Out of the corner of my eye, I could see James Halliday, dressed in an ill-fitting tuxedo, sitting alone in a corner, staring back at me forlornly. I could also hear what sounded like a large crowd of excited, whispering people behind me, but they were just beyond my peripheral vision, and Kira didn’t turn her head to look back at them.
A split-second after I clocked my surroundings, I felt Og squeeze my hand, and a dozen ultra-bright purple spotlights switched on, all converging on a lone figure standing on the stage directly in front of us. It was Prince, dressed in a glittering sequined purple suit. When she saw him, I felt Kira’s heart begin to beat so rapidly I worried she might pass out. I could feel myself swaying ever so slightly, and felt unsteady on my feet, because before I knew what was happening, the Purple One himself was approaching me. Then he was kneeling down on the stage in front of me, just a few feet away.
He raised a golden microphone and sang “Happy Birthday, Kira” to me, or rather—her.
* * *
And then I was back on the Afterworld, in the center of the courtyard arena in front of the Temple of the Seven, holding the Fifth Shard in my outstretched hand. I resisted the urge to immediately check it for an inscription. Shoto was more important. I pulled up my HUD and called Faisal, adding Aech to the call just before Faisal’s face appeared in front of us. We both began to bark questions at him, asking about Shoto’s condition. Once Faisal got us to quiet down, he told us that Shoto appeared to be fine, at least as far as they could tell.
“It’s the same as the rest,” Faisal explained. “All vital signs are normal, and he’s still logged in to his OASIS account. But we can’t locate his avatar anywhere in the simulation.”
Faisal shook his head and shrugged. “He appears to be stuck in limbo, just like all the other ONI hostages whose avatars have died.”
“What will happen when he hits his ONI usage limit?” I asked. “Will he still start to suffer the effects of Synaptic Overload Syndrome?”
Faisal nodded. “Yes. Our engineers think so, anyway. It seems likely that Anorak would have written his infirmware to ensure that all of his ONI hostages remain his captives, even after their avatars die.”
“But why doesn’t he just let their avatars respawn?” Aech asked. “They would still be his hostages.”
“We’re not sure,” Faisal said. “Perhaps he’s doing it to scare all of us? To keep all of his hostages in line, by making avatar death permanent? If so, it’s working. At least on me.”
Faisal told us that Shoto’s pregnant wife, Kiki, and the rest of his extended family were still standing vigil beside his OIV at his home in Hokkaido. They could see his sleeping body on his immersion vault’s internal cameras, which were linked to a video monitor mounted on the wall above it. There was nothing GSS’s engineers could do for him. They weren’t even trying to cut him out of his OIV, because they knew they couldn’t get him out in time. And even if they could, it wouldn’t matter. As long as Shoto remained logged in to the OASIS, his ONI headset would stay locked into place around his head. And until we managed to free Shoto’s mind from the OASIS, his comatose body would continue to be locked inside his OIV, just a few feet away from his family, but totally out of reach.
When Faisal finished answering our questions about Shoto, he couldn’t help himself. In a panicked voice, he began to ask us how close we were to finding the Sixth Shard. I hung up on him without answering. Then I closed my HUD and looked down at the Fifth Shard, which I was still clutching in my right hand. I turned it over until I found an inscription on one of its facets. I held the shard out so that Aech could read it too.
Win her hand through a feat of dark renown
The last two shards are set in Morgoth’s Crown
When I saw the last two words of the inscription, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
I tried to think of a worse place for the last two shards to be hidden. There wasn’t one. Halliday had put them in the deepest, darkest, and deadliest dungeon fortress in the entire OASIS, in the possession of one of the most ridiculously overpowered—and evil—NPCs ever created. An NPC who was immortal, nigh invulnerable, and capable of killing most ninety-ninth-level avatars with his breath.
For all intents and purposes, the last two shards were located in the depths of hell, set into the crown of Satan himself.
I started to laugh.
It was just a rapid-fire giggle at first. But then I couldn’t stop, and it quickly grew into the loud, uncontrolled laughter of a sane soul pushed to the brink of madness by cruel chance, just before fate drop-kicked them over the edge of a cliff.