GEOVRU: IV

Chapter 3

"Sir I apologize, but we simply can't give you an audience with Doctor Gathway." The woman behind the desk says to me with ounces of concern in her voice. "He's a busy man. Even if he's in quarantine, he works all hours of the day!"

"I'm sure he'd make an exception for me! I'm a friend of his daughter, Michelle!" I yelled back. "He knows me personally!"

The receptionist looked down at her lap for half a second before looking back up at me. "I'm sorry, but I am not legally allowed to let you see him, not without his personal permission."

"Ma'am please, this is a serious emergency! A student is missing!"

"That sounds like a matter for the police, not the headmaster." She fired back at me. She wasn't wrong, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't allowed to run to the cops for help on this. I probably wasn't even allowed to run to the headmaster, even if he wasn't able to help me, PRAT definitely didn't want anyone finding out, but I had to do something to help Krystal, God only knows what's happening to her.

I groaned, rolling my eyes into the back of my head and turning away from the counter. I left the building with no further attempts to convince the lady of my cause. I checked the time in the top corner of my HUD. It was just now reaching midnight. Not everyone was asleep, but most people were indeed going to bed, even if it was a Saturday. I had a little over two hours before needing to log onto FMO to confront PRAT, so I didn't bother running. This whole thing brought back bad memories about Michelle.

I was not about to lose another friend, another partner.

Not after Michelle, not after Idius, not after my father.

Whatever PRAT had in store for me, whatever challenge, whatever danger awaited me at 2:45 am, I would take it to the greatest of my abilities, and if it was in Forman then anything thrown at me wouldn't stand a chance. I wasn't max level, but my skill more than made up for any lack of level buffs.

I sat in my recliner for the remaining time and stared out my holographic window. I had it set to the skyline of Seattle for my enjoyment. It was only 7:00 pm over there, but it was still dark. The light of the space needle illuminated brighter than any of the surrounding buildings, it was beautiful to say the least, breathtaking. I had just gotten back from the holiday break a week ago, but it felt like months since I had been in the states. I guess all that wouldn't matter at the end of this semester, I would be graduating in May after all.

I checked the time. 2:43 am. I sat up from my chair.

Enough sitting around. I told myself, ironically sitting right back down on my bed, prostrating myself to the length of the bed. It was funny, even after giving myself countless inner pep talks, even a few outer ones, and I was still shaking. I looked at my hands before closing my eyes. They shook like an earthquake, it was awful. I couldn't keep myself still no matter how hard I tried. I clenched my fists so hard my knuckles popped and finally let my hand come down to a rest at my side. If I was going to save Krystal, I had to gather my nerves and get to a solution. This was my best and only option. I couldn't get anyone else involved, this was my fight, and I would see it finished.

These guys had been after me for over a year now, and it took them this long to get the leg up on me?

What a joke.

The countdown timer of two minutes finally came to an end, and as 2:44 turned into 2:45, I got comfortable on my bed and shouted out as loudly as I could.

"Link, Forman!"

Like magic, I wasn't teleported to my spawn point, not in Distonia, not in any inn that I might have logged out of, instead I was on a rocky field, filled with massive jagged boulders that seemed to make an array of black hills that rose up, and dropped down like building blocks. I spawned in a valley between two massive boulders that towered over me at double my height. This valley I was in could only have been seven feet wide, and eleven or twelve feet deep. It went on for at least twenty feet in both directions. This was not ideal if something was trying to attack me. If something came at me from in front, I could only go backwards, and if from both sides, these jagged boulders were too sheer to climb, and too high to jump, even at my level. The grass I stood on was still. It was practically dead in this tiny valley, and it was dead quiet besides the sound of the wind whistling past this valley, as if it was avoiding it on purpose. After a second, my HUD flashed in front of me, the compass in the top right of my vision, my health bar in the top left corner. Undernearth it rested Krystal's health bar reading: