Play of Shadows

Chapter 24: The King Has Fallen, Long Live the Queen

VELES bumped up her security access.

There was more to it, possibly. The VELES rep had certainly been talking for a while, all long words with very few breaks in between. Ann was having trouble keeping up with the conversation – and the man in focus.

The monologue stalled. Ann realized that the man was waiting for a response of some kind. Anxiety bubbled up, then burst into annoyance when Ann remembered that she was not a kid caught spacing out in class but a grown adult accosted first thing in the morning without so much as by-your-leave.

"I just woke up," she said.

The VELES rep looked at her, then down at the screen in his hands. A dense wall of text reflected in his hook-rimmed glasses.

"Oh, I skipped a paragraph," he said under his breath, then he looked up at Ann with a smile so awkward it was nearly pained. "I hope your rest was healing, Miss Sufort –"

Ann held up a hand. "Okay, no, stop." Was the man reading from a script? And couldn't they get him a better one? "Give me the abridged version."

"The – but," the man looked down again. The text blurred, scrolling by. There were a lot of pages left to go.

"What's your name?" Ann asked.

The man's shaky smile faltered into an outright grimace as he realized he had committed yet another conversational faux pas. "Brian Sipos, Senior Developer, Linguistics," he rattled off stiffly. He looked a little young for senior anything, but that seemed the norm around VELES.

"Why are you here, Mr. Sipos? What is it that you want me to know?" Ann asked.

Sipos's eyes darted to the screen again. "There is quite a lot to cover. Full disclosure is required for the next step in the process," he began haltingly.

"Please," Ann said. She wasn't above begging – or throwing the man out on his ass, if that didn't work. Her head felt swollen, as if her brain was finding her skull a poor fit. She was weirdly aware of her fingers and tongue and ears.

"I'm not operating at a hundred," she added. "Full disclosure won't mean much if I don't get what's being disclosed, right?"

"That's a sound argument," Sipos allowed after a moment of thought.

Ann sighed in relief. "You said something about my security clearance," she reminded.

"It was upgraded, just this morning. You are now authorized to access restricted sections of the building in the company of an escort of relevant seniority."

"Why?" Ann asked. It wasn't like they were giving her the key to the kingdom, if an escort was still required, but it still sounded like something of a big deal. There had to be a catch.

"So that you can access level B-delta," Sipos told her.

"Oh," Ann said, still entirely confused.

"It is where the afflicted players are kept for observation and medical support," the man explained.

"Oh," Ann said again.

"We can go right now. If you are ready?" Sipos prompted.

Ann stared at him blankly. She nodded at length, although she felt nothing like ready at all.

A woman in a white coat – possibly a nurse, but more likely a VELES minion with a flexible job description – appeared out of thin air to force Ann into eating something before she was allowed to attempt being vertical for an extended period of time.

Level B-delta was nowhere to be found on the row of buttons in the elevator. Senior developer Sipos did something on his personal screen that got the lift moving, plummeting past the twelve marked B-floors and then some. Ann held onto a wall and tried not to throw up.