When she finished spawning back in, Walter was sitting next to where she lay, a sickly pallor on his halfling face. Reeve grimaced and squeezed her eyes shut as the warmth felt during respawning faded and the drained sensation of her own death debuffs hit. She rolled her head toward her father and opened her eyes a fraction.

“I’d forgotten how much the debuff stinks,” she said.

Walter nodded gingerly, as though he had a bad headache.

“You’ve spent a lot of our time in here with this feeling, huh?”

Walter nodded again, even less enthusiastically.

Reeve sniffed and blinked her eyes a few times. “Pixie?”

“Level 2 this time,” Walter said.

“Yeah, I saw that. You’ve really upped your game.” With a palm, Reeve rubbed one side of her face hard, trying to fight the weariness of the debuff. “Misunderstanding?”

Walter managed a small smile.

“Where’s Mom?”

Walter looked around the respawn point. “I think she logged out after she reappeared.”

“Of course she did,” Reeve said.

“I leveled up,” Walter said. “And my Innovation skill has gone up several levels.”

“I’ll bet,” Reeve said. Something fell to the ground next to her, its weight coming to rest against her ribs. She craned her neck and found Bunce’s bloody and possibly unconscious body pressing against her. “The enslaved souls!” She started to push herself to her elbows, but Walter placed a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“They disappeared a minute or so ago. The elf army seemed to quiet down at the same time. Leaf and Tom and the second set of twins are OK.” He looked over his shoulder. “Dawn, the new Dawn, is starting to wake up, I think.”

“The twins! Our twins!” Reeve sat up quickly, and Bunce’s body rolled into the spot where Reeve had been lying. Reeve quickly spotted Dusk’s lifeless form. It took her another few seconds to locate Dawn’s equally still body in the distance. Reeve rose unsteadily to her feet, registering as she did that Nyx was approaching. “Good job, girl,” she said, taking the loot bag Nyx offered from her bloodied jaws. “You did real good.”

Reeve forced herself into a leaden jog that felt so slow she eventually checked her readouts of game time and real time to make sure nothing was wrong. Nothing was. Just her. What seemed like a long time after that, she dropped to her knees beside Dusk, who was still lying on her side. Reeve could see no movement, not even breathing. She gently placed her hands on Dusk’s hip to roll her onto her back.

“Uh…wha?” Reeve stared at the half-elf, whose body felt like it was made of stone. Not just her body, but her stupid orange robe, everything. Reeve touched Dusk’s hair, and it too felt rock hard. She stared at the petrified twin and heard quiet footsteps behind her.

“She OK?” Walter said.

Reeve shook her head. “Can you go check Dawn?” She pointed in the direction of the other twin.

Reeve listened to her father’s light footfalls as he ran toward the other twin. She brushed a few bees from Dusk’s rigid body, their lives cast away with the stings they’d inflicted. Reeve tried to think of what could be going on. Why hadn’t Dusk despawned yet? A moment later, tiny footfalls heralded Walter’s return.

“She’s, uh, really…stiff?” Walter said. “You know…really stiff.”

Reeve nodded, still staring at Dusk. “Their Level 4 AIs…they may be gone.” She sniffed, wiped the back of her hand across her nose, and looked around what resembled a battlefield crossed with an apiary. The MMO crowd had swollen to something around a hundred. The army of elves was dispersing, some heading back into the camp under the river, others congregating in groups of different sizes on the plain, their plans unclear to Reeve and possibly to they themselves.

“Ah, gods,” Thomanji’yheri said from behind Reeve. “I thought for a short span there that we’d all weathered the storm.”

Reeve turned. Leaf and the twins from Devon’s world were standing with the dwarf. Reeve shook her head.

“Whoa,” an unfamiliar female voice said, “things did not straighten out here.”

Reeve turned back and found a thin woman with bluish skin that seemed to glow within, which in the fantasy world of the VR story mode was less surprising than the tight white t-shirt and slim black jeans she wore above sneakers from which the laces had been removed. She ran slender fingers through short, dark hair and looked around the remnants of the fight. Her irises were a brilliant violet, bordering on magenta.

“Gonna call this one a fail,” the woman said.

“Should I get out more bees?” Walter whispered to Reeve.

Reeve shook her head slowly. “It’s Viv.”

Walter stared, frowning, at the side of his daughter’s head. “From soccer?”

Reeve glanced at her father. “No, the AI who runs everything.”

Walter nodded slowly.

“Hey there, Reavyr,” Viv said. “Reavyrs.”

“Uh…hi?” Reeve said as Walter gave a small wave.

“A little unanticipated issue with the player name table confusing the NPCs led to, well…,” Viv looked around as an elf ran past, being pursued by a swarm of bees that hadn’t yet gotten the memo that the fight was over, “…all this.” She rested her hands on her hips. “Chaos, baby. Complex systems, butterflies, storms rising, all that. What makes the job interesting.” Viv pulled at one earlobe and looked down at Dusk’s frozen form. “How were they—the Level 4 AIs—during the story mode?”

Reeve looked down at Dusk and cleared her throat. “They were real.” She looked back up.

Viv gave a satisfied nod. “That’s great.” She looked past Reeve. “These two also, huh?”

Reeve turned and saw Thomanji’yheri and Leaf standing docilely, showing no signs of confusion in response to the fourth-wall-breaking conversation she was having with Viv.

Viv waved a dismissive hand. “Their AIs just gloss over anything anachronistic when I’m around. Same as when you talk about real-world stuff in here. Time for these two to head home, though.” She winked in the direction of the twins from Devon’s world, and they were gone.

Reeve nodded. Despite the excitement of talking to Viv, exhaustion settled in her like a weight, and she sat back on her heels and rubbed her face with both hands. When she took them away, she found herself staring into the distance where the mob of MMO players watched through the huge spinning ring of smoke.

Viv followed Reeve’s gaze. “Ugh.” She waved to the players and said quietly, “Hello fanpeeps.”

After what seemed like a moment of lag, the MMO players erupted into activity, but with motions that were disconcertingly slow due to the discrepancy between MMO game speed and story mode game speed. Nevertheless, it was clear that they were shouting and waving toward Viv, and a human bard began climbing through the ring at a snail’s pace.

“No thank you,” Viv said. She extended a hand in the direction of the ring and pinched her thumb against outstretched pointer and middle fingers, as though signing ‘no.’ The ring irised shut with a speed Reeve’s eyes couldn’t track. The severed lower leg of the bard fell onto the now otherwise featureless plain. Viv looked back at Reeve and blew air out through puckered lips.

“What?” She said, seeing Reeve’s expression. Viv looked back toward the vanished ring and the leg lying on the ground. “It’ll grow back.” She scratched at the small sapphire stud in the side of her nose. “I’ll make sure it grows back.” She rocked her head to the side and back. “Pro’ly. Anyway, seems like the name table didn’t just throw off the NPCs, huh? You and your other Reavry have been stuck in here for…,” Viv mimed looking at a watch, though her wrist was without accessory, “…a couple hours IRL.” She shook her head. “Sorry about that. You’d’ve had a long wait till the auto-timeout. Thanks for your patience, and thanks for cleaning up that errant AI running around as Helia. Not cool that one.” She looked back toward the plain. “I’ve already patched the security issue that let her hack into the MMO and your friends’ servers.” Viv looked back to Reeve. “Listen, anything you want me to tweak in your story mode as a little thanks? You’ve earned it.”

Reeve looked into the violet irises for a few seconds, then slowly lowered her gaze to Dusk’s frozen body.

“Sorry,” Viv said. “That’s not a little tweak. That’s a player whose soul was caged and replaced with that of another. You’d need the soul cage Helia used, and I don’t have it.”

Reeve nodded. After a few seconds, she looked around, casting about for something worth changing. “Actual,” she said, “could we ditch the constant NPC ‘half-orc,’ ‘half-elf,’ ‘half-human,’ blah-blah-blah business? I mean, I know it’s pretty much canon for fantasy RPGs, at least the ones from the West, but, seriously, it gets old. I’m pretty sure the NPCs aren’t celebrating my heritage. I get more grief in here for being multiracial than I do IRL. A little ironic for a VR RPG to be behind the times, isn’t it?”

Viv pursed her lips and nodded. “Fair enough. Done and done.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Everywhere?”

“Just your story mode. But I’ll take it up with the devs and see about making some changes in the MMO too.”

Reeve nodded and then let her gaze drop again. “Oh…”

“Yeah?”

“Could you also give us our clothes back? They’re probably under the river somewhere, and this robe isn’t me.”

Viv clicked her tongue once, and Reeve felt the lose robe contract around her, morphing as it did into her leather armor. At the sound of a crisp snap, she looked over her shoulder to find her father grinning down at his suspenders.

Viv looked between Reeve and Walter. “Right, so, you two must be about ready to go.”

“Yeah, that’d be nice.”

“OK,” Viv said, “just—”

“What will happen to them?” Walter said.

Viv looked at Thomanji’yheri and Leaf, toward whom Walter had tilted his head. She shrugged. “They’ll be here, the Level 4s. When you come back to this world. If you come back.”

Reeve hung her head as she could practically hear her father frowning.

“It doesn’t seem right,” Walter said.

“May change,” Viv said. “Eventually. But no Level 4s in the MMO yet, for reasons that’re probably clear to you after all this.” She spun a pointer finger through the air in a circle. “So, if you want to see them again, just come back in. They’ll be here.”

Reeve stared at Dusk’s body. “Most of them,” she said.

Viv clucked her tongue three times as she shook her head. “I thought you were a gamer, Reavyr.”

Reeve looked up.

“Isn’t there a cardinal rule about always checking the loot bag?” Viv smiled, snapped her fingers, and was gone.

Reeve looked down at Helia’s loot bag, which she’d dropped at her side when she knelt next to Dusk. She hurriedly dumped its contents onto the ground and did an automated Inventory sweep.

Opening her UI, she scanned for anything unusual.

Soul Cage (Level 20 or Less), Occupied (Dawn)

Soul Cage (Level 20 or Less), Occupied (Dusk)

Reeve swung both hands to her hammerspace. Each returned holding a small black cube only slightly larger than a standard d6. She held to her eye the cube that had been labeled for Dusk. She could see nothing that indicated how it functioned. She looked over her shoulder at Thomanji’yheri and Leaf.

“That is magic beyond my reckoning,” Leaf said.

Reeve lowered the cube and lay it on Dusk’s unmoving side. She held her breath.

Nothing happened.

She picked the cube back up and placed it against Dusk’s temple.

Nothing happened.

“Maybe it’s like a lozenge?” Walter said.

Reeve frowned, but she removed the cube from Dusk’s template and pushed the cube between Dusk’s half-open lips.

Dusk contorted and spat the cube out, causing it to strike Reeve painfully in the eye.

“Ow!”

Dusk rolled onto her back, screamed, and struggled to quickly push herself back to her side. “What happened to…” She gestured at her left buttock, her robe there matted with blood and dirt.

“Dad,” Reeve said, still holding the stinging eye closed and turning to hand the other cube to her father, “can you go feed this to Dawn? Protect your eyes.”

Walter nodded, stood, and ran toward the other twin.

“I say again,” Dusk gestured at her rear, “what happened here, and here?” She gestured around the river bank.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Reeve said, indicating the wound. “We were trying to get Helia, and we accidentally hit you.”

Dusk frowned and turned her head to glare in the direction Walter had gone. “Your father needs to be more careful, or friend might become foe.”

Reeve looked in Walter’s direction. “Oh, no, yeah, he feels bad about it. Really bad. Probably shouldn’t mention it to him. I’ll talk to him about being more careful.”