She was dead.

David Cameron had been told, and had believed, that every live tester had been logged out of Wild West. The notice was given out two weeks ago. Records had been made by the development team and signed off. He was supposed to be the only living being in the interactive simulation.

A fly crawled from the woman's open mouth and over her sightless eyes. Her blood had long since begun to dry on the floorboards. Nothing was left of the back of her skull. The sun peering through the shuttered windows felt similar what came through those in his office.

"If it gets too real, log out. Understand?" June was usually one to goof around, but David had never seen his superior's face so grave. The interactive suits were known to have potentially dire risks unless handled with care; he recalled reading the fine print with his lawyer's assistance.

He recalled that now that he couldn't log out. He felt the VR suit that covered his flesh a world away respond. The chime to warn of disengagement from the interaction sounding in his left ear, the smell of his coffee, the break that signaled he was free, none of that happened. Instead, a dark, cold wall sparked through his suit and nearly iced the tissue of his lungs.

Dread worked its way from his heart to his spine as the sensation passed.

David inhaled the stale odor of old beer and dust, seasoned with the coppery tang of blood, and tried to quell the wave of panic rising in his throat.

Perhaps there was a mistake, maybe the last scheduled beta test was delayed. But the way the corpse's curled fingers clutched at the cool morning air told a different story, and the creak of the saloon door made him reach for an empty holster before he immediately felt foolish.

They hadn't worked weaponry into the game yet.

And I'm not the only one trapped here!

"Morning, Sheriff." Jim Bailey--he thought that was the player's assumed name--raised a hand to tip his hat in a greeting before he froze. "Oh my God. What the hell happened?" The farmer's voice cracked, his stereotypical drawl dropped. He could hear the younger man inhabiting the character's skin. "Is that--?"

"I don't know who it is." He glanced up. "I thought everybody was told to leave."

"They were?" He had to be one of the kids Softech had recruited. This was likely his first testing job. He tried to fumble for the place his VR helmet would have been and swore sharply. "It's not letting me out! I can't get the hell out! There's this thing, this wall, and it's cutting me off from outside!"

"Jim. Jim!" He had to raise his voice. Raw terror had a way of catching. "How many more people are logged in right now with you?"

"I-I'm the only one from my team." Jim shifted from one foot to the other. "What the hell is going on?"

"I don't know," he was forced to repeat. "I've only been logged in for two hours." Another thought occurred to him. "Did you know her?"

The boy in Jim's artificial skin leaned closer to inspect. "N--Maybe?"

"Which one is it, no or maybe?"

"I think..." He took the handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it over his nose, a gesture he managed with shaking hands. He had to know, the same way David did, of the danger involved. "I think her name was Becca. On the second team. Yeah. Becca. We got coffee together last month."

"And how did that go?"

The kid looked up at him. "You think I would--I don't know how to sabotage somebody's suit, man! And if anything, you're the one with higher security clearance!"

"What's your name? Your real one."

"Andy. Andy Smythe."

He thought he recognized the name but--"Give me your hand."

"Wh-Why?"

"I need to see if I can read your clearance."

Andy stepped up with some hesitation but finally offered his palm. Under the contrived calluses of a working character, he could almost feel smooth, clammy flesh. While the suit sputtered a bit, he could see information come up in the small screen over his left eye.

Andy released his hand with a grunt. "Happy now? Jesus. I'd never hurt Becca. Why do you think we're stuck here?"

"One, I'm ruling everything out. Two, I'm not sure, but I did feel that same wall you did. It was probably malicious code trying to keep us in or an error. I'm going to need to look around to find the source. Give me some help." No sign of the blackness he'd felt when he went to log out. If the block came from the game, inside or out, he doubted Andy had the intelligence or enough of a conniving nature to pull it off.

Dust coated his fingertips as he ran them over old bottles, tables and countertops. The interface had yet to become advanced enough to allow for anything resembling eating or drinking, but props added to the realism. The places where people sat didn't have such filth. A fresh thrill of cold pulsed through his heart. That too was new.

Log out.

He swallowed as he turned to Andy. "Find anything?"

"No. Not over here."

Bookshelves, the front door, some of the back rooms, all empty and devoid of that feeling. That left one place for him to look before he moved on.

He knelt. He could see the film on her eyes and the bloat in her abdomen. David swallowed back the urge to be ill and touched the dead woman's hand.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Nothing, no signs of a suit to give her data to share with him, of life, no information on who she was. Had been. A scattering of feathers from her clothes dappled the floor, purple in the strengthening light. He checked her pockets.

All of her items were there.

He wasn't sure why he reached down to touch the largest of the feathers next, but when his fingertip made contact--.

--she screamed as something like ink itself erupted from a dark figure's face and writhed over her like a living sea. she convulsed as it went past her eyeballs and into her mouth. numbers streamed like pieces of glitter from the mass, all code. something hollow bounced close by, near her feet and clacked--

David shuddered. A shaking breath heaved from his lungs. For a moment he thought he might be sick again or pass out.

"Sheriff?" Andy sounded younger in his fright. "Is something wrong?"

"I..." He swallowed bile. "I think I found something. A trace of the code keeping us in here in this feather. It feels elaborate, so this is probably inside work. Downloading something this large and complicated from the outside would take more than the week it's been since the last time I was logged in here like this. I can't sense anything else in here, so whoever did it probably moved on."

That sparked Andy's suspicion. "How do you know?"

"I saw some of the code, and she's dead. Outside, real-world dead. I'll see if I can run it and determine an origin. And please, call me David."

**

The passage of time inside one of the virtual suits was an odd thing. Sleeping inside of it was not recommended, and every few hours the player was supposed to disconnect.

Instead, Andy's hand clamped down on his shoulder to shake him. The grip was hard with fear. "Sh--David?"

He roused with a groan. "I'll get the report done, June, I just need..." He let out a breath when he opened sticky eyes to see who was above him. "God."

"Nope, but as close as you'll ever see. Thank God you woke up. I thought for a minute you, uh." He was relieved to hear the levity in Andy's tone. He wasn't sharing the game with someone who'd lost his mind.

Yet.

He shook his head. "No."

"Did you crack the code yet?" The younger man's anxiety came back quickly.

"I can't." David removed his hat and ran his hands through his hair. "But I think it's probably a hacker in here with us. Do you remember that kid from the East Coast who tried to jack people's items before we closed the beta?"

"You think it's a situation like that?"

"Yeah, but on a much more massive scale." He didn't want to tell the other man what his exact suspicions were. Becca had to have been at least at level thirty power when she'd met her demise. He wasn't even that high, and Andy was nowhere near that.

"What are you going to do then?"

David stood. The cracking of his old back injury reminded him that he was not, actually, a young gunslinging sheriff of twenty-five but a dumpy man entering middle age. "Determine what the code is on the way to finding its source and crack it, hopefully."

"What if we're in here for days? Weeks?" Andy lowered his voice. "I need to pee."

"I'm sure June won't mind if you ruin one suit," he told him over his shoulder as he headed for the door. "Kaz made them anyway."

"The dirtbag on the ground floor that wants her number?"

"Very same one."

Andy gave him a mock salute. "I'll hold the fort down here for you, Sheriff. Find that code." He sobered. "Please."

**

Part of the feather he took from the pool of blood broke off, its one remaining section brown in the early afternoon light. Fast travel across the map face had also been disabled to better discover game bugs in each section. Dirt from the packed roads threatened to travel up his nose and into his mouth, urging him to press his handkerchief over them to breathe.

Just before he'd left, he tried once again to log out. This time, the black wall had all but taken his breath. He'd needed to sit outside before he dragged in enough air to pick himself up. The next town he could visit was called Antheim, and he saw it as the first tendrils of twilight showed in the sky.

The saloon there wasn't too different than the one he'd appeared at, save for the bar maids wearing costumes of different colors. He ignored their offers for items until they went away and tried to focus on the feather now tucked inside the handkerchief his pocket. As he brushed material, his mind hazed again. Violet fogged across his vision.

Numbers floated, ghosts above heads. Real names, aliases, character strength.

An all-seeing hack. Even the coding for the walls stuck out like sharp brands against his eye interface. The numbers wavered like water.

Everyone here is low-level. Less likely to get a hacker's attention. Everyone here must not have heard yet. But if this person's not after items, and they're player killing--

His suspicion turned to a rock inside his chest. His muscles felt weak for a moment, and it was all he could do to get up and walk out as if everything was normal.

This person could have erased traces of anything amiss. Why are they letting me follow them?

There was one more town with high-level quests still enabled for the beta test. That had to be where the hacker had set up shop.

Every hour he stayed in the game was another hour added to the risk of his never getting out alive.

David hurried.

**

St. Erasmus was the last town enabled in the beta. Buildings were ramshackle. The last time David had run a test there, the code was buggy. Sure enough, another touch of the feather told him that the characters that congregated here were of a much higher level.

Deep down, he knew he was running into a trap, but he slid onto a bar stool and ordered an ale as if he couldn't taste it when he took a sip. No one seemed to carry traces of the malicious code within their own, not that he could see.

Or the hacker could be hiding. He scanned faces for distortion, anything that didn't belong. Of course, nothing jutted out. He hadn't expected it to.

"Up for a game?"

The call from the corner caught his attention. Seated around a table were several men, all of whom were gathered around a wooden board set in the middle of a small table.

"Naw. Fixing to head out soon." David made sure to remain in-character as he tilted his hat. "Time for me to move on."

"Come on, David." The man's voice changed. "You've been playing with me this entire time, what's one more game?"

Something frozen seized David's limbs. The men around the table changed as well, as if to wax. He didn't recognize the voice coming from the dealer. It wasn't anyone he'd worked with. Yet, his tone seemed familiar, as if he'd heard it somewhere before.

The walls, covered in numbers, washed red. The seat under his jeans felt less like woven cane and more like faux leather.

For a glimmer, he could see his office. His coffee cup, his computer screen.

The hacker smiled with different faces. Becca's first. Another he didn't know. The visages of each person in the room they were trapped in, each person from Anheim.

Scarred hands moved marbles across the wooden board. One fell to the floor with a hollow clack.

"Whoops." He grinned with Becca's teeth and watched him with Andy's eyes. "Can't lose our marbles before Pachisi's begun, can we?" He leaned closer. "I've been waiting such a long time, and now I'm ready. I hope you are too."

The more the man spoke, the more his voice became familiar.

He was real the whole time.

David Cameron played his final game and lost.

He wasn't surprised.

**

His eyes hadn't seen true light in almost twenty years.

With the making of the first virtual reality simulation, Craig Manheim, said to be a genius of VR, was said to have died in an accident related to his game suit. His body was buried one rainy Wednesday. His family moved away.

His consciousness remained.

He turned the microfiche machine off and staggered out of the dim library, back to his office, back to the computer he'd stolen from its rightful owner. He'd just wanted to gather strength enough to possess a body long enough to see what happened to his family, but now...

Craig tapped a few commands into David's computer. The way the other man had looked at him just before he'd taken his body was heartbreaking.

But Craig had what he wanted. Everyone in the VR department was frozen inside the game, never to come out again.

Tapping one final key with his newly-scarred finger, he got up from David's chair.

Game deleted.