Another ding tore through my skull and I quickly accepted the call before it did any more damage.

The pain was much worse than before I was trapped in the system. I hoped it didn't have anything to do with what my parents said was happening to me.

Two transparent superiors appeared in front of me.

Once the pain passed I waved at them.

“Are you okay?” Kevin asked.

I caught my breath. Apparently, I needed to breathe in AR. “Yeah, still feeling pain from my implant.”

The person who had called me to their thermobot gave me a sympathetic smile.

They should be able to tell I was on a call. I wasn't sure if they had heard me or not. Perhaps they just saw me in pain?

“Hey, Az,” Jakson greeted me.

I smiled. “Hey runt, how's the arm?”

“Digitally perfect, thanks for asking,” he replied.

Kevin's figure moved closer to me. “I wish I could help.”

“Why don't you make a character and come play?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Grounded.”

“What'd you do?” I asked.

Kevin and Jakson shared a look. “Well…”

“He kind of came to visit me,” Jakson said.

I leaned back using my arms to brace myself. “And you didn't ask permission?”

Kevin looked at his hands.

“Yeah, it was for… you know what,” Jakson said.

The Q.U.B.E.! “Do you have it?”

“Yup, testing it,” Jakson replied.

Kevin's face shot over to Jakson and they stared at each other for a moment. “We just wanted to make sure you're okay.”

I gestured at my surroundings. “I'm camping.” Then I had an idea. “Why don't you make a pet character? You don't have to leave the house for that.”

“How would I even get to you?” Kevin asked.

That could be an issue. “Maybe I could have someone go and pick you up. If you start at your sphere's location I could have a ghost pick you up. You're not afraid of heights are you?”

“Nope, no phobias here. Except for…” his voice trailed off. “Spiders.”

I nodded. “Yeah, if I never see a spider again I'll have lived a happy life.”

He didn't respond.

“I forgot that the game was getting VR. Still don't wanna play it,” Jakson stated.

“What's the matter?” I pulled the slider back to the right so Inethiel was showing. “Don't like the dead?”

“Put it back!” he screeched while covering his eyes.

He was still too young and couldn't play the game. I liked teasing him but torture wasn't exactly my thing so I slid it back.

Kevin shook his head. “Any other news on… your situation?”

“I can come visit you, but I'll be in AR,” I said.

I wondered if Molly or anyone else in my ward could use AR or if it was something Raccoon had concocted.

Kevin took a deep breath. “I visited you.”

“What?” I asked.

He shrugged. “We got a new scan, like you suggested and afterward Doctor Stevens took me to the comatose ward.”

“Di-did I look okay?” I asked and leaned toward him.

Jakson stepped between us. “Hey, no mushy stuff.”

I wasn't going to move so Kevin backed up and Jakson returned to his previous position.

“We just wanted to see if you were okay.” Jakson pointed at me and turned to Kevin. “She's okay. I'm leaving now. Commence your mushiness,” he said while turning around.

I wondered if he was always going to be a little brat. “Aww, how sweet of you to let Kevin force you to come visit me when I'm in a coma.”

There was no doubt in my mind that he rolled his eyes as he hit the end convo button and blinked out of existence.

“He really does care about you. You were all he talked about when I met him,” Kevin said.

He had a weird way of showing it. “I know. I just like to tease him.”

“Was that your first time showing him Inethiel?” He asked.

I nodded. “Yeah, if he saw the shambler version he would have disconnected right away. Inethiel is half as scary as she is.”

“Well,” he said while shaking his head. “Inethiel is quite a bit scarier, especially when you have a hundred shamblers fighting for you.”

Kevin had been doing a little research. “Really?”

“That duel you had with Raziel was amazing! The kids in school talk about you all the time,” he said.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

I smiled. “Only the kids at school?”

“No, like everyone talks about you,” he replied.

“Do you talk about me?” I asked.

He nodded. “Yeah, everyone asks me about you all the time.”

“What do you tell them?”

His hands shot behind his back. “That we're good friends. Everyone told me I can't talk about the other stuff.”

“My Zix helped unlock a bunch of my implant’s functions. He likes to be called Raccoon though,” I said as I did my best to think of Zix as a species rather than Raccoon himself.

“I’ll make a pet tonight. They let me keep the character they made for me on the test server,” he said.

I smiled. He didn't mind being a skeleton, which was pretty cool. “I wish you could come camping with me.”

“Me too, I love camping! My dad and I used to go all the…” he said trailing off.

Unfortunately, I didn't know much about his past other than he used to live in Wyoming and that the people he used to live with called us Techers.

I'd never had a dad so I didn't know how he felt.

I remembered something that had been nagging me. “Why did you act like you didn't recognize your mom when you first saw her?”

“What do you—” He stopped himself. “You mean when you walked me to my sphere the first day?”

I nodded.

“Where I'm from—”

“People don't have implants,” I said.

He grinned. “Right. The doctors told my mom she would never have children. She had me at fifty-three years old.”

“And?” I asked.

“She looked way different when she left,” he said.

Which meant she must be well into her sixties.

I straightened my legs, giving them a good stretch. It felt good. “What do you mean? She had gray hair and stuff like that?”

He nodded.

“That makes sense,” I said. “Jennifer is over a hundred years old and Autumn is turning ninety in a few months.”

Kevin's mouth dropped.

“Yeah, my grandma is close to the same age as Jennifer. It's pretty common to have old parents here. A lot of people don't have kids yet.” I said.

He closed his mouth, recovering. “What about your dad?”

“Don't have a dad,” I replied.

Kevin turned around, bent over, and leaned against something. “Sorry, got on my bed. Did your moms have a sperm donor or something like that?”

“Nope.” I shook my head. “They had Evegen.”

His face twisted. “Gen what?”

I giggled, which was so out of character for me. “Eveogenesis.”

He stared at me for at least four seconds then blinked.

I burst out laughing. The clueless look on his face was too much. Everyone knew what Evegen was.

“What is it?” he pleaded.

“When two girls want—” I had to stifle a laugh. “It pretty much makes two girl’s eggs able to make a baby without needing a guy.”

His eyes went wide. “Does that mean you're a mutant?”

“A wha—” I keeled over and lost it.

Between laughing my ass off I heard him ask, “What's so funny?”

I turned to face him and said, “Yeah, I have the “X” gene and Dr. Xavier recruited me!” and then continued my laughing fit.

Kevin snorted and then lost his shit causing me to start all over again.

It took us a while but we eventually calmed down. Tonight was beginning to remind me of the first time we met.

Kevin spoke first. “This place really is a sci-fi dystopia.”

“Hey, this isn't a dystopia,” I said while sitting up.

He laughed.

“No, I mean it. Sure, there's, like, barely any privacy but there's no crime. Everyone here has food and a place to stay too,” I explained.

His brow furrowed. “You're lucky. There's a lot of people who would give anything to live in a smart city.”

“Autumn is trying to replicate them but it's super hard. There's a lot of quantum tech that is super complicated. There are Solarpunk cities for people who don't like smart ones or can't get into them,” I explained.

He shook his head. “Yeah, but all the cool new stuff is made in smart cities.”

It wasn't a lie. Nearly everything new was made in places like these.

“If the Abandoners were so smart they should have left us with a way to make more,” he said while crossing his arms.

Abandoners? “Who are you talking about?”

“The Kumari. You know the AI that built smart cities?” he said.

Joan Kumar. She'd created the Architects. Were people really calling them Kumari? That seemed informal, and why was that name dangerously close to Kumori? Was it a coincidence?

I shook my head. “But they left us with the Zix…” I paused for a second. “What happened to your mom?”

He seemed to relax and put his hands down. “She had cancer. It had metastasized throughout her whole body. Before she left she looked like she was seventy or eighty. Now she looks like she's in her twenties.”

I could see why people might call the Architects ‘Abandoners’ but they left us with the Zix. The Zix ran off our body's fluids and even worked outside of smart cities. They kept everyone who had one healthy, effectively letting us live forever.

“So the Zix made your mom healthy again and it surprised you?” I asked.

He glanced at his hands and his head bobbed. “They taught us that having a Zix and implants was… blasphemy.”

“How could being healthy be anything but good?” I asked though I meant it as a statement.

A pounding set of footsteps steadily approached me from behind and I turned. A kid who looked barely fourteen stopped in front of me. “Azerail come quick!”

I stood and brushed off my clothes which had acquired virtual dirt on them.

The kid's name was Liam Foster. He darted back the way he had come and I followed.

We ran and approached a lone blurred figure. Suddenly the person unblurred. I stopped in my tracks.

It was Darryl.

Liam blew right past him.

A smile slowly spread across his face. “Hey, Az.”

“Darryl!” I screeched and ran in for a hug.

We embraced. Normally, we saw each other every day at school but it felt as if it were ages.

He was a little taller than me, with short brown hair, hazel eyes, and a slim jawline. He wasn't very masculine but I didn't care.

“Who's that?” Kevin asked.

Shit. I'd forgotten he was still on the call. “My best friend Darryl.”

Darryl noticed the floating image of Kevin and waved. “Hey.”

Liam came running back. “C’mon!”

“Wanna see what he's all excited about?” I asked Darryl.

He shrugged then nodded and we were all racing toward an empty field where Liam stopped.

“Okay jump into the game!” Liam said then turned into a blur.

Darryl and I shared a look and smile. It had been ages since we'd played together.

We both used our sliders together and his Elven character Hephaestus appeared in front of me.

He pulled back his black cloak’s hood and we both turned to Liam.

It turned out Liam was actually Morgue’n, which made his name make a lot more sense. Only a kid could make names that bad.

He'd led us into a swampy knee-high lake.

Three meters away a hand thrust itself from the water causing a small splash.

What the hell?

“Wait for it…” Morgue said.

A dozen more hands did the same thing spread throughout the small lake.

I gasped.

Hephaestus backed up a step.

It caused me to smile. Then I had an idea. I turned on my aura vision and the whole swamp lit up like a Christmas tree.

Then I turned to Hephaestus and he glowed a blood-red color.

“What the fuck, Darryl?” I screeched, breaking character.

***