Stepping past the door initiated a fulfilled quest notification.

Congratulations! You have gotten past the Sacred Door!

Rogue Me or Rogue Me Not Quest Completed!

Reward: +2 to Intelligence!

Reward: 500 XP!

Reward: Artifact (Epic)!

Choice of:

A. Holding Bag (200 slts)

B. Respawn Anchor

or

C. Enchanted Armour (+4 DEF, 80% chance of repelling arrows)

I selected the holding bag of course. The armour was tempting, but at the moment I was more concerned with being prepared than protected. Especially if its primary defence was against only one weapon.

(Also, if I’m being honest, I’d heard that armour is super uncomfortable, and I had no desire to breathe my last sporting a harness wedgie.)

Upgrading bags was as simple as equipping the new one. Anything in the old transferred automatically across to the new, leaving me with a satisfyingly healthy excess of slots. It felt like there was enough room in there to restock CalMart—albeit without its more interesting customers. I would have to take a trip to my vault once I got this whole business of breaking and entering over with.

The image of scooping up gold like fish in a net struck my sense of the ridiculous. So it was with a smile that I continued forward.

As I had noted from my previous peep, the hallway just inside the door was surprisingly plain. No foot-to-ceiling hieroglyphs or gilded reliefs; no obelisks or carved pillars. It had been crafted from the bare basics; sandstone blocks set in functional straight walls. Though there was that one brick….

I moved still farther into the passage, squinting in the dim light, trying to make out just what made this particular block different…

…when a latch clicked behind me and all light was extinguished.

My heart began to pound. Monsters lived in the dark. Big, bad hairy ones…that jostle you when you least expect it.

I squeaked in startlement.

“I say, it’s a bit dark in here. Any chance you have a lamp?”

Of course, sometimes the scariest part of those big, bad hairy monsters were their ever-open mouths. Case in point.

“Why didn’t you bring it with you?”

“That lamp belongs in the antechamber. Taking it with us would have been stealing. Which I’ve given up, remember?”

“Oh, yeah. Mmmhmm. Makes perfect sense. So why don’t we just return to the chamber, I’ll grab the lamp and let you keep the moral high ground.”

“That would still make me an accessory.”

“Buddy, you’re in a forbidden passageway. You’re already an accessory.”

“But we are here in pursuit of knowledge, the most noble of endeavours.”

“Rrriight.” I snorted, then turned around. “Stay here a moment. Keep any sacred guardians at bay.”

“Sacred guardians?” His voice had become a little high. I’m guessing he wasn’t programmed to fight. Which, come to think of it, did make him an excellent canary in this particular mineshaft. As soon as he went silent I’d know that something was on the hunt.

Trailing my hands across the walls, I followed them back to where I thought the door ought to be. And found only more sandstone, no wood. Sometime while we’d been arguing the door had morphed into a dead end.

Great. Now we’re stuck in this place. Whatever this place is.

Bert “spoke”. You know, ostriches have good night vision. I could bring Gunga out to be your guide.

“In here? There’s barely enough room as it is. No. I have a better idea.”

“What was that?” Qalaa enquired, obviously thinking I was trying to speak to him, the only other person apparently present.

“I said, I think I have an idea.” If my holding bag hadn’t finally extinguished it.

Fossicking about in my bag, I found the torch that I had ‘acquired’ in the Dungeon of Amrut. To my relief, it remained lit, despite its unusual mode of transport. In contradiction of the laws of thermal physics, it expended little heat, even as flames licked up one end. By all appearances, the bag and its contents should have gone up in smoke. Instead, it barely warmed the cloth, like an LED Christmas light left on overnight.

I lifted it. My own personal Galadriel phial, if without that prop’s ability to scare away spiders.

Inauspiciously, the first thing the torch illuminated was Qalaa, eyes bright with interest. “I knew you were well suited to accompany me on this endeavour. Keep this up and you could join me in becoming an adventurer.”

I raised my finger to my lips; a cliche amongst librarians, I know, but it had the desired effect. “I need you to be quiet now.” For all I knew he’d already alerted half the inhabitants. Killing him would only alert the other half.

“Unless you ask a question?” he whispered.

I sighed. “Unless I ask a direct question.”

“Fat chance,” Gerdy muttered from her place on my shoulder. It was actually surprisingly good to hear from her. She might be irritating, she might be sarcastic and hate humans, but she was also a great night light that spoke more sense than—

Good lord, what am I thinking? Finding Gerdy’s good points? It was like saying Atilla the Hun was a decent bloke because he didn’t kill as many people as Hitler. I really need to get out of here.

Which led me naturally back to the brick. Shoving Qalaa lightly aside, I angled the light for maximum effect. No shadows. Nothing had been carved into the surface. And no buttons or indents to indicate triggers either. In fact, the only thing that distinguished it from the surrounding bricks was the fact that it was in an eighties pink, completely out of its usual era. I doubted they even produced a dye that colour in this day and age.

Maybe it needed a shove? I pushed against it with my fingers, but without effect. Two hands and my full weight later and I was still stumped.

Unless this is some kind of decoy. Something to draw players into a trap. Or maybe I just don’t have the right tool or class to activate it.

I just hoped it wasn’t important. Otherwise I would be doomed to die in a draughty room with an overly chatty NPC, an AI, and a snippy fairy to keep me company. Skip forward in time to a dusty skeleton stuck with my own dagger. (Though whose skeleton I couldn’t decide.)

Hang on. Draughty? I set myself in the middle of the room and held out the torch. Sure enough, the flames reached slightly backwards, toward the non-existent door. There must be an opening ahead.

And there it was. I hadn’t seen it before because it had an archway that was somewhat lower than the original door and…Qalaa was standing right in front of it. Our intrepid adventurer was proving as blind to his surroundings as an amoeba.

“Follow me,” I whispered, bending to clear the arch.

A solid thunk and a muffled oww, told me he hadn’t. Cleared the arch, I mean. Following was his superpower. He would probably follow me off a cliff and on the way down tell me he had the recovery skills of a paratrooper. Then…splat. (Or boiinng, with my luck.)

Beyond the arch the space opened up into an antechamber, complete with requisite large ornamented pillars. It also had a door that looked to have been custom-built for a dragon—covered in gilt and oversized.

No handles, either, I noted uneasily.

“You think that’s where we need to go?” Qalaa asked against orders.

“Looks like it.” It was no use reprimanding him; he probably had some kind of built-in stealth limitation. For all I knew the game would only shut him up if there was genuine need of it. Like a forest’s animal population going silent when a predator is about.

I tried the whole lean technique again with the new door, even waved my hands in the air and stomped like I expected the ancient Egyptians to have developed electrical sensors. Magic was similar to electricity, right?

Wrong. And my own variety of magic was just as useless. Apparently Illusory Storytelling was just that: illusory. It had no ability to affect matter. I wasted a perfectly good song called Unlock the Block to discover that little tidbit.

Surprisingly, it was Gerdy who provided the answer. Darting from my shoulder, she fluttered over to one of the pillars and hovered before it, her own glow supplying her with the light to see. Then she circled it slowly.

“This is odd. Only one hieroglyph is painted on an entire level. Do you suppose it means something?”

I walked over and leaned in, shooting my arm out to prevent Qalaa from squishing Gerdy for the third time. It was becoming instinctive.

She was right. Only one figure on the pillar was highlighted. And looking around, I noticed that it wasn’t the only one so lacking in adornment. All the surrounding levels featured a solitary, though individual, form. Egyptian gods and goddesses, unless I missed my guess. A few of them were familiar from Memshavit’s tour.

Oh, please don’t let this be a test, I pleaded internally. The vast majority of that tour had been filed under Irrelevant and deleted from even my short-term memory. In retrospect, I probably should have used the note function on my UI like any good little adventurer.

“There are only animals underneath,” I mused, running my finger along the outline of a snake. It moved. No, not the snake—thought that would’ve been shit-my-pants cool—the circular blocks that the animals were carved into. It spun with a grinding sound that made Gerty’s wings stop mid-flutter.

“So it is a puzzle,” I concluded grimly. I wasn’t good at this sort of thing. I’m more of a pick-something-up-and-fiddle-about-with-it sort of gamer. Whenever I get something of this nature, I generally consult the experts at Google. Who needs the stress, right?

The pillar clicked over until a lion sat under the highlighted god. When it did, all the pillars shuddered, the floor vibrated, and dust filtered down from the ceiling as the puzzle moved one brick upwards, a new generic panel appearing at the bottom of each pillar.

Shit. I think I just lost one attempt.

And by my count we only had one, two, three…six left, with eight stations in total.

There was also a layer of water on the floor that hadn’t been there before. Either the temple’s pool had developed a leak…or the room was booby-trapped.

——

“So what’s all this about a hacker?”

Gus tapped the screen. “I’ve found three instances where the code has been altered. Not essential to the running of the game, but significant nonetheless. You saw that brick in the temple?”

“Looked a bit ham-fisted to me,” Terrin said as he threw himself into a chair. Gus had obviously appropriated them from somewhere, as they hadn’t been there on their last visit.

Todd seated himself more carefully. “I agree. You literally tied a neon sign on it. No subtlety at all. Players don’t even have the challenge of looking for it.”

“That’s because it isn’t part of the game,” Gus said grimly. “Whoever hacked into the game simply changed the colour of the brick. My guess, to test their capabilities. That particular brick has no function beyond keeping the wall stable.”

Todd frowned. “I thought you said the game was protecting itself.”

“Only across its primary systems. Anything else can be altered.”

“So why don’t you? Alter it, I mean. If you have the potential to change what Arline faces then you can surely make it less dangerous for her.”

“Do you have any understanding of how complex Age of Deception is?” Gus asked. “How much code would need to be rerouted and reset? Each piece leads to another, setting off bundles that even I don’t fully understand. Cannot understand. A game like this isn’t the work of one person or even one set of people. Groups of programmers, artists and writers have worked for years on each zone, each NPC, each quest line.” He paused to scratch his nose thoughtfully before continuing. “Think of it like one of those choose-your-own-path books. Rip out a page and the story has the potential to stop halfway through.”

Terrin rocked back in his chair. “But you’re saying that this crackajack has found a way to paste in random shit. Does that mean Arline’s going to fall off the edge of the world or some shit like that?”

“If they have the technical experience to avoid direct interference it may be okay. Could very well happen. They would’ve needed some knowledge to even find whatever entry point they used. Otherwise…well. The game is, after all, made of interlocking frames. All changes will have consequences, whether harmful or benign, with any one of them having the potential to create cascades, leading to something unplanned. I’m not exaggerating when I say that each time this hacker accesses the system they’re risking Arline’s life.”

“Really?” Todd was skeptical. It seemed a lot of worry for a few harmless lines of text.

“What if next time this hacker overwrites the code for the ground beneath her feet? Does she fall into infinity, never to wake up? What about if he took out some of the load-bearing bricks in that sanctuary? If she gets crushed, it’s game over. Permanently.”

Gus shook his head slowly. “We can’t be sure the jacker will limit themselves to minor changes in appearance. We need to find them before they—intentionally or accidentally—cause her death.”

——

I stared at the bright green head and strained to remember who he was. It should have been an easy one, little green men not being as popular as some other representations. So many of these gods looked the same, making identification difficult. I’d already left three of the pillars untouched because I couldn’t make a decision.

Like now.

Oh. Hold on. Osiris, that’s the name. God of…of…death? Or is that Ptah?

Three of them had been easy. Crocodile head matched with crocodile. Check. Jackal to jackal, big beaked bird with big beaked bird. But if I saw yet another hawk or falcon’s head I was going to scream. The Egyptians had clearly seen birds of prey as quintessentially godlike.

At least I had four attempts left. With a fifty-fifty chance of solving this one.

Spinning the animal section, I selected the bull and cursed as the pillars juddered and water rose to my thighs. Three left. Three attempts, five pillars.

If I kept failing I was going to need the water to buoy me up just to reach the mechanisms. Maybe part of the reason why it was added. But I suspect it was mainly to create player fear and panic.

A splash sounded in the corner, and I swear I saw eyes flash.

Fear and panic achieved.

Quickly turning back to the pillar, my brain scrambled even more when I realised that I couldn’t distinguish between two of the horned beasts on the dial. A piece of sandstone had chipped off, obscuring one face and leaving only the horns exposed on the other.

Which one is the ram?

I picked the one without a face and screamed in frustration as the water rose around my hips. It wasn’t fair! The game was cheating.

“Again. Are you trying to kill us?” Gerty shrieked. Her pretty blue dress had gotten splashed and the flowers at her waist looked sadly wilted. “No one could be this idiotic unless they were doing it on purpose!”

“Oh, dear,” Qalaa spoke over the enraged fairy. “I can see you have not remembered your lessons with the High Priestess. Do you require assistance?”

My focus immediately shifted from the tiny drama queen to the Citadel. If you ever need any questions answered…I taught Memshavit much of what she knows…

Why the fuck hadn’t I connected the dots? It was right there in front of me! Literally! The game had provided the player with their own cheat codes. As long as they had the fortitude not to ditch him whenever they had the chance.

“Qalaa? I do indeed have some questions…”

——

“Tonight we have a treat for you. The man of the hour, CEO of SharkBytes, Mr. David Parker.” The presenter turned to the chair beside her. “Mr. Parker—“

“Please. Call me Dave.”

“You came on this show willingly, when there has been—shall we say—a reluctance for SharkBytes to share its insights into the current crisis concerning Arline Johnson. Why did you decide to go public now?”

“Well, Kate. We feel that we need to be more open, offer more transparency. We are, after all, just as concerned with getting our girl back as anyone. If not more.”

“What do you say to rumours that errors within the game itself led to this situation? And that SharkBytes subsequently blocked access to game footage in order to cover it up?”

“Look, Kate. You know the drill. Conspiracy theories spring up like mushrooms whenever a company is involved in a news story. Arline Johnson, sweet though she may be, caused her own downfall. Without her ill-advised tampering to her twitch suit, she would have been logged out along with all the other players.”

“And the footage?”

“No one could have been more delighted than me to learn that we hadn’t lost contact. As soon as we realised what we had, I immediately authorised its release.”

“Very laudable, and I’m sure that I speak for everyone when I say that we are very grateful for the continued assurance that she is, in fact, still alive—despite earlier fears.” She turned to smile at the front camera. “Now, this seems like a good time to continue this exclusive report with a few questions from the streaming audience. Dave? Your choice.” The woman indicated a wallscreen of faces.

The CEO picked a man on the far right who looked like he needed to sack his dentist. “Uh…Gerald?”

“Mr. Dave, what’s with the camera movement? My boy had to go to the bathroom and throw up last night, and my wife ain’t feelin’ so good, either.”

“Unfortunately, we have no control over that. Effectively we’re seeing through the eyes of a dungeon fairy. And they aren’t known for their steady flight paths,” he joked.

The dentically-challenged man snorted. “Can’t you just take her over, direct her movements? Oh, and maybe shut her up too? She’s a mouthy little—” The connection cut before he could finish.

“Well, now, I wish we could. But as you all may have heard, Gerdy is a part of our new game, Dangerous Dreams, which is due out New Years Day. She’s an advanced NPC, independent of her makers, and therefore able to make complex decisions without our guidance. This unfortunately means that there is no umbilical cord between her and us, but—“

“Does this mean you have no control over your own creation?” the sharp voice of the reporter cut in.

“Not at all. Our programmers can pull the plug at any point.”

“Some say that this wouldn’t be the first time SharkBytes has created a being that—“ She looked to the side, and briefly a look of irritation crossed her face. Then she smiled again into the camera. “We are out of time, folks. Though I do hope we can get Mr. Parker back to continue this discussion in the very near future. Thank you, and goodnight.”

——

“She made me sound like an idiot, Pete.”

“Everyone sounds like an idiot on talk shows. Even the presenter. Besides, I thought it went okay. You got the chance to talk up the new game, reassured everyone that we weren’t to blame for one woman’s stupidity. What more can you do?”

“She nearly had me with that AI thing. Would’ve ripped me a new one if she hadn’t run out of time. Now that’s all those reporters are going to ask me about. Like sharks smelling blood in the water.” He lifted his scotch and took a gulp, wincing as it hit the back of his throat. “It wouldn’t be so bad if I knew what I was talking about, but Gus is avoiding my questions.”

“You think he’s hiding something?”

“Of course he is, the little shit. He knows I’m sweating my balls off in front of those reporters. Probably wants to see me suffer.”

“What if it’s more than that?”

“Hmm?”

Peter leaned forward. “What if this Bert really is sentient and Gus is keeping it secret?”

“Then…we’d need to initiate a scorched earth approach. Destroy it before it could spread—“

“—but save a copy of its code for analysis.” Peter smiled, with something approaching a gleam in his eyes. “I mean, can you imagine the commercial applications? Institutions like schools and emergency departments—all operating seamlessly both separately and together…. Not to mention what the military could use it for.”

“You think they’d be interested?”

“Dave, I think there’d be a bidding war.”