Jinn, Kay, and Mars sat in the booth before the bed-booth, looking over all the notes Kay had frantically scribbled. They’d gone through about half the notebook, and since this was the planning session, Jinn had taken every page and ripped it from the spiral binding. Currently, Kay had all the pages with game knowledge, Mars was collecting everything about resources, and Jinn was snatching everything else.
“I think...” Mars flicked through his papers. “I think that’s everything.”
“Right.” Jinn straightened her papers, then reached for the pen and notebook again. “Game mechanics. Kay, what can you tell us.”
“Why do you have a notebook since I’ve already written everything?”
“Compiling notes and jotting down questions.” Jinn made a gesture for them to continue; Kay sighed, rolled their eyes, but picked up the first piece of paper and started reading off their notes.
“OMR is currently under in-house testing, which means all of us have bodies hooked up in the main office. That also means that whoever has taken over the main office has access to our bodies.” Kay shuddered. “Which means they’re watching us, and that’s creepy as hell.”
Mars and Jinn laughed.
“You get used to it when testing.”
“It’s not really law, but when health insurance gets involved, it’s mandatory. The company has to have medical personnel overseeing the bodies during testing, so if something happens, there’s a quick response.” Mars shrugged. “In the beginning days of immersive reality, all the bugs weren’t really worked out, and many people in apartments only found out their neighbor had died because of the stench.”
Kay’s pale skin was even paler now. Mars reached over and patted their hand.
“They hooked our bodies up to enough equipment and systems that I’m not too worried.”
Jinn wanted to point out that if someone had a virus that disrupted gameplay, then making one to mimic healthy bodies would be simple, but before the thought could be shared, she bit her tongue. No need to add to Kay’s panic, and the thought that someone was tampering with her body wasn’t something she wanted to linger on for long, either.
“Okay,” said Kay, clearing their throat. “Um... back to notes. The testing period was supposed to finish four days ago by this point. It’s possible some people are already missing family members and are trying to get in contact.”
Jinn privately doubted that. Most testers told their families not to expect them for a bit after the testing time period, but the longer they remained trapped here, the higher that possibility rose.
“There is an area that we can access from inside the game to contact the devs.”
The words sunk into Jinn’s brain, and she pounced on them.
“Wait, what?!” She ripped the paper from Kay’s hand to make sure what she’d heard was actually true. “Why the hell didn’t you mention this earlier?”
Kay scrunched down in the booth, covering her head with her hands and mumbling something.
“What?” Mars poked them in the shoulder. “I couldn’t hear you, say that again.”
‘I DON’T KNOW WHERE IT IS!"
Jinn slumped back, old vinyl crackling in her ears. They had a way to contact the company, from the inside even! And the fucking person whose entire job depended on aiding players, such as telling them where they could go in game to contact the developers, couldn’t remember!
“Seriously? Fucking seriously?” Jinn started laughing. “That sounds like a pretty damn crucial piece of important information, and you just happened to forget it? What, are you the traitor that’s on their side, and you’re just looking for the best way to fuck us over?”
“Jinn—”
She cut him off with a hand slice.
“Think about it.” Jinn glared at the kid. Kay was wiping away tears now, quiet in their crying, but that wasn’t anything new. History showed that traitors could be of any age. They could consciously know what they were doing, or be tricked by someone else into thinking they were helping. “Kay’s taken and placed here with us. We already know something’s wrong with the system; wow, what a coincidence that one of the customer service reps has appeared to ‘help’ us! They drop enough good information to make their offer of aid legit, but there are holes in their story. They can’t remember important things, or facts that any person should have memorized if they had actually worked in OMR’s customer service.”
“I’m not a computer!” exploded Kay, her face red with anger and shiny from tears. She sniffed, wiping her nose with her arm. “You can’t expect me to know everything, or to magically conjure up the correct information when you request it!”
Jinn leaned across the table and locked eyes with them.
“Actually, yes. That’s exactly what I expect!”
“I’m a customer service rep because—and this might come as a shock to you—I know how to find the information that people can’t bother searching for themselves.” Kay gave Jinn a middle finger. “And since this game hasn’t been released to the public yet, I haven’t answered the same goddamned question eighty fucking thousand times. Which, if you can’t figure that out, means I don’t remember everything from a game that’s projected to have over five hundred hours of gameplay!”
The two of them stared at each other, and out of the corner of her eye, Jinn could see that Mars’ smile had finally slipped into a frown.
“Here’s another question,” said Jinn, her mind pulling out a logical point. “How, exactly, do we even know you’re Kay?”
“...what?”
“I can believe that Kay was captured.” Jinn held up her hands. “But why the fuck would the assholes causing this entire problem throw Kay into the game?”
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Kay’s mouth opened and closed, but nothing was coming out except for small squeaks.
“It’s more believable that you’re working for them, and that there’s going to be a ‘system error’ when our bodies die in this fake life that will affect us in our real life.”
“... I don’t need to stay here and take this,” said Kay, punching Mars in the shoulder and nodding for him to move. “Let me out.”
“No,” said Mars, his deep voice rumbling. “Wait, just a sec. Jinn, what the hell was all that bullshit about? Kay was the one that insisted on pulling you from the lake; they’re the only reason you’re alive right now.”
“Maybe they just wanted to look good in front of you.”
“I would have left you there.” Mars crossed his arms. “And if they’d agreed with me, I wouldn’t have thought anything more about it. You would have died in the lake and I wouldn’t have cared. So, you’re wrong.”
Jinn blinked. It had made sense in her mind. Doppelganger Kay comes into OMR, tricks them all into an earlier permadeath, and is then retrieved by their crew. But... She looked at Kay, who was crying and burying her face into Mars’ arm, and at the man’s grim, unhappy face.
“You owe them an apology. I don’t care about me, but now they’re upset. They spoke highly of you too, saying that you’d know what to do when you woke up.”
Fuck no to that guilt trip. Jinn pressed her lips together and shook her head. Her palms slammed against the table, making the two of them flinch.
“I don’t trust you.” She glared at both of them. “I can’t trust you. I don’t know either of you, except that Kay didn’t look like that when I talked to her over VICA, and honestly, there’s such a tradition of screwing over people who have thrown us under the bus in previous games that I can’t trust you, either.”
Mars rolled his eyes.
“Congrats, then,” he said, rubbing Kay on their head. “You can’t trust people; that’s a you problem. You think you’re going to make it alone until the game is fixed and we can leave? Ha!”
Now it was her turn to startle at loud sounds.
“Listen to the words that are coming out of your mouth. You don’t trust Kay because they don’t look like they did when you talked with them. That was explained. You don’t trust me, even though I’ve given you water you asked for and helped you when you were vomiting. If I wanted to kill you, I could have done it then. Or I could have slipped a knife between your ribs as you laid on the bed Kay and I brought here specifically for you. How about you shut up, take our actions at face value, and help us figure out how the hell to get out of this damn game!” He finished his rant, and he filled the next few seconds with the sound of panting. “Get it?”
Jinn said nothing. Kay peeled their face away from Mars and rubbed at their eyes.
“I understand why you don’t trust me,” they said, tucking red hair behind their ear. “Honestly, I keep thinking about who at work was a traitor. Was it one of my friends? Someone in my section? I’m not asking you to put your faith in us completely. Well, we’re not,” they amended, nodding to Mars.
“We’re asking you to work with us,” he interjected. “For now. With the ability to leave if you still think you need to.”
“... I need to think about this,” said Jinn, sliding out from the booth. She paced the small diner. They were right about working together. There was safety in numbers, being able to depend on someone to keep watch while gaining sleep. Two people gathering supplies would either cut the time down or increase stock, maybe even both. And with three, one could be on the road looking for others to join.
But that wasn’t possible if the others in the group weren’t considered reliable. Memories of previous team games came back to her. Groups formed, completed the task, and split after it. Done.
She turned to the table, looking at Kay and Mars.
“If we do this,” she said, her voice soft. “I’m in charge.”
“Hell no.” Kay shook their head. “I don’t want someone who thinks I’m a backstabbing traitor to order me about. You might order me into hurting myself, or someone else.”
Jinn put her arms on her hips and sighed. “Too bad that, out of everyone here, I have the most experience in game life, not to mention niche. Mars, what’s yours?”
“Racing, actually. I was trying to branch out when I sighed up for OMR.”
“And when I started,” Jinn continued. “Mine was survival. Therefore, I’m still the best person to lead.”
“Lead us into trouble,” muttered Kay.
“Kay, are your transcripts recorded?” The question wasn’t as random as it seemed. Customer Service Kay had mentioned that the longer their ticket remained open, the more likely it would be that someone would start asking her questions, but they hadn’t been concerned about someone overhearing them discuss their worries. Kay shook their head, eyebrows drawing downwards in confusion. “Right. Tell me what we talked about when I first requested your help.”
The teen’s eyes lit up, and they smiled.
“You were being bitchy about your stats! Everything had to be split into finer and finer hairs, and actions VICA had already given you points for had to be retracted so you could level up different stats.”
“And you gave me shit about killing a baby bird for the xp,” added Jinn, rolling her eyes. “In a game.”
“It wasn’t a baby bird; you killed a poor, defenseless bear cub, you monster!”
The name didn’t bother Jinn. The fact that Kay had known about the conversation and had corrected the defeated animal meant that she could be 99% sure this was her customer service rep. Mars... her eyes shifted to the person she knew least in the room. She hated gambling.
“Fine.” She held up her hands and slid back into the booth again, grabbing the papers. Like hell she was going to apologize for voicing her thoughts, and if she didn’t push them onto a different task, then they were going to insist on one. She cleared her throat. “I agree with what you said earlier, Mars. We’ll have to work together if we want to resist, and I promise that as long as I’m the leader, I won’t give in to the enemy.”
Mars stared at her, the seconds increasing uncomfortably, until he turned to Kay.
“Honestly, I don’t like her attitude, but we’ve got to trust someone.” Then he dropped a sentence she’d never heard from a game tester before. “I don’t feel confident enough to keep us both safe.”
“We’re going to start with our base, then.” Jinn took her map, Kay’s map, and Mars’ map and placed them together. “Kay, you said you knew of a few places?”
“Well, Briny Breeze is one of them,” said Kay, leaning over the table and pointing at the area on Jinn’s map. “It doesn’t have a fresh water source nearby, but it has lots of places to scavenge, and there are animals to hunt in the forest.”
“Looks like a good place to make a base.” Mars nodded. “I’m game.”
“Well, I’m not,” muttered Jinn. If Saul was still alive, he’d be at Briny Breeze. Tom certainly was, and she was still on his shit list even though he hadn’t actually died. Neither of them compared to Dan, though. “Briny’s out.”
Two incredulous faces stared at her.
“What? Why?”
“It’s nearby, too.”
Jinn took the pen and crossed out the settlement. After a few seconds, the ink faded away and there was a giant X under the name.
“Trust me, we don’t want to go there.” Her eyes were already scanning to see where fresh water was. North Narrow Passage Ranger Station. That name sounded familiar... Where had she seen it before? “Here.” She tapped the place on the map.
“Why?” Mars used his outstretched thumb and pinky to measure the distance. “That’s got to be at least a few days’ walk from here.”
“It’s nestled in the mountains, which means it’s going to have fresh water when it snows. It’s also going to have a good defense since it looks like the walls are half made of mountainside.” And hopefully the area wouldn’t be too cold in winter. Concern about her mutation surfaced in her mind even as she tried to forget it. “There’s also forest on one side, which will mean hunting. And there’s a lake too, for fishing or useful water. Bathing, boiling... for the likes of that.”
“Do we really want to take the time to make a new base? You’ve got Birney, and that’s closer.”
“Briny doesn’t have a good defense going for it.” She looked at the maps again. “Besides, the Narrow Passage Ranger Station is next to an old junkyard. That’s going to be useful.” A part of her mind started thinking about what they could make, depending on the junk that was there. “Trust me.”
She regretted saying those two words as soon as they slipped out of her mouth. That was likely to get them thinking about what she’d said earlier. But her two new companions looked at each other, and with varying degrees of resignation, nodded.
Jinn smiled. This was going exactly how she wanted it to.
“First things first. We’re going to loot this diner and every building we see from here to the new base. Get ready to be a pack mule.”