Stomping and pulling away, Aya tried to break free of the guard’s iron grip as he moved, unperturbed, down a long hallway. His long, sturdy strides weren’t affected by her turbulent wriggling in the least. She was resenting the fact that the man had chosen her left arm to hold on to. If he had chosen the other, she would have had Henry fighting in her corner as well.

“Look,” she pleaded as he guided her down the dark rock hallway. “I didn’t do it!”

Her words solicited absolutely no reaction from the man. He was coated from head to toe with the same gleaming armor she had seen on the guards on her way in and out of town. She could see her reflection in the metal every couple of yards, when they passed by a torch that made a measly attempt to light the somber place.

“I swear,” she appealed, trying to use her childish looks to her advantage. “I didn’t even know it was in there, it’s not even my dress!”

The green velvet was still hugging her in all the places a woman’s dress should. Unfortunately, it made her look like a Lolita, trying to display womanly features she did not possess. At the time, when Furia had shown her the dress and personally fitted it to her body, she had thought it beautiful. It was a sleeveless dress that was held up by a single strap over her left shoulder. The entire dress was embroidered with golden thread, which created beautiful floral patterns all along the wide skirt.

She couldn’t deny that she felt like a princess and after Furia had offered her a bath, she couldn’t help but feel like the woman was the best friend she ever had. The dress reminded her of the prom she never had the chance to attend, not when there was Rin to look after. At the time, it had been one of the nicest things that anyone had done for her in a very long time.

She should have known better.

Aya tugged repeatedly at her arm until she realized it was a pointless action. Looking back down the tunnel they had come from, she knew her small legs would never let her outrun the man beside her. Suddenly deflated, she dropped her arm along with any attempt at escape. The cards had been dealt and it was time to come to terms with the fact that lemonade was going to have to be her drink of choice for the foreseeable future.

The guard glanced in her direction, caught off guard by her sudden lack of struggle. His grip around her arm tightened, as if suspicious of her intentions. Aya sighed but let him continue to lead her down the unending tunnel. A couple minutes later, they came across steps and followed a staircase down. The steps were worn in the middle where numerous people had passed through the years.

It reminded Aya of the ancient beauty of the count’s house. The high ceilings, crown moldings, chandeliers and beautiful designs painted precisely on the walls. The banquet had been the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. She had expected a sit-down dinner but the festivities had been more akin to a ball. There hadn’t been many players present; most of the guests had been NPCs. Aya finally realized why the trio had been so excited about attending the party with her.

She sighed, despairing over her own naivete. Head slumped down, she tripped over her feet when the staircase came to an end and she was handed off to another guard. Looking up, she saw a corridor lined by cells on each side. About half of them were occupied. As the new guard continued down the aisle, she couldn’t help a bout of giggles that escaped. It took playing a game in prison for her to enter what she actually thought prisons were supposed to look like, with unhappy inmates glaring at her through rusty metal bars.

The guard eyed her suspiciously as he pushed her into a cell and locked the door behind him. He didn’t linger after the lock fell into place with a loud clang. Looking around her cell, she snorted at the irony of the whole situation before walking to a corner of her cell and sliding to the rough rock ground. Leaning her head against the wall, she stared blankly at the ceiling, waiting for time to pass.

99 Hours : 58 Minutes : 45 Seconds

Until Verdict Is Passed

There was nothing else she could do.

“For now,” she whispered hoarsely.

In the dark corner of a solitary cell, no one could see the steely look in her eyes. No one but Henry. For once, he chose to hold his peace.

---

Two game hours later, Chris received the dinner notification and logged out. Her mood from the game carried over to real life and she followed the guard that lined them up mutely to the cafeteria. She paid no attention to the setting sun on the walls or the fresh mountain breeze in the air. Her mind was elsewhere and she mechanically followed those in front of her. First she got a tray, then her b-link calculated her nourishment needs and the machine dispensed the same gray slop she had for breakfast.

“So how was it!?” a shrill voice suddenly spoke up beside her.

Chris looked over mutely, finding a head of red-streaked brown hair looking at her expectantly.

“Tiring,” she said honestly. “You?”

“It was great!” Yaz said excitedly, following Chris to a table she randomly chose to sit at.

“Oh yea?” Chris asked, tastelessly shoving the food into her mouth. It still tasted bad but nothing compared to her lunch feast.

“I did exactly what you said! Schliessheim is just like you said it would be! There were only like… ten other people that started out there today,” she said, waving her arms around exuberantly. “It was so great. I never actually followed the game’s quest paths before, you know?”

Chris nodded, trying to focus on the girl’s talking. Her hands worked on shoveling her food while she kept her eyes targeted at Yaz. She hoped it would help with concentrating on the there and then as opposed to the game.

“… Like that’s how it’s supposed to be played you know!?”

Chris nodded, realizing she had missed a couple of her words here and there.

“So I started out with that intro quest, and at first I was like ugh this is gonna be such a draaaag! But then… I followed the quests, you know? And they sorta linked up, one after the other, and soon enough, I was banking some serious cash, EXP and scoring with my gatekeeper all at once.”

Chris swallowed the mouthful of gruel like a ton of bricks, fearing the rest of the monologue.

“In the beginning, I really wanted to team up with some people, you know? But the initial quests are, like you said, mostly solitary,” she stopped momentarily to put some food into her mouth as well. “Ugh. This stuff is vile… Oh yea! I can’t believe you drank one of those pukepacks for lunch! That’s like… so hardcore. I couldn’t even look at the things without getting queazy. Guess you got some more game time in, though. What level did you end up at?”

Thankfully, Chris already had a spoonful of gruel halfway to her mouth, so she simply shoved it in, making the same face of disgust she had seen Yaz make seconds before.

“Ugh. I know right!?” she sympathized. “Well anyway, I was actually kind of dunno… lonely, I guess, you know? It’s crazy how much the regs don’t like us convict players.”

Chris nodded emphatically, trying to keep the conversation going in the same direction.

“They’re so aggravating.”

“No kidding,” the woman to Yaz’s left interjected loudly before going back to her own gruel.

“But like, doesn’t really matter cuz you can totally work around them,” Yaz continued more boisterously when she saw she had an audience. “There are so many convict players… only shame is they all have super restricted playing hours. I mean… with ten game hours a day… what can you really get done, right?!”

Chris didn’t even bother answering. Knowing the monologue would continue with or without her she focused on getting her food down. Her eyes wandered to the edge of the cafeteria where a group of convicts had just left to E-block. It would take them another ten minutes or so to gather another group. If she didn’t go with the next one, she would have to wait an additional ten minutes. Chris looked back at Yaz, who was still talking. She needed to spend as little time as possible with the girl.

“Then around level seven, the quests started getting way more group-oriented. You know? ” she continued in the same loud voice. “I started out just needing one or two partners but soon I had to like, build parties. It’s actually kind of cool how the AI guides you through all that stuff, right?”

Yaz looked excitedly at some of the convicts beside her. They glared at her. Surprised, she shrank into herself a bit before she directed her attention to her plate and shoveling some more gruel. Looking back at them, she lowered her voice a little and continued.

“Well anyway. It was okay cuz like… it helped me find a guild.”

“Oh yea?” Chris asked, sitting up a little straighter in her chair. “What guild?”

“Well, its really not every guild that accepts cons you know?”

“Yea…”

“So like… It’s not like I had much choice,” Yaz said between mouthfuls. “It was either Jailbait or Serving Time.”

Chris’s spine tensed and she focused on carefully chewing her food so her lips wouldn’t contort with anger.

“Which one did you end up with?” Chris asked with forced apathy.

“Well, at first I really wasn’t sure, right?” she pointed her spork around, proving an unidentifiable point. “I was gonna wait to ask you over lunch but you’d already logged back in… so then I met this other chick…” Yaz raised her head, as if suddenly remembering something and looked around the room to find it. When her search stretched into a couple of seconds, she shook her head slightly and shrugged.

“Oh well, doesn’t matter,” she said before taking another sad attempt at the gruel. Her spork loads were midget sized; if they didn’t grow any bigger, it would take her all night to finish her b-link allotted portion. It was visibly greener than Chris’s and a part of her mind wondered what nutrient differences there were between the two. “You’ll meet her soon enough,” Yaz continued after another nibble. “You’re gonna love her. She actually hooked me up with Izmeltine, a con in Era. She’s the one who recruited me into Serving Time.”

Chris’ jaw locked and she almost bit her tongue with her pent-up frustration.

“But yea, it’s crazy. There’s like at least one player from Goldilocks in every major town. Especially the starting locations. It’s awesome cuz it gives you someone to pair up with that doesn’t have to log out after five minutes. Oh yea. What about you? Did you run into anyone from here?”

“Nope, not yet,” Chris said with a controlled voice.

“Huh. Weird,” the girl played with her food, as she looked at it with concentration. “Well, you just have to go talk to the prisoner guilds. Serving Time is the biggest by far in Schliessheim but you’d have to look at the forums to find out which one’s leading in your area. I mean we’re pretty close so the demographics can’t be that dif… Like. In the Elflands, there are totally different guilds. I actually think that’s where most of Goldi’s players are. It’s weird, Izmeltine was telling me about it. But anyway. Just join Serving Time or something! We could be guild-mates!”

“Nah,” Chris said. “I think I’m gonna make my own guild.”

The moment the words left her mouth, she regretted them. The girl’s look of admiring surprise meant she would remember them. It had been an easy way out of getting into one of the convict guilds where she would be surely monitored by other prisoners, but it also brought unneeded attention onto her and revealed too many of her plans to people who didn’t need to know. She should have learned after Doris to be more careful with information. She banged her head against a wall mentally while keeping a calm outer exterior. Her emotions had clouded her judgment, yet again. If it hadn’t been for the anger festering in her blood, she would have been more careful.

“Ohmigod. Ohmigod. Ohmigod!” Yaz exclaimed. “So cool! I’m totally gonna join when I get there okay? It might take me a little longer than expected, though, there’s some serious quests going on in Schliessheim and like… no offense but… the drought is already annoying enough as it is where I am and it’s like supposedly way worse in Durrenheim… so I’m gonna like… stay away from there for as long as possible.”

Chris laughed, forcing herself to react less suspiciously.

“Nah, I get you,” she said as she shoveled the last of the gruel into her mouth, eyes glued to the growing line by the E-block exit. “I’m having trouble with that myself. Ugh, you wouldn’t believe the shit I’ve had to go through because of water. But it’s all good, really helped with the leveling process.”

“Oh yea man. Tell me about it!” Yaz said. “But you know? I think I’m pretty happy with how it all turned out. Did you know they like… track your progress? I was talking to Doris and she told me about it,” her eyes scanned the room again distractedly before almost immediately giving up on the search. “I mean, you can only see your own rank and everyone else’s is like scrambled. But I’m already like rank 227… from the bottom I mean. And as long as we get to 500 in the next six days we’ll be fine. What’s your rank?”

Chris swallowed her last spork of gruel, as she looked at the line across the room.

“I don’t know,” she replied slowly. “Didn’t know you could check it. Could you show me how?”

“Oh yea! Sure!” Yaz said excitedly. “So. First you just access the interface of the b-link. You already know how to do that right?”

“Yea I just do…” Chris replied while accessing her interface. “Oh shoot!” she said standing up. “Sorry Yaz. Gotta go, my lawyer just sent some… Well. Doesn’t matter. Can you show me tomorrow?” Chris asked while hurriedly getting her tray together so she could deposit at the cleaning station.

“Wh—” Yaz said, caught off guard. “Yea, for sure!”

“Thanks and…”Chris said. “Sorry,” she added a rueful look for good measure and then turned around and walked away with quick steps before the girl decided to follow her out. Seconds later, she deposited her tray at the station and filled the E-block line just before another woman did.

She wore wrinkled clothes, had greasy bland brown hair and glared like Chris had just killed her first-born child. Chris shrugged innocently at her, pretending the glare didn’t affect her and left her behind as she followed the line out of the cafeteria. She could feel the glare at the back of her head but it scared her a lot less than any of Yaz’s questions.

The girl had a big mouth.

The moment the cafeteria door closed behind her, she sighed in relief. The crowded noise, overwhelming processed seaweed smell and crowding of way too many bodies was replaced by a tight hallway. But at least her customizations were what overwhelmed her now, and Chris focused on the smell of the early night in a warm tropical forest. The smell of crushed leaves and wet dirt and the humid feeling in the air. She let all of the sensations wash over her for a minute before she focused her attention back on her b-link.

The one thing she hadn’t lied about was Lucky. She opened a pinging message from an inbox she did not even know she had.

Official Counsel-Visitation Request

Issued by Castiel Suerte

Inmate: Christina Bolen

Identification Number: 5826

Accept | Decline

Chris’ heartbeat sped up with the knowledge she would be hearing about her sister soon. Everything she was going through was for something bigger than herself. If she got discouraged at such tiny roadblocks, she wasn’t going to make it to the end and she owed it to her sister to do just that. But most of all, she owed it to herself.

She was Christina Bolen. She could get through anything. Taking a deep, reaffirming breath, she chose the Accept option. Chris wondered how the visitation would work in conjunction with her game hours, but realized it would probably be just like meal time had been. It was her first week after all; she couldn’t let the visit eat too much of her game time. She had a lot of catching up to do.

Yaz had made it to at least level seven and she even took a proper lunch break. The truly frightening aspect of it though was that she never got to find out what the girl’s actual level was at the end of the day. Her own was still at six and if the girl’s ranking was still at 227, things didn’t look all too good for her. She really couldn’t afford to waste too much time with Suerte.

When her thoughts caught up with her, she almost ran into the woman in front of her. Chris didn’t immediately stop with the line at the security gate. All she could think about was how she was suddenly prioritizing the game over her lawyer and thus her sister. She knew she could justify it with the fact that she was playing the game for her sister but unfortunately, she was also self-aware enough to know the true reason.

She wanted to play. She wanted to be free, to be herself. She wanted to get better and stronger, strong enough to beat anyone that got in her way. Her fists clenched and she followed the line as it continued its way to E-block.

Era was fun, she couldn’t deny it. Sometimes, she almost lost herself in the game and forgot about the real objectives, only caring about the next stat, next quest or the next level. She needed all the time she could get that week if she wanted to keep playing the amount she wanted to. Chris was almost ashamed of the relief she felt when she opened the message she got in her inbox moments later.

Official Counsel-Visitation Approval

Issued by Castiel Suerte

Inmate: Christina Bolen

Identification Number: 5826

Visitation Hours are over. There are no Counsel-Visitations on Weekends.

Visitation is set for 21st of May, XXXX.

It was Friday. A slow smile took over her face, but when she noticed it, she quickly reprimanded herself for it. It was sad, but even imprisoned in both worlds, she felt more free in Era than she ever had in the real one.

The line passed the last security gate, but by the time the guard safely deposited Chris back into the cell she shared with Tiny, she was already deeply embedded in the guild forums Yaz had mentioned. She needed to find out all that she could about Serving Time, particularly, three of their members.