Play of Shadows

Chapter 49: Adage

The first official meeting of the VELES super-team ended in a farce.

General Hull and Barton took control of the situation with admirable haste, but their superficial words of comfort did more harm than good. The players challenged every placation and received no satisfying answers. In the end, they were sent back to their rooms like naughty children while the adults gathered for an emergency meeting of their own.

Ann lay on her bed. Her phone was at her side, discarded after a futile attempt to search the net for news of the VELES fallout. The device was still properly connected, but Ann's credentials were rejected whenever she tried to access anything of use. It was a very selective ban that did nothing to soothe Ann's tattered nerves. Access to the internet was tied to personal identity and constituted a right protected by law. The fact that VELES could go dark so quickly and unapologetically rang alarms in Ann's mind.

The phone lit up. And then it kept flashing, message after message blurring by. The first few were in the family group chat from Ann's mother, demanding to know why Ann wasn't picking up and what the hell kind of secret operation she had signed up for, did she think she was James Bond?

Ann snorted as she checked her call log. No missed calls. VELES had guts, Ann gave them that. She hoped INFINITE sued on Frances' behalf for the quasi-kidnapping going on. Ann was certainly not getting any deeper into litigation than she had to.

[I'm fine. We're still going as planned] Ann wrote back.

A message came immediately, this time from Ann's father. [That hacker group released news of the glitch and the contracted players]

Ann's fingers froze over the screen. [how much did they share?] she asked.

[When were you going to tell us that you signed a death contract?] her mother shot back.

Enough, then.

The lack of connection suddenly felt like a blessing. Pacifying her parents over text was not ideal, but it beat a call or worse, a VR meet-up.

The buzzing of incoming messages never stopped as Ann typed up a defense plea on the spot. Her parents were angry and afraid, but they were reluctantly proud of her as well. She had been raised to do the right thing, and they had no one else to blame but themselves for that.

A glance through her messages left Ann smiling without mirth. Most were from media companies – entertainment outlets were like piranhas, swarming when they smelled blood in the water. A few old acquaintances threw tentative olive branches, looking for gossip or possibly a chance at gaining second-hand exposure from the looming media circus.

Ann paused at a message from a familiar ID. She dug out a face to attach to the plastic text and swiftly banished the sender to a mute list. Her good cousin, so worried about her wellbeing that he had not contacted her since cutting off relations as loudly and publicly as profitable in the wake of her scandal. Ann was so touched she sent her parents a reminder to ignore calls from other well-intentioned relatives. Any kind of response would find itself to the media to be quoted and misquoted within the hour.

[I just saw the full team roster] Ann's mother replied, which was not related to the subject at hand and also sent Ann closing the chat in a panic.

Two more messages appeared in rapid succession, falling across the screen like thunderous clouds in a clear sky.

[I know you read the message]

[answer me, are you still holding onto that boy?]

Ann tapped into the message in a fit of anger, forgetting her very well-thought-out plan of pretending she had dropped off the face of the earth, [how stupid do you think I am?!]