[PLAYER 1 - LAYTON YOUNG]

  “Well, the first thing you learn is how far you can go with no gas in the tank.

  And the next thing you learn is how cold it can get at night.”

  - J. Darnielle, Broken to Begin With

  PLAYER 1 - LAYTON YOUNG

  Ultimately, it all came down to Layton.

  Fear and doubt, any emotion at all, really, had been isolated and compressed by the pressure of the moment into a single mass at the pit of his stomach. All that remained was pure instinct, honed over years of training.

  The importance of his next move hung thick in the air. The suspense was everything; every quivering muscle; every cell taut with purpose. The suffocating fumes of impending glory clutched at his throat.

  This was the time. This was the place.

  This was…

  …Intramural volleyball.

  When the impact came, his nose blossomed into a crimson geyser. The crowd cheered as he fell onto his back, tears clouding his vision like stinging rain against a windshield. The low angle provided a lovely vantage point to watch the ball bounce out of bounds. A red streak ran along one rounded side and it took a moment for Layton to realize it was his own blood.

  “Eleven points for Ashland University. Cougars win!” The announcer’s voice crackled in the cheap speakers with a little too much enthusiasm. The bias was to be expected—Ashland was the home team, after all—but hearing it while curled in a fetal position on the gymnasium floor made it hard not to take the tone personally.

  Ricky’s head poked into view, squinting down with a good-natured smirk. Elle’s head, framed in a tightly-pulled crop of yellow hair, popped up next, her expression veering more into the realm of annoyance.

  “You cost us the game,” she said flatly. “Again.”

  “Let him be, Elle,” Ricky laughed. “At least he touched the ball this time.”

  “With his face. Face doesn’t count.”

  “Sure it does,” Layton said, coughing from the metallic taste in his mouth. “That’s, like, the first thing they teach you in soccer.”

  The irony was not lost on Layton that he’d been kicked off the soccer team for using his hands.

  He rubbed his eyes to clear them but when he looked back up, his teammates were gone, headed to the locker room and leaving the Cougars to celebrate. The floor shook lightly from the stampede of feet leaving the bleachers.

  None of these idiots had any idea that Layton was a powerful and feared warrior. No clue how many women desired him or how many men had fled the battlefield at the mere sight of his blade. Sure, maybe all of that was in a video game, but it wasn’t just any video game; it was the most popular video game of all time. Unfortunately, here, in a sparsely attended collegiate gymnasium, he was anonymous.

  Well, not entirely anonymous. There was a single recognizable face in the crowd: a young girl who looked equally concerned and proud. Sylvia Young, his twelve-year-old niece, attended every game without fail. Volleyball, soccer, baseball; whatever the sport, if Layton wore a jersey, she was there, despite the fact that wearing a jersey was usually as close as he ever got to actually playing.

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  It was sweet, but also a reminder that no one else in his family—not his brother, and certainly not his parents—ever bothered to show. And now she was headed his way to put what was left of his self-esteem out of its misery like some mewling roadside accident. Only instead of a mercy bullet, she was armed with snacks from her backpack.

  Sighing, he turned his head. The low angle provided a lovely vantage point to see Ricky put an arm around Elle’s waist as they pushed through the double metal doors.

  Fuck, he hated sports.

  PLAYER 2 - VIMALA TEO

  Ultimately, it all came down to Vimala.

  At least that’s what Mr. Singh had said as he gathered everyone else in the department for a Friday happy hour trip to Ginger Bliss Steak House.

  “Thanks for volunteering to stay behind, Vim,” he’d said, loosening his tie and directing the employees toward the door.

  Vimala had not volunteered. In fact, she’d specifically asked Mr. Singh earlier that week if she could leave early today for personal reasons.

  “Come join us when you wrap things up,” he’d added with a wink and finger gun motion.

  Vimala would not be joining them. The code review would take hours, a fact that Mr. Singh knew perfectly well. He also knew Vimala was a vegetarian and that Ginger Bliss had a logo prominently featuring all the edible parts of a cow.

  “Couldn’t do this without you!” Mr. Singh had called back over one shoulder as he left, hurrying to catch up to a co-worker who Vimala was pretty sure he was fucking.

  His last comment, at least, was accurate. If he’d given this shit assignment to anyone else on the team, they would’ve quit on the spot. In a fair world, her drudgery would have at least garnered a raise. But this was a world run by assholes, and she was still stuck at the bottom of the ladder while unqualified dipshits were constantly promoted all around her.

  So no — justice was not in the deck. That was a card you had to bring to the table yourself, carefully stashed up one sleeve.

  And now she was alone, surrounded by photographs of frozen smiles pinned to her peers’ cubicles. Her own space was barren other than a coffee mug filled with pens and a sticky note pad. The only sound was the stuttering hum of the air conditioner.

  Her monitor was a black void, across which a parade of text danced and swayed at the deft guidance of her fingertips. That’s how she described her job to friends, anyway, whenever they asked what she did all day.

  In truth, she was fine-tuning an algorithm that set the prices of sexy costumes for a pay-to-win mobile game about killing zombies.

  Ah, who was she kidding. She didn’t have friends. And she only stayed at this job because shouting into the void didn’t pay the rent.

  So, for the hundredth time, she unfolded her data card. No missed calls. No unread messages.

  Three news alerts cluttered the screen:

  UNITED COASTAL STATES REACHES TRADE AGREEMENT WITH MIDWEST COMMONWEALTH.

  Economics were boring. She slid the update away with a tilt of her head.

  PROTESTS BECOME INCREASINGLY VIOLENT IN TOKYO AS GOVERNMENT CONTINUES EXCAVATION OF XIA DYNASTY TEMPLE.

  World affairs were even more boring. Another head tilt and the headline vanished.

  POPULAR HYPER-REALITY GAME “SILVERDAWN” SET TO UPDATE AT MIDNIGHT EST [17:00 LOCAL] WITH FIRST SERVER DISRUPTION SINCE RELEASE.

  This…well, this she cared about very much. It was, in fact, the reason she’d wanted to leave early today.

  In exactly six hours and twenty-seven minutes, Silverdawn was going to have its first software update and kick every player offline as a result. It was miraculous that any piece of code, much less a game that hosted millions of players, hadn’t required a single patch in nearly a decade of existence. Most games, including the shitty one she was working on now, were riddled with bugs that needed to be squashed on day one.

  BrainTrust, the enigmatic company that made the game, had kept a tight lid on what changes were coming, but that secrecy had only fueled rampant speculation. Still, no one had any real idea what to expect after Silverdawn reset.

  Well, almost no one. There was one particular change that Vimala was very much expecting. A card that she’d been hiding up her sleeve for months, and tonight was the night she intended to slap it down on the table and get her just desserts.

  Assuming she could get home in time.

  She didn’t bother to read the article, as she’d been following every detail about the update since rumors of its existence first rippled through the gaming community. The important thing was confirming that it was all proceeding as scheduled. Satisfied, Vimala folded the data card and shoved it into her front pocket.

  She typed a few more lines of code and the price of bikinis on hot cyborg assassins dropped five percent. Truly critical, life-changing work. And this thankless corporate bullshit was going to put her at risk of missing out on the only thing she’d been looking forward to in this dumb, unfair world.

  Somewhere, Mr. Singh was squeezing his secretary’s leg under a table littered with cheap beer.

  Fuck, she hated work.