++++++++++++++

The message from Dom had almost sidetracked Hazel from play that day, but she was so glad it hadn’t.

This is literally the best place ever, Hazel grinned as she checked her inventory. The weapons and skills she had already gained sent chills up her spine. Honestly, it didn’t seem fair, and part of her wanted just to report the Trifecta to the gaming commission. Still, there were so many ways to get equipment that the commission rarely intervened. Free offers, sponsorships, clubs, purchase codes. If she were honest, the assets available in the Trifecta, though very cool, were only on par with or a little above what people got from all their other sources.

In front of her, she noticed a dark spot on the side of a hill, and she moved toward it. Usually, an oddity of that type promised a secret cave or a door that would unleash special hidden caches of goodies. She kicked a couple of Pros out of the way, but they completely left her alone as she got closer to the cave. A cave that did not look like a cave.

Instead, the “cave” looked like a pixelated mess on the face of a hill, as if the Trifecta’s creators had miscoded something. Popping up a prompt, Hazel backed away from the hole and approached it again, watching the code as she neared the entrance and then tried to step inside.

She could not step inside, but the code registered her presence. Almost looked like an antivirus snuffing out enemy code as it repelled her. Approaching from the side, she reached out her weapon, passing it briefly through the pixels. The code registered then rejected again, but in the registry, it popped up an access line for a moment. Setting her prompt to record, she approached the hole again from the side, again lowering her weapon across the threshold and noting the content of the code.

Very interesting, she hummed. Finally, she tried to approach again and enter her avatar at full speed. A moment later, the game had crashed and she found herself staring at a blue computer screen next to Sophie’s bed.

Hazel had played Trip for several years, and never once had it crashed on quality equipment. Panicked, she logged back in. To her relief, she found that her account opened normally and had retained all the equipment she had gained in the Trifecta.

Probably just a glitch, she decided, though she found herself shaking. If that glitch had locked her out of the game in some way, or stripped her status, her entire living could have gone up in smoke. Still, she couldn’t let it go. That code. It was an access code, and it gave access to something she couldn’t get to. She wanted to try one more time.

Of course, she wouldn’t risk herself on the attempt. Instead, she made her way to the pub, fought the spectre, then sat down for a drink. Looking around the room, she picked out a couple of crazy looking avatars and approached each one, asking if they were interested in helping her check out a glitch. Not all gamers would have cared, but plenty lived for excitement, so she felt pretty sure of her success.

Sure enough, the second avatar she approached agreed to follow her.

“Any idea what I’m looking at here?” the stranger, Piroulette, asked.

“Not really. I just know that it bounced me out, but the code showed access. Someone can access it; I just don’t know who.”

“Sick!” came the reply. Hazel had chosen well.

“Are you a dancer?” Hazel asked somewhat spontaneously as they fought off a few Pros before they got to the abandoned patch. “You know, pirouette?”

“Ha, actually, yes. Most people call me Letty when they talk to me, though, so the dance part kind of gets lost.”

“That’s really cool. I dance, too, though purely amateur. I do street dance – not on the street. The genre.”

“Ha-ha. Yeah, I’m familiar.”

“What’s your gamertag when you’re not in Trifecta?” Hazel wondered.

“It’s Piroulette. Did yours change when you got inside?”

Hazel stopped moving for a moment, trying to process what the difference could mean, but she came up blank, so she just kept going. “Here it comes,” she informed her companion. “The little glitch on that hill.”

They moved toward the cave entrance, and Hazel opened a prompt.

“I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to try to capture the code if you get in. If I can recreate it, maybe I can manage access for myself.”

“Sure,” Letty agreed. “This looks amazing.”

“What looks amazing? It’s a dark hole.”

“You don’t see that?”

“See what?”

“I mean, weapons, vials, armor. It’s a hidden stash. I wonder why I can see it and you can’t.”

Hazel watched the code. It was static, repetitive – a glitch with a door.

“I’m going in,” Letty decided.

Rather than keep her eye on the code, which she was recording and could pick apart later, Hazel watched as her new acquaintance approached the little glitch. The avatar started to disappear through the hole like everyone disappeared into doors on Trip, but then the figure froze. Instead of passing through, it started to come apart. One second it was moving through the door, and the next, little pixels of light were being ripped from the avatar, which distorted and twisted, compressing into a single point of light on the glitch before disappearing.

Hazel stared at the screen, stunned. Was that what she herself had looked like when the game kicked her out? She didn’t know. Just, one second she was in the game and the next she was out.

Pulling up the code, she started to watch it run past, noting all the parts she recognized. Weapons. skills, scenery, Pros, and doors. As Letty approached the door, Hazel watched for the door code, watched the code that was Letty’s avatar. Suddenly, an unfamiliar series of letters and symbols met the code for Letty’s avatar and literally began to intermingle with the code, unzipping it like DNA and inserting itself, then intermingling with the code number by number. No words, no recognizable commands. Just bits and bytes, intertwining until number by number the last batch whipped like a tail through the glitch leaving a pinprick of light before going dark.

Zipping back through the code to when the game had kicked Hazel herself out, she watched to see if anything similar had begun to happen. She slowed the code and stared at it as she approached the door. Her code approached the glitch and then it was just gone. No unzipping, no evaporating, no revolving.

Maybe Hazel couldn’t see what happened after because she was kicked out, and her code had done the same thing as Letty’s. But Letty’s code somehow had stayed in the game.

Hazel ran the code back again. She stared hard as she approached the door, then watched what had happened when she had pushed the sword inside. As the sword penetrated the door, the code shifted, opening and…reaching out to grab the sword. It brought to her mind the vision of a claw, shoving through the door and grabbing a victim. She shook her head. It was just code; letters and numbers and symbols couldn’t do something like that. Virtually, she guessed they did it all the time. It wasn’t the action that seemed weird, it was the whole environment. A door that grabbed a victim then sent it into virtual oblivion? There was nothing else like it in all of Trip.

++++++++++++++++++

“Damn it,” Pete complained. There had been little hope that he could make the bike trip across four blocks before the NCB agent could walk down one, but Pete had no choice but to try. Instead, though, he now stared daggers at the back of the hulking figure under Mr. DeSoto’s front porch.

Rel Martins paced a short line in the small space outside the front door, rubbing his bare hands up and down on his sleeves in an attempt to keep himself warm.

Not smart enough to wear a sweater, Pete sneered. Maybe I’m too worried. Still, sweating the small stuff had kept him where he was and kept his plan moving forward. He wouldn’t treat Hazel more casually than the rest of his future. Though, maybe if he managed the whole scheme, no one would be in danger from the Wire, so he could just make a new future with someone else. For now, he wasn’t willing to risk it.

When a short, slightly overweight, middle-aged woman opened the door, Pete couldn’t wait any more. He reached out to Hazel’s handheld.

+++++++++++++++++++

Without thinking about it, Hazel lifted her handheld to take in the message. Once she had read it, though, she shut down the computer and stood to her feet.

“Gotta go, Sophe,” she leveled, brushing her hand affectionately over her friend’s hair. “I’ll probably be back later.”

As she reached the top of the stairs, Hilda, Mr. DeSoto’s housekeeper, had just cleared the highest step.

“Miss Hazel,” she offered. “I was coming to find you.”

“I know. Peter – ” Hazel started down the stairs toward the little foyer, not waiting for the explanation.

“Not Mr. Donovan,” Hilda interrupted. “It is someone I’ve never met.”

Before the words could register, Hazel had reached the bottom stair and pulled herself up short when she encountered the massively tall Rel Martins. She stepped back up one step to look him in the eye.

“Um, Rel. What’s going on?”

“Sorry. I swear I’m not stalking you.”

Hazel crossed her arms and glared at him. “Looks a lot like stalking.”

“It’s been three days since I’ve even seen you. Didn’t even have time to access your broadcast. This time, it wasn’t about you.”

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Rolling her eyes, Hazel huffed out a breath. “Fine,” she acquiesced. “You’re not stalking me. And I haven’t even been broadcasting, which you would know if you were stalking me…but my friend has an emergency.” Hazel pulled up her handheld and read the message. Minor emergency on the Bridge. Can you help? It’s about Trip. “I don’t have time to be interrogated at the moment.”

“Wait, one question: what are you doing at the home of Tomás DeSoto?”

Blinking, Hazel stared at him for a second, unsure why he should be so shocked. “I told you I was best friends with Sophie.”

“Sophie DeSoto. DeSoto: you left out the last name. Your best friend is Tomás DeSoto’s daughter?”

Hazel shrugged. “Look, I told you I don’t have time for an interrogation right now.”

Shaking himself, Rel accessed his watch. Eight p.m. “I’m sorry – you’re right. I would still like to talk to you even though that wasn’t my original intent here. I don’t have time tonight, and you seem like your plate promises to be full,” he mumbled. “Can you meet me for coffee tomorrow morning at 10? That place across from your apartment?”

“You sure are stalky for someone who’s not stalking.”

“I’m in intelligence. There’s always some kind of surveillance or monitoring. But I’m not actually monitoring you – didn’t even know you were here. Sophie DeSoto…I received a coded message of sorts that sent me here. I’m sorry.”

He looked so disconcerted, she had to believe him. One corner of Hazel’s mouth lifted. With all his awkward self-consciousness around her, he seemed so earnest. She had lived too long around Peter who was always looking for an angle. For some reason, though she usually started out suspicious, by the time she had spent a few minutes with Rel Martins, she found herself smiling or laughing at him. And she had not smiled or laughed much since the Crash.

“And this is a bad time, so you’re not going to stay,” Hazel declared as she pushed him back out the door.

“Okay,” he hemmed, letting her force him out into the frigid night air. “But you’ll have coffee with me? I promise not to trace you.”

“Was that a bad joke about my name?” she scoffed, glaring at his smug expression.

“Couldn’t be,” he leveled. “Your name is Hazel Hops.”

Despite her sense of urgency, Hazel found herself fighting a smile at his quick wit. She had tried to keep her sense of humor in the days after her dad had died, but it had proven much harder than she had expected, and Peter’s humor was too crass to offer much enjoyment to Hazel – more like deathly awkwardness and embarrassment. She liked that this Rel guy amused her.

“Okay,” she managed without as much enthusiasm as she felt. “Tomorrow at 10.”

For Rel’s part, he didn’t try to rein in his pleasure, and his grin lit his whole face.

“Business coffee,” she reminded him, and he squeezed his face into a more serious expression, though she wasn’t sure how deep the gravity reached.

“Business coffee.”

As Hazel let the door shut behind her, a small laugh surprised her by escaping her lips.

Less than ten minutes later, she approached Peter’s loft, pulling out her handheld to notify him that she had arrived. When he came to the door, his hair seemed windblown, and once she stepped inside, she realized that he smelled like cold air.

“Have you been out?” she inquired.

Pete blew out a breath. “Just out on my balcony,” he hedged. “I needed some air.”

“That bad, huh?” Hazel prompted.

Recognizing his opportunity, Pete paused to assess. He had engaged in a lot of relationships with women, but not with any he intended to keep around for long. Dealing with Hazel would require a little more finesse. He stumbled to the couch and dropped onto it with a sigh. “It’s the Bridge,” he admitted, appealing both to her intelligence and her compassion. “There’s this weird anomaly that I just can’t figure out, and it’s gotten me so frustrated.” He ran his hand through his hair.

Hazel hadn’t seen Peter flustered since a few weeks after the Crash. Moving to the couch, she lowered herself next to him.

“Seriously, is it something catastrophic? Should I be notifying authorities or anything?” The possible ramifications of an issue Peter couldn’t solve ran deep.

He reached for her hand. “Nothing that bad,” he comforted. “It’s just a glitch I can’t resolve, and I usually have the resources to fix these kinds of things.”

“So why contact me?” she wondered.

“Honestly? Because it has to do with Tripartite. And you’re the only resource I have who knows more than I do. And since I taught you to code…”

Hazel actually smiled – not a particularly common occurrence. “I’m sure we can tackle this. What’s the issue?” She tried to stand to her feet, but Peter used their joined hands to pull her back to the couch.

“I know I said it was a minor emergency, but I really just needed some encouragement,” he begged. “I’ve been killing myself for the past couple of hours trying to figure this out by myself. And there are so many other dilemmas I have to solve every day. It’s not like this is a huge ordeal – usually, I would just call my engineers or pull up my notes – but it was just kind of the last straw in a rough day. I wanted you here to help with the glitch, but really, I just wanted you here…I needed a break, a way to readjust my thinking.” Setting his arm across her shoulders, he pulled her gently to his side. “When is the last time we just sat and watched a video?”

Surprised, Hazel did not pull away. Had he once reached out to her in such a way in the past two years? Not once. “Probably before my surgery,” she agreed. “Though not because you needed to. It’s been longer for that.” Though her last experience with him had left her nervous and awkward, before that, she had often curled on the couch with him and lost herself in a vid.

“But you can make some time, right? You have a huge cache of equipment and skills, and the Partie is not for another couple of weeks. What do you say? Can we watch a movie? I know I said it was an emergency, but I’m actually the emergency. Do this for me.”

Pulling her legs up, Hazel acquiesced by scooting close to him in their old way and turning to face the huge blank wall across from the couch.

“Perfect,” Peter simpered. Hazel found herself relaxing in a way she hadn’t in weeks, familiarity suppressing her discomfort. “I’ve missed you.” He brushed his hand across her hair in his strange manner, a mix between brotherly and intimate. Hazel turned her head into his hand and closed her eyes.

“I’ve missed you, too, Pete.”

If she had been any other girl, Peter would have leaned in to kiss her, but Hazel would not have responded well. He knew Hazel, and she would have to want the kiss – maybe even initiate it. Instead, he accessed the video Stream and opened one of their old standby favorites. Before Hazel knew it, she had fallen into a deep sleep.

Peter slid to the side, gently lowering her to a lying position with her head on his leg. He brushed his hand over her hair again, and she turned predictably into his palm. How long had it been since he had been with a woman? Months, he guessed. His body told him months. The Deconstruction had taken pretty much all of his attention. With Hazel, though, if she responded right, he wouldn’t have to work at all to have her available any time he wanted. As soon as the movie ended, he began to call her name in a hushed tone.

Slowly coming to her senses, she heard the sound of her name, tender in her sleep. Her eyes eased open, and Peter sat above her. The video had stopped. Turning to her back, she could make out the silhouette of Peter’s face lit by blue light from the video credits.

“Will you stay with me tonight?” Peter begged, and Hazel felt her breath speed. She had read the situation right a few days before, and now it was happening. As if he could feel her panic, Peter interrupted her thoughts. “I don’t mean anything by it. I just mean stay with me here, on the couch. Let’s fall asleep together like we used to after the Crash.”

Hazel chewed her lip, completely discombobulated by the dissonance in her mind. Only a few days before, she had intended to stay away from Peter indefinitely. Now she was agreeing to sleep in his arms for a night? She had imagined Peter beyond human frailty once he recovered from his brother’s death. But had she underestimated how much of his peace came from the stability of her relationship with him? Guilt glued her to the spot, and when he slid down behind her, she let him. If it took her far too long to fall asleep that night, she would never tell him.

++++++++++++++++

When she awoke in the morning, Pete still slept, his arm draped casually over her waist. She had finally fallen asleep, and she had slept far too comfortably, but now the comfort had evaporated. How had she let herself be lured into this situation?

Peter was right: they had spent weeks sleeping in that exact position in his old apartment, before he had woven together the resurrection of the Platform and built himself a stylish loft in a trendy neighborhood. Back then, though, they had sought any comfort out of desperation. They had both lost the most vital person in their lives, and no one else had seemed to get it.

Later, they had stabilized, and so had their relationship. They had figured out how to function independently, and their relationship had cooled into an easiness that sent them into each other’s presence several times a week, but nothing more intimate. What Peter exuded right now was desperation, maybe even hunger. Some kind of spike in his usual indifference. Now Hazel remembered what had almost brought her to tears the week before – she couldn’t be with Peter like this, but she didn’t want to lose him.

Before she could slide out of his grip, he began to stir, pulling her more tightly against him.

“I have missed you,” he whispered, and despite her thoughts of a moment before, she caught her breath. When his lips brushed her ear, she closed her eyes and slowly blew the breath out. She imagined that something like that would have felt good with anyone she found attractive, so Pete was no exception. He was a beautiful human, though she knew him too well for his appearance to affect her overmuch.

“I’ve missed you, too, Pete, but I have an appointment this morning.”

He squeezed himself toward the back of the couch creating a few-inch space between them, then he pressed her upper shoulder down so that she lay flat on the couch. Raised on his elbow, he leaned over her.

“What is this appointment? That agent?”

“Who?”

“From the night of the crash?”

For some reason, she didn’t want to answer the question. What had made Peter think of it? Certainly, Hazel had said nothing. What had he seen in the few moments’ exchange? She didn’t think, considering her current position, that Peter would appreciate the truth, but it seemed dangerous to feign total ignorance.

“Oh, him?” Hazel hedged. She grasped for a plausible response. “The tall guy? Why would I meet with him?” Answer a question with a question.

“He came to see you yesterday,” Pete accused.

“Me?”

“At the DeSotos.”

“Why would he come see me at the DeSotos? Pete, what is this about? It was the DeSotos’ house. Why would you think he was there to see me?” Don’t realize what I’m doing! Don’t realize what I’m doing! she pleaded silently.

“If you’re not going to meet with him or Sophie, where are you going?”

“A class,” she lied. “I have a class.”

Confronting her will undermine my plans, he realized. “I wanted to discuss Freddy Nako with you, and we didn’t get to fix my issue,” he complained, brushing a stray tress off her forehead, and he was rewarded by a sharp intake of breath.

“I’ll come back in an hour,” she promised, her voice lower. “It’s Trip - you know I’m dying to find out what’s going on.”

Somewhat mollified by her reaction to his touch, Peter stared up at his fingers where they curled in her hair. “You don’t want me to talk about us.”

Panicked, Hazel licked her lips. “Peter, you’re one of the most important people in my life.”

“I believe that.” His finger caught a fragile tress. She shivered, and Peter smiled. “I think… that we are inevitable.” He lowered his hand to her cheek, rubbing his thumb across her soft skin.

“Peter.” She reached up and stopped his hand, and their eyes met. “I don’t think this is who we are.”

“I think we should try.”

For a moment, he locked his grey eyes on her, and she found that she couldn’t move. When he lowered his lips to hers, she froze, heat stirring in her gut – no one had ever looked at her that way, as if he intended to own her. Maybe it didn’t help her self-possession that she hadn’t been with anyone since her first year in college, and she had forgotten the euphoria. She silenced her rational protests, asserting that to reject him would have seemed unkind. Really, his hunger pulled her, and she found herself leaning toward him so that that their lips met with unexpected intensity. After more time than Hazel could calculate, her body reveling in what she had missed for the last couple of years, Peter shifted his weight, not releasing her lips, and he moved to lay her onto the couch, hovering over her and lowering his body toward her. Hazel panicked.

“Stop, Peter,” she gasped, turning her head so her lips lay beyond his reach.

His tone strained, Peter remained leaning over her, frustration and desire warring for dominance – he was not used to being told to stop. “Tell me you didn’t enjoy that.”

“That’s not the point.” She shuffled from underneath him so she could sit up. “It’s not what I want.”

Leaning upright, Peter tried not to clench his jaw. “I’m not asking you to make any decisions, Hazel. But now you know. You have something to consider. Just think about it. We fit together. We make sense.”

“What happens if it doesn’t work out?” Exasperation leaked into her tone. “It’s going to ruin what we have.”

“It won’t ruin it for me, and I think if I am okay, you’ll make it back to okay.”

“Then I’ll consider, Pete.” She reached for his hand again, offering an affectionate squeeze. “I’ll consider, and you keep us okay.”

Pete smiled, maybe the first genuine smile she had seen on him in over a year. With the Bridge weighing so heavily on him, he seemed far too serious of late. Maybe she had pushed him away because he was just so intense; maybe she had hurt him. The realization tightened her chest. She stood to her feet, and Peter raised himself to follow her to the door.

“One more to consider?” he wondered, holding the doorknob shut as he stepped toward her.

Hazel’s lips curved as she registered his eagerness. “One more.”

Threading his arm behind her waist, Peter pulled her to him and pressed his mouth to hers, and Hazel went lightheaded. When he let go, she stumbled backwards a step, and he caught her by the hand.

“One hour,” he reminded her, pulling the door open to let her out.