Kaiden began to reply, but she’d already peeled her face off the window and disappeared out of sight toward the engine room.
“That’s more like it,” Titus said as a pleasant ding sounded and the rings around his med station opened and retracted. “Good as new.” He stood and stretched.
Kaiden’s own station dinged as well. He confirmed his health was back to one hundred percent, then stood and shook his arms out. Being in a game meant his body didn’t actually feel tired or sore, but his mind expected it to, and some mannerisms were hard to forget.
“Now that that’s done, back to the matter at hand,” Thorne said, drawing everyone’s attention back to her. “Werner being in-game means the Party is feeling the heat. They want to get that database back ASAP.”
“And Marty confirmed The Syndicate exists,” Kaiden said. “The turen told you guys pretty much the same, just labeled with a different name.”
“The Pansophists,” Zelda said with a nod.
“I like your theory, though.” Kaiden began to pace. Always helped him think better. “The Syndicate, or the Pansophists, or whatever, have to be a group of players, right? I mean, it just makes sense. It’s… how’d you put it, Thorne?”
“Like a big, secret guild of players,” she said. “Just taken to the next level. A guild where you have to be powerful just to join. Lead a guild of your own, or own a solar system. You know, real power. Well, real fake power. But real power in-game.”
“There’s no difference,” Zelda said. “Real power, fake power? It doesn’t matter. Every advantage we can gain in-game gets us one step closer to the All-Frequencies Broadcast System which, coupled with Bernstein’s in-game database, can bring down the Party. That’s real power. Some may say being important in Nova doesn’t mean anything in the real world, but right now, it might just mean everything.” She looked around the room. “We need allies. Powerful allies, so we can make a real difference in the world.”
It’s a good point. Maybe in the past Nova was just a game, but now? Well, now it just might overthrow a government. Might make a better world for everyone.
“We need allies...” Kaiden said, working his way through things as he spoke. “But Maximus is a dead end. Odditor has unreasonable demands. And The Syndicate, well, we don’t even know where to find them.” He stopped pacing abruptly. “But what if we already found one of them?”
Thorne made a show of looking around dramatically.
“It’s not any one of us, so unless you’re accusing Acton of secretly being part of some shadowy, might-not-actually-exist organization of gods, who are you talking about?”
“PlayaSlaya,” Kaiden said. “Leader of the biggest PVP guild in-game. Everyone knows his name and he’s one of the strongest players in Nova.”
“Things didn’t exactly go so well the last time we tried this route,” Thorne said. “I mean, Titus almost got…”
Kaiden cringed, preparing for Titus’ anger at the memory.
“Maximus turned us away because they’re a bunch of PVP-obsessed punks,” Titus said, and there was no anger in his voice. Or, at least, far less than Kaiden had suspected. If anything, the big man sounded like he was thinking through a plan. “But they also turned us away because we were too low-level, right?”
“Being max level is important for PVP,” Thorne said with a shrug.
“We don’t need max level,” Titus said, the beginnings of a smirk pulling at his lips. “We just need level fifty.”
“Why’s that?”
“Those punks we met on Kyraxis, they said Maximus run PVP tournaments, right?” Titus was full on smiling now. “I’ve been thinking about this since. Didn’t think it was the right time – we were going to meet Odditor, then look into The Syndicate – but now, well, no better time than the present. If we hit level fifty, we can all enter in Maximus’ PVP tournament.”
“Okay…” Thorne said, apparently still not following.
“If one of us can win that tournament, we’ll have earned a meeting, or at least a conversation with PlayaSlaya. And if we think there’s even the slightest chance that he’s in The Syndicate – assuming it does exist – then we need to talk to him.”
“You sure this isn’t about getting back at those jerks?” Zelda asked.
“Never said it wasn’t,” Titus said and cracked his knuckles. A moment later, he shrugged. “But two birds with one stone, yeah? Whether The Syndicate does or doesn’t exist, we still want PlayaSlaya on our side.”
“Can’t say I fault the logic,” Kaiden said, mulling over Titus’ point. Sure, he likely wanted to go back and kick Nassus’ ass, but there was more to it than that. Nothing they learned about The Syndicate had changed the fact that they needed PlayaSlaya as an ally if they were going to take on Warden HQ. Uncovering The Syndicate could help them if they managed it, but so would completing Odditor’s labyrinth and winning his support. And so would finding themselves a massive army. And unlimited funds. And a dozen other things. Kaiden shook his head at the monumental tasks ahead of them.
“We might be trying to do too much at once,” he said to the group. “There’s a ton of stuff we have to accomplish before we go after Warden HQ. The simple fact of the matter is that we want PlayaSlaya or Odditor by our side. Preferably both. What else we might need we still don’t know, but those two we’re set on. So, let’s focus on them.” He looked to Titus. “I like the tournament idea. That’s a surefire way to PlayaSlaya if we can
