Rich sat in jail, and wondered what the hell he had done to deserve this.

But in the end, he knew it didn't matter.

Everyone who lived in the Ministry lived under the possibility that they'd wake up in jail. That the police or some agency of the appropriate virtue could flood your apartment with gas, grab you in the middle of the night, and haul you into jail. If you were guilty, you had no rights. If God let them grab you, then obviously God wanted you in jail.

At least the last time they'd woken him up, first. Rich shut his eyes and leaned back against the white tiled wall, trying to ease the pain in his back. And everywhere else, for that matter. It felt like someone had worked him over, and he had bruises all over his legs and stomach. Also a big sore spot on his head, that hurt like hell when he touched it. Worse, his jaw ached like he'd wrenched it somehow, and a couple of his teeth were loose and bloody. He tried not to move them anymore than he had to, but his probing tongue wouldn't let them be.

Rich was concerned that he hadn't been woken up from his Echo when they grabbed him. He should have been knocked out when they grabbed him, disconnected from the game automatically. Why had they gone to the trouble of keeping him connected while they moved him here?

Maybe this was like one of those suspense movies where he'd been trapped in an Echo simulation. That stuff was supposed to be all science fiction, but there were always rumors that somebody's friend of a friend of their brother's nephew had had that happen.

The worst part of it, though, was that he couldn't access the game.

The game would have made things smoother, would have made time pass easier. Would have given him something to do, besides try to keep his tongue away from damaging his teeth.

But if he'd dared to try and connect up with his family's darknet router at this distance, there was a very good chance his link would be noticed by the police station's firewall. His Echo automatically piggybacked nearby networks to do things like that, and while Echoes were private, traffic moving over those networks wouldn't be.

It was another Ministry truth that privacy either cost a lot of money, or took a willingness to do criminal things. Online privacy was no exception.

So instead he pulled up his coding suite, and got to work on his exercises.

It helped. His legs still throbbed with pain, his head still hurt, and he was stuck in a jail cell wondering what they would interrogate him about this time, but the coding took his mind off things. When he got into the zone, it was like remembering every word to your favorite song, and singing it just right. And knowing you got it right. Knowing that what you were doing was awesome.

Right now his confidence was in the gutter. He needed every boost he could get.

Then he blinked out of his coding trance, as an incoming message chimed in his head.

Incoming Message >> Midian

Hey there Rutger! I found out some things about the players who griefed you.

Rich smiled. She worked fast! But then he'd come to expect that from his guild leader.

His smile faded as he remembered that he was in jail, and discussing an illegal darknet game openly might be a bad idea. Unless...

To: Midian>>I'm under some stress right now. My hand's as high as Beezy Bub's, but I'm always down to discuss Neverquest.

There was a pause. Rich figured Midian was trying to figure out what he was saying, and he hoped she got it.

Beezy Bub was the guardian of the fifth key of Tartoros in Neverquest. He was a hard fight, until you learned the trick to him. And that trick centered around the directions he shouted, and the way he posed. When his hand was raised, he was lying and if you did what he said to do, you'd get fried.

And fortunately, fortunately she caught it.

>>Sure, Rutger. We can talk Neverquest.

>>Good deal. I'm in a rough spot. Let me put this down... there, nothing to hand. Now, I really do want to hear about those griefers.

>>Oh... kay... so basically you've got four of them. They're the main bunch. They call themselves the Bharstool Warmers, and they've been trying to put together a guild.

>>I thought guilds weren't implemented yet?

>>Most people think that, but the Warmers don't. They're convinced there's a way to do it, but it's hidden in the game somewhere and needs to be discovered.

>>What do you think?

>>Obviously I'm interested. I've already re-established contact with about half of the Lords of Boom, but we're spread out all over the continents, and people are still unlocking segments of the fast travel systems, so getting anything organized without guild style functions is going to be hard. Maybe impossible.

>>So why are they slaying dragons and griefing remote villages?

>>Griefing remote villages?

>>That's my friend who's having trouble with him. They're wiping out her starting area NPCs.

>>Ouch. I've heard tell of some people trying that, but it usually doesn't work out so well. You have to be really high level, well-geared, and lucky to pull that off. Which, now that I think of it, all of those griefers are.

>>Oh yeah?

>>Yeah. That's one of the reasons they want a guild. The maximum level is twenty-five, and evidently you get a message when you hit that, telling you to seek out your guild to progress a class past twenty-five.

>>Oh man. They're twenty-five?

>>In their main classes. They probably have others. So they could just be killing dragons for the fun of it.

>>That doesn't explain the village... no wait, if they're bored, it does. Bored players can be dicks.

>>Maybe. They had a big crowdfunding effort not too long ago. Said they had a hot lead, and needed money so they could buy leave from their jobs and chase it down.

>>Buying leave... they must be from the Ministry, then?

>>I doubt it. They've been playing for a couple of years, and we've only had it for a couple of weeks. But anyway, the crowdfunding site is still open. If you want, if you think it could help, I could put money down and back it. But I wanted to check with you before I do it, because that's actual money, you know?

>>Oh geeze... Rich's upbringing and family values warred with his curiosity, and won. Midian, I can't ask you to do that. That's way too much, and I can't pay you back.

>>Rutger, relax. It's affordable, and now I'm curious. If there's a way to get a guild into this game, I could benefit from it too. We both could!

>>Are you sure?

>>One hundred percent.

>>Okay, if you're sure. Thank you Midian.

>>No problem, sweetie. All right, I've got work in a bit. Goodbye!

>>Bye!

Rich sat in silence, and digested what he'd just learned. It wasn't much, wouldn't help with stopping them, unless... unless the village had something to do with guilds. Was there something there that drew them? Or something in the dragon's hoard?

Or more likely, what if it was in the forbidden vaults below? It definitely had a feeling like it was endgame content, all maddening artifacts and ancient mecha and level thirty-six demons and stuff like that.

And here he was, level three... no, level four now, but still, a low level player trying to get his job quest done and being forced to run through a high level zone to do it. With a bunch of hostile players on his tail.

None of which mattered, because he was stuck in jail, awaiting whatever came. Rich closed his eyes and sighed. Trying to stretch his back out against the wall, he settled in to wait.

As it turned out, though, he didn't have long to wait.

Just as he was finishing up his last coding exercise, the door at the end of the cell opened. Rich stood, wincing as his legs went pins and needles.

A large cop, with a belly that put Rich's to shame, entered and pointed a nightstick at the door. “Out the door and to the right, Juve. Fast, now.”

Swallowing, Rich obeyed.

The cop gave him directions as he went, and Rich followed them, moving at as fast a clip as he could manage. He was glad he'd used the toilet when he woke up in the cell, because his belly was churning now. Dread filled his heart... dread and relief. Whatever the reason he was here, the hammer was going to fall now. He wouldn't be stuck in the cell worrying about it any longer.

“Don't know what you did to get federal attention,” the cop said, and Rich almost stumbled. “Don't know why you're worth an agent's time.”

Agent? Agent Cutter was here! Rich breathed a little easier.

This maybe wasn't about him. This was maybe about the Haskeens. Maybe.

He had hope again.

“Hmmf,” the cop said, and Rich jumped and squeaked as he felt a nightstick prod him in the back. “Move faster, lardass.”

Rich found himself left behind in a room partitioned by glass, or very good quality plastic. It went right through the middle of a series of cubicles, each holding a table and a chair. Across the glass he could see another chair on the other side of the tables. Without instruction or any idea what would happen, he chose a table and sat in a chair. Some investigation turned up a faded piece of paper that told him all the things he couldn't do while he was talking with visitors. It was a pretty long list, and the paper looked to be missing big chunks out of it.

Finally, a buzzer sounded over the door on the opposite side of the partition, and a black-suited man walked in.

And Rich stared in shock. That wasn't Agent Cutter at all.

He had a Ministry badge slung over his pocket, and the suit looked federal enough, but this man was bald and had a mustache and thick glasses. He looked Rich over, nodded, then sat down and put a briefcase up on the table.

“Um,” Rich tried. “What is this?”

The man held up a finger, then pulled a metal disc from a side pocket. Rich remembered seeing one of those before, when Agent Cutter had asked him if he was recording. The agent flipped the disc open, glanced at it, and put it next to the briefcase.

Then the agent opened the briefcase, revealing something entirely unexpected.

A laptop. A hunk of plastic that had to be two or three times as old as Rich, a relic of days long gone. Rich stared in fascination at the chipped screen, the worn keys... and the flickering of something that looked like a really bulky webcam.

The flickering focused, and turned into a steady blue light that reminded him of the glow down in the mecha glacier cave, and he shuddered. The screen went from black to an ancient corporate logo, with a big 'Please Wait,' and a loading icon.

He'd heard someone call a loading icon an hourglass once, and he'd thought it an apt name. Whenever you saw the loading icon, you knew you'd spend what felt like hours staring at glass. Well, plastic, anyway.

Heck, this relic was old enough it might very well have a glass screen, he didn't know.

And then it finished, and was replaced by a view of a man's head and shoulders. He had thinning bright yellow hair and a well-made-up face, but the perspective was close enough that Rich could see the wrinkles under the makeup. His beard and mustache were gold, and his eyes radiated warmth and joy. And his teeth were white and big in his easy smile.

That smile reminded Rich of the Whisperer in the Darkness, and he shrunk back a bit despite himself.

“Ah, my boy! A pleasure to meet you at last!” Rich heard his voice clearly, even though the partition was in the way. “I was a bit worried when you didn't accept my invitation to chat, but that's fine, Jeeeeeesssssuuuusss brought us together after all, now didn't he?”

And the way he said God's name clinched the nagging suspicion in Rich's mind.

This was a Man of God. This was a Pastor. This had to be Joel's Dad.

“I guess he did, Mister Haskeen,” Rich said. He said it pretty low, but Justin Haskeen the Second nodded and grinned.

“Well! Let's talk then.”

He wasn't supposed to talk to Justin Haskeen the Second. Agent Cutter had said so.

But an agent had brought Haskeen's laptop here.

What was going on? Was this a test?

Rich glanced over at the agent, and apparently Mister Haskeen caught his motion.

“Oh don't worry about him, he's just an old friend.” The Pastor drew Rich's attention with a wink. “Let's discuss more pressing matters. My son, my poor sinner of a son, he's apparently told you a few things that weren't quite true. But don't you worry about him. He's been disciplined for that. He's got his penance, my boy. He has coooooommme to Jeeeeeeeessssuuuuusss in tears, to be remade and whole!”

Rich almost said 'Amen' out of habit. The preachers at the church he used to go to liked it when you did that after they said something.

“But that's beside the point,” Justin said, his smile turning into a frown. “The point is that he wronged you, my boy. He had power, and he let it make him foolish, and you suffered. Oh God, did you suffer. I have sent you my thoughts and prayers, in this time of darkness.”

And that made Rich gasp.

That was the kindest thing anyone could do for you, in the Ministry! Especially the thoughts and prayers of a pastor! Everyone knew that God loved them the most, that was why they were rich. That was why they were in charge. Thoughts and prayers from them were pretty much gold!

A minute of a pastor's thoughts and prayers, just a minute was priceless beyond measure, priceless because it had to come from the heart! It couldn't be bought, it had to be true. And Justin Haskeen the Second had just admitted that he'd given Rich that gift without asking.

“Thank you.” he whispered, awestruck and enjoying the feeling. Surely his luck had changed! Surely his life would come back together, now!

“Oh, you are welcome, my boy. Don't worry... I had a talk with Jeeeeeesssssusss not too long ago! He told me aaaaallll about your circumstances! I will work hard to undo the travails that assail you! I know what weighs upon your soul, my boy, and Jeeeeesssusss has told me how to make everything right!” The laptop's perspective pulled back, to show Justin throwing his head back, and thrusting his arms into the air. “Rejoice! All your problems shall be solved!”

“Yes, thank you God!” Rich was crying now, and he rubbed his nose. “Thank you Mister Haskeen! Thank you Jesus!”

He had been taught his religion when he was very young, and even though he'd been hurt again and again, even though the questions kept cropping up and the doubts crept in, some spark of it was still in there. Pastor Haskeen had come to answer prayers he'd thought useless, prayers that never seemed to do anything.

The pastor smiled at him. Rich absently noted that he couldn't see the makeup at the distance the laptop's view now encompassed. But he could sure see Pastor Justin's grin. “Yes, boy! Jeeeesssusss has spoken! My son will nevermore trouble you, I have moved him to a different class! I have commanded the police to release you from jail! Your father's recent hospital visit will be covered in full! Jeeessssusss told me to pay it! And your expulsion from school shall be lifted! There are all your troubles solved, Richard Royal! All by the grace of Jeeesssssussss!”

Rich gasped...

...but then a thought broke through his bubble of joy.

That wasn't all his problems. That wasn't the big problem. What had Jesus said about Mom? “What about my mother?” he asked. “What about Mom? When's she coming home?”

Pastor Haskeen froze.

His grin disappeared.

“What?” he asked, and his voice held none of the rolling tones that he'd just used.

“My mother? Please, what did Jesus say about her?”

The Pastor hesitated. “Ah. Well. I may need to ask him some more. I was... overcome by the holy spirit, you see, and perhaps didn't ask the questions I should have. I am but a man, and I fear my humility—”

Rich felt the sliver of doubt creep into his heart. His hope, the faint joy that Pastor Haskeen had awakened ebbed. Ebbed and started to fade.

“He didn't say anything about my mother?” Rich whispered.

“Well, ah, my boy, perhaps... why don't you tell me about your mother. Let's come to Jeeeesssussss together!”

“Jesus didn't tell you about my mother,” Rich said, and now the doubt was in full swing. And Joel's words came to him again, about how this man, this very man he was talking to had beaten and forced his wife into something nasty.

Haskeen lowered his arms and shouted back. “You tell me about your mother!” Rich recoiled at the man's sudden burst of temper. “What's wrong with her? Jesus can't help you if you don't tell me!”

And a flat certainty rolled over Rich. There was only one reason any of the popular kids in school ever talked to him. And he was pretty sure it was the reason that Haskeen was talking to him now. “You want something from me,” he said. “That's why you're here.”

Haskeen stared back, then turned around, pacing across the stage, hands folded behind his back. Finally he seemed to come to a decision. And this time, when he turned around, his smile covered his teeth. “Pull in the camera, June.”

The camera focused on him. His forehead was sweaty, his makeup stippled with tracks. He'd worked himself up back there, and it showed. A bit of black smudge came from where sweat had leaked into his beard. “All right, my boy. So you're not one of the sheep. Pity, that would have made this easier.”

“Excuse me?” Rich blinked.

“I'll be frank. My son, my foolish son who let power go to his head, learned entirely the wrong lesson. He needed to learn how to manage people like you. Instead he pissed away his influence over shaking down poor scrubs for their lunch money. And worse, he said something to you that he shouldn't have. And you, bless your heart, went and swore out a statement against me.”

Rich felt his jaw drop.

What was this? He'd never made a statement. He'd never told anyone what Joel had told him.

“Normally this would be ridiculous bullshit... hell, no one's got any business telling a man how to manage his wife, but I'm at a delicate time and in the middle of attaining something very important. And some of my peers are leveraging that statement. That statement that comes from you.”

“Um,” Rich said again.

“Damned hypocrites, all of them! You know how many of those assholes like sweet young meat? You know how many beautiful boys and girls got turned into ash heaps in the old burn zones? Just new ash among old. Burned for the sins of their betters...”

This was going to some really bad places. Rich shut his mouth, and a sudden spike of pain from the bruise on his head made him grunt.

“I see you do. You see the truth of it,” Justin Haskeen the Second nodded. “Retract your statement, child. I have offered you honey, and I can offer you more. But if you desire vinegar, I have enough to make what's left of your life hell.”

No smile now, just cold words and a bored look on his face.

This was the truth of the man. No Jesus here, not even Jeeeeeeesssssussss. He was terrible and powerful and Rich knew he was in danger, the worst danger of his life. For a second he wanted to agree with Haskeen, promise him anything, and somehow hope to find a way to retract a statement he'd never made.

But he fought the instinct, because he found something unexpected inside of him. A spark of courage. A spark of stubbornness.

He had one big problem, didn't he? And this man had the power to make things happen?

“My mother got put in the camps,” he told Haskeen. “I want her free and back home.”

“The camps?” Pastor Haskeen blinked. Then his eyes flicked to the side. “I didn't know that. Rupert, why didn't I know that?”

The agent recoiled as if he'd been struck. “I don't know,” he said, speaking for the first time. His voice was unexpectedly high for an older man. “Let me—”

“Not here, idiot.” Haskeen grimaced. Then he looked to Rich, and nodded. The smile returned, big white teeth against red, red lips. “I have pull in the camps, my boy. Go and retract your statement. After you do that for me, I will return her to you.”

It was all Rich wanted.

He would have given up anything for it.

And yet...

And yet he had seen the true side of this man.

Rich knew, Rich knew in his bones, knew even through years of indoctrination to trust Men of God, that he was being lied to.

Grown ups lied to kids. They did it without hesitation, his Dad had taught him that. The ones that loved you did it 'for your own good,' and it was funny how often your own good benefited them.

And Justin Haskeen the Second had no love for Rich, Rich was certain of that. Once he had what he wanted, he would walk away.

“You go first,” he blurted out. “You bring her back to me first! Then I'll go and say I lied or whatever! I'll take the statement back!”

“What. What? What?” Justin's voice rose in pure disbelief, and he stared at Rich through the screen as if Rich was a worm who'd just spontaneously sprouted arms and tried to body slam him. “You dare? You think...” Then he shut up. Justin closed his eyes, and shook his head, and his smile twisted. Now it held no pretense of friendliness, nothing of God in it at all. “Oh, my boy. You had been doing so well, too, up until now. You have rejected my honey. Now we must talk of vinegar. And you, you fat little fuck, you have given me the bitterest draught of all to use against you.”

Rich felt his testicles try to draw up into his belly.

“Who do you think runs the camps, boy? The Ministry of Fortitude! My division! Do you know what goes on in there, sometimes? Do you know what I can do to your slut of a mother?”

“No!” The word burst out of Rich. “No, don't!”

“Child, I swear to God, that I will see to her personally if you do not march your ass over to the Ministry of Justice and retract your statement! And I don't think I have to paint you a picture here, now do I?” That devil's grin parted, and Haskeen's pink, wet tongue came out and licked his lips, smearing his makeup.

“I will, I promise, I will!” Some part of Rich's mind was telling him he couldn't retract a statement he'd never made, but he knew Haskeen didn't care about that.

“Good. Go and do this then. For Jeeeeeeeesssssuuuusssss.” Haskeen's voice got ugly, and he said the name of God in tones of utter disgust. If Rich hadn't been so filled with fear, he would have been shocked at the blasphemy.

“I don't... I might... I don't know who to go to, who to tell that I lied,” Rich sobbed. “I'm sorry, I don't know! Who do I go to?”

Haskeen shook his head. “Fat and stupid after all. That I should be in this position because of a worm like you... disgusting. But I suppose it'll take some time to work through the bureaucracy. I am not without mercy. You have three days, boy. After that your mother is mine. Rupert, we're done here. Go tell the pigs he's free to leave.”

Ten minutes later, Rich was standing outside the police station in the hundred degree heat of November, with no easy way home and no good idea of what to do once he got there.

Agent Cutter had told him, visited his hab to tell him not to meet with Haskeen, but it hadn't mattered in the end. What had mattered was that he'd taken a risk to try and help his mother, and it had blown up in his face.

He'd fucked up.

He'd fucked up bad.