Gods of Blood and Bone (Seeds of Chaos Book 1) (26 page)

I rubbed the back of my neck, remembering the two sharp pains I'd felt as they inserted something under my skin. "They put something at the base of my skull, and something else a little lower down. From what Bunny's told me, one's a virtual reality chip, and the other is probably a GPS tracker. Can you get them out?"
 

Blaine pushed his glasses up and walked away to grab some weird device from his supply closet. He mounted its two halves on my shoulders, on either side of my neck, and fiddled around behind me.
 

I felt a warmth, and then he put something sticky on either side of my neck, picked up a smartglass tablet from the table, and pulled up what looked kind of like an X-ray on its screen, except I could see shooting pulses of energy moving along my spine and into my brain.
 

"Like you stated, there is one at the base of your skull, and one a little lower down." He pointed to two different spots of discoloration, then pinched and flicked at the screen, and the picture zoomed in to the base of my skull.
 

A little spider-like thing nestled there, except it had too many legs to be a spider, they were too long, and each of them was digging upward into the base of my brain.
 

I swallowed.
 

"I am assuming this would be the Virtual Reality chip. Of course, it is not fully integrated, but those tendrils likely extend into your visual cortex, which is what allows you to see the Game windows," he said.
 

"Can you get it out?"

"Not without risking serious damage to your brain and spine. It has embedded itself like a tick. Honestly, I doubt you will ever be free of it."
 

"Well, could you just kill it, then?"

"It is attached to your brain, and has a power source strong enough to control your visual cortex. If I were to risk doing anything to it, I could damage your brain beyond repair. I am not a neurosurgeon, Eve. The most I could offer you would be a signal blocker between NIX and your brain, but I would need some time to make it work."
 

I lifted my hands and sent a blank message Window to Adam using my new Command Skill, and the nestled spider let out a flurry of small bright pulses.
 

Adam sent me a message back, and it pulsed again.
 

--IS EVERYTHING OKAY?--

-Adam-

"Did you just use the Game interface?"

I nodded.
 

"Well, that proves my theory." Blaine stood and returned quickly with another gadget, a bright smile on his face that kinda annoyed me, seeing as the situation was decidedly not cheerful.
 

Adam popped his head into the room. "What's going on?"

Blaine waved him over. "Oh, come look at this. We are scanning the implants NIX put into Eve. It is quite fascinating. Do it again, Eve," he said, stepping back and pointing a small curved satellite-like dish at me.
 

I sent Adam another message, and Blaine “oohed.”
 

"Interesting. The lower implant, which is definitely a GPS, is sending out timed pulses to nowhere, but I can also see the data transfer between you and Adam. Each of the chips must have some kind of local area wireless technology built in. I wonder if we might be able to do some tracking of this data between you and Bunny." Blaine lifted his head over the device and grinned at me.
 

That, I could see the cheer in.
 

We spent the next hour doing little tests on Adam and I, and Blaine came to the tentative conclusion that he might be able to create something to block Game interaction from NIX, while keeping the localized access between me and my team. As for the GPS, it was also imbedded into my spine, but not my brain, and though he didn't want to try and remove either of the implants, he thought he might be able to create a localized shock that would render the GPS useless without much damage to the rest of me.
 

But he had no idea what might have caused the hallucination, especially as the VR chip wasn't connected to my auditory cortex, and I knew I'd
heard
things. He hypothesized my problem was too much stress and extended physical and emotional trauma, and seconded Sam's advice to get some rest.
 

After a while, our resident scientist sat down and began to draw diagrams and make notes to himself while glancing at the videos he'd taken through the gadgets on my neck.
 

“Do you need a ride home? You ran here again, right? I can take you on my bike," Adam offered. "I have a feeling you'd get a few feet past the door and collapse, in the state you're in."

My eyes widened at the offer. I must look even worse than I felt. But riding home while someone else drove sounded wonderful. No thinking, no moving. “Yes, thank you. That would be great."

“Okay. Wait here while I get my stuff.”

When we were alone, I turned to Blaine. “What plans do you have in place to keep yourself safe if you were ever able to save your niece and nephew from NIX?”

He stared at me from behind his glasses, but then his surprise faded away and he started to talk. We laid plans for a few minutes until Adam poked his head back through the doorway and told me he was ready to leave.
 

I stood up and made my trembling way to the door. I needed to rest, and then try for a repeat of the hallucination, if that was what it was. I could feel it was significant, and I needed to find out exactly
why
I believed that.

Log of Captivity 3

Mental Log of Captivity-Estimated Day: Two thousand, six hundred eleven.

I do not know how, but my master reached out to me today, as I have been doing to her, though the
blood-covenant
is still incomplete.
 
She touched my mind, fairly
skin-jacked
me! It was only for a moment, and then she withdrew, but I am filled to bursting with these strange feelings I barely remember. Pride and happiness fill me, because I know she is in this way acknowledging our
blood-covenant
. A Matrix has accepted me, and I can only be selfishly grateful that she must be still too young to know the worth of her bond.
 

Chapter 18

I wanted to find one law to cover all of living. I found fear.
 

— Michael Ondaatje

I spent the next few days worrying fruitlessly about Zed, sparring, endlessly smashing different parts of my body against the unfeeling sandbag till I felt like I would fall apart, learning how to throw knives and darts from China, and then trying to reach that hyper-aware state again. I gained points in Focus from trying so hard, but had no luck. I did level up and gain several other Attribute points through the sheer amount of work I was putting in, so my efforts weren’t completely fruitless.
 

On the tenth day, we gathered in the base and waited for the Trial to start. I’d told Blaine about the video I’d taken of my teleportation and asked him to monitor and study our disappearance. We were attached to wireless biometric monitors and under the watch of high frame rate cameras. Tension filled every corner of the room as we anticipated what was to come, checked and rechecked our equipment, and tried in vain to relax.
 

Finally, after hours of my understandably fruitless attempts to meditate, the Boneshaker played. The five of us gathered together, and left together.
 

My knees tried to buckle under the sudden added weight after the transfer, but I was prepared, and controlled them. My stomach roiled, and I took a deep breath of the strangely flavored air.
 

We were all standing together, as we had been. I turned in a circle, looking around. Under my feet lay black, granite-looking stone, reaching far and unbroken in every direction until it met with what looked to be a waterfall reaching into the sky. It was almost as if someone had placed us upside down on a huge black penny, turned on the sink, and placed us under a running faucet. I squinted my eyes, but the light was dim, and I couldn’t tell for sure if the substance that surrounded this huge black disk in a shimmering tube was indeed water.
 

It wasn’t what I was expecting. There was no greenery, no buildings, no rioting mass of strong colors and strange shapes. Ahead was the familiar black cube that always welcomed us to a Trial, but with a little extra.
 

HERE YOU WILL BE TRIED, YOUR MEASURE TAKEN. THE WORTHY WILL BE GRANTED THE POWER OF THE GODS.

TAKE YOUR PLACES ON THE BOARD.

Almost immediately, a timer appeared in front of my face, with a three-minute deadline. The other Players milled around the cube, speaking with despair tinged voices.
 

“What’s going on?” I asked aloud.
 

Adam’s voice was grim. “It’s going to be an Intelligence type Trial.” Something about his tone put a heavy stone pit in the bottom of my stomach.
 

Jacky nodded. “Every once in a while we get the mental Trials.” She cracked her knuckles. “They’re…hard.” Her voice cracked along with her joints and her face was pale.
 

Sam breathed hard, studying his own hands intently.
 

I’d heard of mental Trials from the others before. There was often no Moderator, and the Players had to use clues and deductive reasoning to figure out how to survive and win. And there was usually a cruel twist of some sort. Needless to say, they were almost always a bloodbath, with higher fatality rates than any other type of Trial.
 

This was bad. Very bad.
 

I looked around for a clue to the cube’s message, and noticed an aberration in the smooth stone ground. Circles about a meter in diameter were etched into the stone. They were bordered in complex, almost Celtic looking knots, and on the inward-facing side, small, ornate letters spelled out the name, ‘Adam Coyle.’

“Adam!” I called. “This one’s got your name on it.” I pointed to my feet, then walked to the one directly next to it and saw my own name. “And this one’s mine, I guess.” Good, that was good. Adam had the highest Intelligence in our group, and I the second highest, after recent increases.
 

I turned to my team. “We’ll make it through this, working together.” I reached out and grabbed both China and Jacky by the hand.
 

Jacky squeezed back. “This isn’t my specialty. Gimme a monster to fight any day, not puzzles and silence.”
 

China took a deep breath and stood as tall as possible with her small body. “I won’t die here today. I’ve still got to find Chanelle.”

“None of us are alone.” I squeezed their hands and met the eyes of both Adam and Sam, trying to instill confidence in my words. “Everyone!” I called out loudly, “Find the circle with your name on it, and get inside. Before the time runs out.”
 

Slowly, the whole group of Players in that Trial obeyed. As soon as the last person stepped into their circle, the timer abruptly disappeared, and clear bars shot up around each of us.
 

I reached out and touched one, and found it warm and buzzing, but unmovable. There wasn’t enough room between the bars to squeeze through. Which meant we were trapped.
 

Angry calls rang out at me from around the ring, as if I was responsible for this.
 

Adam tried to shake and rattle his bars in the cage next to mind, to no avail. He caught me watching and took a deep breath, pushing his hair out of his face. “I don’t know what’s going on. But this worries me.”

I smiled. “That’s okay. Neither do I. But we’ll figure it out.”

He cracked a small smile, and then another timer popped up in front of our faces, this time for thirty minutes.
 

The ground of my circle moved strangely, causing me to stumble. Then out of the opening it had formed, a small black cube rose up and sat at my feet. I bent to touch it tentatively, and when nothing happened, picked it up.
 

It was shiny and smooth, except for an infinity symbol on one side, and hairline cracks dividing the surface with curves and lines. I tilted the box back and forth and ran my finger over the surface, trying to see the cracks more clearly. They seemed to be geometrically shaped, not the random lighting branches of true cracks.
 

“It’s a puzzle box, Adam,” I said, as soon as the thought formed in my mind.
 

I tried to take a step to turn and face him, and I realized the floor had softened beneath my feet. I took a shuddering breath, and saw pretty ink-black hands curled around the bottom of my boots. The floor was grabbing me, and as I watched, the fingers wriggled, as if pushing out of the restricting stone, moving a bit further up my shoe.

 
“Adam!” I choked out.
 

He looked at me, and then followed my eyes down. “Oh, no.” Though I couldn’t tell exactly what was coming out of the ground underneath him, he swallowed. “A puzzle box,” he repeated, focusing on my previous words. “Which means, logically, we have to solve it before the time runs out. I used to love these things as a kid,” he said bitterly. “I had a Rubik’s cube that I would solve over and over again.”
 

“Will the skill translate?”

He laughed. “Damn. I hope so.”
 

“The infinity symbol on the front, I’m thinking that might be the shape of the finished puzzle.”
 

“Sounds good to me.” After a few minutes of intense thought that drove me crazy waiting, he wriggled one of the corners. It spun away from the rest of the box, swiveling along with his fingers. Then, he started to twist in earnest.
 

I watched his intense concentration for a few moments and then twisted the same corner of my own box, hurrying to catch up with his movements. Staring at his hands, I mimicked him frenetically, always a few moves behind, until a few minutes later he stopped.
 

“I’ve got it,” he said. In his hands was a twisting infinity sign, kind of like a double helix.