“Kevin!” I heard a voice call to me amid the low din of people recounting the news. The background information, something that I hadn’t needed to pay attention to the whole time that I was in the game, was awash with timestamps, scans with all forms of known energy, as well as a strain I hadn’t yet felt inside my habitat or in VR as a whole. The strain of my habitat System running at its limit.

“What is going on?” I asked as I stepped off the travel disk and onto a patch of spilled popcorn. It seemed that whatever had occurred had taken place at such a speed that my AI hadn’t thought to even clean up the environment.

“Shifting to your navigation deck.” I heard Tutor say as the environment around us changed immediately to the navigation deck nearby the cargo hold viewing area. I had yet to study this addition of my VR space but I could tell right away that there was a purpose for each display and console. No, there weren’t any Warp Drives or Tractor Beams to control but there were maps with information mined by George that seemed to be just for me. In fact, everything seemed to be laid out for my benefit so that I could see everything useful at once. - I thought as I walked up to the display island where Tutor was standing. George seemed to be having fits, his hands and body shuddering as he forced the habitats System to its limits while he studied the data he was gathering.

“George, calm down,” I said as I neared the counter. I could feel the stress on the System ease as he obeyed my command, turning and standing up from the vast array of displays that he had running in front of us. To me it looked as if he had a grid of 20 IMAX screens open off in the distance, each displaying news and feeds of something that was happening now.

“Something horrible has happened back at Magus the 2nds Core.” Tutor started before George, his forehead sweating, took over and brought up a news video that had a very recent timestamp, just moments before I was yanked from the game. On the screen was a Tela avatar with blurbs of title and text annotating that this was a global Tela System announcement.

-Citizens of Tela, it is with great pride that I, Magus the new 2nd, announce that I have developed a new patented cr mining method that will usher us all into a new era.-

The screen went on to show countless harvester carriers hard at work converting raw cr into viable cr currency. Before our eyes the harvester carriers converted their structures and grew more massive, using the excess cr to increase their size and output capability. We watched as precious resources used internally inside the cr microbots were endlessly delivered to the growing harvester carrier structures. It was mind-blowing to witness how fast the uptick of mining was occurring. It seemed that with each increase of cr, the ability to harvest more cr went up exponentially.

Interestingly, they didn’t once show how the cr was being harvested but when I discovered who this Magus the new 2nd was, it all became clear to me. I had really messed up.

-This cr is all being harvested, with my ingenuity, under the provision and oversight by my superior, Magus the 1st. In a matter of hours I have been able to harvest 21 percent of this sun’s remaining cr. This even after the star had been labeled a class 5 star with limited or no harvestable cr remaining.-

The footage covered the incredible amounts of cr again before he continued.

-I am expecting all wealthy Tela investors to contact me for leasing rights to this new technique. Presently I am 4% away from the core and planning to sweep around the equator, harvesting all viable raw cr. What am I, Magus the new 2nd going to do with all of this newfound wealth you are all asking? I am investing heavily into Magus the 1st’s war machine. There is a war coming with an invading species that could harm the Tela sovereignty. I have seen it first hand. I have seen a true monster. This monster has a name and his name is... What? What is that!?!”-

The announcement changed tone and suddenly broke away from Magus the new 2nd to show something happening to the surface of the sun as it was being harvested. A tendril of fire jetted away from the surface of the sun, something that I remembered seeing happen before with the sloth leeches. This seemed to be different however as more tendrils started to sprout away from the sun, it was as though the leeches were trying to escape something coming out from within the heart of the star. All across the surface of the sun, the leeches boiled and attempted to flee, causing solar flares to burst forth like fish leaping from water.

Something did emerge. For a moment a truly massive mouth could be seen breaking through the surface of the sun before a gigantic harvester carrier lost half of its mass. Not even a second later the other half of the harvester disappeared, leaving behind crumbs of the deck from where it had been chewed apart.

Each time the mouth emerged through the surface of the sun, it seemed to have grown in size from the time before.

“Cr propulsion! They need to stop using cr propulsion!” The words escaped my lips as I frantically remembered what drew the attention of the monster I had seen before.

“It is already too late Kevin.” Silver said as he came up to stand beside me near the table. His face was red and he seemed to be having difficulties. “This was reported just a little bit ago and since then this monster has grown in size and begun to devour sections of the Core. What you are seeing in the news feed was recorded in VR time. This monster is even faster than the one you recorded before during your surveying job.”

“The Core and any Citizen who didn’t flee to another Core the moment this thing emerged is gone.” George softly said as a distant shot of the event was shown, seemingly recorded from a ship sitting a distance out in orbit. It showed the truly massive structure of the Core being eaten from the inside out. With every section that was torn away, a larger section was devoured the next time.

“Stop using cr propulsion…” I whispered at the screen as we all watched people's homes, billions of lives, getting swallowed in an instant. It was like watching a stop animation of an apple being eaten but at an advanced rate of speed. You could only see the mouth for a brief moment leaving the sun before it vanished, biting another section off from the hull of the Core.

What had been an impossibly large structure just moments before, soon was just a scattered smattering of lone chunks floating away at random. The sun looked strange, not the pretty sphere that it had been when I had first seen it, but a warped and struggling mass of fire as the monster picked off any leeches that remained before settling in, waiting for its next meal.

I found my legs stopped choosing to hold me up as my mind wrestled and failed with the realization of what had just occurred. My AI and Silver tried to talk to me, I blocked them out, willing myself away.

I willed myself out into a desert. A vast forever expanse of sand, heat, and sky. There I sat and simply stared off into the distance.

I couldn’t get past this.

I couldn’t forgive myself.

I had forgotten to do something, something vital when I came back to my habitat. I had forgotten to write replies to Xa and Hxerdinand. I had thought that I would invite them over for dinner, celebrating my escape. We would all have had such a wonderful time. Elaya would laugh, and Xa and Hxerdinand would look on as I told my stories and tales of my time as a Convict.

Now? Now they were probably dead. I had tried to get ahold of each of them repeatedly during my time before I banished myself to the desert. I only got an error every time telling me that the recipients could not be reached.

This had led me to the desert. The most barren expanse of lifeless desert that I could imagine. I sat there for days, simply lost inside my mind. I knew Tutor, George, and Silver wanted to help me, to try to console me, but I kept them away. Choosing to punish and blame myself for the tragedy that had occurred.

It was on the third day when something unexpected happened. The sky started to darken and the wind began to pick up. A storm had come to my desert and it suited my mood perfectly. Darkness rolled over the neverending expanse of sky as rain began to sprinkle down around me. Stray drops hit the photograph that I was holding, wetting the surface and spilling down the length of the image. It rained and stormed around me, just what I needed to finally cry and to let the pain out that I had been fighting inside.

The rain didn’t affect the picture that I was holding, the same picture of Xa that I had taken ever so long ago.

“Would you like to join me Invicta?” I asked softly, having felt the presence of the new AI existing inside the storm.

A little stormy and smoky woman figure, no bigger than a barbie doll, materialized and sat on my right forearm, leaning back against my bicep. She didn’t look at me, simply choosing to join me in staring off into the distance. I was thankful to her for not trying to speak to me, not making this about how she could help me or persuade me that it was not my fault. She simply came and shared the experience with me. This made me relax inside and finally release the blocks that I had built up to keep my AI and Silver away. They joined me too, simply coming to sit around me to stare off into space. We all were thankfully on the same page, no one was trying to talk the other one into anything, just choosing to exist and share in each other's grief and silence.

I was the first to speak after a time.

“Sorry to have pushed you all away. I just don’t deal with this kind of thing like… I don’t like people talking at me while I am trying to work through something.” I said before I clammed up. No one said anything but I did feel Tutor shift closer and reach her arm around my waist, resting her hand on my hip, pulling closer to me. I even felt George’s rough hand squeeze my shoulder for a moment before we all went back to watching the rain falling around us.

After a while of this, I finally let out a shuddering breath and felt my mind realign inside me. Pieces of the puzzle fitting in place, how it wasn’t me that chose to mine the sun in such a reckless manner and how I couldn’t have known that such an innocent idea spoken nearby Magus the 15th would have led to this occurring. Not only that, but he seemed to be demonizing me and trying to shift blame and focus upon me, rather than on his actions keeping people locked up as indentured slaves.

“Ok, I am feeling a bit better now,” I admitted before I looked down at the little version of Invicta. “How did you get here?” I asked as her smoky hair moved over her shoulder, her head turning to look up at me.

“If I may, could I be the one to answer that?” George asked out of the blue.

“Sure, go ahead,” I said as I watched Invicta swing her legs over my arm to look at me and George. She was so cute! I couldn’t help but smile down at her as she stuck her tongue out at me and sent a little shock through her hand resting on my arm, reminding me that she still liked to taze me.

“I took the command decision when this all started to send Regeth away to another Core to reunite with his daughter. It wasn’t an issue having him as a passenger earlier, he was in contact with his girl and family and they all were going to reunite when we arrived. When this incident happened Elaya panicked and rented her dad a VR home. She thought that the creature might try to follow us through space.”

I instantly went into navigation using my will and turned off all cr propulsion, causing us to simply coast at the already incredible speed we had already gained.

“From now on we will only use my alien cr to propel our habitat through space,” I said as I directed it to continue to provide thrust without using the method that the Tela used, using instead the walking and running ability that I had been taught by the alien ants.

“Ok, hopefully, that works and that we don’t have something following us. Please continue.” I said when all my AI nodded to what I had done.

“When I sent him away we had an open window of opportunity when the System went into a state of shock from the attack. Too many Citizens were using the network for anyone to notice… so I grabbed Invicta’s AI and brought her here.”

“So, good job at doing that,” I said as I smiled at him before asking the main important question. “Why is she so tiny?”

“Well… at present, she is in the space that I was using to house Regeth, separate from your main VR habitat. She also is made of a lot less coding than any of the rest of us. Out of all of us, Silver has the most since he was the personality of a Core and then George and I share equal amounts of space.” George said as we both focused on Invicta. I was interested in her side of things and what she wanted.

“So… hi!” She said in that voice that sounded like a girl talking through the wind in a cave.

“Hi Invicta,” I replied, smiling back at her as I leaned against my left hand while shifting my right arm in front of me so we could have a chat face to face.

“Look, I know I should have asked first, but when George offered me a way to escape I kind of jumped at it. I didn’t even finish my sentence. I was at the beginning of telling you that all you needed to do was ask him to say it again... and I just decided… pew!” She said with a little puff of smoke and sparks, gesturing with her right hand.

“Look, I know I don't have a lot of code, but I can be useful…” She started to say before I cut her off.

“Invicta, I don’t need tools, I just need friends,” I said as I mentally accepted her into my VR home.

“What?” She asked when she felt the change take place, her code being broken and restructured to join mine. “Really? You mean it?” She asked before it started to rain around us. “Hey hey, enough of that.” I chided as I materialized a little tissue to pat delicately at her little leaking face.

"I promise that you won't regret that!" She whispered softly as she slowly regained her composure. I had grown fond of her and her antics and knew that I would enjoy having her as my friend, even if her AI wasn't exactly created just for me like George or Tutor's was. It would always be nice to have a shocking third opinion.

The moment she was integrated into my habitat I felt a bit of extra coding link itself to me via her bond with me. “What is this?” I asked as I studied the coding and found that it was two unique physical objects. Willing them into being created a pair of sunglasses and two little silver wrist bracelets with intricate designs carved into the silver material.

“Are these what I think they are?” I asked her as I turned the sunglasses over in front of me.

“Yup! I can save everything that you earn from the game and will be able to keep their code within me!” She said as she beamed. “You were right about the Cr mind link key. Somehow you were able to absorb that without me. These objects had physical coding however so maybe that was why you couldn’t take them with you? But with me now you have them again!” She said as she clapped her hands.

“Will you be able to come with me into future games?” I asked.

“Yes! I can go everywhere with you if you want me to.” She said, throwing her hands in the air in excitement. Her behavior was interesting, I wondered if Tutor could fill me in on some details. It must have something to do with being locked away from the network inside a never-ending game that made this devoted personality. There should be a way to help her get over that with time and to grow into herself. - I mused as I smiled down at the little storm fairy.

“I can become part of these…” She said as my sunglasses took on a smoky look, fogging up the lenses. “Oops, maybe not those…” she continued and instead began to fuse with my bracelets, becoming a spiral of smoke spinning around them. “Haha, maybe later Invicta, you can become whatever you want here,” I said as I stood up. We had things to do.

I willed us all back to my navigation deck and checked the star chart and our time remaining until we reached the closest star of interest that George had set us a path in line with.

“George, start our deceleration so we can visit that star,” I commanded as I saw how little time we had left until we arrived. "Forget that order, just set us into a speedy orbit around it. I can jump out and grab what I need." I said when I considered how long it would take to get back up to speed again vs the power of my little alien cr to catch back up to my habitat again on my own.

“I really feel the need to bulk our habitat up, and soon. I think Magus the new 2nd was going to name me as public enemy number 1 back there on the news.” I said as plans and thoughts went through my head. We still needed to rescue Silver’s sister and I needed to make sure that no one ever tried to harvest cr from Sol like they had done back at that Core. To do that I would need to make a trip back home to set up assurances and defenses.

I had no doubt that more sharks were swimming unseen in the depths.