Game Alive: A Science Fiction Adventure Novel (18 page)

It had been hours since Alys disappeared, taking Kari with her to…they had no idea where. Des had finally regained consciousness, but the sun had set and in the gathering night Jake had grown increasingly worried. They had no idea where Alys had taken Kari, and it felt like they were no closer to finding the Prime than before.

Frustrated, but satisfied that Des would be alright, Jake got to his feet and dusted off his legs. “Stay here,” he said when Des started to join him. “Take it easy, man. You need it. I’m just going to get some water.”

There was an abandoned well not far off, and as Jake approached it he looked over at the crumbled ruins of the city that had once been called Indigo Fjord. Sighing, he dropped the bucket and drew it back up to refill their water skins. The area was almost completely silent in the night. He wondered what had happened. Perhaps the people who used to live here fought against Prime. With one last glance, Jake headed back to where he’d left Des.

“Look,” he said as he approached, “Des, man, I’ve been thinking. Maybe you’d better…”

“Forget it,” Des snapped, cutting him off. “Don’t you dare. Don’t even say it. I’m sticking with you, Jake. We’re a team.”

“It’s too dangerous.” Jake shook his head decisively. “I can’t take you with me, Des.”

“Yeah, but you’re perfectly safe?” rejoined Des sarcastically. “You’re the battle master, so you’ll be just fine? Give me a break.”

“I never said any of that!”

“But it’s what you’re thinking, right? Poor Des. Weak Des. Des, who can’t take care of himself. Better leave him behind, right? Well forget it. You’re not benching me, I’m coming with you. We agreed, Jake. All of us, remember? All of us.”

“Alys could have killed you,” Jake insisted, but Des’s words pulled at him. They
had
agreed. They were all together in Xaloria, even though they had been separated. But Alys really had nearly killed Des. What good was it rescuing Kari if it cost Des’s life?

“I’m fine,” Des argued. “Or I will be. How’s
your
chest feeling, Coach?”

Jake’s hand moved of its own, and he fought down the urge to rub the scorched and blistered skin over his ribs. “Fine,” he lied.

“Then we’re both fine,” Des said, rising up and dusting off his hands as if to say
that’s settled.
He paused, standing unsteadily, and peered at Jake in the dim moonlight. “Look, we’re better together. We’re a team. I’m not going to go hide somewhere while that witch kills you instead of me. We’re in this together, got me?”

Jake closed his eyes, silently arguing with himself. Des’s words echoed his own thoughts, but Des didn’t understand. “You’re my friend,” he said. “You and Kari, you’re my
only
friends. Don’t you get that? If anything happens to you, either of you…”

Des’s face softened, and he came forward to put his hands on Jake’s shoulders. “Hey, buddy,” he said seriously. “I got you. But that’s just one more reason for us to stick together. I keep telling you, we’re a team.”

Jake didn’t answer for a long time. Unable to meet Des’s probing eyes, he turned and looked back at the shining blue wall that shone brighter than the moon. The Barrier seemed like one massive symbol of his failure. Xaloria, his dream, his masterpiece…it had fallen apart and turned into a nightmare instead. The nightmare threatened to take his friends from him, and Jake was determined not to let that happen. He glanced back at Des and sighed.

“Okay,” he said reluctantly. Des was right about one thing, they would have a better chance working together. Besides, Des still had the list of times and coordinates. “So when’s the next anomaly?”

Des grinned and slapped Jake on the shoulder. It hurt, but Jake tried not to show it. Des pulled out the list while Jake turned away, hiding his pained expression as he checked the system time on the far horizon.

“Tomorrow morning,” Des reported. “Less than twelve hours.”

“Where?”

They consulted the map and found the location. Jake whistled, shaking his head ruefully. “That doesn’t give us much time. Looks like it’s going to be on Kailt Island.”

He pressed his finger against a small, crescent-shaped formation off the coast of the main continent.

“How far?” asked Des.

“A day and a half,” said Jake, and Des groaned. Then, Jake added, “If we had horses.”

The friends stared at each other despondently for a long moment. Then Des jumped up and down, clapping his hands. “The dragon!” he crowed. “Where’d that dragon get off to?”

Jake looked around the dark night, shrugging one shoulder. “I don’t know. Besides, we only paid for the ride this far. I don’t think the Flightmaster would be too pleased with us kidnapping one of his dragons, even if we do manage to find her and convince her.”

A distant screech split the night, the unmistakable call of the dragon. Jake’s jaw dropped in shock.

“Shouldn’t she have flown back to the ravine already?” asked Des, smiling. “I think she wants to help out.”

A few minutes later, the yellow-scaled dragon emerged from the trees and approached the two adventurers with a waddling gait. Her triangular head was low to the ground, serpentine neck bent and stooped as she came near and nuzzled her face against Jake’s side. Her scales glimmered as the morning sun rose over the mountains.

The thief eyed the dragon, and then grinned. “Hey, Sunflower!”

“Sunflower?” Jake snorted. “Did you make that up?”

“Sure, why not? Now shut up.” Des turned back to the dragon, who had shifted her head to look at him with enormous, expectant eyes. “Sunflower. Do you know what I’m saying?”

The dragon yawned.

“I don’t think she talks,” said Jake.

“Okay, maybe not.” Des frowned, then tried again. “Can you take us to Kailt Island?”

Sunflower studied the two boys, her serpentine neck swiveling her head back and forth between them several times before she snorted twin plumes of smoke from her nostrils and bowed her head rapidly up and down. Then she stopped, backing up a few steps and reared up over them. Des stepped back, wondering what he’d done wrong.

“We can pay when we get back,” Jake shouted up to the dragon, taking his coin purse and shaking it in the air for her to see. “We have plenty.”

The winged lizard lowered herself back down and snorted as if to say,
Well, that’s alright then.
She lowered her shoulders to provide the boys easy access to the wicker-bamboo box mounted on her back.

“Told you she understands us,” said Des.

“I never said she didn’t,” Jake answered, rolling his eyes at Des’s back as Des climbed over the dragon’s scaly shoulder to reach the carriage. Jake followed him up, calculating how much time it would take to reach the island by dragon. He figured they’d be in the wicker-bamboo box for a couple hours at least. Normally, traveling somewhere was the most boring part of the game. This time, Jake was actually looking forward to the long period of inactivity. He had a lot to think over.

“How long will it take?” asked Des when they were both settled in the carriage and the dragon had launched herself into the sky. He made a point of not looking outside this time, looking straight across at Jake to ask the question.

“Two hours, maybe three,” Jake said. “We’ll get there long before the symbol appears.”

“Great,” said Des, settling back for the long ride. “What’s the deal with those? You’re the programmer. Have you figured it out, what’s making these things appear?”

Jake considered the clues they had seen so far. The ankh symbols, magically appearing at certain places and times. It seemed random, unless you had the schedule.

“It must be a recurring subroutine…” he mused quietly, hardly noticing when Des leaned closer to hear. “It only runs when scheduled, or else there would be millions of them everywhere. And there has to be some kind of pattern, some purpose to it. It’s a design, otherwise the schedule wouldn’t exist.”

“Makes sense,” said Des, but Jake wasn’t listening. He was thinking about the giant blue wall they had just left behind. What was being built behind that shimmering barrier? And was it the only one? He realized Des had asked him something, something he hadn’t heard.

“What?”

“I said, didn’t you tell me the symbol – what did you call it, an ankh? Didn’t you say it meant‘life’?”

“Yeah,” said Jake. He snapped his fingers, realizing Des was on to something. “It’s obviously drawn from the Egyptian model I made, but there were tons of other hieroglyphs in that. Why did the Prime choose that one?”

“And why make it a quest for the NPCs?” added Des, his brow furrowed in thought. “In my lacrosse program, in the single player mode there are all these goals and achievements that are extra throughout the season. But the
NPC
teams can’t win the achievements. That wouldn’t make sense.”

“You’re right,” Jake said, thinking it over. “NPCs shouldn’t be able to complete player quests. There’s a setting that prevents a quest from being completed accidentally before we get to play it. At least, there used to be…”

Jake looked out the side of the carriage, watching the clouds float past. The sky was blue, the clouds white and fluffy. This was the world he had built, but the Prime had hijacked it. The settings had been changed, the rules altered. The Prime must be the terrible “force” from beyond Xaloria that Ryden had warned him about, but what was the point? What did the Prime want Alys and Torin and all the other “New Ones” to do?

He still didn’t know what was being built behind the Great Blue Barrier, or if there were more new features being added in other places throughout Xaloria. The Prime was changing Jake’s world, and that included the ankh symbols too, but Jake didn’t know what the changes – or the hijacked NPCs – were supposed to accomplish.

He tried to think it through again. Torin and Alys were chasing the ankh symbols. The last one had appeared in front of the Great Blue Barrier. The Barrier represented some kind of problem with whatever the Prime was trying to build. So the NPCs must be trying to figure out what was going wrong with Prime’s changes to Xaloria.

“That’s it!” Jake shouted suddenly, startling Des who had still been leaning toward him. Des jerked away, his back colliding with the bench on his side of the carriage.

“What?” he asked when Jake just sat there, eyes bulging and jaw wide open with realization.

“The quest
isn’t
for the NPCs,” he explained excitedly. “Don’t you remember, they kept calling Kari‘the Interpreter.’The quest is for her!”

Des pointed at Jake, grinning. The knight’s excitement was contagious. “You’re right,” he said. “That must be it.”

“And the symbols, the ankhs,” continued Jake. “They aren’t the problem, they’re part of Prime’s
solution.
He’s trying to change Xaloria, but for some reason it isn’t working the way he wants. So he wants Kari to complete this quest in order to figure out why, or maybe to work around the problem. Either way, if she completes the quest then Prime gets to make something new happen in the program.”

“Then we’ve got to stop him,” said Des, stating the obvious.

“Of course,” Jake said at once, but he was already distracted by a new train of thought. Prime needed a Player Character to complete his quest. That meant that Prime – and they still didn’t know who Prime was – had not been able to fully enter Xaloria. But it also meant that any one of them should have been able to attempt the mission. So why had Prime taken only Kari?

“We’re all stuck here,” he mumbled, thinking aloud. Des leaned forward again, but Jake sank back into silence. Prime clearly believed Kari knew what was wrong with the program. He must also think she could either repair the problem or show him how to repair it. So why not just ask her, instead of making up this quest and then kidnapping her to force her into traveling all over Xaloria interpreting magic symbols? It seemed crazy, and for that matter why not just ask
Jake?

The NPCs were just as confused by Prime’s plan as Jake and Des. Kari’s ignorance had infuriated Torin; he must have thought she was holding out. Alys had not agreed, assuming that Kari would provide the right answer eventually. Why would Prime’s “New One” NPCs disagree with one another – and, in Torin’s case, disagree with Prime himself? Jake remembered Alys’s confused and frightened behavior. They acted like they weren’t sure what was going on. How could a part of the program not understand what was going on
in
the program?

When Jake and Des showed up, Torin and Alys had both been surprised. But instead of reciting a script like normal NPCs, they argued with one another during the battle. Alys had even wounded Torin, and Jake wasn’t completely sure it was an accident. It was like there was no script, like the NPCs were acting randomly. Why had Prime gone to all the trouble of creating this quest and activating the New Ones if he hadn’t bothered to script their interactions? NPC scripting was basic stuff. Anybody who played around with VR programs would have mastered it early on, and it would take an expert to break into Jake’s program and start rewriting it from outside.

The clouds kept floating past, as did the minutes, and Jake continued to ponder the confusing evidence. He was so caught up in his thoughts that he didn’t feel the exhaustion creep over his body. He slipped into a numb stillness and closed his eyes for just a moment. He was startled awake by the carriage jolting. The dragon had begun her descent toward Kailt Island.

Sunflower glided in for a gentle landing on a broad swatch of green just inland from a sandy white beach. Jake and Des clambered down from the dragon’s back and peered around at the deserted surroundings.

“They haven’t arrived yet,” said Jake, yawning and stretching. He was still trying to wake up. “Let’s take a look around before they do.”

Overhead, the dragon snuffled and bounced her head at him. Jake looked up, remembering his promise to pay for the trip. He supposed Sunflower would wait for them and take them back to the Flightmaster. He wondered briefly how much all these trips were going to end up costing him.
Oh well,
he thought,
it’s fake VR money anyhow.

“Don’t worry,” he told the dragon, patting the leather pouch on his belt. “We won’t forget.”