“What?” I managed to get out, trying to gather my wits, “What was that about starfish?”

This was a visit that I had been expecting, but one I had hoped not to have to deal with so soon. It made sense that he’d ambush me, and I really should have expected it.

“It is merely illustrative,” the Chinese officer explained, “Humans lack the capacity to recover from such grave injuries.”

I should have set aside some time to think up contingencies. Still, if I hadn’t taken last night off for some therapeutic dinosaur hunting, I’d still probably be a mess. More of a mess. At least this way I was somewhat more calm and collected.

“That you are conscious at all is nothing short of a miraculous recovery.”

“I hate to rain on your parade, but it doesn’t really feel all that miraculous,” I said, patting my legs. Not even the faintest sensation.

“No need to be impatient, William. You have already recovered from an injury that an expert deemed impossible. Your remaining problem, which the most advanced of human medicine could handle on its own, hardly compares. Though truthfully, I can offer you something that might speed your recovery along.”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” I scoffed, “You already spoiled your offer by telling me I’ll probably get better on my own. I’m not looking to sell my freedom and jump right back to being someone’s test subject.”

Zhou smirked, and stepped next to my bed, standing next to me but facing away, looking toward the window. This close, I got the impression that he was much younger than me. I could also see the eddies in the cloud of essence that clung to him, swirling into complex fractals before fading away entirely. Why did he have that, but I didn’t? Could I just not see my own aura thing, or was he more powerful? Was it something else entirely?

“I am not here to recruit you as a spy or soldier or test subject, William. You are thinking too small. I admit that my mission here was to rescue as many of our kind from your arcologies, but it is simply to deny resources to an enemy and punish them for their crimes against the citizens of the United States-”

“The United States dissolved decades ago,” I interrupted, “If you’re going to feed me bullshit, at least make it vaguely plausible.”

He shook his head and sighed.

“William, I am sure you already know better than to believe everything you have been told. The United States never dissolved. It merely shrank and fragmented. The Chinese Union recognizes the land you presently occupy as the rightful successor to the United States. We also recognize the Native American Nations, though they always decline our offers of aid. But I am not here to teach you geography.”

“Why, exactly, are you here then?” I tried to keep my growing irritation out of my voice. I couldn’t get a good read on this guy, even with Nico’s assistance. The best we could figure out, he just liked to hear himself talk. There was also something menacing about him, but I couldn’t quite decide if that was his body language and tone, or just purely the fact that he was armed. I hadn’t fared great against the last handgun wielded against me.

“I am here to network. To share information and, if you are feeling generous, to hear your perspective as well. I know by your recovery that you have completed the steps necessary within Dreamshards to unlock some benefits of the alien’s technology here in the real world, and that alone makes it worth my time to speak to you.”

“So you’re going to just… share information with me?” I asked.

“Correct.”

“Uh,” I tried to wrangle my thoughts into any shape that might fit the strange direction this was taking, “Like what?”

Not my finest moment, I’ll admit. He stepped away from my side, pacing the room as he spoke.

“For example,” he started, taking the cadence of a practiced instructor, “the floors which have a multiple of five, numbering downward sequentially, represent somewhat more challenging scenarios with no additional rewards. Those with multiples of ten are non-combat exercises which grant access to the next set of floors as well as some boon for use once you have unlocked personal access to the alien technology.”

That… didn’t precisely square with what I knew. Could be differences in terminology or some cultural difference. His language skills certainly didn’t seem to be to blame.

“And if I know all this already?”

“Then you’ll need to share what you know already so that I can skip past it,” he said, with a look somewhere between amused and chiding.

“Not going to make it that easy on you, sorry.”

With another sigh, his look slipped back to that stern default that he had worn when I first saw him. He stopped pacing and stood at the foot of my bed.

“Very well. We think that the entire thing is a training simulation. Training us to use their technology, disguised under the trappings of fantasy. There are more than just health benefits to be had.”

He closed his eyes and the diffuse cloud of essence gathered for a moment. Then he shook his head suddenly, and the cloud resumed its lazy swirls.

“You already know what I mean, don’t you?” he asked. I remained silent. After he realized that I wasn’t going to say anything, he spoke again.

“William, I am earnest when I say that I am uninterested in using you for any purpose for this coming war, whatever shape it will take. That is out of our hands. Out of yours, at least. The Chinese Union will prevail. I am looking beyond that.”

“That’s a pretty arrogant stance,” I couldn’t help but challenge. Until the raid that took me, the Urban States had stood more or less unassailable. How often could their enemies muster the kinds of resources needed for such an attack?

“William,” I hated how he said my name, made worse by the disappointed look he wore, “There are six Urban States, each with an average of eight arcologies, each of which contains an average of approximately two hundred fifty thousand residents. There are maybe ten times that total spread out over the remaining metro areas, and the twenty-four minor enclaves. Little over a hundred million souls.”

He held up a hand to forestall my retort, which he had correctly read was imminent.

“Let us assume that, due to the advanced level and deep integration of your technological infrastructure, every single man, woman, and child within the Urban States is worth ten of my countrymen, both in terms of economic output and combat capability. Would you say that sufficiently represents their hypothetical advantage?”

I wouldn’t. Every single person was trained from childhood, wired from adulthood, loaded with software to smooth tasks and keep things operating efficiently. I couldn’t imagine a world without all that, and with what little I’d seen of it in this hospital, if every little thing was just that much slower, I wasn’t convinced that a multiplier of ten adequately summed up the difference. That wasn’t even counting the vastly expanded capabilities that executives were supposed to have, or the terrifying performance I’d seen from the Enforcer who had escorted me, up to and including shooting me in the head the moment I needed to die to advance his objective. What could five Enforces do together - what could they do with exosuits or aircraft? No, just multiplying our impact by ten most certainly did not cut it. Nico agreed with my assessment - stacking many small productivity multipliers led to explosive growth potential.

“Sure,” I lied.

“And how many people are there in the world, William?”

“Six billion or so.”

“Closer to seven. And my nation and the union it heads owns the allegiance of sixty percent of them, as well as more than forty percent of the Earth’s surface. Your nation- your former nation’s capabilities cannot hope to match the proud and ancient power that is mine. The Chinese Union controls exactly as much of the world as it cares to. Soon it will care to own more of it.”

“Why? Why are you even telling me this?”

“Because they’re coming,” he said. Ominous.

“The aliens?” I tried.

“The aliens.”

But that hardly answered… oh. Nico knew exactly what he’d do if he were the aliens.

“So this Orion Arm Council or whatever comes. They approach the Chinese Union. They tell them: ‘bow before us, and the Earth is yours!’ Your people tell them to fuck off and that they already control the Earth. So they go to the Urban States with the same offer. Suddenly that times ten multiplier becomes a hundred. Or a hundred thousand. The tech they could hand down… we’ve already seen some of what it can do.”

“Just so.”

Fuck. Fuck! This wasn’t going to be ‘just’ a world war over some floating pink crystals. How can such an apocalyptic prediction end up being too optimistic? It was going to be a war of total world domination. Was surviving out in the wilderness going to be enough to keep me safe and free? Nico seemed to think that my new minion would be finished sometime today, which was fine because I sure as hell wasn’t going to be taking a stroll through a forest anytime before lunch.

“Wait, wait, wait. Couldn’t the Chinese just accept the alien’s offer? Doesn’t it seem a little excessive to trample the entire world just so you don’t need to actually engage in diplomacy when the aliens get here?”

“William, I am disappointed.” He shook his head, as if to emphasize his words. My face twitched. I screamed internally, but did my best to outwardly compose myself.

“Where is your pride? My people will, as you say, ‘trample the world’ so that humanity need not subordinate itself. If there are no viable polities to use to undermine our defiance, no… ‘fifth column’ I believe you would say, then we stand a much greater chance. ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’ Isn’t that the quotation?”

I had no idea. It had the ring of a historical truism. But was it actually true? Would a united world have any chance of standing against the architect of Dreamshards?

“So you think that a united Earth could hold out against people who wield literal magic?” I probed. He shot back another look. Pity this time?

“William, there is no need to commit our opponents into the realm of legend. Such thinking only needlessly robs our troops of hope.”

I took a deep breath, only trembling slightly as I exhaled.

“Let me try again,” I said, trying to find the words to express the heart of my complaint, “Do you really think that there is any hope to be had against a civilization that can ACCURATELY SIMULATE MAGIC INTO REALITY?! IN WHAT WAY IS THAT BETTER THAN ACTUALLY HAVING MAGIC?!”

My voice, against my wishes, had reached a crescendo. The ugly, cracking yell of a man who had rarely ever raised his voice, carried away by utter horror at the nonchalant arrogance this officer held for the aliens and how his nation planned to deal with them. What little healing I had managed for my fractured mental state was rapidly being undone by this conversation. Zhou had taken a step back at my outburst, but quickly returned to his rigid posture.

“It does humanity no good to panic in the face of a greater foe, even one whose true heights we cannot yet see. We have their gifts to use as samples for study, and perhaps eventually, to use in our eventual resistance.”

His cadence had gradually picked up over the course of our conversation so far, and he had made his way back to my bedside so we could speak face to face. No matter how delusional he might be about our odds of successfully fighting the aliens, at least he seemed to really care about this.

“You want to use the toys the aliens have given us to fight them?” I asked, incredulous that he thought that might work out at all. I took a moment to think of an analogy, then asked, “What are the odds of the citizens of your nation being able to use your own data networks against your government?”

“We will have the entire scientific output of the Earth at our disposal. We can use what we have been given to derive the novel physics behind them,” he said, not even bothering to address what I’d said, “We can learn the principles and make tools of our own! William, these are the very earliest days, it is too soon to be-”

“No.” I interrupted, leaning on Nico to express the firmest possible rejection, “You said ‘our kind’ to me earlier. You’re starting to identify with other people who have a key. That’s the group that you are a part of. A group of the gifted, powerful beyond human limits, right? The people who hold the power to save humanity. But that isn’t what we are. We are the carrot. The product of peaceful cooperation. The reward for collaborators. We haven’t even seen the stick yet. The more I hear about what you and your nation want to do, the less I want anything to do with it. If you want to do what you said initially and give me your findings about the game, then fine, but if not then just leave me alone.”

“That is a shame.” He turned away from me. His body language seemed to relax a hair, and he rested his hand on the pistol at his hip. My chest tightened. “And I had such high hopes that we would be able to work together.”

My sense of danger spiked. Almost before I had time to process the veiled threat, my hand shot out and made contact with the side of his holster. A twist of will and a flash of exhaustion later, and I had stolen his holster, the pistol it contained, a section of his belt, a few scraps of his coat, and three of the fingertips that had been resting on the pistol itself. In my inventory, I could much more clearly see the structure of his essence. As the remaining wisps evaporated from those fingertips, I got a clear sense of the philosophical ideal of the gun. The abstract principle from which all actual firearms were derived.

I was momentarily stunned. Partly at the lack of headache after pulling such a maneuver, partly because I had done it at all. And what did his essence tell me about his power? Could he shoot me without the gun? Did he need a gun to work his magic?

As I lay stunned, Zhou looked down at the void where his sidearm had been, and strode toward the exit, holding his injured hand to his chest. As his rapid footsteps receded, I grabbed for the remote attached to my bed, and hit the call button. It lit with a gentle chime. Why hadn’t I accepted the doctor’s offer of having a nurse in here for this meeting? Though given that he’d ambushed me so early, it seemed likely that Zhou had intended to circumvent any such measures anyway.

Damn it, what the hell could I do now? I couldn’t get out of this room. I couldn’t get out of this bed.

Before I could work out my incredibly clever escape plan that would somehow work despite my inability to walk, Zhou had returned, a female soldier in a similar uniform at his side. He had a white cloth pressed to his hand, spots of red peeking through. I pulled on my power, ready to absorb whatever they threw at me. Strangely, he did not look like he was angry, nor that he was planning any violence in retaliation. The female soldier, shorter and slimmer but no less stern-looking, did not have her sidearm drawn. She did, however, have an aura of her own. It was raw and pulsing, like the breath of some massive beast. In some distant way, it felt similar to the thrum of solar energy running through me, though without the color and light. It was vibrant in a totally different way.

Zhou said something to her in their language, and held his hand out, pulling the rag away so I could see the injury. It wasn’t nearly as grisly as some of the other stuff I had seen recently, but it certainly looked like it stung. The woman held her hand toward Zhou and spoke, a fine mist emanating from her aura. The colorless particles seemed to get caught in the gravity well of her counterpart’s injury, falling into tighter and tighter orbits. The wound rapidly closed, his middle three fingers ending in smooth scar tissue, but otherwise whole.

“There, you see?” Zhou took another step toward my bed, though not so close as to be within arm’s reach. “Not perfect, but the scar tissue will fade quickly enough.”

I took a look at the back of my hand, where my old scar was, the one that first alerted me to the incongruence between body and avatar. Where my old scar used to be, at least. He was right, those scars would disappear quickly enough.

“You see? If you had just listened to me, I told you I might be able to offer something to help. I don’t know how much this simple alteration might help with your specific problem, but it may have sped your recovery.”

“If it’s all the same to you,” I said, “I think I’d still prefer not to incur any debts that I don’t know if I can pay.”

“I understand now how my word choice may have seemed like a threat, but my honest intent here was only ever to meet you. Your ability, matter annihilation?” he paused, looking to me to correct him if he was wrong. I didn’t. “It could be put to use helping humanity. Helping us to understand this technology, or even just something so simple as removing hazardous waste materials. We don’t need to be enemies. I do not wish for us to be enemies.”

I sighed. Why did the foreign officer have to sound so reasonable? There was every possibility that this was some sort of soft interrogation tactic. His arrogant tone really rubbed me the wrong way, but he hadn’t done anything… actually… could I do something about that tone of his? Could I impress upon him the dangers I’d seen on the other side? Would that maybe short circuit the whole world domination plan, if the Chinese understood the scale of the enemies they were planning on making? It was worth a shot.

“Fine. If you really intend to fight the aliens, I do actually have some information about them.”

I left out my particular relationship to The Painter, but other than that I made very few redactions as I told them about my detailed impression of the entropy spirits at the core of the floor bosses. I told them about the staggering scale of the sorceress and my suspicions that she was directly related to the group that sent us the keystones. Zhou and his companions listened, with grave looks on their faces, growing more somber with each new, horrible detail. I finally worked up the courage to talk about the thing. The one below. I did my best to explain the shape of the idea of it without thinking about it too much. I could tell that I was losing them as I tried to explain that these larger entities could be felt, if you had sensed them before. That one could even be sensed from here. Still below, though a different sort of below than just downward.

“Can’t you feel it?” I asked. “Can’t you hear the shape of it? It’s like hearing the echoes of things moving around deep in the ocean. Out of sight, but you can still tell it’s there.”

The two Chinese soldiers shared worried looks. At some point, the nurse I had called earlier had arrived, and was standing a few steps further back, listening as well.

“I apologize,” he said, pulling me out of my spiral of horror of trying to describe that thing without thinking about it. Had I gotten through to him? Impressed on him the danger of his nation’s chosen course?

“I am sorry for what was done to you, William. It was monstrous to throw you into the simulations as your former masters did, forsaking your life so that they could learn more about it. It was cruel of the Orion Arm Assembly to make their simulation so immersive and brutal. But it is only a simulation. A means to train us to use their technology, with a narrative offering instructions to proceed as we complete each stage.”

That was not the response I was expecting.

“I am sorry, I should not have approached you so aggressively, without knowing the state you were in. I… we have encountered something like this among a few of our key holders. Fell too deeply into the simulation. Do not worry, William. I will see to it that your mental health is cared for, as well as your physical health. They have remarkable resources for that here, you will see.”

And with that, he left the room, his subordinate following him out. I waved away the nurse when she approached. I was left alone with my thoughts. And Nico’s thoughts. And the vague feeling of something, somewhere below.

All of that couldn’t just be in my head. Could it?