I looked in Trix’s eyes and felt I could trust her. Or maybe I was just so lonely I thought I could. Still, she was willing to help me get stronger after I’d just bashed in the brains of her former companions. That took trust on her part, or naivete. Or maybe just cold pragmatism.

  “Okay, first I’m gonna form a party so you can share your screen. It won’t let me do anything in there, but I’ll be able to see your stats, inventory, class information, experience point total, and your hero portrait.”

  “My hero portrait?”

  “In mine, I’m floating in the air and my eyes are totally blue like a spice addict. It’s sick.” Trix had a look of concentration on her face for a bit and mumbled some technical things that I didn’t quite understand. “Okay, you should see an option to join my party.”

  “Trix and Will Kill Squad. Who’s Squad?”

  She chuckled. “No, goofball, we’re the Kill Squad.”

  “Oh, right.” I accepted the party invite.

  “Nice picture. But where’s your baseball bat? And, no offense, but your hair isn’t quite so, um, perfect.”

  I was so lost with all of the screens that Trix had to give me the breadcrumbs. When I finally pulled up my portrait, I was kinda surprised myself. I looked like an anime character, but so did everyone else. I just hadn’t considered that I might look different too.

  “With a picture like this, they’re just going to eat you up on social media.”

  “Is that good?”

  “Good? It’s social media. It’s never good, but savvy operators can use it to their advantage. Okay, first let me check a couple things. Ah, you didn’t have some options clicked on. There, now you’ll be able to see your health meter. You’ll want to keep your eye on that. Okay, other stuff can wait for now. You can see mine now too. Let’s check your stats.”

  Strength: 5

  Dexterity: 7

  Constitution: 3

  Charisma: 6

  Intelligence: 2

  I couldn’t believe that intelligence score. I remembered what I heard and could figure things out fast. But I’d lived in a Z haze for years. Had Z made me stupid? I felt a pit open up in my stomach.

  “This is pretty poor,” said Trix.

  She looked at me and could tell I was bummed.

  “Let’s just accept the things we cannot change. Good news is, it turns out the kind of fighting you’ve been doing is the right kind of fighting for your skill set. You’re not a total wimp, and you’ve got decent coordination.” She paced, teasing at her roots. “With that intelligence, it’s a good thing you found me. But jeez, there’s not a lot of great options here. We could go straightforward with Digital Assassin. That class would give you a boost to dexterity and you’d get a sneak skill and a bonus on your stabs.”

  “What’s the digital part about?” I asked, trying to hide my worry.

  “It looks like you’d get a bonus when tracking a mark through a network.”

  I had no idea how that would even work, and I didn’t want to tell Trix that I didn’t own a computer. “What’s the next one?”

  “I mean, that’s a really good one. You’re already doing all that stuff.”

  “Yeah, but what’s your class. We should think about how we’ll work as a team.”

  “I’m a Cyber Psionicist.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I’ve got psychic powers.”

  “If you’ve got psychic powers, why did you knock me over when I was fighting Jagger? Why not, I don’t know, shoot a brain bolt at me.”

  She shot me a look. “Okay, they’re not called brain bolts.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “I’m not a high level operator. I’d used up all my psychic energy before the battle even started. Here, I’ll share my psy meter with you.”

  At the bottom of my vision, I could now see a thumbnail of Trix along with her power meters. The psy meter was just about a third of the way filled. I noticed the familiar dot triangle above it and closed it for now. I didn’t like clutter.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “I found a Bruiser class. It seems a little too basic though. Here.”

  A bunch of text hit my vision. I didn’t love knowing that Trix could do that, but oh well. The Bruiser class received big bonuses to strength and constitution, as well as skill bonuses for blunt-edged weapons. I’d be building toward something called shakedown and a body blow skill. As a negative, Bruisers received a hit to charisma.

  “That sounds good. Should I choose Bruiser?”

  “Let’s look at the other options first.”

  “Okay. Before we do that though. Do you know what Pocket Knife and Charge do?”

  “You know those are the skills of my former team members, right? The ones you killed?”

  “Yeah—but I guess that’s another thing to accept that we can’t change.”

  “Don’t push it, Will.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Pocket Knife lets you steal items. Here’s the description.”

  See a knife you like? Use this skill to put it in your pocket.

  “You’ll have to play around with it to find out if you can steal items from players or just items in stores. Although I wouldn’t let a store owner catch you trying to steal from them. They’re really tough. Wixx wasn’t very bright and originally thought it would let him instantly put a weapon he was wielding in his inventory or retrieve them even during battle. But everyone can do that.”

  “What about Charge? Does it do anything good?”

  “Yeah, kinda. But why didn’t you take Tank? It gives you a multiplier to your health based on your group size.”

  “The game told me that—”

  “Don’t listen to the game. The game isn’t your friend.”

  “Oh.”

  “So, anyway, Charge. When you run at an enemy straight on, it randomly boosts the attack. Jagger told me that on average it boosted attacks by 20%, but he’d seen it go much higher. He also said that if you used it too often, the boost would get smaller.”

  “Alright. But if you’re attacking stuff and it’s triggering automatically, how do you not use it?”

  “Well, that’s the problem Jagger had.”

  “So, that gives me three throwaway abilities. What are the chances of that?”

  “Um. Actually that’s pretty much what I’d expect. You’ve watched BioZone City before, right?” Trix asked.

  “I mean, yeah. For a minute or two here and there.”

  Trix’s eyes widened. “You’re in here and you’ve barely even watched the show? What were you even doing?”

  “What was I doing when I wasn’t sitting around watching reality television? I’m homeless, Trix. I don’t have a computer. I don’t have a phone. I don’t have a TV. I don’t have Wi-Fi. I don’t have a Disney+ account. Wanna know what I do have? I’ve got this baseball bat.” I pulled the bat out of my inventory and shook it. In hindsight, it wasn’t good optics shaking a baseball bat at a woman backed up against a barrier, even if the barrier was invisible, anyone who knew the quadrant system would read it as an ambush.

  “Hey, take it easy,” said Trix, trying to back up but going nowhere because of the barrier.

  My left shoulder felt like it caught on fire, and my health meter dropped by almost half, showing a jaundiced color that mirrored the pain. Trix dove and knocked me down for the second time as something hot flew over us and slammed into the barrier.

  “Get outta there! I’ll finish him,” came a voice.

  I turned to see a grey-haired Asian man in a blue Adidas tracksuit, Charles – Level 2, PC, hovered above his head. He put his hands together and his head down and started chanting something. A circle of blue spinning energy built up around his hands and he let it go. It wasn’t aimed well, but it caught my arm, sending my health into dangerous territory, and singing Trix’s shoulder.

  Charles backed up and started chanting again. But this time he was watching me.

  At the same time, I heard Trix like she was speaking directly in my mind.

  TRIX: You’ve got to rush this guy. Same play you made with Jaggy.

  WILL: Wait, what?

  TRIX: Now—do it!

  Charles’ chanting was coming to an end, so I pulled my knife, Charged, and plunged it into Charles’ neck.

  He screamed, his health dropping into deep red territory. He fell to the ground and looked up at Trix with confusion and sorrow in his eyes. “I was trying to help you!”

  A dagger appeared in Trix’s hand and she plunged it into Charles’ chest, erasing his health.

  “And you did help me, Charles,” Trix said, looting Charles’ corpse and harvesting his Blue Flame attack.

  “Oh wow,” said Trix, delight ringing in her voice. “I have needed this Blue Flame spell! Now I can hit stuff from forty feet away! Maybe further, but with lower accuracy. Isn’t it kinda funny that his names was Charles and he had a spell that would char things?

  I was having trouble letting go of Charles’ words and feeling stunned from what had just happened. “I’m not a murderer.”

  “That’s right. Murder isn’t a category in this game. He attacked you, Will. We were defending ourselves.”

  “I don’t know. We could have talked to him. And, and, you’re talking about getting his spell like it was a Birthday gift you just opened!”

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry. It really is a shame about Charles. And, for what it’s worth, I tried to talk to the guy. Shame I couldn’t get him to join our party.

  “What? I never heard you ask him.”

  “I asked, just not out loud.”

  TRIX: I did it like this.

  WILL: Woah. I wasn’t ready for that.

  TRIX: Sorry.

  WILL: And he said no?

  TRIX: Uh huh. That’s right.

  “It’s eerie hearing you in my head. Can we talk normal again?”

  “Sure. Nobody’s around. Now, let’s get back to selecting your class.”

  “After Charles nearly set me on fire, that constitution bonus from the Bruiser class is looking good.”

  Trix nodded. “That’s the obvious choice, yes. But what I was getting at before is, this game is televised. I’ve watched it enough to know that Bruisers aren’t usually that popular. You want something with versatility, something surprising, and, counterintuitively, something approaching unplayability.

  “Unplayability? That doesn’t sound like a good idea.”

  “It’s not a good idea. It’s a great idea. Look at this one: Data Pirate. It’s a perfect fit! At higher levels, it boosts dexterity, intelligence, hand combat, and you’ll get network jamming abilities and other network-based attacks.”

  If this was televised, I wondered if people had just seen what happened to Charles. Did it look like we’d killed him? I was afraid it did.

  “So, data pirate?” said Trix.

  I forced myself to stop thinking about Charles. “You think that’s better than a strength boost on top of a blunt weapons skill?”

  Trix smiled at me, all kinds of mischief written across her face. “No comparison. With Bruiser, you’ll put a boot in the face of common thugs. As a Data Pirate, you’ll get all the booty you can handle.”