Chapter 6
A bright, blinding light suddenly seared all of their eyes. Tori squealed in surprise and threw her arm across her face, as did every other player still within the tavern, as the following concussive wave slapped her exposed body. Suddenly dizzy, she staggered hard against the wall, and pain lanced down her left arm where she hit. Shouts and cries erupted from the center of the tavern below her. Despite the loud ringing in her ears, she could hear the confusion and terror in their voices. Tori felt someone grab her arm and pull her to the floor. She bit her lip to avoid crying out when she landed on her already injured arm once more. She was disorientated, confused, and only had one thought on her mind: escape.
“Stay down,” Dylan hissed in her ear, still clutching her arm. “Someone just chucked a flashbang in here, one of the big ones.”
“A flashbang,” she repeated dully as she struggled to pull herself off the ground. Dylan’s heavy weight pressed her back down.
“Stay,” he ordered. “I’ll check it out.”
Woozily, she nodded, eyes blurry as she struggled to regain her equilibrium.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” she complained in a soft voice. Dylan shifted slightly as he moved a few inches away.
“Not on me,” he insisted in a taut voice. “Okay, looks clear. Keep low, though.”
Tori nodded as she pulled herself to her feet, assisted by Dylan. Swaying drunkenly, she grasped the rail of the loft and looked down at the center of the tavern. She shook her head as another wave of dizziness washed over her, and was silently thankful when Dylan grasped her arm to help steady her.
Smoke still rose from the center of the tavern, a thin tendril of wispy white moving toward the ceiling. There were quite a few players still lying on the floor, stunned from the blast. The coded, artificial non-player characters went about their business of serving drinks and waiting on tables as though nothing had happened. Something about this tickled the back of Tori’s mind, but she was unable to grasp the thought fully. She shook her head and continued to stare at the havoc below.
She saw a massive hole in the floor, ripped open by the explosion. Not a flashbang, she noted as bright blobs danced at the corner of her vision. As she watched, the game began the process of slowly rebuilding the damage caused by the blast. Repairing itself, digital boards appeared as though by magic and filled in the giant gap piece by piece. After a minute, the hole was fixed and the floor shimmered once, briefly, as the game coding set the scenery back into place. All traces of the bomb were gone, she realized.
“How?” she asked, still confused. She slowly turned and looked at the rest of the team. She saw they weren’t injured, thankfully. She looked back down at the main level of the tavern as the last effects of the explosive began to wear off. “How did a bomb get in here?”
“I don’t know,” Dylan said as he tugged her arm and pulled her away from the railing. “We need to get out of here, though.”
“Wait.” She paused and looked back down at the main floor. Other gamers were picking themselves up off the ground, shaking the dust off as they did so. A dull murmur began as they talked amongst themselves, with a few even joking about the incident. Tori didn’t think it was funny, however; they haven’t realized it yet, she thought as a chill ran down her spine, but somebody seriously broke some rules. Rules she knew should’ve been impossible to break.
“Even if it’s a joke...” Dylan’s voice trailed off as he looked into Tori’s eyes. The teenage girl swallowed and nodded.
“Still impossible,” she finished for him. She brushed her hands down her pants and looked at the others.
“What the hell?” Jade asked, ignoring her own dust-covered body. Tori looked at her and shrugged, though her insides were still a quivering bowl of gelatin. Jade cocked her head curiously and pointed a long, manicured finger toward the front door of the tavern. “And what the hell are they doing here?”
Tori followed the direction her finger pointed and barely stifled a gasp. She clutched Dylan’s arm and backed away from the ledge, terrified. Five figures stood silently and looked around the inside of the tavern. Although they appeared harmless, each had a small, digital, red dot that hovered above their head; it was the symbol of a Moderator on the hunt.
This is it, she thought, mind racing as she recognized the red dot for what it was. They finally got smart and teamed up to track me down at last.
“They’re here for us,” Tori whispered fearfully, looking down at the group of Moderators. Her terse whisper was dangerously loud in the silent tavern as others began to realize who and what the five newcomers represented. “Or rather, me.”
“You?” Dylan asked incredulously as he looked at her. “Why you?”
Before she could answer and explain everything, however, one of the Moderators hopped onto an undamaged table and looked around. He grinned broadly, though the grin didn’t appear friendly to Tori; it was predatory, and spoke of an individual who enjoyed hurting others. Tori unconsciously flinched as his gaze swept the entire tavern in one glance. Something about the man’s demeanor made Tori afraid, not only for herself, but for everyone else in the tavern as well.
“Greetings, my fellow gamers!” the man’s voice boomed throughout the room, nearly as loud as the explosion had been. He opened his arms wide, as though to encompass them all in a hug. Though the action might have appeared genial to others, Tori saw his eyes were cold and merciless; he didn’t fool her at all. “I’m so glad to finally meet you all, especially on this neutral ground. Why don’t you all sit down and relax? Take a load off, enjoy yourselves. The best thing you can do right now is sit here, listen to my proposition, and try not to make me hurt you any more than I must.”
A few of the younger, inexperienced players sat down, but Tori and the rest of the team stayed on their feet. She knew a sitting gamer was a dead gamer. Instead, she began to look for both cover and escape routes as Dylan began to carefully withdraw a few grenades from his inventory. Players who were always prepared for any fight were rare but valuable. Tori knew Dylan, despite his relative newness to the world, was one of those gamers.
“My name is Apollo,” the massive man began, red hair rippling in a nonexistent breeze. Tori felt another chill course through her body; she recognized the amount of skill needed to achieve the effect. “I’m here to keep you here for a few hours, maybe a day or two, until things on the outside are fixed. Fixed, you may ask? Yes. Fixed. Fixed from tyranny and corporate companies that strive to keep the youth of the world and all humanity’s future down by addicting them to gaming and locking them away in a virtual reality, to keep them ignorant of the crimes committed in the name of capitalism.”
“Is he insane?” Dylan whispered. Tori shrugged and shushed him. Apollo paid them no attention. His eyes were focused on a group of younger players close to him.
“Do you know, WarpSoft turns around every dollar you spend on this game and reinvests it into brainwashing more children in poor countries?” he asked, his voice thunderous now and filled with anger. He shook a meaty fist at the sky theatrically. “We, my Rogues and I, are here to stop this travesty! No more capitalist pigs will run our lives!”
“You’re crazy!” someone unknowingly echoed Dylan’s earlier statement. Apollo looked around the tavern and smiled.
“Am I?” Apollo asked, voice echoing throughout the silent tavern. “Or are you blind?”
“What do you want, Moderator?” Tori called out, surprising herself with her sudden exclamation. As soon as the words were out, however, she had to fight the overwhelming urge to run. She bit down and continued. “You talk a good game, but you still get paid by ‘the man.’” She stood defiantly and waited.
However, the mention of the word “Moderator” had an effect upon the denizens of the tavern that Apollo’s words moments before had not. Not all players within the tavern had recognized the red dots for what they were. A few gamers close to the group of Moderators cried out and stood, ready to escape. Apollo smiled and held a hand up to Tori and the rest of the team behind her. One of the other Moderators, a skinny, hard-looking man, leaned close and whispered fiercely to Apollo. Apollo waved the man away and smiled charmingly back up at Tori.
“Excuse me for a moment, everyone. I’m going to have to prevent people from leaving the tavern while we get the money from WarpSoft that’s due to the people of this world,” Apollo proclaimed, ignoring Tori’s last remark.
She shook her head and laughed softly. “WarpSoft, pay you? For what, ruining the neutrality in taverns?” she asked, fear fueling her onward. She suddenly stopped laughing as a thought hit her like a bucket of cold water, sobering her. “Wait. How were you able to launch the flashbang in here? The rules forbid any Moderator from using any weapon in any tavern.”
Apollo rubbed his hands together and smiled again at her. Tori, blessed with reflexes that would make even the quickest cat blush with envy, knew what was coming and was already on the ground before the laser bolt erupted from Apollo’s hand and streaked by. The impact blasted a large hole in the wall ten feet behind her. Her head had been exactly in the path of the bolt microseconds beforehand.
A split second later, Dylan was on the ground with Jade next to him, using his larger body as a shield. The entire team dropped to the ground as the booming voice laughed, louder than the screams and begging from the first floor below.
“Let’s just say,” Apollo laughed mightily, his voice shaking the walls of the building. “Let’s just say the rules have changed.”
Apollo turned toward two gamers attempting to escape out the front door and unleashed a code—one Tori had never seen before. The two were thrown across the floor, momentum carrying them headlong into the wall as the code wrapped around their bodies and paralyzed their limbs. Their bodies began to contort grotesquely as a green light crawled over them, dipping into every nook and cranny. The light continued to extend from their feet to their heads and back before it disappeared. Tori waited expectantly, sad the gamers had lost such experienced characters, and more than a little afraid. They’ll be recreated by WarpSoft, she rationalized as she waited for the bodies to disintegrate with the usual CGI effects associated with a character dying off. The Mods broke the rules. WarpSoft will understand.
Something nagged her from the back of her mind. She looked at Dylan, who was staring intently at the bodies on the floor, and noticed Jade, too, was staring intently at the two fallen gamers. A quick glance showed everyone except her was still watching where they’d fallen. She was about to ask why they were so focused on the gamers when suddenly it hit her.
The bodies were still there. They hadn’t disappeared.
“As you may have noticed...” Apollo paused and hopped off the table. He landed heavily and smiled at a frightened older gamer still seated at the table next to him. “The bodies weren’t zapped back to CGI oblivion to be recreated; they weren’t able to log off when their characters died. In fact, as of now, if you die in this game, you won’t come out until WarpSoft pays us the money they stole from innocent victims. So essentially, you’ll be dead, and in a dreaming state of unawareness.” His smile grew bigger. “As I said, the rules have changed.”
“Out!” Tori screamed and the rest of the team, with Jade in the lead, bolted toward the back door as screams and pandemonium erupted behind them.
A large blast nipped Tori’s heels as she ran. She’d already known Apollo’s earlier attacks weren’t flukes and the rogue Moderators were deadly serious; the explosion behind her simply confirmed it. Debris showered down upon her shoulders, but she was unscathed. Behind her she could hear the shouts of terror and panic of others who were not so fortunate.
Tori slammed through another door, the last of the team to exit the main room of the tavern. Her adrenaline level was high, and she was ready for anything. A third door led to the back storage area, where old, dusty barrels of unidentifiable drink awaited discovery and use. She paused and looked around the room. It was empty, which she took advantage of to go through her inventory. Moments were precious, and she already knew what weapon she’d probably need the most; she bypassed most of her technologically advanced weaponry with barely a glance before finding it. She accessed the controlling code and withdrew it from her virtual inventory.
Instantly the weapon began to digitalize into her hands, pixels layering on top of each other as the carbine rapidly built. Within microseconds, the barrel was formed. The weapon felt heavy in her hands as it finished assembly and became solid and real.
A few stragglers came into the room, coughing as they passed her. As another pair came in, she barely managed not to fire her gun in fright. They came closer and she recognized the two experienced gamers. Gyasi and Miranda were members of another team she’d done a few missions with in the past, although not with these two specifically.
“Out the back door,” she hissed as she brought her digital weapon up. “Tell them I’m waiting, and covering the rear.”
Gyasi nodded and ran out the door, followed quickly by Miranda.
Tori switched the setting of the carbine and prepared to be attacked. She looked down the length of the weapon and smiled grimly. Those bastards are going to be in for a rude surprise, she thought as she rested her finger against the trigger guard. C’mon, you jerks. Bring it.
The M4A1 was, perhaps, the ideal weapon in a crowded room, used by counterterrorist agents worldwide. Its relative compactness and tremendous firepower was a blessing, although one used it at a maximum range of one hundred fifty yards or so for best effect. Tori didn’t care about the limited range, though. She was armed, ready, and best of all, didn’t have to waste a code or reveal a secret node to protect herself or the team from the Moderators. Plus, experience had taught her the carbine was more than capable of taking down a Moderator.
Usually, she amended.
After a tense minute, she realized her group wasn’t being followed. She relaxed slightly and walked backward toward the door, keeping her attention focused on the entry which led to the main area of the tavern. She recognized Dylan’s cough behind her and turned.
A slight, grim smile rested upon his youthful face. “We’re out of here, right?”
“Yeah,” she agreed. She felt the tension and adrenaline bleed out of her slowly as her heart rate returned to normal.
Tori silently walked away from the burning building, the others following her moments later. Her mind was in turmoil. A deeper, more primal part of her exulted in the wanton destruction of the tavern and cried out for more, and she shivered as the urge bubbled through her emotional walls. She knew where that path led: down a treacherous and slippery slope. She ruthlessly shoved the urge back down and vowed never to give in to her rage.
Behind her, the tavern continued to burn as the layered coding of the game decided it was no longer a functioning structure. Lines upon lines of special program codes rushed throughout the system and determined the new rules instituted by the destruction of the tavern. The tavern no longer struggled to repair the damage received from the rogue Moderators, and condemned itself to a silent death. The rules had changed, as Apollo had claimed minutes ago.
* * *
Within the core matrix of Crisis, multiple servers pinged a query to the coding responsible for the destruction of the tavern. Unlike the servers of the past, the newest WarpSoft servers were more than simple I/O ports; they monitored the game system and kept it constantly updated and moving. Crisis was monitored by no fewer than forty of these servers, all linked to the same game and same world.
The servers now queried the separate programs each was assigned to, clarifying the information received that was outside the programming parameters. The programs, each infected by the designed code uploaded earlier that day, responded promptly and told the servers nothing was out of the ordinary; every relevant .exe file was thoroughly corrupted by the Trojan virus designed by the rogue Moderators. Twelve of the thirteen taverns within Crisis were now designated “battle zones,” and the servers accepted the new game parameters. The servers, query satisfied, continued to monitor the burning of the tavern with mechanical disinterest. They filed away the ping queries to be reviewed by the system administrators, which happened rarely.
Unfortunately for the rogue Moderators, the pings didn’t go entirely unnoticed. Another, smaller server, normally reserved for secret levels and node uploads, didn’t receive the proper response from the .exe files. Uncorrupted by the Trojan, the .exe file spat back information, and the server, confused for an eternity in processing time, decided to “kick it upstairs” to the system administrators. Attached to the lines of code and “data error” message was a priority red flag.
The server shifted back to standby mode and waited for a new node to open, no longer interested in the new rules within the game. It was also oblivious to the chaotic storm it’d just unleashed on its human masters.
* * * * *