Chapter 9

When Lori was a kid, video games had all sorts of fancy tricks to them. One of the neat things that stuck with me was when she was playing a game with a snow world. If she wasn’t dressed appropriately, the edges of the screen would start to frost over with the frost growing toward the center. She’d be slowed down and she would start taking damage.

That was the thought occupying my mind as we exited the wagon. If I could see my HUD, I was sure that it would be frozen over and my health would be slowly ticking down.

Well, I hoped it was slow.

I hopped down from the wagon before the witch did and then finally Bear. If my hands were free and in front of me, I would be hugging myself. The air was as crisp as a December morning and the snow was about ankle deep in the places it hadn’t been packed down by feet and wheels. Out of the three of us, only the old lady looked warm.

Agent Dalton Hayes came over to us, down from whatever horse he had been riding and stood in front of us. He had a pistol on his side, but nothing else.

“Welcome to Fort Pine Hollow. This is your home away from home for the next ten days. At which point, we will begin the long and arduous journey to Hardpan Prison. It will be a two days ride, but it’ll be warmer than here. As a matter of fact, the hardest part of your journey will be this place.” One of his men came up behind Bear and I could hear him fiddling around with the cuffs.

“At this point,” Hayes continued, “my friend, Agent Gibbs, will be removing your shackles and reattaching them to your feet. This will allow you the majority of your free movement but will keep your inventory and heads-up display unavailable. In other words, you’re keeping the shackles on to keep you under control.” Gibbs finished with Bear and came over to me. He was gentle as he swapped them and I was eager to see if my HUD turned back on, even briefly. It did not.

Hayes continued. "While this will be your home, do not go thinking you can stay out late and invite friends over. You are fugitives and outlaws and will be treated as such. Every man and woman in this place is carrying a weapon specifically meant for ending you and each of them is well-versed in how to use it."

A little chuckle came up from the back of the men still trailing in. I couldn't tell if it was in agreement with Hayes or something that I hadn't overheard. Either way, I didn't care. Did I mention that it was cold?

Because I was freezing.

That was about when one of the Fort's soldiers, dressed in blue that was both faded and snow-covered, came over and gave us coats.

Can you guess how they were decorated? That's right, black and white stripes, like I was in one of those cartoons from when my Gran was a toddler.

Bear and I put on our coats while the witch stared at the one they handed her before taking it and deciding to just hold it.

"Fall in line, and I will show you your quarters," Agent Hayes said before marching away.

"Does he mean to follow him?" I asked.

"He doesn't mean to warm yourself up with your farts," the old lady stomped off behind the Redbriar agent.

I shrugged at Bear and started following.

Behind me, I heard Bear mumble, "I don't even think we can fart anymore."

We followed Hayes toward the main building in the center of the fort.

The walls around Pine Hollow encompassed a large courtyard filled with a gallows that I considered might assist us with a respawn escape, a lot of horses tied up in makeshift stables, and men and women wandering around with different chores and urgencies. The courtyard was divided by a wall that the stables were built against. The other side of the wall, accessed via a large arch built into the right side of the wall.

The left side had the only sort of building. It was two stories high and granted access to the walls for defense. I assumed that whatever was inside was living quarters and cells.

I was wrong.

Inside was only a table, chairs, some crates for storage and a lot of people running around as if planning some sort of military action. To that point, I noticed that aside from the five Redbriar agents that I had been interacting with, everyone else here was dressed in the military outfit of the man who had given us the jackets.

This was an active military base. That made me wonder why a video game would need a military. Then I remembered that most of this was likely for ambiance. Or at least, I hoped so.

"This is the only place with a roof on it," Hayes said as he came to a stop. Several of the soldiers stopped and looked at us before returning to what they were doing. "As you can see, there are no beds. That is an oversight that we all have to deal with."

"Where do folks sleep?" I asked.

Bear added, "Or us?"

The old woman wasn't even paying attention. From what I could tell she was eyeing something on the table. It looked like a brush.

"That's why I brought you in here," Hayes smirked. "I wanted you to see it. If you are called in here, it will likely be because you screwed up. In the next ten days, don't make me call you into here."

He turned and marched toward a door at the far end. "Come!"

We followed him, shuffling our chained feet, back to the outside. The door he went through took us to the other side of the dividing wall of the fort. What greeted us was tents, and lots of them.

I didn’t bother to count them, but the entire other half of the fort was where everyone was sleeping. Each grouping of crowded tents was around its own fire. Squeezing between them, while shackled, to keep up with Hayes was tough. When he finally stopped an old tent with holes throughout it near the wall on the backside of the fort, I was exhausted as well as cold.

Stolen novel; please report.

“This is where you will sleep. At night, and in any moments that we feel like it, you will be shackled together as well as to the wall.” Hayes stepped aside so that we could inspect the tent. It had four bedrolls in it, all perpendicular to the opening. The back of the tent was completely open to the wall where four iron rings were attached. I assumed that was where we would be shackled at night.

A soldier handed us each a tin cup and a chunk of bread.

“That’s your ration for today,” Hayes said. “It’ll be night soon. We’ll start you on the hard labor tomorrow. A Redbriar agent will come by in two hours to shackle you to the wall.” With that Agent Hayes turned to leave.

“Wait,” I called after him. When he stopped and looked at me with both a look of ‘How dare you,’ and ‘Oh, this’ll be good,’ I asked, “What about a trial? You’re going to take us straight to the prison?”

Hayes started to laugh and then I realized so was everyone who had heard me ask the question except for Bear. Even the old lady was chuckling.

“Sorry, but that was just downright hilarious,” Hayes said. “Trials are for missions, jobs, or story. They ain’t got much worth when death isn’t permanent and crime is a game.” He spread his hands and looked up to the sky as if beckoning his digital creator. “This is all just a game and this fort, the prison you’re going to and that long two-day ride between, they are all part of this game too. Now, you could be a model citizen, do everything you’re told and get out of prison in a few years when we realize you’re no fun. Or while you’re in there you could start taking jobs to become some sort of prison informant, or level into an underground kingpin, but nah, I can already see you’re not here for the period-piece prison sim. No, you’re a cowgirl, through and through, so your game will be different, but it's all still a game. Your game will be to escape, or maybe we’ll get an assignment to give you a mission to work off your sentence for us, or perhaps this is all still part of whatever job you said you were trying to claim from Lee. Either way, your game will be the cowgirl game, but none of that, or the kingpin route, or just being a model citizen until your code degrades and you’re deleted just for fun, none of it ever allows a player to sit through a boring-ass trial.”

Then he turned and walked away from me.

“Well, then. I guess that’s that,” I said.

“That was incredibly generous of him,” the old lady mumbled.

Bear looked at her and waved toward Hayes’ back. “Generous? We’re screwed, what part of that was generous?”

Bear wasn’t getting it, but I did. Agent Hayes could have just ignored me and kept walking and there was a good chance we would have just sat here until our ‘code degrades.’ That’s not what he did though. Instead, he just gave us a ton more information about the game and some of it was stuff I didn’t even know that I should ask.

For starters, he told me that escape is exactly what we need to be focusing on. He also gave us a good idea of how they got jobs. I was thinking they were all preset scripts, but now I’m wondering if that only accounted for some of them. If you keep going to the same guy in the post office, sooner or later you will see the same or similar jobs being offered, but that sounded like this, the fort, the prison escape, and probably much more, could be jobs that are more complex and likely come with scalability for the different scenarios that might trigger them.

When I finished explaining that to Bear, I spun on the self-proclaimed witch.

"Which brings us to you," I said. "You're an in-game merchant, but you got caught. So, what does that mean? Are you part of this mission? Was this supposed to happen?"

The witch cackled. "Not quite. I'm something of a limited edition."

She was obviously going to make getting information not easy, but a quick glance at my ankles told me that all I had was time.

"What's your name?"

"I am she-that-shall-not-be-named," she said waggling her fingers and lowering her voice. Then she started laughing again. "Just joshing you. I'm Linda, the hag. It's an in-game name, and its incredibly rude, but I kind of love it."

I nodded at Linda and then asked, "So, you're some sort of collector of shiny things? Give us jobs, money, better loot and shit like that?"

"More or less," Linda agreed. "My loot is better than 'shit,' though."

I smirked, "My apologies. What are you doing here then if you are an NPC and meeting us wasn't part of a mission?"

"NPC's are just folks. We're still playing the game, we just have been around long enough to earn some privileges. Me, I like to wander the woods and roads looking for trouble."

"What trouble got you thrown into the wagon?" Bear asked.

Linda's smile faded, just a little. "They took my ivory comb. I was trying to reclaim it."

"Who? The soldiers?" I asked.

"No, those crooks that call themselves detectives," she hissed through her teeth. "Redbriar."

"Crooks?" I pressed.

"Redbriar are this game's version of the Pinkerton's but just like their more famous real-world counterparts they are corruption. They are basically mercenaries for hire, but they work with the law, so they get protections." Linda let out a small grunt of annoyance that was just loud enough to turn a few of the closer heads. "And they like shiny things, too. Which is why, when they saw my ivory brush, they stopped me and confiscated it, claiming that I must have stolen it."

"You seem to be a straight shooter," I said. "If we are looking to escape, would you be someone who could help, or would you get in our way?"

The warmly dressed old lady's smile only got bigger. "Likely both, but I can promise you won't be escaping anything without my assistance."

Bear looked annoyed. "Why is that? You going to tell them?"

She shook her head. "Not at all, but I can sell a skeleton key that takes shackles off. While you can't use your HUD with them on, if you can give me something I want, such as an Ivory Brush, and you tell me that you will trade me for a skeleton key, then you can take your shackles off and leave these premises with haste."

"There it is," I smirked. "The job. We have to steal that brush we saw in the war-room thing back there."

Bear touched my arm and I turned to face him. "What about Coot? He's looking for us. If he finds out we're here and we end up not being here, we'll have to rescue him."

I shook my head. "The second we get the shackles off, we message him. If he's already here, we wait, and make a mess in here when he does his attack. If he's still lost, we tell him to meet us at camp."

"A friend on the outside?" The witch said as she overheard. "The chances for utter chaos are growing and I absolutely love it."

Bear was clearly not liking any of this and I wasn't quite sure why. Everything up until now he had treated as a fun adventure. For some reason getting arrested and taken to the fort had put him on edge.

I pulled him aside. "What's going on man? You've been off ever since we got scooped up."

He was looking everywhere but at me.

"I did time," he whispered so quietly I almost didn't hear him.

So, that was it. He was reliving his life stuff.

"Can I ask what for?" I pressed.

He shrugged, and I don't know if it was my imagination or if it just talking was helping, but I thought I saw him relax a little. "I had a plan to buy credit cards off of the dark web, get the max cash withdrawals and then hit up a casino. I bought two credit cards directly from a federal agent. I was in prison for 18 months."

I smacked him on the chest with the back of my hand. "Here I was thinking you were a smart outlaw."

He smirked, "Nope, boss. Just a dumb crook."

"Well, I promise you that whatever you experienced during your time in the clinker this ain't that."

"Oh, yeah?" Bear asked.

"Did you have me and a witch on your side then?" I asked.

"No, I guess not." Bear's shoulders were starting to ease a bit, but he still looked tense. That was probably the best that I could ask for.

I spun back to Linda. "Alright. Any suggestions on how we get the brush?"