Kaldalis had three simultaneous thoughts.

First and foremost, was that this was a crazy twist for the story to have. The idea that the world of Rundan - and many of its problems - were the direct result of Monsoon punching their way in to make a videogame was extraordinarily meta. On par with Terminal Tales XI: Online having an entire expansion about trying to fight off “the empty” that were a clear analogue for the MMO’s inevitable - but decades-away - server shutdown.

He wasn’t sure if he was impressed with Monsoon for coming up with it, or disappointed in himself that he hadn’t seen it coming. He found himself wondering if getting put into the tube was real or not.

Had he actually signed a contract, or was it a plot device? Had Aaron Stevenson and Jordan Carver been actors? They’d been longtime Monsoon developers, but it wasn’t unheard of for Monsoon employees to do voice work or mocap on characters they were particularly close to.

His second thought was that it was kind of tasteless to do this kind of story on the world’s biggest foray into long-term full-dive immersion media. It might be extremely traumatic to players - and even stream viewers - who had a slightly more tenuous grip on reality. In full-dive, without the ability to return to the real world and with the game systems fully integrated into the world lore, it might be difficult to separate the story from reality. What if people became confused and thought it was real? On top of that, it would have landed so much better if there was a generation or two of full-immersion stories without this twist, to play with audience expectations and present a huge recontextualization to all the previous works they’d played. It felt like a waste.

His third thought, naturally, was that this was a way better story than Monsoon was capable of.

There was only a moment of silence in the courtroom. About two seconds after Onirioago’s big reveal, everyone erupted at once. The prosecution immediately called for her sentencing, since she had very obviously just confessed to the crime in question. The defense was screaming the word “mistrial” over and over. Half the room was screaming questions, and the other half was declaring that they knew all along that “their types” were to blame for all of the world’s problems.

The chaos seemed unaffected by the Judge’s attempts to restore order. Her low voice filled the room with booming demands for calm and quiet, but this seemed to be too big a bomb to suppress. She couldn’t regain control of the room.

Beside him, Kaldalis could feel the confusion physically radiating off of Bangen and Gavinkim. Gavinkim seemed to still be stunned, while Bangen was muttering to herself, presumably piecing together what she’d known with the context of his new revelation.

“I have to get out of this city,” Kaldalis said, as the building confusion in the room started a slow turn into anger. “Preferably thirty minutes ago, but right now sounds like a close second.”

“I don’t know,” Gavinkim said quickly, snapped out of his confused fugue by Kaldalis’s words. “This might play out okay.”

Despite the judge’s orders going unheeded, one voice cut through the mess with calculated precision. If there was one person who knew how to make herself the center of attention in even the craziest of circumstances, it was Onirioago. Years of leadership experience meant that even though her voice lacked the booming authority of the judge, everyone heard her words.

“If you wish for more information,” she called in a patronizing sing-song tone, “there’s a Terran in this very room! I’m sure he’ll be able to answer all of your questions.”

This was it. This was the trap. Onirioago had been so devoted to taking him down, she’d baited the trap with her own admission of guilt. He found himself faced with two options, and the junction between them was fast approaching as the entire room’s attention turned towards him.

He could try and fight her, here and now. She didn’t have any evidence, so he could deny her story. But he’d been led to believe that the judge could see through lies. The truth was that he WAS from another world. He’d personally met Aaron Stevenson and Jordan Carver. If he denied it and the Judge could literally sense his dishonesty, it would prove her right without question.

And in the time it took him to provide a story that would fail to get him out of this mess, he was going to be surrounded by hostile faces. And very likely, weapons and manacles.

It meant the other option was the only way to get out of here.

“Uh, I should-” Kaldalis said before jumping to his feet. The movement seemed to galvanize everyone else. Those who were seated stood as well. Fear took hold, and he found himself at the door before he realized he’d bolted across the room like a startled rabbit.

Bangen was right behind him, with Gavinkim just behind her, though he was facing towards the rest of the courtroom, not Kaldalis. The huge bhogad’s fighting stance seemed to be holding everyone else at bay. Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, he hurled the door open and bolted down the hall, even as the judge ordered him to stop.

He got a good thirty feet down the hall before he realized that Bangen and Gavinkim were still with him.

“Uh, I can explain,” he said quickly.

“You’ve been a good person this whole time, Kal,” Bangen said, “I trust you.”

“It doesn’t matter where you came from,” Gavinkim agreed as the three of them rounded the first corner at the end of the hall. “You saved us all from Onirioago. I would follow you into an Infernal Horde den in my undergarments.”

There was a human guard in this hallway, who whirled at the sound of sprinting on the hallway’s tile floor. Somewhere behind, someone - it sounded like the Talsar Bailiff - shouted to stop them. The guard didn’t have time to react, though, and they bolted past him fore his eyes could focus on any one of them.

“We’re going the wrong way,” Bangen pointed out. She was starting to tire already, audibly panting as she spoke. “The exit is toward the front.”

“Can’t go that way,” Kaldalis said quickly. “I broke through the checkpoint to get to the trial on time. Long story. They’ll be waiting for me there. We need another exit.”

“There’s not one,” Gavinkim said. The bhogad was a tank, like Kaldalis, and so his vigor stat was enough to keep his breathing deep and even despite the physical effort. “The courthouse only has the one door.”

Kaldalis found a string of four-letter words spraying from his lips. First the familiar ones, and then the familiar ones in new arrangements, and then the ones he’d only heard from Heluna. He didn’t know what they meant, exactly, but saying them made him feel a little better.

If there was only one door, then he wasn’t getting out that way. Even if they only had one extra guard at the checkpoint, it would be enough for three people to physically block his exit. He had War Weapons to force his way through, but he wasn’t going to fucking kill someone. Especially when what he was running from was the accusation that he was some sort of violent invader from another world.

In a very gullible part of his brain, he warned himself that he also shouldn’t kill these people because they might be real. If Onirioago was telling the truth, and Monsoon had actually punched through into another dimension to gamify it and use it for profit, then these weren’t just pixels and code. They might be real people.

He struggled for a long moment to plan his own escape. His body seemed to come up with a plan faster than his brain, and he slammed his shoulder against a door and bolted up the stairwell.

“Where are we going?” Bangen asked breathlessly.

“Roof access?” Kaldalis said. He pelted past the second floor door and kept going up. “Maybe we can jump to the next building over and get back to the street through there.”

Gavinkim made an uncertain sound, which didn’t help Kaldalis’s confidence.

The top of the stairwell was a door, but instead of opening onto the roof, they were on the fourth floor, which was much smaller than the other three as the blocky building tapered slightly at the top.

There were also a handful of guards that jumped to attention as Kaldalis burst through the door and into the hall.

They barely made it to the third door down the hall before the guards converged. Kaldalis thrust himself into that last door, ushered Bangen and Gavinkim in behind him, and slammed it before throwing his body weight against it.

Gavinkim grabbed the nearest piece of furniture - a rolltop desk - and muscled it in front of the door, sending a chair to the floor at its passage. It was wider and heavier than normal - sized for a Bhogad - and Bangen had to help him move it, even as she gasped for breath from the run.

With the door barricaded, Kaldalis spared a quick look around the room. It looked like an archivist’s office, assuming that they were terrible at their job. In addition to the rolltop desk and the chair that had been overturned by Gavinkim’s acquisition of the desk, there were cabinets and shelves crammed with not just books and binders, but looseleaf sheets of paper tucked in between. Stained residue on the single-pane window indicated that a previous occupant had been a smoker, but there was no smell of tobacco now. He quickly cast about for an exit, but there were no other doors - unless they were hidden behind the shelves.

A heavy impact against the door made it clear that he didn’t have time for a search. The rolltop desk scooted a few inches before Gavinkim thrust his body against it, keeping the door shut. As the numbers outside grew, it was only a matter of seconds before their pursuers would force their way in.