Heather panted as she ran, her blue shirt soaked with sweat. The wind bit against her face as she sprinted around the room, narrowing her eyes to maintain visibility. Glancing to the side, she watched as Jamie continued doing a handstand, her arms shaking. They’d both been at it for just over an hour.

It had been a month since the incident, and the two of them had quickly adapted to their new lives (well, if you disregarded the nervous breakdowns and panic attacks). Building up strength was monotonous, though, and Heather almost gave up on multiple occasions. But Jamie helped her stick with it, claiming that they were “grinding” or something. Heather didn’t understand the term, but it kept Jamie motivated, and Heather knew that she needed to keep up.

Progress was infuriating. There was no message from the menu or whatever when Heather’s STATS increased, and she barely felt a difference in her workouts. Maybe a couple more pushups, a slightly farther run, but that was it. She only noticed a STAT increase when she went to her menu and looked at her STATS for herself.

She heard Jamie collapse, bringing her out of her thoughts. Pushing herself one last time, she did one more lap of the room, feeling her chest tighten with each step she took. Hyperventilation was about to set in by the time she finally stopped, falling against the wall and sliding down.

Catching her breath, she let her muscles relax, each one burning from lactic acid and the oxygen deprivation. It was amazing just how accurately the game recreated real-life conditions. Heather was only ever reminded that they were living in a game whenever she opened her menu.

“That… sucked,” Jamie panted, lying flat against the floor. Heather groaned in return, her lungs burning even as her breathing evened out.

“I didn’t realize… that STATS… have such a big impact…” she said, slowly sliding further down the wall to join Jamie on the floor. She stared at the ceiling for a bit, her eyes tracing the lines in between the large white tiles.

“Yeah, they do,” Jamie said, coughing a bit. “I’m much stronger now than I was in real life. I never would’ve lasted an hour doing a handstand, that’s for sure.”

“Same here. Running at a dead sprint for that long isn’t even possible.” Heather slowly pushed herself to her feet, making sure her aching muscles wouldn’t give out on her. She wobbled a bit but managed to stay upright.

Grunting, Jamie followed suit, wincing as she massaged her shoulders. Her arms were red and swollen, proof of just how far she had pushed herself. Hopefully things like rhabdo didn’t exist in Leveled Plane, but Heather had a feeling that they weren’t that lucky.

“Well, good news is I can push myself as hard as I want and it’s not gonna kill me,” Jamie said, nodding to herself. “The only way to die in this room is to die of starvation. Stabbed through the chest, crushed to death, diseases and the like, none of it kills ya. And there’s free water! Always a plus.”

Heather shot her a look, and Jamie chuckled. Then her face turned oddly serious, and Heather felt the atmosphere in the room darken. Jamie smiled at her, but something in her expression made Heather take a step back.

This had happened a few times now, and it was always unnerving. Maybe once or twice a week, Jamie would look… off was the best term Heather could think of. She’d twitch a bit, hands grasping at nothing as she stared at Heather vacantly. Once, she’d started running at Heather before coming to a halt, shaking in place. She then seemed to return to normal, but the smile she sent was so utterly fake Heather couldn’t hide her shudder.

She didn’t know what was going on, but she knew that something wasn’t right with Jamie. And watching her right now as she started twitching more violently than ever, lurching forward, hands reaching out towards Heather, sent cold shivers up her spine.

“On that note…” Jamie sang, leaning down to snag something from the floor. Heather’s back hit the wall, and Jamie’s arm flung itself forward, launching something at her. “Here, Heather! Catch!”

There was a glint of metal before something bit through her chest, and Heather felt her body grow cold. She couldn’t breathe properly, and her throat seemed clogged. Coughing and hacking, Heather looked down at her hands to find them covered in blood.

Then the pain hit. Jamie tackled her to the ground, cackling as she twisted the knife in Heather’s chest, and Heather screamed through the blood clogging her throat. Her vision started going dim, and she felt the knife get removed from her chest before being driven right back down again. She tried to stay conscious, but the last thing she saw was Jamie’s face, wearing an unhinged smile so utterly wrong it sickened her.

Heather woke up a while later, feeling oddly refreshed. She was lying in something sticky and wet, and it smelled of iron. She wrinkled her nose, trying to sit up. Before she could, someone straddled her chest, pinning her to the ground.

Her eyes shot open, and she flinched when she saw Jamie above her, glassy, doll-like eyes staring vacantly into her own. Then Jamie’s hands were crushing her neck, and Heather sputtered as she tried to fight her off. She suddenly remembered what happened before she woke up (before she died), and she redoubled her efforts. But Jamie held on as Heather thrashed back and forth.

She felt herself growing weaker and weaker, her protests gradually fizzling out. Black spots filled her vision, and Heather weakly pawed at Jamie’s hands, desperately trying to breathe. It was no use; Jamie flashed her a grin full of teeth before opening her maw and ripping out Heather’s throat with it, and everything faded back to black.

Next, knives were driven through her arms, pinning her to the floor as Jamie pounded on her with her staff. A blow to the head eventually shattered her skull, long after Heather’s voice had gone hoarse from all the screaming. After that, her feet were cut off, then her hands as she tried to crawl away. A sobbing, screaming mess, Jamie had allowed Heather to slowly bleed out across the floor, completely numb with pain.

Heather quickly lost track of the number of times Jamie killed her. Drowned, cut to pieces, beat to death, stabbed, you name it. Jamie used everything at her disposal to kill Heather, over and over and over again, never giving Heather a moment to recover. Most of the deaths were excruciating, giving Heather little time to cope. Eventually, though, it all came to a stop.

Gasping for breath, Heather bolted upright, feeling her heart pounding madly through her chest. Jamie was off to the side, avoiding her gaze. The walls of the room were now splattered with red, marring their pristine white.

Her eyes zeroed in on Jamie, who flinched and shrunk away from her gaze. Heather’s anger boiled to the surface, shattering the glass keeping it held inside. Growling, she pounced, tackling Jamie to the floor. Grabbing a bloody knife from nearby as she fell, she maneuvered herself so that the knife pointed directly at Jamie. Jamie’s body hit the ground with a dull thud, Heather landing on top of her. The knife easily slid through Jamie’s chest, slotting between two ribs. Jamie gasped, her eyes glinting with awareness.

“No… that wasn’t… urg…” Choking up blood, Jamie kept mumbling something, but Heather felt a red haze settle over her senses. Drawing the knife from Jamie’s chest, she stabbed it down again, and again, and again and again and again.

Letting out a primal howl, she sunk the knife in one last time, feeling the rage start to dissipate. Panting and shaking, her vision cleared, giving her the perfect view of Jamie’s mutilated corpse. Blood and gore were spattered everywhere, her hands drenched in it. Stumbling, Heather forced herself to stand, swaying as she tried to walk away from the scene before her.

Then the smell hit, and Heather couldn’t take it anymore; she leaned over and spilled her guts across the floor, which smelled completely rancid. Coughing and choking as she heaved, her stomach quivering, she fell to her knees, feeling tears building in her eyes.

What… just happened? Her breathing picked up, and she tried to wipe her eyes with her hands only to smear blood across her face, and she felt what seemed to be an intestine brush against her cheek. Stomach rebelling again, Heather continued vomiting, getting to the point where her chest and throat started to burn as only acid remained.

Finally, her body calmed down, allowing her to properly assess her situation. She felt her emotions once more settle into their little ball of flame, leaving a numbness in their wake. She just felt… empty. That didn’t get anywhere close to describing what she was feeling, but it was the best thing she could come up with.

A gurgling cough came from behind her, and she turned around to find Jamie struggling to push herself up, drawing the knife out of her chest with a grimace and a flinch. She immediately flung it to the side, and they both watched as it clattered against the floor, bouncing a few times before coming to a rest near the center of the room.

Taking a lurching step forward, Jamie shuddered, hugging her arms to her chest. “…Sorry,” she whispered, almost too soft for Heather to hear, “guess I lost control for a bit. Forgot to tell you about that, I guess…”

Heather watched with a clinical detachment as Jamie’s stomach slowly closed, leaving no wounds or signs of scarring. Jamie stopped a fair distance away, keeping her hands open at her sides.

“It’s why I was worried about your CLASS,” Jamie continued, her hands starting to visibly shake. “In ‘Realistic’ mode, some players theorized that your CLASS drastically affects your in-game personality. Guess we both found out it’s true.” Letting out a hollow laugh, she sighed, her shoulders slumping. “Mine’s affecting me much worse than I’d originally expected.”

Heather didn’t really know what to say, so she stayed silent. For a moment her emotions surged, threatening to overwhelm her with anger and rage, but she hastily shoved them back. Her panic must’ve shown on her face, though, because Jamie’s eyes softened as Heather composed herself.

“Emotions, right?” Jamie asked, and Heather nodded. “Yep, sounds about right. You’re a BERSERKER; you use your anger and rage as tools while you fight. The CLASS probably heightens your emotions to an extreme degree.”

Jamie wasn’t wrong. Usually, out of their friend group, Heather was the logical one. The fact that her emotions had been so on the fritz lately should’ve been a huge red flag that something was wrong. But Heather had brushed it off, excusing it as her being unable to cope with her death, and she wanted to kick herself for it.

There was a soft chuckle, one sounding slightly deranged, and it took Heather longer than she wanted to admit to realize that it came from herself. “That explains the boiling rage I’ve been trying to suppress for the past few weeks.” She kept her distance from Jamie in case she tried anything, something that was noticed if Jamie’s pained expression was anything to go by.

“Well,” Jamie started, before her body shuddered and twitched in place. A smile full of teeth was flashed at Heather, the room suddenly turning cold and damp, and her body locked in place as she felt an overwhelming sense of fear from that thing in front of her. Then, with a deep sigh, Jamie returned to normal, her eyes blazing back to life and that dark, oppressive aura fading under her skin.

“Well…” she continued, clenching her fists, “I got a bad CLASS for this type of thing. DARK DRUID. You know, a creature that worships nature, living off the forest, only to have humanity come around and utterly ruin the land. Gives me power over wind and stuff and makes me absolutely despise humans. You included.”

Heather felt her skin crawl as Jamie palmed her face, letting out a low groan. Her eyes flashed with a maniac gleam that Heather would’ve thought was a trick of the light if she didn’t know any better.

"So, you know what?” Jamie said, voice steadily growing louder. “I’ve got this constant voice in my head salivating over the idea of torturing you until your flesh falls off. Until you scream so much your throat stops working and all I want is to just kill kill kill killkillkillkillkill–”

She stopped, her eyes widening. Letting out a choked sob, she curled in on herself, clutching her chest. “Heather… make it stop… I don’t want…”

Heather took a step towards her, but she couldn’t bring herself to draw any closer. Listening to Jamie’s sobs, feeling a deep pain in her chest, she couldn’t stop herself from seeing the monster trapped beneath Jamie’s skin, the one that shuddered and twitched and tore out her throat with its teeth.

Jamie’s body shuddered and twitched again, and she wailed as she gripped her arms hard enough to bruise them. Her eyes flashed to Heather’s own, leaking bloodlust, but that quickly faded as Jamie wrestled for control. “I… I can’t…”

Forcing her emotions back into their little ball of flame, which coiled and writhed as it begged to be released, Heather moved towards Jamie, ignoring the pool of fear deep in her gut. This… none of this was what she signed up for when Jamie convinced her to play Leveled Plane. She’d expected fun adventures with friends, maybe some monster hunting, but never to face a demon that wore her friend’s face.

I’m not much better, though, Heather thought, as she drew Jamie’s shivering and twitching body close. Yeah, Jamie killed her. Tortured her to death, multiple times. And it sucked (to put it lightly), and most people probably would’ve never trusted their friend again. But Heather, right now, operated under cold, pragmatic logic. With her emotions locked away as they were, that was the only thing left.

And she realized, here and now, that she had absolutely no clue how to survive in this world. Heather had no knowledge of her surroundings, nothing to guide her and nowhere to go. Jamie was the only one who did.

Besides, Heather thought, feeling as Jamie shuddered and wept against her, I know just how hard this must be for her. If what she’s facing is anything like what it’s like for me…

The emotions in her chest roared for a moment, begging to be released. She remembered the satisfaction she felt as she let her rage control her, howling and screaming as she drove the bloodied knife through Jamie’s chest. She remembered the smile her face wore, reflected from the blood pooling off the walls, a gleam of madness and desire in her eyes. Most of all, she remembered the horror that overtook her once she calmed down, realizing what she’d done.

Her vision blurred, tears dripping down her cheeks as she pushed everything back, forcing herself to stay in control. “We’ll… figure this out,” she choked, trying her best to calm down. “It’s… gonna be…”

She couldn’t lie to herself, or to Jamie. It wasn’t gonna be fine. And as she broke down, sobbing into Jamie’s hair, she faintly realized that there wasn’t any going back from this. These were their lives now, as horrifying of a thought as that was, and they would forever be stuck trying to control these new impulses that threatened to remove their already screwed morals. The thought only made her fall even deeper into despair.