[Player Log Start!]

[Log Holder: Michael Kapok]

[Level: 2]

The crab Michael had caught was bleeding like crazy, getting all over his clothes as he flew over the sandy islets. He couldn’t wait until he could put this down, because this was one of the only three outfits he had left, and he couldn’t let it be ruined forever.

He touched down on the island he had cheerfully began thinking of as their island.

But, no, wait a second. Stupid to just think they were in the clear now. They had to keep up constant vigilance in this world, with their pesky bird spies.

[Applying Sorcery…]

[Spell: Proximity Check!]

[No Non-Party Members In a 5-Mile Radius!]

Perfect. Just to be sure, he pulled out the menu to define what counted as an Intelligent Species. Crows, ravens, and all corvid species were included in the list, thankfully, but he could never be too careful. He had taken a lot of pains to get here, after all.

Slipping the exit open, he came inside, trying not to drop the clumps of wires he had gathered from the crab’s lair as he navigated only using his legs.

When he came inside, however, he realized that he was interrupting something big. There was a tension thick in the air. Everyone was on their feet, surrounding Verity. Except Lucky, who looked equally on edge. Their focus seemed to be on Verity, but when he entered, they snapped to look over to him.

“Uh… did I miss something?” He asked, nearly slipping off the ladder and faceplanting on the ground, “Shit, I, uh, hands full. Someone help me?”

“Of course.” Tench agreed, helping him down and taking the crab out of his hand, “Ew, what is this? A crab? Why does it have ten legs?”

“Coconut crab. They’re supposed to have ten limbs.” Ben corrected.

“Did Vera wake up?” He asked, turning to look at her hopefully, where she was still lying, her hair splayed in every direction. But she’d obviously gotten up, with the way her hands were clenching the sides of the covers, and her legs were sliding off the bed, and her mouth was lined with crumbs and water, “Is she okay? Any of that suspected brain damage that Tench was talking about?”

There was a tight pause as everyone exchanged glances. Oh, those were not good glances. Those were ‘dark secrets are being kept here which will be very complicated to explain’ glances. Always the worst kind of looks to be exchanged between your friends.

“Listen, Mike…” Ben coaxed, “Verity woke up, and she said some stuff. Not good stuff.”

“She admitted to being an Armageddon Harbinger.” Lucky cut right to the chase. He might actually like her the best out of all of these duplicitous cowards. He just said duplicitous. Ugh. Wait. The fuck?

“She’s what?” He asked, blanching. It couldn’t be true. No, that meant it definitely was.

As if sensing his warring sensibilities, Ben lifted up the Console, which she had already gotten open before he had walked in. Verity’s profile was displayed, but it looked… different.

Armageddon Harbinger was displayed as the Class, the most glaring difference. And then the Abilities list, which had an extra slot added to it, right at the very top, with the highest level. Deception. It was a shock so striking, he had to take a physical step back.

“This- this is a mistake.” He stammered. Before anyone could attempt to convince him otherwise, he was already pulling up his Computer Affinity. Maybe this was a Deception. Placed on them by a Harbinger trying to turn them against each other. He could easily clear the Console of any changes made to its display, now that he knew what he was looking for.

[Applying Computer Affinity…]

[Action: Tampering Check]

[No Tampering Found!]

He stared at it, watching the display remain stagnant. It was true. Antithetical to everything he knew about Verity, but true.

Jared wouldn’t react to this well. No one would react to this well.

“So, she’s just been doing… what? Helping us in a long-winded scheme to infiltrate our inner circle? I don’t think you’ve noticed, but she was the inner circle. She’s what made the Game possible in the first place. How could she possibly be a Harbinger?”

“We think that it’s because Jared got to her and made her not-evil using his Compulsion Card.” Tench explained, “She passed out before the whole story could get out. Which is awfully convenient for her, but less so for us.”

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“I do not think it is particularly convenient for her, as well.” Lucky added, “But it is likely she was going to fall into the inbuilt programs for destruction if not being Compelled to stay on the straight and narrow.”

“That was her on the straight and narrow?” Tench asked.

“Not the time to be joking about this.” The other three waking people snapped at the same time. It would never be the time to joke about the worst thing this Game had thrown at them yet.

Michael looked at her again, from where she was lying on the bed, lips bared in her sleep to reveal sharply gritted teeth snarling at an unseen enemy. Or maybe them. Maybe she thought of them as enemies now.

“You think… if she wakes up again, she’ll go berserk on us?” He asked, trying to keep an open mind, but it was hard, after all the carefully cultivated paranoia he had built up over the months.

“I do not think so, no.” Lucky shook her head, “Unless our Compulsion card hypothesis is wrong. Which is… unlikely, given all current information.”

Verity shifted in her sleep. Everyone turned to look at her nervously. Michael chewed on his lip, “Just in case… you think we should tie her down?”

“Yeah, I suggested that already.” Ben agreed, her gaze dark as she looked over Verity, “You pick out something from the Inventory to restrain her with. It’ll go easier with you doing it.”

Michael nodded and tapped on the Console, activating Computer Affinity again to pull out the projection of a grid filled with little icons, all denoting essentials like food, water, weapons, books. He pulled out a coil of thick rope, meant for climbing, but usable in this situation as well. If anyone knew how to tie knots with it.

“And, if I am at liberty to ask, where are the others?” Lucky asked, getting to work winding thick rope to one of the cot’s legs. If it had been Michael, he would have started with immobilizing the potentially dangerous Harbinger, but that was just him.

The others. Shit. He hadn’t told them about what disaster he had just flown away from.

“We’re having our own crisis, a little bit.” He admitted, “Found that coconut crab about three hundred miles out? Furthest we’ve gotten so far. And ran into some crows. No, like, a lot of crows. I… I was told to get out. While the others fought them.”

Panic flared in Ben’s eyes, and even Tench looked disturbed. They had effectively been able to dodge any crow surveillance or contact for weeks now. What had changed? What mistake had they made?

“And they- what exactly?” Tench asked, “Don’t suppose they wanted to talk.”

“Yeah… didn’t look like it.”

“And you left them anyway?” Ben asked furiously, “They could die out there, Michael! They could already be dead. You’re the strongest fighter there and you can’t just leave-”

“Ben.” Lucky interrupted her, looking much calmer. But there was a resignation on her face. As if she was simply calm because no one else had the ability to do so, “Even if Michael is able to outstrip the others in terms of raw ability, you know that the others are capable fighters in their own right. Terry with his wall-of-spores attack is terrifying and you know that. Stop catastrophizing.”

Ben took a breath, sharp and shallow. She didn’t seem to take much air in. There was a crazed look in her eye, a rigid cord ready to snap. Maybe one betrayal was enough to put her at the end of her tether. It was a betrayal very close to home, after all.

“What- what do you want to do now?” Michael asked, “Take a breath? Go for a walk? This seems to have shaken you a bit. Maybe you need time to process…?”

He’d like to say that Ben and Verity were close, but the truth was that they all were close to each other. Spending weeks in a city filled with people who weren’t people would bring anyone closer to the one group they knew was real. He wasn’t really qualified to talk about the psychological ramifications of all this, he just knew that it wasn’t good.

Ben seemed to pick up on that, shaking her head, “Great, now the child thinks I’m going crazy.”

“Because you are.” Tench told her mildly, “We’re all going crazy in here. This is not something normal people are equipped to handle. And it’s getting more obvious by the day.”

Level 2 was easy, they said. Just get some hyper-intelligent animals to get along. How hard could it be?

Was this what people called hubris?

Ben stretched out a leg with a yawn, “You know what, maybe I will go for a walk.” She decided, climbing up the ladder, “I’ll try to cook that crab Michael brought back, too, while we wait for the others to come back. No one leave Verity unsupervised.”

“Please don’t scream out your frustration and sorrow into the seemingly endless stars.” Tench called out after her, “I don’t know how well the sound will travel into the sea, and what a squid’s hearing is, but the birds will hear you. And we’ve already got problems with them today.”

Speaking of those problems, there were revelations that Michael hadn’t mentioned to them yet, lost in the shuffle of every bombastic thing that had happened on either side.

Still, before Ben could leave fully, he blurted out, “There might be local humans to this Level who are still alive.”

Ben yelped, losing her grip on the ladder and falling. Lucky was quick to react, her metal arms rushing forward to snatch her out of the air before she hit the ground. Ben barely even spared her a simpering look of gratitude before she was springing back up.

“I’m sorry, what?” Oh, that was not a happy voice, “You didn’t think to tell us this before?”

“My friend turning out to be one of the bad guys was higher on my list of priorities, so it kind of slipped my mind!” He replied, yelling almost but it was because of the stress, okay? This was an unbelievable amount of stress he was under.

Tench sighed, “Could you please just tell us what you know about these humans that somehow escaped an Extinction-Level event?”

“Absolutely nothing.” Michael replied, “I just know they exist. They seek asylum from the corvids sometimes. And they’re considered an endangered species now. The crows the rest of us are fighting right now told us all this.”

“Which means that it could be flawed…” Ben muttered, rubbing her chin.

Lucky growled, and even she was quickly losing her grip, “Can we not do this right now?” She asked, “Can we stop looking for lies and deceit in every direction and just assume that someone is speaking the truth?”

“Well, Luck, usually they aren’t.” Ben told her gently.

“And if I lived by that motto, I would have died opposing you.” She returned bitterly. Ben sucked in a sharp breath, but the damage was done. She had said her piece once and was now making sure that they all understood it, “Michael treated me with respect and dignity, and I returned the gesture. Now, we must make sure that our so-called antagonists are given that same benefit of the doubt. They deserve it.”

[Player Log End!]