Nadine sat as still as she could. The inquiry was not going well. Why did the Disciplinary Board have to call Zen (Simtrixx Games Master), Damon (Simtrixx Creative) and Adam (Simtrixx Editing)? They could have just relied on her word and evidences couldn't they?

When the three first walked in, she was ecstatic. All worked directly under her and knew the circumstances. They knew why she did what she did. It was all for them and the company. It was all to buy time for Zen to complete and iron out all the wrinkles in the orc realm. Damon also needed time to complete the new maps, finish the algorithms for the numerous new NPCs, test their interactions and interface each part together.

But then something unthinkable happened. Zen betrayed her! The very first question Suri asked him and he had thrown her under the bus. Now she sat shaking in fury trying to control her emotions. How dare he?! She would have words with him later! She fumed silently as the questioning continued.

"Were there any other instances?" Suri asked Zen.

"Well, there was also the time when she instructed the attack on Lazarus' City."

More than a few eyebrows rose.

"Please explain."

"A team of twenty Orc Wars 'Helpers' were gathered for the mission. 'Helpers' are our Simtrixx personnel who create avatars and play in the game real time. They have shifts so that a few are always online to help Players, test any upgrade / updates and report bugs to be fixed."

"Anyways, this particular team was instructed to attack Lazarus' City. They were tasked to bring down the GateKeeper's City Shield which would in turn make the City vulnerable to open attacks. Destroying the Shield would also alert and lure the Player online via notifications. When Lazarus came on, we were supposed to spawn kill him until he levelled down at least two levels."

"His City was to be razed to the ground so that he would be delayed in crossing the portal to the Orc Realm. Crossing requires a minimum level of 80 and above. At the time, I believe he was already level 79."

"Why do you think she did that?"

Zen glanced nervously around.

"It was because the orc realm was not finished. We were still working the algorithms for NPCs, dungeons and maps there," replied Damon. He was not going to sit still while Zen took all the heat. "In fact several maps were incomplete at that time."

"Nadine's tactics were to delay Lazarus from crossing. It was to buy us time to complete the orc realm. Lazarus' sudden move to collect the Portal Orbs pushed Creative overtime. It would have been bad if he tried to cross and couldn't. It would have undermined the whole point of the Game and make us look bad. Players don't want to play incomplete games."

Nadine crossed her arms and relaxed a bit. There! Damon said it out loud. He had confirmed she was acting in good faith for the company.

"Yes, I believe the storyline was edited to lure Players to cross over to the orc realm after the first successful reality show. Fight the orcs there since not many were left in the original maps. Get a Lifestone and bring it back, something along those lines if I'm not mistaken," Suri commented.

Zen nodded his head.

"Destroying his City would also require Lazarus to waste precious time in rebuilding before crossing. He could not leave his own city vulnerable when he's away. Any attacks whilst he is gone would adversely affect him in the orc realm as the city shield is linked to him."

"What happened?"

"The plan backfired ... spectacularly." The Games Master couldn't help but smile at the memory. The shock at the turn of events and the extent of the GateKeeper's popularity and influence still astounded him. It had been an unbelievable and most memorable moment.

"The many Players and NPCs our Helpers brought with them in the form of their armies, gave Lazarus an unprecedented opportunity. He killed enough whilst defending his City to level up and be eligible for the crossing."

More than a few in the room smiled at the irony but did not interrupt the Games Master.

"Not only did Lazarus level up, his loyal friends who came to help him also benefited. They all upgraded." Zen paused.

"I want to add that he unintentionally achieved a lot with this incident. Somehow he also managed to involve many random Players and bring them together for the epic fight. Orc Wars gamers from all over the world came online at different times to help him when word spread. They defended his city. Those who were 'too far' away on the map attacked the cities of our Helpers so that they were trapped defending their own and couldn't go back to the GateKeeper's City to continue their assault. That lessened the pressure on Lazarus considerably. Everyone manage to be involved in some way directly or indirectly to help him."

"So they could not go back to his site. Clever," Xiao from Statistics said appreciatively. "One can't attack another when one's own house is under attack."

"The incident ended up as an impromptu fan meeting. Record number of Players turned up to meet the legendary GateKeepers, talk and take pictures with them. In that one incident, all five GateKeepers more than fulfilled their contracts. They single-handedly promoted Orc Wars and improved its presence in the market. It was a brilliant marketing move."

"You mean to say all the GateKeepers were there?"

"Yes. The other four GateKeepers came first with a few friends to help. Then word got out and the rest is history."

The Games Master continued proudly, "I would also like to say on record that all five GateKeepers took the opportunity of the unorthodox large scale attack to test out and show case the full range of our available defences. Being of high levels, they had amassed the five different groups of defences, from the lowly Infantry to the highly powered Super Naturals. Due to that, Adam (Simtrixx Editing) got wonderful fresh footage of the classes in action to use for new trailers and advertisements."

A.J (Marketing) sighed in bliss. Fresh exciting usable footage was a godsend to maintain interest via continuous new teasers and stills. Even the most hard-core fans got bored of reruns.

Zen smiled in remembrance. "The other GateKeepers and Heroes had lots of fun. It was so cool and professional. A real gamer's move."

"Normal Players had the opportunity to meet and play alongside the popular GateKeepers they had seen on tv, advertisements and game trailers, so that was a big plus. It confirmed that our virtual reality show is genuine and not a gimmick. The winners who became GateKeepers and ambassadors of Orc Wars are actually real people."

"You're saying sales increased after the incident?" asked A.J (Marketing) in astonishment.

"It most certainly did," interrupted Darren (Finance). "Sales and demand surged over the next few days. Orc Wars is still selling like hot cakes. Show them Xiao."

Xiao (Statistics) nodded and turned to Suri (Ethics).

"Suri, if you could open my report file? 'OW Data and Effects for Simtrixx Inquiry' scroll down to Slide 18."

Suri opened another window, pulling up the page. The LCD screen divided showing the new data and graph.

"Thanks Suri. You can all see the spike in the graph that was the day of the siege. The spike is the number of online Players. It went on for several hours ... days really. Thereafter, the numbers decrease but still maintained a much higher than normal average."

"The next graph ..."

Xiao smiled at Suri in thanks when she obligingly clicked onto the next slide.

"... shows sales for the game. Demand surged within 24 hours of the incident and is still high. The GateKeepers' promotional behaviour intentional or not is keeping Orc Wars solidly in the number one spot for MMORPG games. No other game comesclose," Xiao said. "They make excellent ambassadors," he concluded gleefully.

A.J (Marketing) grinned boyishly. "Simtrixx's marketing team has it too easy. I'm jealous."

Darren (Finance) laughed. "Simtrixx will definitely reach their sales target this year. In fact at the rate it's going, I'm betting they will over achieve."

Zen felt mollified somewhat. He still remembered the outrage he had felt at the time. "If you want I can detail it in a report. During the siege, Nadine also crossed the line by bypassing the cooling down re-spawning period for four Helpers. By doing that, they could resume their relentless attacks almost immediately, not giving Lazarus time to recover. He died because of that. It caused him to lose Experience Points (XP) and his city shield was destroyed. He would have survived otherwise."

"Also, when our Helpers had to defend their own cities, the Director instructed us to supply them with an infinite amount of health potions. That ensured our Helpers survival for some time until it was obvious the plan had failed. The odds stacked against them were too high when random Players banded together to attack them. After that everyone was told to logoff and let their cities fall, which they did. All twenty of them. They are still in ruins. There is no point rebuilding when many Players still go there to blast and rummage in the rubble for fun."

"Our Helpers also had to abandon their known avatars and make new ones. No one believed nor wanted any help from the twenty blacklisted names. All had been branded traitors. It seems that their names have been made viral amongst the Orc Wars community."

Suri cleared her throat. "Yes, I think a detailed comprehensive report would be good. Please prepare it and send to me, Zen. I will forward it to the relevant parties."

"Anything to add Damon (Simtrixx Creative)?"

"Not really. All I have to say is that Lazarus made us work like crazy. It was tough but we managed to get most of orc realm done by the time he and his team crossed. We worked double time to ensure perfection, well almost .... Of course, some parts of the storyline had to be amended."

Damon gave Zen a sidelong glance but decided not to elaborate on Kyra (Thalasis), Lily (Witch) and Jackie's (Bello) part. Hey, if they didn't ask he was not going to volunteer additional incriminating information especially when it was incriminating to them.

Suri turned to Adam (Simtrixx Editing). "Adam?"

"I have something to say ... sorry Nadine," he apologised to his boss. "The edited footage which Nadine provided you last week ... it was personally edited by me."

"Shut up Adam! I'm warning you!" The cool elegant woman lost her composure again. What Adam was going to say would render her specially crafted 'evidence' useless.

One icy look from Jared and Nadine shrunk back into her chair.

"You are not in a position to warn anyone Nadine," said Jared coolly.

Vincent (Research & Development) folded his arms. "Go on Adam, I think Jared and the rest of us want to hear what you have to say."

Adam nodded gratefully at the broad shouldered stocky man. One would not have guessed that Vincent was from Research and Development. One of the teams under him was checking out the IT industry. Any negativity on Simtrixx would adversely affect their progress and new venture into the lucrative gaming industry.

"The recent edits I did for Nadine does not show the real damage done to Lazarus. I edited it so that it would look like Nadine's tampering and interfering with the Player did not hamper his avatar's progress. I was instructed to use only the parts when Lazarus was alert and fighting."

Adam swallowed nervously, "I left out the parts when he was being afflicted by the poison and suffering which was most of the time. The poisoned GateKeeper had to constantly drink health potions and hang onto Items with healing runes to survive and prolong his in-game 'life'. Lazarus was in constant pain. Any sane player would have abandoned the avatar and made a new one if he was still interested in playing."

Zen glanced at Nadine. So that was what she had Adam do. The Simtrixx Virtual Reality Director had turned very pale. Her lips were pressed into a thin line to keep them sealed. Jared was watching her like a hawk

"As a Gamer myself, when I play a MMORPG, I want to be fully in control my avatar as it represents me and my achievements in-game. If it was regularly tampered with or hacked, I would not be the one controlling it. If that were the case, I would invariably quickly lose interest. If someone could control my avatar why would I want to play? It defeats the whole purpose and enjoyment of the game. It is also an invasion of privacy of sorts," said Zen. "I'm sorry Nadine, but that is how I feel."

"So the video evidence which Nadine provided us was fabricated?" Suri asked in a dangerous voice.

Nadine tensed again.

"Well, I did use real footage but ... not all of it. Lazarus did have lucid breaks," gulped Adam. "I apologise," he said contritely and lowered his gaze. He was too ashamed to look at any of them in the eye. At least he got that off his chest. It had been bugging him. Oh well, if he had to queue in the unemployment line, at least Zen and Damon would be queuing too.

Suri looked around allowing the new information to sink in. By the expressions on her colleagues' faces, the three employees from Simtrixx had just sealed their Boss' fate.

"Let's keep an open mind. We will analyse all the information we have obtained on this case," said Suri. "Thank you for coming and thank you for your honesty. I know it was not easy."

"Now please hold your peace while we listen to our next and final guest."

Zen looked up. "Suri, could I have a word with you later?"

"Oh? Is it about this case? You can say it now in front of the disciplinary panel if it is. We need all the information to make an informed and just decision."

"It is but what I want to say has nothing to do with Nadine. It is about me ..."

"Right," Suri smiled. "Then you can wait in my office, I will see you after this meeting."

"Thank you."

The poor guys, thought Suri. Simtrixx must be in an uproar now. Four of their top officials had been called away suddenly. Still, head office had to nip the problem in the bud. The last week had been for Nadine to hear the charges against her and provide her defence. Today, was for collecting information from Nadine's colleagues and others involved to Nadine's charges.

One more witness and they were done with collecting evidence today. After a late lunch, the Disciplinary Board would discuss and mesh out all the information and come to a conclusion. Nadine would be informed within the week of the Board's decision.

"The next person was invited to inform us the extent of damage of Nadine's action."

Huh? Who had the authority to do that? Who could possibly measure her meddling? How would one do that? thought Zen. It was not possible.

Suri indicated another set of double doors. The guest must have been waiting for some time in there. The secretary went to invite the guest in.