Wow. So that’s why I’d survived so far, and why I’d survived all those other aliens. It wasn’t just the helmet hiding my face. Remnant was a shapeshifter, so the change in his body wouldn’t raise any eyebrows, either.

  To everyone else, I was Remnant—just so long as I kept the helmet on, and stayed smart. Dave might be cracking wise about me not doing anything stupid, but it was still a real possibility, and a deadly one, too. Right now, I wasn’t actually sure what constituted “stupid,” aside from, I don’t know, looking right at a camera and saying “I’m a human who assumed this Hunter’s identity. Also, I want to die.”

  But there were other mistakes I might make, ones I didn’t even comprehend yet. I’d have to figure it out as I went.

  “Okay, so the helmet stays on, no exceptions,” I said. The thing better have some sort of cleaning function. “So, you mentioned a vault? That sounds important. Can we talk freely there?”

  “We can. Sometimes. It should be clear if you can’t, as in, someone else will be in there with us. The show runners think it keeps things interesting if the Hunters have secrets.”

  Oh, I was planning to have secrets, and plenty of them. “Good,” I said.

  “A vault is like a protected area,” Dave went on. “It’s a safe place where you can rest and have tea and biscuits and let the world pass you by if you want. Only, you should never do that, because most Phases are timed.”

  Just under his face, my helmet was projecting the loading phrase Breasting Babes. That was a new one.

  “And how do I find a vault?”

  “It changes each Phase, but it should be pretty self-explanatory. It’ll be in a quest. Instead of talking about that, let’s use this time to teach you how to use your inventory. It should be a knapsack icon on the right side of your view screen. That’s where your laser is. You can also store the Leap there.”

  I checked where he indicated, turning my head on instinct, but the icons moved with me. I had to just stand still and slide my eyes over to find the right icon. There had to be a dozen of the things up both sides, not to mention all the doo-dads along the bottom.

  “There is no way I can do this quickly in a pinch,” I said, tapping the icon. It accidentally highlighted another icon for a moment, and I had to drag my finger down.

  “You can adjust your menu to accept gestures, not just taps. There’s a Customization mode, but that’s a preference thing. For now, open the inventory menu.”

  “Already done.”

  The inventory screen expanded directly in front of me, showing a grid of squares that extended infinitely in all directions. Only a few squares, right in front of me, contained anything. One was the laser gun, the other was the katana. I guess that little girl hadn’t picked it up after all.

  “While that screen is up, you can manually pull out items or drop them in, like they’re on a shelf,” Dave said. “They’ll be small on the screen, but they should instantly expand to full size again when you retrieve them.”

  Just like Seven Keys, then. “Is it infinite?”

  “Not for everyone. But for you, yes.”

  There it was again—yet another thing that seemed different about Remnant.

  He was a nine-time returning Hunter. He had a suit that could take an ionic blast. He had an unlimited inventory. He had a personal FATE assistant, and she was able to override and reset his Game Host without anyone being the wiser….

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “You’ll learn gestures to make this quicker later on,” Dave said impatiently. “For now, get the damned laser out. It should have reset to have nine full charges.”

  I reached into the inventory and tapped the gun. I almost gave a shout as the gun appeared, hovering right in front of me, just behind the inventory screen. All the screens were transparent enough to see through.

  I took the gun into my hand. It felt like a toy, with a silvery, rocket-ship shape and a ball on the laser end. Yet it also hummed dangerously.

  Frowning, I looked back at the inventory. “How do I store things?”

  “Expand a square with your fingers, then shove an object through. It will dematerialize and show up as an icon.”

  I did as he said, and my chosen square expanded to take up most of the screen area. I stowed away the Leap headset, and the box glowed as the Leap passed into it. It was like I was putting the thing into a portal. Incredible.

  “How do they do this?” I asked. This technology was beyond me. “Or—is in an illusion? Did they put implants in my eyes?”

  “No, it’s all real. That’s the power of the qubins.”

  “Cue-bins?”

  “Focus, Talon.”

  On the inventory screen, in a box to the left of the one that was still expanded to accept more items, my Leap headset had shrunk down into a digitized violet rendering of itself. It made me a little nervous to see it.

  “Tap the helmet to leave the menu. Right temple,” Dave said. “That will always work to clear any menus you have open. So remember it. No sense getting shanked by someone right in front of you because you can’t see them through all the displays.”

  I tapped my temple, and the expanse cleared down to my basic HUD.

  “All right,” Dave said. “Now, if you kill someone or something, loot them. Loot is everything.”

  I’d figured this was coming. “How can I loot something? Just grab their shirt and shove it into my inventory?”

  “No, there’s a faster way. You’ll see a symbol hovering over their corpse, the same way you’ll see humans with the Conscript symbol. It should match the loot symbol from the Seven Keys game, so you should recognize it.”

  “Yeah, a hand icon. Okay.”

  Dave huffed at my interruption, then plunged onward, his body leaning forward on his rock. “Looting a body will pull up a smaller 9-box grid menu. The center box in the grid will always house their gold. You’ll only be able to collect the eight most valuable things they had on them, plus their gold, and there should be a gesture you can use to ‘collect all.’”

  “What about a dead human? Will they have loot menus?”

  I swallowed. Were there even any humans left?

  “They’ll have loot menus,” Dave confirmed. Good—that meant there were still humans alive and free on the planet. After all, I doubted any other people had assumed a Hunter’s identity.

  “Anything NPCs or Hunters have, humans will have, too,” Dave was saying. “The Host will have converted them all to the system by now, but don’t get your hopes up. They’ll automatically start off a lot weaker than Hunters will. They start at Level 1 with no items.”

  “I figured as much,” I said, checking the loading text again. This time it said Adding Curse Words to Dialogue. That sounded trivial. Did that mean we were close to getting let out of here?

  I looked around. “If this isn’t a vault, what is it?” I asked.

  “It’s a loading area. They’ll always show at the start of a level, but sometimes they’ll happen in the middle of one, too. We’re safe from damage until that wall comes down, and everyone else will be stuck the same way, so no one can try to camp us.

  “Once the wall does come down, Phase One will have officially begun. We’re going to need a plan on how to beat it. This should all mimic the first level or area of that Seven Keys game. So, got any videos on that?”

  Gritting my teeth, I tucked the butterfly knife into the back pocket of my suit pants. It reminded me abruptly of Seth and the Kitty Scouts.

  “I don’t need vids on the opening quest,” I said. “I’ve played through that a dozen times, so that I could try out all the different classes and magic types. Are the Conscripts going through it, too?”

  “Yes. They should automatically be lumped together as a single party in another Instance, even though there are more than four of them. Four is the party limit, but the rules are different for Conscripts.”

  I breathed out. So the kids were gonna face the opening area of Seven Keys, too. That might actually give them a shot. That guy Seth had definitely played Seven Keys, and plenty of kids had played it, too. Some of the Kitty Scouts might even be familiar with the first level. Maybe they would survive.

  Then I remembered that lasers existed, and they didn’t even have my katana.

  Dave was right. Those poor kids were toast.

  At least I gave them a fighting chance.

  “You said they’re in another instance,” I said. “You mean this opening level is happening somewhere else simultaneously, but with different players? How many Instances are there?”

  “Hundreds, maybe thousands. But there will be fewer all the time.”

  I swallowed. “Why will there be fewer?”

  “Because only one person can survive any given Instance,” Dave said, just as the blue wall came down.