GEOVRU: III

Chapter 3

The next morning I was sitting in class, ignoring what the teacher was lecturing us about, something about AGP mainframes and cross-platform watchamacallit's. Instead of taking notes like my fellow classmates probably were, I was researching the cobalt snakes on the official KOSVO website.

Each clan in the game had a group page, where players could post forums, recruit new members, start events, and many other things. There were a few events planned for this week, but none of them were that important, mostly just low levels looking for carries, and higher loot. There was the occasional property owning event on the feed, but that wasn't something the Crimson Hawks had any interest in. We had our base of operations, we went there and back whenever we needed to restock, and get special quests, but our people were free to run around freely. We never even officially declared rivalry with the Cobalt Snakes, but it was all but official, as we were the two biggest clans in the game and therefore bound to be rivals.

There was a clan rankings page sorting each player of the clan. There were too many players to sort through in general, so the page kept it clean with just a tree chart of the moderators, representatives, admins, owner, and captains. The lowest on this list was the captains containing a list of about ten to twenty players; these were simply the high ranking officers that were in charge of all the other members. There were probably more ranks below this to help deal with the large numbers that needed to stay in line, but they weren't as important. The list above that were the representatives, these players were looked up to by the other players in the guild and usually went to all the meetings for all the big clans. Political Science Majors were usually good people to put in those positions. Above that were the moderators, these were the people that were in charge of punishing players for insubordination, as well as making topics on forums, scheduling events and other things that the admins couldn't bother to do. The admins however, were basically the highest a person could hope to achieve in the guild rankings. These people usually consisted of people the owner trusted the most (their friends) and a few others that had proven themselves through hard work and dedication. They were pretty much in charge of keeping everyone under them in line, managing the crew, updating statuses, answering questions that noobs might have on the forums, though most of those jobs were handed to the mods because the admins were too lazy to do it themselves. The owner of the Cobalt Snakes was a single solitary person, sitting high atop her pedestal as queen of the southern portion of the map. Krystal, with her blue hair and focus on ice magic, as well as her ever popular band Shading the Lines, inspired people to join her group, which eventually dragged more and more people until the Cobalt Snakes were recognized as the second top guild in the game, just under the Crimson Hawks.

I cracked a smile at that thought.

I jumped alarmingly in my seat as if out of nowhere, my Atomiton displayed an EMERGENCY symbol, cutting into my audio feed and video feed pulling up a live broadcast from the global news. A woman in a navy suit sat behind a desk, shuffling papers in her hand. Her hands were quick and slightly sloppy, she was scared. Scared of what?

"Breaking News!" She blares out. "Explosions in Beijing, at least a hundred people are dead. Apparently Atomiton security codes were hacked and exploited to cause an overheat, and a explosion occurred the killed at least two hundred people. The cyber terrorist organization PRAT is taking responsibility for the attack. We are not entirely informed on how the attack occurred, but we are aware that the group managed to hack into atomitons due to a wireless radio like device. The culprit, a man by the name of Hiro Sukai was arrested and convicted of homicide in the first degree. We urge civilians to stay in their homes, and remain vigilant of any suspicious activity. We will be updating our site as the story progresses, please check out our site as much as possible to stay up to date. Again, we... we urge civilians to stay indoors. This has been Carly Tyler with GNN. Everyone have a good rest of your day... and good luck to you all."

The window closed on its own, bringing me back to the classroom.

It was dead silent.

No one knew what to say, no one knew what to do... nothing was safe anymore... hundreds of people just gone, for no reason other than to show a message. And what kind of message was that supposed to send?

A girl in front of me muttered under her breath. "Oh my god..."

"What are we gonna do?!" someone screamed.

The professor raised his hands. "Now, now, everyone settle down, I'm sure you're all scared but let's all just calm down. You heard the lady, she said that they can only get to with that radio device they had, you should all be perfectly safe in the college, the walls and doors are resistant to radio waves outside of the college's custom frequency. Let's all take a second to calm down, call your loved ones if you must and we can take the rest of the day off. Class dismissed."

Everyone stayed in their seats except for me. There was only one thing I could think of, one person. Thomas, he created the Atomiton, he knew how it worked, he knew the inner mechanisms of the machine, the possibility of an attack like this even happening. How the security codes that were otherwise impossible to know, even to the user, could have been used to cause the things to explode. I ran as fast as I could, as hard as I could, down the main road. The citadel, the massive tower at the center of campus, was dead ahead of me. I kept my eyes locked on it, storming down the tightly packed cobblestone.

I busted through the doors running up to the counter. "Where's Thomas? Tell him Caedes is here to see him!"

The girl looked scared and stressed, like the rest of the world most likely was right now. "Mr Caedes, I'm sorry but Thomas has been out on a business trip for the past day. He's scheduled back sometime soon though, maybe later tonight. But now that this has happened... I don't know what could happen."

I clenched my fists. Quickly turning on my heels and back out the door. Thomas was a no go. I had to find out something, but there was no way. I had been researching the Atomiton for the past three days; I've read every article, every post, and every video you could find. There was nothing of the sort of information I was looking at. Thomas was my only option, and since he was gone who knows where... there was nothing I could do.

I stopped in my tracks. The clouds overhead covered the campus in a dark ominous mood that fit the feelings of everyone around the college. A few rain drops hit my head and shoulders, ever so slowly speeding up the time between drops.

Eventually it was raining full on directly on top of me. I shuffled back into my dorm. Shedding my clothes, and letting them dry on the tile floor of the bathroom. I fell face first onto my bed.

I had no choice; I was just as useless as everyone else on this campus. There was nothing I could do for now. I had to wait it out until Thomas was available, until then I had to clear my mind of doubt, clear my mind of worry.

I let out one command in a monotone voice, closing my eyes.

"Link, KOSVO."