Jason fell down through the missing center of the spiral staircase. Sweat trickled down his neck, and his breathing increased, and his heart throbbed in his ears — faster and faster he fell.

Yet, he was alive. He was living. Every sense screamed that he was alive.

Beyul Two-point-Oh was the only game to have the sharp edge of life. He felt it when he played the demo. Once the demo locked him out, he waited for — he hungered much like a junkie hungers for a fix which will never come — the full release. No matter the lies he told Rupert, he accepted the opportunity as fast as he could form the words. He needed this fix, and it was a fix. All of the game — the fear, the adrenaline, the action — came together to … complete him.

Oh, sure some games could scare the player, even put the player on edge. But, there was always a sense of distance and safety. Even the best of the VR games, such as Beyul One-point-Seven, had their weaknesses. But, this, Beyul Two-point-Oh, was his cocaine. Fighting against gun-toting soldiers, fleeing the threat of a nuclear weapon, engaging the massive destruction, and falling the fall were all as close to living as he could get while in the city.

He kept expecting the drag chute words, “Respawn Failure,” in the Beyul font, to appear. Then the game would pull the ripcord and punt him back to reality.

Sure he was afraid as he fell, but his fear came not from the fall. Nor did he fear the pain of failure or injury. After all, pain was the body’s way of letting him know he was alive. No, his fear was born from the thought of seeing those two dreaded words: “Respawn Failure.”

He had seen the words a hundred times in the demo. Perhaps the hundred failures in the vast demo had conditioned him to flinch anytime he faced something truly dangerous. But fear rode next to the edge of life. One couldn't live without fear or danger or pain. So he sang the only reasonable song — embrace the pain, the fear, the danger. Love the necessities of life.

Now he was falling, and he couldn’t unfurl his wings — there was no room. He smiled even as he shuddered at the thought of those dreaded words: “Respawn Failure.”

Instead, he kept his wings wrapped around the local, non-player character, man. And he silently prayed he would not see those words because those words meant more than losing the high.

Those words meant he could never get back to this world — everything would be erased. He would lose his experience points, his character, his possessions, his friends, his team, everything. That loss was the real danger of this game. Banishment. And compared to banishment, the pain of injury from the sudden stop at the bottom was nothing.

He had only just begun to taste life in this particular world, and, thus far, the world promised a large variety of ways to engage in life.

It was too soon to move on to another world.

Despite their intentions, the developers had run into a problem — the respawn system didn’t work. Finally, one of the developers had dropped a bombshell in the fan forums: “Game delayed due to respawn errors.”

Speculation and trolls exploded.

The forums crashed due to the traffic and to the flame wars and to the sewer talk.

Beyul Corporation struggled for nearly ten days before they had upgraded their forums to handle the tempo. Then came The Announcement from CEO Dallas Savannah May Scott: the company had developed a new world model which allowed the level designers to dramatically expand the playing areas and to massively increase encounter size and to deploy thousands of new features. But — and the but was the confirmation — the new model made player respawns a challenge which the Respawn Development Teams (RDTs) had yet to solve.

The Beyul Corporation had made a VRMMO Rogue.

As he fell, Jason held onto his laughter as he waited to hit the death plane and see, “Respawn Failure.”

The Beyul Corporation had simultaneously released Demo 2.0 with The Announcement. The demo was … indescribable. There was weather, there were seasons, there were smells, there were armies crashing, there were a hundred complete worlds, there were corpses. But death resulted in being ganked out of the game, everything lost, that world barred, and the glaring message: “Respawn Failure.” It was a demo which could be played only one hundred times — once for each world.

Jason tasted the thrill of playing the demo. Something inside the game triggered his fight-or-flight instincts. Something triggered adrenaline surges. Something triggered that ride-the-lighting feeling when he was truly alive, but only until he saw those words: “Respawn Failure.” Somehow that made the game even more appealing.

Jason’s feet collided with Rupert.

Snap. Pain.

He fell sideways.

His wing collided with the stairs.

Snap. More pain.

Bang. His head hit a sharp corner.

Torches flared to life about the base of the stairs.

But blue blood and stars filled Jason’s vision. More agony as the jagged end of a broken tibia or fibula sought atmosphere. Silver skin stretched and ripped. More blue blood gushed.

Jason slid to the floor. His foot flopped in an unnatural direction. He clamped his teeth together to keep from screaming. “Medic,” he hissed.

At his feet, Rupert was face down, unmoving.

Jason tried to breathe. He hated T2L (True to Life) pain. He had broken enough bones to know what real pain felt like.

T2L was a different kind of pain — a kind of pain screaming to be shared. Whoever developed T2L needed to be taken into a fully equipped torture chamber and be allowed to personally experience the magnificence —

Something shifted.

Agony surged through his broken limbs.

He screamed.

Still no “Respawn Failure.”

Something was pushing against his unbroken wing.

Panting, he unfolded his working wing.

There, unharmed, was the local he protected.

The man stood and wobbled on his feet. After a few seconds, he moved away from the stairs and drew a gun which he pointed at Jason.

Caitlin, or Sincerity in this world, hearing his scream, tried to push free of the crowd.

Jason slammed his teeth back together to halt his screams.

The crowd stared at him — anger in their eyes, hatred in their jaws, disgust in their mouths and noses.

The rescued local yelled, “They’re not immortal.” Triumph rang in his words. “They can be broken. They can be killed.”

The priest emerged from the crowd. “We discussed this.” His voice was strong, gentle, almost soothing. “Although the ritual would bring us defenders, we had no means to define their appearance. We must accept whatever form they take. Even if those forms are from our worst nightmares. We acknowledged that acceptance might be hard, but —” the priest gestured to Jason and Rupert “— but … we must extend the hand of friendship even to those defenders who wear the bodies of our enemies.

“Did they attack the Alliance troops sent to murder us?”

The crowd murmured acknowledgment.

“Did they help us get into the catacombs away from —” the priest pointed up into the darkness “— the destruction over us?”

The crowd reluctantly nodded.

“Did they serve the purpose of the ritual?”

A few in the crowd agreed.

“Then let them perform the task for which they were summoned.” The priest turned to the local with the drawn weapon. “Costa, perhaps the Gods have given us the best defenders. Defenders who can pass as our enemies. Enemies from whom we must remain hidden. Just as we must remain hidden from those, who were once our allies.”

The man Jason fell with, Costa, nodded and holstered the gun.

Then Caitlin ran to Jason. Hands, glowing with a golden-white light, touched his forehead.

His head cleared, and the blood stopped flowing into his eyes. Pain eased. Even the stars retreated to just the edges of his vision.

“I hate first level healing,” she whispered to him. She looked at his leg. “I need you to do your mind-killer pain chant.”

Jason nodded, but the chant he used was missing. The only chant that remained was, “‘Larak tarath.’” He couldn’t quite remember where that came from, but he clung to the chant and repeated over and over. The other chant would come back to him. “Larak tarath,” he repeated over and over.

She put her hands on her hips. “What’s the rule?”

“Uh …” He racked his brains. “Oh. Doctor Lazarus. Galaxy Quest.”

“Galaxy Quest? Really?”

Jason started to shrug, but the motion required moving his broken wing. He inhaled sharply and closed his eyes. “Larak tarath. Larak tarath.”

Then Oscar held his torso in a bear hug.

He knew what was coming — putting his leg back together. T2L insured the process would be painful beyond all reason. He concentrated on the strength chant.

Skye and Aisha pulled on the broken leg dragging the exposed bone back through the bleeding holes in his skin. Caitlin pressed her glowing hands against the wound sealing the holes. Bones knitted together.

Jason attempted to stand, but pain screamed up his leg. He flopped back against the dirty floor disturbing his broken wing. He went pale and bit into his fist.

“Idiot,” Caitlin snapped. “What part of First. Level. Healing. Did you miss? We are talking about charged band-aids. Nothing more.”

Jason smiled.

Thankfully, his group had made their way through their first combat without banishments.

While every member of the band was a solid player, there were just too many ways to mess up the first significant combat. And with ten-to-one (or more) odds against them, crashing and burning was likely. Even when, they had gone into the demo as a team, they died often.

Different demo worlds required different combat tactics. And none of the demo worlds had anything to do with angels.

And that meant they should have needed time to get their feet under them.

But no one died. No one was banished.

Jason looked over at Rupert.

That guy had been their canary and good luck charm. He had given the warnings to keep them from making mistakes — like the guy had the walkthrough guide memorized.

Jason nodded at the thought. “Make sure Valiant is okay.”

Skye snorted. “What’s a little head trauma between teammates?”

He opened his mouth to retort.

Syke grumbled. “Cornelia and I healed him — once each. We’re on cooldown.”

“How long?”

She shrugged. “No interface. No clue.”

Jason hooked his thumb at Caitlin. “What about Sincerity?”

“Her cooldown seems to be a few seconds but no complete heal.”

Oscar shifted to kneel across Jason’s chest. He and Caitlin yanked on his broken wing.

Jason grimaced.

Caitlin squeezed the break. Pain flared then faded.

“Either I’m out of mana, or there is some other mechanic involved,” Caitlin said.

Jason managed to crawl over to Rupert.

Someone had rolled the guy over.

He put his hand on the chest and whispered, “Heal.” His hand didn’t even glow. Nothing seemed to have changed. “Any idea why Beyul is so quiet?”

Everyone shook their heads.

Rupert opened his eyes and groaned when he touched the top of his head. “It’s part of the event. No access to any part of the standard interface. Although Beyul will announce if you get an achievement or skill point.”

Jason’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know?” He was pleased with how calm his voice sounded.

“I got the ‘Boot to the head’ Skill Point when you landed on me.”

Caitlin nodded. “I got the achievement ‘Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman’ after I expended all my healing on you.”

Jason coughed to cover his real response. Then he said, “Glad I could help.”