Terms and Conditions

Chapter 24

"I don't understand what you're showing me." Judith flipped through the papers, boredom on her face. She huffed as she placed them in front of me. "These are just charts with nonsense. None of it makes sense."

"No." Luis pointed at them, tapping them with his finger. "They make sense. This is the information you've ignored for nearly a month."

"Ignored?" Judith scoffed. Then she crossed her arms. "I haven't ignored anything."

"Hm." Luis slowly shook his head. "Either you ignored them or someone in your office decided to push this information aside. Because if you read them, here—" Quickly turning them in his direction, Luis found a specific piece of data and then pointed at it for Judith to see. "This right here is data from tutorial NPCs registering players who logged in. There are a lot of incomplete quests. People were dropping like flies, no?"

"Are," I added. "People are, and will keep, dropping like flies."

Judith shrugged and shook her head. "Sometimes games are too much. How is that my fault?" She pressed a hand to her chest. "I'm not to blame here."

"Really?" Luis straightened and moved next to me. I saw the determination in his body language, the disbelief on his face. With one brow cocked with irritation, he shook his head once more. "Tell me, Judith, how long did you test this VR game before acquiring beta-testers?"

"That's information you don't need to know." Judith's painted nails dug into the sleeves of her blouse. "But, if you must know something, we were able to provide enough information on Love or Nothing to get to this point. Otherwise, none of you would have been given contracts."

"Ahuh." Luis pressed a tongue against the side of his cheek. "Great. That's great. Love or Nothing is one thing, but what about the spheres?" He tapped his temple. "Your company is the first with them, no? Everyone else has headsets. But spheres? The ability to take us into the game; no one can do that."

"Yet." Judith lifted a finger. "We're the first."

"Yes, and the first usually fuck up a lot along the way."

Judith's eyes shifted from Luis to the guard still in the room. Turning my head, I had to look back at the man, too. He was larger than Luis. Taller, stronger. From the looks of it, all he had to do was wrap an arm around Luis and he was done for.

Yet, the guard appeared to be listening. Why?

"I don't know what you're implying." Judith clenched her jaw, tugging at the muscles in her cheeks. "We've done our jobs."

"Oh, I'm sure you have. Or someone did, if it wasn't you." Luis slid a hand through his hair. "But how much of that was shared with us, the players?" He pointed at himself, then at me. "We were informed of any possible dangers?"

"Like I told Miss Charines here," Judith glanced at me as she spoke, "if either of you had read the Terms and Conditions, then you would see that—"

"Oh, I read them. And printed them for you." He pointed at the papers again. "Last few sheets are the Terms and Conditions, word for word, printed for easy reading. And in it, you list a lot of important facts about the game."

I had to step back. Luis grabbed a chair, spun it around, and sat on it in one swift motion. For a moment, I saw the Luis I first met inside Love or Nothing. The hard, nonchalant jerk without a care for anyone but himself.

But his argument was for my cousin, me, and everyone playing the game.

"You've explained the sneaky details about this data-link thing, syncing players together for a perfect match. But you don't entirely disclose how you'll protect that shared information. Why is that?"