Chapter FiveLocked In

Soph woke in the hospital feeling woozy as hell. Her neck hurt. When she tried to turn her head, Max put down her book.

"You're awake!" Max said.

"What happened?" Soph tried to get her bearings. The light was bright. Flowers rested on a table next to her.

"How do you feel?"

"Awful. My head hurts."

"You got banged up. Do you remember what happened?"

"Atom and I were getting ice cream. Oh, right." Soph winced as she sat up in the hospital bed.

"Is that the last thing that you remember?"

"There was a crash, I think. I just remember this really loud sound, like thunder."

"A truck ran a red light and smashed into you. You had a bad concussion, but you're going to be alright."

"Where's Atom? Is he okay?"

"He's not doing so well, Soph. I'm not sure how bad it is. He's in surgery right now."

"Oh, God. Can I see him?"

"I'm sorry honey, not right now. You've got to stay where you are. Everything is going to be alright, okay? He's a tough kid."

Soph wanted to cry. It was all starting to come back. The blinding headlights, the crash, the screeching, then another crash. The airbags deploying. Her face going numb. She had felt very tired. Blood was gushing out of Atom's nose, and his head was on the wheel, and his hand was still on the shifter underneath hers. Her neck hurt, her head hurt, her ribs hurt. There were some distant sounds. Sirens. Blackness.

Soph slid back down into the hospital bed, defeated. Tears gave way to drowsiness. Max stroked her hair until she fell back to sleep.

Twelve days after the crash, Max found Richard outside the ward.

"How is he?" Max asked.

"Not good, Max. Not good. They've stabilized him but his brain stem has been damaged pretty badly."

"Is there anything the doctors can do?"

"They're still assessing what he can recover. They call it locked-in syndrome. He's awake. He can hear us. They've got him answering yes and no with his eyes, sometimes, but it wears him out."

"I, I don't know what to say, Richard."

"Yeah." Richard grimaced.

They were standing in a corridor that smelled like floor cleaner, under a light that hummed. Richard had slept in the same clothes for two nights. He was holding a paper cup of coffee that he had not drunk from and did not seem to know he was holding.

"Can we go see him?" Max asked.

"Not yet, they're still running some tests."

"Richard."

"Yeah?"

"Maybe this isn't a great time, but… no, never mind."

Richard looked at her hopefully. "What?"

Max hesitated. "What about Phase Two?"

On my son? On my fucking son? Richard wanted to scream at Max. He had wanted to scream at the doctors, too. All the money in the world, and he was helpless. Almost helpless.

"I'm sorry I brought it up," Max said.

"No," said Richard, taking a breath. "It's… it's a good idea. What the hell have I been sinking all of this money into The Lab for, after all?" Richard chewed on his lip, thinking. "How long would it take to get going?"

"We could have it ready by the time he gets out of here. I have to warn you, it's experimental. All of our models show that it will work, but if something goes wrong..."

"Get it ready," said Richard. "Don't put anything in him yet. I want him to understand what it is."

Even as they had been demonstrating the Link to the employees of Solenoid, The Lab had been working on an implanted version. Phase Two could reproduce every sense except sight: touch, heat, pressure, taste, smell, the feeling of your own weight. The old Phase One helmets could manage a little stimulation, enough for a smell or the warmth of a hand, but Max had switched that part off before the early-access release. The retail Link would only read intention. They were leaving the stimulation hardware out of the consumer model altogether.

Putting the interface inside the skull gave them much finer control. They had tested it in animals and had a good deal of data, but they had never asked a person what it felt like. Richard wanted to ask his son. He wanted Atom to tell him to go ahead, and had to remind himself that the boy might not want to.

A communication specialist came the next afternoon with a card of letters and a list of questions. Richard read too fast and she made him slow down. Atom wanted to know if he would be able to talk to Soph. He wanted them to go over the risks again, and then again. When they got to the question about taking the implant out, the specialist wouldn't let Richard skip ahead.

They needed three sessions. During one of them Atom shut his eyes and refused to open them until Richard left. Max found Richard in the corridor afterward, and let him be angry for a while.

Rat lay down in her bed, lights off. She didn't need to lie down, and she didn't need the lights off– the light field projectors and occlusive lenses in her frames did a good job of blocking out the outside world. But the Link was surprisingly sensitive, and she found it easiest to manipulate her character when she lay motionless, free of distraction, in the dark.

To accommodate the Link, Solenoid had added a new realm called Alius, accessible only to ghosts– which was what the community had dubbed players connected with the Link, since they appeared transparent and intangible in the real world. Alius was a training ground, although it contained a full complement of quests, a handful of new monsters and rare item drops. It had a Great Mountain, and a temple, and a dragon.

Her body twitched as she mouthed silent phrases. Occasionally she would jerk violently, but the cabin was quiet. A bar of moonlight lay across the floor. In Alius she was sneaking around large boulders, playing cat and mouse.

A couple of arrows aimed at the dragon's heart, a dodge and roll to avoid a blast of blue flame, endless weaving through the rocks. Rinse and repeat. Her screen flashed red as she was nearly engulfed in flames. Far too close, she thought. Two hours of tracking and two hours of combat. One misstep and she'd die and have to start over from the temple.

The dragon was different from anything down below. It was patient, and it waited for her to commit. It went up when she wanted it down and came down while she was reloading. She had watched every video anyone had ever posted of a raid on it, twelve players and a great deal of dying, and she had decided that all of them were doing it wrong. They stood and fought, and you didn't stand and fight a dragon. You wore it out and made it angry, made it fly when it didn't want to fly and land where it didn't want to land, and when it was finally on the ground breathing hard with its neck stretched out, you were already there.

Finally the dragon fell to the ground, her huge neck writhing and breathing blue fire in anger. Rat unsheathed her knife, snuck around behind the dragon and climbed up onto her back. Being able to jump on top of a creature was one of the experimental new features in Alius. Pretty cool, Rat thought, as the head came around at her and missed. She dodged the flailing head and the feeble arms and plunged her dagger into the dragon's neck at the base of the skull.

The dragon slumped forward in defeat, and was still.

Rat lay on the dead dragon for a while, breathing. Then she pulled up her inventory. She'd never seen Aether Dragon Essence on the market, but it had to be worth something.

Inside the dragon's cave she found a small pile of gold and an ornate lockbox. The gold was pretty insignificant, especially for a dragon, but the lockbox glowed a gentle blue. She tried to pick the lock but failed. Must be a pretty high level item, thought Rat. She was going to need to find a keymaster.

Rat put the lockbox in her inventory and began the long journey back to the Aether Temple. The temple was the worship place of the Aether God, and the priests of the Order of the Blue Flame resided therein. They were the keepers of the Inside Portal– according to lore, Alius existed outside and everything else was inside. It was the kind of thing Solenoid's writers came up with at two in the morning, and nobody, including the writers, had ever fully explained it.

The temple was large but austere. The walls were made of smooth black stone, and candelabra hung from the ceiling and cast pale blue shadows against the large columns that lined the main hall. A man stood at the end of the hall, silent and regal.

Rat walked down the hall.

"Hello, my child. Have you come to pray?" the priest asked.

"No. I need your help."

"Ah my child, I am merely a vessel of the Gods."

"I need you to open this box for me." Rat held the lockbox out before him.

"Have you come to pray?"

Rat grimaced. Either the AI didn't understand her or she was going to have to do something she didn't enjoy doing. Praying to any God, real or imaginary, was definitely not her style.

"Sure, whatever," Rat said.

"Is that a yes?"

"Yes."

"Good." The priest smiled. "Put the box there, on the altar." Rat walked over to the place he pointed to and put the box down.

"Kneel before the altar and pray to Vell'os. Pray to her, God of The Aether and keeper of all that is outside, mother of all that is inside."

Rat kneeled as the priest mumbled incomprehensible Latin. At the end of the hall a hidden door opened and a man entered. Rat examined his nameplate.

The keymaster wore a massive metal chain around his neck to which a great mass of keys were attached. He walked over to the altar and kneeled next to Rat. After a minute he thumbed through the keys on the chain and picked a small one, with an end shaped like the profile of a dragon. He placed the key into the keyhole of the lockbox and it unfolded like a flower and disappeared. A glowing blue eye hovered in its place.

Rat tried to search the item database for it, but nothing came up. It had a purple nameplate, indicating that it was Legendary– a title reserved for the rarest and most expensive items in the game. Her dagger was the only other legendary item she had ever possessed. She took the eye, and in her hand it became a small scepter, a rod of black metal with the eye set on top of it, looking at her. She stood up and turned to the priest.

"Do you have any other quests for me?"

The priest smiled. "You've defeated the great dragon. I have no other quests for you."

"What does it do?"

"You've defeated the great dragon. I have no other quests for you."

"Yeah. Okay."

She walked out of the temple into the blue light. Up on the mountain the dragon lay dead, waiting to respawn. Rat was the first player to have killed it alone. She checked the combat log twice before she let herself believe it.