“Some of my best work,” she admitted.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Lilli asked.
“Um, have you ever watched a superhero movie? Clark Kent does not tell people he’s Superman. No one knows Batman is really that rich dork Bruce Wayne.”
“True,” I considered. I looked around the room. “Does that make this the Batcave?” Despite the vampire-chic décor, it was filled with computer equipment.
“Where all the magic happens,” she agreed, wheeling herself over to a terminal.
“This is so weird,” Lilli exclaimed. “So you’re friends with Maddy?”
“Yup. We originally met online playing Fields of Fantasy. But now we hang out all the time. She’s awesome, isn’t she? And her artwork is amazing.”
“Totally,” I agreed.
“So wait,” Lilli said, shaking her head. “You’re friends with Maddy and then you end up randomly getting partnered with us in Mech Ops? That’s, like, the smallest-world thing I ever heard!”
To my surprise, Starr smiled smugly. “Well, maybe,” she said. “Or, maybe I was on a secret mission?”
“Wait. What?” I asked, realization dawning on me. “You don’t mean…”
Starr held up her hands to stop me. “Look, Maddy was worried about you two. You were acting all weird, talking about emergencies. She knew I was planning to try out for the beta test and asked me to keep an eye on you to make sure you were safe.”
I couldn’t believe it. “So you’ve been babysitting us this whole time?” I asked, not knowing how I felt about that.
“Calm down, Lord Wildhammer,” Starr said with a laugh. “I’m no one’s babysitter. And it wasn’t until I met you that I put two and two together and realized you were the Dragon Ops kids. Which made the job all that much cooler.” She grinned.
“If you say so,” I muttered, though after Starr’s revelation, nothing would have surprised me.
“Anyway, I’m glad you’re here,” Starr continued. “It’s safer here than Maddy’s. It’ll take them a while to track you down. Which will give us more time to find your friend and get her out. According to your dragon, we’re running out of time.”
“What?”
“After you guys dropped and before I got booted myself, your dragon got some kind of message. I don’t know what it was, but he seemed really upset. He said if you didn’t find a way to get back online soon, it might be too late to save your friend.”
I gulped. What had Yano found out? Had Josh followed through with his threat to tell his grandpa about our mission? Was he planning to move Ikumi out of the game? To somewhere we could never find her?
I pulled my VR rig from my back and set it on the table, beginning to reassemble it. “What are we waiting for? We need to get back in.”
“Unfortunately, it’s not that simple,” Starr interjected. “Our accounts are now disabled. Which means you can’t get back in as yourselves.”
“Ugh.” I set down my helmet, discouraged. I probably should have known that was coming. “So what do we do?”
Starr tapped her fingers on her desk. “We’re going to borrow other accounts. While you were on your way here, I took the liberty of hacking the company’s databases and pulling out a list of names and passwords. We can log in as them and keep playing until they realize what we’ve done. Then we simply move on to the next name on the list.”
“Sweet,” I said. How cool was Starr—I mean, Alpha Burn? Then an idea occurred to me. “Can we play high-level characters?”
“Preferably ones that don’t wear dresses and boots instead of armor?” Lilli added hopefully.
Starr swung back to her computer, typing furiously. A moment later, she turned back to us with a triumphant smile. “Done and done,” she declared. “Lilli, you are now an eighty-level baddie with cybernetic-enhanced body armor. A tank couldn’t get through your new skin.”
“Yes!” Lilli crowed. “That’s more like it!”
“And you, Ian, are now specced for stealth. You can sneak, you can lock-pick, you can hack computers and control robots.” She grinned. “Also, we can all fly. I’m sick of waiting around for you guys to catch up to me.”
“Nice,” I said, my hopes rising as I grabbed my helmet again. Finally, we had a fighting chance.
“And we’re back here. Again.”
I groaned as I looked around. We were back in the game and back to our old familiar starting zone. The dumpy apocalyptic warehouse we all knew, but didn’t love.
“Awesome,” Lilli muttered. Then she looked down at her new body. “Oh, awesome,” she added—not sarcastically this time—when she saw her cool shining silver armor. It molded to her body perfectly and had little green circuit lights dancing across it, as if she were literally electric. “Now, this is more like it!”
I looked down at myself. I was pretty cool, too. Dressed in thick leather with an actual electric whip like a cyber Indiana Jones. I even had a set of keys dangling from my belt for lock-picking. Pretty sweet.
Lilli ran over to the shipping container to let Yano out—once more with feeling. As our three-headed friend emerged, he looked at us doubtfully. “Um, who are you?”
“It’s us, Yano,” Lilli assured him. “Lilli, Ian, and Starr.” She explained the reason for the different looks—and powers.
“Well, bully for you!” he declared. “And what an improvement. Lilli, luv, you even have armor now! How utterly practical.”
Lilli snorted. “I know, right?”
“All right, people,” Starr interrupted. “Well, people and dragons,” she amended, nodding at Yano. “Let’s gather up and make a plan. We don’t know how long these identities will work before they cut us off again.”
We huddled together, Yano sticking all three heads in our circle and making it more than a little crowded.
“So how are we going to do this again?” Lilli asked. “We still don’t have a key. And there’s no way to get back into Appleby’s fortress without Josh.”
My heart sank. I’d been so excited about getting back
