by Natalie Grey
“Sorry.” Gracie leaned over, coughing, pounding herself on the chest with her fist. “Sec.”
She remembered words again. That was convenient.
She looked up, expecting to see Alex staring at her from around the door, but he was wisely staying hidden. She glared in the direction of his room anyway—this was all his fault—and then looked back at Jay.
Oh, shit. She had to say something.
“Can I, uh—” Ohshitohshit. “I need to say something.” She wasn’t entirely sure she got the syllables in the right order.
“Sure.” Jay looked a bit worried now.
Ohshitohshitohshit—
“I really like you.” Gracie felt herself go tomato red. What was this, fourth grade? She dropped her face into her hands. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to do this. I’m really sorry. I—”
“Gracie.” Jay sounded like he was trying very hard not to laugh. “Why are you apologizing?”
“I don’t know!” Gracie waved her hands. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
“You’re doing it again.”
“Yeah, yeah, shut up.”
Now a tiny snort of laughter did escape him. “So, uh…” He cleared his throat and fell silent.
Gracie hunched her shoulders. She could not look at him. She did not have that much courage. She’d never had that much courage. Right now, she was frantically sifting through every memory she had of him, trying to figure out if he had ever, by so much as a word, indicated he might be into her.
He hadn’t. She was fairly sure he hadn’t.
So what the hell was she doing? She was blowing up the guild, and—
“Gracie?”
“Yeah?” There ensued a long enough pause that she took a deep breath and looked up at him.
“You’re not… I mean, this seems real. Is it?” Jay shook his head. “It doesn’t seem like it could be real.”
“Why not?” Gracie said heatedly. Her pride was pricked, although she wasn’t exactly sure why. “Why wouldn’t—”
“Well, for one thing, the last thing I knew, you were dating casino managers.”
“Oh, for the love of God.” Gracie threw up her hands. “One casino dude. One time. I walked out on him after twenty minutes because he was a giant douche. Otherwise, I don’t.”
“Date casino managers?”
“Date anyone,” Gracie said grumpily. “If you must know.” She saw his frown and scowled. “What?”
“How is that possible?” Jay asked. “I mean, look at you. You’re amazing. You look like a model, you’re smart, you make me laugh like crazy, and you’ve got a filthy mouth, which is always hilarious. How do you not get asked out all the time?”
“See…” Gracie chewed her lip. “Now I feel like maybe there’s something wrong with me you just can’t see from that end. Because I don’t. I don’t know! I don’t really go out. I mostly hang out with Alex, honestly, and I practiced avoidance when people were at bars when I was working, because, well, casino. So, I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Look, can we just forget I said anything?”
“No,” Jay said blandly.
Gracie felt her stomach twist, and she swallowed.
Then he was laughing. “Do you actually not see what’s going on here? Because I’m pretty sure I’ve been as obvious as fuck about how I feel about you.”
Gracie stared at him. Her pulse was beginning to speed, and there was something in her chest that felt very much like a flutter of hope. Or possibly an alien egg pod. Knowing her luck, probably the latter. “Uh…”
“Gracie, I’m crazy about you.” Jay had put down the beer. He was shaking his head, laughing. “I thought you were the coolest thing on two feet the first night I met you, and—well, I still thought you were a dude at that point.”
Gracie started laughing.
“These past few weeks have been some of the best of my life,” Jay told her. “And I got fired during that time. I have no business being this happy right now, and the reason I am anyway is because of you.”
“Well, what about you?” Gracie burst out. “You’re not dating anyone?”
Jay, who had been taking a sip of beer, gave a snort and a laugh, choked, and bent away to wipe his mouth. He held up a hand. She could still hear him laughing in the background, even as he coughed.
“No,” he said finally. “I worked a night shift at a video game company, almost all of my coworkers were guys, and I look like this.” He waved his hand at himself.
“You’re crazy,” Gracie said, repeating the gesture mockingly. “You have a complex.” Another hand wave. “You’re a perfectly good-looking guy.”
“All this mockery from the woman who apologized three times for telling me she liked me and then tried to hang up the call?” Jay asked pointedly.
Gracie scowled at him.
Jay cleared his throat. “I think we’re getting off-track.”
“Right.” Gracie sandwiched her hands between her knees and wrinkled her nose. “What were we talking about?”
“The fact that we like each other, woman.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Despite herself, she felt a grin spreading across her face. “Really?”
Jay was laughing hysterically at this point. “Yes,” he managed. “Really. Good Lord! How you could think for a second that I wasn’t into you is beyond me.”
“Yeah, well, it’s never obvious to the people involved. How could you not think I was into you?” Gracie crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. “I was pretty obvious.”
“I couldn’t tell!” Jay waved his hands, got beer all over the wall, and stared at it for a moment before putting his bottle down. “I’m going to leave this here. Look, you were nice to everyone.”
“Oh, for—” Gracie groaned. Then, despite herself, she yawned. “Oh, God, now that I’m not nervous as fuck, I’m so tired.”
“Well, it’s been a long night,” Jay pointed out. “What with beating the quest and all. And we were on a hair trigger, ready to drop in and just go as soon as we got the okay.” He yawned as well. “Now you’ve got me yawning, too. Dammit.”
“Sorry. And that was tonight, wasn’t it? Huh.” Gracie tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and yawned again. She couldn’t keep her eyes open all of a sudden. “This is embarrassing; I’m so sorry. I drop this on you and then—”
“Gracie, get some sleep. We’ll talk about this more tomorrow, okay? I’ll be here. Whenever.” When she looked up, his eyes were tracing her face as if he’d never seen her before, he had a half-smile playing around his lips, and his brown eyes were very warm.
“Okay.” Gracie grinned at him. “You get some sleep, too.”
“You think I could sleep after that?” He gave a little laugh. “I want to go yell from the rooftops.”
“Yell what?”
“I haven’t decided. Just yell, mainly.”
“Hope it’s happy yelling.” Gracie smiled. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow. I, uh—I don’t know what to say. I was so sure I was going to torpedo everything, but I couldn’t keep from saying it anymore.”
“I’m glad you said it,” Jay admitted. “I…was too much of a coward, apparently. Not great for my ego.”
“I think everyone is,” Gracie said after thinking about it for a moment, “and the people who ‘play it cool’ are just better at making it look like a play instead of being scared shitless.”
Jay snorted. “That makes me feel a little better, thank you. Go to sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up. Promise.”
Gracie smiled. She reached out to touch the screen, realized that was ridiculous, and blushed a fiery red. She waved awkwardly. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Bye.”
“Bye.” He took another sip of his beer.
There was silence. Gracie stared at the call interface, wondering why everything in the room looked the same when everything was quite clearly completely different now. She pressed her hands between her knees and blew out a long breath.
Now that she’d hung up, it didn’t se
em real. Had she actually admitted her feelings to him? Had he actually seemed into her?
What if he was lying?
“Oh, for God’s sake, Gracie,” she muttered to herself. She’d never had time for relationship nonsense, even her own. Jay was a reasonable, straight-talking kind of guy. It would have been clear if he’d been unpleasantly surprised by the revelation.
A small noise caught her attention, and her head whipped around to glare at the hallway. No more noises, and yet—
Gracie slid off the couch as silently as she could and crawled toward the hallway. She had her eyes focused on Alex’s door. Was it just her, or was it cracked open? As she watched, she saw it open a bit more.
She had one chance to pull this off. Gracie scrambled to get over next to the door as quietly as she could, and when Alex finally stuck his head around the door…she was right there, staring at him.
“JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!” He jumped and then ducked while Gracie doubled over with a hand over her stomach, laughing hysterically. “Jesus. Holy shit. You demon.”
“I-I…” Now that Gracie had started laughing, she couldn’t stop. All the adrenaline that had built up in her system was pouring out of her in the form of laughter. “I— Oh, God, it hurts.”
“Good! You deserve that!”
“Oh, c’mon. Oh, God…ow.” She slumped against the wall. “You were…spying on me.”
“I was checking on you.” Alex had picked himself up, and now he brushed off his sleeves with a glare. “To make sure you were all right.”
“Youuuuu were snooping.” Gracie mock-glared, then grinned. “That was fun.”
There was a long pause.
“What?” Gracie asked finally.
“WELL?” Alex waved his hands wordlessly.
“Ohhhh. Right.” Gracie remembered Jay with a jolt. She thought seriously about letting Alex wonder, but as soon as she thought of Jay, her face split into an involuntary grin. It was obvious how everything had gone.
“Ha! I knew it.” Alex pulled her close for a hug. “I knew he was into you.”
“You knew?” Gracie pushed him away. “You knew, and you let me walk into it blind? You bastard!”
“You gotta do it for yourself!” Alex replied, holding up his arms to fend off blows. “Don’t…don’t go all Callista on me.”
Gracie snickered. “You’re lucky I don’t have a giant sword. But seriously, man, come on. You couldn’t have paved the way a bit?”
“Nope.” Alex was surprisingly adamant. He looped an arm around her shoulders and drew her out into the main room. “It’s like this, you see: when you gave Sydney my number, she and I didn’t have anything going on, right? You were trying to get me out of my shell, so it made sense to shove a bit. But with you and Jay…you knew each other. What was happening was about the two of you, specifically. I couldn’t be the one to do the legwork.”
“Did that actually make sense, or am I sleep-deprived as fuck?” Gracie asked philosophically.
“Por que no los dos?” Alex returned with a grin. He reached over to shut her laptop. “Seriously, I’m glad I was right about how he feels.” He reached out to steady her as she swayed. “Whoa, hey! Maybe you should get some sleep?” He yawned hugely. “I know I should.”
“I’ll be along soon.” But Gracie was looking at the VR suit.
“Gracie…”
“I’m a grown-ass adult.” Gracie gave him a grin. “You go get some sleep. I promise I’ll sleep soon. I just want to see it all again. The starting zone.”
Alex must have understood, because he gave a small nod and disappeared, still smiling.
Gracie pulled on her VR suit. Exhaustion was dragging at her, but the weeks of fury and fear were suddenly gone, and she felt so light that she wondered if she might float away. She’d spoken to Jay. She’d led her team through the quest, and she hadn’t fallen to Harry’s last, insane challenge.
Of course, he would claim she should fight him alone—as if a single player versus a boss was any sort of fair fight.
But Harry was the sort of person who thought the world owed it to him to bow down.
Gracie settled the headset over her eyes and took a moment to bask in the blue ether of the log-in screen before hitting the button that would send her into the world. The walls of the inn had barely materialized around her before she had her character striding out into the near-deserted streets.
It was midnight in the game world, and so the various shops, which were there for color alone—farmers’ carts, street food vendors—were all shuttered and silent. Very few people were around, and most of them, Gracie guessed, were idle.
Only a few heads turned to watch the woman with the glowing 1 above her head.
It was a quick walk out of Kithara and into the starting zone, where a dirt road climbed gently through fields of tall grass. Gracie walked with a smile as the sped-up server time turned the deep blues of night into golds and reds. Birds were chirping, wind rustled in the grass, and she held out a hand to brush it through the grass.
If she closed her eyes, she could imagine she felt it sweeping against her palm.
She opened her eyes again and stared at the lightening sky. This was her world—a world she belonged in. A world where instead of engagement parties and awkward dinner-dates, she had friends backing her up, jokes about magic, and a fight for something worthwhile.
She looked over her shoulder, back at Kithara and went still.
Two characters were standing there, watching her: an Aosi male, a summoner with greenish-blue skin and jet black hair, and a human man, tall and slim, with deep brown skin and a hooked nose.
Gracie sighed.
“So…is one of you Dan, and the other Dhruv?” she asked. “Or are you both Harry and this is some new mindfuck?”
Chapter Two
THE FORGOTTEN KING RETURNS.
Rage. Absolute rage.
For a long moment, Harry could think of nothing at all except his blinding fury. He could not speak, and he was hardly aware of his body or the world around him.
Then it resolved enough to make him want to smash everything in the immediate vicinity.
He didn’t. Barely. He ripped the headset off and used every ounce of self-control he had not to scream his fury. He sank into a crouch, fingers rigid, clenched on air. This wasn’t happening; it couldn’t be happening. Disbelief followed quickly on the heels of anger.
Harry’s mind retreated from the reality of it almost quicker than he could chase it. This wasn’t happening. It was a daydream, and a bad one—a waking nightmare. It wasn’t real, because it couldn’t be real. Who could have known to take that first quest?
No one.
None of them deserved it. None of them cared enough to save pixels. They didn’t think there was any reason to expend their energy being polite to computers. This had been going on for decades, becoming increasingly clear in recent years, and it terrified Harry. He had listened to the things people laughed about doing in simulators, the things they taught one another to do.
They spread cruelty. They learned it from each other, and they spread it into the world.
Because it was never just computers they hurt, it was each other. The cruelty sickened them. It sank into their minds and tinged them with darkness until they could not help but hurt and twist others.
Harry had built himself into the game for exactly that reason. People needed a guiding influence. And, because he was the only one who could see what was going on, they needed him to be that leader.
They could hate him if they wanted. He had expected it; almost, he welcomed it. He had seen from the start that they might try to rise up against him and unite to bring down a common foe. Inspire one another to feats of courage and selflessness.
He didn’t fear that. The bonds between them would stretch into the real world as well.
Writing Yesuan’s story had been bittersweet. When others had heard it, they were not yet willing to step past their initial disbelief and try to und
erstand Yesuan’s struggle.
So it had to be Harry who led them.
He just thought he’d have had more time, but the others had been far too clever at keeping him out of the game as a player. Dan and Dhruv were many things, but stupid was not one of them. They had successfully prohibited Harry from setting up an account. How, exactly, they had tracked him, he wasn’t sure. It wasn’t his name, because he’d used fake ones. It wasn’t his IP address, because he logged on from different locations. He couldn’t think of any way it could be embedded in his VR suit, but he’d even purchased another one of those.
It still hadn’t worked.
They hadn’t closed off all of the game, however. They could hardly manage that when he knew the workings of it so intimately. He’d been poking around, trying to find how they’d set their ban so he could undo it when he saw that someone had begun his quest.
Callista.
The name made him want to yell. He had been so damned stupid—that was the worst part. He hadn’t thought to fear her at first. He had watched her progress, even spoken to her from behind the masks of the bosses he’d constructed.
Part of him, he knew now, was simply grateful to have found someone else who saw the game world as he did. Someone else who was willing to extend courtesy and kindness to everyone. She loved Metamorphosis Online. He’d observed the way she lingered when she examined little details of the game, and how she spoke to her team.
He hadn’t ever expected her to win, so he’d let the whole thing go on far longer than it should have. Like a fool, he’d enjoyed the way she challenged him.
In the end, of course, she’d been like all the rest: grasping for power that wasn’t hers to chase after God only knew what sort of goals. She didn’t understand what needed to be done, and when he’d tried to explain it to her, she’d defied him.
Her. A nothing of a person. Barely graduated from college. A blackjack dealer, for God’s sake. What the hell did she think she knew about the world or about the game?
It was supposed to be him.
Harry stripped the VR suit off, hardly caring when he felt fabric tear and snag on his clothing. He left it in a heap on the floor when he left the unadorned second bedroom of his house in semi-rural Washington.
