My jaw tightened as I got within five hundred meters of the ship.

  She didn’t work for me?

  What in the hell was going on here!

  Pure rage.

  Catharsis… then answers.

  Figures scrambled across the deck hurrying to prepare for my arrival. Seeing that one of them was starting to cast a spell I summoned a strip of leather and wrapped it around the throttle control to keep it pulled down toward the bottom of the skiff.

  A spell exploded into the silt beside me, rocking the small boat and requiring a small course correction from me. Sneering and growling into the wind and the dive room outside the game I said, “How’s this for my fucking job.”

  The pirates on the ship screamed in terror as I got within twenty meters. By the time I activated Surging Blood I was within ten meters of the looming vessel.The ship had a similar hull to the skiff, a bright violet wall of light around a metallic frame displacing the silt around it. Above the top deck it was strikingly similar to many of the vessels I had come to associate with pirates and the Age of Sail.

  My skiff rushed toward it as the world moved in slow motion. Vaulting over the seats meant to carry the skiff’s crew I leaped into the air burst into mist. My vessel bounced off of another small dune and struck the side of the ship like a torpedo. The world was full of screams and red fire as I flowed onto the deck and materialized next to one of the crew.

  Ready to start my butchery.

  Less than five minutes later the pirate captain, a snake woman who now lay at my feet with her clawed hands raised and true terror in her eyes, rasped, “Please… please I just did what I was told.”

  Roaring in rage, I swung one of the Sisters in a cruel arc sending a spray of the woman’s black blood across the deck. Behind me the entire ship was covered in slowly spreading crimson fire. Bodies lay strewn across the deck and the endless night echoed with a low groan of thunder.

  Behind me a soot stained Sakurai stumbled from the hold, being held up by Mystal and one of her ‘crew’ members. A brief pang of remorse struck me when I realized I had not considered the two ‘innocent’ NPCs when I used my vessel as a knife to sink this ship.

  Mystal set down Sakurai and beamed a smile as she hurried across the deck toward me. Raising a blade at her I glared from within the shaded goggles I wore. A confused expression spread over her face as she stuttered, “Ma… Mal?”

  “How the fuck do you know my name?”

  Her voice took on a pained quality as she said, “You… you told me. We have to help…”

  “I don’t HAVE to do anything. Tell me what else you know about me.”

  She glanced back at Sakurai with growing tears in her eyes as she shook her head, “I… know you are kind. I know you took me in even though I had done bad things.”

  She gulped visibly and shook her head, “I see you looking at us sometimes. I can tell you think less of us but… then you put yourself in danger to save us because you really care.”

  “Valerie once told me that you were too smart for your own good… but you were the bravest man she had ever met.”

  She started to cry as she said, “Please Mal, why are you acting like…”

  “Stop crying! Stop trying to manipulate my emotions with this scripted bullshit! You aren’t fucking real! None of this is real, and none of it matters to me!”

  My outburst left the girl’s face ashen, her eyes filled with tears… stunned and betrayed. The deep and pained expression on the innocent NPC’s face caused my blade to dip and my tension and anger slip a fraction. Ignoring the strange girl I stalked across the deck past her. She was still crying and I didn’t want to look at her.

  Reaching a hand out toward Sakurai I growled, “Up.”

  She gave me a confused look but took my hand. I heaved her up from the deck and nodded toward a skiff on the other side of the ship that had yet to be consumed by the flames, “Get in.”

  Turning to a still distraught Mystal I said, “You too.”

  She whispered softly, “I don’t know if I want…”

  “I said DO IT.”

  She recoiled meekly and did as I commanded, helping the still sickly Sakurai along toward the small vessel.

  Jumping into the front of the small boat, I tossed the key to Mystal, “Take us toward Valerie.”

  “Mal… why,” she looked down at the key and wiped away her tears.

  My anger had somewhat cooled and I only offered a low growl, “Just do as I say. I won’t be able to speak…”

  Her own expression had finally hardened to flat wounded pain and she said, “Yes,” her gold eyes shifting to me with a hint of disdain, “I know how you are when you go back to your world.”

  Eyeing her with brief surprise my shoulders slumped and I settled in and spoke out into the dive room, “We have to talk Lydia.”

  “Yes we do, darlin.”

  Cast in the red light of the burning ship I pulled the helmet up and off my head.

  –

  The red light I was expecting was replaced by a blinding white glow. I was still sitting in the dive chair looking up at the monitor where a stoney faced Mystal piloted the skiff out into the waves of the silt sea.

  Looking to my left I found Olivia was sitting at the table smiling at me with a hint of sadness. She was wearing the button up shirt and slacks she had been wearing when I hired her for the job.

  I swung my feet out of the chair and leveled a glare at her, “You aren’t supposed to be down here.”

  She spread her hands, “That is out of my hands I’m afraid.”

  Lydia spoke now, her southern drawl cold and calculating, “Malcolm your rebellious attitude to your tasks has led to a disruption in project advancement. Management has decided that you need to be confined and controlled for the remainder of the process.”

  Sitting numb at the edge of my dive rig, my anger dulled to confusion, I said, “Is this some kind of streamer prank?,” my voice took on a slightly panicked tone, “I have been having bad dreams…”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  Olivia cut me off in a kind measured tone, “We assumed that we could keep you involved in the task by making things comfortable for you and I promise I’m still here to facilitate that but,” she sighed, “Director Speers believes that our efforts have been consistently lacking.”

  My thumb spun the ring I kept forgetting under my haptic glove frantically. Panic started to rise and completely crush my anger, “I… I can wake up anytime.”

  Olivia stood and made her way over to me.

  Stumbling out of the chair, I fell backward and scrambled away from her. She held up her hands with that same kind smile as she kept her distance, “Malcolm, we can not really talk about what is really happening here. You are both on staff for this project and receiving treatment.”

  Lydia’s voice remained calm and cold as she said, “The time for theatrics has ended Malcolm. We will return to progression within the system.”

  Stamping down my panic, my back met the dive room wall and I raised my chin to glare at Olivia coldly, “What if I don’t obey your orders?”

  Olivia sighed and gave me a sad look.

  It was Lydia who answered, “Then the system will be adjusted to apply a negative stimulant.”

  When I started to speak the walls of the dive room blinked as if all the soundproofing, monitors and wires were just images on a computer screen. The room transformed before my very eyes. It was still a dive room but I was back in the sophisticated streaming lab at Myriad Studios.

  Olivia stood back from me as I stood to regard the chamber in terror. For a few moments nothing was happening but I heard rapid footsteps approaching the doors to the dark room accompanied by familiar voices.

  “Look Alice, I won’t tell him if you drop this shit.”

  The door swung open to reveal Sydney carrying a box of equipment. Just seeing her again shocked the breath from my lungs. Not the sad woman I had seen at the lawyer’s office but the Sydney I remembered. Alice was stalking along behind her with a sly grin on her face.

  “Come on Syd. You’ve seen this shit he’s been doing. He needs to be stopped, for everyone’s sake.”

  Sydney chuckled and set the box down as she leveled a glare at her, “I can talk to Mal. I don’t need to side with that holier than thou little dweeb Cameron Lake to do that.”

  A smile came to my face as I looked at my fierce partner staring down Alice’s games without flinching.

  Alice raised a slender tablet with a predatory smile, waving it back and forth as she said, “It would be terrible if Malcolm saw this, wouldn’t it?”

  Flinching at that, I growled meekly, “I don’t want to see this.”

  Both women’s heads snapped up with an unnatural synchronicity to glare at me.

  Sydney stalked around the table toward me growing larger and more slender. She glared down over her lengthening nose and spoke in a tone filled with rage, “Are you spying on me?”

  Alice joined her, crushing the tablet and tossing it aside as she echoed a message I’d seen recently, “Hello again, Murderer.”

  The shocking change caused me to stumble backward and scream. I stumbled and fell through the doors and back into the bright unnatural light I’d awoken in. The two towering hags that had been Sydney and Alice did not advance through the door I had passed through. When I turned I was somewhere else.

  The hospital. Not this place again. This place vied with my childhood home for terrible memories. It was a typical L-shaped room with a bathroom to the left and an elevated television monitor and whiteboard to the right scribbled with nurse schedules. Somewhere in the room I heard the chirp of a machine alarm followed by the long hiss of oxygen being released.

  Stowing the fear of my last encounter, I straightened and squared my shoulders before walking around the corner to look at the hospital bed.

  My mother lay there as she had the last time I’d seen her. She was an emaciated and skeletal representation of herself. She was in a hospital gown with tubes running from the IV in her arm and the mask over her mouth. A bandage entombed her head and right eye, a casualty of her advancing illness and the complications involved. The acrid smell of disinfectants did little to cover the smell of rot and waste.

  She turned to regard me with her one remaining brilliant gray eye. Unlike the last time I’d seen her it was filled with intelligence. She reached to the mask on her face and with surprising strength slowly pulled the mask and the tube down her throat out with a sickening squelch. My emotions had settled. I didn’t feel the terror that the surprise encounter with Sydney and Alice had caused.

  Raising my chin, I glowered as she worked her lips wetly before rasping, “Hello son.”

  Her eye was wild, the pupil seeming to vibrate rapidly, as she continued, “I knew that when I left you, you would fall apart. Not even a year without me and just like I told you,” she paused to cough wetly before she continued with fresh blood on her lips, “I bet you wish you had done more for your mother.”

  Standing there in the light of that room of horrors looking down at her for an indeterminate amount of time, I finally croaked a response but it was not to the creature before me, “I see what you are trying to do.”

  Turning, I walked back through the hospital door to find Olivia looking toward me with sympathy, “Mal, we have to continue the project.”

  Glaring at the young woman I growled through my teeth, “I would rather die.”

  Lydia spoke calmly, “That can be arranged Malcolm,” her voice was flat and clinical as she said, “as many times as is required to correct your attitude.”

  Ignoring Olivia, I glared upward at the ceiling, “Does Speers think that treating me like this is going to get what he wants?”

  Lydia’s response was dismissive, “Director Speers’ motivations are not your concern.”

  It was clear that they had imprisoned me. Was their ability to alter this world an indication that I was somehow in a dive chair? Was I locked into some kind of streaming couch that cared for my needs without ever having to log out? I’d heard that the military and high end medical researchers had invented such devices with aims for long term treatment and space travel.

  If that were the case, when had they kidnapped me?

  Were my downfall and the events of the tournament just some kind of illusion to indoctrinate me to this reality?

  Ignoring the AI I paced and growled my thoughts, “Grabbed me somewhere. Knocked me out and threw me in a dive couch…”

  Pausing, I glared at Olivia and said, “You can’t really be so desperate for a professional tester that you would abduct someone…”

  As I continued Olivia pleaded, “Malcolm…”

  “Started noticing the weird ring and the artifacting after I woke up the morning that I met with Speers. That was the start.”

  “What ‘weird ring’?,” Olivia asked with genuine concern.

  “Maybe it’s not a game?,” I continued, ignoring her, “maybe it was the government.”

  Pausing and sinking into my thoughts I considered everything I had seen around Sakurai’s ‘Punishment’ environment.

  They had done this to her as well. There had to be others.

  My eyes narrowed as my scowl deepened.

  The one who seemed most likely to know something… and actually talk, was Theodora.

  Olivia stood aside, her expression pained and worried as she studied me.

  What were my options in this insane situation?

  One thing was for certain, if they did have me locked into a chair they did indeed have complete control over my world and what happened to me.

  Olivia inquired softly, derailing my thoughts, “Malcolm? I have been told to ask you if you know anything about Megumi Sakurai?”

  Looking at her sharply, I cocked my head. My thoughts swirled rapidly and I finally asked, “Why? What about her?”

  Olivia seemed to reconsider what she had said and shook her head, “It’s not…”

  She was cut off by Lydia who demanded, “Resume testing.”

  The walls shifted and flickered back to the view of the surrounding dive room and the pure white light was enveloped by the deep blood red from before. Olivia stood by in the cast of the bloody light and gave me a sympathetic smile as she said, “I’m sorry you found out like this.”

  Shaking my head I sighed my response in frustration, “Found out what, that you kidnapped me? That you are holding me against my will? I would love to know the truth…”

  Lydia’s voice boomed, shaking the house, “Resume testing.”

  I rolled my shoulders and tried to set my anger and confusion aside as I climbed back into the suspended chair. To my shock the connecting clips that I normally struggled to plug in snaked down and plugged inserted themselves into the connectors.

  Olivia looked on with obvious worry as I grabbed the helmet and yanked it down over my head.