It took the Shop Guy five hours to be able move again, he was covered in snow but he didn't care, he logged out of the server, he had more important things to do and he did not plan on coming back.
He woke up in his room in front of his laptop, not much time had passed since he logged in. Meeting Fire had not been planned in any way, it just had been a very fortunate coincidence. He stood up and stretched, then sat down again. He started one of the hacker applications he still had, it was the voice chat one. He double clicked a name and waited.
Just after Jack had finished taking a bath he heard the signal tone of his voice chat application and moaned: "Who in the world is calling me now? It is almost three in the morning…"
He walked over to his screens and looked at the name, it was the Shop Guy.
"I should have activated the remote deletion… But since I didn't I might as well hear him out." He pushed a button to pick up the call, he asked: "Why are you calling me?"
"Because I have information."
"And let me guess, you want to be in the hacker team again in exchange for that information." Jack said.
The Shop Guy replied: "Hah, I might have issues but I am not stupid, I'll just give you the info, delete the apps, leave the server and you'll never hear from me again."
"We have an agreement. So, what is it?"
"I ran into Fire, figured he somehow escaped. He stole my arrows and used some kind of magic arrow to shatter my armor."
"Okay… that is somewhat disturbing, him being able to do such things, go on."
"I tried running away but he hit me with a splash potion that made me unable to move, it should have disabled my senses too but that somehow didn't work, so I heard what he said."
"That is excellent news, it was something about where they are going, right?" Jack assumed.
"Exactly, he said that he will climb over the left side of the mountain and then go to a jungle, where another Nether portal is."
"Let me check that one real quick…" Jack said and brought up the server map again, he went back to the mountain and there was in fact a jungle near it.
"Yep, the jungle is there." He reported.
Then he searched for obsidian in the jungle and indeed found some, right in the center of the jungle, where a temple was visible from the map's point of view.
Jack grinned and said: "You just helped us out a bunch, thank you, any further info?"
"Oh yes, there is further info." The Shop Guy said with triumph in his voice
"Fire said that there is a large Nether cavern with some supplies in it and most importantly, a map with the location of his base, it is encrypted but I am sure you can find out where it is."
Jack was surprised and pleased with what he had just heard, he hovered his cursor above the button for the deletion and said: "Thank you for this valuable piece of information, I'll clear your computer of our apps now, was nice trying to take over a server with you."
Both laughed and Jack pushed the button.
A fire was burning inside Jack now, he had the chance to stop the runaways and ensure the success of their plan, he knew the exact place where the portal was, he only had to go there and wait for them… or find Fire's base, destroy it and then wait for them. He started up Minecraft and logged into the server. A numb feeling went up his arms and a second later he woke up where he logged out, in the quarry's processing building. There were players working on polishing diamonds, grinding redstone gems and doing other refinery work. Later down the line there were other players making tools and sharpening swords, it all ran like clockwork. As they noticed Jack logging in, they greeted him and continued with their work. Jack ignored them and noclipped through the ceiling high up into the sky, then he flew towards the glacier with high speed and descended.
"Here is the first portal…"
He had spotted a black rectangle in the middle of the white snow. Jack descended a little more and searched the ground for footprints but didn't find any, a recent storm had covered them with snow.
"Okay, now for that jungle."
He flew up again and over the mountain, there were three different biomes in front of him. There was a very dense forest, a taiga and the jungle he was looking for, he could also see another jungle very far off in the distance behind a swamp. Jack floated down into the trees and started looking for the temple, flying through trees and small hills with his noclip.
"It has to be here somewhere…" He said to himself and continued searching the jungle.
About an hour later he found what he was looking for, the jungle temple. With a feeling of triumph he turned off his noclip and walked in through the entrance. He knew about the traps and had already made himself invincible. After passing by several arrow traps he found the portal, it was completely grown over by thick vines and the purple was almost not visible anymore. He spawned himself a diamond axe and cut through the vines, which were almost as hard as wood. He stepped through the portal and found himself in the Nether. He was in a three-by-three corridor, he couldn't see the end.
"Let's see how long it is." He said and flew along the tunnel with very high speed, passing by confused zombie pigmen.
The Shop Guy hadn't lied, there was in fact a huge cavern with a few buildings. He spawned himself a pickaxe and multiplied his strength by ten, then he started hammering down the roofs to see what was inside, mostly chests with potions.
"Nothing…" he said.
He then collapsed another building in which he didn't find anything in. There were only a few left, it had to be in one of them. He got lucky with the next house, it actually had a sign above the door, "Supplies".
"Oh." Jack said, then he descended to the ground and opened the door.
There were a few chests labelled with signs. "Potions… Armor… Swords… Other… there." He said while walking along the chests. He opened the chest labelled "Other" and found nothing.
"What…" He asked himself and realized that the items were not stored in the inventory but physically in the chest itself.
He opened it and found a piece of paper, he took it out. There was nothing on one side but on the other side there was a drawing, maybe Fire's map?
As he looked at the drawing more closely, the mountain formation depicted on the map looked very odd, then he realized that it was a message, there were two big letters on top: "GG" Below there was a tiny text: "You will die in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…"
"What!" Jack screamed and the last thing he heard before the TNT went off was a jukebox playing the first notes of the golden record.
He respawned in the room where all the hackers had set their spawn, his whole body was hurting. He first checked his hacks if there was anything against pain, he didn't find anything.
"God damn Admins…" He cursed and sat up. "Why didn't my godmode work?"
This was a double failure, the first one was that the chest must have been trapped, which meant that Fire had known he would come there. The second failure was that he knew exactly as much as before, it just had been too good to be true. He sat there for five minutes but as the pain didn't go away, he just logged off.
Jack slammed his fist on the table in frustration, making the things he had on top of it shake. He opened his communication application and noticed that Q, the head hacker, had logged out of the server and was now available. He instantly double clicked on the button to call him and waited. It took Q ten seconds to pick up the call, he must have been drinking something.
"What is it Jack?" Q asked with a dry throat.
"We have some major clusterfuck going on!" Jack replied.
"You only use that word when things are serious."
"That is actually a term from military jargon for total failure but that is not important now. We have several problems. We still haven't found the runaways, we have started a search around their approximate location but no luck with that so far."
"And the other things?" Q asked and took another big sip from his bottle.
"The Shop Guy contacted me again, he still had the app. He told me that he ran into Fire and his companions, Fire threw a potion at him that was supposed to disable all his senses and muscles but the senses part didn't work, he heard how Fire talked about their travel route."
"And what exactly is so bad about that?" Q wanted to know.
"I went where he told me to go and there was a booby trapped chest which blew me up with about two tons of TNT." Jack responded.
"Didn't you use godmode?"
"I did but the portal must have reset it, so now we know for a fact that those admins have actually something built in to actively prevent hacking or at least make it harder. By the way, I found something in the code, it is somehow in connection with Fire and it involves removing someone from the server and preventing a takeover, so basically as long as Fire is alive, we can't take over what so ever."
Q replied: "Okay, this is serious, even if it is just a few more days I have to wait out. Something must have gotten out, the police started searching for us, especially for me. Today my hideout almost got found, those cops were standing right on the hatch and I couldn't lock it because that would have made a sound."
"Okay Q, now for the worst part. I doubt that this potion was actually malfunctioning, maybe Fire expected to run into someone and told lies, which would explain the trap at the chest… Essentially, he played us good." Jack said.
"So, neither do we don't have any clue about his travel route nor the location of his base nor do we have any way to kill him quicker but he has a way of removing us from the server so if we don't find him we will have no chance of getting the code. But if we manage to pass the time until his death undetected by the police and without Fire banning us, we have total control over the server and after that we have all the time in the world to extract the code from the admins or get it ourselves."
"True Q but we'll have to find him first. If you want to hear my opinion on this, he won't just have a device in his base that can ban anyone, that is just too easy, the admins wouldn't do that. I would rather think that it would be hidden in a spot where you need to be him to access it."
Q didn't respond at first but a few seconds later he said: "That might actually be true. So our primary worry is the police at the moment. I kicked off the generator I have down here, it is too risky to draw power from the public network from now on, I made sure to hide the old cables as well. I have plenty of canned food and water so I have that."
"What about us other members?" Jack asked.
"You are not at danger currently as the only detected attacks are from my computer, which is down here." Q replied.
"So, we are not at danger of the police storming our houses or anything like that?"
"I am pretty sure that you are safe."
"Good." Jack said and then added: "I'll be trying to make sense of some of that code, it will be a lot easier now that I have a point to start from, I can't believe that we didn't think about that!"
"I'll be spending my time sitting in this improvised bunker coordinating, bye."
"Bye." Jack said and closed down the app.