Risking the multiple open doors on the way down the hall, we ran flat out for the gray area on the ship. The map cleared as we went. Labs, homes, recreational areas. Another gallery with a lounge and tables. I shot a glance into their spa and was jealous. Reminded myself not to be jealous of dead people, and hustled on.

  I slowed as we got to another balcony with stairs going down to the ground floor. We had three minutes. Jake leapt off the railing and glided, the rest of us clattered down the stairs, me in the lead. Akilah stumbled and slammed into my back. I glanced behind me. Frag picked her up, and took the stairs by twos and threes until the end.

  The escape pod was a giant metal pill sitting in the middle of an open bay. The space beyond the cargo bay door was already filled with glowing neon yellow toxins seeping in at the edges. If the two left were going to hit us, the stairs would have been the best.

  Were they hiding?

  I swung Baneheart in front of me like an arachnophobe searching for webs, half sure the rogue was sneaking up on me. The pod door waited, and I launched up the steps to get to the entry platform. The door hissed open, and I burst through and threw myself into one of the six jump seats on the walls. Jake ducked in after me, likewise occupying a seat. Elora raced in next. Akilah stumbled in the door—and into something else. She seemed to have hit something, rebounding to fall into a jump seat, elbows first.

  A figure appeared in the door, twin guns aimed and firing at Fig and Frag. They wore a mask, their dark duster and cowboy hat hiding any identifying features. Even the worn brown gloves concealed what they were.

  As I got up to attack him, a blade slipped in under my arm, another higher, where my chestplate ended and my shoulder began. The magical hue of blue around the blades told me who it was. The Warpblade satyr. My grudge deepened as he tore it out and grinned at me. Blood spilled. [Hit: -4 Warp -2] [Hit: -3 Warp -2] [Hit: Vital Point Bleed]

  The bleed of a vital point hit started ticking away. I bent my elbow and drove it back into his face. There was nowhere for him to run, unless it was into the doom of an exploding starship. Jake lurched up, arms wrapping around the satyr as the System timer ticked down.

  [System Alert: 10 seconds to launch. Pod at capacity.]

  I roared with rage, lunging for the duster pistoleer. I yanked them back, looking out at the open door. Fig and Frag had both been wounded, bleeding as they staggered up the steps. The look in their eyes as the door slid shut…

  I will never forget the acceptance there. Could I ever be as cool in the face of fatality?

  No.

  If I had a chance to fight, I’d tear everything down.

  When the loading screen took me, I was glad. I didn’t want to watch their faces as the pod took off without them. While I waited to be loaded back into Convergent City, I mulled things over. For one, their names. Corinth. The satyr seemed to like being an assassin. I wondered if he was like Shivrith, a PKer. He wasn’t Unbound, as far as I could tell, and wouldn’t escape my wrath like Shivrith had. The look in his eyes, though, when he stabbed me.

  Did I look like that?

  [System Alert: Congratulations to the survivors!]

  Soft earth gave under my feet, and I crumbled to a knee. Blood flowed freely down my arm. My fist hit the soil of the field in Lacunae, blood pooling on the ashy ground. Ashy? Something was weird, but I couldn’t place it.

  Jake appeared at my side, tugging at my armor strap. I joked, “I can undress myself, mom.”

  Other hands joined his, and Jake snorted. “Change your underwear while you’re at it.”

  I grinned, not even all that squicked by the needle he jabbed into my shoulder. They got my chestplate off, and Jake set to work patching me up. I looked up and around for Fig and Frag, nodded to them when I spotted them ambling into the field, presumably from Fig’s house. I’d never been there, but she lived in Lacunae, somewhere.

  Jake called across the field, “You two alright?”

  “I got shot and exploded! Then we were floating in space for a little bit before we came back. It was incredible,” Fig gushed, her green hair still clumpy with blood from wounds healed by death.

  “Let me look you over to be sure you’re alright,” Jake said as he finished checking me.

  He slapped my other arm, pushed up, and hurried over to Fig and Frag, who appeared to be less than optimal, but were fine. I turned my knuckles, running my hand along the barren patch of earth. A glance told me we were back in Lacunae, in the field we’d been taken from.

  “Oh, gods,” Elora said, her hand covering her mouth. I eased to a stand and turned around, following her line of sight. For a few hundred yards in every direction, the ground had gone from lush and sprouting to dead. Beyond dead. Ashen, as if all that made it alive was stolen, like moon dust. Barren.

  “We have to get out of here,” I said, glancing around.

  No one was nearby, but at any moment, someone could see and blame it on us. Elora shook her head, pointing at the spot where she’d buried the idol. “We should dig it up.”

  “We are not digging it up,” Akilah said briskly, going over to Elora to hook an arm in hers. “We’re finishing the quest chain, and then we can come back and dig it up. What’s done is done.”

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  “Look, we knew it was trouble when we took it, Elora,” I said, falling into step beside her on the other side. In this case, we were both devils, but the loot—we all wanted it. “This isn’t like real nature. It’s virtual reality. The System built it and does whatever it wants to it. It tends to return things to their usual state once the disruption is gone. It’ll be fine.”

  Elora looked between us, a doubt lingering in her eyes. “Alga’s bar sometimes gets wrecked. Orcs are rowdy sometimes. After the guests leave, the System resets everything. She’d be out of chairs otherwise.”

  “What about our armor?” She said, poking a finger through a hole burned through her leather skirt.

  I shrugged. “Guess we have to spend our rocks on something.”

  The others followed, having finished Jake’s quick exam. I tried to imagine what an All-Element Core would look like when my inventory lit up. I opened it to see Loogie’s cocoon glowing.

  “Holy shit, Loogie’s ready!”

  I also noticed my Arena awards, but that didn’t matter. I’d been missing the little bug. The simple, pure way it looked at me made my heart squeeze with longing. I almost didn’t wait to get out of the field before opening my inventory.

  When I did, the cocoon came out larger than it had gone in. The dry mucus shell—threaded through with a generous helping of my hair—was a much heftier weight as well. As we got to the road, I lifted it in the palm of my hand and could feel something wiggle inside. Some of the weaker points started to split.

  I guessed it at twenty pounds, though it was hard to say. Everything under a hundred felt light since I chose my avatar. The cracks in the cocoon grew; mottled brown skin peeked through.

  Everyone crowded around me, and our wounded crawl drew to a standstill near the mountain road. I let Loogie do the work, its multitude of tiny claws tearing at the fibrous paper. Its little beakish face poked through one end. It pushed and squirmed to where I held it with both hands, close to me so it wouldn’t fall.

  Loogie’s eyes were still a brilliant sapphire when its eyelids opened. Warmth flooded my spirit as I cradled it.

  “You have a beautiful baby cat lizard,” Jake said, his mouth twitching in a half-smile, his gaze on the Vash’Ora. We were all entranced as Loogie wiggled and kicked its cocoon away. The papery hair fell and crunched further apart on the ground.

  It had less fur this time. Its tiny scaly limbs looked like caterpillar legs tipped with tiny clawed digits. The scales themselves weren’t rough, but soft and dry, like Hythsaa’s skin. The top half of it was still furry, but the hair was longer, silkier, and golden as wheat. The turtlish face was still the same shape, the horn on its nose more prominent, along with a few new spikes on its head.

  I flipped it to lay its belly on my hand to see what I’d felt on the little—not so little bug’s fuzzy back. Tiny wings, something like Jake’s but small, too small to give the body lift. Loogie had another evolution to go before those would be useful.

  I turned my hand so I could see Loogie’s eye and said, “Welcome back, little goober.”

  “Back. Hungie. Give, Loogie hungie!”

  My head rocked back, and I glanced at the others. Elora scratched a finger under the Vash’Ora’s chin, Akilah’s were exploring one of its wings. Fig wiggled fingers at its face, smiling a hello. Jake was making grabby hands, like he wanted me to pass my precious Vash’Ora his way. Fuck that. Maybe later. Even Frag was watching with his own brand of aloof interest.

  “Loogie’s hungry. We have to find something to feed it. Hold on.” Last time, I put it in inventory and found out what it ate. Not before finding out by trial and error, because I’m ass backward like that, but anyway. I tried to put it in my inventory.

  [Cannot Carry]

  Of course. I looked down the curving road through the woods to Lacunae. We’d just defiled one of their fields, and now we had to go back to feed Loogie. Cool. Great. Typical.

  “Anyone have any food and water? We have to try and find what it likes,” I said.

  “How do you know it’s hungry?” Akilah asked, looking from Loogie to me.

  “It told me. Guess it’s telepathic,” I replied.

  “I wonder if any of us could talk with it,” Elora mused. She squinted her eyes and, a moment later, shrugged. “Guess it’s not like the Symbiot.”

  Loogie squirmed in my hands. “Down!”

  “Okay, but don’t run off and get lost. Stay close,” I warned while crouching to put it on the ground.

  “Feed! Loogie find!” Loogie took off running as soon as its many little feet hit the ground.

  “Shit,” I gasped, and took off after it.

  The little critter kicked up dust, scampering at a speed that was hard to keep up with. Behind me, I heard a few sets of footsteps keeping up for a while, then falling behind. It was clear that Loogie was following its nose to the little LARP village.

  We ran past a few houses, and then Loogie veered into a garden with a shaded pond. The Vash’Ora leapt right into the water, little tongue flicking as it swam. It dove, wings flapping to propel it down. I staggered to the edge of the pond and watched it wiggle towards a giant decorative goldfish.

  Fish? I shrugged, then looked up.

  The house was a picturebook thing, with a steep, curving roof, arched windows and door. Creeping vines clung to cobblestone walls. Sitting on the flagstone patio was a fox guy, glasses perched on his elongated nose, an elegant teacup paused on the way to his lips. My eyes widened.

  “Is that your pet?” The fox asked. His nameplate said Humphrey Fox of Shireholme. Someone spent more time than I did figuring out their after-abduction life, that was for sure. My minimap identified this plot of land as Shireholme.

  The fox stood up and sniffed, looking into the little pool under the tree. Ribbons of blood rose and pooled in the little fish pond. Ugh. His furry brow quirked. “Is your pet eating my pet?”

  I rubbed the back of my neck and looked down into the water. Slowly I looked up and nodded with a wince.

  “I didn’t expect…”

  “Kindly put it on a leash,” Humphrey hissed, tail fluffing up behind him. “And I’d like some recompense for ruining my fish pond.”

  “Of course. I apologize,” I said. The others were just catching up. Elora got to the pond and the site of Loogie’s crime first.

  I went over to pay the man while Elora fished Loogie out of the water.

  As we walked back toward the others, Loogie contentedly sunning itself dry in her arms, I muttered, “This is a nice place. I don’t think I belong here.”

  Elora gave me a consoling smile but also nodded, agreeing with me.

  I sighed in quiet defeat.

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