“YOU FOOLS WILL DIE AT MY CLAWS!”
“Ah, crap! This was why we needed five people—not the stupid dungeon part!” Van said, suddenly remembering the end of this quest. He’d honestly completely forgotten about the ending.
“Don’t worry, I have a plan!” Sang said as she leapt back, narrowly avoiding the flames.
“What’s that?” Van asked as he looked over. She was gone. Jane has logged out of the game.
“Are you kidding me?” Van screamed as he realized she had somehow managed to hack the game so that she could leave in the middle of a fight. Flames poured down on him, but fortunately he was still wearing his armor, so he only took a few points of damage. WARNING: ARMOR CRITICAL read his display as he realized that, if he were hit by the fire again, it would completely destroy his armor.
“WHY IS MY LIFE SO HARD RIGHT NOW!!!!” Van cried out as he began to run and try to strip off his armor simultaneously, praying that the dragon wouldn’t devour him immediately.
Chapter Eleven
Sang sat with her arms crossed defiantly, resting in the conference room of the abandoned office that they were staying in. She wasn’t particularly happy with O’Hara’s decision to pull her out in the middle of a big fight. As odd as it was, Sang had wanted to continue battling with the dragon—it had seemed like it might be somewhat enjoyable. She paused as she considered the prospect of what she was thinking, though. All of the pain of dealing with the loss of her partner had been gut wrenching, but with the busyness of the mission, she had been distracted. She was having fun, in a way. She wasn’t sure whether she should feel guilty over that fact or not.
As she sat in the worn-down office with the shattered table in its middle, she watched as O’Hara and Neil stayed busy writing things down on a whiteboard. They were equations and mathematics that she didn’t particularly understand. Normally she understood computer code, but this looked very different from her regular field of work.
“Thanks for joining us, Sang,” Neil said as he turned around and sat on the corner of the table. It creaked a little, but didn’t break—as she had been expecting it to.
“What’s so important that you needed me immediately? We were in the middle of an important battle,” Sang said, crossing her arms again and frowning.
“A fake battle in a fake world,” O’Hara answered as she sat down in the swivel chair opposite of Sang. “It’s not worth worrying about whether you get some fake internet points or whatever. What’s more important is that thing you saw.”
“The glitch?” Sang asked.
“Yeah, the glitch!” Neil said excitedly, pointing to a holographic display of the constellation carving in the center of the room. “It’s perfect, isn’t it?”
“I suppose,” Sang said, staring at it blankly. “It’s just… you know… a glitch.”
“Is it?” O’Hara asked as she abruptly stood up and placed her hands on the table, leaning in to get closer to Sang. “Or is it something more?”
“Like what?” Sang asked, completely unsure of what was going on. She had been a little suspicious of these two for quite some time now, and knew there was something that she wasn’t being told. But what?
“Like… communication,” Neil said as he drew out a picture on the whiteboard. It was of a tall, big-eyed creature. “Tell me something, Sang, what do you think about the universe? The galaxy?”
“Huh?”
“Are we alone, Agent Sang?” O’Hara asked, leaning back and pulling up another series of strange symbols and pictures.
“Um, what?” Sang asked. Now she really had no idea what was going on.
“The reality of being human is that we are always gazing at the stars, wondering what’s out there,” Neil continued as he drew a pictogram of the big-eyed creature trying to use radio waves to reach earth.
“But we’ve wondered if whatever’s out there wants to talk to us, too,” O’Hara said.
“Wait, wait,” Sang protested, “are you guys talking about aliens?”
O’Hara glanced over at Neil, who nodded at her. “Yes,” she said quietly. “We’re talking about something like aliens. Aliens, beings from another dimension, advanced AI, something.”
“Okay, you had me when you were asking me to investigate the servers because of player-related deaths, but I’m afraid you’ve now completely lost me, and perhaps even earned my resignation,” Sang said as she slid back from the table.
“We knew you’d react that way,” Neil said, pointing to the symbols that were still floating in the middle of the table. “Until you saw some proof. Tell me, what do these symbols mean?”
Sang looked at them. She was an expert in computer language and spoke many different languages, but as she glanced at the symbols, she couldn’t figure out what they meant. It appeared to be some kind of language, it was true, from the way it was squiggled and crossed, and the gaps between the lines indicated some kind of words, but the language wasn’t anything like any she recognized. “I don’t know what that is,” she said.
“Neither do we, but we’ve been able to figure out it’s a language,” O’Hara said. “Appeared seven weeks ago, in a glitch. One of our less ambitious agents was trying to track down a human trafficker in-game and ended up coming across this. He thought it was odd and sent it to our department for translation, hoping that it was some kind of secret code to allow him to get free stuff in the game.”
“That slacker accidentally found something more than human,” Neil said. “We can’t decode it. Interestingly enough, those symbols aren’t found anywhere else on this planet. And trust me, we did the research.”
“So, what?” she asked, shaking her head. “It’s probably some kind of stupid secret code made by the game company. It probably says ‘Drink your Ovaltine’ or something.”
“That’s what the higher-ups thought. Then a few people died in the game… so we might have taken a little bit of some creative liberty to get this investigation put together,” Neil said, grinning.
“So, you’re meaning to tell me that this is a rogue operation? Does Frederick know about this?” she asked.
“Frederick was the guy who put this together. It was me, him, and O’Hara’s plan,” Neil explained.
“Alright, this is a bunch of crap!” Sang angrily protested. “You brought me in believing that there was some kind of a serious investigation going on, and now I’m finding out it’s just so we can play X-Files?”
“It’s more than that,” O’Hara said. “There really is a threat here. Those deaths were hidden and hushed up. Draco refuses to talk about the symbols and bugs despite the fact that there are plenty of forum bug reports talking about them. The cover-up, the symbols, the way Draco has been so hidden. It’s all connected somehow.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Sang asked. She had to remind herself she wasn’t in-game; she had felt her hands subconsciously grasping down to where her longsword would have been. It was a weird moment, but she let it pass.
“Well, this sounds crazy, doesn’t it?” Neil asked.
“Yes—yes, it does.”
“And would you ever have agreed to this if you had known this was the plan?” O’Hara asked.
“Never.”
“Right,” Neil said, shrugging. “So, you were the best of the best in this field. Greatest hacking and cyberterrorism operator we’ve ever had. If anyone was going to be good at this job, it was you. So, we kind of, sort of, completely lied to you to get you invested in the job.”
“Really? You’re not even going to try and smooth it over somehow?” Sang growled.
“Look, we’re a clandestine agency dedicated to doing all sorts of shady stuff; we set up third world dictators, hack foreign governments, steal nuclear codes and assassinate those that oppose us, so why the hell do you think we’d be so honest and nice?” O’Hara said.