Mari Mancusi - Scorched

Quickly, she did a search for her friend.

>>HotElfChick69 is not online.

She sighed. That would have been too easy.

She turned her attention back to the situation at hand, directing her character to jump off the table and walk out of the tavern. Now what? she wondered. What did Connor want her to do?

>> Stegosaurus65 has come online.

Wait, what? Trinity scrolled back up the dialog box at the bottom of the screen to make sure she’d read that right. At the same moment, a big, burly, and very familiar-looking level one barbarian walked out of the tavern. Stegosaurus65—she’d recognize him anywhere.

“But that’s impossible,” she whispered. Stegosaurus65 was the character she’d helped her grandpa create last year when he’d been curious to see for himself the game that took up so much of his granddaughter’s time. He’d lasted all of ten minutes before declaring that all the colors and sounds were making him dizzy and he’d never logged on again.

>>Stegosaurus65 invites you to join his party.

She swallowed hard, then hit accept, grabbing the headphones off the desk and shoving them over her ears.

“Um, hello?” she said through the microphone. “Who is this?”

She waited, breath lodged in her throat, for his reply. As the moment stretched on, she tried to prepare herself for inevitable disappointment and—

“Is this thing on?” There was a rapping on the microphone. “Goddamn futuristic technology…”

“Grandpa!” she screeched, then clamped a hand over her mouth, glancing worriedly at her closed door. The last thing she needed was to get caught now. “Is that you?”

“Trinity?” His voice was so loud she had to turn down the volume. “Speak up, girl! I can’t hear you over this blasted thing.”

She laughed even as the tears streamed down her cheeks. “It’s me, Grandpa,” she told him as loud as she dared, while she watched the barbarian on the screen stumble into a tree and get stuck in its branches. What a noob , she thought, her heart soaring with affection. What a total noob.

“Where are you?” she asked. “They told me you were dead.” Her hands fell to the keyboard and she instructed StarrLight to give Stegosaurus a hug. It wasn’t the same as a real-life one, but at the moment she’d take what she could get. The whole thing was just so surreal—she could barely believe it was happening.

“Please. You think I’d go off and croak, and let you have all the fun raising the world’s last dragon?” he retorted gruffly, his voice cracking at the edges. On the screen, his barbarian broke out into a jig. She laughed and joined him, feeling totally silly yet totally happy too. Seriously—best game ever.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, then repeated herself louder so he could hear her. “I should have believed you from the beginning.”

Her grandpa’s voice was firm. “You believe now. That’s all that matters.”

He was right, she thought, as she looked around the colorful town square, drinking in all the familiar sights and sounds. It was funny—though the Dracken had created real-life accommodations made of her wildest fantasies, this simple video game felt a thousand times more luxurious.

>>ConnorTheDragonHunter has joined the party.

“Pretty clever, huh?” Connor’s voice broke in through her headphones, just as a dashing blond warrior wielding a two-handed sword walked onto the screen. Trinity’s heart melted a little at the sight of him. Talk about a knight in shining armor…

“It was your grandpa’s idea,” the dragon hunter continued. “I needed to talk to you and you’d blocked me from your mind. But your grandfather knew you wouldn’t be able to resist logging into your precious game.” He walked over and joined Stegosaurus in his dance.

“He knows me too well,” she said with a groan. She wondered where he was now—was he still inside Dracken Headquarters? She glanced at the door, both longingly and fearfully. A part of her wanted to see him so badly, but the other was afraid of what he’d do. He’d obviously seen Emmy in the courtyard. He knew she’d hatched. And if Caleb and the Dracken were to be believed, that meant he was here for one thing and one thing only.

“Why are you here, Connor?” she asked, deciding there was no time to be coy. “What do you want from me?”

Connor’s knight stopped dancing. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t play dumb,” she snapped. “I know all about your little mission to save the world. Specifically the part where you were planning to kill me if things didn’t go your way.”

“Wait, what?” her grandpa broke in. “What are you talking about? Connor’s there to rescue you, not kill you.”

“He probably told you that, Grandpa, but that was never his true mission,” she said in a flat voice. “Was it, Connor?”

She waited for him to deny it. To tell her that Caleb had been lying. That he’d made it all up just to get her on his side. But Connor only sighed deeply. “Yes,” he said at last. “That was my mission.”

She glared at the screen—at his avatar—wanting to be furious, but instead feeling only hurt and betrayal clawing at her insides. “You kissed me,” she seethed. “You made me think we were on the same team. I trusted you. I saved your life from those government agents. And the whole time you were just leading me on! To get me to trust you so you could cut me down when the time was right.”

“It wasn’t like that!”

“Then what was it like?” she demanded. “I think I deserve to know the truth.”

“You’d better start talking,” her grandpa added, the level one barbarian stepping in front of the knight, his massive arms crossing over his beefy chest. “Now.”

The knight nodded, sinking down onto a nearby bench. “You have to understand,” he began in a low voice. “When I first got my orders, I didn’t know anything about you except what I’d learned at the academy. They taught us you were evil, that you’d set dragons on the world. They told us you were the one responsible for all the destruction. For millions of deaths.” She could hear his hard swallow in her ears. “For my father’s death.”

Trinity cringed. In all her self-righteous anger, she’d conveniently forgotten about her future self’s role in this whole mess. She, with the help of her Dracken friends, had inadvertently released monsters upon the world, destroying everything Connor loved. She supposed she could understand why he might be a little reluctant to confide in her.

But still…

“It’s a bit harsh to judge me for something I haven’t even done yet,” she pointed out, “something that I might not even do.”

“You’re right,” he said simply. “You’re absolutely right. And when I finally did meet you—when I started to get to know who you were—I realized the history texts had to be wrong. You weren’t some cold, world-destroying monster. You were just an innocent girl who had no idea of the situation she was about to be put into.” He sighed. “Do you have any idea how hard it was to know I might have to kill you to save the world, all while you’re trying to help me figure out a way to do it?” He paused, then added, “Let’s just say suddenly things didn’t seem so black and white anymore.”

Trinity twisted her mother’s ring. “I guess I know what you mean,” she admitted. “It was kind of the same—once I met Emmy.” She remembered how much she wanted to destroy the egg when she’d first learned of what it was capable of. To snuff out Emmy’s life force before she even had the chance to be born. It was inconceivable to think of now. And maybe Connor felt the same way about her.