Wally agreed to meet them at his mansion in Tyrathon and marked the location on Carey’s map. Raising his face to the sky, he pitched a high whistle, and soon an armored levathon descended. Wally climbed onto its back, his diamond armor glittering.

“Rest up,” he advised the party. “Tomorrow evening at precisely 6 p.m., we’ll meet at that spot. If you’re late, I’ll assume you didn’t make the trip, and I’ll be off to my favorite pub, The Emperor’s Badger.”

“Why don’t we just meet at the pub?” Carey ventured, attempting an Australian accent. “I like to have a jolly old pint from time to time, mate.”

Wally gave him a flat look. “I don’t sound like that, mate. Not even close. Besides, I have something for the lot of you. Stashed in my house. Just meet me there and don’t be late, ya bludgers.”

When he was gone, Carey, Will, Beatrice, and Min-joon sat around the campfire and roasted a variety of different types of meat they had picked up along the way. Min-joon roasted carrots and offered one to Carey, but Carey made a gagging sound and shook his head. The boy seemed somewhat hurt by this.

“Do you not eat meat?” Carey asked him.

Min-joon shook his head. “I’m a vegetarian.”

“But you know it’s not real meat, right? It’s just code.”

“Then it makes no difference what I eat.”

Carey tipped his head this way and that, as if to say, It’s a valid point.

Min-joon was growing on him, but Carey still wasn’t sure if keeping the boy-thief around was such a good idea. They needed someone like Wally in their party, and yet Wally was the least trustworthy person he’d ever met—not to mention the penalties they’d incur while having him around.

“What’s on your mind?” Will asked. “You’re chewing your lip like you want to bite it off.”

Carey abruptly got to his feet. “I need some time to think about things. Don’t wait up.”

He caught a narrowing of Bea’s eyes and flashed her a thumbs-up before she could say anything. Dry leaves and twigs crunched under his boots as he entered the dark woods surrounding their log cabin. Carey wasn’t sure where he was going, but of one thing he was absolutely certain—no matter what, he could easily find his way back. It was one of the perks of being a Feral; his senses automatically picked out landmarks and geographical anomalies, especially in nature and even in darkness, and memorized routes automatically, making scouting and following trails second nature.

He used his night vision and Small Shovel to unearth mounds of dirt that contained items across the spectrum of usefulness—from ash heaps, of which he had a million, to a few silver coins and Steel Ingots, and even a weird little wind-up toy shaped like a chubby bird that could be used to distract enemies.

When that got boring, he decided to wander. It turned into one of the most meaningful solitary strolls of his life. The game was a beautiful illusion—a simulation fit for a god. Carey saw the appeal of losing himself in Astros until his real body expired in its sad, little pod.

When had he ever been this enlivened, this engaged, this entertained before? Certainly not in his real life, or within any video game he’d ever played.

He stopped at the stream and froze in place to gape at the beauty that lay before him.

Fireflies—called “lightbugs” in Astros—flashed in a variety of different colors: red, orange, yellow, blue, purple. Glowing frogs jumped off rocks and made neon-green streaks below the black water’s surface. Above his head, sheets of moss hung from the tree branches and gave off a misty greenish glow of its own, emitting some sort of natural steam.

Not to mention the stars…

Above the forest, the sky was a sprawling black spread of stars, billions of them, along with planets and galaxies and meteors that ignited fiery streaks across the void. Two full moons—one almost pure white, the other one pale yellow—hung like the bulging eyes of a monster from a children’s book. An incomprehensible universe was wrapped around him, and Carey felt only comfort at the thought of getting lost in that infinity.

Sometimes, at odd moments like these, he couldn’t help but wonder…

Why?

Why troll people?

Why be so critical of others?

We’re all just trying to make our way in the world. Some have it easier, some have it harder—but adding more pain to the world only makes me miserable.

I never saw that before. I’m miserable.

Why do I do it?

“Carey.”

The woman’s voice sent a jolt through him. With a shrill yelp, Carey sprang off the ground and knocked his head against a tree branch several feet above him. He hadn’t intended to jump that high, but it was like he now possessed the soul—and legs—of a cat.

Beatrice covered her mouth with both hands and chuckled.

“Don’t just creep up on people like that, Bea!”

“Sorry. I didn’t realize you were that in the zone. I can leave you alone if you want.”

“No, it’s cool.” He sighed. “Well? What is it?”

She approached the stream. Lightbugs made her eyes flash different colors. Her wings, too, which added a psychedelic effect that made the woman even more beautiful.

“I’ll keep you company,” she said, sitting next to him with a crunch of dried leaves.

“Thanks,” Carey said. “I’d like that.”

“So… what’s the matter?”

Carey bent his neck and stared down at the water. He wanted to cry, to sob into her arms like a little kid seeking comfort in a mother’s embrace. Never in his life had he found such comfort in the arms of his actual mother; Mrs. Walsh had always been cold and awkward, preferring to pat Carey on the head when she was pleased with him and spank his behind when she was not. But there was something motherly about Bea, something comforting about her presence.

Must be because she’s a healer…

“I…” Carey began. “It’s just that…”

He took a moment to collect himself in silence. Beatrice allowed him to do so without interruption.

“You know what it is?” Carey said finally. “The thing about this place that really grinds my gears?”

“What’s that?”

“They made it so damn perfect, Bea. They could have made it hell. They could have filled it with fire and brimstone and screaming victims hanging from chains against the wall…”

“Jesus, Carey.”

“I’m serious. Think about it. They could have made it a little less pleasant, more like the prison it is, so people would be terrified, desperate to get out. But instead, it’s so… so much like…”

“A fantasy?” Bea asked, eyes flashing at him in… was it amusement?

“But why, Bea? Why put a bunch of bullies—people like you and me, who obviously have problems…”

“Hey, wait a minute…”

“… into a fantasy world where it almost becomes easy to forget about your past. To want to stay in this place, where you don’t have to bully or troll people, because you can just pick a fight with a Torg and earn some XP and level up whenever you feel like it?”

Bea tossed a small rock into the stream, causing a neon-bright frog to slip into the water with a glop sound. Her wing touched Carey’s back, sending a shiver through him.

“Do you want to go home, Carey?” she asked.

He thought about that for a solid three seconds.

“I don’t know.” The absurdity of that statement made him chuckle despite himself. “I honestly don’t know. Is that messed up?”

Beatrice gathered her knees up by her chest and hugged them, casually flipping her dark hair out of the way. She tilted her head, ever graceful and somber, against one knee and rested it there for a moment. She looked so damned vulnerable in that moment that Carey had to claw back the urge to grab her and thrust his lips against hers in a kiss like none he’d ever experienced—because, in all his life, Carey had never known the taste of true love.

Nah, not Beatrice. She’s a weirdo. She has emotional issues—

He stopped himself.

Why?

Why did he always have to do that?

“We should get some sleep,” Beatrice said, and when she turned to face him, Carey found himself drowning in those long-lashed eyes. “I know a lot of things about this place feel off, and it can get hard sometimes, not knowing if we’ll ever go back home. But for now, we have each other. That’s the most important thing. All that matters is that we keep going, not just for ourselves, but for each—mmph!”

Carey’s lips were on hers before she could finish, clumsy and forceful, like the lips of a child learning to kiss for the first time.

“Stop!” She pushed him back.

“What, Bea? Is it because I’m not a Sargonaut like him? Am I not tall enough? Should I go rustle up some diamond armor?”

“What you need to do,” she said, jabbing a finger into his chest, trying to keep her voice low, “is stop being so impulsive and insecure. That’s why you troll people, isn’t it? Because you’re afraid if you don’t shit all over the world, the world is going to shit all over you.”

They were standing now, facing each other, Bea’s shoulders up around her neck like she might turn and flee at any second.

Carey sighed. “Thanks for the psychoanalysis, Ms. Ph.D.-in-Psychology-from-Cornell…”

“It was a master’s,” she corrected him, folding her arms across her chest. He hadn’t scared her away, but she sure wasn’t going to open up to him again anytime soon. “And it was from Columbia. You were saying?”

Carey couldn’t help the rising laughter bubbling in his chest.

“What’s so effing funny, douche?” Beatrice asked him.

By then, he had broken into a fit of howling laughter, his tail sweeping up and down, curling and uncurling. He didn’t care if all the enemies in a ten-mile radius heard him.

“You’re a class act,” he said. “If anything—even if I don’t survive this place—I’m glad I came here. Because I got to meet you, Bea. Master’s. Like it fucking matters where you got your master’s.” He slapped his knee, chuckling.

“I guess you’re right,” Bea said, visibly relaxing. “This is pretty fun, I have to admit. And no one gives a shit where I got my master’s.”

“It’s so weird, but I can’t picture you being a bully.” Carey was shaking his head, feeling much more confident now that everything seemed like such a joke. “Pretentious? Definitely. Uptight? Hell yeah! At times, a major B-word? Oh, you know it. But a bully? I just don’t see it.”

“Let’s start walking back,” she said, motioning for him to follow along. “Before I decide to stick my foot up your ass.”

“One of these days, you’ll have to tell me about the bullying thing. I just don’t see it. And about the other thing.”

“What other thing?”

“About your ex, Tom Reynolds the Third, heir to the Hot Dog King’s empire, cheating boyfriend extraordinaire. Good ol’ Tommy Ray, film enthusiast and wannabe Aladdin, wishing he could fly away on his carpet, until some blonde with big knockers comes around offering to wrap her legs around his neck.”

“My God, you have a good memory.”

“Only as good as the stuff I fill it with. So, you gonna tell me what happened? We have time. I must have walked a good ten minutes to get to this part of the stream.”

Bea flicked a lightbug out of the way before it could crash into her face.

“Why not.”

“Come on,” Carey said. “Tell me.”

It took her a few moments of walking in silence to finally gather her confidence. “When I caught them sleeping together—you know, Tommy and Karen—I didn’t make a scene. Didn’t even let them know I was there. I just left.”

“Wait. You just walked out? Without punching Karen in the face?”

“Well… It turns out she had no idea Tommy and I were dating. You know how I know? I tracked her down. Checked Tommy’s friends on Facebook, saw her picture, friended her. I even waited outside the building where all the nursing classes are held, until one day I spotted her.”

“That’s kind of creepy.”

“Do you want to hear this or not?”

“Sorry.”

“Anyway,” Bea continued, “I asked if I could talk to her. She was really nice. I told her that I was dating Tommy Ray and that I wasn’t angry at all, but that I’d heard she and Tommy were also dating, and I just wanted to clear up any confusion, because I was totally over him. She looked at me like I had six eyes and three teeth.

“She and Tommy weren’t dating at all. That day, Tommy had gotten her wasted at some fundraiser and brought her back to our place. But Karen said she only remembered drinking four beers and doing one shot of Jägermeister with Tommy. For someone her size, that’s a lot. But Karen was quite the party girl. Four beers and a shot were her normal pre-game routine, before she and her friends even got to the bars.

“Tommy was the one who kept bringing her drinks throughout the event. And he was really insistent that she finish each one quickly, because—he said—the fundraiser would switch to a paid bar pretty soon, and the drinks wouldn’t be free much longer.

“She knew something was off about him, but her apartment was next to ours, so when Tommy offered to walk her home, she agreed. ‘Just one more shot,’ he told her. The bartender poured the shot and then Tommy—and this is really weird—brought his cellphone up and said they should take a selfie, and then he screwed it up and had to take, like, three more shots.”

Carey felt cold all over. “A distraction. Tommy was distracting her with his phone so he could slip something into her drink.”

“It’s what you would do, right?”

“Bea, come on.”

She shook her head. “Rohypnol. That’s what he slipped into her drink when she wasn’t looking.”

Carey kicked a loose stone up the path. “Date-rape drug. What a scumbag.”

“Karen blacked out that afternoon and doesn’t remember sleeping with Tommy. “There I am, sitting on a bench under a tree with this poor girl, smoking a cigarette while she tells me how my boyfriend raped her. She was crying, not surprisingly.”

“Did Karen tell anyone?” Carey asked. “Like campus police? Or get tested with a, you know… one of those rape kits?”

Bea shook her head, hugging herself though it was a warm night. “She was in denial, apparently, and eventually, it was too late to test for anything. But Karen was smarter than she looked. She had given Tommy her phone number that day, and he kept texting her about what a great time they’d had, so she asked him to send her the selfies he’d taken right before they did that shot at the bar. Something didn’t feel right to her about the whole situation. It wasn’t like her to get that drunk—especially not off beer and one or two shots. So, Tommy sent her the selfies, probably thinking she really liked him and wanted something to remember him by, and you know what she saw?”

“His hand,” Carey said. “Pouring something into the drink.”

Bea nodded, eyes vacant, scanning some inner landscape. “Here’s the thing, his hand and the shot were behind her shoulder, so she couldn’t see it directly. But there was a metal water jug on the table. She zoomed in on the picture and saw it clear as day in the reflection—Tommy tipping a small brown bottle over the shot of Jager.”

“Jesus,” Carey said. “So, what’d she do next?”

“That was the night before I met her,” Beatrice said. “When she discovered this, I mean. A full eight days since Tommy… since… since he raped her.” Her voice broke into a light sob, which she quickly swallowed. “That bastard. She thought about taking it to the school’s administration, the police, the frickin’ governor of the state. I offered to help her and be there for her every step of the way.

“But then she changed her mind. I never learned why, but she started avoiding my phone calls, wouldn’t respond to my text messages, and whenever I saw her in campus and tried to talk to her, she would just blow me off with some lame excuse. Within a few months, she had transferred to a different school. Unfriended me on Facebook, everything. It was like she just disappeared.

“I know Tommy had something to do with it. He came from a rich family, and his father was a slimeball, too. All sorts of sexual harassment and rape accusations from female employees of his hot-dog empire—all settled out of court.”

They stopped walking, close enough now to see the flames of the campfire, Will and Min-joon sitting around it, laughing at some joke.

“So how did you end up here?” Carey asked Bea as she went to sit against a tree trunk. He sat across from her, repositioning his tail so he wouldn’t squash it. Sometimes, the thing could get in the way.

“Tommy still didn’t know that I knew he’d been with Karen, much less that he’d raped her,” Beatrice continued. “When Karen told me about the pictures and we realized what he’d done, I knew I couldn’t stay with him a minute longer. All I told him was that I needed a break for a week or two, to deal with some personal matters. I went to stay with a friend while I figured out what to do about our apartment.

“When I learned Karen’s story, something changed in me. A darker part of my personality—you could call it my shadow self, if you want to get Jungian about it—came out and drove me to do things I never should have done.”

A cool breeze swept through the forest, and Carey felt chilled by it, suddenly unsafe, surrounded by evil.

“Like… what? What things, Bea?”

“I went back to our apartment after a week and a half. Somehow, I managed to keep living with Tommy for three more months, until graduation. I worked hard on my thesis and graduated with high honors. But while we lived together, I tortured him.”

She went silent. Carey waited for her to continue. Around them, lightbugs flashed and an owl hooted from the darkened tree boughs above.

“He had no idea what was happening,” Bea said, “until he did.”

“Wha—how do you torture someone without them knowing it?”

Bea smiled, though it was a slightly toxic smile, soaked in self-loathing. “He had major emotional issues. Clinical depression, bipolar, stuff like that. I suspect he had Narcissistic Personality Disorder as well—couldn’t take criticism, had a grandiose sense of self, only saw flaws and mistakes in others, never in himself. It was part of the reason I was so attracted to him at first—he was easily the most self-confident man I’d ever met. On the surface, anyway.

“But that disturbing part of his personality made subterfuge so much easier. He never would have admitted to himself that someone—especially his live-in girlfriend—could have penetrated his life so deeply, with such consequences.

“It started with his pills. He was on SSRIs—like Prozac, but it was some experimental variety only a rich guy like his father could get. Plus lithium for the manic-depression. You see, good old Tommy wasn’t just dramatic. He was for-real suicidal—though, being a narcissist, he never admitted to me that’s what caused the accident. He drove his truck off a bridge and into a river one night when he was sixteen and only survived because a fisherman swam down to his truck and saved him. Without his pills, he was a mess. So, I started my ‘Campaign for Revenge,’ as I called it, by switching his meds with salt pills we had in the lab.

“It grew from there. You could say I became fixated on it. I thought I was fighting a battle on behalf of all women, against losers like Tommy who thought they could get away with abusing us just because. It became a battle against all men, eventually, because I started seeing it everywhere—in companies, in the government, even in the White House.” She glanced up at Carey. “Trolls like the one you used to be.”

Carey shamefully cast his gaze down at his boots, gripped in an uncomfortable spell of silent embarrassment that threatened to send him running away, running forever, to get away from the feeling. But he held fast. He couldn’t abandon Bea in this moment—not to mention, it was a good story, and he wanted to know what happened next.

“Go on,” he whispered. “Keep in mind, you’re not perfect either, Bea.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot like that.”

“What else did you do to him? As part of your revenge?”

“Well, after a few weeks of being off his meds, he started going nuts. Swinging from a manic state—where he’d go on insane shopping sprees, buying cars, laptops, and once a mink coat for me—and a depressive state where he couldn’t get out of bed for days at a time.

“Manipulating him became like an addiction. How I managed to write a master’s thesis and graduate is beyond me, if I’m being honest. I was obsessed with destroying Tommy Ray from the inside out. Looking back, I think that was the real reason I was studying psychology. Because to poison someone’s mind like that… that’s real power. All dictators who last long enough eventually figure it out. If you want to have power over others, you can’t just point a gun at them. The gun is heavy, and eventually your arm gets too tired.

“But if you can plant that gun in their minds—make them believe they’re the ones wielding it, not just at others but against themselves… they’ll do anything you say.”

“Christ almighty,” Carey said, shaking his head in dumbfounded awe. “It’s almost creepy how smart you are.”

Bea was in the zone now and continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “Switching the depression and bipolar meds was just the first thing I did. Then I waited a couple weeks. When I saw how bad he’d become, I started encouraging him to skip his studies and take last-minute trips with me to Las Vegas to gamble. I pushed him to buy ever more expensive and ridiculous things. Once, he bought me a BMW 3-series convertible—hot pink.”

“Damn.”

She gave a wistful sigh. “I know. I loved that car. Ended up selling it on principle. Anyway, he spent so much money that his dad’s accountant called the old man and complained. Tom Senior cut off Junior, only agreeing to pay for school expenses and anything medical or emergency-related. So now, poor Tommy Ray has no money, no idea he’s going nuts because his meds are fake, and no idea he’s dating a woman who is slowly destroying his willpower and sanity.

“One afternoon, we went on a picnic, just the two of us. We got so drunk, well, he did—I kept pouring my tequila into the grass—that he could barely walk. So, you know what I did? I pushed him in front of a car.”

“Jesus. Bea.”

She shrugged. “It wasn’t going fast. It was on the road in front of our apartment, which was a twenty-five zone. But I told him we needed to cross. We were behind a huge utility truck, so the driver didn’t see us. She was some old lady, gripping the steering wheel like it was a life raft. I pushed Tommy Ray into the road, and she hit him, breaking one of his legs. I told everyone he’d jumped after hours of complaining about his life and saying that he wanted to die. He was so drunk he couldn’t remember if it was actually true or not.

“With his father’s agreement—encouragement, rather—I helped get him committed to a mental hospital, where he stayed for six weeks. No internet or cell phone access. They’ve discovered that social media can enhance depression and increase suicidal thoughts. But he didn’t need social media. I would smuggle in posts that other university students put on Reddit and Facebook, accusing Tommy of being a weak, spoiled, crybaby rich boy fed up with life because he only had 25,000 followers on Instagram. All fake, of course.”

“You faked social media posts about him?”

“Yup. I wrote all kinds of crazy stuff. I mentioned that women had accused him of sexual assault and rape. I wrote the most trollish comments you can imagine, making fun of Tommy Ray, his family name, his dad’s ‘wiener’ empire, you name it. By then, the hospital had put him back on his meds, so all he did was get angry about it. But he couldn’t stop reading about himself. I’d visit him almost every evening before I’d start studying. And I would bring him posts that I’d spend all night writing. Truthfully, I could have used more sleep during that stressful time. But I was so disturbed by the fact that I was living with a rapist, I often had nightmares that he was raping me. That made my compulsion all the more… compulsive, I guess. Addictive. Empowering.”

“So, he got out of the hospital,” Carey said, “and you continued living with him? Sleeping with him?”

“We weren’t really sleeping together by that point,” Bea said. “Hadn’t been for a while. Tommy couldn’t get it up when he was drunk, and the boy loved his booze. I’d feed it to him every evening after class. Sometimes, I’d even pour it into his mouth when he resisted, then I’d promise him a night of wild sex once we were drunk enough to forget about our studies and all the stressful things in our lives. Funny thing is, he thought I was the one with the problem—that I couldn’t even get sexually aroused due to the stress of school. That I was some sort of crazy alcoholic. It made him feel better about his own problems to believe I was crazy. He thought I was so desperately in love with him that I’d do anything he asked. That I was so miserably broken on the inside I’d never leave him. That he was my rock. My obsession.

“In reality, he was my project.” Bea paused for a moment, a somewhat unreadable expression on her face. Regret, maybe.

“A few weeks after he returned from the hospital—after I replaced his meds with salt pills again—he slapped me across the face during a fight. It was the first time he’d ever hit me. Tommy was an asshole rapist, but he was not a fighter. Playing it cool, I decided enough was enough and formed a new plan. The next day, I lied about having to go on a research trip for my thesis. Instead, I booked an Airbnb a few towns over… and did what I did.”

“What did you do?” Carey asked, hoping he wasn’t being too forward. The look in Bea’s eyes told him that revisiting this time in her life burdened her more than Carey could know.

“I was talking to him online—over Skype, you know, nightly video chats and all that—and I decided to secretly record him. Then I asked him about his fantasies. He said the usual things guys say—threesome with two girls, sex in a public place, orgy, whatever, but I kept pressing him. He was drinking gin, his favorite, and finally, after a solid fifteen minutes of hearing his disgusting sexual fantasies, I managed to hit on the right one. He admitted he wanted to have sex with two women, but he wanted one of them to be unconscious, so the other two could do anything they wanted.

“I asked him what things we—since I wanted him to picture both of us doing it, to get him used to the idea—what we would do with the naked body of a beautiful young woman who was unconscious. I could tell he’d started to… you know, touch himself. Despite the booze, talking about rape was enough to get him hard, I guess. He said he wanted to pretend she was sleeping, tie her up, spank her, put things inside her…”

Beatrice winced at the memory. Carey couldn’t help but do the same.

She continued. “So, I walked him through a plan of how we would do it. It was a sick, disturbing plan, Carey. We talked about how we would target this girl who lived down the street from us—Tara, I later learned, was her name. She never went out, and we’d always see her studying by her window on Friday and Saturday nights, but she had one roommate who was a real party animal.

“So, we talked about me going into her house, pretending to be wasted and in the wrong place. I’d convince her to have one drink with me. Just one vodka-and-seltzer. I’d even bring two of the bottles with me, flavored and everything. I’d act like my night would just be ruined if she didn’t drink with me.

“Of course, one of the bottles would be spiked with Rohypnol—which I’m guessing Tommy already had a supply of, though he insisted he’d have to go out and track some down—and once she had passed out or was too dazed to know the difference, I’d lead her down the back street like a girl just helping her wasted friend get home safe. Tommy didn’t seem to care that I would be doing all the heavy lifting, or that I’d be revealing my face throughout this whole process.

“Once we were finished with Tara, we’d somehow get enough alcohol into her system to make it look like she’d passed out. Like we’d enjoyed one too many seltzers that night at my place, and nothing out of the ordinary had happened. She wouldn’t even know about Tommy. It would just be a typical university blackout. Happens all the time.”

Carey struggled to comprehend the totality of how messed up this was. “But you would have taken all the risk if Tara ever got wise to what really happened. If she ever remembered any faces. He would have stayed hidden like a coward. Did—did he actually think you were that stupid?”

“Oh yeah. Did I tell you he was a narcissist? Tommy didn’t give a damn who paid for his sins. We had planned to do it that Friday, once the roommate left. I could tell he was excited. I told him I would only go through with it on one condition—he had to be there, behind Tara’s house, in case I needed his help carrying her.

“He agreed. When I got home from my ‘research trip’ the next day, we talked about it more, going over contingency plans, et cetera. Tommy got really into it. I was surprised by his intensity. I had to make an exception and sleep with him a few times, because the idea aroused him so much. That wasn’t easy, trust me. By then, I was convinced he was a psychopath. He disgusted me. The only thing that got me through those nights was thinking about Karen and all the other women who would never, ever be his victims, thanks to me.

“That Friday, I emailed the Skype video to my best friends, Julia and Des. I sent it right at the last minute, because I knew they’d try to get help and potentially tip him off by accident. I wanted Tommy caught in the act. First, I made sure Tara was studying by her window like always. When we got behind her house, I opened a back window and crept inside.

“Finally, I was alone. I texted Julia and Des and told them to immediately post the video. They were hardcore feminists and had no problem ruining Tommy’s reputation, but they worried about what would happen to me if it went viral. I told them I didn’t care. I was doing the world a favor.

“Then I called the cops. I told them exactly where to find Tommy Ray, crouched behind that house, ready to rape an innocent girl and who knows what else. I told them where they could find the video on YouTube. I explained everything and said they would most likely find Rohypnol among Tommy’s belongings, and that one girl had already been raped and might be convinced to testify against him.

“I found Tara upstairs and explained to her what was happening. I’ve never seen someone freak out like that. She wanted no part of my little ruse, but I finally convinced her that I wouldn’t hurt her, and to at least stay inside the house with me. Once the cops arrived, she calmed down a little. Afterward, she thanked me and said she didn’t mind that I had used her as bait to catch Tommy in the act.

“It was beautiful. The cops found Rohypnol in Tommy’s jacket pocket. They used the video as evidence of his intent to rape Tara. They even tracked down Karen, and after a few weeks of thinking about it, she decided to testify against him and submit the picture of him spiking her shot glass.

“Tommy wasn’t tough enough for prison. I knew he wouldn’t be. After just three months, they found him in his cell. He’d hung himself with his blanket.”

After a moment of heavy silence, Carey found he’d been holding his breath. He nearly gasped. “Wow. I can’t believe you did… I mean, I get the rage, I get the need to take revenge for Karen’s sake, but… As extreme as it was, it actually took a lot of courage. I don’t know if I could have done something like that.”

“Yeah, I can’t believe I went through with it. No way in hell would I have the resolve or the thick skin to do something like that now. But I was so driven by my own anger. I felt I had to do it. And Tommy… Well, he got what he deserved.”.

She let out a light sigh, which sounded almost like relief. “My life changed after that. The Skype video of me and Tommy planning the rape went viral. Millions of people across the internet praised me for being a hero. I also had thousands of trolls—mostly men, but some women, too—shower me with criticism, hate mail, and even death threats. I had to finish up school remotely, from an apartment I rented confidentially, so none of those asshole trolls could track me down.

“And how did I end up here, you might ask?” Carey nodded, having that very question on the tip of his tongue.

“A year after the whole ordeal with Tommy, my life went back to normal—except that I started having some of the worst panic attacks of my life. I’d had them in my youth, but they had never been major, and I had medication I could take whenever I felt one coming on. Those meds spent years in my closet. I’d never really needed them.

“But the panic attacks I started having a year after graduation…” She gave a nervous, shuddering sigh at the memory. “They felt like a garbage truck was rolling onto my chest and crushing every single one of my organs into paste. I could barely breathe through them. Once, I even passed out on a busy sidewalk after randomly having an attack. A bunch of strangers had to drag me into a store and call 911.

“I started seeing one psychiatrist after another. I took all kinds of medication, but nothing helped. I was having one a week, sometimes two, and the anxiety I felt whenever I left the house got so bad that I became a shut-in. In my nightmares, Tommy was getting his revenge on me, and I’d even see him—when I was asleep or whenever I walked into a dark room, sometimes even when I looked up at the night sky—I’d see him hanging in his prison cell, his pale face bloated, blue veins all over it, his rapist’s eyes fixed on me, staring accusingly, hating me, ready to follow me to my grave.

“It got so bad I thought about killing myself. That’s when Roger Solsteim reached out to me.”

“You mean, Sam’s dad?” Carey was astounded. “The CEO of Ample VR-Tech? The guy who created this place just reached out to you?”

“You better believe it. I’m guessing he first learned about me from the viral Skype video everyone and their great-uncle had been talking about the year before. He might have even accessed some of my anonymous posts on Reddit’s depression forum, asking about suicidal thoughts. You know those aren’t really anonymous, right?”

“Yup. You don’t have to tell me twice. I’ll never use Reddit again.”

“He made me the offer of a lifetime,” Bea said, shaking her head at the memory. “He explained how this game worked. How he could use the technology he’d invented to reorganize my brain, so I wouldn’t have the panic attacks. So I’d be able to deal with the self-loathing and the shame I felt after having Tommy Ray in my life.

“He also told me about the risk. Said it was still in the experimental phase and could kill me if something went wrong. I said I needed to think about it and do some research, but he told me I’d find nothing about him or his company online. According to the rest of the world, his VR technology didn’t exist.

“If money was the problem, he’d pay for my airfare—but only if I’d meet him in Paris for dinner that weekend to discuss it. I could be a millionaire, no problem. Money wasn’t an issue for him. I made a joke that I would do it, but only if a suitcase with a million in cash appeared on my doorstep. Then I said goodbye and hung up. Guess what happened next.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

Beatrice was smiling now—beaming, in fact. “Two days later, a briefcase was left under a bush outside my front door. It contained—and I shit you not, I even counted it—a million dollars in cash. Roger convinced me, but I had no way of reaching out to him. So I just waited. Anyone willing to part with that much cash, just to prove a point, would eventually follow up to inquire about it.

“Literally the night after I found the money, Sam showed up on my doorstep and told me about his private plane at the airport. He told me it was a secret where we were going, but that it was outside the country, in a place without laws that could be broken by their experiment. And off we went.

“I knew Luminether Online could kill me or leave me severely brain-damaged. Roger had made that perfectly clear. But by that point, my brain was already in bad shape, and all I thought about was how badly I wanted to die. I was having crippling panic attacks three or four times a week. They terrified me. The anxiety over having an attack could sometimes be worse than the attack itself. It was like some vicious alien demon had embedded itself in my skull and was sucking out every ounce of happiness and calm, leaving a barren emotional wasteland. I knew the attacks would only increase over time. I knew I’d eventually be completely crippled by them—unable to leave my house or be in a relationship. Tommy Ray haunted my dreams, my every waking moment, a terrifying reminder of who I became. Who he made me become.”

“So…” Carey began. “You’re glad to be here? Am I hearing this right?”

She shook her head with a look of defiance. “Absolutely not. When I figured out what other players were having to go through, I condemned Roger immediately. He knows it, too. We used to talk all the time, even through the game, but not anymore. It’s unacceptable what they do here.

“Now I’m trapped, like you. I can’t leave, and I’ll probably die in some battle. Or maybe I’ll win the game and go home with my psyche restored, my memory wiped. Honestly, that sounds like a pipe dream at this point. I don’t think any of us will ever go home. Win or lose. I think the experiment just uses you until there’s no you left.”

“I still can’t believe it, though,” Carey said. “You weren’t kidnapped.”

“Nope,” she said, and Carey followed her as she started back toward the campfire. “You’re looking at the only player in all of Astros who volunteered.”

Will was standing at the edge of the clearing, a silhouette against the flames. Watching them.

“Carey,” he said.

“What’s up? Why are you standing there like a creep?”

“It’s Min-joon. He got you a surprise.”