With a groan, I blinked my eyes open. I was lying on my back, staring up into brilliant blue sky stained with streaks of emerald.

“What a dream,” I muttered as I sat up, rubbing my head. My thoughts were still fuzzy. Had I fallen off my bike?

Then why wasn’t I wearing a helmet? And how’d I end up lying on a dense carpet of soft grass?

“Welcome to day one, Lucas.”

The friendly male voice made me jump and I looked around, but saw no one. The grass turned out to be part of a pretty little glade surrounded by sparse woods.

Tall trees that looked more like hardwoods than the pines I’d seen so much lately in Colorado loomed over mer. Above them, steep, rugged mountains rose all around. I was in a mountain valley, surrounded by tall peaks. On one side, more mountains stretched in ever-higher tiers of broken stone that built up on each other until the final peaks punched impossibly high into the sky. I craned my neck up and up, mouth agape as I stared at the distant sheer cliffs that had to rise over 50,000 feet above me. Mountains couldn’t get that tall on Earth.

Then it came rushing back and I leaped to my feet, my heart hammering in remembered fear. We’d been ripped from Earth, teleported to an alien world, and hurled down like missiles.

Was I dead? Was this what heaven really looked like? I scanned the sky again, looking for angels or harps, or even little red demons.

I couldn’t be alive, could I? I’d crashed into a planet like a living meteor. Why did I feel healthy, then? My legs were shaking, but that was just a reaction to my panic. I tried to breathe as I turned slowly, scanning the area, trying to figure out if I was a spirit or not.

“The best way to get started is to dive right in. That’s what I always say,” the friendly voice continued.

A blue screen popped into the air in front of me and text scrolled down, repeating the words I’d just heard. I jumped back with a start and the screen followed along. When I turned my head, it smoothly shifted through the air to stay in front of me.

“That’s annoying,” I muttered. Maybe I’d ended up in hell like my mom always promised all bikers did.

“You’ll get used to it,” the voice said as more text scrolled past. “This is your main message screen. You’ll use it to access all of your achievements, rewards, and so much more. Don’t worry, I’ll explain how it works. First, when you want to exit the screen, just focus on the dark blue bar along the top and imagine the screen closing.”

Since I couldn’t see much else, I followed the instructions. I wanted to see who was speaking. Focusing on the top bar of the screen, I willed it to close. The screen disappeared.

Wild. Mind-controlled tech was way beyond anything we had on Earth. I had never imagined heaven might be full of techies. I spent a lot of time with computers since I was preparing to launch a new cyber investigation company. I would usually be geeking out over the seamless way the screen functioned.

Figuring out if I was dead or not sucked the joy out of the moment.

“Very good. You’ve got more of a knack for this than a lot of your group. Now, open the screen back up.”

I scanned the clearing, but still saw no one. That initial burst of adrenaline from waking up on an alien world still left my limbs feeling shaky.

I guess I’m alive. I wasn’t entirely sure, but I couldn’t imagine heaven or hell feeling like this.

The grass was soft under my feet. The air smelled like forest. The trees waved slightly from a soft breeze. Any other day, I’d think I’d woken up in a really nice park.

I still hoped maybe I was having some kind of hallucination. Maybe Tomas had bought those sketchy mushrooms after all and slipped them into breakfast. He was a joker, but that would be a stretch, even for him.

I glanced around, but didn’t see Tomas, Jane, or anyone for that matter. If I accepted the reality of what I’d just experienced, I might actually be standing on an alien planet.

An alien planet.

The words made me shiver. I didn’t want to believe it, wanted to lie down and close my eyes and wait for Tomas to give me an injection to wake me up. He was the doctor, he’d know how to treat whatever mental breakdown I was suffering.

I took a long, deep breath. I might be lying in a coma, but I felt like myself. Panic flickered at the edges of my mind, but I pushed it aside. I wasn’t in pain. My entire world had gotten switched on me, but I was still me. I could deal with it until I figured out what was really going on.

Forget how impossible falling off the planet and getting teleported to another world might be. Until I found evidence to the contrary, I decided to trust my own senses. So had Tomas and the others fallen into this crazy world with me, or had they somehow escaped? If they were nearby, I had to find them as soon as possible. That priority helped focus my whirling thoughts. Find and protect my brother and friends. I could do that.

One other thing was clear. Isabella was going to be ticked when I didn’t call her. That made me chuckle, and the sound carried a hint of panic. A missed phone call was the leasts of my worries.

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“Don’t get distracted, Lucas. We have a lot to cover and not much time to do it,” the voice prodded. It was the same guy with a British accent who had spoken while we floated in space.

I still couldn’t see anyone, but the voice didn’t sound like it was speaking into my mind. More like an invisible friend standing close by. So weird.

“Do you see the blinking notification icon in the bottom right corner of your vision? Click on that.”

And all of a sudden I did see a little blinking icon, like a tiny folder. I focused on it and willed it to open. The larger screen popped up again, blocking most of my view.

Text scrolled past and the same warm woman’s voice that had spoken once while we hovered in space spoke again. “Congratulations, Lucas! You’ve successfully bonded with your HUD. You receive a copper Intern loot box.”

HUD? Loot box? I was starting to get a headache.

The screen flashed, and a menu appeared down the left side. Most of it was grayed out, but the first two options were available. Messages and Loot Boxes. In a daze, I mentally selected Loot Boxes.

The screen flashed and minimized into the bottom right corner of my vision, and a box with a copper sheen appeared, hovering in the air in front of me. It was small, about the size of a shoe box.

“Go ahead and will the box to open,” the male voice urged.

Using technology was second nature to me, and doing something with it, even if it was alien technology, helped me focus my scrambled thoughts. I decided mentally controlling technology was cool.

Yay, I was having fun.

My stomach roiled and I felt sick.

The lid popped off and the box disappeared, revealing two small items floating in the air. They looked like little glass flasks, complete with stoppered lids. One was a bright red color, the other blue.

“Congratulations, Lucas! You’ve just opened your first loot box,” said the female voice. Her slight French accent made the word congratulations seem far more substantial, somehow. “You receive a minor mana potion and a minor health potion.”

The male voice picked up. “When you consume the blue mana potion, it will restore a small amount of mana. The red health potion will restore an equal number of health points.”

“Mana?” I asked as I plucked the two flasks out of the air.

“We’ll get to all that!” he laughed, then made a throat clearing sound. “Sorry. I know, getting teleported across the multiverse for the first time, and without warning, is a lot to swallow, especially for a tier-0, unintegrated baby human.”

“What does that mean?”

“Patience, my friend. You can’t learn everything in the first minute, although you should probably learn at least a few things. The game has started, after all.”

“You mentioned a game, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You wouldn’t want me to ruin the surprise, would you?”

“I think I’ve had enough surprises to last a lifetime, thanks.”

My thoughts were starting to work better and I remembered another thing the voice had said when we were hovering in space. “Hey, what was that about everyone dying and Earth being destroyed?”

“So you were paying attention. Good for you. Chances of surviving the next twenty-four hours just jumped to at least ten percent.”

“Wait, what?”

“Make that eight percent. You’re backsliding, Lucas.”

“Why would our planet be destroyed? Are you the one planning to kill everyone?”

“You’re getting distracted again. Try to focus. You don’t have much time before life gets really interesting.”

If only that voice included a body. I’d throttle him. I’d totally changed the trajectory of my life 2 years ago to focus on hunting down people like the ones who had taken everything from my grandmother. Now this voice was threatening worldwide destruction. Time to pivot again, apparently.

With a supreme effort, I forced down the boiling anger that replaced my shock. Nothing about the situation made sense, so I focused on the one thing I knew. Anyone prepared to kill an entire planet was someone I needed to stop.

A moment ago, as I hurtled toward the ground, I’d been convinced I was about to die. I hated feeling helpless, but I hated thieves and murderers worse. Now that I had a second chance on life, I needed to focus so I didn’t die again. I had to survive, find Tomas and our friends, and figure out what was going on and how to get home.

I took a deep breath and scanned myself as I again tried to verify my physical condition.

“Hey, where are my clothes?”

I blinked down in astonishment at my bare torso. The only thing I was wearing was a pair of blue boxers.

“And whose boxers are these?” My voice rose an embarrassing octave.

Despite all the crazy stuff happening, for some reason the fact that I was wearing some random dude’s boxers freaked me out more than all the rest.

“You don’t think I would drop you at your starting point naked?” he asked. This time, the minimized menu grew to fill about a third of my vision, enough to see the words scrolling past. Annoyed, I willed it closed.

“We have to keep our ratings clean,” he added.

“Ratings?” I rubbed my temples. My head hurt. My entire world had been ripped apart and stitched back together like a Frankenstein creation, and the voice’s cheery good humor was totally out of place.

“Nothing. Just an expression I picked up from my initial scan of your world. You know, I usually get more time to study a target world, so I may get some of your phrases wrong for a while.”

“Don’t worry about it. I can’t keep up with half the gibberish my brother throws into his text messages sometimes.”

I looked around again, hoping to see him or the others. Maybe I’d just overlooked something important during my first scan. My mind wasn’t really working yet.

Nothing. Just a sparse forest that would have looked lovely as part of a park near Boulder. To me it seemed suddenly alien and dangerous.

No clothes, no bike, or any of my gear. I seemed to be completely alone. I took a deep breath and glanced at my boxers again. They looked clean, and at least they were solid blue. I don’t think I could have kept it together if they’d been pink or covered in hearts or something.

“Is everyone else still alive? Where are they?”

“You’re jumping the shotgun, Lucas. You haven’t gotten that quest yet.”

“What?”

“Quest. I haven’t shown you that menu, although I do like your enthusiasm for pressing ahead.”

“No, not the quest. I mean, I want to know about that, but what was that you said about a shotgun?” I could really use a shotgun right now.

“An idiom I downloaded from your world. Saying you jumped the gun seemed too vague, so I chose a more specific model of your basic firearms. Did I choose the wrong one?”

“We don’t use specific guns for that phrase.”

“How odd. You humans are proving so fascinating already. How some of you just keep screaming is remarkable.”

“Screaming?” I heard nothing but the gentle rustling of leaves and creaking of wood in the soft breeze. The air smelled fresh, with a bit of pine, even though I didn’t see pine trees nearby.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t mention other conversations I’m having. Your mental state is confused enough. I know it’s a lot to take in, but you have to focus before your initial orientation period ends.”

“Okay. I could use some orientation.”

A laugh. “Finally, someone who wants to play! Most of the other earthlings are too busy panicking or screaming or vomiting. Why you do that as a default defense mechanism is such a puzzle. Probably the result of your nutrient-deficient diets. You have the right idea, though. You only have a few minutes to familiarize yourself with your menus and open your first quest before the monsters begin to spawn.”