After about an hour of driving—much of which had been spent on small, back roads—Ezzie pulled over on a quiet avenue with green, rolling hills to either side.

A few deer were grazing off in the distance, and the sunlight was bearing down from overhead.

“Alright,” Ezzie said. She pushed a button and the car settled gently onto the road. “This is it.”

“More hills, huh?” I said.

“Thought you’d like that,” she said. “Just seemed right.”

I climbed out and walked to the side of the road, shading my eyes from the sun. Everything was so green, and the breeze was whipping through the trees in a familiar way.

Ezzie popped the trunk, then came over with a heavy backpack. “Put a little something together for you.”

“You did?” I said.

“Didn’t feel right to just send you back out there,” she said. “It’s nothing major, but you’ve got a waterproof tent, a bedroll, fire starter, antibiotics, food, tablets for cleaning water, that sort of thing. Here,” she said. “Turn around.”

I did, and she slipped the straps around my shoulders. The bag was heavy, but well-fitted. “This is amazing, Ez. Thank you. You have no idea just how valuable this stuff really is.”

“There’s this, too,” she said. “Had it printed up for you.”

I spun back around, and she was holding a stone dagger in the palm of her left hand. A perfect replica for the one I’d started with.

“Tried to get you a gun,” Ezzie said, “but as it turns out arming humans and sending them into the wild is pretty heavily frowned upon. Still, I wanted you to have something that would make you think about me whenever you shanked someone.”

I took the knife, then reached out and hugged her again. “It’s perfect. Thank you.”

“Shame they couldn’t let you keep the knife skills,” Ezzie said.

“A huge shame,” I said. And when I pulled back, her eyes were leaking blue fluid. She wiped them with the backs of her hands. “Alright, I gotta go,” she said. “Or I’m gonna get all weepy. And I’m a really ugly crier. You don’t want any part of that.”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks again. For everything.”

“You too,” she said. She swallowed, winced, and headed for the driver’s seat. “Stay safe, Silas.” She got in and shut door behind her, and a moment later the car lifted up off the ground.

I stepped to the edge of the road, where grass met asphalt, with my old world stretching out in front of me.

And I was free, forever. No more worries about patrols, about collars, about any of that. And yet...it felt different, somehow. Lesser.

I shrugged the backpack off my shoulders and set it into the dirt, then jammed my new knife behind my waistband.

I walked over to the car, which was still floating in place. Ezzie had her face in her hands, and her shoulders were shaking. I rapped a knuckle on the roof, and she rubbed at her eyes again as she looked up at me.

“Something wrong?” she said.

“Wow,” I said. “You weren’t joking. You really are an ugly crier.”

“Shut up,” she half-laughed, half-cried.

I inhaled deeply, then let it out slow. “Is it always life or death?”

“Huh?” Ezzie said.

“The grounds. Piloting. Everything. Is it always life or death?”

She frowned, then shook her head. “No. It depends on what you wanna do, but plenty of games just use lives. You run out and you lose.”

“You just lose?” I said.

“Yeah?” she said.

“You remember when I said I wanted to be the kind of person people could depend on?”

“Uh huh,” she said.

I looked around at the grass, the hills, the trees. “I can’t do that here. I mean I won’t get taken again, but so what? What does that life even look like? Maybe I find another group to roll with, then they get picked off one by one. And I won’t be able to do a single thing about it.

“Maybe I don’t find a new group, so...what then? I spend the rest of my life foraging? Living off scraps?”

“Is this about Nathan and Mara?” she said. “Because they’re not worth—”

“They’re just a small part of it,” I said, as I slipped back into the car.

“But...”

“It’s about you, Ez.” I shrugged. “You just upended your whole life for me at the drop of a hat. Nobody’s gonna do that out here. And after everything we went through, everything we did, the wild...it’s just not enough.

“I think it stopped being enough a couple days back, but I only just figured that out. Maybe it’s me, or maybe the system made me feel this way, or maybe it’s a combination of the two. But what difference does it make?”

“What are you saying?” she said, her voice cracking. Her eyes were running again, thick lines of blue trailing down her cheeks.

“You said you were taking me home, right?”

“Yeah?”

I reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “So let’s go home, Ez.”

She choked back a sob and threw her arms around me, pressed her damp face into my neck.

“God,” I said. “You gotta stop the crying. It’s truly horrific.”

“I know,” she said, sob-laughing again. “But I can’t help it. I wanted you to stay so bad but I never thought you would or that you’d even consider it and I didn’t want to ask cause I felt like it’d be pressuring you, and...” she trailed off, taking quick, short breaths.

“Let’s go home,” I repeated.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay. Let’s go home, Silas.”