“So how do we use the ring?” Miles asked Laura. She studied it for a moment, trying to determine its magical properties and how to activate them. Most magical items in Champions had explicit descriptions that made it clear how the device was to be activated.

She, Miles and Emmy were standing in the control room talking about how to restore Emmy’s health status so that she wouldn’t become a zombie. She’d been infected two days ago and the symptoms had been getting worse. There were now sores all over her body and she was having trouble staying logged on to AO for any duration of time. It was a miracle that Sean had retrieved the item when he did. Although, looking at his dark countenance when he’d stormed into the bunker just a few minutes ago, Laura wasn’t sure that there weren’t further storms ahead. Just as she was about to read the description of the ring, they both heard a thunk.

Looking down Laura saw Emmy convulsing on the ground. Foam was frothing from her mouth and she was choking. “Quick, let’s get her into one of the pods.” Strong as he was, Miles had no problem picking up Emmy’s small body and Laura helped him position her comfortably onto one of the pod beds. “Turn her head so she doesn’t choke,” Laura instructed. She’d been a doctor once, although it was a doctorate in psychology, not medicine.

“Try the ring,” Miles said excitedly.

“Here goes nothing,” Laura muttered under her breath. She tried tapping into her magic, using it to extend down to the plain band gold ring with a single blood red garnet on her finger. She’d heard from her instructor that this was the way to activate magical items, although she’d never done it. Several seconds later she stopped.

“It’s no use. I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said, exasperated.

Miles looked up at her, his face surprisingly calm. “You may need to be logged in,” he said with a wry smile.

Of course. They’d been so immersed in what they were doing in AO these days, being in her avatar Seona felt like a second skin. She hadn’t noticed that she wasn’t Seona at the moment. “Duh, right.” She quickly got into one of the pods next to Emmy and looked over at her friend, “You’ll be back to making out with Miles soon.” Miles blushed. Laura initiated the login sequence:

***AR Online – Aeon 2.647.38***

She quickly passed the black menu screen and stepped in to the control room of the bunker. Now that she was in game she quickly accessed her power. “Yep, everything is working right on my end. Now to try the ring again,” she said to herself. Charging up her hand she pushed her magical power into it but again had no reaction from the ring. “Weird, still not working.”

“I thought only men were supposed to skip reading the instruction manual,” Miles said dryly.

Seona gave him the look. Sadly, since she wasn’t Emmy it wouldn’t be as effective, but he remained quiet after that. Flicking through a few menus on her Seemi she found the one to open up an items description.

The Restorer

This ring bestows the power to cleanse, purify and heal any creature bringing it back to life. Must be used on target within 24 hours of death. Additionally, once a debuff has been removed in this fashion it cannot infect the recipient again.

Looking up at Miles, she said flatly, “We have a problem. Emmy has to be dead for this to work.”

Miles looked right at her and his gaze was steady, his face unreadable. “We can’t wait for the change to take her completely. If she becomes a zombie the ring may not work.” Seona had rather hoped that they could wait in fact.

The idea of having to murder her good friend was like a rock on her chest. Tim and Alison had logged in to more closely inspect the factory, and she wasn’t going to approach Sean in his current mood. That just left her and Miles. No way was she going to ask him to do something like that. Even worse to contemplate was what if the ring didn’t work.

They didn’t really understand the full implications of what they were dealing with. The ring was a magical item that was supposed to only effect the game world of AO. But the problem was that the game world had infected the real Emmy. Would the ring even work on her? If they killed her what would happen? She had seen enough happen in the last couple of weeks to start doubting herself. Things that seemed like they should have stayed entirely in the game world had been affecting their real selves. The fact that game creatures could hunt them in the real world showed the frightening overlap. The Survivors using their game devices to sustain their real bodies. The lines between reality and virtual reality had become so blurred that just a minute ago she’d tried to use a magical device in the real world without even thinking about it.

She watched Miles chewed his fingernails and he sighed, “I’ll log in and I will be the one to kill her. If she dies permanently…” he choked up at that thought. She put her hand on his shoulder. This world had become all too real in the last month and this was a decision that none of them should have ever had to make.

A moment later Miles had logged in as Cheezus. He stood over Emmy’s body with a dagger. Unfortunately, since she was in a coma they wouldn’t be able to rouse her and get her to log in. They had to hope that the magic transferred to the real world the way they had seen monsters and other things cross over.

Once he was committed to it, he didn’t allow himself to hesitate. He brought the dagger straight across her throat, slicing open her neck. Seona checked her pulse a minute later, she was dead. Looking over at Miles’ stoic face, she didn’t allow herself to cry just yet. She would save that for later since she would need all her focus to bring her magic to bear. “Please work,” she begged.

Channeling her magical power through the ring, it came to life. Seona could see green leaves working their way along a green beam that connected the ring to her friend’s dead body. Her jaw hung slack seeing the power of the ring surge through Emmy, lifting her up and rapidly stitching her wounds closed. A few seconds later she could see Emmy’s chest begin to rise and fall again. Seona’s knees were weak. When the process was done and Emmy opened her eyes, she stood back, awed by the process.

“Babe, you’re alright,” Cheezus said, reverently holding Emmy close, tears in his eyes. Apparently, the tough guy thing had been all an act. It was pretty clear to Seona that it had taken all of his will to cut open his girlfriend like that and hope that the ring would bring her back to life. Emmy smiled and held him close. Logging off, Seona had tears in her eyes but she knew it was time to give the happy couple some time to themselves.

Once again in her own body, the last thing she heard when she left the control room was Miles confessing his love to her. Laura had a momentary touch of sadness thinking about that. She had always been awkward around others and had never really grasped how to be in an intimate relationship. When she’d experimented in college she ended up being really clinical about the whole thing. Perhaps it came from her earlier societal anxieties about being rejected for her weight but she couldn’t ever really trust anyone on the other end. Until life and death circumstances had forced her to bond with the Misfits, she’d always been on the outside looking in – even for just a simple friendship. While she’d divulged nearly every secret she had to her own therapist, she didn’t know how to be close to someone without pushing them away or strangling them with affection. Maybe watching Emmy and Miles would teach her something she’d not yet learned, how to be vulnerable and still strong. The way that Miles had forced himself to be ruthless and then minutes later cry in front of his woman was pretty strong. She wondered if she could have done the same thing for her friend.

Laura bumped into Sean in the mess hall. He was quietly eating a bowl of cereal and reading something. “Is that something that you found in LA?” she asked.

“Yeah, it’s that crazy old man’s journal,” Sean replied, thoughtfully. “I’ve never been big into the whole mental woo-woo thing. No offense.”

She laughed. “I’ve been called a quack and a shrink but never ‘woo-woo’. From the way you described it this guy was on some good drugs or something.”

“True, he probably was on something but he wasn’t entirely crazy,” Sean explained. “Apparently, he was a former employee of Terrazon. A real go-getter corporate type. He was somewhere pretty far up the chain of command although he doesn’t talk about his exact duties. Apparently, the board members were in a competition to build the best AI out there just like Mr. Tiel’s firm, JPWalmart.”

That was interesting, although Laura wasn’t surprised. “Go on,” she said.

“Based on his journal entries it looks like Rory was involved with the development of the AI, Precious One. He’d gotten into Buddhist teachings in college and had already gotten pretty into his chakras by the time he was there at the firm. Apparently, he transferred a lot of his knowledge to Precious One and it started changing him first, before it started changing the real world. Essentially, Rory was test subject one for a new type of nano-tech that the AI employed, making him in effect, super-human,” Sean replied.

Now that was surprising to Laura. The changes they were seeing in the real world weren’t some inexplicable change caused by chemicals from world-war bio-chemical warfare, but in fact purposefully designed technology from one of the megacorps.

“One other interesting thing to note is that Mr. Tiel’s firm was also in on this technology. From the sound of things both JPWalmart and Terrazon were working together to develop not only the AI infrastructure but also the nanotech and Gears. I’m still reading through the journal so there may be more than that; however, that alone explains so much of why things have happened this way,” Sean continued.

Laura suddenly felt chilled. What else had her employer been hiding? “I think we need to tell the rest of the guild right away and try to figure out what this all means. If those two megafirms were working together does that mean that there is a backdoor route from Precious One to Aeon?”

Sean’s eyes got big, thinking about the implications of that.