Rich lay motionless on his new bed. Rotgoriel was covering for him in the game, and the players would be back soon. He'd need to make damned sure nobody saw him doing anything in reality while he was “active” inside the game.

The truth was that the only person he really had to worry about immediately was Cole. Thanks to his isolation in his new living quarters, he wouldn't have much meatspace interaction with his player team. The downside was that Cole was a sneaky bastard, and without having him on a friends list or some other kind of tracking roster, he couldn't track the guy with one hundred percent certainty.

Not yet, anyway.

That was the first thing to fix.

This wasn't the first time that he'd had someone try to shoot him at Waverly Academy. In his first year, the Haskeens had infiltrated an agent. Rich had hacked the student tracking systems, and used it to frustrate the assassin's attempts to get him in a situation where he could be quietly killed. And then when the hit man had decided to go for the direct approach, Rich had enough warning that he and Greg were able to handle matters outside the walls, with no one wiser. The guy's bones were out in the marsh a little to the south. Someone might find them in a few decades.

When Cutter had shown up and set this whole mess in motion, Rich had disabled his hacks. He'd expected higher scrutiny from the Academy, and didn't want to give them a reason to go after him. Of course, this was the Ministry, they didn't need a reason, but he'd played it safe anyway.

Now, though... now he had access to higher-clearance networks, and the backing of the most powerful man on campus.

And he had a deadline.

The time for caution was gone. And so Rich bent all his apps and all his skill to work finding weaknesses he hadn't dared to hunt before.

It was easier than he expected.

The basement had tipped him off. The bunker below Waverly was old, dusty, and ill-cared for. Doubtless the dollars that had been put aside to keep it updated and maintaned had found their way into some administrator's pocket. The Ministry was too much at ease with casual corruption... and that same corruption had led him to conclude that their IT department probably wasn't getting the money they should, either.

He'd guessed correctly.

Most of the network turned out to have been installed with default factory settings, and patches were a thing that happened perhaps once a year.

So Rich rolled up his metaphorical sleeves and got to work.

Again, he would have made any movie director worth his salt a sad, disappointed person. There were no special effects. There were no dramatic moments. It was simply a long slog of checking various darknet data havens to see what the usable exploits were for Waverly's apps, then applying the right software tools for the job to the right places.

But the results... the results were worth it.

He risked getting up to use the bathroom, and asked his Mnemoi to have some food delivered. The bodyguard phoned it in, and Rich sat there, studying the darkening light through the blinds of the bedroom window. To all appearances, anyway. In reality, he was deep inside his own skull, watching the last reports of his toolkit flickering up through his Echo.

I'm in. He sighed as the last few apps came up green, and the file structure of the entire academy sprawled before him.

He didn't have everything. There was a separate, partitioned part that had been added earlier in the month that was definitely Mayhew's own network. His personal communications and those of his entourage and security detail would go through that, and not the more vulnerable parts of Waverly. But that was fine. Rich didn't have to attack that point, didn't need it... yet. Not when the whole of the campus was under surveillance... and he now had total control of its surveillance systems.

And better still, total control of its message logs.

To: Gregory Walker>>This is a secure channel. It's going to be Moses time soon.

There was no reply for a tense minute. Two. Rich knew that Greg was probably turning it over in his head, thinking through the consequences. Or maybe he'd forgotten what Moses was code for, it was hard to say.

>>How soon?

>>Couple of weeks at most. Couple of days at worst.

>>Okay. That's not too bad. This an all hands on deck situation?

>>That's honestly your choice. But Pharoah's gonna be pretty pissed.

>>How secure IS this channel?

>>I'm deleting your traffic a second after it happens. If somebody was directly sniffing you then maybe they could read it, but not from Waverly's systems.

>>Sniffing?

>>Slang for a technical trick that I could explain if you wanted, but it'd take ten minutes and you'd get bored.

>>Well you ain't wrong. Shit. Okay. I'll put stuff in order. Want me to tell Pat?

>>Please. I'll set things up so that communications between us get autowiped. I'm going to be doing some shady stuff for a while so it's better if you fill him in.

>>As much as I can. Got any details? Is it Cole? Will we have to put him in the swamp?

>>It looks like it isn't Cole, but I still can't trust the guy. Unless things change we probably won't have to swamp him.

>>Good. He comes off as a sleaze, but... you know.

>>Yeah. Rich did. He'd had nightmares for a couple of months, after they disposed of the last killer.

>>We'll get shit rolling. Keep us in the loop, boss.

Rich said his farewells, and checked the logs one more time. No surprises there.

This had been the easy part.

Now came the hard part.

Rich pulled up the darknet addresses that some side research had gleaned, and started hunting down Generica Online's cash shop from the other side.

It took a while. Three times he hit false shops, that tried to infect him with malware or had suspicious links that would guarantee any money he sent their way went to people who would drain his accounts and disappear.

Par for the course, really. Nothing unexpected.

But he not only knew what the site looked like, he also had images captured from its code. And the tags and details and hooks in there let him track down the real shop, even if it took longer than expected.

He started his approach, same apps up and running as he'd used in-game, and duplicated his purchase. This was a significant chunk of change, but it brought his token count up to twenty-one, and let him see the differences between both sides.

They were pretty stark. This side had far more security. I'll need a team if I want to come at it from this side, Rich thought. That probably wouldn't happen, thoguh. Not with the time limit he was working under, and the realities of his confinement.

Which meant that he would have to come at it from inside the game. He could handle that.

Setting a few surveillance options, and typing up a quick daemon, (a code process that ran independently,) Rich left a message for Rotgoriel and logged back into Generica Online.

“He is here,” Geebo whispered, as Rich opened his eyes...

...and stared straight into a pair of curious green ones. A large pair of green eyes, attached to a very large green dragon.

“I know,” Agnezsharron rumbled. “I can see it in the way he holds himself.”

“Geebo?” Rich asked, slowly, spreading his wings and getting ready to throw down. “What did you do?”

“He did nothing,” Agnez said. “I fought you. I won.”

“Fuck,” Rich digested it. “What now, then?”

To his surprise she stepped back, and folded her wings around herself like a cloak. “That was a lie. We fought, but you did not yield. I dropped the issue, satisfied.”

Rich stared at her, then glanced to Geebo. The little drakkit was on the ground, kneeling as low as he could, trembling as he glanced back and forth between Agnez and Rich.

“Hey, relax. It'll be fine,” he told Geebo. Then he glared at the other dragon. “Agnez, I don't have much time for games.”

“Then why are you a player?”

Rich stared at her.

She stared back. “You owe me four answers. Rather, Rotgoriel does. But since you share his body, I feel that you share his obligations. Four honest answers, and I feel they are better used with you than him.”

“You got these from... winning the fight? No, you said it was a draw. How did he come to owe you four answers? And no, this won't put me further in debt, it's establishing your goddamn bonafides.”

“I got them by telling Rotgoriel the reasons I did not wish to mate with him.”

Rich palmed his face. “Thinking with his goddamn prick... fine. No, it's fine. Sure. You know about players, somehow.”

“They do not cloud my mind, as they do the others. Even your pet djinn struggles against it. The knowledge seeps from her, the more she is around them. One reason she is leaving, I think. She told you about that, I assume. No, that is not a question.” Agnezsharron circled in place like a cat or a dog, then settled on the cave floor. “I know they are immortal, more or less. I know they are from another world. YOU are from another world.”

Rich sat back on his haunches and folded his arms. “If you don't ask questions I can't answer them.”

“Very well. How are you here?”

Rich shrugged. “I signed up to play a game. Konol talked me into playing a dragon. He neglected to mention that the dragon would get to play me in exchange.”

“That is not a thorough answer.”

“It is a very broad question. Now if you're asking for game mechanics, or how the network lets me log in, I could tell you but I don't think that would help you. So I'm sparing you a few days worth of lectures about how my world created yours.”

“Then tell me about Konol.”

“Dragon. God. Chained up. I see him every time I log in, and every time I return from death. He's got some kind of agenda, and that's why I got the rare racial choice I did. Beyond that you can ask Rotgoriel. He's prayed to the guy, he'd know more.”

“And you haven't. Interesting. I was told, by ancestors, by the council, by my own parent that dragons did not worship gods, had no gods. That none were mighty enough to receive our reverence.”

“There's always someone bigger,” Rich shrugged, fluttering his wings. “Or something bigger. For what it's worth he doesn't look like he's in a position to do anything for you. Well, unless you become a cleric. Those powers work just fine.”

“I could not even if I desired to,” Agnez mused. “But I want something from him.”

“And what would that be... no, wait, I don't want to owe you more answers.”

“You will not. Tell me how to become a player.”

Geebo drew in a sharp breath.

“What?” Rich blinked.

“I am stuck on this mountain for the foreseeable future. Rotgoriel has told me there are vast armies approaching. My death is a possibility. And even beyond that, I am bored. I am so very, very bored of Fimble. And I cannot travel from it without breaking my duty to the Council, and being punished for it. But if I am a player, then I shall not only become immortal, but I shall gain another world to explore.”

“Ah.” Rich licked his lips. He remembered Cole's revelation about Cutter. How the man thought AI's in game were possessing people in reality, and influencing the real world. It seemed a lot less ludicrous all of a sudden, in this dark and cold cave, with Agnez staring at him hopefully. “I don't know if that is even possible,” he said, thinking furiously. “I think... you would have to talk to Konol about it. And I think that even if it were possible, you might be disappointed.”

“How so?” she said, tilting her head to consider him from a different angle.

“You'd be stuck in some human. Maybe even a guy. There's no magic there. You have to obey the laws, and you usually can't murder people who piss you off. There's diseases and wars and messes and assholes running the show, and the world might be dying and nobody's really doing anything to stop it, and... trust me. It's a mess.”

“And yet you have consigned Rotgoriel to it, whenever you come here.”

“I... didn't mean to split my time with him. The players here, they disappear from this world when they end up in the other. I'm different somehow. Again, you'd have to ask Konol about it.”

And a new worry started to worm through Rich's mind.

What if Konol was an AI? What if this game was some vast scheme to get people taking lesser AI's across into reality? The notion that Rotgoriel was a pawn in that sort of scheme struck him and wouldn't leave.

“You are mostly correct,” Agnez said, after a moment. “But I will not ask Konol. You will ask him for me.”

“Oh I will, will I?”

“Yes. I only accepted a draw in our fight because it is forbidden to kill another dragon. But you are not one, are you? You will come back. And so will Rotgoriel.” She stood and put her wings out, stretching and flaring her scales.

“I don't have time for idle threats,” Rich said, standing as well.

“You are correct in that you do not have time. There are people coming for your head. Your head. Not mine. All I have to do is stand aside, and your odds of winning the battle to come shrink, do they not?”

“You want to play hardball.”

“No. I do not wish to play, merely be a player.”

He snorted. “That has a lot of different meanings. No, I'm not laughing...at you.”

“I could play hardball. If I wished. But is what I ask of you truly that much of a hardship? You are a Cleric. Prayer is what you do.”

“I...” he shut his mouth. Sharp, alien teeth clacked against each other. Had they grown a bit? Felt like it. He'd need to find some good rocks to chew. Or an animal with strong bones.

That's one of Rotgoriel's memories, he realized. “If I do this for you, you might not like the answer,” Rich said.

She snapped her wings shut behind her, and the tension left her, scales folding back as she did her best to smile. “The worst he can do is tell me no. I am not so weak as to lose my composure over being denied.”

“Well that's something,” Rich sighed. “Okay. Prayer takes ten minutes or so. I'll knock it out in a little while and have an answer for you tomorrow.”

Agnez nodded, and turned to leave. She paused, looking back over her shoulders in that way only a dragon could. “Do your jobs allow you to take other forms here? Human form?”

“No. Not yet anyway. I'd be surprised if they did later, for that matter.”

“A pity. You are far more... mature than your other half. I can do things as a human without the consequences that would befall me were I in my true shape. And my answer to you would be different than the one I gave to Rotgoriel.”

Then she left without another word.

“Her answer to me? Geebo, what is she talking about?”

“Mating, Great One,” Geebo said, looking awestruck.

Rich blinked a slow blink. “Uh. Wow. Okay. I... huh.”

The silence stretched on, as Rich considered, and did his damnedest to try and fight down and resist what he was pretty sure would be the first dragon boner he'd ever experienced. “Geebo?” Rich whispered, after he was sure he wouldn't embarrass himself.

“Yes, Great One?” Geebo said, from where he'd gone FAR back in the cave.

“Maybe you don't tell Rotgoriel she said that. Ever.”

WIS+1