HC:Pacifist | Ch. 68 - Reunited (Patreon)

As expected, the person calling him was SergeantSarg. He hadn't heard anything from him since he and his platoon of old-timers had left for one of the cities. Probably, he just wanted to catch up with Roth. He opened the message

"Dear Roth,

I finally heard back from your mother. She's worried about you and confirms your story. They ask that you contact the following game tag: HarmlessShark.

Please tell me what city you are based in. My platoon is ready to assist you in whichever way we can.

Yours sincerely,

Sgt. Jazzinald"

Roth collapsed to his knees. His whole body was shaking. Yes! The message had gotten through! As he checked the tag the Sergeant gave him, he knew who was behind it. It had to be Drake.

It had been more than a month since he'd arrived in the world of AstroTerra. Despite his many encounters with friendly NPCs and meeting the Sergeant, he had been all alone. Finding that the Sergeant now believed him and that his mother knew where he was felt like coming to the surface after almost drowning and getting life-giving air into his lungs.

For a brief moment, Roth could gauge the amount of pressure this had been causing him. It was a pressure he didn't get any respite from, even during sleep, because there was no sleep here. The weight he'd been carrying on his shoulders was immense. Feeling some of it lifted caused him to let out a shout of unbridled joy that echoed in the sewers!

He added HarmlessShark as a friend. As soon as he did so, he immediately got a call.

"Lil' Roth. Is that you?"

The features were slightly different from what he remembered but were still there. He recognized the small dark eyes, the square jaw, and the big nose. Even though there was no ink on his skin, no one but Drake called him like that.

"Drake... it's you." Roth broke down crying. Hearing the fatherly voice of his best friend in prison cracked open the dam holding the sadness in his heart. "It's you, Drake."

"Calm down, little one. Calm down. Everything is going to be OK." Roth took a few moments to get his rampaging emotions under control. Never had he been happier to get a phone call or to see a friendly face.

"Where are you?" he managed between hiccups and tears.

"I'm at your mother's."

"Is she OK?"

"She's fine. Your brothers were here earlier. They're also doing well."

Roth felt life rush into his blood and energy coursing through his veins. The weight of not knowing how his family was doing had been weighing heavily on his mind.

"Where are you? I mean... inside the game?"

"Greenleaf Village." Roth shuddered to hear the name of the hell where he'd been tortured. Just hearing it hurt his body as he recalled every strike his former friends had dealt him.

"How did you know about that place? I have never spoken of it to Sergeant."

"Let's start from the beginning, OK? Let's try to bring together everything we know. I'll start while you get yourself together." Drake was someone very logical and organized. Hearing him speak again after all this time warmed Roth's heart. He tried to focus on his calm voice and regain his composure.

"When I got out of prison, I came straight to your mom's. I remembered the address you gave me and took the bus there. As soon as I came near her house, I spotted a tail. Someone was running surveillance on her." Roth's heart sank. Were they surveilling his mom?

"I remembered your story and description of the guy you put in the wheelchair. Concerned that something had happened to you, I pretended to be looking for a job and managed to find my way into her house. There I confirmed there were bugging devices and cameras."

"That monster!"

"I also found that the bugs had been disabled." That threw Roth off. What was the point of installing microphones and cameras only to have them disabled?

"What? What does that mean?"

"Then," continued Drake as if Roth hadn't said anything, "I talked to your mother and asked her about you. She was under the impression that you had killed someone in prison and that they had transferred you to one of the slaughterhouses off-coast."

"Why would she think that? I'm no murderer!"

"Someone forged a very official-looking letter. It was an excellent forgery. It could have fooled me. Additionally, whenever your mother called prison, they corroborated the story." Roth's shoulders sank. That meant that Loki had people in prison. Which in turn meant that he could have killed him whenever he wanted. Roth felt the urge to vomit. To know that every breath in prison had been a gift from Loki was sickening.

"Anyway, I told your mother that we were in prison together. I explained how much you had changed and that the Roth I knew wasn't capable of hurting a fly, and that I knew for a fact that you hadn't killed anyone there."

"Did she believe you?" asked Roth fearfully.

"Of course, she did, man! She's your mom. She loves you. She raised no murderer, right?" The validation brought warmth to Roth's chest.

"Then, your mother told me about a young man living in her basement. He came to her claiming to have fallen out of grace with Loki and was looking for a place to lay low. He offered to pay rent and help your mom with the bills."

"Who?"

"Brian."

"What?! How dare he? HOW DARE HE?" All the relief, joy, and warmth was set aflame in his heart at the mention of this. He felt his breath quickening and his nostrils flare. That traitor had had the guts to show up at his mother's after what he'd done to him! Drake said nothing, but his quiet, icy look helped Roth calm down. When Drake looked at him like that, he felt as if the whole circle of rageaholics was seeing his outburst. That helped him to steady his breathing and to regain some of his composure.

"I'm sorry, Drake. Please continue."

"At once, I saw there was a third party in this story. I confronted him. He confessed to being on Loki's payroll and that Loki had devised a plan to trap you inside the gaming capsule with the pain settings locked. He then told me how they tortured you." Here, Roth could see some fire in Drake's eyes.

"He explained that you had disappeared when they returned to where they had left you. They feared Loki would punish them for losing track of you, so they hired an actor to play you and buy them some time. Meanwhile, they kept searching for you without Loki knowing the wiser."

That explained a lot. Roth had wondered why Loki hadn't brought his whole guild down on him. It turned out that something like that had happened.

"When Gary sensed Loki was growing suspicious, he betrayed Shirley and Brian." Roth gulped. He hadn't expected that Gary could be so ruthless. That's not how he remembered his previous teammate.

"What happened to Shirley?" Roth hated that under all the anger and resentment, there was still a sliver of worry for the girl.

"Shirley's whereabouts are unknown. She's presumably missing or even worse. Brian got out in time and figured he would go to the one place no one would come looking for him.

He went to a place he knew was under surveillance and used some military-grade equipment he had stashed away to fool the bugging devices implanted in your mother's house. Clever boy. He's been paying rent while he stays hidden in the basement.

I don't know if you were aware of this, Roth, but your mother and brothers have been struggling while you were locked away."

Roth had known this was a real possibility. The dread of Loki doing something to his family had kept him up many nights in prison. Back in the day, when Loki's guild hired IronIre for help in certain quests or guild battles, Roth had seen how vindictive Loki was. He was one of the most vengeful persons he had ever met. Roth had admired that in Loki when they had been on the same side. Of course, Roth hadn't been the forgiving type back then, either.

He recalled very well how he left no act of betrayal unpunished. This one time, Loki had hired Roth's guild to attack a castle deep in enemy territory. Castles had been a symbol of strength and prestige in New Earth, not to say anything of the income it brought into a guild's coffers, and Pegasus had hired IronIre to help them siege several of them.

In a strategy meeting before the siege, one of Roth's aides strongly disagreed with Loki's strategy. He called a few colorful plagues on Loki in front of everyone. During the weeks that followed, there had been several minor accidents happening to his guild member.

Twice, his tires had all been cut with knives. He had found rats, cockroaches, tarantulas, and snakes in his garden and inside his house. His little brother got beaten at school. Finally, he appeared one day for work with a black eye and a broken arm. He refused to answer no matter how often people asked him about what happened.

Since this was one of his own, Roth confronted Loki about these incidents. When he did, Loki had playfully denied it and blatantly suggested that Roth teach his underlings to mind their manners the next time Pegasus hired them. Since his guild member had insulted a customer and things had stopped escalating, Roth had left it at that. What could he do anyway? He had no proof that Loki was the one behind these random accidents.

If Loki had been capable of such evil back then when Pegasus was still climbing through the ranks, he shuddered to think of what he was capable of now. Now that they were one of the most influential organizations in the gaming industry, there was no telling what Loki could do.

Although Roth's imagination had run wild for a long time, thinking of the dark acts of revenge that Loki could be doing to his family while he was in jail, he could do nothing to help his family. He had learned to live with the crushing weight of this anxiety.

When his family started answering his letters, he'd repeatedly asked his brothers and mother about their welfare, but they always deflected the subject. The thought of Loki causing trouble to his family for four years made his heart sink even deeper. Knowing his actions had made his family miserable was eating away at his heart.

"So, after that, we also found a letter that Brian intercepted and had hidden away from your mother. A so-called Sergeant Jazzinald wrote it. Since he was in the military and was from a completely different district, I figured he was probably someone we could trust.

"I had one of your brothers come over and send a letter to the sergeant through one of his friends. And here we are." Roth searched his feelings to figure out how he felt about this whole account. He found some joy to be talking to his good friend, Drake. He also found some relief in knowing that, despite the troubles Loki had caused, his family was unharmed and well.

Then there was red burning anger, like a volcano preparing to erupt, as he thought of Brian living under the same roof as his mother. And finally, there was a dark, black fear of Loki and what he might do to him and his loved ones.

"Thank you for telling me this, Drake. Knowing you're there with them puts me at ease. What did Loki do to my family?"

"He's put them under a lot of financial pressure. Your brothers must run around town looking for scraps to get by, and your mother must work hard to provide for herself."

"I see," said Roth through clenched teeth. The angry part of his soul was fiercely battling his guilt.

"Now... Roth, please tell me everything that has happened to you. I need your version of the story to start drafting a plan." The thought of relieving painful memories caused a shiver to run up Roth's spine. On the other hand, he had been keeping all of this bottled in. At least now, he could open his heart to a friend.

Ch. 67 - Swimmer

INDEX

Ch. 69 - Roth's Account