At first, Sarah didn’t know whether the stranger was a boy or a girl. She could see the figure standing at the other side of the street, wearing a hooded jumpsuit that appared to be white but looked gray in the darkness of the night. After a few seconds she could make out the delicate features of the face framed by the hood. The girl was Asian, she was not tall, and appeared to be pretty thin. She was standing motionless, staring at her through the window, waiting.

What kind of sick joke is this? I’ve had enough emotions for one day, Sarah though, not knowing if she should open the door and go out to meet the stranger. Then she recognized her.

A girl who also worked at Digidream. Her name was Sumiko, if Sarah was not mistaken, and she was an artist. Her job involved drawing and designing all kinds of stuff for the gameworld, mainly plants and animals and the odd artificial object. She was just one in an army of artists working on the game, some of them working on the NPCs (non-playing characters), others designing weapons and different kinds of armor, others dedicating their hours to drawing beasts and robotic foes. But Sumiko (if that was truly her name) had caught Sarah’s attention a few days ago because she interrupted a meeting to call Victor Anderen’s attention to some arcane detail on a screen. When she entered the meeting room, Sarah took a good look at her and thought she was a very pretty girl, with a small mouth will full lips, big vivaceous eyes, and pitch black hair with a hint of purple. But more than that, what struck her as notable was how similar she looked to an anime character. It was as if Sumiko was herself the work of an artist working for a virtual game.

It spoke to Mr Anderen’s lack of humility that the codename for the game was Anderworld, but since there were already other entities using the name, it would have to be changed down the line. For now, the splash screens, menus and other parts of the interface used the codename as a placeholder. Someone had suggested that the game were renamed to “Placeholder” instead, but the suggestion went nowhere. (It was an ingenious idea, though, at least as far as Sarah was concerned, since “Ander” means “other” and a placeholder is something that stands for some other thing. In the game, a virtual representation stands for the player, or maybe the other way around.)

What is she doing here? And where the fuck is Mike?

For the eleventh time, she tried to contact Mike, but he didn’t answer any calls or messages.

This can’t be a coincidence. Mr Anderen’s stroke, Mike’s disappearance, and now Sumiko waiting outside my apartment. It all has to be related.

It looked like she had no choice but to go out and meet Sumiko, so she pressed her finger on the lock and went outside. She was wearing normal clothes now instead of the nearly nonexistent gamesuit, and yet, now that the adrenaline wasn’t pumping so frantically inside her veins, she felt cold when she found herself on the street. Sumiko was dressed much more appropriately, with jogging pants and the jumpsuit that showed a cartoon of a fat dude making a funny irate face and the legend, “TRUMP 2028”. (A joke, of course. Ex president Trump had died in 2020 in ridiculous circumstances.)

“I know you,” Sarah said after a few moments of indecision.

“I know where Mike is,” Sumiko replied.

* * *

So there it was, again, the Digidream building glistening quietly in the darkness.

The place Sarah had just swore to herself she’d never set foot on again, just an hour ago.

The place from where she had ran away, vulnerable, almost naked, just an hour ago.

The place where she had left her cellphone, her clothes, her purse, her ID, in her rush to escape the man who was a genius, the man who had a second stroke, the man who, according to Sumiko, was holding her boyfriend captive in a suspension tank.

“Are you sure we can do this?”

“What? Enter the building? Of course we can,” Sumiko replied. And she added scornfully, “They haven’t cancelled my clearance. I’m not the one who kicked the boss and ran away.”

Sarah opened her mouth to give her a harsh reply but she was at a loss. Sumiko was factually right, of course, and Sarah was still too shocked to think of a good comeback. If Sumiko wanted to be a bitch, she was welcome, as long as she led her to Mike.

“Why can’t we just disconnect him?”

“He’s in the game,” Sumiko said as she let her thumb rest on the reader at the door. There were no security guards to be seen; maybe they were still taking care of Mr Anderen. Was he still alive? But the cameras were still there, so Sarah tried to keep her face covered as they walked through the main hall. Sumiko had given her the Trump jumpsuit so she could conceal her face from the video surveillance.

“We shouldn’t be here,” Sumiko whispered as they walked through a corridor and then towards one of the elevators. “It’s too risky. We could do everything remotely.”

“I need to see.”

If Sumiko was to be believed, Mike had beeen kidnapped, put into a tank, unconscious, and trapped inside the game. Why, the Asian artist had no idea; but she had definitely noticed how much interest the company’s owner had shown in a certain young female employee who worked as a tester for the gameworld. Some kind of revenge wasn’t out of the question. So Mike was now trapped inside Anderworld and there was no way to get him out without entering the game. Otherwise, he would suffer permanent brain damage, Sumiko had explained.

“But why?” Sarah had asked. “I have tested the gameworld and walked away fine. He could leave whenever he wants. It’s a game after all.”

“Oh, sweet summer child,” Sumiko had replied, taking a sip from the tea Sarah had made. “He’s drugged. He will sleep for as long as they want. And there’s the bit about time dilation. His mind is working at six to twelve times the normal speed. Even if we could wake him up, the shock would probably kill him, or turn him into a vegetable. Maybe the boss knows of a way out, but he might be in a coma by now; let’s hope he’s not straight up dead. No, you can’t rescue him from here. You need to get in too.”

“But... but how?”

“I don’t know,” Sumiko had said. “You need to find out what the rules are once you’re inside. Whoever did this didn’t want to just kill Mike or make him disappear. They wanted you to go search for him in the game. So if there’s a way, you need to find it in the gameworld.”

Calling the police was out of the question. The first thing they would do is try to disconnect Mike, damaging him beyond repair. The second thing they would do is side with the company and its multibillion dollar resources, helping them cover up whatever was happening. The third thing they would do is arrest Sarah for assaulting the boss, maybe killing him unintentionally, and trespassing.

“Now you’ll see what I’ve seen,” She said as the exit the elevator on the eleventh floor and walked across a dark corridor. “I’m not supposed to be here; my clearance definitely doesn’t let me open this door. But I can anyway. A bit of hacking.”

She pressed on the reader and the door opened with a hiss.

And then Sarah saw the tanks.

There were more than one; maybe a dozen. All of them were working, with people suspended inside. But the air inside the tanks was not perfectly clear. It had a very faint greenish hue. The drugs. They keep pumping these drugs into the tanks to keep them asleep. Or worse.

“Oh, Mike...!”

Sarah threw herself at one of the tanks. Her boyfriend was inside, floating in the air, completely unconscious, with a peaceful expression that reminded Sarah of all the times she had caressed his face while he was sleeping beside her in her bed. Tears were already running down her face. She clutched at the tank, in a futile version of a hug. Sumiko put a hand on her shoulder.

“We need to go,” she said. “We can’t do anything here. Let’s go to my place.”

* * *

This can’t be happening, Sarah tought as she climbed into the tank. It was not like the new model she had been testing earlier; it was one of the old ones, a horizontal pod where she had to lay down and put on a VR headset. But since she had the new-style VR band she was wearing when she ran out of the Digidream building, she could do without the heavy helmet.

Why am I trusting her?

Oh, yes. She showed me what they did to Mike.

Oh, Mike.

“Remember to look for me once you’re inside the game,” Sumiko said, leaning over the tank. “I will try to help you from outside, but I don’t know how I will appear to you exactly. You will be in time dilation, so whatever the case, we won’t be able to talk in real time. I’ll be awake so I’ll be functioning much slower. I think you’ll find me in the landscape or as written messages. But who knows? I didn’t work on that part of the game. I don’t know how it will represent the external hook I will be using.”

“But you will help me.”

“Yes. In fact, whatever I can tell you will be the only help you’ll get in the game. You won’t have any special abilities beyond those of any other player. You’ll have to level up from the start like anyone else, if you want to accomplish anything.”

“O-OK,” Sarah said. She was nervous. “Is it necessary for me to be drugged too?”

“Honestly, I don’t know,” Sumiko replied. “But we’ll do it anyway. It might be the only way to find Mike inside the gameworld. To be in the same state he’s in. Don’t worry, you won’t die if you can’t win. Only he will.” And without any additional remarks, she closed the glass door.

“I will be there... sometimes,” she assured Sarah. “And sometimes I’ll be sleeping or eating or... you know.”

Sarah couldn’t hear her voice, only read her lips now that the door was shut.

She checked that her VR band was perfectly adjusted, closed her eyes, opened them again, and tried to relax. A very soft hissing sound filled the tank. The drugs were now spreading in the air inside, taking her to another world.

The last thing she saw before logging in was Sumiko’s smile. It was pretty, a heroine’s smile, like in an anime.