Continue Online (Part 3, Realities) (36 page)

Over half the giant window pane was lit up by my approving
[Mechanoid]
s. That was more than enough for me to climb up carefully and angle my body through. Inside the room I went, unsure of what would greet me.

"Voices. What is going on?" My own words startled me.

This felt exactly like the Continue Online tower. In front of me was a female, see through and only faintly present. Her body was barely more than a hint of flesh and hair that waved as if underwater.

There was a sense of not being alone here. As if the room were filled with people watching with amused smiles. Some friendly, some annoyed, and a few upset.

"You are no mere mortal," the woman said. Her accent was old, a cadence rarely heard outside of Shakespearean plays.

I raised an eyebrow then started to ask a question. How was this game not Continue Online? The chair, the tables, a scent of heavy air and untouched dust, all of it felt exactly the same.

"Speak softly now. We are watched," the ghostly woman said.

"By who?" My words felt pointless. We were inside a mental projection of a digital existence. Anyone could be watching in theory. Maybe that was the strange feeling, like someone was standing over my shoulder watching a computer monitor.

"Any souls inclined to care, Grant Legate," she said.

"I don't understand," I said with a sinking feeling in my stomach. Then it hit me like an afterthought, she used my real name. Whatever this was, whatever crazy quest plot I had waltzed into, it wasn't an accidental discovery.

Session Fifty Three – Keeper of Souls

The ghostly woman was staring at me while I tried to rapidly digest this latest bout of digital insanity. Gaining an audience with the
[Mistborn]
sounded like a big deal, but we had already met once before. At least, I was fairly sure we had, given that she knew my name.

Fuzzy headed thinking tried to put facts together and failed. Miz Riley was right. The Voices would draw me in. Not only through Continue Online, but Advance as well. It wasn't one game, it was both. It wasn't the games, it was the ARC.

"ARC," I said, fully intent upon going back to my Atrium and screaming at the doorway to Continue Online.

How hadn't I put it together before? Dusk made it through. The block was on me and not anyone else. James could be popping in and out of my ARC without my noticing.

"Awaiting input," my machine responded.

"Needs once again placed you in this abode. Another letter perhaps?" Her words were faint. I froze in response and felt completely out of my depth. "Perhaps not. You wear a different attire, Grant Legate. Has much changed?"

The ARC command prompt faded away as I tried to consider my next step. What good would charging out of the ARC do? I could scream to Miz Riley and watch as she did nothing. The ARC system was too ingrained in our everyday life for it to be yanked away without riots. Then there was Xin. What good would running away do her?

I took a breath and tried to remember the best method for handling virtual world insanity. Stuttered humming and one hand tried to move in a tune. Slowly I regained mental clarity to form a plan. My best choice, aside from logging out and running for the hills, was to handle our situation one thing at a time.

First, dealing with the
[Mistborn]
.

"I'm not exactly the same," I answered the last question to register in my brain with honesty.

"Odd. It seems rare for Travelers to change so quickly." She floated about the room touching objects. Each time her hand swirled through the item as if made from fog. I could see why she was named
[Mistborn]
. "Perhaps my eyes differ from yours. Do you still seek to flirt with death?"

If my sister had been watching the ARC feed during my first trip to
[The Lone Tower]
, she might have heard me answer with glib. Liz might be looking even now. The
[Mistborn]
's question deserved a serious answer.

"No, not really." I didn't intend to die in the game or in reality if fate was kind. There were more things to hold onto now than there had been months ago. I had grown, changed, maybe healed if only a little.

Most days weren't gray and lifeless like before. Despite the insanity of this virtual world being presented, I felt better. More alive. My real body was wracked with exhaustion and soreness, but mentally there was a spring in my step.

"How are you here?" I shook my head. "This is a completely different game."

Maybe my sister would watch this also. Everything else in Advance Online had been harmless except for today's conversations. First with Dusk, now this, what would Liz think?

"How did you arrive upon this place?" she said in a strange echo of our prior conversation.

"Through the window," I spoke the same line as before while gesturing toward the lit window pane.

"Once again. Yet no alarm bells toll. The walls do not quake. She has granted you permission this time." The
[Mistborn]
continued pacing around the room. Her inability to grasp objects seemed barely worth a note.

"Nox?"

"Nox, the night, my captor, my jailer, that which I am bound to always return to no matter the cycle." The way her head tilted caused hair to flow across part of her face. An upset expression lingered upon the visible remainder.

"Yes." I filed away the fact that Nox was a she. "Is she, a Voice?"

"Not exactly. You, you've been touched by them, haven't you?" The
[Mistborn]
walked freely around the room. Her path traveled between me and the window, over to stairs that faded into empty air, and finally back to a chair that she couldn't touch.

I nodded in response to her question. The Voices and I had met numerous times during the character creation portion. Our paths had only crossed once afterward. My mind started trying to piece together a timeline of Hal Pal, Xin's recreation, Continue Online and when the ARC was devised. It was especially complicated for me to process right now.

Hadn't I decided that such worry was for someone else? That grand schemes of the machine were beyond me? Unless the plot being devised was simply for Xin. The thought hit me. That had to be part of it. Her existence was somehow a spark that these machine AIs wanted, roping me in was another stage of the plan.

That flicker of thoughts came together and made my breath pause. This concept would require further consideration once I was out of the ARC. Away from the machine which read my thoughts.

"Perhaps that is what makes me willing to talk. Their marking defines you as distant kin." She looked over at me. The angry tilt to her incorporeal face had vanished. "Do you find that strange?"

"Yes." I filed it away as part of the prior train of thought. Xin, somehow everything happening was because of Xin. For the Voices, it wasn't because of what she was. For me, it was because of who she was.

Either way, I couldn't let the
[Mistborn]
continue controlling this conversation. There were questions that begged to be answered. Not only for myself but for Liz if she watched. This session of gameplay would be my confirmation of a crazy existence.

"How do you exist in both games?" I demanded an answer from the ghostly creature.

"Do you not exist in multiple locations?" her response made the point fairly clear. This place was all in my head, it was ones and zeroes of machine language being fed through hardware and neurological feedback.

Next question. "What was in the letter I delivered?"

"A promise that my purpose would be justified this time. Do you know what that purpose is?" The
[Mistborn]
sat down on a chair despite her earlier apparent inability to touch the objects in this room.

I thought about it for a while then shook my head. No one had told me what this quest chain was for normal players. Letting her turn the question around meant I lost control. The information sounded important enough to suffer that.

"No one has told me what you are."

"I can call upon the dead and return them to life. To people of the various worlds that makes me a treasure, a creature to be controlled, a captive to harness." Her words again turned venomous with each statement. One of her hands tried to smash through an indifferent table.

"No one has died in either world that I want to bring back." I thought about it. The only dead video game NPC I knew was William Carver. He was scattered by the Voices of Continue Online, unless she meant Xin? My pulse raced and gut clenched as if preparing for a long fall.

"Yet here you are, Grant Legate, conversing with me. Only those who have suffered loss ever make their way here." Her head pulled back and the hair fell away. For a ghost, she looked remarkably beautiful, literally haunting. "Who did you lose?"

"The person I lost is already back." I chewed one metal lip and tasted a hint of iron mixed with salt.

"Is she? Mayhap this trial is for me then. Provide unto me her name and I will seek her soul," she said, the ghost's words were faint. Our surroundings were so quiet she might as well be yelling. Maybe it was my own attention being intensely focused on our conversation.

"Xin. Xin Yu," I said.

"Place her likeness in your mind."

I closed my eyes. A useless action inside the ARC but thinking about it helped me concentrate easier. There were no system windows. No floating keyboards or messages from players. I couldn't see a rolling tally to one side of skills being gained.

All that mattered was testing this
[Mistborn]
and imagining Xin. The beauty of the ARC device was that everything already existed within my mind. Xin's face sprang up almost instantly. The curve of her cheek, the oval eyes. She used to glare at me from two feet away just so her neck wouldn't need to tilt as much.

A memory struck me. Once, after she first agreed to go out with me, tossing her over my shoulder and running around in excitement. She had laughed. I remembered being so excited upon hearing such uninhibited joy from Xin. The woman rarely laughed for anyone else, and those moments were precious.

My cheeks hurt from smiling. Being able to hold onto the memory of her was the entire reason I even got an ARC. The first time I tried to end my life was the same day I couldn't remember what Xin looked like. It had freaked me out to the point that I drank an excessive amount and tried to fly to heaven from the third floor of my old accounting practice.

All around me, that feeling of being watched increased. It wasn't a small crowd, there were dozens, maybe hundreds. I didn't like it but tried to keep steady. Doctor Litt's offhanded manner of explaining of ways to stay calm helped out. I needed to ignore the odd sensation of extra people in the room and move past it.

Opening my eyes revealed a change in the room. Not in the dusty furniture or brightly lit stained glass. Colors still hit the wall with spots of illumination. Greens, golds, even a dull almost gray. Those things paled in comparison to the image of Xin sitting there peacefully.

In front of me, not behind, not merely a set of fingertips brushing against my eyes. Nor was this image a fevered dream of loneliness in an ARC death screen. She breathed, she moved, it was her.

"Babe?" I was willing to believe anything.

"Nay, Grant Legate." The woman that looked like Xin opened her eyes and skin fell away. I backed up. She no longer resembled the woman I yearned for.

"Ha ha." She laughed in short little bursts. "Foolish. You do not simply ask to bring someone across the veil. You seek to drag an unshackled being into our reality."

I frowned. "So what if it's foolish? It's my choice."

"That she is outside existence is dangerous enough." The
[Mistborn]
shook her head and took on a frightening air. Everything in the room seemed darker, less alive. More alien. "Pulling such a spirit down to this level would be like freeing a newborn Voice upon this reality. Dangerous, foolish. Why?"

"I miss her," I answered.

"Sorrow over a loss is natural." She turned and waved a hand in my direction. "Struggle through it as all living creatures must."

"I can't lose her, not again."

She turned to me and opaque eyebrows lowered in a half snarl. Her hair moved swiftly back and forth. Finally, the
[Mistborn]
sighed and the intensity stepped down a notch. A bit of life returned to this room.

"Even if I return this Xin, she will never be the same. No being ever returns exactly as they were. Could you find acceptance within yourself? Or perhaps she may choose not to return to thine embrace," the
[Mistborn]
said.

I nodded but it didn't feel like enough. Not for myself, not for Liz if she was out there watching a recording. Even the presences in this odd between realities room seemed to desire more. How I could measure the desire of an unfelt creature was beyond me. A trick of the ARC's feedback perhaps.

"When we first met, I fell in love at first sight and never stopped." I smiled and kept myself surprisingly steady. "But Xin wanted to go to space. There was no time for a relationship. I worked my ass off for years to prove to her that I wouldn't be dissuaded easily."