Reaper

  “He’ll be right too.”

  “Not if Hawk the Unvanquished gives me combat lessons.”

  Hawk actually stopped to consider that for a moment. “I’m sure I could train you to be a lethal sword fighter, but that would take months or years rather than weeks. However, I’ve just thought of a crucial point. You couldn’t use Game commands to run away from your fight, but I could use them to join it.”

  “So I’d just have to stay alive and fighting the Reaper long enough for you to arrive and help me kill him. How long would that take?”

  “Game world transfer involves extra delays while the system checks things like visitation rights,” said Hawk, “so we’d have to set things up for me to be on the same world as you and use Game teleport to join you. I’d still take almost a full minute to go through the transition process though.”

  He frowned. “Given the circumstances, we might be able to talk the Game Techs into giving you enhanced armour to help you stay alive in the fight until I join you. We can discuss this with Kwame after my family meeting. Let’s get back to enjoying the view of Jupiter for now.”

  We lay back on the sand again. I stared at the ever-changing storms of Jupiter, and tried to work out if I was pleased or terrified that Hawk was taking my suggestion of playing bait for the Reaper seriously now. At the moment, terrified seemed to be winning. A few minutes ago, I’d been explaining to Hawk how my anger had got me into trouble in the past. Now it had driven me into volunteering for something that I probably wouldn’t be able to handle.

  “Did you know that I originally planned to call myself Hercules,” said Hawk, “but someone else grabbed the name?”

  I grinned with relief at the change of subject. “Let me guess. Would that happen to have been the Founder Player called Hercules?”

  “Yes. We had to do a month of tests before we entered the Game. Hercules is a malicious person who likes making other people miserable, and he spent the entire month targeting me. We went through Game registration in alphabetical order, so he was ahead of me picking his Game name, and grabbed Hercules because he knew I wanted it. That left me with only a couple of minutes to choose myself a new name. The Game Company had been encouraging us to choose names out of old legends, preferably Greek or Roman, but my mind went a complete blank and I couldn’t think of any of them. I decided to call myself Hawk as a temporary solution, but ended up keeping it.”

  He laughed. “Hercules stole my name, and I’ve spent four hundred years beating him up in duels to punish him for it. He’s refusing to fight me anymore. These days he just sends me messages saying ‘Let’s save time, Hawk. You win.’”

  “I don’t blame Hercules for refusing to fight you,” I said. “Hawk the Unvanquished is bound to defeat him every time.”

  Hawk rolled on his side to face me, and put his arm round me. The links of his chain mail armour were surprisingly warm and soft against the bare skin of my arm. I was hit by a tense feeling that wasn’t panic but was its very close relative.

  This wasn’t Hawk as Michael. This was Hawk as I’d seen him receiving the champion’s crown of the Battle Arena on Medieval, this was the Hawk who was the General of the army of Ruby on Civil War, this was the glittering hero who could take his pick of the twenty-five billion women in Game and couldn’t possibly be interested in me.

  The glittering hero couldn’t possibly be interested in me, but his hand was gently pulling me close to him. His lips pressed against mine, and I felt a dizzying mixture of fear and delight. Getting involved with Hawk was foolish, dangerous, and an utterly irresistible prospect.

  Hawk drew away again. “Jex,” he murmured, “I know I promised I wouldn’t rush things, but ...”

  He broke off because an automated voice was speaking from the air above us. “Player Hawk, resident of Celestius, you have an emergency priority incoming call from United Law facility 814. Do you accept the call?”

  “Why?” Hawk tipped back his head and yelled his frustration up at Jupiter. “Why now? Couldn’t you have waited five more bleeping minutes before ...? Oh, all right. Game command. Accept call.”

  Nathan’s head and shoulders appeared, hovering in midair in front of us. I saw his eyebrows fly up in speculation as he saw us lying on the sand with Hawk’s arm round me. “I’m sorry to interrupt you,” he said.

  I hastily shuffled further away from Hawk, and felt his arm holding me back for a second before he groaned and let me go.

  “I’m sorry you interrupted us too, Nathan,” said Hawk. “I don’t suppose it can wait until later?”

  “Erm, not really. The Game investigation has asked me to tell you some very important news.”

  “And it can’t be good news, or they’d have told me themselves,” said Hawk wearily. “What’s happened now?”

  “The Game Techs have been checking up on Harper’s recent actions,” said Nathan. “You know that Game items, especially weapons, have different abilities added to them. To put it very simply, a sword has the ability to cut a player. A club has the ability to cause blunt trauma.”

  “I know.” Hawk sat up. “There were errors making weapons a few times, where the wrong ability got added to something. Hercules got hold of a dagger that didn’t stab you, but hit you like a massive club. He nearly got me in that fight, but I managed to ... Anyway, I understand what you mean.”

  “Well, all the standard items are made by an automated process,” said Nathan, “but Game Techs also have a process that lets them make individual enhanced items with any of a huge list of useful abilities. Every item that’s made that way is recorded on an audit trail, but there was no record of anything ever being made by Harper.”

  I sat up too. “He must have made some items in four centuries. If there are no records left at all, then he must have deleted them to hide something.”

  “Exactly,” said Nathan, “but this time Harper missed something. He didn’t know that Kwame’s team had set up an automated process to make copies of key audit trails at random intervals. The Game Techs have been going through those old copies, and found one that shows Harper made some enhanced items a couple of days ago.”

  “What sort of enhanced items?” asked Hawk.

  “One was a tracking item. The Game Techs use those to track the location of problem players as they move through Game. There was a weapon too. The audit trail was copied at the instant the weapon was completed, so it’s impossible to tell if Harper made any other items after that.”

  I didn’t like the sound of this. I didn’t like it at all. “Harper made these items a couple of days ago. By then, all the Game Techs had been told that one of their own people was involved in the bombing. Harper was getting worried, so he made himself these enhanced items in case he had to use his escape route and become a player. He’ll have either found a way to take the items with him during his escape, or hidden them somewhere so he could collect them when he was a player.”

  Hawk nodded. “We have to assume that Harper has all the items he made with him right now. I suppose the weapon has an exceptionally nasty ability.”

  “Yah,” said Nathan, in a despairing voice.

  “Since you can’t make yourself say what that ability is,” said Hawk. “I’m guessing that means it’s the worst thing imaginable. Harper’s got a weapon that can erase a player’s mind from the Game.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  “I’m afraid you’re right,” said Nathan miserably. “Harper made himself a deletion weapon.”

  “What?” I shook my head in disbelief. “How is something like that possible? Why would the Game Techs have a process that can make weapons to delete players?”

  “Deletion weapons are designed to work on Game creatures not players,” said Nathan. “When players lose a fight in a hunting zone, the zone is supposed to reset automatically after the last player in the combat area dies, and that reset dispels the monster. However, there’s sometimes a glitch when a major monster kills multiple players simultaneously. The zone reset fa
ils to happen, the monster stays active in the hunting zone, and any spectators are stuck there unable to leave. The simplest way to sort out the situation is to send in a Game Tech with a deletion weapon.”

  He sighed. “One scratch from a deletion weapon is enough to deal with even the Behemoth. Unfortunately, it’s relatively easy to modify a deletion weapon so it works on players as well as Game creatures.”

  “Is it possible to track the location of this weapon?” I asked, without much hope.

  “Only a few very significant items, like the Monarch’s Crown on Civil War, or Excalibur on Camelot, are designed so their location can be tracked within Game,” said Nathan.

  I assumed that meant no. Hawk had buried his face in his hands. Now he looked up again, and shouted at the top of his voice.

  “Game command. Request Game Tech assistance. Kwame! Now!”

  A moment later, Kwame appeared in front of us. “Requesting the presence of a specific Game Tech by name is a severe breach of protocol.”

  Hawk stood up and glared at him. “One of your Game Techs crashed Avalon, killed eleven thousand players, and is running amok in Game right now with a deletion weapon. Do you seriously want me to waste time discussing this situation with a random, bronze status Game Tech?”

  “Point,” said Kwame. “However, using the phrase ‘appropriate Game Tech assistance’ would communicate the fact that your request was connected to the Reaper situation, and I would respond in my current role as crisis co-ordinator.”

  Hawk didn’t bother to reply to that. “The Reaper has an item that lets him track players in Game, and it’s painfully obvious that he’ll have been using it to track me. He’ll have watched me appear in Game on Celestius. He’ll have seen me use Game world transfer to come to Jex’s house here on Ganymede. He’ll know I’m on this beach right now. He could appear right in front of us at any moment.”

  I pictured that happening, the Reaper appearing in front of us, and the combat that would follow. Hawk was a legend in Game, with four centuries of fighting experience, but it would only take one scratch from a deletion weapon and he’d be gone forever. I was glad that I was still sitting down, so I could force my hands deep into the sand to make sure they didn’t tremble.

  “Only residents can teleport to this beach,” said Kwame.

  “You just appeared here and you aren’t a resident. Game Techs can use teleport to appear anywhere in Game. They can even enter houses without the owner’s permission if a player’s safety is thought to be at risk. Are you totally sure that the Reaper hasn’t made himself an enhanced item that will let him do the same thing?”

  Kwame frowned. “We are confident that the Reaper cannot bypass the integral Game design measures controlling access to Game Tech areas and Celestius. Given the Reaper played a key part in the original design of the Game, it is hard to rule out the possibility of him having an enhanced item that gives him access to other areas.”

  “Even if he can’t teleport here, the Reaper could get here by walking, and I’ll need to leave Jex alone soon to go to my family meeting.”

  “I will arrange for a team of Game Techs to watch the house, the beach, and all approach routes,” said Kwame.

  Hawk rubbed his forehead in the gesture that he only used when under extreme stress. “There’s also the problem of what I say at the meeting. How can I explain to my family that the Reaper’s got hold of a deletion weapon without admitting he’s a rogue Game Tech?”

  Kwame started speaking but Hawk lifted a hand to stop him. “Don’t try suggesting that we keep the existence of this weapon secret. I’m not letting my family roam round Game worlds in the belief that the worst the Reaper can do is inflict a Game death on them. Not even Hercules deserves to be wiped out of existence with a single slash of a sword or stab of a knife.”

  Nathan coughed nervously. “I watched your broadcast, Hawk. You said that the bomber was the dangerous one, he’d been in Game for over three centuries, and had worked on server complex maintenance teams.”

  “Oh yes.” Hawk winced. “I told the whole of Game that the dangerous bomber was dead, and the Reaper was just a harmless errand boy with an ego problem.”

  “I’ve been reading about what happened after the Rhapsody world crash three centuries ago,” said Nathan. “There was a massive effort to increase the number of servers for each Game world from two to four. To speed the process up, the maintenance staff were given temporary access to Game Tech systems.”

  “Point,” said Kwame. “The maintenance staff were only given very limited system access to allow them to run tests on the new server configurations, but we could claim that the bomber was accidentally given access to the tools for creating enhanced Game items.”

  Hawk nodded. “So I have to tell people that the bomber was the one who created the enhanced items. When he decided to defrost from Game, he gave them to the Reaper for safekeeping.”

  He paused. “All right. Kwame, Nathan, I’ll talk to you later.”

  Kwame vanished into thin air.

  Hawk waited a bare second before speaking again in a pointed voice. “Goodbye for now, Nathan.”

  “Oh. Right. Goodbye.” Nathan’s image vanished as well.

  I was still being distracted by nightmare visions of Hawk fighting the cloaked figure of the Reaper. The pair of them circled each other, swords clashing, and then the Reaper’s blade caught Hawk’s finger. It was the tiniest of cuts, but it was enough. The Reaper pulled down the hood of his cloak, and his skull face laughed as Hawk faded away and vanished.

  The sound of Hawk’s voice brought me back to reality. “We have to forget the idea of you playing bait for the Reaper, Jex. It’s far too dangerous. I’ll draw the Reaper out of hiding myself.”

  “No,” I said sharply. “If playing bait is too dangerous for me, then it’s too dangerous for you too. The Reaper would only need to scratch you once to delete you from the Game. There’d be nothing left of you but an empty shell of a body in a freezer unit.”

  Hawk gave his characteristic one-shouldered shrug. “I should be able to hold out long enough for the Game Techs to get the Reaper’s identity before he deletes me. If I can kill him before he deletes me that would be even better.”

  He laughed, but I didn’t find it funny. I remembered what Hawk had said back on another beach in the real world, about how a hero versus a god doesn’t usually end well for the hero.

  Hawk turned grim again. “I’m sorry, Jex. I hate saying this, but you have to defrost from Game. Right now.”

  “What?” I shook my head. “I’m not defrosting.”

  “This beach isn’t a safe hiding place any longer. The Reaper could come here, erase you from Game, and I ...”

  Hawk broke off for a second before speaking again. “I couldn’t cope with that, Jex. You have to defrost from Game and stay safely in a United Law facility while I deal with the Reaper.”

  “I’m not going to sit uselessly in a United Law facility, waiting to hear if you’ve got yourself murdered. The Reaper will probably do the sensible thing and stay safely in hiding. The situation could drag on for years, decades even.”

  “It won’t,” said Hawk. “I’ll play target. Lure him out. We’ll get him.”

  “No!” I folded my arms. “I refuse to leave Game. If the Reaper knows that I’m on Ganymede, then I can change my Game appearance and hide on a different world.”

  As I said the words, I realized that would only work if I stayed away from Hawk, left the hunt for the Reaper, gave up Ganymede, and abandoned Jex of the silver, feathered hair to give myself a new name and appearance. What would I be left with after that? Perhaps I’d be better off leaving Game after all. At least then I could be with Nathan, talk to Hawk in Game, and stay part of the hunt for the Reaper.

  “It’s too late for you to try hiding from the Reaper,” said Hawk. “He’s been tracking me. He’ll have found out your identity number by now, so he can track you anywhere you go in Game.”

  He paused. ??
?You have to defrost, Jex. As soon as I’ve dealt with the Reaper, you’ll be able to re-enter Game. The Leebrook Ashton bill specifically states that anyone who has entered Game counts as legally adult, so you won’t have to wait until you’re nineteen. You can stay at the United Law facility with Nathan until ...”

  A musical chime interrupted him, and Hawk groaned. “I need to get to the Founder Players’ meeting and break the news to them about the attack on Celestius. I’ll escort you to your home now, and the Game Techs will stand guard over you until I’m back. We’ll finish this conversation then.”

  I didn’t want to go back to my house, but Hawk wouldn’t leave until I did, and I couldn’t make him late for this meeting. It was going to be agonizingly hard for him to tell the other Founder Players, his family, about the intended bombing of Celestius.

  We walked back towards my house. I’d been looking forward to living in a house of my own ever since I was a small child. I couldn’t let the Reaper snatch it away from me and force me out of Game. There was Hawk too. The gulf between the two of us was too wide already, and it would grow wider with every day we were apart.

  “I’ll stay in the house while you go to the meeting,” I said, as we went inside, “and then we’ll discuss how best to handle this situation. You wanted us to see if things could work between us. Me running away and defrosting, while you stay here risking your life as bait for the Reaper, isn’t the way to start a relationship.”

  Hawk went across to sit at the screens in the corner. “There’s no need to discuss this situation. You have to leave Game, Jex. If you won’t call for defrost yourself, then I’ll have to do it for you.” He waved a hand at the screens.

  All my pent up fury at this situation abruptly focused on Hawk. “Whether I defrost or not is my decision! No one can force me to leave Game if I don’t want to go. I’ve already paid my first annual subscription.”

  “What’s happened?” asked Cassandra’s voice. “Who’s trying to force you to leave Game, Jex?”