"Michelle, I'm begging you, you've gotta believe me!"

If his hands weren't trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey, Kyle would've gladly introduced Annie's flapping gums to the business end of a sock.

The entire trek, his ears had been battered by her broken record impression.

From the second he'd pegged her as Sally's murderer, Annie had been belting out that same refrain, desperate to convince Michelle of her innocence. Too bad Michelle was an immovable object. She'd simply manhandled Kyle out of the chair, hauled him out of the basement fungeon, and carried on like Sally had never darkened her doorstep.

Now they were gunning for the super secret location of the Lither family piggy bank.

Picture this: dead of night, ominous forest, our ragtag bunch of misfits trudging through the gloom.

Michelle was on point, navigating the twists and turns that would supposedly lead to untold riches. Kyle was the filling in the captive sandwich, hands rocking a stylish hemp rope accessory behind his back. Annie brought up the rear, keeping one beady eye on Kyle and the other peeled for any signs of the cavalry riding to the rescue.

Their pace? Glacial was an understatement.

Not because the distaff contingent was lacking in the cardio department. Nah, the bottleneck was one hundred percent Kyle-flavored.

Partially by design. Homeboy wanted to kick any and every can available down the road, buy himself a few precious extra minutes of breathing.

But if he was being real? The corporeal casing he'd woken up in was staging a full-scale rebellion.

Scratch that. Referring to his shiny new meat suit as his own didn't sit right. It was on loan from the artist formerly known as Sir Lither, and from what Kyle could tell, the previous tenant hadn't been big on general maintenance.

Even by Kyle's admittedly pitiful standards - dude was a card-carrying couch potato - his new flesh prison was one stiff breeze away from crumbling to dust. He was giving off serious "consumptive Victorian waif" vibes. A few measly steps above a mosey and his lungs were ready to throw in the towel. Full-body lethargy, a deep-in-the-bones ache that even the Grim Reaper's sweet embrace was starting to look like a half-decent alternative.

All that before factoring in the unholy agony of a intermittent jackhammer doing the merengue against the inside of his skull.

Kyle had the sinking suspicion that even if he managed to pull a Houdini on his captors, he'd probably eat dirt a hot minute into his daring escape. Nothing said "freedom" like getting a mouthful of loam while becoming a tasty lupine snack pack.

Time to pack it in on the solo flight plan.

Busting out under his own steam? Not a snowball's chance.

"Guess we're throwing in with the Lither goon squad."

Kyle didn't bother fighting the wave of fatalistic acceptance.

"Based on a comprehensive analysis of your physical condition, taking into account the residual evidence of trauma, probability indicates you have been in enemy custody for a minimum of seventy-two hours. Lither forces have thus far failed to pinpoint your location and stage a successful extraction, suggesting a concerning lack of tactical capabilities and resources. Conclusion: Depending on an effective Lither-spearheaded rescue presents a mere 10% chance of a favorable outcome."

If Android-powered sleep paralysis had a voice, it would sound a little something like that. A flat,affectless drone that bypassed Kyle's ears entirely to worm directly into the meat of his brain.

He couldn't even drum up a shred of surprise.

The damn thing had been his closest frenemy for the past few hours, coming in hot for the coveted title of "Most Likely to be Mentally Strangled by Kyle." It had burrowed into his psyche and held him hostage, an auditory parasite, from the moment they'd bailed on the torture chamber chic of the basement.

The unwelcome presence had crashed his private mental pity party right around the three hour mark of their little woodland adventure.

He and his new besties had barely crossed the threshold into the great outdoors when, without so much as a by-your-leave, a migraine from the deepest, dankest pit of Hell pimp-slapped him into the stratosphere. Hot on its heels, in waltzed The Voice.

"System initialization in progress. Your patience is appreciated… Greetings, valued user. How may I be of assistance?"

For a hot minute there Kyle thought he'd been punted into yet another cosmic practical joke.

A frantic covert glance-around had him swallowing that theory with a quickness. Michelle and Annie were bumbling along, happy as a pair of homicidal clams, clearly not picking up what his squatter was putting down. Which left him grappling with the very real possibility that he'd gone a bit hinky in the old noggin. Auditory hallucinations were shaping up to be his constant companions in this brave new world.

"You are at liberty to postulate your capacity for rational thought has deteriorated beyond salvage. A logical recourse would be to embrace the sweet release of death. Alternatively, you could dare to dream - could it be you have been graced with the presence of an unparalleled feat of computational advancement, an artificial construct possessed of such vast intellect and resources that it could elevate you from your current predicament and propel you to the very heights of greatness?"

The pest between his ears sure thought a lot of itself.

There was a certain skewed logic there. Hard to poke holes in that reasoning.

A bespoke RPG-esque tutorial doohickey cropping up in his head? Weirder things had happened. Transmigrating into the body of some sickly medieval scrub after kicking it in his crummy apartment was already leagues beyond the pale.

Cheat codes, power-ups, ultimate techniques - bog standard for this kind of gig, right? The jackpot every two-bit isekai protagonist drooled over.

"Alrighty, O Wise and Powerful Cortana-but-Crappier - if you're all that and a bag of chips, riddle me this. What's my best play for giving these nutjobs the slip without pulling a Leonardo DiCaprio and seeing how long it takes to shuffle off this mortal coil to the sweet nothings of Mother Nature?"

Kyle would've crossed his fingers if his hands hadn't been getting cozy with each other behind his back.

"Please press zero to contact a customer assistance representative."

A shimmering numeric display flickered to life, hovering smack dab in the middle of his field of vision.

Kyle barely managed to strangle the full-body spasm that wanted to hurl him face-first into the dirt.

After a few furtive glances confirmed that neither of his new pals were any the wiser to his little holographic overlay, Kyle hopped aboard the train to Spazville. He shimmy-shake-twisted until he managed to boop the offending numeral with the tip of his schnoz.

Nailed it.

"Beep… boop… beep… Thank you for your patience, your estimated wait time is-"

"Hey, Space Odyssey, you hard of hearing? What's my best shot at slipping these psychos without the epilogue starring your friendly neighborhood cadaver hounds?"

Kyle would swear on a stack of Bibles he was keeping his cool.

"Please press zero to contact a customer assistance representative."

Apparently his input was invalid. The keypad cheerfully manifested, blotting out the dense foliage and his captors' weirdly synchronized derrieres.

"…"

Kyle was ready to chalk it up as a big ol' swirly courtesy of Lady Luck. Whichever option he picked, he'd be feeling the cold kiss of steel on his throat before he could say "cheat code from Hell."

He could picture it now - the rogue program, the blinking keypad, his sanity packing its bags for Cabo.

Considering the gruesome twofer of his Hail Mary jaunt across space and time and his VIP invitation to a murder hovel, Kyle figured his mind had every reason to peace out. No judgment here.

Well, he'd had a halfway decent run. Too bad his tenure as "Guy Reborn into Magical Renaissance Faire" had hit the skids before he could do anything cool. Like learn to joust.

Kyle shrugged off the manifestation of his rapidly dwindling grasp on rational thought.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

The voice in his head had all the persistence of a telemarketer on commission.

"Brring brring… You've got mail!"

"Click here to find out fifteen things you never knew about beets. Number eleven will surprise you!"

"In two hundred feet, turn right."

"…Recalculating."

Over the course of their little stroll through the Nightmare Before Christmas, Kyle was pretty sure he'd been battered by more useless notifications than he'd weathered in his entire pre-shuffling-off existence. Eat your heart out, Viagra spam.

Still, for an auditory hallucination, it sure had a wide repertoire of Internet Greatest Hits.

Optimism was for suckers, but maybe he wasn't taking a flying leap off the deep end just yet.

Odds were pretty good that his irritating cerebral hitchhiker had caught a ride straight from his OG universe. Some freak hiccup in the cosmic plumbing during that whole "beam me up, Scotty" routine.

Did it make sense? Nope. Was it likely? Hells to the nope. But sense had waved bye-bye right around the time he'd blinked and found himself hogtied in a grimy dungeon getting worked over by a bunch of jumped-up LARPers, so who was he to split hairs?

Kyle's life had officially hit rock bottom and started to dig.

If this was supposed to be his Get Out of Death Free card - his ultimate power-up, his supernatural leg up, his skeleton key to surviving this circus fun house…

He'd rather take a chance on giving a bear a prostate exam.

"Hey, Siri's uglier cousin, any chance you could put a sock in it for a hot minute? Maybe power down, take a little siesta? Pretty please with a cherry on top?" Kyle figured he might as well shoot his shot.

"I apologize, but that functionality is not currently supported."

Kyle couldn't even muster the energy to flip his inner demon the bird.

"Fantastic. So what, pray tell, are you actually good for, you digital dingleberry?"

"I am equipped with an extensive database," the system chirped, like that was supposed to mean something.

Kyle perked up at that. Huh. Okay, maybe this wasn't a total wash.

Sure, being a walking, talking encyclopedia didn't exactly scream "ultimate cosmic power," but Kyle was stumbling around blind in this bizarro world. For all he knew, a little insider intel could be the difference between life and a horrible, agonizing death.

Maybe access to some all-knowing, all-seeing info-dump was just the power-up he needed to turn this dumpster fire around.

At the very least, it might bump his chances of survival up from "snowball in Hell" to "snowball in a slightly less flame-broiled corner of Hell."

With nothing to lose and everything to gain, Kyle tossed out a question. "Alright, lay it on me. Whatcha got in that big, beautiful brain of yours?"

"Initiating drive search… File located. Accessing file contents. Please standby."

Was it Kyle's imagination, or did the digital demon sound a smidge less like a sentient dial-up tone?

"File accessed successfully… As we embark upon the turbulent seas of our era, we must navigate the tempestuous waters with courage and determination. In this unforgiving urban landscape, we strive relentlessly to achieve our aspirations. On this momentous occasion, it is with great pleasure that we welcome you all to…"

"…"

Kyle's spidey senses started tingling like Mitt Romney at a rap battle. Those lines sounded suspiciously familiar.

Oh no. Oh, hell no. It couldn't be.

The pieces clicked into place like the world's most disappointing jigsaw puzzle.

That was the half-baked word vomit he'd tried to pass off as a "motivational speech" for his boss back in his old life.

"You can shut your digital pie hole now."

The horrible, no good, very bad truth finally Falcon Punched its way through Kyle's thick skull. His alleged "superpower" was nothing more than a crapton of random junk data from his janky old laptop.

Toss in whatever mobile OS updates he'd rage-quit halfway through, and suddenly his annoying backseat driver started to make a weird kind of sense.

Apparently, the universe had decided to scoop up all his digital detritus during his little interdimensional jaunt. Crammed it into his gray matter like the world's worst tech support.

And, just for funsies, slapped on a thin veneer of sentience that seemed dead-set on rickrolling him 24/7 with the most useless bits and bytes of his pre-Isekai existence.

Kyle was ready to wave the white flag. Surrender to his fate as the cosmos' personal chew toy.

Doomed. He was so incredibly doomed.

"Analysis of your speech reveals multiple grammatical errors. Suggested revisions are as follows…"

"Cool story, bro. Now zip it."

Blessed silence reigned for a moment. Then:

"Your writing is bad and you should feel bad."

"Hey, Alexa, what did I just say about zipping it?!"

"System advises that you…"

Kyle cut in before his electronic frenemy could lob another sick burn at his literary prowess. "How about you reroute all that sass into figuring out how to get me out of this mess without dying horribly?"

"…"

Finally, the stupid thing shut its non-existent yap.

Kyle heaved a sigh of relief. Trying to keep his head on straight while saddled with the world's most useless backseat driver was like trying to tap dance through a minefield while juggling chainsaws.

One slip up - one microsecond of breaking character - and Michelle would introduce his head to his shoulders the express way before he could say "Whoopsie daisy."

It was like being trapped in a nightmare mashup of Saw and Survivor. Psycho killers at every turn, a whopping load of diddly squat in the way of tools or weapons, and a giant invisible timer counting down to a Game Over that would make Mortal Kombat look like patty cake.

Oh, and the best part? No respawns. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

But hey, at least Sir Spam-a-Lot had finally powered down. Now, while the quiet lasted, maybe Kyle could rub those last two brain cells together hard enough to spark an idea that didn't end with him experiencing death by a thousand cuts.

"Michelle, I'm begging you, you have to believe me!" Annie's voice wobbled like a drunk on a tightrope.

Kyle barely resisted the urge to Godzilla screech directly into the dirt. He'd take Microsoft Sam beatboxing the entire Bee Movie script over Annie's soap opera bs any day.

"Michelle, I-"

Oh, hell no. Not today, Satan.

Kyle whipped around to face Annie with the kind of grin that would make the Joker tell him to dial it back a notch. "I am going to say this with all the love in my heart - for the love of every deity ever dreamed up by mankind, please, please shut your noise hole before I develop a brain bleed."

Annie reeled back like Kyle had just drop kicked a puppy in front of her. Shock morphed into incandescent rage faster than you could say "anger management issues."

Before Kyle could even blink, he was kissing dirt, courtesy of a combat boot to the back that felt like it was trying to rearrange his vertebrae.

Oh, right. He was held together with spit, prayers, and spite. No way that Jell-O mold he called a body could stay vertical after a love tap from Lizzie Borden's anger-challenged cousin.

Apparently, Annie didn't appreciate his friendly feedback. Shocker.

Insult, meet grievous bodily harm. The sharp crack of a whip chased the stars from his vision, followed by the electric kiss of leather on skin.

Over and over and over. An eternity in each second.

Pain. White-hot, searing, all-consuming agony. He tasted copper as he bit clean through his lip choking back a scream.

Well, one mystery solved. Poor Sir Lither had clearly been beaten out of the gene pool by Calamity Jane over here once the charm offensive stopped working.

Tough break for the poor sap. Like the universe had decided to dump ghost pepper sauce in the paper cut that was being saddled with a body whittled down to the bare minimum specs for existence.

A spark of rage flickered and caught in the screaming vortex of pain. Annie might play the cringing sycophant with Michelle around, but the chick had a sadistic streak wider than the Mariana Trench.

The fact that she had the raw, unmitigated gall to go all Mortal Kombat on his sorry butt right in front of her gal pal? Mind-boggling. The absolute gall of this chick.

And Michelle - freakin' Michelle - just stood there watching like Kyle was a mildly intriguing rerun of Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

"That's enough, Annie. If you keep this up, he's going to die."

Oh, wow, don't strain yourself there, Michelle. Wouldn't want you to pull a muscle from all that aggressive indifference.

"Michelle, no, you don't understand! He's trying to drive a wedge between us! That lying snake - he's just like all the other pompous noble brats. Please, please don't listen to his filthy lies!" Annie tried to bore a hole through Michelle's head with the sheer intensity of her glistening puppy dog eyes. "I swear on my life, on our friendship, I had absolutely nothing to do with what happened to Sally."

Kyle shoved down the bubbling cauldron of imaginary blood raging behind his eyes and struggled to his feet.

Not like he had any other choice. Pulling a Hulk Smash on the Giggling Gang of Psychopaths would just net him an extra fast pass to the Great Dirt Nap.

Didn't mean he couldn't indulge in a catty eye roll inside the safety of his own head.

"Uh, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Little Miss Manson Family say Sally was just missing a hot minute ago? When the heck did we upgrade this to murder?"

Kyle damn near rocketed out of his own skin as the digital peanut gallery piped up out of nowhere.

Once he finished the complicated cardiac gymnastics routine required to coax his heart out of his socks, Kyle ground out, "Y'know, a little heads up would be fan-freakin-tastic before you decide to-"

"Please press zero to speak with a customer service representative."

"… and that's my cue to exit this conversation."

Forcibly tuning out the sentient malware masquerading as a walking, talking "Get Out of Death Free" card, Kyle zeroed in on Michelle. If Little Miss Jim Jones started rethinking her allegiance to the Homicidal Hype Girl, maybe - just maybe - it would buy him a shot at making a break for the proverbial exit.

Hah. Yeah, right. And maybe winged monkeys would fly out of his butt.

Michelle and Annie were clearly racing to see who could get to Crazytown first.

"It's okay, Annie. I believe you." Michelle pulled a full-on anime protagonist move, clasping her sidekick's hands in both of her own.

The homoerotic subtext was so thick, Kyle was pretty sure it had gained sentience and requested they all respect its preferred pronouns.

"We clawed our way out of the muck and the filth of the outermost districts side by side. Survived in the looming shadow of the Church, with nothing but each other to cling to."

Okay, if Michelle kept this up, Kyle was going to have to physically restrain himself from checking for hidden cameras. This was some next-level Hallmark Channel nonsense.

"After everything we've endured, all the trials and tribulations we've faced together, how could I possibly doubt you now?"

Kyle worked his jaw back and forth, hoping the motion would pop his ears and bring him back to the real world. One without a weepy, sapphic soap opera of Guiding Light proportions playing out smack dab in the middle of a freaking kidnapping.

"Michelle, I - I don't -"

Without any warning, Annie cosplayed as a heat-seeking missile, launching herself at Michelle. In a flash, she was sobbing into the taller woman's funereal chic ensemble.

"Annie, sweetie, do you remember what we promised each other all those years ago - the beautiful dream we swore to make a reality?" Michelle's voice had more syrup in it than a truckload of Mrs. Butterworth's.

"With perfect clarity!" Annie wailed, clinging to Michelle like a baby koala with separation anxiety. "One day, come Hell or high water, we'll have our own sovereign nation - a glorious land free from the Church's tyrannical rule! A sanctuary for mages to live and love proudly in the light, liberated from the constant fear of being dragged away in the night to burn for our sins!"

Kyle was pretty sure her caterwauling had a 50/50 chance of summoning every wolf in a twenty-mile radius or shattering his eardrums like sugar glass. Possibly both.

"…"

That was… huh. Alrighty, then.

Putting aside the tonal whiplash from schlocky slasher flick to tear-soaked Lifetime Original Movie, Kyle had to admit it was nice to get a bit of context for whatever fresh hell he'd been dropped into.

So, magic was a thing - a thing that could get your bacon burnt by a bunch of religious nutjobs if you weren't careful. Which seemed to be a feature of this particular universe. Cool, cool, cool. Coolcoolcool. No doubt, no doubt.

Questions? Kyle had a few. Starting with why the homoerotic melodrama had cranked itself up to eleven out of flipping nowhere.

But hey, he wasn't complaining. The more these chuckleheads monologued, the more puzzle pieces he had to work with.

Kyle shook his head, dazed by the whirlwind of feels. Forget the torture and the death threats - the real mindfuck was whatever the hell this was.

"My oh my, such a touching display of sapphic devotion!"

Aaaaand, his last lonely brain cell had officially left the building. Yippee ki yay.