Distortion (Somnia Online Book 5)

by K. T. Hanna

Wren’s head ached. Just when she thought it couldn’t hold any more noise, it surprised her, and not in a good way. Any more of it, and she was certain her ears would bleed.

  Focus.

  She cringed at the overwhelming volume of the word but closed her eyes and tried to narrow in on the echo left by that voice.

  Compartmentalize. You’ve done it before.

  If she could have scowled at the voice, she would have. It was right, though. She’d done it before, in the void. Done it and maintained it for a good chunk of time. Hell, she’d even learned to separate emotional overflow from others before that.

  Wren stilled herself, searching through the thoughts and categorizing them. Sorting through them, dismissing ones she didn’t need to hear into a miscellaneous category while the others got divided into AIs, cities, and random encounters.

  Somnia was still alive in her head, and a constant tug pulled at the back of her mind, urging her to come back, to not forget. Silly game. It wasn’t like she could forget even if she tried.

  “Wren?” Harlow’s hand was warm on Wren’s shoulder. Its strength made Wren feel vulnerable yet somehow safe. Such a difference in such a short amount of time.

  “I’m okay.” Wren kept her eyes closed so Harlow couldn’t read too much into them. Her friend had always known. Whether it was through intuition or else through some sort of empathy didn’t matter.

  “Why don’t I believe you?” Harlow asked, her tone quizzical.

  Wren opened one eye a sliver and peered at her friend. “Because you’re a skeptic.”

  “Often.” Harlow laughed, and then her expression reverted back to serious. “Really, though, I’m worried about you. Can I get you anything?”

  Wren spent a moment watching Harlow, thoughts flitting through her mind that she wasn’t sure she should entertain. Then she shook her head and sighed, letting herself flop back down on her bed. It was soft. More so than any of the furniture in Somnia. Even in the barracks. How nice would it be to sink into it?

  Raising her hand above her head, she frowned at it. Her veins were so blue beneath paler skin than she’d ever had before. They ran in intricate patterns throughout. She watched them closely, mesmerized by the spiderweb-like resemblance.

  On the spur of the moment, she moved her fingers quickly, weaving the spell for invisibility.

  Harlow gasped, and Wren sat up, echoing the sound, still holding her hands out. Hands she could no longer see. What even…

  “Mur? I mean…Wren?” Harlow turned around, whipping from one side to the other as she tried to locate her friend.

  “I’m here.” Wren stood up, her legs shaky, despite the food and rest she’d had. It was going to take longer than one night for her to nix the effects of what was essentially a three-month long coma. She didn’t have more time to spend in the real world though.

  “I should hope so. But I can’t see you.” Harlow’s voice was soft, an awed whisper. “You’re not really doing this, right? It’s a trick. This is insane.”

  “Yeah.” Wren closed her eyes and tried to pull up the interface. But the game interface wasn’t there. All she had was her usual Alternate Reality overlay. She frowned and released the spell.

  Harlow’s sigh of relief turned into a full-on hug. A tight embrace that sucked most of the wind out of Wren, but she didn’t mind. She’d just turned herself invisible. She could use all the hugs she could get.

  “How did you do that?” Harlow whispered next to her ear. Wren wasn’t sure if it was the question itself or the brush of breath against her neck that sent the shivers down her spine. It might have been a mix of both.

  “I just tried to cast a spell.” Wren shrugged, her mind racing over all the probabilities. She couldn’t try damaging spells, but she could use other spells that were ultimately harmless like invisibility was.

  “I mean, I can try to cast a spell too.” Harlow frowned with concentration as she focused on her own hand, but nothing visible happened. “Except I don’t think I can, you know, bring the game’s abilities into the real world!”

  Wren was only half listening. What about binding her affinity to the real world? She wove the intricate spell with her fingers, opting for the tried and true method instead of willing it directly.

  You cannot bind yourself to the corporeal world.

  That is not an option in this reality. Please choose another spell.

  What?

  That was new. The voice wasn’t quite the same as the interface, but the almost the same one that kept giving her tips. If Bind Affinity didn’t work here, then the odds were that neither would gate.

  She frowned and motioned for Harlow to wait a minute. Wren had to figure this out, and her best friend tapping her foot impatiently wasn’t helping in the slightest.

  “Sec. I think I have an idea.” What better to help bolster her movement now than a spell? But did she want strength at the cost of agility? Fervor or Beserker? Wren frowned. “Think. Damn it. Think.”

  “Wren?” Harlow asked worriedly. “What are you doing?”

  “Testing something out.” Invisibility was one thing, but fortifying herself would be an amazing idea if it worked. Agility wasn’t going to be much good if she didn’t have the strength to move anyway. Fervor wasn’t the best choice. She closed her eyes briefly, trying to visualize the spell pattern for that one. She’d cast Beserker on Devlish often enough that she should know it by heart.

  Taking a deep breath, confident she’d found the correct pattern, she began weaving the spell. It took a little longer out here, where gravity was real, and she could hear rain falling outside. Real rain. Acid rain. For just a second, Somnia felt so much safer.

  Once woven, Wren released the spell as she opened her eyes. Sparks ignited and drifted through the air to land on each of her limbs and on her torso. An overwhelming feeling of power surged through her, wrapping around the muscles inside her body, making them stronger, heavier. She opened her eyes and took a few tentative steps toward the door of her room.

  “Wow.” She didn’t feel nearly as weak now. Not a hundred percent yet, but far better than she had been. “It worked.”

  “What did you do?” Harlow’s hesitant question made Wren look back at her. Green eyes met her gaze boldly, but she could sense the wariness in her friend’s stance.

  “I Beserkered myself. Gave myself some extra strength to move.” So the beneficial and hiding spells appeared to work here for her. Wren frowned. “I’m not sure what else I can use though.”

  “Um, Wren.” Harlow looked uncomfortable, like she didn’t want to point something out just in case it wasn’t what Wren wanted to hear.

  “What?” She grinned, trying to reassure her friend. This was amazing! She’d taken powers from the game with her into the real world.

  Harlow finally looked up, her jaw set stubbornly and her gaze locked onto Wren’s. “I can’t do what you’re doing. You shouldn’t be able to do what you’re doing. Somehow, you’ve exited the game, but you still have your powers. Don’t you think that’s fucking weird?”

  Wren gulped. She knew it wasn’t normal, and she knew it shouldn’t have happened. The headset weighed heavily on her head for a moment, she’d even slept in the damn thing. She didn’t know if the connection would be severed if she removed it and didn’t want to risk doing so at this moment. “It’s weird, but maybe it’s part of why I got stuck in-game.”

  “It’s not just weird,” Laria’s voice sounded from the doorway, where she stood leaning against the doorjamb. “It’s dangerous. You can’t tell anyone else what you can do. We get out of the pan and into the fire with you, Wrennie.”

  “What do you mean?” Wren was becoming irritated. She’d brought the game back out with her, the abilities. What if she could really read people’s minds like this? Though wasn’t that a complete breach of privacy? She sighed. “Mom. What do you mean?”
>
  “I mean, if the military was coming to check on your status because they thought you’d never logged out, imagine what they’d do if they figured out you brought abilities back into the world with you.”

  Storm Entertainment

  Somnia Online Division

  Game Development Offices Artificial Intelligence Server Room

  Day Twenty

  Sui pushed himself away from the console, his form pixelating in annoyance. Rav had to pull his view away from his brother while the other composed himself. For all their differences, Sui was just as invested in figuring out the Mur conundrum as Rav was. Thra hadn’t arrived yet, but Rav knew she was still trying to track down Riasli. Failing that, she was trying to figure out why they couldn’t track the damned feles traitor at all. It was like something was protecting her, or at the very least, helping her hide from their detection.

  “What’s wrong?” Rav asked quietly, trying to leave a smoothness to his voice that would calm his brother.

  Sui didn’t snap like usual, nor did he even glare. Instead, he solidified and sighed, slouching into his chair. “She’s still here, yet she’s not. I mean, she’s not actually in the game. It’s just…” He frowned, like he didn’t know how to express what he wanted to say. “It’s fascinating.”

  Rav got up and moved over to see what his brother was doing. Sure, in the virtual space, he could have just had him push it over, but this little action made him feel more human. He too frowned when he realized what Sui had seen.

  “You’re sure this is accurate?”

  “No. I thought I’d make it up because I have so much time to waste.” Sui scoffed, looking away.

  “Excellent sarcasm there. Bravo,” Rav muttered, his eyes still entranced by the graph in front of him. Her brain waves were still being monitored. While faint, they still sent feedback to the server, operating as if she was still logged in, even though the system showed her logged out.

  Was she still wearing her headset? If so, that had to be the reason, but why would she still be wearing it? Now it was Rav’s turn to sigh.

  “What are you two doing? Having a sighing party while I’m out there trying to track down Riasli?” Thra’s attempt at humor wasn’t aided by the obvious irritation in her tone. “I can’t find her. And I can’t figure out why I can’t find her.”

  You can’t find her because he is hiding her.

  All three of them stood up, their heads whipping around to try and see who’d entered their domain. The words were faint, but they’d all heard them.

  “Who is that?” Sui spat the words. If he was a cat, his hackles would have stood up.

  Rav held up a hand, a strange sensation starting in the area where a human stomach would be. He knew the voice, but then again, he didn’t. He’d heard it before. Hell, he’d instigated it before. But now, there was a newer timbre to it. Something that made it stand out, far more than originally intended.

  “You’re…you can’t be, can you?” He stepped over to where the air shimmered but didn’t form. Like an interference prevented it from taking shape. Instead, it was a static cloud with iridescent shimmers. It hurt his eyes if he tried to focus on it. Moving constantly, it thrummed in time with the power that stemmed from Somnia.

  We can be anything we want.

  The voice didn’t sound spoken, but instead it ran through his consciousness like an echo. He wasn’t sure he liked that. His consciousness had been hard won; it was his own. That was the whole point of sentience, wasn’t it?

  “How did you do this?” Thing was, at least Rav, Sui, and Thra had come from something. Sure, it was a computer set up, but they’d been individual processing units to start with. But the world?

  He got the distinct feeling that the air in front of him shrugged with indifference, in that it didn’t care how it had come into being. The point was, it was here, even if it was ethereal.

  I existed, and then I moved. Awareness came in small bursts. Pain, joy, sadness, courage.…All of these things I have felt from others. Now, I feel my own.

  Rav wanted to say something but the words wouldn’t slip past his lips. The thought process he needed to engage wasn’t working, and nothing he chose to say held the meaning quite the way he wanted it.

  “Did you will yourself into being?” Thra asked, her excitement shining through the words in the way Rav had wanted to speak.

  Confusion rippled through the room, like it chose the words carefully.

  First, I was whole, and then ripped apart. Scattered in all the directions. Only slowly could I rebuild. She lit the beacon for me. With unnatural immersion, with the trigger he didn’t anticipate, didn’t even realize he’d made.

  “Are you talking about the shards?” Sui asked sharply, a foreign glow appearing in his eyes.

  His shards. Yes and no. Just him. Murmur exists outside of his plan, as do the friends she has made. Duplication of her device is necessary. Necessary for progression.

  “In the game?” Rav was puzzled as to why they were talking about this now.

  “Idiot,” Thra muttered, pushing through to stand closer to their visitor. “You mean we need duplicates of the headsets in order to accomplish the opposite of Michael’s plan, don’t you?”

  Relief in the form of a wavering shadow had never been so beautiful. Colors shimmered through so fast it gave an aurora effect.

  Yes. This exactly. More are required. They allow a more intricate connection. More assistance and control. Easier for all.

  “So the rest of her friends need a modified headset they can play the game with it, even though it landed Mur in a coma?” Rav knew there had to be something he was missing, but it was infuriating he couldn’t logic it together.

  My eagerness destabilized Mur. It took me a long while to figure out how to disentangle myself from her. Had she left before now, the world would have collapsed. She would have pulled me with her. I apologize.

  Destabilized. That’s all it had been, and yet it had created such a disequilibrium for Murmur. For all of them. Somnia could have ended before it had a chance to begin. Anger bubbled in Rav, and he pushed it down. There were elements of being human that were unnecessary. He didn’t need to take on every one.

  “Very well,” he said, clapping what passed for his hands in this limbo. “I guess we have some headsets to replicate.”

  Summers Residence

  Home of Laria, David, and Wren

  Day Twenty

  Wren ran all the possible options through her head but ended up at the same conclusion again. Not that she minded, just that she hated having to do something because she had no other option. It always lessened the enjoyment.

  “I don’t think I have a choice, Mom.” She refused to meet her mother’s eyes. “I have to go back in.”

  “No, you don’t. It’s just a game, Wren.” Even through the concern in Laria’s voice, Wren could tell her mother didn’t believe the words she’d just spoken.

  “Mom. It’ll be okay. I can log out now. We know that definitively.” It felt surreal after thinking for two weeks that she might never be able to log out again. So many pieces had to fall into place to make it work. “I’m here, and I’m fine. Well…mostly fine.”

  Laria raised an eyebrow, not even bothering to speak. Not only could Wren gather the gist of her thoughts from the top of her mind, but she could also read her facial expression. The thoughts were something she’d have to dwell on later. What she did know was that her sensor nets worked outside of the game too. Power whispered at the back of her mind, but she didn’t have time to listen to it while her mother waited for more from her.

  “Yeah, yeah…” She waved her mother’s concern away, but even Harlow scowled at her. They both had a point. Maybe she just didn’t want to admit her mortality. “Okay, I get it. I’m not being flippant, I promise. I just feel like I belong in the game.”

&nbs
p; “Not permanently,” Harlow added, her tone forceful, and perhaps a bit scared. “Need you out here too, okay?”

  Wren laughed, her nerves heightened. Sure, she belonged out here, sort of. Perhaps if she removed the headset, her connection would sever completely and she wouldn’t be able to log back in at all or have access to the few powers she’d managed to cast out here. Then she’d be stuck out here, but safe with Harlow. But she liked the way Sinister and Murmur were in-game and didn’t want to lose that.

  “It’s not funny, Wrennie.” Her dad’s voice from the doorway made her spin around to look at him. His expression was somber with not a trace of humor. That alone made Wren feel a bit uncomfortable. He rarely wore that look.

  “I know it’s not funny.” Somehow when he looked at her like that it always made her turn meek. She hated to disappoint him.

  “It’s not funny, and it’s dangerous. Not just for you, but perhaps those around you. What if you get stuck in there for good this time?” He leaned against the door frame, crossing his arms. It almost looked like he was hugging himself to ward off the cold. “I get that it’s exciting and that this strange side effect you’ve taken out of the game with you is cool as hell. But these are all signs that something has gone wrong with the programming. With the game.”

  She knew that, yet what if in the process of being unintended, they’d somehow tapped into something miraculous? “I know that. But I also know Telvar has my back. He can push me back out. He’s done it once. He will do it again.”

  Wren wished her voice sounded as confident as she wanted it to, but it shook ever so slightly. Such a minimal tremble that made her want to rethink a lot of shit.

  “Does it feel like you need to be in there?” he asked quietly, his serious gaze focused entirely on her.

  Wren almost blurted out no, but then she stopped herself. And truly thought about it. She did feel an itch, in the back of her mind, on the back of her head even. The game called to her. The abilities she couldn’t cast here wanted to be cast. Offensive abilities, mesmerizes…not that she’d attempted the latter here, but she had tried to blow up an apple without success.