.5 To Have and To Code (3 page)

No one had ever run the entire seven floors on their first attempt.  And The Hacker was making it look like gaming kindergarten.

“Breathe,” said Jamie wryly.  “It’s just a game.  Don’t melt my keyboard.”

Nell stuck out her tongue—it had been five years since the last time she’d sparked and melted electronics.  Fire magic wasn’t always easy to control, especially when idiots made her mad.

Not that making a fire witch mad was very difficult.  “He’s good.”  It was her highest compliment.

“Better than good.”  Jamie leaned over and hit a couple of keys and split the screen, pulling up the admin interface that let them watch The Hacker’s coding live.

Nell stared.  “He’s already through.”  She stabbed her finger at the critical lines of code.  “He hasn’t activated yet, but that’ll get him over the chasm.”

“Yup.”  Jamie reached for a bag of Doritos.  “He’s been doing that the whole way up.  Never takes a step without three more already in reserve, and usually the first try works.”  He crunched chips and grinned.  “The mage took him three tries.”

The mage should have taken him three freaking days.  Nell scrolled back through the code history and felt smoke leak out her ears.  “He… he… oh, my God—what did he do to my mage?”

Her brother was smart enough not to answer that question.

She reverse ran the code and watched her awesome creation raining hellfire and magical lightning down on some poor, hapless rock—while the little librarian strolled past and waved.

Arrogant show-off.

She grinned, temper blowing away as quickly as it had come.  Arrogance usually cost you game points.  “He switched the call variables?”

“Yup.”  Jamie nodded and held out the Doritos.  “Convinced your mage the rock was the biggest threat and then walked right past.  Pretty sweet.”

The mage was extremely powerful—but not very intelligent.  Most gamers didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about the brainpower of the dude hurling lightning bolts at their head.  “He’s smart.”

“We already knew that.”  Her brother waved at the screen.  “Go back to live feed—he’s got to be past the chasm by now.”

He was.  And two quick moves away from sliding through the river of dreams, too.  “Damn.  It’s like he’s done this before.”

“Maybe,” said Jamie, watching lines of text flash past.  “But he got past the mage, and that one’s new.”

Yeah.  Something only one other player had done—and with a very different solution.  She looked over at her chip-vacuum of a brother.  “Think he’ll get through the princesses?”

It was suddenly
his
pride on the line.  “Doubt it.  Nobody does the first time.”

The princesses were one of the oldest levels—and one of the most effective.  Everyone underestimated pretty girls in pink.  Nell rolled her eyes—someday the gamers of the world would learn to take women a lot more seriously.

Until then, they’d keep getting their butts whipped by her baby brother’s creation. 

She leaned forward, eyes intent, as The Hacker walked into the chat room that served as the stage for level seven.  She knew what he was reading.  A ballroom filled with nine dancers, all in matching pink dresses.  His task—to make it across the room to the ornate door on the far wall.

The Eternal Tower—and nothing in the way except for a bunch of frilly pink skirts.

Jamie pulled up The Hacker’s coding again and blinked.  “He’s not doing anything.”

They both watched in silence as absolutely nothing happened.  And then code exploded onto the screen, quickly followed by spectators flooding the chat with laughter and guy back-slapping.  Nell read the conversations and lifted her fingers off the keyboard—just in case.  “Idiot.  He figures that just because the mage was stupid, maybe nine women are too.”

Her brother’s lips quirked.  “Well, they are really pretty gowns.”  The Hacker had offered up a bribe for passage.  Nine custom dresses—unique, bejeweled, and spectacular.

Nell bounced a code manual off Jamie’s head.  “If you wrote them to be susceptible to purple and glitter, you’re so fired.”

“Hey.”  He rubbed the side of his head.  “Your mage attacked a rock.  Someone has to be the brains around here.”  He grinned at the screen.  “My princesses are all modeled after my brilliant sister.”

“Right.”  Nell was both amused and impressed, but brothers came with rules.  “I wear pink frills and dance all the time.”

Jamie just waited and stared at the screen—and then fist-pumped the air.  “Yeah!  That’s my girls.”

Nine dancing ladies started a second, more difficult dance.  And one librarian stood in the corner, newly outfitted in a dazzling gown.

Nell giggled.  “Nice counter-programming.”  Not that her brother’s coding chops were in question—at nineteen, he was the second-best coder on the West Coast.

At least, she hoped he was still second-best.  Esmerelda, his sexy gypsy avatar, had been causing her some serious grief in Realm’s witch-only levels lately.

They watched as the action onscreen began to move again.  This time The Hacker tried to join the dance, an intricate pattern with semi-random steps thrown in just to mess with upstart gamers.  Most people who tried that stunt ended up with seriously bruised toes.

Jamie sucked in air as the new arrival’s steps matched perfectly.  “Damn.  Nobody’s supposed to be able to do that.”

Nell raised an eyebrow.  “Will it work?”

“Nah.”  Her brother shook his head ruefully.  “But it should.  I never set it up to work.  Didn’t figure anyone would ever be able to do it.”

Their onscreen quester jumped neatly out of the pattern and stood against a wall.  Thinking.

Nell grinned—he was going down.  Three failed tries and you got booted back to the first floor.  One more attempt and he was toast.

And then four simple lines of code popped up on the screen, and The Hacker started to walk across the ballroom.  No fancy moves, no flash—just a straight line headed for the Eternal Tower.  With five golden rings in his hand, the “The Twelve Days of Christmas” playing in the background, and nine ladies swooning, right on cue.

“Damn.”  Jamie’s whisper was almost reverent.  “He’s
good
.”

Nell held her breath, caught in the moment.  If The Hacker reached the door and it opened, he was a witch.  If it didn’t, he was just the best non-witch ever to play the game.

She wanted him through.

On the other side of that door was
her
turf.  And one hot-shot librarian was about to meet his match.  “Please let him be a witch.”

Jamie just chuckled, but she felt the same wish pushing in his mind.  Realm’s best two witch players, aching for a fight.

The Hacker paused, a step from the door.  The collected crowd of players held their breath, sensing Realm history in the making.  He held five golden rings up toward the door—

And vanished.

-o0o-

Daniel pushed back from his computer and flexed his fingers, watching shock and awe scroll down his screen.  First guy ever to run the seven levels in one go.

And he hadn’t even cheated.  No peeking at the game guts before he started.

It had been a personal test.  Hackers didn’t always get to read the code over a nice cup of tea.  Sometimes shit happened and you had to roll with it.  Gaming was a good way to keep his reflexes sharp—and Realm had been an interesting challenge, even if it was a pretty puffball game.

Or so he’d thought until he’d started playing a month ago.  That and a couple of late-night tours through their admin code had sharply increased his respect for Realm’s creators.

Jamie and Nell Sullivan.  The duo behind Realm’s online portal.  A nineteen-year-old kid and his math-geek older sister.  He’d figured her for the bookkeeper or something until he’d walked through their code.

Competent coders were interchangeable.  Really good coders had their own style.

Realm had two really good coders.

One was an easygoing, thorough type, with moments of brilliance and a sense of humor.  The other used code like a weapon—sharp, aggressive, and slick.

He figured the brother for the latter—it felt like hothead teenage guy.  Which left Nell Sullivan, math geek, as the likely mind behind the dancing pink princesses.

Not that he’d looked.  A hacker had to have some standards, and looking at the gaming code before you ran it violated his personal ethics.

He leaned forward again, reading a few of the chat-room comments.  Mostly fourteen-year-old kids wondering why the heck he hadn’t tried to open the door.

Amateurs.  Smart coders didn’t open doors until they knew exactly what was on the other side.  He didn’t want to be some elite player’s breakfast.

He wasn’t totally clueless.  A couple of sleuthing trips into the restricted levels had been interesting—and mystifying.  Gaming like he’d never seen before, and not just because of the graphics.

Real, functional graphics—the Holy Grail of online gaming.  And nothing in the Enchanter’s Realm propaganda even hinted that it existed.  The secret levels were totally buttoned down, just a quiet trail of mystery and urban myth running through the chat rooms.

Weird.  With those graphics and better publicity, they could be the biggest game out there.

Instead, they were small town—with a door leading to the strangest levels he’d ever seen.  The first visit, he’d been in less than fifteen seconds before he’d tripped over a stray line of code that shouldn’t have done anything.  Hanging upside down from a leg loop wasn’t exactly good, especially when you were supposed to be invisible.  The second time, he’d been more careful—and while he’d stayed out of any traps, it had been like walking through a parallel universe.

One where code followed different rules.  Nothing he could put his finger on yet—but different.

To a hacker, that was both kryptonite and siren song.

He was definitely going through that door.

Just not yet.

-o0o-

Retha waved to Angelo the delivery guy and made her way back down the hall, a stack of pizza boxes in her arms.  Whoever said that growing teenage boys ate more than anyone alive had clearly never fed any of the full-grown variety.

At least only one set of the triplets was around.  There had been a stretch, with six boys in the house, when she’d been fairly sure only an IV hookup from the grocery store was going to keep them in enough food.

Now she had three boys in Boston with lives of their own, three boys here who managed to feed themselves at least some of the time—and Nell.

Her fiery girl-child.  A grown woman about to lose her best friend and trying her damnedest to be happy about it.  Sammy’s fiancé was a lovely man who adored her—and even Nell’s deeply rational heart couldn’t find a reason to kick him in the shins.

Which was probably a good thing.  The finest spellcaster of her generation also threw some fairly spectacular temper tantrums.

Retha smiled to herself, remembering one or two of the more memorable ones—and ran into a wall.

“Sorry, Mom,” said the wall, laughing and rescuing a teetering box.  “I forget how short you are.”

She reached out for the agile mind of her middle triplet. 
Don’t break dinner—you don’t want to have to eat my first attempt.

Devin’s eyebrows flew up in not-entirely-feigned horror.  “You tried to cook?”

Someday she was going to move to a small, remote island where the natives couldn’t recite her culinary history chapter and verse.  “Jamie thought I might not mangle this recipe.”

Devin snorted.  “No fair asking him while he’s coding or watching baseball.”

She rarely interrupted coding—and the boys mostly watched baseball in their own apartment now.  The empty nest was killing her.  “I suspect it was his secret plan to increase this week’s intake of greasy cheese.”

Her son grinned and slid the rest of the boxes out of her hands.  “We live for greasy cheese.  Matt’s going to be late—he gets to follow some hottie on rounds at the hospital.”

Retha rolled her eyes, well used to overactive hormones.  They settled down.  Eventually.  “I’m sure Matt’s just trying to get some more exposure to the realities of being a doctor.”  With her full support—it worried her to think of her sensitive, empathic son spending his life inside four walls full of hurt and pain.

That he would do it, she had little doubt.  Matt had never taken the easy road.

She smiled at the son who would happily take four roads at once.  “Go page your brother and sister—they’re working down in The Dungeon.”

“Nope.  We’re here.”  Jamie popped out of the stairwell, Nell hot on his heels.  “We smelled food.”

Witch experts swore there was no magic that heightened sense of smell.  Retha was pretty sure they were wrong.  “Set the table and find your father.”

The man in question walked in the back door, hands covered in dirt and a sad excuse for a straw hat perched on his head.

She smiled and kissed a relatively clean spot on his cheek.  “Did you rescue the petunias?”

“They’re nasturtiums.”  His eyes twinkled with humor.  “And I think they’ll live.”

“Sorry.”  Nell looked mildly abashed.  “I meant to hit Devin, not the flowers.”

Since her brother had been pointing a hose at her at the time, Retha wasn’t going to take issue with a little magical overkill.  Bad aim, however, couldn’t be ignored.  “Fire witches who can’t hit their targets need more practice.”

Nell glared at her brother.  “He’s the one that moved.”

It was hard to believe they were nineteen and twenty-seven, and other than the occasional magic fight in the back yard, fairly upstanding members of society.

Not that witch standards for good behavior were all that high.  Retha slapped plates in one set of hands, glasses in the other.  “Pretend to be grown-up witches for a moment and set the table.”

Nell looked over at her father.  “Sorry.  Next time let me fix the flowers.”

Michael chuckled and lifted some of the plates out of her hands.  “I’d rather you didn’t.” 

Nell looked sheepish as everyone else laughed—fire witches pretty much had black thumbs.  Michael had enjoyed the excuse to go mend his garden, and Retha was fairly certain Devin had started the water fight to pull his sister out of yesterday’s grumpy mood.