Owl and the City of Angels (32 page)

“Byzantine! Check your character!”

I raced back to my screen. The nearest pillar teetered precariously from side to side.

I danced Byzantine out of the way before it toppled over, but not fast enough. A piece of rubble smacked into my back, downing my hit points to less than half. Before I could reclaim my footing and down a healing potion, the next nearest pillar started to tilt. “Goddamn it—” I dodged out of its way and looked for a spot where I could safely down the second-to-last potion in my inventory. “Carpe, hurry up and get up here. I’m down to one potion.”

“You have like what? Two resurrection scrolls?”

“That’s not the point.” Though out of reflex I opened up my current inventory to see if I had both of them with me; I had a habit of leaving one hidden so gamers couldn’t loot one off my corpse while I was using the first. The things you have to worry about in PVP areas.

“No. That’s not possible,” I said as I searched my inventory. The scrolls weren’t there, either of them. Oh that was dirty.

“What?”

“My scrolls are gone. Those bastards got into my inventory—”

“What? Shit—mine are gone too.”

I frowned. “I thought you used your last one three months ago.” Carpe had gotten himself killed during a really stupid engagement with an ancient Aztec god.

“Surprise?” he tried. “Now neither of us has a way to regenerate if they manage to kill us.”

“Well, can we hack their character sheets and kill them off?”

“OK, that’s overreacting. Oh damn. You’re not going to like this.”

“Out with it.”

“They figured a way around my ‘Bunnies of Evil’ worm.”

“Carpe, we really have to work on your names—shit.”

Where before there’d been a pair of white bunnies, now stood two black knights, breathing smoke and holding giant axes. The kind I’ve avoided entire games series to never meet.

“Whoa, what are those?” Carpe asked.

“Don’t know and not about to get the monster sheets to find out,” I said as Byzantine rolled between twin blades as they crashed into the stones tiles in tandem, clipping my back and dropping my health bar back down to next to nothing.

“Byzantine, you still alive?” Carpe said.

“Depends on your definition,” I said, eyeing my health bar.

The two knights recovered their swords faster than game physics should have allowed and came at me again. All I could do was bolt out of the way before the swords swung back down in their deadly arcs.

“Do not come up here—I repeat, whatever you do, do not come up here.” Hell, I didn’t want to be up here anymore. Oh no—wait.

The knights might be defying game physics, but the stone tiles in the ancient temple weren’t. Where the knights’ swords had swung, nearly dealing a lethal blow to me, the stone tiles had crumbled under impact.

That’s what you get hacking a game on the fly.

“Carpe—hang tight, I’ve got an idea.”

I wiped another bead of sweat off my face.

Using Hide in Plain Sight, I maneuvered Byzantine to the edge of the temple. Now, time to test the NPC intelligence level on these suckers. Two was one too many swinging swords for what I needed, so . . .

I slid my avatar out of plain sight and, hovering the cursor over the Gesture button, hit Enter in rapid succession.

Byzantine began waving and jumping at the giant knights.

Both raised their swords and started towards me. I danced to the side and checked their foot movements. There was no deviation from their slow walk towards me. I smiled. Generic AI. I waited until the last minute, when the lead knight raised the sword over my head.

I vaulted over the ledge and caught a hook partway down.

The knight did exactly what I expected a generic game AI to do: it stepped over the edge after me.

One knight down, one left to use. I edged away from the second sword as it crashed against the cliff edge. I then vaulted my avatar up a few feet away. “Get ready, Carpe, I’m going to need a portal to nowhere real soon.”

I dodged Byzantine around the knight’s feet, over to the pillar and the cracked stone tile.

The knight, like a good AI, wandered over. There was a burst of white beside my character, and Carpe solidified beside me.

“All right, when do you want this portal?” he asked.

“See the giant knight?”

“Hard to miss, since he doesn’t belong in the damn game.”

“All right, as soon as he drops the sword. Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure there’s a passage underneath.” The game designers might be able to hide architecture, but they couldn’t redesign it on the fly while Carpe had their server tied up.

“Do you have any idea how stupid a plan that is?”

“They want us dead. At this point, poor tactical choices are a moot point.”

The sword rose over the knight’s head, and he bellowed out smoke.

“You’re too far to the right,” Carpe yelled into my headset.

“No I’m not—”

“Yes you are—”

“No I’m—damn it.” I slid to the right, but not soon enough. The knight’s sword sliced my avatar’s arm on the way down.

“Told you so.”

And to boot, the knight had missed the tile.

“Carpe, portal now!” I said as the knight bolted after me.

“I can’t, not with you two moving. I’ve got another idea. Stand back.”

I knew that tone of voice. I tossed on my dragon eye goggles and checked Carpe’s casting effect range. I was well within it. Normally not a problem, but I wasn’t willing to bet the party immunity factor would be on—especially if the designers knew how we played. We’re more of a drop-a-few-fireballs-and-see-what-hasn’t-melted kind of team. Gold and gemstones are good for that.

“What are you casting?”

“Fireball. Figure it’ll trash the knight and the stone.”

Shit. I sat up. “Yeah—hold off, I’m in range.”

“Ahh—kind of a no on that one. Spell’s halfway cast. I’d have to scratch a fifth level off my list.”

“Dude, saving a fucking spell slot is not going to help you if you kill me!”

“A fifth-level Fireball spell isn’t going to kill you. Drain by half maybe—oh.”

“No shit. Check your fucking teammate’s health bar first next time.”

“Look, maybe I can re-spawn you, or you could try to down a potion fast,” Carpe offered.

“Never mind, I’ll save myself.”

Come on, Byzantine, don’t fail me now
 . . . I stumbled out of the spell’s effect range just ahead of the blast, but my health bar flashed red anyways. “No—that’s not good, get out of the red.” I madly equipped my last health potion and waited for the smoke on the screen to clear.

There was a crater-sized hole in the middle of the temple ruins. The knight was nowhere to be seen.

I breathed a sigh of relief and leaned back in my chair. Man oh man that was close. I took the pause in action to grab soda number two and filled a large glass with ice.

“Well, it worked,” Carpe said.

Yeah, well . . . less fireball would have been nice. No point telling Carpe that though. Past “you’re not dead” and “it worked,” I didn’t think it’d get me anywhere. “Bottoms up,” I said, and hopped into the now exposed tunnel before Carpe could argue.

The tunnel beneath us had been lined with carved brick to keep the earth at bay. There were two ends; one that led further into the mountain, and one that led back in the direction we’d come from.

Right, into the mountain we go
. I pulled out a torch and lit it. At least the game designers hadn’t completely raided our equipment.

We maybe had five minutes of solitude before Carpe’s voice chimed up.

“Ummm, were those there before?”

I heard the gleeful squeal right before the first scrape. I turned towards Carpe and caught the first glimpse of rusted metal in the shadows. It was covered in a half-assed poison charm. Great, goblins.

“Just what we needed right now. Goblin horde at three o’clock.” Raided you for gold after they killed you and used your entrails as finger paint. There was an entire out-of-game wall dedicated to goblin art. If you had a good eye, you could tell which styles came from which tribe.

“I think we should turn back,” Carpe said.

I glanced back down at the map in the right-hand corner of my screen, which revealed more of itself as we progressed through the temple. A quarter of the map left, all forward. Just a few minutes more.

“Any chance you’ve got another portal on you?” I said.

“What? No. Fuck off.”

“I need to know what’s in the center of this ruin so I can figure out where the artifacts are coming from.”

“The deal was map for book, not kill my character off—hey!”

The tunnel shook.

“I do not like that. They’re up to something,” Carpe said.

I brushed away more sweat. “We’re almost inside; what’s the worst that can happen? They’ve already banned us.”

The screen shook again, this time loosening a few rocks. A crack formed in the sealed stone door blocking the way. For a second my hopes rose—until I realized the giant stone door was poised not to crack or open but fall forward—on us.

“Carpe! Door—”

“All right, you two.” The voice over my headset was medium-tone male, soft American accent, Midwest—Michigan, maybe. “We’ve just about had it.”

One of the game designers.

“Hey asshole, you had your chance—this is a private chat line,” I said.

“You hacked our server,” a second, deeper male voice said, with a thicker accent. Texas maybe.

“It’s an emergency—” I started.

“Bullshit,” said Texas.

“We mean business. Get the hell out of our game,” chimed the more-educated-sounding Michigan.

“Like I said last time, I can’t do that.” Not only was I hot but now my head was pounding too.

“I don’t fucking believe this,” Texan said.

“Look, if you don’t believe me, ask Carpe Diem. It’s a matter of life and death that I get into that tomb, so will you two whiny programmers get the fuck out of my way?” I thought about adding that I meant that in the most respectable way possible—they had built World Quest after all—but figured I missed the boat to ingratiate myself already.

“Stealing stuff from the Syrian City of the Dead isn’t a matter of life and death,” said Michigan.

Goddamn it. “Look, I got cursed accidently—as in not my fault. And it’s another thief breaking into the temple, not me.”

“She’s lying through her teeth,” said Texas. “Smoke her.”

“Now see, that’s the kind of response that gets your game hacked!”

Carpe groaned.

“Last chance, Byzantine Thief. Get the fuck off our server,” said Michigan.

I don’t do well with ultimatums. “No, this is
your
last chance. Give me the fucking map of the city so I can get this fucking curse lifted, you miserly assho—”

There was an electric hiss as the programmers’ com spike went dead.

“Shit, Byzantine, something is up,” Carpe said. Sure enough, the screen shook and flickered with gray lines.

So close, just beyond that door—maybe another fireball blast would do the trick . . .

The screen flickered again.

“Byzantine, if we both die, I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to resurrect our characters . . . as it stands, I can still hack our way back in.”

So close . . . “I thought you were the best hacker in the world.”

“One of the best! I’m not lord of the internet!”

That decided it for me. “All right, teleport us out of here,” I said.

Light flickered around our characters as Carpe casted his spell. Then everything went dead.

And I mean everything; my laptop, the lights, the fridge, the air conditioner—

“Carpe?”

No answer. I took off my headset. Captain, figuring something was up, came out of the bedroom, followed closely by Rynn.

The bastards had figured out a way to cut the power to the casino. There was something wrong about the darkness though—it was too dark.

Horns and sirens drifted up from the strip below.

They wouldn’t have . . . I swore and checked outside the window. The buildings, streetlights—except for headlights, all of Vegas was dark.

“Oh that’s overkill—”

“Alix, why do I get the funny feeling you have something to do with the power?” Rynn said, coming up beside me.

I turned away from the window and stumbled into him as my headache flared; he’d been standing closer than I’d realized.

“Ah, yeah—long story about that. It was the World Quest developers—”

Rynn peered down at me, his brow furrowed.

“OK, it was my fault, but it was an emergency.”

Rynn touched my forehead with the back of his hand. “You need to get in the shower now.”

“No, I need to get back up on World Quest,” I told him. Maybe Carpe could hack us back in . . . I ducked out of the way but tripped over my own feet. Rynn caught me, his expression of worry deepening.

“Stop it, you’re burning up.”

I stopped. In fact, I got a good look at myself in the mirror, all sweat-soaked, five feet four inches of me. Who was I kidding? I wasn’t going to be any more use tonight in World Quest.

I let Rynn lead me to the shower. Alix Hiboux, welcome to your curse.

14

To Catch a Thief. No, Not Me. The Real Thief.

Noon, somewhere over the Eastern Sahara

Ever flown over a desert?

I figure the closest comparison is flying over the Arctic on a cloudless day. Except for the color, snow dunes look an awful lot like sand dunes.

I turned away from the port window and tried to get comfortable in the . . . well . . . not seat. Let’s go with pile of bags and blankets and leave it on a positive note. This was a significant change from the modes of transportation I’d gotten used to as of late—luxury cruises, private jets . . .

Cargo plane.

The cargo plane itself didn’t bug me. It was a relief to be somewhere I felt safe.

It was the damn chickens. The rooster especially kept crowing and pulling me out of my hard-won sleep, which I was trying to catch up on. After the power on the Vegas Strip was leveled, we bumped up our departure time. No one blamed me outright. They were just happy to have me gone.