Chapter 7
White diamonds fell around her, or she fell through the diamonds. It was hard to tell when her eyes told her one way was up and her dropping stomach said the opposite. Just like when entering Evarus VR through the neural gear, the diamonds danced around her, bending light and distorting space, but with the white backdrop, it shone more brilliantly than ever before.
Her head spun as the movement and light and heat of it all until it felt like she might never be steady again and a hundred times worse than when she stole a few swings of Mom’s rum earlier that summer. Playing a real-life pirate turned out to be less fun than she imagined and reliving the tipsy-turns-feeling made her want to hurl.
Large round objects flashed by her. Some reflected on her like mirrors while others showed a picture, but they passed by too fast to tell what of. Fingers, her fingers she realized, grasped at air as she tried to hold on to anything to steady herself, but they slipped through everything she touched and felt disembodied.
And just as suddenly as it started, she touched the ground and collapsed to her knees, heaving in breaths. Grass itched at her fingers peeking out from burgundy dirt. She must have ended up outside from whatever galactic mind game that app played on her.
Breathe. Steady. In out, in out. When her fingers merged into just ten digits again, she looked up, but she wasn’t outside her house, anywhere in Iowa, or on planet Earth.
“Welcome, Sadie Wall, to Evarus,” the gateway lady said.
The spiral peaks, half rock formations and half man-made, of Rudi Flats towered over her. Other new players stood around her gaping at their generic avatars or staring at players boarding off the peaks Zelda style to the rest of Evarus below.
The starting area. She sat back on her butt and laughed through another wave of nausea. She made it back—evaded her suspension! But how? Suspensions are hard set. Only brink players skirted around that type of rule.
Wait. Did Vidar mean literally traveling through a phone app? That’s impossible. Completely ridiculous. Then again, if someone told her that Mom was the freaking PirateQueen a few hours ago, she would have recommended they check themselves into a grippy sock facility. Just goes to show you shouldn’t go around calling people crazy.
Because this sounded crazy but it was the only thing that made sense. People were disappearing in both real life and the game because they were in the game. Ben somehow kidnapped her mom from within Evarus itself.
Is that all that made Brink players? Not being part of one of the guilds, that was just a front, but just having an app and being able to literally travel into cyber space?
She patted herself and the grass around her to confirm she wasn’t dreaming. Did that make her a brink player? Definitely not dreaming and definitely in Evarus without using the neural gear. So…
Definitely a Brink player, for real.
A squeal escaped her, and she coughed it down when some guys headed towards the Rudi Encampment side-eyed her. She squinted to make sure, but in front of the nearest boy’s head was a quest arrow pointed to camp. She’d never been able to see other player’s quest arrows before.
“What are you looking at?” The boy frowned at her. Before she could utter a sorry, he continued, “Take a good look now because a squealing girl like you is never catching up with me again.”
She rolled her eyes.
Wait a sec. She looked at her hands again. They were her hands. She felt her face. Her face. She still wore her green T-rex tee from the Museum of Natural History, Nike shorts, and socks. Where was her avatar?
God, was she going to have to play as a girl? She hated, absolutely hated, playing as a girl. All the insults and crap and flirting worse than an AI chatbot ran through her brain. It was so much easier to exist in video games as a boy.
It’s okay. I got this. If she could reenter Evarus without help, she could play as a girl—until she found a way to switch her avatar—and could, would find Mom. Then after Mom finished thanking her daring daughter for her life-saving deeds and relinquished her from chores for eternity, she’d be invited to officially join the Pirates.
Then find the key somewhere in there too, but priorities.
Easy. No problem. Just follow the plan. Investigate the Ragarav guy and figure out a lead for the missing people.
Another group of boys walked past her, and one stuck out his tongue at her. Maybe there was an option to switch avatars in her menu. She formed the idea of a menu in her head, but nothing happened. Okay… Busy day. Of course she’d have a hard time concentrating. “Menu,” she said.
“That won’t work,” said the gateway lady from her back pocket causing Sadie to jump.
Sadie opened her mouth to argue back then realized the annoying voice was right because her menu still hadn’t pulled up. She felt her back pocket, and her phone was somehow still with her.
“Alright, who exactly are you?” Sadie pulled her phone from her pocket and unlocked it. No service and most of her apps were gone except Pidgeon.
“I am the Gateway, but you can call me Gate.”
“Fantastic. Bring my menu back, and my gear and avatar while you’re at it.”
“A please would be nice. Do they not teach visitors manners anymore?” Her tone remained pleasant in the cashier-who-is-tired-of-life way.
“You got a lot of sass for a computer program.”
“You have a lot of rudeness for a child.”
Sadie grumbled a few choice words as she attempted to think up the menu again. It didn’t appear. “Where’s my stuff? What’d you do with it?”
“Honestly. Has no one explained anything to you?”
“No,” Sadie said through gritted teeth. If she stood here arguing with her phone, she’d never get anywhere. “Could you please explain?”
“Well, since you asked so nicely,” Gate said, and Sadie rolled her eyes. “I can see the eye roll, and I’d still be able to see it if you stuffed me in your pocket.”
Sadie brought the phone back in front of her. She took a few deep breaths like you’re supposed to do when you’re frustrated. Seven days. She didn’t have time to figure all this out herself, though trial and error would be more fun. “I’m sorry. Please continue.”
“Apology accepted,” Gate chirped. “You’ve come to Evarus, the real Evarus.”
“Yeah, worked that part out myself, Sherlock.”
Her phone shut off.
Sadie wanted to scream. “I’m sorry,” she hissed. “Can you explain where my stuff is?”
“Hmph.” The screen turned back on. “Well, if you had let me finish before.” Her phone made a few annoying beeps. “Evarus VR is only a simulation of the real Evarus, a very real place within cyberspace. The neural gear transports your mind, creates an experience, but you’re on rails, like riding a stationary bike following a video of someone else who rode down the mountain years ago. But with the gate app you physically travel to cyberspace. Mind and body.”
Sadie sighed. “So trying to get my stuff is like instantly transporting something from Iowa to Madagascar.” On the one hand, that sucked. But on the other, she downloaded a freaking portal to cyberspace on her phone.
“At least you’re quick on the uptake.”
“I’ll quickly uptake my foot up your butt,” Sadie muttered under her breath.
“I do not have a butt.” Gate added, “Yes, while your belongings still exist. They are back on those rails. You’d have to not only travel there, but the items would be difficult to extract.”
Okay, fair.
Sadie spun in a circle. The Outlands stretched across the far reaches of the north island, and from Rudi Flats you could see the slim shiver of bedrock and clay on the horizon. The Boiling Mountains to the west ran up and down the entirety of the western side of the island. The hardest quests and monsters lived west of the mountains, including Talaria. Every other imaginable covered the rest of Evarus’ map in the central, east, and south with the Endless Sea providing a barrier around the island.
The island she’d dedicated the last months of her life to was really real, all real and not just a video game. And a mouthy-program-portal-app-whatever transported her here. This was all so much better than she could have ever expected, despite the circumstances. Unbelievable. Unfortunately, this anime type nonsense came complete with its very own villain.
But if Ben was the bad guy here, why did he make it seem like her parents were going to cause the collapse of Evarus. Was he talking about the game or actual cyberspace? Did that make her parents the bad guys for stealing the key? All of BRINK? And if Evarus did collapse, was it their fault?
She couldn’t trust everything Ben was saying. People who disappeared others weren’t exactly the most upstanding citizens themselves no matter what justification they gave. Guess no country was perfect. Canada giveth poutine and Canada taketh away her mother by birthing Ben. He should just enjoy his universal healthcare and stop stealing people.
Wait, they all traveled here by the app. They should be able to just travel back. Maybe Mom could transfer back that way too.
“Is there a way to bring my menu up like before?” She didn’t want to be showing her phone off when no one else had one.
“Hold your hand out and flex your fingers,” Gate said. “I simulate the conveniences of the game world but need the assistance of physical actions as I am not hooked up to your brain by the neural gear.”
Sadie did so, and a game menu appeared. She located the settings and a log off button, but it was grayed out.
“Uh, is there something you have to do to unlock the log off option?”
Gate beeped a few times as she ran a system diagnostic. “No, that is highly unusual.”
“Great.” Okay, don’t panic. That’s cool. Totally fine. Except not fine. Got herself trapped in an actual digital world with no way back.
But brink players logged out all the time. Mom logged out. The deterioration event. Was this related? And if they stole the key months ago when Dad originally disappeared, why was this happening now?
This was also starting to give her a serious headache.
Mom’s voice popped into her head. Deal. And then take a break. VR can give you headaches if you play too long.
Her stomach clenched, and she sat down with her head in her knees.
“Do you need a minute?” Gate asked. “I can pause our tutorial conversation.”
Sadie sniffed. “No, no. I’m good.”
Look on the bright side. Maybe Mom evaded Ben and couldn’t log off before the deterioration event started. Maybe she lost her phone. Any number of things could have prevented Mom from logging out. Which meant she couldn’t trust Ben, this quest, or that Glitch event he created. He could have lied about everything,
Meaning she fell right into his trap and whatever game he was playing. Stupid. So what did he want? Best course of action was still to figure out what happened to Mom and the other missing people regardless of any potential traps.
Time to get moving to Hicto and follow the only real lead she had. Hopefully that Mage Outlaw’s last known location provided some clue to what Ben was doing and Mom’s whereabouts.
She opened Pidgeon to try to message Vidar, but he didn’t accept messages from nonfriends.
“I will work on locating a solution for logging out, but until then try not to put yourself in danger.”
“Great. I’ll work on procuring supplies.” She put a sarcastic emphasis on procuring.
Gate beeped a few angry beep boops. “You are not allowed to steal from game players.”
“What? So no game items work for me?” Sadie asked.
After a pause, Gate said, “I did not say that. The items Evarus VR creates are still real and still in Evarus, even if the players aren’t. You can interact with any item, including your old inventory if you were able to find it. What you suggested, however, is unethical.”
“God, fine. I’ll do it the hard way.” Seriously, who programmed this app? But It was comforting to know she could get her old sword and lootbox dad gave her back, when all this was over.
Sadie headed south away from Rudi Encampment to pace and think. The weapons given to newbies wouldn’t hold up ten minutes, especially off the flats. You could buy some marginally better swords after working the area. She checked the bank app on her phone, and it only showed a phoenix loon bursting in flames to mock anyone who didn’t have money yet, or lost it all. Great. None of her loons transferred either.
Without any money, it left few options for supplies—the chest on the north cliffs containing a butterfly medallion that auto heals at low health, the Minotaur armor in the labyrinth underneath the ruins on the southwest end, or the rabbit swordsmen found in the meadows and woods on the south end.
The singly use butterfly medallion sold for a decent profit for this area, but the swords there still sucked. The Minotaur armor provided decent beginner defense, but the club shattered easily. The rabbits had the best weapons on the flats but no armor, and she likely needed both. She couldn’t waste an entire day chasing down everything.
A scream ripped through the air to her right. She turned in time to see a player fall below the flats’ horizon after the accident stepped off the edge. A smack and clanking rebounded upward followed by a scurrying noise.
Of course, the dead zone. She crept to the edge and peeked over. The moat surrounded the entire plateau the flats rested on and stretched a half kilometer outward. It forced newbies to work the flats until they unlocked the skill to board down, and it kept low level players at a distance from the newbies. Mostly because of the giant man-eating scorpions with heat seeking stingers below.
One crawled out to feast on the dead player, and Sadie shivered. The creep factor alone kept most players away, and by the time you could defeat them, items on the flats were useless.
The dude who fell reappeared next to her. “Wooooo! That sucked. And suuuuuper icky.” He laughed and looked around before settling on her. “Hey, do you know where I’m supposed to go?”
She almost told him to kick rocks, but he sounded like a little kid. Sighing, she helped him use and follow his quest system and pointed towards the encampment where he bounded away shouting a “thank you”.
That was it. Her quick ticket for everything she needed.
“I would advise against the dead zone in your current condition,” Gate said. “If—”
“I’d advise you to watch a master at work,” she mocked back. “Besides we need to get out of here as soon as possible, and the lost items down there from player deaths are the way to do it.”
The real goods were hidden deep underneath the center of the flats from higher ranked players dying and losing items in the lottery, but most players didn’t know about that. It took being end game to even attempt to reach the scorpion’s nest. She’d have to settle for the newbie stuff.
She headed southwest towards one of the spiral peaks. Boards required you to be level eight in the game, but would she level the same way, or at all? She inspected her apps more closely while she jogged over. It included standard MMO options like storage, attributes, bank, contacts, map, settings, crafting, and equipment as well as Pidgeon, which thankfully appeared to still translate speech even without the neural gear. But no indication of a level or experience points though her phone might as well have screamed a big fat one.
A notification popped up with the attribute icon. She clicked and her endurance increased. She hopped a little extra on her next step, and she even felt slightly lighter. At least that part still working like a video game, and she wasn’t relying on her normal human body to fight monsters.
“Hey, Gate, what are the skills on here?” Normally that kind of attribute increase unlocked a skill point to distribute.
“There are no points. As you learn new skills such as the board or sword fighting, it will unlock on your phone to track your progress. They will increase with use and your own personal mastery though the app will simulate a roughly comparable skill level to the game for convenience.”
Annoying. That part was too much like the real world. She quit sports years ago because she hated sweaty practices. Would she sweat here? God, she hoped not.
On the bright side, no grinding levels or equipment just for one particular skill. Her last sword she spent dozens of points on sword skills just to unlock Poison Rage. A twinge of remorse shot through her for her lost sword. When all this was over, she was going back to retrieve it.
She reached the spiral peak and instead of checking the quest board at the bottom began climbing the stone steps circling to the top of the tower like rock formation. In the tower at the top, hoverboards lined the walls in different colors and patterns. She reached her hand in front of one with a dinosaur wearing a cowboy hat on a jet ski. She waited for a “Select?” or “Declined: level too low” to appear, but neither did. The board only stared back. She grabbed the board expecting sirens to blare or Gate to shout at her again, but nothing happened.
Instead, her phone beeped and flashed new notifications: new skills app, new equipment, new skill. The board appeared in her equipment app with boarding listed as a skill. Good enough for her because that’s all she needed to drop down and grab some gear and skedaddle before a scorpion showed up.
With the board strapped on, she gripped the launch handles on the tower’s dive board and pulled back.
“I should warn you,” Gate said, but Sadie launched before the app said anything further. The board wobbled as she cleared the edge of the flats, and she fought not to turn over. “You may want to know—"
“Warn me after on the way to Hicto. I need to concentrate.”
Gate agreed through a series of static that amounted to a digital huff.
A painfully slow and wobbly descent later, Sadie landed on a pile of digitized dead bodies surrounded by scattered equipment. Boarding increased to level four. She assumed and hoped practice would unlock the tricks, speed, and aerial maneuverability she used to have.
All that later though. Right now she needed armor and a sword.
Metal scraped her ears as she moved bodies in varying levels of decay out of the way looking for the remains of a player that lost minotaur armor. At least the decay didn’t look, feel, or smell like real bodies. Here things decayed into digital debris of little red diamonds called exobits. A high note pings rang in her ear every time she brushed too close past the exobits. Her nose crinkled at the noise, and she fought through the urge to cover her ears and run out of the dead zone.
A particularly high ping forced her backwards, sending her tripping to the ground. A sharp pain cut through her ankle. She gathered herself up and ripped cloth dangled from her socks. A few exobits spilled out from her ankle.
“What the…” She touched the area and winced. In the game, she’d had her butt handed to her by dragons, bloodfangs, and other players and never felt pain like this. Heat danced across her left wrist where a bar moved right to left turning slightly less green in the process, just like the game health bar.
Something to worry about later when giant scorpions presented less of a threat. She pulled out the club she tripped over and found the player it belonged to. Luckily he also lost his armor. She finger-pressed it, but the normal scavenger menu didn’t come up.
“Point your phone at it,” Gate prompted.
Sadie did so, and her phone asked “Scavenge?” in a similar but more monotone version of Gate.
“Yes.” A list of the player’s items generated including the armor, a butterfly medallion, scavenged wood and berries from the flats, fifty loons, and the club.
“You are aware of the scorpions in this area, correct?” Gate asked.
“Mhm.” She selected all the dead player’s items which filled about three-quarters of her limited storage.
“And do you have a plan to deal with the man-eating scorpions?”
“Uh, run.” An annoyed beep prompted more. “Okay, more specifically board my ass out of here at lightning speed. Don’t worry I got this.” Sadie selected the armor and hit equip.
Digital diamonds whizzed around her leaving chimes in their wake as they molded the armor to her body. Once finished, they blinked into thin air hefting the weight onto her including basic boots. No more walking around in her now grass-stained socks.
“The club will suffice,” Gate said. “I would suggest exiting the dead zone to avoid an early death with the man-eating scorpions.”
Sadie patted the armor impressed by how much heavier it felt now compared to the game, how cold the brass felt beneath her fingers. “I mean I’ll just end up back on the flats with a couple random items lost. No biggie.”
“That is incorrect.”
A wind swept across the dead zone scratching metal together. “How incorrect?”
“As I advised, it is you, your actual mind, body, and soul in Evarus, despite being in a digital form. If your health reaches zero with no revival items to keep your soul tethered until someone can revive you, it will perish.
That sounded not great. Metals continued to scrape together from the wind. Maybe it was time to follow Gate’s advice and haul her butt on out of there.
Pushing her hair out of her face, she hopped on her board to do just that when a louder, more disruptive clang of metals sounded. She paused mid hair push, bangs in hand. The wind stopped, or maybe was never there.
Her muscles moved at a rusty tinman pace to turn and look at the source of the noise despite screaming at herself to move faster.
About two football fields in the distance, a scorpion the size of a trailer stared her down. Nothing and nobody moved, not even the wind. And then the scorpion scream. The ground thundered and metal armor and swords jumbled together in a cacophony of nail on chalkboard noise. A dozen more scorpions erupted out of the caves beneath the Rudi Flats.
“Now would be a good time to enact your plan to, as you put it, ‘board your ass out of here’.”
“Yeah, thanks!” Sadie snapped, already pushing off. The dead zone ended only two hundred paces ahead. She tried a few hand maneuvers while riding to try to call her club and finally summoned it after swiping her arm while clenching her fist.
Her breath hitched as she pumped, pumped, pumped her board, but the added weight in her storage slowed her down to the crawl of a man with four broken limbs. The scorpions gained no matter how hard she kicked, but the edge inched closer. She only hoped the scorpions abided by game rules and stopped at the edge.
One hundred paces away.
She wished she snatched more butterfly medallions or that she had listened to Gate sooner. Instead she let herself be caught up in the excitement of being in cyber space. Now her stupidity might get her a game over, a real one. Then who would find Mom? Mom might die too, and it’d be all her fault.
She pumped harder and snuck a glance over her shoulder for the scorpions. She should have. One of the ugly bug’s pincers looked bigger than her entire body, sharper than any sword… and it was only a body length behind her.
A scream escaped her though it sounded like it was from someone else in the distance. She twisted around to defend herself but hit the butt of a dead player sticking out of a pile and crashed to the ground.
Her vision pulsed as she tried to gather herself through the new scratches and pain. Her health lowered and lowered until it stopped and regained to a quarter using up her only medallion. Fucking behind a pile of players, she swung the club to knock the scorpion off course. She connected with the pincer, and the force reverberated through her arm leaving it nearly numb. She cursed at her trembling arm and lack of skill, and she cursed again when she saw the pincer. It leaked a few lost exobits but otherwise looked undamaged.
No way could she fight this off. Not with her current gear and stats. Even if she managed to find the gear from a higher-level player who tried to engage the scorpions, she didn’t have the stats to wear their armor or handle their weapons.
She could try hiding. Maybe the decomposing data would mask her if she dived into a pile of dead players, or should she try running again and likely get caught? Both options sucked.
Stretching her foot out, she hooked her board back to her. Running. Definitely. People avoided this area for a reason and better not to underestimate their heat-seeking.
As she tried to form a plan behind the pile of bodies, a wisp of wind crossed a foot above her head. A second passed, and all the players in the pile behind her burst into the sky and broke into a blood-red cloud of exobits. The scorpion stood underneath facing her.
Her heart slowed to barely a beat. This was it. It caught her, and she’d die before she ever had a chance to save Mom, and Dad, or do anything in life.
Then the scorpion screeched and stumbled away from her leaking exobits out a laceration on its side.
“On your nine!” A familiar voice yelled.
She turned to see Fawkes riding a jet-powered board with a flaming axe in hand.
“Are you kidding me? How do you always show up at the worst times!”
He skirted to a stop and glanced between her and the recovering scorpion. “I believe you mean best times.” He held out his hand. “Get on that board and survive to yell at me later.”
Oh, and she had SO many things to yell at him about not least of which go back to him getting her suspended in the first place, but she hopped on her board and reluctantly held his hand.
He flashed a smile which, she hated to amid, sent sparks down her fingers and heat to her face. What a stupid smile. When he grinned even wider, she rolled her eyes and turned away.
Her phone pinged with a new message as a thunderous tear ripped down the sky etching a white line in its wake, but she barely had time to note these things as Fawkes tightened his grip on her wrist.
“Hang on!” He kicked his board from zero to a thousand in a half second flat causing her to more fly through the air than board along with him all while he practically ripped her arm off. When she managed to open her eyes and regain her balance, they boarded safely past the dead zone and watched the scorpions scurry back to their caves.