“You’re at the LLI?”
“Just popped out,” James confirmed. Csongor glanced over to see that Marlon too was once again fully engaged with his computer.
“Then I’ll lead him to you.” And Csongor typed into the chat window:
Lottery Discountz: Follow me, sir.
To which the moneychanger responded immediately with “K,” that being the chat abbreviation for the unwieldy two-letter message “OK.”
This LLI was a busy one, an area about the size and shape of a cricket oval surrounded by market stalls mostly occupied by small-time moneychangers. Upward of a hundred characters were scattered around it, some just standing there alone, others gathered in social clusters, still others engaged in duels that were frequently accompanied by spectacular magical light shows. Lottery Discountz stumbled to a halt in the middle of it and turned around several times.
Dogshaker: Is that them?
He turned to look the way Dogshaker was looking and identified Reamde and Thorakks coming their way. He replied with a Y, but Dogshaker was already running toward them. Csongor ran after. Their chat window went through some kind of reconfiguration: apparently the moneychanger had added the newcomers to the chat list, so that they could all see one another’s messages. This drew Csongor’s attention for a few moments. Another one of those crazy light shows flourished on the screen: some high-level character, locked in a duel, must be invoking a powerful spell.
“O M G,” said Marlon out loud.
Csongor looked at the screen. The ground was dropping out from beneath Lottery Discountz’s feet. Something was lifting him into the air. The others were coming with him.
James just laughed ruefully. “Oh man,” he finally said, “we are so fucked.”
Reamde, Thorakks, and Lottery Discountz were all together, standing on something translucent and bluish white, a platform that seemed to be about a hundred meters in the air above the ley line intersection. Csongor turned his point of view around and was startled to see a giant face glowering down at them. Utterly confused, he zoomed way out so that he could see his character from a greater distance.
He now perceived that he and Reamde and Thorakks were literally in the palm of a hand the size of a tennis court. The hand belonged to a towering, godlike figure standing like a colossus above the city of Carthinias, one foot planted at the ley line intersection, the other about a kilometer away near the Exchange.
Having gotten over his initial astonishment, Marlon was now furiously hitting keys, apparently trying to invoke various spells. Bubbles of light bloomed around his hands, but each was snuffed out by some sort of counterspell from the giant figure. Csongor finally had the presence of mind to mouse over the giant’s head and learned that this was a character named Egdod.
“Asshole,” Egdod proclaimed in a voice that once again obliged all three players to grope in panic for their volume knobs, “I could just kill you and take the gold—if that was what I wanted.”
Marlon sat back in despair and clapped his hands to the side of his head.
“Let’s go somewhere a little more private,” Egdod continued, and Csongor noticed that cloud formations were zipping past them, moving downward. He shifted his point of view down and saw that Carthinias was dropping away beneath Egdod’s sandaled feet. He was taking them up into the air like a Saturn V. Lottery Discountz’s health indicators were dropping at least as rapidly as their altitude was rising: hypoxia and hypothermia, as it turned out, being the main culprits. But then he noted that spells were being cast on him—and presumably the others too— such as “Heavenly Warmth” and “Breath of the Gods,” and his indicators began to climb again.
“Aiyaa!” Marlon exclaimed, having moved his hands around to cover his face altogether.
“Let me hear your voices,” Egdod commanded.
James, Csongor, and Marlon all reached for their headsets and slipped them on. Meanwhile, Egdod was explaining: “I’ll go through with the transaction just as I said. But first I want to hear everything you know about Zula.”
“I know nothing,” James announced, and a moment later Thorakks said the same thing in a different voice.
“I’ll deal with you later, Seamus Costello!” Egdod thundered.
Csongor, Marlon, and Yuxia all turned to look at “James,” who was blushing vividly.
Marlon knew more than Seamus, but he was still too taken aback—and perhaps exhausted—to speak coherently. He looked across the cafe at Csongor.
“Okay,” Csongor said. “The story so far.” And he launched into an account of what had transpired in Xiamen two weeks ago. Richard Forthrast (for Csongor had googled Egdod and learned that the owner of this godlike character was none other) knew a surprising amount about the safe house that Ivanov had set up in Xiamen and about the cast of characters. Csongor couldn’t guess how he might have come by that information and did not want to interrupt the narrative to ask. Until, that is, Richard said, “You must be the Eastern European hacker.”
“We think of ourselves as Central European,” said Csongor. “How did you know of me?”
“Zula mentioned you in her note.”
This silenced Csongor for long enough that Seamus had to break in and explain, “We’re still on the line, big guy… he’s just taking that in.”
“You have heard from Zula!?” Csongor finally exclaimed, exchanging a wild look with Marlon and Yuxia.
“She wrote a note,” Richard said regretfully, “before it all went down. Nothing since then, unfortunately.”
Having allowed his hopes to rise, Csongor had now to observe another silence as his spirits plunged. He looked up to see Seamus giving him a knowing look. “Well then,” Csongor finally said, and he went on to relate a brief account of the storming of the apartment building, Zula’s trick with the fusebox, and how that had all played out.
Richard listened in silence until a certain point in the story when he said, “So Peter is dead.”
“Yes,” Csongor said gently.
“You’re sure of this.”
“Absolutely sure.”
“Well, that is a shame,” Richard said, “and sooner or later I’ll get around to feeling like crap about it. But right now—focusing on practical matters—it is a problem for me because it prevents me from pursuing the only independent lead I have.”
“What lead is that?” Seamus demanded.
“Peter had surveillance cameras in his apartment. They probably recorded video of what went down there the night Wallace was killed and Peter and Zula were abducted. Unfortunately, those files were erased. Later, though, someone came back—probably an accomplice to the original crime—and got caught on video. I have a copy of the file. Unfortunately, it’s encrypted. I was hoping I could get the decryption key. But if Peter’s dead—”
“Hold on for a moment,” Csongor said. For Ivanov’s leather man-purse was sitting on the floor between his feet. The money had been stolen from it, but Peter’s and Zula’s wallets and other personal effects were still in there, sealed up in Ziploc bags. In a few moments, he was able to get Peter’s wallet out and find a certain compartment, sealed behind a tiny zipper, with a scrap of paper inside.
Something moved on the screen, and he noted that they had been joined by another character named Clover—apparently an invited guest of Egdod’s.
Five lines had been written on the paper. Each began with what was apparently the name of a computer and ended with what was obviously a password.
“Do you have a hostname or something for the system you are trying to crack?”
Clover answered: “This was not a server per se, just a backup drive on a network.”
“Brand name Li-Fi, by any chance?”
“The same.”
“Then here is the password,” Csongor announced and read out the corresponding series of symbols.
“On it,” said Clover, and then became still, a sure sign that its owner—whoever he was—was tending to something other than playing T’Rain.
“Pray continue,” Richard said, and so Csongor went on telling the story. He got some assistance now from Marlon, who was able to relate parts of it that Csongor had not seen or during which he had been unconscious. But
