When Rick came to, he stayed on edge. The game hadn’t booted him to a server, and there had been no red balloon to carry him out, but he didn’t feel ill, either. All signs pointed to a synced disconnect.

He let out a deep breath. With the pain control off, it could have been truly horrifying. He gulped at the thought that R3D_Button had also had his neck on the line, though it was impressive that the player had survived to the end. He’d reach out after the dust settled.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. Then again, and again.

He checked. It was Dan.

Dan: Got all the info!

Dan: It was more than expected. We’re getting a place set up for you and your wife.

He contemplated before he texted back.

Rick: Hector?

Dan: In custody

Rick: And Alex?

The ellipsis scrolled, indicating Dan was composing a reply.

Dan: ..

Dan: …

Dan: Who?

Rick: Someone who works with Hector. She was my trainer.

Dan: I have no idea who that is. Maybe the criminal investigation will surface her?

Rick thought about Alex and remembered the pained look on her avatar’s face. Hector had something over on her. She’d said as much.

Rick: Never mind. It’s not that important. Hector’s the main threat.

A thought occurred to him.

Rick: Is it possible my wife and I can move in immediately?

Dan: Don’t you wanna pack?

Rick: Is there a bed in the dorm apartment already?

Dan: Yes. We can remove it if you need us to.

Rick: No, leave it. When’s the earliest we can be there?

Dan’s message bar ellipsis was back, then:

Dan: Tomorrow at 10AM.

Rick: Give me the address. We’ll be there at ten. We can send someone for our stuff, but we don’t have a lot.

There was a delay and no ellipsis.

Dan: Okay.

Rick stood and left the room, giving his card back to the clerk, who took it and wished him a good day, as if Rick hadn’t almost been tortured within a dream while lying back on an SR array’s chair.

No way he could have known. His stomach rumbled. He’d need food before he got on the diesel train north. He texted Kristina on the way out the door.

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

Rick slept for most of the anti-climactic train ride to NorCal. Kristina had texted, then called back, and the excitement in her voice surprised him. Though his decade-long marriage had acquainted him with how quickly her emotions changed, Rick still had trouble adjusting to them sometimes. Being there for his wife was like trying to catch a hummingbird.

Nonetheless, the content of their conversation made it clear something between them had been broken. Had she more options to get away from her parents, would she be so excited to come back to L.A.?

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

He stared out the window into the darkness, blinking only rarely in the hour he had left before he arrived. Once or twice a random noise or the sound of an infant crying drew his attention, but for the most part, he stared into the middle distance, trying to ignore his anxiety.

Kristina-Anne was waiting for him in the train station’s cafe, exactly like she said she would. At her feet lay her packed bags. Next to them, in her chair, her leg bounced up and down in place as if she’d already had more than one cup of coffee and hardly needed another. When she saw him, her leg stopped bouncing.

He sat and reached for her hand, but she pulled away, and he let her. Whatever was coming would take time. The waitress arrived and he ordered coffee and a donut.

“Breakfast of champions, there.” She kept a straight face for only a moment, then a wan smile broke across her lips. She sipped from her coffee, as if to hide it.

“Funny you should mention that,” he said.

She nodded slowly. “Not sure I want to live in a compound.”

He let out a deep breath, then sat back as the waitress set his coffee and glazed donut in front of him. “Thanks.”

The waitress nodded in acknowledgment and left.

“It’s not like you’re thinking. I’ve seen videos of these guys, and it’s not eSports like it used to be. They don’t have us in the simulation eight hours a day.”

She nodded again. “You know that, or is that just what they told you?”

He rolled his eyes. “You wanna go back to the apartment? To not knowing if we’ll make rent?” He sighed again. “Another month on the street? Shit, as soon as we arrive, they’re blocking the muni ads. Might be able to explore more of the city without being hounded at all hours by advertising.”

She flashed a wry smile. “Mine is playing something about coffee creamer. Yours?”

Ditto hadn’t shown up again, and whatever magic he’d used to kill the ads no longer functioned. “There’s a break in them n—” He squinted. “No, wait.” He focused on the ad. “This one’s about a weekly donut delivery service.”

She began to speak and he shushed her. “Hold up. This actually sounds good.”

She slapped his hand and he laughed. She didn’t move her hand, and he didn’t push his luck by reaching for it again, but he imagined he felt the heat from her skin soaking into the air near his own, hinting that a return to intimacy remained possible.

It’s now or never.

“There’s more I need to tell you,” he said. “I think the…” He looked away, then back into her eyes. “The eggs are probably destroyed.”

She got a pained look. “It’s for the best.”

He looked at the table. She pulled her hand back an inch, but no further.

“There’s more,” he said. “I…” He had to take a really deep breath this time. “I think I wanted to kill Aaron Sharpe that night in the bar.” He held his breath, but he didn’t stop looking in her eyes.

She simply nodded for a moment again, then said, “I know, honey.”

It took him aback. “But I always—”

“I’m a woman, Rick. I’m your wife.” She squinted. “How much of what I know about you do you imagineI know because you told me?”

He breathed again and pulled his body back a few inches.

“I know more than that.” She grasped his hand. “I know you had trouble with your father,” she said. “I know they provided for you, but I know you scared your father, and your mother was”—she pursed her lips—“distant.”

He breathed, slow and steady, but he wasn’t really in his body. Instead, he hovered about three inches off his emotional center, and he observed the scene as though through a glass wall.

He’d never told her any of this. They’d talked a lot about her family, and what growing up with her mother had done to her. When the silence became too much to avoid, he spoke about his family. He’d always told her he respected his father, and he stuck to the points about his dad that he could respect. But the man was narrow in a way Rick wasn’t, and because of that, his father never connected with his only son. They never talked about it. He’d died eight years ago.

She was right about his mother, too. She treated him like a duty, and it had put a hole in his soul he never shared with anyone.

Shared or not, that hole was why he fought. It was also why he killed Aaron Sharpe all those years ago in that bar.

And Kristina knew—had known the whole time. Had stayed with him the whole time. He swallowed, and his vision became cloudy. He blinked. His eyelashes were wet. He stared at the formica table, at his hands in hers.

It hit him all at once, then. He thought about how he’d felt when he’d seen Alex helping Hector attack him. His stomach turned because she’d betrayed him. It made him not trust himself, because he hadn’t expected she’d do it. It was a terrible feeling, and he’d only known Alex, only trusted Alex, a short while.

In his wife’s eyes was the same look he was certain he’d given Alex, the same one that put pain on his former trainer’s face. It wasn’t just that he’d lied to his wife; it was that he’d made her rethink whether she knew him.

“You can’t love someone if you don’t know them,” he said. The weight of his crime came down on him, and in comparison, killing Aaron Sharpe barely moved the needle. That was old, and there was an argument that after all he’d been through, whatever his actions said about him that night, they said it about a version of him that hardly ever came around anymore.

But violating his wife’s body, taking from her what should never be taken before it’s given, that was recent. That was sour. That had taken him closer to Hector, had set him up for all the rest.

A raindrop splashed on the table, then another, which was strange, as they were indoors. It confused him more when his wife’s hand was wiping his eyes.

“I know you’re sorry, baby, but I need time,” she said.

He looked down again, but she pulled him up gently by the chin. “I still love you, if that helps.”

They talked late into the night—about their difficulties, about happier times, about old friends they never saw anymore.

When the time came to get back on the train, they were both exhausted. She laid her head on his shoulder as she slept during the long trip back to L.A., and he tried not to move, afraid to lose the comforting weight of her touch.

> THE END

> (Note: Epilogues to follow)