I gave Lilli a look. Maddy had no idea! And, of course, we couldn’t tell her anything. That would be going against our no-talking agreement. Not that I was anxious to relive the experience anyway.
I patted the side of a Gauntlet machine. “I wish I lived back then. Everything was much simpler.”
“Yeah, right,” Maddy scoffed. “I mean, hello? If we wanted to rent a video, we had to drive to an actual store and then return the tape the next day! No streaming. No movies on demand. Even Netflix mailed you DVDs.”
“The horror!” Lilli said, fanning her hand in front of her face, laughing.
I sighed. Honestly, it all sounded pretty good to me. No Wi-Fi, no internet. No crazy AI dragons…
Maddy peered at me curiously. “Are you sure everything’s okay, Ian?”
I paused, unsure what to say. I wanted to tell her; I really did. But we couldn’t risk it. Cool as she was, she was still a grown-up. Which meant she would either not believe us or believe us so much that she’d want to call our parents. Or the police, even.
“Any mail message yet?” Lilli asked, walking back over to her laptop. She peered down at the screen, pressing her lips together. “Maybe you should log in all the way—see if she’s online or something. A lot of people never check their in-game mail.”
I wasn’t sure about that. In fact, my guess was if you sent a help message through the game mail system, you probably would stick around to see if someone answered it. But then, she did send it two days ago, and we hadn’t replied until now. Maybe she’d given up on us.
I set down my rag and forced myself to walk back over to the laptop, trying to ignore the all-too-familiar feeling of anxiety creeping through me as I sat down and selected my character. Lord Wildhammer, the eighty-five-level warrior I’d modeled my Dragon Ops role after, was big and burly, with huge plates of metal armor covering all his vital parts and a horned helmet protecting his head.
In other words, basically the complete opposite of real-life me. But that was the beauty of video games. You could be anyone. Do anything. Lord Wildhammer wasn’t afraid of some silly old dragon. And as long as I was playing him, well, I shouldn’t be afraid, either, right?
“Wow,” Maddy said, coming over. “This really brings me back. I was a huge fan of this game back in the day. I haven’t played lately, though—too busy with work to get sucked back in. My poor mage Allora—I’m pretty sure I last left her hanging out in some random tavern years ago. I hope she’s at least made friends with the locals.”
“Ian used to be a superfan of Fields of Fantasy,” Lilli informed her. “You couldn’t get him offline if you tried.” She laughed.
“I’m still a fan,” I muttered, half to myself. “Just… have other things going on right now.” In fact, just seeing the loading screen was making me miss gaming more than ever. But it was also sparking my anxiety big-time.
Please don’t let Atreus be there. Please don’t let—
The screen flashed, and Lord Wildhammer appeared. At first I wasn’t sure where I’d landed—it’d been so long since I last played. But then I started recognizing the background. The bloodstained rocks, the bone-strewn floor. The chunky crystal-studded walls.
ROAR!
The sound ripped through the laptop speakers, and I nearly leapt out of my skin. With trembling hands, I spun the game camera around, already knowing what was behind me before I even saw it.
The great dragon Atreus. And he did not look pleased.
On instinct, I drew my sword. The dragon growled again, his mouth creaking open, revealing a familiar cavern of razor-sharp teeth. I held up my shield over my body, a pathetic attempt to protect myself. One blast from that fiery mouth and I was a goner.
“Dude, just get out of there,” Lilli scolded. “You’ll never beat him by yourself. Without even a healer.” She drummed her fingers on the table. “Man, I wish we brought a second laptop.”
“I’ve got mine,” Maddy broke in. “Just get out of aggro range and give me a second to port over to the Crystal Temple.” She grabbed her laptop from under the prize deck and walked over to the table, flipping it open. Her eyes glittered with excitement.
And why not?
My brain reminded me. After all, this wasn’t the real Atreus—the artificially intelligent robot that had tried to kill us in Dragon Ops. This was just the classic video game version. A simple program, designed to perform a simple function, dressed in a dragon’s skin.
Still, try to tell that to my stomach, which rumbled uneasily as the massive dragon padded forward, closing the space between him and my game character. His tail swished behind him, and his wings cracked at the air like twin whips. My mind flashed back to that fateful day in Dragon Ops. In the real Crystal Cave, with the real Atreus looming in front of us. Fire dancing on his blackened tongue.
When one wrong move would be game over—forever.
You’re not there, I scolded myself. This is just a game. A dumb, harmless game.
“I’m here!” Maddy cried. “Let’s get this guy.”
I forced Lord Wildhammer forward, ready to pull aggro and strike. The dragon roared, swiping at me with his claw, taking out almost half my hit points with one blow. From behind me, Maddy’s mage shot a blast of ice straight at him, freezing him in place.
“Ugh. Ice,” Lilli shuddered and turned away. Maybe she was thinking about the time back in Dragon Ops when we’d fought an ice dragon and she’d been frozen in much the same way. At the time, I thought she was a goner. Until Ikumi showed up and unfroze her.
“Heal up!” Maddy barked at me. “You’ve got ten seconds before this wears off.”
I clicked on my inventory, digging
