From the mist a girl stepped forward, or rather stumbled.

  Her hair was long and white like fresh snow, face beautiful, and eyes blue and pure like the sky. She wore battered clothes that looked, despite wear, exquisitely woven.

  Behind her, the mist churned unnaturally, not dispersing but instead seemingly flowing from her, clinging to her like a second skin.

  The second she noticed the three of them she assumed a battle-ready stance.

  Kol suddenly fell to the ground, a series of images fshing across him mind.

  “Kol—”

  The girl’s gaze snapped to Kol, and her expression and posture hardened, as she aimed her palm at him. Then, she spoke. Her voice was soft, lilting, but wholly unintelligible.

  Abaka tilted his head, frowning. “Did… did anyone catch that?”

  “Nope,” Annie replied. “Didn’t sound like any nguage I know.” She returned her attention to the girl and a realization washed over her. “This must be why this pce is off-limits... her programming isn’t finished yet.”

  Kol rose to his feet slowly. Then he too spoke gibberish.

  The girl blinked once, recognition fshing across her face. Her stance eased but still kept up. The mist around her pulsed once, then receded slightly as if responded to her mood.

  Annie and Abaka shot each other a puzzled look.

  The girl’s lips moved again, and Kol responded, still speaking nonsense from the sound of it.

  “You understand her?” Abaka asked, disbelief sweeping across his face.

  Kol didn’t answer at first.

  “She wants to know if we are her captors.” He said, eyes still locked on the girl.

  “Tell her we’re not,” Abaka said.

  “Already did. She doesn’t believe me.”

  “Gee, I can’t imagine why,” Annie muttered, casting a wary gnce at the mist still writhing behind the girl.

  The girl narrowed her eyes. She said something else, shorter this time, more like a question, and Kol responded again, his tone shifting subtly, softer. Her eyes sharpened, and mist coiled at her feet like smoke rising from a fire.

  The next instant a wave washed over the three. Abaka colpsed on his knees and vomited. Annie jumped backward and tensed in fear, while Kol stood his ground seemingly unphased. The mist surged forward, and they were frozen in pce, immobilized.

  A silence born from shock and panic fell over the narrow corridor space as they struggled to break free without effort.

  The girl came forward, towards Kol. She spoke again and reached for him. Her eyes began to glow in a bluish hue as she pced her hand on his face.

  The next instant, Kol began to grunt and trash violently.

  The girl withdrew her hand, out of breath and like she was in pain. She backed away a step, then another, her breath coming in short. She muttered to herself, the words still incomprehensible but fear and disgust cing her voice.

  She walked past them. She gave one st look back, eyes fixed on Kol, almost piercing the back of his head, before turning her back on them.

  In the next moment, the passage behind them froze shut, and the ice binding them in pce to melt and break, freeing them.

  A wave of relief washed over them once the ice melted.

  “What the fuck was that?!” Abaka asked in hysterics, still clutching his stomach.

  Annie leaned briefly against the wall, rubbing her temples.

  “Fuck me, that was the first one in a long time.” She jumped up and down, warming herself up.

  She shot Kol a gnce.

  “You good?”

  Kol didn’t move. He just stood there, staring down the corridor where the girl had vanished. His hands were clenched into fists at his sides.

  He didn’t answer, so Annie dropped the question, changing the topic.

  She waved her hand. “Good news is the system isn’t glitching anymore, at least. Oh, and Broil and Mervin are alive and well.”

  Kol finally spoke up, voice barely above whisper. “She was not… made like the others.”

  Annie paused, her brow furrowing. “You mean NPCs?”

  “Did you not see it?”

  Annie shrugged. “See what? She looked like any other NPC to me. A teensy bit stronger though...” She murmured.

  Abaka groaned and wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve. “I don't know what freaks me out more—that she nearly turned me inside out somehow, or that you didn’t even flinch of her.”

  Before Abaka could add another expletive, a low hum filled the corridor, followed by a vibrant fsh of white light made the ice blocking the way out disappear. All three turned as two silhouettes marched through the brightness, their sleek bck and crimson uniforms and signature badge marking them immediately. Enforcers.

  Elite company personnel. The police force within the game that governs its security and has authority to override nearly any system function.

  “Hands where we can see them,” one barked. His voice carried a metallic tinge of a filtered comm channel, distorted but unmistakably stern.

  Annie raised her hands halfway. “Whoa, hey, no need for the drama. We're not doing anything wrong.”

  Another Enforcer moved swiftly past them and scanned all three of them, his visor blinking in rapid pulses of red.

  The lead Enforcer ignored him. “You three are coming with us. Now.”

  “We didn’t do anything—” Annie started.

  “You destroyed company property, entered a restricted server, and freed and engaged with a quarantined entity.” Said a third voice coming down the corridor. This one was wearing a different badge, one ranking lower than the other two.

  The mist dissipated and Dalia came into the view.

  “You have the right to remain silent and appeal to authority should you feel it is necessary.” She continued and gave one of the Enforcers a curt nod.

  The next moment, all three of them felt as if their heart had stopped for a second, and an invisible pressure weight them down.

  “So what now?” Annie asked, wobbling on her feet for a second. “We’re under arrest now?”

  “You are in viotion of multiple security protocols.” Dalia said, stepping closer, doing the utmost so that her tone and posture remain as formal as possible. “Please don’t make this worse.”

  In a fsh, a portal dancing in all the colors of the rainbow appeared in front of them.

  As they were about to step in, Kol suddenly stopped and spoke up.

  “Wait, Mervin and Broil are still here.”

  Dalia turned to look at Kol over her shoulder.

  “They’ve already been collected and are back in the real world.”

  Kol hesitates for a heartbeat, eyes flicking back toward the empty corridor where the girl vanished. Annie tugged on Abaka’s sleeve, and together they step into the swirling portal, Kol at their heels.

  Dalia waited until they were gone, her eyes narrowing on the st traces of mist curling at the floor, before she too turned and disappeared.

  ***

  They’d been separated the moment they returned to the real world.

  Annie and Mervin were cleared after a short debrief, then escorted back to the dormitories, as well as Abaka and Broil in Atnta once it became clear that all four of them happened to be there on Kol’s insistence.

  Now, he sat alone inside the building reserved to the top executives of Dauntless Realms Entertainments, waiting for the ass-ripping he was about to receive.

  The hall was quiet.

  No hum of servers. No polite muzak. Just the steady tick of a wall-mounted clock softly echoing in the hallway making the silence worse.

  Kol shifted in his chair.

  A subtle cnk broke the silence. A door opened.

  A tall man, graying at the temples, sharp suit, sharper eyes, walked out the room, saying nothing. He looked around, scanning the hall, then after a second spoke.

  “Come in.”

  Kol stood slowly, went in the room.

  Everything in there screamed money. Marble floor tiles, abstract painting on the walls, and a desk decorated with pnts that at first gnce passed for real ones.

  Behind the desk sat a woman, facing the window. Her chair shielded her silhouette.

  “You can go, Everett,” she said.

  The suited man left without a word. The door shut behind him.

  “Sit,” the woman said.

  Kol did so.

  Neither of them said a word.

  “Do you know who I am, Mr. Hoover?”

  He didn’t answer right away. “You’re one of the directors.”

  The woman ughed.

  “I suppose it has been a while.”

  Her chair rotated slowly, revealing a woman in her mid-thirties, poised and composed. Her features were striking, sharp face, and blonde hair and eyes that almost seemed golden.

  “Maya...” Kol let it slip out.

  She stood up, stepping away from the desk and came to Kol for a hug.

  “My, you’ve grown. Puberty hit you good,” She chuckled. “Hit the gym and girls will be all over you.”

  Kol didn’t hug back. He remained still in the embrace.

  Maya stepped away, brushing invisible dust from her bzer.

  “Well,” she said brightly, “that’s about the response I expected. Still hurts, though.”

  Kol stared. “Dalia said you’re a manager of security and logistics.”

  “Then it should not come as a surprise to you why I’m the one talking to you.” She returned to her side of the desk.

  “Dalia called me a few nights back and told me everything.” Maya continued. “Ever since then, I kept an eye on you and a team monitoring your sessions.”

  “Dalia was on that team?”

  “Yes. Given who she is to you, and she knows the details, it made sense assigning her to the task. Plus, she needed a final evaluation, so two birds with one stone.”

  “So… this entire time, I was being watched.”

  Maya gave him a pointed look. “Everyone is being watched, Kol. You were being studied.”

  “Feels like the same thing.”

  “That’s because you don’t know the difference.”

  She tapped a few keys on a touchpad embedded in her desk. A projection shimmered into life above the surface, footage from the game, repying the conversation between Kol and the girl.

  “Mind telling me how you conversed with her?”

  Kol was silent for a moment. “It came to me naturally.”

  “Naturally, you say...”

  Maya took a long look at Kol, searching his face for anything. She eventually eased her gaze.

  She then forwarded the footage to the moment the girl touched Kol’s face.

  Kol flinched just slightly.

  “We ran the diagnostics ten times,” Maya said. “System fgged it as an anomaly.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” he said.

  “Maybe,” She leaned forward, elbows on the desk. “But the fact is, you released something you shouldn’t have.”

  “What is she?” Kol asked, his eyes still fixed on the footage.

  “It is an experiment.”

  “An NPC?”

  “In a sense, yes, she is. But more than that she is a highly experimental artificial intelligence. She was not meant to be part of the public servers. Not until much ter anyways, as part of an update.”

  “But she was there.”

  “Yes. And you spoke her nguage. That’s the part no one understands.” Maya paused. “She was designed with a proto-linguistic model meant to evolve independently, without reference data. Her nguage shouldn’t be decipherable. Not even we know what she’s saying.”

  “So how do I know it?”

  “Given what Dalia’s statement on what you told her, your ‘obsession’ with finding the weapon, is it was known to you before, and the behavior both you and she exhibited, it is fair to assume this was another case of memory dissonance.

  “I believe Dalia gave you the basic rundown, but to reiterate, it is a phenomenon that sometimes happens to people when they first log in to the game via Sarcophagus. Memories and or images that are altered or don’t belong, making the person question what is real and what is not.

  “Still, people—powerful people are hounding me to punish you in accordance with the terms. Especially Yosemite Junior.” She sighed deeply mentioning his name.

  “You put a target on your back for what you pulled.” Maya continued. “Jason—his father—is not a person you want to have problems with.”

  “What happens to me now?” Kol asked, hanging his head a little.

  “Well, his main argument is you entered a restricted space and obstructed company work, but neither he nor his son were given authority to work in that space to begin with, which makes the case a PvP conflict.”

  Maya stood and walked to the window, folding her arms.

  “Here’s the thing, Kol. Legally, you’re off the hook, but in practice... you’ve stirred a nest of hornets. Jason Yosemite is a shareholder. His son is… well, let’s say Joshua’s leash is longer than most interns’. You embarrassed him.”

  “He deserved what I did to him in the real world.” Kol said ftly and with conviction.

  Maya smiled, just faintly. “You won’t get an argument from me. But assholes with billions in company stock tend to get what they want. And right now, he wants you to disappear. Quietly.”

  Kol said nothing.

  “You get two options. One: you walk away. Retire from the game. You’re young. Start fresh, forget all this. Pursue another career path.”

  “So bcklisted.”

  “Essentially, yes.”

  Maya turned to face Kol.

  “Two: you stay. And you py the game. But this time… under my watch.”

  Kol furrowed his brows. “What does ‘under your watch’ that mean exactly?”

  “It means I take personal responsibility for you. I’ll hold your leash. You keep pying like how you want, but under my orders. You step out of line; I’ll be the one yanking it. It also means Yosemite cannot touch you directly.”

  Kol leaned back in the chair and thought.

  “... What of the others?”

  “You, your sister and friends have essentially completed the requirements needed to work for the company. They too can work under me like you would effective immediately, should they choose to accept, of course. Otherwise, they’ll continue the intern evaluation.”

  “You can do that...?” Kol asked, though the question sounded more like a statement.

  “If I pull some strings,” Maya answered.

  “And the girl?” Kol asked quietly.

  Maya hesitated, then returned to her seat. “Since your encounter, she’s gone off the grid. No trace of her code anywhere in the servers. Your first assignment would be to retrieve her.”

  A low buzz came from her desk. She tapped a corner of the interface, muting it. “Time’s short. What’s it going to be, Kol?”

  Kol sat still for a long moment, then raised his head. “I’ll take the leash.”

  Maya smirked. “Then let’s make it official.”

  She pressed a few buttons on her desk. A translucent contract appeared in front of Kol, flickering with lines of dense legal text. At the top, in bold letters read:

  DAUNTLESS REALMS ENTERTAINMENT

  SPECIAL OPERATIVE AGREEMENT

  (RESTRICTED CLASS)

  Kol read none of it. He reached out and pressed his hand to the pad before him.

  A sharp beep confirmed the signature.

  Maya smiled. “Welcome to the real game, Mr. Hoover.” She waved her hand. “Dismissed.”

  The door opened behind him. Everett waited silently.

  Kol followed him out into the quiet hall, and out of the building. He walked back to the dormitories in silence, thinking of what had just happened. In the end, he was left with one understanding:

  The leash was on.

  ***

  The morning light withing The Gateway never felt so sharp before.

  The city below was lively as ever, but up here on the rooftop terrace, everything way deafeningly silent. No one spoke a word. Even Abaka wasn’t pacing.

  Kol told them context enough, he thought. Of his dreams, visions, of that corridor. Of knowing things he shouldn’t. And what Dalia had said about the system.

  The bargain he struck with Maya.

  “So let me get this straight,” Mervin spoke up, breaking the silence. “The game can impnt ‘fake memories’ in people, that’s why you acted the way you did?”

  “Partly.” Kol answered.

  “What does that supposed to mean?”

  “It means he was always this aloof, but this time he had a driving force behind his actions.” Annie cut in. “Never seen him this determined about anything before...”

  Abaka scratched his head. “I mean... it kind of makes sense, with the game even helping you to it and that nguage you spoke and all, but still...”

  He trailed off.

  The silence was beginning to feel ritualistic, like each of them was waiting for someone else to make the final judgment call.

  Broil shifted, arms folded. “I just want to know one thing.” He looked at Kol, eyes narrowing. “Did you know how dangerous it was going to be? Before we went in?”

  Kol frowned. “Dangerous how?”

  Annie hopped on her feet.

  “Dalia told us a restricted server has no exit-portals, so we couldn’t log out the normal way. We either would have had to wait until we either died of starvation or freeze to death, or kill one of us, to report where we were.”

  Kol slummed his shoulders, feeling guiltier than ever.

  “You can see why that would be a problem, right?” Abaka added.

  Kol took a deep breath.

  “I did not mean to use you,” he said. “You do not have to stay. Not after this.”

  Silence settled again, heavier than before.

  Mervin muttered something under his breath and stood, moving to the terrace ledge. He leaned on it, staring out at the city like it might give him a different answer.

  “I need to think.” He finally said, sighing.

  “That makes two of us,” Abaka joined in, rubbing the back of his neck. “Kol, I like you, man. But if you ever lie to me again, I will suplex you off this rooftop. Virtual or not.”

  Broil was st. His expression unreadable. He lingered a moment longer than the others, then turned without a word and disappeared into the stairwell.

  The rooftop felt colder in an instant.

  Annie walked over to Kol and plopped next to him. She nudged him. “That could’ve gone worse.”

  Kol didn’t answer.

  “You don’t have to stay.” He murmured.

  Annie pced a hand on her chest.

  “I’m gonna pretend you didn’t just say that. It’s a given I stay with you. You’re a lost cause without me. We’ll figure out what happens next together, after you’re done brooding or spiraling or whatever this is.”

  She left him with that. No hug. No guilt. Just space.

  In the end, only Annie accepted Maya’s extended offer. Mervin, Abaka and Broil went on to find a new aspiration within the game or retry others.