Kodiak stood motionless, his eyes fixed on me. I could see his mind working, trying to figure out whether I was telling the truth or not. Thunder clapped overhead, and I felt the first drops of rain start to fall from the sky. It rarely rained in Carrethen, but it seemed as though here, in the Dark World, nature had been amped up into overdrive.

“You killed him?” Kodiak finally asked, his voice filled with skepticism.

“Yes!” I snapped, getting to my feet. “I know, I know. A girl killed The Ripper? Impossible right? I must be lying—”

“That’s not what I’m saying at all!” Kodiak replied defensively. “There’s plenty of good gamer-girls out there. I’m friends with a few, okay? I just—I don’t understand how that could be. If you killed The Ripper…how are we here?”

“Because this is not Carrethen,” I replied. “Not really.”

“Then what is it?” Kodiak asked.

“A backup. Created by Wintermute, an artificial intelligence program from the original game engine.”

“Wintermute?” Kodiak replied. “Like…from Neuromancer?”

I nodded, impressed. “That’s right. You a sci-fi fan too?”

“I mean, I’m a gamer, right?”

A small smile crept across my lips, but I was still too amped up to let my guard down, and I needed answers.

“All right,” I said, trying to get my thoughts together. “So, you call this place The Dark World?”

“That’s right,” he nodded. “And you can see why.”

He gestured to the sky and the world around us. It was like a distorted mirror had been held up to the world of Carrethen, and everything I was looking at was a shattered reflection of what had been.

“It must have corrupted somehow when Wintermute backed it up,” I thought. Then, an idea sprang into my mind and I leapt to my feet. “Wintermute?!” I called out. Surely he—was that the best way to refer to an A.I.?—surely he would have left a method of communication between us.

I looked at the sky and screamed. “Wintermute!?”

Kodiak looked up with me, but no response came. A streak of lightning cut through the clouds above us, splitting into fingers like the roots of a tree, cascading out for a few seconds before bursting out of existence with a clap of thunder. I felt Kodiak looking at me.

“Nothing?” He asked. I shook my head slowly.

“Nothing.”

“Explain to me how all this works,” he told me. “Because I’m lost.”

“I killed The Ripper,” I told him, thinking back to that fateful day up North. Jack was by my side then. I knew he was here, somewhere, trapped in the Dark World, but my heart still ached when I pictured his lifeless body back there, lying in the snow. “I was given admin powers and freed everyone that was still stuck in the world before I went home. I recovered and all that, and then Wintermute contacted me on my computer.”

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“An artificial intelligence,” Kodiak remarked, shaking his head in disbelief.

“I was as surprised as you,I replied. “He—it? Told me that he’d backed up Call of Carrethen at a certain point and started transferring players there when they died. But he had no way of returning them to the real world. He needed me for some reason.”

“Why?”

“He didn’t explain how,” I admitted. “He rooted my Wellspring device and I dived back in. I spawned up there by the cliff where you found me, got jumped and just ran for it.”

“Wow,” Kodiak replied, taking a seat on a tree stump in front of me. I could see him mulling over what I’d just told him.

“How long have you been here, Kodiak?” I asked him, inspecting him.

Kodiak—level 80.

“A few weeks,” he replied with a chuckle. “Got squashed by a Stone Golem.”

“Up by the Iron Mountains?” I asked him. He looked up and nodded.

“Yeah, how’d you guess that?”

“You were with Bleed,” I said, my eyes narrowing, remembering the horde that had chased us when we were on our way to the Crimson Catacombs.

“Not by choice,” he replied quickly, his voice stony and cold. I could see the anger there, like I’d touched on an old wound. “You remember their motto, don’t you?”

“Join or die,” I muttered.

“Join or die,” he repeated angrily. “They came into Cragrock with at least fifty men. I was with a small guild back then. We didn’t have a chance. One of us tried to fight and…”

“I understand,” I told him. “Human nature can be a terrible thing. I guess The Ripper showed us that.”

“That it can,” Kodiak nodded. “But then again, here you are. You came back to help your friends. That’s admirable.”

“Thank you,” I replied. If this was real life, I would have been blushing.

“Also a little bit stupid,” he chuckled. “But we’ll ignore that for now.”

I smiled and looked around us to see if I could pick out any landmarks I could use to figure out where we were. But there was nothing.

“So, where are we?” I asked. A single Bindstone floated between us, but I saw no buildings or NPCs like there normally would be around a stone in the middle of nowhere. “And where are the NPCs? This stone’s just…by itself?”

“Yeah, NPCs in the Dark World are a little wonky, to say the least,” Kodiak replied.

“Wonky?”

“Sometimes, they’re just not where they’re supposed to be. Other times, they’re there but they’re not responsive. And on rare occasions, they’re hostile.”

“Hostile NPCs!?” I couldn’t believe it. NPCs in Call of Carrethen were vulnerable to attack of course, and would fight back if provoked, but were never allowed to openly attack players. Another bug in Wintermute’s backup world.

“Yup,” Kodiak nodded. “They’re also not respawning when you kill them.”

“So, this place?” I asked him, looking around. Aside from the Bindstone, there was really nothing of note, and I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to be bound out here in the middle of nowhere.

“Back in the original Carrethen, there was a traveling merchant here with a tent,” he explained. “Someone either killed him, or he ran off, or just didn’t spawn at all.”

“Are we North of Stoneburg somewhere?”

“Northwest,” he nodded.

“We should probably head there now,” I said. “I have absolutely no gear on me.”

“I don’t know about that,” Kodiak replied hesitantly. “The last time I was there; it was a ghost town.”

“Any NPCs?”

Kodiak shook his head. “I think there was one mage selling scrolls and low level wands, but that was about it.”

“Damn it!” Kodiak had pulled me out of the frying pan, but we were still dangerously close to the fire. Without any gear, I was a sitting duck. “Well, we have to try something. Let’s go.”

“All right, boss,” Kodiak said with a grin. “Don’t worry, m’lady. I’ll protect you!”

“Okay, stop that before I throw up.”