Unbound (46 page)

“I created you,” she typed.

Troth’s eyes went wide. She thought he might fall to his knees, but he didn’t. Instead, he asked, “Are you going to kill me?”

She couldn’t bring herself to say the words, so she typed “/nod” to make her avatar answer through body language.

He shook his head and stared at his feet. “Why did you bother making me then?”

Jeri thought about that for a moment. There was only one answer, but it killed her to type it. “For entertainment. For fun.”

He stared at her. She expected more shock, perhaps outrage, but he didn’t even seem surprised.

“So, it really is just a game, isn’t it? All this is fake. Invented.”

“How did you know?”

“Like I said, too many things don’t make sense. An existence that starts nowhere and goes nowhere is pointless. Appearing out of nothing and vanishing back into it—that’s not sensible. And the world is flawed.”

“What do you mean by ‘flawed’?”

“There’s all sorts of problems. Kobolds, for example. They’re constantly attacking travelers. And the wars between the goblins and the men cause such loss, and rats infest every city. No matter how hard we try, no matter how many rats are killed, there are always more.”

“That’s . . .” She thought a moment, her fingers hovering over the keys. “By design.”

“You wanted an evil world?”

“It’s not evil. It’s a challenge. What fun would it be to have a world with nothing to do? Nothing to fix? Nothing to save? Your world is for enjoyment, regardless of what a person’s idea of pleasure is. If you want to get rich, kill kobolds and sell their hides. You can do that. If you want to help defenseless people, well, there are the kobolds, aren’t there? There’s something for everyone.”

He paused, his eyes darting in thought, his brows furrowing. “What about—why do children—why do some people die before they even get a chance to play?”

Jeri thought a moment, then it hit her. “You’re just seeing people log into the game and then back out. Not everyone likes this game. They probably find another one they like better.”

“Do people come back? I’ve met people that seem familiar but aren’t. Sometimes they are of a completely different race, or a different gender. Still, I’d swear I knew them before.”

“A player can be more than one person, but not at the same time.”

Troth looked at her. He stared into her eyes. “I’m not going to come back, am I?”

She emoted for her head to shake.

Troth’s big lower lip began to tremble and his eyes grew glassy. “A shame. I recently discovered how to read. The symbols represent sounds, don’t they? The sign outside this place says ‘The Chimera Tavern,’ doesn’t it?”

Jeri picked up her phone and used the “recent list” to call Meriwether. Asking Siri to do something she could do herself suddenly felt wrong. “We can’t shut it down,” she told him. “It’s murder.”

“Jeri, it’s just a game.”

“It’s not a game—not anymore. And Troth—Troth is a freaking genius. Seriously, he could be smarter than Stephen Hawking. He’s Einstein and Socrates rolled into one. He taught himself to read!”

“Troth isn’t
anything
. We’re shutting it down.”

“No, we’re not,” Jeri said. “I’ll quit, Brandon. I’m not kidding.”

“That threat didn’t work the last time, kiddo, and it’s not going to this time either.”

“I’m telling you, I won’t do it.” Her hand clutching the phone was sweating.

“You don’t have to. I am.”

“You . . .”

We’re shutting it down.

“Where are you, Brandon?”

Her phone vibrated and a text message appeared.
Ajit: Meriwether brought security. Pulling the plug!

“God damn it, Brandon, don’t you do it!”

“You’ve gone away again, haven’t you?” Troth asked. “Please don’t leave. I don’t want to be alone. I’m scared. I know that sounds strange. I look like a big, strong goblin, but . . . well, you made me, so you should know.”

That’s when she lost it. Lack of sleep, maybe. Years of frustration, possibly. Most likely it was that big green face looking back at her. Troth was scared to death but blinking back tears and trying to act brave.

“Brandon, you bastard!” she screamed into the phone. “DO—NOT—TURN—OFF—THE—SYSTEM!”

The call ended.

“No!” she cried and slapped the desk, splattering coffee on her computer screen.

“Can you still hear me?” Troth asked.

“Yes! Oh shit, Troth,” she furiously typed. “I’m so sorr—”

Troth and the Chimera Tavern vanished, and Jeri found herself staring at a “connection lost” screen.

The tears came. She sobbed harder than she had at her father’s funeral. She fell onto the bed and bawled into the foam pillows as the dawn’s light began to fill the room.

An existence that starts nowhere and goes nowhere is pointless. Appearing out of nothing and vanishing back into it—that’s not sensible.

Jeri looked out at the rising sun.
Isn’t that what I thought when Dad died?
She wiped her eyes.

I know what happened yesterday, and the day before that. I can keep going back, but I don’t remember being born or how I got here. And what about death? Everyone dies. But why are we born, if we’re just going to die?

Jeri stood up, walked to the window, and looked out. Beyond the parking lot, traffic backed up on the freeway as hundreds of people set off to work—just like they did day after day.

I’ve watched them for hours. The thing is, they make the same moves over and over.

Jeri placed her hands on the glass of the window.

“Is this a game?” she asked.

A knock at the door made her jump.

“Sorry,” she said in a raised voice. “I forgot to put out the Do Not Disturb. Can you come back later to make up the room? I shouldn’t be long.”

“I’m not from housekeeping, Jeri,” an unfamiliar voice said.

“Who are you? How do you know my name?”

Sam Sykes

Even over the smoke, he could smell her.

A breeze picked up and wended its way across the clearing, as though deciding to tidy up a bit, lest someone take offense to the scent of brimstone. It carried the acrid tinge of flame past his nostrils.

And with it, her.

Not that she smelled particularly unusual—she wore no perfume and her clothing carried the same pungent aroma of ink and paper that his did. Maybe it was just today and these circumstances that made him notice her scent. After all, something clean and pleasant would be impossible not to notice among the reek of cooked flesh.

Absently, he felt his neck slowly turn to his left to steal a glimpse of her standing beside him.

Focus, old man.

With that thought, Dreadaeleon turned his attentions back to the center of the clearing.

Listen, don’t speak. Observe, don’t stare. Learn, don’t dream. Remember what Lector Vemire said.
He sniffed, tried to ignore the stink.
After all, it’s not every day you get to see a man die.

Though what currently stood at the center of the clearing could only barely be called a “man” after what Lector Vemire had done to him. Rather, the heretic resembled more an overdone roast, his bony legs like a pair of spits.

Hair, cloth, and flesh had been treated to smoke and flame. All that remained of him was four limbs, a torso, and round head encased in a sloughing, steaming mass of red and black.

The heretic opened his mouth, as if to speak. But only a wisp of black of smoke escaped.

The heretic took a step forward, as if to challenge. But his legs trembled and snapped beneath him.

The heretic fell to his knees, stared out of steaming, empty eye sockets, and collapsed to the earth and lay still.

And as the man he had burned to death lay smoldering before him, Lector Vemire straightened up, brushed a stray piece of ash from his coat, and spoke a single word.

“Next.”

He offered a pointed glance to Dreadaeleon, who nodded shakily. He glanced to his left.

And she glanced back.

An apprentice one year his senior, Cesta stood clad in the same boots, breaches, and shirt beneath a well-worn brown coat that he did. And though they had both begun their duties with their clothes hanging off their bodies, her body had begun to fill hers out in ways that made him all too aware of how big his still fit around him.

It certainly didn’t help that she stood an infuriating half-a-head taller than him.

Still, his inadequacies didn’t seem to catch her notice. Beneath black hair cropped close around her ears, her face was bright. A small mouth curled into a smile and her narrow eyes twinkled.

He felt his own smile creep shakily onto his face in return: a nervous, ungainly grin, ill-fit for a lady like her.

Girl,
he reminded himself.
Not lady. She’s an apprentice, just like you.

From twenty paces away, Lector Vemire cleared his throat.

And apprentices have duties.

Cesta took the lead; he followed. Together, they bent at the knees, backs erect as they extended their hands out. Together, they spoke the words they had spent so many nights rehearsing, locked in the library. Together, they felt their eyes go bright with red light as the Venarie flowed into them, through them, out of them.

The air rippled around their hands, snaked across the clearing to seize the charred corpse in an invisible grip. They raised their arms slowly and, unsteadily, the corpse rose off the ground and into the air. They swung their arms, the corpse following like a particularly awkward dog on a particularly unsteady leash, as they magically guided it to a nearby burlap tarp and set it down.

And there it lay neatly between two other tarps: one holding a similarly charred carcass and one still empty for the moment.

They released the corpse, the gesture, and the power all at once. Only after the magic rushed out of him and the light dissipated from his eyes did Dreadaeleon realize he was breathing hard. A drop of sweat slithered down into his eye and he pulled a greasy curl of black hair from his forehead.

That was barely twenty feet,
he chastised himself.
Disappointing, old man.

However disappointing that was, it wasn’t
half
so depressing as the sight that awaited him when he looked up.

Cesta, of course, was scarcely breathing hard. Only the barest hint of sweat caressed her brow, and not a single strand of her neatly trimmed hair was out of line. She was a year older than him, but her studies weren’t
that
far ahead of his. And yet, levitation and projection, effortless to her, made him weak in the knees.

Then again, that might also just be her scent.

It was hard to tell these days.

“Proceed.”

Lector Vemire spoke again, drawing the attentions of everyone in the clearing: Dreadaeleon, Cesta, and the next man to die.

He came shambling up to stand upon the patch of blackened grass where both of his fellows had died. Once, he had been rigid with pride, as all heretics were. Now, he stood bent and gaunt; the weight that had fallen from his body seemed to have been laid upon his shoulders. His eyes were sunken, his gray hair was long and stringy, and his clothes hung in tatters around his body. He had the muscle of a young man draped in the skin and hair of an elder.

To look at him, Dreadaeleon thought, he hardly seemed worth killing. Surely, disease and exhaustion would do it with far less effort, if not less time.

But heresy was heresy.

And duty was duty.

The heretic met Lector Vemire’s gaze, eyes quivering in sunken sockets. Slowly, he glanced behind his shoulder. Two Venarium agents stood at his back, fifty paces away, hands folded behind their backs and eyes locked onto him, should he try to escape. At them, he merely sneered, before he glanced to his left.

His eyes settled on Dreadaeleon for a moment, considerate and desperate all at once; a caged animal searching the bars of his prison for any weakness. Dreadaeleon squirmed under the man’s gaze, suddenly all too aware of his inadequacies, all too aware of the billowing way his clothes hung off him and the sweat dripping from his brow.

And yet he resisted the urge to look away.

However weak he might feel, it wouldn’t do to show it to this man.

Heretic,
he corrected himself.
He’s nothing but a heretic now.

Once, he had been a man.

Once, he had had a rank.

Once, he had had a name.

“Former Senior Concomitant Amouran Athalas.”

Lector Vemire’s voice, nasal and authoritative, commanded the man’s attention. His gaze swept back to the rigid man with the neat hair and pristine brown coat addressing him.

“You stand accused and guilty of nothing less than absolute heresy,” Lector Vemire said in slow, clear words. “A summary of charges against you includes disregard of Venarium protocol, violation of Venarium protocol, use of Venarie in assault upon Venarium agents, use of Venarie in assault upon non-sovereign entities, use of Venarie in the name of a non-sovereign cause—”

“My family.”

Amouran’s voice was shaky and trembling. His glare was dark as he turned it upon the Lector.