on demand and use it to harvest mana. On each corner is the equivalent of a fantasy Tesla coil that will zap anything that gets too close.”
The young man stopped the image from spinning and zoomed in on one of the cliffside towers. “They have a shaman standing guard 24/7, and if anything tries to approach, they have 3000 mana stored in five totems in the center of the complex that will channel through the tower and zap you for 600 damage, much more if you fail the save. Then they summon a storm to replenish and can keep attacking as long as needed. A perimeter of over 100 feet is illuminated by a light spell that prevents anyone from sneaking up on them, not that you could climb the cliff anyway. It is 750 feet above the plains below and straight up. Once you got close enough to the fortress, you’d be zapped. Anyone with a saving throw high enough to survive wouldn’t be strong enough to make the climb and vice versa.”
Jason was tired of craning his neck and stood to study the fortress from closer up, careful not to cast a shadow with the projector. Stephen did him a favor and zoomed out to give him more accessibility. “Based on the design,” the young man continued, “two towers watch each cliff face. The only chance you have is to go through the front door, but the narrow bridge limits the number of people that can approach, and you are visible for hundreds of feet.”
“What do they want?” Jason asked. “Have they made demands?”
Quinton looked over his rumpled piece of paper again. “They are claiming that the Russian and the two Americans are aiding Choi Hyun-Woo, the South Korean, so they are all enemies of North Korea. The government is willing to overlook this act of terrorism if they are paid one million gold per head for the other three. They said they will not release Hyun-Woo under any condition. I don’t know why they want to be paid in gold.”
“It is the currency within the game,” Ross said, happy that he knew something game related. “I bet they aren’t even affiliated with the government. Likely, they are just entrepreneurs. Maybe they are trying to torture Hyun-Woo into giving them information they can sell to their own officials.”
“Either way,” Quinton said, “It’s not really torture, is it? I mean, it’s just a game. It’s not like you hurt your head every time you make Mario bump a brick.”
“He punches the brick,” Stephen said in disgust at the man’s ignorance but took another tact. “The game is real. It hooks up with your nervous system, so when something happens in the game, you feel it. You can turn those settings down, but since they are in a private stronghold, the North Koreans can force them to turn all their environment settings up high, so they feel everything.”
“Okay, yeah,” Quinton said as if he already knew that, “but can’t they just log off?”
“No,” Stephen said. “They can’t. You can only safely log off when you fall asleep or die. If you try to unplug yourself while awake, it’s like ejecting a USB drive while it’s still active.”
“I do that all the time,” Quinton said with a smirk.
Stephen didn’t doubt it. The man looked like an IT department’s worst nightmare. “You can get away with it sometimes, but imagine if there are 1,000 files on that drive, and your computer is copying, formatting, updating, and deleting all of them at once. If you unplugged it in the middle of that, your files would be trashed. Some might be okay, others might be missing one or two lines of code, and others would be complete garbage. Well, your brain has way more than 1,000 connections within your body, and they are always active. Maybe if you are sitting still in the game and unplug yourself, nothing bad will happen, but our hostages are actively enduring torture. They are in a cramped space, in constant fear and fatigue. All of their five senses are on overload. If you unplugged them now, who knows what would happen. Some people have been disconnected prematurely, and the only thing that happened was that they became left-handed when they used to be right. Others have suffered from total amnesia. Others woke up only being able to speak Elvish. And others woke up with severe burning pain throughout their entire body that wouldn’t go away. Some of the lucky ones never woke up at all. Their mind was so disconnected from their body that it forgot how to tell the heart to pump and the lungs to breathe.”
Quinton swallowed hard and nodded. “Right. So we can’t unplug them. Why can’t they go to sleep?”
Stephen cycled back to the proof of life image they had been sent. “Could you sleep in that environment? Any time they would lie down, a tiger is there to swipe at their face. Besides, the game won’t allow them to rest while enemies are near.”
“We can’t put them to sleep, but we can kill them,” Jason said, still standing and looking at the picture. “The players won’t like it, but it is better than what they are going through, and it removes the bargaining chip.”
“You’d have to get in there first,” Allison spoke up. It was an obvious observation, and she really only wanted to hear how Jason would plan it.
“Not possible,” Stephen insisted.
“We’d have to take out two of the towers,” Jason said.
“How?” Stephen asked. “In order to have a sightline on a tower from below, you need to back away from the cliff, and you are at least 800 feet away. You need 800 mana just to get a spell that far, and you still need to spend enough to do damage to the shamans. They all have damage sink totems, so to kill one, you need to do at least 550 damage to get them in a death spiral with enough spell difficulty that they won’t save. It can’t be done.”
“Even with my level 50 crystal?”
Gracie put a hand on his arm, signaling to Stephen that Jason was her responsibility and to take it easy on the new recruit. He still didn’t know everything. “You would need a wand to project the mana,” she said. “In its current form, you need the enemy to touch it or set it somewhere and have it explode. To project energy out, you need to craft it into a wand. It would need to be at least level 40 to do the damage you need, and nothing like that exists in the game.”
“Even if it did,” Stephen said, “none of the damage spells you would use would work. Fire and acid would take too long to travel up to the targets. They would be bright red or green lights in the air, flying at the tower, and the Shaman would have enough time to take cover or cast defensive spells. Only lighting would travel fast enough to catch them by surprise, but since they are storm shamans, they have lightning immunity.”
“An arrow?” Jason asked. ”I’ve seen YouTube videos of people hitting a target from over 1,000 feet.”
“It is mathematically possible,” Stephen said, “but the bow and the archer you need don’t exist in the game. A longbow has a standard range of 100 feet. If it is level 10, you can design it so each level adds 10 feet so that it can shoot 200. If you get a level 10 arrow, you can do the same thing so that it will fly an additional 100 feet. But nobody crafts items like that. They care more about damage, so you need to craft them yourself. You might find a craftsman to make the arrow, but the bow is too hard to make; you’d have to find it as loot in a quest, and I’m not aware of a bow like that.”
“Let’s say I had a craftsman that could make the bow,” Jason said.
“Has Wallace found someone?” Gracie whispered. Jason nodded.
Stephen noticed the exchange but didn’t hear the operator’s question. “Assuming you had a craftsman to make the bow and arrows, when you use them, you can spend a critical success to add 50 feet to the shot. You need to add 500 feet, so you need ten criticals. That would get the arrow to your target, but remember that arrows only do five damage.”
“Let’s say it is a +5 bow and a +5 arrow, so it does 15 damage.”
Beside him, Jason heard Gracie sigh, and he knew he had said something stupid.
“Plus five, level ten items only exist as summoned magical weapons connected to a demon or god, but let’s say you have a physical bow like that. The shamans have damage sink totems, so you would need to exceed that damage, plus do half the damage again to the shaman. That is the 550 I talked about earlier. Not going to happen, but I have an alternative. Your mythical archer has the Death Shot feat, which most people just call Headshot. You spend one critical plus another for every five levels of the target, and they have to make a Death Save against the damage. It doesn’t matter if their totem absorbs it or if they have high damage resistance. They make a Death Save against the damage. The shamans are level 15, so you need to spend four criticals. We should assume they have about 55 Magic Defense. They might roll a 19, so you must be at 75 to make them fail. But that will just shock them; to kill them, they need to fail by 50. Though, if you can make them fail by 20, that will at least stun them, which might be enough. That would be 95 damage, which means five more criticals to multiply your 15 damage arrows up to 95.”
“So I would need 19 criticals,” Jason said, adding things up.
“Actually,” Allison said, joining the discussion. “When you spend a critical to add 50 feet, it also does +1 damage since you are firing it harder to go further. So if you spent ten criticals to add 500 feet, it would increase the damage of your arrows to 25 each, so you would only need three criticals to get the damage to 100.”
“Fair point,” Stephen said, smiling at the young woman. “You only need 17 criticals. You need to exceed the Shaman’s AC by 170.”
Jason realized that was a bit high. “Or, maybe I need a level 15 bow, and then I could . . .”
It looked like Stephen was about to yell at him when Ross stepped in. “Okay, we will let Jason do what he does and see what he can come up with. In the meantime, what is plan B? How do the kidnappers want to be paid?”
Quinton looked at his sheet again. “They want someone to come to Stormhold in . . .” he looked at his watch and spent way too much time doing math, “twelve hours with the gold.” He looked up from his sheet. “I am not authorized to approve that payment. The FBI does not negotiate with terrorists.”
“And if we don’t pay?” Ross asked. They had the gold in Safe Haven, but he knew his bosses wouldn’t allow the payment either.
“Then they increase the torture on the hostages,” Quinton said. “Right now, they are only doing enough to keep them alive and awake. If we don’t pay, then in 12 hours, they ramp it up.”
“Do we ever consider unplugging them?” Ross asked but directed the question at Gracie and Stephen.
They both shook their heads. “We can’t recommend that,” Gracie said. “At some point, the players will beg their operators to unplug them, but I’m guessing they also made those same operators promise never to do so no matter what. We can’t stop the people at MIT from doing what they will, but we can give them hope that we are working on another option.”
Stephen nodded. Though he didn’t think another option was possible, he knew what Jason had done already, and none of that was possible either, so he would try to reserve judgment. Just telling the MIT students that Jace Thorne was trying to save them might give them the hope to hold out.
“Okay,” Ross said, standing from the table. “Conor and I will work the money and political angle. I trust the four of you will exhaust every game angle there is.” He looked at Allison, Stephen, Gracie, and Jason.
“I assume you have a room where we can plug in?” Gracie asked.
Allison smiled. “Of course. I can take you right there. I’m looking forward to watching you work. My character is only level 8 right now; otherwise, I’d help.”
Jason smiled, appreciating the enthusiasm, but already knew he preferred to work alone. Though, to make his plan work, he figured he would need at least two more teammates.