To Rick’s chagrin, Alex hadn’t been wrong about him having a target on his back. If anything, she’d underestimated the fervor with which players of all size, shape, and discipline pursued him. Suicide bombers who rushed him at the beginning of every match were now a given. Slowly, over the course of the night and into the next morning, his reputation as an up-and-comer had been shredded by defeat after humiliating defeat.

A few notable opponents stood out. There was the woman dressed like a cheerleader who practiced some form of drunken kung fu. She’d slapped him silly before choking him out with her thighs. Her name had been relatively normal for a gamer: DeLiLa88. He’d memorized it, if for no other reason than that her avatar’s thighs were nice.

There was a short, squat male-avatar player named Zeo-MarK who’d proven unbelievably slippery, though Rick had prevailed in that fight, if only just.

He smiled, surrounded by the vastness of the lightless lobby after his most recent defeat. He’d learned more in the last several hours than he’d ever expected to, and though the lumps had been hard, he and Alex had both been increasingly relieved. After all, long-shot odds paid more. During the last two games, word had trickled through that Rick was just a lucky newbie who’d had an inspired moment, and a new player named “JaredTee63” had impressed some internet influencer.

“It won’t matter what the odds are if you can’t place in the qualifier, you know,” Alex chided.

“I need sleep. During that last match, I made it to a-hundred-eighty-seven, but everything was blurring together. It was like fighting soup.”

“All right. Conjure the red balloon and float on out of here.”

Rick grasped the string of the balloon when it appeared.

“Set your goddamn alarm—set three.” Alex grasped her own balloon and slowly rose from the lobby as the door to the server wall opened. “Four o’clock. My place.”

The light from the server wall chased Rick up and out of the simulation.

******************************************

He’d fallen asleep on the train ride home, but someone had accidentally jostled Rick awake two stops before the one nearest his apartment. Though he’d technically been asleep the whole time he’d been in the simulation, exhaustion made his mind soft and blurry. The mental double-vision caused by his damaged implant might have had something to do with that.

He stumbled through the threshold of his apartment. The lock beeped, then clicked behind him. He glanced at his phone. It was just after 9:00 a.m.

He crept to the bedroom door and took a deep breath before opening it.

Kristina lay nearly in the same place as when he’d left, though now her eyes were open as she gazed at her phone’s screen. She glanced up.

“Hey,” he said. “You sleep okay?”

“No.”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Just no? How much trouble am I in? “Are you—”

“Are you coming to bed? It’s already light out.” She looked at him dumbly. “Did you win?”

He shook his head. “It wasn’t the tournament match—it wasn’t even the qualifier. That’s today at four.” Rick pulled off his shoes, then his pants as he stumbled toward the bed.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He shot her a quizzical look. “Coming to bed.”

“Really? We’re not going to talk about the fact that you were out all night with some woman?”

Rick’s sigh was pained. “She’s not… she’s not some woman.”

Kristina-Anne raised her eyebrows. “Oh? She’s… special?”

He winced. “Baby, I can’t—”

“Because if she’s special, I’m not sure how that’s better.”

He shook his head and gritted his teeth. “She’s not special. Baby, I need you to just not fucking fight me on this, okay? We need the money and she’s got something to prove to Hector—”

“No, I get it,” she said. “She’s super important. You’re such a kind and caring provider, Rick.”

“Baby, I can’t do this right now.”

She quickly got out of the bed as he got into it. “I need breakfast.”

“Babe,” he said to her back as she dashed out the door.

She didn’t acknowledge him, instead slamming the door behind her.

He slumped over into the bed, pulling his legs over the unmade mess of sheets and blankets. Shortly after his head hit the pillow, he was fast asleep. His last thought before unconsciousness took him involved the mild concern that Kristina might murder him as he slept.

When he woke to the sound of his two o’clock alarm, he reached for his bedside table for the ephedrine tablet. He guzzled it down with a flat, half-empty beer from the night before and cancelled his alarm, knowing the two-thirty alarm would wake him. If it didn’t, the alarms he’d set every five minutes after that surely would.

At 2:30, he rose to the alarm and cancelled the extra alarms. His heart pounded as he sat up.

He wouldn’t be able to get a shower, but he consoled himself that no one could smell him in the SR world of Ruckus Online. He stumbled toward the kitchen for food and coffee.

Kristina sat at the elevated table, her head again buried in her phone. She didn’t acknowledge his presence.

“There leftovers in the fridge?”

She frowned at him over the top of her handset. “Nope.”

He grunted as he opened the door. “Is it okay if I eat a couple of these hard-boiled eggs? I don’t know how long the qualifier is, but I need something that’ll stick.”

She shrugged. He placed three eggs on a plate, then placed an unopened beer next to them.

She raised her eyebrow at him when he cracked open the beer, but said nothing. That’s a bad sign.

He turned away from the counter to face her. “How long you gonna freeze me out this time, honey?”

“I’m not—”

“You are. You said we’d talk about this, let’s talk about it.”

She frowned and shook her head. “You were out too long to discuss it and I’m too angry.”

“We need the money.”

She smirked. “How many sins ya think we’ve committed in this marriage based only on that?” When he didn’t answer, she added, “Should I start turning tricks, too? After all, we need the money.”

He squeezed his eyes shut and held his head. “Baby, I’m not fucking her.”

She nodded slowly and put the phone down. “You’re not fucking me, either.”

“Yeah, but you’re—”

“Oh no. You’re not putting that on me.” Genuine anger burned in her eyes. “Is that what you tell people? You’re not getting any at home because your wife’s—”

“Enough!” he glowered.

“Let’s not pretend I abandoned our sex life, sweetheart.” She took a deep breath. “Look up ‘emotional desertion’ in the dictionary and there’s a picture of Rick Prophet, smiling like the sadist—”

“Enough!” He tried to calm his breathing.

She slammed her hand on the table and clenched her jaw, then picked up her phone.

Rick turned away, then back again. “I’ve been good. For nearly a decade—”

“You’ve been good because you’ve been broken!” she roared. Her chest rose and fell as she seethed. “And now you’re not. So I get the lamb? Lambs are cuddly, but who gets the lion, Rick?”

I don’t have the energy for… A sad expression overtook his face. “Will you be safe—”

She glared at him again. “I hate that look.” The anger fell from her face, replaced by the expression of the scared woman he knew and loved. “Please don’t look at me like that.”

She stood and left the kitchen. Seconds later, the sound of the bathroom door slamming resounded from outside the kitchen.

Rick ate his eggs and drank his beer.

I’m going to fix this. I need to fix this.