Where Futures End (21 page)

“You're shaking,” Olly said.

“I'm just cold.” Reef doubled over and tried to resist the urge to puke. He'd been stupid to let himself move up to two doses a day. There was no way he could hold out until after they ran the instance. And while getting high made Alt more immersive, it also seriously messed with his focus.

“I'm not going in there with you like this,” Olly said. “I'm not saying I don't really need to grab some items I can sell, but . . .”

Reef fidgeted with his goggles. “Yeah, sorry I haven't been around to—”

Olly cut him off. “If my character gets killed here, I have to run all the way to the metro station and back before I'll be allowed to resurrect.”

“A little exercise wouldn't kill you.”

“You're right. Maybe I can talk Seattle into installing a few more hills under its streets.”

“Give me a second.” Reef moved off into the dark by himself and opened his tin. He promised himself that he wouldn't let his focus drift.

A figure emerged into the light from the goggles around Reef's neck. “Level Three Hundred,” Aedric said in greeting.

“Three oh one,” Reef corrected.

“Ready to swap?” Aedric nodded to another guy who was trudging through the tall grass of the empty lot. “This is Breck.”

Breck's wide grin was friendly enough, but his chemically bleached skin and blue contact lenses lent him a spectral look. “Hey there.” His vorpal was like an envelope of air holding him apart from the rest of them. Reef thought it was making the grass at Breck's feet ripple, but he couldn't be sure he wasn't imagining it. It was the strongest vorpal Reef had ever encountered, and this was the guy he was supposed to fleece.

It doesn't matter,
he told himself.
As long as he doesn't suspect anything, it's not a problem.

Breck reached to shake Reef's hand like they were old friends. Reef yanked his goggles off his neck instead and handed them over.

“Oh, right. We're getting started?” Breck tugged at a zipper on his form-fitting raincoat and produced his own pair of goggles. “Careful now. New model.”

Reef pulled the goggles over his head and gave Aedric a quick glance. Aedric's usually blank face was full of loathing for Breck. He turned to say something to his alien friend on his other side.

“Olly will be the tank.” Reef pointed back to where Olly was loading himself up with imaginary armor. “Breck, you hang back and do far-ranged attacks. If anything zeroes in on you, get close to Olly so he can take the damage.”

“Right, right,” Breck said, wiggling Reef's goggles into place over his eyes. “We'll all get ourselves to Canada in no time.” He flashed another smile that made his cheeks bulge under the weighty goggles. Reef bottled his rage.
Save it for the dungeon, where you'll need it,
he told himself.

“I've got an Impervious Elixir in my inventory,” he told Breck. “You might want to drink it now.”

Olly led the way through the opening in the razor wire to a pair of battered metal doors. A heavy chain dangled from one handle, its busted padlock lying in the grass below. Breck pushed his way to the doors and let himself in first. Aedric's gaze lingered on the padlock. “Think he slept with her?” he asked Reef. The hatred in his eyes
unsettled Reef. He was about to answer
no
when a wave of uncertainty hit him. Breck had visas. He lived on the Floating Isle. Why wouldn't Cadence sleep with him before sleeping with a guy whose house wasn't even big enough to stand up in? A new brand of hatred formed in Reef's heart.

Inside, Breck was testing Reef's new sword, swinging it through the empty air.

“Don't forget,” Aedric said. “Breck makes the kill.
Reef
picks up the silver scepter.”

Reef scrutinized him, wondering at the desperation in his voice, but the next moment their goggles flashed to life. Leafy vines wrapped themselves around the steam plant's huge concrete beams and rickety metal ladders. Flame-colored flowers and fronded trees exploded through every opening in the levels overlooking the main warehouse. The towering white turbines barely visible in the moonlight were transformed into enormous hives shuddering with some inner turmoil.

“I don't think we want to get too close to the dragon nests,” Olly warned, staring up at the hives.

The sudden barrage of images left Reef's head spinning.
Get a hold of yourself,
he thought. His breathing had gone erratic. A warm, dizzying sensation spread through his chest and out to his limbs, courtesy of the resin now going bland in his mouth. For a moment he felt pinned in by the chest-high plants projected by his goggles.

He batted aside a spreading branch to find a grimy control bank that shouldn't show while he was wearing his
goggles. It was part of the steam plant, not the game world of Alt.
Bad design, or patchy edit?
he wondered. He didn't have long to think about it.

A swarm of fairies came ripping through the leaves, engorged with foul nectar that they spewed over the concrete floor. The effect from Reef's goggles was to make the floor steam as though it were being eaten by acid.

“Watch your step,” someone called, and the voice rang in Reef's ears. He took a steadying breath and forced his mind to focus on the game.

Night hares came next, tall as Reef's knee and baring long tusks for teeth. Reef blinded them with a Flash Spell, and the rest of the group used various Mage Blades and Longswords to dispatch the creatures. Olly snatched up the Shield Spell the hares had dropped and then led the way up a clanging metal staircase to where the plants were jungle-thick and blooming with tentacle-like flowers. Just as Reef was wondering if the enormous blossoms were duplicated from the Other Place or if they were from some game designer's imagination, one of them locked on to his leg with its finger-like tendrils. He hacked at it with a dagger while a mage made his entrance with a swarm of toads swollen to the size of dogs.

“Hang back,” he shouted to Breck. “Let Olly take the damage.” Breck made some useless gestures with his electronic glove and threw out spells that fizzled in midair. One of the toads stretched its blue-black tongue and came back with the crystal dagger that had been strapped to Breck's arm.
Reef's
crystal dagger.

“I said stay back!” Reef cried in frustration. He groaned at the memory of what he'd gone through to get that dagger—defeated a Dark Elf and then assembled the two dozen materials required to turn its fang into a blade.

“Sorry, really sorry,” Breck called, and made another attempt at a spell that was too difficult for him.

Aedric's alien friend, playing as a Light Elf, got busy casting healing spells on Olly while the mage attacked. Reef's goggles created the illusion that veins of magic flowed through the alien's skin, and Reef thought to himself that he'd never seen an alien look so alien before. The mage finally crumpled, and they were off to find the stairway to the next level.

Reef hung back. Now was his chance to get the visa off Breck's account. He rifled through Breck's hard drive until he found it, reached for the disc zippered into his jacket pocket—

A flash of white showed against dark green leaves. Reef froze. That was no night hare.

He plunged into the bushes. Another white flash. Reef brought down the flat of his sword, pinning the white rabbit against the floor.

He felt like shouting. He'd done it—
finally
. He yanked the rabbit up by the ears. This was it—one free help was his.
If only white rabbits gave out visas,
he thought grimly.

He considered asking for a Queen's Mark and gifting it to his own account so he could get into the palace on the harbor. But what good would that do him if he was going to Canada?

And there was still that question that haunted him. “Who made up the quest for the Fated Blade?” he asked the rabbit. Somewhere in the distance the others were clanging their way up to another floor. Olly would kill him if he knew he was hanging back for this. “What's the username?”

The rabbit remained silent for a moment, as if considering how to answer. Then it said, “Would you want me to warn you if you were walking into a trap? Should I—if it means harm to me?”

Reef tried to shake the haze out of his brain. Was his mind playing tricks on him?

“What would you do in my place?” the rabbit went on.

Cold dread seeped into Reef's stomach. “What're you talking about? What's the Fated Blade?”

“Do you want to know about fate? You joined your world to another's without thought of what dangers might come. And now the connection between the worlds will be severed. It must be.”

More confusion, and then—clarity. Reef checked the bottom of his display and confirmed that the chat channel was open. The white rabbit wasn't a real white rabbit at all but was someone talking to him through a digital pet. “Who is this?” He already knew. He whipped around, looking for some sign of Aedric's alien friend. Only black leaves and riotous blossoms. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“I'm trying to warn you. Are you listening? You have walked into a trap.”

“What trap?” Reef said to the rabbit.

The chat channel closed. The rabbit vanished from Reef's grip.

“Whatcha doing?” Breck said from the bushes.

Reef spun to face him. “Uh. White rabbit.” Breck couldn't have heard anything the rabbit had said—its voice had come through the chat channel directly to Reef. “Found it a second ago. Gone now.”

“I heard you say something to it about the Fated Blade. Said you thought it was a trap?” He pulled up his goggles and their light flashed on a metal bracelet around his wrist. “It's not a real quest. Just the Chinese mocking us.”

“What?” Reef's eyes were glued on the bracelet. No doubt it had Cadence's name engraved on it.

“You know the game is riddled with leeches? All waiting for their creator to say the word and . . .” Breck mimed an explosion with his hands, made a noise with his cheeks puffed out. “Down goes all of our infrastructure. The leeches are waiting for the signal. The signal, the attack—that's the Fated Blade.”

Reef squinted at him. His head was filling with fog again.

“Think about the character who offers that quest,” Breck went on. “Ever noticed the color of his clothes? Red with yellow stars, same as Great China's flag.”

A vague memory came to Reef of the man outside the hotel that served as the Immigration Office. A battered leather vest like a second hide, red sleeves showing underneath—

“I read about it on this forum.” Breck grinned that harmless grin Reef was coming to despise. “You read forums?
There's a lot of tips that can help you level up. Well, I guess you don't need that.” He shook his wrist, fidgeting with the metal bracelet that must still feel foreign to him. The movement dislodged something in Reef's brain.

“You met Cadence . . . how, again?” he asked Breck.

“Aedric introduced us. I met him on the Floating Isle.”

Reef's mind went back to what Aedric had said earlier that day.
Don't you think I've been working on getting visas for a long time now?

Aedric had introduced Breck to Cadence on purpose. Because he knew Breck had visas or could at least get some. He had set up Breck from the beginning.

Reef almost laughed. Aedric was even more of a snake than he had thought.

Then his skin went cold.
What else isn't Aedric telling me?

From above, Olly's voice rang out.
“Where are they?”

“Better go help,” Breck said.

Reef followed him. He felt suddenly jumpy. The shadowed plants seemed ominous. What had he gotten himself into with Aedric? What was Aedric planning?

As he clanged up the stairs, he remembered he hadn't yet taken the visa from Breck's hard drive. He quickly located it and fumbled for the disc Aedric had given him.

On second thought . . .
He left the disc in his pocket and instead sent the visa through the chat channel to his own goggles, the ones Breck was wearing.

Breck jolted to a stop at the top of the stairs.

“I got a transmission on your goggles?” he said, turning toward Reef. “Let me check it.”

“No,” Reef said a little too forcefully. “No, it sounds like they need us. Look, I can see them over there.”

Breck whirled around, sword in hand. Transmission forgotten. He and Reef scrambled through the foliage to where a huge beast was wreaking havoc, a hulking black mass of bristles. Six-foot spikes protruded from its back, thick needles from its arms and legs. Its glinting black eyes, clustered like a spider's, were almost lost in the nest of bristles covering its face.

It chased them down a rusted catwalk that felt like it would give way any moment. Olly drew it down to the main floor where there was space to get at it with swords.

“That's you, Breck,” Reef shouted. “Make the kill and I'll grab the scepter the Bristle Beast drops.”

A bank of dials on the wall came to life, needles pulsing frantically. The white dragon hives towering over them began to hum. For one terrified moment Reef wasn't sure if it was all part of the game or if the old turbines had come back to life. He ripped off his goggles to find the turbines still and silent in the moonlight. The dials on the wall were rusted over, dead.

“Reef, what're you doing,” Olly shouted. “Put your goggles on.”

Reef jerked them back over his eyes to find a chaotic scene. Breck was doing clumsy battle with the wounded Bristle Beast, who was trailing sticky purple blood. The hives had broken open and dragon fledglings were shooting out, thin and whip-like and enraged. They circled overhead, dipping uncertainly as they flew with their new
wings, shrieking like banshees, blinking blind, white eyes.