//INITIATING PERSPECTIVE SHIFT FROM [SEBASTIAN CORMIER PERSEPHONIA] TO [ANNETTE DELAMAR], CHOSEN OF KAVRE, THE HUMAN EMBODIMENT OF OBSESSION.

//TARGET IS LONGER WITHIN THE PROTECTED HUMAN LANDS.

//PERSPECTIVE MAY BE DELAYED BY A FACTOR OF UP TO [12] HOURS.

//CONTINUE ANYWAY: [Y] OR [N]?

//[Y] SELECTED.

//INITIATING…

Watching Garrett work was infuriating. The man quite literally could not function without yelling at someone, or belittling a proposition that would have made the trek safer. Not faster, which was all he cared about. Annette sighed and pressed a button on a puzzle box she’d found in a hazard, questioning her choices for the tenth time in as many days.

She’d only joined Garrett to find Sebastian Cormier. The man who, in her old life, had led the most successful group of humans to exist. One that didn’t have a single chosen in their midst, and without a single advantage they didn’t deserve. Sure, she might’ve stalked them a little too much, and she’d indirectly killed Poe, but Sebastian’s group had almost immediately returned the favor.

Somehow, Sebastian had ended up outside of humanity’s protected zone. And Garrett had ended up with Sebastian’s core. Annette had watched Garrett for weeks before she made contact, to make sure he wasn’t Sebastian using a different name. She’d almost though he was once she’d seen Dee, but the way Garrett treated him was just… horrible. And the chosen couldn’t even see the razor-sharp edge in Dee’s supposedly drunken eyes.

“He’s gonna get all of us killed.” Dee slurred from her side, gesturing at Garrett with a flask filled with clear alcohol. “And if he doesn’t get us all killed, he’s gonna get some of us killed. I’m not gonna be one of them. How about you?”

Annette shook her head. “This is the third time you’ve asked me that, Damian.”

Damian tilted his head a little too far to the side. “Is it? I thought it was the fourth. Eh, whatever. We’re meeting in the map tent in five minutes. If this ‘Sebastian’ is all you made him up to be, then I’d like to meet him. Ask him why he killed my son.”

Unsteady footsteps carried Damian away from Annette, yet the uneven terrain didn’t do a single thing to slow Damian down. If Garrett had been a little more observant, or cared the slightest bit for the people around him, he might’ve noticed. Luckily–and unluckily–for Annette, Garret was too blinded by his own ego to notice.

She fiddled with her puzzle box for a few more minutes, unlocking a tiny compartment that had a tooth-sized lime green gemstone that her interface told her was worth ten times its weight in gold. She packed it away with the other nine the puzzle box had given her and stretched, then made her way to the tent.

Brushing the curtain aside, Annette found herself among the four other people who could be considered ‘competent’ in Garrett’s little group. Coleen, Damian, Nazanin, and Felix. One sniper slash cartographer, one scout, one enchanter slash smith, and one brick wall of a defender. But their minds were what drew Annette to them.

They were all brilliant in their own ways. And they were all struggling with the new world. But they were adapting. Changing where others refused to give up their old lives, fears, and habits. Annette could work with almost anyone, but since she had the choice, she chose those four.

“Good. We’re all here.” Coleen sighed in relief, gesturing for Damian to isolate the group from anyone who might be listening in.

Damian nodded and summoned a fist-sized glass ball from his inventory, then pushed something that looked like a marshmallow made from honeycomb into it. “Done and done. Our secrets won’t leave this cloth.”

Nazanin, an extremely attractive woman of Iranian descent, gently pressed her hand to the map table. It glowed for a second before shifting to a much larger map, most of which was concealed by a blackened fog.

“From our scouting reports, this land is a much higher level than anything else we’ve seen.” Coleen said matter-of-factly, tapping on a piece of land a few miles to the west with miniature flying squiggles above it. The number 18 appeared above it. “The strongest creature we found was hazard rating eighteen, and we only managed to subdue it thanks to a group effort. If the monsters get stronger the closer we get to wherever Garrett’s leading us, we won’t be able to get strong enough to survive them in time.”

Annette nodded at Coleen’s estimation. “From what I’ve seen, the world itself is randomly dangerous. You can find a pocket of extreme danger, and a few hours away, the strongest thing is only hazard rating three. We can’t use hazard logic all the time.”

Coleen considered that, then tapped the map again. The number disappeared, and was replaced by a large ‘X’. “Okay. So we avoid the high-hazard stuff until we’re sure we can take them down. Felix, how’re the preparations going for the level twelve hazard we found?”

“Ninety percent complete.” Felix, a young man of Chinese descent who spoke without a hint of an accent, eagerly replied. His eyes were full of excitement and he could barely keep from vibrating. “Garrett won’t notice we’re gone, and we’ve automated enough of the scouting that he won’t recognize anything’s wrong for at least a week. Nazanin and I need another day or so, then we’ll be all ready.”

Coleen looked to Nazanin for confirmation. The other woman smiled pleasantly, then summoned a massive sniper rifle from her inventory.

“I have almost everything finished, but I need time to fine-tune their performances. Felix’s guess is accurate.” Nazanin planted the butt of the sniper on the ground and leaned on the barrel. “But about this ‘Sebastian Cormier’; have you managed to coerce any more information from Garrett, Annette?”

“Nothing I’d take as true.” Annette shook her head. “He doesn’t talk about Sebastian like he’s a real person. His Embodiment must’ve told him about Sebastian, and now he’s just pulling facts out of his ass to keep us placated.”

Annette didn’t want to say that she actually did know more about Sebastian, but that the information was seriously out of date. Thirty years out of date. Maybe she’d share what she knew eventually, but she didn’t trust anyone enough to tell them about her old life. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

“That’s about what I thought.” Dee leaned on the table and sighed. He’d taken losing his son a whole lot better than Annette had expected. But what seemed to take the bigger toll was that fact itself. “The man’s hiding something big, but he’s so full of himself that I can’t tell what he’s being stubborn about from his lies.”

Mutterings in agreement were had from all. Even Annette joined in, since she knew what Sebastian had been like in her old life. A man trying his best to make sense of the nonsensical, and to carve a notch for humanity in a new and dangerous world. The one thing he wouldn’t do was run away at the first sign of danger.

Especially not after killing a kid.

“Well, that’s even more reason for all this.” Coleen said gravely. “If we want to get out of this alive, we need to be strong enough to survive Garrett’s idiotic decisions. Who knows what’s out here, now that we got that notification that we’re not protected any more.”

“Probably something dangerous.” Dee chuckled. “We’ve already walked as much distance as America was wide, and we still haven’t seen anything like an ocean. This place could be ten times bigger than Earth, and we wouldn’t have a clue.”

“That’s why we’re preparing.” Nazanin reiterated. “We need nodes and experience. They only come from putting ourselves in danger. If that isn’t the world trying to prepare us for a life of constant danger, I don’t know what else it could be.”

That was a very good point. One that Annette hadn’t taken to heart until a few years into her old life. Before her disease hit. A sense of looming dread fell over her at the thought of it, but she shook her head and forced herself to smile. As long as it was the same as her last life, she had three years before her mind wasn’t truly hers any more. It had to be enough time to fix herself. Before she became the ghost that haunted Sebastian and his friends.

“We’ll need a lot of cores if we want to get strong quickly. Which means clearing hazards.” Annette muttered to herself. “Coleen, did you find any other hazards while you were looking? Even higher level ones we might not have been able to clear?”

Coleen nodded reluctantly. “The hazards out here are not as… locked as the ones where we came from. We can go in for short periods of time, but we will be forcibly removed before we have a chance to do much of anything.”

Annette nodded. Perfect. “Those are perfect for building up materials. If you find one that’s near our level, but kicks us out after about an hour, tell me. Most hazards reset if there’s nobody in them, so we can farm the starting area for cores and materials in short bursts. The stuff won’t be anywhere near as good as if we fully cleared it, but we should be able to boost our stats enough to push our hazard tolerance up a few levels.”

It was the strategy she’d used to power level from 25 to forty in her old life. But it would go so much faster, and be so much safer, with a group.

“We’ll need better gear for that.” Nazanin pointed out. “I can make gear that gives us good stats, but I can’t give them functions. Is that going to be enough?”

“Definitely. Skill is a lot more important than having a huge arsenal.” Annette said eagerly. She was actually getting excited for this. “If we can boost our stats into the fifties, and get our health up a little higher, we should be able to fight things above our hazard level.”

Things were strangely looking up. Annette had expected to come to Garrett and find one person who could sympathize with her, but found an idiot who couldn’t understand that things were different. Instead, she found four people who couldn’t understand exactly what she was going through, but were so much nicer and kinder that it didn’t matter. They couldn’t sympathize, but they could ease the pain Annette felt.

It brought her hope that Sebastian would be the same. She could apologize for everything she’d done, and even though he wouldn’t understand any of it, she could make up for it. Annette leaned back and let Coleen hash out the little details with everyone else; her part to play would come in when everyone was strong enough to start asking the right questions. Until then, she’d just have to–

//SYSTEM WARNING.

//HUMAN CHOSEN [DYLAN ERICKSON] HAS BEEN KILLED OUTSIDE OF THE HUMAN SAFETY ZONE.

//REMAINING HUMAN CHOSEN SHOULD CONTINUE WITH EXTREME CAUTION WHEN NEAR [RAINBOW BASIN].

Annette stared at the message with wide eyes. She recognized that name. That was the racist moron she’d helped kill in her last life. How’d he get out of the safe zone? And what the hell was Rainbow Basin?

Garrett’s panicked footsteps raced towards the tent.

“Aw, hell.” Dee grumbled, smacking the table to return it to a simple map and putting his strange device back in his inventory. “Looks like something happened.”

//RETURNING PERSPECTIVE TO [SEBASTIAN CORMIER PERSEPHONIA].

//INITIATING…