Of Evil and Angels

Chapter 3

Heather Dulot devoted all her free time to Sword of Sanctity, a fanatic much like Alyssalee used to be. Heather’s father forbade her from playing, and rightly so from Alyssalee’s perspective. The game became an IRL battleground for the integrity of human free will. For now, the Undivine were confident they had countered the fleshmongers’ ability to possess players with a game patch they had leaked. Heather’s father didn’t share this confidence, and as much as Bits was Alyssalee’s nerdy hero, she knew he didn’t have all the answers all the time.

Knewarc’s PR department countered the bad press by attributing the abnormalities to a necessary update in the encephlotrak’s device drivers to protect susceptible customers. The studio crafted a story about how people with pre-existing mental conditions could encounter a tiny psychotic break when playing. They deployed the update that, behind the scenes, looked for anomalies in neural activity which would trigger an immediate disconnect from the game. This approach worked reasonably well, but now there were hints from both UNUM and Undivine intel that the fleshmongers were up to something new.

UNUM stationed General Dulot and his daughter at the Unicity headquarters in Toulouse, France. The sole reason for his reassignment was to investigate new fleshmonger activity. Ironically, this was where Heather went missing after supposedly spending the night at a friend’s house. The teenager had mastered ways to evade various tracking tech, no thanks to her father’s occupation. They guessed Heather stayed hidden using an off-the-grid SoS arena over a proxy and a stolen account.

The general brought Heather’s diary, and as Alyssalee sat in a corner, legs splayed, thumbing through teenage angst with an occasional chuckle, a scribble caught her eye. It was unmistakable, even with the hasty rendering. The horn gave away the secrets of the pencil scratches—a SoS beast. It stood to reason she’d choose the opposing faction of the templars—Heather likely associated templars with UNUM’s paladins.

“I think we are looking for an Al-Mi’raj,” Alyssalee announced over the hive of activity in the temporary command center.

“Is that a who or a what?” the general asked, rushing to her with three of his lieutenants.

“It’s a horned rabbit,” Bits said, staring at his console as Alyssalee raised the diary, tapping on the sketch.

One of the Scholae lieutenants stepped away, activating his fingercomm.

“I wouldn’t get too excited,” Bits said, swiping and virtyping across multiple interfaces at a pace that made Alyssalee wonder if he had an AI implant. “There are currently 676 Al-Mi’raj in the game environment. General Dulot, do you recognize any of these gamer tags?” Bits asked, slowly scrolling through a list hovering above their heads.

The anxious father skimmed through the names. “Keep going,” the general directed. Bits scrolled several times. “For the sake of the One Unified God, scroll faster, man!”

Cole spoke up. “I’ll remind you, General, you are a guest here.”

“Wait!” the desperate father said. “Twinkle Toads,” he whispered under his breath.

“Does that mean something to you?” Bits asked.

“Maybe. Heather spent years in dance lessons. Back then, I used to call her ‘twinkle toes.’”

“When did you say she disappeared?” Bits asked.

“Four days ago now. That would have been Saturday.”

“Well then, I think we found your girl. Twinkle Toads last logged on Saturday evening. According to this, she hasn’t logged out yet. That’s an epic gaming session.”

“All right then. I’m on the clock!” Alyssalee jumped from her spot in the corner of the mobile command center.

“Jones, mobilize our social outreach specialists to accompany Ms. Quiteria,” General Dulot ordered.

“No,” Alyssalee said bluntly. “If you want my help, I do this alone.”

Cole pressed her arm, pushing her outside the tarp-covered command center. “You’re kidding, right?” Not waiting for her to reply, he went on. “I mean, I get not wanting UNUM in there, but we can send you in with our best.”

“No more collateral damage, Commander.”

“Why are you going through Undivine training if you are just going to solo missions? We work as a team.”

Alyssalee studied the ground for a moment. “Well, if it’s any consolation, I haven’t completed the training yet.”

***

THE SECURITY-HARDENED version of the ET was much heavier than the holocade’s tiara-style unit. The tech team added safeguards after the fleshmongers started using the SoS game to overtake and possess players. One improvement included an advanced anonymizing algorithm to spoof the wearer’s physical location. Alyssalee hoped it worked. That’s all they needed, demons tracking them down in real life and in real-time while in the game. Alyssalee wondered, with all of their modifications and custom devices, did the Undivine have stock in Knewarc? And did the game studio know their platform was the stage for the real-life fight between good and evil?

She reclined into a comfortable position in the first unit in the rows of combat-modded mobile arenas in the command center’s holocade theater. Alyssalee checked to make sure she was the only one patched in for the mission. Cole had a squad on standby just in case anything got out of hand, but he respected Alyssalee’s wishes to locate and retrieve Heather Dulot alone. Bits had narrowed down Heather’s location to the village of May. This was a popular spot because of its central location on the Darklands continent. All systems were green, and she closed her eyes, ready to go in. Well, she was ready, but Sophie wasn’t done reminding her of all the dos and don’ts.

The acid in her stomach felt like it was about to eat a hole in her gut. Alyssalee put on her best “nothing fazes me” show, but the one who knew her best in the world saw right through it. Sophie seemed to feel every pain, every uncertainty that Alyssalee had. The reverse wasn’t always true. Alyssalee loved Sophie with all her heart but failed to read her at times. It was a deficit that Alyssalee was determined to correct—Sophie deserved as much. The relentless worry Sophie endured while watching over her as she lay in a fleshmonger-induced coma seemed to have aged Sophie a decade. There would be no doing that to her again. She couldn’t.

“You come back to me, promise!” Sophie demanded, sealing her plea with a kiss.

Alyssalee had to force herself to break away from Sophie’s lips. “Of course. I am going for trainee of the year,” Alyssalee said with a grin, a dimple forming in her flushed cheeks.

One of the Undivine on standby brought a chair and placed it next to Alyssalee’s arena. The corner of Sophie’s mouth quirked upward. Their gun-toting gamer brothers and sisters knew them well. Sophie sat, holding her hands as Alyssalee closed her eyes again and logged into SoS.

Just months ago, Alyssalee’s knee-jerk reaction would have been to check the leaderboards. But not today. She had a singular purpose on this day. Foreboding replaced the usual rush of adrenaline at the thought of all the templar ass-kicking she’d do.

The mobile units created a different game experience than the ten-foot-long arenas in the holocade. The holocade arenas physically immersed players in the game, allowing them to move around, creating a more lifelike experience augmented by the Encephlotrak with the illusory settings on maximum. The game existed entirely in the players’ heads, essentially blocking the physical world.

Badmash was the name of Alyssalee’s toon, a female troll with two daggers that most would call short swords. She would have preferred a scimitar but figured that would risk exposing her identity. The tech team had placed her right outside of May, so she had no need to travel. Traveling was the most tedious part of SoS. Alyssalee wondered if it was a hack or if they pre-traveled the toon before the mission.

So far, there were no signs of the red-horned fleshmongers as she picked up a run. Her gear rattled like rocks in a tin can as she jogged to the town center. A bunch of merchants and hundreds of players filled the commerce hub. Hopefully, she could stay unnoticed as she looked for the horned rabbit avatar. Knewarc designed every monster in a humanoid shape, but Al-Mi’raj were one of the more diminutive creatures in the game. She was looking for a shorty.

At the far end of the village, Alyssalee saw a line of toons standing almost zombie-like by one of the vendor booths. There were at least one hundred avatars of various factions quietly waiting—for what, she did not know. This was odd, as the opposing factions seldom did anything in harmony. The booth was nondescript except for a red, gossamer canopy enclosing it. No signage hung around it, and the heads-up display didn’t register any information about the vendor. Something covert was going on here.

As Badmash approached the table, the figure working the booth came into view. Long, pink floppy ears rested on the table where the toon held a conversation with an undead mage. A red finial corked her horn like a clown’s nose. The heads-up confirmed the gamer tag: Twinkle Toads. Alyssalee approached a vampire, patiently waiting in line next to her. “This place is hopping! What are they peddling here? Rare gear or something?”

The unintended play on words made Alyssalee cringe inside. The vampire swatted his hand as if she were a gnat pestering him. Her toon waited, feigning that she didn’t have a clue. The vampire shifted its stance, hissing, “If you need to ask, you shouldn’t be here.”

“Jeez, I just want to know what’s going on!” Badmash yelled.

With that, there was a chorus of weapons unsheathing and shields being made ready.

“Hey, sorry! Clearly, this is a private affair,” she said, backing away from the crowd. Alyssalee scolded herself for taking too many risks. She’d have to figure this out on her own wits or risk blowing the mission.