“Of all the bitches in all the world,” KC muttered under his breath as he fished his keys from his pocket. It was only a fifteen-minute drive to Rosalyn’s apartment building, and thankfully traffic was light, because he was ready to crash her stream with a vengeance. Normally it was common courtesy not to do such a thing, friends didn’t just bang each other’s doors down in the middle of a streaming session, but she’d invited him. To come and ‘wake her up’ from this ‘nightmare.’

And it’s probably a setup, he thought as he unlocked the main door to the building. He was probably going to walk in there and find her smirking out of frame of her camera with a second headset, yapping in a freaked-out voice. He had to admit her acting was next-level tonight. Even in some of the collaborations they’d done in crafting games with multiplayer role-playing storylines, she hadn’t been this good.

Her fans were impressed. He was impressed. He was just salty he hadn’t been in on it. So he was going to give their fans a big dramatic show—a scorned streamer friend upset, a memeworthy rant and fight before they had a giggle fest and thanked everyone for coming out. Then later, later he’d grill her for all of the details of this damn project.

When had she even had time to hire people to film this? Or was it some kind of weird stock footage she was dubbing herself over? It sounded so real, though. He definitely wanted to hook up with the sound director. The level of care and detail was insane.

He reached Rosalyn’s apartment door and raised a hand to knock before pausing. Would it be better to bang hard on the door and demand entry so that she’d have to monologue about hearing him and then approach the noise with her headset? Or would it be better to slip in and surprise her, maybe even slip into her seat on camera and play along for a little bit, say she wasn’t there?

He decided on the second option, running a hand through his hair to make sure it was the artful tousled look he went for when he was on camera. He hadn’t been planning on it that night, but life was spontaneous sometimes, and opportunities like this to give fans something unique didn’t come up super often. Playing along for a little bit could be fun, and then he could teasingly tell Rosalyn she owed him for the extra realism.

He unlocked the door and quietly shut it behind him. There were no sounds inside, and the front hall was dark. Luckily he knew her place like the back of his hand, and he crept towards her office. The glow from her computer screens cast light across the hallway, and he poked his head in, hoping to catch her eye from wherever she was hiding and give her a wink and some hand signals.

But she wasn’t there. The triple screens were on, the chat going crazy on the left and the game screen on in the center. Her office chair sat empty, the pink cat-eared headphones discarded on the seat. He tongued the inside of his cheek, and quietly approached the desk. Was this some extra bit of elaborate prank on him? Was she going to pop out of her bedroom and scare the shit out of him or something?

The screen in the game wasn’t as dark, moving slowly through more forest towards a moonlit clearing. He glanced down at the desk and saw her beer sitting there. Condensation still clung to the sides of the can, and he touched it. Still cold from the fridge.

She’s hiding in here somewhere! He stormed from the office, turning on the hall light as he went. “Rose, I’m going to murder you, seriously!” he hissed, slamming into her bedroom. He expected her to be sprawled across her bed, pretending to be sleeping with a smirk on her face. But the bedroom was empty, too. He checked under the bed and in her closet, gritting his teeth. He stormed into the kitchen and the small living room, but she was nowhere.

Had she seriously gone to all this trouble? Cracked a fresh beer and then left for another location to do the audio for the stream to make it look like she got sucked into the game? This was a lot, even for her.

He stomped back into the office and snatched up her headphones, plonking himself down in the computer chair and sticking them on his head.

“—before it leaps out to rip my head off,” Rosalyn was saying in the ‘game.’

“Okay, Rose, I’m at your place and you’re not here, ha, ha,” KC drawled, tongue dripping with sarcasm. “I can’t believe you’d go to all this to fuck around with me.”

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She didn’t answer him, and he glanced over at the chat that was going wild, people typing his name over and over and asking if he found her.

A donation message popped up. BriGuyMonster: She’s gonna fight the monster to try to die and wake up. You guys are so creative!

“I wish I was this creative!” KC snapped, shaking his head. “I was not in on this, seriously. I came in and she’s not even in the apartment, but she left me her headset and a cold beer.” He took a long swig and leaned back in the chair. “Thanks for the brewskie, Rose.”

She didn’t respond, but that made sense. If she were streaming private audio from somewhere else, then she wouldn’t be hooked up to this stream. She must be logged into the stream with a sock puppet account so she could see the chat and respond, but not have the audio on for her own feed.

He clicked over to the chat window, typing, Bitch it’s KC, I’m at your house and this is the most extra thing you’ve ever done. Thanks for the beer and the front row seat. You suck.

Another donation from BriGuyMonster which read, She can’t see the chat unless she has her eyes closed.

KC rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right,” he drawled, and then shut his mouth as Rosalyn began monologuing again about not being athletic but trying to fight the thing anyway. He didn’t want to interrupt. It seemed like she was building to some big battle, and he wanted to see just how big the production value was on this thing. It was shot first-person, so she must have hired someone to do this with a go-pro. Hell, maybe she’d even filmed it herself and then hired someone to do post production for all the monster stuff. The chatter was live, though, considering she was responding to the chat.

So fucking extra, he thought, and then turned to her rightmost screen. He wasn’t going to mess up her feed, but he definitely wanted to see if he could poke around at any metadata. He brought up her file folders, and had a rifle through to try to find the video files, or a script, or like anything to do with making this thing. He couldn’t find anything, so he pulled up her CPU’s running information to see what programs and files she had going.

“What the fuck?” he asked out loud, leaning in, brow furrowed. Literally the only things she had open were a few browser tabs from researching the game, the streaming software, a terminal window, and King of Demons. It was an executable file, and he pulled over the terminal. That hadn’t been a video or any kind of fake thing. She’d actually executed the commands to run the executable file from the disk in her computer.

He picked up the jewel case, half expecting the slip cover inside to just be a printout that she’d stuffed in an old CD case. But it looked legit, even with the copyright information and everything all finely printed. Would she really go to all this trouble?

But what was the alternative? That she was actually stuck inside of a video game? KC shook his head vehemently. No way, there was just no way. He huffed at himself, even more annoyed that her stupid prank had caused him to get so paranoid and almost even entertain the idea that this had happened to her.

“Fuck,” Rosalyn said, and his eyes flicked to the middle screen.

Fuck, indeed. She turned around slowly, and the entire clearing was surrounded by those monsters. He picked up the CD case again, looking at the front where the gross tentacle alien things swept across the front. They looked just like what was on the screen, except the live moving version was a lot more visceral with squicky noises.

He almost wanted to pop the CD out of her computer and have a look at it. Surely it would be a burned disk with the video file, right? She’d held it up on the screen, but there were ways to modify the art on the disk. He didn’t want to eject it and screw up the stream, though.

Instead, he turned back to the files again, taking a look at the CD drive. When he pulled up the contents of the disk, he was flabbergasted at the normal-looking files there to support the video game. There was nothing out of the ordinary, and it niggled at his brain like nails on a chalkboard. Would she really go to all this trouble? The tiniest details like this wouldn’t even be worth the time it would take to fake something like this.

If it were her elaborate prank, something she’d set up, she would have definitely had him in on it or sucked him into it by now, surprising him when he came into the door. But what was the alternative? That Rosalyn had actually been teleported into a video game somehow? It wasn’t possible. It was insane to even entertain the thought.

He startled at the sound of Rosalyn’s scream. It wasn’t a play scream. It wasn’t the kind of playful aaaa that she used when they were battling it out in PVP. She sounded absolutely terrified.

He faced the middle screen, his heart pounding. Her entire field of vision was just flesh in the moonlight. She looked down at herself, and he could see that the creatures had her wrapped up in their clutches. He could just see a flash of skin, then the curve of her shoulder, but it quickly disappeared into the writhing monsters.

“Itsokayitsokayitsokay,” she whispered, like a mantra, her voice choked as the monsters squeezed her. “If I die, I wake up.”

Dread twisted KC’s stomach. This felt so real. How could it be real?

Rosalyn’s sob echoed through the headphones, constricting his heart. “If I die, I wake up.”