Evarus Falls

A hammer, crowbar, and several kicks with a side of hurt toes later, the filing cabinets refused to open. Sadie slouched on the couch with beads of sweat from her effort. Stupid metal. Who even kept filing cabinets anymore? Why did all this stuff have to be so hard? And sweaty.

It was the only place in the room Mom could hide something except on her computer. There had to be answers in there.

Could Mom really be the PirateQueen? Her dorky and worries about stupid things like headaches Mom? She’d run it through her head over and over while attacking the offices for clues, and nothing else made sense. The brink players used avatars like everyone else, so she’d never recognize her. And the PirateQueen was notorious for never streaming, so there was nothing to dig into.

It left three new facts about her mom unaccounted for—friends with brink players, still played the game despite account ban/disuse, and that weird convo with Vidar.

A giggle erupted. God. Her mom was THE PirateQueen. A freaking legend. The best player in the world by her book. Giggling overtook her body, followed by her heart plummeting when she remembered her current circumstance.

Focus.

She confirmed three things about BRINK while turning over Mom’s office.

One, BRINK didn’t seem to break game rules; they broke reason. Nothing tied Mom to an Evarus VR account other than the old banned gear. A search online and on Mom’s computer for the Gate app or any other potential accounts turned up exactly zero results.

Thus two, BRINK had special gear to hack into the game to break the rules. Different gear would explain not being in the registry, being able to carry banned items, and getting items out of the Sky Fortress they shouldn’t. Were they a bunch of cheaters or just evading some overly restrictive game rules?

She assumed the Gate app somehow hacked the nerve gear and kept Mom’s actual player info, which meant with Mom missing, so were her phone and this app. But there had to be some way to download it initially.

So three, with no information about the Gate app online, they kept instructions only on Pidgeon and offline. A search through Pidgeon again revealed nothing which left one place where there might be more information on how to get this app and get back into the game, but apparently filing cabinets were cousins of cockroaches and able to survive a nuclear apocalypse.

Hopping up, she paced the room as the hands on the clock ticked. Wait. Mom was missing here, in real life. Even with hacking the nerve gear, Mom should still be here somewhere. No one broke into their home. She locked the office door from the inside. What could going back into Evarus VR do except waste time actually finding her Mom?

She couldn’t trust Ben to keep his promise if she found that key. And there was no actual proof in their home of Mom being kidnapped anyway. Except that Mom was gone.

Sadie’s brain ached.

But then… why was that Vidar guy so interested in investigating in-game? Even if something happened in Evarus VR, like your damage neutralizer failing, the nerve gear should boot you back into your body.

It didn’t add up. Something was missing, a puzzle piece to make everything click. She turned to the cabinets and inhaled deeply. Hopefully, its contents held some answers.

Instead of physical force, she tried a different approach—checking hiding spots for keys. She cleared the couch and cushions of any holes or easily opened zippers, moved everything on the wall, and opened every book. Nada.

Sadie traced her fingers along the edges of the desk for a hidden compartment underneath or a taped key but came up empty. She let out a frustrated half-yell and slunk into the office chair. TV shows lied about how easy this was.

She rattled the desk with a few swift kicks as a last ditch effort, and the picture frame fell over. Of course, she forgot the back side of the picture frame! She undid the latches on the back and took off the cover, ready to declare victory, but nothing fell out. The picture didn’t even have writing on the backside. She tossed it back on the table with a groan.

Blackbeard meowed at the door. “What, dude? You hungry?” She swiveled around, and Blackbeard ran to the kitchen. She followed and checked his auto feeder. It still had thirty minutes, but she gave him a scoop anyway and refilled the feeder.

Blackbeard stared at it and meowed again.

“Seriously?” She reached down to pet him, but he ran off. “Freaking cats.” She didn’t mean it though. She remembered when Dad brought him home because he had been following Dad around school for weeks.

Tears welled in her eyes. He never left, not really. Why couldn’t Mom have been honest about Dad? About anything? Did Ben threaten her too? She could have helped with Dad, done something, if Mom had just trusted her. Why let her think the worst?

She gasped. Dad. That was the answer. When they moved to Iowa, Mom placed a lot of Dad’s things in storage or out of sight, except one thing. She reached into the back of the cabinet and pulled out Dad’s favorite mug with the original Digimon partners. Flipping it over revealed a key taped to the bottom.

“YES,” she yelled.

Blackbeard hissed at the sudden noise, but she ignored him. In the time it took to run back to the office, she jerked open the filing cabinets. One by one, she rifled through scanning for anything out of the ordinary. Boring things filled most of the cabinets—car documents, school art projects from when Sadie was in elementary school, birth certificates, etc.

Nothing out of the ordinary. No extra VR gear, attachments, or even instructions. Just a bunch of boring office stuff and family documents. She kicked the filing cabinet and wanted to scream again. None of this made sense.

There had to be something. She kicked the cabinet harder, and it clinked as something fell from the top of the bottom drawer. A black programmable button lay on top of the files, one of the cheap kind you can set up to do one thing. She turned it over in her hand, thinking it was some kind of trick. This little button couldn’t possibly be what Mom was hiding.

“Well, it has to do something,” she whispered to herself. She pressed the button, and the air stood suffocatingly still. Then the room came to life.

Mom’s computer spurred like a train engine as a white light over took the screen followed by a green loading circle chasing its tail. The button flew out of her hand back to its spot in the filing cabinet, which closed and clicked shut, and the door slammed closed. Heat radiated in her pocket, and she snatched her phone out. It nearly burned her fingers, and she dropped it. The same white light filled the screen and diamonds skittered across the edges.

“Is this your personal device, Sadie Wall?” a pleasant customer service voice from her phone said.

Sadie stumbled backwards, tripping over Mom’s office chair on her way to the ground. “What the—”

Her phone beeped at her. “Please answer the question.”

“Who are you? Why are you in my phone?” Is she dreaming? She had to be dreaming, fallen asleep after staring at Dad’s mug. This is some Digimon-type nonsense and more importantly just isn’t possible.

“You have asked for access to Evarus. I am the Gateway. Would you like me to shut down?”

“NO! No, please.” She crawled over to the phone and leaned over, afraid to touch it in case it actually shut down. However weird, she had no other leads for Mom. And if it was a dream, she’d wake up eventually. “Yes, this is my personal device.”

“Registered. Please stand.”

Sadie preferred to dropkick her phone for not getting to the point but she stood. A scanning light connected between her phone and the computer. Several more lights shot forward from corners of the room, and she held a hand over her squinting eyes.

“Please stand still.”

“Bossy,” Sadie muttered.

“Silence for the scan, please.”

Sadie stuck her tongue out at her phone. Who made this program?

“Complete. Transference to commence shortly. Please pick up your phone.”

Sadie delicately picked it up off the ground. It was still warm to the touch but able to be held.

The loading circle disappeared and diamonds, the same as when she entered VR through the neural gear she now realized, filled the screen and began rising out of her phone. They swirled in front of her for a few seconds and then shot forward without warning. Before Sadie could act to shake them off, her skin pulled taught towards her phone as if it tugged on her very soul… and then stretched and stretched to cartoonish proportions.

“Welcome to Evarus,” the bossy lady in her phone said, and the world went white.