Neb’s head was still spinning and it was hard to focus on the box. He ran his fingers over it. It looked and felt like natural wood, and yet he was certain it was not. Each edge and corner was of absolutely perfect precision, and on Earth the box alone would be a priceless Main artifact. Everyone watched him intently, and when he glanced up he saw a range of emotions in the six gazes.

He lifted the lid gently. The box was large, but inside there were only two rounds of ammunition. They were made entirely of a matt-black Main material, but their shape was unmistakable. Neb picked one up and turned it in his fingers. The overlay description read: A non-standard Main-issued pistol round.

‘What’s that for, Doc?’ Buzz asked.

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

Which was technically true. But he could make a pretty good guess. Faintly outlined in the lining of the box was the shape of a pistol, but it was missing a trigger.

‘Well,’ Buzz said, ‘it might become clear.’ He looked to Ver. ‘Anything else for us?’

‘Nothing from me, Commander,’ the avatar said.

‘Okay then,’ Buzz said. ‘Let’s talk about the new military base.’

They began by reviewing its location in detail on the map, and then talking through various approach options and strategic plays. Would other players see it and also try to go there? The conversation dragged on for a long time, long enough for Neb to lose interest and feel the creeping tiredness start to overtake him. What he wanted now was to be alone. Properly alone. Door locked. No Anna or anyone else. Just him and the silence and the non-gun artifact.

At last, with not much over four hours left on the hotel clock, Buzz dismissed them to get some rest. Neb tried not to be the first person to leave, but he was anyway. He felt sick with exhaustion, tiredness crawling over his skin. He went to his room and closed the door and locked the bolt firmly. He saw there was a deadbolt lower down, and he locked that too. Fuck her. He should never have let himself get mixed up with her. She was way too much for him to handle. Let her choose whatever skill she fucking wanted.

He lay down on the bed and took out the artifact. It fit perfectly in the Game Box along with the two rounds, as he had been certain it would. He took it out and activated it using the control dials, the sides lighting up with the golden glow. He had hoped there would be some change in the non-gun’s behavior due to the presence of the rounds, but there was nothing obvious. He adjusted the settings, searching for a pattern, slow and patient as ever, even in the face of total confusion. That was what it meant to be a Main scholar, after all -- confused, lost, starved for information, but endlessly fascinated.

He was not sure how long he had been looking at the artifact and trying to see where the rounds might fit into the picture when he looked up to see Anna watching him.

He met her gaze without saying anything, and then looked to the door with its open bolt.

‘We really must talk about locks,’ he said.

‘They’re mostly decorative,’ she said. ‘I guess the assumption is we’re all friends here.’

‘Yeah,’ he said evenly. ‘I thought we were.’ He held the artifact in his hands, turning it over, half looking at the symbols, half looking at nothing.

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‘You don’t think I should have chosen the Main Seeker skill,’ Anna said. ‘You think I’m trespassing in your world.’

He sighed. It was dispiriting how well she could read him. ‘I was surprised,’ he answered carefully.

‘You should take it as a compliment,’ she said, stepping forward. ‘I saw how successful that strategy has been for you, and I copied it.’

‘It’s not a strategy for me, though, Anna,’ he said, standing up to face her. ‘I have studied the Main all my life. This whole mission for me is about learning more about them. I don’t have a fucking… strategy. I’m not trying to out-compete the rest of you.’

‘Well, Neb, you better get a fucking strategy,’ she snapped, and he almost winced. ‘This is a fight for survival. Whatever infinitesimal chance we have of getting off this Circle, we need to take every opportunity we can get. As a team, and as individuals.’

He looked down at the non-gun in his hands. He knew the feeling of every millimeter of it now, as if he had grown up with it. ‘Why are you here at the Game, Anna?’ he asked quietly. ‘Why did you even take this one-way trip? What happened at Marindine?’

The name landed on her like a slap. Even Anna’s reserve was not enough to fully hide it.

‘Bad things happened there,’ she said, after a beat. ‘Just like bad things are happening here. The universe is a fucked up place, Doc.’

Silence descended onto the room, thick and heavy. The anger he had felt was draining away, and as it receded he saw it was unjustified. For Buzz and Anna, as leaders of the team, of course it made sense to diversify Main knowledge across more than one person. Of course it did. Neb, from their point of view, was a 20 HP liability. He could be snuffed out at any moment. Anna was the next obvious choice. And for Anna herself, why would she not want to discover Main secrets and rise more quickly through the levels, as Neb had done?

He put down the artifact. ‘Anna…’ he started to say, but she spoke at the same moment.

‘Goodnight, Neb,’ she said. ‘Good luck with the artifact.’

She slipped out the door and closed it quietly behind her. He stayed very still, listening intently, trying to divine by sound where she was going. But he knew where she was going. He didn’t need to hear anything. She’s cold, he heard Gray saying, almost as if she was in the room with him. Be careful.

He stood abruptly, trying to release the tension.

Fuck it. To distract himself from the mental images that now arose like intruders in his mind, he picked up the Game Box and examined it minutely for about the hundredth time. He turned it in his hands, running his thumb along the sharp edges. He had for a while convinced himself it was made out of an exotic wood, but now he was back to believing it was metal, albeit a metal suffused with some kind of organic properties. He turned it again, and then paused on the lid. There was a finely-etched geometric pattern there of repeated hexagons which he had already noticed. It was very faint, but now something about the light in the room, or perhaps his defensively over-focused mental state, made him notice something else. Woven in amongst the hexagons were three Main symbols, easy to miss at a casual glance but impossible to unsee once you had seen them. He recognized them at once -- they were the same symbols as on the dials of the artifact. He was still running the tip of his finger over the delicate curves when his Main Scholar skill triggered.

His breath caught in his chest. The skill had tagged the third of the three symbols, the one that Neb still did not know. The description read: Local maximum or defined state. He knew all three symbols now! Location, integers with energy, and local maximum. All of these things must be linked, somehow. But in what way? And what the hell did it mean by ‘local maximum’? The answer to what the artifact was for seemed tantalizingly close, yet was still a complete mystery.

Neb lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling and thought he would never sleep. His last thought was: At least I am not thinking about Anna. Then he was opening his eyes and the light of early morning was filtering in and Meathead was pounding on the door yelling: ‘Move it Doc, it’s fucking Game time!’