Nice one, Dave Whispered. I’m almost hurt. Almost.

  Somehow, I doubted that. I had a feeling he’d heard a lot worse.

  I straightened and turned. There was only one NPC in the room, a male butler. He was a Scael, his skin pine-green and bumpy like a snake’s, and his livery more silver than red to differentiate him from the soldiers. He just stood there, unmoving, but his eyes were on me. Was that a program running, or was it the person? Could he still think for himself, despite whatever the Conduit had done to him? Were the minds of the NPCs gone forever, or was there still a way to bring them back?

  I sat on the low wall surrounding the fountain. First things first.

  “What are we still doing here?” Dave asked. “Just yanking our chains? The guards outside won’t protect you for long if you try to level up here. Most of the Hunters will be level 10 by now.”

  I knew that. As much as I wanted—and needed—to level up, it was going to take too much time. I had to choose a safe spot, or risk dying while I was stuck inside a bunch of menus.

  “We’ll leave in a minute. But first, I’m making some quality-of-life improvements to my gameplay,” I said.

  To start, I pulled up the settings menu in my helmet. It was where I expected it to be, marked with the same gear icon from Seven Keys. I scrolled down to a tab marked Host Settings, and searched through the options there, trying to find anything about “dilation” or the Game Host’s “accent.”

  I found the former, a simple toggle conveniently titled Dilation. It was set to Off. I set it to On.

  Nothing changed, but if Dave had said it would help the Game Host be less annoying, I was all for it. I searched for another minute, chasing down tabs and toggles, but I couldn’t find anything about changing the sex-crazed voice. All I found was the word Seductress at the top of the Host menu, but there wasn’t an option to change it, much less tap it.

  Dave must have been able to see what I was doing, because he Whispered, Remnant chose that voice before Setup Mode every year. I swear, he got off on it. I don’t think you can make it go away, or else other Hunters would do it. I remember this one year, a guy went mad after picking Scottish Brogue. The novelty wears off fast, let me tell you. He only lasted a week.

  I raised an eyebrow. That had to be a translation anomaly of some kind, because surely, aliens didn’t have Scottish people.

  I couldn’t ask that, though, which was the second reason I’d sat down. I exited a few tabs, returning to the main settings and tapping Gestures. In Seven Keys, you could initiate a Whisper by making the “I’m watching you” gesture, but I’d already tried that when Dave had started Whispering me, to no avail.

  Next to the word Whisper on the gesture list was an unfamiliar phrase: temple click. I had no idea what to do with that.

  I sat, stumped, but once again Dave had followed me through the menus.

  It’s what it sounds like, he said. You just sort of… tense and untense your temple really quick. For humanoids, you can sometimes do it by trying to wiggle your ears.

  Frowning, I gave it a shot, fiddling with the muscles of my face. It wasn’t something I had consciously done before, but as soon as I managed it, my whole HUD screen took on a slightly brighter violet sheen. I could still see through it, but it was obvious that I’d activated something.

  Now what? I wanted to say.

  There! You just did it, Dave replied.

  I did what?

  You thought a phrase!

  I did? Oh. Yeah, I see it now.

  Now that I was in the Whisper screen, I could see our chat in the corner of my HUD, writing out my thoughts in real time. It wasn’t getting every thought, thankfully, but when I put a bit of mental push behind a word—when I thought something specifically—it seemed to translate it there. I could even scroll up or down, or pull up a Search function, to access older parts of the chat.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Remnant: Great. This is great. Now we can communicate properly with no one overhearing us.

  Fuck You Dave: Yes! Now you can become the strong silent type in real life.

  Remnant: That won’t be too hard. I don’t have much to say except “fuck.”

  Fuck You Dave: That suits the viewers fine. It’s like my mother used to say, “If you can’t say something nice….”

  Remnant: …don’t say anything at all?

  Dave actually recoiled from me.

  Fuck You Dave: What? No! It’s “If you can’t say something nice, then put a bag on their head and go to bed with them anyway.”

  Fuck You Dave: Sheesh, who raised you? Mother Theresa?

  I sighed and stood up. Even though I still didn’t fully trust the Conduit not to listen in on us, I did trust Dave, and I doubted Remnant would have been a nine-time Champion of the Hunt if he hadn’t been able to talk to his Game Guide using a private line.

  I had to believe the Whispers were safe, at least for now.

  Unwittingly, this had translated into Whispers again.

  Remnant: I have to believe the Whispers are safe, at least for now.

  Fuck You Dave: Oh, they are. Remnant tested them. He cursed the Conduit in here and did all kinds of blasphemy. Mentioned the Prime’s sister’s elephant fetish and everything.

  Fuck You Dave: It isn’t normal, though. You’re right about that. We can talk like this because of FATE. She… is a very unique Auxiliary. Let’s just put it that way.

  At the mention of the AI, I realized I hadn’t actually dismissed her since the Dismantling incident.

  “FATE, go away,” I said, and her little microphone icon went out.

  I rose, dispelling the Whisper menu with another ear wiggle. I’d find out later what it meant to have the Game Host “dilated,” but the ability to Whisper was a much-needed change.

  “What now, bucko?” Dave asked.

  “Now we go piss off the Devs a bit more,” I said, turning and striding up to a large side door leading off the ground floor of the foyer. I once again opened it with no issue, even though it should have been locked this early in the game. The butler remained silent behind us, but I could feel his eyes burning into my back. Or maybe I just wanted to believe I could feel them. I wanted to believe there was still a real person behind that unblinking stare.

  The side door led to a room with a long wooden table and a roaring fire at one end. This room was much more occupied than the foyer. Four Riftguard stood or sat around the table, and one man stood at the far end by the hearth, his arms crossed. He looked right at me as I entered.

  Hergvor, formerly Moran, my supervisor.

  “Hey, I remember that guy,” Dave said. “Are we here to fulfill his quest or something? Are the rewards good?”

  I shook my head. “Nope. We’re here to Conscript him.”

  Dave stared at me. “What? You can’t Conscript NPCs. Only Coreless.”

  I didn’t change my expression. I could only Conscript people without ID chips, or people with compromised IDs, like kids. I had yet to see one of those in the game. I couldn’t imagine there were too many more of them left around here.

  Then again, where was “here” anyway? I posed the question to Dave in a whisper:

  Remnant: Where are we? Like, are we still on Earth?

  Fuck You Dave: Um, duh. Where else would we be?

  Remnant: This looks nothing like Earth, though. Is it an illusion? Are we even still in the Sahara?

  Fuck You Dave: It’s not an illusion. It’s qued.

  There was that word again. He’d pronounced it like “cued” before, but in the Whisper, he spelled it with a ‘q.’

  Remnant: Qued?

  Fuck You Dave: Altered using qubins. Those are like nanoparticles. The Conduit use them for everything. Your helmet, the implants that let you see the HUD and hear the Game Host, most of the in-game items and mechanics, all of that is made and managed by qubins. Think of them as little fairies, always fucking with you.

  I gritted my teeth. Once, a long time ago, I’d hated the idea of having an ID chip. The government could track you then, watch you. People didn’t really believe it was happening, but I always knew. Get an ID chip, and you might have a life, but you definitely lost all of your privacy.

  But this… this was worse. These aliens were in my head. They were altering my body. Once, I’d been willing to sacrifice privacy for safety.

  There was no safety worth this.

  Remnant: So we’re still in the Sahara, then? It’s just been… changed?

  Fuck You Dave: Oh, I have no idea where we are on your planet. We could have been translated anywhere. But I doubt we’re still in some desert. There won’t be many Coreless to kill in a desert.

  I found my hands in fists. This just got worse and worse. I was infected with foreign tech, and so was everyone else. Hours ago, billions of people had been living billions of lives, and now they were reduced to mere characters. My life was now a game, and my planet was nothing more than a gods-damned backdrop for that game, all for some alien’s entertainment.

  Well, what are you gonna do about it? that little voice said in my head.

  These Conduit bastards thought they had my planet dead to rights. They thought they could steal my game, my world, and my people, and that we humans would just let them do it.

  Well, I knew Seven Keys better than these aliens did. If I could find one loophole, I could find others.

  And what better place to start than with my old boss.