The Lag (The Game Master: Book #1) (29 page)

"What's up?"

Beast's eyes bulged, blood-shot. His nostrils flared. He rolled onto his back and sat up, turning his lifeless face with glazed-over eyes to him.

Attila shrank back. "What's wrong with you?"

Without getting back to his feet, Beast raised the gun and fired. Attila ducked to one side. The purple lightning whooshed through the air just next to his shoulder, grazing it. It felt like being electrocuted. Attila staggered and grabbed at the coffin of Gromir the Dwarf, groaning with pain. The left side of his body was rapidly going numb.

Beast scrambled to his feet and walked toward him, training the gun on him.

Crouching behind the coffin, Attila backed off. He took a peek — and immediately another bolt of lightning just missed his head. Attila recoiled and, losing balance, collapsed onto his back. He tried to crawl away as Beast squeezed the trigger again. With a humming sound, the mythogun's ribbed sphere seethed, pouring purple light through the slits, then went out. Was it broken or simply discharged?

Beast pressed the trigger again. And again. Then he lowered the gun and began circling the Portal and the coffins, approaching.

"Beast, what's your name, Misha! Wake up, man! It's me!"

Alpha had brought him under his control. Now his friend was only a puppet. A deadly puppet. Panting, Attila kept crawling around the coffins. The creature that once used to be Beast followed him.
It
wasn't in a hurry, but Attila could barely move. His left arm and leg were getting number with every moment.

The mythogun's ribbed sphere sprang back to life, resuming its purple glow. Beast fired. The lightning hit a coffin leg. It snapped. The coffin listed.

Attila's hand chanced upon something on the floor. He picked it up. This was the silvery jar that Beast had dropped when overcome by Alpha's magic. Without hesitation, Attila hurled it awkwardly with his weak hand.

The jar dropped very close to him. Attila rolled over to the wall, covering his ears and pressing his face to the floor. A powerful blast shattered the room. He heard a screeching noise; then everything went quiet.

The coffin nearest to the explosion was torn off its mountings. It swung round, raising a cloud of smoke that kept changing colors from green to yellow to red. A draft of air reached for the vent.

Attila rolled over. Beast squirmed on the floor, the whole left side of his body shredded by the jar's sharp fragments. The dislodged coffin had pinned his legs to the floor.

Beast was struggling with the mechanical persistence of an automaton. Noticing Attila, he began slapping his hand on the floor around him, feeling for the mythogun. Finally he saw it and reached for it as Attila crawled away on all fours, taking cover behind the Portal.

His right side was in agony. He couldn't feel the left side of his body at all. Rattling noises came from the opposite corner of the room as Beast tried to wrestle himself free. Attila knew he had to use this opportunity but he was so weak he couldn't even get back to his feet. His vision blurred.

He slapped around blindly on his clothes until he found the pocket. He pulled out Wayfarer's black Book. Should he just throw it at the Portal or what?

Beast was panting and rattling, pounding his fist on the floor. Attila crawled to a safer distance and sat up, leaning his back against the wall. He clutched the Book as hard as he could. Its black surface was flashing with charges of crimson lightning which would grow brighter, then subside like some hellish aurorae.

The four crystals in its corners were black too — small and prickly. Just throwing it at the Portal was probably pointless. He had to hit the firewall. Problem was, his body refused to obey him.

Attila focused and pressed the crystals set in black leather. The crimson flashes on the screen went out, replaced by the TV-like flickering of blue light. A Magneto! Attila gulped and squeezed his eyes shut; when he reopened them, the screen glowed with the fiery tongue of a Witch Fire spitting orange flames. Then it was replaced with a deep green of a glowing Jelly.

Wayfarer's Book was an aberration generator. The ultimate cheat device that created them non-stop! What an incredibly powerful thing!

A weak rattling sound made him sit up and pay attention. Barely audible at first — the rattling of a coffee spoon against the cup in a moving railcar — the sound kept growing, drowning out Beast's panting.

The coffins' crystal lids were rattling all at once. Then they screeched open.

Heads appeared above the opened coffins. All seven Conclave Wizards sat up and rose. They moved in synch, their eyes glazed over. All together they turned and stepped onto the floor. Slowly they stomped toward Attila.

He pressed his back to the wall, knowing he was too weak to hurl the Book at the beam of light so that it hit the firewall cylinder.

But he was still strong enough to reach into his own pocket. His hand closed around his own Book. Whose settings he'd already changed to
Control
.

His bag stirred. The God's Eye took off, clicking its steel arms open.

Something glistened in the wizards' eyes — a glimpse of a controlling mind betraying its presence. They walked faster. The High Elfa and great enchantress Nea swept the floor with her flowing garments as she approached him.

The steely star hovered in place in front of Attila. By then, his entire body was numb but he could still move his right hand a little. Wayfarer's black Book seemed to weigh a ton. He strained to lift it and lay it onto the Eye.

But he failed to direct its flight.

Attila's eyes closed. He didn't see the wizards heading for him. He didn't see the room's walls and its high distant ceiling. He didn't see Beast nor the Eye hovering helplessly in mid-air with the Book on its back.

He didn't see anything. The world turned black.

Attila's heart fluttered one last time and stopped.

Y
anna touched the artery on Attila's neck and gasped. No pulse. His heart wasn't beating. She struggled to unzip the suit's thick zipper. What to do?

She had to use the skills she'd received in medical school. But it was one thing practicing on dummies and quite another to resuscitate an actual dead person!

Her thoughts rushed. She dragged Attila's body onto the floor. Seeing no other option, she opened his visor and pulled the helmet off his head. Now: mouth to mouth resuscitation, how did you do it? You tilted the patient's head back and opened his mouth...

She took a deep breath, gripped Attila's nose and blew air into his lungs. His chest rose. It worked. Another breath, then she moved on to heart massage. You laid one hand on the patient's lower chest, pressed the other one on top and pushed ten times. Then you breathed air into his lungs again. Two breaths followed by ten pushes.

Attila, breathe! Come on, you stupid heart, beat already!

She bit her lip and pressed her ear to his chest. Nothing. She probably had to push harder.

Yanna worked for another minute without success. She sat on the cold floor next to him and bit her hand till it hurt. What could she do? If only she had a defibrillator! An ambulance — she could forget that. It would never make it in time in this traffic.

She cast a desperate look around and saw the multiplug. She grabbed the Swiss army knife from the drawer and pulled the desk lamp lead from the plug. She cut the lead off the lamp and stripped it until two bare wires hung loosely at the end. She reached for a water bottle on the desk and poured some over the wires. Then she plugged the lead back in.

She poked Attila's chest with the live wires.

His body arced, crackling and shaking, and went limp again as Yanna jerked the wires away. Tears ran down her cheeks. Discouraged, she pressed her hand to his chest.

His heart beat under her palm, fast and loud.

He was alive! But now he was going to die again or go into a coma as she'd just snatched his mind out of Gryad! Was it possible to resume a broken contact with a game? Then again, why broken? She hadn't disconnected the suit, had she? She'd only removed the helmet. But the suit was still hooked up to the computer, receiving data.

Yanna lifted Attila's head and slapped the helmet on, connecting it to the suit. She zipped the suit close and ran toward the monitor.

The deadly black of the computer screen began to flicker with pale colored circles — the kind one sees before losing consciousness. Losing — or maybe also regaining it?

Attila still lay motionless on the apartment floor but now she knew he was alive. A blurred picture of something that was probably the room's ceiling came into focus. A shining beam of sapphire light reached out for it, distorted by the unusual prospective. Then it listed and floated out of view.

This meant that back in Gryad's world, a player known as Attila had opened his eyes and sat up.

Yanna's knees gave under her. With a relieved sigh, she collapsed onto a chair. She reached for the laptop and opened File Explorer to locate the executable file titled Poison.

Attila was speeding through the air, heading toward a bright light at the end of a dark tunnel. The light was calling him, inviting and soothing, letting him know that he'd never be hurt again. Before him lay the eternity of joy and happiness.

The light was getting closer, large and round. Attila could already feel its gentle warmth-

Then someone pulled at an invisible thread, snatching him back into the round room with the coffins.

His right hand lay on his Book's control crystal in his pocket. His head still foggy, he pressed it, turning, sending the steel star that hovered in front of him into flight, taking the little black book on its back toward the beam of light.

The Conclave wizards froze. Nea reached up, trying to catch the Eye. Awkwardly Gromir the Dwarf tried to jump up, missed it and tumbled back to the floor. The Eye dove down and smashed into the top part of the silver cylinder that encircled the beam's base.

Aberrations flashed in the air, going off one after another. Attila stared at the firewall which began to shake, its shell of lightning sparking and dying.

The room filled with the strong odor of ozone. The wizards slid to the floor, convulsing. Only the fair-haired Assur kept walking toward Attila, his arms outstretched in front of him, like a zombie in a movie.

A toxic-green smoke poured down the shaft of sapphire light. Was it Wayfarer's virus? Had Yanna managed to run it?

Purple lightning flashed through the air. Assur staggered, flailing his arms. His body disintegrated into an avalanche of colored pixels that scattered all over the floor.

Beast sat behind the coffin, his legs still pinned to the floor. He was holding the mythogun, staring at Attila and the blinking cylinder of the firewall.

"Whassup, man?" he wheezed. "What happened?"

Attila could barely shake his head.

"Take that!" Beast bellowed, firing a bolt of lightning at one of the coffins. He hurled the gun aside and began casting fireballs, clapping his hands and waving them in a special way.

He fired two into each coffin and gasped with exhaustion. "How about helping me, maybe? My leg is falling off! It hurts like hell!"

The firewall cylinder exploded, sending a wheel of sparks circling around the room, fading and disappearing. The acid-green smoke filled almost the entire beam of light, pouring down and seeping into the floor, spreading and filling the coffins.

The walls around them shook. Sunlight burst in. The tower listed; the floor bucked underfoot. Two deep vertical cracks zigzagged through the thick granite walls. A large chunk of the wall collapsed in a deafening avalanche of black rocks.

Slowly Attila stood up, peering through the gap. The room was rather high: he could see other Citadel buildings and the wall encircling them. Behind it, swords clashed and battle spells boomed, illuminating the sky with fiery explosions. The crimson of the sky was gone, replaced by a large dome of celestial blue. A few clouds floated slowly across it like wads of cotton wool.

The wizards' bodies were gone. They weren't in the coffins anymore. Stepping awkwardly on his still unfeeling legs, Attila staggered toward Beast and grabbed at the coffin that pinned him down.

"Pull it! Harder!" Beast winced with pain, releasing his legs. Grimacing, he climbed to his feet. "Listen, I... What happened to me?"

"Alpha seized control over your body."

"No! He really did? I don't remember anything. All I know is that I came to already squashed by this coffin. My legs hurt like hell. That's all. But we've done him, eh? We've finished off Alpha, right?"

Attila nodded. "I think so."

"Does it mean we can quit the game now?"

"I hope so. And that's exactly what I'm going to try," Attila stepped back, holding onto the coffin, then slumped down on top of it. "I don't want to stay here any longer than necessary."

"No, but listen... how about those outside the gate? They're still fighting, aren't they?"

"They have mythoguns and your exosuit. Besides, Alpha's gone. And I... I don't think I can fight anyone now. You can't, either. Just tell me... how can I find you back in real life?"

"I'm Misha, Misha Bolshakov," Beast said. "Didn't I tell you? My Skype ID is mike_beast."

"I'm outta here, then," Attila cast one last glance at the sunlit world surrounding the Citadel. He lowered his eyelids and opened the logout window.