Rich came back to himself in Mister Tassle’s kitchen.

His teacher was half-out of his chair, bracing himself against the table, mouth open in surprise.

Next to him sat the bald agent from the jail, and he was smiling, and that was a shock.

And then there was a noise like the casserole hitting the floor, and Rich whipped around just in time to see his father, fall. The big man collapsed face first onto the tiles, slumping down like he’d fainted.

There was red on the white, white wall of the kitchen behind him, and for a second Rich stared at it uncomprehending.

Then a low cracking noise came from outside, echoing for what seemed like seconds.

“Sure, you have your Second Amendment rights,” the bald agent said, smugly. “We left those in there to keep you window-lickers happy. You can have all the guns you want. We’ve got snipers who can drill you from miles away, gear to see you through walls, drones to hunt you from above, and a surveillance network that means we don’t even have to sweat at it, but you can keep your guns, sure. Why not? After all, you gave up everything that made them useful against us.” The agent stood, walked over, and kicked something across the floor. It rattled as it bounced off the wall. “Dumbass.”

Rich barely noticed. He was too busy staring at Dad.

Dad wasn’t moving.

“Dad?”

He knew what had happened. In his mind, he knew what had happened, but it wasn’t like the games. It wasn’t like the movies. And for a second his brain was refusing to put it together, refusing to admit he’d just seen Dad get shot.

There wasn’t much blood. There wasn’t much blood. He was still alive, right? Rich found he was moving, kneeling next to his father, and shaking him. “Dad? Dad?”

“Oh God,” Mister Tassle whispered.

“There was nothing you could have done,” the bald agent said. “He was a dead man when that pistol cleared its holster; everything else was just a matter of timing. Come on, let’s go get this over with.” He wasn’t even gloating anymore. His tone was all matter-of-fact. It sounded wrong somehow; it really drummed in the unreality of it all.

Dad looked smaller somehow, like he’d shrunk. Rich touched him. He didn’t move. “Dad? Come on, it’ll be okay.” There was blood on his overalls, but Rich couldn’t tell where it was coming from. “Dad?”

“It’s done. Come on,” the agent said.

Rich felt a hand on his shoulder, looked up to see Mister Tassle staring down at him. And the sorrow in his eyes was too much to look at.

But Rich didn’t cry. He didn’t cry when the agent told them to go outside. He didn’t break down when the two of them got put in the back of a black, windowless van.

“I’m sorry,” Mister Tassle said, a few minutes into the trip. “I’ve said that a lot today, and it’s done no real good, but I am sorry.”

Rich stared at the wall. “He told me once, you know? Dad told me once that real men never say they’re sorry. That they’re sometimes mistaken but never wrong.”

“Do you believe that?” Mister Tassle asked.

“No. Everyone’s wrong sometimes.” Rich shook his head. “He hated me. He told me how disappointed he was, all the time. Said I was a stone around his neck or stuff like that.”

“He tried to save you,” Mister Tassle said. “That doesn’t seem like somebody who thought you were a stone.”

“No. it doesn’t.” He stared at the wall. “Was I sleeping? Did I wake up just before they shot him?”

“Ah... no,” said Mister Tassle. “What do you mean?”

“I was playing a game when you messaged me and asked me to help talk him down. I came back to meatspace, and everything happened so fast—” His voice was rising, and he swallowed. He’d cried enough today. Rich put his mind to other thoughts, steered it away from his father unmoving on the floor.

Mister Tassle stared at him. “You realize that we’re most certainly being monitored, yes? That everything’s being recorded... more so than usual, I mean?”

“Yeah. I do,” Rich said. “Was I sleeping?”

“Rich, I came home early after you were done with the dryer. We talked. I tried to figure out why you’d come here, and you wouldn’t tell me. We talked about your mother, and I hugged you while you cried.”

“I don’t remember any of that,” Rich said. “Why don’t I remember any of that?”

In the back of his mind, an idea teased across his subconscious, a connection that he didn’t want to acknowledge because it was ridiculous. An idea he couldn’t give voice to, not to someone he respected.

But Mister Tassle went on. “I have to admit, you seemed a bit off. The way you were behaving, your body language, your speech patterns... it was very different than the way you usually act. You— forgive me, but I should tell you, you acted with a self-confidence and gravitas most grown men would be hard-pressed to match. Richard, for a few moments there I wondered if someone had found a way to disguise an entirely different person as you and sent them in to... I don’t know, as part of a sting operation or something of the sort.”

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“And I don’t remember any of it,” Rich said. “From the point I logged in to the point I logged out I was...active... but I don’t remember any of it. Just like when they grabbed me and threw me in jail.” Another spark of a thought. “But they never said they grabbed me. I just logged back out, and I was in jail. I assumed they grabbed me.”

When I log out, my character keeps going on without me.

When I log in... what if...

His mind shied away from the thought, but he had a focus on it now. He was almost there, almost to a connection...

Incoming Message >> Midian

I’ve got answers. I don’t know if they’re the ones you’re looking for, though.

Rich stared at the message, numb. What did it matter? What did anything matter anymore? He was caught. They’d just shot his father in front of him. He was going to the camps or worse.

He closed his eyes. No, there was no point in responding.

And yet...

And yet, he found he wanted to know. Everything else had crumbled to dust and dirt, but the game? The game had been going great.

Maybe he could send this information on to LivingDeadGrrl if it was useful. Although he was pretty sure that if he tried to send something out now he’d be shut down in short order. It was also a certainty that anything he replied to was being watched right now.

But really, what did he have to lose?

To: Midian>>Sure. Tell me what you’ve got.

>>Their crowdfunding thing was to cover the leave from their jobs. They got a big lead, but they knew it’d take a while to follow up on.

>>Okay...

>>It was also to pay for in-game gold to put together supplies for a long trip and to hire an Explorer. They said they were going way the hell out of explored territory.

>>Did they say what they were looking for?

>>Kind of. They’re searching for a lost city.

>>There’s nothing like that around where I am, Rich replied, but something nagged at his mind. Maybe, anyway, he continued. There’s a lot of snow. I guess there could be something under the ice.

>>Evidently this was a city ruled by dark powers and full of forbidden lore. Like stupid full of libraries and temples and things. They think the answer’s there.

>>Well, that explains why they’re tearing up the vaults. But not why they’re griefing the... he remembered then. Remembered the throat singing around the fire in the village, and how it had told the story of the tribe’s exile. And their leader’s exile, as well. Son of a bitch.

>>Ha! So, the information DOES help somehow?

>>It does. I don’t know how to use it, or when I can do anything with it, but thanks. It helps.

>>What? Why so defeatist?

>>I’m not. It’s a long story and I can’t talk about it here.

>>Beezy Bub stuff?

>>Kind of.

>>All right, well, there’s one more thing you should know. They hired an Explorer, and he backstabbed them. Took some useful loot and ran. They say he planned it from the start, but on his social media he claims they were assholes, and he overheard them talking about how they were going to screw him over.

>>Gosh, people on the net having conflicting stories. That’s never happened before in the history of ever.

>>Heh. I know, right? But no Explorer means they probably don’t have waystones. I mean, they might have some that go back to their base of operations but none that get them to any temporary camps, like whatever they’d have to build for the trip. So, any teleportation capability they’d have is one-way. You won’t see them again for a long while if they use it.

>>That’s something. I don’t know how to use it, but I’ll keep it in mind. Thanks, Midian.

>>No problem. All right, break’s over. See you online after work, maybe!

>>Yeah, maybe.

Rich leaned back against the wall of the van.

He thought he had it now. The first Icon had built a great city and eventually been chased out of it. Then she’d been captured by a dragon and thrown in the vault. It wasn’t a coincidence that her prison was the only one that had a hole to the outside, she must have blasted her way out or something.

Either way it had cost her her life, and her successors had worn the same mask throughout their rule in the village. But the city was still out there somewhere. Had it changed names? Had it fallen to ruin? Midian had said the griefers had called it a lost city. Ruins seemed likely, a place like that would make a hell of a dungeon.

He tried to message LivingDeadGrrl and got an out-of-network error. No surprise there.

Then the van stopped, and for a fleeting second he thought they were going to come back and beat him for trying a message.

But no. There was nothing for a long time. The minutes crawled by, turned into a half hour. Rich felt his stomach clench, and he looked to Mister Tassle, with questions he didn’t dare ask on his lips.

Mister Tassle read his expression well enough. He shook his head. “It’s out of our hands now,” he told Rich. “Just have to wait and see what comes.”

Somewhere around the forty or fifty minute mark, the door clunked open, and Rich stared at the bald agent... and beyond him.

Stone and brown vegetation and black streaks, all around. Grey dust blew over the remnants of what had once been a block of buildings. The air smelled of smoke, and sun was bright orange overhead, orange and merciless and hot.

This was a burn zone. This was what remained of one of the old suburbs. A few specks of green grew in the heaps of ash and in the cracks among the sun-shattered asphalt, but there were far, far more ropes and sticks of brown jutting from choked soil.

This was a burn zone, and as Rich looked down, he realized that the agent was carrying a bright red plastic jug in one hand.

“Oh God,” Mister Tassle whispered behind him.

“Get out,” the agent told them.

There was no choice. Rich ignored the throbbing pain in his legs and clambered down from the van.

A plume of dust caught his eyes. Without his glasses, it was hard to tell, but he thought there was a vehicle approaching. The agent didn’t stop him or give him any further direction, so he watched it come.

It was a massive truck, he realized as it rolled to a stop. As wide as the van, but three times as long, with multiple wheels. Gold scripture littered the side, stylized biblical verses. A satellite dish turned on top, and when the doors open, vapor puffed out as the air conditioning met the air.

And two figures emerged, both very familiar to Rich. One small, in a flawless gray suit. And one tall, with a black suit that somehow resisted the touch of the ash as it blew past him.

Even from this distance, the bright yellow of their hair and the pearly whites of their sneers were unmistakable.

Joel and Justin Haskeen, the Second.

A snap and a click from behind him and Rich turned his head to see the agent drawing out his silver disk once more and checking it. He gave a nod, then stepped back, setting the jug on the ground.

Rich could just make out a fiery symbol on the side of it. Gasoline, or something like it. He closed his eyes, knowing how this was going to end.

And when he opened them again, he was far from home, and a dragon was staring at him.