Ben opened his eyes to heavy darkness and the sound of distant rain.

For several long moments, he had no idea where he was. Was it still the game? If so, where was that confounded purple light? Or was it a place between worlds, a black nothingness as he experienced when he’d logged in? Both options seemed unreasonable, especially with that continuing sound of rain hammering against a window.

He moved his head a bit and felt his cheek sink against something soft. His pillow? Ben started to feel around with his hands. Yup, that was definitely his bed. It also wasn’t as dark as he’d first thought. He was in his room, lying in his bed with the VD console still attached to his shaved head. His eyes quickly adjusted to the dim light and he was filled with a mixture of immense relief - and not a small amount of disappointment.

Ben felt as if he’d just woken up from a long and vivid dream, but to call the things that he experienced in the game “a dream” was to insult the whole industry of virtual reality gaming. No, what he had done as “Ben the Scout” was no dream whatsoever… the battles, the undead, his superpowers, the pain... everything was so very real.

Yet, despite the obvious reality of it all, now that Ben found himself in his room, lying in the darkness and listening to the rain pouring outside in the shitty neighborhood that he called home, he found it hard to hold onto the realism of the game. Here he wasn’t a level three scout and had no badass crossbow to help him deal with his troubles. He was just Ben, a 19 years old nobody that had few friends and little possession. A far cry from the adventurous hero and leader who conversed with the undead in an ancient language.

What was that shit about, anyway? From all the miraculous things that had happened to him in Raxlon’s world, the part where he suddenly knew who these skeleton dwarves were and how to speak to them was by far the weirdest. Ben wondered about the vision he had. A dream within a dream… who was the man who so boldly spoke with the Duergar King? And what was his connection to Ben? Ben didn’t know, but it became obvious that playing VD was much more complex than simply hacking and slashing and solving riddles. He would have to get to the bottom of it.

First, though, there was something much more immediate to take care of: Ben didn’t remember the last time he was so goddamn hungry. He had his last meal that morning - which seemed like a lifetime ago. He then skipped lunch, being too excited by the prospect of logging into a VD game. Then he was playing and the prospect of eating seemed irrelevant. Now, though, it seemed his body was demanding food both for his real-life persona and for his virtual character.

Ben sat up in his bed and turned on the light, narrowing his eyes to adjust to the illumination. “Mike?” He called out. His voice sounded strange to his ears and he half expected it to echo in the large chamber of the dark dwarves... only he wasn’t in a huge hall with broken pillars. And his room was too small and too cramped for any sound to reverberate between its walls.

There was no answer to his call, only the sound of rain outside the window. Ben sighed. His friend must be out, probably hanging in one of the local pubs and spending large amounts of the cash he’d gotten from their recent job together.

Ben looked around him, suddenly disgusted by the shape his room was in. His clothes were scattered everywhere, his desk was a mess. The walls were all peeling paint and numerous cracks - somehow it seemed there were more cracks than he remembered - and there was a perpetual moldy smell to the place that mixed with the unpleasant odor of dirty socks. Such was his life, he thought bitterly. It wasn’t a wonder that he tried to escape into different worlds as often as he could.

Checking his V-Watch, he saw that it was a few minutes past eight. Definitely time for dinner. Ben checked the large box that was now his most valued property - the VD console. The large black box lay on the floor by his bed and had three cables that connected it to Ben’s head via electro-pads. A small touch screen was at its center and as Ben touched it a message appeared:

LOGGED OUT. UNABLE TO RECONNECT. CHECK WITH YOUR GAME OPERATOR FOR FURTHER INFORMATION.

Ben wasn’t worried, though. He knew that there were two basic rules for logging into a VD game: you had to have the permission of a game operator - Raxlon, in his case - and you had to usually wait at least 12 hours between sessions. These two rules - forced onto the gaming companies by the government - were the main reason the VR gaming industry was still up and running. It was the way of the state to assure the public that no one would be too consumed by the games so as to forget their real lives and that proper balance would be maintained between the real and imaginary life.

He grabbed the tentacles that connected the sticky electro-pads to his skull and began the slow task of peeling the things from his skin. Then he finally got up from his bed and stretched. It was time to feed this useless body of his real self. After all, he mused, he needed to keep it healthy enough so he’d be able to return to the game as soon as possible.

On his way to the bathroom, Ben stopped for a moment as several small things caught his eye. He had a peculiar sensation, as if he was seeing his and Mike’s apartment for the first time. Details that escaped him before suddenly seemed important somehow - like the way their old TV screen was leaning a bit to the side, or the huge amount of spiderwebs in the upper corner of their front door. Their floor had big splotches of dirt on it and Ben saw several muddy footprints all around. He also found it strange that one of the kitchen’s chairs was standing in the middle of the living room. As he looked at the chair, his eye caught a few clumps of brown hair scattered around the floor.

He suddenly caught himself and cursed. What the hell was happening to him? First he was disgusted by the condition his room was in, and now he was eyeballing the dirt on their floor! Abi would be astonished; his big sister always berated him for “living in muck,'' as she used to say. Maybe her antics have finally begun to affect him, although he saw her so scarcely these days that it didn’t seem plausible.

Ben shook his head in wonder and resumed his walk to the bathroom. He had to physically resist the urge to focus his attention on all the small signs of filth around him as he did his business, but it wasn’t until he stood to wash his hands that he felt for the first time that something was seriously… off.

The mirror above the sink was broken - it was that way since forever - but it still had enough even surface to give back at least some reflection. As Ben splashed cold water on his face, he had to stop and blink a few times. In his mind’s eye, he was back at the waystone room, looking at the polished silver of Red’s newly gained sword. He remembered thinking how amazingly handsome he looked, much more than his RL face had any right to be. Now, however, he was in real life. And the reflection that looked back at him was… different. Ben moved his face, trying to look at different parts of his physique as the damn mirror was too broken to show everything at once and too dirty to really enjoy the view. Still, he had the distinct impression that his features seemed more refined somehow, sharper. More appealing. There was a certain… glint… in his eyes. He was looking dangerous.

Dangerous my ass. Ben barked a nervous laughter, suddenly realizing what was going on. He was letting the game get to him. Ben heard about VD players who spent so many hours in game sessions that they had trouble telling the differences between the imaginary world and the real one. He heard one story of a girl who jumped into a burning building, thinking she was as immune to fire as her character was. She wasn’t, of course, and she died screaming. The advocates of the anti-VD movements used this story as a major tool in their propaganda against the games’ creators. It did them little good.

Ben shook his head, promising himself that he wouldn’t become so engrossed so as to let something like that happen to him. Besides, I probably just didn’t get used to this bald shiny head of mine, he mused. He looked around for a clean towel, couldn’t find one, and eventually dried his hands on his clothes.

His next stop was the kitchen, where he grabbed some dried biscuits to sate his immediate hunger. Then back to his room, to complete a few tasks before he headed outside.

First, he checked his emails. His laptop was an old thing, but he couldn’t really complain as it wasn’t anything that was bought with honest money. Still, it supplied him with basic Internet needs and the only thing that interested him now was VD. Unfortunately, nothing important was waiting for him in his inbox, especially not an email from Raxlon to notify him when their next session was due.

Ben sighed sadly and then checked his phone. Unlike the laptop, this device was actually his - given to him by his sister when he decided to leave their home a little more than a year ago. Neither his father nor Abi had been surprised when Ben announced that he was leaving, but while his father was stoic about it (a polite way to say his father didn’t give a damn), Abi was sad and said as much. They weren’t the closest brother and sister but they had always had this special bond, an understanding of each other that didn’t require too much explaining. She had listened as he shortly told them that this whole family thing wasn’t working out for him; she nodded when he’d said he preferred to rent an apartment with Mike in the city’s suburbs. The next day, she gave him three things: a thin silver bracelet that matched a twin bracelet she wore herself (“a good luck charm”), a smartphone (“so I’d be able to check up on you, at least once a month”), and a kiss on his cheek (“you know I love you, bro”). Ben kept both the bracelet on his arm and the phone in his pocket, and Abi was true to her word: the phone rang once in a month and they met in this or that place, catching up on things. Once in a few months his father, somewhat reluctantly, would join these meetings - and that was the extent of family life Ben now had.

A message from Mike waited for him when he checked the device. ‘Hey fuckface. I Hope you killed goblins today and met some hot elves and whatnot. Do they even have blond elves in there? Anyway, I’m with Sandra tonight. Or Kimberly. Or both. I’ll see how it goes. Don’t wait for me. See you tomorrow kiddo, can’t wait to hear how it went.’

Ben grinned. That was Mike alright. He answered briefly: ‘It was intense. Amazingly so. I’ll probably be logged in again when you come tomorrow so we’ll catch up later. Say hi to Sandra for me. Or Kim. Or both :) See ya.’

Then Ben had to decide what he was going to do with the VD console. He couldn’t take it with him every time he left the house, but he was worried to leave it just lying around. Eventually, he settled on pushing it under his bed and piling some of his dirty clothes on top. They had a break-in a couple of months ago and the thieves found out that he and Mike had nothing worth stealing. Hopefully, the rumor spread and no one would want to spend their time trying to rob them again.

Finally, Ben was ready to venture out into the streets. He put on his one good coat, grabbed his wallet and went outside. His quest was to find food - and he knew exactly how to complete it.

The rain had nearly stopped, now only a light drizzle. Ben took a deep gulp of the cold air and put the coat’s hood over his head as he made his way across the street. Looking around him as he walked, he smiled to himself. While he never liked this neighborhood - he moved here only because it was so cheap - the early evenings were the best time to hang around here. The families - noisy kids and all - were mostly holed in their apartments, and the less-savory members of society didn't come out for a few hours yet. These were the hours when the “good guys”, as Ben liked to refer to himself and his friends, were out in the streets. Well maybe not good in the legal meaning of the word, but when compared to the thugs that patrolled the streets in later hours, Ben’s buddies were all good Samaritans.

He rounded a corner and smiled broadly. The gang was just where he thought they would be, crowded around a small table beneath the canopy of PizzaGreen. The table was loaded with several slices of pizza and nearly a dozen plastic mugs with beer. It looked like his friends had had an early start today.

“Look who it is! His majesty, king baldy himself!” Noah, a gangly man of 21 years, rose up from his chair and gave a mock bow. His glasses nearly fell when he did and he had to quickly catch them. Unfortunately, the hand that was sent to the job was also the one holding his beer, so Noah’s bow ended with beer spilling on the girl that sat next to him. The girl, a petite blond that had several pink stripes in her hair, cursed and drew away from the half-drunken Noah.

Ben laughed as he crossed the street to join them. “Careful now, DM Noah. Remember, karma is a bitch. And Sandra, you have to know better than to sit next to him when he drinks.” At least now I know who’s with Mike tonight, he mused.

The cute girl scowled at him. “I’ll remember next time.”

Ben grabbed a chair and looked hopefully at the table. A few slices were still left uneaten. “I’m starving.”

“Take mine, I’m full.” The speaker was Debby, a brunette girl that was so thin that Ben was always surprised that she even managed to eat as much as one slice. “I won’t even charge you for it this time.” Her casual words were thick with meaning and Ben blushed beneath his hood, remembering a certain bet a couple of nights ago and the following… adventure he and Debby had. The others quickly took up the meaning of the exchange and oohed accordingly. Everyone knew Ben’s weakness when it came to girls. The girls on their part loved to take advantage of his naïveté and Debby was the last one to try - and succeed - in luring him to spend a night with her.

Ben removed his hood, intending to hide his blushing by simply attacking the slice of pizza. He took a healthy bite and sighed in pleasure - but then froze in the middle of the bite.

The others were silent, looking at him strangely. Sandra’s eyes were big as saucers, Debby’s mouth slowly opened and the twins - Jerom and Jimmy - murmured a “WTF” in perfect unison. Ben looked from one to the other, eventually settling his eyes on Noah. “What?” He asked with his mouth full of cheese.

The tall man fixed the glasses that started to slide again from his nose. “Are you on steroids or something, bro? You look different.”

I wasn’t imagining, then. Ben swallowed and slowly put the slice of pizza down, his hunger forgotten. “Different how?” he asked in a quiet voice.

“Well - “ started Noah, but Debby cut him off.

“You look hot, Mister B.”

And of course, he blushed again. Debby wasn’t finished, though. “Maybe it’s this bald head of yours. I thought I liked your hair, cute curls on your forehead and all that, but now you look - “

“Badass.” It was Jimmy. The black-skinned youth and his twin were the newest members of their bunch and also the youngest, barely reaching 18 years. “If I knew how badass one can look without hair I would have gotten rid of mine a long time ago - “

“Can I touch it?” Sandra didn’t wait for affirmation but reached with her hand toward Ben. For some reason he didn’t want to be touched so he leaned back, away from her. Sandra, undeterred, leaned forward in her chair to compensate for the distance. She didn’t take into account the puddle of beer on the table, though, and her elbow suddenly slid. Her movement became wild and her arm hit a mug of beer. The thing flew across the table.

Several hands shot forward to catch the falling mug, but none were as fast as Ben. With what could only be described as super-human instincts - as Noah would later describe it - Ben caught the falling mug with ease and straightened it. “I’d rather not,” he said to Sandra and returned to his pizza, trying to ignore the stares of his friends. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was not as it was supposed to be.

“You know, you never did tell us why you shaved your head,” said Noah after some long moments of silence. “I know Mike knows, but ever since that business he had with Mistress R - “

Ben nearly choked on his cheese. “Say what?”

Noah looked at him strangely. The eldest of the group, he was also their DM when they played classic D&D together and after Mike he was Ben’s closest friend. And while he sometimes looked like the wind might blow him away, Noah was perhaps the smartest of them and he never had any inhibitions about speaking his mind. “You didn’t know? There were rumors about it downtown, and I heard it from several different sources so I tend to believe it. I’m surprised he didn’t tell you but hey, secrets are the thing these days.” His tone was bitter and somewhat cold. Ben deserved it, of course. He couldn’t tell his friends about the VD console. They would ask how he got it and then he would have to lie. Better not to tell and face their disappointment. This thing about Mike and Mistress R, though. What the fuck? If it was true then Mike would have some serious explaining to do.

Ben suddenly lost his appetite. Or his desire to hang out with his friends. “Listen guys, I’m sorry. But I’ve got to go. I don’t - can’t - “ he stopped, realizing he was stammering. Noah snorted in disgust, but Debby smiled warmly at him. “Don’t worry about it, Mister B. Everyone in this neighborhood has some secrets. Can I ask you one more thing, though?”

Ben nodded. “Of course, but I don’t know if I could - “

“If you ever let a woman touch your bald spot, can it be me?” Her voice was heavy with exaggerated sweetness and she batted her eyelashes at him suggestively.

There was another brief moment of silence. Then Jimmy started laughing, followed by his twin, then Sandra and eventually even Noah smiled. Ben gulped, managing a weak smile. He fixed his eyes on Debby, but for some reason instead of the thin brunette he imagined he was looking at a certain witty redhead. “I’ll see what I can do,” he answered meekly, and Debby laughed.

Ben stood up. “I’ll see you all tomorrow,” he said, putting his hood back on.

“What, not even one beer?” asked Jimmy. “That’s even stranger than your shaved head.”

Ben would love a beer, but he just couldn’t look them in the eye anymore. “I have to go.”

He left them there and nearly ran back home. He kept seeing their surprised looks when he’d lowered his hood and when he’d caught the mug of beer. Then he thought of the way he felt when he looked in the mirror, or about his sudden attention to details as he walked about his apartment. Once again, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was seriously different about him.

Ben’s mind was a vortex of thoughts when he came back home. A thought nagged at him, a certain explanation to the things he was feeling. He shook his head, dismissing it. He thought about the girl who ran into a burning building. “I’m imagining things,” he whispered to himself.

During the next two hours Ben tried to distract himself from his thoughts. He showered, then made coffee and sat with his laptop and dove into the world of VD, wanting to learn as much of its lore as he could. Now that he’d played it was easier to know what to search for but sadly, the net was clustered with so many different facts and guides that it was hard to know what was true and what wasn’t. Ben tried to search “RLP”, remembering what Shiraz told him about Red’s special powers. He found several different sites that suggested that there might be an option to purchase VD powers with RL money, but all of them required a password. He sighed and moved to read about leadership status, hidden titles, known traits and everything else he still didn’t know about the game.

Finally, at about midnight, Ben yawned and decided it was time to sleep. Just before he turned off the computer, a new email arrived. Ben eagerly clicked on it and felt a smile widen his tired face. The message from Raxlon was short and clear: “Tomorrow. 8:00 am. Be there or we’ll start without you.”

Ben felt immediate relief wash over his body. He didn’t realize up to that moment how much he wanted to be back in the game. He quickly replied: “I’ll be there!’ and sighed contentedly.

There was one more moment of uncertainty before Ben finally went to sleep. He was lying in his bed, deep in thought, and decided to check his phone. At that moment, a fleeting moonlight filtered through the broken shutters of his bedroom window and Ben saw his reflection in the touch screen. He gasped, straightening in his bed and feeling his heart hammering in fright.

Just below his right eye, he could clearly see a mark he knew too well - a mark that was supposed to exist only in a virtual world. A broken arrow with a droplet of blood next to it.

Ben leaped out of his bed and ran to the bathroom. He turned on the light and looked at himself, hard and long.

His skin was smooth. There was no mark.

Ben sighed. “I’m imagining things,” he whispered again.

It took him at least an hour to fall asleep. When he did, it was with a deeply troubled mind.