The undead surrounded Gia in a tight ring, wheezing, gurgling, staggering, but in no hurry to attack - waiting for a command from the fox in black rags, who soared to the vault of the cave and began casting a spell.
It was moments like this that made Gia wish she had chosen the path of solitude, when you are your own paladin, mage, and healer, with no one to help you.
- Give birth quickly," she tossed to the lich, and, as if he had heard her, he gave birth.
That is, he waved his staff, showering the undead with brown ash, deadly to the living. Gia remembered this maneuver of his, turned on the lethal aura and received a notification that the aggressive influence was neutralized. Drawing her curved sabers, she broke into the crowd of zombies-the ones that came into contact with the aura scattered ashes, bones and experience units sprinkled from them.
It's a shame that the aura only lasts ten seconds. True, it increases by one with each levelup. Gia was level 73.
This dungeon, designed for players of her class and included in the quest chain, she could not pass the second week, so she knew what to do next: retreat to the wall, as much as possible wielding sabers and crushing the zombies, who, unable to surround her, crowded in the way of each other.
Now, prepare a health potion, because after she'd slaughtered the acolytes, the fox would spit a stinking rot and take 90% of her life, hanging a five-minute debuff of energy slug - minus 15% life every minute.
And so it did. The health scale turned red, Gia emptied the vial and recovered, sent the sabers into her inventory, snatched the Life Spades - some kind of shuriken, threw them at the lich first took off 45% of life. He was enveloped in a brownish haze, but a second Spade flew at him, knocking another 45% off and knocking the cast off. If he finished the spell, the minions would rise up and tear Gia apart, as they had twice before.
- Die! - She exclaimed, threw a knife at him, and hung a bleeding doth.
The wounded lich flailed about the cave. The debuff prevented healing, and the necromancer, screaming in terror, collapsed on the floor and melted, leaving him with a ring and a death powder, an expensive alchemical ingredient. Gia thought it wouldn't be enough for a boss of this complexity.
Was that it, the quest chain with Master Trang complete? Gia gathered up the loot and prepared to wait for a notification like, "Congratulations! You have succeeded in your quest, and Master Trang is rewarding you..."
But instead the shadows in the corners of the cave stirred, stretched out, began to take on flesh. What the... Gia focused on the nearest shadow:
Ongx. A level 73 creature of the Netherworld.
To avenge his death, the lich Ulrich, dying, summoned four Ongx, the deadly helpers of the Yznan, the last guardians of the Dungeon of Terror.
Gia gave a long curse. She had lost 30% of her life because of the debuff, and she would lose just as much more. The health potion can only be drunk in half an hour, during which time her abilities will roll back. She couldn't hold out anyway, so she had no choice but to run. So she sprinted toward the cave's exit, cloaking and praying that her invisibility would work. It was only an eight percent chance, but at least there was some hope!
The invisibility didn't work, and the Onghees, looking like dogs woven out of darkness with glowing eyes, caught up with Gia in the spacious hall, where she had just finished off the necrojab on her third attempt. She didn't intend to expose the creatures to her throat; she pressed herself against the wall, stowed her sabers in her inventory, and pulled out a jagged-edged shield and a short sword, good in close combat.
The Ongx rushed in at the same time, and before Gia could even get frightened.
You are dead.
Until resurrection 30, 29, 28...
During that time, she thought she was doing a shitty quest chain. Was about to regret again that she had chosen the path of the loner, but it was worth the thought that otherwise would have to interact with people, and immediately life seemed fine.
Perhaps the makers of the toy are introverts like her, so they created a promising class of universal warriors for their likeness. Kach was slower, on the raid boss will not go to the clan and even in the group did not join, but a lot of other bonuses.
Parallel thoughts leaked out about the reality - that it is necessary to go out and deal with the cheeky mother, though very reluctant. Gia wouldn't let anyone go through her things!
What a busy day ahead! In the evening to test the botnet, and then the scandal was so inopportune. But Gia didn't want to postpone the conversation.
Leaving her Pe-ji behind, Gia mentally activated the exit and stepped into the opening portal. Once in her room, she took off her sensory gloves, hoop, and vest, climbed out of her boots on springs, took off her augmented reality glasses, and headed for her parents' bedroom, hoping that her mother, wherever she was, had already returned.
-
Open up, we need to talk urgently," Gia shouted and knocked on
the door with her fist, certain that her father had been in the study
for a long time and her mother was in the bedroom.
Gia had begun
to suspect her mother was going through her things a year ago, when
she forgot her swim cap in her room, went back to get it, and found
her parent going through things on the table. Caught on the hot seat,
the mother said, with uncharacteristic equanimity, that she had
stopped by to see if there was any spoiled food in the room because a
cockroach had crawled out from under the door.
Gia believed her, because her simple-minded mother didn't know how to lie at all, and she probably couldn't kill that cockroach - she would have felt sorry for it.
She was unlikely to get into the computer - it was seriously password-protected. So seriously that breaking the main password would run a program that would destroy certain information. But just in case, Gia began to keep her paper diary in code, where each letter had a digital correspondence.
It was only personal - about how her classmates don't understand her, how annoying her eleven-year-old sister and the Philippines in general, there were dreams about a mining farm and thoughts that in the near future she would like to buy land in the north of Russia far away from people, where the permafrost is, so that she would not waste a huge amount of electricity on cooling her mining farms. You can't in Antarctica, the damn Manga is entrenched there.
Gia loved watching the letters appear on the white paper, loved the rustling of the pages. But she especially liked knowing that if a global catastrophe happened, these records wouldn't fade into oblivion without electricity, they wouldn't be hacked by an unknown hacker.
When the suspicion that her mother was searching her things again, Gia paid her younger sister to follow her mother, just in case. What a surprise it was when, two months later, a triumphant Mika showed a picture of her mother coming out of her eldest daughter's room.
To say that Gia was furious is to say nothing. And to catch her mother in the act, she set up a camera, because the parent discovered an uncharacteristic quality: this model housewife, who knew by heart all the talk shows and remembered all the proportions of ingredients for her father's favorite dishes, was a virtuoso liar.
Three months without results, Gia thought she was wasting her money on a camera, so she started checking it on occasion, and now she found what she was looking for! And even more, so much more, that now, shaken to her core, she did not know what to do with this knowledge.
The door swung open, and her mother appeared - small, a head shorter than Gia, smiling, in a short pink robe.
- What is it, my daughter? - She asked in Filipino, still smiling.
- Come with me, I have something to show you," Gia said in English; she wanted to say it coldly, but her lips trembled, and it was hysterical, pathetic.
There was concern on her mother's face, the simple concern of a hen for the fate of her chick. Gia looked into her eyes, trying to read her true motives, but she couldn't.
- I hope it's nothing serious," the mother whispered, and she pretended to be frightened.
Gia went silently to her bedroom, which was in the left wing of the second floor. Didn't she understand what was going on? Or didn't she realize that she had broken into someone else's world and turned it inside out, shredded what she wanted so badly to hide? Gia realized one thing for sure: she didn't know her own mother at all! She thought she was simple-minded and naive, but there it was...
- Come in, sit at the computer," Gia said, opening the door.
Her mother sat down, miserable, confused. Gia turned on the video tape: the door opens, her mother enters, and, stepping over the threshold, she changes, squares her shoulders, even her gait is different. She steps toward the desk, opens a drawer, carefully pulls out an album with a black cover - a diary, opens the necessary page, and... takes a photograph of what she has written. So she was able to decipher... no - she is able to make the decipherment! A woman who can barely speak English!
- Are you saying that you picked up the script and read the cipher? - Gia muttered.
Her mother turned to her with her chair, her eyes slammed together in confusion.
- I couldn't do it, and my father refused to help.
Is he lying? Gia's doubts woke up, along with guilt.
- Do you realize what you've done? Do you realize that this is personal? You can't pry into personal things, it's like... it's like peeking in the shower.
Tears glistened in her mother's eyes, she put her hands to her chest and whispered:
- Gia, my daughter ... You do not talk to me lately, you think I'm a fool, and I ... I'm very worried about you. I'm worried about you getting in trouble. You go to school twice a week, you disappear somewhere, you got money from somewhere and that damn motorcycle. Maybe you'll get pregnant... Or crash. I really, really love you!
The guilt swelled, squeezed her throat. It was true that Gia didn't think of her mother as a fool, but as a very down-to-earth person, and she distanced herself from her, because there was nothing to talk about, nothing to discuss with her. Just like with her classmates. Just like with most people. At least her father had brains.
-
I'm sorry, daughter," she dropped, and Gia caught herself about
to burst into tears.
- You don't have to worry, Mom," she
whispered. - About the pregnancy... I don't even have a boyfriend at
eighteen. They all seem..." I wanted to say "stupid,"
but not to offend her, Gia found the right word: "They don't
understand me. And Max is a virtual one, and maybe we'll never see
each other again. And I distanced myself because you're not
interested in hearing about the script I wrote or how much money I
made. By the way, that's where the money comes from.
She didn't say anything about writing cheat weapons for Dreamwalker and selling them to rich idiot gamers. Only grinned when she remembered her latest invention: the legendary scalable two-handed sword, giving +100% to strength, + 50% to dexterity and health (which even for a reader is overkill). After pleasing its owner for three days, the sword will turn into a pumpkin at twelve sharp today. That is, a giant pink ball-ringing dildo, because Gia despised cheaters and donators with every fiber of her being.
All the more silent about the botnet, her and Max's brainchild, which they were supposed to test tonight and attack the Manila Dream site.
The mother shrank back and muttered:
- I'm sorry, daughter. I promise it won't happen again. - She threw up her head and looked pitifully. - But you talk to me at least sometimes. About boys, for instance.
Gia hugged her, patted her on the back.
- I forgive you, Ma. I don't have a boyfriend, and I haven't had sex yet, not even virtually on Alter-Dream. It's about time, though. All my classmates are already... That's what they do for a living! Would you want me to be like that?
Her mother pulled away, tilted her head back, and stroked Gia's cheek.
- I don't. You're special. You have no idea how special.
Once again the mask of the dim-witted housewife revealed another woman, clever and calculating, her gaze sending a chill down her spine. A second, and she was smiling again.
- I'll go cook a celebratory dinner, because today my father and I have twenty years of marriage!
Mother scurried out of the room - happy, smiling. The misunderstanding was gone. But Gia was left with a residue in her soul, first, because she was right, but she felt guilty, and second, she realized that she did not know her mother at all, who turned out to be a skilled manipulator.
And Gia was lost in time again - so caught up in her own business that she had completely forgotten that today was her parents' wedding day, even though the family celebrated it every year! Now she had a botnet in her head, which was slightly moved by the need to buy her parents some kind of surprise.
"What a dumbass," she scolded herself as she walked down the stairs to the first floor and then to the basement where her motorcycle was parked in the garage. - What could have prevented her from choosing some other day to test it? Now I'd have to leave the table at seven, offend my parents."
She didn't have a bicycle or a motorcycle, like her classmates, but a real old Harley, gleaming with chrome. It was more than a motorcycle, it had character and a name, and its name was Harry. Her father had offered her a small car and flatly refused to buy her a bike, but nothing, she got out of it, she earned it. He didn't ask where the money came from, because he realized that his daughter was not a prostitute. Although the oldest profession was much safer.
Gia changed into leather - her father zealously made sure that safety procedures were followed. The heart of the steel horse roared, Gia put on her helmet, pressed the button that opened the gate, one more, and rode out of the yard onto the neat asphalt street. She waved to the armed guard at the checkpoint - he let her out of the village.
Then the way went on through a more or less decent area, where lived mostly foreigners, then - past the low apartment houses, buried in the greenery. The smooth tarmac ended in a flash as Gia pulled onto the exhaust-smelling highway that led through the city, reeking of sweat and sewage and urine, tangled with wires of all kinds.
Gia lurched behind a massive, colorful jeepney, where a weary, elderly passenger looked on. He must have been jealous of the guy on the cool motorcycle, because you couldn't see his face behind his helmet, and you couldn't tell his gender. The bike went about half a kilometer and then got stuck in a traffic jam. In a filthy slum, and near a stinking river that reeked so badly that her eyes were watering.
Here we go again! And it was Saturday afternoon, not rush hour! And there was no curb to go around.
Thoughts were that his father - it seems an advanced man, a broker, and lives in such an asshole! Why, why not in the under-construction New Clark City, where there was not all this trash, smooth roads, clean streets? To this question my father smiled slyly and said: "You'll understand when you grow up. The words sounded like mockery, because she was as tall as he was, and a full head taller than her mother.
Finally
the convoy of cars reached a place where there was a curb. Gia
immediately tried to take advantage of it, turned to the right and
drove along the littered narrow strip of asphalt, but the bulky
jeepney with the passengers swerved sharply - the huge wheel pushed
the front wheel of the bike, and it began to roll over.
By some
miracle, Gia managed to push off and jump onto the lawn, rolled away,
frozen face first into the ground, numb with belated terror. She
heard the screeching of brakes, the scraping of metal, the screaming.
After a second or two seconds, or forever, someone roughly rolled her over onto her back-she sat up sharply, and the man who approached her, screaming like a woman, recoiled. Apparently, he thought the corpse had risen. Gia took off her helmet and held out her hand:
- I'm fine, I'm fine.
- Don't give me the police! - The driver of the jeepney shook his hands, curious passengers poked their heads out, stuck out their phones and began to film the incident. - It was your own fault, where did you go? The troublemakers are here!
Gia turned away - the last thing she needed was for her parents to see it on the news. She knew she was wrong, and the police would only make things worse. It was a shame that she had once again been mistaken for a tourist: too tall, too fair-skinned for a Filipina - more likely Korean or Japanese. She silently walked over to her Harry, lying on his side, sat down on all fours, stroked the gas tank, assessed the damage: it seemed all right. And when she tried to drag him to the lawn, she found that the front wheel was damaged and blocked. She did not understand much about mechanics and did not aspire to get into it. Now at home there is no way to avoid the brainwashing.
Although there is an option - to say that the bike just broke, and had to take it to the repair. That's probably what I should do.
Understanding that the show was cancelled - the motorcyclist was alive - the biker and car drivers returned to their seats and started signaling to the jeepney, which had blocked the right lane. Only a sturdy, gray-haired man remained, helped Gia pull the heavy motorcycle aside and handed her a tow truck business card.
She blurted out a smile and almost kissed the man, who withdrew to his Nissan electric car and stopped disturbing the traffic.
Gia belatedly shook. Then it took a long time to call for a tow truck - her fingers missed the numbers. Besides, it got stuffy, her leg hurt, and Gia realized she was boiling in her own juice, took off her leather clothes, leaving her in short white shorts and a T-shirt, and stuffed her backpack. She glanced at her thigh, where the bruise was crimson, and cursed.
The tow truck arrived in half an hour. The plan was to visit the repair shop first and take Harry for treatment, then buy some pants to hide the bruise, and look for souvenirs for her parents.
Harry, though old, had never broken down in six months, and Gia had no idea where the repair shop was or how to deal with the staff, so she was nervous, as she was every time she felt incompetent.
Fortunately, the smiling and chatty tow truck driver turned out to be aware and took her to the nearest repair station in just ten minutes, took the money - a whole thousand pesos, the greedy bastard! - and drove away. He didn't even help Gia out of the car - her leg was hurting like hell, and she could barely make it to the garage, where she was immediately surrounded by three employees.
The tallest barely reached Gia's ear; the second, stocky and square, even had a cube-shaped skull; the third, toothless and spongy, was a hybrid of a frog and a mouse: greenish, mouthy, and long-eared.
- What happened? - The square-shaped one asked in Philippine; he must have been the leader of the trio, for he was the cleverest, and he had a big square head.
- It rolled over, and the wheel jammed," said Gia, watching as the tall one and the frogman dragged Harry into the back of the box.
- Easy off the hook," the tall one who'd returned blurted, looking at her bruised thigh, and Gia covered it with her backpack. - Where did you come from? You speak Filipino so well.
Gia gritted her teeth. She knew three languages. Her family spoke English, her father made it his duty to teach her daughter Chinese, and her mother preferred Filipino. As a result, Gia seemed to know each language well, but she spoke them all with an accent.
- I'm a local, I go to English school," she said grudgingly, tired of having to explain it to everyone.
Long looked at the square:
- Look at the motorcycle. - He turned to Gia again: "Do you have half an hour? We'll tell you what's what and how much.
- And if it's something small, can you fix it today? - she asked.
The boss shook his head at the three mopeds against the wall and the Subaru with its hood up.
- Nope. See how many unscheduled ones there are. And then there's the time ones. Come on, let's go sit in the waiting room.
It turned out to be a windowless, spattered little room, with a cigarette-burned chair and a jar of cigarette butts floating in it. A fly was crawling across the table, rubbing its paws. On the walls were posters of faded, lush-breasted ladies. They must have hung them last century, and still do. Why did she come here? But it was too late to retreat, and her leg was falling off, so Gia sat down, put her backpack on her lap, and sat down on her phone to play marbles.
The chief returned forty minutes later, he looked guilty.
- The diagnostics were done. Say, ah... uh... By the way, I'm Romeo. - The man held out his hand - stained with oil, with dirt under his grown fingernails.
Gia didn't shake it, introduced herself, and the mechanic continued:
-
How long ago did you have your inspection?
Gia was wary, leaning
forward.
- I've only had the bike six months. Before the previous owners went through...
- They lied to you. Car's in bad shape. The thing about Harleys is they eat oil, you have to fill it up often. If you miss it, you get oil starvation...
- My dad takes care of that," Gia said.
- So the previous owners didn't. Well, the engine... It needs fixing, pistons and camshafts...
A square man came into the closet, perked up his ears. Romeo continued:
- The spark plugs are full of oil, they need replacing too. And the starter.
Looking at Gia's elongated face, the square took pity and dropped it, almost coming out:
- The starter probably just needs the brushes cleaned.
- How much will it cost me? - Maria babbled, realizing that either the motorcycle ride or the gift to her parents would be ruined.
- I need to see how much the parts cost.
Gia took it out of her backpack and handed it to the foreman, who sat down at the antique computer on the table by the entrance, whistled, and then gave out:
- "Everything's in stock, and Chinese equivalents as well.
- How much will it cost me to repair it? - Gia asked coldly.
- Sixty thousand pesos for parts, twenty for labor. Twenty, I mean, thousands..." Watching Gia turn pale, which means she might slip away, Romeo said, "Okay, the work is seventeen thousand. And the starter can wait.
That's a lot more than she has. She'd have to ask her father for it, but there's no guarantee he'd give it to her. Or was she just cheated, as they often do with girls? In any case, she won't drag her father to the showdown - so he won't find out about the accident, and she has no male friends in real life.
- Could I just get the wheel to spin? - In a strange voice she asked.
- Do you realize that the accident broke the pistons? I can do anything, of course, but if the camshaft jams, and it's close to that...
I wish I knew what he was talking about!
- Do the math on the minimum. What can wait a week, let it wait a week.
In the end, the amount was reduced to forty-two thousand for the work and parts, and that was all settled. Feeling like an idiot, Gia hailed a cab (no need to push in a jeepney!) and drove to the business center to look for a gift for her parents.
She had two and a half thousand dollars worth of crypto, would have to change at such a bad time. Or try borrowing from Max, and writing cheats herself? But it would be dangerous to be so visible so often, because they might find out.
She played fair in the Chinese Altera.
- Right here, please! - she shouted, and the cab driver stopped between a jewelry store and a boutique, near which smiling girls in colorful striped dresses were handing out something, and above them from a billboard guy with bright yellow eyes was grinning. Behind one shoulder was an elven forest, behind the other was a spaceship against a backdrop of galactic arms, and above his head was a slogan: "Choose the life you deserve!" And at the bottom, in smaller font: augmented reality lenses aren't just video sequences, they're an entire Dream universe from the Manga Metacorporation.
When Gia caught up with the girls, it turned out that they, too, were advertising lenses - handing out discount certificates. The older girl was talking to a frazzled, obviously abusive young man:
- You don't understand! "Dream is so much more. Just today a set of lenses is only a hundred pesos, and a medium with a licensed program is free.
In the civilized world, the lousiest lenses cost two hundred bucks! Alter glasses are fifty. It was only now that Gia thought about the fact that if they try to stick you with something for almost nothing, it means you're looking for a catch somewhere. MANGA is putting Filipinos on the wagon, so that when they get hooked on Dream, which is scarier than any drug, they can start milking them, selling them illusions-literally.
Or maybe it's something else. Maybe conspiracy theorists aren't so wrong.
But one thing Manga has miscalculated: once - there is a free "Alter". You buy glasses, and you don't have to pay for the rest. Two - part of the population, those people who live in the slums, are illiterate, and prefer more affordable entertainment in the form of palm moonshine and drugs, and on many islands the Internet is only in the hotels.
Then came thoughts of "Alter-Dream," which appeared a couple of months after the main Western project as a counterbalance to it. There was a scandal, the developers were accused of industrial espionage, sanctions against China. This started an open confrontation between the East and the West.
I
wonder what it was really like? "Was the Alter Dream stolen, or
was it just that the East and West were developing similar worlds at
the same time? Gia studied the code and came to the conclusion that
the idea was stolen after all, and when the project was almost
complete.
Eventually, to keep Alter competitive, they made it
free, and then the government bought it back from the developers and
used it as a counterbalance to Manga's Dream, with limited visits to
the world: no more than three hours a day, so that users would not
become addicted. The only thing that was put on stream was the sale
of augmented reality glasses and simulation game supports, lenses
were expensive and used far less frequently.
First Gia waddled to the boutique, where she bought bright yellow loose pants, then she went straight to the jewelry store, looked for great rings, but realized she might get the wrong size, and bought two identical gold figures of swans to wear on a thin chain.
She got off at half past four, hailed a cab, and spent the whole trip thinking about sitting down for an hour at the party table before heading over to Max's place at Alter to set up a botnet test.
Focusing on her new goal, Gia let the situation go and only remembered the pain in her leg when it was time to get out of the car at the house gate.
The dream catcher over the door jingled, announcing Gia's arrival, and her mother looked out of the living room, smiling and chirping in Filipino:
- "Honey, we're hungry, but we're waiting for you. - She ran out to meet her, hugged Gia, pressed her cheek against her collarbone, then turned around and shouted to her little sister: - Mika! Myka, come downstairs for dinner!
It looked like she was addressing the stairs. Her mother pulled Gia after her, and she almost ran after her, trying hard not to limp.
After seeing her eldest daughter off to the living room entrance, her mother ran toward her father's study on the first floor, and Gia relaxed and walked more slowly, glancing at her mother's receding figure, but she suddenly slowed down and turned around and shot Gia a piercing look, her face icy-but in a split second there was a simple smile again.
The hairs on the back of her neck stirred. It seems that there is nothing to charge, the suspicions seem idiotic - but it does not feel good. She felt as if someone had come to possess her, to keep an eye on her mother.
Gia took a seat at a table full of food, and only now felt that she was hungry. Her mother and father showed up happy, waving to Gia-he'd been out of the office all day today, and they hadn't crossed paths.
Leaning on the table, Gia waddled over to them, held out a silver box with a gift, and spoke:
- Congratulations on your porcelain wedding! You are just a model for me.
Mom snatched the box, opened it and aghast, and then went to kiss me. Dad was restrained and, as usual, hovering in his thoughts.
- Papa, is something wrong? - Jia asked in Chinese, watching her mother with her side-eye - or did she seem to, or had she stopped so zealously acting happy and trying to hang her swan on the chain, her ears perked up, tense.
- Today the quotations of Russian "Gazprom" fell by nineteen percent, tomorrow I predict another five percent fall, and you can take tokens! - My father came to life.
Gia leaned on the table to unload her leg, and thought that she should take them.
- Do you think the fall will stop? They're at war over there," Gia wondered, wondering if she'd invest her meager savings in assets.
Her father wagged his finger admonishingly:
- Both my calculations and reliable people say that tomorrow Russia will take some kind of military action that will first crash the market, but then it will strengthen.
Gia bit her lip. Usually the "reliable people" were right. What kind of people were they, and where did her father have the connections that had made his fortune? Smiling, he only shook his head each time. The Chinese government? But why is he holed up here when things are so much better over there in China? Russia's diktat? The neutrals? Crypto-anarchists? The Triad?
Gia glanced at the holographic wall clock: 6:10 p.m. Just under an hour until her meeting with Max.
In her seat at the head of the table, directly across from her father, twelve-year-old Mika sat down, yawned sweetly and made a bored look. Her mother, who had managed her gift, bustled about, putting dish after dish on the table: shrimp in cheese sauce, lobster, rice and fries for Micah, ladobo for herself.
Stunned by her mother's culinary feat, Gia thawed instantly.
- Mommy, that's a whole feast! It's beautiful! You're such a hero!
- Dio, I'm speechless. I have the best wife in the world," her father praised her efforts.
"Myka folded her arms across her chest in awe:
- "Jesus Christ, even fries!
Mom began to arrange the food on plates. Gia watched her and marveled. What for her was an impossible burden and a bore of death, for her mother was bliss. For example, to serve her family, to take care of her children, to make her husband happy.
She
did not read books, had no interest in economics or politics, laughed
at silly things, and talked mostly about the weather and neighbors
and cooking. Gia suspected that she hadn't finished school, either.
There was nothing in common between them, like creatures of different
species; her daughter had outgrown her at eleven - in every sense -
but she hadn't stopped loving her. Because it was impossible not to
respond to her mother's boundless sincerity and openness.
Mom
was a constant. An island of stability in a world of chaos. Could it
be that she had a double bottom, too? It was as if the solid rock had
moved beneath her feet. She wanted to believe in someone!
Gia poured juice into her glass and said, though she hated talking toasts:
- My dear parents! Here's to you. You are the best in the world, I love you very much.
They clinked their glasses and drank. Mom continued:
- It took me the longest to find a potato. - Mom sat back down, and it was time for Dad to take care of her, to put ladobos on her. - You should have seen what they sell at the market! I had to go to a shop for Europeans, but everything there is incredibly expensive...
To her chattering, Gia set to eating, thinking of the botnet. She forced herself to focus on the taste, but her father brought up the conversation about the promising Chinese cryptocurrency, the enormous amount of electricity needed to cool the farms.
Wiping his mouth with a napkin, my father finished:
- So soon we'll have to move to Russia. When you get to the point where the cost of cooling the farms exceeds the income. The corporations have occupied Antarctica.
Gia thought longingly of the natural refrigerator, and how lucky the Russians were with their permafrost... On the one hand, lucky. Gia disliked the cold about as much as she disliked crowds of people, but she formed an idea of sub-zero temperatures only thanks to the freezer.
Mom started talking again about how nice it would be to grow potatoes and beets and sell them to restaurants for Europeans - the conversation turned to a discussion of her business plan.
After thanking her mother and kissing her, Gia headed for the stairs, feeling vaguely anxious. Yes, the Philippines was not part of the civilized world, it was easier to slip out from under the hood of observers, but too zealously metacorporation throws its metastases here.
Gia seems to have foreseen and planned everything, but anything can happen. What if the browser or VPN glitches and she can be tracked down? The probability of that tends to zero, but it doesn't matter... Cybercrimes are not just virtual sentences.
What if Max is just communicating with her, so that he can turn her in if he gets the chance? Let him launch the botnet first, as agreed, she would connect after him.
Gia walked across the room, biting her fingernail, but it was already nibbled to meat. Okay, I was not.
Put on the augmented reality glasses. Wait for the system to identify her. She wrote a program for Dream (she had been working on it for six months!) that would fake her identification, replace her iris pattern with one stolen from the database, and make the system think that someone else was logged in. There was no point in hiding at Altera, here she was communicating with like-minded people and was not rampant.
The identification was successful. The room hadn't changed, only the colors were brighter and a portal flickered in place of a simulator that looked like two interpenetrating squirrel wheels, with boots on springs, gloves, a hoop, and a sensor vest that looked like a cuirass in the middle of it burning with fire. These devices were obsolete and not too expensive.
In the West, they have already developed immersion capsules based on quantum computers, which have a completely different principle of operation and programming language, and such a capsule + computer costs as much as a flight into space. But the experience is indistinguishable from the real one, and there are many useful options.
As soon as Gia dressed up, she became a Pe-ji girl, and three doors appeared in the wall: the "Virtual Room," the "Alter Real," and the "Guest Room. She headed for the room. Her body, encased between two hoops, moved her legs, imitating walking, while her brain perceived a different reality. Here Gia walks across the white-tiled floor, touches the brass doorknob, hears the creak of the hinges-the door here is heavy, iron. It's not a door, it's a gate.
When she first came to Alter four years ago, Gia was more surprised, not by how realistic the experience was, but by how much programming work had been put into this universe! It all has to be not only written, but also synchronized with perception!
In Pe-ji's private room, the red request button on the wall was already blinking: Max had asked to visit, Gia accepted him, and the guy materialized in the middle of the room - a tall green-eyed blond in jeans and a white T-shirt. Of course, that wasn't his appearance. Gia used one of the hundreds of standard avatars, too, but as similar as possible.
- Accuracy is the politeness of kings. - This greeting meant that everything was all right.
Details were negotiated in the encrypted channel of the new and reliable messenger "trustori," a meeting needed more for reassurance.
- And queens. - She confirmed.
They chatted about nothing and soon dispersed, Gia left the Alter and looked at her watch: in five minutes Max would be in, in ten minutes she would be in, and the Manga branch would have a long battle with bots from two different command centers.
Gia
opened the official website of the Philippine branch of MANGA,
through which new zombies are recruited. Tomorrow they have a meeting
scheduled with shenanigans, bonus giveaways, and presentations. Now
there will be no one to coordinate the goofballs, he and Max will
disrupt a statewide event! Just think!
Exactly
six minutes later, the site lay down - Max's strength alone was
enough. But she still entered the game, as agreed. Take that!
Yankees, go home! Let's see how fast you bounce back.
My heart was pounding, my throat was hot, I couldn't concentrate on anything, I wanted to monitor the news and revel in the shrieks of the Mangososos! It was clear that they wouldn't react that quickly, so I had to do something to distract myself. For example, to return to the Alter Real, to finish the quest.
She remembered her defeat in the dungee, and the jitters subsided. Putting on her sensors, she tried to remember how many times she'd been killed there. The thirtieth? Fortieth? How to get through the fucking dungeon?
Suppose, by some miracle, she'd slaughter the creatures of the Netherworld... Or shouldn't they be slaughtered? And in the guide is not useful information, players who have passed dunge, not in a hurry to share their secrets. She'd have to think for herself...
Suddenly it hit her! Lich summoned the creatures with a deathly howl. What if she put a silent seal on it? Exactly!
Once in the game, Gia, who found herself in the graveyard, checked her inventory, and found that a not very valuable sword and a rare shield had fallen from her at the time of her death, and it was worth coming back for that alone. Stopped at the auction, bought a couple of seals of silence and a scroll teleportation to dunge.
She didn't feel like she was going out for fun, but to school or work.
It was as she had been for weeks: a clearing surrounded by pine trees, in the middle of a lonely, protruding boulder, a shimmering portal to the dunge. Ready to fend off the onslaught of a flock of nephrites, Gia stepped forward, but there was a cough behind her, and she turned around.
Her attention was deliberately drawn to a man, a level 72 Serge, of the same class as she - a loner, and thus full of surprises. Take, for example, his light silvery, either shirt or chainmail with steel inlays with a blue pattern. The helmet, too, was odd, Roman-type, covering his forehead, nose, and cheeks.
- Hello, Pe-ji! - He smiled, and Gia looked wary, turning to the lad and asking:
- What do you want?
She couldn't see his face. Clearly this Serge had chosen a European appearance, he was narrow-faced and brown-eyed. But who cares! The avatar could have been a fat black man. You could be a fairy or a nude. "Alter had even developed a race of flying genies for wheelchair users.
- I want to go through the dunge, but it can only be two of us: first I help you, and then you help me. We can't make a group. - He sounded like he was using an interpreter, the way he phrased himself. Or maybe he wasn't, maybe his English was so perfect.
- Can't even buff or knock each other out," Gia nodded. - Besides, we're not really made for each other, and there's no guarantee you won't gank me.
He smiled disarmingly again.
- Okay, I'll show you my cards. The dungeon is buggy. It's single player dungeon, and when two people get there, the location mobs only see the one who's aggroing them. But the other one can easily beat them.
- And won't overagger? - Did not believe Gia.
Serge shook his head.
- And what do the developers do? - She kept on asking.
- There was only one group that made it through the dungee. A couple, actually, and they won't share their secrets. I followed them. - He held up his hands and became invisible, and his voice came out of nowhere.
- So I can tank...
- ... But one loka I can take on. Just do not ungulates, because who starts and finishes, the experience goes to someone alone, the quest counts - too. You swing first.
- I'm lucky to have you. Unless, of course, you're not lying! - exclaimed Gia, she was so surprised that she even forgot about the botnet.
Serge showed up and asked:
- What do you specialize in?
- I'm something of a paladin. But on top of that I can hang debuffs. I'm pretty much a generalist.
- I see. - Serge nodded forward. - Go to the portal!
Since he'd been to the dungee, he knows there's a pre-bathroom beyond the entrance, so he'd better get used to the darkness and prepare himself, buffeting himself to the max. Gia saved her trump cards for the third location, with necrojabs, and the fourth, with the lich. Serg began to cast something right there - he threw up his arms, enveloped himself in flames, and the fiery laurel wreath, the golden Chinese dragon, the rainbow flashed above his head.
The world shattered into pixels, she felt nauseous, her head was pierced with a needle- Gia flailed her arms, trying to hold on, breathing deeply and often. She thought she was dying, and her first impulse was to throw off her glasses, but she managed to endure the attack and her perception normalized.
- Are you all right? - Sergey asked warily, touching her shoulder.
- I think so. Suddenly dizzy. It will pass.
- Don't rush," he said.
Gia didn't hurry, she listened to the sensations and didn't notice anything strange about herself. She waited another minute, and then nodded:
- All right. So, I'm aging. You don't have to insure: I paralyze them, then pour fire on them. The skeletons in the second cave are fast, too. The toads in the third cave wound me a bit and slow me down, so I have to recover for fifteen minutes. But the fucking lich, gasping for breath, summons the creatures of Iznanka, and that's it.
Serge
whistled:
- Wow, you passed, I'm stuck on toads. Anyway, in the
fourth cave I'm aggro.
- You're gonna fold.
- Fuck it!
Gia made it through the first and second caves without sustaining damage. In the stinking swamp of the third lived zombie toads the size of bears, "fat" and resistant to magic. They spit acid, shoot their tongues out, and if touched, hang a slowdown. The more times they got hit, the harder the slowdown. They were killed by either spitting and dissolving acid, or jumping up and crushing them. When the first two necrojabs each had 5% life left, a third would appear.
The plan was this: while Gia sawed off the third, Serge finished off the first two.
Except he was unlucky: first, he accidentally caught a spit, which slowed him down but didn't knock him out of stealth. He managed to finish off the first toad after all. But the second one, moving toward Gia, jumped and landed squarely on top of him.
As they say - fatality! She crushed him without seeing.
Had to wriggle out on her own again. Having finished the toads and collected the loot - the skin from which alchemists prepared potions, Gia sat down to recover near the entrance to the cave with the lich. Usually it took fifteen minutes - and the toads would not recover, and Serge would have time to get to him, though Gia suspected that he would be of little use, and if so, it was not worth helping him...
- Wee, wee, - sounded above her ear, Gia jumped up, putting her sword in front of her, and just in time: from the neighboring cave climbed a huge orc-zombak and tried to catch her with his clawed paw. - Whoa!
What the... That had never happened before! My health was only halfway restored! At this zombie's call, other zombies came. Not only that, but a toad showed up from the swamp, too fast, and spat, but missed!
Is this a self-developing dungeon, self-learning monsters, and they won't act like they used to? Frustration and anger swept over her head. The toad tensed and jumped, at which point Gia triggered a deadly aura, the touch of which incinerated the toad, as did the zombies that Gia managed to reach in ten seconds.
The survivors took her in a ring, began to press her toward the stinking swamp, where two other toads were about to spawn themselves. And behind the dead, a lich who had raised his arms loomed.
Her eyes began to blur again, and the figures of the mobs seemed to pixelize into... no, zeros and ones! She could see what the mobs were made of! Not only that, she could see the texture of the cave walls, and even -particles of scattered light.
A bubble burst on the surface of the swamp, and then a necrojab emerged with its skin peeling off in shreds. It puffed up, about to spit, and at the same moment, at the lich's command, the zombies rushed in to attack.
"I wish I could stop time," Gia thought, and...
The mobs didn't stop, but they slowed, as if they were freezing on the move. Toad spat. Gia threw her hand up, imagining she was holding an invisible shield (she'd lost her own) - and the spit hit an invisible barrier, flowed to the ground.
Gia didn't think about what was happening; it was as if she was changing the rules of the game with her mind! She was not just in the game, she was the game, her soul and flesh.
With a wave of her hand, a shining blade rose from her wrist and stretched across the cave, blowing the heads off the zombies. With another swing, the blade vanished, and a ball of light erupted from within the fox, exploding and bursting, tearing the necromancer into black shreds before he could make a sound.
The zombie survivors crumbled into bones. A pillar of light exploded from above, sending sparks flying.
Congratulations!
The task was successfully completed. Take the heart of the staff to Master Trang and receive your reward!
Only now the excitement wore off, and Gia wondered what it was. Had Serge strangely buffed her? Had the dunge seriously glitched? She hated to give up the feeling of omnipotence, she had destroyed monsters with her mind! Jedi mind.
Stunned, she didn't hesitate to pick up the brown crystal that had fallen from the lich, the heart of the staff. She glanced over at the gurgling in the swamp, where a toad, killed later than the others, had sprung up. Gia focused on it and ordered it to petrify. A second, and the necro toad poked its head out of the water and turned into a statue.
In the silence, Serge's applause sounded like gunfire.
- Well done," he said strangely, "whatever you do, take the ring to Trang, and he'll give you contacts for people who can get you out of this.
- Uh... get out of it? I'm all right," she protested uncertainly.
- Yet.
- You knew that... But why? - Gia gasped with emotion and couldn't formulate a thought.
- "Be careful.
- Who are you? Why should I be careful?
- Because it's time.
- Who are you?!
He shook his head and put his finger to his lips. A teleportation hexogram flashed beneath his feet.
- No, you tell me! Who you are, why you...?
- You can't. Not here.
Serge
shrouded himself in a cocoon of light. Enraged, Gia tried to shatter
it with her mind, but it didn't work on him the way it did on the
mobs, throwing her back against the wall, knocking ten percent of her
life away.
A second later, Serge was gone, a melting cloud in
the shape of a laughing clown. Gia gasped, ashamed of her outburst of
rage. Like a little girl, as if she herself didn't know that every
step of the user was under control. If she showed any suspicious
activity, they'd be interested in her right away. They won't kill
her, they'll just put her on a chain, and she'll have to work for
some secret service.
One thing is clear: it was after the appearance of Serge began strange, and dangerous, which means that the game must be out immediately. Without thinking Gia activated the scroll teleportation to the capital and was on the central square near the well, where, on seeing her, jumped the man Peremen, extended his hand:
- Pe-ji, do you have anything extra? Have pity on the nub! Give me some coins!
She wanted insanely to kick him, but then the guards would snapping at her, so she just walked past him. She walked up the cobblestones to the houses, and from there to the city walls. She had to make sure that the powers Sergius had given her were still there. Staring at the stone in the center of the wall, Gia imagined that it had become liquid. It worked! The stone changed shape, hesitated...
Stop! Stop the change - the stone obeyed.
And what to do about it?
Gia imagined the power and the risk, and her heart seemed to be pounding in her temples. She felt uneasy, anxious. If she were any kind of nub, she'd go crushing mobs left and right and take castles. But she'd be kicked out as a cheater for her imbovy abilities.
- You're a cheapskate," said the nub, who turned out to have followed her from the well. - Isn't it worth a penny?
Gia remembered trying to stop Serge with her mind, stared at the nub, and, assuming nothing would happen, imagined him dispersing into dust. Change burst like a mushroom splattering spores, and the yellow pollen was carried away by the wind.
Gia swallowed noisily, looked around to see if any guards were running toward her for killing in the peace zone, but no one was paying attention to the character's atomization.
No one but Change. A message came from him in the chat room:
- What have you done? Where is my character?
- I didn't do anything," she wrote, and cowardly walked out of the game and removed her sensors.
It turns out that Serge was very difficult, since the trick with him failed, when the elementary came out with this beggar. What had he done to her? I remembered that Serge had told me to go to the Questgiver, who would "give me the contacts of the people who could help me out."
Why all the mystery? Was he being followed, or was she so messed up that the anarchists had taken her under their wing, since the clown was their symbol.
Gia looked around the room, not sure what she wanted to see. There's a hidden camera in the pink bunny, which she watches regularly. You can't see it, but... Gia listened to a strange sensation. In the place where the camera was located, it was as if it felt warm. Gia closed her eyes, and instead of blackness a rectangle of the room appeared, as if she were in a simulator, and in a scaled-down model of her bedroom orange dots marked the appliances. But it was enough to mentally reach for the dot, and it became clear that this was the camera, and there was nothing wrong with it. That dot over there is the phone on charge. Then there's the computer, the laptop off. A simulator with sensors. Augmented reality glasses. The lamp by the monitor... What's that red light?
Son of a... Bug! Gia reached for her picture in the frame where they had hidden it, but jerked her hand away. Someone was bugging her. Wouldn't her mother stop? But how could she get a wiretap? She's illiterate, isn't she? Her father had no reason to. Maybe someone did track her down and break into the house.
Maybe that was what Serge was talking about.
A feeling of impending doom twisted her insides into an icy knot. She tried to reassure herself that she'd never discussed illicit matters out loud, that there was nothing to worry about, that she'd always used the VPA and taken precautions.
She felt hot, her cheeks glowing. Gia sat down at her computer, tried to open the Mangoso website, but it was still down. She ran through the news headlines, found a couple about how unknown superhackers had attacked the Manga site and disrupted the event scheduled for Sunday, which was tomorrow.
Just yesterday she would have been swelling with pride. Today she realized that not for nothing did a clever book say that much knowledge is much sorrow. The same could be said of ability. If you are exposed, the intelligence services or corporations will take you to their hands or lock you in a laboratory.
And if there is a bug, then there is someone who suspects (well, if not know) that she is not quite an ordinary girl.
So now what? Lay low? Refuse to sell cheater weapons in the Dream? Yeah, that's the right thing to do. Buy that crypto my dad was talking about...
And
she'd need five hundred dollars to repair Harry. That was what Gia
was doing, but she couldn't distract herself, she wanted to share it
with someone, but she couldn't. For the first time she felt
loneliness in all its glory. But lamp loneliness, not when you're
hiding from stupid people in a room in your cozy villa, not even when
there's no one to invite to a birthday party, but when you, tiny and
defenseless, stand at a crossroads, wind in your face, and what
threatens you, including the crowd, is giant and inevitable.
When
she had finished, Gia walked around the room, looked out the window,
which overlooked the yard of the usually absent Englishmen: there
stood a pair of trim men in black.
Gia retreated to the back of the room - instinctively, though she knew she could not be seen behind the glass.
The English came three times a year in a motley, boisterous crowd, singing and drinking a lot, and rumbling around the clock. And what were these two - burglars? Definitely not the police. Secret Service?
She wondered if they were watching her, but Gia shook it off - did she think too much of herself?
Two more men with guns came out of the villa and stopped by the pool. A special operation? What if those Englishmen were doing something illegal?
Most likely they were. If they had come for her, they would have acted differently. Gia leaned against the wall, watching the fighters. I wonder who these units work for? Or was it a private military company?
Gia sat down at the computer, but she felt uncomfortable and just stared at the monitor. She went to the window again, but the raiders in the neighbor's yard were hiding somewhere.
And then on the first floor of her villa rumbled - she even jumped. What was that?
Gunshots? No, like a closet being dropped. The door slammed. Another one. Loud thudding... Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang! And now gunshots!
Gia paced around the room, frantically trying to figure out where to hide. Under the bed? That's where they'd look. Behind a curtain? Not an option either. She peeked out the window: if she could tear the curtains apart quickly, she could go down... Or jump? She would land right in the bush...
Except that the trouble was that there were men in black running around in the yard of the English, as if the shots had come as a surprise to them.
There was a knock at the door of the room, and immediately my father's voice sounded:
- Daughter... open up. We must go.
Again the machine-gun sounded in the house and was answered with single shots. She wanted to plug her ears, but Gia pushed the latch open with naughty fingers and clutched her head: her father was standing on the threshold. He clung to the wall with one hand, covered the wound in his side with the other, blood trickling through his fingers and sweat trickling down his forehead.
- Are you wounded? Are you badly hurt?
- It's just a scratch," he brushed it aside.
- Where's Mama? Mika? - Gia asked.
- Gone.
- How do we get out? - Gia clutched at his shoulder, darted to the window, and pointed to the English house: "We're surrounded!
- Don't waste time. Follow me!
He looked around, ducked down the corridor and made for the office. All Gia had time to do was shove her notebook, phone, diary into her backpack, and rushed after him the same way, half-crouched and huddled against the wall. Her mind went blank. She just followed her father because she trusted him...
- Freeze! - A low growl sounded as Gia threw herself through the open door of her office, followed by a path of bullet holes in the wall.
Her father shut the heavy oak door, latched and bolted it, but still he could hear the thunder of gunfire and the scream of a badly wounded man. As he approached the table in the corner of the room, his father pushed against it with all his might, as if he wanted to move it.
Looking at the door, Gia backed away.
- Who is that? Are they shooting at each other?
- Help me," her father wheezed, and she ran up to him, also stumped against the table, unsure why they were doing this.
There was a bang on the door. Another and another. There was a click.
...-take her alive. Cover up! - A crack was heard, and at that moment the table shifted with a clatter, as if someone had been crushed in the bones. Part of the floor slid away, opening a rough, dark opening.
There it was! My father had something to hide! And she was not the target of this attack at all.
- Open up! - shouted with a slight accent.
Gia heard no further, as she descended the steep fire escape into the darkness. Her father somehow closed the trapdoor, and total darkness reigned.