Four years old, already considered a freak. They hadn’t told her the burns wouldn’t fade for a long, long time. They hadn’t told her that her mother was in prison, or how all that was left of her father was a charred skeleton six feet underground. They just told the other kids to be nice to her.

  The kids were never very mean to her directly, not when she was so young, but they did all they could to shun her anyway. An innate hatred of the different they hadn’t learned to shut out yet. The adults looked down on her as much as the children did. They wouldn’t bully her, they were simply as cold as the walls that surrounded her. No one would choose her over the others. She knew she’d be stuck in that sterile, hollow place forever.

  Then one day, she made her first friend.

  When she was five, a new room in the orphanage opened up. The kid inside got adopted, and the boy she shared a bunk bed with wanted her gone as soon as she could. The matron led her into the room and closed the door behind her. The room was rather bare, with nothing but a bunk bed, a desk, a few scattered barely used toys, and a kid huddled in the corner in between the desk and the bed. She’d never seen them before. Their face was down, hidden behind their arms.

  “H-Hello?” She asked. “What’s your name?”

  Her speech was slow and laboured, but the other kid spoke surprisingly fluently despite being the same age as her.

  “James,” He said. “My name is James.”

  She crawled over to him. “I’m Amy. Do you want to play with me?”

  “I’m…having a bad face day…”

  Amelia had no idea what he was talking about. She had other things on her mind. “Can you be my friend? Then we can play together.”

  “Friend…I can be your friend.”

  He finally looked up at Amelia with a perfect smile, and the rest was history.

  Even in a VR game as realistic as Sable Online, nothing felt quite as satisfying as actually punching things.

  Amelia bombarded the punching bag, a rapid spray of jabs, crosses and hooks. She’d done boxing ever since she was a young teen, recommended to her as an outlet for her anger issues. It had helped focus her, and she’d paid regular visits to the gym ever since. The regular pattern of her punches faded into background noise soon enough, giving her time to think.

  She certainly needed that time now. She still had no idea what to think about everything that had happened yesterday. Between Draconautis’ attack and Patrick’s research, it was like the veil the game hid behind was slowly being peeled back to reveal something much darker and much scarier. The strange thing was, despite what had happened to her and James, she still wanted to find out more. It was like something in the game was calling out to her, pulling her onwards. It was an enigma that needed to be solved even if it cost her, and she was certain the others felt the same.

  The timer on her HoloBracer finished, vibrating her bones in a way that only she could feel or hear. Amelia struck the bag with one last cross to finish off, unwrapped her gloves, and sat down to take a drink as it was still swinging back and forth. She checked the clock, and had apparently been training for about four hours so far.

  A staff member opened the door to the part of the gym she was in. The sudden sound was what made her realise she was the only one around.

  “Amelia!” She shouted. “We’re gonna close up soon.”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  She cocked her head to the side. “You’re closing early?”

  “Getting new equipment installed. Sorry.”

  “No problem. Give me a minute, I’ll get out of here soon.”

  The staff member nodded and left. The gym closing shop early was probably for the better, as she still had to meet up with the others later, could easily go on this thing all night. She was always shocked by her physical stamina. Patrick had always teased that it was to make up for how easily people burnt her out.

  Flicking over her HoloBracer, she checked the news.

  Maximilian Kable backs healthcare reforms.

  Amelia skim read the article. It was what she expected: the Kable Conglomerate's charismatic leader supporting improvements to America’s healthcare system, selflessly giving his hard earned money to the system to help fight an incompetent and out-of-touch government.

  This was followed by a list of his other accomplishments, including building the city of Avalon that she had lived in all her life, radically advancing hard light technology and compact computer systems, and helping develop new drone technology for bombing runs on the oppressive Velcorp State.

  She thought for a moment, swearing that he’d tried to push this healthcare reform through before, but she couldn’t quite remember. A quick search on the internet did ‘t find anything, but she was certain she’d heard her adoptive parents talking about it a few years ago. More than likely she was making it up. Kable did stuff like that all the time, endlessly pushing changes of policy through the government, some beneficial, others woefully misguided.

  The fact this was a Kabletech HoloBracer was not lost on her. Sometimes Amelia couldn’t help but agree with Patrick’s belief that Kabletech ran the country, especially with how much of a media darling he was. Those fears would be put to rest when they would be called out for doing some monumentally stupid PR conference, producing a failed product no one wanted, trying to blatantly subvert democracy in front of the American populace or doing shady back deals with arms companies that America should have blacklisted long ago. It was hard to believe they were clever enough to rule America from the shadows, even though most of those actions were usually pinned on the wider organisation and never Kable.

  Floating above the paragraph praising him was an image of Kable himself, shaking hands with a doctor. He was in his mid 30s, with short cut dark hair, a little bit of stubble around his chin, and dark eyes. Others had said he was handsome but Amelia had never understood why, and the most distinctive thing about him was the sharp red suit he always seemed to wear in public. She’d seen him once from the school window, surveying the construction site next door, wearing a hard hat and happily chatting with the construction workers. He seemed rather socially awkward, but she chalked it up to him being out of his depth on a building site. After all, men like him hadn’t done a day of hard work in their life.

  Still, most of the people she talked to either didn’t mind him or thought he was the best thing to happen to America since Lincoln, even if they didn’t like Kabletech as a whole. Patrick was the only person Amelia knew who outright despised him, and he had history with corporations like Kabletech that made his dislike understandable.

  Most of the world's continents were run by corporations: The Hammersmith-Valiant Corporation in western Europe, Velcorp in central Africa, Lotus Root in Japan. All of them gripped their countries with an iron fist, although Velcorp State had collapsed into civil war at the end of last year and they’d been riots in the European state of France against human rights abuses by the HVC. Despite this, most of them looked indomitable in comparison to Kabletech’s bumbling tech monopoly in America.

  Amelia really didn’t care about all that. Replacing the corporations with something else wouldn’t change what happened to her. It wouldn’t have made her father any less of a dick, wouldn’t have stopped the flames that charred her for life, and wouldn’t have stopped her from going to the orphanage. At least she met James there, her first friend and one that stuck with her through thick and thin, and who had led her to friends who didn’t care about the burns and scars that covered the left half of her body. Their words of support had led her to find a foster family, and in some ways she now had two families who adopted her. Maybe there were small mercies in this world.

  She flicked the HoloBracer to switch it off, gathered up her stuff, and prepared to head home and get some sleep. She’d return to Sable Online soon, but not yet. She needed time for her head to clear, which was not something she ever thought unless the others specifically told her she should. She wanted to approach the problem forcefully, take her anger out on whoever was responsible for this, but she knew that wasn’t the answer to her problem.

  Well, not yet anyway.

  She stood up and began her stretches, ready to head to play D&D. Sable Online could wait for tonight. Right now, she had all she needed.