Dark Redemption chapter 16: The Most Dangerous Game

Beneath the gleaming skyscrapers and picturesque facade of the City of Redemption lies another city; a community of dark and ancient magic populated by creatures of the night. Dark Redemption is a shared-world novel based on an online role-playing game by James Crowther.

Reporter Cassandra True has met a nerdish game designer named Byron Sanders at a party thrown by Byron's employer Melchior Aesermann. Sanders begins to tell her terrifying secrets about Aesermann, but before he gets too far, they both find themselves trapped in a virtual reality game which is about to turn deadly.

Nazi Orcs! She was looking at Nazi Orcs! Seven foot tall, grey-skinned goblins with pointed ears, fangs and claws carrying battle axes and wearing SS uniforms.

"Shoot 'em! Shoot 'em!" Byron shouted and opened up his rifle at their attackers. The bullets tore huge bloody holes in the orcs. Cassandra fumbled with her own rifle and fired a spray of bullets into the floor and the kneecaps of the oncoming orcs. The orcs spasmed under the impact of the fire and then began to disintegrate as if burning up from the inside.

"Okay! Run! Run!" Byron grabbed Cassandra by the hand and pulled her along as he dashed out the door and down a long hallway.

"What's happening? My God, what were those things?"

"I told you, this is a shooter game. The object is to get through the castle without being killed."

"But this is just a game, right? We can't really get killed, can we?"

"Like I told you, this game isn't quite ready for commercial release."

The end of the corridor opened up into a huge chamber, at least thirty meters across. The floor dropped off and Cassandra could not see the bottom, but several stone platforms about two meters in diameter hovered in mid-air approximately level with the floor of the corridor. "Jump!" Byron said.

"Are you crazy?"

"Jump! We don't have much time!"

Shadows moved on the chamber's high ceilings and Cassandra saw giant spiders, a good hundred and fifty centimeters long, lowering themselves on dark cables.

"Jump now! I'll cover you!" Byron fired into the air, killing the spiders as they came within range.

Cassandra screamed and jumped for the first stone platform. The platform recoiled as she hit it and for a moment she thought it was going to tip her off..

"Keep going!" Byron yelled. She jumped for the next platform. As soon as she was safely across, he followed, one jump behind.

The spiders kept descending and Byron couldn't jump and shoot at the same time. With one jump separating Cassandra from the far end of the chamber, Cassandra heard him shout a warning and spider came down on top of her. She screamed again and fired at the spider. It thrashed and rolled off the platform and plunged into the abyss below.

Cassandra scrambled to safety and Byron quickly followed her. "Okay," she gasped. "How do we win the game?"

"We have to clear all twenty-seven levels."

"And this is?"

"The first."

"Oh, hell." Cassandra could feel herself growing hysterical. "Can't you pause it? Like you did the bunny game?"

"I'll try," Byron said. "Cover me." He frantically worked at his phantom keyboard, while Cassandra watched out for the next wave of attacks.

They weren't long in coming: Skeletons with nunchaku sprang from the darkness. Cassandra closed her eyes and fired until her rifle began clicking instead of belching lead. She opened her eyes. The skeletons were dead, but her rifle was out of ammunition.

"Look for a blue box; that's where you pick up extra ammo!"

She saw one, about ten meters away on top of an ornately carved stone pillar. She slung her rifle over her back and began climbing. As she placed her hand on top, she felt a pain as something bit her fingers. A skull with robotic spider legs had chomped onto her hand. Without thinking she shook the beastie off and it smashed on the floor below. "I've got the ammo!" she shouted.

"Good! Get down quick!" Cassandra scrambled down the column as he commanded. "I've punched in a cheater code," Byron explained. "They let you skip over the lower levels when you replay the game. This will take us to the very end."

He entered the code and the environment shifted again; now they stood before a large imposing gate flanked by burning braziers. "Oh, bugger."

"I wish you'd stop saying that."

"We still have to fight the big boss monster yet."

"Do we have enough ammunition?"

"No, we can't kill him without the thermonuclear device from Level Twenty-Five; he's too tough."

"There are nukes in this game? Don't answer that!" Cassandra's gave another shriek. "Behind you!"

A scaly lizard-man with a centaur-like body and carrying a crossbow advanced towards them and fired. Byron pushed Cassandra aside and the crossbow bolt struck him in the chest. Byron fired wildly at the lizard-taur and bolted through the gate with Cassandra close behind him.

Inside the gate an intense white beam like a spotlight struck Byron. He threw up his hand before his eyes and screamed. Before Cassandra's eyes, his bones began to glow through his skin and his body disintegrated. Within seconds Byron had been reduced to a pair of smoking boots.

Cassandra turned and faced the source of this new threat; a huge purple beast, three times the height of a man, with moist, glistening skin, four arms and tentacles hanging down from its face. It's eyes glowed ominously.

"Cassandra!" a voice cried out. She barely heard it. The rifle slipped from her fingers and she sank to her knees. She was toast.

A blaze of light like a rip appeared in the air next to her and to her amazement she saw Strephon stride through the rip. He held out his hand to her. "Come out! Quickly!"

Cassandra gaped at him, paralyzed with fright. The Boss Monster rose from its skull-decked throne and drew a gargantuan scimitar.

"Oh, bother!" Strephon muttered. He gestured and a blazing sword appeared in his own hands. Steel met steel in a crackle of lightning. Incredibly, Strephon met the beast's attack and responded with a flurry of blows that forced the Boss Monster to step back. The monster's eyes flared and beams of energy poured from them. Strephon blocked the beams with his sword. "Hurry! Go!" he shouted.

Cassandra shook her head and scrambled for the rent in reality. She passed through the tear and darkness engulfed her.

* * * * *

She woke up to the sensation of pressure on her chest. Three sharp thrusts on her breastbone. Then lips closed over hers, puffing three breaths of air into her lungs.

She opened her eyes and saw Strephon kneeling over her, his wheelchair tipped over. "Are you all right?" he asked.

She tried to get up. How did she get on the floor? "What happened to Byron?"

"Don't move. He's alive, but unconscious. Whatever you were experiencing in that game gave him quite a psychic shock.

Detective Masey came into the room. He must have followed Strephon. "Good God," he said, "what's happened?"

"Call an ambulance," Strephon said grimly. "This young man needs medical assistance."

The detective nodded and drew his cell phone from his pocket. "Mister MacKenzie, when we have a chance I think you and I need to have a serious discussion."

NEXT:  Questions in a Cubicle

Dark Redemption chapter 14: Exclusive Scoop

Beneath the gleaming skyscrapers and picturesque facade of the City of Redemption lies another city; a community of dark and ancient magic populated by creatures of the night. Dark Redemption is a shared-world novel based on an online role-playing game by James Crowther.

Reporter Cassandra True, has been invited accompany Strephon MacKenzie to a party being held by Melchior Aesermann, wealthy owner of a computer game company. She hopes that interviewing Aesermann will be the break she needs to get a promotion.

Cassandra could not believe her luck! Not only was she finally getting her interview with Melchior Aesermann, but she was rubbing elbows with some of the most powerful people in the city! Fortunately, she thought to bring a camera with her. She tried to be discreet about her shots -- no need to push her host's generosity. On the other hand, if she came back from this party with no pictures at all her editor really would flay her the way he promised that morning after he spiked her story about the wolf attack. If you're going to write about wolf attacks, I wanna see you sprouting fur! he said; At least gimme a statement from an old gypsy! What about the naked corpse? Where's the sizzle? Well, that was just fine by her. She wanted to make a name for herself with real serious journalism, not trashy spooks and UFO garbage.

"I'm sorry to cut this short, but I really must be seeing to my other guests," Aesermann said.

"Oh, no, no! That's fine! Thank you so very much for your time!" Cassandra gushed as he turned away to chat with another group of people. She sighed. Here she thought he'd be a jerk, but he turned out to be very polite and charming.

As she fumbled with her purse to return her pocket recorder, she noticed one of the guests staring at her; the skinny pizza-faced guy in glasses wearing the tuxedo a size too large. He shuffled his feet and looked over his shoulder apprehensively. The he mustered enough courage to approach her.

"Hello, You're a reporter?"

"Yes, my name is Cassandra True. I'm with The Daily Oracle" she said.

Once again the geek glanced furtively around the room. "I'm Byron Sanders. Senior Game Designer." Cassandra blinked. He didn't look old enough to be senior anything. On the other hand computer games was a young man's field. "I created the original Virtual Hot Tub," he added with undisguised pride. Yes, she could believe that.

"Really?" Cassandra said fishing the recorder back out of her purse. "That's very interesting." This could be useful background material for her Aesermann profile.

"I suppose Mister Aesermann told you about our new virtual reality platform?"

"A little bit. It sounds exciting."

"Oh it is!" Again the apprehensive pause. Had the guy never spoken to a girl before? Cassandra remembered Virtual Hot Tub. Maybe not. "We have a working prototype. Would you be interested in seeing it?"

Now it was Cassandra's turn to look over her shoulder. She suspected that Byron was seriously overstepping his authority. If Aeserman wanted to show this gizmo to the press he would have suggested it himself. Snooping around like this was a sure way to get herself booted out of the party. On the other hand, she already had her interview; what could she lose? "Sure!"

The two slipped out of the party without raising comment. Cassandra considered telling Strephon where she was going, except that he seemed to be trapped in a conversation with the banker's wife. Poor Strephon! Cassandra made a mental note to rescue him once she come back.

Byron led her to a nest of cubicles two floors down from where the party was. He cleared off a desk in the messiest cubicle and placed a console the size of a laptop computer on it.

"Where are the helmets?" Cassandra asked. She'd played virtual reality games in arcades before; they generally required cumbersome equipment.

"This is all we need." Bryon placed a headset on her head. "This is just the prototype mind you. Eventually we'll be able to directly jack into the player's brain."

"What?"

Bryon donned a second headset and booted up the game. Before Cassandra could protest, she saw the cubicle around her dissolve to be replaced by a woodland scene in bright crayon colors. Byron's clothing had also been replaced -- her own too, Cassandra realized -- by a colorful t-shirt and shorts. A group of cute fluffy bunnies with pastel-coloered fur and shimmering white wings waddled out of the forest. The bunnies joined hands in a ring around the two and began to dance and sing.

"We are featherbunnies!
We like to dance and play!
And if you rub our fluffy tails
We'll grant a wish today!"

"Hang on, hang on," Byron said. He conjured a phantom console in front of him and fiddled with it. In the middle of the second verse, the bunnies froze and large luminous letters appeared in mid-air reading "PAUSE".

"Sorry about that," Byron said. "I wanted to make sure we weren't overheard and this was the only way."

"What's going on?" Cassandra asked.

"Listen. I've got to tell someone! The world's got to know before it's too late!"

"The world's got to know what?"

"It's Aesermann! He isn't human!"

"Oooo-kay." This was starting to weird Cassandra out. "Then what is he?"

Byron became frantic. "I don't know! I think he might be an alien! Him and his people!"

"Hang on. Let's start from the beginning." Cassandra felt she could take this a lot more seriously if not for the ring of bunny rabbits with frozen attitudes of cuteness smiling at her. On the other hand, it gave the whole thing a surreal quality. She had to believe it. Either that or someone was crazy. She dearly hoped it wasn't her.

Byron took a couple breaths and calmed down. "It started about a year ago when Aesermann bought out the company and renamed it Aeser Technologies. We were already a successful game company, but he made us bigger. Then he started bringing in his own people. He said they were programmers, but none of them know a line of code; I'd stake my life on it! But every one of them is a whiz! They seem to do it instinctively! Like they just wish the computer to do what it wants!

"They're the ones who developed this new platform. Now I know programming. And I know a fair amount about hardware. But I have no idea how this works. It seems to interface directly with the player's brain to create an illusion world.

"But that's not all," he continued.  "There's something about him and all his people.  It's like they have some kind of mental powers or something.  It sounds crazy, but they do!  They know what you're feeling and they can affect your emotions and she enters your dreams so you don't know what's real anymore!"

"She?"  Cassandra asked.

Byron turned bright red.  "Lilith, Aesermann's assistant.  She... well she..."

"I get the idea."  Cassandra remembered meeting the assistant and mentally filing her as "Maneater."  The poor boy was no match for her.  With a guilty start she wondered how Strephon was faring.

Suddenly, the bunnies and the forest disappeared.  A wall of static surrounded them.  "Uh, what just happened?  Did the power go out?"

"No, if it did we'd just leave the game.  Someone must have removed the game disc.  Bollocks!"  Byron conjured up the console again, but before he could to anything, the world changed again.

Now the two stood in a small stone chamber with a vaulted cieling.  Heavy wooden doors faced them from each wall.  Cassandra realized that she now held a semi-automatic rifle.

"Bugger!"  Byron said.  "Felching heck!"

"What is it?"  Cassandra looked wildly around, fear beginning to gnaw at her.

Byron slung his own rifle over his shoulder and tapped frantically at the phantom keyboard.  "It's a virtual reality version of one of our shooter games, Nowyr 2 Run, Nowyr 2 Hyd.  It's not ready for commercial release."

Somehow that innocuous-sounding euphemism chilled her.  "How do you turn off the game?"

Byron looked up at her, a cold sweat on his face.  "It's not letting me."

The door to Cassandra's right opened and the orcs came pouring out.

Next: Smooth Operetta

Dark Redemption chapter 5: Temptation

Beneath the gleaming skyscrapers and picturesque facade of the City of Redemption lies another city; a community of dark and ancient magic populated by creatures of the night. Dark Redemption is a shared-world novel based on an online role-playing game by James Crowther.

Strephon MacKenzie, a half-fae investigating faerie activity in the city, has come to see Melchior, a fae lord posing as a businessman who runs a computer firm and has his own agenda.

Here was the difficult point; how could he insinuate himself into Melchior's confidence without committing himself? Although half a mortal, Strephon was Fae enough that he could be bound by oaths. But oaths bound both ways, and Melchior would be playing it cagey too.

Strephon smiled ruefully. "I suppose it serves me right for not getting out more. I've spent too long living in the past and now I see the future already on top of me. But---" he paused, as if the thought had just occurred to him. "Why are you telling me all this? As you observed, I hold the Queen's favor. I could be a spy."

Melchior spread his hands with a look of mock innocence. "Have I spoken any treason against Her Majesty? You may tell her whatever you will. In fact, an associate who has Her Majesty's ear, her confidence so to speak, would be extremely useful to me. You are a man of both worlds, Strephon; surely you see the value of this."

Strephon saw very clearly; he saw ambition and a lust for power. His first impulse was to laugh and tell Melchior to go to the devil, but he also saw danger. He had to know more. He bit his lower lip and knit his brow. "You make an impressive salesman," he said at length, "but as you said, I am also a man of the Mortal World. How much of this is pitch and how much have you actually achieved? I would be interesting in seeing this 'Virtual Reality' of yours."

Again Melchior flashed his predatory grin. "I hoped you'd ask that." He pressed a panel on his desk and Lilith re-entered carrying a thin briefcase. She set the case on the desk and produced a console, several cases containing computer discs, and a device that looked like some sort of technological diadem. "Let us demonstrate," Melchior said, inviting Strephon closer.

Strephon advanced, examining the apparatus. "This is our next generation of computer games, utilizing technology that combines the most advanced interactive algorithms and graphics with the magic of the Fae," Melchior continued. "I think you will be most impressed." Strephon examined some of the titles on the discs: "Nameless Circle"; "Bowling for Lightbulbs"; "The Featherbunnies and the Magic Sp00n".

Lilith took a fourth disc and placed it in the console. Then she plugged the diadem likewise into the console and leaned over Strephon with it. Once again he he caught a heady whiff of Fae essence as well as what he was sure was a calculated eyeful of her cleavage. He tensed. "This won't hurt a bit," Lilith purred as she placed the apparatus on Strephon's head. She adjusted the headset, making sure it fit snugly against his temples. Then she reached over to the console and pressed a button.

Instantly, the room seemed to dissolve around him, and Strephon found himself sitting not in his wheelchair but in a large redwood tub filled with steamy warm water. His clothes had vanished too, and he realized that he was wearing nothing but a pair of brightly colored swimming trunks. He gave the water a tentative splash. It felt real, but he knew it was an illusion; a Faerie glamour. It must be. But he had sensed no one casting the spell! Was Melchior telling the truth? Had he devised machines that could record and cast Fae Magic?

As he pondered this, Lilith materialized standing over him, also in a brightly colored and rather immodest bathing suit. Strephon noted absently that her silvery tattoo ran down her arm and her leg as well. "This is one of our best-selling titles," she explained. "It's called Virtual Hot Tub. The object is to design and build spas and pools and to use your own personal avatar to interact either with simulated people or with other players. As you see, in the new version, players will be able to actually experience the environment." She pressed a large red button by the side of the tub with her foot and the water began to churn and fizz. The jets of warm water felt pleasant against Strephon's limbs and the bubbles tickled. Under other circumstances, he could rather enjoy this.

Lilith sat on the edge of the tub and swung her legs into the water. "You can alter your avatar however you like." She demonstrated by tapping her finger against an unseen console. Her swimsuit dissolved, leaving her naked for an instant, then reformed in a different color and style. "Or do you like this one better?" Again her suit shimmered and evaporated to be replaced by one even more revealing.

"You couldn't do anything about mine, could you?" Strephon asked. Even though his body was obscured by the foam on the water's surface, he still felt uncomfortably exposed.

"Certainly." She did the odd tapping against her imaginary keypad again and Strephon felt a moment of nakedness as the trunks disappeared and were replaced by a tight-fitting pair of black Speedos. He squirmed  This was not more comfortable.

He was even less comfortable when Lilith slid into the tub next to him. "The game comes with several existing characters and the option of adding on new ones, but personally I prefer playing..." she sidled up closer, "...one on one."

"Ah, yes. I can see how that would be more, ah, interesting."

"This game is very popular."

"Undoubtedly."

"And extremely relaxing." She ran her hand along the inside of his leg.

"Ah. I hadn't noticed."

"You seem so tense. I think you need a nice rubdown." She proceeded to rub his thigh. Her other arm slipped around Strephon's torso and she began nibbling on his ear. Strephon felt his face turning red, and not from the heat, as her hand moved dangerously up his leg.

Suddenly, he grabbed her hand and pulled it out of the water. He turned to face her, almost nose to nose; kissing distance. For a wild moment, he considered it. Lilith stared into his eyes, enchantment dancing in her own. Almost noiselessly, she whispered, "You want me."

He held her hand tightly, drinking in her sensual presence. Then he released it and said, "We are keeping Lord Melchior waiting. Perhaps another time I can devote my full attention to you." He gave her what he hoped was a cool smile. She returned it with a lustful grin pretending to be coy.

The world dissolved around Strephon again and he found himself back in his chair, back in his clothing, back in Melchior's office. Lilith sat on the desk -- incredible; he thought she must have been right on his lap. She removed his headset. Then she reached up to a spot behind her ear and Strephon saw that she actually had a jack plugged into her head. Interesting. He looked up and saw that Melchior was watching them from behind his desk.

"Are you impressed?" Melchior asked.

Strephon took a deep breath to regain his composure. "Quite," he said. "I must admit you have me intrigued."

"Perhaps you would be interested in attending a party I'm holding Monday night. Some of my associates and many of the more important people in the city will be there. It never hurts to make connections."

Lilith had finished putting away the apparatus now. She crossed her legs and favored him with another seductive smile.

"Yes..." Strephon said. "That would be interesting."

But inwardly he was thinking "What have I gotten myself into now?"

NEXT:  Table for Two