The Emperor shrugged. "I have no idea, no. But I don't care, because your precious planet is going to be destroyed now. You couldn't leave well enough alone, could you? I was earnest in my offer, and I even gave you the benefit of the doubt, but you still decided to cling hopelessly to your race. How pathetic."
"You think I'm pathetic? Because I'm not the one who's about to flee from this ship in a panic," Van replied.
"Ha," the Emperor snorted as he walked up to them with a sneer.
"We've engineered a virus to backfire on your pods. The lethal biofeedback system you developed? Turns out there's a way to make your fancy Draco pods employ it. And it's about to go off in less than five minutes."
"Oh really?" the Emperor asked. "You expect me to believe that?"
Van grinned. "In five minutes, that virus will pulse out a wave and anyone that it touches will experience a severe electrical pulse that will kill every nerve in their brain instantly. You'll be cooked from the inside in less than a second."
The Emperor didn't look nearly as confident as he had before as Van continued to describe the way the virus worked. He frowned and glanced at Sang. "Is this true?"
Sang nodded. "You bet it is. See, we got access to your little schematics, so guess what? We figured out exactly how your pods were designed to terminate their hosts and, oddly enough, getting those pods to activate the Clean-Up Protocol is surprisingly easy."
"So you can blow the earth up right now, give the order to activate whatever system you have, or you can save yourself," Van said as he confidently walked right up to the Emperor and seized him hard. The word Grappled hovered above the both of them.
"Are you insane?" the Emperor shouted as it tried to push him off, but Van's increased strength – thanks to the Emperor's buffs – had made it a difficult task to pry him off. "You're in one of those pods, too! You'll die!"
"I'll do anything to make sure humanity is safe!" Van shouted back.
"No! No!" the Emperor screamed as he kicked Van hard in the stomach. The words Grapple Broken flashed in front of Van as he fell backwards. "I did not get this far to die here! Not in this game! Not like this!"
"Why do you speak as such?" asked one of the Draco as it looked at the Emperor. "You speak with fear of death in your voice. There is no dignity in what you say!"
"No dignity!" echoed a few other Draco. They were now all staring at the Emperor as if he were some kind of a freak.
"To hell with you all," the Emperor said. "You have no power over me in this wretched realm."
The Emperor's body began to shift and change as he transformed back into the red dragon that Van had been so familiar with. With a roar, the dragon rushed up to the glass of the ship and crashed through it, flying back toward Oirthear at full speed. The lack of a vacuum suddenly pulling everyone out into space indicated that there was indeed oxygen in space.
"We gotta go!" Sang shouted as she grabbed Van and helped him up.
"Should we kill them?" asked one of the Draco. They were all looking around in complete confusion, unable to figure out what to do.
"They are enemies of the Draco!" shouted a bright yellow Draco as it rushed into the room. "Kill them!"
Lasers began to fire at Van and Sang as they rushed toward the shattered glass.
"Come on, come on!" Sang yelled as a few bright streaks of yellow nailed her in the side of her head. Her health dropped down to 750.
"Crap!" Van yelped as bolts of electricity crashed into him, as well. The pain was intense – far more than just the haptic simulation. They must have activated the lethal biofeedback setting on Van and Sang.
"I can't run!" Sang cried out as the word Stunned floated above her head. Her legs gave out and she crashed onto the ground. "Get out of here, Van! Log out before it's too late!"
"No!" Van yelled as he turned back to retrieve her. "They've got the biofeedback on – you'll die here!"
"Look, you risked your life to save me already!" Sang said as she rolled out of the way of a few more laser bolts. The Draco were beginning to grow more and more disorganized as they fired their shots. They were scrambling for cover, despite the fact that no one was shooting at them, and a few of them were running into the walls and continuing to attempt to run.
"The hell is going on?" Van asked as he rushed up to hoist his fallen ally up. He slung her over his shoulder and then fled toward the broken windows that would lead to freedom.
"I put a scrambling thing in the virus code, meant to mess with controls; I guess it's doing a really good job," Sang said.
"Uhhhh," Van said as he began to walk backwards. He wasn't trying to walk backwards, but no matter what he did, his legs refused to follow his orders. "This might be a problem."
"Oh crap, the virus just switches controls," Sang said. "Try walking backwards instead."
Van shrugged and tried to walk backwards, only to move forward. He took a deep breath and began to run for the exit, rushing as fast as he could. He hoped that his jumping capacity still existed as he reached the edge of the platform. There was no time to take in the beauty of the view as Van leapt with all of his might off of the edge. He found he could still breathe, which was great news, and sure enough, gravity was still functional. Space was programmed to be nothing more than a big empty area with some stars painted into it.
As Van fell toward the planet, he wondered if he was going to survive all of this. Not the fall, of course, but the virus. He was still trapped in his pod on the base, so would he be able to log out as soon as he landed on the ground? Or would he be liquefied in his pod in less than two minutes?
"So, the virus, was it engineered to be based on proximity?"
"Yeah," Sang said. "It's based on the zone only – that way, it doesn't accidentally spread to innocent players. The virus is, uh, pretty strong, though. We don't have the power to deactivate it once it gets going."
"Am I infected?"
"No, there's a signal output from the orb. Once you're out of range, you'll be safe," Sang replied.
They sailed toward the ground at a startling speed and Van let out a sigh of relief. As big and blustery as the Emperor was, he wasn't the main threat now. That ship was the problem. All of the major controls were located inside of that ship and, with all of the workers dead, the final protocol wouldn't be activated. All that was left for them to do was to find the Emperor and finish him off, once and for all. Van still had one biofeedback hijacker in his inventory, too, and no doubt the Emperor would be looking for revenge.
"It's my turn to save us," Sang said as she activated her Ring of Safe Falling. She grabbed onto Van before he smacked into the ground and the two slowly drifted toward the ground. Van glanced around and chuckled.
"What do you know – we're at the starting beach of the game. Ha, this was where we were first attacked by those bandits."
"And I thought I was actually dying," Sang said as she looked around. The crashing waves, the birds squawking, and the sun shining gave the illusion that everything was okay.
"At least I'm safe for the time being," Van said as he checked his log-out status. He wasn't able to leave the game. "Can you figure out some way to get me out?'
Sang shook her head. "I'm afraid not. I learned a lot about those pods, but there's some kind of safeguard on their release system. You aren't getting out of this game until we get to your physical location and bust you out."
"Oh, right, so maybe you should tell Neil where I am," Van said. "I was in some kind of desert – "
"Yeah, your coordinates were hard coded into those pods; I'm sure Neil and O'Hara are in the process of shooting up the place right now."
"Well, hopefully Neil doesn't think that I'm responsible for anything going wrong," Van replied as he looked up to the sky.
"Oh, he thinks you betrayed humanity and got me in trouble, so he'll be extra mad when he sees you next," Sang said. She pointed upwards. "Heads up."