I pulled up Sorrento’s OASIS account to check his activity logs, but they were blank. Someone had already erased all of them from our servers. This should not have been possible. Even our highest-level account admins couldn’t delete a user’s activity logs. Hell, even I didn’t have that ability.
“What the fuck?,” I whispered. There was no other appropriate reaction.
I sent a text message to Faisal asking him to investigate. Just a few seconds after I hit Send, an alert popped up on my phone, informing me that something had just changed on Halliday’s Scoreboard. When I pulled it up, my avatar’s name was still displayed there, with a single blue shard icon beside it. But now a second avatar’s name had appeared directly below mine, with another shard icon beside it: The Great and Powerful Og. It could mean only one thing: Ogden Morrow had just collected the First Shard too.
I stared at the Scoreboard in disbelief. Og had never been interested in searching for the Seven Shards. Quite the opposite. He acted like he never wanted the shards to be found at all, by anyone. When I’d refused to abandon my search for them, he’d been so angry that he stopped speaking to me. Why would he suddenly start looking for the shards now? Was he determined to restore the Siren’s Soul himself, before I could?
And how had Og even been able to pick the First Shard up? According to the riddle, only I, Halliday’s heir, was supposed to be able to do that….
For each fragment my heir must pay a toll.
Except that technically, Og was Halliday’s heir too. Halliday had willed his entire collection of classic arcade games to Morrow, and everything else to the winner of his contest.
I stood there in my office, staring at Og’s name on the Scoreboard, feeling paralyzed. Og knew more about Kira than anyone, including Halliday. Finding the other six shards was going to be child’s play for him. But why was he doing this? And how was Sorrento’s prison break related?
I tried to pull up Og’s OASIS account, but it was completely blank aside from his avatar’s name. And his access logs only showed his login and logout timestamps. Nothing else. Halliday’s account was the same way. Their avatars’ movements inside the OASIS couldn’t be tracked or logged, and neither of their accounts could be disabled or deleted by anyone at GSS. When they created the OASIS, Halliday and Morrow had ensured they would both always have unrestricted and unmonitored access to it.
I was still sitting there a few minutes later, staring at Og’s blank account profile like an idiot, when another Scoreboard alert popped up on my phone. A second blue shard icon had just appeared next to Og’s name, which was now above mine. I had just been bumped down to second place by the Great and Powerful Og.
That snapped me out of my daze. I checked the time and made sure that enough time had elapsed so that it was safe for me to log back in. Then I ran over to my immersion vault and climbed into it. As soon as I dropped into its padded recliner, the canopy lowered and locked into place, sealing me inside. I powered up the system, muttering to myself that it wasn’t too late. I still had time. If I hauled ass and located the Second Shard as quickly as possible, maybe there was still a chance I could catch up with Og….
I didn’t really want to compete against him. But my curiosity about the shards—and the nature of the Siren’s Soul—had only grown. And besides, I told myself. This was my best shot at figuring out what had happened to Og. If I managed to find the Third Shard before he did, then I could just camp at its hiding place and wait for his avatar to show up.
I put on my ONI headset and closed my eyes to initiate the login sequence. A brief message flashed on my HUD, informing me that the new firmware update for my headset had just been automatically downloaded and installed. When my login completed, a countdown clock appeared in the corner of my display, telling me how much time remained until I reached my twelve-hour daily ONI usage limit. When my avatar finished materializing inside my command center on Falco, it was already down to eleven hours, fifty-seven minutes, and thirty-three seconds.
Before I could look at the First Shard again, I received an urgent text message from Faisal, informing me that an emergency GSS co-owners meeting had just been called, to deal with a “serious system stability issue.”
I let out a long sigh of frustration. Then I teleported to the reception area on the top floor of Gregarious Tower, wondering what else could possibly go wrong today.
The answer, it turned out, was pretty much everything….
When my avatar rematerialized in the reception area, Faisal greeted me with his usual handshake.
“Thank you for coming so quickly, sir,” he said, turning hastily to usher me toward the conference room. “The other co-owners arrived a moment ago. Ms. Cook is aboard her jet at the moment, but she appears to have a good connection.”
Art3mis, Aech, and Shoto were already seated around the table, and all three of them looked pretty freaked-out. Art3mis actually looked relieved to see me.
Faisal, now standing behind the small podium beneath the giant viewscreen, made a sickly attempt at a smile. Then something changed. He stood taller, arms hanging loose—and instead of worry and alarm, his facial expression suddenly projected only calm complacency.
We all stared at him for a few awkward seconds while he stared blankly back at us.
“Faisal?” Aech said. “We’re all here, man. You wanna start this meeting or what?”
“Ah, of course!” Faisal said, speaking in a much deeper voice. He raised his arms theatrically. “This meeting of the co-owners of Gregarious Simulation Systems is hereby called to order. Wushz-uh-kuh-bam!”
His avatar began to transform, melting and morphing into a familiar likeness. That of a middle-aged geek with unkempt hair and thick eyeglasses, dressed in worn jeans and a faded Space Invaders T-shirt.
James Donovan Halliday.
Holy shit!
“Greetings, Parzival,” he said, giving me a small wave.
That was when I realized that I’d said “holy shit” out loud.
“Art3mis. Aech. Shoto.” He waved to each of them too. Then he smiled his famously dorky smile. “It’s so good to see all of you again, even under these circumstances.”
Shoto leaped out of his chair, then dropped to his knees.
“Mr. Halliday,” he said, bowing low before the creator’s avatar.
Aech, Art3mis, and I all shook our heads.
“No,” I said. “James Halliday is dead.” I nodded toward the digital doppelgänger standing in front of us. “This is Anorak.”
Anorak nodded and gave me a playful wink that was so off-the-scale creepy it sent a chill cascading through my nervous system.
Just then, the doors flew open and the avatar of the real Faisal burst into the conference room.
“I’m so sorry!” he said. “There was some sort of glitch that immobilized my avatar and I’m still not sure—”
Faisal froze in midstep as he spotted Anorak, and all the color drained out of his face. He looked as if he’d just seen a ghost—an appropriate response, considering.