“That shit is gonna kill you if you’re not careful,” I said.

“Yeah?” Kris asked, taking another pull from her vape stick. “Supposed to be a hell of a lot safer than what they used to smoke. Besides. No one’s proven the link between these and anything nasty.”

I waved the cloud of fruit flavored nicotine away as she blew it at me. At least it wasn’t that nasty old shit. Smoking wasn’t allowed on any level of the arcology, though of course how much those rules applied depended on how much money someone had.

Or how little they had to lose, for that matter. It was one of the strange things that the super wealthy and the super poor had in common.

People smoked all the time on our level and no one came after them. Mostly because that was the least of the laws being broken around here on the regular.

“That’s exactly what people said about smoking for years,” I said. “Didn’t do shit for all the people who died thinking it was safe.”

“Whatever,” Kris said. “You ready to do this?”

I looked out across our level and up towards our school in the distance high on the massive center support column. This early in the morning, before the few lights that still worked turned on to create the twilight that passed for daytime, those lights from the center column were the only thing twinkling around here.

At this hour everyone was either logged into their Lotus hardware or sleeping. Or on whatever old fashioned non-VR drug of choice they were chasing as they came down from their overnight high.

“Yeah, I guess we should do this,” I said. “Not like the trip’s gonna get any easier when the lights come on.”

I sighed. At least at this time of day most of the tweakers were still high enough on whatever they managed to score overnight that they wouldn’t be coming at us.

Maybe. If we were lucky as we made our way through the rat’s nest of alleys we had to navigate every day to get to the school elevator.

I looked out to the massive grimy window running around the outside of our level. Supposedly the thing had let in real sunlight once upon a time. At least it’d provided light during the times of day when the sun briefly shone at the right angle to get in here.

Not anymore, though. Sunlight was something for people who could afford to live on a level where people still maintained shit.

I dropped down to the street beside my house. It was safer to be on the roofs for hanging out, but running across the roofs was a good way to get shot by someone with a contraband weapon firing through those roofs thinking you were a thief.

Kris did the same. I double checked that the back door to my place was locked. The last thing I wanted was to come home to a security team trying to confiscate my earbuds because some asshole tried breaking in and that gave them a convenient excuse to officially rob the place. Then Kris and I moved into the darkness.

“I checked the views on our video this morning,” I said. “That thing is doing pretty well considering the Lotus announcement hit a half hour after it was uploaded.”

“Don’t remind me about Lotus,” Kris growled.

I sighed. “Sorry. I’m just as pissed off as you are.”

“I mean who the fuck gouges people like that for the privilege of playing their game a month ahead of everyone else? They’re no better than Horizon,” she groused.

“Don’t say that,” I said. “Lotus was up front with investigators about how their hardware could be abused. Horizon stonewalled. No one is as bad as those murdering motherfuckers.”

“The early access thing still sucks,” Kris said.

“Preaching to the choir,” I said.

“I guess they waited two fucking years to get the game out,” Kris muttered. “They could delay the actual launch another couple of years and it’s not like it’d be any different from where we were before.”

I took a deep breath. I knew what was coming.

“Oh, that’s right,” Kris said. “Except it is different because somebody pissed off Horizon and got us banned from their modules so now all I can do is sit in my tower redecorating in between browsing porn!”

“It was worth it,” I said, my voice level.

Kris rolled her eyes, but there was nothing else to say. She knew getting them to admit what they’d done in such a public way was totally worth getting banned from Horizon modules, even if she was pissy about it.

I opened my mouth to tell her to stop bitching and paused. There was something pinging in the back of my mind. That feeling on the back of my scalp that said there was something wrong.

It was an instinct I’d come to rely on both in the real world and in the digital world.

The big difference being that in the game world you came back from having the shit kicked out of you with maybe the loss of some gear. In the real world things could get a hell of a lot more nasty.

“What is it?” Kris asked, her hands instinctively flexing for her two-handed hammer that didn’t exist in the real world.

“I really wish you wouldn’t do that,” I said. “It’ll just make them think you have a weapon.”

“Yeah?” she said. “Did you ever think maybe if we run into a couple of tweakers they’ll think twice about fucking with us if they think we have a weapon?”

“I don’t think that’ll work as well in the real world as it’s working in your imagination,” I muttered, listening intently for any noises that might indicate some of the skeevier denizens of our level were starting to wake up from their drug-induced haze to go looking for someone they could rob to get the next hit.

The distinct crunch of feet on a grimy alley floor told me there definitely was someone out there.

I glanced up to the school up and in the distance. It was closer, but still too far to do us a damn bit of good. There was no way we’d be able to get to the elevator before whoever was out there got to us.

“Motherfucker,” Kris growled.

Four shadows resolved out of the darkness, but they stayed in the shadows.

“What do you want?” I asked.

There was laughter from the four. Two of them stepped forward revealing a couple of familiar faces.

“Man, you assholes should’ve seen the looks on your faces!”

“Greg? Kyle?” Kris said to the two who’d stepped forward. “And does that mean that’s Trent back there acting like the big bad calling the shots?”

Motherfucking Trent. Think your typical sports big man on campus and that’s your guy, minus any sort of talent to actually win at the football games that supposedly gave him that big man status.

“Shut the fuck up Kris,” Trent growled as he stepped forward.

Fucking great. It was bad enough to cross his path at school. It was worse luck to run into these assholes out here where we didn’t have teachers keeping them in line.

Also? I was wondering who the fuck was still hanging back in the alley, but that wondering didn’t extend to wanting to spend any more time around these pricks than I had to.

“Nice meeting you out here,” I said. It wasn’t. “But you guys had your fun, really funny how you made us think you were going to rob us and kill us there, and we’ll be on our way to school now. Don’t want to be late or anything.”

“Whatever Colin,” Trent said. “It’s not like you have anything worth stealing anyway.”

“Fuck off,” I said without thinking about my words or their potential consequences. “You’re just as poor as the rest of us.”

“Am I?” he asked.

“Yeah, you are,” Kris said.

“Oh yeah? Then how did me and my boys get early access to Lotus?” he asked.

His words landed like a punch to the gut. I guess that was better than the literal punch to the gut he could be hitting me with, but not by much.

“What are you talking about?”

“Shut up Trent,” the fourth figure said. I recognized that voice, and my cheeks colored.

Kara was the last person I wanted to witness Trent pushing me around. She stepped out of the shadows and, as always, she looked stunning. The head cheerleader and most beautiful girl in our school all wrapped up in one tight package, so of course she’d be with Trent.

For all that Trent was terrible at football, and Kara was actually pretty good at the whole stunting and tumbling thing that went along with being a cheerleader.

“Shut up Kara,” Trent said. “Or do you want out of the deal?”

She opened her mouth, but didn’t say anything. Trent nodded in satisfaction, but she didn’t look happy.

“How did you get into Lotus?” Kris asked.

“He’s lying,” I said, holding Trent’s gaze. “He’s just as poor as the rest of us. No one on ZZ-Alfa level can afford to get into Lotus.”

“Yeah? Well things are changing,” Trent said. “I rule this school, and soon enough I’m gonna rule in Lotus too!”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “You think because you’re in sports at our shit school that makes you better than me?”

“Prick like him can’t be that high and mighty considering the football team hasn’t had a winning record against any of the other levels since he joined the team,” Kris said.

“You shut the fuck up,” Trent growled.

“Whatever,” I said. “You’re not worth it.”

I turned and motioned for Kris to go. It pained me to retreat, especially since the more caveman parts of me were screaming that I shouldn’t retreat with Kara standing right there watching me turning tail, but that’s what I did. Discretion is the better part of valor and all that.

Only something spun me around before I got very far. Trent stood there glaring down at me, and he looked pissed.

“Did I give you permission to leave?”

“Fuck you Trent,” I said, that caveman part of me writing checks my ass couldn’t cash, to quote an ancient movie. “And your stupid team that couldn’t win if the other team sat down on the field and let you.”

“Fuck you Colin!” he shouted, loud enough that his voice echoed all around us.

I looked at those alley walls as a plan started forming to get away from these fuckers without them beating the shit out of me and Kris. That plan would have to come together fast. Trent seemed more unhinged than usual this morning.

Unfortunately getting away involved getting him more riled up. Which meant I was risking a punch to the gut before this was all over.

“Why should I shut the fuck up?” I asked.

I raised my voice. It echoed through the alleys. Greg and Kyle were looking around like they didn’t like all the noise, but Trent was fuming. I couldn’t tell what Kara was thinking. She was a surprisingly cool customer for a pretty young girl walking through the alleys.

“And what the fuck about you?” Trent growled. “Spending all your time crying about your dead sister? Please. You’re a fucking loser out here, and you’re a loser in those games.”

I threw myself at him. Luckily Kris was there to hold me back from doing something stupid. Trent was way bigger than me, after all.

“He’s not worth it,” Kris said. “We need to get going.”

I heard something shuffling in the distance. Usually that wasn’t a good sound, but right now it was exactly what I was hoping for.

“Your friend’s right,” Trent growled. “Run off and cry, little loser.”

That shuffling was getting louder. A calm came over me. It was the kind of feeling I got whenever a plan started to come together.

“Go fuck yourself Trent!”

I yelled it at the top of my lungs. Loud enough that all the tweakers and other unsavory types who haunted the alleys would hear it for sure.

“Come on Colin,” Kris said.

Shadows appeared behind Trent and company. I was about to go with Kris, but one of those shadows stepped forward revealing a dude with way too much wild hair and way too few teeth. He wrapped his arms around Kara whose eyes went wide, then she started kicking and screaming.

Trent turned and stared. The wannabe tough guy took in the legitimate danger all around us for the space of a breath, then turned and ran. Kyle and Greg waited for a beat before they ran screaming like the little bitches they were.

Leaving Kara all alone to deal with the assholes I’d called down on her in the hopes they’d distract Trent so Kris and I could make an escape.

Talk about a plan working way better than I ever could’ve hoped for.

“What are you waiting for?” Kris asked.

I looked at Kris. Then to Kara who was still struggling against that tweaker. And I knew that I wasn’t leaving while she was in trouble, for all that she’d been palling around with Trent and the asshole brigade.

“We can’t leave her,” I said.

“Son of a bitch,” Kris said, reading the tone and knowing it meant we were about to leap headfirst into the shit.

The big difference being this was happening in the real world where there was a good chance one or all of us might get shanked instead of getting sent to a respawn point.