Even with his NV Visor on, Ryuk senses a presence in his room.

“Who’s there?”

He selects the “standby” option on his logon screen. His haptic gloves loosen, allowing him to slip them off and he takes off his visor.

“I hate it when you do that,” he says as soon as he spots Hajime standing in his doorframe. For some damn reason, the Humandroid now has a straw basket over his head. “And I said not now. And why are you wearing a basket on your head?”

“It’s a meditative practice,” Hajime explains, “I have just started it.”

“When?”

“Five minutes ago.”

“You really need to get out more.”

“My orders are to guard and take care of you.” He taps his finger on the side of his basket head. “This is the only way to get out.”

“I’m nineteen; I’m a man now. I don’t know why they are so concerned for my safety.”

“I think you know why. Regardless, we need to leave soon.” He pauses just long enough to make Ryuk twitchy. “Your brother is waiting.”

A clawed hand tears the door from its hinges.

“Hajime!”

Ryuk scrambles to the ground. Another glance and he sees a Thulean warrior – a dragon-descended humanoid – grab Hajime by the back of the neck. The image twitches and Hajime is suddenly standing there, normal as ever as he approaches Ryuk. It cuts back and he’s now being choked again. “Hajime!”

A hand presses over his eyes; a dazzling burst of light flickers across the inside of Ryuk’s eyelids. He kicks his feet and struggles to free himself from the steely grip. He tucks his chin into the crook of the elbow that encircles his neck; his teeth find purchase and he bears down hard. The arm tastes like …

Nothing. Cloth maybe, or some sort of skin-like plastic, but that’s about it.

“Relax.”

Why is Hajime’s voice behind me now!?

Ryuk swallows hard and struggles to master the overwhelming terror that surges through him. He realizes that he’s sitting on the floor and someone is behind him, holding him as a mother would comfort her child. He tries to stand, but the arms restrain him.

“You’re hallucinating something,” the voice says into his ear.

“Hajime?”

“Open your eyes slowly. Remember, whatever you see is not real.”

“I don’t want to!”

“I’m here, nothing can hurt you. I’m removing my hand now.”

Ryuk does as instructed and the Thulean’s stats appear on his iNet screen:

Thulean Warrior Level ??

HP: 5309/5309 Def: 2960

ATK: 867 MDF: 2116

MATK: 131 LUCK: 311

Ryuk stares in horror as the Thulean brandishes a Bohemian earspoon and tests the weapon’s balance with a flashy whirl-parry-thrust. His grin is pointed teeth and forked tongue; painted on his forehead are three blood red lines under a half crescent moon.

“What do you see?” Hajime whispers, still behind Ryuk and holding his face forward.

“He’s … he’s … ”

Coming for me!

The Thulean casts a fanged grin and steps into a ready position. His armor clinks as he charges at Ryuk.

(0)__(0)

The Thulean’s spear passes through Ryuk’s body, followed by his hand, his arm, his shoulder and his chest. All of him seemingly disappears right into Ryuk’s chest.

He blinks his eyes rapidly as he tries to comprehend it all.

The Thulean is suddenly gone; he’s in his room on the ground with Hajime behind him, who still holds tightly onto him.

“It’s over.” Hajime relaxes his grip on Ryuk’s body. “Relax.”

“What … was that?” He breathes heavily for a moment as he rubs his eyes. Suddenly visible on his pane of vision are a few minimized chat boxes, including Tamana’s final real world message. He reads it again as he catches his breath. The thought strikes him: I was unable to save her, I failed her.

“I’m going to let go now.”

“Fine,” Ryuk says, suddenly ashamed by his actions.

Hajime adjusts the straw basket on his head and sits onto Ryuk’s bed. “I’ve scanned your vitals, and they are all within normal limits. Tox scan is negative, and I can find no cause for the hallucinatory episode you’ve just endured. May I tap your feed?”

“Please do,” Ryuk pulls himself to his feet and paces for a moment with his arms crossed over his chest. A prompt appears on his vision as Hajime accesses his feed.

“I would like to review your feed from when you followed Tamana into the train station. You did actually see her, correct?”

“I did,” he gulps, “before she jumped.”

Hajime’s straw basket masks his face from Ryuk, who continues to pace. His stomach still churns from his unexpected encounter with a Thulean, in Tokyo. If he hallucinated a Thulean warrior, what could Tamana possibly have seen.

“She was seeing something too!”

“Clearly,” Hajime’s eyes flash, “but what I was checking was in regards to your feed.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let me show you.”

Hajime approaches the Holoscreen attached to Ryuk’s wall.

Ryuk rarely uses the thing – why watch anime on a screen when you can simply lie back and watch it on the inside of your eyelids? Still, it is helpful, or at least it was helpful, when he was enrolled at Waseda University. As soon as the screen comes to life, the Waseda Bear mascot does a little dance in the bottom right corner. Ryuk has been meaning to fix that, but he still entertains the possibility of re-enrolling.

“Give me a moment to arrange the videos.”

Hajime stands for a moment in front of the screen and the volume icon appears. It adjusts itself, and once it is at a low level, two iNet feeds come up in split-screen. On the left is Ryuk’s view of Tamana as he caught sight of her at the subway. On the right is his view of what just happened here.

“This may be a bit disorienting,” Hajime warns as the videos start up. Sure enough, Ryuk can actually see the Thulean on his most recent feed, big as life and twice as ugly in his black scaly armor. All he can see on the left is Tamana running and leaping and …

Ryuk turns his head away at the very last moment. No sense in seeing her do that again.

“Now observe the same timeframe from my perspective.” Hajime’s feed comes up – Ryuk screams and scrabbles for no reason; Hajime surveils the whole room too fast to follow, moves behind Ryuk and pulls him into his arms. His viewing pane focuses on the open doorway in which looms … absolutely nothing.

Ryuk drops his face into his hand. “What just happened?”

“I think something just hacked your iNet feed, and apparently this very same something also hacked Tamana’s feed,” Hajime concludes. “Based on the message you received and the feed, whatever she saw chasing her at the time of her death was real to her but to no one else. She leapt to avoid it; I don’t think she intended to kill herself.”

“What about my feed?”

“This appears to affect only the individual who experiences the digital hallucination, and is apparently quite subjectively real. I’ve collated some data about apparent Proxima dream world intrusions in the real world environment that caused lethal results.”

Several charts spring to life on the holoscreen. They morph and merge into one chart, and one of the many graphics of Ryuk that Hajime usually uses for their correspondence takes shape.

“This chart shows the number of dreamworld users who have experienced an unexpected or unusual death within seventy-five minutes of logging out, beginning in 2070. As you can see, the chart spikes from no reported cases in 2070 to fifty-six for just the first two months of this year. If I include the number of users who were non-fatally injured, or who merely reported disturbing hallucinations, the numbers quadruple.”

Magazine and iNet articles flash on the screen in various languages with Japanese subtitles.

“The mainstream outlets are not carrying these stories,” Hajime points out, “most of these come from Proxima fan sites and Proxi-blogs. Based on what you have just experienced and what happened to Tamana, statistical probability indicates that some thing is coming through from the digital dream worlds and manifesting itself through the users’ iNet feeds, and this is causing people to do terrible things to themselves and those around them.”

Ryuk shakes his head as he tries to take in everything Hajime has just said. “Are you telling me that there are killer NPCs?”

“No, you are saying that, but something is happening, and it’s manifesting from the Proxima network.”

“Fuck … ” Ryuk plops into his rig and settles back into the seat.

“What are you doing?” Hajime asks.

“Logging back in,” he says hurriedly. “I need to get to Tamana. If killer NPCs are really escaping from dreamworlds, Tamana will know the right people to talk to and the right questions to ask. I just hope that they aren’t on separate continents.”

“What difference does that make?”

Ryuk explains the basics in a two breaths. “Tritania is a fantasy MMORPG dreamworld that consists of three floating continents, Hyperborea, Polynya, and Ultima Thule. All players start on Hyperborea. To travel to Polynya you need to be at level 15. To travel from Polyna to Ultima Thule, you need to be at level 35.”

“Don’t you have a high level avatar?”

“I did,” Ryuk sighs deeply.

“What happened?”

“Tamana happened. She was getting bored, so she and I became resetters – we started back at level 1 for a new challenge. Now we’re back on Hyperborea, the first continent.”

“So you can’t get to these other continents to meet the people you need to talk to.”

“Exactly.”

“Can’t you just message them?”

Ryuk scratches the back of his head. “Our guild – well, former guild now – has a ‘no communication clause’ with resetters to deny them any in-game advantages. Sounds stupid, but our previous guild’s leader doesn’t want someone to be able to call on their powerful friends. I may able to get messages to them, but Tamana would know how to do that.”

Hajime nods his basket head. “Perhaps you should notify the proper Proxima authorities.”

Ryuk considers this for a moment. The Proxima company was incorporated in the early 2040s and it revolutionized VR technology by integrating it into an induced REM sleep-like trance – a lucid dream state of consciousness. ‘Diving’ to a Proxima VR Dreamworld requires a neuronal visualization visor to tap into shared dreamworlds, of which there are thousands upon thousands for every taste and proclivity.

Ryuk lets the thought die. “I don’t see that happening. At least not at the moment. Look, I know we need to leave soon to meet my brother, but give me like an hour to check on things at my guild and to get my avatar auto-leveling.”

“You know how much Kodai hates waiting … ”

An image of Ryuk’s older brother flashes before his eyes, almost as if he too were hacking his iNet feed. Everything Ryuk isn’t – that’s the best way to describe Kodai. Good-looking, athletic, incredibly smart, unbelievably successful at the age of twenty-eight. Ryuk was nothing like his brother.

“I don’t care,” he finally decides, “this is more important.”