If not for the Seekflower, our journey through the infinite suburbs would’ve been terrifying. We walked for hours on end, with no change in scenery. No sign we had progressed at all. The perpetual rows of vacant houses passed us, appearing from the dense fog ahead of us and fading away behind us. No Sun, or stars, or other landmarks lent us a sense of bearing. The Seekflower alone led us along, like a lifeline in the grasp of blind, desperate men.

Palpable unease prodded at Saber and Tanin, made them silent and stiff with caution. We talked seldom throughout our journey, until James, Tanin's blue-haired warrior teammate, began chatting as we walked.

“No way it isn’t intentional,” James said. “They made Gold the most hostile place to stay in, and then they made it the first place where you can do PvP matches.”

“You think there's intent?” Roger, Tanin’s bearded friend asked.

“Whoever designed this world really wants bloodshed. You wanna get out of here? Better kill a bunch of people to progress. Else, you’ll be stuck for years, if you even survive.”

Roger glanced at James. “You think this place is worse than Bronze?”

“Me, I’d take Bronze any day. If I had to rank them, it’d go Gold, Bronze, Silver, Platinum. Worst to best.”

“You haven’t even been to Plat.”

"Fair."

As we continued on, James explained to us the perils of this realm. It wasn’t just other players trying to kill us.

“You gotta know where to find resources,” he warned. “Water is easy enough, just find a hose in one of these yards. The kicker is food. Sometimes you'll see a fruit tree in someone's front yard. They're rare, but when you really need them, that's how you keep yourself alive."

"Do any of the houses have food inside?" I asked.

James clicked his tongue. "That would make a lot of sense, wouldn't it?"

"They don't?"

"Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't. If you break into a random house, you better hope you don't find food in there."

I frowned in confusion. "...What?"

James licked his lips, then sipped water from the plastic bottle he had on him. "See, some of the houses belong to somebody. And they'll have things to eat in them. And that's fine. The problem is when you go inside a house that doesn't belong to anyone, and there's food inside."

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"Isn't that better though?" I asked. "Since you're not stealing in that case. More like, just foraging."

"You're missing the point," James said. "There are three kinds of houses. First, ones that have an owner. Like the ones you left. Those have stuff inside, to keep the owner alive. Then, there are houses that don't have an owner. They're completely empty. But the third type are houses with a negative number of owners. Or at least, that's how people explain them. Like the first kind, they'll have supplies inside. But if you walk into one of them, you will not be able to exit again."

My footfall slowed to a stop. "What happens?"

Roger shrugged under the weight of his packs. "No one knows. They just don't come back. And they aren't gone, either. Least we don't think they're completely gone. You don't see them again. And if you shout to them, they won't answer."

"The only sign that they're still there is the Seekflower," James said.

"Let me guess," Tanin said. "Even after they disappear, if you ask the Seekflower to find them, it keeps on pointing in the direction of the house they went into?"

James chuckled. "Smart guy. But wrong. After they disappear, and you ask the Seekflower where they've gone, the flower will always point in the exact opposite direction from the house."

"Not disturbing at all," Tanin quipped. He gave me a pat on the back, to get me marching again. I obliged.

"Not disturbing enough to keep people out apparently," James said. "People get desperate when they're starving. One moment of weakness, and they'll smash windows to get in for a can of Pringles. And that's the last you see of them."

"The workaround isn't hard," Roger added. "If you need to eat, just farm."

James rolled his eyes. "Thanks, Sherlock. I'm talking about lost people. Wanderers. You think they've got time to wait for, I dunno, tomato plants to sprout?"

Roger gave a grunt. "That's why you don't wander."

"Hold on," Saber said. "What do you know about Platinum?"

"Nothing much," James said. "But based on things I've heard? Apparently it's nice enough that plenty of guys there don't even care about getting back to Earth anymore."

As we walked along, I kept querying the Seekflower about Jack and Atlas's whereabouts. Thankfully the flower's pointings along various points of our path converged, intersecting around one blob for Jack, and another, farther blob for Atlas. I measured the angles, using the perpendicular roads as my axes, and jotted down notes and diagrams in my team notebook.

We took a break and sat down by the edge of the pavement. I plugged my approximations into my computer, and had Tanin run some math calculations for me.

"I did my graduation project on sensor systems," Tanin said. "Lots of measurements, localization, error bars. It's your lucky day."

Tanin managed to shrink down the location estimate of Atlas to about a quarter-mile radius circle. As for Jack, he discovered something more.

"He's on the move," Tanin told me.

"Really? You can tell?"

"Yeah, looks like he's going in a straight line too. Probably down one of the streets. And what's more, he's heading straight towards us, steadily."

Saber overheard. She jogged to us and peered at the screen from over my shoulder.

"How close?" she asked.

Tanin double-checked his equations.

"He should be here in ten minutes," he said.