Part 2

  Chapter 14

  We traveled to Rivermoor, the town we had seen from the bridge, which lay on the opposite side of the valley. The vicinity was considered a level twelve to twenty area, and that was all for the good in my opinion as we had already been exhausted from the fight with Blackthorn and didn’t need anything too taxing. As we made the journey, we took out a couple groups of flying monkey-bat things that every once in a while we would aggro from our location on the road. They reminded me of those flying squirrels, only they had bat wings and made terrifying monkey-goblin-like sounds as they swooped over our heads and attempted to dig their sharp claws into us.

  The experience they gave wasn’t enough to level, and by the time we got to the Rivermoor inn, ‘The Dragon’s Goddess,’ I didn’t even care. I was so damn tired, I could have fallen asleep standing up.

  We’d seen a few yellow nameplates out and about on our journey to the inn. Some duos now, but mostly solo players still. Once we passed through the gate of the town, I concluded that it was . . . just a basic medieval town. Unremarkable in every way. The inn itself, however . . . was packed with white and yellow nameplates of NPCs and players. With it being a PVP-safe zone, folks seemed more willing to sit and chat. I downloaded the inn map to my own, then grabbed three frothy lagers while the rest of the party took a long empty table in the corner.

  I sat next to Mie, facing the room, and Clara sat across from us.

  I raised my mug. “Cheers to Clara. For saving our asses. Sorry again for my reaction back there.”

  “No harm done,” she responded.

  We clinked our three clay mugs together, then each took a swig. It was good. Smooth and crisp, refreshing, with just a hint of a sweet and malty undertone. I took another pull as I watched two players eyeing our nameplates. One waved hesitantly. I . . . waved back.

  They walked over. One was a tall and thin Landorian, who wore a longsword at his waist and had a marvelous mustache and a slight smile. His nameplate told me his name was Loc and that he was level twelve. The other was a short, three-foot skinny green goblin with pointy ears, blue eyes, and an intelligent stare. His nameplate told me his name was Liam, his level was eleven, and that he was partied with Loc.

  “Mind if we join?” the tall Landorian—Loc—asked.

  I looked at Mie who shrugged, then Clara, who also shrugged.

  I sighed inwardly. “Sure. Why not?” I said.

  “Sweet. Thanks. I’m Loc, and this is Liam.” He gestured to the goblin as they both sat down next to Clara. He put out his hand for a handshake. When I took it, I noticed an ‘Add to Contacts’ option right below ‘Add to Party,’ as I started to shake his hand. A prompt appeared in my feed.

  Player OGDuckGameChamp(Loc) has made a contact request. {Accept} or {Decline}?

  I accepted, then shook Liam’s hand and did the same thing. Couldn’t hurt to be able to chat with these guys whenever since they seem friendly enough.

  “I’m Sam, and this is Mie and Clara.” I pointed at each in turn.

  “You guys are leveling up nicely it seems,” Loc said, gesturing above our heads. “Our guides keep saying questing is the fastest way to level, but we found a rare event yesterday, and I’m starting to think they are . . . just wrong. What’s your guys’ secret, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “We have gotten lucky with a couple events. They seem to give more experience than killing basic mobs for sure. Significantly more. Not sure about questing; we haven’t even done a quest yet.” I didn’t want to share too much here. For all I knew these players were scouting for loot. I didn’t want to broadcast that we had just completed a Legendary event and found a Legendary item. I had a thought. “Say, do you guys have any quests that point to The Black Domain? Any idea what’s up with all the inky black lines?” I raised my hand to the innkeeper, motioning for her to keep the beer flowing. She had two in hand almost as if she had preemptively read my mind, and she set them on the table for our guests.

  “Thanks, man,” said Loc, looking surprised. He took a sip, then said, “Damn, that’s good. Uhm, let me check my quest log . . . No it doesn’t look like it. Why?”

  Huh, I thought. “I just assumed there would be a questline associated with it. Definitely feels like there should be.” If it’s not part of a quest . . . then maybe it is an event? If that’s the case, then it’s probably a one-time thing. And since events had been giving us insane XP, it seemed like a worthwhile endeavor to check the area out.

  Loc shrugged. Liam remained quiet, scanning the room closely. He seemed like the wary type.

  “That’s a level twenty to thirty region,” Loc said. “Even if there was a quest, we wouldn’t be ready for it. Are you thinking about heading there? Seems risky, even for you guys.”

  I checked my map. He was right about the recommended level . . . but I was pretty sure he didn’t know Mie was a healer, and I still felt heading that way was the right call. Taking out tougher enemies seemed to reward you handsomely with XP, and if it was an event area too?

  “Probably not,” I lied. Seeing how this was a survival to the last party . . . where our lives were on the line . . . I wasn’t going to just tell someone our whereabouts or where we were headed.

  Mie and Clara—mostly Mie—were surprisingly quiet and just let me do the talking.

  I looked around the now-crowded inn. The noise had grown to a low but thunderous din. I noticed that most if not all the players were lower-leveled than our party. But maybe the higher-leveled ones are still out there. Never resting. Ugh. I was so mentally tired. Going back out now . . . would be too risky. I brought my attention back to the room. It sounded like Rivermoor might have a questline we hadn’t picked up by the amount of folks running in and out to talk to the innkeeper. She kept repeating the phrase ‘did you save my Tommy boy?!’ what must have been a thousand times, and at some point, it just became more background noise, like a broken record playing the same thing over and over. Now that I thought about it, we hadn’t really even come across any quests.

  Knowing I was about to look super dumb, I asked, “Hey where do you guys even get quests?”

  Yup, both of their eyes went wide with shock. Like, ‘how are you that high leveled and you don’t know where to get quests?’ shocked.

  “They are on the bulletin boards next to the map,” Loc said. I looked over. Oh. That makes a lot of sense.

  Loc’s face twisted up in a grimace. “Do you guys have any idea what the hell is going on? Or know who Tittles is, or anything?”

  “Probably no more than you,” I said. I leaned in, deciding to be plain, and lowered my voice as I made a small gesture around the room. “But, at the end of the day, it’s every man, every party, for themselves. It’s messed up for sure.”

  He clenched his teeth. “Man, if that isn’t true . . . we are just so in the dark. We don’t even know how much time we have until phase two. And what even is phase two ?”

  I had my theories about phase two. I was pretty confident it would be some sort of battle-royale-like mechanic. In those types of games, boundaries would appear which you would have to stay inside in order to survive from gas, fire, ice, or some other fatal area. While I liked these guys, at the end of the day they were not in our party.

  So I just shrugged and chuckled as I said, “Probably something bad. These afterlife runners know how to make a bad time.”

  He laughed and, smiling, took another swig of his beer. I scanned the room again. All these people . . . are going to die. We . . . are all going to die. I sighed. Loc brought up a good point too. How long do we even have left? I had no idea.

  We continued talking with Loc for another thirty minutes or so, and even Mie jumped in and talked about . . . well, Mie things. So mainly about Greg. She asked them if their guides’ names were Greg too and told them how she was worried about there being more than one Greg. Yeah. Mie stuff. Clara and even Liam made a few comments, and we got along well enough with them, but concluded in the end that it didn’t make sense to try and join forces. There just wasn’t a good way to combine a party of three with a party of two, and I wasn’t really sure we needed another DPS class, which they both were.

  After that, they got up and sat down at another table with two other players. Maybe they will group up with them. I wished them the best, I really did. But since it was last party standing . . . it was probably best to not get too close to anyone.

  After my third frothy Rivermoor Lager, I was starting to be able to tell pretty quickly which NPCs were sentient and which were not. The innkeeper—she repeated the phrase ‘did you save my Tommy boy?!’ for the millionth time—was not despite her well-timed beers. A couple NPCs at the bar kept giving me glances though, and it seemed like they might be.

  I was about to get up to go talk with them when Mie DM’d me.

  Mie: Hungry again, :sad face emoji:

  Sam: Roger that.

  A few players trickled up the staircase to the rooms upstairs. We found the innkeeper and paid her three silver, which was for one room for a single night. Now that we had some gold in hand, the expense seemed trivial. Clara headed that way, and Mie and I logged out in the inn common room. It was nice, knowing we would get the double XP boost just from spending at least four hours resting here.

  Tomorrow will be a productive day.

  When we logged out . . . we found Greg passed out on Mie’s bed. Popcorn bags were everywhere, and little greasy popcorn kernels were scattered all around the floor and on Mie’s bed. The smell slammed into me and instantaneously brought me back to movie nights with the girls. Ada always loved those little greasy popcorn kernels. . . She would stuff them all in her mouth like a chipmunk and suck on them for the entire duration of the movie. I shuddered, the memory of her spitting them all into the popcorn bowl as the credits rolled in the background plastered in my mind. I looked at the kernels all around the floor . . .

  Has Greg been spitting them out? God damn it, Greg.

  I was about to reprimand him, but Mie . . . beat me to it.

  “GREG! YOU CORN-GLURPING FUCK!”

  Huh, that’s a new one.

  Greg sat up with a jolt, looking startled and out of sorts.

  While Mie let Greg have it . . . verbally, my gaze landed on the little black camera square on the short wall behind where we spawned in. A thought registered as I looked at it.

  Are they . . . watching us right now? Did they know about Mie?

  I stepped over Mie and grabbed one of the popcorn bags as I went. I ripped it open so I could get at the bottom. I remembered doing that as a kid . . . to uhh . . . lick it. I shuddered again. I knew exactly where Ada got her weirdness, I just didn’t like to admit it. I shook myself out of the past, ran my thumb along the greasy, buttery bottom of the bag, then rubbed it all over the camera lens.

  The motion reminded me of a video I had seen when scrolling through one of those endless, mind-numbing social media platforms. The content creator had taken some Vaseline and rubbed it on the camera lens, making him, the subject, go all blurry and unfocused. Then he said something I couldn’t help myself but repeat in a whisper.

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  “There you go, Tittles . . . ‘And . . . now, you have an Android.’ ”

  SOUL SPACE AGREEMENT BREACH DETECTED

  COMMENCING DISPOSAL IN:

  30 seconds

  29 seconds

  The words blasted out over the TV speakers like a loud fire alarm. They also hit my logs at the exact same time. The overhead invisible lights flicked off, roaring loud music started up, and the TV screen strobed between red and blue over and over as a loud siren blared over the music.

  Commencing . . . disposal . . . Oh, shit.

  Greg, now wide awake, jumped up off the bottom bunk and rushed over, shouting through the immensely loud noise, “WHAT DID YOU DO?! NO! NO! NO! YOU IDIOT!”

  The blood rushed from my head, as I realized what was about to happen. Anything . . . but . . . this.

  14 seconds

  13 seconds

  Greg was in full-on panic mode, rushing over to the transporter and slamming his back to it. Mie shouted something that I couldn’t hear. The room flashed from red to blue, red to blue.

  5 seconds

  4 seconds

  I took my white cotton T-shirt by the hem and frantically wiped at the thin layer of popcorn grease on the camera lens. “OHHHH!” I started yelling.

  3 seconds

  2 seconds

  1 second

  “FUUUU—!”

  DISPOSAL DISENGAGED

  “PHHHHHHHH . . . wow!” I finished, every single muscle in my body clenched.

  The overhead lights flicked back on, the music stopped, and the TV screen turned to black.

  I let out a long slow breath. “Jesus.”

  “What the hell was that?!” Mie asked.

  I turned around. She was still on the ground, looking afraid and confused. Greg stood on the opposite side of the Soul Space, looking at the TV screen in absolute horror.

  I glanced back at the screen. It was no longer black.

  Incident reported

  Personnel visit required

  Personnel in transit

  “God damn it, Greg,” I said, “you should have said something!”

  “I TOLD YOU TO NOT COVER THE CAMERA!” he bellowed back at me. “JESUS CHRIST! IT’S NOT COMPLICATED!”

  Now that he said it, I did vaguely remember him telling me that.

  I looked at Mie. Another wave of panic hit me square in the chest. “Shit! Hide!” At this point, I was about ninety percent certain she wasn’t supposed to be here.

  “Okay!” Her little baby arms and legs started flailing desperately. “Wait. I can’t move. Remember?!”

  I looked around frantically for somewhere to hide her, and as I did a new thought speared into my mind so suddenly it almost felt physical. This . . . is a cage. There was nowhere to hide.

  “Mie. Log in,” I said.

  “What?”

  “LOG IN. NOW!”

  “Uhm . . . okay? But we just got here and I’m hungry—Ahh!”

  I swooped her up, bundled her up in some sheets, tossed her on the bed, covering her with a couple pillows.

  “Just do it!” I said, finishing in a curt whisper as a little pop sounded.

  I slowly turned around toward the spawn point. I glanced at Greg as I turned. He stood frozen, his entire body as far away from the spawn point as it could possibly get. Even his head was up against the wall. With his head in that position, I noticed some kind of tarnished necklace . . . or collar around his neck. It dug into his skin which had apparently made it hard to see until now. That’s . . . disturbing. He had a look of intense fear plastered on his face as he gazed at the new arrival.

  “Hello again, Greg.”

  I fully turned around to find . . . a little puffed-up cat-bunny . . . thing. It had the ears and eyes of a cat, but the long face and nose of a bunny. It sat on its back legs, licking one of its paws—no. Those are weird . . . hands. It’s licking . . . its hands. Eww.

  “Feels like I was just here yesterday, with—” The cat-bunny creature glanced down at her clipboard. “—Harold, was it? That’s two incident reports in under a week, Greg. You know better than that. Don’t make it three. Okay. You know the drill.” She pulled a little remote with a single blue button off her belt.

  “Please,” Greg said in a tone I didn’t like . . . at all.

  “What’s happening, Greg?” I asked. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the pillow Mie was under shift down slightly.

  “Please,” Greg whined. “It’s these dumb player—”

  Click.

  Greg slammed to the ground, convulsing. Spit from the mouth. Flappy cheeks quivering. Yellow puddle growing.

  Seconds passed.

  “Stop,” I said. A part of me realized I was shaking.

  More seconds, then finally Greg’s spasms stopped as suddenly as they started. He was sobbing now. Something inside of me . . . snapped. Like a hot pressurized glowstick. Its red liquid poured into me.

  “I think two times should teach you your—”

  THUMP! . . . I . . . kicked her.

  Growing up, I played all sorts of sports. Mainly football and basketball, but there were a couple years I played goalie for the soccer team. I got pretty good kicking those balls to half field.

  So when I say I kicked her . . . I mean I punted her. It felt like kicking a soft pillow with little sticks in it. Some of those sticks made cracking sounds as she went flying.

  She hit the ceiling, then the wall. . . then the desk. . . then the ground. She rolled a couple times, her eyes showing white.

  When she came to a stop . . . she didn’t move.

  There was a long silence.

  Oh God. Did I just kill her . . . ?

  Greg, his eyes still wet with tears, was looking at me with a dumbfounded expression, and I was about to say something when the cat-bunny twitched.

  I noticed the remote with the blue button lying next to her. It was cracked, but I went ahead and kicked it under the bunk beds.

  “Greg how bad am I screwed?” I asked.

  “Uuugh,” she moaned.

  “Bad.”

  She held one of her arms to her chest as she got to her feet and limped away from me on one leg. I had probably broken a couple of her bones.

  “Like squished level of bad?”

  “Probably.”

  “Hey, cat . . . bunny . . . thing,” I called over to her.

  She looked up at me with a look of terror first, then absolute loathing. I saw something shimmer all around her for a split second, then vanish.

  “Don’t mess with Greg.”

  At this point, you’re probably thinking, ‘Oh yay! Sam loves Greg now’ . . . so I'm going to be extra clear right now. That is incorrect. Greg is still the worst . . . I just don’t like . . . assholes, or torture. And I definitely don’t like when assholes do the torturing.

  She replied with a pain-filled voice, “You are nothing but a worm. You shouldn’t even—” She cut off in clear pain, then muttered something under her breath. I could only hear bits. “ . . . shields if it wasn’t for . . . Jensen . . . that idiot.”

  She put her paw—hand—to her ear and pressed on what I assumed was some sort of comm system.

  “Jensen, I'd like to put in a disposal request for player,” she looked down at her clipboard again, “Anything . . . But Squished.”

  There was a pause, then—

  “What do you mean he is blacklisted?”

  “Blacklisted?” I asked, desperate to understand more about . . . well, everything.

  She looked up at me, and her eyes widened.

  She turned and hissed downward, her hand still up to her ear. I could . . . hear every word. “Jensen?! The communication barrier too, you IDIOT!”

  She turned back to me, dropping her hand. “This isn’t ov—”

  Her lips kept moving, but no sound came out. She was waving her good arm around, and it looked like she was yelling at me. I thought I saw her repeat the same thing. She cocked her head, looking at me as if expecting a response.

  “Uhh . . . I can’t . . . hear you,” I said.

  She put her hand back up to her ear and clearly started yelling, her face contorting into rage. After a moment, we could hear her again. “—YOU IMBECILE! THE COMM BARRIER NOT THE SOUND BUBBLE!”

  She looked back at me and said, her voice still quivering with anger and frustration, “This isn’t over.”

  Then she vanished, and I saw a new line appear on the TV.

  Incident report complete

  I exhaled deeply. I had been certain the red and blue lights were going to start back up.

  “Who was that?” I asked.

  Greg was still looking at me and odd expression still on his . . . creepy-ugly face. “That . . . was Jessica . . . ‘The Whip,’ but why did you do that?”

  The Whip? Ugh. This company. . . sucks.

  I shrugged and focused in on my HUD.

  “Thanks,” Greg said softly.

  Sam: Mie, all clear, come back. Greg is being weird and touching me.

  Mie: What’s new?

  Greg: I am not . . . touching him.

  Sam: He is.

  Mie: One sex, finishing a glass of Perdon.

  One sex . . .?

  Sam: You really should avoid that stuff. I'm not even sure if it wears off when you log out.

  Greg muttered something as he headed to the shower. After putting on fresh clothes, he crawled under his desk to what we’d started calling his den. Then he curled up in a ball and started snoring.

  Mie appeared with a small pop, and I made sure to block the camera from being able to watch her come in this time. I had the inkling they didn’t know about her, and I intended to keep it that way. If they did know about her, they didn’t seem to care, but I was going to play it safe. I wondered if I had caused more attention by trying to block it . . . and I wondered what being ‘blacklisted’ even meant. I was frustrated I didn’t glean more there . . . Are we being monitored more closely because of that?

  I picked Mie up—acting like I was picking up trash—then made a bottle of formula and fed her on her bed as nonchalantly as I could, trying my best to make sure to keep her out of sight. She squirmed in my arms, and it felt like she was nuzzling in. I . . . didn’t mind.

  While she ate, I scanned my logs. I had missed a couple things because of Greg’s popcorn ecstasy, almost getting squished, and then Jessica showing up. Was . . . punting her really worth it? I need to control myself. I didn’t like thinking about what these game runners could or couldn’t do, because it made me feel powerless. I looked around. Especially when I was here in my . . . cage.

  You have 60 cubed meters of unspent space. {Spend}?

  I was no interior designer, but I got to work after I finished feeding Mie, thrilled to have all the extra cubed meters to work with. I had no idea why we got so much, but I wasn’t complaining. Maybe that Legendary event?

  The first thing I did was put a one-by-six hallway that was two meters high at the far back of the Soul Space, behind where we spawned in and going in the opposite direction of the TV wall. As I placed the space, it very much felt like I was playing Minecraft. Three meters down that hall, I turned right and made a two-by-eight room. I found I could tweak a setting to make sure the wall stayed where the room and the hallway butted up against each other.

  My intention for this room was to make it as easy as possible to keep Mie out of sight. I would be able to respawn into the Soul Space first, pick her up when she spawned in, take a step back and to the right, and then head down the hallway, out of sight from the camera.

  I went ahead and moved the bunk beds out of the main space to this new room and converted that now empty space to a one-by-two closet where we could keep gear. I swaddled Mie and plunked her onto the bottom bunk. I also bought a cheap ceiling fan for the new room, then I spent the remaining thirty-two cubed meters of space on the main space. I pushed five of the seven meters on the TV wall back two meters. I was glad to see the TV move with the wall, and again, I retained the wall between the main space and the bathroom. I did the same thing on the opposite side, but only pushed back three meters of seven—the ones closest to the transporter side—back two meters.

  Now, we could finally walk around Greg’s desk, which I moved and instead placed a one-by-three kitchen island with a sink in the middle. We had some gold to work with now, so I also bought some stools that we placed along the island, a blue couch which I placed in front of the TV, and one of those baby bouncer things Mie could lie in. I put that next to the couch on the side opposite of the camera, again, out of sight.

  I also bought Greg a bed, which I threw at the end of the hallway. I’d build him a room once we got more space . . . maybe.

  Satisfied with my work . . . and tired as hell. I groaned as I climbed the ladder to my bunk in the new room. Mie was sound asleep on the bottom bed.

  I lay back on the bed and was about to close my eyes when I noticed a new log appear. My breath caught.

  Your {Soul Seed} has germinated.

  Curious, I pulled open my Soul Inventory. There was her item—still there, still the—no, not the same.

  {Mie, Soul Sprout}

  Celestial Item, Unique Item

  Soul bound, {Unbind}?

  In use

  Huh. I thought. The seed was gone. This new item looked basically the same but was called something different, in addition to now having the Unbind action. I climbed down the ladder and put my face close to Mie’s to get a good look at her. She was breathing softly and seemed totally the same. I took a look at the unbind action description.

  {Unbind}

  Description: Unbinds the item from your Soul Space.

  “Oh . . . shit,” I said softly, carefully closing out of the Soul Inventory. I didn’t know exactly what that would do . . . but I definitely did not want to accidentally kill her.

  Mie’s eyes opened a sliver, and she looked right at me. After a moment, her eyes focused, and her entire body jolted.

  “AH! HOLY!” she shouted. There was a short pause as I backed up. “The hell, Sam. I thought you were Greg! Jesus. What are you doing?!”

  “Just . . . checking to make sure you were breathing,” I lied.

  “To make sure I was breathing?! Why wouldn’t I be breathing?!”

  “Don’t worry about it . . . It’s a parent thing.”

  Mie was silent for a long time, looking at me, one of her cheeks smooshed against the bed. “Do you think . . . I have parents?”

  I thought about her item representation and was doubtful. But maybe she was someone who just didn’t have any memories, like someone with Alzheimer's, or a dead infant, or something along those lines. I kept my response simple.

  “Everyone has parents,” I said. For all I knew, maybe she really was from Earth, but deep down I knew . . . she wasn’t. But even if she wasn’t, something had created her . . . probably.

  “I wonder what they were like. I hope they were like your mom, but not like your dad. Your dad kind of sucks.”

  “I know,” I said gruffly, the memories swelling beneath me. I could still remember that dry desert air.

  I pushed it away. I pushed everything . . . away.

  “Sam . . . I’m . . . scared.”

  “I know.” I could feel it in our connection, like a poison ebbing through me. I tried desperately to ignore it and the memories. “But we’re doing okay. You saw all those players at the inn and how low-leveled they were. We’re still ahead of the game. Tomorrow, I think we should start heading to The Black Domain. Everything is pointing that way, like it’s a main quest line or something.” I was talking fast.

  “Okay. But Sam, we should talk—”

  “Let’s get some sleep.”

  My heart was pumping fast, my brain working like a whack-a-mole, battering away at the memories that rose within my mind. I climbed back up to my bed.

  “Just don’t . . . leave me, okay?” Mie said.

  Tears leaked from my eyes as I remembered my children, as I remembered my life.

  “I’ll do my best, if you do yours.”

  After a few more long moments, I heard Mie’s breathing change as she fell back to sleep.

  I lay awake for a long time . . . watching the players remaining count fall to another round number. I heard the TV flick on as music vibrated in from the main room. SLAM!

  Players Remaining: 300,000

  . . . Fuck.