Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!

  The spray of bullets clipped me and the rickshaw. Numbers tumbled out of me as I lost a few health points. Thankfully, my ballistic vest took the worst of it, but its durability reduced almost to zero.

  I had no choice. Before my legs had the chance to give out, I swerved toward the edge of the bridge, hopped the guardrail with the rickshaw still in tow, and plummeted us toward the sludgy waters of the canal. Silas clung to me and shrieked, and I heard Sync screaming, too.

  Upon hitting the water, the rickshaw took even more damage and then automatically withdrew into my inventory. New messages hit my HUD:

  | ERROR: The Amphibious Rickshaw skill has not been unlocked. |

  | Please unlock this skill on your Skill Tree to activate it. |

  Glitter and sparkles from my wounds intermingled with the oily polluted water, and I briefly wondered if I could get infections in the AllVerse, but I realized I needed air before anything else. I hadn’t gotten a deep breath before hitting the water.

  By the time my head surfaced, the Godfeathers had slammed their brakes and jumped out of the car. They aimed their guns down and fired.

  Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!

  “Down!” Sync shouted, and we all dove under the water and swam as deep as we could, though the canal was only about ten feet deep.

  The current moved swiftly, and if we stayed submerged, it would carry us away from the mobsters. I remembered my water-breathing skill and activated it, even though the thought of “breathing” in this dirty water made me want to barf. Like with the sewers, some programmer had gone overboard with the realism aspect yet again… or was this sort of thing Lucretia’s doing?

  Whether it was the AI or not, if the AllVerse calculated ballistics as well as it pushed for realistic sewers and canals and applied some other in-game physics, we might be safe from the bullets streaking through the water all around us.

  “Siren’s tails, you’ve really vexed those feathered fellows,” Silas muttered while swimming beside us. We still couldn’t respond while underwater.

  Bullets plummeted down around with air trails, lost momentum, and harmlessly sank to the bottom as they rightfully should.

  Sync pulled strokes beside me, but she didn’t have ten minutes underwater like I did. I heard her gulp noisily underwater a few times. She didn’t have long before she’d need to breathe, then she’d have to surface and risk getting shot.

  I couldn’t let her die. She was my best chance at getting free—maybe my only chance.

  In a stroke of true Erik Shaw genius, I employed a strategy Nate and I had once used to take out a boss in an MMO. It had been one of the few occasions we’d worked together as kids.

  We called it the Slop Swap.

  Whenever my health had delved too low, he’d unequip his magical-cloak-of-whatever, and I’d pick it up, using its healing properties to restore me while he distracted the boss. Then, when his health went down too low, I’d do the same thing, and we repeated it ad nauseum until we finally managed to take out the boss.

  I could do the same thing here, and the only thing it would cost me was my dignity, which we’ve already established was long gone by this point.

  Accessing my inventory, I swallowed the tattered remains of my pride, unequipped the Octo-Boxers, and extended them toward her. I floated down the canal with a bare bottom half, a too-small censor bar, and a ninety-second timer for my standard breath hold, which immediately started counting down.

  Sync looked at me with wide eyes and her face twisted into a mix of disgust and confusion. I pointed to the boxers, then to my throat, then jabbed them at her.

  She didn’t get it. Although, to be fair, I’d never been great at charades. I always got frustrated and yelled the answers at whoever I was playing with, a skill which had served me far better in the corporate world.

  Silas furrowed his brow. “Yes, she knows you have the eldritch boxers. She saw them already, along with the rest of your lumpy, misshapen body. What do you want, a round of applause?”

  For at least the tenth time, I wanted to scream. How were they not getting this?

  And my body was perfectly shaped, thank you very much.

  Sync winced, scrunching her face in pain as she ran out of time.

  I quickly equipped the Octo-Boxers again. The timer for the shorts resumed where it had left off, as I knew it would. I swam in front of her, showed her I could take a deep breath of the filthy water, then I unequipped them and thrust them out again. My standard breath timer, however, reset to a full ninety seconds, confirming my theory about a potential exploit.

  To my dismay, when the censor bar came back a second time, it was even smaller. Someone or something in the game was definitely floundering with me.

  But Sync finally caught on and frantically reached for the Octo-Boxers. When she equipped them, they appeared on the outside of her jeans just like they’d done with every pair of AllVerse pants I’d ever tried to wear. She sucked in big breaths of water, and her frantic face relaxed with relief.

  “Ohhh, I see!” Silas exclaimed. “I say, I never would’ve attributed such quick thinking or altruism to you, mate. Well done.”

  Words appeared in my HUD:

  | Affinity Increased: Silas |

  Bullets still rained down around us, but the current carried us farther and farther away. Sync and I continued trading the Octo-Boxers back and forth, but while we whittled down the item’s timer, it kept resetting our natural breath. The censor bar kept shrinking with each swap, too.

  We exploited it until we were well out of range and I no longer had to float face-down, bare asp-up in a dirty canal. The bullets stopped spraying the water, and Sync traded the boxers back to me. I equipped them, hiding my shame once again, and we all ascended to the surface.

  We drifted with the current through the city for awhile. The sky had gone to dusk, and the city lights burned with futuristic fervor.

  I got a notification telling me the Octo-Boxers had gone up to Level 2, and as a result, my water-breathing skill had upgraded. When I checked, it told me the cooldown had shortened from thirty minutes to twenty, and the duration of use had also gone up to twelve minutes from ten, so altogether it made for a nice boost.

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “They’ll follow us. We need to stay on the move or find a hiding place.” Sync added. “Also… let’s never speak of this again.”

  I nodded. “Agreed.”

  The canal was recessed in the ground by about twenty feet and lined with steep cement walls. There was no obvious area to climb out.

  Well, I could, but then I’d have to trade Sync the boxers again so she could climb out. Despite their recent level-up, the Octo-Boxers still only gave me one minute of Suction Limbs, which wasn’t long enough for us both to climb out, and their hour-long cooldown would definitely get us caught before we could use them again.

  Silas drifted over to me and slapped my face to heal me while we drifted.

  I heard Sync snort, unable to conceal her laughter. “What even?”

  “He needs a good healing,” Silas replied. “And a good kicking.”

  Not long afterward, night had fallen, but the glow of the high-rises illuminated the area well. The AllVerse sky displayed a pronounced Milky Way strip with way more stars than we would’ve normally seen with real-life levels of light pollution.

  Overall, the scenery just had that digital fantasy polish. Despite our predicament, I found myself enjoying the sights. Even though the developers had taken some of the gross details farther than I would’ve liked, at least they hadn’t skimped on the cool elements in the process.

  “Hey there,” called a deep, scratchy voice. He spoke with some sort of brogue, but I couldn’t place the exact accent. “You folks need a raft?”

  Nearby, a swole, shirtless orc on a raft beckoned us aboard. He wore leather pants with furs girding his waist. Leather bracers adorned his gargantuan forearms, and he paddled with a single long oar. A torch mounted to the mast of his raft burned with magical blue fire, and it gave me a good look at his greenish skin.

  We swam over to him and pulled ourselves on board.

  “That’ll be three gold coins, one apiece,” the orc Player growled. His lower tusks jutted upward, accentuating his porcine features and pig-nose. “Pay up, or keep swimmin’.”

  I furrowed my brow and looked to Sync, who just shrugged.

  The orc sighed. “I also take AllCash.”

  “AllCash we have,” I replied. “How much?”

  He shrugged while paddling with the wooden oar. “Depends where you’re goin’.”

  “Just get us out of this canal,” I grumbled.

  “Please,” Sync added.

  “Ten each, includin’ the octopus.” He tapped a wooden bucket hanging from the mast, near the blue torch and under the ragged patchwork sail.

  Silas narrowed his eyes at the orc man. “I suppose I should be used to it by now. Save your money. I’ll stay in the water.”

  He splashed back into the canal as I approached the bucket, and a transaction screen popped up. I transferred the $20 AllCash to him and caught sight of the game he was from.

  “World of Orc-Raft?” I groaned. “C’mon.”

  Sync chuckled in her throat. “Yeah, that one was tough to convert.”

  The orc ferryman shrugged. “Don’t knock it ‘til you try it. You should see the rafts you can build in this game. Epic. Eventually, I hope to unlock the hydrofoil raft of the future.”

  I blinked at him. “Yeah, whatever.”

  “The name’s Murdoch, by the way.” When none of us responded, he said, “I suppose it’s a good thing I didn’t waste my breath offerin’ the Rantin’ Raftsman add-on to your fare, Sync and Erik Shaw and Silas. It’s fine if you don’t wanna talk, but a little common courtesy goes a long way in the AllVerse.”

  “So you can scan us and learn our names,” I said. “Big deal. We can do the same thing.”

  “I’m sorry, Murdoch. We’re not exactly in a talkative mood right now.” Sync sat down on the raft, Silas drifted alongside us in the murky water, and overall, the night actually seemed kind of peaceful as we floated down the canal… for about five seconds.

  “Hmm… I guess not every fare needs to include a rivetin’ dialogue or the exchange of competin’ ideas. Just gets a bit lonely out here on these bespoiled waters. You’re the first Players I’ve seen in hours. Not a lot of people lookin’ for fares in the canals.”

  I sighed. This guy was just like me—stuck with an awful game and class, probably soft-locked in the canal until he could take his raft somewhere else with more traffic, and playing a solo campaign. That realization just made me feel even more run-down. Now I really didn’t want to talk to him.

  To his credit, Murdoch just paddled on and hummed a shanty to himself.

  I looked at Sync until she met my gaze, then I gave her my best Erik Shaw smirk and sensual wiggly eyebrows. “I’ve been on worse first dates.”

  She glowered back.

  I continued to smirk as I accessed my inventory to check the status of my rickshaw… then my smirk faded. It had taken a lot of damage and needed to be repaired, or it would suffer ongoing debuffs. Add it to the list of problems to deal with once we got out of this canal.

  “Sync, how do other Players keep finding you? Is there a map marker right on us?”

  She shook her head. “Only for our general area. Their objective screen has our physical description, though. But when I change classes, my cosmetic appearance changes slightly. It doesn’t update in their WHIMs until they come within close range. So it buys me a little time and helps me hide in a crowd. You might want to visit an Avatar Station and change your appearance for that exact reason.”

  “And ruin perfection? Yeah, no. What you see here is all true to form, and it’s gonna stay that way. Besides, what am I supposed to be? An orc?” I thumbed over my shoulder at Murdoch, but I felt a little bad about it, so I added, “No offense, Murdoch. They probably didn’t let you pick your race, given the title of the game is World of Orc-Raft.”

  “None taken,” Murdoch said. “On the contrary, I chose to be an orc on purpose. They’ve fascinated me ever since I read Orconomics by J. Zachary Pike.”

  “I take it all back.” I held out my hands. “He’s a huge nerd, just like the rest of you clowns.”

  “Mate, it’s exhausting dealing with you sometimes,” Silas mumbled from the water.

  I shrugged and pointed at Sync. “Besides, it’s you they’re after, not me.”

  The sight of the owl-man’s cold black eyes fixing on me flashed in my memory. He’d stalled instead of shooting me right away, and that little bit of extra time had been enough to formulate our escape plan, haphazard though it was.

  I was helping Sync, so maybe Lucretia had put hits out on me, too. And that was a wild thought, given Lucretia’s origins.

  “Alright…” I conceded. “I’ll think about changing my appearance, but no promises.”

  Sync pulled her knees to her chest and hugged her legs. She kept scanning the streets above, watching for any sign that the Godfeathers had found us, but we were clear so far.

  “Are there zones where they can’t find us?” I asked. “You know, like… uh, fog-of-war areas?”

  She looked at me with raised eyebrows. “I’m surprised you even know what that is. Seems like you hate games.”

  “Oh, I do, and rightfully so… but I am familiar with them. I mean, I run the world’s largest and now most-successful gaming company.” I glanced between her and Murdoch. “It’s more that I hate gamers. Most of you guys are just complete and total losers living in your parents’ basements. Right, Murdoch?”

  Murdoch shot me a glare, which confirmed my suspicions about him.

  …at least until he replied.

  “I’m actually a professor of economics at Seaboard University,” he said. “I have a Ph.D., a wife, three children, and a poodle. I’m an avid kayaker, hence my choice of game here in the AllVerse, and I only play video games sporadically, as a sort of vacation from everyday life. Maybe three hours a week.”

  I scoffed, struggling to find words. “Mmkay, but, like, is any of that even true? C’mon. Back in the real world, you’re actually covered in Cheeto mud, lurking in your mom’s basement, and sustaining yourself with energy drinks while you game for days on end… right?”

  “On weekends, I volunteer at a homeless shelter,” he added, “and go to church with my family.”

  “Neptune’s beard, mate. Do you ever listen to yourself?” Silas asked. “To the things you’re saying? Bollocks.”

  “Whatever.” My illustration had gone far enough off the rails. Time to change the subject. “Back to my question. Fog of war? Yea or nay?”

  Sync wore an I-told-you-so sort of look, even though she hadn’t technically told me anything. “You’re correct. Depending on the game types native to certain zones, some zones should conceal us from their maps, so keep an eye out for those areas. The problem is we can’t just camp in any of those zones; we still need to hit that Data Point and find those Relics.”

  I nodded, and she went quiet again.

  Silas drifted up alongside her. “Oi, lass, I’m sorry about your friends. Back there.”

  “Thanks, Silas,” she muttered.

  The staggering reality slapped me again. People might actually be dying in this world I had created.

  But I shook my head. That was their fault, not mine. They chose to come here.

  Yeah, but did they choose for your company’s proprietary AI to glitch and lock them inside?

  That internal debate wasn’t going to end up anywhere positive. Arguing with myself was a pointless exercise. It would only mess with my emotions and wouldn’t help me get home, so I abandoned that line of thinking.

  Sync angled her head toward me again. “Why do you hate gaming so much? Like you said, you own the largest gaming company in the world.”

  Now this I could argue about.

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  break--Royal Road. They call us the Critical Hitters.

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  Dungeon Crawler Carl Audio Immersion Tunnel for Soundbooth Theater, and he's the lead writer for the Dungeon Crawler Carl Role Playing Game.