Daito winced, then punched his little brother in the shoulder. "Didn't I tell you to keep quiet, blabbermouth?" he hissed. Shoto looked sheepish and clammed up.

"What rumors?" Art3mis asked. She looked at me. "What's he talking about? I haven't had time to check the boards in a few days."

"Several posts were made by gunters who claimed to know Parzival and Aech, saying they were both students on Ludus." He turned to Aech and me. "My brother and I have spent the past two years searching for the Tomb of Horrors. We've scoured dozens of worlds looking for it. But we never thought to look on Ludus. Not until we heard that you attended school there."

"It never occurred to me that attending school on Ludus was something I needed to keep a secret," I said. "So I didn't."

"Yeah, and it's lucky for us that you didn't," Aech said. He turned to the others. "Parzival unintentionally tipped me off about the tomb's location, too. I never thought to look for it on Ludus, either, until his name appeared on the Scoreboard."

Daito nudged his younger brother, and they both faced me and bowed. "You were the first to find the tomb's hiding place, so we owe you our gratitude for leading us to it."

I returned their bow. "Thanks, guys. But actually, Art3mis here found it first. Totally on her own. A month before I did."

"Yeah, for all the good it did me," Art3mis said. "I couldn't defeat the lich at Joust. I'd been at it for weeks when this punk showed up and did it on his first try." She explained how we met, and how she finally managed to beat the king the following day, right after the server reset at midnight.

"I have Aech here to thank for my jousting prowess," I said. "We used to play all the time, here in the Basement. That's the only reason I beat the king on my first attempt."

"Ditto," Aech said. He stretched out his hand and we bumped fists.

Daito and Shoto both smiled. "It was the same with us," Daito said. "My brother and I have been playing Joust against one another for years, because the game was mentioned in Anorak's Almanac."

"Great," Art3mis said, throwing up her hands. "Good for you guys. You were all prepared in advance. I'm so happy for you. Bravo." She gave us all a sarcastic golf clap, which made everyone laugh. "Now, can we adjourn the Mutual Admiration Society and get back to the topic at hand?"

"Sure," Aech said, smiling. "What was the topic at hand?"

"The Sixers?" Art3mis offered.

"Right! Of course!" Aech rubbed the back of his neck while biting his lower lip, something he always did when he was trying to gather his thoughts. "You said they found the tomb less than an hour ago, right? So any minute now, they'll reach the throne room and face off against the lich. But what do you think happens when multiple avatars enter the burial chamber at the same time?"

I turned to Daito and Shoto. "Your names appeared on the Scoreboard on the same day, just a few minutes apart. So you entered the throne room together, didn't you?"

Daito nodded. "Yes," he said. "And when we stepped on the dais, two copies of the king appeared, one for each of us to play."

"Great," Art3mis said. "So it might be possible for hundreds of Sixers to joust for the Copper Key at the same time. Or even thousands."

"Yeah," Shoto said. "But to get the key, each Sixer has to beat the lich at Joust, which we all know isn't easy."

"The Sixers are using hacked immersion rigs," I said. "Sorrento was boasting about it to me. They've got it set up so that different users can control the actions of every one of their avatars. So they can just have their best Joust players take control of each Sixer avatar during the match against Acererak. One after the other."

"Cheating bastards," Aech repeated.

"The Sixers have no honor," Daito said, shaking his head.

"Yeah," Art3mis said, rolling her eyes. "We've established that."

"It gets worse," I said. "Every Sixer has a support team made up of Halliday scholars, videogame experts, and cryptologists who are there to help them beat every challenge and solve every puzzle they encounter. Playing through the WarGames simulation will be a piece of cake for them. Someone will just feed them the dialogue."

"Unbelievable," Aech muttered. "How are we supposed to compete with that?"

"We can't," Art3mis said. "Once they have the Copper Key, they'll probably locate the First Gate just as quickly as we all did. It won't take them very long to catch up with us. And once they have the riddle about the Jade Key, they'll have their eggheads working around the clock to decipher it."

"If they find the Jade Key's hiding place before we do, they'll barricade it, too," I said. "And then the five of us will be in the same boat everyone else is in right now."

Art3mis nodded. Aech kicked the coffee table in frustration. "This isn't even remotely fair," he said. "The Sixers have a huge advantage over all of us. They've got an endless supply of money, weapons, vehicles, and avatars. There are thousands of them, all working together."

"Right," I said. "And each of us is on our own. Well, except for you two." I nodded at Daito and Shoto. "But you know what I mean. They've got us outnumbered and outgunned, and that isn't going to change anytime soon."

"What are you suggesting?" Daito asked. He suddenly sounded uneasy.

"I'm not suggesting anything," I said. "I'm just stating the facts, as I see them."

"Good," Daito replied. "Because it sounded like you were about to propose some sort of alliance between the five of us."

Aech studied him carefully. "So? Would that be such a terrible idea?"

"Yes, it would," Daito said curtly. "My brother and I hunt alone. We don't want or need your help."

"Oh really?" Aech said. "A second ago, you admitted needing Parzival's help to find the Tomb of Horrors."

Daito's eyes narrowed. "We would have found it on our own eventually."

"Right," Aech said. "It probably would have only taken you another five years."

"Come on, Aech," I said, stepping between them. "This isn't helping."

Aech and Daito glared at each other in silence, while Shoto stared up at his brother uncertainly. Art3mis just stood back and watched, looking somewhat amused.

"We didn't come here to be insulted," Daito said finally. "We're leaving."

"Hold on, Daito," I said. "Just wait a second, will you? Let's just talk this out. We shouldn't part as enemies. We're all on the same side here."

"No," Daito said. "We're not. You're all strangers to us. For all we know, any one of you could be a Sixer spy."

Art3mis laughed out loud at that, then covered her mouth. Daito ignored her. "This is pointless," he said. "Only one person can be the first to find the egg and win the prize," he said. "And that person will be either me or my brother."

And with that, Daito and Shoto both abruptly logged out.

"That went well," Art3mis said, once their avatars had vanished.

I nodded. "Yeah, real smooth, Aech. Way to build bridges."

"What did I do?" he said defensively. "Daito was being a complete asshole! Besides, it's not like we were asking him to team up, anyway. I'm an avowed solo. And so are you. And Art3mis here looks like the lone-wolf type too."

"Guilty as charged," she said, grinning. "But even so, there is an argument to be made for forming an alliance against the Sixers."

"Maybe," Aech said. "But think about it. If you find the Jade Key before either of us do, are you going to be generous and tell us where it is?"

Art3mis smirked. "Of course not."

"Me neither," Aech said. "So there's no point in discussing an alliance."

Art3mis shrugged. "Well, then it looks like the meeting is over. I should probably get going." She winked at me. "The clock is ticking. Right, boys?"

"Tick tock," I said.

"Good luck, fellas." She gave us both a wave. "See ya around."

"See ya," we both answered in unison.

I watched her avatar slowly disappear, then turned to find Aech smiling at me. "What are you grinning about?" I asked.

"You've got a crush on her, don't you?"

"What? On Art3mis? No-"

"Don't deny it, Z. You were making googly eyes at her the whole time she was here." He did his impression of this, clasping both hands to his chest and batting his eyelashes like a silent film star. "I recorded the whole chat session. Do you want me to play it back for you, so you can see how silly you looked?"

"Stop being a dick."

"It's understandable, man," Aech said. "That girl is super cute."

"So, have you had any luck with the new riddle?" I said, deliberately changing the subject. "That quatrain about the Jade Key?"

"Quatrain?"

" 'A poem or stanza with four lines and an alternating rhyme scheme,' " I recited. "It's called a quatrain."

Aech rolled his eyes. "You're too much, man."

"What? That's the proper term for it, asshead!"

"It's just a riddle, dude. And no. I haven't had any luck figuring it out yet."

"Me neither," I said. "So we probably shouldn't be standing around jabbering at each other. Time to put our noses to the grindstone."

"I concur," he said. "But-"

Just then, a stack of comic books on the other side of the room slid off the end table where they were piled and crashed to the floor, as if something had knocked them over. Aech and I both jumped, then exchanged confused looks.

"What the hell was that?" I said.

"I don't know." Aech walked over and examined the scattered comics. "Maybe a software glitch or something?"

"I've never seen a chat-room glitch like that," I said, scanning the empty room. "Could someone else be in here? An invisible avatar, eavesdropping on us?"

Aech rolled his eyes. "No way, Z," he said. "You're getting way too paranoid. This is an encrypted private chat room. No one can enter without my permission. You know that."

"Right," I said, still freaked out.

"Relax. It was a glitch." He rested a hand on my shoulder. "Listen. Let me know if you change your mind about needing a loan. Or a place to crash. OK?"

"I'll be all right," I said. "But thanks, amigo."

We bumped fists again, like the Wonder Twins activating their powers.

"I'll catch you later. Good luck, Z."

"Same to you, Aech."

A few hours later, the remaining slots on the Scoreboard began to fill up, one after another, in rapid succession. Not with avatar names, but with IOI employee numbers. Each would appear with a score of 5,000 points (which now appeared to be the fixed value for obtaining the Copper Key); then the score would jump by another 100,000 points a few hours later, once that Sixer had cleared the First Gate. By the end of the day, the Scoreboard looked like this: HIGH SCORES:.

1. Parzival 110,000 2. Art3mis 109,000 3. Aech 108,000 4. Daito 107,000 5. Shoto 106,000 6. IOI-655321 105,000.

7. IOI-643187 105,000.

8. IOI-621671 105,000.

9. IOI-678324 105,000.

10. IOI-637330 105,000.

I recognized the first Sixer employee number to appear, because I'd seen it printed on Sorrento's uniform. He'd probably insisted that his avatar be the first to obtain the Copper Key and clear the gate. But I had a hard time believing he'd done it on his own. There was no way he was that good at Joust. Or that he knew WarGames by heart. But I now knew that he didn't have to be. When he reached a challenge he couldn't handle, like winning at Joust, he could just hand control of his avatar off to one of his underlings. And during the WarGames challenge he'd probably just had someone feeding him all of the dialogue via his hacked immersion rig.

Once the remaining empty slots were filled, the Scoreboard began to grow in length, to display rankings beyond tenth place. Before long, twenty avatars were listed on the Scoreboard. Then thirty. Over the next twenty-four hours, over sixty Sixer avatars cleared the First Gate.

Meanwhile, Ludus had become the most popular destination in the OASIS. Transport terminals all over the planet were spitting out a steady stream of gunters who then swarmed across the globe, creating chaos and disrupting classes on every school campus. The OASIS Public School Board saw the writing on the wall, and the decision was quickly made to evacuate Ludus and relocate all of its schools to a new location. An identical copy of the planet, Ludus II, was created in the same sector, a short distance away from the original. All students were given a day off from school while a backup copy of the planet's original source code was copied over to the new site (minus the Tomb of Horrors code Halliday had secretly added to it at some point). Classes resumed on Ludus II the following day, and Ludus was left for the Sixers and gunters to fight over.

News spread quickly that the Sixers were encamped around a small flat-topped hill at the center of a remote forest. The tomb's exact location appeared on the message boards that evening, along with screenshots showing the force field the Sixers had erected to keep everyone else out. These screenshots also clearly showed the skull pattern of the stones on the hilltop. In a matter of hours, the connection to the Tomb of Horrors D&D module was posted to every single gunter message board. Then it hit the newsfeeds.

All of the large gunter clans immediately banded together to launch a full-scale assault on the Sixers' force field, trying everything they could think of to bring it down or circumvent it. The Sixers had installed teleportation disruptors, which prevented anyone from transporting inside the force field via technological means. They had also stationed a team of high-level wizards around the tomb. These magic users cast spells around the clock, keeping the entire area encased in a temporary null-magic zone. This prevented the force fields from being bypassed by any magical means.

The clans began to bombard the outer force field with rockets, missiles, nukes, and harsh language. They laid siege to the tomb all night, but the following morning, both force fields remained intact.

In desperation, the clans decided to break out the heavy artillery. They pooled their resources and purchased two very expensive, very powerful antimatter bombs on eBay. They detonated both of them in sequence, just a few seconds apart. The first bomb took down the outer shield, and the second bomb finished the job. The moment the second force field went down, thousands of gunters (all unharmed by the bomb blasts, due to the no-PvP zone) swarmed into the tomb and clogged the corridors of the dungeon below. Soon, thousands of gunters (and Sixers) had crammed into the burial chamber, all ready to challenge the lich king to a game of Joust. Multiple copies of the king appeared, one for every avatar who set foot on the dais. Ninety-five percent of the gunters who challenged him lost and were then killed. But a few gunters were successful, and at the bottom of the Scoreboard, listed after the High Five and the dozens of IOI employee numbers, new avatar names began to appear. Within a few days, the list of avatars on the Scoreboard was over a hundred names long.

Now that the area was full of gunters, it became impossible for the Sixers to put their force field back in operation. Gunters were mobbing them and destroying their ships and equipment on sight. So the Sixers gave up on their barricade, but they continued to send avatars into the Tomb of Horrors to farm copies of the Copper Key. No one could do anything to stop them.

The day after the explosion in the stacks, there was a brief story about it on one of the local newsfeeds. They showed a video clip of volunteers sifting through the wreckage for human remains. What they did find couldn't be identified.

It seemed that the Sixers had also planted a large amount of drug-manufacturing equipment and chemicals at the scene, to make it look like a meth lab in one of the trailers had exploded. It worked like a charm. The cops didn't bother to investigate any further. The stacks were so dense around the pile of crushed and charred trailers that it was too dangerous to try to clear them out with one of the old construction cranes. They just left the wreckage where it was, to slowly rust into the earth.

As soon as the first endorsement payment arrived in my account, I bought a one-way bus ticket to Columbus, Ohio, set to depart at eight the following morning. I paid extra for a first-class seat, which came with a comfier chair and a high-bandwidth uplink jack. I planned to spend most of the long ride east logged into the OASIS.

Once my trip was booked, I inventoried everything in my hideout and packed the items I wanted to take with me into an old rucksack. My school-issued OASIS console, visor, and gloves. My dog-eared printout of Anorak's Almanac. My grail diary. Some clothes. My laptop. Everything else I left behind.

When it got dark, I climbed out of the van, locked it, and hurled the keys off into the junk pile. Then I hoisted the rucksack and walked out of the stacks for the last time. I didn't look back.

I kept to busy streets and managed to avoid getting mugged on the way to the bus terminal. A battered customer-service kiosk stood just inside the door, and after a quick retinal scan it spat out my ticket. I sat by the gate, reading my copy of the Almanac, until it was time to board the bus.