“I should have known,” Sarah said.

Uberyn —no, not Uberyn, she corrected herself in her mind: Victor, this was Victor Anderen— gave her an inscrutable look. Was he surprised that she didn’t know already? Or that she wasn’t shocked enough?

“Every step of the way, it was you. Always you,” Sarah continued. “There are thousands of realms in the Anderverse, but I kept meeting you everywhere I went. You were pushing me around. Every time things didn’t work out like you wanted... a wave. A fucking wave to send me to a different world. To bump into you again.”

Uberyn shrugged. “Well, what can I say? A man in love—”

“Don’t speak of fucking love,” Sarah hissed, walking through the wide hall and forcing him to follow her. It was not the heart of the fortress yet; there was a metallic wall on the other side, and a huge steel door, with bolts and bars, apparently locked. “I love Mike. The guy you kidnapped and put in the game with lower than minimum stats. You turned him into a clown, an ugly, sorry thing. For what? Out of jealousy?” The windows were big screens. Or maybe they were actual windows facing different realms, since she could see a different landscape unfolding through each one. The command center of a god. A jealous, aging, delusional god. “Why did you bring him here, Victor? Just so that you could mock him incessantly? So that I would see how much more powerful and handsome you were, and fall in love with you?”

“I... I admit that was more or less the idea,” Uberyn (no, no, Victor, Victor fucking Anderen) said, trotting behind her like a little dog, his golden sabatons clanking against the smooth floor. “You were a bit impressed, you can’t deny that.”

“I never stopped thinking of Mike,” Sarah replied, “even though I didn’t know he was beside me all the time. You may be a genius, but you’ll never compare to him.”

“I admit it, yes,” Victor said. Sarah turned around to face him. They were standing in the middle of the hall. She was curious to know what was on the other side of that huge door, but he wouldn’t tell her, of course. Whatever it was, it had to be even more important than this place that would let you go anywhere in the Anderverse.

“You admit it.”

“I do. It was... childish,” he frowned. “A man in love is like a child. Don’t you agree? Sarah, I— I was dying. I couldn’t stand losing you. I wanted to—”

“Losing me? You never had me, you sick fuck.”

“But Sarah, think about it,” he insisted. “We are immortal here. You could rule this world beside me! You could ride a fucking dragon every day!”

“Are you twelve? I think this game might have messed up with your brain a bit. Maybe the—” Sarah bit her tongue. She had been about to reveal too much. She was about to suggest that the mind transfer could have already taken all his adult part and left him with the infant parts. But Victor didn’t know that she knew about that. Or did he? Was he aware of the Sorceress and the Great González? She quickly returned to the previous subject. “And the waves. Oh gods, the waves. I meet Mike at the Enchanted Forest and you happen to be peeking from a distance. As soon as I see you, you push me away with a fucking wave, and send me to another world where everybody loves you and you wear an armor of fucking gold.” She gave him a disdainful look, since the golden armor was exactly the outfit he was wearing right now. “By the way, it’s super corny, you know.”

“OK,” Victor said, and in an instant, the armor had vanished. In its place he was wearing a tight elastic full body suit, like a diving suit but with a more reflective surface. “I admit it, it’s corny as f—”

Sarah’s sword was going down on him before he could finish the word. The blade glistened briefly and reflected in his piercing blue eyes; then it broke in a myriad of shards. The shards dissolved in the air before they could fall to the floor.

“Wow,” Sarah said.

“Wow,” Victor said. And after a couple of seconds he added, “You know you can’t kill me. But if you could, you’d never get out of the game.”

He was right, Sarah realized, and almost gave in to despair. In fact she already knew that, but she was so eager to punish Victor, to make him suffer, that she had stopped thinking. Her hate was clouding her judgment.

“Then I reject your kiss and that very night, bam, I’m gone again,” Sarah continued as if nothing had happened, but she checked her inventory as she spoke and confirmed that the sword had actually disappeared from the list. Maybe it was impossible to win after all. “But then I’m sent to the dead city, alone, to fight zombies for two months. What happened then, Victor? Were you angry? Did I hurt your pride? Were you having a fit?”

Victor’s face reddened. He said nothing.

“And then another wave comes out of nowhere and suddenly I’m with you again, sharing a tower, and Mike is there too, and he’s the useless chump once more. I bet you were planning to send me away as soon as he accidentally got some useful skill. But I was quicker.”

“So you knew who I was?” Victor said. “I don’t understand. How did you know you wouldn’t die by jumping from that tower?”

“I didn’t,” Sarah lied.

“Oh, yes, you knew,” Victor said, walking around her with his hands behind his back and a pensive expression. “Somehow you discovered how to jump from realm to realm. Like this room,” he continued. “But I don’t understand how. Unless you had some help from outside. I mean, it’s the only explanation, isn’t it?”

Sarah remained silent.

“Oh yes, that’s it,” Victor said. “Well, they can’t come here, that’s for sure. I would see them immediately, just like I saw you. I would delete them in an instant. They would die in real life, as you can imagine.”

“Who are the others?”

“What?”

“The others. Undaya, Gervain, Nathyn, Myra. The other players. They don’t remember who they are outside the game. Why? Did you kidnap them too? Is that why they were in the tanks at Digidream?”

“Bah, they don’t matter,” Victor said, waving a hand in dismissal. “They agreed to be part of the game. Of course they didn’t know they would lose their memories once they were here, or that they wouldn’t have a way to log off. But I can send them away whenever I can.” He stopped walking in circles and looked outside, but he was really looking at nothing. His eyes looked glassy. “It’s not that much fun when you know you’re the only one and this whole world is fake, you know? I wanted friends. Well, other people. Real people. Until I could get you to come.”

“Well, I’m here now.”

Victor glanced at her. A shadow of guilt crossed through his eyes.

“I get it,” he said with sudden resolve. “Come with me.”

He took her hand. Sarah was too surprised to shake it off.

Victor made a couple of passes with his other hand, drawing invisible shapes in the air, and the windows started rotating, the realms changing rapidly on each, until they stabilized and now there was a different set of realms they could see. In front of them Sarah could see the tower field. The Gate was once again under attack, but the monsters walking along the road were different now, more powerful than the floxas she had seen when she had been there. Victor waved his hand in a new gesture and the realm came closer and closer. Sarah flinched.

When she realized what was about to happen, she barely had time for a thought: Store attack ship!

A second later they were jumping through the window. They landed on the ground right beside the Damper.

“Come on,” Victor said. “You wanted this, didn’t you?”

“You’re actually doing this.”

“I love you.”

Sarah bit her lip. She didn’t want him to change his mind right now.

They entered the elevator and went up. A minute later they stepped off and were on the top floor. Undaya was there, hooked to a device that let her channel her magic to blast the monsters. Victor approached her with quick strides. Sarah followed.

“Uberyn!” she exclaimed when she saw them. “Sajya! I’ve been missing—”

Victor slapped her forehead with the lower part of his palm. Undaya fell backwards, froze in place for an instant, then resumed her fall at an accelerated pace like in an ancient movie. She became a blur before disappearing completely.

“What the flying fuck!!!” Sarah screamed.

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” Victor asked, surprised. “She’s gone. Logged off. I sent her back safely. She’s now waking up in the real world.”

“F-for real?”

“For real. Come on.” He took her hand again.

Gervain was no longer in the Piercer tower. They jumped and found him in another realm, playing some weird card game with an orc. He seemed to be winning, because he sported the widest grin Sarah had seen. Or maybe he was just a good actor and he was bluffing his life away. A big jug half full of beer was beside him. The rest would surely be inside him by now.

“Hey, guys!” he said. “You don’t know what— hey, what the fuck!”

Victor had grabbed him by his shoulder and given him a sudden jerk to put him in the correct position. Once they were facing each other, he didn’t give Gervain time to add another objection: with a quick slap to the forehead, he was gone, too.

“I hope you appreciate what I’m doing,” Victor said bitterly as they jumped to another realm in search of Myra. “I brought them here while I was out there. Now I am sending them back and I have no way to bring new people. I hope you’re satisfied.”

They found Myra still in the Battle Space realm, boarding a different mothership, presumably to go on a mission somewhere else. She could barely seem them before Victor send her offgame. Nathyn was hiding from a Tyrannosaurus Rex in the Prehistoric Survival realm. He was sent back. There were three or four others, all of them in different parts of the Anderverse. Victor slapped them all on their foreheads, they all fell backwards, they all became blurry, they all disappeared.

“I hope you’re happy,” Victor said when they were back in the sky palace. “They are all safe now. Nobody died. I freed them. For you.”

“I’m not happy,” Sarah said. “You still have to free us. Mike and me.”

“Sarah...”

“Mike, then. Free him. Let him go. I’m begging you.”

“No.”

“Why not? I’m here with you. He’s got nothing to do with—”

“You are here because of him,” Victor said, his expression now hardened. “And I’ll keep him here for as long as I need unti you actually want to stay. Sarah, you can’t kill me, so you’ll have to love me.”

Sarah looked away.

She had lied.

She was happy.

As they went jumping from realm to realm, she had been subtly manipulating the Worldjumper, grazing it delicately with her finger, nudging it from side to side. Every realm was a set of weapons, a set of possibilities. They were all in her possession now. Dozens of items at her disposal, a bunch of stuff she could use against her enemy. Victory didn’t seem so impossible now.

“What do you say, Sarah? Will you be able to love me?” Victor Anderen asked, maybe just to break the silence. But when he turned around to see her, Sarah wasn’t there. Or anywhere he could see.

You will free us or you will pay, Sarah screamed silently as the maximum power of Stealth bathed her in an enduring invisibility. The man standing right beside her kept looking around, puzzled. Let the fight begin.