FEBRUARY 21st, 2022

ATHENA I

I gripped my fists tight as I walked away from Dex. It was hard to walk away—to make the decision my mind kept telling me was wrong. But I guess it’s in my nature to ignore that voice. It’s my fault, everything has gone to shit and I can only make things worse. I wouldn’t make it worse for them. After I told him to beat the game for us I just kept on walking. I knew if I stopped I would stop forever.

I didn’t know where I was going, or what I was going to do. I just needed time and some space, but at the same time, I hated both of those things immensely.

People passed by like nothing had changed—like their world has only begun to fall apart. How little they knew. How little they understood just how bad things could get. I didn’t care. I brushed past them and kept on walking. I only stopped when I hit a pond at the edge of town. The water was still and I doubt there was any sort of life inside. I stared at the surface almost begging for another face aside from my own to stare back at me.

I sat down at the water’s edge and swore I felt the smallest gust of wind—I must have been imagining it because the surface of the water didn’t change a bit. I held my hand up to my cheek, feeling the light touch—the same touch that killed Aaron. My whole reason for coming into this stupid game.

I don’t give the thoughts the chance to weaken me anymore. I shifted my legs under me and held my hands down at the edge of the pond and threw my head under. It was immediately cold and my eyes opened wide and my head flew out of the water and I gasped for breath—my body no matter how hard I tried would try to survive. I gritted my teeth and threw myself back under. I wanted so bad for it all to just stop. I started screaming and I could only hear my voice subdued underneath it all. Water filled my lungs and I saw a mahogany headboard and my face connecting with it—I wished to see anything else before it all became nothing. I screamed the rest of what I had to get it away until the world spun all around me.

I was hacking up water that burned my lungs and looking up at the cursed sky above. I was looking up at a figure I couldn’t see clearly. I saw a flash of green and my eyes perked open. Dex?!

“What the hell are you doing?” said a voice that was definitely not his. He came into view and it was a young man she didn’t recognize—he has short black hair with a green streak and brown eyes. His face looked much older, but there was something about him that said that he was younger than he looked.

I had no response for him, and when he didn’t seem to take that as an answer he took a step closer. Instantly I didn’t like that—and I knew he could tell it too because he smiled smally, “Don’t you know how dumb it is to throw your life away in here?” He cocked his head. “When people are trying to stay alive with everything they have—do you know what an insult it is to see someone like you...”

“I don’t have to tell you sh-shit.” I said, shivering. Fuck. I stutter when I’m nervous. God fucking—

“Fine,” he looked away. “Go drown yourself. If you really think it’ll make you hurt less then go ahead. My ex ran in front of a train seven years ago and you know what? She doesn’t feel anything anymore. I do. I have to live with that fact every single day and that is what you will do if you sink your head in that pond one more time. The only thing that happens when you kill yourself is that you give all of your hurt to someone else. There is no heroism and there is no healing in suicide. If you can’t stand up and tell everyone you love face to face that you’re going to do it then you don’t deserve to drown.”

I looked at him with a shocked awe, and for a moment my heart felt like it broke for the last time and I wanted nothing more than to jump into that pond all the way. He was right and I didn’t deserve to live. There wasn’t even anyone I could tell—

Green eyes opened in my mind and my throat caught—silencing the rest of my thoughts. I had told him to win the game for us. That’s what I said to the boy I…

He was going to die here—I’m sure we all were. But he was going to die fighting—doing the right thing—trying to be a hero. It was probably going to be soon—he might have already been dead. He was new to this like I was. He made mistakes—he was sloppy, but he was brave. The real reason I couldn’t stay with them was because I couldn’t bear to watch them die...Klein was strong—he might have lasted a long time, but even he’d be killed by something eventually. And Dex.

That’d be the push that’d send her over the edge she was now toppling on. It would have been too much.

“How...how do I stop...” and I saw that he was going to misunderstand to I corrected, “How do I stop thinking this way? How do I get the thoughts to stop ripping me apart?”

His look softened, “You have to kill them. You stomp it into the ground and tear it into pieces. You tell them to fuck off and you mean it.” He offered a hand, “I know a little bit about this part of the trip down this road. I can help you find your way back.”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

I looked at his hand and I saw Aaron’s face behind his—morphing into my dead brother and there was a slick smile that almost said “you killed me.”

Fuck...Fuck you. It was a barely-manageable thought. I bobbed on the edge of tears as his face vanished and I found myself taking his hand. He helped me up and then I saw the green eyes flash across his—only for a fraction of a second, but it was there. I could have sworn he smiled as it passed, but now his look was neutral.

“My name’s Rafael. What’s yours?”

“Athena,” I covered fast. I wasn’t ready to tell anybody my name in here. A name meant attachment. Names were strong like that.

“Well, it seems that you need to live up to your namesake,” he said. “Because if you can’t you’re handing your ass on a silver platter to the GameMaster. You don’t want that, do you?”

“N-No.”

“Well good then. I’ve been looking for another player to pair up with and I’d like to offer that position to you.”

“Why?”

“Everyone else was taken,” he smiled wanly.

I didn’t laugh.

“Come on, it was a joke. No, I don’t want to see anybody else die. Too many people have already.”

The green flashed in his eyes again. I realized in that moment that I was thinking about him too much. It was paired with the realization that I did want to live. I wanted to get out of here. I wanted so much.

I want to make sure the real person responsible for Aaron’s death is held responsible. I played a part, and he played an even bigger part, but the biggest of all is the GameMaster. The creator of this fucked up world disguised as an escape.

Well I am through with escaping. At least, I’m going to try to be.

“How do I get stronger in here?” I asked. “I want to get as strong as I can be—but I’m not used to how this world works, yet.”

Rafael grinned, “I can most definitely help you with that. I run a game shop out there. We got a demo unit in of the Oculus back before all this shit happened—y’know, things to keep the kids interested while the parents looked around. Although I can say that kind of VR is a lot different than the Adatech, of course. It’s one thing to be immersed visually—a whole ‘nother kind to have your whole body thrown into the mix.”

“Whatever kind it is it’s definitely much harder to move than in real life,” I said. “I’ve managed walking obviously, but anything more is...”

“A struggle, I’m sure.”

I didn’t comment. Struggle was putting it lightly. It was a struggle that had to be overcome, or I would die. It was that simple.

I bit my lip as I stood back to my feet. Rafael slammed a fist into the bridge of my nose—a blow that would have broken it in the real world. Instead, I only fell back onto one knee and gritted my teeth.

“Come on! If you can’t take what I’m dishing out how do you think you’ll be able to take anything else?” Rafael screamed. His face was soaked in sweat. He slammed his head forward into my skull and searing pain ripped through my head. It broke my ground. My chin slammed against the ground and colored spots seeped into my vision. My knees bent and toes gripped on the ground—I made a motion to push off and up. I bounced upward and reeled back—narrowly avoiding a swift kick to the head.

“Just because you can dodge one kick doesn’t mean you get to rest easy!” he called. He was on me in seconds and grabbed a fistful of my hair. I bared my teeth as his grip tightened and he yanked downward. “It’s a fatal mistake to let the enemy anywhere close to your hair. They will not hesitate to take advantage of this if they can.”

He pulled again and I couldn’t help but let loose a cry. I sent out a kick which caught him in the shin, but he didn’t flinch any. I tried again, but harder this time, but he took a step back—dragging me with him. The pain was ripping through my brain, and then he punched me in the face. My arms dangled loose in front of me. The adrenaline was gone. All of it was gone. He dropped me and I fell to the ground, crying.

“That’s it? You seemed like you had way more fire than that in you. You seemed like you really wanted to live.”

I sat there in what would have been a pool of my own blood and tears and thought about Aaron—the boy who taught me all the little tricks he knew in the games we played. Who held me when I thought I had no-one. Who was now gone.

Rafael lent his hand to help me up, and surprising even myself, I took it. I held him close.

But I didn’t stop crying.

~...~

People had since scattered since Aaron’s death—many of them had gone onto the second floor. Word has since traveled back that a group of players had managed to successfully defeat the boss of the floor, but I haven’t heard specifically what it was. Silently I hoped it wasn’t another player like Aaron.

We haven’t gone up—I’m still not strong enough to protect myself. But part of me knows that if I went up there I would find a new hurt next to the hurt Aaron had left. A parallel pain and I knew I couldn’t take it. But why must there be a pain for a boy I barely knew? That kind of feeling wasn’t deserving of a boy—even with history.

I closed my eyes and through the darkness pierced vibrant green eyes. Something in the way those eyes looked at me...they haunted me. And they probably belonged to a boy who was now dead.

I turned to see Rafael’s slumped body under the covers. We’d retired to the inn beside Gregor’s Armory after our last practice. I didn’t want to share a room, but he insisted. I closed my eyes again and again saw those terrible green eyes. They wouldn’t blink—wouldn’t look away. They kept seeing me as a nasty brother-killer. They were horrible.

I did everything I could to stop them from looking at me. I turned back to Rafael and grabbed him underneath the sheets. Anything to avert the emerald gaze.

His eyes opened wide and he looked at me with surprise and then immediate excitement. I couldn’t bear to look at them, but I couldn’t bare to look at the eyes in the darkness either so I kept them open.

I saw everything.