MMORPG: How a Computer Game Becomes Deadly Serious (38 page)

They were halfway down the stairs to the second floor when they heard a distinctive sound from below. The front door had just been opened.

They even felt the faint tug of draft caused by a small window set right in the turn of the stairway at eye level. It was slightly ajar. She squeezed his arm hard. They looked at each other in the darkness. Robert felt the last vestiges of drowsiness disappear. A boost of adrenaline had just kicked his senses to full alert.

“What now?” he mouthed.

She pointed downward. Tip toeing, they finished the last few steps. The last wooden step creaked when Robert removed his weight from it. They both froze at the sound that seemed like a loud crack in the dark silence. The second floor was even darker than the one above.

Suddenly, Robert remembered the emergency exit down the hall on the floor he lived on. There must be another one at this level, most likely at the same location right at the far end of the corridor. He took Rebecca by the sleeve of her coat and drew her with him down the hallway. She halted after some fifteen feet, where another stairway gave access to the lower part of the house. She bent slightly and looked down over the railing. He jerked her back with force as a bright narrow beam of light suddenly moved over the wall below. Another followed. At least two people with flashlights were ascending from ground level to the first floor.

At this, panic threatened to squeeze all the air out of his lungs. For a precious second, he was immobilized by fear. Then his survival instincts took over and he led Rebecca swiftly to the end of the hallway, where it widened a little. The small alcove was illuminated dimly by the green light of an emergency sign. It held a wide door with a cross handle that had to be pushed down.

He gripped it with both hands and applied just enough pressure to unlock it, careful to make as little noise as possible. Behind them, stairs creaked. Right after, they saw circles of concentrated light moving on the wall only a few yards away. Whoever was out there was on the same floor now. Immediately, they both pressed their bodies flat against the wall, trying to keep out of sight. Robert strained his left arm to keep the heavy door from swinging shut. That sound would give them away for sure. He had to stretch parallel to the wall and was barely able to apply enough pressure with his fingers. He silently said a prayer of thanks to the architect who created this small sanctuary at the far end of the hallway.

They waited for what seemed like an eternity for the lights to cross to the other end of the corridor, to the stairs that led up to Robert’s floor. Just when he thought he couldn’t keep up the pressure on the door any longer, darkness returned. The intruders had reached the next floor. How long would it take for them to open the locked door and discover they were gone?

Mercifully, the heavy emergency door didn’t make a single sound when it swung open. They stepped out onto a small iron balcony.

Khalid watched as the man he always referred to in his mind as Pharad felt the mattress with a flat hand. His leader smiled.

“Warm,” the man stated with satisfaction. “They must be close.”

Khalid let the beam of his flashlight traverse the small space. A stack of papers on the desk lit up under the harsh light. He sheathed his knife and used his free hand to rummage through the papers on the desk. One of the first things he came across was the print of the overview screen of the Hammer of Grimstone that Robert and Rebecca had been using in their efforts to track them down. Without a word, he handed it to Pharad. The other examined it for a second and smiled with grim satisfaction. He nodded. Khalid scooped up all the papers on the desk and put them in the flat rucksack he was wearing.

They stepped out of the room again and stood silently in the corridor. Khalid concentrated briefly. As he had been trained to do, he had surveyed the building thoroughly. He rarely stayed in any place without scouting it for possible escape routes first. He pointed in the direction of the other end of the corridor. Pharad’s gaze followed the motion and fixed on the green exit sign. They started moving again. Following his leader’s example, he put his knife away and replaced it with a gun. It was equipped with a slightly unwieldy silencer. Pharad had already used his knife once tonight. Khalid hoped they would kill again, but this time he wanted the blood of the person who had betrayed him. He had been led by the nose like an amateur. His light beam momentarily danced on dull steel as anger flared up in his chest.

Before he opened the door, Pharad signaled with his left hand. They both extinguished their torches before stepping out into the night.

The fire escape was at the back of the house. Narrow metal stairs, with small landings at each of the floors, had been bolted to the dark wall. Robert’s guess that it must end in the small backyard, partly visible from the window of his room, proved to be correct. They had descended silently and were now standing next to each other on the ground. They were surrounded by an incredible mess of derelict plastic garden furniture, rotting wooden planks, and a small mountain of stinking garbage bags. Two demolished bicycles were lying entangled on the ground, embracing each other in mechanical death. Against one wall stood a sofa. Robert shuddered at the thought of how much water it must have soaked up by now and what must be living inside it.

Some sparse light fell out of the grimy window of the kitchen door, the only access to the backyard. He tried the door. It was locked. He turned around and looked at the concrete wall again. It was too high to climb. Even the sodden sofa wouldn’t allow them to climb over. They were trapped.

He suppressed the urge to hold Rebecca back when she took a few steps backward into the yard. Couldn’t she see it was futile? There was no way out of this place. He sensed with clarity that despair was about to overtake him. He stood paralyzed for a few seconds. His heart was hammering irregularly in his chest. He even had trouble breathing. Was he going to die here? Would it be quick?

“Come on!” she whispered.

He tried to shake his fatalistic thoughts off, angry with himself. They should try anything to escape, not wait to be slaughtered.

Rebecca was climbing the fire escape again. Instead of going up to the first level, she halted somewhere in the middle. He saw her peering out into the darkness, and suddenly he understood. He tried to measure the distances from the ground. Could it be possible? Swiftly, he followed. It looked doable, but he knew how deceptive the dark could be.

They had just reached the tight landing at the first level, when they heard a loud metallic sound above them. Creaking, the fire escape door all the way to the top of the house was opened. Robert’s mind processed the sound and came up with the conclusion that they had been lucky that the door on the second floor had opened so silently. Rebecca’s fingers on his cheek brought him to his full senses again. She used her hand to turn his face toward her.

“Jump. We can do it!” she said softly and kissed him lightly on the lips. She edged her back against the railing to maximize her take off. She tensed, took a great step, and jumped.

It was probably a little over eight feet from where they were standing to the wall. Their position was only a little higher than the top, and for a heartbeat Robert feared she wasn’t going to make it. But her timing was perfect. Her hands gripped the top of the wall, and she used her momentum to create an explosive upward motion. Her sneakers found just enough purchase on the concrete surface to help her to the top easily. She was astride the wall for a second, then she was over. He heard her feet hit the ground on the other side.

Unfortunately, Rebecca’s escape had been far from silent. Above him, Robert heard dim voices cursing, followed by the sound of footsteps racing down the stairs. He took a deep breath and jumped as well.

He knew immediately that his jump wasn’t perfect.

It wasn’t. His balance was off, with his body leaning backward instead of forward. He hit the wall with a dull thud, and his left knee exploded in excruciating pain. One of his flailing hands still managed to grab the top of the wall, if only barely. His fingers dug into the cement with all the power of true desperation. He willed himself to block out the pain in his knee and to concentrate on the wall. With an extreme effort he squeezed his fingers, pulling himself upward on only one arm. He needed only a few inches!

He swung his other arm, knowing he would have only one chance. If he failed, he was dead.

Time seemed to stand still as his other hand found a firm hold on the wall. He felt something sharp, but he ignored the pain just like he was blanketing out the pain in his knee. Right before he heaved with two arms, he told himself that he had done this often before. He was no natural athlete, but his wiry body was young and strong.

He mustered all his strength and pulled. Upward he went, straining his muscles to the limit of their endurance, until his arms were finally under him, and he could lock his elbows. He sighed in relief. He resisted the temptation to rest in this position and pulled himself half onto the wall. He was resting on his stomach now, his legs still dangling on the wrong side. Another heave and a kick in the air, and he was lying alongside the wall.

Suddenly, lights were on him. He looked up against the glare and saw two dark silhouettes on the stairway, standing where he had been only moments ago. One was aiming a gun at him. At the same time, the violent sound of splintering wood came from the far side of the courtyard. A bright light came with it. Involuntarily, he looked over his shoulder in that direction. Someone else had entered the courtyard, and he realized there was a direct access to the streets after all. There had to be a gate or something in that far corner. A dazzling flash blinded him and, at the same time, the wall right under his hand exploded in countless tiny shards and fragments of concrete. Some of it hit his face, numbing the left side of it.

With an unreal sense of detachment, he realized someone had taken a
shot
at him, and missed somehow. The shot had come from the newest intruder, not from the men on the stairs. By unexpectedly entering the scene, and by missing his shot, his attacker had bought him a few extra seconds. Robert wasn’t going to waste them.

He did the only thing he could think of, he rolled over.

He was over the wall only milliseconds before several more bullets hit the crumbling concrete where he’d been lying. One shot hit a tree nearby. Another ricocheted back into the dead bicycles with a terrible din. While he floated between heaven and earth, he actually heard one of the wheels spinning through the air. Then he hit the ground, chest first. All air exploded out of him.

He might have lost consciousness had it not been for two things. The first was his injured knee. Pain he had never even imagined before lanced up into his mind. He experienced it as visual, the color white, blooming behind his eyes like fireworks.

The second was Rebecca. She was waiting for him on the other side of the wall. When she saw him tumble down, she managed to catch one of his shoulders and, by throwing her own weight into his fall, she prevented his head from impacting with the ground too hard. It must have hurt her as well, but she scrambled to her feet swiftly and tried to pull him up.

The realization he wasn’t dead granted Robert new strength. He pushed himself painfully to his feet. When he tried to put weight on his knee, he nearly went down again. He doubted if he’d ever be able to stand on it again. Not that it mattered, if they didn’t manage to get out of here fast.

He looked around. They were in a very tight alleyway. It was four feet across at most. When Rebecca wanted to start to the left, he limped after her and held her back with effort.

“There’s another one of them there,” he whispered. “At a gate to the backyard.”

She nodded her understanding. “Can you walk at all?”

“I must!” He grabbed her shoulder. “Can you support me a little?”

In answer, she started to walk in the other direction, setting a pace he could just keep up with. They came upon a sharp turn and followed it for another fifteen yards or so. Suddenly, they were on the square. Just as their feet touched the neat cobblestones, they heard the sound of running feet behind them.

It was the third man who was the first in pursuit. Even though the attack had been hastily planned and executed, they had studied a map of the area beforehand. The Pieterskerkhof was a strange place. Officially a square, it was actually a cobblestone road that wound around a massive medieval church. Not only were there several little streets and alleys leading off the square, there were also many dark spots and corners that were perfect hiding places.

Their pursuer was a stranger to Leiden. He might have studied the layout of the square beforehand, when he didn’t see them immediately, he assumed they were behind the church. Worse, with so many possible exits, he didn’t know where their most likely escape route lay. He turned left to circle the ancient church clockwise, while Rebecca and Robert were limping in the other direction, down the narrow street that led to Barrera on the corner of the silent Rapenburg. They reached the grand canal shortly.

Historic streetlights threw their yellow light across the motionless water. While they had been walking, Robert had come up with an idea. It was so outrageous that he thought it might actually work. He shared his thought with Rebecca, who at first dismissed it. When he shrugged and admitted it was probably craziness, she changed her mind.

“Let’s do it,” she said softly. “It’s so insane that they’ll never expect it, and we’re dead if they catch us anyway.”

He led her to the side of the nearest bridge and pointed it out to her. It was an incline in the steep canal wall, more like stairs, that enabled people to climb out of their boats onto the street above. She nodded.

Silently, they descended. Robert held his breath as he put one foot into the icy water. He hesitated. This was madness, it was nearly winter, and the temperature of the water couldn’t be more than several degrees above zero. He had called this plan crazy, but suicidal was more on the mark.