ESCAPE // Ready Player One

FOUR

"Who the hell would want to destroy the whole OASIS?" Zer0 asks, clearly getting angry.

"I have no idea," V says, "but that seems like the likeliest thing."

"Is there anyone that hates the OASIS that much?" Nine says.

"No, everyone loves it," I tell him. "Wait, maybe it has something to do with what happened with the Egg in '45! Some people are probably still really mad about all of that."

"IOI," Nine says. "If we think it's about that, no one was angrier about it than IOI. No one wanted the Egg more, and the gunters took it right out of their hands..."

"...So they want revenge," I finish. "Of course! They want revenge on the gunters, and they know that the OASIS is out of their hands, so they want to destroy it!"

"Of course they do," V sighs. "How the hell did it get through that firewall though? Halliday put a practically impenetrable one on here—"

"The key word there is practically," Zer0 jumps in. "We know IOI has a team of experts, they could have all just sat down and coded this thing to break anything."

"And that's why it took so long for it to show up," Nine adds. "It took them three years, but they've done it."

"We need to contact Parzival," I tell my friends. "He needs to know that this is going down."

"But how?" Nine queries. "He probably gets a ton of messages from fans every day, he'd probably just ignore one from any of us."

"But it's us," Zer0 pipes up. "We're famous. Even if he doesn't know who we are, he must have at least heard our song by now."

"If we use our fame to get stuff, we basically become total assholes," I say.

"Well yeah," V agrees. "Maybe we should all meet up and go to GSS headquarters and talk to him in person."

"No," I say, then instantly regret it.

"Why not?"

"I... uh," I struggle to find an answer other than I've been lying to you all about who I am for two years and I'm actually a girl but I wouldn't be able to go anyways because my parents would find out that I'm on the OASIS and I'm not allowed to be.

"There's no guarantee that we'd be able to meet," Zer0 says, and I stifle a sigh of relief. "We could be scattered all over the globe."

"True," V acknowledges. "Okay, we'll just have to bombard him with PM's, then. That seems like our only option."

Suddenly, a vibration comes from my pocket. It's my phone. "Hold on for a second," I tell the group, and lift my visor. My mom is calling me.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Val! Are you and V doing anything important?"

Yes, actually. "No, not really."

"Would you mind coming home? We were planning to go to Disney and forgot to tell you!"

Really? They chose today to do that? "Uh... sure, I guess. I'm on my way." I lower my visor again. "I've gotta go."

"Why?" V says.

"Duty calls," I tell her, winking.

"Damn!" Zer0 says. "You're our leader, man! We need you right now!"

"Well, apparently, so does real life." I sigh, wave, and remove my visor, logging out.

I bike back to my house, where my parents are already waiting.