Page 29 of Code Bound
He studies me. “Your friend, Dox. She was your team before?”
“She still is,” I say fiercely. “And when she gets here, she’ll join us.”
He sniffs and pulls his thin shirt back on. “More like you’ll trade up when she does. Don’t worry. I’m not under any illusions.”
“That’s not how?—”
“We should find the safehouse,” Locke interrupts, looking deeper into the cave. “Use that fancy medallion and lead the way.”
I hesitate. Clearly, this conversation isn’t going to go anywhere good, not with that mentality, so ultimately, I step past Locke and do as he says. What good does it do to argue my character to someone who is practically a stranger? Something like that is shown with repeated actions, not words.
The light of my medallion is just bright enough to let us see about three meters in front of us and nothing else, just like the description said. As we start to move deeper and deeper, it starts to unnerve me that we can’t see anything outside of that distance. It isn’t until I start picking up more items we stumble across that Locke snaps at me, letting me know his nerves are on edge, too.
“Why are you picking up literally everything?” he quips, glaring back at me as I put another rock into my inventory. “You’re slowing us down.”
“What, are younotpicking up things?” I fire back. “This could be important. Remember the howler monkeys?”
“I doubt that particular stone is important,” he grumbles. “If I see a weapon, I’ll pick it up. Otherwise, it’s not worth my time.”
I roll my eyes. “You’d think you’d have learned in Dross.”
He meets my eyes. “I learned a lot. How to backstab,” he says. “How to survive on one portion a week. How to kill.” He leans closer. “I didn’t learn how to hoard. It’s just stuff. Best to keep what’s important and nothing else.”
He’d made it a point to let me know he’s backstabbed people back in Dross, and that he’s fully capable of backstabbing me. That’s fine. We’ve all done what had to be done in Dross, but here, the same rules don’t apply. There’s an abundance of resources. We can survive and more numbers are always better. I, at least, have to survive long enough until Dox gets through—and she will get through—so if I have to play nicey nice with Locke, that’s what I’ll do.
“He is going to get you killed,” Cipher murmurs, but I ignore him.
“Your loss,” I tell Locke, picking up more items.
Within the hour, my inventory is nearly full and I have to start dropping things that don’t in fact look helpful to replace the slot with something that does. If the items are small enough, I simply put them in my pockets. But I probably don’t need ten stacks of ten rocks in my inventory. That’s probably overkill. I drop three stacks of them in favor of three buttons, a pocket mirror with a crack across it, and a note that says, “It’s already too late.”
“There sure are a lot of trinkets in these caves,” I observe out loud.
“There have been many deaths in the Secret Abyss,” Cipher says. “Many players perish within the dark maze. You will likely find remnants of them along your path.”
I stop. “This is all from dead people?”
“Does that bother you?” Cipher asks.
I frown and shake my head. “No. In Dross, all resources are passed on when you die. Even your bones. It doesn’t bother me.”
Cipher sighs. “Humanity has fallen so far.”
I squint ahead of me and realize I can’t see as far as I was able to before. What was three meters now feels like one. I tap the medallion and it starts to fade quickly, as if my tapping is the reminder it needed to deplete entirely, leaving us standing in the dark.
“Vesper?” Locke breaths, pressing closer to me. “Don’t move. If we get separated in here, we won’t ever find our way out.”
“Why is it fading?” I growl, shaking the medallion. And then I remember the description, that it’s weak and only lasts an hour. “Fuck, I need to charge it.”
“We don’t exactly have the sun,” Locke says, stating the obvious.
“Which means it’s XP,” I breathe, grimacing. “One of us has to give up ten XP to charge it.”
We don’t speak for a minute, as if we don’t know what to do. Of course, it’s Locke who points out the obvious.
“Well, you have sixty XP. I only have thirty,” he rasps. “Seems like a clear choice.”
I sigh. Yeah. It feels like taking a step forward and taking two steps back, but he’s right. It’s only fair that I be the one to charge it. Besides, it’s my medallion.
