Chapter 11: Safe Mode

  The heavy leather pouch hit Elara Moonwhisper’s polished oak desk with a satisfying, metallic thud.

  "Five hundred Silver Marks," Alex said, wiping a streak of grime from his cheek. "Count it if you want, but I promise it's all there."

  Elara stared at the pouch, then looked up at Alex and Thorne. Her glowing eyes narrowed slightly. "You cleared the Crooked Coin cellar? In less than an hour? Grandmaster Alaric sent a Silver-ranked party down there yesterday, and they returned with severe arcane burns."

  "We, uh, found a workaround in the local logic," Alex said vaguely, offering a tired smile. "The quarantine ward stays up, right?"

  Elara nodded slowly, her hand hovering over the silver. "The tithe is paid. The Weave will sustain the dead-zone around your companion for exactly three days. After that—"

  CLANG.

  A heavy metallic thud echoed from the center dais. Alex and Thorne spun around.

  Inside the glowing, hexagonal blue grid of the isolation ward, Agent Locke was sitting up. He looked terrible. His face was pale, his tactical suit was completely offline, and he was violently ripping the biometric sensors off his throat.

  "Locke! Hey, take it easy, you're in a quarantine bubble!" Alex shouted, running over to the edge of the blue grid.

  Locke didn't answer right away. He frantically tapped the side of his helmet, which was resting beside him on the marble slab. Dead. He checked the wrist-mounted holographic projector on his left gauntlet. Dead. He reached for his sidearm, pulling it from its holster, only to find the slide fused and completely bricked by the sudden EMP blast he had thrown back in London.

  "Status report," Locke rasped, his voice raw and harsh. He glared at Alex through the translucent blue barrier. "Where are we, Kane? What is this energy field? My suit’s chronometer is wiped, and the HUD says I have two percent emergency reserve power."

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  "We're in Moonveil," Alex explained, gesturing around the massive cathedral of the Silver Spire. "It's a city on the Aurelian server. And this field is an ABSOLUTE_NULL variable. It's the only thing keeping you alive."

  Locke’s eyes darted to Elara, who was watching him with a mixture of pity and severe caution. "Her?" Locke asked.

  "She's a Cleric," Alex said. "Locke, listen to me. Your biology and your suit's hardware are fundamentally incompatible with this world's atmosphere. The ambient energy here—they call it Mana, I call it RAM—is so thick it was literally cooking you from the inside out. You're in Safe Mode right now."

  Locke slowly swung his heavy legs off the marble slab, testing the floor. He stepped toward the edge of the blue grid and pressed his gloved hand against the barrier.

  "So, I'm a prisoner," Locke deduced coldly. "If I step outside this light, my suit fries, my nervous system overloads, and I die."

  "Basically, yes," Alex admitted.

  Locke let out a frustrated breath, looking down at his ten-million-dollar, state-of-the-art tactical suit. It was little more than a heavy, stifling wetsuit now. "Kane, I am a Doorwarden. I don't sit in quarantine while Helios Dynamics is out there trying to harvest a new dimension. I need my weapons online. I need comms. I need a localized thermal regulator."

  "I can't just plug you into a wall socket, Locke! The power grid here is made of magic!"

  "Then hack the magic, Kane!" Locke snapped, his eyes flashing with fierce intensity. "You edited the physical layer of those mercenaries' rifles. You deleted the lock on those guards' weapons outside. You're the Admin here. Write a patch."

  Alex blinked. He looked at Locke's offline wrist-gauntlet, then looked out into the cathedral where ambient, golden "Mana" was floating harmlessly in the air.

  Write a patch. "You want me to build a universal power adapter," Alex muttered, the gears in his head suddenly turning. "If I can siphon a tiny bit of the ambient RAM, step down the voltage, and translate the data into standard electrical output... I could create a script that forces your suit to run on local magic."

  "Can you do it?" Locke asked.

  "I... I think so," Alex said, his Architect vision already pulling up the underlying code of Locke's suit battery. "But I need a conduit. Something physical to hold the code and act as a battery core. A crystal, or a piece of conductive server-metal."

  Thorne, who had been listening to the bizarre exchange in utter confusion, perked up. "A conduit? Like a raw Mana-gem? You can buy those in the Black Market down by the ports. Balthazar sells them. But they are highly illegal and incredibly dangerous."

  Locke looked at Alex, a grim, determined smirk crossing his pale face. "Looks like you're going shopping, Kane. Get me a battery."

  The Hack is On!

  Locke is awake, he is furious, and he is pushing Alex to fully embrace his Reality Hacker class! This is where the sci-fi truly merges with the fantasy.

  Alex needs to go to the Black Market to find a piece of hardware he can use to build Locke's magical power adapter.