Ultimatum: The Proving Grounds (33 page)

She grabbed his arm and he barely had time to close his eyes. They were in a swamp now, standing on an island in the middle of a river.

“The sword can crash a GM’s station by flooding it with nonsense data. Tiny little DDS attack. Not really a sword, either. He just attached the code snippet to a weapon your class could use. Looks like one we had been prepping for the next PVP arena event. Content completed but not implemented yet.”

Toby looked down at his sword. He’d kind of gotten used to the idea that it was a unique and special item… it seemed less so with all its moving parts laid bare.

“But… why give me the power to actually hurt him?”

“Good question.” She nodded as she grabbed hold of his arm.

They ended up standing on top of a rooftop, ceramic shingles clanking underfoot. They were surrounded by buildings stretching as far as he could see in the dark.

Tim appeared a moment later. He waved. “Yo.”

Steff nodded to him. “Near as we can tell, Miller can’t alter existing code. We can’t either, not while the server is running. So he only has access to things that are already running which includes some things he put together when he worked here that no one found to take out. The code running on your sword is one big thing. One block of code. It counts kills as players to trick events into appearing, and it can hurt GMs.”

Tim scratched at his chin. “Turns out it has a few other talents, too. But, like she said, it’s an all in one deal. To get the events ticking like he wanted, he had to give you all of it. Including the ability to ‘kill’ GMs. We can only surmise he put that block of code together for himself but decided to give it to you as part of his attempt to distract us. Only so many plays in his book so he had to improvise.” He nodded to Steff. “I got him.”

She bowed politely and vanished in a burst of white light.

Tim grabbed Toby’s arm. “Eyes.” He warned.

They appeared next on top of a different mountain. The rocks were much less jagged. Almost rounded in places. It must rain a lot here… or be meant to imply that.

“Okay…” Toby nodded. “Let’s say I understand all that. Do we just keep teleporting me around indefinitely?”

“Nope. One or two more should do it.”

“Do what?”

Tim tilted his head to the side as if he was listening to someone standing just behind him. He nodded. “Or that one did it. Cool.” He grabbed hold of Toby’s arm again. “Eyes.”

Toby sighed.

27

They stood on a small island in the middle of a serene looking lake. There were a handful of old buildings clustered in the middle of the island with roofs in need of attention. There was well at the center. The world’s tiniest town.

Tim let go and wandered toward the buildings. “Come on. This is you for a bit.”
Toby frowned. “Umm?”

“The point of all that wasn’t theatrics.” He sat on the edge of the well. “Every time someone teleports it forces the server to talk to them twice. Once at point A, and once at point B. The points are tested and the server has to agree that you moved or you get fun rubber banding effects that make you throw up. The farther one teleports the larger the information that the server needs to deal with.”

“So, when you bamfed about, it… hurt the server?”

“Hurt it? Fuck no, it’s a computer, man. Besides, I could only go a few feet. As far as the game is concerned, I walked real fast. Shadow step can’t make you change areas fast enough for the server to care. What we have been doing, though? Yeah, it cares. It took notice.”

“And… you had three of you jumping about.”

“Classic shell game. Miller was following behind. Why we didn’t stay put for long. He’d search for GM accounts, get the locations, then pick one to check. By the time he made it to any of the three we were gone and he had to consider checking the other two to see if we dropped you off, or checking the three new ones. Only one of him, no way to know more.” Tim pointed at Toby’s head. Or, more specifically, his hood. “Because you don’t show up when he searches your location.”

“So you were tracking him in turn.”

“Barely needed to, really. He didn’t seem to care about hiding his tracks as he gave chase. When Greg dropped out of the shell game it was because he was moving on to phase two, which was checking the server logs for high activity. Only five pings. Me, Steff, Greg, You… and Miller. And only one of those IP addresses wasn’t in the building.”

“You banned him?”

“Blocked the IP, yeah.”

“But…” Toby shook his head. “Weren’t the feds trying to avoid pissing him off? Afraid of other bombs and whatnot?”

“Miller is all ego. I worked with him and I can tell you with certainty he’s working his butt off to get a new IP right now. Honestly we’re not sure what he’s up to, but whatever his goal is it involves the game. Being locked out isn’t acceptable. He knows we can’t block his account because it’s set as admin level, so he’ll figure out the problem soon enough. Besides,” he shrugged, “we tweaked his nose pretty good. He won’t stand for it. But lucky for you he can’t track you with that hood on. So
I’m
out of here in a moment but you’re staying. At least for now.”

Toby glanced around. “Seems… quiet.”

“Isolated is the better term. The big building has a basement which you access by moving a bookshelf. Super high-kinda-low tech. You get in there, and the odds of him finding you, even if he checks the island, are piss poor.”

“And I just… stay here?”

“For the moment. Miller seemed willing to kill you, which would have ended his event. Means whatever it is he was up to he’s done or damn near done. Paul is going to call him out, or at least try. He’s going to assemble the raid at the entrance. When he’s ready, we come get you. I can’t say if Miller’s ego will get him into that raid… but he’s kind of a dick, so it might. Can’t read his mind.”

Toby blinked. “Paul is okay? I thought Miller…”

“Killed them all? Nope. He just dumped them outside. Part of why we don’t think he’s done yet. He could just go on a tirade as a Godzilla sized cricket if he wanted to, but he hasn’t. Makes you wonder, huh?” He shrugged. “At any rate, don’t get too comfy, I doubt it will take long for Paul to assemble the raid. In the meantime we’re going to be informing everyone we can about the event coming to a close… one way or the other. Sucks that we have to spin it all neutral like… but such is life.”

“Tim?”

“Hmm?”

“Thanks for coming back for me, man. From the other side of death, Tim the White returns to save the day.”

Tim grinned. “I was getting bored, so I took over Rich’s station while he stepped out. But I probably won’t give it back, so… I guess so, yeah.” He tried to make himself sound older. “I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.” He nodded. “But I can’t stay. Don’t want Miller to find me here. Peace.”

Tim vanished in a burst of light.

Toby sighed and rubbed at the back of his neck.

This was getting crazy.

All of the buildings were unlocked. He wasted no time exploring the rest, he just checked the doors. Better they were open and not set up to look like they were hiding something. The largest building’s door nearly fell off the hinges. The roof was open to the sky in more than a few places.

There was more than one bookshelf in the room. The entire back wall was lined with them. If one wasn’t looking for a staircase, they might not notice the room inside looked smaller than the walls outside would account for.

The bookcase that moved did so without much prompting, exposing a small space beyond with a narrow trap door. He opened it and took a few steps down the equally narrow stairs before shutting the book case behind him. There was a latch on this side… he hoped it held pretty well. Tim and the other GMs wouldn’t need him to open it.

Of course, Miller counted as a GM. Hopefully everything being shut and locked was just the normal state.

He ventured down the rickety steps and shut the trap door as well. It had a latch of its own, but it broke off when he tried to use it.

Light filtered down through the floorboards over his head. He glanced around. It was dark down here, but his eyes adjusted after a few moments. The space under the stairs had a few old barrels. He shifted them around a bit and sat with his back in the corner. He could see the whole room, and he could see anyone’s feet that started down the stairs.

Not exactly a regal sort of place… dust and cobwebs were the order of the day. Then again, he was pretty sure lots of royals had spent time in places like this when their lives were endangered. Perhaps it was more traditional than he first thought.

Well, he couldn’t be much safer. He didn’t log out for fear of that pinging the server or something, but he reached up to remove his headset.

Claire was standing barely a foot away. She wrapped her arms around him, her own sensor vest clacking against his. “That was too close.”

Paul glanced over from the center station. He was still decked out in his own sensors, minus his headset. “I take it you’re safe then?”

He nodded. “Tim got me a one bedroom I’m subletting from some rats.”

Jesse pointed at the projections on the wall. “He’s right there. We have eyes on the room.”

Paul let out a sigh. “Keep an eye on it. We might need to teleport him again at a moment’s notice.”

Jerry pointed at a different projection. “Got a blip. Miller’s back.”

“Well that didn’t take long.”

“Not a huge deal, really. If he’s got a dynamic IP he just releases it and gets a new one. If it’s static, he hits up a VPN to bypass the block.”

“And we already know he’s using more than a few of those. He probably just needed to drop one.”

“Unless he could figure out which one we blocked, he might have had to stack them again.”

Paul rubbed at his chin. “Any way we can use that?”

“Other than it taking a few minutes? Not really.”

“Oh well. What’s he doing?”

“Can’t tell from one blip… standing there?”

“He wouldn’t have appeared at all from something so minor. He did something.”

Toby set his headset aside. “So ban his new IP, too.”

Paul didn’t look away from the screens.

Jerry shrugged. “We… don’t actually have a way to check the IP addresses of admin level accounts. We never really expected one to be outside of our control. Or even outside the building.”

Paul’s eyes never wavered from the screens. “Something we’ll be rectifying as soon as possible.”

Jesse tilted her head. “His traffic is climbing. I think he’s in the raid.”

“What makes you say that?”

“All the other traffic.” She pointed at the map. “Looks like someone is trying to jump the gun and complete the raid before us.”

Paul narrowed his eyes at the screens. “But they can’t hurt Miller without his GM fighting code.”

“Doubt they are aware of that.”

Jerry shook his head. “Claim jumpers. Want to do it before anyone else.”

Paul tugged on his beard. “Maybe they’re helping anyway. Can we get a projection from there?”

Jerry nodded and turned to the station. He fiddled with a few things and one of the projectors changed to be an aerial view of the raid in progress. “Top down is the best I can do for now. Maybe we can pick out someone to spectate on.”

The overview made it look like an angry ant hill storming ahead.

Jesse moved over to the central set of computers with Jerry. She did something on one of the others. “Pinged the group to pull names and levels as if our spectator was a raid member.” She looked up at the screen as name plates appeared along one side.

Several of them weren’t even at the level cap yet.

Paul shook his head. “No way in hell they make it. Idiots.”

Claire frowned. “They were doomed from the start anyway.”

“Granted, but they won’t even make it
to
Miller at this rate.”

The first of the name plates on the side went dark as the health bar emptied. A second followed shortly after.

Paul stepped closer to the screens. “We need to see more. Pick someone who isn’t likely to die. A healer or ranged DPS. Spectate on them.”

Jerry nodded. “On it.”

The projection changed, the scene playing out became a first person view of a character whose hands were engulfed in flame. They were casting fireballs at a giant lizard centaur kinda… thing. It ignored them entirely.

Jesse shook her head. “Not making much of a dent. And the sweeping attacks are rocking the DPS. They’re careless.”

Jerry shrugged. “There’s a reason rogues do it from behind.”

Paul watched the screen intently. “The mobs are damage resistant. We need to adjust to hit as hard as we can with each swing, rather than a lot of light hits.”

Jerry nodded. “I’ll ping our people so they can adapt… at least as much as they can.”

Jesse tilted her head. “Looks to be universal. Counts for magic, too. Fireball is pretty good while magic missile’s multiple smaller hits do next to nothing.”

Claire pointed at the screens. “Are the debuffs and damage over time spells even ticking?”

“They’re too weak to matter.”

Paul shook his head. “He changed the raid to punish leveling builds, knowing that’s what everyone walking in would have.”

More name plates on the side went dark. Fully half were down now.

Jerry looked form the projections back to the smaller screen before him. “This is where we’d call it a wipe and just wait to die.”

“Except they only get one chance.” Paul stared ahead.

Jesse didn’t look up from the screen in front of her. “So do we.”

The name plates still lit up were dwindling.

Toby shook his head. “Game over, man. Game over.”

All the eyes except Paul’s had turned to him.

“Aliens? I mean, watching the raid fail kinda brought that scene to mind and… sorry?”

Paul shook his head. “He’s not wrong.”

The guy they were observing from tried to break and run, but the doors that lead in had shut behind them. The view jerked sharply before it came to a bouncing stop against the stone floor. His nameplate went dark.

He wasn’t long survived by his fellows.