Chas began to panic. He had no idea how to send a TP. He saw that Jamir’s full name was Jamir Jones and brought up his profile. Immediately he spotted an option to Offer Teleport. He clicked it and felt a certain amount of self-congratulatory satisfaction as he sent an invitation to Jamir to join him in the office on Jersey Island.
Chas: The limousine is on its way.
After several seconds, a flash of light cleared to reveal a grey shape that gradually rezzed into what looked like a small orange dragon on the floor in front of his desk. The tag above its head read, Pilot Jamir Jones. Chas looked at the creature in astonishment, and when he had regained some composure typed a greeting.
Chas: Hi, Jamir. How may I help you?
Jamir: We’ve been threatened, Chas, and I’d like you to do something about it.
Chas: Who threatened you?
Jamir: A griefer called Nevar Telling. He’s based on Sandbox Island.
Chas cocked an eyebrow. Sandbox Island. That’s where Doobie had told him yesterday that she went griefer-hunting.
Chas: Okay, why don’t you start from the beginning, Jamir. Gimme a rundown.
Jamir: Ok. Well. We were flying a jet, Roger and me. Then...
Chas: And Roger is?
Jamir: Beside me.
Chas was startled, dragging his eyes away from the dialogue box to see what appeared to be an identical creature on the floor beside Jamir, except that this one was blue. And was called Roger Showmun. Jamir, it seemed, had sent his friend a TP, and Chas hadn’t noticed his arrival. Chas had the sense that he had somehow slipped out of the real, or even virtual, world into some surreal netherworld beyond any horizon known to man.
Chas: Hi, Rog.
Jamir: We heard a big crash on the wing. Then a hippy-hair-looking man called Nevar Telling told us ridiculous things. Here is a Notecard I recorded of our conversation.
Jamir passed Chas a Notecard, which opened up on his screen. It seemed to be a cut and pasted record of everything that had passed between the dragons and Nevar Telling. But made very little sense to him.
Chas: What is it you’d like me to do, Jamir?
Jamir: Well, if you look at the conversation, it was in caplock and was threatening me and Roger.
Chas was beginning to feel a sense of despair.
Chas: So he just landed on the wing of your jet and bombarded you with these threats.
Roger: Yes, and shot one of our passengers.
Chas: What are you guys anyway, dragons?
Jamir: Geckos.
Chas shook his head. He was having a conversation with giant geckos.
Chas: And you were flying a jet?
Jamir: Yes. Modern, luxury.
Chas: Where to?
Jamir: Nowhere. Just practising.
Chas: You don’t often find geckos flying jets.
Jamir: Hehe. No
Chas: So, to sum up, this Nevar Telling character threatened you, and shot one of your passengers?
Roger: Yes, me and Jamir was shocked.
Chas: Well, you need to take whatever it is geckos take to calm down, and let me look into this.
Ching-ching. Another IM came in. It was from Angel Catchpole.
Angeclass="underline" Hi, Chas. I’m just about to start a group session, if you want to join us.
Chas: Two secs, Angel
He turned to the geckos.
Chas: Listen, guys, I have a pressing appointment right now. Why don’t you let me go and have a word with our friend, Nevar Telling, and I’ll get back to you?
Jamir: Okay. Thanks, Chas. Here are our cards for when you need to get in touch.
Offers of friendship arrived from each of the geckos, and he added them to his Friends List. A cash register sounded, and Chas was notified that Jamir had just paid him five hundred Lindens.
Jamir: That’s on account, Chas. We’ll look forward to hearing from you.
And with that, the two geckos were gone, leaving Chas looking at the five hundred Lindens clocked up in green figures at the top of his screen. He had just earned his first fee as a private investigator. He sent a brief account of his meeting to Twist in an IM that would be waiting for him when he logged in. Then he remembered Angel.
Chas: Hi Angel. Sorry to keep you waiting. How do I get there?
A window appeared almost immediately on his screen offering him a teleport to The Blackhouse, Poison Island.
Chapter Seventeen
Chas landed in full sunlight on a flat, empty stretch of sand that faded off to a blurred horizon as far as he could see in every direction. He immediately had a sense of something not quite right. Some primal instinct at work. The sand seemed divided by shallow waterways into square parcels. To the south he could see water, but no shoreline. Just a sharp division between the two. Tall, red For Sale obelisks spun in slow motion over several parcels, and as he stood, a large, black building began slowly to rez on the neighbouring plot.
He started walking toward it. He could have flown, but he felt as if he had less control in the air than on the ground, and something was telling him that he needed to stay in control. He waded through the waterway that separated the two parcels, and emerged closer to what was clearly The Blackhouse.
Gradually, as he got nearer, detail began to form. It seemed as if the building were constructed from some kind of black steel, welded together and studded with huge, round-headed rivets. Enormous double doors, three or four times Chas’ own height, stood wide, and as he approached them he saw that giant, demonic heads with short, curling horns had been carved into each of them, glowing red opals in the place of eyes. He hesitated and peered inside. It was dark, in stark contrast to the white, dusty glare of the midday sun on the outside. He took several cautious steps through the doors and stopped.
There, in front of him, on a floor as black as the rest of the building, was a large pool of blood. Chas had seen blood left by murderers at many crime scenes over the years, but there was something chilling about this pool of it here in the middle of a virtual floor somewhere in the ether. He knew, of course, that it wasn’t real. That he had no cause to be afraid. And yet, without reason, he felt uncomfortable. He tapped into Open Chat.
Chas: Hello?
And waited. There was no reply. Why had Angel sent him a TP to this place? It made no sense. He took several steps further inside and heard a loud creak, the sound of metal grinding against metal. He turned quickly, in time to see the giant doors close behind him. They shut with a resounding clang. And his discomfort turned to something very much like fear.
This was insane!
He fumbled to open up his Inventory and the Landmark folder within it. There, he found all the LMs Doobie had given him. He clicked on one and selected Teleport.
Nothing happened.
He tried again. The same. He tried another. Still nothing. Something about this place was disabling his ability to teleport out. He was trapped. There were no windows here, and he wondered how he could see. There was a light source somewhere, but he was unable to locate it. The blood on the floor seemed to glow in the dark. Carefully, he worked his way around it, anxious not to step in it, the crime scene investigator in him fastidious about not disturbing evidence. And as he reached the far side, he saw that someone, or something, had not taken the same care as he. There were trails through the blood, and tracks led out of it into a corridor that curved away out of sight. But they weren’t footprints. They were clawmarks, as if some huge creature had feasted here amongst the blood and then dragged itself off down the corridor, leaving a bloody trail in its wake.