Friday, November 29th 2052, 05:16 OWO Server Time

“What the hell?” Macha snapped in the wake of me accepting the quest. “We don’t have time for this!”

“She’s right,” Bolton agreed, his tone edged with frantic tension.

“There’s no failure penalty, let’s just bolt.” Bryn moved for the door.

“I’m not leaving without Archer.”

“What is it with you and this wolf?” Bryn demanded. “You threw yourself down those trapped stairs after him in the tomb too, but he’s not real, Zee!”

“He’s special and we all know it!” I snapped back in frustration. “You all run and hide if you want, or help me look, but I’m done arguing.”

“The quicker we find him, the quicker we can get the hell out of here,” Elias finally concluded in his most reasonable tone.

“Fine! Let’s get this over with.” Bryn threw open the door and marched outside.

The air was crisp and cool when I stepped out of the Laughable Owl’s front door, the hood of my ranger’s cloak pulled up over my head. Between the faint glow of approaching dawn on the horizon and the still flickering candles in village windows, my half-elven eyes could see through the early gloom about as easily as if I’d been human and it had been a bright noon day. In pitch dark I could only see about 15 feet, but even a little bit of illumination greatly enhanced my vision.

“Let’s divide the village and start searching,” I said after looking up and down the quiet village street and not seeing any obvious clues. “I’ll head to the edge of town and look for any tracks heading outward.”

“Now you want to split the party too?” Bryn moaned. “You really must have a death wish!”

“Let’s just get this over with,” Macha grumbled. “I’ve got the north-west side of town.”

“I’ll take north-east,” Bolton volunteered and hurried after Macha who was already stomping off down the road.

“This is so stupid!” Bryn seethed as she marched off in the other direction.

“We’ll go south then,” Elias’s tone was calm and placating.

The NPCs of Faversham all still seemed soundly asleep as I stalked the narrow dirt roads and paths of the small village. Leveraging all of my available skills, I listened intently to every little sound, and my eyes continually scanned the ground for any clues or useful tracks. Faversham wasn’t large, in fact describing it as small even felt like an overstatement. It didn’t take long to reach the village’s outer perimeter, where I began a slow circuit looking for tracks.

“Jackpot!” I whispered the word, but the surge of excitement was more like a scream of joy.

My Tracking and Perception skills working in tandem had found a large canine paw print in some mud beside a dirt path leading out of the village. The game highlighted the print by making it glow yellow in my vision. As I studied the area, a different print stood out and began to glow orange. It was a small shoe print. The game picked out the trail of both prints progressing further down the path and away from Faversham. I shot off a quick message to the rest of the party.

Zee Locked-In: Think I’ve got something!

Bolton: Be more vague.

Zee Locked-In: Wolf prints and what could be kid prints at the edge of town. Gonna follow them. You guys keep checking the village in case this is bogus.

The two lines of glowing prints led into a dense clump of trees and brush. Despite the additional foliage and the litter of autumn leaves on the ground, the trail was straight and easy to follow with my stats.

Beneath the trees, I breathed deep and looked around in the predawn gloom. The hairs along the back of my neck prickled and I had the distinct feeling of being watched. I took a knee at the base of a tree and activated my Stealth skill, still the sensation didn’t dissipate. Either the feeling was just a paranoid tickle, or whatever was watching me had a high enough Perception score that it saw through my concealment.

Reluctant to draw the MacGuffin from its sheath on my hip, I instead drew my less magical but more familiar scimitar. Naked steel in hand, and senses on high alert, I crept forward along the glowing trail of prints.

The trees and brush came to an abrupt end in a rectangular clearing. About a dozen feet from the treeline was a wooden fence. Within the fence black and white cows grazed. At the center of the clearing stood a barn of weathered grey wood. The path, along with the glowing tracks, continued up to the fence, then across the field straight up to the barn.

Crouching stone-still in the shadows of the trees, I waited for something, anything, to happen for several minutes. Still, I had the distinct impression of hostile eyes upon me. While I did, I fired off another message describing how to find the path I’d followed. An almost immediate reply arrived after hitting send.

Macha: Can’t find Bryn, but we’re on our way!

The oppressive sense of being watched grew even stronger as I waited. I twisted and craned my head around, eyes peering into the gloom for any signs of what I was sensing. After almost five minutes of this, I couldn’t tolerate the sensation any longer. Despite my concealment, I felt exposed, vulnerable, and very very alone.

Maybe splitting up was a bad idea, I thought with a shudder.

Rising from my hiding spot, whatever it had been worth, I loped into the clearing. With a fluid grace that my real body never could have managed, I jumped over the fence like an Olympic hurdler, then continued on across the field. A dry raspy moan from the trees behind me followed by a series of rattling crashes as something, or several somethings, began to break cover caused me to glance back over my shoulder. A stiff human-like form awkwardly stumbled from the treeline. I could just make out the red monster tag over its head.

Zombie Thrall, Level 1 Humanoid Zombie, Undead Minion

A second, then a third zombie crashed free of the brush behind the first. By the sounds coming from the treeline, there were more, many more behind them. I turned my head back and pushed myself up to a full sprint. Chest heaving, I reached the doors to the barn and shoved one open. Heedless of the darkness that my night vision barely pierced, I flung myself inside and slammed the barn doors shut.

Maybe I can fort up until the others get here, I thought with a tinge of panic. With my back pressed firmly against the barn doors I frantically surveyed the interior. Empty wooden stalls lined the left side, while various tools hung from the wall on the right.

The interior of the barn was silent, aside from the rasp of my heavy breathing. Then I heard a soft thump from the deep shadows beyond the range of my night vision. Archer stepped into my radius of view and I let out the tense breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. The wolf’s tail wagged in greeting, before he tilted his head and narrowed his eyes at me. He took in my frantic state, and the pointed ears atop his head swiveled like little satellite dishes. I heard him draw in a long sniff through his nose.

“We’ve got company,” I reported as almost simultaneously Archer let out a deep warning growl. “Is the kid with you?”

Archer nodded his head in the affirmative.

“The others are on their way, we’ve got to try and hold here.”

In response, Archer turned around and melted into the shadows deeper into the barn. I heard a clamour as multiple heavy items fell, followed by the sound of something being dragged across the barn’s dirt floor. A heartbeat later, Archer reappeared, jaw clamped around a long wooden board.

With a grunt, Archer hauled the board over to me where he dropped it at my feet. Before I could say a word Archer had disappeared back into the depths of the barn. Reluctantly, I abandoned pressing my back to the barn doors and rushed over to the wall of tools. I grabbed a hammer and snatched up a handful of crude iron nails from a bucket on the floor.

Moving back to the doors, Archer was back with another board. As he went to retrieve another, I did my best to brace the first board across the doors while also trying to line up the nail and hammer. DIY projects were not my favorite. Cursing under my breath, I clenched nails between my teeth and managed to bash a couple nails into one end of the board and the door behind it. Then I pounded a couple nails into the other end of the board so that it hung across both doors at a haphazard angle.

I repeated the process with the second board. Then used the third and fourth boards that Archer had brought to try and brace the boards between the floor and the doors. I had no idea what I was doing, but it made sense in my frantic brain at the time.

When I had finished, Archer was pacing back and forth, his ears on the swivel and nose visibly flexing as he scented the air. I tossed aside the hammer and remaining nails and tried to hear beyond the barn over the sound of my heaving breaths. It was then that I caught the faint sound of a choked sob at the back of the barn.

I looked at Archer and found him staring right back at me with those impossibly self-aware eyes that set him apart from every other NPC I’d met in OVR World Online.

“He’s like you, isn’t he.” It was a statement, not a question.

Archer jerked his head in a nod.

“Not taking it well?”

What had I done to this NPC kid? Archer hadn’t seemed at all distressed when I had accidentally turned his brain on. I hadn’t even realized I’d done anything until my friends started commenting about how smart and independent he seemed. For whatever reason, Lucas seemed to be taking the transition much harder. Maybe if I’d realized what I’d done last night, I could have helped, but I’d been drunkenly oblivious at the time.

Archer whined in an empathetic-sounding manner. His tongue darted out and licked the back of my hand and I blew out a long breath. Then we both heard a chorus of wheezing undead moans outside. A second later there were a series of dull thumps against the wall to my right, causing the tools hanging there to rattle. There was a louder choked sob from Lucas, off in the dark recesses of the barn. Fingernails started clawing at the wall and there were shuffling footsteps as the walking corpses worked their way along the wall in search of a way in.

“Keep an eye on the door,” I ordered Archer “I’m gonna go check on the kid.”

Archer planted himself resolutely in front of the crudely barricaded doors. Jaw clenched with reluctance, I sheathed my scimitar. If Lucas was freaked out, approaching him with naked steel wouldn’t help. Moving away from the doors, my night vision revealed the back half of the barn with each step.

The empty wooden stalls continued along the left wall. There was what I guessed was an animal-drawn plow off in the right-hand corner, along with a sloppy pile of wooden planks and other scrap material along the back wall. Across the back half of the barn was a raised loft strewn with loose hay. Descending from the loft was a wooden frame halfway between a ladder and very steep stairs.

“H-h-hello?” squeaked a small, terrified voice from the deep shadows at the back of the hayloft.

“Lucas? I’m Zee. Archer’s friend. We met last night.” I have no idea why my voice seemed to instinctively rise a couple of octaves as I spoke softly over the sounds of zombies clawing at the walls.

“Y-y-ou did thi-thi-thiss to me.” There was fear, pain, confusion, but most of all accusation woven through those stuttering words.

“I know. You’re right.” I rocked back on my heels at the raw and genuine emotion in the kid’s voice. I struggled to figure out what to say next.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

There was a long silence between us. Then behind me, Archer let out a deep warning growl towards the barn doors. A second later, the doors rattled and shook as the zombies let out a collective wail and began to bang on them. I didn’t like the odds that my craftsmanship would hold for long.

“Can I come up?” I asked after turning back to the loft.

“Okay.” Lucas's response was barely a whisper and clearly reluctant.

I climbed the ladder stairs, then paused at the top to peer into the deep shadows. Just at the edge of my vision I picked out Lucas huddled in the back corner of the loft. Wading through the piled hay, I made my way back to the frightened kid.

Lucas looked up at my approach with big tear-filled eyes which hit me like a bus that couldn’t drop below 50 miles an hour.

“What’s wrong with me?” Lucas demanded as the barn doors rattled violently.

I crouched down a few feet away from Lucas and blew out a long breath. What the fuck was I supposed to say? Archer hadn’t seemed to struggle at all with the transition from mindless simulation to self-aware intelligence. As I struggled to find words the barn doors continued to shudder and crack.

Then Lucas continued to speak, his voice rising with every word until he was screaming at me. “Everyone at home is wrong! They’re all walking around and talking and acting like they always have, but they’re all flat, like drawings. Mom, Dad, even Teresa, it’s like they’re all dead, but still walking and talking!”

Speaking of walking dead. One of my barricading boards let out a crack like a gunshot. Archer gave a sharp high yip of warning.

“And I remember,” Lucas continued. “I used to be like them. Until you touched me, and everything changed!”

Then Archer let out a deep rolling snarl just before barn doors crashed open.