People were shouting, keyboards were clattering, computers sizzled and smoke hissed out of them, men in black suits were hovering over testers with clipboards, and a massive projection broadcast the news on the far wall. The wall-mounted TVs displayed cars and trucks breaking down and crumbling into thousands of pieces, only the shells remained, though some still had seats too, and giant kaiju like beasts roamed cities, destroying everything in their way.

“I cannot believe this is happening,” he always thought the world end due to a mega virus or climate change, but not this.

“Jonas?! You’re back?” his colleague called out.

“Phil you’re alive?! Why is this happening?” he splayed his hands out.

“I don’t know man, our world is dying, everything has gone to shit, modern technology is just falling apart…”

Jonas looked to the men in suits, “What’s their deal?”

“I don’t know man, they’ve been going around making sure we don’t have access to any of our other accounts or characters,” Phil said, looking around cautiously.

A hand clasped Jonas’s shoulder, he winced and looked up, “Exactly as the child of Ibanez888 said…”

Phil snapped up from his chair, “Hey man I’m not a kid, I’m in the last years of high school!”

The man in the suit shot him a glance under his brow, “Sit down,” he commanded. The high school boy collapsed into his shell.

“Is your name Jonas? I see, good. Bring up your account screen please.”

The man in the suit leaned over the desk, peering at the screen, which gave Jonas the time to spy his clipboard, it was curious he was using a paper clipboard in this day and age, but more curious was the details on it, it was all about him, his age, height, sex, school, background, IFO characters and levels, and location… under it was an IP address, subnet, a server symbol and in brackets (Tomb of the Ancients), he paused for a second, brows crossing. “Go to the next screen please,” suit man demanded, a bead of sweat dripped down his face.

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Jonas also spotted words ‘Terminated’ with the check boxes: ‘yes’ and ‘no’ next to it. “Excellent, this all appears to be in order, you will be free to leave once all the testers have returned.” The man said.

Further down the row of VR stations and kid materialised out of thin air. “Agent Donald, there’s one more,” a Suit called out, and agent Donald walk away.

Jonas turned back to his computer, his forehead red. He didn’t look to the side, didn’t make any odd movements, he just typed, and clicked, until all the tester IP address information was in front of him, it was starting to come together. “They did this…” Jonas whispered, his eyes wide.

Phil lent in low, “Did what?”

“They re-configured our IP, Subnet, and IFO server addresses to the same configuration…” his hands reached back, and his forearms embraced his head.

Phil squeezed his face at him, “So what?”

He shot his eyes at Phil, “So what?” his fist clenched. “They planned it all, they sent us to the God’s Tomb, or rather the Tomb of the Ancients, to kill off our characters!”

Phil shook his head, “that doesn’t make sense, couldn’t they have done whatever it is they’d done to our other accounts, and just deleted them?”

Jonas rubbed his forehead, “I don’t know, semantics aren’t important right now, what is important… is we get out of here.” Jonas made his way to the exit.

The Suits stared them down, “No one is allowed to leave until, the process, is complete,” one of the two Suits at the door said.

What? It didn’t make sense, they had gotten what they wanted, why stop them from leaving, there was nothing else they could take from them, or was there? Jonas closed his eyes tight, searching the darkness of his mind for the answer, until they shot open wide.

“We… we need to use the toilet,” Jonas said slowly.

The Suits looked at each other, exchanged expressions.

“Can we use the toilet?” he repeated.

“No, not until the process is complete,” the Suit said, his face mute.

This all but confirmed Jonas’s suspicions. “Come on Phil, let’s head back to our desks,” he eyed the Suits suspiciously, neither shedding a clue to their motives.

“We got to get back there and acquire the loot,” he placed his VR headset on, and tapped a few texts on his phone within his pocket.

“You’re joking right, I don’t think the other guys are too keen to go back there…” Phil’s hand was visibly shaking.

Jonas brought his mum up on his phone and dialled, “Mother? Somethings happened. I don’t think I’ll be able to come home… Just listen… Wait, no, I’m sorry… Just listen for a second!” he shouted, several suits snapped their head towards him, and one of them was walking menacingly in his direction, a hand reaching into his suit.

“Jonas?! Umm… What’s going on?” Phil was hunching low into his desk.

“Mother, get dad and Kiera, pack only the essentials, and…”

“Put the phone and headset down.” The Suit yelled, raising his pistol. “Now!”

Jonas’s neck visibly pulsed. He slowly placed the phone on the desk, a voice could still be heard coming from it, “Joney, Joney honey, are you still there? Please. Please say something?!”

“I love you Mum!” tears streamed down his face, before a gun fired.

  

The suited man bent down and picked up the headset, half of it was blown to pieces.

“They got away.” Another suited man said.

“Doesn’t matter.” He replied, looking at the address on the monitor. “They are insignificant now.”

“What about the rest?” The other suited man gestured to the cowering testers that hadn’t already escaped.

He cocked his pistol. “Process them, then report to HQ.”