‘Well spit it out, goddammit,’ Buzz snapped. Neb swallowed awkwardly. Buzz’s blue eyes really were quite something in their intensity, he thought. The man had been born to run interrogations.

‘There’s, um…’ Neb began. ‘Some things, uh... First, the military installation is clearly marked on the map and labeled in Cluster Common, but almost everything else is vague and labeled with Main symbols. And, um… This forest -- we’re not supposed to believe this is a real forest, as such. It’s clearly a manufactured environment.’

Buzz stared at Neb, eyebrows raised. ‘We already know this is an augmented reality,’ he said, not hiding his irritation. ‘The forests can look any fucking way they want. Fuck me Doc, you feeling okay?’

‘Yes sir… But everything else looks how it should look,’ Neb pushed on, his tongue feeling thick and awkward in his mouth. ‘I mean, it looks like how it would on Earth, more or less. But this forest is not like that. It’s, uh… It repeats. It’s manufactured.’

‘Son,’ Buzz said, his eyes gleaming. ‘You better get your shit together in the next five fucking seconds. What the fuck are you talking about?’

Neb took a deep breath. The pressure of the moment and the half-formed nature of his ideas were forming a perfect storm of vagueness. ‘There’s a shaded area on the map,’ he continued, trying to keep the shakiness from his voice. ‘We’re already deep into it. And it’s marked with a Main symbol. Scholars at home think it means collection. But… On the real planet R-176, where the real Banker’s house is, this area is just rocks. But there are indications of foundations for other structures -- strange structures, single large spaces without any individual rooms.’

‘We don’t fucking have time for this,’ Buzz said, turning away. ‘Let’s move out.’

‘Neb,’ Anna said, coming to stand beside him. ‘What are you saying this area is? What is here?’

Being the sole focus of her unrelentingly perfect gaze also did not help his general state.

‘I think…’ he stammered. ‘There’s a theory from Main scholars that the constructions were cages. And now being here, seeing it all, seeing the cynobugs… I’m willing to bet they were right. And I bet the symbol on the map doesn’t mean collection -- it means zoo.’ He felt a sense of relief that his ideas were coming together, and went on in a rush. ‘I think we’re in the Banker’s zoo. That’s why the trees are weird -- they’re not meant to be natural, they’re aesthetic. They reflect how the Banker created the zoo. And that’s why the map is shaded. It means stay away from here. And that’s why the military installation is so clearly marked -- it’s a lure. The Game is fucking with us, tempting us to go this way while also giving us a little hint that we shouldn’t. I bet…’ -- he took another deep breath, knowing this would be the craziest part of all to the others -- ‘that we should go to the library. In the north-east corner of the map. Marked with a Main symbol.’

There was silence. Buzz looked from Anna to Neb. But Neb had his attention now.

‘Library,’ Buzz repeated. ‘Why?’

‘Just… The Game is testing us. Sending us one way, showing us another. Back at the Banker’s house, Ver said to us that everything in the Game is intentional. I believe the library is the correct destination, that the Game wants us to pursue knowledge.’

Buzz stared at Neb, then looked into space, thinking.

‘You have no proof though,’ he said.

‘No sir.’

Buzz looked to Anna. ‘What do you think?’

‘What the Doc is saying sounds reasonable,’ she said. ‘But the library is far from anywhere, in the opposite direction to the gate. And we still have basically no weapons or ammo.’

Buzz turned back to Neb. ‘This zoo,’ he said. ‘What do Earth scholars know about it?’

Neb frowned, trying to remember. Never in his wildest imaginings in his old life would he have pictured a situation where recalling this kind of academic information would be life or death. His glance flicked from Anna’s crystal beauty to Buzz’s scarred face of a thousand wars, and he decided it was easier to just look at the space between them.

‘The foundations of about thirty structures were discovered adjacent to the Banker’s House on R-176,’ he said. ‘They were mostly square-shaped, and varied in size from about five meters a side to 25 meters.’ Talking about Main history was familiar enough to help him regain a sense of control, and his voice evened out. ‘The original structures had been completely obliterated in whatever event also damaged the house and the surrounding terraformed area. The remains did not indicate enough material for significant structural mass, hence the idea that the original structures were cages, which would explain the low overall mass.’

‘Seems thin,’ Buzz said, and Neb was forcibly reminded of an old professor he had been very intimidated by.

‘In the study of the Main, we work with what data we can find,’ he answered evenly. ‘There’s never a lot.’

Buzz stared at Neb as if evaluating him as a person rather than the information he was providing. ‘What kinds of things were in the cages?’ he asked.

‘We don’t know,’ Neb said. ‘Extensive study never found any organic remains. But I wouldn’t be surprised if here in the Game, we already saw some of the zoo’s occupants -- the cynobugs.’

Buzz paused for a long moment, thinking. ‘The library,’ he asked. ‘Do we know anything about that?’

‘Only that it’s shown on the map marked with a Main symbol, and it’s far away,’ Neb said. ‘But I think that --’

‘Okay then,’ Buzz interrupted. It was evident he had made a decision, a process that happened very quickly. ‘What the doc’s saying makes sense. But even if he’s right, we still have a major fucking problem: weapons and ammo. And lure or not, the military base is the most likely place we can solve that problem. The library is at least twenty clicks away in the wrong direction, away from the gate to Circle Two, through fuck knows what kind of territory. So Doc, while your objection is noted, what I’m saying is: Get your asses ready for a day out at the zoo.’

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

There was not a hint of further questioning, from Neb or anyone else. They just slotted back into their formation and got moving again. Field operations were almost inconceivably different to the academic circles he had moved in, Neb thought, where the simplest thing could be debated forever. He glanced ahead to Buzz, walking at the head of the line. Leadership was a heavy weight to carry. If people died up ahead in the zoo somewhere, would that make the decision wrong? Because Buzz’s argument was hard to argue with -- they could easily push for the library and find it was just a pointless diversion, or encounter disaster on the way.

The land began to slope upwards as they walked, a gentle incline that rose steadily. The trees maintained their scattered patterns but the gaps between them grew larger. They did not hear or see any creature or other players. After an hour or so the forest thinned out and then stopped abruptly at a defined edge, as if the designer had just got tired of placing trees. They stopped at the top of a high bluff, looking out on a plane below, and at first couldn’t make sense of what they were seeing.

The plane was dotted with creatures who at first glance seemed to be close by. But as the team looked more closely they realized that the creatures were actually in the middle distance, and were absolutely huge, as large as buildings. They had four huge legs like round towers, and a small head on a long neck. There were at least fifty of the creatures, the furthest away ones grayed with distance. Neb tried to examine one with his overlay but they were too far away to register.

‘Are they dinosaurs?’ Meathead asked. ‘That is wild.’

No-one answered. They certainly looked like dinosaurs, and they seemed peaceful. But they had already learned not to trust the Game world.

As Neb looked down on the plane something else caught his eye, a metallic glint. Even though he could not see it clearly in the long grass, he was certain he knew what it was: A cage.

‘Could they be escaped zoo creatures?’ Mallory suggested, looking out at the plane and shading his eyes. He and Meathead were standing side by side, and Meathead had the plasma cannon in his hands.

‘I don’t think so,’ Buzz said. ‘Doc -- you said the largest cages were twenty-five meters square?’

‘That’s right,’ Neb confirmed.

‘Well you’re not fitting one of these fuckers in there,’ Buzz said. ‘They’d need a spacecraft hanger.’

‘So what, then?’ Gray asked. ‘Just random?’

No-one had an answer.

Then Mallory said: ‘Oh fuck!’ He looked around at the others. ‘I bet they’re food. For the zoo creatures. Or at least, that’s how they started out.’

Neb felt at once Mallory was right, and the thought made his stomach queasy.

‘Fuck me,’ Meathead said. ‘So whatever was in those cages…’

‘...must be pretty fucking big,’ Gray said.

‘Or there were a lot of them,’ Mallory said. ‘Like, a fuckload.’

‘And if they’re still around, they could be anywhere in that grass down there,’ Gray finished. ‘Fuck.’

They were silent.

‘Well,’ Buzz said. ‘We’re never going to know what’s in that grass, because we’re never fucking going down there. Let’s break due east, back into the trees, and go the long way around to the military base, closer to the main road. At least on the road, we can see what’s coming. Clear?’

‘Yes sir,’ they all said.

Going back in amongst the trees after getting a glimpse of the wide open space felt claustrophobic and unwelcome. They kept to the same formation as before. It was a long way to the east side of the shaded area on the map, and Buzz led them at a faster pace. The day was still bright, but for the first time Neb started wonder how much daylight was left.

It wasn’t long before Neb found his body heating up, sweat forming on his brow. When he had started training with these guys two years ago he was not even close to being able to keep up on marches like this. They had given him endless grief for it. And yet even outside of Meathead being officially assigned to kick Neb’s ass around the gym every day, the others had quietly offered help with training, diet, recovery, mental toughness. They had brought him up to something close to their level, which to Neb had been a minor miracle. Jasper in particular had often been kind and encouraging, and Neb felt another flash of pain at his death.

This fucking Game, he thought. All Neb’s life, since the earliest stories he could remember from his father, he had been fascinated by the Main. Neb’s adult studies and scholarship had, of course, shown him another side to Main history, one of violence and conquest and control. But he had always told himself that it had to be that way, that the Main had needed to defend themselves against the other civilisations of their day, even if they themselves were elevated beyond those petty conflicts. But now, looking at the Game, thinking about the kind of people who would create such a thing, it was hard to escape some dark conclusions. What was it supposed to be about, even? Was it just some form of fucked up entertainment, like the colosseum of ancient Earth history? Or was it somehow something even worse? For the first time in his life he felt something new about the Main: Fear.

Another hour slipped by. Neb was really feeling the pace now. The others could do this basically forever, he knew, as if they were strolling down a city street. But even with all his additional training Neb felt a heavy tiredness building in his legs. He tried to keep scanning the world around them like the rest of the team was doing, ready for anything. But he kept finding himself drawn into his own thoughts, remembering moments from his past, conversations he’d had, people he’d known. Poor fucking Jasper. Poor all of them, really, trapped in a mechanism they had no hope of ever escaping, not able to --

Neb didn’t have even the vaguest sense that they were walking into an ambush until a humanoid man stepped out of the bushes and stabbed Buzz right in the chest with a sword. Buzz fell at once, blood spurting.

‘POSITIONS!’ Anna screamed instantly, but the team was already in motion. The attacker was tall and humanoid and dark green in color, blending with the background. He had a broad upper body and legs that were small in comparison, but still stocky and powerful. His face was sharply angular, his eyes large and almost bulging. His hands were like human hands but sharper and more pointed. Goblin, Neb thought at once. He was vaguely aware such civs existed in the Cluster.

‘FALL BACK!’ Mallory roared. He opened up with his pistol and Meathead raised the plasma cannon. But in the fraction of a second they needed to aim and fire, the creature moved with incredible swiftness back into the cover of the trees. The forest was thick and dark here, the trees closer together. Like it was fucking meant for an ambush, Neb thought. He swung his pistol left and right, heart pounding, looking for a target, guarding his assigned sector of their perimeter. They had sleep-walked right into this situation, he thought, and he mentally kicked himself for not being more alert.

Meathead opened up with the plasma cannon with a huge vooovvvv sound, spraying an arc around them at their unseen enemy until it seemed like half the forest was on fire.

‘Hold fire,’ Anna shouted forcefully. ‘We don’t have the ammo for suppression.’

Gray had run to help Buzz, who wasn’t moving. The health bar was visible over his head again, and it read 3/20. She applied their last healing orb and the 30-second timer started over his head.

‘Mallory,’ Anna ordered. ‘Grab him.’

Mallory tossed his pistol to Meathead who caught it left handed, still wielding the plasma cannon in his right. Mallory ran forward and did a head-over-heels roll, and when he came up he somehow had Buzz over his shoulders. Meathead tossed him back his pistol and he caught it one-handed on the run. The whole maneuver took only a few seconds. Neb had seen them practice it many times before, but he was always astonished by how quickly it happened, and how well Mallory could move for such a big man.

They backed up the trail, braced for more contact, but nothing happened. ‘Hold positions,’ Anna ordered. ‘I doubt we’ll have long to --’

Then a wave of both green and reddish-orange goblins was upon them, crashing from the undergrowth with a cacophony of screams, the metal of bladed weapons glinting in the evening light.

Meathead opened up with the plasma cannon, and the forest glowed brightly with flame.