Titus looked around the room as if waiting for something, then sighed.
“No upbeat rock song? No quick cuts to all of us killing countless mobs as our levels skyrocket? Dang.” He huffed. “I guess that means we’re doing this the hard way. One level at a time.”
“The hard way, certainly,” Zelda said. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t do it the smart way, too. We don’t have time to waste just mindlessly grinding. Being max level won’t count for anything if we don’t have the allies to storm Warden HQ, so we should do both at once, or as much as we can.”
“Like we did when preparing to attack the freighter,” Kaiden said, thinking back to their strategy then. “Everywhere we go, we pick up as many missions as possible, then complete them while en route to where we need to be next.”
“Exactly,” Zelda said. “But this isn’t a few levels we’re talking about. We need to max our characters. We need to be on this grind hard.”
“All right, then.” Kaiden nodded. “Sleep is for the weak anyway, right? We’ll push through until we hit max level. That’s only one part of the solution, though. We still need to find allies. Other players crazy enough to attack Warden HQ with us – and a lot of them.”
“Bernstein had some names in the database, didn’t he?” Titus asked, gesturing toward the hard drive containing it. “A list of potential allies?”
“Some names of sympathetic individuals, some notes on powerful players he thought might be able to help, even some contact info for them, but nothing concrete,” Kaiden said, remembering what Zelda had shown him. “It looked more like the result of a brainstorming session, but I don’t think he made much headway on it.”
“That’s a good start, though,” Thorne said, leaning forward. “We can work with that. Who’d he list?”
Zelda pulled up the database on her handheld console, opened her mouth to speak, then stopped. She squinted at Thorne with suspicion.
“We’re literally talking over the specifics of this plan in a bunker I own,” Thorne said, rolling her eyes. “The database is here and so are you. If I wanted to call in the Party, don’t you think I’d have already done it?”
She has a point. Again. Kaiden was getting awful tired of that being the case.
“This is all happening very quickly,” he said, looking at Zelda, then Titus. And finally, Thorne. “You were the enemy for so long, it’s hard to think of you as an ally now.”
“Exactly,” Zelda said, then shook her head as if pushing away the thought. “Trust isn’t an easy thing to just hand out. Not after what we’ve been through.”
“I get it,” Thorne said, and her expression said as much, for whatever that was worth. “But I can’t help you if we’re not all on the same page.”
Kaiden looked to Zelda. She met his eyes, and he nodded. She sighed, then did the same.
“There are four groups whose support must be won in order to take Custos by force,” she said, reading from Bernstein’s notes. “The first is Maximus.”
“Yeah, that makes sense,” Thorne said. “Top PVP guild in the game. If you showed up to a battle with them at your back, you wouldn’t just be bringing fighters. You’d be bringing the most experienced PVPers.”
“That sounds real good to me,” Titus chimed in. “Everything is easier when you have the proper muscle backing you up. But how do we set up a meeting with the head honcho? He’s the one we have to convince if we want them with us.”
“Any chance you have a back channel or something?” Zelda asked Thorne.
“I’ve got nothing,” she said with a shake of her head. “Shackled a few of his boys over the years – mostly when their PVP battles got out of hand – but beyond that, I might as well be a stranger to them.”
“They have recruitment officers listed on their guild website,” Kaiden said, searching with his own handheld console. “We can friend one in-game and reach out.”
“It’s not ideal, but it’ll have to do.” Zelda looked down to Bernstein’s notes again. “The second group we need on our side is the free wardens.”
“Ooh, now that one I can do,” Thorne said, leaning forward again. “They aren’t organized or anything, but I’ve seen plenty of wardens graduate out of the program. Can pull up contact info for most of them, too. I know a few of them resent the Party, even if they did complete the program. With a bit of prying, I’d wager I could uncover more than a few whose interests would align with ours.”
“Now we’re talking!” Kaiden said. Considering the daunting obstacles ahead, a bit of progress was a huge relief. “But we have to be careful. If any are loyal to the Party, they could blow the whole plan.”
“I’m not going to tell them specifics,” Thorne said as if that should have been obvious. “Not until it’s too late for the Party to react, at least. Do you know how many operations I’ve set up where secrecy was essential? Trust me on this one, Kaiden.”
‘Trust’ is a word getting thrown around an awful lot these past few days.
“The third group is, well, not a group at all, but a single player,” Zelda interrupted before Kaiden had a chance to respond. “I’ve heard of him before: ‘Odditor.’ Wasn’t aware he ran any factions, though. And Bernstein didn’t list, or didn’t know, which they were. All the links to them in the database point to empty folders.”
Odditor? What kind of player name is that? Kaiden wondered. Though, to be fair, when it came to anonymous online accounts, people had a penchant for coming up with the strangest names. In comparison to some he’d seen, ‘Odditor’ was pretty tame.
“Who is this guy?” Titus asked. “And what does he do that makes him important enough to be on the same list as the top PVP guild and free wardens?”
“Odditor is kind
