Bone Diggers - Chapter Thirty Six

Loading... Chapter Thirty Six

The annoying buzz of a phone against the nightstand was the first thing that had roused Owen from sleep. He rolled over and checked the time. Two in the afternoon. Finally, he checked what number was calling. Maybe it was a job, but who would call on a Saturday afternoon? He had his times listed as only weekdays. Either way, he answered by the last ring. "Hello?"

The person on the other line took a moment, probably because of the groggy sound of Owen's voice. "Hello, is this Alexander Owen?" He gave the peppy girl a small 'mhm' in reply. "Well, this is a representative for functionVR, creators of Age of Shadow. We came across your account and there seems to be some suspicious activity for the past few months. We were wondering if you could come to our offices on 3rd Avenue so we could nail down a record of what occurred."

"Suspicious activity?" Owen repeated, and found amusement in hearing it again. "What type of 'suspicious activity?" Every time he said it, it just sounded funnier than the first. Did they mean the dual NPCs, the bone digging, or the situations he kept glitching into?

"We don't think it's a problem anymore, and you're certainly not in trouble. We did, however, lock your account just to make sure the issue is cleared up. If there's any information you can give us, I'm sure we can get your account up and running again soon. Would today work for you?"

Owen let out a long sigh. Why couldn't they do their job without forcing him to travel across town just to get his account back? He rolled off the bed and onto his feet. "Yeah, sure. I can be there in an hour."

He expected the New York fnVR headquarters to be full of people. Especially if it was routine to call people down to their office every time someone had an account issue. When he got off the elevator on the right floor, a receptionist covered the mouthpiece of her mic and greeted him. Owen nodded a hello and glanced around to an empty lobby.

Well, empty besides a stupid cut-out of a professional player.

There wasn't much to hold this attention, so he stared at the cardboard version of the riotously bright player who took advantage of modern hair colors. Curious of who it was, he moved closer, and noticed the back had an Age of Shadow character. Rather clever actually. Adding to Owen's mild amusement was how decked out the avatar was in unnecessary items.

His train of thought was interrupted as a guy who looked around his age came out of one of the glass doors holding a tablet. "Alexander?"

"Owen. But yeah."

"Hello, I am Chris." He offered his hand, which Owen shook. "It's nice to meet you, and thank you for taking the time. If you'll follow me."

If given a second before Chris had started walking, Owen would have commented that he was more blackmailed than invited. He seemed to be the no-nonsense type, so Owen just followed silently behind.

He was led into a small conference room, and sat down before a couple others came into the room. A blonde girl with thick-rimmed glasses smiled pleasantly as she passed. She didn't introduce herself as she went to sit at the furthest edge of the table. Two men sat across from Owen, and the entire situation started to make him feel uneasy.

"This is my partner, Jorge. Sorry to keep you waiting, but we may as well get rolling into things right away." Owen didn't object, so Chris went on. "We noticed a few hiccups in your story data. First off, we noticed you recently found an area that was still under development. Could you tell us if you, or anyone on your team perhaps, used any scripts, or brute force into that area of the game?"

Owen blinked, glancing from Jorge to Chris before shaking his head. "No, we just picked up on some hints that there was an artifact in that area, and tried to find it."

They both nodded, eerily, and at the same time as if taking mental notes. Jorge was the one to speak this time. "Did you come across any glitches before or after that?"

"No, not really," Owen said, matter-of-fact despite the lie. There had been several things that shouldn't have happened, like

"Hm. Well, you see, we've backtracked the trouble to the start of your companion, Amilia. That is where the code starts to have issues, and after some key choices, you seemed to trigger her endgame rather quick."

Owen could smell the bullshit, but he didn't say anything about it. He'd let them believe what they wanted, at least until he knew what they wanted. The tone of blame skewed his expression to one of little patience. "And?"

"Well, we were hoping we could compensate for the problem our system caused by rewriting some of Amilia's story. And since this would be an all new, original story for just you, we were hoping you could return the favor."

"You want to retcon Amilia?" Owen glanced at the developers like he misheard. Jorge leaned forward in his chair as if ready to further explain, but Chris seemed silently amused by Owen's word choice. "And pay me for it?"

Owen didn't know a single person who wouldn't want to bring their favorite character back from the dead. But, the writers didn't just find fans on their own and offer to make the trouble up to them. What should have been a miracle, felt like a crossroads deal.

"In turn," Jorge said, "We'd like to contract to stream your gameplay. We're hoping your style of play will further promote the roleplaying aspect of Age of Shadows. We even assigned a brand new writer to Amilia to handle the conversion, and should help minimize any further glitches."

"Since when do NPCs, or any characters, have writers?" Jorge was ready to answer, but Owen kept talking, not allowing for any excuses. "I'm going to politely ask you to cut the crap. Because you aren't really making sense unless you are trying to give me a weird Make-A-Wish, or frankly have never played your own game."

The room settled for a moment, as if silently testing who would answer that dare. "Who'd even 'write' Amilia, anyways?"

Jorge placed his hands against the glass table, palms down as if to try and level with him. "This is something that—"

"Seriously?" Chris cut his co-worker off before Owen could roll his eyes. "Just be real with him."

They exchanged a glance, silently debating something before Jorge sighed. "We like Daniel. From what we can tell, we'd like you. We want to buy the story so far, and have you officially continue it for us. Months ago, when you first picked up your second companion it caused a stir. People realized that maybe they were ignoring some of the game's features."

"Why is Amilia part of this?" Owen didn't mean to sound ungrateful, but he really didn't understand.

The woman on the end pushed her glasses up. "We noticed your play style is different without her. Your login time and perceived enjoyment is all over the place now. We thought it would fix the problem."

Owen narrowed his eyes, not because she was full of crap, but because it seemed like she was the only one here that understood. Money was nice, but if he had wanted it, or the fame, he could have cashed that news story in already.

"Was I wrong?"

If they could ignore questions, then Owen figured he could too. "Who would 'write' Amilia?" he repeated, letting the weight of his glare sit with Jorge. He almost spilled the beans before, but he didn't have to in the end. "You mean play. I play as Daniel, and you want someone to play as Amilia."

"That's right," Jorge said.

Well, too bad. Someone already 'played' Amilia, and talking to her wasn't on the to-do list.

"And, we'd like to introduce the right person for the job," he continued. "Carmen, will you?"

The blonde left the room, and through the frosted glass Owen watched her walk down the hall. Carmen soon returned with three people following her. They paused for a moment at the door before Carmen opened it. He caught a quick glance at two security guards before his eyes fell directly on the third person of the group.

"Owen, this is Andreah. She's familiar with Amilia, and we're hoping the two of you will work well together."

Andreah entered the room with her head down, and seemed to think about sitting before opting to stand to the left of Chris. "Nice to meet you, Owen."

"Are you shitting me?" If one could go into shock without any trauma, he was certain his expression reached that level. "You are going to let the person who hacked my game keep doing it?"

"Uh," Jorge stalled, and looked over to Chris who just stared. Carmen looked at the table like something important was written there.

"You weren't going to tell me."

"We, um."

Owen leaned back in his seat, and it creaked with the shifting of weight. "I can't trust anyone in this fucking room," he said, more to himself than anyone else.

Andreah ran her hand through her hair, and paced slowly behind Chris and Jorge. "They didn't know, Owen."

"What didn't we know?" Jorge turned in his chair to look at her, obvious in his expression that he didn't like her much even before this.

"That he knew I modded the game."

Chris nudged Jorge before getting up. "I think we need a moment to speak about this, please excuse us." He motioned to the security guards to stay put at the door before leaving as Carmen trailed behind.

Andreah watched them leave before taking Jorge's seat. She slid down, before finally settling. He stared at her, too focused on her face to notice the lazy attitude.

"What's going on here?" Owen asked, his muscles as rigid as his voice.

Her eyes were closed, as if she was ready to take a nap. She looked exhausted, so it seemed fitting almost. Her eyebrows pulled together as if to acknowledge the question. "I didn't tell them about you. Or us. So way to blow that up."

"You are like a stray cat who refuses to leave me alone. Was this your idea, or did you get caught?"

She opened her eyes, lips pursing at his words. "Don't be so self-absorbed. This is still on you. We wouldn't be here if you didn't look for unfinished DLC like an obsessive fanboy."

Owen faked a laugh, and flipped her off as the trio of developers came back in. Security shuffled at the door to make room for them to pass. Jorge glossed over the loss of his seat even though his growing annoyance was clear. But Owen wondered something else. Why was fnVR security here?

Chris seated himself in his old seat, next to Andreah. "Won't this be interesting," he said, noting Owen's previous gesture.

"Trust me, it'll get better," Andreah commented, sitting up and setting her elbows on the table.

"Now son, you should just—" Chris started.

"I should just do a cash buy," Owen said, without much thought. The idea of selling Daniel made his stomach sour, but he didn't care for this situation either.

"You could," Andreah agreed, which wasn't what he expected.

Jorge sat down in a free seat, raising a hand to stop Chris' likely objection that cash buys weren't officially allowed. "You are a part of Daniel, we'd like to keep it that way."

His eyes rested on his ex. Despite her bored expression, her knee bounced under the table. She stared back at him for a moment before reaching for a pen, and messed with the click release on it. "What would you do, Andreah?"

She didn't look up, but she pursed her lips while she gave it a quick thought. "I'd tell me to go to hell."

Her comment made everyone tense. Everyone except Owen. He smiled, and shook his head. "Well, I guess," he said, and licked his lips. He didn't even know what he wanted to do, and looked to the others in the room. While bone digging wasn't illegal, the bullshit Andreah pulled definitely was. Drew had helped her go beyond modding into the world of outright hacking. Hell would be a good place for her, but not jail. And that's exactly where she'd go if he didn't make a deal. It might count as payback, but it was an added chaos he didn't desire. "You can at least show me the contract you want me to sign."