The world shifted its axis. The universe sighed in time with the change of the tides. Trillions of lights flared to life only to extinguish an instant later, never having existed in the first place. And through each of these moments, people entered through the broken pieces of the universe and patched it back together. Millions, maybe billions came and fought and forced their way through the challenges before them, some emerging victorious.

As they fought, they grew and changed. The world was forced to accept them and integrate them into its systems, creating a deviant from the natural order. People then used the world’s systems to grow exponentially, eventually…

“Oh, come on! Stop reading already!” Jamie cried, snatching the box from Heather’s hands, holding it above her head as Heather tried to grab it back from the slightly taller girl. “You’re the only one who doesn’t play this game yet, and I don’t wanna waste all our time today reading the boring manual. Just get hooked up and we can start!”

“Alright, fine!” Heather cried, jumping up to grasp the game box. “Fine, fine, I’ll start! Stop hounding me!” Jamie grinned and nodded, and Heather sighed as she brushed a few things off her desk to make room for the headgear.

Leveled Plane was a fully immersive VR game, the most popular of its kind. Many others had come before it, but none of them had its reputation. It was seen as the pinnacle of game design, allowing players to connect wirelessly to play with billions of others online. Almost half of the world owned the game, including the VR headsets that came with it.

Heather still didn’t understand what was so great about it, though. She was one of the few in her generation that hadn’t touched the game yet, and she was nearing the middle of her high school career. Jamie had practically forced her into it once she heard, buying both the console and the game for Heather’s sixteenth birthday. She’d then given Heather a date for when she’d come over to help with the installation of the software, making sure that Heather couldn’t refuse.

Honestly, Heather didn’t have an issue with that. Leveled Plane would help her grow closer with her friends since they all played the game, and it was all they ever talked about at lunch. At this point, she was just making a big deal out of it to annoy Jamie, which was working tremendously.

“So anyways, you’re gonna need to plug this in here, move this around… no, no, not like that…” Heather chuckled to herself as she tried to help Jamie set the system up, listening to Jamie’s muttering. Jamie was super passionate about Leveled Plane, having played it all her life. Her avatar in the game was relatively well-known, and most saw her as one of the better players in the game. Not one of the best, but certainly on the verge of being one.

It made Heather appreciate how much Jamie cared about her as a friend, choosing to delete her player account so that she could play with Heather. One of the most unique aspects of Leveled Plane was how it treated the player characters, called avatars. It linked your avatar to your DNA, so the only way to change avatars was to start a new one from scratch. The old one would be permanently deleted from the system, with the new avatar taking its place.

The game also restricted your facial features and body shape, making a player’s avatar resemble their real-life appearance completely. Leveled Plane had initially received some severe backlash for this decision, but that had degraded once the naysayers played the game for the first time. Besides, it was easier to control your own body than having to relearn spatial relations after choosing an avatar that’s seven feet tall.

“That should be it,” Jamie said, clapping her hands together, the sudden noise making Heather flinch. Her head swiveled to look at Heather, her green eyes sparkling.

“You ready to give it a try?” she asked. Heather nodded, and Jamie walked her through the steps to calibrate the system. It was much more complicated than she initially expected, having to move through multiple different body positions with sensors attached to her joints so the system could get an accurate reading of her body shape.

It took them another half an hour to get through the calibration and set up Jamie’s own headset, making sure it was properly synced up to Heather’s. This would allow them to enter the game together without being sent to different locations on the map, which was useful.

Letting out a quick breath, Heather looked over at Jamie, who shot her a grin. She sent a shaky smile back before placing the headset on her head, waiting for it to finish the startup sequence. Right before it could cover her ears, she heard a train whistle coming from nearby as the house started lightly shaking. She chuckled before letting the headset come to a rest; she lived next to the train tracks, so hearing train whistles was a common occurrence for her family.

A soft blue light flashed in front of her face for a few seconds as the headset calculated her facial features before the system suddenly flared with bright white light. Her eyes stung, and she would’ve covered her face with her arm if she could. She felt a gentle pulling sensation from the machine, and she gave into it, letting it transfer her consciousness into the virtual world.

Suddenly, a sharp pain flared through her body, the system flashing red for a moment. It lasted less than a second before stabilizing, but during that time it had felt like her flesh was melting off her bones. Her mouth opened in a silent scream as the system buried itself into her nerves, taking complete control of her body. Just before she lost consciousness, she could’ve sworn she heard a sharp crack and watched the headset break into pieces.

Heather woke to find herself in a black room with futuristic blue light shining from lines decorating the floor and walls. The lines extended up as far as she could see, vanishing into the darkness above her. There were no corners to show where the walls began and the floor ended, making her feel like she was floating in a void.

Coughing, Heather groaned as she pushed herself up, struggling to get her feet underneath her. Her limbs were shaking, feeling like she’d just finished a marathon in the real world. Her nerves felt like they’d been stitched together using a hot glue gun.

“Man, Jamie never mentioned this…” Heather said before another bout of coughing took over her system, sending her to her knees. “I didn’t realize coming in here was so painful.”

It took her another two minutes to fully regain her composure, but once she did, she finally noticed the one oddity of the room. Well, the room was already odd, but none of that accounted for the red disk floating above the center of the room. Making her way towards it, Heather cautiously brought one of her fingers to rest on its edge.

The lights of the room flared for a moment, making Heather shrink back, covering her eyes. Once it died down, Heather found herself standing in the center of a circle of floating weapons, each weapon glowing with the same red light the disk was. The disk itself had disappeared, the weapons slowly circling its resting place.

“Hm… a crossbow, some gauntlets, a horse… what the heck? These are—hey! Dang it, I was—wait a freaking minute!” Well, apparently there was a filter against swearing. Heather sighed, letting herself calm down, taking a few deep breaths. This should’ve been expected. She remembered her friends complaining about this a few times in the past, but they got used to it.

Instead, she focused more on the weapon choices. There were eight in total, and in all honesty, Heather thought that the selection was a bit lacking. A staff for a mage, a sword and shield, a paintbrush, a weird book with a rotating gear on the cover, and… was that a fishing rod? What even was this?

There was no explanation for any of the weapons; that is, if you could even call some of them weapons in the first place. They just floated around in a circle, lightly glowing, waiting for her to select one. Heather shrugged, making an impulsive decision to select the sword and shield set.

The lights flared again, but Heather was prepared this time. When they died down, she found herself once again standing in a circle of weapons, these ones all modeled around melee combat. Groaning, she put her head in her hands, realizing that the previous selection process was to determine which character route you were going down, not which weapon you wanted to use. She might’ve chosen differently had she known that right off the bat.

This process occurred twice more, with Heather eventually settling on a pair of daggers the length of her forearm. Even though the selection process was unusual, she liked the setup. No prompts, no needless text, just some quick decisions on what you wanted your character to be. It was also easy to go back and make a new character after understanding how the character selection process works.

Once her daggers were selected, a red transparent screen appeared before her, prompting her to set the STATS of her character. Heather was only familiar with the terminology because of the conversations her friends had at the lunch table. She had to assume that STR stood for strength, AGI for agility, DEX for dexterity, VIT for vitality, and STL for… maybe stealth? She wasn’t sure. There was also INT, which was probably intelligence, and CHA, which… she couldn’t really figure that one out. These were all her STATS, or character statistics, and they were all currently at zero.

Heather had no idea what direction would work best for her avatar. She wasn’t familiar with how all these ‘STATS’ affected her character, how good each one was, or even what they all did. After a few moments of deliberation, she finally reached a decision.

She knew what at least three of these STATS did: STR, AGI, and DEX. STR was probably for attack power, AGI for speed, and DEX for flexibility. The game gave her a hundred STAT points to start with, so she put half of those in AGI and the other half was split evenly between STR and DEX. She thought about sending some of her STAT points to STL, but she wasn’t entirely sure if that actually stood for stealth. She didn’t want to invest in something that she didn’t understand.

The screen vanished once she finished inputting her STAT points, and the lights in the room dimmed. Heather found herself holding her breath as she waited for whatever came next. The atmosphere in the room became tense, as if something were judging her for her previous actions.

After about a minute of this, a loud voice suddenly boomed through the room, making Heather shriek, falling backwards on her butt. “WELCOME, HEATHER YEW,” it said. The voice was distinctly male, although it lacked the inflection in its tone that one would expect from a human. “YOUR DECISIONS HAVE BEEN JUDGED, AND YOUR CLASS HAS BEEN SELECTED TO BE ‘BERSERKER.’ WE HOPE YOU ENJOY YOUR TIME IN LEVELED PLANE.”

“What’s a CLASS?” Heather asked, bringing herself back to her feet, but she received no response as the room began to fade away. “No, no, wait! I said WAIT! Why am I a BERSERKER, what is this CLASS thing you mentioned, just what—"

Finding herself suddenly in a large white room, the voice gone, Heather started swearing for all she was worth. Her rage increased further when words like “skittles,” “fudge,” and “ashtray” came out instead. She wasn’t sure how long she spent like that, venting to the world, but a hand laying on her shoulder brought her back to her senses.

Turning, she found Jamie behind her, clad in a light green tee-shirt with a dark brown skirt, black leggings being worn underneath. She imagined that she was in a similar outfit, having forgotten to look herself over after being placed wherever they were. There was a long wooden quarterstaff in Jamie's hand, which had turned white from how hard her grip was.

“Jamie! Man, that whole no swearing thing is super annoying. But I’m super excited for whatever comes next! Still though, I didn’t know that it hurts that much to log into the…” Jamie’s breath hitched, and Heather trailed off as she finally noticed Jaime’s appearance. Her eyes were red, her breaths coming out in short gasps, and she was shaking in place. Something was obviously wrong.

“Jamie…?” Her friend collapsed to the ground in a heap, a sobbing mess, wailing. Heather immediately went down with her, hugging her friend as she tried to comfort her. Heather didn’t know what had caused Jamie to be this upset, but it was obviously something serious if she was falling apart like this. Wincing from the grip Jamie had on her shoulders, Heather rocked her back and forth as she tried her best to bring her out of whatever this was.

It took longer than Heather would’ve liked to bring Jamie back. Her hair was a mess, her face was wet with tears, and she couldn’t seem to get her sniffles to die down, but at least she was now coherent.

“Jamie?” Heather prompted, keeping her voice low in the hopes that it didn’t set Jamie off again. “What’s going on? Is everything alright?” Heather winced. Wow, that was dumb. Of course everything wasn’t alright.

Her stomach sank when she saw Jamie’s shoulders fall and her body go limp, her mouth pinched in grief. “Heather…” Jamie whispered, pausing as she coughed. “Heather, I’m so, so sorry.”

They stayed there for a moment, Heather’s mind whirling as Jamie tried to continue. Jamie took a deep breath, centering herself before she shot Heather a shaky smile. Her hands were trembling and white atop her staff.

“I gotta… show you something,” Jamie said, releasing her staff with one of her hands. Heather winced when she saw the angry red skin of Jamie’s palms, a few wood splinters jutting out. Moving her hand up, Jamie brought up her menu, making sure to angle it so that Heather could see.

Her fingers flew across the menu screen, Heather unable to keep up with their movements. First, Jamie brought up her log-out button, which was grayed-out. Alarm bells went off in Heather’s head, and her eyes widened. She’d heard about things like this from TV shows. Jamie glanced over for a moment but moved on quickly.

Only a few seconds later, Jamie had a news article displayed proudly on the screen. The website itself was nice and bright, with cheery ads along the sides and some links to other articles at the bottom. The article itself was from an hour ago, and the headline made Heather’s world come to a stop.

“No… no no please no,” she whispered, silently reading the ‘two teens found dead after train accident’ covering the top of the page. Jamie shook her head, tears falling as she continued scrolling down the page with her finger. Heather tried to ignore the panic and fear crushing her throat, she really did, but a half-choked sob still broke through.

There was a part of her that denied what she was piecing together. Something else had upset Jamie, and Heather was only being overdramatic in the conclusions she was drawing. But that part of her was crushed in a wine press when she saw their faces staring out at them from the screen, smiling. Her legs gave out and a long, drawn-out scream filled the room.