Double-Blind: A Modern LITRPG

Some part of me was disappointed Sunny was such a mess. He made a habit of preying on the weak. Pressing others into the corner, threatening them, forcing impossible decisions upon people whose lives simply hadn’t equipped them to handle it. Given that, you’d think he’d at least have a theoretical idea of what to do if the tables were turned.

I’d built him up in my mind as some scenery chewing villain. I’d expected him to shift into a higher gear, be invigorated, perhaps even elated, as he rose to the challenge.

Instead, he just ran.

By grabbing Astrid, engaging in this pointless stalling tactic, all he’d done was give himself the illusion he was in control.

Azure cutoff his supply of adrenaline while I strummed the whispers of sleep in his mind, amplifying them into a symphony. Easy enough. He was already exhausted, on the tail end of weeks on the run and what I guessed was several days awake. Probably hadn’t managed a full night of sleep since the body fell at his doorstep. Even now, his eyelids drooped, and his weapon wavered, signaling to me I’d done enough in that regard.

Specks of dust, glimmering in the haze, were drawn to his face and nose like moths to a lamp.

Several applications of on hammer, trigger, and slide, insured the handgun would never fire again. Redundant, perhaps, but contingencies paid dividends here.

His focus slipped. For perhaps a fraction of a second, sleep took him, and his vice-like grip on the small mage loosened.

TWANG

A bolt from Max took Sunny in the shoulder of his gun arm. He dropped the 1911 with a pained grunt and stumbled backward, pinwheeling at the loss of balance, his face twisting in disbelief. I watched as—as if in slow motion—his heel caught the floor at an odd angle, and he twisted to catch himself. Only he twisted the wrong way. A bone in his leg snapped with an audible crack.

Sae reached out, ushering a stricken and sobbing Astrid behind us before she pulled her throwing arm back.

Not yet.

There were still questions that needed to be answered. I caught her arm and shook my head. “Give him a minute.”

With difficulty, Sunny climbed to his feet. He turned his back and began to limp away, reaching out to steady himself. But he just couldn’t seem to keep a good grasp on anything. The wall was too slick. And when his hand slipped off that, the table he reached out for toppled, thumping against his thigh and sending him back to the ground in a tangled heap.

“Jesus.” Max breathed. “We didn’t even have to come.”

“Hm?” Sae murmured.

“All that build-up and this asshole’s already dead.” Max shook his head. “Good-fuckin-riddance.”

His observation was unexpectedly cutthroat for someone typically jovial and good-natured, but I shouldn’t have been surprised. The one piece of scant information I’d shared with him about the Order was that our ultimate target was behind the soul-harvesting operation during the last transposition. They’d been ambushing entire convoys of Users trying to secure their regions, killing them wholesale. Max had lost nearly his entire squad to the effort, with only half of them returning home alive after the rescue.

With the target neutralized, I checked on Astrid. She’d retreated a small distance down the hallway, and gasped for breath, hand clutched to her chest. “You good?” I asked.

“Yeah.” Astrid straightened up slightly. “Careful. I just… blinked… and he rushed me down.”

“His rushing days are over.”

“Myrddin.” Sae snapped.

I turned, half-expecting to see Sunny on his feet, sprinting down the hallway, defying all expectations. But no. He was on his stomach, having apparently giving up on walking. But he was crawling, and seemed to be doing so with a destination in mind, trailing diagonally toward the right side of the hallway. All the exits were at the far end or to the left, through the stores. Instead, he seemed to be making his way toward a door marked “Utility Closet.”

“What’s the plan, Sunny?” I circled around him at a leisurely pace and paused at the door, waiting for to warn me. It didn’t. “Rigged to blow?” I pulled the door open. “Guess not. Is there a portal back to the order? Something stashed in here?”

“Last one got a reaction.” Azure informed me.

“Well.” I dragged him inside by the back of his armor, pushing him up against the wall in a sitting position. “Not sure what’ll give you a chance in hell at this point, but better safe than sorry. Where is it?”

He looked at me, his gaze radiating hate.

“Here?” I pointed to the left side of the room.

No reaction.

“Maybe here?” I pointed to a cluster of dirty mops, stacked in the corner.

Not even a flicker.

“That’s alright, we’ve got time.” I paused dramatically. “Please tell me you didn’t hide it behind the power cabinet.”

Despair filtered into his expression.

Bingo.

Behind the cabinet, beneath a layer of torn up insulation and covered in a layer of dirt and dust, was a forest green duffle bag. Again, I waited, half-expecting a Title warning not to touch it. When none came, I pulled it out.

Casting something—

I spun, pulling my crossbow and firing. My aim was dead-on, but the bolt impacted with a fuzzy thud, bouncing off his head and falling to the ground. In its wake, he was covered with a dull red glow.

“Trouble?” Sae did a double-take when she saw Sunny. “What the hell?”

Sunny laughed. For the first time, he seemed calm, more like his old self. “Better get moving, asshole. You and yours haven’t exactly been quiet. In case you missed it on the way in, the subhuman trash running this place are jumpy and well-armed. With all the noise, I’m guessing they’re gonna have questions.”

Ah. So there was a plan. Just, not a good one. He’d come here without informing the residents, and assumed we’d do the same. Like me, it probably wasn’t his first choice, but if plan A through plan-whatever-the-fuck fell through, he could raise a ruckus and pop whatever this ability was. He’d be captured and interrogated, but with his charisma, talking his way out of it was a real possibility.

“Sorry. Didn’t even think, he just went for it.” Azure said.

“What is it?”

“Adrenaline got going again, so he’s a little harder to read but… it’s a shield spell. Like Nick’s Sanctuary. Temporary impermeability.”

“How temporary we talking?”

“Depends on how much mana he poured into it… but… I’m getting ten minutes, tops.”

“Eh, I’d rather look through the bag, thanks.” I unzipped the duffel and started rifling through the contents, feeling Sunny’s incredulous gaze.

A shitton of healing potions, status potions, couple throwables, cracked smartphone, and… what are you?

There was a rectangle rubber-backed zip case with a cloth exterior and black and gray crosshatching. It had a decidedly modern feel, like something from before. I opened it up and paused, sizing up the unexpected contents. It was a handheld gaming console with pink and green siding. For curiosity’s sake, I pressed the power button. The screen stayed black, with nothing but the reflection of the mask staring back at me.

I tilted it towards him. “Not yours, I take it.”

“Are you delusional?” Sunny tried again. “They’ll be here any minute.”

“They’re not coming.”

“What… do you mean?”

I left him to ponder that and returned to the doorway, where the others were looking in. “Good news, he doesn’t have shit. Bad news, we’re gonna have to hold tight for a while.”

There was relief in their faces, but also discomfort at the idea of staying in one place. We generally didn’t, and that strategy had worked out for us so far.

“Sure we’re not gonna have a third party problem?” Max asked warily.

I shook my head. “The Steward wants this problem off his doorstep. He won’t order anyone to interfere, but that doesn’t mean one of our new friends isn’t gonna get curious.”

Out of the corner of my vision, I saw Sunny deflate.

“Got it. I’ll keep the voyeurs away.” Max confirmed. “Do what you gotta do.”

Beside him, Astrid was shivering violently, clinging to the sleeves of her robes. I discarded my previous order and softened my voice. “Check on your other half. Make sure we don’t have a containment issue.”

She searched Sunny up and down, teeth chattering. “H-h-he’s not going anywhere?”

“It’s over.” I reassured her.

It was only half-true. By the time I locked the door, pulled over a stool and settled in, Sae cross-legged beside me, I got the feeling that Sunny knew exactly how dire his straits were. His body had gone slack during the exchange, his visage meek and blank as a pious martyr. Saint Sebastian, tied to the execution post.

“It’s late, and I have a long day tomorrow. Wanna take the shield down save us all some time?”

“Ask.” Sunny said.

“Hm?” I cocked my head and cupped an ear.

“You aren’t stupid enough to gloat. I’m still breathing…” he wheezed, “because there’s an itch you can’t scratch. Either you’ve got something to say or a question to ask.”

“Wasting a lot of breath for a guy who doesn’t have much to spare.” Sae growled.

“No, he’s right.” I’d gone back and forth on whether engaging him at all was worth it. I’d bought my way out from underneath the geas, but Sunny hadn’t. There was a limit to what he could tell me. And the question I had, the one that kept me awake, made me sick… didn’t strictly matter. It wouldn’t change the end result. And it wouldn’t buy him more time.

I asked anyway. “While back, you and a couple crackpots ambushed a much smaller group.” His brows knitted together. “A confrontation that led to a kidnapping—right, probably doesn’t narrow it down. Lot of kidnapping going on in the Order. But maybe this does.” I leaned forward. “A mage died. Freaked out at the unexpected confrontation, tried to fight back. Took a bolt in the throat for her trouble. Bled out in seconds. Ringing any bells now?”

His jaw worked silently. As the reality set in, I could almost see him searching for a lifeline, looking for any angle he could use to leverage his way out of the situation.

Finding none.

When he had no objection, I continued. “The thing I couldn’t get out of my head was how damn unprofessional it seemed. Clearly your group was experienced, nobody there batted an eye at the violence, and other than that one, monumental slip-up, you ran a tight ship. Maybe it came down to the individual, and considering what a miserable conniving fuck you are, I have to imagine you’re also not the sort of guy who keeps one token idiot on your team. Meant to ask the shooter myself—ah fuck, what was his name?” I looked to Sae. “Dean? Dan?”

“Darren.” Sunny rumbled, the word coming out in a gravelly sigh.

I snapped my fingers. “Right. That’s it. Only when we set out to interview Darren on t

his dire absence of trigger discipline, he declined.”

“Made toast in the bathtub. Enjoyed it so much he’d stayed in for days by the time we found him.” Sae added.

“Wait.” Sunny frowned. “That wasn’t you?”

“It wasn’t you?” I asked. When he shook his head, I smiled thinly. “Well, he wouldn’t be the first in the dome to sign off that way. Must have caved to the stress. Or the guilt.”

“Of course he takes the coward’s way out. Always was a pussy.” Sunny’s lip curled.

“Sometimes there’s wisdom in being a coward.” I gestured to him, and the surrounding room. “Take your situation, for example. This is the end of the road for you. The finale. Terminus. All that’s up for negotiation is how cleanly you shuffle off this mortal coil. Given the circumstances, the brave thing would probably be to clam up and take whatever you have coming on the chin.” I glanced at Sae warily, “Considering my friend’s ample motivation to make that as unpleasant as possible, it would be braver than answering.”

Disbelief shadowed his face as I took off my mask.

“The question is, how wise do you want to be?”