We ran. If you looked behind us a large portion of the grass would have been trampled.

We'd successfully gotten the second graveyard set up. Lunaveil was able to help lay the Hexed players to rest and she took on the burden of the respawn health depletion.

The mist came before the mausoleum appeared, I suspected it needed to be there for our respawn to work. My Lieutenants were on standby and had positioned themselves for the attack on copper.

Their assault was currently underway and we were rushing to meet them.

You look tired, Spoolie said. Maybe you should pace yourself?

We were in a hurry and I'd taken control of the other player’s characters again so they didn't exhaust themselves. I gave Spoolie a look.

Okay, okay, he said.

Copper wasn't too far away and we'd been running for close to twenty minutes. I wondered briefly what the other players were experiencing, having been kicked out of their character when I took over.

Was the new memory and emotion sharing interesting enough that dealing with the negatives was worth it?

I just wished the pain wasn't there. Intensity was still at normal levels which was relieving. I hoped it wouldn’t heighten again.

It was beginning to get dark by the time the town came into view. The bubble was down. I couldn’t believe we’d been playing all day.

Report, I projected, not bothering to check in on the situation myself.

We stopped. Visibility was limited and only a few houses were viewable.

Energy from their kills had been seeping into us and had suddenly stopped.

Emotions flared from my Lieutenants. They were expressing happiness.

I smiled and reflected their feelings back at them, further enhancing their mood.

They had won without my help. I preened, proud of what they had accomplished.

Then I spread joy to all the Hexed.

***

“I can't believe how fast you guys got that graveyard up!” Morgue’n said.

We had decided to use Copper as a makeshift camp for the night. I didn’t doubt that if I used my AR slider there would be thermobots and food delivery cars just like last time.

I nodded at him. “Raziel killed them and we buried them where they fell instead of being careful about it.”

Morgue’n nodded.

“Kind of cool not streaming,” one of the lower-ranked shamblers said. “It's like we're on one of those old shows where we're incognito.”

The right side of the shambler's face was missing. It wasn't a clean slice either it was as if they were dragged along the ground and it was shredded. Other than that he looked pretty average with random missing chunks of flesh and tattered clothes.

A skeleton pushed him. “Gotta be hard for you, when you just got so many followers.”

My first instinct was to complain about their blatant out-of-character banter but I recognized the streamer.

“You are…?” I trailed off trying to remember his name.

He turned to me, “I'm Shay Poppy!”

“Ah, you're the one who—”

“Recorded the first VRV of your memory sharing!” Shay said.

A cheer erupted from a crowd of skeletons too far away to hear our conversation. They were using one of the more popular emotes where their jaws chattered and heads spun in a circle.

“Aww, I can't wait till I can actually play,” Spoolie said.

When can you play? I asked.

His little eyes drooped. “Not for a couple of days at least.”

At least you still get to go to school right? I asked.

Shay stared at me as if he were expecting something.

“What?” I asked.

“I just—”

“Don't bother, she's a role-player kid. She's going to ignore your out-of-game chatter,” Morgue’n interrupted.

“Nope gotta do it all at home,” Spoolie said. “My schoolwork that is.”

I can probably come over once everything calms down here, I said.

A small toot came from his, whatever he used to do it. “I don’t think my mom will let me have anyone over.”

Raccoon, can I teleport right into his sphere? I thought.

Spoolie turned to me. “Is that your, “I’m going to do something I shouldn’t” face?”

Shay gave up on me responding to his out-of-game antics and started talking to his skeletal friend again.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

Raccoon had taken off as soon as we took Steel. He said he wanted to join Molly and try fighting at Copper with her.

You should be able to go right into his room, Raccoon said. Anywhere anyone has Spec's actually, at least locally.

There were specific apps that connected us globally, like the Brain Trust, InfoBases, or the Had-E-Verse apps. Most VRVs were shared through one of those. You could gaze through someone's eyes from afar but most people didn't bother unless there was some sort of event happening.

I'm sure there were a ton of VRVs made over the last few days of our interactions. We'd all agreed that VRVs were okay so long as they didn’t divulge any of our battle plans.

The Zix tended to catch any sort of obsessions or infatuations people might have and squash them through therapy. Which was one of the many reasons there were “lifers” who never left the smart cities.

I can come over and don't have to use the front door, I responded to Spoolie.

Raccoon trotted into view from behind a building and I waved at him. He saw me and headed my way.

After everything was looted, we'd set up in the biggest building in town. Tomorrow we had big plans and I couldn't wait to see how the Enlightened reacted.

When Raccoon arrived he said, “We have to talk about—” he stopped and glanced at Spoolie. About the hairpin.

Want to do it now? I asked.

He vigorously nodded.

Do I need to log out? I asked.

As he climbed into my lap he said, Nope.

“I'm going to go AFK for a bit,” I announced. “If you need me just tap my shoulder.”

A shambler I didn't know in the crowd gave me a thumbs up. He only had half a thumb which made me snort and shake my head.

The world shifted around me and we were back in the home server—

Through my right eye, I could see DO and the Hexed gathered near Inethiel. On the left, I could see the home server. Raccoon, like me, was in both.

“This is what I like to call a split,” Raccoon said. “I do this so I can be in multiple places at once.”

My stomach churned so I closed my right eye, allowing me to focus on Raccoon. “This is not working.”

“Well if you want I can—”

I closed my eyes and focused on the two locations. I'd dealt with being in multiple places at once before this wasn't any different. At least that's what I told myself.

Redoubling my concentration I imagined the spider-like sight I got from dealing with so many points of view with the shamblers. Instead of a single eye, I let the sight from both sets of eyes seep through. My whole body relaxed as a sense of familiarity overcame me. Gone was the unease.

Shutting off Inethiels point of view was easy now. When I opened my eyes a slack-jawed Raccoon sat in front of me.

“What?” I asked.

He closed his mouth. “I didn't know humans could do that.”

“Do what—”

“You just manipulated code in real time without actually programming,” he interrupted. “There is nothing in my dataset about humans being able to do that.”

I shrugged. “One eye from each place wasn't enough information for me to unconsciously distinguish the difference between the two POVs. My brain already understood—”

“Yeah, I know, I've just never seen it happen in real-time before,” he said. “It was impressive.”

“Okay…” I trailed off.

He'd brought me into my room. I sat on my bed and took a moment to clear my head.

Raccoon jumped up next to me. “The hairpin.”

“How can I help?” I asked.

He sat and placed a hand on my thigh. “That's the problem, I don't think you can. When I attempted to destroy the thing it came back faster than it deleted.”

“So you brought me here to tell me I can't help?” I asked.

“Also there's a response from it that's similar to the reason I can't connect to the Zix network. It's like a virus that attempts to unravel my code. Which makes me wonder if it was Kumo that blocked off my access to the Zix. Or he could have learned how to do it from the Zix who blocked him off. So many questions.” he said.

I shook my head. “I don't think you needed a meeting for this.”

He looked up at me, his little eyebrows dropping. “Ferret won't talk to me anymore.”

“What? Why won't she—” My mom's words of warning echoed in my mind. She'd said the Zix were only wild till they were trained. “When did they start her training?”

Raccoon leaned against my stomach. “Two days ago.”

“Do you think she will talk to you again after you get trained?” I asked.

He shrugged, raising his little palms upward.

Then I got an idea. “Wanna do something fun?”

“Oh, that's pure evil! They're gonna hate you!” he said.

“Are Jasper and Fen Li at their homes?” I asked.

Raccoon jumped to his feet. “Better, they're both at Fen Li’s house!”

“This is gonna be perfect!” I yelled. I'd been meaning to pay them a visit.

***

Fen Li Huang and her friend Jasper Evans sat at a table across from each other. They were in building one hundred and twenty-four. Her dorm.

“There were even zombies attacking the West gate!” Jasper said. “I had to pull people from the East side to defend—”

Fen Li’s hands dropped slamming on the table. “Can we stop talking about that stupid game for a few minutes and eat?”

A little red light appeared in her interface. That was just what she needed, her mom looking in on her.

This was Fen Li’s last year of school in Ambition. Education never really ended for a lot of people; they just drifted from specialty to specialty until they found something that fit. Some people never found an area they belonged to. She thought Narrative Design was going to be her thing but—

The floor shook and the lights flickered.

“Whoa, did you feel that?” Jasper asked.

Fen Li had placed her palms on the table for stabilization and didn't even realize she had done it. “Earthquake?” The light in her interface changed to orange then to yellow and back to red again.

“What the hell? Do you see—”

A loud banging came from her front door.

Holy shit! she thought her heart pounding in her ears.

Suddenly the whole building shook again. Everything in her home rattled.

The building groaned and began to tilt. Her drink slid across the table and fell shattering on the floor.

Everything stopped then. “Jasper?”

Jasper held his plate and drink and flinched when the light flickered again.

Another bang came from the door as it shattered inward. Splinters of metal went everywhere. One piece flew through the air and buried itself deep into the wall next to them.

Fen Li and Jasper's eyes met.

A girlie giggle floated around the room as a slack-jawed zombie entered her room. It groaned and faced them.

Fen Li was paralyzed, heart practically bearing out of her chest.

The lights went out and Fen Li screamed. When they came back on, the room had straightened, her door was back intact, the zombie was gone, and her broken glass was back on the table unmarred.

Jasper and Fen Li both huffing from fear swallowed in unison.

Then a Chinese girl with her hair covering her face appeared in the chair between them.

Jasper fell to the ground and Fen Li threw a chopstick at her.

The girl swept her hair behind her ear, met Fen Li’s eyes, and smiled. The chopstick stuck in her chest a little dribble of blood trailed down her skin.

It was Azerail.

“So you two wanted to talk?” she asked.

Fucking bitch, Fen Li thought.

***