Erebos (47 page)

‘No!' Victor's shout made Nick and Emily both turn around. ‘Shit, people. This is getting creepy.'

‘What is?'

‘Programmer commits suicide,' Victor read out. ‘On the evening of 13 September, L. McVay, the proprietor of a software company, was found hanged in the attic of his house in north London. According to preliminary investigations the police are ruling out outside involvement. All indications are that McVay took his own life. The reason attributed is the judgement in a fraud trial three weeks previously, in which McVay was sentenced to serve a six-year prison term. He had been released on bail, and had announced that he would lodge an appeal.'

‘We know that already,' Nick said.

Victor threw him a dark look. ‘And did you know Larry McVay? Did you ever meet him?'

‘No. Adrian only came to our school after he died.'

‘I thought so. Then get ready for a surprise.' Victor turned the laptop around.

A soft cry escaped Emily, and she reached for Nick's hand. ‘That's . . . isn't that . . .'

‘Yes,' Nick whispered. He looked into McVay's face, recognised the eyes, the narrow face, the small mouth. Larry McVay was the dead man.

CHAPTER 31

Victor closed the laptop. ‘Who programmed the guy into the game?' he asked in a faint voice. ‘Whose macabre idea was that?'

No-one answered.

Nick glanced at the clock; it was just after one. Adrian was probably having lunch. After that he would have two or three more classes.

‘We have to talk to him today,' Emily said, as if she had read Nick's thoughts.

‘Yes. Let's go to school, maybe we'll catch him between classes. No, that's no good. We can't let anyone see us talking to him.'

‘Why not?' Emily put in. ‘No-one's going to be suspicious of me. I'm officially addicted to Erebos.'

That was true. They needed a place to meet where they could be sure no-one would see them together.

‘Here!' Victor called out.

‘Too dangerous. If someone follows us here, your cover is blown, and you're our last connection with the game. You're the only one who can tell us what's going on in Erebos,' Emily pointed out.

‘Hang on. You're still in too!'

‘But only theoretically.' She smiled and looked at her watch. ‘In seventeen minutes, I'm supposed to go to see Mr Watson and put him in a compromising situation. But I'm not even remotely considering it, so – goodbye, Hemera.'

‘Very well,' Victor growled. ‘But it's pretty inconsiderate to rely only on me. What happens if the game asks
me
to seduce this Mr Watson? Then I'll have to do it, I suppose, so we don't lose our access?'

They laughed, and it broke the tension.

‘There's still Kate, but she's not as brilliant as you,' Nick said. ‘You should be playing right now, by the way. Your lot are so close to Blackfriars that it could start any minute. And then we need to know about it, okay?'

Victor stuck out his bottom lip and took himself off to the computer room. ‘So I don't get to find out what Adrian McVay has to say?'

‘Yes, you do. We'll send you a bug-proof carrier pigeon,' Emily said with a completely straight face. ‘Nick, where are we meeting? A cafe is too dangerous – what about a park? Somewhere in Hyde Park where we can see the surroundings?'

‘No. We could still be seen there.' A thought flashed into Nick's head. He wrote an address on a piece of paper for Emily. ‘It's my brother's place. We'll be safe there. One hundred per cent. I'll wait for you both at that address.'

First Becca flung her arms round his neck, then Finn. ‘Hey kid! What a nice surprise! Do you want a coffee? Are you here about the laptop?'

Nick answered both questions in the negative. ‘I need a quiet place for a . . . meeting. I've asked two friends here, they'll be coming in the next hour. Is that okay?'

Finn put his arm around his shoulders, which wasn't all that easy given that Nick was half a head taller.

‘You're so nervous – are you in trouble? Could it be that your meeting is about something not entirely legal?'

‘What? No!' Nick shook his head violently. ‘No. If anything, it's the opposite. It's complicated, but certainly not illegal.'

‘Well, in that case . . .' Finn took him to one of the three studios. The walls were covered with photos of freshly inked tattoos on every imaginable body part. ‘Is this okay? I need the bigger studio today, and a few people are booked in with Becca for piercings.' ‘It's perfect.'

‘Good. Everything okay with Mum and Dad?'

‘Yes, it's all fine.'

Finn raised his eyebrows – each of them now sporting six piercings, Nick noted – probably in amazement at his brother's unusually monosyllabic replies. He left, but came back three minutes later with orange juice and biscuits. ‘We don't want anyone accusing the Dunmores of being bad hosts.'

‘Thank you.'

The minutes dragged. Nick tried to distract himself by studying Finn's gallery. A back covered in climbing roses, biceps with an alpine panorama, and knuckles with dolphins kissing.

Would Emily manage to get Adrian to come along? On the other hand, why wouldn't he want to? He'd been so curious to find out something about the game.

There! The little bells Becca had put over the shop door were ringing now. Customers? Or Emily?

‘Hello, we're supposed to meet Nick Dunmore here.' Emily. Finn led her and Adrian in.

Nick couldn't help noticing that Emily studied his brother with great interest. The somewhat shorter prototype.

‘Hello.' She pressed a kiss on Nick's lips that made him float for a moment. Adrian was behind her, smiling. His blond hair was standing up on one side of his head, giving him a puckish appearance.

‘The designs are fantastic,' he said, and pointed to the walls. ‘Perhaps I'll get one done too one day.'

Finn beamed. ‘Then come and see me, and I'll give you a special price. And now I'll leave you to have your secret meeting. If anyone needs anything, the kitchen is the second door on the left, and the toilet's opposite.' With that he left.

Adrian sat on what Nick called ‘the treatment chair' and looked at him expectantly. ‘Emily says you need to discuss something with me? It's about Erebos?'

Adrian certainly couldn't be accused of beating round the bush.

‘Yes,' Nick answered. ‘First of all: Emily and I aren't part of it any more. So you don't have anything to fear from us.'

‘Okay.'

Nick was finding it hard to know where to begin. He was about to open an old wound in Adrian and then poke around in it. He pushed a nonexistent strand of hair out of his eyes.

‘Erebos is somehow connected to your father.' He saw Adrian's eyes widen, and mentally slapped himself. Very sensitive, idiot. ‘How do you know that?' Adrian whispered. ‘Not from me. I didn't let on to anyone.'

Nick and Emily exchanged a look.

‘I'm surprised that
you
know,' Emily said.

‘Of course I know. I just didn't know for ages what it was.' He smiled as if he wanted to apologise. ‘Of course I thought it was a game. My father programmed virtually nothing else. But I wasn't sure.'

Nick didn't understand a word. He needed to start again from the beginning. ‘You said to me recently that you weren't allowed to accept any of the DVDs, but that you needed to know what was on them. Why?'

‘I wasn't allowed to accept one, because Dad had forbidden me.'

Again Nick and Emily exchanged a quick look.

‘I don't understand,' Emily said. ‘Your father is dead.'

‘Of course.' He looked away, studied the toes of his shoes. ‘Dad wrote to me about it. He wrote down all the details for me.'

‘What? What did he write down for you?'

Without looking up, Adrian shook his head. ‘No, you first. I want to know what sort of game Erebos is.'

Nick sighed. ‘It's a fantastic, exciting game. Once you've started, it's almost impossible to stop.'

Adrian beamed at the floor. ‘All Dad's games were like that.'

‘But are you sure your father programmed it?' Emily put in.

Adrian looked up, and there was mild indignation in his eyes. ‘Oh, definitely. Otherwise he would never have said that it's his legacy.'

‘He said that?'

‘Wrote it. In the letter. That it's his legacy, and that I should pass it on.' Adrian looked from Nick to Emily and back again, and seemed to realise that they couldn't make head or tail of his explanation.

‘Dad died two years ago,' he said. ‘On the second anniversary of his death his solicitor rang me and said he had a letter for me. There was a letter from my father in the envelope, and two DVDs.'

Nick's jaw dropped. ‘You distributed the game at our school?'

‘Distributed? Well, I gave one DVD to someone from my class. I gave the other one to a boy I know from earlier who goes to another school. Dad didn't want both DVDs to end up in the same place. And he also wanted me to think carefully about who I gave them to. Give it to someone whose life seems empty, was what he wrote. And promise me that you won't look at the DVDs. They are a part of my legacy, but it's a part that is not meant for you.'

Something inside Nick throbbed painfully. ‘And you kept to that?'

‘Of course,' Adrian whispered. ‘After all it was the last thing I heard from my father. I hadn't expected to see or read anything more from him . . . I was so happy!' He blinked tears away.

And he used you.

‘Now it's your turn again. What is the game about?' To Nick's relief Emily took over the explaining. ‘At a superficial level it's about a dark world where you need to complete all sorts of tasks and survive threats. But the tasks you need to complete are not limited to the world of the game; they overlap with the real world. For example you have to . . . take photos of someone or write an assignment for someone.'

Adrian looked ecstatic. ‘That's Elysium, Dad's favourite project. He wanted the players to give each other presents or give each other a hand in other ways – in real life. So they're not just sitting in front of the computer, so friendships can develop. He talked to me about it often, before . . .' Adrian's gaze slid away. ‘Well, before someone tried to steal it from him. Have you noticed that it's different for every player? For example the music depends on what sort of mp3 files you've got on your hard drive, or what songs you listen to on YouTube. Once the game's got to know you, it knows what sort of quests you enjoy the most, and sends you on them. Dad integrated psychological software that customises the game specifically for each player.' You could see that Adrian was revelling in his memories.

Nick was so furious with Larry McVay that he felt like smashing the furniture to pieces.

‘Could it be . . . so, do you think it's possible that your dad reprogrammed the game? That he added some neat new details? I mean, it's not called Elysium any more. It's called Erebos.'

‘What? Yes, possibly.' The glow faded from Adrian's face. ‘The thing is, someone tried to steal Elysium from him. Then there was a court case that dragged on forever . . . Dad was . . . well, different the last two years. He didn't talk to me much any more, so I don't know if he changed something. He worked like crazy, at any rate. In fact that's all he did; he barricaded himself in his basement, hardly ate, didn't even take the time to wash.' He looked at Emily and Nick apologetically. ‘Mum says he wasn't himself any more, even at the beginning of the trial. He couldn't cope with the fact that they accused him of theft and fraud. And what's more, we were the ones being burgled. Four times. At the office, at our home – even the cars were broken into.'

Adrian's story was starting to add up to Nick, and the answer wasn't pretty. It went like this: Soft Suspense had got wind of McVay's new development and tried to get hold of the program. That hadn't worked, or at least not to their satisfaction, so they'd taken McVay to court. And won. Was that possible?

‘Listen,' he said. ‘I'm going to explain what the objective is in Erebos, is that okay?' Even though he felt Emily's gaze resting on him, he couldn't stop now. ‘A monster must be killed, and the best, strongest and most ruthless warriors are sought for the task. They must prevail over anyone who wants to stop Erebos, and they must make preparations for the last battle. This last battle is going to take place very soon – and do you know the name of the monster who is to be destroyed in the battle?'

He saw from Adrian's eyes that he suspected, at least.

‘Exactly,' Nick said. ‘Its name is Ortolan.'

Adrian exhaled audibly. Gave one short laugh. Became serious again. ‘Really?'

‘I swear.'

Adrian's face showed a number of emotions at once – satisfaction, grief and hatred.

‘You mean,' he said in a raw voice, ‘that someone is going to kill Ortolan?'

‘Possibly. I believe something of the sort will happen.'

‘I considered doing that myself a couple of times. After Dad changed so much, and . . . definitely later.' He smiled at the ground again. ‘After I distributed the DVDs and so many people suddenly changed – I got worried that Dad had made a mistake. A game that destroys the players, you know? At the end he was . . . oh, whatever. He'd completely changed. Just like all of you. That's why I was so scared.' He looked up now. ‘But he didn't want to hurt you at all. Only Ortolan.'

When Emily spoke, it was very quietly and carefully. ‘That's not how it's working out, Adrian. The game has made the players do dreadful things. Someone sabotaged the brakes on Jamie's bike.'

Adrian's head jerked up. ‘What?'

‘Yes. It wasn't an accident. A whole lot of bad things have happened just so your father's revenge plan won't be jeopardised. Yesterday someone tried to push Nick in front of a train.'