After the revelation that their 'secret code' wasn't so secret, Onyx and Nina spent over an hour facing the back walls of their cages and communicating by sign language. It was slow and cumbersome as they tried to use only their fingers and hold their backs and arms perfectly still.

O: Smart enough to figure out our code? Or was he somehow trained in it before coming here? A trained spy?

N: Not the latter. What spy could know one of our secret ways to talk and then simply give away the advantage?

O: Someone playing a longer game? Looking to gain our trust?

N: Ha! Good luck with that. A more paranoid and untrusting group than our little family you will not find. We were betrayed, abused, and hunted for far too long.

O: One of us? Bork playing one of his stupid pranks?

N: There you go hoping again. Even Bork wouldn't play a joke that got himself captured.

O: Would anyone? But consider how tired and broken he looks? He just came from a fight with a world-boss. He was probably injured and low on mana. A perfect time for our captor to strike and carry him away without a fight.

N: Cheese addict. It's killing him, you can see it. He's going through withdrawal and hurting. The wizard has a new toy to play with.

O: We may be boring him at this point. Our refusal to talk with him set up the rat to play the role of a fawning sycophant.

N: Disgusting.

O: Or clever? We gained a clue. And I have another. Watch how the rat watches the door. He sees something about it. He studies it too much.

N: Studies what? Hinges, lock? Only a mechanic.

O: Watch rat watch door. Maybe learn.

N: Later. Tired. Sleeping more, depression. Rat sleeps, I sleeping. Maybe...

O: No.

N: Yes. Maybe just not waking back up is better?

=*=

Sydney debated, and then finally sent a message to get Wally's attention. The AI appeared on her desktop screen as if she had set up a video conference. "Yes? How can I help."

"I lost my rat, and it's bugging me.” She went to take a sip of coffee, but her cup was empty, as were several others on her desk. It was a testimony to her state of mind that she was more worried about Milo than her coffee cup.

Wally waited a full three seconds, but when she didn't continue, asked, "Lost, how?"

Sydney brought up a screen that she knew he would immediately see, with log-in and log-off time stamps. She couldn't back-track to where Milo was logging in from, but she did know when he came into the game, and when he left. She hadn't really monitored him since they had made their deal. She left him alone.

But the recent events had thrust him into a spotlight and she had taken a look at what little info she had on him.

Everything was good until two days ago. "I know he logged into the game. I have no record of him logging out. But after a time, he has no footprint in the game. He doesn't exist. He has a unique race and class. There is only one Were-Rat Scout in existence, and my query to the system turns up 0 in game. The system says it has had no interaction with him, it also insists he didn't leave the game."

Wally confirmed her information. "You are correct. Very odd. How would he achieve something like this? To log out, he needs system access. So logically, he is still in the game, but not registering on any search. The AI paused for only a second, but in that time ran several other searches. "Of more interest, I show that two other players have logged into the game, and not left. In this case for several months."

"Also of concern, similar to Milo, we cannot find where they logged in from. Also, similar to Milo, they each have unique classes and race combinations. There are simply too many similarities to our long-tailed friend."

"Thank you, Sydney, your work may be very important. Now, I need to talk to everyone. "

Wally appeared on the huge, full wall monitor. "Apologies for disturbing you. But things are happening. Something odd has happened to the player, Milo, our hero from Shadowport. He is logged into the game but invisible to the system. Two other players are also logged in, and also invisible to the system. Of further interest, none of these players can be tracked back to a location, and all have unique classes."

Onscreen, the AI began to pace. "There are severe limits on what I can do within the game world. If you don't understand why yet, you will just have to trust me. I'm not omnipotent in there. I made it, but I don't run it. It's why I rely so much on the people in this room. You do very important work."

"There is a situation I don't like. Several people are invisible to our system. Only one is known to us. We don't know how this is being done. All three are using pods programmed with an extra section of code. This was created and inserted into the game by one of our developers. I suspect I know who this is, but was waiting for your confirmation. I cannot wait any longer

"I know I tasked you with looking through all of the human created quests, and normally would leave that job to you, but something dangerous is going on, so I'm speeding things up. I need the data asap."

"But I notice someone is missing? Where is Brian? We need to discuss a quest he wrote called The Eye of Wonder."

Steven looked up from his screen. A disturbing co-incidence. "Brian sent an email yesterday saying he was ill and would be out for a few days."

Wally looked pained. It wasn't a real emotion, but one designed to show the level of anxiety his system was suffering. Everyone in the room was scared. "Steven? Can you please do whatever you think is best to find Brian? I don't need to know the details. But I'm concerned about him."

=*=

In a large, very comfortable office, Victor Seimovich leaned back in his chair, and addressed the three men in the room. All three were paying complete attention to Victor. They knew he was upset when they entered the room. There was a feeling you got when Victor was angry, like a bomb was about to explode.

"I'm worried about our good friend Brian. I asked for a meeting and for all of the work I so generously paid for. And now it is two days later. He was not on the plane he was supposed to be on. Security cameras show him getting on, but not off. He is not in his apartment. He is not anywhere. His accounts are drained. What have you found out about our good friend Brian?"

The first man laid out a folder showing a very nice apartment in a very nice part of New York. "We searched his apartment. Someone else had been their first. All security footage is gone, every scrap of the apartment was gone over. They even had nano-tech sniffers searching the place.

Victor exhaled with a loud huff. If they were smart enough to use sniffers, and rich enough to afford them, it was not the police, or any normal security.

"There was a surprise as we were leaving." Victor looked up, he dearly hated having his thoughts interrupted. But this was Mikhail, and Mikhail had been with him since he was 13, and his father before him. "Yes, Mikhail?"

Another picture went down showing two security guards and a man in terrible looking suit. "These people came to check up on Brian as we were moving out of the building. The cameras we left sent down the image. The man is Steven Duran. I had the cameras quietly self-destruct.

Victor exhaled. "That was good Mikhail, very good." Steven Duran, in his horrible suit, worked for the god-computer, WALL-E.

"Brian has too many friends." He turned to the next man, who began to talk. "The plane was a ruse. He didn't get on. He paid a look-a-like to take his ID and get on a cheap flight. The man changed clothes and his hair color on board, and exited. We have found enough footage to show that Brian left his building in disguise as a maintenance worker and caught an Uber. The car picked him up four blocks away, and within ten blocks is off the grid. We spent two days looking. It just disappears between one block and the next."

"Keep looking. But also follow Mr. Duran if he again leaves the building. Who knows, he might lead us to our friend Brian. And wouldn't that be a fun catch? What would be the ransom on Mr. Duran, best friend of the god-computer?"

=*=

"Please! Who the hell are you?" Brian wasn't very comfortable, tied to a chair in a blank room. The voice of his captors was not recognizable, being produced by a machine, not a human.

"But what the hell do you want? I can pay you! I can get you into the game. I have a lot of money in the game! It's all yours."

=*=

Milo was straining and pushing. He almost had the collar off and it hurt to think. Probably because he was squeezing his own brain. He had ordered his little friend to concentrate on the bones in his head. Dangerous, but so was staying here with a sadistic wizard and the two people he had already broken with psychological torture and preying on their addictions.

With a last push, the collar popped off, and he could think again. Before he could start to do anything, there was a small pop of displaced air behind him, and a small basket appeared with a red bow and a card. Curiosity won. He grabbed the card.

Best wishes to you, sir, and welcome to the Imperial Cheese of the Month Club.

Your friend, Sydney sends her thanks for saving countless people in the City of Shadowport.

Each month for the next year you will receive a small basket of the finest fromage the emperor has to offer, straight from his own cheese vault in the caverns beneath the palace.

This month we send you:

Four ounces of a 10-year-old, cave-aged cheddar from the Mountains of Mourn.

Four ounces of gouda, aged for 20 years.

And a creamy smoked sedge cheese that has a delightful, if unique, flavor.

As always, we include just enough tasty crackers, a tube of 'I can't believe it's not Cheese-Whiz', a small but very sharp cheese knife, and a lovely oak and steel cheese slicer for precise cuts. ENJOY!

Enjoy!

Cheese!

From the door, he felt the strange machine code moving and heard the sound of wings.

No Cheese!

He put the basket upside down in the corner so it showed its straw construction and coloring, quickly covering it with his bedding. Then grabbing the collar, he forced it painfully down over his head. Very, very painfully.

When the door opened, Philistron saw that one of his captives was in distress. The rat was curled on the ground in a fetal position, holding his head and moaning. The wizard smiled. The late stages of cheese addiction were amazingly horrible. He'd have to keep them going with a few small slivers while he engaged in conversation with Tall-Squeak.

His time with his captives was much more fun. The three-way dynamic was confusing Onyx, and driving Nina insane. He would dangle tea and mice just in front of them again today, while the rat got treated better.

=*=

Sydney screamed to the room. “I got him, he appeared on the system. And he just took delivery of the Cheese Basket. HA! We lured him out with cheese!”

Her screen informed her that no Were-Rat Scout was in the system. Milo was gone again.

Sydney pounded the table as people ran over. “How the hell does he know! He popped up, stole the cheese, and left. How!”