by Natalie Grey
Finally, in a stroke of pure luck, he found the right thing: “You’re my friend, Gracie. This quest or no, Metamorphosis or no, you’re my friend.”
There was a pause, and then she had her character emote a smile.
“I’m glad,” she told him, and there was feeling there.
“I want to solve this,” Jay said, “so you can feel like you’re just playing the game and experiencing the world. Does that make sense? I want to clear this up so it can stop hanging over us.”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “Yeah, that does make sense. I get it. By the way, am I the only one leaning into this hill and almost overbalancing?”
Jay snorted with laughter. “No, I’m doing it, too.” As they made their way up the winding streets, they found themselves automatically leaning forward the way they would have to in order to keep their balance in real life. His laughter turned into yawns a moment later. “Goddammit, I wanted to stay and talk.”
“Get some sleep,” Gracie said. “We’ll come back tomorrow with Alan or Dathok or someone. I think Lakhesis said we got a couple of new healers.”
“I wanted to talk to you about that. We’re probably going to have moles coming in from the other guilds.”
“Jesus Christ!” Gracie exclaimed.
“Sorry I mentioned it. Should have saved it for a better time.”
“Nah, it’s fine. Just, ughhhh.” She drew the word out and sighed. “We’ll worry about it tomorrow. Let’s turn in, and then sleep late because we’re both jobless hobos.”
Jay gave a bitter laugh. “I take it you feel as weird about it as I do, huh?”
“A hundred percent,” Gracie confirmed. “It fucking sucks. And we can’t complain, because we’re making a living from playing video games, right?”
“Yeah,” Jay commiserated. He sighed. “Maybe we should just accept that someday we’ll look back on this as the good old days when we didn’t have to wear real pants and did make all our bills by playing video games. Sure, maybe we’re eating a lot of ramen, but we have a good group here. We could be doing worse.”
She smiled at him. “I like that. Good point. All right, sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Chapter Seven
Thad woke up to faint light filtering under the door of his room. Frowning, he sat up and felt around in the darkness for a sweatshirt, then stumbled over to the door and opened it.
The light was coming from the common area. The members of Demon Syndicate lived in a renovated warehouse, with one of the upper floors converted into various living areas. Most of the guild members shared rooms, with a big common area, while the guild’s officers had a smaller area reserved just for them.
Generally, sleep and exercise rules were pretty well enforced, but Thad knew who was up, and why. A few days ago, Callista’s guild had managed a month-first run, beating out Demon Syndicate, and the guild’s officers had decided to infiltrate her group.
Jamie had been chosen. As a healer, he had a natural in. He wasn’t a tank, which might threaten to displace Callista, and good healers were in short supply. For the past few days, he’d been logging in under a new account, power-leveling a new healer who didn’t have any ties to Demon Syndicate, and his schedule had been shifted accordingly.
He looked up as Thad came into the room and gave the leader a quiet nod. Tall and fairly muscular, Jamie looked intimidating to people who didn’t know him. If someone met him on the street, there was no way in hell they’d guess what he did for a living, and some of the guys in the guild were a bit salty about it. They were all in pretty good shape now, thanks to the guild’s exercise requirements, but Jamie had taken to it better than most.
Thad fought down a wave of resentment. Jamie had the sort of looks that made people listen to him, choose him, notice him. Since Jamie had become the top healer, the leadership at BrightStar, the guild’s sponsor, had pushed for him to be included in promo materials and leadership.
Jamie wasn’t a leader, though. He hated conflict, he hated making hard decisions, and he didn’t like being the center of attention. Thad was fairly sure that Jamie had turned down offers to be the guild leader.
He wanted to hate Jamie for that, but Jamie was too nice.
For instance, right now, Jamie was genuinely sad. He knew that Thad had wanted to infiltrate Callista’s guild himself, and he didn’t want things to be weird between the two of them.
“How’s it going?” Thad asked him bluntly. He went over to the coffee maker and poured himself a cup.
“It’s caffeinated,” Jamie said worriedly.
“I know.” Thad didn’t like the attempt to play nursemaid. He took a sip. “How’s it going?” he asked again pointedly.
Jamie refrained from sighing. He sat down to his breakfast of oatmeal and a banana and gave a shrug. He paid pointed attention to his food to avoid looking up.
“Fine, I guess,” he said.
Thad ground his teeth. He looked back toward his bedroom. Jamie didn’t want to talk about this, and neither did Thad. He wasn’t going to enjoy hearing about the job he’d wanted to do. But Thad was the guild leader. He should know. He sat down at the table.
“Jamie, come on. You got picked. It’s fine.”
Jamie looked up at him. “It made more sense to have a healer than a tank go over.”
Thad took a sip of his coffee and didn’t answer.
Jamie waited for Thad to say something more but finally broke. “They’re nice,” he said awkwardly.
Thad waved his hand for Jamie to keep talking. The coffee was strong, and he was beginning to regret drinking it. Tomorrow would be a struggle.
“I told them I’d played WoW and stuff, but hadn’t played this before, so they’re treating me like a newbie,” Jamie explained. “It covers my ass if I know things about basic formations, so it’s a good story. A couple of the guild officers have helped me level.”
“Of course they have,” Thad muttered. “Gotta show how nice they are.”
“It’s not like that,” Jamie argued. “They aren’t trying to beat us out or be high up in the rankings. They just want to have fun playing the game, so they’ll be like, ‘oh, you’re at level 18, you should come to this zone. It’s really fun.’” He shrugged. “They really like the lore and stuff.”
“Well, it’s nice to know they’re beating us without even trying,” Thad growled savagely. He stood up and grabbed a banana from the bowl on the table. “Guess I’ll go read up or something so I can try to keep this guild on track.”
He left without another word.
When he was gone and the door was closed, Jamie sighed and let his head drop into his hand for a moment. He hadn’t meant to rub in Thad’s face that they’d lost the last month-first title.
The healer wasn’t at his best right now, though. Red Squadron tended to play really late at night for some reason, so he’d flipped his schedule around to play with them, and he was tired and distracted.
Not only that, trying to avoid problems in conversations with this guild’s leader was basically like walking through a minefield. He chewed a mouthful of oatmeal contemplatively. Thad was a quick decision-maker and liked being in charge, which, combined with his natural skill at strategy, made him a good leader. But he was also prone to envying anyone else when they got attention or promotions, or anything at all.
Still, he’d been one of the only people who’d taken the time to teach Jamie how to be a good healer. It had been way back in the day, and Jamie had wound up in a PUG with some members of Demon Syndicate. After the first time they wiped, he’d braced for yelling.
Instead, Thad had asked if he wanted pointers. Over the next few days, they had run almost all the existing dungeons as Thad helped Jamie incorporate new skills and game mechanics, and Jamie had worked his way up through the guild.
Jamie finished his oatmeal and carried the bowl over to the sink to rinse it out. Thad was willing to be patient and help other people, he reflected, because that meant that Thad was in charge. That
he was being benevolent, lifting up someone who was clearly beneath him.
A moment later, he felt bad for thinking that. He finished his coffee and put the mug in the dishwasher, then headed back to the deserted VR gym.
Thad had given Jamie the chance to get into Demon Syndicate, and now Jamie lived rent-free while making as much as he had in his last, much crappier job. He knew that anywhere he went, there would be power dynamics and bosses with annoying quirks. Thad was a good friend most of the time, and Jamie didn’t want to lose that.
Which meant there was only one thing to do: figure out what Red Squadron was doing that was boosting them in the rankings so that Thad could use that information to put Demon Syndicate on top again.
Then all of this craziness would die down, and the BrightStar executives would stop trying to make Jamie the next guild leader. Even the thought made him feel vaguely nauseated. It was worse because they never asked outright, they just recommended him for things and gave each other significant looks.
When they were number 1 again, Jamie told himself, this would all stop. Thad would be happy, BrightStar would be happy, and Jamie could go back to having a cool job and a better friendship with his guild leader.
He got himself into his VR suit and logged in. He didn’t really like practicing on his own in this big space because the empty room was a bit creepy at night, but the rest of the guild was asleep right now.
“Hey, Cas.” The voice that greeted him was Aosi and echo-y—Callista. Jamie had chosen the name ‘Caspian,’ a reference to one of his favorite characters in the CS Lewis books, and he’d quickly acquired a nickname in the group.
“Hey,” Jamie said. His heart had started pounding, as it always did when he talked with Callista.
She was the reason everything was wrong. She was the one he had to deceive, and it made him nervous.
“Get anything tasty?” asked another voice, rumbling and low. That was Dathok, Red Squadron’s secondary healer, who had been helping Jamie get up to speed. “He was off getting some breakfast,” Dathok explained. “Or maybe lunch?”
“Dinner, lunch, something.” Jamie accepted this safe topic with relief. “I have a few weeks free, so I’ve given up on having a schedule.”
“I know how that feels,” Callista said. “It gets disorienting, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” Jamie said emphatically. “It feels kind of….” His voice trailed off. His character walked out of an inn to look at a vista of waterfalls and lush jungle.
“Kind of?” Dathok prompted.
“Eh, I don’t want to be insulting. I know it’s not really pathetic, it just kind of feels like everyone else is out doing their job and I’m just screwing around, you know?” He missed hanging out with the rest of his guildmates, doing his regular exercise and training routines.
“Are you kidding?” Dathok asked. “I’d kill to have a few weeks free to play Metamorphosis. You’re doing something right, kid.”
“No, he’s right,” Callista argued. “I’ve been doing this as a job, and it feels really weird. I never get out anymore, and I don’t see many people. If Alex didn’t live here, I’d basically be a hermit. And…well, he has Sydney now, so he’s out a lot.”
“Alex is Gary Swiftbolt,” Dathok explained to Jamie. “He and Callista are roommates.”
“You can also call me Gracie,” Callista said.
“Nah, I like using people’s character names,” Jamie said. “It’s more fun that way, you know?” In reality, he didn’t want to get too close to these people. He knew Thad would practically be taking notes, trying to get into their heads and learn whatever he could to get under their skin, but Jamie just wanted to focus on business.
Using someone’s real life against them felt awful.
“Fair enough,” Gracie replied easily. If she sensed the lie, she gave no sign of it. “Dathok says he’s been helping you level up. You two need a tank?”
“That’d help,” Dathok said. “Give Caspian here plenty of time to figure out the ropes without worrying about DPS getting beaten up.”
“Solid. Where do you want to meet? Caspian, I see you in Hothik Bay, is that right?”
“Yeah.” Jamie swallowed and told himself that it was good that Callista was coming to play. She might drop some hints about what was going on, and she had no reason to suspect him anyway. “I’ll meet you all at the gate into the jungle.”
“Sounds good.”
It wasn’t long before Callista and Dathok came jogging up to the gate together. Dathok was taller, a hulking Ocru in black robes that looked very unhealer-like, but Callista was the one who caught the eye. Her gold armor was studded with jewels and shone in the sun. She waved when she got close.
“‘Sup?”
Jamie nodded awkwardly. “Hey. Thanks for coming out. I know you probably have more important stuff to focus on than helping a newbie.”
“No way,” Gracie said emphatically. “We’re all just discovering this game, and it’s really fun to be poking around in all the zones again. I’m always seeing new things, you know?”
“Yeah.” Jamie couldn’t help but smile. He’d been enjoying his second run-through for the same reasons. He was focused on leveling up as quickly as he could so that he could be involved in Red Squadron’s next month-first attempt, but his new guildmates were encouraging him to really enjoy the process.
After months of playing the game as a full-time job, logging in only for objectives and being graded on them at his monthly employee reviews, this was a welcome break.
It made him feel kind of guilty. He didn’t want to like Red Squadron or its guild leader.
“Let’s head out and look for some smugglers,” Callista suggested. “Dathok, you were with us when we came to the lava place, right?”
“You mean, when we glitched and did some other weird dungeon?” Dathok asked with a laugh.
There was a pause. Jamie perked up his ears.
“Yeah,” Gracie said finally. “Long story. So tell me, Cas, how did you get into Metamorphosis?”
“A friend recommended it to me,” Jamie said, trying to figure out how to turn the conversation back to the glitch. Callista didn’t seem to want to talk about it, and that alone made it interesting.
If there had been a glitch in one dungeon, why not in another? What if their win had been a glitch?
That would resolve this all very easily.
To his discontent, however, Callista steadfastly refused to return to the topic. No matter how Jamie tried to angle the conversation, she always managed to link it to something else…and bring it back around to him.
Nor, he had to admit, was she lacking in strategy. Once or twice, she got them out of situations he was sure were going to wipe the party. If Jamie was looking for evidence that she didn’t know what she was doing—and he definitely was—he wasn’t finding it here.
But most of all, the party made him laugh. From the Piskie summoner who showed up to the mages who hopped around one-shotting smugglers with fireballs and ice lances and calling out kill tallies to one another, the group was hilarious, and every one of them was eager to help Jamie. By the time he called it a night and headed back to bed, he had to consciously wipe the smile off his face.
He wasn’t supposed to like these people. He was going to bring them down from the inside.
Chapter Eight
Gracie was in the middle of a fight when she felt her phone buzz. She had learned early on that no matter how securely it was wedged in her pocket, it would go flying at some point—and leaving it somewhere else meant that she was missing calls. She’d wound up with a workout armband, therefore, which allowed her to check it pretty easily without worrying she would step on the phone.
She whirled and used her mass-stun before flipping up her headset briefly to check the screen.
Alex. He’d understand if she took a moment before calling him back. She flipped the headset back into place and redoubled her efforts, beating the crap out of a poor harpy who’d d
one nothing other than be in the wrong place at the wrong time. She had been minding her own business when Chowder ran over to start whaling on her with a mace, and now she and her buddies were deeply outmatched.
Gracie went through the complicated series of strikes for her most powerful combo, grimacing. Due to the call, she’d used her stun before she’d intended to, and it had thrown off the rhythm of the fight.
For most people, making a bad choice was something they did in the heat of the moment, missing the forest for the trees. For Gracie, though, it took work to ignore what she knew was the best course of action, and she could feel the wrongness like an itch.
When she finished the fight, it was with a quick, “AFK.” Away From Keyboard wasn’t accurate in this game but, by and large, they’d kept the lingo from other MMORPGs.
Panting, Gracie stripped off her headset, pulled her phone out, and called Alex back. “Hey, sorry. I was in the middle of a fight.”
“Oh, thank God,” Alex said. “I need you to come over soon—like, pretty much now. I spilled coffee all down my pants, and I have that new client coming in again today.”
“Oh.” Gracie held the phone with her ear and began undoing the rest of the suit. “Okay, so you just need other pants?”
“I don’t think any of my other pants are going to go with this shirt very well, so I need a shirt, too. There’s a blue one. Wait, maybe the plain white. Or do I want the checked one?”
“Heck, I don’t know, dude.” Gracie undid one of the clasps with her teeth. “Sec.” She held the headset back to her face for a moment. “Hey, I have to run out. I’ll be back in an hour or so. You all want me to stay here or port back to the inn?” If the team would be moving on, she didn’t want to log back in to find her character being attacked.
