Chapter 1
Sadie added a new line to her summer to-do list. Ditch college plans (who needs student loans), become a pro gamer (no sweat), move to the other side of the world (or at least California), and now—get cooler, better friends than Meera and rub her stupid, stinking face in it.
Because some people think becoming a pro gamer is “unrealistic” and “not being serious about my future”. Some people are also bombastic bitches.
“Retreat!” PirateQueen called out from the latest raid on the Sky Fortress. Sadie hit the right arrow to fast forward to the good part.
Her crew retreated into the swamp as a snake man edged closer, teeth snarling in his assumed win. A few more keystrokes and PirateQueen signaled. Two assassins, new additions to her crew, snuck in with a cloaking skill, disarmed the snake-man, and injected a sleep poison. The rest of the crew captured the floor mark before the raid boss could regenerate and multiply.
A classic strategic retreat. Three days ago, it won the fastest clearance of floor ten in the Sky Fortress this season, and Sadie was ninety percent certain the fastest on the floor in the history of Evarus VR.
Not surprising because the PirateQueen was the best, the highest-ranked player in the Pirate Guild, and Sadie intended to join them. With her fifteenth birthday last week, she was finally old enough to do so and take the first step on her road to going pro.
She selected another crew member’s stream of the raid to study while she waited for noon, but all she could hear was her last argument with Meera.
“You don’t even act like a person anymore,” Meera snapped. “Closer to a zombie puppet pushing buttons”
“First of all, it’s a fully immersive VR game. There are no buttons to push.” Sadie held back tears during the fight that ended in their breakup.
Meera ignored her, didn’t even look at her. “I thought you wanted to be a lawyer? What happened to our plans? Undergrad together, then grad school, and a power couple doctor-attorney duo in New York while we rescue kittens as a side gig.”
Three years cut into bits, stuffed in a trash bag, and tossed in a random dumpster. All because she didn’t want to be a lawyer and go to school for another decade. Within a month, Meera went from concerned about Sadie’s mental health, to dismissal, to calling her unrealistic, to straight-up insults. Were they ever even real? Or only real as long as she fit into Meera’s plans?
As noon approached, Sadie pulled up Evarus Fall’s website and smashed f5 like the fate of the world depended on the new event. Because it did. Ever since the announcement of it a month ago, rumors on the forums indicated this event was for end-game players, the kind BRINK watched for recruits.
The Assassins, Mage Outlaws, Raiders, and Pirates. She’d accept an invite from any, of course, but the Pirates were number one for a reason. And she wanted to be number one.
“Sweetie, breaking your computer won’t make them post the update any faster.” Her mom paused a beat. “Or clean the toilet. It’s not even noon yet. Have you done it yet?”
Sadie tore her eyes away from the screen and muffled a scoff. “Not yet, but I will.”
“Rolling your eyes won’t pick up a toilet brush,” she said in a sing-song manner causing Sadie to actually roll her eyes.
“You’re so weird,” Sadie shot back, not totally meaning it. “I’m the only one using that bathroom, and I am satisfied with its current cleanliness level.” Mom always appreciated a well-articulated and reasoned argument. Sometimes it even worked. “So I feel I should receive a day pass and not clean the bathroom on aSaturday.”
“You know, I don’t remember days having much meaning during the summer when I was a kid.”
Sadie walked down the hall to make her case in person. “You mean when people didn’t even have phones?”
“That’s dramatic. I told you I got a slider phone in middle school.”
Barely a phone. Mom held a bowl of ramen, which meant she was about to lock herself in her office and work. Of course. Even moving to the middle of nowhere barely-a-town, Iowa failed to reduce her insane level of workaholic-ness. You’d think she’d watch a video on anti-capitalism or something.
“Tell you what,” Mom said, “I’ll let you out of chores for a week if you take your bike and ride into town. There was some festival happening today. Maybe you’ll meet someone.”
Sadie snorted a laugh. “This isn’t your childhood. You can’t just ‘make friends’ by riding your bike around and stumbling on kids playing baseball or something.”
“Okay, first off, the Sandlot was set in the 1960s.” Mom stared mock-agape. “How old do you think I am?”
“You know what I mean. That stuff just doesn’t happen anymore. It’s a classic but unrealistic.” Thought she wished it wasn’t. No watching your ex through a screen spend nearly every day with people who used to be your mutual friends. Just move to a new town, wander around, boom, new friends. And complete, blissful severance of your old life.
“Classic! It came out after I was born.”
“Exactly?”
“And for that, you’re doing the bathroom today.” Mom grabbed a pair of steel chopsticks and headed to her office. “And I get to pick the next movie again. Educate you on some real classics.”
“Fine,” Sadie mumbled. “But after I play bit.”
Mom pursed her lips and then grinned. “Deal. And then take a break. VR can give you headaches if you play too long.”
“Mom,” she groaned. “The game has been down for the update. I don’t think I’m in any danger of overplaying today.”
“I’m serious. Plus, I don’t want you getting addicted and living inside the game.” Mom shot her a look as if she knew Sadie intended to abandon any college plans and closed her office door.
Sadie slid back into her desk chair with a chicken salad sandwich and busied herself tallying the loot of the PirateQueen’s raid while pulling up an Evarus daily streamer doing a countdown to the new event. You can never be sure of exact loot numbers because while the Sky Fortress had legit end-game dungeons, the loot pulled by BRINK was not. No one outside their guilds knew exactly how they retrieved those items when no one else could, but if the system caught you with a banned item, it was an instant suspension.
Didn’t stop everyone from paying top dollar and risking it. Banned items were unbreakable, replenishable, and just downright awesome compared to other game items.
Game reporters asked Ben Gray, the creator, why he didn’t disband BRINK or put additional rules in place at the Sky Fortress to prevent this. He weaseled out of ever answering, but the real answer was obvious. It’d be pretty dumb to shut down gameplay that generated millions of views on analysis videos alone; it only helped fill Evergames’ coffers.
Scrounging forums for any new posts and findings, she counted at least one giant mech suit introduced to the Colosseum, a book of the dead, an unbreakable lock pick, and eight million straight loons, plus a few new weapons.
Between checking forums and the stem, she frantically refreshed the events page for the thousandth time. Please let this event be good. Something big and awesome to show BRINK she deserved an invite.
One chance. That’s all she wanted. No, needed. You didn’t join BRINK simply by wanting it. She could easily join any regular guild, ones that went on normal dungeon raids couldn’t pass the first floor of the Sky Fortress. Ones that weren’t filled to the brim with pro gamers.
But Sadie didn’t want to be a regular girl in a regular guild. She didn’t want to make new friends like Mom bugged her about, as if her last friends were so great. She wanted to be a pirate on the PirateQueen’s crew building a name for herself and a pro career.
And if the PirateQueen could come out of nowhere to take the top spot from PittPeng months ago, she could too. Come to think of it, no one had heard from the PittPeng since. Probably rage quit from embarrassment.
Her phone dinged. A small light of hope bloomed before she remembered the events page wasn’t going to ding at her. Any light extinguished when she looked at the notification–a photo memory of her and her old DC friends hiking at Great Falls Park… and where she saw a picture of them hiking last week on social media. All the friends who could clearly make plans with each other but not respond to her texts. Or wish her a happy birthday.
I mean her ex-girlfriend she understood, but everyone else? Harsh. Every time she looked at the texts, she felt a flowing lava of screams want to erupt and ease the pressure that’d been brewing all summer.
All four of the unanswered text chains sat right below a text from Mom saying “Don’t forget to feed the chickens.” As if she ever asked for chickens, or to move, or to be stuck by herself in the middle of nowhere.
She needed to get out of here. Make the pirates… or any BRINK guild. Needed to know every waking moment spent this summer was worth it. That causing her relationship to break up was worth it. She was worth it, and she deserved this.
A meow from outside the window broke her spiral. She refreshed the page again. Nothing. God, when would this update finish?
She opened the window then slammed it closed with a “Shut it, Blackbeard!” to their white cat with a black spot on his chin and stomped back to her chair. Before sitting, she signed and peeked her head back out. She wanted to be a pirate, not a jerk.
She broke off a piece of her sandwich and tossed it out the window before shoving the rest in her mouth. “Sorry for yelling, little dude,” she muffled through chews.
Blackbeard purred and disappeared back into the bush with chicken sandwich in mouth. She shut the window before too much chicken poop smell wafted in and too much AC escaped. Freaking chickens.
Why did Mom have to move them here to Nowhereville, Iowa? All this way from D.C. and her friends and the Smithsonian just for Mom to spend all her time in her office with the exact same computer, same desk, and same chair. At least Blackbeard enjoyed the “fresh” air.
Luke Skywalker whining about his uncle’s farm and all the chores involved made a gargantuan amount of sense now. It sucked. With a capital “S”.
A grunt escaped from Mom’s always-closed office. Maybe she needed to be more like Mom and spend literally every waking second at her computer. For as much as Mom got on her about screen time, she’d hardly seen Mom outside of movie nights since they moved, and it’s not like they saw each other all the time back in DC to begin with. Not after Dad left.
Maybe Mom was secretly in one of the BRINK guilds, traversing Evarus, raiding the Sky Fortress, and spending all her time with her guild. Sadie snorted. That’d make her a pro gamer, and there was no way Mom was awesome enough for that.
Her mouth salivated at joining the PirateQueen’s crew—the views, the sponsorships, the fame. Not to mention the fun. When she became a pro gamer, she’d move somewhere awesome like London, or literally anywhere without chickens.
The streamer began talking rapidly, and Sadie launched herself at her computer nearly tripping over Blackbeard’s toys as she plopped into her seat. Refresh, refresh, refresh.
A Glitch Has Appeared: Early Access Event
A glitch has occurred across Evarus causing some monsters to grow ten times their size with the power boost to match. Be warned.: Glitches are not for the faint of heart and are intended for end-game players.
For any player able to take down a Glitch, grand prizes are in store including access to previously banned items. But most importantly, one Glitch holds the key to fixing the fractured sky.
Good luck. - Ben
She groaned. Early access? Only a few random people received invites to those. How was she supposed to stand out from the crowd by the time it went public? People would have too much time to strategize and team up.
Her computer dinged and she double groaned at the possibility of another stupid photo memory. Wait, her computer. She opened her eyes and a red bubble now existed over her mail icon. With trembling hands, she opened her email.
New mail. Sender: Evarus Falls. Subject: Early Access Invitation.
She jumped out of her chair and yelled at the top of her lungs while fist-pumping into the air. What were the odds? Out of the nearly two billion players.
She clicked on the email and accepted the invite. As her account synced, she read the rest of the email. It contained only one thing, a location—Talaria, the city of speed.
That had to be where one of the glitches popped up. She snatched her Evarus Falls neural gear, dashed to her bed as she entered the starting coordinates, stuck the neural pads to each side of her forehead, and closed her eyes with a Cheshire grin. Let the games begin.