It was Kyle who’d come up with the game.

Kyle who I’d met one day, scavenging through an outdoor adventures store for equipment, and who had followed me home like a lost puppy. He looked up to me, I guess. Or something. And I grew fond of him after a while. It was nice to have someone to watch my back, to take a night watch, to chat with on the balcony overlooking the river while we pretended that the world hadn’t gone to shit around us.

He was an exchange student, living with an Argentine family when the world fell to pieces. At least, that was the story he told me. And I had no reason to question him. He never talked about anything before that. Just like I didn’t. I didn’t press him, either.

But, in any event, the game was his idea. I’ll never forget how excited he’d been when he came up with it.

By the time I met Kyle, I knew that there was an escape plan. How to get away from this screwed-up world. Many escape plans, in fact. Each one stupider than the last. I knew that some governments were launching massive space stations, decades ahead of schedule. I knew that some people were fleeing to nuclear bunkers in the mountains to wait out a couple hundred years like rats in holes — or, more likely, until the mutants finally found and overwhelmed them. I was also vaguely aware that some powerhouse virtual reality gaming company was offering people the chance at “a new life in a world far away.”

That one was the stupidest of all.

Only it wasn’t. At least according to Kyle.

It’s called AvatR! he’d told me, and through his excitement I could see the gleam of belief in his eyes. Obsession, even. Some tech billionaire obsessed with the afterlife had spent his entire fortune developing software to transport the human consciousness into “other realms of reality.”

Whatever that meant.

Apparently it was originally a two-way process. Your body was “disassembled” — yeah, sounded peachy to me, too — and reassembled as an avatar in a virtual plane of existence. Or a not-so virtual one. I was never quite clear on that. Then, when you wished to return — days, weeks, or even months later — you were transported back — again, light on the details — and your mind reinserted into a biologically-identical clone. Clones had been around for decades, of course, but never in that sort of copy-paste capacity. They had your DNA, sure, but their minds were their own.

I mean, how could it possibly work? What did it even mean? Tossing your consciousness around like a hot potato… And I’d never been able to figure out what was in it for the company either, saving all those people. Money, after all, lost quite a lot of value in a world without an economy. And that scared me, not knowing their angle. Scared me almost as much as the idea of falling out of orbit in an ill-prepared, under-manned heap of government-funded scrap metal.

Yeah, I preferred to trust myself. Only myself.

But Kyle had been a firm believer in the veracity of their claims. And I… Well, I’d gone ahead and been a hypocrite. Cause I trusted Kyle, too.

We have to do it, Colin! he’d told me. You and me! Just think. Adventuring together, winning loot, levelling up, building kingdoms… He’d trailed off and I could imagine where his mind had wandered.

Hot fantasy babes? I could have finished for him. Don’t judge, that’s where your mind wanders when you haven’t seen a living woman in more than a year. Did I mention that since the world this company had developed was originally intended as a video game (and also sprang from the imagination of a crazy rich tech nerd) their “new life far away” was in a swords-and-sorcery fantasy world?

Yeah. Like Dungeons and Dragons had sex with an Oculus Rift.

Of course, that’s when Kyle explained that due to the pushed-up launch date — and, you know, the impending end to civilization — the whole clone thing had been put on ice. Insertion into this humblingly medieval existence was a one-way trip. And that was why Kyle had developed his game. Because the final part of “the immersive AvatR Experience” was a series of in-game bonuses and penalties assigned to your character based on… You.

Again, frustratingly vague on the details. But something along the lines of: “you are your character.” If you’re fit, your character gets Strength bonuses; if you’re fat, your character loses Speed.

We gamify the real world, Kyle had proposed, so that when we go through those gates into a new life we know we’re prepared. We build our own ideal characters out here, then transport them into AvatR!

I had stared at him like he’d just told me he wanted to turn real life into a video game.

Only… he had.

It makes perfect sense, he explained, while I sat there thinking about how little sense it made. We develop skills, we practice combat, we learn languages, we learn the fundamentals of science and physics to simulate magic…

And I’d listened, fascinated by his passion for this outlandish, impossible idea.

Promise me, Colin, he said, holding out his hand. Promise me, we’ll do this thing. And then, we’ll take on AvatR. Together.

And me, sappy idiot that I was, I took his hand. And shook it. And made the promise. And then, not long after, Kyle was gone. But my promise, that hadn’t died. I told myself that if I lived to “Level 10” playing Kyle’s silly game, I’d try out this AvatR thing. Or I’d die, trying.

I owed it to the boy. My friend.

What else did I have to live for, anyway?

* * *

I lived in a high-rise in a neighborhood across the river from the presidential palace. It was a tall, modern building that was all glass and steel and sharp angles. Once, the cream of the city’s elite had lived in this part of town. Now, I lived here. Along with literally no one else, as far as I knew.

It wasn’t until the front doors that I realized I was bleeding.

I’d been stumbling along in a daze, thinking about the implications of what had just happened.

I’m there, I thought. Level 10. Almost a year after Kyle’s death, I had followed through on my mission. And now I had to decide if I would keep my promise.

After all, it’s one thing to live a whole year of your life trying to fulfil a promise to your dead friend. It’s another thing to kill yourself over that promise.

Because, let’s be honest, that whole AvatR thing was just a pipe dream. It was a fantasy designed to trick naïve, gullible people into spending their savings on a final hope at a fantasy life beyond our fucked up world. Who knew? Maybe the Krishn4 Corporation — the company who built AvatR — had simply executed thousands of people in a deranged attempt at a mass mercy killing.

I was turning these thoughts over and over in my mind when I raised my hand from my side to scan my palm and enter the lobby. I instantly realized two things.

First, I’d been holding my side in the first place.

Second, my hand left a wet, red handprint on the glass scanner, crimson liquid slowly dripping down the cool pane.

* * *

My mind was oddly analytical as I stared at my blood-stained fingers. My eyes calmly followed a bead of the stuff as it trickled and fell, plop to the ground. Then, I turned slowly and looked back the way I’d come.

Maybe, once, I wouldn’t have noticed. But I’d been living in this hell for almost two years. I’d trained myself to pick out the details. Details like the boot print half-outlined in sludgy ichor on the street, the streak of red on the dented blue BMW I’d stumbled into and rested against half a block back.

A blood trail, I thought. I left a blood trail for them to follow.

I didn’t panic. I didn’t think, Oh my god you damn fool you’re fucking dead. It was just an observation. Like I would have made upon noticing I’d tracked mud into the lobby for the cleaner bots to sweep up. The rage and the fear that usually drove me, that made me careful and meticulous and dangerous…

I was disconnected from them. Like my body and emotions were far away and I was floating above them, looking down with disinterest.

I’d heard about this. About the mutants leaving some sort of natural numbing agent in their wounds. Like how you don’t feel a mosquito bite until later. Only… a million times worse than a mosquito bite. Because a mosquito bite doesn’t turn you into a giant, feral mosquito with an instinctive desire to rend and devour anything you can get your clawed hands on.

I leaned my spear against the glass-paned wall of the lobby, mopped up the blood with my sleeve and used my dry hand to scan myself in. The doors slid open silently and I entered. They slid shut behind me with a series of soft clicks that belied their security. One of the benefits of modern technology — with upgraded materials and systems, the lightweight, beautiful glass foyer was probably strong enough to stop anything short of a bazooka.

Instinctively, though, I checked that my scanners were still in place: simple laser tripwires that would send an urgent alert up to my apartment if something crossed the threshold. Still there. Tiny spheres stuck unobtrusively to the walls at waist height and blending into the paint behind them. Gentle red pulses signaled their readiness to detect intruders. Another one was attached to the door, ready to pick up any impact stronger than a gentle push.

Walking across the lobby, I vaguely wondered what the hell I was going to do. I looked down again, pulling away the shredded, blood-saturated tee shirt, and saw the deep claw mark across my side, right above my hip. The mutant had gotten me good, and blood was welling between my fingers, running down my leg and soaking my pants.

Looking at it, I felt a slight ache. But that was the most my dulled pain receptors could manage.

I’m dead, I thought. And the idea was disturbing enough to merit a furrowed brow. That’s messed up. I wanted to get riled, but really all I felt like doing was sitting down and passing out. Should I be this tired? Maybe it’s the loss of blood. I should probably do something about that.

My hand smacked down on the Up button for the elevator.

Ding.

The elevator car had been waiting for me in the lobby. Where I’d left it. It wasn’t like anyone else had used it in the meantime. I leaned against the wall for a moment, then pushed myself off and stepped inside.

I heard a gentle whirr, and when I glanced around I saw that one of the cleaner bots was following along behind me, scrubbing diligently at the disgusting boot prints I was leaving on the marble tiling. The bot was a black disk the size of a dinner plate, about as thick as one of those antique dictionaries that contains all the words in the English language.

What was it, Webster’s?

I had no idea why the designers had thought it necessary, but the bots were playful little things. They dashed around, oftentimes weaving between your feet when you tried to walk and chirping little electronic noises in response to your voice.

“Yo, Webster,” I said, and I gestured vaguely at the thing. “Come on in.”

I have no idea if the thing actually understood me, but it chirped happily and zipped into the elevator just before the doors closed. It bumped against the toe of my boot, like it was acknowledging my invitation, then busily set to work scrubbing all around the outline of my sole.

I stared at it, zoning out until the elevator slid to a stop and opened onto my floor. Webster followed me, scrubbing diligently, as I made my way across the red-carpeted hall and pushed open the door.

We were just entering my apartment when the alarm went off.

* * *

It blared at me, loud and sudden, and actually jarred my mind free from the fog that had settled in.

“Crap!” I hissed, suddenly feeling the hot blood welling over my fingers and the hard, biting pain of the wound in my side. I grunted, doubling over, as the wailing of the siren in my ears continued. I swore some more, stumbling to the marble-topped kitchen counter and smashing on the keyboard at my security station. Sparkling, HD footage — one of the last reminders of the high-quality life we’d all lived just a few short years ago — popped up on the trio of monitors.

The front steps of my building were swarming with mutants. A dozen of them. More. And even as I watched, they were attacking the glass front doors.

“What’s attracting all of them?” I grunted to Webster, watching as one particularly aggressive creature body-slammed the glass and bounced off, rolling down the steps under the feet of the crowd. “Are they really smart enough to come after me in a group? Did I piss them off that badly?”

The cleaner bot beeped in response and buzzed off around the kitchen, whirring and sucking up dirt and the crumbs like a fat kid slurping down a milkshake.

Okay, so maybe I could have invested some more time in cleaning my apartment. Sue me.

“Thanks for the insight,” I muttered at my new friend, gritting my teeth as a wave of pain stabbed up my body and right into my brain. When my eyes stopped watering, they twitched back to the monitors. Maybe I’d underestimated their primal intellect. Would they really gang up like this, just to take down one troublesome survivor?

But still, I felt reasonably safe. Safe enough to step away from the computer screens and rip open my cabinet of medical supplies. Bandages, gauze, duct tape… I didn’t have anything to stop the viral bacteria that were doubtless flowing through my system, but I could at least staunch the blood loss. Give myself some space to think.

I could feel myself getting lightheaded, and the alarm sounds were growing duller and duller in my ears.

I grunted in pain as I pressed a white bandage to the wound, glancing back to the monitors for a distraction. Luckily, in spite of their ferocity, the mutants shouldn’t be a problem. Like I’d said, the doors downstairs would hold against anything short of —

“Oh fuck me…”

Remember those things I mentioned, the ones that shouldn’t exist? The ones that came out of jungles that had been radiated to shit.

Yeah, somehow I’d managed to piss one of those things off, too.

The gigantic beast looked something like a jaguar, something like an alligator, and something like a goddam triceratops. It had the snarling maw of a jungle cat, scales and whipping tail like a prehistoric swamp lizard, and a three-horned forehead with what I swear was nature’s version of armor-plating. Just to make sure it was completely overpowered, it was also at least 15 feet long, and the mutants around it only stood to its shoulder.

I swallowed, and may have made a tiny squeaking noise that I immediately blamed on Webster.

Then, the trijaguagator powered up my front steps like a battering ram and into the front doors, and, well… It was like they’d been smashed in by a goddam tank.

Glass exploded across the foyer, scattering across the stone floor. As mutants swarmed over the shattered glass and my alarm system went insane, I slapped a strip of duct tape across my side with a hiss and an involuntary gag of pain. The right side of my body was tingling, like it was falling asleep, but I flexed my fingers and forced pressure into my fist.

“Well, Webster.” I said aloud. I gripped the counter as I pushed my way back to the door and snatched up my spear. “I guess we just have two options.”

Almost certain death via dismemberment and consumption by a ravening horde of subhuman monsters. Or probable death via instantaneous vaporization with the tiniest sliver of potential for a life of fortune, glory, adventure and gorgeous fantasy babes.

Easiest decision of my life.

“Ya know, Webster,” I commented, putting my shoulder against the heavy wooden bureau by the front door. “I think I’ve always wanted to fuck an elf.”

Smash.

My wound carved a ragged slice of bloody pain through my torso as the bureau crashed down against the door, a makeshift barricade. Then I turned, panting, and hobbled deeper into the lavish apartment, using my spear as a walking staff. The small cleaner bot chirped, seemed to hesitate at the idea of leaving the kitchen floor crumb-covered and dirty, then followed.

One way or another, it was time to die.