I look around. But there's nothingness for as far as I can see in every direction. It's pretty eery how I'm just standing on empty space. The voice is definitely familiar, though, and it doesn't take long for the owner of it to chime in again.

"Just give us a moment to load in the video feed, yeah? Don't want to leave you talking to empty air."

Stephen Jennings' voice rings out from all directions before the man himself seemingly blinks into existence about twelve paces in front of me. He's significantly better groomed than when I saw him this morning - now dressed in a no-doubt reprehensively expensive black tuxedo and bow-tie, with shoes to match.

"Ok. We're all good, now right?" He says looking off to the left at someone invisible. The motion is a little jarring as the colour of his head seems to blur a little as it turns and the movement of his lips doesn't quite sync up, "We are? Great."

Curious, I observe the small minute movements of his body, such as the rise and fall of his chest as he breathes, and notice a similar phenomenon. But looking at myself, still in Nealan's body evidently, there is no such discrepancy.

Maybe picking up on that, or just reading my mind, Steve clears his throat and explains, "I'm not actually on the system with you. We have this like, cage lined with high-speed cameras set up in a spare conference room I'm stood in the middle of. It's entirely unnecessary, but I figure it'll be more comfortable and/or polite if we can actually, y'know, see each other. Just borrowed it from the mocap guys in the Avatar Creation team, since they're not using it at the moment."

"I'm assuming this isn't a dream, then, and you're actually talking to me from reality?"

"Yepperoo," He affirms, shooting me the double finger guns again as I cringe inwardly at how dorky it makes him look.

"So, what's happening with my body right now? Nealan's, that is."

I mean, there's no guarantee that another attack won't come while I'm sleeping. It'd really suck for Nealan to die like that, but I'm assuming that Steve - or at least his staff since I don't have the greatest confidence in his judgment - have taken all this into account.

Steve rubs his hands, smiling lopsidedly, "Weeell...Nothing, really. We've 'paused' the game and pulled your consciousness into a separate space so we can talk. Speaking of which, I should probably explain what this is all about, yeah?"

He licks his lips, "So, as this is at it's core, still a test, we're more or less obligated to check in with you every now and again to get your feedback. There's only so much we have access to on our end after all, so hearing it from you directly is more or less a necessity. We're trying to keep a hands-off approach to this as much as possible because it muddies the data if we continuously break your immersion, and there's this annoying bug that happens if we pause and unpause the simulation too often that makes shit start ignoring collision etc. Normally, one of your supervisors would be doing this, but I have a flight in like, three hours to San Francisco for the opening night to 'Across the River', then I've got to get back to my day job. So, I wanted to get a word in with you all before I leave since it's been a while."

Sounds reasonable, I suppose. But he mentioned something that's bothering me.

"What do you mean, 'it's been a while'? We only met this morning."

"Ah."

Steve snaps his fingers and starts wagging it with a slightly constipated expression, "That's not strictly correct."

He scratches the back of his neck in embarrassment, "It's actually been about a week and a half since the medical staff put you under. Getting your Avatar assets ready, editing the files, then connecting and transferring you into the system takes time even with cutting-edge tech, yeah? Doesn't matter how much money I throw at it, can't change facts."

I blink several times in surprise. Its been a week and a half? I didn't even realise it. Feels strange to have lost all that time without even noticing anything.

"Although a couple of you took a little longer than anticipated because there was a memory retrieval problem for the first few transfers. Nothing serious, yeah? The program accidentally skipped over a step and they had to re-do it from scratch. But that's the risk you take with experimental technology, hence the waivers you signed."

His blase attitude to almost giving me a lobotomy irks me, "Nothing serious sounds like a comical understatement from where I'm standing. That's my memories you're glossing over!"

Steve just waves me off, "It's fine, it's fine. The memories are still stored in your physical brain, according to the neurologist I chewed out over it. It's just the data copy that was incomplete. It'll still be there when you go back, probably. Depends how important it was, I guess."

Still fuming, I take a step forward, but think better of shouting at him. Breathing deeply, my anger is forcibly suppressed. It's not his fault, even if he's being way too casual about it. The responsibility lies with the ones who performed the transfer, not Steve.

He claps his hands together decisively, "Anyway, we're getting seriously off-track here and I've got places to be, so, how about we get started?"

Reluctantly, I nod in agreement, "Fine. Shoot."

Steve reaches out on his left and gets handed a tablet by a disembodied arm, "Alright, I've got a list to get through, here. First up, of course, is what you think of it so far."

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I think about it for a moment before answering, "It feels no different from reality. Completely natural. Almost unnaturally so, ironically. The...new memories and personality quirks are taking a bit of getting used to though."

Steve nods along, "Sure. No surprise there. You're adjusting faster than most of the test subjects we've had, though. Probably because Nealan isn't all that different from you yourself, psychologically speaking. It's more or less why the team insist on you all making your own characters for testing instead of plugging you into a bunch of preset models. Characters born from you are easier to relate to. Also, since your brain and nerves by extension are 'ghosting' onto your Avatars, you're feeling it as though you were really there. It helps prevent a lot of the feeling of disconnect. Or so I'm told, I've never actually been hooked up myself, so I'm just taking the technicians' word for it."

I tilt my head, "That's odd. Figured from that speech you gave over breakfast you'd want to be first in line to try it out."

Steve shrugs, "Wish I could, but I just don't have the time for it. I've got a business to run and a public image to maintain. If I suddenly vanish or claim a serious illness the media will swarm all over it, and eventually some nosy bastard is going to find some tidbit they're not supposed to find and it'll be this whole mess. So I've gotta make do with watching the highlights the technicians send me and Sharon in their reports."

Steve suddenly breaks out laughing, "Oh yeah, that reminds me. You've been a busy guy, ain'tcha? I mean, I used to know some guys who traded stocks for a living, but you, Mr Lancaster, they have nothing on you and your complete disregard for your own life. I mean, the psych eval said you'd probably want to try and fight the Dirolft Pack, but we figured you'd wait until you got some backup. You should have seen the look on Matthew's face when I told him you'd attacked and killed them immediately after being told about them, he was livid! It was absolutely priceless!"

I feel my face flush with shame, "Yeah. It was really pretty dumb of me. Still, it was a lot easier than I was expecting considering their reputation. I mean, they're supposed to be able to give an Adventurer party a run for their money, aren't they?"

Steve shrugs, "Well, yeah. But, uhh...hmm. Not sure if I should explain it or not..."

He taps the tablet on his wrist, contemplating what to do for about a minute before a muffled voice says something to him that makes Steve pause, "Really? Is it ok? Alright."

Clearing his throat, Steve launches into a brief explanation that goes a little like this:

A regular Dirolft isn't really that much more dangerous than a feral wolf from Earth. They're more aggressive and faster, certainly, but they don't have much more durability than a regular wolf. Thus, a solid hit is really all you need to kill it. It's essentially the same for the Alpha, which is for all intents and purposes a scaled up Dirolft.

The danger lies in their nature as pack animals. Ordinarily, an Alpha Dirolft would be backed-up by dozens of regular Dirolft, allowing the Alpha to pick their fights and provide a large intimidating threat to draw aggression away from it's pack.

In my case, the pack was far diminished compared to what it would normally have been. Add in some dumb-luck in avoiding the patrols of the pack, interrupting the Alpha during an afternoon nap and my slightly above average striking power and voila, a recipe for unintentional sequence breaking because I went in dick first like a moron.

It was, quite literally, Dumb Luck.

Feeling embarrassed, I scratch at my chin, "I feel like I should apologise..."

"Nah, don't worry about it. Matthew just wrote the outline for the scenario, the details are out of his hands now. It's up to you what you make of it all at this point, all he gets to do is watch. Besides, it's not the first time something like this has happened, and it won't be the last. Not to be rude, but you're not all that unusual compared to some subjects we've had. Buuut I can't really talk about them for legal and spoiler reasons."

Again, I just shrug. Not like I'm surprised or anything.

"Moving on. Like I mentioned earlier we'll be checking in with you periodically to get your feedback and share any news from outside you're interested in. The next one they're looking to do is going to be in about a month from now by your calendar. They'll be very rare after that. Mostly when something important happens. That's the plan at least, so unless you have any questions, I'll let you get back to sleep."

He looks at me expectantly, but I can't really think of anything specific to ask him that he'd actually answer. Asking about the quest I'm on is probably a complete no-go, after all. I also never really paid any attention to the news, so I figure if something is important enough to warrant my attention they'll just tell me without having to ask about it.

So with that in mind, I shake my head, "Nah. I'm just...really tapped out."

"Fair enough. It was nice to have a longer chat with you, yeah? I'll probably see if I can squeeze a chance to drop by again in the future. Enjoy yourself in there alright? I'll be watching what you all get up to with interest."

As if on reflex, he moves to offer a handshake, before realising he can't and awkwardly raising his arm to wave goodbye. He probably thinks he saved it. Not even close.

And then, nothing.

----------------------------------------

After a while, they wake me up and force me to go to a different room on the floor below. It's oddly small, but is almost reminiscent of the one I was given back at the Think Tank in reality. A single bed placed against the wall with patterned sheets and a table with four wooden chairs. No window, and no lightsource means that other than a sliver from the gaps around the door the room is pitch dark. Thankfully, my profession has trained my night vision somewhat, so adjusting is simple.

My hands are still bound behind my back, and the guards inform me that my new 'owners' will come to collect me in the morning. Wonderful news, I'm so excited to be sold into slavery as blackmail material against a father I've never met. I'd make a joke about art mimicking life, but I've honestly just had enough.

This isn't really the life I wanted. I can't help but feel that I've traded one bag of worthless crap for an even more fetid bag of shit. Sure, I wanted adventure, an escape from the boring nothing that my life was turning into as my already minimal fame dwindles. I didn't want to be a slave for fuck's sakes. I didn't want to talk like a fucking idiot with this weird aversion to personal pronouns that I didn't make for the character.

But here I am, a prisoner in some asshole merchant's manor waiting to be carted off to who the hell knows where.

I can't...

I can't fucking handle this. Yemesvel can't handle it. This isn't how it was supposed to go. It's only the first day. If this is what I'm supposed to expect from Eden then what manner of utter horse dick am I going to be expected to swallow in a year's time? Or five years?

And to top it off, I'm stuck with it until Yemesvel dies. Not that I'm eager to let that happen, but...

Where the hell has my composure gone? A week ago, I could stare down my 219lb wrestling nut of a producer until he stops bitching me out about not taking on another tv serial. I endured some of the absolute worst head chefs and kitchens you can find in a proffessional space.

Now look at me, piggybacking a teenager's body in a video game on the verge of tears.

I'm a gods-be-damned mess.

And I'm just, so....tired.

I approach the bed and flounce on top of it, passing out again almost immediately. When I open my eyes again, the dingy little cell is gone, and so is everything else, as I stand in an empty, white void.

"Hello there Ms McDonnell, long time no see..."