Cold wind rushed over their backs as they ran, like icy claws reaching out for them. They were at least partially within the wall now, as flakes of snow and ash rolled alongside them.

“You guys need to go,” Erik told them. He knew he was limiting their speed. Marcus could’ve doubled his pace easily, and as for Sarah, she could’ve left them both behind with no trouble. Reaching Juvenile was no joke.

“Don’t be stupid,” Sarah told him, her raptor head tilting to the side, one yellow eye angled downward to stare at him. “We win or lose together.”

“Oh,” Marcus said, snapping his jaws indignantly. “Where was that attitude before?”

“What, you mean turning down my dream?” she said, her tone dripping with sarcasm.

“We would’ve gone pro together if you’d stuck it out,” Marcus shot back. “Instead of running out the door at the first offer.” Their pace began to slow as each turned a fierce dinosaurian glare on the other.

“Guys—” Erik tried to interject, but Sarah overrode him.

“Then why didn’t you? How come you never signed with a team?”

“Because—” Marcus said, but he stopped, hesitating.

“Guys,” Erik said again, seizing his chance. “If you two really need to do this, then we can do it, but let’s do it any other time than now.” Punctuating his sentence, an especially cold tongue of wind rolled over them, swirling white-gray flakes around where they’d come to a standstill. He began to move and hoped against hope they would follow.

Sarah quickly trotted up to his side, her raptor head held high, almost haughty. A few seconds later, Marcus arrived on his other side. They ran on in tense silence for a while, barely keeping the sky ahead from being swallowed by the death wall looming high over their heads. Though panic was a living thing in his triceratops breast by the time the blue sky began to shade towards night, turning a gentle orange as the sun set.

“So, I don’t want to be a negative nancy or anything here, but if this wall thing is faster than us, then I don’t see what we’re gonna do. Hell, even if it’s only a little slower, we’re not gonna gain much ground at this pace. Are we going to spend the rest of the game running ten steps ahead of it?”

“So what you’re saying is,” Erik said, pausing to gasp for air as he began to tire, “we must go faster?” he finished with a laugh that was more of a wheeze.

“Why is that funny?” Marcus asked, the small bone crests above his Rex's eyes a perfect accent to the irritation in his tone. As Erik thought about it, he realized the Rex face always looked irritated. He wheeze-laughed again.

“Still not getting the joke,” Marcus said, sounding even more irritated.

“We should be fine in a minute. I hope. Maybe,” Erik said. He was falling off the pace now. His leg muscles were burning with the exertion. He could actually see them starting to change color on his health readout. It seemed there was only so far the game would let him push his body before it began to inflict injuries.

“What makes you say so?” Sarah asked, more curious.

“Well,” Erik said, “tell you what. If I’m right, I’ll explain it when we don’t die.” He really did need to conserve his breath for running. He felt like if he tried to talk while keeping up the trotting speed he was at, he would quite literally pass out, fall down, and then die. He ignored the aching, burning sensation of his lungs and his body and committed his entire will to the next trotting step. One foot after the other, he carried on.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The sun had vanished from sight entirely by the time Erik was sure he was correct. The ash-laden gusts receded away behind them until only the occasional out-of-place breeze served to remind them of the death wall. It had stopped, Erik guessed, right as night fell. Right when the sun had dipped out of sight, it had stopped. He’d have to ask Primarch to be sure, assuming the AI would even tell him. Halfway through the thought, he collapsed. Not on purpose; he had actually started to forget how tired he was. Compared to how he felt out in the real world, a little bit of muscle pain and some shortness of breath was nothing. That being said, there was an absolute limit, and he’d reached it. Bell down and legs splayed out, he lay on the ground, his snout pressed into the dirt.

“So how’d you know it was going to stop?” Sarah asked, and Erik couldn’t help but note how unfair it was that she didn’t even sound winded. Marcus at least had the decency to act like running several miles through the jungle wasn’t easy, even if he hadn’t collapsed himself.

“Didn’t,” Erik said laconically when he regained a measure of his breath. “Guessed.”

“Okay,” Sarah said in a tone that promised she was rolling her eyes even though he couldn’t see it with his own firmly shut. “But why did you guess that?”

“Made sense,” he told her. Luckily the speech was internal or else it would’ve been muffled by the ground. He chuckled at the thought, his triceratops mouth huffing, blowing up a small cloud of dust with its own version of tired amusement. “Couldn’t go forever, or the game would be over very quickly.”

“It nearly was over for us,” Marcus said. Erik tipped his head up, eyes opening as he looked around, taking in their surroundings. They’d come to a stop in an open patch of dirt, too small and sheltered to be called a clearing. “Should we keep going?” Marcus asked. “I feel like we need as much distance as possible.”

“No,” Erik said, shaking his head, his crest moving with the motion. He could feel it shifting the air around him, catching it like a fan would. “We need to stay put. We don’t know what hunts at night or how good those senses might be. We go stumbling through the jungle at night, and we might as well ring a dinner bell. We’d be a baby dino buffet.” He was starting to catch his breath, but curiously he still felt tired. He knew the fatigue was simulated. His Trike body needed to sleep, to rest. It was a survival game, and tending to your character’s needs was a staple of the genre. Usually, that meant food and water. It meant those things as well for them, but apparently, it also meant laying around doing nothing. He stood up long enough to find a spot to curl up that wasn’t so close to the middle of the open space.

He didn’t think he could sleep. The VR’s time dilation should make that impossible, but he knew he needed to rest. Unlike the previous night, the moon was out in all her glory, casting a silver sheen across the jungle, and Erik was surprised to find his night vision was actually better than it was for people. After some questions and some testing, he determined that his was nothing compared to Sarah’s and Marcus’s, both of whom seemed to be able to see quite far with the moonlight.

“This game just gets more interesting all the time,” Erik said.

“We should probably be quiet, don’t ya’ think?” Marcus whispered, crouching down. His small claws moved nervously.

“So much for the Tyrant Lizard King,” Erik teased him.

“Hey,” Marcus said, “I’m a grower, not a shower.”

Sarah and Erik both laughed, and despite having made the joke, Marcus admonished them once again to be quiet.

“When did you get so responsible?”

“Since one-third of five million dollars is a damn lot of money,” he shot back.

Erik dragged himself to his feet and together they set about finding somewhere to hunker down for the night. They eventually settled on a stand of brush with a gap in the middle. Unlike the first night, this one was much quieter, with hardly any animal or insect noises. It had a bone-deep unsettling quality, as if there were a massive predator lying in wait in the dark, patiently waiting for some small, hapless animal to make a sound. Erik knew it was the death wall and that the animals in the area had reacted to its approach and moved further away from it, or at least he hoped that was the reason for that eerie stillness.