Jon took stock of himself first. He was surprised at how emotionally drained that last section of the game had left him. It wasn’t really anything the game designers had done. It had just touched on a bad memory. The mandatory counseling after hadn’t helped much. He could still remember that weird smell in Dr. Sadoki’s office as she’d told him he was only human, that no one could be perfect every second of every day.

That all sounded good in theory, but she hadn’t been the one whose hands were covered in a little boy’s blood. God, that kid had been maybe seven or eight years old. His own son had been around the same age. Jon had been over that scenario a million times, trying to think what he should have done differently, what he would do differently if he ever found himself faced with a hostage situation like that again.

Being better was the best he could do for that little boy, so that no one else’s little boys died too. That was when the long hours had started; longer hours, he should say. Then the problems with his marriage. He couldn’t let it go, she couldn’t deal with him never being home. He didn’t stop working even when he was off the clock.

She’d been right about that. Here he was, two broken ribs and a broken leg, supposed to be on leave and recovering. He could justify it as spending time with his son, but if he was being honest, he would never have picked up Istrius if he hadn’t noticed the common theme that every victim was connected to the game in some way.

Still, it had been nice to spend time with Derek. Jon hadn’t seen much of him since the divorce, not that he’d seen much of his family before it either. He had a suspicion he knew why his son’s grades had taken a sudden nose dive during the last half of the school year though. He made a mental note to discuss balancing school and hobbies.

Jon snorted. He was such a hypocrite, thinking he could lecture someone else about balancing work and play. This would definitely be a ‘do as I say, not as I do’ lecture, and he knew from experience that those were the hardest ones to drive the point home on.

As for Istrius itself, Jon had to consciously remind himself that it was only the first day. He hadn’t seen anything that struck him as too suspicious so far, besides his improbably high luck in rare drops. The blacksmith NPC had been incredibly simplistic compared to the AI on display in the village, too. He would have expected a prominent quest giver to have a bit more attention and effort put into creating it than random no-name background characters.

That wasn’t much to go on, but Jon wasn’t discouraged. Only some of the perps they’d arrested had actually been players in the game, and he’d taken the time to learn how to find their character profiles. All of them had been high level players. In four other cases, the people in custody had been roommates to active players who were also high level.

That said that if there was a real connection, and Jon still wasn’t convinced there was, that the answers would not be found at the lower levels. His working theory was that someone had discovered a vulnerability in how the game interfaced with the player’s brain and used it as a backdoor to perform mind jacking. Whoever had done it would have to have been beyond brilliant though.

There hadn’t been a case of mind jacking in over two hundred years, which was why Marc had dismissed the whole theory as nonsense. He didn’t believe the people they had in custody when they said they didn’t remember anything, and in all fairness, criminals were known to lie if they thought it could get them out of trouble.

Jon was not convinced. Just because no one had done it for generations didn’t mean someone wasn’t going to figure out a new way to do it. If Istrius was how that person was getting to his victims, Jon was going to find the link and trace it back to the source.

Before he did any of that though, he had a different kind of challenge, one that at that moment felt like a trial of Herculean proportions. His bathroom was on the other side of his apartment, he had multiple broken bones, and he really, really had to pee.

-------

Derek rummaged through the kitchen for snacks. His whole day had been surreal. It was unusual to even hear from his dad at all, but when he’d read the message asking if he wanted to play Istrius together, Derek had been so surprised he’d almost walked into traffic.

To his shock, the workaholic had been sincere. He’d gotten hurt on the job and was off to recover for a few weeks, and decided to put that time to good use bonding with his son. Since he was basically immobile, a vrmmo was perfect, and he’d remembered that Derek like Istrius.

It had been kind of weird at first, but his dad hadn’t treated him like, well, like a child. Derek was seventeen, about to finish up school, and his dad had kind of forgotten that kids got older. He had a tendency to still think of Derek as if he was still five. Maybe it had been the extra layer of separation the game world gave, but it was nice to be treated like an adult.

And damn, his old man was good at it. Even without that insanely lucky drop, his dad could fight. He guessed that made sense kind of. He was part of the police force, so presumably he had some sort of hand-to-hand combat training, but Derek hadn’t really expected it to extend to using a spear. There was a dragoon in his main character’s guild who’d been playing that class for a year, and Derek would have swapped him out for his dad in a heartbeat.

All in all, it had been a pretty fun day. There had been that speed bump at the end, and Derek was kicking himself for not remembering the whole hostage situation thing. He should have known how his dad would react to that, but he’d been in the mindset of Istrius being a game world for so long that he didn’t think of NPCs as people. They were plot devices and resources to enhance the player experience, nothing more.

But the AI was impressive. It had actually been one of the game’s selling points when it had come out a year ago, and the NPCs could act very life-like if the players were willing to play along and talk to them. Derek was sure his dad had never had time in his life to play a vrmmo, so the shock of stumbling into such a life-like scenario and not being in the proper head-space to separate it from his real life had done a number on his dad.

Hopefully he wouldn’t let it keep him from coming back, because it had been years since Derek had spent that much time with his dad and he was enjoying sharing his favorite hobby. It wouldn’t last more than a week or two. Once his dad was off bed rest he’d be right back to work and probably never log in again.

Derek took his arm load of snacks back to his room and sat down in his gaming chair. Idly, he opened the Istrius message boards and scrolled for interesting topics. The front page was composed of mostly two types of posts: those hyped for the upcoming expansion and those complaining about all the spoilers the beta testers had leaked. Derek’s only real opinion was that he was annoyed it wasn’t coming out until school started up again.

Not seeing anything he was interested in, he clicked on the second page and reached for the first snack bag.

------

The big machine whirred and hummed, but the girl inside didn’t hear it. Her body was securely placed in an examination chair, laid at an incline and with about a hundred different sensors pointed at her to monitor her vitals.

Her mind was far away. After she’d said good night and logged out, she hadn’t gone straight back to the real world. Instead, she’d gone up one level of vr to a doctor’s office. The staff member there was an AI construct, but she’d always found it easier to interact with if she pretended it was human.

She entered the office, and the AI known to her simply as Todd looked up from where he was doing paperwork. That was all an illusion, of course. The whole thing was fake, but the illusion of him doing busy work at a desk was just to make him appear more human. There was a word for that, when AI constructs were given meaningless scripts to humanize them. It bugged her that she couldn’t remember what it was.

“Good evening, Kelly,” Todd said. “Are you ready to give your daily report?”

“Yeah,” the girl replied. “So, I was online for about ten hours today. There was still some slight distortion trying to track fast moving objects, and I’m not sure, but I think some of the brighter hues are a different shade than they were yesterday. Other than that, everything seems to be good.”

“I’ll make a note of that and have someone check your neuro receptors. You should watch for any deterioration in the upcoming week. Of course the goal is to perfectly replicate sensory input, but in the interest of not having to perform invasive surgery to modify the implants, the clinic may decide that a level of slight distortion is acceptable when it comes to fast moving objects.”

It always made her shake her head that they’d designed Todd to have all the needless superficial human behaviors like a bunch of paperwork cluttering his desk or the pair of running shoes tucked into the corner beside a gym bag, but then his speech was so clinical and precise. It was like the AI couldn’t bear to be less than perfect, and any areas it was allowed to, it dialed the machine precision persona up to the max.

“Do you have anything else to report?” Todd asked.

She thought about Kana’s wild eyes when he took down the mob who’d killed the hostage. It was the first time she’d ever seen that look on anyone’s face. She thought about asking about it, but decided to hold off. She wanted more time to process what she’d seen. Maybe she’d tell Todd later.

“No, I think that’s everything. Have there been any changes to my next appointment schedule?”

“No. Dr. Landon will see you in the morning at the usual time.”

She tried not to wince at the word choice. Todd must have noticed the reaction though, because he said, “My apologies.”

“It’s not a big deal, Todd. I think I’m going to log off and go to sleep. Could you page a nurse for me?”

“Of course. Good night, Kelly.”

“Good night.”

She logged out of the VR system and the implants stopped rerouting sensory data. Slowly, the hum of the machine she was in came to her. The air started smelling like a hospital again, and she could feel a spot on her leg where the chair she was in chafed.

The colors of the office faded away, and everything went dark. She laid in the chair, waiting for the nurse to come remove her from the machine. After a minute, she heard the door open and a voice said, “Ready to come out?”

“Yep,” she said back, and a motor kicked to life. Fresh air, which just meant a stronger hospital smell, flooded the interior of the machine, and the darkness got a fraction of a shade less dark. She groped through the air with one hand until she felt the nurse grab onto it and help her to her feet.

“This way,” the nurse said.

The girl followed her, twelve steps to the door. She paused and waited for the squealing hinge that marked the door being opened. Then the nurse guided her forward, three steps forward and a left turn. She counted the steps to the bathroom, the same hundred and forty-two as every other night, then sixty-four more to her room.

She got settled into her bed and the nurse left her a tray of food. Then the nurse said, “Good night, Kelly,” and left the room.

Idly, the girl wondered if they left the light on or if she was left sitting there in the dark. She’d never bothered to ask. Mechanically, she shoved the food in her mouth until she couldn’t feel anything else on the tray, then she set it aside and laid down.

She hated being Kelly Teddik. Kelly Teddik needed help to do everything. Kelly Teddik was a burden on everybody. Kelly Teddik’s best friend was dead. Being Kelly Teddik sucked. The girl lay in the bed, unseeing eyes wide open and alone in a probably dark, and tears streamed down her face.

Screw being Kelly. She’d be Valit forever if they’d let her.