Limitless, John Gold [best novels of all time .TXT] 📗

the Golden Hand began reforming in Papilio, sans Leon but with his idea of building a path other players could take that lived on in his disciples. The players were still too weak to declare themselves an independent nation or faction, however.

Fiji received the letters from Sagie that described his life. It was the story of a boy from an orphanage who found a family and wandered the world looking for a way to resurrect his dead loved ones. Fiji published all the letters on the official Project Chrysalis site, hoping that any information about Sagie would help her find him. It had already been a year since he went missing. His old friends could see in the interface that he spent all his time in the game, though Fiji didn’t mention two things: the space ship he was building and Ledge, the ArtIn that disappeared with him. Fiji joined forces with the Lunar government to look for her friend, and a year later, they found a camouflaged factory on the edge of the solar system that was autonomously assembling an enormous spaceship.

Reasonably enough, the security system recognized Fiji, gave her access, and made her a super admin with control over the entire operation. The frontier ship was already built, and the factory was beginning work on a second. It was five kilometers long, six kilometers wide, and two kilometers tall, an enormous flat space on which a city could be built. The lower compartments in the ship had working hydroponic facilities, a life-support system, and propulsion systems to move the whole mass to other stars. The ship was built using technology even Lunar didn’t know about or use in their ships. It wasn’t that Sagie had made new discoveries; he just thought in completely different categories. The frontier didn’t have citizenship grades. Instead, the life support system was built such that everyone living on the station ship was identical. There was security, duplicate nodes and communication systems, two backup generators, and drives that served as alternative ways of moving through space in case the main engines broke down. Every detail on the ship had at least three purposes, expanding the frontier’s capabilities and giving its crew a better chance of survival in extreme conditions. But the ship didn’t have what Fiji cared about most: Sagie and Ledge.

Lunar checked all the hospitals, coma facilities, clinics, and underground labs that could have hidden the young man’s body. But they didn’t find a single trace or mention of him. There was almost no information to be found anywhere online about Anji Ganet, Ribonz Almart, Bak Kvan, or Sagie. Fiji guessed that Ledge was wiping all mention of him, and so she tried to break through to the ArtIn’s logic and convince it that she was a friend looking to help Sagie. But Ledge ignored every attempt she made except for hacking into her server to delete them. The only untouched information about Sagie was in Lunar, where their sites as databases were strong enough to withstand the ArtIn.

For the whole year, scout drones scoured the planet in search of Sagie or the ship that took him away from Earth. The Azure August was ransacked from top to bottom, and even the body regeneration and other medical equipment was checked to make sure it hadn’t been used to genetically modify Sagie’s appearance. Again, nothing was found that pointed to his whereabouts.

But then, Fiji received another letter from her grandfather, Miguel Elmaro. They met in the same café.

“I should tell you about the third person who reached a second-order world. Her name was Europe in the game, but in reality, it was Persea de Bran, a scientist specializing in alternative life forms. We were staying with the Eru, and she lost her mind after the first contact with aliens. It happened in Papilio. As soon as she moved up to the new world, she caught the eye of an egregore who exerted pressure on her mind until she picked up the guide ability and stаrted avoiding his attention. To use the old terminology, she’s a druid, a healer, and a Life Magic master, not to mention a little crazy. You have to be born with a certain mentality if you want to pick up the guide ability, so what the egregore did damaged her mind. Anyway, I read Sagie’s letters. She is the woman he saw in his dreams. When Akashi and I pulled Sagie into the control room, he said, ‘take me to your field of flowers.’ I have no doubt that she managed to somehow manipulate Sagie, giving him dreams full of harmony and love, to lure him over to her side. I also know that neither she nor I will ever see where Sagie is. The last thing she was able to do was hack into the Project Chrysalis control room to let Sagie through into Papilio. That happened a long time ago. All the boy had to do was give the code phrase. There’s nobody who can say where he is or what frame of mind he’s in.”

“Where is that monster? Europe, was that it? She might know where he could have gone. We need to beat it out of her.”

“Fiji, if it were that simple, it would already be done. Europe went over to the Hlou, an insectoid civilization that stands alone against the alliance of twenty-five civilizations, of which humanity is one. It’s the first time in history that they’ve accepted someone into their ranks. Because of what Europe did, they now have the kind of monsters ten knights of the order would have a hard time beating. She introduced a new class of bug, the zero. They’re battle marshals, they guard the queen, and they fight in special forces. Do you realize how terrible it is that Sagie might have gone over to the enemy? He hates people.”

“Yes, I get that, but I’m not sure how that can possibly explain how he could have disappeared in the