Trapped in a Game Pt. 03

She sighed, and gave me a little frustrated elbow in the stomach nonetheless.

And here I was thinking she didn't get jealous.

"Come to think of it, you probably held Tracey like this too," she muttered, as she took my hand and brought it up to her amply sized breast.

"Do you want a lie or the truth?" I asked, and she prodded me with her elbow again.

She gave a thoughtful 'hm,' before shuffling a bit, turning over to face me, and suddenly our faces were just inches apart, her breasts were mashing delightfully into my chest, and our legs almost automatically intertwined.

Our noses were just touching, and I stared into her eyes as I felt the little warm puffs of breath each time she exhaled.

"There!" she announced triumphantly, "this is much better, isn't it?" and I nodded hypnotically as our faces drew in, almost automatically, for our lips to meet.

"I miss you," I muttered softly, as we broke the gentle kiss, and she giggled at me:

"I'm right here, silly."

"No- I mean the real you. You look like an angel when you sleep- you always have. That day when I woke up and you were there, sleeping by my side... it was like waking up from a nightmare to find myself in a heavenly dream."

She blushed, before leaning in to kiss me again.

"What would you have done if I didn't wake up?" she asked, and I smiled uncertainly.

"Probably nothing... just sit there and admire you," I murmured, and she frowned a little.

"Not even a kiss?" she asked, and I shook my head:

"I was a good brother."

"You still are."

I kissed her again, then brushed her bangs out of her eyes, and she hummed contentedly in response.

"I'm not so sure about that," I countered, as I stole a glance at her naked breasts with a wry smile. "I did think about kissing you though."

"Really?"

"Yeah- as far as I knew I was dreaming... dreams don't count, right?" I added with a wink, and she shoved me playfully in response. "You have beautiful lips," I countered, and she licked hers as she hung on my every word.

"Can I tell you something?" she asked shyly, and I studied her intently, making her blush further.

"Go on," I offered with intrigue.

"I kissed you that day," she admitted, going ever redder than before.

"You naughty little-" my words trailed off as I grasped her, and rolled her about as she giggled gleefully.

She ended up on her back, breathing a little more tersely, but still looking up at me playfully as we came to rest, my hand at the side of her head, supporting my upper body just over hers.

"Can I tell you something else?" she asked, as she put a finger to her lips and she shot me a naughty, secretive smile: "That wasn't the first time."

"Uh-huh. And here I was thinking all these years my little sister was just the perfect little angel."

"What? I am," she responded with a showy innocent smile.

"Sure- let's hear it then."

"Hnn. Remember back when you were in high school and Tracey got into that whole drama/interpretive dance thing?"

"Ugh- why is every story related to her?"

"Oh, I dunno- maybe because you dated the bitch for seven years?" she quipped.

"Hm- fair enough," I conceded, with mock indifference, and she turned her head away from me with a playful 'hmph!' "Go on," I prodded her, and she smiled as she relented.

"Remember that big recital you all had?"

"How can I forget? Those people worked me like a slave for days, and we didn't even get so much as a thank you in the acknowledgements."

"Kind of like the perfect metaphor for your entire relationship with Tracey if you ask me," she responded with perk, and I flicked at her forehead in retaliation.

How apt it was that the club was called 'drama,' I thought to myself.

"You were passed out in the car on the way home; then one sharp left and you kind of slumped over to my side. You didn't wake up; it was dark, mom and dad couldn't see us unless they looked back, and you looked so peaceful I kind of just held you, petting your hair comfortingly- but then I turned your face up to mine, and your lips just seemed to be calling out to me. I was entranced, and before I even knew what I was doing, I leaned in- and kissed you. In my head, it was going to be just a little sisterly peck- but when I pressed your lips to mine... something just felt so right. I was going crazy thinking you could wake up at any moment and start screaming your head off at me, but it felt so good- I just couldn't stop myself. I have no idea how long the kiss lasted- but I could never get that feeling out of my head."

She was blushing again, and I studied her with a mixture of amazement and affection.

She'd been holding back so much, and for so much longer than I'd ever imagined.

I didn't think it was possible for me to hold her any higher in esteem, but she truly never ceased to stop amazing me.

I was leaning in to kiss her again when-

*Bzz!

I twitched a little, and she looked into my eyes.

"Call?" she asked, and I nodded, confirming that it was indeed Tracey who was again calling.

I ignored it once more, but a little anxiety began to gnaw at my chest, and Kelly quickly took notice.

"You know- that was the day we officially got together," I muttered.

"Huh?"

"The dance recital."

"Oh," she responded, a little despondently.

I tried to keep up a smile, but the look on Kelly's face told me that it wasn't as effective a mask as I'd imagined.

"I'm sorry," I muttered, turning away from her and slumping onto my back.

"For what, exactly?" she asked, leaning over me now, a thoughtful look in her eye.

"I dunno- isn't the last thing a girl wants to hear is a guy complaining about his ex?" I asked with a sigh, and to my surprise she smiled at me and tugged at my nose, before giving it a little wiggle.

"I'm not just a girl, Josh- I'm your sister too. And I know better than anyone just how badly broken that girl left you. I'm not saying I want to hear you constantly talking about her, but I don't expect you to magically heal overnight either," she added, before leaning down to rest her head on my chest. "I'm just glad that you've started back talking to me again. Dying in a death game wasn't the only way I could've lost you..."

As she lay there, stroking my chest comfortingly, my thoughts began to wander.

Kelly thought the world of me, didn't she?

No matter how low I'd sunk, she'd stuck it through and stayed with me.

She believed in me when I could have scarcely believed in myself.

I wanted to be worthy of her.

I wanted to be the awesome big brother, the hero she saw me as.

I clenched my fists, and smiled a little, as the resolve took shape in my head:

I'm going to kill a master vampire!

***

//

***

Eric Dyer poured himself another cup of coffee.

As he looked over to the other man in the lounge, he saw what he imagined his own tired, sleep deprived eyes looked like.

It had been three solid weeks of absolute Hell since Mythic Lands Online first launched, but their hell was probably nothing compared to what the players were going through.

He sighed.

As the only executive who didn't bail as soon as it all fell apart, a lot had fallen into his lap and all at once too.

Gary Wright went into hiding.

Luka's kids still couldn't be found.

And Angela was basically spending night and day trying to contain the PR nightmare that had come with the disaster.

He took a sip of the piping hot, dark liquid, and allowed the warmth to spread through his chest.

With coffee in hand, he walked carefully out of the room and down the hall to the hotel conference room that was now operating as a makeshift headquarters.

How very apt it was for this impromptu meeting to take place in Geneva, he thought with a chuckle as he walked into a room where a world map stood on the far right wall, with little pins and pictures of every player still trapped in the game, stood, with their corresponding location.

With players hailing from every continent on the planet, the event was quickly being hailed as the first truly global technological disaster.

The death toll was already close to five hundred, but the more worrying part was the four thousand or so others who'd been disconnected from the game without waking up.

They were comatose by all appearances- but this was the strange thing; every single one who had been unplugged immediately died.

It was as if their minds were still stuck in that place, and their bodies died if they didn't make it back intact.

It was being covered up of course; there was no way they could let people know that players were disconnecting and not recovering; the sheer panic was nigh uncontrollable as is.

This was where Angela's brilliance in PR really shone; her decision to limit communication between the players and the outside world saved lives, and bought them some much needed time.

But panic could kill faster than even the game itself could.

He surveyed the mishmash of analysts in front of him with a sigh.

All attempts made by the company to resolve the issue internally had failed, and after less than a week they had no choice but to accept governmental intervention; but whose?

That was the funny part.

This was a company based in Switzerland, with assets on every continent on the planet; hell, they even had three satellites orbiting the earth, and one on Mars.

The Americans demanded precedence, but they were quickly contested by the Russians and Chinese.

Whose protocol was it to govern virtual space? All known laws depended on where the servers were located, but this incident was global in almost every sense of the word.

And... two weeks later, and where did it get them?

No one wanted to share intel; but no one was making significant progress alone.

All projections told them that it would take two months to reverse engineer all of the game's protocols; and that was provided that they'd even found a way in at all.

That was where this conference came in.

It was a peacekeeping effort of sorts, and the type that quite frankly, they didn't have time to waste on.

That was how it started out at least; until he showed up.

Eric adjusted his glasses as he eyed the man uncertainly.

He wore a carefree smile that didn't seem to ever fade, and his hair had been dyed a curious shade of green which seriously contrasted the complete business attire that he wore at all times.

He arrived, uninvited, to a secret meeting of some of the world's most notable representatives with a simple proposal; the conspiracy group, known by their alias, CPY, wanted a chance to crack the most notoriously protected game of all time.

Eric had at his disposal some of the brightest young minds in cyber security, network analysis and computer engineering on the planet.

What were they, but a bunch of glorified modern day pirates?

Every year they cracked and distributed billions of dollars' worth of software freely.

Eric had almost laughed at the prospect, but that was before the man presented them with a video of one of their testers logging into the network and getting to the loading screen and opening credits.

It was more than any of the arrogant government agencies assembled here had accomplished with two weeks of dedicated work, and they had done it while hacking their security systems to get unauthorized access to some of the game's protected servers.

The video checked out, and the representatives gathered had to make a decision quick; keep working at it alone, or use a team that had made more progress than any them had with much less resources and time.

After a quick conference, the representatives gathered decided to give it a try, and to everyone's shock, it took them just three days to reverse engineer the game's introductory protocols, giving the alliance their first real glimpses into the protocols that had been initialized after the game's launch.

And so the impromptu collaboration began.

It began with just the Americans and the Chinese, but Japan, Russia and the Eu quickly followed, and list of countries that were allocating resources and manpower to help was growing daily.

Survival mode; that was what the protocol was called.

There was so much hush behind it that they couldn't even locate the coders who programmed it; it was Luka's doing, there was no doubt about it now, but the hows and whys would haunt the world for some time to come. After all... his body was lying in a morgue as they spoke.

"We've gotten word on the kids; a young man called, as he burst through the conference doors in a huff. They're in bad condition, but alive."

Eric breathed a relieved sigh.

"Where are they?" he asked.

"At the medical facility in Stockholm."

He picked up his phone and immediately placed a call to arrange a flight for one of their representatives.

Those kids had gotten into the game somehow.

But how, and why?

Their father, Luka, was already dead.

No-one had any clues, but if they could get in then the matter needed to be investigated and fast.

He was still midway through the call when a young woman suddenly shrieked, drawing his attention to her.

He walked over to the little laptop screen she was seated in front of, then gasped as he processed the information that was being displayed.

"Two hundred and forty? That- that can't be right..." Eric muttered, the phone slipping from his hand, and landing on the floor with a *thud.

Two hundred and forty deaths in the last four hours.

It was more deaths than had occurred in any single period since the initial phase immediately after the game's launch.

What the hell was going on?

***

//

***

After a reluctant farewell with Kelly, I met up with Serra and was immediately struck by the incredibly grumpy look on her face.

"H-hey. You look, uh-"

"Fuck off," she muttered angrily before storming off, not even looking back to see if I'd followed.

She was quiet and brooding for half of the journey but her irritability eventually abated, to my relief, and she began going over our plans.

Our destination was an abandoned castle some half a day's journey East of Ravenloft, and nestled into a nook in the great range that ran from the east to a long way south of the town.

As we studied the castle, I glanced at Serra.

"Think we'll have company?" I asked, and she shook her head.

"Not a chance. This one is the furthest out, and no-one should know about it."

"What if your contact sold you out?" I asked with a wry smile, and she turned haughtily on me.

"Mackenzie isn't that type of scout. I've been paying her 50k per report since the game started. Her info is exclusive and always on the money."

"Wow. That's a lot for a scout."

"Yup. But she's worth it. She's a rogue with zero combat skills but every movement, sneak and escape skill in the game. There isn't any dungeon in existence that she can't scout."

We started scoping out the scene for ourselves but quickly ran into a stumbling block; every animal, insect or critter we could send in to scout for us quickly wound up dead, as the vampire's lair was crawling with little critters of their own capable of snuffing them out.

We spent half the morning trying to get some useful info before resorting to my scan skill as a last resort; but even that failed as the lair was apparently protected by an anti-magic field designed to prevent scrying of any kind.

"So- do we go in blind?" I asked, and Serra sighed.

"I think you should sit this one out," she responded, and I stared at her in disbelief.

"What?"

She fidgeted a bit, looking away as she spoke:

"I'm pretty good at staying alive, and thanks to Mackenzie's info I have a pretty good idea of where the baddie might be hiding out. But if we don't know what we're up against then I don't wanna risk-"

"Seriously? You've been building your skills around my support. You told me yourself that you stopped building your skills for solo play- and you've spent a lot on me that you would have spent on yourself. You'd be putting yourself at risk here. Why?"

"That's not it- I'm just confident that-"

"Bullshit."

I think in that moment I finally understood how Kelly felt when I'd changed things up on her at the start of the game.

"Come on- you've trained me, and we've been doing well so far. If you don't trust me then maybe trust in your own ability as my teacher?"

I winked at her, and she relented with a sigh.

"Fine- lets go then," she muttered reluctantly.

Mackenzie's scouting info pointed out a few useful ways in, so we made it inside without much of a fuss.

Since vampires were natural creatures of the dark, we opted for Serra's silence spell over our now usual tactic of moving under the cover of shade.

"Be careful. This place is bound to be crawling with thralls," she whispered.

As she activated the spell, she reached instinctively for my hand and I hesitated just a bit, and she looked away with a glum expression before leading me down a dilapidated hall.

As we moved, however, I caught sight of a rat that seemed to be paying special attention to us, and on instinct, I lunged forward and skewered it with my dagger.

Serra looked at me questioningly, then gasped when the dead rat suddenly burst into flames, and vaporized before us, leaving nothing but a little heap of ash.

I gulped as Serra and I exchanged nervous glances.

"I don't like this," Serra muttered. "They can see us, and we're blind. I'm going to check for traps: Detect traps," Serra muttered, and I put my hand over hers as she placed it against a nearby wall.

Detect traps was a useful spell, but it was limited to what was in the caster's line of sight. But by using synergy and adding my magical necklace to the equation we had managed to increase the effectiveness of the spell by over tenfold.

"There- there's a pit trap up ahead," Serra muttered, and I nodded, but as we approached the spot Serra stopped me.

"Something's not right. Light," she whispered, bringing a little ball of light into the palm of her hand, and I leaned forward to follow her gaze.

"Whoa," I added, as I stared through some missing blocks in the floor to the floor beneath us.

"That's not a pit," Serra muttered, and I pondered the information.

"Anti-magic field?" I asked, and she shook her head.

"Anti-magic would have negated the spell, not given me a false positive. It's an illusion; and a powerful one."

I studied her, as she paused, deep in thought.

"What're you thinking?" I asked.

"I could cast true sight," she muttered, "but then I won't have enough magic to use fire storm on the vampire... but if something's leading us around with powerful enough illusions to manipulate my detection spells- then we might not even make it to him at all."

She took a deep breath, before deciding: "Fuck it- I'm gonna cast it. You can enchant your rapier to hit him and I'll just smite the bastard to death. True sight!"

Serra's eyes instantly glowed white, but as soon as the spell activated Serra shrieked, and I quickly grasped her hand to activate synergy.

I followed her gaze downwards, and was met with a pair of deep red eyes staring directly back at me; but before I could so much as gasp, a faint, disembodied whisper came echoing down the corridor; "collapse."

The ground beneath us immediately began to give way and Serra, almost instinctively, reached out with her hands in an attempt to push me out of the way; but for once I was one step ahead of her.

As she reached out, I grasped her hand, and pulled myself into her body, wrapping myself firmly around her as we cascaded down with the collapsing floor into a seemingly never ending pit of darkness.

"Feather fall," Serra whispered as I clung to her, and not a moment too soon as we hit into the floor with a *thud!