Guardian of the DeadAn NPC's Path, book 4 by Pavel Kornev
Prologue
Offline
If you want to take a look down
into a chasm, just look down the barrel of a gun. No, not when you’re busy
cleaning it, in breach of all safety regulations, but when it’s clenched firmly
in a stranger’s hand, pointing at your... let’s say, at the bridge of your
nose.
This was where it was more or less
pointing at me.
Inside it was pure darkness;
behind it was the blurred silhouette of a man. My gaze failed to focus on the
villain himself, so mortally fixated it was on the wrong end of the silencer.
Yes, “mortally” was the right word, I assure you.
My guts tied themselves in a knot.
Only when the barrel tipped lower did I manage to overcome my stupor.
I obediently pressed the button to
lower the car window. My very own electric car which I’d parked in my very own
parking space on the maintenance level of the tower in which I rented my very
own office.
With a rustle, the window began
gliding down.
My very own, yeah right. If his
finger pulled the trigger now, there wouldn’t be anything of mine left.
Including myself - because this lifeless body wouldn’t be me anymore. It would
be just a pile of flesh and bones, plus some splattered brains.
The window stopped at its lowest
point. Its motor seized whirring. Silence fell.
“Kogan says hi,” the blurred face
said in a deadpan voice.
I just couldn’t bring myself to
look at him.
A flash.
It went off like a grenade – as if
it had actually exploded in my head. All the colors were gone, leaving only
white; the world had become a white nothing.
Then I was pulled out of the car
and dragged into this nothingness.
No, they hadn’t ripped my soul out
of my body. It didn’t at all feel like being whisked up to Heaven while still
alive. Even though I couldn’t hear anything and could only catch a few glimpses
of what was going on, some vague sensations suggested that I’d been grabbed
under the armpits and dragged across the concrete floor.
The blurred shadows before my eyes
must have been a pair of black combat boots. Aha. It looked like my vision was
coming back.
At this point, they must have
thrown me into a van or a minibus and – judging by the slight vibration –
slammed the sliding side door shut. Or at least that was the impression that I
got.
My ears were ringing; white
circles swam before my eyes. My tactile sensations were the only thing that
seemed to have fully returned, my fingers sensing the roughness of the carpet.
And I was lying on it in my
bespoke suit which had cost me an arm and a leg.
No, wait. Screw the suit. Had I
just been kidnapped?
And if I had, was it better than
getting a bullet in the head – or quite the opposite?
It really depended on the thugs’
intentions. The fact that they’d mentioned Kogan made it quite clear they
weren’t after any ransom. And as they weren’t creditors of mine, they wouldn’t
be content with the proverbial pound of flesh.
What a bitch! Why had this
happened now? After so many years!
You’d think I’d taken care of
everything. I’d moved to the other side of the country, changed my line of
work, avoided social media and even taken out a new insurance. So what was this
now? What did Kogan want from me? Okay, so they’d put him away for eight years
mainly thanks to my testimony in court – but so what? He'd already been paroled
for good behavior and had left for the proverbial Promised Land! Now why the
hell would he start raking up the past? Was he so sure they wouldn’t be able to
trace him – or did he think no one would rat on him?
Then again, why would I care? What
difference did it make to me? Better for me to have been shot on the spot...
The sound of the door being slid
open reached me through the vicious ringing in my ears. This time I more or
less managed to make out one of the kidnappers. He was wearing an urban camo
suit, a tactical belt, a gun and a helmet with a gas mask and an opaque visor.
He didn’t look at all like a regular thug. And somehow I doubted Kogan would
have hired a private security firm just to kidnap me. That would have been a
bit over the top. I just wasn’t worth it.
That just left the law, then. But
that would have been just as crazy!
They took me under the arm, lifted
me and seated me in a car seat. Then they lowered the folding table and set up
a laptop on it.
“When you’re ready, just lift the
lid,” the man in camos said. “Got me?”
He can’t have been happy with my
feeble nod because he repeated, “Do you read me?”
Although my ears were still
ringing from the stun grenade, I could make out his words quite clearly. “Yes,”
I croaked, not wishing to antagonize him any further.
My reply sounded admittedly
pathetic. Still, he didn’t hassle me any further. He just climbed out of the
windowless van and slid the side door shut.
I wasn’t in a hurry to open the
laptop. Instead, I just sat back and squeezed my eyelids several times, trying
to get rid of the white spots still flickering before my eyes.
Gradually my vision began to come
back. I tentatively ran my fingers along the computer’s rubberized edge. I
could tell it had been made to order. After a moment’s hesitation, I plucked up
my courage. No good keeping myself in suspense.
I lifted the lid.
I didn’t know what I expected to
see – even the grinning mug of my ex-employer – but instead, I was confronted
with the in-game logo of The Towers of Power slowly rotating on a black
background.
What’s that now for bullshit? For
the umpteenth time in the last five minutes, my jaw dropped in amazement.
Then a comm channel kicked in,
conjuring up a face. Not a real person’s but that of a cartoon character. Who
wasn’t human, either.
The avatar had a sharp face,
grayish skin, ashen hair and pointy ears. Its black eyes with vertical pupils
were flecked with crimson. Aha. So I’d been graced by a visit from a Dark Elf.
Or an Elfa, rather. Namely,
Isabella Ash-Rizt. Or someone who was trying to pass themselves off as her.
All of my dealings with this
not-so-pleasant lady had ended already four years ago.
But no, it wasn’t a ruse. She was
real.
‘Hi Kitten,” she greeted me in her
habitual way. “Long time no see!”
As far as I knew, she worked for
an information department of one of the law enforcement institutions. No idea
which one.
“Begone!” I blurted out.
The Elfa (like hell she was an
Elfa but I had to call her something, didn’t I?) gave a little laugh. “And
that’s after we’ve just saved your life?”
By then, my head had cleared
enough to suspect a catch here somewhere. “Yeah right,” I said. “You gonna tell
me this wasn’t a set up?”
Isabella shook her head. “Denial,
anger, bargaining,” she began ticking off on her long black-nailed fingers. “None
of these are gonna help you. Ditto for depression. You’d better move straight
on to acceptance. Alas, Kitten, your ex-employer turned out to be a vindictive
piece of work. You’ve been lucky that the guy he’d hired to find a hitman was
too mouthy. We didn’t have the time to set him up with our own man so we had to
adlib, if you know what I mean.”
“But what have you got to do with
it?” I asked. “That’s not your profile.”
“We’ve got a business proposition
for you.”
With my ears ringing like a bell
and my head throbbing, I didn’t bother to hold back my emotions. “Oh you have,
have you? Have you any idea where I’d like to shove your propositions? Or I
could even go one further!”
“How about we put you in the
witness protection program? It comes with a new name, new background and even a
new face if you so wish. Travel expenses included. I know you don’t seem to be
struggling but still there’s no such thing as too much money. What would you
say to that?”
This proverbial punchbowl was so
big there just had to be at least a couple of turds in it. Still I knew better
than to reject it outright. I needed to think it over.
“It’s really easy, Kitten,”
Isabella carried on trying to coerce me. “You either walk out, give you evidence
in court and live happily ever after until the next attempt on your life—”
“Provided there is one.”
“I’m not the best person to
second-guess Mr. Kogan’s tenacity,” she said, waving my remark away. “You know
him better than I do. Alternatively, you accept our proposition and officially
die here and now. We’ll take care of the technical side.”
That got me thinking. All of my
capital was lodged on digital bank accounts, so I’d keep access to them
regardless. I hadn’t yet got myself a family over these last years or even been
close to anyone at all, subconsciously feeling that something like this would
eventually happen. It was true that living in perpetual fear wasn’t that
pleasant, I had to admit.
Also, I knew that Kogan wouldn’t
just let it be. Once he’d set his mind on destroying me, he wouldn’t let it
drop. I didn’t for one second doubt his determination – which was exactly why
I’d holed up in this backwater at the other end of the country.
The witness protection program
could be a way out. But at what price?
“And what do you want in return?”
I asked reluctantly, abandoning my ruminations.
“Two months of your life. Or even
less if you manage to finish up earlier. In an ideal world, we need to wind it
up in under a month.”
“Wind what up?”
“You’re gonna have to find someone
for us—“ she stopped herself short, apparently reading the amazement on my
face, and raised a reassuring hand, “I meant online, Kitten! We need to
find him online first! Have you ever heard of the Deep Sleep Multi-Platform?”
“That doesn’t make sense,” I
muttered, completely thrown by her sudden offer. “Why would you need me to do
that?”
“I assure you, kitten, we just
can’t do it without you. Now I’d like you to read the agreement and press your
thumb to the scanner...”
Online
Darkness. Silence. Bliss.
Then, almost straight away, a
sequence of blinding flashes began strobing madly around me, followed by
screeching and scraping noises and the prickling of electric shocks.
I would have ripped the helmet off
my head had I not by then lost all control of my own body. I couldn’t even
scream. Which was for the better, because a few moments later, the flashing
subsided and the cacophony of noise died away, submerging my mind into
boundless darkness.
“Your attention please,” a
genderless voice sounded within my head. “Prepare for equipment calibration.
Try to visualize a white square in your mind.”
I did as I was told, then watched
in surprise as the said geometric shape began to glow in the pitch blackness,
conjured up by my imagination.
As soon as it stabilized, I
received a new command,
“Try to transform the square into
a circle.”
Once again, this turned out to be
very easy. Ditto for my next attempt to change its color to green. After that,
I had to transform the circle into a diamond and paint its left side blue and
the right side red.
With that, the calibration was
complete.
Equipment ready for use
Darkness quivered, its surge
erasing the two-colored diamond and replacing it with the developers’ logo. I
was spun like a twig in a whirlpool. My mind collapsed down a portal framed
with flames.
Still, my freefall promptly turned
into gliding as my rabbit hole panned out, turning into boundless space. One
after another, stars began to light up in the dark, getting closer and
brighter, then transforming into a plethora of portals leading to virtual
worlds.
Please select entry point.
You can come back and change it
later.
My gaze shifted frenetically,
looking for the right window. Finally, I came back to my senses and sent a
mental command,
“Boundless Realm.”
And it worked. One of the virtual
icons began to grow in size until I dove into it and sped along its tunnel
toward the incredibly distant specks of light.
Then I saw a grating which barred
the tunnel.
Сheck for locked accounts in progress...
The system message had popped up
unexpectedly, forcing me to shrink in anticipation of slamming myself against the
grate’s spiky bars smeared in caked blood. I wasn’t exactly sure that this was
how the developers had programed it to be; most likely, it was just some cruel
trick of my overwrought imagination.
It was scary, whatever it was.
New permanent account locks
detected: Towers of Power.
I realized they were about to spew
me out back into the real world like a naughty kitten. The thought of me being
kicked out of the witness protection program filled me with such horror that
the inevitable evil of hitting the rapidly approaching spiky bars had instantly
ceased to be scary or unpleasant even.
Deep Sleep Multi-Platform: No
global account locks found
Boundless Realm: No account locks
found
Access granted!
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