Aech seemed to be the one they knew the least about. His file contained very little information, and no photo—just a screenshot of his avatar. His real name was listed as “Henry Swanson,” but that was an alias used by Jack Burton in Big Trouble in Little China, so I knew it must be a fake. His address was listed as “mobile,” and below it there was a link labeled “Recent Access Points.” This turned out to be a list of the wireless node locations Aech had recently used to access his OASIS account. They were all over the place: Boston; Washington, D.C.; New York City; Philadelphia; and most recently, Pittsburgh.
Now I began to understand how the Sixers had been able to locate Art3mis and Shoto. IOI owned hundreds of regional telecom companies, effectively making them the largest Internet service provider in the world. It was pretty difficult to get online without using a network they owned and operated. From the looks of it, IOI had been illegally eavesdropping on most of the world’s Internet traffic in an attempt to locate and identify the handful of gunters they considered to be a threat. The only reason they hadn’t been able to locate me was because I’d taken the paranoia-induced precaution of leasing a direct fiber-optic connection to the OASIS from my apartment complex.
I closed Aech’s file, then opened the folder labeled Daito, already dreading what I might find there. Like the others, they had his real name, Toshiro Yoshiaki, and his home address. Two news articles about his “suicide” were linked at the bottom of his dossier, along with an unlabeled video clip, time-stamped on the day he’d died. I clicked on it. It was handheld video camera footage showing three large men in black ski masks (one of whom was operating the camera) waiting silently in a hallway. They appeared to receive an order via their radio earpieces, then used a key card to open the door of a tiny one-room apartment. Daito’s apartment. I watched in horror as they rushed in, yanked him out of his haptic chair, and threw him off the balcony.
The bastards even filmed him plummeting to his death. Probably at Sorrento’s request.
A wave of nausea washed over me. When it finally passed, I copied the contents of all five dossiers over to my flash drive, then opened the Mission Status folder. It appeared to contain an archive of the Oology Division’s status reports, intended for the Sixers’ top brass. The reports were arranged by date, with the most recent one listed first. When I opened it, I saw that it was a directive memo sent from Nolan Sorrento to the IOI Board of Executives. In it, Sorrento proposed sending agents to abduct Art3mis and Shoto from their homes to force them to help IOI open the Third Gate. Once the Sixers had obtained the egg and won the contest, Art3mis and Shoto would “be disposed of.”
I sat there in stunned silence. Then I read the memo again, feeling a combination of rage and panic.
According to the time stamp, Sorrento had sent the memo just after eight o’clock, less than five hours ago. So his superiors probably hadn’t even seen it yet. When they did, they would still want to meet to discuss Sorrento’s suggested course of action. So they probably wouldn’t send their agents after Art3mis and Shoto until sometime tomorrow.
I still had time to warn them. But to do that, I would have to drastically alter my escape plan.
Before my arrest, I’d set up a timed funds transfer that would deposit enough money in my IOI credit account to pay off my entire debt, forcing IOI to release me from indenturement. But that transfer wouldn’t happen for another five days. By then, the Sixers would probably have Art3mis and Shoto locked in a windowless room somewhere.
I couldn’t spend the rest of the week exploring the Sixer database, like I’d planned. I had to grab as much data as I could and make my escape now.
I gave myself until dawn.
I worked frantically for the next four hours. Most of that time was spent copying as much data as possible from the Sixer database to my stolen flash drive. Once that task was completed, I submitted an Executive Oologist Supply Requisition Order. This was an online form that Sixer commanders used to request weapons or equipment inside the OASIS. I selected a very specific item, then scheduled its delivery for noon two days from now.
When I finally finished, it was six thirty in the morning. The next tech-support shift change was now only ninety minutes away, and my hab-unit neighbors would start waking up soon. I was out of time.
I pulled up my indenturement profile, accessed my debt statement, and zeroed out my outstanding balance—money I’d never actually borrowed to begin with. Then I selected the Indentured Servant Observation and Communications Tag control settings submenu, which operated both my eargear and security anklet. Finally, I did something I’d been dying to do for the past week—I disabled the locking mechanisms on both devices.