Bruce found himself in the dead of night in some kind of field.

As he looked down at himself, he had another surprise. Gone was the normal dad gut, replaced instead by a well-defined torso clad in the thick leather armor. He chuckled. His wife would surely approve. He scanned further and found himself holding a massive axe in his right hand. How he’d not noticed he was holding something that heavy baffled him.

He was just about to try to make sense of the information hovering over his vision when a violent scream made his heart jump. He turned just in time to see a man in animal skins charging at him with a crude spear.

Bruce screamed in response, his fight or flight mechanism kicking into high gear. Surprising even himself, he lashed out with the axe and embedded it in the man’s shoulder. The man cried out as a bar appeared above his head and instantly depleted to zero.

“OP strength build bull–”

His words cut off as he fell to the ground and then burst into a flurry of sparks. New words appeared before him.

Congratulations! You have slain Rockeasy23

14 hunters remain

You autoloot Rockeasy23

You find a Crude Spear

You find a Wolf Skin armor

You find Jerky[3]

What was all this junk?

It didn’t matter. He needed to find Cedric. Still, he could deny the strange sense of exhilaration rushing through him now. Bruce was a peaceful man by nature and getting into a fight was out of the question, especially in the real world. But killing that…player just now?

It was like nothing he had felt before. Terrifying yet liberating.

He was beginning to understand why people gravitated towards these types of games.

Focus, he told himself. Find Cedric.

Connecting to his link to the outside world, Bruce patched a message through to Carl.

Carl’s response appeared as text before his eyes.

Carl: Cedric’s player name is Messiah. His starting position was just north of you.

Messiah? Oddly fitting for a delusional profit, Bruce supposed.

Carl: No idea which character he might be. But I would out it past him to know exactly where Cedic spawned as well. Better get moving.

Using the compass on his display, Bruce orientated himself and booked it through the forest. The screams of other players unnerved him as he made his way through the dark. At the top of his vision a player counter which started at 15 was now down to 12. A ring on his map labeled death zone kept growing smaller and smaller as well. All those things combined to send his heart rate skyrocketing. He needed to get to Cedirc sooner than later.

Another message then appeared from Carl.

Carl: Hey… be careful in there. The failsafe limits have been deactivated.

Bruce recalled seeing that message before he entered the game.

Carl: Dennis has changed the settings. In this game there is something called insta-kill involving headshots. The feedback from that can cause actual head trauma if that limiter isn’t in place.

Carl: The bigger question is why. I’d get out of there Bruce. I can call Evelyn and have her shut down the whole thing. It’s not safe.

Bruce paused to think a moment. This was exactly the setup Dennis wanted, an easy opportunity to take Cedric out. But Bruce already knew that. He needed to get to Cedric before that happened. Before Dennis found him. Breaking into a run, Bruce sent another message to Carl.

* * *

Wind presses into my face as I stare out at the rolling dunes.

We’ve traveled for over an hour now and my heart beats faster as the distance ticks down on my minimap to the coordinates of Citadel. We’re all in the buggy, silence reigning as we’re each lost in our own thoughts. Gilly’s green eyes stare into the distance as she sits next to me and I wonder what she’s thinking. I send her a PM.

Me: You okay?

She turns and smiles and then speaks to me instead of sending a PM. “Never better.”

“Kind of surreal, isn’t it?” I say, looking at my minimap. “Being this close to home?”

“I know. I can’t wait to see my mom and dad,” she says. “Can’t wait for this to all be over.”

I only nod as I imagine being able to see my own mother again.

Almost there, Mom.

But for me, the battle is still far from over. Saving Citadel is just the beginning.

“There it is!” Rembrandt suddenly cries. “I see it!”

We all stand up in our seats, peering in the direction the cyberpunker is pointing.

There just faintly on the horizon is a domed structure sitting atop the dunes. I can barely believe it. “It’s there guys! We found it!”

A roil of cheers and laugher ring out as we celebrate.

“Holy crap, we made it, man!” Maxis says, and I swear I can see tears in his eyes. “All these damn years. We’re finally bringing this nano home.”

“What do you think its going to be like?” Val Helena says. “Going back home like this? We’re still in our avatars, right?”

Crap, I hadn’t given much thought to that.

“Maybe when we reach the terminal we can all transition back into the shards?” Becky says with a shrug.

“That sounds plausible, love.” Rembrandt gives her a nod. “It should be a hardwired connection when we get there.”

“Who say’s I even want to change back,” Aiko says with one of her cackle laughs. “I like being like this.”

“That makes two of us,” Val Helena says with a deep sigh.

I look to the giantess and elf questioningly. I never really considered what going back to the real world would be like for them. After all, they literally been inside these nano bodies for years. As if to emphasis the point, Maxis suddenly laughs as he points at me.

“Mom would totally freak out if she saw you like that, Bro.”

“Yeah,” I said, realizing that as normal as we all felt, we were still in these synthetic superhuman bodies. “Mom still doesn’t even know that I can walk aga­in, much less seeing me as a nin––”

My words cut short as the world suddenly turns upside down.

Screams and the groan of twisting metal fill the air as the buggy flips over, sand stinging my face as we tumble across the dunes. I lose count of the number of times we toppled end over end before we finally come to a jarring stop that takes a few HP away.

My head is spinning and hurting from the pressure being upside down, I realize.

“Everyone alright?” Rembrandt says with a cough. “Max, what happened?”

“I don’t know. I think something hit us. It just––”

Our world goes spinning again as something strikes the buggy a second time and on my HUD I see its health go from 40% to zero. What’s left of the buggy’s frame collapses into nano dust as we’re tossed into the air and spit out into the desert like eggs falling from a carton. I break my momentum in a chaotic roll, losing a couple more HP in the process.

Aiko and I are back on out feet in an instant using breakfall, and we instantly cast Shadow Copy, still uncertain as to what’s going on. Warmth then fills my body as a healing spell comes from Gilly, just getting to her feet as well.

“There!” Val Helena shouts brandishing her massive axe.

As I follow her line of sight, my heart drops into my stomach.

No more than fifty feet away a black twisted figure the size of a hill giant stands against us. Its features are humanoid but alien, dark sinewy smoke forms muscle and skin attached to a spindly frame that seems far too frail to support its massive head. Twin sets of eyes stare back at me from its skull like face, and I can sense an aura of hatred exuding from it. On my HUD the thing appears even more odd. There’s nothing there at all.

????????

Level: ???

No data available

Affinity: N/A

“You all can see what I’m seeing, right?” I ask, glancing back at my friends.

But their lack of responses speaks volumes. This is their first time truly seeing one of them. Not the mindless giants we just escaped from, but one of the true Oroku in the flesh. But how is it even here? I recall seeing one like this before, back when Gilly and I fell through the surface of the desert on our way to New London.

Has it come back for me now?

But no…this one is different. But I recognize it all the same.

“You!” I say pointing at it. “You’re the puppetmaster. The that controlled the Queen!”

My friends form up together in a party, Gilly and Becky buffing us with spells with no glitter or glam, the icons simply appearing on our HUDs with small bursts of nano dust. The lack of visual effects makes this all the more real for me.

We’re back in the wild.

A no man’s land with no special effects or governing AI.

And we’re about to face off against an Other in the flesh.