Zeroworld, p.23
Zeroworld, page 23
The Accountant was on his feet now with his hands raised in a non-verbal instruction to his guys not to shoot.
“You are impressive, you know. Both of you. I still don’t know much about your friend, Madeline.” Well at least there was that.
“But as impressed as I am and as much as I would like to have you on my side, if you won’t cooperate then I will have to have you stopped.”
The Accountant began to grow. His shirt split as his arms became more muscular, he was a foot taller, his clothes ripped and torn around his body. He touched them and they reformed around him, but now they were armour, and he had a sword of his own. Behind me now, the doors to the bar smashed open and many tough looking men and women crashed in, they had a variety of weaponry from swords to guns to nunchucks. Our plan was going swimmingly. It was going to take everything we had.
Alex had light single-handed machine guns in each hand and was firing all around us, mowing people down, deliberately shooting at the legs so they would fall, not sure if bullets would be lethal. I had to hope for the best for her because I was standing in front of a huge warrior who could also possibly assess your personal tax requirements. I ran at him, sword above my head and struck downwards but my sword met his much longer one, and the impact reverberated along my arm. It was a sensation I was very used to after months sparring in the den, and I absorbed it and punched forwarded with my other hand which was holding the shield. I connected with his face, and he stepped back, surprised, and now a little bloody. I pointed the sword at him, and bright, searingly hot light shot from it missing most of him but connecting with his left hand. It burnt away in a second, the smell of it was awful and awesome all at once. But it was fleeting, he looked at it and it grew back, like it had been a minor inconvenience. He was holding a spear now and he threw it at me hitting me in the centre of my chest. It should have been a killing blow and I was knocked to floor, on my back. But the armour was undamaged, the spear hadn’t made a dent. I was on my feet in seconds, my sword and shield were gone, replaced with a long trident glowing with fire. It didn’t burn me though and I threw it at him, at his lower leg which was not protected by armour, and he cried out as the flames engulfed him.
I had a minute to look around. Many of the minions that had entered the bar were now on the floor, dead or injured and there was blood everywhere. Alex was covered in blood, she had scars on her face and at least two bullet wounds that I could see. I looked back to the Accountant, the flames were gone again, and he was before me and struck at me with a sword as I materialised an energy shield for it to bounce off. Then three others entered the room. Two men and a woman, their hands were glowing with electricity. They were blocking the door and were clearly the cavalry, ready to charge in when needed. The Accountant hadn’t thought he would need them, obviously, so perhaps we should have been flattered. An electricity bolt flew from one of their hands and I absorbed it with my energy shield. It took everything I had but I was unharmed.
We couldn’t win this. We might not lose now, immediately, we were still strong, but he would wear us down. We needed to leave. More worryingly, I could feel a change, I felt lethargic, as if my senses were dulled. I ran to Alex while the Accountant was still recovering himself from hitting against my shield. His attack and the magic users entering the bar and firing had been a matter of seconds. I grabbed Alex by her hand, and we were gone. My energy had depleted, I could feel it. Even with the boost I felt the armour gave me. Was Alex the same, or had I used much more power than her? We needed to recover and hope that they didn’t find us until we had. I never did get to find out where all of the secret rooms were hidden in the bar.
Chapter 38
I was lying on my back on my bed in my room at the den. It still retained its pastel colour scheme, thankfully. Alex was next to me, and with a great sigh of relief, Zoe was perched at the end of the bed looking at us both.
“I was furious with you, bud.” Zoe looked at me intently, her legs were crossed underneath her in what looked like a disorganised yoga pose. “But when you landed back here, I realised that you were right. I shouldn’t have gone with you.”
“We shouldn’t have let you,” I replied.
“It wouldn’t have worked, bud. At least we all came out of that alive, right?”
Alex hadn’t said anything, she was just lying there. Expressionless. Zoe turned to her, and we were both looking at her. It seemed to take a while for Alex to register us both. Finally, she spoke, very softly, almost a whisper. “I thought I was going to die.”
“Me too.” I replied but she continued without hearing me.
“I mean, properly out of it, gone just like that. I’d forgotten what that felt like, it’s been so long, and it was different to the disease, it was so quick. No time to prepare, I would have just been gone. I couldn’t even say goodbye.” A tear ran down her cheek, it was strange to see her this vulnerable.
I turned on my side next to her and put an arm around her.
“We’re still here Alex. After all of that, we’re still here. All three of us.”
Zoe looked at me, considering Alex’s words then, “She’s right, we should prepare for next time, prepare as if we’re not coming back.”
“We can’t think like that, Zoe.” I said, almost snapping at her.
“We have to, Maddy,” Alex now, “I’ve been through this, life suddenly changing all of your plans, you have too. We need to prepare for it. I’m not sure we have any choice. I can’t see how we can win.”
“But we’ve got to try,” I said quietly.
“Of course!” Alex snapped back abruptly. “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, that’s all we can do. There’s no way we can run away, my dad is counting on me and I’m counting on you. Both of you. I need you both, if I haven’t made that clear I’m sorry, but it’s true.”
“We know bud,” and this time I didn’t mind Zoe calling her ‘bud’ too.
We all stayed there for a while. I’m not sure how long, but there was an easy silence between us, a permanent bond now. Even with mine and Zoe’s history. If there was any way out of this, it was together, that was certain. I think I slept for a while and when I opened my eyes again Zoe was gone. Alex was gently napping next to me. I sat up carefully not wishing to wake her, but she opened an eye to look at me.
“You’re so much more than I anticipated, Maddy,” she said rubbing her eyes, “I’ve put you through so much, relied on you, I’ve never done that before with anyone except my dad.”
“What about your mom?”
“Well yes, but I mean consciously, she was there when I was a kid obviously, then when I was sick and I guess I block out how much I needed her, we needed her, because she abandoned us.”
“Or she chose to live,” I said gently.
“Chose to live without us. I can’t believe that was her choice, for my dad it was no choice at all. He gave everything for me. Literally everything.”
“But by a normal barometer, not compared to your dad what she did was possibly selfish, but it was human, Alex. Deciding to die, even for you, is a lot.”
“I can’t forgive her, Madeline. I don’t think I will ever be able to, but you’re right, maybe I can let go a little. It has been an extremely long time.”
“For us, yes, but for her not at all, she’ll be living with her guilt every day, Alex, maybe that should be enough.”
Alex sat up, turned away from me, and dangled her legs over the side of the bed. I knew we were done on that subject. Her mind was whirring though, I could almost actively see her reaching a conclusion.
“I think he might have been bluffing.”
“What?” I asked, quite rightfully, I thought.
“Dave.”
“Yes, I know who, I don’t what, Alex. What was he bluffing about?”
She sighed, like it was obvious. It annoyed me when she did that, like I was a kid missing an answer very evident to everyone else.
“Magic, Madeline, Magic. He was testing us, trying to judge our reaction. He gave up that he knew about the limits very easily. He maybe guessed that we would know, maybe because Zoe is ZeroFlex. He judged our reaction, realised he was right. Saw your reaction to how they were six then threw in that he knew who the other three magic users were.”
I wasn’t convinced, “He said they were not as capable as us or something like that – how would he know that?”
“He doesn’t, Madeline, that’s my point. Think about it for a second. He attacked us as soon as he mentioned them, he didn’t want to answer questions, he just wanted to demoralise us whilst at the same time showing that if we surrendered, we had value to him. But that there were others too, so the value was limited. It kept his options open.” Alex was getting more excited, speaking much more quickly now, her theory gaining momentum. “You escaped them, Maddy, that means something too,” I was about to interject that I couldn’t see how that helped but Alex was a step ahead answering me before I asked, “He wouldn’t risk it. If he had three uncooperative magic users kept prisoner, he wouldn’t bring every one of his people here. Do you think he would have left Declan to guard them – someone he clearly doesn’t trust at all?”
“He said they were much weaker than us.”
“Even if that’s true, he wouldn’t risk it. If there was any doubt at all, he wouldn’t risk it. You escaped them, Madeline, he couldn’t let that happen again. I imagine they thought you were trapped too.”
Then, Zoe walked in looking pleased with herself, “I think the Accountant is bluffing!”.
“You’re just realising that now?” I asked, then winked at Alex, and she grinned at me back.
A little while later, we were all sitting on comfy furniture, a movie in the background, having just finished some raspberry cheesecake. Zoe and I were on the couch; I had taken over most of it lying on my side with Zoe squeezed on the one end, but she didn’t seem to mind. Alex was on our left curled up into a large plush chair of red velvet that didn’t fit at all with the cream couch Zoe, and I were on but that was the beauty of the den - we could change everything in an instant. I momentarily felt bad that I hadn’t made the couch longer so Zoe could lie down too.
Zoe had realised he was bluffing for very different reasons to Alex and I, but it had possibly confirmed our theory. She knew of one of the missing three, she believed he had been deleted in the early days. Zoe had apparently been doing quite a lot of research recently and uncovered that there had been a guy that in the first few days of Zeroworld was doing a whole heap of things that shouldn’t have been possible. The company had found out, and he quietly disappeared, never to be heard from again. We had agreed not to deal with just how sinister that was for now and take it as a positive. Zoe was also able to confirm that the reason so few magical places existed was that the allocation had almost entirely been used in the original game, when the world was simply escapist virtual reality, and not alternative reality or whatever the fuck it was now.
There were two left… maybe. And perhaps we could get to them first.
“But there’s more,” Zoe was enjoying being in control again, I could tell.
“His magic users, I know who they are.”
“How?” I asked, which I thought was fair.
“Well, we, and by that, I mean ZeroFlex, saw them on our turf. It was our bar, which means we know who they are and how to track them.”
“Will they know that?” asked Alex.
“Maybe, maybe not,” replied Zoe unhelpfully but then more helpfully added, “thankfully, that doesn’t matter because we can track them through their powers now, so even if they stop us the normal way, we have a whole other route I don’t think they would have thought of.”
I could see Alex was angry. I wasn’t sure why, surely this was good news?
“What have you told them, Zoe? What the fuck have you told them?”
Ohhhh, yes, that made sense.
“Nothing, bud, nothing on you. I haven’t told them about here, I’ve been careful, used the room you showed me. I told them I was in hiding with Madeline, that we had a way to solve this. They agreed to give me time.”
We had no choice but to trust her, and to be honest, I really hoped and wanted to.
Alex had calmed down a little, possibly because she had realised something else, “Zoe, are they always together?”
“No, bud, they are most definitely not, they spend quite a bit of time apart, quite far apart actually,” a wicked smile on her face.
Chapter 39
The first guy was easy to track. We could have done it without any corporate help. By all reports, he was an obnoxious drunk with a gambling problem and he had not been particularly secretive about using his powers. He had recently enjoyed a remarkable winning streak at several casinos.
“Richard Thompson is the name he goes by in here,” said Zoe, showing us his picture from an almost satisfyingly 1990s black and white computer printout. “He seems sloppy, so he’s definitely going to be the easiest to find and deal with.”
“This could be another trap, Zoe,” said Alex, always thinking, staring intently at the photo, “What do we know about him… I mean what can he do?”
Zoe was used to Alex by now and had been ready for this question, “Well, we know where the other two are, so they aren’t together, and there’s been no sign of the Accountant either.” In real time, it had now been three days since our meeting in the bar. I’m not sure how long it had been in the den.
“So, if it is a trap, it’s likely to be more armed guards than other magic users, which we should be able to deal with.” I said, “Unless he has found either of the other missing powered people. But I don’t think so.”
“Why?” asked Alex, still cautious.
“Because I think he’s arrogant, he’s constantly underestimating us. Even though we went after Anna and neutralised her, we ran away from the bar from his perspective. I don’t think he thinks we’ll go after him again. Even if we’re wrong, I can’t see that we have another choice. This seems like our best shot.”
“We’ll have to go after the others quickly too.” Alex was spinning and getting on board, “We run the risk of alerting them, and we need to avoid that if possible. Ideally, we need to get to them all at once but that’s way too risky.”
“Maybe that’s what Dave thinks too,” I said, pondering. “Maybe we could get one, but not all three, and we don’t know how quickly it would take for the others to appear when we get one.”
“We overload them,” said Zoe. “I think ZeroFlex needs to be fully involved now. I could get a team on the other two, probably VI’s so they’re expendable, while we go after Richard.”
“That’ll work,” I said “but this time you’re staying here on important coordination work. I can’t be protecting you and attacking them, not again. And we are sure that the VI’s, are really VI’s?”
Zoe nodded, knowing that arguing about staying was a battle she was not going to win or also about the VI’s. Either way she was staying put, I’d insist. Then we spent the next few hours planning and arguing. Zoe called her bosses and convinced them that we needed this, badly. Eventually, after some rest and cake, we were ready to go on the offensive (again), but this time more successfully than the last. At least we hoped so.
Zoe had excelled herself and had a team of 300 VI’s who would keep the others busy while we nabbed Richard Thompson. Then if all went well, we’d go after each of the others in turn while they still had company.
The tricky thing was that when I said ‘nabbed’ what I meant was ‘kill’. Yes, it was possible he had a real-life counterpart, like Anna, but we couldn’t know and the only way to be sure that he wouldn’t come back was by making sure that it wasn’t possible. This is what a whole lot of our disagreement had been about, and it took a toll on me especially. We all knew, deep down, what needed to be done but we’d been trying to explore other options not because they were realistic but just to ease our consciousnesses. With acceptance came planning, how could we kill him? Anna had been an accident and we didn’t think the power that might be required for more vaporising was necessarily a good idea. We needed weapons that we could create in the den which would hopefully not expend magical energy that we could use outside. Finally, we each had a gun that fired a net that would tangle him in, a magical bow and arrow, a handgun and sword. It took some management to figure out how it was possible to carry it all, and be able to reach for it quickly, but we got there. I had my armour on, Alex went with a Kevlar vest. I decided to leave my helmet behind, concerned that it would call too much attention (which was ridiculous given the small armoury I was carrying but, hey, don’t judge, I was in the moment).
Then it was incredibly easy. So easy. Murdering another human, simplicity itself. We had been waiting outside a casino where we knew he would be. We had both disguised our appearance figuring that even with our weapons arsenal, it might buy us a few seconds before he realised who we were. Then he appeared, walking through the door. Miraculously no one was with him, no one was around in viewing distance, the casino entrance being on a side street for no obvious reason. As he stepped out, he turned to look at me, smiled and didn’t see Alex behind him pull the trigger and shoot straight through his head. We tried to separate his head from his body with a sword for good measure but as with the other death, he disappeared into nothing.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Sure, fine, I think, yes.” She wasn’t fine. But we would have to deal with how we dealt with this later. For now, it was time for our next target. Unfortunately, this was much more challenging.
A question I had been wondering was, if we could kill and they could kill, why weren’t more people dying in general? Car accidents, fights, any number of other reasons. There had not been a spate of deaths amongst the general populace at all. Alex thought that it was perhaps to do with our power in here, one way to test it would be to see if Zoe could kill someone but that seemed like a twisted experiment. For now, the power to kill seemed limited to us and them, but we also weren’t sure if it applied to their non-magic users as well. For the most part we were relieved, panic amongst the public (well more panic, given the dragon incident), in addition to everything else, was not something we wanted to deal with.
