Digital Distraction: Part 35

It was unsurprisingly dim lit beyond the curtain. The same sort of holographic torches as in the dining hall were spread unevenly around the room and didn’t light the room particularly well. She could see well enough get a grip on the layout though.

The huge throne was what caught her attention though and she froze when she realised that there was a huge man in heavy looking black armour and a helmet that covered his face, on the giant obsidian throne. She hadn’t seen him on the security cameras and she knew that no one could have followed her in.

When he didn’t seem to react to her presence, she figured he had to be a hologram whose programming hadn’t been fully activated yet and risked entering the room further, taking in the painting on the floor that looked like it was a magic circle of some variety.

She made her way over and recognised it, on closer inspection, as the magic circle the ShadowSwords had thrown her into when they had planned on sacrificing her to the Shadows four years ago, leaving her confused. Pegasus had told her that they planned on sacrificing every player coming to the beta test, but the circle here wasn’t big enough for that.

Either Pegasus had fed her false information or there was something going on here that she didn’t know about.

She risked turning her back on the hologram on the throne to see if there was some way that she could disturb the seal on the floor, to put paid, at least, to this part of their plans.

It wasn’t hard to come up with an idea. She pulled her purse out of her bag and fumbled around for a coin. She tried scratching at the paint and was pleased when the paint started to chip away.

“What do you think you’re playing at?” Dani had just enough time to let out a startled squeak and start turning around before an arm coated in black armour wrapped around her chest and she was dragged away from the circle.

“Let me go!” She struggled and kicked out, trying to break free from what was obviously not a hologram as she was dragged to a heavy metal door in the wall opposite the generically evil looking dark throne. “Let me...ack!” She yelped as she was slammed against the wall and held there by the throat by a gloved hand, the metal of it cutting into her neck as his hand pressed firmly, partially cutting off her airways and distracting her enough to allow the man to unlock the door with his other hand as she focused more on trying to get his hand away from her neck than she did on what he was up to.

The door opened before she could free herself and the armoured knight quite literally chucked her inside. She hit the granite floor with a pained yelp as the door slammed closed and locked behind her, leaving her trapped in a almost lightless room that, from what she could tell only had one way out.

“Well shit.” She grumbled as she backed away from the metal door, her eyes still adjusting to the fact that the only light was the dim stream coming in under the door. Suddenly her foot hit something on the floor that let out a weak whimper. She knelt down to feel for the cause of the sound, only for her hands to find a person shaped form, with their hands bound behind their back and their ankles tied together.

“Yami?” She asked, swiftly untying him, blindfold and all and helping him sit when it became obvious he couldn’t on his own, reaching in her backpack for a bottle of water when he tried to reply only for his voice to crack. “Here, drink this.”

Dani had to pull the bottle away when he tried to down the whole lot in one sitting, wincing he let out a piteous moan. “I know. I know.” Dani tried to reassure him, “But if you drink too much at once you could drown yourself and then your brother would kill me.”

“Ya...Yami?” The teen asked after another few mouthfuls. Dani frowned slightly, she couldn’t make out who she was talking to properly but it didn’t sound like the Yugi she had been talking to on the boat.

“Which Yugi are you?” She couldn’t help but ask, confusion obvious in her tone. She felt the body leant against her flinch and hastened to add, “It doesn’t matter, but if you’re the one who was kidnapped, I thought you were Yami.”

“N...No.” The teenager replied still tripping over his words as his voice croaked again. “Yami...uses my name...has done for years.” Yugi chugged down the last of the bottle. “A...Any more?”

“Water?” Dani asked, when she felt Yugi nod, she pulled a sandwich out of her bag. “Eat first, you’ve got to be...” She was pleased and highly amused when Yugi snatched the sandwich from her hands, his eyes long adjusted to the darkness after being blindfolded for two days. “There’s more in the bag.” She told him, as he scoffed it rapidly.

“Thank you.” Yugi said between mouthfuls, sounding grateful even as he took the other sandwich from her.

“You’re welcome, Yugi.” Dani informed him, “Do you think you’ll be able to walk soon?”

“My legs are sore and stiff but I can try.” Yugi replied honestly.

“Okay, you fill up while I check the door.” She nudged the bag closer to him, “Just remember to drink slowly.” She reminded him as she pulled a set of hairpins out of the bag and edged over towards the door, feeling it for the keyhole.

“Who are you?” Yugi asked as she searched the door blind.

“My name’s Danielle, my friends call me Dani, my reader call me D.M.G.” She told him, grinning when she found the keyhole, “And we are getting the hell out of here.”

Digital Distraction: Part 34

Dani was feeling proud of herself as she slipped out of the admin room. She hadn’t managed to reactivate the DimDisks, but she had managed to get the data that Pegasus had asked her to recover. That wasn’t why she was feeling proud of herself though.

No, why she was feeling proud of herself was because of one simple thing. The key card she was holding was the only one that was synched to the new pass-code she had encoded. Everything related to the final section of the game, including the boss room, where they planned on sacrificing everyone, was locked up using the pass-code system to prevent people skipping to the end.

Now she had control over the system. They wouldn’t be able to trap the players in their web if they couldn’t get them into the ritual room. As long as she held the only key, the other players were safe.

There was something else too. The electronic locks, the ones she had just reprogrammed, were all that stood between her and not only the boss room but all the secrets within.

The keycard slot for the ‘waiting room’ was hidden under a fake stone in the medieval wall that opened up to reveal the much less medieval looking electronic lock. “Open seseme.” She chuckled as she swiped her keycard through it, grinning when it bleeped and she heard the sound of the door unlocking.

She slipped inside, shutting the door behind her and grinning when she heard it lock again, feeling more confident once she was certain that she was the only one around and would be until she let anyone in.

There were stairs to the left that she suspected led up to the balconies. She was much more interested in the fact that there was no door into the next room, just a black cloth that she suspected would be lowered when the time was ‘right’. She pushed it aside, leaving the almost pitch black corridor to enter the main room of the castle.

Digital Distraction: Part 32

Dani felt guilty as she followed the goons though through the service entrance to the castle and hid in the kitchen. Tristan and Kari had made for an excellent distraction to allow her to get away, that didn’t mean that she didn’t feel horrible for letting them get caught.

Still with the bad guys distracted by their latest batch of incoming players, it was easy for her to slip into the rest of the castle and search for the information she had been sent to get. She was running out of time. The players were piling in, eager to get their DimDisks reset so they could continue their game session. Once they were all here, Dani didn’t doubt that the ritual would begin and everyone here would die.

She needed to get to the admin room. Once there she could unlock everyone’s DimDisks and at least give them the ability to defend themselves while she downloaded all the information that Pegasus had requested she get.

She didn’t know what else she could do. She didn’t have magic, there were people on the island who did though, she just wasn’t sure she could rely on them. Not when the backup Pegasus had promised her was helpless to do anything because his brother was being held hostage somewhere on the island.

She figured the brother had to be here, in the castle. She was hoping to find the security room while she was looking for clues. They had to have security cameras around here. If only to ensure they could be aware of who shanked who during their Gathering. If her luck held up, though, they would be at two completely different ends of the castle.

She started off by heading down the stairs at the back of the room. The huge stone staircase, with its heavy looking wooden railings, led down into the store room. It had huge wooden racks and cupboards that looked like they could easily hold enough food to feed the horde they had invited to the island. Most of them were empty though, just confirming Dani’s suspicion that they weren’t planning on feeding their guests.

Towards the back of the room there was a heavy metal door with a barred window, hidden away behind the last huge rack, where she wouldn’t have seen it if she hadn’t been investigating a noise that she could hear from the back of the room.

She couldn’t see anyone beyond, but she could see more doors, just like the locked metal one she was peeking through. She couldn’t find the keys for the metal door and honestly she didn’t think she had time to play ‘Hunt the Keys.’ Whoever, or whatever, it was down there was probably safer than up here with the bad guys.

Instead she headed back towards the kitchen, hiding behind one of the stacks as a secret entrance slid open and two of the robed figures from earlier, their hoods up, hiding their faces, entered the store room using a secret entrance. She watched them go, unsure if they deliberately left the secret door open wide or not, and then followed them upstairs, being careful not to be spotted as they went through the kitchen and into a dining hall.

She waited a few minutes, until the sounds of talking on the other side vanished, and then slipped through the unlocked door. The difference in style was startling. While the store room and the kitchen had looked old in style, they had had all the modern mod cons, the dining hall had a huge, heavy wooden table with thirty to forty uncomfortable looking wooden chairs around it and one, cushioned, spiky looking chair in a dark wood that had probably been stained black.

It was a room that was meant to make an impression, with its narrow windows that barely let any light through and the solid vision torches on the walls that gave off just enough light to pass as real torches but not enough to light the gloom in the middle of the room.

Dani was nervous as she tried to decide which of the four doors to go through. The one behind her she could rule out instantly, that one would only lead back to the kitchens and either the store rooms or the back door.

She had no idea which door led to what besides that. She had no inside information, no understanding of how the castle was laid out and she wasn’t a super spy. Realistically her best bet was to just keep trying doors until she struck gold.

She was just about to try the rightmost door when the leftmost door opened, revealing a room full of computers, a robed goon whose hood was down, revealing him to be a young man of about twenty with a strange henna tattoo down one side of his face.

She got lucky. Something started alarming on the consoles within, causing the mook to turn to face them. Dani took advantage of the disruption to dart into the room and slam the door shut behind her.

The mook wheeled around at the sound of the door shutting but Dani was ready, driving a fist into his chin as hard as she could. He staggered backwards, slamming into the console that was beeping, taking a moment to recover. Dani used that time to make another swing at him.

He ducked, driving his knee into her stomach and winding her, causing her to curl up in a ball and collapse to the floor, coughing and wheezing.

“Who the hell are you?” He demanded as he poked her with his foot, glowering down.

Dani grabbed his foot and rolled over, making him lose his balance and slam head first into the door. The mook crumpled into a heap, leaving Dani to push herself up, leaning on the desk chair which looked about as medieval as the rest of the computer banks in the room, i.e. not at all.

This had to be the admin room she had hoped to find and, luckily, it did seem to have all the security cameras in place. For once, it seemed, the ShadowSwords had been organised and kept all their technology together, out of sight of the players. She couldn’t help but wonder, though, as she sat in the desk chair and tried to work out what was alarming, if it had been the ShadowSwords who had been organised or whether DimSoft had been trying to keep the castle’s atmosphere in as many places as they could.

She finally managed to find out what was causing the ruckus when she noticed that one of the security cameras had picked up movement in somewhere that looked like a dungeon. Tristan was busy trying to break into a cell.

“Right...” Her hands flew across the computer bank as she worked, inserting a portable hard drive into the system to copy the data over to even as she cut off the alarm to give him more time and tried to see if there was a way to override the locks in the building automatically, “Time to go to work.”

Digital Distraction: Part 31

“You know, those guards look horribly out of place.” Tristan commented as he tried to count how many guards were outside the castle. “They’d be better off in suits of armour or something.”

“They obviously gave up on the magic for now. Obviously guns work better. Problem is there’s too many for us to slip past.” Kari frowned, thinking as she beheld the men who were in suits and who were obviously carrying. She agreed with Tristan, the rest of the island had had a projection of a medieval setting laid over it. The modern suits and guns broke the illusion that they had been trying to set. “If we walk up to them, we’ll get grabbed.”

“Only if you’re with me.” Dani corrected her, glancing around thoughtfully before slipping off her DimDisk and handing it and the two cards in her hand to Jamie. “I’ll go in first. Then you guys can walk into the castle without trouble. You claim you found the DimDisk on your way in and keep it safe for me, okay?”

“You sure?” Kari asked, concerned for her safety.

“I’ll be fine.” Dani promised, with a smile she didn’t feel. “Give me twenty minutes.”

“I don’t...” Tristan started.

“I have an...” Dani paused and wheeled around at the sound of the bushes behind them moving. She caught sight of the guards moving towards them, guns pointed in their direction and bolted, leaving Kari and Tristan behind as she darted away.

Before the others could run for the hills the goons were on them, guns pointed at their chests.

“Put your hands up.” One of them demanded, waiting for them to do so before he gestured to one of the other men. Kari let out an indignant squeak as they took her DimDisk and backpack before patting her down thoroughly. Tristan nearly swung for one of the goons when Kari flinched away from an inappropriate touch, only for him to get pinned against a tree.

“I wouldn’t.” Tristan felt the barrel of a gun press against the back of his head, making him let out a low growl as his arms were forced behind his back. He struggled as he heard Kari yelp in pain, only for the butt of the gun to slam into the back of his head hard, causing pain to flare up, his legs to buckle and his world to go dark briefly.

When he came around again he was alone in a small, stone walled, room. It was dark, and dank, the only light entering the cell coming from the tiny, barred window in the thick, heavy looking metal door. He staggered to his feet, pain spiking in his brain as he did so, his world lurching horribly alongside it.

“K...Kari?!” He called, attempting to barge the door open, only to find it didn’t even shudder in its stone frame. “Kari!”

“Tristan!” The voice that answered him wasn’t Kari’s. Tristan let out a frustrated growl when he realised it was Tea speaking.

“Tea?” He demanded, grabbing the bars in his window and trying to pull the door open instead. “Is Yami here too?”

“I don’t know.” Tea replied, sounding a bit desperate, “I don’t think so. They drugged him and were saying something about a first sacrifice when they locked me in here. Where’s Kari?”

Tristan had no answer for her. When the tugging didn’t help, however, he went back to trying to barge the door open, frustration growing when it didn’t seem to help. “Damnit! There has to be a way out of here.” He snarled as he kicked the wall hard with the flat of his foot. To his surprise the stone shifted slightly. When he kicked it again some of the material sticking the stone together fell out of the gaps between blocks, looking like it had crumbled away or possibly just not been mixed correctly.

“Tristan?” Tea asked again.

“I don’t know, but I’m getting us out of here.” He promised, “Just wait a little longer.”

C.N. April 2014: Digital Distraction Part 28

“S...Stay away!” Kari stopped mid step at the feminine, frightened yelp, causing Tristan to barrel into her and knock her over. The pair tumbled to the ground, crashing into a tree and ending up in a tangled heap at its base.

“Oh shi...!” A man squawked just before a a bright burst of purple light bounced between the trees. Two men bellowed in pain, and then a girl darted past them, a Duel Monster following her.

Kari recognised the Duel Monster, for all its unusual colouring it looked like a Dark Magician Girl and there was only green variant of that card in circulation.

“Danielle.” Kari called to the player the monster was protecting, wondering what the hell was going on.

The reporter glanced over her shoulder at them, paused, then stopped, her Duel Monster, Maddie, getting between her and them. “I...” She started, frustration obvious as she glanced in the direction she had come from.

“There she is!”

Dani squeaked as a couple of men, these ones dressed much differently from the ones who had tried to grab her on the boat. She recognised them though, or rather their uniforms and she gestured for her Dark Magician Girl to deal with them.

The mooks were prepared, the magician’s attack was sucked into a vortex of wind and disappeared.

Tristan didn’t give them a chance to counter attack, startling Kari by leaving her side and swinging for one of the mooks, taking him out with one powerful punch. Danielle’s Dark Magician Girl blasted the other one, sending him crashing into a tree and making him drop the bleeping object in his hand.

Kari scooped it up, trying to work out what it was. She took two steps back, pacing slightly as she poked and prodded at the touch screen before cussing profusely.

“Kari?” Tristan asked.

“It’s a tracker.” She informed him, showing him the machine, which was clearly tracking Danielle. “I don’t know what the signal’s coming from but...oh...” She turned to Danielle, “The only new thing you’ve got on you is your DimDisk right?”

Dani nodded, taking it off and passing it to Tristan when Kari asked her too. Her suspicions were confirmed when Tristan wandered off and they tracked him down easily only to find he had had to knock out another pair of goons.

“They’re tracking our DimDisks?” Dani scowled, “No wonder I couldn’t lose them.”

“I’m not surprised.” Kari shrugged, “Kaiba’s Duel Disks do the same thing. My boss said it was to ensure that he could find out if any of his players decided to go awol during the tournament or enter any restricted areas.”

“Is it legal?” Dani demanded, angry that she hadn’t known about any of this.

“I assume so.” Kari replied, having wondered that herself and never gotten a straight answer from anyone within the company. “But is this really the time to be asking that?”

“She has a point.” Tristan nodded, “Pass that to me?”

Kari chucked him the tracker and he poked at the screen until he called up the list of Duellists tapped Yugi’s name. The little dot on screen appeared halfway across the island, but not where they had expected it to be. Instead it looked like Yami was heading for the castle.

“Huh.” Tristan showed Kari.

“If Yami’s heading for the castle, we should probably go that way too.” Kari said, thinking aloud, “You don’t have to come with us.” She offered as she looked at Dani, “Since you’re trying to avoid the goons.”

“Oh no, I want to get in the castle.” Dani corrected her, “I just have no intention of ending up as someone’s prisoner again. It wasn’t much fun last time so excuse me if I don’t go for a repeat.”

“Why don’t you stick with us.” Tristan suggested as he started for the castle, Kari in tow. “Though you might want to ditch the DimDisk if you don’t want them following you.”

Dani paused, having not thought of that before now. When she tried to remove her deck from the slot, however, the DimDisk let out a high pitched screech and a metal guard slid up and across to cover the deck, something similar happening to her graveyard, leaving her with only the green Dark Magician Girl available.

“Hey!” Kari yelped when something similar happened to her DimDisk, preventing her from accessing anything that wasn’t in the hand she had already drawn from her deck.

Tristan, who didn’t have a deck and had discarded his DimDisk early into their travels, scowled. “So, just you two? Or everyone?”

“THIS IS AN ANNOUNCEMENT TO ALL PLAYERS.” Kari hadn’t known the island was rigged with speakers until a voice started booming out of them, “WE CURRENTLY HAVE A HACKING ISSUE. ALL PLAYERS MUST RETURN TO THE CASTLE TO HAVE THIER DIMDISK RESET WITH THE UPDATED SECURITY PROTOCOLS TO ALLOW GAMEPLAY TO CONTINUE.”

“Hacking issue my behind.” Kari frowned, “Unless...” She sighed, “Unless my boss is repaying the favour.”

“What do you mean?” Dani asked, well aware that Kari worked for Kaiba Corp.

“I’ll explain on the way.”