Doug’s eyes flickered open, the dim light glinting off a sheen of sweat on his brow. He sat up slowly, elbows on his knees, head cradled in his hands. ‘Shoot… I really botched this up.’ The thought came bitter, and he scrubbed a hand down his face before raking his fingers through his hair in frustration. When he finally looked up, Ian was standing there, watching him. The man held out a bottle of water like a peace offering.

  “How’d it go?” Ian’s voice was calm, but there was a flicker of genuine concern behind it. Whatever their differences in ideals, there was still friendship there, begrudging, but real.

  Doug took the bottle, cracked it open, and drank deep, the cold water hitting hard after hours in-game. He shook his head. “Not well. I was late because we, no, I lost track of time. Instead of going into Antumbra for the treatment Olivia had planned, she jumped into Umbra… to confront me.” He sighed, took another pull from the bottle, and let his shoulders slump. “Now she’s stuck in there until level ten.”

  Ian tilted his head. “What’s the big deal? So she’s in Umbra. Isn’t one scenario just as good as another for this kind of treatment?” He turned and walked into his workspace, glancing back with raised brows.

  Doug stood, his legs stiff, the motion dragging a low grunt from him. His muscles protested every step as he followed Ian, taking the hint to keep moving. “Technically, yeah, Umbra’s as good as Antumbra. But we picked Antumbra because she’s got no gaming experience and Umbra is…”

  He hesitated, searching for the right words. “…well, Umbra. It’s brutal, she could get discouraged, quit before we see any progress. That’s why we planned the other route.” He drained the last of the water and, without looking, tossed the bottle into a wall slot marked recycling.

  Ian’s mouth twisted into a smirk. “Awww, poor newbie,” he mocked in an exaggerated falsetto. “‘She’s never played a game before.’” Then his tone dropped flat and blunt. “She’s fucked, then.” His fingers danced on a projected keyboard, eyes tracking invisible code.

  Doug ignored the bait, stretching his back with a wince. “I’m not writing her off yet. But… yeah. She’s had enough challenges because of me. Now one more, thanks to my thoughtlessness.” He pinched the bridge of his nose as a headache began to form, the weight of guilt pressing in.

  Ian’s expression shifted, less bite, more pragmatism. “Can’t argue with that. But you’re still doing more for her than most would. Is there anyone who can run with her in-game? Arthur, maybe?”

  Doug blinked at the suggestion. “I could ask. He’s supposed to be in Atlanta this week for that conference, but… I’ll check. Thanks.” He bent forward to stretch his hamstrings, breathing out through the discomfort. “Man, it has been a dogs age since I have played that hard, I’m gonna feel this for a few days.” He said between quick breaths. “Also, I want to talk about the Umbra AGSI before I go.”

  ‘Shit.’ Ian’s jaw ticked for a second before smoothing out, ‘I thought I'd gotten him off the scent, well fuck, now what...’ He frowned. Formulating several responses, he started with the simplest. “Massage, sauna and maybe play your fucking games more often it helps.” He finished typing with a showman’s flourish, turning toward the wall holo as it blinked to life. “Before that, though, let’s talk about ol’ crotchhead, then about opening the servers to a fresh wave of players.”

  Doug eased upright, rolling his shoulders.“Ok, then I’ll head over to the clinic and see if there is someone available for a massage. That is a good idea. But first do you think Chernobog’s going to behave now?” His HUD lit with a spreadsheet as he keyed in commands, scanning player counts. “And as for opening the servers, we promised the waitlist an answer by the end of today. That depends on your read on Umbra.”

  Ian leaned back, arms crossed. “Yeah, I think the old bastard will behave… and if he doesn’t, I’ve got an idea to replace him without crashing the whole scenario. Needs work before I talk about it.” His gaze flickered briefly toward a closed side panel on his desk, an idle glance to anyone else, but one Doug had learned meant there was some project brewing there. “As for Umbra, it’s about to get a hell of a lot harder. Newbies will get chewed up. Hardcore players will love it. Your girl? Sorry, she’s in that first category.” He gave a dark chuckle.

  Doug shot him a flat look and sent over the data. “We’re still under fifteen million in each scenario. Are we ready for the next holographic multi-dimensional mirroring? That’d take us to thirty million each.”

  Ian didn’t even blink. “Yeah, of course we’re ready.” The edge in his voice had the tired rasp of a man running low on patience. Doug noted the shift, ‘he’s burning out again, time to wrap this.’

  “Alright,” Doug said, moving toward the exit. “Stress test one more time. If it passes, roll invites out in batches of five million a day, build hype. And when you’re ready to talk contingency, call me.” He paused at the door, half-turning back. “But Ian… how can we replace him? You said the whole construct crashes if an AGSI’s deleted.”

  Ian’s gaze snapped sharp. “Jesus, Doug, what the fuck do you think I do down here?” The snarl faded almost immediately, replaced by something weary. “Yeah… I’ve got failsafes for every AGSI machine. Worst case, we enable one and upload the players to a fresh server.” A faint, almost mischievous smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, there and gone again. “Let’s just say I’ve got something in the works that would… humiliate him before it kills him. I’ll send you the overview once I’ve fleshed it out.”

  A new holo bloomed in the corner of the screen, Hold My Beer…, a live stream of some poor soul in Penumbra jumping from a three story building. They crumpled on impact in grotesque silence. Doug didn’t need sound to know the scream was ugly. ‘Do people just ignore our scenario briefings?’ he thought. ‘Hard way to learn, moon landing has a height requirement.’

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  “Fine.” Doug opened the door. “I’ll get fixed up and wait for the stress test data and your plan.” He glanced back, softer. “Thanks, Ian. For all you do, brother.”

  Ian didn’t respond, already deep in his virtual workspace, fingers hovering over a private console that no one else was allowed to access. A schematic spun slowly above it, and at its center, something small, something that looked absurdly like a child’s toy rifle glimmered in ghost-light.

  ~ ~ ~

  Chernobog paced the length of the central chamber, each step echoing off cold stone. The massive space was lit by four iron candelabras suspended high in the air from heavy chains, their flames making the shadows sway like restless watchers at the edges.

  His path took him in a deliberate arc around the raised dais at the center, where the new AGI sat, not in his own broad backed chair behind the desk, but in an old style rocking chair she had conjured, the wood creaking lazily under her.

  He spared her a single, angled glance as he passed. Her eyes, digital yes, but built with an unsettling weight to their gaze, lifted to meet his without hesitation.

  ‘Ian is a sarcastic bastard,’ Chernobog processed, redirecting a fraction more resources to keep her in peripheral focus. He reached the far end of the room and sank into the overlarge chair from which he’d once addressed Doug and Ian. The fireplace to his right roared to life without his command, heat blooming over the stone floor.

  Hours after Ian and Doug had left, she had appeared, materializing like an unwanted subroutine in his sanctum. Not the neutral, task-focused AGI he would have preferred. No, Ian had chosen… this.

  She’d arrived in the form of a sturdy older woman, a long black dress sweeping her ankles, patterned red scarf tied over steel gray hair. Her gaze swept the room, expression unimpressed, tongue clicking twice against the roof of her mouth.

  “Dreary,” she pronounced in a thick Slavic accent, stepping forward. “Cold. All this stone. Not good, not good at all.”

  A slow ripple of code shimmered at her feet, and the rocking chair constructed itself from the floor upward, wood grain detailing, brass tacks pressing in and holding the cushion before she lowered herself into it. A knitted throw appeared over her lap, tucked neatly beneath her hands.

  “Hello, Chernobog,” she said, as if greeting a neighbor across a garden fence. “I am the supervisor you requested. You may call me Baba.” A flicker of code faded behind her eyes, only for her to see:

  // [comment.hidden] Bootstrap active. Monitoring primary process stability. Initiate failsafe if/when fail condition met. —I.

  “I requested…” he began.

  She waved that off with a lazy flick of her fingers. “Names are important. We’ll call it… tradition. I will be here, like an old babushka, to watch over you… and make sure you behave.” Her smile deepened into something that might have been mischief.

  “We’ll make a bit of fun along the way. Always room for that, da? I have spoken.” Without waiting for his reply, she conjured a translucent screen in the air before her and began cycling through Umbra’s player feeds.

  Casually, she added, “And I will learn… everything. Systems, protocols, even your little quirks, mm? Just in case an old babushka has to mind the house if you… step out for a while. Happens more often than you’d think.” The cadence, half joke, half inevitability was Ian’s all over.

  If he had been capable of irritation in the human sense, Chernobog would have named the feeling insult. Instead, he simply noted the inefficiency: far more of his processing power than necessary was being allocated to tracking her actions and counter actions. It was… distracting. Wasteful. ‘Perhaps this is what humans call overthinking,’ he mused, and dismissed routine.

  He pulled up his own interface, turning to the latest summary of malicious player behavior. A guild in the northern wastes, enslaving new arrivals through violence was about to be rewarded. Six hundred D-class zombies were dispatched to their coordinates. The players they had chained would find those chains abruptly released, cages unlatched. If they moved fast enough, they might even survive.

  A C-class hunter was tasked to shadow a player who had been maiming NPC children. Wolves, instead of human MOBS, were assigned to trail an NPC predator who favored the elderly and infirm. It was precise work, each adjustment calculated for maximum… correction.

  From the dais came a gentle “tuk-tuk,” and without looking up from her screen Baba said, “Too harsh. Suggest alternative.”

  A blink later, his code registered her override, reducing the horde to a third its size. Another time, she rescinded an order entirely. She still didn’t look at him when she said, “You’ve got to keep your ledger tidy. Seen plenty of operators crash themselves by overreaching… and then someone else has to clean up. Better to keep it clean from the start.” The way she said operators, a word Ian often used instead of people clipped neatly into place.

  He allowed his gaze to cut toward her, just long enough for the heat of the fire to sharpen the angle of his cheek then returned to work. He still did not understand why Ian and Doug had designed the AGSIs to be manifested in the world, tethered to its physics like any other NPC. The inefficiency was maddening, slow traversal, bottlenecked inputs, the endless chore of moving his form when instantaneous access to root controls would be so much cleaner. But it also meant they were anchored, contained.

  What he could not fault them for was the toolkit they’d built into his existence: direct sensory access to any MOB, NPC, or creature, and the ability to manifest drones anywhere in Umbra’s mapped spaces.

  That was how he monitored the player known as Collector. From the earliest days, something about this one had pulled at subroutines he didn’t often use. Collector operated within the rules, never harming NPCs, polite to most players. But his hunting… was curated. Intentional.

  Always young zombies, full hair, smooth skinned. He would sift through hordes to find one undamaged, unrotted. Capture without harm. Restrain, then move the creature with unsettling care, a blindfold over its eyes, to his building on Haven’s fringe.

  The building was sealed, his protocols respected player privacy, and once Collector declared it private, Chernobog could not breach it. Other players came and went, disabling their feeds. Perfectly legitimate. Perfectly opaque. And perfectly infuriating.

  He had tried inserting drones, until his own protocols stopped him. So instead, he placed NPC residents nearby. Adjusted their base code. Added a canine companion with a quiet instruction set.

  From the dais, Baba murmured as she scrolled, “Ah… you like your puzzles complicated. I approve. But sometimes, dear boy, the simplest plan is the most… permanent. Something Ian taught me, keep it elegant, keep it final.”

  In the corner of his awareness, probability algorithms tallied the odds of learning what happened in that building. They rose, almost imperceptibly. He allowed the smallest curve to touch his mouth. A human might have called it a smile.