Jones couldn’t pay attention in class, so he was excited to be able to get home to jump back into the game to play. He hadn’t felt this way in quite a while, ever since the Free States militia had taken over the starting zone of the Far Reaches of Space. Trying to fight a guerilla war wasn’t the idea that was sold to him when he started playing with his friends, he wanted to fly around in space, explore other planets, and use his real world engineering skills to build something fantastic.

Of course, greedy people had to ruin everything, and a lot of players had abandoned the science fiction setting for one of the other three available. Less people to contend with for fights and loot, but even then, a small galaxy of space to wander around meant that there wasn’t a very high chance of finding other people without looking for them.

Jones was on the train, hoping to get home quickly, when he heard a few other passengers talking about what was happening in the game. It sounded like Logan was doing well, other players couldn’t make it to the building in large numbers, making it easier to take them out when they were inside. A lot of discussion and disagreements were happening between the others, some praising Logan and others rooting for the militia, just enjoying the pro-human message they were promoting at the moment.

Jones put his earbuds in and turned on a podcast, hoping that things were still going well when he was able to log in again.

—

Pat was having a bad session in therapy. She didn’t want to be there, she wanted to be in the game helping Logan to kill any of the militia members who tried to storm into the headquarters. She wanted to be doing something, anything, that could help her friends, but she was stuck here in therapy, trying to sort out her rebellious nature.

Her therapist knew what was going on, if only because she had explained it in detail over the last few sessions. He knew that Pat respected Logan as one of the few authority figures in her life, because he actively helped her, sacrificing his own time and resources, putting himself on the line alongside her, which she hadn’t had a lot of growing up.

True friends were hard to come by, and he understood why she was so anxious to return, but maybe Pat was just using the events in the game as an excuse to act out and cause mayhem without consequences. He wrote a few notes about adjusting her medicine dosage, and a recommendation to limit the amount of time she spent in the game, at least for a few weeks, to try to get her to calm down a little bit.

Pat stormed out of the session, even more angry than she went in, which wasn’t unusual, but the receptionist noted that it looked like she had been crying, which certainly was unusual.

—

Meghan’s class went slowly, her mind wandering to the strange times she had been a part of recently. Everything was going exactly as it had been; raid a few small outposts, go to class, hang out with Jones afterwards, rinse and repeat for weeks on end. Then one day, a man with strange eyes appeared, and everything went off script from there.

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Being trapped in the devourer caves wasn’t something she expected, and by her own group, no less. What was even stranger was that the strange new man had jumped into the chance, and had become something new and frightening. He had strange eyes of green and blue before, and now they shone gold, glowing softly in the darkness of the caves they had been transformed in.

The eyes weren’t the biggest change, of course. He could control the monsters they had been fighting now, creating more from the corpses of the people they killed, perpetuating the cycle; more death, more devourers. A few of the other rebels took the chance to wear the same armor, failing to achieve the powers Logan had, but still being better equipped than many of the others.

Meghan hoped that her friends could play the game normally when this craziness was over, she wanted to explore the stars, painting the landscapes all over the galaxy. Being a designer was a nice plan, but she just wanted to relax and enjoy the beauty of the universe for a while.

—

Tony sat at home, the television in the background playing the news describing what was happening in the city of Dust Haven. He couldn’t watch it, knowing that he would just see more of the aliens that had been responsible for tearing people apart, as well as a large group rallied around the flag that made everyone hate The Far Reaches of Space. He wanted to call Wendy, to talk and try to figure out what they were going to do if things actually changed, but she wasn’t accepting any forms of communication.

She had been spooked, first by being betrayed; Mason was a good man, but now that the trust had been broken, it couldn’t go back to the way it was. Logan’s transformation was the other major part of it, nobody expected that he would become a devourer just to fight the militia, but maybe it needed to happen and nobody was willing to risk it.

Tony sighed, looking at the cup of stone cold tea he had brewed hours ago on the table in front of him. He knew what he should do as a friend, but he was scared. Nothing in his life had felt so real as dying, again and again, and he didn’t know if he could go back, but he also wanted to be there for the people who fought through things with him.

Indecision was a problem he had to contend with his entire life, and he still didn’t know how to deal with it. Staring at the tea helped while he fought with himself silently.

—

Wendy was processing things better than everyone thought. She was terrified of trusting people, even before everything that had happened, but that was caused by everyone in her family being incredibly unreliable. She thought she had found a good group of people with the rebels, hoping to get to explore space and study the things she found, but so far the only one who was always there for her was Tony. And here she was, ignoring him.

She meandered in her greenhouse, using a spray bottle to mist the plants as she walked by. A mixture of water and a growth formula meant that the plants were bigger than their wild counterparts, but she had more than enough room to allow all of her greenery to overgrow by quite a bit.

Wendy spotted a ladybug on one of the ferns that was nearby. She crouched down to be able to look at it more closely, enjoying the small nature of the insect. This is what she wanted to be doing; enjoying the study, figuring out how things worked. Fighting wasn’t something she wanted, which is why she agreed to be a healing class in the game, she didn’t have to be on the frontlines getting hit and trying to hit things back.

Of course, the ladybug just brought her mind back into the game, and what was happening to one of the people who had stuck around to help keep her safe while they were trapped in the darkness. He could control the devourers now, which was fascinating, and she hoped that Logan would let her study his connection to them, and maybe allow her to get close enough to study a live subject.

The devourers were terrifying if they were coming at you with intent to kill, but they were just simple-minded insects in massive bodies. She couldn’t be too hard on them, but they did leave enough of an imprint that she still had been instinctively afraid, even if she knew that the ones with gold eyes were nice.

Maybe she should go back and help out. Wendy was uncertain, not sure if she was over thinking things, or just making a bad choice due to some misplaced loyalty.