Marcus drove for several hours before leaving the highway. It was tense at first, but I gradually relaxed as the trip continued without incident. The two men tried to start a conversation several times, but I shut them down.

I might be pretty sure that this wasn’t a trap anymore, but I still wasn’t quite ready to be friendly with people who had just tried to knock me out. That could come later once I’d talked with Linnea and confirmed that I could trust them.

From what I could tell, Marcus was making the drive from memory. I couldn’t sense any GPS at all in the car, which suggested to me they were worried about being tracked. If car manufacturers in Sweden were anything like America, they would have had to pull the device.

Even after leaving the highway, we took a dizzying set of turns along back country roads. I couldn’t know for sure without being familiar with the area, but I was fairly confident that this was far from the quickest way to get there.

Eventually, we pulled into the driveway of a property off one such road. It had a chain-link fence around the exterior, and Simon had to jump out and unlock the gate to let us through.

My body tensed up again as we took the narrow driveway. If there was going to be an ambush anywhere, it would be here. I still had the gun I’d stolen, and the syringe of knockout drugs, so I was far from defenseless if anything happened.

We drove for several more minutes before a small compound came into view. There were at least four buildings I could make out forming a rough square, a converted farm by the look of things.

I couldn’t see any evidence of crops being grown nearby, but I could see several cattle out among the paddocks. While it was possible this was still an active farm my money was on them being for cover.

One of them turned out to be a garage when the door slid open as we approached. Marcus drove in, taking a spot by two other cars.

“OK then, Jared,” Marcus said as he turned the engine off. “We’ve arrived. Are we good to get out and see the others?”

“Yeah,” I said, having already decided to go along with them. If an ambush hadn’t happened by this point, I doubted one was coming. The other two cars in the garage were standard civilian models, backing up the idea that this was someone's home.

We each left the car, and I stuffed the gun into my pants pocket. It was far more awkward than a holster would have been, but I felt like it was a good sign of cooperation to make.

I could have it in my hands in under a second anyway, so I didn’t need to carry it everywhere.

We filed out, with me waiting till the other two had passed so I could take up the rear. There was no way I was letting either of them get behind me.

A covered walkway attached the garage to the largest building, a three-story farmhouse. It looked to be an older building that had been heavily renovated in the near past.

The front door opened on its own as we approached, and I sensed multiple hidden cameras watching us. The entire house was laced with smart home technology, all linking back to a powerful server somewhere deeper into the house.

The door led to a small entrance hall with spots for shoes and coats. I followed the other two men’s lead in taking both of mine off. It was a slight risk if I had to flee, but I’d seen enough to decide that it was time to be polite.

The beautiful, polished wood floors beyond suggested the reason for removing our shoes, and made me glad that I’d followed suit. Scuffing their floors would have hardly been a good second impression.

The rest of the house was elegantly designed in a fusion of old farm style and new-age technology. If it was Peter that had renovated it, then he must have significant funds at his disposal.

The three of us were soon stepping into a well-appointed room filled with lounges and a large entertainment system. It was lit by a pair of large skylights and must have extended out past the upper stories.

An older man with a striking resemblance to both Linnea and Elana was sitting in the middle of the room where two lounges faced each other over a low, glass table.

He looked up from a tablet as we approached, and I could sense that it was tied into the house’s security systems. “Jared, I presume?” He asked in a cultured voice with barely a hint of an accent.

“Yes,” I responded with a nod. “And I’m guessing you're Peter? Linnea and Elana’s father? Where is she?” I asked rapid fire, looking around for any sign of her.

“Yes, to both of your first two questions,” he said as he rose from his seat. “As for Linnea, she was resting to prepare for your arrival. Being out of the game is… difficult for her. If you come this way, I’ll take you to her so we can get this unfortunate situation cleared up.”

I held myself back from saying that it only had to be cleared up because they’d attacked me, instead only nodding and following him out of the room. The two younger men remained behind, and I relaxed further as the number of potential threats dropped to one.

Peter wasn’t armed with anything I could detect, and I was confident of being able to take him if the worst happened.

We moved through several rooms until we came to a closed doorway. Peter knocked quietly, asking if Linnea was awake.

A quiet voice responded from the inside, and I braced myself as he opened the door. I could barely stifle my nerves now it was time to meet her.

The room was comfortably decorated and centered on a large bed with various machines stationed around it. More than half of them were plugged into the withered body lying atop it.

While she was recognizable as my girlfriend, it was only just. She was thinner than I’d ever seen a human being before and was so pale that her skin was almost translucent.

If this is her being ‘greatly improved’, as Elana said, I never want to think about how bad it must have been before, I thought, while suppressing a shudder. I was determined not to show a negative reaction, knowing that she’d had troubles in the past.

Instead, I walked in as if nothing was wrong, and greeted her only a little awkwardly. “Hey Linnea,” I said as I made my way to the edge of the bed. I wanted to hold her hand or something, but I wasn’t sure what would be alright.

“Hey Jared,” she responded her voice weak and with more than a hint of sniffling. “I’m so sorry it worked out like this, I tried to talk them out of doing the stupid screening process.”

“It’s OK,” I said, smiling down at her and placing a hand near one of hers. “Thank you for not telling them everything I could do. I appreciate you keeping my secrets, and I can understand why they would take the actions they did.”

“It can’t be easy keeping off the radar, and I can see why you would need to question people before telling them any secrets.”

Her face relaxed as I spoke, and she moved her hand to cover mine. Despite her appearance, her grip had some strength to it. Some of her changes from VSO must have been coming through, just as she’d hoped.

“Thank you for being so understanding, and for not running out screaming,” she whispered. “I would have preferred to never meet you like this and have you just think of me as the Linnea from VSO.”

I assured her it was fine, that I still cared about her regardless of her appearance, and we spent a few minutes talking quietly before she urged me to go talk to her father.

She was going back to VSO and would meet me the next time I logged in. She was healthiest when logged in, as whatever process brought us over lessened the strain on her body.

I bid her farewell before leaving the room. Peter was waiting in the hallway, looking at me appraisingly. After a moment, he nodded with a brief smile and gestured back to the lounge room.

“Thank you for caring,” he said once we’d moved out of earshot. “And I apologize for the ugliness at the airport. I wanted to trust Linnea, but she has made mistakes when meeting people before.”

“It’s fine,” I said, fully relaxing now that I’d talked to Linnea. “I understand that you’re part of some form of secret society, and I should have expected that you would have to screen people somehow.”

He only nodded in response until we came back into the lounge room. Marcus and Simon were both sitting in the same lounge Peter had vacated, each of them holding a beer.

“Can I get you any refreshments?” He asked as we walked over. “This will probably be a long conversation.”

“Thanks. I’ll have whatever they're drinking,” I said, gesturing toward the sitting men.

I moved over and sat across from them as Peter moved off, before teleporting the gun and syringe onto the table. “Thanks for the loan,” I said with a brief laugh. “You can have them back now.”

Marcus blinked for a moment before he burst out laughing. “I take it you trust us again, then? Sorry about that, just following procedure, you know.”

I waved his apology away and instead engaged in light conversation until Peter returned. It turned out that Marcus and Simon were both Peter’s nephews and worked for his company.

It was unclear if their parents were in the secret society, but they had been with Peter since he first became suspicious. They turned away any further questions about that, instead throwing back questions about my time in VSO.

They only played part-time, having to keep working at the company to avoid suspicion. The last thing they wanted was for all of Peter’s family to drop off the grid and play VSO full-time all at once.

It sounded almost too careful to me, but then I didn’t have any clear idea of the resources they might be facing. For all I knew, someone was doing careful analysis like that to pick up anomalies.

Peter returned a few minutes later with another beer and a glass of whiskey for himself. It was longer than it should have taken to get a couple of drinks, but I’d sensed commands going out to each of the hidden cameras.

I imagined he’d done a last check of the exterior, making sure that no one had followed us. It was more evidence of their paranoia about being discovered, and I was eager to hear what he had to say.

“I understand Linnea has told you the basics. How I was working on a contract for Vivid Industries and started becoming suspicious?” He asked, after handing me the drink.

At my nod, he continued. “When people started disappearing, I had to be very careful with my inquiries. It was only because someone else reached out to me that I was inducted into our group, just like you are now.”

“I was shocked to find an entire underground of people investigating the same things I was, hundreds of people, if not more. We have diverged and split since then, but our drive to understand what is going on is the same.”

“Linnea tells me you have a unique power that may be of help. I assume it is the same power that lets you control technology?” He asked, staring across the table at me.

“Yes,” I said before taking a sip of my beer to stall for a moment. “I detected something strange about the VR pods and would be happy to share the information. After I hear the rest of the story.”

“Are Vivid Industries the people you're so worried about?” I continued, starting with the thing that concerned me the most.

“For the most part, yes,” Peter responded gravely. “We still lack a full understanding of their motive or the scope of their resources, but what we have discovered is disturbing in the extreme.

“At a minimum, they are a multi-billion dollar company with contacts in almost every government worldwide. They have their own private security service numbering in the thousands and an entire division dedicated to intelligence operations.”

“At the worst, they are some form of invasion, designed to covertly take control of Earth during the transition event caused by VSO,” he finished, the words echoing in the silence that followed.

Well fuck, I thought with a frown as I stared back at him. That was rather more than I was expecting.