I woke up abruptly as light streamed across my bed.

I’d fallen asleep with my clothes on. Even my shoes were still tied. The covers under my head shifted aside as I groaned and rubbed the sleep from my eyes.

This late in the morning, the light flooded through the pair of windows near the ceiling, cascading across the walls and dressers tucked to the side. An alarm clock ticked silently on one of the wooden frames.

A long moment passed as I stared bleary-eyed at the posters and advertisements hanging at every angle. There, the largest image taped on the back of the door. I froze before walking over to Kestrel’s towering form, sword held aloft. I imagined the beasts facing his wrath: a neverending tide of red eyes and gnashing teeth.

With a steady hand - agonizingly slow - I tore my idol from the door, crumbled him up, and tossed him to the trash.

A clean miss was my reward.

Why?!

I sat down abruptly, staring at the broken poster. It still ran rampant through my head. The words Boz had spoken hours prior, and my longstanding hope just as easily dashed away.

Why would Millennium Games do such a thing?

Objectively, it made no sense. Profits were as high as they’d ever been, and Battlebond’s playerbase was only increasing each passing week. Four and a half years had passed since the game was first introduced, long years which had seen the market saturated with competitors eager to cash in on Millennium’s success. All of them had fallen short.

I glanced at my clock. 11:52 am. That left only a few minutes before the next announcement. Maybe now I would get some concrete information, even if only to confirm Boz’s statement.

The now bare door creaked as I swung it open, making my way down a long flight of stairs. Lyam and I had separate rooms along the second story, while dad took up most of the first. Working from home had been a long standing affair for him, and it was often I’d catch my father perusing the news during a quick lunch break.

I heard the fridge close shut before I’d descended the last step. Most weekends were a casual thing for either of us. Sleep in late. Maybe relax to a good book or movie. I hardly saw my older brother until the sun was well on its way down. Lyam spent his days at work or amongst friends, though that too was coming to a close. The next cycle of players were due in a week.

I stopped before a marble countertop that spanned the length of the kitchen, sitting down beside my father.

He was not what you would call a handsome man. Bulging belly, wisps of grey streaking through a nearly bald pate, his big eyes looked inflated behind a pair of glasses. As I pulled in my chair he looked surprised to see me. That’s just the way my dad always looked: regularly astonished. That, and a little overcome.

“Good afternoon, champ,” he said.

“Hey, dad.” I looked at the computer screen a foot to his right. A quick commercial break before the drop of information. He glanced over at me, setting his glasses down. “Lyam told me, before he went out.”

“Mhm.”

“You want to talk about it? My day is wide open.”

I shook my head. “It’s okay dad. Thanks.”

“Alright, if you’re sure.” He placed a consoling hand on my shoulder before getting up. “I’ll be in my study if you need anything.” I’d always appreciated my father’s willingness to step back, to allow Lyam or I to come to terms with our own problems. He worried about our wellbeing, and could never turn down a chance to offer some assistance. Even if it was just a few kind words.

The commercial took its sweet time before finally coming to a close. In its place one of Millennium’s representatives appeared, sporting almost the same attire as Boz.

“Good afternoon everyone. I’m sure by now all of you have heard about the recent events surrounding Battlebond’s closure to the public. We here at Millennium deliberated long and hard about whether this was the right course of action. Last night, we came to a decision, to no longer accept players into the game.” The man’s baritone voice seemed to cut through the computer’s speakers.

“This begs the question, why? Well, that’s something which I can answer here and now.” He paused a moment, and I could see his eyes move down across my screen. “There have been...reports, of players turning off the safeguards that are present for everyone inside the game. This situation quickly escalated to malicious acts of violence. To be clear, the individuals involved have been subsequently removed from Battlebond, but we are still unable to determine just how this development began.

As a result, new character creation after next week has been indefinitely put on hold until we can be sure that all of our players, both their avatars and linked bodies on Earth, are safe and secure.”

I listened mutely as the man continued to drone on about safety concerns. Well, there’s your answer Kage. Not that it was what I’d suspected. No, far from it. Battlebond’s safeguards had been rock solid since the game first launched, with clear rules regarding player activities. The fact that these protections had been bypassed was more than a little unsettling.

I shut down the laptop before walking back upstairs, my backpack still next to my bed where I’d flung it the night before. Stewing in anger here was going to get me nowhere. I was almost back down at the front door before my dad called out. “You heading out to the library?” He was leaning against the wall leading into his office, arms folded across his ample chest.

“For a few hours, yeah. Got some last-minute studying I need to finish up.” I didn’t meet my father’s eyes as I said the words.

“Lyam said he’d be back home early tonight. I’ve already prepped up a stew to have together for dinner,” he said.

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“Sure dad, that sounds delicious. Have a good day at work.” I locked the door shut behind me and started my walk toward the Kirkland Public Library, stopping short of the front entrance. I’d arrived at off-peak hours, and passed only a handful of other students and adults, each sliding into parking spots created just wide enough to fit their convertibles and sleek sedans.

Nothing traditional, of course. My brother’s pride and joy was something of an oddity, its deep ocean-blue hood and tinted windows a rare sight, especially amongst Kirklands sparse population. It was also about to be sold more than likely, handed off to some eager collector on the east coast, only to collect dust under an overhanging roof. Lyam had offered me the keys, but I’d turned him down. Driving a stickshift wasn’t something I was comfortable with.

I made a hard right, walking past the library and its surrounding shops and restaurants. Each building I passed was less and less crowded, and by the end of the short jaunt I hardly saw a single person along the paved stretch of road. One of the benefits of living in such a small town, you never had to go far to find a little peace and quiet.

The next turn took me to The Gap, an arcade almost as old as my brother’s car. It was small, big enough for a few rows of aging video game consoles and coin-operated machines, leaving just enough room to amble through the aisles.

I didn’t spot anyone behind the front desk, but I found Fritz glued to one of the games, tapping furiously at a set of buttons. So long as you had the cash to keep replaying one of the machines, there wasn’t a limit to how long you could stay.

Fritz looked up, hearing me. His real name was Keanu, but even those who barely knew him called him Fritz. He had black, wavy hair that seemed to have a mind of its own, constantly stretched out in every direction. ‘Keanu’s hair is on the fritz again!’ had stuck a little too well during our school years together, and the nickname had taken hold ever since. He was hunched over, operating the controls with pudgy fingers. They moved rapidly in time to the interactive game.

“I’ve almost got it!” he said. “Chris is going to flip when he finds out I beat Dragon’s Lair.”

“How long have you been at it this time?” I asked, pulling up a chair to sit beside him. “Ten deaths wouldn’t surprise me.”

“More like twenty,” Fritz said, grinning. “The dragon at the end is kicking my butt. Always burns me to a crisp right before I rescue the princess.”

I probably should have gone off to study - like my dad was expecting - but really, what was the point? Most days, Fritz and I were just bored in the back of the class, whispering about anything else but the ongoing lecture. I already knew english and math by heart. Though the final exam was supposed to have quite a few history questions on it, Fritz and I had been picking my brothers brain for over five years. We were overqualified, if anything. So why did I need to learn how to solve another equation or analyze a popular book?

Moreover, since I spent so much time away from textbooks, I had a lot of downtime, enough that Fritz often tagged along with me to the next source of entertainment. I’d heard about The Gap from one of my brother’s friends. Any chance now found us wiling away hours inside.

I settled down and watched Fritz dodge around the dragon’s fire. He was practiced and efficient in his movements as he hit the keys mostly from muscle memory.

“So,” he said, head bowed, eyes fixed on the screen, “I bet Lyam is over the moon right about now.”

“You’d be surprised. He offered to hand over his slot to me.”

“What! The lucky bastard wins the lottery and he almost threw it all away?”

“We were at the drawing last night. When my name didn’t get called he wanted me to have it.”

“Guessing you told him that would never work,” Fritz said.

“First thing out of my mouth.”

Fritz chuckled. “Hey, at least you won’t be stuck in Kirkland alone. I know this ‘metropolis’, he said, waving one arm around the store, “can’t compare to Battlebond, but we might as well live a little, right? Just like Dirk the Daring here.”

I nodded silently, watching Fritz as he moved Dirk left and right, barely pressing the button prompts in time to dance around the piles of gold or avoid the dragon’s fire. This was farther than I’d ever seen him get. Usually it was the roaring rapids in the beginning that did him in, or the numerous red and white snakes squeezing tight around Dirk’s chest. I hated them the most.

Despite all the game’s hazards, I loved the way it played like an interactive movie. Each scene progressed rapidly, giving you just enough time to tap the right key before some new trap sprung up. Dirk, the game’s protagonist, winded his way through a sorcerer’s expansive tower, culminating in a showdown between the dragon Singe who guarded a princess. Unlike Battlebond, in the arcade game there were no continues. Once you ran out of lives you had to start from the beginning. Any convenient respawn point was pointedly absent.

“Yes!” Fritz shouted, “Not so tough now, are you Singe?” He whooped, pounding a fist against the console. “And Dirk saves the damsel in distress! Just in time too; my hands are cramping something fierce.”

“Easy on the game there, boy. Bad enough I had to listen to you yell yourself hoarse the whole morning.” A door creaked shut behind us. I turned, meeting the man’s scowl. “He just beat Dragon’s Lair,” I said, “on the second day!”

“He has more quarters than he knows what to do with,” Amos said, the scowl turning into a small smile. “You’re going to clean me out before long at this rate. Prizes are in short supply.”

Amos was The Gap’s owner, and he was everything my father wasn’t - tall, grizzled, powerfully built. Fritz and I often wondered why a man whose arms were as big as our thighs decided to open up shop here, instead of becoming an ironworker or prestigious gym instructor.

“The offer still stands you know,” Amos said.

“Wait, you were serious about that?” Fritz responded.

“Course I was. Wouldn’t be a smart move to turn away the two best-paying customers in the city.”

“And we’d get paid? To work here?,” I said, looking around the arcade. Working under Amos’s wing, while no Battlebond, was one strong incentive.

“I can’t promise you both minimum wage, but you’d have the run of the place. No extra trips to the ATM for a sack of quarters.” Amos paused, scratching at his head. “Would want some basic chores done, cleaning and stocking and the like. Start you out small and go from there.”

I grinned. I loved The Gap, and Amos had always been kind to us. Considering that journeying together with my brother - inside a game that put all of these coin-ops to shame - was quite possibly off the table, it made sense to accept the offer. I tried to think about any negatives to the job, but that list came up short.

“Look, no need to jump the gun right now. Sleep on it, let me know in a day or two,” Amos said. He reached under the front desk, pulling out a dusty cardboard box. I tried imagining what was inside it. A tool, to fix one of the consoles? A spare lock or key?

The last thing I expected was a matte black virtual reality headset.

“While I still got you here, how about something a little more challenging?” Another headset followed the second onto the table, this one sporting a silver finish. “Couldn’t help but overhear you gush about that game everyone’s so crazed over.”

“What, Battlebond?” Fritz said. “As in, the most popular obsession the world’s seen in years?”

“Sure, whatever you say kid.” Amos walked out from behind the desk, handing us each one of the headsets.

“You thought Dragon’s Lair was hard?” Amos said, a sly grin on his face. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”