Zed was silent as Soze polished off another cup of cider. He tried to pour more from the jug but sighed defeatedly when only a few drops came out.

"The broken edge of the boulder had severed my spine and slashed open several intestines. It took over an hour for rescue to come, by then my legs were unsalvageable."

"You didn't just bleed out?" Zed asked, mildly surprised as he finished off his own cup.

"The weight of the boulder put pressure on my wounds. Ironically the thing that had just ruined my life was what kept me alive," he chuckled humorlessly. "Sometimes I wish it finished the job."

"Ruined your life? Could you not afford prosthetics?"

"I could. Being a ranger gave me pretty decent health insurance, I used all my savings and nearly sold my house to get the best prosthetics money could buy, but they just weren't enough."

With the technology used to make AetherGear, it was possible to create prosthetic limbs that were directly hooked up to a person's nervous system. When combined with advances in robotics, it was possible to give people artificial limbs that replicate the normal range of movement almost perfectly. No matter how bad your injuries, as long as you could get modern prosthetics you could have a normal life again.

But Soze didn't want a normal life, he wanted to be out in nature and test his limits against the dangers of nature. The advanced prosthetics were too complex and too fragile for the level of punishment he would normally put his body through. There were more simple and durable versions available for people who wanted to play sports, but those were designed to handle specific tasks like sprinting or climbing, never both. Most prosthetics couldn't give Soze the full range of motion he needed for his extreme camping trips, and those that could meet those needs would break in less than a week.

But the worst part was not the damage to his legs, but the damage to his intestines. With the bottom fifth of his digestive system reduced to paste, he couldn't... relieve himself properly anymore, and couldn't be too far from a bathroom at any given time.

"I managed to keep working with the park, but I couldn't go too far from the ranger station so I practically got transferred to a desk job." Soze clenched his fists, frustration rising. "It was better than nothing, but I didn't spend all those years training and studying just to look at nature through a window!"

It was just an accident, the kind that would eventually happen to someone when talking about dangerous activities like canyoneering, Soze just never thought it would be him. Yes, he liked to push his limits, but he was never reckless. Even on that terrible day, Jonah and Mark had offered to take him to a more intense route than where he had been injured, but he had turned them down.

Sometimes, tragedy is blameless and unavoidable.

"And you can't stop thinking about it?" Zed asked. "Even in the middle of all this?"

"This entire fucking game is what keeps reminding me of it," Soze groaned. "None of this is fair. The people in here are just innocents who wanted to have fun playing a video game, and for that, they've been punished with imprisonment and possibly death. Literal fucking children could die from this, and probably have died already." Soze held his face in his hands. "And the worst part..." Soze didn't even want to say it.

"And the worst part is that you don't even want to leave?"

Soze's head jerked up to stare, wide-eyed at Zed. "How..."

Zed looked at the younger man with a bemused expression. "Didn't I already tell you that I'm in my late eighties? You think I don't understand wanting to ditch a frail human body for a healthy digital one?"

"...Right."

Soze had barely played video games growing up, but soon after the accident, the AetherGear had practically become his life. Unlike the computer and console games of his youth, virtual reality games were able to put you in hyperrealistic fantasies, to give you abilities that were impossible in reality.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

They were an escape, a way to forget that his healthy body and adventurous lifestyle were no longer possible. It was something that made him feel guilty like he was just running away from his problems instead of dealing with them. Before, Soze had been living his best life, but after the accident, even though he was still getting by he could feel every day getting harder, an invisible weight getting heavier. The copious amounts of alcohol he drank when he wasn't playing or working certainly didn't help.

But New Eden Online was different. They were trapped and there were no clues on how to escape, all they could do was play the game and go along with whatever twisted plan Dr. Zheng had for them. Soze had no choice but to be here, and strangely, that was a relief to him. He didn't like being forced into a dangerous situation like this, but now that he was here he could forget about reality and enjoy the extreme lifestyle he had always loved. As long as there was no path to escape, he had no obligation to go searching for it because, as he had said when they first became trapped, there was no point in worrying about it when they didn't even know where to start.

Soze doesn't want to find the way out, because if he finds it he would be obligated to leave. He can't just abandon his real life for a video game, no matter how much he hates what his life has become. Anytime people around the village start talking about trying to find Dr. Zheng, about finding a way out, all he can think about is hoping they fail.

'But it's not my choice, not for over a billion people.'

There was no situation where he could stay while everyone else leaves. Even if he could be selfish enough to just abandon his life out there and choose to stay, New Eden Online was the tool used in the largest kidnapping, and potentially largest mass killing event in human history. The authorities would never allow them to simply keep playing, not as long as it was possible for some hacker to reengage that part of the program and trap another group of people.

"So what are you going to do about it?"

Soze shook his head slowly. "Nothing. Not a damn thing."

He would never stop people from finding a way out, even if he could. The whole situation was out of his hands, but that didn't stop him from hating himself a little more for feeling this way. For silently hoping that they never find a way out. For hoping that he could spend the rest of his life forgetting about reality.

'....I really wish we had alcohol already.'

The two sat silently for a few seconds. Then a minute. Soze used his cup to get some water from his inventory to wash down the sticky feeling in his mouth from the cider.

"Soze, I..."

He looked up and was greeted with a strange sight.

For the first time in the over three months since they had known each other, Zed looked uncertain, a strange blend of emotions radiating off of him. Sadness, understanding, conflict, relief, and so much more that Soze didn't have words to describe. It was the understanding that truly struck a chord with him. Zed had already said that he felt similarly, but seeing the battle-hungry player become like this after hearing about his troubles was validating.

"Is this the part where you tell me not to worry about it?" Soze asked with a small smile.

"No, you already know that. I just... do you trust my hunches?"

It was definitely a strange question to ask. There had been plenty of times over the last few months that Zed has said something that turned out to be true, based on seemingly nothing. He wasn't right about everything, like if people were making bets over some random thing, but it was almost scary how accurate he could be about other things. Usually, it was whenever others were worrying about people seeming to go missing. Some people would start to worry, wonder out loud if they were dead, and if Zed happened to hear them he would confidently state that they were still alive. It caused more people to view him in a positive light. A battle-hungry but incredibly optimistic player.

"What are you getting at?" Soze didn't exactly believe Zed would always be right, but there was no harm in hearing what he was thinking.

"...I don't think we're going to make it out of here."

"What, like we're all going to die before we can escape?"

"No...I mean I don't think it's possible for us to get out."

That certainly caught Soze's attention. It was one thing to say that they would die before escape was possible, but no one thought it was impossible. They would probably never find Dr. Zheng here in the game, but the people on the outside would be working on the NEO's code to let them out. Considering how much of a coding genius Zheng was and the time difference between reality and the virtual world, it could take years, maybe even decades from their perspective.

But to say that it couldn't be done?

"And that's just your hunch?"

Zed shrugged. "Yup."

"...Why."

"...I told you, I don't really have a reason." He paused. "Maybe I'm just hoping for it like you are, but I really just don't think we can get out."

Soze took a sip of water. "Well, even if you're right, it doesn't make me feel any better."

Zed held up his hands defeatedly. "Oh well, I tried."

Neither spoke again, and a heavy silence filled the air. Both men had poured their hearts out and talked about thoughts and feelings that would normally never see the light of day, unless it was through the anonymity of the internet, with the comforting knowledge that no one who knows this can connect it to you.

It felt like there was nothing else that they could say at this point.

Until Zed found one last question.

"You want to get something to eat?" Zed finally said.

"...Yeah."