Tower Climber 3
Jakob Tanner
Contents
Newsletter
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
FREE EBOOK
Author’s Note
A.K.O Book 1 Sample
The Chosen Reading Group
Join the LitRPG Group on Facebook
Join the GameLit Society for more GameLit and LitRPG
More Places to Hang Out!
The LitRPG Store
Newsletter
Join to stay up to date with my writing, new releases, giveaways, and more. Click here to sign up.
Dedicated:
To my mom and dad, who have encouraged and supported me in everything that I’ve done.
Special Thanks to:
Angela Marshall for assistance in so many things.
Nik Grantham for letting me be his “most read” author.
Andrew Smith for sage wisdom.
Thanks to my beta readers and their amazing feedback:
Ben Graff
Sean Hall
Jo Hoffacker
Denny Johnson
Valentine Obasuyi
Josh Robinson
This book wouldn’t be what it is today without you guys!
Prologue
Many Years Ago, 2075
Max woke up to the smell of fire and smoke.
He opened his eyes, still in a daze.
Where am I?
He looked down to find himself strapped into the back seat of a car.
Shards of shattered glass were scattered across his pants as well as around his feet.
The broken pieces of glass reminded him of diamonds, except for the red shards.
He paused.
Glass isn’t made of red material, is it?
What’s going on?
Still in a daze, Max couldn’t understand why his thoughts were acting so incredibly sluggish.
He looked up and saw what was making the glass shards red.
It was the back of his father’s head, dripping with blood.
An indescribable pain twisted inside of Max.
“Dad?” he croaked.
He began to look around in a panic.
It was all coming back to him.
They had been driving. They were on a family outing. They had gone out for dinner.
On the way home, there had been a commotion.
Max recalled bright lights from a passing vehicle.
His father had swerved.
And then everything had gone black.
Now he was here, covered in broken glass and blood.
His mother laid unconscious in the front passenger seat, her neck severely twisted.
“Mom!?”
A horrible heat pulsed against him.
“Max,” said a voice.
He turned to his side and it was his little sister sitting nearby.
Elle.
She was only four years old.
A large metal signpost was wedged between them in the middle seat.
A line of blood fell from Elle’s forehead.
She’d been injured in the crash.
“Max,” she said, frantically. “Why won’t mommy and daddy say anything?”
POP!
The car was on fire. Pipes were bursting from inside the vehicle.
He had to get out.
He had to get his sister out.
“Elle,” Max said. “Can you undo your seatbelt?”
She blinked. She was in too much shock to comprehend what he was saying.
The car shook and popped again.
Max shuddered. He had to act fast.
He undid his safety belt and opened the door.
He moved to take a step out of the car, only to find himself falling onto the street.
Huh?
He tried to push himself up, but his legs weren’t working.
The flicker of the flames reminded Max that he needed to focus.
In that moment, he didn’t care or dwell on the fact that he couldn’t stand on his own legs.
He had one goal.
To get to the other side of the car and open the door for his sister, so she could get out of the burning vehicle.
Nothing else in that moment mattered.
He dragged himself across the concrete road, going around the car.
With every push and pull, he kept reminding himself of a promise he had once made to Elle when they were playing.
I’ll always protect you, he had told her.
He got to the other side and pushed himself up, so he could grab the door handle.
He pulled, but the door didn’t budge.
Crap.
Child lock.
He banged on the window.
“Elle,” he shouted. “You need to open up the door. Pull up the latch near the window.”
The car made more popping sounds. Every pipe and fuse bursting was a clock ticking down to their deaths.
CLICK!
“Brother,” Elle said, “I opened the—”
KABOOM!
The car exploded, hurling Max backwards.
The next thing he could remember was watching the car covered in flames.
He saw it all from the pavement, until his view was blocked by a pair of black leather boots.
Those boots were the
last thing he saw before everything went black.
When Max returned to consciousness, he found himself hooked up to a hospital bed with a heart monitor attached to him.
He looked around in a panic.
“Good, you’re awake,” said a woman in a white doctor’s coat. “You’ve been out for a couple of days.”
“My sister,” Max said, still getting his bearings, “is she okay?”
“We can discuss all that with you later,” said the doctor. “Right now, we just need to check your vitals and make sure you are doing okay.”
“Tell me,” he said. “What happened? How are my parents?”
The nearby heart monitor began to beep louder.
The doctor said to a nearby nurse, “His heart rate is dangerously high, we’ll have to anaesthetize him before he does any more harm to—”
Max wasn’t sure how much more time had passed by the time he woke up next.
He tried to act a bit more calmly, and he eventually found out about his family.
They were all dead, the doctor told him.
And he himself had lost function of his legs.
The days all became a blur.
Eventually, the doctor came in with a pudgy bald man with glasses and long nose hairs sticking out of his nostrils.
“I’d like you meet someone, Max,” said the doctor. “This is Mr. Grimes. He’ll be your new guardian when you’re ready to leave here.”
The older man smiled menacingly at Max.
Max had no idea what to say or do with everything that kept happening around him.
He felt like he was living in the aftermath of a horrific dream.
Little did he know, as the older man named Mr. Grimes loomed over him, that a new nightmare was only just beginning.
1
Present Day, 2086
Max hurried down the streets of Zestiris, gradually quickening his pace.
It was a sunny beautiful afternoon in late August and the city was basking in the enjoyable late summer weather.
More people were out and about than usual. Taking pictures, seeing the sights. It had a lot to do with the outer-rim and the tower-zone combining into one unified city a few weeks earlier.
He had no reason to believe he was being followed, but ever since his last communication with his sister, he’d been getting increasingly paranoid.
To call it a communication might be an overstatement though, more like the last clue his lost sister had left behind for him to find.
The clue had been a single black feather, which also just so happened to be the symbol of the inter-tower terrorist group known as The Fallen Angels.
To have any business dealings or communication with such an evil organization would break numerous laws in the different floors and civilizations that existed within the tower.
And here Max was walking around with practically their calling card given to him by his sister no less.
It wasn’t a good look.
Hence the paranoia.
Max crossed the street and looked over his shoulder once more for good measure.
He walked a few more blocks and then stopped at an intersection.
He could make a right turn and head to the climber’s guild hall or continue on his way to Hawker’s Alley.
Make a right or keep going in the same direction?
On the surface, it was a simple choice.
But for Max, it was far from it.
He gulped as the sun shone down on his neck. He was sweltering in the heat.
He could take this black feather left behind by his sister and bring it to the climber’s guild hall and show it to the authorities. Show it to his friend, mentor, former roommate, and climber president, Sakura.
That was probably the smartest most legally sound thing he could do.
But he also knew the guild authorities would take the feather away from him. The only thread that connected him to the only family he had left.
His long lost sister, Elle.
He didn’t know why his sister had left him an object with such evil connotations to it, but one thing he did know was: she had left the feather for him, not for the Zestiris climber’s guild.
He glanced to his right and could see the climber’s guild hall building in the distance.
He sighed, looked away, and continued walking straight ahead.
A few minutes later, Max stepped into an old antique shop in Hawker’s Alley.
The place was a hoarder’s paradise: stacks of old magazines and newspapers, dusty broken furniture, and clocks—oh how the owner loved to collect different types of clocks, all ticking away in the small shop.
It was enough to drive you insane, thought Max.
“Sorry, we’re closed,” shouted an old cantankerous voice from the back.
In fact, the clocks probably had driven the owner Harold crazy, Max thought to himself.
“If you’re closed, why don’t you put up a sign, or here’s an idea: lock the front door!”
An old grizzled man waddled into the front of the shop from the back room. The man placed his hands on his own back theatrically playing up his role as curmudgeonly shopkeeper.
“What do you want!?”
Max sighed.
He had already made the decision when he chose to come here and not to the climber’s guild hall, but even still every step of the way was difficult.
That said, he had come to Harold a few months back with the original letter his sister had sent him and he had been an immense help in decoding it for more information and clues.
If he had been able to put his trust in the cranky old man back then, he didn’t see why he should be so worried now.
He materialized the envelope his sister had left behind for him in Elestria on floor-10 of the tower.
“You brought me a love letter young man?” snickered Harold. “Young boys aren’t really my thing, I gotta say—”
“It’s not like that you weirdo,” said Max.
“Oh, is it from a pretty lady then?” said the man. “And you need my advice? Well, in that case, I’d be more than happy to share my expertise.”
“You seriously got the wrong idea,” said Max, opening up the envelope and pulling out the black feather his sister had left behind for him.
He held it out in his palm for Harold to see.
The shop went eerily silent except for the ticking of the many old clocks.
Harold’s face had quickly grown stern and serious. He looked down at the feather and then back up at Max.
“I don’t need to analyze that to tell you what it is,” said the old man. “And we could both get into a lot of trouble for even being in possession of it.”
“I know what it symbolizes,” said Max.
“Then why have you brought it to me here then?”
Max gulped.
“Will this stay between you and me?”
Harold raised an eyebrow.
“Have you never heard of antique collector-client privilege?”
“Is that a thing?”
SMACK!
Harold slapped him in the head. “Of course not, dummy! Tell me why this particular black feather is so important.”
Max sighed.
This was it.
He had shared this with no one else other than his best friend Casey and he had only told her because she was there when he found out.
Otherwise, he would have kept it a secret until he knew what he wanted to do next with the information.
“Like the letter I brought to you a few months back,” Max began, “This was left behind by my sister.”
The man’s eyes widened at that.
He let out a long sigh.
“Oh boy,” he said. “I can see why you’d want to keep this hush-hush. Why bring it to me th
ough?”
“I want to see if maybe there’s a secret message in it,” Max explained.
“Well, that I can do,” said the old man and then gestured with his hands. “C’mon, let’s go into the back.”
The back of the shop was much more orderly than the front.
It wasn’t clean exactly, but objects and furniture had a coherent place to them and you could walk around much more easily compared to the front of the shop.
Harold went over to his workstation and sat down and gestured for Max to do the same.
“If you could place the feather down here for me please,” said Harold. “Actually, we might as well see the envelope it came in as well.”
Max placed the envelope down first and then the black feather on top of it.
Harold then picked up a thin metal object that looked a lot like a dentist’s scalpel and poked at the feather.