Game Alive: A Science Fiction Adventure Novel (13 page)

Crashing in the leaves beneath him alerted Des. Looking down, he saw the first of his pursuers had nearly reached his position. Gritting his teeth, and hoping at least some of the VR safety systems were working, Des tucked his arms against his body and dove from his perch. He flipped on the way down, crashing to the ground in a roll that carried him away from the base of the tree and the second goon.

Des surged to his feet, casting a frantic look over his shoulder before breaking into a run. He zigzagged, hoping to slow his chasers with the same kind of erratic running he would have used in one of his sports sims. The edge of the clearing was near, tall and broad-leafed ferns growing up at the base of the trees. If he could reach them, he might find cover behind the gently waving fronds.

While Des ran for his life, Jake lay on his back and blinked to clear his vision. Through the ringing in his ears, he could just make out Kari’s frantic cries. She was shouting for him to get up, to look out!

Without thinking, he rolled quickly to one side and barely avoided the hooked tip of a short sword as it buried itself savagely into the ground just inches from his face. Dirt spattered in his face, blinding him. He kicked out with his heel and felt a jolt of elated satisfaction as his foot blindly found the man’s shin. There was a cry of pain and the man lost his balance, cursing as he stumbled back into his partner.

Jake wiped the clinging dirt from his eyes, pushing himself up to his feet and searching for his dropped sword. Spying it several feet away, he dove toward it with outstretched hands while the tangled henchman struggled to free themselves. Jake’s fingers closed on the hilt and he rolled over and jumped back up with a grin.

Hearing Kari’s shouts, Des abandoned his run for the protecting fronds and juked toward her like a broken field runner. The pursuing henchmen saw his objective, and moved to cut him off. Des forced himself to run faster, pounding his legs faster than he ever had in lacrosse or soccer sims.

Jake’s foes had disentangled themselves, and one of them bravely dove forward to tackle the re-armed knight. Jake had barely gotten his balance back, and was unable to bring his sword up in time. He swung his left arm up, and the man crashed into his buckler and bore them both to the ground. The henchman landed on top, batting the shield away with the flat of his sword as he straddled Jake and prepared for a killing stroke.

Thirty feet away, having nearly reached Kari where she struggled against Alys, Des saw what had happened to Jake. Without breaking stride, he whipped up his bow and loosed an arrow just as the man raised his nasty, hooked blade to skewer the helpless knight.

Jake felt his attacker tense in the instant before the sword plummeted down. His chainmail would never hold up against such a blow, and Jake squeezed his eyes shut. He would have shouted “Pause Xaloria” but knew it would do no good. He hoped Des could rescue Kari at least.

The head of Des’s arrow burst through the man’s chest an inch or so beneath his collarbone, splitting the quilted leather armor and spraying a burst of blood out and over Jake’s face. The henchman stared down at the arrowhead in surprise as his eyes dimmed, then he fell back and to the side, tumbling off Jake.

Jake scrambled to his feet just in time to meet the other attacker. Steel rang against steel as their swords met. The henchman gave a savage twist of his arm, seeking to trap Jake’s sword with his own weapon’s sharply hooked end. Jake danced to the side, twisting his blade free and prepared an upward swing that would disembowel his opponent if he could get there before the man could block.

Just then a horrible spasm jolted his entire body. From the corner of his eye, Jake saw Des’s body jerking and writhing in place as flickering bolts of brilliant blue electricity coursed and flashed all over his body. Wave after wave of lightning shook the boys, lifting them into the air with their backs arched in agony. Jake’s teeth ground together uncontrollably, jaws clenching against the fiery pain. His lungs refused to suck in air and fear swelled within him.

Just when he was sure he would lose consciousness, the magical electrocution ceased. The crackling bolts of energy vanished as instantly as they had begun, and Jake fell painfully to the ground. Through hazy eyes blurred with tears of pain, Jake could see Alys wielding a pair of silvery daggers before her, points aimed at him and Des. Rage boiled over in his heart, and Jake forced himself shakily to his feet with a wordless roar of challenge.

Lunging for the last remaining attacker, Jake drove the man back with hacking swings of his sword. The man staggered back, unprepared for Jake’s ferocity. He tried awkwardly to block, but Jake knocked the hooked sword aside with a swing so powerful the weapon was torn from his opponent’s hands. The hireling, face filled with terror, fell back another step but Jake shoved his sword forward, impaling the man through the stomach.

Meanwhile, Des leapt to his feet. Seeing Jake’s maddened frenzy lent Des a newfound courage as the two men chasing him charged from either side. Des ducked and dodged, imagining himself on the ten yard line with the ball in hand. He threw himself into a looping somersault, passing right over the shoulders of one of the diving attackers, and rolled nimbly to his feet a few yards away.

The two men collided on the ground where he’d been standing a moment before. Des fired an arrow, but the larger of the two men knocked it aside with a bracer-covered arm as he climbed back to his feet. The brute motioned for his disoriented companion to stay back, and stormed toward Des with his sword held high.

Des grabbed his last arrow from the quiver at his back, gripping it near the middle of the shaft. The henchman bore down on him, a murderous light in his eyes as he chopped downward with the wickedly hooked sword. Des dropped to his knees leaning to one side, and shoved upwards with the tightly-gripped arrow with both hands. The steel point slid through the hireling’s leather armor and pierced flesh. Blood welled up, quickly spilling over Des’s hands as he drove the arrow deeper into his larger assailant.

The murderous light went out of the man’s eyes, and his dead weight threatened to collapse on Des. The thief shoved him aside, rolling in the other direction.

“Got ya!” he crowed, climbing to his feet.

The two men who had stayed out of the fighting, flanking Alys on either side, looked around the clearing at their fallen comrades. As one, they threw down their weapons and fled into the trees. Alys sneered after them, shouting that they were cowards. The giant Torin watched them go without a word, still gripping Kari with both muscled arms.

“Now it’s your turn!” shouted Jake, leveling his sword straight out in front of his chest to point squarely at the dagger-wielding sorceress. He glanced over at Des, hoping the thief would know what to do, and then charged.

Without a word, Alys raised her silvery daggers again. She held them overhead with the short, sinuous blades crossed. The spiky-haired sorceress began spinning in place, a circle of light forming above her as the dagger’s points seemed to carve a trail of glowing yellow fire in the air itself. Spinning faster, the circle grew brighter.

Jake honed in on her, intent on reaching Alys before she could finish the spell. If only he could make it…

Alys’s feet lifted off the ground and her body twirled like a top. She uncrossed the daggers, spreading her arms to either side. Trailing scars of fire followed, leaving brilliant loops of blinding light all around the woman’s body.

There was a deep, cracking sound like a massive boulder splitting in half. It was so loud and low pitched that Jake felt the shock more than heard it. At the same moment, a wave of pure darkness exploded outward from where Alys hovered. The nearby pack-horses whinnied in terror, prancing and rearing up on their hind legs. Jake barreled forward, charging straight into the blinding wall of blackness.

Two steps in, the darkness dissipated like thick mist burned away by the sun. Wisps of greasy black smoke drifted in vague circles all around him before they, too, faded from existence. Where Alys, Torin, and Kari had been there was nothing. Jake’s momentum carried him forward, throwing him off balance so that he crashed to his hands and knees in the exact spot Torin had held Kari captive just a moment before.

He looked over at Des, shaking his head in stunned defeat.

Kari and her captors had vanished.

Jake pounded his fist angrily on the ground. “We had them!”

Hobbling over to him, Des knelt in the grass beside his armored friend. “I know,” he said, draping one arm across Jake’s shaking shoulders. He sighed heavily. “At least we finally found Kari. We know she’s still in Xaloria.”

“Right,” said Jake, drawing a deep breath and letting it out slowly as he turned it over in his mind. “Okay, so we know she’s here for sure, and now we have some idea of who’s holding her hostage. What we don’t know is what they’re after, what they want her for. Or where they’ve gone.”

“But we have to get her back somehow,” Des said quietly, turning away from Jake to hide the hopeless expression he could not keep from his face. Then his eyebrows shot up and he grabbed Jake’s arm, pointing toward the horizon. “Look!”

Jake turned his eyes to the familiar spot just over the curving horizon. The sky was an empty blue scudded with fluffy, cotton-ball clouds. Jake blinked, taking a moment to realize what Des was pointing to. Or rather, what Des was
not
pointing to. The green – and occasionally red-stained – horizontal bars that displayed their health points were no longer there.

“Where are our points?” Des asked in a shaking voice. He jumped to his feet and spun around in a circle, frantically searching the low sky all around them. “Nowhere,” he cried, sounding panicked. “Nowhere! And when we were fighting, there were no hit points showing up.”

Jake nodded. He had noticed it too, but in the thick of battle had been unable to comprehend what it meant. He considered the revelation for a moment. “My arm,” he told Des. “When we fought the crolorg, and it speared my arm. It really hurt.”

“Well, yeah,” Des started to say, and then his eyes grew so wide Jake would have laughed if he wasn’t scared out of his mind. “You mean it
really
hurt?” Des asked in a hoarse, frightened whisper. “And I’m covered with bruises. Jake…are we actually getting hurt? Not just losing life points, but for real?”

Jake clenched his teeth as he climbed painfully to his feet, reaching up to unlatch his chainmail halberd. “Help me get this off.”

With Des’s help, Jake pulled the various pieces of armor from his upper body to reveal his battered torso. Angry red welts had formed on his sides, and circular impressions from where the mail had been driven into his skin were spotted with tiny wells of blood. Worst of all was the area around his wounded arm; though the wound seemed healed earlier, the edges were red with a yellow tinge that turned Jake’s stomach upside down.

“That’s not life points,” Des said, still whispering. Jake shook his head, swallowing a thick lump in his throat. “They really
hurt
us,” Des went on. “Not just playing. What if it gets worse. Jake, what if we die and then instead of starting over at the spawn point we’re just…”

“Stop it!” Jake said sharply, pausing where he had begun replacing his armor. “Freaking out about it won’t do us any good.”

Des opened his mouth to say something angry, but Jake held up a hand and spoke over him. “Sorry. But look, I’m scared too. This is really, really bad. And it’s all my fault somehow. But I need your help to fix it, and we’re not going to get anywhere if we’re too scared to fight a couple hired mercenaries. I guess we just have to try and not
think
about it.”

“Not
think
about it?” Des repeated incredulously. “Jake, we are
not
legendary heroes of a mythical realm. I don’t want to die.”

“Me neither,” said Jake. He reached out with both hands, placing them on Des’s shoulders as he peered pleadingly into his friend’s eyes. “And neither does Kari.”

The reminder hit home. Des rubbed his eyes with the heel of one hand, lowering his head in shame. “You’re right.” He looked back up at Jake, and some of the old Des returned. “And, hey, man, it’s not
all
your fault. Remember, someone’s messing with your program. Whoever has us trapped here, it’s
his
fault. What did she call him…the Prime?”

Jake drew in a sharp breath. He had almost forgotten about the Prime. Whoever that was. Could it be another NPC? Then he remembered Ryden’s warning about an invading force from another dimension. Prime?

“Okay,” he said. “So it’s Prime’s fault. We’ve got to find him and then think of a way to make him let us
all
go home. You, me…and Kari.”

Des nodded, reaching out to clasp Jake’s hand in a tight, brotherly grip. “All of us,” the two boys said together, an oath they both intended to keep.

They kept their hands together, looking into one another’s eyes to seal the promise. Then they let go, and Jake looked around them at the abandoned forest clearing.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s get it figured out. Can you remember what they were talking about, before we got here?”

Des dropped his eyes to the ground, brow wrinkling in concentration. “The big one, he said something about how they shouldn’t have come back. So they’d been here before.”

“That’s right,” said Jake, snapping his fingers. “He said she didn’t know what it was before, and then a few minutes later they called Kari the
Interpreter.
’What was she supposed to interpret, though?”

The two boys cast their eyes about the trampled grass of the clearing, searching for something they hoped they would know when they saw it.

“It has to be around here somewhere,” Jake reasoned.

“Maybe Kari’s the only one who can see it,” suggested Des. “Or maybe she had some magic item that would let her interpret it, whatever it is.”

“Good idea,” said Jake, and started for the red tent that was the only remaining sign that anyone else had been here. The bodies had all faded away, erased by the game’s AI now that they were no longer active. Des followed, holding up the flap to let the light in as Jake examined the inner room. Piled pillows against one wall formed a low pallet for sleeping, a single blanket tangled and discarded atop the pile. A cushioned folding chair sat in another corner, facing a collapsible oaken desk which held a few scattered papers and scraps of parchment covered in sketches and indecipherable notes scrawled in a cramped, spidery handwriting Jake couldn’t make sense of.