“The code’s all sorts of fucked,” Larry said, at the table in the common room with a mouthful of fruity o’s cereal the following morning. Milk dappled the surface, making his spot at the table look like a study in crime scene dairy spatter.

Cale frowned at the tablet in his hands, swiping through pages of letters and numbers. “This is way over my head,” he finally admitted and set the device down where it’d be least likely to get sprayed.

Larry snorted, “Don’t doubt it. No offense, if it’s plugging me up worse than a cheese platter, don’t know how you think you’d do any better.”

“It was worth a shot,” Cale said and took a sip of his coffee. “I wouldn’t feel right going back in unless I’d looked at it.”

“Don’t gotta worry about the psychic attack no more,” he said, slurping down the rest of his milk. “We turned that shit off globally. Soon as the players figured that one out, they started walking all over the mind worm dungeon. Little bastards can’t do shit besides flail around and hit for 1% damage. Even Riot could heal that.” He snorted at his own joke. “Don’t let it get to you, girlie. If fightin’ druids could heal off spec as well as they could on, they’d be overpowered.”

I shrugged, not having taken any offense. My heals sucked, that was a fact, but now that I had his attention, I said, “What was the logic behind not giving druids a heal poison spell? You could give us that much at least.”

Larry sniffed. “You can dispel curses. Ain’t that good enough?”

“Druids are nature bitches, right? How many curses do you think they run into in the woods compared to the amount of snake and spider bites? It just doesn’t make any sense, man.” Yes, I might have been overreacting, but the game had become something real to me. Nearly tangible. The need, the addiction, to log back in already itching through my blood.

“I see your thinking,” he admitted, his meaty head bobbing from one side to the other. “I’ll consider it.” He slapped the table, sending a shower of spilled milk dangerously close to his tablet. “Back to what you’re gonna face in there. This asshole,”—his eyes darted around the room—“Er, Leland, his physical attacks, well, until I figure this code shit out, they’re still gonna put you down for the count, but I’m working on a patch. Make it so you’ll get kicked instead of drained.”

Cale glanced at me across the table and exhaled loudly. “That’ll have to be good enough. If something happens to her… To any of us, you better pray that I went down with them too.”

“Ooh,” Larry said and rolled his eyes. “Scrawny nerd threatened me. Whatever am I gonna do? Please, if it was the big one sayin’ that, I’d be scared.”

“Then the big one is sayin’ it,” Luke said, making his presence known to Larry with a large hand on his shoulder. He’d been standing there for a bit. I just didn’t want to spoil the surprise for everyone.

Larry gulped and nodded, his triple chins slapping in agreement. “You know what, I just remembered that I should get back to my office and finish that code.”

“Good,” Richard said as he entered the dining area, looking like he’d just woken up with mussed hair, wearing jeans and a t-shirt. His face pale and drawn. “There was another attack this morning. This time he hit the tavern in Lighthall.” The unspoken words hung in the air; Leland took his own grandpa out.

“Fuck this waiting shit,” I said, blood rushing to my head, creating a rhythmic pounding in my ears. “I’m going in.”

The wails of the dead were the first thing to load in and I held my breath, waiting to see where I’d appear. As the dim light of the underworld hit my eyes, and the system drew the landscape, I breathed a heavy sigh of relief. Around me, the crumbling buildings of the skeletal cities were a double blessing. We’d have time to prepare and I could get some reinforcements.

“Anyone have any meat?” I asked as soon as everyone logged in.

“Honey,” Salvo said with fake concern. “If Cale isn’t providing what you need in the bedroom-”

I cut him off despite his protests. Salvo really hated not giving the full punchline. “No time right now. I need all your meat. Don’t give me that look, you know what I fucking mean. Give me anything you might have in your inventory that a carnivore would eat.”

A trade window from Maddie opened, with three blessed stacks of various meats, totaling somewhere in the hundreds. She blushed, “I’ve been saving them to work on my cooking skill.”

“You kick so much ass,” I said and accepted the trade. Then got to work feeding the dogs who’d started sniffing around me the second I loaded in. All patiently waiting for their good boy treats. They’d get their fill and then some. “Before we mount up, I need Salvo to do me a favor. And it’s gonna be weird.”

Our mounts kicked up black earth as we ran across the empty fields and ravines of the underworld. Overhead, the swirling, shimmering mists coiled as we passed. The screams of the fallen took shape in my mind and for a moment Viv was beside me, urging me on with a battle cry.

Who knows, it very well could have been her with all the distortion in the air that grew heavier the further we went. Rocks glitched, either vanishing or hovering feet from the ground. Vegetation flickered in and out of view. Each time it was a little off from where it’d been before. Sometimes inches, sometimes feet.

Until finally, the tower rose above the opalescent clouds on the horizon, and I shivered. Memories of the attack on my brain still a little too fresh. All I could do was hope and trust disabling the psychic attacks had worked and push forward; dropping morsels of meat as I continued.

Panic bubbled in my throat as Oz lit up in green, covering the hills with a toxic glow. I closed my eyes and waited for the assault on my head to begin. Fear hammered inside my chest uncontrollably, but it was steady and natural. Instead of taking root and growing as it had before, the terror was my own and gradually dimmed with the realization.

Score one for the good guys, I thought and kicked at my mount’s sides to build speed. A smile so large it was painful spread across my cheeks. We might actually pull this shit off after all.

As we drew closer, close enough to see cracks in the crystalline structures of the tower, a wall of thick, jagged obsidian tore through the ground. Quakes rumbled underfoot, and my mount reared before vanishing as it unsummoned itself. My body ragdolled in the air before landing painfully on my ass.

“Pussy,” I yelled both at my mount and the tower. Then cast a slow heal to cover the fall damage I’d taken. It wasn’t much, but still monumental when the difference between coma and otherwise could be those few hit points.

With me prone and off guard, the puppers did what they do best, attack with tongues and flailing tails. A shriek of delight left me as the herd of dogs jumped and zoomed; blinding my vision with paws, tongues, butt waggles and wet noses.

An arm in full plate pushed past the wriggling mount and lifted me to my feet. “Let’s keep moving,” Cale said, the corner of his mouth twitched in amusement.

They’d covered me nearly head to toe in dog drool and hair, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Their unconditional love had given me the strength I didn’t realize I needed. But had the side effect of causing me to reconsider my plan for them. Ones and zeros, Liz. They’re just ones and zeros, I reminded myself. Just like the vase in Richard’s waiting room, they can always come back.

“All right,” I sighed, working my eyes over the wall that hadn’t been there minutes before. “How the hell are we gonna get over that thing?”

Maddie raised a little hand and said, “If Salvo hand’s over the goblin glycerin he stole from Richard’s office, I have an idea.”

“Stole from Richard?” Salvo asked, his eyes wide with a hand to his throat. “I wouldn’t steal something from him, and definitely not that stuff. It smells toxic. Who’d want to drink that in an appletini?”

“Give her the shit,” I said, shaking my head at him.

“But, Liz…” He whined before finally handing over a thick bottle with a stylized goblin skull and crossbones; XXX written underneath in a crude scrawl.

With the requested ingredient, Maddie flipped to her menus. Her little avatar pounded the air with hammers, scorched nothing with a blowtorch, and turned a wrench on… well, you guessed it, nothing. Finished with her work, the menu icon above her head disappeared and she held a rather large stack of dynamite in her tiny hands.

“This should do it,” she said proudly. “We’ll have to hide behind that boulder way over there to avoid any shrapnel, though. It’s gonna be raining razor blades when that thing goes off.” She finished her speech with a manic little giggle.

“You’ve been hanging around Liz too long. Her psychosis is catching,” Salvo said, glancing from her to me.

“Nah, she’s always been like this.” Nate shook his head. “Mom has a copy of the Anarchist’s Cookbook under her mattress she doesn’t think I know about.”

“Well, holy shit,” I said and whistled through my teeth.

“Nathan, what were you doing looking under there?” she asked. Then seemed to remember he was a teenage boy. She shook her head and added, “You know what, nevermind.”

“Make me a copy and I’ll love you forever,” I said in a singsong voice. I’d been searching for the book since I learned it existed in the sixth grade. At the time, I was interested in the drugs section. Kids are like that. While I was still interested in that part, not going to lie, the rest was just as interesting to an adult Liz.

“Done,” she said and lit the fuse.

We ran for cover, diving behind the boulder in a pile of Arcadian bodies right as the blast went off, sending shock waves through the ground followed by the tinkle of raining obsidian shards.

“I’m not done,” she said, holding my arm before I could run forward. The strange ghostbusters device she’d used on the horde in Dante’s Depths appeared in her hands for a split second before it hurtled towards the opening in the wall. It scooped at the ground, making a half dozen passes before returning to her. “Now, I’m done and we have enough caltrops to last us for eternity.”

“And no hurt paws either when the dogs go inside,” I said. There was moaning and shambling on the other side of the hole. Something was waiting for us, something that sounded suspiciously like zombies. “Everyone ready? Pretty sure we know what we’re gonna run into on the other side of that thing. But he knows we’re here. So there might be more than we’re expecting.”

No one protested, so I took that as a go.

A separate stack of meat, one I’d left untouched till now, appeared in my hand, dripping with dark red ichor, courtesy of Salvo. I wasn’t sure if his would have the same effect as his vampire daddy’s blood, but after a private chat I’d had with Larry earlier, he assured me he’d make it work.

“Go get it,” I said, and threw the marinated chops towards the wall. The hungry dogs ran after, gobbling and lapping at the juices. Within moments of the blood reaching their tongues, their muscles rippled under their fur. The dogs howled, their canines extended, claws jutted from their paws. Closer to hellhounds than dogs, I eased over to them, praying they wouldn’t attack. That they’d still recognize me, even over the haze of their blood fury.

“Liz,” Cale said nervously.

“Shh, I know what I’m doing. Kinda.”

The largest of the bunch sniffed my face without having to stretch upwards and licked a cheek. That was all I needed. I gave him a scratch behind the ear and a shiver ran down my spine as I shifted to cat form. Without a single command, the vampiric stray dogs fell into place all around me. We were an army of feral creatures, only cranked up to eleven. And it was time to hunt.

It was almost too gruesome, even for me to watch as the dogs worked their way through waves of the undead. Their jaws clamped around brittle bones, crunching and tearing their way through the Romero-sized crowd of living corpses. Two of the hounds grabbed a zombie on either end, shook their heads and played a game of tug, spilling rotten entrails as the body ripped in half.

Salvo tossed a bag of mana potions to Maddie, giving her the juice she needed for a steady supply of off-spec fireballs. The holy members of the party worked their magic, careful to avoid hitting either my pets or the rogue who darted around the battlefield, stabbing, slicing and dicing the undead flesh.

Maggots wriggled in my fur when the last of the zombies fell. I shook, sending a fan of squirming off-white things in all directions. Once I fought back a wave of revulsion, I checked on my troops. A few had fallen, but they were otherwise unharmed. Mostly, they reclined in the dried grass, tongues lolling from the sides of their mouths or gnawing on bones scavenged from corpses.

Nate cast a spell on two of the fallen hellhounds, taking them as his own. And why wouldn’t he? He might not get another chance for these creatures since they were a onetime deal, unless Larry added them permanently into the game.

I’d have to thank him for going with me on my crazy plan. Even using a brand-new skin pulled from another mob in the game since there hadn’t been enough time to design another. But there wasn’t time for happy thoughts. The doors to the tower rumbled open, casting the same light created by old televisions flickering in the dark, and my blood ran cold.

White noise, like static, grew loud until deafening, threatened to burst my eardrums. I opened menus, cranked useless sliders that no matter where they stopped, did nothing to allay the pain. Volume control all the way down or up. It was all the same. I shrieked as the tiny membranes gave way with a pop in my ears, followed by a warm liquid trickling down the fur on the sides of my neck.

Cale’s mouth formed words but I couldn’t understand, only saw the same effect was being done to him as he wiped the sides of his head with the back of his hands. Streaks of red ran across his cheeks.

“Log out,” I screamed and tried to find the button… but it was gone. Panicked, I tried to blink out, but just like C0n4n had said, it didn’t work. Years of alt+f4 jokes on noob players in other games finally caught up to me in one steaming turd of poetic justice. “Fuck,” I shouted, anger overriding fear, griping my claws into the ground to pull myself forward. “I’m not going down like a bitch, motherfucker.” All I had to do was put one paw in front of the other and pull. Progress was slow, but made.

The painful fight forward ended when movement caught my eye and at least a dozen of the static agents poured from the door, moving in bursts of stop motion speed. They twitched, jerked and ported themselves, lessening the distance between us in halting steps.

Behind them, with a face so fucking smug it begged to be punched, strode Leland Bouchard himself, having dropped the mask of static to hide behind. Guess he figured there wasn’t a point in hiding anymore. That cat was out of the bag. He held up a hand and the agents froze in place. Kinda like someone hit their pause button. Some even hovered a few inches from the ground.

The constant painful roar in my hearing ceased. Anyone with heals started casting on themselves and the other’s. Sound, painful at first, rushed back in an overwhelming but steady stream of input. Wails of the dead, scratching dogs, grass rustling, etc. Stuff you take for granted when it’s gone.

“Had to give us our hearing back to hear your little evil tirade, I take it?” I asked through gritted teeth. Not the smartest thing I’ve done in a while, taunting a guy who could put me in a coma, but, you know what, fuck him. It felt like I was headed that way no matter what and the longer I kept him talking, the longer Larry had to get the patch in. At least this gave me the chance to go down swinging.

Leland took another step towards me and the dogs, with no sonic attack to recover from, raised their hackles. A few growled, baring teeth of nightmares, while others surrounded me, bodies lowered and ready to strike.

“That fat fuck Larry really outdid himself this time, didn’t he?” The younger Bouchard asked. “I didn’t mean for all this to happen, you know?”

I ground my teeth hard enough to shoot pain through my jaw. “Spare me the helpless victim act because I’m not buying it. If you really feel the need to have someone feel bad for rich little asshole Leland, there’s a hospital in Vegas you can go to. Ask for Viv Williams. I’m sure she’d love to hear all about your woes. She’s not the most talkative lately, but all the better, right?”

“Attacking her was a mistake,” he said with a look of honest regret.

“You absolute piece of shit.” I was treading on thin ice. He made that clear with his expression, but I was beyond the point of caring. The anger drowning out my vision was all I could focus on. And the cause for all that ire was finally in front of me after all this time. And he would hear it. All of it. The people he’d tormented deserved as much. “It’s not because she’s a human being, just like all the other victims you’ve cut down, is it? It’s because of her connections. Because of who her daddy is? Am I getting warmer?”

“That and her rabid bitch of a friend,” Leland said, his nose crinkled and eyes narrowed.

“What d’you just call her?” Cale asked, golden shimmers of holy magic sparked along his armor.

“What’s this?” A psychotic glee entered Leland’s expression. “The bitch has a guard dog. Call him off before I’m forced to do something we’d both regret. Though, I’m sure you’d feel worse than I would.”

I glanced sideways at my boyfriend, his own anger coming off him in waves, and shook my head. Not trusting Leland wouldn’t somehow hear any communication I sent, I could only project my thoughts at Cale and hope he could read something in my face, We need more time, cut the machismo bullshit. While my lips told him, “Let’s talk first. If we don’t like what he has to say, you’ll be the first to give him a second asshole.”

Cale frowned but eased, slightly. It would have to be good enough.

“The greasy guy you sent to my house, by the way, is south of the border right about now. Alive but in the heart of Tijuana without a passport or means of communication. Might wanna start looking for him. You know, before the cartel knows he’s there. Sold some pictures of the wrong person’s daughter once upon a time.” Leland tsked. “It would be a shame if her dear old dad found out where to find the cameraman who caused all her humiliation.”

“How fucking noble of you,” I said, hoping whoever was watching caught where to find Cale’s connection. He could give some pretty damning testimony if this all went the right way. “Since you’re in such a talkative mood, tell me, why’d you get involved in all this? Seems to me you had it made, pretty girls, tons of cash, fame, fast cars, family who gives a shit about you. I could go on.”

“You don’t know shit,” he said, fists clenched.

Good, I was getting to the fucker. People talk when they’re pissed. “No? What about your grandpa in the tavern?”

“That bitch, Dana, would have to be my mom for that old sack of shit to be my family. Dad left my real mom when I was six to chase his true love or whatever bullshit that asshole convinced himself he felt. Said he tried, but sometimes adults just don’t get along. Then he walked out on both of us.”

Well, don’t we have some daddy issues, I groaned to myself. “But he raised you…”

“After mom drank herself to death, sure.”

I shook my head, choking down a bark of bitter laughter. “So you’re pissed your parent’s split and taking it out on everyone else years later? Either I’m missing something or you’re the world’s biggest toddler throwing a pant-shitting tantrum of epic proportions. What the fuck, man? Grow some balls and accept that life didn’t give you a perfect hand. The rest of us had to do it.”

Leland’s hand twitched and his eyes said he wanted nothing more than to see me skinned alive. I’d gone well over his threshold for acceptable talk and moved into consequence territory. His face twisted into a sour, disgusted look. Lips raised from his teeth as he spat. “That slut wife of his got knocked up. I’m going to lose everything. Sure, I might get a little hush money and sent off to a quiet little spot. Somewhere he can forget I exist.”

“So, if you can’t have the ball all for yourself, you’re going to stab it so no one else can have it? That’s what’s happening?”

He shook his head, staring down at me like a smashed turd on the sole of his expensive loafer. “That’s how I know you’re gutter trash, Eliza. You don’t look at the big picture and how to move up in the world. It’s all black and white to you, isn’t it?”

“I mean…” I said, bobbing my head from side to side in exaggerated movements, purposefully ignoring his use of my real name. “Honestly not seeing shades of gray in what you’re doing. Seems pretty fucking black to me. Must be that gutter trash side getting the best of me again.”

“It’ll all come into perfect focus for everyone else. All I had to do was give things a little push in the right direction. Yesterday’s lab rats are today’s gamers, and the experiment was a success. Shame you won’t be around to witness it.” Light flared from his fingertips, searing into Cale’s head, dropping him before he had the chance to ready himself.

The world moved in slow motion as the life left his eyes and his body crumpled to the ground. Messages popped up that I could barely read through clouded vision.

DreadPirat3 has disconnected from the server

ERROR: USER DreadPirat3 - DOES NOT EXIST