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  Before I could follow, Trafford caught my shoulder. Thankfully the old man wasn't waiting around to hand out more bad news. He was a builder, and he wanted to start building.

  "It's been three days," he said. "At 14 HQR a day, we're up to 42."

  The corner of my mouth crooked. Our headquarters resources had been exhausted in the climactic last stand that defeated Hadrian, his shadows, and the kraken. With the beasts destroyed and the Whisperer in chains, the main obstacle to our rebuild was the ticking clock. They say time heals all wounds, but this was an MMO and we had potions for that. We really just needed it to refill our headquarters resources.

  The development made the buildmaster general unusually upbeat. "We finally have enough HQR to rebuild the barracks that were destroyed. Best of all, the repair time is only 10 man hours. With the ogres doing double duty and eager to get back to work, I can have it complete in no time."

  I swiped open the menu.

  Black Hat Headquarters

  Level: 2

  HQXP: 7 / 8

  HQR: 42

  Daily HQR Production: 14

  DP: 1

  Current Buildings

  Guildhall

  Brothel

  Lumberyard

  Vault

  Destroyed

  Barracks

  With the brothel already serving as a respawn point and our lack of a true army, the barracks weren't wholly necessary, but it was good for morale to rebuild what we'd lost. Not to mention, repairing took half the time of building something new. This was the quickest structure to get up that would add another HQXP to our total, which would put the headquarters over the edge to level up, increasing our daily HQR production and speeding up all build times in the future.

  We took the detour with Trafford to the site of the old barracks. I spent the headquarters points, lined up the shimmering blue placement, and spawned it. A foundation popped into place and a little goblin girl wearing fur clapped her mitts together excitedly.

  "Times for wakey wakey, worky worky?"

  Trafford chuckled and nodded. "It's time, Jixa. Assemble the crew."

  The girl ran off to find her ogres. Jixa's team was a real asset to our city building. I briefly wondered how the Shorehome transplants felt about being besieged by their own kin. They'd broken ties with the pagan faction, sure, but it was hard to get away from blood. That was free will for you.

  I side-eyed the buildmaster general as he licked his lips. "You know, Trafford, I still can't get used to you smiling all the time."

  "What do ya mean?" he countered.

  "Well, you know..." I rubbed my neck. "You can kinda-sometimes be a bit of a crank."

  His eyes narrowed. "I'm a fucking bundle of joy, Talon. Don't you forget that." He burst into laughter.

  That was the Trafford I knew.

  Kyle sighed under his breath. "I wish I could still make jokes like that. Hey Trafford, any chance you wanna—"

  "Join you in your clean-and-sober challenge? No way. If misery loves company, I'd rather be alone."

  The brewmaster moped as we dragged him away. Today was gonna be a good day. I could feel it. Izzy too, if only because she got to watch Kyle struggle every time he spoke. For now, however, a nervous silence overtook us. We marched to the west gate to retrieve the message from the wildkins.

  Saint Peter materialized nearby, sandals flapping as he hurried our way. "Talon, you must come at once!" The old man was frazzled. Sure, his off-white toga remained the height of Greek fashion, but his crown of golden twigs was seated at a precarious angle.

  "What's the matter?" I asked.

  "It's Hadrian."

  "He escaped?"

  "Of course not, but—"

  "Let him stew a minute then. I'm expecting word from the wild king."

  The saint followed as we continued to the main thoroughfare. I craned my neck toward the west gate. The double doors were barricaded. Lackadaisical rambling from the guards was the only activity in sight.

  "You don't understand," continued the exasperated saint. "Hadrian's manipulating the codebase somehow. Someone's still in play, either him or a hidden ally. Judging by a sharp increase in network chatter, I suspect they're about to make a move."

  "F him," said Kyle.

  My lips twisted in annoyance. The expression intensified as I confirmed Dune and company weren't waiting on the road for us.

  "Go on," Izzy told me. "Potty mouth and I will track down the ranger."

  "I'll show you a fudging potty mouth," grumbled Kyle.

  The saint blinked uncertainly. "What's going on with you?"

  "Nothing," said Kyle. "And don't you worry, Peter, we'll track down the tracker."

  Peter nodded and turned to me. "And now that your dispatch is safe within Stronghold's walls, let's take care of more pressing matters."

  Izzy and Kyle hurried off, leaving me to follow Saint Peter to the dungeon. So much for the start of a good day.

  1560 Civilization

  The march through the Forum wasn't hectic or panicked. The mood in the morning wasn't ominous. Adventurers proceeded throughout their days much as they always did, browsing the busy mercantile district for quests and fancy new loot. The goblin horde had only been outside the gates for three days—hardly enough to affect the economy of a city the size of Stronghold. There were quests to complete within the walls, plenty of drink and distraction, and somewhere around three-quarters of Haven's player populace at hand.

  Given our huge recent victory, the city was more prosperous than ever.

  "I still don't understand what you mean by network chatter," I said as we weaved around an ox hauling a load of weapons.

  Peter's white beard puffed over his lips. "To be frank, Talon, I don't completely understand it myself. Christian and Tad handle the technical matters. The important thing is we know Larry's betrayal wasn't an isolated incident. They've prioritized looking into some worrying developments."

  "I'll bet. I should Everchat with them right away."

  "Actually, we believe your talents are better utilized elsewhere."

  "But I'm a programmer."

  "Which is Tad's full-time job. Not only are you an exact copy of him, but he's been working for Kablammy and is already familiar with the codebase. He has it covered."

  "Mmm hmm, and what can I do?"

  "We need you watching the virtual home front, as it were. Rally the player base and keep malcontents like Hadrian out of trouble."

  My mouth twisted into a sour smirk. "You need me to help Haven launch."

  "As smoothly as humanly possible."

  The lofty Pantheon loomed before us, a huge domed capitol building fronted by a triangular portico of Corinthian columns and grand marble steps. The columns that had once lined the leading walkway had all crumbled but one, a foreboding testament to what we'd endured. Of the original Golden Seven, only two angels remained. One was wounded and MIA and the other—

  "Wait a minute. Where's Decimus?"

  Saint Peter's eyebrows stretched to his hairline. "He senses something afoot as well, auto-activated by his security protocol."

  Whoa. Angels weren't woken lightly. Their activation required a player somehow skirting the rules of the game. Hacking and glitching were the usual culprits.

  "Then that's game, set, and match," I said. "If Hadrian's been caught, let Decimus delete him and be done with it."

  "If only it were so easy," returned the old man. "No, something is staying the arbiter's silver swords. Hadrian has been too careful to incriminate himself."

  We rounded the Pantheon and crossed into the nearby slums. There were lots of quest buildings here. With the influx of Shorehome immigrants, the developers had patched in emergency housing. Instead of building new structures they simply doubled and tripled up the entryways, making each door lead to several unique interiors. With a simple patch, the afterlife had solved the housing crisis.

  As we cut through the slums, our path wound with the adjoining river. Saint Peter w
istfully sighed. "Did I ever tell you how the Albula River got its name?"

  I shrugged. "Random name generator?"

  "Oh no," he chuckled, "we didn't invent the name. It means mountain stream. In ancient history, after the fall of Troy, a group of survivors fled to the Italian peninsula and formed the influential city of original Latins, Alba Longa. The line of Alban royalty was descended from a Trojan prince and would go on to found Rome itself. But one day, back in those formative years, Alba Longa's ninth king, Tiberinus Silvius, was crossing the Albula and he drowned." The history buff paused on that note. "Imagine that, a great king dying so simply. Anyway, from that day hence, the river was called the Tiber, in his honor."

  "Hardcore," I said.

  He nodded. "Here, in Haven, we've created a world where the dead live again. When it came time to name our river, we felt a landmark evoking death wasn't apropos to our vision. We restored the river's original moniker."

  I chewed my lip as we followed the water north. The jail was settled against the city wall a little ways up. I thought over the parable a minute, wondering at the saint's exact point but knowing it had something to do with emphasizing the importance—the dream—of Haven.

  "I'm gonna say it again, Peter, but I think you should consider calling off the launch. What are we at, three days to showtime? It doesn't give us a lot to work with."

  "Impossible. The timetable is set. Processes have started. Do you know how difficult it is to reschedule a satellite launch? Besides, publicly releasing Haven is precisely what protects it. Once we're fully live and independently networked, tampering will be impossible. The systems will run as a closed circuit. Haven will no longer be part of Kablammy's asset portfolio, making it immune to hostile legal acquisitions. Christian has given the long-term viability of the afterlife years of thought. You have to trust that he has everything in place."

  I swallowed down my next objection. As far as paradigm-defining CEOs went, Christian Everett owned the top of the scoreboard. And while I'd once suspected his motives, recent events convinced me he was one of the good guys. It didn't hurt that Tad Lonnerman, my real-world doppelganger, had eyes on him.

  "Okay," I relented, as if I wasn't already going along with the dev team. "Let's see what the player-formerly-known-as-the-Whisperer is up to."

  I'd expected Peter to smile, but his expression grew more grim as we entered the jail yard. Warden Jorah waited for us inside the main prisoner building.

  "Oi, Protector. You're a right sight."

  I nodded at his salute. "Let's see how I feel on my way outta here."

  He chuckled and led us down the hall. "Fair enough. Anything that spooks Saint Peter and Decimus oughta be a whopper."

  He unlocked a fortified door and we stepped inside, zoning into the separate dungeon level. A dank stairway and lonely hall streamed in. We followed the sequence of empty cells to the solid wooden door at the end. Jorah undid the bolts and swung it open. In the deep dank of the shadows was a man shackled to a chair: prisoner one one seven.

  The unassuming man seemed built for the darkness. Beady eyes and thinning hair gave him a molish appearance. His diminutive stature made him all the less impressive. But then, he never was one for the limelight.

  "I like what you've done with the place," I said as I stepped inside. The stone-walled cell was barely more than a walk-in closet. The damp and dark seemed to close in from all sides.

  I flinched when I noticed Decimus beside me. A perfectly chiseled model of a man wrapped in flowing white cloth, he stood in the corner poised like a snake. Instead of fangs, the angel carried a silver sword in each hand. He didn't acknowledge the presence of Peter or myself; he simply stared straight at the shackled prisoner. I couldn't tell if the white blindfold made the scene more or less unnerving.

  "Justice is blind," quipped the Whisperer, finally raising his gaze to meet mine. "In this case, it's quite indecisive as well."

  "Cut the crap, Hadrian. What're you up to?"

  The prisoner studied the room and shrugged. "I appear to be sitting. It'd be difficult to do anything else."

  He was shackled to the chair by his ankles and wrists. This was to keep him from suiciding and respawning back in Shorehome, not that the pirate city was an entirely safe place for him anymore. I just wished I'd gotten word from Papa Brugo of their post-Hadrian status.

  "I'm talking about the network traffic," I snapped. "You're reaching out to someone."

  Hadrian scoffed. "I'm hardly in a position to scratch my own nose. You've got the wrong guy."

  "I doubt it."

  He shrugged again. "Your watchdog is on top of me. If I was doing anything at all, I'd be dead. Maybe you should be tracking down Saint Loras."

  "Loras is dead. Try again."

  "A construct can't be dead."

  "Don't play semantics. He's gone." I snorted and leaned against the wall, wondering how I was gonna get anything out of a prisoner who hadn't spilled a useful tidbit in days. "You haven't admitted it, but I know you've somehow infected the simulation. The Loras avatar was the same as anyone else, a pawn to further your interests. A rogue algorithm driven by your will. By now you know the developers have taken countermeasures against you. Remote control of the saints has been revoked."

  The old man watched Hadrian passively from the doorway. He'd no doubt exhausted his breath with the same line of questioning. Hadrian, having heard it all before, was already playing the part of the bored spectator. I opened my developer menu. Although the display was invisible to everyone but me, the action immediately caught his eye.

  "According to this, you're locked out of the hub. All prisoners in the dungeon are."

  "Then believe both your eyes and your brain," Hadrian replied. "It's impossible for me to do what you say."

  "Let's start simple then. What's the purpose of the goblin horde?"

  Hadrian chuckled. "This again?"

  "How do we disperse the pagans?" I pressed.

  The prisoner didn't answer.

  "They're barely a distraction, you know. With the Eye of Orik safely in the tabernacle, it's impossible for the horde to enter Stronghold as pagans. And if they defect, I'll slaughter them in a second. In fact, the only reason I haven't already torn them a new one is because I don't want to break the armistice."

  I froze, the recesses of my brain buzzing as I seemed to hit upon something. Of course Hadrian hated the armistice. I'd figured that angle two days ago. This was something deeper—yet more universal. A horde of goblins. A legion of defenders. This was two armies, wasted, or at least, taken out of play. The would-be king was still sowing the seeds of discord, but were these the stagnant remnants of a failed plan, or was there a future to it?

  In this interrogation, I had supreme control. Of that there was no doubt. But Hadrian's confidence exuded some measure of control as well. Saint Peter was right. The Whisperer was still active.

  "There are ways out of this," said the old man. "Tell us how to undo the damage you've caused—"

  "And you'll offer leniency?" spat Hadrian. "You're only out for blood. The second I give you the slightest indication I've shirked the terms of service, your watchdog will delete me."

  "Justice can regard context."

  I turned to the saint, eyes narrowed. "What are you doing?"

  "We can agree to terms if you cooperate," said Peter.

  "No terms," I said. "We have him where we want him. Any negotiation will just be him angling for an edge."

  Hadrian smiled bitterly, his resolve strengthening. "What did I tell you, Peter? Out for blood."

  >> Minigame <<<br />
  Tad Lonnerman scrolled down the news feed. A video autoplayed a computer rendering of the vastness of the cosmos.

  "Space is infinite," came the collected voice of Christian Everett. "What if your life could be infinite as well?"

  Although it was Christian speaking, the social media commercial featured his investor voice. This wasn't his usual curious, hopeful tone—it was commanding and
resolute. One meant to appease shareholders and inspire passion. One meant for selling.

  The camera panned through space and centered on a state-of-the-art satellite. A quick zoom into its metal heart revealed circuit boards, electrical impulses, and then, magnificently, a lush world of gallant knights and devious baddies. Epic music accompanied fantastical landscapes and architectural wonders. As the action and music crescendoed, the camera suddenly pulled back into the void of space. One satellite was joined by others until a network of them orbited the Earth.

  "Welcome to the afterlife online. Welcome to Haven."

  The end of the commercial displayed a stylized date across the vista, reminding Tad of just how little time they had before launch.

  The programmer turned to his boss. "Laying it on a little thick, don't you think?"

  "Hmm?" Christian peeked up from several investor portfolios and squinted at the computer screen. "Oh, yes. In my defense, overselling is a better marketing strategy than underselling."

  Tad chuckled. "Luckily, you don't need to worry. Once Haven goes gold, the players will do all the selling for you."

  They were in Christian's personal office at the Seattle headquarters of Kablammy Games. The studio spanned the top floor of a modern tower of glass. The ceiling-to-floor windows in the CEO's office provided a stunning view of Downtown Seattle and the deep-blue waters of Elliot Bay. The room itself was adorned with stout Victorian furniture. Stacks of physical binders cluttered the carpet. Christian Everett sat on the floor poring through them while Tad inspected the company's digital footprint on the workstation at the desk.

  The head honcho sighed. "All the hype in the world won't help if we don't find our saboteurs. And I don't know that scouring the depraved recesses of InLink will uncover the conspiracy."

  "You never know," Tad hedged, scrolling the news feed further. "People reveal a lot more online than they think."