It was getting late.

Carey dismissed Ara without even asking what she meant. No one else seemed to mind. It was bullshit. All of it. Everything that came out of her mouth. As for him being some sort of “Chosen One,” he suspected she had singled him out because she was his version of Ara, from his Araband. Will’s and Bea’s versions of Ara probably would have told them the same thing.

On his furious command, she had zipped back into the crystal, but not before flashing him a sad, almost desperate look. She was even chewing her lower lip, as if terribly worried about them.

“Glad she’s gone,” Carey said with a sigh of exasperation.

“This is crazy,” Beatrice said. “She was talking just like a real person.”

“Not just a person…” Will began.

“A computer engineer?” Min-joon ventured.

Impressed, Carey ruffled the boy’s hair. “Very good, buddy. That’s exactly right. They’re spying on us.”

Min-joon beamed up at him like an adoring son gazing up at a strict father. Carey had given his own father that look thousands of times before, mostly as a young boy, and he’d been rewarded with nothing but dismissive sighs and cold shoulders.

It made him feel bad for Min-joon. He ruffled the boy’s hair again, more softly this time.

“By the way, thanks again for the owl, kid. That was pretty awesome.”

“You’re welcome, Carey. It feels good to do nice things.”

“Speaking of being nice, you seem like a nice enough kid. What are you in here for, MJ?”

Min-joon shrugged. “My dad works for the company that made this computer thing. He got mad at me this one time and put me inside the game.”

A chill ran down Carey’s back, as he imagined a man shoving his little boy into one of the game’s death pods.

“Mad at you? Why would he get that mad at you? What happened.”

Min-joon shrugged again, only this time more solemnly, his gaze fixed on the ground. It took him a moment to dredge up the words.

“I was at the lake with my family, and my little sister Chae-Won and I were playing in the water, and I… and I…”

He looked to be on the verge of sobbing.

“It’s okay,” Carey said. “You don’t have to talk about it.”

“I was dunking her,” Min-joon continued. “She was telling me to stop, and I was calling her a ‘wussy’ because she was crying, and then she went under the water and didn’t come back up.”

“I’m sorry, MJ. Did she… did she drown?”

The boy nodded, sniffled, and wiped his nose. “My mom was crying and screaming. My dad hit me a few times. Really hard. And then he stopped talking to me, and then they brought me here and put me in the long black thing…”

“The pod.”

“Yeah, and my mom was crying but my dad wouldn’t let her hug me. And then I woke up here.”

The story made Carey’s stomach churn with dread. Despite the vivid colors and fantastical creatures of Astros, this was a horrible place—and a horrible thing they had done in creating it. He couldn’t forget that.

This was death row.

***

An idea struck Carey as they were all sitting around the fire, munching on snacks and planning the way forward.

“If we’re going to plan anything correctly,” Carey said, “we need to know if Ara’s genuine. If she really means to help us. And if she does want to help, will she give us information that can bypass some of the system’s rules? You know, to give us an edge.”

“Why don’t we just ask her?” Beatrice said.

Carey tapped his Araband’s crystal, and said: “Ara, get your booty out here.”

She appeared across from him, looming over the fire and the seated players around it, arms crossed and a heated stare burning into Carey.

“What did I tell you?”

“Whoa, hold on. I just wanted to see if you’d still come out. You have to, don’t you?”

“I’m at your command. Mostly.”

“Relax,” he said. “Sit down. I order you to sit with us.”

She shook her head. “That’s not how this works. I’m a resource, a tool, that you can employ as needed. I’m not a trained monkey or a stripper.”

Min-joon gasped at such an adult word. Carey wasn’t amused; he stood, mirroring her serious look. “Ara, I’m sorry I treated you like an object. I genuinely mean that.”

“How can I know for sure?”

Her expression had softened, which was a good sign. Even with those oversized eyes, that tiny sharp nose, those pouty lips, and that exaggerated figure, all of which made her resemble an anime character, Carey had a hard time seeing her as anything but another human with feelings like his own.

The system was tricking him. It was damned good at its job, too.

Remember, she might still be the enemy.

“Carey, please,” Ara said, “quit looking at me like I might flash a pair of fangs at you and bite your neck. If the game wanted you dead, then it would do it. Clearly, you’re more valuable alive.”

“For now,” Carey said.

“Yes, but still. If I’m truly just an extension of that system, then I also want you to live—and even win. Without a winner, how can we know if our game is worth playing? If it was even worth building? Wouldn’t winning be part of the experiment? A necessary part that merits observation?”

“All good points,” Carey said.

Maybe she’s right.

He found his chest and shoulders relaxing a bit, despite feeling slightly embarrassed at having overreacted. Maybe he should trust Ara, not because it was the smartest thing to do, but because he couldn’t get rid of her, her reasoning made sense to him, and his feelings of constant suspicion could distract him and therefore get him killed.

“Fine.” He gave a definitive nod. “Empathy or not, no intelligence would waste time like this. If you wanted me to fail, your system would make it happen. But that begs a new question—what exactly is your mission?”

“My mission is the same as your inventory screen, or the notification log, or your map. To help you progress in this game and ultimately win. As well as to help your party, since they have officially joined you in your quest and your survival would be almost impossible without them.”

“But you said earlier that I could be the only winner of this tournament. Does that mean I have to defeat the other players? Including my friends? And would their versions of you from their Arabands have said the same thing to each of them?”

She shook her head. “First of all, other versions of me might appear to exist. But they’re all me. There’s just one Ara, split across dozens of Arabands across Astros. But it wouldn’t matter if there were millions of Aras and Arabands. Trust me when I say this, there is only one Ara, and that’s me. Just like there’s only one system, one game—one you.”

She held out her hand to shake Carey’s. He stared at it for a moment, as if she’d offered him a pale, bloated fish. Then the steel in his gaze softened, and he remembered that she was his ally and he was hers. Time to act like it.

He took her hand and shook it.

“Friends?”

He nodded once. “Friends.”

“Are you guys gonna get married?” Min-joon asked.