Another dead end.

  “Douglass, open the next sim,” Zed said, fighting a persistent yawn.

  He’d been at it for hours with no luck. Under normal circumstances, he would have really enjoyed himself. The various simulations were impressively fun, but there was no enjoyment to be had when you were looking for a murderer’s digital footprints.

  He’d spent an hour messing around in Great Depression-era New York City, clashing with a mobster or two before moving on to a more outlandish sim that involved cat people living in trees on some alien world. It was a bit harder to tell if anything was off in that particular sim without any real point of reference for what normal would even be.

  His favorite was a somewhat sacrilegious recreation of the Garden of Eden. At first, it played out as Chaplain Baat would recognize, with a snake convincing Adam and Eve to mess things up for everyone and get kicked out. Then the sim immediately reset and allowed the user to influence events.

  Zed, in a twist that would have made the snake proud, made sure Adam wasn’t around when Eve was being tempted, so she was the only one cast out. This left poor Adam to live alone for eternity before the sim reset again.

  Zed had hopped through several other time periods and scenarios, but he was losing steam.

  “Alright, Douglass. One last sim. Load up whatever’s next.”

  The Roman city landscape Zed had been floating over disappeared, replaced by what looked like a cutaway of an anthill.

  There were tunnels running through it, but they seemed to be laid out on a flat plane rather than snaking in three dimensions like an actual anthill.

  As Zed moved closer, he could see that the tunnels had people moving through them. It was clear now that they were people and not ants, but something seemed off about them. There were a few wandering outside the tunnel system that seemed to be shaped differently than the others.

  With a flick of his fingers, Zed threw himself forward, landing in one of the tunnels. Now that he had entered the space completely, there was no more transparent cutaway allowing him to see the rest of the tunnels. He looked around and was struck by a wave of claustrophobic panic as he realized he was in a rather narrow cavern with one of the strange people heading straight for him.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  On pure instinct, Zed raised his fists as the dark shape approached. Then he remembered that he was an invisible ghost as far as everyone else was concerned. Just before they passed through him, Zed caught a glimpse of their face in the dim light.

  One look at the uni-brow underscored forehead, and Zed knew exactly what this sim was about.

  “They’re cavemen! What am I supposed to do with that?” Zed asked the empty room. “Can they even talk?”

  Zed floated down the hall until he was in front of the Neanderthal again and hit the command to make himself visible. He might not be able to talk to this guy, but maybe he could scare him.

  To Zed’s surprise, nothing happened. He gave the command again and was met with silence once more.

  The Neanderthal walked through him again, and Zed didn’t pursue. He opened his menus and started trying out all the various tools for interaction and environmental manipulation he’d been able to use in all the other sims. Nothing seemed to work. He could move freely, but that was it. No level of interaction was possible.

  “Well, that’s a pointless waste. Must be a bug,” Zed muttered. “Douglas, shut the—”

  Zed’s mouth hung open mid-sentence. He’d been ready to shut the sim down and call it a day when something tickled his brain. He floated up above the nest of tunnels again. Something felt familiar, like a memory that might just be déjà vu, but in his gut, he knew it wasn't.

  Zed stared in silence for several moments longer, willing his mind to once again touch on whatever had seemed familiar. He was almost ready to issue the shutdown command again when he finally saw it.

  “The dome. It’s the same. Holy crap, the whole thing is the same. Everything, and every—”

  Zed stood abruptly and started pacing in his room while facing a particular spot in the sim. He did this for a full minute, starting and stopping, changing speed, jumping up and down, until he was satisfied with his conclusion.

  This was it. This was the hack. More than a hack, Zed thought. I don’t know why this is here or what it’s for, but this can’t be an accident or a coincidence. They’ve got to take me seriously now.

  Zed looked back at the sim and shook his head. On his first day in Naug, he’d learned about the colony’s pie wedge layout. Sections could be brought online as Naug grew.

  Much of the place was unoccupied, but there was one particular room that tied it all together: the mess hall dome. It sat directly in the middle of Naug’s collection of wedges, just like the domed cavern in the center of these cavemen’s home. A home comprised of corridors and rooms organized into rough wedges.

  In one of those wedges was a young caveman, standing in a small room next to a stone outcropping that was shaped much like a bed. Zed waved, and so did he.