“I’m proud of what we’ve done. No president in history has faced a crisis of this magnitude. We acted swiftly, saved millions of lives. Americans are strong, resilient people. They’ll bounce back from this in no time. Mark my words.”

President Bicton 2113.

I felt like I was stepping back in time as I made my way down the old steps into the guts of the city. The stairwell just kept going and going, plummeting down a rough, circular tunnel that looked as though it had been bored out of the earth by a giant worm with rows of teeth the shape of drill tips.

This was an ancient part of town, “the old city,” as we called it. It was so old that the only real truths that remained about its origins were that it had been built by the government and was still off limits, despite having an entire slum build around it. Every kid in the Barracks knew the story—or maybe urban legend—about the group of three boys who managed to sneak in a top window and were immediately whisked away by a squad of government ultralights, never to be seen again. True or untrue, those boys were on my mind as I descended.

A glimpse of red fluttered ahead of me and I saw the delivery girl standing patiently at the bottom of the steps, where a smooth matte-green concrete floor spread out before me to a set of double steel doors that looked like something straight out of a bank vault.

“Hey!” I cried out as I walked towards her. “What the Hell is going on?”

“All will be explained,” she said as the rotors on the drone that had been tracking me hummed down and landed easily on her arm like a loyal falcon returning its owner.

“Where are we? How did you get down here?!”

“This is the Reactor,” she said simply. “The old heart of the city. Shut down by the government over one hundred years ago. We…repurposed it some time ago. Never knew it would turn into something so important.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but she turned to the enormous doors and rapped a pattern with the back of a knuckle.

Tap-tap…. tap…tap-tap.

The sound of heavy gears and precision metal groaned from behind the two monstrous slabs of steel. Then, a crack appeared, and one of the doors opened slowly, just enough for a person to pass through.

“Come,” she said again, and stepped through the opening.

“Shit!” I stammered again, slapping my thigh with a palm.

Why can’t this make sense!?

I felt like a ball of string being batted around by a kitten, or a tiny figurine in a board game being played by some bored god-like beings amusing themselves with my misfortunes. Still, I’d come this far…

A huge axe could have come out of the blackness as I stepped through the door, and chopped my head off, and I wouldn’t have had any right to be surprised. Thankfully, that didn’t happen, and I found myself standing in a dimly lit room, draped with cables of all kind that had clearly been spliced into, with smaller lines running off in every direction.

There was a circle of chairs that were fully reclined, almost like hospital gurneys, but made from faded leather, each with a Fount sitting on the ground beside them. At the center of it all, stood three people.

I recognized one of them, the red woman, her arms crossed as she leaned casually against a beat up storage locker. Beside her, was a tall mammoth of a man, his skin as dark as coal and his hair as white as snow, and behind him, doing his best to appear like a tough guy, was the obvious tech of the group. He was pasty white, not quite thin but not quite in shape, and wore camo cargo pants with a tattered tank top.

“Welcome, Rand,” the man spoke, his voice strong like an iron bar.

“Where am I?” I asked, then followed up immediately. “Who are you?”

“We are the free,” he replied with a smile containing more confidence than I’d ever seen from a face. “Those who, like you, have broken free of our chains.”

I felt like I was listening to a preacher—a preacher who I did not understand.

“That was you?” I asked, latching onto the only thing I could even try to comprehend. “On my computer?”

The preacher nodded slowly, but the eyes of the young man behind him lit up.

“Mickey,” the man introduced us. “Our resident tech genius. We call him the wizard.”

“Hi,” Mickey said sheepishly, raising a hand. The preacher placed a hand on the woman standing beside him.

“This is Fujiko,” he said simply. “And I am Altarus.”

“You—you were in the game?” I asked, trying to get a grasp on what the strange man was trying to tell me. It was like trying to get a firm grip on a bar of wet soap.

“We were,” he replied, taking a step forward. “But like you, we were able to escape.”

“How?” I asked. “How was I even able to do that when no one else was?”

“It seems as though we all share some kind of…unique aspect to our minds that has freed us from the system…that allows us to escape the clutches of whatever it is that binds the rest of them.”

Unique aspect to our minds? I thought, feeling the frown on my face as my eyes wandered around the room. Then, a realization hit me like a slap in the face.

“My epilepsy…”

Altarus nodded but said nothing, letting me take it in. My epilepsy had been a constant burden in my life, and I’d spent years trying to find the best medication to keep my seizures under control. Every time I had one, I was in bed for a day or two trying to recover from the massive headaches, nausea, and worse—temporary memory loss.

I’d wake up on the floor with no idea where I was or what had happened. When I’d look around the room, I had no sense for the layout and was unable to fill in any of the gaps with my mind. Luckily, I’d recognize my mother, but that was about it. The last few days would be a complete mystery. Could it really be that somehow this thing that had been torturing me all my life, had actually saved me from being trapped in the world like the others?

“That’s why I was able to get out…” I muttered to myself, remembering the moment when I’d felt that strange sensation as I was pulled back to my room. It was morbid and strange, twisted and grim, but somehow I couldn’t help but smile. “Incredible.”

“You’re lucky,” Fujiko said firmly, speaking for the first time since I’d arrived. “Like the rest of us. We brought you here because we need your help.”

‘Yeah, how did you do that?” I asked curiously. “That thing to my computer?”

“It’s pretty simple actually,” Mickey chimed in with a kind of timid enthusiasm. “I’ve been tracking Fount logins, which is easy if you know what you are doing, waiting for logouts. When I saw yours, I simply searched your username, and since you used it on a couple of other games, I was able to get your full name, which I used to search in the surrounding areas of your Fount’s signature, which led me right to you.”

“Oh,” I replied. “But the message? On my PC?”

Mickey smiled confidently. “Well—that’s why they call me the wizard.”

“And quite a drone pilot too,” I added, to which Mickey smirked.

“We want you to join us, Rand” Altarus interjected. “Something is happening in the world—something terrible—and we have been chosen. Will you help us?”

I glanced around the room, at the strange bed-chairs, hoses and cables draped down from the ceiling and walls, the Founts and Crowns just waiting to be used.

“My friend is inside,” I said softly.

“We all have loved ones trapped inside,” Fujiko said firmly. “Which is why we hoped you’d understand.”

“I want to help her,” I replied. “But…saving the world? We don’t even know what’s going on or what we are up against…do we?”

“We believe it is the game’s developer, Mizaguchi,” Altarus explained.

“But why?”

“Whatever is going on is being done at the server level,” Mickey added. “Some sort of code maybe that’s preventing players from logging out.”

“So, you don’t think it’s a glitch?”

Mickey shook his head. “That’s what the company’s saying. But there’s no way. They’d have a thousand fail safes built in for something like this. They’re just as clueless as we are.”

Mizaguchi? I thought. But why?

Blood Seekers was his magnum opus, a project he’d put his entire experience as a game designer into. Why would he want to turn it into something terrible? What could he possibly have to gain by doing so?

“He hasn’t’ made a statement?” I asked.

“No,” Altarus replied grimly. “In fact, no one has heard from him since this all began.”

“Probably in some secret data center somewhere,” Fujiko spat.

“What do you guys think about the monolith?” I asked. They were like me, and I’d expected to see recognition in their eyes, but all I saw was the same look Jacob had given me when I’d mentioned it to him.

“Monolith?” Mickey asked sheepishly.

“You all didn’t see the monolith?” I asked. Heads shook slowly and my heart sank. If they were like me, why hadn’t they seen it too? I guess it didn’t really matter—not at the moment. Everything was a question, and we were searching for answers.

“Okay, so what do we do?” I asked, bucking myself up the best I could.

“We go back in,” Fujiko said. “Level up and get to the bottom of this.”

“My Fount is toast,” I told them. “My character—”

“Stored server side, dude,” Mickey grinned. “Those days of direct device backup are long gone. You’re good to go!”

I shook my head in disbelief.

“We’re all in this together, Rand,” Altarus said. “If we’re going to get to the bottom of this, free those who are trapped there, we need to work together. Will you help us?”

The question was all but rhetorical. I’d come this far already; I wasn’t about to pull out now. So, I took a step forward to the Fount Mickey had prepared for me and took a seat on the gurney beside it. Taking the crown and sliding it onto my head, I looked up at my new friends.

“I’m at the Weeping Hills lamppost,” I told them. Altarus’ eyes lit up and they all made their way to their own Fount. “Just died in the Cragstone Plains.”

“Did you lose much Quintessence?” Fujiko asked.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Killed a Stone Demon—”

“Waste of time going back then,” she scoffed. “We are based in Ebonmire, a long trek West of the Hills. Wait for us in town. We’ll meet up there.”

“Okay,” I replied, lying back on my bed. “I’ll work off my death penalty—hopefully it’ll be gone by the time you get there.” I noticed Mickey had taken a seat in a large rolling chair with a high back. “You’re not coming?”

He flicked his fingers quickly across a matte-black mechanical keyboard and shook his head. “I’m not a fighter. I’m the brains behind the brawn.”

“All right, Brainiac,” Fujiko scoffed. “Quit yappin’. We’ve got work to do.”

“See you on the other side,” Altarus said as he thumbed the button on his Fount. My head was spinning, but I was on the crest of the wave and there was nothing to do but keep riding it as long as I could. I reached over and pressed the button and closed my eyes.