Chapter 14: The Most Dangerous Enemy

“So,” Lena asked, “which of your asshole relatives made you terrified of statheads?”

“I don’t think you’ve met him,” I said. “Hey! I’m not terrified, I’m justifiably concerned. And some of my relatives aren’t assholes.”

“I don’t think I’ve met those,” she said.

I chuckled.

“Think he’s NugsFan15?” she asked.

“Oh, God, don’t even.” I shuddered. “No, there’s no way. Dane doesn’t like basketball that much, and when he watches it, he roots for the Warriors. I remember him mocking how shit the Nuggets were when I was a kid.”

Lena’s head tilted. “But you said they’re good now?”

“You think my cousin would change allegiance to whatever team was on top of the standings? Like some kind of sociopath?” I felt a chill down my back.

Lena shrugged.

“You’re just winding me up,” I said.

She offered an angelic smile. Devils, recall, are supposed to be fallen angels.

I didn’t believe Dane would get involved with Third Eye, not for a second, no way. Especially not its Kickstarter, and only backers seemed to have gotten into the beta. Even I’d known that was a bad bet when I made it.

So why did I find myself comparing NugsFan15’s typing style to what I remembered of Dane’s?

Was I desperate enough to pop into the family Discord to check what handle he used now?

Not until I’d exhausted all other alternatives.

I’d left the Third Eye wiki up on my phone. I refreshed the Materials page real quick and noted that dozens of new entries had been filled in. Lots of people getting Wood. I thought the joke to myself, and I thought I’d already gotten sick of it. Some Stone, less Iron and Plastic, no reported Glass yet so Lena had an edge there. Still only the one Fire. Was it even real?

Fire later. First I tabbed over to the wiki’s Media page.

People had started posting their screenshots. Holy shit. I hadn’t looked at people’s Third Eye avatars for a little while. Lena’s was one thing, but she’d paid through the nose for it and I’d already found her cute. This was like a photoshoot from a fashion show where all the models were randos off the streets, but the designers were so elite it didn’t matter.

ShakeProtocol had reposted his in-game selfie. Completely unfair. At least one of the models looked like a model. He should have to use his picture from outside Third Eye so he only slightly outshone the rest of us at better than our best.

I got my first look at Salamancer, who was a guy who needed more help but of course got it. The deep shadows of his broad-brimmed red hat didn’t so much erase the pockmarks teenage acne had left on his dark skin as turn them into intriguing scars. He looked like a mercenary wizard. Bad. Ass. Also, another person who got the hat I hadn’t.

I scrolled past another dozen images, since they were in reverse chronological order. Men and women, most around the same age as Lena and I, made up for a killer fantasy blockbuster.

NugsFan15’s was at the very bottom.

Definitely not my cousin Dane.

“Now there,” I breathed, “is somebody doesn’t need any help.” But got it anyway.

Lena furrowed her brow and scrolled on her own phone. “Oh. Daaamn.”

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A creamy Klein bottle of fabric wound around NugsFan15’s body, almost shockingly bright against her skin. The outfit didn’t seem like it made sense, physically. Where would the seams be? Could a single piece of cloth simultaneously encircle her long neck, clasped in gold, and split to drape over her breasts in a way that showed nothing and told everything, and form into two loose pantlegs that gathered at a pair of golden anklets? A fourth golden band lifted an incredible explosion of hair over her head. Something between glasses and a monocle curled over her elegant nose, one chain winding over her ear.

I focused on details because looking at the totality of her, really looking, just at this screenshot, much less what it would be like to see her in motion, hurt. If I touched the screen, her cheekbones would cut my thumb. She didn’t wear an imperious expression like Lena had put on; in fact, if I allowed myself to pay attention, her eyes crinkled with what could have been nerves and her smile was a delighted grin.

Nonetheless, my stomach churned at the idea I’d let myself gaze on her face.

Fan? Fuck.

She could be a player’s wife.

If a player married an empress.

Of heaven.

No wonder she’d been the first person to capture Fire. It wouldn’t dare burn her.

“I was right all along,” Lena said. “Check out those guns. This chick’s a jock for sure.”

It was true. The woman’s bare arms looked carved from obsidian, sharp, toned. She looked tall and athletic enough to play for a WNBA team herself, if Denver had had one, and if the league could afford her.

“How much you think she paid to look like this?” Lena asked.

“Five hundred. Minimum.” I felt certain I was, for the first time since Lena, looking at someone who’d spent at least that much (“Canadian!” cried the Lena in my mind) to back Third Eye at a tier that granted Custom Personifications.

I tried to picture what NugsFan15 would look like outside of the app. What would she wear? Slacks? Skirts? A blouse or a tee or a team jersey? Was that piece of jewelry over her nose how Third Eye interpreted glasses when they weren’t smart glasses?

I couldn’t see it. With most of the players, even someone like ShakeProtocol, who looked like he could be a star’s stunt double outside Third Eye, I could at least imagine their normal selves. Could I have done that with Lena if I didn’t know her personally? Not a chance. Same with this woman.

It snapped me back to the moment.

“You still think she’ll be an easy out?” I asked.

“For me? Obvs.” Lena sighed. Then she said and did two things I didn’t understand, especially in combination. Her eyes half-closed, she smiled. And she said, “Nah, there’s no way we can beat her.”

“Huh?” I risked a glance at the screenshot again, then, to clear my head – honest – I switched to my phone camera and looked at Lena’s Third Eye avatar. Her flames curled up to frame her little smile. “Hey, I didn’t say that. She’s... really something... as a stathead, I mean! But nobody’s perfect.”

Even if they looked it.

“You and me together?” I clasped Lena’s shoulder. Warm as she felt, I didn’t get burned. A good reminder. Third Eye didn’t reveal the truth, it displayed what somebody wanted me to see. Especially when they paid it a whole lot to show me. “We’ve got this.”

Lena clasped her hand over mine. “I don’t mean we aren’t good enough to beat her, Cam.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“No problem.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“Let’s say we do,” she said. “Beat her, I mean.”

“Yeah, let’s.”

“We pull ahead in – whatever the hell they’re judging people on when they cut out the bottom 1% – and this chick gets bumped out of Third Eye for the rest of the beta.”

I tried to picture it, but like what NugsFan15 would look like outside the app, our victory remained impossible to imagine. I still believed it could happen.

I nodded.

“Congrats,” Lena said. “We just caused the person who made the whole wiki, and almost certainly paid for the server to host it, to abandon the game.”

I stared. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

If it came to that? Her or us, on the cusp of falling out of the beta? We’d have to throw the game, wouldn’t we? Even Lena, who respected winning more than anyone I’d ever met, sports nuts included, understood that. We’d both lived through the meltdowns when games only had fan wikis and the admins got into internet drama.

Beating this opponent wouldn’t be like beating another team.

It would be like beating our own team so hard their stadium stopped serving beer.

We might win, but every fan would hate us. Ourselves included.

I leaned against the wall of the IHOP, closed my eyes, and sighed for what felt like a long time. Eventually, maybe because the bricks were so cold they shocked me out of getting so worked up about a game, I snapped my eyes open. Dutifully, I entered my resources in the appropriate tabs on the wiki. It had been updated again while I’d stood there in a funk, including with Lena’s instance of Glass.

What else could we do?

I’d known, but hadn’t truly internalized:

Truly, a stathead was the most dangerous enemy.