Three Years Ago

  Several Weeks Before Launch of the Hermes Mission

  “Check this out,” Lore said, stepping off the waystone. I followed his avatar, a deep red Scael he’d named IsoLAIDtion. Given he was a thirteen-year-old kid, I thought it was fairly tame, as bad sex puns go. He’d be retiring the character once he launched.

  As he led me down a path into the dense jungle area—the words Weeping Forest overlaid my screen for a few seconds—I raised my hand to look at it. We stood together in my apartment, both of us wearing our Leap headsets with all the included foot and hand trackers. He would soon be issued a full Leap suit, but for now, the cheaper getup did the trick, tracking our movements in real time and translating our characters into the game.

  My hand was see-through, incorporeal. I looked like a ghost. I even passed it through a bromeliad leaf, and felt nothing. The trackers on my hands didn’t even give a buzz of feedback.

  “This is wild,” I said.

  IsoLAIDtion peered back at me, its red eyes burning. When it spoke, it was with Lore’s voice.

  “Really? I’ve never actually done it,” he said, before turning back around. “You kinda need friends that want to let you shadow them. Ones that are higher-level than you, anyway.”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. He hadn’t mentioned not having friends before. Then again, he hadn’t mentioned having them, either.

  My heart sank. Ever since he became a citizen, he’s always made it seem like it was heaven on Earth to live in the City…. Maybe it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

  “Lore—”

  “Shh, listen,” he cut me off, stopping. He cocked his head, so I did too.

  Very faintly, so faint I thought I was actually hallucinating, I heard the wail of a crying baby.

  That sinking feeling in my chest turned hard. “Lore, this had better not be—”

  “It’s nothing to do with that. The baby crying is because of a hidden boss,” he explained. “It gets louder the closer you get.”

  The sound had me on edge. I couldn’t help thinking Lore was trying to get something out of me. He knew I hated to hear babies cry. Anything to do with babies, I hated, and he knew exactly why.

  “I’ve seen you kill bosses before, in your vids,” I said. “Let’s do something else. Isn’t there a battle in the Cosmodome right now?”

  “It’s not about the fight,” he pressed, still not turning around. We were still walking, and the baby’s cry was getting louder. “It’s a—well, kinda like a glitch. An exploit. Not everyone knows about it, and it could help you farm the Mother later. You can get a ton of levels doing this.”

  By farm the Mother, he must mean the boss. All bosses had some sort of moniker in addition to their names. I’d heard of the Mother somewhere before.

  “It’s not the dragon from the opening level, is it?” I asked. That one had been a mother, too.

  “No. This one is called Pontianak. I think it’s from Native American lore, or something. I should look it up, see what tribe it’s from. Maybe we’re related.”

  We had a very small amount of Native American blood in us, from our mom’s side. It’s where Lore got his slightly darker skin tone, and it’s where our mother’s maiden name came from. North, short for Northwest Wind. Lore had taken her surname when he’d picked up citizenship, while I was still stuck with our father’s name.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “I doubt it. There were tons of tribes.”

  His avatar shrugged ahead of me. The baby was getting much louder now, and the path was turning into a vine-draped tunnel. There was a light at the end, though. It was the opalescent glow that usually surrounded a healing pool.

  I jogged in place back in the apartment, spurring my avatar to sprint up next to IsoLAIDtion. “A healing pool? In the middle of an area?”

  “I know, right? That’s the trick.”

  The baby wailed, making my stomach curdle. It kept drawing breaths between each scream, almost like a hiccup. If I never heard that sound again, I’d die happy.

  That was a lie, though. I’d never die happy. It just wasn’t my lot in life. Never was.

  The light grew closer, and I realized it wasn’t coming from the end of the tunnel, but from the side. The tunnel branched off in a new direction, and Lore stopped there. I joined him.

  The branching path led away, but there was an open space where the two tunnels met. A small pool of water, fed by a creek, took up most of the space. A woman in long white robes stood beside the pool, her hands clasped and head bowed.

  “My lord IsoLAIDtion,” she said, her voice reverent. “I await your command.”

  Lore interacted with her using a gesture, pulling up a menu that floated between his avatar and the NPC, who I knew to be a Celeste worshipper. These shrine maidens worshiped the gods of Ostium, with most of their order centered in the Treecurve, which was the forested fourth region of the World Ring.

  “Here’s what I wanted to show you,” Lore said. “Look at her menu.”

  I scanned through it. Since I was shadowing him, I could see all the same menus he could. I couldn’t interact with the game in any other way. I was basically an observer, but it was a nifty trick that a seasoned player could use to help coach a new player in fighting bosses.

  “You can give her commands?” I asked, reading through the menu. It offered three different options: one, to assist Lore in battle in the Ruined Shrine area; two, to activate a healing pool at the entrance to the Ruined Shrine, which I guessed was this turnoff; and three, to increase his Luck by one stat point while he was in the Ruined Shrine area.

  Despite all the mention of the Ruined Shrine, however, I hadn’t seen the words pop up like they had when we’d entered the Weeping Forest. We technically hadn’t entered the Ruined Shrine yet.

  “Yeah,” Lore said. “It’s a part of a major Celeste quest line. There’s a shrine past here that’s overrun with high-level wraiths, and the Celeste send this maiden to help you defeat them. You’re supposed to go into it under-leveled.”

  I could still hear the damned baby. “Okay,” I said. “And this is a big deal, for some reason?”

  IsoLAIDtion raised a hand, one finger extended. I could hear Lore’s smile in his voice, but it didn’t show on the Scael’s face.

  “It’s a big deal because this spot, right here, is in two areas at once. It’s in the Ruined Shrine on that half of the pond—” he pointed “—and it’s in the Weeping Forest on this side. Meaning we can trot on down the path and fight the boss with a healing pool right here. It’s just close enough that the boss won’t lose aggro if you run back to heal.”

  My eyes widened. Now I was getting it.

  “You mean, because of this oversight, lower level players can kill a much higher level boss, because there’s a healing pool where there shouldn’t be one!”

  Lore snapped his fingers in real life. I heard the sound, but his avatar’s hand mostly just flickered. “Right?”

  I looked at the pretty shrine maiden again. She had her hands clasped in front of her, her face turned down in reverence. Her info box was still open, and I could see that she had the Worship status for Lore. That was the highest Friendship level an NPC could have. In the game, she basically thought of Lore as a god, or an extension of one.

  “But what about her quest?” I asked. “What happens when you finish it?”

  Lore gave a nod. “Exactly. Once you complete this quest, you can’t get the shrine maiden to do this again. So you can’t advance the Celeste quest line so long as you want to keep farming the Mother.” He shrugged. “I’ve reached the point that I don’t need the pool anymore, so I was going to beat the wraiths today. Want to watch?”

  “Anything to get away from that racket,” I said, and I followed him as he stepped past the maiden. Finally, the phrase Ruined Shrine faded in and out of my vision, and the sound of the crying baby faded.

  In its place, there came a silence, sharp as death. On the one hand, it warmed my cold dead heart that Lore had shown me this. It would help me level up quickly, if I ever got this far in the game.

  On the other hand, I knew I’d be hearing wailing babies in my sleep tonight.

  This wasn’t the only reason you did this, is it, little brother? I thought.

  He was smarter than I was. Smarter than sex puns. And no matter how poorly I slept when he was gone, I could at least know he’d be smart enough to survive out there, without me.

  I just hoped I could make it without him.