The Destroying Plague Read online

  The point is that if you wanted to live somewhere, even in Cali Bottom or Gaian Basin, you had to pay. Even something small, like the room in which Trixie and her grandpa lived, cost thirty six phoenixes a month, but you needed a capsule to legally earn in Dis.

  You could rent a non-citizen type capsule at Snowstorm if you had a registered place of residence. And if you spend at least twelve hours a day online, you don’t even have to pay for it. But could you call that living? Spending half your life on hard labor in Dis, another third on sleep, and the rest of the time in a crowded closet, living off universal nutrient blends. As far as I remembered, Cali Bottom didn’t even have sidewalks. The residents went out for walks on the roof. The kids spent their time there too, deprived even of a basic education and unable to go into Disgardium until they came of age.

  “The Zones have their own laws, Alex,” Manny continued. “The authorities don’t get involved there, they don’t care. The police? Ha-ha, don’t make me laugh. At first they tried to send mech cops in there, but after our boys put down a couple of the rustbuckets, they stopped. To the authorities, all Cali Bottom and the lives of its people,” Manny raised a finger, “are worth less than one police mech.”

  “What does this have to do with Scyth?” Crawler asked impatiently. “You suggesting he hide with you guys?”

  “Maybe let me finish and find out,” the miner brigadier said in annoyance. “What I’m getting at is that your rich kid players don’t venture into the Zones. The Eye doesn’t work there either. And if you have money, then you can set yourself up a nice life with us. Diego Aranzabal lives in our neck of the woods. A bastard and a half but made a nice living off kidnapping. Not personally, of course. All kinds of drug addicts work for him, stealing citizen kids and demanding ransoms. If they get caught, they don’t give up Diego, because they don’t know his real names. If it all works out, then Diego gets tens of thousands of dark phoenixes.”

  That was the name of the cryptocurrency created in opposition to the official one. But something else bothered me — why was Manny talking about all this so calmly?

  “That monster should be turned in! You know where he lives?”

  “Alex…” Manny frowned. “He pays off high officials in the police and the peacekeepers to protect him. They have their own families too, and high fences won’t stop the Damned — sooner or later one of them will get through.

  The Damned was a name for certain desperate non-citizens. They were used for a guaranteed assassination, in exchange for a promise of support for their families. Another city legend that just became a reality for me. I remembered flying into Cali Bottom so carelessly… What an idiot I was!

  “And anyway…” Manny continued. “Get rid of one monster and another rises to take his place. At least this one isn’t insane. He returns his victims alive and unharmed. If the families pay, of course. Anyway, you won’t prove anything. Like I say, the police don’t care! And this isn’t even the point! The point is that inside the high-rises, the rich inwinovas build whole palaces! They buy up one, two sometimes even three whole floors at a time through phantom buyers. They knock down the walls, break through the ceilings and end up with mansions that would make your class A citizens blush! I haven’t seen it, but I’ve heard that Diego even has an eighty-foot pool in his! The less said about his lovers the better. He has a whole harem — half the girls in Cali Bottom dream of getting into that circle. Also, he has fighters in spades. Every resident of the anthill is at Diego’s beck and call, and they all have a gun. If he whistles, the neighboring buildings will come to help too. And Diego is far from the only one…”

  “So you’re suggesting we hide with you?”

  “Well, you don’t need a palace. But Gyula and I have already figured out a way to help you. You, and therefore us. Along with our families, there are around five hundred of us. We could use the same strategy to occupy a floor or two of one of the new buildings in the south of the city. Believe me, Gyula and his boys know how to build not only in Dis!” Hearing this, Gyula nodded, but remained at his table. “They’ll be able to fix it all up so that nobody can get close to getting in. Sorry that I’m sticking my nose in, but your boys were saying that Snowstorm showered you with a pile of money. What I mean is, you can afford it. If not in Cali Bottom, then there are plenty of other zones like it in the world…”

  “Life expectancy in zones like that is under sixty,” Bomber said in a mentoring tone, raising his hand and quoting Greg the teacher yet again. “The risk of cancerous illnesses… Oh, the Nether with it! It’s a great idea! I’m up for it! Manny, you gonna teach me to talk to your chicas? I want a harem like Diego!”

  “Dumbass,” Crawler chuckled. “But the idea is cool, I like it. Scyth?”

  I was thinking of Manny’s offer from all angles. I decided to delay the decision.

  “There’s no point talking about this before the citizenship tests. The money is frozen in Dis anyway…”

  Someone rose from the next table and approached us with an erratic, shuffling gait. Feeling safe, especially while in a group with Crag, I paid no attention, continuing to think over Manny’s idea.

  “The Destroying Plague says hello, traitor!” an unfamiliar voice rasped.

  Something pierced me in the neck and an icy cold quickly spread through my body. The sharp pain took my breath away, and I started gasping for air, unable to breathe in. Everything got numb, I lost sensitivity.

  Rick the miner (Ricardo Salazar) dealt damage to you: 0.

  Health: 67262/67262.

  You are infected!

  “What the hell, Rick?!” Manny shouted. The voices sounded as if far away. I heard the roar of a flying fireball and a scream of pain from a stranger burning alive.

  I smelled the sweet stench of rot. I retched and felt sick. Then I started to collapse to the floor. I felt as something inside was twisting, wrapping up my guts, and my mouth opened in a soundless scream from the pain. Zero damage couldn’t cause pain like this! It had to be the debuff! I read its description with my darkening gaze and went cold.

  Infection

  You are infected with the plague of the dead. After death, you will become a vassal of the Destroying Plague.

  —1% total health per second.

  The Nucleus of the Destroying Plague had found a way to take vengeance after all.

  Chapter 5. Fort Kharinza

  THE BOYS DIDN’T immediately realize that the Infection ticks were hurting them too. We were all in a group, and Crag’s Nergal’s Wrath reacted to the attack, but the debuff didn’t care about my suddenly increased stats — my health was dropping in percentages.

  I didn’t realize this when the mess started with the emissary of the Destroying Plague in the form of the worker Ricardo. We checked the damage logs and invulnerability mechanics later, the next day. Sleeping Invulnerability blindly absorbed a fifth of the damage and split the rest among the group: me, Crag, Crawler and Bomber. In spite of the latter’s boasting, my health wasn’t much lower than his due to the bonus stats from the adepts and for achievements. Thankfully, my friends were quick.

  With my Infection, I had no control over my body, so I told them in the chat to take me to the temple. The Sleeping God was our only hope in this situation, since there were no heals, and the cheap health potions Bomber was shoveling down my throat weren’t winning the battle with my dropping health. Amazingly, I was so used to the Destroying Plague that I didn’t even panic about losing my character. I just decided that since a deity had attacked me, then another might protect me.

  Behemoth felt something was wrong himself — he met us on the temple stairs. They handed me to him, and he took me to the altar, but left the others at the threshold. A little later I realized why — he didn’t want the adepts to see his weakness and vulnerability.

  Carefully, even gently placing me on the stone floor, he pressed on my stomach a few times hard, as if trying to resuscitate a drowned man. Behemoth pressed and pressed, and I lost count of the
presses and the time, focusing my darkening consciousness only on my remaining health. The bar slowly diminished, and the damage was no longer splitting among the group. There was no group now — my clanmates might have left on their own to avoid dying, or maybe Behemoth disbanded the group to avoid mixing up the Destroying Plague with Nergal’s gift and the magic of the Sleeping Gods.

  And it worked. Behemoth was literally pushing out the sickness. I felt nauseous, and a stinking, tar-like liquid with streaks of brown and green began to stream from my mouth, and then each breath brought forth clouds of oily soot and smoke, sent them streaming into Behemoth’s nose and mouth.

  That went on for a minute or two, and when it stopped, my body started to obey me again. The remnants of my weakness prevented me from sitting up. The Sleeping God sat nearby breathing heavily, hoarsely. I touched his shoulder in concern, but he shrugged my hand off and gestured for me to wait.

  The debuff hadn’t gone anywhere, but something in it had changed:

  Infection

  You are infected with the plague of the dead. After death, you will become a vassal of the Destroying Plague.

  The life bar slowly crept upwards. But the ticks hadn’t gone anywhere — they’d just changed their victim. Behemoth shivered every second, shook. I couldn’t see exactly whether he was losing health — the god didn’t have a health bar. But if such a creature was experiencing pain so great that he couldn’t hide it, then that definitely meant something.

  “We do not have much time,” he finally broke the silence. “It would not be difficult to get it completely out of you if you were an ordinary human. But you are extraordinary! You are the former emissary of this parasite! Its structure is interwoven with your energy signature, and to break them apart would be to kill you.”

  “But I watched that horrible stuff come out of me…”

  “The parasite cares not what it eats. I simply gave it another source of nourishment, a little bigger, and it switched to me, while still remaining in you.”

  “So I can’t die…”

  “You cannot. I know that you are aliens from another world and can revive in Disgardium. Death is never final for you. But you cannot die — the parasite has attached your soul fast to your body. If you die, you will not revive, the parasite will take over your body, and I will lose my Herald.”

  “Are there any ways to get rid of it?”

  Behemoth opened his mouth, his body shook, his legs bent. I helped him keep his balance by putting a shoulder under his arm just in time. He coughed heavily and spat out something anthracite and sticky. An acrid stream of smoke swam up from the stone floor.

  “There are…” he answered. “Tiamat is well versed in such weavings, and for her it will not be difficult to get the parasite out of you, I am sure. But she is too weak to materialize in this world.

  “How long can you hold it back?”

  “My strength is fading. Too little energy, Herald,” the god wheezed. “Too few adepts. Our faith is falling. We’re spending everything to resist the parasite. The Destroying Plague. We have enough energy for six days. I fear that in such a short time, you will not be able to summon Tiamat.”

  “What happens then?”

  “The parasite will kill you. But first it will transform my imprint in this world.

  “Sleeping God… These six days… Can we somehow extend them?”

  “As I said, the balance of our influx and outflow of faith is negative. However, the presence of dedicated adepts near the temple, their prayers… That should reduce the losses. The effectiveness of faith of the undedicated is not great, if you gather enough of such intelligent creatures and allow them to pray here… That too may help.

  “I know what to do, Sleeping God.”

  * * *

  A minute before midnight, the system warned me of a forced exit from Disgardium. That was no surprise — we weren’t allowed to spend too much time in the game on weekdays because the citizenship tests were so close. We’d gone out into the big adult world, but still lived by child’s rules. We would become formal adults only after the citizenship tests, regardless of whether we were successful or not.

  So we didn’t have time to discuss everything that was happening in Dis and all our plans. We’d stopped all communicator chatter for fears of our safety, so I went to sleep in a complete mess. I tossed and turned for a long time, racking my brain for ideas, and then I couldn’t help it — I got up and wrote an angry message to Snowstorm. I remembered that the victims of the Destroying Plague in Tristad were given hefty compensation, and as for me, Behemoth was right, I wasn’t an ordinary player.

  At school, I exchanged whispers with the former Dementors, but heard nothing concrete — they were still planning to hold a clan council in one of the family restaurants where the Awoken was born right after lessons. The whole school seethed with yesterday’s events. Nobody knew anything specific, and the wild theories of the other students made us laugh.

  Aaron “Robolover” Quan stood out in particular. He was going crazy over two things: Denise Le Bon and Modus. The boy compensated for not being the most active player with the successes of ‘his’ clan — he supported them as if a football team. Anyway, Aaron confidently claimed that he had access to a secret section of the Modus clan forum and knew the exact reason for the war with the Alliance of Preventers: a woman. Or more precisely: Denise Le Bon, over whose heart Hinterleaf and Horvac were warring.

  “I bet Denise is the whole reason,” Ed confirmed with an impassive face when Aaron went to him for support.

  “The problem is that she wants Glyph,” Hung added. “I read about that on the Azure Dragons fan forum. The info is solid, a Chinese guy I know confirmed it, a friend of someone from the clan…”

  The answer from the developers came in my last lesson. It was laconic: everything was within the bounds of gameplay, there were no additional rewards after the loss of a character since I’d already received them for my current Threat level. No anonymous messages from that highly-ranked member of Snowstorm came afterwards…

  After lessons, we applied to enter a child protection program. If we didn’t hang around in dangerous regions, then we didn’t have to worry about our safety thanks to the officials that were assigned to us. After the citizenship tests, which would also mean our exit from the program, we planned to move to Cali Bottom and set up a clan base there.

  Tobias was waiting for us in the Chinese restaurant on the shore. He was in disguise, but it seemed to me he was trying too hard, apparently inspired by the appearance of his dwarf: he wore a curly beard, a mustache and a baseball cap. Considering that he’d also completely shaved his head, the boy was drawing more attention rather than less. But it was hard to recognize Tobias in him, he’d done a good job there.

  “I used some cream to grow my hair quick. What do you think?

  We kept silent, holding back our smiles, and Tissa gave him two thumbs up.

  A waiter came, took our order, left. Ed glanced at me. I nodded and he spoke.

  “Remember me telling you about that worker that got bit in the mine? Here’s the thing. He was the one that infected you. I logged into Dis this morning to talk to Manny. According to him, the man claims to remember nothing. Just remembers sitting at the table, eating, drinking, talking and… boom! He’s standing by our table and burning alive. Bullshit, Alex. Either he’s just lying to avoid punishment, or he got a quest from the Destroying Plague…”

  “Or he really doesn’t remember it,” I said. “You keep forgetting that everything we see and feel in Dis comes from the capsule. It interacts directly with the brain, imitating tastes, smells, pain and pleasure. You think temporarily blocking out memory and taking control of the body is a problem for it? If the Destroying Plague is something like a deity or a strong creature, then it must be controlled by a powerful AI. And it may well have certain access privileges to interactions with players…”

  I didn’t have time to finish the thought, because everyone started tal
king at once. A hectic discussion of what had been said began: from direct laughter to bashful supposition. In the end, we decided to temporarily suspend the mine worker with pay. He could level up his skills elsewhere until we’d eliminated the Infection.

  Then we moved on to discussing our plans, and Ed took the floor again.

  “We can put aside our initial idea of holing up in Kharinza and calmly leveling up while we wait for Malik and Tissa. We have new challenges now. It’s obvious that we badly need a second temple. Tiamat will be able to heal Alex and give him immunity from the Destroying Plague.”