LevelUP: an 8-bit novel by Micah Joel. Author's definitive online edition.

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Chapter Sixteen

1-3: [Return]

Screaming. Crying. A brisk slap to the face.

Molly.

Disorientation surges, washes over Max, then ebbs. Flickering lights around the room gradually resolve into focus. Those aren’t pixels.

“Oh, Max, I’m so sorry…are you OK?”

“I…” Max’s voice is raspy, like he hasn’t used it in a long time. Suddenly, he pats his pockets. “Where is it?”

“What?”

She didn’t see any of what happened. “The scroll. I picked it up.”

The experience seemed so real. Max groans. What must his jumping and climbing and flailing around have looked like to her? No wonder she was worried.

“Scroll?” Molly asks. “Like papyrus? Cuneiform?”

“Yeah, pretty much.” Max recounts his platform adventure.

“Two items,” Molly says, “a coin and a scroll.”

Max nods. “And a trophy at the end. All captured as inventory.”

As the word, inventory, crosses Max’s lips, information marches across his HUD:

INVENTORY:

* COIN

* TROPHY 1

* MYSTERIOUS SCROLL

“Whoa, I’m seeing a list of the items right now.”

“Items?” Molly says. “What can you do with items?”

Of course. Noun and verb combinations, just like Zork. “Examine coin,” Max says.

THE COIN IS MIRROR SHINY.

“It worked!” Max says.

“What worked?” Molly says.

“Right, I keep forgetting that you can’t see this,” Max says. “I got a message saying that the coin is mirror shiny. And it was.”

“Try something else,” Molly says.

“Examine scroll.”

THE SCROLL IS TIGHTLY WOUND. NO WRITING IS VISIBLE.

“Unwind scroll.”

YOU UNWIND THE SCROLL AND A WRITTEN PASSAGE APPEARS. IT LOOKS LIKE THERE MAY BE MORE WRITING, BUT THE SCROLL STICKS SHUT, AS IF BOUND BY MAGIC.

“I’ve got something,” Max says. “There’s a message in the scroll.”

“Read it,” Molly says.

“Read scroll.” Max reads the text out loud as it scrolls past.

DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ. YOU MUST GATHER THE FOUR TROPHIES.

“Four trophies. One already. That’s good.” Molly says. After a brief silence, “That’s it?”

“Hmm. Read scroll,” Max says.

BEWARE THE POWER THAT BE. CHOOSE YOUR WORLD CAREFULLY. YOU DON’T HAVE TO LIVE LIKE A REFUGEE.

“Shouldn’t that be powers that be, with an s?” Molly asks.

“Read scroll.”

YOU WANT PROOF? YOU’LL FIND IT AT

“Read scroll!”

YOU WANT PROOF? YOU’LL FIND IT AT—

Max makes a frustrated, vaguely profanity-inflected noise.

YOU CAN’T READ ANY MORE OF THE SCROLL UNTIL YOU UNLOCK THE MAGIC SPELL BINDING IT.

“Read scroll!” The message only repeats. “Read scroll! Read scroll! Arrgh!”

Max counts to ten before he can say anything. “I’ve just been trolled by a scroll.”

“Well, that’s something,” Molly says. “We should get started.”

“Started what?”

“Finding the other trophies, of course,” Molly says.

“It’s not like we have much to go on. We don’t even have the tiniest sliver of a hint where to look. I’m not sure I even believe anything written in this scroll. Look…the first line even said not to believe it.”

“How did you find the first trophy?” Molly asks, mildly.

“By accident,” Max says. “Well, not entirely accident.”

“The HUD.”

“That doesn’t count,” Max says.

“You don’t think there was somebody at the other end, feeding you hints?”

“Look, I’m not somebody’s trained puppy. My life consists of more than following the orders of some shadowy presence that’s getting way, way into my personal space.”

“If you mastered the first level, then I’m sure you could handle the next level just as easily,” Molly says.

“No, Molly. There aren’t levels. This is the real world we’re talking about, not a game.”

“Says the one reading from a magic scroll.”

Touché.

A loud thump rumbles through the ceiling, then the room plunges into darkness. All the equipment in the room powers down, except for a few weakly blinking lights from devices that must have internal batteries. “Time to make our exit,” Max says.

Molly’s hand finds its way into Max’s once again. Max leads them into the even darker corridor. The air feels slightly damper in his lungs, and the wall feels cool when his hand grazes against it. Max remembers where they are—buried deep under an active Superfund site—and wipes his hand across his shorts.

Navigating by the dim glow of Molly’s hair isn’t going to be enough. “Hold up a second,” he whispers. When Molly stops, he pulls out the salvaged lock mechanism from her backpack. It’s still emitting a sickly green glow. It’s not much, but enough avoid bumping against the walls.

Max leads them back to the ladder, and up. In the darkness, he almost misses a rung, and an alarmingly loud scraping sound reverberates through the narrow space. Max stops to listen.

Footsteps clomp across the room. At least two people up there, one of them in heels. Max hears a voice: Hermera’s. He can’t quite make out what she’s saying, but it’s definitely her. That earlier encounter was more than enough for a lifetime, but now he’s separated from her by only the thinnest layer of flooring. Her voice fades in and out as she click-clacks across the room.

Across a bare floor—the rug! They had rolled it out of the way to expose the trapdoor in the floor. Once they went through, there was no way to reset the rug to cover their tracks. Which meant that Hemera was staring right at their only way out. Probably deciding whether to go down herself, or to send one of her goons instead—knowing how Hemera liked her bodyguards, probably someone with rippling biceps the size of hypertrophic Rottweilers. That door might fly open at any moment.

Max strains to hear what she’s saying. He creeps up a few more rungs, more carefully. By the time he reaches the top, the voices above have gone quiet. Maybe Hemera went to find reinforcements, in which case they’ve got a narrow window of escape.

“We’re trapped,” Molly whispers.

“I’m working on a plan” Max whispers.

“A plan?—Sssh!” Max chokes off his response.

A voice. Right on top of them. Hemera again, but Max can’t make out most of the words, except for one word that sounds an awful lot like “trophy.”

“She has a trophy,” Molly says, a bit louder than a whisper. She immediately cups her hand over her mouth.

Max nods. “I knew it.” If he knows Hemera at all, she’ll insist on validating her suspicions firsthand. After all, she’s gone to the trouble of coming all the way out here in person. She doesn’t trust anyone else with whatever she might find. Which makes for an opportunity…

“I’m getting you out of here,” Max whispers.

“No, together,” Molly counters.

“Don’t worry about me. I’ve got a plan for a distraction, but only for a window long enough to get one of us to out of here.”

“But there aren’t any windows,” Molly says.

Based on the voices and footsteps, there’s only people up there. A distraction will separate them.

“You need to wait right here.” Max points at a groove in the wall near the top of the ladder. “If you stand on this little ledge, and keep your hand here to steady yourself, you’ll be fine. Don’t make a sound. Don’t even breathe, and they won’t notice you, I promise. Wait until two people move past, then quickly climb out. Silently. Try not to be seen once you’re outside.”

“No, this is crazy—”

Max thumps the bottom of the trapdoor, bumping it open an inch.

“I told you someone in there,” Hemera says, her voice clearer through the open crack.

Max puts a finger to his lips and tucks the green light back into Molly’s backpack, plunging the tunnel into darkness. Molly slips on a hoodie to cover her hair. Max slides down the ladder, the rust burning his palms.

Seconds later, the door bangs against the limits of its hinges. Hemera grunts delicately as she lowers herself down, along with the waving beam of a flashlight and the clatter of expensive shoes ticking lower, rung-by-rung.

The piercing light assails Max’s retinas. Hemera’s flashlight is unconscionably bright, but the beam passes him by. Max is pretty sure he hears the gentle scritch of Molly climbing up and out, and Hemera seems focused on something else, but just in case, he lets out his own grunt in protest.

The light swivels back to him. “What do we have here?” Hemera says. She doesn’t wait for an answer, but instead marches down the long corridor and shines her light into the server room. She returns immediately.

“We’re too late, there’s nothing of use here,” she calls to the bodyguard up top. “Have this one brought to my car. We need to have a little chat.”

Max doesn’t struggle against what happens next.

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