MetaWars: Fight For The Future

Chapter 15

‘Unless we get some local help,’ said Sam. ‘Delphine,’ said Bradbury.

Axel nodded. ‘Delphine knows the ground. She can

get us past any Millennial search parties and over the border. But it won’t be so easy to find her down there. If we want her help, we’ll have to contact her first, and have her come to us.’

‘I know where to find her,’ offered Sam, ‘in the Metasphere. I’ll go.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ said Jonah, quickly. He expected Axel or Bradbury to object to this, but neither of them did.

‘Make sure you’re quick about it,’ Bradbury warned Sam. ‘We’ve got maybe fifteen minutes before that fighter comes back – and, next time, I think it’s safe to say its controller will be shooting first and asking questions later.’

Jonah and Sam plugged into a terminal in one of the empty cabins.

They arrived in the Metasphere in a sunny cornfield. The yellow cornstalks came up to Jonah’s nose, and buried Sam completely. They flapped their wings and the dragon and the unicorn rose into the air.

‘Are you sure this is the right place?’ asked Jonah. The cornfield spread to the horizon in each direction. ‘There’s no one around for miles.’

‘They’re here,’ said Sam. ‘We just can’t see them yet.’

She took a mental bearing from the position of the sun, and led Jonah north-east.

He hadn’t noticed before how striking Sam’s unicorn avatar was. It was dwarfed by Jonah’s dragon, but would have been taller than his old humatar. Its hide was a pearly white, and its feathered wings shone where they caught the sunlight. The unicorn’s mane was red. It had a splay of red tail hair too, the same shade as Sam’s real hair. Jonah could almost have enjoyed this summer’s day, flying through this cornfield with her, had it not been for the urgency of his real-world plight.

Then, in the blink of an eye, the cornfield disappeared.

Jonah was in the courtyard of a medieval castle – and there was a wall behind him, hemming him in.

Assorted avatars were gathered before him, many of them guardsmen armed with pikestaffs. They moved in to seize hold of him.

Jonah struggled, and surprised himself once more with the strength of his dragon avatar. He sent two of his would-be captors sprawling, but more came to their assistance. They pinned Jonah’s wings to his side.

‘It’s OK, Jonah,’ said Sam. ‘They’re friends.’

‘Some friends,’ scoffed Jonah, struggling to unfurl his wings.

‘Identify yourselves!’ a brawny guardsman demanded.

Sam gave her name and Jonah’s, then reeled off a string of letters and numbers that Jonah took to be a password. ‘We have to see Delphine,’ said Sam.

‘I’ll have to verify your avatars,’ said the guardsman, gruffly.

‘Of course,’ said Sam, ‘but hurry, please. Our lives are in danger in the real world.’

The guardsman nodded. He gave a signal to the other avatars, and Jonah was prodded forward, towards the castle’s forbidding grey towers.

From the conical roofs of those towers flew black and green flags, fluttering in the computer-generated breeze.

They were marched beneath a raised portcullis, across a marble-floored hallway, to a small, carpeted reception room. The door closed heavily behind them, and a yellow padlock icon appeared in the virtual stone.