Ultimatum: The Proving Grounds (29 page)

“Don’t think so. Think I’ll hold onto it for when I need it.”

“You’re racking up a lot of ‘oh shit’ buttons. I guess that’s a smart thing to do. On the other hand, you do have to
make it
to fifty before any of that matters.”

Jesse was the first of the group to appear. “Oh ho. Since when is Timbo a pessimist?”

“Probably started about the time I died. That kind of shit happens, you know.”

Toby’s mood sank a bit. One of Soulbreaker’s racked up kills was Tim, after all.

Claire elbowed him in the side gently. She was smiling. “Hi. What are we doing for dinner?”

Tim leaned back in his chair. “Last I heard was Itallian. Probably those pans full of stuff again.”

“Ooo.” Jesse nodded. “Their spaghetti sucks, but their alfredo is good.”

“Good to hear.” Paul nodded as he stepped up, dragging a comb through his hair. “Since it’s already on the way. Might want to go snag your table.”

Jesse nodded and started for the door. Claire and Toby fell in with her.

“Oh, Toby, you got a minute?”

He paused and glanced back. “Sure, I guess.” He shrugged at Claire who frowned a bit. She and Jesse continued out of the room.

“What’s up?”

Paul sat in one of the chairs. “Wanted to get your opinion of this business with Miller.”

“Uh… so far he isn’t hindering us. In fact, he seems to be helping.”

“Which plays into the theory that he needs to buy time.”

“He can’t just legitimately want us to make it?”

Paul scoffed. “He set us up against impossible odds. I doubt he intends to lose. But the more this goes on the more I think he has some other motive than winning.”

Tim rubbed at his chin. “One that takes time, and he’s using us. Keeping the people that know this infrastructure best running around in circles.”

Paul nodded. “Most likely. I’m going to head up stairs in a few minutes to see if the feds have gotten anything useful from him being around. Then we’ll meet back up and try to get as far as we can tonight. It’s probably no coincidence he is following us so closely now. We are advancing quickly, probably faster than he anticipated and he wants to keep a close eye on us.”

“You think he’ll risk breaking his cover to take a swing at us?”

“Depends on the end goals. The ones we don’t know about.”

Toby shook his head. “Makes it a tad hard to predict.”

“Which is why we continue on as we have been, working toward the stated goal. At least where he can see us.” Paul nodded and hopped up from his chair. “Alright, dismissed.”

Tim nodded and stood as well. “Come on,” he patted Toby on the shoulder, “you don’t want to be reduced to eating the spaghetti.”

The break room was less packed than it had been in the last few days. There were empty chairs in places and plenty of room to walk about.

The mood in the room hadn’t seemed to suffer much, though.

And everyone was right about the spaghetti. They put something weird in it that Toby couldn’t put his finger on. Well he could literally put his fingers on it, but he couldn’t say what it was.

All of the plates, at least at the group one table, held alfredo.

People talked and laughed. Toby kept his head down.

He didn’t know what to make of what Miller was doing. It had people upset, and he was no exception. He was the one Miller would target if he decided enough was enough. He needed to stay on his toes.

He glanced up to see Claire frowning at him. He gave her a smile in return.

She seemed unconvinced.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, now.” Jesse leaned back against the booth’s hard plastic bench. “But I’m looking forward to all of this being done. I just did a long crunch with you people. I want to while away my idle hours at home with my comfy sofa and my stupid TV shows. Maybe a book. Probably some wine.”

Claire nodded. “Yeah…”

Toby didn’t have much of an opinion… this sort of thing
was
what he did with his idle hours.

Jerry shrugged. “Some definite downsides to being on salary, yeah.”

Tim scoffed. “I work in marketing. I have the least business being here.”

Toby chuckled. “Well, I’m happy to be here at least. It’s been great to hang out with all of you and see things from your end. Definitely different than the end user experience.”

Jesse stuck out her tongue at him. “Quit being nice. We’re trying to wallow in self pity here, yeesh.”

Carol smiled. “I like your take on it, Toby.” She nodded. And then elbowed her husband in the side. “And so does Tim.”

Tim coughed. “Oww. Yeah. I mean, of course.”

Jesse narrowed her eyes at him. “Traitor.”

He shrugged. “Wife’s not happy, nobody’s happy.”

Carol nodded. “Words to live by.”

Claire found Toby’s hand under the table. He smiled.

Jerry was sitting on the other side and couldn’t have seen the gesture, just the result. “I don’t think our situation really equates to being happy.”

Toby shrugged. “I think we can win. We’re doing great. Stronger all the time. I mean, yeah,” he nodded to Tim, “we lost a few friends and that sucks, but it’s just testing our resolve which has held up. We can do this thing.”

Jerry blinked at Toby a few times before shaking his head and chuckling. “Shit, man. You work in public speaking? Go team and all that.”

“No word of it a lie, man. We’re on the downward slope.”

Claire frowned a bit. “You haven’t seen the raid we’re heading towards.”

He waved dismissively. “We’ll tackle it. We got this.”

Carol nodded. “Confidence is good… but maybe we should try to get you familiar with the mechanics before we head in, hmm?”

“I guess. Though I assume I’ll just be swinging a sword most of the time.”

“Probably, yeah.”

Tim shrugged. “Much more important to know when not to swing the sword. When to get out of the way. Hope you know how to dance because there are times you absolutely need to.”

Jesse practically groaned. “And for the love of all that is good and holy don’t stand in the goddamn fire. Please.”

Toby shrugged. “I’ve raided before, no worries.”

Claire smiled a bit. “We’ll go over it some anyway. Just to be safe.”

24

The ruins were getting a little too familiar.

They were just outside, waiting for any news from the scouts.

Miller was out with them. Or not. He could literally have been anywhere… but in taking over the guise of Mitchel he had apparently actually taken over the character somehow. The members of his guild were unaware of the change and searching for Mitchel’s character returned results one would expect.

Taragon Belano Level: 42 Location: Agarin Mills

Wherever Agarin Mills was, it wasn’t here. So he was indeed scouting.

Strange.

Paul waved to the members of his group. They gathered in around a fire pit.

“The feds are working to track him based on the consistent ping signal. It’s bouncing around through various proxies, but they’re working to get through them one at a time. They say to not do anything to upset him for now. So we won’t. Just… be polite and try not to get in his way or speak to him unless spoken to or the situation warrants it. Okay?”

They all nodded.

“What’s the plan?” Amos held his hands over the fake fire. He took his gaming seriously.

“Press on. At least until we have reason to do something else. We aren’t at the cap yet, so we keep at it.”

“And we keep our distance, without looking like we’re keeping our distance.”

Jesse smirked. “Fly casual.”

“…I walked right into that one.”

“Totally did.”

“Ahem.” Paul glared at both of them. “We have work to do. Quip all you like, but do it while you’re killing things if at all possible.”

The night provided no more events for them, but they followed leads from small camp to small camp clearing out all manner of mobs. The groups spread out some, but none was ever more than a few minutes from the rest. Ever hopeful of a big event, but it was not meant to be.

It wasn’t exactly a bust, though. They crossed level forty and three levels besides before they all met up back at the church town that had once been the ruins of Morblina. It was feeling homey at this point. Clean, bright, lots of bustling business type NPCs and players doing stuff at all hours.

It was a bit early yet, only about 10:00 p.m. Toby was about to call it when a lone rider thundered into the town. He glanced around and started calling out names.

Important ones.

Paul wandered out into the street. The man was wearing a guild tag, so he couldn’t hurt them if he wanted to.

The rider bowed his head as he dismounted. “Sir. When we were out scouting we found something earlier that might be of use. It’s been a hard trip. We just managed to transport it back”

Paul nodded. “Alright, let’s see it.”

Toby followed Amos back outside while the others started logging out.

A group of beat up scouts were waiting with a horse drawn wagon. They saluted when they saw Paul… or maybe Toby. The they were standing pretty close together. He assumed it was for Paul.

“Sir. We weren’t sure what to do with all this. We ran across a group of blue name players being escorted by red names. Members of the Seven Eyes. The blues fled when we swept down on them, but we managed to overtake the red names with minimal losses. Their things are in the wagon now, but… that’s not the real find.” The man waved and started toward the back of the wagon. The three of them followed.

The contents had been covered with a tarp which the scouts untied and removed. Half a dozen sets of black armor were at the rear, but the rest of the wagon was loaded down with barrels, baskets, boxes and two chests. All of the containers were filled with little red glass vials.

Toby tilted his head. “What, a stash of health pots? So what?”

Paul shook his head. “No…” He picked one of the vials up. “This is innocent blood.”

Toby blinked at the wagon. “What,
all
of it?”

He nodded.

“Holy shit. That’s sick.”

“Yes… this is a treasure trove to hostile players.”

Amos whistled. “They’ve been busy.”

Paul frowned at the wagon. “Hopefully everyone involved here isn’t too cross with us for being locked out. I never imagined there would be so much fighting between players this early.”

Toby shook his head. “How many of these drop from each person?”

“If they’re very lucky? Two.”

“God damn.” He stared at the wagon. “So… what the hell are we going to do with this? Bury it? Burn it? Throw it in the ocean?”

Paul picked up a black helmet from the back of the wagon. “Maybe… maybe not.”

Toby stared at him for a few moments. “You can’t mean you’re planning to use it. This is… what’s left of murdered people. People who got ganked. Jumped by superior numbers if they knew they were being attacked at all before the end. One of these could be from Tim.” He shook his head. “I was about three seconds from being one of these vials this morning.”

“I know.” Paul set the helmet back down. “But right now, we’ve got bigger problems. We’re fighting an uphill battle and we don’t have time to grind out gear. With this?” He pointed at the wagon. “We can
make
what we need. It won’t be the best possible gear but it will be good enough to get us to the raid. Besides, yours and mine are already made form the stuff and falling behind. We can use this to upgrade the sets we already have.”

Amos stared at the wagon for a few moments before nodding. “The dead people are dead. Not our fault and we can’t do anything about that. This right here? It’s a resource we can use to help us win.”

Toby shook his head. “And we all just walk around looking like we cut down a goddamn city for blood?”

“It’s already here. The deed is done, and not by us. But we can benefit from it.”

Paul handed the armor sets off to a few of the scouts. “Get these inside, would you? And then take the wagon around to the west end. There’s an empty barn there by the smith we can stash it in.”

Toby scoffed. “What, are you ashamed of this? Why on earth would that be?”

Paul rounded on him. “We’ve got a war to win here. We’re not going to do that with good intentions and happy thoughts. We have an
edge
in that wagon. And yes, I intend to use it.”

The scouts pulled the tarp back over the top and started the wagon moving.

“If you prefer,” Paul watched it roll away, “consider that those people’s sacrifice, willing or not, will help us to overcome this challenge. That’s what
I
see here. More people on our side. And after we win, everyone that fell to fill that wagon will be rewarded the same as everyone else who helped us. Fair enough?”

Toby still didn’t like it… but he nodded. “I guess.”

Paul gave a curt nod in return. “Good.”

He could be intense when he wanted. Toby kind of understood… Paul’s company was on the line if things went bad. What Miller was doing in the real world might very well end up tied to them because of his shenanigans in the game. Their only chance was to help the feds stop him before he did anything crazy, and that meant they had to keep fighting. The feds had a lead now and they were working it.

And he got that.

He did.

And yet this felt… like a compromise. They had been progressing. This seemed like a step down a path they didn’t need to tread.

But it wasn’t his call to make. He started back toward the church.

“And Toby?” Paul hadn’t turned to face him. “This stays between the three of us for now. Understood? I don’t want people upset over it.”

Amos was watching him.

Toby nodded. “Understood.”

Claire was smiling at him when he took his headset off. “Everything okay?”

He nodded and gave a weak smile as he handed her the headset. “Yeah. Just talked to some scouts.”

“Cool.” She set the headset aside and helped him out of the rest of his gear.

He felt about twenty pounds lighters all of a sudden. He was getting used to the weight.

Claire was still smiling. He couldn’t help but follow suit. “What’s got you in such a good mood?”