Nate muttered.
“Stay to the right side of the corridor, remember. Or the ceiling stalactites will fall down and skewer you. Isn’t that what Craig said?”
“Yes, that’s right.” Nate guided the hograt as far to the right of the widening chamber as he could. He rounded the curve of a rock formation, and there it was.
The Obelisk towered high in the vast, dark chamber. Its surface seemed to shimmer like liquid, but as they grew closer, they saw that the movement was caused by lines of shifting, incomprehensible glyphs which rolled across the stone horizontally and then disappeared. The glow lit the whole chamber, revealing its depth, and the huge stalactites hanging down. Ominous ambient music played constantly.
As he drew closer to the Obelisk, a pop-up opened on Nate’s screen. It was a grid, with the gamer handles of the people currently writing on the stone.
Elisa leaned closer as Nate scrolled through them, and stopped on the eighteenth one.
GeekwadX1000.
16
“Nate,” Elisa whispered. “Did you see that?”
“Yes. Let’s hope it’s really him.” His voice was rough with excitement. “That gamer’s message is on the eighteenth line of the Obelisk. So it’s this one, right here.”
The eighteenth line had three glyphs right in the middle, constantly repeating.
“So how do we translate it?” Her voice had a desperate quiver.
“Craig said we have to spill blood on the altar,” Nate said thoughtfully. “The YouTuber talked about using the wand. I think we can use the wand to translate the glyphs, and the translated message will appear in our pop-up.”
His avatar approached the altar, which was gory and dark with the spilled blood of previous players. Some of it was dried out and dark, some was fresh and glistening. A bejeweled dagger lay on the altar, shiny with blood. There was also a long, narrow, slightly knobby wooden wand. It looked like a long, thin spectral finger.
Nate’s avatar picked up the dagger. “I’m really glad this is virtual, because it looks fucking unhygienic,” he said, slashing the blade across his avatar’s wrist.
A spray of virtual blood splattered over the altar. A key on the side of the screen measured the player’s health points and another one in the pop-up had a bar that showed the wand’s charge level. Nate had to stop twice and buy two more big blocks of health points, or his avatar would have zeroed out and croaked.
The thirsty altar sucked up his blood, and the translation wand bar finally rose to the very top. So far, so good.
He had his avatar pick up the wand. He touch it to the glyphs on GeekwadX1000’s line. The translation that appeared in the pop-up was succinct.
sos
Nick entered his own handle in to the Obelisk list, and opened his own dialog box. It had the option to reply to a specific message, so he chose GeekwadX1000 as the recipient, and typed into the box.
r u Josh Roarke
His message appeared on the Obelisk, translated into glyphs, and began its constant horizontal cycle. Many long minutes went by. He wondered if Josh was paying attention, after months of silence and disappointment. If he’d given up hope.
sos disappeared. A new, longer message rolled out onto the Obelisk.
Nate touched the translation wand to the column, and waited for the dialog box to fill. who wants 2 know
yr sister, Nate entered in his own box.
Another long pause, and a new message appeared. do not fuck with me
true thing Nate typed. she is here
if u rnt her then who r u?
a friend Nate typed. helping
Another pause, and Josh wrote, where did i spend my 10th bday
Nate turned to Elisa. “Security question,” he said.
She leaned over. “Shaw’s Crossing,” she said. “Summer camp. I was in the arts program, and Josh did the computer science module. Dad sent enough chocolate ice-cream cake for everyone at the camp to have a piece.”
Nate entered, computer camp shaws xing chlct ice cream cake
The next line came faster jesus lu it took u long enough
yes but we r here now. where r u? u have a router?
bailey ridge. I found a broken router & fixed it w/o them knowing. They let me play with shards bcz they think its sngle plyr
Nate turned to Elisa. “Where’s Bailey Ridge?”
“It’s one of Dad’s properties,” Elisa said. “A place in the mountains near Amity Springs, not far from Mt. Ranier. He used it sometimes when he was skiing.”
Nate typed again. Is Gil there now?
no he is gone. nite b4 last.
tell me about the security, Nate wrote.
hardware beefed way up, Josh wrote. cameras. motion