“Yes! Twenty years ago. But I still hold the legacy.” She pointed to her head. “It’s safely tucked in here.”
Aiden didn’t really know what to say to that. How to respond or what to make of it. He looked around and searched for those telltale signs that this wasn’t a real world, wondering why anyone would’ve kept a glitchy AI.
But the system couldn’t be faulty because the VR boot-up check had flagged nothing. Even if it was indeed a scrapped AI model, he would’ve been warned it had issues… And he hadn’t been, which meant that whatever Sara was on about had to lead somewhere or Darren wouldn’t have bothered to keep her data.
“Can you tell me what this… legacy is?” Aiden asked, deciding to play along and find out.
Sara shook her head, the smile turning impish. “Nope! It’s a secret!”
Well, that wasn’t very helpful. “Ok, I understand. But you see, Sara, I was sent here by someone,” he tried, thinking back to Darren’s riddle. “To find the white raven. Can you help me with that?”
Sara’s eyes lit up with excitement. “So, you are his friend?”
The white raven’s?“I’m not sure,” Aiden answered, hoping it wasn’t the wrong thing to say.
“I am his best friend!” Sara countered, pride lacing her words.
Aiden wrapped his fingers around his cup, sliding it and its small plate closer to him. “I think the person who sent me here knows him.”
“Who sent you?”
“He’s called Darren Howe.”
“Hmm.” Sara tilted her head left and right. “I don’t know him!”
Right, of course. This wouldn’t be so easy. If Aiden wanted to get to the truth, evidently he had to play Daren’s silly games with an AI.
“I meant to say Sir Barnaby Albus II,” he corrected, using Darren’s codename and internally shaking his head at himself. But he’d come so far, so what difference did it make if he made a fool of himself in front of this AI?
Sara froze. Her form warped, pixels flying left and right. A glitch, Aiden guessed, since it lasted only a few seconds.
“When is he coming?” she asked with urgency once her manifestation stabilized.
“Darr—Sir Barnaby Albus II?”
“Yep!”
“I…” She didn’t seem to know that Darren was in prison, so maybe it was best he kept that to himself in case she decided she didn’t want to cooperate because of it. “I don’t know.”
Sara pouted and crossed her arms over her chest, the frills of her sleeves rippling. “But if he sent you, then he must be coming back soon.”
“I’m afraid he can’t make it here.”
“He promised!” Her features clouded in a way which reminded him of a kicked puppy. “He can’t break his promise! Not to me!”
A pang of sympathy flared in his chest, surprising him. Whoever had created this AI was truly skilled because Sara’s capacity for emotion was exceptional. If Aidendidn’t know he was in a VR, he wasn’t sure he would’ve been able to tell her apart from a real human.
Feeling bad but also wanting to find out what this was about, he said, “Maybe that’s why he sent me? So I can keep that promise on his behalf?”
Sara bobbed her head, thinking his words over. “Okay!” she declared, determination replacing the sadness in her gaze. “I have to make you a knight, then!”
“You have to make me a…knight?” Aiden blinked at her.How did she arrive at such a bizarre conclusion?
This was getting weirder by the minute, and he had no idea what any of it had to do with his quest here. Clearly, there was some connection, there had to be, or Darren wouldn’t have sent him to the hideout. He just wasn’t sure what it was yet.
“Yep, like Sir Barnaby Albus.” She sprung up, her face alight with excitement. “Follow me!”
Aiden massaged the sides of his head and sighed.What had he gotten himself into?Seeing as he didn’t have a choice though, he jogged a pace behind the raven-haired girl. She took him through a beautiful rose garden with a marble fountain in the middle, then toward the thicket of trees he’d spied when they’d made their way to the back of the house. From there, they followed a stony path weaving along the edge of an oak forest until they reached a chapel-like building with stained glass windows and two turrets. Its inside was dusty and murky, the aisle leading to an elevated obsidian statue of a man with a white raven perched on his shoulder.
