Chapter Three: Zeke
The only bar in the Unbearable was called Scavenger’s, and most of the patrons were non-humans. There was no rule against humans coming in, but the owner was this ancient Vorician former college professor, and the drinks were inspired by classic Vorician folktales that most humans had never heard of, so they tended not to bother with it.
It was, therefore, pretty easy for me to spot my guy, as he was the only human in the whole place.
He was about forty-five, with all of his own grey-black hair and chiseled, rugged features like something out of a noir detective story. He also happened to be a cop, although he was in plain clothes tonight; a wrinkled button-up shirt that Imogen would have stuck her nose up at, and a pair of loose-fitting jeans.
“Ryce!” I held up my hand, and he saw me and gave a little wave before striding over and slamming down onto the stool beside mine.
“Zeke,” he said. “Thanks for coming.”
The look he gave me was one I’d seen a thousand times on a thousand faces, and I knew right then that he hadn’t just invited me out for a friendly drink. Detective Ryce needed something from me.
I sighed. Of course he did.
“Okay,” I said. “Go on. Ask.”
Ryce looked instantly relieved.
“Sorry” he muttered. My kid’s babysitter is missing.”
I just stared at him.
“That’s, uh, too bad,” I said, “but I’m not sure what the hell I can do about it. You’re the detective; I’m just a-!”
“You know about games,” he interrupted, “and I don’t. All this virtual combat stuff is beyond me; I’m a cop, not a ‘dungeon crawler,’ or whatever the kids are calling the whole virtual battle party thing. But you…you are one of those. You understand how this stuff works.”
I’d never heard myself referred to as a “dungeon crawler;” that was a little off the mark, in my case, but I took his point.
“You think this kid is stuck in a game?” I asked.
Ryce frowned. “Maybe.”
I turned to the bar and raised a finger.
“What’s your pleasure, Zeke?” Brindie, the pink-eyed Mayurian humanoid behind the bar flashed me a weary smile. “And who’s your sexy friend?”
Ryce gave her a startled look, and I swallowed a laugh.
“Two Sunken and Sultrys for me and Detective Roger Ryce, please,” I said, and Brindie made a disgusted face, then turned around and began preparing our drinks.
“Cops aren’t too popular around here, huh?” asked Ryce, looking sheepishly at Brindie’s back.
I shrugged.
“They aren’t as unpopular as cleanse camp guards,” I said.
“Yeah?” Ryce plunked a credit down on the counter for the drink, but I pushed it back at him. “She seems to like you just fine,” he said. “Everybody does.”
“I’m a good customer,” I told him, shrugging.
I didn’t tell him about the glares that I could feel from half the patrons sitting around me, or that the reason I always sat with my back to the wall was that I’d once been hit over the head here with a full bottle of Silken Smog … and that guy must have been pissed, because that shit is expensive.
Ryce, however, was no dumbass. .
He took a look over his shoulder, assessed the atmosphere, and then scowled.
“They’re ignorant idiots,” he muttered. “You’re a gods-damned hero. And that statue is just insulting. You should have been -!”
“How about you tell me why you think your babysitter is trapped in a game,” I said, clearing my throat.
Brindie passed two bubbly, purple drinks over to us and I saluted Ryce with mine before pounding it down and placing my glass back on the counter.
“Right,” muttered Ryce, frowning at me. “Sure thing. Uh…we have to start a little ways back; do you know about the three dead bodies that showed up on the final level of that Olympus reality?”
I did. “Odds of Olympus” was an ICRR with a game built in that was inspired by legendary Earth pantheons. It was known for being a particularly easy game designed for busy, overworked fucks who wanted a little excitement in their limited downtime. Lots of people played it, especially kids. Actually a bunch of the high schoolers in the classes I taught had skipped out of school to go and play it a couple of weeks ago, and I’d ended up having to emet with all of their damn parents, which had been torture.
“There’s no reason why anybody should be dead up there,” Ryce continued, “but a player discovered the bodies of three developers from a totally different game lying in a heap in front of the door to the ‘loot room,’ which I understand is where people get the prizes for beating the final boss.”
I hadn’t realized that the dead guys had been developers. That probably meant something important in terms of the case, but it wasn’t my problem, and I wasn’t interested in making it my problem, so I didn’t comment.
A kid trapped in a game in the midst of some kind of mass death situation, though … that didn’t sit right with me. That kind of shit was everybody’s problem.
“The other night,” Ryce went on, “I was on the holo-chat for hours with another guy from work, and we were talking about the dead developers. Apparently my six-year-old, Macy, was sitting on the staircase landing, listening the whole time, and when Mateo, her sitter, came over the next night, she told him everything she’d heard. Mateo’s a nice kid; eighteen, gets good grades, has nice friends, keeps himself out of trouble, most of the time … but at the end of the day, he’s a teenager, and I guess the idea of doing some detective work of his own must have excited him, because the next night, he didn’t show up to watch Macy. He has NEVER skipped out on Macy before, so that was a bad sign. Around the same time, two of his friends disappeared, too. It’s been three days now, and nobody’s heard from any of them. I think the three of them went into the game to try and ‘solve the case’ and ended up trapped … or, gods forbid, worse.”
This Mateo kid sounded a little bit like my Alex. I empathized, and I bought us another round of drinks in solidarity.
“What is this purple thing?” asked Ryce, when his second one arrived. “Do you always order your drinks to match your shirt? That’s a good shirt, by the way; the color, uh, works for you.” Then he coughed and drummed his fingers on the counter, looking very slightly uncomfortable. “Anyway.”
I blinked at him, and he did not meet my eyes.
“What makes you think that Mateo decided to go sleuthing?” I asked.
I should probably have said something else; something flirty, or at least receptive. Trouble was, it had been a really, really long time for me, and I had no idea how to react to a good-looking guy complimenting my borrowed clothes.
Ryce just nodded, and the moment, if it had been a moment, was over. I was the tiniest bit disappointed, but more than that, I was freaked out. This human body reacted a little more intensely to, uh, excitement than I was used to, and there were some things happening inside me that I had NOT been prepared for.
I cleared my throat, and we both looked down at our drinks.
“Apparently,” he eventually continued, “Mateo told Macy that he was going to ‘make it okay,’ so ‘she didn’t have to worry.’ She told me all about it last night when Mateo again didn’t show up to look after her; she was sobbing, and said she’d waited all this time to tell me because she didn’t want to get Mateo in trouble. She loves that boy; thinks of him like family, and for the past couple of years, he’s frankly helped raise her. I don’t know what she or I would have done without him. I can’t just leave him lost in a game that might or might not be killing people.”
Again, I felt like I understood. There wasn’t anything more important than family.
“So, obviously this sounds like a job for the police,” I began, “not for some old game guy. I don’t really get-!”
Ryce glared into his drink.
“The Chief says the kids are probably just runaways,” he muttered bitterly, “and that they aren’t a priority. He says that the games aren’t killing people, and that I’m acting like a rookie. Says I need some time off to remember how the job works.”
Now, it was Ryce’s turn to drank his drink in a single swig.
“Bullshit,” I muttered. “Your boss sounds like a moron.”
I also didn’t believe that it was the game that was killing people; other over-stimulated, violence-crazed residents of Exodus were more likely to have murdered those poor fucks, but that didn’t change the fact that if this kid and his friends were trapped in a game that they couldn’t break out of, they’d ultimately starve to death, or go nuts. Even if they had originally run away, they now probably needed help. The fact that they couldn’t rely on the police for that didn’t actually shock me.
“Okay,” I told Ryce. “I’ll see if I can find them. No promises, though; they might not even be in Odds of Olympus.”
Ryce reached out and clasped me by the arm, and I realized with some surprise how rare it was for anyone other than Alex and Imogen to voluntarily touch me. Again ,my human body did … things.
Was this what it felt like all the time, as a human? How the hell did Alex even cope?
“Thank you, Zeke,” he mumbled. “I really appreciate it. My Macy is worried sick. She’ll be so happy when I tell her that the great hero of the Dirty Rebellion is on her side.”
I snorted a laugh and plunked a few credits on the counter.
“The great heroes are Alex and Imogen,” I reminded him. “I’m just the controversial sidekick.”
Ryce looked me straight in the eyes, his arm lingering on mine for a weirdly long moment before he pushed himself to his feet.
“That’s crap, and you know it,” he said, “Thanks for the drink. Keep me posted.”
Then he turned around and walked out of the bar, and I stood watching him with a dangerous, tingly feeling in my chest and my mouth slightly open.
“He sure is cute,” sighed Brindie behind me, gathering up her payment. “Shame he’s one of them. You closing out, or you got time for around with me? I’ll be off shift in five minutes.”
***
I don’t know exactly when, but at some point, Alex showed up to drag me home.
I’d … had a few drinks. Once Brindie had gotten off work, we’d moved on from the Sunken and Sultrys to a much stronger bottle of Vorician Beige, and by the time Alex arrived, I was blissfully half-blind.
“Come on, Zeke,” he grunted, throwing one of my arms over his shoulders.
“You’re not losing any muscle mass,” I mumbled as we made our way through the front door, Alex stubbing his toe as he tried not to bang my head into the wall. “You keeping up with your training? You are; I knew it. You’re still-!”
“Don’t body shame,” he interrupted.” Hey, at least you smell okay tonight. Been drinking fruity drinks with Brindie again?”
He waved at Brindie, but I don’t know if she noticed him. For some reason, she’d never taken to Alex. He was kind of intimidating-looking, but he was a big ol’ softie. I kept trying to tell her that.
“A hot-ass cop told me that he liked my shirt,” I muttered.
“Yeah?” Alex sounded interested. “You get his number?”
I already had Ryce’s number, but not for those reasons, and suddenly I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. My stomach felt weird.
“I’m supposed to rescue his babysitter,” I explained.
Alex seemed to think about that as we stumbled back together through the portal that led towards home.
“Huh.” He snorted a laugh. “Okay. Well, my ex always did say that I didn’t understand romance. Maybe she was right. I don’t get it.”
I laughed too, but the laugh soon turned into a cough, and it felt for a second like I was choking on my own spit.
Alex sighed.
“You ever think about not doing this to yourself?” he asked.
The virtual jungle was full of hoots, cries, and clicking sounds at night, and it reminded me of my childhood home. I stopped to listen, forcing Alex up short.
“Yeah,” I whispered. “Yeah, I’ve thought about it. But this is the only way to ward off the nightmares. Don’t have to watch you and Imogen die tonight if I’m too fucked up to dream. You understand?”
Alex was silent for a long moment, and then he nodded.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “Yeah … I get it.”
I forced my feet to keep moving forward, hanging onto Alex’s massive arm for support.
“Kid,” I finally asked him, “how do you fight the nightmares?”
“Let’s just focus on getting you home,” he said. “Imogen’s worried, and you know how she gets.”