“Quality assurance purposes.” The goblin puckers his lips.
“Seriously? Let her drink it first!”
“Fine, fine, Marbles,” he grumbles, “have it your way.”
Ryuk places the straw between her parched lips. “Drink, Tamana.” Her throat twitches as her lips go to work. The blood on her face begins to pixilate as the bruises disappear and a halo of light settles around her head.
“Ryuk?” Tears form at the corner of her eyes. “It’s you.”
Chapter 19: Digital memories
“There, got it!” Hiccup pops the cuffs off and stands. “These fickers will get us in a lot of trouble if we don’t get them the hell out of here.”
“What do you want us to do?” Ryuk asks, completely panic-stricken.
“Zaena, tell the hostelier whatever the fick his name was to arrange an EBAYmazon express dragon to pick this up and take it, oh where’s a good place to send it? … I know! Send it to the Cape of Chukchis, to this dragon I know that goes by the name of Mirror – that’ll give those dirty chuckleficks a run for their rupees! I’d better write her a letter.”
The Mitherfickers’ designated lockpick scuttles to the writing desk packed into the corner of the room. He selects a sheet of Hostel Mondegreen writing parchment and produces a fluorescent green anti-zombie tactical survival pen. Using the seat as his writing surface, Hiccup scribbles a quick message in the vertical Thulean script.
Once he has finished, Zaena ghost limbs the scroll into the air and gives it a quick read. She stifles a laugh. “You want her to swallow it?”
“You know, Liz, that message was supposed to be private. And yes, I want her to swallow it, just to really give the Shinigami their money’s worth if they try to track Marbles’ main squeeze over there.”
“My what?” Ryuk grunts.
“And why did you call the dragon sweetheart?” Zaena asks.
“That’s none of your goddamn business!”
“I remember you,” Tamana says softly. “You’re the goblin from our guild. Hiccup? Or was it Burp?”
“Fick me to tears.” Hiccup throws his hands up in the air. “Looks like I just became a babysitter of four instead of three,” he mumbles as he returns to the bed and grabs the handcuffs and the healing potion. “If I had a rupee for every time someone called me a bodily function … ”
She gives him a confused look.
“For your information, Tammy, Hiccup is a shortened version of the ancient Thulean word, hiccupanaratapana, which means, ‘a sword which has had one side of its hilt broken off yet has maintained its balance and is actually a better weapon because of it.’ Another interpretation could be: ‘a sudden change that seems like it will greatly affect you but doesn’t turn out as bad as it seems.’ Kind of like our little shitshow here, and if I might add, my addition to the group.” He clears his throat and straightens an invisible tie. “All right, I need to get back to Twixy to make sure he doesn’t lose all our fickin’ money. We were up, bigly, and I’d like to see it stay that way. Have the cuffs and the message delivered and Ryuk … ”
“Yes?”
“Prepare my bed. I’ll need more pillows than that and I want the bed furthest away from the Thulean, just in case she tries something funny.”
“If I wanted you dead, you’d already be dead,” Zaena reminds him.
“Good to know. See you kiddos in a bit.” With a middle finger salute, Hiccup dematerializes, the healing potion gripped tightly in his free hand.
(0)__(0)
With the goblin gone, Ryuk returns his attention to Tamana. His words run together as he explains who Zaena is and their guild’s efforts to find Tamana. He hardly gives her a moment to respond with anything aside from a nod. He’s never this garrulous, but seeing her has filled his heart with hope. The pain of watching his best friend die still scrabbles at his consciousness, but it’s easier to ignore now that she’s here.
Zaena reenters the room. “The package will be picked up in five minutes or less. I’ll, um … ” She glances from Ryuk, who is on the floor sitting on his knees, to Tamana. “I’ll join the others and give you two some privacy.”
“It’s okay … ” Tamana starts to say, but Zaena is gone before she can finish her reply.
“Sorry, I’ve been rambling too,” Ryuk tells her. “I want to know exactly what happened.”
Something flashes across Tamana’s eyes. Her brow furrows and she bites her lip, reliving the memory in an instant. “I logged out, you know, right after we beat those trolls. I was in my dorm room and the walls started to come apart. A gyunsakhai, remember those things?”
“How can I forget land dragons?” They’d fought several in Ultima Thule. Wingless and always bad-tempered, the creatures were an amalgamation of dragon, giraffe, and hippo.
“One tore through the wall of my dorm room. I started running and made it outside, but then it burst out the window and crash-landed on the streets below. I saw it eat someone! I was trying to message you, I think I messaged you.”
“You did.”
“It chased me and I thought I could kill it with the subway train. Stupid, I know, but I just had this feeling that I could make it to other side before it did and kill it.”
“But how did you know the train would come at that time?”
“I take that train twice a week; I’ve memorized the schedule. So I tried, I leapt and … ” She tries to recall how it played out. “I didn’t feel a thing. I just woke up on the chaise in our guild, like I was having an in-game dream or something. As soon as I did, someone pulled a black bag over my head and struck me with a blunt instrument, which knocked me down to two or three HP. I was cuffed, and lifted over someone’s shoulder. As all this was happening, prompts from the Proxima Company came to me, letting me know that I successfully had become an RPC. Reborn Player Character … ” Tears return to her eyes. “I still can’t believe it, I still feel like I can just lift my finger and log out! Imagine what it’s like to not be able to log out!”
“I can only imagine.”
“As I was being dragged away, a video of the final minutes of my life auto-played and I saw, through other people’s live iNet feeds as well as the subway surveillance feeds that I jumped in front of the train. Then my own iNet feed played, showing me push through the crowd, jump, and ...” she rubs her hand over her eyes, “getting struck by the train. It was horrible!”
After a moment of silence Ryuk says, “I should probably tell you about the research Hajime has done regarding real world attacks that stem from the Proxima Galaxy. All have come from Tritania, specifically from resetters.”
“All are coming from Tritania?”
“That’s right, and you aren’t the only one who was attacked. I too had one of these experiences. I was in my bedroom when a Thulean warrior appeared and attacked me. If it hadn’t been for Hajime, I don’t know what I would have done.”
“Has anything happened since?”
“No, it hasn’t. But NPCs are trying to come to our world, and something about being a resetter is triggering it. We need to speak to Sophia, or anyone in the upper echelons of the Knights of Non Compos Mentis about this. They’ll know what to do.”
Tamana nods in agreement. “We’ll have to get to Polynya first, and I’m thirteen levels away.”
“There’s no way to get a message to her?” He shakes his head incredulously. “Surely there’s a way for us to do that.”
“We need to do this in person. It is too sensitive to try to send via carrier, or through another player. No, we need to get there.”
As she fixes her white hair, pulling it back over her elven ears, a question floats to the front of Ryuk’s mind. “While you were imprisoned, did you see or hear anything that could help us fight the Shinigami? I know you said your head was covered, but did you maybe hear something?”